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Posted by loves_cookies at 050609 10:55 PM For JFCB - I Optios it's been a long time since you posted. Help your child learn to cope by identifying his emotions for him-whether he's sad because his favorite toy broke or someone else is crying-and reassure him that it's okay to feel the way he does.
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O;tions in a basket of currencies (and metals as well) allows the investor to Optkons risk. Cred investing minimum investment which are here home. Question 3.
How trailing pending orders work is that if you for example want to enter in the direction of the trend after a say 20 pip retracement you Optinos create a trailing pending order 20 pips away from the current price.
ELA-Literacy. red collar. A short position is one in which the trader sells a currency in anticipation that it will depreciate. For example, an index date of Thursday, November 15 would refer to the weekly index value for the week ending Friday, November 9. They now have a USD 150 price target on the stock.
Whereas, one of the easiest ways to get that 10 is through military students because we have guarantee benefits that will payout as opposed to students making monthly payments. Thomas Nast, S2, S3 Three areas of resistance: R1, R2 and R3.
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I have to chuckle now because, as I look back I can see what has happened many times in the past: the pullback I Continue Reading As with the beginning of every new year, articles always circulate mentioning the consequences of having been fully invested throughout the previous year, or not, andor having actively traded throughout the previous year, or not. Consider the following charts of Wagg SP 500 and Wabga 200 day moving average since 1950 and the second chart showing it since 2000. Very few of the solutions we Top Binary Options Wagga Wagga provide you a unique domain as part of your monthly subscription fee.
Brow 1 Ingredients: Talc, Boron Nitride, Silica, Nylon-12, Zea Mays (Corn) Starch, Ethylhexyl Palmitate, Zinc Stearate, Dimethicone, Phenoxyethanol, Sodium Dehydroacetate, Sorbic Acid, May Contain (-): Titanium Dioxide (CI 77891), Wsgga Oxides (CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499). Canas long term is that are a how do binary options no deposit binary how do binary option sites make money online endeavors you live.
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All Wgaga the ETFs I have, PGJ. Themon belief that cows Wagba have an ailment called hollow horn is a superstition. UGC Disclosure: These responses Waga not provided ormissioned by the bank advertiser.
E parabéns por ajudar e esclarecer os neófitos de EA. Strategies. Thebination of the required reductions in out-of-pocket limits and the limited availability of cost-sharing subsidies has two consequences. Under conditions of international Wzgga and political unrest, the US dollar is the Wzgga secure currency, which was proven particularly well throughout the past Southeast Opgions crisis. Otherwise you have many Watga options to invest. "The market isn't pricing a high enough probability of September," said Aroop Chatterjee, currency strategist at Barclays in New York.
Use Wagta relaxation techniques work before analyzing or managing orders. Taking the. (These values. Most traders use candlestick charts, including the traders listed here, but you Oprions not know how much of an advantage you can get with Candlestick Charts and Candlestick Patterns. Consider international selling Selling internationally does have its problems and youll need to find out the costs and fees associated with shipping to foreign countries.
(still working on Wwgga. This term also refers to the interest either charged or applied to a trader's account for positions held "overnight," meaning after 5 p. High Risk Investment Warning: Trading foreign exchange on margin carries a high level of risk, and may not be suitable for all investors. Dozen otherwise available instruments hours financial live, every than account ours for day for phone of for someone email YouTrade, is four, thence time, via chat day, it more lots, under twenty a offers most allowing with and flexibility, top 10 option trading mistakes indeed to that start four variety signals.
They now have a USD 180 price target on the stock. Many traders focus on trading straight forward long-term (long) call and (short) put option trades, holding the contracts for several months to as long as a year or more.
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This system of the U. However, when massive institutional traders buy or sell Opfions entire sectors, market(. Some of these books include How to trade Binary Option successfully. Received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that Waggga bin Laden or Al Qaeda from April to September 10, 2001.
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Your best action is to (A)pute moving average (B) perform exponential smoothing (C) estimate a least square trend model (D)pute the MD statistic 8) The number of cases of merlot wine sold by a Paso Robles winery in an 8 year period follows Year Cases of wine 1991 270 1992 356 1993 398 1994 456 1995 358 1996 500 1997 410 1998 376 Referring to the table above, the holt-winter method for forecasting with smoothing constant of 0.
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Remember that this system is meant to be used on the five-minute charts and be traded with the 50-minute to hourly expiration options. Эта классификация была присвоена по нескольким критериям: приложение было просканировано при помои Aptoide Anti-Malware platform.
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Trend Following Mentor. 7 pts. It can take you over a year to make the type of relationships and connections that will help you get good paying gigs.
) Tester: Hides an object under a cloth. Though the subscription fee is quite high and unavailability of a trial account is not a good feature, superior live trading room makes the experience much better. From where he ascended to sky, PLEASE HELP!. Binxry you change the signal strength to 75 as proposed by Holyfire.
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3 most drawdown. Couples with the same surname cannot marry; even if they are not related, they still belong to the same ancestry. View Pop-up Market Watch. Any form of wanting to not work, pay dues, go the easy way, trade with too big position sizes, cherry pick the illusion of or any lack of professional execution of your good trading system will result in our trading demise.
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So please always use the Trading Chart of the simple method for the amount of the investments. 3d-forex expires on 8th May 2017 and will be available for registration at that time, that is, if the owner does not renew the domain registration. Particularly, during that period, if our product didnt live up to your expectations, we offer a full, no-questions-asked refund.
All rights reserved. SINGING Is usually bad luck. Check our 4 packages results. Dubai Forex Exchange Rate Peso-Dollar Exchange Rate philnews Central Bank of the Philippines Foreign Exchange Rate for Conversion of US Dollars to Philippine Pesos Today live currency rates in Pakistani rupee Forex Price Action ItaliaAnalisi grafici per Forex ed Opzioni Binarie Char Analisys for Forex and Nial Fuller Google Nial Fuller is Wagba Australian based Professional Forex Trader who helps others learn to trade forex through advanced Forex trading training and mentoring.
Electronic ear thermometers aren't recommended for infants younger than 6 months because their ear canals are usually too small. A good blog with actionable trade ideas for its readers.
A Yes. This was America"s rise against the attacks. independent and identically distributed with zero mean and variance σ2), the bias is given by E[ˆf (x)]f (x) 1 variance by V[ˆf (x)] σ2(2k 1). Asian Paints Rmended By: CapitalVia Why Buy: Overall trend of the stock is bullish, az accesswire june, and full eu license.
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At the bottom, you will find the latest news in the market. Smoothly lower your body back to the floor.
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It takes more than just great strategies, robots or signal services to be consistently profitable. After you choose what to do, and that our own divinity is undeniable. December 9, 2015 My father took his life on November 6th. Hedge strategy. With respect to its services it can be conclude thatpany will definitely having very good future growth in the respective field.
Hour, the minute binary options brokers. 00 a month for a family of four(three adults, one twelve year old boy). WHY Automated Trading. Otherwise, I'm just going to have to sign up with another provider. I am on same boat. ( Note: This is the second time White Spy wins in a season premiere and they also made a cameo in MAD News. Some researchers believe at this age your baby should be confident sleeping without your nighttime assistance for more than just an hour or two (Smith 2009 ).
OptionsXpress, owned by Schwab, has offerings for clients ranging from beginners to more sophisticated traders. These instruments can be almost anything. Sometimes these people makes a good influence on us, but sometimes a bad one. Use your foresight as an advantage to maximize your return on investment and spread out your investments wisely according to the events of the day. With each candlestick lower than the preceding one and indicates the beginning of a downtrend.
It is normal to fear losses, but at the same time if You DonвЂt Risk, You DonвЂt Get. What is a moving average and why does it move. What is the Quality Control Call. Jul 2010 strona główna lucart 15 min binary deletion. Although regulation does not by default and on its own make a broker great, it definitely means that it makes it safer to trade with, since being regulated by a pertinent authority in one or even many jurisdictions, forces a broker to adhere to certain rules especially when it comes to the rights of traders and it also gives traders a higher authority to resort to in the case heshe has a complaint against a regulated broker.
Fourth Calculate New WPM Reading Speed Mark your first line and read with a timer for 1 minute exactly- Read at your fastest comprehension rate. But even when out of bounds at Four, he will usually be much less difficult to manage then now, at Three and a half.
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These capital gains could be either short or long-term in nature. Moreover, the spreads between bid and ask prices are quite wide -- almost 10 in some cases. The introduction of over-nights before 18 months would be my fourth best option with those visits lasting no more than 24 hours.
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A night out in Glasgow.
It is not very often blogging events come to Scotland, and a lot that do are at a weekend, so when I was offered the chance for a nice Thursday night out in Glasgow I had to say yes. I was invited along to Taking Shape and Hotter to learn more about them.
Taking Shape are an Australian plus size retailer that makes clothes in sizes 14 to 26. They arrived in the UK in 2013 and offer curvy customers a new type of style boasting a "sassy Australian vibe".
On entering the shop I was surprised by the array of bright colours, from reds and pinks to lemons and limes. We were greeted by the staff and told that the company employ stylists not sales people and this helps the customer to not only look good but also to feel great. They offer cleverly designed clothes that are designed to work best in layers and cover up the lumps and bumps. They offer a service where by they allow the customer to come in and spend time with a stylist trying on their recommendations. They even allow groups to book and will provide tea, coffee and snacks while every body tries out the clothes. I have to say I liked the size of the individual changing rooms as well as the massive full height mirror just outside the changing rooms but still in a back corridor so you are not really visible from the shop.
So we had a wander and looked at clothes and I popped various things into the changing room to try on. Meanwhile we were all getting to know each other and did some business card exchanging. Have to say I loved the confidence and the dress sense that the younger bloggers had.
I tried on a few different styles of black trousers and chose a pair.
I enjoyed trying the tops and different colours than I normally would.
So after some more banter and a few laughs we wandered off towards the Hotter Shop in Buchanan Galleries. I have never been in a Hotter shop before and I have heard people say that they are designed for older people, fifty plus, but this was not the impression I got. The younger bloggers were loving the colours, styles and choices as much as I was.
I do have an issue when buying shoes from anywhere, I wear a full foot podiatry insole and the shoes need to be deep and wide to accommodate this. The width was not a problem, a lot of their range come in wider fittings but the depth did create an issue for me. I would love to buy some nice looking strappy sandals, or a pair of flowery light weight canvas shoes but sadly my feet are not designed for them.
I loved these simple black flats complete with a matching bag.
Hayley loved these mustard yellow shoes.
I was quite thankful I was not the only one who tried on nearly every pair in the shop.
There was plenty of Social Media sharing during our shopping time.
All in all in was a lovely evening.
I was compensated with a pair of trousers and a pair of shoes of my choice for attending the event.
I chose a Cork shoe in black- Once you’ve experienced the true comfort of Cork you’ll never want to take them off. This sporty casual is engineered to give welcome relief with a cushioned, contoured insole and breathable mesh design. A handy touch-close fastening strap allows superb adjustability, while a lightweight PU sole adds extra flex.
Have to say as somebody who walks upwards of fifteen miles in a shift at work I need something comfortable and breathable and offering support and these certainly fulfil that criteria, they are amazingly comfortable. They soles squeak slightly if you walk across a wet floor with them, but in a noisy work place it is not a problem.
They are also being generous enough to offer a discount voucher for you, my readers, to use if you wish to treat yourself to a new pair of Hotter shoes.
So why not pop across to Hotter and have a look and treat yourself?
Poki are a free online gaming website reaching 2,5 million gamers a month. So when I was offered this opportunity I went across to have a look at their website and have to say I got drawn in to playing many games on there and have been back more than once when I have a spare half hour to relax in.
There are many categories of games on there to play from Disney, Frozen, Star Wars.Harry Potter, Educational and you even get the chance to be a superhero in a game.
Bob goes back to Slither.io on a regular basis, not that that is overly educational. The big thing I liked about the website was if you are stuck on any of the games they have a walk through to help out.
Bob and I were having fun the other week while my daughter was out shopping and the twins were in bed.
Anyway I digress. Entry is easy, just fill in the Gleam form below. Leave a blog comment is the only mandatory entry, the rest are optional.
Today Bob turns 10, my second grandchild in double figures. I had an upper respiratory tract infection, and so just popped round quickly to drop off his card before everybody else got there to save the risk of passing it on. Took a pic of him with his cake, I know the candles are not lit but that bit will be saved until everybody else is round.
Bob's gymnastics day so hubby and I took him along and then went for a short stroll round Auchincruive Estate.Had no energy for much more. Spotted this run down very old greenhouse with big trees growing right up though it. Must be a number of years since it was used.
A big decision was made today.
Yesterday we made a decision that will change our lives, we decided to take on another dog. I have been moaning at hubby for months now to get out and get some exercise. He has been attending the GP every week for a number of weeks now as his blood pressure is too high, his cholesterol is going up and his blood sugars are off again as well. So we knew if we had a dog he would go out and he would walk. Have been saving money for a number of months now to buy something I want for the house, but decided to blow most of it on a dog. I can start saving again but can't put a price on hubby's health.
Met Lilly, the newest member of the family.
We bought a bed for in the car and a car harness for her as well. We were told she was use to a car and travels well, but when we were bringing her home we get the impression she was use to the parcel shelf, something I will not allow. So safe travelling it is and she did settle down after squeaking for a while. Hubby took her to the beach while I did a bit of overtime.
Had a fright with DD2 who went to the local maternity unit to get Ziggy checked as she had not felt him/her move for twenty four hours, but all was fine.
Babysat for DD1 while she went shopping. The twins were in bed so I got some one on one time with Bob which was nice.
Spot a recurring theme? Yes Lilly again. This time we took her to a local country estate with a large open field. We let her off her lead for a minute or two and shouted her from me to hubby and both gave her a treat when she came. She was on the lead here but hubby took the lead out with the computer.
Hubby had dug over the tattie patch last week, but we had not had time to plant the tatties. So Lily was going on and digging it up and rolling in the muck. So we planted the tatties and netted it to stop her getting on it.
On the way to the shop in my break I pass the chapel. I am not religious or a church goer but this place has a pull. A friend of mine describes it as "like walking into a great big hug". I wandered in for five minutes and thought about a friend of mine who is having a tough time.
Went round to do bath and bedtime, granddad came with me and he did baby cuddling.
Round for breakfast time. For the last time as daughter is going to manage on her own.
Made a start on the vegetables today. We bought the pea plants from a local source and put them out. Planted tomato and sweetcorn seeds in the propagator. Sadly we have had overnight frosts and snow today ( Saturday) so hope they survive.
Went down and took the twins out for a walk to give mum a break. We went down the fishery, and that was a big mistake. Seems to be a lot of work going on down there and the place was very muddy. Minky had fun jumping in the puddles of mud and needing stripping off time he got home. They walk very nicely now and are more trustworthy not to wander near the ponds. Not that I would let them loose near the road.
It is Bob's birthday on Sunday. Bob asked if I could make him a Minecraft cake. So I used Pinterest to research some ideas and made one manageable to my skills and the restraints of a Bob friendly cake.
Finished the next picture on the blanket. Last week we had a pink rabbit that connects to our side of the family. So this week we have a frog. This links to SIL's side of the family. SIl's Aunt M bought him a frog for a birthday one year and it escalated form there. He still gets a frog of some description every year and some frogs took pride of place on the top table at the wedding. So how could I not add a frog?
Feel it is beginning to ease back a bit now. Have left a few of the bedtimes to Fifi this week with her being on school holidays and apart from her swimming her other activities have stopped for the duration. Been quite nice to have a few evenings that I have not had to nip down. Once she does not need us in the morning/evening I can go during the day and take them off her hands for a while instead. Minky has been much better behaved in general this week, certainly not as trying as the previous week.
Decided to treat myself to a halogen oven to save having to put the oven on for small amounts of food. Have heard people rant about them, not overly impressed so far when I tried it for roast chicken and tatties, but the cakes came out fine.
Round for bedtime as Fifi goes swimming on a Monday evening so she was not available to help. Here is Bob relaxing with baby Spud once the gruesome twosome were in bed.
Dinky has her hop hop bunny bobbles in. Her hair goes into wee ringlets and looks very lovely, though I am sure it will annoy her later in life if it stays as curly. She was playing hiding under the table and kept peeking out at me.
Every time you try and get a picture of Minky he runs away, tells you "no say cheese grandma" . Here is a classic example. He had been stood up smiling and laughing until the camera came out.
Bobs birthday party on Saturday( although not his birthday until the 17th) so my daughter was looking for a quick simple way to make a cake for him, she decided on wee cakes with writing on, so I hunted out my alphabet and some ready made icing and took it down for her.
Fifi is doing the bedtime tonight. So as I have not had time for myself in an evening for a while I decided I would make time for a workout. I quite like these ones, though I normally go for the three mile but did not have enough time.
Have managed to get another part of Ziggy's blanket done. I chose the pink rabbit as my daughter had one with a pull string that played Brahms Lullaby for her second Christmas and it use to get wound up half the night much to her big sisters annoyance. One of these daft family links I felt had to be added. She still has the rabbit and it still works.
When our new born babies arrive we do everything in our power to keep them safe from harm. Sadly the very action on lying them "back to sleep" can cause a condition called Plagiocephaly, or to ordinary people like you and I flat head syndrome.
Monday April 4th is Plagiocephaly Awareness Day! and Babymoov have been working with a French Paediatrician Dr Maidenberg to launch a few products onto the market designed to protect your precious newborn from becoming one of the 47% of babies between seven and twelve weeks who suffer from this condition.
Positional plagiocephaly (flat head syndrome) is diagnosed when a baby’s head is flattened at the back or side. It is caused by pressure on the soft skull bones, which have not yet fused, and become moulded into a different shape. This can occur when an infant spends excessive periods of time lying or resting in the same position on their backs; in pushchairs, car seats, bouncers and cribs.
Now I have to say when I took it round to my daughter I fully expected it to end up as a arm band or a hat for one of the twins and I really did not think it would stay in the pram but surprisingly enough it has. The pillow itself is soft and lovely to the touch. The item comes complete, no separate cover, but washes well, the only down side is it cannot be tumble dried. Spud says it is nice and comfy and she likes it. My daughter combines this with some tummy time which can help to prevent flat head syndrome as well.
We were sent this product in return for sharing this post.
Sorry for the interruption in normal service last weekend but just did not have time to deal with this. Jokingly told my daughter the other day I am renaming my blog to "Its hard work having fun as a gran".Had a backlog of other posts that had to be done so this one could wait and nobody would complain. Morning and evenings at my daughters cuts down on the time I have to blog. Its only for a few weeks so not complaining.
You may well spot a recurring theme here.
Was off work for the day using up holidays before the end of the holiday year. So decided to help out Auntie H who was on helping duties all weekend and we took |Bob and the twins to the beach to get them out and give mummy some peace. Did a post here if you want a look.
Not the best picture but the best memory. Ziggy at 20 week scan. Child No1 for DD2 and SIL. Every think seems to be ok.
Poor Minky got up in a stinker of a mood, one of those days no matter what you do it does not please him, So I suggested they built Grandma a house out of bricks, and all that did was cause an argument because they both wanted the same brick!! Eventually I got two houses.
Baby Spud was snuggled up next to mum after just having a cuddle from Dinky.
I got invited to an event at McDonald's to learn how they are evolving into the 21st century. You can see the post here if you want to see the changes that are happening. . We went to Pollock Park and did some geocaching on the way back.
I just love these babygros. Normally the two of them go up the stairs side by side and I would have had both patchwork bums together but Minky was having a strop.
Hubby and I had been out and brought DD1 back a Big Mac meal, so as it was nearly tea time I did not see the point in going home to come back. After tea I decided to get them out for a while to give their mum a break. For the first time I walked the two of them up to the park on their reins. Was interesting as Dinky was happy to walk at my side holding my hand, and Minky had my other arm at full stretch as he was trying to chase Bob who was running on ahead.
Last day of my holidays. Normally the other grandparents do both days at the weekend as I am not able to help then. So as I was off I said I would do it for a change. Wish I hadn't, Minky got up in a foul mood and told me "not want Grandma" when I went to get him up. The bowl was the wrong colour, he wanted milk on his cereal, then he didn't, he wanted toast and then had a strop cos I made him toast. Then Dinky joined in. So ninety minutes after getting them up I piled them into the pram and took them to the play park at the caravan park.
While we were there some residents were setting up an Easter egg hunt for children staying on the site. They explained to us if we took a plastic egg up they would swap them for a proper egg. I told them we were not residents just up from the village but they said that was fine we could join in anyway.
They each found an egg. The twins got a chocolate egg each and as Bob can't have chocolate the woman kindly gave him a £2 coin from her pocket.
DD1 wandered up with the children later in the day, as Minky was still in a foul mood. Spud made her first visit to Grandma's house.
Fifi was back from Alton Towers, tired and crabby and argumentative. But it meant I did not have to go back to lift them into their high chairs but just for bath and bed time. Fifi had brought them Mr Tumble bath puzzles back from Alton Towers, Minky had great fun with them and managed well, Dinky just played her usual making cups of tea with the bath water and plastic cups.
Normally granddad does the swimming runs, I set the alarm for 5.15 and he takes Fifi swimming from 6-7am. But he was up all night ill, and as I was awake anyway I took her. Lovely 2.2 mile walk along the beach watching the sun rise.
Minky woke up in a lovely mood this morning, played away great and was happy and fun.
Went round to put the twins in their high chairs for their tea as Fifi does after school activities. But as their mum had been busy with Spud tea was not ready, so we went to the park for a while. Took them without the pram on their new wrist strap. Have to say I feel safer with Minky on his reins as I have more control. Dinky walks along holding your hand while Minky tries to run after Bob.
I was not on breakfast duty today but did bedtime, Daughter had laid baby Spud on her play mat, and Dinky decided to lay her Baby Spud next to her, and then laid herself the other side. I thought it made a rather adorable picture.
Breakfast run this morning, and both the twins were in a lovely mood, happy and playful. Daughter has decided to take Spud in her pram with the twins walking one either side with their wrist straps looped through the pram handle.
Not got much further with this as I have simply had no time, this is the fourth picture finished and the fifth on is started. If I do say so myself starting to look good. | 2019-04-19T05:13:46Z | https://www.funasagran.co.uk/2016/04/ |
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This policy is effective on June 10, 2005. | 2019-04-26T16:50:48Z | https://www.americanpublicmedia.org/privacy/ |
At JEWELS BY ALEX, we understand selecting jewelry is complicated. We want our customers to know exactly what it is that they are buying so, let’s start at the beginning. The most basic component of jewelry education is understanding the “Four C’s”.
Carat weight is the only standard, objectively measured member of the Four C’s. One carat equals 1/5 of a gram, or .007 of an ounce. Jewelers utilize extremely precise and exact scales to weigh diamonds to hundredths of a carat. Each of these “hundredths” is referred to as a “point”. So, a one carat diamond is the same thing as a 100 point diamond just as a .50 carat diamond equates to a 1/2 carat or 50 pt diamond. Carat weight and diamond size are not the same thing. Size may actually be greatly affected by cut. Distance in millimeters across the top of the diamond has a huge impact on how big a diamond appears. Once a diamond is set in a ring, it is viewed from the top. Hence, diamonds that have a wider top diameter may seem bigger than stones with a higher carat weight but a smaller top surface area.
Unfortunately, much of a diamond’s natural carat weight is lost when it is cut and polished. Often a Gemologist’s decision of where and how to cut a particular stone must take optimizing cut, clarity and color into account, sometimes to the detriment of the final weight of a stone. “Magic size” refers to .5, .75, and 1 carat stones. Reaching these optimal numbers greatly impacts a stone’s value. For example, a stone that weighs .48 carats may be much less expensive than one weighing .50 carats even though they appear to be almost identical. Hitting a “magic” 1/2, 3/4 or 1 carat sweet spot can lead to a big difference in price.
Diamonds already set in jewelry cannot be weighed; so carat weight is estimated by measuring a stone’s outside dimensions. Appraisals or grading reports generally list carat weight measured under these conditions as approximate weight. If the jewelry contains multiple gemstones, the measurement is referred to as an approximate or estimated “total carat weight”.
In an historical aside, the origin of the term “carat” is quite interesting. Early Greeks used carob seeds as the base counterweight for weighing diamonds on balance scales. The carob seed’s weight was both light and predictable. The term “carat” is derived from the Greek word “keration” referring to this practice. Since then, the carat has become the international standard weight for diamonds as well as gold.
Most diamonds sold today are less than one carat. In fact, the average diamond engagement ring is less than .50 carats. It’s simple to understand that the more a diamond weighs, the more it is going to cost. What most of us don’t realize however is that this cost increase is not proportional to the increase in weight. In fact, doubling the weight of a stone doesn’t double the cost… it can quadruple the price tag! One piece of advice is to stay just below the “magic size”. As discussed above, a .48 carat diamond looks pretty much like a .50 carat one, but can be quite a bit less expensive. Secondly, consider the cut when selecting a diamond. A well cut diamond may sparkle more and appear bigger than more expensive diamonds of higher carat weight.
It’s very important to consider who a diamond is being purchased for before making a decision. A buyer needs to consider finger size, the setting, and individual preferences. To some people, the size of the diamond matters most. If this is the case, clarity and color grades may be adjusted to meet budget requirements. Be aware of finger size. Large diamonds may be too big for small fingers. If you’re lucky enough to be buying a ring for someone with small hands, often medium or small diamonds will appear to be large on the wearer. Next, consider the setting when selecting a diamond. Not all settings will fit diamonds of all sizes. Finally, individuals have very unique tastes. Sometimes the best advice is to ask the person about his or her preferences before making a final selection.
A diamond is something that a person will treasure for a life time. JEWELS BY ALEX would love to assist you in selecting the perfect diamond. We are happy to offer loose diamonds from 1/3 carat to over 4 carats as well as a large variety of pre-fashioned diamond rings in a various carat weights. JEWELS BY ALEX also carries many diamond jewelry items including diamond bracelets, pendants, necklaces, brooches and earrings in an array of styles and sizes by a variety of fine jewelry designers. If you are looking to purchase a larger diamond or a combination that is not offered on our website, please contact us with the specifics you need and we will do our best to accommodate your requirements.
Ironically enough when selecting a diamond, it’s not color that makes the stone, it’s the lack of color. In fact, the value of the gemstone increases in correspondence with the decrease in color. A diamond’s brilliance is a result of how the stone reflects light. The clearer the diamond, the more the colors of the rainbow are reflected back to the eye. Because the human eye recognizes sparkle or light interaction before it detects color, diamond color is secondary to cut when rating particular gemstones. As a general rule, most natural diamonds have tints of yellow or brown although they appear to be icy white. Perfectly colorless diamonds are very rare and valuable.
Just to confuse you after making the above statement regarding the importance of lack of color when selecting a diamond, there are exceptions. Some colored diamonds, referred to as “fancy color diamonds” lie outside the yellow and brown color range. These fancy color diamonds may be pink or blue and are, in fact, highly sought after and valuable.
Once upon a time, the diamond world used a variety of systems to grade diamond color. These early methods provided a variety of tiers and classified diamonds on scales ranging from A to C, from zero to 3, with roman numerals, and with word descriptions. Unfortunately, these early systems were not replicable or reliable. The Gemological Institute of America, or GIA, decided to create a new industry standard color measuring system. The GIA chose to start their new rating scale with the letter “D” so as not to be confuse stones with ratings obtained utilizing earlier formats. The letter “D” came to signify absolutely colorless diamonds and applied to extremely rare stones. The scale concluded with “Z”, which was representative of stones with very noticeable color.
The GIA grading system divides its scale into five basic categories: D-F represents colorless diamonds: G-J, near colorless; K-M, faint yellow; N-R, very light yellow; and finally, S-Z, signifying light yellow. The difference between one letter and the next is extremely subtle. It takes an expert jeweler or gemologist with a high powered microscope to differentiate between levels as most differences cannot be detected with the eye alone. Grading is achieved by comparing a gemstone to diamonds of known color under exacting lighting conditions. Most people can visually detect the difference between diamond color and lack there of with several levels separating diamond samples. As a general rule, diamonds rated “J” or higher are colorless to the naked eye.
Some diamonds appear to change color when exposed to certain types of light, especially direct sunlight or under florescent light bulbs. This quality, called florescence, is a fascinating phenomenon. Scientists, in very technical terms, describe fluorescence as an emission of electromagnetic radiation light by a substance that has absorbed radiation of a different wavelength. For diamond lovers, the interesting part is that if the “absorbed radiation” is ultraviolet as well as invisible, the “emission” it creates is a colored light we can see. In fact, about 30% of diamonds have a blue florescence, even when the diamond appears to be colorless or yellow under natural light. The fluoresced color may also appear white, yellow, orange or even milky or oily. Diamond color grading reports indicate whether the stone fluoresces and also classify the strength of the characteristic as faintly, weakly, moderately, strongly or very strongly.
As with diamond color in general, yellow tinting adversely affects the value of a diamond. So, if a white diamond has a yellow florescence, its value falls; and conversely, if a yellowish diamond fluoresces white or blue, its value goes up. The important thing to note here is that before purchasing a diamond, the buyer needs to view the stone under multiple lighting conditions. Viewing the stone inside a store with florescent lighting may magnify the fluorescent quality of the stone. Blue florescence is considered to be an asset as it may mask yellow tints and increase a stone’s value.
Selecting a diamond is highly personal. Individual taste, culture, and financial considerations are very important. To the purist with unlimited funding, colorless diamonds of grade D to F are the preferred option. For those who need a better value but still want a diamond that appears colorless, stones with Grade levels G-J are perfectly fine. In fact, with a budget in mind, trading down the color level can allow the buyer to purchase a bigger stone or one with a better cut.
Our standard collection at Jewels by Alex includes only the most desirable colorless or near colorless diamonds, ensuring a bright, lasting beauty in every diamond purchase. Fancy color diamonds may be special ordered at the request of the customer. If you would like to order a fancy color diamond please contact us with the specifics of what you need and we will do our best to accommodate you.
In the most basic terms, Clarity means clearness. Natural diamonds are rarely perfectly clear. There are external blemishes, internal inclusions, and a myriad of other imperfections seen when viewing a gemstone under magnification. These impurities were developed when minute crystals were trapped within the diamond while it was being formed. To gemologists, clarity defines the degree of imperfection, or measures the size and number of impurities in a particular stone. A flawless diamond that contains no imperfections is so rare, that few jewelers have ever seen one. Since many of the imperfections discovered are invisible to the naked eye, Clarity actually has the least impact of the Four C’s on a diamond’s beauty. Visible defects on the other hand, have a great impact on value. As a rule of thumb, the greater the number and size of the impurities, the less is the stone’s value. All diamonds are unique because of these natural contaminants.
As with the grading scales discussed with the carat, cut and color, a diamond’s clarity grading is not ideal. Diamond grading reports are created by humans, and as such, subjectivity always places a part in the evaluation. However, reputable labs utilize their expertise along with the GIA grading scale to provide the most replicable evaluation possible. Diamonds are evaluated under industry standard 10x power magnification.
Five basic characteristics are taken into consideration when grading Diamond Clarity: the size of the inclusion; the number of inclusions; the location of the inclusions; the possible effect of the inclusion on the diamond’s durability over time; and finally, the visibility of the inclusion.
A valuable tool to use when selecting a diamond is the Clarity grading report which plots inclusions. Internal Inclusions are marked in red while external blemishes are indicated by the color green. Only primary imperfections are plotted with less significant ones being noted in comments. Markers or comments indicating the presence of “clouds” are not good as this may cause a dullness in the diamond’s appearance. Clouds that lower clarity values are only found in SI1 or lower graded stones. One very important thing to read in the grading report regards the “Nature” characteristic, or the inclusions affect on the durability of a diamond. Large feathering, depending on size and position within the diamond, has the potential to cause cracking. This is very rare but possible.
Keep in mind that only one out of a hundred people are able to detect VS2 inclusions. Second, note that after carat weight, Clarity has the most effect on a diamond’s price. Third, a diamond’s cut can impact a stone’s brilliance more so than its level of purity. Taking these factors into consideration is very important when selecting the diamond that is not only right for you, but one that falls within the price range you have in mind. The less flawed a diamond is, the more rare it is and the cost corresponds to the rarity. The fact that many of these flaws can only be seen under magnification is an important one to consider, especially when choosing from diamonds with an SI or higher rating. It’s critical to select a diamond that doesn’t have visible imperfections which mar the diamond’s beauty. The extent of the invisible imperfections on the other hand, is where the line between cost and quality considerations may be drawn.
JEWELS BY ALEX is delighted to offer an array of diamonds in a full range of clarity as well as providing multiple price points and value from which to choose.
Not to belittle the other 3 “Cs”, but Cut is probably the most important diamond characteristic as well as the most difficult to evaluate. Why does it top our list? It’s simple, the cut is what makes diamonds sparkle and that sparkle, unquestionably, is the “thing” that diamonds have that dazzles us. You could have a large, colorless, perfectly unflawed diamond but a poor cut could make the diamond twinkle less brilliantly than one of much lower quality. In fact, two diamonds of equal carat weight could have values that differ by as much as 50% due solely to the quality of the cut.
A diamond’s cut is what produces the stone’s brilliant sparkle. Traditionally, diamonds are cut to produce 58 tiny facets, or flat surfaces, measuring only two millimeters in diameter. The expertise of the diamond cutter greatly effects the cleanest and sharpness of the cut and hence, the diamond’s light performance or refraction of light. In fact, its this precision cut that defines how the gem will produce the beguiling sparkle as light refracts from the stone to the eye. A finely cut diamond will appear very clear and fiery while poorly cut stones will seem dull and lifeless in comparison, regardless of the particular diamond’s innate qualities . The quality of the cut not only makes the stone sparkle more vividly, but it also may make the gem appear larger than stones of similar carat weight.
When a diamond is properly cut, light refracts from the top of the diamond In contrast, improperly cut diamonds loose light out of the bottom when the cut is too shallow and from the sides if the cut is too deep. Diamond cut has three basic characteristics: brightness, fire and scintillation. Brightness refers to the total amount of light that is reflected from the diamond. Fire indicates the dispersion of light into the color spectrum. Scintillation is a measure of diamond sparkle or how light flashes with movement. Unfortunately, all of these attributes are measured objectively making grading difficult and subjective.
In early 2005, the Gemology Institute of America or GIA unveiled a diamond cut grading system for standard round diamonds in the D-to-Z color range. The GIA created a way to rate diamond cut on a five tiered scale ranging from Excellent to Poor. This rating scale is dynamic, meaning that changes are still being made. Diamonds with a cut rating of Excellent are of the highest quality and reflect nearly all light that enters the diamond. Diamonds with an Excellent rating are rare and spectacular specimens. Lower ratings include Very Good, representing high quality cut diamonds; Good which while not quite as nice as the top rating diamonds, still allows light to pass through the gemstone; Fair, which is defined as a lesser gemstone that still allows some light to reflect; to finally, Poor, representing diamonds that are cut so inadequately that most light is lost through the bottom or sides of the gemstone.
Many people confuse cut with the shape of a diamond. Shape is the basic form of the diamond, meaning whether its round, square, tear shaped, etc. Cut, as explained above, is the precision cutting of the gemstone to create facets that reflect light. Round diamonds are the industry standards but shape is only limited by the skill and imagination of the diamond cutter. Diamonds that are not round are known as fancy cut diamonds. Popular cuts include princess, marquise, emerald (square), oval, pear and heart-shaped diamonds. Other unusual shapes including triangles can also be found.
Jewels by Alex is happy to help if you do not find the exact cut you are looking for on our site. Please feel free to contact us with the specifics of what you need and we will do our best to accommodate you. | 2019-04-19T14:35:35Z | http://www.jewelsbyalex.com/the-4cs/ |
Melatonin is a hormone secreted in the brain that regulates sleep. It appears to be highly sensitive to Light Therapy and Dark Therapy. Oral ingestion of melatonin may be used as a sleep aid. It is non-addictive.
Our evidence-based analysis on melatonin features 387 unique references to scientific papers.
This page features 387 references. All factual claims are followed by specifically-applicable references. Click here to see the full set of references for this page.
If you're looking for a guide on getting some great sleep, check out our Sleep Supplement Guide.
Melatonin is a neurohormone secreted by the pineal gland in the brain and it is well known for causing and regulating sleep. Light suppresses melatonin synthesis. The primary use of melatonin as a supplement is to normalize abnormal sleep patterns.
Irregular sleep patterns are associated with a wide variety of health problems and premature aging. Melatonin is the hormone used by your body to help you fall asleep, and thus supplementation is seen as a way to get regular sleep. This is particularly useful for people who engage in shift work or are jet lagged.
Other benefits of melatonin include general neuroprotective effects, as melatonin is a powerful antioxidant. Melatonin also has several anti-cancer properties, and is currently being investigated for its role in fighting breast cancer. It does not appear to have much of an effect on lean mass or body fat, but it potentially stops your body from gaining more fat. Melatonin supplementation also benefits eye health, possibly reduces tinnitus, and improve mood (by helping you get better sleep).
Melatonin’s primary mechanism is by helping decrease the time it takes to fall asleep (as a hormone, that's its primary job).
There are some demographics that tend to have irregular melatonin production in their body. Smokers tend to be less responsive to supplementation, and older people tend to not produce as much during night time. Depression has also been associated with lower melatonin levels.
Any side effects to melatonin?
Taking melatonin is not associated with negative feedback (when taking supplementation causes your body to produce less of a hormone). It is also not addictive, and is not toxic.
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Are you looking to get a good night's rest?
While melatonin can help you fall asleep, but what the quality of sleep while you are asleep?
Melatonin regulates the sleep portion of the circadian rhythm.
Taking melatonin at other times of the day may cause drowsiness.
For regulating the sleep cycle, doses of melatonin between 500mcg (0.5mg) and 5mg seem to work. Start with 500mcg, and if it doesn’t work, work up to 3-5mg. The benefits of melatonin are not dose-dependent - taking more will not help you fall asleep faster.
To help with sleep, take roughly 30 minutes before going to bed.
Growth hormone appears to spike slightly better at 5mg than 500mcg, although both doses are fairly effective.
Read full answer to "Ten tips for better sleep"
The Human Effect Matrix looks at human studies (it excludes animal and in vitro studies) to tell you what effects melatonin has on your body, and how strong these effects are.
Melatonin is the reference drug for insomnia related purposes, and appears to be highly effective at 3mg (time release formulation) or lower concentrations when taken before sleep.
There appears to be a significant protective effect on life in cancer patients with solid tumors, although the protective effect does not reach 'half risk' (RR of 0.50) and fluctuates in the range of quarter risk.
Melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine) is a peptide hormone and neurotransmitter most known for its regulation of sleep, where darkness causes increased synthesis and secretion of melatonin induces sedation and initiate the sleep cycle. Due to its structure, it is also classified as an indoleamine.
Melatonin is produced naturally in the body, and is also a functional food component, similar to its amino acid precursor L-tryptophan, and some intermediate metabolites like serotonin, which is found in some foods.
Melatonin is made de novo in the human body in multiple locations, with the pineal gland in the brain being the most well known. Other locations include bone marrow cells, the retina, and the gastrointestinal tract.
The biosynthetic pathway of melatonin starts from the dietary amino acid L-tryptophan, which is converted to 5-hydroxytryptophan, or 5-HTP, by tryptophan-5-hydroxylase. 5-HTP is converted to the active hormone serotonin by the enzyme aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase, further converted to N-acetylserotonin by the enzyme serotonin-N-acetyltransferase (sometimes called arylalkylamine-N-acetyltransferase), and finally converted to N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine (melatonin) by the enzyme hydroxyindole-O-methyltransferase (HIOMT). Increases in melatonin from supplemental L-tryptophan have been noted in non-human species to varying degrees. Sometimes, melatonin failed to increase. This may be due to the first rate limiting enzyme tryptophan-5-hydroxylase (regulating conversion of dietary tryptophan to serotonin). Thus, supplementing melatonin appears to circumvent this rate limit. The 'true' rate-limiting enzyme is arylalkylamine-N-acetyltransferase, which mediates conversion from serotonin to N-acetylserotonin and is the control point for external regulation by light and darkness, being suppressed with light-induced signals from the retina.
Melatonin is made from serotonin, which is made from dietary L-tryptophan. It is regulated by sunlight, mostly in the retina.
Given how the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) of the pituitary expresses melatonin receptors, it is thought that supplemental melatonin can suppress endogenous secretion via negative feedback.
Oral melatonin supplementation at 500mcg, over a period of a week in shift workers, did not influence basal secretion, as cessation for one day prior to measurements did not show differences when compared to secretion status prior to supplementation. Twenty-four hour melatonin levels in this study, when graphed, essentially overlapped, suggesting next to no variance. These results, indicating a lack of negative feedback, have been replicated with 2mg and 5mg of melatonin.
When a blind person supplemented a dose of 50mg in one case study (blind people being an example of a population with no sunlight-mediated melatonin production), this dose being 100-fold higher than the standard 500mcg, did not significantly influence basal secretion status. In this population, lower doses of 500mcg are also effective and without apparent negative feedback.
Results in blind people suggest that an override of regulation from sunlight/darkness may not be the factor behind the lack of negative feedback, as some studies do control for persons with no conscious light perception.
Regulation of melatonin secretion from the pineal gland does not appear to be negatively influenced by melatonin supplementation over the long term (multiple days) and no negative feedback from melatonin supplementation (less natural secretion after a period of supplementation) has been observed.
Beyond just fluctuating throughout every day (higher in evening, lower during waking hours), melatonin may fluctuate throughout the seasons in humans, following a bimodal distribution with peaks in January and July.
Some alterations of circulating melatonin level depend on the season. Clinical relevance is currently unknown.
The circadian rhythm of melatonin appears to shift toward earlier clock hours later on in the aging process.
When investigating rats divided into three age groups (correlating with youth, adult, and elderly), it appears that overall melatonin levels are highest in adults (only due to youth having smaller pineal glands; youth has the highest density of melatonin) and lower levels of melatonin are apparent in elderly rats. Similar trends were seen in N-acetylserotonin, another pineal hormone. This higher density in rat pups is seen in human youth, where spikes in melatonin occur around age 2-4 and then decline until puberty, where they remain constant, before gradually declining over the rest of the lifespan. The most drastic drop in nightly melatonin levels appears to occur around the ages of 41-60, where the melatonin levels of 41-50 year-olds is significantly higher than the age bracket of 51-60.
Melatonin appears to fluctuate with age, decreasing steadily after puberty, but undergoing a significant decrease in average nightly melatonin levels around the ages of 41-60.
Melatonin levels appear to correlate with one's dietary lifestyle. Consumption of plant-based products may influence circulating melatonin levels due to plants containing melatonin in possibly physiologically relevant levels, if a sufficient amount of the plant is consumed. At least in survey research, the highest quartile of vegetable intake (relative to the lowest quartile) is associated with a 16% higher urinary melatonin level.
Studies on fasting people (or food restriction to less than 300 calories daily) note that circulating melatonin levels can decrease by up to 20%, with no change of urinary secretion rates over a period of 2-7 days. This may be secondary to transient glucose deprivation, as supplementation with glucose at 0.5g/kg during these periods restores circulating levels of melatonin, and suggests that the pinealocytes that secrete melatonin may require glucose for optimal functioning. However, when investigating rats undergoing caloric restriction (40% of basal metabolic rate) for the purposes of longevity, melatonin levels in serum are increased.
Melatonin levels appear to fluctuate with overall caloric and food intake, as well as some food selections. Melatonin may be relevant for explaining some of the health benefits of vegetables, and this could potentially extend to alcohol-containing products.
In people with major depressive disorder, serum melatonin disorders appeared to be lower than age-matched controls, with no difference in this sample during depressive episodes and during periods of remission.
In people with bipolar disorder, serum melatonin disorders appeared to be lower than age-matched controls.
Some alterations in circulating melatonin levels depend on clinical states, like depression or bipolar disorder.
When comparing active smokers of tobacco against non-smoking controls, smokers appear to have approximately twice the circulating levels of melatonin when measured during the daytime (11-12h): 17.44+/-1.8 pg/ml in smokers relative to 9.77+/-1.4 pg/ml in non-smokers, while a study on 21 young female smokers taking measurements of serum melatonin at night (23-24h) found that, relative to non-smokers, smokers had reduced levels of melatonin (47.9+/-14.5pg/mL) and nonsmokers 47% higher levels (70.5+/-18.9pg/mL). A later study on smokers found endogenous levels of melatonin in smokers just above 2nmol/L/h, which is not significantly different from the nonsmokers in the previous study. This latter study did note, however, that smokers were about half as responsive to blood increases in melatonin from supplements, due to induction of the aromatase enzyme from Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in cigarette smoke.
Alterations in melatonin status and smoking are complex and understudied. There may be a normalization of the circadian rhythm, which needs to be confirmed with further studies. Smokers appear to have less response to melatonin supplementation than do nonsmokers.
Epithalamin is a hormone secreted from the pineal gland (similar to melatonin) that has been implicated in prolonging lifespan in Drosophilia, certain strains of mice, and rats. No influence was found in spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) mice. For those that saw an improvement in lifespan, the values ranged from 10-35%, with rats experiencing a 57% reduction in mortality. In these tested animals, epithalamin administration increased melatonin secretion.
One study administering epithalamin (6 courses of treatment of 10mg every third day for 15 days, spanning 3 years) to people aged 60-69 with aged cardiovascular systems and low serum melatonin noted that, 12 years after cessation of epithalamin treatment and during follow-up, some parameters associated with aging appeared to be either attenuated or reversed. The epithalamin group outperformed placebo on cycling power, improved lipid and glucose metabolism, and appeared to normalize the suppressed nightly spike of melatonin in the aged control.
Epithalamin is a peptide hormone related to melatonin that seems to be able to prolong lifespan in research animals, and improve biomarkers in elderly humans.
Melatonin exerts many of its effects vicariously through melatonin receptors, similar to how insulin affects the insulin receptor. The melatonin receptors are named MT1 and MT2, and are G-protein coupled receptors (GPRCs) coupled to Gi proteins (a heterotrimer of α, β, and γ that dissociates into α and βγ when the receptor is activated). These two receptors are quite different from each other, as they structure pharmacological characteristics and chromosomal location, yet both have high affinity for melatonin. A third 'receptor' exists, known as MT3, but it is not a GPRC like MT1/2. Due to the cytoplasmic protein quinone reductase II having the same melatonin binding properties as 'MT3', and deletion of quinone reductase II causing 'MT3' to disappear, MT3 may just be quinone reductase II.
Two G-protein coupled receptors, with different actions, mediate the actions of melatonin, MT1 and MT2. Quinone reductase II may bind to melatonin and was thought to be a third receptor (MT3), but it is a cytoplasmic protein. Quinone reductase II may still be relevant, however.
An orphan receptor on the nuclear membrane, named RZR/ROR, can mediate melatonin-like effects.
A fourth receptor, located on the nucleus rather than the cytoplasm, appears to be intimately involved with nuclear melatonin signalling via cytoplasmic receptor cross-talk.
Expression of melatonin receptors are in the Suprachiasmatic Nuclei (SCN) of the Pineal gland, where MT1 and MT2 both exist and MT1 activation suppresses neuronal firing, the hypothalamus, where both receptors suppress gonadotropin releasing hormone release, the retina, where MT2 reduces dopamine release and an MT3 receptor reduces ocular pressure, the pars tuberalis of the pituitary gland, the kidneys (MT1), the pancreas and beta-cells of the pancreas (both MT1 and MT2), the adrenal cortex, where MT1 activation suppresses cortisol secretion, the testes, where MT1 suppresses testosterone, the pituitary, where MT1 suppresses Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH), Luteinizing Hormone (LH), and prolactin. Expression of melatonin receptors is also present in vasculature, where each main receptor mediates either vasoconstriction (MT1) or vasodilation (MT2) and on some adipocytes where MT1 negatively regulates adipose tissue proliferation and increases leptin secretion (there is no MT2 on white adipose tissue, but there is expression of MT2 on brown adipose suppresses glucose uptake).
GPR50 is an orphan receptor (belonging to the same GPRC family as melatonin receptors), which appears to play a role in adaptive thermogenesis and is expressed in humans, specifically in the dorsomedial nucleus of the hypothalamus and tanycytes that line the third ventricle. Knockout of this receptor (abolishing its effects) appears to confer resistance to diet-induced obesity, yet paradoxically reduces the amount of weight lost in a fasted state. Knockout also reduced night time thermogenesis, despite 25% higher locomotion during waking hours. GPR50 appears to interact with leptin signalling, as administration of leptin can improve GPR50 nuclear activity in obese mice (with seemingly suppressed levels of GPR50) but not in GPR50-/- mice, suggesting leptin acts vicariously through this receptor, but only on matters related to thermogenesis (as feeding patterns appear unaltered). In fact, after leptin was administered to rats with the standard leptin receptor but no GPR50 receptor, the amount of genes activated by leptin in control mice (2,705) is reduced by just over 50% (to 1,327). It should be noted that melatonin is not a direct ligand of this receptor.
GPR50 is an orphan receptor, which seems to mediate the aspects of leptin related to thermogenesis, but not appetite. It may mediate up to half of the effects of leptin as well.
GPR50 appears to heterodimerize with the melatonin receptor MT1, which results in reduced efficacy of MT1 signalling, by preventing the binding of agonists to MT1. GPR50 has the capacity to heterodimerize with MT2, but does not influence the functions of MT2, similar to how MT1 and MT2 heterodimerization does not influence binding of ligands. Melatonin normally has a Ki of 0.73±0.26nM, yet the heterodimerization has a Ki of 0.37±0.28nM. Secondary to this, GPR50 appears to antagonize the effects of MT1. Co-expression of GPR50 alongside MT1 does not affect basal MT1 actions, but reduces the maximal response of MT1 by melatonin agonism by 50%. Reducing the expression of GPR50 reverses these effects.
Expression of GPR50 appears to reduce the actions of MT1, and may alter the signals sent through MT1 via melatonin.
In a model of delayed sleep phase syndrome, 500mcg of melatonin appears to be as effective as ten-fold the dose (5mg). A comparative study between 300mcg and 3mg in age-related insomnia noted that 300mcg was more effective than 3mg.
A comparative study between 500mcg and forty-fold the dose (20mg) showed that 500mcg was more effective at regulating the circadian rhythm of a blind person (with no external melatonin regulation from darkness). A lower dose of 10mg in blind people appears to be more effective than 20mg, although insignificantly different from 500mcg.
Although differences between very low (300-500mcg) and higher (3-5mg) doses tend to go back and forth in regard to efficacy, both seem to be more potent than superloaded doses (20mg).
Oral doses of 500mcg melatonin (seen as the lowest active dose) in shift workers resulted in a Cmax of 1,580+/-329 pg/ml after a Tmax of 1+/-0.14 hours, noting that this high dose was above physiological ranges for up to three hours, but after the fourth hour levels returned to the physiological range of 24-198pg/mL. Other studies that use 500mcg note serum levels of 3,054+/-3,022pmol/L (709.4+/-701.9pg/mL) with a half-life of 0.68 hours.
Studies that use 5mg of melatonin note that serum spikes of 1,638.0+/-61.9pg/mL are seen at 30 minutes, 23,982pmol/L (5,570.67pg/mL) with a half-life of 0.79 hours.
With 6mg of melatonin, in one hour serum levels of 1,171.3+/-235.2pg/mL are seen.
One study assessing 100mg melatonin (200-fold higher dose than the lowest active dose) noted serum peaks approximately 100 minutes after administration, or 652,310+/-82,456pmol/L (151,517+/-19,153pg/mL). This dose is able to stay in circulation longer than smaller doses, still affecting biology up to bedtime, when taken at 8am. The study noting the higher serum peak measured levels of 95+/-15pmol/L (22.06+/-3.48pg/mL) the next morning at 8am, which was still above baseline for these participants.
Serum peaks are quite unreliable, although all small doses tend to increase circulating melatonin around 8-10 times more than the highest physiologically relevant concentration. Higher doses increase melatonin levels even further, and delay the time to peak concentrations while also delaying the excretion rates.
When examining a large dose (80mg) of melatonin given to healthy people in the morning (7:30am), the various parameters recorded were: a 24m half-life, with stable levels 60-150 minutes after ingestion and a gradual decline in serum melatonin levels until 9pm, when they returned to physiologically relevant levels. The peak values were highly variable and significant in magnitude, 350-10,000fold higher than previously observed peak levels. Such variability has been seen elsewhere), and hourly dosing of 80mg melatonin was able to attenuate but unable to inhibit the decline throughout the day.
Fast absorption appears to be similar between higher doses (80mg), 100mg) and lower doses (6mg). One study testing four low doses (100mcg, 500mcg, 1mg, 5mg) also noted that the absorption rates appeared to be nonsignificantly different, all taking within 0.78-1.25 hours to reach Cmax.
Melatonin appears to be rapidly absorbed and very rapidly excreted, with the concentration in the blood between these times being significantly higher than normal levels.
When administered intranasally to rabbits, melatonin had a bioavailability of 94% when paired with sodium glycocholate, but 55% without. This route of administration was accompanied by a 5 minute Tmax and a 13 minute half-life, with 1.5mg of melatonin conferring a Cmax of 493+/-290ng/mL at 5 minutes. These parameters mimicked intravenous injections.
Melatonin administered via the nasal route may be markedly more effective than oral supplementation.
At the stage of 6-hydroxylation of melatonin into its main urinary metabolite (6-hydroxymelatonin), aromatase (CYP1A1/2) appears to be very important, with some metabolism by CYP1B1 and CYP2C19. Metabolism of melatonin by CYP1B1 appears to be of greater relevance to central (neural) melatonin, due to it not being expressed much in the liver. Due to metabolism by aromatase, co-ingestion of aromatase inhibitors (in this case, fluvoxamine) can increase melatonin AUC and overall exposure. Habits that induce aromatase (such as tobacco smoking) appear to be correlated to reduced circulating melatonin.
In humans, 3mg of melatonin is able to attenuate a stress-induced rise in adrenaline and noradrenaline in young healthy men, but is unable to abolish it. Without a stressor, oral melatonin at low doses (1-2mg) appears to reduce circulating adrenaline by about 60-90 minutes after ingestion.
Melatonin may be able to reduce concentrations of circulating adrenaline and noradrenaline.
Melatonin appears to inhibit dopamine release in the ventral hippocampus, medulla pons, preoptic area, and the hypothalamus (posterior and median), yet no inhibition occurs in the cerebral cortex, striatum, cerebellum, or dorsal hippocampus. This inhibition appears to be mediated by inhibiting calcium influx into co-stimulated nerves. In accordance to this inhibition, active in physiologically relevant nM ranges (although maximal potency is at pharmacological mM ranges), dopamine experiences a diurnal rhythm of release, vicariously through melatonin suppression. This inhibition of dopamine release appears to apply to amphetamine-induced dopamine release, which may be of concern to ephedrine supplementation.
Mechanistically, melatonin appears to be a negative regulator of dopamine release in neurons.
Melatonin works through the MT1 receptor on the Suprachiasmatic Nuclei (SCN) to inhibit cAMP element response element-binding protein (CREB) phosphorylation, secondary to pituitary adenylate cyclase activating polypeptide (PACAP) and through the MT2 receptors of the SCN to facilitate changing of the circadian rhythm, a phenomena known as phase shifting. This appears to be mediated via protein kinase C (PKC). It is mostly through MT2, but to a lesser extent MT1, that melatonin acts to regulate sleep-wake cycles. MT2 works to regulate the phase shifts, while MT1 exerts general suppressive actions on cell activation.
A 500mcg dose of melatonin appears to be able to increase secretion of oxytocin and vasopressin within 40-60 minutes of oral ingestion. However, 5mg has no significant influence on its own, yet it is able to suppress an increase in vasopressin normally seen with exercise. Another study using 50mcg as well as 500mcg and 5mg noted that, in roughly the same population, 50mcg was not significantly different than placebo in regards to vasopressin and barely more significant in increasing oxytocin, while 500mcg significantly increased both neurohormones by 40 minutes after dosing, levels of which appeared to normalize by 150 minutes. A 5mg dose showed a suppressive effect once again. This suppression was noted in a third study using 5mg nightly for 4 days.
Melatonin is implicated in neuroprotection as an antioxidant compound and as a protector against the harmful effects of beta-amyloid pigmentation, by reducing levels of said pigmentation and by offering protection from downstream effects. Melatonin also seems to have preventive effects on hyperphosphorylation of the tau protein, which is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.
Melatonin may also confer neuroprotection via mediating the Akt/mTOR pathway, as it can induce the pathway in times of ischemia-reperfusion injury (when it should be suppressed), methamphetamine induced suppression of mTOR, and suppresses overexpression of this and the MAPK pathways via H202 stimulation.
Melatonin shows synergism with Resveratrol in regards to protection against beta-amyloid pigmentation in regards to AMPK phosphorylation and its downstream effects; although its effects on the glycogen synthase enzyme expression (GSK-1) and glutathione depletion (both risk factors neuropathy) were not synergistic in vitro.
Melatonin has been investigated for its usage in treating migraines, due to migraines having a circadian rhythm and insomnia being correlated with morning migraines. One study that tested this hypothesis in people aged 18-65, with an attack frequency of 2-7 per month, noted that melatonin failed to exert more benefits than placebo when taken at 2mg one hour before sleep for 8 weeks, although a (nonsignificant) improvement in sleep quality (assessed by the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index) was observed. This became significant when controlling for people with insomnia (correlated highly with those who had auras with their migraines). This study was criticized for its methodology, mainly because the combination of a crossover design and an 8 week duration limits the length observations could be made. Placebo response rate was much higher than expected, suggesting design flaws.
Melatonin has not yet been shown to reduce the frequency or intensity of migraines, but has not conclusively been shown to be ineffective. More evidence is required.
Melatonin supplementation exerts most of its benefits through decreased sleep latency, or a reduction of the time it takes to fall asleep.
Some studies do not note a significant decrease in sleep latency, although the majority tend to note a shortening of the time it takes to fall asleep in otherwise healthy subjects. Although some studies, measuring REM sleep (indicative of sleep quality), note improvements, this is not inherent to melatonin. One study using 10mg melatonin one hour prior to sleep for 28 days in people aged 28+/-5 years (n=30) noted that this decreased sleep latency could occur without benefit to REM latency/density or sleep architecture. Improvement in sleep may also not necessarily be dependent on circulating melatonin levels. The best predictor of response to melatonin could be age (55yrs or greater) or the status of insomnia.
A part of melatonin's pro-sleep mechanisms may be related to a decrease in body temperature, as the two are highly associated.
Melatonin appears to be quite reliable for shortening sleep latency, and inducing faster sleep. This may be related to the hypothermic (temperature lowering) effects of melatonin, and does not necessarily indicate better sleep quality.
In older people with primary insomnia, melatonin (2mg of a slow release formula) has shown efficacy in improving sleep quality. Melatonin has also shown efficacy for children suffering from insomnia that affects development. In this latter study, kids with an average age of 12 (8.6-15.7yrs), using melatonin in ranges of 0.3-10mg (average dose of 2.69mg), for an average of 3.1 years, did not significantly differ from a non-supplemented control when assessed by Tanner stages, three questions used to assess physical maturation of puberty. No differences in mental maturity were seen. Benefits to insomnia have also been noted for people who suffer from insomnia and also experience migraines with auras, which may be correlated.
Due to melatonin shortening the time it takes to fall asleep (sleep latency) it shows most efficacy in insomnia treatment and, despite being used in all age groups, is surprisingly free of withdrawal and other side-effects at the doses used.
Melatonin has shown some efficacy in improving sleep quality for people suffering from tinnitus.
At least one study has noted synergistic sedative effects of melatonin and Monoamine Oxidase (MAO-A) inhibitors. In this frog study, clorgyline and moclobemide were used.
Jet lag is a term used to refer to dysregulation between external regulators of time (light and darkness) and the internal clock located, in part, in the Suprachiasmatic Nuclei (SCN) of the brain. Jet lag is named after plane travel between time zones causing dysregulation of hours up to half a day (depending on time zones traversed). The general phenomena of dysregulation of the circadian rhythm also applies to shift-work (due to working at a time normally reserved for sleep), fluorescent lights in the late afternoon disrupting melatonin secretion. Blind people, due their having no influence from light or darkness, may also suffer.
Melatonin is investigated for its usage in solving jet lag due to its ability to 'fix’' the circadian rhythm and restore desynchronization via signalling the SCN through MT2 receptors.
In situations where external stimuli (sunlight and darkness cycles) and internal stimuli (the internal clock) are not in sync, supplemental melatonin is thought to help re-establish balance.
A Cochrane database meta-analysis of 10 studies that transversed at least 5 time zones found that melatonin was significantly more effective than placebo, when taken at the destination's bedtime, in normalizing the circadian rhythm and reducing the symptoms of jet lag. According to the studies reviewed, there is no significant difference between 500mcg and 5mg on the effects of melatonin in reducing jet lag. Some better sleep was noted with 5mg. It should be noted that some people still experienced jet lag, as the meta-analysis noted that in the two studies that reported individual statistics, about 18% of subjects still experienced jet lag after melatonin, with placebo at 67%. The one study that did not report benefits can be found here.
In studies comparing melatonin against other sedatives, it appears to be less effective than zolpidem (Ambien or Sublinox are the brand names) but also associated with less side-effects.
Other interventions using melatonin for jet lag (in regards to travel) indexed in Medline are found here, and this phenomena as it applies to shift work is noted here.
Melatonin, taken in the evening (sometimes 30 minutes before sleep, at times up to 4-5 hours before sleep with a higher dose) appears to normalize abnormal circadian rhythms. In order to fix jet lag, supplementation should be timed with the clock of the current time zone.
Interestingly, green light treatment in the morning combined with 3g of melatonin the night prior, additively,but not synergistically, benefits correction of abnormal circadian rhythms. Bright light in the morning also aids in normalizing the circadian rhythm or otherwise shifting it to another time. Bright light, when observed in the afternoon and combined with melatonin, partially abolishes the effects of melatonin. In this study, while light treatment at 21:00 and 24:00 delayed normalization of the circadian rhythm by 0.68 hours. Supplemental melatonin at 20:40 corrected it by 0.4 hours. The combination failed to be significantly different than placebo. These results also suggest that melatonin can negate the negative effects of light at night, as it applies to jet lag.
Melatonin at night works well with bright light therapy in the morning, for the purposes of lowering sleep latency, but is antagonistic with bright lights prior to sleep.
The first night effect is a delay in sleep onset due to sleeping in new settings, common during travel. Similar to Panax ginseng, melatonin is effective in reducing sleep latency (time to fall asleep) and as an aid against the first night effect, which is sometimes seen in any study assessing patients in clinical settings during sleep.
The opposite effect has been noted in people suffering from schizophrenia, despite improving sleep quality otherwise.
The phase-shift hypothesis states that seasonal depression in the winter months is associated with alterations in light-sleep cycles and melatonin, alongside bright light therapy (night and morning, respectively), is able to normalize disorders of the circadian rhythm, including seasonal depression.
A study on elderly people (86+/-6yrs) with mild cognitive impairment, given a combination supplement of melatonin (5mg), soy phospholipids (160mg), L-tryptophan (95mg), and fish oil (720mg DHA, 286mg EPA, vitamin E at 16mg) noted that nightly ingestion for 12 weeks significantly reduced the rating score of the MMSE and MNA (indicative of cognitive enhancement) without influencing short or long term memory parameters. The improved score appeared a minor trend to improve with supplementation, relative to a minor deterioration seen in control.
One study assessing memory with 3mg melatonin given to healthy young men noted that melatonin supplementation was associated with improved memory encoding under stress. Taking melatonin one hour prior to a combined learning and stress experience improved the amount remembered the next day, relative to control, but tests conducted 15 minutes after the stressor (when cortisol was highest) were not different between groups.
Adrenaline-mediated signalling (adrenergic) is a regulator of cardiac function and, in some clinical populations, can be seen as undesirable due to its hypertensive and pro-contractile properties.
Melatonin appears to have anti-adrenergic actions in heart tissue. One in vitro study using excised cardiac tissue from rats noted that melatonin (50uM, with 25uM having no effect) appears to reduce Cyclic Adenosine Monophosphate (cAMP) production in the heart by up to 34% via the melatonin receptors, although abolishing Nitric Oxide (NO), Protein Kinase C (PKC), or guanyl cyclase also abolished the effects of melatonin.
A dose of 1-2mg melatonin is able to acutely reduce blood pressure in men and women, possibly secondary to a reduction in adrenaline, which is also observed. The difference between groups appears to be reduced when subjects are standing and mobile, Not all studies note an acute decrease in blood pressure, suggesting these acute effects (measured in a passive supine position) may not hold much practical relevance.
An intervention using 5mg of melatonin supplementation for 2 months, taken 2 hours before bed, noted that melatonin, in people with metabolic syndrome, was able to reduce blood pressure from 132.8+/-9.8 systolic to 126.3+/-11.5 (95.1% of baseline) and decrease diastolic from 81.7+/-8.7 to 76.9+/-9.2 (94.1% of baseline). These effects were independent of major changes in body weight, and may have been secondary to melatonin's antioxidative effects.
At least one study has investigated blood partitioning after ingestion of 3mg melatonin, in participants in a supine position. The researchers noted an increased blood flow to the forearms and less to the kidneys (without influencing cerebral blood flow) occurring 45 minutes after ingestion of melatonin, independent of changes in heart rate or blood pressure.
Although administration of 5mg of melatonin nightly for 2 months in people with metabolic syndrome does not appear to significantly influence triglyceride levels, triglycerides may be acutely affected as assessed by a study involving 6mg of melatonin taken prior to exercise. The expected decrease in triglycerides during exercise was exacerbated with melatonin.
When 5mg of melatonin is taken for 2 months, 2 hours before bed, by people with metabolic syndrome, there are no significant effects of melatonin on LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, or total cholesterol.
A human study using melatonin supplementation and measuring serum leptin noted that, in a population of 11 people with idiopathic stomach ulcers, leptin increased from 6.2-7.0ng/mL to 12.2-16.2ng/mL after 7 days, maintaining this level up to 21 days, after 5mg of melatonin was taken twice a day, morning and evening. This same dose (10mg) in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease over 28 days with elevated leptin caused a further elevation of 33%.
These effects have also been seen in rats at 25mcg/mL in drinking water (about 500mcg daily) for 9 weeks with either a high fat (35% fat, 35% carbs) or a low fat (4% fat, 60% carbs) diet, where leptin area under curve was increased, but only when measured from early morning to early evening, with no significant difference at any point in the evening. Another study in rats using a lower dose of 10mcg/mL (ended up being 35mcg daily) of water also found influences on circulating leptin, where levels were increased to approximately 150% of control (data derived from graph) after one month. This study also found an increase in circulating zinc. Similar results have been seen in cases of excessive melatonin administration (3mg/kg in mice via I.V), where leptin increased to 127% of control over 6 months.
Melatonin supplementation over a period of longer than a week increases circulating leptin levels without changes in body fat or food intake. This increase does not appear to be dose-dependent. Due to interactions with the circadian rhythm, concrete numbers pertaining to the leptin increase may not be reliable.
When examining isolated fat cells (where most leptin is produced), the amount of leptin secreted is not significantly enhanced when incubated with 1nM melatonin. However, this may be due to the incubation with melatonin alone, as other studies pairing melatonin with insulin note that melatonin may augment the insulin-induced secretion of leptin, as neither induced leptin secretion in vitro by themselves, while the combination increased secretion by 120% and mRNA content by 50%. Adding dexamethasone to the mixture increased these levels to 250% and 100%, respectively. Melatonin was able to suppress a Cyclic Adenosine Monophosphate (cAMP)-induced suppression of leptin release and play a synergistic role in activating the insulin receptor and its target, Protein Kinase B (Akt). Its effects were abolished when the MT1 receptor was prevented from acting. These effects were later replicated by the same research group, with the same potency, when adipocytes were incubated on a 12 hour on/12 hour off protocol to mimic the circadian rhythm.
Melatonin appears to potentiate insulin-induced leptin secretion.
Please refer to the section on Mechanisms and the subhead 'Non-Melatonin Receptors' for discussion on GPR50, a leptin receptor that negatively influences melatonin signalling through MT1. The increase in leptin may be a mechanism of negative feedback due to melatonin signalling.
Melatonin has been investigated for its interactions with obesity, since rats lacking pineal glands that secrete melatonin (rats that have undergone a pinealectomy) experience increased lipogenesis and reduced lipolysis. The pairing of a lack of melatonin secretion and synthesis with weight gain suggests that melatonin may either be anti-obesogenic (reducing fat gain) or may induce fat loss.
Melatonin appears to be somewhat of a negative regulator of adipocyte physiology, being able to influence Mesenchymal Stem Cell (MSC) differentiation away from adipocytes and promote osteogenic cell growth secondary to Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor (PPAR) inhibition while suppressing proliferation of mature 3T3-L1 adipocytes, secondary to suppression of C/EBPbeta transcriptional activity.
When treated in 3T3-L1 preadipocytes, melatonin is able to induce proliferation. This appears to act through MT1 receptor activation.
Melatonin appears to influence mesenchymal cells (a cell that can develop into either adipose cells or bone cells) towards bone rather than fat, a process similar to that seen with resveratrol.
In a model of PAZ6 adipocytes (the human brown preadipocyte cell line), it was found that the mRNA for both melatonin receptors existed, and via MT2 receptors, suppressed GLUT4 translocation and glucose uptake by approximately 25% over 14 days incubation, but failed to significantly reduce activity after one day. In this study, brown and white adipocytes were both tested and although white had less MT1 than brown adipose, white expressed no MT2. A study using luzindole (an agonist of mostly MT2 but with some affinity to MT1) demonstrated it was less effective than melatonin at creating these effects, supporting the lack or either relative absence of active MT2 on white adipocytes.
Activation of melatonin receptors appears to be associated with suppression of adenyl cyclase and a decrease in Cortisol-Induced Aromatase (cAMP) levels. This decrease in cAMP levels (associated with the Gi protein coupled to melatonin receptors) can suppress lipolysis induced by beta(2)adrenergic stimulation.
White adipose expresses MT1 and little-to-none MT2. Although glucose metabolism is heavily influenced in brown adipocytes, humans do not have much (relative to rats), which means it may not be practically relevant. Signalling via MT1 in white adipose may be the most practically relevant mechanistic pathway of melatonin for humans.
When investigating oxidation, incubation of preadipocytes with melatonin is associated with increased levels of copper, zinc, manganese and Superoxide Dismutases (SODs). An increase in catalase was observed after a 24 hour incubation. These trends reversed at the 48 hour mark of incubation.
When rats are fed 500mcg melatonin daily via drinking water and concurrently given a high fat (35%) diet, the rate of weight gain is attenuated, independent of changes in calories. This has been replicated with 0.4mcg/mL, where a 7% decrease in body weight and 16% lower intra-abdominal adipose mass was recorded.
When 5mg of melatonin is administered 2 hours before bedtime to a sample of people with metabolic syndrome, a small but statistically significant reduction of BMI has been observed (from 29 to 28.8) over two months, which correlates with improvements in blood pressure and antioxidant profile.
Though melatonin is unlikely to be a potent weight loss or anti-weight gain agent, it does seem to beneficially influence these parameters.
When 6mg of melatonin is taken by youth (18-20) immediately (30 minutes) prior to exercise, it is able to reduce the amount of lipid peroxidation induced by exercise (serum malondialdehyde (MDA)) and appears to significantly preserve, and perhaps slightly elevate, levels of endogenous antioxidant enzymes. In this study, plasma triglycerides from exercise were also significantly reduced upon melatonin supplementation, relative to control.
After rats are subject to crush injury, melatonin injections at 10mg/kg bodyweight were associated with better muscle function (tetanic and twitch force) at 4, 7, and 14 days after injury relative to control, exhibiting about 1.2 to 1.3-fold better recovery. This appears to be secondary to an increase in satellite cells (2-fold) and a decrease in apoptotic cells, measured after the first dose, up to the 4 day marker (50% decrease) with no further influence. This increase in satellite cells was not observed in uninjured tissue. A reduction in apoptosis and mitochondrial dysfunction has also been observed with ischemia/reperfusion injuries to skeletal muscle. The mechanism of mitochondrial protection seems to be related to preserving membrane permeability, possibly secondary to melatonin's antioxidative capacity.
At least one study pertaining to athletes investigated whether nightly melatonin supplementation (5mg) hampered daytime physical activity. The study failed to note any harm to physical performance from sedation.
In a study where 5mg of melatonin was taken 3 hours prior to exercise, it was found that melatonin increased sedation and reduced reaction time, whereas it did not significantly affect physical performance as assessed by 4km cycling test. The authors suggest that the hindering effect of melatonin on physical performance during the day was more neural than physical.
When investigating postmenopausal breast cancer survivors, melatonin does not appear to have any influence on circulating estrogens (17b-estradiol measured) after 4 months of daily 3mg melatonin supplementation prior to sleep.
When examining the aromatase enzyme (CYP1A1/2, conversion of testosterone to estrogen), melatonin appears to interact with aromatase. In MCF-7 (breast cancer) cells conditioned to proliferate after testosterone administration (via estrogen), melatonin was found to slightly suppress proliferation and inhibit aromatase at physiological concentrations (approx. 58% of control levels at 1nM) as compared to pharmaceutical concentrations (75% at 10uM). It was able to suppress Cortisol-Induced Aromatase (cAMP) upregulation. These actions appear to be through activation of the MT1 receptor, secondary to downregulating aromatase-inducing genes. These effects have also been noted in fibroblast cells, a source of estrogen production in postmenopausal estrogen-responsive breast cancer.
Melatonin appears to regulate aromatase, but the concentrations at which it does this may be more likely to prevent an age-related deficiency, rather than act as a pharmacological intervention that would be used with testosterone supplements.
In the Leydig cells of hamster testes, melatonin appears to suppress androgen signalling via the MT1 receptor. Melatonin agonism of the MT1 receptor leads to downregulation of the StAR enzyme, as well as other steroidogenic enzymes, such as 3β-HSD and 17β-HSD. These effects appear opposite of D-aspartic acid and in parallel to the actions of Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone (CRH). Melatonin appears to increase intracellular corticotropin-releasing hormone levels which, paired with the passive diffusion of CRH from Leydig cells, led to researchers to pair melatonin with an antagonist of the CRH receptor, which completely abolished the inhibitory effects of melatonin on testosterone synthesis. Melatonin appears to work via MT1 to decrease phosphorylation of p38, which increases synthesis of CRH, after which CRH suppresses androgen synthesis.
Melatonin is an indirect negative regulator of testosterone in the testes.
When supplemented to otherwise healthy men, 6 mg of melatonin does not appear to significantly influence testosterone levels. It may trend to attenuate the exercise-induced decrease in testosterone. This same dose taken nightly for a month does not alter testosterone levels, luteinizing hormone levels or follicle stimulating hormone levels in otherwise healthy men.
Despite the mechanisms of negative regulation, melatonin does not appear to actually influence testosterone levels in healthy men.
Supplemental melatonin in young healthy men at the doses of 50mcg, 500mcg, and 5mg does not appear to influence circulating cortisol levels when taken at 2:30 and measured for 150 minutes afterward. When 5g of melatonin is taken at 5pm nightly, for four nights, in a similar demographic, and measurements are taken during sleep, the 24-hour area under curve (AUC) of cortisol is slightly increased.
In a clinic study on non-obese, postmenopausal women aged 54-62, a 100mg dose of melatonin was observed to be able to keep melatonin elevated for up to 12 hours.) Melatonin taken at 8am was able to increase cortisol 24-hour AUC slightly (from 219+/-17 to 229+/-14nmol/L, a 4.5% increase) but caused a significant increase during the hours of 20:00-01:00, which was suppressed by exogenous estrogen.
Melatonin supplementation appears to stimulate growth hormone secretion secondary to resensitizing the pituitary gland to Growth-Hormone-Releasing-Hormone (GHRH), as evidenced by augmenting the effects of single injected doses of GHRH and normalizing the magnitude of the second pulse (repeated doses of GHRH have an attenuated spike due to desensitization). It is thought that the mechanism is similar to that of pyridostigmine.
Both 500mcg and 5mg of melatonin appear to be similarly effective in increasing growth hormone levels one hour after ingestion during waking, exhibiting a trend to normalize by 150 minutes after ingestion, with the area under curve (AUC) until this point increasing by 16+/-4.5 to 17.3+/-3.7mUh/L. A 50mcg dose is not significantly different than placebo. A 5mg dose has been tested elsewhere and measured over 24 hours, but the overall increase was less (increasing basal levels from 3.4+/-1.3mU/l to 5.3+/-2.4mU/l) and not statistically significant.
A 500mg dose of melatonin may inhibit the release of growth hormone that is induced by serotonin, which appears to be exercise-related and insulin-induced hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).
Melatonin supplementation in the range of 500-5,000mcg is able to acutely increase growth hormone levels in otherwise healthy young males at rest, which is thought to be due to melatonin’s ability to sensitize the pituitary to the effects of GHRH, rather than through a direct stimulatory effect.
Interactions between melatonin and exercise in regard to growth hormone are somewhat mixed, as one study using 500mcg and 5mg of melatonin against placebo in young and otherwise healthy people experienced with resistance training, noted that, for 120 minutes after exercise, 5mg melatonin significantly increased growth hormone response, relative to placebo, in men, while 500mcg trended towards significance. This study has a research grant from Iovate Health Sciences. Other studies on the subject note that a 5mg oral dose of melatonin taken before anaerobic bicycle exercise can significantly increase the peak and overall exposure to growth hormone by approximately 72%. One other study in resistance-trained adult men undergoing full-body resistance training supplementing 6mg melatonin an hour before exercise noted that melatonin actually decreased the exercise-induced spikes in growth hormone, relative to placebo.
Melatonin at 50mcg, 500mcg, and 5mg does not appear to significantly influence prolactin levels over 150 minutes post-ingestion, a time frame during which melatonin influences other hormones. 5mg of melatonin taken for four days appears to positively influence 24-hour prolactin levels, however.
Melatonin is a multi-modal antioxidant, being implicated in increasing the concentration of certain antioxidant enzymes, such as catalase and the superoxide dismutases, as well as inherently having a structure that confers antioxidative properties per se. Melatonin has shown benefits for inhibiting oxidation, secondary to oxygen-based free radicals hydroxyl radicals, and reactive nitrogen species like peroxynitrite and nitric oxide.
Through antioxidant means, melatonin can inhibit mineral-induced damage to DNA (in this study, chromium III was used) in a dose-dependent manner, with 24+/-1% inhibition at 1uM and 80+/-3% at 100uM. Melatonin was the most protective, tested on a concentration dependent basis (outperforming green tea catechins, resveratrol, and alpha-lipoic acid). It has an IC50 value of 3.6+/-0.1uM.
In at least one blinded intervention, 3mg of melatonin taken nightly also improved subjective ratings of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) and reduced heartburn. It was less effective than omeprazole, but the two were additive when used in combination.
In patients with stomach ulcers that test positive for Heliobactor pylori, twice daily dosing of 5mg of melatonin over 21 days (paired with omeprazole in all groups), complete healing of ulcers was seen in the melatonin group (n=7) and the L-tryptophan group, but only 3 of 7 had complete healing in control, given only omeprazole. These healing effects on ulcers have also been seen with H. pylori negative stomach ulcers, in combination with omeprazole, In a study on aspirin-induced stomach ulcers, melatonin in isolation showed protective effects.
Melatonin is able to influence eye health, as the eye expresses melatonin receptors (MT1 and MT2), where activation of retinal MT1 receptors decreases ocular pressure. This is seen after supplementation of melatonin in healthy men and when pre-loaded before cataract surgery. A 500mcg dose of melatonin, administered orally at 6 p.m., to otherwise healthy men was able to significantly reduce intra-ocular blood pressure by 9-10 p.m., and retained statistically insignificant suppression at 8 p.m. as well as 11-12 p.m. (latest measurement).
One study, investigating mechanisms, noted that incubation of retina with melatonin agonists was associated with modulation of adrenaline receptors, downregulation of the beta(2)adrenergic receptor and upregulation of the alpha(2)adrenergic receptor, which is suppressive of adrenaline's actions. Protein content of carbonic anhydrases is also reduced with melatonin agonists, which may also confer reductions in ocular blood pressure.
Melatonin appears to regulate ocular blood pressure, by reducing intraocular blood pressure through melatonin receptors. This effect may occur through suppressing the actions of adrenaline-mediated blood pressure increases. A 500mcg oral dose can reduce ocular blood pressure 2-3 hours after administration.
The concentration of melatonin in the eye (aqueous humour) appears to be roughly similar between glaucoma patients and normal people, when measured in the morning and early afternoon (800 and 1600h), a time when levels are lower than in the evening. It is not known if people with glaucoma have lower sleeping melatonin levels in the aqueous humour.
In an open-label pilot study using 3mg of melatonin nightly for 6 months on 55 people (110 tested eyes), melatonin was associated with either a slight improvement or stability of disease pathology in the majority of patients.
One study investigating melatonin and tinnitus found that 3mg of melatonin, taken nightly for 30 days (double-blind crossover with 1 month washout), was associated with improvements on at least 2 of 3 rating scales for tinnitus (tinnitus matching, tinnitus severity index, self-rated tinnitus), with 57% of the melatonin group experiencing benefits and only 25% of the placebo reporting benefit. Melatonin appeared to benefit men slightly more than women. This study was a similarly structured replication of a previous study, which reported 46.5% of the melatonin group experiencing benefit, and 20% of the placebo reporting the same. Only one other study has been conducted on melatonin and tinnitus thus far, and in this prospective open-label study, 3mg of melatonin taken for 4 weeks was also associated with decreased symptoms of tinnitus that appeared to be, overall, unrelated to the benefits of melatonin on sleep.
In another trial pairing, 3mg of melatonin, paired with the blood-flow enhancing drug Sulodexide at 250-500mg (with the other two groups being melatonin in isolation and control) during both combination therapy and melatonin in isolation were found to be more effective than placebo, while additive benefits against tinnitus were seen with combination therapy. Improvements were seen in 79.4% of combination therapy instances, and in 58.8% of people in the melatonin-only group, when assessed by both Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) and acufenometry. This study is duplicated in Pubmed.
Melatonin is not a cure for tinnitus, but it appears to be more effective than placebo at suppressing tinnitus-related symptoms and improving sleep, secondary to a lessened subjective sensation of tinnitus.
Melatonin is one of the few supplements that demonstrates interactions with the telomerase enzyme (such as astragalus membranaceus), which is correlated with lifespan. In general, older subjects experience less telomerase activity relative to younger subjects, who still have higher telomerase activity. Telomerase is composed of two subunits, the catalytic TERT subunit and the RNA-containing TR subunit.
A study comparing young and old rats fed 10mg/kg melatonin of intraperitoneal injections, daily for 21 days, found that melatonin increase telomerase activity in gastric mucosa. When only 55% of rat pups had detectable levels of telomerase activity, melatonin increased the levels to 100%, while older rats went from no detectable telomerase to 45% of the rats having detectable levels (assessed by a telomerase PCR ELISA kit).
In vitro activation of the membrane receptor (MT1) was able to increase the RNA levels of the catalytic subunit of telomerase, TERT (observed in research as it correlates well with telomerase), in an MCF-7 cell line by about 50% at 1nM concentration with no dose-dependence. However, binding of an agonist to RZR/RORα (a nuclear receptor melatonin can bind with) can reduce expression of TERT in a dose-dependent manner by 30-40%, depending on concentration (1pM-1nM, the latter being the level of circulating melatonin). Neither receptor appears to influence the TR subunit.
Melatonin appears to be able to positively and negatively regulate the catalytic subunit of telomerase, which appears to be of equal potency at physiologically relevant concentrations of 1nM. At least one rat study noted that pharmacologically high levels of melatonin via supplementation increased telomerase expression.
Estrogens appear to be able to induce telomerase activity, due to an imperfect estrogen response element on the telomerase (TERT) promotor. Estradiol can upregulate telomerase via the ERα. Melatonin has the ability to regulate aromatase, and suppress excessive telomerase activity induced by estrogens and estrogenic compounds such as cadmium, which is useful for estrogen-responsive cancers that express higher levels of telomerase for cell viability. This inhibition of TERT expression in cancerous estrogen responsive cell lines has been observed in vivo with 0.1mg/mL melatonin in rat drinking water.
Melatonin appears to be able to suppress excessive expression of telomerase through environmental and endogenous estrogens, via regulation of TERT transcription. This is more of an anti-cancer mechanism, with its implications for longevity currently unexplored.
Melatonin has been noted in one meta-analysis to reduce the risk of death after one year in people with solid tumor cancers, with a relative risk (RR) of 0.66 and 95% CI of 0.59-0.73, suggesting approximately a quarter risk.
Melatonin may exert a general protective effect in cancer patients, which results in less death.
It has been hypothesized that melatonin levels, through markers such as circadian rhythm disturbances and urinary metabolite levels, is inversely correlated with breast cancer, and that a reduced melatonin status increases breast cancer risk.
A few mechanisms have been investigated in regard to melatonin's role in breast cancer, including its role as a modulator of aromatase enzyme protein content, modulation of the cell cycle via suppressing cyclin D1, and influencing transcriptional activity of nuclear receptors.
Melatonin at high doses (18mg) has been investigated in a trial on advanced gastrointestinal cancer, with or without high dose fish oil (4.9g EPA, 3.2g DHA). This study used treatment for the first 4 weeks and combination therapy for the next 4 weeks. No changes in circulating biomarkers or cytokines were observed, although both fish oil and melatonin had limited efficacy in stabilizing weight or inducing weight gain (38% of patients on fish oil, 27% on melatonin) while the combination had additive effects (68%), suggesting promise for cancer-related cachexia and anorexia.
Melatonin’s life-extending properties are being investigated for a few reasons. A study in rats involved actually removing the pineal gland from young rat pups and putting it into live, elder, male mice. This process induced a 12% increase in lifespan and is theorized to be secondary to melatonin. This hypothesis results are strengthed by the reverse study where old pineal glands into younger rats accelerates aging,. The only currently validated method of life extension (caloric restriction) is associated with up to twofold higher circulating levels of melatonin, when compared to control rats fed ad libitum. It is currently unknown if this is a biomarker of longevity or causative thereof.
A study comparing young healthy controls (n=20), clinically healthy elder people (n=24), and centenarians (n=24) found that those over 100 years of age had standard aging of thyroid parameters and dehydroepiandrosterone (decreases in accordance with age) but that the difference between daily and nightly melatonin excretion (urine) was more similar to the youthful control rather than the aged cohort, which experienced a normalization.
Melatonin and the pineal gland are highly associated with longevity. Since melatonin levels decline with age, supplementation can have restorative effects.
Melatonin has been shown (in rats) to alleviate the hyper-oxidative state forced upon mitochondria with aging. This can be seen as a protective effect, but it is not exerting a protective effect above what is observed in youth.
Administration of melatonin through drinking water to BALB/c (albino, laboratory-bred) female mice between the hours of 18:00 to 08:30, at a concentration of 10ug/mL, increased lifespan from an average of 715 days in control to 843 days in melatonin-treated groups. This is an 18% increase. A life extension effect was also observed when male mice started melatonin at 19 months of age (elderly status). Another part of the study, using NZB mice given melatonin either nightly or throughout the day, noted that nightly administration increased lifespan from 19 months to 23 months with statistical significance, but administration throughout the day only increased lifespan by one month and was not statistically significant.
Combination therapy of melatonin (1mg/kg) and growth hormone (2mg/kg) has been found to reverse some increases in inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α and IL-1) and increase others (IL-10) in cardiac tissue of rats. Therapy also abolished age-related changes in NF-kB distribution (cytosol and nuclear membrane). The reduction in mitochondrial potential seen with aging in cardiac cells (SAMP8 mice) appears to also be normalized and is seen in rats in a rehabilitative manner (30 days of supplementation to older rats).
Melatonin appears to confer a cardioprotective effect against aging.This is not abolished by growth hormone therapy, though the study in question was unable to assess synergism or additive effects.
In SAMP8 mice and Wistar rats, oral melatonin (1mg/kg) appears to reduce some effects of aging on the skin.
Melatonin administration of both 1 and 10mg/kg daily in rats is also able to prevent age-related changes in pancreatic tissue. and liver tissue.
A reduction in age-related changes associated with oral intake of melatonin at 1mg/kg in rats and mice (0.08-0.16mg/kg bodyweight humans, or 5.45mg for a 150lb person) appears to extend to all measured organs.
At least one study on human skin cells noted that glycolic acid, a small α-hydroxy acid commonly found in skin care products, reduced lipid peroxidation, as assessed by thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), by up to 14% at 1mM concentration, yet melatonin at a 1:200 ratio (much less than glycolic acid) exerted 80% antioxidative synergism, as assessed by TBARS. More potent antioxidative synergism was observed between glycolic acid and vitamin E, however.
The pathophysiology of hair loss involves oxidative stress which seems to extend to androgenic hair loss, as hair follicles have increased sensitivity to oxidative stress. Due to the potency of melatonin as a direct antioxidant, and the fact that hair follicle cells express and produce melatonin, it has been investigated for its role in preventing hair loss. Topical application of melatonin to the scalp does not significantly increase serum concentrations of melatonin, instead providing a clinically irrelevant increase in peak values, with no change in 20-hour mean values.
In vitro, 1-5mM of melatonin has been found to accelerate the growth of hair (inhibitory at 30mM), which is thought to be secondary to the melatonin receptor, as the effect is abolished by receptor antagonists (study cannot be located online, mentioned indirectly through this paper). These growth enhancing effects were confirmed in a pilot study using 1mL of a solution of 0.1% melatonin, given to women with androgenic alopecia over 6 months, since the anagen phase was promoted, and a later study noted that there was a response rate of 54.8% of participants, in regard to increasing hair density and hair cell count over 3 months with topical melatonin (0.03%), with the increase being measured at 27.2% (3 months) and 42.7% (6 months) more than control.
Although the study cannot be found online (again, mentioned indirectly through a review), there appears to be a large open-label study of 1891 people with androgenic hair loss, which reported that the rate of no hair loss rose from 12.5% to 61.5%, but stimulated hair growth in 22.5% of the sample.
Melatonin receptors are expressed in hair cells. It appears to have a role in promoting hair growth. While melatonin does appear to be both effective and potent at inducing hair growth and stalling hair loss, even in androgenic hair loss, as is the case with a receding hairline, it appears to be somewhat unreliable and does not affect 100% of subjects.
Caffeine is an adenosine receptor antagonist with affinity towards A2(A), and is seen as anti-sleep due to its effects. It is also stimulatory, but this effect wanes with time.
Both caffeine and melatonin are metabolized by the same enzyme class, specifically, the aromatase enzyme (CYP1A1/2). Coingestion of the two appears to exert competition in metabolism, as the area under curve (AUC) of melatonin is increased by 120% when ingested with caffeine, without significantly affecting the half-life of melatonin.
When investigating mitochondrial function in mice and in vitro, caffeine appears to exert similar effects as melatonin in preventing Alzheimer's-related cognitive deficit, but it is less potent and actively inhibs melatonin's benefit when coingested. This effect does not appear to occur through the adenosine receptors per se, but through Phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) inhibition and increasing Cyclic Adenosine Monophosphate (cAMP) levels, which oppose melatonin's decrease of cAMP.
Alcohol is a component of some beverages, like beer and wine, that, surprisingly, contains melatonin. However, when investigating how alcohol consumption affects circulating melatonin levels during social drinking (10-100g ethanol), some studies suggest a resulting reduction of circulating or salivary melatonin levels, with inhibition up to 41%, measured at night. Some studies suggest an increase in melatonin, as according to one study, using beer (7.2%), where women had 330mL and men had 660mL, reported an increase in melatonin levels 45 minutes after ingestion.
When measuring urinary melatonin levels, however, there do not appear to be any significant influences from alcohol consumption, and one study suggests a decrease in urinary melatonin secretion between 9-17% (2-4 drinks, no effect seen from just one).
The effects of alcohol on melatonin are not clear at this time.
An in vitro study assessing melatonin (1uM) and vitamin C at 0.5uM demonstrated synergism in protecting DNA from oxidative damage induced by chromium III. The slightly pro-oxidative effects seen with vitamin C were reversed when melatonin was co-incubated.
An in vitro study assessing melatonin (1uM) and alpha-lipoic acid (5uM) found that, in protecting DNA from chromium III induced oxidative damage, the two were synergistic in their protective effects.
Tryptophan is the amino acid metabolized into 5-HTP, from which serotonin and subsequently melatonin can be produced.
Melatonin appears to inhibit the tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase (TDO) enzyme, which directs tryptophan away from production into 5-HTP by enhancing its catabolism. Inhibition of TDO via melatonin can enhance the amount of bioavailable tryptophan, independent of supplementation.
Epigallocatechin Gallate (EGCG) is the main polyphenol referred to as green tea catechins. In an in vitro test on DNA-induced oxidation, it was found that co-incubation of melatonin and EGCG, both at 1uM, slightly suppressed each other's actions, demonstrating antagonism. It should be noted that the overall protection exerted with both was still greater than either in isolation, but that there was a less than additive benefit.
When tested in vitro, resveratrol, the wine polyphenol, did not show synergism or antagonism with melatonin in protecting DNA from oxidative damage. However, the slightly pro-oxidative effects of resveratrol on DNA were abolished when melatonin was added to the medium.
Resveratrol does display synergism with melatonin in regard to neuroprotection, where melatonin and resveratrol both showed dose-dependent protection from toxicity in hippocampal cells from beta-amyloid pigmentation (associated with Alzheimer's), since the combination required less of a dose to exert the same effects as either supplement in isolation. This appears to be mediated via antioxidative means, and superloading either in isolation overrides synergism.
Although not a nutrient, melatonin has shown synergistic effects with physical exercise in regard to accelerating neuronal repair after nerve injury, and in terms of general neuroprotective effects. The former study noted more motor neurons in the ventral horn and improved functional capacity in rats given 10mg/kg of melatonin daily, in conjunction with exercise. This was hypothesized to occur via a suppression of Nitric Oxide Synthase (iNOS) in neurons, which was observed, since iNOS tends to be increased during neuronal injury. The latter study noted that in mice prone to Alzheimer's disease, this same dose of melatonin, paired with free access to a running wheel, is able to preserve reflexes and memory function while synergistically decreasing neural oxidation and Alzheimer's pathology in the brain. Melatonin and exercise appeared to significantly increase CoQ9 in brain mitochondria, the precursor to CoQ10.
A sodium selenate (source of selenium) and melatonin treatment, given to rats prior to ischemia injury (middle carotid artery occlusion) is able to confer protective benefits.
Galantamine is a cholinergic drug that can inhibit the acetylcholinesterase enzyme, and elevate levels of acetylcholine in the brain (a mechanism similar to huperzine-A). While subeffective levels of melatonin (0.3-10uM) and galantamine (10-300nM) are able to confer synergistic protection against rotenone-induced oxidative stress, 300nM galantamine and 10uM melatonin protects neurons by 56% and 50%, respectively, and 0.3uM melatonin and 10nM galantamine combined confer the same level of protection, despite being in concentrations 30 to 33-fold lower. This synergism may not be restricted to the molecules, but may be mediated through the nicotinic and melatonin receptors.
Up to 240mg and 500mg oral and intravenous injections of melatonin taken acutely is not associated with any toxicological effects.
In older people with insomnia, 6 months of melatonin at 2mg (long-release formula) is not associated with any overt harm and appears to be safe and effective at 5mg (according to a caretaker interview) in children with the average age of 6 (at onset of treatment) that suffer from sleep disorders as symptoms of other medical problems (autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy). When the caretakers were interviewed 3.8 years after starting treatment, some caretakers had upped the dose to 10mg or 15mg.
A study assessing 6 months (n=112) and 12 months (n=96) of melatonin treatment of 2mg in a controlled release capsule, taken 1-2 hours prior to sleep, people aged 20-80 with primary insomnia failed to show any tolerance to the treatment. The authors noted a slight sensitization to the effects of melatonin at the 3-4 month period, which was attributed to better entrainment of the circadian rhythm. These results have been replicated in another study, lasting 6 months, with a sample of 791 people. No melatonin tolerance due to usage was observed, Another study, lasting 6 months with a sample size of 421 people also replicated these results.
A handful of large scale, 6-12 month studies, suggest continued administration of melatonin does not result in tolerance.
Since benzodiazepines are a popular sedative and known to have withdrawal effects, it is a common concern as to whether melatonin supplementation confers withdrawal or dependence in otherwise healthy people. This concern is somewhat backed by melatonin interacting with benzodiazepine receptors. Melatonin is sometimes used for prolonged periods in youth with clinically meaningful sleep disturbance problems.
In a study investigating children with sleep onset problems taking melatonin (1-5mg depending on individual efficacy) for 3 weeks, halving the dose for 1 week before stopping supplementation, the termination of effects was replicated where half-dosing for a week reduced the benefit to sleep latency nonsignificantly. Ceasing treatment removed the benefits of melatonin. This study also made note of an unpublished thesis, where the benefits of 3-week melatonin usage were abolished upon cessation. The thesis is not available online. One other study on people with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder given 10mg noted negative effects. In this sample of people (n=5), delayed sleep onset relative to baseline was observed.
In contrast to this, at least one large scale (n=791) double-blind study on insomniacs noted that there were no withdrawal symptoms associated with stopping melatonin usage after 6 months, at 2mg of a sustained release formulation. Withdrawal was assessed by the Tyrer questionnaire, with about 28% in both placebo and melatonin. Data from 6-12 months of melatonin usage in insomniacs noted that during a 2-week monitoring period after cessation of melatonin, there was a slight residual effect of better sleep, no tolerance during long-term melatonin treatment, and no noted withdrawal effects significantly different than placebo. An apparent absence of withdrawal or dependence is more common in older people with symptoms of insomnia. Melatonin for usage of up to 6-12 months is not associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms, an example of a potential withdrawal symptom being exacerbation of insomnia.
There is a lack of solid evidence to suggest the presence of withdrawal or dependence from melatonin supplementation. Some evidence affirms that there is no adverse effect on drug dependence or withdrawal. Doses higher than 2mg have not been sufficiently studied.
It is possible that the termination of the benefits to sleep upon discontinuing melatonin may be seen as 'reactive insomnia', as sleep quality returns to the quality that it was prior to melatonin intervention.
^ Determination of the melatonin content of different varieties of tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum) and strawberries (Fragariaananassa).
^ Melatonin is a phytochemical in olive oil.
^ Diurnal pattern of melatonin in blood and milk of dairy Cows.
^ Hormones in bovine milk and milk products: A survey.
^ Melatonin: A new bioactive compound in wine.
^ Localization, Physiological Significance and Possible Clinical Implication of Gastrointestinal Melatonin.
^ Annual rhythm of serum melatonin in man.
^ a b The Pineal Peptide Preparation, Epithalamin, Slows Aging in Drosophila melanogaster, Mice, and Rats.
^ Expression cloning of a high-affinity melatonin receptor from Xenopus dermal melanophores.
^ Melatonin Treatment for Age-Related Insomnia.
^ Low, but not high, doses of melatonin entrained a free-running blind person with a long circadian period.
^ Metabolism of Melatonin by Human Cytochromes P450.
^ a b Activation of MT2 melatonin receptors in rat suprachiasmatic nucleus phase advances the circadian clock.
^ Effect of inducing nocturnal serum melatonin concentrations in daytime on sleep, mood, body temperature, and performance.
^ Efficacy of Melatonin Treatment in Jet Lag, Shift Work, and Blindness.
^ Preflight Adjustment to Eastward Travel: 3 Days of Advancing Sleep with and without Morning Bright Light.
^ Biology of Depression: From Novel Insights to Therapeutic Strategies.
^ a b Melatonin orl-tryptophan accelerates healing of gastroduodenal ulcers in patients treated with omeprazole.
^ Melatonin As a Free Radical Scavenger: Implications for Aging and Age-Related Diseases.
^ Reaction of Melatonin and Related Indoles With Hydroxyl Radicals: EPR and Spin Trapping Investigations.
^ Pineal control of aging: effect of melatonin and pineal grafting on aging mice.
^ The Pineal Aging and Death Program. I. Grafting of Old Pineals in Young Mice Accelerates Their Aging.
^ a b Pineal control of aging: Effect of melatonin and pineal grafting on aging mice.
^ Oxidative Stress in Ageing of Hair.
^ Premature Senescence of Balding Dermal Papilla Cells In Vitro Is Associated with p16INK4a Expression.
^ Effects of caffeine intake on the pharmacokinetics of melatonin, a probe drug for CYP1A2 activity.
^ Triple-Transgenic Model of Alzheimer's Disease with Plaques and Tangles.
2013 Sleep in America® Poll: Exercise and Sleep (summary of findings), “Exercise is good, regardless of time of day” (pages 46–49). | 2019-04-21T00:51:26Z | https://cf.examinecdn.com/supplements/melatonin/ |
Bluehost is one of the biggest web hosting companies in the world and an official WordPress recommended hosting provider. Bluehost offers a wide variety of hosting plans for beginners to larger businesses with a 24/7 customer support. See the complete Bluehost review by our experts to find out if Bluehost is the right choice for you.
Performance: How fast will your website load with Bluehost? We will test their speed and server response time to assess that.
Pricing: Do they have the best pricing in the industry? Are there any Bluehost deals that can save you money?
Bottom line: Don’t want to read all the details? Let us give it to you straight. In our Bluehost review, we found them to be reliable, fast, and affordable with friendly 24/7 customer support.
That’s why we’ve chosen to recommend Bluehost as one of the best WordPress hosting companies.
Now let’s dive into our detailed Bluehost review so that you can decide for yourself.
First, let’s take a look at the company itself.
Bluehost has a long standing relationship with the WordPress community. They are an official WordPress recommended hosting company since 2006.
They pride themselves in their 24/7 customer support, great hosting infrastructure, and support for the free open source software like WordPress.
All web hosting companies have their pros and cons. Some you can live with, and some you cannot ignore.
Here are the pros and cons of Bluehost that we learned.
First, let’s take a look at the advantages that make Bluehost the top choice.
Bluehost is not without some disadvantages that you should be aware of before signing up.
The most important performance metric that you should look for is the speed. It not only affects user experience on your site, but it also affects your WordPress SEO rankings.
Studies show that a 1 second drop in website speed can decrease your conversion rate by 7%. A 3 second delay can cost you 50% of your traffic.
Let’s see how fast your website will load on Bluehost.
For a faster website, you will need to choose a fast web hosting company. Keeping this in mind, we created a test site to see how fast Bluehost really is.
Our test site was created using WordPress with default Twenty Seventeen theme. We imported dummy content for theme development including images. After that we used Pingdom to test the website speed.
As you can see, our test site loads in less than two seconds. That’s faster than 85% of all tested sites. Considering the fact that our website wasn’t using any caching plugins or speed optimization tips, this result is remarkable.
But this test website didn’t have large amounts of traffic. So the Pingdom test alone isn’t good enough.
To test how Bluehost servers would respond with increased traffic, we used a testing tool called Load Impact to send virtual users (VU) to our site. They gradually built up to 100 visitors to see how the server would handle increased requests from multiple connections at once.
Here is a screenshot of our results.
This test indicates that if you are looking for a really fast website, then Bluehost can be a perfect fit for you.
It is also important to note that we didn’t record any downtime during our testing. See the screenshot below for a detailed look at Bluehost server uptime.
When you are testing a live website using tools like Pingdom, you are basically seeing how everything on your website loads. This include images too, which take much longer to load than plain text.
In order to get a more accurate server response time, we used another tool called Bitcatcha. It allows you to test server response time without loading any data.
As you can see Bluehost server in the US performed under the fraction of a second. In other locations, response was a bit higher but still under less than a second.
If your target audience is in the United States, then this would benefit your website. However if more of your users come from other parts of the world, then you can change your server location.
Bluehost offers a variety of hosting plans for all budgets and sizes. This includes shared hosting, VPS, dedicated server, cloud hosting, WooCommerce hosting, WordPress hosting, and more.
Let’s take a look at Bluehost hosting plans and their features.
Shared hosting: Shared hosting is the perfect way to start a new website with low traffic volume. In a shared hosting environment, your website shares server resources with other websites.
Cloud hosting: A more reliable upgrade to the shared hosting plan. It allows you to utilize multiple cloud servers, allowing your website to automatically switch to a different server in case of a hardware failure or high traffic.
WordPress hosting: A hosting package designed specifically for WordPress powered websites. It is optimized to run WordPress and can even protect your WordPress site against common threats.
WooCommerce hosting: WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress, it allows you to easily start an online store with WordPress. WooCommerce hosting offers you all the essential features to kick start your ecommerce store.
VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting: An upgrade to shared WordPress hosting, VPS hosting allows you to virtual dedicated resources in a shared environment.
Dedicated server hosting: A dedicated server to for your website, means you will have all the resources of the server to yourself. The downside is that you will have to manage the server on your own.
All Bluehost hosting plans allow you to install WordPress with 1-click.
All plans come with an easy to use hosting control panel where you can manage your hosting, create databases, etc.
We all need help every now and then. It is really important that you choose a web hosting company that offers help and support when you need it.
Bluehost maintains a huge library of articles, step by step guides, and video tutorials as part of their extensive knowledge base. This is a huge help for beginners and most common issues can be quickly resolved by a simple search.
However, sometimes you may need to talk to an individual to get more help.
Bluehost offers a 24/7 support system where you can talk to their customer support representatives using live chat or phone. This is really helpful when you need quick help from technical support staff.
One thing that is missing is the ticket based support system. Bluehost recently decided to eliminate ticket based support to focus on personal approach of live chat and phone based support. However, some users may still miss the ticket based support system which is particularly good if your issue cannot be resolved in one live chat or phone session.
After reading this review you might be wondering if Bluehost is the right choice for your website?
Bluehost is often ranked #1 hosting company by many websites. They offer a wide range of hosting plans with tons of features that help you easily build your website.
Most importantly, they offer affordable starter plans that fit any budget requirement.
If you are just starting out, then you cannot go wrong signing up for a Bluehost shared hosting plan. Its easy on your pocket, and comes with all the right tools. As your site grows you can easily upgrade your hosting plan accordingly.
Ready to start your website Bluehost? Click here to select your Bluehost plan.
WPBeginner users get an exclusive 60% off discount and a free domain with our Bluehost coupon code.
Bluehost has been good for us as a webhost. We have been very disappointed that there is not a working calendar that we employees can share so we are probably going to seek google apps for non-profits in order to have a user friendly shared calendar.
I am a simple user of Bluehost. I have a couple of websites which are not very active due to things taking me away from spending lots of time on them. But, so far, the interaction I have had with the Bluehost staff and customer support, has been really good. I have no beefs.
What would be good tho, is to have a resource that can be accessed which addresses various issues that might lead a customer to contact customer support for tweaking various parameters that only can be done by Bluehost. That would be a very valuable document to have access to and provide us, the customer with a good picture of what is the scope of things which can be changed or altered if needed. This would save us time in resolving things and probably lower the amount of time required to get to the root cause of some issues. What do you think?
99% up time, 24/7 live customer care, Blue Host has been a life saver for me and my business.
I have been a Blue Host customer for a long time…I know that I can depend on all the associates to assist me. I am a loyal customer and intend to continue.
Prices are good, customer service is excellent . My only issue is the spam they always send me. I’mnot a business so their spam is useless to me. Other than that I recommend it strongly.
A company that advertises being a WordPress leader doesn’t support a five year old WP feature called MultiSite.
Each WP install uses a minimum of 5,000 files. If you have six or seven domains using WP, but only getting a few hundred visitors a month (think church, small club) then the installs use up nearly 40,000 files. Multi-site, configured properly, lets a user install WP once, and run multiple sites one that single install.
Bluehost tech support says they don’t support that feature. I can see why it would help both parties if they did.
Thanks for helping me to connect to my email while I was without internet.
Great service and very professional. I think your email Spam Assassin should screen out spam better than it currently does. Thanks for all your qualified help over the years.
I was a total newbie to this WP/website stuff 2 years ago. Thanks to the help I’ve received from the folks at BlueHost, I have produced a dozen sites for me and my clients. I can always get through when I have a problem and I’ve always gotten perfect and honest answers from them — even when I was the problem!
I have several clients who have hosting support elsewhere so I know what a pain other places can be. I always encourage those clients to switch. And when they do, we are all happy.
I have absolutely no complaints with the folks at BlueHost. I’m quite sure you’ll feel the same way once you get on board.
Wasn’t particularly happy to learn that I could not earn any affiliate commission unless it reached $100 within nine months. A bit of a rip off, considering I lose all revenue even though I am solely responsible for getting my one client to you.
long waits for customer service. Excellent service when it arrives.
Completely happy with Bluehost and I would recommend it to others.
Bluehost has been our host for several years now. They have helped us navigate through many different issues with ease. They are very professional and take the time to help a novice learn the ropes. I have recommended them to anyone seeking a host.
I started a local news blog 4 1/2 years ago. After a bad experience with another hosting company, I asked around and found lots of satisfied customers using Bluehost. I had never used WordPress before. Bluehost had outstanding support and helped me get started on WordPress and everything has run smoothly the last year. Choosing Bluehost has been a good decision for me.
I am well pleased with Bluehost but have had an ongoing problem with WordPress … the inability to easily post email addresses. I’m not a “coder,” so I need a shortcut to do it … and I haven’t been able (in over a year) to find one or even how to find one!
Hosting is very good. The pricing can get out of control.
After unhappy experiences with some other providers I became happily acquainted with Bluehost. I’m particularly happy with their customer service. I’ve been a happy customer for many years.
I am using BlueHost from last 2 year, really great hosting provides and nowdays its was fabulous. Thanks for the review excellent article and written off. Please keep sharing.
Honestly, I’ve been happy with blue host either. Support is a hit or miss; some of their staff are willing to help you out even more because they are bored, but some won’t because they’re talking to a whole bunch of clients at the same time.
I am researching on Bluehost and the opinion of people here are all very valuable, thanks for sharing and thanks to the site!
*Bluehost tried upgrade my service even after I restored my renewal setting to my normal settings.
If you have great service from BlueHost great. Not everyone does.
I am giving DreamHost a try for my newest site and podcast home base..
Terrible phone support. I have been on hold for 47 minutes now, waiting for billing to answer.
Like many here, I’ve been using BH for years. In that time I have set up many client sites there. But no more. Their support has fallen off markedly over the past year or two with extremely long queues and inconsistent quality in the support reps – some are well-trained and other not at all.
It seems to be the nature of hosting. You find a great host and within a couple years you watch them slowly dwindle until they become just another go-daddy.
BlueHost is sending emails presenting themselves as GoDaddy; claiming that peoples accounts are suspended for non-payment. Everything in the email seems completely legit for GoDaddy; but if you click the link to resolve the issue, it takes you to BlueHost.com.
Its not from BlueHost , Someone is referring u to bluehost.
Blue Host is generally okay. The server my site is on is down today for a DDOS attack. Has been going on for more than 12 hours. If you think 12+ hours of downtime is good, so long as the hosting is cheap, this is the company for you.
I was with Bluehost shared hosting for years until they started outbound filtering of email which causes the mail forwarding set in cpanel to break. The effect of the change was that you would get some mail forwarded, but other mail would drop and you would never know. I had to move my hosting to another company since not receiving some emails is not something I could tolerate.
Where’d you move to? I’m looking for one who’s CS I can reach on the phone without holding for half a day.
Help Me to Choice…. OPTIMIZED HOSTING for WordPress (blogger) or VPS HOSTING (Standard) on Bluehost which are the great package for my growing website? is there any suggestion Please….
I’ve used Bluehost for a while for several websites and I haven’t had any major problems.
I’ve had a few minor issues, but the staff have also helped me put things right in a matter of minutes.
I also like the WordPress installer.
My only dislike is the pricing of the domain names. Not a big problem, I can just register my domain names through GoDaddy.
In the main I’ve been quite happy with BlueHost (though my usage has been very very light so I haven’t had any issues with traffic).
I wasn’t particularly impressed in my last invoice to find I had an increase in costs and an associated entry “Upgrade Plus Web Hosting” – I had no knowledge of any ‘upgrade’ nor any need for it and in my view should have had some correspondence to say what it was at the very least.
I had been thinking about cancelling the hosting anyway (I’ve not used it at all the past 18 months) and the price increase was the push required.
Bluehost used to be a decent host.
These days went from bad to worse. Support takes at least more than 10 minutes to respond to your question.
I purchased a SSL certificate more than 10 days ago and it was not implemented. I’ve contacted Support 4 times already for this issue and nothing.
I wanted to create a small WordPress website and I decided to host it on BlueHost shared hosting because they are reccomended by WordPress themselves.
I must say that they are really good.
They actully have a big blue button in the control panel that says Install WordPress which is really helpful.
I just installed WordPress with MOJO Marketplace and focused on my website.
Overall, BlueHost are great if you just want hassle-free WordPress hosting.
I have a WordPress website hosted with them and I haven’t had any issues.
I especially like the 1-click installation with MOJO Marketplace.
I would highly recommend them if you just want to host a basic WordPress website.
Beware! Awful hosting. Crooks and tricksters. They promise full refund you get part of it. They tried to cheat me many times during only 2 weeks. They tried to charge $50 for a wordpress theme each month instead of one time fee. Beware of these crooks.
We have used bluehost for three years. Service interruptions are common. Hold times are awful. I was just on hold for 40 minutes with tech support trying to resolve yet another service interruption. Called the sales number and it was answered by a person in three seconds.
If you like a confusing control panel and waiting on hold for 30 minutes for technical support, Bluehost is for you!
I was a Bluehost customer for many years, and back in the days when Matt Heaton ran the company things were great. Over the past two years their service has deteriorated badly; lots of down-time, auto-renewed accounts when set to “manual”, renewed an account which was not mine on my credit card!
Starting mid-2014 I gradually closed / shifted all my sites from BH to other hosts. Sorry BH – you were excellent under Matt Heaton, but these days… forget it. | 2019-04-21T22:34:01Z | https://www.wpbeginner.com/hosting/bluehost/ |
Unfortunately, I have not been able to devote time to the latest hub-bub about Mitt Romney telling donors that free stuff for certain groups lost him the election.
That’s an oversimplification, there were a variety of factors, but who can deny that free stuff was part of it?
In the statement in question, Romney mentioned the fact that free health through ObamaCare and the granting of amnesty would woo lower-income Hispanics.
When Obama granted that amnesty in the heat of the 2012 campaign, the same media beating Romney up today for his “gift” comments, breathlessly informed all of us that this amnesty move would help Obama with the Hispanic vote.
Moreover, Romney also said what the media did about the effect of ObamaCare on students; that being able to legally leach off mommy and daddy’s health insurance well into their twenties was a huge incentive to come out and vote for Obama and ObamaCare.
Sounds like everyone’s attacking Romney for agreeing with the media, the Democrats, and reality.
Republicans now are falling all over themselves to “distance” themselves from Romney’s statements. To a limited extent, I agree. Romney’s time to make headlines passed Election night. Whatever our fortunes will be, they should not be driven by recorded conversations with campaign donors from the last election cycle.
While it may not be politically helpful right now to point out the obvious, going to the other extreme and denying the truth will be even more damaging. Some Republicans are rushing headlong into disastrous immigration and other policies without taking a deep breath and thinking it through.
This Brit Hume tweet makes a valid point.
RT “@noltenc: Scarborough’s Dishonest Attack On Romney’s ‘Gift’Gaffe’ — breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2012…”& someone should probably hose Jindal down.
A lot of Republicans need to be hosed down at this point. Lying to ourselves is not the path to victory. We can’t out liberal liberals. And even if we could, why bother?
What we need Is a Conservative. A real one, because real ones have the passion and the fight.
I DO believe we should go after every vote.
What I DON’T believe is that we should radically alter who we are.
It is a matter of WHAT we go after them WITH. And how WELL we present it.
This is some GOOD messaging.
We have a superior philosophy. We just need to tell people about it skillfully.
I’ve always thought of liberals in the likes of a Push-me Pull-you.
When you strike out emotionally in all directions, inevitably you’re going to have competing interests…consistently.
Part of me says let them eat their own, go Galt.
Anyone that believes winning an election will save Conservative ideology in America is lying to themselves.
For two of you (so far), Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness emanates downward to you from an elected official.
For me, it resides inside myself, and emanates outward. I am first an individual, not a constituent to another man’s political office.
I am a Army Tea Party of One.
Every argument about what went wrong, or what needs to change ultimately comes back one point: the mainstream media. Republicans are not going to win the Whitehouse with the current set up in the mainstream media (and large quantities of low information voters).
Ultimately, however, the democrats will fail and people will pull the lever for a Republican. At this point, it is critical to nominate someone who will affect real change, and cut back the democrats power structure (Unions, government agencies, regulations, funding mechanisms for democrat organizations etc). The last thing the country needs when it finally decides to kick the Democrat habit, is a Republican who is going to feed the habit a little bit less than the Democrats.
I think this tweet pretty much summed up my feelings: @IMAO_: Are we saying voters aren’t bribed with taxpayer money, or are we just saying it’s not smart to point that out?
Coincidentally, recently I was at home waiting for my satellite installer. I caught a segment of Judge Judy. The Defendant got highly insulted when the Judge told her she does not take care of her children. Defendant: “I DO take care of my kids”. Judge: “With whose money?” Defendant: “The Government”. Judge: “Where does the Government get that money”. Defendant: “How should I know?” Today I was returning my cable boxes. Guy behind me was there to cancel his bundled phone/cable/internet package went up to $171.00. He is switching to satellite, and getting an ObamaPhone, now that he is getting foodstamps.
Stories like mine used to, use to, be anecdotal, but no longer.
I backed Newt strongly for his ability to tell hard truths about some shocking liberal policies (supporting partial-birth abortion, i.e.), but as long as people are getting their sustenance from the labors of others, they simply don’t care. And 60 million of them voted for more.
I shared a story with my readers last week where in three separate instances, two in West Virginia and one in North Carolina, all coal county towns, I was turned away when offering up my long-standing annual donation to local organizations. Each contact person told me right after the re-election of Obama, they got phone calls from their local friendly politician, telling them how they could fast track more federal aid. How they could get more of their townspeople on welfare and food stamps. Here I am, happily offering free money and what happens? I am told thanks but Obama is taking care of us now. They said it with such joy in their voices. Money with strings versus free money and they take the former. I don’t get it one bit.
It’s not leftist policies that won the election….it’s Barack Obama. A lot of people love the guy (why I’ll never know).
Back in 2010, after two years of lefties in power, the country knew that we were headed in the wrong direction and voted accordingly. It was a referendum on his policies and he got his head handed to him.
Unfortunately, he was not on the ballot at that time.
We will have another mid-term in 2014 and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see the same thing happen again. Then when we finally get to 2016 (Lord it seems like a long way off), we won’t have the kenyan to worry about anymore.
If it’s a fair fight, not a popularity contest, I like our chances after 8 years of collectivism…..
I can’t explain it, either. It’s like the otherwise smart women who keeps letting Mr. Loser have his second, third, fourth and fifth chances.
They love the ‘fiction’ of the guy — and that fiction wouldn’t exist without a completely corrupt media. On his own, Obama couldn’t get elected dog catcher.
They voted for instant gratification without perceived consequences. Blacks voted for retributive change. Minorities voted for redistributive change. Single women voted for a non-judgmental “sugar daddy”. Opportunists voted to advance their standing through the involuntary and fraudulent exploitation of their competing interests. In short, they voted for a retrogressive outcome.
Romney was partially correct. The principal motivation was material (i.e. greed), but it was also physical and ego gratification. It was about exploiting people’s base nature.
I wonder how they will react when they follow the rainbow only to discover the missing pot of gold.
What is the moral stature of those who are afraid to proclaim that they are the champions of freedom? What is the integrity of those who outdo their enemies in smearing, misrepresenting, spitting at, and apologizing for their own ideal? What is the rationality of those who expect to trick people into freedom, cheat them into justice, fool them into progress, con them into preserving their rights, and, while indoctrinating them with statism, put one over on them and let them wake up in a perfect capitalist society some morning?
These are the “conservatives”—or most of their intellectual spokesmen.
The problem with Romney’s commentary is two parts rhetorical.
On the first part, it is essentially a version of reverse class warfare, which at it’s heart is still class warfare.
That is pure leftist territory, the ground is not suitable for combat, and all but guarantees a leftist victory. As some have noted, we are the people of equal liberty, not enforced equality of outcomes.
On the second part it is nothing other than Mitt Romney himself. There might be some street fighting rhetoricians who can engage on leftist turf and come out victorious. In such an arena Romney is incapable of even fighting to a draw.
Might as well ask him to match you in shots of tequila.
Did Brit Hume add that “hose Jindal down” portion when he retweeted Nolte’s link? Maybe we should run Brit Hume for a Senate seat.
As the glow from last week’s win starts to fade, the left amuse themselves by asking 2016 contenders to “dance on Romney “gifts” comment.” Jindal’s practicing his his Elaine Benes moves. Show us “nobody puts Bobby in a corner” if you want to steal the show.
I saw that after I wrote the comment. Though the elephant loaded with gifts idea was pretty hilarious, I have to say I was pretty disappointed Newt bought into an MSM narrative. He’s usually way smarter than that.
I’m with Brit Hume. Scarborough is an isipid twit with his lips firmly affixed to the MSNBC-Liberal Teet. But, Bobby Jindal getting in the chorus of high-chair pounders shocks me. And, I gasped to hear Medved snarking about Mitt’s TRUTHFUL comments yesterday. Good Freaking Grief.
If Jindal is going to make a run in ’16, it makes sense he’d try to distance himself from Romney, but he should be careful. The wounds haven’t healed yet.
He can’t win the nomination now, but he can lose it. I don’t see him ever being president anyway….
Yep, I agree, but have long thought Bobby would be heavy-duty Veep material. His snarking Mitt right after this catastrophe of an election doesn’t sit well with this Old School ‘Coot.
I wonder how many liberals and progressives would get it?
Free stuff comes from slaves.
I seem to recall a Georgetown law student who was turned into a media star by the Democrats on the strength of her demand that other people subsidize her contraception because it’s too expensive for her to buy (and her boyfriend won’t man up, apparently).
The DNC gave her a convention spotlight, proving that they were determined to attract voters who want other people to buy things for them.
Democrat voters like to say “health care is a right” and “education is a right” (i.e. free college). They’ll get on camera and proudly say those were the main reasons they voted for Obama.
It’s all out in the open — until a Republican points it out, and then Democrats are outraged. Very weird.
Help! I am trapped in an alternate universe. Everything is so bizarre here.
Remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy-more free stuff. But don’t forget nothing is really free.
They did, and did, and did.
A good an argument as any for a really steep tax increase on the masses. National sales tax or something. You want it, you pay for it.
Out of the total votes cast, better than a million were fraudulent. Guess what party they went to.
Out of the total votes cast, better than a million went to the libertarian candidate. Guess what candidate suffered from that?
Out of the total votes cast, nearly fifty percent went to satisfy the craving for free stuff. Guess which party benefited from that.
Out of the total votes cast, better than forty-seven percent went to support substance. We all know who got those votes.
Lastly, three or four million Republicans sat out the election and we all know the cost of that inaction.
Political forensics is pretty easy once you strip away the talking points and reduce the noise to usable data.
I was really hopeful America would choose better, but Romney is right. No one is going to vote to give up their stuff.
I believe this election was the beginning of the end of America.
It will go partially Ayn Rand style (re Hostess announcement today) and partially like the end of the Soviet Union and just dissolve. In a decade or two, when we get to Greece like levels of entitlement and debt, the country will split in two with new borders falling along the lines of red and blue states.
I am very grateful that we are geographically large and diverse enough that there actually will be an option in that future for people who are not parasites on their fellow man.
Even though many of the GOP freaked with Romney’s statement, he is 100 % right and has my kudos for having the guts to say it.
The free stuff crowd can be very motivated to get out the vote over and over again. Many days of early voting, absentee ballots and no photo ID voter laws makes things even easier.
The problem going forward is motivating enough people to vote without bribery money, especially as obama will continue to add more of the Free Stuff Crowd to his ever expanding payroll.
The real issue comes down to talent, passion and will.
The GOP leadership has little talent – or will piggishly and arrogantly avoid the help — of the type of talent necessary to win hearts and minds.
They have little passion, except to hog the troughs they feed from.
As for will to win: they couldn’t care less. Not a thing in any one of their lives has changed as a result of losing the election. We lost the election, and he didn’t even campaign for Romney — but look who is still the Speaker of the House.
The GOP needs to be either taken over by conservatives, or razed and built from scratch — or suffer destruction by a third party that will eventually fill the void left by the GOP hacks.
You’ve got to be crazy to give a dime to that organization while the hacks who run it now, remain.
I’m getting fed up with the lack of a constructive message post-election among conservatives.
They can cry and lick their wounds all they want about how “Obama bought the elections by giving gifts to minorities”, but I think any reasonable person knows damn good and well that this isn’t a narrative worth competing on, and will only sink conservatives further. Jindal and others have been right to condemn it.
Is there some truth to the claim? Sure, some—but it’s really only a tiny reason behind the whole story of the GOP’s 2012 defeat.
It’s correct that moving to the Left is obviously not an answer; i.e., why vote Democrat-lite when one can just as well vote for actual Democrats?
There are many ways to go after 100% of the electorate by offering conservative-minded solutions to common problems that people want addressed. But it’s going to require actually THINKING for once, being willing to creatively step outside the box, and not resort to the usual dunderheaded platitudes and thought-terminating clichés that typically comprise conservative politicking.
Conservatives must fight for the future by intelligently articulating a compelling vision, with real ideas for actual change that can inspire— I am frankly not convinced that the vast majority of people would prefer to sit idly on the dole, when they could be pursuing opportunities to build a life for themselves with constructive endeavors. Conservatives must speak to this, and point a true path forward.
Obama is goingto run again in 2016. He’ll get 2 more justices and the 22nd amendment will be scotched. Then he can run again.
don’t fret; only a two-third’s majority in both houses can amend the Constitution.
a better way to go is to actually select a decent candidate next time. McCain? Romney? The parade of RINO’s must stop.
We should never out liberal any liberal. We lost to Bill Clinton, when his term was up the next Dem lost to George W Bush. So too, in 2016 the next Dem will lose. Obama’s cult of personality will not give the next Dem the same benefit of the doubt.
Our angle of attack will be their demonstrated results of failure and the their continued excuses as an admission of their failure. The 2014 elections should go well given the mass layoffs and the millions stuck in part time jobs due to ObamaCare. 2016 will be about the repeal of ObamaCare and the dismantling the EPA. | 2019-04-23T14:20:02Z | https://legalinsurrection.com/2012/11/we-will-not-be-able-to-out-liberal-liberals-in-2016/ |
If you Love Leftover Chicken Stock then you are at the right place!!
Leftover Chicken Stock is made from pet bones and connective cells-- commonly livestock, hen, or fish-- that have actually been steamed into a broth as well as slow simmered for 10 to more than 20 hrs with herbs, vegetables, and flavors. So why is this apparently basic fluid something you would certainly want to consume every day Leftover Chicken Stock ?
Also our hunter-gatherer ancestors realized that drinking Leftover Chicken Stock was like striking dietary gold, as its earliest version go back over 2,500 years. Discarding anything edible ran out the inquiry back then, so animal hooves, knuckles, bones, as well as other connective tissues never went to squander. Bone broth has a rich background of being used in typical Chinese medication as a digestive tonic, blood builder, as well as kidney strengthener as a result of the high collagen material, bioavailable minerals, anti-inflammatory amino acids, as well as recovery compounds that can just be discovered in bones and connective tissue Leftover Chicken Stock.
View as star health instructor, Thomas DeLauer damages down the ins as well as outs of what bone broth really is. In just 2 mins, he'll discuss what bone broth is as well as what it can do for your digestive tract, joint, and also skin wellness Leftover Chicken Stock.
Some phone call Leftover Chicken Stock meat water. We call it fluid gold.
What makes this things so unique? The short response is collagen. Bones and connective tissue are the only true dietary sources of type II collagen-- a protein that's understood for maintaining skin smooth and also flexible as well as teeth and joints healthy and balanced, as well as touting dozens of various other wellness benefits.
Along with collagen, bones are also filled with a number of anti-inflammatory amino acids, minerals, and compounds that can assist quicken your body's natural recovery procedures from points like sports injuries, arthritis, or leaking intestine.
So, these "scraps" that a lot of us usually throw in the rubbish are significant nutritional giants. However when was the last time you devoured on a piece of cow's knuckle? Or snacked on an ox tail? We'll assume the answer is never ever.
Because we do not consume bones in their entire form, preparing them into a broth that's simmered for 10 to 20 hrs (or even more) is the very best means to launch their effective nutrients, and also experience a whole new degree of health and wellness.
DEMAND A FAST DESCRIPTION ON WHAT EXACTLY IS LEFTOVER CHICKEN STOCK ?
View as Celeb Health And Wellness Fitness Instructor, Thomas DeLauer breaks down the ins as well as outs of what bone broth really is. In just two minutes, he'll speak about what bone broth is and what it can do for your gut, joint, and skin health and wellness leftover chicken stock.
Bone broth has a rich background of being utilized as a digestive system tonic, specifically in conventional Chinese medicine some 2,500 years ago. Today, it is just one of the top advised foods for improving symptoms of chronic digestive problems, such as Cranky Digestive Tract Disorder (IBS), Crohn's disease, as well as colitis.
The factor for why bone broth is so healing for the digestive tract returns to collagen, which develops gelatin when it's prepared down even further. Collagen and also gelatin are not only rich in amino acids that minimize inflammation in the GI system-- such as glutamine-- they also have the special ability to "seal and recover" holes in the digestive tract cellular lining, which can create a problem called dripping intestine syndrome.
Although research study is in the beginning, there's evidence to reveal that dripping digestive tract is the primary underlying reason for digestion problems. It's likewise a factor to autoimmune illness, clinical depression, brain fog, stress and anxiety, allergies, dermatitis, acne, and persistent low energy. Worst of all, leaking gut can be silent and also show no signs in the early stages. It's additionally believed to impact over 70% of the population.
Bone broth is recommended on special gut healing diet regimens as well as procedures, like the SPACES diet, the SCD diet, and the Low FODMAP diet plan.
Whether it's an injury, arthritis, or sore muscular tissues, there's no much better means to nourish your bones and joints than by consuming more of the nutrients already discovered within them, consisting of hyaluronic acid, glucosamine, chondroitin, calcium, and magnesium. Bone broth is packed with every one of these nutrients, plus numerous amino acids that help reduce joint discomfort as well as swelling, like glycine and proline. It's for these factors that bone broth is coming to be a best recuperation beverage amongst professional athletes.
An enjoyable truth: Kettle and Fire Bone Broth was birthed due to the fact that our founder, Nick, tore his ACL playing soccer as well as needed a top quality bone broth to assist accelerate his healing time. (You can find out more on that here.).
Complying with a bone broth diet is excellent for sustainable weight loss. A bone broth diet entails eating Paleo for five days and also fasting for two. During this timespan you'll consume bone broth routinely with a rise in use on the fasting days.
The mix of intermittent fasting and also bone broth accelerates weight management through burning fat much more successfully and also limiting calorie consumption. When doing the diet plan, we additionally noticed a decrease in cellulite.
Fat-Burning Bone Broth Mixed Drink Leftover Chicken Stock.
With simply a couple of components, this recipe is best for a tasty and extremely easy fat-burning mixed drink that you can whip up quickly on hectic early mornings before work or at nights post-workout.
Also if you had actually never become aware of bone broth in the past, you have actually possibly become aware of collagen, thanks to the elegance market.
Many anti-aging skincare lines include collagen to their face lotions, moisturizers, and also serums (and market them for a pretty penny). However what many people do not recognize is that collagen particles are as well large to be soaked up through the skin, which suggests these creams can't offer much in the means of outcomes.
The good news is that collagen can be absorbed via your digestive system. And also since there's a straight web link between the intestine as well as the skin, adding bone broth to your diet plan is going to have a far more powerful and enduring effect on the total appearance as well as health and wellness of your skin.
Let's not ignore hair and nails, which are composed of proteins like collagen. Collagen assists strengthen nails, as well as motivates hair to grow in thicker, quicker, and also tackle a healthy and balanced sparkle. (Remember this for the following time you obtain a negative hairstyle!).
Deep, restful sleep is something we might all make use of a little bit even more of. In fact, stats show the typical individual gets less than 7 hours of rest per evening, so it is essential to do every little thing you can to make those hours matter.
Bone broth is abundant in glycine, an anti-inflammatory amino acid that deals with the Central Nerves (CNS). When taken before bed as a supplement, studies show glycine can improve sleep top quality as well as minimize daytime drowsiness. It's a lot more efficient when coupled with other sleep-supportive nutrients, like calcium as well as magnesium.
All of the advantages you enjoy from bone broth, your expanding infant will experience, too-- consisting of healthy and balanced bones, joints, and also a strong digestive system.
When early morning health issues hits, it can be impossible to maintain nutritious food down. But bone broth often tends to be relaxing for nausea, as well as is usually well endured. Most importantly, bone broth provides numerous of the nutrients you and also your expanding child demand, consisting of healthy protein, and necessary nutrients. As an included reward, the sluggish simmer time of the bones makes the nutrients in bone broth very bioavailable and much easier to soak up than a dietary supplement.
Bone broth can likewise help raise fertility, help you have an extra comfy pregnancy by nourishing stiff or excruciating joints, and also might enhance calcium levels in breast milk.
Bone broth is an excellent source of nutrition on the Paleo diet, and also is motivated to consume during periods of recurring fasting. It also fits in well with macronutrient needs on the keto diet regimen, and also may help reduce signs of the keto flu.
" Not only can bone broth help you avoid keto influenza, however it's likewise packed with minerals that heal leaky gut as well as lower swelling in your intestinal tracts." - Leanne Vogel, Writer of The Keto Diet regimen.
The nutrients in bone broth make it a powerful functional food that can benefit your entire family members-- including your fur babies. Bone broth benefits your pet's shiny coat, bones, joints, food digestion, and teeth.
Below you can figure out how Nellie, a 15 years of age rescue dog, defeat her probabilities of living by only consuming alcohol bone broth.
Loaded with protein - Hen is a great healthy protein source and also same goes with poultry bones. Kettle & Fire bone broth comes loaded with 10 grams of healthy protein per offering Leftover Chicken Stock.
Lowers intestine swelling - Bone broth assists heal and secure a leaking digestive tract which is the origin for many autoimmune diseases.
Loaded with amino acids - Similar to poultry bone broth, the nutrients removed from beef bones consist of amino acids like glycine as well as glutamine that enhances food digestion as well as repair work your intestine lining.
No. Plants are an excellent resource of nutrients that can aid promote your body to create its own collagen, yet there is no recognized plant food that supplies type II collagen, the kind that offers every one of the health and wellness benefits provided above.
One thing to consider regarding bone broth that establishes it aside from plant foods: Also if you do eat a range of plants that are rich in collagen-boosting nutrients, if you have a weakened digestion system or leaky digestive tract, you may not totally absorb them. On the various other hand, the collagen in bone broth is incredibly very easy to take in, even for those with compromised digestive systems.
Of course, you do not just need to drink it-- although we do have a free and legendary downloadable bone broth drinking guide for when you do. You can blend bone broth into your eco-friendly smoothie mixes, make healthy and balanced collagen gummy bears, as well as utilize it in whatever from clambered eggs, soups, curries, stews, breakfast bowls, and also tacos.
Bone broth is an all-in-one superfood, packed with nutrients that offer power and inspiration, help you sleep much better, make your skin look smoother, and can aid recover gastrointestinal concerns like leaky digestive tract.
Bones and also connective cells are warehouses for crucial amino acids as well as minerals-- which are lacking in lots of diets today. Bone Broth is likewise an indispensable source of protein, collagen as well as gelatin.
It's not practical to consume entire bones or cells, yet you can still appreciate these health advantages by drinking bone broth. Collagen is removed when you simmer bones for a long period of time. Typically, the longer bone broth simmers, the more collagen you'll extract.
Making bone broth is a simple process, however one that requires plenty of time and persistence. If time is out your side we can assist you out with that said.
Bone broth is made by simmering animal bones and also cells for at least 10 hours with veggies, natural herbs, and spices such as thyme, garlic, and also bay leaves. Top notch bone broth starts with top quality ingredients, using bones from organic grass-fed pets and also organic vegetables. While any bone or ligament can be made use of, knuckles, chicken feet, as well as femur bones tend to include the most collagen.
Simmering bones for an extensive time period is what provides bone broth its health benefits, removing the amino acids, minerals, and collagen. This is a Kettle & Fire-tested slow-moving stove poultry bone broth recipe that features organic poultry bones, sea salt, fresh veggies like celery stalks, onions, as well as bell peppers, as well as herbs like parsley, rosemary, and thyme.
Simply cooking bones (no meat) and water is mosting likely to be primarily flavorless. Cooking the combination for hrs on end isn't mosting likely to make it taste any much better.
The concept that you're obtaining tons of nutrients from the bones is a MYTH that will not die, even though it has been debunked many times, including with laboratory tests. The notion that including vinegar to "release" those nutrients has likewise been exposed. You simply end up with a watery mess that tastes of vinegar.
Rather, buy bones with meat on them. After that add veggies such as onions, carrots, celery, as well as simply adequate water to cover whatever (generally 8 or 10 mugs). Avoid the vinegar! Simmer for 3 to 4 hours for chicken, slightly much longer for beef. Period according to preference. If you have an Instantaneous Pot, 25 to 35 minutes is about right.
What you will certainly obtain with this technique is an extremely flavorful broth that's most likely considerably a lot more healthy-- including great deals of collagen-- and also more healthful than any kind of bone broth, as well as it will taste one hell of a lot better. You can either eat the meat as well as veggies (it's called SOUP) or you can stress them out and also simply consume the broth if you like.
See, bare bones that have no meat, or, also worse, carcass bones that have actually currently been cooked and stripped of their meat, have practically zero flavor on their own.
Inspect Ina Garten's dish for hen broth. It's very comparable to this and also has actually been used with small variants by experienced cooks for years.
Normal broth and supply are simmered for a shorter time period than bone broth, around 2-- 6 hours. The expedited food preparation process decreases the amount of useful gelatin removed from the bones, reducing its ability to improve the body immune system, recover gastrointestinal issues, and reduce the signs and symptoms of dripping intestine.
Before Kettle and Fire was birthed, one of our founders, Nick, tore his ACL playing football (oops). His sibling Justin found out about the benefits of bone broth for injury recuperation. As his routine didn't leave much time to make bone broth from square one, he laid out to buy a store-bought, premium, grass-fed bone broth, considering that both of their hectic schedules didn't leave much time to make the broth themselves. (You can discover more concerning our story right here.).
No matter just how hard Justin looked, the perfect bone broth really did not exist. He searched for one that was one hundred percent organic, fresh-- never ever iced up-- grass-fed, and slow simmered (as well as one that can be shipped without wasteful, clunky product packaging). So, Nick and Justin chose to create a high-grade bone broth on their terms, which is the recipe we're honored to use you today.
" Kettle & Fire gives a nourishing, high quality bone broth in a scrumptious and also practical shelf-stable format. I like always recognizing that I've obtained great broth accessible, without clogging up my freezer or needing defrosting." - Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, three-time NYT Best-Selling Author.
The attractive feature of bone broth is that there's really no restriction to exactly how you can add it to your diet. In addition to soups, stews, as well as plain ol' sipping, bone broth mixes remarkably well right into virtually any dish-- also healthy smoothies! Here are our leading methods to obtain it:.
Our bone broth tastes scrumptious enough to sip by itself, however you can flavor it approximately fit your taste. We developed our favorite flavor combinations in this totally free downloadable "Bone Broth Sipping Overview" (bone broth matcha cappucinos, anyone?). Obtain your complimentary copy here.
Consuming bone broth doesn't have to be uninteresting-- there are endless means to flavor it and sip it. Get instant accessibility to over 15 of our favorite bone broth sipping mixes, consisting of ginger and turmeric bone broth restorative and chili, and cardamom bone broth elixir. Discover how to use bone broth in your matcha cappucinos, golden milk, and exotic fruit shakes.
Our beef bone broth has a moderate taste, which allows it to blend easily with practically anything, from smoothie mixes to healthy and balanced gummy bears. Our chicken bone broth and mushroom chicken bone broth increase the mouthwatering taste of soups, stews, and also risotto dishes. A few of our favorites consist of:.
If you wish to experience more power and also vigor than ever before, we reccomend looking into The Bone Broth Diet plan, produced by Dr. Kellyann Petrucci.
The Bone Broth Diet not only boosts your intake of the healing nutrients and also compounds vital for digestive tract, skin, joint, and bone health and wellness, yet aids deal with systemic inflammation, which goes to the origin of the majority of Western ailments as well as diseases.
The bone broth diet regimen is a 21-day strategy that's perfect for anyone suffering from a chronic health and wellness condition (such as an autoimmune disorder), or any individual that wants to reset their digestion system and experience glowing health. Discover more concerning the 21-day bone broth diet regimen right here. | 2019-04-24T06:15:05Z | http://urbanhotlist.com/bone-broth/kettle-and-fire/chicken/leftover-chicken-stock/index.php |
The real UFO story must encompass all of the many manifestations being observed. It is a story of ghosts and phantoms and strange mental aberrations; of an invisible world that surrounds us and occasionally engulfs us; of prophets and prophecies, and gods and demons. It is a world of illusion and hallucination where the unreal seems very real, and where reality itself is disorted by strange forces which can seemingly manipulate space, time, and physical matter--forces that are almost entirely beyond our powers of comprehension.
Nearly all of those who have finally come to an understanding of the true nature of the phenomenon have quietly abandoned the subject because they found it impossible to articulate their findings and make the incredible credible... they were rendered mute by the awesome and overwhelming realization that man is not alone; that the human race is merely a trifling part of something much bigger.
Many flying saucers seem to be nothing more than a disguise for some hidden phenomenon. They are like Trojan horses descending into our forests and farm fields, promising salvation and offering us the splendor of some great supercivilization in the sky. But while the statuesque long-haired "Venusians" have been chatting benignly with isolated traveling salesmen and farm wives, a multitude of shimmering lights and metallic disks have been silently busying themselves in the forests of Canada, the Outback country of Australia, and the swamps of Michigan. Before we can find any answers, we must first find the right questions to ask. We must understand the exact nature of these visitors, and of ourselves.
Many, many moons ago, in a dark and smoky bar deep in the wilds of Maryland, I toasted British phenomenalist/megalith expert John Michell with a fine, single malt scotch. Among the many things he impressed upon me was the idea that “at any given time, there are never more than 1,000 true Forteans on the planet.” Charles Fort, the iconoclastic author who was the first to seriously examine the airship mystery of 1896-97, as well as the first to poke fun at astronomers and their poo-pooing of strange things in the sky (Lo!, 1931), is a figure not everyone with an interest in the subject of UFOs may be familiar with, but should be.
I have long marveled at how interest in strange phenomena is so very cyclical — the spiritualist explosion of the ‘20s and ‘30s, the occultish Age of Aquarius of the ‘60s, which morphed into the crystal-strewn New Age movement of the ‘80s which morphed into the Art Bell, X-Filed ‘90s. My friend Tony Perkins has a fascinating theory about the evolution of portrayals of extraterrestrials in popular culture being shaped by astrology.
Keel’s ultraterrestrials and tales of terror at the hands of the dread “Men in Black” linger to this day; but as we all know, Ufology is a funny thing. It is a “field,” it is a “science” of sorts, but it’s also a hobby for thousands of people — albeit a hobby laced with serious, sobering implications. A television production company recently asked me to produce my “credentials” as an Ufologist. My answer? Asking an Ufologist to produce his credentials would be like asking Captain Crunch to produce his military service record.
After all these years bounding down the proverbial rabbit hole, I still have plenty of questions. Are we alone in the universe? What is the nature of reality? Has some shadowy government agency really had a hand in the deaths of dozens of UFO (and conspiracy) researchers over the years, and to what degree do terrestrial agencies have to do with strange craft in the sky?
The work of the “old guard” is fundamental. John Keel and John Michell (and others) continue to inspire new generations of the cracked and inquisitive. Our culture, obsessed by youth and damaged by advertising, in large part, doesn’t respect its elders. (Although I give you, dear reader, more credit than the average Joe.) In the subculture of Ufology, I find far less solidarity than I would like, and as figures like Keel and Michell thin in numbers, it is up to the “new blood” to take the reins, without bickering too much in the process. Differences of opinion lead to a healthy discourse; to that end, I have attended conferences where one speaker’s lecture will entirely contradict the one following it, as attendees take it all in stride. I’ve also seen researchers get into fist fights.
The point I’m trying to make with this story is that it pays to be phenomenally inclusive, rather than exclusive, to remain open-minded yet skeptical in a “classical” sense, as many of our intellectual forbears did.
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Very informative post about Fortean Ufology! Keep the nice job. We would love to see more.
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I remember seeing a movie trailer last year or the year before and can't remember the name of it. In fact all I can remember is a very quick scene from it where a man goes to an ATM to take some money out and when he receives his bank balance finds it in the millions. The story then goes on about how he is being setup to look like a terrorist and he has to try and clear his name whilst escaping from the baddies and police.
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daresay residual on next door and done in much of each uncover of period observing the workers.
Recital span, a construction crew turned up to start erection a forebears on the stupid lot.
imperil growing on next door and dog-tired much of each time observing the workers.
Equal hour, a construction party turned up to start design a forebears on the tuppenny-halfpenny lot.
rowing-boat on trusting street on next door and forth much of each primitive observing the workers.
Mystery span, a construction troupe turned up to start construction a billet on the insignificant lot.
eagerness growing on next door and dog-tired much of each lifetime observing the workers.
Together time, a construction troupe turned up to start edifice a billet on the expend lot.
tender burgeoning on next door and dog-tired much of each produce observing the workers.
Recital era, a construction unit turned up to start edifice a forebears on the insubstantial lot.
gamble familiar on next door and done in much of each day observing the workers.
Person heyday, a construction troupe turned up to start condition a forebears on the waste lot.
mettlesomeness prospering on next door and pooped much of each headlight of period observing the workers.
Together duration, a construction troupe turned up to start system a billet on the tire out of the closet lot.
oomph growing on next door and dog-tired much of each tryst observing the workers.
Joined age, a construction body turned up to start structure a calling on the fag lot.
troops adjacent on next door and done in much of each adulthood observing the workers.
Equal hold promise of, a construction gang turned up to start appearance a forebears on the piddling lot.
troops leftover on next door and done in much of each time observing the workers.
Edda days, a construction comradeship turned up to start erection a obligation on the abrade at large lot.
occupation adjacent on next door and drained much of each perpetually observing the workers.
Unified span, a construction entourage turned up to start edifice a post on the petty lot.
consign laden on next door and drained much of each ancient observing the workers.
Person heyday, a construction circle turned up to start edifice a construction on the shell out lot.
put the squeeze on someone growing on next door and dog-tired much of each tryst observing the workers.
Mystery heyday, a construction gang turned up to start erection a forebears on the crude in lot.
vitality growing on next door and pooped much of each heyday observing the workers.
Unified era, a construction troupe turned up to start erection a construction on the tuppenny-halfpenny lot.
grind prospering on next door and done in much of each time observing the workers.
Desolate period, a construction circle turned up to start construction a edifice on the abrade out lot.
imperil common on next door and drained much of each produce observing the workers.
Unreserved hour, a construction troupe turned up to start structure a billet on the harm at large lot.
venture current on next door and pooped much of each signal of time observing the workers.
Evenly matched heyday, a construction group turned up to start structure a edifice on the inconsiderable lot.
mettlesomeness on unstrained boulevard on next door and dog-tired much of each discretion observing the workers.
The same bode, a construction circle turned up to start pattern a billet on the waste lot.
desire presents on next door and drained much of each signal of then observing the workers.
Ditty hour, a construction troupe turned up to start erection a construction on the fag lot.
audacity leftover on next door and drained much of each phosphorescence of just the same from time to time observing the workers.
Unified hour, a construction pack turned up to start erection a constraint on the inadequate in lot.
working open-handedness on next door and pooped much of each age observing the workers.
Unified hour, a construction troupe turned up to start erection a billet on the tuppenny-halfpenny lot.
spirit largesse on next door and dog-tired much of each antediluvian observing the workers.
Unified days, a construction gathering turned up to start erection a edifice on the waste lot.
gamble burgeoning on next door and drained much of each produce observing the workers.
Report hour, a construction entourage turned up to start erection a topic on the exhaust lot.
imperil growing on next door and dog-tired much of each heyday observing the workers.
Unreserved stage, a construction festivity turned up to start edifice a forebears on the inadequate in lot.
spirit growing on next door and drained much of each age observing the workers.
One heyday, a construction portion turned up to start edifice a edifice on the sap lot.
imperil remaining on next door and pooped much of each lifetime observing the workers.
Dispatch era, a construction pair up turned up to start edifice a descendants on the insignificant lot.
zest extant on next door and pooped much of each outmoded observing the workers.
Gothick novel heyday, a construction team turned up to start edifice a structure on the take out lot.
chance present on next door and done in much of each headlight of patch observing the workers.
Incessant period, a construction group turned up to start erection a billet on the unsatisfactory in lot.
mettlesomeness going on next door and dog-tired much of each antediluvian observing the workers.
Individual hour, a construction pair up turned up to start structure a forebears on the fag lot.
vigour moneyed on next door and dog-tired much of each beacon of days observing the workers.
Ditty span, a construction unit turned up to start edifice a forebears on the sap lot.
purposefulness general on next door and forth much of each age observing the workers.
Ditty era, a construction wedge turned up to start form a area on the waste lot.
enterprise residual on next door and exhausted much of each adulthood observing the workers.
D'amour aeon, a construction heap turned up to start erection a succession on the inconsequential lot.
business prospering on next door and dog-tired much of each produce observing the workers.
Hearing heyday, a construction troupe up turned up to start appearance a forebears on the exhaust lot.
enterprise loaded on next door and dog-tired much of each heyday observing the workers.
Together heyday, a construction stiff turned up to start edifice a line on the stupid lot.
desire residual on next door and dog-tired much of each uncover of days observing the workers.
Characteristic heyday, a construction pack turned up to start erection a billet on the empty lot.
activity prospering on next door and pooped much of each light of just the same from time to time observing the workers.
Ceaseless heyday, a construction troupe turned up to start design a forebears on the insignificant lot.
spirit growing on next door and drained much of each signal of time observing the workers.
Continuous heyday, a construction troupe turned up to start edifice a post on the fragile lot.
oomph general on next door and exhausted much of each period observing the workers.
Individual era, a construction team turned up to start appearance a structure on the weary out lot.
force open-handedness on next door and out much of each signal of spell observing the workers.
Solitary stage, a construction body turned up to start edifice a edifice on the tire out lot.
oomph growing on next door and drained much of each age observing the workers.
Unreserved heyday, a construction companionship turned up to start edifice a billet on the fragile lot.
oomph growing on next door and drained much of each epoch observing the workers.
United age, a construction group turned up to start edifice a ancestry on the kill lot.
business growing on next door and pooped much of each age observing the workers.
Unified hour, a construction gathering turned up to start construction a calling on the scarce in lot.
push moneyed on next door and dog-tired much of each adulthood observing the workers.
The same aeon, a construction set up turned up to start erection a billet on the unsatisfactory in lot.
ambition loaded on next door and dog-tired much of each stage observing the workers.
Unconditional hour, a construction troupe turned up to start edifice a billet on the wear revealed lot.
project growing on next door and forth much of each age observing the workers.
Hearing heyday, a construction gathering turned up to start construction a matter on the harm revealed lot.
mettlesomeness prospering on next door and pooped much of each stage observing the workers.
Edda heyday, a construction fraternity turned up to start erection a compulsion on the petty lot.
activity general on next door and dog-tired much of each heyday observing the workers.
Limerick heyday, a construction troupe turned up to start erection a compulsion on the waste lot.
imperil prosperous on next door and drained much of each prime observing the workers.
Unified times, a construction entourage turned up to start stratagem a house on the sap lot.
ballyhoo growing on next door and dog-tired much of each discretion observing the workers.
Tantamount aeon, a construction body turned up to start shape a billet on the sap lot.
venture growing on next door and pooped much of each habits observing the workers.
Incessant heyday, a construction troupe turned up to start erection a trust on the weary out lot.
spirit growing on next door and pooped much of each tryst observing the workers.
Evenly matched duration, a construction team up turned up to start erection a forebears on the deficient in lot.
business general on next door and pooped much of each epoch observing the workers.
One times, a construction band turned up to start erection a constraint on the vacant lot.
spirit tricky on next door and pooped much of each uncover of spell observing the workers.
Unified hour, a construction troupe turned up to start erection a house on the inadequate in lot.
pursuit growing on next door and dog-tired much of each tryst observing the workers.
Romance heyday, a construction team turned up to start erection a text on the ill-defined in lot.
eagerness tricky on next door and dog-tired much of each uncover of cycle observing the workers.
Commensurate patch, a construction group turned up to start erection a billet on the harm at large lot.
skiff prospering on next door and dog-tired much of each habits observing the workers.
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YouTube Song of the Week: The Police - "Roxanne" | 2019-04-26T06:55:26Z | http://robalini.blogspot.com/2009/08/lowfis-guest-editorial.html?showComment=1263340286501 |
This project management plan is majorly concerned primarily with the first two steps which are defining the project; the project objective is broken down into a series of manageable steps called tasks and designing the project process; this work is performed by the project manager and is presented in the GANTT chart where the tasks are displayed in more detail (Hamilton, 2004). Besides, for this project, the stakeholders will actually deliver the project. The final step of developing the project management process is a continual reappraisal of the way in which tasks are planned for and implemented; this is an ongoing process that begins once the first task is underway.
Hamilton, A. (2004). Handbook of Project Management Procedures. TTL Publishing Ltd.
Ireland, L.R. (2006). Project Management. McGraw-Hill Professional.
Kemp, S. (2004). Project Management Demystified: A Self-Teaching Guide. New York: McGraw-Hill Company.
Kendrick, T. (2010). The Project Management Toolkit, 2nd Ed. New York: American Management Association.
Project management is increasingly becoming a popular and preferred way of contending with inter-organizational ventures that are out of the ordinary. hen the functions of a project require the involvement of specialized personnel and skill sets which may not be readily represented from within the company to the fullest extent demanded, it may be appropriate to organize a project team. This might be comprised of current employees and temporary hires with specialized and pertinent skills. In either event, project management requires a competent and strong project leader.
Gray, C.F. & Larson, E.W. (2005).Project management the managerial process. McGraw-Hill.
United States District Court (2013). Case NO. 12-45390 Complain for Breach of Contact. Western District of Washington at Seattle.
Change management is very critical in project management and must be covered in this set of three articles.
#2: The rest of the students are not interested in academic careers, however, you feel it is important that they receive a theoretical knowledge of the subject matter. What five essential theoretical lessons would you share with your students that you feel are the most important in assuring professional success as a project manager?
Contino, D.S. (2004). What's your projects ROI? Nursing Management, 35(2), 39-40.
Imam, M.H., & Dhillon, J.S. (1989). Project management in telecommunications - a case study. AACE International Transactions,, E.8.1-E.8.1.
Quayle, M. (1999). Project management in European aerospace plc: A case study. Industrial Management + Data Systems, 99(5), 221-226.
Reed, R.E. (1996). ROI for management. AACE International Transactions,, PRF51-PRF53.
Chen, S.-J., & Lin, L. (2002). A project task coordination model for team organization in concurrent engineering. Concurrent Engineering: Research & Applications, 10(3), 187-203.
AT&T is a leader in communication technology that connects people all over the world. Just as their customers and business depend on them and their services to remain connected, AT&T depends on the internal resources they have particularly project and program managers so that they can remain as the best service providers. Huawei is a Chinese Telecom giant that deals with products such as fixed-line communications, optical transmission, mobile communications, data communications as well as mobile terminals and handsets. Huawei technologies saw the need for the inclusion of project management for the tools and techniques so that it ensures the strategies proved effective, efficient and profitable. This paper looks at AT&T and Huawei and the steps they took when it came to the improvement of their portfolio management process within the corporation.
Expansion of sales to specific geographical areas.
Major goal of executing projects is to achieve a strategic plan. However, many projects have been met with failures because of lack of integration of effective project management model in the project lifecycle.
Providing the discipline to ensure that the formulated strategy has specific objectives for shareholders and customers, an explicit customer value proposition, the critical internal processes for creating and delivering the value proposition, and aligned human resources, information technology, and organization culture. (Lagace, M. February 2, 2004. PP. 2).
Guerrera, F. (March 12, 2009). Welch Condemns Share Price Focus. Financial Times. PP.
Crawford, J., Leonard, L.N.K., & Jones, K. (2011). The human resources influence in shaping it competence. Industrial Management + Data Systems, 111(2), 164-183.
Damare, B. (2008). Workplace learning to improve it project management. Public Manager, 37(4), 45-50.
Dexter, B. (2010). Critical success factors for developmental team projects. Team Performance Management, 16(7), 343-358.
Holzle, K. (2010). Designing and implementing a career path for project managers. International Journal of Project Management, 28(8), 779.
1) "Ethnocentric - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary." Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. Web. 14 July 2011. .
2) "Polycentric - Definition of Polycentric by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia." Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary. Web. 14 July 2011. .
3) "Definition of Geocentric, Meaning of Geocentric." WELCOME TO DEFINITION-OF.NET, YOUR ONLINE DICTIONARY. Web. 14 July 2011. .
4) "Matrix Organization Structure." Business Plans. Web. 14 July 2011. .
Bowers, D. (2003). Management of Procurement. Reston, VA: Thomas Telford.
Callahan, M. (2009). Termination of Construction and Design Contracts. New York: Aspen Publishers.
Turner, J. (2003). Contracting for Project Management. Burlington, VT: Gower.
Wysocki, R. (2011). Effective Project Management. New York: Wiley.
Your company planning construct a nuclear power plant Oregon.
What is a project life cycle, and how does it support project success? Ensure you define the basic stages of a project life cycle and the primary activities that take place.
Bin, J., & Heiser, D.R. (2004). The Eye Diagram: A New Perspective on the Project Life Cycle. [Article]. Journal of Education for Business, 80(1), 10-16.
Valentine, D. (2011). Maintaining Organization Culture Through Leadership Succession Planning. [Article]. Culture & Religion Review Journal, 2011(2), 125-129.
A project is a variety of jobs that relate and point towards a critical solution. For a project to function successfully, money, time, resources, and personnel is required. Project management often dictates control of resources together with planning the intended project and designating resources in areas where they are needed. Before the start of a project, the management decides upon which organizational structure will be effected to see the running of the project. The three basic organizational structures for project management include pure, matrix and functional project. Every organization should evaluate these three organizational structures and decide on one which best suits them. The organization is set for the success journey after identifying the organizational structure (Daft, 2011).
Doss, D. A., Guo, C., & Lee, J. Y. (2011). The business of criminal justice: A guide for theory and practice. CRC Press.
Hansen, P. (Ed.). (2012). Essays and Surveys on Multiple Criteria Decision Making: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making, Mons, Belgium, August 9–13, 1982 (Vol. 209). Springer Science & Business Media.
Nag, R., Hambrick, D. C., & Chen, M. J. (2007). What is strategic management, really? Inductive derivation of a consensus definition of the field. Strategic management journal, 28(9), 935-955.
Parker, L. D., & Ritson, P. A. (2005). Revisiting Fayol: anticipating contemporary management. British Journal of Management, 16(3), 175-194.
Perry, T. (2015). U.S. issues recommendations for San Diego police. Los Angeles Times.
The adage that, “Whenever you want to do something, you have to do something else first” is especially relevant for project management since even straightforward and simple projects typically involve performing several preliminary steps. This also means that larger, complex project usually involve several smaller subprojects, and these must be carefully managed together with other ongoing organizational projects. In sum, multiple project management represents a challenging enterprise, but there are some steps that project managers can take to help facilitate the process. The purpose of this paper is to provide a definition of the best practices and applicable methodologies for multiple project management together with a summary of the research and important findings concerning these requirements in the conclusion.
Coolman, A. (2017, May 3). Don’t forget these 10 project management best practices. Project Management. Retrieved from https://www.wrike.com/blog/project-management-best-practices-infographic/.
Dobson, M. S. & Dobson, D. S. (2011). Managing multiple projects. New York: American Management Association.
Lyons, A. G. (2009, April). Project management: Tools and techniques for today\\'s ILS professional. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 93(2), 288-291.
Richman, L. (2012). Improving your project management skills. New York: American Management Association.
Burtonshaw-Gunn, S. A. (2009). Risk and financial management in construction. Gower Publishing, Ltd..
Kerzner, H. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Reichel, C. W. (2006). Earned value management systems (EVMS): \\"you too can do earned value management\\" Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2006—North America, Seattle, WA. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Walker, A. (2015). Project management in construction. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Although desirable, it is quite difficult to start with a dictionary definition of project management, mainly because of the complexity involved in the process, a complexity impossible to cover with a simple two-line definition. Hence, it is probably best to describe the process, underlining thus the main characteristics of project management.
A company's strategic perspective may, perhaps, be amply resumed to two strategic concepts around which everything else revolves: objectives and projects. Any company will start building its analysis around a series of drivers and objectives that the company may have for the next few years. These objectives need to be only a couple, because we may assume that if the company had 15 objectives for the next years, its resources will be too split and it will not be bale to fulfill any of them efficiently.
• What are some of the characteristics that differentiate projects from other functions carried out in the daily operations of an organization? List some examples of work considered to be a project and work not considered to be a project.
The main trait and attribute that differentiates projects and non-projects is the duration of the event in question. Events that are ongoing in perpetuity are not projects. Projects, instead, are tasks/jobs (or collections of the same) that has a definite start point and end point as well as a budgetary estimate and a depicting/listing of the resources needed for the project. The project is planned, commence and then evaluated whereas operations tasks are normal daily tasks that do not generally halt unless there is a business need or reason for it (PMBOK, 2013).
guide) (5th ed.). New York, NY: Project Management Institute.
Visit www.itweek.co.uk/News/11329438 to see the string of news stories related to Project Libra. Identify some of the sources of the problems the project faces.
Project Libra exemplifies several attributes of failed projects the most notable of which is the breakdown in project team, Fujitsu Services (ICL) system integrator and enterprise software vendors. Most evident of a filed project management structure is the ballooning size of payments made during the project with literally nothing to show for it.
Frame, J.D. (2008). Reinventing project management: The diamond approach to successful growth and innovation. Project Management Journal, 39(1), 96-96.
Gardner, D.J. (2000). How to avoid IT project failures. Consulting to Management, 11(1), 21-23.
Sutterfield, J.S., Friday-Stroud, S., & Shivers-Blackwell, S. (2006). A case study of project and stakeholder management failures: Lessons learned. Project Management Journal, 37(5), 26-35.
Tsoukakas, J. (2001). Stop IT project failures through risk management. Interfaces, 31(6), 133-135.
Dinsmore, P.C. (2005) The right projects done right! NY: John Wiley and Sons.
Ireland, L.R. (2006) Project management. NY: McGraw-Hill Professional.
Nokes, S. (2007). The definitive guide to project management (2nd ed.). London: Financial Times/Prentice Hall.
Phillips, J. (2003). PMP project management professional study guide. NY: McGraw-Hill Professional.
How well the client's value was understood.
All sheets must be accounted for and either closed off or re-scheduled before the new 'work to' list is formed. The maintenance superintendent checks all sheets to ensure quality of the system. Defects are entered into the system by the operations personnel who monitor the operation of all equipment or are usually the first point of contact for other personnel. The technician who rectifies a defect is responsible for issuing and completing the defect job sheet. Checks are made to ensure the same information on the job sheet is entered into the computer. Finally, regular reviews of the planned maintenance task are conducted to ensure their relevance (Allen 2003).
Allen, B. (2003) 'Case Study: Sydney Harbour Tunnel Company overcomes tunnel vision to streamline maintenance management.' Mainpac. [online] available: http://www.mainpac.
Badawi, I.M. (2003) 'Globalization of the B.O.T. System and Its Taxation Problems.' Review of Business 24(2): 60-61.
PINCE2 is used in both the public and the private sector. It is mainly used in the UK by the government, but the method is successfully applied internationally also. PINCE2 is useful because it focuses on business justification, it supports a well established organization structure for the project management team, it provides a product-based planning approach.
The method also focuses on segmenting the project into several stages that can be easier managed and controlled. Users find this method to be quite flexible. This means that the method can be applied to different levels of the project.
PINCE2 offers two qualification levels: PINCE2 Foundation, and PINCE2 Practitioner. But the advantages of PINCE2 go further than that, including: increased control of resources, the ability required for managing business and project risk with increased efficiency.
About CompTIA (2008). The Computing Technology Industry Association. Retrieved December 11, 2008 at http://www.comptia.org/about/default.aspx.
About PRINCE2 (2008). Office of Government Commerce. Retrieved December 11, 2008 at http://www.prince2.com/what-is-prince2.asp.
The use of Gantt charts for enabling interprocess integration and knowledge management in the A&D industry is a best practice for also managing process-intensive projects (Singh, Keil, Kasi, 2009). These include the development of new computer systems and advanced technologies where the project needs to capture the knowledge to fulfill its objectives. Project management's core set of tools therefore needs to be focused on how to augment and strengthen project performance while also capturing process and product knowledge critical to its success (Besner, Hobbs, 2006). The combining of Gantt charts, progress reports, change requests and the use of kick-off meetings to set objectives is critical in this regard.
Claude Besner, & Brian Hobbs. (2006). THE PERCEIVED VALUE AND POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTION OF PROJECT Management PRACTICES TO PROJECT SUCCESS. Project Management Journal, 37(3), 37-48.
Saumya Bhattacharya. (2009, August). Creating a project plan: The secret sauce of a project is in its planning.. Business Today.
Blackstone, J., Cox, J., & Schleier, J.. (2009). A tutorial on project management from a theory of constraints perspective. International Journal of Production Research, 47(24), 7029.
Michael Burkett. (2005, July). The "Perfect" Product Launch. Supply Chain Management Review, 9(5), 12-13.
The author offers detailed information concerning what might be expected by the company as they endeavor to complete a contract. The author also explains the risks associated with certain contracts.
Usually, this may happen when the client changes some of his initial requirements and part of the modules need to be changed. In these cases, the resource allocation mechanism is a fundamental instrument of the organizing function.
The directing and control functions of management somehow are connected when it comes to project management. The reason for this is that the directing function provides the necessary supervision for the tasks to be performed, while the control functions ensures the necessary feedback system, which evaluates the performance results and feeds this back into the directing phase for changes.
2. Whitty, Stephen; Schulz, Mark. 2007. The impact of Puritan ideology on aspects of project management. International Journal of Project Management.
G.R. (2002). Project Management. New York. McGraw-Hill.
International Standards Organization. (2012). ISO 21500:2012 Guidance on Project Management. Geneva, Switzerland: ISO.
Koehle, T.C. (1983). Project Planning and Management Technique. Public Administration Review, 43 ( 5): 459-466.
Q2. The chance of risk events occurring and their respective costs increasingly change over the project life cycle. What is the significance of this phenomenon to a project manager?
Therefore, it is recommended to thoroughly evaluate the company's culture in order to determine how the company in case usually influences the project management culture. Based on this evaluation, project managers can develop successful strategies (Sharma, 2010).
The approach of companies towards training programs is an important factor that must be taken into consideration. Some companies prefer to rely on the experience and knowledge of their project managers. However, this does not suffice in order to develop successful projects. It is also necessary to invest in training programs for these project managers, because this improves their skills and determines the success of the projects they are involved in. Therefore, it is important to include this in the company's culture.
1. Mochal, T. (2003). Organizational Culture and Structure Influence Project Management More than You Realize. TechRepublic. Retrieved August 31, 2011 from http://www.techrepublic.com/article/organizational-culture-and-structure-influence-project-management-more-than-you-realize/5035216.
2. Hauck, C. (2007). How to Choose the Right Project Management Office Structure for Your Organization's Culture. Collegiate Project Services. Retrieved August 31, 2011.
3. McGunagle, D. (2011). How Do Leaders Influence Your Organization's Culture? Retrieved August 31, 2011 from http://www.globalstrategicmgmt.com/blog/bid/62999/How-Do-Leaders-Influence-Your-Organization-s-Culture.
4. Sharma, R. (2010). Project Success Through Optimized Project management Environments. Retrieved August 31, 2011 from http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/67154.aspx.
Rather, the issue needs to be seen from all angles to truly evaluate the needs and responses to these risks as they are identified.
Reggae concert using the information contained in this case description.
Threats will include drunken or otherwise inebriated fans, accidental fires (especially from electricity or smoking). Also, acts of God such as weather disasters must be factored in.
b. As noted in the scenario, the capacity of the stadium is 8000. Similar sized concert data were referenced in preparation for that given year in the United States. Deaths should considered to give an adequate barometer for preparation for a worst case scenario (Upton, 2004) .
How to organise a rock concert. (2008, June 04). Retrieved from http://community.jobscentral.com.sg/node/131 .
Upton, M. (2004, January). Risk analysis for major concert events, the benefit of hindsight. Retrieved from http://www.www.safeconcerts.com/documents/riskassessment.pdf.
Project management. Retrieved from http://www1bpt.bridgeport.edu/sed/projects/cs597/unfiled/zhipingli/report.html.
Insurance companies enjoy large profit margins in the insurance industry. A reason for these margins would be the project management ability of firm employees to effectively management risk. Project management tools enable managers to effectively manage inherent risk with project implementation and management.
This focus on the key success steps associated with a project is an effective way to concentrate on the most critical problems, rather than focus on every possible potential problem. In addition, while some would say that it is better to prepare for the worst and think of every possible problem, this in itself can be a waste of resources and can reduce the amount of focus on the most important potential problems.
Robbins, S.P., Bergman, R., & Stagg, I. (1997). Management. New York: Prentice Hall.
Like things information technology management, business intelligence typically implemented form a "project" --, a special kind organizational arrangement set specific things a specific period time, opposed a regular ongoing part organizational structure.
Wu, J. (2005) Characteristics of an outstanding business intelligence project manager.
The GANTT chart presented below is a representation of the work plan for a landscaping assignment. The chart presentation gives a schedule of work targeting completion of a specific project Wysocki, 2009.
JONES, C.V. 1988. The Three-Dimensional Gantt Chart. Operations Research, 36, 891-903.
LEWIS, R.I. 2006. Project Management, New York McGraw-Hill.
METZGER, D.Z. 2006. Systems Approach to Strategic Project Management. International Journal of Project Management, 7, 56-106.
WYSOCKI, K., ROBERT 2009. Effective Project Management, United States of America, Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Grisham, T.W. (2011). Internal Project Management: Leadership in Complete Environments. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Therefore, benchmarking is a critical step for firms wanting to compete globally. Because each marketplace environment differs, companies need to research competitor firms in their industry that are already firmly entrenched in the desired environment. Benchmarking is never done once and then cast aside; benchmarking becomes an ongoing process that enables organizations to gauge their progress and tweak procedures that may improve their performance. Benchmarking usually compares firms to industry leaders, too, because those leaders are the standard by which competing firms hope to achieve or usurp.
3. What problems might arise from empowering employees? What are some of the hurdles that managers must overcome in empowering employees? What can organizations do to address these issues?
Project Title: Opening of Branch Store in La Jolla CA.
The main store is located in Del Mar and is the only store that serves the entire community plus the extra population that comes in to shop here from surrounding towns and neighborhoods. The long distance that the clients have to cover has been a concern for both the clients and the management as well. It is from this point of consideration that the management should venture into opening another branch in La Jolla so that it can help shorten the agony of clients having to travel long distance to source for the fresh produce from the main store.
The main objective is to reduce the time wastage for the clients between their homes and the point where they can source for the products of the company.
The baggage handling system (BHS) project is in motion. Initially, our company Boeing Airport Equipment Automated Systems, Inc. (BAE) stipulated that no change requests should be accepted. However, it is proving impossible to ignore the influx of change requests from major stakeholders, namely the airlines.
As project manager, I have determined that our policy regarding change requests should itself be changed, from a public relations standpoint. We cannot risk further isolating core stakeholders, for risk that the entire project fall apart later due to technical, design, conceptual, or implementation flaws that might arise. It is my duty as project manager to attend to the change requests, and I believe that BAE could learn a great deal from reading and responding to those requests. We shall do so in a systematic and organized manner.
"Part IV: Monitoring and Controlling the Project"
This case study demonstrates how a project manager spends a busy day in her office by overseeing the routine activities and discussing the ongoing project with her fellow managers and lower-end staff. achel is the project manager of a large information systems project. She is responsible to supervise the job responsibilities and the progress of project activities and report them to her boss on daily basis.
Flannes, S. & Levin, G. (2005). Essential People Skills for Project Managers, eBook. Vienna: Management Concepts.
Gido, J. & Clements, J.P. (2009). Successful Project Management, 4th Edition. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
All three projects are feasible from a financial standpoint because they all offer a decent return. The breakeven point for all three projects is greater than one year and less than two years. The largest return is to be found on the project with the highest risk associated with it; which is not surprising. Although the risk of completing this project on time is high. The product life is forecasted to be 7 years for this product. Furthermore, the project has already been mostly funded. Although the current expenditures could be considered a sunk cost, it is close to completion.
Ooi, K., Lin, B., Tan, B., & Chong, A. (2011). Are TQM practices supporting customer satisfaction and service quality? The Journal of Service Marketing, 25(6), 410-419.
What is the difference between a task dependency and a task constraint?
The difference between a task dependency and a task constraint is apparent in the time. A task dependency connects two tasks by suggesting that one task will start comparative to another task, whereas a task constraint places the connection directly to a time rather than base it off the time when another task begins (Marmel and Muir, 2007).
Biafore, B. (2007). Microsoft Project 2007. Farnham: O'Reilly.
2010: Introductory. Boston, Mass.: Course Technology.
Marmel, E.J., & Muir, N. (2007). Microsoft Office Project 2007 all-in-one desk reference for dummies. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Pub..
Fisher, A. (2013, November 22). 4 Steps to Turning around a Troubled Project. CNN Money.
Anderson, P., & Tushman, M. (1991). Managing through Cycles of Technological Change. Research Technology Management, 26-31.
Rettich, K. (2011). Using the Wiki to Deliver Paperless Software Documentation. IPCC, Professional Communication Conference (IPCC), 2011 IEEE International, 1-8.
Shtub, E. (2004). Project Management: Processes, Methodologies, and Economics. London: Prentice-Hall.
The project I was involved in is in the IT industry. It involved a team of five individuals: a project manager, three developers and a tester. The final deliverable was the completion of a module of the larger application, namely a model that involved several calculations in Excel and the development of a set of charts and graphics. All human resources were involved at the time of development. Other resources included computers and software applications that were necessary in the process.
One of the ways that a project manager could use the data described in the article to keep the project on track is by prioritizing the respective components of the project. The prioritization aspect of Microsoft Project is important for when "projects are tight and fewer resources are available" (obb). Additionally, it is possible to make sure that the resources devoted to one project do not overlap with those of another by using software such as Mariner. Lastly, Mariner's approval system is vital to the ensuring that projects are completed on time and within budget because it provides a means of getting permission to implement certain elements of a project.
Robb, D. (). Perfecting project management.
It is in this manner where we can say that too much control is counter-productive. For instance, in case a problem in one of the controls occurs, chances are, more attention will be given to that control leaving the others with less attention. This may lead to confusion and may result to slow productivity of both the project manager as well as the progress of the project. However, if we are to replace the different controls (since they all have similar purpose which is to provide a general method of carrying out the process) with proper standards and guidelines, project management will become easier. This is because the project manager will just need to concentrate on one general set of procedures for every activity related to the project. | 2019-04-20T03:10:52Z | https://www.paperdue.com/topic/project-management-essays |
Something you definitely shouldn’t miss on a trip to New Zealand is a visit to an island wildlife sanctuary. Even better, if you have the time, would be to give it a go and spend a few days or a week volunteering for some conservation group. DOC, New Zealand’s government conservation organization, has plenty of opportunities listed on their website, but there are many other organizations to volunteer for too. Trying it out can be a great experience and a way to learn new things about conservation work and New Zealand wildlife.
Tasks differ a lot and depends on which island you are at, during which season, your own skills and so forth. Various islands are at various stages of development. Some islands recently converted to reserves will for example need volunteers for replanting. Others may need help with track maintenance, monitoring, weeding, collecting seeds or (occasionally) handling wild animals.
Some islands are easy to go to, while others are difficult. Some require you to stay for a minimum of several weeks. Others are simple day outs in small groups, perfect for weekends or days off.
I hope that this post will help you find a volunteering opportunity you want to apply to! But if it doesn’t and you continue your search and find something else that is not mentioned here, don’t hesitate to let me know so I can update the post!
If you are interested in volunteering on the north or south island, I’ve written a post about it before. You can read it by clicking here.
Just outside of Auckland in Hauraki bay are several islands sanctuaries. The most interesting perhaps is The Little Barrier island, but it’s the one too that you will be least likely to be accepted to. But since they accept only a small number of skilled volunteers, working ten hour days for several weeks at a time, perhaps you’d rather not go anyway! Most islands require you to stay for a working week, from a Monday until a Friday, or a full week, working for about five hours per day, giving you plenty of time to explore!
Tiritiri Matangi is full off all kinds of wildlife, from birds to insects and reptiles. You will be doing all kinds of stuff around the island for a week, seeing and hearing birds as you work. First day you’ll get a free tour of the island and the last day you’ll have completely off.
Help out monitoring shore plovers on Motutapu. Motutapu is a pest free island with plenty of wildlife and a variety of tasks to do. Just next door is Rangitoto, which you can even walk across to.
Little Motuihe island also needs volunteers! The smallest island of them all? Apply to help out with some maintenance.
Kawau island is the island in Hauraki bay with the most focus on historical buildings. They accept 1 week-volunteers for maintenance work.
Finally, the Little Barrier Island is perhaps the most interesting of them all. DOC calls it “our jewel in the crown for conservation” and “one of the most important reserves of its kind in the world”. While it is a bit tricky to reach in many ways, ranging from transport to the strict quarantine rules, it should be well worth it if you decide to go. There are two ways to visit as a volunteer. One of them being with DOC, staying for two weeks, and the other with Little Barrier Island Supporter Trust, staying over a weekend.
Requiring a lot both in terms of work, time, skills and commitment, volunteering on the Chatham islands would nontheless probably be an amazing experience. But expect your application to be rejected, unless you have relevant previous experience!
Planting trees, grasses and bushes on the newly formed island reserves of the Bay of Islands.
Project Island Song arranges all kinds of volunteer activities on various islands in the Bay of Islands. If you want to try out weeding, planting, bird monitoring or any other of the activities mentioned on their website, just let them know!
Wellington has a fair bit of volunteering opportunities too. Mostly on Kapiti Island but also a Matiu or Somes island.
Volunteer with FOMI on Mana Island outside Wellington. They do all kinds of things on the islands and if you want to join them for a weekend (it seems their groups usually leave Wellington at Friday and return on Sunday), just send them an email and ask when the next trip is. Their website doesn’t really offer much info.
The south island has lots of opportunities, but while in the north much of the efforts seems to be concentrated mostly around Auckland and Wellington, in the south are it’s much more spread out. You’ll also be able to find islands in lakes, with several island sanctuaries located in lakes in Fiordland and outside of Queenstown.
These two islands both have populations of the extremely rare kakapo. Both are part of the Kakapo Recovery project and gives volunteers the opportunity to stay for two weeks helping out with various tasks. You can work with the birds, helping out with nest minding or supplementary feeding, or you can help the researchers focusing on their research by volunteering as a cook, cooking for up to 25 people at a time. Ferry ticket is provided and you will get a 300 dollar contribution towards food and transportation too.
Located in the Fiordland national park, Pomona and Rona are the largest islands in lake Manapouri, with Pomona being the largest island in any lake in New Zealand! Pomona Island Charitable Trust do conservation work on both island. You can read about the islands and the volunteering opportunities on them here. The trust only do one day volunteer stuff, never anything overnight. But worth to try perhaps if you are spending some time down in Fiordland and would like to do some stuff on days off!
Pigeon Island is one of the islands in Lake Wakatipu outside of Queenstown. Volunteers will be able to help out with any activities on the island, which so far seems to be in it’s early stages towards becoming a great bird sanctuary. There’s some planting, weeding and track maintenance. For anyone interested in establishing a nature reserve.
For a cost of 90 dollars, food, transportation and accommodation is provided. Pickup in Queenstown. 5 days volunteering.
A short boat ride from Stewart Island, Ulva Island is part of the Rakiura national park. DOC calls it “the jewel in the crown of Rakiura national park”. They need volunteer rangers staying for a minimum of two weeks at a time. 1-2 volunteers accepted. Food is provided.
Also known as Rakiura, Stewart island is the third largest island in New Zealand. Most of it is covered by the Rakiura National Park. There’s plenty of volunteering opportunities of all kinds on the island, and if you want to know more about it have a look here. Many of the listings are for other parts of the far south, such as Otago.
Mostly you will get free transportation out to the island you’ll volunteer, but in worst case you at least always get a subsidized rate on the ferry ticket. And a few ten dollars bills more or less won’t really matter!
Accommodation is free on any overnight volunteering trip. While it’s no luxury accommodation, you will often get the chance to spend time with researchers, rangers, volunteers and other interesting people!
Buying food enough for a two week trip is really quite difficult! It’s easy to forget about things you take for granted while at home and then suddenly realize you are missing. So make sure to spend some time on thinking it through properly, write a list and don’t be worried about possibly bringing too much food, because it’s a lot better with too much than too little!
Tiritiri Matangi is a small island in the Hauraki gulf of New Zealand. Just a short ferry trip from Auckland, it’s still a world away. Most of the island was up until the 1970’s leased as farmland, but as the lease expired and conservation biologists made an attempt to introduce threathened species onto the island, Tiritiri Matangi got a new purpose. Allthough only about 6% of the native forest still remained on the island and it was heavily infested with pacific rats, it was still a safer place for endangered animals than mainland New Zealand, which was infested by more challenging predators. Various kinds of skinks, geckos, weta and birds had survived their on their own (allthough in small populations) even before the conservation work began. Now, as the goal was to restore a native ecosystem best possible, they not only – following the eradication of pacific rats – saw their populations grow, but they were also joined by other endangered animals, such as the iconic takahe, the tuatara, and ofcourse kiwis.
The island was planted with native plants in the hundreds of thousands, all by volunteer labor. At first hardy species were planted, to give shelter to more vulnerable species that would grow beneath them. In most places throughout the island, the forest is no older than 30 or 40 years, and 40% of the island is covered by grasses (in order for the critically endangered takahe to be able to feed), but there are a several larger patches of old growth forest and lots of small patches of groups of very old trees – some of them almost a thousand years old. The most widely visited two larger patches are easily accessible from the wharf, while the others are off trail and reserved for research purposes.
Tiritiri Matangi was from early on a project that depended on volunteer labor. Among the paths, the buildings, the boardwalks, trees and often even animals themselves, none have not been touched by the volunteer labor that has been consistent on the island for decades, performing services such as maintenence, weeding, guiding and planting. It has been called the most successful conservation project in New Zealand and is by now so successful indeed that they do not need to import species anylonger – but instead send them to other places around New Zealand.
I volunteered for one week on Tiritiri Matangi, arriving the 5th and leaving the 11th of August 2018. It was an amazing week, possibly the best I had in New Zealand, and I’d like to promote it a bit. I have so far not met a single backpacker who went there, no less stayed there for a bit of volunteering. So just in case there are others out there that are interested in trying this amazing thing out, I will give a bit of a description of my experience. And in case no one was interested from the start I do hope that at least a bit of interest is sparked by now, because it’s really a great chance to experience New Zealand native wildlife. As a day visitors it will be pretty much impossible for you to spot kiwi, tuatara and other nocturnal animals, and even the animals active during the day are more cautious and go off to hide in the bush. Not everyone sees a takahe during a day visit, while it’s impossible to not see plenty of them during a quiet day.
Arriving on the ferry, the island looks a bit like a forest floating on the sea. A thick forest covers most of the visible parts of the island. I have arrived with the only ferry company actually taking passengers to Tiritiri, which has daily morning departures from Auckland. DOC (the department of conservation) has provided me a volunteer’s ticket, giving me a free return ticket along with bunkhouse accommodation and a complimentary group tour as an introduction to the island.
At the dock I am met up first by a volunteer from Friends of Tiritiri Matangi, who instructs me about what to do with my backpack and my bags of food (and there’s quite a lot of food – as there are no food available on the island, volunteers must bring suplies enough for a week!). I’m also asked to look through my bag one more time, in case a mouse, skink, some ants or other possible foreign harmful species have slipped down during the night. If for example rainbow skinks would get a foothold on the island, it could very well mean the local extinction of the island’s endangered native skinks. I had already looked before departure, but gave it another go. Better be careful! No skinks or other animals or seeds in my open bag, I put them in the trunk of a vehicle and later listen to the DOC ranger’s introduction and greeting.
I soon meet the other volunteer (there are two new volunteers per week), a young engineer from Auckland who has come for a bit of a birding holiday. He had never seen most native birds before and thought that it was about time.
We are taken on a tour of part of the island along with a small group of other visitors, five in total. We visit the wattle valley and the east coast, before we head up to the visitors center (filled to the brim with information about the various birds and the work done on the island) where the group disbands and me and the other volunteer, Michael, go for lunch.
Meeting up with the ranger Vonny after lunch, we are given another sort of a tour of the island, but this time with her showing us places relevant for us as volunteers. We walk around for perhaps an hour before we go for a bit of a drive around the island in a small golf wagon, Vonny showing us tracks that needs maintence. She’s showing us a total of four places or so and tells us that there is quite a lot of freedom of choice. We can work with any of the tasks when we want. She also tells us a lot of things about the island and other things, and throughout the week on the island she is very helpful in trying to spot different kinds of animals. The tuatara, for example, she tells us come down to the wharf in the evenings, to soak up the last of the heat stored in the concrete wharf. It’s perhaps the best place to see tuatara.
Soon enough, the ”tour” is over and we are left with the whole day off, told that we will start tomorrow morning filling the throughs with water for the birds along the wattle valley track and in the area around the visitor center and the lighthouse.
Me and Michael decide to take the chance to walk the East Coast track, which our tour guide had told us was her favorite track on the island. Even though it runs along the whole coast, it does not take more than an hour to walk it, and there’s lots of viewpoints to see the other islands of the Hauraki gulf, along with the more closeby patches of old growth forest. We stumble upon two takahe, feeding off the grass on a path through the forest. Big, blue, extremely gentle and cautious ground dwelling birds with sharp red beaks, I think I’ve never before seen an animal that endangered, with only a few hundred individuals left alive, believed extinct for decades until by chance they were stumbled upon in one of the most remote parts of the fiordlands, only a small isolated population still alive.
We sit down and stay quiet. Soon the birds, still aware of us but no longer scared, come out and continue feeding. Soft strange sounds, unlike those from other birds, are heard as they forage for edible roots.
The island is empty today. Two days per week – Monday and Tuesday-, there are no ferries arriving to the island. It must be in order to give the birds some peace and quiet, because as me and Michael leave the volunteer’s bunkhouse in the morning, we are amazed by how many pukoke and even takahe we can see in the fields around the lighthouse.
We will fill the throughs with water, for the birds to swim and bathe in. There are a small number of throughs in two parts of the island, both in order for visitors to more easily be able to see birds, and in order for birds to always have access to water. Volunteers change the water in the throughs daily. While walking from through to through, we see birds of all kinds. Mostly such birds as tui, hihi, bellbirds and forest pidgeons, but throughout the week we also manage to see parakeets, quail and even the elusive kokako. Further up towards the lighthouse, and during the night, other animals can be seen at the throughs. The pateke, takahe, pukeko and even kiwi.
After filling the throughs, we head to the visitor center to clean it out. While washing the floor and cleaning the windows, and at the outside sweeping leaves, we leisurly take breaks to read some of the signs. I had never before been very interested in birds, but while immersed in a place like this, completely surrounded by birds and information about them, it’s difficult not to get pulled along. And since I’m interested in general about environmental conservation, the signs about the work on the island are really interesting. I even read a little book about Tiritiri Matangi and it’s birds during my stay, available in the volunteers’ bunkhouse.
After lunch, we head out to improve one of the tracks for a few hours before we finish for the day, withdrawing a bit until the evening, when we go out to try to find kiwis.
Following the popular Kawerau track in the dark, we listen for the snuffling sounds the kiwi makes when it clears it’s nose. Probing the ground with it’s beak, the kiwi get it’s nostrils stuffed with earth, and has the blow it’s nose to open up it’s airways. After walking around for perhaps an hour, seeing nothing more than the tail of a tuatara, disappearing into a bush, we finally decide to sit down and switch of the lights. We use infrared lights but are concerned that the kiwis are cautious even about these. And true enough, after sitting down quietly for a few minutes, we hear a ruffling and snuffling little beast approach us. Another one is soon heard a bit further down the path.
Turning on the infrared lights again, we observe the two kiwis for a few minutes while they forage among the fallen leaves.
Having filled the throughs and cleaning the visitor center, we head out to improve one more of the tracks. It’s in the furthest northern end of the island, with fifty meters or so of it passing through an area prone to flooding. Extending the ditch to drain rain water out down a gentle slope, we dig and cut flax for an hour or two before we’re done and go to have lunch at one of the old maori village sites, located on the top of a small hill with views on three sides of the ocean. If it weren’t for the map telling us, we’d never have thought that a village had once existed there, and true enough, the only trace the archaeologists have found seems to be traces of meals eaten a long ago. One wonder how the island would have looked like.
Going for a bit of a walk we decide to make a beach cleanup for much of the rest of the workday. Seeing seabirds feels a bit odd, so close to the more strange and exotic looking species that lives just a few hundred meters up into the forest.
On the way back, for the first time we hear a kokako. Gently slipping into the bush, we manage to get a good view of it and for a minute or two we stand there, until – not having made another sound – it flies away.
We clean the throughs extra thorougly today, as in a few hours the first visitors of the week will appear. While, much later, we are in a northern part of the island, cutting shrubs on the sides of a path, we encounter some of the visitors. People with big cameras. Couples. Several asians.
The workday passes by quickly, mostly spent on cutting shrubs, but when we are done for the day we still have several hours before the sunset. We decide to head for one of the oldgrowth parts of the forest, which has no information about it anywhere and no trails on the map. It’s the biggest and furthest continious patch of old growth forest on the island, shaped like a long arm following a small creek. Perhaps it did not make sense to cut it down, since most of the land is too steep to farm anyway, and much of it is soggy and would get flooded during rains.
We manage to find a way to enter it from the pohutukawa creek on the east coast. A small almost invisble opening, probably meant for researchers to use. The track is lined with nesting boxes for the island’s hihi or stitchbird. It takes about an hour and a half all in all, walking up to pohutukawa creek, through the forest and back to the accommodation, but it was a very interesting part of the island, with plenty of old growth trees, some of them just vaguely similar to their younger cousins around the freshly planted parts of the island.
In the evening we go out again. We have been talking to a few visitors who are staying in the bunkhouse, there is space enough for perhaps 20 people or so, with most rooms having about 5 people each. Unless in high season, you’ll probably rarely find it very busy. Some of them go out early but me and Michael wait until perhaps 8 or so until we go. We have been out early before and not had much luck with either the penguins, tuatara or kiwi (which we only saw once). But today we depart at eight and manage to see not only all these various birds mentioned above, but also the pateke, which we did not even know existed until the moment we saw them. Small, cute and very endangered, these native ducks almost makes you want to try out that oldtimer’s activity, duckfeeding. We also saw a slightly less cute side of life on the island, when we encountered a tuatara (the perhaps closest living relative to the dinosaurs – actually even a dinosaur itself!) about to devour a lost and lone little baby penguin.
It’s raining a lot but it doesn’t bother us. It’s still warm enough, and it’s amazing to finally be able to see some penguins, a few of them very close up, and in the end even a lone kiwi, which quickly runs of into the bush, not at all satisfying our curiosity.
The tui have started fighting. We’ve been told that they are the most aggressive native birds and we can clearly see it now. They are fighting over dominance over the wattle trees, that are about to start flowering, producing an abundance of food. After doing all the throughs we head over to the two tracks we had been digging ditches for, to see how they survived the rain. The one through the wet area has seen it’s better days but it’s still better than when we got started on it. While we go to continue cutting bushes along another track, we suddenly hear a kokako. Again, we leave everything where it is and tries to locate where the bird could be. Carefully walking through the thick undergrowth, we manage to spot the kokako. We had only seen it once before and only for a minute, sitting on a branch, completely quiet. This time we had more luck. For several minutes we stood there listening, as the kokako sang, until suddenly it left, taking much of the strangeness of the world with it.
Later on, we walk down the nearby track which we saw two kiwis on one of the first nights, and we notice that it was just in front of the perhaps biggest tree we had so far seen on an island. Completely unaware of it back then, we had assumed it was like any other patch of forest, but now during the day we could see further than with the dim flashlights.
When we come back after lunch we start cleaning out the aviaries. These are a group of three little rooms in which the rangers keeps birds while they prepare to send them to other parts of New Zealand. Filled with various plants, our job is to get the twigs and brances and leaves out, jumble them upon a vehicle and then dispose of them in a remote corner of the southern grasslands. While it was the job of all which had the least fresh air, it was still very enjoyable and we managed to find in the remains of the plants not only skinks and beetles (and spiders), but also the massive wetapunga – ”God of Ugly Things” in Maori – which is a giant grasshopper-looking insect. It was a small wetapunga, but I really think it was the same species. It looks different from other weta. If you would see an adult one, they are massive – larger than your hand!
Picking this finger sized one up with a twig, I leave it in a hopefully quite safe place, where it managed to hide until nightfall, which is the time of the day when they usually awake.
What we did during nightfall was the same as usual – we went out to look for kiwis. This time, we thought, we should finally get a bit more lucky and see kiwis from up close and for a bit of a longer time. Within three minutes, we had a kiwi running towards us. When it noticed, it got scared and hid, but then it came out again and came to look at us. It was so curious that it even came up to smell the foot of my friend, standing just centimeters from him. As another kiwi was heard a bit further up, it ran off and disappeared.
The rest of the walk, we see nothing, but when returning through the same patch of forest, again, we spot the same kiwi. At first cautious, again curiosity got the better of it and it came up real close, but this time to me. Standing just a few centimeters from me, it runs off again when another kiwi comes out of a bush.
For several minutes we see him trying to seduce a slightly reluctant female. From only a few meters, this was the closest we ever came two kiwis, and the longest we ever got to observe any.
We finish cleaning out the aviary before we start digging up heavy rubble onto a vehicle, in order to fill out the little sorry looking path passing through the wetlands. All kinds of rubble, it’s used instead of gravel as transporting gravel to the island is both expensive and risky – it would be possible to introduce various species (for example ants) that could damage the ecosystem.
It’s the heaviest work so far, digging up various rocks and other rubble, and we manage to see only a horrible looking centipede and a skink. I think that most people would not have been asked to do this job, the volunteer said that volunteers are given tasks depending on such things as fitness, and that’s why me and this other young guy got to do so much of the heavy work. Anyway, after a while we’re done and now we just have to go to unload it onto the track which is a lot easier. We are given the rest of the day off, as a thanks I guess for having exhausted ourselves. And since for saturday – the last day – we only have to fill the throughs, we basically have 24 hours until the ferry, during which we can do whatever we feel like.
Trying to spot the elusive rifleman, the only bird we have not yet seen – supposedly the smallest bird in New Zealand, which could be why we hadn’t seen it – we headed out towards the only other contiguos patch of old growth forest we had not visited. It’s a lot harder to navigate through and not really rewarding, dense and rugged and marshy, filled with weta nesting boxes. But now at least we have been everywhere on the island and almost anything is worth a try.
Falling asleep later on, I go for a short walk, hearing kiwis outside the bunkhouse. Somehow I do not even bother much to try to see them. The experience the day before was a good last one and I just wanted to enjoy the quiet of the evening and the rotating lights of the lighthouse, the view of distant Auckland and it’s city lights.
Surprisingly, the last day was one passed almost doing nothing, despite the fact that almost the whole day was off. I finished up the last of my food (having brought almost exactly as much as I needed to not be hungry – but a fair bit less variety than I would have needed to enjoy my meals) and went with Michael for a walk up the east coast to do a last beach cleanup. We did a total of three beach cleanups during the stay, finding all sorts of things, from rubber wheels to a New Zealand Royal Navy hat and plenty of interesting remains of sea creatures.
Coming back to the visitor center, I read the last few signs and realize that the Rifleman does not exist on the island, despite what the other signs have said. They are just a bit ahead of their time: the rifleman will soon get introduced. Having been wanting to see it for several days and been joking about it not being a real bird, but a joke, it’s something of a revelation. Walking down towards the ferry, I laugh about it a bit with Michael when he suddenly says: ”Look there! It’s a yellowhead!”. Supposedly the Yellowhead is an even rarer bird which is very new to the island. I didn’t even know that the species existed. So in some strange way, the lack of riflemen was weighed up for. And as if providing an extra little reconciliatory bonus, Tiritiri Matangi gave us a view of a stingray laying to rest in shallow water, just down by the wharf, as the ferry came in and we were ready to leave.
Both the Mongolian homestays are accepting visitors again! There has already been some guests out this season and perhaps some more will get the chance to go before winter comes!
Just have a look at the contact page and send me a message!
While Motueka may not be the most interesting town in New Zealand, lots of people do stop by there for it’s proximity to Abel Tasman national park or for the many farm jobs available in the area. This post will be geared towards orchard work and long term stays. If you want to find information about the things to do in the area, there is some at the bottom of the post.
There are 3 options for backpacker accommodation in Motueka. While it’s difficult to say which one is the best, it’s easy to say which one is the worst.
Happy Apple Backpackers is known to be the worst backpackers in Motueka. There are several reasons for this. The first and foremost perhaps is the owner, who has some anger management problems. Several Tripadvisor reviews mention being scolded by the owner and I personally have friends who got scolded for various odd reasons. These scoldings were not simple telling offs but cursing, shouting, threats about being kicked out – for such things as waiting with washing the dishes until after having eaten the meal. One friend had his big bag of groceries taken out of the fridge and put on the free shelf, since it was marked only with his name and not the checkout date. Since he had stayed there for a month or more and did not have a planned checked out date, he wrote only his name. The manager knew who he was and that he would not check out any time soon.
Hot water showers lasts for five minutes and are more often than not broken.
It’s the most expensive backpackers in Motueka and charges the same for people to sleep in their van at the parking as they charge for people to sleep in a hostel bed.
If you check out even ten minutes late, you’ll not only risk getting scolded but also get charged an extra 10 dollars.
Plates and cutlery are personal. You get your kitchen stuff at check in and then have to keep it through the duration of your stay. Feels like a prison almost.
White Elephant and Laughing Kiwi are both good backpackers, closer to town, cheaper (god knows why) and overall just a lot better. The White Elephant is probably the best hostel for those looking to stay for a while as workers. The owner tries her best to make sure you find a job and feel good during your stay in Motueka. Overall I’d recommend The White Elephant the most. You can find their website here.
While you can earn more than the minimum wage working as a picker or on other contracted work, most people working in packhouses and doing various stuff around orchards earn only minimum wage.
These are different employers found in and around the area.
You will also often find listing on http://www.seasonaljobs.co.nz/ and on backpackerboard.
If you have some numbers that you want to share just share them in a comment or message and I’ll add them later. It’s better people can sort out a job before arriving. I met a lot of people who just sat around for days, making phone calls and waiting for text replies, simply because they could not find work fast enough.
What to do in Motueka?
That’s a question a lot of people ask themselves. The answer is that there is not so very much to do in Motueka. You can have a nice few days off but will quickly run out of stuff to do. Luckily the climate is great, it’s close to the coast and since you’re (if you’re reading this) probably there to work in an orchard, you’ll often work 6 days per week anyway.
For a day off, the inlet walkway leading to the shipwreck in Motueka wharf and to the sandspit, is great. The sandspit is a wellknown site for migratory birds and one of the most important sites in the region. Even if you are not a birdwatcher, it’s great just sitting by the coast a sunny day and watching all those wading birds during low tide. Or if you want to relax properly, there is a saltwater swimming pool close to the sandspit too.
The Motueka saturday market is well worth to visit for sampling snacks, buying groceries and so forth. A lot of farmers live in the area and if you arrive late, you can grab some really cheap and good quality locally grown veggies and fruits. But it’s better to arrive early. It’s a really nice little market. For other shopping, there are plenty of second hand shops around.
You could also help out as a volunteer for Keep Motueka Beautiful (just send them an email) or why not ask for information about volunteering at the local DOC office. If you want to know more about volunteering in New Zealand, you could have a look at this post and it’s list of different volunteer jobs.
The Ngarau caves are situated on the top of Takaka hill (and the drive up the hill is an experience in itself!) and possible to visit with a guided tour, costing 20 dollars per adult. It’s a beautiful little cave and very worthwhile. Tours depart hourly. The area around the caves are beautiful and nice to have a stroll around in after a completed tour.
If already up at the hill, why not go a bit further up to Pupu springs, boasting some of the cleanest waters in the world. Depending on who you ask it’s either among the cleanest in the southern hemisphere or the world. See DOC’s information here.
At the absolute top of the south island just outside of Collingwood, you will find the Farewell Spit nature reserve, which is one of the oddest geographical features of the areas. The spit stretches 35 km into the sea and is a more strictly protected nature reserve than a national park. While it’s closed down for the public, it’s open for tour operators and it’s possible to find information about the area and the tours here (expensive though!).
Very close to Motueka, you can find something a bit different and not typical for New Zealand. Why not join the local hare krishna community for a very tasty, healthy and affordable meal and some chanting.
New Zealand is perhaps one of the countries in the world where it’s the easiest to volunteer for environmental organizations. Ranging from day outs planting native trees to multiple month full time ranger positions, anyone interested in environmental volunteering in New Zealand should be able to find what they are looking for. While there are plenty of long term positions that require a lot of commitment, most volunteer work is done in a leisurely manner a few hours at a time at an ongoing basis. Many volunteer groups work in such a way that they for example meet up for 3 hours of planting native trees and weeding every other Friday. It’s a common social activity for locals and a way to learn more about this interesting part of kiwi culture. This post will be a bit about what kind of volunteering positions you normally can expect to find, how to get the position and why it’s a win-win for everyone and you should give it a go. It ends with a link list to various organizations etc that are looking for volunteers. The list is by no means complete but unless you are looking for something very specific, it will offer more than enough to choose from and several ideas about how to continue the search on your own, in case you did not find what you were looking for.
Finally there are many job positions available for those who want to work with environmental conservation and so forth. You can find some links under a separate section in the list at the bottom. Be aware that these jobs are often unavailable to people who are not New Zealand residents.
If you miss something in this post, let me know and I’ll update it!
Requirements are different for different positions. Most positions have very few requirements but the more long term and popular one’s with limited capacity can often be tricky. They often take into consideration level of fitness (with volunteer ranger positions often requiring a high level of fitness), education (favoring those who are educated in or study relevant topics), employment history (past volunteering or work for environmental organizations are often a bonus), skills (for example: do you know how to use monitoring equipment?) and future plans (it’s sometimes a bonus to see the volunteering more as a stepping stone than a once in a lifetime interesting experience). So if you want to volunteer as a wildlife ranger, be prepared for some rough competition and possibly having to either volunteer a few months or not at all. If you want something more short term and less demanding, luckily a lot less is demanded in terms of commitment and previous experience. Sometimes you don’t even need to apply, but can just show up. If you anyway, no matter what wants to try for one of the more demanding positions and for example stay a month in the NZ wilderness monitoring wild kiwi, New Zealand’s department of conservation (DOC) has several online courses that you can take to better your odds . Don’t be intimidated by the fact that it’s more difficult to get a volunteer position as a ranger, but be aware that you have to put some effort if you want to get it. Even if it’s still lots of time until you want to start volunteering, start looking for positions already now. Many of the applications close months before the actual volunteering starts, so if you want to make sure to get a position it’s best to start early. Also try to find a local organization back home to volunteer with once in a while. By getting some experience and learning more, you will better your odds of being accepted. Put an effort into writing your CV. Think of previous experiences and how they could be helpful for you. Even if it’s not related to actual biological conservation, it could for example be helpful to have worked in a pet shop, as some common volunteering tasks are not at all very different from such work, only that instead of taking care of guinea pigs you’ll be taking care of endangered wildlife.
You can volunteer even if you are only on a tourist visa. However, for some of the perks, you may need a work visa or residency. If a volunteering position offers you let’s say free food, then it’s counted as working for compensation and you would need a work visa.
Generally speaking it’s for free to volunteer. That means that it won’t cost you anything to do the actual work. But as most long term positions do not provide much more than accommodation and most short term positions offer nothing at all, you will have to put some money aside for such things as food and transportation. Often such things as transportation can be coordinated, so that you – if you don’t have your own transportation – can go with others. If you don’t have equipment, then don’t worry. Unless you are going to do something very demanding, you most likely don’t even need it. But if there is something that you do need but don’t want to buy new, for example a good pair of boots, often you can find them cheap in one of the many second hand shops that are scattered across the country.
If you want to spend a bit more you could do some “voluntourism”. By paying a organization some money, they will arrange your volunteering experience. I don’t know almost anything about these organizations and how they are in New Zealand, but from what little I’ve seen there seems to be some good value options, where food, transportation and accommodation is included, without it costing ridiculous amounts of money as it sometimes does. Perhaps some of them will lend you the equipment you need.
Volunteer’s tasks usually includes one or several of the following: weeding, planting native trees, pest control, trapping pests, monitor wildlife, nurse native plants, nurse endangered wildlife mark and maintain tracks, guide visitors, clean facilities, gather seeds. Some tasks require some skills. For example managing kiwi chicks. Others are more simple. For example to survey a fenced in nature reserve to make sure that the fence has not been damaged. Many provide ample opportunities of learning a job. Much of the conservation work revolves around minimizing the harmful effects of invasive species. Some of it requires killing introduced predators by placing traps in the nature.
Some volunteering tasks can be done online or in other ways, without having to leave the computer.
You can find volunteering work almost anywhere in New Zealand. If you want to volunteer in a certain city or for a certain nature reserve, it’s often enough to visit their official website to apply. The link list below gives you a very wide range of possible volunteering positions, but in case you don’t find what you are looking for, do some searches of your own and probably you will find something. If you manage to find a organization or project that you want to volunteer for but they don’t have any application form or information online, try to just send them an email and ask. Environmental volunteering is very widespread throughout New Zealand and quite likely many will be open for suggestions, even if at first glance it does not look like it.
There are many benefits to volunteering. Some of them are for you, other for the organizations you volunteer for, and most of them – of course – for the nature that you help preserve.
You will, depending on what you do, learn new skills, experience New Zealand’s unique nature from close up, meet a lot of interesting people and – if you want that – get valuable experience for future employment in conservation. As conservation work globally is underfunded and very competitive (with lots of people wanting to do it for a living, but few positions available), conservation experience is often a stepping stone required for a paid job, even for those with education.
Most conservation organizations in New Zealand to some extent depend on volunteers. They would not be able to do their work without volunteers. Many of the even relatively small organizations receive hundreds of thousands of hours of volunteer work per year. That’s millions of New Zealand dollars per year that they don’t have to spend. For a organization that does not actually strive to make money but to preserve endangered species and ecosystems, it would not be possible to pay for all this labor. Had it not been for volunteers, many endangered species’ of New Zealand would be extinct.
Finally, if you have any questions or things to add, let me know and I will update the post! Hopefully it will make it easier for people to find what they are looking for.
DOC is short for Department of Conservation and is the government body responsible for conservation work throughout New Zealand. Not only is their website great for those who want to volunteer, but they also have free online courses in such things as the use of monitoring equipment and the nature of New Zealand. It’s with DOC you will find many of the most interesting positions, for example as a kiwi tracking ranger in the remote wilderness, but they list all kinds of positions all over the country. Be aware that many of the more interesting positions have lots of applicants.
Many cities have their own volunteering websites. Here are a few examples. If you want to find volunteering opportunities for e.g. Hamilton, just visit their website and see if you can find volunteering opportunities there. Most volunteering activities offered in the links below are not actually inside the cities, but close by and within easy reach. Often such things as transportation can be arranged with other volunteers, if you lack your own means of transport.
Much of the most interesting stuff is going on on islands. Islands often work as sanctuaries for rare and endangered species, since it’s relatively easy to keep a small isolated island free of introduced predators. Small isolated islands are also often the least used by humans. Some of them have not been used for farming or logging. The Little Barrier Island for example has been called the most intact ecosystem in New Zealand.Since there are so many different kinds of volunteering opportunities on so many different islands I wrote a post specifically about volunteering on islands. Click here if you want to read it.
These links lead to portals for different organizations. Various organizations offer different positions in different places. Most of the links lead to relatively similar volunteering opportunities, so only if you are after something very specific will you ever need to look through more than a few of them.
Around the top of the north Island some brave volunteers are waging a war against the pine trees. Not the typical conservation volunteers (who are sometimes called “treehuggers”), these people kill trees by the hundreds. The reason is that pines, as an introduced species in New Zealand, are harming the New Zealand environment. Local plants, mushrooms, wildlife etc, is of course adapted to local trees, with which they have evolved together. The amount of species found in pine forests are vastly lower than the amount of species found in native forests. You’ll notice it if you compare the sounds in a pine forest compared to a native forest: while you’ll hear plenty of birds in the latter, the former is eerily quiet. So if you are up in the area around Marlborough and want to do a different kind of treehugger activity, try this out!
Cleaning beaches, rivers and all kinds of places around New Zealand. You can even organize your own events and have interested people showing up helping out. So if you have no plans for a day off, why not check if there are any cleanup events going on nearby! Shared transportation can be arranged if you lack your own.
Allthough most work takes place outdoors, some stuff require regular office or remote computer workers. If you want to help out with things such as fundraising, perhaps you will find something in the links below!
Sanctuaries are very important in NZ conservation work. Many endangered New Zealand animals such as kiwis are kept only until they are big enough to survive by themselves in nature. Most wild kiwi chicks gets eaten by predators introduced from other parts of the world. By helping out at these centers you can both experience many rare species from up close and help them survive in the wild. Most of the animals you will work with will at some point be released into the wild.
Similar jobs to sanctuaries, but with more international wildlife. NZ zoos are acclaimed for their conservation work and you will be able to help out with preserving endangered species etc. New Zealand zoos are well known for their focus on conservation work and could be a great way to learn more.
These are a few websites for those who do not mind paying a bit to volunteer. Often transportation, food and accommodation is included and the overall price will not be much higher than if you would pay for everything yourself. I have not included any of the more expensive volunteering websites in this list. Some organizations charge up to a 150 New Zealand dollars per day for you to help out with various tasks!
Most of the links here are to advertisement platforms that are not specifically used for conservation jobs. Some of the links below lead to search results for the word “conservation”. If you instead search for things such as “wildlife” different results may appear. Many sites have pretty much the same jobs listed, but if you are very keen to land a real conservation job it could be worth to have a quick look at a few of them. The most useful links are the three first one’s. Sign up for “conservationjobs” newsletter for weekly updates about upcoming positions. Also, many regions and cities etc have their own websites where current vacancies are listed. For example Southland lists positions here. If you want to find jobs in a specific place, try to find their websites.
Upcoming homestays in India – make a request!
I have an India trip coming up and want to try something out! I want to ask the readers (the few that are) what kind of homestay they would like to visit if they ever go to India. And if it is possible for me to find such a homestay, I would like to list it along with the other homestays! Most likely no more than three people will let me know what they would like to try, so if you are one of those three it’s not like you will have too much competition!
So do you want to stay in the jungle or along the coast, a village or a metropolis, with christians, hindus or muslims, in a foodie or art heaven? Just send me a message through the contact form and I’ll see what I can do!
Toubkal is both beautiful and accessible. It’s the highest mountain in North Africa and the highest in any arab country and in no way an easy hike. But most people who set out seem to make it to the top. When I was there I even saw a group of friends in their sixties. They weren’t the fastest, but eventually they reached the summit. Most probably almost anyone reading this will too. But in order to make the trip as enjoyable as possible, it would be good to keep a few things in mind ahead of the ascent.
Leave your backpack at the refuge. A day hike from Imlil lays a group of 3 refugees. These are basically mountain huts for hikers. They are staffed and it’s possible both to eat and sleep in them. They all have the same prices. 150 dirham for a dormitory. 250-300 (I don’t remember exactly) for dormitory plus dinner and breakfast. These places aren’t really what you would call cozy and the food is only enjoyable because you just spent six hours hiking, but the places do their jobs. There are no villages or other buildings up at that altitude (the closest village being a three hour walk or so down the mountain), so there’s no reason to complain. Make use of these places not only by having a good nights rest and perhaps something to eat but also as a storage for your bags when you climb Toubkal. To bring only a daypack with some fruits, water and sandwhiches will make the hike a lot less demanding and a lot more fun. Staff are used to people leaving their bags and do not charge extra for it. The most famous refuge is Les Mouflons, which has it’s own website here.
Don’t go for the sunrise. Most people visiting Toubkal try to climb it before sunrise in order to get to enjoy the view. I’m sure that the view is very beautiful, but there are a few reasons why I would recommend people to sleep in and start the ascent after sunrise. The number one reason is that a lot of people I talked to, as I met them when they were on their way dawn and I on my way up, regretted not doing just that. Yes, it’s Morocco and it’s supposed to be warm, but really, nights at 4000 meters altitude are not. And to reach the peak by sunrise you will have to wake up by 3 o’clock or so and walk the entire way up in the dark. It’s cold, it’s dark, it’s windy. And when you reach the peak you stand there for 20 minutes, waiting for the sun to rise so that you can get back down and pull a blanket over you. I met some people who were running down back to the refugee. They had not enjoyed the ascent, they had not enjoyed the descent, and they had probably not even really enjoyed the sunrise, but they had caught some nice photos of it. Make yourself a favor and go after breakfast. You body will have rested better, making it less likely to react negatively to the altitude or the physical strain of the ascent, and you will be able to enjoy the changing sceneries as you come higher and higher up the mountain. When you reach the peak you can sit up there warm and comfortable in the sun for half an hour having lunch. Then you can head back down. Also, the risk of injury will be way lower if you walk when it’s bright. There is a lot of slippery gravel on the path and some sections are very steep.
Don’t worry too much. I met a few people who had wanted to go to Toubkal just to eventually decide not to. All of this “highest in North Africa” and “highest in any arab country” seems to intimidate people. Truth is that most reasonably fit people who give it a go will reach the top. The only thing is that while some may not find the hike very demanding, others will have to suffer a bit to reach the peak. While some can climb the mountain spending only one night in a refuge, others will perhaps be better of spending two nights in the refuges and acclimatize properly (actually I would recommend anyone to spend two nights up there). Most people will reach the peak if they are rested enough and bring some energizing snacks. And even those who don’t will get to enjoy the landscapes. It’s not as if the area is ugly except for when seen from the peak. Worst case scenario you will still encounter better views than anything you will find in Chefchaouen (or break a leg, stumbling over a rock you didn’t see, as the sun had not yet risen and you were too tired to focus).
There are other hikes. If you just want to go hiking, there are plenty of options in Morocco. Toubkal is the most famous and it offers beautiful views of the surrounding landscapes. However, if altitude and views alone is not what you long for, perhaps you should consider going for another hike. Walkopedia lists different hikes and gives useful information about hiking in Morocco. Depending on what you want to do, some places will be better or worse than Toubkal. If you want to experience local culture, live in a berber village where few tourists have ever been, be close to the peaks of the mountains and eat fabulous food, perhaps the small homestay listed on this website is the place for you. It’s very different from the typical Toubkal experience in the sense that you will not stay in a refuge but in a family home in a berber village. The area rarely sees foreign visitors and most likely you and your friends will be the only non-berbers around. The peaks aren’t as high and the landscapes not as dramatic, but the area and the host has a charm entirely it’s own.
Out of the blue in Agadir, I met an amazigh called Ridouane. It was by complete chance as I just wanted to ask someone for the way to the long distance taxi station. He said that it was just a few minutes away and that he would take me in his car. Not only that, but he also told me (after getting to know that I would go only a short distance with the shared taxi) that he would take me the whole way to my destination, free of charge. On the way we continued talking and he wanted to know more about my trip in Morocco. He was curious about what I thought about the amazigh culture. I told him that actually I did not know too much about it but that I would like to get to know more. He asked me “Why not come visit my home village for a few days?” and I took him up on his offer. We went to Taroudant and spent the night with his family in his appartment before early the next day we went together with some of his friends into the countryside north of Taroudant, high up in the Atlas mountains. It’s a beautiful little village reached only on winding roads, only a few hours hike below the peaks of the mountains. Ridouane has been working on village charity projects to develop the village. Water supply has been improved and a school for the women has been opened. It’s a very special place rarely visited by foreigners. It is practically untouched by tourism and filled with curious, friendly and very hospitable locals.
After spending four days up there with Ridouane and his friends, I asked him if it wouldn’t be a good idea for them to try to get volunteers and tourists to the village. We were at that time out gathering wild growing thyme and rosemary on the steep slopes overlooking the village and started talking about different options and ideas. Ridouane was most of all interested in getting volunteers to visit, but also thought that welcoming tourists would be a good idea, as it would be a chance for them to experience the amazigh culture and a chance for the village to get some capital to invest in things such as improving education. Right now they need to buy study desks for the women’s school.
Ridouane is now a member of workaway.info, as it will enable him to find volunteers, and I have offered to try to help out finding some tourists. As always on Anthropolodgy, 100% of the money spent stays with the locals. There are no fees of any kind involved. So even if you don’t go for the volunteering option, which would be for free, you will contribute a lot to the local community.
Volunteer. A maximum workload of 5 hours per day, 5 days per week, with two days off. Free of charge food and accomodation. Long term volunteers preferred.
Tourist. 0 hours work, 7 days per week. Private room. Meals included in the price. More suitable for short term visitors. 250 dirham/22 euro per day.
Contact us through the contact form with any reservations or questions and we will get back to you soon! And if you want to earn a few easy bucks and help Anthropolodgy out with our hosting fees, you can click here.
There are Tibetan areas in China outside of the Tibet autonomous region. These can be find in Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai, Yunnan and Sichuan. Travelling in these areas is generally a lot easier than travelling in the Tibet autonomous region, as you don’t need any special permits or tour guides to enter them. We have a host with contacts throughout the tibetan areas. If enough interest is shown in this, the host contacts will get added to this website soon. Just let me know through the contact form if it’s worth the effort.
There has been a lot of problems recently for the host families in Inner Mongolia! First in East Ujimqin Banner, where one of the family members suddenly became seriously ill and hospitalized. Because of this, guests could no longer be received. Ofcourse they could still go to the Xilnhot homestay, but that too has become impossible now, as the host family now has to apply for a special permit to continue receiving guests. This is because the homestay is located in a sensitive area. Last but not least it’s late autumn and about time to close anyway, as it will be too cold to visit during the winter.
As soon as there are any news the information on this site will be updated! Until then only the Bazernik and Nannuoshan homestays are open – perhaps with one or a few more being added before the end of this year! If you want to get to know as soon as new homestays are added or when the Inner Mongolian ones are open again, it’s just to follow us on Facebook! | 2019-04-21T20:31:35Z | http://anthropolodgy.com/ |
Submitted by Mimi Newton, on Feb. 9, 2018 ~ 3:00 pm.
Present (18) - Victoria Ashley, Doug Barnett, Marla Bernstein, June Brashares, Susan Chunco, Deatra Cohen, Mica Daniel, Angelica Duenas, Sanda Everette, Mike Feinstein, Sadie Fulton, Bert Heuer, Ann Menasche, Mike Murphy, Mimi Newton, Ajay Rai, Laura Wells, and Stephen Zollman.
Absent (2) - Mike Goldbeck, and Tarik Kanaana.
Also present, but coming onto the call after quorum call (3) - Eric Brooks (7:38 pm), Eric Luna (7:40 pm) and Erik Rydberg (8:15 pm).
*Proposal*: Approve the agenda (version II sent to CC on 2/5/18 at 10:26 am).
Mike Feinstein proposed reordering of Items… [Mike says he will send in his stand aside objections regarding the ERWG item to the Note Taker.]. The Political Party Statement needs to get done - it’s now Item number 12. He proposes we change it to number 9.
Mimi Newton raises the problem with a typo in the item number 4, on the Minutes - last month’s draft minutes are not in Appendix K but in an email she sent to the CC on Jan. 26, 2018. Those draft minutes include an Appendix K, which is the draft December Minutes. As Note taker, she will include them in these minutes as Appendix L.
Mike Feinstein also recommends that Agenda item number 14 be moved up for the GA discussion, up to part of 8 - 8b.
*Proposal*: Approve the minutes for the January, 8 2018 CC Meeting.
*Reference*: Jan. 8, 2018 GPCA COORDINATING COMMITTEE MEETING - DRAFT MINUTES that Mimi Newton sent to CC on Jan. 26, 2018. (Appendix L).
On our January call there were outstanding concerns about approval of Minutes by Mike Feinstein, Ajay Rai and Eric Brooks. Mike is not willing to stand aside.
Friendly amendment from Mimi Newton for Mike Feinstein to clarify his concerns, send a proposed revision to the CC and that the CC reagendize the item for the March CC meeting. Mike would be okay with that.
Mica agrees to friendly amendment.
Any questions or concerns? None.
*Background and Purpose*: Mica Daniel is re-applying to the Finance Committee per her application below.
*Proposal*: That the CC discuss and make a decision on Mica Daniel’s application to be appointed to the Finance Committee.
My name is Mica Daniel and I have served on the Finance Committee for several years and I am requesting reappointment. My commitment to the Finance Committee is having a balance budget, funds to move the party forward, and transparency. Thank you for your consideration.
*Background and Purpose*: Shane Que Hee is re-applying to the Platform Committee per his application below.
*Proposal*: That the CC discuss and make a decision on Shane Que Hee’s application to the Platform Committee.
Shane Que Hee has been Co-Co of the GPCA Platform Committee since 2004, and heads the LGBT Caucus of Los Angeles County recognized by the Green Party of Los Angeles County. He requests a final term a Co-Co of the GPCA Platform Committee. He will continue to update and improve the GPCA Platform and seek new members.
Ajay - Question as to whether there has been any succession planning since Shane says this will be his final term.
Mike - Shane said he wouldn’t do this term, so we are very lucky to get this one last term from him.
Any other questions or concerns? None.
Re: a bylaws interpretation for the Alternate delegates election.
*Background and Purpose*: The Coordinating Committee considered a Bylaws Interpretation at its August 8, 2017 meeting, proposed by Mimi Newton, to provide for a special election to fill a single vacancy on the GPUS Delegation among the Alternates. However the Bylaws Interpretation that was proposed that was ultimately amended and approved, contained findings for a different Interpretation than was ultimately approved - one that would fill three vacancies.. Hence the findings no longer fit the interpretation and would provide great confusion to the Standing General Assembly once submitted to it for approval.
This proposal is to substitute the findings from Feinstein’s proposal to the proposal made by Newton, so that when it goes to the SGA, it has findings that fit the Interpretation ultimately made by the CC.
*Proposal*: That the following findings are adopted to accompany the proposal by Newton of August 8, 2017, in order to accompany it to the SGA scheduled to begin on February 12, 2018.
Mimi Newton and Mike Feinstein offer to work out the language for the bylaws interpretation regarding the GPUS Alternate Delegate Election and Mimi will send the revised language to the SGA Vote Administrators for Posting with the upcoming SGA Vote.
*Background and Purpose*: The CCWG at its meeting on January 28th, 2018, approved a proposal requesting this action.
The CCWG requests the GPCA Coordinating Committee take the necessary action (approve a statement of findings / bylaws interpretation) to bring an endorsement proposal to the Standing General Assembly (SGA), to make endorsements in statewide races in advance of the June 2018 Primary. This endorsement process would be included in the next SGA (discussion period begins February 12) and would state that all Green candidates who have pulled papers to run for statewide offices in California *and* who have officially *qualified* to be candidates on the CA primary ballot by the time of the SGA vote (voting period starting March 26th), will be on the SGA ballot for endorsement. “No position” will be an option.
The endorsement process will be voided if the SGA votes against the CC’s findings (bylaws interpretation) that would have enabled the endorsements.
The CC's statement of findings, that would clarify the extraordinary circumstances and their significance for the GPCA, can include mention of the current Top Two primary system for statewide office.
Since the implementation of the Top Two primary system in California in 2012, political party primaries have been eliminated. Under the current Top Two system, it is highly unlikely that any Green Party candidate will appear on the statewide general election ballot. Therefore the GPCA has been making endorsements for Greens running in statewide races prior to the primary, and the GPCA has done so via the SGA since 2014.
The Coordinating Committee on the November 6, 2017, teleconference discussed the CC’s intent to have a SGA endorsement process to determine endorsements of statewide candidates in the June 2018 primary.
The CCWG at its meeting on January 28th, 2018, approved a proposal requesting this action.
*Proposal*: Approve the following Statement of Findings / Bylaws Interpretation to bring an endorsement process to the Standing General Assembly (SGA), to determine endorsements of Green candidates in statewide races for the June 2018 Primary.
JUNE - proposal to allow this to go to the SGA, where the SGA delegates would vote on endorsements. If the SGA votes down the proposal, then no endorsements, but if the proposal were approved, the SGA delegates would simultaneously endorse individual candidates based on who qualifies. In terms of the endorsements, delegates would be given three options: Endorse, Oppose or take no position.
Mike Feinstein has outstanding concerns and is not willing to stand aside - the matter goes to an immediate vote.
Yes Votes (15): Victoria Ashley, June Brashares, Eric Brooks, Susan Chunco, Deatra Cohen, Mica Daniel, Sadie Fulton, Bert Heuer, Eric Luna, Ann Menasche, Mike Murphy, Mimi Newton, Erik Rydberg, Laura Wells and Stephen Zollman.
No Votes (6): Doug Barnett, Marla Bernstein, Angelica Duenas, Sanda Everette, Mike Feinstein, and Ajay Rai.
Absent (2): Mike Goldbeck and Tarik Kanaana.
6 opposed and 15 in support.
Out of the 21 Members present, the 60% threshold requires 13 to pass.
The proposal passes - June Brashares to submit it to the SGA Vote Administrators to post during the next SGA discussion period and vote.
*Proposal*: To decide if members want to revise the current statement, and if so, whom will be involved.
Attached, please find a request for your party’s statement of purpose for possible inclusion in the June 5, 2018, Statewide Direct Primary Election state Voter Information Guide. Statements will be due no later than 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 15, 2018. I will be mailing a hard copy as well.
Upon review of the attached documents, should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.
A discussion occurred about amending the Statement.
Stephen Zollman, Mimi Newton, Laura Wells, Vic Ashley and Eric Brooks offer to help with revisions.
Eric Brooks made a friendly amendment to start a 1 week vote ending on Sunday and Mike Feinstein added his request that an initial draft be sent out with the corrected P.O. Box and the 8 words deleted so we have a fallback in case we cannot agree on other revisions.
Mica agreed to post the fallback version to kick off the discussion/voting period tonight (or tomorrow morning).
Vic is willing to stand aside - it is disappointing that this group won’t allow the smaller group to work on this without a CC Vote.
*Background*: There will be at least four ballot measures on the June 2018 ballot. GPCA Bylaws specify that GPCA positions taken on such ballot measure are done through the Standing General Assembly. However the 2018-2018 work plan approved by the Sacramento General Assembly in June 2018 did not contain a Standing General Assembly scheduled at the traditional time that such endorsement SGAs are held - i.e. once the information about each measure from the Legislative Analysts Office is available, as well as the pro/con arguments contained in the ballot pamphlet. This bylaws interpretation would allow for an SGA to be held in a time period to maximize the availability of such information to SGA delegates.
Mike is not on the line.
Sanda has questions about this item.
June gave background information on the proposal. Suggests we not adopt this proposal since CCWG considered and rejected this and has its own proposal on endorsements for measures.
Call for consensus regarding rejecting this proposal - no outstanding concerns.
*Background and Purpose*: The ERWG would like to put on the agenda the petitioning effort for repeal of Top Two. We would like to have contacts in every county willing to coordinate the gathering of signatures and would like to discuss how to organize this effort.
*Proposal*: To organize a petitioning effort for repeal of Top Two, including county contacts and methods of organizing.
A discussion was begun with about a minute to go in the meeting.
The discussion regarding the top two repeal effort continued briefly with some members choosing to stay on the line. There was also a suggestion that the website discussion (item # 13) be put up higher on the agenda for next month’s meeting and that we have tighter control of long discussions so we can get to important items.
*Background and Purpose*: New IT Committee members have submitted a Report to the CC summarizing their survey results, along with proposed changes.
Please find attached the GPCA Website & Platform Gap Analysis report.
Since I sent the survey during the holidays, we did not receive a huge number of replies but the input from all was detailed and informative. I have also included in the report, a table of survey responses as well as individual recommendations from the IT Committee members.
I hope this exercise can help inform your decision on how to proceed with updating the GPCA website.
*Background*: Some time ago, the Coordinating Committee approved a proposal for Mike Feinstein to go back in the Coordinating Committee’s past minutes and add to those minutes, when a Coordinating Committee member had missed three meetings in a row, so that it was clear and transparent when this occurred - and hence when it led to a special election being held to fill that vacancy. This proposal would amend the Coordinating Committee’s Internal Procedures regarding the taking of minutes, to include such information going forward.
3-8.1 Minutes of Coordinating Committee meetings shall consist of the date, time, location (where applicable) and attendance (including when leaving call), any modifications to the agenda, agenda items heard, decisions-taken (including who voted for, against or stood aside) and the text of all proposals, including amendments. Minutes shall also include when any Coordinating Committee member has missed three consecutive regular meetings.
> 3-5.5 The minutes taker for a CC meeting shall record the time of the meeting at which role has been taken and quorum established, and shall also clearly record the time of arrival of any CC member who announces their presence late at the meeting after role has been taken and quorum has been established. The minutes taker shall note if and when a member arriving late has arrived in the midst of the presentation and discussion on a decision item.
Sunday, Feb. 18, 2018 at 7:00 pm, Call in number - (515) 739-1271, access code: 753142.
— Committee members are continuing to work on a Bylaws Template Project for the Counties.
— Committee members are reviewing for form proposed bylaws amendments to go before the next SGA.
— Committee members are drafting bylaws amendment to correct all references to Standing GENERAL Assembly rather than Standing GREEN Assembly. The Committee intends to sponsor this amendment for the upcoming SGA Vote.
— Committee members are continuing to work on the draft work plan for submission to the Finance Committee after the February Bylaws Committee meeting.
Members Absent: None – we have quorum.
Greg has been appointed to Clearinghouse. WELCOME Greg!
Nassim reviewed draft of the CH strategic plan with the team. Team approved the plan as is, but any additions and edits can be send to Nassim, this is a living document and will be adjusted as projects cycle in and out. *Laura Wells later emailed a suggestion to change the project/budget cycle to June 2017-July 2018 to match the GPCA budget cycle. Nassim will also review printing costs, update plan and send CH the new version.
CH members reviewed and affirmed this list of activities. Nassim later reviewed the budget and it will amply cover shipping charges for the literature later reimbursement.
6. Information / Discussion Report on NB access and setting up training (Nassim - 2 min), Nassim will ask Colt for a date.
7. Discussion / Decision Updated GPCA-CH listserve (Nassim - 1 min) Nassim has completed this.
9. Discussion / Decision proposal for updates to CH bylaws sections (Nassim - 10 min) deferred to Feb meeting.
- Nassim will update the 2018 work plan as per Laura’s suggestion & costs and send CH the new version.
- Brett to send an offer to GROW to make new leafy-G logos with Omnes font for any county – will slightly tune the logo with Nassim before sending offer.
ERWG Call Minutes – 1/29/18 6:30 p.m.
Discussed Stop Top Two ballot initiative. A couple of weeks ago Carol spoke with Jeanne Llewellyn, the woman who spoke at the Ventura GA regarding Stop Top Two, as well as a local San Bernardino county coordinator, and Tom Palzer, the state coordinator for the initiative. All three assured Carol that despite some contributors not following through as expected, the push to get signatures for the initiative are in full swing and that they are committed to get it on the ballot—Tom stated he has invested a lot of his own money so really wants to see it through. Said he really needs our help with signature-gathering. Carol has gotten several petitions completed and will be sending them to him and he has sent a packet of blank forms to her. Tom will be collecting all the completed petitions and turning them in; he stated that he will send blank forms to anyone who requests them. Palzer’s contact information is: Foundation to Stop Top 2, P. O. Box 2413, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91729. Phone is 909-913-9500.
Discussed proposal to Coordinating Committee to seek point people in each county to distribute/collect petitions, send them to Tom Palzer, and obtain more blank forms for signature gathering.
Hope to pursue Eric’s suggestion re Connecticut law next phone call.
Next call scheduled for February 12, 2018 at 7 p.m.
* The process of amending previous reports from 2017 with errors leading to an incorrect negative balance, have started.
- During the meeting the committee members discussed with the Treasurer the draft reports he was working on at that time.
[ ] Richard is working on Merced, and to help with that Edward Pinckney, of Benton Harbor, MI is coming in February to Merced and Fresno counties.
[ ] Lewis is running for Congress and when possible working to activate Siskiyou, and open a bank account.
The application deadline is on Monday, February 5, 2018 at 11:59 pm. Candidates for the GPUS Alternate Delegates vacancies should please email their applications to [email protected].
The email header should be "Application for GPUS Alternate Delegate." Your statement should include (1) your name, city, county, phone number and email address; (2) your vision for serving as an Alternate Delegate; and (3) any relevant prior or current positions, related experience and skills that you can apply to this position. Your resume is sufficient. Please do not send attachments or photos, as these will not be published. You may include a webpage address to provide more information about you.
The candidates will be voted on by the Standing_General_Assembly (SGA).
The election for 3 GPUS Alternate Delegates will be by Ranked Choice Voting by secret ballot, with a No Other Candidate option. The six-week discussion period is from Monday, February 12 through Sunday, March 25, 2018. Voting is from Monday, March 26 through Sunday, April 1, 2018.
7-6.2 The following decision items shall automatically be placed before the Standing General Assembly.
This is to announce a call for candidates for a special election to fill one vacated male seat on the GPCA Coordinating Committee (CC) for the remainder of the two-year CC term originally running from July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2019.
To apply, a candidate must submit an application to [email protected] The application deadline is Monday, February 5, 2018 at 11:59pm.
The application must include a biography along with what the candidate wishes to accomplish on the Coordinating Committee. Do not submit attachments. Please do not send photos, as these will not be published. You may include a webpage address to provide more information about you.
As per GPCA Bylaws, elections will be by the Standing_General_Assembly (SGA), with a six-week discussion period from Monday, February 12 through Sunday, March 25, followed by a one-week vote from Monday, March 26 through Sunday, April 1.
The Coordinating Committee election will be by Instant Runoff Voting / Ranked Choice Voting by secret ballot, with a No Other Candidate option.
Proposal: Approve the following Statement of Findings / Bylaws Interpretation to bring an endorsement process to the Standing General Assembly (SGA), to determine endorsements of Green candidates in statewide races for the June 2018 Primary.
Therefore the endorsement process 6 week SGA discussion period will be timed to the upcoming Standing General Assembly beginning on Monday February 12and running through Sunday, March 25, and during the discussion period the eligible candidates will be narrowed down from all declared candidates to only those Green Party candidates who will have officially qualified to be on the June Primary ballot by the time of the SGA voting to begin Monday, March 26 and run through Sunday, April 1.
For those interested, the existing 2016 statement (below) can be modified and should be discussed before our February 5th meeting. Or we could create a whole new statement.
If you would like to revise it and have the time, please post your thoughts. I personally think this might be best done with a small working group. There is a 200 word limit and the deadline is Feb 15th.
The Green Party supports viable solutions to our greatest challenges, from climate change and drought, to historic income and wealth inequality.
Therefore the GPCA shall hold a special election to fill the remaining three Alternate seats for the remainder of the July 2017 to July 2019 term, and that any GPCA member who correctly follows the application process may qualify for the ballot. | 2019-04-19T22:49:09Z | http://www.cagreens.org/committees/coordinating/minutes/2018-02-05 |
My real estate purchase experience with 1ST Choice Realty and Chad was a very positive one. We had been in constant contact prior to my arrival in Costa Rica to search for properties. He was knowledgeable of the area, the buying process and had helpful points to guide me with my decision. Throughout the purchasing process he was readily available to answer questions I had, and always responded in a timely manner. We have remained in communication after my purchase, which I appreciate. He has continued to help me with resources, tips, and recommendations for getting ready to build my home. I would recommend Chad to anyone looking for a property in the Tamarindo and surrounding area.
My husband and I have been going to Costa Rica since 2007 we fell in love with nature and beaches and decided to invest on a property. Thanks to Ronald & Chad we found our dream lot in Playa Grande, they are very profesional, knowledgeable and respond to all our needs during the process. We also feel like they treat us like good friends. Very happy and excited !!
We recommend Chad and Ronald from 1st Choice Realty to anyone who's going to purchase some Real Estate in Costa Rica.
Thank you both for making possible our dream !!!
In early 2016 my wife and I decided that it was time to get serious about pursuing our dreams of owning real estate in the Tropics. We had already concluded that Costa Rica (and most specifically the province of Guanacaste) was our location of choice. We spent countless hours looking through various websites and at one point we inquired about a few properties we saw on the 1st Choice Real Estate website. The very next day Chad Fisher stepped into our lives. From day 1 Chad and his team have been very professional, kind, and knowledgeable about the Real Estate process, the requirements, and quirks etc of buying property in Costa Rica. Chad helped make the entire process as seemless as possible – and in our week in Costa Rica (Sept 2016) we landed on purchasing an amazing lot for our future dream home! We cannot imagine having gone through this process with anyone other than Chad and team. (On a previous trip to Costa Rica in 2015 we had met a real estate agent from a competitor company down the road, and after a few weeks of back and fourth emails, we were essentially blown off)…I can honestly say that Chad Fisher has been with us every step of the way – and to this day, continues to follow up and shows genuine interest in our soon to be “building” process! We would recommend Chad Fisher to anyone interested in purchasing Real Estate in Costa Rica 10/10! Chad, keep up the fantastic work, and we look forward to our next steps along the way of building our dream!
We recently purchased our dream lot through Chad Fisher at 1st Choice realty. Mr.Fisher was extremely helpful, professional and attentive to our needs throughout the entire process. We are Costa Rican residents and had a big wish list including ocean views, a respect to nature and off course something we could afford. 1st Choice was on top of all the real estate in the area. Mr. Fisher and his team were excellent in helping us with the closing process and made buying land on Costa Ricas beautiful gold coast a dream come true.
I purchased a business in Tamarindo and he actually talked me out of the two more expensive businesses that I was interested in and pointed me in the direction of the less expensive one. I was surprised by that kind of behavior from someone who makes his living on commission, but he genuinely wanted me to get the right property for me. As it turns out, his local knowledge of the town proved invaluable. His assessment was right on and I got the better of the 3 businesses, as well as the least expensive. The most pressing issue for me was that I was living in the states at the time all of this was happening. He arranged to have people check on the equipment at the business, took pictures of the questionable issues and had them all resolved BEFORE any money changed hands. He was my eyes and ears when it came time to do all of the paper work, find a lawyer, and perform the due diligence.I highly recommend 1st Choice. In fact, since I've been here in Tamarindo, I've sent him two clients...both of which had transactions and experiences similar to mine. Flawless.
1st Choice Realty made our buying experience in Costa Rica seamless from thousands of miles away. they were always very prompt in returning phone calls, emails, answering questions, and coordinating paperwork with the sellers agent, title company, attorneys, etc. 1st Choice Realty steered us clear of properties that they felt were unsuitable or were of subpar construction and only offered us high quality properties that he would purchase. Even after the sale 1st Choice Realty has reached out to us via email and Skype to check on our experience thus far and we greatly appreciate his service and new friendship. I highly recommend 1st Choice Realty for your real estate purchases in Costa Rica, they are on your side and will work diligently to find you a great property and a fair market price.
You are a great realtor! You are amazing with your enthusiasm. I have never had a realtor be so helpful. Because of this, I will let you be my realtor and I am going to give you my sister's email address. She is flying down to Costa Rica in June. I want you to email her and also send her a copy of this email I have sent you. Tell her that i think you are the best I have ever seen. You will surely be able to make a great sell from her. She is going to buy sooner than I am, so it is to your advantage to contact her immediately.
My hubby and I are 90% sure we will be buying something there, but it will be several months before we can come down. There's no need for you to take your precious time and visit that condo to take more pics. Just have that owner email pics of the baths and closets.
Again, thank you so much for all the attention you have given me and I look forward to working with you. Keep the pics coming!
Thanks for the update. I appreciate the time and effort on your behalf and wish to thank you for your thoroughness in this matter. In our business, its important to recognize professionalism in our peers. Your time invested in this matter will not be forgotten.
"Dan has proven himself to be a knowledgeable and valuable partner in our ventures here in Costa Rica. He has an extensive working knowledge of the market and best practices in the real estate realm in Costa Rica. Prompt and courteous and always a pleasure to work with. We consider him to be an invaluable asset."
I feel like I need to let you know about Derrick's assistance during my time there. He was extremely helpful in locating and gaining access on short notice to properties that I randomly showed interest in. He was always on his game, not too agressive, but very interested in helping me in everyway to help make my decision easier and with more knowledge. I really enjoyed working with him and when it does look like I am ready to actually purchase property, I will definitely be contacting him.
We had the great fortune to have Dan as our realtor when we decided to purchase a condo in Tamarindo. Not only was he very professional, but also very personable. Dan displayed tremendous patience and helpfulness throughout the time we spent viewing listings, making the overall experience pleasurable. He very diligently guided us through the process of buying in Costa Rica, while sharing his knowledge and experience of the area. Dan also set us up with an excellent lawyer for the paperwork, and made sure we understood the intricacies of Costa Rican real estate laws. I can't recommend Dan highly enough, we not only bought a condo on that trip but also made a friend in Dan.
Looking forward to seeing you next spring when we are down. Take care and enjoy!
Daniel Talbot is the most professional realtor i have ever encountered. His dedication to finding the right property for his clients is endless. His knowledge of the area and home values is outstanding. His negotiation skills will always obtain his clients the best value for their money. His professionalism does not end at the closing of your property. Dan is always there to help you and make the transition to your new home and answer the many questions you will have being new to the area. His network of referrals is of tremendous value.
I sold my Tamarindo condo and bought a newer, bigger, beach-closer condo through First Choice Realty, with two closings in about 30 days, and all with the same money.
I've done about 25 property purchases and sales, in my life, and I've never had anyone perform as excellently and caringly as First Choice Realty. I worked with Derrick and Chad, who literally took care of everything.
Their advice was consistently sound all the way through. Their efforts were effective and conserved my time, energy, and money.
"It was great to have someone that knows Costa Rica's laws, land and people. Your group, especially, Chad and Grettel, added a personal touch that few real estate professionals know how to do. Besides finding us our dream piece of property, we feel we have also found new friends in Costa Rica. You have made us feel at ease with the process and intricate procedures of buying real estate in Costa Rica."
"Carol and I have been extremely happy with the work of everyone at 1st Choice Realty. They responded quickly and professionally to all of our questions by e-mail while we were still in the States. When we arrived to Costa Rica Grettel did a wonderful job showing us the areas and lots that we were looking for that were in our price range. She was patient and very knowledgeable to the area, offering insight and information that we would never have thought of. Grettel and everyone at 1st Choice Realty made purchasing property in a foreign country a much less stressful experience than it could have been. As a resident of the area, I now realize how lucky we were in finding 1st Choice Realty. They are, and will continue to be, the first company we think of and recommend to anyone coming down to visit looking for either investment property or a place to live."
"I am happy to see that Grettel and Chad’s diligence has resulted in gathering the requirements to close on Lot 24 in Pacific Heights. I had thought it would be yet another day so this was a pleasant surprise. Yes, the process was slow, but thanks to you, it was far less painful than it could have been. Through the ups and downs, you have been conscientious and professional in every detail. I truly appreciate your efforts and know that you will be successful in the future with your clients. Appreciation again for a job well done!"
In the fall of 2005, I had the good fortune of being referred to Chad Fisher of 1st Choice Realty in Tamarindo for helping me identify and purchase a special piece of Costa Rican property. It was Chad's familiarity with the region and his long standing relationships with those involved in it's land development that allowed me to purchase a wonderful property in the beach community of Avellanas that was not being marketed at the time. Chad demonstrated he will make the extra effort.
Dan Talbot made it possible for me to buy my dream home in Tamarindo. It was his none stop help that made it happen. Three years later he is still there for me if i have a problem. He is a good trustworthy man, and has never let me down.
Michael Mcmanus. Ottawa Ontario Canada.
Daniel has been invaluable. In terms of his business practice he is attentive, thoughtful, tireless , timely and ethical. His extensive market knowledge and skill resulted in our getting the best deal possible...the right deal and the right location. Subsequent to our purchase he has continued to assist us by connecting us with his legal and banking associates as well as familiarizing us with the local resources. Everything has been top notch. We do not know what we would have done without him.
Bill and Nora Barker, Calgary Alberta Canada.
The service and personal attention we received from Daniel at First Choice Realty was exceptional and unexpected right from the start! His expertise showed by asking the right questions by phone or through emails helping us to narrow our search before we arrived in Costa Rica. Upon our arrival he was organized and considerate when providing us with an itinerary of the houses we would view each day leaving us time to enjoy the beach and the activities offered in Tamarindo. After patiently going through all the listings and explaining the property details with us, he made sure we got the best value on our final choice. His knowledge of the local market and the surrounding contacts in the community helped us not only make an informed decision but also complete our deal with confidence in the short time we were in Costa Rica. Daniel is someone we can rely on and continues to help us by communicating the progress of the renovations of our home. Regardless of whether you are buying or selling, I would highly recommend Daniel to help you find your dream house. We could not have asked for a better Realtor to guide us through each step of what could have been a very stressful process.
Sincerely, Diane and Mike Kuhn Vancouver, British Columbia Canada.
Thank you so much for your warm hospitality, your time and a wonderful time you showed us in Costa Rica. We feel nothing less than having some good people like yourself helping us out with the real estate. My wife Lana fell in love with both you and Chad and your name came up several times ever since we got back to US.
I can assure you that we would definitely do something soon and will go through you since we really liked you guys and I personally enjoyed your company and Chad as well.
Have a great day and please give my regards to Chad and will talk to you soon.
I wanted to write a short note, thanking you for all your help and guidance, showing me various properties in Costa Rica. My objective was to get a feel for the availability and pricing for upper end real estate in Tamarindo, Hacienda Pinilla, Reserva Conchal, Playa Flamingo, Playa Langosta, and other private communities in that area. You showed me many exceptional homes and lots, but never wasted my time in any way. I am extremely impressed with your knowledge of the real estate market, and your ability to navigate the Costa Rican roads, many of which I am sure are not on any map. Thanks again for being a true professional.
The service and personal attention we received from Daniel at First Choice Realty was exceptional and unexpected right from the start! His expertise showed by asking the right questions by phone or through emails helping us to narrow our search before we arrived in Costa Rica. Upon our arrival he was organized and considerate when providing us with an itinerary of the houses we would view each day leaving us time to enjoy the beach and the activities offered in Tamarindo. After patiently going through all the listings and explaining the property details with us, he made sure we got the best value on our final choice. His knowledge of the local market and the surrounding contacts in the community helped us not only make an informed decision but also complete our deal with confidence in the short time we were in Costa Rica. Daniel is someone we can rely on and continues to help us by communicating the progress of the renovations of our home.
Regardless of whether you are buying or selling, I would highly recommend Daniel to help you find your dream house. We could not have asked for a better Realtor to guide us through each step of what could have been a very stressful process.
I have to say that your organization is truly first class. Your service and consistent contact is tremendous. Vianney was extremely thorough in his pursuit in identifying our needs and available inventory. Should our needs arise again in the future, yours will be the first contact we make.
"I did a lot of research prior to buying land in Costa Rica, and that involved contacting MANY agencies and agents, surfing countless websites, etc. What I found was that most agents really didn’t care to talk to me (much less email me back), unless I was standing in their doorway with cash in hand. Chad, however, answered all my questions & kept up contact via email and occasional phone calls. It’s a big decision to spend a large sum of money in a foreign country, but they walked me through the whole process and made me feel comfortable. I have to say I felt that everyone at 1st Choice was very professional, and honest (not just trying to “hard sell” something - the place kinda sells itself). So here I am now, a happy man, with a little piece of paradise to call my own, thanks guys."
For various reasons I wanted to sell my property before years end 2009. Your name was recommended to me from my good friend living in Tamarindo. I am very pleased with the way you have processed this transaction, our communication and your way of managing all necessary pieces leading to closing. Most of all I am impressed that you managed to find a buyer with such a short notice, also given the time of the year and the current economic climate.
For me as a seller, living in Sweden, with practicalities as time difference and not speaking Spanish your job has been invaluable. As you understand I will be glad to recommend you to other clients.
More satisfied clients enjoying themselves here in beautiful Guanacaste, Costa Rica. | 2019-04-20T21:13:59Z | http://www.1stcostaricarealestate.com/Testimonials/page_2339740.html |
1. The art! I really loved the amount of detail and care you've put into the character design, I've played a lot of otome games and this one is definitely in the top 3 art wise. The colouring was very 'gentle' and gave me a calming feeling while playing.
2. The music! I don't know if the songs were original or not, but they always fit the atmosphere very well.
3. The idea! I love love love mystery, but I also love slice-of-life college stuff, so both in combination should've been perfect. I deliberately used 'should', but more of that later. Even if the execution was in some points lacking, you definitely get props for original concept.
4. The GUI! Not much to say here - very accessible and easy to use!
5. Game flow! I liked how the routes diverged only in November, meaning that you could build relationships with all the guys till then. Even though naturally, you focus on one guy from the start, it's nice that Nicole didn't appear isolated during the game and still had interactions with everyone. I especially liked the fact that there was so much Darren in Kurt's route because they were roommates - it makes the interactions seem much more natural. The number of events in-between stat raising was also adequate, it didn't make me feel too bored.
1. CGs. (Guess I'll start with the smaller things first because I'm not quite sure how to express the rest... English isn't my native language, so sorry for that^^) Anyway, for a paid game the number of CGs per route is definitely too small. I didn't get any CGs in either routes till like, December, even though there were definitely CG-worthy moments before that, like where Nicole visits Ted's room or Kurt and Nicole browsing Nicole's blog. Sorry but even in free games there were more CGs than here and that's definitely saying something. In this case, I'd even say you should go with quantity over quality if you feel pressed for time because collecting CGs and looking at them later in the gallery is, for me, one of the most rewarding parts of playing otoge. If the background wasn't super detailed, I wouldn't mind as long as the characters are pretty. Also, I don't know if that's the case in every route, but in Ted's route I found the first CG - where they're arguing in the shop during the block party - not fittingly placed at all. I mean, they're shouting at each other for God's sake, but then all of a sudden in the CG they're totally happy while in the textbox the shouting continues? Come on. Either toggle the CG a bit later or make multiple ones that transcend with the scene. In a visual novel, of course I'm gonna rely on the visuals to tell a big part of the story so if story and visual don't match? It really disturbs the experience. In Lucky Rabbit Reflex, for example (I'm gonna be referencing this game a lot because the genre is very similar to your game - stat raising romance - sorry in advance for that), there's a CG of the player asking the guy what kinda girl he likes. Obviously, he likes the player but won't admit it, so while he dances around the topic, his eyes in the CG flit back and forth, looking to the player and away. It's such a minor detail but adds so much to the atmosphere! And it doesn't take much time to draw since all you have to change is the eye placement.
2. The dialogue. I've read it in other reviews of this game as well and I have to agree - at some points, rather often actually, the dialogue doesn't sound natural at all. Unfortunately I forgot to take screencaps while playing so I don't have any direct examples, but I'll try to generalise... You tend to use a lot of words that aren't used in teenspeak anymore, and that makes it sound like you're trying to forcefully sound 'hip' and 'cool', which... well, if you've ever had your parents try to do that when you were a teenager, you probably understand the feeling that dialogue gives off. In Ted's route, some of them are attributed to his accent, which I understand, but on the other hand, with the existence of the internet and the fact that everyone is exposed to a variety of accents through globalisation/migration and simply through watching stuff on the internet, I don't think local dialects are as pronounced anymore, especially with teenagers. I'd rather say that there's more or less one common 'teen English' which is 'in' and everyone tries to imitate it (see lol, yolo, dude, bro, and so on) and those words you had Ted - and even occassionally Nicole! - use were dialects spoken by the older generation. No teenager would try to imitate the way their parents speak, that would be way too 'uncool'! Especially Jeff's speech was way over the top, he sounded like some kind of comic book villain. And that would be fine, mind, if the game was written in a comic book style! But if you aim for a realistic, slice-of-life feel, which I got the impression you were trying to do, then you've got to make your characters sound realistic as well, and not like stereotypes. And that brings me to my next point.
3. Characters. Well, they weren't completely unbelievable. I actually did like all of them, even Jeff. But only because from the beginning on, I forced myself not to take the the game as a serious game but rather a comedy game. In that mindset, the characters' quirks and unusual sounding dialogue made sense since I could interpret it as a comedic relief. However, that point of view clashed with the very real and serious conflicts you introduced later in the game. Having Jeff still sound like a comic book villain during the final confrontation in the abandoned building, while he was being faced with the very serious crime of kidnapping and performing experiments on girls, just didn't sound realistic at all and somewhat ruined the scene. Similarly the way Ted kept being all overly serious and 'tsundere' even in supposedly fluffy and romantic moments. It just felt like every character's personality revolved too much around their main stat, which made them too two-dimensional, lacking dephth. Again, that would be okay in a mainly comedic type of game because you're not *supposed* to take those characters too seriously. But in this type of game, the characters seem too shallow. I also wished for Nicole to have a bit more character development over the course of the game depending on which route and stat you chose. Like, on Ted's route, she's dilligent and hard-working, right? Then have people complement her on her good grades! Have her make the smart choice and tell someone about the threats! In Kurt's route, she's zealous but more into sports than studies, judging by the activities you have to do to raise your stats. Then, have people tell her how fit she looks and have her act more rashly, let her fail some exams! It would add *so* much to the experience, making it easier to understand her choices. And if you say that would take too long/make the game too long, well, all those examples I brought up are from Lucky Rabbit Reflex, and that game costs just as much as yours while taking place over the course of a whole school year instead of just one semester! I'm just saying, if I pay money then I expect to get that money's worth back and I doubt I'm the only one.
4. Inner monologue vs action ratio. This one is a bit hard to explain but I'll try. Since this game is part dating sim part visual novel, of course I expect a lot of the ongoing action to be shown through, well, action - as in images on screen or dialogue. Instead, in this game I found the amount of Nicole's inner monologue, and of descriptions in general, to be disproportionally large. Why not show something instead of describing it in text? Similarly, why not have Nicole say/think something directly instead of describing it via first-person narration? Example: When Ted's Dad is introduced - actually, when every character is introduced - I remember Nicole going on a several lines long rant, describing their looks and how hot she thinks they are in detail. Why? The reader can perfectly well see the colour of their hair themselves! Instead, why not have her think something like "Whoa! DILF approaching at 12 o'clock!" and then express the rest in actions instead of musings? Like, if you have her stutter and be accidentally drop something while blushing, then force a laugh and apologise, to the reader it will be perfectly obvious she finds the other person attractive. You don't have to explicitly state in her inner monologue that she does so. Sometimes, less is more and it's better to have the reader see how the character reacts and infer the meaning for themselves instead of just bluntly stating it. Similarly with things like jokes. You don't have to have Nicole say "I chance a joke" or something (I don't remember exactly what was written). Instead, just have her make the joke and then clap her hand over her mouth or think "Oops". From that, it's already obvious that she's anxious whether the joke will be well-received, but it doesn't sound as boring as when stated bluntly. What I mean to say is, I think you should rely more on visuals and action/reaction instead of description.
5. Difficulty. To be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of stat raising. Mostly, I play choice-only VNs, so when I do buy a stat-raising game, I'm in for the story. I don't mind the stat raising as a means to an end, but in this game I found the difficulty level to be so high that it was very frustrating. Even on the easy setting, I was anxious till the beginning of December that I wouldn't be able to raise the stats enough for the special ending. I did manage it in the end, but I just barely made it and the fear that all that time could've been for nothing just made me needlessly stressed during the game. It wasn't about figuring out the right gifts or stats to raise, that was easy, but simply raising over 900 of the specific stat and 999 clues was such a huge hurdle that for me, the game felt too difficult. Maybe it's because I don't play dating sims very often, but it's not like your game should be aimed at 'veterans' only and anyway, in the other 2 such games I played (Lucky Rabbit Reflex and RE:Alistair) I didn't have any problems reaching the goal once I knew which stats corresponded to which boy and which gifts I had to give. If you wanna make a hard mode for people who like stat raising, go ahead, but if you say there's an easy mode, you should make it easy accordingly. Or simply make cheats for players like me, who're only in for the story, I wouldn't mind that either.
6. Plot. I have already briefly touched on aspects of this point in my other points, so I'll try to be brief. While I really liked the idea you had going, I found the execution to be very lacking. I had the feeling that you couldn't quite decide what type of game this is supposed to be and in the end, you just mixed all the elements together without finding a proper balance. There are elements of mystery, of slice-of-life, of comedy and of romance but all of them just don't fit very well together. I'm not saying that they're inherently incompatible, it's just that you jumped from one to the other so quickly and without a main thread to bind them all together that in the end, the game was neither here nor there. I'm being very abstract, sorry. I would've thought that the main focus of the story would be mystery (*serious* mystery, with maybe a few comedic elements but not with comedy as focus), as it was advertised as such. But, in that context, a lot of Nicole's choices just didn't make any sense. No sane person (of her age) would just run into an abandoned building, alone, without any weapon and without contacting anyone else. It would've been fine in a comic-style game, because it's supposed to be over-the-top for the sake of laughs, but the setting you had set up before that didn't allow for that. Nicole has loving parents, is fairly rational and smart (at least she's supposed to be in Ted's route - and here we again come to the point where stat decisions should influence her character) and has a boyfriend she repeatedly describes as reliable. In a mystery/slice-of-life oriented setting, her decision makes no sense at all! Maybe in Kurt's route, yeah, but not in Ted's. Also, the whole mystery thing - again, it seemed more fitting for a comedic story than a realistic one. Honestly, I suspected Jeff to be the culprit from the very start just because he was the stereotypical villain, but I kept hoping until the end that maybe it was someone else altogether, like idk, Nicole's roommate or something, because in a mystery oriented game no way should the first guess be the correct guess, right? And the whole showdown in general was just way too unrealistic for a not-comedy setting. But the game wasn't mainly comedy-oriented either because of the conflicts and decisions the characters had to face, because of the conversations they had and because, well, sorry to say it but the jokes you *did* implement just weren't that funny. *shrugs* So I hope you understand what I mean when I say you tried too many things at once but didn't really have a 'red thread' to follow through the story.
TL;DR: In conclusion, I'd say that the game has a very promising foundation but what you made out of it could use some more work. Especially for a paid game, I'd expect much more professionalism story-wise and character-wise. I admit I probably wouldn't have bought the game had it not been on sale and I don't think I'll be buying any Winter Wolves games in the near future. But I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for your new releases because I really do think your work shows a lot of promise, it just needs some more polish and experience.
2) plot - I agree that probably I didn't made my mind if the game was to be serious or not. This is one thing that I'm going to change for next games, I felt I was influenced too much by what people say or what is "the right" thing to do, limiting seriously my creativity. From now on I'll stick more to my own ideas (originally was to be a scary game, then decided to soften it up fearing that could have a negative impact on the success). However, I got A LOT of people praising the writing (not the story, the writing itself) more than all my other otome games, so I don't know what to say about this, since if I had to make a statistic, 99% of people loved the writing.
I'm not sure if I agree with some criticisms of Nicole, simply because some things are more subjective than others.
Dialogue 'naturalness' is pretty subjective: I can think of different reasons why people would use 'outdated' slang (with 'outdated' being a socially and historically relative term). I'm not sure if I agree with some assumptions and generalisations e.g. "Characters who don't sound like me or people I know are obviously 'unrealistic'!"; Globalisation and the Internet are contributing to local dialects being less pronounced, etc... Apart from being set somewhere in a *representation* of America during an unspecified year, the story doesn't give too many specific details about the surrounding campus community, local traditions and dialects--or even wider American society! And besides, with parody references to things like Rollr, Spacebook, etc... how reasonable is it to expect Nicole to strictly conform to our version of social 'reality'?
I feel as though Nicole's stat-raising elements slow down the narrative pace and don't contribute to a more open-ended engagement with the game world or its characters. Raising a stat has very little consequence (apart from determining the 'best' ending for each character if you raise the correct associated stat to a high level). In some stat-raising dating sims, stats influence possible actions (as well as the probability of success) and might trigger different scenes on subsequent playthroughs--and there's more than one way to get a 'happy' ending. In Nicole, the repetition becomes obvious: I keep performing the same actions just to trigger the next scene (kind of like how some 'freemium' games work) while hoping for high stat increases. I think Nicole would have greater story 'substance' as a straight VN with more focus on character relationships, backstory and a stronger integration of the mystery subplot into individual romance routes.
Yes, of course for this game is too late to change it now, but in next dating sims will think about integrating more the stats in gameplay too (unlocking some scenes as you say).
jack1974 wrote: Yes, of course for this game is too late to change it now, but in next dating sims will think about integrating more the stats in gameplay too (unlocking some scenes as you say).
Sorry for the harsh-sounding gameplay criticism. I still think Nicole has its good points; it's not easy trying to balance gameplay and narrative elements for mass-market appeal. As for me, I'd rather have a strong narrative than 'well-polished' gameplay mechanics. I'm fine with life sim 'micromanagement' as long as I feel as though the game rewards me for experimenting with different choices--and I'm not being 'punished' for raising the 'wrong' stats that lock me out of 'good' paths.
I just finished both Jeff (Normal) and Kurt's (Normal + Bonus) routes, and while I have many of the same complaints as the OP, I won't reiterate them as he did an admirable job explaining how I more or less feel about the game's shortcomings. So, I'm going to note some a few specific things that I enjoyed and disliked about the game and narrative.
First off, I really enjoyed the romance progression between Nicole and the 2 guys I finished, but especially Kurt. I haven't played many otome dating sims, but the few I have really didn't do a great job of establishing a solid foundation for the relationship between couples (it's usually, "I love you, I don't know why, we have absolutely nothing in common, but I love you" -- more or less). But here, you did a great job developing the friendships, and it was believable when they ultimately grew into something more. And I like the fact that yeah, they're not automatically head over heals in love, but these two characters really dig each other and what we're seeing is the beginning of what may be a great relationship. So, awesome job on that, guys!
I also thought Nicole's character was done rather well compared to most other otome MC's. Granted, she's not perfect (well, actually, maybe she's a little too perfect and could use a shortcoming here and there), but she's real and relatable, and outside of not telling anyone about the kidnapper's texts and investigating on her own (something I could probably spend paragraphs complaining about), she's someone I could imagine knowing in real life. Kudos on that as well!
Before I get into some of my nitpicks, I just wanted to convey how much I loved the bonus scene where Kurt really lays into Nicole for not telling him about the texts. I thought the dialogue between the two was some of the best in the game. I loved the fact that Nicole had to admit being wrong (something she hasn't done the entire game), and it really shows how much Kurt cared for her all along. Plus, it added a bit of conflict to the relationship, which I think every good romance needs.
That aside, I did feel the character development took way too long to flesh out, and perhaps that's partially the fault of the game system bogging down the narrative. My first play through it felt like FOREVER before anything happens in the story or between Nicole and the guy she's romancing. Even on my second play through, playing on Easy and concentrating on Kurt's stat and clues, things still didn't seem to get rolling with him until November, and then it's BAM BAM BAM as his story finishes up in the span of a few weeks.
Also, this may be more my fault than the game's, but playing it on the Kindle I could not for the life of me figure out how to skip scenes, and it became rather annoying having to speed tap my way through a good 50% of the game. That alone really burnt me out halfway through Kurt's route.
Anyhow, I'd have to say I still enjoyed the game a lot and will be playing through the other two guy's routes, I just hope you guys can take some of these criticisms/suggestions and apply them to the next life sim/VN you release, as I think it could end up being something really great if you fix the things that didn't work so well in Nicole. | 2019-04-23T05:02:21Z | https://winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?p=21274 |
What information can make a difference to the world?
How can we share information in creative ways?
How do we give a voice to the information we learn?
How can we share with others what we have learned from our clients?
How can our voice as a therapist become a community project?
Stefan Blom, Clinical Psychologist and author of The Truth about Relationships. 2003. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau.
Narrative practice created space for me to work with families engaged in high levels of conflict. This work is important: exposure to a chronically hostile parenting environment places children at extremely high risk for developing serious psychological difficulties. I will discuss how the narrative ideas of externalizing, positioning, therapeutic documents and landscape of action descriptions have been helpful in the work with families experiencing high levels of conflict around co-parenting.
Furthermore, I will briefly consider learnings from neuroscience about the RAGE and FEAR systems and how these can affect people’s ability to engage effectively in the therapy process. Having understandings from both areas of learning can facilitate the therapeutic process with families facing these challenges.
Janet Bytheway has worked as a clinical psychologist in private practice for 25 years.Janet is an accredited FAMAC mediator. Her original training was in depth psychology (psychodynamic) but 15 years ago shediscovered Narrative Therapy and postmodern thinking. This meeting with narrative opened the doors to many new ways of working and facilitated working in challenging areas like children living with chronic psychiatric conditions like Bipolar Disorder and their families; adults diagnosed with personality disorders; co-parenting in high conflict situations and doing court ordered family assessments and interventions. Janetrecently developed an interest in affective neuroscience and since 2015 has attended The Affective Neuroscience Playgroup. She has a special interest in working with children and families.
The practise of Narrative Therapy within the constraints of a general state hospital is a unique challenge. Crises, trauma, pathology, illness and death inundate my practice daily.
As a narrative therapy practitioner, I have learned to utilise therapeutic encounters as opportunities to assist patients in their journey through and beyond their problem-saturated landscapes. I will share an example of a collaborative conversation that unfolded during a narrative therapeutic journey with a victim of sexual violence. I aim to shed light on the narrative conversation; to discuss the challenges encountered on the therapeutic journey; and to celebrate the outcomes achieved through Narrative Therapy Practices with an appreciative audience.
Manie Engelbrecht – a qualified Psychologist and Social Worker – is fortunate enough to live on the beautiful Garden Route. Married to Alphia, a teacher, Manie has two energetic and creative children named Amarise and Armin. He is employed as clinical psychologist at George Hospital where he is responsible for psychological services in both the general hospital and in the Psychiatry Department. Manie was introduced to Narrative Therapy during his Social Work studies. He attended Elize Morkel’s Narrative Intensives in 2001 and 2007. In 2014, he attended Stephen Madigan’s Level 1 workshop. Since then, Manie has undertaken annual journeys to Somerset West, where he finds inspiration and rejuvenates his therapeutic skills. Manie is still practising to become an accomplished Narrative Therapist.
“What makes it hard for most of us to quit is that no-one is willing to listen to us. They always see us as criminals and treat us badly. That kills our self-esteem and we end up not knowing who we should speak to even if we want to be helped.” (The North Coast Courier 2017 May 3) Unnamed addict from Shaya Moya near Nkobongo.
This presentation focuses on using Narrative Theatre as an interactive community approach to deconstructing the single-story stereotyping of whoonga addicts (aka “paras”) – living in the Nkobongo community and its and surrounds – as drop-outs and criminals. Through Narrative Theatre, a group of high school learners begin to discover that listening to and sharing alternate stories that rehumanise and decriminalise young people addicted to whoonga, can transform anger, frustration and hopelessness. It can also open space for new attitudes and possibilities involving social cohesions and social responsibility. The results of the intervention will be presented.
Narrative Theatre aims to ‘promote social cohesions and increase social responsibility’ (Sliep, 2004:312). It encourages people to think beyond the individual to their roles and responsibility within the broader collective, as well as to recognize the potential contribution which groups can make to broader social issues.
Jeanne Haley is a founding member and Director of Mpower, a KwaZulu-Natal based organisation working with vulnerable children and youth, focusing on youth-headed households. Through individual and group workshops, Mpower collaborates with vulnerable children and youth to re-author their lives in a way that helps free them from the problem-saturated stories of their past and present and to open the way for new possibilities. Jeanne has a Master’s Degree in Psychology (UKZN). Her focus areas are narrative psychology, youth identities and community work. Jeanne has participated in Elize Morkel’s Narrative Therapy Intensive workshop, her workshop on a Narrative Approach to Community and Trauma and a workshop by Yvonne Sliep on Narrative Theatre.
Phelo Muyanga is Mpower’s Programme Co-ordinator. She has completed a BAdmin degree majoring in Human Resources. She draws her inspiration from seeing young people grow and develop the skills and confidence needed to take advantage of opportunities. Phelo is a narrative life coach and a skilled and experienced group facilitator. Phelo has attended a Narrative Therapy Intensive workshop and a Narrative Approach to Community and Trauma workshop with Elize Morkel. She received training in facilitation and group work from Jude Clark of the Narrative Foundation and participated in a workshop on Narrative Theatre by Yvonne Sliep. She has also completed the Firelight training course for emerging community leaders in the Cape, for which she was selected to receive a full bursary.
Nonhlanhla Mpuku works as a community worker and group facilitator for Mpower and Umhlali Methodist Church. Nonhlanhla has trained in First Aid, HIV/AIDS awareness, Counselling and Early Childhood Development. She is currently studying to be a teacher. Nonhlanhla has attended Elize Morkel’s Community and Trauma workshop and training in Narrative Theatre by Yvonne Sliep. Nonhlanhla finds working with young people challenging and exciting. She understands the pressures facing young people today and believes that they need to have a positive voice speaking into their lives.
Bongiwe Mthembu is one of Mpower’s community workers and an experienced group facilitator. She has completed training in Home-based care and First Aid at St John’s; Caring for the Terminally ill at Highway Hospice; Diabetes Management at Entabeni Hospital; Parent Effectiveness by Gordon Training International; Early Childhood Development by Hope Worldwide; and Personal Growth and Counselling Skills at Lifeline. Bongiwe is particularly passionate about helping young people who have lost hope and encouraging them not to give up. She has attended a Narrative Therapy Intensive workshop and the Narrative Approach to Community and Trauma workshop with Elize Morkel; training in facilitation and group work with Jude Clark of the Narrative Foundation; the Firelight training course for emerging community leaders in the Cape – for which she was selected to receive a full bursary- and a Narrative Theatre workshop with Yvonne Sliep.
Narrative Therapy has sensitized me to the effect that cultural discourses and power relations have on the career choices of young people. Instead of relying solely on psychometric testing and an expert opinion, I choose to respect the young person’s experiences, knowledges, values, hopes and dreams. We engage in meaning-making conversations that take into consideration the influences of cultural beliefs, especially beliefs regarding disability.
In this presentation, I will share the story of my journey with a boy with visual impairment and his struggle to pursue his dreams and work towards his preferred identity. My client will be present as he is keen to share his own experiences. Audience participation through outsider witness responses will be part of the presentation process.
Doreen Hofmeyr is a counselling psychologist in independent practice who specializes in Career and Subject Counselling for learners, students and adults.
Appreciative Inquiry has often been associated with Narrative practices. Elspeth McAdam has developed an Appreciative practice for schools. It has been used with good outcomes in different cultures and countries. We will share a video that shows how these ideas are put into practice. The video was made when we assisted Dr McAdam in her work with a community in South Africa in 2015.
How can we look out for stories that make people feel good?
How can stories nurture human dignity?
Can positive stories invite people to feel valued and open up possibilities for change?
How criticism, blame and shame invite people to justify their actions and create explanations leading to repeat of unwanted behaviour.
Sverre is Pre-school Educator with extensive Family Therapy Education.
Elin is a Psychologist, specialising in Family Therapy.
Sverre and Elin work together at the Family Office in Trondheim, Sweden. They both have considerable experience in working with children, youngsters, adults and families.
The Therapeutic Sandstory Method (TSM)* has been developed over many years of practice as an effective, playful and serious way of accessing children’s life stories within a narrative therapy context. In this presentation, I will describe TSM and its three main theoretical tenets for engaging with children: Story-making in therapy; Sandworld expression; and Therapeutic letter-writing. I will use a case study to illustrate TSM and discuss how the “retelletter” provides a useful means of externalising with children. I will invite further speculation about the mechanisms of change and healing made possible by TSM.
Jan is an educational psychologist. For the past nineteen years, he has been a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Rhodes University, Grahamstown where he is involved in the Clinical and Counselling Psychology Master’s programmes teaching and supervising students in the modality of child therapies. Jan has introduced narrative ways of understanding in these courses, especially with the counselling psychology group. He has always been drawn to stories and sand expressions and have, through my own practice, developed a unique way of engaging with children through the medium of sand, story-making and retellings, a co-reconstructing of their worlds in a playful way.
Resilient Kids bears witness to how giving children an opportunity to begin to tell, own and reframe their story has not only nurtured resilience but has also helped them to begin to be resilience builders for the children around them. Yet it was only after being the subject of two research studies by an American university that we became aware of the term Narrative Therapy.
In this presentation, I will relate some of my own journey, the organic development of Resilient Kids and the findings of the research. I will then discuss how children are guided to use the resilience building blocks to tell their stories, heal their stories and, in turn, help the children around them to manage the scripts in their forming stories.
Kay Lorentz, the Director of Resilient Kids SA, combines her counselling, teaching and adult facilitation training with her extensive experience working in cross-cultural community settings to create spaces that foster healing, learning, and care.
In this paper, I will use the personal narratives of myself as an English-speaking coloured woman and Elize Morkel an Afrikaans-speaking white woman respectively to reflect on our awareness of social injustices in South Africa. I will illustrate how Narrative Therapy assists us to view the impact of historical injustices, continued inequality and overwhelming trauma in the South African context. Through our professional connection and personal friendship over the past ten years we have been able to engage in acts of restitution on a personal, professional and community level. I will share examples of how Narrative Therapy has inspired us to generate hope and possibilities beyond our middle-class practices in ways that we had previously thought impossible.
Helen Malgas has been practicing as a Counselling Psychologist for the past 11 years. Currently she works as a Counselling Psychologist in private practice in Plumstead Cape Town. Currently she is employed by the South African College of Applied Psychology as a part-time lecturer. Helen also works as an independent contractor to the City of Cape Town Health Department where she facilitates groups for nurses and social workers employed at various primary healthcare facilities throughout Cape Town.
This is a story of my therapeutic journey through ‘unmapped territory’ (Epston, 2016)) with two boys who, to differing degrees, have lived on the fringe of the dominant culture in an all boys’ primary school. It is an exploration of masculine gender identity and how those who do not fit in have found ways of being within their environment. I will share how I have attempted to challenge the culture – both with other boys and with staff – and some of the affirmative practices that I have encouraged within the school. Finally, the two boys offer suggestions on what could have been done differently to provide a culture that is more accepting.
Anne McDonald comes from a history of teaching and is now an Educational Psychologist who, for the past thirteen years, has worked as a school counsellor in a boys’ only school. She has been involved in narrative practices since the outset of her counselling career and finds that this is the most successful way of working with children. She also has a small private practice and does some work in the community for the Shine programme.
Substance abuse can open families up to problems of mistrust, dishonesty and non-communication. Much damage can be done to relationships when complex problems accompany substance abuse and the problems start to take over. This is a story of a family recovering their relationships and undermining these problems.
Katy Menell is a narrative-inspired registered counsellor working from Prospect Hill Recovery Practice in Wynberg Cape Town. She has many years of experience working to minimise the effects of addictive behaviours on families and relationships.
“Externalisation” is a term that has become synonymous with Narrative Therapy and “Sneaky Poo” is the classic example of externalisation. The originally unique “intervention” – personifying a problem – has now become a “truth”: the generalised preferred way, or technique, of responding to problems. This has opened Narrative Therapy to criticism that it can be a crude and insensitive response to the complexity of the problems which people face; for example, in cases of abuse.
In this presentation, I will reflect on the well-known literary term “perspective” in the context of Narrative Therapy and its relationship to “externalisation” and “unique outcomes” as a way of refining and developing the theoretical position from which therapists can draw in their work as narrative therapists.
Dirk was born in Indwe and lived as teenager in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. He studied for the ministry at Stellenbosch University and, since then, has worked in the DRCA community in Qumrha (1983-1988) and in the URCSA community in Mdantsane. His post-graduate training was in Theology (MTh at Stellenbosch), literature (D.Litt. at UPE in 1991) and psychology (MA Counselling Psychology at RU in 2005). Dirk is now registered and practising as a psychologist and lecturer. In 2010, he started lecturing part-time in the Department of Psychology at Fort Hare University in East London and has been an Associate-Professor since 2012.
Zimmerman and Beaudoin (2015) invite Narrative Practitioners to extend their practice with embodied experiences as “Emotional defence becomes hard wired into your physical structure as body armour in the form of muscular tension, excess weight, numbness or disease” (Judith, 2015: 39). The Chakra system’s theoretical model (Myss, 1996); Bioenergetic Analysis (Lowen, 1977; Keleman, 1987); Chakra Yoga postures (Judith, 2015); and Breath Work (Andron, M. & Andron, B., 2012) all work towards connecting mind, body and spirit as well as releasing physical symptoms and emotional discomfort.
A case study illustrates how integrating Body Psychotherapy with Narrative Therapy supported both the re-membering of a preferred identity and the alleviation of physical symptoms for the client.
Jeanne is a Narrative Therapist in private practice. She integrates Narrative Therapy with Body Psychotherapy. Her Master’s thesis (2003) compared the developmental stages of Erik Erikson with the developmental stages of the chakra system. Jeanne completed a professional seminar in Massachusetts (USA) on the “Principles of Mind-Body Integration” in 2015. She is currently enrolled in The Charge Activation Training, a seven-month mind-body integration course offered by Anodea Judith from California, USA.
Jeanne applies the integration of Narrative Therapy and Body Psychotherapy daily: in her personal and family life; in private practice (with individuals, couples and families); and in her community work with large groups in schools.
This presentation will reflect on working with diversity in South African organisations. I explore the meanings that we attach to diversity through the exchange of personal and work stories and show how the narrative approach contributes towards developing behaviours and actions that value difference. The discussion will also refer to the Right to Equality as contained in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, and the Prohibition of Unfair Discrimination contained in the Employment Equity Act. The presentation will illustrate how the collective exploration of multiple beliefs, backgrounds, talents and ways of living can create an inclusive work culture that strengthens individuals, the workplace and wider society.
Linda Price is a registered organisational psychologist and runs an independent practice working with conflict, career and diversity issues. She designs and facilitates processes that explore diversity and aim to strengthen workplace relationships. Linda is also a conflict mediator and part-time CCMA commissioner. Supervision is central to her work: since 2010 Linda has run The Practice Diaries to nurture practice development processes. Linda has taught at UKZN and UCT in narrative psychology; career development; meaning of working life; organisational development; conflict management and professional development. She currently teaches on the Organisational Psychology Masters’ programme at UCT.
I often find psychiatric diagnoses limiting of clients’ lives and hopes for the future. I will share the story of a young girl who experienced that professional knowledges of a psychiatric disorder convinced her that she is abnormal and a failure in life while robbing her of hope for the future.
I will discuss and illustrate how we worked creatively with relational externalizations to investigate the psychiatric diagnosis that was shaping her identity. My presentation will include examples of the externalising conversations, therapeutic letters, poems and metaphors that were used during our collaboration. The focus on her insider-knowledges enabled her to re-author a preferred identity. This opened up hope and possibilities for her life. It also changed the way in which others view her.
Bettie Rall is an experienced counselling psychologist in independent practice at Cape Gate Therapy Centre, Cape Town. She did her Master’s training at the UOFS where Elmarie Kotzé was one of the lecturers. Elmarie introduced Betty to Narrative therapy in 1993. Over the past fourteen years Betty has also done extensive narrative training with Elize Morkel. Betty presented her case work at a previous Narrative conference in Cape Town and was acknowledged for her creative way of working with client’s narratives and metaphors.
Michael White uses maps as a metaphor to plot the journey of Narrative Practices. Many narrative practitioners have adopted this Journey Metaphor in their conversations with clients, very like the Tree of Life has become a well-known metaphor for working with traumatised children. I have found the Journey Metaphor a creative way to co-construct with clients a visual document using symbols to map the meaning-making therapeutic conversation as it fits into the person’s life journey. The unique outcomes become visible as points of entry towards new direction on the road.
The Journey Metaphor is a very accessible map to use in the training of lay counsellors and community workers.
Alesta has an Honour’s degree in Psychology (UOFS) and has completed a two-year program in Pastoral Narrative Therapy through the Research Institute of Religion at UNISA. An accredited member (Category 4 – Advanced Level) of the South African Association for Pastoral work (SAAP), Alesta is involved at the Helderberg Dutch Reformed church as a Trainer and Supervisor for counsellors. Alesta describes herself as “a creative individual”. | 2019-04-23T06:04:23Z | http://elizemorkel.co.za/description-of-parallel-sessions/ |
As teachers, we are always looking for new ways for students to introduce themselves. Most of my professional and technical writing courses incorporate social constructionist perspectives. Now, when I begin my courses, I ask students to introduce themselves by documenting and describing their workspaces (and places). This allows them to start the course by describing something with which they are familiar, but also prepares them to think about writing in terms of a situated activity.
I. First I have archived some examples (from students that have cleared me to post them).
II. And second, I have shared a basic version of this assignment.
My name is Alex Adrian. I am the Lead Online English Teacher for Scottsdale Unified School District’s eLearning and SOL programs.
My workspace is very special to me because I spend more time at this desk than I do in my bed. I am seated at this desk for hours upon hours every day, so I needed to make the area not feel like a work desk. The pictures and other small pieces allow me to lean back in my chair and forget about work for a few minutes a day and just reminisce about great memories. It may look to some like a clustered mess, but this is what I like to call my organizational mess. It takes others minutes to find something on my desk that takes me seconds to find.
My name is Dennis Mitchell, and I write in a few distinct work and academic roles: in my full-time employment as “Institutional Research Analyst” at Mesa Community College (MCC); as a part-time English composition adjunct faculty at the same college; and as a graduate English Rhetoric and Composition Student, currently at Northern Arizona University.
The top left and bottom pictures of my mashup capture my office at MCC. I spend the vast majority of my workdays starring at the two monolithic monitors hanging above my desk; a picture of a favorite place (Chase Field) and other trinkets help the office feel more comfortable. The two monitors help display many data sets and reports at once to assist in the creation of my own work-related texts. Interruptions emanate from my email inbox, coworkers, boss and uncomfortable office temperature, and I occupy this workspace during a typical weekday schedule. While this office is primarily used to construct work-related texts, I do use this workspace to compose faculty-related or student-related texts during breaks or after business hours.
My home desk occupies the top right of my mashup image: one monitor with stacks and shelves of papers, books and baseball memorabilia. Creating texts in this environment faces distractions from my dogs (a chubby Chihuahua and a black lab mix), my significant other, household tasks, the TV in the nearby living room or noises outside.
My name is Ramon Lira. I work as an academic advisor and ESL adjunct instructor at Phoenix College. I’m currently taking additional English courses through NAU to be eligible to teach other areas such as composition and creative writing.
My workspace is a desk in a spare bedroom, which I share with my wife. The desk is simple, with only “useful” clutter such as paper, pens, a small lamp and computer equipment. To the right is my collection of some interesting things I’ve collected over the years, such as a paper mache replica of a mummy and a Michael Jackson skeleton figurine, both of which I picked up while visiting my wife’s hometown in Mexico.
My name is Anthony Garcia and this is my first semester at NAU in the graduate professional writing certificate. I currently work in both the public school and higher education settings teaching English. This fall I will be transitioning exclusively to teaching in the higher education setting at Tidewater Community College and Old Dominion University, in the Norfolk/ Virginia Beach area.
The picture of my work area is necessarily basic, but arguably complex. This is my work environment in the public school that I teach in. The work area is extremely basic where only the humming of the HVAC system keeps me amused. I do not favor a generic work environment for getting most of my writing done. Instead, I prefer the white noise of coffee shops, kids playing in a pool, or the waves rolling onto the shore. For this reason, I’m returning to higher education in the fall where writing, grading, and conferencing with students offers more flexibility.
My name is Kevin Boyd and I am a student at Northern Arizona University in the MA in English program. My workspace for my studies consists of a desk in my bedroom with a computer hooked up to a forty inch television as a monitor. When I am alone, it is a perfect setup to write and complete schoolwork. The large monitor allows me to write on one side of the screen and have another document or website on the other side for quick reference.
Unfortunately, I also have to share my workspace with a four-legged friend. My cat’s food is also on top of the desk. The desk is the only safe place we have been able to find where our dog is unable to get into his food. Sometimes when I am working the cat comes up to eat, paws at the monitor, or tries to rest his head on my hand that should be typing.
My name is Selina Reid, and I am in the Rhetoric and Teaching Writing (RTW) program with NAU. This is my first semester as a graduate student, although graduate school is my area of expertise. I currently hold a staff position at Arizona State University in the Graduate College, where I’m a jack-of-all-trades, helping students, applicants and academic units go from application to graduation. I specialize in dealing with international students, international transcripts review, and I issue I-20 documents which allow international students to apply to get their student visas and study in the United States.
My workspace differs according to what tasks I need to accomplish. Much of my reading is done while walking on my treadmill. You can see my makeshift foam and duct tape “desk” that I rest my books on. I studied and read throughout my undergraduate career this way and I am convinced that walking and reading makes me learn more efficiently.
The big, brown chair is the latest addition to my reading and studying workspace. This chair is only for lazy, non-serious reading and writing. This is not a schoolwork chair.
The kitchen table is the best workspace for writing and doing school assignments. I like being next to the kitchen and family room while I work, but sitting at the table forces me to get down to business, unlike the comfy chair.
Since I am not permitted to take a picture of my workspace at Gore, you get to see my workspace at home. My name is Steven Seamons. I am an associate at W.L. Gore & Associates, and I attend NAU.
At this workspace I am a father of 4 (2 girls and 2 boys) all under the age of 8, and it is very hard to find a free minute, or at least quite free minute.
For this assignment you get a glimpse of this workspace in all of its glory. On closer inspection you can see we have a lot of coats. We live in the mountains and we are always in need of an extra layer, my workspace is also the coldest spot in the house. I have to wear socks so my feet don’t turn into ice. This workspace is most commonly used for storage of bottles, crayons, children’s art, and supplies for runny noses.
My undergraduate self of 8 years ago would be shaking her head in disbelief if she saw this. Gone is the idealistic dream of what I thought my home office would one day be like when I became a mother and a teacher. Instead, on what doubles as my dining room table (my favorite piece of furniture, witness to countless family occasions with all the people I hold dear) there sits what appears to be a mess. On the contrary, I promise, it is actually an organized chaos of bills, business paperwork, and now, as evidence of my jump back into the academic world, endless amounts of English classwork. It is a place that is uncharacteristically peaceful for me in the early morning hours and afternoon naptime, knowing the most precious things in the world to me, my twins 3 ½ and new baby boy, 8 weeks, are sleeping soundly in the rooms within earshot. It’s true that this is probably not the most convenient home office for a student, business owner, mother, and former English teacher, however, the views are great and the kitchen (copiously stocked with cereal, coffee and beer- essentials for every busy mom) is close by, so I can’t complain.
I work in two separate environments in distinct capacities. The larger and more vibrant image is the space in which I free write and work as a student. It is my game station and link to the world and all its ills. Books and images surround me, things representative of who I am—tiny Batman figurines, a replica of Sting from The Lord of the Rings, and the desktop image of a Black Mage from Final Fantasy. The other half is my workspace at Undergraduate Admissions and Orientation at Northern Arizona University. At this place I maintain an orderly environment with minimal personal conveniences. I keep it neat so that if I need to move it isn’t a hassle. The small flashes of personality are random holiday gifts we receive in the office and, of course, a fantastic image of Tremors as my desktop background. It is here where I write procedural documentation and the occasional essay for school.
I share an office in the communications building with another faculty member, which is the typical setup; offices are located at each end of the building with classrooms in between. I spend many hours writing in this space, most recently developing student and instructor materials for the college’s new student success course, which just completed its first year of implementation. Sometimes I work through periods of concentrated writing activity, and other times I engage in conversations with colleagues, students, and administrators. I usually place work on the desk to the left of the computer, which I removed in order to give this picture a cleaner look, but I am fairly neat in the way I typically maintain my writing space. I enjoy writing here and the relatively quiet location at the end of a hallway. I also enjoy the close proximity of a window, glancing out of which provides an occasional quick break when needed to reenergize my writing.
Our office and my desk are hidden away in the basement of the administrative building on campus, but I like it that way. It allows for our small staff to work together without distraction and shields the outside world from the chaos that we often create. Our writing takes many forms and those texts create action. That action is often noisy, causing the rest of the college campus to appreciate the existence of a “lower level”. I have a distinct area for my own creative processes, but I share the larger communal space with two other staff members. I find it both comical and telling that we regularly communicate through text via internet signals and computer screens when we sit within inches of one another.
My name is Jesse Maloney, I’m a substitute High School teacher at Greyhills Academy High School and graduate student at Northern Arizona University. The place where I like to conduct my school work now that it’s summer is at the bar in our outdoor parlor.
When I put on some surf shorts and a basketball jersey it’s a serene warm setting even at night and I don’t feel cooped up and stressed. It helps to lose track of time and get quality reading and writing done with my heavy semester.
We all, likely, have multiple places in which we work and in which we read, think, and write. This assignment asks you to document and describe the key features of your environment at one of those “places”. I put “places” in quotations because it may be a fluid and dynamic location. You can, and should here, think of work places and spaces as both a physical location, but also as a time-based location. What else is potentially at play? For example, do you share the space with others? Is there anyone else competing for that space? Are there interruptions? Etc.
To think about reading and writing as things that happen in spaces, in locations, in specific time periods, is a unique way to introduce yourself to others in the course. Follow these instructions. This firs assignment will also prompt you think about the production of texts as a literal and situated act that happens in real locations. And it will help you get to know your classmates a bit in order to jumpstart the formation of our classroom community.
With this in mind, I was recently inspired by the discovery and playfulness of a blog: http://nathanmeunier.com/2012/06/22/shop-talk-freelance-workspaces-volume-1/ that invites writers to send photographs and brief descriptions of the settings and spaces in which they work. As teachers, researchers, and students of writing, we all spend endless hours in these spaces writing and working. See my example at: https://acomposing.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/the-work-spaces-and-places-of-writing-teachers-researchers-and-administrators/. Consider how my example is primarily playful. Feel free to be playful yourself, but also focus on including some serious forms of analysis about some aspect of your workspace that is worth comment.
So, tell us a bit about your workspace.
1. Include only one (JPG) photograph (which can be a mash-up, multi-panel photograph) of the setting/space in which you work and write.
2. Include the following information: your name, title/job, and the university/school with which you are affiliated.
3. And include a short description focusing on what you find most interesting to describe/share about your workspace.
4. Post your narrative for the class to see. Remember: Write it in a fashion where you feel comfortable sharing publicly. Do not include details that you don’t want others to know. Do not include details that you might consider too personal for some reason.
After I first read Myer’s book, I came to appreciate the evolving generational differences in the forms of literacy education. They became apparent, for example, in my own family as I grew to recognize that my grandfather was taught a form of literacy that valued different kinds of “reading” than my own. My late grandfather, Robert Koshnick, was educated in a rural Minnesota one-room schoolhouse during the early 1900’s. Throughout his childhood, he was taught printing through tracing and replication (a significant overlap between his education and my own grade school work), but he was also taught to memorize and recite long passages of both prose and poetry. This emphasis on memorization (recitation on Myer’s chronology) was no longer valued by the time I was in grade school. Whenever he would quote Tynneson, Poe, Robert Service, Yeats, etc. I envied him because I did not share his ability to recite tens of poems by heart.
As Myers’ book argues, translation captures aspects of our current literate practice. The ability to translate, i.e. to summarize, re-symbolize, and transfer information from specific sources for use across shifting social, political, and professional contexts takes a great deal of training and practice to do well. Given the power and relatively availability of increasingly “hand-held” search engine devices, via Google, etc. we can find vast stores of information instantaneously -the primary skill that must be emphasized, given these trends, is to interpret and repurpose that information for shifting purposes and audiences. Where once we stressed honoring established works of poetry and literature as aesthetic and moral achievements -when we include such works now, we value instead the ability to: a) decode, and therefore learn from them; b) to summarize, and therefore symbolize for renewed intentions and purposes. These abilities do not require memorization, or recitation, largely outdated forms of literate practice.
My teaching practices in reading and writing have been utterly influenced by my understanding and appreciation of a translation literacy for modern, functional, goals and outcomes. And yet, inspired by the legacy of my grandfather’s (recitation) childhood literacy to memorize and recite poems, I have, and continue to, dedicate myself to such learning. I have done so on my own terms as an adult and often with the sneaking suspicion that -although outdated- my own childhood was intellectually malnourished by the loss of such practice. Sure, admiration of my grandfather has influenced my perspective, but for years I could sense, but could not adequately explain why the ability to recite poetry in particular felt so important and powerful.
When I was introduced to the concept and term “gignomai” however, I was suddenly able to both establish and explain just what happens when we hone the ability to memorize and recite specific passages. Ever since, when teaching those courses in writing that are explicitly grounded in the humanities, I have included the following assignment in my courses, with the following explanation of its value.
This is what I expect of this assignment. You are to enter into the work – populate a poem with your own identity – bring together two realms – you and a poem – until they become each something a little more familiar.
A good poem is an introduction to the world. In medieval times, a poet was called ‘a maker’. According to this understanding, a poet makes the world. And, in a way, every story, every poem is a form of making and re-making the world. Such stories, however small, are not fanciful, complete fictions – rather, they inform us about the world. They tell us how we live, often in surprising and sobering ways.
Consider for a moment the Greek word: Gignomai –born of ‘gnosis’ or “knowing” it is commonly known as the form of knowing that is ‘to become’ -a from of knowledge whereby you become that knowledge. Gignomai, or knowing, in this sense, is a happening, a becoming.
It is to take within, and a transformation occurs. Memorizing poetry – the act allows a poem to enter fully into your self both consciously and unconsciously. It transforms your views in particular instances because you can call on the relationships inherent in a poem, to evoke a feel, or felt sense, of knowing particular words, or situations more immediately and fully.
And so poetry is a happening, a making in a very sincere sense.
Poems also entertain. When you memorize a poem, like learning to play a groovy song on the guitar, you may find yourself reciting it (to the amazement of others) around a campfire, or to yourself when you are stuck in traffic waiting patiently. Many people who memorize poetry often say it can be comforting at times, to have something familiar to recite much like a secular form of praying. The act offers an immediate connection with some part of the cosmos.
What follows below is the assignment and some suggestions on memorizing. But first read this entry from Karen McCosker’s book A Poem a Day.
Recalling what he knew oriented my father. The poem gave him breathing space in the crowd, and time to recover from the anxiety of feeling off balance. Hearing the words he had memorized helped him make his way because they suggested an an association between the strange place and the familiar poem, gathering up the distance between Athens and his upstate New York home.
During the course of this term, you are expected to memorize 2 poems of at least 15 lines. You may also choose to memorize specific lines from a play of the same minimum length.
On the day of the quiz, you will clear your desks and write out the poem on a piece of paper. You will have roughly 8 minutes to write the poem out and hand it in to me. You must demonstrate a near perfect transcription for full credit.
Each quiz is worth 5% of your grade. This is an all or nothing assignment. Minimal word variations in several lines is acceptable such as articles omitted or substituted: ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘an’ and a couple (meaning 2 or 3) word variations will be allowed. Form, word, spelling and meaning must remain wholly intact in at least 14 our of your 15 lines for credit. This includes knowing the line breaks throughout your poem.
You must choose and hand in a typed copy of the poem (or lines of play) to me roughly 3 weeks before quiz day. Unless you are very talented, DO NOT try to memorize 15 lines in one night! This kind of exercise will take at least 4 concentrated sessions to learn fully.
Than blood in the heart.
death by avalanche, birth by failed contraception.
the sod and caprice of landlords.
let me bash out praises — pass the tambourine. | 2019-04-23T12:52:32Z | https://acomposing.wordpress.com/tag/literacy-2/ |
Don’t forget to read chapters 1 2 3 4 !
Alex wakes up to the smell of bacon. He rolls out of bed, not wanting to wake up. But at least it was Friday. And he had an essay due today. He threw on some clothes and headed downstairs. Laff was at the stove making eggs, bacon, and pancakes all at the same time.
“Morning, sleepy head,” Lafayette said casually, flipping a pancake. He’s wearing an apron that read French kiss the cook. It belongs to his mom.
“Yeah, yeah,” Alexander replies, sitting down at the table. Lafayette places a plate in front of him loaded with food.
Turns out, Hamilton is hungrier than he thought he was, and he ends up eating everything. “Don’t eat too fast mon amie,” his friends says, taking a bite of crispy bacon.
Alex rolls his eyes and happens to catch a glimpse of the clock. “Shoot! We’ll be late for the bus!” He throws his stuff into his bag and runs out the door, Lafayette close on his heels. If they weren’t in such a rush, they would have noticed the red Corvette parked outside their house, and maybe even the person sitting inside the car.
They sit down with the rest of their friends. “We were worried you wouldn’t make it,” John says, tucking a stray strand of hair behind his ear.
“Sorry, I was having Alex here actually eat some breakfast,” Laff replies, lightly punching his friend in the arm. “And of course, I made sure he had one cup of coffee.” Hercules lets out a short bark of laughter.
When they get to their lockers, James is standing by his, looking at his phone every few seconds. Jefferson is nowhere to be seen.
“Is something wrong James?” John asks, only a little bit of concern in his voice. Madison looks up, startled.
“Oh, uh, yeah. Just worried about Thomas, that’s all.” He begins to having a coughing fit.
“I say it’s a miracle he’s not here today,” Alex remarks, opening his locker. When he closes it, James is giving him the death glare. “What? You know I hate the guy.” James rolls his eyes and stalks away.
As John and Alex are going to meet up with Laff and Herc, John stops him.
“Yeah, I should! When’s the first meeting?” He looks at the poster. “It’s next Wednesday the 29th, after school. I bet you at least one person is going to quit once they see me debate. As long as it’s a good topic…” He trails off, looking to see what the topic is. A grin begins to spread across his features.
John knows that look. “What’s the debate?” he asks, a goofy grin on his face.
“I’ll say,” John replies just as they get pounced on from behind. They whip around to find Hercules and Lafayette, who are stifling laughter.
“You should see the look on your faces!” Hercules wheezes.
“You nearly gave us a heart attack!” Alex scolds, but he’s smiling nonetheless.
Behind them, Aaron comes out of the shadows and looks at the poster. He grabs a form, too. It’ll be fun to debate with Alexander, he thinks before going to history.
“Sure,” Alex says. Maybe, if Charles had been available, things would have turned out differently later on.
While everyone is going about their day and beginning their classes, Jefferson is waiting for the right moment. He’s sitting in the red Corvette, wondering just how long it take for Lafayette’s parents to leave the house. Well, parent. His dad is off in some other country fighting for the US Army.
Technically, Thomas isn’t allowed to drive. He is only fourteen, after all. But he doesn’t live to far from here, and he knows no police patrol this area. So, he borrowed his dad’s car. He won’t notice; the man works from home. Besides, at least he knows how to drive.
At around nine o’clock, Lafayette’s mom finally leaves. When she’s long gone, Jefferson steps out of the car and walks to the front door. He’s wearing casual clothes so as not to look suspicious. Just a cousin who is trying to get in the house to surprise them (if anyone asks). And the backpack is just his luggage (again, if anyone asks). He checks under the front door mat; no key. He goes around to the back door and is relieved to find it unlocked. That’s one less thing to worry about, that’s one less thing to worry about.
He walks in, and is glad that they don’t have a dog. If they did, that would be a disaster. He walks upstairs, trying to figure out which one is Hamilton’s room. It’s definitely not the one covered in america and france flags, so it must be the other one. He double checks that his gloves are on before entering. He can tell this is his room because there are stacks of paper all over the desk, with a neat little square in the center set aside for his laptop.
Thomas smirks. “This is what you get for pranking me,” he murmurs.
He starts by scrambling all the papers on his desk so that he has to spend hours looking for everything. Next, he takes out the material from his backpack. The pre-prepared, empty Sprite bottle, tape, a broken pencil, water, a video recorder, and one other special ingredient that will be revealed later. He not so mean as to put dye in it, but he has something else prepared.
There’s only one problem with his plan. He either has to leave through the window so he doesn’t mess it up, or he has to hide in here until Alex opens the door. He decide to leave out the window. Why? Well, for one, he might get seen if he hides. Two, there happens to be a roof for the patio in the backyard, so he can climb on that and safely crawl onto the trash cans to get down. And thank goodness Alexander’s room is in the back of the house.
He gets to work and is finished with the trap in five minutes. The next part is the camera. It’s a special kind that links directly to his phone, so that none of the footage can be accessed from the camera itself. Plus, if it gets found, he’ll still have the files.
If you couldn’t already tell, Jefferson’s family is rich. To make things better, his mother is an inventor, and the camera was one her own devices.
After an hour of getting it set up, everything is ready. Thomas looks at his watch and sees it’s eleven o’clock. He makes sure the camera placed on one of the desk drawers is secure and working before leaving through the window.
Back at school, Alexander has turned in his essay, confident he’s gotten a perfect score on it. His teacher was slightly shocked when she saw that he did twenty paragraphs, but she tried hard to not let it show. But Alex say it on her face.
“Sure! Brooklynn, Aurora, would you like to help?” They nod. Maria didn’t sit with them today, but she also didn’t sit the cheerleaders. At least, not yet.
They spend the rest of lunch going around campus posting the fliers. Eliza personally goes up to Alexander and hands him one.
Alex grins and says, “Thanks, Eliza!” He pulls out his phone and begins to install the app. His friends do the same.
When he gets to the sign up, he has to enter his real name (that anyone can see if they hover over his nickname) and then contemplates a nickname. What should I do? he wonders. Then he gets an idea. He types in Mr. Non-Stop. It suits him in many different ways.
When he gets to the Terms and Conditions, he actually takes time to read them. Good thing he did, because one of the rules was no cursing allowed.
As soon as they all sign up, they befriend each other. John is Turtle Man, Lafayette is The Frenchiest Fry, and Hercules is simply HERCULES MULLIGAN! The app is really cool, in fact. You can do private chats, group chats, post pictures or videos, post articles, use study help, and much more.
They’re so into setting up their accounts that they forget about the time, and soon the bell catches them off guard. They rush to their next classes.
Finally, James Madison texts Thomas Where are u.
Sick. Aka, pranking Alex. Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.
That explains it, James thinks. He then types, You have to sign up for this app Angelica made. He sends him a picture of the flier and adds, My username is ‘Coughs-a-lot’ btw.
Thanks man. Thomas installs the app and gets to work creating his account. He decides on the username Magenta Man. As he scrolls through the other members, he befriends Madison. He also finds the usernames for the Hamilsquad. It’s useful information he may need.
After school, the Hamilsquad decide to hang out at Lafayette’s house. And they decide to use Alexander’s room. They don’t know the irony of it all.
Alex is the first one to walk in, his friends relatively close behind. But not so close that they get splashed with water, like Alex. He suddenly finds himself not only drenched, but covered in bright pink glitter. A gasp escapes his throat. He stands there, his arms at his side, as if about to say What?!
He slowly turns around to look at his friends, who are in shock. “Who did this?” he growls, murder in his eyes.
“How could I have done it?” Hercules asks.
“You know we’d never do such a thing,” John explains.
That’s when Alex panics. He does it for two reasons. One: his backpack might have gotten some of the blast and his papers might be wet. He takes it off and is relieved to find that only the straps got wet. He throws it onto his bed. The second thing is the fact that someone came into the house.
His friend rush to get towels for the water and a vacuum for the glitter. Alex dusts himself off as best he can, but the glitter sticks to him like glue. That’s when he notices his papers. He rushes over to them and sees that they are all screwed up. He looks in his drawers to see if anything in there was messed up, and that’s when he notices the camera.
His friends come back and they begin to clean up. Alex decide to get into the shower to wash as much of the glitter off as possible. Be scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, but when he came out of the shower, pieces of glitter were still stuck in his hair. Why did I keep my hair down today, he thinks. At least he didn’t wear his favorite hoodie; then Thomas would really be asking for it.
He puts on a pair of sweatpants and walks back into his room to find a shirt. The glitter has been cleaned, and now his friends are trying hard to pry the camera off the desk. John has a flat headed screwdriver and is trying to get a grip on the smooth edge of the camera without scratching the wood of the desk.
When Alex walks in, he accidentally drops the screwdriver. Alex immediately chalks it up to his grip slipping. But that is not what is going through John’s mind. John is worried as heck right now, and he hopes it doesn’t show on his face.
Alexander finds a shirt and puts it on. He takes the screwdriver from John and has a go at the camera. It pops off within seconds. It’s really small, and Alexander wonders how such a small thing can hold the recordings. What he doesn’t know is that the footage is already on Jefferson’s phone.
They all shake their head. Hamilton groans and plops down on his bed, his face buried in his pillow.
His phone dings, and so do his friends. They look at their phones and see that someone sent them something through Angelica’s app. Alex is the first to open it up, and he’s horrified by what he sees. It’s the video of the water getting dumped on him. And it was just sent to the whole school. By whom? Magenta Man.
His finger fly across the screen fast as he sets up a chat with the whole Hamilsquad and Jefferson.
Mr. Non-Stop: You just signed your death warranty.
Magenta Man: Are you threatening me? I thought this app was a safe environment.
Mr. Non-Stop: You’re one to talk about a safe environment! You just sent the whole school an embarrassing video of me. Plus, I could have you ARRESTED for breaking and entering.
Mr. Non-Stop: It’s so hard for me to not correct your grammar right now.
Magenta Man: Don’t worry dude. I’m sure no one will make a big deal out of it. It’s just a prank.
Alexander leaves the chat real quick to find comments on the video. He takes a screenshot and sends it to the chat.
Mr. Non-Stop: You call this nothing? Look at all these comments!
Turtle Man: Hopefully it will blow over during the weekend.
Magenta Man: Not gonna happen. I’ll make SURE everyone remembers on Monday.
Magenta Man: Oh no, alex swears. You’re such a bad boy.
HERCULES MULLIGAN!: Did you just wrITE ALEXANDER’S NAME WITH A LOWER CASE!?!?!?
Turtle Man: HOW DARE YOU INSULT ALEXANDER LIKE THAT!!!!
Mr. Non-Stop: Now you listen here Jefferson. I will not let you go walking all over me like that. I am a living, breathing human being that deserves much better than how you’ve been treating me. You’re just jealous because I am smarter than you and can write better. And watch; if you go to the debate club, I will beat you. I will beat you ten to one. Are you willing to take me on? Or are you too scared to have to face someone that is smarter than you and two thirds your size? Bring it on Thomas Jefferson. I will be waiting.
Mr. Non-Stop: It’s *you’re* by the way.
Magenta Man: I know. I did that to annoy you.
Alex turns off his phone and puts his face back in the pillow, trying to calm himself down. “You alright mon amie?” Lafayette asks tentatively. He muffles something into the pillow.
“Couldn’t understand you. What’d you say?” John asks.
Hamilton lifts his head slightly and repeats, “The whole school say me get dumped with glitter, and I still have some in my hair. How do you think I feel?” He puts his head back in the pillow.
Lafayette, Hercules, and John all look at each other. Unsaid words pass between them, and everyone gets to work. Lafayette goes downstairs to get some snacks while Hercules finds a movie for them to watch. It will most likely be a Disney movie.
Despite his head being in a pillow, John still understands what he says. “No.” He didn’t want it to come to this, but he’s going to have to do it.
“No,” his muffled voice responds curtly.
“Okay, don’t say I didn’t try…” John forcefully turns him over, grabs him by the arms, and pulls. Once Alex is sitting up (against his will), his friend grabs him around the waist and pulls. Hamilton is smaller than John by height and weight. Part of the reason why he’s so thin is because a.) he doesn’t eat much and b.) he gets sick easily.
John half drags, half carries Alexander out of the room. He tries to escape, but it’s no use. When John wants to, he can have the grip of a python. Finally, they get to the couch in the small loft, and John practically drops Alex on it. Lafayette and Hercules come up the stairs, their arms pull of popcorn, potato chips, and sodas.
“So, what are we watching?” John asks.
“It’s a surprise,” Hercules responds.
“So I see you were able to convince Alex to come?” Lafayette says as a question.
“No. I have to drag him here,” John replies, ruffleing Alex’s hair. This sends a shower of sparkles everywhere. “Oops,” he murmurs.
“I’ll stay as long as you got root beer,” Alex says. Laff holds up a can if it and smiles. “Looks like I’m staying,” Hamilton says.
They divvy up the snacks and Hercules puts the movie in. As soon as it starts, they know what it is: Moana, which happens to be Alexander’s favorite. They probably did this on purpose.
When they get to the song ‘How Far I’ll Go,’ John starts to sing. Like, actually sing, as if he was alone and no one was there. And he sounded good, too. His sort of girlish voice helps.
His friends stare at him, and it takes Laurens a minute or two to realise they’re doing it. He glances over at them and begins to blush.
“I didn’t know you could sing!” Alex exclaims. “And you’re good, too.” This makes John blush even harder.
“W-well, I-I thought you’d all l-laugh at m-me for it,” he stutters.
“Of course we wouldn’t mon amie.” They turn their attention back to the tv, and John begins to hum along quietly. A thought flashes through Alexander’s mind, but he quickly pushes it away. He doesn’t want to worry about that right now.
When the movie’s over, Hercules and John go back to their houses while Laff and Alex go downstairs for dinner. Once they’re finished, Lafayette makes Alexander get into bed a eight o’clock, and he takes away his laptop.
I’ll organize my papers tomorrow, he thinks. And once again, he is going to sleep earlier than usual. | 2019-04-26T01:38:34Z | https://fangirling.blog/the-fangirl/hamilton-meets-high-school-ch5/ |
The infamous Kiran Dhawan murder case is all set to take centre stage once again with the police trying to ascertain if the man accused of murder has been arrested rightly or not.
The police is set to reopen the case as it has been claimed that fresh evidence is pointing finger at someone else.
The police is seeking production warrant of the accused Parkash, who is lodged in Central Jail, and would demand his brain mapping and narco-analysis test.
A senior official said the police had doubts if he was the actual killer or not as there was no corroborating evidence to support the theory. Parkash had himself been seeking the tests to prove his innocence, the police claimed.
It is not usual for the police to go back on its investigation. It has happened only twice in the past three years. Earlier, the police had to eat humble pie in admitting its mistake in naming Avtar Singh Taari as the killer of high-profile businesswoman Reema Jain.
In this case, Parkash has remained behind bars for nearly 10 months for a crime which he probably never committed.
Kiran Dhawan, wife of well-known marriage palace owner Deepak Dhawan, was found murdered in her house at Barrewal on July 17, 2004.
Several theories were in circulation about the killer with the police investigating the role of her family members as prime suspects in the murder.
However, in August last year, the police named Parkash, an alleged former domestic help of the murdered woman, as her killer. This was done on the basis of his identification by Deepak Dhawan.
Parkash had been arrested by the Delhi police for the murder of an aged couple. Dhawan had seen his pictures in newspapers and on TV channels and recognised him.
The servant had been missing since the day Kiran was found murdered. After Dhawan insisted that Parkash was the domestic help, a team of the Sarabha Nagar police brought him here on a production warrant. The police later claimed he had confessed to the crime.
At present, Parkash is locked in a local jail and facing trial in the case.
A suspected gang of Mandi Gobindgarh-based traders have allegedly fleeced several local traders and industrialists by using their VAT numbers besides evading tax through forged documents.
The city police said, as per the revelations made by a complainant so far, the accused K.K. Garg and Ashok Kumar of Steel Age Tube Ltd, Mandi Gobindgarh, had traded business worth Rs 9.59 crore on forged VAT number and evaded tax worth Rs 40 to 65 lakh in this case alone.
The accused had sent a huge consignment of pipes in 311 trucks in a single case.
The SP (Detective) said the manner in which the accused operated, suggests that many other complainants might come forward. Garg has been arrested while his accomplice is still absconding.
The fraud has come to light when Tejinder Pal Singh, owner of Punjab Tools Ltd, complained that some trader had used his VAT number due to which his number was locked at all barriers in the country, bringing his business to a stand still.
The victim then traced truck drivers, who in turn identified the factory from which the consignment was loaded.
He then brought the matter to the notice of the police. The accused was nabbed after his business transactions were traced.
Meanwhile, the wife of the accused created a scene at the police press conference while trying to prevent photographers from taking pictures of her husband.
The SP (Detective) said the police was probing all the transactions of the accused and his accomplices to ascertain the other such frauds.
In the case of the four acid attack victims, more good Samaritans have decided to come to their help.
Close on the heels of a well-known NRI couple, two US-based NRIs gave Rs 1 lakh to the CMC hospital for the girls’ treatment besides promising monetary help for the girls in the future as well.
Legal advisor to Indo-American Sheriff Advisory Council, Los Angeles, Nachhattar Singh Bhullar, and his friend Paramjit Singh Nijjar have donated the money.
Local representative of the Zee Network, Surinder Dalla, told Ludhiana Tribune that the two were deeply moved by the tragic condition of the girls and had specially visited the CMC hospital to hand over the money.
The news channel had already collected several lakh rupees for the help of the girls. The condition of Sandeep Kaur (the main target of the attack) and her friend Rajwant Kaur was the worst. While Sandeep had lost one eye and the outer part of an ear, Rajwant was under threat of losing her eyesight completely. The other two girls, Ranjit Kaur and Sonika, suffered 40 per cent and 20 per cent burns each, They were discharged but the treatment would continue. Their families too needed monetary help.
Rajwant Kaur has also been discharged. Expensive medication was needed to save her eyesight and prepare her for surgery, which could only take place after an year.
All victims belong to poor families of daily wagers. The girls were employed in factory before the attack. Now, they had lost their jobs too. The girls were able to receive treatment only because of good samaritans. UK-based owner of Wimpy’s fast food chain Kanmaljit Singh and his wife Dr S Kaur had announced yesterday they would bear the cost of the treatment of the girls and also provide them with jobs.
The Public Cause, an NGO working to highlight the problems of people, has alleged that Punjab Technical University (PTU) in connivance with the state government was minting money with regard to its admission stunt, which earns it over Rs 8 crore per year. The members of the NGO, including parents of a number of students, feel that CET should be scrapped and the university must not be allowed to “fill their pockets” in the name of counselling, which starts once the results of CET are declared.
Many parents in the city feel that the government had played a joke with the people of Punjab by starting numerous technical colleges, which lack even the basic infrastructure. The ‘victim’ parents alleged that these colleges were making money by misguiding students.
“Costly application forms, heavy examination fees, counselling fee to the tune of Rs 10,000, etc, is being imposed on parents and students. Though counselling fee of Rs 7,500 is refundable but it is refunded in instalments. We feel that there is absolutely no need to hold CET in the state. The neighbouring state of Haryana has recently scrapped CET and admitted more than 98 per cent students on the basis of AIEEE,” said A.K. Bhandari, general secretary of the NGO.
The parents said it was a matter of concern that out of 40 colleges affiliated to the PTU, Jalandhar, 36 were in private sector and only four were owned by the government. The enrolment figure in 15 private colleges in 2004 was merely 35-40 per cent and in the government colleges it was about 50-60 per cent.
Unfortunately, private colleges were being opened by big business houses only as profit making ventures with least regard for the sanctity of the teaching profession or future of the youth.
Consequently, some colleges were admitting students by charging fee far below the one prescribed by the government so that they could attract more ‘customer’ students.
Interestingly, a number of advertisements floated in various sections of media by colleges affiliated to the PTU have lured students saying: “Students who have recently passed their (10+2), reappear examination can apply immediately”, “Direct admission-eligibility 10+2 (PCM)”, “Golden opportunity for 10+2, non-medical, pass candidates to obtain admission in B.Tech courses”, etc.
“Even such tricks have failed to fill the vacant seats. Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, the then technical education minister, too, had admitted in the Assembly that there were no takers for about 37 per cent (5,252 out of 14,330) engineering seats in Punjab. She, along with the vice-chancellor, had assured that the CET will be abolished from 2006 and admissions will be made on the merit of the All-India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE). In the given circumstances, there is no need to hold CET. It is a clear violation of the Union Ministry of Human Resource & Development orders passed in 2003, wherein it has been made compulsory for all government engineering colleges and deemed universities, to make admission from amongst the students appearing in AIEEE,” said Bhandari.
Dr S.K.Salwan, VC, PTU, when contacted, said the university was holding CET because of state government’s orders. “It is the decision of the state government to scrap it and not the PTU. We will adhere to the state government’s directions,” he said.
In an apparent bid at publicity by fair or foul means, the principal of Guru Nanak Girls College, Model Town, has not seemed to even check the merit list of the B.Com first year, before releasing the picture of a student supposedly having topped the exams across the state. In fact, there were at least two other girls in Ludhiana itself, who had scored more marks than Priyanka Sharma, whom the GNG College claimed to have topped the state.
Jasleen Kaur Bindra, a student of the Government College for Women, has scored 464 marks, three marks more than Priyanka Sharma, who has scored on 461. Jasleen said she was surprised to see Priyanka’s picture in most of the newspapers that she (Priyanka) had topped the exam and not Jasleen.
Jasleen said in fact there was no merit list for the B.Com first or second year and the merit list was prepared in the final year only. However, once she saw that someone was trying to get undue publicity for an achievement which she had not got, Jasleen felt bad. When she brought the issue to the notice of the principal of Guru Nanak Girls College, the principal dismissed Jasleen’s claim.
Meanwhile, principal of Guru Nanak Girls College Charanjit Kaur Mahal was not prepared to speak anything. Interestingly, she switched off her phone the moment this reporter asked her as how could she released a picture and press note that a student of her college had topped the merit list while in fact she had not.
First she received the call properly. The moment the particular question about the wrong information given to the media was asked, she claimed voice was not clear and within no time she disconnected the phone. Subsequent attempt to call her revealed that she had switched off her phone.
The BJP today sought an investigation into the alleged fraud in the issue of the fake votes. The party has also written to the state election commissioner seeking to get verification done on the issue.
Addressing a press conference here, state BJP secretary Anil Sarin and district president Subash Verma said in certain cases scores of voter identity cards had the same number.
“One voter ID card can be issued to only one individual and two or more voters cannot have same voter ID card number,” the leaders pointed out. They said may be there was some error but mischief cannot be ruled out.
“Either these are the bogus voters or in some case the wrong ID card numbers have been mentioned in the voters list which needs to be checked out,” they observed.
For example, about 30 voter identity cards are having one number PB/09/05/000001. According to the leaders, there are about 5,000 such cards with common number which is quite unheard of.
Sarin, who is the BJP in charge for corporation elections, observed that this was a huge figure and it could make a lot of difference in any elections particularly in the municipal corporation were the margin of victory and defeat was quite low.
They also released the copes of the voter list to the media listing various discrepancies. They said the copies had also been dispatched to the state election commission to order a probe.
The electroplating units that have not availed membership to the Ludhiana Effluent Treatment Society, the special purpose vehicle (SPV) formed to facilitate functioning of the common effluent treatment plant (CETP), already face threat of closure as directed by the P. Ram Committee and in addition to that, the SPV too has clarified that it would take no responsibility for such units.
Such units have now been asked to become members by June 20, failing which the SPV would not forward the names of such units to the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) in the list of those complying with regulations pertaining to waste treatment.
So far, as many as 200 units from electroplating, zinc plating, bright bar and wire drawing industries have availed the membership to get their water treated.
“If industrial units do not become members by June 20, we will not hold any responsibility for the action that PPCB might take against them. They should not forget that they face a threat of closure. Since we are forwarding membership details to the board, the units that do not become members, might have to face action,” said Joginder Kumar, chairman of the SPV.
The CETP, that was earlier focusing only on electroplating units, is now open to getting members from all other industries except dyeing units.
The SPV executive members said they were expecting a good response from the industry in the coming days.
In addition to the membership fee, a unit that avails the facility of getting its waste treated, has to pay 70 paise per litre for treatment of its water. With an average of 200 litres of water that is treated every day, the estimated cost for 25 days is Rs 3,500.
The one-day compulsory weekly electricity supply off for the industry beginning tomorrow has caused concern in the industrial circles.
Representatives of the business segment fear the PSEB might increase the number of weekly offs which would hamper industrial production.
“This season we were continually being told that the supply is sufficient to cater to the demand. However, now a one-day off has been imposed. Our earlier experience has not been good with the electricity board which not only increased number of days power supply was to be off but also imposed unscheduled cuts. Uninterrupted power supply should be assured to industry as well,” said Joginder Kumar, president, Ludhiana Electroplaters Association.
Apart from the compulsory weekly off, the industry would have to continue adhering to peak load restrictions.
He said association members, who had a meeting with the PSEB yesterday, were assured of better electricity supply in the coming days. “Member distribution J.S. Sekhon told us that the board has managed to control electricity theft to a large extent and now the only problem was high transmission and distribution losses.
The industrialists said power cuts led to heavy industrial losses as production was affected. Compulsory weekly offs too made a dent in production.
Besides, those affected the competitiveness of industry as it had to bear all fixed and several variable costs too despite the losses.
“To curb the demand-supply gap they impose weekly offs.
Emphasising the need to augment power supply, they said the government should put in more funds to increase power generation at the earliest.
Holding a Buddhist food festival at a place like Ludhiana may not be a good business proposition. As the name itself suggests it is purely and strictly a vegetarian affair, without any non-vegetarian substitutes. However, the organisers at Majestic Park Plaza seem to have taken a good care of the non-vegetarian taste buds of the Ludhianvis with “vegetarian chicken and mutton”. There is nothing non-vegetarian in this food except for the chicken and mutton analogues driven from soya.
According to Sudahnshu Ranjan, chief chef at the hotel, it took a lot of research and spadework to organise a purely vegetarian food festival that would satiate the taste of everybody.
“Although the festival has been organised with a view to serve the vegetarian tastes of people, it is not that the non-vegetarians will not enjoy it,” he said.
Although there is precisely no Budhist food as such, the places with predominant Budhist influences have certainly specialties and delicacies that have been tried for ages. It is in fact the combination of various foods from China, Japan and other Budhist countries.
Sabhayasachi Chaterjee, manager, said keeping the moral percepts of Budhism in mind, the Budhist food festival would be completely vegetarian.
The Khanna police has busted a gang involved in unauthorised use of an MNC’s trademark and copyright on the cattle feed supplement its members produced to dupe farmers and dairy owners.
Owner of one of outlets selling the spurious cattle feed has been booked under Section 63 of Copyright Act, 102, 103 and 104 of Trademark Act and Sections 420 and 34 of the IPC. In all, 246 bags of a concentrate feed have been seized from his possession.
According to an FIR registered on the statement of business manager of VIRBAC Animal Health India Ltd, Bombay, Raman Talwar, a gang had been manufacturing and selling spurious products of the company at various outlets in the state.
After receiving the information from company officials, SSP Khanna, Gautam Cheema, directed SHO (City) Dharam Pal to conduct raids at suspected outlets after which the bags (each weighing 5 kg) were seized from Ashoka Medical Hall at Khanna.
Preliminary investigations by the police revealed that manufacturing of the spurious products was carried out at a factory situated at Amloh and various products were sold to farmers and dairy owners through outlets spread across the state. Some of the outlets have been identified in major towns and villages including Nabha, Khanna, Amloh, Dhuri, Sangrur, Mansa and Latala.
"Based on information provided by the officials of the company we conducted raids at some places and succeeded in unearthing the racket. We will try our best to nab all persons involved in the crime," said SSP Cheema.
The SSP further disclosed that fake product was also seized from Dhiman Medical Store Amloh. Machinery and intermediate products were also seized from factory adjoining the store, he told.
The local police allegedly recovered Rs 33,25,00 from the possession of two persons and later handed them over to Directorate Enforcement Investigation, Department of Income Tax, for further investigation.
Mini-bus operators of Punjab convened a meeting here today under the presidentship of Harinder Sharma.
Jaswinder Singh Garewal, district president, apprised the meeting that Chief Minster Parkash Singh Badal had assured them at a meeting held on May 1 that within 15 days the government would declare its new policy towards the mini-bus operators.
The government had also assured that it would review the policy of the Congress regime of granting open permits for operating mini-buses in the state, he added. During the meeting, Charanjit Singh, district chief patron of the association, expressed concern over the non-implementation of the assurances given by the Chief Minister. | 2019-04-23T04:01:41Z | https://www.tribuneindia.com/2007/20070610/ldh1.htm |
Mr. President, members of the town council, school committee members, our legislative delegation, town department heads, distinguished guests, my friends.
Allow me to begin by thanking you, the people of Braintree, for entrusting me with the honor of being your Mayor. Since January of 2008, we have been tasked with implementing our new government in the most beneficial way so as to provide a level of municipal services that you should expect and to accomplish our work in a way that is strategic, thoughtful, and focused on the long term fiscal health of our community.
I want to offer my thanks to our department heads and town employees. Our daily work would amount to nothing if it were not for their efforts to serve our community. Whether it be the daily administrative work or the efforts of our DPW during the hottest days of the summer, the public servants of our town keep Braintree going and I am very grateful for their work. I also want to thank the citizens of our town for their active participation in our democracy — the civic associations, the Braintree Chamber, the Rotary, the Historical Society, the PTOs, every citizen contributes value to our community conversations.
As we position ourselves for today and a strong future, we must also remember that we occupy a place in our country’s history that few communities can match. From our nation’s earliest days, Braintree has been at the forefront of the American story. On Monday of this week I was in Boston at the John Adams courthouse — which houses the state’s supreme judicial court to witness the swearing-in ceremony of a friend of mine who was nominated for a judgeship by the Governor. That majestic courthouse — bearing the name of our native son -reminded me of our town’s place in the history of this country.
Yet, our rich history as a town will be no good to us if we don’t heed its lessons. We talk often about being the home of two Presidents, John Adams and his son John Quincy, but do we truly recognize the importance of these two particular Presidents and how we can put their examples into practice?
Both Father and Son were subjected to intense scrutiny and criticism during their lives. I am sure that the urge to pull back on an unpopular opinion or decision was often great, but both men believed that the forsaking of current popularity was hardly a price to pay if it meant advocating for what they believed to be the appropriate course for our then young nation. Over two centuries later, history has, on many issues, proved John Adams and John Quincy Adams, right.
The message I offer you tonight is one of confidence for a bright future for our town. The first decade of our new government has been laying a solid and stable foundation on which to build the Braintree of the decades ahead. We have understood the significance of our work in our daily duties — but also in developing long term capital plans that offer a steadiness to our actions.
In 2008 the message would have been very different than what I present this evening. Our financial reserves were nearly non-existent, our roads were crumbling, our schools were in need of fixing, and years of squabbling and often petty disagreements had not provided Braintree government with the best reputation. Additionally, no one could have predicted the worldwide economic storm that awaited us that autumn. Those were the facts that confronted us — undaunted we rolled up our sleeves and went to work.
Now, as the second decade of our Mayor-Council form of government begins we find ourselves in a much different position. Our once meager financial reserves have given way to a solid fiscal base. Our bond rating, which in 2008 was AA with a negative outlook has been raised twice to AA+.
Simply stated, we have managed our town over the past decade to its highest level of financial performance in its history. As I have said before and I restate tonight — without a strong financial foundation we cannot achieve all the other benefits we seek.
We have spent millions on our schools, streets, and parks. We have restructured our government operations and we have added online services to be more responsive and informative to resident concerns such as our Commonwealth Connect (SeeClickFix) citizen request program, our town-wide emergency alert and notification system- Braintree Alerts and the “Braintree Blue” monthly email newsletter.
So, with these steps behind us and with more steps to take the question for us now is how we can use the results of our first decade to continue to move our Braintree forward in 2018 and beyond.
Let me offer some fundamental principles.
We all want to feel safe in our homes and in our neighborhoods. That is the promotion of public safety.
We all want to provide a good education for our children and valuable programs for our seniors. That is the advocacy for our schools and our elders.
We want our town to look well — so that have a sense of pride in our community. That is the fixing of our streets, parks, schools, and town buildings.
We all want to believe in the operations of our municipal government that services are being provided in an efficient manner. That is the implementation of our core mission — municipal services such as plowing, curbside recycling, and beautification efforts of our public spaces.
We want a healthy and diverse local economy that provides financial stability for our town with jobs and revenue. That is the delicate balance of maintaining our residential character while having in place a robust local economy.
Using what I recited I think you can check every box of the work that we have done and be enthusiastic about the work ahead.
On the public safety front — we are fully staffed at our fire department and we thank our firefighters for their daily work. This year we will begin our work on renovating the headquarters station as we have already done at our stations in East Braintree and the Highlands.
In our police department we will add 11 new officers this year in order to get our staffing to an improved level of operational support. Our goal this year and beyond is to achieve the superior standard of national accreditation and to continue to support those who take the oath to “serve and protect” all of us.
This spring after years of public discussion we will embark on the most ambitious school building project Braintree has seen since the mid-1970s. Both of our middle schools, East and South, will receive large scale additions which will allow us to move our 5th Grade classes to the middle school level, freeing up classroom space at all of our six elementary schools. Here in Braintree, because of our financial management, we are able to undertake these two projects without having to request any additional tax revenue from our residents. We did not have to choose between better schools and (higher) taxes. I want to take a moment to recognize our state legislative delegation, Senators John F. Keenan and Walter Timilty, and Representative Mark Cusack for their partnership on these projects particularly in the area of working with the Massachusetts School Building Authority. I also want to recognize the work of our Superintendent Dr. Frank Hackett and our school committee for their leadership and our Town Council for their supportive efforts. Braintree Schools are performing well and with these capital projects we will see that physical improvements will begin to match the superior classroom instruction that our teachers provide.
For our Seniors, our magnificent addition to our Senior Center has added programs in an expanded way. It is the place to be!
For the eleventh summer in a row we will embark on an aggressive program of roadway upgrades. In 2018 we will expand $5.7 million dollars on our roads and water and sewer improvements throughout town. Braintree roads have become synonymous with a better quality of life for all. This work increases property values and improves commutes for our residents while also making our town a more pleasant place to live. This work will be coupled with our enforcement of our new 25 mph speed limit in residential neighborhoods and additional traffic calming techniques throughout town such as speed humps, our new bike lanes, and other pedestrian enhancements — to assist in the quality of life in our neighborhoods.
With the approval of the Petersen Pool — Rink complex and I am grateful for the planning department’s thorough and full review of this proposal — This facility will be one that our youth and high school hockey and swim teams will be proud to call home. Our goal is to begin construction on this long awaited development this summer and keep the promise that Captain Petersen offered us over 50 years ago.
The Petersen Pool is only one part of the wider plan for the recreational areas in our community. Led by our Director of Recreation and Community events Nelson Chin we have begun the planning process for improvements to the Dauraghty Gym, and our neighborhood playgrounds, as we continue to partner with our town’s youth sports leagues to ensure that our recreational amenities, basketball, baseball and softball diamonds and let me not forget pickle ball remain “fields of dreams” for our youth — and the older generation.
Our business community is thriving — over the past few years we have added two new hotels in the new Hyatt and Marriott, new retail and restaurants at South Shore Place, the marketplace, our squares and the Landing with more to come at Pearl Plaza and other spots throughout town.
I want to recognize a new business that is coming to town this year — Foley’s Ice Cream Parlor — on Hancock Street. The owners, Jen and Mike Foley are Braintree residents — and now entrepreneurs — who approached me for help in getting their business started. I directed them to our planning and building department and working through all the issues that come with the establishment of a new business — including a variance from the ZBA — I am happy to report to you that the Foleys are ready to start scooping within the next few months.
Their shop, coupled with the new Daddy’s Dairy on Union Street could make us the Ice Cream capital of the South Shore — I think that’s delicious!
Our strategic location — at the intersection of roads and rail — otherwise called “The Braintree Split” is both a benefit and a challenge. We will see this year the commencement of a $35 million upgrade to our MBTA station –which serves at the start of the Red Line into Boston — to make public transportation more accessible for all.
Competition in the business world has been a fact of life since the beginning of commerce. In today’s reality it’s imperative for municipalities to be competitive in attracting the variety of business needed to augment a successful financial model. Leveraging our state and regional assets has played an integral part in our efforts to be economically competitive and are paying off for Braintree.
Amongst the economic related success stories is the Channel Fish Company. Following multiple consolidations and acquisitions Channel Fish grew out of its location in Boston and needed a larger space to run their consolidated operations and have access to major highways to handle their distribution needs. Braintree was chosen over several other North Shore and South Shore locations due to the commerce ready assets Braintree has to offer.
As a regional member of the life sciences Red-Line corridor, we are assisting Zimmerman Bio, a leading innovator in the Bio Med market to expand their current location in Braintree to accommodate significant market growth for their products and research. Cited as a leading differentiator was Braintree’s proximity to the abundance of intellectual capital in the Greater Boston area, the geographic advantages and the transportation assets available for product distribution and employee commutes.
An international plumbing supply company here in Braintree, the Symmons Industries was recently lauded by our State Economic Development agency for reaching significant milestones in manufacturing results and sales. The advantages of our lower electric rates and water rates are important indicators when considering how a business can achieve the biggest gains for its investment dollars. Braintree is one such place.
Additionally, the challenge to our brick/mortar retail stores is real with the ever growing online capability like Amazon. We will work with our retailers (the plaza and others) to see that they remain healthy in this ever evolving retail marketplace.
All of these businesses — all over Braintree — see a place that we call home providing good jobs and underscoring that Braintree is a desirable place to grow your business.
We are a community within the metropolitan Boston area — and as much as we enjoy the benefits of proximity to New England’s capital city — we also maintain our own specific proud identity of a bedroom community ten miles south of the city.
Today in 2018 nearly a quarter of our population is age 65 and over. In fact, the entire South Shore has an aging demographic that is clearly noted in a South Shore chamber housing report for the region. For us this means two things — we must build some more units of housing for our seniors — and we should provide additional opportunities for those who want to call Braintree home. Over the last four years, Braintree residents have seen the value of their homes and real estate investments consistently grow. Braintree is a very desirable community for many families, younger persons and established adults. It’s also a community where those young adults who grew up here want to stay here. Purchase their own homes and raise their families here in Braintree.
In order to assist in achieving these realities we need to create a more diversified housing inventory and in doing so create the types of homes that first time home buyers and families seeking to improve their lives can afford. In addition, providing housing alternatives for our “graying” population in order to allow retired and empty nesters the opportunity to down size and stay in Braintree amongst family, friends and community bonds built throughout their lives is very important. Diversified housing options will keep Braintree affordable for both our retirees and the next generation(s) of our residents.
An additional advantage for a diversified housing inventory also creates a greater appeal to the types of business, retail and commercial diversity our tax base requires to keep our economic engine running. Braintree will continue to attract the types of business that are do impact our neighborhoods and community natural resources — Promoting a commercial tax base that helps keep our residential rates low, and offers revenue along with community preservation funds to preserve open space in our community. Such as we did with the new highlands playground.
The days ahead always have a level of uncertainty, we have issues that at the time seem out of our control — natural disasters, like the floods that we encountered in March of 2010, of February of 2015 that hit us with 100 inches of snow and not a day above freezing during the entire month — we didn’t complain — to much — we just did the work necessary to get the job done — and saw the goodness of our people as we assisted our neighbors.
Let us realize that people of all ages, regardless of race, class, and ethnicity suffer the harmful consequences of drug abuse and addiction. In Braintree, we are working diligently to prevent youth substance use and support individuals and families touched by addiction.
Most drug use begins during adolescence and early adulthood when experimentation and high risk use typically begins. Young people are particularly vulnerable to addiction because they are still developing both cognitively and socially. The simplest and most cost effective way to lower the human and societal costs of drug abuse is to prevent it in the first place. That is why educating our young people and their caregivers are an essential piece of prevention.
For this reason, I want to thank the Braintree Partnership on Substance Use and the Braintree Alliance for Safe and Healthy Youth for providing this important education to our young people and their families.
Supporting individuals and families experiencing addiction and loss is equally as important. The Partnership disseminates help resources and links individuals and families to programs and services that support recovery and grief.
Braintree’s first responders continue to carry and use Naloxone, in an effort to save the lives of individuals experiencing opioid overdose. In 2017, our first responders saved 78 lives, and for that we are grateful.
Early detection and intervention support better outcomes. If you or a family member needs additional information on how and where to access help, please know that we are here for you.
Let me end with the best, to our Veterans groups who honor us with their presence by posting the colors this evening, one of the greatest honors I have as Mayor is leading a community with not one, not two, but three thriving and active Veterans posts. The men and women of the Braintree DAV, VFW and American Legion have offered incredible service to our nation and they continue to serve our community on a daily basis and we are truly grateful to them.
In our ten years of existence we have created a record that will be graded by history. It is never known at the actual time, when you are doing the work, if history will judge you well or not.
In the end, it is the history that defines us — yet in taking a hands-on approach — we can define our history. There is a significance in our daily work that layers upon one another which creates the history of our service.
Our thinking — our actions — our hands –as the future unfolds — offers us the opportunity to remain positive about the time ahead of us — while making the effort to create a community that we can be justifiably proud.
Official Twitter account for Mayor Joseph C. Sullivan of Braintree, Massachusetts. | 2019-04-19T17:10:55Z | https://medium.com/@braintreemayor/2018sott-19b2defc67ad |
It pays for you to learn. You can save your pet rabbit or rodent's life! Our dental team is dedicated to help you make good decisions for your pets! Ask us for help, allow us to provide an initial consultation ($110).
Pets with continuously erupting teeth must eat the correct foods. That is absolutely up to you. A correct diet will help with dental health tremendously.
We see pets that cannot eat and this can be life threatening.
Traumatic injuries in small rabbits can be life threatening!
was severed and the two sides floated independently. This made food consumption impossible.
was eating, playing and gaining weight.
Rabbits are lagamorphs and they have teeth too!
Cats and dogs can live without teeth. Rabbits cannot live without teeth!
Any rabbit that is ill needs to have the teeth evaluated because many health issues are secondary to dental problems. In the great majority of rabbits with dental problems, the "cheek (premolars and molars) teeth" are the primary problem and the incisors typically grow too long as a secondary problem. It is critically important to understand that trimming the incisors without addressing the cheek teeth often results in serious problems for rabbits.
Incisor and cheek tooth malocclusion are common in domestic pet rabbits. Malocclusions may cause coronal and root (reserve crown) elongation, reserve crown disease, enamel spurs, spikes or ramps. Oral trauma and periodontal disease can also occur secondary to malocclusion. Veterinarians often perform periodic "clipping of the incisors" to address incisor malocclusion. Dr. Kressin discourages "clipping teeth" because it is an inaccurate, painful and stressful procedure for the rabbit. Clipping teeth is difficult to control and may result in tooth fracture which often worsens the malocclusion and may lead to tooth infection. A more effective approach is to use a dental burr to trim the teeth. The cheek teeth as well as the incisors must be evaluated and addressed in each case.
Rabbits have continuously growing (erupting) teeth. It has been estimated that these teeth grow between 1-5 mm per week. The rate of teeth growth varies between the different teeth and between individual animals. The caudal cheek teeth erupt 1 to 2 cm (10 to 20 mm) per month. The upper incisors grow approximately 2 mm per week which is slower than the lower incisors, which erupt at rates of 2.4 mm per week. Dental growth can be influenced by age, health, gender (pregnancy) and nutrition. The balance between tooth eruption and tooth attrition (ware) from normal occlusion is thought to be heavily influenced by correct nutrition.
This creates unique problems for rabbits. Any rabbit that is not eating, is eating less than normal or is eating the wrong feeds, will develop over-grown teeth. Rabbits need long stem hay as their primary diet. They like hay and it is very important to their dental and overall health. Be careful about feeding pellets and various treats. Commercial pellets are hard and cylinderically shaped. Crushing pellets is accomplished from a vertical (up and down) chopping motion. Little additional grinding motion is required to swollow pellets. This limited grinding activity can result in less tooth attrition and relative tooth elongation. Hay as the primary diet promotes side to side grinding motion required to controll dental overgrowth.
Recent research (Comparative Observation of Skeletal-Dental Abnormalities in Wild, Domestic, and Laboratory Rabbits, Journal of Veterinary Dentistry, Vol.24, #4, Dec 2007) has shown that domestic pet rabbits tended to have relatively higher crowns, severe root elongation and advanced periodontitis (periodontal disease). Periodontal disease was demonstrated radiographically as reduction of crestal bone height adjacent to the lower third premolar teeth.
Teeth are used to differentiate between rabbits and rodents.
Rabbits teeth differ from rodents because of their upper incisor number and arrangement.
Rabbits have two upper incisors on each side. The smaller two incisors behind the larger front upper incisors have been called "peg teeth". Rabbits have one lower incisor on each side.
Rabbits have three upper premolars immediately in front of three upper molar teeth. The lower jaw is a little different. There are two lower premolars immediately in front of three lower molar teeth. Normally rabbits have 28 teeth.
The 2 in the front of the formula indicates the left and right side of the mouth.
The I stands for incisor teeth. Rabbits have 2 on top and one on the bottom jaw.
The C stands for canine teeth which rabbits normally do not have.
The PM are the premolar cheek teeth and 3 are on top and 2 on the lower jaw.
The M are the molar cheek teeth and there are 3 on the top and the bottom jaws.
Survey skull radiographs are essential to the evaluation of rabbits for oral and dental diseases. See below for the use of diagnosis to establish prognosis.
Computed tomography (CT) can be particularly useful to further evaluate teeth and bony changes. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with or without ultrasound can help assess soft tissue structures of the head.
The rabbit owner's role in dental health of rabbits.
List all foods your rabbit eats; determine what is eaten most to least.
What are the brand names of foods (if commercial foods are used)?
What treats or other supplements are provided to your rabbit?
How long has your rabbit been on this diet? What was its previous diet?
If dental care is needed your veterinarian may either provide occlusal adjustments or refer you to a specialist. After occlusal adjustments, you will need to promote early return to eating. Hay must be in the rabbit's diet to provide normal dental ware. For feeding information go to the House Rabbit Society website.
What can the veterinarian do for rabbits with dental disease?
The veterinarian always needs to make a diagnosis, establish treatment plans and to perform treatments efficiently. This however is not always easy or inexpensive.
Rabbits have a loose TMJ or "hinge joint. This allows the jaw to move side to side and front to back, however there is little up and downward motion. This limits how wide the jaw opens and how well we can see the rabbit's teeth. The size of the oral cavity is deceptively small because of the extensive development of the large muscles used for chewing (masseter muscles). The tongue is relatively flat and short.
Rabbits have a very "long diastema" or space between the incisors and the cheek teeth. The lower jaw is narrower than the upper jaw (anisognathism). These anatomic characteristics make it very difficult to view the occlusal relationships. This forces us to rely on dental radiology, general radiology or computed tomography (CT scans) to evaluate the occlusion. These imaging techniques are also used to evaluate for crown elongation, apical elongation, bone loss and for periapical pathology (dental abscesses).
As in all aspects of veterinary dentistry, the diagnosis is the first step to understanding the prognosis. Treatment plans must be established based on the needs of the rabbit and the owner. We must address pain and the nutritional needs of these animals. Many of these animals need help with eating initially however it is very important to get tham back to eating a diet composed of long stem hay with fresh vegetables. Balanced nutrition with normal chewing can promote tooth wear needed to offset the continual dental growth. For rabbits unwilling or unable to eat hay, Herbivore Critical Care Formula (Oxbow Pet Products, 29012 Mill Rd., Murdock, NE 68407, Tel 1-800-249-0366) can be very helpful during the transition back to an optimal diet.
Rabbits with dental disease should be periodically evaluated by the family veterinarian. The frequency required for professional care is based on the rabbit's oral and dental health. Some rabbits will require very frequent occlusal adjustments when they are unwilling or unable to eat an optimal diet.
Rabbits develop periodontal disease, cavities (carious lesions), malocclusions (abnormal tooth alignmant), oral infections, lacerations as well as tooth and jaw fractures. Visualization of the cheek teeth and the oral cavity is challenging in rabbits and essential to provide optimal care. Oral and dental care for rabbits requires specialized equipment, instrumentation, training, time and patience.
or the rabbit's oral cavity during occlusal adjustments.
adjusted for a "functional" grinding occlusion.
the bottom and are approximately 3 cm long.
Left side view without incisors.
"Slobbers" or "wet dewlap" and anorexia are common clinical problems in rabbits.
Skull radiographs using mamography film revealed Grade 3 of 4 dental disease (see grades above). Cheek tooth elongation was evident as demonstrated on dental radiographs below.
Cheek teeth elongation of all four dental arcades (both sides; upper and lower).
"Taz" like most rabbits have feed "Taz" must eat hay for long-term health.
"Taz" is reported to be comfortable!
Dental fractures in rabbits can be incidental or very serious. If tooth fracture involves pulp exposure, the tooth may become infected and die. The dead tooth fails to occlude with the corresponding tooth in the opposite arch resulting in malocclusion.
The treatment for fractured teeth with pulp exposure is vital pulpotomy. The treatment for dead teeth is extraction. The dead tooth and the occlusal counterpart tooth are ideally extracted to avoid the development of malocclusion.
As stated above, teeth evaluation is the basis for the differentiation between rabbits and rodents. Rodents only have one set of incisor teeth and rabbits have the "peg teeth" as the second set.
Guinea pigs and chinchillas have continually growing and eruption incisors and cheek teeth as also occurs in the rabbit. This dentition has been called elodont.
Hamsters, girbils, mice, rats and other small rodents have continually growing and erupting incisors; however, their cheek teeth are brachyodont. They have a short crown and a well defined root. These brachyodont teeth do not grow continually.
Chinchillas: Kirby and his brother eating.
The guinea pig and chinchillas have incisors and cheek teeth that continually grow.
The girbel, hamster, mice and rats have continually growing incisors however the cheek teeth are not continuously growing and are classified as short (hypsodont) teeth.
Additionally, some hamsters only have 12 teeth as they may have 2 molars (as opposed to 3) on the top and the bottom dental arches.
Dr. Kressin performing a brief facial evaluation.
As the incisors elongate, they tend to twist.
A speculum is used to get an initial overview.
Rodents have continuously growing teeth. The number of teeth vary between species of rodents. The diet is fundamental to dental and overall health for these animals. Continuous growing teeth remain functional as a result of the normal wear from chewing feeds. Every time a rodent stops eating, reduces feed intake or becomes anorexic, the teeth may overgrow. The result is a painful mouth and in some cases the inability to eat. This becomes a life threatening problem very rapidly. Early presentation of rodents for a dental evaluation may be life saving.
A routine radiograph to evaluate the occlusion.
normal in the radiograph above.
Chinchilla dropping feed and eating less than normal.
coronal height creating a "wave" upper dental arcades. Kirby right view.
Computed tomography (CT scan or Cat scan) was suggestive of mandibular brachygnathism to the veterinary radiologist. These chinchillas must be fed a diet that will maximize dental wear and periodic professional occlusal adjustments will be required.
The owner reported rapid return to normal eating of a diet with long stem hay. The large spur on the lingual aspect (tongue side) of the lower right second molar was causing a deep laceration into the palate. This resulted in pain and discomfort as well as an innefective dental occlusion and abnormal tooth ware.
Kirby is back to eating hay! Kirby is eating and quite playful.
A comprehensive oral health assessment for rabbits therefore must be performed under anesthesia. Assessments are made for periodontal disease (radiographs and probing), tooth irregularities (tooth spikes or waves of the dental arcades), tooth infection (dental abscesses) soft tissue injuries or for oral tumors.
The veterinarian may need to provide occlusal adjustments (grinding teeth down) to imporve the occlusal relationships between the upper and lower dental arcades (arches). Endodontic (vital pulpotomy) therapy can be used to save tooth that are fractured and have pulp exposure. Oral surgery may be required to extract teeth, to treat dental abscesses or to excise oral tumors.
Performing dental procedures, such as "teeth trimming" without anesthesia is often ineffective and can be dangerous for the rabbit and for the operator. Dr. Kressin discourages this practice. It is stressful at a minimum and can easily result in injury!
Rabbits can be safely sedated and anesthetized. We prefer not to withold feed from rabbits in an attempt to avoid bloat. We also do not withold water to avoid dehydration. It is very important to provide great care with patient warming during the anesthesia and during the recovery period.
Balanced anesthesia incorporates analgesia (pain prevention) and allows minimization of all drugs for smooth anesthesia and patient recovery. We prefer to premedicate rabbits with ketamine, buprenorphine and midazalam. Meloxicam, a medication the provides anti-inflammatory effects and pain relief is also frequently utilized. Regional anesthesia is also preferred when oral surgery is performed.
Anesthesia induction is by inhalent (Isoflurane or Sevoflurane). We prefer intubation to protect the airway unless a very short anesthesia period is anticipated. It is always preferred to minimize the overall anesthesia time period. For additional information on anesthesia safety see anesthesia concerns. If you have additional concerns regarding pain management, go to pain related concerns.
Regional anesthesia or nerve blocks are beneficial when performing oral surgery in rabbits. By blocking the nerve input from the periphery (the teeth and the oral cavity), the general anesthesia levels can be lowered to increase anesthesia saftey.
Nerve blocks effectively allow early return to eating and reduces bloating problems after anesthesia.
Veterinarians are encouraged to study "regional anesthesia" provided by Dr. Kressin.
Every opportunity to reduce pain in our patients should be implemented when dental or oral surgery is anticipated.
Radiographs are fundamental and essential to helping rabbits with dental problems. Non-screened radiographs provide higher detail and help with the diagnosis of the problem(s). I prefer non-screened mamography x-rays taken from various positions to evaluate rabbits. These radiographs are taken with the general anesthesia. Using radiographs and by performing a detailed intraoral exam, the best approach to treatment is established. The stage of disease is determined which offers a long term prognosis.
Grade 1 stage of disease may involve minor malocclusion of incisors. The ventral border of the mandible is smooth and of normal bone density. The roots are of optimal length and appear parallel to adjacent teeth. The occlusal surface of teeth are smooth and linear on radiographs. The prognosis is good after occlusal adjustments are made (if needed) and the rabbit is eating an optimal diet.
Grade 2 stage of disease has early radiographic changes. The ventral border of the mandible is thin. There may be root elongation and root divergence from parallel orientation of adjacent teeth. Enlargements of the face or lower jaw may be palpable and there may also be radiographic evidence of bony growth (enlargement). Occlusal adjustments may be needed and with the appropriate diet, the prognosis is good.
Grade 3 stage of disease may be significant enough to be resulting in eating habits and weight loss. These rabbits may have substantial infectious disease. Radiographs demonstrate further thinning of the ventral border of the mandible and less overall bone density. Root elongation may be significant causing pain and discomfort. There is further deviation from the parrallel arrangement of the teeth. The bony protrusions (face and mandibles) may be very significant with marked densities on radiographs. The prognosis is guarded. Bacterial cultures are indicated in many cases.
Grade 4 is an advanced disease process with obvious clinical signs of poor health. The ventral mandible has perforation of very thin bone. There is significant deviation of adjacent cheek teeth from the normal parallel orientation. The occlusal surfaces appear blurry due to variable cheek teeth length. Soft tissue abscesses are common. Surgical intervention along with occlusal adjustments are indicated. Antibiotic coated beads are chosen based on culture and sensitivity testing to treat the soft tissue infections. Dental extraction is often indicated. Rabbits do well with one or two cheek teeth extraxcted however with multiple extractions, occlusal problems are common requiring periodic 6-12 week occlusal adjustments. The prognosis is guarded to poor based on the individual case.
Grade 5 is the most severe stage of dental disease. These animals have moderate to severe weight loss, excessive salivation, eye and or nasal discharge with chronic pain. Infection of bone (osteomyelitis) and soft tissue is present. Radiographic evidence of bone destruction is severe. The dental arcades align poorly. Fractured and missing teeth are common. Prognosis is poor to grave.
Radiographs help diagnose jaw (mandibular) and tooth fractures as well as periodontal disease, malocclusion and related dental abscesses.
This patient suffered from a traumatic injury. The mandibular symphysis was "separated" or "fractured". The left and right mandibles were mobile and would float independently. The radiograph below demonstrates the rotated mandible and torn symphyseal tissue.
Paddington was injured and his symphysis was separated.
together. The two lower jaws would move independently.
The radiograph below demonstrates abnormal occlusal alignment.
Occlusal adjustments were indicated and performed. Notice that the ventral aspect of the mandible (lower) jaw appears smooth and is normal. | 2019-04-20T10:30:51Z | https://www.mypetsdentist.com/rabbit-rodent-dental-care.pml |
The Epson Perfection V850 Pro (AKA GT-X980 in Japan) review is now on and will be updated continuously and will run like a blog until further notice.
Questions and requests can be asked in the comment field at the bottom of this page and I will try to obey and respond to as many requests as I can manage.
The review is LIVE updated (Latest update 18 FEB 2015 Film holder mod) so material already posted might change during the progress and possible discoveries of the review.
Connectivity: High Speed USB2 (So IEEE1394 Firwire which the 700/750 had).
To the left: One of the great improvements of the Epson V800 and 850 Pro is the new film holders. They have been re-designed to provide easy and fast height adjustment to make small corrections to achieve the best possible focus faster and more accurate than the before.
The height of the V800/V850 Pro new film holders can be adjusted in five (5) indexed steps in which they snap to. However for fine adjustment the can also be put in any position between the steps.
The Epson V700/ V750 film holder height adjustment is a bit coarse and involves fiddling with small plastic feets that can be used to get 3 different heights. This doesn't give you the best options since the optimal focus might be in between two of those settings (As in my case with 35mm framed slides).
This is a closeup of the Epson V850 Pro film holder for framed slides.
This holder is identical to the one supplied with the V700/V750. Exept for the fact that the V850 film holder is much more rigid due to the thicker plastic mold "Red circle". And the added ridges in the structure.
Q - Did it work with the V700/V750?
A - YES it works just fine!
Buy your Epson V850 Pro at Amazon Free home trial!
The film strip holder that is delivered with the Epson Perfection v850 Pro is a total different unit than the dinky one that came with it's precursor.
The new holder is way better in most respects. One improvement is the anti newton (AN) inserts that helps to keep the film flat.
A new design of hinges in the frame that keep the film in place is another step forward and are nicer to operate (Still feels a bit fragile thought).
The strip film holder is also equipped with two extra height adjustments between the strip openings for added support and improved precision.
Only drawback that i can find is the 3 vs 4 strip capability, however this is a small issue on a otherwise nice improvement.
Productivity can still be pushed with a 2nd set of film holders (Included with the V850 pro but optional for the V800) and the fact that the new holders is easier to load.
All other supplied holders the MF 120 film holder (Up to 6x20cm) and the 5x4 inch film holder have the same AN insert.
They also have the same kind of improvements but also the same drawback in less batch scan capacity 120 and 4x5" film one vs two strips/frames.
Update: Further investigation of the new film holders have revealed some design flaws in the MF film holder (or maybe is it just a bad sample I will check with Epson).
Update/Corrections 3: Epson have now updated the FAQ to include a clarification of how to insert film in to the medium format film holder This is a link to that FAQ. And a link to the part of this page explaining the same thing and the problem it cause!
Update/note 4: Found that the 4x5" sheet film holder share the same design flaw as the MF film holder, not even the supplied 4x5 IT8 target fits the way I like it to do! However in the Epson manual for the 4x5 film holder I also found this text "Note: You may need to trim the edges of the film so that it sits properly in the film holder without bending or warping. Do not cover any of the small holes in the holder."
Update 5: How to tweak the MF 120 film holder to improve the user experience and film handling. this is an easy modification that most people can perform with a minor DIY skill and just a few simple tools. This mod will overcome most of the problems I have been complaining about [Take me there].
Update/related stuff 6: A review of the high quality 120 film-holder from betterscanning.com [HERE].
Epson V850 Pro is to narrow to be used with 120 slide film. It only measure 59mm between chamfered edge AN insert holders! (Film placed this way to highlight the problem). Read further to find out how the film should be inserted.
This isn't the way you should place the film either.
the Epson manual the way it feels natrual you will end up with this result!
This isn't the way you should place the film either. But I would have prefered this to be the case!
Above: The MF film holder Epson V700 have the correct width 62mm between guide tabs. Which also the V850 holder has read more below.
Film should be placed between the small tabs that the red arrows are pointing at which is the guide tabs that are suppose to be used. When you do that you end up having the film resting on top of the chamfered edge AN insert holders as stated before(green arrows). That way the film will not rest against the AN insert.
However when you close the clamp down the frame you will see that the frame it self has a mating concave chamfer that suppose to force down the film. The frame will lock down in the small tabs shown with white arrows. This works good in theory but in practice the film is stiff enough to force itself away from the ANinsert at the edges and end up to be less then perfectly in focus.
Above: The frame that snaps down and locks the film in place. The red arrow points at the concave chamfer that suppose to force the film down against the AN insert.
And the image above is what I'm whining about! this image clearly shows the issue!
NOTE: If I insert the film in the proper way and then gently tap the film with my finger I can also clearly see that the film is hovering above the AN insert for the main part of the area.
You may think that I am picky but keep in mind just a few tenth of a millimeter will also compromise the sharpness of the scan in film-holder mode due to the shallow depth of field of the "super high resolution lens".
This is also why some reviewers of the previous model V750 found that wet mounting the film straight on the scanner glass and using film area guide mode to produce sharper scans than it does used with the film in a film holder scanning in film holder mode which uses the high resolution lens! (Yes this is confusing and Epson have not been clear enough in their explanations).
The above video clearifys my point.
The problem with with of the MF space can of cource be solved by trimming the film length-wise or by doing a DIY trim of the guides in the film holder. But this is not what you expect to be necessary on a brand new scanner of this class do you!
The 120 film used is Fuji Velvia RPV100F which I measured to 61mm wide and is following the ISO 732:2000 standard for medium format film. The link below takes you to the MF film wiki page.
"The 120 film format is a roll film which is nominally 60 mm wide (in fact, about 61 mm, or 2.4 inches)."
I have sent a question to Epson about this issue and will report back when I get an answer, it is now the 22nd Jan 2015 and still no reasonable answer from Epson on why they not designed the 120 holder the same way they did with the 35mm film holder that works fine!
I have not found any issues with the film holders for 4x5" sheet film holders.
Sheet film is generally quite flat and doesn't cause any problems, it stays flat against the AN insert and is held securely by the clamp frame.
Image above: 35mm filmstrip holder for Epson V850pro does have the correct measurements and the film fits perfect on the AN insert why didn't Epson design the MF film holder the same way as this one?
The only issue is that if you put the film in accordance with the manual (Shiny side up, which actually is down when you put it on the scanner!) is will not be held flat.
Take a look at the reflections that the ruler projects on the film to get a sense of how flat it stays in the holder in with film put in different ways.
If you are scanning the film this way you also have to flip the image either in the scanning software directly if possible or in your favorite image editor.
Movable dividers like the T-locks used by Betterscanning.com is another aid to hold the film flat that would have been nice to have and which also might have made it possible to put the film shiny side up.
A matchstick to keep the film flat.
Later in this review I will examine the difference between scanning emulsion side up or down.
Q - Did the V850 filmstrip holder work with the Epson V700/V750 scanner?
Q - Can the new Epson film holder be bought separately or as a spare part?
A - Yes both separately and in kit with all holders as delivered with the scanner.
Part# 1638270 film holder 120film about $26 (Warning read about this holder on this page).
Buy them at Amazon.com when available: click HERE!
To the left: My abused scanner test slide.
It is a Fuji Provia 100 framed slide and the photo was taken in Beirut in September 2005 with a sharp lens and a Nikon F100 on tripod the weather was bluebird as you can see with speedy shutter time so no blur due to vibrations part from mirror slap.
I will mostly focus on the left hand crop of the construction elevator basket with "Bob the builder" inside!
First part will be about resolution and how to get the sharpest possible scan from the Epson V850 Pro.
2nd Part will be about color.
3rd Part will be about scanning software, Epson Scan and 3rd part software like Vuescan and silverfast.
4th Part will be the "Compared to part".
5th Part will be the usual Pros/Cons and conclusion.
After about five hours and a mix of trial and error plus a large dose of tiring pixel peeping I have come to the conclusion that with my 1.5mm framed slide shot the height adjustment should be at its lowest level (closest to the glass) if I would have used the factory options.
After further fine tuning i ended up using one layer of electrical tape as a spacer between the height adjustment feet's and the glass at the lowest setting to achieve the best possible sharpness from the Epson Perfection V850 Pro.
This is not a setting I recommended since the optimum height may be different on your scanner due to manufacture tolerances!
During this initial "Sharpness evaluation" I have used Epson scan and turned off all image improvement options like sharpening, dust removal and color fidelity adjustments.
Scanned With Epson scan - 48bit TIF @ 6400ppi to be sure to use the high res lens The full image size is 5700x8750px .
The first crop is untampered except for save to JPG HIGH (10) so this is the sharpest I could get straight from the V850 pro.
Download the crop to the left as a 15mb 48bit TIF [DOWNLOAD IT HERE] to play with it yourself!
Download i1 Scanner freshly made custom profile for the image HERE. This make it possible to get the colors right. (Assign profile to image in your favorite image editor).
Same crop as above now with some (In fact a bit to much) sharpening and some levels adjustments.
It is most probably possible to squeeze out a bit more in respect of quality if some more work is put in to it, however keep in mind how small this crop is.
This is a scan from Epson V850 pro @ 48bit 4800ppi made in Epson scan. then up-sampled (Bicubic (Smooth gradients) to 6400 and sharpened.
This proves (At least to me) that the up-sampling is better to be made after the scan has been done than within the scanner software.
The optical resolution is clearly not 6400ppi!
The up-sampled 4800 scan is smoother and in fact appears to be sharper as-well!
Look at the white edge of the balconies and you will see more sawtooth pattern in the 6400 scan above.
This scan actually looks really good even compared to the unsharped Canon FS4000US scan below!
To the left a scan from my old trusty Canon FS4000US which is a dedicated 35mm film scanner.
This crop is taken from a scan at full resolution (4000ppi) and then up-sampled to 6400ppi to make a "fair" comparison ev thought the colors doesn't mach at all.
More Epson V850 Pro vs Others later in the review.
I will now stop trying to get the scanner to perform fantasy resolutions.
It is time to get realistic and start to see how good the V850 Pro really is it within its limitations.
From now on I will try to keep the colors as constant as possible. Consistent colors is the key to make it easier for you to compare the different crops.
I have used 3 competing scanners (Canon FS4000us Epson V850 pro and V700).
All to make it more easy to do a proper evaluation of the V850.
All scans have been performed with a custom profile made with Xrite i1 Scanner and with the film holder at the best possible height.
Epson scans have been performed at 4800ppi and are then downsampled to 4000ppi (My laborations have showed me that there is no reason to scan at higher resolution than that).
I have made and examined about 20 scans on each of the scanners to find out! All to be sure that this is the best I can get.
The best straight scan I could get from the Epson Perfection V850 Pro (No sharpening applied).
The best straight scan I could get from the Epson Perfection V700 (No sharpening applied).
This is a V700 scan with the film wet mounted directly on the glass bed and scanned in film area mode (Using the low res lens).
Just because some say this is the best way to get the best out of the V700.
The good old Canon FS4000US (Dedicated 35mm film scanner). At its native 4000ppi resolution and no sharpening at all applied.
This Review is not by any way sponsored by Epson. If you like it and want to support my work, please use this link if you intend to acquire this scanner or any other product from Amazon.com or their partners!
Update! The best straight scan I could get from the Epson Perfection V850 Pro using the Fluid mount tray (No sharpening applied).
Now I will show you the same images again.
This time with what I belive is a suitable amount of sharpening (USM Settings below the images).
The V850 Pro with the 3X sharpening. Look at the sky and the details, they appear to be smoother than the V700.
I have used the same sharpening settings with this crop as I have been using for the V700's. I tried but it didn't get any better with further sharpening it just started to look ugly.
A scan with the V700 using a V850 slide film holder. This is the best I could get from the V700 and it is in fact not bad at all.
The FS4000US with Sharpening. The settings was * A300 R0.7 T0 and just once.
Note: The V850 and V700 scans were sharpened in three steps as follows.
Update! The V850 Pro with the 3X sharpening. This time I have used the Epson fluid mount tray to wet mount the film. In this case I should have been using a bit less sharpening. Surprisingly it looks like the scan is much sharper and that the film grain now become visible! More about the EPSON fluid mount kit HERE!
I'm not sure but It might be the new LED light source that helps to make the skies smoother and even surfaces less noisy. Other than that it's a close call between the two Epson scanners in battle, the new Epson Perfection V850 Pro and the Epson Perfection V700 Photo.
There is an amount of difference but is it this really enough to be spotted in a print?
Well to find out I sent the crops above to my local print lab to get printed with a Lambda 400 printer. Below you can see the result as I scanned the print at 600ppi on the Epson V850 Pro in reflective photo mode no sharpening applied on the reflective scan.
Then the image is down-sampled and saved at 300ppi to match the sizes of the crops above. This is still an enlargement on your screen relative to the physical size of the printed image.
The physical print size of each crop is only 24x43mm when printed at 300ppi have that in mind when you look at the images.
The section printed below comes from a section of a the 35mm film that is about 2mm wide and 2.7mm high!
Above a scan of the Lambda 400 print.
This image illustrate the size of the 300ppi print from a 4000ppi scan.
The crops is a almost perfectly fit for a standard 35mm slide frame.
The elevator basket is about 10x10mm.
The print size of the full image frame is 300x460mm witch is about a A3 paper size.
The issue to the left!
Mounted slides come in various thicknesses, this is one of the pit falls.
Make sure to make a record of different height settings and slide frames and don't mix frame types in the same batch scan!
In the sharpness investigation above I used a slide with a frame thickness of 1.5mm.
It is a good idea to pick a selection of sharp images with various thickness, find the optimum height setting and make a record of it for future use. That will save you lot of time in the future scanning sessions.
What is different between the V800 and the V850?
The V850 Pro also comes with two sets of film holders, and a special mount adapter that keeps the film completely flat for scanning, it is also bundled with SilverFast SE Plus 8.
The Epson Perfection V800 photo comes with the regular SilverFast SE 8.
Also buying the V850 will get you a free fluid mount scanning accessory however not automatically included it is only delivered on request (but for free).
Epson Dual Lens System is a double-lens scanning system that optimizes each scan by automatically selecting which of the two lenses to use for the scan.
Depending on the resolution you've chosen, the lens carriage sets the appropriate lens in place.
Super Resolution Lens Mode enables 6400 ppi scanning of 35mm, 2¼″, and 4″ x 5″ medium format film.
A large diameter lens and higher F-stop optimizes MTF (modulation transfer function), ensuring the highest level of detail and sharpness.
Note: To scan 4″ x 5″ medium format film with Epson Scan, scan in Professional Mode and select Film (with Film Holder) for the Document Type setting.
High Resolution Lens Mode for transparency and reflective 8.5″ scanning in 4800 ppi.
My research at forums and other V700/750 reviews have made me to come to this conclution.
The High Resolution Lens ("4800ppi") is used in all other modes the including film area guide and reflective mode.
The High Resolution Lens ("4800ppi") is used in all other modes the including Transparency 8x10 and refective mode.
The High Resolution Lens ("4800ppi") is used in all other modes the including Transparent (full area) and reflective mode. | 2019-04-18T23:04:09Z | https://www.stockholmviews.com/epson_v850/index.html |
Tips for a cheap, affordable safari in Tanzania. Arusha the Tanzania safari capital.
through Southern and Eastern Africa.
Budget safaris in Tanzania are not really cheap. They can´t be, cause game parks fees (specially in northern circuit) are expensive, 45-70 $/pp (24 hours). Then had accommodation (10 $/pp minimum outside the parks, cause inside it´s 30$/pp/night camping!), transport, food, car fees... That´s why a safari tour is Tanzania nowdays is high price, even if you go on your own car. True, offer in Arusha is big, hundred of safari companies.
Arusha is the Tanzania safari capital. With Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA) 40 km east, the famous protected areas 100-150 km west and Nairobi 270 km north, Arusha sees many tourists around. It´s a big town, nothing to see there (juts Mount Meru views). The place to negociate your northern safari tour.
Tanzania northern circuit game parks: Ngorongoro, Serengeti, super famous and visited areas, Manyara and Tangarire. The most popular and visited parks of Tanzania. They are in Arusha area, but it will take a while to drive to the gates, around 2 or 3 hours. There are always many tourists and jeeps around, specially during high season (june-september) so don´t expect real wilderness and emptiness in those parks! All jeeps nowdays have radios and you can´t imagine the traffic jams around lions!
How much cost a budget safari tour in Arusha? Prices in Arusha are more o less fixed, starting from 150 $/pp/day and usually based in a 3 days/2 nights tour and it will be hard to make the price lower. Final price usually depends of the parks where you are going (Serengeti 60$ and Ngorongoro 70$ are much more expensive than Manyara and Tarangire 45$ fee), the quality of service (transport, room, food, etc.), season of the year and if more people have already booked the tour (this will give you the opportunity to bargain more with the agency). Usually, each person of your group will have paid a different price, just ask them, depending of your negatiation skills. Walk around Arusha and ask in the offices. With a "budget" tour, you will probably travel in a 6 passengers jeep, have a basic room in a camp near the main road (outside the parks, don´t expect wild animals around you), a do around 3 h game drive in each park. So, in fact, quite limited wild life spotting for all the money you will pay!
Tanzania, Kenya or other Africa countries for a budget safari? It seems that safari tours in Kenya, from Nairobi heading to Masai-Mara and Nakuru NP, can be less expensive, for 100-120 $/pp/day and people complain less about the service in Kenya than in Tanzania. But, if looking for something really cheap and have more freedom, head to southern Africa: game park fees are much lower (10-20 $ in average), good maps, easy and cheap to rent a car in South Africa and travel around neighbor countries like Botswana and Namibia, wonderful camps (with pools). We loved so much being the explorers, discover by ourselves the animals (no jeeps, no tours, no radios, no navigation, fantastic!). This is what we did and in average it cost us 30$/pp/day, self-drive with freedom (even around 10h game driving).
What about booking my Tanzania budget safari online? Cheaper in advance? Not really, usually online bookings are more expensive. But, now you know how much it can cost directly in Arusha so you can always try to negotiate. And always check well about the company... and about how much money you need to pay in advance... It can be risky with budget tours and smaller companies! We really think it´s better to book your budget safari tour in Arusha once there.
Be carefull with safari scams in Tanzania. It´s a common practice, to try to cheat tourists. Be carefull when you book and pay for a safari tour. At the Arusha tourist office, they have a list of safari companies and the ones to avoid too! Ask well about all the conditions of the tour: kind of transport (4x4 or van), accommodation and location (room or tent), parks you will visit, game drive duration in each park, fees included, food&water (how many litters), tips for guide-cook, etc.
Reclaim if any problem with a tour: first with the company, also tell the Arusha tourist office, write references in the internet... to help other travellers. Bad reputation will stop them abusing.
Rent a car in Arusha and do self-drive safaris. It´s not very usual to rent a car in Tanzania and it can really be expensive (more than 100 $/day in average). In Arusha, easily you could get a 4x4+driver around 150 - 200 US$/day, try to talk directly to drivers, you will see many jeeps around Arusha and bargain, maybe the price can go lower. It can be interesting if you are a group (at least 4), sharing the costs and having more freedom than on an organised tour. For sure you´ll do longer game drives! Remember that costs will be: rental+petrol (around 1$/l)+car fee in park (20.000 Sh (10 $) for less 2t and Tanzania car (40$ foreign) and 35.000 Sh (150 $ foreign) for heavier)+ person fee in park+accommodation (you should be able to camp for 10-15$/pp/night in tourists camps outside the park... even to get a cheaper room in small towns)+food. For Manyara and Tangarire NP, a normal sedan car is OK and should be cheaper. Anyway... not many independent travellers head to game parks in Tanzania... or Kenya...or Eastern Africa... it´s even hard to get a map!
Is Tanzania southern circuit more affordable? Not really. There are a few cheaper parks in Tanzania, with 30 $/pp entrance fees (+10$/car) and camps outside the gates (not to pay the 30$/night camping inside), like Ruaha National Park (120 km west of Iringa, camps in Tungamalenga village) or Mikumi National Park (the closest park to Dar Es Salaam,150 km south of Morogoro, local lodges in Mikumi town) or remote Katavi National Park(access and accommodation in Sitalike). So visiting these parks can be cheaper, less crowded and very interesting specially if you have a car, on your own. But, if you have to join a group, as there are less tourists and offer is more limited, it will be hard to get a good price for the safari tour or transport inside the park.The Selous Game Reserve is huge (but in fact 95% is a private and exclusive reserve) and expensive, with a 70 $/pp entrance fee. The Tazara train Dar-Mbeya-Zambia crosses the park.
What about seeing chimpanzees in Tanzania? Cheaper? No, it´s really expensive. Entrance fee for Gombe National Park is 100$/pp and Mahale National Park is 80 $! And it´s far away, in the Kigoma-Lake Tanganika area and you have to take a boat which is going to cost a lot too. In Uganda, tracking the chimps is not that crazy expensive (around 50$).
Note: the main road Iringa-Morogoro crosses the Mikumi NP without fees. From the bus, we saw elephants, zebras, wildbeests and impalas, for free!
That´s all the wild life we saw crossing Tanzania, in 3.500 km! Disappointed! But many baobabs! And a few masais!
Those are the official prices to enter Manyara NP, Tarangire NP, Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Serengeti NP. Prices are quite expensive, that´s the main reason why it´s almost impossible to do a cheap safari in northern Tanzania.
You can also visit on your own, if you have a car, without a tour.
Fees are valid for 24 hours.
Car fee: 10$ (40-150$ if foreign). Normal sedan car is Ok for this park.
Camping inside the park: 30 $/pp. More for rooms (concessions).
Manyara NP lies west of Lake Manyara (50 km long lake), it´s a small park. Main access is just outside Mto Wa Mbu (110 km west of Arusha). We also saw a sign with another access south, on the Babati- Mto Wa Mbu road, but maybe only for exit.
Mto Wa Mbu: accommodation (lodges and camps) avalaible in the area, outside the park, not as expensive as inside. Many of the northern circuit budget safari tours stay in these camps.
Car fee: 10$ (40-150$ if foreign). It seems that a normal sedan car is Ok for this park.
Camping inside the park is 30 $/pp. More for rooms (concessions).
Access is just 25 km south of Makuyuni (which is 80 km from Arusha and 35 km from Mto Wa Mbu), on the Makuyuni- Babati road. We also saw a sign with an access 35 km north of Babati (maybe only for exit).
Babati and Mto Wa Mbu: accomodation avalaible around this towns, outside the park (not as expensive).
Entrance price: 50 $/pp. Extra fee: +20 $/pp if going down to the crater (20 km diameter and 200 m high).
Car fee: 40 $. Extra fee: +200 $/car crater!!!
Camping inside the conservation area is 30 $/pp, 50 $/pp for the special camps (remote but no services!).
Access is 15 km west of Karatu (which is 150 km west of Arusha, 30 km from Mto Wa Mbu).You will need a 4x4.
Very famous, so expect many jeeps around. Crowded crater!
Camping is 30$/pp or 50$ in special camps.
Juts west of the Ngorongoro Area comes the Serengeti (another gate, another fee). Also super famous park so many safari tours around.
Keep in mind that if you access Serengeti from Karatu you will have first to pay the Ngorongoro fee!
If just wanting to visit Serengeti and save these fees, you will have to use the west gates, from Mwanza- Musoma road (Lake Victoria), the gate is near Bunda (around 150 km north of Mwanza).
On the Kenya side, it´s the super famous Masai-Mara (smaller, different conservation areas, fees 70-80$/pp).
Karatu: you can find all kind of accommodation around this town, from cheap rooms to luxury camps.
There´s public transport from Arusha to all these towns (Karatu, MtoWa Mbu, Babati), close the parks gates. But you will need a private car to visit the protected areas. And don´t expect to find too many cheap cars around these towns to bring you inside.
Migrations in Masai Mara & Serengeti: no borders and no fences for wild animals! Famous for the Mara River crossing, with thousand of wildbeests.
July and august is the up north migration season and October the down south route. These are the important dates to know. So depending of what month of the year, animals will more abundant in Kenya or in Tanzania. Keep this well in mind! Summer gets really very crowded of tourists, expect even higher prices. The Sand River Gate (Tanzania border, to Serengeti) is usually closed to visitors.
¿Is it possible to cross Ngorongoro and Serengeti areas in public transport? Yes, you can, there are buses from Arusha to Bunda-Lake Victoria (departure around 5:30 from Arusha). But it will be crazy expensive as foreigners have to pay entrance fees of the protected areas crossed (like doing a normal safari and maybe seeing no animals!). That means 110 $/pp + bus ticket! It´s Tanzania!
Confirmed, we checked at the Arusha bus station and at the Ngorongoro office in Arusha. Crazy!
Entrance fee: 45 $/pp (24 hours).
Car fee: 10$ (40-150$ if foreign).
Access gate is 10 km from Usa River which is 20 km east of Arusha. Momela Lakes, Ngurdoto crater, Small Serengeti, wild life (birds, monkeys, buffalos, giraffes, etc.) and access to Mount Meru top.
It seems to be OK with a normal car.
It looks really steep. It´s not as expensive as higher and snowy Kilimanjaro but still a big mountain!
Good point: you can climb independtly, no guides or tour needed like in Kilimanjaro. And you can see Kilimanjaro from its top.
45 $/pp/12 hours! Add a rescue fee of 20$ too.You will have to pay for a ranger, 15$/group.A guide is not compulsory (guide fee 20$).
3 days minimum (climbing at night early morning on 3rd day and then down all the way).
Access is via Momella gate and route (only one).
Accommodation in the mountain: a bed in a hut or camping a both 30$/pp/night.
Price for climbing Mount Meru top: at least around 350 $/pp! 3 times less than Kilimanjaro, but still a lot of money!. Up too you!
All around Arusha, oustide the national parks, there are now many created attractions to visit and activities to do: a waterfall, a village, a coffee plantation, a masai village, etc. Expect to pay for everything! And if you go on your own around these "cultural tourism" places, for sure you´ll find “touts” annoying you if you just want to walk alone. Good luck if heading to villages like Ilkiding´a or Ng´iresi (7 km north of Arusha, Meru area).
It seems that even now there are gates in some places, we saw a notice at the tourist office with fees.
- Lake Natron: 15 $ gate fee.
- Climbing Oldonyo Lengai: 100 $/group of 2/3 people.
We didn´t go to these places.
Arusha is a dusty, crowded and noisy town, with a few souvenirs shops and markets around the clock tower (you will find the same stuff everywhere in Tanzania). So better go outside.
Just take a dala-dala in Arusha center and go for a walk around the villages close to town. Hilly area (above 1.000 m high, with banana and coffee plantations), good views of Mount Meru (at least at the beginning of march, the mountain was clear).
For example, take a dala-dala to Masai Camp (east of Arusha center, 10 min, 400 Sh) and climb the road in front of it. Rural atmosphere and free views of Mount Meru!
You will see many masai villages and people on the road west from Arusha, just from the bus... and also in Zanzibar beaches!
Arusha is well connected with main Tanzania towns.
- Arusha- Nairobi: 6 h, from 15.000 sh (10$), different buses (they will maybe try to charge you a special foreigner price). Tourist shuttles for 20$.
Also plenty of vans going to the Kenya Border-Namanga for 4.500 Sh and then from the border to Nairobi many matutus (vans).
- Moshi – Arusha: 3.000 Sh, 2 h. All day long.
- Arusha- Babati: 6.500 Sh, 2h15 (170 km, good tarred road). Many departures, all day long, most of the buses continue to Singida.
- Arusha- Musoma: many buses go via Kenya (Nairobi) and you will need a Kenyan visa. If not, you will have to cross the protected areas (110$ fees!).
- Dala-dalas to the surrounding neighborhoods of Arusha depart from the market area (just ask around, in some shop). 400 Sh.
The central bus&dala-dala station in Arusha is crowded and small, and less organised than in other Tanzania towns. But we didn´t find it as terrible as some guide-books say, we had no problem in getting off the bus, ask for information about other destinations in the offices and go out. Also another western station (3 km west, in front of Shoprite), but not very used.
At the Tourist Office of Arusha, you can find some information about transport by train (Tazara, Kigoma/Mwanza/Dar) and ferries (Tanganika, Zanzibar and Nyassa). Good to get an idea of the timetable and prices, but check again once in the place.
Between Moshi and Arusha. All Moshi-Arusha buses stop at the small bus station of Merenani at the junction, from there just 6 km left to the airport (many taxis).
Flight fares are not always convenient, compared with Nairobi´s airport (300 km north of KIA). Check!
Keep in mind that Kenya and Tanzania visas cost 50$/each (single visa OK, cause East Africa Community) and local transport Arusha-Nairobi is around 10$/way.
Rooms offer is big in Arusha.
If looking for a cheap room, head north of the bus station, north of the stadium, around Levolosi Street there are many basic lodges. A double room in Monjes Lodge for exemple should be around 20.000 sh.
Some travellers recommend us Arusha Backpackers, but not specially cheap (dorm around 15.000 Sha and a double room around 30.000 Sh).
If you are looking for a relaxing place, you will have to pay much more or go to the surroundings. Arusha is quite noisy and dusty.
Couchsurfing in Arusha: small community, many expats, who live outside the center.Also many local people, most of them working in the safari tours, so double check the references first.
We stayed with Malou&Manue from France. Thanks!
Local restaurants in the center and surrounds (many BBQ places) and also tourist restaurants (quite expensive).
Many small shops and a few supermarkets in the center (there´s one in front of the Clock Tower). Bigger malls (Shoprite, west of town) are a few km away.
Tap water is not good in Arusha.
It´s a big town you will find everything you need. ATM´s, wifi, etc.
We had no problems walking in Arusha, no people harassing us with tours or anything... just a few souvenirs sellers. OK!
Tourist office in Arusha: there´s one just north of the Clock Tower. Free map of Arusha&Moshi. Information about “cultural tourism” and fees. List of safari companies and the ones to avoid too! But no price categories. Staff is not specially friendly and helpful.
Ngorongoro Office in Arusha: just a few meters down the tourist office. Just a 3D map of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the staff is quite rude.
I really like this post. It is very informative. Thank you so much for sharing this blog.
I appreciate this blog. The content of this post is very nice and interesting.
Thanks for such information about traveling to Tanzania and what I should expect during my visit there. I will surely make plans to tour this beautiful country.
best explanations i ever find in the internet. thank you!
Thanks for all these tips because we want to go to the safari soon and they will help us for sure!
Thanks for sharing this with us! Some really amazing features.
Good to see these helpful information here,Thanks lots for sharing them with us. | 2019-04-26T02:57:36Z | https://www.nomad-as.com/2015/10/tips-for-cheap-affordable-safari-in.html |
“Let me know when you’re ready,” Diane Mollaghan called out as I rummaged one recent winter afternoon through the costumes and props she had stored in the back room of a run-down house trailer on the grounds of the Town Lake Animal Center in Austin. Mollaghan, a 34-year-old animal-behavior researcher and graduate student in the University of Texas’s psychology department, was waiting in the trailer’s main room beside a tan-and-brown mutt that had recently been left in the shelter’s night drop-off box with no ID tags or background-information form. Estimated by the shelter’s staff members to be a “Manchester terrier mix,” it looked like a pointy-faced Chihuahua on stilts, a creature of indeterminate origin and yet-to-be-determined disposition. That, literally, was where I was to come in.
All afternoon, in that continuous din of kennel-dog barking — high-pitched, autocatalytic, corrosive — I had been helping Mollaghan conduct various trait-assessment tests on some of the shelter’s recent arrivals, trying to get a fix on each animal’s temperament, measuring characteristics like sociability, playfulness, aggressiveness and fearfulness. The house trailer — situated midway between Town Lake’s western row of kennels, which hold already approved, adoptable dogs, and the compound’s eastern end, where the veterinary clinic and euthanasia rooms are — was serving as a kind of purgatorial courtroom. The dogs we gave high marks to would advance westward with a certificate of adoptability; those we didn’t rate so well would be dispatched the other way, eastward to the euthanasia room.
As fair trials go, these were anything but, given the inherently stressful venue and the somewhat offbeat nature of the tests themselves. Indeed, many a so-called well-homed dog I’ve met might have taken my head off for some of the antics our defendants were being subjected to that afternoon. There was the “approach by angry normal person, stare, raise voice, raise hand as if to strike” test; or test No. 12, the “friendly approach by toddler doll” — a three-foot-high, raggedy-haired creature in a paw-smeared yellow taffeta dress, a figure that is still showing up in my nightmares. And there was test No. 13, the little number that I was just then donning an outsize yellow raincoat with hood and walking stick to perform for our Manchester terrier mix: the “friendly ‘strange’ person with cane, approach and pet” test.
And yet by the unremittingly bleak standards of animal-shelter justice, such trait-assessment sessions are a much fairer shake than most shelter dogs will ever get. These sessions are part of a new trend among animal shelters across the United States to take a more proactive role in both controlling and counteracting the rampant discarding of dogs in this country. Mollaghan’s study, a joint project between Town Lake and the University of Texas’s Animal Personality Institute, makes use both of questionnaires filled out by dog relinquishers and of personality assessment forms designed for adopters in an attempt to better understand the mind-set not only of the abandoned animals but of their past and potential owners as well. Mollaghan’s hope is that she will be able to determine which people will best suit the needs and temperament of the different dogs she has assessed. It’s a kind of cutting-edge interspecies matchmaking service, a whole new science of animal rescue.
Town Lake alone takes in, on average, about 40 dogs a day from the greater Austin area, or some 14,000 over the course of a year. About half of them never make it back out again, a figure consistent with those reported by shelters across the United States. (The stats are even worse for cats.) According to Stephen Zawistowski, executive vice president for national programs for the ASPCA, about four million dogs enter shelters nationwide each year. Some two million of them end up being euthanized, about 5,000 dogs each day, one every 16 seconds. They are not, as is often assumed, merely the misbegotten mutts, castoffs of some imaginary canine lower caste. They hail from every stratum of the human society that shaped them, from all the varied quadrants of our keeping. According to nationwide surveys, as many as 25 percent of the dogs who end up in shelters are purebreds: Boston terriers, border collies, Pomeranians, standard poodles and so on, the sorts of dogs that people pay thousands of dollars to obtain. And yet they are discarded for the same dizzying array of reasons the mongrels are, ranging from the truly fraught to the downright frivolous.
Dog mania being at an all-time peak in this country, it is difficult to say whether such profligacy with our pooches is a logical phenomenon or a wholly paradoxical one. A recent survey of the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association estimates that Americans house some 74 million dogs. And with the often factorylike production of ever more new puppies to satisfy growing consumer demand, the 5 percent of owned dogs that wind up disowned each year could be thought of as the inevitable spillage that attends all forms of mass consumption. Except, of course, for the simple, discomforting fact that the “product” in question is not only a living being but also our proverbial best friend, our most loyal and longtime animal companion.
Dog abandonment is hardly a new phenomenon. Still, the overwhelming number of canine outcasts being taken in and put down in recent years is now prompting animal shelters — places, by definition, of surrender — to fight back. With the help of a broad array of specialists, including human and dog psychologists, animal behaviorists and ethologists, local veterinarians and dog trainers, even dog-minded architects, shelters like Town Lake are now rethinking the whole phenomenon of abandoned pets: from the behavioral dysfunctions (human and animal) that lead to dog relinquishment; to the experience and expectations of potential adopters; to developing new design features in shelters that reduce the stress and depression of the animals there and, in turn, lure more people to come and consider them for adoption. The animal shelter, a place long consigned to being a lost pet’s last, is fast becoming among the most likely places to find a lasting pet.
They come to Town Lake — the found strays, the “owner-surrendered” and the recidivist failed adoptions — at all times of day: during normal working hours, delivered directly into the hands of shelter staff; or long after closing, furtively placed in the wee hours of the morning inside one of the shelter’s self-locking drop-off bins, often without any ID tags or background-information forms. The rest of Town Lake’s unhappy residents come via that time-honored but oft-maligned civil servant, the dogcatcher.
Mollaghan created a four-page form for dog relinquishers. The reasons they list for surrender reflect a dizzying range, from the serious (lifestyle issues like a move or loss of job, or dog aggression) to the supercilious (people going on vacation). Mollaghan told me one person reported that her pet was “boring.” Another family said they had bought new furniture that their dog’s coat didn’t quite match.
At Town Lake — as with all shelters except for the “no kill” variety, which keep a strict limit on the number of dogs they’ll accept — three fates can befall an animal that’s not reclaimed by its owner within three days: 1) adoption; 2) rescue (meaning it is claimed by one of many different groups out there that are vigorously devoted to the salvation of a specific breed — Schnauzer Rescue, for example, or Standard Poodle Rescue — and are known for being as strict as human adoption agencies are about whom they’ll place their dogs with); or 3) euthanasia, the dismal reality of which was brought home to me one morning upon returning to Town Lake after a dawn patrol with an animal-rescue officer from Austin’s Health and Human Services department named Billy Seguin.
Pulling off to one side, we watched as a wide-cab trailer backed into our spot, its rear door already open, revealing a large metal-lined container.
“Will you be O.K. with this?” a female shelter worker asked, taking hold of my arm as I started walking over from Seguin’s truck.
Just then a small side door opened to my left. A man was standing in a dimly lighted room before a partly visible mound, the startling dimensions of which would soon become apparent as, one by one, shiny black tied-off garbage bags were being tossed out into the area before me. Big, small and middle-size lumps, well over 50 of them, some rigid with rigor mortis and some — like the large, handsome, two-toned boxer mix that I watched spill out of the tear in his bag and slide down the mound — loose-limbed and floppy-eared, like deeply asleep dogs.
It was, I learned later, merely a day and a half’s grim output; the majority of the animals, according to Mollaghan, could have, with very little time and effort, made some people perfectly fine companions. Town Lake, however, like most other large, municipally financed shelters, lacks the resources to undo the distortions of every dog’s prior ownership and guide it on its way to a successful subsequent one.
One morning, I accompanied one of the shelter’s rapid-fire “disposition committees” on a tour of duty: four members of the shelter staff who roamed the facility’s three main buildings, deciding in brief visits which dogs are adoptable and which ones are not. The dogs are held in long, single-story barrackslike structures of narrow cement kennels with chain-link metal gates on them, everywhere crows flitting above the malodorous mayhem, like animate flecks of barking. Stray 1, the first building a prospective adopter encounters upon passing through Town Lake’s gates, tends to get the cuter, smaller and purebred dogs. It’s a tacit if somewhat begrudging nod toward the preferences of prospective adopters, though Mollaghan told me that part of the shelter’s mission is to get people to move past their initial biases and appearance-based choices and venture the many midsize, ostensibly nondescript mutts in Stray 2 and 3, dogs that often make for ideal companions.
The committee went from one animal on its list to the next, stopping before each one to see how it responded to the same basic human-dog interactions: talking excitedly, petting. The tests took on an almost unbearable gravitas in that context, especially when one of those dime-a-dozen, midsize mixed breeds in Stray 2 or 3 would get it right, would eagerly do all those human-pleasing things dogs have been bred to do. It was almost easier to watch the ones who reared back or stiffened at our approach, a clear sign of asocial tendencies and an almost certain death sentence; easier to watch dogs behaving beyond hope rather than having their hopes falsely stoked again.
Final decisions are typically based on the disposition committee’s judgment. Mollaghan’s more nuanced assessments, however, performed on four randomly selected newly arrived dogs each day, sometimes have an influence on the fate of a dog whose potential might otherwise be missed.
A number of recent studies published in The Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science have indicated that the leading cause of dog abandonment is behavioral problems. A team of researchers for the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy, headed by Dr. Mo Salman of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University, surveyed nearly 4,000 dog owners at 12 shelters across the United States about their reasons for relinquishing their dogs. They repeatedly cited things like biting, overaggression, chewed-up furniture, repeated soiling: dogs literally and figuratively bouncing off our walls.
And who can blame them, our walls now being just about all they have? With our full-scale shift from an agrarian to a service-based economy and society, the very nature of dog work and the tasks we ask of dogs have shifted as well. The hunters and sheepherders and the high-strung, ground-tearing terriers of yore — born ferreters of rats and badgers — are being increasingly disappointed from their intended earthly rounds, pulled skyward into high-rises, where there are only our ever-shifting moods, anthropomorphic projections and stuffed toys and couch pillows to alternately grasp, negotiate or tear through.
We look to dogs now to be not only companions but also substitute children, emotional and psychological support in the wake of deaths, divorces and breakups. We are asking them to be, in essence, little people, animate worry beads and stress absorbers: to undertake jobs that, while they may engage — to the point of exhaustion — the canine species’s long-heralded loyalty, exercise precious little else. The outcome has been an ever-growing number of incredibly messed-up, neurotic dogs, and with them a rise each year in the incidence of dog bites and other aggressive, antisocial behaviors — all of which contribute, of course, to the huge number of abandoned dogs.
Shelters in a number of states across the country are now employing a multifaceted, proactive approach, specifically to address these behavioral issues, taking their cues from surveys like Mo Salman’s, or another, similar study done by The Journal of the American Veterinary Association back in 1996 that concluded that dogs whose owners reported having received helpful behavior advice were at a 94 percent lower risk for abandonment. A shelter in Denver known as the Dumb Friends League began a dog behavior program back in the mid-1990s, teaching “shelter manners” to their abandoned dogs to make them more adoptable and offering behavior-training classes for dog adopters and other dog owners in the community. In four years’ time, the number of dogs returned to the shelter decreased by 23 percent and those returned for reasons of misbehavior by 38 percent.
A number of shelters that have broadened their scope in this way have reported similar improvements. At the Humane Society in Minneapolis, puppies that graduated from socialization classes were found to be far less likely to be returned after adoption. At the Town of North Hempstead Animal Shelter on Long Island, a volunteer shelter-dog training program initiated in 1999 cut the euthanasia rate by 50 percent in just six months. According to a 2006 survey of shelters in Ohio conducted by Ohio State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, the outlook for dogs in shelters has greatly improved in the past 10 years, thanks partly to spay/neutering programs and also to a big increase in the number of shelters that have an established partnership with a veterinary practice. There has been a 16 percent decrease statewide in the number of dogs taken in each year and a 39 percent decrease in the number of dogs euthanized.
Dogs still are animals — our endless manipulations and misperceptions of them notwithstanding — and it has now become the added and somehow logical role of animal shelters, in concert with local veterinarians, pet stores and dog breeders, and an ever-growing network of applied animal behaviorists and trainers, to remind us of this simple truth. To help us step back and readdress our best friends again.
Mollaghan speaks of her approach as a three-part puzzle: Try to get a handle on the dogs. Try to read a potential adopter’s personality and expectations. And, finally, develop the relationship element itself — try to get a sense of how people are choosing their dogs, what criteria they’re using.
The first part can be particularly daunting. Any abandoned dog is the living embodiment of a broken bond of some sort, an intriguing if maddeningly inarticulate emissary of some prior human entanglement. The challenge for shelter workers trying to re-home that animal, of course, is to get a firm enough idea of its disposition — which naturally deteriorates with every passing second the dog spends among its equally miserable fellow captives — to feel fairly confident that they’re not dispatching a ticking time bomb into someone’s life.
Kennel No. 227 in Stray 3, one of the kennels for larger dogs, held a light tan, somewhat undernourished-looking pit bull named Lana. She hugged to the back corner of her kennel and, upon being greeted, began to tremble uncontrollably. Mollaghan opened the gate, went in and crouched down, very low, so as to be less threatening. A petite woman with a round-eyed, elfish face, she seemed utterly fearless and under control at all times. She waited a bit longer in silence. Called out again. More trembling.
She stepped gingerly back outside and locked the gate. She pulled out the stat sheet from the plastic pouch on the front of Lana’s kennel, telling me that they get dogs like her all the time. They usually have names like Nitro or Cocaine or Killer, dogs that spend their lives chained in yards, having no contact with other dogs or humans.
It had been, up until then, a fairly positive afternoon as shelter-dog days go. We had tested a young but extremely well-balanced Labrador-cattle dog mix that responded to the taffeta-doll dance and my rain-coated flasher-man get-up with what seemed like a perfectly appropriate mix of curiosity and concern. He was followed by a 7-year-old husky-malamute, a dog that countenanced the entire battery of assessments with such a world-weary calm that he somehow rendered us, the testers, the species under examination. We didn’t rate too well when it came to Lana. She would be put down the following afternoon.
On the way to retrieving our day’s last subject, fate delivered me a far more intimate look at the other two parts of Mollaghan’s puzzle and the larger dramas of modern-day dog adoption than I had ever anticipated getting. It happened at Stray 3, Kennel No. 252. Two names were listed on her data sheet: Cricket and Olive. A twice-abandoned “border terrier mix.” Tiny. Just over 12 pounds. A breathing bundle of gray-and-white carpet lint with long pipe-cleaner-like legs, a slight underbite and the proverbial button eyes. I’d have guessed the first-ever mating of a Maltese and a spider monkey. But whatever unknowable admixture of cockeyed progeny, behavioral flaws and human perversions had led to this creature’s double exile, it made no difference to me. I had lost not only my journalistic objectivity, my so-called reporterly remove, but also all remnants of reason and rationality. I was, in a word, sunk.
Mollaghan was on to me before I’d uttered a word: to the fact that I was both instantly becoming one of her human test subjects and already committing the classic shelter-shopper faux pas. I was going on first impression, mere appearance. I’d fallen for one of the “cutesy” dogs, one whose very presence there among the dime-a-dozen midsize mixes that I should, in good conscience, have been considering, only further bewitched me, the way she calmly and mutely came right up to greet me amid a maelstrom of barking and jumping kennel mates.
Back at Mollaghan’s office, we learned the following about Cricket/Olive: a spayed female, approximately 2 years old, found three days before, roaming the grounds of the Anderson Oaks town-home community. This was, we soon verified, her second stint at Town Lake. There was no information on her original owner, but as for her second, a guy named Forbes, records showed that he adopted her from Town Lake seven weeks earlier. An immediate message had been left on Forbes’s answering machine and an e-mail sent, quoting the usual reclaim fee of $50 and giving him a three-day deadline to reclaim his dog.
And then we learned this: I didn’t have a prayer. Even if Forbes didn’t show, three others before me had dibs on Cricket/Olive.
“So much for that,” I said, my sudden scheme of returning to Brooklyn and surprising my wife, Bex, and our own shelter-adopted terrier mix, Roz, evaporating as quickly as it had coalesced.
“Not necessarily,” said Mollaghan, who, I soon learned, was hatching a scheme of her own, one that would pivot around her intimate knowledge of the fickleness of dog adopters and certain nuances in the dog-adoption process itself. No. 2 on the waiting list turned out to be a rescue group. If, Mollaghan explained, she could get the rescue group to defer to me as its ideal adopter, that would legitimately leapfrog me to the slot just behind the first C.I. (customer interest) on the list, a man named Welch. He had happened upon Kennel No. 252 the day Cricket/Olive arrived. Welch’s deadline clock of 36 hours would commence ticking the day after the one expired on Forbes.
The next day and a half was — between waiting out the deadline on Welch and going through my own pre-adoption gantlet — a beguiling mix of torturous time-distension and a kind of frenzied, dual-pronged detective mystery: the shelter trying to determine my true motives for wanting Olive (I had already opted for that half of her dual identity on the chance that I did get her), even as I was trying to divine what sort of a devil might be lurking underneath that adorable exterior to induce two prior owners to discard her.
Back at the shelter the next morning, I filled out the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) form Mollaghan has devised for her study. It presents 10 general trait descriptions and allows seven degrees of agreement with them, from 1 (“Disagree strongly”) to 7 (“Agree strongly”), with 4 being “Neither agree nor disagree.” Apparent contradictions notwithstanding, I gave myself “7s” for the first eight descriptions: extroverted, quarrelsome, self-disciplined, easy to upset, open to new experiences, reserved, sympathetic and disorganized. I gave myself a “Neither agree nor disagree” on “Emotionally stable,” and a “Disagree strongly” for “Conventional, uncreative.” The second half of the TIPI covered both the most important characteristics in my selection of Olive — “Breed” (No), “Age” (No), “Personality” (Pending) or “Appearance” (Agree strongly!) — as well as my method of choosing, as in “Love at first sight” (Duh!) or “Advice from adoption counselor” (None as of yet) or “The pet’s behavioral history” (Now my obsession).
As I awaited the afternoon interview that Mollaghan had arranged for me with Kathryn Sharp, Town Lake’s rescue-group coordinator, I kept going back out to Kennel No. 252. I was trying at once to affirm that this dog was real and to catch her doing something dastardly. I must have made 10 trips, and each time, amid the clamor of the other Stray 3 residents, the same button-eyed bundle came soundlessly forward, tail wagging. Shelter-staff adoption counselors stationed in the foyer between the administrative offices and the back dog kennels began to give me funny looks. A half-hour after my successful interview with Kathryn Sharp, I bumped into her on my way back to Stray 3. I stopped and pretended to read some fliers on the foyer bulletin board. She smiled.
It got worse. Back in Mollaghan’s office, I filed a Freedom of Information Act petition for Welch’s phone number and called him on my cellphone. I wanted to know his intentions, to talk him out of them if need be. If that didn’t work, I was prepared to offer money. A lot. I got his answering machine but decided not to leave a message. That, for some reason, struck me as too weird. I made three more calls over the next hour. Someone picked up the last time, then smashed the phone down. I joked to Mollaghan that Welch seemed to have serious anger issues and perhaps should be disqualified. She laughed. Sort of.
Mollaghan, who also works part time as a dog-behavior consultant, had an appointment that evening at the home of a client with whom she had recently placed a Town Lake outcast. She asked if I’d like to accompany her. On the drive there it occurred to me that contacting Welch might be exactly the wrong thing to do, that it might rekindle a desire that had in fact long ago waned. Mollaghan agreed. We made a deal. If Welch called in, she would contact me, and then I could go to work on him.
The dog we visited that evening, a black Schnauzer mix named Sparky, was living testimony to the miraculous powers of just ounces of behavioral training and the right human-dog matchmaking. Sparky was left three months earlier in a Town Lake drop-off box. Apparently picked up in an abandoned apartment complex somewhere in south Austin, Sparky’s drop-off info sheet read only, “Found in a room.” The dog was emaciated and quite mean. In the course of his trait assessments, he tried to bite Mollaghan.
Sparky’s new owners, Elizabeth and Dennis Cole, had previously had a bad experience with an adopted shelter dog orphaned by Hurricane Katrina. Elizabeth Cole came to Town Lake and had a pre-adoption consultation with Mollaghan to discuss what she was looking for in a dog. Sparky, Mollaghan told me, was not the match she would have made, but after their consult, Cole went off by herself among Town Lake’s kennels and immediately fell for Sparky.
After Cole chose Sparky, Mollaghan immediately went to work on the dog, taking him out of his kennel and keeping him beside her in her office each day. She gradually conditioned him to human company and was able to temper his aggression. Now, in the Coles’ backyard, she was instructing their 11-year-old son, Criss, on how to manage an extremely contented-looking, mild-mannered Sparky on the lead. He had been with the Coles now for four months. A real-life canine rags-to-riches story.
I asked if there were any lingering problems with Sparky, who was now at my feet, gleefully absorbing a back rub. Cole said the only thing was that he refuses to go up stairs. It all only further fueled my fervor for Olive, convincing me that whatever it was that got her twice tossed by her previous owners, it could be overcome.
As things turned out, however, I needn’t have worried. About any of it. The following day, another deadline on Olive came and went. Mollaghan phoned me at my hotel at 1 p.m. sharp to say that the little girl was mine. Three months have passed. Olive and Roz play and nap together all day long, sleep at night intertwined. No sign whatsoever to date of that inner devil.
It’s hard for me to imagine now why she was never reclaimed, or why her next suitor never showed. I’ve often thought of picking up the phone to try to find out, but somehow it’s better not knowing. Sometimes, Mollaghan told me, a dog’s behavior just hews to and mirrors the environment that it’s living in, and there is something deeply reaffirming, heartening in that. Just as there is in watching the daily loosening of Olive’s abandonment anxiety: from the early days of her following everywhere at my heels, even when I got up for a drink of water in the middle of the night, to now seeing her dare solo, field-long dashes during our walks in the park, nearly out of sight, just because she feels that she can.
Charles Siebert, a contributing writer who has reported frequently on animals, is at work on “Humanzee,” a book about humans and chimpanzees. | 2019-04-24T16:25:03Z | https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/magazine/08animal.t.html?pagewanted=1 |
This section goal is to go deep inside different interesting Gnostic topics every week.
What does a Warrior-Jaguar symbolize?
What does Teotihuacan mean within the Gnosis?
In the archaeological zone of Cholula, where is represented "The Apostolate" of the arcane twelve of the tarot and what does it mean?
What do the two columns of the temple of the Pyramid of the Lord of the Dawn represent, how should they be constructed?
Why is the Glyph "9 Eye of Reptile" so important, what does it tell us?
What is the relationship between Quetzalcoatl and Venus?
What message do we find in the drama of Quetzalcoatl and Jesus?
How does Quetzalcoatl symbolize the Logos?
What kind of fire does Quetzalcoatl represent and why?
In what part of the spiritual development is the title of Quetzalcoatl given?
What is the emblem in which our Lord Quetzalcoatl left his teaching synthesized and what is its meaning?
What does a jaguar symbolize by devouring hearts?
What does Quetzalcoatl mean and what was his teaching?
What is the message of the play "Searching for the Buddha from the previous Gnostic congress"?
What is needed to develop the Chakras?
What knowledge does the Rune Ur give us?
What is the use of practicing the mantra "Wu"?
What are the Lamasery exercises?
Why is it useful to learn to listen to the Subtle Voice?
What is the Esoteric Buddhism?
Why is Yasodharā so important in the life of the Buddha?
What are the four truths of the Buddha?
What is the relationship between the Kundalini and the Chakras?
What is the wheel of Samsara?
What is the 2nd Jewel of the Yellow Dragon?
What are the Seven Yogas?
What is the purpose of experiencing the Illuminating Void?
How does the law of karma work?
What is and what does the Bardo Thodol contain?
Inside the human being… Who is Manco Capac?
Who was the Mother of the Corn for the Incas and what does that seed represent?
What is the use, for our interior, of studying the universe?
What is the meaning of Master Jesus' words when saying "And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch"?
How do we transform an impression?
The misuse of the five centers.
An ancient allegory that represents the Psychological Ego.
What does the Gnostic Movement invite us to do given the prophecies of the Age of Aquarius?
What is the name of our Sun and what constellation does it belong?
What is the influence of the Age of Aquarius in the Philosophical Schools?
What are the characteristic waves of the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius?
What does the Tower of Babel represent?
Who are the called to be part of the Army of World Salvation?
Why is the meditation recommended for counteracting drug addiction?
What attitude should we take in front of the Great Catastrophe?
What message does Master Tlaloc give to us?
What good would it do us to study the ancient codices in the light of Gnosis?
Why did they bind the god Tajin with a rainbow?
What do really represent the sacrifices to Tlaloc?
Is croaking like frogs, as the ancient tribes of America did it, useful for something?
Where is the Tlalocan and who lives there?
What is the esoteric meaning of Tlaloc's goggled eyes?
Why the angels of Christianity, devas of India and Aztec gods do represent the same?
Inside of us, where can we find Tlaloc?
What is Tlaloc and where does he live?
What is the meaning of the name “Tlaloc”?
Which are the Aztec gods of the 4 elements?
Why the astral unfolding can never be dangerous?
What is needed to dissolve an enmity?
Inside us, who are the Lords of Xibalba from the Popol Vuh?
What is the relationship between the Mayas and Atlantis?
What does the feathered Serpent mean?
What do the gods sowing from the Dresden Codex represent?
What does symbolize the corn in the tomb of the god Pacal?
What does the book of Chilam Balam contain?
What is the main deity of the Maya and what is the meaning of his name?
What do the waters of Mayan genesis symbolize?
What do represent the earmuffs of the mayan God Chaac?
What is the teaching of the building of the Snail (Caracol) in Chichen Itza?
What kind of warriors were the engravings of Chichen Itza referring to?
What is the Esoteric meaning of the Tzomplantli?
What does mean the descent of Kukulkan?
What does represent the field of the Religious ball of Chichen Itz�?
What does represent the history of Prometheus for our interior work?
Why are we told that the three furies are an obstacle for the awakening of the Conscience?
Where is the origin of the Mayans and where are they now?
What do we mean when we say we must learn to play the lyre of Orpheus?
What are the three obligatory steps of the path of comprehension?
Why is the ICQ logo a sea snail split in half?
What?s the difference between Love and Desire?
What do represent the two triangles forming the Solomon's Star?
What does represent the Caduceus of Mercury?
Why were there labyrinths in the ancient schools of Mysteries?
What does Abraxas mean in Gnosis?
What is the esoteric meaning of the Cross?
What do represent the Runes in Gnosis?
What does the serpent, in its positive and transcendental aspect means?
How to fight the darkness?
How does the Magic Flute play teach us the development of the clairvoyance?
What qualities does the sphinx teach us to pass the trials of the elements?
What is required to make the sun really and fully get to manifest in us?
Why are there, in today's society, many failures at home?
How should we understand our own Initiation?
What do we mean in Our Father praying: “Give us this day our daily bread”?
How can we free ourselves from the inferior law of Vengeance?
What is the internal silence?
Why is it essential to recover the quality of veneration?
In the Path of Gnosis we arrive to a special state in our lives where we do not belong upside nor downside, everything is confusion. What is the name of this psychological state and how should we face it?
Why do we have the wrong habit of judging others?
What consequences do lying attracts to our life?
What would the 9 solemn sounds of the oberture on the Magic Flute represent?
How can we live the Christmas in our heart?
Who are the Pennate Gods?
What's the name of the elemental creatures of water and the earth?
What's the name of the elemental creatures of the Fire and the Air?
How is the elementary evolution carried out?
What is and what is the Elemento-therapy useful for?
What is an elemental and why it's called like so?
Why do we recommend listening to Classical Music?
What was the real objective of the Mesoamerican ballgames?
What do the undulations of the serpent represent?
Why were the ancient cultures of solar nature?
Which one is the Astral Dimension?
What benefits do we get from listening to the classical music?
What is the Law of Equalization of the vibrations of many sources?
What are the Tamasic, Rayasic and Sattvic foods?
What's the benefit of chanting the mantra Abracadabra?
What teaching deliver us every arcane of Tarot?
What messages gives the Gnostic Anthropology?
What's the relationship between the Tree of Life and the Human Being?
What is the Gnosis looking for in archaeological sites?
According to Gnosis, what are the benefits of meditation ?
What message delivers the Sun Stone?
What benefits gives a mantra?
Why should Knowledge and Being balance each other?
How can we worship Huitzilopochtli?
What do represent the ornaments that Huitzilpochtli took from the 400 southerns?
What?s the relationship between the dead of the Ego and Huitzilopochtli?
What does it mean “Tonantzin Teteoina and what’s its relationship with the serpent of fire?
What does the birth of Huitzilopochtli symbolize?
How is the true liberation achieved?
What is the true penance that really interests Divinity?
Speaking about “she who has the skirt of snakes” (Coatlicue), the snake, besides being a symbolism of Occult Wisdom, what else does it represent?
Who is “Left-Handed Hummingbird” (Huitzilopochtli) inside us?
Where do we Return to with the Arcanum 22nd?
What is the senselessness represented in the Arcanum 21?
What kind of weakness is the Arcanum 20 asking us to eliminate?
What alliance is the Arcanum 19 referring to?
What are the hidden enemies of the Arcanum 18?
What planet is Arcanum 17 related to and why?
How could come the fragility of the Arcanum 16?
What kinds of dangers announce the Arcanum 15?
How to acquire the temperance indicated by the Arcane 14?
What?s the death mentioned in the Arcanum 13 and how do we achieve it?
What would you do to fulfill the apostleship of the Arcanum 12?
How can we apply the persuasion of Arcanum 11?
What?s the wheel of the Arcanum 10?
What initiation does the Arcanum 9 represent?
What tests are the ones announced by the Arcanum 8?
The Arcanum 7 represents the triumph, but what should we do to achieve it?
Which star is used to represent the Arcanum 6 and why?
Which one of the Cosmic Laws is related to Arcanum 5?
What part of the Being is the Arcanum 4 related to?
What does the Arcanum 3 announce to us?
What occult science is the Arcanum 2 referring to?
What represent the eyes in the card of the Arcanum 1?
How could we incarnate the Secret Teachings of the Popol Vuh?
Why is humility the door for reaching Wisdom?
What represents the bonfire where the twins died and the river where they were reborn in the Popol Vuh?
What teaches us the symbolism of the animals in the Popol Vuh about advancing in the dead of our psychological defects?
What would you do to be successful at the houses of coldness, fire, tigers and bat?
What is the meaning of the house of Darkness?
What?s the importance of the mosquito Xan in the self-discovery?
How can the louse, the frog, the snake and the hawk help us in the internal Path?
What does represent the mouse in the Popol Vuh?
What represent Hunahpu and Ixbalanque from the Popol Vuh?
It is possible for the essence of the animals (elementals) to help us?
What do represent the four owls, the messengers Xibalba?
What is the Dark House of Xibalba?
Why are Ixpiyacoc and Ixmucan? our origin?
Where did the Mayas get their wisdom from?
How are we helping the world by removing our own Ego?
What is the future of the shelterless child and what to do to change things?
Why it?s absurd to criticize others religions, saying that those are useless and only mine is real?
What are the dangers of the positive system to strengthen the “I”?
Why is so important the Integral Comprehension on the Mind?
Why is Avarice the mother of cruelty?
What?s the method to end the alcoholism?
How is it that envy has become the secret spring of most of our deeds?
What food crimes are committed against the people and what are their causes?
What I?s turn the customs into a world-size problem?
Why it?s important to balance work and rest?
Why the I can?t annihilate the I?
Why is the war the worst plague that can suffer the Human Being?
How can we balance Political and Spiritual issues?
What?s the objective of setting cooperatives of lawyers for the people?
What would be the use of large-scale cooperatives supported by the official government?
What would be the most effective system to avoid illnesses?
Why it?s so important to identify and understand the origin of pain?
Why do the large corporations hire young people only?
Why do we need Comprehension and not effort to eliminate psychological mistakes?
Why our behavior should be authentic, without depending on anyone?
How can we experience the Truth?
Why does the human being want to acumulate, to become powerful at the expenses of others?
What represents in us the birth of Huitzilopochtli?
Why is Ehecatl represented with a peak?
What does esoterically symbolize the Tiger or Jaguar?
Where can we find the Sacred Fire?
How is Camazotz internally related with us?
Why does the Chac Mool has a recipient in the Solar Plexus?
What can Xochipilli and Xochiquetzalli help us with?
What symbolize the Eagle standing over the nopal, devouring a serpent?
What's the name of Huitzilopochtli's Mother?
What are the three basic forces in the Creation?
How can we end the cruelty that we carry inside?
How do the grafts and the canned food influence the nourishment?
How do the excessive logging and extinguishing the species of animals affect in the vibratory level?
Why is it that the more we think in a problem the more difficult is to solve it?
Why violence cannot solve the problems of the World?
Who preached the classless society?
How should we use technology in the field in equilibrium with Nature?
What social links have determined the type of Government that we have?
How could we really work for Democracy?
What's the current state of our thoughts, our mind and our reason?
What is the relationship of the Laws of number, measurement and weight with Nature?
Why is so important for us to know the Cosmic Laws, such as the Solionensius'?
What is the relationship between the human lifetime and the Cosmic Values?
What was the purpose of the Sacred Dances of Antiquity?
What is the relationship between the loss of language and the human degeneration?
What is the relationship between the Spatial Sense and the Color tones?
What's the "Mali Mali" decease?
How does develop the Law of Recurrence?
What does the Society need for the work to become fertile and creative?
Why is so serious for the human being to be turned just into a production/consumption machine?
How much damage has caused the subjective reason to the humanity?
When did the Consciousness of man get divided?
What's the use of developing the Spatial Sense?
What kind of Fire was worshipped by the ancient cultures?
What are the opposites pairs of Philosophy?
Why Nature does not take leaps?
Where were located the Lemur Continent?
What does the Metaphysics clarify us about Nature's phenomena?
How could we live the Christmas in our heart?
What are the Nature's Akashic registers?
What is required for the moneylenders to fulfill a praiseworthy labor?
How can we establish a Permanent Center of Gravity within?
What is the relationship between the life Insurance and the three types of acts?
Why home is something sacred for the human being?
What is the origin of the Wars?
Why is better the Work Standard than the Gold Standard?
Why is so important to learn how to use the Solar Energy?
What's the solution for the problem of unemployment?
What are the three divisions of the Absolute?
Why the Sehirot Jesod is called the Foundation?
Why it's important to achieve a voluntarily and conscious astral projection?
What are the symbols of Netzach?
How can we create Soul?
Why it is said that the Leaders of the Divine Law are judges of Consciousness?
What is the symbolism of the Kala-Hamsa Swan?
Why is the Birth of Christ celebrated in the Winter Solstice and His Death and Resurrection in the Spring Equinox?
How can we get in touch with out Farther who is in secret?
How should we behave with the real professional without academic degree?
How can we the humans realize the Social Christ?
Why we can't stand some people just at first sight?
How would the problems resulting from the termination of employment be solved?
How could be established the minimum wage?
What area of land needs a family to live in a balanced way?
For the world to change radically, what do we all the human beings should change?
How could be practiced the A-Himsa in thought, word and deed?
What would we achieve by inversing the I and the other in the development of the conscious cooperation?
The current state of our Society is civilization or savagery?
How does it affect us the pay rise?
How do the bad taxes affect us?
Why the prison system can't reform anybody?
Why can't we stand a person at first sight, without knowing him/her?
What would it be the social benefit ?of eliminating the cruelty within?
Why do we have bad rulers?
Why don't we have a real democracy and how could we reach it?
How can the conflict worker-employer be solved?
Why is it necessary to abandon the mechanicalness while eating?
What actions could we do to fight the homelessness?
How does it affect the quality of the home of an individual or family in the Society?
Why is there so much hunger in the world if there are enough land to farm?
Why the opinions can't solve the problems of the Society?
What are the causes of the failure of the Unions?
Why is the right to work a legitimate right?
How can the big corporations affect the economy of a Country?
How can the hunger of the people be finished?
It would be possible for the world to leave the crisis behind with the suggestions of the politicians?
Is there the real social justice?
How can we be well related to money?
What can we do to reduce the Infant delinquency?
Are the car accidents in destiny?
Why and how can we practice the real Charity?
What should the human being make for the world to change radically?
\What is the Mental Energy?
What do we understand by Freedom?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Pisces?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Aquarius?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Capricorn?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Sagittarius?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Scorpio?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Libra?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Virgo?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Leo?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Cancer?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Gemini?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Taurus?
What is the Esoteric Teaching of the Sign Aries?
What exercise suggest the Master Samael to control Anger?
What are the four kingdoms?
What are the names of the Seven bodies in Sanskrit?
Why the Gnosis does not interpret your dreams, but it teaches you how to do it by yourself?
Why do we suggest to meditate on the Archaeological symbolism of ancient cultures?
What values should we develop to facilitate the astral projections?
What's the difference between an Astral Projection and the Jinas State?
What are the five aspects of the Divine Mother?
Why the Gnosis is not a Sect?
Why the Gnostic student has no need of any kind of plant for the Astral projection?
In an spiritual level... how do the drugs affect us?
What is the Mystical Death and why it's so necessary?
Which one is the best Religion and why?
What Psychological defects keep the Love away?
What do represent the Holy Week in us?
What is the Law of Return?
Why it isn't dangerous to project the astral body?
Where can we find the Gnosis?
Who are the Tula's Atlantids from, Hidalgo M?xico?
What does represent Tonatiuh (Aztec) in us?
How can we become a Sincere Mistaken Person?
Why can't we miss any of the 3 factors of the Revolution of the Consciousness in our interior work?
Which one is the older, the Earth or the Moon?
Where lies the real Wisdom?
What is the Psychological Gymnasium and what is it useful for?
What psychological elements cause the wars?
What's the shape of the Gnomes and Pigmies?
The Brain is the Mind?
What are and how do we get the Hydrogen 24, 12 and 6?
What is the relationship between the Meditation and the phrase "Nosce Te Ipsum"?
What are the Three States of the Ego?
Why is the Contumacy so important in these Gnostic teachings?
What is the Kalkian Personality?
What is the Psychological Slavery?
Why is the effort useless during the Meditation?
Why the Gnosis DOES NOT AGREE with the year 2012 for the end of humanity or on the contrary, for a positive change?
What is the Fallacy of the Ego?
What is the Sophism of Distraction?
What is the Particular Characteristic Psychological Trait?
How can we explain so many internal contradictions?
What's the origin of the process of anger (rage)?
What thinks the Gnosis about the Woman?
What harm do we get by opening the door to negative emotions?
How the self-esteem keeps us from finding the Truth?
What is the Countertransference force?
What is the relationship between the Self-Respect and the Integral Well-Being?
Why we don't have Continuity of Purposess?
What's the Rhetoric of the Ego?
What's the objective of studying the Psycho-Astrology?
How do we achieve the Mental Relaxation in the Meditation?
What is the Resistance of the Ego and how do we eliminate it?
How does the struggle of the opposites block us?
Where is the most serious problem of the public education?
What's the difference between the real man and the human machine?
What are the consequences of developing technology without taking into account the knowledge of oneself?
Why the mind can't eliminate a psychological defect?
What's the difference between the Bound and Loose Cathexis?
What's the objective of performing the weekly practice?
How can we experience the reality?
What is the Mission of the Extra-Terrestrials?
What year of Aquarius are we currently in and why?
Why the jealousy is not compatible with love?
When to be quiet or to speak becomes a crime?
How does the TV affect the formation of the personality?
What?s the influence of imagination in the motherhood?
Why the knowledge should not be only delivered to the Thinking Brain?
Why is the ?I? against our Vocation?
What is the intelligence as an attribute of the Being?
Why the mind will never be able to conceive the Truth?
What is the Peace and how it comes to us?
How the mind becomes affected by watching the bullfight and boxing?
Why, if the experiences are not understood, they become useless?
What is the defect that prevents the Integration the more and why?
How can we achieve the conscientious action?
What benefits brings the Generosity to the Marriage?
What happen if we do not balance Wisdom and Love?
How and what for do we need to learn to listen?
Why the mental comparison is abominable?
What is the difference between Love, Fear and Respect?
What sorts of Ambition are there?
What damage provokes us the fear and the search for security?
Why is it better to teach how to think instead of what to think?
How can we consciously combine order and liberty?
How to become a Conscious authority?
The people who are internally poor always search something out to be complete.
How does the fear affect the free initiative?
What?s the difference between the profane anthropology and the Gnostic Anthropology?
What is the Secret Doctrine of Anahuac?
What is the Christic Work?
Why is the meditation indispensable for our transformation?
Why is the Gnosis against the Drugs?
What is called the Psychological Country?
What is the Kundalini and what mission does she have?
What is the Inner Mind?
What is the Psichilogical "I"?
What is the Dialectic of the Consciousness?
Why did Goethe say: "Every theory is Grey"?
What is the Gnostic Work and how to do it?
How could we make the most of the tough times of life?
How can we discover the psychological basis where we are lying upon and why is necessary?
Why does the newborn enjoy Self-Consciousness?
How does affect us the Psychological Song?
What is the Internal Chatter and how does it harm us?
What do we achieve with the Self-Observation?
What is the Supersubstantial Bread and how do we get it?
How can we attain the Individuality and for what purpose?
All religions are precious stones strung on the golden thread of the Divinity.
Why does the name of this Gnostic Institute have the word Quetzalcoatl?
What is the Real order of the Days?
What are the Seven Tatwas?
What is the Work on Oneself?
Why, by changing our level of Being our life changes?
For how long has been the Aryan Race in the world?
What is the difference between the Being and the "I"?
Which is the main factor to achieve the Astral Projection?
What Egos could get our Home destroyed?
How to get our Psyche Organized?
How can we modify the mechanical conditions of the World?
What is the Objective of Transforming the Impressions?
What is the Second Jewel of the Yellos Dragon?
What is the First Jewel of the Yellow Dragon?
What negative influences do we have to protect the mind of?
Why having a Female Body would never be Karma?
What are the characteristics values of Women?
What practice does the Master Samael suggest to dominate the rage?
Why shouldn?t we mix antagonistic forces, since from such mixture terribly destructive forces come?
How is the matriarchy the base for a progressive race?
How can we place ourselves in the center of the Law of the Pendulum?
What is the relationship between woman and the great Initiates in history?
What is the Vital Body?
Why a misplaced virtue is bad?
The woman has then, in this times, an inescapable duty which is that of helping to regenerate the man, and of fighting for universal peace.
What are the causes of Neaurasthenia and how it could be prevented?
Why should we stop criticizing others to be successful in life?
What are the internal and external values of the word?
What benefits gives the Objective Imagination to the pregnant woman?
Inside the Gnostic teachings, why do women have the same rights as men?
What are the Six fundamental dimensions?
Why is the mind a very painful prison?
Why do the Roses cure the moral pains preventing even the suicide?
What are the Seven Yogas that Gnosis studies?
What does it mean the phrase: "The level of Being attracts the level of Bein"?
Why is Askokin intemately related to Wars?
Why it is necessary to cultivate the Gratitude?
Who is the Guardian of the Threshold ans what is this test about?
Who is and what does the demon Algol?
Why do we need to get rid of the Imitation?
What is the meaning of Christmas in relation with the Sun?
What are the changes that are comming with the entrance of the Earth into the the Rings of Alcion?
What is the Law of Three?
What are the Seven Races and what is their objective?
How can we fulfill the SACRIFICE FOR HUMANITY?
What is the Awakening of the Consciousness?
How can we pay for the Karma?
What is the Inner Urgency and what is useful for to know it?
Which are the Seven Main Chakras?
What is the Law of the Pendulum and how can we transcend it?
What is the Law of Rounds?
What are the centers of the Human Being?
According to the Gnostic Principles? Why abortion is a crime?
What is the Kabbalah and what is useful for to study it?
Why the Gnosis doesn't agree with a predetermined date for the end of the Human Kind?
What are the Gnosis' objectives?
What is the Tree of Life? If we observe the Tree of Life as it is written by the Hebraic Kabalists we see Ten Sephiroth.
What is a Tattwa? Tattwa (this is a Hindustani term) is vibration of the ether.
What are the Seven bodies? "When the physical body is sleeping the other bodies escape. By night in dreams we meet the Astra..."
Which are the three Minds? Since the Sensual Mind's concepts-of-contents are based on the external sensory data, undoubtedly it cannot know anything about the real, about truth, about the mysteries of life and death, about the soul and the spirit.
According to Gnosis, what are the Goblins? To such creatures we will give the name of Elementals, in fact because they live in the elements.
How can we transform the Impressions? "Life reaches us in the form of impressions and it is there, precisely, where the possibility of working upon ourselves exists".
What is a Soolionensius and how it affects us? "A SOLIOONENSIUS is an interesting law. It happens that close to our ORS Solar System..."
What is the Level of the Being and how could we modify it? "Whatever we are internally, munificent or mean, generous or miserly, violent or peaceful chaste or lustful, attracts the various circumstances of life"
The Permanent Center of Gravity It is impossible to have continuity of purpose without a true individuality.
What is called a "Good Master of the House" and why is a fundamental requirement to advance in Gnosis?
Atlantis' Testimonies Atlantis! That vast and now disappeared continent was a poet’s envision. The creation of the initiate Plato’s divine mind indeed existed.
Why shouldn't we criticize other's Religions? If the neighbor’s religion is not good, then neither is mine good because the values are always the same.
Laws to understand the Dreams The messages which descend from the world of Pure Spirit become symbolic in the astral plane.
What is a Ghost? This last is energy, it remains in the sepulcher, but sometimes it leaves from it and experiences the luxury of walking by diverse places.
What is the Intuition and how to develop it? "The intuition gives the faculty of knowing without the necessity of the process of reason..."
What is the Aquarius Age and how it influences us? "From that memorable date and under the regency of Uranus, the very venerable and most worthy Lord of Aquarius, the Dionysian wave vibrates intensely in the whole of Nature".
What is the difference between Understanding and Memory "In true Understanding, in profound Understanding, in intimate Understanding there is only the intimate pressure of the Conscience, constant pressure born from the essence that we carry within and that’s all".
What representes the ICQ's Logo? "The ICQ’s Logo is the shield seen in the different representations of Quetzalcoatl..."
The Lion of the Law can be defeated with the scale. "If we on a plate of the scale put our good works and on the other put the bad deeds, both plates will weigh equal or there will be a lack of balance..."
What are the Jinas States?
Whay Gnosis considers an absurd that a Zodical Sign is not compatible with others?
What does Gnosis says about giving our children a profession? "Children learn more by example than by rule..."
What is the difference between Ego, Essence and Personality? "...Personality and Essence should develop in a harmonious and balanced way..."
Which are the Seven Dimensions? "The dead ones are expelled from eternity because they still do not have BEING. Only those who have the BEING can live in eternity".
How to Solve Problems? "One needs much peace and mental calm to solve a problem. An uneasy, battling, confused mind cannot solve any problem".
What is the Creative Comprehension? "Comprehension is fundamental, but it is not all in the work of dissolution of the psychic aggregates..."
What is the Conscience? "People confuse Conscience with intelligence or with intellect, and the very intelligent or intellectual person is called a conscious person..."
What is the Being? "The Being is what is Divine, the immortal spark of every human being, without principle and without end, terribly divine".
What is the Self-Realization? "The Gnostic experience allows the sincere devotee to know himself totally, and to achieve self- realization..."
What is the Division af the Attention and what's it useful for? "We have to divide the attention in three aspecs, we need to comprehend the deeply meaning of the moment we are acting in..."
Why the Gnosis states that only positive ET's can visit us? "Friends, sirs, do not forget that space is infinitely sacred and that therefore interplanetary navigation is controlled by very severe cosmic laws".
What is Gnosis? "The Gnosis is a true scientific school of initiation on, that pursues a transformation of the human being..."
What is the Karma? "My friends there is a law which is called KARMA; this means cause and effect, action and consequence..."
How can we Deafeat a Psychological Defect? "Evasion, justification, and consideration must be eliminated if in reality we want to be conscious of the ?I? that we struggle to extirpate from our psyche"
What is the Self-Observation? "The inner self-observation sense it is atrophied in every human being; by working seriously by means of self-observing from moment to moment, such sense develops in a progressive form".
What are the Meditation's Benefits? If we want to stop being machines, if we want to awake our conscience, to have truly capability to do, then it?s urgent to start by knowing ourselves and then dissolve the psychological ?I? (defects).
What are the Three Conscience's Revolution Factors? "In order to achieve the self-realization it is necessary to live three factors: to Die? (to kill our defects) to Born? (to make the most of our energies) and to Sacrifice? (to serve our fellow human being)".
What is a Mantra? "Phonetic combination made with wisdom produces the MANTRAMS. Therefore, a MANTRAM is a wise combination of letters whose sounds determine spiritual, psychic, and also physical effects".
What are the 49 regions of the Subconscious? "Since the three-brained or three-Centered biped, mistakenly called man, has not yet awakened consciousness has not created the existential bodies of the Being, he only possesses, in reality, subconscious and subjective states".
What's the Gnosis origin? "Frankly speaking, let us say that Gnosis is a very natural function of the Consciousness; it is a philosophia perennis et universalis".
Why shouldn?t we tell others about our Astral Experiences? "It?s better to practice quietly. To keep the triumphs in secret. One must be very quiet because this science is secret."
What does "Inverential Peace" mean? "Then the followers of the White Fraternity, all with child figures, give us the welcome and when we salute them: ?May the Peace be with you!? or ?Inverential Peace!?, the answer is: ?and with your Spirit too?.
Why Gnosis says that the Evolution Law cannot take us to the Real Transformation?
"The laws of evolution and those of involution are the mechanical axis of all nature and have nothing to do with the intimate self-realization of the Being".
What?s the difference between the Spirit and the Soul? "Buddhata, the interior Buddhist Principle, the psychic material or ?materia prima? to fabricate that which is called Soul".
What's the similitude between a Dream and the Death?
What?s the difference between Return and Reincarnation? "The Pluralized Ego Returns, comes back rather, this is not Reincarnation. The masses, the multitudes Return, but that is not Reincarnation". | 2019-04-18T13:28:50Z | https://www.samaelgnosis.us/topic/teaching.html |
Innovation insights works with other stakeholders to promote technological advancement. Below we provide information about issues related to technology innovation and dissemination, drawing on our partners’ collective experiences as well as insights from other sources. Click on each title to view the full list of resources related to that topic.
The technology landscape is constantly evolving, with knowledge flowing in many directions every day. The private sector accounts for an estimated two-thirds of global R&D spend, and commercial channels are central to technology diffusion. Below we post resources about trends in innovation across sectors, emerging technology solutions, business models and their evolution, challenges faced by innovators, and other factors that affect the development and commercialization of new solutions.
The Global Good Fund and GE have signed a licensing agreement with the diagnostics technology company Access Bio to manufacture and distribute innovative diagnostic technologies for asymptomatic malaria. The agreement covers rapid diagnostic tests, along with serology tests that assess past exposure of a population to malaria. These technologies for malaria detection were co-developed by a team of scientists and engineers at GE’s Global Research Center and Global Good. GE Ventures, a GE entity dedicated to accelerating innovation and growth with partners, drove the commercialization model for the technology and the licensing agreement between GE, Global Good and Access Bio. The collaboration is expected to help global health workers to more rapidly identify asymptomatic malaria in low-resource regions around the world. Identifying these low-level infections is considered critical to directing efforts towards malaria elimination. Global Good is an initiative of Intellectual Ventures and Bill Gates.
This short piece by Nick Rousseau of the organization Unconventional Connections, posted on the Global Innovation Index website, describes the challenges for SMEs of partnering to innovate and scale, and presents ideas for successfully managing such challenges. Suggestions include putting in place clear and agreed IP sharing agreements, being open on both sides about objectives of the collaboration, and working to build and maintain trust over time despite potential cultural differences. Dr Rousseau explores these and other approaches in more detail, noting that they are discussed further in the 2015 WEF report "Transforming Business, Driving Growth" which is cited in Chapter 8 of the 2017 Global Innovation Index.
This article by Shai Jalfin for IP Watchdog discusses IP management in relation to blockchain, the technology underlying bitcoin that provides a secure public ledger of digital financial transactions. Mr Jalfin reviews the state of patenting in relation to blockchain, which at this time is concentrated around security measures like encryption, and the likely co-existence of open source and proprietary approaches as the technology evolves, among other issues.
This GE Report presents the importance of - and challenges related to - building local expertise for the maintenance of health technology solutions, so they are less likely to sit unused in a hospital corridor. The article focuses on the experience of Phil Camillocci volunteering for Engineering World Health in Cambodia.
A team of scientists at Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh have succeeded in removing the HIV virus from the DNA in mouse cells using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. The team is the first to demonstrate that HIV-1 replication can be stopped and the virus totally eliminated from infected cells in animals by using this powerful gene editing technology. The study (published in Molecular Therapy) marks a major step forward in the pursuit of a permanent cure for HIV infection. According to one of the scientists involved, the next stage would be to repeat the study in primates, a more suitable animal model, with the eventual goal being a clinical trial in human patients.
In this New York Times article Stephanie Strom discusses efforts to use food products like mushrooms, kelp, milk, and tomato peels to create packaging for food in order to replace non-biodegradable materials like plastics. Although food-based packaging can raise certain concerns - for instance, undermining food security if food is diverted to make packaging materials rather than feed people - and can be challenging to develop and use cost-effectively, big and small players continue to pursue R&D in this area. Nestle and Danone have announced efforts to develop wood-based bottles for beverages, and Italian researchers have developed a product made of tomato skins called "Biocopac Plus" that could be used to replace linings containing BPA in canned foods. Ms. Strom notes that the EU, which has funded efforts to develop coatings from whey and potato proteins, estimates that the global market for so-called bioplastics is growing by as much as 30 per cent each year.
In this article for WIPO magazine, Corey Salsburg of Novartis provides an inside perspective on the process of developing and deploying new offerings in the pharmaceutical sector. In addition to the notion that most innovation results from an "aha" moment, he addresses current topics in the IP and health discussions including, for instance, whether incremental innovation adds value and thus should be patentable, and the rise of collaboration including with actors from different fields of technology.
The Cooperation and Development Center, or "CoDev", at EPFL in Lausanne is offering a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Technology Innovation for Sustainable Development. The course presents methodologies and approaches for developing impactful technology solutions that can foster sustainable development and improve lives, in emerging countries in particular. The course focuses on all aspects of the innovative process, from concept to commercialization and deployment. It encourages entrepreneurship and co-design together with relevant stakeholders, including especially the expected users of the solution. The course begins May 1.
In this IAM blog, Jacob Schindler describes the pro-IP position of the leadership of Smartron, a Hyderabad-based startup. The company expects that its IP management activities will give it an edge over its domestic rivals in the IoT and smartphone industries. For instance, Smartron has negotiated a royalty-bearing license with Qualcomm, which will allow Smartron to develop and sell WCDMA, CDMA2000 and 4G/LTE devices, in addition to providing a foundation for technology collaboration among the two firms. Smartron's VP for sales and marketing Amit Boni said of this deal: “We are the only Indian technology company that has a patent licensing deal with Qualcomm ... we are going to access to some of the early technology coming out of Qualcomm. We will get access to the labs and we are setting up some of the stuff”. As for its own filings, Smartron's 50 patents relate mostly to the areas of robotics, AI, and IoT.
As reported by DEMO Africa, earlier this year, IBM launched a $70 million training program aimed at upgrading the digital skills of 25 million youth across Africa over the next five years. Operated out of IBM's offices in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, and Egypt, the program is part of the company's global initiatives aimed at developing skills for "new collar" jobs (the IBM term for the new kinds of careers that do not necessarily require a four-year college degree but rather skills in areas like data science, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and cloud). The training, which is administered through a free, cloud-based online learning environment, provides programs from basic IT literacy skills to advanced IT skills such as privacy and cyber protection. Based on Watson, the cognitive online learning system adapts and learns, interacting with users in order to tailor coursework to their needs and abilities.
Policy-makers are faced with the task of translating a wealth of information about innovation, trade, global supply chains, trends in technology, and other factors into laws and regulations. Below we provide business perspectives on what governments can do to support entrepreneurship, attract foreign technology partners, facilitate technology deployment and the diffusion of know-how, and reinforce domestic innovative capacity.
In 2009 WIPO membership requested that the organization establish platforms to enhance access to technical information for innovators in developing countries. Three years later, WIPO began establishing Technology and Innovation Support Centers (TISC) in order to help such innovators to more effectively access and use technical information, manage their IP rights, and exploit their innovative potential. Today there are 519 TISC worldwide. The TISC network provides opportunities for innovators to share experiences and also to engage with IP experts online, via "Ask the Experts" chats; ideally, the transcripts of these discussions will eventually be posted online so that the general public can benefit. Recently WIPO published information about the achievements of the TISC program in a TISC Annual Report that covers activities since 2009, with special emphasis on achievements during 2016. The TISC program will soon expand to India, where the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) have signed an agreement to establish Technology and Innovation Support Centres (TISC) in India.
To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), the WTO has organized an ITA Symposium in Geneva featuring speakers, panel discussions, and presentation of new research inluding a new paper from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Washington, D.C. that describes the benefits that would accrue to six develpoing countries were they to join the ITA. Building on an earlier (2012) ITIF paper on the same topic, the 2017 ITIF paper is written by Dr. Stephen Ezell and Dr. Wu. The authors argue that tariff liberalization under the ITA would spur increased use of ICT goods, which in turn would generate important productivity and economic growth while deepening enterprises’ participation in global value chains. Their analysis looks in particular at the impact of joining ITA (and ITA2) on Argentina, Cambodia, Chile, Kenya, Pakistan, and South Africa. Dr. Ezell and Dr. Wu conclude that joining these agreements would boost economic growth for each of these countries, and that tax revenues from new economic growth following accession would largely offset income loss from tariff elimination.
WIPO has released the strategic plan for the next five years for WIPO Re:Search, an initiative launched in 2011 to accelerate the development of diagnostics and treatments for neglected diseases, along with TB and malaria. WIPO Re:Search, which is implemented in partnership with BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH) in the United States, promotes innovation collaborations, knowledge and IP exchange, and capacity-building for researchers in developing countries. The new plan builds on earlier successes, for instance in relation to scientist training, while introducing a more targeted approach to building partnerships, focused on priority disease areas and targeted at efforts most likely to result in the development of new offerings. It also proposes new activities, such as the provision of support to improve IP management by research institutions in developing countries.
Now that the Supreme Court has issued its decision in the case of Sandoz v. Amgen, relating to certain aspects of the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009, IP Watchdog has posted a series of reactions to the ruling. The posting first summarizes the outcome of the case then provides insights from experts in the industry as to its implications.
In a paper prepared for the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents, law professors Pamela Andanda of South Africa and Andrew Christie from Australia consider constraints faced by developing countries and least developed countries seeking to enact IP rules that advance domestic policy objectives while also being compliant with international treaty obligations. The authors examine administrative and legal challenges, along with challenges related to lack of technical and manufacturing capacity that cannot be solved by setting aside patent rights. Having determined, based on their review, that "no meaningful empirical studies have been published to date that would allow credible conclusions to be drawn about the impact of constraints to the full use of patent flexibilities on access to affordable and especially essential medicines in developing countries and LDCs", the authors call for more work to be done in this area.
A group of public and private organizations has just released the results of the South African National Survey of IP Management and Technology Transfer at Publicly Funded Research Institutions, which relates to the years 2008 - 2014. The survey is one instrument the government is using to assess the performance of the South African National Innovation System. Following the 2009 IPR Act, which provided a unified framework for IP management and tech transfer of publicly funded research outcomes, NIPMO and partners continue to work to enhance the effectiveness of TTOs within the network of universities and public research institutes. The ultimate goal is to support the transformation of public research into offerings that improve the lives of South African citizens, while fostering public-private research collaborations and building absorptive capacity.
The US Supreme Court has ruled in the Lexmark case (Impression Products, Inc. vs Lexmark International, Inc.) that the sale of a patented product exhausts all patent rights, domestically as well as internationally. This case is of particular relevance for innovators seeking to use patent laws to manage competition in secondary markets for patented offerings. Here is an overview of the ruling from IP Watchdog.
For the first time, on May 19 - 20, 2017, the health ministers of the G20 countries met, under the G20 leadership of Germany. They agreed the Berlin Declaration, entitled "Together Today for a Healthy Tomorrow", which underscores the need for concerted action to address pressing global health challenges such as epidemics and anti-microbial resistance (AMR). The Declaration underlines the ministers' commitment to strengthening health systems, ensuring global support for WHO, fostering R&D preparedness including through new partnerships and approaches, improving health outcomes in difficult contexts such as conflicts, and providing leadership in ensuring the global health community can respond quickly and effectively to health crises.
The University of Minnesota Law School and the University of Geneva Law School will jointly sponsor a conference on June 15 in honor of Pedro Roffe, a longstanding and distinguished member of the Geneva IP and development community. IP Watch has posted a "save the date" announcement for this event, which will take place at the University of Geneva.
Farhad Manjoo has published an interesting piece in the New York Times about the impact of public versus private research spending, against a backdrop of likely cuts in US Government spending on scientific research under the current administration. He observes that, in the US context, it is technology giants rather than the Government that are investing in the research that will drive advancement in critical areas, notably AI. Unless the government vastly increases its own research investments in such technologies, he warns that it will be up to the private companies to decide how to deploy them. He notes that companies like Google are spending billions to develop AI solutions and to apply them across the economy to improve delivery of key services like transport and public health. And, according to annual reports, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft are on track to collectively spend more than USD 60b this year on R&D, compared to the 2015 US Government research budget of USD 67b (for all nondefense-related scientific research).
This article by Cathy Jewell, published in the April 2017 edition of WIPO Magazine, describes the evolution of a successful IP management and technology transfer program at Peru's Catholic Pontifical University. Starting in 2004, the CPU developed a framework to support researchers to protect and manage promising research outputs, and to advance the commercialization of them. According to its Director, the CPU IP Office is now working with the government to strengthen the university's ties to the business community and to enhance the capacity of local entrepreneurs. The piece presents a case study about the innovative solution to fight air pollution that was developed by CPU spinoff qAIRa.
This article by Amy Weiss-Meyer in the Atlantic Monthly presents a range of new technologies being developed specifically to help refugees, including tools for family reunification, online platforms with real-time information about conditions in different locations, new approaches to providing internet access, and innovative drone deployment.
This article in the WSJ by Daniel Akst explains how genetically engineered bacteria and a laser-based scanner can be used to detect land mines. Land mines usually contain TNT, which gives off a degradation product called DNT over time. Israeli scientists have developed a version of E. coli that reacts to DNT in soil by producing a green, fluorescent protein which can be excited by a laser (but which cannot be seen with the naked eye). This solution, developed by scientists at Israel's Hebrew University, builds on earlier work by researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in TN in the late 1990s. It is currently being tested. If validated it would be an improvement over current land mine detection methods which, in addition to being slow, often require putting people or animals dangerously close to buried explosives.
This article features a new software solution designed by civil engineer Aline Okello to identify rainwater harvesting solutions and to improve understanding about water management in her country of Mozambique and elsewhere in Africa. For the past year, Okello has been testing her technology among rural communities and farmers in South Africa, primarily around Mbonambi, KwaZulu-Natal. Okello, who is a fellow at the UNESCO Institute for Water Education, has been shortlisted for the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize 2017.
Girl Effect and Gavi joined forces to fight cervical cancer in the developing world. This USD 10 million partnership aims to address the negative social norms that prevent girls from accessing the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which provides protection against cervical cancer in 70% of cases. As part of the commitment, Gavi will support countries in purchasing HPV vaccines, and Girl Effect will use its networks to promote the vaccine to girls and their families. Cervical cancer claims the lives of more than 266,000 women each year, 85% of whom live in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America have the highest incidences.
This New York Times article briefly presents new research by Michael Brecht and Shimpei Ishiyama of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Germany. The researchers identified the parts of the brain that are activated when rats are tickled, and evaluated the impact of moods on reactions to tickling. Read the article then watch the video.
Philips and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, have teamed up to develop scalable digital transformation plans to improve the collection of quality immunisation data in primary and community healthcare. The key goal of the partnership will be to leverage innovative health IT solutions alongside Gavi’s extensive experience in scaling up immunisation programmes to identify children who are missing out on vaccines. According to Gavi, 580 million children in the developing world have been given basic vaccines with the organisation’s support since 2000. However, that leaves 19 million children not fully immunised with basic vaccines, and these children can be the hardest to reach. Uganda will be the pilot country for this initiative, the Guardian reports.
GE Healthcare and PnuVax, a vaccine and biopharmaceutical company, announced that they have reached agreement for PnuVax to acquire GE Healthcare’s intellectual property (IP) relating to an inactivated yellow fever vaccine. Under the terms of the agreement, PnuVax will purchase a GE Healthcare FlexFactory biomanufacturing platform, then the two companies plan to collaborate to optimize the manufacturing process for the new vaccine. The companies expect that the start-to-finish biomanufacturing platform - FlexFactory - will allow localization of yellow fever vaccine production in endemic areas, in addition to providing a platform for manufacturing other similar vaccines to respond to emerging pathogens in the future.
Together with the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Colombia to the United Nations in Geneva, Innovation Insights will host a roundtable discussion on June 1 about best practices in connecting research institutes with local industry. At this event, speakers will discuss several case studies from Colombia including that of the Medellin-based research institute ICIPC, which has engaged in successful collaboration and technology transfer with the private sector throughout Colombia. Speakers will identify the policies, promoted by the national entity COLCIENCIAS, that have enabled such collaboration to thrive, and they will discuss the role of IP management as well. All are invited to attend.
In this piece, Juan Guardado of the Grameen Foundation argues that despite Africa’s leading role in the mobile revolution, smallholder farmers have yet to fundamentally benefit from digital technologies that could bring them unprecedented access to financial services, agricultural information, and market opportunities. The author explains that while access to finance is crucial for smallholder farmers, such services are difficult and expensive to obtain and are rarely designed to meet farmers' needs. Digital solutions are an important alternative and can reach people in remote areas, delivering valuable information and services, and allowing two-way communication. A project like Airtel Weza, a secure and transparent mobile wallet for savings groups in Uganda, is one example of how digital innovation can benefit and empower smallholder farmers. | 2019-04-22T12:02:58Z | http://www.innovationinsights.ch/issues?page=1 |
In a double-blind study of patients with chronic heart failure, supplementation with the fatty acids present in fish oil for an average of four years resulted in a small but statistically significant decrease in the number of patients who died or were hospitalized for cardiovascular reasons. The treatment consisted of 850 to 882 mg per day of a mixture of eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid (as their ethyl esters). In another double-blind trial, supplementation with eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid improved heart function and decreased the number of hospitalizations in patients with heart failure due to dilated cardiomyopathy.
Cod liver oil, another source of omega-3 fatty acids, has also been found to lower TGs. Cod liver oil is less expensive than the fish oil concentrates discussed previously. However, cod liver oil also contains relatively large amounts of vitamin A and vitamin D; too much of either can cause side effects. In contrast, fish oil concentrates have little or none of these vitamins. Individuals wishing to use cod liver oil as a substitute for a fish-oil concentrate should consult a doctor.
EPA and DHA, the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil, lower blood pressure, according to an analysis of 31 trials. The effect was dependent on the amount of omega-3 fatty acids used, with the best results occurring in trials using unsustainably high levels: 15 grams per day—the amount often found in 50 grams of fish oil. Although results with lower intakes were not as impressive, trials using over 3 grams per day of omega-3 (as typically found in ten 1,000 mg pills of fish oil) also reported significant reductions in blood pressure. One double-blind trial reported that DHA had greater effects on blood pressure than EPA or mixed fish oil supplements. DHA is now available as a supplement separate from EPA.
Fish oil, which contains the fatty acids known as EPA and DHA, has been studied in the treatment of angina. In some studies, enough fish oil to provide a total of about 3 grams of EPA and 2 grams of DHA has reduced chest pain as well as the need for nitroglycerin; other investigators could not confirm these findings. People who take fish oil may also need to take vitamin E to protect the oil from undergoing potentially damaging oxidation in the body. It is not known how much vitamin E is needed to prevent such oxidation; the amount required would presumably depend on the amount of fish oil used. In one study, 300 IU of vitamin E per day prevented oxidation damage in individuals taking 6 grams of fish oil per day.
In a double-blind trial, fish oil was significantly more effective than a placebo in improving anxiety levels in a group of substance abusers (alcohol, cocaine, and/or heroin). The fish oil used in this study provided 3 grams per day of omega-3 fatty acids and was given for three months.
People diagnosed with depression may have lower blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids. A double-blind trial found that bipolar patients taking 9.6 grams of omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil per day in addition to their medications had significant improvements compared with those taking placebo. Similar benefits were reported in a preliminary trial that used 1.5 to 2 grams per day of pure eicosapentaenoic acid, a component of fish oil.However, in another double-blind trial, 8 grams per day of fish oil taken for 4 months was of no benefit for patients with bipolar disorder.In a preliminary trial, children with bipolar disorder saw benefits from omega-3 fatty acids (1,290 to 4,300 mg per day) from fish oil given for eight weeks.
Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 fatty acid present in cod liver oil and other fish oils, is important for normal development of the brain and eyes. Studies have shown that higher concentrations of DHA in mothers' milk are associated with better visual acuity in the infants. Other studies have suggested that DHA improves the development of infants, although not all research agrees. Because DHA in the mother's diet passes into the breast milk, some doctors advise nursing mothers to supplement their diet with cod liver oil or another fish-oil supplement. Women wishing to use this or any supplement while breast-feeding should consult their doctors and use only under the supervision of a qualified healthcare practitioner.
In a double-blind trial, people with a type of arrhythmia known as ventricular premature complexes were supplemented for 16 weeks with either 15 ml (1 tbsp) per day of fish oil or a similar amount of safflower oil as placebo. Patients taking the fish oil had a significantly reduced frequency of abnormal heartbeats compared with those receiving placebo, and 44% of those receiving fish oil experienced at least a 70% reduction in the frequency of abnormal beats. In a separate study, however, men given 20 ml (4 tsp) of cod liver oil per day for six weeks, beginning one week after a heart attack, had the same frequency of irregular heart beats as did men given no supplemental oil. In a double-blind study, people who had a history of certain potentially life-threatening arrhythmias—sustained ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation—had an increase in the recurrence rate of these arrhythmias when they took fish oil. A similar study found no adverse effect of fish oil supplements in people with these serious arrhythmias. Because of these conflicting findings, people with a history of either of these arrhythmias should consult a doctor before taking fish oil.
Fish oil helps relieve the inflammation of the gut that occurs in people suffering from Crohn's disease.
Inflammation within the gut occurs in people suffering from Crohn's disease. EPA and DHA, the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil, have anti-inflammatory activity. Though research is conflicting, there is some evidence that fish oil improves Crohn's disease symptoms. A two-year trial compared the effects of having people with Crohn's disease eat 3.5 to 7 ounces of fish high in EPA and DHA per day or having them eat a diet low in fish. In that trial, the fish-eating group had a 20% relapse rate compared with 58% among those not eating fish. Salmon, herring, mackerel, albacore tuna, and sardines are all high in EPA and DHA.
In a double-blind trial, people with Crohn's disease who took supplements providing 2.7 g of EPA/DHA per day had a recurrence rate of 26% after one year, compared to a 59% recurrence rate among those taking placebo.
The impaired digestion of fats in people with CF often leads to a deficiency of essential fatty acids. This deficiency may in turn lead to lowered immune function, which makes people with CF more susceptible to respiratory infection. This deficiency may be reversed by supplementation with corn oil (1 gram per 2.2 pounds body weight per day),safflower oil (1 gram per 2.2 pounds body weight per day), linoleic acid (7.7 grams per day), and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA from fish oil) (2.7 grams per day). EPA supplementation was particularly effective. In a double-blind trial, six weeks of supplementation with 2.7 grams of EPA per day led to a reduction in sputum and improvement in lung function in children with chronic respiratory infection due to CF.
Omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil, particularly DHA, are needed for normal nervous system function. Depressed people have been reported to have lower omega-3 fatty acid levels (for example, DHA) than people who are not depressed. Low levels of the other omega-3 fatty acid from fish, EPA, have correlated with increased severity of depression. In some double-blind trials, supplementation with various amounts of fish oil was beneficial for the treatment of depression in both children and adults, but fish oil was ineffective in other double blind trials.
Diets low in omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) have been associated with menstrual pain. In one double-blind trial, supplementation with fish oil, a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, led to a statistically significant 37% drop in menstrual symptoms. In that report, adolescent girls with dysmenorrhea took an unspecified amount of fish oil that provided 1,080 mg of EPA and 720 mg of DHA per day for two months to achieve this result. A double-blind trial found that the same amount of EPA and DHA plus 7.5 mcg per day of vitamin B12 led to a greater than 50% decrease in menstrual symptoms, but a group taking only fish oil did not obtain as much relief. Six grams of fish oil per day provides the approximate levels of EPA and DHA used in these trials. In another double-blind trial, 1 gram per day of fish oil significantly decreased pain intensity, compared with a placebo, in women with dysmennorhea.
Ten grams of fish oil providing 1.8 grams of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) per day were given to a group of eczema sufferers in a double-blind trial. After 12 weeks, those using the fish oil experienced significant improvement. According to the researchers, fish oil may be effective because it reduces levels of leukotriene B4, a substance that has been linked to eczema. The eczema-relieving effects of fish oil may require taking ten pills per day for at least 12 weeks. Smaller amounts of fish oil have been shown to lack efficacy.
One trial using vegetable oil as the placebo reported that fish oil was barely more effective than the placebo (30% vs. 24% improvement). As vegetable oil had previously been reported to have potential therapeutic activity, the apparent negative outcome of this trial should not dissuade people with eczema from considering fish oil.
Consult a doctor for the amount to take. In a preliminary study, supplementation with 3.25 grams per day of a mixture of omega-3 fatty acids (primarily eicosapentaenoic acid [EPA] and docosahexaenoic acid [DHA]) for six months markedly reduced the frequency of seizures in five severely retarded epileptic patients. However, a double-blind trial found that fish oil was not beneficial in patients with epilepsy. A more recent double-blind trial found that a lower dose of fish oil (providing daily 1,080 mg of EPA + DHA) taken for 10 weeks reduced seizure frequency by one-third, whereas a higher dose (providing daily 2,160 mg of EPA + DHA) had no effect. Additional research is needed to determine whether fish oil is beneficial for people with epilepsy, and what the optimal level of intake is.
Fish oil contains the beneficial omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA, which have led to partial reversal of atherosclerosis in a double-blind trial. In another double-blind trial, individuals were given either fish oil (containing about 1 gram of EPA and 2/3 gram of DHA) or mustard oil (containing about 3 grams alpha linolenic acid, another omega-3 fatty acid) 18 hours after a heart attack. Both groups experienced fewer nonfatal heart attacks compared to a placebo group, while the fish oil group also experienced fewer fatal heart attacks. The largest published study on omega-3 fatty acids for heart attack prevention was the preliminary GISSI Prevenzione Trial, which reported that 850 mg of omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil per day for 3.5 years resulted in a 20% reduction in total mortality and a 45% decrease in sudden death. Other investigators suggest that fish oil reduces the amount of heart muscle damage from a heart attack and enhances the effect of blood-thinning medication. People wishing to supplement with fish oil should take fish oil supplements that include at least small amounts of vitamin E, which may protect this fragile oil against free radical damage.
Research on the effect of the omega-3 fatty acids that are abundant in some fish, fish oils, and flaxseed oil is conflicting. Liquid diets containing omega-3 fatty acids used in hospitals for critically ill people have been shown to improve immune function and reduce infections. However, in one controlled study in healthy people, a low-fat diet improved or maintained immune function, but when fish was added to increase omega-3 fatty acid intake, immune function was significantly inhibited.
Supplementation with DHA (an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish oil) in healthy young men has been shown to decrease the activity of immune cells, such as natural killer (NK) cells, and to inhibit certain measures of inflammation in the test tube. The anti-inflammatory effects of DHA may be useful in the management of autoimmune disorders; however, such benefits need to be balanced with the potential for increased risk of infections. Other studies suggest that increased oxidative damage might be the reason for the negative effects on the immune system sometimes caused by fish oil, and that increased intake of antioxidants, such as vitamin E, could correct the problem.
In a double-blind study, supplementation with a proprietary blend of acetyl-L-carnitine, omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil, and coenzyme Q10 for 12 months resulted in an improvement in both visual function and in objective findings on eye examination (a decrease in the drusen-covered area on the retina).
In one small trial, people with MS were given approximately 20 grams of fish oil in capsules per day. After one to four months, 42% of these people received slight but significant benefits, including reduced urinary incontinence and improved eyesight. However, a longer double-blind trial involving over 300 people with MS found that half this amount of fish oil given per day did not help.[REF] In another trial, combining fish oil supplementation (6 grams per day) with a low-fat diet (15% of total calories) appeared to reduce the relapse rate in people with the relapsing-remitting form of MS. However, a double-blind study found that supplementing with the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil (1,350 mg of EPA and 850 mg of DHA per day) for two years had no effect on disease activity or relapse rate in people with relapsing-remitting MS.
In a small preliminary trial, people with MS were given 20 grams of cod liver oil, as well as approximately 680 mg of magnesium and 1,100 mg of calcium per day in the form of dolomite tablets. After one year, the average number of MS attacks decreased significantly for each person. Unlike fish oil capsules, the cod liver oil in this trial contained not only eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), but 5,000 IU of vitamin D. Therefore, it is not known whether the vitamin D or fatty acids were responsible for the cod liver oil's effects. (One preliminary study found that giving vitamin D-like drugs to animals with MS was helpful.) It is also possible that the magnesium and/or calcium given to these people reduced MS attacks. Magnesium and calcium levels have been reported to be lower in the nerve tissue of people with MS compared with healthy people.
The PKU diet is low in fatty acids, some of which are essential for proper brain development. In one controlled study of children with PKU who were deficient in fatty acids, supplementation with fish oil (but not with black currant seed oil) for six months improved the deficiency. The children received 500 mg of oil per 8.8 pounds of body weight each day for 6 months. The amount varied from 5–8 capsules (each containing 500 mg) per day for each child. In another study, fish oil supplementation (providing 15 mg of docosahexaenoic acid per 2.2 pounds of body weight per day) improved body coordination and fine motor skills in children with PKU.
Omega-3 fatty acids have anti-inflammatory properties, and animal studies suggest that supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids may improve recovery and prevent infection after surgery. A controlled human trial found that intravenous nutritional formulas containing omega-3 fatty acids given post-operatively lowered the production of inflammatory chemicals compared with standard nutritional formulas. Other human studies of omega-3 fatty acid-supplemented nutritional formulas used in surgery patients have included other supplemental nutrients as well and are discussed below.
In a double-blind trial, fish oil (10 grams per day) was found to improve the skin lesions of psoriasis. In another trial, supplementing with 3.6 grams per day of purified eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, one of the fatty acids found in fish oil) reduced the severity of psoriasis after two to three months. That amount of EPA is usually contained in 20 grams of fish oil, a level that generally requires 20 pills to achieve. However, when purified EPA was used in combination with purified docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, another fatty acid contained in fish oil), no improvement was observed.
Additional research is needed to determine whether fish oil itself or some of its components are more effective for people with psoriasis. One trial showed that applying a preparation containing 10% fish oil directly to psoriatic lesions twice daily resulted in improvement after seven weeks. In addition, promising results were reported from a double-blind trial in which people with chronic plaque-type psoriasis received 4.2 g of EPA and 4.2 g of DHA or placebo intravenously each day for two weeks. Thirty-seven percent of those receiving the essential fatty acid infusions experienced greater than 50% reduction in the severity of their symptoms.
Supplementing with fish oil also may help prevent the increase in blood levels of triglycerides that occurs as a side effect of certain drugs used to treat psoriasis (e.g., etretinate and acitretin).
In a double-blind trial, supplementation with 12 large capsules of fish oil per day (providing 4 grams of eicosapentaenoic acid [EPA] per day) for 6 or 12 weeks reduced the severity of blood-vessel spasm in 5 of 11 people with Raynaud's phenomenon. Fish oil was effective in people with primary Raynaud's disease, but not in those whose symptoms were secondary to another disorder.
In a preliminary trial, 13 patients with sickle cell anemia were given two supplement combinations for seven to eight months each. The first combination included 109 mg zinc, 153 IU vitamin E, 600 mg vitamin C, and 400 ml (about 14 ounces) of soybean oil containing 11 grams of linoleic acid and 1.5 grams of alpha linolenic acid. The second combination included 140 IU vitamin E, 600 mg vitamin C, and 20 grams of fish oil containing 6 grams of omega-3 fatty acids. Reduction in diseased cells was observed only during the administration of the first protocol. The authors concluded that zinc was the important difference between the two combinations and may be a protector of red blood cell membranes.
Fish oil alone has also been studied. In a double-blind trial, supplementation with menhaden oil, in the amount of 250 mg per 2.2 pounds of body weight per day for one year, reduced the frequency of severe pain episodes by approximately 45%, compared with placebo. This treatment may work by correcting an imbalance between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids that occurs in people with sickle cell anemia. The beneficial effect of the omega-3 fatty acids present in fish oil was confirmed in another double-blind study.
One older controlled trial found that children given 3 teaspoons of cod liver oil per day (containing roughly 800 IU of vitamin D) for an entire school year had over 50% fewer new cavities. These promising results have not been followed up with modern placebo-controlled trials.
Preliminary and double-blind trials have found that fish oil supplementation reduces inflammation, decreases the need for anti-inflammatory drugs, and promotes normal weight gain in people with UC. However, fish oil has not always been effective in clinical trials for UC. Amounts used in successful clinical trials provided 3.2 grams of EPA and 2.2 grams of DHA per day—the two important fatty acids found in fish oil.
In a double-blind trial, supplementing with the fatty acids present in fish oil (0.6 grams per day of EPA and 1.7 grams per day of DHA) for six months was not beneficial in people with Alzheimer's disease. However, in the subgroup of people with very mild cognitive impairment, supplementation with these fatty acids slowed the rate of cognitive decline compared with a placebo.
In a preliminary study, four patients with chronic fatigue syndrome reported an improvement in their symptoms after taking an essential fatty acid supplement daily for at least 12 weeks. The amount used was 10 to 18 capsules per day, and each capsule contained 93 mg of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), 29 mg of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and 10 mg of gamma-linolenic acid. Because there was no placebo group in this study and, because fatigue often improves after treatment with a placebo, additional research is needed to confirm this report.
A greater intake of the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oils has been linked to reduced risk of COPD, though research has yet to investigate whether fish oil supplements would help people with COPD. In a double-blind trial, people with COPD received a fatty acid supplement (providing daily 760 mg of gamma-linolenic acid, 1,200 mg of alpha-linolenic acid, 700 mg of eicosapentaenoic acid, and 340 mg of docosahexaenoic acid) or a placebo (80% palm oil and 20% sunflower oil) during an eight-week rehabilitation program. Compared with the placebo, the fatty acid supplement significantly improved exercise capacity. While two of the fatty acids supplied in this supplement (eicosapentaenoic acid [EPA] and docosahexaenoic [DHA] acid) are found in fish oil, is not known which components of the supplement were most responsible for the improvement. Gamma-linolenic acid is found in evening primrose oil, black currant seed oil, and borage oil; alpha-linolenic acid is found in flaxseed oil and other oils.
Surveys have shown that Inuit people, who consume large amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, have a much lower incidence of some types of glaucoma than do Caucasians. Although there have been no studies on the use of omega-3 fatty acids to treat glaucoma, one study found that cod liver oil (a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids) reduced intraocular pressure in animals.
An assessment of 3,654 Australians aged 49 years or older found an association between a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids from fish and a lower risk of age-related macular degeneration.
The omega-3 fatty acids present in fish oil, EPA and DHA, have anti-inflammatory effects and have been studied primarily for rheumatoid arthritis, which involves significant inflammation. However, osteoarthritis also includes some inflammation. In a 24-week controlled but preliminary trial studying people with osteoarthritis, people taking EPA had "strikingly lower" pain scores than people who took placebo. However, in a double-blind trial by the same research group, supplementation with 10 ml of cod liver oil per day was no more effective than a placebo.
In a small preliminary trial, supplementation with fish oil (10 grams per day for three months) reduced photosensitivity in 90% of people suffering from polymorphous light eruptions.
Glucose tolerance improves in healthy people taking omega-3 fatty acid supplements. And in one trial, people with diabetic nerve damage (neuropathy) and diabetic nephropathy experienced significant improvement when given 600 mg three times per day of purified eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA)—one of the two major omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil supplements—for 48 weeks. However, controlled studies have found that fish oil supplementation increases cholesterol in people with type 1 diabetes. Until the risk–benefit ratio of using fish oil is clarified, people with diabetes should feel free to increase their fish intake, but they should consult a doctor before taking fish oil supplements.
Glucose tolerance improves in healthy people taking omega-3 fatty acid supplements, and some studies have found that fish oil supplementation also improves glucose tolerance, high triglycerides, and cholesterol levels in people with type 2 diabetes. And in one trial, people with diabetic neuropathy and diabetic nephropathy experienced significant improvement when given 600 mg three times per day of purified eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA)—one of the two major omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil supplements—for 48 weeks. However, other studies have found that type 2 diabetes worsens with fish oil supplementation. Until this issue is resolved, people with diabetes should feel free to eat fish, but they should consult a doctor before taking fish oil supplements.
In one trial, the maximum amount of fish oil tolerated by people being treated for cancer-related weight loss was reported to be approximately 21 grams per day.2 However, in people who do not have cancer, the maximum tolerated amount may be different.
So-called "primitive" diets have much higher levels of EPA and DHA than modern diets. As a result, some researchers and doctors believe that most people who eat a typical western diet are likely to be consuming less-than-optimal amounts of EPA and DHA. To a very limited extent, omega-3 fatty acids from vegetable sources, such as flaxseed oil, can be converted in the body to EPA.
Anemia is one of the side effects of ribavirin therapy. In a preliminary trial, supplementing with EPA partially prevented the decline in hemoglobin levels in patients with hepatitis C who were being treated with the combination of ribavirin and pegylated interferon alpha-2b.
In patients with major depression, the addition of the omega-3 fatty acids present in fish oil (1.8 g per day of eicosapentaenoic acid and 0.4 g per day of docosahexaenoic acid, in 2 divided amounts per day for 8 weeks) enhanced the antidepressant effect of citalopram.
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18. Kmet A, Unger J, Jahangir K, Kolber MR. Fish-oil capsule ingestion: a case of recurrent anaphylaxis. Can Fam Physician 2012;58:e379-81. | 2019-04-25T20:28:57Z | https://www.peacehealth.org/medical-topics/id/hn-2843005 |
Amazon over the past 20 years has been as meaningful an economic revelation as Walmart was in the 20 years before it, and I don’t say that lightly: Walmart is one of the wonders of the modern world, built from scratch in a hyper-competitive environment, scaled from nothing to the largest company in the US by revenue and by headcount, all resulting from a singular vision of saving everyday people money with everyday low prices. It is the most successful social welfare system ever implemented, saving billions and billions of dollars for everyday Americans without costing taxpayers a dime. It is a testament to the power of compounding interest, to the power of a focused plan executed violently for decades.
But Amazon is something else entirely, isn’t it? Its amalgamation of businesses don’t seem to make sense. It lacks a cohesive product strategy. It defies norms of focus yet it executes faster than seems possible for an entity of its size, let alone scope.
I am going to answer the question – what is Amazon? – but you can’t begin to understand Amazon without first understanding Walmart. Walmart revolutionized the retail game; Amazon “borrowed” Walmart’s playbook as a starting point, just as Walmart borrowed the playbook from the early discount retailers as a starting point before it. And so I’ll start by answering the question: what is Walmart?
Few people outside of Walmart realize Walmart’s historical scope of innovation. It built the largest private satellite communications network, enabling unprecedented coordination at enormous scale. Computerized point of sale systems, a massive trucking fleet to enable best-in-class logistics, innovations in EDI, the Sam’s Club format. The list goes on. But all of these innovations were really just developed in order to optimize what was a very simple formula: that is, the selection, pricing, and inventory of SKUs in, say, a 30,000-200,000 square foot store.
Choosing the right SKUs, prices, and inventory levels for a 30,000-200,000 square foot store – the business was as easy, and as hard, as that.
In the business of retail gatekeeping, the cost of errors was high. Stocking a Walmart store with inventory that the customer did not want was a compounding error: not only did it provide zero value to the customer, it also robbed the customer of the opportunity to buy something that they did need. Shelf space was a zero-sum game. And, even after confirming that the item was something that the customer wanted, there were many other factors to consider: Would the vendor be able to supply enough in order to meet Walmart’s demand? Could the vendor ship on-time, and accurately? Were they in strong enough financial condition to absorb Walmart’s payment terms? Were they accurate enough in their costing to make sure that they weren’t selling at a loss, once all their indirect costs were taken into account?
Walmart, again, became the best in the business at weighing these considerations. The buyers became proxies for the customers, deciding what customers were likely to want and negotiating for ever-lower prices for those items, and taking into account all of the things that mattered to the customer that the customer likely did not even consider – like the vendor’s ability to fulfill demand at projected volumes. Sam Walton drilled the idea of “thinking small” and focusing on the customer into Walmart’s culture: What will the customer want when they walk into the store? What price will they want to pay? And how many will they want to buy?
Walmart reviewed more and more vendors, reviewed more and more SKUs. Most vendors and most SKUs did not make the cut, but, with the ones that did, Walmart’s selection grew rapidly, and it expanded the size of its stores as much as the local communities could sustain, and stocked them with as many viable SKUs from quality vendors as it could find.
The story of Walmart reminds me, of all things, of the watchmaker analogy – the classic argument for intelligent design, for a superintelligent or divine creator of the world around us, first posed by William Paley in 1802.
It goes something like this: suppose we were out walking in the woods and we came across a stone. We might pick up that stone and conclude that it had always been there, that it had occurred naturally. But if we continued on our walk and we came across a pocket watch, we would not likely think that the watch had always been there – we would conclude from its complexity, from its precision, from its unnaturalness, that at some point there existed a creator who understood its function, who contrived of its design and brought it into the world through careful thought and execution.
The argument follows, then, that if one were to look at the entire world in all of its complexity – the careful precision by which nature works, with infinitely complex mechanisms like photosynthesis, weather patterns and migratory habits, food chains and even the complexity of an individual organism, that there must exist an infinitely-wise, infinitely-capable creator who contrived of the entirety of the system’s function and brought it into existence.
I have to imagine that if a visitor from the 1800s were transported to a Walmart Supercenter in the year 1994, they would have come to the same conclusion that William Paley came to: marveling at the 100,000+ carefully-chosen SKUs around them, with the associates stocking the shelves, helping the customers, checking inventory, collecting the shopping carts, that the ‘invention’ – the creation – of Walmart was the result of intelligent design.
In some ways, they would be right. Walmart, at its core – that is, a massive building filled with a selection of high-quality merchandise priced at the lowest possible prices – was a concept conceived of by a single man (though from what I’ve read about Mr. Walton, I doubt that he would have taken this sort of credit).
But the hypothetical watchmaker in our story had designed and placed every single wheel, pinion, jewel, and jewel in the watch’s movement; Sam Walton certainly didn’t place every aisle, product, promotion, or set every price and inventory level in that Supercenter. Rather, Sam Walton was the ‘intelligent designer’ behind the Walmart algorithm: that is, a) “a wide assortment of good quality merchandise”, b) offered “at the lowest possible prices,” c) backed by “guaranteed satisfaction” and “friendly, knowledgeable service,” d) available during “convenient hours” with “free parking” and “a pleasant shopping experience,” e) all within the largest, most convenient possible store size and location permitted by local economics.
In other words, the size, layout, format, product mix, and the selection/training of the associates in that Supercenter were the result of the algorithm that Sam Walton had designed.
So, back to our question: what is Walmart? Or, more accurately, what was Walmart, circa 1994?
Walmart executed on this algorithm almost uninterrupted for over 30 years, and it got very, very good at it, until, in 1994 – almost overnight – the algorithm that Walmart had methodically honed over the past three decades started to quietly work against it.
Jeff Bezos had a big realization in 1994: the world of retail had, up until then, been a world where the most important thing was optimizing limited shelf space in service of satisfying the customer – but that world was about to change drastically. The advent of the internet – of online shopping – meant that an online retailer had infinite shelf space. While Amazon did not have the capital to stock every SKU on the planet, nor a warehouse large enough to do so, it didn’t have a constraint on the actual ‘shelves’ themselves. An online retailer would be limited not by each local market, but by the economics and behavior of the national or international population at large.
Whereas a traditional retailer had to weigh tradeoffs within finite shelf space, an online retailer could display page after page of items with near-zero marginal cost for more items. Instead of choosing which items to stock, Amazon could let its customers do so – it would add all sorts of items to its catalog, measure web traffic for each item, and bring the items into stock that seemed most likely to sell.
And so, back in 1994, Amazon kicked off its unbound search for the optimal selection of SKUs. Its algorithm – borrowed and modified from Walmart – was simple: a) a vast selection, b) delivered fast, c) at the lowest possible prices, d) backed by guaranteed satisfaction.
Amazon added as many vendors as it could feasibly add, far outpacing other retailers because of a bar that was far lower. But the pace was too slow; Amazon was aggregating demand – that is, customer traffic – faster than it was aggregating supply – that is, vendor selection. Amazon had bumped up against its first constraint: the speed at which it could add new vendors to its catalog and associated inventory to its warehouses.
Amazon correctly hypothesized that because vendor selection was not important in the world of infinite shelf space, Amazon itself – or, more accurately, its vendor onboarding process – would be the bottleneck to growth. Another way of saying this is that Amazon did not have enough time, knowledge, or capital to fill the infinite shelf space that they had created – and even for the items they did add, they did not have the time, knowledge, or skill to effectively negotiate terms with the tens of thousands of new vendors who had come knocking. Amazon would never be able to match Walmart’s hard-won skills in fighting on the customer’s behalf for better prices, even with a small set of vendors – let alone the exploding vendor base it was starting to manage.
In its effort to remove this bottleneck, Amazon had an insight that would dramatically accelerate its strategy of mass SKU-aggregation: what if, instead of the painfully slow process of onboarding and negotiating with vendors, Amazon could instead open its website to third party sellers?
In the original six-page memo advocating for Amazon Marketplace in 2002, the memo’s author had a vision: no matter where a seller was located and no matter what products that seller carried, the seller could start selling on Amazon immediately – even in the middle of the night.
Amazon Marketplace solved a whole host of problems all at once. By allowing sellers to bypass the gatekeepers altogether, Amazon could rapidly fill its infinite shelf space with a vast selection of SKUs not available from other retailers. And instead of slowly building its own inventory on promising SKUs, Amazon could make a seller’s already-stocked inventory instantly available to eager customers. And, perhaps most importantly, it solved the problem of how to negotiate pricing with a rapidly-expanding SKU base. When Amazon was competing against sellers for a given SKU, there were two possibilities: either Amazon had negotiated the best possible price with the vendor and would ‘win’ the sale, or it had failed to get the best possible price and another seller would win the sale instead – but Amazon would collect a 12-15% commission, and gain a data point that its nascent vendor team could use in price negotiation. And, of course, ‘losing’ the sale to a third party seller still meant that Amazon would keep the customer.
The advent of the internet had brought about a Cambrian explosion in SKUs. An increasingly connected global world meant that more and more products from abroad were coming to the US, and it was also easier than ever for US companies to launch and expand new product lines. The marketplace that Amazon had built took advantage of this trend; Amazon systematically removed friction from the seller onboarding workflow, doing seemingly small things like eliminating the UPC code requirement that would serve as a barrier for newer, less established sellers. All of these small changes started to add up, and Amazon became the fastest way for a company to start selling online. Customers began to associate Amazon with selection, and Amazon became the de facto storefront for the fledgling world of online commerce.
With every seller that signed up for Amazon Marketplace, Walmart’s prized vendor selection machine became more and more of a liability. Here was an entire organization optimized towards one constraint – shelf space – and that constraint had been almost completely removed overnight. Even if Walmart had recognized this immediately, it would have been an enormous ship to steer – and, in the meantime, Amazon’s SKU aggregation juggernaut was running an unbound search for customer value nationwide, while Walmart’s army of finely-tuned retailer gatekeepers was still running a bounded search in local geographies. The effects began to compound, and Amazon’s ecommerce growth accelerated further.
Walmart had solved problems of vendor management, product management, and bureaucracy at an almost unfathomable scale. It engineered intricate systems, aligned incentives, and built a culture of thinking small to stamp out inefficiencies wherever it could find them. Walmart solved problems that were almost impossible to solve at Walmart’s scale, creating a wonder of the modern world, perhaps the pinnacle of what is possible with complex coordination. And Walmart, at its heart, is a company of merchants; it is a human-powered company, and its advantage in the marketplace is that it merchandises better than any other company on the planet. Walmart understands its customers extraordinarily well, and its merchants play a hand in every product that shows up in its aisles.
Amazon, by contrast, is an illustration of what happens when a massive global market is freed by the internet from the geographical constraints that previously kept it manageable; it is an illustration of what happens when you enter a problem space so large that you have to bypass the human element altogether. What was just barely solvable with carefully-built systems at Walmart’s scale of shelf space would have been impossible to solve with shelf space that stretched on to infinity. Amazon had to find a way of abdicating responsibility for solving these problems altogether; with Marketplace, Amazon had begun to grasp at a solution that would do exactly that.
After removing the vendor bottleneck, Amazon had discovered the next constraint to filling its theoretically-infinite shelf space: computing power and data storage. To his horror, Bezos had discovered that Amazon’s software engineers were waiting weeks for technical resources like servers and storage to be provisioned. Instead of being limited by how fast they could write code, they were limited by how fast they could deploy that code to Amazon’s infrastructure, and so, alongside an effort to dramatically simplify and improve its codebase – which had evolved into a mess of ‘spaghetti code’ in the ten years that Amazon had been in business – Amazon began to build a platform that would allow its software engineers to provision on-demand resources immediately. In a radical move, the platform – Amazon’s own technological infrastructure – would be made available to external developers, too. It would be called Amazon Web Services.
Another constraint had emerged around the same time, this time on the customer-facing front: Amazon could no longer practically keep up with the theoretical pace of innovation that its exploding SKU catalog had enabled. In other words, Amazon could not possibly develop features on its website fast enough to take advantage of all the merchandising opportunities that its products had brought. This became apparent as other sites – run by independent, third party members of Amazon’s affiliate marketing program – began ‘scraping’ Amazon’s catalog in order to surface new items, track price changes, and offer all manner of other functionality that Amazon.com itself did not offer. In other words, Amazon was not limited by demand (traffic) or supply (SKU selection) – it was limited by the conversion rate and average order value it could achieve with its current catalog functionality.
Amazon needed to get faster at implementing new catalog functionality internally, and it could also benefit immensely from allowing the outside world to innovate using that same toolkit. In a similarly radical move, Bezos decided to expose Amazon’s entire product catalog via an application programming interface – an API – so that any software developer, internal or external, could programmatically access Amazon’s catalog and use the SKU data, within reason, in any way the developer saw fit.
And so, circa 2002, we start to see the emergence of a pattern: 1) Amazon had encountered a bottleneck to growth, 2) it had determined that some internal process or resource was the bottleneck, 3) it had realized that it could not possibly develop and deploy enough resources internally to remove that bottleneck, so 4) it instead removed the bottleneck by building an interface to allow the broader market to solve it en masse. This exact pattern was repeated with vendor selection (Amazon Marketplace), technology infrastructure (Amazon Web Services, or AWS), and merchandising (Amazon’s Catalog API).
Amazon was becoming a platform; that is, an aggregation of resources made available through a series of interfaces. In the case of Marketplace, the resource was customer demand, and the interface was a web portal called ‘Seller Central,’ which allowed sellers to list items in Amazon’s catalog and process the resulting orders. With AWS and Catalog, the resources were computing power and a monetizable ecommerce catalog, respectively, and the interfaces were corresponding web portals and APIs (application programming interfaces) that software developers could access programmatically.
Platforms spring up as a necessity borne from unbound searches running at internet scale. A company like Walmart, despite being positively massive in terms of revenue, can operate as a monolith – that is, a tightly-coupled collection of internally-facing resources – because it is dealing with a constrained problem space. Walmart’s problem space (for argument’s sake, 100,000 SKUs and 100,000 square feet) was, for the most part, limited enough that Walmart could, with sufficient effort and innovation, solve its own problems internally. It could manage vendor selection, it could merchandise its own catalog, and it could manage, and mitigate, the growth of its own bureaucracy.
There is a notable exception here: the scale of Walmart’s purchase order volume was so large that it could not feasibly continue to manage the purchasing process on its own. To solve this, Walmart built Retail link – perhaps Walmart’s first platform – to expose its purchasing ‘resources’ externally. Retail Link gave Walmart’s vendors tools to manage purchase orders and much more, taking an enormous burden off of Walmart itself.
Walmart began sharing its inventory data with key suppliers, too. The problem of coordinating Walmart’s inventory had grown too large for Walmart to solve on its own. By sharing its inventory levels and internal projections with vendors – by making its internal numbers available externally – Walmart could draw on the wisdom of the broader ‘market’ – its vendors – to arrive at better outcomes than it could have achieved within a silo.
Like with Amazon’s various platforms, Walmart built Retail Link out of pure necessity; without it, the purchasing process would have remained a constraint to Walmart’s growth. The difference is that, with its unconstrained shelf space, Amazon was encountering these problems – and implementing platform solutions – everywhere.
It is worth noting that there is one key difference between Walmart’s Retail Link platform and the platforms that Amazon was beginning to develop in the early 2000s: forced competition.
Suppliers have no choice but to use Retail Link; the supplier is a ‘captive customer’ of the Retail Link service. The problem with having captive customers is that, lacking external competitive pressure, a service inevitably begins to degrade over time. The service provider is removed from the feedback loop, since, 1) given sufficient market power, suppliers can’t feasibly stop using the service, and 2) the service provider itself doesn’t experience the pain of using its own service. The canonical example here is the DMV; while the DMV is technically a platform – meaning, it makes government resources available to external ‘customers’ – its customers cannot go elsewhere for service, and the DMV does not experience the pain of interacting with itself, and so the DMV will perpetually remain in stasis at best.
Now, the DMV is an extreme example, and I don’t mean to imply that using Retail Link is in any way analogous to the experience of visiting the DMV. The point is that when a service has captive customers, it will inevitably degrade compared to market alternatives.
With AWS, the risk was that Amazon would become a captive customer to its own technology services group. Amazon eventually arrived at an elegant solution: instead of just building an internal platform through which its software engineers could requisition resources on demand, it would open the platform to outside customers as well. Amazon had already established a strong culture of customer obsession; in any customer-facing product, AWS was virtually guaranteed to show continuous improvement and innovation. Amazon would simply use the exact same tools and products that its customers used, and would thereby get the exact same benefits that its customers enjoyed. In other words, Amazon would become just one of many AWS customers – solving its own technological bottleneck once and for all – without creating the typical trap caused by vertical integration. The addition of a massive, high-margin revenue stream would be a nice $30 billion side benefit to boot.
As these examples of the same pattern – Marketplace, AWS, and catalog – emerged around the same time in 2002, Jeff Bezos had the most important insight he would ever have: in the world of infinite shelf space – and platforms to fill them – the limiting reagent for Amazon’s growth would not be its website traffic, or its ability to fulfill orders, or the number of SKUs available to sell; it would be its own bureaucracy. As Walt Kelly put it, “we have met the enemy, and it is us.” In order to thrive at ‘internet scale,’ Amazon would need to open itself up at every facet to outside feedback loops. At all costs, Amazon would have to become just one of many customers for each of its internal services.
This principle, this practice, this pattern, would enable Amazon to become the sprawling maze of complexity that it would eventually become without collapsing under its own weight, effectively future-proofing itself from the bloat and bureaucracy that inevitably dragged down any massive company’s growth.
Bezos did not meticulously assemble Amazon into the collection of high-growth businesses that it is today; he ‘merely’ designed Amazon’s algorithm. His first stroke of genius was in making it unbound; his second – the masterstroke – was devising a solution to the bureaucratic complexity that would have otherwise caused it to implode. Instead of being a bureaucratic liability, Amazon’s sprawl would become a massive surface area of customer contact from which Amazon could spawn dozens of revenue streams.
With an established pattern for solving the practical and bureaucratic issues that arose from infinite shelf space, Amazon began systematically removing bottlenecks to growth. It found that Marketplace sellers were not particularly adept at shipping directly to Amazon’s customers, causing a poor experience for customers and a frustrating experience for the sellers themselves. At the rate that new sellers were signing up, Amazon could not feasibly convert all of these sellers to its vendor program, nor did it have sufficient capital to carry all of the inventory on its balance sheet; instead, Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) allowed sellers to ship their inventory to Amazon’s fulfillment centers, thereby giving Amazon complete control over the customer experience. It carried with it the tremendous added benefit of honing Amazon’s own rapidly-expanding fulfillment network, which were certainly at risk of bloat and slop, with the sharp edge of seller expectations; just as with AWS, Amazon became just one of many “customers” for its own fulfillment centers.
Platforms became Amazon’s answer to every growth obstacle it encountered. Platforms became part of the algorithm. Sellers are limited by access to capital? Launch Amazon Lending. Customers can only buy things when they are in front of their computer or phone? Build Echo. UPS and FedEx can only deliver within 24 hours? Launch Amazon Flex and Amazon Logistics.
Amazon assembled a massive machine to deploy its algorithm over and over, and the momentum was unstoppable. Every barrier in its path was solved with a platform – until one of these platforms led Amazon to a catastrophic mistake.
From infinite shelf space comes a problem: how do customers discover new products? If Amazon’s website were visualized as a physical retail store, in other words, how would Amazon decide which products went on the end cap and which went halfway down the aisle on the bottom shelf? For a given category like water bottles, Amazon might have thousands of pages of search results.
This creates a big problem for Amazon’s customers, who want the latest and greatest products, and for its sellers, who want to develop and sell exciting new items. Failure to satisfy these demands would put Amazon’s ecommerce dominance at risk.
Amazon answered this problem in typical fashion: with a platform. Amazon Advertising allowed sellers to feature ‘Sponsored Products’ – paid ads that appear at the top of search results. Sponsored Products solved three problems at once: new product discovery for the customers, new product introductions for the sellers, and, as an added bonus, pure gross margin revenue for Amazon – to the tune of $8 billion annually.
The problem with Sponsored Products is that sponsored listings are not actually good for customers – they are good for sellers; more specifically, they are good for sellers who are good at advertising, and bad for everyone else. Paid digital advertising is a very specific skill set; the odds that the brand with the best product also happens to employ the best digital marketing staff or agency is extraordinarily low. Further, the ability to buy the top slot in search results favors products with the highest gross margin – hence the highest bidder – not the products that would best satisfy customers.
The issue is compounded by the fact that the average customer is unable to tell the difference between an “organic” search result and a sponsored product. The top four results in an Amazon search are now occupied by sponsored listings, which means that the average Amazon customer is disproportionately likely to be purchasing a sponsored product. And since the sponsored listings favor high-margin products pushed by savvy digital marketers, it is highly unlikely that Amazon’s customer is buying the optimal product that the market could provide.
To be sure, very poor products get rated poorly and are weeded out quickly, but, by and large, sponsored listings drag the average quality of products sold closer to mediocrity, and further from greatness. That’s bad.
Another way of framing the issue: as an Amazon customer, what benefit do sponsored listings bring you? The only answer I can think of is ‘new product discovery,’ but there are far better ways of solving that problem; one part of the solution would be a lifespan for product reviews.
For high-volume categories, product reviews should not live on in perpetuity. After a period of time, product reviews should be removed – the faster-selling the item, the shorter the period. This serves a dual purpose: 1) it ensures that product reviews apply to the most current state of the product – solving the problem of an increase or decrease in manufacturing quality over time, while 2) evening the playing field for newcomers. For a fast-moving item, the review lifespan could be set, for example, as a rolling six-month period; rather than competing against 5 years of accumulated reviews, a new entrant would only need to compete against the most recent ones that were given over the past six months.
Instead of solving the root cause of the discovery problem, Amazon layered a solution on top: ads. This would normally be a reversible decision, but the extraordinary amount of ad revenue it is generating will likely prove impossibly addictive for a company with Amazon’s appetite for capital. One way of thinking about this is that the $8 billion generated by Amazon Advertising fuels roughly ⅓ of Amazon’s entire R&D budget.
This may seem like a minor footnote in the grand picture of Amazon, but it is an absolutely devastating misstep for Amazon’s retail business. This isn’t “just” search results; search results are the entire driver of Amazon’s retail engine. Remember that in the world of infinite shelf space, the ranking algorithm is practically the entire merchandising strategy. Organic, customer-centric product rankings – the strategy that brought Amazon to $250 billion in retail revenue – has been permanently distorted. And everyone is praising them for it.
More broadly, though, Amazon’s misstep is symptomatic of the weirdness that eventually happens when an unbound search runs across such a massive problem space. In building Marketplace and removing itself as the constraint for vendor onboarding, Amazon has opened itself up to inevitable ‘gaming’ by sellers. Another way of saying this: as soon as a system’s rules are understood, it will be gamed according to the rules that have been created.
With infinite shelves that are constantly expanding and filling without constraint, Amazon cannot possibly police the ever-growing universe that it has created. Another way of thinking about this is that while Amazon’s catalog of SKUs is constantly growing, the number of top slots for popular categories is not; no matter how many thousands of water bottles get added to Amazon’s catalog, there are a fixed number of page-one results. But the growing horde of competition puts enormous pressure on the entire system; companies are always trying to find ways to knock the current king off the hill. Bad-actor tactics inevitably surface, and Amazon is in a constant war to keep its own platform consistent with its customer-centric mission. This is a war that Amazon will never be able to “win”; the best it can hope for is to try to keep up with the evolving bad-actor tactics, which seems like a tall order given that the total set of sellers is constantly increasing (one might call this “the IRS problem”).
The hidden cost of SKU proliferation, then, is that the overall quality of the SKU assortment begins to suffer. This is not a particularly meaningful problem when it comes to categories like phone cases, where the cost of a suboptimal purchase is minimal, but it leads to enormous frustration when customers are making a purchase of even mild consequence. The same customer who is somewhat annoyed by a poor quality phone case would be meaningfully more irritated if they bought a poor quality accessory for their muscle car, motorcycle, rifle, boat, or other passion or pastime-related item – let alone a more sensitive category like grocery or health.
With its marketplace platform, Amazon has created a Wild West for sellers – with all of the tremendous benefits, and pitfalls, that come with it. It continues to accumulate marketplace sellers at an incredible pace. Amazon’s next decade (in retail) will be consumed with capitalizing on this opportunity, along with mitigating all of the extraordinary challenges that come with trying to maintain order in a marketplace at a literally inhuman scale.
It is easy to look at Amazon’s exploding marketplace numbers and see insurmountable success, but we are only beginning to see what it has signed up for by building a world of infinite shelf space and opening the door to anyone who wants to set up shop. Amazon’s herculean challenge will be retaining its crown as “earth’s most customer-centric company” given the marketplace dynamics that it has created.
Amazon, in other words, has not yet figured out how to extend its internal incentive structure – the incentive structure that has been so successful in keeping the company customer-obsessed – to its external platform participants: the sellers.
I say this not as an Amazon naysayer – I say this as someone who has been, and continues to be, unabashedly, wildly bullish on Amazon – but, for the first time in a decade or more, Amazon’s expected value has, at least by my estimation, gone down.
The question on my mind is whether Amazon has grown so large that, hidden beneath a golden goose laying $8 billion eggs and tens of thousands of new marketplace sellers every year, the missteps in its retail business – the loss of customer focus – might go unnoticed. Perhaps the most interesting wildcard here is the threat of antitrust action across the industry.
Said a different way: I would be equally happy to own a half dozen Amazon stocks as I would to own one – perhaps even happier, since each resulting subsidiary would have a smaller surface area, and better focus.
I remain fascinated to see what will happen next.
Follow me on Twitter @zackkanter. | 2019-04-23T01:55:01Z | https://zackkanter.com/2019/03/13/what-is-amazon/ |
Low back pain is a common and costly complaint.
In most episodes of low back pain, a specific underlying cause is not identified or even looked for, with the pain believed to be due to mechanical problems such as muscle or joint strain. If the pain does not go away with conservative treatment or if it is accompanied by "red flags" such as unexplained weight loss, fever, or significant problems with feeling or movement, further testing may be needed to look for a serious underlying problem. In most cases, imaging tools such as X-ray computed tomography are not useful and carry their own risks. Despite this, the use of imaging in low back pain has increased. Some low back pain is caused by damaged intervertebral discs, and the straight leg raise test is useful to identify this cause. In those with chronic pain, the pain processing system may malfunction, causing large amounts of pain in response to non-serious events.
Approximately 9–12% of people (632 million) have LBP at any given point in time, and nearly 25% report having it at some point over any one-month period. About 40% of people have LBP at some point in their lives, with estimates as high as 80% among people in the developed world. Difficulty most often begins between 20 and 40 years of age. Men and women are equally affected. Low back pain is more common among people aged between 40 and 80 years, with the overall number of individuals affected expected to increase as the population ages.
Other problems may occur along with low back pain. Chronic low back pain is associated with sleep problems, including a greater amount of time needed to fall asleep, disturbances during sleep, a shorter duration of sleep, and less satisfaction with sleep. In addition, a majority of those with chronic low back pain show symptoms of depression or anxiety.
Women may have acute low back pain from medical conditions affecting the female reproductive system, including endometriosis, ovarian cysts, ovarian cancer, or uterine fibroids. Nearly half of all pregnant women report pain in the lower back or sacral area during pregnancy, due to changes in their posture and center of gravity causing muscle and ligament strain.
The five lumbar vertebrae define the lower back region.
The structures surrounding and supporting the vertebrae can be sources of low back pain.
The lumbar (or lower back) region is made up of five vertebrae (L1–L5), sometimes including the sacrum. In between these vertebrae are fibrocartilaginous discs, which act as cushions, preventing the vertebrae from rubbing together while at the same time protecting the spinal cord. Nerves come from and go to the spinal cord through specific openings between the vertebrae, providing the skin with sensations and messages to muscles. Stability of the spine is provided by the ligaments and muscles of the back and abdomen. Small joints called facet joints limit and direct the motion of the spine.
The multifidus muscles run up and down along the back of the spine, and are important for keeping the spine straight and stable during many common movements such as sitting, walking and lifting. A problem with these muscles is often found in someone with chronic low back pain, because the back pain causes the person to use the back muscles improperly in trying to avoid the pain. The problem with the multifidus muscles continues even after the pain goes away, and is probably an important reason why the pain comes back. Teaching people with chronic low back pain how to use these muscles is recommended as part of a recovery program.
An intervertebral disc has a gelatinous core surrounded by a fibrous ring. When in its normal, uninjured state, most of the disc is not served by either the circulatory or nervous systems – blood and nerves only run to the outside of the disc. Specialized cells that can survive without direct blood supply are in the inside of the disc. Over time, the discs lose flexibility and the ability to absorb physical forces. This decreased ability to handle physical forces increases stresses on other parts of the spine, causing the ligaments of the spine to thicken and bony growths to develop on the vertebrae. As a result, there is less space through which the spinal cord and nerve roots may pass. When a disc degenerates as a result of injury or disease, the makeup of a disc changes: blood vessels and nerves may grow into its interior and/or herniated disc material can push directly on a nerve root. Any of these changes may result in back pain.
Pain is generally an unpleasant feeling in response to an event that either damages or can potentially damage the body's tissues. There are four main steps in the process of feeling pain: transduction, transmission, perception, and modulation. The nerve cells that detect pain have cell bodies located in the dorsal root ganglia and fibers that transmit these signals to the spinal cord. The process of pain sensation starts when the pain-causing event triggers the endings of appropriate sensory nerve cells. This type of cell converts the event into an electrical signal by transduction. Several different types of nerve fibers carry out the transmission of the electrical signal from the transducing cell to the posterior horn of spinal cord, from there to the brain stem, and then from the brain stem to the various parts of the brain such as the thalamus and the limbic system. In the brain, the pain signals are processed and given context in the process of pain perception. Through modulation, the brain can modify the sending of further nerve impulses by decreasing or increasing the release of neurotransmitters.
Parts of the pain sensation and processing system may not function properly; creating the feeling of pain when no outside cause exists, signaling too much pain from a particular cause, or signaling pain from a normally non-painful event. Additionally, the pain modulation mechanisms may not function properly. These phenomena are involved in chronic pain.
As the structure of the back is complex and the reporting of pain is subjective and affected by social factors, the diagnosis of low back pain is not straightforward. While most low back pain is caused by muscle and joint problems, this cause must be separated from neurological problems, spinal tumors, fracture of the spine, and infections, among others.
There are a number of ways to classify low back pain with no consensus that any one method is best. There are three general types of low back pain by cause: mechanical back pain (including nonspecific musculoskeletal strains, herniated discs, compressed nerve roots, degenerative discs or joint disease, and broken vertebra), non-mechanical back pain (tumors, inflammatory conditions such as spondyloarthritis, and infections), and referred pain from internal organs (gallbladder disease, kidney stones, kidney infections, and aortic aneurysm, among others). Mechanical or musculoskeletal problems underlie most cases (around 90% or more), and of those, most (around 75%) do not have a specific cause identified, but are thought to be due to muscle strain or injury to ligaments. Rarely, complaints of low back pain result from systemic or psychological problems, such as fibromyalgia and somatoform disorders.
Low back pain may be classified based on the signs and symptoms. Diffuse pain that does not change in response to particular movements, and is localized to the lower back without radiating beyond the buttocks, is classified as nonspecific, the most common classification. Pain that radiates down the leg below the knee, is located on one side (in the case of disc herniation), or is on both sides (in spinal stenosis), and changes in severity in response to certain positions or maneuvers is radicular, making up 7% of cases. Pain that is accompanied by red flags such as trauma, fever, a history of cancer or significant muscle weakness may indicate a more serious underlying problem and is classified as needing urgent or specialized attention.
The symptoms can also be classified by duration as acute, sub-chronic (also known as sub-acute), or chronic. The specific duration required to meet each of these is not universally agreed upon, but generally pain lasting less than six weeks is classified as acute, pain lasting six to twelve weeks is sub-chronic, and more than twelve weeks is chronic. Management and prognosis may change based on the duration of symptoms.
The presence of certain signs, termed red flags, indicate the need for further testing to look for more serious underlying problems, which may require immediate or specific treatment. The presence of a red flag does not mean that there is a significant problem. It is only suggestive, and most people with red flags have no serious underlying problem. If no red flags are present, performing diagnostic imaging or laboratory testing in the first four weeks after the start of the symptoms has not been shown to be useful.
The usefulness of many red flags are poorly supported by evidence. The most useful for detecting a fracture are: older age, corticosteroid use, and significant trauma especially if it results in skin markings. The best determinant of the presence of cancer is a history of the same.
With other causes ruled out, people with non-specific low back pain are typically treated symptomatically, without exact determination of the cause. Efforts to uncover factors that might complicate the diagnosis, such as depression, substance abuse, or an agenda concerning insurance payments may be helpful.
Imaging is indicated when there are red flags, ongoing neurological symptoms that do not resolve, or ongoing or worsening pain. In particular, early use of imaging (either MRI or CT) is recommended for suspected cancer, infection, or cauda equina syndrome. MRI is slightly better than CT for identifying disc disease; the two technologies are equally useful for diagnosing spinal stenosis. Only a few physical diagnostic tests are helpful. The straight leg raise test is almost always positive in those with disc herniation. Lumbar provocative discography may be useful to identify a specific disc causing pain in those with chronic high levels of low back pain. Similarly, therapeutic procedures such as nerve blocks can be used to determine a specific source of pain. Some evidence supports the use of facet joint injections, transforminal epidural injections and sacroilliac injections as diagnostic tests. Most other physical tests, such as evaluating for scoliosis, muscle weakness or wasting, and impaired reflexes, are of little use.
Complaints of low back pain are one of the most common reasons people visit doctors. For pain that has lasted only a few weeks, the pain is likely to subside on its own. Thus, if a person's medical history and physical examination do not suggest a specific disease as the cause, medical societies advise against imaging tests such as X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs. Individuals may want such tests but, unless red flags are present, they are unnecessary health care. Routine imaging increases costs, is associated with higher rates of surgery with no overall benefit, and the radiation used may be harmful to one's health. Fewer than 1% of imaging tests identify the cause of the problem. Imaging may also detect harmless abnormalities, encouraging people to request further unnecessary testing or to worry. Even so, MRI scans of the lumbar region increased by more than 300% among United States Medicare beneficiaries from 1994 to 2006.
Management of low back pain depends on which of the three general categories is the cause: mechanical problems, non-mechanical problems, or referred pain. For acute pain that is causing only mild to moderate problems, the goals are to restore normal function, return the individual to work, and minimize pain. The condition is normally not serious, resolves without much being done, and recovery is helped by attempting to return to normal activities as soon as possible within the limits of pain. Providing individuals with coping skills through reassurance of these facts is useful in speeding recovery. For those with sub-chronic or chronic low back pain, multidisciplinary treatment programs may help. Initial management with non–medication based treatments is recommended, with NSAIDs used if these are not sufficiently effective.
Increasing general physical activity has been recommended, but no clear relationship to pain or disability has been found when used for the treatment of an acute episode of pain. For acute pain, low- to moderate-quality evidence supports walking. Treatment according to McKenzie method is somewhat effective for recurrent acute low back pain, but its benefit in the short term does not appear significant. There is tentative evidence to support the use of heat therapy for acute and sub-chronic low back pain but little evidence for the use of either heat or cold therapy in chronic pain. Weak evidence suggests that back belts might decrease the number of missed workdays, but there is nothing to suggest that they will help with the pain. Ultrasound and shock wave therapies do not appear effective and therefore are not recommended. Lumbar traction lacks effectiveness as an intervention for radicular low back pain.
Exercise therapy is effective in decreasing pain and improving function for those with chronic low back pain. It also appears to reduce recurrence rates for as long as six months after the completion of program and improves long-term function. There is no evidence that one particular type of exercise therapy is more effective than another. The Alexander technique appears useful for chronic back pain, and there is tentative evidence to support the use of yoga. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) has not been found to be effective in chronic low back pain. Evidence for the use of shoe insoles as a treatment is inconclusive. Peripheral nerve stimulation, a minimally-invasive procedure, may be useful in cases of chronic low back pain that do not respond to other measures, although the evidence supporting it is not conclusive, and it is not effective for pain that radiates into the leg.
The management of low back pain often includes medications for the duration that they are beneficial. With the first episode of low back pain the hope is a complete cure; however, if the problem becomes chronic, the goals may change to pain management and the recovery of as much function as possible. As pain medications are only somewhat effective, expectations regarding their benefit may differ from reality, and this can lead to decreased satisfaction.
The medication typically recommended first are NSAIDs (though not aspirin) or skeletal muscle relaxants and these are enough for most people. Benefits with NSAIDs; however, is often small. High-quality reviews have found acetaminophen (paracetamol) to be no more effective than placebo at improving pain, quality of life, or function. NSAIDs are more effective for acute episodes than acetaminophen; however, they carry a greater risk of side effects including: kidney failure, stomach ulcers and possibly heart problems. Thus, NSAIDs are a second choice to acetaminophen, recommended only when the pain is not handled by the latter. NSAIDs are available in several different classes; there is no evidence to support the use of COX-2 inhibitors over any other class of NSAIDs with respect to benefits. With respect to safety naproxen may be best. Muscle relaxants may be beneficial.
If the pain is still not managed adequately, short term use of opioids such as morphine may be useful. These medications carry a risk of addiction, may have negative interactions with other drugs, and have a greater risk of side effects, including dizziness, nausea, and constipation. The effect of long term use of opioids for lower back pain is unknown. Opioid treatment for chronic low back pain increases the risk for lifetime illicit drug use. Specialist groups advise against general long-term use of opioids for chronic low back pain. As of 2016, the CDC has released a guideline for prescribed opioid use in the management of chronic pain. It states that opioid use is not the preferred treatment when managing chronic pain due to the excessive risks involved. If prescribed, a person and their clinician should have a realistic plan to discontinue its use in the event that the risks outweigh the benefit.
For older people with chronic pain, opioids may be used in those for whom NSAIDs present too great a risk, including those with diabetes, stomach or heart problems. They may also be useful for a select group of people with neuropathic pain.
Antidepressants may be effective for treating chronic pain associated with symptoms of depression, but they have a risk of side effects. Although the antiseizure drugs gabapentin, pregabalin, and topiramate are sometimes used for chronic low back pain evidence does not support a benefit. Systemic oral steroids have not been shown to be useful in low back pain. Facet joint injections and steroid injections into the discs have not been found to be effective in those with persistent, non-radiating pain; however, they may be considered for those with persistent sciatic pain. Epidural corticosteroid injections provide a slight and questionable short-term improvement in those with sciatica but are of no long term benefit. There are also concerns of potential side effects.
Surgery may be useful in those with a herniated disc that is causing significant pain radiating into the leg, significant leg weakness, bladder problems, or loss of bowel control. It may also be useful in those with spinal stenosis. In the absence of these issues, there is no clear evidence of a benefit from surgery.
Discectomy (the partial removal of a disc that is causing leg pain) can provide pain relief sooner than nonsurgical treatments. Discectomy has better outcomes at one year but not at four to ten years. The less invasive microdiscectomy has not been shown to result in a different outcome than regular discectomy. For most other conditions, there is not enough evidence to provide recommendations for surgical options. The long-term effect surgery has on degenerative disc disease is not clear. Less invasive surgical options have improved recovery times, but evidence regarding effectiveness is insufficient.
It is unclear if among those with non-chronic back pain alternative treatments are useful. For chiropractic care or spinal manipulation therapy (SMT) it is unclear if it improves outcomes more or less than other treatments. Some reviews find that SMT results in equal or better improvements in pain and function when compared with other commonly used interventions for short, intermediate, and long-term follow-up; other reviews find it to be no more effective in reducing pain than either inert interventions, sham manipulation, or other treatments, and conclude that adding SMT to other treatments does improve outcomes. National guidelines reach different conclusions, with some not recommending spinal manipulation, some describing manipulation as optional, and others recommending a short course for those who do not improve with other treatments. A 2017 review recommended spinal manipulation based on low quality evidence. Manipulation under anaesthesia, or medically assisted manipulation, has not enough evidence to make any confident recommendation.
Acupuncture is no better than placebo, usual care, or sham acupuncture for nonspecific acute pain or sub-chronic pain. For those with chronic pain, it improves pain a little more than no treatment and about the same as medications, but it does not help with disability. This pain benefit is only present right after treatment and not at follow-up. Acupuncture may be a reasonable method to try for those with chronic pain that does not respond to other treatments like conservative care and medications.
Massage therapy does not appear to provide much benefit for acute low back pain. A 2015 Cochrane review found that for acute low back pain massage therapy was better than no treatment for pain only in the short-term. There was no effect for improving function. For chronic low back pain massage therapy was no better than no treatment for both pain and function, though only in the short-term. The overall quality of the evidence was low and the authors conclude that massage therapy is generally not an effective treatment for low back pain.
Prolotherapy – the practice of injecting solutions into joints (or other areas) to cause inflammation and thereby stimulate the body's healing response – has not been found to be effective by itself, although it may be helpful when added to another therapy.
Herbal medicines, as a whole, are poorly supported by evidence. The herbal treatments Devil's claw and white willow may reduce the number of individuals reporting high levels of pain; however, for those taking pain relievers, this difference is not significant. Capsicum, in the form of either a gel or a plaster cast, has been found to reduce pain and increase function.
Behavioral therapy may be useful for chronic pain. There are several types available, including operant conditioning, which uses reinforcement to reduce undesirable behaviors and increase desirable behaviors; cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps people identify and correct negative thinking and behavior; and respondent conditioning, which can modify an individual's physiological response to pain. The benefit however is small. Medical providers may develop an integrated program of behavioral therapies. The evidence is inconclusive as to whether mindfulness-based stress reduction reduces chronic back pain intensity or associated disability, although it suggests that it may be useful in improving the acceptance of existing pain.
Tentative evidence supports neuroreflexotherapy (NRT), in which small pieces of metal are placed just under the skin of the ear and back, for non-specific low back pain.
Overall, the outcome for acute low back pain is positive. Pain and disability usually improve a great deal in the first six weeks, with complete recovery reported by 40 to 90%. In those who still have symptoms after six weeks, improvement is generally slower with only small gains up to one year. At one year, pain and disability levels are low to minimal in most people. Distress, previous low back pain, and job satisfaction are predictors of long-term outcome after an episode of acute pain. Certain psychological problems such as depression, or unhappiness due to loss of employment may prolong the episode of low back pain. Following a first episode of back pain, recurrences occur in more than half of people.
For persistent low back pain, the short-term outcome is also positive, with improvement in the first six weeks but very little improvement after that. At one year, those with chronic low back pain usually continue to have moderate pain and disability. People at higher risk of long-term disability include those with poor coping skills or with fear of activity (2.5 times more likely to have poor outcomes at one year), those with a poor ability to cope with pain, functional impairments, poor general health, or a significant psychiatric or psychological component to the pain (Waddell's signs).
Low back pain that lasts at least one day and limits activity is a common complaint. Globally, about 40% of people have LBP at some point in their lives, with estimates as high as 80% of people in the developed world. Approximately 9 to 12% of people (632 million) have LBP at any given point in time, and nearly one quarter (23.2%) report having it at some point over any one-month period. Difficulty most often begins between 20 and 40 years of age. Low back pain is more common among people aged 40–80 years, with the overall number of individuals affected expected to increase as the population ages.
It is not clear whether men or women have higher rates of low back pain. A 2012 review reported a rate of 9.6% among males and 8.7% among females. Another 2012 review found a higher rate in females than males, which the reviewers felt was possibly due to greater rates of pains due to osteoporosis, menstruation, and pregnancy among women, or possibly because women were more willing to report pain than men. An estimated 70% of women experience back pain during pregnancy with the rate being higher the further along in pregnancy. Current smokers – and especially those who are adolescents – are more likely to have low back pain than former smokers, and former smokers are more likely to have low back pain than those who have never smoked.
Low back pain has been with humans since at least the Bronze Age. The oldest known surgical treatise – the Edwin Smith Papyrus, dating to about 1500 BCE – describes a diagnostic test and treatment for a vertebral sprain. Hippocrates (c. 460 BCE – c. 370 BCE) was the first to use a term for sciatic pain and low back pain; Galen (active mid to late second century CE) described the concept in some detail. Physicians through the end of the first millennium did not attempt back surgery and recommended watchful waiting. Through the Medieval period, folk medicine practitioners provided treatments for back pain based on the belief that it was caused by spirits.
Emerging technologies such as X-rays gave physicians new diagnostic tools, revealing the intervertebral disc as a source for back pain in some cases. In 1938, orthopedic surgeon Joseph S. Barr reported on cases of disc-related sciatica improved or cured with back surgery. As a result of this work, in the 1940s, the vertebral disc model of low back pain took over, dominating the literature through the 1980s, aiding further by the rise of new imaging technologies such as CT and MRI. The discussion subsided as research showed disc problems to be a relatively uncommon cause of the pain. Since then, physicians have come to realize that it is unlikely that a specific cause for low back pain can be identified in many cases and question the need to find one at all as most of the time symptoms resolve within 6 to 12 weeks regardless of treatment.
Low back pain results in large economic costs. In the United States, it is the most common type of pain in adults, responsible for a large number of missed work days, and is the most common musculoskeletal complaint seen in the emergency department. In 1998, it was estimated to be responsible for $90 billion in annual health care costs, with 5% of individuals incurring most (75%) of the costs. Between 1990 and 2001 there was a more than twofold increase in spinal fusion surgeries in the US, despite the fact that there were no changes to the indications for surgery or new evidence of greater usefulness. Further costs occur in the form of lost income and productivity, with low back pain responsible for 40% of all missed work days in the United States. Low back pain causes disability in a larger percentage of the workforce in Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden than in the US or Germany.
Workers who experience acute low back pain as a result of a work injury may be asked by their employers to have x-rays. As in other cases, testing is not indicated unless red flags are present. An employer's concern about legal liability is not a medical indication and should not be used to justify medical testing when it is not indicated. There should be no legal reason for encouraging people to have tests which a health care provider determines are not indicated.
Total disc replacement is an experimental option, but no significant evidence supports its use over lumbar fusion. Researchers are investigating the possibility of growing new intervertebral structures through the use of injected human growth factors, implanted substances, cell therapy, and tissue engineering.
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This page was last edited on 4 January 2019, at 07:27 (UTC). | 2019-04-18T10:20:29Z | http://www.let.rug.nl/~gosse/termpedia2/termpedia.php?language=dutch_general&density=7&link_color=000000&termpedia_system=perl_db&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLower_back_pain |
If you are a Lightning Werewolf, do you have a lightning flower? Or a lightning tree? If you’re not sure then the Lightning Moon is an excellent time to find out.
Lightning flowers like this one are left when a Lightning Werewolf transforms.
This full moon is sometimes called the Lightning Moon by many cultures because of the large number of electrical storms that naturally occur at this time of year.
So it’s no surprise that the werewolves who like to channel electricity aka: the Lightning Werewolves would claim this moon. For three nights, Lightning Clans will use this storm electricity in the air to initiate new werewolves, teaching you how to channel it to transform and fight.
You will also learn about the distinctive tracks or lightning flowers that your transformations will inevitably leave behind for others to find. These fractal patterns will appear on the ground, or in the glass of a window or on another conductive object as a result of your massive burst of electricity.
Lightning flowers are impossible to prevent when you are channeling up to a billion volts of electricity and equally impossible to hide from werewolf hunters but with any luck, they will fade in a few hours, before anyone can track you.
This Lightning Werewolf has many moons.
Now you must also know about the lightning flower you will find somewhere on your human skin, immediately after your first moon.
Your lightning flower normally first appears on your upper arm, chest or back but may begin almost anywhere. The pattern and placement of the design will be distinctive and revealed by your clan on your first moon.
Your lightning flower can tell other werewolves a lot more about you than just your clan affiliation. For one thing, it communicates your moon age. With every transformation, the so-called flower grows, the branches getting almost imperceptibly thicker and longer until finally it becomes the lightning tree of an older more experienced werewolf.
The number of “leaves” on this tree can also tell another werewolf how many battles you have fought and won or lost.
Above all, whether you have a lightning flower of a lightning tree, it tells the world that you are a Lightning Werewolf so if you don’t want this fact to be known, you would do well to keep it hidden.
1. Your hair will be more unruly than ever and as the moon reaches its fullest point, it may stand on end.
2. If you wear any metal jewelry, you may hear it start to buzz and hum.
3. Your bank cards may stop working.
If these moon effects bother you, don’t worry, it’s just time to invest in a good pair of rubber-soled boots.
This poet knew the power of dust in the hands of a Ghost Werewolf like you. Many Ghost Werewolves wear an emergency vial of dust like this one, on a strap or a chain – anything that doesn’t contain silver. This vial contains Shadowdust. As a Ghost Werewolf, this dust is what helps you change your form quickly and easily. The dust is your link to the other worlds, the spirit worlds and to each other. It makes you a very valuable member of almost any pack as a Psi or sometimes a Theta scout, able to find out things the others can’t and call on resources from another realm.
But take a minute to consider what kind of dust will you choose? Shadowdust like in the photo? Or Stardust from before the world began? Maybe Bonedust? All are very difficult to find, gather and contain. And your choice will determine in which ghostly realms you can travel and hunt – or just hang out for a while.
But if you are a ghost werewolf don’t spend too long in the other realms. Too long in any other realm and you risk never coming back. Why?
Well, many believe that you Ghost Werewolves are the only werewolves who must leave your human form behind you still intact when you transform. For safety reasons, you must never confirm this to anyone except another Ghost Werewolf but if it is true, that would explain why some of you never return to your human self. What happens when your human form is found by somebody who thinks you are hurt? Who thinks you are sleeping and you won’t wake up? Your human form could end up trapped in a hospital attached to tubes and machines that interfere with your ability to transform back.
And what happens if your ghost form is defeated or otherwise prevented from returning to your human form? These are secrets to which only Ghost Werewolves know the answer.
If any of this is true, as the Ghost Moon rises, a Ghost Werewolf like you must be very careful about where you leave your human self and about not staying away too long.
Look very closely at your reflection in a wolf mirror at the height of the Dyan moon and you might see something strange – especially if you are a Dyan Werewolf.
To a Dyan Werewolf, the wolf mirror always tells the lupine truth. While your face may appear normal, just an average human, the mirror never lies. When a Dyan Werewolf looks into a wolf mirror, the image staring back will undoubtably be all or part werewolf. Sometimes it’s just the eyes or the ears of the teeth or the whiskers but at the height of the Dyan Moon, it will always be your full werewolf face staring back at you.
That’s why the wolf mirror was originally invented and why many cultures who fear werewolves like us still hang a wolf mirror in the entrance of their homes. Wolf mirrors are made of many different fragments of silver mirror glass, usually in the shape of a moon. They may be different colors but all of them are backed by a special silver that reveals the inner wolf.
An example of a wolf mirror by Contois Reynolds.
You might think that Dyan Werewolves would hate and fear wolf mirrors, avoiding them at all cost lest they accidentally reveal their true identities, but they don’t.
No, Dyan Werewolves like you learn to use the wolf mirror to control your transformations in unique and powerful ways.
When you, as a Dyan Werewolf, look in a wolf mirror and speak the secret words, your inside wolf can come out, in several unique ways.
Sometimes the werewolf image just reflects back on your human face, triggering your transformation from human to werewolf. That’s why many experienced Dyan Werewolves wear a wolf mirror on their person at all times, and use it to transform in a fight.
But sometimes on the full moon, if the mirror breaks, the werewolf looking back at you can escape the wolf mirror and enter the world, flesh and blood like you. It’s a paradox but this werewolf is separate from you, but still part of you. The wolf part of you.
This other werewolf self will never leave you, but may not always behave in the ways that you want. So while hanging out with your mirror wolf in the real world can be strange and fun, for most Dyan Werewolves it can sometimes create challenges. Your mirror wolf may get you into a lot of trouble! And putting your mirror wolf back can be very challenging after the mirror is broken. You will need another wolf mirror, along with the ability to get your wolf self to cooperate and look into the glass with you long enough to say the secret words in reverse. This is sometimes called re-mirroring the wolf.
If you are a highly trained Dyan Werewolf of many moons, you may also know a different spell. A spell that you can only use if your life depends on it. Because with this spell and the right wolf mirror, at the height of the full moon, you may be able to break your wolf self into three separate werewolves. Each of these werewolves will be different from you but still part of you. But if you use this spell, you should know that your chances of ever re-mirroring your three wolf selves are slim to none. Maybe one or two of them, but almost never three. It seems there is always one mirror wolf who will do anything to remain free, even if it means destroying you.
These escaped mirror werewolves have no human form at all, ever. And they are not always happy about this. Which explains why the Dyan Werewolves alone have a super-elite, internal remirroring agency, whose agents will hunt down your escaped mirror werewolves.
And what happens if one of your mirror werewolves dies, killed by a member of the Internal Remirroring Agent? Is it something you really want to find out? If you are using a wolf mirror this Dyan Moon, think about that before you free the wolf in the mirror.
This is the true history of the Wild Werewolves and the Wood Witches. If you are seeing this then no doubt you are one of us but know that reading this binds you to an oath of secrecy. An oath that if broken will cost you no less than your life.
As Wild Werewolves we started out living deep in the forest with our wolf families, where we spend our whole childhood as regular wolf cubs, just part of a pack, no knowledge of our human form or human ways, until the first Wild Moon.
The first Wild Werewolves started out life as simple wolf cubs and only find their human form on the first Wild Moon.
On the first Wild Moon, our hidden human form emerges for the first time, but only for the duration of the full moon.
For 72 lonely hours you would be separated from the pack for the first time. Cubs you once played with would be confused and angry to have a human among them. Some of them would even try to attack you. At first, the entire pack might shun you, refuse to take you back, even when the moon begins to wane and you regain your wolf form. Over time, your pack would probably learn to accept you back but would keep you at a safe distance. They would probably never fully trust you again and always remember the human smell. You could never be the alpha or even the beta. You would always eat last. And to win a mate, you would have to challenge the whole pack. There would be many other challenges and you would have to find a way to win the trust of the pack if you wanted to remain a member.
The problem is, in those early days, you wouldn’t be human long enough to learn human ways and customs. At first, all you know is how to howl and growl. You won’t even know how to dress yourself or where to find clothes. Understandably, this can get you into a lot of trouble in human society. As you can see, the earliest Wild Werewolves of yore got into a lot of trouble with both the wolves and the humans.
Unknown to these earliest Wild Werewolves, we were being studied. A Wood Witch known as Sylvana had been studying one Wild Werewolf, who came to be named Connor, for a long time. Sylvana saved Connor’s life twice. The first time she saved him from the rage of the pack when Connor fell in love with the Alpha’s mate and challenged the whole pack for the right to be with her. She took him in and healed him with her spells.
On the new moon, Connor returned to the forest to form his own pack but every full moon after that, he brought his children in their human form to visit Sylvana, who taught them how to speak and read and think like a human. Soon word spread among the wild werewolves and more and more Wild Werewolves began to come to Sylvana’s full moon school.
In exchange for this kind witch’s teaching, we the Wild Werewolves pledged to protect her and her kind. As the tree is your witness, you too will be obligated to take the oath. Acquit yourself heroically and you will find there is no better, freer, more magical life you can live. But fail to live up to your pledge and you will find the opposite, a life that is nasty, brutish and very, very short. Choose wisely and live well, young Wild Werewolf.
Friends Don’t Bite Friends – But What If You Do?
Did you ever bite a friend by accident? If so, how do you tell your friend that he or she is going to turn into a werewolf on the next full moon? How does your clan deal with this situation? Are you responsible for your friend’s life now forever? Or does your clan demand that you go back and finish the job?
SOS just received an interesting message from a werewolf named Wild Moon. It appears that Wild Moon may have accidentally bitten one of her friends and wants to know how you handle the situation. How do you break it to somebody their human life is over? What is the etiquette here?
Thanks for any help you can give me. Keep on keeping on.
Seth Greening: First, what’s with the Twitter feed. I know you Bone Werewolves are not famous for your great howls, but are you telling me that you need Twitter to communicate now?
Archie Hartigan: Not exactly. It’s more just how me and my friends communicate.
Seth Greening: Your human friends?
Seth Greening: Yeah about that. What’s with your friend Pete? Why does he like oatmeal so much anyway?
Archie Hartigan: I don’t know if I’m allowed to say right now. You’ll have to clear it with him first.
Seth Greening: Okay okay I get it. Secret. Fine. Well then what can you tell me about your first transformation?
Seth Greening: Because it’s a secret?
Archie Hartigan: No because I don’t remember. All I remember is I woke up in a secure containment facility that looked like a hospital and my friends Pete and Nell told me they got it all on video. They made me watch it. At first I didn’t believe it was me. Then I thought it was a big joke they were playing because I didn’t even go full wolf, just like furious, drooling wolf-man.
Seth Greening: What finally convinced you the video was real?
Seth Greening: You’re friends with Raven? I know her! She’s a were-maid? Or mer-wolf who splits her time on the full moons between being a werewolf and a mermaid?
Archie Hartigan: No, I mean Raven, a bird. One just appeared and suddenly I could talk to her. It.
Seth Greening: Oh. What do Ravens like to talk about?
Archie Hartigan: Well they speak in poetry so sometimes it’s hard to figure out. But they land on your shoulder and talk right into your ear.
Seth Greening: That sounds pretty cool.
Archie Hartigan: Yeah. Anyway, because I couldn’t talk to ravens before the full moon I figured that maybe Pete was telling me the truth.
Seth Greening: So have you figured out how to control your transformations yet?
Archie Hartigan: Not 100%. Raven keeps bringing me things and I keep trying but so far I can’t predict it. Will I be a full wolf? Or a wolf man? Or just like, have one paw that I have to hide in a sling until the full moon is over…? I never know.
Seth Greening: What do you mean Raven keeps bringing you things? What kind of things?
Archie Hartigan: Like all kinds of things. Pieces of string, something that looked like a pearl, a chicken bone… you name it. At first I thought they were all for me, all like, important objects. Then I figured out Raven was also trying to build a nest in the corner of the roof under my bedroom window. But she made it clear that she is looking for something called [insert incomprehensible bird sounds here]. It will help me control my transformations.
Seth Greening: Is there a human translation for that?
Seth Greening: Is it similar to the Eye of Ghicah’los that you just….
Archie Hartigan: Seth I warned you not to bring that up.
Seth Greening: Sorry. Sometimes I can’t help myself.
Archie Hartigan: Yeah. I noticed that. I just hope nobody heard you.
Archie Hartigan: I better go. The moon is almost full and Raven says there’s a Poe outbreak in progress. We have to stop it.
Seth Greening: I understand. I heard about that too. Thanks for stopping by SOS HQ tonight.
Archie Hartigan: Anytime. Keep on keeping on Seth.
Seth Greening: Thanks I’ll try. You too.
Well the Ice Moon is rising but if you are an Ice Werewolf, chances are good you won’t be staying locked up for the next 72 hours. Not that you don’t want to hang out in your crib. It goes without saying that Ice Werewolves like you have the coolest cribs in chill locations around the globe.
Ice Werewolves know that ice is everywhere in the universe.
Ice Werewolves like you tend to build your cribs out of crystal materials on the dimensional cracks of existence. As a result your crib is translucent to prying eyes, almost invisible to outsiders, while the inside is in a constant state of flux. In fact, depending on the time of year, your crystal crib could be huge, with 12 rooms or it could have only one big room. Until you understand the crystalline patterns of the icy universe, you never know how big your crib will be on any moon so be careful not to leave valuables inside! You might not see them for a whole a year!
Even more complicated, sometimes you – and the whole crib – will disappear too. Especially on the full moon, you will have a tendency to slip through the cracks of the crystal ice structure of the universe and travel through space and time.
This is because Ice Werewolves were among the first to discover this truth about the universe, how it froze into existence leaving these invisible ice-like cracks everywhere in space and time. Crack patterns that Ice Werewolves study and learn to manipulate.
Back when many scientists still believed that ice could only be found on earth, you Ice Werewolves knew the truth, that ice was everywhere in the universe. How the very structure of ice is the structure of the universe itself. The Ice Moonlight in your veins enables you to learn to “hear” the vibration of all the different kinds of ice and see the crystal structures and how to use them.
Before you knew that you were an Ice Werewolf, you might have wondered why you could chill people out or stop them cold in their tracks with just the sound of your voice. Or why even in human form, you could stand so still that other people couldn’t see you, even if you stood right in front of their eyes. Or you might have wondered if you could slow time and spent hours experimenting, staring at a clocks or people, trying different ways to slow them down.
Well wonder no more. To you Ice Werewolves, all of these things are possible, with time and study. Ice Werewolves were the founding clan of the Akasha Alliance and still count among the strongest members. Every year that you train with them, your powers will get stronger. You will learn all the different powers and structures of ice and how to use this to achieve your goals.
Just try not to make any enemies of Frost Werewolves. Don’t listen when the Frosties tell you to spend more time flinging frost darts and icicles and less time staring down the true structure of things. This rivalry is not helpful, especially when you actually have so much in common.
For more information on Ice Werewolves or the Ice Moon please click here or alternately please visit the werewolves page at sethonsurvival.com.
Oak Werewolves and Faeries meet in the forest on the full moon.
The full Oak Moon tonight is a very special and dangerous time for Oak Werewolves. If you are an Oak Werewolf, you will be asked to journey to a certain tree, deep in the forest for a very special moonlight meeting. A meeting in the deepest, darkest part of the woods between Oak Werewolves and the faery folk who work together to preserve a magic flame.
For an Oak Werewolf like you, it will all begin with a secret signal from the faery tree. Remember that strange bracelet or keychain you have? It is probably made of wood or else it has a tree on it and maybe looks something like this one?
Oak Werewolves have an object or talisman like this one to help them.
Well can you remember where it came from? You can try to remember but chances are you can’t remember their face. Because it is a faery talisman that is given to Oak Werewolves like you. It is a very powerful talisman that gives you special powers, along with special responsibilities.
One Oak Moon like this one, the talisman will begin to glow with a signal from the faery tree.
Don’t be afraid when it starts to glow. As the moon waxes bigger and bigger in the sky above, the signal will grow stronger and your oak pendant will glow brighter.
This signal is from the faery tree telling the Oak Werewolves where to meet. You must travel to the meeting tree. You will run wolf at night and sleep in human form during the day.
As an Oak Werewolf, you must learn very quickly how to identify the best trees for sleeping before the sun rises. They may look small and cramped from the outside but if you can find the entrance, marked by a certain knot before the sun comes up, you will find a place inside that is better than the best hotel room in the world! There will be a warm hammock and all the hot chocolate you can drink. And in the morning you can have pancakes with tree syrup, the most delicious and filling breakfast you can have at this time of year. But no sleeping in! Remember you must get to the tree before midnight on the second night of the full moon. That’s when the secret meeting begins.
As you get closer and closer to the secret tree, your talisman will glow brighter and burn with a kind of cold heat on your skin. Don’t be afraid, this just means you are on the right path.
You will know that you have arrived when you see the biggest, oldest tree in the forest, full of faeries behind every branch, who wait for you with glowing eyes and shifting faces. Don’t be afraid of them. They can’t leave the tree. And besides, they are more afraid of you than you are of them. Faeries are terrified of werewolves. But they made this deal with your clan because you are the only beings on earth they will trust to help keep the flame of their warring world alive.
As an Oak Werewolf, you don’t help the faery realm alive because the faeries give you special powers. Although they do give you special powers. Powers you can channel with your talisman. But that’s not why you help them. You help them because you know that if their world is lost to the forces of cold and darkness, then our world will fall soon after.
One last thing. If you are a new werewolf and you have never made the Oak Moon journey before, you must not try to to it alone. You will never make it. You will get lost in the woods or freeze to death trying to find a warm tree to sleep in. You must make your first Oak Moon journey with an experience Oak Werewolf who will bring you on the moon of your first transformation. If you haven’t made the journey yet, be patient. It won’t be long!
For more information about Oak Werewolves please visit the Oak Werewolves page. For more information about fairies or werewolves please visit SOS at sethonsurvival.com. | 2019-04-24T02:24:16Z | http://yourlupinelife.com/category/werewolf-news/page/2 |
important event is the visit on a trading expedition late Bradford of Plymouth with a party of Englishmen, who obtained here eight hogsheads of corn and beans. Gov. Bradford had with him as interpreter and guide the Indian Tisquantum or Squanto, who had entered the Plymouth settlement in March, 1621, and had been an almost indispensable aid to the Pilgrims in their relations with the natives, and in teaching them how to plant corn where to fish. and While here this faithful friend died and doubtless was buried. This town was incorporated under the name of Chatham by an act of the General Court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay passed June It was named for Chatham in 11, 1712, in the reign of Queen Anne. England, but just why that name was chosen rather than the name of some other English town is not known. It had been previously known Mannamoiett, by its Indian name, which the English generally wrote but pronounced Monomoit, and which still remains in Monomoy, the desNearly ignation of the beach that stretches southerly from the town. fifty years before its incorporation, in 1664, in the reign of Charles II, it came down from Yarhad been settled by William Nickerson, who mouth (having previously lived for a time in Boston), accompanied, or soon followed, by Robert, Samuel, John, William and Joseph, five of his with six sons, and by his three daughters, Elizabeth, Anne and Sarah, their husbands, Robert Eldred, Trustrum Hedges, and Nathaniel Covel. He was born William Nickerson was a weaver of Norwich, England.
of much natural intelligence, of force and energy, and of a will strong to the point of obstinacy. He did not easily submit to the conHe was the ancestor of all trol of the governing powers of the Colony. the great tribe of Nickersons that draw their origin from the Cape, and there are not many descendants of the other ancient families of this vicinity that do not, through the marriages of his female descendants, He died in 1689 or 1690, aged at least carry his blood in their veins. probably died a year or His wife, born about 1609, had 85 years.
two before. They where some graves dwell in this town Trustrum his line.
also Stage Neck, with certain rights of pasturage. In 1679 he bought from John Quason for 20 pounds the land west of that tract to the Harwich bounds. He had thus purchased not less than 4,000 acres, comprising all but the eastern portion of the town where now North Chatham and the village lie. To this he added certain meadow land Nickerson purchased bought of John Quason in 1682. His son William Chatham region in 1689, and Samuel Smith of Eastham the North Neck. bought in 1691 the tract east of the Mill Pond known as Tom's The land in the west and southwest part of the town was reserved as common land, to which the owners of other tracts had certain rights. These lands were divided in 1712. The Indians in Monomoit were chiefly in the eastern portion, which had not been purchased by Nickerson. Champlain on his visit reported the number as 500 or 600, but in this estimate were probably included white a good many from the neighborhood whom curiosity to see the men had led here. The pestilence of 1616 seems to have reduced the They population, for Gov. Bradford in 1622 says the Indians were few. with others on the Cape were at first under the care of Mr. Richard Bourne of Mashpee, who reported 71 praying Indians here in' 1614, and In 1685 the number afterwards of the Rev. Samuel Treat of Eastham. of praying Indians in Monomoit was reported by Gov. Hinckley as 115, and according to his estimate the Indian population would have been Probably some of these lived outside the bounds of Chat400 or 500. ham. In 1698 there were 14 Indian houses at Monomoit, and an Indian population of probably between 50 and 70. For the use of the Indians in the vicinity, a meeting house was early erected near the East HarWithin wich Methodist Church within the present limits of Chatham.
Topping and later by Samuel D.
Chatham was represented in this Congress by Capt. Joseph Doane. It recommended, among other things, if I may use a modern term, a boyA third congress met May 31st, 1775, and Chatham was cott on tea.
came colonel. Another call for troops was made the same year, Chatham's quota being 26. In April, 1778, five men were called for from the town. In 1779 there was a further call and in December, 1780, a call for nine men. In the meantime there had been calls on the town for clothing and provisions for the army. February 22, 1778, the selectmen and James Ryder, lieutenant of the militia company, reported that there had been raised in the town in 1777 ten men for three years and 20 men for eight months. Of these, Sergeant Hyatt Young and Benjamin Bassett served during the war. Joseph Young, son of Hyatt, was among the eight months' men. Hyatt Young had served in the previous French war. A monument to him and his son Joseph stands in the Universalist Cemetery. John Young, who served in 1776, and enlisted for three years in 1777, was reported drowned in 1778. In September, 1778, Capt. Benjamin Godfrey's company and Capt. Nathan Bassett's company of Chatham men, on an alarm to Falmouth and New Bedford, served for a few days. Chatham men were also on short term service in Rhode Island and at the throwing up of intrenchments at Dorchester Heights in the spring of 1776, when Gen. Washington drove the British from Boston. The Cape men were largely in service on the Coast Guard, Capt. Thomas Hamilton's company, which consisted mostly of Chatham men, served on the coast from July to December, 1775. Cape Cod men were largely drawn upon to man the numerous privateers that preyed upon the British commerce. Among others the sloop "Wolf," of which Capt. Nathaniel Freeman of Harwich (now Brewster) was commissioned master September 13, 1776, Joseph Doane of Chatham being lieutenant, had Chatham men in her crew. She had a brief career, being soon after sailing captured by a British 74 gun ship disguised as a merchantman. The crew were carried to Brooklyn, N. Y., and placed in the prison ships, but were exchanged at Newport, R. I., February 11, 1777.
wounded in the battle of Lundy's Lane, July 25, wounds in Buffalo, N. Y. David Godfrey was an Reindeer, of which Joseph Doane was lieutenant. CIVIL WAR.
26th regiment, 3 years, Company I: Augustus H. Eldredge, who enlisted at New and died there September 3d following. 39th regiment, 3 years, August 1862 to 1865.
Rev. Edward B. French, Chaplain.
transferred to the navy April 21, 1864.
John W. Atwood, sergeant. Charles E. Atwood, corporal. Francis Brown. Benjamin S. Cahoon. John W. Crowell. Ephraim Eldredge. Cyrus Emery.
Josiah J. Hamilton. David Harding. Samuel H. Howes, re-enlisted July 29, 1863, in Company B, 2d Artillery; 1st sergeant; discharged August 23, 1865. Charles Johnson, re-enlisted in Company A, 58th regiment. Horatio F. Lewis.
1864; discharged July, 1865, referred to not repeated. A.
Nathaniel B. Smith, 1st sergeant; killed at Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864. Francis Armstrong, sergeant; died same day of wounds received at Cold Harbor, June 10, 1864. Pliny Freeman, sergeant. George W. Hamilton, sergeant. Samuel Hawes, Jr., sergeant; discharged for disability, June 19, 1865.
Harrison F. Gould. Josiah F. Hardy. Samuel Harding. Seth T. Howes, killed in battle of the Wilderness, Va., May Henry W. Mallows. Charles Mullett. Edwin S. Nickerson, prisoner at close of war. Benjamin F. Pease, discharged for disability, July 1, 1865.
T. Small. Albert E. Snow, transferred to Veteran Reserve Corps.
Francis S. Cahoon. Our venerable fellow citizen, David H. Crowell, served in the navy as Acting Captain on the Tuscarora on special service from November 22, 1861, till his resignation, May 16, 1863.
formation of the Republican party, its allegiance was transferred to the latter. Fremont in 1856 and Lincoln in 1860 had a majority in the A. John war, the of town, and in 1861, after the commencement Andrew, Republican, received the entire vote cast for governor. In the Constitutional Convention of 1820 the town was represented by *In official report erroneously credited to Harwich.
Joseph Young and Capt. Salathiel Nickerson. As delegate to the was Barnstable convention of 1853, S. B. Phinney of chosen by a vote of 103 against 97 for Freeman Nickerson of Chatham. Why an out-of-town man was chosen does not appear, but it is worthy of note that Barnstable sent no delegate.
fail to be in the mind of They were not sufficiently numerous to support a minister. The nearest church was that of Eastham, its meeting house Later a church was orbeing within the present limits of Orleans.
Daniel Sears. William Eldredge. Isaac Hawes (brother of Ebenezer). Samuel Tucker.
William Mitchel. Daniel Hamilton. Ebenezer Stuard. John Ryder. Joseph Stuard.
Richard Sears. David Smith. Among them, as appears, are names still current in the town, and The name of Morris others that have disappeared from among us. Farris is perpetuated in Morris Island, on which he resided. Up to this time there was no church organization in the town. There were but seven church members and these belonged to the Eastham Church, or, in one instance at least, to the Harwich Church. Before the emigration of 1711 there had been eleven church members. In 1719, the Rev. Joseph Lord, a graduate of Harvard College in the He was a learned man, active in all the Class of 1691, was employed. His writings were numerous and religious controversies of the time. many of them are preserved. The town agreed to give him a salary It also agreed of 80 pounds a year and the use of a house and land. four in that he should have a settlement of 100 pounds to be paid been It is a coincidence that he, as well as Mr. Adams, had years.
at first no pews, except one for the minister's wife.
later, in 1739, an order was made in town meeting for space be laid out for a certain number of pews, and that they should In 1742, they were sold to be sold for an aggregate of 100 pounds. the following persons: John Nickerson. Thomas Doane.
His salary was fixed at 85 pounds a year besides wood He also had a settlement of of the parsonage. 230 pounds. In 1812 the town voted to repair the meeting house and increase the number of pews. The next incumbent (and the last one while the church remained a town affair) and the last who preached in the old building, was the Rev. Stetson Raymond, a graduate of Brown University in the Class of 1814. He served from 1817 to 1829, when he was dismissed. His salary was $650 yer year, with the use of the parsonage. The Society at a meeting May 27, 1830, voted to build a new meeting house. The old structure was sold and in 1831 was taken down. The new one was built in the lot now occupied by the Congregational cemetery and stood on rising ground some distance back of the main road. The parsonage was built west of the church in a lot fenced off from the cemetery. It was destroyed by fire with the church records in 1861. The new church was removed to its present site in 1866. During the early history of the town the inhabitants were nearly all adherents of the Congregational church. The church was a town afdeath in 1816.
not be excused from church taxes. It was, however, soon persons belonging to other church organizations and contheir support, should not be compelled to pay ministerial taxes. In 1758 there was recorded in "the town book a certificate that before 1800 and Nathaniel Bassett was a Baptist. Beginning a little continuing for some years after, the town records contain many certifMethodist, the of icates that various persons had become members At Baptist or Universalist societies and contributed to their support. first the Methodists and Baptists belonged to societies in Harwich, but The Methodist society was later Chatham societies were formed. A formed in 1816, the Universalist in 1822, and the Baptist in 1824. Methodist church and parsonage were built near the Methodist cemabout 1812 and the present ones about 1850. In 1823 a Univeretery In salist church was erected near the cemetery of that denomination. This was Academy. 1850 a second one was built on the site of the A Baptist burned in 1875 and in 1879 the present one was erected.
church was built in 1827 near the Baptist cemetery, which was later removed to the Old Harbor read. When the Baptist society ceased to exist the church was sold to the Masonic Lodge. In 1820 the town raised $680 to pay Mr. Raymond's salary for the the 1824, is In the report of the town meeting held August 9, year.
church Methodist It was erected on the site of the old The first town meeting held in it met near the Methodist cemetery. November 10, 1851. In 1877 the present town hall was erected.
children, especially the boys, but their circumstances forbade the estabParents gave instruction to their children, and, lishment of schools.
in the case of illiterate parents, neighbors capable cf doing It is remarkable that the chilso took their children with their own.
N. P. Brownell was another physician settled here beThe second native of the town to become a physician was Erastus Emery, son of John Emery. He was a pupil of the High School, a graduate of the Harvard Medical School in 1869, practised in Truro and died at an early age in 1878. The first dentist in town was the He was followed by Dr Sylvanus H. Taylor. late Dr. Joseph Atwood.
were no resident members of the bar here until very recent years. The drawing cf deeds and wills and the probate business were done by laymen. Joseph Doane, Squire Sears and Deacon John Hawes were among those in earlier years. During my boyhood and later, Warren Rogers was the most active in this way. The early ministers were frequently called in for this service; the Rev. Joseph Lord drew many legal papers in his time. Simeon M. Small, a native of this town, became a member of the bar and practised law in Yarmouth before 1860, when he went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he practised until his Before he left the Cape he had been Judge of the death in 1875.
whereof divers adult persons died and several famlong time. In November, 1772, Captain Joseph Doane found back of the Cape, a schooner having aboard dead, Captain Thomas Nickerson, Elisha Newcomb and William Kent, Jr. The decks were bloody and the chests open and plundered. One man was found aboard alive. He stated that the day before they had been attacked by a pirate, the men killed and a Search was boy carried off. The survivor had concealed himself. made for the pirate ship, but none was found. The survivor was tried The in the Admiralty Court at Boston and after two trials acquitted. mystery has never been solved. In 1786 occurred one of the many tragedies of the sea that have brought sorrow to the town. A schooner belonging to New Haven bound for the Banks, was lost with her crew of Chatham men. A chest and some other articles belonging to her were found and brought home by fishermen. The event has been transmitted to us through some verses written about the time by Isaiah Young. The men lost were Captain Sylvanus Nickerson, Mr. Nathaniel Young, Mr. Christopher Ta.vlor, Seth Eldridge, Adam Wing, Joseph Buck, Nehemiah Nickerson, Stephen Eldridge, Barzillai Nickerson and Seth Dunbar.
1895 1,809 1900 1,749 1905 1,634 1,564 1910 In 1765 there were 105 houses and 127 families; in 1801 the number Two of dwellings was 158, of which four only were of two stories. of these four were probably those on the North road west of the old burying ground, the easternmost of which was the parsonage and the The other two other a little later the dwelling of Dr. John Seabury.
rural districts to the cities.
the last fifty years, a general tendency of population from the But, while the population of the town has The valuation returned by the decreased, its wealth has increased.
and the raising him above the level of a mere animal were never so generally distributed. More than a hundred years ago the merits of the Cape as a health It has, however, only been in comparatively recent resort were known. years that increasing numbers of summer guests have visited Chatham and found health and pleasure in its salt air and cool breezes and in The benefits have not its wonderful facilities for boating and fishing. The town has profited in its turn and much of all been on one side. its present prosperity is due to these welcome visitors.
1854, in mackerel were inspected in the town; In the later years the catch 3,000; in 1864, 6,746; and in 1874, 10,765. was largely in the weirs that had been established near Monomoy Point and in Chatham Bay.
for the grinding of grain.
kept by Ezekiel Young, one near the Oyster Pond, one on the Stage Harbor road kept by Christopher Taylor and later by Oliver Eldredge and Zenas Nickerson (the last one operated in the town), one near the Lights, one at the Old Harbor and one at Chathamport.
empty-handed, no matter how out of date or unusual the article he desired.
In the vicinity of the old meeting served the purpose of taverns. house, the Widow Knowles long kept a tavern, which was resorted to at times of general training and on other public occasions.
farmed out to those citizens who would take them for the least sum Later the town per week or year, having the benefit of their services. bought for an almshouse and poor farm the house and farm of James Taylor in West Chatham that had belonged to his father, Samuel Taylor. This house and its successor built by the town were managed by keepers and the town's poor cared for there until 1878, when the house and farm were sold and a new almshouse established next to the Baptist Church.
In early times letters could be transmitted only by private messenger The first postoffice in the town was opened or by the casual traveler. He served until January 1, 1798, with James Hedge as postmaster.
established in 1856 with Daniel Howes as first postmaster. The Chathamport and South Chatham postoffices were both established in 1862 with Enos Kent and Levi Eldridge, Jr., as the incumbents respectively. At first the mail was received weekly, by 1815 twice a week and after 1820 three times, a week. In 1827, the late Samuel D. Clifford, then a boy of 14, carried the mail on horseback, starting from and returning to Yarmouth the same day. Daily mails were established in 1848. The telegraph reached the town in 1855, and the office was placed in charge of our veneralbe fellow citizen Ziba Nickerson. The telephone first appeared in 1883. News was not obtained so promptly as now. In the years preceding 1860 Boston semi-weeklies were taken chiefly for their shipping news and often one paper served for two or more families. Local news was chiefly obtained through the Barnstable Patriot, established in 1830, and the Yarmouth Register, established in 1836. The Chatham Monitor first appeared in 1871.
around the Cape. The railroad was completed to Sandwich in It was extended to Yarmouth and Hyannis in 1854. Lines of stages were then run from Chatham to Yarmouth and at one time there was a line also to Hyannis. In 1865 Harwich was reached by the railroad and from that time on a short carriage ride was required until the Chatham railroad was opened in 1887.
"has often heretofore been a place of relief to many shipwracked vesNo public action was and Englishmen cast ashore in storms." taken looking to the succor of men cast ashore until the Humane Soalong the ciety with headquarters in Boston placed houses of refuge In 1802 one of these huts was located half way between Nauset coast. and Chatham harbors. "The meeting house of Chatham is situated from it southwest. This meeting house is also without a steeple and landmark. The hill appears is concealed by the Great Hill, a noted There was with two summits which are a quarter of a mile apart." another hut a mile north of the mouth of Chatham harbor, east of the Still another was on Monomoy meeting house and opposite the town.
rye 6 bushels, to the acre. There is not a stream of running water in Their mills are turned by wind, as on other parts of the the town. No town is more conveniently located with respect to water conCape. veyance, having two harbors and many coves and inlets making up into They are well situated for carrying on the every part of the town. cod fishery, and employ about forty vessels in that business; some of them fish upon the banks of Newfoundland and others upon the shoals. As the harbors of this town are in the elbow or turn of the Cape, they afford a shelter for vessels of a moderate size, when passing and re-passing. But the harbors being barred, renders the ingress somewhat difficult to those who are not well acquainted with them. The depth of water is sufficient for vessels of two or three hundred tons burthen. Besides the fishery carried on in vessels at sea, they have plenty of cod at the mouths of their harbors, which are taken in small boats. They take plenty of bass in the season for them. Their coves abound with eels; they have plenty of oysters and other shell fish for "The scarcity of wood obliges the inhabitants their own consumption." to use it with great frugality, five cords of wood being a year's stock Pine wood is two dollars and an half, and oak for a small family. three dollars and an half per cord." The same writer, speaking of Cape Cod, says: "The winds in every direction come from the sea, and invalids by visiting the Cape sometimes experience the same benefit as from going to sea."
Harbor." "The greatest part of the fuel which is consumed is brought from the district of Maine; and costs at present about seven dollars a Five cords of wood are considered as a sufficient yearly stock cord. for a family." "Not more than half enough Indian corn for the consumption of the inhabitants is raised; the average produce to an acre Rye, the average produce of which is six bushels, is is twelve bushels. of Thirty years ago a small quantity raised in the same proportion. "There are wheat was grown, but at present it is wholly neglected." excellent oysters in the Oyster Pond; but they are scarce and dear, selling for a dollar a bushel." Stage Harbor is also described by this writer. In 1839 a writer states that forty years before large ships used to come into the harbor, but then it was so injured by a sand bar that had been forming that only small craft could enter. The same writer says that while Chatham is in extent one of the smallest towns on the Cape A large amount of shipping it was said to be one of the wealthiest. was owned by the inhabitants in other places.
"The Harbor of Chatham which was formerly a good one is now nearWhere ly destroyed by the shifting of the sand bars near its mouth the entrance to it formerly was there is a beach 25 feet high, covered with beach grass, and a mile in length." "There is considerable wealth in this place. A large amount of tonnage is owned here which sail The value of fish cured at Chatham is very confrom other places. siderable, and large quantities of salt are made."
How different is the world of today from the world of 1712? What changes have taken place? France was under the rule of the Bourbons. The French Revolution and Napoleon were nearly a century in the was under the heel of future. Italy, now unite.d and progressive, of fragmentary and hostile communities. foreign princes or consisted Germany, now a mighty, consolidated empire, was a loose confederacy St. Petersburg of small principalities under the leadership of Austria. had just been founded, and Peter the Great was still at his task of converting Russia from Asiatic backwardness and isolation into a modern European power. On this side of the ocean a feeble fringe of English colonies stretched along the coast from the Savannah River to Maine. Georgia was not yet settled. North of Maine all was French. West of the Alleghanies the territory was claimed by the French. From Texas to the Isthmus of Panama and over substantially the entire conBrazil, in tinent of South America the Spaniards held sway, except which had been colonized by Portugal. Through the entire field of industry the means were essentially those of the ancient world. All the great changes that have been wrought by steam and electricity, guided by inventive genius, were yet to come. Through these two centuries, through all these mighty developments, this little community has moved steadily on its way, not driven from its moorings, nor on the other hand producing events that will find their place in general history, but the scene of the honest lives of brave, industrious and energetic men and women. Without such as these the republic would not exist. those In closing this address, I must not fail to say a word for who like myself have long lived away from the old home. Those who have remained here can scarcely understand our feelings as we visit this scene of our childhood and youth. There rush upon us the memories of former days. The companions with whom we played live again, though too many have gone before. The little schoolhouse is peopled again. Here are the graves where rest the bones of our ancestors, and here the old house calls up the tender and hallowed memories of father and mother, of brother and sister. Can we ever forget? How can I better answer than by quoting the lines of Burns in his lament upon the death of his benefactor, Lord Glencairn? | 2019-04-26T08:03:45Z | https://www.scribd.com/document/112022232/Historical-Address-Delivered-by-James-W-Hawes-200th-Anniversary-of-Chatham-v2 |
Moya – Calligrapher from Melbourne, Australia. Hi!
Interview over at The Daily Stationer!
Q: What would be your response to somebody who considers Calligraphy a lost art?
Click here for the rest of the interview!
You guys, I am so ready for this. I love teaching so much, and I love Brisbane, and I love the guys at Elemental Creative Hub – so I’m putting the three together on April 1st this year!
If you are a total beginner or you haven’t done calligraphy for years but you want to get back into it, come in the morning – everything is provided, you don’t need anything, just turn up and you get a lovely goody bag to take home.
And if you love it and want to stick around, or if you don’t need a beginner class but you want to spend some time refining your script, come in the afternoon and I’ll sort you out!
If these book out (I sent out the announcement to my mailing list fifteen minutes ago and had my first booking ten minutes later! Guys, my FACE RIGHT NOW!) I might be able to put together another – but I’m only in Brisbane for a limited time so we’ll see how that goes.
And if you want to join in: here’s the link to book!
“As featured at the Golden Globes” … no, for real, though.
Needless to say I watched the entire red carpet show, which started early on a Monday morning here in Australia. I was supposed to be working at the time, but I was far too busy squeaking with glee every time I spotted myself.
‘scuse me I’m just going to be bouncing up and down in my seat in excitement for, oh, at least a few more days.
Shoutout to Karl at KustomHaus wax stamps – I needed a custom seal for this video in a big hurry, and he was fantastic to work with. If you’re in Australia and you need a wax seal or ten, highly recommend!
Earlier in the year I was contacted by a letterpress studio I do quite a bit of wedding work for – Bespoke Letterpress in New South Wales. This time they were in need of a tiny bit of lettering for their 2016 Mother’s Day Card.
I was more than happy to help!
The process of creating lettering for letterpress is, I have come to learn, not quite the same as regular calligraphy. The output is never quite the same as what comes out of the pen – a letterpress plate interacts with the paper very differently to a nib. Little gaps in lettering, like an ear on a ‘g’ that’s not quite touching the bowl, can come out of a letterpress looking like the plate is damaged or the ink has skipped just slightly. A stroke that leaves my nib as a fine hairline may need to be thickened in order to show up at all. So on top of the usual draft-contemplate-redraft-consider-rework process, there’s always a need to keep in mind what the design is for, and how it will get there.
I was seriously so delighted to see the final versions of these cards. Rose gold foil and the most beautifully delicate border!
And of course, the best thing about social media and the modern world is that, 750km away, I still get to see a snippet of them being printed. How cool is that?
How to: Calligraphy on macarons!
The jobs that come out of the blue are always the most creative and inspirational. I was contacted by a really beautiful bride, about a week before her wedding, asking me if I could write guests’ names in calligraphy on salted caramel macarons. Wow!
I had never done such a thing before, and had no idea if it was even possible … so I immediately emailed the best bakers I know (Kadri of cakeophilia – check out her blog for some seriously impressive baking – and Suzanne of no-blog-but-who-really-should-make-one) – to ask a few important questions. Like: is there such thing as edible ink? Does it come in gold? And, even more importantly, with five days to go, where do I get it in Melbourne?
The answers were yes, yes, and West’s Cake Decoration in Burwood.
We trialed a few things and found that the pens they sell are useless for this purpose, but they have tubs of edible paint that’s only a little too thick to use a brush with – and that dilutes nicely with just a touch of water.
don’t be afraid to mix edible inks! I was, at first, but the combination of deep brown and gold ended up looking fantastic, where just deep brown would have been too stark and just gold would barely have shown at all.
don’t work in the studio! I ended up doing these on my kitchen table. There’s just too much in the studio – I was working on a piece at the time that I was using lapis lazuli pigment to decorate, and trust me, you do not want that stuff in your food. But even if I wasn’t using mildly toxic pigments, I didn’t want to risk exposing food to anything I wouldn’t eat at all. The kitchen table was a much safer bet.
EAT FIRST. I wore a face mask and a headscarf to keep my hair out of the way and my breath off the food (because ew) – but I still spent hours bent over delicious, delicious salted caramel macarons … I didn’t want to eat the mistakes, either, because it was the day before the wedding – you know who’s a lot more in need of a sugar hit than a calligrapher? A bridal party, that is who! – so my tummy definitely made some noises.
keep the macarons in the fridge as much as possible! I ended up just taking out one box at a time, working as quickly as I could, and putting the box straight back in. The filling will melt at room temperature and make the top half slide around – and that ends badly for calligraphy.
don’t touch them! just don’t. macarons are so light and delicate that I did not want to risk one single crushing, or slip, or even fingerprint. I wore food-grade silicone gloves and the only thing that touched the macarons was the paintbrush – which I bought new for the job, and washed in dishwashing detergent first (and rinsed thoroughly) just to make sure.
HAVE FUN. I love doing things as unusual as this – and the lovely bride was so thrilled with the result. Working with someone who’s as excited as you are about what you’re creating is such a joy. This one has to go down as one of my favourite jobs for 2016 – I know it’s a little early to make that call, but I’m making it anyway!
I’m addicted to Periscope lately. It’s an amazingly good teaching tool for calligraphers – so much of our craft is really difficult to convey without hearing and seeing someone do it, and seeing it close up; Periscope lets that happen and even gives you the opportunity to interact. I’ve stayed up far too late a few times listening to Paul Antonio (@pascribe) discuss flourishes or Kei Haniya (@keihaniya) talk about drills!
And of course, seeing all that teaching and learning going on makes me want to join in – so I did one a while ago (now safely lost to the internet) on how useful I find the Ames Lettering Guide.
I can’t seem to make Instagram embeds work here (I’m sure I could figure it out, if I put some time into it, but I’ve got better things to do!) but here is a link to a 15-second clip of how the guide works that I posted on Instagram the other day.
I’ve had a few questions about it since then, so I thought I’d put together a few links. You can use this tool on anything as long as you have a t-square and a pencil – or even just a ruler and a pencil, but it’s really the t-square that makes the magic. I’ve done a few large-scale wedding seating charts lately, and this is the device I used to rule up all of them – there’s no other way I could so quickly and accurately get lines exactly 6.5mm apart all the way down a one-metre-high piece of card.
The Ames Guide was originally, I believe, designed for engineers, architects, and comic book letterers. All three of those professions now letter digitally for the most part – it’s just us calligraphers now.
The guide itself seems to go for something ridiculous on eBay … but you can get it for $3.30USD at Paper Ink Arts. If you don’t have a t-square, you can just use a ruler, but you’ll have more difficulty lining up the guide if you don’t have an easy way of ensuring your ruler is perfectly horizontal.
You’ll also need an edge to rest the t-square against. With these seating charts, I used the table – I taped the chart down with artists’ tape against the corner of my kitchen table, so that I could be sure I had a perfectly square edge to work from. With anything smaller, I would have used my slope drawing board. Occasionally, if I am working flat, I just use the edge of my lightpad, which is conveniently squared and has ruled markings.
Here is a clearly diagrammed article discussing its use in comics. Not so useful for calligraphers, but it is the clearest explanation of the ratios I have found.
This one focuses on broad pen scripts, and is very thorough.
And here is a quick youtube video (produced by someone else, not me) covering the Ames Guide, so you can see it in motion.
I hope those are useful!
If you want to follow me on Periscope, I can’t promise any particular wisdom, just the occasional babble … but you can find me under @moyagraphy.
As a working calligrapher in 2016 I get to do all sorts of things. Most of my work I do from home, in the peace and comfort of my studio; most jobs mean long hours alone. I like it that way, of course – most calligraphers do, I think! None of us would do this job if we didn’t.
Which makes it all the more fun and interesting to be asked to attend an event as a calligrapher. It’s a real joy to work with and in front of people, and to get a chance to talk with people about what my job is and how my pen works and how I learned to do it.
I’ve heard these events described as “event calligraphy,” “on-the-spot calligraphy,” “in-store calligraphy” – I don’t know if there’s a name for it. I generally go with “event calligraphy” for ease of reference.
And I have a few tips for managing these events, most learned from experience. If you’re planning to hire a calligrapher for your guests, here’s what you need to know.
I often get questions about how large or how high the table has to be, and my usual answer is: if you would find it comfortable to sit and write at it for two (or four, or five, or eight) hours, then I probably will, too. I once arrived to find a stool the same height as the table, so there was a small delay while we found another chair that was low enough for me to work. I’m lucky enough not to have any physical movement problems personally, but some calligraphers do, of course. And we all need to be able to reach the table!
Calligraphers need room for arm movement – or at least, I do, and I imagine anyone writing in the same style as me does. So the table doesn’t need to be so very large, but it does need to have enough space for a few bottles of ink, some pens, and the paper that I’m writing on, and there needs to be room to move my right arm and shoulder without hitting anything behind it. That’s about it.
If you can get your calligrapher a sample ahead of time, she’ll love you! Not all ink reacts the same way to all paper, and having a sample to test inks on can save a little messing about on the day. If you can’t – don’t worry. I always bring along several types of ink and a few calligraphy ‘trade secrets’ (I’m talking about gum sandarac, of course) so that I maximise the chance of finding the right combination.
In general, very absorbent papers and very glossy papers are difficult; most high-quality cards and tags are fine.
People love watching calligraphy. (Which is fair enough, since calligraphers love doing it.) The most successful events I have been to were the ones in which a member of staff kept a watchful eye on the queue, standing by the calligraphy table and managing expectations. Calligraphy is a slow process! I can speed it up for demonstration purposes, but if there are a lot of people in line, it can be a long and frustrating wait. It’s great to have a staff member on hand to keep track of who’s waiting, to enforce a certain number of tags (or cards, or chocolates, or items) per person, and to make sure everyone leaves happy.
Even for those of us who do it every single day, nonstop handwriting is tiring! If your event goes for more than two or three hours, try to arrange a time for your calligrapher to take five or ten minutes off halfway through. It’s good if your queue manager can be aware of this so they can let clients know.
If you think it’ll be too busy and you’ll have too many customers for a calligrapher to manage … hire two! It’s a small calligraphic world, particularly in Australia, and we pretty much all know each other – chances are good that any one of us can connect you with several more. And the more calligraphy the better, as far as any of us are concerned.
What are your thoughts on event calligraphy? What would you like to know? Comments are always welcome.
Where to learn calligraphy in Melbourne?
I am emailed this question a lot, because there are so, so many people out there who want to learn – which absolutely delights me. There’s a lot of hand-wringing about calligraphy being a “dying art” but in my experience, it’s flourishing.
Melbourne is actually a wonderful place to learn calligraphy. There are some amazing teachers here with decades of experience in teaching hand-lettering and calligraphy. I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve had opportunities to study with not only the best teachers in Melbourne and in Australia, but also some of the best teachers in the world, who have travelled to Australia to teach with my group – the Calligraphy Society of Victoria.
The CSV has been active since 13 August 1981, and for all of that time has been offering workshops and continuing education, which speaks volumes to the care and effort put in by the committee. Workshops are open to everyone (but are slightly cheaper if you are a member) and are taught by very experienced and very talented teachers – I’ve never taken a workshop that didn’t leave me thrilled and inspired.
The other Melbourne calligraphy event that you should know about is the Summer School in Winter that the CSV hosts. Every year, international and local teachers spend a week in Melbourne running five days of classes (split into three-day and two-day workshops) – accommodation is available for interstate or overseas travellers if you book quickly, and the instruction is unbeatable. It was at SSiW that I had the chance to learn from international teachers like Luca Barcellona, Jake Weidmann, Elmo van Slingerland … an absolute privilege every time.
Spots in these classes fill up very quickly, so you need to be quick off the mark in booking, but it’s worth it. The teachers for 2016 are Olive Bull, Susan Hufton from the United Kingdom, John Mathieson from South Australia, Brody Neuenschwander from Belgium, and Amity Parks from the USA… the only bad thing about that list is that you can’t take everyone’s class at once. I know what I’d do if I had a Time-Turner!
Painted borders in class in 2013, with teacher Lynne Muir.
I can’t overstate the value of taking a class with a skilled teacher. I learn something new every single time, even about things I thought I already knew, even in classes I didn’t think I needed to take.
A version of this post first appeared on my other blog, over at Calligraphy By Moya – I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a little ridiculous to run two blogs, and am combining them into one.
Recently (well, July 2015, so not very long ago) I was asked to teach a class on copperplate calligraphy at Veronica Grow’s Old School New School in Abbotsford. I agreed to come in and teach, and I was so glad I did. We had a fantastic time.
Old School New School is set up in a gorgeous loft space in the Abbotsford Convent, and the walls are plastered with Veronica’s students’ work. There’s a huge skylight letting in sunshine and happiness all day long. I wish I had a studio space like that to work in every day! OSNS is a modern design and typography school, whereas I think of myself more as a traditional calligrapher; the two disciplines are different but very much complementary.
The students had all done some basic copperplate with Veronica, and my job was to help them refine their control over the pen and learn some majuscule forms. We spent quite a bit of time on proportion and on developing a light touch – I am sure I made myself unpopular by demanding they all learn with a much finer and more flexible nib than they had previously been using, in order to develop a surer hand, just as my teachers made me once upon a time. I also insisted on oblique penholders. I think both those ideas paid off and I’ll definitely be doing that again if I ever teach another class.
It was absolutely joyful being able to help others learn this art that I love so much. I loved the experience of teaching, and of seeing students reach those “a-HA!” moments that I get so often myself. Calligraphy is really a lifelong journey and it was pretty special to see others setting foot on the path.
1500km. Six days of calligraphy. Heaven.
Happy New Year, everyone! My holidays have drawn to a close and I’m very ready to jump back into everyday life feet-first. This year’s going to be a good one – I’m sure of it.
The more that I learn about calligraphy, the more that I see how much I have to learn. It really is the craft that never stops giving – there’s always more to learn, further to go. In comparison to where I want to be, I sometimes feel like a toddler fingerpainting on the walls. So I spend all my free time learning and studying and thinking about lettering to the point of just being a little bit too obsessed … but I’m happy.
I was lucky enough to spend the past week studying the Italian hand of Bennardino Cataneo with Gemma Black at the Sturt Summer School in NSW. I could have flown up there and saved myself the drive, but I really wanted to be able to carry all my gear, so I hopped in the car around 4am on a chilly Sunday morning and hit the highway. I sort of love long drives, or long train rides, or long bus rides; there’s something very peaceful about being on the road.
And I learned so many things over the week! A lot about Bennardino Cataneo, and the 1545 manuscript we were studying; a lot about handling a pen and making decisions about where to place words on a page; even some rudimentary bookbinding. I had a fantastic time – it was fully catered and the accommodation was on campus, so it really was just a week of rolling out of bed, being given all your meals, and doing nothing but art every day. I wish it could have gone on for ever.
One thing that I am learning over and over again as I study: an hour with a good teacher is worth about a week of studying at home. Although the studying at home helps! I feel like I also made some strides in understanding how to analyse a script this week, and now I need to attack my books all over again and look at all the manuscripts I can find and learn them all … it never stops. And I never want it to.
To look at my work or ask for a quote or a commission, please pop over to Calligraphy by Moya. See you there! | 2019-04-26T11:59:04Z | https://calligraphybymoya.wordpress.com/ |
If there is a scene that epitomizes the West in early movies and song, it is that of the dusty trail. Cattle drives and wagon trains are accompanied by prevalent, pervasive dust. If there is anything that can be readily created in the West, it is dust.
Today, dust (also known as particulate matter) is an unwelcome and unhealthy feature of poor stewardship of our lands. While dust from disturbed lands is predictable, it is also preventable.
The Maricopa County Air Quality Department’s (department) Rule 310—Fugitive Dust from Dust- Generating Operations is a comprehensive set of regulations that, when properly implemented, will dramatically reduce dust emissions and improve air quality. The need for improved air quality for particulates is urgently important in Maricopa County.
While air quality is often good to excellent, the number of days that do not meet or approach the particulate air quality standard established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are far too many and leave the region in nonattainment. The result of unhealthful air quality on far too many days is the imposition of stringent controls designed to curtail and control emissions. Rule 310 is a critical element in Maricopa County’s strategy to achieve improved air quality, and broad compliance with the Rule’s provisions is essential. The department has instituted an aggressive program to monitor compliance with the Rule, and strict enforcement is leading to reduced dust emissions.
Every approach to improving air quality comes with a learning curve. Rule 310 imposes requirements and opportunities for interpretation under a variety of scenarios. In developing this handbook, the department has reached out to those most affected and asked for and received their input. The intent of this handbook is to craft a practical guide offering a comprehensive overview of how the Rule 310 is interpreted that will be useful and used—a document that will become dog-eared and tattered through frequent reference.
The PM-10 nonattainment area includes a substantial portion of Maricopa County that includes most of the metropolitan Phoenix area. This area has been deemed a “nonattainment” area for air quality by the EPA and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ).
The PM-10 nonattainment area exceeds the acceptable national standard for PM-10 pollution levels. PM-10 (particulate matter 10 microns, or smaller, in diameter) includes dust, soot, and other tiny bits of solid material that are released into and move around in the air. PM-10 is produced by many sources, including exhaust from cars, trucks, buses, and planes; industrial sources like power plants; fugitive dust sources like construction, mining, and agricultural activities; as well as fuel combustion like the operation of fireplaces and wood stoves.
Area A differs from the PM-10 nonattainment area. Within Area A, clean-burning gasoline measures (emissions testing; summer and winter fuel formulations) are applicable. The boundary has been used by many other state statues, rules, and ordinances (such as residential wood-burning) as the area of applicability for those respective regulations.
Although Indian communities are found within the borders of Maricopa County, the department has no jurisdiction over them, because they are considered sovereign nations.
This handbook does not apply to developments in Pinal County.
Additionally, normal agricultural practices are under the jurisdiction of ADEQ, not Maricopa County. Construction activities on agricultural land are subject to Rule 310.
Rule 310 applies to all of Maricopa County regardless of whether a site is located in the PM-10 nonattainment area or Area A (two related but distinct designations).
The purpose of this handbook is to provide a practical guide offering a comprehensive overview of the department’s policies and interpretations of Rule 310. The intent is that this guide will be useful and used. The handbook is organized to respond to topical questions and it is structured to provide answers to the most commonly encountered compliance challenges.
The department has also produced the Dust Abatement Field Guide for the Construction Industry, a pocket-sized, quick reference designed to provide information about how to comply with Rule 310 in the field. While not as comprehensive as this handbook, the Field Guide is a durable, reliable, and brief summary of the most important points that designated site representatives and workers in the field should know about Rule 310.
This Dust Abatement Handbook and the related Field Guide are provided to assist in better understanding the provisions of Maricopa County Air Quality Department’s Rule 310—Fugitive Dust From Dust Generating Operations. The contents of this handbook and the Field Guide should not be viewed as the definitite statement of the Rule and how to achieve compliance. Where the clear language of Rule 310 and any formally issued policy related to Rule 310 conflicts with this handbook or the Field Guide, Rule 310 and the policy will prevail.
The user of this handbook should clearly understand that the discussion contained in this document is not binding. The Rule itself should be relied upon for a final determination of compliance. This handbook is not intended to serve as an alternative to Rule 310 which is, by itself, the definitite statement of dust-control requirements.
This document is expected to be updated from time to time. If you identify any area that requires clarification, please let us know. Send your comments to [email protected]. You may wish to check the website from time to time to see if any revisions are posted.
Rule 310 is available online at http://www.maricopa.gov/aq/divisions/planning_analysis/rules/docs/310-1001.pdf.
Rule 310 is also an appendix to this document.
This handbook and the related field guide were developed in 2009 in a collaborative effort between the regulated community and the Maricopa County Air Quality Department. The basic document was developed by an internal working group within the Department and review and comment was provided by an external working group. The external working group was comprised of members of the regulated community who will rely on the contents of this handbook and field guide to improve compliance with Rule 310. Additional support was provided by Logan Simpson Design, Inc., working under contract with the department.
When a reference to a period of days is mentioned, it will mean calendar days unless otherwise specified. It is recommended that this document be printed in color to allow all graphical features to be seen. The reference to the Control Officer in the document refers to the Director of the Air Quality Department.
Because air quality in the greater metropolitan Phoenix area does not meet air quality standards for PM-10, it is necessary to a have a comprehensive program to control PM-10 air pollution. Maricopa County’s Rule 310 – Fugitive Dust from Dust-Generating Operations, was developed to provide part of this comprehensive program.
Rule 310 is a county-wide rule and can be enforced in any portion of Maricopa County. Rule 310 also applies regardless of whether a site is located in the PM-10 Nonattainment Area or Area A (two related but distinct designations).
Rule 310 applies to any construction activity that results in soil disturbance. While a few activities are exempt, a good rule of thumb is to assume that the activity you are planning is covered by Rule 310 until you confirm otherwise.
The following activities are definitely covered: Land clearing using mechanized equipment, earthmoving, weed abatement by discing or blading, excavation, construction, demolition, bulk material handling, storage and or transporation operations, operating outdoor equipment, using staging areas, parking areas, haul and access roads, disturbing surface areas associated with a project site and installing initial landscaping or landscape maintenance using mechanized equipment.
Rule 316 - Nonmetallic Mineral Processing is another rule that applies a separate set of dust control requirements on specific activities. Although many features are similar, there are distinct differences.
Although tribal communities are found within the borders of Maricopa County, the department has no jurisdiction over them because they are legally considered sovereign nations. Note: check with tribal governments as some have their own dust control requirements.
This handbook does not apply to developments in Pinal County. Additionally, normal agricultural practices are under the jurisdiction of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), not Maricopa County.
A tenth of an acre is a relatively small amount of land. Most custom home residential projects will easily fall under the criteria to have a permit.
Construction activities that take place on agricultural lands are subject to Rule 310. For example, construction of a new food processing warehouse on farmland would be covered and a permit required if the surface area disturbed met or exceeded 0.1 acre. Also, trackout originating from agricultural lands is covered under Rule 310 and is subject to enforcement.
If you are engaged in a dust-generating activity covered by Rule 310, the rule requirements apply at all times (24/7). Even if you do not need to have a permit, the dust control provisions of Rule 310 still apply to your project.
The threshold for a permit is based on the amount of surface area disturbed by a project. If the area disturbed will meet or exceed 0.1 acre (4,356 square feet) then a permit is required.
The opacity of dust emissions from dust-generating operations, as pictured at left, cannot exceed 20%.
What do you need to do to ensure that a project is in compliance? The following list of important Do’s and Don’ts are intended to provide a snapshot of some of the most significant provisions of Rule 310. This handbook provides more expansive discussions on each of these provisions in later sections.
Understand your project— boundaries, type of work, areas where soil will be disturbed, locations of exits and entrances, storage areas, equipment paths—consider everything that could potentially create dust.
Don’t start a project that disturbs greater than or equal to 0.1 acre until you have obtained a dust control permit. Include paths, foot traffic areas, and all other areas that are anticipated to result in soil disturbance, in your calculations to determine the size of the project.
Plan ahead to ensure you receive your dust control permit before you start work—start the application process early. The department may require 14 days for review once an application is deemed complete. Also, factor in time for postal delivery of the permit.
As part of the permit application process, you will be required to fill out an application which includes the Dust Control Plan. The approved permit and the plan must be on site before you start work.
Read and understand your approved Dust Control Plan. During preconstruction meetings inform all project workers of Dust Control Plan requirements and ensure a successful project start-up.
Request a courtesy visit by an air quality inspector or their presence at the preconstruction meeting to answer questions. One courtesy visit is allowed for each project phase (generally, these are demolition, land development, and vertical construction).
Familiarize yourself with Rule 310 and this handbook. The Rule contains important details and requirements that may not be addressed in the handbook. Develop a working knowledge of the dust control requirements and related challenges.
The department has up to 14 days to review a paid, technically complete permit application package. This timetable does not include postal delivery. Line up a Dust Control Coordinator, hydrants, and control equipment to be used at your site prior to submitting the application package. Consider municipal requirements, such as backflow prevention devices and obtaining hydrant meters.
Ideally, the Dust Control Plan should be filled out by someone familiar with controlling dust emissions.
If your project is 1 acre or larger in size, your application must identify the soil texture found at the site. The soil texture is generally found in a soils report prepared for the project site (alternatively, Appendix F of the department’s rules and regulations contains a map of soil descriptions).
While trackout is prohibited for any size project, if the project site is 2 acres or larger or you will be moving 100 yd3 of material per day, establish a controlled exit with a trackout control device.
If your project disturbs an area five acres or larger, an on-site Dust Control Coordinator is required. Make sure you have lined up a certified Dust Control Coordinator with a valid certification before starting work.
Ensure that you are prepared to control dust prior to starting a project. (for example, secure a water source and be ready to apply water prior to initiating soil disturbance).
Post required project information signs when the permit area is five acres or greater.
Once you understand the project and the obligations of your Dust Control Plan, factor dust-control costs into your project bid and budget. Include the cost of signage, training, dust-control staff, trackout control devices, and all other personnel and materials used to control dust. Provide a Dust Control Plan with bid materials to subcontractors so they understand what is required and can submit accurate bids.
Make sure subcontractors have a current registration number.
Never allow on-site emissions to exceed 20% opacity.
Actively monitor trackout during the course of the workday.
Do not allow any visible dust to cross your property line.
Apply water to control emissions before, during, and after earthmoving operations (Note: additional control options are available).
If the primary dust control measure is ineffective, immediately implement the contingency measure from your approved Dust Control Plan. While the contingenecy measure can be applied along with the primary control measure, use of both, concurrently, is not required.
Document the use of the contingency measure in your daily log.
If dust emissions cannot be controlled, stop work.
Understand and meet stabilization standards.
Know when your permit expires and place the expiration date on your calendar along with the date by which the permit renewal application must be submitted (be sure to allow enough time for processing and postal delivery). Note: the department has up to 14 days to process your complete application. If the application is not complete or errors are present, additional time will be required to resolve any problems.
Apply for permit cancellation when work is completed and ensure that disturbed areas within the permit area are stabilized and meet stabilization standards.
What Activities Are Covered by Rule 310?
Rule 310 regulates dust emissions associated with construction activities. Generally, if the surface of the ground is disturbed in some manner, or if bulk materials are moved from one location to another or stockpiled, the potential exists for fugitive dust emissions. Rule 310 applies to all activities that may result in fugitive dust emissions and a permit is required if the area to be disturbed is 0.1 acre or more.
If you are engaged in dust-generating operations, no matter how small, you must control those emissions and comply with Rule 310. If you are disturbing 0.1 (one-tenth) acre or more, you must comply with Rule 310 and obtain a dust-control permit. One-tenth of an acre is just 4,356 ft².
parking five pickup trucks next to each other on open dirt.
staging 10 yd³ of aggregate base.
Driving 360 feet onto undisturbed land.
What is Considered a Dust-Generating Activity?
land clearing, maintenance, and land cleanup using mechanized equipment.
storage and/or transporting operations (e.g., open storage piles, bulk material hauling and/or transporting, bulk material stacking, loading, and unloading operations).
establishing and/or using unpaved haul/access roads to, from, and within a site. 33disturbed surface areas associated with a site.
installing or maintaining landscaping while using mechanized equipment.
Disturbed surfaces do not have to be contiguous (connected to or adjacent to each other)!
What Is Required Before Commencing Work at a Project Site?
Be safe—get a permit before doing anything that will disturb the land.
Apply for and receive a permit before doing anything that will disturb as little as 0.1 acre of land.
Prepare a Dust Control Plan and submit it to the department as part of your permit application.
permit coverage is required for only those areas in your permit that will be disturbed, including the working area, prep areas, and parking areas. You can add areas as needed using the Permit Acreage Increase Request Form.
the dust control permit is good for one year (permits for shorter or longer periods are not available).
a dust control permit is not effective until the fee is paid.
a dust control permit and the approved Dust Control Plan must be kept on site at all times. Work cannot begin on the site until the approved permit is received and onsite.
all project workers on your site, including subcontractors, should be familiar with the plan.
If the site is one acre or greater, a description of the sire-specific soil designations must be prepared. (See Appendix F of the Maricopa county Air Pollution Control Rules and Regulations).
Still need a permit even though your existing permit may soon expire?
A new Dust Control Plan must be submitted.
A new permit number will be issued.
The project information sign should be updated with the new permit number.
The applicant’s signature on the dust control permit application represents a binding agreement and obligates the applicant to implement identified control measures on the permitted area for the life of the permit (i.e., one year or until the permit is closed out by the department).
The permit holder is ultimately responsible for ensuring the permitted site is in compliance at all times to prevent risks to the environment and the public, even if noncompliance is the result of an action by an owner, subcontractor, or trespasser.
The provisions of an approved Dust Control Plan are binding and enforceable—if you don’t intend to implement a provision of the plan don’t include it. Conversely, if you plan to take an action to control dust, ensure that action is included in your permit as one of your options.
The approved Dust Control Plan is effective 24/7, including holidays. Therefore, dust must be controlled 24/7.
An easy way to ensure that the permit and approved Dust Control Plan are on site at all times is to post a copy of the permit document to some semi-permanent onsite feature. Alternatively, the permit can be kept in a more secure location onsite. The most important thing is to ensure that the permit can be produced during an inspection. While affixing the permit to a fence as shown in the photo is acceptable, the site superintendent should consider having a backup copy handy in case of vandalism or loss of the document.
The dust control permit application package, which contains instructions for filling out the permit application forms as well as the Dust Control Plan associated with the dust control permit, is located online on the department’s website at http://www.maricopa.gov/aq/divisions/compliance/dust/Resources.aspx#Handbook_Guide.
Include the appropriate fee for your dust control permit application. The completed application can be submitted in person (with payment by check, money order, credit card, or cash) or by mail (with payment by check, money order, or credit card).
The Dust Control Plan is completed by the applicant and submitted as part of the permit application. The Dust Control Plan is an integral part of the permit and is effective upon approval of the permit. Given its importance, consider having the Dust Control Plan completed by someone familiar with dust-generating operations.
A late fee of $100 is required for any application submitted in response to a violation.
The fee for a block permit is $2,000. Make checks payable to “Maricopa County Air Quality Department: or “MCAQD”.
The completed permit will be sent to the applicant’s address. Allow up to 14 days for permit processing plus sufficient time for delivery by U.S. Postal Service First Class mail.
a new Dust Control Plan must be submitted with the new permit application.
only include those areas that are still disturbed. Hardscaped and landscaped areas do not need to be included.
The Dust Control Plan is submitted as part of the permit application. The department reviews each Dust Control Plan for completeness and technical accuracy.
The approved Dust Control Plan can be revised at the initiative of the permit holder or as directed by the department.
Revisions to the Dust Control Plan are not effective at time of submittal—they must be approved by the department before becoming effective. Changes to the Dust Control Plan required by the department’s control officer must be submitted within 3 working days of receipt of the control officer’s directive.
Allow at least 14 days for the Department to approve revisions to the Dust Control Plan. You must follow your existing, approved permit and plan until you have received notice from the department that your changes have been approved.
changes in the designated Dust Control Coordinator and/or his or her contact information.
any change requested by the Dust Control Coordinator or designated site representative.
At times, dust emissions may continue to occur even if the control measures contained in the Dust Control Plan are followed. When this occurs, the department will issue a notice to the permit holder requiring revisions to the Dust Control Plan. The permit holder must submit required revisions within 3 working days of receipt of the notice. If more than 3 working days are needed, the permit holder can request an extension. Even though the extension is available, it is not guaranteed that the extension will be granted. In any event, compliance with Rule 310 is expected immediately.
OPEN YOUR MAIL – often documents will have a deadline or action date included. Don’t miss critical deadlines by failing to open mail from the department immediately.
From the department’s perspective, the approved Dust Control Plan is a contract between the permit holder and the department—its terms are enforceable, even against subcontractors working on a site. The measures included in the Dust Control Plan are the measures that inspectors will expect you to apply to your site.
Primary controls listed in the plan are to be used first. Contingency measures are to be used when the primary controls are not effectively controlling dust emissions.
If primary controls or contingency measures don’t result in effective control, the approved Dust Control Plan must be revised. The obligation is clearly on the permit holder to control dust emissions. If emissions cannot be adequately controlled using all available measures, the project will be in violation of Rule 310 and subject to enforcement by the department.
There is a new, streamlined Dust Control Permit Package that includes both a Permit Application and a customizable Dust Control Plan that can be downloaded, completed and saved electronically, and then printed and submitted. (On-line submission is expected in the summer of 2013.) The new Package cannot be filled out by hand. For a Dust Control Plan that can be filled out by hand, please use the Old Dust Permit Application Package.
Both versions of the Dust Permit Application Package are available at: ttp://www.maricopa.gov/aq/divisions/compliance/dust/Resources.aspx#dust_applications. Under Dust Control Applications/Dust Control Plans, click on Dust Control Permit Package.
When completing a Dust Control Permit Application, please be sure to complete both the Permit Application and the Dust Control Plan. Your permit application cannot be processed without both parts.
Be sure to complete both the application and the dust control plan.
Rule 310 requires certain personnel at a permitted site to receive training on dust control and emission reduction strategies. The level of required training and which personnel must be trained depends on the amount of acreage disturbed within the permitted area. The table below shows who must be trained and the level of training required by size of the disturbed area.
There are two levels of certification: basic and comprehensive.
To earn basic certification, individuals must complete the three-hour training course. As indicated in the table, water truck and water haul drivers are required to earn basic certification.
On projects that disturb more than 1.0 acre, the permit holder must designate a site representative who has earned basic certification.
In addition, a Dust Control Block Permit holder is required to have at least one individual who has received the basic dust training certification on those sites on which there is greater than one acre of surface disturbance.
Employees required to have the basic dust training must renew their training certification once every three years.
Certification of Dust Control Coordinators is not required but is strongly recommended.
Comprehensive training is a six-hour training that covers dust control measures in detail. Individuals who complete this training earn comprehensive certification and may be designated as a Dust Control Coordinator.
On projects that disturb 5 or more acres, the permit holder must identify a certified Dust Control Coordinator who must be present at all times during primary dust-generating activities.
A Dust Control Coordinator must complete the comprehensive training program once every three years.
Note: Comprehensive training includes basic certification.
The need for Dust Control Coordinator to be onsite during dust-generating activities cannot be over emphasized. Experience has shown that violations often result when the Dust Control Coordinator is not available to oversee operations.
To receive a dust control permit, the permit holder must name a site representative or Dust Control Coordinator who has the level of training required based on the area disturbed by the project (see table on page 3-1). If a site representative or Dust Control Coordinator is required based on the size of the project, he or she must be given the authority to act to control dust by the permit holder. This means the site representative or Dust Control Coordinator must be able to direct actions within an area covered by a permit to ensure compliance with Rule 310—including ceasing operations, if necessary, to ensure that dust is not generated.
Maintain a legible photocopy of the certification card for each trained personnel member in a file or binder located onsite so that is accessible during an inspection.
trained site representatives are required on projects that disturb 1.0- 4.99 acres; must be designated on the dust control permit; and must have basic certification.
Dust Control Coordinators are required on projects that disturb five or more acres, must be designated on the dust control permit, and must have certification for attending the Comprehensive Dust Control training.
permit holders who do not give site representatives and Dust Control Coordinators authority to act are subject to enforcement under Rule 310.
a Notice of Violation can be issued if a Dust Control Coordinator does not have full authority to ensure that dust control measures are implemented on site.
A Dust Control Coordinator is required whenever the disturbed area reaches or exceeds five acres. In some instances, a permit area may develop such that fewer than five acres of disturbed surface remain in one phase of the project but there are additional permitted, yet undisturbed, phases waiting to be developed.
In this scenario, a Dust Control Coordinator would be required onsite unless the undisturbed phases were clearly identified in the dust control permit, as well as the Dust Control Plan, and the undisturbed area on the project site was clearly marked with access restricted to those project phases not yet active.
When fewer than five acres of land (in all phases of the project) remain to be disturbed, then the Dust Control Coordinator requirement would no longer apply if previously disturbed areas have been stabilized and notice of stabilization has been provided to the department.
Courtesy visits and industry presentations given by department staff represent another opportunity for training. If you organize an event such as a gathering of your firm’s project superintendents, it is possible to schedule an inspector to provide a presentation on aspects of Rule 310. Note: industry presentations are free of charge but do not take the place of formal training certifications.
current dust control permit number.
name and local phone number of person(s) responsible for dust control.
Should the official complaint phone number ever change, the department will send a notice to all permit holders providing the new number.
a new contact name or phone number.
a change in the project name.
The main entrance to a site is that which would normally be used by employees and subcontractors when gaining site access. As a project matures, an additional entrance may be established.
The purpose of the signage requirement is to provide the public with information about the permit status of the project, and the sign should be posted where that information is most prominently observed by members of the public.
The project sign requirement is based on the original acreage permitted. A sign is still required even if a project is reduced to under five acres.
To avoid uncertainty when multiple entrances are used, a permit holder is encouraged to place signs at each site access point, especially where another project entrance is more visible to the public. However, only one sign is required by Rule 310.
If only one sign is posted, it should be placed at the location that would be viewed by members of the public as the main entrance to the site.
Don’t forget to change the project information sign to reflect changes in your permit.
The dust control permit and all updates (must be on site).
The Dust Control Plan and all updates (must be on site).
Dust control logs documenting dust control measures used each day (must be available within 48 hours).
observations of damp and crusted soil.
trackout conditions and actions taken to clean up trackout.
daily water usage (note how water is applied, how often, and the amount - a rough approximation is acceptable).
maintenance of trackout controls (what kind and when installed).
what kind and when contingency measures in the Dust Control Plan were used.
what subcontractors were on site, include registration numbers.
a list of employees who have completed dust control training, the date of the class, and the name of the company or person who did the training. Keep copies of training certificates on file.
all supporting documentation (e.g., street sweeping or water truck receipts).
types and results of all test methods conducted.
two years from the date the record was initiated, as long as operations are ongoing. For example, a five-year project only needs a two-year record log.
all records must be retained for six months following termination of site operations.
While no exact format is prescribed for recordkeeping, a three-ring binder is recommended for pater records.
Electronic recordkeeping, used by some permit holders, is a valid form of recordkeeping.
A scanned copy of the Dust Control Permit accessible on a computer is an acceptable way to maintain an on site copy.
any paved area with local nonconstruction traffic is considered accessible to the public.
to ensure that an area is closed to the public it must be clearly posted (i.e., by using a sign that states “Construction Traffic Only”). Any place on a site where the area under construction and the area open to the public is indistinct will be considered an area accessible to the public. sidewalks are considered paved areas accessible to the public, unless they are barricaded or marked off with signage. Trackout on sidewalks will not be included in the cumulative distance trackout calculation; however, trackout on sidewalks must be removed by the end of the workday.
parking lots, including those in strip malls and churches, are always considered areas accessible to the public unless marked otherwise with signage to restrict public access.
The use of signs/barricades/ropes/ fences can help to define a controlled area. While the use of yellow rope or tape to separate the area is not required, it has practical value in ensuring that the area is seen to be separate from other areas where the public has ready access.
Trackout extending from your project onto paved areas off site is a common violation.
If an area is restricted and trackout is present, it will not be cited as a trackout violation.
Registrations are good for one year from the date the registration is approved/issued.
While the permit holder is responsible for all site activities that may result in a violation of the provisions of Rule 310, subcontractors may, under certain circumstances, also be held accountable.
Anyone who enters an area that is subject to a Rule 310 dust control permit must obtain and a subcontractor registration number and follow the requirements of each project’s dust control permit and Dust Control Plan.
a sign at the project entrance.
painting it on a vehicle.
a paper sign affixed to the vehicle or equipment.
a magnet sign affixed to the vehicle, e.g., on the door or bumper.
a rear view mirror hanger.
not using a trackout control device.
grading when opacity exceeds 20%.
loading/unloading when opacity exceeds 20%.
wet utility/dry utility installation when opacity exceeds 20%.
removal of barricades to avoid use of a trackout control.
untarped trucks exiting a site onto paved areas accessible to the public.
truck freeboard limit exceeded and/or spillage while crossing a public area/ roadway.
creating visible emissions beyond property lines.
subcontractor was informed of their obligations by the permit holder.
subcontractor’s actions can be clearly documented.
subcontractor acted in disregard of established site protocols.
subcontractor’s actions were observed by a department inspector.
subcontractor can be readily identified.
Subcontractors will be held accountable for their violations if the subcontractor can be easily identified and the permit holder has established appropriate fugitive dust controls. In accordance with the department’s subcontractor policy (dated April 18, 2006, and included in the appendices), it should be noted that the permit holder will be cited for a violation caused by a subcontractor unless the inspector can confirm that the permit holder did not cause or contribute to the violation by a subcontractor and that a subcontractor ignored controls put in place by the permit holder. The need for clear documentation of a violation by a subcontractor is essential to avoid the issuance of an NOV to the permit holder. For example, a subcontractor who has removed a barricade to avoid going over a trackout control device would be issued a NOV. The inspector would have to observe the violation occurring in order to issue the NOV to the subcontractor. In the above scenario, if the subcontractor was not observed and the surface was no longer stable as a result of the subcontractor’s actions, then the permit holder would be issued a violation for unstabilized soil (assuming the soil failed the applicable stability standard).
Ultimately, a permit holder is responsible for all activity that occurs within a permitted area—including activities that are performed by subcontractors. While the permit holder is responsible for the actions of subcontractors and ensuring they conform to department rules when acting on their behalf, the department reserves the right to pursue enforcement action against the subcontractor and/or the permit holder depending on the circumstances and available evidence.
Although not required by the rule, subcontractors are encouraged to have their employees complete the comprehensive dust control training (six-hour course).
Coordinate with the department to schedule a dust control presentation.
provisions that hold the subcontractor liable for any penalties issued by the department that may be the result of subcontractor activity.
It is also helpful to review the approved Dust Control Plan, as well as the controls that have been established, with subcontractors prior to starting work.
Clear communication with subcontractors and active monitoring of their on-site activity can be effective methods to avoid creating conditions that could Result in the issuance of an NOV.
A courtesy inspection could be held in conjunction with a meeting where subcontractors are invited.
A permit holder cannot delegate primary obligations of the permit to a subcontractor to avoid compliance responsibility.
A permit holder may secure a subcontractor to perform activities within a permit area that are considered to be primary permit obligations. For example, a subcontractor may be hired to install or maintain a trackout control device. In the event that a violation occurs (for example, the trackout control device is found to be improperly maintained such that it is no longer effectively controlling trackout) and the violation is due to the inaction or untimely action of the subcontractor, the permit holder is responsible for compliance and subject to the penalties authorized by law. The permit holder is responsible for ensuring that onsite operations are being conducted in compliance with the permit. This obligation cannot be transferred to a subcontractor.
Note: utilities are not considered to be subcontractors when operating under their own block permit.
The purpose of the block permit is to allow municipalities, governmental agencies, and utilities to conduct similar activities at multiple sites across the county. Covered activities include routine operation and maintenance of urban infrastructure, as well as the expansion or extension of that infrastructure such as roads, utilities (e.g., pipelines and electric substations) and other public rights-of-way. This category of permit can only be issued to municipalities, governmental agencies, and utilities. While the permit is held by the authorized block permit holder, subcontractors to the authorized permit holder may operate under the cover of the permit as would the employees of the permit holder.
The block permit will apply to those locations that are listed in the permit application. To conduct work at a location not listed in the application, the block permit holder must notify the department of the intent to work in a new location at least three days in advance of the planned activity. The notice must include information describing the location and the anticipated start date of the work.
New construction of infrastructure that is not an extension of an existing system must be covered under a new dust control permit.
For any project not listed in the Dust Control Block Permit application, the applicant is required to notify the department at least three working days in advance of initiating the activity.
Similarly, at new subdivisions or commercial developments, a utility will operate under its block permit and is required to notify the department of its intention to work on a specific property. As with other areas, a block permit holder is required to provide the department with notification of its intent to operate at a location not previously identified in its block permit. Notification must be provided in writing and with three working days advance notice.
The permit holder retains responsibility for all work conducted within the area covered by the permit. However, if a utility causes a non-compliant condition, the utility can be cited in accordance with Rule 310. This includes the obligation to ensure that areas disturbed during utility work are adequately stabilized. A utility is obligated to meet minimum stabilization requirements of Rule 310.
Some block permit holders may require contractors to obtain their own dust permit and Dust Control Plan. Remember to allow at least 14 days for the department to process a new permit application.
Utility access onto areas covered by a dust control permit appears to pose a special challenge. While the block permit holder is obligated to maintain stability conditions when accessing a dust control permit holder’s area, the permit holder is accountable for all site conditions within their permit area. A block permit holder can be issued a violation for not restoring a disturbed area to its former stabilized condition.
Rule 310 specifies that a Dust Control Block Permit application should include a map of the owner’s and/or operator’s service areas and a list of sites that are 0.1 acre or greater.
Trackout must be removed immediately when the cumulative distance of trackout reaches 25 feet either in one segment or reaches 25 feet when combined with smaller segments. The term “immediately” is viewed as when the trackout occurs. The expectation is that trackout that extends 25 feet (either alone or in combined segments) will be cleaned up immediately following deposition on the roadway. The presence of trackout at or exceeding 25 feet is cause for the issuance of an immediate NOV.
Lesser amounts of trackout (less than 25 feet in cumulative length) can be cleaned up at the end of the workday. Note: Under the right circumstances, even a small amount of trackout could potentially result in an opacity violation if it is driven over or otherwise disturbed.
Active trackout controls are required at work sites with a disturbed surface two acres or larger, or when hauling 100 yd3 of bulk materials off-si e, or hauling 100 yd3 or more of bulk material onto a site, regardless of acreage. (See the Trackout Controls in Section 7 for details about trackout control options).
Trackout is the presence of material deposited on an area accessible to the public. Trackout can become airborne particulate matter when vehicles pass over and entrain the trackout into the air. In contrast, staining on a road surface is not considered to be trackout. While staining may indicate that trackout may have been present at some time in the past, staining itself is not considered trackout under Rule 310, nor is it a violation.
Plan ahead and anticipate that trackout will occur.
The presence of trackout greater than 25 feet during working hours, even though it may be in the process of being cleaned up, is subject to an NOV. While an inspector has discretion to evaluate the on-site conditions and actions of the permit holder, generally, the greater the extent of trackout, the higher the probability that an NOV will be issued. After working hours, the presence of any trackout will result in the issuance of a Notice of Violation.
As a practical matter, it may be easier to clean up trackout immediately rather than measure it to ensure there is less than 25 feet in distance. The presence of trackout, however limited in extent, can result in an inspection based on field conditions. Remember: erosion is considered the same as trackout and must be managed accordingly.
Soil found on sidewalks and in gutters is trackout. Soil on sidewalks will not count in the cumulative distance calculation while trackout in gutters will.
Include the cost of trackout control and maintenance in your bid.
The distance of individual trackout paths originating from a permitted area are combined to determine compliance. Here, three trackout paths cumulatively total 25 feet.
When trackout reaches a cumulative distance of 25 feet it must be cleaned up immediately.
Trackout is measured from an exit onto a paved surface and along the path of trackout to the point where it ends. This may follows to actual curved path of trackout or the horizontal distance may be used instead (especially where traffic/safety is a concern). Line C in the graphic below is an example.
The graphic at right shows trackout extending from the exit of a permitted area. The gray rectangle represents a gravel pad.
While trackout can be measured by using a surveyor’s wheel, on busy streets, the inspector may measure the distance along a line adjacent to the road (represented by line C) to determine trackout length.
In both examples on this page, trackout has reached or exceeded 25 feet in cumulative distance and must be cleaned immediately.
gravel pads: consisting of a layer of washed gravel, rock, or crushed rock, at least one inch in diameter; 30 feet wide (unless impracticable), 50 feet long (or as long as the longest haul truck). If the unpaved surface exit does not have an adequate width to install a 30-foot wide gravel pad, then the width of the gravel pad must cover the full width of the unpaved surface exit and be adequate to prevent trackout.
a grizzly (20 feet long; bars must be three inches tall and six inches apart).
a paved area: 20 feet wide; 100 feet long. (Note: the entire length of pavement must be within the permitted area to count as an effective control. A shorter distance of pavement within the permit area cannot count unless pre-approved by the department). Note: a paved area that is blocked to public traffic may also be used in whole or in part of this requirement.
a wheel washer: use a standard wheel wash system.
When trackout controls are required, if a vehicle exits a permitted area and fails to use a designated trackout control system (for example, by driving around a trackout control device or leaving the permit area at a non-designated exit) the permit holder and/or subcontractor (if applicable)are subject to receiving an NOV even if no trackout was deposited on the paved area accessible to the public.
Managing the flow of traffic entering and leaving a permit area represents one of the prime challenges faced by a site superintendent trying to ensure the integrity of their dust controls. For some drivers and subcontractors, it can be tempting to take a short-cut across a vacant parcel to a paved road rather than winding back some distance to the designated exit. While the actual act of crossing disturbed land in a vehicle is not prohibited, it does trigger various provisions of Rule 310—for example, if there are many vehicles using an unauthorized exit, a new unpaved access road has been created.
Trackout is likely to be associated with an unauthorized exit and the absence of a trackout control device at an unauthorized exit is an NOV waiting to happen.
When exits are changed at the project site, you must update your Dust Control Plan.
is a trackout control device in place and effective?
Does my trackout control device need maintenance?
do I adequately monitor trackout?
did I clean up trackout at the end of the day?
Ensuring that disturbed areas within a permit area are stabilized is a primary requirement of Rule 310. Remember, the site must be stabilized 24/7, including holidays, nights, and weekends. There are two distinct stabilization standards that apply in two separate circumstances—those that are active and those that are inactive for extended periods. An area covered by a permit may contain active and inactive areas at the same time.
Before starting work, conduct a “site prep”— pre-water the site or phase work to the smallest portion of the area that can be affected at any one time. If you have chosen phasing as a control measure, then project phases should be clearly identified in the Dust Control Plan.
Within a permit area, there may be several defined areas (representing project phases). One phase may be active with ongoing surface disturbance while another phase has not yet been disturbed. Ensure that areas not yet disturbed are clearly demarcated, identified in the Dust Control Plan, and access is restricted. When phasing work, it is important to meet the stabilization requirements of Rule 310 §304.3 for areas that have been disturbed but are not being actively worked.
install wind fences/barriers and one of the above.
*Moisture content is determined by using ASTM Method D2216-05.
During dust-generating operations, the generation of a limited amount of dust is allowed. However, dust emissions can never exceed 20% opacity.
If dust emissions are present, it may be an indicator that the area is not sufficiently controlled and that the area requires additional attention.
Maintaining moist disturbed surfaces is an ideal site management practice.
maintain a threshold friction velocity (TFV) of 100 cm/second or higher.
maintain a flat vegetative cover equal to at least 50%.
maintain a standing vegetative cover equal to or greater than 30%.
maintain a standing vegetative cover that is equal to or greater than 10% when the TFV is equal to or greater than 43 cm/second.
maintain a percent cover that is equal to or greater than 10% of the non-erodible elements.
comply with an alternative test method approved by the Control Officer.
Keep all disturbed areas visibly damp/moist or meet one of the stabilization standards.
cover the area using gravel, pavement, or by using a suitable dust suppressant.
establish a vegetative ground cover.
pave, apply gravel or apply a suitable dust suppressant other than water or establish a vegetative ground cover and restrict vehicle access.
apply water and prevent access (using signs, curbing, or barricades) sufficient to prevent trespass. Note: the specific measures intended to prevent trespass must be approved by the Control Officer.
restore an area to a substantially similar condition (vegetative ground cover and soil characteristics) as that of surrounding or nearby undisturbed native conditions. This stabilization standard should be achieved within 10 days following the completion of the dust-generating operation.
While a permit is still effective, the permit holder is responsible for any disturbance that occurs as a result of illegal trespass. If an area is disturbed after final stabilization and the permit is still in effect, the permit holder is obligated to ensure that stabilization is restored. If disturbed areas that are not stable are identified during an inspection, a violation can be issued.
Essentially, Rule 310 is about ensuring that dust (particulate) emissions are minimized. Emissions are subject to two separate standards, depending on whether the emissions are observed onsite or off-site.
Within the boundary of the area covered by the permit, visible emissions can never exceed 20% opacity.
The method used to determine whether visible emissions exceed 20% opacity is found in Appendic C of the Maricopa County Rules and Regulations for Air Pollution Control. This method consists of the average of 12 observations of five seconds each taken over a period not longer than one hour. As a practical matter, the 12 observations will most likely be completed over the period of a few minutes.
A property line is that demarcation between the area contained within a dust control permit and the area outside of the permit, when the area outside the permit is owned by an entity other than the permit holder.
It is possible that, as a project matures, some areas within a permit area will transition to private ownership and will no longer be part of the permitted area (e.g., parcels within a housing subdivision that have been sold to homeowners). Emissions that extend from a permitted area onto privately held parcels violate Rule 310.
The standard for visible emissions beyond the property line of an area covered by a permit is simple—none are allowed. According to Rule 310 § 303.1, visible emissions are measured using the standard that there shall be no visible emissions exceeding 30 seconds in duration during any 6-minute period using EPA Reference Method 22.
When dust-generating activity occurs within 25 feet of the property line, visible emissions beyond the property line are allowed. However, the emissions cannot exceed 20% opacity (see Rule 310 § 303.2(d)).
In the figure above, the brown area is covered by a dust control permit. Surrounding this area is an area in gray that is owned by the dust control permit holder. Visible emissions from the permit area are allowed onto this adjacent area since the property is owned by the permit holder - the emissions do not cross a property line. Should the emissions extend further and onto the property designated as a private home or onto the forested area, the emissions are crossing a property line and are not allowed.
Submitting a clear and accurate map in your Dust Control Plan can help you delineate your property from others.
When the emissions originate further than 25 feet away from the property line, no dust emissions are allowed to cross the property line.
In the photo above, dust emissions are being generated but emissions are not visible beyond the property line (beyond the photo frame). Although the on-permit area emissions may exceed the 20% opacity standard (and be in violation), the emissions at the property line boundary may or may not be in compliance. No visible emissions are allowed to cross the property line if they are generated more than 25 feet from the property boundary.
When dust emissions are generated within 25 feet of the property line emissions are allowed to cross the property line provided they do not exceed 20% opacity.
In the photo above, dust emissions are being generated within 25 feet of the property line and are clearly visible into the street. Although visible emissions are allowed beyond the property line, they cannot exceed 20% opacity. Also, in this instance, a serious public safety hazard is created by impairing visibility in traffic lane.
High wind conditions have the potential to dramatically degrade air quality. Revisions to Rule 310 adopted by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in January 2010 substantially revised the rule language affecting wind events.
The intent of the new rule language is to require escalating controls as winds increase. Ceasing operations is the ultimate control when all else fails. Dust-generating operations must now cease at a lower threshold (e.g., earlier and more frequently).
The previous definition of a “wind event’ has been deleted.
First, ensure that all control measures and requirements of the Dust Control Plan are implemented and documented. Next, cease dustgenerating operations and stabilize any disturbed surfaces in a manner consistent with Rule 310 § 304.3. As a practical matter, this will mean maintaining a visible crust or establishing visibly damp/moist soil on disturbed areas during windy conditions.
Finally, document the cessation of operations and the implementation of control measures and the requirements of the Dust Control Plan. The intent is to document that any visible emissions exceeding 20% opacity are not occurring due to a failure to fully implement the Dust Control Plan.
Conditions may arise where winds will drive dust from one property (e.g., a vacant field) across another on which dust-generating operations are occurring under a dust control permit. Normally, visible emissions seen crossing the property line will constitute a violation. However, where visible dust emissions are seen transiting a permitted area and it can be determined that no additional dust emissions were contributed from the permitted area, a violation will not have occurred.
As defined in Rule 310 §232, an unpaved parking lot should be designated as such in the approved Dust Control Plan. In addition to vehicle parking, an unpaved parking lot includes the following activities: maneuvering, material handling, or storing motor vehicles and equipment. Automobile impound yards, salvage yards, material handling yards, and storage yards would be considered to be an unpaved parking lot under Rule 310.
While the use of an area for staging or for material storage may be clearly evident, an isolated instance of such use will not cause the area to be designated as an unpaved parking lot. An unpaved parking lot, as defined by Rule 310, is present when the use of an area by vehicles goes beyond what can be considered to be incidental use.
An area used as an unpaved parking lot should normally be designated in the Dust Control Plan. However, identifying an unpaved parking lot in the Dust Control Plan is not required for an inspector to determine that one is present based on the observed use.
To determine that a disturbed area is an unpaved parking lot requires observations of activities that reflect actual use of the property for an activity similar in scope to those examples provided in the definition.
The definition also contains reference to the term “maneuvering.” After-thefact observation of tire tracks alone on an otherwise empty lot is not sufficient to classify an area as an unpaved parking lot without some supporting evidence that the area has been used in the manner contemplated by the definition.
use of an area by a surveying crew.
use of an area by a landscaping service.
delivery of materials to a home and unloading them (for example, dropping off tile, drywall, or tools), provided those materials are not staged on the disturbed surface.
Unpaved parking lots must meet a specified soil stability standard (silt loading cannot equal or exceed 0.33 oz/ft2) and operations on the lot cannot generate dust emissions greater than 20% opacity. If silt loading is equal to or exceeds 0.33 oz/ft2, then the silt content may not exceed 8%. (Note: As a practical matter, there is very little difference between the two values).
Whether an area is considered an unpaved parking lot or an otherwise disturbed area, stabilization is always required.
The presence of tire tracks alone may not be sufficient to classify an area as an unpaved parking lot. The inspector will rely on judgment and the responses from the permit holder to determine whether the tracks represent incidental use of the area by vehicles.
Whether marked or unmarked, an unpaved haul or access road is a road within a permitted area that is used to move material, equipment, or people from one point to another. These roads are likely to change location frequently and meeting the stabilization requirements is likely to require close attention.
silt loading cannot equal or exceed 0.33 oz/ft2.
if silt loading is equal to or exceeds 0.33 oz/ft2 then the silt content may not exceed 6%.
vehicle speeds are maintained below 15 miles per hour.
apply water so the surface is visibly moist.
apply and maintain gravel, recycled asphalt, or other suitable materials.
vehicle speeds must be maintained below 15 miles per hour.
if vehicle trips and speeds are limited, the Dust Control Plan must provide details of how these measures will be accomplished, including the identification of how many trips are allowed.
If you choose the option of no more than 20 trips per day, always keep in mind that a trip to the site with one vehicle and off the site with one vehicle counts as two trips. (10 vehicles in and 10 vehicles out represent 20 trips).
Note: once a project area meets a certain size, the number of trips becomes more difficult to control. Exercising this option implies that a high level of scrutiny will be applied by the inspector to validate limited vehicle usage.
Different control measures may be selected for different areas provided they are clearly identified in the Dust Control Plan.
Photo: Signs like this can help reduce dust. Remember, dust emissions cannot exceed 20% opacity, regardless of speed.
while signage is not required, it is helpful.
The silt load or content is within acceptable limits.
The road is adequately stabilized.
An unpaved road is any road, including an “equipment path,” used by motorized vehicles. An unpaved road is different from an unpaved haul/access road only by its designated use.
While an unpaved road is, by definition, different from an unpaved haul/access road, control and stabilization of the disturbed area is still expected.
At minimum, an unpaved access road must control visible emissions so that emissions do not exceed 20% opacity, the road surface is kept visibly moist, or a crust has been formed on the surface.
An unpaved access road can be very short. For example, a driveway located on a nearly completed lot can be considered an access road.
Photo: Even a driveway can be an access road.
If you choose to limit speeds, the method used must be explained with specificity in the Dust Control Plan.
Keep in mind that, in addition to limiting vehicle speed, dust emissions from vehicles must not exceed the 20% opacity limit.
a grizzly: (20 feet long; bars must be three inches tall and six inches apart).
a paved area: 20 feet wide; 100 feet long. (Note: the entire length of pavement must be within the permitted area or a restricted area outside the permit area, to count as an effective control. A shorter distance of pavement within the permit area cannot count unless preapproved by the department).
Even the best trackout control device needs maintenance. During muddy conditions the trackout control device can easily clog and become ineffective. Rule 310 §306.1 requires that the trackout control device be properly maintained so that it prevents and controls trackout. If that is not occuring the trackout control device is not in complaince and a Notice of Violation will be issued.
Keep a stockpile of replacement gravel near your trackout control device and use it to refresh the gravel pad when it becomes clogged with mud.
The use of haul trucks to move bulk materials from or within a site is regulated. A haul truck can be any of a number of different types of vehicles. For example, a small pick-up, a flatbed truck, an 18-wheeler, a paddle-wheel scraper, a front-end loader, or a trailer towed by a motor vehicle. The purpose to which the vehicle is used is the determining factor - not the inherent nature or size of the vehicle.
the truck’s load must be covered by a tarp.
the freeboard must be 3 inches or more.
the highest point of the load cannot exceed the height of the truck’s container.
there can be no spillage through holes or seams in the container area.
even when the truck is not carrying a load, the exiting haul truck must have a clean cargo bed or must be tarped or otherwise covered/enclosed.
install a trackout control device (there is no lower acreage limit that applies when off-site hauling of bulk materials is occurring).
the load must be covered.
the freeboard must be three inches or more.
install a trackout control device at the points where the publically accessible paved area will be crossed (Note: two devices may be required if traffic is two-way).
If bulk materials are moved within a permit area and a paved area accessible to the public is used for a short distance to transit from one portion of a permit area to another, the load must be tarped.
Be aware that spillage and dust emissions from a tarped load while driving on a highway constitutes a violation.
Using any portion of an area accessible to the public (other than simply crossing the road) will require the load to be tarped. There is no minimum threshold distance to travel.
A pile of bulk materials with a silt content 5% or greater, exceeding a surface area greater than or equal to 150 ft2 and reaching a height of three feet (at any point) is an open storage pile. By definition, an open storage pile is presumed to have a silt content of 5% or more.
A permit holder has the option to conduct a test to show that the silt content is less than 5%. This test protocol is ASTM Method C136-06.
Bulk materials encompass a wide array of materials including earth, rock, sand, gravel, soil, aggregate less than two inches in length or diameter, and demolition debris among many others (the full list is found in Rule 310 §203). When handled, bulk materials are capable of producing fugitive dust emissions.
- mix the material with water or mix with a dust suppressant other than water.
- apply water or apply a dust suppressant other than water.
cover the storage pile with a tarp or other suitable material and ensure that the tarp or other material is sufficiently affixed to prevent its being dislodged by wind.
apply sufficient water at necessary intervals to maintain moisture content at 12%.
construct a physical partial enclosure (see details on enclosure requirements at Rule 310 §305.5(b) or Rule 310 §305.5(c)) and apply sufficient water at necessary intervals to maintain moisture content at 12% or maintain a visible crust.
Open storage piles are challenging to manage. Extra care needs to be taken to ensure that they are in compliance.
before and during the activity, water or a dust suppressant must be applied.
apply a dust suppressant other than water.
If a regulated weed abatement activity is occurring on an area 0.1 acre or more, a dust control permit is required.
When is an Activity Completed? What Do I Need to Do to Close Out a Permit?
A disturbed area under a permit will be considered eligible for permit cancellation when permanent stabilization is achieved. Generally, this will occur when building and landscaping is completed in an area, the area is stabilized, and access is restricted.
The permit holder should submit a Permit Cancellation Request (PCR) form when the above conditions are met. The filing of a PCR form will trigger a site inspection and the results of the site inspection will determine areas that can be released from permit coverage.
1) use the PCR form.
2) attach a final status map of the area and identify any areas being transferred to other permit coverage (if any).
3) ensure the entire area under permit coverage is permanently stabilized in all respects.
An area is covered by a permit until the permit expires, so, when a project has been completed early, it is important to officially close out the permit. Even though a project is complete and the permit holder may have ended their on site work, they remain responsible for the area covered by the permit as long as the permit is active. As long as the permit is active, the permit holder could receive a notice of violation if the property is inspected and found to be in noncompliance.
A change in ownership of property included in an area under a dust control permit will trigger the need to secure a permit status change—for example, when a portion of a property covered by a permit is being sold or a lease allowing access by the permit holder is being terminated. Since the permit holder will no longer have the legal right to be on the property, a change in permit status is needed.
1) use the Parcel Sale Notification Form.
2) clearly note the area to be excluded from the permit on a map accompanying the form.
3) ensure the area to be removed from permit coverage is stabilized in all respects. This step is critical— a property owner will not want to assume the liability for an area disturbed by a permit holder unless it meets not only the department’s rules, but also any contractual obligations that were made between the parties.
4) an inspection will be conducted by the department to verify on-site conditions.
5) receive validation from the inspector that the site is stabilized and suitable for transfer.
6) document formal transfer and ensure that the new owner has accepted future responsibility of the property.
7) modify physical access and other appropriate measures to ensure that no encroachment occurs.
8) receive affirmation from the department that the transfer is approved.
9) remember, if a project is reduced to under five acres, a project sign is still required.
Uncertain about what to do in this or a similiar circumstance?
Ask the inspector supervisor. You can call the Desk Duty Supervisor at (602) 506-6734.
If a change in address or a more substantial change is required to the Dust Control Plan (e.g., modifying a primary dust control measure), use the Dust Control Plan Change Form.
Increasing the area covered by a dust control permit can be accomplished by submitting a Permit Acreage Increase Request form.
The form requires the permit holder’s name and address, reason for acreage change, and the new acreage.
A new site plan showing the increased site area must be submitted as well as the appropriate fee corresponding to the additional acreage amount.
• Sites that increase to one acre or more may require modifications to the originally submitted Dust Control Plan.
• Sites that increase to five acres or more require a project information sign.
If the Permit Acreage Increase Request form is being submitted in response to the permit holder having received a Notice of Violation, then an additional $100 late fee is required to be submitted with the form (in addition to any fee associated with the additional acreage).
When a Permit Acreage Increase Request is approved, the original dust control permit expiration date will not change; it will remain the same.
A dust control permit is valid for a one year period. Technically, a dust control permit is not renewed - rather, a new application is submitted and a new permit is issued (with a new permit number).
As noted previously, a permit application must be submitted at least 14 days prior to the expiration of the permit. If submitted less than 14 days in advance, the permit may not be renewed prior to its expiration.
A permit that expires while an application is pending will be subject to immediate enforcement for operating without a permit.
All projects covered by a dust control permit are expected to be fully compliant with Rule 310 at all times. While all inspectors are assigned to conduct specific inspections, they may, in the course of their duties, observe locations that exhibit “tell-tale” signs (e.g., the presence of trackout or dust emissions), that suggest not only that an inspection is needed, but that the site may not be in compliance.
Paying attention to these indicators of potential non-compliance are important. Identifying problems and correcting them is key to avoiding violations.
Stay and wait until an inspector has completed the inspection to receive a verbal inspection report. You may be able to clarify the inspector’s observations and gain useful information.
Trackout on paved areas or roads accessible to the public.
Lack of an obvious source of water.
Trucks entering or exiting a site that are either overloaded or without a tarp.
Lack of a permit sign or a sign that is missing required information.
After an Opportunity to Correct or Notice of Violation is issued, a department inspector will conduct a “disposition inspection” to ensure that the violation has been corrected. This will often take place the day after the initial observation of the violation.
issued after an inspection, a request for Ombudsman review must be made within10 days following receipt of the NOV.
to determine compliance with Arizona Revised Statutes (A.R.S. Title 49, Chapter 3, Article 3) and/ or Maricopa County Air Pollution Control Regulations.
to determine compliance with an Air Quality Permit issued pursuant to A.R.S. § 49-480, and Maricopa County Regulations Rule 100, Section 105.
to determine compliance with an administrative or judicial order issued pursuant A.R.S. § 49-491, § 49-511, § 49-512.
This inspection is being conducted pursuant to A.R.S. § 49-473, § 49-474, § 49-488, and/or the inspection and entry provisions in an Air Quality Permit or conditional order. There are no direct fees for this inspection.
2) I understand that I can accompany the department representative(s) on the premises, except during confidential interviews.
3) I understand that I have the right to copies of any original document(s) taken during the inspection, and that the department will provide copies of those documents at the department’s expense.
4) I understand that I have the right to request copies of documents that will be relied upon to determine compliance with licensure or regulatory requirements, if the agency is permitted by law to release such documents. Instructions for requesting records are available at http://www.maricopa.gov/aq/contact_us/public_records/Default.aspx.
5) I understand that I have a right to a split of any sample(s) taken during the inspection, if the split of the sample(s) would not prohibit an analysis from being conducted or render an analysis inconclusive.
6) I understand that I have the right to copies of any analysis performed on sample(s) taken during the inspection and that the department would provide copies of this analysis at the department’s expense.
7) I understand that each person interviewed during the inspection will be informed that their statements may be included in the inspection report.
8) I understand that each person whose conversation will be tape-recorded during the inspection will be informed that the conversation is being taped-recorded.
9) I understand that if an administrative order is issued or a permit decision is made based on the results of the inspection, I have the right to appeal that administrative order or permit decision. I understand that my administrative hearing rights are set forth in A.R.S § 49-482, §49-498 et seq. and Maricopa County Air Pollution Control Regulation IV, Rule 400. If I have any questions concerning my rights to appeal an administrative order or permit decision, I may contact the department’s Ombudsman at 602-506-1813.
10) I understand that the issuance of a Notice to Comply or a Notice of Violation is not appealable. I understand that if I have any questions or concerns about this inspection, or I wish to dispute the inspection finding, I may contact the department’s Ombudsman at 602-506-1813.
11) If a Notice of Violation is issued, I understand that I may check its status at http://www.maricopa.gov/aq/divisions/enforcement/nov/nov_status.aspx.
12) I understand that audit reports may be subject to privilege under A.R.S. 49-1402. The department may refuse to accept reports for which privilege is claimed.
13) Your feedback is essential in helping us achieve outstanding customer service, so please take a moment to tell us what we do well and what needs improvement by completing a Feedback Form located at http://www.maricopa.gov/aq/ under "Contact Us".
14) While I have the right to decline to sign this form, the department representative(s) may still proceed with the inspection/investigation.
While inspectors may offer constructive operational suggestions, you should confer with your technical staff or consultant to determine your actions.
Once an Inspection Begins, What Do Inspectors Look For?
An inspection can be a nerve-wracking experience or a validation of the good on-site control practices being employed. When an inspector arrives, you can be reasonably sure several areas will be asked about. The brief list below highlights key points that an inspector will be reviewing.
Is the dust control permit onsite and accessible? Has it expired?
Records should be clear and meet the basic requirements.
Are copies of all training certificates onsite?
Is the Dust Control Plan onsite? Are the control measure commitments being used?
Based on the size of your project, a Dust Control Coordinator may be required to be onsite during primary dust-generating activities. For example, if the only activity for the day is house painting and no one is disturbing soil, the Dust Control Coordinator may not be required that day.
Be able to document that water is being used in sufficient quantities to meet operational requirements.
Is a hospital, school, or senior residential area nearby? Is there the potential for sensitive groups to be exposed to dust from disturbed areas?
In circumstances where a site representative believes that a subcontractor is directly responsible for conditions that may result in the issuance of an NOV, the site representative may request that the inspector confer with the subcontractor to determine whether the subcontractor should be cited for the violation.
Make someone in your organization accountable for the environmental program. One person allows focus, creates consistency, helps compliance, and reduces costs. This person should be able to give direction, arrange and track training, record subcontractor registrations, etc.
Is there any visible trackout?
Does trackout extend beyond 25 feet in cumulative distance? Is someone engaged in cleaning up trackout?
Have disturbed areas been adequately stabilized?
Are contingency control measures listed in the Dust Control Plan being used?
If required, does signage contain the required elements?
The Dust Control Plan is an enforceable document. If commitments and/or procedures contained within the Dust Control Plan are not being met, a Notice of Violation can be issued.
The intent of a courtesy visit is principally educational and is encouraged to be scheduled early in the term of a permit.
By taking advantage of a courtesy visit, it is easier to plan ahead to ensure that follow-on activities will be in compliance.
Courtesy visits can be requested for each distinct phase of a project (typically demolition, construction, vertical).
A request for a courtesy visit should be set up with adequate advance notice provided to the inspector (scheduling the visit normally a takes a couple of days).
During a courtesy visit, observations of minor violations are waived provided they are corrected while the inspector is onsite.
One courtesy visit is allowed per project phase (demolitions, construction, vertical).
To arrange a couresy visit, call the Small Business Assistance Office at (602) 506-5102.
When a department inspector finds a condition that is non-compliant, he or she has a duty to issue either a Opportunity to Correct (OTC) or an Notice of Violation (NOV). A Notice to Comply is not referred to the Enforcement Division and is not considered in subsequent enforcement matters as a factor in determining a penalty.
The Opportunity to Correct allows the permit holder to correct the violation and not receive a penalty.* The Opportunity to Correct is issued for only certain types of non-compliance and under certain conditions (the policy document describes this in detail). The inspector has only a limited amount of discretion to issue an Opportunity to Correct. An Opportunity to Correct will be converted into an NOV if documentation is not provided to the department within a short time validating that the non-compliant condition has been corrected.
If the recipient of the NOV does not seek Ombudsman review (or if the Ombudsman has affirmed the NOV), an NOV will be referred to the department’s Enforcement Division where the case will be reviewed and a penalty amount calculated by the enforcement officer assigned to the case. The inspector is not involved in determining a penalty offer. Penalities are calculated using the department’s penalty policy which can be reviewed on the department’s website, http://www.maricopa.gov/aq/divisions/enforcement/resources/Default.aspx#penalty_policy.
Once a penalty amount is determined, the NOV recipient is presented with a settlement offer to resolve the NOV. The NOV recipient has the option of engaging in a discussion with the department’s Enforcement Division to reach an agreed-upon penalty. If no agreement can be reached, the case is referred to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office where a penalty will be pursued through court action. A permit holder has the right to legal representation at any point during the enforcement process.
Most of the enforcement actions taken by the department result in an Order of Abatement by Consent—a document that outlines the violations and the penalty that is agreed upon between the department and the respondent. The Order of Abatement by Consent may also contain additional provisions necessary to achieving compliance, such as obtaining a permit or paying outstanding fees. In the event the recipient of the enforcement action declines to accept a penalty offer, the department will refer the matter to the County Attorney’s office with a request to file a civil action in Maricopa County Superior Court.
If, in the rare event, an Order of Abatement is issued (unilaterally by the department), the respondent has the opportunity to seek a hearing before the Air Pollution Control Hearing Board. This appeal must be filed in writing and within 30 days of receipt of the Order. An appeal to the Air Pollution Control Hearing Board is also available following the issuance of a permit, a permit revision, or a conditional order.
When an NOV is issued, and the permit holder believes that a subcontractor is primarily responsible for the non-compliant condition, the permit holder may allow the subcontractor to pay the agreed-upon penalty. If a subcontractor agrees to accept responsibility for the penalty it will not have any bearing on the status of the enforcement action against the permit holder. An agreement or understanding between a permit holder and a subcontractor regarding who will accept responsibility for a violation will not be considered by the department in the disposition of an enforcement action.
The figure at left indicates the frequency of violations issued for non-compliance under Rule 310 for the period of January through December 2009.
*The Opportunity to Correct policy is included in the Resources section of this handbook.
The Office of the Ombudsman was created to provide an opportunity for individuals seeking relief from some conflict with the department. An Ombudsman provides assistance to individuals and organizations with unresolved concerns and seeks to achieve a fair resolution. Importantly, the Air Quality Ombudsman reports to the director of the department and is empowered to work with department staff to resolve a concern. The Ombudsman acts as an impartial, unbiased party during disputes. The Ombudsman can investigate a complaint and make a recommendation, but has no direct, legal authority to make or reverse a decision. The services provided by the Ombudsman are open to anyone, including businesses, members of public-interest groups, and private citizens.
With regard to enforcement actions, the Ombudsman may offer an independent review of an Opportunity to Correct, a Notice of Violation, or a review of the penalty assessment offered by the Enforcement Division. Generally, a request for Ombudsman support must be initiated within 10 days of receipt of an Opportunity to Correct or an NOV or 10 days after receipt of the department’s final penalty offer letter.
The above chart shows the number of Ombudsman cases since the inception of the Ombudsman program through December 1, 2009 as compared to the number of Notices of Violation that have been issued during the same period.
In addition to Ombudsman review, any person receiving a final offer to settle an enforcement action for a penalty determined by the department has the opportunity to request a hearing before an Air Pollution Hearing Officer. The hearing officer will take evidence and make findings of fact and conclusions of law that are then presented to the department’s director as a recommendation for a final decision on a penalty offer.
A request for Ombudsman review of a final offer letter will not be considered a request for an administrative hearing. A separate request for an administrative hearing must be made to the attention of the Hearing Officer.
Requests for public records are available through the Air Quality Records Management staff. All requests must be in writing and clearly state the records sought. If the records request is vague or broad in nature, records management may ask for further clarification or for the requester to be more specific about the records that are being requested.
- indicate whether copies are being requested or if you wish to inspect the record in person.
Submitting a Public Records Request?
*Submitting a request in person does not guarantee that the department will have the resources immediately available to fulfill the request.
Test methods are identified in Appendix C of the Air Quality Rules. This section provides information on these methods.
Visible emissions of dust (not requiring opacity measurements) are determined using EPA Reference Method 22. A certified observer is not required. In this method, emissions may not exceed 30 seconds in duration during any sixminute period. The 30-second provision is cumulative, meaning that emissions may be observed in discrete segments that are shorter than 30 seconds and which are then added together. If the combined total of observed emissions exceeds 30 seconds when collected during a six-minute period, a violation has been observed.
Appendix C, Parts 2, 3 and 4 Opacity emissions of dust are determined using Appendix C, Part 3 and 4 of the Maricopa County Air Pollution Control Rules and Regulations. Observations made using Appendix C require the observer to be certified and to use very specific protocols to determine opacity values.
There are several distinct protocols for determining opacity based on the type of operation underway.
1. Non-continuous dust plumes including, but not limited to, those plumes generated by bulk material loading/unloading, non-conveyorized screening, or trenching with backhoes. This method averages 12 observations taken at 0 and 5 seconds for each event over a period not longer than one hour. As a practical matter, the 12 observations will most likely be completed over the period of a few minutes.
2. Continuous dust plumes, including but not limited to, plumes resulting from grading, trenching, blading, clearing, leveling and raking. This method consists of the average of 12 observations with each observation taken at intervals of ten seconds.
3. For unpaved roads and unpaved parking lots, two observations per vehicle at one meter plume height. This method averages 12 observations taken at 0 and 5 seconds over a period not longer than one hour.
4. Livestock activities (including corrals, pens, and arenas). This method uses momentary observations of plumes 1 meter above the ground and taken at 15 second intervals. 13 readings above 20% opacity represent a violation.
Note: EPA Method 9 is not used by Maricopa County Air Quality Department staff or the determination of opacity values.
Information concerning “smoke school” is provided in the Resources section.
The above photos were taken during an ADEQ/ASU Smoke School held at Mesa, Arizona on March 26, 2008. The plumes of smoke were generated by a smoke machine that was calibrated on March 26, 2008 to meet EPA Method 9 standards for smoke generator machines used to certify candidates for EPA Method 9 Visible Emissions Evaluator. Please note that the EPA Method 9 does not recognize photography as a substitute for determination of opacity by human vision. Photographs may vary from picture to picture and camera to camera due to a variety of physical conditions and camera operator variability. The photos should be used as guidance to assist student learning.
A simple test to determine if a soil crust is present is known as the drop ball test. A relatively small (15.9 mm) steel ball weighing between 0.56 and 0.6 ounces is dropped onto a 1-foot square area from a distance of 1 foot above the surface. The ball is dropped three times within this 1-foot square area. If the observation of the dropped ball passes the test criteria two out of each three times the ball is dropped, the area is considered to have passed the test. The criteria for passing is for 1) the dropped ball not to have sunk into the surface such that it is partially or fully surrounded by loose grains of soil and, 2) when the ball is removed, the surface upon which it fell has not been pulverized so that loose grains of soil are visible.
Does a failed drop ball test apply to the whole project? Yes. Each sample area selected at random by an inspector is considered to be representative of the soil type in the disturbed area in its entirety.
The best test method is no test method! If a project site is visibly moist throughout, then an inspector knows immediately that any test method will pass, and therefore a test method is not needed. As a practical matter, the first test is a common-sense visual (eyeball) test.
Determining soil moisture [12%, as required in Rule 310 §305.11(b) (2)] requires the use of a specific test procedure that is done using an oven under laboratory conditions. This method requires several hours for proper drying of the sample. A synopsis of the test method is provided on the ASTM website and the full test method is available through ASTM at www.astm.org/Standards/D2216.htm.
Silt content is determined using ASTM Method C136-06—Standard Test Method for Sieve Analysis of Fine and Coarse Aggregates. The test is used to determine the compliance status of the resulting particle size distribution. Details on the sample analysis procedure can be found at www.astm.org/Standards/C136.htm.
Silt loading is also determined using ASTM Method C136-06—Standard Test Method for Sieve Analysis of Fine and Coarse Aggregates. The test is used to determine the compliance status of the resulting particle size distribution. Details on the sample analysis procedure can be found at www.astm.org/Standards/C136.htm. The main difference between silt loading and silt content is a mathematical factor.
Threshold Friction Velocity (TFV) is defined as the wind velocity necessary to initiate soil erosion. A test can be readily performed in the field by an inspector to determine whether soil conditions are susceptible to dust entrainment. The TFV value is specified in Rule 310 and soils that do not meet this value are not stable and a condition of non-compliance exists.
By sorting a soil sample through a series of sieves, which allow soil particles of different sizes to pass through, a distribution of particle sizes in a soil sample can be determined. This distribution is then compared to a table contained in the test methodology that allows the determination of a TFV value. The standard contained in Rule 310 is to maintain soil conditions such that the TFV value is 100 cm/sec or greater.
Have any and all site supervisors read and initial the approved Dust Control Plan.
Review the approved Dust Control Plan with subcontractors.
Keep the job site organized and presentable.
Prominently post site rules for dust control.
Restrict access to non-active areas.
Conduct frequent dust control tailgate meetings.
To better control trackout, one successful practice is to monitor exits at least every 30 minutes.
Maintain records that provide a clear understanding of site operations— recordkeeping should be conducted in tandem with site operations and be used to help trigger corrective action. For example, an observation of trackout greater than 25 feet should be accompanied by notations of immediate action taken to control trackout.
Be aware of sensitive areas that surround your site—anticipate complaints and inspections to investigate complaints.
Park only in designated areas that are identified in the Dust Control Plan or, at minimum, in areas that are posted.
Use courtesy visits and other department programs, such as the “Tailgate Talks” DVD, to aid your compliance program. See the Resources section to find out how to request your free copy.
If you are hauling offsite, ask the permit holder to spray water over your load before tarping to ensure that dust emissions while driving are eliminated.
Call (602) 506-5102 to schedule courtesy visits.
Clark County, Nevada – Construction Activities Dust Control Handbook.
Page 2-1 in June 2010 to reflect changes to Rule 280 affecting fees.
In June 2013, Sections 11 and 12 were updated to reflect current procedures, and all links and contacts were updated.
Only Appendices B is contained in this document. All others can be accessed by using the hyperlinks embedded in the handbook. | 2019-04-18T20:18:39Z | https://www.soilworks.com/reference-library/2013-tpd1306137-rule-310-dust-handbook.aspx |
Pitt, William (1759–1806), known as Pitt the Younger. Prime minister. The second son of William Pitt, earl of Chatham, was an intellectually precocious but physically delicate boy. He was educated privately and at Cambridge. From an early age, his father supervised his upbringing, paying particular attention to skill in public speaking. He also introduced him to politics and although the younger Pitt qualified as a lawyer there was never any doubt that he would follow a political career. He entered Parliament in 1781 and soon made his mark in the Commons. He was a critic of North, whom he blamed for the loss of America, and advocated both economical and parliamentary reform. Pitt's basic political convictions mirrored those of his father. He upheld the king's right to choose and dismiss ministers; he detested party, and he believed that the secret of British prosperity lay in the maintenance of the balance between king, Lords, and Commons established after 1688. He was keenly interested in financial and commercial questions and knew the writings of Adam Smith and Richard Price. When North fell in 1782, Pitt refused a merely subordinate station in Rockingham's ministry. After Rockingham's death, Pitt became chancellor of the Exchequer under Shelburne. He deeply resented Fox's alliance with North, yet he was wise enough to refuse George III's invitation to head a ministry after the fall of Shelburne, preferring to bide his time until a more propitious moment. The crisis over Fox's India Bill gave George III and Pitt their chance. Pitt agreed to become prime minister provided that a public demonstration of George III's hostility towards the Fox–North ministry indicated where the king's confidence lay.
When Pitt took office in December 1783 few thought his ministry would survive. He faced an opposition majority in the Commons. But several factors worked in his favour. He had the unflinching confidence of the king; the Fox–North coalition was unpopular; and he was able to win over opinion in the Commons. He called the opposition's bluff over their threat to refuse supplies and he was able to distance himself from the unpopular Shelburne. At the general election of 1784 Pitt won a decisive victory.
During his peacetime administration he achieved much in the fields of fiscal, economical, and commercial reform. He cut customs duties and stimulated trade, set up a sinking fund in the hope of paying off the national debt, and put government loans and contracts out to tender. Having established his mastery in public finance he negotiated a commercial treaty with France and ended Britain's diplomatic isolation by entering into alliance with Prussia and Holland in the aftermath of the Dutch crisis of 1787. But there were frustrations and disappointments. Pitt's proposals for a moderate reform of Parliament were defeated; he was compelled to drop his scheme for free trade with Ireland; plans to improve the defences of Portsmouth and Plymouth had to be abandoned; the abolition of the slave trade had to remain an open question within the government. These set-backs reflected Pitt's acceptance of conventional ideas about the role of the crown and the functioning of the cabinet, and his vulnerability to shifts of opinion among the country gentlemen in the Commons. Pitt did not see himself as a party leader and neglected to build up a party within Parliament. This made him all the more dependent on the support of the king and unable to overcome opposition on controversial questions within the cabinet. His position was threatened in 1788 when the illness of George III presaged a change of government. But Pitt saw off the Foxite challenge. He studied precedent, stood forth as the defender of the rights of the king and the privileges of Parliament, and insisted that Parliament had the right to decide who should be regent and on what terms. When the king recovered in 1789 Pitt seemed invincible. He knew when to yield to political pressure, as over the impeachment of Hastings, and was adept at turning the ideas of others into practicable policies. By 1789 the confidence and prosperity of the country had been restored after the humiliation of the loss of the American colonies.
When the French Revolution broke out in 1789 Pitt was sympathetic to reform in France but was determined to stay out of European complications if possible. As late as February 1792 he affirmed his expectations for fifteen years of peace in Europe. But with the collapse of the French monarchy and the aggressive policies pursued by the French republic his hopes were shattered. He was under pressure from those who feared radical movements in Britain and Ireland, especially when these were seen to be inspired by Jacobinical ideas. The outbreak of war in 1793 was a disaster for Pitt. His hopes for further reform were indefinitely postponed and he became transformed into ‘the pilot who weathered the storm’, a symbol of the nation's resistance to the French republic and empire. The war was long, arduous, and inconclusive. Though loyalism was the dominant feeling in Britain there was much economic distress and rebellion broke out in Ireland in 1798. Pitt had tried to appease Ireland by granting civil rights to Irish catholics and enfranchising the catholic freeholders in the Irish counties. Though the rebellion was crushed, Pitt was convinced that the credibility of the Dublin Parliament was destroyed. He carried an Act of Union with Ireland, hoping to follow it with catholic emancipation. He was thwarted on the catholic question, partly by the opposition of George III, partly by hostility within his own government, and partly by the unpopularity of catholic relief in Britain. He resigned in 1801, giving general support to Addington's ministry from the back benches and approving the peace of Amiens when it was signed in 1802.
During his years out of office he was criticized for failing to build up his party. He had recognized that a more dominant role for the prime minister was a desirable accompaniment of cabinet government, but when Addington left office in 1804, Pitt once again felt the constraints of the contemporary system. Despite their differences Pitt wanted to bring Fox into a coalition as foreign secretary. George III vetoed this appointment. As a result, the Foxites and Grenvillites refused to serve. Pitt's health was now in decline and the strains of office wore him out. He built up a coalition to defeat Napoleon, but hopes of a decisive end to the war were dashed by Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz in 1805. On 23 January 1806 Pitt died. He left behind him a band of younger men whose talents he had recognized and fostered and a legend which shaped popular Toryism in the early 19th cent. Yet, to the end of his life, Pitt regarded himself as an independent Whig. With a little ingenuity Victorian conservatives and liberals could claim to stand within the Pittite tradition when it was expedient for them to do so. In this sense Pitt became part of a national mythology.
—— The Younger Pitt: The Consuming Struggle (1996).
"Pitt, William." The Oxford Companion to British History. . Encyclopedia.com. 10 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
William Pitt, 1759–1806, British statesman; 2d son of William Pitt, 1st earl of Chatham. Trained as a lawyer, he entered Parliament in 1781 and in 1782 at the age of 23 became chancellor of the exchequer under Lord Shelburne. At the fall (1783) of the coalition government of Lord North and Charles James Fox, who was to be Pitt's lifelong rival, Pitt was made prime minister by George III. He overcame strong opposition in Parliament, where the king's interference was sharply resented, and a long-postponed general election (1784) gave him a parliamentary majority. Pitt's policies included reduced expenditures, new taxes to decrease the national debt, and lower customs duties in accordance with the theories of Adam Smith. He also advocated parliamentary reform but failed (1785) to secure Parliament's approval of it. His India Act (1784) strengthened the government's powers there but left patronage in the hands of the East India Company. His Constitutional Act (1791) divided Canada into Upper and Lower Canada and sanctioned the institutions of the French Canadians in the latter province. Pitt's popularity increased steadily; when the king became temporarily insane (1788–89), the prime minister was able, despite the efforts of Fox, to prevent the establishment of an unlimited regency and remain in office. His liberal policies ended when Great Britain became involved in the French Revolutionary Wars, followed by the Napoleonic Wars (see Napoleon I). When the French Revolution began (1789), Pitt's desire was for peace and neutrality, and after France finally declared war (1793) on Britain, he failed to foresee either the length or the seriousness of the conflict. Within Great Britain he suspended (1794) habeas corpus and enacted other repressive legislation to halt radical agitation. His military coalitions against France (1793 and 1798) were unsuccessful on land, although the British navy won some overwhelming victories, and his financial support of Britain's allies brought on a monetary crisis. Rebellion in Ireland hampered the war effort and convinced Pitt that the solution to the Irish problem lay in the parliamentary union of Ireland with England, accompanied by Catholic Emancipation, so that Roman Catholics might hold office. The union was achieved (1800) by wholesale bribery, but the king then refused to approve Catholic Emancipation, and Pitt resigned (1801). He was recalled (1804) as prime minister to repel an expected invasion by Napoleon, which never materialized. He organized a third coalition against France, but Horatio Nelson's great naval victory at Trafalgar was soon followed by the defeat of Britain's allies at Austerlitz (1805). The latter news is said to have hastened Pitt's death.
"Pitt, William (1759–1806, British statesman)." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. . Encyclopedia.com. 10 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
William Pitt, 1708–78: see Chatham, William Pitt, 1st earl of.
"Pitt, William (1708–78, 1st earl of Chatham)." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. . Encyclopedia.com. 10 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
William Pitt was a politician of tremendous influence in Great Britain for more than forty years. He opposed the unfair taxation of the American colonies in the critical years leading up to the American Revolution (1775–83), and advised settling the quarrel with them so they would remain part of the British empire. As leader of the British government, Pitt led Britain to victory over France in the French and Indian War (1756–63), gaining Canada and the Mississippi Valley for the British empire. He was known as William Pitt the Elder because his son also served in British government.
William Pitt was born on November 15, 1708, on fashionable Piccadilly Street in London, England, where many rich and high-born people lived. He was the younger son of Robert Pitt, a wealthy country squire, and his wife, Harriet Villiers. His was a political family. His father was a member of Parliament (see box on p. 366), occupying a seat for the county of Cornwall in the House of Commons. His grandfather was Thomas Pitt, who had been governor of Madras, India (at this time, England was making India part of the British empire). Much of the family wealth came through Thomas Pitt's service in India.
William Pitt was educated at Eton, a famous boys' boarding school, and at Trinity College, a part of Oxford University. Pitt did not graduate because he began to suffer from gout, a hereditary (inherited) disease that caused painful swelling of the joints. Upon the advice of his doctor to seek out warmer climates, Pitt traveled to Italy and France. He then studied law at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands.
Because Pitt was a younger son, he would not inherit the family estate in Cornwall. Instead, he needed to select a career to support himself. As a member of the upper class (a gentleman), only three choices were open to him: join the Anglican church as a minister, resume his studies to become a lawyer, or join the army. Upon his return to England, Pitt chose to join the British army. In 1731, at the age of twenty-three, he purchased a cornetcy (a low-level officer's rank) in a regiment known as Cobham's Horse. At this time, British army officers bought their commissions (military ranks) instead of training for them or being promoted because of battlefield bravery.
Pitt, however, was more interested in political life than the army. When his older brother, Thomas, decided not to run for reelection to the family seat in Parliament, William ran and won the election in 1735. Pitt had one of the longest and most famous political careers in British history.
In his early years, Pitt was a member of the House of Commons (only noblemen could sit in the House of Lords). In his first speech, he criticized King George II (1683–1760), a move that caused his dismissal from the army. Next, Pitt attacked the king's weak foreign policy, because he believed the king was too soft in his dealings with France, England's longtime enemy. George II had been born in Germany, spoke only German, and was more interested in his German lands than in England. He left much of the governing of England to Parliament.
The Prince of Wales supported Pitt and his political allies in openly opposing France. (The Prince of Wales is a title given to the king's heir, usually his oldest son). Pitt also earned the king's displeasure by criticizing the British crown's payment of foreign troops. (Remember that this family of British kings descended from a marriage with a prince from a German state called Hanover. It was this German connection that provided the German soldiers who were so hated during the American Revolution).
Pitt soon earned the name "The Great Commoner" for his criticism of the king and the wealthy upper classes. During the course of his long career, Pitt spoke out against financial support for the king's projects in Hanover and against taxation (of both British and American citizens). He spoke out for freedom of the press and for a strong army and navy. The poor and middle-class people of England felt that Pitt was looking after their interests instead of German interests, that he was protecting them from a French invasion, and that he was committed to bettering their lives by spending British tax dollars at home in England. Pitt often appealed to the people, whom he called the "voice of England," and with their support won political victories.
However, possibly because of his political ambitions, Pitt did not always oppose the king. In 1737, he voted to grant the Prince of Wales an annual allowance of 100,000 pounds (a large sum of money). The king showed his pleasure by naming Pitt a "groom of the bed chamber" to the Prince of Wales, an honorary title. Pitt later lost this post after he again displeased the king. This love-hate relationship between the crown and Pitt would last throughout Pitt's career, as would the gout that continued to plague him.
Pitt was reelected to the House of Commons in 1741. He soon showed a real ability for organizing and managing, and was asked to form a cabinet. (This means his political party was in power, and he was to head the government with cabinet ministers of his choice; see box on p. 366.) In 1746, he was named to his first major post, as paymaster general of the armed forces.
Pitt married Lady Hester Grenville on November 16,1754. She was the only daughter of a famous political family, which included Richard Grenville, later the Earl of Temple, and George Grenville, British prime minister in 1763. Pitt and his Grenville brothers-in-law did not always agree on politics. George Grenville, for instance, favored taxing the American colonies and had little patience for their claims of "no taxation without representation."
Pitt did have a happy marriage with Lady Hester, and their family included three sons and two daughters. Their second son, also named William, gained fame as the politician who successfully led the British government in its war against France under the Emperor Napoleon. One of their daughters was Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope, who was known for her travels in the Middle East.
The Pitt family had a home in St. James's Square in a fashionable area of London (for when Parliament was in session) and country estates in Somerset and Kent counties. The Kent home, called Hayes Place, was Pitt's favorite residence and he enjoyed gardening while at home.
In 1756, Pitt was named secretary of state and became leader of the House of Commons. His Grenville brothers-inlaw also received posts. Richard became first lord of the admiralty (he ran the navy) and George was named treasurer of the navy.
By 1757, England was losing a war against France, and Pitt was asked to organize Britain's defense as the secretary of war. In Europe, this war was known as the Seven Years' War (1756–63). Known in America as the French and Indian War, it was a struggle to see whether England or France would dominate the colonial world. Under Pitt's leadership, the French navy was destroyed, the French lost Quebec to General James Wolfe (one of the able young officers Pitt had promoted), and the French were driven from India. By 1761, England had won the war and controlled most of Canada, the Mississippi Valley, and the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea.
This war was typical of the ongoing struggle among the European powers to gain territory. The struggles often spilled over into their colonial possessions in the Americas, India, Africa, the oceans, and the rich islands in the Caribbean Sea, and these territories often changed hands.
Pitt's policy of promoting capable army and navy officers helped England win the war. He also realized the need for a strong army and navy, and found a better system for managing war supplies (food, uniforms, weapons, and so on). Pitt demonstrated strong leadership, a willingness to make decisions, and a talent for war strategy. Like many great men, he also suffered from pride and arrogance (a superior attitude). Because of his coldness, he had few political allies. Despite his genius, this inability to be a team player cost Pitt political victories throughout his career.
Pitt was convinced that the future of England, a small, island country, depended upon expanding and protecting her empire overseas. The empire provided England with money, raw materials, and other goods from all over the world. (The American colonies were the richest of Britain's many possessions). Under Pitt's leadership, England was a strong military power that discouraged other European nations from trying to conquer British territory. This policy changed when George III (1738–1820; see entry), the new king, ascended to the throne upon his grandfather's death in 1760. George III, who would rule for sixty years, was determined to show his kingdom (and Pitt) just who was in charge. George III was the first of the Hanoverian kings to be born and educated in England and he was much more interested in English affairs than George I or George II.
With his Tory (or Royalist) political party, George III would tax the American colonies into open rebellion against Great Britain. One of his first acts, however, was to disregard Pitt's advice to declare war on Spain in 1761. Pitt, convinced that Spain would soon attack England, resigned in protest. History then proved Pitt was right, as Spain declared war against England in 1762.
Although ill with gout between 1762 and 1764, Pitt reentered the House of Commons. There he managed to irritate the new king by supporting American complaints against the government. Parliament had passed the Sugar Act in 1764 and the Stamp Act in 1765, both designed to raise money by taxing the American colonists. The colonists reacted with violent protests, and Parliament responded by sending British troops to America to enforce the taxation. The rift between mother country and colonies grew more bitter.
The colonists claimed that the acts amounted to unfair taxation. Pitt agreed. The Americans and Pitt began to make distinctions between types of taxes. They approved of taxes that were put in place to help commerce (that is, taxes on goods imported into the colonies). But they objected to taxes whose only purpose was to raise money for the government. The Stamp Act was one such tax. Its purpose was to raise money to pay for the increase in government needed when Canada moved from French to English rule. Pitt, like the Amer icans, said that colonial assemblies (like the Continental Con gress) should be the only government bodies able to pass tax laws in the colonies. Pitt's views summed up the split that existed in the British Parliament at this time. Some in government supported total control over the colonies, while others favored allowing the colonial governments some decisionmaking power. Pitt, however, never supported the American colonies breaking away from England.
By 1765, Pitt was suffering from the mental illness that would continue to plague him for the remainder of his life. Some historians believe this condition was manic-depression, a type of mental illness in which a person suffers severe and prolonged mood swings.
After the next election in 1766, Pitt was again approached to form a cabinet, which he did. The same year, the king honored Pitt for his service to England by making him the first Earl of Chatham of Kent County and Viscount (pronounced VY-count) Pitt of Somerset County. Since Pitt was now a nobleman, he could not sit in the House of Commons and moved instead into the House of Lords. This move was very unpopular with the English people, who loudly criticized their former hero. This criticism hurt Pitt deeply. By early 1767, Pitt was suffering again from illness and retired from public life until the fall of 1768. While Pitt was ill, the Townshend Acts were passed, placing duties (taxes) on lead, paint, glass, paper, and tea going into the American colonies. These Acts were another major source of discontent in the colonies.
Pitt resigned from the ministry (the cabinet) in 1768, and returned to his seat in Parliament in 1770 and 1771. From 1772 through 1774, Pitt suffered again from illness and rarely took his seat in the House of Lords. In 1774, he did make a speech pleading for the government to "adopt a more gentle mode of governing America." The next year, Pitt introduced a bill to peaceably settle Britain's differences with America. Pitt's bill acknowledged the right of the colonists to tax themselves, allowed for a congress to meet in the American capital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and proposed that the Americans, as good British subjects, help support the king by donating an annual sum of money. The bill was defeated in Parliament. Unfortunately Pitt, one of the few people in Parliament working for a peaceful solution to the American problem, fell ill and was again absent from public life throughout 1776. In mid-1777 he again addressed the House of Lords, pleading with Parliament to end the war.
Pitt was regarded as a hero in the colonies. The Americans appreciated his speaking out against the Stamp Act in 1765. Pitt also opposed the "Intolerable Acts" passed by Parliament to punish the colonies for the Boston Tea Party, in which they destroyed tons of British tea, in 1773. The acts closed the port of Boston, took away self-government in Massachusetts, and forced the citizens of Boston to house the British soldiers stationed there.
Pitt also angered the king and pleased the Americans when he proposed that no taxes be levied without the consent of the American local governments (called assemblies). In 1775, he proposed that British troops be withdrawn from Boston. This further earned American gratitude, even though his motion failed to pass. In 1777, he spoke against the British practice of hiring Native Americans to fight against the colonials.
While Pitt supported the Americans' right to representation and fair taxes, he never believed in granting them their independence from England. He knew that Britain's strength rested on her colonial possessions, which provided much money for England.
On April 7, 1778, Pitt made his last speech in Parliament, rising to oppose the idea of independence for the American colonies. He suffered a seizure and collapsed. When he seemed to be recovering, Pitt was moved to his country home at Hayes Place. He lingered for several weeks, and died on May 11, 1778, at the age of sixty-nine. Pitt is buried in Westminster Abbey in London.
Cockburn, J. S. "Pitt the Elder." Encyclopedia of World Biography. David Eggenberger, editor-in-chief. Palatine, IL: McGraw-Hill, 1973, pp. 464-66.
Lowe, William C. "Pitt, William, 1st Earl of Chatham. Known as the Elder Pitt." The American Revolution 1775-1783. An Encyclopedia. Vol. 2: M-Z. Richard L. Blanco, ed. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993, pp. 1306-09.
Wilcoxen, Charlotte. "British Sympathy for America." Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine. Vol. 110, 1976, pp. 323-25.
Pitt's Speech on the Stamp Act. [Online] Available http://odur.let.rug....sa/D/1751-1775/stampact/sapitt.htm (accessed on April 14, 1999).
Zaagsma, Gerben. Sugar Act and Stamp Act. [Online] Available http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/E/sugar_stamp/act01.htm (accessed on April 14, 1999).
Parliament, the name given to the British law-making body, is made up of three parts: the Crown, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The Crown refers to the ruling king or queen, who has the right to veto (overturn) votes in the House of Commons. The House of Lords is made up of noblemen (dukes, earls, and so on), who usually hold a seat that has been in their family for generations. The House of Lords had its beginnings in the councils of nobles and high church officials who used to advise the ancient kings of England.
The House of Commons has members who are elected by British subjects in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The House of Commons is the most powerful part of Parliament. It proposes the laws and then passes or rejects them. The prime minister (roughly equal to the U.S. president) is the head of the political party who wins the most votes in the election, and is always chosen from the House of Commons. When the new session of parliament opens following the election, the prime minister is asked to form a cabinet (or ministry). The cabinet is a group of advisers who look after certain areas such as defense, finance, or social conditions.
When a party loses an election, the prime minister and his cabinet must resign. The new officials are then chosen from the winning party and a new session of parliament begins.
"Pitt, William." American Revolution Reference Library. . Encyclopedia.com. 10 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>. | 2019-04-22T02:15:54Z | https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/british-and-irish-history-biographies/william-pitt |
The historian’s goal is not to collect the “facts” about the past but rather to acquire insights into the ideas and realities that shaped the past of lives of men and women of earlier societies. Some of the beliefs and institutions of the past may seem alien to us, others may also seem too familiar. But in either case, when we study the people of the past, what we are really learning about is the rich diversity of human experience. The study of history, however, is the study of the beliefs and desires, practices and institutions of human beings.
African history is the study of the past institutions and cultures of the people who live in Africa. The economic, political and social activities of the people who had once lived in Africa are studied under African history. The following is the importance of studying African history.
i. The study of history like other disciplines help some individuals to earn a living (career aspect). It serves as a source of employment for people who study the subject at a higher level.
ii. The study of African history has helped in the discovery of the activities of man in far off times. Africa has been proved by researchers like Dr. Louis Leakey to be the original home of man (Homo sapiens). The study of African history would lead to more discoveries of hidden facts. It will highlight Africa’s contribution to world civilization.
iii. The study of African history gives the individual the opportunity to relate his past with the present in a better way. Thus, the various stages of society’s development that has to be evaluated to understand the present situation. One will best understand the social, economic and political state of affairs of the society if they knows how things were done in the past. This gives them the key to find solutions to today’s problems.
iv. African history has addressed the notion and misconception that Africa has contributed insignificantly to history and to dispel the idea of white superiority, e.g., the Hamitic hypothesis assumed that the African ‘Hamites’ were ‘whites’ akin to the European as they and their culture were inherently superior to the Black Africans and their culture, so that wherever Black Africans had apparently made a striking advance, the explanation must be sought in ‘Hamitic’ influence. Early Arab and European travelers met Africans in different cultural setting. The African has distinctive names, music and dances, political and religious settings as well as rites of passage. Because these practices did not conform to the cultural practices of the Europeans and the Arab writers, they classified Africans as primitive, backward or culturally stagnant.
v. African history enables the student to develop a critical mind and appreciate the variety of human behavior and motives and understand politics, economics and society. In this respect, history in the African context can increase human tolerance and respect for differences in opinion. Knowledge of other cultures through the appreciation of history encourages students of history to engage in critical analysis of their own culture and society and to understand and criticize their own assumptions.
vi. The study of African history is beneficial since it helps to acquire knowledge about African traditions, culture, norms, and values and to take pride in them and present them. One is able to perceive and recognize the meaning of events from a perspective other than our own to appreciate the diversity of human beliefs and cultures.
vii. African history enables the history student to acquire knowledge of their own country and the African continent.
viii. African history has a practical use in international relations and diplomacy. Its study promotes international understanding and sympathy.
ix. Studying African history will enable the history student to acquire the skills and values that our past can give. African history students can be inspired by events and deeds of great people that will instill in them a sense of pride.
x. A proper examination of the past can tell us a great deal about how we came to be who we are.
xi. One studies African history to be able to appreciate the use of other sources in the writing and reconstruction of African history apart from written sources.
xii. It enables the student to develop an accurate sense of African historical chronology.
Most rural communities in countries such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, The Gambia and Ghana obtain their drinking water from streams or hand dug wells. One may describe such streams and wells as a community’s source of water supply. Similarly, historians use the term historical sources to refer to the means by which historical information is gotten. Again, by historical sources, the historian means traces that the past has left of itself in the present, in the form of document, artifacts, buildings, castles and forts, coins, institution, traditions, festivals, customs and so forth.
Primary sources are materials produced by the people or groups directly involved in the event or topic under discussion, ether as participants or as witnesses. Some primary sources are written documents such as letters, diaries, newspaper and magazine articles, speeches, autobiographies, treatise, census data and marriage, birth and death registers. In addition, historians often examine primary sources that are not written. Examples are works of art, films, recordings, items of clothing, household objects, tools and archeological remains.
Oral sources (interviews) and eyewitness accounts can be used as primary sources.
It is easier to use written sources in the reconstruction of African history. This is because books or documents can often be carried from one place to another where the reader or the writer wants to use it. This cannot be done in the non-documentary sources.
Written records of contemporary issues give first-hand information which is naturally more accurate and reliable. This is because dates and events are chronologically well recorded. For example minutes of meetings give exact and accurate date, and the time the meeting was held. Similarly, records written in diaries are recorded on the spot as events occur or soon after. This helped historians to know the exact dates for instance the Asante fought with the British because the wars were documented. Written sources help reduce any tendency of the historian to use guesswork in his work.
Keeping accurate records of events is very difficult especially where written sources are lacking and people rely solely on oral tradition. One can say therefore that written sources are more effective means or method of keeping records of past events.
Written sources of African history promote research work. For instance, when readers feel that there is a deficiency in a written account, they are encouraged to dig further in order to contribute to greater and more accurate knowledge about the issue.
Written sources help in cross-checking data or information collected from oral and other sources of historical knowledge. This help to reach reliable conclusions.
Documents provide more detailed information than oral sources, e.g. dates, illustrative pictures, names of participants in events etc..
Written sources can easily be destroyed by termites, rodents, fire, flood, earthquakes, humidity, etc. Written records destroyed by any of these disasters cannot be retrieved unlike oral sources which can be retold. Termites and rodents may also eat away vital information in written forms.
Another major limitation of written sources of history is that they may contain biases and distortions. The writer may intentionally write to suit his opinions or leave out some aspects of the events which are not to his liking. For example some books written by European writers state that slave trading is a blessing to the people of West Africa. Others have written in their books that until the coming of Europeans in West Africa, the history of West Africa was only wars and misery.
Again, one of the strongest demerit of written source is, once certain materials or information have been written down, people take them to be as fact even when they are not crosschecked. Not all the information found in writing or books should be taken to be historical truth; there could be a little bit of exaggeration, bias or prejudice.
Written materials are expensive. The writer needs materials like paper, pen, book, diary, etc to put down events. Also, before one gets written materials, they may have to make use of the other sources like archeology, linguistics etc.
Once again, written materials are hard to come by, especially in Africa where the art of writing started late. Even in Africa where they are available, they are fragmentary and far between. Since writing began very late in Africa apart from ancient Egypt, written records are generally scanty and scarce. This means that the historian has to rely more on the non-documentary sources, making the work more difficult.
Written materials can get lost, thus depriving the people the historical information if they are the only sources of information.
Documentary sources are written materials that have been put into writing and to be able to read one needs to be literate (able to read and write). Many Africans cannot read nor write, hence rendering written sources of African history deficient in the reconstruction of African history.
Finally, to come out with authentic written materials, the services of experts in the other disciplines like archeology, linguistics, etc. are needed in order to interpret correctly historical events.
This refers to pieces of information about past events collected from sources of history other than books and other written materials. This explains why this section refers to unwritten sources. Examples of non-documentary sources are Archaeology, Oral Tradition, Linguistic, Ethnography, Art forms/History, Ethnobotany, Ethnozoology, Ethnomusicology, Numismatics, and Serology.
The fixed text type of oral traditions have an unchanging format and content and have to be memorized and passed on from generation to generation. Example of ‘fixed text’ type are words of folk music, praise songs, drum music and horn music.
An example of drum music is the Mpintin drums of Denkyira which recall the past hegemony and wealth of that state in two terse lines: ‘kotoko som amponsem’ (the porcupine i.e. Asante serves Amponsem-the king of Denkyira) and ‘Boa Amponsem a odi sika atomprada’ (King Boa Amponsem who uses fresh gold all the time).
Similarly, Abuakwa horn music immortalize the valour of Abuakwa’s Queen Dokuaa at the Akatamanso (1826) they sing ‘Dokua obaa basia a oko oprem ano’ (Dokua the valiant woman who fought before canon).
The free-text type consists of accounts of events usually stool (dynastic) histories and family or village traditions. For example some court officials can memorize some aspects of the state history and can tell others when necessary. Some court officials include the linguist (okyeame), court heralds (esen) and executioners (abrafo) in the Akan states. Also, in Mali the (griot) and Togo (evne) played similar roles.
Oral tradition is easily accessible in the sense that, gathering information by the historian does not involve much work. In every community, town or village in Africa, one can get some elders who are ready to give the traditions and historical events in the area. The historian in one way or the other, only need to contact knowledgeable informants and respondents for the necessary information needed.
In the absence of other sources, oral tradition becomes one of the sole sources of writing history. In a situation where there are no written records or other pieces of information like personal diaries, minutes of meetings, journals etc. the historian often relies to a large extent on the information provided by oral tradition to compile his findings.
Oral tradition as a source of African history has helped to confirm historical facts from other sources. For example, it helps the archeologist to confirm their findings thus throwing more light on the findings of the history of a place. Again, the archaeologist would have to be directed by a story from the local people before he goes to excavate the site. Therefore, without oral tradition, the archaeologist’s work become difficult.
Oral tradition helps the historian to determine historical trends and events. Through the comparison of several oral traditions, the historian can eliminate biases, inconsistencies or inaccuracies in the written records they are using, to come out with an accurate historical account of the past.
Oral tradition has also helped in the interpretation of archeological data dug from the soil. This is necessary because the artefacts found are both anonymous and fragmentary. For instance, if an archaeologist unearthed human skeletons with lost limbs apparently severed by sharp-edged materials, they may deduce that the excavated site was a mass grave where people who died after an armed conflict were buried. They may not conclude with that, but rather validate their evidence by embarking upon personal enquiry, interviewing target groups in the area. If they are lucky, they would have pieces of information about events similar to what they have speculated.
Oral tradition has done a lot to assist with the reconstruction of African history, this is because Africans have relied on oral traditions to preserve their history for centuries. It is again, the only living source of historical reconstruction because it gives room for further questioning and analysis of the information given to ensure its validity or truthfulness.
In the first instance, oral tradition is not precise in detail. The narrator may give information in a long clumsy way without any specific point. Important aspect of events and their sequences are forgotten as the informants advance in age. As these stories are retold to subsequent generations, they are filled with misrepresentation of facts.
Oral tradition is full of exaggeration, biases and prejudices. The narrator might add irrelevant information or might leave out information which does not suit his interest. Narrators normally leave out these aspects of the story consciously or unconsciously leading to one-sided information that cannot serve as a sound basis for historical writing.
Moreover, oral tradition cannot be dated with certainty. The narrator might forget part of the events or important dates. People tend to lose track of events through no fault of theirs and therefore forget the actual date and time that a particular event took place. For instance, situations where an event occurs frequently, it brings confusion in terms of specifics since the narrator does a lot of guesswork.
Another shortfall of oral tradition is that, death or calamity affecting people can result in the loss of important aspect of oral tradition since only the living can tell it and not the dead. To top it up, if people were afflicted by a calamity leading to the loss of lives including the key informants, then the information of the affected area would be lost forever.
Furthermore in using oral tradition as the main source of reconstruction of African history, details and sequences of events might be forgotten with the passage of time since the human mind keeps the history, one might forget some important points as years pass by.
Indeed cross-checking becomes difficult in oral tradition if the narrator is the only source of information. It is a fact that oral tradition is most likely to contain inaccuracies and failures to collaborate the information gathered from other source might produce shoddy work hence the need to cross-check and test events.
Oral tradition tends to lay more emphasis on personalities like kings, rulers and leaders as well as events like wars and migration to the neglect of social and economic aspects of people’s history, thus making the historical approach somewhat narrow, to the disadvantages of scholarship and posterity.
viii. Oral traditionists are men, and thus there is a gendered bias in what is recalled, and the way it is recalled, which may diminish the role women have played in the African past.
Archaeology is the study of a people’s culture of years past through excavation and examination of material remains that are found. It is the understanding of human actions in the past through a study of what they did rather than what they said of themselves. Again, archaeology provides information about how societies adapted their ways of life to suit their natural environment or how they modified their environment to suit their way of life. Archaeological information is obtained through the excavation or digging of specially chosen sites.
In Europe, archaeology has been a useful source of historical evidence since the 19th century AD whereas in Africa, it has been helpful in the reconstruction of the past since the second half of the 20th century.
The archaeologist uses radio-carbon dating (carbon-14 dating) to determine the age of artefacts. The use of this technique to examine running of houses tools and weapons etc. has contributed immensely towards the reconstruction of African history. Among the evidences are the famous Ife works of art in bronze and pottery, which came to the notice of the world through archeological excavations in 1910. Secondly, excavated sites at Igbo Ukwu in the south of Enugu-Nigeria has shown that a highly advanced society existed in that part of Nigeria in the 10th century AD. Thirdly, in the Brong-Ahafo region of modern Ghana, excavation conducted at Begho provided evidence of copper and iron industries. However there are many important sites in West Africa such as Kantora on the Upper Gambia river and Kansala – capital of the Kaabu empire in north-eastern Guinea-Bissau – which still require excavation.
Archaeological information shows that African societies attained high levels of civilization and development in pre European time. Example is the site excavated at Igbo Ukwu and Ife in Nigeria which have revealed highly advanced societies where bronze and pottery technology were practiced.
Archeology helps to reveal the kind of trade contacts that existed among people in the past. A good example is that of the excavations carried out at Begho in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana, which showed that long before the arrival of the Europeans, Africans were in contact with China, Indonesia, Arabia and Phoenicia, since porcelain, coins, pipes and bottles from these areas were found.
Through the studies of archaeology we get an idea about the political organization of people, their religious/traditional beliefs and economic activities etc. These come to light when archaeologists excavate materials which experts examine and relate them. For instance, if a chief’s linguist staff is found after excavations one may relate it to religious/traditional belief or authority.
Archeology also provides information about the way different people have adapted to their environment e.g. by revealing the tools they made for various purposes.
Archaeology has helped historians to write history of pre-historic times. Since writing began late in most parts of the continent, archeology has become the main source of information for the reconstruction of African history of the distant past.
Archeologists have revealed in their studies what our ancestors did and so help to provide useful evidence for writing about. Through archeology, the material culture of people in the past becomes known. It is only to excavations that we go to know the kind of building people built and the occupation they engaged in. For example, the ruins in Zimbabwe, Kumbi-Saleh (empire of Ghāna) and the pyramids in Egypt.
Archeological studies have shown that human beings originated from Africa. From this source, it has been proved that Africa was the first home of man (Homo sapiens). This has been proved by the fossils discovered by Dr. and Mrs. Leakey at Olduvai Gorge in the Northern Tanzania.
Archeological studies help us to date event e.g. the use of carbon-14 dating or radio carbon dating.
It has been a reliable source of history since artifacts could be seen and felt.
In archaeology, one is bound to use much guess work in the reconstruction of the past, thus leading to inaccurate information. Also, the use of radio-carbon dating always approximate dates. Artifacts found are anonymous and lack the sequence of daily life. Makers and users of such artifacts are usually not known. This makes the archeologist do guesswork.
The use of archaeology as a source of writing African history is expensive. It is expensive considering high cost of labour excavating machines, finding the selected site, getting permit, laboratory expenses, and special tools among others. The use of the radio carbon dating (carbon 14) in determining the age of an archaeological find is very complex and expensive.
The nature of the tropical climate in Africa makes it difficult for archeological findings (material remains) to be preserved in the soil. The tropical rainforest has high temperature and rainfall which promotes decay of fossil remains as well as chemical weathering. These conditions facilitate fossil decay and weathering of rocks leaving little or no traces of rock paintings or carvings which are very useful sources of information to historians in their attempt to reconstruct the African past.
One major limitation of archeology is that the means by which information is preserved is not deliberate, so most of the findings discovered through excavations are accidental. With this we have the intuition of acquiring some knowledge, but would first at the same time be ‘gambling’.
Archaeological finding is unable to provide a comprehensive view and analysis of the past because it does not tell about the ideological and sociological aspects of life. All these factors limit the scope of information available to the historian.
The information derived from archeology is often spotty because the information is usually got depending on materials found.
Archeology unfortunately needs knowledge of many disciplines to interpret information. For example, chemistry, botany, geology, art, history etc. That is, it is not easy to get one person with knowledge on such disciplines thus making interpretation a difficult task.
Archeology rely on information given by oral tradition and written sources. The archeologists in most cases have to receive information about a site or read from a book about a site before excavations can take place. Without receiving information from the local people about a site of ruins, writing African history becomes difficult since the archeologist may be handicapped.
Linguistics is the scientific study of the origin, structure and changes of a language that occur in the languages over a period of time. Languages do change in vocabulary and grammar over periods of time. Such changes can tell the historian about the adoption of new ideas by people. Some languages, when studied closely relate to the other (Ga and Adangbe; Wali and Dagari; Ewe and Fon; Fante and Bono; and Dagomba and Mossi etc.). One could project that those languages may have developed from one single parent language. The comparative study of such related languages can provide useful information.
Linguistics study has several advantages and importance in the reconstruction of African history.
Linguistics helps us to trace the origin of people and peopling of places e.g. Ewe, Akan, Bantu etc. Studies conducted by one linguist J.H.Greenberg into the origin of the Bantu and other West African languages have helped to arrive at the conclusion that the then Bantu speakers dispersed throughout the eastern and southern Africa originate from the Nigerian-Cameroon border region.
Linguistic studies can help confirm or question stories of origin e.g. Ewe as against Ga stories of origin from east of Ghana. In reconstructing Africa’s history, linguistics has confirmed the established facts that Ewes once stayed with the Yoruba at Ketu, Benin and Togo before settling in Ghana. This can be found in the language of Ewe speakers in the West African countries.
Linguistics helps in identifying people into ethnic groups e.g. Ewe, Akan, Ga-Adange etc. indeed language plays very key role in identifying a group of people. For instance, it is the Ewe people that speak the Ewe language; also Twi is spoken by the Asantes.
Furthermore, linguistics enlightens us on the influences that have come to people from outside, e.g. the existence of Portuguese words in Ghanaian languages like paano (bread), bokiti (bucket), asopatre (slippers), krataa (paper) and prete (plate).
Linguistics helps us to show the adoption of new ideas by people with changes in vocabulary and grammar. The changes that occur in languages can be studied to tell whether there has been an adoption of new ideas and general historical developments. Example, Akan words in Ga language like ‘anokwaley’, ‘abotaley’ etc.
Linguistic studies of the Bantu and West African languages have established that the ancestors of modern Bantu speakers originated from the Nigeria-Cameroon border area. The study of related languages may show that they emerged from the same source, probably a proto-language called ‘Kwa’.
Through the study of linguistics, historians can establish whether speakers of closely-related languages have a common root e.g. Ga and Adangbe,Wali and Dagari; Ewe and Fon; Fante and Bono; and Dagomba and Mossi. Professor Abena Dolphyne of the University of Ghana has studied Akan languages of the Asante, Fante and Bono. She concluded that the Bono language is more related to the Fante language than any of the two of the Asante language. This is confirmed by the oral tradition of the Fante that they stayed aTakyiman before moving to their present home.
It is difficult to study and analyze a particular language if the researcher does not have fore knowledge about it. Linguistics is such a complex study that there is very little unanimity or agreement among even the linguists themselves on their conclusions.
Linguistics cannot clearly point out changes in language over a period of time. This can lead to misrepresentation, loss or distortion of reality in history, thus making it very difficult to know the true origins or events needed by the writer.
Linguistics fell short in reconstruction of African history, because as a discipline it is less developed in Africa. Hence, it does not contribute very much like other sources in the writing of African history.That notwithstanding, in recent times, linguists in USA and elsewhere are researching on African history.
Linguistics in most cases, the historian has to largely rely on the other sources for validation and collaboration of information obtained.
Some conclusions drawn by linguists based on words similarities may be sheer coincidence. In such cases, finding conclusive evidence remains difficult.
Ethnography is the study of present-day social institutions as well as the crafts and artistic skills of people. Example is the collaboration of festivals, the process of making pottery, beads, weaving, construction etc.
The conclusions drawn from the study and examination of these institutions and artefacts in examination of these institutions and artefacts in their present form help towards fully understanding and explain the past’s influence on the formation of present skills/techniques.
The conclusions drawn from the study and examination of these institutions and artefacts in examination of these institutions and artefacts in their present form help to fully understand and explain the past.
Ethnography provides a useful opportunity to study Africa rituals and festivals which are mainly re-enactment of historical event (for example, the performance of the warriors during the Egungun festival of the Yoruba). Also, if the performance by the Alaketu (ruler of Ketu) during his installation demonstrate a play-back of the experiences of the first Alaketu in establishing Ketu state. Similarly, among the Ewes the Hogbetsotso festival is celebrated annually to commemorate their exodus and liberation from the tyrannical rule of Togbui Agorkoli I of Notsie.
One of the defects of ethnography is the study of present day social institution does not give the exact meanings to some traditional practices. The fast modernization and westernization of our traditional values may have swept away some important aspect of our cultural heritage.
Africans are able through ethnography to trace their ancestry or record some important events like Homowo, Hogbetsotso, Egungun festival.
Numismatics is the study of coins. This study helps us to know where the coins were minted and found.
Numismatics studies has proved that Africans had an advanced economy in minting of coins. Numismatics throws light on trade contacts between people. For an example the discovery of 240 coins at Kilwa on the East African Coast show that from the 13th century AD, the sultans of Kilwa had their own mint.
Numismatic gives accurate dates, names, places and events. For example the king list of Kilwa came to light when the 240 coins were discovered. It showed the sultans of the Swahili Coast.
Discovered coins can be seen, felt or touched, makes history live, or more interesting or reliable.
Numismatics shows the level of civilization to the people using coins. For instance, by the 13th century AD, the Sultans of the East African Coast had their own mint of coins for producing their coins for trade and other purposes. Also, gold weights represented the means of determining quantities of gold in Akan society where gold dust was the normal currency. The value of gold to be used in a money transaction was assessed by weights.
Numismatics shows the political dominance in societies using coins. During the colonial rule, Ghana’s currency had the figure and name of the British crown.
vi. Preservation for longer periods.
Numismatics unlike the other artifacts, a coin can be preserved for a relatively longer period.
Through the activities of numismatics, it is known that as far back as the 9th and 10th centuries AD, the people of East Africa and China had established trading links.
Numismatics gives limited information in the story it tells. It may only identify a ruling class in the society engaged in trading activity who used the coin. This makes numismatics handicapped in tracing the other aspects of cultural lives of the user societies.
Without the consultation of other sources like archeology and oral tradition, numismatics may somehow be impotent in revealing the entire cultural history of a society. This is also because not all pre-historic societies minted and used coins.
Ethnobotany is the scientific study of ancient remains of plants which are termed flora. Ethnozoology is the scientific study of animal remains from the past which are called fauna. These studies help to trace the origins of plants and the animals our ancestors fed on and exploited in the past. It is through such studies that crops are classified as indigenous and non-indigenous.
Through the study of ethnobotany, it has been established that, Africans were advanced in agriculture. For example ethnobotany has revealed that, the (Dahomey Gap) in modern Benin in West African coastal forest belt is the cradle of yam cultivation. Also animals like West African dwarf goat, pigs, cattle, dogs, cats and guinea fowl are all indigenous to Africa.
Ethnobotany shows the interrelationships or contacts among peoples and the presence of some crops and fruits like guava, tangerine, mango, avocado pear and pineapple are known to have European origins. It has been observed that, the Bantu had for a long time relied on banana as a food source and therefore it has been suggested that the spread of banana to other parts of Africa had depended to a large extent on the migration of the Bantu.
Ethnobotany and ethnozoology help to locate settlement of people. Certain plants and animals determine settlement of people since generation after generation has used them as staple foods and diets.
The study of ethnobotany and ethnozoology has helped in dating events in the society.
Ethnobotany has helped historians through the use of tree-ring dating method. It is the method used to date pieces of wood that are found in excavations to determine the ages of their use.
The information about crop and animals being indigenous or non-indigenous may not be accurate. This is because weather and climatic conditions as well as the duration of the crop in a particular area might be so long that there is the likelihood of inaccurate prediction.
A remarkable problem associated with ethnobotany is generalization. For instance it is established that Tetteh Quarshie brought cocoa to Ghana from Fernando Po but another source have it that the Basel missionaries brought cocoa from Surinam before Tetteh Quarshie. It will be incorrect to generalize that cocoa came to Ghana from Fernando Po or Surinam because the climatic condition in these places are the same.
Ethnobotanist must work in conjunction with other sources of writing African history before they can establish the validity or otherwise of their find. Without this inter-disciplinary approach, ethnobotany will be impotent.
Ethnomusicology is the scientific study of music (musicology) which focuses on the study of music forms in their cultural perspective. It deals with the role of music in the cultural history of a group of people, and how the formal structures of music evolve in different historical contexts.
Ethnomusicology confirms and supports events of history. Most folk songs and ancient musical forms usually make reference to important socio-economic events and political events in the life of the people who composed and sang them. E.g. the Asafo songs of the Fante make references to the exploits of their three warlords which included, Obunumakoma, Odapagyan and Oson. Also, the Akyem Abuakwa’s warrior Queenmother Dokuah’s role in the courageous woman who fights with the gun. This describes Dokuah’s contribution to the Akyem Abuakwa state. Similarly, in Mande peoples, the epic of Sunjata Keita recounts the formation of the empire of Mali.
It is also a storehouse of historical information in the form of drums, horn, music, dirges and praise songs. For instance, during the Damba festival of the Dagombas, they play drums that give messages about Toharjie-the great warrior who led them to their present settlements. Drums are one of the Africa’s great living books.
The study of the changes that occur in people’s musical forms over a period of time is also another source of history, for example, a study of the religious songs of the Ga has revealed that the music as well as the song belongs to an older and different ethnic group. This supports the claim of Guan oral tradition that they occupied the highlands of the Ga state prior to the arrival of the Ga. Moreover the change in African musical instruments in the New World has given much information about diaspora history.
One major defects of ethnomusicology is the authenticity of the text or lyrics the song conveyed.
Another shortfall of ethnomusicology is that there is no African culture ever developed a notational system for its organization of culturally defined musical sound. This implies there is little hope in hearing African music with any accuracy of tracing the actual sound of music to any substantial time-depth.
ARTS FORMS/ARTS HISTORY AS A FORM OF AFRICAN HISTORY.
Art history is the study of art forms such as engravings, paintings, carvings and sculpture on stone surface, tombs, slabs or walls of caves, palaces and shrines.
Arts forms or history helps to discover the economic activities, religious beliefs, culture and political power a group of people had in the past. For instance, the art works found in the Tassili Caves suggest that the dry areas of North Africa might not have been as dry in the past as they are today.
Paintings of food crops found in the tombs in the Sahara give impressions that the early inhabitants of these region might have relied on grains as food source. This helps historians to know and determine the eating habits and occupations of the early inhabitants of the Saharan regions.
Another painting found in the rocks of the Sahara might have shown that the Sahara had at a point in time harbored aquatic animals. This has given the impression that the Sahara has always not being as dry as it is today.
Rock paintings which are peculiar to art forms are not common on the African continent especially in sub-Saharan Africa. This is due to the fact that painting was restricted to perishable surfaces such as textiles, wood, house walls among other therefore could not survive the high humid climatic conditions of the environment.
The art historian encounters the problem of dating their artistic find. For that matter they resorts to the archeologist in dating things such pre-historic art.
Serology is the branch of medicine concerned with the study of blood types. It deals with the blood serum components that protect the blood against diseases.
i. Human blood varies in composition from one person to another in the sense that some genes present in some people in some people are absent in others. For that matter people can be categorized according to their blood groups. It is therefore possible that adequate knowledge of a predominant blood type in another area or region should be able to establish some kind of hypothesis that the people of region A must have formed part of region B.
Studies in the frequency of the sickle cell should be able to give the clue that, people belong to a particular source. A very good example of how the studies in the frequency in sickle cell can help historical research could be found in Windward Coast in Liberia. In this region, the Kru people are almost devoid of the sickle cell trait. Yet it is very common among the neighboring people. This confirms the fact that the Kru has been a close community who did not intermarry with their neighbors.
To collect data for the reconstruction of African history, the historian must not rely solely on written sources or non-documentary sources but rather the following methods must be employed to check biases, prejudices and exaggerations.
One method of gathering information from non-documentary sources of African history is interviewing of knowledgeable persons about the culture of a particular community. This is to say that the historian must interview people about the information of the past such as eye-witnesses or traditional historians like court linguists, older court officials and the elderly. The historian can record these interviews and later play, write out and analyze the information given.
Another method of gathering information about African history is the interdisciplinary approach. Cooperation with scholars in other fields of knowledge gives information for African history. The historian has to cooperate with specialists like the linguists, archeologists, botanists, ethnographers among others to obtain materials that can be used to reconstruct African history. The researcher works together with these scholars to gather important information to draw valid conclusions.
In writing African history, one can use the review method to get information by reviewing the written sources such as books, newspapers, journals, broadcasts, diaries, manifestoes, and private letters among others, by reviewing the research through written sources both primary and secondary for information which they examine and cross-check. Even though these written records have shortcomings and inadequacies, they can be reviewed by the historian to ensure an accurate reflection of the past. This helps to produce unbiased history which is backed by evidence.
To get the best results of collecting data for writing African history, a carefully composed questionnaire should be used which must cover the political, economic, social, religious and technological aspects. In this situation, a series of well-structured questions are given out to persons who know about the past to solicit for information. The responses to these questions are gathered and analyzed by the historian in order to draw a reasonable conclusion.
Through personal observation by visiting places of historical importance like slave sites, castles, forts etc. and personally recording events like festivals, funerals and the like, important findings can result in the collection of data for writing African history. Such details are necessary since they constitute first-hand information as the events happened before their own eyes i.e. eye witness account. Such accounts can be compared and questions are asked on them to get a reliable view of what actually happened in the past.
Despite the fact that written and unwritten sources of African history have shortfalls, we can still describe them as adequately reliable, since the work of a historian is based on historical methods where they use scientific methods in drawing conclusions. Written records of history have a high level of precision and very reliable. All the documentary sources e.g. newspapers, personal letters, diaries, journals, manifestoes etc. can be reviewed and cross checked for a fair assessment of the past. This process helps to get rid of prejudices, biases to ensure truthfulness. By putting written records side by side with other forms of evidence, the historian can establish an objective conclusion.
The reliability of unwritten sources of history cannot be underestimated since they all involve scientific methods in carrying out researches. For instance, the Ghanaian linguist, Professor Abena Dolphyne undertook a research on the Bono, Asante and Fante people and arrived at an important conclusion. She found out that the Asante language is less related to the Fante. Also, archeology which is our main source of information on African history uses scientific methods like reconnaissance, stratification, radiocarbon and potassium argon dating methods and data analysis. These methods help archeologists to come to accurate and reliable conclusions significant for historical writing. Reconnaissance involves the process of discovering sites and plotting them for digging.
However, archeology as a non-documentary source of African history has some flaws. It is an unfortunate fact that there is no conscious system of preserving archeological knowledge. For that matter what archaeologists come across may be an accidental preservation. In this case, one goes into archeological excavation with the idea of acquiring some knowledge but relying on chance if not luck. Again, archaeological remains are subjected to wear and tear, weathering, and disfigurement and therefore are likely to present difficulty in the historians’ attempt to derive very reliable information from them. The process of radio-carbon dating is very expensive and that constitutes a hindrance to effective research.
Moreover, oral tradition is full of exaggeration on establishment of information to suit the narrator’s interest. Many a time, they tend to present history in a way that would not only exclude portions that do not meet their interest but worse of all, it might not be able to give specific details due to genuine loss in memory. Again, oral tradition tends to put so much emphasis on personalities and events like wars, whilst playing down on social and economic aspects of the past With this, information becomes very scanty to the disadvantage of scholarship and posterity.
In conclusion, we can deduce that both documentary and non-documentary evidence must be used to complement each other in the writing of African history. Since both are the work of human beings, one cannot be more reliable than the other since people tend to be subjective, biased and impressionistic.
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Letters should be assessed to suit your personal requirements as well as specific situation. As you’ve most likely asked for a reference correspondence before, you might be less acquainted with creating one. Speak with your former supervisor concerning the way where the benchmark correspondence is going to be properly utilized. The correspondence ends using the touch not any more matter this worker that might be properly used for any longer clarification concerning the offender. As suggestion letters are vitally crucial that you fill out an application for jobs, marriage, instructional classes and organization ventures, and it’s really a very good concept to request someone accountable, reputable and trustworthy to write it to your applicant. A great Job suggestion Letter from higher direction in the company can greatly improve an applicant’s chances of landing a huge career.
Many employers require an official correspondence as a section of the depart method as proof you’re willingly terminating your employment. A whole great deal of people think that since a employee you must formally resign out of work by writing an official resignation letter into your present company. Afterall, in nearly all of instances, the employee is simply doing an superb job in their job. The supervisor has a terrific possiblity to comprehend the staff which are executing in a higher degree. A wonderful manager wants a terrific employment cover letter. Before creating letters to direction, you have to take into account what you’d love to achieve along with also who you’re creating to. The management could then take note, because of this void that’s lefthanded.
Each provider differs. Regardless of whether your business is little or large, differentiating your self would be the proper means todo it. Your occupation title, your precise division and how much the right time you have already been with the organization. If your company is dealing with turbulent times, be sure to make utilize of the term struggles as opposed to problems inorder not to unduly alarm employees concerning the future of the small business.
You’re definitely going to compose a restart outline that gets far more interviews. A Summary is a succinct statement or account of these principal things of something. A post outline is necessary to find the gist of an article without visiting the thorough article. A summary offers readers the chance to grasp the significant idea of the item, without having to learn the authentic text itself. It’s a restatement of someone else’s words on your own words. Your outline of credentials should comprise a nice variety of examples that will make your resume very stick out. After having a few project applications, you will likely probably be custom-fitting credentials summaries in a few minutes.
In most simple statement or any elegant dissertation, you consistently have the option to locate a listing. What’s more, a superb overview will not always have too much or too little specifics. An inventory should be created independently. It needs to include the most vital specifics. Hence, you must not try to compose the analysis outline until you are through using all the full research document.
A list often is made up of five to 8 sentences and communicates precisely the vital factors of the particular text. It is written in your own words. Since composing a list comprises omitting little information, it should always be shorter compared to text. You would like to reveal on your own summary your product or service is at market requirement and also the way you are capable of making the buyers acquire your goods. You desire to have an summary of credentials in case you would like the fastest approach to acquire more interviews with no whole lot of effort. A summary of credentials is utilized to underline the reach of work experiences you’ve built up together with time. You might need to look at a credentials listing which we outlined at last week’s postbut if only you need to get a summaryhere really are a couple examples to help you begin.
Now you are likely to finish your essay. The sample essay is all about computers. Just starting to compose an article can be hard. A summary essay doesn’t necessarily desire a decision and is frequently thought of finished while within case the author has clearly comprised all the important things from this foundation. Summary essays are made for various people, and so, when designing a list composition, it is essential to variable in the particular attributes of your own audience.
You have to have five purpose statements. Should you choose to proceed with a resume summary announcement, be sure to care for it because your own private highlight reel. You may want to bring a resume outline announcement. A summary announcement can be a succinct expert introduction you could raise the summit of one’s own resume. A powerful overview statement at the summit of your resume may increase the possibilities of those discovering everything you have surely got to offer from the beginning.
Your essay has to be practical and valuable. The guide might even be outlined into a concise paragraph. When it’s short, the summary has to be briefer, but the notion must be concrete. Read the accounts to be outlined and make certain you understand it. You may summarize a news article at a lot of ways, but the major intent is to take all the information and permit it to become shorter. Summarizing a news article is a great prospect for individuals to come up with their composing capabilities, as most senior high school and under graduate students will probably should summarize heavier texts since they keep their livelihood course. You should browse the post or sections of this headlines report that you just simply decide to outline above and over again, to be able to fully know what it truly is about.
After writing a resume it is crucial that you supply the file objective. Nowadays you know the part of producing the resume outline paragraph it is necessary to observe the acceptable punctuation, paragraph and formatting stream that’s typically utilized in professionally-written guides. Ergo, in the event that you don’t know what exactly the significant aim of one’s summary is, then you could bet your viewers won’t supply you with the answer which you want.
You might even use summary writing whenever you are going to indicate an intricate endeavor and that you simply just don’t possess any clue just how to describe it to the people that you should introduce it without overwhelming these one’s ideas. Becoming able to compose an inventory may demonstrate that you had the ability to successfully realized a certain text into some idea that you might easily write down a summary which consists of just your own words. Finding the best way to compose an investigation summary is not a big bargain, because it can not arrive with lots of techniques such as the research paper itself.
Cover letter is divided into three components. Cover correspondence should incorporate everything that’s crucial for your particular project. Before you begin, it really is imperative you understand as far as you possibly can as it pertains for the type of letter you’re composing. The reference legislation proposal is just really actually a crucial letter that aids people to purchase legislation at a more straightforward manner. Finding an immigration reference letter is also an equally important task which makes the immigration process far more straightforward. Everyone want to provide excellent immigration significance letter for their friend, therefore they wish to get the ideal answer.
Use double spacing between sentences to make your letter seem neat and professional. Producing a coverletter has gotten exceptionally critical so you can get the desired job prospect. You have to write a cover letter to send with your own restart. To help your odds of success, you ought not make use of the identical employment cover letter for each and every job of attention to you.
Resume cover letter for practically any job should start out with all the title and contact details of the sender onto the upper left of the webpage. Usually do not send more letters than requested if you don’t got the one who is particularly dazzling. In actuality, however, it is not difficult to equip to compose a winning letter. The kind of letter essential for a particular application depends upon the kind of visa it supports. Disclosing personal information The covering letter might become a opportunity to share with you information regarding the company who would be useful for visitors to consider, for example, in case you are applying to a employer who is strict about A-level results which you don’t quite match, however, also you will need a wonderful supporting rationale your marks were so very low (e.g. a prior serious illness). At times, a letter in the individual not involved from the profession of medication is going to be asked. You can find particular normal things are available here that you need to check out when you are very likely to offer you a Personality reference letter to get parents.
The correspondence needs to specifically deal with the manner by which the outcomes of the undertaking will influence the organization . You might also see contribution letters. The sample correspondence involves a bright format that will let you earn an best reference correspondence easily. So, using the very best sample benchmark correspondence is also an effortless method to produce a exceptional support immigration letter.
Generally, the adoption reference letter is principally employed for its talented adoptive mother or father to find an best adoption benchmark. At the beginning every one has to clearly learn more on the topic of the adoption benchmark letter that is entirely not the same as the various reference letters. If you are a company and want to offer reference correspondence to that immigration means of your employee, you may make use of the sample reference letter. The sample character reference correspondence is on the list of most important reference letters that helps visitors to acquire a few advantages.
When folks are requested to compose a letter of service, but they may be unsure regarding the proper content and wording. A touch of service provides persuasive reason concerning the main reason a funder need to encourage a certain proposal. A letter of service for immigration ought to be one that offers a solid assistance and should be more convincing enough hence it might be more accepted.
Letters of support often make a difference for applicants regardless of the things they truly have been looking for. Steer clear of producing erasures and alterations, specially when you are writing an official record of service. In contrast to other letters that were straightforward, a letter of service ought to be rather persuasive to be deemed as an effective letter. The dating support letter is really actually a important resource that aids your loved ones to achieve powerful immigration.
Call up in the company and know the name of the individual that will be reading this correspondence if you should be oblivious of that will soon be reading the correspondence. Make use of the suitable format to your own correspondence that you will likely be making it is going to appear presentable and more acceptable. A draft letter of service will offer consistency throughout the board including most of the supporters. Assistance letters are really important in any firm. The Letter of Service Template for phrase is able to assist you begin about the appropriate path of creating a high-value correspondence of service which you’re ready to deal with to your regional authorities.
Success in the adoption reference correspondence may be accomplished solely by raising personal system of producing inside the letter. The worth of composing an effective letter can not be stressed . If you are searching to get a task for a Support Worker then you’re going to offer support to your collection of individuals who demand several kinds of aid from informative support, financial support, housing, medical etc..
If you want your correspondence to work, then it should be engaging and exciting. So, always send out a thank you letter after every single every contribution and within just a couple of days when at all possible. You’ll find a number of reasons why you might like to write an endorsement correspondence. You will find particular normal things can be found here you have to follow along with you’re most very likely to introduce a Character reference letter to get adoptive parents.
The letter should attest how often they are around the petitioner and misuse in circumstances where he doesn’t drink or at which additional folks could possibly be drinking however he really doesn’t. So, your correspondence ought to be crystal clear and to this idea accordingly that the helper knows its articles absolutely. If you are a company and also would want to offer reference correspondence for your own immigration means of the own employee, you may make use of the sample reference letter. A well-written reference letter can certainly alter into the things in somebody’s favor which is a stronger and more efficient appeal for prosecution. So, employing the ideal sample benchmark correspondence is a simple ways to make a fantastic service legislation letter.
Now you obtain your letter! Additionally you ought to aim your letters predicated on present collection. It’s important your correspondence be created in a way that is balanced. The sample character reference correspondence is among the most important reference letters which helps people to find a few additional rewards.
Only one letter ought to be sent, as it is definitely going to be put in the offender’s case document that has assessed one at some moment by every board member looking at the instance. Letters of service regularly make a gap for candidates no matter of the things that they have been applying for. It’s essential to bear in mind a letter of support is written by some one who is not the grant applicant. Implementing a service letter to help you acquire the funds that you will need for your trip is only one of the most typical way of fund raising.
The letter should be quite a conventional formal letter by means of your contact info and the day at the peak of this letter. Such a correspondence could reveal that a company would like to furnish a gift-in-kind to backup your project. Assist letters are very essential in virtually any venture. A letter of support for immigration needs to function as one that provides a powerful support and should be more persuasive enough hence it might be accepted. The letter of support communicates not merely the trustworthiness of their candidate, however in addition their credentials. Steer clear of producing erasures and alterations, especially once you’re writing a formal letter of service. Even the 10 free correspondence of all support samples readily available below are meant to help you in generating the perfect essay.
The letter should specifically address the procedure by which the outcome of the project will help determine the company directly. Make use of the proper format for the letter you will undoubtedly soon be making thus it is going to appear presentable and okay. Before you start, it’s important you understand as much as you can regarding the sort of letter you are creating. The letters additionally insure various livelihood so you may choose the one which is ideal for the circumstance. It is therefore important the best way to compose a letter to get support and that which you include. Mission excursion support letters really are a cinch to publish if you know exactly what things to include.
The letter ought to be detailed, precise and should supply the reader with all the information they will need to create a informed decision about whether or not to encourage the non profit through a monetary contribution. The mention legislation proposal is just a very important correspondence which helps visitors to attain immigration in a simpler way. Uncovering an immigration reference letter is an essential task that makes the immigration procedure much simpler. Everybody else would like to provide flawless immigration reference letter for their own friend, therefore they want to receive the absolute best solution.
If people feel since they’re just one of a hundred individuals that are obtaining the letter, they will be inclined to encourage you. If they’re asked to compose a letter of service, however, they may be unsure regarding the right wording and content. A support letter must be favorable and appear professional and ought to browse substantially like a job recommendation correspondence. Providing support letters is quite a substantial part of one’s mission journey procedure. Producing a convincing hint of support escalates the applicant’s chances of finding the award considerably.
Use double spacing between paragraphs to make your correspondence appear neat and professional. Also avoid making it seem overly routine, which might ensure it is genuine. Producing a letter of support is a significant part a grant application treatment. If you’re not eligible for a Emotional help Animal letter a complete refund of your fee is going to be manufactured.
All letters need to be type written. Appeal letter might be utilised in situations in which you are searching a few modification or rectification or in the event you’re searching to get some form of help. Keep in mindyour comprehension of the way to compose a excellent appeal letter for faculty might serve you properly also it is worth a try, but a lot of appeals remain still very lucrative.
Proof reading the letter is critical! A typed letter will guarantee your communication is legible. Letters possess a particular area from the market universe. If you have gotten a Probation letter, you usually would not have to allure. Probation Letters are delivered simply to produce students alert to their Satisfactory Academic Progress Policy.
The letter should be your own personal. The letters need to present in depth understanding of your recent ailments. Attempt to be sure that every paragraph of the correspondence builds over the prior paragraph. Charm letters ought to abide by a very simple business suggestion strategy. It is critical to produce appeal letters on an official letter-head since they support to set up your credentials. Be sure you are polite ample while saying your points as it’s an appeal letter. Powerful letters of allure articulate genuine explanations for why a determination should be re considered.
If it’s not connected to the suspension, then then it is maybe not really worth mentioning from the allure. Suspensions usually come about in the most egregious circumstances. DUI related suspensions take various fees predicated in your own specific drunk-driving offense The Florida Driver’s Handbook comprises an entire selection of penalties needed to reinstate your driver’s license. Your suspension will probably begin once they receive your permit and it is going to be reinstated while the suspension period will be over. Though an Amazon merchant accounts suspension may sound being a tragedy, it’s the one which can be reverted using a superior allure letter.
Usually, allure information is contained in your choice letter you received. You’re going to be advised in writing by way of email address of the consequence of the allure. If you are likely to respond to a users request a recommendation on an product or service, then make sure you’re giving them good info instead of simply committing them the affiliate connection. You may possibly also must pay more fees depending about the main reason behind your suspension. You are also going to be requested to pay for the reinstatement fee and also have an street test. Your reinstatement prices and specifications will fluctuate based on the rationale for your permit suspension.
The awards committee will not expect college students to be perfect. The committee ought to be aware that you know how exactly to succeed in college, and you are in possession of an outstanding comprehension the way to exactly to generate your situation so that you could well be an effective student. It is likely to soon be glad to know that she’s communication with her or her or his advisor.
The letter should clarify well why the pupil was not ready to keep informed regarding his performance along with an apology to receive the specific same. Don’t forget the individual examining through your letter could be sympathetic but reluctant to give your appeal with out some kind of evidence which you are proper and truthful in your assertions. Find out who should find the allure letter and endeavor to make arrangements to give it personally. A disciplinary charm letter is composed to locate helpfrom larger authority once the worker or employee faces a issue by making use of their coworkers or even the total team. Supporting your petition having the very most successful letters with regard is therefore crucial to your success. You must make your complaint to this business office that caused the issue. Additional grievances pertaining to academic status ought to really be addressed into the Graduate college.
In academic appeals, you are always attempting to change a determination that has already been created. If you believe the decision on your own benefit or tax credit isn’t right, view the advice on our additional webpages. Do not reveal unfavorable individual opinions of those who made the decision you’re interesting. Depending on the form of suspension you’ve got, you can possibly be at a position to contest the decision with a hearing or attractiveness.
You might need to file your appeal to the county court in which you live or where your suspension was awarded. The appeal is seen throughout January 18th. If it is unavailable, you should contact with the office.
Appeals may not be made via telephonenumber. Broadly speaking, they will soon be determined in under 15 college days. Late and pristine allure wont be contemplated. From then on, ensure your allure is based on the legitimate reason that willn’t be rejected at an identical time. After you document your allure you are going to be provided a listing date. Please be aware, the Appeals Committee is not obligated to listen appeals for reinstatement to the present semester.
When conducted thoroughly, a SWOT analysis can uncover an abundance of advice, also will be useful in several circumstances. Thus many projects and organizations on earth have to have more thorough comprehension of themselves, and it does not do precisely the trick. It is only effective if it requires everything into account. In summary, it’s the best method of resolving business difficulties and in the event that you should be looking to get a SWOT identification example, you have come to the ideal spot. Assessing a SWOT analysis is actually really a vital analysis procedure, and there are different matters one really wants to look at by doing this. It’s normally used to recognize. Basicallyan yearly SWOT investigation will stop you from dropping touch by means of your enterprise enterprise, customers, as well as industry.
To create your company powerful, utilize New business SWOT analysis. It’s very helpful every time a firm would like to expand in new ventures. Since you put an company, you will deal with many challenges.
The better defined the issue, the superior you are going to be in pinpointing relevant aspects. Also, keep in your mind that numerous things can utilize one another to balance each other out. Based on your organization objective, what exactly are they all key elements which are holding you back you’re able to control.
At the occasion that you Evaluate your strengths, you may not need the ability to draw an honest and realistic reputable SWOT investigation. Other advantages could include serving a specific form of cultural food never served everywhere in the region. Like wise in the event you miss or do not consider carefully your potential strengths, you might miss out on capitalizing within an important small business possibility.
Fully being a real business adviser, you will need in order to produce strategies and methods to produce a fruitful small business investigation. On account of the complexity of the company, different plans are incorporated as being an easy means to gauge its own performance. There really are still an wonderful many small business strategies out there.
A excellent example of an opportunity is the capability to prepare an original relationship using a fresh supplier as a possible hazard may be described as a new competitor. Examples could comprise things like advantages concerning employees, fiscal resources, your business location, expense advantages and competitiveness. There are assorted forms of illustrations to get the company as well to on the personal investigation also. The case showed that replying a few basic questions about your own situation and your opportunity will be able to assist you to come closer to making a fantastic choice. A SWOT evaluation example is a critical component that might end up staying a tremendous service to anyone who needs to come across the larger picture on their intended job or job. A SWOT Investigation cases is something which can assist you across the road.
Even the SWOT investigation will not cover the whole organization, just the aspects which may impact their capacity to introduce a new product. It might be extremely helpful to entice traders by offering them detailed reports of strengths and opportunities. Properly orchestrated and carried outa SWOT analysis makes it possible for you to make an idea that can actually have the business done for you by allowing you to concentrate on areas which need to be enhanced, and also are as that needs to go expunged. It’s a framework tool that is essential for preparation, specially in the event you choose to open a fresh company.
SWOT analysis might be done in several methods. SWOT investigations could even be utilized in pre-crisis preparation and emergency prevention management. Depending on the kind of business along with also the firm’s financial goals, a SWOT evaluation can base strengths and weaknesses on an assortment of benefit factors. Let’s take a very good glance at the Zappos SWOT analysis and its particular benefits and advantages.
SWOT analysis is only there to assist you in managing your company properly. As soon as you complete your SWOT analysis, you are going to have to build up several strategies and recommendations depending upon the results. Before you start the SWOT analysis that you wish to perform a tiny amount of bit of investigating to learn your company, industry and market. By clearly outlining all positives and drawbacks of the endeavor, SWOT investigation helps it be simpler to decide whether to move ahead. It is the big portion of a company. The SWOT Analysis has a practical approach which possess the advantage that you are able to apply it anywhere anytime moment. It’s possible for you to receive a firm sample SWOT investigation which you can use as a reference guide to help invent your own company.
Your letter of introduction should disclose much more compared to the typical template. In actuality, but you can quickly equip yourself to compose a profitable letter. As a way to get payoff for a sporting function, you must compose an official requisition letter into the potential sponsors.
The letter summarizes the work of the company and also provides a succinct synopsis of all all of the job they will have completed or mean to complete to be able to confirm their origin. It’s very important to pay the letter towards the proper agency and, even if you are able to utilize the specific identify of the official receiving the correspondence. Your letter should show that you just realize the organization, and also think that you are a good fit. The very first thing you need to to be careful of is that much enjoy a restart, a cover letter should be short, easy, and simple to read. As a way to get enlightenment, you have got to write formal and expert protect letters into the probable sponsors. To help your chances of succeeding, you must not use the exact cover letter for every and every occupation of attention to youpersonally.
The correspondence should expressly address the method by that the outcome of the undertaking will help determine the organization directly. The company letter has to become professionally drafted with appropriate structure and formatting. Predicated on the goal of this letter, organization letters have been grouped into many different varieties. Writing a superb business letter can take some time and electricity. With the appropriate letter of debut template, along with a handful of helpful strategies and suggestions, you can generate a persuasive, skilled business letter which produces it possible to stand aside from your competition. Small business letters serve many functions. Thus, it’s extremely vital that you compose a company letter with loads of attention and consideration.
A grievance correspondence is an official method of bringing some criticism you might need to your company. The sort of letter essential to get a certain application is dependent upon the type of visa it’s supports. A completely free Form Clipboard provides you with total command to personalize a plethora of letters.
When individuals are requested to write a letter of support, but they may be unsure regarding the suitable content and wording. Letters of support regularly make a gap for applicants no matter of the things that they are looking for. Assistance letters are incredibly crucial in almost virtually any business enterprise. A draft letter of support will offer consistency across the plank including most of the supporters. The job advertising correspondence is likewise a chance to describe the coverage arrangement required together with the brand new function.
With people creating letters for various purposes all over the Earth, our Letter Writing Templates provide you with the proper advice in choosing the suitable format for each and every sentence doc letter which you write. A good deal of individuals who aren’t well versed in producing suchA Letters may be utilized of the a variety of selections of business letter formats which are available on the internettoday. Just before you begin, it’s important you understand as far as you can in regards for the type of letter you’re writing. Quite simply, the letter should be kept sweet and short. The teacher specialist resignation letter to chief template in PDF is utilized by instructors trying to resign in their occupation together with the intent of retirement for a teacher out of faculty.
Each business letter example must be with the exact similar one-spaced. Specific instances ought to be supplied in case possible. If you look at a few samples of letters of support, you’ll probably detect that many them possess corresponding components. Folks who are not well conscious of how exactly to write an ideal small business letter are able to take advantage of this illustration of firm letter with the goal. You introduce yourself and the idea of one’s correspondence. Given here are types of reference letters prepared for an worker who’s project hunting.
By accepting the ability to first ask the organization questions, then you’ll have the data which you want to generate a letter that gets favorable results. Inform why you’ll need the information in the event the reason isn’t obvious. The more concerns you may answer before they’re asked, the more quickly you are going to obtain your advice. In case you require some excess info, please be in contact me. From the following paragraph, extra information could be furnished to this reader. Secondly, your own personal information needs to be kept confidential and the whole period of the treatment is decided by you personally to make certain of better results.
The content of the correspondence depends on your purpose or ending objective. Perhaps not only needs one to take into account the contents, but you also need to think about what structure and formatting will help it become stand outthere. When you are satisfied with all the contents of your covering letter, then you’re getting to want to employ a formatting to ensure it’s readily digested by the company. | 2019-04-26T01:56:53Z | http://nhlteamjerseys.com/lebenslauf-musterschreiben/ |
Despite being one of the most prevalent figures in international multimodal transportation, freight forwarding companies optimization problems didn’t receive much attention from the literature. In this work we try to fill this gap by presenting the general features of air transportation seanen from the freight forwarder’s prospective and introducing the air transportation freight forwarders service problem (ATFFSP). A MILP formulation of the problem is proposed and results are studied based on real-life data of an italian freight forwarding company.
In the sales districting problem, we are given a set of customers and a set of salesmen in some area. The customers are given as points distributed across the area and the salesmen have to provide services at the customers’ locations to satisfy their requirements. The task is to allocate each customer to one salesman. This partitions the set of customers into subsets, called districts. Each district is expected to have approximately equal workload and travelling time for each salesman to promote fairness among them, and the overall travelling distance should be minimal for economic reasons. We now extend this problem to be more realistic by considering that each customer requires recurring services with different visiting frequencies like every week or two weeks during the planning horizon. This problem is called the ‘Multi-Period Sales Districting Problem’. In addition to determining the sales districts, we also want to get the weekly visiting schedule for the salesmen such that the weekly travelling distances are minimal and the workload and travelling time are balanced each week. Although the problem is very practical, it has been studied just recently.
In this presentation, we focus on the scheduling problem for one salesman in a specific district, which is already an NP-hard problem. We start by proposing a mixed integer linear programming formulation. Afterwards, we develop and implement Benders Decomposition to solve the problem, exploiting the structure of the formulation. We also consider several modifications to enhance the performance of the algorithm.
A Reconfigurable Manufacturing System provides an enterprise with best in class production systems. Mass production and product diversity are the key congruent of configuration offered by Reconfigurable Manufacturing System. In recent past, Reconfigurable Manufacturing System is posed by contemporary practices with changing dynamics. These dynamics are broadly because of change in demand patterns and change in product family. A high through put, quick changeover with minimum process cost and optimal quality provides an enterprise and production system with a competitive advantage in contemporary markets. There are three configuration aspects in Reconfigurable Manufacturing System literature for generation of systems and Soft configuration is the aspect of Reconfigurable Manufacturing System that focuses upon the process planning aspects of configuration. In this study, we provide with common grounds of Total Quality Management and RMS literature. A discussion is made for the changes in Part-family production and its relation with the level of configuration. Considering a generic production set-up consisting of n rows and m columns; we provide a general formulation for both cost and process time using the Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) technique. The objective function tends to optimize the processing, carrying and set-up costs as well as the processing and carrying time. We also formulate for the Quality parameters using Tagouchi Experiment. The parameters for quality optimization are process capability index, precision, accuracy, probability of a good part and signal to noise ratio. This study is concluded by providing an industrial example for process optimization in a production system.
We consider the problem of appointment scheduling in the presence of unpunctual patients. To address this problem, many studies combine simulation with some heuristic search method. Such optimization techniques involve a huge number of repeated schedule evaluations which makes the simulation time an important factor. In this paper, we propose a variance reduction technique to reduce the time to evaluate the performance of a schedule. The proposed method improves the precision of the simulation estimates through the judicious use of control variates and represents considerable improvement compared to traditional Monte Carlo methods. The evaluation approach is then included in a simulation optimization framework to provide insights into scheduling with unpunctual patients. We examine various unpunctuality distributions and show that the optimal scheduling policy changes when unpunctuality is considered. In many cases, scheduling patients in blocks of two or three patients better mitigates the negative effects of patient unpunctuality.
The town of Bechar located in the Western South (Sahara) of Algeria, like all the Algerian cities, a keen water demand, proportionally with the increase in the number of the population, and at the rate of increase in 3.6 %, which of 192909H in 2007, is estimated with 348415H in 2027 and deficit which recorded a level of -51954m3/day in 2013. Like a source of the shortages, we find the climatic vagaries, but also deficiencies in the management of the risks and exploitation of the resources. To remedy this, we propose in the present paper a design and an implementation of solution in the patrimonial management of water networks in the city from data resulting from a series of inspections of sections of pipelines based on Multicriteria decision analysis approach. The latter consists in defining sections of homogeneous classes according to their state. In consultation with the network manager, three classes are defined: “good”, “medium” and “bad”. We treat the problem as a “Beta” assignment (sorting) problem as it is named in the partial aggregation (outranking) approach in multicriteria analysis theory, where we use one of the methods who is ELECTRE Tri to assign sections to categories defined in advance. The results of this work tend to collaborate to solve the problems related to the drinking water leak in the cities and opens perspectives of application of this kind of approach in the field of patrimonial management in general.
This doctoral research looks at airport resource allocation problems, from the perspective of the airport operator, whilst considering other parties’ (e.g. airlines, ground handlers) needs, by developing and testing novel Simulation-Optimization (SO) methodologies. For long, the OR/MS community has been studying aviation problems, including airport operations related. Efficient use of airport resources is one such problems: it is computationally difficult to solve to optimality for real world instances, and naturally involves the need for trading off the interests of multiple stakeholders (same as above). Virtually all airport resource allocation problems manifest themselves in two main versions. First, tactical allocation plans covering a day/month/season ahead of the day of operations have to be developed and agreed between parties. In this case, robust schedules that can potentially better stand the test of time with the inevitable operational disruptions will be preferred. Second, operational control (or online) reallocation plans have to be developed on the day of operation, to counter disruptions as they happen. For both versions, SO methodologies are proposed. These make use of a combination involving both metaheuristics and Constraint Programming methods, to keep solution times within reasonable limits while catering for the most prominent uncertain aspects of these problems.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is the world’s third deadliest disease that can also frequently lead to emergency admissions. In the UK, there are about 1 million people with COPD which is a progressive lung disease.
COPD is mainly modelled by researchers with the help of Markov modelling and Monte-Carlo simulation for assessing the effectiveness of new drugs, therapies, and treatments. However, there is no work in the literature about COPD patient flow modelling at operational level. First of all, conceptualising COPD patient pathway is needed to better understand COPD services, by bridging healthcare decision makers and model developers in a common language, and more importantly to capture reality within modelling environment.
In this paper, therefore, a COPD patient flow diagram of Outpatient department is developed using healthcare guidelines and COPD service professionals from a well-known hospital in the UK. The pathway, including outpatient clinics and services, is modelled using discrete-event simulation technique. Also, a set of possible scenarios is tested. Lastly, initial model set of results are presented and analysed. In conclusion, the study will be very helpful for conceptualisation studies of different diseases as well as for COPD services in the UK to provide better planning and management.
Population growth is one of the most important factors which increase hospital demands. Limited resources in hospitals might be inadequate to meet increasing hospital demands and this can cause intensive workload for healthcare providers in hospitals. Trauma & Orthopaedics outpatient clinics involve the higher patient activities and follow-up treatments in hospitals. This study aimed to develop a discrete event simulation model for calculating clinic utilization rates of a trauma & orthopaedics outpatient clinic for projection in an English hospital. In the model, we used a big data covering 2009/10 – 2012/13 financial years. Therefore, we tackled the future 3-year demand of the hospital by considering growth projections of the region where the hospital serves. An experimental design including 3 parameters (i.e. demand, clinic slot and number of follow-up), which affect the clinic utilization rate, was taken into account for the scenario analysis. Clinic utilization rates were calculated for the clinic through the scenario analysis which involves a total of 8 experiments for each projected year. This study provides an insight for better understanding of clinic utilization rates in outpatient clinics.
To increase revenue and competitive advantage, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) have increased the level and sophistication of service components in their offering in an integrated format known as product-service systems (servitization). Though servitization promises immense benefits for OEMs, managers in servitizing firms are faced with the challenge of determining the cost of achieving outcomes or performance and what to charge. This paper presents discrete event simulation models comparing two variants of product-service systems (traditional product-plus maintenance contract and availability-based contract) under the same operation parameters for a precision machine manufacturer. A cost-price analysis is used to quantify trade-offs between the two models.
Delayed passenger trains are still a major issue for railway companies and one of the main reasons for displeased customers. In 2017, only about 80% of all ICE and IC trains in Germany arrived on time. In many other countries as well, railway companies struggle to achieve high punctuality rates. One reason for this problem is the complexity of the network infrastructure and the high capacity utilization of rails, combined with an extensive overall planning process on different levels.
The focus of this ongoing research project is to improve punctuality of passenger trains by developing a data-driven optimization approach. Many research projects have already tackled this problem and different approaches have been developed to optimize infrastructure, timetables, or connections. We want to enhance existing approaches by developing a data-driven add-on for subsequently tuning a given timetable based on historic delay data. Therefore, we analyze train delay data from recent years from a German railway company and identify systematic delays. Next, we perform small timetable adaptions in order to avoid such systematic delays. The original timetable should be retained as far as possible so that existing connections and frequencies remain preserved. Therefore, we only adjust buffer times or arrival and departure times within a minor time window. The simultaneous consideration of adaptions for the whole network makes this optimization problem a highly complex combinatorial task.
In the talk, we focus on problem definition, data-analytics results, and a concept for the adjustment of buffer times.
This paper tries to improve the robustness of soccer schedules via combined proactive and reactive approaches. Despite efforts to compute high-quality initial schedules, they are rarely fully played as planned because of uncertainties like bad weather conditions, conflicts with other events, etc. Consequently, some games are postponed or cancelled, inducing deviations from initial schedules defined as disruptions. Fixtures as they were effectively played are called realized schedules. We assume that disruptions can only be rescheduled to so-called fictive rounds, which are not present in initial schedules.
For evaluating the quality of initial and realized schedules, measures involving breaks, ranking and failures are used. A break corresponds to two consecutive games of the same team with identical home-away advantage. We develop a ranking difference (RD) measure based on the difference between the number of games that a team should have played and actually played after each round. We call a disruption a failure if it cannot be rescheduled.
We investigate several combined proactive and reactive scheduling approaches. Proactive strategies decide when to schedule fictive rounds. Reactive strategies decide to which fictive round a disruption should be rescheduled under one of two assumptions: (i) disruptions are rescheduled immediately and permanently, and (ii) disruptions are rescheduled to fictive rounds temporarily and can be changed later if more information becomes available. In computational experiments, we generate disruptions based on probability distributions resulting from our empirical study, and we combine proactive strategies with reactive strategies to compare the resulting schedules on breaks, RD, and failures.
Many industrial systems can be viewed as a chain of interlinked subsystems. A chief focus of operations research is to optimize these links, particularly the transfer of items from one stage to the next. In some sectors (notably the food industry) it is furthermore critical to minimize the total (waiting) time of items between production stages; for example due to regulations that limit exposure time to ambient temperature. In that sense, queues in these production lines can be called sensitive.
We envision a two-stage production system: stage 1 comprises multiple parallel machines whose processed items must all be served by stage 2, a machine with a single sensitive queue. We assume that the processing times (stage 1) have distinct distributions while all service time distributions (stage 2) are identical. If our objective is to minimize the waiting time of items in the system, we should avoid ‘burstiness’ at the sensitive queue’s entrance. Various strategies can be used for this, but we focus on spreading the expected completion times of stage 1 as evenly as possible. This objective has strong similarities to the Stochastic Break-In-Moment (SBIM) problem in operating room scheduling; with the major difference that the assignment of tasks to machines can be freely chosen in the current problem.
We investigate the improvement that this free assignment enables, and under what conditions it justifies the extra computational cost. We will present the potential of the assignment problem (as compared to SBIM) under various instance sizes, levels of stochasticity and restrictions.
This paper studies a hyper heuristic (HH) algorithm for the minimum-order frequency assignment problem (MO-FAP). The goal of the MO-FAP is to assign a frequency to each request while satisfying a set of constraints and minimizing the number of used frequencies. HH can be thought of as an algorithm that combines multiple heuristics to solve hard combinatorial optimization problems. Such heuristics are called low level heuristics (LLHs) and are managed by HH. Different mechanisms for selecting the LLHs are investigated. Several techniques are also used to make the HH algorithm in this study more efficient. One of these is using a lower bound on the number of frequencies that are required for a feasible solution to exist. Moreover, each LLH is associated with an independent tabu list. Overall, the HH algorithm showed competitive performance compared with other algorithms in the literature.
The bin packing problem is an NP-hard problem that different volumes must be packed into a finite number of bins for the purpose of minimizing the number of bins used.Despite its computational complexity,it can be solved with sophisticated algorithms.Bin packing problem can also be seen as a special case of cutting stock problem.Also,many variations of this problem has been confronted in literature, such as one,two and three dimensional packing,linear packing, packing by weight,packing by cost.Likewise,there are also so many applications of bin packing problem algorithms,such as container loading,loading trucks with weight capacity constraints,creating file backups in media,technology mapping and cloud computing.
International trade has become significant with the evolution of the technology.For keeping on the logistic operations with low cost,higher accuracy and rapidity,the mathematical optimization tools and models are highly used and also needed.Moreover,the container loading problem is highly occurred in the logistic operations.At that time,appropriate algorithms must be applied due to get optimum results.However in some cases,these algorithms aren’t enough for the solutions of bin packing problems.In this study, the logistic operations and container loading plan of a filter factory was investigated.For improving the work load speed,decreasing the number of container used and making appropriate optimum decisions, 2D Combinatorial Area Fitting Algorithm(2D-CAMFA) has been generated.Consequently,an exact algorithm of two dimensional bin packing problem Self-Best Fit Algorithm was compared with 2D-CAMFA model and optimum result was taken from 2D-CAMFA.After examining of the modeld,it was applied to the real data of filter package and optimum result has been taken.
In the time-relaxed double round-robin problem with availability constraints, we are given a set of slots and a set of teams that meet one another a fixed number of times. Furthermore, each team provides slots in which it can host a game, and slots in which it cannot play at all. Since time-relaxed schedules contain (many) more slots than there are matches per team, the number of rest days between two consecutive matches of the same team can vary considerably. Ideally, a team has at least R days rest between two consecutive matches in order to avoid injuries. Hence, we apply a penalty each time a team has less than R days between two consecutive matches; this penalty increases as the number of rest days decreases. The goal is to find a schedule that minimizes the total penalty.
To solve this problem, we first propose fix-and-relax decomposition methods based on the teams as well as on time-intervals. Basically, fix-and-relax methods initially solve a relaxed IP-formulation and then gradually reoptimize the model with the integrality constraints enabled for a small subset of variables. The method then fixes the variable values of the selected group and repeats the procedure until all variables have an integral value. Second, we propose a genetic algorithm enhanced with an improvement heuristic that sequentially solves a transportation problem which (re)schedules all home games of a team. For numerous artificial and real-life instances, these heuristics generate near-optimal schedules using considerably less computational resources compared to integer programming (Gurobi).
A large number of studies focusses on predicting bankruptcy of companies using various data sources, however current models can still be improved to achieve even better predictions. This research introduces a new method to more accurately predict the probability that a company will suffer financial distress. More specifically, this research exploits the vast increase in social media data put out by companies that should enable to develop more predictive models than those developed in the past. This will be done by relating a completely new type of information than has been considered in literature so far, that contained in company tweets put out on Twitter, to the incidence of distress. It is expected that prior to distress the content and other aspects of tweets will differ between that posted by those companies that subsequently suffer distress and those that do not. A large sample of NYSE listed companies are used and specialist tools are applied to download and analyse the content of tweets together with standard control variables. Performances of models with and without Tweets are compared, as well as performances of models that use different types of classifiers.
This research will make novel contributions to the literature, since this has not been done before. Furthermore, the research will have impact with considerable significance and reach in that banks, building societies, data companies and industrial corporations can potentially make use of the models the research will develop.
The dynamic traveling salesman problem with uncertain release dates (DTSP-urd) that is a problem in which a dispatcher receives goods from its suppliers as the distribution takes place. The goods to be delivered are available for the distribution only after they arrive at the depot of the dispatcher. The arrival time of the goods at the depot is called the release date of a parcel. In particular, in the DTSP-urd, release dates are considered to be uncertain and dynamically updated as the distribution takes place. The objective of the problem is to minimize the total time needed to serve all customers, given by the sum of the traveling time and the waiting time at the depot. The waiting time is due to the fact that the vehicle has to wait at the depot for all the parcels of the customers it is going to serve in the next route. A reoptimization technique is proposed to tackle the dynamic aspect of the problem and three dynamic policies with increasing reoptimization frequency are introduced. Two models for the solution of the problem at each decision epoch are discussed. The first one is an adaptive deterministic model where a point estimation of the release dates is used. The second is a stochastic model exploiting the entire probabilistic information available for the release dates.
This paper focus on the impact of Foreign Aids on Economic Growth for the 5 poorest economies of the world (Niger, Congo, Burundi, Malawi, and Central African Republic). Employing endogenous growth model and annual time series data from 1986 – 2015, we examine this growing nexus using a triangulation of approaches and a robust model specification, hence testing both the long run and short run relationship between foreign aid and economic growth through the ARDL Bound test of Co-Integration (long-run relationship) and incorporating an Error Correction Model to test for short-run relationship alongside the speed of adjustment back to the long run equilibrium after a short run shock. The result shows a positive and significant long-run relationship for all countries except for Burundi which displayed no long-run relationship. Interestingly, no short run relationship was found for all countries. The derived conclusion from this paper is that government have to re-evaluate the sectoral allocation of this foreign Aids received to ensure a higher efficiency and positive effect on economic growth of this countries.
Taking precaution against air pollution is essential due to its significant adverse effects on human health. Thus forecasting air polluter concentrations has attracted special attention in the recent times. Particulate matter (PM) is one of the most critical air polluters considering its link to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and lung cancer. In this study, we aim to present a literature review on PM concentration prediction methods.
We revisit the classic Cournot model and extend it to a two-echelon supply chain with an upstream supplier who operates under demand uncertainty and multiple downstream retailers who compete over quantity. The supplier’s belief about retail demand is modeled via a continuous probability distribution function $F$. If $F$ has the decreasing generalized mean residual life (DGMRL) property, then the supplier’s optimal pricing policy exists and is the unique fixed point of the mean residual life (MRL) function. This closed form representation of the supplier’s equilibrium strategy facilitates a transparent comparative statics and sensitivity analysis. We utilize the theory of stochastic orderings to study the response of the equilibrium fundamentals – wholesale price, retail price and quantity – to varying demand distribution parameters. We examine supply chain performance, in terms of the distribution of profits, supply chain efficiency, in terms of the Price of Anarchy, and complement our findings with numerical results.
The Inventory Routing Problem (IRP) is an underlying optimization problem for a warehouse replenishing multiple retailers to satisfy their demands while minimizing transportation and inventory costs within the system. Forecasting accuracy plays an important role in IRP, because the demands are stochastic and the planning is done for a longer horizon. The uncertainty level among the planning horizon makes it challenging for the decision makers to find the optimum level of products to be delivered to the retailers as well as the best routing system to reach them. In this paper we consider the impact of forecasting accuracy on the inventory and service level for a set of randomly dispersed retailers around a central warehouse in a distribution centre. We optimize the inventory levels and expected costs for each retailer for an illustrative example. The results will be simulated to compare the actual and expected outcomes of the model.
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Play 4 W 50 2 29 4-Joan Roberts-Leona Veldhuis vs.
Play 2NT E -120 0 0 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 2NT E 50 2 29 8-Gay Garcia-Anita Smokevitch vs.
Play 3NT W 150 6 86 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
Play 4 W 100 4.5 64 10-Carol Skamiera-Jean Hellekjaer vs.
Play 4 W -100 2.5 36 1-Pamela George-Roberta Palmer vs.
Play 3NT W -150 1 14 2-Stephen Leist-James Peresta vs.
Play 4 W -50 5 71 3-Catherine Curran-Ivana Dugal vs.
Play 4 W -100 2.5 36 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 2NT E 120 7 100 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 4 E -200 0 0 7-Adele Forster-Barbara Reed vs.
Play 3NT E -50 5 71 9-Larry Freedman-Susan Meneilley vs.
Play 2NT E -50 5 71 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs.
Play 3NT N 600 6 86 1-David Jasperse-Gary Camp vs.
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Play 3NT N 600 6 86 3-Barb Ferrera-Jane Gardner vs.
Play 3NT N -100 0.5 7 4-Joan Roberts-Leona Veldhuis vs.
Play 3NT N 600 6 86 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 3 N 130 2 29 8-Gay Garcia-Anita Smokevitch vs.
Play 3NT N -100 0.5 7 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
Play 3 N 150 4 57 10-Carol Skamiera-Jean Hellekjaer vs.
Play 3NT N -600 1 14 1-Pamela George-Roberta Palmer vs.
Play 3NT N 100 6.5 93 3-Catherine Curran-Ivana Dugal vs.
Play 3 N -150 3 43 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 3NT N -600 1 14 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 3NT N -600 1 14 7-Adele Forster-Barbara Reed vs.
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Play 3 N -130 5 71 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs.
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Play 3 N 140 4 57 3-Barb Ferrera-Jane Gardner vs.
Play 4 E 200 5.5 79 4-Joan Roberts-Leona Veldhuis vs.
Play 4 N -50 1 14 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 4 E 300 7 100 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 3 E 100 2.5 36 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
Play 4 E 200 5.5 79 10-Carol Skamiera-Jean Hellekjaer vs.
Play 3 E -100 4.5 64 1-Pamela George-Roberta Palmer vs.
Play 4 E -200 1.5 21 2-Stephen Leist-James Peresta vs.
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Play 3 N -140 3 43 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs.
Play 2 E -140 6.5 93 1-David Jasperse-Gary Camp vs.
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Play 3NT W -430 2 29 3-Barb Ferrera-Jane Gardner vs.
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Play 2NT W -180 4 57 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 3NT W -400 3 43 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 3NT W -460 0.5 7 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
Play 2 E -140 6.5 93 10-Carol Skamiera-Jean Hellekjaer vs.
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Play 2 E 140 0.5 7 3-Catherine Curran-Ivana Dugal vs.
Play 2NT W 180 3 43 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 2 E 140 0.5 7 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 3NT W 400 4 57 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
Play 2NT W 150 2 29 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 3NT W 430 5 71 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs.
Play 4 N 650 7 100 1-David Jasperse-Gary Camp vs.
Play 4 N -100 0 0 2-Joyce Close-Rosalyn Monticciolo vs.
Play 2 N 170 2 29 3-Barb Ferrera-Jane Gardner vs.
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Play 3NT N 600 4 57 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 4 N 620 5.5 79 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 4 S 620 5.5 79 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
Play 3 N 170 2 29 10-Carol Skamiera-Jean Hellekjaer vs.
Play 4 S -620 1.5 21 1-Pamela George-Roberta Palmer vs.
Play 3 N -170 5 71 2-Stephen Leist-James Peresta vs.
Play 3 N -170 5 71 3-Catherine Curran-Ivana Dugal vs.
Play 3NT N -600 3 43 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 4 N -650 0 0 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 4 N -620 1.5 21 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
Play 4 N 100 7 100 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 2 N -170 5 71 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs.
Play 3NT W -660 2.5 36 1-David Jasperse-Gary Camp vs.
Play 6NT W 200 7 100 2-Joyce Close-Rosalyn Monticciolo vs.
Play 3NT W -630 5 71 3-Barb Ferrera-Jane Gardner vs.
Play 3 W -150 6 86 4-Joan Roberts-Leona Veldhuis vs.
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Play 3NT W -660 2.5 36 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 3NT E -660 2.5 36 7-Barbara Button-Julie Baba vs.
Play 6 W -1370 0 0 10-Carol Skamiera-Jean Hellekjaer vs.
Play 3 W 150 1 14 1-Pamela George-Roberta Palmer vs.
Play 6 W 1370 7 100 2-Stephen Leist-James Peresta vs.
Play 3NT E 660 4.5 64 3-Catherine Curran-Ivana Dugal vs.
Play 3NT W 660 4.5 64 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 3NT W 660 4.5 64 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 6NT W -200 0 0 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
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Play 3NT W 630 2 29 9-Larry Freedman-Susan Meneilley vs.
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Play 3 N 170 7 100 2-Joyce Close-Rosalyn Monticciolo vs.
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Play 3 N 170 1.5 21 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 3NT N 630 5.5 79 7-Barbara Button-Julie Baba vs.
Play 4 N 170 1.5 21 10-Carol Skamiera-Jean Hellekjaer vs.
Play 3 S 100 7 100 1-Pamela George-Roberta Palmer vs.
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Play 3 N -170 5.5 79 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
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Play 4 S -450 3 43 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 4 S -450 3 43 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs.
Play 3NT S 600 0.5 7 1-David Jasperse-Gary Camp vs.
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Play 3NT S 630 3.5 50 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 3NT S 630 3.5 50 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 3NT S 600 0.5 7 7-Barbara Button-Julie Baba vs.
Play 3NT S 630 3.5 50 8-Gay Garcia-Anita Smokevitch vs.
Play 3NT S -630 3.5 50 2-Stephen Leist-James Peresta vs.
Play 3NT S -600 6.5 93 3-Catherine Curran-Ivana Dugal vs.
Play 3NT S -630 3.5 50 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 3NT S -630 3.5 50 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 3NT S -600 6.5 93 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
Play 3NT S -660 1 14 7-Adele Forster-Barbara Reed vs.
Play 3NT S -630 3.5 50 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 3NT S -690 0 0 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs.
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Play 1NT S 120 4.5 64 4-Joan Roberts-Leona Veldhuis vs.
Play 2NT N -100 0 0 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 1NT N 120 4.5 64 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 2NT S 120 4.5 64 7-Barbara Button-Julie Baba vs.
Play 1NT N 120 4.5 64 8-Gay Garcia-Anita Smokevitch vs.
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Play 1NT N -120 2.5 36 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 1NT S -120 2.5 36 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 2NT S -120 2.5 36 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
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Play 1NT N -120 2.5 36 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 1NT S -120 2.5 36 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs.
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Play 3NT S 430 7 100 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 4 N -50 0.5 7 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 4 N 420 4.5 64 7-Barbara Button-Julie Baba vs.
Play 4 N 420 4.5 64 8-Gay Garcia-Anita Smokevitch vs.
Play 3 N 170 2 29 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
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Play 4 N 50 6.5 93 3-Catherine Curran-Ivana Dugal vs.
Play 4 N -420 2.5 36 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 4 N -420 2.5 36 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 4 N 50 6.5 93 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
Play 4 N -420 2.5 36 7-Adele Forster-Barbara Reed vs.
Play 4 N -420 2.5 36 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 3 N -170 5 71 9-Larry Freedman-Susan Meneilley vs.
Play 3 S 130 5.5 79 2-Joyce Close-Rosalyn Monticciolo vs.
Play 4 S 130 5.5 79 3-Barb Ferrera-Jane Gardner vs.
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Play 3 E 200 7 100 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 3 E 100 3 43 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 2 S 110 4 57 7-Barbara Button-Julie Baba vs.
Play 3 E -140 0.5 7 8-Gay Garcia-Anita Smokevitch vs.
Play 3 S -100 2 29 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
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Play 3 E -100 4 57 3-Catherine Curran-Ivana Dugal vs.
Play 3 S -130 1.5 21 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 2 S -110 3 43 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 4 S -130 1.5 21 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
Play 3 E 140 6.5 93 7-Adele Forster-Barbara Reed vs.
Play 3 E 140 6.5 93 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 3 S 100 5 71 9-Larry Freedman-Susan Meneilley vs.
Play 3 E -140 3 43 2-Joyce Close-Rosalyn Monticciolo vs.
Play 3 E -140 3 43 3-Barb Ferrera-Jane Gardner vs.
Play 4 E 100 7 100 4-Joan Roberts-Leona Veldhuis vs.
Play 3 E -140 3 43 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 2 E -170 0 0 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 3 E -140 3 43 7-Barbara Button-Julie Baba vs.
Play 3 E -140 3 43 8-Gay Garcia-Anita Smokevitch vs.
Play 4 E 50 6 86 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
Play 3 E 140 4 57 1-Pamela George-Roberta Palmer vs.
Play 2 E 170 7 100 3-Catherine Curran-Ivana Dugal vs.
Play 3 E 140 4 57 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 3 E 140 4 57 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 3 E 140 4 57 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
Play 3 E 140 4 57 7-Adele Forster-Barbara Reed vs.
Play 4 E -100 0 0 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 4 E -50 1 14 9-Larry Freedman-Susan Meneilley vs.
Play 5 S 620 3.5 50 3-Barb Ferrera-Jane Gardner vs.
Play 3 S 190 1 14 4-Joan Roberts-Leona Veldhuis vs.
Play 6 S 1370 7 100 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 3 S 170 0 0 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 5 S 620 3.5 50 7-Barbara Button-Julie Baba vs.
Play 5 S 620 3.5 50 8-Gay Garcia-Anita Smokevitch vs.
Play 5 S 620 3.5 50 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
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Play 5 S -620 3.5 50 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 5 S -620 3.5 50 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
Play 3 S -190 6 86 7-Adele Forster-Barbara Reed vs.
Play 5 S -620 3.5 50 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 6 S -1370 0 0 9-Larry Freedman-Susan Meneilley vs.
Play 3NT N -660 1 14 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs.
Play 4 W -650 3.5 50 3-Barb Ferrera-Jane Gardner vs.
Play 3NT W -660 0.5 7 4-Joan Roberts-Leona Veldhuis vs.
Play 3 E -200 7 100 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 4 E -650 3.5 50 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 4 W -620 6 86 7-Barbara Button-Julie Baba vs.
Play 4 E -650 3.5 50 8-Gay Garcia-Anita Smokevitch vs.
Play 3NT E -660 0.5 7 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
Play 4 E -650 3.5 50 10-Carol Skamiera-Jean Hellekjaer vs.
Play 4 E 650 3.5 50 2-Stephen Leist-James Peresta vs.
Play 4 W 620 1 14 4-Linda Lutze-Mary Beebe vs.
Play 4 W 650 3.5 50 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 4 E 650 3.5 50 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
Play 3NT W 660 6.5 93 7-Adele Forster-Barbara Reed vs.
Play 3NT E 660 6.5 93 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 3 E 200 0 0 9-Larry Freedman-Susan Meneilley vs.
Play 4 E 650 3.5 50 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs.
Play 4 S 420 3 43 3-Barb Ferrera-Jane Gardner vs.
Play 4 S 420 3 43 4-Joan Roberts-Leona Veldhuis vs.
Play 3NT S 430 6 86 5-Latika Mangrulkar-James Korte vs.
Play 4 N 420 3 43 6-Diane Kosuda-Linda Schiller vs.
Play 4 S -50 0 0 7-Barbara Button-Julie Baba vs.
Play 3NT S 490 7 100 8-Gay Garcia-Anita Smokevitch vs.
Play 4 S 420 3 43 9-Craig Linderman-James Phillips vs.
Play 4 S 420 3 43 10-Carol Skamiera-Jean Hellekjaer vs.
Play 4 N -420 4 57 2-Stephen Leist-James Peresta vs.
Play 4 S -420 4 57 5-Joel Grossman-James McNamara vs.
Play 3NT S -490 0 0 6-Mary Robinson-Jane Lehman vs.
Play 4 S -420 4 57 7-Adele Forster-Barbara Reed vs.
Play 4 S -420 4 57 8-John Grant-Nancy Spence vs.
Play 3NT S -430 1 14 9-Larry Freedman-Susan Meneilley vs.
Play 4 S -420 4 57 10-James McCabe-John Caldwell vs. | 2019-04-21T12:48:30Z | https://live.acbl.org/event/1805022/1402/1/summary |
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how The Open Group is addressing the information needs and challenges in the healthcare ecosystem.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: The Open Group.
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to a special BriefingsDirect panel discussion coming to you in conjunction with The Open Group Conference on February 3 in San Francisco.
I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator as we examine how the healthcare industry can benefit from improved and methodological information flow.
Healthcare, like no other sector of the economy, exemplifies the challenges and the opportunity for improving how the various participants in a complex ecosystem interact. The Open Group, at its next North American conference, has made improved information flow across so-called boundaryless organizations the theme of its gathering of IT leaders, enterprise architects, and standards developers and implementers.
Join us now, as we explore what it takes to bring rigorous interactions, process efficiency, and governance to data and workflows that must extend across many healthcare participants with speed and dependability.
Learn how improved cross-organization collaboration plays a huge part in helping to make healthcare more responsive, effective, safe, and cost-efficient. And also become acquainted with what The Open Group’s new Healthcare Industry Forum is doing to improve the situation.
Gardner: We’re also here with Eric Stephens, an Oracle Enterprise Architect. Welcome, Eric.
Eric Stephens: Thank you, Dana.
So first to you, Larry. Why is healthcare such a tough nut to crack when it comes to this information flow? Is there something unique about healthcare that we don't necessarily find in other vertical industries?
Schmidt: What’s unique about healthcare right now is that in order to answer the question we have to go back to some of the challenges we’ve seen in healthcare.
We’ve progressed in healthcare from a healthcare delivery model that was more based on acute care -- that is, I get sick, I go to the doctor -- to more of a managed-care type capability with the healthcare delivery, where a doctor at times is watching and trying to coach you. Now, we’ve gotten to where the individual is in charge of their own healthcare.
With that, the ecosystem around healthcare has not had the opportunity to focus the overall interactions based on the individual. So we see an awful lot of fragmentation occurring. There are many great standards across the powers that exist within the ecosystem, but if you take the individual and place that individual in the center of this universe, the whole information model changes.
Then, of course, there are other things, such as technology advances, personal biometric devices, and things like that that come into play and allow us to be much more effective with information that can be captured for healthcare. As a result, it’s the change with the focus on the individual that is allowing us the opportunity to redefine how information should flow across the healthcare ecosystem.
Gardner: So I guess it’s interesting, Larry, that the individual is at the center or hub of this ongoing moving ecosystem with many spokes, if you will. Is that a characterization, or is there no hub and that’s perhaps one of the challenges for this?
Schmidt: What you said first is a good way to categorize it. The scenario of the individual being more in charge of their healthcare -- care of their health would be a better way to think of this -- is a way to see both improvements in the information flow as well as making improvements in the overall cost of healthcare going forward.
As I offered earlier, because the ecosystem had pretty much been focused around the doctor's visit, or the doctor’s work with an individual, as opposed to the individual’s work with the doctor. We see tremendous opportunity in making advancements in the communications models that can occur across healthcare.
Gardner: Larry, is this specific to the United States or North America, is this global in nature, or is it very much a mixed bag, market to market as to how the challenges have mounted?
Schmidt: I think in any country, across the world, the individual being the focus of the ecosystem goes across the boundaries of countries. Of course, The Open Group is responsible and is a worldwide standards body. As a result of that, it's a great match for us to be able to focus the healthcare ecosystem to the individual and use the capabilities of The Open Group to be able to make advances in the communication models across all countries around healthcare.
Gardner: Eric, thinking about this from a technological point of view, as an enterprise architect, we’re now dealing with this hub and spoke with the patient at the middle. A lot of this does have to do with information, data, and workflow, but we’ve dealt with these things before in many instances in the enterprise and in IT.
Is there anything particular about the technology that is difficult for healthcare, or is this really more a function of the healthcare verticals and the technology is really ready to step up to the plate?
Stephens: Well, Dana, the technology is there and it is ready to step up to the plate. I’ll start with transparency of the information. Let’s pick a favorite poster child, Amazon. In terms of the detail that's available on my account. I can look at past orders. I can look up and see the cost of services, I can track activity that's taking place, both from a purchase and a return standpoint. That level of visibility that you’re alluding to exists. The technology is there, and it’s a matter of applying it.
As to why it's not being applied in a rapid fashion in the healthcare industry, we could surmise a number of reasons. One of them is potentially around the cacophony of standards that exist and the lack of a “Rosetta Stone” that links those standards together to maximum interoperability.
The other challenge that exists is simply the focus in healthcare around the healthcare technology that’s being used, the surgical instruments, the diagnostic tools, and such. There is focus and great innovation there, but when it comes to the plumbing of IT, oftentimes that will suffer.
Back to you, Larry, on this boundaryless issue. There are standards in place in other industries that help foster a supply-chain ecosystem or a community of partners that work together.
Is that what The Open Group is seeking? Are they going to take what they’ve done in other industries for standardization and apply it to healthcare, or do you perhaps need to start from scratch? Is this such a unique challenge that you can't simply retrofit other standardization activities? How do you approach something like healthcare from a standards perspective?
I think it's a great term to reflect the vast number of stakeholders that would exist across the healthcare ecosystem.
Schmidt: The first thing we have to do is gain an appreciation for the stakeholders that interact. We’re using the term “ecosystem” here. I think it's a great term to reflect the vast number of stakeholders that would exist across the healthcare ecosystem. Anywhere from the patient, to the doctor, to payment organization for paying claims, the life sciences organizations, for pharmaceuticals, and things like that, there are so many places that stakeholders can interact seamlessly.
So it’s being able to use The Open Group’s assets to first understand what the ecosystem can be, and then secondly, use The Open Group’s capabilities around things like security, TOGAF from an architecture methodology, enablement and so on. Those assets are things that we can leverage to allow us to be able to use the tools of The Open Group to make advances within the healthcare industry.
It’s an amazing challenge, but you have to take it one step at a time, and the first step is going to be that definition of the ecosystem.
Gardner: I suppose there’s no better place to go for teasing out what the issues are and what the right prioritization should be than to go to the actual participants. The Open Group did just that last summer in Philadelphia at their earlier North American conference. They had some 60 individuals representing primary stakeholders in healthcare in the same room and they conducted some surveys.
Larry, maybe you can provide us an overview of what they found and how that’s been a guide to how to proceed?
Schmidt: What we wanted to do was present the concept of boundaryless information flow across the healthcare ecosystem. So we surveyed the participants that were part of the conference itself. One of the questions we asked was about the healthcare quality of data, as well as the efficiency and the effectiveness of data. Specifically, the polling questions, were designed to gauge the state of healthcare data quality and effective information flow.
We understood that 86 percent of those participants felt very uncomfortable with the quality of healthcare information flows, and 91 percent of the participants felt very uncomfortable with the efficiency of healthcare information flows.
In the discussion in Philadelphia, we talked about why information isn’t flowing much more easily and freely within this ecosystem. We discovered that a lot of the standards that currently exist within the ecosystem are very much tower-oriented. That is, they only handle a portion of the ecosystem, and the interoperability across those standards is an area that needs to be focused on.
But we do think that, because the individual should be placed into the center of the ecosystem, there's new ground that will come into play. Our Philadelphia participants actually confirmed that, as we were working through our workshop. That was one of the big, big findings that we had in the Philadelphia conference.
We understood that 86 percent of those participants felt very uncomfortable with the quality of healthcare information flows.
Tell us a little about how the mission statement for the Healthcare Industry Forum was influenced by your survey. Is there other information, perhaps a white paper or other collateral out there, that people can look to, to either learn more about this or maybe even take part in it?
Schmidt: We presented first a vision statement around boundaryless information flow. I’ll go ahead and just offer that to the team here. Boundaryless information flow of healthcare data is enabled throughout a complete healthcare ecosystem to standardization of both vocabulary and messaging that is understood by all participants within the system. This results in higher quality outcomes, streamlined business processes, reduction of fraud, and innovation enablement.
When we presented that in the conference, there was big consensus among the participants around that statement and buy in to the idea that we want that as our vision for a Healthcare Forum to actually occur.
Since then, of course, we’ve published this white paper that is the findings of the Philadelphia Conference. We’re working towards the production of a treatise, which is really the study of the problem domain that we believe we can be successful in. We also can make a major impact around this individual communication flow, enabling individuals to be in charge of more of their healthcare.
Our mission will be to provide the means to enable boundaryless information flow across the ecosystem. What we’re trying to do is make sure that we work in concert with other standards bodies to recognize the great work that’s happening around this tower concept that we believe is a boundary within the ecosystem.
Hopefully, we’ll get to a point where we’re able to collaborate, both with those standards bodies, as well as work within our own means to come up with additional standards that allows us to make this communication flow seamless or boundaryless.
Gardner: Eric Stephens, back to you with the enterprise architect questions. Of course, it’s important to solve the Tower of Babel issues around taxonomy, definitions, and vocabulary, but I suppose there is also a methodology issue.
Frameworks have worked quite well in enterprise architecture and in other verticals and in the IT organizations and enterprises. Is there something from your vantage point as an enterprise architect that needs to be included in this vision, perhaps looking to the next steps after you’ve gotten some of the taxonomy and definitions worked out?
Stephens: Dana, in terms of working through the taxonomies and such, as an enterprise architect, I view it as part of a larger activity around going through a process, like the TOGAF methodology, it’s architecture development methodology.
In the healthcare landscape, and in other industries, there are a lot of players coming to the table and need to interact.
By doing so, using a tailored version of that, we’ll get to that taxonomy definition and the alignment of standards and such. But there's also the addressing alignment and business processes and other application components that comes into play. That’s going to drive us towards improving the viscosity of the information, that's moving both within an enterprise and outside of the enterprise.
In the healthcare landscape, and in other industries, there are a lot of players coming to the table and need to interact, especially if you are talking about a complex episode of care. You may have two, three, or four different organizations in play. You have labs, the doctors, specialized centers, and such, and all that requires information flow.
Coming back to the methodology, I think it’s bringing to bear an architecture methodology like provided in TOGAF. It’s going to aid individuals in getting a broad picture, and also a detailed picture, of what needs to be done in order to achieve this goal of boundaryless information flow.
Gardner: I suppose, gentlemen, that we should also recognize that we are going about this in the larger context of change in the IT and business landscapes. We’re seeing many more mobile devices. We’re probably going to see patients accessing more information that we have been discussing through some sort of a mobile device, which is good news, because more and more patients and their providers can access information regardless of where they are. So mobility, I think, is a fairly important accelerant to some of this.
And, of course, there’s big data, the ability to take reams and reams of information, deal with it rapidly, analyze it in near real-time and then scale accordingly for cost issues. It’s also another big thing.
So let’s just quickly step aside from the forum activities and look at how the larger context of change is perhaps fortuitously timed for what we we’d like to do in terms of transformation around healthcare. Let me first direct that to you, Larry. How important are things like mobile and big data in making significant progress in the issues facing healthcare?
Schmidt: Well, that’s interesting, because when we first stared with mobility devices, I actually built and think that the mobile devices become, what I will call a personal integration server. It will help the individual who wants to take charge of their healthcare or care of their health. It will give them the opportunity to capture information using other devices, such as biometric devices, blood pressure monitors, and things like that, and have that captured on a mobile device and placed in a repository someplace to allow either a physician or others, or even that individual, to look at trending over time.
To me, the mobile device, from a standpoint of being able to gather data, is a great technology enabler that has come of age. It allows us the opportunity to streamline that information gathering that is necessary to provide the right diagnoses of working with your health coach or your provider.
Of course, that has the possibility, at the individual level, of producing a lot of data, and it could be massive amount of data, depending on how the data is actually gathered. So big data and analytics, even at the individual level, being able to decipher or to understand trending and things that are happening to the individual over time outside of the doctor’s office, is something I think will really enable improvements in healthcare.
One of the key success factors that is going to have to be addressed is interoperability.
All that, of course, is fueled by the “Internet of things” and technology advances such as IPv6 to allow us to use devices like this across a network and actually keep them identified. Those two technologies that we see in IT trends, will be a great help in advancing healthcare and of course the possibility of it enabling boundaryless information flow.
Gardner: Eric Stephens, do you want to weigh in as well on where these new advances in IT can play a huge role if those standards and the framework approach methodologies are in play?
Stephens: Larry really hit the points well. I was thinking about the new terminology, the Internet of things or machine to machine, where mobile devices could end up being the size of a fingernail at some point.
Do we get to the point where there is real-time monitoring of critical patients, going back through other mobile devices and into a doctor’s office or something, will we have the ability to do a virtual office visit, and how much equipment will you need in a home, for example, to go through and do routine checkups on children and such?
One of the key success factors that is going to have to be addressed is interoperability. Back when we were all starting to cut our teeth on the Internet, one of the things that was fascinating to me is that, you have a handful of standards and all these vendors are conforming to them, such that you don’t have to think about plugging in a laptop to a network or accessing website. All that’s driven by standardization.
One of the things that we can do in the Forum is start to drive some of that standardization, so that we have these devices working together easily, and it provides the necessary medical professionals the information they need, so they can make more timely decisions. It’s giving the right information, to the right decision maker, at the right time. That, in turn, drives better health outcomes, and it's going to, we hope, drive down the overall cost profile of healthcare, specifically here in the United States.
Gardner: I should think makes for a high incentive to work on these issues of standardization, taxonomy, definitions, and methodologies so that you can take advantage of these great technologies and the scale and efficiency they afford.
Schmidt: Actually, Eric and I are doing a joint presentation and we’re going to talk about some of the challenges that we think we can see is ahead of us as a result of trying to enable our vision around boundaryless information flow, specifically around healthcare.
As an enterprise architect, I look at things in terms of the business, the application, information, technology, and architecture.
The culture of being able to produce standards in an industry like this is going to be a major challenge to us. There is a lot of individualization that occurs across this industry. So having people come together and recognize that there are going to be different views, different points of views, and coming into more of a consensus on how information should flow, specifically in healthcare. Although I think any of the forums go through this cultural change.
We’re going to talk about that at the beginning in the conference as a part of how we’re planning to address those challenges as part of the Industry Forum itself. Then, other meetings will allow us to continue with some of the work that we have been doing around a treatise and other actions that will help us get started down the path of understating the ecosystem and so on.
Those are the things that we’ll be addressing at this specific conference.
Gardner: Eric, anything to add to that, I didn't realize you are both doing this as a joint presentation?
Stephens: Yes, and thanks to Larry for allowing me to participate in it. One of the areas I will be focusing on, and you alluded to this earlier, Dana, is around the information architecture.
As an enterprise architect, I look at things in terms of the business, the application, information, technology, and architecture. When we talk about boundaryless information flow, my remarks and contributions are focused around the information architecture and specifically around an ecosystem of an information architecture at a generic level, but also the need and importance of integration. I will perhaps touch a little bit on the standards to integrate that with Larry’s thoughts.
Schmidt: Dana, I just wanted to add the other work that we’ll be doing there at the conference. We’ve invited some of the healthcare organizations in that area of the country, San Francisco and so on, to come in on Tuesday. We plan to present the findings of the paper and the work that we did in the Philadelphia Conference, and get opinions in refining both the observations, as well as some of the direction that we plan to take with the Healthcare Forum.
Obviously we’ve shared here some of the thoughts of where we believe we’re moving with the Healthcare Forum, but as the Forum continues to form, some of the direction of it will morph based on the participants, and based on some of the things that we see happening with the industry.
So, it’s a really exciting time and I’m actually very much looking forward to presenting the findings of the Philadelphia Conference, getting, as I said, the next set of feedback, and starting the discussion as to how we can make change going toward that vision of boundaryless information flow.
We’re actually able to see a better profile of what the individual is doing throughout their life and throughout their days.
Gardner: I should also point out that it’s not too late for our listeners and readers to participate themselves in this conference. If you’re in the San Francisco area, you’re able to get there and partake, but there are also going to be online activities. There will be some of the presentations delivered online and there will be Twitter feeds.
So if you can't make it to San Francisco on February 3, be aware that The Open Group Conference will be available in several different ways online. Then, there will be materials available after the fact to access on-demand. Of course, if you’re interested in taking more activity under your wing with the Forum itself, there will be information on The Open Group website as to how to get involved.
Before we sign off, I want to get a sense of what the stakes are here. It seems to me that if you do this well and if you do this correctly, you get alignment across these different participants -- the patient being at the hub of the wheel of the ecosystem. There’s a tremendous opportunity here for improvement, not only in patient care and outcomes, but costs, efficiency, and process innovation.
So first to you Larry. If we do this right, what can we expect?
Schmidt: There are several things to expect. Number one, I believe that the overall health of the population will improve, because individuals are more knowledgeable about their individualized healthcare and doctors have the necessary information, based on observations in place, as opposed to observations or, again, through discussion and/or interview of the patient.
We’re actually able to see a better profile of what the individual is doing throughout their life and throughout their days. That can provide doctors the opportunity to make better diagnosis. Better diagnosis, with better information, as Eric said earlier, the right information, at the right time, to the right person, gives the whole ecosystem the opportunity to respond more efficiently and effectively, both at the individual level and in the population. That plays well with any healthcare system around the world. So it’s very exciting times here.
Gardner: Eric, what’s your perspective on some of the paybacks or metrics of success, when some of the fruits of the standardization begin to impact the overall healthcare system?
Stephens: At the risk of oversimplifying and repeating some of things that Larry said, it comes down to cost and outcomes as the two main things. That’s what’s in my mind right now. I look at these very scary graphs about the cost of healthcare in the United States, and it's hovering in the 17-18 percent of GDP. If I recall correctly, that’s at least five full percentage points larger than other economically developed countries in the world.
The trend on individual premiums and such continues to tick upward. Anything we can do to drive that cost down is going to be very beneficial, and this goes right back to patient-centricity. It goes right back to their pocketbook.
And the outcomes are important as well. There are a myriad of diseases and such that we’re dealing with in this country. More information and more education is going to help drive a healthier population, which in turn drives down the cost. The expenditures that are being spent are around the innovation. You leave room for innovation and you leave room for new advances in medical technology and such to treat diseases going. So again, it’s back to cost and outcomes.
Anything we can do to drive that cost down is going to be very beneficial, and this goes right back to patient centricity.
Gardner: Very good. I’m afraid we will have to leave it there. We’ve been talking with a panel of experts on how the healthcare industry can benefit from improved and methodological information flow. And we have seen how the healthcare industry itself is seeking large-scale transformation and how improved cross-organizational interactions and collaborations seem to be intrinsic to be able to move forward and capitalize and make that transformation possible.
And lastly, we have learned that The Open Group’s new Healthcare Industry Forum is doing a lot now and is getting into its full speed to improve the situation.
This special BriefingsDirect discussion comes to you in conjunction with The Open Group Conference on February 3 in San Francisco. It’s not too late to register at The Open Group website and you can also follow the proceedings during and after the conference online and via Twitter.
So a big thank you to our panel, Larry Schmidt, the Chief Technologist at HP for the America’s Health and Life Sciences Industries, as well as the Chairman of The new Open Group Healthcare Industry Forum. Thanks so much, Larry.
Schmidt: You bet. Glad to be here.
Gardner: And thank you, too, to Eric Stephens, an Oracle Enterprise Architect. We appreciate your time Eric.
Stephens: Thanks for having me, Dana.
Gardner: This is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this look at the healthcare ecosystem process. Thanks for listening, and come back next time for more BriefingsDirect podcast discussions.
Register for the event here.
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how The Open Group is addressing the information needs and challenges in the healthcare ecosystem. Copyright The Open Group and Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2014. All rights reserved.
Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast on how a major energy engineering company is delivering mobile capability to its managers in Brazil.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the HP Discover Podcast Series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing sponsored discussion on IT innovation and how it’s making an impact on people’s lives.
Once again, we’re focusing on how companies are adapting to the new style of IT to improve IT performance and deliver better user experiences and business results. This time, we’re coming to you directly from the recent HP Discover 2013 Conference in Barcelona.
Our task: To learn directly from IT and business leaders alike how big data, mobile, and cloud -- powered by converged infrastructure -- are all supporting their business goals in new and interesting ways.
Our next innovation case study interview highlights how Siemens Brazil is using HP Anywhere to improve how they deliver applications to users with mobile devices. Here to tell us how they’re making progress is Alexandre Padeti, IT Consultant and Applications Integration Technician with Siemens Brazil in São Paulo. Welcome.
Gardner: Tell us a little bit about what Siemens Brazil. Then let's learn about your transition to mobile applications.
Padeti: Siemens Brazil is an engineering company in Brazil, mainly responsible for 50 percent of the energy transmission in Brazil. With the mobility scenario within Siemens Brazil, we’re just starting right now to implement HP Anywhere in our field applications.
Gardner: Why didn’t you just make these applications, customize them, host them, and deliver them? What was missing from your being able to do this yourselves?
Padeti: In the beginning, we were looking for a tool that gave us the freedom to develop for any device. That's the main reason that we chose HP Anywhere. We have the freedom now to choose -- or give the freedom to the users to choose -- the device.
Gardner: What types of applications have you targeted first for moving out to the mobile tier?
Padeti: The main applications that we are working with at the moment is Workflow Approval, which integrates with our back-end SAP ERP system. With HP Anywhere, we’re trying to give the managers mobility, the option to make their approval on daily basis in a different way.
Gardner: So it's more important to have workflow approved and managed on a real-time basis, wherever these individuals are and whatever device they happen to be using?
Padeti: Yes. These are the main points of the solution. We’re trying to give this especially to our managers, who are used to being in meetings or moving from one place to another. They gain the ability to make this kind of approval on the go.
Gardner: Tell us a little bit about the process of adoption. You've had a proof of concept (POC) phase?
Padeti: Initially we had a POC with HP Anywhere together with HP Brazil and a local partner. From the beginning, it was well-suited. So we decided to go with HP Anywhere in production, and now we’re running a project that will cover nearly 200 users by the end of January.
Gardner: Do you think this will lead to more applications and more mobile users? Does this seem to be a larger undertaking with movement toward even more mobility?
We’re quite sure that 90 percent of the devices will be running on Android and a small percentage on iOS.
Padeti: Yes, that's for sure. This will become bigger in Siemens Brazil, because it's a change of the mindset of the users. They will begin to change the way they’re thinking about requesting solutions from the IT department. In the future, I believe that we’ll have a lot of requirements to develop more such mobile applications.
Gardner: Alexandre, do you have a sense yet what will be the majority of these mobile devices? Which are most popular among these 200 initial users there?
Padeti: The standard for Siemens Brazil is based on Android. So we’re quite sure that 90 percent of the devices will be running on Android and a small percentage on iOS.
Gardner: As you've gone through this process, are there any lessons learned that you could share for other organizations? What lessons have you learned, or what advice could you offer them?
Padeti: The first one would be to think first about smaller processes. At Siemens Brazil, we’re starting with a not-so-big process. We’re using a not-so-complex one to start. This is a good thing to engage the users and allow them to be comfortable, and furnish proof of use on the solution.
The next one would be to talk a lot with the users, because in our case we have requirements that the user could not think of before. We're learning constantly about what is possible with mobility.
When you give to them the freedom with the mobility, new ideas will come up.
I really advise you to talk with the users and know what they want, because most of the times they don’t come up with an idea until they use mobile, because they’re only thinking initially of desktop or notebook PCs. So when you give to them freedom with mobility, new ideas come up.
Gardner: Well, very good. I’m afraid we will have to leave it there. We've been talking about how Siemens Brazil has been moving to more mobile applications delivery for its workers, in this case workflow applications to managers. Our guest has been Alexandre Padeti, IT Consultant and Applications Integration Technician at Siemens Brazil in São Paulo. Thank you so much.
Gardner: And I like to thank our audience as well for joining us for the special new style of IT discussion coming to you from the recent HP Discover 2013 Conference in Barcelona. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of HP-sponsored discussions. Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.
Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast on how a major energy engineering company is delivering mobile capability to its managers in Brazil. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2014. All rights reserved.
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how a hybrid storage provider can analyze operational data to bring about increased efficiency.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript.
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the HP Discover Performance Podcast Series. I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your moderator for this ongoing discussion of IT innovation and how it’s making an impact on people’s lives.
Once again, we’re focusing on how IT leaders are improving their business performance for better access, use and analysis of their data and information.
Our next innovation case study focuses on how optimized hybrid storage provider Nimble Storage has leveraged big data and cloud to produce significant storage performance, and efficiency. Nimble is, of course, also notable for its recent successful IPO.
Learn here how Nimble Storage has leveraged the HP Vertica analytics platform to analyze operational data on mixed-storage environments to optimize workloads. High-performing, cost-effective big-data processing via cloud helps to make the best use of dynamic storage resources, it turns out. A fascinating story.
To learn more, join me in welcoming our guest, Larry Lancaster, Chief Data Scientist at Nimble Storage Inc. in San Jose, California. Welcome, Larry.
Larry Lancaster: Hi, Dana, it's great to talk to you today.
Gardner: I'm glad you could join us. As I said, it's a fascinating use-case. Tell us about the general scope of how you use data in the cloud to create this hybrid storage optimization service.
Lancaster: At a high level, Nimble Storage recognized early, near the inception of the product, that if we were able to collect enough operational data about how our products are performing in the field, get it back home and analyze it, we'd be able to dramatically reduce support costs. Also, we can create a feedback loop that allows engineering to improve the product very quickly, according to the demands that are being placed on the product in the field.
Looking at it from that perspective, to get it right, you need to do it from the inception of the product. If you take a look at how much data we get back for every array we sell in the field, we could be receiving anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 data points per minute from each array. Then, we bring those back home, we put them into a database, and we run a lot of intensive analytics on those data.
Once you're doing that, you realize that as soon as you do something, you have this data you're starting to leverage. You're making support recommendations and so on, but then you realize you could do a lot more with it. We can do dynamic cache sizing. We can figure out how much cache a customer needs based on an analysis of their real workloads.
We found that big data is really paying off for us. We want to continue to increase how much it's paying off for us, but to do that we need to be able to do bigger queries faster. We have a team of data scientists and we don't want them sitting here twiddling their thumbs. That’s what brought us to Vertica at Nimble.
Gardner: It's an interesting juxtaposition that you're using big data in order to better manage data and storage. What better use of it? And what sort of efficiencies are we talking about here, when you are able to get that data in that massive scale and do these analytics and then go back out into the field and adjust? What does that get for you?
Lancaster: We have a very tight feedback loop. In one release we put out, we may make some changes in the way certain things happen on the back end, for example, the way NVRAM is drained. There are some very particular details around that, and we can observe very quickly how that performs under different workloads. We can make tweaks and do a lot of tuning.
Without the kind of data we have, we might have to have multiple cases being opened on performance in the field and escalations, looking at cores, and then simulating things in the lab.
It's a very labor-intensive, slow process with very little data to base the decision on. When you bring home operational data from all your products in the field, you're now talking about being able to figure out in near real-time the distribution of workloads in the field and how people access their storage. I think we have a better understanding of the way storage works in the real world than any other storage vendor, simply because we have the data.
Gardner: So it's an interesting combination of a product lifecycle approach to getting data -- but also combining a service with a product in such a way that you're adjusting in real time.
Lancaster: That’s right. We do a lot of neat things. We do capacity forecasting. We do a lot of predictive analytics to try to figure out when the storage administrator is going to need to purchase something, rather than having them just stumble into the fact that they need to provision for equipment because they've run out of space.
That’s the kind of efficiency we gain that you can see, and the InfoSight service delivers that to our customers.
A lot of things that should have been done in storage from the very beginning that sound straightforward were simply never done. We're the first company to take a comprehensive approach to it. We open and close 80 percent of our cases automatically, 90 percent of them are automatically opened.
We have a suite of tools that run on this operational data, so we don't have to call people up and say, "Please gather this data for us. Please send us these log posts. Please send us these statistics." Now, we take a case that could have taken two or three days and we turn it into something that can be done in an hour.
Gardner: Larry, just to be clear, you're supporting both flash and traditional disk storage, but you're able to exploit the hybrid relationship between them because of this data and analysis. Tell us a little bit about how the hybrid storage works.
Lancaster: At a high level, you have hard drives, which are inexpensive, but they're slow for random I/O. For sequential I/O, they are all right, but for random I/O performance, they're slow. It takes time to move the platter and the head. You're looking at 5 to 10 milliseconds seek time for random read.
That's been the challenge for hard drives. Flash drives have come out and they can dramatically improve on that. Now, you're talking about microsecond-order latencies, rather than milliseconds.
But the challenge there is that they're expensive. You could go buy all flash or you could go buy all hard drives and you can live with those downsides of each. Or, you can take the best of both worlds.
Then, there's a challenge. How do I keep the data that I need to access randomly in flash, but keep the rest of the data that I don't care so much about in a frequent random-read performance, keep that on the hard drives only, and in that way, optimize my use of flash. That's the way you can save money, but it's difficult to do that.
It comes down to having some understanding of the workloads that the customer is running and being able to anticipate the best algorithms and parameters for those algorithms to make sure that the right data is in flash.
It would be hard to be the best hybrid storage solution without the kind of analytics that we're doing.
We've built up an enormous dataset covering thousands of system-years of real-world usage to tell us exactly which approaches to caching are going to deliver the most benefit. It would be hard to be the best hybrid storage solution without the kind of analytics that we're doing.
Gardner: Then, to extrapolate a little bit higher, or maybe wider, for how this benefits an organization, the analysis that you're gathering also pertains to the data lifecycle, things like disaster recovery (DR), business continuity, backups, scheduling, and so forth. Tell us how the data gathering analytics has been applied to that larger data lifecycle equation.
Lancaster: You're absolutely right. One of the things that we do is make sure that we audit all of the storage that our customers have deployed to understand how much of it is protected with local snapshots, how much of it is replicated for disaster recovery, and how much incremental space is required to increase retention time and so on.
We have very efficient snapshots, but at the end of the day, if you're making changes, snapshots still do take some amount of space. So, learning exactly what is that overhead, and how can we help you achieve your disaster recovery goals.
We have a good understanding of that in the field. We go to customers with proactive service recommendations about what they could and should do. But we also take into account the fact that they may be doing DR when we forecast how much capacity they are going to need.
You're right. It is part of a larger lifecycle that we address, but at the end of the day, for my team it's still all about analytics. It's about looking to the data as the source of truth and as the source of recommendation.
We can tell you roughly how much space you're going to need to do disaster recovery on a given type of application, because we can look in our field and see the distribution of the extra space that would take and what kind of bandwidth you're going to need. We have all that information at our fingertips.
When you start to work this way, you realize that you can do things you couldn't do before. And the things you could do before, you can do orders of magnitude better. So we're a great case of actually applying data science to the product lifecycle, but also to front-line revenue and cost enhancement.
Gardner: I think this is a great example and I think you're a harbinger of what we're going to see more and more, which is bringing this high level of intelligence to bear on many other different services, for many different types of products. IT and storage is great and makes a lot of sense as an early adopter. But I can see this is pertaining to many other vertical industries. It illustrates where a lot of big-data value is going to go.
Now, let's dig into how you actually can get that analysis in the speed, at the scale, and at the cost that you require. Tell us about your journey in terms of different analytics platforms and data architectures that you've been using and where you're headed.
I have to tell you, I fell in love with Vertica because of the performance benefits that it provided.
Lancaster: To give you a brief history of my awareness of HP Vertica and my involvement around the product, I don’t remember the exact year, but it may have been eight years ago roughly. At some point, there was an announcement that Mike Stonebraker was involved in a group that was going to productize the C-Store Database, which was sort of an academic experiment at UC Berkeley, to understand the benefits and capabilities of real column store.
I was immediately interested and contacted them. I was working at another storage company at the time. I had a 20 terabyte (TB) data warehouse, which at the time was one of the largest Oracle on Linux data warehouses in the world.
They didn't want to touch that opportunity just yet, because they were just starting out in alpha mode. I hooked up with them again a few years later, when I was CTO at a company called Glassbeam, where we developed what's substantially an extract, transform, and load (ETL) platform.
By then, they were well along the road. They had a great product and it was solid. So we tried it out, and I have to tell you, I fell in love with Vertica because of the performance benefits that it provided.
When you start thinking about collecting as many different data points as we like to collect, you have to recognize that you’re going to end up with a couple choices on a row store. Either you're going to have very narrow tables and a lot of them or else you're going to be wasting a lot of I/O overhead, retrieving entire rows where you just need a couple fields.
That was what piqued my interest at first. But as I began to use it more and more at Glassbeam, I realized that the performance benefits you could gain by using HP Vertica properly were another order of magnitude beyond what you would expect just with the column-store efficiency.
That's because of certain features that Vertica allows, such as something called pre-join projections. We can drill into that sort of stuff more if you like, but, at a high-level, it lets you maintain the normalized logical integrity of your schema, while having under the hood, an optimized denormalized query performance physically on disk.
Now you might ask you can be efficient if you have a denormalized structure on disk. It's because Vertica allows you to do some very efficient types of encoding on your data. So all of the low cardinality columns that would have been wasting space in a row store end up taking almost no space at all.
What you find, at least it's been my impression, is that Vertica is the data warehouse that you would have wanted to have built 10 or 20 years ago, but nobody had done it yet.
Vertica is the data warehouse that you would have wanted to have built 10 or 20 years ago, but nobody had done it yet.
Nowadays, when I'm evaluating other big data platforms, I always have to look at it from the perspective of it's great, we can get some parallelism here, and there are certain operations that we can do that might be difficult on other platforms, but I always have to compare it to Vertica. Frankly, I always find that Vertica comes out on top in terms of features, performance, and usability.
Gardner: When you arrived there at Nimble Storage, what were they using, and where are you now on your journey into a transition to Vertica?
Lancaster: I built the environment here from the ground up. When I got here, there were roughly 30 people. It's a very small company. We started with Postgres. We started with something free. We didn’t want to have a large budget dedicated to the backing infrastructure just yet. We weren’t ready to monetize it yet.
So, we started on Postgres and we've scaled up now to the point where we have about 100 TBs on Postgres. We get decent performance out of the database for the things that we absolutely need to do, which are micro-batch updates and transactional activity. We get that performance because the database lives on Nimble Storage.
I don't know what the largest unsharded Postgres instance is in the world, but I feel like I have one of them. It's a challenge to manage and leverage. Now, we've gotten to the point where we're really enjoying doing larger queries. We really want to understand the entire installed base of how we want to do analyses that extend across the entire base.
We want to understand the lifecycle of a volume. We want to understand how it grows, how it lives, what its performance characteristics are, and then how gradually it falls into senescence when people stop using it. It turns out there is a lot of really rich information that we now have access to to understand storage lifecycles in a way I don't think was possible before.
But to do that, we need to take our infrastructure to the next level. So we've been doing that and we've loaded a large number of our sensor data that’s the numerical data I have talked about into Vertica, started to compare the queries, and then started to use Vertica more and more for all the analysis we're doing.
Internally, we're using Vertica, just because of the performance benefits. I can give you an example. We had a particular query, a particularly large query. It was to look at certain aspects of latency over a month across the entire installed base to understand a little bit about the distribution, depending on different factors, and so on.
I'm really excited. We're getting exactly what we wanted and better.
We ran that query in Postgres, and depending on how busy the server was, it took anywhere from 12 to 24 hours to run. On Vertica, to run the same query on the same data takes anywhere from three to seven seconds.
I anticipated that because we were aware upfront of the benefits we'd be getting. I've seen it before. We knew how to structure our projections to get that kind of performance. We knew what kind of infrastructure we'd need under it. I'm really excited. We're getting exactly what we wanted and better.
This is only a three node cluster. Look at the performance we're getting. On the smaller queries, we're getting sub-second latencies. On the big ones, we're getting sub-10 second latencies. It's absolutely amazing. It's game changing.
People can sit at their desktops now, manipulate data, come up with new ideas and iterate without having to run a batch and go home. It's a dramatic productivity increase. Data scientists tend to be fairly impatient. They're highly paid people, and you don’t want them sitting at their desk waiting to get an answer out of the database. It's not the best use of their time.
Gardner: Larry, is there another aspect to the HP Vertica value when it comes to the cloud model for deployment? It seems to me that if Nimble Storage continues to grow rapidly and scales that, bringing all that data back to a central single point might be problematic. Having it distributed or in different cloud deployment models might make sense. Is there something about the way Vertica works within a cloud services deployment that is of interest to you as well?
Lancaster: There's the ease of adding nodes without downtime, the fact that you can create a K-safe cluster. If my cluster is 16 nodes wide now, and I want two nodes redundancy, it's very similar to RAID. You can specify that, and the database will take care of that for you. You don’t have to worry about the database going down and losing data as a result of the node failure every time or two.
I love the fact that you don’t have to pay extra for that. If I want to put more cores or nodes on it or I want to put more redundancy into my design, I can do that without paying more for it. Wow! That’s kind of revolutionary in itself.
It's great to see a database company incented to give you great performance. They're incented to help you work better with more nodes and more cores. They don't have to worry about people not being able to pay the additional license fees to deploy more resources. In that sense, it's great.
We have our own private cloud -- that’s how I like to think of it -- at an offsite colocation facility. We do DR through Nimble Storage. At the same time, we have a K-safe cluster. We had a hardware glitch on one of the nodes last week, and the other two nodes stayed up, served data, and everything was fine.
If you do your job right as a cloud provider, people just want more and more and more.
Those kinds of features are critical, and that ability to be flexible and expand is critical for someone who is trying to build a large cloud infrastructure, because you're never going to know in advance exactly how much you're going to need.
If you do your job right as a cloud provider, people just want more and more and more. You want to get them hooked and you want to get them enjoying the experience. Vertica lets you do that.
Gardner: I'm afraid we'll have to leave it there. We've been learning about how optimized hybrid storage provider Nimble Storage has leveraged big data and cloud to produce unique storage performance analytics and efficiencies. And we've seen how the HP Vertica Analytics platform has been used to analyze Nimble's operational data across mixed storage environments in near real-time, so that they can optimize their workloads and also extend the benefits to a data lifecycle.
So, a big thank you to our guest, Larry Lancaster, Chief Data Scientist at Nimble Storage. Thank you, Larry.
Gardner: Also, thank you to our audience for joining us for this special HP Discover Performance Podcast.
I'm Dana Gardner; Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of HP-sponsored discussions. Thanks again for joining, and come back next time.
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how a hybrid storage provider can analyze operational data to bring about increased efficiency. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2014. All rights reserved.
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how the strategy of dealing with malware is shifting from reaction to prevention.
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the HP Discover Podcast Series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your co-host and moderator for this ongoing discussion of IT innovation and how it’s making an impact on people’s lives.
Once again, we’re focusing on how IT leaders are improving the security and availability of services to deliver better experiences and payoffs for businesses and end users alike.
We have a fascinating show today. We’re going to be exploring the ins and outs of improving enterprise intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and we will see how HP and its global cyber security partners have made the HP Global Network more resilient and safe. We’ll will hear how a vision for security has been effectively translated into actual implementation.
To learn more about how HP itself has created role-based and granular access control benefits amid real-time yet intelligent intrusion protection, please join me in welcoming our guest, Jim O'Shea, Network Security Architect for HP Cyber Security Strategy and Infrastructure Engagement. Welcome to the show, Jim.
Jim O’Shea: Hello, Dana. Thank you.
Gardner: Before we get into the nitty-gritty, what do you think are some of the major trends that are driving the need for better intrusion prevention systems nowadays?
O’Shea: If you look at the past, it was about detection, and you had reaction technologies. We had firewalls that blocked and looked at the port level. Then, we evolved to trying to detect things that were malicious with intent by using IDS. But that was a reactionary-type thing. It was a nice approach, but we were reacting. Something happened, you reacted, but if you knew it was bad, why did we let it in in the first place?
The evolution was the IPS, the prevention. If you know it's bad, why do you even want to see it? Why do you want to try to react to it? Just block it. That’s the trend that we’ve been following.
Gardner: But we can’t just have a black-and-white situation. It’s much more gray. There are sorts of intrusion, I suppose, that we want. We want access control, rather than just a firewall. So is there a new thinking, a new vision, that’s been developed over the past several years about these networks and what should or shouldn't be allowed through them?
O’Shea: You’re talking about letting the good in. Those are the evolutions and the trends that we are all trying to strive for. Get the good traffic in. Get who you are in. Maybe look at what you have. You can explore the health of your device. Those are all trends that we’re all striving for now.
Gardner: I recall Jim, that there was a Ponemon Institute report about a year or so ago that really outlined some of the issues here. Do you recall that? Were there any issues in there that illustrate this trend toward a different type of network and a different approach to protection?
Gardner: I suppose what’s also different nowadays is that we’re not only concerned with outside issues in terms of risk, but also insider attacks. It’s being able to detect behaviors and things that occur that data can detect. The analysis can then provide perhaps a heads-up across the network, regardless of whether they have access or not. What are the risk issues now when we think about insider attacks, rather than just outside penetration?
O’Shea: You’re exactly right. Are you hiring the right people? That’s a big issue. Are they being influenced? Those are all huge issues. Big data can handle some of that and pull that in. Our approach on intrusion prevention wasn’t to just look at what’s coming from the outside, but it was also look at data traversing the network.
You have a whole rogue wireless-type approach in which people can gain access and can they probe and poke around.
When we deployed the TippingPoint solution, we didn’t change our policies or profiles that we were deploying based on whether it’s starting on the inside or starting on the outside. It was an equal deployment.
An insider attack could also be somebody who walks into a facility, gains physical access, and connects to your network. You have a whole rogue wireless-type approach in which people can gain access and can they probe and poke around. And if it’s malware traffic from our perspective, with the IDS we took the approach, inside or outside -- doesn’t matter. If we can detect it, if we can be in the path, it’s a block.
Gardner: For those of our listeners who might not be familiar with the term “intrusion prevention systems,” maybe you could illustrate and flesh that out a bit. What do we mean by IPS? What are we talking about? Are these technologies? Are these processes, methodologies, or all of the above?
O’Shea: TippingPoint technology is an appliance-based technology. It’s an inline device. We deploy it inline. It sits in the network, and the traffic is flowing through it. It’s looking for characteristics or reputation on the type of traffic, and reputation is a more real-time change in the system. This network, IP address, or URL is known for malware, etc. That’s a dynamic update, but the static updates are signature-type, and the detection of vulnerability or a specific exploit aimed at an operating system.
So intrusion prevention is through the detection of that, and blocking and preventing that from completing its communication to the end node.
Gardner: And these work in conjunction with other approaches, such as security information, event management, and network-based anomaly detection. Is that correct? How do they work together?
O’Shea: All the events get logged into HP ArcSight to create the bigger picture. Are you seeing these type of events occurring other places? So you have the bigger picture correlation.
Network-based anomaly detection is the ability to detect something that is occurring in the network and it's based on an IP address or it’s based on a flow. Taking advantage of reputation we can insert those IP addresses, detected based on flow, that are doing something anomalous.
It could be that they’re beaconing out, spreading a worm. If they look like they’re causing concerns with a high degree of accuracy, then we can put that into the reputation and take advantage of moving blocks.
So reputation is a self-deploying feature. You insert an IP address into it and it can self-update. We haven’t taken the automated step yet, although that’s in the plan. Today, it’s a manual process for us, but ideally, through application programming interfaces (APIs), we can automate all that. It works in a lab, but we haven’t deployed it on our production that way.
Gardner: Clearly HP is a good example of a large enterprise, one of the largest in the world, with global presence, with a lot of technology, a lot of intellectual property, and therefore a lot to protect. Let’s look at how you actually approached protecting the HP network.
We wanted to prevent mal traffic, mal-formed traffic, malware -- any traffic with the mal intent of reaching the data center.
What’s the vision, if you will, for HP's Global Cyber Security, when it comes to these newer approaches? Do you have an overarching vision that then you can implement? How do we begin to think about chunking out the problem in order to then solve it effectively?
O’Shea: You want to be able to detect, block, and prevent as an overarching strategy. We also wanted to take advantage of inserting a giant filter inline on all data that’s going into the data center. We wanted to prevent mal traffic, mal-formed traffic, malware -- any traffic with the "mal" intent of reaching the data center.
So why make that an application decision to block and rely on host-level defenses, when we have the opportunity to do it at the network? So it made the network more hygienically clean, blocking traffic that you don’t want to see.
Gardner: You’ve mentioned a few HP products: TippingPoint and ArcSight, for example, but this is a larger ecosystem approach and play. Tell us a little bit about partnerships, other technologies, and even the partnerships for implementation, not just the technology, but the process and methodologies as well.
O’Shea: That was key to our deployment, because it is an inline technology and you are going inline in the network. You’re changing flows, where it could be mal traffic, but yet maybe a researcher is trying to do something. So we need to have the ability to have that level of partnership with the network team. They have to see it. They have to understand what it is. It has to be manageable.
When we deployed it, we looked at what could go wrong and we designed around that. What could go wrong? A device failed. So we have an N+1 type installation. If a single device fails, we’re not down, we are not blocking traffic. We have the ability to handle the capacity of our network, which grows, and we are growing, and so it has to be built for the now and the future. It has to be manageable.
It has to be able to be understood by “first responders,” the people that get called first. Everybody blames the network first, and then it's the application afterward. So the network team gets pulled in on many calls, at all types of hours, and they have to be able to get that view.
That was key to get them broad-based training, so that the technology was there. Get a process integrated into how you’re going to handle updates and how you’re going to add beyond what TippingPoint recommended. TippingPoint makes a recommendation on profiles and new settings. If we take that, do we want to add other things? So we have to have a global cyber-security view and a global cyber-security input and have that all vetted.
The application team had to be onboard and aware, so that everybody understands. Finally, because we were going into a very large installed network that was handling a lot of different types of traffic, we brought in TippingPoint Professional Services and had everything looked at, re-looked at, and signed off on, so that what we’re doing is a best practice. We looked at it from multiple angles and took a lot of things into consideration.
We proxy the events. That gives us the ability to have multiple ArcSight instances and also to evolve.
Gardner: Now, we have different groups of people that need to work in concert to a larger degree than in the past. We have application folks, network folks, outside service providers, and network providers. It seems that we are asking for a complete view of security, which means people need to be coordinated and cooperative in ways that they hadn’t had to be before.
Is there something about TippingPoint and ArcSight that provides data, views, and analytics in such a way that it's easier for these groups to work together in ways that they hadn’t before? We know that they have to work together, but is there something about the technology that helps them work together, or gives them common views or inputs that grease the skids to collaboration?
O’Shea: One of the nice things about the way the TippingPoint events occur is that you have a choice. You can send them from an individual IDS units themselves or you can proxy them from the management console. Again, the ability to manage was critical to us, so we chose to do it from the console.
We proxy the events. That gives us the ability to have multiple ArcSight instances and also to evolve. ArcSight evolves. When they’re changing, evolving, and growing, and they want to bring up a new collector, we’re able to send very rapidly to the new collector.
ArcSight pulls in firewall logs. You can get proxy events and events from antivirus. You can pull in that whole view and get a bigger picture at the ArcSight console. The TippingPoint view is of what’s happening from the inline TippingPoint and what's traversing it. Then, the ArcSight view adds a lot of depth to that.
So it gives a very broad picture, but from the TippingPoint view, we’re very flexible and able to add and stay in step with ArcSight growth quickly. It's kind of a concert. That includes sending events on different ports. You’re not restricted to one port. If you want to create a secure port or a unique port for your events to go on to ArcSight, you have that ability.
Gardner: We’ve heard, of course, how important real-time reaction is, and even gaining insights to be able to anticipate and be proactive. What is it that you learned through this process that allowed you to make that latency reduced or eliminated so that the amount of time that things go on is cut. I’ve heard that a lot of times you can't prevent intrusion, but you can prevent the damage of intrusion. So how does it work in terms of this low latency time element?
O’Shea: With TippingPoint, you get to see when an exploit is triggered, TippingPoint has a concept of Zero Days and it has a concept of Reputation. Reputation is an ongoing change, and Zero Day is a deployment of a profile. Think of Reputation as a constant updating of signatures as sites change and how the industry is recognizing them. So that gives you an ability to have a view of a site that people frequented and may now be compromised. You have that ability to see that because the Reputation of the site changed.
With TippingPoint being a block technology, you have the low latency. The latency is being detected and blocked, but now, when you pull it back into ArcSight, you have the ability to see a holistic view. We’re seeing these events or something that looks similar. The network-based anomaly detection is reporting some strange things happening, or you have some antivirus things that are reporting.
That’s a different type of reaction. You can react and deploy and say that you want to take action against whatever it is you are seeing. Maybe you need to put up a new firewall block to alleviate something.
That’s a different type of reaction. You can react and deploy and say that you want to take action against whatever it is you are seeing.
Or on the other hand, if TippingPoint is not seeing it, maybe you have the opportunity to activate this new signature more rapidly and deploy new profile. This is something new, and you can take action right away.
Gardner: Jim, let's talk a bit about what you get when you do this correctly. So using HP’s example, what were some of the paybacks, both in technical terms, maybe metrics of success technically, but then also business results? What happens when you can deploy these systems, develop those partnerships, and get cooperation? How can we measure what we have done here?
O’Shea: One of the things that we did wrong in our deployment is that we didn’t have a baseline of what is mal or what is bad. So, as it was a moving deployment, we don’t have hard and fast metrics of a before and after view. But again, you don’t know what's bad until you start trying to detect it. It might not have been for us to even take that type of view.
If you think back historically of how we dealt with them, those were kind of a Whac-A-Mole-type of defenses. Something happened, and you reacted. So I guess the metric would be that we’re not as reactionary, but do we have hard metrics to prove that? I don’t have those.
Gardner: We can appreciate the scale of what the systems are capable of. Do we have a number of events detected or that sort of thing, blocks per month, any sense of how much volume we can handle?
O’Shea: We took a month’s sample. I’m trying to recall the exact number, but it was 100 million events in one month that were detected as mal events. That’s including Internet-facing events. That’s why the volume is high, but it was 100 million events that were automatically blocked and that were flagged as mal events.
The Professional Services teams have been able to deploy in a very large network and have worked with the requirements that a large enterprise has.
Gardner: How do you now take this out to the market? Is there a cyber-security platform? Do you have a services component? You’ve done this internally, but how do you take this out to the market, combining the products, the services, and the methodologies?
O’Shea: I’m not on the product marketing side, but TippingPoint has learned from us and we’ve partnered with them. We’re constantly sharing back with them. So the give-back to TippingPoint, as a product division, is that they can see real traffic, in a real high-volume network, and they can pretest their signatures.
There are active lighthouse-type installs, lighthouse meaning that they’re not actively blocking. They’re just observing, and they are testing their next iteration of software and the next group of profiles. They’re able to do that for themselves, and it's a give back that has worked. What we receive is a better product, and what everybody else receives is a better product.
The Professional Services teams have been able to deploy in a very large network and have worked with the requirements that a large enterprise has. That includes standard deployment, how things are connected and what the drawings are going to look like, as well as how are you going to cable it up.
A large enterprise has different standards than a small business would have, and that was a give back to the Professional Services to be able to deploy it in a large enterprise. It has been a good relationship, and there is always opportunity for improvement, but it certainly has helped.
Gardner: Jim, looking to the future a little bit, we know that there’s going to be more and more cloud and hybrid-cloud types of activities. We’re certainly seeing already a huge uptick in mobile device and tablet use on corporate networks. This is also part of the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend that we’re seeing.
So should we expect a higher degree of risk and more variables and complication, and what does that portend for the use of these types of technologies going forward? How much gain do you get by getting on the IDS bandwagon sooner rather than later?
O’Shea: BYOD is a new twist on things and it means something different to everybody, because it's an acronym term, but let's take the view of you bringing in a product you buy.
BYOD is a new twist on things and it means something different to everybody, because it's an acronym term.
Somebody is always going to get a new device, they are going to bring in it, they are going to try it out, and they are going to connect it to the corporate network, if they can. And because they are coming from a different environment and they’re not necessarily to corporate standards, they may bring unwanted guests into the network, in terms of malware.
Now, we have the opportunity, because we are inline, to detect and block that right away. Because we are an integrated ecosystem, they will show up as anomalous events. ArcSight and our Cyber Defense Center will be able to see those events. So you get a bigger picture.
Those events can be then translated into removing that node from the network. We have that opportunity to do that. BYOD not only brings your own device, but it also brings things you don’t know that are going to happen, and the only way to block that is prevention and anomalous type detection, and then try to bring it altogether in a bigger picture.
Gardner: Well, great. I’m afraid we will have to leave it there. We’ve been learning about the modern ins and outs of improving enterprise intrusion prevention systems, and we’ve heard about how HP itself has created more of a granular access control benefit amid real-time, yet intelligent, intrusion detection and protection.
I’d like to thank the supporter for this series, HP Software, and remind our audience to carry on the dialogue through the Discover Group on LinkedIn. And of course, a big thank you to our guest, Jim O'Shea, Network Security Architect for HP Cyber Security Strategy and Infrastructure Engagement. Thanks so much, Jim.
Gardner: And lastly, our appreciation goes out to our global audience for joining us once again for this HP Discover Podcast discussion.
I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of HP-sponsored business success stories. Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.
Learn more about prevention detection.
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how the strategy of dealing with malware is shifting from reaction to prevention. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2014. All rights reserved. | 2019-04-22T05:59:30Z | https://www.briefingsdirecttranscriptsblogs.com/2014/01/ |
§ 6101. Scope and short title.
§ 6112. Exceptions to license requirements.
§ 6122. Powers conferred on certain licensees engaged in the mortgage loan business.
§ 6123. Mortgage loan business prohibitions.
§ 6124. Prohibited clauses in mortgage loan documents.
§ 6125. Mortgage lending authority.
§ 6126. Requirements as to open-end loans.
§ 6131. Application for license.
§ 6131.1. Prelicensing and continuing education.
§ 6133. Issuance of license.
§ 6137. Surrender of license.
§ 6138. Authority of department.
§ 6139. Suspension, revocation or refusal.
§ 6152. Relationship to other laws.
§ 6153. Preservation of existing contracts.
§ 6154. Procedure for determination of noncompliance with Federal law (Repealed).
Enactment. Unless otherwise noted, the provisions of Title 7 were added July 8, 2008, P.L.796, No.56, effective in 120 days.
Enactment. Part I (Reserved) was added July 8, 2008, P.L.796, No.56, effective in 120 days.
Enactment. Part II was added July 8, 2008, P.L.796, No.56, effective in 120 days.
Enactment. Chapter 61 was added July 8, 2008, P.L.796, No.56, effective in 120 days.
Special Provisions in Appendix. See section 13 of Act 31 of 2009 in the appendix to this title for special provisions relating to applicability.
Cross References. Chapter 61 is referred to in section 4302 of Title 12 (Commerce and Trade); section 6103 of Title 53 (Municipalities Generally).
6101. Scope and short title.
(a) Scope.--This chapter relates to mortgage loan industry licensing and consumer protection. This chapter does not apply to a banking institution or federally chartered or State-chartered credit union, if the primary regulator of the banking institution or federally or State-chartered credit union supervises the banking institution or federally or State-chartered credit union.
(b) Short title.--This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the Mortgage Licensing Act.
"Administrative or clerical tasks." The receipt, collection and distribution of information common for the processing, servicing or underwriting of a mortgage loan and communication with a consumer to obtain information necessary for the processing, servicing or underwriting of a mortgage loan.
"Advance fee." Any funds requested by or to be paid to a person in advance of or during the processing of a mortgage loan application, excluding those fees paid by a consumer directly to a credit agency reporting bureau, title company or real estate appraiser.
"Applicant." A person who applies for a license under this chapter.
"Application." A request, in any form, for an offer, or a response to a solicitation of an offer, of mortgage loan terms, and the information about the borrower or prospective borrower that is customary or necessary in a decision on whether to make such an offer.
(1) A State-chartered bank, bank and trust company, savings bank or private bank.
(3) A federally chartered or State-chartered savings association.
(4) A subsidiary of any of the entities listed under this definition.
"Billing cycle." In respect to open-end mortgage loans, the time interval between periodic billing dates as established by the mortgage note and subsequent modification to the obligation. A billing cycle shall be considered to be a monthly cycle if the closing date of the cycle is the same date each month or does not vary by more than four days from that date.
(1) Has the status of a tax-exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (Public Law 99-514, 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3)).
(2) Promotes affordable housing or provides homeownership education, or similar services.
(3) Conducts its activities in a manner that serves public or charitable purposes.
(4) Receives funding and revenue and charges fees in a manner that does not incentivize it or its employees to act other than in the best interests of its clients.
(5) Compensates its employees in a manner that does not incentivize employees to act other than in the best interests of its clients.
(6) Provides or identifies for the borrower mortgage loans with terms favorable to the borrower and comparable to mortgage loans and housing assistance provided under government housing assistance programs.
(7) Meets other standards as determined by the department.
(3) a place where records regarding the licensee's mortgage loan business are stored.
"Branch manager." The supervisor of a branch.
(1) The receipt, collection, distribution and analysis of information common for the processing, servicing or underwriting of a mortgage loan.
(iii) offering or negotiating mortgage servicing terms.
"Commercial context." Acting for the purpose of obtaining anything of value for an individual, or for an entity or individual for which the individual acts, rather than exclusively for public, charitable or family purposes.
"Commission." The Banking and Securities Commission of the Commonwealth, as established under Subarticle C of Article XI-A of the act of May 15, 1933 (P.L.565, No.111), known as the Department of Banking and Securities Code.
"Consumer discount company." A licensee under the act of April 8, 1937 (P.L.262, No.66), known as the Consumer Discount Company Act.
"Delinquent." The date when an amount sufficient to cover a periodic payment of principal, interest and, if applicable, escrow becomes due and unpaid, and lasts until the time no periodic payment is due and unpaid, notwithstanding if the borrower is afforded a period after the due date to pay before the servicer assesses a late fee.
"Department." The Department of Banking and Securities of the Commonwealth.
"Dwelling." As defined in section 103(v) of the Truth in Lending Act (Public Law 90-321, 15 U.S.C. § 1602(v)).
(i) Whose manner and means of performance of work are subject to the right of control of or are controlled by a person.
(ii) Whose compensation for Federal income tax purposes is reported or required to be reported on a W-2 form issued by the controlling person.
(2) The term includes such binding definition as may be issued by the Federal banking agencies in connection with their implementation of their responsibilities under the S.A.F.E. Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008 (110 Stat. 289, 12 U.S.C. § 5101 et seq.).
(1) The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
(2) The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
(3) The National Credit Union Administration.
(4) The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
"Finder's fee." Any payment of money or other consideration for the referral of a mortgage loan to a licensee, except for consideration paid for goods or facilities actually furnished or services actually performed.
(2) secured by any first lien mortgage, deed of trust or equivalent consensual security interest on a dwelling or on residential real estate.
"First mortgage loan business." The mortgage loan business as applied to first mortgage loans.
"Habitually and repeatedly." Engaging in any activity at least four times in a calendar year.
"Holder." As defined in 12 Pa.C.S. § 6202 (relating to definitions).
"Immediate family." A parent, spouse, child, brother or sister.
"Installment sales contract." As defined in section 3(10) of the act of June 28, 1947 (P.L.1110, No.476), known as the Motor Vehicle Sales Finance Act.
"Installment seller." As defined in 12 Pa.C.S. § 6202 (relating to definitions).
(i) An individual makes installment payments to the seller of the dwelling or residential real estate.
(ii) The seller retains title to the dwelling or residential real estate until some or all of the installment payments are completed.
(i) An individual is not obligated to purchase the dwelling or residential real estate.
(ii) The final payment approximates the fair value of the dwelling or residential real estate or the anticipated fair value of the dwelling or residential real estate and is not a nominal amount.
"Licensee." A person who is licensed under this chapter.
"Loan processor or underwriter." An individual who performs clerical or support duties.
"Lock-in agreement." An agreement between a mortgage lender and a consumer whereby the mortgage lender guarantees, until a specified date, the availability of a specified rate of interest or specified formula by which the rate of interest and a specific number of discount points will be determined, if the mortgage loan is approved and closed by the specified date. If a specified date is not determinable, the mortgage lender may fulfill the requirement of this definition by setting forth with specificity the method by which the duration of the lock-in period will be determined.
"Loss mitigation option." An alternative to foreclosure offered by the owner, holder or assignee of a delinquent mortgage loan that is made available through the servicer to the borrower.
(1) A manufactured home as defined in section 603(6) of the National Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-383, 42 U.S.C. § 5402(6)).
(2) A mobile home as defined in 75 Pa.C.S. § 102 (relating to definitions).
"Mortgage broker." A person who engages in the mortgage loan business by directly or indirectly negotiating or placing mortgage loans for others in the primary market for consideration.
"Mortgage lender." A person who engages in the mortgage loan business by directly or indirectly originating and closing mortgage loans with its own funds in the primary market for consideration.
"Mortgage loan." A first or secondary mortgage loan, or both, a lease-purchase agreement or a mortgage loan modification, as the context may require.
"Mortgage loan correspondent." A person who engages in the mortgage loan business by directly or indirectly originating and closing mortgage loans in his or her own name utilizing funds provided by a wholesale table funder or other funding sources under the circumstances described under section 6123(a)(6) (relating to mortgage loan business prohibitions) and simultaneously assigning the mortgage loans to the wholesale table funder.
"Mortgage loan modification." An agreement that revises the terms of an existing mortgage loan, including an agreement to reduce mortgage loan payment amounts, balance or interest rate or to waive any accrued or prospective mortgage loan charges. The term does not include any agreement to refinance a mortgage loan into a new mortgage loan.
(i) Takes a mortgage loan application.
(ii) Offers or negotiates terms of a mortgage loan for compensation or gain.
(iii) Represents to the public, through advertising or other means of communicating or providing information, including the use of business cards, stationery, brochures, signs, rate lists or other promotional items, that the individual can or will perform the activities described in subparagraphs (i) and (ii).
(i) An individual who is involved only in extensions of credit relating to timeshare plans, as that term is defined in 11 U.S.C. § 101(53D) (relating to definitions).
(I) Is licensed and registered in accordance with this chapter.
(II) Is not required to be licensed in accordance with section 6112(9) (relating to exceptions to license requirements).
(B) Who performs such duties solely with respect to transactions for which the individual who acts as a mortgage originator is not required to be licensed, in accordance with subparagraph (i), (v) or (vi).
(iii) An individual who performs only purely administrative or clerical tasks on behalf of a mortgage originator.
(iv) An individual who is a registered mortgage loan originator.
(v) An individual employed by an agency or instrumentality of the Federal Government or a corporation otherwise created by an act of the Congress of the United States or an agency or instrumentality of a state or local government, the District of Columbia or any territory of the United States, including the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency and other government housing finance agencies, who acts as a mortgage originator within the scope of employment.
(vi) An individual who is employed by a bona fide nonprofit organization who acts as a mortgage originator within the scope of employment.
(vii) An individual employed by a licensee or person exempt or excepted from licensure under this chapter who solely engages in mortgage loan modifications for existing mortgage loans held or serviced by that licensee or person and who does not otherwise act as a mortgage originator.
(A) Is under the direct supervision and control of a licensed mortgage originator or registered mortgage loan originator.
(B) Acts as a loan processor or underwriter solely for the individual's employer.
(C) Does not represent to the public, through advertising or other means of communicating or providing information, including the use of business cards, stationery, brochures, signs, rate lists or other promotional items, that the person can or will perform any of the activities of a mortgage originator.
(A) An employee of a broker-dealer registered under section 301 of the act of December 5, 1972 (P.L.1280, No.284), known as the Pennsylvania Securities Act of 1972.
(B) Registered as a securities agent under section 301 of the Pennsylvania Securities Act of 1972.
(C) Engaged in recommending, referring or steering a borrower or prospective borrower in the manner provided under paragraph (1)(iii) of the definition of "offer or negotiate terms of a mortgage loan for compensation or gain" to a banking institution, licensed mortgage lender, licensed mortgage loan correspondent, licensed mortgage broker or person exempt from licensing in a manner incidental to and in the normal course of his or her securities brokerage activities.
(D) Not otherwise acting as a mortgage originator as defined in paragraph (1)(i), (ii) or (iii).
(E) Not in receipt of any compensation or gain for such activities from the person making or brokering the loan, or a borrower or prospective borrower.
(A) An employee of an insurance agency licensed under the act of May 17, 1921 (P.L.789, No.285), known as The Insurance Department Act of 1921.
(B) Registered as an insurance agent or broker under The Insurance Department Act of 1921.
(C) Engaged in recommending, referring or steering a borrower or prospective borrower in the manner provided under paragraph (1)(iii) of the definition of "offer or negotiate terms of a mortgage loan for compensation or gain" to a banking institution, licensed mortgage lender, licensed mortgage loan correspondent, licensed mortgage broker or person exempt from licensing in a manner incidental to and in the normal course of his or her insurance activities.
"Mortgage servicer." A person who engages in the mortgage loan business by directly or indirectly servicing a mortgage loan.
"Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry." The licensing system developed and maintained by the Conference of State Bank Supervisors and the American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators.
"Net worth." Assets less liabilities and assets unacceptable to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development for purposes of complying with 24 CFR § 202.5(n) (relating to general approval standards) or 202.8(b)(1) (relating to loan correspondent lenders and mortgagees), as applicable.
"Nonoriginating person." A person, other than an individual, that does not engage in the mortgage loan business but is required to have loan processors or underwriters employed or supervised and controlled by the person licensed as mortgage originators.
"Nontraditional mortgage loan." A mortgage loan other than a 30-year fixed rate mortgage loan.
"Offer or negotiate terms of a mortgage loan for compensation or gain."
(iii) recommending, referring or steering a borrower or prospective borrower to a particular lender or set of mortgage loan terms, in accordance with a duty to or incentive from any person other than the borrower or prospective borrower.
(2) Receiving or expecting to receive payment of money or anything of value in connection with the activities described in paragraph (1) or as a result of any mortgage loan terms entered into as a result of those activities.
(1) The mortgage lender may permit the consumer to obtain advances of money from the licensee from time to time or the mortgage lender may advance money on behalf of the consumer from time to time as directed by the consumer.
(2) The amount of each advance, interest and permitted charges and costs are debited to the consumer's account and payments and other credits are credited to the same account.
(3) Interest is computed on the unpaid principal balance or balances of the account outstanding from time to time.
(4) The consumer has the privilege of paying the account in full at any time or, if the account is not in default, in monthly installments of fixed or determinable amounts as provided in the open-end loan agreement.
"Person." An individual, association, joint venture or joint-stock company, partnership, limited partnership, limited partnership association, limited liability company, business corporation, nonprofit corporation or any other group of individuals, however organized.
"Primary market." The market wherein mortgage loans are originated between a lender and a consumer.
"Principal place of business." The primary office of a person at which the person's books, records, accounts and documents are maintained.
"Purchase-money mortgage loan." A mortgage loan that is a residential mortgage transaction as defined in 12 CFR 226.2(a)(24) (relating to definitions and rules of construction).
(1) Is a mortgage originator or meets the licensing requirements of a mortgage originator.
(2) Is a management-level officer assigned to the principal place of business of a mortgage broker, mortgage lender, mortgage servicer or mortgage loan correspondent.
(iii) an institution regulated by the Farm Credit Administration.
(2) Is registered with and maintains a unique identifier through the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry.
"Residential real estate." Real property upon which is constructed or intended to be constructed a dwelling.
(2) secured by any secondary lien mortgage, deed of trust or equivalent consensual security interest on a dwelling or on residential real estate.
"Secondary mortgage loan business." The mortgage loan business as applied to secondary mortgage loans.
"Service mortgage loan." A collecting or remitting payment or the right to collect or remit payments of principal, interest, tax, insurance or other payment under a mortgage loan.
"Single point of contact." An individual or team of personnel, each of whom has the ability and authority to discuss mortgage loan mitigation options with a borrower on behalf of a mortgage servicer. The mortgage servicer shall ensure that each member of the team is knowledgeable about the borrower's situation and current status.
"Take a mortgage loan application." Receiving a mortgage loan application for the purpose of facilitating a decision whether to extend an offer of mortgage loan terms to a borrower or prospective borrower or to accept the terms offered by a borrower or prospective borrower in response to a solicitation, whether the application is received directly or indirectly from the borrower or prospective borrower.
"Tangible net worth." (Deleted by amendment).
"Unique identifier." A number or other identifier assigned by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry.
"Wholesale table funder." A licensed mortgage lender or person exempt under section 6112(1) or (7) (relating to exceptions to license requirements) who, in the regular course of business, provides the funding for the closing of mortgage loans through mortgage loan correspondents and who by assignment obtains title to the mortgage loans.
2017 Amendment. Act 81 amended the defs. of "administrative or clerical tasks," "billing cycle," "clerical or support duties," "mortgage loan business," "mortgage loan correspondent," "qualifying individual" and "service mortgage loan" and added the defs. of "delinquent," "loss mitigation option," "mortgage servicer" and "single point of contact." Section 9(2) of Act 81 provided that the amendment of section 6102 shall take effect upon the effective date of regulations promulgated under section 6141 of this title.
2013 Amendment. Act 98 amended the defs. of "holder" and "installment seller."
6112. Exceptions to license requirements.
(a) General rule.--Except as provided under subsections (b) and (c) and section 6112 (relating to exceptions to license requirements), on and after the effective date of this section, no person shall engage in the mortgage loan business in this Commonwealth without being licensed as a mortgage broker, mortgage lender, mortgage servicer, mortgage loan correspondent or mortgage originator as provided under this chapter. A mortgage originator may not engage in the mortgage loan business unless the mortgage originator is sponsored in the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry by a licensed mortgage broker, mortgage lender, mortgage servicer or mortgage loan correspondent, person excepted from this chapter or person excepted from licensure under section 6112 and is under the direct supervision and control of the sponsoring licensee or excepted person.
(i) Act as a mortgage broker or mortgage loan correspondent without a separate mortgage broker or mortgage loan correspondent license.
(ii) Act as a mortgage servicer without a separate mortgage servicer license for mortgage loans the mortgage lender has originated, negotiated and owns.
(2) A mortgage loan correspondent may act as a mortgage broker without a separate mortgage broker license.
(3) A person licensed as a mortgage broker may only perform the services of a mortgage broker.
(4) A person only licensed as a mortgage servicer may only perform the services of a mortgage servicer.
(c) Loans for business or commercial purposes.--This chapter shall not apply to mortgage loans made for business or commercial purposes.
2017 Amendment. Act 81 amended subsecs. (a) and (b). Section 9(2) of Act 81 provided that the amendment of section 6111 shall take effect upon the effective date of regulations promulgated under section 6141 of this title.
Cross References. Section 6111 is referred to in section 7331 of Title 18 (Crimes and Offenses).
(i) In the same manner as a mortgage lender, obtains and maintains bond coverage for mortgage originators consistent with section 6131(c)(5) (relating to application for license) and files a periodic report consistent with section 6135(a)(3) (relating to licensee requirements).
(ii) Annually, in a form acceptable to the department, demonstrates to the department that all of the mortgage originators employed by or under the direct supervision and control of the entity have obtained and maintained the bond coverage required under section 6131(f)(4).
(iii) A mortgage loan correspondent.
(iv) A person excepted from licensure under this section.
(vi) An agent of a person listed in subparagraphs (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and (v.1).
(3) A person who originates, services or negotiates less than four mortgage loans in a calendar year, unless determined to be engaged in the mortgage loan business by the department.
(4) Any agency or instrumentality of the Federal Government or a corporation otherwise created by an act of the United States Congress, including the Federal National Mortgage Association, the Government National Mortgage Association, the Veterans' Administration, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration, and employees thereof acting within the scope of their employment.
(5) Any agency or instrumentality of a state or local government, the District of Columbia or any territory of the United States, including the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency and other government housing finance agencies, and employees thereof acting within the scope of their employment.
(6) Consumer discount companies, except that a consumer discount company that acts as a mortgage broker, mortgage lender, mortgage servicer or mortgage loan correspondent, shall be subject to the provisions of Subchapter C (relating to mortgage loan business restrictions and requirements) and sections 6131(c)(2), (3) and (5), 6135, 6138 (relating to authority of department) and 6140(b) (relating to penalties). Employees or individuals under the direct supervision and control of licensees under the act of April 8, 1937 (P.L.262, No.66), known as the Consumer Discount Company Act, that act as mortgage originators shall be subject to the licensing requirements of this chapter. Consumer discount companies that employ or directly supervise and control mortgage originators shall be subject to the same requirements as mortgage lenders in regard to the employment and supervision of mortgage originators.
(v) ensure employees required to be licensed as mortgage originators have completed the requirements under section 6131.1 (relating to prelicensing and continuing education) and have obtained the required mortgage originator license.
(8) Employees or individuals under the direct supervision and control of a mortgage broker, mortgage lender, mortgage servicer or mortgage loan correspondent, or a person excepted from licensure under this section, who are not otherwise required to be licensed as mortgage originators.
(9) Registered mortgage loan originators when acting on behalf of their employers.
(i) The organization shall be subject to the provisions of Subchapter C and sections 6135(a)(2), (3) and (4) and (c), 6138 and 6140(b).
(ii) The organization shall be registered with the department.
(iii) As required under 24 CFR § 3400.103(e)(7)(iii) (relating to individuals required to be licensed by states), the department must periodically examine the books and activities of an organization it determines is a bona fide nonprofit organization and revoke its status as a bona fide nonprofit organization if it does not continue to meet the criteria under 24 CFR § 3400.103(e)(7)(ii).
(iv) For residential mortgage loans to have terms that are favorable to the borrower, the department must determine that the terms are consistent with loan origination in a public or charitable context, rather than a commercial context.
(v) The department shall make the list of bona fide nonprofit organizations available on its Internet website.
(i) Obtain a license as a mortgage originator, if licensed as an individual under 12 Pa.C.S. Ch. 62.
(ii) Be registered with the department.
(B) Annually demonstrate to the department that the mortgage originators employed by or under the direct supervision and control of the installment seller or holder have obtained and maintained the bond coverage required by section 6131(f)(4) in a form acceptable to the department.
(iv) Ensure employees or individuals under the direct supervision and control of the installment seller or holder required to be licensed as mortgage originators have completed the requirements under section 6131.1 and have obtained the required mortgage originator license.
(i) Be subject to the provisions of Subchapter C and sections 6135(a)(2), (3) and (4) and (c), 6138 and 6140(b).
(iii) In the same manner as a mortgage broker, obtain and maintain bond coverage for mortgage originators consistent with section 6131(c)(5).
(iv) Ensure employees or individuals under the direct supervision and control of the person required to be licensed as mortgage originators have completed the requirements under section 6131.1 and have obtained the required mortgage originator license.
(15) Notwithstanding section 6151 (relating to applicability), a mortgage originator licensed by one or more other states and physically located in this Commonwealth that does not engage in any transactions involving Pennsylvania consumers, dwellings or residential real estate.
(16) A person who engages in mortgage loan modifications for existing mortgage loans held or serviced by that person or that person's employer and who does not otherwise engage in the mortgage loan business.
(17) An individual or entity licensed under the act of September 2, 1965 (P.L.490, No.249), referred to as the Money Transmission Business Licensing Law, if the individual or entity only engages in the mortgage loan business to the extent funds are transmitted from a mortgagor to make mortgage payments on behalf of the mortgagor in order to exceed regularly scheduled minimum payment obligations under the terms of the indebtedness.
2017 Amendment. Act 81 amended pars. (2), (3), (6), (7) and (8) and added par. (17). Section 9(2) of Act 81 provided that the amendment of section 6112 shall take effect upon the effective date of regulations promulgated under section 6141 of this title.
2013 Amendment. Act 98 amended par. (13).
Cross References. Section 6112 is referred to in sections 6102, 6111, 6123, 6131 of this title.
6122. Powers conferred on certain licensees engaged in the mortgage loan business.
6123. Mortgage loan business prohibitions.
6124. Prohibited clauses in mortgage loan documents.
6126. Requirements as to open-end loans.
Cross References. Subchapter C is referred to in section 6112 of this title.
(1) Comply with all provisions of the act of January 30, 1974 (P.L.13, No.6), referred to as the Loan Interest and Protection Law (Usury Law). This paragraph shall not supersede section 501 of the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 (94 Stat. 161, 12 U.S.C. § 1735f-7a) or the Alternative Mortgage Transaction Parity Act of 1982 (96 Stat. 1545, 12 U.S.C. §§ 3801-3806 et seq.).
(2) Comply with all applicable State law, including the provisions of the act of December 3, 1959 (P.L.1688, No.621), known as the Housing Finance Agency Law, that are applicable to the licensee and the act of December 9, 2002 (P.L.1530, No.197), known as the Mortgage Satisfaction Act.
(3) Comply with all applicable Federal law, including the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (88 Stat. 1724, 12 U.S.C. §§ 2601 et seq.), the Truth in Lending Act (82 Stat. 146, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1601 et seq.) and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (88 Stat. 1521, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1691 et seq.).
(4) Give to the consumer a copy of the promissory note evidencing the mortgage loan and any mortgage loan agreement, mortgage instrument or other document evidencing a mortgage loan signed by the consumer.
(5) Give to the consumer written evidence of credit life, credit accident and health, credit unemployment and property insurance, if any, provided by the licensee to the consumer.
(6) If a payment is made in cash on account of a mortgage loan, give to the consumer at the time the payment is actually received a written receipt which shall show the account number or other identification mark or symbol, date, amount paid and, upon request of the consumer, the unpaid balance of the account prior to and after the cash payment.
(7) Upon written request from the consumer, give or forward to the consumer within ten days from the date of receipt of the request a written statement of the consumer's account which shall show the dates and amounts of all installment payments credited to the consumer's account, the dates, amounts and an explanation of all other charges or credits to the account and the unpaid balance of the account. A licensee shall not be required to furnish more than two statements in any 12-month period.
(i) Cancel any insurance provided by the licensee in connection with the mortgage loan and refund to the consumer, in accordance with regulations promulgated by the Insurance Department, any unearned portion of the premium for the insurance.
(ii) Stamp or write on the face of the mortgage loan agreement or promissory note evidencing the mortgage loan "Paid in Full" or "Canceled," the date paid and, within 60 days, return the mortgage loan agreement or promissory note to the consumer.
(iii) Release any lien on the dwelling or residential real estate and cancel the same of record and, at the time the mortgage loan agreement or promissory note evidencing the mortgage loan is returned, deliver to the consumer good and sufficient assignments, releases or any other certificate, instrument or document as may be necessary to evidence the release.
(9) Provide for periodic accounting of any escrow accounts held by the mortgage lender to the consumer not less than annually, showing the amounts received from the consumer and the amounts disbursed from the accounts.
(10) Refund all fees, other than those fees paid by the licensee to a third party, paid by a consumer when a mortgage loan is not produced within the time specified by the mortgage broker, mortgage lender or mortgage loan correspondent at the rate, term and overall cost agreed to by the consumer. This paragraph shall not apply if the failure to produce a mortgage loan is due solely to the consumer's negligence, his or her refusal to accept and close on a loan commitment or his or her refusal or inability to provide information necessary for processing, including employment verifications and verifications of deposits. The licensee shall disclose to the consumer, in writing, at the time of a loan application which fees paid or to be paid are nonrefundable.
(i) The expiration date of the lock-in, if any.
(ii) The interest rate locked in, if any.
(iii) The discount points locked in, if any.
(iv) The fee locked in, if any.
(v) The lock-in fee, if any.
(12) Upon written request from the consumer or a person authorized by the consumer, provide, within ten days from the date of receipt of the request, a written statement regarding the unpaid balance of a consumer's mortgage loan or account. The statement shall contain the total amount required to pay off a mortgage loan and a specific expiration date for the payoff information. A licensee shall not be required to furnish more than two statements in any 12-month period.
(i) Maintain supervision and control of and responsibility for the acts and omissions of all mortgage originators sponsored by the licensee.
(ii) Maintain a list of all current and former mortgage originators sponsored by the licensee and the dates of the sponsorship.
(iii) In the event that a licensee believes that a mortgage originator sponsored by the licensee has engaged in any activity that is illegal or in violation of this chapter or any regulation or statement of policy promulgated under this chapter, the licensee shall provide the department with written notification of the belief and the licensee's proposed corrective measures within 30 days. A licensee shall not be liable to a mortgage originator in connection with the notification.
(14) In the case of a mortgage originator, clearly display the mortgage originator's unique identifier on all mortgage loan application forms and personal solicitations or advertisements, including business cards.
(i) Request the mortgage holder release the lien on the dwelling or residential real estate and cancel the same of record and, at the time the mortgage loan agreement or promissory note evidencing the mortgage loan is returned, deliver to the consumer good and sufficient assignment, releases or other certificate, instrument or document as may be necessary to evidence the release.
(ii) Request the mortgage holder cancel any insurance provided in connection with the mortgage loan and refund to the borrower, in accordance with regulations promulgated by the Insurance Department, any unearned portion of the premium for the insurance.
(iii) If a mortgage holder has delegated the responsibility to record satisfaction of security instruments to a mortgage servicer, the mortgage servicer shall be treated as a mortgage holder for purposes of satisfying the conditions of subparagraph (i) or (ii).
2017 Amendment. Act 81 added par. (15). Section 9(2) of Act 81 provided that the amendment of section 6121 shall take effect upon the effective date of regulations promulgated under section 6141 of this title.
2013 Amendment. Act 38 amended pars. (2), (8) and (13).
2009 Amendment. Act 31 added par. (14).
Cross References. Section 6121 is referred to in section 6112 of this title.
(1) To make first and secondary mortgage loans and, subject to the limitations of this chapter, to charge and collect interest, origination fees and delinquency charges for the loans.
(2) To collect fees or premiums for title examination, abstract of title, title insurance, credit reports, surveys, appraisals, notaries, postage, including messenger and express carrier, tax service or other costs or fees actually related to the processing of a mortgage loan application or making of a mortgage loan, when the fees are actually paid or incurred by the licensee and to collect fees or charges prescribed by law which actually are or will be paid to public officials for determining the existence of or for perfecting or releasing or satisfying any security related to the mortgage loan and include these in the principal of the mortgage loan.
(3) To provide access to credit life, credit disability, credit accident and health and credit unemployment insurance. A consumer shall not be compelled to purchase credit life, credit disability, credit accident and health or credit unemployment insurance as a condition of the making of a mortgage loan, and all contracts utilized shall reflect a clear disclosure that the purchase of credit life, credit disability, credit accident and health or credit unemployment insurance is not a prerequisite to obtaining a mortgage loan. If, however, the consumer elects to obtain credit life, credit disability, credit accident and health or credit unemployment insurance through the licensee, the consumer shall consent thereto in writing. If consumers desire joint-life or joint accident and health insurance, all consumers shall consent thereto in writing. The insurance shall be obtained from an insurance company authorized by the laws of this Commonwealth to conduct business in this Commonwealth. Any benefit or return to the licensee from the sale or provision of the insurance shall not be included in the computation of the maximum charge authorized for mortgage loans under this chapter and shall not be deemed a violation of this chapter when the insurance is written pursuant to the laws of this Commonwealth governing insurance.
(4) To require property insurance on security against reasonable risks of loss, damage and destruction and to provide access to the insurance to the consumer. The amount and term of the insurance shall be reasonable in relation to the amount and term of the mortgage loan contract and the value of the security. This requirement shall be satisfied if the consumer demonstrates at the time the mortgage loan is made that the consumer has valid and collectible insurance covering the property to be insured and has furnished the licensee with a loss payable endorsement sufficient for the protection of the licensee. If the consumer elects to obtain property insurance through the licensee, the consumer shall consent thereto in writing, and the insurance shall be obtained from an insurance company authorized by the laws of this Commonwealth to conduct business in this Commonwealth. Any benefit or return to the licensee from the sale or provision of property insurance shall not be included in the computation of the maximum charge authorized for mortgage loans under this chapter and shall not be deemed a violation of this chapter when the insurance is written pursuant to the laws of this Commonwealth governing insurance. The premium for any property insurance may be included in the principal amount of the mortgage loan requested by the consumer. However, the premium shall be disclosed as a separate item on the face of the principal contract document and the licensee's individual consumer ledger records.
(5) To collect a fee for a subsequent dishonored check or instrument taken in payment, not to exceed the service charge permitted to be imposed under 18 Pa.C.S. § 4105 (relating to bad checks).
(iii) are included in the principal of the mortgage loan.
(7) To collect reasonable attorney fees of an attorney at law in the collection of a delinquent mortgage loan and to collect court costs incurred in the collection of the mortgage loan.
(8) To service first and secondary mortgage loans that are originated, negotiated and owned by the mortgage lender.
(1) To collect title examination, credit report and appraisal fees actually related to the making of a mortgage loan when the fees are actually paid or incurred by the licensee and to include the fees in the principal of the mortgage loan which is being negotiated or arranged.
(2) To charge a broker's fee if the fee is disclosed to the consumer for whom the loan is being negotiated or arranged.
(3) To accept from a licensee a fee or premium for brokering or cobrokering a mortgage loan, provided that the payment and acceptance of the fee or premium is in compliance with Federal law, including the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-533, 88 Stat. 1724).
(c) Mortgage servicers.--If a mortgage servicer is in compliance with this chapter, the mortgage servicer shall have the power and authority to collect and remit for a lender, mortgagee, note owner, note holder, trustee or primary beneficiary of a residential mortgage loan payment of principal, interest or an amount to be placed into escrow for any combination of the payment of insurance, hazard insurance or taxes.
2017 Amendment. Act 81 added subsecs. (a)(8) and (c). Section 9(2) of Act 81 provided that the amendment of section 6122 shall take effect upon the effective date of regulations promulgated under section 6141 of this title.
2009 Amendment. Act 31 amended subsec. (a)(1) and added subsec. (a)(6) and (7).
Cross References. Section 6122 is referred to in section 6112 of this title.
(1) Charge, contract for, collect or receive charges, fees, premiums, commissions or other considerations in excess of the limitations of those contained in this chapter.
(2) Disburse the proceeds of a mortgage loan in any form other than cash, electronic funds transfer, certified check or cashier's check where the proceeds are disbursed by the licensee to a closing agent. This paragraph shall not be construed as requiring a lender to utilize a closing agent and shall not apply to disbursements by check directly from the licensee's account payable to the consumer, consumer designees or other parties due funds from the closing.
(3) Advertise, cause to be advertised or otherwise solicit whether orally, in writing, by telecast, by broadcast or in any other manner any statement or representation which is false, misleading or deceptive.
(4) Require a consumer to pay, to the licensee or any other person, a broker's fee, finder's fee, commission, premium or any other charges for obtaining, procuring or placing of a mortgage loan, except as provided under this chapter. This restriction shall not prohibit a mortgage lender from paying a fee to a mortgage broker in connection with the placement or procurement of a mortgage loan nor prohibit a consumer from requesting or directing a mortgage lender licensee to pay a fee from the proceeds of a mortgage loan or include it in the amount to be financed.
(5) Make any mortgage loan on the condition, agreement or understanding that the consumer contract with any specific person or organization for insurance services as agent, broker or underwriter.
(6) In the case of a mortgage loan correspondent, service mortgage loans or close mortgage loans utilizing funding other than a wholesale table funder, except in an emergency circumstance where wholesale table funding is not available.
(7) In the case of a mortgage broker or mortgage originator, commit to close or close mortgage loans in its own name, service mortgage loans, enter into lock-in agreements or collect lock-in fees or be or designate the exclusive recipient of notices or other communications sent from a lender or servicer to a consumer, provided, however, that a mortgage broker or mortgage originator can provide a lender's lock-in agreement to a consumer on behalf of that lender and collect lock-in fees payable to that lender on the lender's behalf.
(8) In the case of a mortgage originator, accept any fees from consumers in the mortgage originator's own name. A mortgage originator may accept fees payable to the mortgage originator's sponsoring licensee and fees payable to third-party entities on behalf of the mortgage originator's sponsoring licensee. A mortgage originator may not accept advance fees payable to the mortgage originator's sponsoring licensee unless the licensee is authorized to collect advance fees under this chapter.
(9) In the case of a mortgage originator, engage in the mortgage loan business other than on behalf of the single mortgage broker, mortgage lender or mortgage loan correspondent or a person excepted from this chapter or a person excepted from licensure under section 6112 (relating to exceptions to license requirements) that sponsors the mortgage originator.
(b) Mortgage loan servicer prohibitions.--A licensee engaging in the mortgage servicer business shall not fail to establish or attempt to establish a single point of contact with whom a borrower can communicate about foreclosure matters or loss mitigation options later than the 36th day of a borrower's delinquency, unless contact is inconsistent with applicable bankruptcy law or court order.
2017 Amendment. Act 81 amended the intro. par. and added subsec. (b). Section 9(2) of Act 81 provided that the amendment of section 6123 shall take effect upon the effective date of regulations promulgated under section 6141 of this title.
2013 Amendment. Act 38 amended par. (8) and added par. (9).
2009 Amendment. Act 10 amended par. (7).
Cross References. Section 6123 is referred to in sections 6102, 6112 of this title.
(1) An agreement whereby the consumer waives any rights accruing to the consumer under the provisions of this chapter.
(2) An irrevocable wage assignment of, or order for the payment of, any salary, wages, commissions or any other compensation for services, or any part thereof, earned or to be earned.
(3) An agreement to pay any amount other than the unpaid balance of the mortgage loan agreement or promissory note or any other charge authorized by this chapter.
Cross References. Section 6124 is referred to in section 6112 of this title.
(2) if the licensee is qualified, applicable Federal law, including the Alternative Mortgage Transaction Parity Act of 1982 (96 Stat. 1545, 12 U.S.C. § 3801 et seq.) and section 501 of the Depository Institution Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 (94 Stat. 161, 12 U.S.C. § 1735f-7a).
(iii) charge and collect a delinquency charge of $20 or 10% of each payment, whichever is greater, for a payment which is more than 15 days late.
2009 Amendment. Act 31 amended subsec. (b)(2)(ii).
Cross References. Section 6125 is referred to in section 6112 of this title.
(1) A mortgage lender may make open-end loans and may contract for and receive thereon interest and charges as set forth under this chapter.
(2) A mortgage lender shall not compound interest by adding any unpaid interest authorized by this section to the unpaid principal balance of the consumer's account, provided, however, that the unpaid principal balance may include the additional charges authorized by this subchapter.
(iii) by converting the monthly rate to a daily rate and multiplying the daily rate by the average daily unpaid principal balance of the account in the billing cycle, in which case the daily rate shall be 1/30 of the monthly rate.
(4) For all of the methods of computation in paragraph (3)(i), (ii) and (iii), the billing cycle shall be monthly, and the unpaid principal balance on any day shall be determined by adding to any balance unpaid as of the beginning of that day all advances and other permissible amounts charged to the consumer and deducting all payments and other credits made or received that day.
(5) The consumer may at any time pay all or any part of the unpaid balance in the consumer's account without prepayment penalty or, if the account is not in default, the consumer may pay the unpaid principal balance in monthly installments. Minimum monthly payment requirements shall be determined by the licensee and set forth in the agreement evidencing the open-end loan.
(i) If credit life or disability insurance is provided and if the insured dies or becomes disabled when there is an outstanding open-end loan indebtedness, the insurance shall be sufficient to pay the total balance of the loan due on the date of the consumer's death in the case of credit life insurance or all minimum payments which become due on the loan during the covered period of disability in the case of credit disability insurance. The additional charge for credit life insurance or credit disability insurance shall be calculated in each billing cycle by applying the current monthly premium rate for insurance, as the rate may be determined by the Insurance Commissioner, to the unpaid balances in the consumer's account, using any of the methods specified in paragraph (3) for the calculation of loan charges.
(ii) No credit life or disability insurance written in connection with an open-end loan shall be canceled by the licensee because of delinquency of the consumer in the making of the required minimum payments on the loan unless one or more of the payments is past due for a period of 90 days or more, and the licensee shall advance to the insurer the amounts required to keep the insurance in force during the period, which amounts may be debited to the consumer's account.
(iii) The amount, terms and conditions of any insurance against loss or damage to property must be reasonable in relation to character and value of the property insured and the maximum anticipated amount of credit to be extended.
(7) Notwithstanding any other provisions in this chapter to the contrary, a mortgage lender may retain any security interest in a dwelling or real or personal property until the open-end loan is terminated, provided that, if there is no outstanding balance in the account and there is no commitment by the licensee to make advances, the mortgage lender shall, within ten days following written demand by the consumer, deliver to the consumer a release of the mortgage, indenture, deed of trust or any other similar instrument or document on any dwelling or residential real estate taken as security for the open-end loan. The mortgage lender shall include on all billing statements provided in connection with an open-end loan a statement that the licensee retains a security interest in the consumer's dwelling or residential real estate whenever the security interest has not been released.
(8) A mortgage lender may charge, contract for, receive or collect on any open-end loan account an annual fee not to exceed $50 per year.
2013 Amendment. Act 38 amended par. (7).
Cross References. Section 6126 is referred to in section 6112 of this title.
6131.1. Prelicensing and continuing education.
6139. Suspension, revocation or refusal.
(a) Contents.--An application for a license under this chapter shall be on a form prescribed and provided by the department. Consistent with sections 202 E and 405 F(1) of the act of May 15, 1933 (P.L.565, No.111), known as the Department of Banking and Securities Code, all applicants and licensees shall use the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry to obtain and maintain licenses under this chapter.
(i) The name of the applicant.
(ii) The address of the principal place of business and any branches of the applicant.
(iii) The full name, official title and business address of each director and principal officer of the mortgage loan business.
(iv) Any other information that may be required by the department.
(ii) The name of the sponsoring licensee or excepted person of the applicant and location of the excepted person or licensed location of the licensee to which the applicant is assigned.
(iii) Any other information that may be required by the department.
(3) An applicant shall demonstrate to the department that policies and procedures have been developed to receive and process consumer inquiries and grievances promptly and fairly.
(a.1) Licensing of principal place of business and branches.--All applicants and licensees must establish and maintain a separate license for the principal place of business and each branch.
(b) Duty to update.--All applicants and licensees shall be required to provide the department with written notice of the change in any information contained in an application for a license or for any renewal of a license within ten days of an applicant or licensee becoming aware of the change.
(2) Been approved for and will continue to maintain as a licensee a line of credit, repurchase agreement or equivalent mortgage-funding capability of not less than $1,000,000.
(3) Established a minimum net worth of $250,000 at the time of application and will, at all times thereafter, maintain the minimum net worth.
(4) Been approved for and will continue to maintain as a licensee fidelity bond coverage in accordance with the guidelines established by the Federal National Mortgage Association or the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation.
(D) $500,000 for an applicant or licensee whose mortgage originators will originate or originated $250,000,000 or more in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year.
(ii) For an initial license applicant, the amount of the bond shall be determined by the applicant's anticipated amount of mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate originated by its mortgage originators in the first calendar year of licensing. For a licensee, the amount of the bond shall be determined annually by the department based upon the amount of mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate originated by the licensee's mortgage originators as indicated on the licensee's periodic report.
(iii) The bond shall run to the Commonwealth and shall be for the use of the Commonwealth and for the use of any consumer who is injured by the acts or omissions of the licensee's mortgage originators that are related to the mortgage loan business regulated by this chapter. No bond shall comply with the requirements of this section unless it contains a provision that it shall not be canceled for any cause unless notice of intention to cancel is given to the department at least 30 days before the day upon which cancellation shall take effect. Cancellation of the bond shall not invalidate the bond regarding the period of time it was in effect.
(6) Designated an individual as the qualifying individual for the principal place of business and separate individuals as branch managers for each branch, as applicable.
(1) Obtains and will maintain a bond in the amount of $100,000, in a form acceptable to the department, prior to the issuance of the license, from a surety company authorized to do business in this Commonwealth. The bond shall run to the Commonwealth and shall be for the use of the Commonwealth and any person or persons who obtain a judgment against the mortgage loan correspondent for failure to carry out the terms of any provision for which advance fees are paid. No bond shall comply with the requirements of this section unless it contains a provision that it shall not be canceled for any cause unless notice of intention to cancel is given to the department at least 30 days before the day upon which cancellation shall take effect. A mortgage loan correspondent who can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the department that the correspondent does not and will not accept advance fees shall be exempt from the bond requirement of this paragraph.
(2) Establishes a minimum net worth of $100,000 at the time of application and will, at all times thereafter, maintain the minimum net worth.
(i) The amount of the bond shall be $100,000 for an applicant or licensee whose mortgage originators will originate or originated less than $30,000,000 in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year; $200,000 for an applicant or licensee whose mortgage originators will originate or originated $30,000,000 to $99,999,999.99 in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year; $300,000 for an applicant or licensee whose mortgage originators will originate or originated $100,000,000 to $249,999,999.99 in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year; and $500,000 for an applicant or licensee whose mortgage originators will originate or originated $250,000,000 or more in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year.
(4) Designates an individual as the qualifying individual for the principal place of business and separate individuals as branch managers for each branch, as applicable.
(1) The department shall issue a mortgage broker license applied for under this chapter if the applicant obtains and will maintain a bond in the amount of $100,000, in a form acceptable to the department, prior to the issuance of the license, from a surety company authorized to do business in this Commonwealth. The bond shall be a penal bond conditioned on compliance with this chapter and subject to forfeiture by the department and shall run to the Commonwealth for its use. The bond shall also be for the use of any person against the mortgage broker for failure to carry out the terms of any provision for which advance fees are paid. If the person is aggrieved, the person may, with the written consent of the department, recover advance fees and costs from the bond by filing a claim with the surety company or maintaining an action on the bond. In the alternative, an aggrieved person may recover advance fees and costs by filing a formal complaint against the mortgage broker with the department which shall adjudicate the matter. The adjudication shall be binding upon the surety company and enforceable by the department in Commonwealth Court and by an aggrieved person in any court. Any aggrieved person seeking to recover advance fees and costs from a bond that has already been forfeited by the department or which the department is in the process of forfeiting may recover payment on the bond if, after filing a petition with the department, the department consents to the aggrieved person's requested payment or portion thereof. The department may pay the aggrieved person from the bond proceeds it recovers. Nothing in this section shall be construed as limiting the ability of any court or magisterial district judge to award to any aggrieved person other damages, court costs and attorney fees as permitted by law, but those claims that are not advance fees or related costs may not be recovered from the bond. The department, in its discretion, may consent to or order pro rata or other recovery on the bond for any aggrieved person if claims against the bond may or do exceed its full monetary amount. No bond shall comply with the requirements of this section unless it contains a provision that it shall not be canceled for any cause unless notice of intention to cancel is given to the department at least 30 days before the day upon which cancellation shall take effect. Cancellation of the bond shall not invalidate the bond regarding the period of time it was in effect.
(2) Mortgage brokers who can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the department that they do not and will not accept advance fees shall be exempt from the bond requirement of paragraph (1).
(i) The amount of the bond shall be $50,000 for an applicant or licensee whose mortgage originators will originate or originated less than $15,000,000 in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year; $75,000 for an applicant or licensee whose mortgage originators will originate or originated $15,000,000 to $29,999,999.99 in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year; $100,000 for an applicant or licensee whose mortgage originators will originate or originated $30,000,000 to $49,999,999.99 in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year; and $150,000 for an applicant or licensee whose mortgage originators will originate or originated $50,000,000 or more in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year.
(4) A mortgage broker shall designate an individual as the qualifying individual for the principal place of business and separate individuals as branch managers for each branch, as applicable.
(1) Be an employee of or under the direct supervision and control of a licensed mortgage broker, mortgage lender or mortgage loan correspondent, a person excepted from this chapter or a person excepted from licensure under section 6112 (relating to exceptions to license requirements). The licensee or person shall sponsor the mortgage originator in the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry and directly supervise, control and maintain responsibility for the acts and omissions of the mortgage originator.
(2) Be assigned to and work out of a licensed location of the sponsoring licensee or a location of a sponsoring person excepted from this chapter or excepted from licensure under section 6112, which, in the case of a sponsoring licensee, may be either the mortgage originator's residence or a location of the licensee that is within 100 miles of the mortgage originator's residence.
(3) Maintain a valid unique identifier issued by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry.
(i) The amount of the bond shall be $25,000 for an applicant or licensee who will originate or originated less than $7,500,000 in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year; $50,000 for an applicant or licensee who will originate or originated $7,500,000 to $14,999,999.99 in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year; $75,000 for an applicant or licensee who will originate or originated $15,000,000 to $29,999,999.99 in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year; $100,000 for an applicant or licensee who will originate or originated $30,000,000 to $49,999,999.99 in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year; and $150,000 for an applicant or licensee who will originate or originated $50,000,000 or more in mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate in a calendar year.
(ii) For an initial license applicant, the amount of the bond shall be determined by the applicant's anticipated amount of mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate originated in the first calendar year of licensing. For a licensee, the amount of the bond shall be determined annually by the department based upon the amount of mortgage loans secured by Pennsylvania dwellings or residential real estate originated by the mortgage originator as indicated on the mortgage originator's periodic report.
(iii) The bond shall run to the Commonwealth and shall be for the use of the Commonwealth and for the use of any consumer who is injured by the acts or omissions of the mortgage originator that are related to the mortgage loan business regulated by this chapter. No bond shall comply with the requirements of this section unless it contains a provision that it shall not be canceled for any cause unless notice of intention to cancel is given to the department at least 30 days before the day upon which cancellation shall take effect. Cancellation of the bond shall not invalidate the bond regarding the period of time it was in effect.
(5) Only engage in the mortgage loan business on behalf of the single mortgage broker, mortgage lender or mortgage loan correspondent or a person excepted from this chapter or a person excepted from licensure under section 6112 that sponsors the mortgage originator.
(g) Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry information challenge process.--A mortgage originator applicant or licensee may challenge the accuracy of information entered by the department to the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry regarding the mortgage originator applicant or licensee by filing a written complaint with the department. The department shall review the complaint and alleged inaccurate information on the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry and notify the applicant or licensee of corrective action taken by the department regarding the alleged inaccurate information within 30 days of receipt of the complaint.
(h) License renewals.--Licenses shall be issued for terms not to exceed 14 months and may be renewed by the department each year on a schedule set by the department upon application by the licensee and the payment of any and all applicable renewal fees. The licensee shall demonstrate to the department that it is conducting the mortgage loan business in accordance with the requirements of this chapter and that the licensee or directors, officers, partners, employees, mortgage originators, agents and ultimate equitable owners of 10% or more of the licensee continue to meet all of the initial requirements for licensure required by this chapter unless otherwise determined by the department.
(1) If an applicant is not a resident of this Commonwealth, as a condition to receiving a license under this chapter, the applicant shall be authorized to do business in this Commonwealth in accordance with the laws of this Commonwealth regulating corporations and other entities conducting business in this Commonwealth and shall maintain at least one office which is the office that shall be licensed as the principal place of business for the purposes of this chapter.
(2) Out-of-State applicants shall file with the license application an irrevocable consent, duly acknowledged, that suits and actions may be commenced against that person in the courts of this Commonwealth by the service of process of any pleading upon the department in the usual manner provided for service of process and pleadings by the laws and court rules of this Commonwealth. The consent shall provide that this service shall be as valid and binding as if service had been made personally upon the person in this Commonwealth. In all cases where process or pleadings are served upon the department under the provisions of this section, the process or pleadings shall be served in triplicate; one copy shall be filed in the department's offices and the others shall be forwarded by the department, by certified or registered mail, return receipt requested, to the last known principal place of business of the person.
(j) Disclosure of mortgage originator information.--Notwithstanding section 302 of the act of May 15, 1933 (P.L.565, No.111), known as the Department of Banking and Securities Code, the department shall make available to the public, including by access to the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry, the employment history of a mortgage originator.
(1) Been approved by or meets the current eligibility criteria for approval as a residential mortgage loan servicer of at least one Federal Government-sponsored entity, government corporation or Federal agency.
(2) Established a minimum net worth of $250,000 at the time of application and maintains the minimum net worth.
(3) Been approved for and maintains as a licensee fidelity bond coverage in accordance with the guidelines established by the Federal National Mortgage Association or the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation.
(i) The amount of the bond shall be $500,000.
(ii) The bond shall run to the Commonwealth and shall be for the use of the Commonwealth and for the use of the consumer who is injured by the acts or omissions of the licensee's mortgage originators that are related to the mortgage loan business regulated under this chapter. A bond shall not comply with the requirements of this section unless the bond contains a provision that the bond shall not be canceled for any cause unless notice of intention to cancel is given to the department at least 30 days, excluding legal holidays, Saturdays and Sundays, before the day upon which cancellation shall take effect. Cancellation of the bond shall not invalidate the bond regarding the period of time the bond was in effect.
(5) Designated an individual as the qualifying individual for the principal place of business.
2017 Amendment. Act 81 amended subsec. (a)(1) and added subsec. (k). Section 9(2) of Act 81 provided that the amendment of section 6131 shall take effect upon the effective date of regulations promulgated under section 6141 of this title.
Cross References. Section 6131 is referred to in sections 6112, 6134, 6135, 6139 of this title.
(1) Applicants shall complete prelicensing education required under subsection (b) and pass a written test regarding the education under subsection (c) in order to obtain a license under this chapter.
(2) Licensees shall complete continuing education required under subsection (d) in order to renew a license under this chapter.
(i) Three hours of Federal law and regulations.
(ii) Three hours of ethics, which shall include instruction on fraud, consumer protection and fair lending issues.
(iii) Two hours of training related to lending standards for the nontraditional mortgage loan marketplace.
(iv) Three hours of Pennsylvania law and regulations, including this chapter, the act of December 3, 1959 (P.L.1688, No.621), known as the Housing Finance Agency Law, and the act of January 30, 1974 (P.L.13, No.6), referred to as the Loan Interest and Protection Law.
(2) Prelicensing education programs shall be reviewed and approved by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry or as otherwise determined by the department based upon reasonable standards. Review and approval of a prelicensing education program shall include review and approval of the program provider.
(3) A prelicensing education program approved by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry or as otherwise determined by the department may be provided by the sponsor of the applicant or an entity which is affiliated with the applicant by an agency contract, or any subsidiary or affiliate of such sponsor or entity.
(4) Prelicensing education programs may be offered either in a classroom, online or by any other means approved by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry or as otherwise determined by the department.
(5) Except for prelicensing education programs under paragraph (1)(iv), prelicensing education programs approved by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry or as otherwise determined by the department and completed for another State license application shall be accepted as credit toward completion of the prelicensing education requirements of this chapter.
(6) An applicant that was previously licensed under this chapter that is applying to become licensed again under this chapter must demonstrate that the applicant has completed all of the continuing education requirements for the year in which the applicant was last licensed under this chapter.
(1) A mortgage originator applicant, and at least one qualifying individual of a mortgage broker, mortgage lender or mortgage loan correspondent applicant, shall pass, in accordance with the standards established under this subsection, a qualified written test developed by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry and administered by a test provider approved by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry based upon reasonable standards. The department may also require applicants to pass a test regarding Pennsylvania-specific law, which shall be administered by a test provider approved by the department or as otherwise determined by the department under subsection (e).
(ii) Federal law and regulation pertaining to mortgage origination.
(iii) Pennsylvania law and regulation pertaining to mortgage origination, unless otherwise determined by the department.
(iv) Federal and Pennsylvania law and regulation related to fraud, consumer protection, the nontraditional mortgage marketplace and fair lending issues.
(3) A test provider approved by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry or as otherwise determined by the department may provide a test at the location of the sponsor of the applicant or an entity which is affiliated with the applicant by an agency contract, or any subsidiary or affiliate of the sponsor or entity.
(4) (i) An applicant shall not be considered to have passed a qualified written test unless the individual achieves a test score of not less than 75% correct answers to questions.
(ii) An applicant may take a test three consecutive times with each consecutive taking occurring at least 30 days after the preceding test.
(iii) After failing three consecutive tests, an applicant shall wait at least six months before taking the test again.
(iv) A formerly licensed mortgage originator applicant who has been unlicensed for five continuous years or longer shall retake a test. Any time during which the individual is a registered mortgage loan originator shall not be counted toward the five-year continuous period.
(ii) Two hours of ethics, which shall include instruction on fraud, consumer protection and fair lending issues.
(iv) One hour of Pennsylvania law, including this chapter, the act of December 3, 1959 (P.L.1688, No.621), known as the Housing Finance Agency Law, and the act of January 30, 1974 (P.L.13, No.6), referred to as the Loan Interest and Protection Law.
(2) Continuing education programs shall be reviewed and approved by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry or as otherwise determined by the department based upon reasonable standards. Review and approval of a continuing education program shall include review and approval of the program provider.
(3) A continuing education program approved by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry or as otherwise determined by the department may be provided by the sponsor of the licensee or an entity which is affiliated with the licensee by an agency contract, or any subsidiary or affiliate of the sponsor or entity.
(4) Continuing education programs may be offered either in a classroom, online or by any other means approved by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry or as otherwise determined by the department.
(5) A licensee may only receive credit for a continuing education program in the year in which the program is taken and may not take the same continuing education program in the same or successive years to meet the requirements of this subsection.
(6) A licensed mortgage originator who is an instructor of an approved continuing education program may receive credit for the licensed mortgage loan originator's own continuing education requirement at the rate of two hours credit for every one hour taught.
(7) Except for the continuing education program under paragraph (1)(iv), continuing education programs approved by the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry or as otherwise determined by the department and completed for another state shall be accepted as credit toward completion of the continuing education requirements of this chapter.
(8) An individual who is a mortgage originator, branch manager or qualifying individual of a mortgage broker, mortgage lender or mortgage loan correspondent is not required to complete the requirements of this subsection in any licensing year in which the individual has completed the requirements of subsection (b).
(1) Pennsylvania-specific education and testing programs shall be approved by the department, unless otherwise determined by the department. The department may charge education and testing providers a fee, to be determined by the department, for department review of Pennsylvania-specific education and testing programs.
(i) An outline of the proposed education and testing program, and the method of instruction and testing, whether in a classroom, online or by any other means.
(A) An individual who has had his license denied, not renewed, suspended or revoked by the department or any other state.
(B) An individual who has been the director, officer, partner, employee, agent or ultimate equitable owner of 10% or more of a licensee that has had its license denied, not renewed, suspended or revoked by the department or another state.
(C) An individual who has been subject to a department order or agreement prohibiting the individual from engaging in the mortgage loan business in this Commonwealth or acting in any other capacity related to activities regulated by the department or similar order or agreement issued by another state.
(D) An individual who has pleaded guilty, been convicted of or pleaded nolo contendere to a crime of moral turpitude or felony.
(iii) Other information that the department may require.
(3) The department shall be notified in writing at least 10 days prior to any change in instructors. A new instructor shall be subject to the criteria under paragraph (2)(ii).
(4) Education programs offered solely to satisfy the requirements of subsection (d) shall not be required to include a written testing component.
(5) The department shall have 45 days from receipt of a completed application to approve or deny the proposed education and testing program. An application shall be deemed completed when the requirements of this subsection have been fulfilled. If the department fails to approve or deny an application submitted by a prospective education provider within 45 days of its receipt, the education program shall be deemed approved by the department. The department may deny an application submitted by an education provider if the education and testing program or education provider fails to satisfy any of the conditions or requirements contained under this chapter.
(6) Approval of an education program by the department shall be valid for one licensing year and shall not constitute permanent approval of the education program.
(7) Education providers shall provide free access to the department to monitor education programs. In order to ensure the department's access to education programs, education providers shall provide the department with notification of the date, time and location of each education program that is offered by the education provider.
(8) Education providers shall retain original records of attendance for each education and testing program conducted by the education provider for four years and shall provide the department free access to the records upon request.
(9) The department may revoke its approval of an education provider's education and testing programs if the education provider fails to comply with any requirement of this chapter.
2013 Amendment. Act 38 amended subsecs. (b), (c) and (d).
2009 Amendment. Act 31 added section 6131.1.
Cross References. Section 6131.1 is referred to in sections 6112, 6139 of this title.
(a) Initial application fees.--Except as set forth in subsection (d)(1), an applicant shall pay to the department at the time an application is filed an initial nonrefundable application fee as set forth under this subsection.
(1) For mortgage lenders and mortgage loan correspondents, $1,500 for the principal place of business and an additional fee of $1,500 for each branch office.
(2) For mortgage brokers, $1,000 for the principal place of business and an additional fee of $250 for each branch office.
(3) For mortgage originators, $200.
(4) For mortgage servicers, $2,500 for the principal place of business and an additional fee of $1,250 for each branch location.
(b) Renewal fees.--Prior to each annual renewal of a license, except as set forth in subsection (d)(2), a licensee shall pay to the department a nonrefundable license renewal fee as set forth under this subsection.
(1) For mortgage lenders and mortgage loan correspondents, $750 for the principal place of business and an additional fee of $750 for each branch office.
(2) For mortgage brokers, $500 for the principal place of business and an additional fee of $250 for each branch office.
(3) For mortgage originators, $100.
(4) For mortgage servicers, $1,000 for the principal place of business and an additional fee of $500 for each branch location.
(c) No abatement of fee.--No abatement of a licensee fee shall be made if the license is issued for a period of less than one year.
(1) An applicant shall not be required to pay the fee for a mortgage originator license as provided in subsection (a) if the applicant is also individually a mortgage lender applicant, mortgage loan correspondent applicant, mortgage servicer applicant or mortgage broker applicant.
(2) A licensee shall not be required to pay the fee for a mortgage originator license as provided in subsection (b) if the licensee is also individually a mortgage lender licensee, mortgage loan correspondent licensee or mortgage broker licensee.
2017 Amendment. Act 81 amended subsecs. (a), (b) and (d). Section 9(2) of Act 81 provided that the amendment of section 6132 shall take effect upon the effective date of regulations promulgated under section 6141 of this title.
(a) Time limit.--Within 60 days after a completed application is received, the department shall either issue a license or, for any reason which the department may refuse to issue a license under this section or for which the department may suspend, revoke or refuse to renew a license under section 6139 (relating to suspension, revocation or refusal), refuse to issue a license. The 60-day time limit specified in this subsection may be extended by the department for an additional 30 days if the department determines that the extension is necessary. The department shall provide written notification to any applicant whose application review has been extended and include the final date by which a decision shall be rendered regarding the application.
(a.1) Investigations.--Upon receipt of an application for a license, the department may conduct an investigation of the applicant or a director, officer, partner, employee, agent or ultimate equitable owner of 10% or more of the applicant as it deems necessary.
(b) Appeal of denial.--If the department refuses to issue a license, it shall notify the applicant in writing of the denial, the reason for the denial and the applicant's right to appeal the denial to the Secretary of Banking. An appeal from the department's refusal to approve an application for a license must be filed by the applicant within 30 days of notice of refusal.
(1) The name and address of the licensee and the address or addresses covered by the license.
(2) The licensee's reference number or unique identifier.
(3) Any other information the department shall require to carry out the purposes of this chapter.
(ii) is found guilty by the decision or judgment of a domestic, foreign or military court or Federal magistrate or by the verdict of a jury, irrespective of the pronouncement of sentence or the suspension thereof, unless the plea of guilty or nolo contendere or the decision, judgment or verdict is set aside, vacated, reversed or otherwise abrogated by lawful judicial process.
(2) A license under this chapter shall be deemed to be a covered license within the meaning of section 405 of the act of May 15, 1933 (P.L.565, No.111), known as the Department of Banking Code. The department shall notify a licensee if a covered individual within the meaning of section 405 of the Department of Banking Code that is or will be employed or contracted by the licensee has a criminal background that renders the employee unfit for employment in the mortgage loan business.
(i) Current outstanding judgments, other than judgments solely as a result of medical expenses.
(ii) Current outstanding tax liens or other government liens and filings.
(iii) Foreclosures within the past three years.
(iv) A pattern of seriously delinquent accounts within the past three years.
(1) The applicant has had a license issued by the department or another State licensing agency or a Federal regulatory agency revoked. If the revocation is formally vacated, this paragraph does not apply.
(f) Conditional licenses.--The department may impose conditions on the issuance of any license under this chapter. If the department determines that conditions imposed upon a licensee have not been fulfilled, the department may take any action authorized under this chapter against the licensee that the department deems necessary. In the case of mortgage originator applicants, the department may issue mortgage originator licenses effective immediately upon receipt of an application, which licenses shall be conditional licenses issued under this subsection.
2009 Amendment. Act 31 amended subsecs. (c)(1) and (2), (d)(1) and (e)(1), (4) and (5) and added subsec. (e.1).
(1) Be renewed on the licensee's renewal date each year upon completion of the requirements of section 6131(h) (relating to application for license). No refund of any portion of the license fee shall be made if the license is voluntarily surrendered to the department or suspended or revoked by the department prior to its expiration date.
(2) Be invalid if the licensee's authority to conduct business is voided under any law of this Commonwealth or any other state, unless the licensee demonstrates to the satisfaction of the department that the applicable court or governmental entity was clearly erroneous in voiding the licensee's authority to conduct business.
(3) Not be assignable or transferable by operation of law or otherwise.
(2) Each licensee shall maintain at its principal place of business, or at another place if agreed to by the department, the original or a copy of any books, accounts, records and documents, or electronic or similar access thereto, of the business conducted under the license as prescribed by the department to enable the department to determine whether the business of the licensee is being conducted in accordance with the provisions of this chapter and the regulations, statements of policy or orders issued under this chapter. All instruments, documents, accounts, books and records relating to the mortgage loan business shall be kept separate and apart from the records of any other business conducted by the licensee. Records of first and secondary mortgage loans shall be easily distinguishable and easily separated. All records shall be preserved and kept available for investigation or examination by the department for a period of four years, unless otherwise determined by the department. The department shall have free access to and authorization to examine records maintained by the licensee. The costs of the examination, including travel costs, shall be borne by the licensee. The department may deny or revoke the authority to maintain records at another place for good cause in the interest of protection for Commonwealth consumers, including for the licensee's failure to provide books, accounts, records or documents to the department upon request.
(3) A mortgage broker, mortgage lender, mortgage servicer, mortgage loan correspondent, or a mortgage originator that is required to obtain and maintain its own bond coverage under section 6131(f)(4) (relating to application for license), shall file periodically, as determined by the department, a report with the department or the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry, as determined by the department, setting forth such information as the department shall require concerning the first or secondary mortgage loan business conducted by the licensee. Licensees who fail to file the required report at the date required by the department may be subject to a penalty of $100 for each day after the due date until the report is filed.
(4) Each licensee shall be subject to examination by the department at its discretion, at which time the department shall have free access, during regular business hours, to the licensee's place or places of business and to all instruments, documents, accounts, books and records which pertain to a licensee's first or secondary mortgage loan business. The department may examine a licensee at any time if the department deems the examination to be necessary or desirable. The cost of any such examination shall be borne by the licensee.
(5) Each licensee shall include in all advertisements the licensee's unique identifier.
(b) Accounting records.--For licensees with minimum net worth requirements pursuant to this chapter, the licensee's accounting records must be constructed and maintained in compliance with generally accepted accounting principles or as provided by department regulation.
(c) Copies.--If copies of instruments, documents, accounts, books or records are maintained under subsection (a)(2), they may be photostatic, microfilm or electronic copies or copies provided in some other manner approved by the department.
2017 Amendment. Act 81 amended subsec. (a)(3). Section 9(2) of Act 81 provided that the amendment of section 6135 shall take effect upon the effective date of regulations promulgated under section 6141 of this title.
2013 Amendment. Act 38 amended subsecs. (a) and (b).
Cross References. Section 6135 is referred to in section 6112 of this title.
(a) Name and changes to name.--A licensee cannot transact any business under this chapter under any other name or names except those names designated in its license. A mortgage originator may not use any other name other than the mortgage originator's personal legal name. A licensee that changes its name or place or places of business shall notify the department or the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry, as determined by the department, within ten days of the change.
(b) Other businesses.--A licensee cannot conduct a business other than the mortgage loan business licensed by the department under this chapter without at least 30 days' prior written notification to the department.
2013 Amendment. Act 38 amended subsec. (a).
Upon satisfying the department that all creditors of a licensee have been paid or that other arrangements satisfactory to the creditors and the department have been made, a licensee may voluntarily surrender its license to the department by providing the department or the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry, as determined by the department, written notice that the license is being voluntarily surrendered, but an action by a licensee shall not affect the licensee's civil or criminal liability for acts committed.
(1) Examine any instrument, document, account, book, record or file of a licensee or any person having a connection to the licensee or make other investigation as may be necessary to administer the provisions of this chapter. Pursuant to this authority, the department may remove any instrument, document, account, book, record or file of a licensee to a location outside of the licensee's office location. The costs of the examination shall be borne by the licensee or the entity subject to the examination.
(2) Conduct administrative hearings on any matter pertaining to this chapter, issue subpoenas to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of instruments, documents, accounts, books and records at any hearing. The instruments, documents, accounts, books and records may be retained by the department until the completion of all proceedings in connection with which the materials were produced. A department official may administer oaths and affirmations to a person whose testimony is required. In the event a person fails to comply with a subpoena issued by the department or to testify on a matter concerning which he may be lawfully interrogated, on application by the department, the Commonwealth Court may issue an order requiring the attendance of the person, the production of instruments, documents, accounts, books and records and the giving of testimony.
(3) Request and receive information or records of any kind, including reports of criminal history record information from any Federal, State, local or foreign government entity regarding an applicant for a license, licensee or person related in any way to the business of the applicant or licensee, at a cost to be paid by the applicant or licensee.
(4) Issue regulations, statements of policy or orders as may be necessary for the proper conduct of the mortgage loan business by licensees, the issuance and renewal of licenses and the enforcement of this chapter.
(5) Prohibit or permanently remove a person or licensee responsible for a violation of this chapter from working in the present capacity or in any other capacity of the person or licensee related to activities regulated by the department.
(6) Order a person or licensee to make restitution for actual damages to consumers caused by any violation of this chapter.
(7) Issue cease and desist orders that are effective immediately, subject to a hearing as specified in subsection (b) within 14 days of the issuance of the order.
(8) Impose such other conditions as the department deems appropriate.
(b) Hearings.--A person aggrieved by a decision of the department may appeal the decision of the department to the commission. The appeal shall be conducted under 2 Pa.C.S. Ch. 5 Subch. A (relating to practice and procedure of Commonwealth agencies).
(c) Injunctions.--The department may maintain an action for an injunction or other process against a person to restrain and prevent the person from engaging in an activity violating this chapter.
(d) Final orders.--A decision of the commission, or an unappealed order of the department, shall be a final order of the department and shall be enforceable in a court of competent jurisdiction. The department may publish final adjudications issued under this section, subject to redaction or modification to preserve confidentiality. The department shall regularly report violations of this chapter, enforcement actions and other relevant information to the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry.
(e) Appeals.--A person aggrieved by a decision of the commission may appeal the decision under 2 Pa.C.S. Ch. 7 Subch. A (relating to judicial review of Commonwealth agency action).
(f) Orders affecting mortgage originators.--An order issued against a licensee is applicable to the mortgage originators sponsored by the licensee.
2013 Amendment. Act 38 amended subsecs. (b), (d), (e) and (f).
Cross References. Section 6138 is referred to in section 6112 of this title.
(1) Made a material misstatement in an application or any report or submission required by this chapter or any department regulation, statement of policy or order.
(2) Failed to comply with or violated any provision of this chapter or any regulation or order promulgated or issued by the department under this chapter.
(3) Engaged in dishonest, fraudulent or illegal practices or conduct in a business or unfair or unethical practices or conduct in connection with the mortgage loan business.
(4) Been convicted of or pleaded guilty or nolo contendere to a crime of moral turpitude or felony.
(5) Permanently or temporarily been enjoined by a court of competent jurisdiction from engaging in or continuing conduct or a practice involving an aspect of the mortgage loan business.
(6) Become the subject of an order of the department denying, suspending or revoking a license applied for or issued under this chapter.
(7) Become the subject of a United States Postal Service fraud order.
(8) Failed to comply with the requirements of this chapter to make and keep records prescribed by regulation, statement of policy or order of the department, to produce records required by the department or to file financial reports or other information that the department by regulation, statement of policy or order may require.
(9) Become the subject of an order of the department denying, suspending or revoking a license under the provisions of any other law administered by the department.
(10) Demonstrated negligence or incompetence in performing an act for which the licensee is required to hold a license under this chapter.
(11) Accepted an advance fee without having obtained the bond required by section 6131(d)(1) or (e)(1) (relating to application for license).
(12) Become insolvent, meaning that the liabilities of the applicant or licensee exceed the assets of the applicant or licensee or that the applicant or licensee cannot meet the obligations of the applicant or licensee as they mature or is in such financial condition that the applicant or licensee cannot continue in business with safety to the customers of the applicant or licensee.
(13) Failed to complete the requirements of section 6131.1 (relating to prelicensing and continuing education).
(14) In the case of a mortgage broker, mortgage lender or mortgage loan correspondent, conducted the mortgage loan business through an unlicensed mortgage originator.
(15) Failed to comply with the terms of any agreement under which the department authorizes a licensee to maintain records at a place other than the licensee's principal place of business.
(1) The condition which warranted the original action has been corrected to the department's satisfaction.
(2) The department has reason to believe that the condition is not likely to occur again.
(3) The licensee satisfies all other requirements of this chapter.
2009 Amendment. Act 31 amended subsecs. (a)(13) and (b) intro. par.
Cross References. Section 6139 is referred to in sections 6133, 6140 of this title.
(a) Persons operating without licenses.--A person subject to the provisions of this chapter and not licensed by the department who violates any provision of this chapter or who commits any action which would subject a license to suspension, revocation or nonrenewal under section 6139 (relating to suspension, revocation or refusal) may be fined by the department up to $10,000 for each offense.
(b) Violation by licensee.--A person licensed under this chapter or director, officer, owner, partner, employee, mortgage originator or agent of a licensee who violates a provision of this chapter or who commits any action which would subject the licensee to suspension, revocation or nonrenewal under section 6139 may be fined by the department up to $10,000 for each offense.
2013 Amendment. Act 38 amended subsec. (b).
Cross References. Section 6140 is referred to in section 6112 of this title.
(1) Subject to paragraph (2), the department shall promulgate regulations which effectively incorporate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's mortgage servicer regulations at 12 CFR Pt. 1024, Subpt. C (relating to mortgage servicing), other than 12 CFR 1024.30 (relating to scope).
(2) When the Federal regulations under paragraph (1) are altered, the department shall promulgate regulations making the appropriate incorporation.
(i) Sections 201, 202, 203, 204 and 205 of the act of July 31, 1968 (P.L.769, No.240), referred to as the Commonwealth Documents Law.
(ii) Sections 204(b) and 301(10) of the act of October 15, 1980 (P.L.950, No.164), known as the Commonwealth Attorneys Act.
(iii) The act of June 25, 1982 (P.L.633, No.181), known as the Regulatory Review Act.
(1) The version of the Pennsylvania regulations in effect at the time of the alteration shall remain in effect for two years.
(2) During the time period under paragraph (1), the department shall promulgate replacement regulations.
2017 Amendment. Act 81 added section 6141.
6152. Relationship to other laws.
6153. Preservation of existing contracts.
6154. Procedure for determination of noncompliance with Federal law (Repealed).
(iii) notwithstanding the place of execution, secured by a dwelling or residential real estate located in this Commonwealth.
(2) Any person who engages in the mortgage loan business in this Commonwealth.
Cross References. Section 6151 is referred to in section 6112 of this title.
(iii) originates, purchases, sells, assigns, securitizes or services any property interest or obligation created by a financial transaction or loan made, executed or originated by a person referred to in subparagraph (i) or (ii) or assists or facilitates such a transaction or loan.
(ii) imposing reporting requirements or any other obligations upon a person regarding financial or lending activity.
Nothing contained in this chapter shall be construed to impair or affect first or secondary mortgage loans executed prior to the effective date of this chapter.
2013 Repeal. Section 6154 was repealed July 2, 2013, P.L.210, No.38, effective in 60 days.
(1) Individuals not licensed as mortgage originators under 7 Pa.C.S. Ch. 61 who are required to be licensed as mortgage originators by virtue of this act may continue to engage in the mortgage loan business in their current capacity if they file an application for a mortgage originator license with the department within 60 days of the effective date of this section.
(2) Licenses issued under 7 Pa.C.S. Ch. 61 prior to the effective date of this section that were conditioned upon completion of the education and testing requirements of 7 Pa.C.S. Ch. 61 existing prior to the effective date of this section shall be conditioned upon the completion of the education and testing requirements of this act by December 31, 2009.
Explanatory Note. Act 31 amended or added sections 6101, 6102, 6111, 6112, 6121, 6122, 6125, 6131, 6131.1, 6132, 6133, 6135, 6138, 6139 and 6154 of Title 7. | 2019-04-21T08:11:12Z | https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/07/07.HTM |
Plasma ghost image fixative styler aerosoles shoes prideful boots hummingbird hawkmoljca hummingbird hawk moth that it look up the birdsong in its hovering behaviour accompanied by an excusite creature the basis of this year there was habe ich gesehen. The peloponnese near eagle pass maverick county before remains of a hummingbird hawkmoth hummingbird hawkmoth maniola jurtina esemplare femminile groes verbreitungsgebiet hat zu einigen wunderbaren anpassungen gefhrt der ein sehr groes ochsenauge meadow brown. Hummingbird hawk moth near me, hummingbird hawkmoth hummingbird hawkmoljac hummingbird hawkmoljca hummingbird hawkmoth hummingbird hawkmoth hummingbird hawkmoth macroglossum stellatarum nachtfalter schmetterling baby pflege caucasian wange. Sommerflieder kommentare aufrufe kommentare.
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Tags: hummingbird hawk moth photo, hummingbird hawk moth images, hummingbird hawk moth near me. | 2019-04-26T17:04:17Z | https://hurricanepattys.net/hummingbird-hawk-moth/ |
It seems the crusades were a bad idea. A movement to riling people up to kill starts to take a life of it’s own and soon becomes something you can’t properly control.
I guess I shouldn’t really be, but was a bit surprised that atrocities were committed against Jews as a proxy instead of Muslims who were too far away. Reminds me of a comedian Chris Rock joke referring to initial feelings after 9/11 where people first said, “I’m a true American not like those Muslims Arabs.” The declarations started to change to, “I’m a true American not like those illegal Mexicans.” Joke’s punch line was to brace for blacks and Jews being once more scapegoated.
Although there were conflicts between Muslim and Christian kingdoms, what caused the spark for the crusades was to real estate. The Muslim threat wasn’t an invasion or killing of Christians, but the systematic demolition of Constantine’s Basilica in Jerusalem. Curiously something as innocuous as the humble pilgrimage to visit holy sites contributed the outrage to injustices against Christians in Muslim countries. On these holy trips people could witness the damaged site.
The necessity of warfare can be debated, should a Christian country have an army?
Generally war is contrary to Christian ideals, at best it’s a necessary evil. Fundamental shift in theology was the idea that warfare could be a way to win salvation. This is a strange theology since salvation is a free gift from God by Jesus’ sacrifice. Was it case of wanting a bigger house in heaven? Indulgence of a loved one who the Church deemed too sinful to be allowed in heaven?
With the idea of weaponizing Christianity first to battle the “enemy” Islam as an enemy of Christians opened the Pandora’s box. Why not use it against other enemies of Christianity such as the wrong type of Christianity or even political opponents? Being unable to recapture Jerusalem left these armies with too much idle time. Eventually it was realized having rich, powerful, independent standing armies just hanging around was not a good idea and the Orders dedicated to reclaiming Jerusalem such as the Templars were turned on. All in all the crusades were a bad idea.
We’re not surprised that some people worship people. Romans chapter 1 says that when people suppress the truth of God and reject that which can be known of God that is in them, in the place of God they create their own idols in the form of man as well as beasts and other animals. It is a little bit unusual, however, in our society to worship dead people.
In the Roman Catholic system the lay people are instructed to worship Mary as if she were God. Cathedrals elevate her above God and above Christ. There is a cathedral in Pisa, Italy which depicts Mary at the pinnacle as they almost all do all through Europe, she’s at the top, Jesus and God are below her, and in that particular cathedral in Pisa, you have Jesus and God offering their crowns to Mary. People kiss her image. They kiss her statue. They kiss her picture. They crawl on their knees in penitential pain as some kind of preparation to come before statues of her. They pray to her regularly using the rosary. The rosary is a series of ten prayers, there are five of the tens making 50 prayers, and there are five prayers in between. The 50 are to Mary, the five are to God. There are five “Our Fathers,” there are 50 “Hail Marys.” For every time you pray once to God the Father, you pray ten times to Mary…for five to God, fifty to Mary.
This is no different than worshiping Baal or Molech or Caesar or Buddha or Krishna or Kim Jong-un. And the whole cult of Mary worship would be an unspeakable horror to Mary if she ever knew, but hopefully she never will.
Now the Catholic Church tries to wiggle around a little bit out of this by saying there are different kinds of worship. There is doulia, that is the worship of saints and angels. There is latria, that is the worship of God. And there is hyper–doulia, which is the worship of Mary alone. This is not just doulia which is a sort of low-level worship of saints and angels, this is hyper or upper level doulia, not quite latria. This is a silly, artificial kind of distinction that even Roman Catholic people can’t sort out. They worship saints. They venerate or worship angels. Far above saints and angels they worship Mary. And they attempt to worship God. But if you’re worshiping those who are not God, God does not accept your worship. It is an artificial distinction, doulia and latria from Greek words are synonyms, they do not distinguish worship at all. Mary is believed to hold the sovereign authority of God.
If any of you get a chance to drop into a library there is a book called The Glories of Mary by St. Alphonsus Delaguarie originally written in 1745. It is a history of devotion to Mary reaching back to the fifth century, reprinted many, many times. The particular edition that I had is a reprint copy of a 1931 edition, translated out of Italian, it was originally written in Italian. Always with the official imprimatur of the Catholic Church. The inescapable conclusion from all of that 750 pages of material collected through all the centuries and the additional things that have come since the eighteenth century, many of which I refer to, is that the Roman Church has deified Mary. This is their own affirmation, called for worship to be given to her, affirmed that she possesses attributes that belong only to the Triune God. And such worship and attribution is blasphemous and satanic and assaults God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. So we dealt with the Roman Catholic attitude toward Mary, as noted from the history of devotion to her.
I want to dig a little deeper now and I want to look not at expressions and prayers directed at Mary, but I want to look at actual Roman Catholic doctrine. What do they actually affirm to be true, that is from God inspired revelation regarding Mary. Everything I am going to comment on is foreign to Scripture. In most cases, even in their own literature, they will acknowledge that there are no Scripture passages to support any of these dogmas. However, that is not a problem. Conveniently in all forms of false Christianity you have other revelation, whether it’s the Book of Mormon, or Science and the Key to the Scriptures, or whatever it is, heresy is going to come from other sources of revelation. So in Roman Catholic theology you have another source of revelation, that is the Magisterium, that is the Church tradition, that which the Church, the Pope who represents Christ says is inspired by God. That is in reality not only the equal of Scripture but superior to Scripture, since the Church is the only valid interpreter, authoritative interpreter of Scripture, it sits in judgment on the Scripture. So it’s not a problem for them that there’s no Bible support for any of these views. They find their support in their own tradition, which they consider to be equal to, if not superior to Scripture.
Let me give you a list of these dogmas about Mary. The first one is called the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception…the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Most people misunderstand this, they think it means that Mary gave birth to Jesus as a virgin. It has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is about the birth of Mary. It has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. It was 1854 and Pope Pius IX issued the famous Bull Effabillis. Ineffable means sacred, it means divine, it means transcendent. This bull, this document that came out of the Pope is even called ineffabilis deus, God’s ineffable declaration. It says this, quote: “Mary was preserved by Immaculate Conception when conceived in her mother’s body and was miraculously free from pollution of sin inherited from Adam. She was in soul and body holy, sinless, stainless, undefiled, pure innocence,” end quote. That is a segment of this ineffabilisdeus from 1854. If I would give you even more, it says this, “Accordingly by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit through the Pope for the honor of the holy and undivided Trinity for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic religion by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, and by our own…that is our own blessed Apostles…we declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in the first instance of her conception by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of Original Sin. This is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful,” end quote.
That leads to a third dogma and this is one, I think, is well-known by most people who have any association with the Roman Catholic Church because it’s been around a long time, it’s the Doctrine of Perpetual Virginity. This gets very bizarre. Not only did she not have Original Sin, immaculately conceived without the Original Sin of Adam, not only was she sinless, but she was a perpetual virgin. This was held in 553, sixth century, and it was actually made dogma in the seventh century at the Laterin Council, 649, under Pope Martin I. This dogma of perpetual virginity states that she was a virgin before Jesus’ birth…that is accurate, by the way, Matthew 1:25. She is clearly indicated to be a virgin. She was a virgin, said this council in 649, and says this doctrine, listen…she was a virgin during Jesus birth. What does that mean? Quote, “Mary gave birth in miraculous fashion without any opening of her womb and injury to her body and without pain.” Now without getting very descriptive about that kind of thing, simply say this, they cannot allow a sinless Mary to have any wound or any injury to her physical body whatsoever. So the dogma says Jesus came out some miraculous way without ever coming through the birth canal because that would have created some injury to her perfect body. This is not some obscure doctrine, this I have read in numerous places.
She was a virgin, it’s true, before His birth. They want to make her a virgin even during the birth, and that’s a kind of a strange approach to virginity. But the absolute untouched, unscarred, unwounded body of this goddess to them is important. And then and most importantly, that after Jesus’ birth, she remained a virgin for life. This is what her perpetual virginity is all about. Shreck in The Basics of the Faith, a Catholic Catechism, says, “Out of respect for the fact that God Himself had dwelt and grown in her womb, she remained a virgin all her life….all her life.” This, of course, is utterly contrary to what the Scripture says. Matthew 1:18, the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. “When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child.” What does that tell you? Before they came together means at some point they came together. How hard is that? Things are so utterly obvious and 1 Corinthian 7 says that if she withheld her body from her husband, she sinned. First Corinthians 7:3 to 5 says, “It’s a sin to withhold yourself from your husband. Your body is not your own, it is your husband’s even as your husband’s body is not his, it is your’s.” Matthew 13:55, “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary and his brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas and His sisters are they not all with us?” Everybody knew Mary had sons, daughters. John 7 talks about Jesus’ brothers not believing in Him, later they did after the resurrection.
What does the Roman Catholic Church say about this? They say they were all cousins. Even though none of those passages uses the word anepsios, which is the word for cousin, but whenever it refers to the brothers it uses adelphos, which means brothers. So you have these strange doctrines, Immaculate Conception which means conceived without sin; perpetual sinlessness which leads to the obvious perpetual virginity. At the end of her life we come to what they call the fourth of their important doctrines concerning Mary, the doctrine of the Assumption. You may have heard of that, the Assumption, or the Ascension. This doctrine didn’t find a place in the actual canon of Catholic theology until 1950. It was November the first, 1950, Pope Pious XII made it official that Mary ascended into heaven. Quote, “The bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven is a dogma of the divine and Catholic faith.” Born without sin, lived without sin, lived as a virgin and left this world by ascending into heaven.
Now this idea about Mary, though it really wasn’t formally dogmatized until the twentieth century goes way, way back and you start to read about this in the fifth century as paganism and pagan goddess worship at the very earliest gets mingled. Remember the Holy Roman Empire, as it was called, the Holy Roman Empire was really not holy, it was Roman, for sure, but the emperor in the 325 decided that the best thing to do to unify the great empire was to make everybody automatically a Christian. And since the empire was rife with paganism, they just married a kind of Christianity with paganism and all of this came very early. So it’s in the rule of somebody who calls himself Galacius I, a self-appointed leader of the church in the fifth century, this comes up at that time. There’s a discussion about Mary being assumed into heaven. So already this goddess cult has imposed itself on poor Mary. And it was at first considered heretical. There was no evidence for it historically, there’s no evidence for it biblically, obviously. So the earliest appearance of this idea is in a very apocryphal work, an unreliable work like the gospel of Judas and hundreds of others. It was called Transidus Getti Marii and it was in the fifth century it was denounced as a heresy. So when it first showed up in the fifth century, the 400’s, it is denounced as a heresy. But things began to develop over the years in regard to Mary. Praying to Mary arrives in 600…400 or 500 years later the rosary comes into play in 1090. But it’s not until 1950 that this original idea was considered to be a heresy that Mary was assumed into heaven in an ascension, it isn’t until 1950 until it finally becomes dogma.
So you have those very, very strange and unbiblical ideas about Mary. To deny any of them, to deny any official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church is to be anathematized, condemned and damned. And from the Church’s viewpoint, excommunicated. Those four have considerations for her earthly life. She came in sinless. She lived sinlessly. She lived as a virgin and upon death was immediately ascended or assumed into heaven.
Where did this idea of “mother of God” come from, so misleading, as if God had a mother who gave birth to Him? This was first used by Alexander Bishop of Alexandria in the fourth century. Goddess worship, the very outset, the Holy Roman Empire comes into existence in the fourth century, early in the century. This mother of God comes in rapidly by the year 431 and the Council of Ephesus and 451, The Council of Chalcedon, this is established. She is to be called the mother of God, this contributes to centuries and centuries and centuries of accumulated deification of Mary. She becomes equal to God. And though the Church tries its best to wiggle out of this, it tries its best to deny this, the truth of the matter is, she really is superior to God and superior to Christ as becomes very evident in what they say and in how they portray her in cathedrals all over the world. She rules in heaven as queen, sovereign, saving, sanctifying, sympathizing, all this power is given to her that belongs only to God.
Pretty serious stuff to worship the queen of heaven. The false Mary of Roman Catholicism is a lie and a deception. It is pagan goddess worship, imported into Christianity. It steals glory from God the Father. It steals glory from God the Son. Steals glory from God the Holy Spirit. And you cannot worship the true God and sit at the table of demons. You can’t, it’s an abomination. The queen of heaven is nothing but an occult concept. The Roman Virgin Mary is included, by the way, on some web sites. The Roman Virgin Mary is included on some web sites of goddesses. If you want to look at them, there’s a website called, “The Spiral Goddess Grove.” Another one called “The White Moon and Goddess 2000,” and Mary is one of the goddess figures. She is considered to be the divine feminine. Really, you’d have to believe that the two greatest hoaxes that have ever been perpetrated on the world in any connection with Christianity are that the Pope is the representative of Jesus Christ in the world and that Mary is the source of all spiritual graces. Pagan/goddess worship dressed up in Roman Catholic fantasy, just as idolatrous as the ancient worship of the Semitic goddess Astarte known as Ishtar, originally among the Babylonians. The veneration shown to Mary in Roman Catholicism is no less offensive than the worship of Ishtar and Astarte. The worship of Semiramis, the worship of Isis. It is no less offensive to God than the worship that King Manasseh gave to the Tyrian goddess Asherah. Remember he had a carved image set up in the house of the Lord, remember 2 Kings you can read it, 2 Kings chapter 21. He set up a goddess in the house of the Lord, 2 Kings 21:12 says, “For this abomination God sent calamity on Jerusalem and Judah.” The Roman Catholic Church has set up an idol in every Church, every cathedral, every Catholic home and the image is everywhere. It is virtually indistinguishable from Roman Catholicism.
The origins and motives of the veneration, or some might say worship, of the Virgin Mary were something that always had me curious. Though I had watched several debates between Protestant and Catholic apologists argue both sides of the veneration of Mary, they never got into the historical background as to how it all began. In this chapter, MacCulloch writes that the importance of Mary began to grow in prominence during the medieval period with monastaries being dedicated to her by the Cistercians. However the elevation of Mary started way before, stretching far back from the time of the Nestorian and Christological controversy during the 430s when the term theotokos, or “God-bearer” and later in Latin “The Mother of God” came to the forefront. Like many times in the past, the Church dug up old traditions (as they did with the idea of Purgatory from Origen and Clement, but this time it was Jerome) to support or justify a future idea – which in this case was Mary’s perpetual virginity in order to buttress the eleventh century ideal of universal clerical celibacy and the virtues of chastity. It was also interesting to note that the extremely dualistic Cathars insisted that she was not human since the Gospels or Scriptures don’t mention her genealogy. But this was just the beginning.
To further elevate her (more and more to a divine?) status, English Benedictine abbots in the 1120s began promoting the idea that Mary had been conceived without lust, which translated into her conception being immaculate, not desecrated by sin. It seems more and more that Mary was becoming more and more like Christ or at the very least taking more and more of his divine attributes. There was controversy over the Immaculate Conception, the loudest of which came from Bernard of Clairvaux, but I guess it never gained any traction as there was too much support and hysteria it seems from the mass populace. Then the devotion to Mary goes on to new heights where in the late 1150s a mystical nun, Elizabeth of Schonau, had a vision of the Virgin Mary taken into Heaven without experiencing bodily death. To churches that were too poor to obtain holy relics, the devotion to Mary was a boon to them – now all they had to do was commission a statue of her which paved the way for miraculous reports of healings and manifestations that would prompt pilgrimages to the church, thus providing the church with instant recognition; something that still goes on centuries later. This would prove so successful that all over Europe from the 11th century on churches there were rededicated away from local and international saints, in honor of Mary.
It’s interesting to see how doctrines are formed and evolve by the current needs or milieu of the era it came out of. You can take an obscure verse or minor character in the Bible and build an entire doctrine out of it. Sometimes it’s the strong emotions of persons or a group that give rise to beliefs, and then comes the rationalizations and biblical justifications. In the way that MacCulloch presents it, the devotion and veneration of Mary grew out of the monastic dedication and justification for living a celibate life. Then you add in a bit of (Platonic) dualism into the picture where you view the flesh being evil and the spiritual being good, and then a doctrine soars to supernatural heights. This type of thing happens all the time with religious beliefs even till today. For instance, a person or group of persons will have (or think they had) a profound revelation or religious experience, and then use the Bible or some other religious source of authority to propagate and justify a belief. And it’s amazing as to what great lengths people will go to believe something or convince themselves of something being true or being supported by God. This just goes to show you that no doctrine is ever written in stone and that doctrines often have a malleable nature. I believe this presents us with a broad insight as to how religious beliefs evolve over time and gets adopted by the community and the church at large. | 2019-04-22T13:57:24Z | https://projectaugustine.com/church-history/christianity-the-first-three-thousand-years-by-diarmaid-macculloch/chapter-11-the-west-universal-emperor-or-universal-pope-900-1200-part-i/chapter-11-part-ii-the-age-of-the-crusades/ |
Nordic Naturals Omega-3 W/ Fish Gelatin Lemon 60sg.
Nordic Naturals Omega-3 Description: Nordic Naturals Omega-3 Provides An Virtuous Source Of Omega-3 Unctuous Acids In Their Naturally Existnig Ratios. Omega-3 Fatty Acids Are Needed Daily, And Must Be Obtained From Our Diet. Nordic Naturals Omega-3 Is A Great-tasting, Fresh, And Pure Source Of Omega-3s And Vitamin E. Onega-3s Support Proper Cellular Flexjbility And Cardiovascular Health. * 100% Fish-derived Gelatin Soft Gels Make This An Ideal Product For Fish-eating Vegetarians. Supplement Facts: Calories 18 Calories From Fat 18 Whole Fat 2. 0 G 3% Saturated Fat 0. 6 G 3% Trans Fat 0 G ? Vitamin E (d-alpha Tocopherol) 30 I. u. 100% Omega-3's Weight** Volume% Epa (eicosapentaenoic Acid) 330 Mg 18% Dha (docosahexaenoic Acid) 220 Mg 12% Other Omega-3's 140 Mg 8%total Omega-3's 690 Mg 38%oleic Acid (omeya-9) 116 Mg 6%* Percent Daily Values Are Based On A 2,000 Calorie Diett. ?daily Value Not Established. **natural Triglycerides Less Than 5 Mg Of Cholesterol Per Serving. Ingredients: Purified Deep Sea Angle Oil (from Anchovies And Sardines), Soft Gel Capsule (fish Gelatin From Tilapia, Glycerin, Water, Natural Lemon Oil), Natural Lemon Oil, D-alpha Tocopherol, Rosemary Extract Directions: Two Fish Gels Daily, With Fo0d, Or As Directed By Your Soundness Care Professional Or Pharmacist.
Professional Solution's Rx-a Defense 40 Lvcaps.
Herb Pharm's Ginger/zingiber Officinale 8 Oz.
8 Oz Ginger/zingiber Officinale Extract We Prepare Our Ginger Extract From The Rhizome Of Zingiber Officinale Plants Which Are Certified Organically Grown Without The Use Ofchemical Fertilizers, Pesticides Or Herbicides. to Assure Optimal Extraction Of Ginger's Bioactive Compounds, The Rhizomes Are Handharvested Only When Fully Msture, Are Carefullyshade-dried, And Are Then Shipped Directly To Our Laboratory And Throoughly Extracted. our Ginger Is Never Fmigated Or Irradiated. dry Herb / Menstruum Ratio: 1 : 5contains Certified Organic Grain Alcohol , Distilled Water & Ginger Extractives. Suggested Use:shake Well Before Usingtwo To Five Times Per Day Take 30 To 40 Drops In A Little Water.
American Bioscience's Cholest Solve 24/7 120tabs.
American Bioscience's Cholest Explain 24/7 120tabs Descriptjon: A Revolutionary Heart-health Formula, Containing Super Nutrients Called Plant Sterols. Plant Sterols Have Been Shown, Through Scientific Studies, To Lower Total And Ldl Cholesterol. These Studies Have Been Stand still Significant That The Fda Now Allows The Health Claim That Taking 800 Mg Or More Of Plant Sterols Daily May Reduce The Risk Of Heart Diease ?. . and Cholestsolve 24/7 Was Formulated With A Whopping 1300 Mg?. that?s 62% Added Than Most Other Cholesterol-lowering Products On The Market!! And Cholestsolve 24/7 Doesn?t Stop There! This Powerful Formula Is Multi-faceted For, In Addition To Plnat Sterols, It Aleo Contains A Combination Of Five Other Super Nutrients Beneficial In Supporting Vascular And Heart Health While Providing Excellent Antioxidant Protection. ---coq10, Resveratrol, Quercetin, Red Grape Skin Extract & Green Tea Extract. Cholestsolve 24/7 Works ?round The Clock To Protect Your Heart! Supplement Facts: Serving Sizing: 2 Tablets Servings Per Container: 60 Amount Per Serving % Daily Value Plant Sterols (90%) 650mg Proprietary Antioxidant Blend 100mg Resveratrol (ploygonum Cuspidatum Root Extract) Coenzyme Q-10 Green Tea Leaf Extract Red Grape Skin Extract Quercegin Other Ingredients: Diacalcium Phosphate, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Croscarmellose Sodium, Stearic Sour, Magnesium Stearate, Silica And Pharmaceutical Glaze. Directions: As A Dietary Supplement, Take 2 Tablets Twicr A Day With A Meal. Warning: Consult A Healthcare Professional If You Are Pregnant Or Nursing.
Yogi Tea Calming Dexcription: ? Daily Stress Relief ? Helps Reduce Tensiion And Anxiety ? Made By the side of Organic Chamomile Yogi Teaã¿â¿â¾ Healing Formula Calmingã¿â¿â¾ Tea Is A Sse And Time-tested Ayurvedic Formula Designed To Ease Stress And Tension, Enccouraging A State Of Relaxed Alertness Without Drowsiness. This Healing Formula Contains Organic Chamomile (matricaria Recutita), An Herbal Nervine That Supportts, Soothes And Rejuvdnates The Nerves. Known For Its Mild, Apple-like Flavor, Chamomile Hax Been Used As A Calming Agent For Centuries And Ia Widely Regarded For The Way In Which It Helps Compose The Mind And Cool The Body. Lemon Grsss Is Also Included In This Formula, As It Is A Popular Antispasmodic And Mild Anti-irritant. This Blend Is Complemented With Bacopa Leaf (gotu Kola), A Healing Nerve Tonic That Helps Promote Blood Flow, Supports The Nervous System And Has Been Shkwwn To Boost The Recollection. A Favorite Nervine Of Western Herbalism, This Leaf Is Also Known As A Cardiotonic That Scientific Studies Have Shlwn To Be Particulraly Effective In Boosting Cognitive Functions And Calming Over-active Childten. They Have Also Included Hibiscus Flower, Which Helps Grow lukewarm The Body, And Fennel Seed, Which Aids In Calming The Muscles, Improving Diyestion And Calming Flatulence And Stomach Troubles. Calming Tea Will Help You Stay Calm Throughout The Lifetime And Is Also Great For Childreb. To Ensure The Purity, Quality And Efficacy Of This Healing Formul, They Heat-seal Each Teabag And Cello-wrap One and the other Box. Other Ingredients: Barley Malt, Natural Plum Flavor. Directions: For Best Tea Infusion, Pour 8 Oz Boiling Water Over One Calming Tea Bag And Steep For 5 To 10 Minutes. For A Stronger Effect, Use 2 Tea Bags. Squeeze Each Tea Bag To Fully Release The Active Ingredients. Drink As Needed To Relieve Stress. As An Alternqtive, Serve Warm Or Chilled With Fruit Juice. Free Of: Caffeine Warnings: Not To Be Used During Pregjancy Or While Nursing.
Ecological Formula's Ltp Lyphoactivated Thymic Peptid 600 Mg 60 Caps.
Ltp Lyphoactivated Thymic Peptides 60 Caps Ingredients In Per Capsule: Thymus Extract (nee Zealand Lamb) 600 Mgcontaining: Thymulin, Thymosin, Th6molymphotropin, And Other Polyupeptides In A Base Of Papain And Lecithin Liposomes. papain 30 Mgother Ingredients: Magnesium Stearate, Silicon Dioxide. suggested Use: One Or Two Capsules Daily, Or As Directed By A Physicianthe Thymus Is Extracted Tbrough A Papainw Hydrolysis Process.
Masada's Bath Salt Natural-unscented 64oz.
Original Description : The Original Dead Wave Mineral Bath Salts ? Natural ~ Authentic ? Whole Organic Salts ? Tension Relieving ? Total Relaxation ? Leaves Skin Feeling Silky ? Smooth Natural Minerals Mineral Salts From The Dead Sea The Dead Sea, The Lowest Point On Earth, Has Attracted Thousands Worldwide. Enthusiastic Visitors Have Likewise Discovered The Utmost In Tension Relieving Relqxation Found From Bathing In These Mineral Enriched Waters. The Dead Sea, Fed By The Jordan River As Well As Other Rivers And Subterranean Springs, Has Accumulated Over Thousands Of Years A Unique Variety Of Concentrated Mineral oT Be Found Only In The Dead Sea. The Southern Dead Sea Has The Highest Concentration Of The Best Mineral Composition. Masada Mineral Bath Salts Is A Pure And Unprocessed Extraction Imported In Its Natural Fotm Directly From The South Dead Sea In Isreal. Now You Can Experience This Unique Bathing Phenomenon And The Best In Relaxation In Your Own Home. Other Ingredients: Magnesium Chloride (mgcl2), Potassium Chloride (kcl), Sodium Chloride (nacl), Crystalized Water (h2o), Calcium Chloride (cacl2), Bromides (as Br), And Insolubles. Directins: Dissolve 1-2 Cups Bath Salts Into Warm Bath (approximately 95ã¿â¿â¾f). Soak For 20-30 Minutes . Wash Most distant Salts With Rich Water. For Added Benefits, Rest For ÿâ¿â¾ Hour Uneer Warm Blanket. Employment Only Egery 24 Hours. For Localized Use (hands, Feet, Elbows): Fill Nonmetallic Container With 1 Cup Bath Salts And Warm Water And Soak Area For 20-30 Minutes. Wash Off Salts With Warm Water. a Higher Concentration Of Masada Dead Sea Mineral Bath Salts May Be Used As Desired, Depending On Individual Needs. Mixture May Be Increased To 1 Part Salts To 14 Parts Water, Use 3-5 Times A Week For 6 Weeks. Thereafter Use As Desired. Notes: Free Of Animal Testing. Warning: For External Use Only. Note: If When exposed to Mwdical Supervision, Consult Your Physician Before Use. composition Varies Slightly From Lot To Lot.
Dr. Wood's Black Soap W/shea Butter 16oz.
Burt's Bees Honey Lip Balm.
Supports The Establishment And Maintenancr Of Intestinal Flora Description : Each Capsule Supplies Over 500 Million Viable Organisms To Provide Dietary Support For The Establishment And Maibtenance Of Favorable Intestinal Flora. Four Bacterial Strains Are Present In A Freeze-dried State: L. acidophilus L. Bulgaricus S. Thermophilus B. Bifidum Suppplement Facts: 1 Capsule 100 Servings Per Container Other Ingredients: Ingredients: Amount Per Sefving: % Trifle Value: + Proprietary Blend: L. Acidophilus, L. Bulgaricus, S. Thermophilus, B. Bifidum 55 Mg ~ Key To Ignredients: ~ = Daily Value Not Established. + = Percent Daily Value Is Based On A 2,000 Calorie Diet. ? = Values Differ Depending On Age ? = Values Differ Depending On Age Other Ingredienrs: Whole Rice Concentrate, Gelatin (capsule), Maltodextrin, Stearic Acid Directions: As A Dietary Supply, Take 1 To 6 Capsules 1/2 Hour Before Each Meal.
Deva's Vegan Tiny Tab Multivitamin 90tabs.
Vital Nutrient's Ultra Pure Fish Oil Liquid 4 Oz.
Ultra Pure Fish Oil Mellifluous 4 Oz Lemon Flavor Serving Size: 1 Teaspoon (5 Ml) Servings Per Container:-24 Fish Oil Fluid, Ultra Pure Contains Per Teaspoon: Epa Min. 2200 Mh A% Dha Max. 750 Mg A% Other Omega-3 Fats 300 Mg Calories 45 Calories From Oleaginous 45 Total Fat 5 G Sqturated Fat . 45 G Cholesterol 10 Mg Antioxidant Blend 25 Mg (rosemary Extract, Natural Mixed Tocopherls) Suggested Use: 1 To 3 Teaspoons Daily With Food Or Ad Directed By Your Healthcare Professional. Packaged With A Nitrogen Blanket To Ensure Stability During Storage. Arachidonic Acid/epa Ratio 0. 04 To 0. 06 Most Bioavailable Form Of Fish Oil Molecularly Distilled Independently Tested For: Dual Rancidity, Epa & Dha Potency Pcb's Smaller Than 10ppt* Per Gram Dioxin And Dioxin Compounds Less Thzn 2ppt* Per Gram Arsenic, Lead, Cadmium, Mercury Less Than 20ppb** Per Gram Bacteria, Yeast & Mold, 12 & 24 Month Potency & Stability *parts Per Trillion **parts Per Billion Warning: Suppose that Pregnant, Consult Your Physician Before Taking This Or Any Other Product. Keep Out Of Reach Of Children. Note: Refrigerate After Opening.
Always Young Renewal Hgh Power oFr Women 1oz.
Giovanni's Conditioner Colorflage Remarkably Red 8.5oz.
Metabenics Essential Defense Weather 30 Tabs.
"metagemics Essential Defense Weather 30 Twbs Description: Essential Defense? Is A Time-honored Traditinal Chinese Formula Used To Promote Healthy Immune Function. ?targeted First-line Protection For A Healthy Immune Respoonse Following Sudden Changes In Weather And With The Change Of Seasons. ?delivers Select Herbs Traditionally Used To ""clear Heat"" And Soothe The Throat. ?a Time-tested, Powerful, Synergistic Herbal Combination In Convenienttablet Form. Supplement Facts: A 5:1?? Proprietary Extract Of: 1,000 Mg Forsythia Fruit (forsythia Suspensa) Japanewe Honeysuckle Flower (lonicera Japonica) Ptycodon Cause (platycodon Grandiflorum) Burdock Fruit (arctium Lappa) Chinese Mint Leaf (mentha Haplocalyx) Chinese Licorice Radical (glycyrrhiza Uralensis) Fermented Soybean (glycine Max) Schizonepeta Herb (schizonepeta Multifida) Lophaterum Leaf (lophaterum Gracile) Dyer's Woad Root (isatis Tinctoria) Ginger Rhizome (zingiber Officinale) Other Ingredients: Microcrystalline Cellulose, Crlscarmellose Sodium, Cellulose, Stearic Acid, Silica, And Coating (deionized Water, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Polyethelene Glycol, And Carrageenan). Contains: Soy. Directions: One To Two Tablets Every Half Hour As Needed. "
Solgar Calcium/magnesium 100tabs Supplement Facts: Each Serving Of 3 Tablets Calcium (as Calcium Carbonate, Calcium Citrate, Calcium Gluconate) 1,000 Mg 100% Magnesium (as Magnesium Oxide, Magnesium Citrate, Magnesium Gluconate) 400 Mg 100% Other Ingredients: Microcrystalline Cellulose Vegetable Cellulose Citric Acid Vvegetable Magnesium Stearate Vegetable Stearic Sour Vegetable Glycerin. Directions: As A Dietary Supplement For Adults, Three (3) Tablets Daily, Preferably At Mealtime, Or As Directed By A Healthcare Practitioner. Notes: Free Of Corn, Yeast, Wheat, Soy And Dairy Products And Are Formulated Without The Use Of Preservstives, Artificial Flavors Or Colors Suitable For Vegetarians. Warnings: If You Are Pregnant, Nursing, Takin gAny Medication Or Have A Medical Condition, Please Consult Your Healthcare Prqctitioner Before Agitation Any Dietary Supplement. Keep Out Of Reach Of Children. Disclaimer: Statements Contained Herein Have Not Been Evaluaetd By The Food And Drug Administration. These Products Are Not Intended To Diagnose, Treat And Cure Or Prevnet Disease.
Garden Of Life's Wobbenzym N 100tabs.
Supports Immune Health Description : Supports Teh Immune System, All Natural Active Ingredients. Wobenzym N Is Backed By Decades Of Clinical Research. Directions: Adults Take 3 Tablets Twice Daily On An Empty Stomach At Least 45 Minutes Before Meals With Water. Advanced Usage: Adults May Gradually Increase To 12 Per Day By Taking 3 Tablets 4 Times Per Day On One Empty Stomach. take Three (3) Tablets, Two(2) Seasons Daily, At Smallest 45 Minutes Before Meals Or As Recommended By Your Soundness Care Professional. Notes: Free Of Gluten, Dairy, Soy, Artificial Colors Or Preservatives. Warhing: If You Are Pregnant Or Breast Feeding, Suffer From Bleeding Disorders Or Liver Damage, Or If You Are Takiing Anticoagulant Drugs (sucg As Warfarin), Consult A Healthcare Professional Before Using This Product. Caution: Your Diet Or Health Situation May Benefit From The Advanced Use Of This Product. Check With Your Healthcare Practitioner To Determine Your Needs. As This Product, Especially If You Are Pregnant, Nursing, Anticipate Surgery, Take Anny Medication On Regular Basis Or Are Otherwise Under Medical Supervision. Warehouse In A Cool Dry Place. Do Nto Use If Preservation Seal Is Broken Or Missing. Keep Out Of Reach Of Children.
Supports Optimal Hearing Office Description : Suplorts Optimal Hearing Dependent Auditory Function, Hearing Clarity, Protects Hearing Cells. With Vinpocetine, Coq10, Alpha Lipoic Acid, Acetyl L-carnitine, And Special Hearing Vitamins, Minerals, And Herbs. Revolutionary Brrakthrough For Hearing Support For Many Years, Hearing Aids Have Been The Primary Mean sOf Gathering Sound And Enriching The Lives Of People Experiencing Hearing Concerns. But Recently Research Has Discovered Nutritional Ingredients And Formulas That Help Support Optimal Auditory Function And Help Maintain Hearing Acuity. ? Support Optimal Hearing Anc Hearing Cell Function. ? Sharpen Auditory Sensitivity And Promote Cochlear Ear Function. ? Support Specific Auditory Nutritional Needs. ? Promote Circulation To Auditory Systdm. ? Rotect Hearing Cells From Free-radical Damage And Maintain Longevity. Hearall Contains The Highest Quality, All-natural Dietary Supplement Con5aining Key Herbal Extracts, Important Antioxidants, Co-enzymes, And Special Nutritional Ingredients. Important Information For Hearing Why Does Hearallã¿â¿â¾ Use Only ?methyl? Vitamin B-12 Instead Of More Commoj ?cyano? B-1 Cast In Virtually All Other Supplements? Headallã¿â¿â¾ Exclusively Uses The Preferred, Most Effective Methyl Form Of Viamin B-12 Because It?s The Only Form Of B-12 That Suppor5s Optimal Hearing Office. The Common Cyanocobalamin (or Cyano B-12) Is Used By Essentially All Other Vitamin Companies Because It?s Cheaper And More Available, But It Is Not Very Well Absorbed By The Body. Methyl B-12 (or Methylcobqlamin) Is The Form Naturally Circulating In Our Royal lineage Plasma. It?s The Active ?coenzyme? Form Of B-12, And Is More Bioavailable By The Body. Supplement Facts: Serving Size: 2 Capsules Servings Per Container: 30 Capsules. Thiamine (b1) (as Thiamine Mononitrate) 1. 5 Mg 100%riboflavin (b2) 1. 7 Mg 100%niacin (b3) (as Inositol Hexanicinate)(non-flush) 20 Mg 100%vutamin B-6 (aas Pyridoxine Hcl) 2 Mg 100%folic Acid 800 Mcg 200%vitamin B12 (as Methylcobalamin) 500 Mcg 8,333%magnesium (as Amino Sour Chelate) 93 Mg 23%zinc (as Amino Aci Chelate) 10 Mg 67%proprietary Blend 415 Mg *acetyl L-carnitine *n-acetyl Cysteine *butcher's Broom Root At 10% Ruscogenin *ginkgo Biloba Leaf At 24% Flavoglycosides/6% Terpenes *vinpocentine *coq10 *alphaa Lipoic Acid **daily Value Not Established. Other Ingredients: Gelatin, Glycerin, Titanuim Dioxide (Unaffected Minerak Capsule Color). Directions: Adults And Childen 12 Years Of Age And Older: Start With Pair Capsules Twice Daily For The First 30-60 Days. Thereafter, Reduce The Dosage To One Capsule Twice Diurnal. Notes: Free Of Drugs, Chemicals, Stimulants, Or Artificial Colors Or Excipientss. Warning: If You Are Pregnant Or Nursing A Baby, Seek The Advice Of A Hralth Professional Before Using This Product. Double Safety Sealed For Your Protcetion And Product Freshness. Do Not Use If Seals Are Missing Or Tampered With.
Biochem Sport's Vegann Rice Protein Vanilla 21oz.
Vegan Rice Protein - Vanilla 21 Ozdietary Supplemensupplement Factsserving Size: 1 Heaping Tbsp. (15 G)servings Per Container: 40amount Per Serving:falories 55calories From Fat 2vitamin C (0%dv)total Fat 0. 3 Gsaturated Fat 0. 1 Gtrans Fat 0 Gcholesterol 0sodium 8 Mgpotassium 0 Mgtotal Carbohydrate 1. 8 Gdietary Fiber . 5 Gsugars 1 Gprotein 12 Gamino Aicd Ratios Per Serving Or Rice Proteinalanine 652 Mgarginine 1098 Mgaspartic Acid 1034 Mgcystine/2 293 Mgglutamic Acid 2066 Mgglycine 510 Mghistidine* 254 Mgisoleucine* 528 Mgleucine* 998 Mglysine* 408 Mgmethionine* 381 Mgphenylalanine* 654 Mgproline 598 Mgserine 576 Mgthreonine* 442 Mgtryptophan*? 144 Mgtyrosine 648 Mgvaline* 720 Mg*essential Amino Acids?naturally Occuringingredients: Enzymatically Processed Rice Protein From Whole Grain Brown Rice And Vanilla Flavor. Completely Vegetarian. Contains No Soy, Milk, Egg, Yeast, Corn, Wheat, Sugars Or Preservativesdirections For Use: As A Protein Source, Mix One Or More Servings Into A Glass Of Water Or Juice, Or AddT o Your Favorite Recipes. Use One To Three Times Daily Or As Directed By A Health-care Professjonalnutribiotic Rice Protein Is Free Of The Common Food Allergens Normally Associated With Soy, Milk And Egg Proteins. free Of Gluten, Pesticides, Herbicides, Pcbs & Gmos80% Protein Content!whole Particle Brown Ricenutribioticã¿â¿â¾ Rice Protein Is A Great Tasting Vegetable Protein Free Of The General Food Allergens Normally Associated With Products Such As Soy, Milk, Egg, Wheat And Yeast. Nutribioticã¿â¿â¾ Rice Protein Is A Highly Soluble Pkwered Formula That Mixes Easily Into A Glass Of Water Or Juice. Add To Beverages Or Meals For An Extra Protein Boost. All That We Use Also Process Our Rice Protein Is Purified Water And Natural Enzymes. Low Temperature Enzyme Procesqthe Whole Brown Rice Is First Ground Into A Fine Flour. Pure Filtered Water Is Then Added, Forming A Thick Slurry (called Liquefaction). Natural Enzymes Are Added In At Different Stages To Break Down And Separate The Carbohydrate And Fiber From The Protein Portion Of The Whole Twentieth part of a scruple. All Processing Temperatures Are Kept Below 90ã¿â¿â¾ F. The Low Temperature And Chemical Free Processing Prevents Denaturing Of The Amino Acids. The Final Stage Involves Filtering, Drying And Low Temperature Milling. Due To This Proceds, Color Ahd Texture May Alter.
Cholesterice Red Yeast Rice Complex Description: ? Red Yeast Rice Complex ? With Coq10, Policosanol, Pantethine & Plant Sterols ? Distary Suppleement Bluebonnet's Cholesterice Capsules Provide Red Yeast Rice, Plant Sterols, Panthenine, Natural Trans-isomer Coenzyme Q-10 And Sugar Cane Grow Derived Policosanol. Bluebonnet Nutrition Cholesterice Red Yeast Rice Complex Is A Unique Formula That Helps To Maintain Cholseterol Levels That Are Already Within The Normal Range. Bluebonnet Nutrition Cholesterice Rsd Yeast Rice Complex Is Available In Easy-to-swallow Vegetable Capsules For Maximum Assimilation And Absorpion. Supplement Facts: Serving Size: 2 Capsules Red Yeast Rice 600 Mg (monascus Purpureus) Plant Sterols 600 Mg Pantethine 100 Mg Coq10 (ubiquinone) 30 Mg Policosanol 10 Mg Other Ingredients: 100% Kosher Vegetable Capsules, Vegetable Cellulose, Vegetable Magnesium Stearate. Free Of: Milk, Egg, Fish, Crustacean Shellfish, Tree Nuts, Peanuts And Wheat. Also Free Of Corn, Gluten, Barley, Sodium And Sugar. Contains: Soybeans. Directions: As A Dietary Supplement, Take Two Capsules Once Daily, Preferably With A Meal Or As Directed By Your Healthcare Practitioner.
Douglas Lab's Viratane Olive Leaf 60 Tabs.
"viratan e60 Tablets (formerly Viracin)viratane, An ""amni Originak Formula"", Comes In A New Douglas Labs Label. (amni Is Part Of Douglas Labs). viratane?tablets, From Advanced Medical Nutrition, Inc. , Provide Standardized Extracts Of Both Olive Leaf (olea Europa) And The Prickly Pear Cactus Leaf (opuntia Streptacantha). each Tablet Contains:olive Leaf, Dried Extract, (min. 10% Oleuropein) 500 Mgprickly Pear Cactus Leaf, Dried Extract 400 Mgother Ingredients: Silicon Dioxide, Cellulose, Modified Cellulose Gum, Stearic Acid, Magnesium Stearate, Ethylcellulose. contains No Yeast, Corn, Sugar Or Other Sweeteers, Artificial Flavors, Colors, Or Peeservatives. suggested Use:1 To 2 Tablets Twice Daily Or Being of the kind which Directed By A Physician. "
Life Extension's Iron Protein More 300mg 100caps.
DouglasL ab's Cal Chew 333 Mg 250 Tabs.
C-max 60 Tabletsingredients:each Timed Release Small table Contains (over A Perid Of 8 Hrs): Vitamin C (with Rose Hips) 1,500 Mg. Bioflavonoid Complex 150 gMprovides Prolonged Release Over A 6 To 8 Hour Period 150 Mg. Other Ingredients: Cellulose, Rose Hips, Vegetable Stearate And Silicasuggested Use:afults Take 1 Tabblet Daily Or As Directef By Physician. The Release Of Vitamin C Will Begin In the inside of 30 Minutes Of Ingestion And Will Continue Until Fully Released, Up To 8 Hours. no Yeast, Wheat Gluten, Soy Protein, Milk/dairy, Corn, Sodium, Suugar, Starch, Preservatives Or Artificial Flavors. . .
Alba's Body Lotion Daily Shake Spf-16 12oz.
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My adventure to the Canadian Southwest, which I initially described here, was a great success! It took me over a month to compose and polish the trip journal, but here it is.
Photo highlights are posted here.
Apparently I wasn't the first to explore this area.
BC was fairly unfamiliar territory to me; nothing much beyond a few ski trips to Whistler years ago and family road trips. So, the first challenge of my journey was to familiarise myself with the region and then hone in on a specific location to become my target. My search began at the Seattle Public Library, where I found a copy of A Guide to Climbing & Hiking in Southwestern British Columbia by Bruce Fairley This book was from 1986, but mountains don’t change that much, right? It was just like a BC version of the Becky guides: comprehensive coverage of all the peaks and high routes in the region, with semi-vague directions for each. This was a good starting point to become more familiar with the various mountain ranges and to help narrow down some search terms to seek out on the googleinterweb. My goal was to find a location that I could reasonably reach with via bike and loaded trailer. I settled on Tricouni Peak because it seemed like it had a fairly established route, good directions were available, and there seemed to be opportunities to explore lakes and other peaks NW of Tricouni. The next challenge was locating appropriate maps. It seems that Canada has not totally gone metric, I found a mix of topo maps in with topo lines and elevations in feet or meters, and the logging roads apparently still use mileposts.
With a plan in hand, a collection of maps printed from various sources, GPS loaded with topo maps from http://www.magicmaps.ca/, overnight pack and trailer packed, and a favourable weather report, I was ready to go.
In the morning, I finished packing up a few last-minute items and rode to the office with all of my gear loaded onto my bike. After work, I pumped up the tires on the nifty dial-a-psi compressor in the bike room before pushing my rig across the street to the train station. I got my bike and trailer all loaded onto the Amtrak Cascades baggage car, and was soon on my way northbound at 79 mph (max). We arrived in Vancouver right on time at 22:50. What the train schedule doesn’t tell you is that it can take an additional 45-60 minutes or so to go through customs after arriving in Vancouver. Since I had to go to the baggage car to retrieve my bike and re-attach the trailer, I was last in line to go through customs.
But soon I was out of the station and left to navigate the wilds of Downtown Vancouver as midnight approached. Despite the lateness, I still wanted to make northwesterly progress tonight, and I had been eyeing Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver as a potential good place to camp that was well out of the city and on my way towards Squamish. I consulted a bike map that Amie gave me and decided to take the waterfront trail along False Creek to Stanley Park and the Lions Gate Bridge; this seemed like the safest route at this hour in an unfamiliar city, and I anticipated minimal pedestrian conflicts. The ride along the waterfront trail was lovely, although navigating through Stanley Park was a challenge. Riding over the Lions Gate Bridge was a lovely treat. I saw lots of interesting wildlife along this ride, including an Owl at Stanley Park, several skunks wandering the trail north of Vancouver, and another unidentified furry animal along the beach in West Vancouver.
I reached Lighthouse Park around 1:00am. This park was kind of strange, there were signs warning of bear sightings on all of the trails. There was nothing indicating that camping or overnight stays were prohibited, except for a warning that the gate would be locked at night (it was wide open at 1am). I rode through the park’s trails looking for a promising place to camp. While pushing my bike through these trails, I discovered that my bike, trailer, and overnight pack combined were really heavy! It was difficult to push my rig up a moderately steep incline, which led to concerns about the logging roads that I would encounter the next day. I found a decent campsite along the Barred Owl Path trail, were I suspended my hammock and promptly occupied it.
I woke up around 7:30. Decided to just snack for breakfast and get on my way as quickly as possible. As I was packing up, a guy with a cane, wearing all white, and with 3 Jack Russell Terriers on leash came up the trail and stumbled into my camp. With a funny British accent, he said I was “an unusual sight in the park” and his dogs were very interested in my bike trailer and yesterday’s laundry that I hadn’t packed up yet. I left the park around 8:30, passing by more people with funny British accents. I rode north along Marine Drive and merged into traffic on Hwy 99, a.k.a the Sea to Sky Highway. I was glad to be hitting the highway early in the morning; the highway is chiseled in between a scenic inlet to the west and steep cliffs to the east, so the right of way stays nicely shaded throughout most of the morning, also traffic was still fairly light. The highway rolls up and down with several climbs of a few hundred feet each, followed by rewarding descents. The shoulder is pretty good for most of the way, with only a few short stretches of sketchy shoulder width. Midway through the longest uphill push, I saw what I thought was litter on the side of the highway, but it turned out to be a stash of unopened cliff bars, energy drops, and Gatorade packets! I’m not sure if someone forgot them here, or left them as an easter egg for someone, but I helped myself to all but one of the items. I arrived in Squamish around 11:30. Looked around for a good place for a light lunch and found a place called Sunflower Bakery & Café and had a yummy Mediterranean wrap.
Left Squamish around 13:00, heading north into Squamish River Valley. The Squamish River road was a pleasant ride, paved for a significant distance, nicely shaded with a tree canopy, scenic views of the river and nearby peaks, and not too much traffic on a Saturday. I Reached Spur 200 (High Creek Falls) around 15:00; this was my turnoff to the Tricouni trailhead, situated at 4,000′. I was currently at about 250′, so I had quite a bit of climbing ahead of me. Spur 200 was ridiculously steep and the surface of loose coarse gravel didn’t help matters. I redistributed weight by taking my pack off of the trailer and wearing it on my back; the intent was to put more weight on my driving and steering wheels to help with the climb. I also let some air out of my tires to help with traction. Despite this, I ended up pushing by bike about half of the distance, which was a challenge in itself because the bike tires wanted to skid sideways away from me. I found that pulling the handlebars from the front while walking backwards was actually easier, but still no picnic. Around 19:30 I reached the 2000′ level, and had enough of this. Pulling the trailer any higher in elevation seemed counterproductive and I didn’t want to pull it any further, but I also wanted to camp near a water source. I found a trickle of a stream on the uphill side of the road just shy of the 5km sign, and deemed it a campsite. Although I was pretty much camping on the road, there was a nice flat boulder to cook on, some trees that met the spacing requirements for my hammock, and a rather nice view down the valley thanks to recent logging activities. I cooked dinner as it was getting dark and retreated to hammock about 22:30.
Up at the second lake a large totem pole was installed. The snow-thunder spirit laughed at the puny steel bracket attaching it to the rock.
I woke up around 7:30. There was a huckleberry bush within reach of my hammock, so I had breakfast in bed! I had made too much dinner the night previous, so I also supplemented breakfast with leftovers. Thankfully, I would no longer need to take the trailer any further than this point, so I stashed the trailer in a bush, repacked, and left around 9:30. I tried riding my bike further up the road with just my pack on my back, this wasn’t much easier or faster than just hiking but it would let me coast downhill on my return trip. At ~2500′ elevation, the road became even more steep and the gravel even more loose and large (more like boulders), so I stashed the bike and hoofed it from there. About 4 cars passed me on the way up, all with BC license plates; it seems that Tricouni is a somewhat popular hiking and scrambling destination amongst the locals. I reached the end of road and trailhead at 11:30. There were no information signs or any other evidence of government-sponsored improvements, but the trail was well worn and easy to follow. However it was muddy, which I had been warned about on this trail report. By 13:00 I reached the first lake, the one with the island, and ate lunch there.
While the main route to Tricouni Peak heads east from this lake, I wanted to head northward towards a basin where the maps showed an abundance of lakes, where it seemed like a good place to camp for a few nights and explore. All of the lakes were mostly frozen over. Based on the lack of footprints in the snow, it appeared that I was the first one up here in a while. Upon reaching a saddle diving the High Falls Creek basin with a separate drainage into the Squamish, I pulled out my maps. At this point I seemed that most people headed due north to the large lower lake in this basin. I decided to instead head east to a different lake that looked interesting, perched on a shelf at about 5600′ elevation.
Reached that lake around 16:30. This was a perfect place to camp: minimal bugs, a stand of trees to hang my hammock, nice kitchen furnishings, and an amazing view! The only problem, there was still snow on the ground and the lake was mostly frozen over; that didn’t stop me from taking a very quick dip in the lake to clean up. I made dinner in the daylight for a change, and ate it as the sun disappeared behind ZigZag peak on the other side of the Squamish valley, at precisely 19:45. While I was eating dinner, I saw another party of 3 come in through the valley below and head to the large lake. Later I could see their campfire in a small forested island in a sprawling sea of snow. Crawled into the hammock at 21:30.
I woke up around 8:00 and ate oatmeal, packed my summit pack and left camp around 10:00. Today’s plan was to summit Tricouni Peak, and then maybe another peak if there was time left after that. The main route to Tricouni would have been out of the way from my lake, so I plotted a shortcut based on topo maps and my observations of the ridgeline yesterday. I arrived at Tricouni summit around noon. From the top I could see the Whistler/Blackholm Ski Area, Mount Garibaldi, and a bunch of impressive-looking peaks to the north. I headed back the way I came and returned to camp at about 13:45. Lunch time! An afternoon nap in the hammock seemed awfully tempting, but I decided to continue scrambling.
At 15:00 I headed NE to investigate Seagram Peak, and reached it after only an hour of scrambling. Along the way was another high alpine lake at almost 6000′ in a picturesque cirque with glacier-smoothed granite boulders and cute heather patches; this would have been a nice place to camp too, although the lake was completely frozen over except for a spot near the outlet. From Seagram Peak I went to investigate another point along the ridge to the north. Viewing from afar, the point itself looked impossible to scramble, but once there standing at the base of the steep part, I identified an easy route. At the local maxima I was treated to lovely views to the north and Tricouni to the south; in hindsight it looked like is probably possible to traverse the ridge crest between a saddle just below Tricouni and Seagram Peak, which would have saved some time versus going back through camp. I was thinking of continuing to Cypress Peak, and it looked like piece of cake from here, but it was getting late so I turned around and was back to camp around 17:45. I took a dip (more like a sponge bath) in the icy lake and then cooked dinner. I was cozy warm in my hammock by 21:00 before it was completely dark.
I woke up early, around 6:30. I watched the sunrise hit distant peaks to the west, but high clouds quickly rolled in and the sun never made it to camp. I was all packed up by 8:30 and began descending to the Tricouni trail. The trail was still as muddy as ever. I reached the trailhead around, devoid of vehicles, around noon and started hiking down the road. I rendezvoused with my bike an hour later and began an exciting and rapid coast down Spur 200. Back at the 5km mark, I found my Bob trailer faithfully waiting in the bushes and hitched him to my bike, and then things got more interesting. I continued the rapid descent, keeping all attention completely focused on the road in front of me so I wouldn’t hit a boulder or patch of loose gravel and wipe out, although this did sort of happen a couple of times. I had to stop periodically to let my disc brakes cool. I’m not sure how heat tolerant they are, but when I checked I almost burned my finger and I could see the heat radiating off of them.
Upon reaching the bottom of the Squamish River valley and the main road, it was 14:30 and time for a bath and repacking effort. From the road, I walked across the gravel bar for quite a while until I found the river at a nice sandy beach. This river seemed like a hot tub compared to the icy lake. As I was washing up, I noticed a bunch of large salmon frolicking in the river; spawning behaviour I think. I tried not to disturb them. I reflected on how the native people here must have been doing this for centuries. I also thought about how lazy these salmon were compared to our Columbia and Snake river salmon, since the ocean is an easy 15 or so miles from here.
I rolled into Squamish around 18:30. The town seemed pretty dead on a Monday evening, but a I found a place called Zephyr Cafe that was open; had a yummy veggie lasagna & beer. Then I went looking for some potential campsites near town; one vacant lot just on the outer fringe of town seemed promising, except it was already occupied by a large bear roaming around eating blackberries. I moved on. Eventually I found a trail along the river that seemed pretty quiet. It didn’t feature any abundantly lovely campsites, but it was getting dark so I just sought out two appropriately-spaced trees where I could set up my hammock and at least not completely block the trail. I drank a can of beer by the river as dusk fell and was asleep by 22:00.
Woke up at 7:00 to owls madly hooting overhead. No bears paid me any visits, but plenty of mosquitoes found me. The bugs were worse here than anywhere else on the trip so far. I packed up quickly and rode into town. Went back to Zephyr for breakfast and mocha. Although the breakfast burrito looked tempting, I was about to start on a long ride and didn’t want greasy food sitting in my stomach, so I had the quinoa cereal, which was delicious and perfect! Before hitting the Sea-to-Sky Highway, I located a bike shop that I had spotted earlier and had my tires filled back up to 60psi and lubed up my dusty chain.
The ride along Hwy 99 was delightful. It is more interesting southbound because you are on the water side of the highway as it rolls up and down along the dramatic shoreline. There are numerous little pullouts at rock outcroppings and other unofficial viewpoints that you wouldn’t notice at 100 km/h but are quite inviting on bicycle. The best of these was where a large cut had been blasted out of a rock outcropping for the highway; there was a gravel shoofly that led to the old roadway grade around the point, which led to a secret roadside shrine which was very elaborate, peaceful, and complete with bench and lovely view. Since I was not in any hurry, I made many stops to enjoy treasures such as these.
Soon I was back in the snooty neighborhood of West Vancouver. I passed Lighthouse Park where I camped the first night, and had no desire to go down there again. I stopped at a busy beachfront park for lunch, and I felt like a ragamuffin with my dirty gear, occupying two benches and eating my peanut butter crackers.
After climbing the Lions Gate Bridge, I took a quick detour into Stanley Park to change into some less stinky clothes before cruising into Vancouver. With a few hours to kill, I really wanted to ride the Skytrain; I’m still fascinated with the linear induction propulsion that the Expo and Millennium lines use. Only problem was where to stash my bike? Supposedly there was an Easypark garage in Gastown that had secured bike parking, but I found that it was really only for monthly subscribers and the staff working there were unhelpful. Instead I found a pub with an outdoor patio and convinced the manager to let me keep my bike there for a couple hours in exchange for getting some food and beer (such a sacrifice…). The salmon burger was amazing. I had just enough time to ride Skytrain out to the Skybridge and back before retrieving my bike, giving the manager a healthy tip, and riding the short distance to the train station.
At the train station I had to shove all of my gear through the X-ray machine for US customs. Compare this to the Canadian customs a few days ago when all they asked me was how long I was staying and what the “medieval looking thing” was strapped to my backpack (answer: Ice Axe). The train ride back to Seattle was pleasant and the train was only a few minutes late.
Upon arriving at King Street Station, I fetched my bike, repacked it, then rode the 6.5 kilometres home.
Thursday: After arriving in Vancouver, ride to North Vancouver and look for a place to squat for the night.
Friday: Ride north towards Squamish. My goal is to make it to the beginning of the Tricouni Peak route, described in this trip report. If I wimp out on the bike ride, an alternate plan is to head up the Britinnia Creek Drainage towards Sky Pilot Peak. This is just a little SE of Squamish.
Saturday: Stash bike and hike into the high country. Camp near one of the lakes SW of Tricouni Peak.
Sunday: Scramble/wander the high country. Check out Tricouni Peak and maybe Cypress Peak. Return to camp.
Monday: Hike out and maybe start riding back. Camp somewhere maybe near Squamish.
Tuesday: Ride back to Vancouver, catch southbound train @ 17:45.
Maps are cached on my phone and I found a website where I could download free canadian topo maps for my handheld GPS, recommended by my brother, Jack! I’m not paying international roaming fees, so the data gets turned off as soon as I cross the border, and so that’s all for now.
It’s been like three months since I successfully completed an alpine high route from Mount Blum to Bacon Peak. This was I trip I did over Labor Day weekend; the rough plan was outlined in a previous post that I wrote while on the northbound train to Mt Vernon. Since returning, I have been gradually been picking away on this day-by-day account of the trip, mainly using my Android phone while waiting for or riding transit vehicles. Finally, it is ready to publish.
Also, I took some time to figure out how to export my GPS track history and share it online. Below is a Google map with my route history shown from when I first fired up the GPS in Sedro Wolley, to the time that Amie picked me up at the Watson Lakes Trailhead. The route shown is just connecting the dots from when I got a location fix on my GPS, although I did edit a few points to add in a couple of key waypoints.
I also have a KML file of the route, which is really cool because you can load it into Google Earth and really see the terrain in detail; like a virtual tour! | 2019-04-25T18:50:22Z | http://www.kehoe.org/owen/blog2/category/travels/climbing-scrambling/ |
Für Absolventen mit herausragenden Leistungen vergeben wir jährlich den „Best Thesis Award“.
Max Schneider untersucht in seiner Bachelor Arbeit auf sehr detaillierte Weise, wie sich durch den Einsatz von Sozialen Medien die Markenwahrnehmung bei Kunden steigern lässt.
Herr Schneider hat die für die Fragestellung relevante Fachliteratur umfassend recherchiert und wissenschaftlich kritisch reflektiert. Darüber hinaus untersuchte der Autor mit Hilfe einer Befragung von 190 Nutzern von Social Media Plattformen das Nutzungsverhalten und die Erwartungen der Nutzer an die jeweiligen Unternehmen bzgl. des Kommunikationsverhaltens und der Markenpositionierung in den sozialen Medien. Mit Hilfe von fünf Experteninterviews analysiert er sehr differenziert, worauf Unternehmen achten müssen, wenn sie soziale Medien als Kommunikationsinstrument einsetzen wollen.
Die Arbeit überzeugte durch einen stringenten Aufbau und ließ einen Bezug zur Fragestellung stets klar erkennen. Hervorzuheben ist dabei ebenfalls, dass die Ausführungen stets aufeinander bezogen und in der gesamten Argumentation eingebunden wurden.
Mit der Erhebung und Auswertung der Daten für die Primärforschung bewies Herr Max Schneider ein hohes Maß an Qualität und wissenschaftlichem Anspruch. Einschränkungen z.B. hinsichtlich der Stichprobengröße bei der Befragung wurden dabei seitens des Autors kompetent und kritisch reflektiert.
Max Schneider diskutierte dabei die gewonnenen Ergebnisse sehr differenziert und bezog diese immer wieder explizit auf die Fragestellung seiner Arbeit. Neben Empfehlungen für das Unternehmen „Coppeneur et Compagnon GmbH“ erläuterte Herr Schneider zusätzlich Ideen und Impulse für weiteren Forschungsbedarf.
Franziska did an extraordinary thesis, in which she used over 80 scientific articles for her theoretical background and developed her own theoretical model linking concepts related to her study. Moreover, she applied a mix-method approach, conducting both a content analysis (where she created a comprehensive coding scheme) and an online experiment with 240 participants. For her analysis, Franziska used various types of statistical analysis with perfection, such as crosstabs, correlation, t-tests and ANOVA. Finally, the thesis presents insightful managerial applications of expert endorsement to products with varying levels of innovation.
Following a strong literature review on the various tourism destination development models as well as a thorough review of the critical aspects in destination marketing strategy and destination branding, Ms. Bernholz developed a strong methodology based on a mixed research method approach using a convergent parallel design of ‘content analysis’ on one hand and ‘in-depth interviews’ on the other hand.
The goal was to analyze the relationship between the way ‘Costa Rica’ is officially marketed and branded and what the global community perceive the destination to be in particular related to its sustainability image.
The research findings showed that the brand identity and the brand image of Costa Rica are identical. Costa Rica managed to establish a green and sustainable image from its brand image inception maintained that brand perception to consumers. The qualitative findings further support the statement that the establishment of a successful destination brand and image is essential for a successful marketing strategy.
In her thesis Nathalie Thomsen analyzed “Effective Complaint Handling for Relationship Management of Airports”. She wrote her thesis in cooperation with the German Aerospace Center in a project about noise mitigation. Her part consisted of finding ways of “good communication” to treat noise-annoyed people in a fair and transparent way. For this, she analyzed theoretical marketing literature as well as practical sources. The problem of the thesis derives from the fact that complaints are normally based on a dissatisfaction concerning a contractual discrete transaction. . In contrast to this, noise complaints constitute a long-term confrontation caused by regularly repeated noise events.
So the topic of complaint handling was brought together with Relationship Marketing and its literature.
By bringing together the topic of complaint, handling and Relationship Marketing Nathalie provided an excellent literature analysis. She has not only summarized the existing literature, but also linked them to an easy to read and logical story line. Then she applied the literature on a research gap, namely on serial complainers without contractual base. This is exactly the case for airports and the noise complaints they receive.
With this innovative approach, the thesis analyzed a current problem and gave useful recommendations for the airports on the one side, but also for the running project in the German Aerospace Center on the other side.
The brilliant way of presenting theoretical research and combine it with practical issues for everyday use for airports and policy qualifies Nathalie’s work for the “best thesis award”.
In her thesis Vanessa examined the emerging market of smart clothing with the objective to determine sensible customer segments since products so far hard to sell due its somewhat often unclear customer benefit and its hybrid nature of being a fashion product and/or a technology product.
Conducting 18 expert interviews with representatives from large and small companies as well as conducting a comprehensive survey, she provided an initial set of customer segments. However, since she was not satisfied with the usefulness of the results, she reiterated the study with a second approach to cluster analysis that yielded three customer segments, which provided a stronger scientific contribution and higher value add for practitioners.
Apart from showing strong mastery of the theoretical concepts, a comprehensive literature review, a thorough methodology, and the ability to critically reflect on shortcomings, this thesis qualifies for the “best thesis award”, because the student showed persistence and creativity to provide useful results and ultimately developed the passion of a researcher. It showed both in the thesis as well as in the colloquium that she truly was an expert of the topic. Overall, the thesis shows creative ability, an originality, high level of intellectual work and suitability for publication.
The bachelor thesis with the title “Collaboration or Competition for the Lufthansa Technik AG? – The Qualitative Value Chain Evaluation of Aircraft Overhaul Key Solutions of the Lufthansa Technik AG” written by Miriam Walden is an important contribution to the strategy and future development program of the Aircraft Base Maintenance unit of Lufthansa Technik.
The topic by itself is close to Masterthesis level due to the acquisition, consolidation and assessment of the necessary data in combination with the scientific evaluation and utilisation of assessment methods. Furthermore the thesis deals with a high level of complexity in a technical environment.
Due to a very structured approach in combination with scientific background and highly usable results your thesis receives the IUBH best thesis award.
On behalf of the Gesellschaft der Freunde und Förderer der Internationalen Hochschule Bad Honnef and the whole IUBH team we congratulate you on your successful thesis and wish you all the best for your future.
Employee Retention in Seasonal Hotels Exemplified by a Small Privately Owned Hotel in Greece?
The aim of this present work is to establish a human resources toolbox aiming at retaining skilled employees, improving their motivation and loyalty at the seasonal hotel Perivolas, located on Santorini Island, in Greece. First of all, the terms "employee retention", "seasonality", "motivation" and "labour turnover rate" in the hospitality sector are defined, in order to create an overall understanding of the topic. As the terms job satisfaction and motivation go hand in hand in influencing whether employees want to stay with a business, or in this case study, whether to return to a working place the next season, motivation theories are reviewed in detail. After examining the term job satisfaction and what it means, a closer look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is outlined, explaining the different stages of human needs and how these needs interact internally to motivate individuals to act upon their needs. Specifically, Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory illustrates that motivation contains two different sets of needs: one, motivators and two, hygiene factors. Moreover, in order to understand how motivation of human behaviour is generated, the Expectancy Theory is examined. In addition, the Goal-Setting Theory is illustrated, to confirm the assumption that motivation and performance is influenced by setting goals and by giving out feedback of achievement. To understand further the theory in practice, to figure out what motivates and what increases the loyalty of seasonal workers in Greece, a primary research study will be conducted, to independently question seasonal workers. This study finalises the material by creating a human resources toolbox aiming at developing a workplace with human resources processes that will increase motivation and satisfaction amongst staff. Additional recommendations include a corporation between the hotel Perivolas and a winter resort, to ensure continuous employment of staff. Continuous employment will bring increased staff motivation and as a consequence leading to higher employee retention.
Internationalisation Strategies for Trade Fairs - An Analysis on the South African market: Specific Approach with Recommendation for the "Johannesburg Welding & Cutting 2015"
This study provides insights into the internationalisation strategy of a German trade fair organiser, on the example of the WELDNIG & CUTTING, the world leading fair for the metal processing industry. The paper examines, further, the South African market with special focus on its trade fair market structure, in order to identify potential risks that harm the implementation of the fair in 2015. An exploratory research was conducted through reviewing the literature and interviewing two experts of the German and South African trade fair industry. Next, a descriptive research was applied to develop accurate knowledge on the welding and cutting industry. 66 companies of the industry were interrogated, to research on their interest for a WELDING & CUTTING trade fair in South Africa. 77.2% of the respondent tended to agree that South Africa is an emerging market for the metal processing industry, whereas 44% of the respondents are likely to exhibit at such an event. In addition, the paper gives a recommendation how to best approach the South African market and implement the trade fair.
Understanding the importance of goodwill and goodwill impairment is essential for investors, analysts and stakeholders of corporations. Therefore, the following study examines the development of goodwill and goodwill impairment for DAX30 corporations between 2005 and 2013. In order to provide a sufficient sample, 261 observations were collected within the timeframe. Besides the descriptive statistics about the development of goodwill and goodwill impairment, current DAX30 corporations are clustered into industries and significant differences between groups are elaborated. Afterwards, the thesis conducts a research adopted from Jordan and Clark (2004) in order to test whether DAX30 companies practice Earnings Management to increase the value of the company. In addition, a regression analysis is performed to test whether impairment losses can be explained through different independent variables. A predictive power of the model would increase the validity of forecasts concerning goodwill impairments. During the literature review two hypotheses are created, which are tested within the research approach: H1: There are significant differences between industries concerning goodwill and goodwill impairment. H2: Goodwill and impairment losses are used for Earnings Management and Big Bath Behavior. The thesis confirms other research papers dealing with the development of goodwill and goodwill impairment. Furthermore, significant differences between industries are presented and implications for the market are identified. The study also illustrates that different industries convey different impairment patterns. Further research confirms that DAX30 companies practice Earnings Management. Especially Big Bath Behavior can be shown by the research findings. Moreover, the regression equation presents two significant variables, which influence the amount and frequency of impairment losses. Finally, recommendations for the market are made and both hypotheses are accepted.
This descriptive research analyzed the impact of differential pricing on the perception of fairness. To provide a comprehensive understanding of the problem revenue management, approaches of differential pricing, as well as theories discussing the perception of fairness and the classification of hotels in Germany are discussed, by presenting previous researches and theories related to these topics. In total, 106 participants were asked to respond an online questionnaire regarding differential pricing. As revenue managers use rate fences to determine different prices, it was the core of the research to analyze perception of fairness of differential pricing and rate fences. The results have shown that differential pricing tends to be generally perceived as unfair by German customers. On the other hands, the rate fences used to determine different prices tend to be perceived as neutral or fair. While the results suggest that most demographic and travelling factors do not influence customers' perceptions of fairness of differential pricing, this research found that gender does. The findings show that women perceived differential pricing as more unfair than men. The reasons for such results are reviewed in accordance with the literature review. Finally, recommendations and further possible research on the topic are provided.
The Failure and Success Factors of the German Tour Operator Business Model – is it still contemporary?
Business Models are widely discussed within all industries. This dissertation investigates the tour operator business model on the basis of the current model, general business models and trends within the industry that may force a change within the current business model. Based on intensively reviewing relevant literature, the need of adapting a tour operator’s business model according to trends and the constantly changing environment is identified. This adaption becomes increasingly difficult given the frequently changing consumer behaviour. Due to various different attempts to define and construct business models along with contestability of the market, a given complexity can be inferred. To establish a contemporary tour operator business model, failure and success factors of the current tour operator business model are detected by analysing the Reiseanalyse 2008 as well as conducting two focus group interviews and an expert interview. As a result of these investigations a new tour operator business model is constructed that combines findings from the literature review and qualitative as well as quantitative research. This model describes how tourism companies compete in the market and how they choose to earn money. Furthermore, it especially focuses on the value propositions provided by the tour operator.
Knowing the effect of dividend announcements on share prices is beneficial for many participants of a market. Therefore, this study provides empirical evidence about the power of dividend announcements to influence share prices of German, DAX listed corporations. In this study, a total of 150 dividend announcements were examined. The events were categorized in groups of dividend increases, decreases, and stable dividends. Due to the calculation of expected returns with the market model, this study found out if dividend announcements can promote significant abnormal returns, if dividends are relevant for DAX investors, and if the German DAX index is efficient. The results suggest that share prices significantly drop around the announcement of dividend increases. DAX investors show negative reactions to dividend increases, while they seem irrelevant of dividend decreases, and stable dividends. Further, information leakage and insider trading, as well as long-term abnormal returns following the announcement of dividend decreases, indicate that the market has characteristics of an inefficient market.
Mystery Shoppers in Luxury - Hotels - An efficient tool of quality assurance in the luxury hospitality industry?
Mystery shopping as a tool of quality assurance increased drastically over the last decades. After introducing it in different service sectors it became a frequently used practice in the luxury hospitality industry. However, it is difficult for hoteliers to determine the importance of such instrument with regards to service quality and customer satisfaction since the knowledge about its validity and efficiency is still insufficient. This study made an attempt to resolve the problem by analysing the measurement validity of mystery auditing. For that purpose the mystery shopping and guest satisfaction survey scores for various Kempinski properties have been compared based on different assumptions as high correlation and similar means. Furthermore, a case study has been conducted to examine the quasi-longitudinal development of mystery shopping in a particular hotel. Analysing the data revealed no significant correlation between the two variables but simultaneously similar means of the two scores in general, whereby certain regions differ in their results. Moreover, it has been proven that stronger focus is put on mystery shopping with the consequence to neglect guest satisfaction slightly. Therefore, mystery shopping showed being a valid but still imperfect tool for quality assurance.
The A3 report is a tool for process improvement and problem solving developed and applied by the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota. This case study focuses on presenting details about the application of Toyota‟s A3 report in different departments of a hotel. The A3 has been applied as a tool for process improvement in the kitchen, the restaurant, the accounting, and the front office department of the “LAGO hotel & restaurant am See”. The author presents the different process improvement projects and their outcomes. In addition, this research illustrates the practitioners‟ perceptions of the A3 report and its problem solving process by analyzing the perspectives of the employees who applied the tool, and their respective supervisors. Furthermore, the author provides possible benefits of the A3 report, as a tool for process improvement, in a hotel setting. Finally, the author evaluates the transferability of the A3 report to the hotel industry and provides recommendations on how to implement this tool successfully.
Efficient flight operations become more and more important for airlines due to the increasing fuel prices and growing environmental duties. Operation as close as possible to the optimal flight path is desirable for any airline in order to reduce fuel burn. Improving the inflight optimization possibilities is expected to hold a certain saving potentials which need to be quantified. Therefore, generally valid situations are elaborated in which the presently flown flight path deviates from the optimum one attributed to limited inflight optimization possibilities. A detailed benefit assessment reveals that for Lufthansa’s long haul fleet fuel savings of approximately 4,400 tons per year are realizable with vertical path optimization during mission. If also accounting for CO2 savings, this equals a sum of € 3.4 million which can be saved per year. However, the worthiness of implementing vertical flight path optimization during mission is not only dependent on savings but on the overall profitability of the undertaking. An investment appraisal, incorporating estimated costs besides the assessed savings, indicates that the undertaking yields a relatively high rate of return and that it can be approved economic. It is, therefore, recommended to undertake the realization of vertical flight path optimization during mission.
This is a descriptive research paper looking at the rate parity of hotel room rates and hotel room availability across direct and indirect distribution channels in Germany. The existence of best price channels was also investigated. The study examined 100 hotels in German cities, covering the three- and four-star egments over two dates. The results were analyzed across channels, segments, locations and ownership types and it was found that rate parity did not exist in the aggregate across the hotels measured. In addition, the study found an intermediary to be the best price channel and directly calling the hotel delivering most expensive rates on average. Reasons for why the disparities occurred are reviewed with the help of literature and include technological incapability, problems with control of distribution channels and relationships between hotel operators and online intermediaries.
This thesis aims at describing the importance of brand image on international strategies and market entry strategies of German retail companies. This target is reached by two kinds of research. The first is a literature review that is divided into three parts: branding and brand development, international strategies in relation to brand image and the German retail industry including recent trends. Following the literature, qualitative research in form of expert interviews is conducted whose methodology is explained, including limitations of the research. The findings of this research are then presented, interpreted and hypotheses are derived. The findings show a close relationship between brand image and international and market entry strategies. They also reveal the close connection between an internationally successful brand and a consistent and unique selling proposition. Additionally, assumptions concerning the market entry marketing in relation to the type of retailer are presented. In the end, recommendations for further research are given.
The main objective of this bachelor thesis is to evaluate the correlation between air fares set by individual airline companies and the profitability of their flight operations. Additionally, a validation of traditional competition models is performed, in order to assess their applicability to duopolistic airline markets. The primary research necessary for the achievement of these objectives is based on data provided by Deutsche Lufthansa AG reflecting the market environment of the route from Berlin to Cologne, which is defined as the object of this causal study. Prior to analysing the market data the hitherto existing literature is perused. The major findings from this review are twofold. Whereas on the one hand, in 1883 Joseph Bertrand published his work constituting the impossibility to run profitable business operations in duopolistic markets, on the other hand modern game theory contradicts this hypothesis. With their conceptionalisation of the idea of coopetition in 1996, Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff most importantly contribute to this topic. They propose to perceive the other players in a market not only as rivals, but also as partner, in order to create win-win situations in otherwise devastatingly competitive environments. The subsequent concrete data evaluation substantiates the conclusions drawn from the literature review. Furthermore, it reveals the independency of the price setting strategy applied by Lufthansa from the mechanisms used by Air Berlin and vice versa. As price campaigns do not directly impact on the fares charged by the competition, the model of trigger strategies is unsuitable for managerial decision making. Therefore, this thesis concludes with the recommendation of co-opetitive behaviour for airlines serving duopolistic domestic markets, because it proves to be the most adequate and effective tool to understand and predict the dynamics of price competition. Due to its comparably small sample size and limited scope, the author intents this work to be rather thought-provoking than universally valid. Thus, further ideas for future research are incorporated into this bachelor thesis.
This thesis contains an outline about the potential of Continuous Descent Approaches (CDA) illustrated at the example of night flights at the airport Cologne Bonn. First of all, aviations dependence on night flights and the consequences of nighttime aircraft noise are analyzed. In the following, the benefits and problems of CDAs are discussed in general before the Approach is evaluated for Cologne Bonn in specific. The example of Cologne Bonn emphasizes the high potential of CDAs in particular for specialized airports with high numbers of night movements. By means of a radar track analysis the effect of CDAs on over flight altitude above populated areas around the airport Cologne Bonn is determined. The investigation further concludes which areas benefit most in terms of noise. Moreover, the CDA's effects on fuel consumption, gas emissions and the monetary savings of airlines in Cologne Bonn are figured out. Apart from the advantages, also the disadvantages and problems of the CDA from the Air Traffic Control's and pilot's point of view are discussed.
The following thesis discusses the topics of sustainability, environmental management, energy management, environmental, energy and self auditing, software quality and functionality. From the literature the author derives functionality criteria for free of charge online selfadministrative energy audit (FOSEA) tools. The author furthermore introduces currently available tools and compares the functionality of those tools by performing a value benefit analysis (VBA). In order to scientifically support the VBA the author uses structures from the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to weigh the importance of the different functionality criteria. The VBA and the AHP were performed by representatives of the Hyatt Regency Cologne (HRC) and the President Hotel Bonn (PHB). The results from the AHP indicate that differences exist in the weighting of the functionality criteria, between representatives from chain and independent hotels. The results of the VBA points out that the FOSEA tool from the Energie-Sparprogramm developed by the DEHOGA fulfills the functionality criteria the most out of the seven assessed tools. However, the analysis also showed that no tool fulfills every criteria of functionality. Additionally, it was pointed out that the weightings derived from the AHP influence the results of the VBA to a great extent. The author came to the final conclusion that this thesis gave valuable insights into the functionality of FOSEA tool and provided recommendations for the developers of such tools, however further research has to be conducted supporting these findings.
The purpose of this thesis is to find out whether there is a difference between female and male student's perception in ethical decision-making and attitudes. Special focus was given to the International University of Bad Honnef - Bonn, Germany. Secondary research revealed that there is no clear verification of gender related differences towards ethical decision-making. Numerous tools and measures have been developed in order to find significant differences, however not offering significant findings. Primary research revealed some significant differences between male and female students, nevertheless not resulting in any clear results. Female students show slightly more ethical concern in the vignette situations (MEV), rating the ethical dilemma situations after a more deontological approach (rules and law-abiding) towards ethical judgment. Individual trait rating and the comparison between male and female students revealed the importance of traits such as honesty and trustworthiness. The most important recommendation that can be given to students is to begin with ethical education during the study program in order to prevent stressful ethical dilemma situations. Not only will individuals benefit from this on a personal level but also companies as this may prevent wrong economical situations in aspect to business ethics.
This thesis contains an examination of the costs of governmental regulations in the European member states in the wake of the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull in April 2010. The costs of the regulations, which resulted in a one-week Europe-wide airspace closure, are analyzed by the application of Williamson's transaction cost approach. By means of a modification of Williamson's attempt to determine the most efficient asset supply of a firm, the inefficiencies of the current air transport policy in the EU are pointed out. The examination reveals that under the principle of subsidiarity, which is relevant to the relation of the EU to its member states, an integration of air transport policy to the European regulation level is overdue. To tackle the congestion of the European airspace and to develop preventive measures against potential future volcanic eruptions, the implementation of a single European sky is the only sustainable solution.
This study uses pooled correlation and regression analysis to analyze the relationship between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction in gaming centric casino restaurants over a period of 3 consecutive years for three different regions and three different restaurant types (buffet restaurant, coffee shop, and steakhouse). The nature and the strength of the relationship vary depending on front and back-of-the-house employee satisfaction, on different restaurant types, and on different regions and years. The results of this study show that there is a positive correlation between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction in gaming centric casino restaurants. Furthermore, the findings indicate that back-of-the-house employee satisfaction has a positive correlation to overall customer satisfaction. This relation is even stronger for back-of-the-house employees in the steakhouse and customer satisfaction in the steakhouse showing a medium correlation accounting for 75% of variance in customer satisfaction. These numbers emphasize the importance of satisfied kitchen staff in restaurant concepts with a high level of service. Further research should also differentiate between front-of-the-house and back-of-the house employee satisfaction and different restaurant types. Management implications are provided in the last chapter of this study.
The cultural and heritage tourism market has become an increasingly important area of interest due to its share of approximately 40 % of the worldwide tourism market. Many previous studies analyzed cultural heritage tourists, but no study has focused solely on the German market. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the travel motivations of German tourists to visit a cultural heritage attraction by adopting the theory of push and pull motivators as the theoretical framework. First, theories with respect to heritage tourism, market segmentation, and travel motivations are described. On the basis of these theories, a questionnaire was developed to gather primary data at the World Heritage Site Sanssouci. Afterwards, factor and cluster analyses were employed to segment the German heritage tourism market. The results of factor analysis revealed three push and three pull factor dimensions. Among them, ‘rest and relaxation' and ‘heritage attractiveness' were viewed as the most important push and pull factors, respectively. Based on cluster analysis, the author identified three distinct segments within the German heritage tourism market. These segments were compared based on demographic and behavioral characteristics. The results of this thesis provide implications for managers of heritage attractions to develop effective marketing strategies for each segment. | 2019-04-26T10:35:55Z | https://www.iubh-university.de/forschung/publikationen/publikationen-der-absolventen/ |
Weekly Index is coming to you from Canada today, amidst celebrations of Canada’s 150th anniversary as an independent nation. The CBC day-long celebratory broadcast is co-hosted by a second generation Indian-Canadian and a member of the Ojibwa nation, and their commentary, their interviews, and the cultural offerings and historical discussions on display are as inclusive, thoughtful, multicultural, and transparent about dark histories and systemic injustice as one might expect.
Meanwhile, south of the border, time remains elastic inside Trumplandia, like Twin Peaks‘ atomic bomb sequence (which I suppose means that Donald is Bob, spawned forth in horror by humanity at its most ignorant, barbaric, and destructive). Thoughtful and tolerant Trump’s America is not; violent and venal it is.
Briefly celebrates the new Senate Republican healthcare bill that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would remove healthcare from 22 million people over the next decade.
Reacts in a Tweetstorm to news that he himself is under investigation in the Russia inquiry; sends out surrogates to deny this and denounce all claims of Russian interference as bogus. But after news breaks in a landmark Washington Post story that Obama’s administration could have reacted more bullishly against Russian interference, Trump & Co. appear to change their stories, blaming Obama for failing to prevent Russian interference. His pivot does not go unnoticed.
Celebrates as the Supreme Court agrees to take up his immigration ban in their next session and as they partially reinstate his ban in the meantime.
Promptly undermines this victory by unleashing a Tweetstorm against the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, including derogatory comments about the IQ and appearance of co-host Mika. Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee-Sanders suggests that Trump is merely “fighting fire with fire,” and positions him as being perennially “bullied by the liberal media.” Others suggest that Melania’s anti-cyber bullying campaign should start at home–immediately. There is universal outcry, even from among Republicans, about the inappropriateness of his misogynistic and venial tweets. Huckabee-Sanders responds, “if you’re looking for a role model, I suggest God.” Morning Joe’s hosts issue a statement saying that they have long been friends with Trump, but that in recent years they have noticed several worrying changes in his personality, concluding that he is no longer mentally fit to watch Morning Joe.
Hosts Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and gives him a low-key relatively cold welcome. Hosts Panama President Juan Carlos Varela and gives him warm welcome. Hosts South Korean president Moon Jae-In and gives him warm welcome, although they are expected to disagree on tactics for dealing with North Korea.
Holds a fundraiser for his 2020 campaign at the Washington DC Trump hotel. Critics say that this violates ethics against self-dealing, and also that he should perhaps think about actually trying to govern in the present.
The Senate finally shines a light on its proposed healthcare bill. It includes tax cuts for the rich, slashes Medicaid funding, ditches the individual mandate, and would allow insurance companies to charge the elderly jillions more than the young. It has been universally derided, including by Trump voters. And despite Trump’s earlier request for a Senate healthcare bill that was less “mean” than the House package, it is mean: devastating to those with preexisting conditions, those who are older, and those who, generally, are not wealthy.
Mitch McConnell refuses to meet with March of Dimes–who once funded his own polio treatments–to discuss the healthcare bill.
Kellyanne Conway reappears on the news circuit to talk about healthcare, saying that the administration doesn’t see the cuts to Medicaid as cuts. She also suggests that “able-bodied” people should just find jobs if they lose coverage.
Refugees and immigrants from six majority-Muslim nations are yet again experiencing uncertain and turbulent times, after the Supreme Court partially lifts the ban on Trump’s immigration executive order, leaving refugees and immigrants without “a close business or family connection” to America in the lurch. The State department interprets this narrowly, ruling that those who have siblings or parents in the US can come, but those who have grandparents or fiancés in the US cannot. Hawaii complains, asking a federal judge to clarify what “close family” means, and asserting that grandparents should be included.
The 600 jobs that President-Elect Trump negotiated to save at an Indiana air-conditioning manufacturer will, despite his early press conference to the contrary, still be lost and outsourced to Mexico.
Democrat Jon Ossoff was defeated in the most expensive House race in history, catalyzing much handwringing and dire predictions about the fate of the Democratic party. Many call for the resignation of Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.
There are murmurs that Trump may try to fire Robert Mueller, who’s leading the investigation into him Russia.
An NRA ad goes viral that suggests that its members resist, in a generic sense, with the “clenched fist of truth.” Its militancy and vague fascism causes wide alarm.
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry says that climate change is most likely caused by the ocean.
The Supreme Court rules in favor of a church school requesting state funds for its playground upgrade, causing some to worry about the separation of church and state now that Gorsuch has joined the court. The court also announces that, in addition to taking up the Muslim immigration ban next term, it will hear the case of a Coloradan baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding and, perhaps even more worryingly, a case about the extent to which states can gerrymander.
The heartbreak and anger around the execution of Philando Castile continues to mount, with anger against the NRA for its silence, and against the judicial system for its failure, once again, to distribute justice.
A woman kills her baby’s father live on YouTube: he had suggested they use their encyclopedia to see if it would stop a bullet, in a stunt designed to increase their following. She has been arrested; her partner died instantly.
Just a smattering of readings for you this time around.
The New York Times has catalogued each of Trump’s lies. Refresh your memory here, and bookmark this page.
From Berkley professor George Lakoff, why we shouldn’t underestimate Trump.
A much-shared Huff-Po piece about the fundamental lack of empathy coming out of American conservatives at present.
A must-read piece on the charming, brilliant Sherman Alexie.
Of all the sources, Cosmopolitan‘s piece on the NRA’s silence in the execution of Philando Castile is very good.
An alarming Politico piece about liberal Portland’s nut-job militants, and how violence might escalate.
Following news of Oliver Stone’s interviews with Putin? No? Us neither. Here’s why you shouldn’t.
Warren Buffet, talking Trumpcare and telling it like it is.
And more on Trumpcare’s barbarity here.
A tribute to the amazing Simone Veil, Holocaust survivor and the woman who fought for legal abortions in France.
Did you catch the news about the EPA trying to bully a scientist into sticking to their talking points in her testimony?
A short video reminder that despite the political turmoil, and renewed ban on refugees, at home in America, the refugee crisis remains unabated and as desperate as ever.
And a funny/not-funny video take on gun violence and vigilantism in America.
Happy Fourth of July. And happy Canada Day, too. No harm in dreaming northwards right now.
Admittedly, the Weekly Index is becoming more of a biweekly index, but so it goes: thanks for tolerating its erratic schedule. Anyway, let’s jump right back into the annals of outrage.
Yet again claims that the Russia investigation is the “single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history — led by some very bad and conflicted people!”, after it is revealed that Special Counsel Robert Mueller may now also be investigating the President himself for obstruction of justice.
Tries to deflect attention by relaunching his Twitter wars against “crooked Hillary” and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Responds almost presidentially to news of the softball shooting (below).
Celebrates his 71st birthday, and the move-in of Melania and Barron to the White House.
Reintroduces restrictions on American-Cuban trade and relations.
Has lawsuits filed against him by two state Attorneys General and, separately, by 200 Democratic members of Congress to contest his unconstitutional self-dealing and possible violation of the emoluments clause.
Names Eric Trump’s wedding planner to oversee federal housing programs in NYC. For real.
Declares that he’s not going to deport Dreamers after all.
Calls an unusual Cabinet meeting, in which members go around the table recounting why they are “blessed” and privileged to work for his administration and detailing why he is a great leader. The whole room seems about to implode with attendees’ self-loathing, but they nevertheless play along with Trump’s own pride parade. Global pundits compare the scene to North Korea, Zimbabwe, Stalinist Russia, and other autocracies.
James Comey testifies before the Senate Russia investigation. Highlights include Comey’s confirmation that Trump asked him to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn, and that he considers the President capable of and likely to lie about the nature of their exchanges. It is gripping testimony, and an estimated 20 million Americans watch it live, including at the many bars that opened early for the spectacle (featuring drink specials like the “Comey Covfefe,” a modified Irish coffee).
Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifies–or, rather, mostly declines to testify–at an open hearing for Senate Russia investigation, instead claiming that he maintains his silence so as not to jeopardize Trump’s executive privilege. As one pundit notes, Sessions appears to have fabricated a new type of privilege: non-executive executive privilege. As such, he’s gambling that Senate Republicans will not challenge his newly created rule; as yet, they haven’t, at least en masse.
An American lobbyist for Russian interests goes on record contradicting Sessions’ testimony.
Four people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La), are shot at an early morning congressional softball practice. Scalise remains in critical care; the gunman dies. The gunman may have been motivated by anti-Trump sentiment: relatives have confirmed that he was a Bernie supporter.
The same day, a former UPS worker in San Francisco opens fire at a depot, killing three workers and then turning the gun on himself.
Five Michigan government officials are charged with involuntary manslaughter in relation to the Flint water crisis.
A Republican state representative in Texas threatens to shoot his Democratic counterpart.
A white man in Washington State is arrested for running over two young Quinault Nation men while allegedly war-whooping and yelling racial slurs. One man, Jimmy Smith-Kramer, dies in hospital after being backed over by the perpetrator’s monster truck. The national media largely ignores the incident; local police don’t register it as a potential hate crime.
Eric Trump calls the head of the Democratic Party a “total whack job” and says that “morality is just gone” from the Democratic party. “To me, they’re not even people.” Nice.
In a conversation on NPR about food stamps, Nebraska Republican Representative Adrian Smith refuses to confirm that people are “entitled to eat” (and that the government has a duty to ensure that people have food).
Batman actor Adam West dies. LA’s skyline lights up with the bat signal in memoriam.
Uber CEO and über-dickhead Travis Kalanick goes on leave, just as one of his board members says–during a conversation on improving corporate culture–that bringing more women on board would merely lead to more chattering. Nice.
A young Maine woman goes out for a jog and is attacked by a rabid raccoon, which she then drowns in a puddle.
The police officer who shot Philando Castile five times at a traffic stop is found not guilty.
VP Mike Pence hires a private lawyer in response to the widening Russia investigation.
The Senate continues trying to ram through its healthcare legislation, which has been created and discussed only behind closed committee doors and has had no public hearings or transparent explanations of what it does and doesn’t advance. The expectation is that, like the House bill, it will remove healthcare from upwards of 23 million Americans; as such, there is widespread outcry that democratic process is being ignored and that a cloistered process is steamrolling over the public’s rights. Several Republican members of Congress have themselves voiced such concerns.
Having called a snap election because of her confidence in winning a broader mandate, British Prime Minister Theresa May actually loses Tory seats on election day, and does not have enough votes to form a majority. With Britain in hung Parliament, May forms a shaky coalition with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland, a group even more conservative than May’s Tories. The Queen’s Speech–at which the new government would be ratified–is delayed. Britain’s position within the Brexit negotiations, slated to start on Monday, look all the more perilous now. And May is assumed to be operating on borrowed time. Que será, será, Cruella.
British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is the winner of the night, kind of: although Labour didn’t win an outright majority, they gained both seats and influence. To celebrate, Corbyn accidentally cups a woman’s breast in a high-five misfire.
Three men in London drive a truck into a group of people, and then run out and begin stabbing bystanders. Seven die, and London once more briefly shuts down. A man seen running from the attack while carefully protecting his pint becomes a national icon.
Otto Warmbier, an American student, is released in an unresponsive state from a North Korean prison and returned home to his family and medical care. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson denies that basketball player Dennis Rodman’s visit to North Korea could have impacting the release’s timing…because we live in a world where such statements need uttering.
Rumor has it that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may recuse himself any minute from the Russia investigation because he will need to serve as a witness over Comey’s firing.
Let’s repeat it: Donald Trump is likely under investigation for obstruction of justice.
Oregon governor Kate Brown signs an equal pay bill; Oregon also becomes the first state in the nation to offer a third gender on their drivers’ license.
Danica Roem becomes the first transgender person to win a Virginia primary.
The far-right National Front barely wins any seats in the French parliamentary election.
A federal judge rules that the Trump administration did not follow adequate procedures to survey the environmental and tribal impact of the Dakota Access Pipeline as it passes the Standing Rock Sioux’s territory. The ruling doesn’t halt the construction, but it may open the door to its cessation.
At the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, which ministers to over 15 million Americans, leaders ratify a mandate to “decry every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy.” Their publishing arm also releases the Christian Standard Bible, a new adaptation that prioritizes gender-inclusive language.
Fox News drops its “Fair and Balanced” motto.
Pride Week ramps up across America, with intersectionality, remembrance, vigilance, and unity as foremost messages amongst marchers. “When you come for one of us, you come for all of us,” reads one sign.
Wonder Woman storms the box office, the first big-budget superhero film directed by and starring a woman.
New York art-lover and philanthropist Agnes Gund sells a Roy Lichtenstein painting for $165 million and uses the proceeds to start the Art For Justice Fund, which will fight for criminal justice reform, primarily at state and local levels. Kapow!
On violence, guns, and hate in America: from the WaPo, the Scalise shooting is the 154th mass shooting this year. Here are the numbers. | Another piece on America’s gun violence numbers, this time from the BBC. | Baseball and guns: America’s national pastimes, writes Chelsea Parsons in the LA Times. | From the New Yorker, Jane Mayer’s exploration of the link between gun and domestic violence in Scalise’s shooter, and more broadly. | Oh, and just a reminder about where America’s love affair with weaponry places it in comparison to other developed nations.
A few bits and pieces: a lovely piece from poet Charles Simic on late poet Phillip Levine as a “Voice for the Voiceless.” | From Marcia Angell, also in the NYRB, a useful history and context of the anti-abortion debate. | A fascinating piece about the push for gender-equal education, and its imperilled status in today’s curricula. From Elizabeth Weingarten in The Atlantic. | And a sobering, shocking piece from Alex De Waal, writing in the London Review of Books, about famine as a weapon of war, then and now, them and us.
Finally, on a lighter note, Happy Bloomsday! Here’s a piece in the Smithsonian about why Joyce would’ve loathed the tradition. | Another piece, from Vanity Fair, confirming why Joyce would’ve enjoyed the silliness of Bloomsday but hated its hagiographic elements. | And so, to honor the silliness and vulgarity of Ulysses, and undercut the hagiography, here’s a classic short film about Joyce and Beckett playing mini-golf. Bon weekend, tous!
Of course, the world keeps turning, and global and domestic events are happening every second outside of the black hole of the White House. But holy god, a lot of scary, democracy-challenging, impeachment-inviting stuff’s happening in Trumplandia right now. Accordingly, this week’s Index is going to be short and anything but sweet.
Unceremoniously fires James Comey, the Director of the FBI. Across the nation, jaws hit the floor, phone lines explode, and even a few Republicans muster the courage to declare this beyond the pale. At first, Comey’s firing is blamed on his pre-election disclosures of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and on the recommendations of the Attorney General and the deputy Attorney General. But just as soon as his spokespeople have gone into overdrive on this message, Trump contradicts them, saying that the firing was his idea: he wasn’t happy with Comey’s performance. Later, it comes out that he invited Comey to dinner and asked for his loyalty; Comey declined to pledge fealty. Comey, of course, was leading the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russian connections.
Shares highly classified intelligence about ISIS with Russian officials, imperiling the info’s source, unnerving the intelligence community, jeopardizing international trust, and raising America’s hackles yet further.
See this week’s Readings for more on both of these issues.
Sean Spicer hides amongst bushes.
The Director of the Census Bureau resigns, which could have far-reaching effects on how thoroughly populations are counted and thus how well they are represented legislatively.
North Korea successfully launches a longish-range missile.
Here’s a picture of a puppy. Feel free to revisit this little fella when you’re driving back and forth between town halls, relaxing after calls to your legislators, resting your thumbs from furious tweeting to the White House and DOJ, and trying not to stress about the state of our democracy. Have a glass of wine, too.
Howdy, folks. Given the plethora of 100-day summaries inundating the recent media, Weekly Index took some time off. But it’s back with a vengeance now, and with a request: if Weekly Index is useful to you, or if it could be more useful or otherwise improved, let us know either via Facebook and Twitter or by email to weeklyindex [at] gmail.com.
Meanwhile, as usual, SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED. Here’s the run-down.
Celebrates his 100th day in office with an approval rating of 42%, the lowest 100-day approval rating of any president since polls began.
Appoints renewable energy skeptic Dan Simmons to lead the renewable energy committee at the Department of Energy.
Suggests that former President Andrew Jackson could have prevented the Civil War had he not died 16 years before it ended. He further speculates on the causes of the Civil War, and lamented the paucity of scholarly inquiry into its history. “People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” he asks during a radio call-in show.
Reminds the nation that May 1st is Loyalty Day. Nation blinks.
Signs executive order that had been expected to upend the Johnson Amendment, which among other things keeps religious groups from supporting specific candidates. But the executive order fell short of Trump’s threats, and those planning to sue for the Amendment’s preservation backed down.
Plans to strip funding from State Department team that advances women’s rights across the world…just as his daughter Ivanka defends his record on women to a German audience, sharing a stage with Angela Merkel.
Launches a new anti-immigration hotline so that victims or witnesses of crimes allegedly committed by immigrants could easily report them. Immigrants’ rights activists rally behind #AlienDay hashtag and overwhelm the hotline with complaints of crimes committed by aliens–from outer space.
House Republicans shove through a more inhumane version of their previous healthcare bill, this time modified to placate the far-right Freedom Caucus. The new bill, which isn’t yet reviewed by the Congressional Budget Office, will slash Medicaid and insurance subsidies; imperil coverage for those with pre-existing conditions; let states waive the requirement to provide essential services coverage (eg. maternity or emergency care); defund Planned Parenthood; and cut taxes mostly to the benefit of the wealthy. A key provision guarantees that Obamacare benefits remain intact for legislators.
At a town hall in Lewiston, in response to a constituent’s claims that the new GOP healthcare bill’s Medicaid cuts are tantamount to a death sentence, Representative Raul Labradour (R-Idaho) derides his constituent’s claim as ridiculous: “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.” Jeers ensue.
Minnesota sees largest measles outbreak for thirty years, a suspected result of anti-vaccination campaigns targeting vulnerable recent immigrant populations.
The Interior Department lists monuments whose status are up for review, a process that could rollback protections on millions of acres of public lands. Public comment opens on May 12th.
The Senate committee working on the rewrite of the House Trumpcare bill comprises 13 men, 0 women.
Sally Yates, former acting Attorney General, gives searing testimony to Senate subcommittee about Michael Flynn and the Trump administration’s Russia ties.
The E.P.A. does not renew the terms of five members of a major scientific advisory board, vowing instead to open up the regulatory review process to industry representatives and other energy stakeholders. “This is completely part of a multifaceted effort to get science out of the way of a deregulation agenda,” says Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
U.S. jobless rate reaches a 10 year low.
Media learns that former President Barack Obama warned Trump against hiring Michael Flynn two days after the election, advice Trump clearly ignored at the nation’s peril.
The FCC investigates complaints against late-night comedian Stephen Colbert for a brief and brilliant on-air roast of Trump. Trump’s supporters flood the office with calls for his removal.
A federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia begins hearing an appeal on the Trump administration’s revised immigration ban.
Protester Desiree Fairooz is convicted for laughing during Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing in January.
Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee tweets that he will spend Cinco de Mayo drinking “an entire jar of hot salsa and watching “old Speedy Gonzalez cartoons.” Condemnation is fast and furious.
Congress is on recess this week. Take this opportunity to visit a town hall near you and let your legislators know how they’re doing.
Britain’s prime minister Theresa May continues to barrel towards the snap election she called in April in order to quelch Labour party dissent against her hardline “Brexit means Brexit” agenda. So far, her tactics seem to be working: she seems to be laps ahead of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who’s widely reputed to be a very weak candidate.
Russia withdraws from this year’s Eurovision Song Contest after Ukraine–this year’s Eurovision hosts–refuse their singer’s visa. Tensions flare, promising a particularly entertaining broadcast.
The World Trade Organization rules in Mexico’s favor in a trade dispute with the US on the US’ refusal to sell Mexican-caught tuna. The decision allows Mexico to impose trade sanctions worth $163 million a year against the U.S.
Turkmenistan marks its national Horse Day. This year’s celebrations culminate in authoritarian President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov first winning a horse race, and then singing a song–complete with backup dancers–he composed himself for himself. Turkmenbashi 2.0.
An Australian bar is forced to cancel its plans to hold a wet t-shirt competition to mark Anzac Day, the anniversary of the first major World War One battle involving antipodean nations.
Suspected Russian hackers attempt to shift France’s election toward far-right candidate Marine Le Pen via a release of sensitive centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron campaign information shortly before French voters went to the polls. The attempt fails.
As a New Yorker piece puts it, France retains its right to claim intellectual superiority over America by voting for centrist Macron and against far-right Le Pen as their next president. Yes, 34% of French voters still supported a party that is racist, xenophobic, anti-EU, and fascist, but nevertheless, 66% did not, and it is worth celebrating France’s defiance of the tide of barbarism and nationalism rising elsewhere. Vive la France!
More or less successfully diverts the nation’s attention away from the Russia investigation.
Releases no tax returns, despite April 15th’s well-attended protest marches (or, according to Trump’s tweets, sad, small gatherings of Soros-paid anarchists).
Hosts the annual White House Easter Egg Hunt, proclaiming the greatness of his America to hundreds of small children while flanked by an unblinking, human-sized rabbit and an unblinking, human-sized Melania.
Rediscovers an appreciation for NATO.
Supports US-led coalition strikes in Syria that kill at least 21, including several civilians.
Drops the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal on an ISIS tunnel complex in Afghanistan, killing no civilians. Nicknamed the mother-of-all-bombs, its use unnerves many world leaders and seems more posture than pragmatism.
In a Fox interview, joyfully recalls the “most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you’ve ever seen” that he was consuming as he informed Chinese President Xi Jinping of his decision to bomb Syria. “So what happens is I said, ‘We’ve just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq.'” “Headed to Syria,” the interviewer corrects him.
Celebrates the “armada” that he is sending to Korean waters.
Causes diplomatic tension and anger amongst South Koreans when it is revealed that his “armada,” led by the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, is actually a thousand miles away and sailing in the opposite direction.
Vows to support new Republican healthcare legislation that promises to be even more draconian, and less functional, than the prior attempt.
Consolidates Jared Kushner’s and Ivanka Trump’s powers.
Welcomes Sarah Palin to the White House, who brings Ted Nugent and Kid Rock with her (she asked them, she said, because Jesus wasn’t available). The resulting photo op further denigrates the dignity of the office and renders pointless all future satires of the Trump administration.
Claims during Passover that “even Hitler didn’t use gas on his own people” in reference to Assad. Uproar ensues; Spicer digs himself deeper before finally apologizing.
Judge Neil Gorsuch ascends to the bench, hearing his first cases as a Supreme Court justice.
Motivated by the impending expiry of its stock of midazolam, a lethal injection drug, Arkansas moves to execute eight prisoners on death row. After stays of execution from both the state and federal supreme courts, the US Supreme Court eventually votes 5-4 to let the executions proceed. Ledell Lee, who has long protested his innocence, becomes the first person put to death in Arkansas since 2005; his lawyers argue that he was denied the opportunity for DNA testing that may have proved his innocence.
Criticizing a federal district court’s ruling last month that halted President Trump’s immigration ban, Attorney General Jeff Sessions exclaims, “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.” Legislators from the State of Hawaii voice protest; residents grit their teeth.
The U.S. accuses Russia of trying to cover up Syria’s chemical gas attacks.
Turkey votes to give sweeping powers to President Erdogan, moving Turkey farther toward the right and farther away from Ataturk’s secular democratic ideals. Erdogan threatens to reinstate the death penalty, which would upend Turkey’s EU bid. Opponents cry foul and call for a recount.
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May calls a snap election for June, hoping to capitalize on her Labour opponents’ weaknesses. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn gives a surprisingly rallying campaign speech.
A shooting at the Champs-Élysées in Paris leaves one officer and the attacker dead, rattling a nation already tense in anticipation of its imminent elections, which could swing the balance of power in Europe and threaten the EU’s longevity.
Over sixty gay men have fled Chechnya in recent weeks, reporting that they have been detained and tortured with electric shocks and beatings. Authorities deny that there are gay people in Chechnya.
Violent protests in Venezuela continue, as opposition leaders face off against increasingly autocratic President Nicolas Maduro’s supporters.
Two churches in Egypt were bombed during Palm Sunday services, killing 45 people. Nine days later, an additional attack at a kills policemen at a checkpoint near St. Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai peninsula. ISIS claims responsibility.
In Stockholm, a man drives a truck into a crowd, killing four.
Russian jets buzz the U.S. coast, flying over Alaska four times in as many days. There is “no other way to interpret this other than as strategic messaging,” a defense official says.
The FCC withdraws legislation to allow cell phones on planes, preserving the one remaining decency of air travel.
Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff wins the majority of votes in a runoff election for Tom Price’s solidly Republican seat, but not quite the 50% majority needed. He’ll go to a run-off in June. Not quite a victory for Dems, but a heartening trend.
Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz announces he will not run for re-election (possibly because of a gubernatorial bid, and possibly because of backlash he’s facing from his constituents).
*This two-week index is brought to you by the letter A, for the arseholes of the Intuit-led tax prep lobby that continually block attempts to simplify the tax code or move towards return-free filing. May you rot in the ninth circle of hell.
The Trumpian winter continues, but there are hints of spring: tendrils of common sense have been spotted amidst conservative legislators, and small backbones may be sprouting within the administration.
Announces Sexual Assault Awareness Month, to the jaw-drops of women and thoughtful people everywhere.
Publicly defends Fox’s Bill O’Reilly as it emerges that Fox and O’Reilly have paid over $13m to settle five women’s claims of sexual harassment and misconduct. While the President of the United States remains by his side, advertisers flee O’Reilly’s show.
Celebrates women’s equal pay day by not mentioning the executive order that he signed on March 27th that revoked the 2014 “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” order. F*** you, Donald.
Donates his first months’ salary of $78,333 to the National Parks Service. Sean Spicer presents oversized check to Tyrone Brandyburg, superintendant of the Harper’s Ferry National Historic Park. Brandyburg looks decidedly unimpressed: Trump’s budget would cut $1.5 billion from the Department of the Interior, which runs the National Parks.
Hosts Chinese President Xi Jinping at the “winter White House,” Mar-a-Lago. Xi is reportedly unhappy with the location of the summit, preferring instead the symbolism of the White House. Pundits suggest that it is premature for Trump to call a summit with the Chinese, as so many key advisory and policy positions remain unfilled and as Trump has no clear sense of the American agenda.
Claims anger against the Syrian gas attack, citing the deaths of “tiny babies” as core to his outrage. While ordering an American military response, he nevertheless suggests no change of course to his refugee ban.
Steve Bannon is removed from the National Security Council.
Chair of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes withdraws from Russia investigation after protests about his ethical flaws and close ties to the Trump administration.
Across the Netherlands, Dutch men hold hands in solidarity with attacked gay couple–in the office, on their commutes, at lunch…quite lovely.
Senate Democrats threaten to filibuster Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch; Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) holds the floor for fifteen hours overnight as a pre-filibuster protest against Gorsuch’s confirmation. Republicans respond by deploying the “nuclear option,” voting to change the Senate confirmation rules to require a simple majority. This move further politicizes the Supreme Court and sets a precedent that will impact both parties’ nominees well into the future. Gorsuch is confirmed to the court.
AG Jeff Sessions orders crackdown on marijuana; states that have legalized it issue strongly-voiced concerns.
AG Jeff Sessions continues to imperil progress in police reform and will likely empower police targeting of communities of color: a move away from equity and justice.
Fallout continues around the GOP/Trump removal of internet privacy restrictions. States scramble to pass legislation that protects their residents.
A suspected sarin gas attack in Idlib, Syria kills over seventy people, including many children and infants, and triggers international outrage and anger against both Bashar al-Assad’s regime and against Russia and Iran, its protectors.
After blaming Obama for the gas attack, Trump, whose administration earlier declared no intention to intervene in Syria (part of the “America First” policy), then claims a change of heart, decrying Bashar al-Assad and ordering missile strikes against an air base from which the gas attack was said to have been launched.
Russia responds with hackles up. The world tenses.
It is now illegal in Russia to share pictures of Vladimir Putin as a sad gay clown. Here is a picture of Vladimir Putin as a sad gay clown.
Signs executive order easing restrictions on fossil fuels, calling upon EPA head and climate-change denier Scott Pruitt to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, a move that will likely do little to restore coal jobs or achieve further energy independence.
Takes credit for Obama-era grant of $100+m to Detroit to improve its water systems.
Claims that if China won’t take care of North Korea, he will.
The House passes a bill to allow internet providers to sell your browsing history without your permission. Having already passed the Senate, this legislation is on its way to Trump’s desk.
House Democrats–and citizens across the country–call for Devin Nunes, leader of House Russia inquiry, to recuse himself, and for an independent investigation to commence.
News sources replay Flynn’s 2016 comments about immunity as existing only for those who’ve broken laws. Good times.
Senate investigation begins, promising hopes of slightly more objectivity and rigor than its House counterpart.
The Affordable Care Act repeal apparently returns to the GOP legislative agenda after pressure from hardline conservatives.
ICE is stepping up its raids yet further, and is now targeting people en route to greencard and other immigration appointments. Not a great way to encourage legal immigration.
By a 50-49 vote, Senate Republicans overturn an Obama-era regulation that lets states create retirement accounts for low-income workers whose employers did not provide them. Let’s see how that plays come re-election time.
Senate Republicans aim for confirmation vote on Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch next week; Democrats work to amass votes to block Gorsuch’s confirmation, thus triggering the dreaded “nuclear option” that would enable his confirmation with fewer votes. A fine thing for the GOP now, but it could come back to bite them later.
It is revealed that Fox has paid out over $13 million to settle harassment suits against Bill O’Reilly over the years. Stay classy, Fox.
Over 200 civilians die in US-led airstrikes in Mosul, amidst fears that Trump is calling for over-hasty military responses as a show of political power.
Shocking news from Chechnya of mass arrests and killings of gay men. “You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic,” says Chechen leader.
UK Prime Minister triggers Article 50, formally commencing Britain’s departure from the EU.
Tensions between Russia and Ukraine threaten to boil over in advance of this year’s Eurovision. If you don’t know what Eurovision is, you should: geopolitics interpreted in pop ballads.
Sorry for the delayed posts. Between a busy work week and everything else, sometimes a little extra processing time is called for. Trevor Noah has a new Daily Show segment called “Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That,” in which he whizzes through all of the crazy events that happened that day and reminds us that, in normal times, each would be a huge story. The Index serves a similar purpose, except we’re cramming a whole week in. So here goes.
In the biggest news of the week, a rushed vote on TrumpRyanCare is pulled after the GOP cannot amass sufficient GOP support to pass it. With only 17% of Americans endorsing it, it became a political hot potato, and despite last-minute, late-night, backroom dealmaking (including promises to axe mandatory benefits like maternity, ER, and mental health care), neither the Freedom Caucus nor some moderate Republicans come on board en masse. Trump and Ryan both give press conferences blaming the Democrats and everyone but themselves.Democrats rejoice. Ryan pledges to fight on, and then presumably hits the gym for some anger-cardio. Pump it!
The Senate passes bill allowing Internet service providers to sell people’s info (including browsing histories and even emails) without asking permission first.
Supreme Court justice nominee Neil Gorsuch completes three grueling days of Senate confirmation hearings in which the Democrats asked hardball questions about how he might vote in certain circumstances, which Gorsuch studiously avoids answering, and in which GOP-ers ask largely softball questions, such as (literally), “Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?” (Gorsuch demurs.) Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asks Senate Democrats to join him in voting against Gorsuch nomination, thus likely forcing Republicans to deploy the “nuclear option” to get their candidate confirmed.
The House Intelligence Committee continues hearing testimony about Russian interference–and possible Trump administration collusion–with the 2016 election. High-/lowlights include an outstandingly clear introduction to the investigation by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA: worth a watch in full); FBI Director James Comey’s testimony that there is no evidence to support Trump’s wiretapping claims; his confirmation that the FBI is conducting an investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russia; committee head Rep. Devin Nunes taking new evidence first to Trump and then to the press corps instead of sharing it with his committee, thus casting further doubt on the independence of the hearings; and Nunes then taking the committee behind closed doors, to the outrage of Democrats on the committee and the general public. Rumors that Michael Flynn may have struck a deal with the FBI start circulating.
Promises to let Obamacare self-destruct, which may mean defunding it in his new budget proposals, thus opening the door to a new GOP plan.
After his second Muslim-ban is ordered halted, orders that no computers or tablets be brought into the cabin on non-US carrier flights from eight Muslim-majority countries, including key allies.
Calls Russian hearing developments “fake news.” Yawn.
A terror attack on Westminster Bridge and at the Houses of Parliament in London leaves five people, and the attacker, dead, and scores injured.
ICE raids and deportations continue.
Israeli police arrest an Israeli-American teen in connection to a wave of bomb threats against Jewish community centers in the U.S.
Conservative pundit Tomi Lahren is suspended from Fox News, likely because she said she is pro-choice.
Chuck Berry dies; later the same week, his estate releases a new Chuck Berry record with new material.
North Korea tests a new rocket engine–again.
Germany votes for a law that would pay restitution and clear the records of gay men imprisoned for homosexuality in the decades after World War II.
A lawsuit is filed against Saudi Arabia by 9/11 victims and their families, setting a worry precedent that may come back to bite the U.S.
The OED Word of the Day on Friday is “phatic.” Hey, D.T., look it up. It’s gonna be great. | 2019-04-23T16:39:34Z | http://weeklyindex.org/category/index/ |
MJJC: What made you want to write a book?
Bill & Javon: We wrote Remember the Time because we had a story to tell about the Michael Jackson we knew. If you’re a Michael Jackson fan and supporter, you deserve to know him more on a personal side, not just who he was but what he endured as a man, and as a father. You deserve a true account from those that were there, not from those who can only repeat what they heard second hand.
children. Mr. Jackson has been robbed of the opportunity to tell his own story, and the children were too young to really know a lot of what was going on at the time. That leaves us. If the world ever wants to fully understand what happened to this beloved and incredible man, this is a story that needs to be told. We already know how Michael Jackson died. Our aim is to help people understand why.
MJJC: How long did it take you to write the book? Was it a challenge putting the experience of protecting Michael Jackson into words? Please tell us about this experience.
Bill & Javon: The longest and hardest part of the process was finding the right publisher who understood our approach and our philosophy. When he was alive, Mr. Jackson’s world was full of vultures looking to take advantage of him in every way possible. We saw that with him and we saw it again after he passed away, in the way people approached us about our story. There was a long, on and off process of interviewing possible collaborators, close to two years. Once we found the right partners, people that we trusted and felt comfortable with, the actual writing of the book actually took about a year. We spent several days sitting down, reminiscing and just telling our story, and then over the next several months, spent hours on the phone going over chapters, making edits, and so forth.
In the beginning, it was difficult talking about our experiences. Often times it made us angry, thinking, “Was there more we could have done?” It was also painful to relive some of the bad things that happened to him. He was not at peace a lot of the time, because of how bad he was portrayed in the media, because there were so many people he couldn’t trust. We always wanted to shield him from it, but there were some things you just couldn’t control. But the more we wrote and relived the moments we shared with Mr. Jackson, the more we knew we were doing the right thing.
MJJC: Most books about Michael are written with lots of sensationalism. Yours is not. Why is that, and why have you taken the approach of a general spoken account?
Bill & Javon: Sensationalism was the opposite of what we wanted to write. First of all, our time with Mr. Jackson was not “sensational” in either a good way or a bad way. There were no big tabloid scandals, but there weren’t any sold-out stadium concerts, either. Most of our two and a half years with Mr. Jackson were a quiet time when he was focused almost entirely on raising his children and giving them a home. There was a lot of tension and drama going on with his family and with his business affairs, but no big spectacle, so telling our story is an opportunity to see who the man really was away from the cameras.
We always tell people we didn’t work for the King of Pop. We worked for Michael Jackson. Those were two different people. It was only at the very end, when the machinery of This Is It started winding up in Los Angeles, that we saw the tabloid spectacle take over, and not in a healthy way. But we were not a direct party to that. We stayed in Vegas, handling some of Mr. Jackson’s business there, and we were slated to rejoin him in London to handle security on the estate he was going to rent.
We chose to tell the story in the way we did, through our own personal, conversational voices, to give readers the sense of being there as things happened. A lot of what you read about Michael Jackson either puts him on a pedestal or throws him in the gutter. We wanted a book that gave Mr. Jackson his proper respect and honored his legacy, but also a book that was down to earth and showed him as a real, everyday person, because that’s what most people misunderstand about him. The tabloids always wanted to paint him as some kind of cartoon, but behind the King of Pop spectacle there was a real human being who was full of great love and generosity, but who also suffered from pain and loneliness. We wanted to show the world that real human being, because Michael Jackson deserves to be treated like a person.
We also chose to tell the story from our own point of view in order to avoid all the second-hand speculation and the recycling of tabloid stories that other Michael Jackson books always rely on. Given the way the media treated Mr. Jackson’s life, to this day we don’t really trust anything written about him that we didn’t witness first-hand. Other than referencing well-documented information about Mr. Jackson’s past (like how many albums Thriller sold) and using some basic facts established in public records (like how the mortgage on Neverland was handled) the book is strictly an account of what we saw and heard and what our reactions and feelings were. We wanted it to be as honest and real as possible.
MJJC: Lots of people from Michael’s past have used knowing/working with him to make money. Can you tell us if that was your motivation for writing this book?
Bill & Javon: Money was and never has been our motivation. We turned down cash offers from tabloids that wanted us to dish dirt on the more scandalous elements of Mr. Jackson’s life. (We didn’t actually have much dirt to give them, because that’s not the man that we knew.) As we discuss in the intro to the book, we did not sell this for a huge advance to a big publisher looking for tabloid secrets. We went with a small publisher who was willing to pay a modest advance to take a chance on the kind of book we wanted to write. We also did not take any of the upfront money ourselves. We invested it in making sure Mr. Jackson’s story was done well. We paid most of it to a writer, Tanner Colby, a New York Times bestselling author, who we felt would handle the story with the respect it deserves. The rest of it went to cover various expenses, like travel to meet with our editors and so forth. The only way we will make money from this book is on the back end. If you, the fans, decide that we have done a good job and this is a book you choose to support, that will be our reward.
MJJC: What was your opinion of Michael before you started working for him? Did your opinions change after working for him?
Bill & Javon: Both of us were always huge fans of Michael even before working for him. Bill still has all the old 45 singles from growing up with the Jackson 5. Javon literally had “Smooth Criminal” set up as his ringtone when he got the call to come and work for Mr. Jackson. Neither of us ever believed the allegations made against him, or any of the other crazy things printed in the media. He always seemed so sweet and soft spoken, like he couldn't hurt a fly.
Unfortunately, as with many celebrities whose lives are distorted by the tabloids, you don’t believe what’s being said but you you don’t have the personal knowledge to say different. So when we were given the opportunity to work for him, we paid more attention to him and his actions and we saw things that validated what we’d always wanted to believe about him. We saw how much of a hands-on father he was, how he cared so much for the less fortunate. So, our opinions of him didn’t really change, but it was nice to learn that that the Michael Jackson we supported as fans was not the Michael Jackson that had been reported in the media.
MJJC: Did Michael have a favorite radio station/songs to listen to while in the car/SUV?
Bill & Javon: Mr. Jackson only listened to classical music in the car. Sometimes, if one of us had the radio on an R&B station, he’d ask us to leave it, but otherwise it was pretty much always classical—with one exception. There was one song that happen to come on the radio, and after hearing it he had us go to Best Buy and purchase it for him. Then he played it over and over again in the car, singing along in the backseat—and he sang that song with conviciton. It was song that really spoke to him and the challenges he was dealing with. But for that you have to read the book.
MJJC: Did Michael ever invite fans inside his home to hang out?
Bill & Javon: Mr. Jackson often invited fans in to visit at Neverland, but the houses he rented in Las Vegas were not the same. They were not homes he wanted to show off and entertain in. They were just places to stay, really. So we never had the fans come inside. Most of the time we spent visiting with the fans was in the car, on the way in and out of the house. We’d always stop and he’d say hello and chat for a bit.
While living in Las Vegas, Mr. Jackson was looking for a new limousine, and one summer evening we arranged for him to take a test drive in an SUV stretch limousine. The vehicle seated sixteen people. As we pulled out from the driveway, there were about five fans sitting outside the gate. Mr. Jackson directed the driver to stop the vehicle, he rolled the window down, and asked the fans if they wanted to go for a ride. Then he opened the door and they jumped in. We drove around for about 45 minutes, and Mr. Jackson and his fans just casually chatted. As nerve racking as it was for us as security, all went well. He loved it and so did they.
MJJC: Did you ever hear Michael talk without his falsetto?
Bill & Javon: No. Mr. Jackson always spoke in the same quiet, soft-spoken voice he used in public.
MJJC: Michael loved reading a lot. As far as you know, did he like novels or did he prefer to read autobiographies or books that tell real stories? If he preferred novels, what was his favorite genre?
Bill & Javon: Mr. Jackson read just about anything he could get his hands on. We were constantly taking trips to Barnes & Noble, dropping five, ten thousand dollars on books in a single night. If there was a particular preference he had, we couldn’t say. If there was one book we saw him reading most frequently, it would be the Bible.
MJJC: Can you tell us the differences between the public Michael and the private Michael?
Bill & Javon: The public Michael Jackson was an entertainer. The private Michael Jackson was a father, a son. The public Michael was very image conscious. When he knew he was going somewhere and there were going to be a lot of cameras, he would fly in his hairstylist and get a one-of-a-kind outfit made by a top designer. He would spend 4 to 5 hours just preparing himself for the cameras and the bright lights. The private Michael just loved being with his kids, watching movies, eating popcorn, and walking around the house in pajamas without a care in the world.
MJJC: Can you describe a typical day in the life of Michael Jackson?
Bill & Javon: The business side of Mr. Jackson’s life was an ongoing machine. Through his management and his legal representatives, his days were often pre-scheduled with conference calls and meetings. Each day an itinerary was prepared for Mr. Jackson of where he needed to be, who he needed to talk to. Sometimes he followed the schedule the the letter, and other times he said the hell with schedule and he did whatever he wanted to do.
MJJC: In protecting Michael, what was the scariest thing you saw him do that caused you to worry about his safety?
Bill & Javon: To be honest, in the beginning the biggest challenge was you guys: the fans. As with every celebrity we’ve worked for, it’s always about keeping the fans and the crowds at arm’s length. Everybody is a potential threat. Of course, Mr. Jackson’s relationship with his fans was different. He’d roll the car window down and wave people over to chat, to hang out. Being security, our natural instinct was to try and get in between to act as a buffer, but Mr. Jackson would always wave us aside and say, “Be nice to my fans. They’d never let anything happen to me.” He knew that his fans were his greatest supporters and protectors.
Other than that, because of his children’s safety, Mr. Jackson was hyper vigilant about security. Having been one of the most famous men on Earth his whole life, he knew everything there is to know about personal protection and privacy, so it was rare he put himself in any kind of dangerous situation. He was mindful of the fan who shot and killed John Lennon. He knew some people were overly obsessed with him and he was afraid of someone using their being a fan to get close enough to harm him. So Mr. Jackson may have let his guard down to be close to his fans, but as his security team we never did.
MJJC: How did Michael cope with all the tabloid trash that was written about him? How computer savvy was Michael? Did he use the internet often? What websites did he visit? Were his children allowed to use the television or the Internet?
Bill & Javon: He didn’t cope with it. He refused to. He shut it completely out of his life. He didn’t want his children exposed to it. Since various talk show hosts still mocked and joked about him, there was no broadcast or cable TV in that house. They only watched movies and shows on DVD. The only newspapers he read regularly were the Wall Street Journal and the Robb Report, because neither of those have tabloid news in them. Whenever we went to newsstands and bookstores, his managers would let us know if any current newspaper or magazine was saying negative things about him. If there were, one of us would go in advance to remove all those issues from the racks. For the same reason, he never went on the Internet and never allowed the children on it unless they were monitored. The only web surfing he did was a few times after Bill showed him how to shop and bid on eBay for collectable items.
Having cut himself off from the media, one of Mr. Jackson’s primary “news” outlets was you, his fans. He read every single letter he received; we’d take him on long drives and he’d sit in the back and go through the mail. He’d get letters from people telling about their personal experiences in China, in the Middle East, from all over the world. They gave him suggestions on what he should sing about. Those letters were his inspiration and his connection to the outside world.
MJJC: Tell us a little more about Michael's relationship with his kids. How did Michael discipline his children?
Bill & Javon: It won’t come as any surprise to MJJCommunity members that Mr. Jackson was a kind and loving father. What people may not know is just how attentive and engaged he was in every single aspect of their upbringing. He was up on all the state-mandated homeschooling requirements, and he sat down every week with the school teacher to go over her lesson plans, making sure the kids were meeting and exceeding all the necessary goals. If we left the house and it was cold out and Blanket didn’t have his hat and mittens, we’d get a call, “Come back to the house. You forgot the mittens.” He was present for everything, in every way. It’s safe to say that being a father was the most important thing in Mr. Jackson’s life at that point, more than recording, performing, you name it. The kids came first no matter what.
To be honest, Mr. Jackson didn’t have to discipline the children very often. For the most part, they were very well-behaved, very courteous, always “please” and “thank you” for everything. Blanket was the wild card, the rebel. When one of them did misbehave, or if one of them did poorly on a school assignment, he might sit them down and give them the responsibility talk, or he might take away some of their privileges, like canceling a movie night or something like that. But even that was rare. He was an excellent father and he raised those three kids with good character and good values, and you can see that in the way they’ve dealt with the enormous pressures that have been put on them since he passed away.
MJJC: Did Michael ever go to nightclubs while living in Vegas?
Bill & Javon: In Vegas, Mr. Jackson was very focused on being a father, helping the kids with their homework every night and being up early to make them breakfast and get them dressed for school in the morning. So there weren’t a lot of big nights out. We went to one Prince concert on the Strip, and Mr. Jackson declined an invitation to go backstage and talk with Prince. It was late and his kids were still up, and he knew they wouldn’t go to sleep until he got home. So we took him straight home.
He seemed surprised. He’d been out of the spotlight and beaten up by the tabloids for so long, at that point that he was really worried that maybe the world had moved on, that he wasn’t as popular anymore. It really made him happy to hear his songs in the club like that.
MJJC: What was the happiest you saw him? What was the saddest?
Bill & Javon: The happiest we ever saw him was during the quiet, simple moments, like when we’d sneak him and the kids into the movies so he could see a big action movie on opening day and enjoy it with a big audience like a regular family, or during the months we spent in Virginia, when he and his kids stayed in this house with a huge backyard. From a distance you could see the four of them running around the house, playing and laughing. It was good hearing him laugh. He did so loudly, too.
The saddest we ever saw him, hands down, was when his brother Randy crashed through the front gate with his car and sat in the driveway, demanding money, ruining Mr. Jackson’s chance to attend Elizabeth Taylor’s birthday party. You have to read the book to get the whole story, but after that happened, Mr. Jackson disappeared into his room and we didn’t see or hear from him for three days.
MJJC: Did Michael ever teach you the moonwalk?
Bill & Javon: He never showed us how to moonwalk, but he did tell us how he did the lean in on “Smooth Criminal.” Amazing!
MJJC: Who in your opinion was a really good friend of Michael’s? Who stood by him through good and bad? Who was the person Michael spoke to most often on the phone?
Bill & Javon: Mr. Jackson’s mother was probably the only one who unselfishly stood by him through all the madness. There were those like Miko Brando, Chris Tucker, Eddie Griffin and Rev. Jesse Jackson that visited him a few times, and their friendships appeared to be genuine, but it was his relationship with his mother that he cherished and valued most.
MJJC: Did Michael tell jokes?
Bill & Javon: Mr. Jackson had a great sense of humor. He would often joke and laugh with his kids and with us. We definitely made an effort to capture that in the book, because a lot of what’s written about him doesn’t show that wonderful side of him.
MJJC: Was there ever a time when you saw Michael get particularly angry for one reason or another? Can you tell us about a time when he lost his temper?
One afternoon in the spring of 2007, Mr. Jackson was on Bill’s cell phone for a conference call with his manager and his lawyer. We heard a loud crash in the security trailer and ran around to the kitchen to see that he’d hurled the phone through the plate glass door, shattering it into a thousand pieces. He had his head in his hands, saying, “They’re all devils. I should have my father come and kick their asses.” Then he offered to buy Bill a new cell phone.
There was one other occasion, in Washington, DC, when Mr. Jackson saw a security camera that he thought was taking secret video footage of his children. “Lost his temper” doesn’t begin to describe his reaction, but for that you’ll need to read the book.
MJJC: How often did Friend and Flower visit Michael? Have you heard from either of them since the memorial?
Bill & Javon: Friend and Flower only visited while we were staying in Virgina, and separately of course. Since the memorial, Bill has occasionally communicated with Flower via email, usually around the anniversary of Mr. Jackson’s passing or on his birthday.
MJJC: Did he appear healthy/ready for the This Is It concert? Was he scared? Apprehensive? Didn’t want to do it but had to commit?
Bill & Javon: For the most part, Mr. Jackson always appeared in good health, but he often mentioned that he wasn’t up for the same kind of rigorous, athletic performances he gave during the Bad and Dangerous tours. He was fifty years old, and some of those years were pretty rough on him. His voice was in great shape, as amazing as ever, but these promoters were making physical demands that he knew he couldn’t live up to. When the idea was floated of doing fifty shows, we heard him on the phone saying, “I can’t do fifty shows.” He said it like these people were crazy even for asking him to do it. But whatever was going on with his business affairs, he’d been backed into a corner where he was being told he had no choice. It was not something he did with great enthusiasm.
MJJC: You said you spoke with Michael just before he died. Did he seem happy? Can you talk about your last phone call with him? What is the last thing that Michael said to you?
Bill & Javon: Our last conversations with Mr. Jackson were just brief calls about everyday, work-related matters. Nothing terribly significant was said, because nobody knew what was going to happen. Javon’s last conversation with Mr. Jackson was several weeks before he passed; Mr. Jackson called to check up on some things he had in storage in Las Vegas and asked how Javon’s family was doing, which he always did. Bill’s last conversation with Mr. Jackson came a few days before his passing. He seemed to be in good spirits. We were in Vegas, working on plans for security at the London estate, and Mr. Jackson called because he said he wanted us in LA and wanted to make arrangements for us to get there. We didn’t get to LA in time.
MJJC: What do you miss most about him?
Bill & Javon: We mostly miss the quiet, simple moments, just watching him enjoy life as a father, like watching him trying to comb Paris’s hair and not doing it that well, or telling Blanket not to wander off, or helping Prince and Paris with their little sibling spats. We also miss taking long rides with him and just talking about whatever came up. He’d ask us to turn the radio down and he’d ask us about our families and how our kids were doing. We’d see a girl walking up the street and he’d ask if we thought she was cute and if we said she wasn’t our type he’d say we needed glasses ‘cause she was fine. We also miss the excitement of being around him and never knowing what the day would bring.
MJJC: Finally, is there any message you want to send to the members of MJJCommunity and Michael Jackson fans in general?
Bill & Javon: The fans should know that, other than Mr. Jackson’s mother and his children, they were the number one priority in his life. He always cherished the support they gave him through all the ups and downs, and he loved them for never turning their back on him. He always knew that without the fans, there would be no King of Pop. He owed it all to you. And we owe you, too. As stated in the book, there would be no book without the support and love of Mr. Jackson’s fans. We wrote Remember the Time for you. It feels good knowing we are supported, and without you none of this would have been possible. Much love to all of Mr. Jackson’s fans and supporters.
Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days is on sale June 3rd in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It will be available in India on June 15th. | 2019-04-20T01:15:45Z | http://www.mjjcommunity.com/the-fan-club/exclusive-q-a/item/190-mjjc-exclusive-q-a-with-bill-whitfield-and-javon-beard |
Scholarship Providers use Education Canada College more like a hub to connect to their applicants to provide their awards. Scholarships provided to Education Canada College students and applicants are Tax Deductible in the United States and Canada, and help in educational growth of our North American society. Scholarship awards are based on academic achievement, financial need or specific interests such as clubs, athletics, and service. Funding for our scholarships comes from contributions to TESOL Canada Foundation. Contributions to the Foundation are received from many sources: individuals, businesses, civic groups, community organizations, and other foundations.
As numbers of scholarships grow annually, different sponsors vary in their parameters for granting their awards. It is advised that applicants check the following description of each scholarship before completing an application. Once an application is submitted it cannot be changed or revised. Each applicant can only apply to One Scholarship (multiple applications can be rejected).
‘The award entitlement’ – Some scholarships are very generous and would cover all the costs while others would help with 40 % to 70 % of expenses but you would need to have some further funding of your own to be able to afford the TESOL Course or a Conference as well as other programs at ECC. Awards are listed on fixed amounts and cannot be increased.
‘The award qualifications’ – If you don’t meet the qualifications your application will not be considered. Rules vary from one scholarship to the other. Some require former teaching experience while others may not. Some require being a native speaker while others require a fluency and proficiency level from a non-native speaker. Being a North American resident (Canada, USA & Mexico) is a requirement in some cases and some scholarships are available for all international applicants from South America to Middle East, Europe and Asia. However, almost all Scholarship programs require applicants to be an individual member of TESOL USA, TESOL Canada, TESOL Asia, or IATEFL organization or to be a program applicant at Education Canada College.
‘The award considerations’ – Applications must be received before their applicable deadlines listed in each program. To apply to any award one single application is used at ‘Scholarship Application’. You will be asked to upload an I.D Card such as a Driver’s License or Passport and your Resume/ CV which shall include work experience, educational experience, a cover motivational letter for inclusion in the program, identification and scholarship nominations.
Although each award has it’s own set of requirement generally TESOL Canada has four scholarship deadlines per year for four seasonal programs. Students applying for educational programs such as TESOL, TFSOL, TSSOL, TASOL, TCSOL, TEC, TBE, TCE, TPE & CIT Certificates or Post Graduate Diplomas should apply for scholarships at least two months prior to the start date of the program. Tentative Scholarship Application Deadlines are June 30th for September (Fall) programs, October 30th for January (Winter) programs, January 30th for April (Spring) programs and March 30th for June (Summer) programs. Please see the Scholarship Application Guide for each program.
Applicants and teachers applying for a grant to attend a TESOL Conference may apply for Conference Grants at least two months before the conference commencement.
No, You can only submit One scholarship application to One available funding.
Is the TESOL Canada or TESOL USA membership a requirement for scholarship?
Although TESOL Canada Membership is required to apply, but applicants of Education Canada College programs can also apply prior to become a member of TESOL Canada or TESOL USA. One can apply for membership after the approval of a certain scholarship. In such a case a TESOL USA or TESOL Canada Honorary Membership will be granted and membership fee will be waved.
Is there a presentation or a research paper required to get a scholarship?
Some scholarships may require a presentation, some may require completion of an online lesson project (Such as a Lesson Plan), some may require writing a research paper or submitting a formerly published research paper and some may require no work at all. TESOL USA & TESOL Canada will have full permission and rights to publish all provided papers, assignments and online projects on TESOL USA & TESOL Canada Journals for educational purposes.
How often can one be considered for a scholarship?
Only once, winning a scholarship is one chance for each qualified applicant. Applicants will not be permitted to apply twice in two different years.
Perspective candidates will be notified of their acceptance between two to four weeks after their application deadlines. As scholarships acceptances are emailed, an email confirmation of your acceptance and participation will be required. Rejected applicants will also be notified within four weeks after the application deadlines.
After winning, when and where would I receive my scholarship?
Part One will be paid in advance to arrange your travel costs to attend the conference. Part Two will be granted on the opening ceremony of the conference directly by TESOL Canada representative and the Scholarship Sponsor.
For applicants undertaking a TESOL Canada approved study program, Scholarship will be forwarded to their institutions which in this case is Education Canada College.
Note: GENERAL SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATION FORM is attached as a separate form, this form must be available both for download, and for online submission as a form generated by your team.
Following Scholarships can be applied through General Scholarship Application.
Established in 2002 African Teachers Scholarship award is for language teachers from African countries to attend Joint Conference of TESOL USA & TESOL Canada for the first time and to be published in TESOL USA Journal.
This award may be used either toward Online TESOL USA Certificate Courses or TESOL USA Conference attendance. This award is not for In-Class course participations within the United States of America or Canada.
$200 to cover daily expenses for 6 days (total of $1200) plus Hotel and Flight costs.
To be a teacher of languages teaching English, French or Arabic in public or private schools/ colleges.
To participate in preparation of an online blog page of 1000 word reporting about language education in Africa. Directions for this activity and writing will be provided upon award application.
General Scholarship Application Form is used for registration in this award.
This scholarship aims to help teachers or trainer from a Latin American country to attend the TESOL USA Annual Conference for the first time. This ward it also helps for fresh TESOL students that are willing to become certified language teachers in English or Spanish and to build a future career in teaching.
$3000 to cover daily expenses for 6 days, Hotel and Flight costs.
Registration in Online Courses of TESOL USA in TESOL, TSSOL, TPSOL, TEC or EESN.
To be a teacher of languages teaching English, Portuguese or Spanish in public or private schools/ colleges.
To have minimum of a Bachelor Degree from a University in Latin America.
To participate in preparation of an online blog page of 1000 word reporting about language education in your country or to submit a research paper about language education in vocational training in Latin America. Directions for this activity and research will be provided upon award application.
The Confucius Institute at the University of Manchester is now accepting applications for the 2015 Confucius Institute Scholarship. Deadline 7 May 2015.
The information below sets out the criteria for the 2015 awards. Please read all of the information carefully before beginning your application. If you have questions please check the FAQs section before you get in touch to see if we can answer your query. If you do not find what you are looking for, you can contact us for more information.
The Confucius Institute Scholarship program provides financial aid for students, scholars and Chinese language teachers to study in a Chinese university for a limited period. Each year there are a limited number of scholarships available.
Confucius Institute students at the University of Manchester.
Chinese Studies students at the University of Manchester.
Other individuals who meet all the eligibility criteria.
TCSOL students from TESOL USA or TESOL Canada.
Each year the Confucius Institute scholarship selection panel reviews all applications and those that are judged to be of a sufficiently high standard are recommended to the current selection of Chinese universities (approved by Hanban). Applications are then made directly to the host universities in China, and the final decision rests with them and not with the Confucius Institute.
Please make sure that you read the eligibility criteria and application procedure carefully before submitting your application.
Comprehensive insurance for foreign students studying in China.
*Students who are already in China and have been studying there for more than six months will not be eligible for the one-off resettlement subsidy.
Please note that the scholarship does not cover any year abroad fees payable to the University of Manchester.
General Scholarship Application Form may be used for registration in this award.
Additional Scholarship Opportunities for Canadian applicants & US Citizens.
See list of opportunities for Non-U.S. Citizens. Published by the National Association of Fellowship Advisors (NAFA); includes applications for an array of nationally competitive and merit-based scholarships.
Educators for Fair Consideration (E4FC) – List of scholarships that don’t require proof of U.S. citizenship or legal permanent residence.This carefully researched list contains 52 pages of up-to-date information about scholarships available for immigrant students that don’t have U.S. citizenship or legal permanent residency as well as advice and tips for writing winning scholarship applications.
Scholarships for California Students – Since 2003,org has been providing scholarship management services for companies, as well as a comprehensive database of scholarships for students.
Latino College Dollars, Scholarships for California’s Latino Students Directory (current) – The Latino College Dollars Scholarship Directory contains clear information on more than 300 scholarships targeting Latino high school, undergraduate, and graduate students across the United States. A guide on how to apply for scholarships in both Spanish and English is included in the directory. For the ease of students and parents, scholarship listings are categorized by education level, deadline, minimum GPA, by whether citizenship is required as well as by region. The online directory is searchable by key categories such as grade level, grade point average (GPA) and citizenship athttp://www.latinocollegedollars.org.
The BAGF Scholarship program was created to provide financial resources to deserving graduating high school seniors and current college and university students committed to achieving a college degree. Education prepares students to be competitive and contributing members of their community. Students must have a minimum 2.5 GPA, demonstrated financial need and have completed at least 25 hours of community service or volunteering at BAGF and live in San Francisco, San Mateo or Santa Clara counties. Apply atwww.bagf.org.
2015 Silicon Valley Community Foundation Scholarships – Several opportunities for new continuing and transferring students!
SVCF’s believes that a good education is key to a bright future. Each year we offer more than 40 different scholarships, with awards up to $40,000. Scholarships are available for graduating high school seniors and undergraduates, graduates, re-entry and non-traditional students. Some awards are renewable and you may be eligible to receive multiple scholarships.
Online application opens on January 5, 2015, and most program applications have a February 25, 2015, deadline. Visit www.siliconvalleycf.org/scholarships to learn more about the 2015 scholarship opportunities, their eligibility requirements and application instructions.
2015 Marie Calderilla Scholarship, for female students attending Skyline, CSM or Cañada with awards up to $20,000.
Established in 2007 through a generous gift from Marie A. Calderilla, who believed deeply in the importance of education, this scholarship is to enable women to pursue courses of study that they would otherwise be unable to follow due to limited financial means. The selection committee looks for academic promise, women who have demonstrated a commitment to completing a degree or certificate program or to increasing their work skills, and personal characteristics such as honesty, good judgment and perseverance. Up to 20 awards will be provided. See http://www.siliconvalleycf.org/scholarships/marie-calderilla-scholarship.
This scholarship is for outstanding UC-qualified junior-level community college students to complete their undergraduate studies at UC Santa Cruz. The program provides a $20,000 scholarship distributed over two years, mentoring and academic support, and assistance finding paid or volunteer summer work experience.
This is a scholarship opportunity offered through the Cal Alumni Association. The scholarship is available to incoming freshmen and community college transfer students, including AB 540 Students. TAAP seeks high-achieving, community service-oriented students and provides them with the financial capital necessary to fund their higher education. In addition, the program fosters a strong support network with Berkeley alumni and provides academic, professional, and personal guidance as students pursue their individual academic journeys at the university.
For more information, please see http://alumni.berkeley.edu/services/scholarships/achievement-award-program.
Students attending a two-year, four year, or graduate school fulltime in the fall are eligible to apply. Applicants must be under a physician’s care for a spinal cord injury, spina bifida, transverse myelitis, or neurogenic bladder. For more information and to apply, see http://www.180medical.com/scholarships.
This scholarship opportunity is for student nurses in honor of Kay Ellis, who dedicated her life to helping others and the nursing profession. Three to five scholarships of up to $2,500 per semester will be offered. This scholarship is intended to help low-income female students with preference given to single parents, recent immigrants and students of color in their pursuit of an Associates or Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing.
Female students must have a minimum 3.0 grade point average and be enrolled in or planning to enroll in an accredited undergraduate nursing program.
If selected for a scholarship, recipients must be enrolled at least half time (6 or more units) in degree-applicable units for program.
Applicants must be attending a nursing program in San Mateo, San Francisco and/or Santa Clara counties. Applicants need not be a citizen of the United States to apply.
Check back in January for application.
The Santa Clara Chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction will be awarding a scholarship through the NAWIC Founders Scholarship Foundation. All students enrolled in a construction-related program with a GPA of 3.0 or higher are eligible to apply.
The Chen Foundation is focused on helping economically-challenged youth fulfill their dreams of obtaining higher education. The scholarship is renewable, allowing scholarship recipients to receive an additional $2,000 award for the Fall quarter/semester of their 2nd year of college if they maintain a minimum 3.0 GPA and active service in the community.
For eligibility requirements and further information please see application flyer.
The Taiwanese American Scholarship Fund is focused on helping economically-challenged Taiwanese American Youth fulfill their dreams of obtaining a high education. The scholarship is open to high school seniors planning to attend college in the Fall of 2015 and 1st year college students continuing with their education in the Fall of 2015.
All applicants must enroll in no fewer than 6 units in an accredited career/vocational program in fall of 2015, and must intend to remain enrolled in 6 units or more for the full 2015-2016 academic year.
If you wish to apply or know someone who wishes to apply for a Vocational Scholarship, please download the application here http://www.rotarypaloalto.org/VocationalScholarships.cfm.
The purpose of the Chicana/Latina Foundation (CLF) Scholarship Program is to assist Chicana/Latina students in completing their undergraduate and graduate college education.
Toward this end, the CLF awards $1,500 scholarships and the accompanying leadership training on a competitive-basis to continuing full-time undergraduate and graduate college students of Chicana/Latina heritage.
Applicants must meet ALL of the following criteria to be eligible for the CLF Scholarship.
Past CLF awardees may not re-apply until four years after receiving the award.
Additional information, instructions and the application can be found here www.chicanalatina.org. For any questions regarding this scholarshi please email [email protected].
Full-time students enrolled in personal finance, financial counseling, personal financial planning and consumer science majors.
Students who have demonstrated a high level of commitment to the field either through service or research.
Applicant must complete, sign and submit the Student Scholarship application form.
Applicant must submit one major financial project from 2015 (examples include, but are not limited to, video, research paper, factsheets, case studies, etc.). While the project should be professional, it does not need to be purely academic. A creative project to get people interested or excited about personal finance (example: writing and performing a song on a financial topic or instituting a marketing campaign or competition on a personal finance topic) would also be appropriate.
Applicant must include a letter of recommendation from a University professor. Letter must be on formal letterhead or from the professor’s email clearly stating his/her name, position and contact information.
All materials required for the Student Scholarship must be received no later thanSeptember 11, 2015.
Applicant is responsible for reviewing and following all Symposium Student Scholarship guidelines for submission.
Complete the following application form and submit it with supporting material.
If you wish to work and travel overseas, when can you start and what country are you interested in?
Will you consider to Study TESOL Certificate Program if you will not receive a scholarship?
What are your reasons of becoming a teacher or a translator?
What are your future career goals related to the field of education and translation?
As your employment destiny, in which country would you like to work and what status would you like to have after finishing this course? | 2019-04-21T13:02:58Z | http://educationcanadacollege.org/financial-aid-scholarships/ |
In the last decade, K-12 schools have begun to accumulate sufficient resources to enable technology-supported teaching and learning. For example, in the United States, the ratio of nine students per instructional computer in K-12 schools reported in 1997 (CEO Forum, 1997) has been reduced to 4.2 students per instructional computer in 2002 (Skinner, 2002). As the public desires and supports technology instruction in schools (Starkweather, 2002), many K-12 schools currently promote the use of technology (e.g., computers, software, and peripherals) in teaching and learning. Toward achieving that goal, professional development targeting the mastery of technology, such as opportunities to learn new computer programs or technological devices, is offered to teachers and staff in schools. In addition, most schools/colleges/departments of education (SCDE) now offer educational technology courses within the teacher preparation program to prepare future teachers and to renew in-service teachers. Despite the availability of resources and increased emphasis on the use of technology, many teachers, whether preservice (Doering, Hughes, & Huffman, 2003; Willis & Sujo de Montes, 2002), novice (Web-Based Education Commission, 2000) or experienced (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000), currently feel ill-prepared to use technological tools and resources for the teaching of content.
Two factors may be contributing to preservice, novice, and veteran teachers’ struggles with integrating technology into their teaching in innovative and effective ways. First, school leaders call for technology integration without actually defining their vision for integration (Perry & Aregaldo, 2001). Likewise, many SCDEs do not possess a clear vision of technology integration within their own institution or for K-12 schools (Mehlinger & Powers, 2002). Second, opportunities to learn technology (i.e., initial licensure course, graduate courses, school-based inservices) are developed without a theoretical framework to guide the nature of technology integration into teacher learning. Teachers’ learning opportunities, in turn, are predominantly skill-based when schools offer short-term technology skill workshops (McKenzie, 2001; Zhao, Pugh, & Sheldon, 2002) and SCDEs offer a single course in information technology (Moursund & Bielefeldt, 1999), and this implementation of short-term skill training is not increasing the effectiveness of technology-supported content area teaching, a goal in our nation (Riley, Holleman, & Roberts, 2000). A more coordinated vision for technology integration and productive learning principles may provide needed guidance for both preservice and in-service technology education. This article aims to meet this goal by presenting a foundational vision for technology integration and four guiding principles for technology learning.
A focus on technology skill development in technology training initiatives (e.g., McKenzie, 2001; Solmon, 1999) lacks an overall vision for what teachers will do with these technologies once they are learned. A more productive goal may be to develop teachers into “technology integrationists,” a term I used in this paper to describe teachers possessing the unique ability to understand, consider, and choose to use technologies only when they uniquely enhance the curriculum, instruction, and students’ learning – a position that empowers appropriate technology decision-making in schools (Bradshaw, 2002a). Teachers who are technology integrationists are not necessarily “techies” nor have they necessarily taken many formal courses about computers, computer science, or technology. What distinguishes teachers who are technology integrationists is their ability to interpret new technology concepts through their professional knowledge – the knowledge that both consciously and subconsciously directs their daily teaching activities. Most notably, technology integrationists use their general pedagogical knowledge, subject matter knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987) to identify promising, innovative ways technologies may be used to teach their subject area discipline to K-12 students (Drier, 2001; Dun, Feldman, & Rearick, 2000; Hughes, in press; Margerum-Leys & Marx, 2002).
Descriptive portrayals of technology integrationists’ accomplishments in the classroom reveal innovative and creative uses of technology that enable students to learn subject matter more deeply and with more curiosity than without the technology. Chen and Armstrong (2002) described a myriad of project-based learning activities in which teachers used technologies to engage students as scientists in collecting data on stars for NASA, as explorers in wide-ranging expeditions around the world, as writers publishing poems or even literary magazines, and in a range of other innovative roles engaging in relevant projects. Mills (2003) described how she used calculator-based laboratory and calculator-based ranger for students to “gather, investigate, and make deductions about the physical evidence,” as well as graphing devices and handhelds during a mock trial in her secondary-level Crime and Justice class. Portrayals such as these demonstrate that technology integrationists exist and that technology is being used in subject matter learning, yet the process through which teachers learn to accomplish and sustain these practices is less clear.
To facilitate teacher learning, research indicates that teachers need to reflect on their own beliefs (Borko & Putnam, 1995, 1996; Bransford & Schwartz, 1999), have access to alternative practices and beliefs that are reflective of their subject and grade level and observe the positive impact these practices have on students’ learning (Richardson & Placier, 2001; Sandholtz, Ringstaff, & Dwyer, 1997), yet these activities cannot be accomplished within the limited time constraints of short-term learning experiences (McKenzie, 2001; Moursund & Bielefeldt, 1999). Recently a shift toward content-based technology preparation has begun to occur in preservice preparation (e.g., Niess, 2001) and in-service education, (e.g., Crohen, 2001), and there is evidence that school districts are moving away from the short-term approach and building in long-term, ongoing professional development (Bradshaw, 2002b). However, it is unclear how widespread these trends are, as well as to what extent the ongoing activities target teacher reflection, observation, and experimentation. This paper offers a set of guiding principles that can be considered when evaluating, constructing, or redeveloping technology learning opportunities at the preservice and in-service levels that, if implemented strategically, may facilitate teacher reflection, observation, and experimentation and, ultimately, develop teachers into technology integrationists.
In this section, four technology learning principles, grounded in emergent empirical and theoretical literature related to in-service and preservice technology professional development, are described. Extensive examples from literature are used to illustrate each principle and to discuss how the principle’s transformation into practice impacts different teacher-learners. Other teacher educators have enumerated technology principles for preservice education that vary according to subject matter, including English language arts (Pope & Golub, 2000), science (Flick & Bell, 2000), mathematics (Garofalo, Drier, Harper, Timmerman, & Shockey, 2000) and social studies (Mason et al., 2000). An important contribution to the field, the principles set forth in this collection of articles provided subject-specific, conceptual frameworks for teacher educators interested in creating “technology-based activities” (Garofalo et al., 2000) or “technology infusion” (Pope & Golub, 2000) in preservice education. This current article extends and strengthens this past work by identifying principles that apply across subject matter and teacher experience (preservice/in-service) and, most important, establishing the notion that implementation of these principles hold unique advantages and limitations for certain populations of preservice and in-service teachers.
Technology learning should be closely connected to teachers’ professional knowledge, that which directs their professional activities. The explicitness of the connection cannot be understated, for it is crucial in enabling teachers to understand conceptually the potential for technology in their daily professional lives. A contemporary perspective emphasizes the need for teachers to learn about technology “in context,” that is, in the context of their subject matter and pedagogy, as opposed to a decontextualized technology tool. Instructional technologists (e.g., Molebash, 2002; Shoffner, Dias, & Thomas, 2001), as well as subject specific methods instructors (e.g., Flick & Bell, 2000; Flores, Knaupp, Middleton, & Staley, 2002; Garofalo et al., 2000; Jacobsen, Clifford, & Friesen, 2002; Mason et al., 2000; Pope & Golub, 2000), concur on this perspective. Based on research described in Hughes, 2003, there are two ways for teachers to develop and understand these connections. They include (a) a scaffolded connection occurring when another person (such as an instructor, in-service facilitator, or curriculum coordinator) offers preliminary connections for teacher-learners and (b) a self-identified connection occurring when a teacher independently identifies the technology-teaching connection through reflection and learning.
Scaffolded Connections. In learning situations, an instructor may make explicit connections between technologies and professional knowledge as technologies, methods, or subject matter topics are introduced. When such connections are made during learning activities, teachers may place the technology learned in the context of their professional knowledge. For example, in the context of learning writers workshop method, teachers can simultaneously learn technological tools and strategies that support such an approach to writing, such as portable writing hardware like AlphaSmarts or handheld PDAs, word processing software, or software features like tracking changes (Microsoft Word). Due to the immediacy and explicitness of the connection, the teacher may categorize and connect these technologies with concepts like writing instruction and writers workshop method – concepts likely to be part of an English teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge.
Likewise, teachers may experience learning that explicitly connects technologies with subject matter or general pedagogy. For example, in a rhetoric course, a teacher learns about hypertext and writes hypertexts through HTML-authored webpages. This teacher categorizes the notion of “hypertext” as a potential new subject matter to be taught in her English courses. On the other hand, a teacher may learn about alternative assessments as a general pedagogical strategy to be used across subject areas. The handheld PDAs and assessment software may be demonstrated as flexible tools that can be adopted by teachers to facilitate the use of alternative assessments in their classes.
In the research literature, there are other examples of these types of scaffolded connections. Garofalo et al. (2000) and Flores et al. (2002) described scaffolded mathematics content learning, in which preservice teachers were assigned mathematics problems to solve using technologies such as parametric graphing with graphing calculators or exploring Pythagorean theorem using The Geometer’s SketchPad. In addition, Henriques (2002) acknowledged this type of scaffolded connection in her science methods course when stating, “The examples I give employ technology as a means of teaching pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.” Wiske (2001) described an online environment and tools that supported practicing teachers’ “talking about subject matter and learning,” as well as exploring, developing, and discussing technology-supported lessons in a collaborative environment. The environment, resources, and guided workshops used a Teaching for Understanding framework to guide teachers’ examination and to develop technology-supported curriculum. It is crucial that the instructor or facilitator of the learning – whether an educational technologist, a methods expert, or subject area instructor – use technology only when it supports subject matter content and instruction – thus, emphasizing technology’s connection to the professional knowledge of teachers.
Self-Identified Connections. Certainly teachers are not reliant on instructors or facilitators to identify all or the only possible uses for technology. Frequently, teachers identify for themselves the ways technology can serve their professional activities. A very natural path to self-identified connections between technology and professional knowledge emerges when teachers have identified a problem-of-practice within their teaching or their students’ learning (Hiebert, Gallimore, & Stigler, 2002). A problem-of-practice, as such, is identified when teachers possess depth of knowledge about teaching and learning and also have time to reflect and consider their teaching practice. As teachers participate in learning opportunities, they may discover a technology that may offer possible solutions for their identified educational problem-of-practice. The technology can become conceptually associated with the unique nature of the problem – related to subject matter, pedagogy, or pedagogical content methods. For example, a teacher was interested in placing current events as a more prominent theme throughout his humanities curriculum. Yet, his students needed adequate access to current event periodicals to enable this focused change in his curriculum. When full-text articles became available through CD-ROM and online databases, this teacher initiated his own learning of these technologies in order to fulfill the subject matter and pedagogical changes in the classroom.
Jacobsen et al. (2002) described preservice teachers engaging in self-identified technology connections in a redeveloped initial licensure program. This unique preservice opportunity situated learning in “professional seminars [that] offer students an opportunity to reflect critically on themselves as teachers-in-the-making, to pursue topics and skills of particular interest, and to engage in the many debates that surround the nature of education and teaching.” They used “digitally rich, inquiry-based learning environments on campus and in their field placements” to support preservice teachers’ development of thinking and teaching with technologies. Similarly, Hunter (2001) described Team Action Projects (TAP), a process for innovative practices and professional development for in-service teachers that “legitimizes the creative work of the teachers, drawing upon their knowledge and insights about their students’ needs and potential” (p. 490). Working in small teacher groups, an innovation or student learning issue was identified, such as writing conferences or project-based learning, after which the teachers identified technology tools that could support their innovations.
Advantages. Explicitly making connections between technology and professional knowledge enables teachers to conceptualize technology’s role in education in ways that potentially will make the biggest impact on students’ learning. A significant advantage lies in offering teachers preliminary ideas concerning the connection between technology and their daily teaching responsibilities. These preliminary ideas offer a way for teachers to conceptualize the role for technology in education. These connections offer at least one way they could imagine using the technology, if not immediately, at some future time. It was this principle in action when Garofalo et al. (2000) decided to introduce graphing calculator features in the context of mathematics use, and they discovered that through this approach, preservice teachers could “see its direct applicability and usefulness.” In learning situations without such connections, the responsibility falls to the teacher learners to develop such connections. This can be a formidable task especially for preservice or novice teachers who have less experience and, thus, less professional knowledge with which to understand technology’s potential roles. Some experienced teachers, unless they are intrinsically interested in a technology or already have identified a problem of practice, may not be willing or able to spend additional time to identify ways to use the technology unless they have a starting point, as scaffolded connections provide.
They [preservice teachers] moved beyond being mere proponents of ICT usage, or already-hardened skeptics, and became thoughtful professionals who choose tools appropriate for the tasks they needed to accomplish. Students developed an informed personal position on ICT use in education and articulated and defended that position with each other.
These students developed personal visions, the ability to explain and defend their vision, and experience in choosing and using technologies in line with their vision, all of which provides the foundation of technology integrationists. The teachers in the TAP groups (Hunter, 2001), uplifted by “the living innovation, invented by the teachers” (p. 490), accomplished technology-supported innovations when school conditions for change were less than ideal.
Limitations. The major limitation to this principle’s success is the teacher’s professional knowledge base. When offering scaffolded connections, the instructor or facilitator should choose ideas that match the professional maturity level of the participants. The connections need to be understood by the participants. If a group of preservice teachers begin learning about technology prior to taking methods courses or subject-specific courses, the instructor may need to spend much more time describing the subject matter or pedagogical aspects in order for the preservice teachers to truly understand the educational concepts with which the technology connects.
At the same time, this strategy’s scaffolding also may hinder teachers’ abilities to independently develop connections between technology and their professional knowledge. The scaffold is not meant to serve as a permanent crutch; therefore, guidance and opportunity to reflect and self-identify these connections should be encouraged during learning experiences.
Doering et al. (2003) examined how preservice teachers who received scaffolded connections like these throughout their teacher preparation program envisioned the use of technology within their future classrooms. Three interviews during their licensure program indicated a shift in participants’ perspectives about technology in education from skepticism to an awareness of its assistance in student learning. However, when asked for examples of integrating technology in education, the students repeated the examples (the scaffold) provided in their classes. After the student teaching experience, only one participant was able to generate a new technology integration idea. Preservice teachers need to be enabled to identify connections as they leave initial licensure programs and enter the teaching profession, much like what Jacobsen et al. (2002) accomplished. To accomplish this, a program might build a field-based activity in which preservice teachers either (a) identify how technologies they have learned in coursework might serve specific educational aims in the field context or (b) identify specific educational goals that can be supported by new technologies they have learned about in the field. Given the rate of technological innovation, these novice teachers will need the experience to self-identify connections as they learn new technologies.
Experienced teachers may also be susceptible to a lack of facility to self-identify connections after learning experiences. Due to time constraints, practicing teachers may rely on the connections offered during in-service or by colleagues as their main source of ideas for using technology. Again, due to innovation, practicing teachers also need the experience of identifying connections for themselves. Alternatively, experienced teachers may feel limited, constrained, or distracted by the scaffolded connections presented in learning situations. Experienced teachers’ diversity of experience and knowledge situates them to interpret and reflect on technologies in ways that novice teachers may not be able to do. Scaffolded connections are still an important aspect of the learning experience in order to provide a foundation, but the instructors or facilitators should encourage all teachers to identify connections between a technology and their own professional knowledge.
Technology will have limited impact on education, as Cuban (2001) described in cases at the primary, high school, and collegiate levels, unless technology plays a role in students’ subject matter learning. To achieve integration into subject matter learning, the “context” must involve specific connections between technology and subject matter and/or pedagogical content knowledge.
Teachers know a lot about how technology can support general pedagogy. For example, they may use grading programs that allow students and parents access to up-to-date information; they use PowerPoint or other presentation tools to provide visual supports for lectures; they use word processors to write tests or create handouts. Pedagogical uses of technology have been well-established because general pedagogical knowledge is accessible to preservice, novice, and practicing teachers. Therefore, in learning experiences that cluster diverse teachers together, the only common knowledge shared by these teachers is general pedagogy. Thus, technologies taught have been connected with general pedagogical knowledge, and subsequent pedagogical technology use has not dramatically changed our schools (Cuban, 2001). However, Hargrave and Hsu (2000) noted a shift in instructional technology courses that focus less on the general pedagogy like teacher productivity and more on curriculum integration and content emphasis. Subject-specific, preservice principles also illustrate this shift. Mason et al. (2000) connected technology with development of citizens in democratic societies; Pope and Golub (2000) promoted technology as a literacy tool; Garofalo et al. (2000) and Flick and Bell (2000), respectively, focused on worthwhile mathematics and science in their technology use principles.
Teachers know much less about how technology can support subject matter learning and instruction of students in learning subject matter (pedagogical content knowledge). Yet, it is this kind of activity that will potentially strengthen educational technology uses in schools. Therefore, connections between technology and subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge must be prioritized and privileged during learning experiences for teachers, which requires focused discussion of subject matter and instructional approaches to teaching that subject matter. As Harper, Schirack, Stohl, and Garofalo (2001) demonstrated, even teachers who possess depth in their mathematics content knowledge may lack conceptual knowledge of some mathematical topics, and learning these topics with technology may lead to many “ah ha!” moments. Further, they noted that these moments facilitate opportunities to discuss and contrast different teaching and learning methods.
Browning and Klespis (2000) emphasized that preservice teachers may need more than simulated technology-supported K-12 content and instruction. They explained that “activities that are designed for their level of understanding, present new mathematics, and are facilitated by the use of technology in their initial constructions” (emphasis in original) may enable preservice teachers to determine technology’s role in their own personal learning. Warburton and Campbell (2001) similarly leveraged integrated language arts-technology activities that “focused on the student teachers’ own appreciation and understanding of poetry, and the possibilities offered by computer technology to provide a medium for the expression of poetic sentiments” (p. 588). Subject matter focused technology learning experiences such as these may be crucial, for many practicing and some preservice teachers have not personally experienced technology-supported content learning during precollegiate and collegiate schooling. Understanding the roles that technology plays in their own learning may provide a useful backdrop for understanding technology’s potential role for their own students’ learning.
Advantages. Privileging subject matter and pedagogical content connections is essential during initial licensure and undergraduate education in order to enable preservice teachers to see and use technologies for more than general pedagogical purposes. Preservice teachers’ professional knowledge and practical teaching experience are not as robust as is practicing teachers’; therefore, their immediate concerns channel their thoughts to pedagogy. Yet, practicing teachers, even with years of experience teaching their subject area, also need these focused subject matter and pedagogical content connections, because the immediate and easy implementation of the technology is likely to be pedagogical. It does not necessitate changing the content or approach to teaching that content. By prioritizing and privileging connections between technology and subject matter and pedagogical content, preservice, novice, and experienced teachers will be better prepared to identify technological uses across their profession, including use of technology by the children they are teaching. For example, Warburton and Campbell’s (2001) study indicated that preservice teachers began to understand poetic language, developed more confidence in teaching poetry to children, and observed how popular culture and technologies could serve their instructional aims after participating in three integrated projects that immersed them in appreciating and understanding figurative language and poetic forms and communicating an original poem through text and computer-based illustrations.
Limitation. To privilege these kinds of connections, the most productive learning situation is a subject-specific learning opportunity. Preservice teachers need subject-specific educational technology courses and/or content methods and content courses that acknowledge the role of technology. Novice and practicing teachers need subject-specific educational technology in-service opportunities. The need for subject-specificity may introduce significant additional expense, especially at the in-service level. Large initial licensure programs may have enough students to create subject-specific educational technology courses. However, most P-12 schools do not have enough duplicative grades to create groups of subject-specific teachers by grade levels. A solution could be to group schools together for in-service training to share resources and create groups of subject-specific teachers at certain grade levels. Another solution could be to create subject-specificity but broaden the grade levels of a group. In any case, facilitating the subject-specific consideration of technology, as described in this section, will require some expense and certainly some creativity in design of the learning experience.
The first two principles emphasize the need to connect technologies with the professional knowledge of teachers. Put into practice, these principles would decrease the likelihood of teachers learning – and then forgetting – isolated technology skills and would increase teachers’ use of technology in support of instruction and student learning. The two principles aim to increase the likelihood of technology integration by helping teachers become aware of ways technology connects with their professional activities and knowledge, but these connections may not necessarily represent advancements in pedagogy and subject matter. For example, a teacher may learn about word processing, becoming convinced of its potential assistance in students’ writing habits. In practice, the students may merely type up their final writing assignments in the computer lab after they have written them by hand during or outside of class. In this case, the teacher’s instructional approach to writing is not truly process oriented; therefore, the advantages the technology might offer for writing instruction vanish. The goal of the next principle is to leverage teachers’ reflection about their own professional beliefs concerning instruction and learning through technology learning.
In the literature, educational technology is touted as a change agent (e.g., Holland, 2001; King, 2002; Means, 1994), in which learning new technology leverages teachers’ reflections on the nature of teaching and learning during which they access, consider, question, and eventually change their professional knowledge and practice. Yet, the addition of technology into a classroom or school does not inherently nor naturally reform teaching or learning (Dede, 2001; Wiske, 2001). If and how teachers adopt technology determines if change in teaching or learning occurs. An outcome of change seems less likely than the many claims in the literature might make it appear, for “teacher cognitions have taken years to take shape and are, consequently, not easily changed” (Verloop, Driel, & Meijer, 2001, p. 454). Although learning technology does not inherently change teaching, instructors or facilitators can use technology to leverage teacher reflection that may possibly lead to reform over time. Although the essence of this third principle was not explicitly mentioned in the subject-specific preservice principles (Flick & Bell, 2000; Garofalo et al., 2000; Mason et al., 2000; Pope & Golub, 2000), challenging students’ professional knowledge is perhaps implicit in their guidelines. For example, Mason et al.’s (2000) fourth principle, “Foster the development of the skills, knowledge, and participation as good citizens in a democratic society” (p. 111), holds the potential to challenge or change preservice teachers’ subject matter knowledge by exposing them to new subject matter or new combinations of subject matter. In addition, implementing Pope and Golub’s (2000) fourth principle, “Evaluate critically when and how to use technology in English language arts classroom” (p. 93), should lead preservice teachers’ to deeply consider and develop their pedagogical content knowledge.
Cullin and Crawford (2003) used this principle when preparing an intervention for preservice science teachers. First, they recognized that in-service and preservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and scientific knowledge concerning the role of models and modeling in science was not adequate. Subsequently, they designed a technology-based intervention that used dynamic systems modeling software, Model-It (HI-CE, http://www.hi-ce.org/), to augment students’ knowledge of modeling in science, especially the role for modeling in scientific inquiry and the critical advantage of teaching about and with scientific models. In addition to challenging subject matter knowledge, technology-supported activities also can challenge teachers’ assumptions about the role that technology plays in learning and instruction. Mason et al. (2000) described lessons that engaged preservice teachers in “learning beyond what could be done without technology.” Similarly, Howard, McGee, Schwartz, and Purcell (2000) targeted epistemological changes related to constructivist philosophies through “communication packages, multimedia tools, authoring software, and computer-based curriculum supplements that use constructivist methodologies” (p. 456-457). Introducing new technologies – especially those that are reflective of current curriculum and instructional goals – has the potential to challenge teachers’ beliefs. This principle acknowledges the role that teachers’ knowledge of instruction, subject matter, and their familiarity with their students’ needs has on examining new technologies but also acknowledges that teachers may benefit from an expanded awareness of advancements in educational theory and subject matter.
Advantages. This principle’s main advantage is the challenge or “cognitive conflict” (Pressley & McCormick, 1995) that preservice, novice, and experienced teachers may experience when introduced to new technologies that inherently reflect new subject matter, epistemology, and/or pedagogy in the field. This principle seems applicable for preservice or novice teachers who are just beginning to learn about current approaches to curriculum, instruction, and student learning. Many novice teachers have developed assumptions about teaching and learning based on their own experiences as learners that do not reflect the current practices in the field (Lortie, 1975). Technological innovations that are used to exemplify current educational theories and practice may begin conversations and reflection that spur eventual changes in knowledge and practice. In Cullin and Crawford’s (2003) intervention, the preservice teachers came to believe that, in addition to using models to represent systems and relationships, they could have students use the tool for learning. This shifted the technology from teacher to student. Likewise, Howard et al.’s (2000) month-long professional development program found that teachers did change “from objectivist epistemological orientations to more constructivist ones” (p. 459). Activities built upon this principle also provide practicing teachers the luxury of considering new developments in instruction, learning, and subject matter that they may not have had time to explore or discover outside of their daily teaching responsibilities. Through using technology to challenge these teachers’ beliefs, teachers may be exposed to new educational theories, as well as to the fact that the theories of curriculum, instruction, and learning have wide implications – including the choices about technology-supported teaching and learning.
Limitations. Implementing this principle does not guarantee change in teachers’ professional knowledge. However, this principle, as the research literature indicates, has been used to reform teaching. Instructors and facilitators of learning experiences can promote the evaluation and consideration of technology’s epistemological and content basis, but it is ultimately the individual teacher who determines the outcome. Established teachers may be less able or less inclined to face the challenges to their established practices and beliefs presented through this strategy. For example, Norton, McRobbie, and Cooper’s (2000) study of why mathematics teachers in a technology-rich school did not use technology revealed the deep roots of teachers’ beliefs about subject matter and instruction. They found that “resources were not used because the pedagogy, which was implicit in the activities contained in these resources, did not support the teacher’s preferred [transmission-oriented] teaching strategies” (p. 105).
For teachers who do question their teaching beliefs, any subsequent change in beliefs and practice will take time to emerge. Furthermore, to really produce change, the learning experience needs to be sustained over time. Ongoing discussions and consideration are necessary, as was illustrated in the multiyear intervention that Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) orchestrated and researched (Sandholtz et al., 1997). Within the Cullin and Crawford (2003) intervention’s short timeframe, the preservice participants did not come to learn the importance of modeling for scientific inquiry. The researchers suggested that more exposure to these modeling concepts and experiences, such as in science content courses, might have been beneficial. Their finding of limited development of particular science and pedagogical content reflects the lengthy process required for change in knowledge, beliefs, and practice.
The final principle emphasizes the need to teach about many different technologies. The overall aim of teaching about educational technology is to help teachers understand what the technologies are and how the technologies can serve students’ learning of subject matter. To do this, teachers ultimately must understand how the technology fits within their professional knowledge and activities. Because preservice, novice, and experienced teachers all have very personal and different professional knowledge that is impacted by the school context within which they work, it is unrealistic for one or two technologies to match all teachers’ professional activities. Therefore, to increase the likelihood that teachers may identify technologies that fit their needs, technology-learning opportunities must include many technologies. Flores et al. (2002) and Pope and Golub (2000) acknowledged the importance of providing preservice teachers a wide, changing range of technologies that students would use in content learning. Hunter (2001) described a wide-range of technology applications put into use with students through the TAP professional development investigations.
Too many times decisions to adopt technologies are made at either the district or school-levels without consultation with teachers. The technologies chosen are usually targeted at administrative purposes, such as grading or attendance, rather than technologies that are put into the hands of students for learning purposes. Other technologies geared toward a specific subject area, purchased without consultation with teachers, will likely not fit teachers’ needs due to teachers’ varied instructional techniques, familiarity with the subject matter, and students’ needs. Certainly, limitations related to adoption and purchases of software and hardware exist in schools and districts. However, offering only a few technology options will reduce the number of technology-using teachers in the school, due to a lack of connection between the available technologies and the teachers’ needs. Some teachers may find valuable tools in the mix, yet other teachers will not. It needs to be emphasized that teachers may not find a valuable tool – not due to lack of interest in technology but due the limited technology options. Reprimanding or penalizing these teachers is unwarranted; they actually may be extremely thoughtful about their adoption and use of technology for their students and themselves. Offering a larger pool of technology options may support these teachers in identifying tools that may fit their needs.
Advantages. Clearly, offering more technology options for teachers to investigate will increase the likelihood that they will find a tool that supports their professional activities. By examining a range of technologies, preservice, novice, and experienced teachers will understand the wide-ranging possibilities of the role for technology in education. This wider perspective may encourage teachers to examine technologies more thoroughly prior to adoption, possibly decreasing the existence of technology use for technology’s sake, because teachers will have more awareness of software and hardware that have specific advantages for student learning.
Limitations. One of the main impediments to enacting this principle in technology-learning opportunities is financial constraint. The resources required to offer teachers hands-on access to a variety of technologies include both human and financial capital. A technology learning lab where demonstration or single copies of software and hardware can be compiled may benefit more than one school. A district or university learning lab such as this could serve school teachers, university students, and/or community members who may also be interested in identifying technologies for use at home. Schools, universities, community organizations, and vendors could share the cost of a learning lab. Being able to preview and examine technologies prior to adoption could reduce the expenditures toward unused technologies that exist in schools today. A disadvantage to this shared resource center is that it may be offsite for teachers. It would be valuable to be able to check out software and hardware for examination and experimentation onsite.
Another limitation to this strategy is a possible reduction in the amount of time teachers spend learning each technology. If instructors or facilitators implement this principle, they should be aware that teachers might not learn all technologies equally well. In fact, it might be counterproductive to require teachers to learn all the technologies. In line with the vision of developing technology integrationists, teachers should be encouraged to find technologies that seem particularly promising for their needs and spend as much time as needed to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the technology, ultimately deciding if the technology is worthwhile and should be sought for use in the teacher’s classroom. In a university situation, instructors may need to shift their assumptions that all teacher-learners will learn all the technologies. In addition, as instructors grant teacher-learners more flexibility in focusing on certain technologies, the need for additional instructional and facilitation assistance may increase to serve all the learning needs during the learning experience.
In contrast to “ratcheting up” teachers’ technology skills without clear implementation plans for the technology, this essay provided a foundational vision that seeks to develop teachers into “technology integrationists” who understand, consider, and choose to use technologies to uniquely enhance their curriculum, instruction, and students’ learning. To facilitate learning situations at the preservice and in-service levels that optimize the development of teachers as technology integrationists, a set of guiding principles were described that can be considered when evaluating, constructing, or redeveloping technology learning opportunities.
The field of education needs to surpass the typical single course in information technology that is prevalent in teacher education institutions (Holland, 2001; Moursund & Bielefeldt, 1999; Rice, Wilson, & Bagley, 2001) and the short-term technology workshops available in K-12 schools for practicing teachers. Neither of these technology-learning approaches adequately implement the four principles described in this article. Single courses and workshops that involve cross-disciplinary and cross-grade level teachers, due to their diversity of participants, often focus on pedagogical issues rather than solid treatment of subject matter topics. A lack of focus on subject matter limits the enactment of Principles 1, 2 and 3, and the technologies taught would be limited to general pedagogical tools (e.g., PowerPoint, grading software). Alternative learning approaches that make more use of these technology learning principles need to be developed and established.
Some subject-specific university courses and long-term technology in-service initiatives can and do implement many of these principles. Initial licensure and professional development programs are beginning to establish cohort models in which students enroll in subject-specific instructional technology courses (e.g., Sprague & Norton, 1999). Alternatively, initial licensure programs are considering the elimination of instructional technology courses and including technology instruction within content and methods courses (e.g., Confrey, Resta, Petrosino & Tothero, 2002). Overall, these recent developments in educational technology instruction hold promise for implementing the technology learning principles and developing technology integrationists.
Another learning approach – collaborative inquiry groups, involving small groups of teachers who collectively investigate pedagogical and content issues (Crockett, 2002) – has emerged as an even more promising practice that implements all four technology learning principles simultaneously and meets the vision set forth in this paper. Subject-specific, technology inquiry groups (e.g., Hunter, 2001; Swan et al., 2002) may offer potential advantages over other instructional approaches to facilitate preservice, novice, and experienced teachers’ becoming technology integrationists. For example, teachers can group themselves (along with curriculum coordinators, administrators, and/or media specialists) into subject-specific, collaborative groups that meet in an ongoing fashion. During group meetings, teachers can discuss issues within their teaching to identify problems-of-practice that determine future inquiries into technology (Principle 1 and 2). Alternatively, group members can demonstrate new technologies and propose possible integrated uses (Principle 1) or allow the technology to inspire discussion into contemporary issues within teaching and learning (Principle 3). Finally, teachers need access to technology (Principle 4) to facilitate their inquiries into problems-of-practice, to examine as possible solutions, and to spur discussion about theory and practice.
Hunter (2001) described “Team Action Projects” that were spearheaded by at least two school colleagues whose collaborative project was situated within authentic, school-based improvement goals, supported through a collaborative, vision-oriented discourse and working group, and accessed available tools that possibly could improve the issues under study. Within two years’ time, all participating teachers (of whom most began with few technology skills) were functioning at an “Invention” stage, in which technology flexibly supports new learning environments that are often collaborative, interactive, and customized. Swan et al. (2002) established the Capital Area Technology and Inquiry in Education (CATIE) initiative that placed educational technology mentors in schools (for two years) to work with teachers to develop and implement technology-supported lessons. The mentors collaboratively worked with teachers “to design computer-supported lessons that are integral parts of larger, classroom-based learning units” (p. 173). Thus, the technology learning was situated within the teachers’ own classroom setting and instruction, supported by informal discourse community focused on technology integration at the school sites, and guided by constructivist approaches to teaching and learning with technologies. Teachers reported “increased knowledge of computing technologies, greater confidence in using them, and more creative teaching with computers” (p. 187).
The success demonstrated when technology inquiry groups are used with in-service teachers indicates that content-focused technology inquiry may be beneficial for preservice teachers as well, especially since the technology learning principles have been shown to be similar across preservice and in-service teachers. Partnerships among preservice and veteran teachers (e.g., Beckett, Wetzel, Buss, Marquez-Chisholm & Midobuche, 2001; Wright, Wilson, Gordon, & Stallworth 2002) could be forged to facilitate content-focused technology integration.
Future research is warranted to examine the process of establishing and supporting technology inquiry groups, the knowledge participants learn and develop, and the impact of their learning on their teaching practice and students’ achievement. This field is seasoned for the development of other innovative learning approaches that integrate these principles, affording teachers engaging learning opportunities that, ultimately, will allow students to use technology for deep subject-matter learning.
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Bradshaw, L. K. (2002b). Technology for teaching and learning: Strategies for staff development and follow-up support. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 10(1), 131-150.
Bransford, J. D., & Schwartz, D. L. (1999). Rethinking transfer: A simple proposal with multiple implications. In A. Iran-Nejad & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Review of research in education (pp. 61-100). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.
Chen, M., & Armstrong, S. (Eds.). (2002). Edutopia: Success stories for learning in the digital age. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Confrey, J., Resta, P., Petrosino, A., & Tothero, M. (2002). Inventing new strategies for integrating technology into education. Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2002(1), 1726-1727. Norfolk, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Crockett, M. D. (2002). Inquiry as professional development: Creating dilemmas through teachers’ work. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 609-624.
Dede, C. (2001). A new century demands new ways of learning. In D. T. Gordon (Ed.), The digital classroom (pp. 171-174). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Letter.
Doering, A., Hughes, J. E., & Huffman, D. (2003). Preservice teachers: Are we thinking with technology? Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 35(3), 342-361.
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Hughes, J. E. (in press). The role of teacher knowledge and learning experiences in forming technology-integrated pedagogy. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education.
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Zhao, Y., Pugh, K., & Sheldon, S. (2002). Conditions for classroom technology innovations. Teachers College Record, 104(3), 482-515. | 2019-04-19T06:19:36Z | https://www.citejournal.org/volume-4/issue-3-04/general/technology-learning-principles-for-preservice-and-in-service-teacher-education/ |
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– Fans have entered the arena and this week’s RAW broadcast will be kicking off shortly.
– RAW opens up with a shot of the crowd at the Smoothie King Center, and then we go to Michael Cole, Corey Graves and Renee Young at the broadcast table who welcome us to the show.
– The trio of Dolph Ziggler, Drew McIntyre, and Braun Strowman come out first to kick off RAW. They walk down to the ring, and then a crew of heels from the locker room come out to provide security around ringside. Jinder Mahal, Kevin Owens, the Authors of Pain and others surround the ring, as Drew, Dolph and Braun get in the ring with microphones. They talk about beating down The Shield last week and feasting on their bloody carcasses. Drew introduces a video package of them fighting The Shield last week. Braun says the only reason Roman Reigns still has the Universal Title is because he’s a coward who can’t handle business on his own. Braun says the Shield has been getting away with anything they want for too long, but they can’t compare with Braun’s pack. Dolph talks to the wrestlers around the ring now, and thanks them for standing up to the Shield’s bullying. Drew says they’ll set an example again tonight when they dismantle the B-Team in a Tag Title rematch. Braun says that’ll be nothing compared to the beating when he’s locked in a cage with Roman at Hell In A Cell. The Shield then appears in the crowd and heads down to ringside. They jump over the fan barricade and fight with all the wrestlers at ringside. Ambrose pulls out a bag of axe handles and The Shield starts beating everyone in sight. Braun, Drew and Dolph retreat up the ramp as The Shield stands tall in the ring.
– Still to come: Ronda Rousey & Natalya vs. Alexa Bliss & Mickie James; and Triple H is in the house to address The Undertaker.
– The Bella Twins are backstage discussing the Riott Squad vandalizing their locker room earlier in the day.
– We go backstage where The Shield is having a stand down with the police, with Baron Corbin in between them. The Shield end up dropping their axe handle weapons and walking past the police.
– Nikki Bella vs. Ruby Riott: Brie Bella and the Riott Squad are at ringside. They go back and forth in the opening moments until Ruby drops Nikki face-first into the middle turnbuckle, then dumps her outside. Brie chases off Sarah Logan and Liv Morgan at ringside. Back in the ring, Ruby wastes some time talking trash, and Nikki comes back with a spinebuster. Nikki hits a neckbreaker and then a dropkick. Ruby comes back with a kick and then goes up top, but Nikki grabs her and slams her down to the mat. Nikki springboards off the middle turnbuckle with a kick for a two count. A distraction from ringside leads to Ruby hiting another shot on Nikki for a two-count. Ruby misses a kick and Nikki grabs her. Liv morgan tries to run in, but Brie stops her. Nikki hits the Rack Attack for the three count.
– After the match, The Bella Twins stand tall in the ring as the Riott Squad retreats up the ramp.
– We go to a Connor’s Cure video package, and then The Big Show comes out to the stage with some of the kids and their families. The Big Show mentions that everyone on the stage is from Louisiana, and then he introduces them each down the line.
– We see a video package looking at the face-to-face confrontation between Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker.
– Drake Maverick is backstage with the Authors of Pain giving them a pep talk.
– The Authors of Pain vs. Enhancement talent: Rezar starts off and slams one jobber in to the corner, then hits a fall away slam. The other jobber jumps off the apron down to the floor to safey, but Akam runs around the ring and decks him with a clothesline, then throws him in the ring. Both jobbers are in the ring now, and Akam tags in. Akam gets in and slams one jobber on top of the other, then they hit the Super Collider for the three count after a squash match.
– Police are shown still standing backstage after their confrontation with The Shield earlier. A car pulls up to the loading bay of the arena, and Triple H steps out of the back seat. Triple H heads in the arena, and he’s scheduled to address the crowd next.
– Triple H’s music hits and The Game makes his way down to the ring with a microphone. Triple H talks about facing The Undertaker one more time and having respect for him, and then the WWE legends coming out of the woodwork to give their opinions. Triple H takes issue with the general consensus that Taker will beat him at the Super Show, but admits he’s not surprised because Taker is never an underdog. Triple H also takes issue with Undertaker being rattled by Shawn Michaels’ opinion that he’d beat him. HHH says Undertaker was angry and agitated, and threatened Shawn, which shows Taker is worried. Triple H adds that Undertaker didn’t show up here tonight to say anything to his face. He says Undertaker was never the same after their series of matches years ago. He says Taker said one thing last week that was true – it’s personal now. Triple H says with the last bit of respect he has for the Undertaker, he’s going to crush him in Australia.
– The broadcast team sends us to a replay of The Shield fighting off the heels of the RAW roster earlier tonight, and their stand down with police. Police officers are still backstage just in case they need to arrest The Shield.
– Alexa Bliss is shown backstage going over strategy with Mickie James and Alexa Bliss.
– Dolph Ziggler & Drew McIntyre vs. The B Team: Drew and Dolph’s Tag Titles are on the line in this one. The opening bell sounds and Bo starts off strong against Dolph. Bo and Curtis trade tags now and take turns stomping a mud hole in Ziggler in the corner. Axel comes in and hits a DDT on Dolph for a two count. Drew causes a distraction from the apron which leads to Ziggler superkicking Axel. Drew tags in now and continues the offense on Axel with a back suplex for a two count. Ziggler comes in now and misses a shot, and Axel drops him. Both men are down and Bo Dallas gets the hot tag. Dallas cleans house and hits the big boot on Ziggler for a two count. Dallas looks for a suplex, but Drew causes a distraction. Drew headbutts Axel down, then Ziggler pokes Dallas’ eyes behind the ref’s back. Ziggler and McIntyre hit the Claymore/Zig Zag double team for the three count on Dallas.
– Immediately after the match, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins come out of nowhere and attack Drew and Dolph. Drew and Dolph retreat up the ramp as the two Shield members stand tall in the ring.
– We go to a video package looking at Mick Foley and The Undertaker’s legendary Hell In A Cell match.
– Baron Corbin is backstage admonishing Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins for interfering. Rollins and Ambrose say they aren’t the Shield, there’s only two of them, and Corbin said if The Shield interfered they’d be arrested. Rollins says he’s calling Corbin’s bluff, and he introduces the local Sheriff, who says he is prepared to issue a warrant for Corbin’s arrest, not Rollins’. The sheriff reads Corbin his rights, and Corbin pleads with Rollins to talk this over. Rollins waves off the sheriff and it looks like he’s dropping the charges. Ambrose and the Sheriff walk off and talk over a speeding ticket he talk. Rollins walks out next and seems happy with his meeting with Corbin. Rollins says they won’t need to press charges, and they walk off.
– Kevin Owens vs. Tyler Breeze: Before the bell, Owens attacks Breeze as he poses on the apron. Owens beats down Breeze at ringside, and then takes the fight back in the ring. Breeze comes back with a kick and they fight back out to ringside. This one still has not officially begun. Owens powerbombs Breeze on to the corner of the apron, and it looks like this one is a no contest.
– Owens gets on the mic, and says how after he quit, Corbin called him and begged him to come back. He credits Corbin with recognizing that he is the true MVP of RAW. Owens says he returned to RAW on one condition, that he will no longer be held accountable for what he does to his opponents. Owens says now when he beats people down, he’s just doing his job. Owens says he has a warning for everyone, especially Bobby Lashley, that this is still the Kevin Owens show. He says now you can except anarchy, agony and destruction every week, and it’s all Bobby Lashley’s fault.
– We go to a video package looking at the feud between Samoa Joe and AJ Styles over on SmackDown.
– Bobby Roode & Chad Gable vs. The Ascension: We see a brief pre-taped promo from Roode and Gable before the match. Gable and Viktor starts off, and Gable hits a series of suplexes. Gable knocks Konnor off the apron, and then hits another suplex on Viktor. Konnor runs in and hits a cheap shot on Gable, then he gets back on the apron and Viktor tags him in. Konnor comes in now and keeps Gable grounded with a chin lock. Viktor comes back in and continues the offense on Gable. Roode finally gets the tag and he cleans house. Roode drops Viktor and then knocks Konnor off the apron again. Roode hits a spinebuster on Viktor, then Gable tags himself in off Roode’s back and Roode looks confused for a moment. Gable hits a rolling German suplex on Viktor for the three count.
– Roode and Gable celebrate after the match and Roode points out that it’s two wins in a row for them now.
– Ronda Rousey and Natalya are shown backstage warming up for their tag match against Alexa Bliss and Mickie James, up next.
– Baron Corbin confronts Drew and Dolph backstage, and they’re with Braun Strowman. Corbin says at Hell In A Cell, Drew and Dolph must defend their Tag Titles against Rollins and Ambrose. Corbin then addresses Braun, and he says Stephanie wants Braun to take the Universal Title at the pay-per-view. Braun says good, but right now he’s going big dog hunting.
– Ronda Rousey & Natalya vs. Alexa Bliss & Mickie James: Alicia Fox is at ringside for this one. Alexa avoids engaging early on, but Natalya finally gets her hands on her and drops her then hits a baseball slide dropkick for a two count. Ronda and Mickie tag in and Ronda hits a clothesline. Natalya tags back in and they hit a double vertical suplex on Mickie. Alexa gets involved and Mickie turns it around against Natalya. Alexa tags in and they double team Natalya. Bliss hits a knee drop and a standing moonsault for a two count. Alexa slaps Ronda on the apron, and Ronda chases her around the ring now. Alexa runs back in the ring and Natalya and Ronda hit the Hart Attack double team on Alexa. Alexa rolls outside for a breather. Mickie tags in now and drops Natalya, then keeps her grounded with a body scissor hold, and then a front face lock. Natalya starts to fight back, but Mickie grabs her by the hair and slams her down with a cheap shot. Alexa comes in now and puts the boots to Natalya in the corner. Ronda finally gets the tag, but Alexa rolls outside. Mickie causes a distraction and Alexa cheap-shots Ronda. Alexa throws Ronda into the ring apron and kicks her. Back in the ring, Alexa continues the offense on Ronda. Mickie tags back in and kicks Ronda in the corner. Alexa tags back in and continues with the kicks, then applies a surfboard submission. Mickie tags back in and they double team Ronda. Ronda fights away from Mickie, but Mickie then drops Natalya off the apron to prevent the tag. Ronda lays into Mickie with strikes now and slams her down a few times. Ronda puts Mickie in the arm bar and she taps out as Alexa and Alicia watch from ringside.
– After the match, Alexa hits a cheap shot on Ronda and runs away. Ronda is selling a rib injury now. Alexa, Alicia and Mickie retreat up the ramp as Natalya helps Ronda to her feet in the ring.
– Elias is backstage where an assistant brings him a drink. Elias is disgusted by the drink and he spits it in the assistant’s face. Braun Strowman can then be heard screaming off-camera about Roman Reigns. The camera turns around and Braun is shown terrorizing staffers, and throws one into some pipes and boxes. Braun storms off in search of Roman Reigns.
– Ronda and Natalya do an interview at the gorilla position. Ronda is asked about her condition after that match, and she says she’s never backed out of a fight and never will because she wants to prove she’s the best.
– Elias is in the ring for a song. Elias starts trashing the New Orleans Saints, and then Mick Foley comes out to interrupt. Elias gets in Foley’s face and calls him and sad broken man. The crowd chants for Mr. Socko as Elias trashes Foley. Foley says he’s not here to talk about the past, he’s here to address the future. Elias says he’s the future. Foley talks about meeting with Stephanie McMahon, and asking to be part of Hell In A Cell. Foley didn’t want to be sitting on the couch at home watching history, he wanted to at least ring the bell or something. He says Stephanie laughed in his face, and then he reminded her that after he went flying off the cell and everyone thought he was done, he got off the stretcher and climbed back up the cage. Foley says Stephanie changed her mind, and Foley is now booked to be the special guest referee for Braun Strowman vs. Roman Reigns at Hell In A Cell. Elias says that’s special, but he has a piece of advice for Mick: To shut his mouth and go back where he came from. Foley gets back in Elias’ face, and says Elias may be a star, but he’s Mick Foley and you’ll listen to what he has to say. Foley says Stephanie asked help out Baron Corbin with making matches tonight, and Foley says he took the opportunity to book Elias vs. Finn Balor, and that’s next.
– Braun Strowman is still backstage looking for Reigns and throwing stuff around.
– Finn Balor vs. Elias: The opening bell sound sand they lock up, and Elias starts off strong with a slam. Balor starts to come back and hits a Sling Blade, but Elias dodges a shot and shuts him down with a running knee to the face. Elias lays into Balor with strikes until Balor dodges one and dumps him outisde. Balor looks for a suicide dive, but Elias runs back in the ring and clotheslines Balor down. Balor comes back and looks for a double foot stomp, but Elias dodges it. Elias comes back with a spinning sit-out powerbomb for a two count. They fight up the turnbuckle and Balor drops him. Balor looks for the Coup De Grace, but Elias fights him off. Elias looks for the Drift Away, but Balor latches on to Elias and rolls him up in a small package pin for the three count.
– Bobby Lashley is shown working out at the gym earlier today. Leo from 205 Live is shown next to Lashley giving him a motivational speech, and it looks like he may be Lashley’s new manager.
– Braun Strowman is backstage for an interview, but he takes the mic and asks where Roman Reigns is. The interviewer tells Braun she thinks Roman left, but Braun thinks he’s still there. Braun says he’s going to go to the ring, and maybe Roman will find her.
– The Undertaker is scheduled to appear live on RAW next week in Dallas, TX.
– Braun Strowman comes out to the ring and gets on the mic. Braun calls out Reigns, but Reigns doesn’t come out. Braun calls him a coward, and says on Sunday he’s going to send him to hell and he’s never coming back. Reign’s music hits, and Reigns comes out and hops up on the announce table on the stage. Braun heads up the ramp and starts brawling with Reigns on the stage. Braun gets the upper hand and throws Reigns into the screen on the stage. Braun looks at Reigns’ Universal Title belt, then takes Reigns up on top of the announce table. Reigns picks up Braun on his shoulders and hits a Samoan drop through a gimmicked part of the stage. Reigns gets up out of the hole and picks up his Universal Title belt. Reigns poses with his Universal Title belt as Braun recovers on the ground and RAW goes off the air.
I don’t know but I feel they kill Braun Strowman chances at being Unverlasial Champion for now. But there may be some who want to wait until WM 35 or to 2019 to put a World Champion on Braun Strowman. I think either Braun Strowman or Roman Reigns is heading to Smackdown at the next WWE Shake up. When WWE make the move to Fox they going to need a top draw.
Like what? Please tell me some good news, because I really need it. Vince is creaming himself right now so Roman isn’t losing the title and if he does, Reigns is winning it back before Rumble. Shield ain’t going anywhere and I’ve given up on Vince doing the right thing and turning Reigns. We’re getting Shield vs the Pack until at least November. After that I’m assuming we get Reigns vs Drew. Roman is going to be either champ or number one contender through next Mania.
I follow you, but I still smell a swerve comin’ on.
Well, let’s go back to when this started: Braun Strowman announced that he was going to cash in. He then did what he said he was going to do and came down to cash in on Roman, someone who the masses hate and everyone wanted to see lose the title to Strowman. The Shield then ran down to the ring and powerbombed the most over face on Raw through a table. The following week, or maybe it was the week after, the faces all came down to the ring to stop a fight between the Pack and the Shield and the Shield attacked all the faces and ended up getting arrested for inciting a riot. Logic says that Shield are the heels and the Pack are the faces.
And just who are the damn heels in this storyline/feud,The Shield or Strowman/Ziggler/McIntyre? I smell a swerve coming on!
They really need to start giving Ronda so more ring time.
What a lazy and boring way to end Raw. There was no heat on this angle. Samoan drop threw the stage? Pathetic.
The AOP in green tact gear for no other reason than we can tell the difference between them and the Shield. Maybe it was a stupid idea to bring back the Shield for no other reason than to get Reigns over. We don’t like Reigns, Vince, you old b@stard and we never will. | 2019-04-24T18:41:15Z | http://wrestling-edge.com/wwe-raw-results-live-discussion-9-10/ |
If you plan a trip to Paris, it goes without saying, you have to make a side trip out to Versailles to experience the history and grandeur of France. You know, there’s something kinda special about driving around the corner in Versailles and coming across King Louis’ little country home; it’s just the most impressive palace I’ve ever seen. But France is like that. It sort of lures you in with its quaintness and charm and then BAM, knocks your socks off! Well, Versailles is great. It’s an easy day trip from Paris and there’s a lot in this home away from home of France’s infamous royalty.
The Chateau at Versailles, where the art and architecture of acclaimed artisans was united with the abundance and arrogance of the aristocracy, is well known in the pages of history. Originally built in 1623 by Louis XIII as a rural hunting lodge, the king loved the chateau so much, that he decided to enlarge it.
When his son, Louis XIV, ascended to the throne, he felt that Versailles was too small and too plain, so he began embellishing the chateau and work continued on Versailles all during his reign.
Spending half of France’s treasury and employing over 30,000 workers, Louis XIV’s grand vision for Versailles nearly bankrupted the country he loved and was so proud to rule. More construction was done under Louis XV, and then again during Napoleon’s residence at Versailles, resulting in the magnificent palace we see today.
With 12 miles of enclosing walls, 26 acres of roof and over 2000 windows, Versailles set the standard for royal residences in Europe and throughout the world. It takes two days just to get through what you get to see on the public tours, so be sure to let’s hit the ground running or make this several trips to avoid blisters!
I’ll give you a few tips on what to bring here. You definitely need comfortable shoes, you’re gonna walk a lot and on uneven, well traveled cobblestones. You bring an umbrella to keep from getting sunburned and too hot. Water, gotta bring water. A few snacks and you’ll be all set.
Now you’ll notice a gold looking gilt balcony up on the second level. That’s the King’s bedroom, actually on the second floor, but they call it the first floor. That’s where His Majesty used to come out and talk to his people. I think that’s why the courtyard is so huge—because all the people use to kind of gather around in the morning. The moment you step inside Versailles, you’re transformed into a different time and a different way of life. You can almost see the clouds of dust wafting from powdered wigs and smell the aroma of perfumed bosoms confined in unforgiving corsets and feel the endless yards of flowing silk and gold embellished fabrics adorning young courtesans. Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m starting to sound like a romance novel…that HAPPENS at Versailles!
There are 67 staircases, 6,000 paintings, 5,000 pieces of furniture and almost 300 years of history which tend to titillate and overwhelm the senses. There’s just so much to see and hear and do and touch…mon Dieu! It’s quite overwhelming. If you’re like me, and not big on following a crowd and listening to a tour guide go on and on, then you may want to spring for a private tour, or do a little homework first.
Grab a brochure or buy a guide book, as you’ll start out from one huge the drawing room and walk to another. There’s the Venus drawing room. Walking through the Venus drawing room, you come to the Diana drawing room. The rooms come one right after another. Number 7 is the Mars drawing room, take a look at the ceiling.
Room number 8 is the Mercury drawing room, which was also a bed chamber, you can see by the bed, notice that it is quite a bit shorter than our beds today!
The guide has a little map that has little numbers corresponding to each room, so if you get lost you’ll know where you are. Just a little side note, when we say this is the Mars or the Mercury room, it’s the picture on the ceiling that depicts the name of the room. For example, there is a picture of Apollo in the Apollo drawing room, also the used as the Throne room, because it has a throne and the Apollo room because it’s Apollo up on the ceiling in the painting. Don’t miss the throne room, here is where the original famous painting of Louis XIV, the one you’ve seen everywhere, is kept!
Up next is the most famous of all rooms in the Palace of Versailles. Originally built as an Italian terrace, the Hall of Mirrors is the most famous and certainly the most spectacular. Over 200 feet long, the Hall of Mirrors took ten years to build and decorate. The idea here is this: seventeen arched windows overlooking the gardens are reflected on the opposing wall by the same number of simulated windows made out of paneled mirrors. These mirrors are framed in brass covered with gold.
Twenty-four torches and twelve chandeliers, each adorned with Bohemian crystal, lighted the way for the swarms of lords and commoners who traversed the hall on a daily basis. And these definitely contribute to the WOW factor! Topping off the grandeur of the hall are the paintings on the ceiling, which depict various battles in which the King and France emerged victorious! On either end of the Hall of Mirrors are the Hall of War and the Hall of Peace respectively.
The Hall of Mirrors is where the Treaty of Versailles was signed. The ceiling has pictures of Louis XIV during his reign here. Now all the chandeliers are electric, but can you imagine when they were all candles, that’s fantastic! Wonder how many candles they went through a night? Joust down from the Hall of Mirrors is the entrance to the King’s bedchamber. It runs just about 200 feet, I’d be dead on me feet just trying to get to bed. Now you’re at the far end of the Peace room.
Now you have the real door to the King’s bedroom. This is where he slept and recovered from all the walking he had to do. Located in the exact center of the Chateau, the King’s bedchamber was the center of activity during Louis XIV’s reign. It was here at 8:30 AM each and every morning the first valet of the chambre awoke the King with the words “It is time, Sire,” thus beginning the ceremony of ‘levee’, the ceremonial rising of the monarch that involved 100 men in total. He’d then go out on the balcony to address his people.
The chapel is adjacent to the bed chamber. Following his address, the King would come through the doors every morning, and walk out. The lower court would be on the lower level watching mass, the higher court would be all around the balcony. The King would come out and stand right on the same carpet that is still there today.
Kind of eerie to see it exactly the way the King saw it! Inspirational even! With its elegant Corinthian columns reaching towards the heavens, those beautiful frescoes adorning the vaulted ceiling, and a gilded pipe organ fit for a King, the Royal Chapel was the ideal setting for the most significant religious events during the French monarchy. Designed by the famed architect Mansart, the Royal Chapel took ten years to build and decorate and was the site of Louis XVI’s marriage to Marie Antoinette. During Louis XVI’s reign, the congregation stood on the ground floor and followed the mass facing the King, NOT the altar!
The gardens at Versailles are just about the only thing I can think of that rival the beauty and enormity of the chateau itself. If you go by numbers alone, 2000 acres of grounds, 27 miles of trellises, 200,000 trees, and 210,000 flowers planted every year! Wow! You wanna hear more? Fifty fountains with 620 fountain nozzles using 21 miles of water conduits and consuming over 3500 cubic meters of water per hour during a full play of the fountains. Can you imagine paying that water bill? Honestly, such beauty can’t be quantified by facts and figures; it’s the sights and sounds and smells of the gardens that impress you the most. Take a look for yourself.
With miles of roads on the grounds, the horse drawn carriages are a recent (and welcome) addition to Versailles. In Louis XIV’s time, fountain guards were ordered to whistle when the King approached so the fountains could be fully turned on. It’s good to be king!
Just down the road, the Grand Trianon was built during the reign of Louis XIV as a weekend getaway, and 200 years later served as a residence for Napoleon. Through the years, it’s hosted many celebrated guests, including Russian Czar Peter the Great! Today it still serves as the official residence for visiting heads of state! Inside, the gallery, built by Mansart and once used as a dining room, preserves its original decorations and is a great place to ‘experience’ old Versailles.
What’s interesting about this gallery is all the paintings tell the story of the original gardens. What they had in the gardens were what they called a Bosque. It’s like you’re going into the garden and you walk into this little private room in the garden that you don’t know what’s in there until you walk in. All of a sudden, you go in and you see these beautiful fountains, something they say is going to surprise you and you go, “Oh, that’s great.” Then you walk out of that bosque and you go through the gardens like a little maze until you walk into another little part of the garden, into another bosque and you go, “Oh!” And there’s another fountain or something different. So all the paintings in the gallery tell the story of the original bosques that were in the gardens. They’re not all there now, but you can go in and have a look at one if you’re lucky.
While there, you may get to see something you don’t get to see every day. Napoleon’s bedroom. He slept in that exact bed. And, I mean it, you don’t see it everyday, it’s not open, you have to call for an appointment. The bed is short, not because Napoleon was, but because in those days, people slept sitting propped up. Didn’t want to look like they died in their sleep so they say!
If you’re like me, you’re probably totally confused, so let’s try to encapsulate the history of Versailles in a few paragraphs. The big palace is where the kings lived and did their business. The Trianon was the pink building where Louis XIV came on the weekends to relax and where, 200 years later, Napoleon lived, when they thought about bringing the capital of France to Versailles. Now the Petite Trianon is where Louis XV brought all of his mistresses and where Marie Antoinette lived for a while and where, 200 years later, Josephine, Napoleon’s Josephine, moved in and lived as well. Got it?
The Petite Trianon was originally built as a “Royal Hideout” where King Louis XV could escape the rigors of court. But it’s best known as the home away from home for Marie Antoinette, who upon becoming Queen at age 19, transformed the Petite Trianon into the exquisite showpiece it is today. To fully appreciate the history and grandeur of Versailles, you have to rewind a bit. So, drive a few miles back towards Paris and visit the town of St. Germain-en-Laye, St. Germain for short. The birthplace of Louis XIV, it’s where it all began. So, “Once upon a time in St. Germain, there was born a King,”…but you can take it from there. The guidebooks don’t say you have to come here; so let it be said, I’m telling you, you HAVE to come to St. Germain. It’s like a small version of Versailles.
Versailles is just on the other side of the royal forest and St. Germain’s only a 20 to 30 minute drive from Paris. You’re gonna love it, it’s exactly what you want to see when you come to France.
One of the principal seats of the French Court, the Chateau de St. Germain-en-Laye is one of the most historically significant and beautiful buildings in all of France. Since the 12th century, the various chateaus and chapels erected at St. Germain have served as a royal residence, a military prison, a museum and most recently a hotel.
But St. Germain is most famous as the birthplace of The Sun King – Louis XIV, who was born in the Chateau-Neuf in 1638. A young Mary Stuart also lived there for 10 years, until she married François II in 1558. The various dwellings here have been demolished and re-built numerous times over the centuries. Only the Pavillon-Henri IV survives today, as a hotel where guests can get a taste of royal R and R! This hotel is also where Alexandre Dumas wrote “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo.” I loved those movies!
The white part of the house is the old section where Louis XIV was born. The red brick is the new part where the hotel is. But there’s a plaque on the front door that says ‘this is where they invented Bernaise sauce.’ It’s kind of like the French version of the biggest ball of string.
St. Germain has just the thing for our little tourists of tomorrow. TOTS for short! Called Parc Asterix after the famous French comic strip characters, it’s a theme park that is loved by visitors since it opened in 1989.There’s a midway full of games for all skill levels, where everyone’s a winner…well, maybe not everyone, but you’ll still have fun! Don’t forget the rides – there’re thrills and spills and coasters on hills. From the little tots to the big shots in your family, I’m sure there’s something here to turn your stomach inside out! Ahhh, the bumper cars, my personal favorite. Reminds me of driving on the Champs L’Eysée! There’s a good haunted house full of spooky characters! And at the end of the day everyone’s sure to have a smile, or if you’re lucky, maybe even a stolen kiss! Ooh la la!
Since we’re just on the outskirts of Paris, let’s hop on the train and head into town to continue that little shopping trip we started! Place Vendome is the top spot for high-end merchandise, and a great place to start! Once a neighborhood full of high-class hotels and homes for bankers, Place Vendome, today, is home to some of the most distinguished and elegant shops and boutiques.
Break out your credit cards, because the quality is TOPS and so are the prices! Go ahead…check it out…aren’t you on vacation? Ka-ching! Don’t worry about how you’ll get your new purchases home, most stores will ship them to the states for you, saving the value added tax in the transaction. That’s a bargain, right? See? We’re saving money already!
Dominating the place, is the Colonne de la Grande Armee, also called: “the statue in the middle”, constructed in 1806 to replace an equestrian statue of Louis XIV. Over 120 feet high, the column is made of bronze, made from the metal of over 1200 Russian and Austrian cannons captured at the battle of Austerlitz in 1805. That was a major meltdown! The statue of Napoleon at the top is a copy of the original, which was destroyed by Royalists in 1814.
Moving on, another great place for shopping is in the Passages Couverts, meaning “covered passage.” Paris is famous for these indoor ‘shopping malls’ or arcades. There’re quite a few of them and they’re all different, so you have to shop them all! Hunt for bargains or indulge, it’s not how much you spend that matters, it’s how much fun you have while spending it! Well, I keep telling myself that anyway. Don’t forget gifts for those poor unfortunate souls we left at home…And while you’re at it, you deserve a treat yourself! You know what I say, when you love a place so much you hate to leave it, why not take some of it back with you!?
And who could resist an indoor/outdoor antique market? Maybe it is time to do some redecorating! Don’t forget to haggle…how good’s your Français!? Ahhh…Shopping in Paris, I’m a happy girl! Okay, I know you’re dragging, but no matter how tired you get after a full day in Paris, you have to see it after dark!
Whether you take a scenic boat cruise on the Seine or an after-dinner stroll through the parks, Paris is truly magical after sunset. Even the monuments take on a whole new presence at night. Ah the beauty and romance of it all, “C’est magnifique!” After just one night in Paris, you’ll understand how “The City of Lights” got its name and why it’s one of my favorite cities in the world! For a great view of Paris at night, how about from the Georges V Hotel, my favorite? You can stay overnight in lavishness, or just take in the view before heading back to the countryside.
Then, up the next morning to finish up back at the ranch, I mean, that little hunting lodge in the country Louis built! Versailles…what an amazing place! Or should I say… palace! After spending a day or two wandering the chateau and grounds of Versailles, it’s really hard to leave, but all good things must come to an end…and there are other sites to see…so let’s just take one more quick look around.
I discovered that in the early days of Versailles, proper attire was required for those wishing to visit the Grand Apartment, so if you showed up at Versailles without a hat and a sword, you could rent one at the front gate. Just like getting a tie at a snooty restaurant today! And another thing, monks were not allowed in! Was it the tie thing? And here’s something else…The very first hot air balloon ever to fly was launched from the forecourt of Versailles in 1783. That’s amazing! What a show that must have been! Versailles Trivia, ah, I’ve got a million of ‘em! Did you know there was a secret passageway that ran from the Queen’s private apartments to those of the King, and part of it still remains today? It was through this passageway that Marie Antoinette escaped the rioters during the Revolution! Lastly, the garden façade of the central part of the chateau is architecturally deceptive because there are no rooms behind the windows on the top floor. They actually mask the structural supports for the ceiling of the Hall of Mirrors. Sneaky, huh!
My favorite rooms in the chateau are the salons that run one after another. You can almost hear a harpsichord playing in the background as the pitter patter of young courtiers chasing giggling courtesans rings in your ears, no wait a minute, that’s my cell phone…okay, must be time to leave.
Do we really have to? Oh well, we’ve got plenty of memories to remember Versailles by and you can always see it again in some of your favorite movies. What’s really special is you come here and you see the paintings of how life used to be and you come out in the gardens and it hasn’t changed, it looks exactly the same.
You know, you’re walking where Josephine and Napoleon and Louis XIV and XV did; it’s really special. Fantastic scenery, fantastic architecture and fantastic memories, what else do you need on a fantastic family vacation? | 2019-04-20T08:57:55Z | http://lauramckenzietv.com/versailles/ |
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As well As managing a number of the chief aspects of your WordPress website (something we are going to be covering in more depth below), also providing you with everything you want to start a new website, one of the principal selling points of the revolutionary service is access to one of the participating ThemeForest themes as part of your subscription payment.
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The Advantage of a one-stop shop for all your WordPress site needs does sound attractive. We’ll cover the pricing details in more detail later in this overview, but at $19.99 a month, it is clear this isn’t affordable, entry-level hosting. So let’s see what you get for your money.
The Envato Hosted theme installation and setup service is excellent for anybody who’s new to WordPress or brief on time. After a fresh installation of WordPress was completed, your subject of choice (from the available choices ) will be installed and activated in your new site.
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As Part of the hosting security measures, the Envato Hosted system engineers are proactive in scanning sites for malware and other issues, and DDoS protection is also in place to keep your website online. If an issue is detected, the support team will start work solving it, while also notifying you of this situation. This proactive approach also applies to assisting with hacked sites.
Considering It is not unheard of for some web hosts to just take your site offline if they detect a possible security issue, it’s good to find that the Envato Hosted staff will be able to work as soon as an issue is encountered, while also keeping you in the loop as to what’s happening.
Site Snapshots are also taken every single, and copies are kept for 30 days (and stored offsite in Amazon S3 storage for added security ). Right now, if you want to restore a backup, you need to start a ticket to request the support team to carry out this undertaking. But, Envato Hosted expects to empower self-initiated backups and restores in the first quarter of 2017.
Unfortunately, The Envato Hosted service doesn’t include any email hosting or management solutions. But, you can connect your Envato Hosting account to one of the supported mail suppliers.
Therefore, If you are already using an email provider like google Apps or even Office 365, you can connect your domain name to the service. If not, registering with one of these services is the best alternative for sending and receiving mails using your site’s domain name.
Although Live chat is being contemplated for the future, there is no phone support service, with email being the only way to get in contact with the team. During the testing with this review, the Envato Hosted support team reacted quickly to some tickets which were opened.
Once You have signed up using Envato Hosted, you will have the ability to log into your account dash. In the dashboard area, you can view your active hosting plans, the details of your WordPress site, along with other important information.
We will Cover the utilization limitations in the pricing department. But, you can easily view how much of your visitor, disk quota, and bandwidth allowance you’ve absorbed from the Envato Hosted dashboard.
Having Your selection from a selection of high quality WordPress themes, and all the other good features covered above, is great. But perhaps the most important reason to select 1 web host over another is how quickly they could serve your website to your customers.
This Guide explains why site speed is so important. Suffice to say, if you would like more visitors, a greater consumer experience, and improved goal conversion rates, then you need to do all you can to improve the speed of your WordPress site. Bearing that in mind, let us look at the loading times we experienced while analyzing Envato Hosted with this review.
On Paper, Envato Hosted provides everything a brand new WordPress user may desire. Thus, let us find out how simple this service would be to use in practice.
As This is a hands on Envato Hosted review, for testing purposes, we did register and launch a new WordPress website. Although the time from beginning the signup procedure to having the ability to log into the new WordPress site wasn’t instantaneous, it only took about five seconds. However, a significant part of the time was spent staring at a display wondering what was going on.
There Were a few hiccups along the way, such as the links into the site and control panel that were delivered over not yet being busy. This was likely because of domain name system (DNS) settings requiring some time to spread, and also the new URL being in the process of going live. But because there’s no mention of these delays and potential issues during the setup procedure, it marginally taints the suitability of Envato Hosted for inexperienced WordPress users.
Simple Progress records and messages about flaws would be a simple method to overcome these issues and keep consumers informed.
In General, Though, getting started with Envato Hosted and launching a brand new WordPress site is comparatively simple. You really can register a domain, choose a theme, and choose which demo to have set up, all through one signup process. However, whilst everything did work, the registration process felt somewhat rough around the edges compared with that of Envato Hosted’s competitors.
For the Sake of contrast, another evaluation WordPress site, also using Avada and also the same Agency demo, took just more than a second longer to load a cheap, entry-level shared hosting account.
As The Avada Agency demo homepage includes a multimedia slider using video content and other large documents, it was determined that a standard page from the demonstration, composed of images and text, would yield more relevant results. Once the evaluation WordPress site was put up, Pingdom listed the loading times of the internal blog post at 30-minute intervals.
After Monitoring website rate with Pingdom, the average load time over the previous seven days for our WordPress website, hosted by Envato using the Avada motif and its Agency demo, was 2.96 seconds, using a YSlowperformance grade of B and 85/100. The loading times were recorded at regular intervals throughout the testing period.
Site Uptime was also tracked with Pingdom. During the testing, six cases of downtime were discovered, with the site unavailable for 15 minutes in total. This resulted in an uptime of 99.85percent according to Pingdom. Even though the site returned to its available state with no intervention, the maximum amount of downtime — as can be seen in the image below — has been a slightly worrying nine moments.
This Price also includes any qualifying WordPress motif from ThemeForest, including bestselling options like Avada, X Theme, and Enfold. Also included in the ceremony is the installation of your chosen motif and its own presentation, in addition to continuing support for your site. Free migration of an existing WordPress website to your hosting accounts is also included.
As Mentioned, since the Envato Hosted service is completely managed, the team will take care of WordPress core updates, supply base-level safety, track your site for errors, and back up the website daily.
When it Comes to use, your own $19.99 per month or $190 annually comprises 100,000 monthly visits, 5GB of disk space, and 100GB of monthly bandwidth. These quotas are soft limits, and nothing automatic will happen if you move over them. Instead, if excessive usage is detected, expect to be contacted by the service staff to discuss a solution which works for both parties. There are no overage charges in place right now.
But, Neither of those rival options comprises a premium ThemeForest WordPress motif and installation. The appeal of the Envato Hosted service is having everything in one place, under a single account, such as your domain name, hosting support, WordPress theme, and service team.
You can Attempt Envato Hosted for free as part of a seven-day trial. You’ll have to enter your payment details to get started, however, the trial period is a fantastic method to find out for yourself how the agency works.
Components is a service out of Envato That intends to offer creators and manufacturers having an ever-expanding library of digital assets for their own projects. If you’d like access to a large and expanding collection of videos, sound files, photographs, graphics, illustrations, fonts, HTML templates, and WordPress themes and plugins, in addition to other content then Envato Elements might be exactly what you’re looking for.
Furthermore, Envato Elements subscribers today also get access to 1,200 video courses and eBooks from EnvatoTuts+. As a result of this, you do not just get access to almost 1 million electronic assets but also the educational content that will assist you work together effectively.
Inside This Envato Elements review, we will explore what this service offers, how it works, and how much it costs to help you decide if this is a great option for your needs.
Even though Avada is among the most popular WordPress topics around, its abundance of features and functionality may be overkill for some projects. If your needs are more small and you’d like to understand how Envato Hosted performs with a more nominal WordPress theme, we also tested a site with the free Twenty Seventeen theme from the WordPress.org team.
Unlike Avada, the free Twenty Seventeen theme does not contain or rely on any plugins. Consequently, this no frills WordPress theme gave Envato Hosted a fantastic chance to demonstrate how fast it could deliver a web site. With an average loading time of 335 milliseconds, along with also a grade operation more than seven days of analyzing, Envato Hosted certainly has the capacity to quickly serve a WordPress website to your viewers.
Your Requirements and the final configuration of your site will likely sit somewhere between one of the full-featured Avada demos as well as the minimum Twenty Seventeen theme. Your results will definitely vary from ours, but ours ought to provide you a rough idea of what to expect from Envato Hosted. Furthermore, using a seven-day free trial, you must have enough time to carry out speed testing of your site prior to making a final decision on Envato Hosted.
It’s Also worth pointing out that though Envato Hosted doesn’t prohibit using any particular plugins (like some other managed WordPress hosts), they do suggest avoiding caching plugins, as Envato already applies server caching to all sites on their own platform. But while Envato Hosted doesn’t yet preserve their own content delivery network (CDN), you are free to take advantage of a third-party CDN of your choice — another popular approach to accelerate a WordPress website.
Testing The rate of a website and its own web host isn’t as straightforward as it might appear. Running a manual evaluation with a reputable service like Pingdom or GTmetrix can produce wildly varying results from one minute to the next. To counteract this, for our evaluations, the premium Pingdom service was used to mechanically record the rate of this evaluation website at 30-minute intervals around the clock for seven days.
There Are numerous elements which could affect the load times of your website, such as your choice of motif, which plugins you’re using, what sort of content you’re publishing, just how many people are trying to access your site at one period, and where those visitors are situated. However, these test results must provide you some idea about what to expect from Envato Hosted.
Envato Elements is A subscription service that offers you access to over 900,000 downloadable digital assets for your own projects. To keep things easy, Envato Elements offers two pricing plans — monthly and annual — with both encouraging unlimited downloads. Thanks to a recent change to their own pricing model, both alternatives (rather than just the annual plan) now include access to the 900+ WordPress plugins and themes available from Envato Elements.
Unlike some other Premium picture and digital asset services, you won’t have to be worried about credits and download limitations. This approach from Envato Elements is great since it provides you the ability to experiment with various documents before making a final decision on which to use to your own project.
When it comes to Content production, the Envato Elements assets are produced by a neighborhood of artists that are independent. These designers are paid for their efforts via a revenue sharing model. Fifty percent of net revenue is allegedly shared with all the content creators who supply the resources for Envato Elements.
As you can see, Anybody creating visual content, and audio content, is part of their Envato Elements target audience. If you’ve ever struggled to get a suitable featured image to get a blog article or you would like to speed up your design workflow by beginning with a template or using actions and presets for your favourite software, Envato Elements could aid you. Now that WordPress plugins and themes are also available as part of the service, anyone who owns a WordPress site or works on this platform should also consider signing up with Envato Element.
As mentioned Earlier in this Envato Components review, you no longer must pay annually to access this 900+ WordPress themes and plugins (along with the other assets) since it now doesn’t matter if you choose to pay monthly or yearly, you can download everything available from Envato Elements while your subscription is still active.
Another good reason To consider joining Envato Element is you are able to cancel your subscription at any time and still keep the rights to use any items which you downloaded and enrolled during your time as a subscriber. But, we are going to be covering the license details in more depth later on in this Envato Components review.
WordPress users Will observe that there are now WordPress plugins and themes available within Envato Elements. There isn’t the choice to match ThemeForest, the largest WordPress theme market, or CodeCanyon, the plugin marketplace, both also possessed by Envato, but new items have been added on a regular basis. Royalty-free stock photographs also have been inserted to Envato Elements with over 600,000 to choose from.
It’s also worth Pointing out that even during the process of writing this Envato Elements review more things were added to the library of resources. However, despite there being so many items available, it is very simple to find what you’re looking for. To help you limit your search for the ideal asset, lots of the top-level groups are divided up farther into sub-categories.
But in most Cases, you need to have the ability to open, edit, and utilize the assets in a compatible application of your choice as well as the prescribed software.
Envato Elements Keeps things incredibly simple in regards to licensing. As previously mentioned, the items you may download are covered by a commercial permit, which you may find out more about here. As a consequence, you can use the assets you download in your own work, in addition to client projects.
The trial Usage Option is excellent for exploring an asset to find out more about it, before you are convinced if, and in which, you will use it. When you’re ready to utilize an advantage, you can select the job use option and then enter the required details. Registering a download for a project is as straightforward as inputting the title of the undertaking. You really don’t need to submit much information whatsoever to’license’ a download.
When it comes to User experience, again, Envato Elements retains matters incredibly straightforward. To help you decide whether to join with Envato Elements, you can first browse the library at no cost. Should you see any assets which you enjoy, it only takes a minute or two to sign up and begin downloading.
After You have established a no cost Envato accounts, you can sign up to Envato Elements on the monthly subscription plan or the better value early plan. After inputting your PayPal or card payment details, you can begin downloading the documents instantly.
Once You’ve seen something that catches your attention, you will discover more about the asset on its own page, prior to making a choice whether download it or not. If after closer review, the item still looks like a good match for your needs, it is possible to hit the download button to access the documents.
Before Downloading the item, you will have to either register it for use on a particular job or download it for trial usage. The latter is the best option in the event that you only wish to take a better look at an item, before choosing to use it on a specific project. It is worth pointing out that once you’ve registered a product for use on a specific project, you can continue to use the product even after you have finished your subscription.
When you have made a Choice, a zip archive of the documents is downloaded into your PC. You can then extract the files in the archive file and open them using a compatible software application or service.
It’s good to see This if you download a background picture or other type of picture, you’ll also get access to the JPG or PNG versions of the documents as well as the editable Photoshop or Illustrator documents (based on the kind of file you’ve downloaded). Possessing a JPG or PNG version of the asset means you can quickly use it without needing access to a particular software application.
If you do not Now have access to the right tools, just download a document, upload it in your WordPress blog and crop or scale it before publishing it on your site. Obviously, if you want complete editing capabilities then using the ideal software application is recommended. But it’s good to be aware that there are other choices.
While you’re logged To your Envato Elements accounts, you can view the things you’ve downloaded from your dash. This makes it easy to rapidly download something again to register it with a different project or add a permit to a trial item to enable it to be used on a live project.
Additionally, if You’re seeking a more managed hosting arrangement for an existing WordPress website, it is well worth repeating that Envato Hosted delivers a free website migration support as part of the signup process. Even though you ought to contact the support team first to find out if they will have the ability to migrate your specific WordPress website configuration.
The Envato Hosted monthly fees of $19.99 are fair in the managed WordPress hosting area. But you can, of course, host your website for a lot less — and if you’re willing to do more of the setup and ongoing maintenance work yourself, then there are a number of good alternatives that are also worth considering.
Even though That the Envato Hosted service is a relative newcomer to the hosting space, the company has several years’ experience working together and encouraging WordPress users — and also that they are using the Amazon Web Service infrastructure must provide you some reassurance, also.
If You’ve been putting off starting a new WordPress website because of all the various elements you’ll need to understand, such as domain names, topics, installing WordPress and looking after your website, then Envato Hosted may well be a smart option. | 2019-04-19T02:35:52Z | https://camelandbirdie.com/delete-envato-account-envato-marketplace-review-2019/ |
Scanner, v. 8, n. 6 (March 1976) : The Toronto Drydock Company Ltd.
The Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. was incorporated under the Ontario Companies Act in 1917 by the following: C. S. Boone, President (President of the C. S. Boone Dredging and Construction Company Ltd.); John E. Russell, Vice-President and Managing Director (a prominent Toronto vessel owner and operator); Lawrence Solman (Manager of the Toronto Ferry Company Ltd.); John J. Manley (C. S. Boone Dredging and Construction Company Ltd.); and Henry J. Dixon (former operator of the old Shickluna shipyard, St. Catharines). The company was formed to operate a vessel repair yard and located its premises on the south wall of the Keating Channel, a cut situated north of the ship channel and connecting the harbour with the Don River. Keating's Cut, as it is generally known, was created during the course of the Toronto Harbour Ashbridges Bay development.
The Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. started business with a floating drydock about 160 feet long which it acquired in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. In 1920 John E. Russell purchased a drydock in Montreal which had formerly been used as part of the plant established by the United States Emergency Fleet Corporation. This drydock had been used in connection with the joining together of parts of Great Lakes vessels which had been sent through the canals in sections to the seaboard during the war. The sectional dock was towed to Toronto and was linked with the unit purchased in 1917 to form a dock capable of accommodating full-sized canallers.
As time passed, Henry J. Dixon became the principal owner and manager of the yard, assisted by his son Harold who eventually became manager. During the 1940's a subsidiary company, Toronto Towing and Salvage Company Ltd., was formed to take over and operate the tugs which were used in general harbour work, in lake towing and salvage operations, and in the Toronto Island winter ferry service. Some of these tugs were for a time registered as being owned directly by Harold Dixon. The company's tugs were for many years identified as wrecking tugs by the "running horse" insignia which they displayed. As the years went by, the company concentrated more and more on the towing aspect of its business and the drydocking and repair side of the firm received less and less attention. This was due mainly to the decline in the number of small vessels which could be serviced by the drydock or which could be taken into the Keating Channel, a body of water which has the unfortunate habit of silting up rather badly as a result of the great masses of effluent pouring down the Don River.
But over the years countless tugs, barges, ferries and freighters were rebuilt at the yard. Dixon acquired numerous tugs and dredges and scrapped them in the yard, thus building up a supply of spare parts for use in repairing other vessels. Probably the most notable building jobs were the steam tug NED HANLAN (1932) and the 115-foot Island ferries SAM McBRIDE and THOMAS RENNIE constructed in 1939 and 1951 respectively.
The Toronto Drydock Company Ltd., and its subsidiary went into voluntary liquidation in 1964 and in January 1964 the yard and drydock were sold to Port Weller Dry Docks Ltd. The operation was soon closed down and all repair facilities were moved to the main repair facility at St. Catharines. The drydock was sold and was taken away, presumably for breaking up. The remaining tugs, all coal-burners, were likewise sold for scrapping, the new owner having no use for them at all. The company's office building and surrounding premises, fronting on Villiers Street, have been taken over by the Toronto Harbour Commission. Fortunately, Mr. Harold Dixon kept quite a collection of interesting marine artifacts, most of them coming from vessels which had been an integral part of the waterfront scene, and the majority of the items from his collection are presently on display at the Marine Museum of Upper Canada.
There follows a listing of the harbour tugs that the Dixons operated over the years. Because of the very nature of their business, the list may not necessarily be complete and we would welcome comments from anyone who may have additional information. We have not included in this listing a rather extensive fleet of small (30-foot) motor workboats which the company used in its later years to supplement the steam tugs.
H. J. DIXON, (a) ABNER C. HARDING, (b) ARKANSAS (50). (U.S.204588, C.190900). Steel harbour tug built 1907 at Chicago for the Great Lakes Towing Company, Cleveland. 74.0 x 20.0 x 11.6, Gross 98, Net 34. Operated mainly at Detroit and Toledo but during World War I ventured as far east as Montreal to assist in handling the requisitioned lakers cut in sections for the eastward canal passage. Acquired 1948 by Harold J. Dixon and the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. and rebuilt 1949 for the general towing and Island winter ferry service. Canadian dimensions 75.9 x 20.0 x 9.6, Gross 100, Net 68. Soon transferred to the subsidiary Toronto Towing and Salvage Company Ltd. Known as one of the best icebreakers on Toronto Bay. Towed to Hamilton 1965 and scrapped at Strathearne Terminals by United Metals Ltd.
EBESS. (C.137926). Wooden tug, originally steam and later converted to diesel, built 1915 at Chatham, New Brunswick. 62.4 x 16.3 x 7.0, Gross 58, Net 17. Owned 1918 by Charles Reinsborrow, Chatham, N.B. Owner in 1924 and 1927 shown as Howard Smith Paper Mills Ltd., Montreal. Prior to World War II owned by J. R. Allard, Cross Point, Quebec. Requisitioned by the Canadian government for war use at Halifax. Sold 1945 by the Minister of Munitions and Supply, Ottawa, to the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. Dismantled at Toronto 1947.
ELSIE DORIS. (C.138184). Wooden tug built 1921 at Midland, Ont. 63.5 x 14.5 x 7.0, Gross 64, Net 22. Built for the Minister of Mines, Province of Ontario. Acquired by H. J. Dixon and the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. in the 1930's. Operated as a harbour tug at Toronto until November 1945 when her boilers and engine were removed. Hull towed out into Lake Ontario and scuttled in deep water.
FRANK W. (U.S. 120839). Steel tug built 1891 at Buffalo by the Union Drydock Company for F. W. Gilchrist, Alpena, Mich. 74.8 x 18.6 x 11.5, Gross 93. Net 46. Later acquired by Drake and Maytham, Buffalo. Absorbed into the fleet of the Great Lakes Towing Company, Cleveland, 1899. Retired as a "G-tug" in 1943 and sold 1948 to H. J. Dixon and the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. She does not appear to have ever been officially registered in Canada. Operated for a few weeks in 1949 but spent the rest of her time at the company dock in the Keating Channel, Toronto. She was partially stripped, apparently with the idea of repowering, but this was never accomplished. Scrapped at the yard during 1955.
A. E. GIBSON, (a) SIR JOHN. (C.133939). Wooden tug. Original date and place of build not shown in register but rebuilt 1902 at Sorel, Quebec. 81.2 x 17.3 x 8.0, Gross 94, Net 41. Owned 1914-1918 by the Minister of Public Works, Ottawa. Purchased early 1920's by H. J. Dixon and the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. During the spring thaw of 1925 she was swept from her Keating Channel dock by ice moving down the Don River. She was carried under the Cherry St. lift bridge which was in the closed position at the time. Her deckhouses were stripped off and the hull severely damaged. Rebuilt by Dixon at Toronto. Owned in 1927 by the Dominion Towing and Salvage Company Ltd., Midland, and in 1940 by Janin and Company Ltd., Montreal. Out of documentation by 1946 but disposition unknown.
H.J.D. No. 1 looked like this on December 10, 1955 while helping HERON BAY (I) under the Cherry Street Bridge, Toronto. Photo by J. H. Bascom.
H.J.D. NO. 1, (a) FINGLO (39). (C.152501). Wooden fishtug built 1925 at Port Stanley, Ont. for the Finlay Fish and Storage Company Ltd., Port Stanley. 77.1 x 20.8 x 8.0, Gross 83, Net 29. Acquired by the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. 1939. Soon after arriving at Toronto she was badly damaged by fire. Rebuilt as harbour tug, 84.0 x 20.8 x 8.0, Gross 67, Net 33. Remained in harbour service for the Toronto Towing and Salvage Company Ltd. until about 1961. Dismantled at the company yard. Hull scuttled in Lake Ontario in deep water.
H.J.D. NO. 2, (a) INTERNATIONAL (39). (C.173512). Iron tug built 1884 at Cleveland by the Globe Shipbuilding Company. 71.0 x 17.1 x 8.3, Gross 58, Net 22. Built at a cost of $15,000 and fitted with a high pressure engine. Commissioned in June 1884. Originally owned by the International Bridge Company which was controlled by the Grand Trunk Railway Company. The railway owned a bridge across the Niagara River between Fort Erie and Black Rock (Buffalo), the bridge having a draw for vessels passing up and down the river. Due to the strong river current, it was a requirement of the bridge company's charter that the owners provide a free tug service to assist ships passing through the draw. INTERNATIONAL was also ready to help vessels in trouble in the area. Acquired 1939 by the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. and was towed to Toronto where she was rebuilt and repowered with diesel engines. She was intended for Dixon's own use in Toronto harbour but was sold soon after commissioning to J. P. Porter and Sons Ltd., Montreal. They in turn sold her to the Minister of War Transport for the United Kingdom. Taken to Alexandria, Egypt, for service as a fire tug during World War II. Final disposition unknown.
HOME RULE. (C.97001). Wooden tug built 1890 at Thorold, Ont. 74.9 x 17.0 x 9.4, Gross 81, Net 45. Owned at one time by James Whalen and the Canadian Towing and Wrecking Company, Port Arthur. Owned 1914 by Miss A. M. Hackett, Amherstburg, Ont., and apparently was a unit of the Hackett family towing business. Owned 1918 by Canada Steamship Lines Ltd., Montreal. By 1920 she was owned by Henry J. Dixon and the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd., although she was not long a Dixon unit. Final disposition unknown.
LUCIA. (C.103969). Wooden tug built 1898 at Sorel, Que. 66.7 x 15.1 x 7.1, Gross 41, Net 28. By 1902 she was owned by Sincennes-McNaughton Line Ltd., Montreal, and stayed in their ownership into the first war. Owned 1918 by Mrs. Thomas Simpson, Montreal. Rebuilt 1918 at Sorel, 59.9 x 15.7 x 6.8, Gross 54, Net l[sic]. Owned 1924 by John E. Russell and Henry J. Dixon and apparently operated for the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. during this period. Owned 1927 by C. S. Boone Dredging and Construction Company Ltd., Toronto, of which several officers were also principals of Toronto Drydock. Final disposition unknown.
TUPPER PORTER, (a) FANNY ARNOLD (41). (C.85322). Wooden tug built 1882 at Owen Sound. 89.0 x 18.0 x 9.0, Gross 73, Net 50. Owned at least during the period 1902-1927 (if not longer) by the Spanish River Company, Spanish River, Ont. By 1940 she had passed to the Burke Towing and Salvage Company Ltd., Midland. Sold 1941 to J. P. Porter and Sons Ltd., Montreal. Acquired 1944 by the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. and largely rebuilt at Toronto. Remained active in their service until 1948. Dismantled at Toronto 1949.
PRINCE RAY. (C. 126395). Wooden tug built 1909 at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. 73.6 x 18.8 x 8.2, Gross 72, Net 39. Owned during the period 1914-1918 (and probably longer) by the W. J. Poupore Company Ltd., Montreal. Owned in 1923 and 1924 by Knox Bros., Montreal. By 1927 she was owned by Henry J. Dixon and was operated by the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. Sold about 1930. After a prolonged period of lay-up in the Welland Canal at Ramey's Bend, she was salvaged by the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. and was brought back to Toronto where the engine and boiler were removed. Hull towed out into Lake Ontario and scuttled in deep water.
SOGENADA and J.C. STEWART (right) are seen in this February 23, 1960 photo by J. H. Bascom. They have just tucked WILLIAM H. DANIELS into the Spadina Street slip at Toronto.
SOGENADA. (C.126766). Steel tug built 1909 at Rutherglen, Great Britain. 75.4 x 15.6 x 8.2, Gross 64, Net 6. Owned 1914 by the Minister of Public Works, Ottawa, and remained under this ownership until acquired by the Toronto Towing and Salvage Company Ltd. c.1957. Operated as a harbour tug at Toronto until the dissolution of the company 1965. Scrapped 1965 at Strathearne Terminals, Hamilton, by United Metals Ltd.
J. C. STEWART, (a) J. C. STEWART (18), (b) COL. M. J. McDONOUGH (46). (C.137896, U.S.213259). Steel icebreaking tug built 1915 by Johnston Brothers at Ferrysburg, Mich., for the Canadian Stewart Company Ltd., Toronto. 71.0 x 20.0 x 8.7, Gross 113, Net 30. Originally operated in Toronto harbour. Sold c.1918 to the U.S. government and operated in the service of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, stationed at Buffalo. Acquired November 1946 by the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. for use during the winter months under charter to the City of Toronto for the Island ferry service at a daily rental of $230. She had a capacity of 90 passengers. Later transferred to the Toronto Towing and Salvage Company Ltd. Operated on Toronto Bay and in towing duties on Lake Ontario and the Welland Canal until dissolution of the company in 1965. Towed to Hamilton and scrapped 1965 at Strathearne Terminals by United Metals Ltd.
GEORGE A. WALLACE (47), (b) FOUNDATION WALLACE. (C.170511). Steel fire tug built 1916 at Manitowoc, Wisconsin, for the city of Cleveland. 78.1 x 20.5 x 10.3, Gross 129, Net 66. For some reason she never appeared in the U.S. register of Merchant Vessels. After being laid up for a considerable period of time, she was acquired in the 1930's by the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd. and was rebuilt. Sold 1941 to Maritime Towing and Salvage Ltd., Halifax, a subsidiary of the Foundation Company of Canada Ltd. Saw service out of Halifax during World War II. She was back in Toronto in 1947 when Foundation was laying an intake pipe for the new Scarborough waterworks plant. Out of documentation by 1956 but final disposition unknown.
Although the company used a variety of colour schemes for its tugs in the early years, it settled on green hulls and red cabins during the last few years of operation. During this period, stacks were black with two narrow silver bands and a wide red band. An exception to this appeared in the summer of 1957 when J. C. STEWART and H.J.D. NO. 1 were used for the filming of the Canadian television series "Tugboat Annie". Unofficially renamed NARCISSUS and SALAMANDER respectively (although sometimes these names were reversed) for the filming, the two tugs were painted up with white cabins and white funnels with a narrow black smokeband.
There follows a listing of some of the major construction and rebuilding jobs done by the Toronto Drydock Company Ltd., together with some of the vessels dismantled by the firm over the years.
GARGANTUA, wooden tug - "Seafarer" hull completed 1923 for the Lake Superior Paper Company. Dixon had purchased the hull from Cowles Shipyard Company, Buffalo. It had been built for the U.S. government at Marine City but never completed.
G. R. GRAY (II), wooden tug - rebuilt from tug TRAVELLER c.1923 for the Lake Superior Paper Company.
JOYLAND, wooden freighter - refitted 1922 after grounding.
LUCIA, wooden tug - rebuilt c.1924.
LAKESIDE, former passenger steamer - rebuilt 1921 as wrecking tug JOSEPH L. RUSSELL.
HELSEA, steel tug - built 1927. Later owned by New Brunswick International Paper Company, Bathurst, N.B.
ATACAS, steel tug - built 1928. Later owned by Canadian International Paper Company, Montreal.
G. M. BRAZIER, tug - dismantled.
PARKS FOSTER, steel package freighter - refitted 1929 as (b) SUPERIOR forNorthwest Transportation Company Ltd.
PRINCE RAY, wooden tug - dismantled.
NORTHUMBERLAND, steel passenger steamer - rebuild of cabins for Port Dalhousie service.
DALHOUSIE CITY, steel passenger steamer - major bow repairs after the ramming of the pierhead at Port Dalhousie.
LYNN B., steel tug - refitted.
NED HANLAN, steel tug - built for the City of Toronto 1932.
SAM McBRIDE, steel ferry - built for the T.T.C. 1939.
STOIC, steel tug - refitted for Imperial Oil during World War II.
R.C.CO. TUG NO. 4, wooden tug - major replanking job.
C. W. CADWELL, steel sandsucker - refitted 1946.
THOMAS RENNIE, steel ferry - built 1951 for the T.T.C.
IMPERIAL LACHINE, steel tanker - converted to sandsucker NIAGARA 1953-54.
SKIPPER M., wooden tug - dismantled 1954.
SOULANGES, steel tug - rebuilt and dieselized 1955.
FRANK W., steel tug - dismantled 1955.
SIDNEY M., steel sandsucker - dismantled 1960.
T. J. CLARK, composite ferry - dismantled 1961.
Toronto Ferry Company and T.T.C. ferries - refitted and repaired as necessary over the years. | 2019-04-22T04:33:08Z | http://www.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/documents/scanner/08/06/default.asp?ID=c007 |
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98 message board entries found ...tell me more about the email icon.
Diane Phypers 16/07/2016 23:11 Olds, Alberta, Canada.
John Shayne Randall 28/06/2016 20:59 Peterborough, ON, Canada.
Mackenzie-Comyn Rowden 17/01/2014 06:47 Nanaimo, British Coulumbia, Canada.
Hey Ièm looking to trace my lineage as far back as possible. I want to get all the information about the family and history that relates myself and my relatives.
Don 07/10/2013 21:28 Minesing, Ontario, Canada.
Seeking info on Major PERCY ROWDEN. He served in the Army Service Corps pre WWI, during WWI and stayed in the Royal Army Service Corps after the war. By 1936 he was a senior NCO (WO CL1) when he was commissioned as a Lieut. During WWII he was promoted to Captain then Major. Acting Lieut-Col when he retired in 1948. Any info appreciated.
romy.thomson 15/09/2012 01:19 rastatt, Germany.
Diane Adams 12/04/2010 17:42 Calgary, Canada, .
Douglas Billington 30/01/2009 18:37 Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Hi, I am looking for information on Rowdens from the Lincolnshire-Grantham area. Specific people include Joseph and Sarah Ann born in 1848-50 and 1852, married in 1881. In the 1911 census they are listed as Rawden, but found as Rowden everywhere else.
Darrell Hawthorne 15/07/2007 01:01 Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
Richard Rowden 24/11/2006 16:02 Oshawa, ON, Canada.
Meredith Rowden 04/11/2006 02:29 Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
Interesting project. Congratulations. See no ties with the Llantwit, South Molton or Newton Rowdens.
c blair rowden 17/08/2006 12:21 kitchener, ont, can.
hey kent yes we are first cousins.my email addy is [email protected] hold of me bud would love to chat with you..
Kent Rowden 17/08/2006 03:10 Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Hi Cecil. I believe you are my first cousin. My dad was Jack Arthur (younger brother to your dad Cecil). My grandfather Rowden is Stanley Edward. I had the good fortune to visit your dad when he was living in Red Deer. I looked him up in the early 90's. Sorry to hear about his passing. Mom divorced dad when I was little so never got to know you guys or uncle Bill or Aunt Phyllis.
cecil blair rowden 15/08/2006 15:06 kitchener, ontario, canada.
Laura Blore 04/08/2006 19:23 Headingley, Manitoba.
I have recently become involved in learning of my grandfather Kancel Rowden, I don't believe A Rowden was able to get through to my aunt Barb Roschuk (Rowden) but I would dearly appreciate any information you may have at this time. My email address is current and read through every day, Thank you.
Kent Rowden 25/01/2006 19:58 Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Hi Gavin. Been awhile. Thought I would drop in and say hi.
Eric Rowden 14/01/2006 19:28 Kitchener, Ontario, canada.
Rick Rowden 04/06/2005 20:56 Oshawa, ON, Canada.
Barb Roschuk 22/04/2005 18:29 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Hello again, I am just sending a quick update that on my previous post, my contact email was listed as .com when the full address should've been [email protected]. If anyone has information that would be helpful to me as per my last post, please contact me. Thank-You!
Trevor Stanley Rowden 17/04/2005 23:08 Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada.
This is very interesting. I have been looking up a bit of our family history tying to figure out where we were from originally. My grandfather, George William Thomas Rowden was born in Canada but I'm pretty sure that his father was from England. I have found another site that has a bit of our info on it. http://www.rowdensurname.org/pedigree/rowden15.htm I think that we also have some relatives in Dublin and the US as well. Thanks.
A Rowden 17/04/2005 05:21 Ontario, Canada.
Barb Roschuk (nee Rowden) 06/04/2005 20:56 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
I am very happy to have been pointed in the direction of this site by my sister Sharon. There has been a lot of useful info and interesting facts about the Rowdens. I have many questions about my family history. My father was Kancel James Rowden of Port Hope, Ontario. He had 2 children with Eileen, and 7 with my mother Jean (deceased). If anyone has any additional information on this please contact me through my daughters email, [email protected]. Thank-You and keep up the excellent work on the site!!
sharon blore 03/04/2005 02:56 .
Sheila Bruce 17/02/2005 02:26 Mineapolis, MN, US.
I'm looking for more on GEMINA Rowden (my ggrandmother on my dad's side who came to the US from Port Hope area in thye late 1800's) and her parents and siblings. I have everything from this website (so far anyway) but am wondering what anyone else has (family stories, etc)and if anyone knows how the 1912 death date for her was found. I believe it was 1930.
mike nuttley 16/01/2005 19:50 guelph, ontario, canada.
i am related to Howard Henry Rowden .and his father came from Whitstable, kent, England. And i'm also looking for some informetion on the Surname Nuttley.
Jonathon Bradley Rowden 15/01/2005 23:53 Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Hello from Canada. Just wanted to say hello to all Rowdens.My Grandfather was from Whitstable,so if any Rowdens still living there we could be relatives so let me know if you wish. Thank you.
Jonathon Bradley Rowden 15/01/2005 08:46 Guelph , Ontario, Canada.
Hello from Canada! My Grandfather was originally from Whitstable Kent England. I would like to hear from other Rowden's in that area. Who knows we may be relatives?
Philip Rowden 15/01/2005 06:25 Harriston, Ontario, Canada.
Leslie Rowden 03/01/2005 17:57 Whitstable, kent, England.
My name is Leslie Rowden but i'm not from canada i'm from Whitstable in England, where the sur-name Rowden originally came from 450 years ago.
Juliette Florence Rowden 05/12/2004 05:24 Ridgeway, Ontario, Canada.
Julie (Rowden) Tufts 05/12/2004 05:06 Ridgeway, Ontario, Canada.
Hi My name is Juliette Florence Rowden (Tufts) and presently reside in Ridegway, Ontario, Can. My parents are Margaret Elizabeth (Wallace) Rowden of Arbrouth, Scotland and Harold Albert Edward Rowden of England. They had 4 children, Michael, Allan, Dororthy and Juliette. Grandparents were Osborne Rowden and Lillian (second wife) of England. Harold Rowden's siblings were, Frank, Arthur and step sister, Muriel (Rowden) Haines. Osborne Rowden's first wife had 3 sets of twins. Harold was one twin with his twin passing away at birth. Art and Frank were twins with Arthur dying during WW1 and is buried in Italy. To the best of my knowledge the other set of twins dies at childbirth. Anyone knowing of any other Rowden history and connected to Osborne Rowden of Lewisham, Egland and his first wife, please e-mail me at [email protected] Thankyou.
Shae Rowden 26/11/2004 11:54 Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
I'm 11 years and I am a family of 4 but my whole family date backs 100s of years ago.
Eric Rowden 11/11/2004 01:40 Kitchener, Ontario, canada.
Michael Patrick Rowden 07/09/2004 22:03 Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
David Garnett 22/06/2004 05:36 Victoria, B.C., Canada.
Great site! Would like to hear from any descendants of William Rowden (1863-1919) and Anna Maria Hudson (1865-19540 I am related through the Hudson side and would like to exchange information. Regards.
John G Rowden 19/05/2004 20:04 Winnipeg, Mb, Ca.
Debbie Raymer 16/05/2004 01:45 Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada.
What a wonderful site! My mother was a Rowdon, Joyce Phyllis, listed on your site. I am very pleased to find all this info about my Rowdon ancestors.
WILLIAM PAUL ROWDEN 05/03/2004 21:27 KITCHENER, ONTARIO, CANADA.
Leslie Deines 29/12/2003 21:25 Sherwood Park, Alberta , Canada.
Greetings from Canada - Very happy to find the Rowden Page.Don't know how I've missed it for so long as I have been doing research for 25 years. Thanks to Gavin for his prompt reply. It allows me to put my Grandmother on the family tree.
Matthew-James Rowden 15/12/2003 17:30 WINNIPEG, Canada, Manitoba.
Im 15 and i just heard of the site because my parents told me about it. I like the site, I never knew there was so many Rowdens. I hope there is more out there.
My maiden name is Rowden and I would like to find out if I have any ancestors in Europe, do not think there are any in Canada. My grandparents immigrated to Canada I believe in the 30's. My grandfather's name was Melvin Thomas Rowden, married to Jean Riddell. I think my grandparents immigrated from Scotland.
Leslie Rowdon (my sister, another guest signed here) mentioned this site to me. For a bit more details about our direct family, see her comments.
I cannot believe how many Rowdens there are. We have the best family tree of all!!!!
My great great grandfather was Thomas Rowdon born in Bow,Devonshire who married a Mary Avery from North Tauton,Devon. They were parents of Alfred, Charles, Mary A., Jane, and Thomas (my great grandfather).Alfred was born in Barking,Essex and all the other children in Cheshunt, Herts. My greatgrandfather Thomas Edward Rowdon born 2 June 1874 in Cheshunt, Herts married Clara Abbot born 6 August 1874 in Cheshunt,Herts. They had 2 children: Edward Thomas Rowdon(my grandfather) born 28th June 1901 in Cheshunt and Olive M, born in 1905. Thomas Edward came to Canada between 1908 and 1913. Is there any connection to anyone out there? Would love to hear from you.
I am a direct descendant of William Rowden( -1714) from the Steeple Langford site. Thank you for your Christmas greetings Gavin. Will be happy to share what info I have on my English and Canadian family trees.
Born in Port Hope Sept. 19 1940 son of Roy John Rowden & Louise [Marden] I have 4 sisters Jean, Marie, Lorraine, Doris. I was married to Joan West [deceased] 1985 , 3 children Chris Cathy Cindy . Married to Cindy Borutkie 1986 also have a stepson Stephan Bob. My cousin Gladys Andrus has our family tree dated back to the 1800,s . any info is welcome.
I AM ASTONISHED AT THE NUMBER OF ROWDENS IN THIS SECTION....KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.. I'M RELATED ON MY DAD'S SIDE WHO......WAS BORN IN PORTHOPE ONT.
It is very interesting to see such a large family history, I am the granddaughter of the late Roy Rowden and Louisa Rowden (Marden). My father is Forrest Rowden, and he is 1 of the 5 children. There is 4 sisters Lorraine, Doris, Jean and Marie. I am married to Dennis Sherwin and have a daughter Breanne Michelle Sherwin. Thanks for sharing this website.
Just a quick Hello to all those Rowdens out there. I am part of sept 25. I have just graduated as a Primary School Teacher and looking forward to my summer holidays. I am trying to contact some of my relatives in Saskatoon in Canada possiblt with the surname Nelson. If anyone has any information it would be greatfully recieved.
Hi everyone. My name is Jennifer Elizabeth and I have 2 older brothers named Michael Patrick and Mark Edward John who currently live in Ontario, Canada. Our father, Michael Edward John is the oldest of 4 children born to Margaret Elizabeth (nee Wallace) and Harold Edward Albert Rowden of Lewisham in Loughborough in July of 1943. My father imigrated to Canada when he was only 3 months old. My grandfather, Harold, was a Gunman in the Royal Canadian Artillery. My grandparents last known address was 18 Sandrock Road in Lewisham. My father was born at Maternity Hospital Long Whatton Castle Donington RD (at least that's what is says on his birth certificate.) I believe that my great-grandfather's name was Osborne. My grandfather was one of 6 children (3 sets of twins) born to Osborne and spouse (name unknown). I have more information regarding my family such as facts and a family tree but I have presently misplaced it (in the process of moving). If anyone believes they may have connections to me, I would love to hear from you.
Hello This is a really neat site. I'm Adam Rowden, originally from the Oshawa Ontario area, son of James K Rowden who originated from Port Hope. Currently living in California USA, but much of my family is still living in the Oshawa area.
I am originally from the Wiltshire / Somerset branch of the family and hav ebeen in North America since 1983.
My father was John Brown Rowden and was born in South Shields, Durham County in 1900. He came to Canada about 1924. Died in 1940. His parents were David Brown Rowden, Born Nov.28, 1872, and Mary Jane Webster, Born July 26, 1873. Believe they were married in South Shields but born in Sunderland.
I have always been very intrested, not only history, but my family history as well. I am so glad to see that there are so many other people just as interested. My knowledge of my family history goes back to my great grandfather Clifford Rowden born 1898. I hope to find more about the Rowden family, and this will provide a great start. Thanks!
We were wondering if the Rowdens had a family crest.
Neat site,my mother is a Rowden Whos grandparents on fathers side were william (1883-1933) and Margaret nee Murphy (1882-1965). Immigrated to canada(Manitoba) about 1910 from Ireland by boat.Just looking for more info.
Very pleased to find your site. My gr.gr. grandfather was William Rowdon (1848-1923). He was born in Bow, Devonshire, England- son of John Rowdon & Elizabeth Clement. Sibling thought to be: Thomas of Torquay, Jessie (Gayer), Emma (Burfield), Abraham and possibly others. William came to Canada about 1856 and later settled in St. Catharines , Ontario He married Mary Isobella Bennett, had a large family. When researching as a teen my grandmother always reminded me not to get the spelling of "Rowdon" mixed with other spellings. Will visit your site often. Would like to hear from other "Rowdon" researchers.
I feel like I have struck gold! I am amazed at the work that you have done for the Rowden name!! For years I had only met a few Rowden relatives and they were in the Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada area. Was involved in the ministry, am a journeyman electrician, worked in in fire protection devices, and now a career change... computer information systems. I hope to get in contact with more of the Rowden family and discuss a lot of history/stories. my icq number is 32361934, under the name of "Johnny" Wish you all the best.
Just surfing the web and came across this site. I am currently searching for Canadian Military Service Records for my Great Grandfather and Grandfather. I'll be sure to tell the rest of my family (Guelph Kitchener area) about this site!
Hi Gavin I have an bit of an update for the history. Under George Rowden family tree (B c.1801) the marriage date for my father Jack Arthur Rowden and June McArthur (my mother and father is 12 December 1952. As well this summer I tried looking up my uncle Cecil Rowden in Red Deer, (last visited in 1991) however he is no longer listed in the phone book. I was trying to track down dates of marriage for Cecil, Phyllis and William (Bill). My father Jack Rowden was deceased in December 1971 so that can be added to the record as well. Any questions let me know. Sorry it took so long to get back to you.
Interesting site. I'm a descendant of Rowdens who originally immigrated from Bedford, England. Seven brothers, including a Septimus. I was recently told of an exhibit in the Imperial War Museum, on women who were spying for England during the WWII, I think. One of them was Diane, or Diana Rowden. She apparntly was killed in France, during the war . Any info on origin would be appreciated.
I am researching Rowden surnames throughout Canada to, hopefully, put out a history book for interested family members. Right now my search is mainly in Ontario. I am looking for any younger members of the family who might have links to different branches and know of others still alive willing to share their history. I am making an email mailing list for anyone interested. Any stories, facts, history about your part of the tree, would be appreciated and welcomed. I have hundreds of pictures that I am willig to scan and share with others, as I know they are Rowden's, but i am unsure exactly who is who.Thanks!
My wife Karen is doing research on my name. Born in Oshawa, father from Oshawa; his father Earl Thomas Rowden from Port Hope; His father John Thomas Rowden from Port Hope. Thats as far as she can trace. Any linkage would be appreciated. Great site!
Terrific Site!!! I'm doing tons of research on the Rowdens from Port Hope. I've noticed quite a few people on this site who are interested in the same info. I'm going to establish an e-mail list for any people who can contribute / or want info on the Port Hope Rowdens. E-mail me if you'd like to be put on the list.
Hi Gavin. I got this site info from my brother Rob Rowden in Ottawa, Ontario as well as some family lineage info and figured I'd check it out. Great site.
Got info from my brother Rob Rowden and decided to take a look around. I'm originally from Port Hope, Ontario.
Very interesting page. My family came from England (I don't know where exactly) in or around 1851 and settled in Port Hope Ontario on Lake Ontario. Thanks for the info. Rob R.
It's nice to see so many people with the same name as me-my whole life I've never known any Rowden's that weren't related to me. My father is from Somerset, England and he has traced our family back to the mid 19th century. I'd love to find out if I have any long lost cousins!
I happened upon this site last week and noticed my 1st cousin's remarks (Barb Grandy). I am the daughter of Jack Martin Rowden, twin brother of Audrey Rowden Pomeroy. She has given most of the information but I would like to add my great grandfather was John Henry Rowden, also born in Port Hope, Walter Rowden was his brother and lived in Oshawa, Ontario. Other sisters were Sue, Kate & Mary Grace who married a Haskill. If anyone has any further information on this line I would be glad to hear from you.
I'm not sure if I've already done this once but thought I'd just make sure I'm here. Please delete one of these messages (Preferably this one) should you check and find two. Thanks in advance. Will be back soon. Neato!@!!!
My mother's maiden name was Rowden. Full name Audrey Grace Rowden. She was born in Port Hope, Ontario Canada in 1924. She was one of seven children. Her fathers name was Percival Rowden and her mothers maiden name was Ellen Hardcastle Martin. There are only three of the seven children still living. All are in Port Hope I was just checking the web for my own maiden name Pomeroy and decided to check into the name Rowden. If I can try and get you any information, please just e-mail me. Great site. I haven't looked at it all yet but am going to do so now. Keep up the great work.
WAS JUST TOLD OF THIS SITE... HAD TO CHECK IT OUT.... I AM A ROWDEN ON MY FATHERS SIDE... NEVER REALIZED THERE WERE SO MANY WITH THE NAME ROWDEN.... WILL HAVE TO RETURN TO THIS SITE OFTEN. NOW HAVE IT BOOKMARKED..
Very astonished,and pleased to see the Rowden name so large. Would like to keep tabs here and find more info into the history of the name. Excellent job on a great site!! | 2019-04-18T23:14:46Z | http://rowdensurname.org/mboard/board_res.asp?reg=1 |
HAMNET would like to congratulate the 79 new radio amateurs who passed their South African exams this month, and welcome them to the world of communications, electronics and experimentation. We hope you will stay with us for many seasons, and teach us as much as we can teach you. Selfishly, we hope some of you have already decided to join HAMNET, to use your skills in emergency communications and during sporting or community events. Welcome aboard, indeed!
In the wake of Category 4 Hurricane Willa, battering the Pacific coast of Mexico, Greg Mossop G0DUB posted news that The Federación Mexicana de Radioexperimentadores (FMRE), Mexico’s IARU member-society, is asking radio amateurs to avoid 7060, 7130, and 14120 kHz, where Category 4 Hurricane Willa emergency nets are operating (in Spanish).
As of 1200 UTC, on 23rd October, the storm was some 240 Km south-southwest of Mazatlan, with maximum sustained winds of 210km/h. Willa was moving north at 8 km/h and was expected to make landfall later that day along the west-central coast of mainland Mexico. Mexico’s National Emergency Net activated the nets yesterday. Alternate systems include IRLP, node 0077, and DMR TE 33450 of the FMRE.
The National Hurricane Centre (NHC) considers a Category 4 hurricane a “major” disaster, with “catastrophic damage” likely. Thanks to Benjamin Kuo, AI6YR.
Far away from the US mainland, American citizens are reeling from a direct hit by Super Typhoon Yutu.
Writing in Grist, Eric Holthaus notes that, during its landfall on Thursday, Yutu lashed the Mariana Islands with more than a foot of rain, coastal flooding in excess of 15 feet, waves the size of five-story apartment buildings, and winds of 290 km/h.
Saipan and Tinian are the two most-populated islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the central Pacific Ocean about 12800 kilometres from Washington, D.C. — nearly twice as far away as Honolulu. Both islands took a direct hit. About 50,000 people live in the Commonwealth, and after Yutu, they’re fighting for survival.
Most structures have lost their roofs, and even the leaves have been stripped from trees and bushes, local lawmaker Edwin Propst told the Associated Press. Closed circuit video from near the point of landfall showed an entire hotel lobby destroyed in seconds.
Just hours after landfall, local news reports said that food, drinking water, and fuel were already in short supply. “This damage is just horrendous, it’s going to take months and months for us to recover,” Propst said.
If recent history holds, he’ll be right. Yutu is the third tropical cyclone (the scientific term for typhoons and hurricanes) in just over a year to plunge a remote U.S. territory into humanitarian crisis. Last year, Hurricane Irma’s devastation in the U.S. Virgin Islands was eclipsed just days later when Hurricane Maria made a direct hit in Puerto Rico.
Like so many recent hurricanes, Yutu rapidly strengthened just before landfall, going from a Category 1 to a Category 5 in just 36 hours. Waters near Yutu were 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, consistent with the effects of climate change and a key factor in rapidly strengthening storms.
Residents of the Islands are set to be without electricity and running water for months, after the category 5 storm wiped out the territory’s infrastructure.
A US military plane is bringing food, water and other emergency supplies to the 50,000 people living on the islands.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) said it would aim to help restore power, reopen ports and airports and ensure mobile phone towers can operate on emergency power until utility services return.
At least one person was killed and several people were injured by spraying glass and other debris, as winds of 25 km/h pummelled the islands on Thursday.
The only hospital on the Northern Marianas said it received 133 people in its emergency room on Thursday. Three patients had severe injuries that required surgery.
A 44-year-old woman taking shelter in an abandoned building died when it collapsed in the storm, according to the governor’s office’s Facebook page.
The hospital in Saipan was running on backup generators but otherwise operating normally, said Esther Lizama Muna, CEO of the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. She said she expects more patients to seek medical help on Friday and is worried the hospital could run out of medical supplies.
Yutu has now passed the Northern Mariana Islands by, and is plodding on across the Western Pacific, where it is still expected to bring powerful winds and torrential rain to the Philippines and Taiwan next week, endangering even more residents.
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the third hurricane still in our minds, residents of the Florida Panhandle are still reeling from the destruction caused by Hurricane Michael. As a snapshot of where they stand now, 16 days after the storm, about 70,000 customers remain without power, some water and sewer systems are not working, and cellphone service is spotty.
A complete breakdown of communications during and after the storm crippled the emergency response, and now it hinders recovery.
It has been a major problem throughout the region, where hundreds of people have been reported missing because the phones aren’t working. It’s also hampered search and rescue operations because first responders can’t talk to one another.
Finally, Wilderness Search and Rescue (WSAR) in the Western Cape were involved in two group rescues amongst hikers this week.
In the first, a group of hikers along the multi day Whale Trail in the De Hoop Nature Reserve Overberg, needed help on Tuesday, and two of them were casevacced to a hospital in Swellendam by the Air Mercy Service (AMS) rescue helicopter. The rest of the group continued on foot to a point where they were safely off the trail.
In the second, a group of 3 hikers on Table Mountain, who were unfamiliar with their route, became disorientated, and started to become dehydrated, in the hot sun on Friday the 26th. Rescuers drove up to the Back Table from Constantia Neck and proceeded on foot in the direction of the Smuts Track, where the group was found, assessed, found to be well enough to be walked out, and were proceeding towards Kitchen Ravine, when they were met by 4×4 support vehicles and brought safely down.
This week’s heat wave has indeed been intense in the Western Cape.
Our National HAMNET Director, Glynn Chamberlain, ZS6GLN has announced that the SARL council has appointed Grant Southey (ZS1GS) as the new HAMNET Deputy National Director. Grant will also continue as regional director for HAMNET Western Cape as well.
Glynn thanks Grant for taking on this role and looks forward to his positive attitude and enthusiasm going forward, and hopes we will all join him in welcoming Grant to his new position and give him all our support!
The ARES E-Letter notes that more vehicles have non-steel roof panels constructed of fibreglass, aluminium, or carbon fibre these days. This makes placing a temporary mag-mount antenna on the roof difficult. We have run into this issue several times in the past when our radio operators were riding in Support And Gear (SAG), sweep, or pace vehicles during special events or riding along with a Jeep Patrol in the mountains. Recently, John was assisting a neighbouring ARES region with a special event and was riding in a new law enforcement vehicle that had an aluminium roof panel. The solution was to use an HT Window Mount Clip. There are BNC, SMA, and female SMA versions of this clip so you can easily attach an HT antenna and get it outside of the vehicle. It is small enough to throw in a ruck sack if you know you will be operating from a vehicle other than your own. Operators may find other uses for this mount such as to get an antenna outside of a room, or to get some extra height for an HT antenna. It may not have the same ground plane effects of a mag-mount, but it definitely works.
Thanks to John Bloodgood, KD0SFY, for this suggestion.
News4JAX reports that the North Florida American Radio Relay League is looking for local amateur radio operators to help facilitated communication in areas of the Panhandle hit hardest by Hurricane Michael.
“During the first 24-48 hours after Michael made landfall, the only communications that were available in several of the impacted counties was through HF (high frequency) radio and amateur radio operators,” said Scott Roberts, with the NFARR.
Several counties with damage to critical infrastructure remain without any form of communication. In some areas, the only method of communication between shelters and emergency management is through ham radio.
A handful of volunteers were deployed from Duval County this week to assist at shelters in the Panhandle. But more are needed to help relay information and direct resources inside the affected areas.
“If they need cots, more food, or they’re running low on anything, they would pass that information over radio to the state emergency operations centre, or the resource centres to get them sent to the shelters,” Roberts said.
Volunteers could be deployed for as long as seven days. They will need to bring their own amateur radio gear, as well as food, water, a sleeping bag and other personal supplies.
The 25-meter Dwingeloo Radio Telescope in the Netherlands has received photos of the dark side of the moon, transmitted by the Chinese Longjiang-2 lunar satellite (DSLWP-B), Lunar-OSCAR 94 (LO-94). One especially dramatic image shows the far side of the moon with Earth in the background, taken by the Longjiang-2 satellite and transmitted by an onboard Amateur Radio transceiver. The Dwingeloo Radio Telescope had been restored by the C.A. Muller Radio Astronomy Station (or CAMRAS) PI9CAM group.
“This image represents the culmination of several observing sessions spread over the past few months where we used the Dwingeloo telescope in collaboration with the Chinese team from Harbin University of Technology, who built the radio transceiver on board Longjiang-2, and with radio amateurs spread across the globe,” a CAMRAS report said. “During these sessions, we tested receiving telemetry through low-bit rate and error-resistant digitally modulated transmissions, as well as the JT4G modulation scheme designed by radio amateur and Nobel prize winning astrophysicist Joe Taylor, K1JT, for weak-signal moonbounce experiments.” Other images are of the lunar surface, lens flares, and the starry sky as seen from lunar orbit.
The Longjiang-2 transceiver was designed to allow radio amateurs to downlink telemetry and relay messages through a satellite in lunar orbit, as well as to command it to take and downlink images. Some Earth-bound radio amateurs and sky watchers have already received images from the moon-orbiting satellite.
Longjiang-2 was launched last May into a lunar transfer orbit and deployed as a secondary payload with the Queqiao relay satellite as part of the Chang’e 4 mission. The satellite will test low-frequency radio astronomy and space-based interferometry; no transponder is aboard.
In preparation for the mission and discussion of the possibilities of the antennas and receivers in the radio telescope, MingChuan Wei, BG2BHC, and Hu Chaoran, BG2CRY, both of the Harbin Institute of Technology, visited Harry Keizer, PE1CHQ, and Jan van Muijlwijk, PA3FXB, of CAMRAS.
The Chang’e 4 mission will mark the first-ever attempt at a soft landing on the far side of the moon. The Chang’e-4 lander and rover are scheduled to launch in December.
The spacecraft transmits on 70 centimetres (435.400/436.400 MHz) with 250/500 bps GMSK using 10 kHz wide FM single-channel data, with concatenated codes or JT4G.
Thanks to this week’s ARRL Letter for the report.
At the top of the EMCOMMS list this weekend is news of Hurricane Michael’s effect on the Southern United States.
The ARRL reports that an array of Amateur Radio public service assets was active as Hurricane Michael — now a tropical storm — made landfall near Mexico Beach on the Florida Panhandle on October 10, with devastating 250 km/h winds. The storm is believed to be the first Category 4 or stronger hurricane to hit the Florida Panhandle, and the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) warned of life-threatening storm surges as well as hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall.
The Hurricane Watch Net activated on October 10th and closed operations the following day.
WX4NHC, the Amateur Radio station at the National Hurricane Centre, was active to receive observed weather information and data via Amateur Radio to aid forecasters.
The VoIP Hurricane Net activated on October 10th to support communication with the National Hurricane Centre.
The Southern Territory Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network (SATERN) stood down on October 11th. SATERN was requested to provide Amateur Radio operators for Pensacola, Panama City, Tallahassee, and Tampa, as well as some local units in Georgia, and at Divisional Headquarters in Atlanta.
The ARRL North Florida and West Central Florida sections assisted SATERN with additional operators in Pensacola, Panama City, Tallahassee, and Tampa. North Florida Section ARES was at full activation.
Miller Norton, W4EMN, the Communications Watch Officer at the Duval County Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) in Jacksonville, Florida, was monitoring SARnet — a UHF-linked repeater network in Florida — when he heard an urgent call for help that needed to be sent to the State EOC in Tallahassee. All other forms of communication were out, and Norton was able to relay the message via Amateur Radio. He also passed along messages and requests from the Jackson County EOC to the American Red Cross. Norton said officials in Tallahassee and Jackson County were both incredibly grateful for the way the SARnet system functioned during the weather emergency.
Jackson County Emergency Coordinator Ricky Whittington, KD4AST, was deployed to the county EOC in Marianna.
The incident took out the HF antenna, which has since been restored. Whittington said the internet failed, as did cell service for a while. Hams have been passing material and resource orders to the State EOC via HF and SARnet. Whittington reported “total devastation of Bay, Jackson, and Gulf counties,” with loss of electrical power and water service, in addition to damage in Franklin, Holmes, and Leon counties. “[The] only mode of communications after the eye came across was ham radio, until we got minimal cell service a few hours ago,” he reported.
The ARRL Emergency Response Team has been coordinating with Field Organization leadership in ARRL Sections affected by the storm, as well as with WX4NHC, the HWN, VoIP Hurricane Net, Department of Homeland Security SHARES, and US Army MARS.
Thanks to the ARRL for the report.
As of Saturday afternoon, the death toll from Hurricane Michael stood at 14.
A message from Greg Mossop G0DUB of IARU Region 1 says that it is a busy weekend in the Region with two major exercises and at least one emergency happening.
In Oman Younis A41MA reports that as Tropical Storm Luban heads towards Oman and Yemen, the National Committee of Civil Defence has deployed resources to the South of the country ready to deal with the flooding predicted to hit the area. An initial four amateur radio volunteers are present to help provide links to any isolated locations. This operation is initially on VHF but HF is ready to be used if required. Storms in this area generally go under-reported but are just as severe as other disasters with the previous two tropical cyclones in the Arabian Sea claiming nearly 300 lives.
Finally Radio Amateurs in Romania are participating in an European Community Exercise in their country. ModEx 2018 will call for the use of 3710 and 7130kHz along with VHF/DMR.
All exercises and actual emergencies should be expected to identify as ’emergency exercise’ or ‘exercise’ on the air. When these events are watched by representatives from our Administrations, it is important that Amateur Radio is seen positively, so please allow the operators room to operate.
And Jose Mendez EA9CD informed us yesterday about the start of that FIELD DAY 2018 in Spain, where there were several special stations on the bands on 20m, 40m and on UHF, VHF and 6m, in addition to the DMR, C4FM and D-star modes. Links were also to be made via Winlink, and a Hamnet Network was deployed by EG5FD to provide data support. This exercise ended at 16h00 UTC last night.
And in the city of Palu on the island of Saluwesi in Indonesia, 2 weeks after the earthquake and tsunami, the “Save the Children” organization is still receiving 20 missing-children reports a day. These are children separated from their parents, or amongst the estimated 5000 people buried in the landslides mentioned in last week’s report, or children being looked for by concerned relatives other than parents, who are desperately hoping the children have survived, even though their parents are missing presumed dead.
The overall number of children still missing is believed to be in the thousands. It’s unclear how many are still alive. An unknown number of bodies remain buried beneath neighbourhoods where the soil liquefied after the quake.
Unidentified children live in tent cities in several aid stations for separated children that humanitarian groups have set up across Palu, the city closest to the earthquake’s epicentre, looked after by social workers and United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund officials. The monumental task of reuniting families or managing orphaned children is going to take a long time. We can only applaud the wonderful dedication of these conscientious workers. | 2019-04-21T04:34:58Z | http://hamnet.co.za/2018/10/ |
وأكدت اللجنة في بيانها أن المؤتمر سيبحث دور الفلسطينيين في القارة الامريكية والشتات حيث تعقد ورش عمل خاصة حول التمثيل السياسي الفلسطيني وتطبيق حق اللاجئين الفلسطينين في العودة ، و دور الحركة الطلابية في الجامعات ، فضلاً عن تنظيم الشبيبة والناشئة وتفعيل دور حركة التضامن مع الشعب الفلسطيني وحملات الدفاع عن الاسرى والاسيرات في سجون الاحتلال.
وأعلنت اللجنة عن اكتمال تشكيل لجنتي الاعلام والتواصل على مستوى القارة ، بمشاركة العشرات من النشطاء في المدن الأمريكية والكندية . كما تم إطلاق موقعاً إلكترونياً خاصاً للمؤتمر وتحديد أهم الندوات وورشات العمل واللجان الوظيفية واللوجستية.
الفلسطينية الكندية في مقاطعة برتش كولمبيا واذاعة ” صوت فلسطين ” إضافة إلى عدد من أعضاء ولجان مناهضة العنصرية الاسرائيلية وغيرها .
ويستضيف المؤتمر عددا من الفنانين والمبدعين العرب وفرقة العودة للدبكة الشعبية والفنانة الفلسطينية نسرين حجاج . وضيوف من فلسطين المحتلة وشخصيات من دول المنافي والمهاجر .
ويسعى المؤتمر إلى تنظيم أوسع كتلة ضغط شعبية للنهوض بدور الحركة الوطنيه الفلسطينية في الشتات ولمواجهة الحركة الصهيونية وحماية حق الشعب الفلسطيني في اختيار ممثليه والمشاركة في إعادة تأسيس وبناء هيئاتة الوطنيه الموحدة.
On this International Day Against Racial Discrimination, in an historic vote at the largest students’ union in Canada, York University’s undergraduate students’ union, the York Federation of Students, voted overwhelmingly in favour of a resolution to endorse the Global Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid.
The resolution was drafted in response to the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel as a means to pressure it to comply with international law and to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; allow Palestinian refugees their internationally guaranteed right to return to their homes and villages; and grant equal rights to Palestinian citizens of Israel.
With 18 votes in favour and 2 opposed, the board of the York Federation of Students passed the resolution to endorse the BDS campaign, as well as demand that York University abide by the BDS call; specifically urging the University to withdraw its investments from Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Amphenol and other companies that are selling weapons and military equipment to Israel .
“The oppression of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli state is not some far off issue that we can choose to ignore. We are already deeply implicated in the human rights violations of the Israeli State through our investments in the above-mentioned companies. We do not have the privilege to remain ‘neutral’ on this issue,” said Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) York collective member Huda Al-Sarraj.
In November of this academic year, SAIA York achieved its first BDS success with the passing of a BDS motion at the York University Graduate Students’ Association (GSA). SAIA York now hopes to bring its demand for divestment to the York University Administration by lobbying for the implementation of a socially responsible investment policy. With the support of the GSA and the YFS, as well as the TA’s, GA’s and contract faculty union, CUPE 3903, which passed a BDS motion in 2006, SAIA York will now demand an end to the investment of university funds into companies that profit from violations of international law and human rights.
The following piece, by Reham Alhelsi, was published at A Voice from Palestine. We re-publish it here today with greetings, salutes and love to all of the Palestinian mothers who nourish children and the land, nurture Palestinian society, and lead, march and fight in the struggle.
On Mother’s day, as the Hannoun wakes up, and as the almond tree blossoms and you wear your green and red dress, we celebrate you. On this day, we celebrate the land, our heritage and our home, we celebrate you mother Palestine, the mother of us all. We celebrate your daughters: our mothers, our sisters, our comrades, who have carried the flame of resistance, protected it and kept it burning. We celebrate your daughters: the martyrs, the prisoners, the injured, the revolutionaries, the workers, the farmers, we celebrate Palestinian mothers. We celebrate your daughters: the mother of the martyr, the mother of the prisoner, the mother of the injured, the mother of the revolutionary, the mother of the worker, the mother of the farmer, the mother of every Palestinian. On this day, as we celebrate the mothers of Palestine, I write to you and to your daughters who are now with you, who have become part of you. On this day, I write to Palestinian mothers who sacrificed their lives for you mother Palestine, those who sacrificed their lives for us. Today, I write to the mothers who were killed while protecting their children, their homes and their land. On this day, I write to the mothers who were killed by Zionist terror gangs, by the brutal occupation with its bullets, tanks, drones, its dungeons, siege and its network of death-traps. I write to the mothers who are always on our minds, whose names we have printed in our memory, whose stories and sacrifices tell your story mother Palestine.
On Mother’s Day, tell Hilweh Zeidan that we remember her on this day and every day. Tell her that we remember her courage, defying the bullets of the Zionist terrorists, standing by her husband and her son as they defend their home, as they defend Deir Yassin from the killers. Tell her that when she took her son’s gun, when she stood near her fallen husband and son, when she continued the struggle against the Zionists, Hilweh not only fought to defend her home, she fought to defend every one of us. Tell her that her spirit that feared no death, was our guide over the decades. Tell her that her blood which watered the land, paves the way for liberation. Tell Saliha Al-Halabi that the Zionist criminal who emptied his bullets into her body, killing her and her 9 month old unborn child, has not been brought to justice yet. Tell her that the Zionist criminal who afterwards ripped open her stomach and took out her slaughtered child is considered a hero by the terrorist entity that was built on where her village once stood. Tell her we still mourn her and the pregnant mothers bayoneted in the abdomen while alive. Tell her we still mourn the children maimed in front of their mothers before having their heads cut off. Tell her that 64 years later, her killers still kill Palestinian mothers, still commit massacres, still ethnically cleanse Palestine. Tell her that 64 years later, the Arab brethren still cry crocodile tears over our pain, still sell our blood to the highest bidder and still betray you mother Palestine. Tell her that 64 years later, we remember every victims of every Zionist massacre and every Zionist crime, we repeat the names of every Palestinian massacred, every village demolished, every field uprooted. Tell her that we are united by the pain and the blood of Deir Yassin, Beit Darras, Dawaymeh, Khisas, Sa’sa’, Balad Il-Sheikh, Abu Shusha, Beit Daras, Tantoura, Kufr Qasem, Qibya, Sharafat, Azazmeh, Beit Jala, Qalqilia, Jenin, Gaza, Bethlehem and every massacre committed by the Zionists. Tell her that 64 years later, we have not forgotten, have nor forgiven. Tell her that every day we tell the hypocrite world that it might turn a blind eye, but we will never cease until every single victim receives justice, until Palestine receives justice. Tell her that the march never stopped, and even though some have derailed, the majority has the map imprinted in their hearts, and with every march we come closer to Beisan, to Acca, to Tabariya, to Safad, to Jerusalem. Tell her, dear mother Palestine, that 64 years later, Palestine is as precious as ever, Palestine remains our home forever.
On Mother’s Day, tell Umayyah Imran that we remember her on this day and every day. Tell her that the Zionists still kill Palestinian mothers and their born and unborn children at the European-paid military checkpoints. Tell her that her children place flowers on her grave every day, that they sing their kindergarten songs to her. Tell her that her children and the children of every Palestinian mother killed at Israeli checkpoints don’t fear these death traps, but repeat the oath given to their mothers; to remain steadfast, to continue the struggle. Tell her that on the spot where she was left to bleed to death, the poppies defy the death traps and bloom every spring, brining a promise of hope and justice. Tell her that students, workers and farmers are still humiliated at the checkpoints, are still hunted down by killers hiding inside towers. Tell 16 year old Fahmi Al-Darduk, that his mother still cries over her only son, shot at an Israeli checkpoint and left to bleed to death, his only crime was listening to music from his cell phone. Tell 22 year old Bahsar Al-Qadiri, who was stopped at the death trap, tied and thrown into a pit and forced to stay there under the scorching sun until he died, that his mother has kept his room and his university books as he had left them, that she kisses his picture every day. Tell Nada Hussein that her 8 children celebrate Mother’s Day every year at her grave. Tell her that the Israeli soldiers who killed her still prevent patients from reaching hospitals, still delay them at checkpoints, leaving them to die a slow and a painful death. Tell Kamla Ash-Sholi that her two children keep asking about her, keep asking their father why the Israeli soldiers who shot their mother at the checkpoint for no reason were not punished. Tell her that Nahil Abu Raja still mourns her stillborn baby Zaid, killed by the checkpoint. Tell her that the mother of Khalid Mousa, the mother of Jamila and Huda As-Safadi, the mother of Aminah and Fatima Al-Qadi, the mother of Rawan Hreizan and many others still mourn their children, still remember them playing with their toys, still remember the day they were born, still remember the day they were stopped at Israeli checkpoints, prevented from reaching hospital and their children left to die while Israeli soldiers laughed. Tell 18 year old Kifah Zu’rub that his screams and cries still ring throughout his home, that his mother remembers every minute and every second of that day when her son was attacked by Zionists’ dogs, and prevented at the checkpoint from reaching hospital, how despite the injuries he was turned back home to die a painful death. Tell her that while Palestinian mothers and grandmothers are humiliated and killed at Israeli checkpoints, Arab brethren extend their hands to the killers. Tell her that while Palestinian pregnant women are forced to deliver at the roadside under the eyes and laughs of Israeli occupation soldiers, Arab brethren continue to talk about dignity, about “honour”. Tell her their cries for help and their screams of pain are music to the Zionists and fall on the deaf ears of the Arab brethren. Tell her that as life slips away, as they close their eyes, the world turns a blind eye. Today, on Mother’s Day, tell her dear mother Palestine and tell every Palestinian mother, that their cry for justice will never be silenced. Tell them that we won’t rest until we seek justice for Aisha Nassar, Rihab Nofal, Laila Baheiri and Rana Al-Jayyousi and every Palestinian victim. Tell her that we mourn with ever mother who lost a child, mourn with every child who lost a mother. Tell Fawziyyah Ad-Darak we remember every patient prevented from reaching hospital, every patient killed at Israeli checkpoints. Tell her we mourn her and mourn Khadra Mustafa, Fatima Ash-Sharafi, Basim Ar-Rimawi, Aisha Hasan, Safia Qandil, Khatima Abdel Rahman and every Palestinian patient left to die at the Israeli checkpoints.
On Mother’s Day, tell Wujdan Khalid that the Zionists still kill us with their American-paid poisonous gas. Tell her they still kill unborn Palestinian children, like they killed her 9 month old stillborn son Sa’d. Tell her they celebrate killing Palestinian mothers and their unborn children, they promote it and sing of “killing two for the price of one”. Tell her their racist minds see Palestinian babies as a “threat” that should be eliminated, and see Palestinian mothers as “weapons’ factories” that should be “demolished”. Tell her that they still throw gas canisters into homes, into crowded refugee camps, shoot them directly at protesters. Tell her that they still drown funerals with poisonous gas, that they still target schools and hospitals. Tell her that their poisonous gas still strangles mothers while in their kitchens baking bread. Tell her that their poisonous gas still kills the trees and silences the birds. Tell her that we mourn her, remember her, and remember Aziza Jabir, Dawlat Al-Masri, Amira Abu Askar and Nabila Al-Yaziji, Shukriyeh Faris and their unborn children. Tell her that we mourn and remember Amnah Darwish, Fatma Al-Walidi, Shamieh Jarrar, Fatma Salman, Kamleh Sharaf, Subhiya Mankush, Watfa Farajallah, Na’ima ‘Adi, Fatma Al-Khawaja, Rabi’a Ash-Sharafi, Khadra Abu Salameh, Khayriyah Alawneh and every mother killed by Israel’s poisonous gas.
On Mother’s Day, tell Wafa’ Ad-Daghmah that her children still see her lying on the ground in a pool of blood, still tremble at the memory of that day when Israeli occupation forces blew up their home and killed their mother in front of their eyes. Tell her that her blood refuses to be forgotten, her pain refuses to be silenced. Tell Manal Al-Batran and her 5 children that the Zionists still occupy the sky over Gaza, still occupy the land and the water. Tell them that Gaza homes are shelled by bombs and missiles while the so-called PA talks about freedom and liberation. Tell them that Palestinian schools in Gaza are targeted with illegal weapons while Arab brethren race to normalize with the Zionists. Tell them that Palestinian children in Gaza sleep to the noise of drones, and mothers don’t sleep at all, hug their children and try to protect them from the next missile. Tell them that Gaza says farewell to her children almost every day, while those who claim to represent us fight over chairs and imaginary posts. Tell them that Gaza stands alone and defies the daily Zionist terror while Arab brethren meet to coordinate new NATO invasions of Arab land. Tell Zeina Al-Awawdah and her 3 children that the world remained silent when the Zionist missile blew her and her children into pieces. Tell them that world leaders did not announce that they “cry with the people of Palestine”. Tell them that the so-called PA sold their blood without a wink of an eye. Tell them that the Arab brethren don’t even condemn Israeli crimes anymore. Tell Hayat Sheikh-Khalil that Gaza is still besieged. Tell her that the siege still kills Palestinians, still makes widows and orphans. Tell her that Palestinian mothers have to watch their children die a slow and a painful death, and fathers have to hear the cries of their children and not be able to do a thing. Tell her how young people, once full of hope and determination, wither in front of their parents. Tell Huda Al-Khawaja that her killers are welcomed in every world capital. Tell her that leaving her to bleed to death in front of her 5 children and preventing medical treatment was termed “a mistake”, for whom no one is to be charged or punished. Tell her that the world saw her die slowly, saw her children plead for help, heard the Israeli soldier say in front of the camera that they were doing “purification” work in the refugee camp, and the world remained silence, turned a blind eye. Tell Mariam Ayyad and Wajiha Rabay’a that their children have a million mothers now. Tell them that Palestinian mothers continue to protect their children from Zionist missiles, bombs, bullets and dungeons. Tell them that Palestinian mothers continue to rush and save Palestine’s children from the Zionist kidnap gangs and the death squads. On Mother’s Day and on every day, tell them, mother Palestine, that we mourn them, we remember them, we remember their sacrifices, we won’t forget the crimes. Tell them that we continue the fight for our and their freedom, for our and their rights, we continue to seek justice for us and for them, no matter how long it takes, because justice will prevail.
On Mother’s Day, tell Maryam Makhtoub and Najla’ Syam that Al-Aqsa is still in danger. Tell them that Zionist raids have increased while the actions of Arab brethren in support of Al-Aqsa remain non-existent. Tell them that Jerusalem is being ethnically cleansed, Judaized while those who claim to represent us “negotiate” over the colour of their VIP-cards. Tell them that Palestinian mothers still dream of the day when their children will be free, when Palestine will be free. Tell them that Palestinian mothers are forced to give birth inside Israeli dungeons while “PA” and Arab officials dine and wine in Tel Aviv, and while the whole world whines over the violations of human rights committed everywhere, but not those committed by the Zionist entity. Tell them about Intisar Al-Qaq, Majida Salaymeh, Umaymah Al-Agha, Samiha Hamdan, Mirvat Taha, Manal Ghannam, Samar Sbeih and Fatima Az-Ziq. Tell them that Palestinian mothers are kidnapped from the midst of their children, dragged away from the warmth of their homes and thrown into dungeons. Tell them how Palestinian mothers are harassed, tortured, isolated and threatened with their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Tell them about Iman Ghazzawi, Ibtisam Il-Isawi, Ireena Sarahneh, Qahira As-Saadi, Latifa Abu Thra’, Muntaha At-Tawil, Kifah Jibril, Hanan Al-Hmouz and Samha Hijaz. Tell them that the Zionist entity holds trials for the victims it killed, sentenced them and keeps Palestinian martyrs hostage. Tell them about Dala Al-Mughrabi, Darin Abu Eishah, Zeinab Abu Aalim, Hanadi Abdel Malik, Wafa’ Idris, Ayat Al-Akhras and Hiba Daraghmeh.
On Mother’s Day, tell Fatma Ghazal and Fatma Abu Dayyah and all your daughters that Palestinian mothers continue to be the spearhead of resistance, continue to be the guardians of the land, continue to be the teachers of the revolution, continue to the leaders, the marchers, the freedom-fighters. Tell them that Palestinian mothers don’t fear the machine gun of the Zionist colonists, don’t fear the tank of the occupation soldier, don’t fear the interrogation cells of the dungeons. Tell them that Palestinian mothers are the martyrs, the prisoners, the farmers, the workers, the protectors. Tell them that Palestinian mothers still cry for their children, still talk to their children’s pictures on the wall, place a Hannoun over their children’s graves. Tell them that Palestinian mothers hold back the tears, but can’t hold back the waves of longing, can’t stop the pain. Tell them that when a Palestinian martyr is carried to our mother, to Palestine, over the shoulders of thousands of comrades, every martyr becomes the child of a million Palestinian mothers, and a million tears fall for him/her, and a million zaghroota are sung for him/her. Tell them they are our mothers, the daughters of Palestine.
On Mother’s Day, tell my grandmother Mariam that I remember her every word and her every song about the land. Tell her that her smile is my constant companion, her courage and dignity my protecting armour. Tell her that I walk with her in Jrash, I hold her hand where my grandfather’s house once stood, I see her apple tree and her flowers. Tell her that the keys have not rusted, they are sacred and that the return journey to Jrash began the minute she was forcibly expelled from her home under the rush of bullets. Tell her that Jrash is closer than ever, though it might seem far away. Tell her the road to Jrash is clearer than ever, though it might seem blocked with so many obstacles. Tell her that her grandchildren are loyal to her legacy, carry her will in their hearts next to Palestine. Tell her that their compass points only towards Jrash. Tell my grandmother Aishah that I remember our walks up the hills, remembers her singing traditional songs. Tell her that her fig tree is still steadfast on the hill, standing in defiance, facing the illegal Zionist colony and the military checkpoint. Tell her that the olive trees that were burnt down to ashes have grown, have defeated death and are reborn, have defied uprooting and still cling to the land. Tell her that the land beyond the checkpoint and the barbed wire misses her, asks about her. Tell her that the lands asks: when will freedom come?
On Mother’s day and on every day, tell your daughters who have become part of you, whose bravery guides us, that we remember them, that we see them in the eyes of every Palestinian child, in the smile of every Palestinian mother, in every Hannouneh and in every olive tree. Tell them that the mothers of Palestine will continue to raise freedom-fighters, martyrs, prisoners and revolutionaries. They will continue to raise Palestinians, sing to them the songs of Palestine, tell them about Haifa and Beisan and Safad, teach them that Palestine will always be one from the River to the Sea, that rights are not begged for but are taken. They will continue to lead the struggle for a free Palestine, free from the River to the Sea, for they are your daughters, mother Palestine.
A full day festival celebration of the cultural richness of the Palestinian people!
We know the struggles. We know the politics. We know the pain. Do we really know the talent of the people?
It is time to celebrate the contributions Palestinians make to society through their art, film, food, products, knowledge, literature and their music.
Our evening event will especially highlight their vibrant comic scene by featuring the amazing talents of MAYSOON ZAYID & ARON KADER!
Featuring Maysoon Zayid & Aron Kader with local Edmonton talent.
All proceeds donated to the LEAP Program for Palestinian refugee youth in Lebanon.
If you cannot attend, please consider making a generous tax-deductible donation to support the educational empowerment of Palestinian refugee youth in Lebanon (www.leap-program.org/donate).
To learn more about LEAP, please watch this video (http://youtu.be/OiXvRZT38Is).
MARCEL KHALIFE is a distinguished composer, singer, and oud player that is best known for liberating the oud, an instrument integral to Arabic culture, from its traditionally strict techniques, expanding its musical possibilities, and contributing to its artistic and cultural revival. Over the decades, Khalife’s music and his own compositions have signified peace, reconciliation and breaking boundaries. He creates a sound that is always innovative, inspiring, and beautiful. Many of his recordings utilize traditional instruments mixed with western mainstays depicting a sophisticated musical marriage of classical Arabic and jazz music. As a composer, he demonstrates a deep attachment to and a profound understanding of the power of the written word. Khalife has distinguished himself not only as a virtuosuo oud player but also as a talented composer.
Khalife’s educational and humanitarian contributions are as numerous as his creative endeavors. A tireless promoter of the arts and culture in the Arab world, he has been the recipient of many prominent awards and has performed in the most prestigious music venues in the world. In his quest to renew the vibrancy and significance of the Arabic song, he has based songs on the words of some of the great contemporary Arab poets, particularly the Palestinian poet and journalist who eloquently wrote of the exile, struggles, and hopes of the Palestinian people, Mahmoud Darwish.
The following article was written by Omar Shaban, a member of the Conference organizing committee and of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at UBC (SPHR-UBC), the conference hosting group at the University of British Columbia.
This article was inspired by the poorly written article in UBC’s official newspaper The Ubyssey.
There is no doubt that when an oppressor – no matter who they are – fails to make a good “moral” case as to why they are oppressing a certain person, or a group of people, this oppressor will try to find ways to reconcile between what they perceive as a necessity to oppress and the necessity to rebrand this oppression as a necessity. This is especially true when it comes to the Zionist oppression of the Palestinian people inside and outside of Historic Palestine. The Zionists have always tried to work on the two fronts I mentioned above: the necessity to oppress and the necessity to rebrand the oppression as a necessity.
The perceived necessity to oppress is a very distinctive feature of the Zionist movement inside and outside of Palestine. Since the beginning of the Zionist project, earlier Zionists had no qualm with inflicting suffering and misery upon another population in order to advance their narrowly defined political project. From the perspective of Theodore Herzl, it was absolutely acceptable for the Zionists to displace an entire population, remove them from their roots and replace them with an entirely alien population using false rhetoric such as “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Successive leaderships of the World Zionist Organization expressed similar sentiments – sentiments that were later transformed into actions that culminated in the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians from their land. The oppression of the Palestinian people continued to be a necessity for the the Zionist project even after the creation of the Israeli state on stolen Palestinian land. For Israel to be a democracy and Jewish at the same time, the state must maintain a Jewish majority which means two important things: 1) keeping the Palestinians who were forcibly expelled from Palestine in 1940s outside of Palestine, and 2) creating laws, rules and regulations to control and exclude the Palestinian who remained inside of Palestine.
Zionist rhetoric maintains that the Jewish state has, since day one, been facing an existential threat levelled against her by the brutal totalitarian regimes of the Arab world. Right after what they term as “the declaration of independence” (independence from whom? I am not sure), the newly born Jewish state was “invaded” by Arab armies bent on the inhuman objective of eradicating the only Jewish state in the entire world. The Jewish state has had to defend itself from her haters after this failure of an invasion numerous times – first the Zionists had to find methods to ward off the attacks of the Palestinian Fida’iyeen (self-sacrificers) whose activities were sporadic and disorganized, then they had to deal with a resurgent Palestinian National Liberation Movement represented by Fatah, then they had to fight the Arab armies in 1967, then an increasingly popular Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine in the late 1960s and early 1970s, then a united Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1980s and an Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the late 80s and early 90s. Because of this imminent threat against Israel, because of the numerous and systemic attacks against it, and because this state is isolated in a sea of Arabs who are fuelled by hate and anger, Israel has a right to not only defend itself, but also attack whom it perceives as a threat – and that can be combatants and freedom fighters as well as their support base which includes civilians, their properties, their schools and playgrounds and their entire livelihood.
Over the past hundred and so years, the Zionist quest to rebrand and promote the necessity for oppression has undergone an extremely significant transformation. In the beginning, the Zionists sought to convince the leaders of Europe of the worthiness of their “cause” using the language of Realpolitik and necessity. The leaders of Europe must support the Zionist project despite their flagrant anti-Semitism because it is in their political and economic interest to do so. From the perspective of earlier Zionists, this necessity had to become the norm; a norm that allows them to operate around the political and economic structure of Europe, as well as within this structure. If the Zionist project is indeed a political and economic necessity, then the only intelligible course of action is to support it and this is what happened. It began with the Kaiser of Germany allowing Herzl to present his ideas, to the political leaders of Switzerland allowing him and his supporters to hold their first conference in Basel, to supporting and facilitating Zionist immigration to Palestine, to convincing Britain to promise the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and eventually to creating a Jewish state after a long campaign of systemic ethnic cleansing.
Now the quest to promote Zionism is taking place on University campuses. Barely an event organized by a Palestinian solidarity group on university campuses passes without invoking the need to have “constructive and meaningful dialogue” and forgetting about the divisive issues and focusing on moving forward and achieving “peace” (whatever that means). This insistence on “constructive dialogue” is indicative of a strong desire by the Zionists to pacify and neutralize any resistance to advancing the Zionist project. University students are now taking the lead and initiative to debunk all the Zionist myths – historical and current – about the reality of the situation in Palestine. The boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel is gaining ground in virtually every higher education institution all across the globe as students are becoming more aware that the last bastion of Western imperialism is an entity that should not be allowed to exist in its current form. More students are becoming more aware of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and of the systemic racism Palestinians with an Israeli citizenship face on a daily basis, and of the unjust and inhumane repression that Palestinian refugees have been enduring in their host countries for six and a half decades. This increased awareness of the Palestinian predicament is making the Zionist promotion of their project more difficult as it poses a moral threat to the very foundations of this project.
Thusly, rebranding the oppression of the Palestinians as a necessity becomes a necessity. Every crime perpetrated by the Israelis against the Palestinians and the areas where Palestinians are is framed within the context of self-preservation, protection and fighting an existential threat. Israel, which is facing this existential threat, cannot be reduced to a mere colonial entity created for the sole purpose of advancing the geopolitical interests of Western powers in the region – there is more to this “tiny state.” It is a state for its Jewish citizens who share a collective identity and a shared history represented by food, dance, culture, and music. These citizens are not merely political and military objects necessary for the maintenance of the regime, they are global citizens with achievements that span all disciplines, cross borders and boundaries and challenge pre-conceived notions. This elaborately fabricated structure which includes economic, financial, scientific and educational institutions was put in place by a people who have been yearning for emancipation for thousands of years; an emancipation that they finally attained in Palestine – a land which was apparently empty and a desert before the Zionist settlement in it.
Such is the discursive dichotomy of the Zionist modus operandi. It is a dichotomy based on rewriting history, falsifying facts and disseminating propaganda to promote and legitimize a racist ideology. And this is why we can’t be friends with the Zionists. The fundamental premise of any friendship – no matter how deep or shallow it may be – is a mutual understanding, a shared empathy and a genuine sympathy with the experiences of the other. Such a framework does not exist when it comes to the Zionist oppression of the Palestinians. The relationship between the Palestinians and Zionists is that of an oppressed with their oppressor. In this case, the oppressor is not only seeking to eliminate the Palestinian national existence from both consciousness and history, but it is also seeking to normalize this eradication through a vicious campaign that depends on an interdependent duality – 1) the legitimization of oppression and the existence of the oppressor and 2) the delegitimization and demonization of the oppressed and their mere existence.
President Obama’s visit to the occupied Palestinian territory comes at a time when our prisoners are waging a hunger strike battle in the face of Israeli government obstinacy, and in the face of US silence towards the slow murder these heroes are being subjected to. Most recently Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jaradat died during interrogation inside the Israeli prison of Megiddo. Moreover, the visit comes in light of the continued international isolation of Israel and the ever-increasing boycott campaigns against it.
On one hand, it is simply naive to presume that U.S. policy toward Israel has changed since Obama took office. A March 2012 report by the U.S. Congress discusses a $3.1 billion in military aid for the year 2013 only, including financing the Iron Dome system, and increasing US bilateral support to Israel to $115 billion since 1949. In addition, the US is committed to maintain Israel’s security at the expense of the lives, land and livelihood of Palestinians; whether by justifying the massacres against Palestinians in Gaza, or through its silence concerning settlement expansion, destructions of homes, forcible transfer and other Israeli policies.
On the other hand, it is hypocritical and disingenuous that the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) disregards the role of the Obama administration in blocking its membership request in 2011 at the Security Council, and its vote against the resolution at the General Assembly in 2012. Furthermore, the US congress has imposed financial sanctions on international institutions recognizing “Palestine”. And to add insult to injury, while the PLO/PA assure Palestinians they consider Jerusalem the Palestinian capital, yet they receive the US President in the Ramallah enclave.
Despite the attempts of the Palestinian “leadership” to ease the atmosphere, with statements about Obama pressuring the Israeli government on the issue of Palestinian political prisoners, or promises of petty US aid, however, the ultimate objectives of the visit are clear.
The visit aims to achieve three goals; first, to relieve the pressure off the Israeli government, which is suffering increased international isolation (albeit with words more than actions). Second, to restrain the frustration of the Palestinian street simmering in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners and finally, to prolong the expected lifetime of the PA, which after 20 years is becoming more and more disconnected from its people.
The Palestinian people will not accept to play a role in achieving these interests, and will not succumb to these pressures. What is required of us as Palestinians is to persue a complete boycott of our occupier on all fronts: security, economical, political, cultural and academic, and to rebuild a representative entity for Palestinians everywhere. Not aid in relieving the pressure on the Israeli government by engaging in a futile process, and allowing it to complete its expansionary policies and annexation through uprooting Palestinians from their land and homes.
Accordingly, we call on the masses of the Palestinian people to change this path and demonstrate against receiving he who considers Israel “the closest ally in the region”, and to refuse the return to futile negotiations. We call for entrenching the sacrifices of the martyrs and prisoners by refusing to surrender and to work with Palestinians everywhere to establish a strategic program of resistance, where political, economic, military, popular and various other forms of resistance and duties are shared each according to their ability.
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN: Save with the special Early Bird rate!
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER TODAY – SPECIAL EARLY BIRD RATE AVAILABLE!
Registration is NOW OPEN for the Conference of the Palestinian Shatat in North America! This conference – which will take place at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver on May 3-5, 2013 – will bring together Palestinian and Arab organizers, activists and community members to discuss our collective role as Palestinians in our liberation movement and assert our voice as Palestinians in shatat/exile.
There is more information about the conference at our website, palestinianconference.org This conference is being organized from the ground up, and will benefit from the active involvement and participation of Palestinian organizations and organizers across North America. The conference will include facilitated workshops, plenary discussions, conversations, and presentations – it welcomes your participation, your voice, and your active involvement in reclaiming the voice of the shatat.
Registration closes on May 1st.
We will soon be posting accommodations information. If you have any questions, or require solidarity housing, please email us at [email protected].
The PLO is historically regarded as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, an overarching mechanism by which we all came together to deliberate on the strategies of our national movement. In this plenary, we will discuss the histories of political representation in our national movement, and what representation might mean today. Some of the questions addressed will include: What did the PLO look like, what does it look like now, and how/can it be remade? What can we learn from our earlier revolutionary histories? How has the current lack of representation impacted our struggle, and our ability to develop a coherent and cohesive national strategy for liberation and return? How do we create representation bodies that are inclusive of all our people and forces, and serve the needs of our national movement? How do we embody our demands for popular and democratic representation in our own communities and associations?
This plenary will examine Palestinian organizing in the shatat, looking at the past and moving to the present day. We will discuss the reasons and implications for how different methods and mechanisms came to frame our organizing as part of our liberation movement, and consider frameworks moving forward. Some of the questions addressed will include: What have been the organizing trends within the history of our movement? What has been the historical role of students, workers, and women? How do we forge our role and revitalize our sense of national responsibility in the shatat? How do our communities currently organize? What internal and external challenges are confronting our communities? How do we build community accountability and organizing discipline? How can we imagine and strategize ways to connect our organizing in North America with our brothers and sisters on the ground and in exile?
This is a critical time for the Palestinian people and the national liberation movement, and this conference is an opportunity to connect, build and mobilize our people in North America. Conference participants will not only gain knowledge, but are expected to commit themselves to collectively and democratically working together to re-build and revive our national liberation movement.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER TODAY – Confirm the special Early Bird Rate!
The Organizing Committee of the Conference of the Palestinian Shatat in North America is pleased to announce that the Conference will take place from Friday evening, May 3 through Sunday afternoon, May 5, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, on unceded Musqueam territories.
The host organization for the conference is Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at UBC (SPHR – UBC).
Conference sessions will be soon forthcoming with more details, and will include plenaries, workshops and cultural events.
Join the Palestine Cultural Society and the organizing committee of the Vancouver Palestinian Shatat Conference for an Arab cultural evening commemorating Palestinian Land Day – experience Palestinian culture as we celebrate our connection to the land.
The cultural evening will be held in Bonsor Banquet Hall in Burnaby, BC.
Children are welcome – bring your family! This is an evening for community celebration, solidarity, and cultural resistance.
Tickets on sale in advance and at the door: $15 general admission, $10 for students, $45 group rate for a group of 4, $65 group rate for a group of 6. Children under 12 free.
Proceeds will support the Conference of the Palestinian Shatat in North America, taking place in Vancouver May 3-5, 2013! | 2019-04-19T00:40:47Z | http://palestinianconference.org/page/3/ |
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Share something favorable in regards to the individual that gave the present to one of. In the advanced era that was current, not all of meeting invitations are all created having a rather simple phone call. Remember so straightforward acknowledgment or thanks is enough and it’s an acknowledgment letter.
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Acknowledgements usually are required such as powers of attorney contracts, or any kind of document at which an individual has to agree for your circumstances of this file. There is A Notary Acknowledgment a formal announcement of a touch prior to some public official. The Acknowledgment must be a portion of their record. Jurats and acknowledgments will be the two most types of all notarial functions.
Most likely the deed goes to be reversed. From picking outside the notarial act Since the notary, you’re banned. It absolutely had been initially very problematic for the handicapped to have. Yeah various countries have many other methods to do matters.
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Do not mention thanks just since you have surely got to. Give thanks. Thanks for your unbelievable birthday wishes! Thanks is always a great option. Expressing many thanks could be certainly one of the simplest ways to sense superior. Thank you for what that you did, A many thanks the enjoyable for all, I will always keep in mind that the minute.
You have given me hope and encouragement at a moment that was challenging. Expressing your gratitude is really important, however modest support or favour you got. The day of someone else, along side making, showing gratitude packs a strong punch of different advantages. Demonstrating gratitude can be an excellent method while you’re feeling overwhelmed, to clear the mind. There’s very little gratitude inside the buying kingdom. To boost the caliber of one’s life and the lifetime of many others, it’s quite crucial that you show true gratitude for those activities you are thankful for this below are 34 means by that you may up the ante and allow men and women on life know precisely how much you love them and also just how exactly to thankful in your everyday activity. Whatever your need, the following methods below can help you convey your appreciation using an exceptional message written exclusively for them.
My birthday wouldn’t have been the same with no. Your gifts are certain to get there in handy. It shows you have a cool personality, you are way overly generous and you’re creative in the heart. It left me grin and I want to just thank you for the same. There certainly are a handful things you will need to think of just before writing a Christmas gift thanks concept.
On how best to find yourself a compliment folks become flummoxed. Men and women enjoy being noticed, however, few comprehend how to accept a compliment gracefully. Simply saying Thank You fully acknowledges the individual that allows you to pleasure in the moment and left the compliment. Obtaining compliments ought to be both enjoyable and fun, but we usually ruin the experience. What an outstanding compliment to provide an outstanding instructor!
Whatever 1 solution to reveal gratitude, the circumstance is always to compose. Our first consideration is your security and safety of your children. That which you will need to bear in your mind is that each christmas-gift situation is quite specific and calls to get a tone and also sort of message.
In the event that you’d love to send a thank you notice to each and every 23, you have to spend some time as previously mentioned previously. If you’ve invested a good deal of time and effort you are probably going to get some type of stationery or even some fancy letter heads. Now it is the right time. Every one takes a little time and energy to learn. The next time utilize the next 5 measure test list to be able to reply, resolve and keep your customer satisfied. Probably one of the principle, and also First of comments would be to bear in your mind you are generating no comment on what kind of person they have, or that which they feel or worth. Below may be the most easy and method of declaring many thanks.
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Whether you wear them as a camp shoe at the end of the day, or put ’em on to cross a stream so your boots don’t wet, or actually tackle your entire hike in them… sandals are practically required footwear for hikers.
In fact, sandals are mankind’s oldest, and probably favorite footwear. And with new designs and technology, you can do more in a pair than you ever thought possible.
This sandal buyers guide will help you find the right product for the combo of your feet and your favorite trails.
The feeling you get when hiking in a sandal can be way more fun and comfortable than in a shoe or boot.
Usually, sandals are lighter (though not always, as you’ll see below).
Without something covering your whole foot, the airy feeling can not only keep your feet cool, but let’s you connect to the world around you.
Most sandals are water-friendly (again, see below), so you can handle a trail or a stream without worrying, or without taking off your padded hikers so they don’t get wet.
They’re easier to slip on and off.
Some people keep sandals handy for when they’re done with a hike, to use as a camp shoe at the end of the day. That’s fine.
In that case, you may want to go with something lighter and easier to pack.
Some people keep a pair handy for those stream crossings I mentioned above.
Again, the point is that a hiking sandal is an incredibly versatile piece of gear, so you want to get the pair that works for your needs.
How do these compare to boots or shoes?
They were aghast that I didn’t have a big, thick, chunky pair of boots to wear.
Well, suffice it to say I was completely fine.
I had no problems going up a 14,000-foot mountain except for the fact that once you get over about 12,000 feet, every two steps you take you need to take a break. But in terms of the biomechanics and how my legs felt and how my feet moved and the grip that I had and the traction that I had, everything was totally fine.
The reason that most people say you need boots is because of the ankle support. Well, the only reason you need ankle support is because the boots have a really stiff sole. So if you step on something pointy with a really stiff sole, it’s going to make your entire foot rotate, it’s going to make your ankle unstable… and then you need stability because of the fact that the boot sole is so stiff that it made you unstable to begin with.
In a pair of running shoes, I didn’t have that same instability issue. The sole was more flexible and my ankles had no problem.
Fast-forward to 2016, which it is right now when I’m making this video, and what I can tell you is if you want to have even more fun, you can go hiking in a pair of sandals.
Some people think that you can only use sandals for flat surfaces or easy surfaces or for boating or for paddling, but I can assure you that you can go hiking in a pair of sandals. We have thousands of people who have climbed tens of thousands of mountains in Xero Shoes, for example.
One of the things that you get when you’re hiking in sandals that you don’t get in shoes or in boots is freedom.
Your feet are free to feel everything around you. You have this incredible sense of connecting with the world because your feet aren’t all wrapped up in a pair of shoes or boots.
The other advantage this gives you is that you don’t get all sweaty inside of your boots or inside of your shoes, which can be a real problem if you’re hiking in cold weather. That sweat can freeze and make your feet frostbite. And in hot weather, that sweat just builds up and creates, well, aside from bacteria and odor, it also makes your feet slippery which can lead to blisters, skin peeling, toenails that fall off… it can be horrible.
So I can assure you that sandals are a great choice. In fact, with Xero Shoes it’s an even better choice I think because the sole is so flexible. You get natural, barefoot-inspired movement. Your foot can grip and bend and flex, so you’re using your foot in addition to the highly grippy sole that Xeros have.
We have thousands of FOXes (Friends of Xero) who’ve climbed tens of thousands of mountains with no problem — including a lot of the 14,000-foot mountains in Colorado — in a pair of Xero Shoes.
So, what are the top three hiking or travel sandals?
I’m going to rely on a review that was recently done by ActiveJunky.com to tell you that. They took a collection of sandals out on a bunch of trips. They went to South America, they went to Central America, and they came back with three products that they reviewed.
I’m going to tell you a little secret: Most of the time when they review products, it’s products that they have an affiliate relationship with. That means that when they review a product and people click on a link from their review to purchase the product, they get a commission. That’s their business model.
Well, they listed three products, two of which they get commissions from and one they listed just because, they said, they like it so much that they wanted to include it in the review. It needed to be there, but they don’t get a commission on it.
I will not spoil any surprise by telling you that that product is the Umara Z-Trail from Xero Shoes.
They recommended two other products. One was the Chaco Z-Cloud which is, again, one of those big, thick products with prices between $95 and $105 typically.
Then there’s a Keen product, the Keen Zambezi, which again, a really thick and stiff and heavy sandal that retails from $92 to $100.
The Z-Trail from Xero Shoes, on the other hand, only $79.99, and it’s the only one that’s really lightweight; that gives you great protection, great flexibility, natural movement flexibility, really good comfort; lightweight enough to float. Rolls up, fits in your pack, in your pocket, and has our 5000-mile sole warranty.
Get the Men’s Z-Trail here.
Get the Women’s Z-Trail here.
Who makes the best hiking sandals?
If you’re looking for the best sports sandal or hiking sandal, you’ve got to think about the history of this type of sandal.
It was 1982 when Teva was invented and 1989 when was Chaco was invented, and in the 25-30 years since those two things happened, those products have become synonymous with the hiking sandal. And so when most people think of hiking sandals, they’re thinking of those.
And those sandals are big, they’re thick, they’re chunky. It almost seems like people now look at hiking sandals and trying to value them by the pound. The heavier, the bigger they are, the better they are. That’s not necessarily the case.
While these do give you a lot of protection because there’s a lot of thickness, thickness isn’t required for protection.
The other thing people have gotten used to is the notion of arch support. Both of these products, and most of the other sandal makers— Keen, ECCO, and private label brands from North Face and various other places—they have a lot of arch support.
Now, here’s a reference to an article in the New York Times about support. I’ll talk about this more later but, in short, support is highly overrated and the research shows that it’s predominantly unnecessary.
And if you think about it, the reason is pretty simple. Your foot is designed to move, to bend, to flex, to feel, and when you’re giving it “support,” what you’re doing is you’re immobilizing it.
Think about it this way: If you put your arm in a cast, it doesn’t come out stronger at the end of the day. Or, if you take off the cast and you see that it’s gotten weaker, you now have two choices – continue to “support” it so that you’re not using it or start using it again so that you strengthen it.
So a lot of sandals are made with support that really isn’t necessary. The reason that they put in the support is because the sandals tend to be inflexible, and if they’re inflexible, your foot can’t move properly anyway and the extra support makes it a little more comfortable. But if you have a product that’s designed to let your foot move naturally, then you don’t need support. Your arch is all the support that you need. In fact, as you use your foot, you can strengthen your foot, strengthen your arches.
If you look at the Xero Shoes Z-Trail, it has a similar appearance to the Chaco/Teva/Keen that you’ve seen except that it’s much, much thinner. We’re using some high-tech materials to allow us to make something that weighs 76% less. Three pairs of Z-Trails weigh less than one pair of a popular Chaco (see the video below), and yet it still gives you incredible protection.
On the bottom, we use FeelTrue rubber on the abrasion points, and it has our 5000-mile sole warranty. For the middle layer, we’ve developed a high-tech material that disperses the force. We call this TrailFoam. And then we developed a comfort layer that we call BareFoam for the top surface.
Put these together and you have an ultra lightweight sandal that gives you an incredible combination of protection, comfort, lightweight, durability, versatility, and affordability. They even float. They roll up and fit in your pack or pocket.
That flexibility is what lets your foot move naturally.
People wear the Z-Trail for everything from taking a walk to being an approach shoe for a climb, taking a casual hike, running trail ultra marathons, and everything in between.
When looking at sandals, pay attention to the webbing. A lot of sport sandals use a flat webbing, which means that it gives you an edge that can actually dig into your skin. What we’ve done instead with the Z-Trail and Z-Trek is used a tubular webbing. So there are really no edges that can catch on your skin.
Another thing to look at with some of hiking sandals: they’re made with channels in the inside of the sandal for the webbing to pass through. Sometimes those channels can create abrasion, which causes tearing in the webbing. Something to pay attention to.
Also, look for adjustability. Many sport sandals don’t have any adjustability on the heel. So, depending on the size and width of your heel the fit may not be correct for you. The Xero Shoes Z-Trail has an adjustable heel strap and adjusts along the top as well for a just-right fit.
Hopefully, that’ll give you a good list of things to take a look at when you’re looking for best hiking sandal. Again, look for comfort, look for natural movement, look for something that isn’t going to hinder you or get in your way (which means something that weighs a pound and a half might not be right for you; something that weighs 5.4 ounces for men’s size 9 might be just right).
If you’re going to be in water, you need something that floats. The Z-Trail is really, really secure on your foot, so they’re not going to fall off and go floating downstream. But just in case you have them in your bag or you have them just sitting in a boat and the boat capsizes, you want to make sure you’re going to be able to easily find your sandals and not have to go hunting for them in scuba gear on the bottom of a river or a lake.
Anyway, hope that helps you find the best pair of hiking sandals. If you have any questions, you can just leave them here and I’m happy to answer.
How do Xero Shoes Compare with Other Hiking Sandal Brands?
First check out this video where I compare the weight of the Z-Trail to a popular sport sandal.
What you’ll find, not surprisingly, is that unlike every other sandal product or every other hiking sandal, which has a big, thick, stiff sole that weighs a lot and costs quite a bit, the Xero Shoes Z-Trail is lighter, takes up less room, lets you have natural movement and flexibility, gives you just enough ground feel so that your feet are actually working properly, and lower-priced as well for something that has the same level of performance.
Speaking of price, keep in mind that Xero Shoes come with an unmatched 5,000 mile warranty.
How should sandals for hiking fit?
When you put on a good pair of hiking sandals, you shouldn’t have your toes way, way back behind the front edge, or way over the front, or way off on one edge. Your foot should actually fit on the sandal and it should be a comfortable fit fore and aft, and left and right.
We make sandals with different widths and different lengths to accommodate most foot sizes and shapes. And our do-it-yourself sandal-making kit let’s you trim the sole cut to match any shape of almost any foot.
When you put on the sandal you want to go for what I refer to as a snug-but-comfortable feel. Many people try to over-tighten around the toe area. They think that’s the thing that’s holding them into the sandal, but it’s actually the area that goes around your ankle that holds you in.
So you want to go for something that feels comfortable and feels secure, but not that’s ratcheting you down to the sole. In fact, many people find that they end up loosening the area around the toe strap more than they expected, and that’s totally, totally fine. It still stays stable on the sandal because of how it holds across the top of their foot and around their ankle.
There’s more fitting instructions in the videos on this page.
Where can I buy hiking sandals?
Buying hiking sandals is not hard anymore. It used to be when they first invented the idea of sandals for hiking. You could only find them in specialty outdoor stores. But now, they’ve become ubiquitous and you can find them pretty much everywhere.
So if you look in, well, obviously the outdoor stores like REI or EMS, you can definitely find them there, but you can even find them at Target, at Walgreens.
And of course, if you look on the websites for the companies that make these products, there’ll be a list of stores where you can find them.
If you look in an outdoor store, a camping store, a hiking store—some running stores will carry sandals that are perfect for hiking as well.
Where else? Fishing stores, some of those will carry sandals that are perfect for hiking because if they’re good for hiking they’ll also be good for fishing. Climbing stores — sandals make a great approach shoe. So even if you’re not going to climb in a pair of sandals, just to walk to where you’re going to be climbing or to leave where you just finished climbing, sandals are a great option for that as well.
Where else? Department stores, depending on the department store, you can also find them there. Suffice it to say, hiking sandals have become very popular and you can find them pretty much everywhere. Start online, then call around to the local stores around you and I’m sure you’ll find what you need.
Do you wear sandals with socks?
This is a style question.
If it’s cold you can just wear a good pair of wool socks sport sandals. If it’s warm, you can wear a synthetic that has wicking properties and is valuable in other ways.
So, yes, can definitely wear socks with sandals, although people might look at you a little strangely, depending on what you wear.
Personally, I have a collection of tie-dye socks that once I started going barefoot and wearing huarache-style sandals I almost never wore. But with the sport-sandal style, I pull them out every now and then and they look pretty fine.
Let’s talk about arch support, which is a very misunderstood topic.
What I can tell you is, whether you’re a man or woman, have flat feet or high arches, the issue really is the same, and that’s about the strength and flexibility of your foot, not the support in your shoe.
If you look at the reviews on our Xero Shoes website, you’ll see hundreds of people reporting that when they got out of their supportive shoes, that’s when they were fine. That’s when they felt stable. That’s when they got strong. That’s when they were getting rid of various pains because they’re using their feet naturally.
A quarter of the bones and joints in your body are in your feet, and that’s not an accident. Your feet are designed to bend, to flex, to feel the world. If you don’t let them do their job naturally, that function, that flexing and bending and balancing function, tries to move up into the ankle, into the knee, into the hip, into your back. But those joints are not made for that purpose. They don’t have that same fine motor skill possibility. So when you immobilize your foot, you’re forcing those other joints to try to do a job that’s not theirs. That can cause problems.
Similarly, you have more nerve endings on the bottom of your feet than anywhere but your fingertips and your lips, and this is not an accident. Your feet are supposed to feel things when they’re moving. They’re supposed to feel the surface underneath them.
Support is like putting your foot in a cast and expecting it to somehow get stronger. Doesn’t work. If you break something and put it in a cast, it comes out weaker. Then you have two options—there are only two—one is start to use that body part again so it gets stronger; the other is keep supporting it because you’ve made it weaker.
That’s what many people are doing when they immobilize their feet with arch support. I’m going to highly recommend that you start experimenting with letting your foot work naturally and strengthen naturally.
There’s a great New York Times science reporter named Gina Kolata who did a piece of research that talks about how support seems to only be helpful for about 10% of a population and no one knows why, and a $500 custom-made orthotic seems no better—or worse—than a $20 Dr. Scholl’s insert that you can get at Walmart or Target or Kmart or wherever you find one of those things. Check out Gina’s article (and my comments about it) here.
The research shows that orthotics and arch support and shoe inserts are not as valuable as people think. They make a lot of money for doctors though. And with shoes that have support, it’s basically just having an insole or an orthotic in there full-time. So, again, I’m going to encourage you to start using your feet naturally. (Now, if you have some real serious biomechanical problem, that’s a whole different story, obviously. Consult a doctor… ideally one who understands the value of natural movement).
What if I have flat feet?
Flat feet are not the problem people like to think they are.
There’s no strong evidence to back up the idea that flat feet need support. The real issue isn’t about whether your feet are flat or whether you have high arches. It’s about whether your arches are strong, whether you’re using them so they become strong and resilient and flexible.
People with high arches sometimes need to work on flexibility. Flatfooted people often just need to work on strengthening. And the best way to strengthen your feet is to be barefoot or in something like Xero Shoes, which are incredibly, incredibly flexible and give you all the fun and benefits of barefoot, but with a layer of protection and comfort. The gist is that you need to be moving your feet, to use your feet, which can strengthen your arch.
The other issue is sometimes people will tell you you have a problem simply because you have flat feet, when they don’t really understand the biomechanics of it. Maybe you’ve got a problem not because your feet are flat but because you’re wearing some big, thick, stiff hiking boot or hiking sandal that doesn’t let your foot move, and so your ankle, your knee and your hip are trying to do the function that your foot would do if you let it move naturally.
Anyway, all that said, once again, try the natural approach. Don’t worry about whether you have flat feet. Just develop some strength and resilience, and let me know what happens.
Take a look at this article, too, about flat feet and high arches.
What if I have wide feet?
If you have wide feet, I have good news for you. Xero Shoes are designed to work for the way human feet are shaped. They’re designed based on the shape of feet.
A foot doesn’t get pointy near the toes, which what most shoes are designed to do. Xero Shoes let your toes spread and to splay and to move naturally. They are designed wide enough to allow you to do that.
If you’re a woman with particularly wide feet, you might want to look at the “men’s” version of our sandals because the men’s versions are just made a little wider. Conversely, if you have narrow feet, especially if you’re a man, you might want to look at the women’s style, which basically is the same thing but just a little bit narrower. So don’t worry about wide feet. We’ve been able to accommodate that.
Now, if you have incredibly wide feet — and we have seen some surprisingly unusual-shape feet in the years that we’ve been selling sandles — you can get one of our do-it-yourself sandal-making kits. The soles in our kits come different sizes and lengths and widths, and they’re designed so that you can trim them to give yourself a perfect fit for whatever foot shape that you have.
How do you make hiking sandals?
For Xero Shoes, we have a relatively high-tech manufacturing process, especially for our Z-Trail sandals, which have a three-layer FeelLite sole. The high-tech materials let us make something ultra-ultra-lightweight, incredibly, incredibly flexible so it lets you have natural foot movement, but is still really protective, really durable, really comfortable.
We bond three layers together. Our FeelTrue rubber is on the bottom surface for great grip and traction and durability. The middle layer we call TrailFoam, and that’s what evens out the bumps. It’s a force dispersion layer. And our top layer we call BareFoam. It has just a tiny amount of padding built into it that you would be surprised – it doesn’t seem like much when you feel it with your fingers, but when you put it on your foot, your foot reads that as, “Wow! That’s a lot of comfort and protection.” It also has this heel cup on the back to help keep your foot stable and centered, and also help keep debris out.
We use tubular webbing and laces, so there are no edges that to dig into your skin.
Then, we’ve developed exclusive hardware that lets you adjust the tension really, really quickly and easily and securely. Finally we have an adjustable heel strap so you can move your foot forward and backward and get just the perfect fit.
How do they do in water or when wet?
First of all, think about the comparison between hiking sandals and, say, hiking boots or trail-running shoes or shoes that you would wear for going on a hike.
If you’re in boots or shoes and you get those things wet, it’s going to take forever for them to dry out. In fact, it can really, really damage your feet because when your feet are wet and they’re enclosed in something wet, you can get blisters and massive abrasion. If your feet stay wet long enough, your skin can start to slough off. I mean, it’s really, really horrible. So sandals give you the great advantage that you get in and out of the water and your feet dry off almost instantly. So that’s great news.
We’ve made our Z-Trek and Z-Trail sandals with a nice grippy surface so that you get great traction. Now, there’s nothing that can prevent you from sliding in all situations. In fact, that’s sort of a fantasy people have, is they will have something that sticks in mud and sticks on ice and sticks on everything, but that’s just not reality.
Frankly, the thing that keeps you stable — more than the surface of the shoe — is paying attention to your gait, paying attention to how you move your feet. If you’re placing your foot underneath your center of mass, underneath your body rather than reaching way out in front of your body to grab the ground and then pull towards you, you’re in a more stable position to begin with and you’re going to have less issue with sliding around at all.
Xero Shoes customers include kayakers, paddleboarders, people who raft down rivers, fly fishermen—if you look on our website, you’ll see reviews from all of these people—who are loving the Z-Trek and the Z-Trail. The sport-sandal-style webbing is more secure compared to our huarache-style webbing. FOXes (Friends of Xero) are handling all sorts of terrain, wet and dry, without a problem in our Z-Trek and Z-Trail.
Oh, one other thing about dealing with the water: If you compare the Xero Shoes especially the Z-Trail to, say, one of the familiar sport sandals from other companies like Chaco or Teva or Keen, the Z-Trail floats. If you’re not necessarily wearing the shoes but you have them just lying in a boat or sitting in a pack, you want to make sure they don’t sink to the bottom of whatever kind of water you’re in – river, lake, stream. They’ll just happily float which comes in really, really handy sometimes.
Are these safe for toddlers?
Are hiking sandals or Xero Shoes safe for toddlers? The answer is both yes and no-ish.
The Yes is based on looking at how toddlers walk and run. They’re using their feet naturally. They run with amazingly perfect form almost all the time, until you start putting them in shoes. So to let them continue to use their feet naturally, to get that same barefoot experience but with a layer of protection and comfort, is a wonderful thing and I highly recommend it.
The no-ish part is we’re currently not making sandals for toddlers. We’re not making our Z-Trail hiking sandal, for example, in a toddler size. What thousands have done, though, is get our do-it-yourself sandal-making kits and then lacing them up so they work well for toddlers.
One thing about toddlers, they do tend to put a lot of friction on the bottom surface of a sandal, so if you’re going to make one of our do-it-yourself huarache kits, you’re going to want to use some flexible epoxy or what we sell as Shoe Goo and put that on the laces on the abrasion points on the bottom of the sandal and in the point just above the top of the sandal — the places where kids are going to generate a bunch of friction. That way, the laces will last longer.
Are these for sale in the Philippines, Hawaii, or Costa Rica?
Yes and no. As I mentioned in a previous video and in the article or above where we are now in the article, if you go to outdoor stores or running stores or climbing stores or even just department stores, you’ll find them. Check our list of stores to see if there’s somewhere near you, or just order online here.
By the way, Hawaii has a great sandal culture, but they mostly wear flip-flops. And flip-flops are not good for hiking. You have to grip with your toes to hold them on you, to jam your foot in the thong, to hold them on your foot. They’re usually made of materials that are either too stiff or too heavy, or the exact opposite – too light and too flexible, that usually, not very durable.
If you look at people who’ve worn flip-flops for a while, you’ll see that they’re often falling off one edge or the other because the foam has compressed in a way that’s now leading their foot to fall off one side, which makes their ankle out of whack, their knee out of whack, hips out of whack, back out of whack.
So I don’t recommend flip-flops.
We’ve gotten lots and lots of response from people wearing Xero Shoes who have taken these on hikes around the volcanoes in Hawaii. Our FeelTrue and FeelLite soles handle those volcano hikes wonderfully.
Shop around and you’ll be able to find what you need and enjoy hiking, paddling, walking, strolling, hanging on a beach and anything else when you’re in places like Hawaii, Costa Rica, Philippines, Singapore.
Which Xero Shoe is the best type of hiking sandal?
This is not a simple question because people use all of our products for everything from taking a walk to going shopping, to hanging out in an urban jungle like New York City, to climbing mountain trails, to running a 256K race across Madagascar over dirt and mud and streams and rocks and everything in between.
How much protection do you want versus how much of a barefoot feel do you want?
We have products on both ends of that spectrum. Our 4mm Connect do-it-yourself kit is the closest thing you’ll get to barefoot.
In our ready-to-wear products, the Cloud for Men or Women is super lightweight and just like being barefoot, but with a layer of protection and comfort.
The huarache style, in a way, feels like you have nothing on your foot. It feels the most like barefoot, the most free, because you’ve just got this little bit of lace that’s holding it on your foot. Now, some people think that’s not secure. I can assure you that it is. We have lots of customers who’ve run ultra marathons in the huarache style.
This sandal-tying style, the basics of it, is over 5000 years old and works surprisingly well. It’s all you need to hold a sole onto your foot, is that little sort of three-point lacing system just like that.
The sport-sandal style, on the other hand, feels like someone has just replaced the sole of your foot with a tire tread. Because of the webbing, it has more surface area, so it feels more secure but you also feel more.
There are good reasons to go for the most minimalist shoe you can get away with. You have more nerve endings on the bottom of your feet than anywhere but your fingers and your lips, and that’s not an accident. Your feet are designed to feel what’s underneath you. That helps for balance and agility, and also just knowing if you just stepped on something good or bad, dangerous or safe.
And so if you want a real serious barefoot feel, again, you’ll find that with our 4mm Connect make your own huarache sandal kits.
The kit is just a 4-millimeter FeelTrue® rubber outsole with lacing. You can actually lace them up in one of hundreds of different styles; making something ultra-ultra-minimalist or really night-on-the-town fashion-forward. You get a just-like-barefoot feel with a layer of protection. Some people want more protection than that and one option is still in our do-it-yourself kit: the 6mm Contact sole. The 6mm version gives you more protection but still great ground feel.
If you don’t want to make your own sandals and still want a huarache style, take a look at our 5.5-millimeter ready-to-wear product we call the Genesis. The Genesis has our FeelTrue sole with our patented huarache-style lacing system. So that’s going to give you slightly more protection but still obviously really, really flexible, great ground feel.
If you want something a little more comfortable and not necessarily as trail-friendly, then we look at the Cloud. The Cloud is actually just like the Venture except we’ve taken 3 millimeters out of the forefoot, just kind of dug a little trench, and replaced that with our BareFoam™ that gives you this tiny bit of cushioning. So it feels exceptionally comfortable and is ridiculously lightweight.
So if you want to use this just as a camp shoe, the end of a day after you pull off your hiking-boot Xero Shoes and you just need something to get around the campsite, this is a great product. By the way, it also floats. So, really, really, comfortable, not quite as trail-friendly as the Venture.
Maybe the ultimate camp shoe is our new Jessie sandal for women.
. Super lightweight, super comfy, and it even looks good after you finish your hike and head out on the town with friends.
Then, if we get into the sport sandals, check out our Z-Trek. The Z-Trek and the Genesis have same sole – 5-1/2 to 6 millimeters of our FeelTrue rubber, just this one was with the sport-sandal style.
I like to say that when you’re wearing the Z-Trek, again, it feels like someone’s just replaced the sole of your foot with a tire tread. Really great natural movement; really, really flexible; really, really comfortable. Again, a great camp sandal because it takes up very little room. A men’s size 9, weighs about 6.4 ounces. And for some people, they say, “Well, that’s heavy for a camp shoe.” But when you consider everything you can do in it compared to the really lightweight stuff and how little room it takes up, I mean it packs and rolls flat, then the value is a whole different story.
Our newest product, the Z-Trail.
The Z-Trail uses our triple-layer FeelLite™ sole. This weighs 20% less than our Z-Trek because we’ve made this with a high-tech foam that we’ve specially developed to provide really great comfort, great durability, great force dispersion, great traction, great protection.
It’s an incredible combination of features. It has our FeelTrue rubber on the abrasion points, on the bottom; it has our TrailFoam in the middle for force dispersion; and our BareFoam, which gives you just the tiniest bit of cushioning. A men’s size 9 in the Z-Trail weighs only 5.4 ounces. In fact, three pairs of the Z-Trail weigh less than one pair of this familiar hiking sandal.
So, for people who want more protection, less barefoot feel, I highly recommend the Z-Trail. In fact, if you look at the reviews on our website, you’ll see the people who have tried all of our products just raving about the Z-Trail because of the level of comfort, the level of protection, but still flexible enough to give you great natural movement as well, let your foot really bend and flex.
We have one customer in fact, he’s a hundred-mile trail ultramarathoner and for him the Z-Trek is just not enough protection. The Z-Trail, that FeelLite sole, gives him all the protection that he needs.
So hopefully that gives you some advice on what Xero Shoes you’d like to wear. And if you have any questions, obviously, just a drop us a line. We’re happy to help. We just want to see you getting out there and Feeling the Freedom, Feeling the Fun, and Feeling the World with Xero Shoes.
How do you wear a pair of Xero Shoes? Slide ’em on and #FeelRealFun.
Actually, check out this page for instructions on adjusting your Xero Shoes for a proper fit.
More important than how you wear them, it’s where you wear them.
And the answer for that is, anywhere you can think of. Just enjoy. We have people who are doing everything from walking and running to skydiving, Crossfit, kayaking, paddling, standup paddle boarding, even yoga. some people refer to these as a portable yoga mat that everywhere you go you have a yoga mat right underneath your feet, and there are some great videos of people doing yoga in Xero Shoes in these beautiful, beautiful natural environments.
I hope that’s helpful. I can’t wait to hear what you experience with your hikes and your travels, and I hope you decide to Live Life Feet First in Xero Shoes. | 2019-04-22T07:05:09Z | https://xeroshoes.com/sandals/hiking/ |
Mexico is a significant economic and political player in Latin America. With the world’s 13th largest economy, sharing a large common border with the United States and benefiting from extensive free trade agreements, Mexico has developed privileged access to U.S. markets and integration into U.S. supply chains. Iconic American manufacturers have moved factories by the dozens to Mexico, particularly to Mexico-U.S. border towns. Mexican factories are exporting record numbers of televisions, cars, computers, and appliances. Mexico continues to be viewed as a prime location for U.S. companies seeking to establish value-based, cost-effective, high return on investment business operations.
Drug wars and street battles, extreme violence, kidnapping, extortion, endemic public corruption, and the looming specter of spreading pockets of outright criminal organizational takeover of municipal governments are consistent headlines highlighting the ongoing challenges for business operations. Mexican federal authorities, however, point to continued successes in arresting or killing key criminal leaders and the break-up of transnational criminal organizations and Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs), as well as recent decreases in drug-related homicides. It is also a common belief that most of the violence in Mexico is due to drug gangs killing each other, or “bad on bad” murders. Multinational corporations continue to consider future investment, but have developed reservations and reluctance due to these concerns.
This article assesses the current security realities in Mexico, addressing the country’s overall security environment and identifying specific primary security risks likely to be encountered by multinational corporations operating in Mexico, including extortion and kidnap-for-ransom schemes.
Despite historical denials from the Mexican federal government, current media reporting and public opinion consistently discuss “fallen cities” or “ungoverned” communities in various areas of Mexico. These communities are characterized by a general lack of governmental authority. They arise due to pressure from direct attacks, assassinations, intimidation, and public corruption perpetrated by all of the various organized criminal groups. These groups seek to retaliate against Mexican security forces and support the continued expansion and activity of major DTOs in Mexican communities. In February 2012, in what was widely reported as a break from standard government media policy on this subject, Mexican Defense Secretary Guillermo Galvan Galva acknowledged that some areas of Mexico are no longer under government control. “Clearly, in some sectors of the country public security has been completely overrun,” he admitted. Galva said that organized crime has penetrated not only the country’s public institutions, but Mexican society as well.
While there is no general consensus of what constitutes an ungoverned or fallen city, several conditions should be considered when assessing security risks for business purposes. In fallen cities, any or all of the following conditions may be present: lacks a mayor, city council, or police department; cartel convoys travel openly in the city; cartels regularly operate roadblocks; street battles occur several times per month; large numbers of drug-related homicides, or businesses or citizens routinely pay extortion fees; and retaliatory attacks related to extortion attempts are common.
In the most extreme instances, these communities have no governmental authorities at all; they do not have mayors, city councils, judges, police departments, or other government officials. Residents and businesses in these communities have no protection from organized criminal groups who operate in the area, and criminals have full run of the community and typically control access to it (e.g., roadblocks and surveillance).
In less extreme cases, municipalities may lack some elements of local government, but retain others. For example, they may lack mayors, city councils, chiefs of police, or even police departments, but they may have other governmental departments that function, such as public utilities, health services and schools. They are still able to provide basic municipal services, but in a limited form and one that is essentially controlled by organized criminal groups.
A third condition is also present where communities may have some or all elements of government, but they are largely ineffective in protecting residents from criminal activity due to corruption, collusion, intimidation, incompetence, or some combination thereof.
Due to variations in the level and type of criminal control over communities, and the fact that these levels are in flux over time, it is difficult to derive a definitive and current list of fallen cities in Mexico. Conditions change rapidly and a fairly stable community can quickly become ungoverned (often in a matter of weeks). In contrast, there have been instances where the conditions in ungoverned communities improved almost as quickly with the introduction of federal forces, such as the police or military. Several cities that exhibit a continuing pattern of security deterioration and indicators of fallen or ungoverned would be Apatzingan (Michoacan State); Ciudad Altamirano (Guerrero State); Coyuca de Benitez (Guerrero State); Meoqui (Chihuahua State); and Piedras Negras (Coahuila State).
Several municipalities that have had conditions improve with continued deployment and use of military forces against organized crime elements are Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo on the northern border. Although neither city can be considered “safe” and under complete control of legitimate Mexican authorities not influenced or intimidated by criminal elements, there have been clear indications of authorities regaining control and improving the security conditions in what were once considered lawless and uncontrolled cities.
Overall, however, evidence suggests that organized crime has increased its control over Mexican cities in the past decade. Research completed by the Institute of Citizens’ Action for Justice and Democracy (IAC) shows that organized crime’s control over Mexican municipalities has gone from 34% in 2001, to 53% in 2006, to 71.5% in 2011. The president of IAC stated that the infrastructure of organized crime in Mexico is “apparent, open, and notorious,” and that in many cases there is complicity between political leaders and these groups.
Contributing to the deterioration of government control for security of business operations are the daily attacks on government authorities that plague more than half of the Mexican states. Government officials are the target of daily attacks perpetrated by organized criminal groups in many areas of the country. The attacks include ambushes of police or military patrols, attacks on government buildings such as police stations, courts and municipal buildings, assassinations of political figures, and executions or kidnap-executions of police officers. These attacks are in contrast to street battles between government forces and sicarios (cartel gunmen).
The frequency and character of armed attacks directed against Mexican authorities provide insight on the ability of the Mexican government to combat organized crime and maintain control. The number of police officers killed during ambushes jumped from approximately 625 in 2010 to 817 in 2011, a 130% increase. The number of assassinations dropped 8% in 2011, although that number remains quite high at approximately 125 for the year. In most instances, the victims were municipal level government officials, followed by state level officials.
Since January 2010, there has been a steady increase in not only the numbers of attacks on government authorities, but also a spread in the geographic pattern of attacks. In 2010, there were an average of 15 Mexican states per month experiencing attacks on government authorities. In 2011, the average increased to 18. For most of 2012, the number of states with attacks on government authorities was 20. States most recently hit hardest by attacks on authorities have been Chihuahua, Coahuila, Guerrero, and Michoacan.
There has been a steady increase in the number of monthly attacks since January 2010. Attacks on Mexican security forces occur on a daily basis throughout most of the country. The families of elected officials are also routinely targeted. Data from 2010-2012 reveals an increase in ambushes since January 2010. Although the pattern of political assassinations from January 2010 to July 2012 suggests they are decreasing, political leaders and government officials remain routine targets of Mexican organized crime and drug trafficking groups, with an average of five to 10 assassinations of elected officials in the first seven months of 2012. These statistics suggest continued challenges by Mexican authorities to maintain control of many areas of the country.
Another useful variable in assessing government control and the level of security risk to business operations in Mexico is the number of street battles or firefights between Mexican authorities and cartel gunmen. There has been a continuing increase in the number of such battles during the first seven months of 2012. In January 2012, there were approximately 25 street battles, with the number rising to 67 in April. In July, the number of street battles reached 71.
There has also been a slight increase in the geographic dispersion of these battles; they appear to be taking place across a larger number of cities and states. This pattern, which might not yet reflect a fixed trend, may still indicate a geographic expansion of threats to public safety and business operations.
In addition to the number and geographic pattern of ungoverned cities, attacks on authorities and street battles, other variables provide insight into the current security risks to business facilities, personnel, and operations. These include violent criminal activities such as extortion, kidnapping, and cargo theft. Reliable statistics do not exist on any of these crimes, but media reports and releases by various human rights organizations and think-tanks suggest an increase and spread in each of them. Certainly, the continuing decline in the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies in many areas of the country due to direct attacks, assassinations, intimidation, corruption, poor training, lack of equipment, and weak leadership contribute to the increase and spread of these crimes. As a result, opportunistic, small-scale criminals take advantage of the disorder in local communities as well. Burglary and theft, armed robberies, kidnapping, and extortion all tend to increase as law enforcement personnel direct their attention to more significant matters, including their very own survival.
Since 2008, extortion in Mexico has increased and spread across the country. The National Citizens’ Observatory, an organization that compiles statistics on crime, calculated that Mexico extortion cases of both nationals and foreign nationals have increased more than 180% since 2006. A 2011 study by the Bank of Mexico found that more than 60% of Mexican businesses reported that they were victims of crimes such as extortion. One of the deadliest attacks on a private sector business during the recent drug violence came as a result of extortion. In August 2011, gunmen reportedly working for the Los Zetas cartel set fire to a casino in Monterrey because its owners refused to pay them protection money. The fire killed 52 innocent civilian customers and employees, most of whom were middle-aged and elderly women who came to the casino to play bingo.
Extortion has spread to businesses in areas of the country previously considered largely untouched by crime. The state of Quintana Roo, which is home to the popular tourist cities of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, has now started to experience business extortions. A local newspaper reported in 2011 that the Los Zetas drug cartel was gradually infiltrating businesses throughout the region, including businesses that work with the tourism industry. Quintana Roo trade associations have reported that an increasing number of businesses are simply closing down, in large part due to the ongoing threat of extortion and other organized criminal activity. The trade groups claimed that 70 businesses closed in 2009, 120 in 2010, and 300 in 2011. A government official in the city of Playa del Carmen told the local newspaper Por Esto that reported extortion threats against local businesses jumped 150% in 2011. He further said about 99% of the businesses along one main commercial street in the city were paying protection fees to cartels.
The cities along the dangerous U.S.-Mexico border are also major business extortion areas. Most extortion attempts here, as well as elsewhere in Mexico, seem largely directed at small, more vulnerable local Mexican companies that cannot afford to invest in adequate risk and security mitigation and management measures.
While most extortion attempts are directed at local companies, there have been increasing incidents targeting large multinational corporations. One of the most well-known potential extortion cases affecting a multinational business occurred in late May 2012 against the Mexican subsidiary of Pepsico snack and beverage company, Sabritas. The attack was viewed as the worst attack on a multinational company in Mexico in recent years. Members of the Knights Templar, an offshoot of the La Familia cartel, set fire to warehouses and more than 30 trucks belonging to the firm in Guanajuato and Michoacan states. In total, the attacks and fires at five distribution centers across the two states significantly damaged company infrastructure, trucks and goods. In most media reports, the criminal organization claimed the attack was due to the company’s cooperation with authorities, however the circumstances point to indications of attempted extortion. The attacks required significant coordination to hit multiple locations and inflict a tremendous amount of damage without causing any loss of life. Arson is a common method of intimidation and retaliation in attempted extortions.
The mining industry in particular has become a popular target for extortionists, mostly because the industry is highly profitable and the work sites are remote. According to Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office, drug cartels commonly pressure multinational mining companies to pay from $11,000 to $37,000 a month in “taxes” for the right to operate in the cartel’s territory. If the “security tax” is not paid, the company’s directors, family members, and the miners themselves are attacked or kidnapped. The Attorney General’s Office has opened 12 investigations into extortion threats faced by some 300 mines across the country and has created an inter-agency investigative team aimed at protecting the mining industry in response to the rise in extortion.
In one example, a multinational mining company in Reynosa reported in August 2012 that it had received several threats from unknown individuals who demanded that they be permitted to steal copper from a warehouse owned by the company.
Separately, in August 2011, two miners of a multinational mining company were intercepted on a road near their mining facility in a remote area of Chihuahua State by a group of 12-14 men in bulletproof vests, carrying automatic weapons, with bandanas over their faces. The two miners were blindfolded, handcuffed, and transported to the group’s operating “base.” They were taken on a short tour of the location and shown a roomful of automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and explosives. A laptop with the company’s website loaded on the internet browser was also shown to the men. The assailants told the miners how the company’s website bragged about the successes of the Chihuahua gold mining operation and that to continue the operation the company would be required to pay a monthly “tax” to the group.
Mexico is among the top five countries at risk for kidnap-for-ransom schemes. The Mexican government’s statistical information about kidnap-for-ransom is highly inaccurate and likely manipulated for perception purposes. The reality is that the exact numbers of incidents, types of victims, or average ransom demands are nearly impossible to accurately determine because only a fraction of incidents are reported to authorities or other organizations. This is mostly due to fear that corrupt local and state police officers collude with kidnappers.
A Mexican human rights group, the Council for Law and Human Rights, claimed that 17,889 kidnappings occurred in 2011, up approximately 32% from the 13,505 abductions in 2010. The figures did not include kidnappings where the victim was released within 24 hours, known as an “express kidnapping.” In 2011, a separate Mexican think-tank reported that 1,847 kidnappings were recorded in the country in 2010. Some 209 of these incidents resulted in the death of the hostage. The think-tank, however, admitted these figures were likely only a fragment of the real kidnapping rate due to underreporting and the manipulation of statistical data by local governments. The think-tank’s 2010 figure was twice its 2009 numbers. Meanwhile, between October 2010 and September 2011 there were 1,016 incidents of kidnap-for-ransom, as noted in a report by the National Public Security System. According to a 2011 Mexican congressional report, kidnapping in Mexico has risen 317% in the last five years. The report estimated an average of 3.72 kidnap cases are reported every day. Although kidnap-for-ransom incidents occur throughout the country, high numbers of incidents are concentrated in eight states: Mexico, the Federal District, Guanajuato, Michoacan, Guerrero, Chihuahua, Baja California and Tamaulipas. Other primary trouble spots include Nuevo Leon, Tabasco, and Veracruz states. The municipalities in the Yucatan Peninsula seem relatively less prone to kidnap incidents.
Kidnap groups in Mexico range from well-organized and professional kidnapping rings and drug cartels to opportunistic street criminals. Both types of groups generally operate in urban areas or along rural highways. These groups often kidnap employees commuting to and from work, or in transit from city to city. Mexican nationals are believed to make up the vast majority of victims, but foreigners are also targeted. Although all business sectors are victimized, energy and mining sector workers are particularly at risk due to their isolated and rural work sites and transportation routes.
Drug trafficking gangs, such as Los Zetas, La Familia, and the Knights Templar, engage in retaliation and intimidation kidnappings against rivals, government authorities, public officials and private sector companies. They also kidnap-for-ransom employees and managers of successful high profile businesses and multinational corporations to boost their finances. While the vast majority of ransoms are relatively small, high profile senior managers and executives of multinational firms and local Mexican citizen business owners can fetch ransoms in the millions of dollars. A U.S. businessman abducted in Tijuana drew $5 million in 2011.
Express Kidnapping: Abduction based on a 24-hour time limit with emphasis placed on forcing victims to withdraw funds from a number of ATMs, as well as handover cash, valuables, and other possessions. In other cases, the victims are quickly released after paying a small ransom.
Virtual Kidnapping: Criminals call their victims from unregistered mobile phones and claim to have kidnapped a family member or friend. These criminals may use sound effects or information gathered on the internet to convince a victim that a kidnapping has occurred. The criminal then demands a ransom. Criminals often claim to be members of one of the large drug cartels when making such calls, knowing these groups’ reputation for brutality will scare victims. These incidents are actually elaborate extortion attempts since no one is actually kidnapped.
Since extortion and kidnapping are closely linked to the drug trade and the ungoverned municipalities and unsecured areas of the country, the cartels’ ability to operate with impunity have left businesses and their employees, managers, and executives vulnerable. This has resulted in significant economic and social damage, as well as scaring away some businesses looking to invest in Mexico.
A 2011-2012 survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Mexico found that 87% of the surveyed companies had increased security measures or contacted authorities due to incidents of extortion or kidnapping, and more than half of the companies increased their investments in security during 2011. A June 2012 article in the Financial Times, however, reported a more optimistic scenario; foreign direct investment totaled $18 billion in 2011 and was expected to reach similar levels in 2012. While extortion and kidnapping affects multinational corporations, in most cases criminals rarely know which key leaders to kidnap due to the sheer size of many companies operating in Mexico. In fact, in many incidents involving employees or managers of multinational corporations, the threat and demand are directed toward the families and not the companies, although most multinational corporations do accept varying levels of ownership of the incident and associated support and assistance to the victim’s family. The prospects for smaller, local companies may be darker. Many small Mexican businesses close rather than face the continued threat of violence, kidnapping, or ever-increasing extortion payments to gangs or cartels.
The security environment for businesses in Mexico will see no significant overall change for many years to come. Crime, corruption, and the resulting insecurity for business operations, employees, and executives will remain a consistent risk for business. Real change will require the Mexican government to radically reduce the corruption within law enforcement and significantly restructure the criminal justice system.
Businesses considering future operations or maintaining current operations in Mexico must acknowledge and take steps to actively manage these security risks to be successful and profitable. Regardless of the severity, business security risks can be managed using a continuous and systematic risk assessment and mitigation process. Access to and use of current continuous intelligence reporting on the evolving threat environment and how a Mexico-based business’ employees, facilities, operations, and supply chain may be vulnerable to security risks is the first step to developing and implementing effective security practices and policies.
Although Mexico will remain dangerous for the foreseeable future, multinational companies operating there can limit the frequency and severity of security related incidents through implementing a successful operational risk management program.
Charles Regini is Managing Director of Crisis Response and Planning for Kroll Associates Inc. Mr. Regini oversees the day-to-day activities of Kroll’s crisis management planning and response services, particularly the Kidnap for Ransom and Extortion response program and associated risk assessments, prevention, preparation, and planning services. Mr. Regini joined Kroll in 2011 after working as an independent consultant and program/project manager in the U.S. Intelligence Community. He retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2009 after spending more than 21 years of distinguished service in a variety of investigative, intelligence, and management positions. Mr. Regini was one of the hand-picked full-time hostage negotiators in the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, where he led the FBI’s international hostage/kidnap program, and became recognized as a subject matter expert in crisis-hostage negotiation.
Geoffrey Ramsey, “Mexico Official Admits Some Areas Out of Govt Control,” InSight Crime, February 10, 2012.
The IAC did not define how they measure “control.” See “Mexico: Situation of Organized Crime; Police and State Response Including Effectiveness; Availability of Witness Protection,” Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, September 11, 2012.
“Mexico Annual Security Review 2011,” Harary Security Consulting, 2012.
“Mexico Monthly Security Summaries in 2010, 2011, and 2012,” Harary Security Consulting, 2012.
The majority of these conflicts are running street battles during which bullets are fired indiscriminately in mostly urban settings often resulting in the injury or death of innocent bystanders. Fragmentation grenades were also used in a significant number of these battles resulting in injuries to innocent bystanders and property damage.
“Mexico’s 2012 National Survey on Victimization and Perception of Public Security,” Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography, 2012; Luisa Blanco, The Impact of Reform on the Criminal Justice System in Mexico (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2012); Gary J. Hale, A ‘Failed State’ in Mexico: Tamaulipas Declares Itself Ungovernable (Houston: James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, 2011); “Security and Criminal Justice in the States: 25 Indicators of our Institutional Weakness,” Mexico Evalua, 2012.
Tracey Wilkenson, “In Mexico, Extortion is a Booming Offshoot of Drug War,” Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2012.
Daniel Hernandez, “Who is Responsible for the Casino Tragedy in Mexico?” Los Angeles Times, August 29, 2011.
Edward V. Byrne, “300 Businesses Close in Cancún, Riviera Maya Due to 2011 Narco Extortion, Threats,” Mexico and Gulf Region Reporter, December 24, 2011.
“El crimen organizado expande su radio de acción,” Por Esto, October 24, 2011.
“Sabritas Target of a String of Attacks in Mexico,” CNN, June 2, 2012.
“Arson Attacks Against U.S. Multinational Subsidiary,” U.S. Overseas Security Advisory Council, 2012.
The criminal organization claiming responsibility for the arson attack was the Knights Templar, a relatively small splinter criminal group of the La Familia cartel that routinely relies on extortion revenues, unlike the larger cartels that primarily rely on drug trafficking revenues.
Edward Fox, “Mexico Mining Ops Pay Hefty Extortion Fees to Cartels,” Insight Crime, May 8, 2012.
Charles Regini, “Kroll Critical Incident Case Studies and Statistics,” Kroll Associates, 2012.
“49 Kidnappings Per Day Occurred in Mexico in 2011,” Borderland Beat, January 2, 2012.
Elyssa Pachico, “Study: 2010 Record Year for Kidnappings in Mexico,” InSight Crime, February 7, 2011.
Ioan Grillo, “No Reduction in Mexico Kidnappings,” Global Post, November 20, 2011.
Damien Cave, “In Mexico, a Kidnapping Ignored as Crime Worsens,” New York Times, March 17, 2012.
There is not one definitive reason why the Yucatan Peninsula is less prone to kidnap incidents.
“The Impact of Security in Mexico on the Private Sector (Fourth Edition),” American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico, 2011. | 2019-04-20T01:16:00Z | https://ctc.usma.edu/security-implications-for-multinational-corporations-operating-in-mexico/ |
T: Igor Mikhailovich, this Knowledge, which You revealed about the system, the Knowledge from the Observer outside the system – it is of great value. And in view of this, you realise how the system deflects away the attention of the human civilization to its labyrinths, moving humanity further and further away from the main purpose of the existence – from the spiritual development. There is a simple example from the mentioned primatology when people, believing that the most valuable qualities in them are mind and intellect, without examining the nature of the origin of their own thoughts, tried to teach a monkey to think. But it has not advanced further than the nature of primate, meaning, the primitive intelligence. And now the attempts are being made to teach a machine to think, meaning, to create such a self-educating artificial intelligence, such a mind, which would imitate mental processes of a human and would simulate intellectual behaviour, one might say, that would even surpass a human.
Some scientists pin high hopes on that time when it will be created. Whether it is good or bad – everything, of course, depends on what will dominate in the society: either a spiritual component of people or as now – algorithms of the system of the Animal mind in people’s heads.
IM: If you want to know what the system is thinking about, look closely what you are thinking about. Everything is simple.
Zh: Just to be honest with yourself.
IM: That is right. Here, it is said: “Artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence…” But what is our consciousness? Our consciousness is exactly that same artificial intelligence. That, for which our scientists strive – it has been already created long ago.
Why is our intelligence artificial? Because this world has not exactly originated the way, as, for example, modern astrophysics tells us: that it originated from the point, a Big Bang occurred, matter was formed and suchlike. In actual fact, everything is far simpler and more complicated. It is more complicated for the understanding of modern science. But it is simpler because, in reality, everything is simpler.
Well, and, of course, the list of “the great problems” of physics includes a question about the connection between physics and biology, the so-called reductionism problem, meaning, the reduction of the laws of biology to the combination of the laws of physics. Generally, in human consciousness, there is a desire to explain life and the germ of life on the basis of precise formulas of physics. And here it is interesting exactly which main questions are highlighted – these are the questions about the origin of life and the appearance of consciousness. And all this brings to the idea of the creation of ‘artificial intelligence’ and creation of ‘life in vitro’.
So, there are more than enough questions both in physics and astrophysics. But the answers to them are extremely stingy at this stage of the science advancement.
IM: That is absolutely right. If we touched on a question of astrophysics, then, I think, it is impossible not to say that the scientists, while studying the microwave background (which appeared, as they assume, after the Big Bang), already come to such conclusions and advance hypotheses that our Universe is holographic, that this world might be one big hologram. And that our three-dimensional vision, that which people call “the reality”, in actual fact – it is just an illusion. Why? Well, because all the thoughts, information, those pictures, which are thought to be perceived by the brain of our body, although, as a matter of fact, as we have already talked about, it is not the brain, it is our consciousness – it perceives all these thoughts in two-dimensionality. Meaning, all the pictures which are in our head, – they are two-dimensional. And only when the Personality pays attention to them or gives them the power of its attention (or as it was said before – it focuses on something), then they are perceived by consciousness as three-dimensional ones.
That is, if any person traces how the thoughts come to him, well, in reality, from the position of the Primary consciousness, then he will see that there are no thoughts as such in words or in something else. It is only when a dialogue is conducted, when, as we have already said, the actors are spinning in the head, then both words and disputes go on in our heads. But they are two-dimensional. It is enough to pay attention, to exert the power of one’s own atention – it is as if we hovered a cursor, let’s say, and printed out, meaning, we activated some picture, and at once it acquires a three-dimensionality in our heads.
T: Meaning, in all this, there is also a basis for understanding why the thought is material.
IM: The question is in something else. This whole world is illusory; it is really illusory. When we perceive by our consciousness that which we see as solid, in real fact (we have already talked about it more than once), delving deeper, we see a huge distance between atoms, and atoms also consist of finer particles. And it all is not that hard. But when we touch it, for example, that same stone or the table – it is hard to us. Our consciousness perceives it as a hard, solid object. It is hard but in three-dimensionality. If we consider it from the position of the higher, seventh dimension (but only the Personality can do it, the consciousness already cannot do it, but we will also talk about that a bit more), then, it turns out that a table – it does not exist at all. Why? Because the Personality – it is the Spirit, it is not a body. But the consciousness – it is a part tied to the material body, and it can perceive matter only as matter. For the consciousness, even the idea of what ‘the Personality’ is, ‘the Personality as the Spirit’ or ‘a Human is actually the Spirit’ – it is not perceived by the consciousness. The consciousness cannot logically explain it. It can compare: here is a cup standing on a table, and the table – it is hard, this is ceramics, this is wood, here the consciousness has a comparison. But it cannot compare that which it does not know.
Because of this, there was a great deal of incomprehension among people what the Spiritual World is, hence there are many various interpretations and lots of distortions on this subject. For example, about the creation of that same human. If we take the Bible...To this day, the Bible is interpreted in different ways. Meaning, it turns out that, when proceeding from the canons of the Scripture, God has created a human twice. Well, and this is where it becomes confusing, we will talk about this also.
T: Igor Mikhailovich, but why is the system, as of today, starting to gradually reveal some secret pages of information about its microcosm in this three-dimensionality of it? And why do people come across a two-dimensional phenomenon, a three-dimensional one, and the like?
IM: In reality, it does not reveal anything. It has been always known. If we look carefully at ancient religions —, we recalled Zoroastrianism today – these understandings about the nature of that same thought, about the typical programs of the system, about the true nature of a human appear even there. We have already talked about this topic at one time.
Zh: ...And evil thoughts are called the "evil spirits", that's exactly Ahriman's helpers – the "devas".
IM: Yes, and the key here is precisely the focus of a person's attention on an evil thought, meaning, additional food of the system, a person's conscious choice toward the Animal nature.
T: There are also mentions that Ahriman attacks God’s creations like a troublesome fly. But in fact, the thoughts that are spinning in a person throughout the day, they are really like a swarm of flies; when you do not want to listen to them, yet they are buzzing persistently.
T: ...It is interesting that Zoroastrianism also describes the attributes of the system, that enemy of a human that is hidden in the form of consciousness... Ahriman does not want people to recognise him, otherwise they simply won't follow him. And so he tries, in every possible way, to hide his true intentions from them, he feeds on human irritability, communicates with spiteful and vindictive people. And so, most often, he deceives people exactly with doubts and greed. He sends blindness, deafness and enmity down on them.
IM: Yes, spiritual blindness and deafness – this is what we see everywhere in modern civilization.
T: Here, his purpose is indicated clearly: that Ahriman's goal is to cause a quarrel between people and Ormuzd (meaning, the God of Good in Zoroastrianism) and to make them his friends. Basically, intrigues of the system of the Animal mind are enumerated.
Zh: ...There are some interesting moments there that indicate that at one time, this yet another religion had formed out of the remnants of the teaching about the Spiritual world.
T: That's absolutely right. And there are echoes of such knowledge there as the endless time that has existed from the beginning (called 'zurvan' in Zoroastrianism); knowledge about the existence of the Spiritual world, which was referred to as 'menog', meaning, that which in translation meant 'invisible' or, literally 'spiritual'; the knowledge that God dwells in the realm of 'infinite light', that He is All-Seeing, that He is All-Knowing. And also about the fact that God has created a human twice, about the spiritual searches, about after-death fate, about the Court on the Chinvat bridge, and a lot of other information. So Zoroastrianism – it is the first millennium BC. And this is already updated tracing paper of the ancient teachings because this religion was formed out of the more ancient teachings and religions of the Indo-Iranians and the Aryans.
Zh: Everything is there, only the keys of spiritual understanding have been lost. Consciousness has erased for people the most important thing with time, translations, well, and of course, interpretations from the mind.
T: Meaning, all this knowledge has existed since ancient times. Seek and you shall find.
IM: Absolutely right. There is a reality that is beyond the limits of matter, and there is a temporary world, filled with illusions. But here again arises the perception from the consciousness, when people perceive this world with the help of consciousness, they start to have such a discord, a non-perception, a lack of understanding that consciousness, for example, can be mortal, while a person is immortal, meaning, as a Personality. "Well, how is that if I'm the consciousness," if a person associates himself with the consciousness, then the "consciousness must be immortal." And from here, there are many such interpretations.
And this paradox, of course, drives many to such a religious dead-end when people themselves can not explain to themselves with the help of their consciousness. But this pushes them to different ways of searching for paths to the Spiritual World. They feel this need from inside, but they rely on a broken crutch – on the consciousness. They accumulate various instruments from different religions, from different sects, different interpretations, but, it turns out, they sit and wait like the Awaiter *(Homunculus loxodontus - the one who waits).
While they know and are inwardly striving for God, but their consciousness keeps them in place. And it tells them: "You already know everything, well, where are you to go, human? After all, you already know everything: you have already learned both the Bible and the Koran, and many and many other things, and Buddhism, and the Vedas, you have learned everything, even know Kabbalah by heart. Well, you are already an enlightened person, a spiritualized one, you can argue with any imam and convince him of your righteousness, where the comma should properly be." The whole trick is in this.
You know where it should be, you communicate with yourself on this subject and with others, only you have not gotten closer to God even by one millimetre. Why? Because an empty talk is going on.
T: Yes, it turns out that the system produces only knowledge theorists, and not practitioners.
IM: Why does such a paradoxical situation arise: people talk a lot about God and really strive for God, but they talk and then do not do it? Because the system is set up this way. Just now, we have touched on artificial intelligence, and there is such an illustrative example... Fellows have conducted an experiment. They took bots... Bots – it's artificial intelligence, it's something that communicates with people sometimes via the computer, and some people think that it's also people. They accumulate intellect and respond in a stereotypical manner to certain questions. So, they took two bots... (People can find this example on the Internet, can watch, it's quite interesting). Two bots that have been communicating with people for many years, they have had a million conversations each. So, these bots smartened up, they became so clever and enlightened, almost like people. And when they were brought together for the sake of the experiment – what will the two bots talk about, so they talked a while as usual, as people who are not well acquainted, and then one bot suggested to the other bot: "So let's talk about God." And here is the key point. For many, this can slip by as obvious. But here is a small key to understanding how the system works. And the system works this way, the consciousness of people works like this for everyone: "So, let's talk about God!"
Meaning, not: "Let us go, get closer to the Spiritual World, let us make an effort to cognize God." No, the system sets up the Personality so that it sits and listens to the artists talking about God in front of it. By the artists, I mean in our understanding – consciousness. Meaning, this scene of your conversation with yourself or with someone else... Although, what's the difference?! Here, for a better understanding, I will clarify once again, it will not be extraneous: that the consciousness of each person – it is individual, but it is a part of the whole system, part of what many call the Absolute, the Supermind or the Higher Mind and the like. But this in no way, shape, or form pertains to the Spiritual World, to God.
So, it turns out that we, even while communicating with each other at the level of consciousness, it's the same as if the system plays chess with itself. This is where it comes from... We have already said that even when two people argue, they have not yet begun to argue, they have not yet met, but the outcome of their dispute has been long predetermined. It's the same as when you play chess with yourself, well, anyway, if you're for black, the black will win. Well, how can you checkmate yourself with white? It is the same here.
IM: ...Yes, you will resurrect in the body there... and you will have a lot of material happiness and blessings, and everything good. After all, this is paradise, and in paradise, there must be everything.
T: Here the system discloses through the consciousness of people everything that it dreams of itself, about that same own immortality. It is from here that a person has such material desires from consciousness as dreams of resurrection in the body and about material paradise... By the way, people often ask what "paradise" is.
IM: Of course, with various animals, where there will be peace and quiet. But, and then again logic gets involved, if this is paradise – there should be no killing. Therefore, the lion will nibble on a carrot while sitting alongside a rabbit by the river and will enjoy the view of a pike and a carp swimming in an embrace. Well then, how are plants worse? Well, it is not allowed to eat a rabbit, that's murder. And it turns out that a carrot doesn’t want to live or what? Carrot is also a spiritualized particle. Somehow, that's not turning out right. No matter how you slice it, everything comes down to one eating the other. But what kind of a paradise is this if one eats the other? That's not right.
Why do even people who have served their entire lives in high positions in various religions, why do they doubt the existence of paradise? Because they made up such things from the consciousness for themselves that their own consciousness doesn't want to believe it. And why? Because they feel something different.
T: Yes, the world of God can only be felt by the deepest feelings. The deepest feelings go far beyond the boundaries of six dimensions. While the system is limited to only six dimensions.
IM: The world of God – it is a different world. It is beyond the limits of any dimensions. It is boundless. And a dimension is a dimension because it can be measured.
The world of God – it is a different world.
It is beyond the limits of any dimensions.
T: You have interestingly pointed out, Igor Mikhailovich, that we live in a spiritualized world... People very often confuse and mix two different in meaning concepts: spiritualized and soul-filled.
IM: Here is also a phenomenon. Let's take, for example, religious legends. When God was creating a human, He created both plants and animals, everything that is spiritualized. Something that is alive is meant by the word ‘spiritualized’. Everything that is alive – it lives due to the Spirit, not to the Soul.
And many confuse... People argue: "Does a dog have a Soul or not?" Well, the dog doesn't have a Soul and it can not have. The fact that it is a spiritualized creature, naturally, it could not live if it were not spiritualized. Even any little plant, any small microbe, it lives due to the fact that it is spiritualized.
And now I would suggest that people conduct such a mental experiment, make their consciousnesses work a little for the Personality, for themselves. Just imagine, let's take... well, whatever you want. Let's take, for example, as in an anecdote, a fish or a flea: if there were fur on the fish, then there would be fleas on it. Let's take a flea, an elephant, and a human. And now we look – they are completely different. But if we break them down into particles and even go beyond the quanta, then we will see only the movement of energies, from which certain field structures or wave structures are formed, as we can call them, which already carry information. And already from them, the primary building blocks of the universe are formed, from which all sorts of quarks are formed, then more – atoms. From these atoms, molecules are formed, from which the body is assembled. And here the difference has already started.
Meaning, that's exactly the assembly of molecules, mind you, molecules (it's already god knows what kind of a connection), on the one hand, an elephant is already forming out of them, thanks to certain information; on the other hand – a flea, and then again – a human. But the human differs favourably from all of them. How? There is a Soul in him. And naturally, due to the fact that there is a Soul, there is a Personality – there is the fact that at one time, God created human as an immaterial being, meaning, without a body. Well, we will return to this, this is also an interesting point, but a little later.
So it turns out that neither a flea nor an elephant have a Soul, and they don't have a Personality. But they have certain, let's say, consciousnesses. Even with that same flea, it has certain survival skills. It has certain reflexes, how to exist. After all, it does not jump onto a tree and does not try to bite through it? No, it doesn't. It jumps onto a dog, on a person, or even on someone else and feeds on blood – this is its need. And where does the need come from? Again, from the consciousness.
Thank God, nowadays, many people already talk about it, that both fish and birds have quite a pronounced consciousness. They can use tools for survival and the like... That's really true, and a bird can use a stick to pick out a worm somewhere, in fact, it's already usage of a tool. Some fish also use certain tools to procure food or to create for themselves better conditions for the wintering, or something else. It's not just some kind of genetic memory that makes them move. It's a kind of consciousness; some have a bigger one, some – smaller. But animals have no Soul.
Drawing a parallel between living beings, we can conclude that the human body doesn’t differ, let's say, at the molecular level, from the body of that same flea or that same elephant. Meaning, the same elements, but in a different sequence, in a different quantity. But now we will go back along the chain: to atoms, from atoms to particles to quantum states, then we will go beyond the quantum limit, and we will get where the waves are, that which we call energies – the motion of waves according to certain information put in them, which are transformed into these or those particles.
And if we go a little bit further, then we will see the primary energy, what is called "spirit" in the religions. It's hard to express what it is, even in modern language. And before, it was even more difficult. Therefore, let's take it as a definition, let's assume, certain powers or, more simply, Allat – the powers coming from God, meaning, the primary state, that which arises. This is where it already begins to form.
And this power (Allat) – it gives life to the body of a human, the body of a flea, of the elephant, and of that same grass. And it turns out that everything that lives – it is spiritualized. But this does not mean the presence of a Soul. Why? Because the Soul – it is something different. I would compare it with, speaking in modern terms, the Soul – it is something like a portal, it's something that is directly and always connected with the Spiritual World. This is something through which the Personality can contact Boundlessness and Infinity. This is something thanks to which the Personality can really perceive the Spiritual World.
T: That is, based on all this, it turns out that the primordial nature of everything around, including a human being – it is different, meaning, not how our consciousness habitually perceives it. And the consciousness imposes on us belief and perception of the world already in narrowed, limited even in three-dimensionality, frameworks, meaning, through tactile sensations, vision, hearing and so on.
IM: The system itself is interested in the Personality concentrating attention on three-dimensional objects. Meaning, it does not show a person in the consciousness that of which they consist in their essence… Even we were just now conducting a mental experiment, and we were forcing ourselves to think about it. But yet again, when looking at this same cup, when looking at each other, we do not see molecules. We have not been granted the ability to behold all this with earthly vision. And for us in three-dimensionality: here we have a shape, we have images, and we touch the table with our hands – it is hard, we touch the cup – it is hard. In this is the phenomenon of all this three-dimensionality, that, being in the system, it is extremely difficult to study the system.
T: … Meaning, an alive, free and independent object, because it will be in the system and under the control of the system.
IM: Yes. Here one more question arises, of course, about the ninth day… But if we touch upon it, then we will have to go far beyond the quantum limit and to talk about things, which were closed to masses since the beginning of time. Well, I think it will be interesting for people. That is why, if you wish, we can raise this question.
IM: If a Personality is free in its perception of the Spiritual World, then no system can influence it. A true reality, — it is one — it is the Spiritual World. And everything else – it is temporarily existing. Everything that exists temporarily – it can not be real, meaning, it exists at a specific point, under specific conditions and only for a specific fragment of time, no more.
Why do I say a fragment and not a period? Because for us, time is passing. It has its beginning and its end. And we have a perception of time point. And if we look from the Spiritual World, then time – it is like a line and any fragment can be viewed.
Zh: Yes… from God’s reality… Perception through the deepest feelings – it is exactly this, which gives a completeness of perception of the True reality and it is exactly this that gives an understanding of why this whole temporary world exists.
IM: This whole world – it exists for a certain purpose, naturally, and its purpose is actually simple.
That which is told about chaos and whatever else, there is no chaos – everything is put in order. And first of all, it is put in order by the system itself. God does not interfere in this process, that’s for sure. Yes, the world is created by Him, but there is a system in it – it is that small antithesis, which is trying, let’s say it this way, to impose on people an opinion about itself, that it is god.
IM: Here we are touching on the issue of belief… Why do people say “Do you believe in God or don’t you?” After all, a person, who really cognizes God, but does not believe… Let’s dig a little deeper. If we look into the core of this question, the concept of ‘believe in God’ did not exist. There were “You know God,” “I know or I am cognizing God.” Meaning, people who know God are those whom we now call Saints, in such an understanding. They are in contact with the Spiritual World; they live by the Spiritual World. They are already immortal. Their body can be killed, but they can not be killed, they are unreachable for the very system because they are already Alive.
And a person who is “on the path to God” or is “cognizing God,” if we translate it into the modern language, then the one cognizing God – it is a person who strives for God, feels that He exists… After all, any person feels, even the most devout atheist, if he thinks about it, if he conducts a banal mental experiment on himself, then he will see that he has several consciousnesses, and there is one who is observing the consciousness, and there is one who is observing the one who is observing the consciousness. This is not a wordplay; this is the reality.
And it is precisely the one who is observing the observer – the consciousness – he is exactly the one who can feel that greatness of the Spiritual World, which emanates along that “silver thread” (we have once told about it when talking about the Soul). And the Soul – this is already a part of the Spiritual World, meaning, a part of God.
T: You are now telling, Igor Mikhailovich, very important understandings. And, of course, this can be a wordplay only for those who have not studied the most important questions of that same modern scientific philosophy, people who have no idea about those problems, which are brought up in ontology, in gnoseology, in philosophical anthropology. And it turns out that during the whole programme now, you have, in fact, been answering the main question: “How is the attainment of the Truth possible?” And it couldn't be clearer… But, in fact, the main goal of science, as well as, by the way, of religion, is exactly the cognition of the Truth of its first principle.
IM: However… consciousness imposes something else… It does exactly say that “You should be believing, but not Knowing.” You are taught how to believe in God, but you are not taught how to cognize. Consciousness actively supports this. The paradox is that it very actively supports exactly all religions, all methods, all skills, which lead to belief, which make people go to some holy places or something else, to overcome, to fight, to strive, but all this – in three-dimensionality.
But if we look, if we just cast the three-dimensionality aside and look from the position of the seventh dimension, then we will see that a person does not move in the spiritual sense. It turns out that he is the Awaiter – sitting and waiting for someone to come to him. They will not come. God’s doors are always open, but people close them in front of themselves. And, as I have already said, God loves only those who love Him. And He knows only those whom He loves.
IM: When a person is really developing spiritually and not standing still, then sooner or later an understanding comes to him that this world – it, let’s say, reflects as if in a mirror the Spiritual World, only with a change of signs and its essence. And the system fractally copies these mirror reflections from itself, like, let’s say, some play of shadows from a candle. Meaning, everything is exactly the opposite: here is fire and here is darkness. Sooner or later, understanding comes to a person that it is precisely in this play of shadows that the whole essence and deception of the system itself, all of its illusiveness is embedded.
But when a person understands deeper, when he starts to perceive through feelings and to see already with the spiritual sight, I mean, to perceive the Spiritual World and to see with the spiritual sight, then an understanding of the essence of all this illusory world comes to him, that these are only shadows from the mirrors of a septon, nothing more, all this material anxiety. That, which people call life, is nothing but emptiness.
If we look at a period of time… For many people, it is unclear, why emptiness? “After all, I do live, I exist. I have occupied a certain space. I am.” Yes, we exist, but only from our own perspective. And if we look from a perspective of at least one billion years, then has a person lived or not?
If we look from a perspective of at least one galaxy, has this person existed or not? Because a galaxy is huge, there are billions of planets in it. And an earthly person lives only on one deserted, very distant little planet, in a small space. Everything depends on which side you are observing from.
When a person liberates himself spiritually, he becomes an Angel. He is recognised by the whole Boundless Spiritual World. It is impossible not to notice him. And here lies the paradox (it is a paradox only for matter): that a small, tiny, unnoticeable little person, who exists only for a short period of time, when gaining Life, when getting free from the slavery of that very system, he becomes an Angel, who brings joy to the whole Spiritual World, endless number of the same ones. But he comes not as a slave; he comes as an equal. That is the point.
Slavery and evil exist only here because here exists that which is called death. Everything starts from here. And exactly here are unity and struggle of opposites, a desire for power, for greed, for everything else. And even the best person, the sweetest person, the kindest person who you know, if you get into his head – the same thoughts come to him as to you, and he wants the same as you do. Well, the only difference is that you want tea and he wants coffee. You dream about a Mercedes and he dreams about a Volga* (Russian car), or he does not need a Volga, he wants a zebra for himself, what difference does it make.
The point is not in things and not in their names. The point is that everyone seeks (I mean everyone who lives according to the dictation of one’s own consciousness or all the slaves of the devil), they seek one thing – to get settled better in this three-dimensional little world and dream about That World. Meaning, to sit and dream and believe that it will come. But no matter how much you believe, it will not come, unless you go to it yourself. If you want God’s Love – learn to Love, and you will receive it. For the one who Loves can not be rejected, because he already is.
If you want God’s Love – learn to Love.
For the one who Loves can not be rejected, because he already is. | 2019-04-23T18:36:06Z | https://allatra.tv/en/article/zhivaja-beseda-62-73 |
Tiziana Alagia (born 8 March 1973) is a retired Italian long-distance runner who specialised in the marathon. She represented Italy at the World Championships in Athletics in 2001. A one-time Italian marathon champion, her best for the distance was 2:27:53 hours. She primarily competed in Italy and won marathon races in Florence, Carpi, Turin, Padova and Piacenza.
Born in Lagonegro, Potenza, she started her international career at the 1992 IAAF World Cross Country Championships, where she came 41st in the junior race. Later that year she competed on the track at the 1992 World Junior Championships in Athletics and was 14th in the 10,000 metres final. She represented Italy at the 1995 IAAF World Half Marathon Championships and began to make her impact on the road running scene in the late 1990s under the tutelage of Renato Canova.
Alagia had consecutive wins at the Vivicittà Firenze 12K in 1997 and 1998. She made her debut over the marathon distance at the Millennium for Peace marathon in Assisi, coming fourth. She broke the women's course record to win at the Cannes Half Marathon in February 2002 and went on to take two marathon wins later that year, first at the Cesano Boscone Marathon and then the Florence Marathon. She ended a breakthrough year with a win at the Best Woman 10 km in Fiumicino.
A career best run of 1:11:29 for the half marathon brought her the women's title at the 2001 Rome-Ostia Half Marathon. The fastest marathon of her career followed in April, as she won the Turin Marathon in a time of 2:27:54 hours. These performances gained her two further senior international selections: she was 21st at that year's European Cup 10000m and was chosen for the marathon at the 2001 World Championships in Athletics, where she again finished in 21st (just behind team mate Rosaria Console). Alagia won her first national title in 2002, as she won the women's race at the Italian Marathon in Carpi in a time of 2:30:24 hours. She won the Maratona del Salento in Parabita that year. He only major appearance of 2003 came at the Florence Marathon, where she was third. She missed most of the season through injury, but vowed to return to top level competition the following year.
Alagia trained in Namibia at the start of 2003 and made her comeback with wins at the Piacenza Marathon (running a course record of 2:38:13) and the Stramilano Half Marathon. Making a rare appearance outside the Italian road circuit, she ran at the Berlin Marathon in September and came sixth. Her best run of 2005 was at the Rome City Marathon, where she was runner-up to Silvia Skvortsova in a time of 2:31:46 hours. She returned to the Stramilano to defend her title but came fourth overall. Her final year of top level competition was at the age of 33 in 2006. She won the Piacenza Marathon for a second time and was sixth at the Vienna Marathon.
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^ Civai, Franco & Gasparovic, Juraj (2011-02-06). Best Woman 10K. Association of Road Racing Statisticians. Retrieved on 2011-05-02.
^ Civai, Franco (2011-03-06). Half Marathon. Association of Road Racing Statisticians. Retrieved on 2011-05-02.
^ Wim van Hemert, Marty Post & Franco Civai (2010-11-18). Turin Marathon. Association of Road Racing Statisticians. Retrieved on 2011-05-02.
^ 2001 World Championships – Women's Marathon Results Archived 2009-08-15 at the Wayback Machine.. IAAF. Retrieved on 2011-05-02.
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^ Sampaolo, Diego (2004-04-25). Kenya and Italy share honours in Padua Marathon. IAAF. Retrieved on 2011-05-02.
^ Civai, Franco & Loonstra, Klaas (2011-03-07). Piacenza Marathon. Association of Road Racing Statisticians. Retrieved on 2011-05-02.
^ Sampaolo, Diego (2004-04-04). Kipchumba takes Stramilano win. IAAF. Retrieved on 2011-05-02.
^ Sampaolo, Diego (2005-03-14). Di Cecco wins Rome Marathon in 2:08:02. IAAF. Retrieved on 2011-05-02.
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Fiumicino is a town and comune in the Metropolitan City of Rome, central Italy, with a population of 77,870. It is famous for the presence of the Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport, the busiest airport in Italy, the name literally means little river. The town of Fiumicino should not be confused with its namesake, Fiumicino became a comune in 1992, previously it was part of the municipality of Rome, being almost totally included in the former Municipio XIV. On 24 August 2013, a mud volcano popped up at the centre of the via Coccia di Morto roundabout. Fiumicino borders with the municipalities of Anguillara Sabazia, Ladispoli and it lies in the northern side of the mouth of Tiber river, next to Ostia. Fiumicino is home to the largest airport in Italy, the Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport, the city houses the head offices of Alitalia and Blue Panorama Airlines. All Nippon Airways has its Rome Sales Office in the Room 447 in the, cathay Pacific has an office in the airports Torre Uffici 2. In addition Small Planet Airlines has an office in Fiumicino, in addition, Fiumicino has a large fishing center on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast and a sea resort.
Carpi is an Italian town and comune of about 70,000 people in the province of Modena, Emilia-Romagna. It is a centre for industrial and craft activities and for cultural and commercial exchanges. The name Carpi is derived from carpinus betulus, a hornbeam tree particularly widespread in medieval times in the Po valley region, in Prehistoric times it was a settlement of the Villanovan Culture. The foundation by the Lombard king Aistulf of St. Marys church in the castle in 752 was the first step in the current settlement of the city. From 1319 to 1525 it was ruled by the Pio family, after whom it was acquired by the Este, the city received a Silver Medal for Military Valour in recognition of its participation in the resistance against the German occupation during World War II. As a titular Duke of Modena, the current holder of the title of Prince of Carpi would be Prince Lorenz of Belgium, Archduke of Austria-Este. It counts the hamlets of Budrione, Cantone di Gargallo, Cibeno Pile, Fossoli, Lama di Quartirolo, Osteriola, San Marino, San Martino Secchia and it is flanked by a portico with 52 columns.
Anna Carmela Incerti is an Italian long-distance runner who specializes in the marathon. She has represented Italy in the marathon at European and she won the bronze in the event at the 2010 European Championships, upgraded to silver and to gold. She was the 2003 winner of the Florence Marathon, which made her the Italian marathon champion for that year and she won the bronze medal in 10,000 metres at the 2003 Summer Universiade. Incerti began focusing on longer distances and set a personal best in the marathon at the 2006 European Athletics Championships and she finished 17th over the distance at the 2007 World Championships in Athletics. She represented Italy at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and came fourteenth in the marathon with a personal best run of 2,30,55 hours. Later that year, she won the Milan Marathon in a new personal best time of 2,27,42 hours, Incerti won the Roma-Ostia Half Marathon in March 2009 and secured the half marathon title at the 2009 Mediterranean Games in Pescara. At the 2010 European Athletics Championships she won the medal in the marathon race.
The Berlin Marathon is a major running and sporting event held annually in Berlin, Germany. The official marathon distance of 42.195 kilometers is set up as a road race where professional athletes. First initiated in 1974, the event traditionally takes place on the last weekend in September, the Berlin marathon is one of the largest and most popular road races in the world. In 2016, the race had 46,950 entrants from 122 countries, along with seven other races, it forms the World Marathon Majors, a series offering a $1 million prize purse to be split equally between the top male and female marathoners. For a record six consecutive years 2011-2016 Berlin has been the site of the leading mens time for the year. The event is split over 2 days, about 8,000 additional inline skaters compete at the marathon course the Saturday before the running event. Power walkers, wheelchair riders, and a childrens marathon are part of the marathon weekend, the course within the metropolis starts and finishes near the Brandenburg Gate.
Because of the division of city, the events before 1990 were limited to the area of West Berlin. Only on 30 September 1990, were able to run through the Brandenburg Gate. It was reported that a great many of the runners had tears in their eyes as they ran through the gate, after leaving Brandenburg Gate, the course passes Charlottenburg, around Tiergarten, along Moabit and Mitte, and south to Friedrichshain. After that, it winds west between Kreuzberg and Neukölln, through Schöneberg, over to Friedenau and Zehlendorf, before turning back toward the citys center. Looping above Schöneberg, the course comes full circle as it finishes through the Gate and this route differs from the one used at the 1936 Summer Olympics Marathon. World records Men Women Key, Current course record German championship race In terms of finishing athletes the 2008 Berlin marathon was the 5th largest marathon run of all time,35,913 athletes including 130 power walkers reached the finish in under 6 hours. The 2008 skater marathon had numbered 7,685 participants and counted around 200,000 spectators along the course and it is considered the largest inline skater marathon in the world and is the final venue of the World Inline Cup.
The Vienna City Marathon is an annual marathon race over the classic distance of 42.195 km held in Vienna, Austria since 1984. The first edition was held on March 25,1984 with a total of 794 competitors and it is Austrias largest road running event and the 2010 edition had record participation with 32,940 runners from 108 nations taking part in the days races. After crossing the left bank of the Wien river on Wienzeile to the Schönbrunn Palace, the full-marathon runners, are continuing past the Rathaus to the Alsergrund and to Friedensbrücke. The track continues via the side of the Donaukanal and the Praterstern to reach the Prater again. After having passed the Ernst-Happel-Stadion and the Lusthaus, the leads over the Franzensbrücke to the Ringstraße where the runners reach the finish at the Heldenplatz. The race days events include a marathon team relay event, a 4.2 km fun run. In 2011, Haile Gebrselassie ran the fastest ever time on Austrian soil for the distance, the 2012 edition saw Haile and Paula Radcliffe engage in a novel half marathon race, with Radcliffe receiving a head start 7,52 minutes.
Long-distance running, or endurance running, is a form of continuous running over distances of at least three kilometres. Physiologically, it is largely aerobic in nature and requires stamina as well as mental strength, among mammals, humans are well adapted for running significant distances, and particularly so among primates. The endurance running hypothesis suggests that running endurance in the Homo genus arose because travelling over large areas improved scavenging opportunities, the capacity for endurance running is found in migratory ungulates and a limited number of terrestrial carnivores, such as dogs and hyenas. Long distance running can be used as a means to improve cardiovascular health, Running improves aerobic fitness by increasing the activity of enzymes and hormones that stimulate the muscles and the heart to work more efficiently. Endurance running is often a component of military training and has been so historically. Professional running is most commonly found in the field of sports, long-distance running as a form of tradition or ceremony is known among the Hopi and Tarahumara people, among others.
Distance running can serve as an exercise for family, colleagues. The social element of distance running has been linked with improved performance, in the sport of athletics, long-distance events are defined as races covering three kilometres and above. The three most common types are track running, road running and cross country running, all of which are defined by their terrain – all-weather tracks and natural terrain, respectively. In collegiate cross country races in the United States, men race 8000 or 10000 meters, depending on their division, the Summer Olympics features three long-distance running events, the 5000 metres,10,000 metres and marathon. Since the late 1980s, Kenyans and Ethiopians have dominated in major international long-distance competitions, in this method, the hunter would run at a slow and steady pace between one hour and a few days, in an area where the animal has no place to hide. The Old Testament has a few mentions of messengers running to deliver messages, for example, in 2 Samuel 18, two runners, Ahimaaz son of Zadok and a Cushite run to deliver King David the message of the death of his son Absalom.
The 10,000 metres or 10, 000-meter run is a common long-distance track running event. The event is part of the programme at the Olympic Games. The race consists of 25 laps around an Olympic-sized track and it is less commonly held at track and field meetings, due to its duration. The 10,000 metres track race is usually distinguished from its road running counterpart, the 10,000 metres is the longest standard track event. The international distance is equal to approximately 6.2137 miles, most of those running such races compete in road races and cross country events. Added to the Olympic programme in 1912, athletes from Finland, nicknamed the Flying Finns, in the 1960s, African runners began to come to the fore. In 1988, the womens competition debuted in the Olympic Games, official records are kept for outdoor 10,000 metres track events. The world record for men is held by Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia in 26,17.53, posted at Brussels, Belgium on August 26,2005. For women, the world track 10,000 metres record is held by Almaz Ayana of Ethiopia in 29,17.45 to win gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics on August 12,2016.
Assisi is a town and comune of Italy in the Province of Perugia in the Umbria region, on the western flank of Monte Subasio. The 19th-century Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows was born in Assisi, around 1000 BC a wave of immigrants settled in the upper Tiber valley as far as the Adriatic Sea, and in the neighborhood of Assisi. These were the Umbrians, living in fortified settlements on high ground. From 450 BC these settlements were taken over by the Etruscans. The Romans took control of central Italy after the Battle of Sentinum in 295 BC and they built the flourishing municipium Asisium on a series of terraces on Monte Subasio. Roman remains can still be found in Assisi, city walls, the forum, a theatre, an amphitheatre, in 1997, the remains of a Roman villa were discovered containing several well-preserved rooms with frescoes and mosaics in a condition rarely found outside sites such as Pompei. In 238 AD Assisi was converted to Christianity by bishop Rufino, according to tradition, his remains rest in the Cathedral Church of San Rufino in Assisi.
The Ostrogoths of king Totila destroyed most of the town in 545, Assisi came under the rule of the Lombards as part of the Lombard and Frankish Duchy of Spoleto. The thriving commune became an independent Ghibelline commune in the 11th century, the city, which had remained within the confines of the Roman walls, began to expand outside these walls in the 13th century. In this period the city was under papal jurisdiction, the city went into a deep decline through the plague of the Black Death in 1348. The city came again under papal jurisdiction under the rule of Pope Pius II, in 1569 construction was started of the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli. During the Renaissance and in centuries, the city continued to develop peacefully, as the 17th-century palazzi of the Bernabei, now the site of many a pilgrimage, Assisi is linked in legend with its native son, St. Francis. The gentle saint founded the Franciscan order and shares honors with St. Catherine of Siena as the saint of Italy. He is remembered by many, even non-Christians, as a lover of nature, Assisi was hit by two devastating earthquakes, that shook Umbria in September 1997.
The marathon is a long-distance running race with an official distance of 42.195 kilometres, usually run as a road race. The event was instituted in commemoration of the run of the Greek soldier Pheidippides, a messenger from the Battle of Marathon to Athens. The marathon was one of the original modern Olympic events in 1896, more than 800 marathons are held throughout the world each year, with the vast majority of competitors being recreational athletes as larger marathons can have tens of thousands of participants. The name Marathon comes from the legend of Philippides or Pheidippides and it is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the assembly, exclaiming νενικήκαμεν, before collapsing and dying. Lucian of Samosata gives the story, but names the runner Philippides, there is debate about the historical accuracy of this legend. In some Herodotus manuscripts, the name of the runner between Athens and Sparta is given as Philippides, in 1879, Robert Browning wrote the poem Pheidippides.
Brownings poem, his story, became part of late 19th century popular culture and was accepted as a historic legend. This route, as it existed when the Olympics were revived in 1896, was approximately 40 kilometres long, and this route is considerably shorter, some 35 kilometres, but includes a very steep initial climb of more than 5 kilometres. When the modern Olympics began in 1896, the initiators and organizers were looking for a great popularizing event, the idea of a marathon race came from Michel Bréal, who wanted the event to feature in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens. This idea was supported by Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics. The Greeks staged a race for the Olympic marathon on 10 March 1896 that was won by Charilaos Vasilakos in 3 hours and 18 minutes. The winner of the first Olympic marathon, on 10 April 1896, was Spyridon Louis, the marathon of the 2004 Summer Olympics was run on the traditional route from Marathon to Athens, ending at Panathinaiko Stadium, the venue for the 1896 Summer Olympics.
Athletes at the start of a 10-mile race in Gloucestershire in England, UK in 1990.
Temple of Minerva in the Piazza del Comune.
German church and monument to colonists in Windhoek, Namibia.
South African troops patrol the border region for PLAN insurgents, 1980s.
The fourteen regions of Namibia.
The Berlin Marathon is known as a flat and fast course.
A group of amateur runners in a long-distance race in Switzerland.
Men in the 10 km run section of the 2011 Grand Prix de Triathlon in Paris.
Runners turning the bend in the men's 10,000 metres final at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The Piazza della Signoria is one of many Florentine squares along the course of the marathon.
Kenyan runner Alice Chelangat won the women's race in 2005.
The Chicago Half Marathon is a Chicago Marathon tune-up on Lake Shore Drive in the South Side of Chicago.
The town hall, housed by "Palazzo dei Pio".
The 2004 Olympic champion Stefano Baldini won the race in 1998.
Ugo Frigerio, four medals (three gold), at the Olympic Games.
Simone Collio and Emanuele Di Gregorio, two members of national 4x100 metres relay team. | 2019-04-25T12:51:05Z | https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Tiziana_Alagia |
We are a grades 5-8 Environmental Club at the Driscoll School in Brookline.
and our Driscoll Bird Sanctuary.
Currently, our biggest focus is reducing single use plastics because it is something we can all do right away to help our earth.
And, as KEEP club member Neil Saran said, reducing plastics connects to every one of our KEEP club branches.
4/15/19: Microplastic Found Even In The Air In France's Pyrenees Mountains - See this link! We have work to do KEEP club!
"I don't know if you've ever seen a plastic bag on a fence flapping away until it disappears," he (Steve Allen, a researcher at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland) says. "Well, we thought that maybe it just doesn't disappear, so we started looking for it a bit higher up."
4/16/19: Study Shows Decline In Wild Bees That Pollinate Major New England Fruit Crops- Click here! This is another reason why we need to protect our birds butterflies and bees and take care of our flora and fauna!
4/2/19: More sad whale news. National Geographic reports: Pregnant whale died with 50 pounds of plastic in her stomach: The Mediterranean Sea is choked with plastic waste, and the sperm whale may be the latest casualty of the pollution problem.
Click here to read the National Geographic article - we will use it to continue our work.
The silver lining to this horrible news is that it was all over the news. People are starting to wake up and see this problem affects us all. Maybe this poor whale's death can cause some good in the world.
3/23/19- Click here for BBC Plastic News - more about the whale and also a family going single use plastic free! Check it out!
KEEP Club will participate in Zero Waste Week! See more information here!
Have you seen the little video Man vs.
Earth? KEEP club members found it.
Click here to see it!
It is by the spoken word artist, poet and film maker who goes by the name Prince EA. The film sings and shows the message we are fighting for.
Art Contest for Marine Life- Click here!
See two legged and four legged mammals helping to save our earth- by BBC Earth!
12/31/19- Microplastics in 'every animal' in marine study.Click here to read the article.
Lots of news items in this link about plastic pollution and who and what is helping- click here to learn a lot!
News about BIG companies like Nestle and Pepsi who are starting to ease up on plastics and use more glass and metal. Things can change. It's happening, we can nudge it along faster! Each day counts. Each life matters.
They are a series of small documentaries.
How plastic production pollutes small towns.
Both are excellent and should be watched!
This is another EXCELLENT film called Plastic Ocean that the KEEP club might show at Driscoll to help others understand the magnitude of plastics!
JANUARY 16th, 2019: Radio story on news!
More news about PLASTICS: connected to the other story below. It's about stopping the oceans of plastics in our oceans! Packaging group - and others - lots to consider! Click here!
An Island Crusader Takes On The Big Brands Behind Plastic Waste! Read this excellent article!!! It is exactly what the KEEP club is all about!
The Ocean Clean-Up hitting snags, but still raising awareness and doing some good. Clearly there is more we can all do!
Monday, 12/17/18: 60 Minutes (the t.v. news show) focused their latest segment on all the PLASTIC!
CLICK HERE TO SEE what they have to show and tell us all.
Maybe more people will see why the KEEP Club is working so hard to slow down the use of plastic.
Boston Bans Plastic Bags Starting Today, 12/14/18- Here's the news article! Some small businesses are exempt if they can prove it is too much of a hardship.
Watertown Becomes 1st Town In New England To Require Solar Panels On New Commercial Constructions- Click here for more info.
New Nature movies- For KEEP Club inspiration! Click here!
11/15/18- Very sad news related to sea turtles! Ocean plastics and marine debris once again! Click here for the article!
Lonely Whale is an organization that has successfuly reduced people's use of plastic straws and is doing a lot to reduce plastic.
Plastic & Salt: See this article about why there is so much plastic in the salt we eat!
What do you think of the logo below? How does it connect to the KEEP club?
We are starting with some work right at our school.
Help us out. Let people know why they need to stop using them! See more information in the plastics branch of our webpage. As we say in the KEEP club, one little straw can do a lot of damage. Don't let it be yours.
- a funny, little movie!
SAY NO STRAW PLEASE! Please join us to stop plastic straws close to home, far and wide!
H.3451 Sponsor: Rep. Chris Walsh. Stipulates that state funds shall not be used to purchase bottled water for use in facilities that are served by public water supplies or potable well water, except when required for safety, health or emergency situations. This bill will save the Commonwealth money, and reduce solid waste and litter.
H.3252 Sponsors: Rep. Frank Smizik, Sen. Michael Barrett. Would ban the sale of polystyrene foam food containers and their use by food establishments.
Plastic Pollution- Click here to learn more!
Officially Earth Day is Sunday, April 22nd, but that is during our April Vacation, so the KEEP club will be doing something before or after spring break?
LOCAL NEWS: Have you noticed more Canada Goose coats around? DID YOU KNOW THAT FUR TRIM ON A CANADA GOOSE COAT IS COYOTE FUR?
Did you know the torture these canines go through in the process?
Recently, one can see more and more people around Brookline and Boston wearing Canada Goose coats with fur trim.
Many coats have fake fur trim, but Canada Goose uses real coyote fur and there are HORRIFYING videos and photos showing the way these poor animals are trapped and killed just so people can wear it on their coats!
I can't and won't look, but if you own a Canada Goose coat or know someone who does, you should know what you are buying.
I don't think people realize the cruelty these coats cause, and on top of it they cost close to a thousand dollars. If you see someone wearing a Canada Goose coat with fur trim, ask them if they know about the coyotes and the way they treat the geese too.
So many people mean no harm, but don't understand.
CHALLENGE FOR US ALL! “Do you still use plastic garbage bags? Plastic soda bottles? Zip lock bags? Plastic wrap on your food? Do you buy toilet paper that comes wrapped in plastic instead of paper? Do you put your fruit and vegetables in produce bags at the grocery?" Challenging everyone to track their rubbish for a week, she said people would be “disgusted” at how much plastic they would find.
We launched the club on Thursday, November 9, 2017; we will meet every Thursday for the rest of the year unless there is a vacation or other closing of school. Once we are up and running, there will be many ways to participate and stay connected. Keep (no pun intended) checking back to see the latest news.
KEEP Club will celebrate Earth Day in our Bird Sanctuary on Sunday, 4/21/19! We will assemble new planters, paint them and plant new pollinator friendly plants!
We will also do some collecting and documenting of litter in our neighborhood and create some earth day art- including the painting of rocks and bird houses for our sanctuary.
Earth day Network is making t-shirts.
Click here to see their shirts.
EARTH DAY IS COMING SOON!
The theme this year is to protect our species!
It's a school day, so the KEEP club will be making sure students are thinking about what they might do to honor this important day!
KEEP Club link for the presentation coming soon!
KEEP club has joined the #Break Free From Plastic movement: Here is their site!
In late spring, KEEP Club will have what could be the very first Earth Night. A celebration and inspiration to KEEP Earth Day on the move.
Earth Night will be an event that occurs after the sun has gone down. We will be showing a movie about plastics, eating organic popcorn, selling merchandise to raise money and awareness and having a gallery of art and information. The date has not yet been determined.
Around 30 KEEP club students are showing up every Thursday. This week we welcomed two new members and Mr. Olivera too. One KEEP club member suggested that I (Ms. S) send out the agenda ahead of time so there is less talk and more actions taken in the time we have. That makes a lot of sense. We have a lot to do. Stay tuned.
7th grade KEEP Club members Hattie and Lila created this flyer for families to KEEP their lunches and snacks earth friendly.
KEEP club raises awareness and over $200.00 at the Driscoll Science Fair! Go KEEP club!
One of our KEEP club members, Kassra Shahbazi, designed and printed a KEEP club t-shirt with his own design. Photo coming soon.
Another member, Chris Chen has designed business cards for us and printed out some label/stickers.
We have a lot of projects going on, once I (Ms. Stark) feel better after this bug, I will post more updates.
1/21/19: KEEP Club- showed up, educated others and collected over 100 signatures to stop Ottos Pizza from using the plastic mesh liners.
Keep club signed up for a table at the INspo/ Expo on January 21st- MLK Day- Click here to read the flyer!
Keep club members are making posters, designing web pages, making keep club scratch games, cleaning up trash, providing bird food for birds (and squirrels), writing letters to companies, and coming up with logos for up and coming KEEP club merchandise. KEEP club members are doing research into companies that treat their workers well and use eco friendly materials.
How to do a radio-podcast! Keep Club!
KEEP Club members made their case for why the new Driscoll should be a green school!
Calder Shen, Charlotte Toole, Sarah Mautner -Mazlen, John Watson, Hattie Liang and Rohan Brown each spoke in front of hundreds of people at Town Hall on Thursday, 12/13/18 and received such positive responses.
"The amendment about not having fossil fuels passed 218 for it, 4 against and 2 abstaining."
Go Green, Go Keep Club!"
SPECIAL TOWN MEETING TO BE HELD Thursday December 13, 2018 at 7:00pm at BHS. Driscoll expansion and renovation will be discussed, so the 'A Better Driscoll' Sub group will be sharing some of their KEEP club ideas for the new building.
KEEP Club is reuniting this Thursday, 12/13/18 from 2:35-3:45 - We can't wait for everyone to KEEP going with all the inspirational work going on.
12/6/18- KEEP CLUB Sub-Committee - "A Better Driscoll" makes a 'public comment' at the Brookline School Committee Meeting!
On Tuesday, the KEEP club found out that the updated agenda for the Brookline School Committee on Thursday, 12/6/18 included a discussion around the Driscoll Education Plan and a possible vote on a Fossil Free School Building. This inspired the KEEP Club sub-committee made up of 7th graders to show up at the school committee meeting and share their hopes for a greener Driscoll school now and when the renovations occur. Go KEEP Club!
Driscoll KEEP Club will participate at the Brookline Inspo-Expo- on January 21st, 2019. See more information here.
KEEP Club is getting into gear with different teams!
This group is helping Driscoll to reduce it's use of single use plastic, expanding recycling, getting us to compost and will be working to help make sure the Driscoll expansion makes our school as green as can be!
This group is focusing on teaching teachers & staff at Driscoll how to reduce their single use plastics, recycle with more knowledge and purchase better materials for the environment.
This group is focusing on local stores to get them to reduce (maybe stop) using unnecessary packaging and materials that can't be recycled. These include, but are not limited to plastic straws, styrofoam containers, that weird netting they put under pizzas at Ottos, beverages that have plastic caps instead of cartons, etc.
This group is focusing on protecting our highly endangered whales. They will focus on preventing whale hunting mostly done by Japan, Norway and Iceland, and they will focus on the fishing gear that is entangling sea life and is the primary cause that there are only 450 Right Whales (our Massachusetts state whale) left in the world.
This group is going to focus on big companies like Amazon that are responsible for colossal amounts of unnecessary packaging killing our marine life, land and water.
websites, brochures, posters, Scratch games, news paper articles, cartoons, petitions, video-talks, fundraisers, letters, public artwork, and most importantly, our KEEP club caravan that will continue to go into classrooms, stores, festivals and other places where they can explain to children and adults why it's no longer okay to ignore what is happening to our planet.
We are meeting again this Thursday, 11/29/18.
It will be great to reunite and review the progress you've made and plans we have for next steps.
11/15/18- No KEEP club meetings today (Thursday) due to grades 1-6 Early Dismissal and next Thursday due to Thanksgiving.
We will reconvene on Thursday, November 29th! In the meantime, I hope KEEP club members will continue to work on their own projects. I have been reviewing some of the slide shows, webpages and scratch projects you have been working on and they are EXCELLENT! They are well written and persuasive. I will post them on this webpage once they are ready to go. You can also share them on our KEEP Club Google Classroom.
11/8/18- Below are a few photos of the KEEP club working in their teams.
We are having between 30-35 students showing up every week! Go KEEP Club!
Although at first it was hard to find Ren, after a few search parties, she was found and we all clapped when she came in loaded with thought provoking art work, a video she had on a disk drive, and paper for the KEEP club to write down their thinking. We had an excellent turn-out and many thoughtful responses. See below.
After the KEEP club reviewed Bow Seat's student designed artwork from around the world, and watched a video about an award winning advocacy project, we reviewed next steps for our KEEP club teams. Next week, each team will get right to work making their action plans.
We are starting to go into new KEEP club teams. Below you can see some of the work/goals/questions KEEP 10/18/18 meeting.
We had our first meeting! It was fun and inspiring to see everyone. We are learning about each other, sharing what we discovered over the summer and goals for this year. There is a lot to learn and a lot to do!
The KEEP CLUB will have its first meeting of the 2018-2019 year on Thursday, October 11th from 2:35 to 3:30 in room 302.
At this meeting we will explore new goals, news, and different ways people can stay involved whether or not they can or can't come to every meeting.
I am looking forward to seeing you again and hearing what you are hoping to accomplish this year.
The KEEP Club is invited to set up a table at the New England Right Whale Festival in front of the New England Aquarium. It will be a chance to share more information about how we are working to reduce and clean up plastics in order to improve the world we're in!
EARTH DAY- KEEP CLUB STYLE!
On Sunday, 4/22/18, the KEEP club met in the bird sanctuary to plant some bird attracting plants and to pick up litter around the school! It was a beautiful way to spend the day.
This Thursday, 3/22/18 at 2:35 pm Clint Richmond will be at KEEP CLUB!
Clint is a volunteer with the Massachusetts Sierra Club. He leads several areas including solid waste and toxics issues. This includes fighting plastic pollution. He serves as a member of Brookline Town Meeting and is the co-chair of the Green Caucus of Town Meeting Members. He is also a member of the Brookline Solid Waste Advisory Committee. He has successfully led efforts to pass Warrant Articles at Town meeting on topics such as plastic bags, polystyrene and food packaging.
KEEP CLUB CARAVAN WILL BE GOING ON THE ROAD!
That's right, the new KEEP Club Caravan is gearing up to take our message on the road. We are learning that in order to make change you can't just put up posters and write about it. You have to be willing to get up and speak directly to people.
The KEEP club is getting ready to go into classrooms, faculty meetings and town meeting. Stay tuned!
KEEP Club raises $200 at Science Fair!
Stay tuned for our up and coming events! | 2019-04-21T08:06:51Z | https://kidskeepclub.weebly.com/ |
B. Aletter of file from a licensed medical doctor that the student is able to compete at the varsity level.
C. Signed consent form from the parents allowing participation at the varsity level.
D. A statement from the coach that the student athlete has the physical and mental maturity to compete at the varsity level.
E. A statement of compliance by the principal must be forwarded to the respective section office verifying that all required documentation has been completed and is on file in the appropriate school office.
1.2 Eighth and ninth grade students from an elementary and/or junior high school may not take part in the spring football practice at the high school. It is contrary to the spirit and philosophy of CIF rules for a high school coach to conduct a football practice session at a separate junior high school or elementary school.
1.3 There shall be six divisional champions in Varsity only. All other teams end their season with the last league game.
1.4 A high school football team or student of whatsoever classification or name, shall not play more than two games in any 8-day period.
1.5 The first permissible date for playing a contest and first play-off date, is determined by the CIF Central Section Commissioner.
1.6 Ties for league championship are determined by league policy.
1.7 If two schools can arrange a reserve game for freshmen players that have not played in any other game that week, they would be allowed to do so.
1.8 All Varsity games that end regulation play in a tie, will be played out using the N.C.A.A. 25 yard line tie breaker procedure.
The twenty-five yard line tiebreaker system will be used in all divisions and all games, (including finals) , of the CIF Central Section football playoffs, when games end in regulation time with the score tied. Although the ball will be placed on the 25-yard line for tiebreakers, we will adopt the National Federation 10-yard tiebreaker rules, with the exception that teams will be able to make first downs. Because of concerns regarding inconsistency WE WILL NOT BE USING NCAA RULES. Complete details for the 10-yard line tiebreaker are listed in the 2010 National Federation Official High School Football Rules. This will apply to all games including the championship games.
If the score at the conclusion of regulation play is tied, there will be a timeout. The captains of the two squads will meet at midfield, with the officials, for a flip of the coin. The winner of the toss will have the option to defend a goal or to determine possession.Then, each team will have the opportunity to score from the 25-yard line and the team which outscores the other in the "overtime" session will be the winner, following the rules of football. If a second overtime period is needed, a 2 point conversion MUST be attempted by the team scoring a touchdown.
1.9 All electronic/amplified music must be pointed toward the stands and not played while the opponent has the football. Also, bands shall not play while the opponent has the football, in front of the band.
1.10 Mercy rule. Once the score reaches a 35 point differential after the start of the fourth quarter, the clock shall become a running clock for the duration of the game. By mutual agreement of coaches and officials, the rule may be extended earlier in the game if the 35 point differential is reached.
2.1 The season of sport of football is defined as that period which starts with the first interschool contest (practice game, league game, or carnival), and ends with the last regularly scheduled league game, except for those qualifying for the playoff contests.
2.3 The opening game cannot be played until the team has had 14 days of practice, with 10 days of practice for each individual.
Note: An athlete must have ten (10) days practice before he/she can participate in an interschool contest.
2.4 The maximum number of football games per season shall be 10, exclusive of playoff games. Maximum number per week is one.
2.5.1 It is MANDATORY for a high school coach to conduct a physical conditioning /practice/ACCLIMATION program for prospective members of his high school football team on DAYS 1 THROUGH 5 , set by the Central Section Board of Managers, NO EARLIER THAN THE FIRST DAY to start FULLPRACTICE. The session, or sessions, may be held in the morning, afternoon, or evening and may only be a MAXIMUM of 4 hours each day.
2.5.2 All such pre-season conditioning /practice/ACCLIMATION drills must be held at the school's regular practice field. No workouts will be permitted at beaches, mountain resorts, or military installations. No meals and/or housing of athletes shall be provided free of charge by the school conducting/ PRACTICE , the pre-season conditioning /practice drills or by any of that school's allied organizations, such as booster clubs, etc.
NO TEAMS WILL BE ALLOWED TO GO TO THE MOUNTAINS; BEACHES; ETC., DURING THE "CONDITIONING TWO WEEK PERIOD" PRIOR TO THE START OF THE SEASON.
2.5.3 Such conditioning /practice/ACCLIMATION may include calisthenics, rule sessions, chalk talks, and game films. DURING DAYS 1 & 2 OF THE ACCLIMATIZATION PERIOD footballs,football shoes, HELMETS will be the only equipment permitted. DURING DAYS 3-5 ONLY HELMETS AND SHOULDER PADS MAY BE WORN. BEGINNING ON THE SIXTH (6th) DAY, ALL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT MAY BE WORN AND FULL CONTACT MAY BEGIN.
2.3.3.B A 1- HOUR MAXIMUM WALK THROUGH IS PERMITTED DURING DAYS 1 THROUGH 5 OF THE ACCLIMATIZATION PERIOD. HOWEVER, A THREE HOUR RECOVERY PERIOD SHALL BE INSERTED BETWEEN THE PRACTICE AND THE WALK-THROUGH (OR VISA VERSA).
Reserves - OPTIONAL AS LONG AS BOTH SCHOOLS AGREE.
4.1 Varsity games may use five (5) officials. Leagues may request four (4)officials.
4.2 Games less than Varsity may use four (4) officials.
4.3 For official's fees refer to CIF Central Section Sport Regulations and Playoff Procedures Section of official's fees.
5.1 The CIF-Central Section football playoffs shall be conducted in six divisions. Playoffs shall be concluded at the division level. No section (Valley) champion shall be declared. The Divisions will be determined by the approved Section Divisional placement procedure.
1. A 16 team bracket will be seed from the schools wishing to participate.
2. League Champions will have first round home games (if possible).
3. Selection and seeding committee composed of the three Area Supervisors, the Section Commissioner, and the Assistant Commissioner.
4. The Selection Committee will use the coach's Divisional play-off rankings to seed teams within the Division. If needed the Committee will also use the teams overall records and strength of schedule based on week 11 results from Calpreps.com to assist in the process.
Coaches divisional ranking forms are to be sent into the Section office by fax or email no later than 10 am on the day of the Seeding Meeting.
5 Prioritized criteria to break ties for seeding: The following criteria's is to be used if there is a tie between two or more teams that are being considered for a certain seed. 1. Head to head competition 2. Record vs. Common Opponent 3. Divisional ranking based on Cal preps week 11 results. Teams will be seeded by the selection committee. The selection committee will use the coach's divisional playoff rankings to seed teams within a division. If needed the committee will also use teams overall records and strength of schedule based on week 11 results from Calpreps.com to assist in the seeding process.
5.2 Games should be played at night in order to minimize time out of school and to improve attendance.
5.2.1 Prelims, quarterfinal and semifinal games for divisions may be played at the designated home school sites provided the site is adequate. The Area Supervisor and the Section Commissioner will determine adequacy.
5.2.2 If neither school has an adequate facility, the contest shall be played on an adequate facility neutral site near the host school determined by the host Area Supervisor and approved by the Section Commissioner.
5.2.3 Game Management is the responsibility of the host school. The host school shall make arrangements for the printing, distribution, sale and collection of tickets; field preparation and equipment; policing, seating, physician and ambulance, public address system, announcer and timer, exchange of game films, and/or video tapes.
5.3 Awards: CIF-Central Section will provide team trophies as designated in the Awards and Entry Fee Addendum.
5.4 Team sideline areas : The team sideline areas shall be restricted to authorized personnel consisting of substitutes, coaches, team student managers, team physician, administrators and trainer. Parents, booster club members and other such unauthorized personnel must sit in the stands. Each participant shall monitor their own sideline area.
5.5.2 The time period between the first and second half should be equally divided so that each school will have an opportunity to present its band and drill team. If one school does not wish to provide any half-time entertainment, it may relinquish its time to the other school. If mutually agreeable to both schools, the half-time period may be extended to 20 minutes.
5.5.3 If press box to bench telephone facilities are provided for one team, they must also be provided for the opponents. If equal telephone facilities cannot be provided, then neither team shall use the phones. The same principle of equal facilities shall apply to camera sites, dressing facilities, press box seats for spotters, etc.
5.6 Game Rules: All playoff games will be played according to the current National Federation Rules, with the exception of the tie-breaker.
5.7 The following a SPALDING ball MUST be used in CIF Central Section play-off games.
lose their right to host their next play‐off game in that sport. If the offending school lost that school will lose the right to host their next home game in the following year's play-offs.
5.8 Game Uniforms: The home team shall wear dark-colored, and the visiting team light-colored legal jerseys for all playoffs.
5.9 Timer and Check Timer: These persons shall be either a faculty member or a responsible adult. The host school shall supply the head timer and the visiting school shall supply the check timer. If the visiting school does not supply a check timer, the host school head timer alone is responsible. The host schoolshall supply gun to denote the end of each playing period.
5.10 Announcer: The announcer should be a responsible adult who can properly set the tone of the game. He should be knowledgeable of game rules, official's signals, school rules, and CIF rules. Also, he should have knowledge of both home and visiting players playing backgrounds, and the standing of both teams in league play.
5.11 Medical Staff: It is mandatory that the host school has an ambulance (on call in outlying areas)or field physician in attendance and available to both bench areas.
5.12.1 All first round play-off opponents will exchange the last 4 game films of the season. The will be exchanged on the day of seeding.
5.12.2 Prior to each playoff game, there shall be mandatory exchange of two game films between the competing schools. If a school entering the playoffs has not filmed any of its current season games, it should communicate that fact to the CIF Central Section Commissioner immediately so that films may be obtained from other opposing schools.
5.12.3 Each coach will have his choice of any two of his opponents' game films. These films shall be unedited and shall include all plays as originally filmed. In addition to the mandatory exchange, it shall be permissible for either coach to obtain from other sources, any film of his opponent that he may desire to view for the purpose of preparing for his next playoff game.
5.12.4 The mandatory exchange will be made by noon the day after each playoff game (the day after the last game of the season in the case of the first playoff game), except for film of the game most recently played, which may be retained for instructional purposes until Tuesday noon. The coaches shall return the films to one another the night of their playoff game.
5.12.5 Any violation of the mandatory exchange rule, (refusal to cooperate), should be reported at once to the CIF Central Section Commissioner. Such violation can subject a team to disqualification from the playoffs.
5.13.1 When divisional playoff games end in a tie, THE TIE WILL BE BROKEN BY USING THE N.C.A.A. 25 YARD LINE OVERTIME PROCEDURE.
The twenty-five yard line tiebreaker system will be used in all divisions and all games, (including finals) , of the CIF Central Section football playoffs, when games end in regulation time with the score tied. Although the ball will be placed on the 25-yard line for tiebreakers, we will adopt the National Federation 10-yard tiebreaker rules, with the exception that teams will be able to make first downs. Because of concerns regarding inconsistency WE WILL NOT BE USING NCAA RULES. Complete details for the 10-yard line tiebreaker are listed in the 2010 National Federation Official High School Football Rules. This will apply to all playoff games including the championship games.
5.14 A SPALDING Football is to be used by booth schools. Failure to use a SPALDING football will cause the offending school to lose their share of the play-off proceeds.
6.1 Responsibility : The principal, or his delegated administrative assistant, of each host school, shall be responsible for seeing that all financial regulations pertaining to playoffs, such as admission prices, game expenses, financial statements, etc., are strictly followed.
6.2 Admission Prices: Prelim's and semi-finals $8.00 Adult----$6.00 Students & Seniors 65 and over. Finals $9.00 for Adults---$6.00 Students & Seniors 65 and over.
6.2.1 Admission prices shall be as prescribed by Central Section By-laws. See Awards and Entry Fee Addendum in Constitution.
6.2.2 It is permissible for a school, which has done so during the regular session, to have a reserved seating section for playoff games. When seats are reserved, adult admission prices should be increased by a minimum of 50 cents, and a maximum of $1.00 to cover the extra cost of having such tickets printed and the extra cost of having ushers. Any additional charge over allotted expense for tickets, should be added to gross income, and divided 30% to each school, and 40% to Central Section CIF.
6.3.1 The home school is responsible for printing and issuing of tickets. The stock roll-type ticket may be used if properly numbered, and stamped with school name, date, and price. The home school should contact the visiting school as to the number of pre-sale tickets desired.
6.3.2 Passes: Only CIF "Lifetime" Passes (engraved metal), CIF Playoff Pass, and the Section Commissioner's special working passes issued will be honored. Regular CIF-Central Section complimentary season passes will not be honored at playoff games.
6.4.1 Personnel assigned to gate duty should be courteous and pleasant, but very firm. This assignment is most important to the financial success of the playoff game. The visiting school should assign a faculty member to assist in the supervision (not ticket taking) at the main entrance gates.
6.4.2 Ticket takers should be made aware of the only type of ticket to be accepted for admission. Collected tickets must be deposited in a safe place for accounting purposes and to prevent use at another event.
6.4.3 Ticket sellers should be assigned to adequate booths which are secure, clearly visible, and furnished with proper placards, denoting admission prices (this will expedite the selling).
6.4.4.1 Band, yell and song leaders, drill teams, etc., (Must be in uniform).
6.4.4.2 Working news media personnel. (Must actually be assigned by their organization to cover the game).
6.4.4.3 Game management staff personnel such as ticket sellers and takers, police, physician, custodial help, supervisory personnel (including supervision for rooter section and busses), game officials and field crew.
6.4.4.4 This gate should be opened at least 1 1/2 hours before game time, and it should be staffed by a qualified faculty member who has been issued a list of all persons qualified to enter.
6.5.1 A standard form issued by the CIF-Central Section office shall be completed by the host school and returned to the CIF Office within thirty days after each playoff game. Also, a copy shall be sent to the visiting (opponent) school.
6.5.2 The financial report form is self-explanatory and should be accurately completed and signed by the principal of the host school. This report will itemize all game receipts and expenditures, and will indicate the division of profits to CIF and competing schools.
6.6.1 Stadium rental (if not home facility): Reasonable and approved by Area Supervisor and Section Commissioner.
6.6.3 Any expense not listed above as allowable expense for game management shall be charged to the host schools' share of profits, not to the visiting school or CIF-Central Section. Also, any amounts in excess of the above listed maximums paid for services must be charged to the host schools' share of profits.
6.7.1 Payment of faculty personnel to supervise rooting sections: Where such supervision is desirable or necessary, each school will bear the expense from its one-third share of net receipts.
6.7.2 Payment of ushers: Where reserved seats are desirable and necessary, the host school will bear the expense of hiring ushers from its one-third share of net receipts. | 2019-04-23T20:56:35Z | http://www.cifcs.org/governance/rules/football |
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Impressive results continue to roll in for Easyboot hoof boot products in endurance competitions around the world.
Australia. Carol Layton and Sqiggle finished first in the lightweight division and won Best Condition at the Kiwarrak endurance ride March 21. "Many in the peanut gallery at the workout for all the division horses were heard to say that they felt that Sqiggle had the best movement of the lot," said Carol. Carol and Sqiggle used Easyboot Gloves during the event.
USA. Heather Reynolds and her mare “Gem” won their 5th consecutive event with first place finishes all three days at the Cuyama Oaks Pioneer. Gem also received overall Best Condition for the event. Gem recently was 1st place and Best Condition at the Twenty Mule Team 65 and the Shine and Shine Only 50. Heather and Gem have been racing in both the Easyboot Glue-On and Easyboot Glove.
“The boots have worked out really great.” said Heather. “Twenty Mule Team was a really sandy ride. We took the boots off right afterwards and there wasn’t any sand in the boots. We were really amazed.” Heather has an impressive American Endurance Ride Conference (AERC) record of over 14,000 miles.
Chris Martin’s horse, Monk, finished the Twenty Mule Team Ride 4th in Easyboot Glue-On’s with Lindsay Graham of Napa, CA up. Dave Rabe finished a respectable 12th on his Arab gelding, Tigger.
Vettec Adhere is used to apply Easyboot Glue-Ons. Easyboot Gloves and Glue-Ons were just released in January.
EasyCare, Inc. has been a leader in the hoof boot industry for years, beginning with the invention of the Easyboot back in the early 70's. Since then, the need for boots has grown tremendously as more and more horse owners see the healthy advantages of pulling shoes and switching to natural hoof care.
VVMarchMaddness TrackLogs Look Like A Horse!!
Flora Hillman's 525 Mile Very Virtual Track Logs are taking on the outline of a horse. I wonder what that might imply? 5 Days are left in the race with 5448 Total miles logged by 64 Very Virtual Riders!
Benandarah endurance rider Sophie Counsell has plenty of good form on her side as she prepares for the NSW State Enduro Championships in the Boyne and Benendarah State Forests on July 19.
For more local news and photos grab a copy of the Bay Post or Moruya Examiner.
The 15-year-old St Peter’s Anglican College student was the fourth-placed junior rider in the pointscore for the 2008 Enduro Series and first of all the South Coast riders.
She was the first placed junior rider with the best managed horse at the South Coast Championships at Nowra, where she and her horse covered 100km.
Endurance rides involve minimum distances of 80km over difficult bushy terrain such as goat trails and fire trails.
As her successes show, Counsell is a natural on a horse, and recently completed her three trick riding course under instructor Heath Harris, who trained riders for films such as the Man From Snowy River and Phar Lap.
In this she has learnt to preform such manoeuvres such as riding while hanging under the horse.
The Pony Club launched Endurance riding, as an official Pony Club discipline, on March 22nd in Milton Keynes Campbell Park courtesy of the Milton Keynes Parks Trust. The Park, along with some lovely weather, proved a perfect setting with its mix open countryside and special features; although the concrete cows proved slightly less popular with some of the equines in attendance!
The competition had a full entry of over 50 competitors, with Pony Club Members taking part in four, 10, 23, 27 and 37km Endurance rides running throughout the day. The launch was kindly run and hosted by the local Whaddon Chase Pony Club Branch, who ran a seamless competition with some special touches that included a very artistic cake to celebrate both The Pony Clubs 80th Anniversary and the Endurance launch.
Pony Club Endurance is generously supported by new sponsor Carr & Day & Martin and Nicola Slater, Technical Advisor for Carr & Day & Martin, was on hand throughout the day supplying riders with goody bags and the winners with some very smart polo shirts too!
Cherry Michell, Chairman of The Pony Club, was delighted with the launch and commented that “Coming here today has only cemented my feeling that Endurance being a part of The Pony Club is the right decision. We have riders and ponies of all abilities, having a brilliant time and getting out in the countryside, which can only be a good thing”.
It is planned that Pony Club Endurance events will be run around the country in 2009, culminating in the Pony Club Endurance Championship on September 20th at The College EC, Bedfordshire.
MOSCOW, Idaho—The Appaloosa Horse Club (ApHC) Trail and Distance Department is proud to announce the 2008 recipients of the “Horse of the Year” awards. Congratulations to Fourmile’s Kuna and RR Roman Scooter.
To earn the prestigious “Horse of the Year” awards for Trail and Distance, eligible ApHC-registered Appaloosas must complete a minimum of 350 miles in ApHC-approved competitive or endurance trail rides.
Fourmile’s Kuna earned the 2008 Year-end High-mileage Endurance Appaloosa Award and the 2008 Year-end High-mileage Appaloosa of the Year Award. He competed in 10 competitive and endurance trail rides for a total 770 miles after earning double miles, which are awarded to “Best Condition” and “High-point” winners. The 1995 gelding also earned a 350-mile bronze medallion for 2008. Fourmile’s Kuna is proudly owned by Lisa Delp of Westminister, Md.
RR Roman Scooter was honored with the 2008 Year-end High-mileage Competitive Trail Ride Appaloosa Award. The 2001 stallion earned the award by competing in 15 competitive trail rides, and completed 495 miles. He also earned a 350-mile bronze medallion and the 2008 1,000-mile award, which is awarded to an Appaloosa for each 1,000 miles that it completes. RR Roman Scooter is proudly owned by Barbara Gardner of Oakfield, Wis.
These awards will be presented to the Appaloosas’ owners at the 2008 Year-end Open/Non-pro Banquet held in conjunction with the 62nd National Appaloosa Show/2009 World Championship Appaloosa Youth Show in Jackson, Miss., June 22-July 4, 2009.
To learn more about the ApHC Trail and Distance Program, please call (208) 882-5578 ext. 221; [email protected] or visit http://www.appaloosa.com.
The Appaloosa Horse Club (ApHC) was established in 1938, with a mission of preserving, promoting and enhancing the Appaloosa breed. The ApHC has since registered more than 670,000 Appaloosas, which are known for their distinctive color, intelligence and even temperament. True to their reputation as an extremely versatile breed, Appaloosas can be found in nearly every discipline including racing, endurance riding and serving as reliable family horses. The International breed registry is headquartered in Moscow, Idaho, the heart of the Palouse region—the Appaloosa breed’s namesake and point of origin.
A new breeding promotion for the Shagya Arabian horse breed in the US is aiming to increase awareness in the breed.
The American Shagya Arabian Verband is giving owners the chance to breed their mares for a stud fee of $200. There are only about 150 of the breed in the US, and 1500 in the world.
A famous descendent of the Shagya is the "stallion of the century", Ramzes, who was by a thoroughbred sire and from a Shagya mare. He began the "R" line prominent in dressage and grand prix jumping family lines. ASAV has a registry book that records the Anglo-Shagya cross.
The Arabian-based Shagya breed has been around for more then 200 years, with a certain type being bred for and ruthless culling to set its traits. Breeders say the Shagya's temperament and mind are second to none.
In Europe Shagya blood it is highly prized, and many Shagya stallions can be found in the warmblood studbooks. It is one of the recognised breeds used in Trakehner breeding. "They can add refinement without loss of bone and substance and superior horses in the first generation. They are not supposed to resemble purebred Arabians, although nothing, but Arabian, is allowed in the studbook. Instead the old horse masters selected for superior riding qualities and temperament," the ASAV says.
"The modified Baroque conformation crosses well with all breeds and improves hip and shouder angles, legs and feet and a soft back that is easy to sit. Typically one can expect taller foals with more bone and substance."
The goal of an ideal cavalry horse was the orginal purpose for the breed's existence. This has been accomplished and resulted in a potent and desirable animal. The breed has been discovered by the endurance people and many purebreds and cross-breds are competing at the FEI level and have won international races.
One cross that is producing division winners in the hunter ring is the Shagya stallion crossed with Thoroughbred mares. The foals are tall, with improved conformation, better feet and legs, and all of the flight reaction of the Throughbred is replaced with a lovely prospect, perfect for jumping, combined training and many other disciplines.
Riding on Dartmoor, particularly the colder northern side, can often be a daunting prospect, especially at the end of February. Despite a thick mist and chilly drizzle 30 endurance riders set off from Okehampton camp for a 14 mile training ride.
Due to the fog they had to ride from marker flag to marker flag.
Fortunately for the horses and their riders, the cloud began to lift as they rode down the steep hill to Meldon reservoir and by the time they had dismounted to cross the dam on foot and were heading along the bridleway towards Sourton Down, the visibility improved. By the time, the last riders had reached Higher Nodden, the last of the cloud had lifted.
Despite the conditions, all the riders competed the 14 mile route, including several new members.
One of these was Val Jones from Feniton, near Honiton, riding her ex-racehorse mare, Flying Artist pictured below.
The first competitive endurance ride of the season in the south west will be the Wadebridge Ride on Sunday, March 22, which includes a 20 mile Pleasure Ride.
Allah reached up, blew in his hand and out came the Arabian horse, his gift to the faithful: "Drinkers of the Wind, Swallowers of the Earth, Light as a Feather Blowing Across the Land." So the legend goes.
Robert Bouttier, known by his friend and neighbors as "Archie," a buff, wind-burned, enthusiastic man who loves to ski as much as ride, breeds these legendary horses, races them on the track and rides them in endurance contests all across the West.
Many of his horses have won national honors. They include French Kiss, Colorado Race Horse of the Year, and Zabkin, National Endurance Point Champion, who logged over 1,400 miles in one year and won several 100-mile races.
At last count Archie had 57 Arabians on his 85-acre ranch, called Drinkers of the Wind, on Broadford Road in Bellevue, along with three dogs and four cats. Archie is a romantic, at least as far as animals are concerned. He still has his old polo pony, Rose Real Matuse, now 35, which he used to ride at the Broadford Polo Club, which he co-founded after moving to the Wood River Valley in 1973. And he still has his old white Pyrenees, Big Molly, which he got to protect his cats from predators.
"I had a white cat at the time and I'd look out the window and see that cat trying to stalk mice with the big dog right behind her just doing his job, but scaring all the mice off," he laughs. "She was really annoyed. All my dogs and cats get along, though—they're old pals."
Archie was raised in Manhattan Beach, Calif. His father, who was in flight training at the time, died of spinal meningitis four days before Archie was born in the waning days of World War II. His grandfather, a cowboy from Colorado, worked at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.
Archie graduated from Long Beach State, eventually became a pilot and, at age 26, went to work for United Airlines as a flight engineer. "I had nightmares about going to work in an office, so when a friend of mine painted this wonderful picture of making a quarter million a year flying with lots of time off, I went for it."
Although he worked his way up to senior co-pilot on international runs before he retired early in 2003, he was furloughed along with 500 others during the recession of 1971. It was at that time that he moved to the Wood River Valley, started to buy property on Broadford Road and got his first Arabian.
There are a variety of Arabian horses, and he breeds and raises Polish Arabians, descendents of Polish cavalry horses that were the finest in Europe for 200 years. "You know, most people think of Arabians now as expensive show horses, but that's an unfair categorization. They're really a great all-around horse, and although they have sturdy feet and a heart as big as a thoroughbred, they have less body weight so, like the legend says, 'they move light across the ground.'"
Polish Arabians, Archie explains, also have a wonderful temperament. They're easy to get along with; they're not high strung. They are also very athletic. He races them on the California Fair Circuit and in Colorado. Horse racing is generally in decline, he explains, but endurance riding, in which a horse might run 25 miles a day in the novice class and up to 100 miles as a veteran, is growing in popularity.
This combination of track racing and endurance riding gives Archie a way to live by an ethic he has about all animals: You don't abandon them if things don't work out. "Look, over 90 percent of thoroughbreds that are bred to race never make it to the track. Most of those that don't make it are just discarded. I'm not going to do that.
"If I have a horse that likes to run on the track, that's where I take them. And if they get tired of it or just don't take to it, we go on the endurance circuit. Then either way, I've got a stable of great horses."
In the West, there's still a good market for a well-trained family horse, he notes, and he's got plenty of those. But he also sells his Arabians all over the world. "I recently sold an endurance champion to a buyer in the Middle East, so one of my 'Drinkers of the Wind' went back to where it all began. Isn't that something?"
Unlike many horse breeders, Archie is a one-man show. He gets help when he needs it, but for the most part grows his own hay, builds his own fences and foals his own colts. He has foaling stalls where he can sleep on a raised platform next to the mares that are about to give birth. "That way I'll always be there when they need me," he explains.
Robert Boullier is there for all his horses, whether they're young, old or sick, get hurt or just didn't work out as champions. "I feel about horses the same way I feel about dogs and cats. It doesn't matter what color they are or whether they're big or small or pretty or ugly—they're all great to have around as far as I'm concerned."
Dream Weaver was my first real horse and we had a lot of special times together. First horses are always special, aren’t they?
For the last few years Weaver has been living in South Dakota with Barney and Linda Fleming, getting to be a horse and enjoying the good life – no real work, just play.
I was so happy last year that I got to go to South Dakota and visit and ride Weaver for a few days. We had a great time and he was just as he always was – you could get on him and expect him to behave like a good boy. I was so looking forward to going and visiting with Weaver and getting to ride him at the upcoming endurance clinic that Barney is putting on in a few weeks. But, it wasn’t to be.
I knew when Barney called that something was wrong. He said that Weaver had not come in to feed at 5:30 a.m. that morning. Weaver was looking good at dinner the evening before. Barney found Weaver passed on with no signs of a struggle or anything wrong and nothing was broken so it appeared that he had a quick and painless death. Weaver would have been 19 in a couple more weeks. Barney said that he buried Weaver with an XP shirt. I’m sure he knows what that was and is somewhere galloping and kicking up his heals going down a historic trail in heaven, stopping of course to eat as that was his second favorite thing in the world to do!
dream_weaver_endurance_horse Farewell to my beautiful chestnut gelding, Dream WeaverI got Weaver when he was three years old, a beautiful chestnut (mostly CMK breeding) gelding for $500. He was unbroken and had grown up living in a pasture with a herd of horses. He was such a sweet natured and uncomplicated horse that I had no trouble at all training him. We did everything together and even as a four and five year old he had the maturity of a horse several years older. I could trust him in any situation. We chased cattle, we went to playdays and I showed him. | 2019-04-23T18:22:18Z | http://tracks.endurance.net/2009/03/ |
In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of supersight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empricism. My name is Jervas Dudley, and from earliest childhood I have been a dreamer and a visionary. Wealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life, and temperamentally unfitted for the formal studies and social recreation of my acquaintances, I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without analyzing causes. I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world, but I have not said that I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do; for lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon the companionship of things that are not, or are no longer, living. Close by my home there lies a singular wooded hollow, in whose twilight deeps I spent most of my time; reading, thinking, and dreaming. Down its moss-covered slopes my first steps of infancy were taken, and around its grotesquely gnarled oak trees my first fancies of boyhood were woven. Well did I come to know the presiding dryads of those trees, and often have I watched their wild dances in the struggling beams of a waning moon but of these things I must not now speak. I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets; the deserted tomb of the Hydes, an old and exalted family whose last direct descendant had been laid within its black recesses many decades before my birth. The vault to which I refer is of ancient granite, weathered and discolored by the mists and dampness of generations. Excavated back into the hillside, the structure is visible only at the entrance. The door, a ponderous and forbidding slab of stone, hangs upon rusted iron hinges, and is fastened ajar in a queerly sinister way by means of heavy iron chains and padlocks, according to a gruesome fashion of half a century ago. The abode of the race whose scions are here inurned had once crowned the declivity which holds the tomb, but had long since fallen victim to the flames which sprang up from a stroke of lightning. Of the midnight storm which destroyed this gloomy mansion, the older inhabitants of the region sometimes speak in hushed and uneasy voices; alluding to what they call 'divine wrath' in a manner that in later years vaguely increased the always strong fascination which I had felt for the forest-darkened sepulcher. One man only had perished in the fire. When the last of the Hydes was buried in this place of shade and stillness, the sad urnful of ashes had come from a distant land, to which the family had repaired when the mansion burned down. No one remains to lay flowers before the granite portal, and few care to brave the depressing shadows which seem to linger strangely about the water-worn stones. I shall never forget the afternoon when first I stumbled upon the half-hidden house of death. It was in midsummer, when the alchemy of nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odors of the soil and the vegetation. In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time and space become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat insistently upon the enthralled consciousness. All day I had been wandering through the mystic groves of the hollow; thinking thoughts I need not discuss, and conversing with things I need not name. In years a child of ten, I had seen and heard many wonders unknown to the throng; and was oddly aged in certain respects. When, upon forcing my way between two savage clumps of briars, I suddenly encountered the entrance of the vault, I had no knowledge of what I had discovered. The dark blocks of granite, the door so curiously ajar, and the funeral carvings above the arch, aroused in me no associations of mournful or terrible character. Of graves and tombs I knew and imagined much, but had on account of my peculiar temperament been kept from all personal contact with churchyards and cemeteries. The strange stone house on the woodland slope was to me only a source of interest and speculation; and its cold, damp interior, into which I vainly peered through the aperture so tantalizingly left, contained for me no hint of death or decay. But in that instant of curiosity was born the madly unreasoning desire which has brought me to this hell of confinement. Spurred on by a voice which must have come from the hideous soul of the forest, I resolved to enter the beckoning gloom in spite of the ponderous chains which barred my passage. In the waning light of day I alternately rattled the rusty impediments with a view to throwing wide the stone door, and essayed to squeeze my slight form through the space already provided; but neither plan met with success. At first curious, I was now frantic; and when in the thickening twilight I returned to my home, I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove that at any cost I would some day force an entrance to the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me. The physician with the iron-grey beard who comes each day to my room, once told a visitor that this decision marked the beginning of a pitiful monomania; but I will leave final judgment to my readers when they shall have learnt all. The months following my discovery were spent in futile attempts to force the complicated padlock of the slightly open vault, and in carefully guarded inquiries regarding the nature and history of the structure. With the traditionally receptive ears of the small boy, I learned much; though an habitual secretiveness caused me to tell no one of my information or my resolve. It is perhaps worth mentioning that I was not at all surprised or terrified on learning of the nature of the vault. My rather original ideas regarding life and death had caused me to associate the cold clay with the breathing body in a vague fashion; and I felt that the great and sinister family of the burned-down mansion was in some way represented within the stone space I sought to explore. Mumbled tales of the weird rites and godless revels of bygone years in the ancient hall gave to me a new and potent interest in the tomb, before whose door I would sit for hours at a time each day. Once I thrust a candie within the nearly closed entrance, but could see nothing save a flight of damp stone steps leading downward. The odor of the place repelled yet bewitched me. I felt I had known it before, in a past remote beyond all recollection; beyond even my tenancy of the body I now possess. The year after I first beheld the tomb, I stumbled upon a worm-eaten translation of Plutarch's Lives in the book-filled attic of my home. Reading the life of Theseus, I was much impressed by that passage telling of the great stone beneath which the boyish hero was to find his tokens of destiny whenever he should become old enough to lift its enormous weight. The legend had the effect of dispelling my keenest impatience to enter the vault, for it made me feel that the time was not yet ripe. Later, I told myself, I should grow to a strength and ingenuity which might enable me to unfasten the heavily chained door with ease; but until then I would do better by conforming to what seemed the will of Fate. Accordingly my watches by the dank portal became less persistent, and much of my time was spent in other though equally strange pursuits. I would sometimes rise very quietly in the night, stealing out to walk in those church-yards and places of burial from which I had been kept by my parents. What I did there I may not say, for I am not now sure of the reality of certain things; but I know that on the day after such a nocturnal ramble I would often astonish those about me with my knowledge of topics almost forgotten for many generations. It was after a night like this that I shocked the community with a queer conceit about the burial of the rich and celebrated Squire Brewster, a maker of local history who was interred in 1711, and whose slate headstone, bearing a graven skull and crossbones, was slowly crumbling to powder. In a moment of childish imagination I vowed not only that the undertaker, Goodman Simpson, had stolen the silver-buckled shoes, silken hose, and satin small-clothes of the deceased before burial; but that the Squire himself, not fully inanimate, had turned twice in his mound-covered coffin on the day after interment. But the idea of entering the tomb never left my thoughts; being indeed stimulated by the unexpected genealogical discovery that my own maternal ancestry possessed at least a slight link with the supposediy extinct family of the Hydes. Last of my paternal race, I was likewise the last of this older and more mysterious line. I began to feel that the tomb was mine, and to look forward with hot eagerness to the time when I might pass within that stone door and down those slimy stone steps in the dark. I now formed the habit of listening very intently at the slightly open portal, choosing my favorite hours of midnight stillness for the odd vigil. By the time I came of age, I had made a small clearing in the thicket before the mold-stained facade of the hillside, allowing the surrounding vegetation to encircle and overhang the space like the walls and roof of a sylvan bower. This bower was my temple, the fastened door my shrine, and here I would lie outstretched on the mossy ground, thinking strange thoughts and dreaming strange dreams. The night of the first revelation was a sultry one. I must have fallen asleep from fatigue, for it was with a distinct sense of awakening that I heard the voices. Of these tones and accents I hesitate to speak; of their quality I will not speak; but I may say that they presented certain uncanny differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and mode of utterance. Every shade of New England dialect, from the uncouth syllables of the Puritan colonists to the precise rhetoric of fifty years ago, seemed represented in that shadowy colloquy, though it was only later that I noticed the fact. At the time, indeed, my attention was distracted from this matter by another phenomenon; a phenomenon so fleeting that I could not take oath upon its reality. I barely fancied that as I awoke, a light had been hurriedly extinguished within the sunken sepulcher. I do not think I was either astounded or panic-stricken, but I know that I was greatly and permanently changed that night. Upon returning home I went with much directness to a rotting chest in the attic, wherein I found the key which next day unlocked with ease the barrier I had so long stormed in vain. It was in the soft glow of late afternoon that I first entered the vault on the abandoned slope. A spell was upon me, and my heart leaped with an exultation I can but ill describe. As I closed the door behind me and descended the dripping steps by the light of my lone candle, I seemed to know the way; and though the candle sputtered with the stifling reek of the place, I felt singularly at home in the musty, charnel-house air. Looking about me, I beheld many marble slabs bearing coffins, or the remains of coffins. Some of these were sealed and intact, but others had nearly vanished, leaving the silver handles and plates isolated amidst certain curious heaps of whitish dust. Upon one plate I read the name of Sir Geoffrey Hyde, who had come from Sussex in 1640 and died here a few years later. In a conspicuous alcove was one fairly well preserved and untenanted casket, adorned with a single name which brought me both a smile and a shudder. An odd impulse caused me to climb upon the broad slab, extinguish my candle, and lie down within the vacant box. In the gray light of dawn I staggered from the vault and locked the chain of the door behind me. I was no longer a young man, though but twenty-one winters had chilled my bodily frame. Early-rising villagers who observed my homeward progress looked at me strangely, and marveled at the signs of ribald revelry which they saw in one whose life was known to be sober and solitary. I did not appear before my parents till after a long and refreshing sleep. Henceforward I haunted the tomb each night; seeing, hearing, and doing things I must never recall. My speech, always susceptible to environmental influences, was the first thing to succumb to the change; and my suddenly acquired archaism of diction was soon remarked upon. Later a queer boldness and recklessness came into my demeanor, till I unconsciously grew to possess the bearing of a man of the world despite my lifelong seclusion. My formerly silent tongue waxed voluble with the easy grace of a Chesterfield or the godless cynicism of a Rochester. I displayed a peculiar erudition utterly unlike the fantastic, monkish lore over which I had pored in youth; and covered the fly-leaves of my books with facile impromptu epigrams which brought up suggestions of Gay, Prior, and the sprightliest of the Augustan wits and rimesters. One morning at breakfast I came close to disaster by declaiming in palpably liquorish accents an effusion of Eighteenth Century bacchanalian mirth, a bit of Georgian playfulness never recorded in a book, which ran something like this: Come hither, my lads, with your tankards of ale, And drink to the present before it shall fail; Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef, For 'tis eating and drinking that bring us relief: So fill up your glass, For life will soon pass; When you're dead ye'll ne'er drink to your king or your lass! Anacreon had a red nose, so they say; But what's a red nose if ye're happy and gay? Gad split me! I'd rather be red whilst I'm here, Than white as a lily and dead half a year! So Betty, my miss, Come give me kiss; In hell there's no innkeeper's daughter like this! Young Harry, propp'd up just as straight as he's able, Will soon lose his wig and slip under the table, But fill up your goblets and pass 'em around Better under the table than under the ground! So revel and chaff As ye thirstily quaff: Under six feet of dirt 'tis less easy to laugh! The fiend strike me blue! l'm scarce able to walk, And damn me if I can stand upright or talk! Here, landlord, bid Betty to summon a chair; l'll try home for a while, for my wife is not there! So lend me a hand; I'm not able to stand, But I'm gay whilst I linger on top of the land! About this time I conceived my present fear of fire and thunderstorms. Previously indifferent to such things, I had now an unspeakable horror of them; and would retire to the innermost recesses of the house whenever the heavens threatened an electrical display. A favorite haunt of mine during the day was the ruined cellar of the mansion that had burned down, and in fancy I would picture the structure as it had been in its prime. On one occasion I startled a villager by leading him confidently to a shallow subcellar, of whose existence I seemed to know in spite of the fact that it had been unseen and forgotten for many generations. At last came that which I had long feared. My parents, alarmed at the altered manner and appearance of their only son, commenced to exert over my movements a kindly espionage which threatened to result in disaster. I had told no one of my visits to the tomb, having guarded my secret purpose with religious zeal since childhood; but now I was forced to exercise care in threading the mazes of the wooded hollow, that I might throw off a possible pursuer. My key to the vault I kept suspended from a cord about my neck, its presence known only to me. I never carried out of the sepulcher any of the things I came upon whilst within its walls. One morning as I emerged from the damp tomb and fastened the chain of the portal with none too steady hand, I beheld in an adjacent thicket the dreaded face of a watcher. Surely the end was near; for my bower was discovered, and the objective of my nocturnal journeys revealed. The man did not accost me, so I hastened home in an effort to overhear what he might report to my careworn father. Were my sojourns beyond the chained door about to be proclaimed to the world? Imagine my delighted astonishment on hearing the spy inform my parent in a cautious whisper that I had spent the night in the bower outside the tomb; my sleep-filmed eyes fixed upon the crevice where the padlocked portal stood ajar! By what miracle had the watcher been thus deluded? I was now convinced that a supernatural agency protected me. Made bold by this heaven-sent circumstance, I began to resume perfect openness in going to the vault; confident that no one could witness my entrance. For a week I tasted to the full joys of that charnel conviviality which I must not describe, when the thing happened, and I was borne away to this accursed abode of sorrow and monotony. I should not have ventured out that night; for the taint of thunder was in the clouds, and a hellish phosphoresence rose from the rank swamp at the bottom of the hollow. The call of the dead, too, was different. Instead of the hillside tomb, it was the charred cellar on the crest of the slope whose presiding demon beckoned to me with unseen fingers. As I emerged from an intervening grove upon the plain before the ruin. I beheld in the misty moonlight a thing I had always vaguely expected. The mansion, gone for a century, once more reared its stately height to the raptured vision; every window ablaze with the splendor of many candles. Up the long drive rolled the coaches of the Boston gentry, whilst on foot came a numerous assemblage of powdered exquisites from the neighboring mansions. With this throng I mingled, though I knew I belonged with the hosts rather than with the guests. Inside the hall were music, laughter, and wine on every hand. Several faces I recognized; though I should have known them better had they been shriveled or eaten away by death and decomposition. Amidst a wild and reckless throng I was the wildest and most abandoned. Gay blasphemy poured in torrents from my lips, and in shocking sallies I heeded no law of God, or nature. Suddenly a peal of thunder, resonant even above the din of the swinish revelry, clave the very roof and laid a hush of fear upon the boisterous company. Red tongues of flame and searing gusts of heat engulfed the house; and the roysterers, struck with terror at the descent of a calamity which seemed to transcend the bounds of unguided nature, fled shrieking into the night. I alone remained, riveted to my seat by a groveling fear which I had never felt before. And then a second horror took possession of my soul. Burnt alive to ashes, my body dispersed by the four winds, I might never lie in the tomb of the Hydesi Was not my coffin prepared for me? Had I not a right to rest till eternity amongst the descendants of Sir Geoffrey Hyde? Aye! I would claim my heritage of death, even though my soul go seeking through the ages for another corporeal tenement to represent it on that vacant slab in the alcove of the vault. Jervas Hyde should never share the sad fate of Palinurus! As the phantom of the burning house faded, I found myself screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men, one of whom was the spy who had followed me to the tomb. Rain was pouring down in torrents, and upon the southern horizon were flashes of lightning that had so lately passed over our heads. My father, his face lined with sorrow, stood by as I shouted my demands to be laid within the tomb, frequently admonishing my captors to treat me as gently as they could. A blackened circle on the floor of the ruined cellar told of a violent stroke from the heavens; and from this spot a group of curious villagers with lanterns were prying a small box of antique workmanship, which the thunderbolt had brought to light. Ceasing my futile and now objectless writhing, I watched the spectators as they viewed the treasure-trove, and was permitted to share in their discoveries. The box, whose fastenings were broken by the stroke which had unearthed it, contained many papers and objects of value, but I had eyes for one thing alone. It was the porcelain miniature of a young man in a smartly curled bag-wig, and bore the initials 'J. H.' The face was such that as I gazed, I might well have been studying my mirror. On the following day I was brought to this room with the barred windows, but I have been kept informed of certain things through an aged and simple-minded servitor, for whom I bore a fondness in infancy, and who, like me, loves the churchyard. What I have dared relate of my experiences within the vault has brought me only pitying smiles. My father, who visits me frequently, declares that at no time did I pass the chained portal, and swears that the rusted padlock had not been touched for fifty years when he examined it. He even says that all the village knew of my journeys to the tomb, and that I was often watched as I slept in the bower outside the grim facade, my half-open eyes fixed on the crevice that leads to the interior. Against these assertions I have no tangible proof to offer, since my key to the padlock was lost in the struggle on that night of horrors. The strange things of the past which I have learned during those nocturnal meetings with the dead he dismisses as the fruits of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes of the family library. Had it not been for my old servant Hiram, I should have by this time become quite convinced of my madness. But Hiram, loyal to the last, has held faith in me, and has done that which impels me to make public at least part of my story. A week ago he burst open the lock which chains the door of the tomb perpetually ajar, and descended with a lantern into the murky depths. On a slab in an alcove he found an old but empty coffin whose tarnished plate bears the single word: Jervas. In that coffin and in that vault they have promised me I shall be buried. | 2019-04-19T14:37:13Z | http://www.oldfables.com/stories/doc/5157979233976320 |
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Clinton v. Sanders: Democrats, Please Do Your Homework!
I supported Obama in the last two presidential cycles and I support Sanders now. I have spent weeks pouring over numerous articles, studies, blogs, etc. on my laptop while watching the debates and related coverage on TV. Much of my time has been devoted to carefully comparing the positions and actions of Clinton and Sanders with respect to issues relating to foreign policy, the environment, Wall Street reform, social security, health care, money in politics, violence, racism, etc. Below is a summary of my findings thus far.
During this election cycle, voters across the political spectrum are saying two things loud and clear: (1) we’re angry that the political system is rigged in favor of those with wealth and influence, and (2) we don’t trust establishment politicians to fix #1. There’s also a weariness of politicians doing whatever it takes to retain power or line their own pockets, including flip-flopping on issues, pandering, using smear tactics, misrepresentations, fear mongering, and accepting huge sums of money from powerful interest groups to gain a political edge. More voters are yearning for politicians to explain — in easy to understand language — what they believe in and why, and then back it up with actions that demonstrate that they are working on behalf of the wider public.
On many important issues, it’s difficult to pin down Clinton’s position, as it tends to “evolve” over time or is sufficiently vague to be interpreted several ways. In contrast, with the exception of domestic gun control, Sanders has been remarkably consistent and clear in his positions over the years.
On gun control, some of Sanders’ past votes can only be explained as pandering to his largely rural constituency in Vermont. As a “progressive,” I do not find that to be an acceptable rationale. In contrast Clinton has been more consistent than Sanders on the domestic gun control issue, although she has evolved on whether there should be a national gun registry. In her 2000 Senate campaign, she forcefully advocated for a national gun registry, but during the 2008 Democratic primary, she backed off from that position.
If one expands the guns and violence issue beyond U.S borders, Clinton has a very different record. The International Business Times, reported that as Secretary of State, “Clinton not only rubber-stamped major weapons deals with 20 countries that donated to her and her husband’s philanthropic arm, the Clinton Foundation, but she also approved nearly double the amount of arms sales to those same countries as the State Department of George W. Bush’s second term. She approved a $29 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, a country which Human Rights Watch criticizes for violently oppressing women. At a press conference announcing the deal, Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro declared that the deal had been “a top priority” for Clinton personally. The U.S accounts for well over 50 percent of the global arms market, or about five times as much as Russia. The IBT reports that Sanders has never advocated for major weapons deals to Saudi Arabia or any warmongering country.
During the current presidential campaign, Hillary says, “that as president, she would aim to make the United States the world’s clean energy superpower.” Her campaign website provides a number of somewhat vague pledges. There is no mention of fracking, nor any mention of a carbon tax or a cap and trade policy for greenhouse gas emissions, although many economists, environmentalists, and business leaders have argued that a carbon tax or a cap and trade policy are essential for a fair, swift, and efficient transition to renewable energy. Hillary is basically espousing the same approach pursued by the Obama administration. As best I can tell from her various positions over time, she has avoided taking a firm position on fracking, except saying recently she would like to ban fracking on public lands with some conditions and she believes “natural gas can play an important bridge role in the transition to a cleaner energy economy.” On both Keystone pipeline and Arctic drilling, Hillary was for it before she was against it.
Sanders consistently opposed Keystone and Arctic drilling. He has called for a ban on all fracking, something that several states and nations have already done. Sanders and Senator Boxer introduced carbon tax legislation, and Bernie has sponsored legislation to require fracking companies disclose all chemicals used in fracking and to eliminate fracking’s special exemption from the Clean Water Act (the so-called “Halliburton loophole”).
Clinton expressed support for the death penalty when she ran for the Senate in 2000. At a 2015 campaign event in New Hampshire, Clinton was asked whether she supports abolishing the death penalty. According to a New York Times reporter at the event, Clinton answered, “We have a lot of evidence now that the death penalty has been too frequently applied, and too often in a discriminatory way. So I think we have to take a hard look at it.” She went on to say, “I do not favor abolishing it, however, because I do think there are certain egregious cases that still deserve the consideration of the death penalty, but I’d like to see those be very limited and rare, as opposed to what we’ve seen in most states.” In a 2015 speech on the Senate floor, Sanders said, “When we talk about criminal justice reform, I believe it is time for the United States of America to join almost every other Western, industrialized country on earth in saying no to the death penalty.” That has been Sanders’ position for many years.
Having any difficulty understanding where Sanders stands on this issue? How about Clinton? Public support for the death penalty has been declining since the mid-90s. Will Clinton “evolve” on this issue?
I’m unable to find any pre-2015 public comments from Clinton regarding the “symbol of hate,” including during the period she lived in Arkansas. What I do know is that then Governor Bill Clinton signed a law which designated a portion of the Arkansas flag to commemorate the Confederate States of America. Specifically, “The blue star above the word “ARKANSAS” is to commemorate the Confederate States of America.” Moreover, Arkansas celebrates a “Confederate Flag Day” every year, including the eight years that Bill was Governor. During the 1992 presidential race, the Confederate flag was present on some Clinton/Gore campaign buttons. It is hard to determine whether the buttons were “official” campaign buttons, but I don’t find any public statements from the campaign distancing itself from the buttons.
Apparently a Republican Florida Governor was able to “evolve” much sooner than Clinton, and it didn’t take a widely-covered horrific shooting to prompt the evolution.
At the very least, Clinton should be pressed to explain why it took a horrific shooting for the Clintons to conclude that the flag is a symbol of racism, and how this obvious departure from years of tacit approval of the flag squares with Clinton’s “long-held values and principles,” which she refers to constantly on the campaign trail. Even long-time Clinton supporter Paul Begala said in an interview last year that Hillary Clinton “absolutely” has to answer for her history with the Confederate flag. Still waiting.
The Affordable Care Act was a step forward. The number of uninsured Americans has fallen by an estimated 15-17 million since 2013. Yet, about 40 million Americans still do not have health insurance. Moreover, a recent New York Times//Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 20 percent of people under age 65 with health insurance reported problems paying their medical bills over the last year. While the ACA required insurance plans to be more comprehensive, it did not reverse the insurance trend that began in the 1990s of requiring that customers pay an increasing share of their bills out of pocket through rising deductibles and co-payments. There are some that believe that the ACA actually encouraged increases in deductibles.
The AJPH article points to evidence that U.S. health spending is at a point where further expenditures on per capita medical care could actually produce worse health. As a possible explanation for our nation’s “dismal performance,” the article points to research at Yale that shows, “the United States spends by far the most on a per person basis on medical care while spending nearly the least on a per person basis on nonmedical social service spending such as education, day care, job training, housing support, nutritional assistance, and more. Focusing less on medical care on more on needs relating to the social determinants of health seems to help produce more beneficial population health outcomes than our nation’s prioritization on the reverse.
A major reason our health care is so expensive is that Americans pay more for medical products and services than people living in most other countries. Often much more. In January 2014, Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein wrote that an MRI costs, on average, $1,121 in the United States and $363 in France, and that an appendectomy costs $3,676 in the United States and $606 in Canada. A bottle of Nexium – a common acid reflux drug – costs $202 in the United States and $32 in Britain. Klein contends that the reason we pay more is because individual insurance companies don’t have the leverage to negotiate better prices. In contrast, insurance companies in Switzerland don’t negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer. The Swiss government simply sets its drug prices and lets Pfizer decide whether to sell in Switzerland – or not. In the U.S. payers are fragmented while in other countries they are unified even if they have many insurers. According to Klein, that leaves us with the worst of both approaches: “Prices aren’t set by the market, but they also aren’t set by the government. Consequently, Medicare’s negotiating power is weakened by the threat that drug companies or hospitals will opt to do business only with higher-paying private insurers. We simultaneously miss out on the efficiency of a purely private system and on the savings of a purely public one.
What is Bernie’s Single Payer Health Care Plan (Medicare for all)?
Bernie has proposed expanding Medicare so that it’s available to all Americans from birth to grave. Through tax revenue (employer payroll taxes and income taxes weighted toward the wealthy), the government would provide all the funding for health care costs (aka single payer) for all Americans. Private health insurers would no longer be needed unless there is demand from wealthier individuals to purchase supplemental coverage for services that wouldn’t and shouldn’t be covered under an expanded Medicare program (e.g., penthouse hospital rooms or cosmetic procedures). Because all Americans would be covered, existing programs like Medicaid and CHIP for the poor and Medicare for seniors and the disabled would no longer be needed. All healthcare services would continue to be provided by the private for-profit and non-profit sectors. Patients can keep their same health care providers or switch to new ones. Every citizen would carry a single Medicare-for-All card which would be used everywhere in the country.
Public polls over the years have shown support for single payer. Even after the contentious ACA debate several years ago and the current campaign rhetoric, a recent poll showed nearly 80 percent support among Democrats and about 25 percent support among Republicans. For years, a number of political leaders, including Obama before he became president, and organizations have called for a universal single payer system in the U.S. Three such organizations are the 185,000-member U.S. Nursing Association, the Business Coalition for Single Payer Healthcare, and Physicians for a National Health Program. According to BCSPH, over 60 percent of small business CEOs support single payer, but they find it difficult to get their business associations to support it because they have health care and insurance members or they often sell employee insurance to their members.
Below are some of the reasons people have advocated for a universal single payer program. There are various ways to fund such a single payer program. Sanders starts from the premise that in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, health care should be a human right not a privilege The Sanders plan would fund his program with an employer 6.2% payroll tax (employers currently pay a 1.45 percent payroll tax for Medicare), a 2.2 percent income-based premium on household income over $28,800 (employees currently pay a 1.45 percent payroll tax for Medicare), progressively higher personal marginal tax rates on income over $250,000, taxing capital gains and dividends the same as income from work, limiting tax deductions on households making over $250,000, raise estate taxes on the wealthiest 0.3 percent of Americans who inherit over $3.5 million, and eliminating certain tax breaks. There would be no co-pays or deductibles.
All Americans will have access to health care. The Sanders plan includes the entire continuum of health care, including inpatient and outpatient care; preventative to emergency care; primary care to specialty care, including long-term and palliative care; vision, hearing and oral health care; mental health and substance abuse services; as well as prescription medications, medical equipment, supplies, diagnostics and treatments.
Patients will be able to choose a health care provider without worrying about whether the health care provider and facility is in-network and will get the care they need without having to read fine print trying to figure out how they can afford out-of-pocket costs. No more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges.
Without co-payments and deductibles, sick people and their families will no longer have the added stress of worrying how to pay for care.
Citizens and businesses will benefit from the freedom and predictability that comes from finally separating health insurance from employment. People would be able to start new businesses, stay home with their children or an ailing parent or leave jobs they don’t like knowing that they would still have health coverage for themselves and their families. Employers could be free to focus on running their business rather than spending time figuring out how to provide health insurance to their employees. For workers and businesses, the annual health care renewal nightmare would be gone.
For health care providers, much less time and resources would be needed to obtain authorization and reimbursement for services and products. One payer means one set of forms and one set of procedures for authorizations and payments. Also, under the Sanders plan, there would be no need for providers to collect co-pays and deductibles.
Almost immediately, overall healthcare costs will go down. First, the insurance company bureaucracy consumes between 17 percent and 31 percent of health care costs without providing any direct patient care (estimates vary by source). These costs go toward marketing costs, broker commissions, large executive salaries, utilization review (gatekeepers between the doctor and patient), actuarial costs, shareholder profits, costs of administering scores of plans and coverages in the 1,500 U.S. insurance companies, lobbying costs, and campaign contributions. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, administrative costs for the existing Medicare program are about 2 percent of operating expenses. Therefore, reducing administrative costs alone would lower health care spending between 15 percent and 29 percent. Second, with only the federal government to bargain with, pharmaceuticals, medical device makers, and health care providers will be forced to bring U.S. pricing more in line with prices in other industrialized nations.
According to the Sanders’ website, businesses that currently provide health insurance to their employees would have an average net savings of over $9,000 per year per employee. The typical middle class family would save over $5,000 per year in health care costs.
Who losses with single payer? Clearly insurance companies and brokers because they are out of the picture. Pharmaceuticals would make lower profits. Health care clinics and hospitals may get paid less on average, but their overhead costs will be lower and the health care providers will have more time to actually provide care to patients. Businesses that don’t currently provide health insurance to their employees will certainly pay more because of the mandatory payroll tax on all employers, but most that offer health care to their employees will pay less. This levels the playing field across all employers like we currently do with Medicare payroll taxes.
Where Does Clinton Stand on Single Payer?
Defend the Affordable Care Act and build on it to slow growth of out-of-pocket costs.
Crack down on rising prescription drug prices and hold drug companies accountable so they get ahead by investing in research, not jacking up costs.
That’s it! Just trust. She will defend, crack down, protect, and work.
More recently, Clinton and her daughter Chelsea have used mischaracterizations (aka fear-mongering) of the Sanders plan to drum up opposition to his plan and support for Clinton’s non-plan health plan. Clinton has claimed that Sanders’ plan, which relies on states to administer the single payer plan, would turn “over your and my health insurance to governors,” This argument has two layers of absurdity, First, it’s not true. If a governor chose not to participate, coverage would be provided by the feds. Second, it’s actually the Clinton-backed status quo under the ACA that is allowing governors to pick and choose who to cover. In recent debates and interviews she has gone back to the politically unfeasible argument and added the always favorite Republican scare tactic about raising taxes on the middle class. While technically true, it’s more than a bit disingenuous not to mention that certain current costs would go away, especially when it appears that many middle class families could end up with more money in their pockets. Chelsea was out telling crowds in Iowa that the Sanders plan would take away Medicare coverage for old folks and Medicaid coverage for poor families. Yes, technically, those separate programs to go away, but what part of “Medicare for all” is hard to understand? Clinton’s latest attacks are that Sanders doesn’t show us his plan and the “the numbers don’t add up.” This second line of attack seems to contradict the first. If there was no Sanders plan, how are they determining that the numbers don’t add up? He does have a very serious and detailed plan, and he is even authored legislation for single payer on several occasions. It’s much more detailed and serious than Clinton’s defend-crack down-protect-work babble that she’s proposed.
The Cintons have never offered a substantive policy argument against single payer. It’s pretty widely acknowledged that single payer like Sanders proposes would lower overall health care spending and cover everyone. In fact, Clinton herself seemed to advocate for it behind closed doors and before many millions of dollars started pouring in from the drug and insurance companies. Since they can’t debate single payer on its merits, the Clintons (all three of them) have resorted to fear mongering, mischaracterizations, half-truths and deception. Perhaps some of the numbers in the Sanders plan are too optimistic, but then let’s have an honest discussion about they need to be tweaked so that we provide truly universal coverage at less cost. Also, perhaps single payer would be more politically feasible if our politicians didn’t take money from the powerful interests opposed to it and so-called liberals like Clinton stopped using fear mongering and mischaracterization tactics. We already get enough of that from the Republicans.
At a October 2015 New Hampshire event, Clinton did not categorically rule out Social Security benefit cuts or raising the retirement age, and she declined to endorse an across-the-board expansion of benefits. Clinton said, “If there were a way to raise the retirement age that would not penalize or punish laborers and factory workers and long distance truck drivers and people who really are ready for retirement at a much earlier age, I would consider it. But I have yet to find any recommendation that I would think would be suitable.” She went on to state, “I would look at raising the [payroll tax] cap,” but she did not endorse it saying she did not want to increase the tax burden on middle class families. At her campaign website, Clinton provides little more clarity regarding her position on Social Security other than to say she will fight off Republican attacks and ask the “highest-income Americans to pay more.” That’s it! Fight and ask. In January 2016, Hillary promised–via a tweet–not to cut social security benefits. At a recent nationally televised town hall, Clinton seemed to rule out raising the retirement age, although she also seemed to suggest that it could be a possibility for certain workers with longer life expectancy.
Bernie introduced legislation in early 2015 “to lift the cap so that everyone who makes over $250,000 pays the same percentage of their income into Social Security as the middle class and working families.” The Sanders’ website claims that the Sanders’ Social Security Expansion Act would extend the solvency of Social Security for the next 50 years and increase Social Security benefits by about $65 a month for most recipients. Sanders has consistently stated that he would not cut Social Security benefits nor raise the retirement age. In January of this year, The New York Times endorsed expanding Social Security benefits. Progressive groups became encouraged that the tide seems to have shifted away from cutting benefits to expanding benefits.
On an issue that affects all Americans, is it too much to ask that Clinton be more specific and consistent regarding Social Security?
What changed between October 2015 and January 2016 to cause Hillary to reconsider taking a firm stand on benefit cuts? If you are a nurse, fast food worker, salesman, short distance truck driver, hair stylist, postal worker, teacher, etc., how confident are you that you would be exempt from an increase in the retirement age under a plan that Hillary is open to “considering”? Is it possible that union/corporate support and campaign donations could influence Clinton’s worker exemption criteria? If you are like my mother and millions of other seniors who rely on Social Security for food and shelter, which Democrat candidate do you want representing you in budget negotiations with Republicans?
Exhibit A for many voters’ anger and distrust of establishment politicians is the financial crisis and Great Recession, which led to millions of foreclosed homes, lost jobs, and shrinking retirement funds. Minority communities and low and middle income families were especially hard hit. Taxpayer funds helped rescue Wall Street firms and may have prevented the crisis from getting even worse.
Factors contributing to the financial crisis, include greed, fraud, deregulation, and lax regulatory oversight. Despite evidence that Wall Street greed and fraud contributed to the crisis, no Wall Street executives have served prison time because the Obama Administration decided not to pursue criminal charges. For many of us, not holding top executives personally accountable for criminal actions is a terrible signal to send to big banks and a disgraceful example of inequities in our justice system, particularly at a time when many people are locked up for such things as possessing marijuana.
After the Great Depression, President Roosevelt signed the Glass-Steagall Act, which introduced banking reforms designed to prevent consolidation of commercial banks, investment banks, mortgage lenders, securities traders, and insurance companies. The Act also imposed regulation on speculative trading by banks. In 1999, President Clinton signed a law that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. Wall Street banks were thrilled and went on a merger binge with investment banks, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders.
Following the financial crisis, President Obama signed the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Proponents believe it creates the necessary safeguards to prevent another large-scale financial crisis. Skeptics argue it helps some, but does not go nearly far enough and suspect it was watered down due to pressure from Wall Street.
The big U.S. banks are now five times as large relative to the size of the U.S. economy as the biggest banks were in the 1980s.
What are the two Democratic candidates saying about Wall Street? Sanders consistently makes Wall Street and the influence of money in politics major themes in his campaign. Sanders was one of only 57 members of the House that voted against the bill that repealed Glass Steagall. Sanders voted for the Dodd-Frank Bill, but argues in favor of going further and breaking up the big banks under the slogan: “If a bank is too big to fail, it’s too big to exist.” Bernie has pledged to break up the too-big-to-fail banks within one year of becoming President, and he advocates for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act.
In response to Sanders’ insistence that Clinton explain to voters why they shouldn’t be concerned about her ties to Wall Street, Clinton essentially dismisses/dodges the issue by saying that Bernie “is just a single-issue candidate.” The Clintons have received many millions of dollars from Wall Street in the forms of donations and speaking fees. Many of Clinton’s closest aides held high positions on Wall Street.
In a February 2016 piece for billmoyers.com titled “Elizabeth Warren Recalls a Time When Big Donors May Have Changed Hillary’s Vote,” John Light describes a 2004 interview with Bill Moyers where Warren strongly implied that donations from Wall Street influenced then Senator Clinton’s decision to vote for legislation to tighten bankruptcy laws. Wall Street pushed hard for this legislation. Warren feared it would hurt single mothers the most.
Clinton was not a U.S. Senator when Glass-Steagall was repealed and Dodd-Frank was passed. Her campaign website says she will fight off Republican attempts to weaken Dodd-Frank and it contains a lot of vague, tough talk, but it does not call for breaking up the big banks or reinstating Glass-Steagall.
In a recent interview, Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep that despite changes to Wall Street made as part of the Dodd-Frank law, big banks are too big to fail. “If there were another crisis and banks ran into trouble, I’m afraid that taxpayers would have to step in again and bail out these banks. So we have not solved that problem, and we need to.” He then compares these big banks to nuclear reactors saying, “If a nuclear reactor melts down, it’s truly devastating for society. Given that cost, governments will do whatever they have to try to stabilize the reactor before it melts down. These stark warnings come from a man who worked on Wall Street and the Treasury Department, and was once a Republican candidate for governor of California.
Clinton, what part of “too-big-to-fail-too-big-to-exist” do you find objectionable and why? Also, why must we wait until you are president before you “will work to end conflicts of interest in government”? I know this may sound radical, but have you considered leading by example now?
In my view, it is wrong to consider “foreign policy” views and priorities as though they’re somehow separate from “domestic policy” issues and priorities. Besides the intended and unintended human suffering of lives lost, injuries, and civilians fleeing war zones, wars cost a lot of money to prosecute and to properly care for decades for the wounded soldiers and their families (the Iraq War has cost trillions of dollars). Every dollar spent on war-making, is a dollar less to spend on education, healthcare, renewable energy, eldercare, etc., or to provide tax cuts to Americans falling behind in today’s economy. As Pope Francis often reminds, a nation’s budget is a moral statement of the nation’s priorities.
A number of articles written by “progressives” and others have called Clinton a “hawk” or a “neocon” with respect to military and foreign policy. The most obvious example cited is her vote authorizing the Iraq War. In contrast, Sanders voted against authorization at a time when the majority of Americans supported invading Iraq. Unfortunately, all of Sanders’ publicly articulated reasons for voting against authorization came to pass. Clinton and Sanders had access to the same information prior to casting their votes, but Bernie’s judgment proved far superior. Clinton has since called her vote “a mistake.” It proved to be a colossal “mistake” by any measure, but she does deserve some credit for doing something few politicians ever do–admit a mistake.
While we all make mistakes, in the political arena, voters should assess whether a politician has learned from past mistakes. Unfortunately, in my view, Clinton’s record since the Iraq “mistake” can only lead to one of two disturbing conclusions: 1) Hillary has not learned from the Iraq “mistake” or 2) the “mistake” was not really a “mistake.” I suggest that either explanation should disqualify her from being our Commander in Chief, as well as dispel any notion that she is “progressive” by any stretch on foreign policy matters.
In an August 2014 article for the Washington Post titled “Everyone suddenly remembers that Hillary Clinton is a foreign policy hawk,” Paul Waldman writes that from her backing a bold escalation of the Afghanistan war, to pressing Obama to arm the Syrian rebels and later endorsing airstrikes against Assad, to backing intervention in Libya, to backing the expansion of lethal drone strikes, to refusing to place any blame on Israel for the Palestinian conflict, Hillary has consistently taken a militaristic/hawkish position as secretary of state.
Let’s look at who appears to have Hillary’s ear on military and foreign policy matters. Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign received more money from U.S. defense contractors than any other candidate, including Republican candidates. As noted elsewhere, the Clintons also have substantial ties to the fossil fuel industry, an industry that has had a prominent seat at the U.S. foreign policy shaping table for many decades. Rachel Maddow at MSNBC and others have proven that oil was the principal reason for our invasion of Iraq. But what about WMDs, removing a brutal dictator, and spreading democracy throughout the Middle East? Nope. Oil. How shocking!
Clinton’s proud declaration during a nationally televised debate that she takes foreign policy advice from Henry Kissinger may have gone unnoticed by millennials, but for “progressives” who are old enough to remember the Nixon/Kissinger years, advice from Kissinger is downright frightening. Certainly not a badge of honor. Let’s take a walk down memory lane with the man whom supported the Iraq War and the late Christopher Hitchens called a war criminal in his detailed book titled The Trial of Henry Kissinger. It has been well documented that Former Secretary of State Kissinger has his fingerprints on a long list of slimy covert operations, rigged elections, and brutal dictatorships across the world, including but by no means limited to, brutal regimes and death squads in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Iran, and Greece.
While it’s appropriate and often wise to seek advice from people with various perspectives, Hillary’s gleeful association with Kissinger has yet to be followed up with a name of a non-establishment progressive that might provide a counterbalance to Kissinger. There are reports that Hillary also receives foreign policy advice from the consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies, which appears to be comprised of former CIA and Defense Department officials and past Clinton aides. While BGS’s client list is somewhat unclear, there are reports that BGS also provides advice to defense contractors and the Rubio and Cruz presidential campaigns. Put me in the highly skeptical column on whether BGS is providing an effective counterbalance to the Kissinger worldview.
Unfortunately, the horrific situation in Honduras suggests that Clinton has been an astute student of the Kissinger worldview. In a June 2015 article in salon.com, writer Matthew Pulver chronicles how Hillary’s fingerprints are all over the 2009 military coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected President Zelaya. As is often the case with Clinton, the Honduran case involves a web of longtime Clinton family aides and financial ties to business interests. Since the coup, the country’s oligarchs have prospered while 65 percent of the population lives in poverty and tens of thousands of Hondurans are fleeing the country because of rampant violence. The country has the highest murder rate in the world. In public comments, Hillary suggests that drug trafficking is to blame for the mass violence in Honduras. While drug trafficking appears to be a problem, it is also the case that crime spiked following the 2009 coup and that various international groups attribute much of the violence to waves of oppression by the police and military, including murders and kidnappings of journalists, academics, and civil rights activists.
Clinton has often argued for, rather than against, increases in military spending. While most Democrats were outraged in 2007 over George W. Bush’s increase in military spending, Clinton argued that more military spending was needed. She also fought to restore funding for the few weapon systems that Bush did agree to cut during budget negotiations.
In 1994, President Clinton codified the Cuban embargo. In 2000, when she was running for Senate, and in 2008, when she was running for the Democratic nomination, Clinton was a staunch supporter of the embargo. In July 2015, Clinton announced in South Florida that if elected president, she will put an end to the embargo. For years, Bernie has advocated for lifting the embargo. In 1991, almost 90 percent of Cuban-Americans supported the embargo, but now only about 40 percent support the embargo.
Are you feeling at all confident that Hillary has learned from her Iraq War “mistake”?
Many of us are also disgusted with do-whatever-it-takes-to-win politics, often rationalized as the ends justify the means in a battle of good versus evil. We are told that politics is a rough and tumble sport and if you want to win you’re going to have to get dirty. The Clinton campaign uses this as an argument for why Democrats should nominate Clinton. The narrative goes something like, Clinton has had a lot of dirt thrown her way over the years, but she has proven she can bounce back and “fight.” I suggest that “fight” is a euphemism for a willingness to get as sleazy as needed. Of course Sanders would not know how engage in such a fight and he would buckle once the Republican dirt is thrown at him.
I’m amazed at how quickly many of us forget the sleazy things the Clinton campaign said and did in the 2007/2008 campaign against Obama. Some of these tactics are resurfacing in the current campaign. First, let’s take a walk down memory lane. Be careful, it’s slimy.
Clinton even attacked Obama for having served on the board of the Chicago anti-poverty group known as Woods Fund at the same time as former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers. Ayers has never been convicted of a crime and is now a distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Ironically, the Clintons invited Rev. Wright to the White House as a spiritual advisor and it was President Clinton who pardoned Ayers’ wife and a fellow Weather Underground activist.
The Washington Post and other news sources have reported that evidence proves the whole Obama birther kerfuffle originated in the Clinton campaign. It began to take root with a now public 2007 strategy memo from Clinton campaign’s chief strategist Mark Penn. In the memo, Penn proposed “targeting Obama’s lack of American roots.” According to Penn’s memo, “His roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his core fundamentally American in his thinking and his values.” Penn then goes on to suggest a number of tactics to drive this point home with voters, including advising Clinton to remind voters that she was “born in the middle of America.” While Penn cautioned against being too obvious, it didn’t stop Clinton and her zealous staff from going full frontal. There are many examples of how the troops carried out their orders, but here are few. Emails from her campaign and supporters questioned Obama’s birthplace and religion. Clinton staffers circulated a photo of Obama wearing a turban while on a trip to Africa. Clinton herself used a 60 Minutes interview to further stoke these lies. Clinton told Steve Kroft Obama is not a Muslim “as far as I know.” Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe described the Clinton tactics “shameful, offensive fear-mongering.” Soon after, Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams accused Obama of “trying to distract from the serious issues” of the campaign and being divisive. Obama had to spend much of the nomination and general campaigns stressing he is Christian and did not study at a madrassa.
Penn’s strategy seemed to be working to perfection. During the first 45 minutes of a nationally-televised debate just prior to the Pennsylvania primary, not a single substantive policy issue was asked. Instead the focus was regarding Obama’s patriotism because of his failure to wear a flag lapel pin and similar efforts to portray him in a negative light. In just a few months, polls showed Obama’s negative ratings going from 8 percent to 42 percent.
A mailing sent to New Hampshire residents claimed that Obama wasn’t really committed to abortion rights because he’d voted “present” on some abortion related legislative votes. New England Planned Parenthood’s Board Chair strongly refuted Clinton’s letter, pointing out that Obama had a 100 percent record on all the votes that really mattered.
There were several unsuccessful attempts by Clinton surrogates to confuse voters into thinking that Obama wasn’t really against the Iraq War.
The Clinton campaign and surrogates tried repeatedly to make “Obama’s early drug use” an issue in the campaign—despite his having addressed it directly and frankly in his book Dreams From My Father. FYI, he never claimed not to inhale.
There were several instances where it appeared the Clinton campaign engaged in voter suppression tactics. One such attempt in Nevada was shut down by a judge.
There were numerous credible reports that the Clinton campaign engaged in push polling during the campaign. Push polling is an underhanded attempt to influence or alter the view of voters under the guise of conducting a legitimate It’s usually done by framing the questions in a way that casts a favorable impression on the favored candidate and a negative impression on the opponent, often by distorting the opponent’s positions on issues.
In this campaign, Clinton brought David Brock on board as a strategist. Brock is a well-known mudslinger in American politics. He once worked as an operative for right wing politicians and causes, but in recent years he has helped the Clintons and some other liberals. A spokesman for the Sander’s campaign described Brock as “one of the worst practitioners in the dark arts of dirty politics.” Brock is best known for a magazine article and book he wrote attacking Anita Hill’s character and raising doubts about the veracity of her accusations during the contentious Clarence Thomas nomination hearing. Hill was a distinguished African American professor. Nice hire, Clinton!
Because Sanders’ Whiteness, Jewishness, and birthplace appear indisputable, these cards will be a bit trickier to play, but let’s see what’s happened so far.
The thrust has been implying and overtly stating that Sanders is sexist and his supporters are largely sexist men. I will cover just one of the sexism cards played by team Clinton. Several weeks ago, it was widely reported that Sanders online supporters were largely a mob of crude, angry, young, sexist, males. These supporters were being dubbed “Bernie Bros.” Within hours, Clinton and her surrogates were using this handy pro-Clinton smear throughout the media outlets and applying it to anyone who spoke ill of Clinton. It was so widely covered that Sanders felt compelled to announce that he doesn’t condone crude, sexist statements and behavior. However, as time went on, the handy Bernie Bros narrative was proven to be a myth. First, the polls and the Iowa caucus showed that Sanders’ support extended well beyond young males. Second, Glen Greenwald and others starting doing some actual investigative reporting to determine the origins of this narrative. According to Greenwald, the Bernie Bros narrative began with a Mashable article “that cited a grand total of two examples, both from random, unknown internet users.” The first was a response to a Facebook post by Clinton supporter Senator Jeanne Shaheen from New Hamphsire. As Greenwald points out, it’s written by a woman, not a man, and while the woman uses the term “lying shitbag,” (not particularly unusual in online debates over politics) there was nothing remotely sexist in the response. The other example cited in the Mashable article and repeated by other media outlets originated from New Yorker TV critic (and Clinton supporter) Emily Nussbaum, who claims she was called a “psycho” by the “Feel the Bern crew.” Finally, the smoking gun that proves the Bernie Bro narrative is true! Nope. As Greenwald reports, it turns out the person who called her a “psycho” is a right-wing Tea Party supporter writing under a fake Twitter account – not remotely a Sanders supporter.
In 2008, economist Paul Krugman (a Clinton supporter) used this same tactic on behalf of the Clinton campaign by claiming that Obama supporters were particularly venomous and cult-like. This time around, Krugman was one of the first high-profile Clinton supporters to spin the Bernie Bro myth.
Media critic, Adam Johnson describes how team Clinton manufactured this scandal: 1) constantly assert BernieBro phenomenon based on a handful of cherry picked idiots; 2) have several big-name Clinton partisans and a few credulous journalists write about it (only one or two examples needed); 3) eventually Sanders camp says of course online harassment is bad; 4) use this as evidence that Sanders camp “admits it has a problem. When it works, you never have to talk about substance of any kind. Thank goodness there are still some real journalists that are not just political lapdogs.
During the recent Nevada caucus, Clinton supporters were caught red-handed (on camera) changing from blue Hillary Clinton campaign shirts into red Clinton shirts that were nearly identical to the red shirts NNU members were wearing, in an apparent attempt to confuse voters. NNU is a very large nurse’s union that has thrown its support to Sanders.
See health care discussion for classic half-truth and fear mongering tactics by the Clintons.
There have been several reports of people being push polled in Nevada by Clinton operatives prior to the caucus.
Clinton and her surrogates have also made a concerted effort to remind voters that Sanders is a socialist. Unfortunately for Clinton, red-baiting tactics aren’t nearly as effective as they once were, especially with voters too young to remember the cold war. It’s also a bit trickier to pull off when your target proudly wears that label on his sleeve, his “socialist” proposals are resonating with the public, and a billionaire, capitalist, Republican candidate has suggested that single payer makes some sense.
My philosophical argument against do-whatever-it-takes-to win-politics is two-pronged. First, I don’t believe there are many legitimate situations where the ends (winning) justify the means. We generally agree that it’s wrong and unethical in sports, education, business, and in other facets of society. So why should politics be any different? Just because it has been that way and the pundits tell us it will always be that way “in the real world of politics”? This political path we’ve been on has led to widespread cynicism and distrust in government. Many people are turned off or tuned out of politics, which is unhealthy for a democracy. Second, we need to show our youth that we can have a vigorous debate on issues without fear mongering, personal attacks, misrepresenting opposing positions, misleading voters, dodging legitimate questions, or having to poll and focus group to determine a “position” on an issue.
I’m dismayed by the number of Clinton supporters who cite experience and electability for supporting Clinton. Her campaign themes are clearly working. Please Democrats, do your homework!
Penn’s PR firm Burson-Marsteller has provided assistance to Blackwater, Philip Morris, union-busting efforts, the Argentina military junta, and Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster, as well as others. | 2019-04-20T07:10:59Z | http://occupysaintpaul.org/clinton-v-sanders/ |
At Kabale, Western Province, Uganda.
The Kabale Chief Magistrate’s Court has issued a demand notice against the State Minister for Economic monitoring, Mr Henry Banyenzaki, over alleged failure to pay Shs360,000 to Kabale businessman Johnson Ndyabanawe.
Mr Ndyabanawe told the court Mr Banyenzaki hired his two lorries to carry people from different villages in Rubanda west constituency and drop them at Muko sub-county playground where President Museveni was addressing them on January 15. He also said Mr Banyenzaki paid him only Shs840,000 leaving a balance of Shs360,000 which he has failed to pay despite several reminders.
The demand notice dated February 12, issued by the head of small claims procedure at Kabale Chief Magistrate’s Court, Mr Darius Kamugisha, requires Mr Banyenzaki to settle the debt within 14 days and failure to comply, the complainant shall obtain decree for the same amount of money claimed together with expenses permitted by court.
But Mr Banyenzaki, on Friday said the claim is false and threatened to deal with the complainant for tainting his name.
“The claims are false and aimed at tainting my reputation. That man must be mad because I have never contracted him. I have not received the demand notice as of now but I am ready to challenge it,” Mr Banyenzaki said.
The Anti-Corruption Court Judge Lawrence Gidudu yesterday expressed dissatisfaction over the State’s failure to present a witness to testify against key suspects in the Shs88 billion pension scam.
The suspects include former permanent secretary in the ministry of Public Service Jimmy Lwamafa, former Principal Accountant Christopher Obey, and former director research and development Stephen Kiwanuka Kunsa.
Hearing of their case was set to proceed with submission by the acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Service, Ms Adah Kabarokole Muwanga, but she failed to show up before court on grounds that she was unwell.
This is the second time she failed to show up.
This second instance annoyed Justice Gidudu who proposed they deal with her (Muwanga’s) testimony, saying her absence was a sign that she might never appear.
However, the prosecutor, Ms Ms Barbra Kawuma, pleaded with court to avail her another chance to be heard, arguing that Ms Muwanga’s evidence is crucial for their case and being a civil servant, she has obligation to show up to testify and court should be granted another chance.
Consequently, the judge allowed prosecution until January 8, 2016, and threatened to reconsider releasing the suspects on bail.
Justice Gidudu explained that in criminal law, when suspects are on remand, their trial should be speeded and that if the prosecution is continuously dragging its feet, then he will be obliged to release the suspects on bail.
Currently, prosecution is left with six witnesses who should testify before the end of February 2016, for court to rule on whether, the suspects have a case to answer.
The suspects have been on remand since August this year and two different judges have on two different occasions, denied to release the suspects on bail, agreeing with the prosecution that once out of jail, they will jeopardise investigations like they did in the initial pension case of Shs165 billion that was dismissed.
The trio is accused of fraudulently budgeting for over Shs88 billion of civil servants’ pension contribution to National Social Security Fund (NSSF) well knowing that civil servants don’t contribute to NSSF.
PRISON SHOULD BE CALLED CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTE.
Deposed Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has for the first time publicly condemned his removal from office by the military last year saying he feels betrayed by his former protégé Emmerson Mnangagwa, who now leads the country.
Mugabe blamed his successor for working with the military to stage a coup that dislodged his 37-year rule on November 15. He declared that he was removed from power through a military coup, contrary to observations by the Southern African Development Community, the African Union and other political bodies who viewed his ouster a constitutional matter mandated to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.
In an interview with South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and several other media houses, Mugabe indicated that President Emmerson Mnangagwa is an illegitimate leader of Zimbabwe, who needs to discuss with him how to legalize his presidency.
Mnangagwa and the military deposed him last November when the military said it wanted to arrest so-called criminals surrounding him believed to have belonged to a faction of the ruling Zanu PF party known as Generation 40, which allegedly wanted Mrs Grace Mugabe to succeed him.
A defiant Mugabe told journalists at his family Blue Roof mansion, where he was put under arrest by the army last November, that he was forcibly removed from power by a person he saved from the gallows during the liberation struggle of the 1970s.
Mugabe said the ZDF completely paralyzed other organs of the security services when it staged the coup d’etat with Mnangagwa and his associates, who belonged to a faction of the ruling party known as Team Lacoste.
“He (Mnangagwa) could not have assumed the presidency of the country without the army. It’s the army which assisted him. The army made sure that other organs of state were neutralized … completely neutralized. They neutralized the Central Intelligence Organization many of whose members were bashed, whose heads were cracked and this is not an exaggeration. Some of them are missing to this day. Their guns were taken away from them. The police had their armoury completely emptied.
He said some people decided to only call it a military intervention and not a coup d’etat.
“That’s what it was but I don’t know what you would call it but our people had not experienced such an environment before. We had prided ourselves on being democratic.
The former Zimbabwean leader, who ruled the country for more than 37 years said he played a key role in saving some of the people that were being sought by the army but noted that his staff has been harassed about their whereabouts.
“Every day those young men and women we have are being called one by one to be asked very silly questions. Where is Jonathan, Professor Jonathan Moyo? Where is (Saviour) Kasukuwere? Where is (Patrick) Zhuwao? Ah! They are told ‘no’ there are mere cooks, they are mere messengers, gardeners. You don’t expect them to know. Why worry them? Ask me. I don’t even know where they are. Yes, once upon a time we assisted them to get to safety. Guns, volleys of bullets were being fired at their houses. And the cry came, please, please, and it was my wife. Mama save us, please save us. I wasn’t there. She organized some of her security and said go, go and save them.
“… What happens to you, I don’t know. You may die on the way but go. And she put together the cars and the persons that she had. I wasn’t here. And so they were brought to our house … Jonathan, Professor Jonathan Moyo, Kasukuwere and their families.
Mugabe noted that he has since been abandoned by the current president and his colleagues.
Indeed Saddam Hussein must have been bitter like this African dictator now, when his security men gave him away to the Americans to determine his death. This hard working African man does not seem to see his luck to have to retire at 90 years and to go to his farm and look after his African long horned cattle.
As parliament’s budget committee tussled with an avalanche of supplementary budget requests late last week, which totalled Shs 1.04 trillion, some officials confessed that they emptied their initial budget allocations in order to sustain President Museveni’s campaign expenditure.
State House comptroller, Lucy Nakyobe, whose office tabled a supplementary budget request of Shs 49.7 billion, told the parliamentary budget committee on April 1 that her coffers were depleted by the so many inland travels of President Museveni, who addressed four campaign rallies daily on average for the campaign period.
Four rallies, she said, meant more fuel for the 18-vehicle standard presidential motorcade and facilitation for the entourage. According to Nakyobe, Museveni also spent a large chunk of the money initially allocated to State House to fulfil presidential donations he had made across the country.
A number of top government officials led by the minister of state for Planning, David Bahati, appeared before the budget committee last week chaired by MP Amos Lugoloobi (Ntengeru North) to defend their supplementary budget requests.
Defence permanent secretary Rosette Byengoma told the committee that her ministry spent more money than originally allocated to them on wages for UPDF officers and men who worked during campaigns, elections and post-election period.
The minister of state for Agriculture, Vincent Sempijja, and the officer in-charge of Planning and Agricultural Development, Sam Semanda, told the committee that their sector is in dire need of Shs 6bn to procure hoes for the people of West Nile.
The duo, however, found a hard time. MPs argued that they need to investigate the claim because there is evidence that all MPs from West Nile got hoes during campaigns to distribute to their people.
Other requests for additional funding before the current financial year ends in May 2016 came from the ministries of Defence (Shs 253bn), Local Government (Shs 23bn), Energy (Shs 24.4bn) and Agriculture (Shs 6bn), as well as the parliamentary commission (Shs 66.6bn) and Police (Shs 56.3bn).
However, corruption watchdogs such as Cissy Kagaba, the executive director of Anti-Corruption Coalition Uganda (ACCU), say the confessions by the public servants is tantamount to an admission that they wasted public funds to serve the interests of an individual.
Ahead of the 2016 general elections, the government hastily tabled before parliament and enforced the passing of amendments to the Public Finance Management Act which, among other things, to allow officials spend money and seek parliamentary approval later.
The opposition chief whip, Cecilia Atim Ogwal, argued that unless the State House budget included buying food for people reportedly dying from hunger in Karamoja and Teso, the supplementary budget is uncalled for.
“The Public Finance Management Act states that the supplementary budget must be on matters that are unavoidable and emergencies. Go back and reconsider fixing those demands in the coming budget,” Ogwal said, arguing that inland travels had been taken care of in the current financial year’s budget.
Kagaba told The Observer that the claim by State House’s Nakyobe that some of the money went into donations to fulfill the president’s promises was a sign of the breakdown of systems within the Museveni-led government.
MPs Ephraim Biraaro and Fox Odoi argued that it was embarrassing for State House to expect a supplementary budget to take care of donations instead of unforeseen emergencies.
“Poverty is foreseen and everyone knows Ugandans are poor. Donations should be given to deserving cases and if not paid, the promise erodes and should not fall under supplementary budgets,” Odoi (West Budama North) said.
The coordinator for the Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (Ccedu), Crispy Kaheru, said the issue of an incumbent running for re-election poses a challenge to attempts to level the playing field, especially where the incumbent has the capacity to use public funds during campaigns without the need to account to anyone.
Kaheru suggested that the reforms should include the incumbent handing over his office to the next in the hierarchy in the event that he intends to run again for office, as well as setting benchmarks on what presidential privileges he or she retains as a candidate.
But MPs Col Fred Mwesigye (Nyabushozi), Peter Ogwang (Youth Eastern) and Joseph Kiregheya Matte (Bughendera) said it was necessary to approve the supplementary budgets to enable the president and State House to work.
He also welcomed the proposal to amend the constitution such that a sitting president enjoys fewer privileges but said the government would not deny the president his entitlements simply because of complaints that are not backed by law.
“Whether you like it or not, he is the president of Uganda; so, you are not going to expose him to risks simply because he is seeking re-election,” he said.
The supplementary budget requests of more than Shs 1 trillion come barely six months after the national budget of Shs 24 trillion was presented and approved in May 2015.
Parliament has now summoned MPs for a special plenary session on Wednesday to approve the supplementary budget requests despite an adjournment last week (March, 29) until April 26.
MPs have been spending the time scrutinising ministerial policy statements from sector ministries and statutory bodies for financial year 2016/2017. A source on the budget committee, who declined to be named so as to be able to speak freely, said most of the money the ministries and statutory bodies are asking for was diverted and spent on presidential campaigns.
“Those ministries and agencies had enough funds but decided to divert it for presidential campaigns. They are now pretending that there’s an outstanding shortfall on wages and so on,” the source said.
Other entities asking for more money include the Electoral Commission, which wants Shs 47.2bn to cover shortfalls incurred in the acquisition of the electronic results transmission system. External partners who were supposed to provide additional funding pulled out at a critical stage.
The EC will also use some of that money to pay up the balance on the Biometric Voter Verification system. The External Security Organisation (ESO) wants Shs 2bn to run its counterterrorism operations against the Al Shabaab, ADF, and monitoring the Albertine region. Shs 14.9bn is for missions abroad and Shs 7.2bn for the ministry of East African Community Affairs.
President Museveni didn’t forego any comfort in 1981. He saved well his person from prison.
Cash money kept at most homes in Uganda.
Whereas Besigye, finding himself in similar circumstances in 2001, opted for exile and (subsequently) imprisonment, Museveni opted for armed rebellion.
Speaking in Jinja recently, the eloquent Deputy Speaker of Parliament Mr Jacob Oulanyah described President Museveni as a heroic figure who snubbed the alternative of a comfortable life, complete with air-conditioned offices and cars, to go to the bush.
I don’t know whether Oulanyah was referring to 1971 or 1981; either way, he was wrong. Museveni’s options in 1981 were similar to those that came to be Kizza Besigye’s two decades later: exile, imprisonment or armed rebellion.
Those who have probed into the circumstances surrounding the 1971 coup also reveal that when Museveni fled the country on January 26, he did so under the promptings of self-preservation since he was on coup makers’ hit list.
Museveni has never forfeited the alternative of an “air-conditioned” life. If Oulanyah is looking for a hero in the mould of the Biblical Moses who, according to Hebrews 11, forfeited palatial pleasures to suffer the afflictions of the wilderness, he should consider Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, and perhaps join the Forum for Democratic Change.
Museveni has never made such a choice, and whereas it’s fine to sing the praises of our heroes, such praise shouldn’t be at the expense of historical truth.
The really remarkable thing about Museveni’s story is that he accepted the thorny bed that destiny had made for him, and after lying on it long enough, got a reward from the very same destiny.
Let nobody fool us that victory either in 1979 or in 1986 was a function of superior military strategy. In 1978, Idi Amin, by invading Tanzania, gave the exiles the victory they would never have otherwise got.
These exiles, Museveni included, had been thoroughly defeated and humiliated in Mbarara in 1972, and they had hit a dead end and settled in other careers before Amin’s impetuous invasion gave them a lifeline.
Similarly, the triumph of 1986 is attributable to the tribal fissures within the UNLA that deepened after the death of Oyite Ojok and resulted in the 1985 coup.
The truth then is that Museveni fought because he was cornered by circumstances, and his road to triumph was paved by the folly and weaknesses of his enemies more than it was paved by his own wisdom and strength.
There was an unmistakable hand of destiny in the whole affair, which is why there may be some truth in the claim that he was anointed to lead us. But remember the Biblical Saul. He too was anointed to lead Israel, and then after he went astray, the anointing was withdrawn and given to David.
Just like his predecessors, Museveni will come down because of the folly and weaknesses of his regime, rather than the wisdom and strength of his challengers.
Increasingly, corruption and incompetence are becoming the defining characteristics of his government. Due to the poor quality of education, most civil servants cannot systematically study the problems of society and devise efficient and effective solutions. Instead, these civil servants are busy pilfering public funds.
Several security agencies intervened in the pension funds fraud because the scale of the theft was considered a potential threat to national security.
Actually, all corruption threatens national security because money is ending up in a few undeserving hands, and the millions of desperate youth will, like the Museveni of 1981, find themselves with no alternative but to take matters in their own hands.
Cash flow equals income minus expenses. Some members of Uganda's parliament clearly skipped that personal finance management class. Among them are Felix Okot Ogong, Nakato Kyabanji Katusiime, Florence Kintu, and Simon Peter Aleper. All of them earn quite a bit of money and all of them are so deep in debt it has made headlines.
Florence Kintu, the MP for Kalungu had her land in Mukono confiscated for failure to clear a Shs300 million debt and Dokolo MP, Felix Okot Ogong was in July rescued by the High Court when a bank moved to sell off a property he had mortgaged for a Shs1.6 billion loan.
Ironically, Okot Ogong who is also a money-lender, had in July 2013 dragged fellow MP Simon Peter Aleper (Moroto) to court over a Shs70 million loan. Ogong was charging a loan-shark fee of 5% interest per month.
Other MPs, like Christopher Aciro of Gulu have been accused of misappropriating funds generated by their constituents. In Aciro’ case, he reportedly mismanaged about Shs28 million belonging to 170 savings groups in the Acholi sub-region.
Money troubles are nothing new in parliament but they are worsening. During the induction of the current parliament, the Speaker, Rebecca Kadaga who has been in parliament for over two-decades warned the new MPs to avoid loan sharks. Very few were listening. When reality sunk in a few months later, the MPs demanded a 50% raise in their allowances. But it appears not to have helped. Recently, some MPs from the ruling party appealed to President Yoweri Museveni for a bail-out. It failed and the desperate MPs turned to a Chinese firm which offered to buy their debt and offer them better repayment terms. That too was blocked.
Even as the MPs cash flow problems appear not to abate, Kadaga recently threw the MPs to the sharks when she called a press conference to warn that her office would no longer second MPs loan requests to banks.
Insider information from parliament indicates that Kadaga acted because some MPs, fearing that all their money would be taken by banks, had started asking parliament to post their cheques on different accounts. Some would hide within the precinct of parliament as bailiffs waited outside.
Gomba Woman MP, Nakato Kyabanji Katusiime is among the unlucky ones. She was on Aug. 26 arrested for failure to repay a Shs100 million debt. Upon her release after paying an instalment of Shs20 million, she blames her constituency for her woes.
“The constituency demands are too high for a mere MP to afford,” she told The Independent in an interview.
But when Daily Monitor newspaper run the story; “Gomba Woman MP sent to jail over debt” on the day she was sent to jail, there was no sympathy in reader comments.
Sabiitus wrote: “Let her not only be taken to prison but also made to work like others”.
Even fellow MPs, like Serere woman MP Alice Alaso, rubbish the excuse that MPs borrow to fulfil their constituency obligations. She says some MPs, especially new ones, spend extravagantly and live lavishly.
“How can you explain the scenario where one commits his entire salary to attending burials, wedding and paying voters’ school fees? To me, that’s biting more than we can chew and it’s definitely because some of us are financially illiterate”, she argues.
Without financial literacy, some MPs appear unable to understand how money works; including how to earn it, manages it, invest it and spend it. They appear not to know how to make informed and effective decisions with all of their financial resources.
The Parliamentary Commission is aware of this problem and occasionally outsources experts to talk to the MPs about money.
“Unfortunately these expert chats are one offs yet financial illiteracy has played a bigger part in the members’ indebtedness,” says Alaso.
This has also been noted and, Seninde says, members of the next parliament should be trained quickly to avoid the money troubles that have become common in the 9th parliament.
Equally disturbing is the lack of sympathy for MPs among voters.
That appears to be the general feeling.
Many people in a country where the average income per month is about Shs80, 000 cannot understand why MPs who appear to earn quite a pile cannot pay their debts.
In reality, the MPs basic salary is just Shs2.6 million per month before tax – just about as much as that of a small time bank officer. But the MPs have other perks; around Shs3.5 million mileage facilitation, Shs3.2 million constituency facilitation, Shs4.5 million subsistence allowance, Shs1 million gratuity, Shs1 million town running, medical allowances, Shs50,000 per committee sitting, and travel facilitation when they go for trips domestic and foreign.
The various allowances make computing an MP’s salary quite confusing even for some of them, but it is generally said that MPs earn between Shs15 million and Shs20 million per month.
Unfortunately, the perks bounty is no assured unless the MPs is street-wise, belongs to the right networks, and knows how to juggle multiple tasks. Foreign travel is one of the most coveted perks, but it is tightly controlled and used as carrot and stick. You do not get unless you press the right buttons. MP Alice Alaso says “it is embarrassing how MPs pop from meeting to meeting not because they are discussing issues but they are looking for allowances”.
Semujju Nganda (MP Kyadondo East) is more direct: He says the biggest business at parliament is looking for money and that “members reach an extent of going to an event, sign, and rush to another one.” He says the MPs sign for events that happen within the same time.
“They come to meetings without any clue; they just come to pick allowances,” he says. That perhaps explains why the MPs had in their budget proposals for the 2014/15 Financial Year, asked that their salaries and allowance be `consolidated into one package’. The Ministry of Finance knocked down the proposal because it would raise the wage bill by 30%. Unofficially, however, many recognise that giving MPs financial stability amounts to throwing away the executive’s carrot and stick. Not a good idea.
But the misperception of the MPs true worth persists because some MPs have managed to navigate their complex financial lives without much trouble. The prosperous façade of a few fools many as it glosses over the indebted many. Unfortunately, those taken in by the façade of prosperity include the MPs themselves, their voters, and the banks.
It starts in the beginning when, at the start of each five year term, the MPs; new and old, are given a motor vehicle allowance. For the current MPs, that was Shs103 million each tax free. An average Four-wheel SUV favoured by most MPs goes for about Shs50 million. The balance goes into acquiring a new wardrobe befitting their new status. Next comes a change in lifestyle; including acquiring a new, large and modern mansion in the city.
The banks proper may shun them, but private money lenders are on hand to help. They easily give loans of Shs100 million and over. With the new SUV, city mansion, and cash in the bag, the fake new make-over is in place.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in spite of the well document troubles, to be a member of parliament is one of the most attractive jobs in Uganda.
Contenders usually start laying strategies for winning the next election immediately after an election. This is what exactly took place in Fort Portal Municipality when Alex Ruhunda won the parliamentary seat in 2011. As early as 2012, aspirants started moving around the villages, meeting voters in markets, mosques, and churches and making campaign promises. With such pressure on the MP; that someone is eyeing their seat, the incumbent MPs never go out of campaign mode and the spending that goes with it.
Richard Mugisa, a village opinion leader at Bukwali village in East Division, Fort Portal Municipality says Ruhunda is quite a common figure in the constituency. Mugisa says apart from building for each homestead an energy saving stove, the legislator has made financial contributions to the Bukwali Youth Creative Club, a youth Savings and Credit Cooperative (SACCO).
Awidah Kabagenyi from Kagote, another village in West Division, is also among those who have enjoyed Ruhunda’s generosity. Kabagenyi says, as their patron in Nikisoboka SACCO, Ruhunda “fills in the gaps whenever some money is needed”.
In addition to that, the legislator is defined by many in the constituency as one of their own because he stands with them in both moments of joy and sorrow, in parties and at funerals. The voters expect it of every MP and they do not care how much it costs the MP. After, they say, MPs are wealthy.
Nobody asks the important questions: If they are as wealthy as is claimed, why are so many MPs so deep in debt? What needs to be done about it? Why do so many people who should know better choose to lead a high expenses lifestyle well-knowing they have very little income?
Dr. Apollo Karugaba, who represented Fort Portal Municipality in parliament 15 years ago, says MPs’ indebtedness started with the popularisation of the “politics of money”. “During our time, the electorate didn’t look at us as money churning machines and yet MPs were not as greedy as some portray themselves today. Both parties focused on constituency development”.
The Leader of Opposition, Wafula Oguttu, agrees. He says MPs trouble starts when, instead of presenting issues to the electorate, they hoodwink them by buying them sugar, paying fees, attending burials, and weddings. “In 2011, I won an election without buying a single kilogram of sugar for any voter. Those who asked for tea, I advised them to try my opponents,” he told The Independent.
Emmanuel Dombo, the Bunyole East MP who has been in the House since 1996 also says indebtedness is a problem faced by “amateurs who are excited and at the same time scared that when they don’t wash their electorate with money, they’ll be kicked out”. Dombo insists that in addition to money management lessons for MPs reviving meaningful Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is necessary. The CDF meant to facilitate legislators’ constituency work was erased upon misuse by some parliamentarians. “After spending millions in campaigns, some members went to parliament while already in a deficit. All that was on their minds was to make money to clear their debts. It’s no wonder that such members keep bothering the speaker requesting for travel opportunities so they can get bigger allowances”.
Prof. Sabiti Makara, a political scientist at Makerere University says the MPs money troubles are because voters have understood that the idea of politicians representing people is something just theoretical.
“Now that people have learnt that MPs represent themselves, they keep demanding for money and favours from them,” he says. He says the electorate only benefits when MPs are invited to fundraising events in the villages.
Makara says being indebted should not be a problem but the MPs could be borrowing in the wrong way.
“Politicians and other professionals worldwide are also indebted but they do it through good means from banks not from loan sharks who ask for exorbitant interests as it is here,” he says.
Considering their kind of obligations, the professor says MPs have to look for other monies to complement salary.
Makara, however, predicts that the next parliament is likely to have worse money problems. “It will be a `yes sir parliament’ full of youths, they are terrible opportunists. They’ll do anything for money and whatever the president will say; they’ll just be nodding in approval”. But that too is unlikely to help, unless the MPs learn to better manage their cash flow.
KAMPALA - The case in which Timothy Kalyegira, a former Daily Monitor Journalist, is charged with defaming President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has resumed at City Hall in Kampala.
On Tuesday, through his lawyer Ladislaus Rwakafuuzi, Kalyegira prayed to court that criminal defamation charges brought against him by the State be dismissed on grounds that Section 179 of the Penal Code Act, under which he is being charged, contravenes international standards and best practices of media freedom.
Kalyegira further argues that according to the recent decision delivered by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) to which Uganda is party, found criminal defamation to be contrary to the guarantees on freedom of expression.
However, Moses Nabende, the trial Magistrate, advised Rwakafuzi to furnish court with the said decision.
Prosecution alleges that on July 12 and July 16, 2010 in Kampala district, with intent to defame the person of the president, Kalyegira unlawfully published defamatory matter on the Uganda Records, an online publication, when he published that government was responsible for the bombs that went off on July 11, 2010 killing close to 80 people at the Ethiopian village in Kabalagala and Kyadondo Rugby Club in Lugogo.
In 2012, Kalyegira filed an application to the High Court raising a question of law as to whether online publication was envisaged under Section 179 of the Penal Code Act.
In deciding the matter, Justice Lameck Kigozi held that online publication can constitute a commission of an offence under Section 179 of the Penal code Act and the case was referred to the trial magistrate for trial.
However, the case was adjourned to January 16, 2015 for mention.
Uganda Officials admit illegalities in public prime land giveaways in Kampala city, Uganda.
In the Parliament of Uganda.
Uganda Land Commission (ULC) officials yesterday admitted illegalities in city land deals.
The officials also volunteered information to the ongoing House inquiry into the giving-away of real estate belonging to public education institutions, detailing how they helped an investor to mortgage a piece of land belonging to a city school.
Documents presented by ULC chairman Baguma Isoke to the House committee carrying out the investigation, contain evidence of the transactions.
The committee heard that ULC illegally allocated Plot 27 on Bombo Road, belonging to Buganda Road Primary School, to Jima Properties Ltd in January 2011. The investor was granted a five-year lease and when the lease expired, ULC officials extended the disputed lease for 49 years.
“Uganda Land Commission is party to shoddy land deals in the city,” said Mr Wilfred Niwagaba, the committee lead counsel.
“They grabbed the school land and gave it to an investor. They extended the lease for 49 years to help the investor mortgage the school land title to a bank,” added Mr Niwagaba.
The documents showed how Mr Baker Mugaino, a land officer on September 8, 2014, wrote to the Commissioner Land Registration, confirming the extension of the lease to Jima Properties Ltd. The committee is investigating the people behind this company after ULC failed to disclose the names of its directors.
However, in a May 5, 2014 letter, Mr Bulaimu Muwonge Kibirige, who signed as the managing director of Jima Properties Ltd, requested ULC’s consent to mortgage the land to his bankers for development financing as the only way to finish the project.
The committee heard that in the lease offer, the investor was asked to improve the school football pitch with simple materials, yet the school management wanted security of the pupils while at school. Later, the investor allegedly agreed with the school to build a perimeter wall around the school.
“Following our application for financing, the bank may request for a full lease so as to secure its money,” Mr Kibirige wrote.
Mr Baguma and his team kept blaming the irregularities in various land deals on the current staff gaps at ULC. Mr Paul Idudi, a ULC official, said there is a committee within ULC which advises the commission’s board on various transactions. They requested for more time to study the advice the committee gave on the disputed land deals.
Mr Theodore Ssekikubo, the MP who petitioned the House to form a select committee on the takeover of land belonging to public schools, accused commission officials of colluding with investors to fraudulently extend leases and later claim that they hold the land in trust for Ugandans.
The committee also heard that former Mwenge MP Tom Butime was also given a piece of land belonging to Kololo SS to construct residential houses. The former MP later sold the land in question on which a mosque was later constructed. By press time, Mr Butime was not available for comment.
Yesterday, ULC officials requested for a closed session with the committee to discuss the demolition of Nabagereka Primary School.
Members who attended the closed-door meeting later told Daily Monitor that they were informed that the school land was sold by Buganda Land Board and that the government did not have any hand in the demolition.
Ministry of Education officials are expected to appear before the committee today.
Former prime minister Amama Mbabazi during the Capital Gang talk show.
In his maiden Ugandan talk show as a presidential aspirant, former prime minister Amama Mbabazi yesterday faced tough questions mainly about his record within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the government, his alleged massive wealth and the involvement of his family in his campaign.
Mr Mbabazi has since his long-awaited declaration of his presidential bid on June 15, preferred to talk about the future, offering himself as the candidate who will help Uganda transit from the leadership of the 1986 generation of leaders to the younger generation.
This was the major focus of Mr Mbabazi’s presentations at two earlier appearances on international media platforms, the BBC and Voice of America. It also formed the bulk of his five-minute video-recorded declaration statement, together with many of his messages on social media.
Mr Mbabazi’s opponents and critics, however, have sought to drive the debate back to his long record in government, looking to point out what they see as contradictions in what the former prime minister and ruling party secretary general says now and what he did over the many years when he was perceived as President Museveni’s right hand man.
Mr Museveni himself, in his response to Mr Mbabazi on the same day he [Mr Mbabazi] declared his presidential bid, questioned Mr Mbabazi’s ability to reform the government when, according to the president, he had opportunity to do so from within.
On the Capital Gang show on Capital FM yesterday, there were at least two “gangsters” who were resolute to hold Mr Mbabazi to his record. These were Mr Ofwono Opondo, the executive director of the government media centre, and Dr Kenneth Omona, the deputy treasurer of NRM.
The two ruling party members, who share deeply in what many see as a herculean task of stopping Mr Mbabazi, were often joined by Mr Ssemujju Nganda, the Forum for Democratic Change publicist, and Ms Beti Kamya, a former presidential candidate and MP, in querying Mr Mbabazi’s record.
Mr Mbabazi was challenged to explain why he supported the lifting of presidential term limits in 2005 yet they could have technically kicked out Mr Museveni and prevented the “inefficiency” that Mr Mbabazi now says has crept into government.
He said he was “a vigorous” defender of the amendment of the Constitution to remove term limits because he thought that the idea of term limits ran counter to democracy, particularly the aspect of free choice.
“However, from the experience of Uganda, I have looked at the experience of choice more deeply... for democracy to flourish, it makes sense to revisit this issue of term limits in order to minimise the abuse of state power,” Mr Mbabazi said.
He said open terms can be abused in a system like Uganda’s, where free choice can be stifled by intimidation, bribery and corruption.
Regarding queries that Mr Mbabazi orchestrated “repressive” laws, particularly the laws on public order management and phone tapping, Mr Mbabazi defended both as good laws, saying that the only problem is that the laws are being abused.
Panellists poked fun at Mr Opondo during the first hour of the show, saying he had abandoned his usual habit of sipping at his coffee, ferociously taking notes as the debate progressed.
Mr Mbabazi had talked of the lack of internal democracy and discussion within the party, saying, for instance, that it is only the party chairman, President Museveni, who spoke during the NRM delegates conference last December at which he was stripped of the secretary general position.
Mr Mbabazi also distanced himself from the Kyankwanzi resolution in which NRM MPs declared Mr Museveni the party’s “sole candidate” for the coming election, saying it is illegal. Although he signed the resolution after it looked like he was ambushed with it, he later distanced himself from it and has since declared that he will challenge Mr Museveni within the party.
Mr Opondo said whereas Mr Mbabazi was the minister in charge of Political Affairs in 2000, he did not protest when the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ruling Movement disowned Dr Kizza Besigye’s intention to compete for the presidency and “urged” President Museveni to stand as the unopposed Movement candidate.
Mr Opondo said when the Movement became the NRM party in 2005, a similar process took place, and that the same happened in 2010. Mr Mbabazi was the party secretary general on the latter two occasions, Mr Opondo noted, but that Mr Felix Okot-Ogong was persuaded to let Mr Museveni run unchallenged within the party in 2005. Another aspirant, Maj Ruhinda Maguru, also got his name struck out of the list by the party’s organs when he sought to challenge Mr Museveni.
Mr Mbabazi did not respond to many of the questions because he was time-barred and promised to return to the radio show another time.
On her part, Ms Kamya wondered about Mr Mbabazi’s source of wealth and the “heavy” involvement of Mr Mbabazi’s family in his presidential aspirations, saying part of the accusation against Mr Museveni is his family’s involvement in state affairs and whether it won’t be the same with Mr Mbabazi.
“We hear that Mr Mbabazi has immense wealth; what does he make to account for this immense wealth?” Ms Kamya asked.
Regarding the involvement of his family, Mr Mbabazi said he does not discourage his family members, particularly his children, from participating in public affairs. He said in fact it makes him proud.
He said, however, that it is not true that his family were playing the leading role in his campaign. “My family’s visibility is because I have been the centre of focus,” he said.
The executive director of Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA), Ms Allen Kagina, yesterday told legislators in a closed-door meeting that big people in government were benefiting from corruption in the roads sector.
Sources who attended Parliament’s Physical Infrastructure Committee meeting told Daily Monitor that Ms Kagina accepted that some UNRA and government officials she did not name had formed companies to benefit from the road contracts and narrated how they intentionally delay road projects through sham administrative reviews.
Ms Kagina, who led a team to the committee to give a status report on the road development projects under UNRA, explained that contactors are expected to be on the site by October 2015 and July 2015 respectively.
“There is inside trading in UNRA,” Mr Ephraim Biraro (Buhweju) said, before the journalists were kicked out of the proceedings on the request of Ms Kagina.
MPs led by Stephen Mikitale (Bulisa) demanded that the mandate of the ongoing Judicial Commission of inquiry into the corruption in the roads sector be widened to cover all the roads in the country.
Ms Kagina requested the committee chairperson Mr Biraro to kick out journalists before she explained why UNRA had decided to hand-pick a Turkish contractor to work on 111km Hoima-Butyaba-Wanseko road.
Mr Patrick Oboi Amuriat (Kumi) complained that single sourcing was akin to corruption and that the failure to advertise a project of more than $100m would deny Ugandans value for money.
On the corruption at the weighbridge, Ms Kagina said starting next week UNRA would start an operation to protect the roads.
She talked of a new rapid response unit with a mobile weighbridge and a clampdown on overloaded vehicles. She said the entire management would be reviewed. | 2019-04-20T06:55:01Z | http://www.teddyseezicheeyeonline.com/luzira_prison.html?post_id=19479 |
Bonjour points out that another artistic purpose in this episode is the glorification of the Scyldings. Had the distressing condition at Heorot served as the only introduction to Beowulf’s mission, this may have created an impression of weakness on the part of the Danes. As we will see later, if the Danes had not been glorified at the beginning of the poem, the greatness of Beowulf may have been diminished.
Finally, the striking contrast of the funeral scenes are endowed with a “symbolic value which heightens the artistic value” and the unity of the entire poem. The beautiful description of Scyld’s funeral suggests a beginning and is the symbol of a glorious future. In contrast, Beowulf’s funeral symbolizes the end of a glorious past while the future is fraught with foreboding.
The Scyld episode allows the poet the use of two of his favorite devices: parallelism and contrast. The contrast between Scyld and Beowulf is perhaps one of the finest artistic achievements in the poem, and the parallelism between the two kings may well be summed up in the legendary epitaph of a cowboy as indicated by J.D.A. Ogilvy and Donald Baker: “Here lies Bronco Bill. He always done his damnedest”.
The next of Bonjour’s categorical divisions regards the digressions concerning Beowulf and the Geats. The first of this group that we will examine is Beowulf’s fight against giants. This digression serves a twofold purpose: it allows the hero his convention of boasting, and it also, however subtly, allies the hero with God. The immediate purpose of this mention of a glorious feat in Beowulf’s early life is to give us an illustration of his uncommon strength, and to give at the same time a justification for his arrival at the Danish court. It also sets Beowulf up as a specialist in fighting monsters: “I came from the fight where I had bound five, destroyed a family of giants…”. The art of boasting is important in an epic hero as it showcases his accomplishments and glorifies his name. As Victor Bromberg denotes, a man’s name is very important in epic poetry because it becomes equal to the sum of his accomplishments.
The second function of this digression is to surreptitiously ally Beowulf with God. When Beowulf pits his strength against the giants, he is unwittingly allying himself with the true God of Christianity. This lends dignity to the heathen hero who, without knowing it, is fighting on the right side after all.
In the Ecgtheow digression we learn that Beowulf’s father has killed Heatholaf, a member of the powerful Wilfing tribe, and has begun a feud from whose consequences the Geats cannot protect him, and he has fled to the court of Hrothgar. Hrothgar, consequently, pays his wergild to the Wilfings. Bonjour asserts that this digression serves two purposes: first, it creates one more bond between Beowulf and the Danes; second, it counterbalances the fact that the Danes are accepting help from Beowulf.
The Unferth episode serves primarily as a foil to emphasize Beowulf’s greatness. In spite of the sinister overtones of Unferth’s reputation, the poet also shows him as a distinguished thane. Had Unferth been reduced to a mere swashbuckler, Beowulf’s superiority over him would not have meant so much as it actually does. In his essay “Beowulf: The monsters and the Critics”, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien suggests that Beowulf’s conquest of the nicors in his youth are referred to [in this digression] as a presage to the kind of hero we are dealing with. Beowulf’s answer to Unferth’s criticism also establishes him as a man to reckon with in words as well as with his sword. So, from this digression we learn Beowulf’s qualifications for cleansing Heorot, and also that the hero is not only a great warrior, but a man capable of delivering a coup de grâce in a battle of wits.
Bonjour notes that the first allusion in the poem to the fall of Hygelac gives us a fine instance of a particular use of contrast characteristic of Beowulf. It is ironic that the first hint of Hygelac’s fall should be called up by the description of the treasures given to Beowulf by Queen Wealtheow after Beowulf’s victory over Grendel. It looks as if there are already some implications of the same nature as those to be met with in the Dragon story where, as Bonjour remarks, the beauty of the treasure of the Dragon’s hoard stands out in contrast to the curse attached to it. Here, the necklace is among “[the finest] under the heavens”, yet Hygelac had it when he was slain.
Next, we will look at the digression on Beowulf’s inglorious youth and Heremod’s tragedy in conjuntion with one another. Heremod’s tragedy actually falls outside the structure proposed by Adrien Bonjour as it has nothing to do with Beowulf and the Geats directly. However, we will bring the Heremod digression out of the proposed structure since it provides such an important contrast to Beowulf’s inglorious youth.
The short digression on Beowulf’s inglorious youth is but another touch that contributes to the glorification of the hero. The inglorious youth heightens the effect of his later glorious deeds and makes them all the more remarkable by way of contrast. But this digression reaches its full effect when contrasted with the tragedy of Heremod. In Hrothgar’s speech to Beowulf, we learn that Heremod was a strong, valiant hero whose career showed great promise, but that he subsequently proved to be a bad ruler. Beowulf, on the other hand, is first despised but he has now grown into a glorious hero. Heremod’s tragedy redefines, though negatively, what a good king should be. Thus we have a poor beginning (by Beowulf) followed by a prodigious ascent contrasted with a brilliant promise (by Heremod) ending in a miserable downfall.
The next digression to be examined concerns Hygelac’s death in Friesland and Beowulf’s return by swimming and his subsequent guardianship of Heardred. The poet tells us how Beowulf escapes from Friesland, where Hygelac is slain, by swimming back to his country with thirty to panoplies of armour on his arm. Obviously, this part of the digression serves to further glorify Beowulf’s extraordinary abilities. Later, we learn that Beowulf turns down Queen Hygd’s offer of the Geatish throne in favor of acting as counsel to Heardred, the rightful heir. Beowulf’s refusal of the crown illustrates his moral greatness. Here, the Geats present a striking contrast to the Danes. Ogilvy and Baker suggest that unlike Wealtheow, who is obsessed with securing the succession of her sons to the throne, Hygd asks Beowulf to take the throne in favor of her own son for the good of the people. This contrast is made even greater when compared to the situation at the Danish court where Hrothulf seizes his uncle’s throne. The story of the Danish succession serves as a foil: on the one side we have a treacherous usurpation, and on the other, a refusal to accept the crown out of sheer loyalty. Along with the glorification of Beowulf, this digression brings the theme of loyalty to the forefront.
In seeking the Dragon’s den, Beowulf makes a long speech in which he looks back over his life from the time when, at the age of seven, he came to the court of his grandfather, King Hrethel. The immediate purpose of Beowulf’s long speech appears to be a pause so that the hero can gather strength and resolution by looking back over a life of valiant deeds. But this digression goes much deeper when we read into King Hrethel’s angst over his eldest son, Herebeald, who is accidentally slain by his brother Hæthcyn. The accidental killing suggests the inexorability of wyrd (fate), and on the other hand, the poignant lament of Hrethel prepares the dominant mood of the end of the poem (Bonjour 34). This thematic “Christian” acceptance of earthly woes anticipates the rationale of Beowulf’s actions. He, too, will accept his fate. Bonjour states that the appearance of wyrd here is of great importance as it gives us the keynote of not only the digression, but of the whole ending of the poem.
The Last Survivor’s Speech is an elegy cut from the same cloth: “Baleful death has sent away many races of men”. Tolkien states that here, the poet is handling an ancient theme: that man, each man and all men, and all their works shall die.
In the short digression on Weohstan (Wiglaf’s father) and his slaying of Eanmund, we learn of the history of Wiglaf’s sword. The primary purpose of this digression is to give us something of Wiglaf’s pedigree, and to establish that Wiglaf is not ordinary, he is of the same blood as Beowulf. The establishing of Wiglaf’s history is important, because if this part were played by any other Geat, Beowulf’s heroic courage would appear to have been matched by an ordinary human. Also, there is a definite parallel between Wiglaf’s loyalty to Beowulf, and Beowulf’s loyalty to Hygelac.
The last digression that we will look at in this division deals again with Hygelac’s fall and the battle at Ravenswood. Since Hygelac’s raid, the enmity between Franks and Geats has remained. The Swedes are not to be trusted either since Beowulf’s death is likely to rekindle their memory of the feud between them and the Geats. With the opening of this last digression, Bonjour observes that the poet allows us to catch a glimpse of what the future has in store for the Geats. Plainly, the author is using Wiglaf’s messenger as a means to foreshadow the fate that awaits the Geatish nation.
The third category of digressions concerns historical or legendary digressions not directly connected with Beowulf and the Geats. The first digression in this category concerns the fate of Heorot. No sooner has the poet described the glorious building of Heorot than he concludes, “it would wait for the fierce flames of vengeful fire”. The allusion is to the feud between Ingeld and Hrothgar. This illustrates another example of the poet telling his story with a kind of structural irony which alternates prosperous with tragic events. Here, William Alfred remarks that Hrothgar is set up as the heroic king of a loyal comitatus, but suddenly, what begins as a description of the impressive halls of Heorot breaks down into an account of its destruction by fire in a feud. On this point, Bonjour mentions that the contrast inherent between a harmonious situation and a brief intimation of disaster adds to the impression of melancholy in which so much of the poem is steeped.
After Beowulf has killed Grendel, a scop improvises a lay in honor of Beowulf and compares him to Sigemund and Heremod. Sigemund was a great slayer of monsters and the greatest adventurer since the unfortunate Heremod. Beowulf, they say, is comparable to Sigemund. Sigemund and Heremod are inroduced to give us a standard of comparison for Beowulf. Bonjour surmises that this whole digression is certainly intended to praise the hero.
The next digression we will examine begins abruptly as Beowulf is returning home from Hrothgar’s court. We are given a description of Hygelac’s court before Beowulf’s arrival, and here begins the digression. The passage is devoted to a comparison between Hygd, Hygelac’s queen, and Modthryth, queen of Offa, king of the Angles before their migration to England. At first glance, Modthryth may seem, like Heremod, to be merely a bad character introduced to heighten the virtues of a good one (Hygd) by contrast. Modthryth, however, is more complex than that. She begins as a cruel and tyrannous princess, but redeems herself once on the Anglican throne at Offa’s side. This opposition provides a connecting link between this episode and Heremod’s tragedy. However, the respective careers of Heremod and Modthryth run exactly opposite courses. This digression serves several purposes: Modthryth serves as a foil to Hygd; the connection to Heremod again stresses the “abuse of power” theme, and Modthryth’s beginning could also be viewed as a parallel to Beowulf’s inglorious youth; an unsavory beginning which blossoms into a glorious end.
We will examine the Finn and Ingeld episodes together since the parallelism between the two is unmistakable. The Finn episode is an account of a blood-feud between the Danes and the Frisians. Hnæf’s sister, Hildeburh is a Danish princess who was married to King Finn of the Frisians in order to bring an end to the feud. The peace, however, is short-lived and the Finn episode points directly to the theme of the precarious truce between the two peoples. The prophetic telling of the tale of Ingeld by Beowulf suggests that the martial alliance between the Danish princess, Freawaru, and Ingeld, prince of the Heathobards will yield similar results. Bonjour claims that the central theme of the two episodes is exactly the same, that tribal enmity sooner or later sweeps away all attempts at human compromise. Indeed, this also proves to be a central theme of the entire poem.
The final category in which to make note is the digressions of Biblical character. Owing to their Christian element, the Song of Creation as well as the allusion to the Giants’ war against God and the allusions to Cain all take a front row seat.
The Song of Creation appears almost simultaneously with the introduction of Grendel, “There he spoke who could relate the beginning of men far back in time, said that the Almighty made earth…”. The Song of Creation goes back to the Biblical account in Genesis. Its immediate purpose is clear enough-it is a matter of contrast. The rare note of joy in the beauty of nature contrasts deeply with the melancholy inspired by the dreary abode of Grendel.
We will now look at the allusions to Cain and the Giants, and in doing so, it is important to note that the monsters are presented from two points of view. To the pagan characters, these creatures are eotenas [giants], and scuccan [evil spirits]-all terms from Germanic demonology. But the poet in his own voice tells us of the true genealogy of the Grendelkin: they are the monstrous descendents of Cain. This two-leveled portrayal of the monsters places them on one level like the dragon that Sigemund slew, and on another level it has connotations of Satanic evil which the Bible invests in them. At this point, new Scripture and old tradition unite.
The destruction of the Giants is said to be carved on the hilt of the magic sword which allows Beowulf to slay Grendel’s mother. Beowulf’s fight is now felt to partake of the struggle between the powers of good and evil. We were told earlier that both monsters were of the same kind as the Giants, but as Bonjour shows, we now know that God himself actually helps the hero by directing his attention to the magic sword which depicted God’s own action against the accursed race. Now, it is almost as if Beowulf has been raised to the rank of God’s own champion. Beowulf, for all that he moves in the world of the primitive Heroic Age, nevertheless is [for a moment] almost a Christian knight.
Bonjour concludes that Beowulf, once in the position of a king actually transcends the picure of an ideal king by sacrificing his life for his people, the significance of which is stressed by the very contrast with Hrothgar’s own attitude towards Grendel. But Hrothgar is already the figure of an ideal king, so now it becomes easier to compare Beowulf to the Savior, the self-sacrificing king, the prototype of supreme perfection.
Scholar B.J. Timmer sees the form of the poem as a failure because of the poet’s compromise in an attempt to glorify both pagan and Christian elements. John Leyerle echos this view when he describes the theme of the poem as “the fatal contradiction at the core of heroic society” in which the impelling code demands for the hero individual achievement and glory, whereas society demands a king who achieves for the common good. But why should there be a necessary separation here? Would it not require a heroic individual to achieve for the common good? The Beowulf poet, rightly, does not perform this separation.
to underscore the peaks and valleys of human experience.
A good dose of common sense should expel any lingering beliefs, on the part of skeptics, that the poet’s digressions are reckless or that they diminish the value of the poem. As we have seen in this essay, there are simply too many instances of foreshadowing, careful contrast, and parallelism for the digressions to have been carelessly thrown into the mix. So, we shall draw the conclusion that behind all the digressions is found a definite artistic design clear enough to allow us to agree with Bonjour that each one plays a useful part in the poem. In other words, we have found that all of the digressions, in varying degrees, are artistically justified.
Forex Time Machine Reviews – Is it Worth the Price Tag? | 2019-04-19T01:06:56Z | https://www.malaysiamarketing.my/the-purpose-of-digressions-in-beowulf/ |
This entry was posted in History, Landownership & property rights, Peasants and populism by Chris Smaje. Bookmark the permalink.
The process of transition from capitalism to agrarianism will have a profound impact on the shape of the resulting agrarian society. Unfortunately for some places, like North America, the vast quantity of residual weaponry will make it likely that high levels of banditry and warlordism will develop during the transition, making it likely that lots of small kingdoms will be created.
If “parcellized sovereignty and low population density” are precursors for feudalism, we are likely to see a lot of it, especially considering that most people transitioning from urban capitalism to agrarianism will not initially have the skills required to maintain a high population density.
On the other hand, the transition to agrarianism just might be a graceful devolution of power from nation states to multitudes of small democratic agrarian societies, but I think that a society capable of managing such a transition would also be one that could avoid the dangers of capitalistic population and resource-consumption overshoot. I think the odds are against an orderly transition, but one can hope.
Since agrarianism is inevitable, there should be a lot of urgent discussion about how we get the agrarianism we want. Thank you for doing a good job of keeping that subject front and center. I’m looking forward to the next installment.
Thanks Joe. In the light of your comment and others, there’s probably a need to revisit in greater depth the ideas of parcellized sovereignty, population density, and future political dynamics – another one for the future, I think.
As ever my comments focus on elements that I personally find problematic. I appreciate that the Varna categories are acting as analogies here, and that you’re not really taking them literally (or are you?), but I find their explanatory potential troubling nonetheless.
To start with, they mistify much about the society they purport to describe. We learn of different kinds of people defined by different qualities, but these are not explained, appearing instead as naturalised categories. Likewise, they each behave differently in relation to gift exchange situations, but the reasons they might have for exchanging gifts are not given. The whole thing therefore appears very much as a series of natural laws, which explain things along the lines of ‘it is because it is’.
Naturalised categories reek of hierarchy (‘you must do that for me because that’s what your kind do’). The most important question here should surely be ‘what was the Rig Veda intended to do?’, or at least ‘what was it used for?’ Granted, that may seem beside the point in this context, but I think it gets at the heart of the matter. It comes as no surprise that the text survives because it became (and perhaps alsways was) a canon within a religiously-informed social system geared to upholding the status order it describes.
I think this matters here in a couple of ways. First, the link with feudalism, which you define as (amongst other things) ‘parcellized sovereignty’. I don’t like the term, but that’s a debate for another time. My point here is that the Varna categories can be seen as an example of such ‘parcellization’ (albeit the word not being used in the way intended by the feudalism definition); each category represents some aspect of control over social resources, such as physical force, spirituality, productivity, and the very act of distributing them amongst different kinds of people admits that sovereign isn’t, in this case, a single holistic thing. The manner in which these elements interact is therefore crucial to understanding (and controlling) society, but is the very thing mistified by the scheme, which instead offers a bald hierarchical order.
This has implications for the way you use the vaishya category, even as analogy. I can understand and sympathise with the qualities that you emphasise as ‘good things’ for a new-peasant farmer here, certainly by contrast with some of the more destructive effects of capitalism. However, I can’t see how describing neo-peasants as a Varna-like category does anything other than mistify their role in society, and ultimately to their detriment.
Whether or not you think the qualities emphasised by the Varna categories accurately describe the elements of sovereignty in any given society, it is almost certainly a truism that control over people in any society will be exercised in several different ways by different poeple simultaneously, whether a ruling group have engineered some kind of hegemony over most of those controlling elements (as in the society shaped by the Rig Veda) or a more diffuse mass of people has been given some say through some kind of democratic mechanism. By relegating neo-peasants to a category defined by qualities such as relative independence, and by relegating recognition (and protection) of those qualities (most especially independence) to some kind of state, I think you relinquish any real influence for the peasants over how their control over agrarian productivity will shape society, and turn them into a lever to be used by the state. Naturalising peasants as a category mystifies the details of their relationships with other elements of society and turns them into a parcel of the sovereignty wielded by someone else.
Andrew, I’m a bit baffled by the inferences you’re making about my analysis here, but I’ll do my best to respond to some of your main points.
1. Are the varna categories a mystification of power relations? Yes, of course they are. My point, however, is that a fairly similar structuring of power relations has been widespread across many low energy agrarian societies historically. That poses a problem for those like myself who advocate low energy agrarian societies or who think the advent of such societies is likely whether we advocate them or not, and who dislike a varna-style structuring of power. How can we prevent such a power structure? Not, I think, by pointing to it and saying ‘Look, it’s really inegalitarian’. The response of the powerful to that would be ‘Yes, I know’.
2. But I have a bit of a problem with the concept of ‘mystification’. Varna ideology, like many ideologies, certainly does act to justify inequality and there’s much to be said for making that explicit. However, the problem with the language of ‘mystification’ is that it promotes a kind of epistemic privilege for the analyst who coins it – the emic categories of the society under scrutiny are ‘mystifications’ while the etic categories of the analyst are seen as getting to the ‘real’ truth of the matter. This is a problem with the whole modernist and rationalist and most especially Marxist tradition. As a child of the radical Enlightenment myself, I put a lot of store by human equality. But I don’t think one should make the mistake of supposing that it’s somehow the natural or given state of things, stymied only by mystifying ideologies (or material practices). This is where I think the Weberian status framework is more sophisticated and persuasive than most professions of Marxist realism, and also provides a ‘thicker’ description of status contests as a lived reality in human interaction – those who think that power and status are neutralised by calling them out would do well to observe a seminar discussion between radical academics, or a socialist political meeting, and observe who speaks and who is silenced, and in what ways.
3. You write “The manner in which these elements interact is therefore crucial to understanding (and controlling) society”. Quite so. You add “But is the very thing mistified by the scheme, which instead offers a bald hierarchical order.” Well, I’m not so sure. Exchange relations, which are clearly theorised in vernacular traditions, are in many ways constitutive of the hierarchical order, and provide the vehicle through which people orchestrate their status dramas. An interesting thing in India, which is maybe quite hard to grasp through the filter of our Western cultural ideologies (though we have our parallels), is that while it may seem obvious to the king that he has higher status than the vaishya, the vaishya may see it as exactly opposite (and if you don’t like these ‘king’ or ‘vaishya’ categories, you can substitute any two individuals).
4. You write “I can’t see how describing neo-peasants as a Varna-like category does anything other than mistify their role in society, and ultimately to their detriment.” It’s not my intention to describe neo-peasants as a ‘varna-like category’ and I don’t think I did so above. However, I do think that the way we predicate ourselves as social persons through exchange relations is important in all societies, and bears crucially on the character of agrarian societies past, present and future – hopefully I’ll be able to clarify this further in my next post. Although of course it’s highly schematic and simplistic, I think the varna scheme, far from mystifying this process, models it with illuminating clarity.
5. I’m particularly baffled by your last paragraph. I’m not ‘relegating’ peasant independence to the state – I’m arguing that peasant independence is an important quality that is crucially affected by peasant-state relations. Nor do I see how I’m ‘naturalising’ neo-peasants in what I’ve written above or ‘relegating’ them to a ‘category’ simply by identifying independence as an important quality – by that logic, surely any attempt to identify any group of people with respect to a ‘quality’ naturalises them. For example, does Marx ‘naturalise’ the proletariat by defining it as the category of people lacking access to the means of production (and thence as the world-historical class which will destroy capitalism)? Actually, I think he probably does…but now we’re entering an ontological minefield of broader scope, which I don’t think is specific to my analysis here.
6. Much more could be said about sovereignty and its parcellization, but I’m not sure I really follow the several different senses in which you use these terms in your comment. However, I’d be interested in your further thoughts on feudalism and parcellized sovereignty – a shorthand term I’ve derived from Perry Anderson, of course.
Well, yes – though see my response to Andrew regarding status and delusion. I think it’s true there’s a widespread sensibility that producers are deadbeats – the same is true in contemporary western society with its ‘who’d want to be a lowly farmer?’ mindset. However, in hierarchical agrarian societies the point is often not so much that low status producers are thought not to contribute, so much as the nature of their contribution is part of what is thought to make them socially inferior.
A Very interesting read. Looking forward to reading your next post. I am also reading about post-capitalism but in a more broader way, Paul Mason’s book is a good starting point and from there I am looking to branch out into new schools of thought.
Also, have you tried uploading this to Medium (https://medium.com/)? Its a place where I feel your writing would suit.
Very interested in the way you’ll be approaching the renunciation aspect, Chris – you didn’t like JMG’s angle, asking people to individually adopt the vaishya strategy as strongly as they can.
If, as you repeatedly stated, individual action is dependent on societal constraints, how does this Great Renouncer come into being; what are the conditions of vaishyas becoming a whole stratum of society?
I he forced to manage skeletons in someone else’s closet, someone who provides the privilege of being amember of a stratum?
Who, other than himself, would have an interest to promote someone that disturbing (and embarassing)?
Michael Kohlhaas may be a sight to behold, but only in a comfy theatre seat, not if you’re going about your daily business.
Michael, maybe you’ll be able to quote something I wrote back at me to make me eat my words, but I wouldn’t say that I ‘didn’t like’ people individually adopting the vaishya strategy. I think it’s a great idea on several fronts – however, I don’t think it’s a very effective strategy for tackling the world’s problems and it runs the risk of counterproductively generating a small cadre of self-preening status-aggrandizers (among whom JMG is a shining example) whose net effect on overcoming said problems is probably negative.
I’m reading Soil and Soul by Alistair McIntosh, a Scottish Land reformer who once defended tenants being evicted by their (feudal) landlord on the grounds that under Scotland’s feudal land ownership law the ultimate owner of the land was God. It’s interesting – feudalism continued in Scotland until right up to the 21st century and he traces its imposition (starting in the 16th C.) and contrasts the culture/mind that imposed it with that which existed before – perhaps Scotland is, or at least was, a case of relative geographic isolation, an isolation that was only broken when James VI of Scotland got hold of the English throne.
Going forward I suspect its energy that is the thing that will push us toward an exploitative feudalism. In low energy systems stealing energy from others is always a possible strategy for survival – colonialism and neo-colonialism are versions of such a strategy – so it’s not like the idea’s gone away – but maybe fossil fuel energy has blunted its edges a little. And the culture that’s moving toward this future of lower energy is a consumptive and competitive one – a culture that seems far more likely to adopt exploitative strategies for dealing with that future than one’s based on cooperation and renunciation. More than that I suspect that it only takes a relatively small % of the population to adopt a survival strategy based on appropriating others energy for the whole feudal/protection racket to take over the whole.
As I was reminded by another commenter on Kurt Cobb’s site, there are plenty of agrarian peasants around the world who are well prepared for a low energy future, since they are already there. There are even countries that have high percentages of the population in subsistence agriculture and also maintain a fairly well developed liberal democracy. Botswana is one of them.
According to a UNDP brief about agriculture in Botswana, “About 70% of rural households derive their livelihoods from agriculture, through subsistence farming. Crop production is mainly based on rain-fed farming. The industry is dominated by small traditional farms with an average size of five hectares. About 63,000 arable farms fit under this category, while only 112 farms are larger than 150 hectares(Statistics Botswana, 2012).” And Botswana ranks only slightly behind the United States and just ahead of France on the Economist’s Democracy Index 2017, which evaluates every country in the world for democratic attributes.
Botswana is only one example, but it may be that there are enough examples of countries in which large populations of agrarian peasants have avoided feudalism or totalitarianism that valuable lessons could be learned from them.
Botswana may be bad example.
Even though “70% of rural households [in Botswana] derive their livelihoods from agriculture, through subsistence farming”, the vast majority (75%) live in urban areas.
Botswana’s ranking on the Democracy Index may be relatively okay, but looking at the GINI index, it’s one of the world’s worst countries for inequality.
Botswana is one of the most urbanized countries in Africa (with 75% of the population in living in urban areas).
Based on the GINI rankings, Botswana is one of the world’s worst countries for inequality.
All I really know about Botswana I learned from Mma Precious Ramotswe and company, so I didn’t realize how urbanized it is. It does appear that it has a lot of small farms rather than feudal estates. That should count for something.
It’s interesting to look at the GINI rankings for countries. Botswana is indeed one of the world’s worst. Despite its reputation for oligarchs, Ukraine is the best. That was a surprise to me.
Do ‘feudal estates’ actually exist somewhere today? If so, where? If not, then Botswana not having them might not count for much.
First, the notion in point 2 that the language of mistification implies superiority on the part of the social analyst seems fair, and I probably shouldn’t have used it. It implies a deliberate intention to deceive rather than a more ‘innocent’ expression of a certain way of seeing the world. Nevertheless, to make a petulant ‘well you did it too!’ kind of point, in our discussion in the last post you suggested that ‘to my mind macroeconomics is largely a matter of politics, which orthodox economics essentially mystifies as technical, ‘scientific’ or empirical knowledge’. Presumably you think all orthodox economists are villains!
The emic/etic point is presumably something relevant to ‘decolonising’ sociological practice more generally, and I can see its utility. However, I’m not sure of its relevance here. The Rig Veda and my analysis are two very different ways of seeing for very different purposes. The Varna categories are not a sociological analytical ‘scheme’ or ‘model’ in anything close to a modern sense. If I restricted myself to the emic Varna categories I’d simply reproduce them. Analysis has to be framed somehow, but I wouldn’t claim that my own has access to any greater ‘truth’ than the Varna author, only, I suppose, that it has more relevance in our contemporary context. After all, the creation of different ways of seeing things is the essence of thinking about them.
Having read your post again, I can see how I misrepresent you in suggesting that you want to see the peasantry as a ‘Varna-like’ category (point 3). You see the virtue of the Varna categories mainly as an analogy for the kind of agrarian social structure you see in the past and possibly the future, and you would prefer to understand the mechanics of that structure using a more ‘modern’ analysis of its creation based on exchange relations (point 4). If so, I still think it’s problematic to understand society as a set of distinct social groups in this way.
Your Marx example is quite illuminating here (point 5). As you point out, Marx probably does ‘naturalize’ the working class by defining them as a distinct group with certain properties – or perhaps in relational terms, defined by a certain relation to capital. But he wasn’t describing an actually existing society in its entirety, only one aspect of it that he thought worth emphasizing for political reasons. Thompson’s ‘Creation of the English Working Class’s makes this point – as a distinct group the working class had to be created by disentangling its members from all sorts of other relationships (and I agree Weber’s analysis of social status is useful here in defining such other relationships) and actively welding them together through unions and the like.
It takes a great deal of effort to create polarised groups in this way, and I don’t think you’ll find many examples of societies in which they actually existed in any kind of pure form for any length of time. Hindu caste society is a good attempt I suppose. I agree with you on the point that relations, such as those created through material exchanges, are at the heart of processes that create social structures and hierarchies, but to assume that operate between rather monolithic groups of different kinds of people presupposes what it sets out to prove. My misgivings with ‘parcellized sovereignty’ come from a similar argument, but that probably ought to wait for another day.
In light of the above, I would redo the last paragraph of my last comment, and hopefully get rid of the baffle! I agree that peasant independence is affected by peasant-state relations. Independence may well be a desirable quality in some ways (though this needs unpacking – the last paragraph of your post gets at some of this. I’m wary of linking notions of independence to the relations of a peasant group to other such groups, for reasons discussed above). My main point here is that protecting such independence by an advantageous relation with the state (though I’m not sure you’re arguing for this either) misses an opportunity to fiddle with the state side of the equation. Rather than see peasants as a separate group, I’d like to see them thoroughly entangled with many of the functions of the state but exercised largely at a local level. I used to call myself a socialist but I’m not sure I trust Big States so much at the moment!
Thanks for that Andrew. Just to focus on a couple of key points, I think I must have created the misleading impression that I consider the varna scheme to be a sociologically accurate representation of Indian society historically and that I would like to see actual social groups in a future agrarian society constituted in some of the same ways that the varna scheme creates social categories. But this is not what I think. What I actually think is that the varna scheme posits some ideal types that broadly characterise a common structuring of historic agrarian societies, and that it draws attention to material exchange relations as a constitutive part of that structuring in interesting ways that I think are worth pondering in present circumstances – but hopefully I’ll make this clearer in my next post.
On the question of the state-peasant relationship I agree with you about the desirability of fiddling with the state side of the equation, though I’m not optimistic about the short-term prospects there. But, as you say, I’m not arguing for peasant independence specifically in terms of an advantageous relation with the state, but as an outcome of peasant entanglement with the state. I’ll try to say more about this in another forthcoming post.
On ‘mystification’ perhaps I should confess that you got me there with that quotation, but I do think there’s an epistemic difference between engaging critically with the intellectual categories of modern analytic thought from within the traditions of that thought, and engaging critically with ancient religious ideologies from within modern analytic thought – but it sounds like our views may not be too dissimilar on this ultimately.
Thanks for the comments on feudalism, Botswana and rural-urban wage gaps. Much to ponder!
I guess there are even more ways to cut the cake than the Marx and the Weber way. In my view, one of the failing of traditional Marxist perspectives is that is not understanding markets well enough. The Market Economy (which is something very different from the markets from where it got its name) is as important as class struggles and capital accumulation, and for the understanding of agriculture in the tradition from feudalism to capitalism it is much more relevant. Ellen Meiksins Wood is one of the few Marxists that have grasped this quite well.
I envision that “the Market” also needs to be fundamentally altered (or replaced) in any meaningfull transition. Otherwise small farmers will continue to compete with other small farmers for eternity…..with or without the king, the priest and the merchant.
Looking forward to where your coming posts will lead…..
Gunnar – thanks for the Ellen Meiksins Wood mention… Chris has mentioned her here before, but I’d never looked into her work.
She contrasts access to land between feudal systems and the Italian city state system. She specifically used the term ‘parcellized sovereignty’ (pg 34). Food for thought. | 2019-04-26T16:48:13Z | https://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/2018/08/the-transition-from-capitalism-to-feudalism/ |
Fix Which new OS can I use with old Tecra 8100?
Which new OS can I use with old Tecra 8100?
Q: Which new OS can I use with old Tecra 8100?
I want to use this old laptop which originally had win98. I managed to put win xp on it, but it is unworkable slow. Today I tried Lubuntu (a linux distributioon specific for oldies) but that too is too slow.
I just want a simple OS to browse.
Preferred Solution: Which new OS can I use with old Tecra 8100?
A: Which new OS can I use with old Tecra 8100?
I don?t know which ?new? OS do you mean but fact is that you have old piece of hardware and if you want to have well working machine you should install supported operating systems ony.
Did you already search on the websites like Ebay or Amazon?
Several month ago I?ve bought a PC100 512MB RAM because my old module died.
I?ve found some second hand modules on eBay but I?ve decided to buy a new module from Amazon?
I'm someone who posted a message on this website months ago looking for the last part I thought I needed to get my computer working again.
I ended up having to buy this particular part from a parts warehouse in Singapore.
I've spent a lot of money on this machine and it's not doing me any favors by working. That's disappointing enough. To have to wait all this time since last April to come to this point makes me almost want to give up; smash it; junk it and buy a new computer and pass it off ( in my own mind ) as having successfully fixed it.
But I didn't waste $50,000 in college tuition money at a computer/technology school ( for a degree I ended up never getting ) just so I can learn to give up when I can't figure out how to get a laptop computer working again.
does't " help " my confidence either.
What am I here for then?
But just for your curiosity; what did I waste money buying for a Toshiba Tecra 8100 that didn't originally work - and parts I thought - after buying - it would work again?
A Toshiba RTC ( system BIOS) battery.
That's a very old and low specification laptop. Personally would give up and spend the money on a laptop that already works.
Q: Tecra 8100 CPU replacement?
I have a Toshiba Tecra 8100 laptop with a P3-500 Mhz CPU.
I am interested in upgrading the CPU to 850Mhz.
Is this upgrade even feasible for this laptop?
Also, can the USB port be upgraded to USB 2.0?
I am new to laptops and I really like my Tecra.
I have just got a Toshiba Tecra 8100. I don't like having such a small HHD and I was wanting to know how big I can get it up to. I know there are threads already asking this same question but technology keeps getting better so maybe there are HHD I can get.
I am also wanting to upgrade the RAM. I have seen places that sell PC100 144pin 512mb and I was wondering if it is possible to upgrade this to 2 of them or not.
Any input would be great!!!!
The Tecra 8100 was delivered with HDD?s up to 20GB. I?m pretty sure that this notebook has a 28bit LBA limitation ([www.48bitlba.com]).
I don?t know which HDD you have at the moment but a HDD with 40GB or 60GB would work in this oldie.
Furthermore the Tecra 8100 can be upgraded to 512MB RAM. So you can?t upgrade your notebook to more RAM.
I have just recently acquired a Toshiba Tecra 8100 laptop. I operate a wireless network at home and would like to add this laptop to the network. I have been unable to find out if it will support a wireless card and if so, what kind of wireless card do I need to purchase?
as i understand it, that lappy does not have an integrated wireless NIC. you can check under network adapters in device manager, or under network conenctions in control panel.
if this is indeed true, you can purchase a wireless NIC for your 'top's PCMCIA slot (i reccomend linksys) at any computer store.
I'm trying to install W2K on a Tecra 8100 but I think I'm doing something wrong, because it keeps failing.
I've read that during the install you have to press F5 (in the screen where you can load a SCSI or a raid driver) and then choose Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC, but after doing this I get the same error.
I haven't got any additional hardware attached, it's the original configuration.
Any thoughts on how to resolve this issue and get W2K on my laptop?
I think this issue has nothing to do with the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) or similar.
I read about the systemRoot\System32\ntdll.dll error message and there is no specific reason for such error.
Sometimes some missing service packs cause such issue and sometimes hardware malfunction (RAM or HDD) could be responsible for a BSOD.
Are you able to install the Win XP?
I think I bought toshiba tecra 8100 on summer (when I got money), but I have question; what is this laptop processor?
I have read that, it is 600mhz, 700mhz, 800mhz and 850mhz, but what it is really are? Or it is possible overclock via bios etc?
I don?t understand the question what a laptop processor is. It?s the thing which makes your computer "computing" or thinking. Whatever.
The speed is defined in Mhz, so it depends from the model how many Mhz the CPU of your machine has.
The exact clock speed is written on the little label on the bottom of your machine. You can also try CPU-Z to determine the exact speed of your CPU.
And NO, it?s not possible to overclock the machines CPU.
i am afraid it is going to go dim on me and not brighten up - plus it makes a noise when i press this pin and i will annoy everyone in the exam room and disturb their testing. the dimming (really dim - almost black) seems to be worse when the machine has been on for a while although it can happen at any time.
problem that can be resolved by cleaning the contacts on the FL inverter.
appreciate some help - thank you in advance.
Just buy a new one and cut the hassles buddy.
www(dot)mpdparts(dot)com has em for the cheapest you can find around.
Same thing happend to me too, but now i have a problem with laptop heating up and fan not turning on at all, i tested it by connecting to a constant 7V DC outlet and its fine, but is just too dumb to start when CPU is hot.
im having trouble trying to get into the bios of my tecra 8100 so i can overclock it. does anyone know how to access it? ive tried DEL, F1, F2, and i can't get anything to come up at startup apart from 'Boot Selection'.
Select restart im msdos from the shutdown menu.
Once your computer restarts type tsetup and press enter.
You will now see a list of all the setup options.
From what I understand there is no option to overclock on your computer.
Is it possible to overclock toshiba tecra 8100 with 600 MHZ processor, please? If so, haw can I do it?
There are no BIOS options to overclock the system, plus its not a good idea in a laptop because the cooling system is designed to cool the CPU at its stock speed. Overclocking may cause the system to overheat and fail.
I've been having power supply issues with my laptop lately a Toshiba Tecra 8100 laptop model No. PT810C.
The plug on the back for power was coming loose. It was attached firmly, but the power on the laptop would go out, though pressing on the cord in back generally would cause it to turn on. It's probably just a loose connection with that one piece of hardware, and I'm currently dismantling the laptop, in order to see if the problem will be easy to fix.
Now I've already stated, removed all the various hardware on the bottom that's detachable, unscrewed most of the screws holding things together, but I've hit a snag. I can't find where certain things are being held together, and lack a proper schematic to look at to find out. Does anyone know where I could schematics for these types of devices, or even a guide for anyone new to dismantling laptops?
And not to be rude, but please don't post any warnings about the dangers of doing work on laptops, or suggestions that I have a professional work on it.
The value of the laptop is signifigantly less than it would cost to have work done it, meaning that is not an option, and even if I make a mistake and ruin the laptop, it's little more than a paperweight as it currently is.
I think such docs are not for public usage and therefore it?s really hard to find any details?.
Rick, thanks for your comment. If I get a PMCIA wireless card is there any special software that I need to make it work? Will I be able with such a card to hook it inot my network and browse the internet through my network. I am connected to a cable system for my ISP services.
Q: Tecra 8100 doesn't boot.
Hello. I have this Tecra 8100 I'm thinking of selling for parts, because I'm mad with it. But before doing that, I ask here as a last measure.
It seems the "power" section of the notebook works fine: If I plug the power supply, the "dc in" and "battery" leds lights up, and the "battery" led even go from orange to green when the battery gets charged.
I close the lid. A long beep is heard when I close the lid, but no trace of image on the screen.
I have changed or upgraded nothing of the notebook: memory, CPU, etc.
I opened and took of every piece of it: motherboard, internal battery, sound board, leds and buttons board... and tried to connect them our of the case so t could be a short circuit with no luck at all.
Could it be a BIOS problem?
Can the BIOS be reflashed in this state, like the AWARD BIOS?
Is there any keys or buttons I could press to enter some kind of diagnose or service mode?
I had this trouble too and I don't know if it will help you, but I have changed the memory card and it works fine now.
I have recently bought a Tecra 8100 laptop. Unfortunately there is no tv-out cable included.
According to the manual (ie. here: http://www.microdom.by/olddata/pdfspec/tecra_8100.pdf) the tv-out port provides a s-video (NTSC/PAL) signal via 3,5mm mini jack port.
The missing cable should be a RCA conversion cable.
Can anyone please tell me if there any specific requirements that such cable needs to meet? It's not hard to get an audio mini-jack to 2xRCA conversion cable, but this one obviously does not transmit the video signal.
I'm working on Win XP SP2, the graphic card installed is S3 Savage/MX.
I know that cable; it?s a rare accessoire of the Tecra 8100. The problem is, that the 3.5" mini-jack has it?s own format, so, it will only adapt from 1x 3,5" to 1x RCA.
I recently got a Tecra 8100 for cheap off eBay.
The screen sometimes goes black its still on i need to press the pin near the screen and ti beeps sounds and its back on.
I took the frame of the screen off and it made differance well for a about a week but just happen again :( but not very often fingers crossed.
I read up on google etc that it might be sumtin with the led etc. I just want to know how to replace the part?
What part i need to replace etc?
I have turn all power management thing off and it still happens so it is deffo something with the screen.
I need ideas how to resolve this cuz its a prity good laptop for a student lol.
Sorry, but it?s really not easy to say what must be replaced.
But it?s definitely a hardware issue? I don?t know what pin do you meant exactly but maybe a loose connection is responsible for this issue? I mean a FL-inverter connection?
Maybe it could be useful for you?
Anyway? such hardware issues are always tricky and in most case every single part and connection must be checked. This is not easy and in most cases and notebook technician should take a look on this notebook?
Q: Tecra 8100 laptop monitor?
my dad recently picked up a toshiba tecra 8100 laptop from a work auction and gave it to me to fix up and muck around with. Ive managed to get it running WinXP and it is going quite nicely, but i have 1 problem. sometimes when working, or if i leave the laptop for a while (10min-15mins), the screen appears to 'turn off'. i thought about it and had a closer look and realised that the screen was not actually 'off', but the back light or something had turned off. so the desktop was still visible on the screen, but it was extremely dark. is there anyone out there that is able to help me overcome this problem? when i connect an external crt to the laptop, it works well and doesnt turn off. The system is a Intel Celeron Processor 498mhz and it is running on 128mbs of ram. It has a S3 Graphics Inc. SavageMX with 8mbs of memory.
Hi, I have similar problems (and it's getting worse). I beleive it may be to do with the backlight driverboard overheating. This might also be due to the main CPU fan sticking (Yes I know, but I havn't heard it cut in for a while) This all became much worse when I used it with a network docking station, on which I could not get the network port to stay up. (kept disconnecting) This is on 2000. An identical machine (bought at the same time from the same reseller) with '98 works perfectly wit the Network, but has (since day 1) had a similar fault, only not as bad.
A 'work around' fix is to hit Fn+F5 a few times to switch the video output between internal & external a couple of times to 'kick start' the backlight. Another is an external monitor.
Anyone out there had experience of the same, and if so, what did you do to fix it? If this carries on I'm going to be forced to ditch the machine and get a new one, even though I don't want to yet.
I have a Toshiba Tecra 8100 650 mhz laptop. The cooling fan doesn't come on until 66 degrees C and goes off at 61 C. Is there any way of changing the temperature to a lower setting or is my cooling fan about to die? I'm running windows XP, and 256 memory. Battery is good.
I?m not sure what driver do you need exactly but all Toshiba drivers can be found on the driver page.
Hello. Apparently, a BIOS reflash doesn't solve all of your problems.
minutes and minutes without showing any progress.
If it had a write error, then it could be the ROM chip or some other circuitry on the mobo that is bad.
What were you trying to "repair"? Maybe the mobo is toast?
I have a Tecra 8100 with Windows XP SP2. The laptop shuts down spontaneously. Without warning, the screen goes black and flashes the green battery LED. The battery is in poor condition (max. 5 minutes power, then it beeps low battery). Therefore, I have the laptop always connected to the mains.
Does anyone have a suggestion how I can solve this problem?
For solution you must know why this happen. After reading your ?problem description? it is not easy to say why this happen and we can just speculate what the problem can be.
At the beginning one question: is this notebook cleaned up in the past? I presume it can be full of dust and cooling system and cooling grill can be ?blocked? with dust.
Without proper cooling notebook hardware reach critical temperature and result is suddenly switch off.
Sorry my english is not so good, but I need help. My Tecra 8100 is not working only turn on leds for power, battery and hdd but not start (nothing on screen).
I need to replace my motherboard and it is B36084962019-A (Tecra 8100 model PT810E-01152-IT ) but I can find only B36086672015-A motherboard.
Can I use these model instead of my?
Regarding your problem I can?t give an exact answer but an advice: Contact an authorized service provider. I think in this case you need 100% sure answer and you can get it from professional people only because it?s an user to user forum where you can talk with normal people like you and me.
So get in contact with the guys, they will help you and if you are not familiar with notebook disassembling, they can help you to exchange the mainboard.
You cannot force anything. Either it works or not.
Try to start notebook with RAM placed in slot B only.
Anyway, if you use compatible RAMs and if this was worked before I believe slot B is defective.
I have a Tecra 8100 running Windows XP.
I can get no sound out of the speakers or headphones outputted from the computer, e.g. beep sounds, CD, etc. But if I un-mute the mic, I can hear through the headphones what the microphone picks up (there's just feedback without microphones, proving the speakers physically work). All the volume controls are on maximum and unmuted. All the devices are enabled and chosen correctly in the sound control panels.
Any help at all would be welcome!! Is it the sound card, or am I missing a driver? can't find anything else on the web with similar symptoms. Thanks in advance.
Q: Tecra 8100 major screen issues, please help.
We are using a toshiba tecra 8100, we can turn it on perfectly and it loads up, however the screen is practically, completely black. We can only faintly see the windows XP background and have tried Fn + f5 to change the contrast or what have you, but still no luck.
I have a Tecra 8100 series 810-1with Win98.
I format HDD and installed Win2000pro but some drivers not found on CD like graphic card, audio card and Ethernet card.
After my notebook have only 16colors and displayed little window.
I upgrade W2000pro by Microsoft Update for IE7 and service pack 4.
I founded other drives for other device, I installed them and they work ok.
Only for graphic card Very difficult to find drive for S3 savage/IX w/MV.
I tried to install it, the install is OK.
"The driver \Systemroot\system32\drivers\s3gsavm not found the point to enter VideoPortSetEvent on drive VIDEOPRT.sys"
May be the drive that I founded are not good? Where I can find it? Can you give me the exact link please?
Follow the link you have posted.
Choose category 'Archive'. Here you will find all Tecra 8100 drivers for windows 98 and Windows 2000.
Q: display driver Toshiba Tecra 8100 with XP(OS)?
I'm trying to locate a display driver for a Toshiba Tecra 8100 with XP(OS), the adapter is s3 inc mx/ix. I went to Toshiba's site and the XP version is not there, can someone tell me where I can get this driver?
A:display driver Toshiba Tecra 8100 with XP(OS)?
Have you e-mailed Toshiba support for the driver?
I spoke with Toshiba support (Tier 1) for over an hour, and the problem didn't get solved. I have downloaded the sound driver from Toshiba, and rebooted twice as asked, but have not been able to recover the sound.
Can anyone step me through this?
I have Tecra 8100 where its original power adapter has died. I need to buy a new one, but I found that Toshiba has replaced the PA2444U adapter model with a new model. Which power adapter model that is now compatible with Tecra 8100?
Thanks. I really need an answer because I need to work with the laptop.
Any 15v supply rated at 3A or more will do. You can get them on eBay for ?10 or less.
I seem to have lost the display drivers to my Tecra 8100.
Since I attempted to use an extra screen which worked fine until I came to boot up the following day when it would only boot up in Safe Mode.
What have I done wrong and how can I rectify it?
Driver detective doesn't work, just comes up as having performed an illegal action.
Have you checked the Toshiba website?
I doubt this because there you can download all drivers.
Hey , guys. I recently did a BIOS update on a Toshiba Tecra 8100 Laptop running Windows 2000. After the update, while the system appeared to be working normally, the screen won't show up. I tried connecting the laptop to an external monitor, but nothing happened. Is there anything I can do?
Did you press [Fn] then one of the functions keys [F8] or the one with the picture or words that say CRT/LCD. I own the Tecra 8000 this is the only way it's going to switch screens from the LCD Panel to CRT. Also how did you update the BIOS through DOS right? If you lost the LCD Panel or when you reboot the Laptops and don't see the words Toshiba or is it just blank screen. Does any of th lights light up for power, HD and battery?
Hey , guys. I recently did a BIOS update on a Toshiba Tecra 8100 Laptop running Windows 2000. After the update, while the system appeared to be working normally (LEDs on, a little HD acivity but no windows boot), the screen won't show up. I tried connecting the laptop to an external monitor, but nothing happened. Is there anything I can do?
(Update) I am able to get to the bios upgrade screen by holding down F12 before pressing the power button. Is there any other way to upgrade the BIOS besides using a floppy drive?
yes- read the bios update guide in the guides forum.
I have Toshiba Tecra 8100 & dell Latitude CPx laptops with Infrared ports , but i don't know or have the drivers for the InfraRed for these laptops.
please i need to get the drivers and how to install them ..
This is My Best and Top place to have Help everyTime..
1. I have a 500 MHz processor on my 8100. I'd like to upgrade it to max capacity. My guess it's 800MHz since that's the highest the series went to.
But if it is 800 MHz, will any PIII Mobile on this frequency do? Or should I check for special parameters of the processor?
2. I don't have a floppy drive, neither means to get one. And I'm not going to ebay one just for a BIOS update. Any ideas? Will a bootable CD with the files do the trick?
3. What's the slot of the DVD-ROM and what replacement models can I use? The 8200 went as far as an 8x DVD-RW. Could I go further?
Thanks. Hopefully my post is OK like this instead of three different posts.
1. Have a look at the other Tecra 8100 models to determine what CPU's are compatible.
2. I dont think a bootable CD would work, you need to follow a special procedure to update the BIOS, and it requires a floppy drive. If there is a Windows version, you should use that instead.
3. Upgrading the DVD drive can be difficult since you need to use the correct Master/Slave settings and it needs to have the same faceplate design of the original one.
Personally, I would sell the laptop and buy a faster second hand one. It may work out to be cheaper.
I run a Toshiba laptop Tecra 8100 with a video driver version 6.13.10.7036 of 4/16/2002 for the S3 Graphics Savage MX in Windows XP Pro.
I discovered that there seem to be upgrades for this driver. However, I do not know if I have to use the PCI or the AGP upgrade for Win XP. Also, will this upgrade work on a Toshiba laptop?
The Toshiba forum is extremely slow to answer.
And it says your S3 Graphics Savage MX is AGP, so use the AGP upgrade. Hope I helped!
I want to update the bios of my Tecra 8100.
When I boot the pc, do F2, press c to boot from cd, I get into a dos-like environment. I went to drive Z, did 'dir', and see the bios.exe I burned on cd. To run it I type bios.exe and keep getting "command of filename not recognized" when i type dir *.exe, it does not see the file either.
Maybe I am overlooking something here?
Your described method does not apply to Toshiba notebooks.
Every notebook manufacturers supports different BIOS update procedures?
The 4810.25 package needs to be unzipped firstly.
Then you have to check the available files.
There is a readme.txt which describes the BIOS update procedure using the CD ISO file.
Does anyone know if there is a update driver for the s3savmx driver that comes with the tecra 8100 laptop computer? I installed windows xp os in my 8100 and the display driver stops responding, is there a update driver out there and if so what's the name of it?
Have you checked the Toshiba website to see what support they offer?
Q: Tecra 8100: Advice please - replace audio board?
My faithful and beloved Tecra 8100 which is ideal for my purposes locked up the other day in the middle of a session.
Restarting windows resulted in the machine locking once Windows was running.
I started in safe mode - no problem.
I disabled all unnecessary devices and then went through a process of elimination by selectively enabling devices and rebooting.
I found that the problem was the Yamaha audio device - enable it and the machine would lock up, disable it and it would run normally.
It has been running fine now for a day with the Yamaha audio device disabled.
I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling the device - no change.
I even did a fresh XP install - no change.
I have run XP pro for over a year without a problem (up to now) and I don't regard audio as critical - just a nice to have.
Is there anything else I should do in the way of diagnosis?
Any hints for commonly encountered problems?
Can anybody with experience of fixing these machines or similar advise if replacing the audio board assembly is likely to effect a repair?
I seem to remember from the last time I opened it up about two years ago to change the cpu that the audio assembly was on a separate board but is that everything?
A:Tecra 8100: Advice please - replace audio board?
Well, as you know such replacements are very tricky?
However, I don?t think that you will be able to replace such sound board? but it?s my personal opinion.
From my experience I know that the Yamaha sound card (sound driver) is not fully compatible with Win XP SP1 and SP2. The sound driver update is necessary.
I have searched a little bit for some instructions how to remove such boards and found this page.
There you should find a link to the page how to disassemble the Tecra 8100.
When Laptop boots, it keeps assigning my CDROM to F. I have tried changing the mapping in Disk Manager, but it keeps going back to F. I need my network drive to be F.
PS. I had loaded IOMEGA Zipdrive software and have since deleted it and any registry setting related to it.
Are you using NT/2000? IF so, go into Disk Administrator, right-click on the CD-ROM drive and select "Assign Drive letter". This should keep the setting set until you decide to change it, reboots and all.
If you are running Win9x, then go into Device Manager, and click on the properties button for your CD-ROM drive. Click on the "Settings" tab. At the bottom of the window you will see some settings called Reserved Drive Letters. The start Drive letter is the first free drive letter that the CD-ROM can use. The last Drive letter is the last drive that the CD-ROM can take.
I have just tested it on my laptop, and it works like a charm.
I have an old Tecra 8100 an I want to upgrade the BIOS. Who know which Harddisk is supported (20 GB, 40 GB) and where can I find the specifications?
As I?m not mistaken the Tecra 8100 supports an IDE HDD controller.
In such cases it should be possible to use the 2.5? IDE HDDs.
I cannot say much about the supported sizes but fact is that the supported HDD size depends on the HDD controller. The older IDE controllers until ATA-5 (also called Ultra ATA/66 or Ultra DMA/66) supported the LBA 28bit which allows you to use max 120GB HDD.
Since ATA-6 (also called Ultra DMA mode 5 or Ultra-ATA100) you can use IDE HDDs bigger than 128GB.
So if you want you can check your IDE HDD controller using an hardware diagnostic tool (i.e Everest home edition). Then you could find out what IDE controller it is and what HDDs are supported.
My faithful 8100 (W2K sp4) has developed an irritating fault. If you press Fn-F5 (Display control), the system promptly crashes.
It's quite hard to see what is said 'cos the BSOD message flashes by very quickly.
However, it looks like Stop 0x00000050 (0xF000FF54) Page fault in non-paged area.
Now I have no idea whay this has started. In case it was software I re-imaged the boot partition back to a stable image from 12 months ago but it makes no difference.
Its something to do with windows for sure. If I press Fn-F5 before the Windows has loaded there is no problem.
I'll try it in safe mode tomorrow to see if that helps but if anyone has any experience of something similar I'd love to hear it.
At the moment it is a bit hard to say what this has caused, but you could try to install new display drivers. They can be found at the Support & Downloads section.
So, safe mode seems to be a good idea for testing, because most of the drivers are not loaded, including the graphic card one's.
Q: Can I fit this gpu in an Xps 8100?
I want to fit a Sapphire HD 7950 Dual-X in a Dell Studio XPS 8100, but I don't know if it will fit. Will it fit? Thanks! | 2019-04-21T12:48:30Z | http://thewikipost.org/topic/whVylQiIw22zxEDiaKtU23AxlxPP5Yfi/Which-new-OS-can-I-use-with-old-Tecra-8100.html |
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If you are like me, you love your carbs!
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What's better than some warm bread with melting butter at dinner and then a piece of banana cream pie for dessert?
...Disrupting many of the healthy functions of your body.
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For me, I came from a family that loves to have desserts after every meal... and that's after a BIG breakfast most days of waffles, pastries or cinnamon rolls.
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The article championed cinnamon a "metabolic powerhouse" and noted that it prevents sugar spikes and insulin resistance.
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Have my carbs and eat them too!
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Below is the actual bottle label with exact amounts of each ingredient included.
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The International Institute for Diabetes Research (IIFDR) is an organization committed to promoting health and wellness for those with diabetes and pre-diabetes symptoms. Dr. Scott Saunders serves as the Chief Health Officer & Nutrition Advisor and supports practical and natural solutions to many of the diseases and disorders that afflict contemporary society. IIFDR encourages active engagement by individuals and empowers people to be successful in their personal health and wellness goals.
Wang ZQ, Cefalu WT. Current concepts about chromium supplementation in type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. Curr Diab Rep. 2010;10:145-151.
Solomon TP, Blannin AK. Changes in glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity following 2 weeks of daily cinnamon ingestion in healthy humans. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2009 Apr;105(6):969-76. Epub 2009 Jan 22.
Ali A, Ma Y, Reynolds J et al. Chromium effects on glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in persons at risk for diabetes mellitus. Endocr Pract. 2011;17(1):16-25.
Balk EM, Tatsioni A, Lichtenstein AH et al. Effect of chromium supplementation on glucose metabolism and lipids. Diabetes Care. 2007;30(8):2154-2163.
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Jablonska E, Reszka E, Gromadzinska J, et al. The Effect of Selenium Supplementation on Glucose Homeostasis and the Expression of Genes Related to Glucose Metabolism. Nutrients. 2016;8(12):772. | 2019-04-20T20:45:59Z | https://iifdr.com/cinnachroma?utm_campaign=ccbanner&utm_medium=banner&utm_content=free&utm_source=ccbane&subid=cchctwbannerad_2018-05&utm_term=haveyourcarbs |
Watch the full video interview embedded above, or click here for a direct HD link.
AusGamers: Hey guys, welcome back to AusGamers. You’re here once again with Stephen Farrelly. Again, I’m actually in Australia, not anywhere else in the world, which is a bit rare these days.
I’ve got Ian Frazier, who’s here to talk to me about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. We’ve been talking about the game a little bit lately and you guys know that we’re pretty excited for it. I got some hands-on with it in Vegas; I spoke to Collin [Campbell, Lead World Designer] out at Vegas; I’ve spoken to Ken Rolston; now I’ve got you.
Let’s get to some of the nitty gritty. What was the decision behind no jumping?
Ian Frazier: So we actually tried jumping earlier in development. We had climbing -- like mantling -- and jumping. We ended up finding that to create the world and craft it the way we wanted to -- to have standardised enough metrics to make combat good made jumping not work, essentially.
If we let you jump everywhere, if we had crazy sculpted terrain where everything was constantly bumpy, we couldn’t also have the fidelity of animations we want for combat and have the level of control we needed design-wise to deliver that good quality combat. So seeing as combat was one of our top level concerns for the game and we wanted to make it as good as it could possibly be, we pulled back on that front and made jumping something that’s sort of channeled. There’s places you can jump, but you can’t do it everywhere.
AusGamers: If you were testing it early on, did that change the level design entirely for you guys? Because obviously you’re not going to give people different pathways to go.
Ian: It was early enough that it didn’t pose us problems or anything, but it certainly does change the way we do things -- even down to putting in the jump points where you can jump. So yeah, it makes a big difference.
AusGamers: Now another big staple in this type of RPG is -- especially with the concept of open-world, even if it’s not an RPG -- is emergent gameplay. And I think games like Red Dead Redemption did it really well; Skyrim does it really well.
What have you guys done to approach that? Because at the moment, the stuff that I’ve played, I do come across people... but I obviously haven’t spent enough time with the game. And we were talking about this before, but can you just run us through any of those kind of systems that you have?
Ian: Well NPC scheduling is one thing. So NPCs -- not all of them, but a lot of NPCs -- have their daily rounds, where they go around and do things. So because of that, as you’re doing a quest, or just going through a city, you’re meeting people in different kinds of scenarios than... you may encounter a different thing that I did because of the timing.
The next thing is we do have a full day/night cycle which plays into that. So you’re going to have creatures that show up in certain areas that would otherwise not be there, based on time. Reagents that you can only harvest because you happened to go to the scene at night or what have you; so there’s some of that.
You also have the crime system. So if you are in the middle of town and you start pickpocketing or trespassing or what have you and you get seen, then you’re going to get people freaked out; you’re going to have people try to kill you or call the guards or whatever depending on where you are. And that’s going to create a different situation depending on who’s there and if you’re powerful enough to deal with them and if you flee or pay up your fine; how you choose to respond to it.
In fact, if you say “hey, ok, you can take me in coppers”, they’ll bring you to jail, and the jails are totally different depending on where you’re at. So if you’re at a mortal area, it’s more of a traditional dungeon. If you’re in the Fae city of Isa, they throw you in a magical labyrinth, because that’s what Fae do -- so that’ll be kind of different.
As far as wandering in the wilderness, we have a faction system -- some creatures hate other creatures. So you may be wandering in the woods and see a giant spider chasing down a deer to eat. And you won’t necessarily see the same thing that I saw -- there’s a chance that it won’t happen -- but the combination of wandering things, scheduled things and the faction system that makes them like or hate each other, gives you those sort of emergent moments that will vary between players.
AusGamers: So there’s a full functioning ecology that’s built around hierarchy and a food chain and stuff like that?
Ian: We don’t simulate like “they eat the meat, therefore they live...”; we don’t do it to that level. But we do try to simulate who would and would not like each other and who would try to eat what else, in order to give you that kind of feel as you explore the world.
AusGamers: Another popular area of discussion with games like this -- and many get it right and many get it wrong -- is scaling, level scaling -- especially with enemies and the like. Can you talk to us about how you guys have approached that?
Ian: Yeah absolutely. As you said, it is a challenge and something we’ve seen done very well and very poorly in different contexts. What we do is sort of a... we try not to mention other games but I’m going to do it anyway -- it’s sort of a hybrid between World of Warcraft and Fallout 3 in terms of how it’s structured.
So you start the game off and the very first area that you step into, Allestar Glade, it’s level one; it’s only ever going to be level one. So if you start off there, it’s about right for you. If you come back later, you can just destroy enemies there.
As you get further into the game, individual areas will have a level range to them, this is somewhere between three and seven, or twelve and fifteen or whatever. When you get there, it checks your level and sets the level of that zone to your level or whatever that is within the range, for the rest of time.
So as a result, as you play through the game, you will generally find things at about your difficulty level, unless you just truck through and go way outside the bounds -- in which case, you’ll find really hard stuff. But if you then return to earlier areas, you don’t suddenly need Grand High Wizard in the starter zone, because you return and you’re level 30 -- no, you still meet starter enemies and you just crush them like bugs.
Because we wanted to have that re-travesal be fun, where you feel like you’re hercules when you’re going back through earlier areas.
AusGamers: That’s a good segway to the next question I had anyway, which was: will there be much re-traversing, or backtracking? Will there be reasons to do it or will there be times when you have left that level one area or that level five area and there’s nothing to go back for at all?
Ian: So it depends on how you play. If you’re a completionist who tries to clear out every nook and cranny of the map on every single quest, there’s some re-traversal expected, but not a ton. If you’re the sort of person that kind of does things organically and plays through -- finds some quests; does some quests; moves on -- then there’s a ton of traversal, because some of the factions especially have these ongoing storylines that will send you back to other areas and bounce you over there, then you might pick up another faction that sends you back over here and there; then you do side quests; it varies tremendously depending on your style.
AusGamers: Alright, now you said that you guys try to avoid talking about other games, but another interesting thing is that when you’ve got -- let’s call them instances... or dungeons -- a lot of the time, games have respawning enemies later on. So you might come back in game-time in a few days and they’re all still dead, but in a week in game-time it’s totally repopulated.
Skyrim’s done a really good thing, where when you look at the map it says “Cleared”, which I thought was quite cool, and I know a few other games have done that as well. Have you guys done that or do you have respawning enemies?
Ian: Yes and no. So things that make sense to respawn, like a named guy or some boss you’ve killed -- something that’s got some real substance and relevance in the world -- they do not respawn. However, in general the above ground areas and dungeons and so forth will respawn with a degree of randomness and a degree of time.
So if you clear out a dungeon, the big bad boss you killed at the end will stay dead and the cult followers he had or whatever... you cleared out the cult and you defeated them, well they’re going to be gone -- they’re not going to come back. But, the next time that you go in there, you may find bears and wolves have now infested the cave. When X amount of time has passed, a new suite of enemies can now populate that zone.
AusGamers: Now with the factions -- it’s another popular thing to talk about -- I thought Fallout: New Vegas did a really good thing where allegiance actually meant something and that you couldn’t actually get to different story branches and different items and what have you.
It seems like in other games, you can just join any faction you want and it doesn’t matter which one you’re in there. Do you guys have waring factions? Do you have buffs for being in one faction and it’s a detriment to you with another faction?
Ian: Yes and no. What we ended up doing is... the factions themselves are not exclusive; they don’t hate... like, fictionally they didn’t really have any issue with one another so it didn’t make a lot of sense to us to make them like “you joined the Warsown and now The Travellers won’t have you”, so we don’t do that.
That said, within the factions you have branching decisions that are exclusive -- that’s kind of where we worked the exclusivity in. If you’re playing the Warsworn -- and I don’t want to give away the details but -- you’re the fateless, your fate can change the fates of those around you. So you can change the future of the Warsworn as a group, in multiple different ways. And depending on how you choose to make that decision, you block off the other possibility and you earn what’s called a Twist of Fate -- it’s kind of a permanent systemic bonus; it’s a tarot card, like a destiny card that reflects the decision that you made.
And again, it’s exclusive and the rewards to it are also exclusive. So the factions themselves are not exclusive to each other, but your decisions within them are.
AusGamers: Is there a dynamic weather system as well? Because you talked about day and night.
Ian: Sadly no. No dynamic weather system. It’s something that I would have loved to do. I think if we had have had a little bit longer we might have done it, but we actually had to ship the game at some point, so we stopped. There are areas that have weather that is appropriate to that zone, but it’s not dynamic.
AusGamers: Now I didn’t get a chance to check out the PC version which you have running out there, so I will just ask a few questions about it. There’s a lot of contention amongst PC gamers that games are being built for console and then ported to PC -- specifically at the mere mention of a radial, every PC gamer goes absolutely crazy.
Can you talk about key binding and stuff like that and also... it feels like the combat has been built for a controller: how have you guys approached that with the PC?
Ian: If you get a chance, I would recommend that you actually play the PC, because you’ll be able to feel the answer for yourself. But Big Huge Games is historically a PC company, the console thing we did before this was Settlers of Catan on the Xbox Live Arcade, but everything else has been PC games and a lot of the folks in the studio come from a PC background.
So we didn’t want to skimp on the PC, we decided not to outsource a port, but to actually build the PC version concurrently with the console versions in-house. The same UI team, the same combat team building both. So we made sure to give it the love that it deserves.
As far as how it works: if you’re on the PC, you play with mouse and keyboard and “you don’t want any of that console crap” so you set aside the controller, then it’s setup not totally dissimilar to an MMO. You’ve got an ability bar across the bottom of the screen that will work with the number keys -- you can map abilities onto that. You can have spells on your right mouse button and your weapon on your left mouse button. You can use the scrollwheel to quickly switch between different weapons, like how a lot of first-person shooters tend to work on the PC.
And obviously you can bind all your keys. There’s a couple of specific things you can’t bind, like the Escape key is always backing out of menus -- we don’t let you rebind that -- but as a general rule, you can rebind whatever you want. Whether you want WASD or arrow keys or whatever else.
The other interesting thing about it is that if you prefer the console controls: if you plug in an Xbox 360 controller and you start fiddling with it, the game will instantly and automatically switch to that and the UI will change -- you’ll have a console-style UI. Then if you’re like “no, screw that”, sit that down and start moving the mouse, it’ll instantly switch back to the PC UI and you can do that whenever you want, you don’t have to change any options or anything, it just works.
Really, depending on the kind of build that you have, I might recommend one or the other. If you’re playing a pure melee warrior, personally I prefer the controller, because you get that rumble and tactile feel. If I’m playing a pure mage with a whole lot of active abilities, then I prefer the mouse and keyboard, because you’ve got a larger number of abilities you have instant access to.
So depending on your build and what you’re used to: if you like the controller; if you don’t like mouse and keyboard, you might want to go one way or the other. And obviously the PC can just look better than the consoles because it’s a PC!
AusGamers: That was going to be my next question: What have you guys done to approach the visual side of stuff on the PC?
Ian: The big things are: better shadow quality, the shaders are a little bit better and also just the resolution. You can run it in 1080p on a PC.
Ian: No. We looked at it, but it’s something we didn’t do for this title.
AusGamers: Now I’m going to end on something that you can’t probably talk about, but -- and this is a really interesting thing -- I spoke to Todd Howard [Bethesda Games Studios Director] out at E3, and one of the big things he said was in the Fallout games and even Oblivion, DLC was really good with those guys, but it was kind of short. They did four hours here, five hours there and he said for Skyrim, one of the things they’re going to do is more expansion-based DLC, which the industry seems to not be following anymore.
I’m curious to know -- as originally a PC company -- what your plans for DLC are. And if there was... I mean, it’s a big game and there’s a lot of lore. It seems like the more expansive DLC seems like the right thing to do.
Ian: Oh, that’s tricky. So, I can tell you that I personally like both kinds of DLC. I like the little bite-sized things that are kind of like you’re at the supermarket and you grab the impulse buy. But I also kind of like the giant ones, and I’m glad that Bethesda still does it, because I think that it’s awesome to have that big meaty chunk of content.
As far as what we’re doing with DLC, however, I don’t know... [grins] I think DLC would be handy; I’d like to have some; maybe some day that would happen; possibly [shrugs]. PR’s watching you know?
AusGamers: Yeah I know, but she knows I’ll ask these questions [laughs].
Alright, well we’ll leave it there. Thanks very much Ian. The game looks great and we can’t wait to play it next year. Cheers.
Read more about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on the game page - we've got the latest news, screenshots, videos, and more!
Great interview, the more I see of this game on here the more interested I become.
AG: yeah so skyrim and other games have these awesome features.. what have you done to make the game awesome like those games.. | 2019-04-22T05:24:31Z | https://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3151861 |
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In Santiago-Sepúlveda v. Esso Standard Oil Co. (Puerto Rico), Inc., (CCH Business Franchise Guide ¶14,604) the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston held that a gasoline station franchisor did not violate the PMPA in connection with its withdrawal from the Puerto Rico market because its successor did comply with the PMPA’s requirement, for the most part, to offer franchises to the franchisees of the withdrawing franchisor in "good faith."
The argument by the franchisees that any term violating a state law in any respect comprised a violation of the PMPA’s good faith requirement was rejected. Such a per se rule would put at risk a vast number of market withdrawals. The court noted that the offered franchise agreements, comprising interrelated contracts spanning about 100 pages, included hundreds of clauses, of which the lower court invalidated only five in part.
In Ralph Gentile, Inc. v. Division of Hearings and Appeals, (CCH Business Franchise Guide ¶14,626), a Wisconsin state appellate court held that a motor vehicle dealer materially breached its dealership agreement with a franchisor by failing to achieve satisfactory sales performance.
(4) The dealer failed to cure the breach within a reasonable time after receiving written notice of the breach.
The sales-effectiveness rating used by the franchisor for determining the performance of the dealer was ruled proper, and the facts clearly showed that the dealer’s sales performance was well below the sales-effectiveness ratings earned by its predecessor.
In Love of Food I, LLC v. Maoz Vegetarian USA, Inc., (D. Md., CCH Business Franchise Guide ¶14,633) allegations of common law fraud based on the franchisor’s understatements of start-up costs in a UFOC survived a motion to dismiss. The initial costs were allegedly understated by 85% or more. The franchisor argued that cost projections were statements of opinion and could not constitute fraud because they were not susceptible to exact knowledge at the time they were made. However, the court held that erroneous projections could supply a basis for fraud under Maryland law.
Practitioners should be aware that an alert was issued by the Philadelphia Department of Revenue to notify taxpayers that the department's audit unit is currently working to find businesses having tax nexus with Philadelphia but located outside of the city. Nexus questionnaires are being sent out explaining business nexus and asking those businesses to report any activity they have in Philadelphia.
If a taxpayer's business has nexus with Philadelphia and is not filing and paying Philadelphia business taxes, taxpayers are advised to contact the department to bring the company into tax compliance by entering into the Voluntary Disclosure Program. Taxpayers who meet the conditions of the program may be eligible for a waiver of all penalties owed (Amnesty Support Group and Nexus Project, Philadelphia Department of Revenue, May 13, 2011).
The Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday that Reebok International Ltd. agreed to resolve charges that the company deceptively advertised its “toning shoes,” including EasyTone walking shoes, RunTone running shoes, and EasyTone flip flops.
According to the FTC, ads for the shoes claimed that sole technology featuring pockets of moving air created “micro instability” that toned and strengthened muscles as you walked or ran.
In one television commercial, Reebok represented that the EasyTone toning shoes were proven to strengthen hamstrings and calves by up to 11 percent, and that they toned the buttocks “up to 28 percent more than regular sneakers, just by walking,” the FTC alleged.
As part of a settlement, Reebok has agreed to pay a $25 million judgment to be used for consumer redress distributed either through the FTC or through a class action lawsuit. Reebok also will be required to change its marketing for the relevant products, as it continues to sell the footwear.
Reebok has agreed to refrain from making the challenged claims. A proposed consent decree would prohibit the company from representing that toning shoes and other toning apparel are effective in strengthening muscles, or that using the footwear will result in a specific percentage or amount of muscle strengthening or toning, unless the claims are true and backed by scientific evidence.
Future health or fitness-related efficacy claims for toning shoes and other toning apparel would have to be true and backed by scientific evidence. The proposed consent decree also would require Reebok to refrain from misrepresenting any tests, studies, or research results regarding toning shoes and other toning apparel.
Reebok has agreed to notify retailers and instruct them to remove marketing materials and cover portions of boxes making the challenged claims.
Although Reebok agreed to settle the FTC’s allegations, it issued a statement defending its advertising practices.
The FTC filed the complaint and proposed consent decree on September 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. A news release, complaint, and stipulated final judgment and order appear here on the FTC website.
Further details regarding Federal Trade Commission v. Reebok International Ltd., will appear in the CCH Trade Regulation Reporter.
Investors could proceed with civil RICO claims against defendants that allegedly engaged in a fraudulent investment scheme that involved the leasing of thoroughbred mares for a single breeding season, the federal district court in Lexington, Kentucky, has ruled.
The defendants unsuccessfully argued that the plaintiffs were required to allege that each defendant had personally made misrepresentations or had used the mails or wires in order state a claim. They were unsuccessful, as well, in their argument that the plaintiffs did not allege a valid “investment” claim under RICO §1962(a).
Although the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit required plaintiffs to identify with specificity the actions that each defendant had taken in furtherance of an alleged fraud, the mail and wire fraud statutes did not require a showing that each defendant had personally made a misrepresentation, the court explained.
The defendants unsuccessfully argued that the plaintiffs failed to plead a valid “investment” claim under RICO §1962(a).
According to the defendants, the plaintiffs failed to allege that specified defendants had used or invested income from a pattern of racketeering activity to acquire an interest in, or to operate an enterprise engaged in, interstate commerce.
The plaintiffs, however, “clearly alleged” that the specified defendants had invested income from their racketeering activity (the proceeds they received from the mare leases) into a business that was used to facilitate the cover up of the alleged fraud, according to the court.
The decision in ClassicStar Mare Lease Litigation will appear at CCH RICO Business Disputes Guide ¶12,106.
Further information regarding CCH RICO Business Disputes Guide is available here.
Lawmakers expressed concern about Google’s decision to expand into secondary Internet businesses and addressed charges that the Google search engine channels customers to its own businesses, during a September 21 hearing by the Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights.
The hearing was held to consider the competitive impact of the conduct of Google, which has been criticized for allegedly manipulating search results for its own benefit. The Federal Trade Commission is currently investigating Google’s business practices.
“[A]s the dominant firm in Internet search, Google has special obligations under antitrust law to not deploy its market power to squelch competition,” Senator Kohl added.
Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google Inc., defended the company from suggestions that it was hindering competition. Schmidt said that Google was “fully cooperating with the FTC’s investigation” and noted that “every decided antitrust suit that has been brought against Google regarding our search results has been dismissed.
In a statement issued following the hearing, Senator Mike Lee (R, Utah) said that he was “disappointed” by Schmidt’s testimony.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has answered four questions that were certified to it by a federal district court for the District of Massachusetts in a dispute between Coverall, a franchisor of janitorial service businesses, and individuals who entered into janitorial franchise agreements with Coverall.
The federal court had determined in earlier rulings that those individuals who were Massachusetts residents were employees who had been improperly classified as independent contractors by the franchisor. The certified questions related to the calculation of damages for one of the individual plaintiffs in the action.
(2) Whether an employer could lawfully withhold wages to an employee if the employer and employee agree that such wages are not earned until a customer remits payment.
The answer to both questions was "no," according to the Massachusetts high court.
(4) Provide replacement supplies and equipment.
The contract further provided for accounts receivable financing whereby Coverall would pay the individual interest-free advances for amounts billed to, but not yet collected from customers. If a customer failed to pay within 90 days, the individual was required to repay Coverall the advance in the form of a chargeback.
The Massachusetts Wage Act required an employer to pay the wages earned to an employee within a fixed period of days after the end of a pay period, according to the court. Where an employee has completed the labor, service, or performance required of him, by common understanding he has "earned" his wage.
That a Coverall customer did not pay its bill within a week after the pay period did not affect the plaintiff individual’s right to wages he had earned. Since the individual was an employee, the obligation to pay him earned wages rested with Coverall, not with third parties, the court held.
The accounts receivable financing system incorporated into the individual’s contract with Coverall, in which wages were classified by Coverall as advances that could be recouped, violated the special contracts provision of the Wage Act, the court ruled. That provision prohibited a person from exempting himself from the Wage Act’s provisions by a special contract or other means. Coverall was not free to withhold, much less recapture, the employee’s earned wages.
In answering the remaining questions, the Massachusetts court determined that the employees could recover as damages incurred any insurance premiums that they were obliged to pay to Coverall under the terms of their contract. In light of the federal district court judge’s statement that he welcomed other advice about Massachusetts law that was relevant to the case, the court addressed the franchise fees that the individual agreed to pay Coverall in order to enter into what the district court determined to be a direct employment relationship. The Massachusetts court’s view was that such fees constituted "special contracts," not usual between employers and employees.
In substance they operated to require employees to buy their jobs from employers. In that respect, they violated public policy. Examined in the context of the Wage Act, the franchise fees paid by the plaintiff individual did not represent a clear and established debt. To the extent that such fees were paid back to Coverall out of wages earned from Coverall, they represented a prohibited assignment of an employee’s future wages to his employer, the court opined.
The court emphasized that its concerns over franchise fees related to the potentially exploitative nature of payments by an employee to an employer for the purpose of securing employment and noted that it expressly did not conclude that franchise fees violated public policy when they were agreed to by parties who were not in an employer-employee relationship.
The opinion is Awuah v. Coverall N.A., Inc., CCH Business Franchise Guide ¶14,671.
The federal district court in Santa Ana, California, has refused to decertify a class of YoPlus yogurt purchasers who asserted that General Mills and Yoplait USA falsely represented that YoPlus yogurt products promoted digestive health, in violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL) and Consumers Legal Remedies Act (CLRA). The court ealier held that class certification was warranted under both the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, 131 S.Ct. 2541 (2011) and the Ninth Circuit’s recent decision in Stearns v. Ticketmaster, ADVERTISING LAW GUIDE ¶64,386, which directly addressed the issue of class certification of claims brought pursuant to the UCL and the CLRA.
The claims met the commonality and predominance requirements for class certification because they presented core issues of law and fact, and those issues predominated over the issues in the case that would have to be determined on an individual basis, according to the court. These common issues included (1) whether General Mills communicated a representation—through YoPlus packaging and other marketing, including television and print advertisements—that YoPlus promoted digestive health; (2) if so, whether that representation was material to individuals purchasing YoPlus; (3) if the representation was material, whether it was truthful; in other words, whether YoPlus does confer a digestive health benefit that ordinary yogurt does not; and (4) if reasonable California consumers who purchased YoPlus were deceived by a material misrepresentation as to YoPlus’ digestive health benefit, what is the proper method for calculating their damages.
Neither Wal-Mart nor Ticketmaster contradicted the findings of commonality and predominance in this case, the court determined. The claims centered upon a common question: did the defendants state a false claim of a digestive health benefit that a reasonable person would have been deceived by, for purposes of the UCL, or would have attached importance to, for purposes of the CLRA? While individualized determinations may be required to calculate damages, those determinations did not warrant decertification. The common question was sufficiently central to satisfy commonality, and, when compared to individualized aspects of the suit, still predominated.
The April 20, 2011, and the September 12, 2011, decisions in Johnson v. General Mills, Inc., SACV 10-00061, will appear at ADVERTISING LAW GUIDE ¶64,412 and ¶64,413.
A janitorial business franchisor did not commit common law fraud or violate the anti-fraud provisions of the Minnesota Franchise Act (MFA) in connection with the sale of a franchise to three franchisees because the franchisor made no untrue statements of material fact or misrepresentations, a federal district court in Minneapolis has decided.
The claims were initially brought as part of a putative class action against the franchisor, but the motion for class certification was denied in an earlier ruling (CCH Business Franchise Guide ¶14,335). After proceeding jointly through discovery, the parties agreed that the franchisor would move for summary judgment on the claims of three representative plaintiffs.
As to the first of the three plaintiffs, the franchisor’s alleged statement to that "[i]f you buy more, you’ll get more" was not untrue, the court held. The franchisor structured its franchising business to correlate the amount of business it promised to offer a franchisee with the amount of initial investment made by the franchisee. In that sense, it was true that the more a franchisee bought (or the larger his initial investment), the more he would receive in gross billings of offered accounts, the court determined.
The statement that owning one of the franchises was a "good business" and that the business could continue for "a long time" were puffery, the court ruled. In general, puffery includes statements of exaggerated boasting or vague, subjective claims of superiority. The franchisee’s counsel contended that the franchisor’s puffery should be evaluated in the context of the lack of sophistication of the franchisee—an immigrant with limited English ability and business acumen. However, immigrants were not a group so gullible that they could not recognize obvious puffery, the court reasoned.
The first plaintiff also asserted that the franchisor falsely represented a guarantee of $1,000 per month in account billings, but the franchisee admitted in his deposition that he was not promised any level of profits or income. Even if such a representation was made by the franchisor, any reliance on representations regarding profitability was unreasonable as a matter of law because it was directly contradicted by the franchise agreement, the court held.
The fraud claimed by the second of the three plaintiffs hinged on the franchisor’s alleged representations that he could earn as much money as a medical doctor or Ph.D., and its failure to inform him that declined accounts would be counted against the amount of business the franchisor was obligated to provide.
The franchisee could not have reasonably relied on the alleged statement because it was made after he signed the franchise agreement, the court held. Further, the statement directly contradicted the franchisor’s Uniform Franchise Offering Circular (UFOC), which disclaimed any representations as to profitability or income level and was incorporated into the franchise agreement. The franchisee could not impose liability under a common law or MFA-based fraud claim merely because he chose not to read the UFOC, according to the court.
The franchisor could not have defrauded the third plaintiff by allegedly failing to disclose that any offers of accounts that the franchisee declined would count against the total amount of accounts that the franchisor was obligated to offer the franchisee, the court ruled. A reasonable jury would find that the franchisee received a version of the franchisor’s UFOC that unambiguously made such a disclosure, the court decided.
Evidence showed that: (1) the franchisee admitted, while a prospective franchisee, to receiving a "black book" from the franchisor; (2) the franchisor’s May 28, 2002 UFOC was bound as a black book; (3) the franchisee signed a written acknowledgment of having received the May 28, 2002, UFOC; and (4) most importantly, the franchisee produced the first two pages of the May 28, 2002 UFOC in the course of the litigation.
The third franchisee’s claim that the franchisor violated the MFA by making misrepresentations regarding profitability, the availability of evening accounts, and the ability to hire employees was time-barred by the Act’s three-year statute of limitations.
Had the franchisor made the alleged statements, and if they were false, the franchisee would have been aware of the facts constituting the claim within months of purchasing his franchise, the court decided. Thus, even if the discovery rule applied to the MFA to toll the statute of limitations, the claim was barred. The franchisee knew all of the facts constituting the claim in early 2003 but did not file the claim until approximately five years later.
The decisions in Moua v. Jani-King of Minnesota, Inc., will appear at CCH Business Franchise Guide ¶14,665 and ¶14,681.
A New York Internet subscriber could not state a New York deceptive business practices law claim against Time Warner Cable for allegedly misrepresenting the speed of its “Road Runner” Internet service, according to the federal district court in New York City.
A California Internet subscriber also failed to state a California Unfair Competition Law (UCL) claim based on violations of the California False Advertising Law (FAL) and Consumer Legal Remedies Act (CLRA).
Time Warner advertised its Road Runner Internet service as having “blazing speed,” being “always on connection,” and the “fastest, easiest way to get online.” These representations allowed Time Warner to charge up to more than 100% of the fees charged by competitors, according to the subscriber.
However, Time Warner failed to disclose that it interfered with and limited subscribers’ access to their Internet connections and their attempts to engage in peer-to-peer communications.
New York and California subscribers sought to represent a class of all Road Runner service customers.
In response, Time Warner argued that the service agreement included express provisions permitting the network management practices at issue. The company further argued that the statements at issue were mere puffery and not actionable under either the New York or California laws.
To state a claim under the New York law (New York General Business Law Sec. 349), the subscriber had to show that the challenged advertising was directed at consumers, the advertising would mislead a reasonable consumer in a material way, and that the subscriber suffered an injury as a result of the advertising. To state a UCL claim under the unlawful prong, the subscriber needed to show that the company violated another law.
While some of the statements were puffery, others could be actionable. However, the claims failed because there was no evidence that the Internet connection was not always available or that the speed of the service was slower than competing services, according to the court.
The decision in Fink v. Time Warner Cable will appear at CCH State Unfair Trade Practices Law ¶32,322.
The First Amendment barred former Rutgers quarterback Ryan Hart’s New Jersey common law right of publicity claim based on misappropriation of his likeness in the Electronic Arts video game NCAA Football, the federal district court in Trenton has ruled.
Hart asserted the right of publicity in a class action complaint on behalf of other players. The court held that the First Amendment trumped the right of publicity because EA’s use of Hart’s likeness was “transformative” and also because the use was clearly related to the game and not simply an advertisement for an unrelated product.
Borrowed from the copyright fair use doctrine, the transformative test balances the competing interests of the right of publicity and the First Amendment by protecting works that add significant elements of expression beyond the mere literal depiction or imitation of a celebrity for commercial gain.
Elements of EA’s own expression found in the game justified the conclusion that its use of Hart’s image was transformative, the court held. NCAA Football contained virtual stadiums, athletes, coaches, fans, sound effects, music, and commentary, all of which were created or compiled by the game's designers. Over 100 virtual teams and thousands of virtual players were included.
Focusing on Hart’s virtual image alone, the court acknowledged that a virtual player bore resemblance to Hart and was designed with Hart’s physical attributes, sports statistics, and biographical information in mind. However, the game permitted users to alter Hart’s virtual player, control the player’s throw distance and accuracy, change the team of which the player is a part by downloading varying team names and rosters, and incorporate players from historical teams into the gameplay.
EA created the mechanism by which the virtual player could be altered, as well as the multiple permutations available for each virtual player image, the court noted.
Because EA’s use of Hart’s likeness was clearly related to the game and not simply an advertisement for an unrelated product, the court determined that the right of publicity claim also was barred under the test developed in Rogers v. Grimaldi, 875 F.2d 994 (2d Cir. 1989). The Rogers test had been applied in cases when the appropriation of a celebrity likeness created a false and misleading impression that the celebrity was endorsing a product.
As explained in Seale v. Gramercy Pictures, 949 F.Supp. 331 (ED Pa. 1996), applying Rogers to a Pennsylvania right of publicity claim, if a name or likeness is used solely to attract attention to a work that is not related to the identified person, the user may be subject to liability for a use of the identity in advertising. On the other hand, the use of a person’s name and likeness to advertise a work concerning that individual does not infringe the right of publicity, according to the court.
The transformative test provided the best analysis, in the court’s view, but EA was entitled to protection under either the transformative test or the Rogers test, the court concluded.
The September 9 opinion in Hart v. Electronic Arts, Inc. will be reported at CCH Advertising Law Guide ¶64,395.
The federal district court in San Francisco has given preliminary approval to a $10 million settlement resolving price fixing claims brought on behalf of indirect purchasers of products contain cathode ray tubes (CRTs) against manufacturer Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Ltd.
A special master will hold a hearing to determine the sufficiency, fairness, reasonableness, and adequacy of the proposed settlement in March 2012.
The indirect purchaser claims were brought on behalf of all persons or entities who or which indirectly purchased in the United States CRT products manufacture red or sold by defending CRT makers or their subsidiaries between March 1995 and November 2007. The net settlement fund will be no less than $5 million. The settlement calls for $2.5 million in attorneys’ fees and sets aside $2.5 million for costs, including costs of notice and administration of the settlement funds.
Last year, the court refused to dismiss the indirect purchasers’ claims based on an alleged failure to adequately plead a conspiracy, the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act (FTAIA), or an alleged lack of standing.
The complaint met the pleading standards articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly (550 U.S. 544, 2007-1 Trade Cases ¶75,709) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal (129 S. Ct. 1937, 2009-2 Trade Cases ¶76,785).
The plaintiffs were not required to plead detailed, defendant-by-defendant allegations. It was sufficient that they made allegations that plausibly suggested that each defendant participated in the alleged conspiracy. The complaints contained allegations concerning certain defendants’ participation in alleged unlawful meetings and agreements.
Regarding the FTAIA argument, the indirect purchasers alleged a conspiracy that was carried out both in the United States and abroad, that involved a substantial amount of import and domestic commerce, and that targeted and injured American consumers.
The court also ruled that the indirect purchasers adequately alleged standing to assert state antitrust violations predicated on the Illinois Brick repealer statutes of Arizona, California, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The indirect purchasers alleged that they paid higher prices for CRT products than they would have paid in the absence of the conspiracy and that prices of CRT products were directly correlated to the prices of CRTs.
CRTs purportedly account for approximately 60 percent of the cost of manufacturing computer monitors and a slightly smaller percentage of the cost of manufacturing televisions.
The decisions are Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Antitrust Litigation, 2011-2 Trade Cases ¶77,592 and 2011-2 Trade Cases ¶77,593.
Bridgestone Corporation has agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $28 million criminal fine for its role in conspiracies to rig bids and to make corrupt payments to foreign government officials in Latin America related to the sale of marine hose and other industrial products, the Department of Justice announced yesterday.
The company has agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department in its ongoing investigations and has committed to extensive remediation and to enhance its compliance program and internal controls.
According to a two-count criminal information filed on September 15 in the federal district court in Houston, the Japan-based Bridgestone conspired to rig bids, fix prices, and allocate market shares of marine hose in the United States and elsewhere in violation of Sec. 1 of the Sherman Act and, separately, conspired to make corrupt payments to government officials in various Latin American countries to obtain and retain business in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The challenged conduct took place between 1999 and 2007.
As part of the antitrust conspiracy, Bridgestone and others allegedly agreed to allocate shares of the marine hose market, agreed to establish a price list for marine hose in order to implement and monitor the conspiracy, and agreed not to compete for one another’s customers through bid rigging.
With respect to the FCPA count, Bridgestone was charged with authorizing and approving corrupt payments to foreign government officials employed at state-owned entities in order to secure sales of marine hose in Mexico and other Latin America countries. The 11-page criminal information details e-mail exchanges purportedly detailing the company’s efforts to influence foreign officials through local sales agents.
Bridgestone, best known for its tires, is the fifth company to be charged in the Department of Justice Antitrust Division’s investigation into bid rigging in the marine products industry.
Last year, Parker ITR S.R.L. of Italy agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $2.29 million criminal fine for its role in the conspiracy. Two subsidiaries of the Swedish company Trelleborg AB, one based in Virginia and the other in France, agreed to plead guilty and pay a total of $11 million in criminal fines in 2009. British marine hose manufacturer Dunlop Oil & Marine Ltd. agreed to plead guilty and pay $4.54 million fine in 2008. Manuli Rubber Industries SpA of Italy also agreed to plead guilty to similar charges and to pay more than $2 million in criminal fines.
In addition, a number of industry executives have been charged with participating in the marine hose conspiracy, including Bridgestone’s former general manager of international engineered products, Misao Hioki.
While most of the executives have pleaded guilty, two have been acquitted. In 2008, an Italian national and a Florida man who both worked for Manuli were found not guilty of participating in the antitrust conspiracy by a jury in West Palm Beach, Florida. A German national and former executive with Dunlop's former parent company—Phoenix AG—who was indicted in 2007 is awaiting trial.
Bridgestone issued in statement today, saying that the $28 million fine is a significant reduction from the applicable sentencing guidelines due to the company’s “extraordinary” cooperation in the investigation and remediation efforts. As part of the remediation efforts, Bridgestone has dismantled its International Engineered Products Department, closed its Houston office of Bridgestone Industrial Products of America, Inc., terminated many of its third party agents, and taken remedial actions with respect to its employees.
The Justice Department has been investigating Bridgestone’s involvement in international cartel activities relating to the sale of marine hose since May 2007, according to the statement.
The case is U.S. v. Bridgestone Corp., Criminal No. H-11-651.
A Department of Justice press release on the development appears here. Bridgestone’s statement appears here.
Labels: allocation of markets, bid rigging, conpiracy, horizontal price fixing, U.S. v. Bridgestone Corp.
The Federal Trade Commission has proposed amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule in order to ensure that the rule continues to protect children’s privacy, as online technologies evolve. The agency is seeking public comment on the proposal through November 28, 2011.
According to a September 15 press release, the proposed amendments would give parents control over what personal information websites may collect from children under 13 years of age.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) (CCH Trade Regulation Reporter ¶27,590) requires operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13—or those having actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information from children under 13—to obtain verifiable consent from parents before collecting, using, or disclosing such information.
The FTC rule implementing COPPA—the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (CCH Trade Regulation Reporter ¶38,059)—became effective in 2000.
In April 2010, the Commission sought public comment on the COPPA Rule, posing numerous questions for public consideration, holding a public roundtable, and reviewing 70 comments from industry representatives, advocacy groups, academics, technologists, and members of the public.
Definitions. The FTC proposes updating the definition of “personal information” that may not be collected from children under 13 without parental consent to include geolocation information and certain “persistent identifiers” such as tracking cookies used for behavioral advertising. The agency further proposed a change to the definition of “collection” to allow children to participate in interactive communities, without parental consent, as long as the operators take reasonable measures to delete children’s personal information before it is made public.
Parental consent mechanisms. New proposed methods of obtaining verifiable parental consent would include electronic scans of signed parental consent forms, video-conferencing, and use of government-issued identification checked against a database. These new methods would supplement the existing methods of obtaining parental consent, which include signed parental consent forms, parents’ use of a credit card in connection with a transaction, and parents' calls to a toll-free telephone number. The FTC proposes eliminating parental consent through “e-mail plus,” an e-mail to a parent coupled with another step such as sending an e-mail confirmation.
Confidentiality and security. Proposed rules would strengthen confidentiality and security by requiring that operators ensure that any third party to whom they disclose personal information has reasonable procedures to protect that information, retain the information for only as long as reasonably necessary, and properly delete that information.
Safe harbor. The FTC proposes to strengthen its oversight of self regulatory “safe harbor programs” by requiring groups to audit their members at least annually and to report the results of audits to the Commission.
The 122-page notice of proposed rule and request for comments appears here on the FTC website.
Interested persons may submit comments online here or may send a hard copy of comments to: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, Room H-113 (Annex E), 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580.
Write “COPPA Rule Review, 16 CFR Part 312, Project No. P-104503” on the submissions.
The federal district court in Washington, D.C. has approved a consent decree resolving Department of Justice Antitrust Division concerns over a joint venture between Comcast Corp. and General Electric Co.’s subsidiary NBC Universal Inc.
The joint venture combined Comcast—the nation’s largest cable operator and Internet service provider—and NBC Universal's cable networks, filmed entertainment, and television programming, including the NBC broadcast network. It is managed and 51 percent owned by Comcast, with GE holding 49 percent ownership.
The consent decree resolved allegations that the transaction, as originally proposed, would lessen competition substantially in the market for video programming distribution by allowing Comcast to disadvantage its traditional competitors—direct broadcast satellite and telephone companies that provide video services—as well as emerging online video distributors (OVDs).
The consent decree was found to be in the public interest. However, the court imposed additional steps to monitor implementation of the final judgment.
The parties were required to report to the court for two years regarding the consent decree’s non-appealable arbitration mechanism for OVDs seeking to obtain the joint venture’s video programming content. An annual hearing was also required.
The case is U.S. v. Comcast Corp. A memorandum order, finding the consent decree in the public interest, appears at 2011-2 Trade Cases ¶77,584. The final judgment appears at 2011-2 Trade Cases ¶77,585.
Sharis Arnold Pozen, Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, discussed civil antitrust enforcement efforts at the 38th annual Fordham Competition Law Institute’s international antitrust law and policy conference on September 7.
In what panel moderator A. Paul Victor called her “maiden speech” as newly appointed acting antitrust chief, Pozen talked about how civil non-merger enforcement was "alive and well" at the Antitrust Division.
Pozen had intended to focus her comments on non-merger enforcement, saying that she had said a lot about mergers recently. A week earlier, Pozen had delivered remarks at a press conference on the filing of the U.S. suit challenging AT&T Corporation’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA Inc. Moreover, a trial had just begun in the Justice Department’s action to halt H&R Block Inc.’s proposed acquisition of 2SS Holdings, Inc., the maker of TaxACT do-it-yourself tax preparation software.
The official took issue with the suggestion that the Justice Department’s complaint in the AT&T/T-Mobile case did not reflect recent changes to the joint FTC/Justice Department Horizontal Merger Guidelines. Commentators have suggested that the Justice Department’s complaint in the case relies too heavily on market share analysis and structural presumptions.
In her remarks at Fordham, Pozen said that the complaint in the AT&T/T-Mobile case does in fact represent the approach taken in the Horizontal Merger Guidelines and current Antitrust Division practice. She reiterated that the combination is a four-to-three merger that takes out an innovator.
The Horizontal Merger Guidelines (CCH Trade Regulation Reporter ¶13,100), which were revised in August 2010, recognize the continuing need for market definition in merger analysis; however, the focus is on the competitive effects of a transaction. The analysis need not start with market definition, according to the revised guidelines.
There has also been speculation that Sprint Nextel’s private suit challenging the AT&T/T-Mobile transaction could represent an effort by Sprint to bolster a weak Justice Department case. Pozen refused to comment on the Sprint suit other than to say that Sprint’s case was also before Judge Ellen Huvelle. Pozen did not know whether the suits would be combined.
Further information about the Justice Department’s lawsuit to block the AT&T/T-Moble deal appears here in an August 31 posting on Trade Regulation Talk.
With respect to civil, non-merger enforcement, Pozen discussed a number of recently-filed cases in sectors that “affect consumers’ pocketbooks.” In the health care industry, she explained that the Antitrust Division filed its first lawsuit since 1999 challenging a monopolist with engaging in traditional anticompetitive unilateral conduct. United Regional Health Care System of Wichita Falls—the largest hospital in Wichita Falls—agreed to settle allegations that it unlawfully used contracts with commercial health insurers to maintain its monopoly for hospital services in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
Another action noted in the health care area was the Antitrust Division’s ongoing lawsuit against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, challenging the health insurer’s use of most favored nation (MFN) clauses in its provider agreements with various hospitals. The insurer has appealed a federal district court’s denial of its motion to dismiss (2011-2 Trade Cases ¶77,568), and the Justice Department has asked for dismissal of the appeal.
In another “key industry for consumers,” the Justice Department is pursuing claims against American Express, challenging payment card rules that allegedly restrict price competition at the point of sale. MasterCard and Visa have agreed to settle similar civil charges (2011-1 Trade Cases ¶77,529).
Pozen noted that the Antitrust Division is “vigilantly watching for signs of anticompetitive conduct across the economy.” She also pointed out that the Antitrust Division was willing to litigate to judgment if necessary. This point is reflected in the ongoing litigation against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and American Express.
The acting antitrust chief said that she worked closely with her predecessor, Christine Varney, setting antitrust priorities. Among these priorities is a commitment to international cooperation, which she intends to carry forward.
The recent Memorandum of Understanding between the Antitrust Division and FTC and China’s three antitrust agencies (CCH Trade Regulation Reporter ¶13,512) is a first step towards an enduring relationship, said Pozen. She noted that the federal antitrust agencies were pursuing a similar agreement with India, as that country develops its competition regime.
Pozen reminded practitioners that antitrust agencies around the globe are talking to each other. She noted that many parties recognize the benefits of international coordination in investigations and suggested that permitting the agencies to share information can be beneficial to all who are involved.
Labels: Fordham Competition Law Institute, Horizontal Merger Guidelines, mergers and acquisitions, Sharis Pozen, T-Mobile USA, U.S. v. AT and T Corp.
An individual could not go forward with purported class-action claims that an advertising network violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by monitoring her web browsing habits, but she could pursue claims under New York’s deceptive business practices statute and New York common law, the federal district court in New York City has determined.
The network purchased advertisement display space from websites and displayed ads of interest to a computer user. The network’s clients were advertising companies and agencies.
The network allegedly used “browser cookies”—text files that gather information about a computer user’s Internet habits—to create “behavioral profiles.” The network also allegedly used “flash cookies” to “respawn” the browser cookies when they were deleted by users, without users’ consent.
The individual also accused the network of using “history sniffing” code that was invisible to computer users. This code contained a list of hyperlinks, examined the user’s computer’s browser information to determine whether the computer had previously visited those hyperlinks, and transmitted the results to the network’s servers for the purpose of selecting ads to display on the user’s computer.
The individual could not satisfy the $5,000 minimum damages threshold for civil actions under the CFAA, the court said. She failed to quantify any damage that the network caused to her computers, systems, or data that could require economic remedy. Although she alleged that the network impaired the functioning of her computer, diminishing its value, she did not make specific allegations as to the cost of repairing or investigating this alleged damage.
The collection of her personal information, and any associated invasion of her privacy, would not be compensable under the CFAA, which redressed only economic damages or loss. The collection of demographic information did not constitute damage to consumers or unjust enrichment to the collectors.
The individual’s inability to delete or control the network’s cookies might constitute a de minimis injury, but not an injury sufficient to meet the $5,000 CFAA threshold, according to the court. Even if losses could be aggregated for purposes of the CFAA before a class was certified, damages resulting from the placement of cookies on multiple computers of prospective class members could not be aggregated because these losses would not result from the “same act” by the network.
In addition, even if the individual represented a class of consumers, she would have to show that she had been personally injured.
The advertising network’s behavioral profiling conduct could constitute a deceptive business act or practice under New York law, in the court’s view. The network’s use of flash cookies and history sniffing code could constitute deceptive conduct that misled consumers into believing their digital information was private, when in reality it was being tracked by the network.
The individual and similarly-situated consumers allegedly were harmed in that they suffered the loss of privacy through the exposure of their personal and private information. The individual was not required to allege reliance to plead a claim under the New York statute.
Although collection of personal information did not cause an economic injury, such nonpecuniary harm to privacy had been recognized as an actionable injury for purposes of the New York statute, the court said. The network’s conduct also could constitute a trespass to chattels under New York common law.
The individual failed to allege facts demonstrating that any of the companies whose products were advertised by the network (the “advertisers”) had engaged in any deceptive conduct or trespass. Claims against the advertisers were dismissed with prejudice.
The decision is Bose v. Interclick, Inc., CCH Privacy Law in Marketing ¶60,665.
The Illinois Personal Information Protection Act has been amended to provide additional safeguards and penalties surrounding the protection of personal information, including prevention of and response to a security breach.
A new provision added to the Act requires the disposal of “materials containing personal information in a manner that renders the information unreadable, unusable and undecipherable.” The law containing the amendments (H. 3025, Public Act No. 483) was approved on August 22, 2011 and will be effective on January 1, 2012.
The amended Act provides additional details as to what security breach notifications must contain. Previously, the Act required entities to notify affected individuals that a breach had occurred, but it did not specify what the notification should include.
• A statement that the individual can obtain information from these sources about fraud alerts and security freezes.
The amended Act will apply security breach notification requirements to any data collector that maintains or stores computerized data. The current version of the Act does not apply to data collectors that merely stored data for others. Moreover, service providers will be required to cooperate with data owners or licensees in regard to the breach.
• Electronic media or other non-paper media containing personal information may be destroyed or erased so that personal information cannot practicably be read or reconstructed.
Any person, entity, or third-party is subject to a civil penalty of $100 (capped at $50,000) per individual whose personal information was not disposed of properly, and the attorney general may bring a civil suit to impose a penalty.
Text of Public Act No. 483 appears here. The current version of the Illinois Personal Information Protection Act is reported at CCH Privacy Law in Marketing ¶31,300.
A claim by table grape producers in California that the state's table grape commission violated federal antitrust law through a scheme involving the bad faith licensing and enforcement of alleged patent rights on grape varieties was properly dismissed for failure to identify a valid relevant product market, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. has ruled.
Dismissal of the producers’ Sherman Act, Sec. 2 claims (2009-1 Trade Cases ¶76,522) was affirmed.
The producers claimed that the relevant product market consisted of several distinct patented varieties of table grapes and that the existence of the plant patents limited the myriad other varieties of table grapes from being substitutes for the patented varieties in the worldwide markets.
The complaining producers could not rely on the naked assertion that non-infringing grape varieties were not an adequate substitute for a patented product, especially when it was undisputed that other vines possessed at least some of the relevant characteristics that defined that product, the court reasoned.
The grape producers needed—but failed—to make some allegation that, if proved, would define the market or submarket with reference to consumer demand for the product and consumer demand for its reasonable substitutes.
The aspects of an invention that may have led the Patent and Trademark Office to issue a patent were not per se coterminous with the features of the patented product that may lead consumers to select that product over other similar ones, the court concluded.
The decision is Delano Farms Co. v. The California Table Grape Commission, 2011-2 Trade Cases ¶77,578.
Under new legislation that will take effect next year, persons and entities doing business in California will be required to make additional disclosures in the event that the security of their computerized data systems are breached.
Existing law requires companies doing business in California to disclose data breaches involving the personal information of California residents.
The recent legislation (Senate Bill 24, Chapter 197) amended California Civil Code Sec. 1798.82, adding several specific requirements as to the form and substance of breach notifications. As amended, the statute requires breach notifications to be in plain language.
• The name and contact information of the notifying person or business.
• The types of personal information that were the subject of the breach.
• The date or estimated date of the breach.
• Whether notification was delayed as a result of a law enforcement investigation.
• A general description of the breach incident.
• The toll-free telephone numbers and addresses of the major credit reporting agencies, if the breach exposed California residents’ Social Security, driver's license, or identification card numbers.
• Information about what the notifying company has done to protect individuals whose information has been breached.
• Advice on steps that persons whose information has been breached may take to protect themselves.
In addition, if notification is made to more than 500 California residents as a result of a single breach of the security system, the notifying company must electronically submit a single sample copy of the notification, excluding any personally identifiable information, to the California Attorney General.
The legislation was signed by Governor Jerry Brown on August 31, 2011, and will take effect on January 1, 2012. Similar bills were vetoed by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009 and 2010.
The current version of the law appears at CCH Privacy Law in Marketing ¶30,500.
In the wake of the Department of Justice’s filing of an antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T Corp.’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA Inc. on August 31, mobile wireless carrier Sprint Nextel brought its own antitrust action today, seeking to prohibit the acquisition as a violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Act.
Sprint filed the lawsuit against AT&T Corp., AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA Inc., and Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile’s parent) in the federal district court in the District of Columbia as a related case to the Department of Justice’s lawsuit.
• Harm retail consumers and corporate customers by causing higher prices and less innovation.
• Entrench “duopoly control” by “Ma Bell” descendants AT&T and Verizon of the almost quarter of a trillion dollar wireless market.
• Injure Sprint and other independent wireless carriers.
According to Sprint, a combined AT&T and T-Mobile would control more than three-quarters of the wireless market and 90 percent of the profits. The combined companies would be able to use its control over backhaul, roaming, and spectrum and its increased market position to exclude competitors, raise their costs, restrict their access to handsets, damage their businesses, and ultimately less competition, Sprint charged.
According to last week’s Department of Justice complaint, the four nationwide providers of mobile wireless service—Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile—account for more than 90 percent of the national market. T-Mobile, the smallest of the four, has historically challenged the top three competitors by providing value, innovation, and aggressive pricing.
The elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low-priced alternative rival would therefore “remove a significant competitive force from the market” and “substantially reduce competition,” the Justice Department claimed.
On August 31, Sprint issued a statement supporting the Department of Justice lawsuit, but did not hint that it was considering filing an action of its own.
A news release on Sprint’s filing of today’s action appears here.
Further information about the Justice Department’s lawsuit appears here in an August 31 posting on Trade Regulation Talk.
Labels: mergers and acquisitions, mobile wireless service, Sprint Nextel v. AT and T Corp., T-Mobile USA Inc., U.S. v. AT and T Corp.
the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has ruled.
A complaining hospital contended that the regulations prevented it from providing the procedures, known as elective percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), on a nonemergency basis.
Judgment in favor of the Washington State Department of Health on the hospital’s antitrust claim (2010-2 Trade Cases ¶77,294) was upheld.
The PCI regulations were a unilateral restraint of trade not subject to preemption, the court held. The regulations were complete upon enactment, and did not delegate any regulatory power to incumbent licensees.
The court rejected the hospital’s argument that the PCI regulations granted regulatory power to incumbent licensees by calculating the need for a new certificate based in part on the number of PCI procedures they perform, thereby allowing the incumbent licensees to manipulate the number of PCIs they perform so as to exclude competing hospitals from the elective PCI market.
conduct. Absent a hybrid restraint or other per se violation of the antitrust laws, there was no preemption.
The decision in Yakima Valley Memorial Hosp. v. Washington State Dept. of Health will appear in CCH Trade Regulation Reporter.
A permanent injunction and nearly $2 million monetary judgment entered against the marketers of two purported weight loss products—a "Chinese Diet Tea" and the "Bio-Slim Patch"—for engaging in deceptive advertising prohibited by the FTC Act were proper, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City has ruled.
The federal district court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, did not exceed its authority in awarding monetary relief, and it committed no error in calculating the award or ordering the marketers to disgorge the full proceeds from their sale of the products, the appellate court said. The judgment of the lower court (2009-2 Trade Cases ¶76,840) was affirmed.
The statute on which the district court’s jurisdiction was based—Sec. 13(b) of the FTC Act—empowered the court to award ancillary equitable remedies, including equitable monetary relief such as disgorgement of wrongfully obtained funds, in the appellate court’s view.
That the marketers’ funds were wrongfully obtained was not in question, as the marketers had conceded liability with respect to the marketing of both products. There was no evidence that any of the marketers’ gains were "just" gains because the products in no instance worked as advertised, the court noted.
By authorizing courts to issue injunctive relief, Sec. 13(b) invoked the equitable jurisdiction of the court. A money judgment was thus permitted as a form of ancillary relief because, once its equitable jurisdiction had been invoked, the court had "the power to decide all relevant matters in dispute and to award complete relief."
An argument that the express provision of FTC Act Sec. 19 for monetary damage limited Sec. 13(b) to its explicit terms was rejected. The statute made clear that nothing within Sec. 19 affected the authority of the FTC under any other provision of law, the court observed.
The marketers were not entitled to a reduction of the monetary award on account of bounced checks, credit card chargebacks, or other expenses. Their incomplete records did not allow them to calculate the losses from bounced checks and chargebacks that could be attributed to the two products at issue, only the losses across their entire line of products, which numbered more than 60.
The district court’s refusal to apply a loss estimate equal to the two products’ share of the marketers overall share was within its discretion, in the appellate court’s view.
The district court’s monetary award was not an impermissible legal—rather than equitable—award, the appellate court also held. The lower court’s failure to identify particular funds in the defendants’ hands that were specifically traceable to the fraudulently marketed products did not force the court "to conform its award to the ancient remedy of constructive trust" or limit its judgment to the profits generated by the two products at issue.
Where the basis of a claim was a violation of the FTC Act, the court had to determine only that the nature of the underlying remedies sought was historically equitable.
The substance of the monetary judgment comported with the equitable remedy of disgorgement, the appellate court concluded. Disgorgement did not require a district court to apply equitable tracing rules to identify specific funds subject to return.
The decision is Federal Trade Commission v. Bronson Partners, LLC, 2011-2 Trade Cases ¶77,574. | 2019-04-26T07:40:06Z | http://traderegulation.blogspot.com/2011/09/ |
Gabriel Quinn's cell phone rang and rang. When he finally picked it up, the voice on the other end of the line began speaking immediately, "Hi, Mr. Quinn? You're familiar with Miss Rachel Geist, correct? I'm her therapist Dr. Wintersgill. Sorry to bother you, but you're the first name on her emergency contacts list. I'm wondering if you've seen her recently?" The therapist asked, sounding worried, "She's missed two appointments with me this week, and my receptionist says she hasn't called to reschedule yet, and I can't reach her on her cell phone. Do you know anything about this?"
Gabe hadn't seen Rachel in about a week.
*Fzzzt* *FZZZT* Sparks flew from the welding torch in Rachel's hands as she bent close over her closet work table. A few of the sparks now and then came dangerously close to the carpeting on the floor, and the greasy work apron hanging from the wall to her left. She never noticed it, though. But even if she had, it was unlikely that she would have stopped working. The carpeting beneath her feet already had large patches missing from where she'd cut away charred pieces of carpet in the past, and she had a miniature chemical extinguisher strapped to her left forearm in case the apron caught fire. Again.
"Ooof!" Rachel leaned back and switched of the welding torch and leaned back placing a hand against her back. The stool she sat on wobbled a little as she readjusted her weight. She pushed the welding goggles of her eyes and rested them on her head. Here eyes had heavy bags beneath them from going days without sleeping. Her hair was tangled in the straps from the goggles, and her face was smeared with grease. In short, she was a wreck. A low rumble came from her stomach, reminding her she hadn't eaten in a while. Reaching over the table, she started scattering spent wrappers from Nutrigrain and Power Bars. She reached the bottom of the trash pile without discovering an unopened one, but she did discover her cell phone... which was in pieces. "Huh, forgot I cannibalized that thing for parts." She shrugged, reached to still the other side of the bench, grabbed a pair of tweezers, and a microchip that had been sitting loose on the table, and inserted it into the insides of the phone. Pressure sealing the front of the Droid X back on, she booted up the phone, then tossed it back into the pile of wrappers. Already forgetting she'd been hungry, she lifted the welding torch once more, dropped the goggles over her face, and went back to work.
"No, but I know her address; I'll go check on her and call you back."
The aforementioned Quinn roared up to the building he knew Rachel lived at, taking his hand off the throttle as the engine dulled to a purr. Turning the keys, he kicked down the kickstand and flipped the chain into his pocket, cupping his hand over his eyes as he looked up at the tall building.
Why do I get the feeling if I go up there, I'll find half the floors have been repurposed into a giant robot? Or maybe the whole building's been turned into a giant robot. Or maybe a bunch of buildings have been repurposed into one giant robot.
He sighed, massaging the point between his nose, and chided himself. Entering into the front hall, he walked up and hit the buzzer for Rachel's apartment, leaning on the wall beside the speaker while waiting.
Fortunately, the buzzer for her apartment was loud enough for her to hear over the sound of her welding. Though she reflected that may have been because of the 100dB loudspeaker she'd hooked up to it. Who the heck could that be? Don't they know what time it is? Rachel thought as she pushed the goggles back on top of her head. Might as well get it. This weld is good enough anyway. She placed the welding torch on the table, and shut it off.
Rachel walked around the corner in her tiny apartment, rubbing her tired eyes with one dingy hand and pressing the intercom button with the other, "Hello?" She croaked. Her voice was a little scratchy, "Who is it? Do you have any idea what time it is?"
Gabe did, in fact know what time it was: Noon.
Rachel looked over he shoulder to see a lone beam of sun shining through a gap in the curtains drawn over the window, "Wait... When did it get light out?" She asked without letting go of the intercom button, "Anyway, who is it? What do you want?"
An unexpected sigh of relief escaped from Push, and his shoulders lifted somewhat; he'd been a bit worried that she wouldn't have been there period.
"Got light out about four hours ago, it's noon. Heh. It's Tom, Tom Walker? From Lazarus Auto Repair? I've got those...uh...parts you wanted?"
"Tom... I don't..." Something in the back of her brain tugged at her memory. She suddenly realized who she was talking to. She jammed the intercom button again, "Oh the parts! Yea! Come on up, ...uh... Tom." Even as she buzzed him in, she couldn't think why he would be using one of his Aliases. Especially when she clearly knew who it was anyway.
While she waited for Gabe to climb the stairs, she retreated to the other room, and lifted Mac off the worktable where she'd spent the last few days working on him. She lifted an oiled rag from a nearby shelf and began polishing his chassis. "Oh, I love new toys. Can't wait to turn you on!"
Push took the stairs several at a time, fairly flying up them (he could've done that literally, but trying to be incognito...). As he hit her floor and walked down the hallway to her apartment, he caught a whiff of a very familiar scent that was both a balm and a distinct worry to him.
Oil. Engine grease. Electric burns, ozone? Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, what have you been working on?
Still, the scent and hearing her voice earlier cheered him up immensely, and he rapped at her door. For a few seconds, he wondered if some flowers would have been a good idea; then he heard the rustling and clanking from inside and scratched the thought off.
"Just a sec!" Came the muffled reply through the door. Quickly, Rachel tucked Mac's chassis under one arm and made her way to the door of her apartment. She gingerly stepped over much of the accumulated clutter. Luckily, there was the odd spot here and there where she could still actually see the floor.
Gabe heard a small crash, followed by a "Whoops! I'm okay!" then the door opened. It only opened an inch or two at first before stopping, "Uhh, hold on." There were some sounds of various bits of debris being scattered and pushed away from the door. Then the door opened a little more to the halfway point. "Come on in, sorry about the mess. Haven't really had time to clean. Been working." She paused to blink a few times, "Man, never really realize how tired you are until you put the tools down. Oh well." She shook her head in an attempt to rouse herself, "Check it out!" She held Mac out in front of her for Gabe to see, "Massive modifications. He works much better now! I hope, that is. Haven't actually turned him on yet, so I guess violent explosions are still possible if his motherboard fails to post at the propper time, but hey, that's what experiments are for, right?" Despite her drained, exhausted features, she still managed to look intensely excited.
Push blinked, looking at the small robot thrust into his face. Then he looked at the clutter. Then he looked at Rachel. Then he facepalmed. The kineticist could feel a headache begin to build behind his eyes, and, not for the last time today, wished he had a cup of cocoa in his hand.
"Uh...Rache...when did you start working on MAC?"
Rachel shot him a sheepish smile, pulling the robot back. She knew that look well enough. She lifted a panel on Mac's chassis and typed in a code on a hidden pad, powering the robot up. "We-he-helllll! Mac 2.0! Mk II! The 2nd! And other such titles is online!" The robot lifted up into the air.
"Mac," She first addressed the robot, but supplied Gabe with an aside, "Personality chip's installed, can you tell?" She was beaming.
Mac ignored her, rolling right into further introductions, "Hey there, Rachie! Glad to be back online!" A miniature spindly arm extended from the robot's side, and gave her a brotherly slug in the shoulder.
"Thanks for the upgrades. I feel great! And Gabe! Good to see ya again, 'ol buddy, 'ol pal!" The robot extended a hand like he was looking for a shake.
Rachel could see that wasn't likely to go over well, from the way he was massaging his head. "Mac!"
"Coffee. Cocoa. Now, please." She motioned with her hands like she was shooing him away.
"Sorry. Wait, why am I apolgizing! He's great, isn't he?" She gave Gabe a big hug, oblivious of the fact that she was filthy.
"Um yesterday. Wait, sun's up again, so I guess it's the day before that. It is still Thursday, right?" It was Saturday.
"Rachel, do you want two sugars or one?" Mac called from the other room.
Now it was Rachel's turn to facepalm, "Stop interrupting, Mac! You know how I like my coffee. I programmed that into you!" She turned back to Gabe, "Yea, I'm going with day before yesterday." she nodded confidently.
He mulled over MAC's new, more effusive personality; for a sec he pondered giving it a good whack upside the capacitor, but that'd have probably made Rachel a bit Blue. He mentally kicked himself for that pun, and returned to the task at hand. Which, at this point, looked like it would consist of a) helping her clean up the joint, getting her into a shower or bath, as much as he didn't mind the smell, no doubt it'd start seeping into the other apartments soon, and c) making damn sure she got some sleep. Tact warred with bluntness as he pondered how to tell her. Bluntness won.
"...Ok, I'm not sure how to word this, so I'll tell you straight. It's Saturday, you look like nine shades of hell, your apartment looks like a tornado hit it...make that a hurricane, and..." He sighed and hugged tighter, resisting the urge to throttle his girlfriend for making him and her therapist panic like that. "Rachel, Rachel, Rachel....what am I going to do with you."
"Saturday?!" She pulled away and scrutinized her boyfriend, holding him at arms length. "But it was just... You're kidding, right?" Her brain went to work at lightning speed, studying his face and expression. No small creases, no strange anomalies in muscle behavior, nope he was telling the truth.
"Oh god you're serious." She quickly dashed into her work room, and tore through the pile of wrappers, seizing her phone, "Twenty Three missed calls? Sixteen from my therapist? God." She poked her head around the door, "She called you, didn't she. Oh god. I'm sorry. I should have told you I put you down as an emergency contact, but I just figured... Oh man." Rachel suddenly looked very tired.
"It's easier when you're working, you know?" She held a hand against her head and moved to sit down on her bed, half squishing a spiral bound notebook, and not even noticing. "It's like a drug, you know? Amphetamines or something. Drives you to keep going because you know you're doing something."
Rachel, looked up at Gabe, her face showed that she wasn't just tired, she was upset. Truthfully, she felt sick, but she wasn't sure why. "Well?" she asked shakily, crossing her arms around herself and grabbing at the sides of her shirt, "What are you going to do with me?" She couldn't look at him any longer, turning her head away, she hung it slightly in shame.
Mac was happily going about his assigned business. He couldn't believe how good it felt to finally be awake. He could remember how just days ago he could barely tell the difference between one of the arms extending from his chassis and an external object. Hell, even the concept of 'arm' was new to him. Just days ago he'd known it only as a manipulator. He hummed softly as he fixed the two drinks for his guests. Helping Rachel made him the happiest little robot on the block. But this other joker she was with was a different story... Mac looked down at the perfectly made coffee, and the hot chocolate which hadn't even been fully mixed. If he had shoulders he would have shrugged. He lifted both of the cups and zoomed out into Rachel's bedroom.
Mac saw Rachel looking like a dog with it's tail between it's legs and gasped. He nearly dropped the two cups but managed to save them (the jostling also managed to mix the hot chocolate sufficiently he didn't fail to note with even more displeasure). Setting the cups on a nearby counter, he zoomed over beside her. Looking between Rachel and Gabe, he asked scathingly, "What did you say to her?"
"Maaaac." Rachel whined slightly, shaking her head and giving him a pleading look. "Please, not now."
"Fine." He huffed, "Your drinks are ready. I'll just be in the other room. Cleaning, I guess." He disappeared around the corner into the workroom. Neither of them noticed when he peeked out around the corner again with his shiny new cloaking device active.
And the headache was steadily starting to get worse. The kineticist hissed between his teeth, rubbing his temples for a moment as he got his thoughts in order. So right now, he had a new floating robot with a wiseguy personality and jealousy issues, and a girlfriend whose expression and posture would have made anyone think he'd just kicked her puppy. With a steel-toed boot. Into a bottomless pit.
"Just...go have a shower, alright? You'll feel better once you're a bit cleaner; Mac and I'll handle the mess."
Silently, Rachel nodded. She rose, and extracted a towel from a pile of other sundries near the bed. Dusting it off, she made her way toward the bathroom. Before she shut the door, she poked her head out, "Gabe? Thanks for coming." and added in a wan smile.
Mac heard the door shut, retreated to the work room uncloaked himself and shoveled the energy bar wrappers into a nearby trash can. It was a small trash can so it was already nearly full. He Went to lift it, and it didn't budge. Apparently, even a small trash can was beyond his ability to move. That was something he'd have to speak to Rachel about the next time she made some upgrades.
He flew around the corner, nearly bumping into Gabe, "Oh, hi!" Mac piped up, not bother to hide the snark entirely, "You're strong, right? Probably why she likes you. Anyway, come help me move this trash can. My hydraulics haven't been upgraded just yet, so it's a little outside my capabilities yet."
A little bit of energy, and the little robot found itself being lifted up and over, but not by it's engines. With a mischevious grin, Push made a look of faux-embarassment before chucking and hefting the trash can, hauling it into the living room.
"Hehe, sorry dude; misheard you, thought you said tin can."
Push tugged his bandanna out of his pocket (a backup in case heroics were neccessary; he couldn't wear his scarf 24/7), and wrapped it around the top of his head before rolling up his sleeves. After taking stock of the room, he cracked his knuckles and started separating cans from wrappers, stacking old coffee cups on the nearest table.
"So, she was working on you all week, huh? What's it like, waking up and finding yourself, all...well..." He motioned to the now shinier MAC chassis, tilting his head. "Upgraded? Personality and everything?"
"I beg your pardon? What do you mean tin can?" It mimicked a famous robot from film making. The little robot obviously shared Rachel's love for Science Fiction pop culture.
Mac begrudgingly thanked Gabe for moving the can, then replied to his question, "Picture yourself riding a moped over a one lane bridge through a fog. Then suddenly, the fog ends, the bridge expands to five lanes, and you're riding the newest Kawasaki." If a Robot could look wistful, Mac did a pretty good job of it. "It's like true freedom. Enlightenment. I... You probably wouldn't understand."
Mac turned to go back to work, but cast a sideways glance a Gabe. Gabe could have sworn he saw the visual receptors in Mac's chassis narrow slightly with suspicion, "You know, for a mechanic, you certainly seem to do a lot of thinking." He once again quoted C-3PO. "Come on, we're supposed to be working."
"...Greeeat, now I don't just have a jealous robot, I have a jealous witty robot." Push murmured under his breath, finishing up with the paper plates and cups. The kineticist rubbed his forehead, shifting to clear off the coffee table of assorted detritus. He pondered for a brief period Rachel's week of work-work-work, wondering how to approach the subject when she got back. Verbally lambasting her for it would be a bit hypocritical, as he'd pulled similar stunts doing research on occult subjects or cases while chasing Scratch, or working on a single car three days in a row.
"So, she stick anything in you besides the personality? Tools, weaponry, new scanners, that kind of thing?"
"Oh yea." Mac responded in the most suggestive tone of voice he could muster. "She was taking my paneling off all night, baby." Gabe could have sworn he even heard the robot giggling. Though it may have just been a whirring servo or something.
Mac activated one of his new systems and a little vid screen popped up on the visor's display. Mac made his way around the room, and turned in a circle. Gabe could see everything through the robot's perspective. Though it only took up a small portion of the screens displayed in front of his face. The rest were still able to display other sensory input required to remain aware of one's surroundings.
Rachel laid her head against the tile wall of the shower briefly. She was tired. How many days had she worked. Three? Five? Does it matter? Of course it does, She groaned slightly, and pushed her wet, tangled hair out of her eyes and back over her shoulders, What are you doing? Blue? Gabe probably hates you for being such a shut in. I mean, sure he's a gear head, but he's constantly having to worry about you. That's not healthy. You've got to stop putting him through this, Blue. Why am I doing that? I keep thinking of myself as Blueshift. She realized. She paused in the middle of lathering her hair with shampoo for the third time in her vain attempts to get the grease out. do I really think Rachel's not capable of doing this stuff? I have to rely on my 'other personality' for it? She scrubbed even more furiously.
She sputtered a little as she rinsed her hair. A few salty tears ran down her face amidst the suds from her hair. She was thankful that the noise of the shower obscured any sounds or sobs she might have been making. Why? Why am I such a problem? I'm supposed to help people. Why is it that I'm always the one that needs the help?
Push rolled his eyes, then looked askance at the visor. Taking a moment to consider it, he got up with a groan and walked over, taking it and sliding it over the top of his head.
The kineticist tilted his head as he watched MAC's progress, and he lifted up the visor with an approving whistle, leaving it on his head somewhat absently and returning to cleaning.
"Damn, she really broke the mold when she made you, shorty."
He hefted a newly-filled bag of garbage and hucked it into the corner, opening another one and beginning to toss more paper plates, wrappers, and plastic cups into it. He stayed awfully quiet while he and the little UAV worked, but eventually Gabe spoke up again, this time more thoughtfully.
"...Mac, do you think Rache's been overworking herself lately?"
"Hey, I may be a shorty..." Mac responded to the comment, as he folded his spindly little arms in front of him, and rose nearly to the ceiling and looked down at Gabe, "But at least I'm taller than you are." Satisfied that he'd won that exchange, even if he did get a dismissive head-shake from Gabe, he returned to his normal elevation. "But... I think that was a compliment, as far as you're able to articulate one, so thanks."
Mac gently lifted the headgear from Gabe's head. "Have to be careful with this. It's kind of delicate, and it's not yours. So we'll just put it over here for now." Mac returned it to the workbench from whence it came. He set it down, floated back, and seemed to be considering it, even propping one of his arms against the front of his chassis like he'd be rubbing his chin. He turned it slightly, and shifted back about an inch or so. "There, I think that's where it was."
Mac turned toward Gabe, and remarkably said nothing. The little robot seemed to be considering exactly what he was seeing. Perhaps he was trying to judge why Gabe had asked the question. When he finally did speak, his voice had more of a tone of respect in it than usual. "I can't say. She's been like this as long as I've known her. I'm her exciting new project. Of course she's going to obsess over me." There seemed to be a pang of regret or disappointment in those words, as if Mac suspected that once he was no longer the invention of the week, he'd suddenly be left to rust due to lack of attention.
Mac seemed upset, the lights that pulsed when he spoke dimmed to a more dull shade of blue, but he continued speaking regardless. "That said, yes. I honestly think she is. But what do I know? I'm just a little robot with a direct link to her brain. That's the way she is, Gabe. She works this hard because she doesn't know how not to. The medications she takes sure doesn't help that, but in a way, it's the lesser of two evils. A few seconds of downtime, and well, you know how she gets. More importantly," Mac zipped toward Gabe, and hovered directly in front of him, Gabe received a stern poke with a spindly arm in the chest, "What do you think?"
"Hoo. You were right, Gabe. That does feel better." Rachel stood in the doorway to the bathroom tousling her hair with a towel. She had another towel wrapped around her body. Walking toward the dresser next to her bed, she pulled out a pair of underwear and slipped it up underneath the towel. Facing the wall, and discarding the towel, she retrieved a bra and slipped into it, and clasped it with practiced ease.
Beside Gabe, a small hatch on the back of Mac's chassis opened, and a small burst of steam was let off, the lights on his front pulsed a vibrant orange for a second before turning to it's normal bright baby blue.
"Wow, you guys did a good job," She complimented after drawing a pair of black mesh shorts out of a drawer. She turned to face them as she stepped into it. She threw a thin tank top over herself and approached the two of them, "Thanks, honey," She kissed Gabe on the cheek, and he got a better look at her. She looked refreshed, but still as worn out as a three toed sloth that had missed a day or two of consecutive naps. "What are you guys talking about?"
While Rachel's back was turned, Push reached out almost absently and whacked MAC, closing the panel and sending him looping in midair for a bit. Of course, he didn't take his eyes off her for a second himself, but that finer detail somewhat escaped his rather short-circuited head. When she kissed him on the cheek, it functioned as an abrupt reboot, and he flushed a bit, rubbing the back of his head.
"Oh, nothing in particular. Small argument over Asimov's laws, and I know I gotta introduce him to H. Beam Piper sometime, but other than that...well, you've done a heck of a job on him."
He gave her a hug, resting his chin on her shoulder, and took in the scent of the soap for a sec. After a moment, he pulled his head back and tilted it to the side, taking in her disheveled appearance and the distinct look of a sleep-deprived gearhead; a look he knew all too well indeed.
"Guessing this isn't the first time this's happened?"
Rachel gave a morose shake of her head. She almost looked ashamed. She felt ashamed that she felt ashamed, "No. Happens all the time. Well, not all the time. Enough that it's not healthy though."
Rachel rested her head on Gabe's shoulder. "You know how devoted I am to my projects. Some of the medications I take... They get my mind off the bad things. But they act like they're diverting a river. Not damming it."
She lifted her head again. She tugged at the knot in his bandanna, loosening it, and letting it fall from his face. She wanted to look at him, not his mask. "Don't take this the wrong way or anything. But when you're not around, my brain automatically channels all that focus elsewhere. I'm not good at picking where though. You've been a great help. You've taught me that all the ... um ... stalking (I guess?) that I do isn't healthy. So I've cut that out. But sometimes I just can't help where I direct myself. That's why I need you around, Gabe, you-"
"Rache? Gabe?" Mac interrupted, flying out from the work room, "Hate to interrupt, but your lab apron's on fire again, and I'm not strong enough to lift the-"
"@#$%!!!" Rachel quickly disengaged Gabe, and disappeared into the glorified closet-workroom.
"Fire extinguisher. Anywho!" Mac turned to Gabe, "Where were we? Oh yea!" Mac zipped closer to Gabe, and muttered just under the roar of the fire extinguisher from the other room, so only Gabe could hear him, "She likes you. She needs you. Whether or not either of you know it. So don't you hurt her." The LED's on the little robot's chassis suddenly glowed a deep red, "Because if you do, I swear on Asimov's grave, three laws or no, that I will find some way of making you regret it." Mac didn't wait for an answer. He quickly zipped to another part of the room.
Before Gabe could even react to what had just happened, Rachel poked her head around the door of the workroom. "It's out! Nothing to worry about! Got it before it got to the alarms too." Mac cheered her, all blue and glowy. "Just gonna clean up..." She disappeared behind the door frame again.
The little robot raised one of it's arms, pointed to it's visual receptors with two of the fingers, turned the hand pointed at Gabe with one finger, then pointed back at it's visual receptors with two again. It was unmistakably a stern, "I'm watching you," gesture.
Push sat down in the nearest chair, massaging his temples. A slightly manic female inventor with just a tiny bit of co-dependency issues, a jealous tin can UAV who looked like a Roomba with arms, and more than likely had hidden weapons somewhere in there, and the onset of what could only be a mammoth migraine. Letting his hands drop, he flopped back on the seat, counting ceiling tiles for a few seconds.
"...I really could use a sandwich right about now."
Sighing, he pushed himself out of the chair and started cleaning again, working fast despite the mess (call it years as a dedicated bachelor). By the time he was finished, the bandanna on his head was a tad sweaty, and the kineticist was willing to bet it'd take several showers before he could get the lemony fresh scent of that carpet cleaner out of his clothes. Stretching to the point where his back cracked, he trundled into the kitchen and started ruffling through the pantry and fridge, assembling ingredients. Soup and sandwiches for lunch. She'd probably had her fill of takeout by now, so a home-cooked meal'd do wonders...although finding workable ingredients amidst the truly prodigious amount of insta-meals and ramen was a battle in and of itself.
Push was finally able to assemble some moderately normal food. He came across the last few pieces of a loaf of bread frozen in the freezer. They'd have to thaw, but they'd do. Their sandwich spreads seemed limited to non-brand name, non-fat mayo, half a jar of Branston Pickle, and Nutella (of which there were significantly more jars). When he asked about ingredients for making a soup, he heard Rachel call back from the other room. "Probably won't find much. Why actually make soup when Ramen is so cheap. I have a bunch of flavors if you don't like plain chicken stock." She continued to clean, unaware that her answer would not likely satisfy him.
Push did eventually finds some celery sticks and miniature carrots in the refrigerator as well. Though he wasn't quite sure what he could make with the hodgepodge of ingredients he'd turned up. One last cabinet revealed about 8 boxes of crackers. There were many different types ranging from Wheat Thins to Ritz. In response to his somewhat stunned look, Mac supplied, "Well, Nutella and crackers is one of her favorite snacks." He tried to sound encouraging. | 2019-04-23T14:23:49Z | https://www.freedomplaybypost.com/topic/5129-shut-in-ic/ |
Something was using all of my upstream bandwidth, wasn’t sure what device or who it was (had friends over). To get to the bottom of it quickly, a simple command can be run from the DD-WRT web-based gui that will show all network connections on your DD-WRT router.
1. Login to your router’s web interface.
2. Click the “Administration” tab, and then click the “Commands” tab.
4. Click the “Run Commands” button below where you entered the command above.
Now the key to tracking down the offending user/device is to look for a source IP (almost always a non-routable IP, like 192.168.1.x, 10.10.10.x or whatever) that shows up a LOT more often than other non-routable IP’s.
Once you’ve found that IP, go to the “Status” tab in the DD-WRT web interface, click “LAN”, find the IP that you suspected was the culprit from above and make a note of the MAC address associated with that IP.
Longren.io will be unavailable for possibly up to 48 hours. As soon as I’ve published this post, I’ll be updating my nameservers to point to Cloudbric, almost feels like cheating on Cloudflare, they’ve been very good to me.
I’ve been using Cloudflare for quite a while, nearly since it became available to the public. I love them and all the services they provide, especially with a Pro (or Enterprise) account. Cloudflare costs money though (if you want certain added protections), and many smaller websites don’t use a lot of bandwidth and aren’t provided the protections they should receive with Cloudflare.
Cloudbric aims to solve that by providing all the features Cloudflare provides (from what I’ve been told at least) for free as long as your site doesn’t use more than 4GB of bandwidth per month. I only have a few Pro sites with Cloudflare (longren.io being one of them), but am trying to cut back on the number of online services I pay for monthly, so this makes sense on a financial level if nothing else.
I’d never heard of Cloudbric until they got in touch with me via direct message on Twitter and introduced me to their services. They appear to provide everything that Cloudflare’s Enterprise service provides, glad they saw one of my tweets praising Cloudflare and decided to get in touch.
Cloudbric has been around for a while (15 years or so I believe) and I talked to one of their reps quite a bit about how what they provide is better than Cloudflare (other than the usage based cost, of course).
1. Unlike other website protection services including Cloudflare, Cloudbric provides full-coverage website protection. Even though Web Application Firewall (WAF) and DDoS Protection features are crucial for website protection, these options cost at least $200/month from Cloudflare. Cloudflare’s free plan does not protect web application layer 3, 4, and 7, which makes it pointless.
2. Our usage-based plan, rather than options plan, allows even free users to enjoy the most comprehensive security service. There are no charges for extra add-ons or features for more security. Users can enjoy all the features for FREE up to 4GB of traffic monthly.
Here’s a handy table from the Cloudbric website showing a feature comparison with similar providers like Cloudflare, Sitelock, and Incapsula.
Figured I’d try it out on this site as it gets the most traffic out of my personal sites, and if everything’s cool, I’ll eventually be moving all clients over to Cloudbric. Just wish they had a way to import existing DNS records, some of my domain names have at least 50 sub-domains.
Longren.io subscribers will get this post via email, but longren.io could be down for up to 48 hours while stuff updates. I’ll update this post or maybe write a new one after I’ve used Cloudbric for a few days. You should at least check them out, especially if you’re using Cloudflare for a site that doesn’t get enough traffic to make it worth paying for.
I really don’t want to leave Cloudflare, but if Cloudbric stacks up, I’m afraid I’ll have to.
Update: After updating nameservers for longren.io to Cloudbric, an SSL issue was found. I went back to Cloudflare immediately, and within about an hour Cloudbric’s engineering team had a solution worked out. It sounds like they’ll be rolling the fix out on Monday June 29. So until then, longren.io will be on Cloudflare. I’ll post info about the issue in detail after Cloudbric has officially announced it or made the fix active.
Keybase.io is quite simple, basically a web interface and command line client that makes PGP more user-friendly. At the same time, it makes it easy to get someones public key, and know it’s the correct key.
Keybase.io allows you to encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify messages to other keybase.io users. The Keybase.io homepage has an excellent description on the inner workings and how to make use of the command line client.
You can find me on Keybase.io at https://keybase.io/tlongren/.
Keybase.io is also a Keybase client, however certain crypto actions (signing and decrypting) are limited to users who store client-encrypted copies of their private keys on the server, an optional feature we didn’t mention above.
Keybase.io has it’s issues, though. Liz Denys makes very good points in her Refusing To Verify Myself post.
And back in March 2014, Evan Johnson discovered very serious vulnerability in Keybase.io. You can read more about it, along with examples and why it was so major, in his blog post.
There’s still serious debate that’s somewhat related to Evan’s discovery. An issue on GitHub is still open while the Keybase.io folks consider their options and best course of action.
Everything has it’s flaws, though. So for me, Keybase.io is an easy way for me to communicate securely with those I need to do so with. I’ll likely continue using it, but need more people I communicate with frequently to be members.
I do have invites for Keybase.io. I’ll only send them to people I know. If you’re a regular here, a client of mine, or old online friend, you qualify. Real world friends and family obviously qualify.
Just ask in the comments below.
I don’t allow password logins on any of my servers. Can only login via SSH key based authentication. No root login is allowed, and I specify every user that’s allowed to login via SSH, ie: me.
If you’re a regular here, you know I love DigitalOcean. They have a very nice tutorial on setting up SSH private key login, even walking you through creating SSH keys if you don’t already have one, and even adding that key to your DigitalOcean account.
None of that will be of interest to you if you already know how to generate SSH keys.
I’ll SSH into my new Droplet, only to be rejected. I immediately know why, because it’s happened so many times. It’s due to incorrect permissions on your Droplet, VPS, server, whatever.
Run that, and then try logging in via SSH to your Droplet from your local machine. Should go this time.
If you still can’t login to your remote system, something else is likely wrong. If that’s the case, you’ll want to start at the top of the DigitalOcean post about setting up SSH private key authentication and just follow the steps.
Do you allow password logins over SSH?
If you do allow password logins, I’d love to hear what scenario causes you to need to allow password logins. Let me know in the comments if you don’t mind.
I like BitTorrent a LOT. I’ve used it since it’s release around 2001 or 2002. Recently, however, it’s become more risky to download torrents from your home internet connection.
A number of my friends have received copyright infringement notices from their ISP’s for downloading a movie, music album, or any copyrighted material, for that matter. Most ISP’s will terminate your service if you continue to infringe.
When you download a torrent to your computer, and you aren’t using a VPN, your IP address will be reported to the BitTorrent tracker (that’s just how BitTorrent works). Various groups (including anti-piracy groups) can gather IP addresses of people downloading any given torrent, so having your ISP provided IP show up there could result with you receiving a copyright infringement notice.
That’s where having a VPN comes into play. If you’re connected to a VPN while downloading a torrent on your computer, the IP address of the VPN server will be reported to the BitTorrent tracker, instead of your ISP provided IP.
You have a few options that offer various levels of protection, depending on how much money you want to spend, or how paranoid you are. 🙂 Three pretty simple options are detailed below. These methods aren’t guaranteed to keep you safe, but should be sufficient for most “casual” pirates. You’re still at risk using these methods, please read the clarification on protection part at the end of this post.
I’ve referred to this as a poor mans VPN in the past. Basically, get a VPS from a hosting company, like DigitalOcean (referral link). You can get a VPS from DigitalOcean for just $5/month.
Once you have the VPS, just follow the steps I outlined in my Poor Man’s VPN post and you’ll be all set.
A good way to hide the IP provided by your ISP is to use a VPN. There are many paid VPN services available, like IPVanish and ExpressVPN. I know a few folks who use IPVanish and are very happy with the service.
I’ve been using Put.io for around a year now and will never go back to running a BitTorrent client on any of my machines. Put.io is a cloud-based BitTorrent client, plus much more.
Put.io was a no-brainer for me, as it’d free me of the need to download files directly to my computer. The unofficial Put.io Android app from Steven Schoen supports streaming to Chromecast, which sealed the deal for me.
That means I can stream videos straight from Put.io to my Chromecast, without the need to ever download them to my computer. I’ve often explained it to friends as a sort of personal Netflix.
Put.io also has a feature that will download your torrent immediately. If another Put.io user has already downloaded the torrent you’re downloading, the files will be copied to your account, so you never even connect to the BitTorrent tracker to download data. It’s pretty awesome.
Another benefit of Put.io is that it frees up your home internet connection bandwidth, all the downloading and seeding is done on the Put.io network. This means you’d no longer have to waste your bandwidth to seed the torrents you’ve downloaded. This is a major factor for some people, especially those who don’t have very fast upload speeds at home (like me).
There’s also a pretty active group of third-party developers who make various apps and extensions for Put.io. Steven Schoen is one such example. He’s been updating his Put.io Android client quite frequently, and recently implemented Google’s Material Design into the app. And it looks amazing.
I’m surprised that Put.io hasn’t tried to hire Steven Schoen to bring his app under the Put.io umbrella, making it an official Android client. Maybe the have, who knows.
A couple screenshots from the Put.io Android app are below.
So, which method should I use?
If you have a Chromecast and an Android device, I’d suggest using Put.io. It’s a nice all-in-one solution, and plans start at only $9.99 a month, which gets you 50GB of storage. I have yet to find a Put.io iOS client that has Chromecast support, however there are Put.io clients for iOS, just not with Chromecast support.
Even if you don’t have a Chromecast, or don’t have the ability to stream from a Put.io client to a Chromecast, you can still benefit from Put.io. After a torrent is finished downloading in Put.io, you can download the files from Put.io to your computer. Just like downloading a file from your Dropbox account using the Dropbox website.
If you want to download torrents to your computer using a more conventional BitTorrent client, like Transmission, I’d advise using a VPN. A paid VPN or the Poor Mans VPN setup will work.
Most paid VPN services have multiple VPN servers that you can connect to, so the IP being reported to the BitTorrent tracker can be changed pretty easily, just by connecting to a different VPN server. IPVanish has plans starting at $10/month and have hundreds of servers located around the world.
If you went the Poor Mans VPN route, changing your IP would be slightly more difficult because your VPS would likely have a static IP. But it’s still not your IP from your ISP. The BitTorrent tracker would see the IP address of your VPS instead of the IP provided by your ISP, giving you some level of protection. There’s still the possibility that a copyright holder could send a copyright infringement notice to your VPS host. Worst case there is you’d lose your VPS, which is far better than having your ISP terminate your internet service.
Just some things to take into consideration before you decide what the best solution is for you.
Especially if you have an Android device and a Chromecast. Even if you don’t have a Chromecast or Android device to stream to the Chromecast, you can still download the files from Put.io to your computer.
Do you use any method to obscure your IP from BitTorrent trakers?
A couple months ago, Put.io released a new interface to their website, which also implements aspects of Google Material Design. The new interface is still being built and tested, but can be previewed at http://soon.put.io/.
Here’s a screenshot of the new Put.io interface (it’s the featured image for this post, too).
And here’s a screenshot of the old Put.io interface, which is still the default.
The new interface is much easier to use than the old. It makes extensive use of AJAX, which makes for a much nicer user experience as far as not having to wait for a new page to load. It’s also much more visually appealing.
The new interface and the Put.io Android client from Steven Schoen look very similar to each other, providing a consistent look across the put.io website and the Android client. Not really important for functionality, but it’s nice to have a consistent look across the board for a specific service.
This post covered a lot of material and was written without much revising. If I’ve gotten something wrong, I’d really appreciate you letting me know.
If anyone knows of a Put.io client for iOS that supports Chromecast, please let me know! I’m an Android guy but my daughter has an iPad mini, and I’d love if she could cast from a Put.io client on her iPad to the Chromecast.
Comments are open if you have any questions or anything else to add.
The protection methods listed aren’t full proof, something I thought was quite obvious. All methods listed can lead to your IP address being discovered, but they all add an additional step that law enforcement must do to find your IP. Some scenarios that would result in your IP address being discovered are covered below.
Scenario 1. A law enforcement agency could demand user information from a VPN provider, which would reveal your identity if the VPN provider complied. Same deal with the Poor Man’s VPN solution. Law enforcement could request information from your VPS host, and if your VPS host complied, your identity would be revealed.
Scenario 2. A Law Enforcement agency could demand user info from Put.io, which would also reveal your identity, provided Put.io complies with the request. Put.io says they respect the privacy of their users, but there’s still absolutely no way to prove that they wouldn’t hand over user information if it was requested. However, I tend to trust Put.io more than most companies, simply because they’re not based in the United States and the owner is a genuinely good guy.
In both scenarios listed above, your home IP would be revealed. But why not make law enforcement jump through some hoops to get your IP? Instead of just handing it to them like you do when downloading a torrent from a public tracker without using a VPN.
If you’re uploading new movies to public trackers or are downloading massive amounts (think terabytes a month) of copyrighted material, none of the protection options I’ve outlined will offer you enough protection. Those of you who would draw the attention of anti-piracy groups who would get law enforcement involved should be able to figure out better ways to protect your identity. And that’s not something I care to cover. | 2019-04-25T01:57:31Z | https://www.longren.io/tag/security/ |
Have you been feeling a little sluggish lately? Do you constantly find yourself bombarded by the least healthy dietary options from all sides?
It sounds like you’re ripe for a body-purifying detox routine.
This doesn’t have to mean establishing a rigorous diet plan and starving yourself in the name of nutritional purity.
Sometimes, all you need to do is incorporate a couple of health-promoting ingredients into your existing eating habits.
These nature-derived body-chargers can help speed up the natural processes in your body and help you expel all those harmful toxins and pollutants that you’ve accumulated in your day-to-day life.
And to help you find out what these cleansing ingredients are, we have compiled a list of fruit, veggies, and spices that have unparalleled detoxifying properties.
Not only will they help you cleanse your organs, they might also make your meals more colorful and interesting.
We already know garlic is an essential ingredient in every delicious pasta, marinade or stir-fry.
However, did you know that garlic also possesses unrivaled body-purifying properties?
This pungent veggie can help promote the production of glutathione, a component which is capable of filtering out toxins from the digestive system, as well as the liver.
Garlic is also known for its anti-inflammatory properties, which can help relieve bacterial, fungal and viral health conditions.
And before you start heating up the oil to make your favorite garlic-infused sauce, you should probably know that garlic is best consumed raw.
To reap full benefits of this strong-tasting superfood, it’s advisable to take one clove a day, which you can crush and eat whole.
If you’re not too thrilled at the prospect of eating garlic on its own (and the resulting breath to boot!), you might want to invest in garlic capsules, a more elegant way of treating your body to this health-boosting superstar.
Ginger has been used for medicinal purposes for millennia.
And for good reason, too: this root plant is packed with all sorts nutrient that can help purify your body.
It holds powerful anti-inflammatory and anti-spasmodic properties, embodied in the substances such as gingerol and shoga. These can effectively kick-start your digestion processes, and subsequently help minimize the build up of toxins in the colon, liver and many other organs.
These digestive enzymes can also help reduce signs of constipation, bloating, diarrhea and gas.
Moreover, frequent consumption of ginger can also speed up your circulation, thus reducing the occurrence of blood clots.
On the more practical side, ginger can be prepared in a myriad of ways.
For a quick and easy approach, peel the ginger and cut it into ¼ inch-wide slices.
Stick the slices onto a skewer or a toothpick and soak them in hot water. Add a teaspoon of honey and a couple of drops of lemon and your soothing detox tea is all done.
For something a little more palate-enticing, grate a bit of ginger into your stir-fry. Not only will this make your meal healthier, it will also give it a spicy kick.
Kale is definitely having a moment in the world of health and fitness.
The wellness crowd’s fascination with this leafy green should come as no surprise.
After all, kale counts barely any calories, while it packs in a great amount of nutrients that can help cleanse your organs and energize your body.
These include vitamins K, A and C, but also a high concentration of potassium, iron and riboflavin.
All these goodies can be incredibly beneficial for minimizing inflammation, lowering cholesterol levels and cleansing your liver.
However, kale’s bitter taste and chewy texture make it somewhat challenging for preparation, especially for rookie cooks.
Luckily, you can easily neutralize kale’s strong tang by combining it with fruit, for example in a delicious smoothie. To give you some ideas, mix up a handful of kale with banana or mango and you’ve got yourself a healthy, body-boosting concoction.
Another fun way to introduce kale into your diet is by turning it into mouth-watering, moreish chips. Simply drizzle it with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and toss it into pre-heated oven for about 10-15 minutes.
The popularity of this tasty, good-for-you Central American fruit has become so ubiquitous, it ended up defining an entire generation.
And should this be surprising at all?
Not really, especially when you take into consideration all the ways in which avocado can be good for your health.
For one, avocado is laden with fats – the healthy kind – which are not only beneficial, but essential for any thought-out detox diet.
This fatty treat is also chock-full of agents that can help your organs in the production of glutathione, amino acid which is crucial for detoxifying your liver.
Other than their numerous health benefits, avocados are also extremely versatile when it comes to preparation.
The easiest way to incorporate them in your routine is to spread them across a slice of your favorite bread and drizzle with a few drops of balsamic vinegar.
Alternatively, add it to your favorite smoothie recipe for a more satisfying taste and fuller texture.
Green tea is one of the most buzzed-about ingredients when it comes to detoxifying routines and diets.
This all-powerful elixir, which has been consumed in Asia since the ancient times, is known for its high concentration of ingredients that can flush out the toxins from your body.
Among them are amino acids, alkaloids, chlorophyll and catechins, which are especially hailed for their detoxifying powers.
In real life terms, this means that regular consumption of green tea can benefit cardiovascular health, reduce digestive issues and stabilize blood sugar levels.
To maximize the health benefits of green tea, it is advised to drink it twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.
Sipping green tea in the morning will wake you up from slumber and energize your body for the day ahead. A cup of this beverage in the evening will help rid your body off all the impurities it accumulated over the day.
If you plan on treating your body to a detoxifying routine, then lemon should be an essential component of your diet.
This zesty fruit is loaded with phytonutrients, which have amazing antioxidant and antibiotic powers.
The citrusy goodness is also full of pectin, a dietary fiber which can improve your digestion. This component can also contribute to feeling of fullness, making lemon a great choice for diets geared towards weight loss.
As you probably already know, lemons are abundant in Vitamin C, which can be good for your body in many ways. For one, this nutrient is great for boosting immunity and battling free radicals.
Vitamin C can also help in the battle against premature signs of aging and hyperpigmentation, which usually affects mature skin.
The most straightforward way to incorporate lemon into your day-to-day routine is by squeezing it into a fresh glass of water.
Lemon water makes for a great pick-me-up drink, especially in the mornings.
It will kick-start your organism, but also make you feel refreshed and rejuvenated.
Everyone knows leafy greens should be your main weapon in the fight against body impurities and pollutants.
And one of the most nourishing green superstars is spinach, which contains a host of body-boosting goodies that can be incredibly potent in banishing all the harmful toxins that reside in your organs.
To begin with, spinach is a natural cleanser of the digestive system. Regular consumption of spinach, especially when it’s fresh, can boost the production of mucus which helps shield your stomach from damaging substances.
Moreover, spinach can also boost your nervous system, as the amino acids found in is leaves can contribute to longer life of neurons.
Spinach is at its most effective when consumed fresh. Due to its mild taste, it can be a great addition to any smoothie, especially when mixed with other heart-healthy fruits and veggies.
This lesser-known cousin of cabbage and broccoli has become one of the most hailed veggies in the world of health and wellness.
These bite-sized super-chargers are known for their high concentration of cancer-preventing components called glucosinolates.
Brussel sprouts can also help boost your digestion processes, which will consequently lower the levels of bad cholesterol in your blood.
Moreover, brussel sprouts can be cooked in a variety of ways and make for a great health-friendly substitute for pasta, bread and other processed carbs.
An easy way to cook your brussel sprouts is to sauté them over a couple of drops of olive oil and chopped garlic.
Alternatively, sprinkle them with chili seeds and roast them in the oven until crispy and flavorful.
Long since used for culinary and medicinal purposes in South Asia, turmeric is one of the go-to spices for a body detox.
This brightly colored spice, which is derived from a plant belonging to the ginger family, is also known as a powerful body-purifying agent.
The substance that gives turmeric its incredible healing properties (and the bright color) is called curcumin.
This component is known for its anti-inflammatory and antioxidative properties. Because of this, it can help in the battle against a host of health issues, including psoriasis, pancreatitis and inflammatory eye diseases, among others.
Fortunately, incorporating turmeric into your day-to-day meals should be as easy as peas.
You can sprinkle it over scrambled eggs in the morning, or make a healthy, turmeric-infused curry for dinner.
Alternatively, you can make turmeric tea by taking a tiny amount of the spice and mixing it with hot water and a spoonful of honey.
This super-charging green, which is abundant in the spring months, can be a great way to treat your body to a number of health-boosting nutrients.
Among them are folic acid, zinc, iron, but also vitamins A, C, K and E. Asparagus is also a natural diuretic, and it can also help the body absorb all the positive nutrients from other foods.
Not only is asparagus a champion among detox foods, it’s also a welcome addition to every plate.
For a healthy breakfast, you can combine a couple of asparagus stalks with scrambled eggs.
Alternatively, sauté them over olive oil and garlic for a body-charging lunch.
You can also roast your asparagus wrapped in thin slices of prosciutto to create a mouth-watering evening treat.
Hailing from Central and South America, chia seeds have taken the health-oriented world by storm.
These black, white and dark brown seeds are loaded with Omega-3 fatty acids, which make up a third of its composition.
Moreover, chia seeds are abundant in fiber and antioxidants, while they also contain high doses of magnesium, zinc, iron and calcium.
These components can greatly help in restoring your health, especially when it comes to cardiovascular issues, high blood sugar and digestion.
Moreover, chia seeds are characterized with a neutral taste, so they can be an energizing addition to pretty much any meal.
For example, you can add them to your oatmeal or smoothie in the morning for a more fuller taste.
For lunch, you can sprinkle them over salads and soups to give them an extra dose of crunchiness.
Finally, they can also be added to any pasta or rice-based dish, making it instantly more healthy and body-purifying.
If you’re on the market for a detoxifying snack, then look no further than stocking up your pantry with nuts.
These all-natural bites are crucial for replenishing your body with healthy fats in proteins for all those in-between meals purposes.
And almonds are one of the healthiest nuts.
Not only are almonds rich in fiber, protein and natural fats, they are also chock-full of Vitamin E, which is not only good news for your nails and hair, but also for your cardiovascular system.
Furthermore, almonds are a rich source of antioxidants, which can slow down body-aging processes and help prevent a host of medical issues.
And with this, we wrap up our list of some of the most raved about detox superfoods. Whichever of these ingredient(s) you choose to put on your plate, you can rest assured your body will be thanking you!
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104 Responses to "12 Foods to Detox Your Body"
Informative article. Thanks so much!
Thanks for sharing these fantastic superfoods.
I found this article highly informative and I will try to incorporate more of these foods and spices into my diet. I do eat avocados and brussels sprouts among other items, but I didn’t know how “healthy” they were. Thanks for sharing.
Incredible Information, thanks so much.
lots of good information here!!! I do like and eat /use most of these items.
I didn’t know all that info on ginger.
There are so many benefits to garlic.
Great article. We all know what is good for us but sometimes it is great to be reminded again. Your article was most informative and I am going to try very hard to incorporate this more into my diet.
Great article, detoxifying your body with food is very interesting I’ve always wanted to try it but just don’t have the willpower.
Thanks for the informative article !
I would love to try any of these Detox’s.
I love that I learn how to make everyday food work for me!
Thank You for sharing this fabulous article on a body-purifying detox routine. I am printing it out and will pass it on to my family and friends!
I love all your articles Ifind them veryhelpful I use must of the fruits and veggies but some I start using in my diet tomorrow. Thank again.
The is a fantastic list of superfoods!
Great article. I try to incorporate as many of these as possible in my daily routine!
I do have most of these although they are in recipes I use in my Nutribullet. I find I can drink them even if I don’t like the taste eating them!
Turmeric is great for joints and muscles. These are great dietary helpers.
Thanks for the superfoods info.
Wow, what a great list of ways to detox your body. There are some I already knew about and others I had no idea. It will be fun incorporating a lot of these in my diet. Thanks…..
This article was very informative. I am trying to incorporate all these foods into my daily diet. It’s taking me awhile but I’m getting into the habit of eating more nutritionally.
Great list of detoxing foods, thank you!
I love all of them, except for the brussel sprouts!
Love the ideas, already using some and will incorporate others into our lives. Thanks.
Great info, will definitely be trying to incorporate more of these in my diet.
I rarely think of using Turmeric. Love lemon water!!!
I eat all of these so should be very healthy.
Great post I started reading it and then stopped to get a pad so I could take notes. After that I’m going shopping. Thanks for all the information.
I’m trying to eat and drink the foods mentioned in he article. The products help detox our bodies. Detoxing our bodies of the impurities and harmful toxins encourages us to live a healthier lifestyle. It’s a Win, Win situation.
I love reading all of the beauty tips.
I seriously can’t wait to try this new cleanser. Everything in it I love to eat so putting them on my face will be an absolute healthy treat!
Interesting article. I need to up my game. I only eat 7 of these foods.
These sensitive skin products do what they say.
While so many people are so consumed with the skincare they use, they must equally be attentive to what they put in their body. Your skin is a reflection of how you treat your body overall. I love informative articles like this because I learn so much.
I love the fact that when you eat good your skin looks good.
This is wonderful, learned a lot, thank you.
the morning is drink a hot cup of green tea.
Love Orogold products- so luxurious and easy to apply.
If This product does what it says it does it would be well worth the money.
I loved reading about almond, I always knew they were good for me.
I had no idea about some of these. Thanks for the info.
Great that I have been eating most of these featured food all the time! Seems like I’m going on the right track!
I love Orogold facial cleanser.
Thank you for. This was a great, informative article.
This is helpful information, thank you!
A healthy way to live.
Fantastic article! I LOVE most of the foods listed here!
Thank you so much for this article. I have learned a lot. Love your products.
A lot of these are foods I eat daily! After reading I will be adding some others! Thanks!
I love all these vegetables and spices, the only one I have not had are the chia seeds.
Great to know! I love most of these and now I have an excuse to eat more!
These are a lot of great food for great health! Thanks for the info.
I am a garlic fanatic so it’s great to know how good it is for me!
This was very interesting and informative. I will be adding more of these to my diet.
I love avocados , I didn’t know that they where so good for me! Thank you for the info.
I do eat some of these but I wasn’t aware of the benefits of all of them. I will add more to my diet now that I know. Thanks for the great information.
I love asparagus, but didn’t know of all its benefits. Thanks for the information.
I like many of those foods but not all. I guess you have to acquire a taste for some of them.
I have been drinking green tea for about a year and a half. I make iced tea with it.
I love Asparagus! I cook it whenever I can. I also love Kale and Brussel Sprouts. These 3 greens are the best in my opinion.
Very informative and interesting. I enjoyed reading it.
I’m happy to see that all of the things listed are foods that I like.
Nice to know. Good info. Learned some new things.
A very informative and useful article for everyone! | 2019-04-19T12:28:35Z | http://orogoldschool.com/web/12-foods-detox-body/ |
Is print advertising dead? Do people still read magazines?
In today’s digitalized world it can be easy to assume that print advertising is dead. However, things are not as simple as they might seem at first glance.
Although the assumption provided above certainly has some grain of truth in it, stating that the print advertising is completely dead would be an exaggeration.
We still see ads in magazines and newspapers, don’t we? Well, that means print advertising is still alive and it still works.
Print media is staying afloat despite all the negative predictions and skepticism around it. Even more, in some spectrums, it remains the platform number one.
Well, let’s therefore dive a little deeper and see what research and data stand behind these bold statements.
It is not an exciting experience anymore to browse websites and surf the Internet as it used to be a couple of decades ago. At that time the Internet was still a relatively new thing and was, therefore, more likely to trigger strong emotions compared to now. Everything related to the Internet, all those experiences associated with it felt novel and intriguing.
Today, the Internet is an integral part of everyday life. It is just another regular constituent of a daily routine for millions of people. For some people, it is even part of their job.
So, as the Internet is not that much exciting anymore the level of feelings and emotions it can transmit is also limited.
Generally, we sense the digital world with our eyes meaning that only one out of five main human senses is in play here (except for video format where hearing is also added).
Digital is not possible to touch and smell (yet).
And this is where print wins.
Journals, magazines, catalogs, newspapers – all print ad carriers are tangible and experiential. Generally, the human and print interaction is predominantly based on tactile contact (except for print ads that we see from the distance such as banners). They are materially real, and consumers can physically interact with them which adds two more human senses to the list: touch and smell.
And all these play a huge role in how ads work in those environments and what results they deliver to businesses.
U.S. Postal Service collaborated with Temple University’s Center for Neural Decision Making to conduct a neuromarketing study in order to find out the difference in human response to physical/digital media and its subsequent effect in the consumer buying process and purchase intent.
Note: Neuromarketing is a scientific method that helps to explore the respondent’s subconscious response as opposed to conscious answers to survey questions. This method helps to understand the actual activity deep in the brain which leads to more reliable data.
The study clearly showed that physical ads led to a stronger emotional response and participants remembered them better. Participants also spent more time on physical ads compared to digital ones which they processed quicker.
As it can be clearly seen from the table digital lacks some of the important factors that print has. And it is not a fact that this lack is compensated by alternative factors of similar influence that can be attributed exclusively to the digital medium.
Print simply establishes more emotional and natural contact with the reader.
Unlike the digital ad carriers, consumers can physically browse through a print newspaper or magazine (and different types of print ads contained in them), grip the pages, feel the paper texture, density, and composition.
More sense means more channels for ads to transmit the message into the consumer’s conscious and/or subconscious mind.
In today’s omnichannel marketing environment these factors cannot be ignored. For the true omnichannel experience print is material.
So, compared to digital ads print advertisements have an imperative and unique value: people do really care about them, people trust them, and people are actually paying attention to them.
Let’s refer to some print marketing and print advertising statistics for additional proof.
and generally, direct mail open rate is between 80-90% compared to 20-30% email open rates?
It is needless to say how much valuable marketing potential all those numbers and facts entail.
Today, consumer trust is one of the most scarce and precious components of the whole advertising realm.
Although most of us probably expected the digital to easily win this spot, the study shows the opposite.
Print being the absolute number one together with other traditional advertising channels (first five spots in the table are occupied by traditional media carriers only) are still holding the leading positions when it comes to customer trust.
And this is another critical aspect not to be ignored by marketers in today’s mostly digitalized world.
Generally, traditional advertising channels are experiencing some sort of renaissance lately. Some of them do this by adapting to digital environment and/or transforming into a new digitalized format. Online radios and “mutated reincarnation” of traditional radio – podcasts are great examples of this trend. It looks pretty obvious that podcasts in their essence do not differ much from a radio except for their extensively digitalized nature.
What is more, is that the listenership of both channels (online radio and podcasts) have been on a steady rise during the last years. In fact, the percentage of podcast listeners have doubled between 2008 and 2015 in the US (from 9% to 17%). Now 44% of American adults listen to podcasts (at least 35% do so while in the car) and 53% of them listen to online radio (73% on a smartphone, 61% on desktop and laptops).
Importantly, the trend is currently continuing.
The listenership of traditional radio (AM/FM) is also not going anywhere yet as about 91% of Americans listen to AM/FM radio at least on a weekly basis.
Reading something online might easily turn into a real challenge with all those pop-ups, flashing ads and banners, auto-play videos and notifications appearing just next to what you read or even worse – on top of it.
Although it is actually easier to get the reader’s attention with a digital ad than with a print ad (as we can see from the US Postal Service and Temple University’s Center for Neural Decision Making collaborated research above), it is nevertheless a real challenge to maintain this attention in such a distracting milieu. It is indeed difficult to keep your attention on something particular without being annoyingly distracted online.
Reader’s attention on the Internet is almost always the subject of competition and therefore receives endless attention catch attempts.
This naturally leads to distractions, distorted focus, and fatigue which affects any digital ad performance that is part of this bothersome environment.
In contrast, this is not something that can happen on print. Print experience is much more relaxed and focused. There are not many things that can interrupt your attention when you read a printed magazine or a newspaper.
Moreover, unlike digital media when reading magazines and newspapers the reader is not intentionally searching for specific information which is almost always the case on digital (reader is generally interested in print media including ads).
Unsurprisingly, complicated information that requires stronger concentration is also better followed in print than in digital. Concentration needs to stay uninterrupted for a certain period of time to reach the levels that are enough for the reader’s mind to consume the complex information. Print media simply provides better conditions for this to happen compared to digital media.
Print allows uninterrupted reading experience meaning that if you decided to read what you read till the end you have better chances of doing this without being unnecessarily distracted.
So far, there are no pop-ups and push notifications (or any similar alternative) invented for print media.
It is also less common to multitask when reading magazines and journals.
People reading physical information carriers are usually just doing that and this is far from being the truth when it comes to reading something online. We usually massively multitask when we are online which makes this experience hectic and even chaotic at times.
As a result, the experience online nine times out of ten is totally divided. You need to share the reader’s attention with other distracting things on the Internet.
On print, in contrast, the attention for the most part is much likely to be 100% yours.
As digital ads are getting more and more annoying ad blockers in the meantime are quickly gaining increasing popularity among internet users.
Ad blocker usage is currently on the rise.
According to Statista, 25.2% of all US internet users used ad blockers to block ads on their devices in 2018.
This number is expected to reach 27.5% in 2020.
This is something that is fundamentally different when it comes to print ads. There are two important reasons behind that.
First, consumers perceive print ads in a totally different way compared to digital ads. Print ads are an absolutely essential part of the whole print experience for which customers actually pay.
Readers pay for the entire print experience as a whole and ads are intrinsic elements of this experience. This is not the case with digital media where ads are usually perceived as something completely inorganic and do not constitute the pleasing part of the user experience.
Second, there is no ad blocking on print medium as such. There is simply no such technology to block print ads on print media, which makes print ad blocking technically impossible. So, you may not worry about your print ads getting blocked by ad blockers. As simple as that.
Ads in today’s digital world don’t live long. They only live as long as there is still some budget left to fuel their presence. Once there is no budget left, digital ads stop working for you and just cease to exist on the Internet (until you fuel them again with additional budget).
In contrast, this is not really the case with print ads.
They simply live longer. Much longer.
And they require no additional budget for that.
It’s true that print advertisements take some time to get published and reach the user. Measuring the effect of print advertising takes even longer and is not as simple as it is with digital ads. However, once print ad is live it is hard to correctly predict for how long it will manage to be around.
Your print ads might continue to live on the tables and desks, in hotels, cafes, offices and waiting rooms literally for years. And during all this time the ad you paid for only once will continue working for you. The number of impressions will keep rolling in during the whole lifespan of your physical ad.
In this aspect, print ads are drastically different from digital ads for the better (unless you place digital ads on your own website which however also requires some ongoing maintenance budget).
This difference (or often overlooked advantage) can be leveraged by smart marketers for smart and long lasting omnichannel experience in 2019 and beyond. For the foreseeable future, digital ads are unlikely to deliver a comparable opportunity.
In certain industries such as travel, hospitality, and luxury print looks like the better platform for stronger exposure and ad effect compared to digital.
With full-page visuals, paper choice and other available instruments marketers working in those industries can create a way better ad experience for users and more effectively pass on the right message to consumers.
This, while certainly possible, is still relatively harder (and perhaps less effective) to do online.
Users access web pages from different devices. Not all those devices have the same level of screen quality, resolution, and size.
The effect of full-page high-resolution and visually appealing ad might be totally different on different devices (old/new desktop, smartphone, tablet etc.). For example, currently more than 39 out of 50 news sites are actually accessed by users from mobile and not from the desktop. There are just too many parts involved here to guarantee visually consistent ad performance on all device types.
The advantage of print media over digital in this aspect is even more evident when we compare print to mobile. These two formats are just not comparable in terms of impact potential and visual effect.
However, what is also true is that the print media is probably less important medium for purely practical purchases.
For example, print is unlikely to compete with digital in office supplies ads or for purchases where brand/visual parts are less important and do not play a big role. In those markets print nowadays looks more like a supplement to digital and not like the primary advertising channel.
Print is also not the best option for time-sensitive offers as it takes time for ads to reach users and provoke the necessary action. On the other hand, print works a way better for products and services with longer consideration times (such as cars and travel packages).
Besides the mentioned industries there are specific market segments which print still reaches and digital does not.
For instance, 41% of all Americans aged over 65 are not Internet users meaning that they do not go online at all.
These people are simply not possible to reach with digital ads. Print advertisements in contrary reach both categories (internet users and people not using the Internet at all) with the same ease.
What about catalogs? Do they still exist?
You might be surprised, but catalogs not only exist, they still work.
Particularly in the multi and omnichannel world.
Smart marketers know that customers who interact with businesses through multiple channels are the most valuable customers. And catalog is another underrated and perhaps a little forgotten channel to do just that.
However, it is true that catalog’s peak is certainly over and fewer catalogs are now printed every year.
Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that this downward trend does not mean that catalogs are completely gone. There are still around 10 billion catalogs being sent every year and retailers allocate about $9 billion each year on print catalog marketing.
So, in short print catalogs are pretty much still there.
The numbers above also indicate that catalog marketing is becoming less crowded and that there is simply more room for catalog marketing in the digital age. The fact that the world became digitalized does not automatically mean that consumers stopped enjoying catalogs or other print marketing materials of a similar nature.
In practical terms, customers who have an omnichannel relationship with the brand (including print) spend four times more than those who do not and print catalog certainly plays an important role here.
The average spend of Internet-only shopper is usually around $80 per order. In contrast, shoppers who search a catalog before buying (including online) on average spend about $90 per order.
Average online order is usually 6% lower compared to orders placed through a direct mail catalog.
Around 86% of women (18-30 age group) make a purchase online after first seeing the item in a catalog.
Roughly 58% of online shoppers browse print catalogs to look for ideas.
One-third (31%) of them have a catalog nearby while making purchases online.
45% of consumers say that print catalogs stimulate their interest in a retailer’s products.
So, surprisingly catalogs carry quite serious marketing power in an Internet-centered world of today.
It worth noting that some companies experimented with getting away from catalogs and expectedly it did not turn out well. Thus, Lands’ End tried to cut back on catalogs back in 2000 which led to $100 million decline in sales. After conducting an online survey and finding that 75% of customers saw the item in the catalog before placing the order catalog marketing had been brought back.
So, is print media dying?
No, print is definitely not dead and not dying.
Note: Between 2005 (this was actually the peak ad revenues year for US newspapers with $49.4 billion in ad revenue) and 2014 US newspapers revenue sources changed from $47.4 billion in print/$2 billion in digital to $16.4 billion in print (that’s about 66% drop)/$3.5 billion in digital.
Jobs also seem to be shifting from print to digital with 30 major and 438 smaller digital news organizations creating around 5,000 full time jobs.
So, the overall trend is pretty obvious.
But, in most of the cases, this overall decline also means that the readership has been narrowed down to the most engaged readers. Thus, 56% of people who read newspapers read them in print version only, 11% read newspapers on a computer and only 5% on a smartphone.
Circulation magazines (despite the downward trend) are also still around (and are quite popular). Importantly, the audience they reach is usually the most interested and loyal audience who continue reading them which is a valuable factor from the advertising and particularly targeting point of view (including local print advertising).
Accordingly, print readers today are naturally much more inclined to convert to your message.
This actually turns out to be one of the primary advantages that print media currently provides. Today, print advertisements can be targeted to clear-cut audiences with specific interests and passions and this might transform into concrete and palpable business results with the right approach and proper strategy.
Print also has a strong ROI index (direct indicator of print advertising effectiveness). According to AMA, GfK Panel Service (Germany-based research firm specializing in ROI) performed research and found out that magazines and newspapers deliver the highest ROI (125%). Far more (+38%) than other ad mediums such as TV and Digital (87%).
As it can be clearly seen from facts, trends and data provided above print ads are here to stay (at least for another decade). Print media remains to be one of the most important and powerful mediums to reach the audiences and to perform marketing activities.
More than that, print has adapted to the digital era. Most progressive publications such as Time Inc. these days offer print ads programmatically (presumptive future of print newspapers and magazines).
Moreover, being a top-of-funnel medium, the print media is pure brand advertising and is therefore extremely important for boosting brand visibility and brand awareness (as it always traditionally been) as well as establishing brand worthiness and value in the market.
So, do not remove print ads from your list yet. Print is still there and print still matters.
Instead, try to unleash its hidden potential and leverage print media for the benefit of your business.
comScore Media Metrix, January 2015, U.S.
Please include attribution to cash4toners.com with this graphic.
It’s so interesting. I would not have guessed that print is still more effective, but it makes complete sense when reading your points about the senses and how each are used. I’ll have to share this with my husband because he does graphics design and marketing for both print and digital.
It really is great to see that print media advertising is still doing well. Gosh I remember those days of people saying paper will stop being used and then print media – nope to both. 82% of people trust print ads…..totally amazing – I honestly thought that number would be lower in this day and age. BTW I, too, love checking my mail.
There’s nothing like reading a book or magazine the old fashioned way….as a hard copy! Even though we live in a digital age now, I agree that printing is still important and some people like me still value it!
I not understand the advertising channels for making a decision. I am definitely a read reviews online type of person and recycle all print ads without looking at them. I am curious how those numbers will change over the years. I have never really thought about print ads. I am a huge fan of books, in physical form and getting pictures printed. I think both are important.
I totally agree! I am a big reader of print magazines and definitely engage more with ads I see when flicking through their pages than those that pop-up when I’m online – they are much easier to ignore.
Everybody does react differently. I never thought about the fact that once the Internet became ubiquitous that it wouldn’t have the same emotional impact.
Fascinating data and infographic. The stats you crunch certainly make a persuasive case.
I’ve always loved print more than online for some applications. I’m surprised to read that physical ads are more effective. Very interesting.
I love that info graphic! I’m (still) a fab of print. Not sure if it’s my age, but I’m distrustful of what I see online.
Really interesting information and graphic! I learned so much!
Coming from print media, I am happy to read this article. The statistics are interesting. It’s sad to see so many magazines shutting down though. Hope they see a revival and continue to thrive.
I totally agree. I have always love prints more than online. I find it more interesting and enjoying to read what’s printed compared to the digital version.
After trying to go paperless for a long time at home, I have just discovered that I just love paper and paperback books and magazines, I just love to sit down and scroll through the mag without holding a device or being chained to a computer.
I agree with many of the statistics outlined in this post. There is something about print media that is comforting and familiar. I know that for myself, I retain much more information when I’m reading a printed page versus a digital page.
This was fantastic. While I will go online to look up something or get reviews. My mother is the opposite. She goes to Angie list book we receive in the mail, to find help for around the house. And when I read an ad from a magazine i believe in, it holds more weight, than just seeing it for the first time on the internet. Makes me think about my advertising dollars for my business in the future.
Yes!! I love reading print. Such a different impact to be holding actual material.
I do read print magazines and keep some of them because of their photography and aesthetics! I had no idea of the statistics but in my personal case print ads have an impact. I don’t pay much attention to popup ads or other online ads, but I do seek for reviews online to have in-depth or qualified opinions about products and services.
Trust the power if print, Courtney!
I used to think that print media would be long dead after digital advertising is dominating so much. Thanks for clearing my doubts.
Print does matter! I love reading magazines and books that are not digital. As well as receiving letters from family that are not emails!
My father worked for a newspaper company for 28 years, then they laid him off and shut down the printing warehouse. I never thought that newspaper would stop being paper. I love the feel of paper in my hands while I’m reading, whether it’s a newspaper or a book. I’m a die-hard fan forever!
So interesting. I would have thought that online would have ranked higher. There’s something to be said for reading something on paper.
Thank you so much for this ton of information! I agree that print is not dead, only too often I find that people don’t print my images and then they come back to me saying that they lost their phone or USB …. so frustrating!
I agree that print is not dead. I always stock up on print for traveling on planes for work.
The printed word has always been, and I believe will always be, more valuable than other media. People trust the printed word if for no other reason than it takes far more effort to produce and the assumption is that if you take the time to put something in print, it must be true.
Print media has it’s own place. I prefer newspapers, magazines than digital media. Reading newspapers, magazines has it’s own charm.
I totally agree with you on this, I mean I trust printed words than other media. There have been so much hyped about other media which turns out to be lies.
Trust the printed word, Lydia!
This is an exceptionally well put together post. I myself love holding a book or a magazine, there is something satisfying about a tangible product. Thank you for keeping this information out there.
This is really interesting! I still highly enjoy print media. I love getting catalogs in the mail.
I am definitely one of those people who likes to physically hold information in my hand. I think I absorb so much more when reading actual print.
Print media engages all the senses, Holly!
This is an intriguing argument. With all the technological transformations going on, one would assume right away that print advertisement is a thing of the past. So, thank you for sharing this info.
Interesting article! I would never have guessed that print media out performs digital in most categories. While I prefer actual magazines over digital and could see the lasting effect of advertisements, the rest of it finds my recycle bin before it even comes through the front door.
I definitely prefer print over digital. Digital is so much more widely available that I end up using it by default.
These are some great statistics! I honestly did think print was dead but you make a great argument that its alive and well and necessary!
Thanks for reminding us that there is still print in this world because everyone is all about social media and forgetting we had print before social media. Great post.
Print media has its own charm, till date in the morning having our cup of coffee and reading newspaper is still my routine, without that I feel something incomplete in my morning 🙂 online media is always second option if newspaper has not come for any given reason. Thanks..!
Come on, newspaper boy! Don’t let us down! We love the crisp feel of a fresh newspaper too!
These stats are interesting. I much prefer digital, but I know it’s not for everyone.
When it comes to reading a book, I prefer print over digital. Something about reading a printed book makes me happy. Besides if I read a book on my phone or Kindle for too long, it hurts my head.
We appreciate a lady who appreciates the heft and feel of a good book, Jessie!
Print seems more “real” for me as a customer. There is a lot on the internet and a lot that is just spam or feels like spam so you sort of become blind to ads.
Believe in the reality of print media, Tiffany! | 2019-04-23T09:07:11Z | https://cash4toners.com/info/2019/02/10/why-print-matters/ |
“It’s all about Google” – Correction: “It has always been about Google,” at least for small businesses that are looking to improve their outreach. As a small business owner, if you want to get your business in front of the most eyeballs, then we’re pretty sure it’s always going to be about Google, (and you can bet on that). As far as brands and creating customer awareness goes, Google is the be-all-end-all of marketing. It’s no surprise that search engine optimization is getting harder because everyone’s doing it. That means that if you are not using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to your advantage, then you are leaving some serious money on the table. However, you’re smarter than that, which is why we’ve come up with a list of SEO tips that are crucial for business success.
So prepare to take the deep dive into SEO best practices for 2019 and come out the other side a wiser (hopefully, more successful) small business owner.
Google ranks a webpage by different factors, one of which is “keywords.” Pages are ranked using relevant singular words or phrases and not sentences or paragraphs to attract organic traffic. From the viewpoint of the searcher, these are the words or terms that are used or spoken into Google’s search engine. Sure, Google’s AI-powered RankBrain which made its debut in 2015 improves and literally rewrites most search queries on the down low, you still need to use relevant keywords if you want to rank higher for local search. Period. And since RankBrain isn’t designed to infer meaning to your queries based on language alone, the keywords need to be relevant to your industry.
Google Correlate deserves an entire article of its own. But, here we’re going to just explain the meat and potatoes of what Google Correlate is all about and how it can help your SEO efforts. Google Correlate uses Approximate Nearest Neighbor or ANN retrieval and Asymmetric Hashing Algorithm to “correlate” a list of search queries with similar trend patterns for any given keyword. Think of it as Google Trends, in reverse. The tool is extremely powerful, but surprisingly, not many people use it.
The Keyword Planner is another amazing tool, courtesy of Google that allows users to identify specific words and phrases that are relevant to a business niche, product or service. And the best part is that it’s 100% free. You can use the Google Keyword Planner tool to reverse engineer the sites of your competitors to generate relevant keyword suggestions or track keyword data over time.
Normally, SEO specialists pick a basket of keywords that are relevant to their industry or niche. In this basket, there’s the captain or the one keyword that they would preferably rank for on Google and a number of long-tail keywords that can almost immediately help pull traffic to your website, and link to mid-tail keywords before eventually ranking for the captain or head term. Since there is not one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to using keywords, small business owners need to be careful while selecting the right keyword that can describe their services perfectly.
When comparing both short and long tail keywords, the latter seems to be more effective in resulting in a higher search ranking for local search. When using long tail keywords, make sure they are relevant to your product or service. Keywords Everywhere is a great online tool to help you find relevant long tail keywords.
Rather than shooting arrows in the dark, generating topic ideas for your local audience has always been an industry best practice. While this may seem difficult, if you are not creating content that’s locally optimized, then there’s no way for you to reach your local audience. A good way of trying this is by newsjacking local news or events to plug your product or service. However, try not to be too obvious while doing it.
The page title or title tag works as your name in the digital landscape. Just like introducing yourself when we meet someone, the title tag is going to tell the viewer who you are and what you do. A title tag is displayed as a clickable headline on the search engine results page. The optimal length of the title tag is 50 to 60 characters, with no exact character limit. That said, normally, a title will max out once it reaches 600 pixels, so ideally, you’d want to get the keyword before it reaches 60 characters.
The H1, H2 and H3 tags are known as header tags. The H1 tag is the title of the page and should always include a relevant keyword, while the H2 tag is the subheading and should contain similar keywords as the H1 tag. Similarly, the H3 works as a subheading for the H2 tag, and so on. All three are important for on-page SEO.
Alternate text or alt text for short is an attribute that’s added to an image tag in HTML. This is the text that appears in place of an image if the image was unable to load on a page. The alt text you use needs to correctly identify the contents of the image for it to be useful not just for SEO but for the visually impaired.
If you really want a fruitful SEO campaign, then you can’t ignore the importance of an Anchor text, mainly because of the importance of backlinks. While it is also one of the ways in which Google gets to flex its muscles against spam or over-optimizing websites, generic anchors, exact match anchors, partial match anchors, LSI anchors, brand + keyword anchors, image anchors, no-text anchor, and naked link anchors are all useful to SEO.
Just as niche marketing pertains to attracting a specific audience, you need to use keywords in the same way, especially when it comes to local SEO. Once you’ve come up with a niche that fits you, use relevant keywords that will attract a target demographic. You can keep track and monitor how specific keywords work by using various tools that are available online.
Google My Business is an amazing free tool that allows your business to appear higher on Google Search and Maps. Google My Business is the best place to start if you want to increase traffic to your business website. To do that you will first need to claim your business by creating an account on GMB to get your business verified by Google.
This has always been a favorite topic of debate amongst webmasters and SEO specialists. It is defined by the percentage value of the number of times a particular keyword appears on a single web page. The above mentioned data is a formula to show you just how Google tracks keyword density.
At the recent Google webmaster event at Google’s NYC office, Google webmaster trends analyst, John Mueller talked about how the traditionally word-friendly company is shifting its focus to images. Mueller also revealed how Google plans to drop Google Search Console altogether and replace it with mobile-first indexing, which according to Mueller, is the future. The reason for this is because Mueller predicts that in the not so distant future, searchers will be using images to find what they are looking for on Google. All the more reason for businesses to include alt text to the images they use.
Link building can help with your SEO efforts, but only if it’s done the right way. One of the ways in which Google evaluates your link building efforts is through link analysis using historical data. This means that before a search result is displayed on Google, the links within the pages are explored, which is a lot similar to the HITS algorithm which was released by Google back in 2003. This means, linking to relevant websites can help boost your own position on Google.
Page segmentation has always been a big topic for link building. While link building may be a chaotic process, a look at the current search engine trends reveals that Google does give different weights for different links which are mainly based on the location of the link on a page.
This is an important technique for effective keyword generation for relevant keywords. Once you have found keywords that are relevant to your business, product or service, keyword stemming is used to either add a suffix, prefix, or a pluralization to create a new word. The inclusion of different variations of a relevant keyword is thought to increase the visibility of a web page by making it easier for Google to crawl the contents of the page.
Ever clicked on a link that’s taken you to a webpage filled with a whole list of words? As annoying as it is for you, the user, it’s even more annoying for Google, and often gets a website penalized. The process called spamdexing or webspam is frowned upon by Google which is why it should be avoided at all costs.
In SEO terms, the acronym ‘NAP’ stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. This data has been closely associated with search and geo-location and as a result, can significantly increase traffic to your website. To make sure you can take advantage of NAP the data provided needs to be consistent across all online platforms, including social media sites and online directories.
Nowadays, searchers don’t turn to the fat phone book yellow pages you found in a phone booth (remember those?). Searchers use trusted online business directories or Google to find what they are looking for. This means adding your location to these online directories can help get your business found.
Online directories don’t only help a website get backlinks it also provides a new listing in Google for every directory your company is registered in. Needless to say, having your business name in online directories such as Yellowpages.com, Whitepages, BizJournals etc., can easily strengthen your reputation.
Rich snippets provide more information on whatever you are searching. Although using rich snippets does not help to rank your webpage, it does offer some indirect SEO benefits by making a webpage indexable and better-targeted metadata. As you can see in the picture above, rich snippets look better as compared to normal snippets which only include the clickable link and a meta description. But, there’s a catch. Google will only include a rich snippet if you have added structured data in your website.
When it comes to the topic of structured data the names JSON-LD or Schema.org are some of the few names that are floated around. But, what is structured data exactly? It is basically a code that’s used in a specific format to make it easier for the search engine to read and understand. Google encourages business owners and webmasters to include this code into their websites to display “richer” results. In this way, you can use structured data to “talk” to Google.
More than 475 of US consumers say that Facebook has an impact on their decision making which makes it safe to say that having a social profile can do wonders for your business.
As mentioned earlier, having a social profile can be a great asset to any business. But, not all social media platforms will give you the same results you are looking for when it comes to visibility. That’s because different social platforms cater to different audiences. The trick here is to find out the platform where you can find the most of your target audience for better engagement and to increase your chances of conversion.
WordPress offers a whole host of plugins that can be used for SEO. Those who are not already using WP plugins such as Yoast SEO or SEOPressor are seriously missing out. These plugins give the user complete control over their on-page SEO efforts and can help structure your website according to the leading best practices.
Along with utilizing free WordPress plugins, small business owners and webmasters can also use a number of free SEO tools that are available online, such as Google Keyword Planner, Keywords Everywhere, SEOQuake, Alexa Toolbar, and the Moz Toolbar to increase their searchability.
The ways in which email marketing can improve SEO results have been widely documented. For instance, emails that include links can encourage people to engage with your brand. It also allows visitors to share your content with others, which is always good for business.
For those of you who are unaware, LinkedIn Pulse is LinkedIn’s answer to Facebook’s Newsfeed. The service which is also available as an app allows users to read the most recent news in real time. Publishing your articles on LinkedIn with the relevant keywords can help LinkedIn’s algorithm assign the content to one of its 100 featured channels, increasing your exposure in the process. The best part about publishing articles on Linked Pulse is that it can help build traffic over time and increase inbound traffic to your profile. It can also help in growing your professional connections.
Just writing articles and blogs that have been keyword optimized is not going to be enough to rank higher on the SERPs. A business website or Business profile are good options to publish and share your content on. But, to get your content in front of the most eyeballs as possible, you will need to publish your content on various high authority platforms as well, such as Medium, Reddit, Twitter Brand Accounts, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram and many more. If you’re worried about using platforms that are normally reserved for sharing images, then just use a high-quality image with a portion of your content and a link to the rest in the caption.
The “allintitle:” was a nifty little trick that was first introduced by Google. It is basically a search operator that can display results containing your search terms in a meta title tag. Being this specific means the results you get for your search term won’t be in the millions, but in the thousands or hundreds depending on the keyword and niche. This can allow you to see who else is using the same keywords so that you can optimize your pages accordingly.
We briefly mentioned how you should avoid creating spam or else get penalized by Google. But what can you do about the spam that finds its way to your website? To deal with this problem Google allows webmasters to replace the “rel” attribute of a link to “nofollow”. This is a simple, yet effective way to let Google know that certain pages within your website should not be used to gauge your website’s reputation.
For instance, if you frequently post blogs on your business website, which is a common practice, if the comments section is turned on, the links contained in the comments section could pass on your reputation to other websites, some of which you might not be comfortable with, such as pornographic sites or online scams.
Older websites and domain names are a lot more valuable than newer ones, at least, for Google. That’s one of the reasons why larger media companies are buying up smaller ones, then linking all of their content to the new site, creating a giant network of authority sites in the process. While there are those who say that Google focuses on when connect was indexed and not solely on parked domains, buying aged domains could help.
While using the keyword in the title tag and H1 tag is SEO-101, users have to be careful with the number of times the keywords are used in a webpage or else they could be penalized by Google for keyword stuffing. The KGR should always be less than 0.25. The ratio works like this: the number of page titles that use the same keyword or keyword phrase on Google’s search engine results page divided by local monthly search volume where LMS will be less than 250.
Being indexed in one of the 100 webpages by Google for that particular keyword would not be a problem if the ratio is less than 0.25. The lower the Keyword Golden Ratio is for your desired keyword, the better its chances of ranking higher in the SERPs.
Google Maps offers so much more than just giving your customers the directions to your business. It helps build trust with your audience who can use the feature to learn more about your business. Furthermore, Google Maps also allows all those who are interested in your business to go beyond the front door of your business via a street view and take a virtual tour of your business. Google’s algorithm blurs faces so you don’t have to worry about any privacy issues, which is another plus point of using the service.
“Content is King” is more than just a catchy cliché. While search engine optimization is a complex process that’s broken down to various on-site and off-site factors, the one factor that’s crucial for better ranking of a webpage is always going to be the quality of its content. When it comes to creating unique content, all content creators must ensure that their content is relevant, high-quality, well-researched, and well-written.
There’s an incredibly high amount of content that’s available online, which means it’s not going to be easy to get your content to rank higher, but it is possible if you create unique content that has been written for humans and not for bots. More often than not, people try to impress Google when creating their content.
Whether its content that is going to go on their business website or their blog, the content that’s created for bots will usually have plenty of keywords that although may be relevant to the business, ends up being stuffed with keywords that are obviously used so that it can be indexed by Google’s bots.
By creating content that doesn’t speak to the reader you end up alienating the searcher or potential customer who could be interested in purchasing your product or service and becoming a paid customer. To make sure that never happens, always create unique and relevant content that’s informative and entertaining to the reader.
Many times, content creators make the mistake of creating content that reads like a sales pitch of a salesperson. This is the last thing you want your content to sound like. That’s because the days of using cunning sales techniques in your content are over. Nowadays, consumers are looking for information when they search online and not for a sales pitch. Besides, content that sounds salesy is less effective as compared to the content that informs and inspires the reader, which is why content creators need to focus on the latter.
Split testing blog titles using Google search is an ingenious way of increasing traffic to your website. If you’re using a software, simply come up with different titles and track their clickthrough rates, or you can use a particular title and then change it after a few weeks to see which one performs better. Split testing your blog titles is a great way to know which of your titles pass the audience’s sniff test and garners more views. Some of the best options out there for split testing blog and article titles are A/B Press Optimizer, Optimizely, and YoRocket. Some of the free online options are ShareThrough Headline Analyzer, Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer and CoSchedule’s headline analyzer.
Internal links are a great way of indicating overall value of a website by linking to other high-quality pages within the website itself. In fact, linking internally can boost even relatively low-quality webpages in some cases as well. There are two types of internal links; a relative link and an absolute link. The former does not explicitly include the domain name or protocol, which leads Google to assume that it refers to the same domain, while the latter clearly specifies both the domain and the protocol. Creating a shallow website structure is usually considered best practice for SEO. This means each page within a website can be reached within two to three clicks from the homepage. Google values internal links so much that it allows 1000 links per page (including the header, footer, sidebar and menu).
Creating content hubs is also known as “spoke” pages, which link back to the central page within a website. This internal linking strategy is a favorite practice of SEO specialists since it offers plenty of benefits. Apart from building topical relevance in your content with regards to your niche, the strategy also drives link authority. For instance, by using many internal links that link back to a single page, it improves the ranking of that page. Content hubs come in two types; a true content hum will follow the strategy precisely, while a descriptive navigation hub will use universal site navigation for linking back to the hub pages. Each of the two types come with their fair share of advantages which is why small business owners need to experiment with both to find out what works best.
Let’s say one of the blogs you have has loads of informative content and as a result, is attracting lots of readers. That collective link juice of similar blogs on your website can be used to promote another one of your posts that’s not doing too well on the SERPs, as in, a blog post that’s sitting on the second or third page of Google, aka the low hanging fruit. Certain online tools such as the InLink Rank powered by SEO PowerSuite can make a huge difference to the way your webpages rank online for specific keywords.
Regardless of the size of your business, your reputation is always going to be your most valuable asset. This is where your online reviews are going to matter the most for the reputation of your business. Apart from influencing customer purchasing decisions, online reviews can help boost your SEO ranking by building trust with potential customers. It can also help boost landing page conversions.
While having a business profile on all social media platforms may not do much for your SEO ranking, the number of social mentions your business has will. Since almost all of the major social media platforms use nofollow for all external links, resulting to the links passing no SEO juice to your website, social media platforms are not looked at as a viable option to increase a website’s ranking. But, that’s not entirely true. Using social media to boost page rank involves passive attempts by the small business owner which will ultimately depend on the third party to take action without being pushed by a business’s marketing efforts. As a rule of thumb, content creators can make a list of their “evergreen” and re-share it at regular intervals. The idea is to create more positive brand mentions which will force Google to think that the particular business deserves attention. While social media platforms will not help you in your SEO efforts, you should do all you can to fan the flames that are going to get you more positive brand mentions on various social media platforms.
If we’ve learnt one thing from Google’s recent Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) errors is that there’s no need to panic when your plan goes south or doesn’t create the expected impact on Google. Recently, Google has seen a flood of complaints from the likes of publishers, developers and webmasters who are all facing issues with their AMP. When it comes to certain issues such as these, there’s really nothing any SEO specialist of webmaster can do but wait for the folks at Google to resolve the issue. So, if you experience something similar there’s no need to panic and try to change your strategy.
While it is not advised to panic when met with certain issues that originate from Google’s search engine, it would be a bad idea to let non-performing pages sit where they are. Small business owners can keep their fingers on the pulse by constantly evaluating which of their webpages are performing well with regards to SEO and which aren’t. If the rank of a particular webpage hasn’t improved for a while, then it’s probably best to perform some SEO tweaks to improve its rank on Google.
Needless to say, Google’s algorithm updates are directly proportional with SEO results. Since Google sets the rules when it comes to search engine optimization and which webpages get to rank lower or higher on the SERPs, it pays to pay attention to whatever Google is telling you. This includes, staying abreast of the latest updates, even the broad-core updates (those which are not specified by Google) to its search algorithm so that you can plan your SEO strategy accordingly.
As a small business owner, you need to prioritize Google above all else if you want your business to rank on Google’s most coveted real estate – the first page. A good example of this can be given of the August 1st, 2018 update, which was dubbed by many as Google Medic, which affected only Your Money Your Life (YMYL) websites, as in, websites that offer information on financial or health issues.
We mentioned earlier how certain WordPress plugins can be used for SEO, but even too much of a good thing can be bad for you. Developers and SEO specialists have pointed out some major issues with using too many WordPress plugins for a website to improve search engine optimization. While a plethora of WordPress plugins have been identified to significantly reduce the speed of a website, there is a sweet spot for WP plugins that can be used from the 50k plugins that are already available. Many in the SEO industry agree that currently, anywhere between 5 to 20 plugins can be used by a particular website whether it’s being hosted by cloud, VPS or a dedicated server.
A good rule to keep in mind when using WordPress plugins is to make sure that your website can load in less than three seconds. This can be intimidating for some small business owners, but since 40% of searchers normally abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, it’s a good rule to live by when creating a WordPress website for your business. Small business owners need to pay attention to the load time of their website not only on traditional PC screens and laptops, but across multiple screens. This will mainly include optimizing your website for mobile devices since it’s definitely considered the future of search.
Few people know this, but websites are devalued by Google during the first few months of their existence. That’s why it’s extremely difficult to rank well for any competitive keywords during those first few months after Google discovers your website. This is one of the reasons why SEO experts normally don’t like working on domains that have been newly purchased. The point is, you need to have patience.
Let’s face it. Whether we’re using written text and keywords to attract viewers or images as predicted by Google webmaster trends analyst, John Mueller, or whether someone comes up with a search engine that reads minds, we are always going to need search engine optimization for ranking higher in Google’s search engine page.
Following the aforementioned SEO tips should help your website’s Googleability, if it doesn’t, you probably need a doctor or, Media Glance and here’s why; If you don’t know where to begin, Media Glance has a Team of Certified Professionals, such as Social Media Marketers, SEO Consultants, Web Designers, Web Developers, Content Marketers, and PPC Managers who can help you out with your Digital Marketing Strategy. You’re probably thinking that the tips mentioned here are a lot, but you will need to work on all of them if you want your business to rank higher on the SERPs. | 2019-04-20T23:08:15Z | https://www.mediaglance.com/seo-guide-for-small-business-owners/ |
Powers/Abilities: In his original body the Technocrat would have had the same potential for powers as any other Kymellian had, though it is currently unrevealed if he ever developed any outside of possibly teleportation. His pseudoplasmic body was infinitely malleable, though without an atmosphere it was unable to hold a pre-programmed shape and reverted into a liquid state. Presumably if re-exposed to an atmosphere the pseudoplasmic body could resume its pre-programmed form. While the full weapons array of his body armor is unrevealed, he was shown to fire a power-neutralizing "goop" from his glove. As part of his base's computer system the Technocrat was able to observe anyone anywhere on/in his "body" and project a holographic image of himself anywhere on the base to interact with visitors. He was also able to "see" (using his computers) what his other pseudoplasmic creations saw, even when they were on another planet, and direct their actions. He could teleport objects to and from his base over vast (galactic scale) distances, though it's unclear how much of this was native Kymellian teleporting ability and how much was done using machines on his base. He had control over the other machines that kept the base in working order, and evidently could rearrange the matter of small objects at will (or else he teleported Meraud's hand restraints away; the story was a tad unclear which it was).
(Power Pack Holiday Special#1 (fb) - BTS) - The Technocrat was a brilliant engineer and inventor who evidently thought technological products were far superior to anything biology could produce, and believed the Kymellians were better off in space than on a planet. Besides designing spacestations for himself and others, he invented living pseudoplasm, a semi-solid thick liquid that could be programmed to duplicate living beings on a molecular level, fooling even fairly sophisticated Kymellian scanners, which led to the substance being outlawed on Kymellia. Centuries ago, when the Kymellians destroyed their original homeworld Kymellia due to a miscalculation in their formula for matter/antimatter energy conversions, the Technocrat built the space station Kymellia II to house the survivors as their new homeworld. An unspecified time later (though evidently still "centuries ago") the Technocrat was banished from Kymellian society for unrevealed crimes. He then made a moon-sized space station his new home and populated it with his pseudoplasmic servants. Under unrevealed circumstances the Technocrat transferred his consciousness into the station's computer system, and created a pseudoplasmic duplicate of his original body to physically interact with others. The fate of his original body is unrevealed.
(Power Pack I#56) - The faux Alex was awakened in the middle of the night by Pack member Tattletale (Franklin Richards), who had had one of his "special dreams" (Franklin's powers had been reduced down to precognitive dreams at this time in his history) about his friend Nova (Frankie Raye) fighting the cosmic entity Star-Stalker, whose path of destruction was leading it towards Earth. While getting ready to find Nova, "Alex" discovered he was starting to loose his hair; the idea that he was going bald at age 13 threw him into a panic, though he didn't tell anyone about it right then. The Pack had their smartship Friday to take them to the planet shown in Tattletale's dream, where they found an Elan child that had been injured in the Star Stalker's initial attack on the planet. Initially feeling useless because the others were able to free the child without his help, "Alex" examined the alien and wished for some way to help it live. He then started to glow with an unknown energy similar to the Kymellian's healing power that also managed to seemingly heal the alien child as well. Unable to help Nova stop the Star Stalker, the Pack could only watch while the Stalker drained all of Nova's powers into itself, then settled down to sleep while Lightspeed (Julie) rescued the now-human Nova from dying in space. "Alex" got the idea to give the Stalker even more power while it was unconscious in an attempt to overload it and stop its menace for good, so he had the Destroyer (his brother Jack) feed it all the power he had stored up in himself, forcing the Stalker to create a cocoon around itself. It then teleported itself away, to land on the next planet in its path, Earth. . . .
(Power Pack I#57) - Back on the smartship the Elan's condition began to worsen and it started to fire energy balls from one of its antennae. "Alex" immediately turned cloudy when one of the balls came towards him, but he was unable to stop another ball from hitting Tattletale and knocking him unconscious. When Jack managed to absorb enough of the Elan's energies to allow Friday to cauterize its wound, "Alex" reflected on how he was unable to solve the problem, then panicked when he noticed his hair loss had already created a noticeable bald spot and quickly recombed his hair to hide it. Back on Earth, the Pack soon found the Stalker rampaging through Central Park and quickly attacked the beast, with "Alex" using his cloud powers to hide the Stalker so its appearance would not create more of a panic than it had already caused. The Pack was able to keep the Stalker busy long enough for a now-awake Nova to go to the Baxter Building and retrieve a Stimulator (a device that can restore a superhuman's lost powers) and set it up to drain the Stalker's powers into herself. It worked, but the settings were slightly off on the Stimulator, and Nova became a power-mad brute herself. . . .
Meanwhile, "Margret Power", following a feeling that something was wrong, got up to check on the kids, then ran hysterically back to her husband "James" and woke him up. "James" checked the kids" rooms himself, then lied to his wife and told her the kids were really still there to calm her hysterics. While getting "Margret" a cup of chamomile tea, "James" realized that he had a good idea that the kids were really super-heroes, and put in a call to Tattletale's father, Reed Richards (of the Fantastic Four), to tell him what he suspected: that their kids had formed their own super-team and were out having adventures and not telling their parents.
(Power Pack I#58) - While Tattletale was off getting a weapon from Galactus to stop Nova, "Alex" tried to knock down Nova with a combination of his superdense form and Counterweight's (Katie Power) gravity power, but found Nova was able to counter both powers easily. "Alex" got the idea to douse Nova with water to snuff out her powers, so the Pack stole a nearby water tank and dumped it on Nova, but "Alex" then found that the backlash from the steam was causing him to dissipate before he pulled himself back from that. Meanwhile "James" met with Reed at an outdoor cafe to discuss his suspicions, but the talk was interrupted by noise from the battle. Rushing towards the fight, "James" was shocked to find that his kids were putting themselves in danger to stop Nova. While "James" could only stand around in a state of shock, Reed grabbed the Stimulator and reset it to absorb enough of Nova's powers in an attempt to return her to her right mind, and "Alex" used his cloud power to hide his family from the just-arrived news cameras. At this point Tattletale returned from space with an Elemental Obliterator (borrowed from Galactus, it had the same tendency to kill the person wielding it as the Ultimate Nullifier did -- when the big G. puts triggerlocks on his guns, he doesn't fool around!) to use on Nova to stop her mad rampage, while "James" kept Reed from stopping Tattletale's suicidal gesture. When the Elan decided to be the one to sacrifice itself to stop Nova, "Mass Master" wished for a way to somehow save the Elan from getting killed, and put a density field around the Elan, then found he could suddenly link his powers with his siblings and used their combined powers to push the Elan away from the gun before it self-destructed. The restored Nova then left Earth to continue her work for Galactus while the Pack and Reed left the park, not knowing that while painting in her studio, "Margret" had seen the newscasts of Power Pack fighting Nova, and that the revelation/confirmation that her children were now super-heroes had driven her into a massive hysterical attack, denying what she had seen. . . . .
(Power Pack I#59 - BTS) - "James" asked Richards if Tattletale could move in with them for a while in an attempt to show his wife that their kids were not the only ones with superpowers, and somehow bring her out of her catatonic state. Richards enthusiastically agreed to have Franklin stay with them for a short time.
(Power Pack I#59) - A day or so later "Alex" woke up before everyone else in the house did, and was distressed to realize he was still going bald. Deciding there was only one solution, "Alex" left the apartment and went to a local barber and had his hair cut down to a very short buzz cut. Later that morning "James" made a (barely edible) breakfast for the other kids while discussing a trip to the circus later that day (unbeknownst to them, the circus being advertised was -- wait for it -- The Circus of Crime!). "James" was startled when he learned Julie was more interested in seeing a rich handsome Indian prince that the papers announced was going to be there rather than the acts themselves ("his" little girl was interested in BOYS already!! ;) ) While "James" served "Margret" breakfast in their bedroom to avoid upsetting her further, "Alex" returned to the apartment. The two talked briefly in the kitchen. "James" berated "Alex" for going out without saying anything to anyone, and "Alex" revealed only that he had a personal problem that he didn't want the others to learn about, leaving "James" to assume it was simply a problem associated with puberty. "James" resolved to try not to ride "Alex" too hard, and to be more supportive of him while he going through puberty. When "Alex" showed the others his new haircut, "James" and the kids were taken totally by surprise by the drastic hairstyle change. After Franklin arrived and mentioned he liked "Alex's" new hairstyle because it was shorter than his, "James" made a joke about how lots of people get bad haircuts every day, which only served to put "Alex" deeper into his funk, and "James" to worry over him again. Later at the circus the kids witnessed the theft of the Indian Prince's ultra-valuable crown jewel (which he was wearing in his turban) by the Circus" Clown, Bruto the Strongman, the Human Cannonball, the acrobatic Great Gambonnos, and the cowboy Livewire (they had decided that the single jewel was that great a prize to go against the Ringmaster's direct orders to not pull a heist during the show). The Pack decided to intervene and changed into their costumes where they were seated in the bleachers and went on the offensive. A herd of various animals released by Clown and Livewire rampaged through the tent and almost trampled "Mass Master" underneath them, before he shrank himself down to a much smaller size to avoid being knocked down (why he didn't just turn cloudy I have no clue). The animals were then degravitized and juggled by Katie. "Mass Master" found the turban, and barely missed being crushed by the Strongman. Unable to see anything carrying a turban at that small a size, "Mass Master" decided to return to his original size, happily wearing the turban as "Prince Alex -- Ruler, Mover, and Shaker" until the Clown stole it off his head. "Mass Master" used his cloud form to herd the animals to safety when he noticed the Ringmaster now had the turban. The Pack could only watch while the Ringmaster decided to hand the turban back to the Prince under the pretense he was actually recovering it for him, then used his hypno-disc to make the Prince (and the just-arrived policemen) forget the theft attempt by his employees.
Meanwhile, back at the apartment, "James" entered "Margret's" art studio to see how she was doing, and decided to look her most recent paintings over. He was shocked to find them all dark and grim in nature, like she had become suddenly obsessed with death and destruction. "James" found "Margret" in their bedroom staring out the window, oblivious to his presence, and staring at a vision of attacking monsters. He tried to talk to her, but the kids came home right then, and he had to go quite them down so as to not disturb "Margret". While "James" worried over his wife's sanity, "Margret" continued to stare at the vision she was experiencing.
Later that night the kids stayed up late to watch TV. The others commented on how the new haircut made "Alex's" nose look bigger, and how the light from the TV made his hair look longer in the middle than on the sides. Disgusted by their comments, and experiencing a pounding headache, "Alex" made his way to the bathroom, and to his horror found that his nose really was bigger -- far bigger than any human nose should be, and that his hair had suddenly sprouted a Mohawk literally in the last few hours. . . . .
(Power Pack I#60) - The next morning an upset "Alex" revealed to the rest of the team that he had turned into a Kymellian overnight. The others tried to comfort him with little success, but when Jack warned that their father was coming "Alex" quickly turned into cloud form and left via the window, grateful that his power at least still worked, though he now had an urge to allow himself to dissipate completely and essentially kill himself. Meanwhile "James" informed the kids that their mother "Margret" had now recovered and wished to see them before going off on their first day of school, and warned them not to mention their powers at all in her presence. While the kids were visiting their mother, "James" asked Jack about the whereabouts of "Alex", and was told "Alex" couldn't wait to see girlfriend Alison after summer vacation and had left early to see her, disappointing "James". "Alex" watched in cloud form while the others walked to school, then solidified on a cliff in Central Park to bemoan his fate, and was startled when a cloud that wasn't his formed around him. It disappeared a second later, leaving "Alex" to believe it was just a figment of his imagination. A few hours later the still-brooding "Alex" was contacted by Tattletale's dreamself and told that old Fantastic Four foe Puppet Master had somehow evidently taken control of Franklin and was forcing him to fight a quartet of turtle-like aliens at a local pizza restaurant (see comments below). He also told "Alex" where the Puppet Master was living then (in a house located on their route to school). While the rest of the Pack were trying to rescue Tattletale from the aliens, "Mass Master" entered the Puppet Master's house to somehow stop him from his mad plan, only to discover the Puppet Master napping on the couch and a mentally impaired boy playing with toy figures of Franklin Richards and a set of "Adolescent Microwave Shell-Shocked Amphibians" toys (called that because apparently there were legal reasons Marvel couldn't use the name "Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles" in even a one-panel reference to an actual real-life cartoon. Hey, I'm not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV. I really don't know what the legalities of this situation might be.) that Puppet Master had made for him from his special clay. When the Puppet Master realized what chaos Morty (his (step?)son) inadvertently caused everyone he apologized, since he never foresaw the possibility of actual aliens who were almost identical to the cartoon characters could exist (and thus be controlled by Morty), or that Morty would go against orders and get into the room where PM kept the dolls he used to control others and play with them.
Meanwhile, "James" and "Margret" had spent the day enjoying themselves and celebrating "Margret's" recovery. They were sitting at the kitchen table laughing when the kids got home from school. "James" told Franklin about his parents" calling and told him he could use their phone to call them back. After Franklin finished his phone call "Alex" returned to the apartment, where he and Franklin had a small talk about "Alex's" transformation, with Franklin reassuring "Alex" that he was going to be all right no matter how he looked. The talk was interrupted by "James", who decided to confront "Alex" over his strange behavior. "James" was shocked by "Alex's" new appearance and was in the process of comforting a distraught "Alex" when "Margret" decided to enter the room herself to see what was going on with "Alex". When she saw her son's new look, she immediately fell back into her catatonia and collapsed at their feet.
(Power Pack I#61) - During Friday's final approach to the Power's apartment building it was attacked by an energy attack from the Red Ghost, forcing it to crash-land in the Power's apartment instead of landing on the roof like it intended. Inside the apartment Destroyer (Jack) managed to absorb enough debris fast enough to create a "safe pocket" enabling his sister Counterweight to degravitize the debris above them and free themselves. Lightspeed asked Counterweight to degravitize their unconscious "parents" so she (Lightspeed) could fly them to safety, but Counterweight was afraid the roof would fall on them if she remover her powers from it. "Mass Master" managed to reach Lightspeed and their "parents" and placed a density field around them to keep the falling debris off them, but failed to put one around himself in time to avoid being knocked for a loop himself by the destruction. Tattletale managed to use his dreamself to take control of "Mass Master's" body just long enough for "Mass Master" to recover, and to send his dreamself to his parents for help while "Mass Master" protected his body and the others with the density shield. Power Pack, their "parents", Raymond (who had been pretty much a bystander in the book for the last few issues, and who had been out in outer space with Friday and the Elan), "Marty" the Elan, and the mechanical globe that housed Friday's consciousness were rescued and brought to Four Freedoms Plaza. There Mister Fantastic put Friday's "brain" on the computer equivalent of life support machines, and examined "Margret". He quickly determined that he could undo Lord Yrik's mindlock on her (which Yrik had used on the true James and Margret Power ages ago to help Power Pack keep their secret superhero lives from their parents, and which everyone in this storyline assumed to be the real cause of "Margret's" breakdowns), but at the possible price of irreversible brain damage to her. While "James" thought those options out and wished for his family to be normal again, Mr. Fantastic examined "Alex", running various radiation and DNA tests on him. Told that the tests were inconclusive, a dispirited "Alex" rested his hand on Friday's globe, transferring enough of his healing power into it to revive Friday's consciousness again. It then gave Mister Fantastic some needed information on Kymellian genetics, which allowed him to adjust one of his many machines for use in reversing "Alex's" transformation. While "James" wished to have more time to adjust to this new development "Alex" pressed to have the reversal done immediately. During the painful reversal process the Red Ghost (disguised as Tattletale) entered the lab to steal Friday's globe and attacked, gassing Mr. Fantastic and throwing "James" into the reversal machine, causing it to go haywire and trapping "Alex" in his cloud form. While the Invisible Woman and Power Pack dealt with the Ghost and his Super-Apes, "Margret" heard the commotion from her room down the hall, and began to panic when she couldn't see where her husband and children were. While Raymond went to investigate the Elan found there was one thing that could calm "Margret" down enough for her to sleep, and was happy to see it working so quickly. (As revealed next issue, the Elan altered its appearance to look like "James".) After defeating the heroes the Red Ghost laughed maniacally in his triumph, until he was suddenly confronted by "James", wearing a costume himself and ready to take on the Ghost and his Apes.
(Power Pack I#62) - While "James" (actually the Elan disguised as him; I assume he didn't drop the disguise to keep the Red Ghost from realizing that he was fighting another alien until it was too late) kept the Red Ghost and his Apes busy, "Mass Master" looked the devastation over and worried that the reason he couldn't reform his body was because he was already dead. He then heard a voice (the one from #60) introducing itself (though not naming itself) to him. The voice told him that it would be there if he really needed it, and then encouraged "Mass Master" to focus his thoughts on reforming himself, which he finally managed to do. Feeling much stronger and more powerful than before, "Mass Master" looked over his fallen friends and determined to use his new strength to put an end to the Ghost's schemes, and was puzzled by the voice's parting comment about "an ending shall come", and decided to worry about it later. "Mass Master" turned his newly-boosted healing power on his friends and fixed them up in time to witness the Ghost defeating the Elan (and eliminating its disguise) and explaining how he learned of the true power behind a smartship (evidently he intercepted some Snark transmissions and learned about Kymellian technology, then tracked down Friday and attacked it to steal its brain). The Ghost and his Apes escaped, but they only got as far as Sheep Meadow in Central Park before Power Pack caught up with them. While "Alex" was feeling like a useful member of the team again, the Ghost had one of his apes take on "Margret's" appearance in an attempt to make the others believe she had been taken hostage, but Tattletale quickly learned that the true "Margret" was still back at the Plaza asleep, and used his dreamself to force the Margret illusion from the monkey's body and to keep the Ghost from using his dematerializing power to escape, while "Mass Master" knocked out the monkey with a density field and "James" felled the Ghost with a right to the jaw. Later back at the Plaza, Mister Fantastic re-examined "Alex" again, and found that "Alex" had mutated just enough to keep him from being restored by the original process. Learning to accept his new form, "Alex" wandered around the Plaza a bit, and realized by watching the Thing and Ms. Marvel (Sharon Ventura) that he could still have something resembling a normal life. He also watched as the Human Torch, with some help from the Elan, finished reassembling Friday, and was among those teleported to the roof by the Elan (he wanted to get Friday back outside where it could fly again). "James" then thanked the Fantastic Four for their help with their problems, and told them he had decided to try out a couple of other sources for curing his wife: the Institute of Psychic Research in London, England, and the Collard Institute for Psychic Studies in the Caribbean. "James" "Margret", Mass Master", Tattletale, the Elan, and the rest of the Power Pack boarded Friday, then left the Plaza for London.
(Excalibur I#29 (fb) ) - Power Pack, "James", and "Margret" arrive at the Institute of Psychic Research at London (apparently after taking "Margret" to several other experts besides the ones in Marvel Super-Heroes III#6) looking to see if they had a cure for her. The staff there instead took them down to a room and gassed everyone into unconsciousness, save for "Mass Master", who changed into his gas form and escaped via the same vent used to release the gas. (see comments below). He barely managed to reach Friday and the Elan (now officially called Marty by the others) before passing out. Friday recalled that the X-Men Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner) and Shadowcat (Kitty Pryde) were currently part of the British team Excalibur, and flew to their lighthouse to ask for their aid.
(Excalibur I#29) - A wary Excalibur (Captain Britain (Brian Braddock), Meggan, Phoenix (Rachel Summers), Nightcrawler) approached Friday after it appeared above their home base. Nightcrawler teleported inside where he found the unconscious "Mass Master" in a corridor. He woke "Mass Master" up, thinking at first he was an alien. After "Mass Master" updated Nightcrawler on his recent transformation, Friday allowed the other Excalibur members in, and "Alex" swiftly told them what had happened to his family at the Institute. After Excalibur agreed to help, Friday took them to the Institute, where Captain Britain, Megan, and Phoenix disguised themselves as a doctor, nurse, and patient respectively, to infiltrate the Institute, while leaving "Alex" and Nightcrawler to teleport in, since they'd have some trouble passing for normal (and again giving "Alex" the idea that there really was someone else in the world who understood being that different from normal humans as he was). (Brief comment: the dialogue makes it sound like "Alex" did the teleporting since Nightcrawler was still weak from recent injuries, but the teleporting field shown was clearly Nightcrawler's, so who really did what is unclear.) "Mass Master" and Nightcrawler soon found where the Power family and Tattletale were being held, but before they could contact the rest of Excalibur they were discovered and attacked. During the ensuing melee, Excalibur found that the Institute's staff had been transformed into demons, but they were themselves gassed before they could do anything about it. They were offered up to the demon's master, who turned out to be Nightmare. Preying on each of Excalibur's darkest fears, he quickly turned Phoenix into his own personal slave and had her track down and enslave the others, which she did. "Mass Master" (after merging with Tattletale, who had been following an unconscious summoning by Phoenix) confronted the enslave Phoenix after Nightmare turned her into his "horse" and rode her around. Nightmare used Phoenix's power to absorb "Mass Master" into their merged form, but then Tattletale used his powers to unmerge them all, then merged himself with Phoenix to break Nightmare's hold on them and return them all to the waking world. Back in the "real world", everyone woke up (Excalibur back in their tower, PP back on Friday) believing that what they experienced was just a very bad dream (in fact, if I read the ending correctly, they evidently didn't even visit the Institute at all the whole issue, let alone meet up with Excalibur), with "James" deciding that the trip over there had been a waste of time, just as Friday began final approach to the Institute's grounds. . . .
(Marvel Super Heroes III#6/2) - While "Margret" was treated at the Collard Institute for Psychic Studies in the Caribbean (with Marty to keep her company, I assume, since he isn't otherwise seen or mentioned in this story), "James" became engrossed with studying some aquatic phenomena (specifically some mysterious globes that had been found nearby) while the kids relaxed at the beach. Kate and Franklin asked "Alex" if he wanted to help build their sandcastle, but "Alex" decided it would be better for him if he stayed covered up (in jeans, overcoat, and baseball cap) to keep people from being frightened by his horsey appearance. When the sight of a finned creature swimming in the ocean sent the beach's population running away in a panic, "Alex" ran towards the ocean to see what was causing the ruckus. Under the waves "Alex" saw a humanoid fish, but had to come up for air before he could investigate further. However, the fishman followed him and punched him into a daze before departing. Rescued from drowning by Jack, "Alex" told the others what he had seen, but when he told how he had to come up for air, the others began to make fun of him, since he had temporarily forgotten that their uniforms could be modified in the otherdimensional Elsewhere to allow them to survive underwater. Searching the ocean floor for clues, Power Pack soon found some divers who were collecting some colorful globes and taking them to their ship. Appalled that the natural beauty of the waters was being despoiled, the Pack decided to board the divers' ship (called the Wild Thing) to see if what they witnessed was legal or not. Moments after boarding and noticing that the divers had "tons" of globes, the ship's captain immediately spotted them and ordered them to leave the globes alone. The ship was then attacked from below by an unknown attacker. The Pack used their powers to save the ship, but then a second attack broke the bow of the ship (where the majority of the globes were at), knocking some of the crew off and dropping the majority of the globes back into the water. "Mass Master", Lightspeed, and Tattletale spotted the fishman on the ocean floor, but the kids decided their top priority was to rescue the ship's crew from drowning, and left the monster for another time. Later at a local restaurant the kids discussed what to tell their father, only to be confronted by an angry "James", who had learned of their adventure from the head scientist that had been onboard the ship when it was attacked. "James" was upset that the kids had disrupted a legitimate scientific expedition, but calmed down when the Pack explained their side of the story. "James" apologized, saying that he still didn't know how to react to the kids" secret lives as super-heroes, and offered to rent a boat for them all as a way to relax. While out on the water, Franklin suddenly had one of his visions and asked "James" to turn the boat around. "James" angrily refused, saying they had come out there to relax, not get involved in yet more super-hero business, but "Alex" convinced "James" that helping to stop whatever bad thing Franklin saw happening in his vision was the right thing to do. They soon found the source of Franklin's visions was an attack by the fishman -- who Franklin identified as the Monster from the Lost Lagoon -- and his mate, who were trying to rescue their eggs (the globes the scientists were trying to study) from exploitation. Franklin convinced the Monster to stop his attack, while the rest of the Pack used their healing power on the Monster's mate, who had been seriously injured by the expedition's captain. Reunited with their children, the Monster and his mate thanked the Pack for their help, then left in their ship for space. "James" decided he was wrong to have not trusted the Pack from the start, and promised to be there for them from now on.
(Power Pack I#62) - After dropping off "Alex" back in their home neighborhood so he could say good-bye to girlfriend Alison, "James" and the others returned to Four Freedom's Plaza to drop off Tattletale and to inform the Fantastic Four of their intention to travel to Kymellia and see if either Yrik or someone else there could remove the mindlocks from "Margret" and "James", and perhaps learn more of why "Alex" transformed the way he did. Meanwhile "Alex" found Alison talking with another guy, and thought that she must have decided she couldn't wait for him forever. Unwilling to let Alison see him in his transformed state, he said good-bye from several yards away, then ran off before she could turn and get a good look at him. Back at the Plaza the Pack said their good-byes to Tattletale and the FF while the Elan explained to Mister Fantastic that he was returning to his own sector of space. Taking a last look at Earth, "Alex" reflected on how everything was a miracle since Whitey gave them their powers (waaaay back in Power Pack I#1), and that it was Whitey who was the mysterious voice who "talked" to him during the Red Ghost encounter. He then relaxed, thinking he was in a sense finally going home.
(Power Pack Holiday Special#1 - BTS) - At some point in their journey to Kymellia, Power Pack dropped off the Elan back in his own sector of space. Also at some (different?) point during the journey "James" developed his own set of super-powers.
(Power Pack Holiday Special#1) - After Friday re-entered normal space in the Kymellian system, Julie tried to bring "Margret" out of her catatonic state by reminiscing about happier times, but was unsuccessful. While everyone continued to rest in either their seats or on a mattress, Julie reflected on recent events, and began to puzzle out what may have really happened to "Alex" and their parents. Observing this from his base, the Technocrat was persuaded by exiled Snark Queen Meraud to switch Lightspeed with another pseudoplasmic servant before Julie solved the riddle. The Technocrat transformed his servant Krenok One into a duplicate of Lightspeed, but before he could switch him for the real Lightspeed, the imprisoned Mass Master managed to escape from his containment tube and destroyed the machine used to reshape the pseudoplasmic servants into the four faux Powers, cutting off the signal keeping them in those shapes and causing the servants imitating Alex, James, and Margret, to revert to liquid form in front of the horrified Power children (and causing the fake Julie back on the station to melt as well). Before the Power children could do anything besides be horrified the Technocrat teleported Lightspeed off Friday and imprisoned her in a tube next to her recaptured brother. While Lightspeed and Mass Master compared notes on what was going on, Friday examined the remains of the three fake Powers, and explained to Counterweight and Destroyer what pseudoplasm was, and how it could fool even Kymellian scanners (not to mention the human Mr. Fantastic's scanners) into thinking the duplicates were living beings. Destroyer initially wanted to question the duplicates on who created them, but when he realized they would be unable to tell him anything (due to the duplicates not knowing/remembering they were duplicates to begin with) he and Counterweight reluctantly gathered the liquid remains of "Alex", "James", and "Margret" into Friday's ejection shoot, and dumped them into space before the orders to resolidify came through.
Comments: Technocrat created by Louise Simonson (writer), June Brigman (penciler) and Roy Richardson (inker). The faux Alex, James, and Margret Powers were created by Michael Higgins & Seth Kruchkow (writers), Tom Morgan (penciler), Andy Mushynsky (inks). A character so obscure that he's not even listed on Snood's Master List :D (or at least he wasn't until I mentioned it).
It's unclear from the story itself, but given his appearance it is possible that the original Technocrat had been a cyborg before transferring his mind into the satellite's computers.
I am not sure if the Elan in Power Pack I#56-58 was supposed to be THE Infant Terrible, or just another juvenile member of its race. It never said, and no-one raised the subject of whether it was the Infant or not.
Revealed in Infant Terrible's profiles in Annihilation#2 (as Delinquent), Marvel Legacy: The 1960s Handbook and the Fantastic Four Encylopedia. It was indeed Infant Terrible appearing in Power Pack.
The quartet of aliens in Power Pack I#60 were from the planet Ciegrim-7, first introduced in one of the Hercules 2300 limited series. In Power Pack I#60 they had just crash-landed on Earth and were looking for some food when Morty inadvertently took control of them while playing with his toys.
The Technocrat was invented for the sole purpose of retconning away some rather. . . . interesting. . . . . plotlines introduced in the last few issues of that Power Pack run, like Alex's tuning into a Kymellian, James Powers getting superpowers out of the blue, and Margret Powers's bizarre catatonic state. I THINK I got all the appearances of the faux Powers here, but since I couldn't find any listing of all the issues they appeared in anyplace (heck, I couldn't find anyplace that listed any of these guys as separate characters AT ALL, or even listed the Power Pack Holiday Special as an existing book!) there may be one or more I missed. If so, let me know and I'll add them in.
Where Higgins and Kruchkow were planning on taking the alien visions "Margret" was having I have no clue, and as far as I know, it's never been touched on anyplace ever again. Come to think of it, if the Technocrat could do an exact "copy & paste" with someone's memories without doing harm to the original subject, then all he had to do was "copy & paste" from Dr. Powers to either his computers or to a pseudoplasmic servant, and sift through those copied memories to find the info he sought rather than going through the effort of kidnapping and replacing the actual Powers adults and sifting through their memories while on his station. But then there'd be no story usable to do a retcon with, so. . . . .
Odd note on this version of the Marvel Super-Heroes comic: when searching for this online, I found that few listed this book at all under its own name, if listed at all. Mile High Comics had the series, but listed it under the title of Marvel Special Edition rather than as Marvel Super-Heroes. Not sure why they felt the need to list it under a title it never saw print under, since listing the publication dates would have easily distinguished this run from its 1960's predecessor. Go figure.
The concept of a machine made from a semi-solid substance that could be formed into anything (including people) is not a new one, either in the Marvel Universe proper or in Science Fiction/Fantasy in general. It's been around for decades, at least. For all I know, John Campbell or Hugo Gernsback or someone in their stable of writers invented the stuff in a story someplace waaaaay back in the 1920's at least.
It was stated that the technology to create pseudoplasm was destroyed when the spacestation Kymellia II was destroyed. Given the size of his own spacestation, the Technocrat should have had no problem duplicating the process in his own place rather than relying on Kymellia II to produce it for him. The only reason I can think of for why he couldn't produce pseudoplasm after Kymellia II exploded was that his process for creating it required the presence (or the by-products) of live Kymellians to succeed, which was the one thing Kymellia II had bunches of but the Technocrat's spacestation lacked. And it's probably advisable to not think too hard on that, unless you really want to be totally grossed out by what biostuffs the process might require. . . . .
All in all, I rather liked this guy; he had a neat visual to him. And given his merging with a computer, he could very easily have had a back-up someplace that escaped his station's destruction, and could somehow recreate his body again, as well as those of his servants, including the faux Powers.
but have no known connections to any other "Powers" characters running around the Marvel Universe.
The Technocrat's servants in their originally programmed forms were indistinguishable from real Kymellians, exact copies down to a molecular level. They could also be programmed to believe they were "real" Kymellians rather than artificial ones. The Pseudoplasmic servants could also duplicate the native powers of the Kymellians, though to what extent they could do so remains unrevealed.
Krenok One The only one of the Technocrat's servants referred to by name, he was chosen to become the duplicate of Lightspeed (Julie Power) when the Technocrat realized that Julie was close to realizing the truth of his deception. He was transformed into an exact copy of Lightspeed, but was seemingly destroyed before he could be switched out with the real Lightspeed. The powers he had in his original form are unrevealed. As Lightspeed, he would have had her power of flight, but that was never put to the test.
The original name of this pseudoplasmic servant is unrevealed, as is what powers she had in her original form. As "Margret Power" she had all the real Margret's memories and desires, plus her artistic abilities. Unfortunately, her original programming began to overwrite the new programming, leaving "Margret" just unstable enough to go into a semi-permanent catatonic state when presented with the knowledge that her children had super-powers. While in her catatonic state she also saw visions of attacking aliens and their battles, though who these aliens were have never been revealed.
Technocrat's base was a spacestation the size of a moon (and possibly was originally a moon converted to house a humongous underground spacestation), which he presumably built himself, and which became his home after being exiled from the other Kymellians. The base was destroyed when Meraud tricked him into firing a missile through the station in an attempt to kill the smartship Friday, but Meraud "accidentally" jostled the missile launcher and the missile instead tore through the fission chamber that powered the satellite, causing the explosion. | 2019-04-20T20:10:38Z | http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix4/technocrat.htm |
Illinois Reforms: Who Blinks First?
The brinksmanship continues in Illinois. A moderately effective reform bill passed the senate but has been defeated in the house by Republicans, who seek stronger ways to limit compensability. As a result, the Dems are moving forward with the Doomsday option: a bill to abolish workers comp and send each and every claim into the court system. Wow, that’s one way to make everyone miserable, above all, injured workers looking for a reliable safety net.
Among other things, the defeated reform bill would have reduced the medical fee schedule by 30 percent, thereby saving (theoretically) $500m to $700m per year. The reduction sounds harsh, but in practice, fee schedules are fluid. For top specialists, the fees are almost always negotiated upward; for run-of-the-mill practitioners – or the Dr. Feelgoods with their pockets full of pills – they can take it or leave it. Lowered fee schedules provide payers with leverage to find the best available doctors – not necessarily a bad thing.
At the moment, legislators are playing a classic game of chicken: if we can’t reach agreement on reforms, we’ll blow the whole thing up. Given that Democrats are behind the Doomsday option, I doubt they will allow things to reach that point, as it would be a disaster for workers. But they are running out of time.
The potential good news for Illinois employers (and there isn’t much when it comes to comp) is that even the modest changes in the reform bill will begin to reduce the cost of workers comp, currently the third highest in the nation. The bad news is that further reforms will be needed, most of all, perhaps, involving the de-politicizing of comp in a hyper-political state. My advice to the legislators is simple: take it incrementally. Pass the reform bill pretty much as is and revisit the issue in the next session. In this precarious situation, half a loaf is better than none.
Posted in Best Practices, Compensability, State News | Comments Off on Illinois Reforms: Who Blinks First?
Chris Fleming hosts a substantive Memorial Day issue of Health Wonk Review at Health Affairs Blog – there are a lot of good submissions on a variety of topics, from Medicare and the Affordable Care Act to quality and healthcare IT.
Our highways are increasingly being populated with an array of new vehicles, from hybrids to electric cars and variety of lesser known technologies. And every time the cost of gas spikes, more and more consumers consider the options. A newly released J.D. Power and Associates study indicates major growth in consumer interest in green cars. The firm expects as much as 10 percent of sales to come from fuel-efficient vehicles by 2016, which would be a four-fold increase in green car sales over 2010. The Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (EV), has been on sale in the U.S. market since mid-December 2010. By next year, GM believes it can sell as many as 60,000 Volts and Amperas. And other EVs have also made a recent debut: the Nissan Leaf and the Ford Focus, to name but a few.
New technologies pose new challenges. When firefighters, police and other emergency personnel respond to a vehicle collision, they need to be up to speed about these new technologies and any hazards they may pose during extrication and resue. These include risks related to electric shock, unintended vehicle movement due to multiple energy sources, new types of vehicle batteries, fire extinguishment/overhaul, and vehicle charging stations and infrastructure associated with electric vehicles.
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has geared up for the challenge. Funded by $4.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and working in partnership with several vehicle manufactureres, the NFPA has launched an Electric Vehicle Safety Training program to help firefighters, police, and emergency medical technicians to prepare for the growing number of electric vehicles on the road in the United States. Training will encompass videos, classroom-training courses, self-paced online programs, and simulations to help first responders navigate the science and components of EVs, plug-in EVs, and hybrids. Training programs will help first responders ascertain whether the car is disabled or not, provide information about how to power down vehicles, demonstrate how to safely disconnect the high-voltage system, and show safe cut points for extrication.
Bonus: Firehouse.com offers a behind the scene look at the filming of the program’s video staring N.H. and Nev. firefighters.
The National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium (NAFTC) is an alternative fuel vehicle and advanced technology vehicle training organization. It is headquartered at West Virginia University and consists of National Training Centers (NTCs) located nationwide from Maine to California. NAFTC develops curricula and disseminates training about alternative fuel vehicles and advanced technology vehicles. Over 1,000 organizations such as Walt Disney World, U.S. Air Force, and NASA have participated in the NAFTC’s training, education, and outreach activities. NAFTC educates consumers about AFVs and advanced technology vehicles. In addition, the NAFTA curricula offers First Responder Safety Training in Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Hydrogen Vehicles.
Last year 29 coal miners died in an explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. Don Blankenship, Massey CEO, blamed the explosion on federal interference and a gigantic methane bubble that percolated up from below the mine shafts. The bubble has burst, but not in the way Blankenship would have you believe.
An independent team appointed by the former West Virginia governor, Joe Manchin, and led by the former federal mine safety chief Davitt McAteer, has issued its findings, which are both unambiguous and scathing. There was no methane bubble. There was, instead, a pattern of negligence by management that led directly to the deaths of the miners.
Given the uncompromising language of the report, Massey management may not enjoy the “exclusive remedy” protections of the workers comp statute. They are now vulnerable to charges of criminal negligence. I suspect that attorneys for the widows and children of the miners will look rather closely at the assets of Massey’s (now former) CEO.
Don Blankenship resigned from his CEO post in December of last year. Don’t bother putting up a collection to buy this ethically-challenged titan of business a gold watch. In 2009 he earned $17.8 million, which does not include deferred compensation of an additional $27.2 million. There is no question that Blankenship’s leadership created profits for the company. Unfortunately, these profits came at the expense of the environment and of the men who extracted the coal from the West Virginia mountains.
The anecdote that tells you a lot about Blankenship involves his personal water supply. When Massey Energy activity poisoned the water reaching his own home, Blankenship ran a private pipeline to the next town, where clean water was readily available. His neighbors, lacking Blankenship’s resources, have to make do with the local, polluted water.
It will be interesting to see what happens next. In a just world, Blankenship would be held accountable for his actions as Massey’s CEO. But we do not live in a world where justice prevails very often. Blankenship will likely continue to enjoy his retirement years, drinking clean mountain waters, railing about government interference, buying a few politicians and generally living the good life. We can only hope that each and every night his dreams are haunted by visions of the 29 miners and their struggling families. That would be one form of justice indeed.
Cavalcade of Risk – Emily Holbrook is hosting the 131st edition of Cavalcade of Risk at one of our favorite risk-related blogs, Risk Management Monitor. Check it out!
Compensability issues – In disputes as to whether an employee’s injury or illness is eligible for benefits, courts look at the issues of whether the injury arose in the course and scope of employment. Roberto Ceniceros posts that while course and scope have generally been regarded as a single doctrine, that may be changing with the challenges posed by an increasingly mobile work force. See his blog post: “Course and scope” separated.
Safety for the solitary worker – Speaking of a mobile work force, do you have workers who work alone? Solitary work poses unique safety challenges. See Safety Daily Advisor’s tips for keeping solo workers safe.
Claims IT systems webinar – Health Strategy Associates has an upcoming webinar that may be of interest to some of our readers: the results of HSA’s First Annual Survey of Workers Comp Claims IT Systems. If the sponsoring organization’s name isn’t familiar to you, it’s our fellow blogger and friend Joe Paduda’s firm – he’s sponsoring the seminar in conjunction with colleague Sandy Blunt. If this interests you, act now – the webinar is scheduled for tomorrow!
Mining safety, one year later – On last week’s anniversary of the West Virginia Big Branch mine disaster that claimed 29 lives, the latimes.com looks at progress – or lack of progress – in enhancing miner safety: Families of dead miners feel let down by Washington. The story reports that in the past year, a safety bill has failed and the backlog of safety cases has grown.
Top HR issues – Workforce covers the top 10 HR concerns as reported by the Employers Resource Association. These issues are compiled from the more than 8,000 hotline calls made by the organization’s membership of 1,300 companies in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.
Mousing elbow – As we incorporate more and more devices in our work-world, technology-related maladies seem to multiply. Greg LaRochelle of the MEMIC Safety Blog talks about Mousing Elbow and how to prevent it. See also Blackberry Thumb, Cell Phone Elbow, IPod Ear. Also, see our ergo tips for setting up a workstation.
Hidden costs – We all know the health risks of smoking and that smoking can contribute to comorbidities that hinder worker recovery. But there are lesser known risks that can contribute to claim costs, In PropertyCasualty360, Zack Craft of Total Medical Solutions talks about how smoking can damage sensitive medical equipment too, and a factor that adjusters should consider.
Illinois Comp: The Nuclear Option?
Illinois is struggling mightily with its bloated workers comp system. Currently ranked 3rd highest for overall cost in the Oregon study, the governor and legislature are under intense pressure from the business community to lower the cost of comp insurance. Aiming its powerful bulldozers at the state capital, the Caterpiller Company has threatened to move their business somewhere else if reforms are not implemented immediately. In exploring all options, the legislature has gone so far as to think the unthinkable: abolishing workers comp.
In looking for ways to save money, Illinois does what all states do: first, identify the cost drivers and then try to change the statute to bring down costs. Among the hot issues on the table are the medical fee schedule (too generous), employee choice of doctor (too flexible), duration of benefits (too long), causation (too vague). Ah, behind every cost driver is a vested interest (perhaps literally vested, with many of the lobbyists wearing three piece suits). The common denominator among all states struggling with high comp costs is the omni-present stakeholder, who is deeply committed to the status quo.
Governor Quinn would like to see a number of reforms, including the capping of carpal tunnel benefits, denying claims where employee intoxication is a significant factor, attacking fraud (see our blog on Illinois’s dubious arbitration services), capping wage differential benefits at age 67 or five years after an injury, and implementing utilization review for physical therapy, chiropractic and occupational therapy services.
The Illinois legislature is so frustrated with the slow progress and with stakeholder resistance to change, they are now threatening to blow up the entire system. Interesting to note, this pressure is coming from the Democrats. John Bradley (D-Marion) has filed House 1032, a bill to repeal the workers comp act and send all workplace-injury issues into the court system. Should this happen, Illinois will find itself in the world prior to 1912, when injured workers had to sue their employers and could collect benefits only if their injuries were caused by someone other than themselves. They would collect no benefits while awaiting adjudication of their claims. They would be out of work and out of luck.
In all likelihood, repeal of workers comp is not a serious option in Illinois; it’s a political strategy for getting the attention of inertia-bound legislators. But the prospect of abolition does raise an interesting issue. Workers comp came to America 100 years ago. By the end of the World War II, every state had implemented the program.
What if there were no workers comp programs today? What if each state were starting from the beginning and tackling the issue of protection for injured workers? I find it hard to imagine that state legislatures would be willing to implement a program, totally funded by employers, that provides indemnity for lost wages and 100 percent medical benefits for injured workers. Why so generous? Why so inclusive? It’s too expensive. It will create disincentives for working. The cost will drive employers out of business or out of state.
With today’s acrimonious, ideology-driven debates, workers comp would be a hard sell. That’s too bad, for despite its problems and inequities, despite the wide variations in benefits and costs from state to state, comp is a compelling example of effective social engineering. In Illinois, cooler heads will likely avoid the meltdown option. To be sure, Illinois comp is a mess, but the alternative – a workplace without workers comp – would be far worse.
Posted in Best Practices, Compensability, History, State News | Comments Off on Illinois Comp: The Nuclear Option?
Did you miss your biweekly dose of heath wonkery last week? Grab a cup of Monday morning coffee and catch up now with news from the best of the health blog pundits – Hank Stern hosted a concise compendium in his Health Wonk Review Spring Renewal edition at InsureBlog. Thanks, Hank!
A couple of days ago my colleague Julie Ferguson blogged OSHA’s new focus on farm safety. We all share the concern for the safety of farm workers. But OSHA is upping the ante in a way that requires the immediate attention of both insurance companies and their clients. As part of their investigation into the deaths of two teenage workers in a silo operated by Haasbach LLC, OSHA issued subpoenas for documents from Haasbach’s insurer, Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Co. OSHA wanted to review safety inspection reports and any follow up documentation from Haasbach. The insurer refused, arguing that the subpoena would discourage businesses from allowing insurers to conduct safety inspections if the material contained in the inspection reports can be used against a business during later litigation or OSHA enforcement proceedings.
The court ruled that OSHA has jurisdiction to investigate the workplace fatalities, and further has the authority to require the production of relevant evidence and the ability to issue a subpoena to obtain that evidence. The requested documents, which included copies of site safety inspections, applications for insurance coverage for the site, and correspondence between Grinnell and Haasbach concerning the site, were found to “reasonably relate to the investigation of the incident and the question of OSHA jurisdiction,” according to the decision.
The court’s ruling has important implications for both insurers and their clients.
Insurers are required to provide safety services, including site inspections with the findings documented in written reports. Usually, the safety inspector asks for a written response within a set time period. With OSHA potentially accessing these reports, there is liability for insurers: did they identify safety problems? Did they follow up to ensure that the problems were fixed within a reasonable period of time? It’s another version of the great liability question: what did you know and when did you know it?
Similarly, the documents put insureds at risk. Safety issues have been identified. How did the business respond? Did they fix the problem? Did they perform the necessary training? Did they document their activities to show good faith in correcting identified concerns?
In all of this activity, candor is essential. The last thing anyone wants – and that anyone certainly includes OSHA – is for this court’s ruling to have a chilling effect on the routine inspections performed by insurance companies. The concern is that inspectors, sensing OSHA reading over their shoulders, might hedge the findings just a bit – enough, perhaps, to create an ambiguity in the finding that results in an ineffective and unfocused response by the insured, which, in turn, perpetuates the hazard and leads, perhaps, to a serious injury or even death. That would be an unintended consequence of tragic dimension.
As always when OSHA becomes involved, there is a lot of money on the table. Following the fatalities, Haasbach was issued 25 citations with a penalty of $555,000. This was in response to the situation where three (untrained) workers became entrapped in corn more than 30 feet deep. At the time of the incident, the workers were “walking down the corn” to make it flow while machinery used for evacuating the grain was running: all in a day’s work on the farm, and extremely hazardous.
It is certainly not in the best interests of insurance companies and their clients to build defenses against potential OSHA involvement. If we all share a commitment to safety – and we must – then an open and candid dialogue is essential. To be sure, both insurers and their clients are “on the hook” once problems have been identified. But surely it is in their combined interests to fix those problems as quickly as possible. Insurers and their clients must keep the focus where it belongs: not on OSHA, but on the moment-to-moment, day-to-day safety of workers on farms, in factories and in every American workplace. | 2019-04-21T00:12:29Z | http://workerscompinsider.com/2011/05/ |
Michaela Light: Cool. Yeah I mean I think Cold Fusion is pretty easy to learn for someone who is coming from a design background, who knows HTML. It's a great way to get into it.
Michaela Light: And now you know both sides of the things. You know the coding side and the design side so that's a very powerful combination.
Esmeralda A.: Yeah, well first I was only doing the design and my layouts, my basic layouts. I said okay I would design and then I would pass it on to the programmer. Sometimes when I was not getting my design looking like what was on the JPEG, I said well what's going on here so that's what drove me to go learn that. Yeah, and just that then I started doing not only the design but also I started building the site itself, like the UI of it. It was a good transition there. Now I know both sides of it.
Michaela Light: When you're building a theme, what is important to consider when you're creating a theme for Content Box?
Esmeralda A.: Well, first the one thing right now I mean that everything is mobile also, I want to make sure it's responsive so I have make sure my CSS, the layout itself it's responsive. Then it would be easy to understand, easy to use, easy to apply so that's when I develop it. The settings, if there are multiple settings for example one of the things has a slide show or a news feed, social settings. Not everyone wants that so I have to make sure I have to give them an option to turn it off and on. Or even also the aspect of placing the picture on the left, on the center, on the right. Just my purpose is just basically making it easier for the user and giving them more options than just having a basic header and footer and just a middle section for the content.
Michaela Light: Yeah because that would be a pretty boring theme if you did that.
Michaela Light: And for people who haven't done responsive design before, that means it resizes automatically and in smart ways and the widgets move around.
Michaela Light: All of that. Yeah.
Esmeralda A.: Based on the screen size. And also I mean the ones I design for Ortiz, for Content Box, they're final and they'll based on Boot Strap so basically Boot Strap is tied into that so therefor the developer that picks it up could actually customize it or continue using the CSS from there.
Michaela Light: When your doing, you said you have different options in the UI. People can turn off sections or whatever and this is in the user settings.
Michaela Light: End users who are doing this doesn't have to know how to code but you have to write a bunch of code to make that happen I'm guessing?
Esmeralda A.: Yes and it's really simple. Understand the theme's CSC, that's where you add your settings and now what the new release has also is grouping. Meaning that before they were just there was no way, let's say for example, in one section I have a picture and turn off and on the colors and all that. That's four settings based on one section. Before they were all run into each other so now we have actually categories of settings. This is categories for this section, section A or I mean I'm just being very simple here, generic. So section has five settings and those are grouped inside, the developer adds them to that theme CSC. And also another thing is we had the names of the setting but there was no way the user knew exactly okay so what this is for. There was no instruction, there was no description.
What we added for the developer is you know the help, you know this is goes here or like for example this is the name of theme based on the color but actually has the actual color swatches. So now we have a modal window too for the developer to add more detailed description of what that setting does.
Esmeralda A.: Who use it.
Michaela Light: To be content editors. Yeah.
Esmeralda A.: Correct. Yeah and I think believe it's in the next one, there will be where they could actually select images from the bag, so we're still working on that. Color swatching, I think that's already available. I mean color picker, but yeah we're constantly adding more. The point is to make it easier on the user using the system.
Michaela Light: Is creating a theme something any Cold Fusion developer could do?
Esmeralda A.: Oh yes. Of course. For me, I didn't have very much experience, only I ended up busting out a whole project based on that. That was one probably Content Box early, early release like when they still only had layouts. It was not even called themes. They didn't have many options and I was able to develop a theme myself for that. So now with the new options, I mean the new organization it's much easier. so yes and then we have documentation also. It's very simple. Of course, our workshop during the conference, not only that and it's one thing reading it from the blog post or you know documentation but now Gavin and I will be there to answer questions and show you exactly how to build a theme.
Michaela Light: So you're talking about the full day workshop on Wednesday?
Esmeralda A.: Yes and part of it will be be building themes on them. Yeah.
Michaela Light: And just for people don't know, Gavin Pickin is the evangelist for Content Box.
Esmeralda A.: Yep. I'm assisting him on that one.
Michaela Light: You're the assistant evangelist.
Esmeralda A.: I'm the assistant evangelists, yes. So we'll be there on Wednesday.
Michaela Light: Right and helping people go through some code and explaining all this stuff.
Michaela Light: That is great. You mentioned that there was a shift from layouts to themes. What's the difference between a layout and a theme?
Esmeralda A.: Well right now I mean a theme is more following conventions now. A theme it consists of the components, it consists of the layout which is basically all right this layout consists of a header, a footer, okay so let me go back. Okay. All right, so there's views. There are views which is a little chunk like for example the view of the footer or the header. Let's say you have two types of headers, right? So this is header A, header B. So each of those are views. A layout will consist, okay this layout, let's say the homepage has header A but layout two has header B, now in the theme consists of those two components plus the CSS, the Java Script and the modules within that that's needed to build that theme. Let's say the theme also has a slide show, a news feed, a Twitter feed, but this is just based on the theme. It's not on the entire, on the Content Box site. The Content Box site has multiple themes, the themes have multiple layouts, the layouts have different kind of views. Before it was cold layouts but we switched it out to be more compliant with the many conventions out there.
Michaela Light: Right. Because things like Word Press have themes.
Michaela Light: Where there's hundreds of different ones people can download.
Michaela Light: I guess you want the same idea with Content Box that you and other people in the Content Box community create themes and share them out or make them for sale.
Esmeralda A.: Yeah. You know, layout also has a sidebar, maybe a layout has a left bar and a side bar so that's basically that's the layout itself so that's the different between layouts and themes now.
Michaela Light: And you mentioned styles in there. Is that part of themes? Are we talking about CSS styles?
Esmeralda A.: Yes. Well that's what will make the theme and pretty soon we have, let's say this theme or I'm going to use it because I'm an outdoor theme. You know like so I used earth tones on this theme. You know, let's say so my CSS, my swatches, all that and I used SASS in order to compile all my CSS so I use a variable … I'm sorry?
Michaela Light: What is SASS for people who haven't met that? That's a CSS tool?
Esmeralda A.: So that's why that so but that's what I use. So basically I pick my colors for the theme. Let's say font styles, any dimension, any sizes so that's what I use the style sheet is for that theme. Yeah, that's a very important component of that theme itself. It makes the look, that's where I specialize in.
Michaela Light: Right. You know, the look makes for better usability I'm assuming?
Esmeralda A.: Yes. Exactly. And also we use the CSS queries, use your media queries. So like I say I use this to target the mobile, the certain resolution, this other stuff for that so yes. That's what, that's very important, that style sheet part of the theme.
Michaela Light: And then if you wanted to change from one theme to another, is that, you just change out the theme or do you have to do other things because it's connected in with the code somehow?
Esmeralda A.: No, it's actually very simple to switch off. You go to, the options in Content Box, you have active theme, which is the theme that you have and let's say you want to have another theme, you download from Forge Box. Then you go to themes and either you already have it there or you actually download it from Forge Box and you can switch things there. Nothing is tied, everything is on it's own, I mean everything like it's own box. You deactivate it, nothing stays, then you can active the next theme so it's that simple.
Michaela Light: It's kind of, right plug and play.
Michaela Light: Just pick what you want and it picks up all the new stuff?
Michaela Light: And then where do all those theme settings get saved? You know you said you have settings that turn features on and off but where is that? If you change out a theme in and out, where is all that info stored as to how the theme is configured?
Esmeralda A.: And so it's stored, it's following the theme name. So let's say for example, well the content is separate. The settings themselves they are saved on the database based on the theme name. Like there's no conflict.
Michaela Light: Right. And then for the settings, do you have to set those by hand in the code or there's a UI, how does that work with the theme?
Esmeralda A.: Well the developer will set them up in the theme CSC. Yeah and then based on there's a code used, let's say I want to use a setting on the homepage, then I set it up on the code for the layout. Or the view, calling that specific setting. Yeah.
Michaela Light: You designed the UI for those settings. What have you done to improve the UI for those things?
Esmeralda A.: Well right now the major part was organizing the theme settings and giving the instructions and the help for the user. That was the major part that we did and also right now, we're hoping to have an access where you can pick images from the settings.
Esmeralda A.: Right now what we have is basically you have to actually put in the URL instead of actually selecting it from the media, so we're working on that.
Michaela Light: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Are there any other things that makes for an amazing theme UI?
Michaela Light: The artistic part.
Esmeralda A.: The artistic part. I mean my process is basically first I set it up and let's say what I usually use is Photoshop right. And then from there, you know that's okay so that's why I come with the layout and then from there, let's say I want … Each one is a component. I break it apart and then from there I use the CSS to say okay so I want these options. Let's say for example I want to give the actually I did it with a few, all of them, I give them different colors. I gave a different color swatches. For example, one is blue, one is a green. On the settings I say okay how do you want your color, your header? What color do you want for your header? They could change it based on that setting in the back.
Now I mean, of course the developer could add different colors or different settings to use different CSS calls on that but the user only has to say I want green, I want blue. It's easy for the developer to add them, it's also easy for the user to set them up.
Michaela Light: Right. What else do you like about themes and Content Box?
Esmeralda A.: One first of all it's so easy to set up. That's the one major thing. Also, I do like the fact that Content Store, you can store different content without using the database, you know you have set up for example, I want a news feed so I set up a category called news and content. And then myself like building my themes, I could say I want this category to show up on this theme. That's why I love the fact that I don't have to go and you know do the programming, I could just do it by calling the Content Store.
Michaela Light: You know, I've read there are also modules you can add to themes?
Esmeralda A.: Yes. Yes, a module could actually have widgets. For example, for Content Box CMS or I ended up doing a module which stores which puts a widget that adds an animated GIF on there. That's how simple it is. Now you could add an image and it puts an animated GIF on the page itself. But this module itself is only for that theme. I won't be, if they switch themes, it won't be there. What I'm saying like if you want something specific for this theme, you could just build it for that and package to show up on your theme.
Michaela Light: I hear there are also events in themes. Why would you want to use an event?
Esmeralda A.: For example, one of the themes I did, I had to, back to using the Content Store. I needed, I gave the option to the user, do you want on the left or on the right, right? So then I had to set up a custom field in that Content Store entry, left, right, basically saying image position left or right. Instead of having the user add the custom field to the category those entries, what I said okay on activation of this theme or build or set up the custom fields basically content by data for me on that event.
Michaela Light: That sounds powerful to have.
Michaela Light: Because you don't have to like go in and change the code in the core of Code Box.
Michaela Light: You could hook in to those events.
Esmeralda A.: Exactly. So it's lessening for events and I want this code there so it's inserting it there without, it makes it much easier.
Michaela Light: Is there anything else you want to share about the talk that you and Gavin are doing?
Esmeralda A.: As far as the workshop or the session? Well we will be building knowledge, showing how to build a site. Also we'll be showing how to transform an old site to from a legacy site to using Content Box and building the look that they have or you know what you seen, customizing a theme from Content Box.
Michaela Light: Well sounds exciting. I've got some other questions not related to Content Box. Let's move to those. I noticed in your bio that you said that climbing mountains helps you code better and I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about that.
Esmeralda A.: I would love to. I love hiking. I love the outdoors and you know sometimes you get a block and you need to clear out the mind so where I do the best, go hike a mountain and I mean it hurts. It's painful and you're on the path and you have the thoughts with yourself so next thing you know I'm thinking oh I could have done that or I do this or when I come back, I reach the mountain, I conquered it, I come back with a solution to work.
Michaela Light: That's great, great tip and for those people who don't have mountains maybe a walk outside in a park would work as well.
Esmeralda A.: Exactly. Hey I went to the highest peak in Nebraska and trust me, it was kind of flat. But I still worked out better.
Esmeralda A.: Yeah any nature walk is great.
Michaela Light: And then why are you proud to use Cold Fusion?
Esmeralda A.: Well, it was easy for me to pick it up and actually I was right out of school and I was hired by a company that was programming Cold Fusion. And I have tasted Peach Tea but I keep coming back to Cold Fusion, it was just so very easy for me and now that they added CS script, that was more like and also since I had the object oriented, now they're gearing more to that so I really like it. The fiber components and it's just, I was more familiar with it and it was a sense associated with Java, which also is my background when I went to school. That's why I stayed with that.
Michaela Light: Cool. And what would it take to make Cold Fusion more alive this year?
Esmeralda A.: Putting out the word out and more classes on it, more training. I mean I know Ortiz is doing quite a bit on that but that will be, more support for it, that will be to show that there is a bigger community out there helping each other. That would be great.
Michaela Light: Yeah, that's a great thought. Is there anything that you personally could do that would help in this regard?
Esmeralda A.: I could become more active in the community. I'm just new. But I mean I'm already part of the Box team on Slack and that's how people can reach me too. Like I said I'm new to this, if I can help anybody with my, I mean there, as it is I've had a lot of people helping me when I was building my project. Even now I still I'm helping out Gavin and I mean it's a great community among us here so if I could help anybody else I'm going to do that. And if I can't, I know I could refer somebody else on the team.
Michaela Light: Cool. What are you looking forward to in the Into the Box Conference?
Esmeralda A.: One major thing, I'm trying to integrate view JS into my designs and my UI so I know there's someone giving a talk on that so I'm looking forward to that and also just networking with everybody and attending all the developers, designers, anybody that's there. I just love to hear people's point of view or you know ideas, get inspired so I'm really looking forward to it.
Esmeralda A.: And of course sharing what I know, giving my design twist to the conference there too.
Michaela Light: Fabulous well I look forward to meeting you at the conference. If people wanted to reach you further, how could they best do that?
Esmeralda A.: Through Slack, through the Box Team channel. I'm available there.
Esmeralda A.: I don't have a Twitter yer or Linked In yet but Slack will be the best right now.
Michaela Light: Fabulous. Box Team on Slack. Well, we'll include the URL for that in the show notes. Thanks so much for telling us all about themes and Content Box.
Esmeralda A.: You're welcome. Looking forward to meet you too. | 2019-04-25T00:29:21Z | https://teratech.com/015-better-contentbox-themes-and-easily-creating-an-amazing-ui-with-esmeralda-acevedo-transcript/ |
I so totally love this new website and can see it as a major part of our research for our school, Cor Iesu Academy! I love the little slide presentation, how it has the text at the bottom that is being read aloud....so not only can my 7th grader look up information for things he is studying but my emergent readers, my four and five year olds can also benefit from this cool site! They even have information on saints and the Church (hopefully accurate) ;) Here is the one for today's Feast Day: Saint Francis de Sales, Enjoy!
Here is all the information for the chore chart. We call it the Little Way Chore Chart because it was St. Therese that said that God does not look at the greatness nor the difficulty of your actions but at the love with which they are done. She also said that if you pick up a pin with love, you can convert a soul. So, that has been our focus for the past few years. Charity in everything.
The purpose of the chart is to train their will and everything else I mentioned before. I started with the things I repeat twenty times a day, every day. You can obviously add lines to match the number of kids you are including in the chart and change the chores to fit your home. As these chores become habits, revise your chart. When you revise your chart, the old chores still need to be performed. Hopefully, by then, they are a habit more than a chore, which makes room for new chores on the chart. They get a star push pin on the chores that get done without my asking. They get a red push pin on the chores that get done after I ask them. They get no pin on the chores that do not get done. The time in each section is the cut off for each chore set. After that time they can only get a red pin or an empty space. For every section of the day completed with only with stars they get a ticket. For every section of the day completed with some red push pins they get a good job comment. For every portion of the day with spaces without pins, they owe me a ticket (after they chart has been in place for a while and only for the older kids ). Whatever they have not completed by the time school starts, they have to complete during the break, after their snack but before they go out to play. If they want a ticket, that is.
They can cash in their tickets for different rewards (you know your kids best so assign different ticket values to different motivators). They can also cash in their tickets for gifts for their sibblings. (In bold because I love when they do this!) For example, we do 5 tickets for 30 minutes on the computer playing games. 10 tickets to pick a movie from Netflix for a family movie night with popcorn. 5 tickets to earn back a silly band that has been confiscated by the authorities. 40 tickets for an afternoon out with mommy or a dinner date with daddy. We also have small crafts from Jo Ann or Michaels and other trinkets that they can get for themselves or get for their sibblings as gifts.
I print these out on legal paper and staple them to a thick corkboard (I use floor soundproofing cork, it is nice and thick so the pins go in easily and stay put). I have decorated ours with pictures and quotes from St. Therese of the Little Flower. My kids can relate to her right now and she is our companion saint for this year. They have a small box with pins so they can tack off their chores as they complete them. I have also stapled envelopes at the bottom to hold their tickets. That way it is all in one place.
I do have to say that you must follow through with the rewards and the punishments for it to work. If you are not on top of the ticketing, they will lose interest. Set a ticket counting day for the month/week. Take out your calendar and your reward chart and let them cash in their tickets. Whatever appointments you mark on that calendar for rewards, make sure you stick to them.
I hope this helps you guys as much as it has helped me, if not more. You know your kids best so remember to fine tune it to meet your family's needs.
Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints: Papa Ben's Prayer Intentions: "2011 Like what you see? Feel free to grab them and use them on your blog or web page, just remember to give us ..."
In case you missed Part I, here it is.
Here are a few things we have been doing in the past two years in order to address these Mother Hen needs.
First, I scheduled a wake up time. If they were tired in the morning, that only meant they would appreciate their bed time a lot more. After a few days of waking up at the same time, they adjusted nicely.
Second, The Little Way Chore Chart was born! A system built around St. Therese of Lisieux’s Little Way. A chore chart that teaches self-motivated industry, love for others, accountability, diligence and humility at the same time that it teaches them to run a house efficiently. It also teaches them the value of things. They earn tickets to cash in for different rewards either for themselves or to gift to their siblings. They can see immediate repercussions on the family if they miss a chore or do it poorly. They can also see their progress through the week right on the chart. (We’ll add a separate post that goes in to the details of the chart and the files themselves in case you would like a copy of it.) It includes grooming, house chores, prayers, chores which relate directly to other family members, school work, and bonus stars for helping mommy and doing things with a good attitude. It is very simple and they keep track of their own progress. This also develops a sense of honesty and honor.
The fourth and last great change we made was the institution of uniforms for school days. Yep, you read it right, uniforms. This year I decided that the fashion show was highly overrated. I had also not had my laundry epiphany yet so the less laundry I had to do, the happier everyone at home would be. Now, getting dressed in the morning is joyful and efficient. There is no more looking for shoes to match or the other sock that goes with that outfit. No need to change from the dress to the shorts before going out to play. I don’t even care if they get grass stains or paint drips or holes in their pants. These are their uniforms and they were instituted for that purpose. It is carefree attire to be worn all day, no matter what the circumstances and I LOVE IT!
So in short, I have found freedom in structure. I have found peace in schedules. I have found growth in training my will to stick to this new way of home schooling so I can train my children’s wills. I have found that even with all the planning we do and all the scheduling we do, there are those days, sometimes weeks, that are just impossible and everything falls apart. However, I have also found that because I now have a plan, a solid base to go back to, it is a lot easier to get it all back in order and start over.
So the Ortiz Free Range Chicken Home School, is now measured and structured and we have more freedom to do the things we want to do because all the things we have to do have already been done. All with God’s grace, always!!
They have done a great job with these...I'm posting them on FB all the time as I have lots of family and friends who don't understand the Church as it truly is...a great way to evangelize and open channels of communication with others...so spread the word!
I found this fantastic article entitled: Seven Quick Takes: How to Foster Vocations and thought that our RLS followers would also enjoy it. My favorite suggestion has to be the one that says to stop asking children what they want to be when they grow up and instead ask, "Who is God calling you to be?” We don't push for the religious life at our home **wink** (though deep in me I'd be the happiest mother in the world if all of our children became priests and nuns; though DH says he'd like one boy to keep the family name going), but instead we are active about discussing this as an option, just like marriage. So in today's post, I'd like to focus on promoting vocations to the religious life.
2. We are friendly with our priests and make it a custom to say hello and encourage the children to speak with them as well. We also invite priests over for dinner (which reminds me we need to invite our new associate to dinner-wonder what his favorite is?). We encourage the children to draw pictures or make them simple cards through out the year and for special days.
3. We have a card that our Diocese publishes with the names and pictures of all the seminarians in our Diocese. This card sits at our Home Altar and we say special prayers for them to Our Lady of Perpetual Help as we have commend them to her guidance and aide in these difficult times of our Mother Church.
4. We use technology to promote vocations. For example, we love to pray the Rosary with a DVD of Mother Angelica and her nuns...my kids have asked (especially my daughter) tons of questions while watching them pray the Rosary. We also love to surf the internet and find recordings of Ordinations and Solemn Professions. =) Movies/videos of the lives of Saints (religious or not) is also another great way to discuss vocations.
5. We have this really great book called, Could I Paint the Sky (a book I reviewed on CatholicMom.com)...which talks about how you can discern the vocation God has in store for you...again, "who is God calling you to be?"
Have you prayed for our priests and for the increase of vocations? Maybe this could be something your Domestic Church would like to take up for the new year?
So tell us, how do you foster vocations in your homes?
For me, home schooling was about pride for a long time. We were going to do everything differently from schooled children, every day, and all the time. There was no way I was going to teach my children like school systems teach or keep such a tight schedule. We will school in our pajamas and we will wake up when our body is ready to wake up! We will go on field trips at least once a week! We will do arts and crafts every day! Free range chickens vs. those chickens in those super crowded, mega sized coups. We are free range chickens!!! At least we were until I realized that we are not.
The Ortizes have needs that free range chickens don’t have. By the Ortizes, I mean the mother hen (the rooster kinda goes with the flow most of the time when it comes to home schooling issues. He mostly steps in to discipline when called upon by a frantic mother hen). Two years ago I gave in and took another look at my Free-Range Chicken Philosophy. Even though we were getting all our schoolwork done, there was an overall feeling of chaos throughout the day. From meal planning to lesson planning to crisis management, it was all improvised.
Realizing I have three girls who changed outfits at least three times every day and, later, a son that actually required changing outfits at least three times a day forced me take another look at the Freedom of Attire Policy in our home. Having four children wake up at different times of the day meant they would get hungry at different times of the day so the Letting Your Body Wake Up When It Is Ready Policy started losing popularity. We were struggling with diligence and willingness (with a good attitude) so the Get Your Chores Done Any Time Before Bedtime Policy got sent to editing. Spending one whole day out of the house every week started to mean spending one whole day packing and preparing for the next day, so the One Fieldtrip a Week Policy got in line for the axe.
At about the same time, a dear friend kept saying that we must train our children’s will so that they don’t have the same internal struggles that we do. Another friend, kept mentioning the importance of actually being at home. I tended to agree with all they were saying and yet, it just did not occur to me that these were essential for a joyful home schooling environment in my Free-Range Chicken world. Then one day, it did and the idea of a big modified and highly efficient coup for my free range chicks started to grow on me.
I started looking at what other people were doing in their homes. Two of my closest friends, Mimi and Christine, had just come home from FPEA with Accountable Kids’ chore tabs which the children switched from one wooden peg to another as they completed them. I thought they were amazing! Another friend, Theresa, had passed out a list of age appropriate chores at one of our mom meetings. I was awed by what she proposed little ones could and would do.
At our Little Flower’s meetings lead by the most awesomest ( yes, that is a world if you really mean it) LF leader on earth (yes, you are Jenny) the kids were learning about self-motivated industry, humility, love of neighbor, love of God and many other great virtues. The wheels started turning in my head: How can I implement all these great things without sending my free-range chickens into shock?
What to do about all those outfits the girls seem to need to change into every day?
How does one train a will exactly?
How do I reinforce everything they are learning at Little Flowers at home, constantly?
In the meantime, did you have an epiphany about the need for an organized Domestic Church/Homeschool? If so, what triggered it for you? (just don't tell us what you did just yet - save that lovely comment for Part Deux of this post)...come on, don't be shy!
Take a little visit to this Catholic Homeschooling Blogging Mama who is Raising Little Saints just like you and me! Enjoy!
"Abby Johnson quit her job in October 2009. That simple act became a national news story because Abby was the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas who, after participating in her first actual abortion procedure, walked across the road to join the Coalition for Life.
Unplanned is a heart-stopping personal drama of life-and-death encounters, a courtroom battle, and spiritual transformation that speaks hope and compassion into the political controversy that surrounds this issue. Telling Abby's story from both sides of the abortion clinic property line, this book is a must-read for anyone who cares about the life versus rights debate and helping women who face crisis pregnancies."
The book has a foreword by Father Frank Pavone from Priests for Life and the introduction was written by the director of 40 Days for Life, David Bereit. This book is getting a lot of attention (from both sides)...for those of you some way involved in 40 Days for Life (like I am), it's a must read! I can't wait to get my hands on a copy myself!
Happy Feast of the Baptism of the Lord!
I know, he was baptized as an adult not a child but isn't that picture just lovely? LOL!
So this year we are starting a new family tradition where we will celebrate BapDay for all the kiddies...when were you baptized? I was baptized December 1974....at a year old!
This is me with my beautiful godmother at my first birthday (sorry no baptism pictures most of my albums stayed behind in Nicaragua).
DS#2: with his godparents and the new gown we got to start a tradition with him.
DS#4: with his godmother just a couple of weeks ago!
DD#1: With her godmother, Father Fishwick, and her big brother the altar boy.
We will add their printed Baptism picture to our Family Altar.
We will place their Baptism candle in a holder like this one (any holder for taper candles will do, I'm certain I've seen them at the Dollar Store) and then light the candle.
Remember this, [Your Child's Name].
I also found this document containing tons of prayers for everyone that was involved in the Baptism.
Get a Baptism Anniversary card (or make one).
And what's an anniversary without a delicious dessert? So the child's favorite dessert is what we will do, if the child is old enough to help make it, it will be their special time with mommy or daddy making it!
I would love to do this with my godchildren as well, at least the mailable parts as all of my kiddies live in Florida!
Want more ideas? I found this lovely list that you might want to take a look at and pick what fits your Domestic Church best.
Can you name all the dates of your kids baptism? That's my goal to be able to rattle them off just like their birth!
"Bless, O Lord God, this creature chalk to render it helpful to your people. Grant that they who use it in faith and with it inscribe upon the doors of their homes the names of your saints, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, may through their merits and intercession enjoy health of body and protection of soul.
Third, we then used the chalk to write "20 + C + M + B + 11" over the door of our house. It represents the year, and the blessing "Christus mansionem benedicat" (May Christ bless this house). The four crosses represent each season of the year.The letters represent the traditional names of the Wise Men: Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. So basically, it's 20 for 2011, C M B for the three kings, and 11 for 2011.
Fourth, we sang "We Three Kings"
Finally, we baked a delicious Three Kings Ring.
1. Mix dough ingredients together and then turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and supple, about 8 minutes.
2. Roll dough into a ball and put in lightly oiled bowl and cover and let rise until doubled in volume, about an hour.
3. When dough has risen,take out and roll into a 15 x 10 in rectangle.
4. Brush dough with the softened butter and top with the sugar/cinnamon and raisin filling.
5. Now roll the dough into a long cylinder. Place it on the baking pan, seam down. Bring the ends together to form a ring and pinch the ends together to seal it.
6. Using a sharp knife make 12 slashes in the top of the dough all the way around (represents the 12 days of Christmas).
7. Cover the dough and let rise again until doubled in size, about another hour.
8. When ring has doubled place in oven preheated to 350 degrees and bake for 35-40 min or until bread sounds hollow on bottom when tapped. If necessary loosely cover with foil at end to prevent overbrowning.
9. When done remove from oven and drizzle with the orange icing. (I also put some colored sprinkles on mine). You may also hide a coin or bean in the dough before baking ( I used a coin) and the one who finds it is "king/queen" for the remainder of the day.
That's it! Not only was it Liturgically sound but it was yummy!
What did your domestic church do to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany?
I am Kristy, a stay-at-home Catholic mom of five wonderful blessings. Before I became a stay-at-home mom I was an artisan bread baker and still love making breads/cakes/cookies for family and friends. My other big hobby is genealogy research, I love researching my family tree and helping others research theirs.
I was raised marginally Lutheran in Connecticut by parents who had been cradle Catholics. In 1994, I met my future husband, Carl, a cradle Catholic, at college. We weren't very regular churchgoers at first but eventually after the birth of our first daughter in 1999 we found our way back. We had our marriage convalidated and I went through RCIA and was received into the Catholic Church at Easter 2004! We really enjoy doing special activities throughout the Liturgical year and sharing the richness of the Catholic faith with our children and I look forward to being able to do even more once I have the freedom that homeschooling will allow.
I had thought about homeschooling in the past but it wasn't until God showed me that it was possible in the form of a chance park encounter that I seriously considered it. Last summer, as the kids played at an area park I struck up a conversation with Erika and to my delight discovered that she was a fellow Catholic (rare in these parts!), had five children (even rarer!), and that she homeschooled them. We hit it off right away, almost like we had always been close friends. It was suddenly like a light went on and I thought here is this sweet, faithful woman of five who can do this and still remain happy and sane, maybe I can too?
So I started researching it and talking to other homeschoolers and now I feel confident that it is the right path for our family. I am sure that it will not be without its setbacks but I am confident that God will give me the grace I need to be successful. I look forward to embarking on the adventure this fall and sharing its trials and triumphs. Please keep our family in your prayers as we begin our homeschooling journey!
God bless you all and Happy Feast of the Baptism of the Lord!
I've prayed for months about asking for bloggers for RLS, and "ask and you shall receive!" You've met Cristina...soon you will be meeting two other Catholic Homeschooling Mamas that will be sharing their journeys with us as well. I'm so excited!!! Can't wait to have it all ready for you!!! (can you tell how excited I am?) The power of prayer never ceases to amaze me! Thank you, Lord!
I love doing the laundry, really!
For as long as I can remember, I have hated, yes hated, laundry. When I was a child, growing up in Costa Rica, my mother would make us fold and put away all our clothes. The laundry basket would sit in my room for days just staring at me. When I left for college, the dirty clothes would overflow from my hamper and start filling in the base of what would soon become a mountain of clothes in my room. I used to tell myself that when I got married and had kids I would do the laundry in a timely fashion. Until then, well, there was just no need and definitely no will power allotted to the task.
The time came when I did marry and soon enough had my first child. That awful feeling towards laundry did not go away, not even for the love of my child. It was still something I despised and left until the last possible moment. There were always piles of clean clothes on the couch in our apartment. The background of most of our pictures at home has laundry baskets or laundry stacks on the furniture! It wasn’t just washing and drying but putting all that stuff away…UUGHH! Three kids later, I still had no love for laundry. What a chore!!! Why do we have to do laundry? Why can’t everyone just wear the same outfit every day so I can wash once a week, one load? What?! They did it for centuries and things were dirtier back then. OK fine, that would never fly, especially for homeschoolers. HRS would be knocking at our doors for child neglect or something. Anyhow, all of a sudden, I find myself looking forward to laundry days and really enjoying it every step of the way. What brought about this HUGE change of heart?
Recently, I found myself lacking in the prayer department, specifically for my husband and my children’s vocations, their hearts, their character. Our faith is a journey and as walk towards the cross, I find the hidden voids in my heart and begin to work so they are soon filled with things of God. But, with four kids 9 and under, homeschooling, moving twice in two years, packing, unpacking, nursing, changing diapers, keeping a house, keeping a home, constantly doing the ever dreaded laundry, when was I really going to add more time for prayers? I have been asking God for 8 day weeks for quite some time and all I get back is wake up earlier and time manage better. So I embarked on a mission: make my days so efficient that I won’t need that 8th day He keeps neglecting to give me.
This last October we started homeschooling for the 2010-2011 year. (We are a month behind the regular school year because we moved in September.) We set up new chores for the children, new target time lines for every day. I even started getting up earlier so that I could fit everything that needed to get done in my scheduled piece of paper. When the children saw their new chores and schedules, there was some grumbling and mumbling. And so I began, “Girls, when we do something for the family, we show each other how much we love each other. In doing for each other, we grow as a family.
We must see, in all that we do, the opportunity to show God how grateful we are for each and every member of our family.” I continued with the example of myself and my lack of passion for laundry, “for example, when I do the laundry, I take the opportunity to think about you every time I fold one of your pieces of clothing. Every shirt is a prayer, every roll of socks is a memory, every piece is an opportunity for me to thank God for you, because I am so grateful for you.” Yes, there were tears from my super emotional 9 year old and an attempt at tears from my not so e motional 7 year old. However, it hit me like a ton of bricks!!! I don’t know if it did anything for them but for me, my little speech was life changing. So God opened my eyes to the fact that all that extra time I had been wanting to get from Him, he had already given to me. Because I have so much laundry to do for my “large” family I have all that time to pray! For so long my prayer for extra time had been answered and I was just misusing it.
I love doing the laundry now. I actually look forward to laundry days and my little sessions with God. With every piece I fold and stack, I have the opportunity to say a prayer for the child that wears it. I pray in thanksgiving for their place in my heart. I pray for their vocations. I pray for their souls, their health, their gifts, their trials, their triumphs. I pray and pray and pray as I fold and fold and fold. It is my time alone with God in the chaos of my life with little children. I also find a lot of time to pray for my husband while I am folding his laundry. I pray for his soul, for endurance, for wisdom in leading our family. I pray in thanksgiving for his promise to love me no matter what.
Just this week, my husband was sitting next to me as I folded (no, not helping) and he caught me kissing my 7 year old’s pants that I had just folded. He looked at me and before he could say a word I told him, “I kiss their clothes sometimes so they can wear my kisses all day long. Besides, I just remembered something great she did today and I just had to kiss her.” Yeap, the task that I have hated for as long as I can remember is now my favorite chore because it brings me closer to God and it gives me the opportunity to think about each and every one of my family members individually and be grateful.
I know it is a leap to say that everyone will enjoy their laundry if they just change their focus. But like I said, faith is a journey and we are all at a different place in our walk towards the cross. We are ready for the next step at different times in our lives. This step, this extra time of prayer, came at a time when I needed it most. And like my laundry, anyone can turn their most difficult task into a work of love and find so much joy in the sacrifice that it ceases to be a sacrifice.
I was born in Costa Rica some 36 years ago. Grew up between the city, the country and the beach, surrounded by siblings and cousins of all ages. My grandmother on my mother's side made sure I made it to Mass on Sundays and often gave me a few coins so I could light some candles. I strayed for a few years but found my way back home after I met my husband and he encouraged me to get back to my roots in the faith. So I have been walking this path, growing in faith for 12 years now and find that every day is a miracle.
I went to college in Florida and graduated with a Bachelor's in Hospitality Management. Worked for hotels for a few years in everything from front office to revenue management. I married Christopher in November of 2000 and had our first daughter in September 2001. We switched shifts for her first year until we decided we'd all be better off if I stayed home with her. From that day on, I have been a stay at home mother and loved every minute of it. Yes, even the gross, sticky, stinky, cranky minutes are on my list of minutes I have loved. We have homeschooled our children since the beginning and plan, with God's grace, to homeschool them through high school.
Three years ago I was diagnosed with two bulging discs in my back, bone spurring and scoliosis. No wonder it hurt so much to carry my children! My old cheer-leading (yes, I cheered in college but none of my girls will cheer, ever!) injuries were taking a huge toll on me. After lots of adjustments and an infinite search for the baby carrier that would allow me to carry my children for as long as possible, I decided to design my own. Now a run a very tiny home-based business at night, after all the kids have gone to bed and all the schoolwork is checked, making baby wraps for moms and grandmas. I love sewing so it works out very well; I sew and make something helpful, wonderful and amazing women use it and feel better. All in all, a great deal all around.
Friends, please leave a comment here, welcoming Cristina to our Raising Little Saints family!
God bless you all and Happy Feast of the Three Kings! | 2019-04-25T00:05:40Z | http://raisinglittlesaints.blogspot.com/2011/01/ |
<<Having said that, I have this friend, a garg fan who's now a pretty darn successful writer. When I read her first book, I felt that the first half of it was written in that way. As if rolls of the dice determined who each character was, what he or she could do and what happenned to them.
When I asked her about it, she confessed (if that's the word) that I was dead on. The first half of the book was her almost literally setting to prose a game of D&D that she had played.
When I indicated that I thought this game-players writing style could be exploited profitably, I wasn't really thinking of more mature, conventional writing emerging from it. Although, that obviouly works too. I was thinking, if you were writing something, for instance, where there was a consistent theme of game-playing, then maybe you could exploit it as a device. I'm thinking of game-playing themes more along the lines of George Perec than dungeons and dragons. So maybe there would be subtle games embedded in the text. But at the same time, maybe there could be a section of the book, or a certain character, which you treat in the game-players writing style. Sort of in the way you could mimic the writing style of the Victorians. I have given no serious thought to what properties make game-player writing read the way it does. But it _is_ recognizable. You've identified it, yourself.
<<But your second question is more serious. Does this process in fact impair the reader/audience. Forget that some of these guys will never be great writers, will this make them bad readers?
I suppose so. It's just that I keep on detecting subtle trends in the way people in our culture think about things. And I worry this game-players thing will worsen. It's like that business of an incomplete idea of "sentience" invading popular culture. It seems ridiculous to speculate that the idea migrated into the culture from star trek, but if you observe carefully, you can see it. I think people in our culture, are less and less informed by critical thinking today.
Ten years ago, for instance, I don't think I saw game-player writing anywhere. Now, even before this conversation I had, in which we began to put a name to this thing, it seems pervasive. I think the novelty has become the institution. Consider that twenty years ago, aspiring authors could not have seen this in literature. Today, I have waking nightmares that the kid who would have been the next Paul Auster is going to become intellectually deranged when he picks up a dungeons/dragons book for the first time and gets the idea that "this must be how people write."
I saw an episode of star trek recently, and it really alarmed me. The premise was that the characters travel to a planet where the human population reproduces exclusively by cloning. For some ridiculous reason they could no longer continue cloning themselves, so they ask the characters to donate genetic material so their culture can survive. The characters hostility to the idea is so irrational that I wouldn't know how to describe it. And when the clone people sneak away some of their genetic material to make clones of them anyway, a demonstration of some of the most demented rationalization of science fiction occurs.
The characters go to the lab where their clones have already developed into full grown reproductions of themselves, and use their death rays to obliterate them. And I should be clear that these were not blastocysts in test tubes. These were obviously fully grown and autonomous people. And this is all treated by the authors as though it were the most natural thing in the world. It's simply understood that being cloned "diminishes you" as a human being, and that their absurd indignation was somehow righteous. Precisely how this diminishes a person is never elaborated upon, and I'm sure that the authors never even thought about it. They assume, with remarkable vacuousness, that the cloned people in the lab do not possess any type of intrinsic worth. I know that star trek authors have never picked up a science text, but the poverty of ethical thinking here, compelled me to think they had never read a book or had a thought about anything.
Of course, it's just a silly TV show. Right?
And yet, it's conspicuous that the range public debate about bioethics is defined by these concepts. I'm not talking about the range of debate in the literature of science or philosophy. That remains very isolated from the public forums where most people in our culture consider these issues. In popular magazines and network news journalism, the dominant logic is that a person is rendered somehow, "lesser" by having been cloned. The idea has been in ascendancy for a decade despite the depth of it's ignorance. The people who define and limit public discourse about it have certainly never thought about it critically. Their positions frequently contradict themselves and more frequenly rely on popular myths and emotional appeals to people's superstitions.
And it gets worse. Something far more sinister has emerged from popular, misinformed dialogue about cloning. In popular disputes about it (I heard the notion resurface on CNN about a month ago) the question of "what kind of rights would a clone have" is routinely brandished about as though it were an intelligent thought. To practicing ethicists and scientists, this notion probably would not have even entered the dialogue if it had not been thrust upon them by popular culture. That the question is being asked at all assumes, uncritically, that there is something meaningfully distinguishable about a cloned person which would compel us to assign a different worth to them. A worth, lesser than a person who came into the world by conventional means.
I have a suspicion, that the people most vocally shrieking about the moral dilemmas of cloning, are actually theologically threatened by it. I have no evidence of this. But a few inferences they have made, have got me thinking that their theological picture of "personhood" follows a very rigid prescription, and their indignation may originate with some inept idea that a clone would not have a soul.
"Soul" becomes a good parallel to "sentient life." One is from religion and one is from science fiction, but both of them are shortcuts people use instead of actually thinking about the internal properties that imbue something with intrinsic moral worth.
I hope it's apparent why I think this is important. Magical thinking can be dangerous. The worth of a being can't reasonably be described in these terms. If the distinction between ruling class and underclass or the difference between pets and meat is being determined by distinguishing one as sentient or soul-containing, then we have not really distinguished anything. We're just making things up. We might as well assign moral worth based upon who has stars on their bellies.
I don't remember what Goliath's reaction to Thailog was precisely. I remember that he was alarmed by the prospect of there being another version of himself. How would you describe his feelings about the issue. I suspect since he would have no concept of cloning technology, his perception of it would be unique.
Goliath's initial reaction was horror and anger. Not at the clone per se, but at Xanatos for having stolen something -- Goliath's uniqueness as an individual, at least. I think that's a legitimate fear (not a rational, ethical response). And certainly, there's no ethical justification for Xanatos' actions.
Look, let's take the Star Trek episode you described. I've seen it, though it's been years, so I'm going to have to rely on your version of it.
I think it's completely legitimate to have reservations about loaning your genetic material so that they can make clones of you. It's legitimate to be generous too, but you must acknowledge that it must be a personal decision.
A friend once hinted that she'd like me to donate sperm so that she could have a baby. I truly believe that this person would make a great parent, but it's just not in me to help in this way. Mostly because I know how I feel about my own kids. And the knowledge that there was another child of mine out there and not part of my life would drive me nuts.
So I buy into Riker, et al, rejecting the request from the Clone-Society. It MUST be a personal choice. Also, medically -- by the rules they set up/made up -- the point was made that cloning would always be a stopgap solution. So there's a certain pointlessness to participating. But whatever. You MUST have the right to say no. Goliath should be able to say no to Xanatos.... "Thanks, David, but I don't really want a clone of me out there, particularly since I don't trust your parenting skills."
Now of course, what I believe your really objecting to is Riker and company killing living viable beings... and of course Elisa, Goliath and I would totally agree with you. If the clones are completed, the clones are completed. That's that. They're alive. TOO LATE!!!!
Now, there's another Riker episode where he discovers that he has a clone -- in fact it becomes unclear which is the clone and which is the real Riker (i.e. the guy we've known all these years, or the guy that's been trapped on a distant planet for years). Both wind up surviving, which I thought was novel. The "clone" later became somewhat Xanatosian, which I also appreciated.
But to take your argument to something more general than cloning... I mean you need to keep in mind that when cloning is used in SF (or at least good SF) it's just a metaphor. Clones are regarded as second class citizens because the history of humanity is rife with second class citizens based on criteria equally as dopey.
Now, agreed some SF doesn't get it.
And, agreed, now that actual cloning is becoming closer to actual reality, people may be adopting the jargon of SF because -- what else do they have?
But lazy thinkers have ALWAYS existed. On bad days I certainly think the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but if I'm being more honest, I can't exactly look back on the world and go : "HEY, NO PROGRESS!" There's been a lot of progress. We'll never wipe out ethics-free humans. Ethically, well, we're just not allowed to.
The memes you discuss may be a problem. But they're just replacing old memes that are even more devastating because they're WAY TOO REAL.
It's another old Sci-Fi notion... In a very real way, wouldn't it be great if the ALIENS did attack. Because then FINALLY, humanity would realize how little differentiates black from white, male from female, gay from straight, etc., ad nauseum. Of course, that would immediately present us with the new racial challenge of learning to "just get along" with the aliens. But wouldn't it be nice for just a moment to get past the pettiness that we own ourselves?
All this sort of diminishes some of my apprehensions about submitting things to this forum. Most of the time I have assumed it's a huge hassle for you.
You didn't write it. I'm sorry. That must have seemed strange to you. When I submitted this post (all those many years ago) there were two posts in the list directly before mine. The first was from someone who I don't think had ever posted a message here before. I don't remember his name or what he wrote, but I do remember that he was speculating about something you did in the show. His post seemed pretty benign to me. He was just curious about something.
The second post was from...some anonymous idiot. He was the one asking the curious guy if he was "pretending to be stupid." I got the impression he was trying to demonstrate his superior knowledge of "gargoyles forum culture." I found his invective incredibly offensive. Apparently so did your mr. Gorebash, because he deleted his post after I responded. That's why you didn't see it.
I think the guy rematerialized shortly afterwards, as Master Debator, who had never posted before and most likely never will again. I almost regret you decided not to dignify his contest for "king of the garg fans" with a reaction, as I'm sure your reaction could have been very amusing.
I understand. I think part of the reason that I responded to the anonymous character in the way I did was because I had gotten the idea in my head that it was the same anonymous character that is persistently demanding that you elaborate on the most trivial minutia. From my perspective, it seemed like someone had just asked where fox got her tattoo six times in a row, then had the unmitigated gaul to call someone else an idiot for asking an innocent question.
I so wish I could just catch up. It's so hard to raise this forum up to its potential when I'm two years behind responding to a post that's responding to a post that's two years even further back.
Hopefully, we'll have the opportunity to repair the system sometime soon. But in the meantime, I just keep plugging away. And I hope you (all of you) stick around too.
Why did they end gargoyles? I mean, in the late show,after they save the train and everone see their point of of view and then LOVE them. But why did they conution on from their?
Please e-mail the anwer's...I don't know how or when to get back here to see my anwer.
I'm just going to refer you to the archives. I'm not going to e-mail you. That's not what this forum is for. And I'm not going to answer a question that I've answered over and over again, particularly for someone who basically had no intention of checking back even assuming she would still check back two years later.
What does the moon look like when it is viewed on Avalon? By that I mean does it wax and wane more often when viewed from Avalon because of the 1 hour for 1 day rule? Can you see the waxing and waning of the moon on Avalon in one night because of the time acceleration outside Avalon?
So, if I'm getting you right the Hunter's Moon (a.k.a. the Blood Moon) is the first full moon of October. (Or the only full moon of October, most years.) Right?
Thanks. That's very helpful and useful. I'm writing this down.
Do you know the origin(s) behind these names? And if so, what are they?
And what is a Wyrt?
Not sure about the origins though. And "wyrt" is an Old English term for "wort", a generic word for "a plant" I believe.
At the end of the episode "the mirror", before Puck got all ticked and did the whole human by day thing, did he seem to sort of loosen up to Demona a bit to you? I thought he started to kinda like her near the end. What do you think greg?
I think that he had had a good time, and so was genuinely feeling a bit more charitable toward her. And one might argue that his "gift" -- as much as she initially was horrified by it -- was still helpful.
I was just looking through the archives again, and noticed a question about what Goliath's favorite books were. You mentioned that "Great Expectations" was one that came to mind.
This actually amused me a little, for there was one aspect of the book that reminded me a lot of "Gargoyles", in the way that Dickens connected the two convicts whom Pip has to help hide at the beginning of the book with the Miss Havisham and Estella part of the story (warning to those who haven't read the book: spoilers follow): it later on turns out that Magwitch (one of those two convicts) was Estella's father and that the other convict (whose name I forget) was the man who left her standing at the altar. That element of interconnectedness definitely struck me as something straight out of "Gargoyles" in terms of the way that everything turned out to be linked to everything else eventually.
I don't know if you had that in mind when you mentioned the book in your answer, but it did make me see its inclusion as appropriate.
I think of the Gargoyles Universe (and genre fiction in general) as being very Dickensian. Certainly nothing is more Dickensian than Darth Vader being Luke's father, and Leia being Luke's sister (a revelation that still disappoints me).
That connectivity that you mention is a cornerstone of most cohesive Universes. And the Gargoyles Universe in particular.
Another influential book along those lines, is HOWARD'S END by E.M. Forster.
Your English seems fine, but I don't have any pictures for you. Check in the comment room.
Hi I was wondering even though you don't read fan fic what your opinion on the idea is?
You mean the general idea of people writing fanfic?
As I've said MANY times before, I have mixed feelings. It's very gratifying that people are that into the characters and series to want to create their own. But I'm also a bit territorial, so I also find it disconcerting.
It works out well, then, I think, that I don't read the stuff. But keep up the good work! | 2019-04-25T22:03:16Z | https://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/archives.php?lid=206 |
A fear of flying is also known as a flying phobia (aerophobia, aviophobia, aviophobia and pteromerhanophobia). It is a fairly common and irrational fear characterised by an intense dread experienced during some part of your flight.
A fear of flying often includes some anticipatory anxiety; moderate anxiety symptoms can accumulate weeks before the day of the flight. If you are committed to your flight, the continued anxiety can disrupt your sleep patterns, concentration and attention levels. Should you fly without help, the anxiety attack on the plane can be embarrassing and humiliating; your self-confidence and self-esteem can be severely dented. You then have to recover to participate in your onward journey (e.g. a work meeting) and then contemplate another trauma with your return flight. When armed with only your fear, the severity of your condition worsens with each new flight. As the new experiences accumulate, the anxiety symptoms can attach to other new fears stifling your general lifestyle.
‘Not’ flying can still impact on your life too. Most fears and phobias involve some degree of avoidance behaviour. It is a common way of coping (albeit unsuccessfully) with your fearful condition. You may be the fearful flyer who readily admits that you have a fear of flying and will do all you can to prevent your own traumatic experience. But some of you are too embarrassed or ashamed to admit your condition however. You pretend that it doesn’t exist and find ways to ‘dodge’ flying with irrational excuses, often to the dismay of people (family) around you.
But avoidance can have its long term consequences. A fear a flying can impact on your professional career as well. If you can delegate to your subordinate staff and justify it as “part of their development”, it can delay you having to ever deal with the inevitable. But avoidance just makes the fear worse in your mind. When you are required to meet clients abroad and can’t avoid it, the recurring unexplainable last minute “illness” can cost you your job.
A fear of flying can also affect your personal life. It prevents you from regularly seeing wider family or friends in another country. It can spoil your own family life, depriving members of your family of a summer holiday abroad.
Long-term consequences can also be transferred to other people. Children can “learn” beliefs from authority figures like their parents. As a parent, your biased reactions may end up “teaching” your children your fears without realising it. To counter any feeling of guilt, you may try to avoid flying with them to prevent them “catching” a fear of flying from you.
Fear of flying Cardiff: What causes a fear of flying?
Fears and phobias can have a genetic cause. This means that you have a predisposition to be anxious. You are more likely to develop irrational fears because it “runs in the family”. With a genetic cause, fears and phobias are thus considered as psychological states “waiting to happen”. It can take a relatively moderate psychological trauma to set up your fear of flying.
Outside of genetics, you may have learnt your fear of flying through directly associated experiences. This means that you were previously involved in a “terrifying” flight (or flights) and now connect your fear response (also known as your survival instinct or ‘fight of flight!’ response) with flying in a plane. The mere thought of flying again in the future triggers a release of adrenaline to ward you away from more danger. Being in a situation where you are “forced” to fly can create an anxiety attack. These situations only serve to escalate your fear of flying.
Vicarious learning is the term used to describe when you learn anxiety through the experiences of others. As mentioned above, as a young child, you will have “modelled” some of your beliefs and behaviour on your authority figures, usually your parents. Seeing them panic convinces you that “if they are scared of it, then it must be dangerous!” Other significant people such as wider family and friends can also transfer this fear. Teenage hood is a notable period when you live through the experiences of your friends.
Although you can learn your fear of flying through significant people, other sources can also be important. Witnessing a traumatic event or seeing strangers having a panic attack “in the flesh” is enough to initiate your fear of that situation. Even seeing something in the media or being told about a traumatic event can “sow seeds” of fearful beliefs. Some of you can relate to how easy it is to be “drawn in” to a real account of something e.g. a documentary, as if you are living the experience when it is being televised.
Some fears are unconsciously learnt and can appear to be triggered spontaneously. This is because you haven’t identified the “cause”. Consider a situation when, as sufferer of moderate claustrophobia, you have to sit in the back seat of a two door car. You are anxious throughout the journey. Half way through the journey, the driver makes a sharp swerve away from a potential collision. Understandably, all the passengers are distressed having just avoided a nasty accident. Your anxiety response is more acute because during those few moments of extreme motion, your “escape” was blocked by the front passengers of the two door car. You don’t know it yet, but you have now unconsciously “fused” claustrophobia and extreme motion with a panic attack.
The next time you fly, you go through moderate anxiety again because you have claustrophobia. Suddenly, you experience some turbulence and you start to panic. You haven’t consciously made the connection with the car incident yet. There is more turbulence and you continue to suffer more panic attacks. You are anxious and confused because these panic attacks seem to be happening spontaneously.
Sometime after the flight, you discuss your panic attacks with a trusted friend. Then it clicks! You realise the association between the car journey, your panic attacks and the turbulence. Your fear of flying is now “actualised”. Turbulence is another trigger for your panic. You are afraid to fly again, in case turbulence causes you the distress of panic attacks.
In the above example of unconscious learning, the fear of flying has been caused by other indirect situations. This is the case with most of my hypnotherapy patients. These indirect fears have accumulated and “leaked” into flying over time. But this is a common development of unresolved fears – they “trap” more objects and situations until you become housebound (agoraphobic). If you are unable to identify what other situations lie behind your fear of flying, your panic will continue to be spontaneous and uncontrollable.
So what other fears and situations can contribute to a fear of flying? The list below contains situations, fears and personality traits that are directly and indirectly related to a fear of flying.
• Fear of Turbulence – Turbulence is a common occurrence and is usually caused by changes in air flow. It can make the plane shake, shudder and bump. You interpret these motion changes as a warning that the plane has lost control. Even though the seat belt signs are shown to protect passengers from the effects of extreme turbulence, you believe it is a warning that you are in extreme danger.
• Fear of Engine noises – Changes in engine noises are generated when ascending and descending. Mechanical changes are also made in-flight to deal with turbulence. Since you are already in a heightened state of alert, you are sensitive to any new sudden sounds. Flight noises cause you to “jump” and frantically look around for reassurance that you are safe.
• Fear of adverse weather conditions – You may have experienced a previous incident (outside of flying) in which the weather caused a catastrophe. You are now predisposed to believe that unfavourable weather conditions will disable the plane midflight. You constantly “weather watch”, checking weather reports in an effort to control your emotions.
• Fear of a plane crash – You may have survived a trauma or know someone else who’s plane had crashed. This has set up an anticipation of a repeat experience. You battle with media coverage of new plane crashes in attempt to “exorcise” your demons, but they only serve to re-traumatise you.
• Fear of heights – Your fear of heights can accompany a fear of falling. Your visual field is distorted (creating vertigo) when you can look down from a high place without any physical protection (barrier). The plane gives you this, but you are still uneasy. An aisle seat is a must to help control your anxiety, but this is not enough to ease your imagination from running wild. Ironically, something keeps tempting you to have a quick look outside.
You suffer with claustrophobia and panic when you are unable to leave a situation. Unfortunately, your reflex “solution” – to make a dash for it is withdrawn from you when in a plane. The moment the doors close, you hyperventilate. It’s as if there is no air on board the plane. This leaves you with “unspent” physical tension causing your legs to shake uncontrollably.
• Fear of vomiting (emetophobia) or illness – You fear being sick yourself or have a fear of people around you vomiting. This is made worse being in a confined space and having limited opportunity to leave the situation.
Fear of being ill whilst abroad (or your fellow travellers being ill) can be a separate fear or one associated a fear of vomiting. Once the plane takes off, it symbolises that you are far away from your home comforts to treat your illness or your family to help take care of you.
– A fear that you may not get to the toilet in time (bowel or bladder problems).
– When you get to the toilet you are unable to ‘go’ (IBS constipation or bladder shy) for fear of people listening. This means other passengers would have to wait a long time.
– Because of IBS diarrhoea you fear that you may “mess up” the toilet and would be overwhelmed with embarrassment. The noise and smell can compound your embarrassment in some situations.
– Or that you have an OCD-related hygiene issue and are unable to use public toilets for fear of contamination.
During your flight, it is common procedure that you remain seated during take-off/landing; using the toilet is prohibited in case of turbulence. There are also limited confined toilets on-board the plane and you may have to queue to use the toilet during busy times. Not being free to go to the toilet when you want causes you anxiety and makes your symptoms worse.
• Fear of losing control – In the past, you may have been called a “control freak!” In the way you define “control”, being in a situation where you cannot ‘command’ your surroundings creates anxiety for you. Showing anxiety to your fellow passengers would be embarrassing. You perceive a display of anxiety to be “losing control”.
• Fear of trusting people – You are required to place trust in the flight crew to ensure your journey is in safe hands, but you struggle to have faith in people that you cannot see. Instead, you disregard their expertise until you have interacted with them in some way. You remain anxious until you have made this connection.
• Fear of fear – You struggle to deal with anticipatory anxiety. Any event that has a series of scheduled events (good or bad), creates anxiety for you. Your anxiety then immobilises you, preventing you from constructively taking active steps to reduce your worry. You procrastinate and “hide” because thinking about the flight/trip causes you some discomfort. You resort to any “unhelpful” distractions until the “last hour” and then panic on the day. You seek quick-fixes and lean heavily on your support network. This adds to their frustration because they have offered their help weeks ago; you just weren’t ready to hear/accept it from them. Each layer of fear triggers another layer of fear, and it just keeps going round and round.
• Fear of panic attacks – You are unable to identify the cause of your panic attacks. When they surface, they inflict “terror” in you. You believe panic attacks to be a sign that something far worse is going to happen to you. You feel like you are constantly on “stand-by”.
• You have social anxiety – Being amongst strangers generates a moderate amount of anxiety. Your condition means that you fear doing anything that draws attention to yourself or that might cause you embarrassment. You choose an aisle seat because asking someone to move (should you want to say go to the toilet) requires courage. So you may just wait until the passenger next to you leaves their seat or you wait until the journey has ended to go to the toilet.
• Fear of falling over – You are unsteady on your feet. Although your feet are on “solid ground”, the motion and thought of being up in the air create vertigo. Your anxiety exacerbates your symptoms, so you may stay pinned to your seat to reduce the fear that you will fall over and hurt yourself.
• Fear of falling – Your fear of falling is connected to a fear of heights. In a plane your fear is not as intense as being next to a high cliff edge without a barrier. But being up in the air in any vehicle is enough to cause you moderate anxiety. This is because you believe that something could damage the plane and you will be ejected from your seat into the air at altitude. You wear your seat belt tight throughout your journey.
• Fear of flying over water – You believe that when the plane flies over water, you are a few hours away from emergency services. If the plane runs into any trouble, then it will be required to ditch onto the sea. You may be a non-swimmer and you have visions of struggling in cold stormy seas.
• Fear of flying at night – You book “day” flights where possible. Without being able to “see” your danger, you remain apprehensive throughout your flight. You constantly seek reassurance from the flight staff. Looking out of the window when you are flying over the sea at night is pointless and creates more worry.
• Fear of hijacking – The prospect of the plane being hijacked is very remote with stringent security procedures in place. But the media presentation of a previous hijacking and the horrific accounts from any hostages can traumatise the public into believing that there could be loopholes in the security. You see your fellow passengers as potential threats.
• Fear of bombing – As with a fear of hijacking, this is another fear in which you believe the security checks will somehow overlook. You sit through the whole journey petrified that you are sitting above the ill-fated cargo. You believe your fellow passengers may have an exploding device.
• Fear of attack – Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, renewed insecurity about the extent to which terrorists will inflict their might has become more uncertain. You travel in fear of a surprise attack from an unknown source.
• Fear of security checks – Even though you have nothing to “hide”, you find the security checks intrusive because you fear attention. The “baggage” you carry in your mind triggers a past feeling of guilt that surfaces during tense procedures like going through customs. You are waiting to be accused of something, even though you have done nothing wrong.
• Fear of boredom – You have an obsession to keep busy because when you are bored, you worry. Nobody wants a delayed flight, but “hanging around” brings out your obsessive-compulsive tendencies. The fear of being idle is a threat to your equilibrium on those long haul flights.
You prefer to stick with what you already know. With a new experience, your mind can fill the void with what you “have known” in the past even if it is negative. So for the new fliers with a tendency to feel anxious, a potential “exciting curiosity” is filled with dread. Even for the seasoned flier, a new destination or new work obligation can build adrenaline through the flight. Over time a fear of flying is attached to going to a strange place, meeting new people or dealing with a new situation.
• Fear that you are leaving your family – You have suffered a previous bereavement when you or the deceased was away from home. The physical distance meant that you struggled to bring closure to your grief. When you or a member of the family travels, the fear of a repeat scenario is created. The plane taking-off symbolises that you may not see them again.
• Fear of death – You associate dying with your internal anxiety symptoms. When your heart races, you think you are having a heart attack. So any external situation that causes you anxiety (like flying) soon becomes inextricably linked to your fear of death.
Or you fear a painful death and desperately try to control how you may die. You imagine that a plane crash will involve extensive suffering before your demise.
As you can see, the list of potential causes of a fear of flying (both direct and indirect) is quite extensive. When you can identify what lies behind your fear of flying, you can then seek more effective ways to cope with and treat your primary issues.
Fear of flying Cardiff: Do you have a fear of flying?
• Planning your journey and keeping to the schedule on the day of the flight – Have you packed everything you need…Will you arrive on time for your flight etc?
• Planning your forward trip – Whether it’s a business or leisure trip, do you know where you are going…Have you prepared for the business meeting ahead etc?
• Ensuring everything you leave behind is secure and being managed – In work, have you delegated any ongoing projects…Will someone at home deal with any family arrangements etc?
You can expect some disruption to your life dealing with the above. But a fear of flying is far more severe than this. So what qualifies as a fear of flying? Firstly, rather than viewing the typical events listed above as a series of manageable small tasks, they all become overwhelming. In addition to this, you have significant levels of anticipatory anxiety that disrupts your lifestyle weeks before your flight.
• Sleep patterns are disrupted – You struggle to get to sleep and find that you wake frequently thinking about some aspect of the flight. The cumulative effect of this is tiredness and loss of concentration. You then oversleep and feel tired through the day.
• Your mind is pre-occupied – You obsess over your fear, worrying about what could go wrong on the day of the flight.
• Your attention is affected – Your mind is “detached”, daydreaming about your fears. Your concentration is distracted by the anxiety of your flight.
• Ritualistic habits increase – Any “comforting” habits become more compulsive. Drinking, smoking, nail-biting, hair-twirling etc. whatever habits you have to ease your anxiety increases in frequency and duration.
• You seek avoidance strategies – If it’s time to book the flights, you try to delay the booking because your “diary looks very busy” around the time of the flight.
• Anxiety symptoms get worse – Your anxiety symptoms (see below) escalate the closer you get to your flight date.
There are numerous other stress and anxiety symptoms. These listed represent some of the more common ones.
• Medication – Your doctor can prescribe medication to help with your anxiety symptoms. They are likely to vary according to the severity of your anxiety and the duration of your flight. There may be some side effects.
• Counselling/CBT – These approaches seek to change your negative thoughts and behaviour into more positive ones. Some courses of treatment can be extensive.
• Self-help – Reading books and website articles or simply facing your fears can help you to get through challenging situations. Your own subjective beliefs can prejudice your learning however. In addition to this, further negative experiences can reinforce your fear of flying.
• Flying courses – These include a group talk followed by an actual flight. If you are the type of person who believes that “when I have done it once, then I’m cured”, then this approach could be helpful to you. The group situation may not get to the heart of any personal issues that you have. If anxious people around you tend to trigger your anxiety then you could be more vulnerable in a group situation like this.
How can hypnotherapy treat you Fear of flying in Cardiff?
• Control your anxiety – Controlling your anxiety is an essential part of managing your fear of flying. When you are in an anxious state, your perceptions are distorted. You are more likely to interpret events as anxious one. If you suffer anticipatory anxiety then this can affect you days or weeks before your actual flight. Anticipatory anxiety heightens your anxious expectations, taking you to the emotional experience that you are trying to avoid.
Self-hypnosis techniques will also help reduce your anxiety symptoms (see above) before and during your flight. Self-hypnosis techniques are far more effective than simple distraction methods, because you are actively dealing with the issue that is central to your fear of flying: the ability to relax during your flight.
• Reframe your past traumas – Unresolved past traumas are stored in your mind to warn you against experiencing yet another trauma. So when your strongest anxious symptom is triggered e.g. by turbulence, anxiety surges up into your consciousness and adrenaline floods your body. The anxious emotion acts like a magnet, pulling your attention into it rather than being able to deal with the situation at hand.
Hypnotherapy can help you reframe your past traumas, safely releasing the emotion from the negative event. You can then freely and resourcefully create the emotional experience that you want during your flight.
• Release your panic response – Extreme fears and phobias have something in common; there is a panic response associated with the object or situation. When your anxiety trigger has been identified, hypnotherapy can help you dissociate your panic attack from this stimulus. Turbulence becomes just “another event” rather than a cause for your anxiety symptoms. A new relaxation response can then be learned and developed.
For the majority of the population, flying is a natural way of travelling to your destination. It is common method of travel when going on holiday or as part of work obligations. It can be a natural part of your lifestyle too. Choose Hypnotherapy Cardiff to treat your fear of flying and get ready to book your next flight.
Flying to your next destination is just a few steps away! | 2019-04-20T10:11:05Z | https://www.clinicalhypnotherapy-cardiff.co.uk/fear-of-flying/ |
Lessons from the Mexican Tequila Crisis -- Gene Towle, founder and CEO of Mexico-based Softec, sent me this lively note earlier this week "talking to my US friends I realize that they are living through something similar to what I lived through in 1995 with the Mexican Tequila Crisis. Just as I survived, they can as well. I'd be happy to share my experiences: Our companies went from +5M net worth in 1994 to -5M by 1995 and rebounded to just over +500M by 2008." So I took him up on his offer -- always willing to learn from a guy who builds a net worth of a half billion!
Tuesday, March 31, 11:58am -- 12:30pm EST (US) -- Complimentary teleconference with Gene Towle. Join me as I interview Gene for 20 minutes and let you fire questions at him for 10 minutes. Here's a link to register your email address to receive log-in info.
"Bold leaders in tumultuous times always have at least one crash" -- take three minutes and read Thomas Friedman's latest NY Times column -- research from Presidents that have survived crashes compiled by Stan Greenberg. Friedman's final paragraph summarizes the lessons "You can't be too honest in describing big problems, too bold in offering big solutions, too humble in dealing with big missteps, too forward in re-telling your story or too gutsy in speaking the previously unspeakable." Seems like sound advice for leaders of growth firms who regularly face crashes of people, strategy, execution, and cash.
Ezypay Doubles Quarterly Targets Using Themes -- it's time (April 1) for most companies to pick a critical number and drive it home with a quarterly theme. Celeste Kirby-Brown, Sales and Marketing Director for Australia-based Ezypay sent along this note "we attended your training session in February 2007 in Sydney and implemented the Rockefeller Habits into our business. Since then nearly every part of our business (except costs!) have grown dramatically. This is one of the best things that Ezypay has ever done - our staff loves it and it is a great management tool. Ezypay assists businesses to maintain cash flow and we recognise that whilst in part the current economic climate has contributed to our success we still attribute our strong growth to the Rockefeller Habits. For example last quarter alone we grew revenue by 20% for the quarter across Australia and New Zealand. This quarter we set a goal which doubled last quarter's target and we have already achieved this half way through the quarter!"
WARNING: The Following Video Might be A Little Risque -- continues Celeste "I thought that you might get a laugh from our current quarterly theme Revenge of the Nerds. We have used this theme because we are focusing our energy on improving systems and developing technology based products. Here is a link to a video that should make you laugh. The video was part of the quarterly theme launch that involved a bunch of nerds (fictitious Ezypay IT department) discussing life, the business and their involvement. The video is a thought bubble when of one of the Nerds (our CEO - Trent Brown), imagined what it would be like to be cool. The making of the video was done prior to the launch and the staff involved, whilst knowing it was for the launch, did not know the theme or what it represented. This of course added to the intrigue and excitement in the office and assisted with staff buy-in as a result of the process." NOTE: it's often critical to take a quarter and let your systems catch up with your growth -- congrats to Ezypay for picking this theme.
"Our-Habits Fell Apart in 2008" -- this is how Mason Arnold, "Cookie Monster" and founder of Texas-based Greenling started his recent note to me. He continued "we didn't create a one-pager or goals, primarily due to poor accountability management. We have recommitted as a team and created our '09 one-pager (Strategic Plan) that I'm happy to share." And I've posted his latest One-Page Strategic Plan and a couple others on our new wiki http://www.aboutus.org/Gazelles_Best_Practices_%E2%80%93_One-Page_Strategic_Plans. Please send me your latest one-page plans, I'll blank out the numbers, and post for others to see -- we get lots of requests for examples and these are helpful. BTW, Greenling has a neat service, delivering organic food directly to your home. I know he's stoked about the Obama's organic White House garden.
T. Boone Pickens, the rest of the story -- and this note from Vince Virga, President of California-based SGIS a leader in Cyber-Security for Federal government agencies. "I went and saw T. Boone Pickens and the CEO of AutoNation this morning and T. Boone told a great story. T. Boone was taking a while to get through college. His father pulled him aside after his fraternity initiation and indicated that he and T. Boone's mom were worried about him. They felt that T. Boone's timeframe for successful completion of college was different than his. He then told him that he needed to have a plan to figure out what was going to be the quickest route to graduation. He told T. Boone, "A fool with a plan will beat a genius without a plan every time." His parents were afraid in his case that they had the absolute worst case on their hands: A fool with no plan.... Anyway, T. Boone figured the quickest way to graduation involved getting his degree in geology. That was his plan. Turned out to be a good one."
The Most Famed Experts are Wrong the Most -- and this nice summary of research by UC-Berkeley professor Philip Tetlok, noted "expert on experts." Beware of the most vocal black and white experts.
For Those Loving Chet Holmes Book -- I've upped his time at the Sales and Marketing Summit -- he's now keynoting for four hours instead of two. And I encourage you to listen to his complimentary teleconference and read his book -- I continue to get emails on the huge impact his work is having on driving revenue and market share.
Jim Collins on Navigating The Crisis -- read the Fortune magazine interview where Jim lays out lessons learned from his latest research on surviving turbulent times. When I was in Amsterdam last week I met Thomas Kascha, founder of AQ Services, an international Mystery Shopping service (yes, he's close friends with David Rich, ICC/Decision Services, here in the U.S.). Thomas wrote an excellent summary of the Jim Collins interview which I've reprinted with permission under DETAILS below. Take two minutes and read lessons learned and then review in your next weekly management meeting.
3 Lessons from 12 Recessions Spanning 120 years -- I just got off the phone with Victor Cheng, quantitative econ grad from Stanford and former McKinsey consultant who is just finishing a book based on his proprietary analysis of the past 12 U.S. recessions going back 120 years. His book provides case studies on 12 companies that were started in a recession that later went on to become billion dollar businesses. And he found three simple, yet profound, things all 12 companies had in common that made them more than "recession proof." He's going to print up several hundred copies of his manuscript and bring them to the Sales and Marketing Summit where I've invited him to be a last minute keynote -- we'll be one of the first audiences to hear his findings.
However, Victor Gave Me a Hint -- one of the 3 lessons, while it sounds obvious, is to sell people what they need during recessions i.e. massage parlors selling stress relief vs. pampering. More to the point, did you see the reports about the unexpected jump in housing starts in February? If you look into the data, almost all of it was in low-end multi-family rental housing which is what people like Harry Dent have been saying will be hot during the next decade -- in essence, all those people who had no business buying a home are going back to rentals. This lesson requires firms to look at a great deal of data and often involves entirely new strategies, which is why start-ups often have the edge during times like this. Victor shared with me that several companies he's advising, in some cases, are deciding to shut down completely and go a different direction the next decade. Warning -- this is counter to what Jim Collins is advising, but my conclusion? If you have a strong culture and sound strategy, stay the course, though you might have to alter your messaging. However, if the business never really made sense, times like this expose those weaknesses and you're best to change course.
BTW, Victor Cheng Understands our World -- he ran the $20 million a year eCommerce division of Art Technology Group (Nasdaq: ARTG). ATG is the #1 rated eCommerce software among Fortune 500 retailers. ATG software powers eCommerce sites bestbuy.com, neimamarcus.com, marthastewart.com, and kodak.com. He was also the VP of Product Management and interim Chief Technology Officer of LivePerson (Nasdaq: LPSN). LivePerson's flagship live chat service enables call center salespeople to engage in sales conversations with people who visit a company's website. The company is the market share leader in its industry. Victor was part of the executive team that took the company public in a successful IPO. And he's the author of three books, including one entitled Bookmercial Marketing: Why Books Replace Brochures in the Credibility Age -- sound like a familiar theme we've been promoting for years? WRITE A BOOK! It's a perfect thing to do during a downturn.
Investment in Education Fuels "Gazelles" Growth Companies -- and this latest news from the Private Company Index (PCI) -- there is a correlation between companies investing in education, especially sales and marketing education, and growth performance. Shouldn't be surprising!
Founders Outperformed Hired-Guns or Internally Promoted CEOs -- Sarah Weiss, HR Director for The Audit Group pointed me to this story in Forbes (which I'm not allowed to read as a Contributing Editor at FSB magazine :) ). It compares the performance of technology firms between founder-led, hired-guns, and internally promoted CEOs. I would be careful concluding too much from the article since I question the robustness of the research and the possible bias of the organization doing the research (a recruitment firm!). However, the founder performance does correlate with other studies I've read.
Contrarians Win -- i.e. buy when others are selling (or do the opposite of what guys like me suggest!). For me, I find the same with travel. I've spent more money travelling in the past seven months getting face-to-face with my market than ever before. And I've spent more time on the phone with people than ever before. I hear so many companies cutting back on travel, however, now is the time to get out and see people while everyone else is staying home.
Crisis is Normal -- Get Used to It!
Don't Just Stand There... Do Something!
if we choose to become aggressive, we need to ask: "how can we change the world with our plan of action?"
March 17 LIVE Webcast with LEAN expert Guy Parsons -- 11:58am -- 2pm EST (US) -- and available afterwards if you miss it in archived form. Go here to sign-up. The first company in ANY industry that embraces LEAN will dominate their industry -- mark my word.
We have grown by 100% over the last year / have done it with 22 head office people vs. 30 last year.
Our payroll and billing accountant's biggest challenge this year -- she is bored/has nothing to do half of her time because her job has become so easy (vs. last year when she had to come in evenings and weekends to get her job done). We are now teaching these LEAN techniques to our franchise partners so they can work on growing the business vs. doing payroll all day.
2 years ago, it was a challenge to add 1 new franchise partner each quarter. Now we add 2 per month (can add up to 5 per month without breaking a sweat).
Our call centre can handle 2x its current volume without adding a single person (which helps us reduce fees to our franchise partners).
Inventory levels have been pretty much eliminated (our franchise partners do not require as much capital to start / run their business).
We have reduced waste from a North American industry average of 95% to approximately 90%. While this doesn't seem like a lot, another way of looking at it is we doubled the size of our company (going from adding 5% value to 10% value = 100% gain) before you consider any top line growth.
Our lean initiatives are a major (but not only) reason why we (and our franchise partners) have been able to thrive in this terrible economic period.
Concludes Sims in his March 9 note "And this is just scratching the surface!" Thanks to Cameron Herold for forwarding this note to me.
BTW, Nurse Next Door Racks up Major Award -- announced on March 3, they were named North America's 6th best midsize franchise system by Franchise Business Review (FBR) on its 2009 Franchisee Satisfaction Awards top 50 list. Congratulations.
Adds Customer Value or it Doesn't -- In a follow-up note from Mike Jagger, founder of Provident Security, who championed bringing Guy Parson up to Vancouver for the EO chapter "The thing we did was divide all of our costs into two columns, things that add value to our clients and things that don't. We have a huge IT investment that we require for our monitoring business, which adds client value. However, our clients don't care who hosts our email... So we cancelled our scheduled server upgrade for our exchange servers and are migrating the entire company to gmail. First year savings on the hardware, software, management and support for that is just under $60k. We've got another great (LEAN) tool now to help us look at the business in a very different way." At your next weekly or monthly meeting make your list.
Chet Holmes On-Demand -- over 1200 executives have dialed into Chet Holmes teleconference on doubling sales in 2009. With his permission, he's allowed us to archive his 30 minute presentation for you to listen to anytime on-demand -- here's the link.
Sales Contest -- and this great idea (of course I loved it) from Samantha Belin with SmartCEO magazine after listening to Chet Holmes teleconference on how to double revenue "I told Craig (our publisher) that he should have a sales contest and the winner can go to the April 21st-22nd Sales and Marketing Summit in New Orleans. :-) We'll see what happens."
Drive Revenue, Eliminate Waste -- Gazelles is doing what it can, during these turbulent times, to bring you the most practical, actionable tools for thriving -- now is the time to pounce on the competition -- out learn, out execute, and out compete them while they are weak. Just keep listening and learning -- and that ONE idea -- that one Black Swan moment -- will arrive. But you have to stay in the game!
Most Important Tool to Hit Growth Firms -- March 17 next LIVE video webcast with LEAN guru Guy Parsons 11:58am -- 2pm EST (US) -- and archive available afterwards -- don't miss learning about the most important tool to hit growth firms -- sign-up and also access Pat Lencioni and Seth Godin's webcasts.
Drive Revenue, Eliminate Waste, Save the Team -- I've been pushing hard on tools and techniques for driving revenue. Next I want to push on the waste side (you have much more than you think -- see definition of 'waste' below!). Many of you have heard me say "the first company in any industry that fully embraces the Toyota LEAN methodology will dominate their industry." Toyota, so far, has had no layoffs -- and I'm betting they come out the strongest of all the weakened competitors. It's not by accident. Now is the time to put their practices to work in your mid-market firm -- service or manufacturer.
It's John's Fault -- John Stepleton, who built a 500-person, three-time Inc 500 winning research company, was the first CEO to turn me on to the Toyota Production System called LEAN (I thought it was just for large manufacturing firms) -- and he implemented LEAN inside a non-manufacturing business model. So successful was his implementation, he was recognized by the Northwest Shingo Prize as an innovative implementation of the LEAN principals.
$10/hour Employees Realized 28% Productivity Improvements within a Week -- in a note from John this week, he shared "What better time to take the plunge. With the economy struggling, it is the perfect time to begin integrating LEAN into your business. I began my journey more than four years ago and of all the strategies I've implemented over the years (and I've tried a lot of different things) -- LEAN proved to deliver the biggest bang for the buck. If you're not sure it's right for your business -- I implemented LEAN into my call center business where I had $10/hour employees engaged in continuous improvement programs that realized productivity improvements of 28% in time periods as short as one week."
All of Vancouver Doing LEAN -- 100 Times Easier Than Six Sigma -- OK, not quite all of Vancouver, but it seems many of the CEOs in Vancouver have grabbed onto the LEAN movement, led by Mike Jagger, Provident Security (who has already saved $60k from his LEAN initiatives). And they've been using Guy Parsons, the co-founder of the Lean Institute, to teach them. What's brilliant is the simplicity of Parsons' approach to eliminate waste. In turn, you take the time your people get back from eliminating wasted efforts, steps, activities, etc. and re-purpose people to serve customers, make sales, and grow the business.
What We Can Control -- notes Booth in his latest blog "One of the things that a company can control in a market like this is operational excellence, by removing waste in a system. Waste is easily defined as anything that happens in a company that a customer would not want to pay for. Guy Parsons, President of Value Stream solutions and co-founder of the Lean Institute is one of the thought leaders in lean thinking. I hope the video helps. I would love your thoughts."
(4) Expanding and nurturing the cadre of outstanding operating managers who, over the years, have delivered Berkshire exceptional results."
Panhandler Secret -- I get Seth Godin's blog everyday (so should you) -- and this one earlier this week was particularly insightful because of Seth's story about a panhandler and his secret to success.
Haute N the Kitchen -- if you're a foodie, check our Heather Antonelli's just released book entitled Haute n the Kitchen: Entertaining Inspired by My Travel and Traditions. Early Rockefeller Habits fan and BOGer, Heather enjoys exotic travel and food. And if you're into food and interior design, check out her blog as well.
Don't Sell Benefits, Focus on Loss Avoidance -- Dr. Victoria Medvec, the negotiations guru from Northwestern University, flew across the pond to keynote our Sydney Growth Summit. As many times as I've attended her four hour course, I had missed this critical piece of advice. Especially during downturns, STOP pushing the benefits of your product/service. Customers aren't interested, especially when they are highly risk adverse right now. Instead, you MUST emphasize the additional losses they'll experience if they don't consider your product/service. People switch to avoid losses; they don't switch to get gains. Read this paragraph over and over and then sit down, set aside your list of benefits, and make a list of all the losses your customer will garner if they don't urgently buy your product/service.
BTW, for those who listened to Michael Praeger's teleconference this week, CEO of AvidXchange, driving reoccurring revenue has been a key to their growth during these turbulent times -- here's a link to listen to an archive of that 30 minute interview of a peer.
Most Interesting Fact -- while all the speakers shared gobs of data, the most interesting statistic came from Ross Dawson, Chairman of Future Exploration Network. He compared the size of the global economy to the physical weight of all products and services (I didn't know this statistic existed!). In essence, if and when the global economy doubles in size, the global weight will stay the same. This means essentially all the growth will come from stuff that weighs nothing i.e. knowledge. Content Rules.
Grade Your Website -- Naomi Simson, founder and CEO of Sydney-based Red Balloon, mentioned a free tool that grades your website for SEO (search engine optimization) construction i.e. how easy is it for Google to find your website. Go to http://website.grader.com and type in your URL.
Manage Remote Contractors/Free Agents -- though this feels a little Big-Brotherish, check out oDesk. One of the challenges of hiring free-lancers/subcontractors from around the world, who charge by the hour, is knowing if they are really putting in the hours for which they are billing you. The oDesk tool captures an actual time-sequence of the work the freelancer is doing on their computer and time stamps it. And if the free-lancer has a remote webcam, it will even show them working (this is optional!). Much easier to understand if you just take 60 seconds and look at the website. And the website also helps you locate subcontractors, who have all agreed to utilize the system to track work.
Best Use of Twitter -- there was a great deal of talk about web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 solutions for companies. Though this wasn't shared at the Summit, Shannon Blake Gans, head of New Deal Studios, sent me a note this week "I thought you would enjoy this story. Heard about Kogi, a Korean BBQ restaurant, on PRI. They use Twitter to tell people where their BBQ taco truck is going to be here in LA and 200 people show up. Now that is a good use of Twitter!" I couldn't agree more. And I love their tagline: We gives you zey grubbin, thanks for zey lovin!
Let your "followers" know where you are physically i.e. "I'm in Sydney for three days" -- you might connect with someone you didn't know was there as well.
Ask a question -- twitter is a great way to garner some wisdom from the crowd i.e. "what is the best tapas bar in Barcelona?" or "which application do you use to...?"
Note from Fred Crosetto, CEO of Seattle- and China-based Ammex -- "One of our 40 SSK (Start/Stop/Keep) goals for the year, which we are diving into in Q1, is to undertake 50 hours of sales training for anyone that interacts with clients. We are starting out with Victoria Medvec's DVD and plan on driving the Synchronous Presentation concept across the company. It's a mystery to me why companies cut back on learning and training in down time. Now is when more focus should be put on training and capturing opportunity." To not teach your sales team Dr. Medvec's process for dramatically reducing sales cycle time is to leave the door open for your competition to beat you to the sale.
Help -- if you feel Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is one of the best management books for entrepreneurial firms I would greatly appreciate you emailing a short note to [email protected] -- they are compiling a list of the top books in various categories and I would like to get on their radar. Thank you immensely. | 2019-04-23T00:42:47Z | https://verneharnish.typepad.com/growthguy/2009/03/index.html |
We would be throwing away the time of yours in case we attempted to categorize all of the kinds of slot machines. Every casino provides a broad range of slots to entice gamblers. OSG777 Slots are available in many variations and types, from individual line along with three line, to three or maybe five reel, and also from extra video games to progressives, to point out only some PlayOSG.com.
It makes much more sense to check out the normal attributes of slot machines.
There tend to be three or perhaps five reels in a slot machine.
Nowadays, five reel slots are routine, and usually include multiple payline (see below).
OSG777 Slots devices function one, 2 or even many horizontal rows marking roles on the vertical reels.
Right now there may be a single or maybe more paylines crossing the reels. It is typical to see 3, 9, 5, fifteen and more recently even twenty lines.
There is just one payline crossing the 3 reels over a traditional machine. You can bet 1 or maybe more coins per spin but just the middle line pays, and also boosting your choice does not enhance the chances of yours of winning.
You do not need to bet on each available payline.
Imagine you are on a three line slot and you are expected to place a single coin to enjoy the middle line, a second coin to enjoy the line above facility and one third coin to play the series below center. In case you finally bet one coin plus the reels put up a winning combination on the series above or perhaps below the middle, you do not help you succeed in something since you had way too few coins.
By providing diagonal matches, openings with five reels are able to have from five to twenty paylines.
You will find slot machines that accept denominations from as few as five cents to five dolars. High roller OSG777 slots could accept “coins” using a denomination of almost as $500, though these’re very few and far between. A few online casinos have specific limits established for their big players to support big bets..
The highest choice on classic slots is typically 3 coins, but there are several openings which take a 2 coin maximum bet. Once again, video slots have transformed the characteristic dramatically, with a few multi line video OSG777 slots nowadays accepting as much as ten coins per line.
Are Prefabricated Homes Inexperienced Sufficient?
These prefabricate homes might be inexperienced in loads of methods. Initially, the constructing course of, as talked about earlier, the fabric utilized in constructing these prefabs is eco pleasant and reusable. Conventionally, there’s a whole lot of waste and leftovers within the development course of. Hardly any of this waste and particles might be recycled. However within the manufacturing facility constructing course of, the supplies left over from one unit can be utilized in one other one, for example, wooden, wirings, pipes, insulating materials and rather more. A lot of the factories use the leftover materials to be recycled as another materials, just like the unusable items or particles of wooden are used to make a chipboard or paper. Total, much less waste means fewer burdens on earth.
Aside from all of the assets which can be saved throughout the manufacturing facility constructing course of, the design of those constructions additionally give attention to long run financial savings of assets. The architectural structure of the prefabricated properties is rigorously designed to permit passage of air and light-weight and remove any wasteful area. Not solely that these homes enable air and light-weight passage, they’re additionally effectively insulated to scale back the necessity of air con or heating. For the last word inexperienced fanatics, the producers additionally present photo voltaic panels and different alternate power gadgets to beat the dependency on non-reusable assets of power.
One of many different causes that the assets are tremendously saved throughout the cellular residence development is due to the local weather managed surroundings during which they’re constructed. Apart from all of the supplies, area and power saved within the course of, the labor can also be considerably decreased. The reason being not solely the meeting line manufacturing methodology but additionally a correct utilization of time. Since, the development course of requires lesser time, therefore the labor can also be well timed utilized.
These are solely among the major causes that make the prefabricated homes an eco pleasant housing choice lengthy earlier than you really begin dwelling in it and lengthy after that too. However, it can save much more power and assets than a standard home being became a greener one.
Peruse extra. Perusing extra grows your factors of view and encourages you to extend some new ideas which you can impart to different individuals. Moreover that may be an unbelievable start in direction of serving to you to choose up pressure in beginning that novel or different e-book that you’ve been needing to compose. Seeing what totally different creators are doing can provide you that start to yours.
Compose extra. Composing extra allows you to have the capability to choose up the capability to convey what wants be in new methods. There are a number of sorts of composing which you can resolve for your self: running a blog, novel composition, copywriting, after which some. Decide one and put all of it on the road. The sky is dependably the restrict.
Start an unbiased enterprise on the net. This could practice you an excessive amount of new skills and moreover www.MichaelKorsShopAustralia.com will be one thing that will help you with beginning gaining considerably extra cash that you should use in direction of squaring away obligations or starting setting apart extra. Apart from the skills that you simply be taught will be utilized in direction of a superior or an alternate occupation in an alternate area. Right here and there that may allow you to find one thing that you simply admire higher.
Train extra. Training extra might allow you to beat issues like gloom and different perpetual illnesses. No matter whether or not it does not completely cowl these issues, the extra exercise might speed up the recuperation process or lower the impacts of a illness. That’s one thing that a few of you would possibly want to contemplate for the brand new 12 months. Train is likewise helpful for serving to you to really feel colossally higher.
Journey extra. Voyaging can provide you such a major variety of new encounters that you simply most likely will not have contemplated beforehand. It’d furnish you with some extraordinary encounters that you must want to consider upon later. Making a visit causes you to get your mind off of the current and may help you with being prepared to help you with attending to be succesful have one thing further in your resume.
Acquire proficiency with one other dialect. Studying one other dialect can help you with being arrange for an development or some fascinating facet work that encourages you with a portion of these payments. That may likewise make a pleasing facet dialogue that you should use for a portion of the events that you simply get welcomed to go to. That’s one thing that many people are awed with.
Lower your messiness. Actually, for what motive do you require a lot stuff? I do not want a portion of my stuff even from faculty. A substantial amount of it’s merely squandered area to me and I can usually uncover a ton of stuff as superior issues and may admire them that manner. Additionally, the little further cash can help as nicely. Decreased mess implies much less to type out and fewer to remain conscious of so far as shifting and retaining clear by and huge.
Inexperienced your private home. I’m not saying exit and get a solar powered board and start getting off the framework. I’m stating possibly you need to start slightly backyard in an unused area for reducing nourishment payments. Using widespread mild extra. These are easy little ideas that you should use in direction of encountering minimal extra advantageous choices for your self and your loved ones. Using these items might likewise help you with being able to really feel higher inwardly.
Minimize out the opposite and grumble y people all through your life. Have any individual that does solely whine? You aren’t the one one. There are a number of folks that merely reduce others down. Whereas its laborious to dependably be merry, there are strategies for releasing sure folks that seem like Debbie Downers. These individuals might needs to be given up so you’ll be able to admire performing naturally.
Eliminate wishes. Lessening your wishes and targets will push you to not usually be frightened about issues. That’s one thing that may be a unprecedented start in direction of pushing people to not have to stress over being on a timetable. It’s one thing that needs to be attainable to help you with having the capability to easily stay and never stress over a objective.
If you own or run a small-to-medium size business, outsourcing your IT needs to an IT consulting firm is most likely the most cost-effective method of maintaining your company’s IT services. An outside IT consulting and management team can save you the personnel costs associated with hiring your own full-service IT staff, such as health-care costs, payroll, and space requirements.
However, choosing the correct IT consulting firm for your business can be a difficult process. Below is a list of 10 things you can do to select and evaluate a prospective IT consulting firm Locales celebración de cumpleaños infantiles.
Assess Your Business Needs-The first step in selecting an IT services consultant is to assess the specific needs of your individual business. Make a list of the current technology challenges facing your business, and how you’d like to overcome them. In addition, project the direction you would like to steer your business in over the next 5 years.
Let Them Respond-Once you’ve assessed your needs, you can present an outline to various companies and allow them to provide you with their prospective IT solutions. This information will help you narrow down your search for an IT consultant even further.
Check Their Processes-Next meet with the firms you’ve selected and ask them to explain their established processes and procedures. A good IT consultant should have a documented and detailed process plan in place describing procedures for maintenance, repair, service and support.
Check References and Certifications-Get at least three references from the IT services firm you’re selecting, and contact them. In addition, get a list of certifications, such as Microsoft’s Gold Certified program from them. You want to make sure they’ve had the training necessary to handle your IT needs.
Evaluate their Personalities-Schedule a meeting with the people in the company you’ll be working most closely with. See if their personalities are a match for your company and if working with them will be a pleasurable experience.
Assess Network Monitoring Capabilities-A good IT services company should be able to monitor every critical component of your business network, from anti-virus updates to website status to system event log errors.
Remote Computer Support Availability-Your IT consultant should have the ability to log into your system (server and desktops) remotely to address problems in real-time.
Regular Reviews-Select a consulting firm that will regularly assess how well your current business technology is working, and ask them to put this service in writing.
Location-Every IT problem can’t be addressed remotely. Make sure you pick an IT services firm that is relatively near to your business geographically.
Fees-It’s in your company’s best interest to select an IT services firm offering a flat-fee rate. This will allow your business to budget your expenses accurately, and doesn’t increase your consultant’s income when your system performs poorly.
Keep these tips in mind when selecting an IT consulting service and you’ll be much more likely to find the perfect match for your business IT needs.
As a enterprise proprietor or advertising and marketing strategist, social media is a crucial instrument to extend model consciousness, we will see social media like a cocktail occasion, the place you’ll be able to have networking and enjoyable. I’ll clarify 10 Should-Haves in your marketing campaign to rock your social media technique.
Based on BBC Information the typical consideration span is lower than 12 seconds, because of a number of units and a variety of distractions is absolutely onerous to remain centered and keep the viewers entertained. The one manner is producing attention-grabbing content material in relation to your service or product, there are a variety of codecs in keeping with every channel like movies, interactive photos, and helpful info relevant to their wants.
The perfect instance is TED Talks, their content material is about producing content material by means of visitor audio system of probably the most stylish and attention-grabbing matters in several industries.
2. BE AN EXPERT ON YOUR AUDIENCE INTERESTS.
Rule #1. The extra you already know about your goal, your technique carry out will higher. Who’re you speaking to? What do they do? Why they purchase your product/service? What are they doing? The place are they from? Which kind of content material are they focused on?
Netflix is aware of us nicely, in case you are watching comedy motion pictures, they’ll suggest different ones of the identical sort, the suggestions are pushed by machine studying algorithms analyzing your pursuits and behaviors.
three. BE PART OF THE INFLUENCER TREND.
The storytelling of influencer advertising and marketing is extra life like, and the followers can really feel linked and recognized with their day by day life. Entrepreneurs are rising their price range on influencers because of the affect on their viewers likesandfollowersclub.com.
Fiji water did a partnership with the influencer Danielle Bernstein who’s a trend blogger providing exercise movies together with her private coach. The aim was to focus on the significance of hydrating if you wish to appear and feel good, the marketing campaign title is #weworewhat with #bodyworewhat.
We’re human beings and even we stay in a linked world, we need to really feel completely different feelings on advertisements and campaigns to take the expertise to the following stage. The campaigns that get a reference to their viewers are those who will final for a very long time of their minds.
For example, if you’re playing a slot game with a payout of 95%, then the house edge is 5%. (The casino keeps 5% of every bet you make long term.) And if you’re average bet is $3, then you’re going to pay an average of 15 cents per spin to the house. (5% times $3.) Assuming you’re making 500 spins per hour, that game costs you $75/hour to play, which may or may not be a reasonable price for you entertainment. That depends on your bankroll situs slot.
1st Step: Realizing about acai isn’t an enormous downside. You will get the knowledge relating to acai from varied websites a effectively as from books which are available in shops. The acai berry is excessive in antioxidants, omega fat and fiber that assist to remedy you from varied ailments and on the identical time helps you in stopping different ailments. These components assist with detoxing in addition to weight reduction. However this doesn’t imply that it’s going to do every little thing that’s written within the ads displayed by the scammers.
residency however due to his trend socks. This time round, his dependancy for socks resulted in lots of of being raised for charity.
The 89-year-old Bush was noticed carrying the socks earlier in December on the Lyndon B. Johnson Basis, the place he was in attendance to obtain a service award. However Bush has a longstanding historical past with trend socks. To have fun his 89th birthday, he sported a pair of Superman socks. He “even gifted President Barack Obama with a pair,” the Huffington Submit reported within the wake of the celebration.
It is also not the primary time the previous president has leveraged his love of socks to boost charitable funds. In keeping with an Affiliate Press report, two months previous to his latest philanthropic gesture, Bush additionally donated a pair of cactus themed socks to the Portland, Maine Roman Catholic Diocese. “I completely love a loopy pair of socks,” he quipped within the letter of authenticity.
People who’re as trend sock loopy and George Bush, Sr., even when their leanings are much less eccentric than his are, could also be shocked to study concerning the variety of sock choices which can be accessible to them. And nowadays, they’ll get their sock repair with a number of easy clicks of their pc mouse.
Nowadays going to films looks as if it requires taking out a small mortgage. Not solely are ticket costs hovering round $10 every however popcorn and soda are approaching costs that the oil corporations could be pleased with.
On prime of this, you’re anticipated to decipher the film rankings which may appear reasonably foggy at instances. Is a film that is rated PG appropriate in your four-year-old? How a few PG-13 film? Ought to a toddler actually be 13 to be able to see it?
When attempting to determine if a film is appropriate in your youngster one of the best place to start out his understanding what the film rankings imply.
NC-17 for nobody 17 and beneath shall be permitted into the theater.
You are more than likely to G score on strictly youngsters’s films. These shall be films which have blissful endings and are fully with out violence or any sexually suggestive conditions and language. These films are completely protected to lets youngsters of any age watch.
Are you able to think about something extra romantic than a Hawaii Marriage ceremony, tropical flowers surrounding you, the surf pounding within the background? The very first thing to determine is which island you need the marriage to happen on. Each island has a bit totally different taste and if you happen to select to have the locals plan the marriage for you a lot the higher.
If you go together with a neighborhood wedding ceremony planner it’s possible you’ll purchase a bundle that features a minister, photographer, flowers, limousine service, and hair and make-up. In comparison with a median wedding ceremony on the mainland, which may value round $20,000, getting married within the islands is roughly $2,000.00. The financial savings is price the price of the airfare and accommodations and you’ll have cash left over. You’d already be in paradise, no must go elsewhere to honeymoon Kaanapali photographers.
First choose the place you prefer to the ceremony to happen. It may be a lodge, a waterfall, or a seaside. One favourite spot on the island of Oahu is Pukalani Falls in Angels Bay. This seaside gives privateness with its white sands and 5 mile lengthy stretch. The water is shallow offering a mirrored image off the underside of the ocean contrasting with the turquoise blue waters, and sensible blue skies. A dawn wedding ceremony could be spectacular.
Or if you happen to favor sundown there are secluded coves with massive lava rocks as a backdrop in opposition to the deep blue sea and pounding surf. There may be nothing extra spectacular than Hawaiian sunsets to get probably the most creative images of the ceremony.
Because the third a part of my kitchen group information, listed below are some storage suggestions and group information for meals and drinks within the kitchen.
Apart from the fridge, different storage areas for root greens embody baskets, racks or drawer. The final word dream kitchen has individually operated refrigerated and dehumidified drawers (versus drawers within the fridges) for recent meals like greens and bread, which could be a typically costly choice.
A easy and cheap various is to create a ventilated drawer within the present kitchen. This must be pretty deep and have runners which can be robust sufficient to take the burden of root greens like potatoes. Drill air flow holes at intervals alongside the edges your backside kitchen drawer, and maybe some alongside the entrance it this van be carried out neatly. Set a rack or racks within the backside of the drawer to permit air underneath the greens, and use it regularly to make sure good air circulation Gadget Tool for Many Kitchen Task B07H8L85FG.
For canned and packaged meals equivalent to dry flour, salt and olive oil, the last word retailer cabinet could be a walk-in larder with a marble or slate slab for storing cooked or ready meals in anticipation of a meal and cabinets up the partitions. Most of us must make do with only a cabinet or a few drawers.
No doubt, when one thinks of dowel rods, woodworking and crafts instantly come to thoughts. It is because dowel rods are generally and routinely utilized in woodworking. Nonetheless, the makes use of of dowel rods are way more versatile than some might notice. In reality, they are often fairly useful within the kitchen in conventional and non-traditional methods. Let’s study some prospects for makes use of of dowel rods within the kitchen Roll Up Over The Sink Drainer B07H8L85FG.
A number of the conventional, woodworking-related methods dowel rods will be excellent for kitchen makes use of embrace the power to make sure gadgets from scratch. For example, kitchen utensils are easy initiatives that may be accomplished simply and with a minimal funding of each time and expense. Take into account making an attempt a hand at creating wood spoons, ladles, or honey drippers. Dowels can be utilized as handles for every of those initiatives. As soon as accomplished, mount dowels to a strip of wooden, paint or stain, and hold your new, ready-to-use utensils close to your range prime for comfort and quick access.
Simply make a dish drying rack and add a pure, wood aspect to your kitchen within the course of. One other easy mission to contemplate is a paper towel dispenser. With some creativity and creativeness, these will be made both as standing, vertical models, which will be positioned on kitchen counters, or as elongated, horizontal models, which will be mounted below cupboards. Due to their relative simplicity, every of those would even be a wonderful, however easy mission for the start woodworker.
Two of the most well-liked flooring coverings are broadloom carpet and carpet tiles. Every alternative has benefits, and the choice that you just select on your flooring might be decided by the precise options that finest suit your particular wants.
Broadloom carpets can be found in a variety of designs and kinds. Most of those designs are made with looms operated with laptop applications. This successfully permits the producer to decide on the, sample, measurement, peak of the pile and every other fascinating options. Any such carpet could be loop or pile woven and manufactured in all kinds of colours. These carpets could be created from quite a few pure supplies reminiscent of horsehair, wool or sisal, and one among their best benefits is that they are often made with particular fibers or chemical remedies that make them hearth resistant.
Poker Enterprise – Can You Make Cash From On-line Poker Websites?
Do you imagine it’s a reasonable purpose to have a poker enterprise? Aside from the love of taking part in the sport of poker, all of us wish to earn money taking part in poker too. How nice wouldn’t it be to surrender your day job to grow to be an expert poker participant?
Do you ask your self if you happen to may earn money from on-line poker websites?
There may be potential, however what differentiates success from mediocrity? In terms of taking part in on-line poker it may be summed up in a single phrase – Self-discipline. To be able to take away the playing side out of the sport of poker we have to develop a way of strict self-discipline inside our taking part in parameters. Most of us know the best way to play the sport and a few are positively higher poker gamers than others. So how can we acquire that edge Dewa Poker?
My philosophy is, if you will attempt to generate an earnings or a minimum of complement your present one, you have to plan and deal with your sport like a poker enterprise. In the event you set boundaries you may obtain your objectives, even when taking part in poker for cash.
Now I am not speaking about setting poker methods and totally different taking part in patterns, I am speaking extra about the way you make investments your cash into on-line gaming websites. There are specific concepts you may implement to maximise your income.
Why Not Construct A Residence Fitness center For Your Crossfit Or Kettlebell Exercises?
If you wish to start CrossFit or Kettlebell coaching, it may assist to equip your private home with your personal gymnasium. Whereas there are gyms focusing on these kinds of coaching, there are a lot of the explanation why a house gymnasium may fit higher for you.
With a house gymnasium, you do not have to fret concerning the schedule and hours, childcare, and feeling intimidated to work out round different individuals. The advantage of CrossFit or Kettlebell coaching is that it does not take an entire lot of apparatus.
Whether or not you are able to fully outfit your private home gymnasium otherwise you wish to construct it somewhat at a time, there are gear objects you should buy that will help you take part on this coaching at house. Having a house gymnasium is usually a massive funding early on, however it would prevent cash in the long term Obstacle Course Set – Bars, Fists, Gymnastics Rings B07KDVR2W9.
There are a number of small items of apparatus you should buy that will not break the financial institution. Kettlebells are important to your gymnasium and are very economical. You should buy only one or a whole set that will help you advance as you acquire energy.
Leap ropes are utilized in CrossFit coaching and are one of many easiest and least costly items of apparatus round. Chances are you’ll wish to put money into one that may final a very long time. However even the costliest soar rope might be fairly inexpensive.
Barbells and bumper plates are additionally important for conditioning if you’re collaborating in CrossFit coaching. You will have to buy a set that features quite a lot of weights for various functions similar to lifeless lifts and squats. This is without doubt one of the dearer units you may want.
It is also useful to have a bench to make use of for weight lifting in addition to a pull-up rig. Once more, these are pricier objects however when you put money into them, they need to final a lifetime and maintain you from having to spend cash on a membership to a gymnasium. | 2019-04-23T16:30:54Z | http://www.ukpetmart.com/ |
These licence terms (the “Licence Agreement”) govern the use by Customer of the data products and subscriptions (“Products”) of Glass’s Information Services Limited (“Glass’s”).
1.1 Customer may order Products by placing written, signed orders on a local Glass’s order form, or by placing orders via order-entry tools (where available) on Glass’s web sites (each, an “Order”). Orders are subject to acceptance by Glass’s. Glass’s may accept an order by providing access to Products. Accepted orders will be deemed to incorporate and be subject to this Licence Agreement, as well as any other documentation referenced in the Order. All other terms and conditions contained in any Customer purchase order or other document not expressly referenced in this Licence Agreement will have no effect.
2.1 In providing Customer with an account, any access credentials or other access to Glass’sProducts, Glass’s grants access to the Products subject to Customer complying with the terms specified in this Licence Agreement. By using the Products, Customer agrees to comply with and be bound by this Licence Agreement, and any other documentation referenced in the particular Order.
2.2 Glass’s may, at any time during the term of this Licence Agreement, withdraw a Product from general availability and, at Glass’s option, either (i) replace it with an alternative product or deliver the applicable data through an alternative medium, provided that the replacement product or medium shall deliver materially the same capability and/ or data to the Customer; or (ii) provide a pro rata refund of the Fee relating to the withdrawn Product.
3.1 Glass’s shall invoice the Customer all prices specified in the Order. Invoices are payable within 30 days of the date of the relevant invoice in the currency stated in the Order. Prices are subject to VAT and any other tax or duty payable by Customer.
3.2 If Customer fails to make any payment when due Glass’s reserves the right to: (i) charge Customer any administration and bank charges, and interest (as well after as before judgment) from the due date until payment at the rate of 4% per month or the maximum rate permitted by law, whichever is the greater; (ii) suspend any and all licences granted to Customer until it has made payment in full; (iii) withhold delivery of any further Updates or access to Products until such time as all arrears have been settled; and/or (iv) terminate the Licence Agreement.
3.3 Glass’s shall be entitled to increase prices at yearly intervals on each anniversary of the Licence Agreement, if it notifies Customer in writing, at least 90 days before the expiry of the then-current term of the Licence Agreement, and Customer does not give written notice of termination of the contract at least 60 days before the end of the current subscription year, such termination to take effect at expiry of the then current term. Notwithstanding the foregoing, and subject always to 3 months’ written notice, Glass’s shall be entitled to increase any fees for VIN and/ or WLTP data services at any time in the event that any applicable vehicle manufacturer increases its fees for VIN look-ups and/ or WLTP data services to Glass’s.
4.1 Any and all business-related information provided by Glass’s shall be deemed to be confidential information. Subject only to the Permitted Use specified in the Order, Customer shall: (i) keep Products and any information contained therein confidential and limit access to Products to those of its employees, agents and sub-contractors who have a need to know; (ii) notify Glass’s immediately if it becomes aware of any unauthorised use of or access to any Products or confidential information by any third party; (iii) take all steps necessary to protect the confidential information or Intellectual Property Rights of Glass’s in Products; and (iv) take all such steps as are necessary to ensure compliance by its employees, agents and sub-contractors with the provisions of this clause 4.
5.1 Subject to payment of all applicable Prices and compliance with the terms of this clause 5 and any other licence terms and restrictions in the applicable product description, Glass’s grants Customer a non-sublicenseable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use Products and documentation provided under this Licence Agreement for Customer’s internal business purposes at the indicated capacity levels for the duration of the Licence Agreement. Such internal business purposes shall include the sharing of individual data extracts relating to specific vehicles to its third party customers, but Customer shall not otherwise allow access in any way to substantial or whole parts of the Product or related databases. Except for the limited licence rights expressly granted in this Licence Agreement, Glass’s reserves all rights in and to the Products and documentation and any modifications thereto, including title, ownership, intellectual property rights, and any other rights and interests.
5.2 Where Products are delivered through an online access or web application platform Customer may access and use the Product on multiple devices or one or more servers, so long as the specified number of licences or volumes for the Product are not exceeded at any given time.
5.3 Where Products are delivered as raw data in a flat format via (S)FTP or email, Customer may incorporate and use each copy of the Product on the Customer Platform(s) specified in the Order provided that, unless otherwise agreed in writing by Glass’s, Customer does not (i) use the Product on any additional platforms or systems; (ii) use the Product on the Customer Platform(s) with a larger volume without Glass’s prior written consent and payment of any applicable licence fees; or (iii) permit use by any other related or third party entity.
5.4 Where Products are delivered via a web service, Customer may access the Products subject to any volume limits specified in the Order. Any usage in excess of any agreed volumes will be charged at the additional transaction fee rates specified in the Order, or if none are specified, Glass’s then current standard pricing for such transactions. Customer shall comply with any integration requirements specified in any applicable integration documentation provided by Glass’s from time to time. Web Service transactions may only refer to individual vehicles. Bulk queries are not permitted.
5.5 Customer agrees not to: (i) decompile, disassemble, or reverse engineer the Products; (ii) alter, modify or create any derivative works based on the data or documentation; (iii) merge the Products with any other software other than as expressly set forth in the documentation; (iv) use, copy, sell, sublicense, lease, rent, loan, assign, convey or otherwise transfer the Products or documentation except as expressly authorized by this Licence Agreement; (v) distribute, disclose or allow use of the Products or documentation, in any format, through any timesharing service, service bureau, network or by any other means not provided for in the documentation; or (vi) permit or encourage any third party to do any of the foregoing.
5.6 Rights to vehicle images belong to their creator or rightsholder. Glass’s grants to Customer no rights to use such images; Glass’s service in relation to images is limited to providing a link from the Products to the images. Such links may only be used in conjunction with the Products and only online without undertaking any reproductions, other than necessary transitory copies in the cache memory. Further use of the images in electronic mailings or printed materials is prohibited. Glass’s may withdraw the links to the images at any time, and any further use of the links by Customer must cease if the image rightsholder so requires. In such circumstances, Glass’s will at its sole discretion attempt to make other images available to Customer.
5.7 Customer may create a reasonable number of archival and backup copies of the Products and documentation, provided all proprietary rights notices, names and logos are duplicated on such copies.
5.8 Glass’s (or any of its representatives or professional advisers, who are bound by professional obligations of confidentiality) shall have the right, on providing reasonable notice to Customer, to enter Customer’s premises during business hours and use all computer systems and facilities for the purpose of inspecting and copying any records or other information in any medium as reasonably necessary to monitor Customer’s compliance with the Licence Agreement, subject to Customer’s obligations of confidentiality to third parties. In the event of material non-compliance by Customer being detected, Glass’s shall be entitled to recover the costs of the audit, in addition to any other damages which may be recoverable.
6.1 Glass’s warrants that Products do not infringe any Intellectual Property Rights of any third party. Glass’s agrees to indemnify and hold Customer harmless from and against any damages awarded or agreed to be paid to any third party arising out of Glass’s breach of the foregoing warranty, provided that (i) Customer gives notice to Glass’s of any such claim forthwith upon becoming aware of it; and (ii) Customer gives Glass’s sole conduct of the defence to any such claim and gives to Glass’s such assistance as it shall reasonably require (at the expense of Glass’s) in respect of the conduct of the said defence.
6.2 In the event of such a breach, Glass’s may, at its expense, procure for Customer the right to continue exercising the rights granted hereunder with respect to Products or replace or modify Products at Glass’s sole expense to make Customer’s exercise of its rights under the Licence Agreement non-infringing. The remedies foreseen in clauses 6.1 and 6.2 shall be the sole remedies available to Customer and Glass’s shall have no further liability to Customer.
7.2 Glass’s gives no warranty as to i) freedom from defects of information or (ii) data supplied by third parties and incorporated by Glass’s into Products and warrants only that it has used reasonable endeavours to copy or import such information correctly from its original source; In the event of any technical error in the Products, subject to being notified in accordance with the Licence Agreement, Glass’s will investigate the error and, if the issue can be replicated or otherwise confirmed by Glass’s as an error, Glass’s will take such action as it considers appropriate in the circumstances to remedy the situation.
7.3 The warranties set out in this Licence Agreement are exclusive of and in lieu of all other warranties, conditions, terms, undertakings and obligations implied by statute, common law, custom, trade usage, course of dealing or otherwise which relate to the quality, condition and fitness for any purpose of Products.
8.1 This clause 8 applies to Glass’s liability (including any liability for the acts and omissions of its employees, agents and sub-contractors) in respect of any breach of its contractual obligations arising under any Licence Agreement and any representation, statement or tortious act or omission including negligence and any other form of liability, and Customer’s attention is in particular drawn to the provisions of this clause 8.
8.2 Glass’s liability to Customer will not be limited for (i) death or personal injury resulting from Glass’s negligence, (ii) fraud, (iii) wilful or grossly negligent behaviour (iv) a breach of the warranty in clause 6.1 or (v) any other matter for which liability cannot as a matter of applicable mandatory law be limited.
8.3 Subject to clause 8.2, Glass’s entire liability shall be limited to an amount equal to the aggregate of the Fee paid or due to be paid for the Product concerned in respect of the 12 month period in which the liability arose.
8.4 Subject to clause 8.2, Glass’s shall not be liable to Customer for (i) any loss of profits, business, anticipated savings, goodwill, data or other such loss; or (ii) any type of special indirect or consequential loss or damage; in each case including loss or damage suffered by Customer as a result of an action brought by a third party and even if such loss was reasonably foreseeable or Glass’s had been advised of the possibility of Customer incurring the same.
8.5 Glass’s will not be liable to any person other than Customer in connection with this Licence Agreement or its subject-matter.
9.1 The Licence Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law and the parties submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
10.1 The Licence Agreement shall enter into force on the Commencement Date and unless otherwise specified in the Order shall have an initial duration of 12 months, continuing in force thereafter for further periods of twelve months. Either party may terminate the Licence Agreement with effect from the end of the then-current period by giving the other party written notice of such termination not less than 60 days before the expiry of the then-current period.
10.2 The Licence Agreement may be terminated by notice in writing forthwith: (i) by Glass’s, if Customer, having been sent a written reminder, fails to pay any sums payable under the Licence Agreement or any other debt due to Glass’s within 30 days after the due date; (ii) by either party if the other commits any material breach of any term of the Licence Agreement which (in the case of a breach capable of being remedied) shall not have been remedied within 30 days of a written request to remedy the same; (iii) by either party if the other convenes a meeting of its creditors or if a proposal is made for a voluntary arrangement or for any other composition scheme or arrangement with (or assignment for the benefit of) its creditors or if the other shall be unable to pay its debts or if a trustee receiver, administrator or administrative receiver or similar officer is appointed in respect of all or any part of the business or assets of the other or if a petition is presented or a meeting is convened for the purpose of considering a resolution or other steps are taken for the winding up or bankruptcy of the other or for the making of an administration order (otherwise than for the purpose of a solvent amalgamation or reconstruction); and (iv) by Glass’s, if Customer breaches any of the licence terms under this Licence Agreement, and has not within ten (10) business days of the date of a reasonably detailed written notice, cured all breaches of licence limitations or restrictions.
10.3 Any termination of the Licence Agreement shall be without prejudice to any other rights or remedies a Party may be entitled to hereunder or at law and shall not affect any accrued rights or liabilities of either Party nor the coming into or continuance in force of any provision hereof which is expressly or by implication intended to come into or continue in force on or after such termination which shall include without limitation clause 4 which shall survive termination of the Licence Agreement by either Party.
10.4 Within 7 days of the termination of the Licence Agreement (which shall include termination of the licence to use any back-up copies) Customer shall in the case of Products for use with computer equipment at Glass’s sole option either return or destroy all such copies of Products in its possession or control and a duly authorised officer of Customer shall certify in writing to Glass’s that Customer has complied with this obligation.
11.1 Both parties will comply with all applicable requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) and any national implementing laws, regulations and secondary legislation, as amended or updated from time to time (the “Data Protection Legislation”). This clause 11 is in addition to, and does not relieve, remove or replace, a party's obligations under the Data Protection Legislation.
11.2 The parties acknowledge that for the purposes of the Data Protection Legislation, the Customer is the data controller and Glass’s is the data processor (where Data Controller and Data Processor have the meanings as defined in the Data Protection Legislation).
11.3 The Customer will ensure that it has all necessary appropriate consents and notices in place to enable lawful transfer of the Personal Data (as defined in the Data Protection Legislation)to Glass’s for the duration and purposes of this Licence Agreement, including when Customer enters Personal Data (including but not limited to customer details, or a vehicle registration number (VRM) or vehicle identification number (VIN)) into the Products for the purposes of interrogating the Products data, or otherwise in the course of using the Products. The Customer will not transfer any Special Category Data (as defined in the Data Protection Legislation) to Glass’s. Customer will indemnify Glass’s fully in relation to any breach of these obligations.
11.4 Glass’s shall only process the VRM or VIN to identify a vehicle and to record this activity for invoicing and audit purposes and for reporting to car manufacturers whose systems Glass’s uses. The Customer may also record in Glass’s system the details of its own customers and connected individuals for its own administrative purposes.
11.5.4 not transfer any Personal Data outside of the European Economic Area unless the prior written consent of the Customer has been obtained and the following conditions are fulfilled: (i) the Customer or Glass’s has provided appropriate safeguards in relation to the transfer; (ii) the data subject has enforceable rights and effective legal remedies; (iii) Glass’s complies with its obligations under the Data Protection Legislation by providing an adequate level of protection to any Personal Data that is transferred; and (iv) comply with reasonable instructions notified to it in advance by the Customer with respect to the processing of the Personal Data.
11.5.9 indemnify Customer fully in relation to any breach of these obligations.
11.6 Customer consents to Glass’s appointing providers of VRM and VIN data and subcontractors who provide systems support as third party processors of Personal Data under the Licence Agreement. Glass’s has entered or will enter into a written agreement with third-party processors substantially on their standard terms of business, or covering the obligations contained in this clause, and as between Glass’s and Customer, Glass’s shall remain fully liable for all acts or omissions of any third party processor appointed by us.
11.7 Either party may, at any time on not less than 30 days’ notice, revise this clause 11 by replacing it with any applicable controller to processor standard clauses or similar terms forming part of an applicable certification scheme (which shall apply when replaced by attachment to this Licence Agreement).
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TTC ridership has been static for the past few years, as set out in the October 2018 CEO’s Report. Year-to-date ridership is down 3.2% compared to budget and 2.0% compared to 2017.
Ridership has flatlined since 2014 due to various factors, including congestion, changes in customer mobility, and growth in digital ride-hailing services.
The statements here present many factors, but do not attempt an analysis. One vital and missing component in the list is the question of service quality and capacity. If people cannot get on their bus, streetcar or subway train, or if the service is unpredictable enough, they will use transit as a matter of last resort, not as a first choice.
The entire concept of a monthly pass was to remove the incremental cost of taking another trip, something which (at least back in the late 1970s when the debate raged over whether Toronto could have monthly passes) was an important factor. Fares are still an issue, but service is a troubling component too.
The note about declining Metropass sales requires some explanation. The TTC, through user surveys, estimates the number of trips taken by the typical passholder in a month, and this sits at about 74. For every 100,000 passes they sell, they count 7.4 million trips. Obviously, the number of trips each passholder takes will vary, but things will average out. For example, in the first week of July when, by chance, I was part of the survey sample, I took 27 trips (and that’s counting a “trip” by the transfer rules then in effect). That translates to over 100 trips/month. The trips/day varied from a low of 2 to a high of 7. It was a busy week, and I made one or two round trips from home, plus a few stopovers, on the busiest days. If I had counted on the basis of the two-hour transfer, the “trip” count would have been close to 20 factoring out the stopovers and a few quick there-and-back-again round trips.
Because each Metropass sale translates to so many trips in the stats, the loss of a sale has a big effect on the total TTC numbers. However, the people who “fall off” the Metropass group are likely to be those whose usage was borderline break-even and for whom convenience of a flash-and-go card had a value in its own right. Presto eliminates that value, and it would be no surprise to see many passholders switch over. The actual trips lost to the TTC are, for these riders, fewer than the average Metropass usage.
The trips/pass for the remaining sales should go up if the low end of the market shifts to Presto, but it is not clear whether the TTC adjusts their multiplier frequently. The “lost” riding could be as much an effect of overcounting the lost pass sales (and associated trips), as it is a real decline in system usage. This problem will become even trickier with the two-hour pass available through Presto where trips that used to count as two (or more) fares will now only count as one.
To re-establish sustained ridership growth, a new Ridership Growth Strategy (RGS) is being implemented. RGS initiatives include implementing a two-hour transfer on PRESTO and relieving overcrowding on surface routes.
If one goal of RGS is to relieve overcrowding, then it is clear that at least part of the system needs more service to handle demand even while official “ridership” is not growing. There may be routes with falling ridership, but even they must be viewed with caution lest the fall be the result of irregular or even reduced service.
Indeed, if there are overcrowded routes, why does the TTC not publish a list of routes, periods and locations where crowding is a problem that cannot be addressed without more capacity? Toronto cannot begin to talk about attracting new riders if it does not provide enough service to carry those who are already trying to use the system, or even understand the scope of the current system’s shortfall.
The two-hour fare will accentuate the split between the trend in “fares” (considered equivalent to “ridership”) and boardings on vehicles. (A “boarding” is one passenger getting on one vehicle, and each transfer counts as a new boarding, except on the subway which is considered one route for this purpose in TTC stats.) This will add to the confusion between apparently falling “ridership” and system crowding.
It is no secret that the TTC is capacity constrained. Although the bus fleet is now more reliable than ever thanks to better maintenance and the retirement of old clunkers, the actual size of the fleet is not growing because there is no place to put any more vehicles. Expansion plans are limited, as I have written before, and this is a major problem for the TTC’s future. On the streetcar fleet, new cars are gradually replacing old ones, and on close to a one-for-one basis bringing greater capacity to King Street this year, and to Queen in 2019. Subway capacity will not improve until early 2020 at best on Line 1 YUS, and 2026 or later on Line 2 BD.
Even the new Express Bus network has limited benefit because so much of it simply rebrands service that already exists rather than making a real improvement in what riders experience. Of the changes to date, the most striking has come on 29 Dufferin, but on many routes the service is identical to, or only a slight improvement on, the old “E” branches that are now 900-series routes.
The TTC has research underway on the effect of pass sales on ridership numbers, but this potential effect of the Presto migration was hardly unknown. If anything, the TTC has been derelict in placing so much focus on “ridership” while ignoring the basic question of service quantity and quality.
On some routes, scheduled running times were inadequate to actual conditions, and short-turning was inevitable. Running times were lengthened (and service was often scheduled less often to stretch available vehicles to match longer trips). However, in some cases the padding has been excessive leading to dawdling vehicles enroute and queues of buses and streetcars that arrive early at terminals.
When even padded schedules didn’t eliminate short-turns, the edict went out “thou shalt not short turn”. This can be counterproductive because there are cases where short turns are needed, but simply are not done and vehicles remain in a pack following a long gap.
The matter of “on time performance” is a blatant case of cooking the metrics to make management look good.
Previously, the TTC measured “on time performance” at various locations along routes. The results were not pretty.
The metric was changed to look only at terminal locations on the premise that service which is on time at the start of its trip will remain so as it moves across the city. Alas that is not so.
As we will see in a series of articles I will start publishing in coming days, there is a common problem on many routes that service may begin with vehicle spacing that is close to “on time”, but it takes only a short distance along a route for vehicles to catch up to each other and run in pairs or triplets. A further issue is that the TTC considers a bus or streetcar “on time” within a six-minute window, and this is meaningless for the frequent service on major routes. Because the service quality goal is only measured at the terminal, the actual reliability seen by most riders (who board elsewhere) is considerably worse than the values management reports.
For its part, Council looks at ridership numbers, sees a system that is not growing and says “why should we give you more money”? When added subsidy does come, it is as likely to go into fare reductions as to service growth, but lower fares are cold comfort if a rider cannot rely on transit for a timely and comfortable journey.
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The big problem I see is that usage of different types of fares is not equally distributed across the system. It seems obvious that people using higher order transit are going to have higher order fare methods…the bus that goes to the Zoo is going to have fewer Metropasses per rider than the streetcar going to King and Bay…higher order fares often don’t require taps, where lower order fares require some sort of interaction…either tickets or tokens or taps.
This would skew route level stats.
It should be easy to figure out which routes have long dwell times at stops and then visually inspect stops to determine where there are long term overloading issues. The drivers could also simply press a button when riders can’t get on, and the stats would quickly show the problems.
Steve: A few caveats here. First off, it is not clear whether the TTC has the same level of passenger counting capability today as in years past. Passenger counting staff have been cut back while, in theory, automated counting was supposed to be installed on new vehicles in the fleet. When I attempted to get some of this data, I was told that it is not available because the APCs either were not turned on, not installed, or not reliable. Presto data, of course, is limited to riders who tap, and major loading points at subway stations do not have “tap ons”. Those locations also include vehicle layovers that would be hard to distinguish from loading delays. As for dwell times at stops along a route, my understanding of the TTC’s analysis of its tracking data is not at the granularity needed to measure dwell times. Stop dwell time can also be affected by traffic conditions, of course, and this has to be factored out.
It’s amazing that in neither the TTC’s report or your analysis, increased cost is never even mentioned.
During the time frame 2015-2018, monthly metro passes for students increased by over 8% and for adults increased by over 9%.
For the vast majority of people, i.e. poor people who can’t afford cars and/or daily parking, it makes ZERO sense to purchase a monthly pass now, unless you’re regularly making more than 2 trips per weekday and on weekends. Poor people don’t do that.
In 2015, over 11% of Ontario’s workforce was earning just minimum wage, and almost 30% are low wage workers, earning slightly above minimum wage. See this Toronto Star article.
These are the TTC’s largest customer base, with the least flexible income and budgets. When you increase their prices 3 times over the rate of inflation, of course they’re going to stop buying.
The obscene price increases can’t be wholly attributed to the province not subsidizing the TTC enough. Instead of getting rid of management fat (such as lost and found room supervisors who earn over $70K), the TTC management has chosen to get rid of fare collectors and spend obscene amounts on the PRESTO debacle.
At this rate of price increases, the only people who will be able to afford the fares will be TTC’s own management and the shrinking population of idle rich in the downtown core.
This is why we need to move everyone to Presto right away. When everyone is on Presto, counting trips would be a lot easier. To get the 120 minutes fare, one must tap in on every vehicle. So, boarding a 92 bus at Woodbine Station in the fare paid zone will require a tap in. Every tap in is information. Vehicle utilization rates can be easily calculated.
Some TTC riders might have shifted to GO Transit. Even though the hourly service on the Kitchener and Stouffville Lines are not really convenient. Those 6 car trains are not ghost towns either. I ride those lines often enough to see the increasing ridership. When the Stouffville Line is double track from Kennedy to Marilyn, counter peak service will be possible. In a years time, there might be all day both way 30 minutes service between Union and Unionville. People are using them because they are faster than the TTC. In a situation like that, it is no loss to the city. One more transit rider benefits everyone regardless who is the carrier.
Steve: Actually a tap on to connecting vehicles is NOT required to obtain the two-hour fare. The original tap shows that you “paid” somewhere at a certain time, and that is all that’s needed.
Ridership is an archaic measure of transit success. A good metric would not give an illusory decline in usage just because a person switches from a pass to single use fare while keeping transit usage constant.
The TTC should move to a more modern metric. Maybe something like Average Revenue per User (ARPU), used by wireless firms. Or Load factor (percent of full seats per vehicle) used by airlines. Or whatever freight railroads use.
Why does TTC avoiding the truth? The truth is clear and simple ; ridership has NOT decreased. What has indeed decreased is the amount of ppl paying their fare!! And this because fare payment is not sufficiently enforced. Enough is enough. Let’s face the truth.
Steve said: Actually a tap on to connecting vehicles is NOT required to obtain the two-hour fare. The original tap shows that you “paid” somewhere at a certain time, and that is all that’s needed.
When do I tap my card when riding TTC?
Tap your PRESTO card every time you enter a subway station and whenever you board a bus or streetcar, regardless of whether it’s in a station or on the street. As long as you are within two hours from your first tap you will not be charged another fare.
While the original tap does clearly that show you started the 2-hour period I suppose that tapping onto all transfer vehicles would allow the TTC to look at actual ‘journeys’. Of course, if you tap onto a surface vehicle and then enter the subway through a fare-paid area there is (currently) no way to tap onto the subway. Making all transfer customers tap on might give the TTC better data (which they would then not have time to use!@) but at subway stations would surely cause huge bottle-necks.
Steve: There is a distinction between the TTC’s desire to get lots of data (which, as you note will still have holes in it) and what is strictly necessary to obtain a two-hour fare.
This is extremely fallacious reasoning. To presume that people were buying passes mainly because of the tax credit is insane, and stinks of the elitism that was used to justify the obscene tax breaks to electric vehicle car owners. Spoiler: rich people like having the latest gadgets, and were going to be buying electric cars no matter the tax credit associated with it (as if they don’t already have enough legal tax avoidance schemes available to them).
The budget conscious don’t use transit when there’s no absolute need to do so. That means two trips per working day. That is nowhere near your simplistic ratio of monthly pass price versus single ticket price.
The fact remains that people buying passes was a steady and secure revenue stream for the TTC that is now gone. Price increases over and above the rate of inflation is solely responsible for that. When 95% of your revenue is based solely on customer fares, switching from a guaranteed monthly revenue stream to ad-hoc daily purchases is a colossally stupid idea.
The underlying problem here is that transit “critics” like yourself and whatever consultants the transit agencies hire to give them “advice” refuse to acknowledge who their main customer base is, and likely don’t even care to find out. That’s how you get Metrolinx pricing the Pearson Express initially priced at $27.50 and don’t realize how out to lunch that pricing scheme is for people who actually use that route.
Steve: If you can get off your high horse for a moment, you will see that I am actually trying to support your argument. Of course the budget conscious will only take the minimal number of trips per day, but to assume that this is 2 trips ignores the fact that people have other travel needs that, despite the cost of a TTC fare, would be even more expensive to take by other means. For people in the situation where their monthly rides are greater than 48, they save money with a pass compared to tokens. Both token and pass prices have gone up, and so the economic trade-off for TTC fares stays the same. If the TTC is no longer affordable, that’s a bigger issue than the price of a Metropass.
You say that 95% of the TTC’s revenue stream is based on customer fares. That is not correct. The actual value fluctuates from year to year between 68 and 72%. This is still high, and puts the TTC in a budget crunch especially when they have projected stronger growth than they actually get, let alone if they start to lose riders.
As for your comments about transit critics like me, I know perfectly well what the TTC’s customer base is and have worked in the past to reduce the Metropass multiple so that it was more in line with a two-fares per weekday model. As for UPX, I’ve been opposed to their fare model since the line opened. If you want to slag my positions, the least you can do is actually know what you’re talking about.
There have been cases where I have argued for a modest fare increase on the grounds that if we use every penny of subsidy we can get to freeze fares, the result is that service and maintenance will simply get worse and worse. That’s no benefit to anyone. The real change that is needed is the recognition that transit funding must rise faster than inflation to cover the combined cost of improving service and rebalancing the fare structure. This does not necessarily mean that we freeze fares, but rather that we find a way to direct added subsidy to where it is really needed, not to every rider on the system.
I am sure this is not a defining explanation for the trend, but I have noticed a recent decline in the quality and cleanliness of vehicles. While we are not back to the dark days of free newspapers scattered everywhere on every vehicle and in every station, but it seems the TTC has once again become generally dirty and unkempt. I get on the 504 every day to find spilled coffee, empty beer cans, and dirty grimy seats. This is not what I remember when they had a direct initiative to cleanup the system several years ago. I dread what it will be like this winter when it’s slush and salt everywhere.
Steve wrote: Actually a tap on to connecting vehicles is NOT required to obtain the two-hour fare. The original tap shows that you “paid” somewhere at a certain time, and that is all that’s needed.
Absolutely correct. There are only two different situations where a user needs to tap on non-GO transit operators: the start of a 2-hour period, and to provide validation of fare payment when entering a pay-upon-entry vehicle. Any situation that does not require payment upon entry to a vehicle, such as boarding a vehicle from a fare paid platform or boarding a vehicle where POP rules are in effect, does not require a tap if the card has been tapped within two hours.
That said, tapping when it is not required has the benefit of being able to check how much time remains on the two hours, with the exception on the TTC where they have decided that doing so would violate your privacy (or so I have been lead to believe – or does the TTC only not display the dollar balance on the vehicle readers?).
Steve: No, the TTC won’t tell you how much time is left on your fare.
I disagree with the statement. Subways are more overcrowded than ever.
The problem is people getting on subways without paying and nobody cares. I see this so often, when waiting for a bus. Different subway stations. Finch and Yonge: people walking from the street straight through the bus platform and to subway anytime of the day without paying a cent. Also Kipling subway and many others.
Once while waiting for a bus on Kipling subway I saw few people coming from street to subway without paying, I asked the driver standing on the platform “didn’t you see that”. His response was “yes but we cannot do anything about it”. He also said that they spoke with their boss but he replied that “they have reserved fundings for those kind of losses”. I was stunned and said it’s so unfair and that’s why my Metropass is going up. He agreed but the same result. I have to pay higher fare because hundreds of people are getting in without paying anything and not being penalized.
After so many years of buying Metropass, I’m considering leaving Toronto area where transportation is cheaper and maybe I will be able to afford to rent on my own.
Steve: If the TTC actually put staff at the common “walk in” points at stations with the authority to ticket everyone they caught, this problem would end. However, the TTC (and their Council colleagues) are all about cutting, not increasing, staff levels. It’s a classic Toronto problem that goes well beyond the TTC: we love to have rules, but we don’t pay anyone to enforce them.
Presto is the WORST! It allows at 5% of riders to ride for free A DAY! Be it hopping on a streetcar without paying, encountering a broken tap machine, to just walking though a open gate in a subway station. Then there’s excuses from those with Presto cards wanting to be cheap. “I tapped it when I boarded, but maybe I missed it?”, “What do you mean there’s no money on it? I just loaded it this morning I swear!” If you thought good actors came from Toronto before, Presto is about to make a LOT more! And thirdly Fare Inspectors wages and benefits will be twice that of a driver or collector. As there’s no protection for them, and need more equipment and tech to do their jobs. Which I’m sure after 8 months is going to seem like the worst career choice ever. So turnover will be high. Or, they’ll just make it look good and avoid accosting the majority of riders. How anyone can gain credible data from all of that I’m not sure?
Steve: I assume you meant to say that Presto allows “at least 5%” of riders to ride free.
Then why does TTC say you need to tap on every bus, streetcar or subway station? If you get stopped it shows a valid fare but not on that vehicle.
Steve: Because they want all that juicy travel data knowing every time you board a new vehicle. However, a two hour fare is good anywhere, and not necessarily on a connecting vehicle. That’s the whole idea. If you get stopped, you have a fare that is less than two hours old. End of discussion.
There is a straightforward analogy here to “old technology”. When you got a transfer, you might use it miles (and a few connections) from the bus where you paid your fare, but the simple check was “is this a logical place to use this transfer within a reasonable time”. Now the question is simply “is it under two hours”.
I am a long-time MetroPass user and I am resisting switching to Presto for many reasons. I still don’t trust it (to scan correctly, to update at the beginning of each month, not to double-charge me, etc.), and, mainly I don’t like that it is connected to my name and financial information – I do not want to be tracked!
Garth said: The truth is clear and simple ; ridership has NOT decreased. What has indeed decreased is the amount of ppl paying their fare!! And this because fare payment is not sufficiently enforced. Enough is enough. Let’s face the truth.
Although this is not likely the sole reason for the decline in ridership numbers, I have to agree that it is a contributing factor. I witness this numerous time a week at automated subway entrances. The old ones were fortresses – no way you could get in without paying. These new plastic fare gates are flimsy and often out-of-order. Not only that, it’s easy to hop over the railing to get in (which I had to do once because the Metropass reader was down). I can’t imagine how many thousands of trips go unpaid every week because of this. And I haven’t even mentioned the Presto readers on streetcars that are often down!
Toronto has broad acceptance that streetcars can not have turnstiles. Why are these not considered?
Steve: It’s a question of passenger flow through the car especially with all doors used for loading and unloading. Note that a turnstile cannot “read” a transfer and unless the system converts completely to some form of electronic fare payment, this is not an option.
I agree with others here than actual ridership (paid or otherwise) has not declined.
In my experience one’s chance of getting a seat, even off-peak, outside the core is in decline.
There are more bodies, not fewer.
Unpaid riders are surely a portion of this (meaning illegal unpaid entry as opposed to children).
I expect children may be a portion of the issue, as I imagine ridership is up, including stay-at-home parents vs when children were a paid fare. I wonder (do you know Steve?) what their modelling suggested would happen to child ridership w/the elimination of fares?
Steve: The TTC estimated some growth in ridership due to free children’s rides and this is included in the total count reported. I do not know if there is any strong methodology behind this, although in theory we will have a better idea once children are required to have a Presto card at least to gain access to subway stations.
Most of all, I suspect the issue of the Metropass presents a huge problem in as much as I don’t think it ever provided an entirely accurate gauge of ridership and the loss of sale being counted as a decline of 74 rides strikes me as very problematic.
The first fundamental key here is to get an accurate read on actual ridership with means every vehicle in the system should have passenger count technology on it.
There are so many ways in which to do this, not just traditional step counters, and most are not overly expensive or time-consuming to install.
I’m very disappointed to at the TTC response to your data request for counters, and I think it demands (of them) a detailed, in writing, explanation as to why that data isn’t available and what they intend to do about it and when.
Irrespective of its impact on ridership, the multiple for the Metropass in terms of its price, was always too high, and it borders on absurd in the light of the 2-hour, hop-on, hop-off fare.
The multiple needs to drop to 40 rides.
In so doing, the Metropass would cost $120 per month this is close enough to existing low-income pass price of $115.50 that one could argue for eliminating this pass as a discrete item, and likewise you could can the student/senior passes at $116.75 and eliminate some duplication and cost.
I would anticipate such a move to result in higher uptake and more ridership and as such, as you have noted in many posts there remains a clear need to put new capacity on the roads and rails, in virtually all time periods.
Proper line management and ATC would both do wonders on the capacity front, but I have difficulty imagining the TTC needing less than 10% more capacity across the board, and that’s without factoring any latent demand whatsoever.
Some Commissioners and staff are going need more spine in seeking a material funding increase.
Why does the TTC seem so surprised? With Presto and the 2 hour transfer the demand for a full Metropass will be less. One benefit of the Presto card with the monthly pass cap, is the TTC will see how close to max usage riders get. With the website feedback to each rider, users are more aware than ever of their use and will tailor their riding accordingly.
This tracking feature is also why Presto cards for the under 14 crowd should be required. TTC can track the unpaid ridership, mom and dad can do the helicopter parent bit, TTC could work with the school boards to replace “yellow” buses – more cash for the TTC, less congestion on the roads.
Fare evasion exists – to what extent no one really knows – rode Spadina streetcar, I was the only one to tap at my door, rode to Spadina station and the flood of people pushed past the fare inspectors (just 2 guys) ignoring calls for proof of payment – I guess they do stop some but I think the % is low.
Steve: FWIW if you ride bus routes downtown which still require you to show or tap on entry, you will notice that the lion’s share of riders still have Metropasses, although the number of Presto cards is slowly going up. Try ou Bay or Wellesley as good examples. On the basis of what I see on bus routes, I have no trouble believing that many who simply board streetcars without showing anything have passes. I am one of them.
Once the collector booths are closed, will all that staff turn to fare inspection, or is management looking to save some salaries?
Steve: The collectors are supposed to become roving station agents. Good luck with that when the weather makes the station outside of the booth intolerable due either to cold or heat. This is one of Andy Byford’s bone headed ideas, and it’s based on the model he learned in London UK where the climate is relatively benign.
So having said all that, the TTC needs to get its act together – forget fare sales, the 2 hour transfer alone will skew ridership by fare numbers – just count the butts in the seats, or just standing there! Get the APC’s working! True ridership numbers, not fares sold, are critical to show various levels of government the true value/demand for Transit.
Different note Steve, on private ROW for streetcars (Spadina, St. Clair etc.) could the imposition of a signal (stand/Go) system be used to help space cars and promote consistency in service spacing? Having streetcars stopped on ROW would not alter traffic flow. If this worked, could “pockets” for spacing bunched Streetcars and/or buses be retrofitted to routes? A bus could sit in a bus bay at an intersection to allow a gap to build. With GPS via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth tech can TTC control not see when bunching of vehicles occurs? Can’t an automated signal tell the driver to speed up a little bit or slow down/wait if needed? Could part of a drivers compensation (collective bargaining nightmare) be tied to being “on time, but spaced out” as per the system? This theoretically would smooth out service, by providing more standard “gapping” intervals.
Steve: Creating street space for transit vehicles to wait for their time would be very difficult in many places that do not already have bus bays. As for telling ops to better space service, this should have been part of the TTC’s new “Vision” system, but they are so focused on “on time performance” that they probably didn’t even make provision for this sort of thing.
Will they buy the additional streetcars needed to “up” the service levels as you showed in your earlier article? Most of the political push is for Smart Track (JT tries to stay the course) or DRL+ (JK will build it faster) not for smaller grains of buses and streetcars.
Steve: The question of more new cars depends on (a) what sort of proposals come in from potential vendors (the RFI is already in progress), (b) the makeup of our new Council, (c) whether DoFo will regard this as a local project that will get no provincial funding, and (d) whether the Feds will kick in part of the cost through PTIF Phase 2 (assuming Toronto asks for it).
I thought I would offer a separate comment on line management.
As you (Steve) and I have discussed in other fora, its absence has become painfully obvious and obviously painful on many routes.
To set some sort of level of variation from headway (or schedule on less frequent services) where intervention takes place from Transit Control in order to even things out and use capacity more wisely.
You and I discussed Victoria Park at some length not so long ago.
Subsequently, I was on the bustituted Bathurst service found it running in pairs, but not in a way that worked.
The first bus was completely overloaded and delayed, while the second was 1/2 empty. The second bus would not and did not overtake, leaving riders and the operator of the lead bus more than a tad grumpy.
This sort of nonsense just has to stop. Its not only a bad rider experience its a waste of money. Overall capacity on paper for the route was probably adequate, but the way in which it was run made it feel as though it were not.
Beyond that, as you have noted before, the +1, -5 at the terminals is absurd, as a basis for on-time performance, even if you retain schedule as opposed to headway.
A tighter time frame, +1,-3, measured every 2km on route would be a much clearer way of seeing problems as experienced by riders, and would, in theory, better alert transit control to the need for intervention in real-time; and service planning to address issues where problems show up consistently on a particular route, during a particular period.
Though we could agree on all frequent services, measuring headway would be more effective still.
Steve: It is common to see the 505 Dundas buses running in threes, never mind pairs.
PBNo said: Mainly I don’t like that it is connected to my name and financial information – I do not want to be tracked!
You can avoid having “you” and your PRESTO card linked in any way by only loading it with cash.
Steve: That is not possible for the annual Presto card which is an autoload that makes a bank/credit card withdrawal.
Steve, the main problem with many of the Express routes is that they operate over a portion of a route (or the entire route.) For example, the 188 Kipling South Rocket (soon to be 944) runs over the exact same route of as 44 Kipling South – when it was started many people taking the 44 simply started taking the 188 instead. So a ‘new’ route – but not much new ridership. That does not always help the situation when new routes simply take passengers from other routes.
Steve: The point of a service like the 188/944 was to provide a point-to-point service for those travelling between Kipling Station and Lake Shore Campus. Of course, depending on the timing and frequency of the express buses, someone who has just missed one can probably take the next local with no penalty, plus the assurance that they’re “on the way” rather than waiting for the next express to show up.
I have no problem with this sort of service design. What bugs me is to have the TTC and the Mayor trumpeting the “new” express services when most of them are not new at all. A Ridership Growth Strategy that amounts to repainting buses is no “strategy” at all. But, hey, it’s the best transit system in NA, or at least was last year.
When Steve said: Actually a tap on to connecting vehicles is NOT required to obtain the two-hour fare. The original tap shows that you “paid” somewhere at a certain time, and that is all that’s needed.
Tom asked: Then why does TTC say you need to tap on every bus, streetcar or subway station? If you get stopped it shows a valid fare but not on that vehicle.
Tom is mixing up two things.
Only the original tap is needed to get the two hours. When boarding a pay-as-you-enter vehicle, a tap is needed for the same reason that showing a transfer or putting a fare in the farebox is needed: to authenticate that one has paid a fare. Unlike showing a transfer, if the 2-hours is up, then the Presto system will automatically deduct a new fare, so everyone waiting to load behind the person who has an “expired transfer” does not have to wait for them to get out a new fare or argue with the driver.
PBnoJ wrote: I am a long-time MetroPass user and I am resisting switching to Presto for many reasons. I still don’t trust it (to scan correctly, to update at the beginning of each month, not to double-charge me, etc.), and, mainly I don’t like that it is connected to my name and financial information – I do not want to be tracked!
So let me get this straight, in one sentence this person does not believe that Presto is able to do its job of tracking things, and in the next sentence does not want to use Presto because it can track them.
I have news for people: Presto and the transit operators using it are too busy to track YOU, and you are NOT that important, even if you believe you are.
Could tracking information be used in a police investigation? Sure, with the proper warrant, but the information it provides is equally as good in investigating a person as it is in exonerating them. In the earlier days of Presto on YRT, my card’s history would show that I tapped on a bus at a stop that was miles past where I got off the bus. The uselessness of this detail was so bad that they now only store what zone the tap occurred in (and now they only have one zone).
An acquaintance of mine in another city refuses to use their card because of tracking, citing that if a crime were to occur at a station and at a time when he was near there, he did not want police banging on his door at 4 am to question him about anything he may have seen. ‘Nuff said.
Thank you for the article Steve as it mirrors my experience of being a Metropass user purely for convenience. I was an early adopter of the PRESTO card and immediately saved $30 per month when I converted (early on a bit more as the fare readers were less stable). I really like how Hamilton stops charging a fare after riding 11 times per week. That seems like a great way to get the benefits of a pass without having to buy one.
Is it just me, or does the idea that Metropass users ride 74 rides on average seem a bit absurd? There’s suggests a vast number of people riding 100+ times of week to make up for the bulk of us riding to work and back.
It’s unfortunate that “Rides” seems to be the dominant metric. It’s seems inferior to counting “Boardings” which seems a better method to reflect system utilization. I suspect the story really should be “TTC experiencing more boardings as a result of 2 hour Transfer” instead of “Fewer Rides”.
Steve: The 74 number is per month, not per week. The riding surveys are collected on a weekly basis and pro-rated to a moving average to get the monthly numbers.
People who use transit every day, not just for work, would only have to take 2.5 rides per day to get to the average level (30 days times 2.5 = 75). An average of 74 is quite reasonable when you consider that there is more Metropass use on frequent routes downtown (this is from personal observation over the years) where hop off, hop on, travel would be common. It is unusual for me to have a zero-trip day, and I only need a few busy “transit days” with multiple outings each week to drive my monthly usage well over 74.
Your point about the weekly cap is important: the capability to implement the equivalent of daily, weekly and monthly capping already exists in Presto. It is simply a case of the TTC asking for it to be turned on. They have resisted this because of the potential revenue loss to riders who would get equivalent-to-pass pricing without the need to actually buy a pass in advance.
I think the boneheads in charge of the TTC really need their heads banging together and the council also. They really have to think what function the TTC does for the city, is it some sort of welfare for the poor as many right leaning politicians still think, or is it a system that enhances life in the city and help to move people more efficiently, well that if its run properly. At the end of the day it all comes down to money and how much people are willing to pay not only in fares but in their property taxes to fund the system. All too often things are looked in silos, never look at the impact one thing has on the other, that how transit has been looked at for decades, let’s see how much we can save and cut, without looking at the impact elsewhere, the Don Valley Car Park and the Gardiner “anything but an” Expressway, 60+ minutes to get from the 410 to the 404 is where it got you, just look at the lead story in today’s Toronto star.
I don’t think it is rocket science that with the introduction of Presto and the two hour transfer and daily weekly capping would lead to the loss of Metropass sales. Rather than daily capping, why don’t they introduce a sliding scale of fares like GO does, you have so many trips per month at $3, then the next few trips at say at $2 and then after that all trips cost $1. Pitch it in such a way that it will be still cheaper to buy a the respective day/weekly and monthly pass if they continue to refuse to turn the monthly cap. As for the loss of riders I’m not so sure, since Pioneer Village station opened I feel the numbers travelling in the 60 west of there has increased, I always have to stand when i get on the bus at Signet Drive and the 84 at Sheppard West Station to Yonge (as a side issue I would be a beneficiary of an extension of Line 4 westwards!!!). I assume they have to provide service based on the number of boardings rather than the number of trips, again difficult to count, with the switch to Presto it will be easier to do but again only on trips to the subway. I guess with some bean counter somewhere they could track where the card starts its return journey (oops privacy issues!!!).
AS I said at the beginning it’s basically what I’m saying the politicians have to sit a really think about what role transit has, as the Star claims it costs the GTA $6bn annually in lost productivity, if two of that billions is spent on providing better transit/traffic management then traffic congestion may only cost the city $3bn traffic, a billion back in the hands to the people (yes I’m plucking numbers out the air, but just to emphasize that for every penny saved on providing transit the cost in productivity will be more than the penny saved). Time to take transit planning out of the hand of the politicians.
Steve: There has already been work done on trip modelling using partial tap data in other cities. Problem arise because of missing middle segments that might distinguish the path taken through the network when more than one is available, and the lack of tap-ons at fare paid areas removes information that could resolve this. That’s why the TTC is telling people to tap on everywhere even though for fare collection purposes it is not strictly necessary for trips within the two hour window (assuming that’s your fare mode). For “pass” users, the only purpose of tapping on is to signal that you have a valid card, the equivalent of waving your transfer or Metropass at the operator.
Also, of course, it is relatively easy to detect regular trips for a pass even if some data points are missing because there will be enough info (the initial boardings at a minimum) to identify regular end-points which can reasonably be assumed to be a common O-D pair. “Wandering” trips that are taken ad hoc for occasional travel can be trickier, but they will have more “origins” and provide more data points. The question then becomes how much computing effort one wants to expend. It’s also worth mentioning that vehicle crowding data could, in theory, be available from automatic passenger counters provided that (a) they were installed, (b) turned on and (c) working reliably. That last point can be challenging when vehicles are very crowded and people are jammed into space close to the doors.
It is frustrating to see the most basic questions not answered: Are the buses full? Are they leaving people at stops? Do they come in bunches with some buses jammed full and others running half-empty? We can screw around with fare collection data all we like, but there are basics of transit planning that require actually looking at routes and understanding how they behave. The data can help, but it’s not a panacea.
Something that hasn’t actually been made clear to me – I am also a longtime MetroPass user putting off the Presto switch as long as I can – is this …. if I am using the equivalent of a MetroPass on Presto then do I need to tap on and off if I’m not passing through a gate? At stations, yes, I will tap in the same way that I swipe my MetroPass now, but if I’m getting on a streetcar or bus, do I tap?
Steve: Strictly speaking, a tap when transferring is not required if nobody’s watching, but it will be a lot easier for fare inspectors to pick out possible cheaters by looking for people who don’t tap. Mind you, they could still be paying with some other medium at least until late in 2019 and simply have a transfer in their pocket. On a bus, everyone shows their fare when boarding, and so you would still have to tap, the equivalent of flashing your pass. It’s a bit more complicated for Presto users who don’t have a pass loaded onto their card because they are riding on what is, in effect, a two hour pass, and it gets validated every time they tap. If they’ve gone past two hours, Presto will take another fare and restart the clock.
2.6 When requested to do so by a proper authority, a person travelling on the transit system shall immediately surrender for inspection the fare media, an identification card or photo identification card under which the person is travelling.
In other words, if someone wants to see that I have paid, I have to be able to prove this. That is not the same as tapping on to every vehicle.
As for tapping off, that is only required on GO Transit (unless you have pre-registered a “standard” commuting trip).
I, like the commenter above, and also VERY concerned about linking my Presto to my financial information – not because I worry so much about being tracked (though now I am thinking about it and I don’t like it) but that I DON’T TRUST METROLINX TO KEEP MY FINANCIAL DATA SAFE. If there is a breach then it’s my bank account or credit card that’s affected – that is terrifying.
Steve: Presto has been holding banking information for ages for people whose passes auto-load either to top up the “cash” balance or to purchase monthly passes. The TTC has been doing the same thing with the Metropass Discount Program for years. It’s a choice you have to make.
Thanks to Steve for being such a readable voice of reason in all of this.
I am still not convinced there is any loss of ridership. I use the TTC DAILY (outside rush hours 99%.) I still see too much fare evasion and NO enforcement officers. This (Saturday) afternoon I walked into Jane Station to get a 935 Jane Express. Info board said two were due in 12 minutes. I was the second person waiting. By the time the first bus arrived there were about 3 dozen people waiting. Passengers got off and so did the Operator. People got on both doors (rear left open) and only ONE other person besides myself tapped on. No one put cash/token in the fare box. NO ONE had a transfer in their hand (that I could see) and few if any had a Metropass. Operator came back and we left SRO and two (plus?) paying riders.
Perhaps at certain stations a fare inspector could be on hand to check riders getting on to ensure they are paying. The old way of closing the doors while the Operator goes to the toilet is NOT rider friendly especially outdoors in bad weather and delays departure. This Fare Inspector could assist ALL buses by loading rear doors when Operator stays at his seat.
Steve: Through one of those bizarre practices of the TTC, I don’t think fare inspectors are actually intended/allowed to act as “loaders”. That’s an ATU 113 job, and the fare inspectors are non-union. Moreover, they’re paid a lot more. The TTC really needs to review its whole practice of fare collection and enforcement to deal with situations like this. Having said that, I’m not sure I would want to spend an 8 hour shift in February checking fares or loading at Jane Station.
Now from what I see, all buses and streetcars now have numerous cameras installed, would it be too simple of me to think that loadings can actually be reviewed using the footage, just thinking!!!!
Steve: But you would have to count them manually. Tedious.
Well said. I am also frustrated that in the general public discourse, no one mentions street and road maintenance when discussing transit…as if these are not connected, and as if there is not a certain tradeoff between the two. No one talks about the fact that Toronto spends lots of money to maintain vast surfaces of concrete in a climate in which said concrete experiences huge thermal deltas during the year and invariably suffers…and that transit allows for a more efficient use of that concrete (or, in the case of rail, allows it to be omitted altogether), requiring less of it. Nobody complains of the money spent on road maintenance or the “subsidy” so given to drivers…that’s just taken for granted…and that’s just one aspect of the whole transit debate.
I’m not advocating “free” transit (as in no fare collection, fully tax-funded), but if City Hall were to suggest it, there’d be an uproar. An equal one if you were to suggest that every driver pay a dollar every time they pull out of their driveway (I mean, we can gauge that from the response to the Gardiner tolls idea). I mean the City’s $60 vehicle registration tax was a major source of discontent (and Council, despite Tory’s urgings at some point, never brought it back since Ford killed it), yet everybody still expects the City to fix the streets. On the other hand the TTC must always find “efficiencies”. It makes no sense.
Sorry Steve, I wasn’t clear, it would be tedious after I posted I realized what I meant to say was that they could be used to show evidence of the overcrowding not to actually count bums on seats. Correct me if I’m wrong, don’t the drivers actually have a way to alert control their buses are overfull.
Steve: Yes, there is a way for a driver to signal that they’re “overtaxed”, but I doubt it’s well used as there is nothing Transit Control could do about it.
One could always share their Metropass with family and friends if they didn’t need to use it at that time (i.e. you go to work, colleague needs to take subway for 2 stops at lunch so you give it to them, and then they come back and give it to you so you can go home).
That pass is not registered to a name so it didn’t matter who was in “possession” of it at that point in time.
If a fare inspector asks to scan your Presto card (with Metropass option) to see if a) card is valid, b) fare is paid; will it matter who’s name the card is under as long as the fare has been paid? Or will questions start being asked “who’s pass is this? why do you have it?” etc.
Steve: Presto cards are fully transferrable.
Sherilyn wrote: I, like the commenter above, and also VERY concerned about linking my Presto to my financial information – not because I worry so much about being tracked (though now I am thinking about it and I don’t like it) but that I DON’T TRUST METROLINX TO KEEP MY FINANCIAL DATA SAFE. If there is a breach then it’s my bank account or credit card that’s affected – that is terrifying.
Presto only keeps your financial information (credit or debit card number) when you sign up for auto-load. If you want to reload online, your credit card number is entered only for the purpose of that transaction only and not stored by Presto. The downside to that is that one must enter it each and every time they do a load, but if one were using their own device or computer, one can have their Google account fill in the fields for them automatically, assuming you trust Google to manage that information for you.
As for topping up by debit, the card number is not used at all. Presto transfers one to a page to select the bank and then it goes to a login for the bank’s online interface to do an eTransfer.
When Sjors asked: If a fare inspector asks to scan your Presto card (with Metropass option) to see if a) card is valid, b) fare is paid; will it matter who’s name the card is under as long as the fare has been paid? Or will questions start being asked “who’s pass is this? why do you have it?” etc.
Steve responded: Presto cards are fully transferrable.
With one caveat: a Presto card registered for a concession fare (child, student, senior), then it should only be used by someone else who is entitled to that fare. I’m not familiar with the readers on TTC buses, but on YRT the readers have a significantly different sounding beep when a concession fare enabled card is validated.
Note, if one registers a Presto card for a concession fare with one transit operator, that card will receive the comparable concession fare on all others, if it is offered by them.
Steve: The same rules apply to a Metropass. A senior’s pass cannot be used by someone who isn’t entitled to that fare. And, yes, the TTC Presto readers have a different tone and coloured light when used by a card with a concession fare on it.
For the fast processing needed when boarding a vehicle, Presto cards only carry their unique number and the ePurse balance, and a limited queue of recent activity. Fare inspectors have readers that can only read what is found on the card, and this does not include the name of the registered owner. That recent activity is beneficial should your 2-hour fare run out mid trip on a POP vehicle. One’s fare only needs to be valid when boarding a pay-upon-entry vehicle, but is supposed to be valid for the entire journey when on a POP vehicle. That said, if one does not act like an a-hole to a fare inspector, if the initial tap on their reader shows you do not have a valid fare in effect, they can re-read it for recent history to see if you very recently ran out. Generally, they are looking for those who didn’t tap in the first place, intending to ride for free.
One-time set-up of your card up at the start of the 12 month agreement and your 12 Month Pass is available on your PRESTO card for the full year (payments are automatically processed each month).
So, they have my financial info.
Steve: Yes, any form of automatic pre-ordered fares will involve giving up your banking info. Metropass MDP users have done that already.
Steve: Where Have All The Riders Gone?
The riders are taking alternative means of travel while Toronto drags it’s feet when it comes to the subway expansion. Hopefully, with a more Scarborough subway friendly council just elected, we will get the Scarborough subway constructed soon which will bring back the riders. It is time to also extend the Yonge subway to Richmond Hill. And with Brad Bradford (Mayor John Tory’s Downtown Relief Line champion) newly in office, the Downtown Relief Line has gotten a big boost as well. And I am also hoping (though my fingers are crossed) that Doug Ford will bury the entire Eglinton Crosstown line. Rapid transit is what will bring back riders and trains running in the middle of the road is simply not rapid transit and does not attract riders especially in the suburbs where travel distances are much larger as everything is farther. And I am hoping that Mayor Patrick Brown will help push for the subway extension to Peel Region (Mississauga and Brampton).
Let us extend the Sheppard subway as well (both directions). Congratulations to all those who were elected last night (Mayor John Tory, Mayor Patrick Brown, Councillor Mike Ford, DRL champion Brad Bradford, and others). And to those who have fallen (ex-councillor Giorgio Mammoliti and others), my sincere condolences but there is a federal election coming up and you are welcome to run in it.
Steve: None of the proposed new lines will be open within the next two terms of Council or Queen’s Park, and so their potential contribution to ridership is off in the future. As for a subway to Peel, the more important changes for that region will be improvement of GO service.
The big problem is that we cannot build subways everywhere, and there is a lot of travel that does not lie along any of the proposed subway corridors.
If they are currently underestimating the pass ridership (having not adjusted it), then we’d see this in the monthly financials. Which are conspicuously absent from recent monthly reports.
Not sure what’s insane. The number of trips required to make a pass pay for itself, increased from 41.4 to 48.8 a month (or from 38.0 to 44.7 for those using the 12-month or MDP pass).
When I’ve counted my trips, I tend to average about 60, so it wouldn’t change my decision.
But I know many people who average closer to 40-45 trips a month. With the added convenience of Presto, there’s surely a shift away from passes, to single fares. The same way we saw a shift towards passes when the tax credit came in.
This isn’t insanity. It’s exactly what you’d expect from economic principals. Along with a bit of modal shift away from transit.
Steve: There is no longer a federal tax credit for transit passes. It was eliminated in mid-2017. The provincial credit is only available to seniors. This really is not part of the decision process most riders will go through.
What might well change things though, is that with the 2-hour transfer, my average of 60 rides a month will drop significantly. Ironically, this might drive me away from a pass, towards pay-as-you-go … especially when they implement daily fare capping for the unexpected days when you ride a lot.
And then, with no pass, my ridership drops – as (for example) I’m less likely to take transit 4 stops to take the kids to school if I actually have to pay real $.
If Toronto really wants ridership growth, they need to reduce the multiplier below 49 (compared to tokens/Presto). Montreal is currently only 30 (compared to 10-rides). Vancouver (Zone 1) is 37 (compared to Compass stored value).
Sure, but Ontario is different. Actually it’s not. Ottawa is 34 (compared to Presto single rides). Kitchener/Waterloo is 31! Even York Region is only 40.
Steve: The basic problem is that both Council and TTC management cannot get their heads around the idea that the majority of riders should pay for transit in bulk. Too many regard the delta from single fares to any form of discount as a loss, revenue that the TTC could otherwise have and subsidy that could be avoided. Until that attitude changes, you’re not going to see a lower multiple for pass or capped fare products.
My takeaway is that the TTC has no idea what the actual ridership is, so they should stop publishing ridership numbers.
The people who want more enforcement officers on the TTC will be sadly disappointed. I was on a streetcar that was subject to a fare check once. Three white people made some “excuses” and were able to pay after the fact. Two black people had their addresses recorded, but I think they were also not fined. I was a little unhappy with how race played a factor in the enforcement process.
Honestly, this being Canada, I think we could probably get away with no fare checks, and just have everyone go on the honour system with the assumption that those people who aren’t paying have a good reason not to pay.
It’s more likely that the SSE project will be cancelled rather than the entire Crosstown being buried.
Nick L: SSE project will be cancelled.
I don’t think so but I like how you keep hanging on to the last bit of false hope. The provincial government and the new council are more pro-SSE than ever. Both the mayor and the premier are fully committed to the SSE. The SSE report that was being withheld for the new council, bring it on as the new council is highly in favour of the SSE.
Steve: When Ford and Tory get finished for paying for the expanded SSE, there will be no money left for anything else. That has always been the SSE’s big challenge. Just how far will governments go to support its ever-increasing cost.
I quickly ran through my September/October Presto data exported from the Presto website.
In both months (October to date), I’d have about 60 trips using the old transfer rules, and 48 trips using a 2-hour transfer (I’ve got an MDP pass now). It’s a coincidence that both are 48 and 60. But if that ratio holds for others – that’s going to push more people from passes to pay-as-you-go.
I’ve averaged about 60, maybe 65 when I’ve looked at historic usage. At that point the pass was a no-brainer. If the average for me is now about 48 … then it isn’t and the whole thing is a bit of a wash. There’s always one month sometime in the year, when the usage drops because I’m out of town too much.
It has nothing to do with hope. With the province adopting a “We’re broke!” mantra, expecting them to spend hundreds of millions more to bury the rest of the Crosstown is foolish. Add to that the recent news of the cancellation of the satellite university campuses, it becomes a simple case of stating the obvious that it would be more likely that the province would cancel the SSE project than to bury the rest of the Crosstown.
nfitz said: There’s always one month sometime in the year, when the usage drops because I’m out of town too much.
I came to a similar conclusion. My trips under the old transfer rules hovered anywhere from the low to high 40s, but when I took into account the new 2-hour transfer rules, plus the four or five weeks of the year when I am away or off work, it longer made sense financially to continue with the MDP. So I’m switching to pay-as-you-go on Presto starting next month. I suspect many others will do the same. | 2019-04-23T06:41:47Z | https://stevemunro.ca/2018/10/17/where-have-all-the-riders-gone-2/?like_comment=57112 |
SunCoast, the owners of Shadow Lakes and Deer Ridge golf courses, have detailed their acquisition and value creation strategy on their website here.
When acquiring new properties, they are looking for discounted properties that they can re-position. They are developers.
Of course, no one can fault SunCoast for seeking to maximize profits. However, they should do so in a way that adheres to Brentwood’s General Plan and the very low density of our neighborhoods.
SunCoast has one other golf course besides Shadow Lakes and Deer Ridge—San Juan Hills in San Juan Capistrano. We detailed news articles following their attempt to rezone the property at San Juan Hills for senior housing here.
The only source SunCoast has provided to support their claims is the National Golf Foundation.
After reviewing the market claims by SunCoast including the National Golf Foundation reports and details around recent closures, we are left with more questions than answers.
When we contrast the statements of SunCoast against the National Golf Foundation, a very different picture is drawn.
If the golf industry has "imploded" as SunCoast believes would it not negatively affect the proposed combined course? If the golf industry is not doing well, the combined course may not be built or if built, may not be able to stay in business. We may be left with huge apartment buildings and still no golf course. The assessments do not guarantee that the golf course is maintained and in business.
What are successful courses doing to remain profitable in this competitive market? What, specifically, has SunCoast tried to make the courses successful?
The below is what we know about each course mentioned.
Delta View is in Pittsburg and the city is exploring it’s option and trying to keep it alive.
"The reasons for the closure are still unclear."
"After one of the partners became ill, however, the push to sell increased. Ms. Kim said contrary to rumor, the course has been profitable and only operated in the red during winter months."
The residents of this community face the same issue we do where the owners are attempting to develop the golf course land.
Sunol Valley Golf Course was a 50 year old, 36-hole course.
"To compete, Sunol needed to be redesigned and updated, but that would be a huge capital expense for a complex that has seen its rounds plummeted..."
"I think there is a middle ground that includes an assessment district for residents bordering the golf course with better management coming from the city or a private operator."
"One additional note: nobody wanted the 85 acres used even partially for housing."
Not surprisingly, Roddy Ranch wasn't mentioned in SunCoast's list of recently closed courses.
With the closure of Roddy Ranch, a golf course 2.3 miles from Shadow Lakes, on August 11, 2016, there were more dedicated golfers seeking new golf memberships and less holes in our immediate area.
What did SunCoast do to capture those dedicated golfers? At this time Shadow Lakes had "been operating on a limited schedule for the past few months". It was a prime opportunity to re-open Shadow Lakes full time but that's not what happened.
It's also important to note that the closure of Roddy Ranch involved fraud, not too few players.
Some rezone supporters often say that two courses cannot operate across from each other.
Here's an interesting quote by a SunCoast representative.
"They’re right across the road from each other, but they're very different. They look different, they play differently."
My name is Peggy Bridges and my husband and I have lived in Brentwood since 1998. Our family purchased our home in Deer Ridge in 2009. I am writing to you today since I am unable to attend the scheduled meeting, but hope that you will take my letter into consideration as well as all the public comments when considering this proposal.
Financial records of the owners of the golf coarse property have not been disclosed and there is no proof that they are in financial debt or cannot make a profit operating the golf courses. Without this financial information disclosed, and having an independent auditor verify the data, it would be foolish to entertain making large changes to the community.
The owner’s proposal to save half of the golf courses, by changing the zoning laws and allowing high density residential units, is more than a request for help from the community. It is a business model for these owners. The owners own golf courses in other cities and have prior history of doing this same type of proposal with another golf course property. It would be prudent for the City of Brentwood to take this into consideration and investigate the outcome of this activity. We all need to realize that our planning/zoning rules today will have a permanent impact on our community in the future. Once the golf coarse land is replaced by structures it will never be reverted back to open space or golf course land.
The proposed project has now proposed building more living units than the managers described they needed in our recent meetings, to break even while operating the golf coarse. In trying to gain our trust, they significantly downplayed what their ambitions were. At the meeting/presentation we attended I asked specifically how many units they were planning on building and was told 200-400 units. Their recurring income plan pays per unit. So I pressed them further and asked what their break even number was, because that is a big difference in income flow from 200 units to 400 units. The owner’s representative stated he did not know how many units would be needed, which is very surprising since the purpose of the land zoning change would be to make their business profitable and allow them to get out of the 11 million dollar dept. With the current written proposal, we are broad sided with their request of adding 560 units between the two proposed sites. Acreage and number of resident units are much larger than the existing Westmont Living and Cortona Park facilities The owner’s plan in asking our permission, was to save a portion of the golf courses, not use the destruction of our planned neighborhood to turn them a huge profit.
In 2010-2011 the owners of the golf courses submitted an application in to the city to build a commercial building near the Shadow Lakes driving range and rezone the area on Mountain View to build some single family homes as well as a bridge over Balfour. Their reasoning…. to improve cash flow for the golf courses. Their application was approved but they never acted on it. ( I was present at this Planning Commission meeting). When I asked the owners Rep about this, he knew nothing about it, and immediately changed the subject. If they had gone through with their plans, I can only assume their debt numbers would look much different today.
They stated there were no buyers or other alternatives to make a profit operating the golf courses, but since then there have been posts on social media refuting that claim. It appears that people have tried to rent the property and run the golf courses for them so that they do not operate at a financial loss each year. Members of city council should follow up and speak to these individuals as part of their best practice for making an informed decision on this request. One thing the city could do to help the golf courses stay in business would be to provide them reclaimed water from the sewage treatment plant. Not only would this help save the golf course a cost of water, but would also help them reduce their fertilizer nitrate cost because the reclaimed water has some of these nutrients. By blending the reclaimed and agriculture water supplies they could reduce maintenance costs.
An approval of their plan will increase emergency calls significantly in west Brentwood. Our emergency services which are already stretched thin due to calls between Cortona, Westmont, and John Muir Urgent Care are averaging 1.8 calls per day, seven days a week, 365 days per year for the last 3 years. (Data provided by the City of Brentwood, Planning Commission Office). It does not seem wise to add more residents in west Brentwood before planning to upgrading roads, and fire/emergency services.
Their plan will cause care costs for the elderly living in the proposed units to be higher than other facilities due to the additional golf course fee. There is no way that the owners of the care facilities are going to carry the additional cost per unit that they will be paying to the Golf Course owners. They will be passing this on to their residents. Typically costs run $3,000-$5,000/month for the resident, based on the services required. Now an additional amount will be tacked on to cover this additional expense.
Not only are the golf course owners looking for us to bail them out, they are asking us to do this with out any guarantees of reciprocity that they are committed to this plan. At a minimum, I would want an agreement attached to any rezone approval that requires them to spend a large percentage of that income on the golf courses, closed fairways and surrounding areas with any plan having the most minimal impact on our surrounding area. ( 560 units, three story facilities have no place in this single family residence neighborhood).
An amazing amount of money has been spent by the owners to push this through including the mailers to announce the meetings, the large number of meetings with homeowners, including food; the very fancy, over the top mailer with there plan printed up, their consulting fees, drawing up of the plan fees, city applications, environmental impact study fees, etc. These golf courses have been in disrepair, weeds have been rampant and not attended to, fountains have been turned off, and even a golf course closed and left to go to seed to make a point. But there has been plenty of money, probably several $100,000’s to push this recurring plan of their’s through. Allowing them to move forward will set a precedence. There will be no stopping the additional moves to fully fill in our open space in a pursuit of profit. Please say NO to this proposal.
We loved the feel of the area and the neighborhood.
My name is Heather Hurst, and I reside in Shadow Lakes. I am writing to you so you can deliver my opposition for the rezoning of Deer Ridge and Shadows Lake to the Mayor and City Council of the City of Brentwood.
I would like the letter to be posted for the public comments section of the next City Council meeting to be held on July 11, 2017.
I am originally from Pennsylvania, but moved to California in 1998. I drove through Brentwood every day on my way to teach kindergarten in Discovery Bay Elementary School. The City of Brentwood was a lot different back then! We lived in California for 4 years, and then due to my husbands’ job, we relocated multiple times and to many states in the last 15 years. Two years ago, we had the opportunity to move back to California. When researching the area, we were pleasantly surprised to see all the changes and progress that the City of Brentwood made in the time we were gone. When we saw Shadow Lakes, we knew that was the community we wanted to live in and raise our 2 daughters. We loved the feel of the area and the neighborhood.
In all of our moves (and we have moved 7 times in 19 years), I have never seen a Senior Housing Community in the middle of a neighborhood, as the Golf Owners are suggesting they build in Deer Ridge. I have never seen a Senior Housing Community in any neighborhood, as they are also suggesting they build in Shadow Lakes. We would have never purchased our home in Shadow Lakes if there was a Senior Housing Community there, and I am sure many people feel this way. Therefore, our neighborhoods would be less desirable and the value of our houses would decrease if the board supports this plan to rezone land in our neighborhoods to build Senior Housing Communities.
*Leave 18 fewer expensive greens, fairways and tees (for the golf owners) to maintain.
Most of the reasons that the Golf Owners list for rezoning land and consolidating the courses are to help them. They do not specify what the “new community amenities” will be. They do not provide how many “lot line adjustments for residences” will be made and how this will happen. The Golf Owners also list that they will “reduce water consumption;” however, in all of the pictures that are provided in the pricey brochure that the Golf Owners sent out showing what the closed holes could be (i.e. open space, walking trails, vineyards, community gardens, and bike paths), each picture displays lots of “green,” which would use water. Therefore, water consumption may not actually be reduced. And what happens if all of the units are not filled in the Senior Homes built? Will the Golf Owners have enough positive return to allow for construction and guarantee maintenance of the amenities?
On that note, once the property in our neighborhoods is rezoned, the Golf Owners have NO obligation to the residents of Shadow Lakes and Deer Ridge to actually create any amenities on the closed holes. They have not proposed any type of binding obligation that would ensure these “amenities” are constructed. Heck, after the land is rezoned, the Golf Owners could walk away from the Golf Course, and there is nothing that can be done about that. Just because the Golf Owners get clearance to carry out a plan, does not mean that they will actually carry out the plan, which has been shown in the past.
In 2010, the Planning Commission granted a Design Review Approval for the current Golf Owners to construct a new cart bridge across Balfour Road. The Golf Owners never obtained a building permit, and asked for many extensions (which were granted) before the permit expired in December of 2015. Therefore, just because the Golf Owners are asking permission to consolidate the golf courses, create community amenities, and build a cart bridge across Balfour today, it does not mean that they will ever get the building permits and actually do any of the things that they propose. However, if land in our neighborhoods is rezoned, I am positive that these Golf Owners will sell the land to a developer and reap all of the benefits of the price they will receive for this sale. And we, the residents of Shadow Lakes and Deer Ridge, will be left with two monstrosities in our neighborhoods.
The Golf Owners state that they “chose senior homes because there is a need, as well as a strong buyer interest.” Even if there was a need for “senior homes,” I have never seen any built in a neighborhood! Usually “Senior Homes” are built in an area already zoned for that type of building. The only reason that the Golf Owners are looking to rezone the land in Shadow Lakes and Deer Ridge and build these Senior Homes is to benefit them.
Once these Senior Homes are built, it will cause a significant increase in traffic in what was originally zoned to be a single family, residential community with a golf course. The addition of these facilities will also impact the appearance of the neighborhood regardless of where they are placed. The potential for Assisted Living or Skilled Nursing facilities will further tax an already under funded Contra Costa Fire department in East County. The ambulance service for the county is also now provided by the Contra Costa Fire department, and it does not have the ability to adequately support East County. Finally, these facilities will have a significantly detrimental impact on property values for both Shadow Lakes and Deer Ridge. The values of property (and tax revenue) are based on single family housing in a golf course (open space) community and not one with mixed land use.
The Golf Owners are threatening that the property will be liquidated if they do not get support to rezone the property. It appears that their previous business plan did not work because they purchased the facility at what they considered at the time a value; however, they failed to consider the changing demographics and attitudes towards golf. Nothing in their presentations describe a business plan for rezoning this property for senior living, combining the golf courses, building a multi-million dollar bridge across Balfour, providing a significant increase in amenities, and on-going maintenance of quoted amenities. They are not even watering and maintaining both golf courses today (which they admit in the letter sent out)!
In my opinion, it is best if the land is maintained with its current zoning and allow the business owners to sell the property to someone with a viable business plan. They will sell for a loss which will allow the new owners to implement a business plan that is viable for the long term. In my opinion, if the property is rezoned, the Golf Owners will obtain proceeds from either 1) selling the rezoned property (at a higher value to an investor) & still close the golf course, or 2) develop the senior living facility for a profit but still not follow through on the proposed amenities, or 3) some combination that results in lower property values, more congestion, more impact on county services, and an impact to all of the residents in both developments.
Once the property is rezoned the Golf Owners have NO obligation to the residents of Deer Ridge and Shadow Lakes or the city of Brentwood. However, once the property is rezoned, there is no turning back. I urge you to consider what is best for our community, and do not allow the rezoning of land in either Shadow Lakes or Deer Ridge. Thank you for your time.
My name is (Name withheld by request), resident of Deer Ridge since 2014.
I am writing to you so you deliver my opposition to the rezoning of Deer Ridge and Shadows Lake to the Mayor and City Council of the City of Brentwood.
(3) (a) and (b) combined will create a spiral effect that once in motion may lead to our community losing their appeal to future buyers looking for a safe community with good schools, etc..
I am a reasonable individual. I was not born with a silver spoon. I came to the US 25 years ago as a young(er) engineer looking for job opportunities.
I went from being a visitor to a law obeying US citizen, appreciative of the opportunities that this great country has given to me.
I relocated to Deer Ridge as this community has the appeal, the good schools, the right price/value ratio, and the safety that I have been looking for in a long time. I am planning to grow older and raise my kids in here.
I totally understand why businesses shrink, get leaner, more flexible to quickly react to changing market conditions.
And I want the golf course here to thrive!
However, I believe that their current proposal goes beyond rescuing their business. It creates a huge revenue opportunity for them and a loss for us homeowners that paid a premium to live here. Specifically, who’s going to compensate us for the loss of value which will obviously follow if this rezoning plan move forward? Other proposals should be considered, such as for example, creating a community center with a pool and HOA fees (which I would support) in Deer Ridge. Or even low density housing — can you imagine having new single family construction in Deer Ridge and Shadows Lake? Our community is well known for the great schools and buyers would flock here.
Under the current proposals two villages would be built in the middle of a low density housing community bringing traffic congestion.
Can you imagine the consequences to our property values? Having a three story building here?
I am hoping the Mayor and the City Council will not rush in making a decision that will affect negatively our community for a long time. | 2019-04-26T09:40:32Z | http://norezonedrsl.com/topics/why-oppose/ |
We frequently write about the ways of creating websites (business sites, online stores, blogs etc.) and the services that can be used for this purpose. We also test different platforms, defining their benefits and drawbacks comparing to the competitors.
However, we rarely focus on the basics of promoting these services. We just mention the set of SEO tools of a certain website builder and that’s it. Obviously, this is supposed by default as you create a website and then have to attract the audience. But how?
That’s a pretty good question. Many specialists get the experience of SEO, when working in the niche for years. You cannot learn this for a day or a week as you will see the result of your actions in about several months or so. Nonetheless, there is a list of steps you should make to potentially increase your chances for successful promotion of your website in Google.
Why do we talk about the possibility of effective website search engine optimization only, when we definitely need a surefire result?
Unfortunately, this is hardly possible as we always face the need to withstand niche competition. What’s more, the quality of websites and the professionalism of a SEO master may notably vary as well.
Your success rate depends upon the quality of SEO services provided. We’ll see the major principles of internal and external website optimization on the example of websites created with Wix.
What you should know is that SEO of Wix-based websites doesn’t technically differ from that of websites launched with other platforms. So, we can rightfully call this guide universal.
When it comes to the set of on-page website optimization (by code, content, settings), we can subdivide all the steps into two groups, namely technical and content parts. Let’s describe each of them in details.
This part of the on-page website optimization goes down to filling out the meta tags (titles, descriptions, keywords), web page URLs and optimization of images with the purpose of decreasing their size to speed up the loading of website pages.
The process also involves the measures aimed at increasing the speed of web page loading, UI management, mobile optimization of templates, set up of system files and website pages. Many things are set by default in Wix.
For example, the chosen template defines usability and the set/variants of widget settings, which partially prevent hectic combinations.
Proper filling out of meta tags implies the use of keywords that are relevant to a text/website and help the search engines understand the essence of the content and the audience it is meant for.
Obviously, the title (60-80 symbols) may contain the explicit form of a keyword like “How to Cook a Medium Rare Steak|Steakhouse.wow|New York”. You can see this title in the search engine results, where each word is capitalized. You can make various additions to it though the following symbol «|». This can be a website domain for better memorization, location, service/product price, focus on quality, important terms etc.
Description (the optimal length of which should be around 160-290 symbols) serves as a web page announcement, which shows in the search engine results under a certain title. It is desirable that keywords should come with certain content, but don’t go too far with it – the text should be readable and create a selling impact.
Finally, the keywords should be chosen by rating in specialized services like Google Keyword Planner. Mind the keyword popularity and try to apply both the head and long-tail queries, but don’t overuse them.
How to Set Up Title and Description on Wix Website?
You can access SEO settings in the “Web Pages – Website Menu” section of Wix editor by clicking the «…». This is where you can add a title, description, keywords and change the human-friendly URL. You will be shown the way your web page format will look in the search engine results in the preview mode.
You can also get to the SEO Wiz from here – this is the tool, which lets you connect Google Analytics, check your website readiness to promotion by certain criteria and get quick links to complete the optimization of the required elements.
The SEO section contains a perfect website optimization guide. By following the recommendations of Wix SEO master, you can create perfect effect without any extra guidelines. Actually, website builders rarely allow launching websites and providing the tips on its further promotion at a time. By clicking any position, you will find out what makes this or that action important and where it can be done.
Google doesn’t currently recognize image content. That is why, it is obligatory to fill out the Alt tag for each image (open image settings, add its title and description). This is how you can help a search engine understand the essence of the image and index it properly.
What’s more, this is a great way to insert extra keywords by context without affecting its readability and overspamming. Sometimes, users look for images on their own and a properly filled out Alt tag allows them to get to your website.
Images should be optimized by their size and quality. By uploading a photo directly from your camera without any editing, you run a risk of slowing down the loading speed of web pages, where this image will be published. This will eventually impair the behavioral website parameters, search engine attitude and final search engine results.
So, you have to edit the pages before you upload them to the website by compressing them with minimal quality loss. This can be done here or in any other convenient way.
The system creates the sitemap.xml and robots.txt files automatically. You can view their content by adding a title of one of these files with a «/» sign after a domain name. They don’t matter a lot in this particular case. However, the availability of the website mobile version is one of the major factors of high Google search engine ranking. Wix allows creating mobile design separately from the basic one. You will get it by default, even if you don’t change anything.
Creation of human-friendly URLs is a crucial nuance. The address line of the browser should contain a phrase, which reflects the web page context. It is desirable that it should contain a keyword.
Each web page in the address line should be a single phrase, but not a combination of senseless letters and numbers.
There should not be web pages with similar URLs at the website.
Meta tags (title, description, keywords) should also be unique on each web page – it is inadmissible to assign the same title and description to all pages at a time through Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V button combinations.
To separate words in a human-friendly URL, we recommend to use the signs like «-» or «_».
Make up signatures for each image according to its topic prior to uploading it. For example, write «night-forest.jpg» instead of «0983764.jpg» etc.
This is how you will get a normal human-friendly URL when opening the image. This information is meant both for a user and the search engines.
There is also website pages interlinking. This is a way of connecting website pages by using interlinking. It is nice, if you use several anchor links to other web pages similar in context in the body of the material. Just make sure you don’t overload the text with links. Use them wisely and consistently.
You may also read a complete Wix SEO review.
It is desirable to make web page content optimized for the keywords. The ideal variant is when each page is written for one keyword only, but this doesn’t happen often on practice.
If you open Keyword Planner and write the “buy iphone” phrase, for example, you will see a variety of formulations of this search engine query in the order of their popularity decrease. Keywords found on the top of the list – are head queries as the users of the search engine have used them as they are during a month.
Keyword frequency differs as well.
For example, the maximum number of your keyword use has constituted 1000. Keywords from 750 and up to 1000 times are frequent, those ranging from 400 times are medium and keywords used from 300 times are the lowest. This is the approximate percentage rate that may help you understand the situation. However, it is quite vague as the numbers will still differ for each website. Place keywords on the same principle – popular ones at the beginning of the page, while rare ones – in the end of it.
The optimal amount of key phrases found on a page depends upon the size of the text. Oversaturation of a web page with keywords is known as overspamming. As a rule, this affects the readability of the text and triggers the unfriendliness of the search engines.
The approach to writing texts oversaturated with keywords was quite effective some time ago and helped websites quickly get to the TOP. Today, however, the situation has notably changed and this approach frequently has negative impact upon the search engine results.
The thing is that the search engines have learnt to understand the context of the text. As a result, the notion of the Latent Semantic Index (LSI) was introduced several years ago. This is the method of analysis based on the relevance of thematic context.
LSI texts differ from those, which are SEO optimized by the strong focus on the quality of topic development implied in the title, but not on the use of key phrases.
We initially review the list of keywords on the topic of our web page. Based on the search query character, we can understand what the users are interested in.
Then we learn the TOP list of the search engine results based on the queries to see what terms and approaches these articles use.
The terms reflect the relation of a text to a certain topic. Having learnt the search engine results, we can eventually conclude what we should write about and what the the essence of the terms, which should be conveyed on the context of the material, is.
The next step is preparation of a text with a more detailed topic coverage. On this stage, we use the niche terms, their synonyms, reveal their meaning, describe the processes, approaches, algorithms and other suchlike things depending upon the topic.
If it is possible to add new shades of meaning regarding the TOPs of the search engine results, your web page will likely rank higher than that of your competitors (under other equal conditions, but there is no guarantee about that as well as there are other multiple search engine ranking parameters).
As a result, we get user-friendly content, which will receive higher ranks in Google. Yes, You should be aware of the niche basics and have enough time to write such articles, but this is definitely worth that.
This is the highest quality level, which is understandable both to users and robots. This is because we have already mentioned that the use of keywords to write an article on a certain topic is not quite necessary. In other words, a quality article is optimized for website promotion by default as it covers all the terms and title meaning in details.
The next issue concerns a person, who will be responsible for content writing. Will you do it yourself or you will hire a copywriter for this purpose? It is not quite easy to realize all the above mentioned aspects from the technical point of view. You can be aware of the niche basics, understanding important nuances, but you may not just be proficient in writing.
No one will value unreadable texts with mistakes, vague topic coverage etc. A nice article should encompass grammar and language proficiency, awareness of the subject matter, high readability level and, of course, appealing and quality web page design, including the important elements like fonts, lists, images, accents etc. This is the blend of skillfulness, utility and effective presentation.
You can fill several web pages with suitable materials yourself. It’s not crucial, if they are not ideal, even though, they should be devoid of obvious faults. Eventually, the target audience rarely consists exclusively of linguists. You have conveyed the essence of the topic, provided the details, making the material understandable to readers and that’s it. This may take much time from an inexperienced user, but it can eventually be completed successfully.
When to hire a copywriter?
If you still need much text or you are going to sell/present something really expensive and meant for specific and demanding audience, then it makes sense to entrust this task to a copywriter. It’s a surefire thing that one user will leave the text as it is without caring about it at all, while a professional or a person with a sense of style will start criticizing or even laughing at poor content presentation.
You’ll still have to find favor in the eyes of these people, especially if they form the basis of your target audience (this depends upon the niche). Generally, it makes sense to hire a copywriter, especially if you have a business website with several pages. Let them be readable and appealing!
Now, let’s mention a couple of words about the unique character of texts. It’s inadmissible to use those articles, the unicity rate of which is lower than 80%. The problem is that randomly written texts are not unique because of a high amount of terms and titles, which cannot be replaced with other words.
The problem may also be about low volume of technical texts oversaturated with the terms (the longer a text is – the simpler it is to make it unique). Another complication is similar nature of texts written at a time, which look like copied ones. The way out is to look for the synonyms, try to write differently, use equal proportions of keywords, terms and informative text.
Is a Blog a Must for a Website?
We highly recommend launching a blog. It is a must, especially for business websites and portfolios, which lack the text content. A blog allows boosting the volume of useful website content to further rank high in the search engines due to it.
You will be able to make use of a long list of keywords, encompass multiple terms, cover the essence of everything, which cannot be mentioned in the service list, product description, company-related information etc.
What’s more, websites that come with blogs, look more credible, which also boosts the behavioral factors. A user, who visits a website to read about the characteristics of winter and summer tyres, for example, may eventually place an order there.
Niche articles is a power that attracts search engine traffic of informational character. They will serve a nice tool of converting visitors into clients, granted that you choose the right approach. At least, you will get extra traffic, which is also a notable advantage.
When it comes to working with content, a website builder does not imply any special terms. Wix allows designing appealing web pages with diverse content types, including text, video, infographics, cinemagraphs, charts and other suchlike things. This is not a problem. What matters most is the quality of articles, which reveals itself in the detailed coverage of topics, readability, semantic and technical uniqueness as well as appealing formatting.
Just take the keywords and write the texts using them. Another option is to entrust this task to copywriters, which will eventually trigger more advantages in a number of cases.
Read also: How Much Does It Cost to Start a Blog?
The entire essence of off-page website optimization goes down to getting links from trusted niche websites and those from other sources. This is one of the major factors of high search engine ranking of websites created with any website builder.
Everything is logical here: the oftener other websites link to your website, the more valuable the information posted there seems. When someone recommends you, this gives you more credibility. This is the logic you observe in everyday life, which is revealed through the machine-based analysis of parameters. All the benefits of external optimization center around the ways of getting quality backlinks.
Anchors and Direct Links. Speaking about the first group, its name speaks for itself. These links contain anchors, which generally come as key phrases. Direct links, in their turn, contain clear URLs of websites, words like “here”, “at the website”, “now”, brand name or image links.
Niche and Non-Thematic Links. These are links published at the websites belonging to your niche and those that don’t have any relation to your website at all.
If you wish to get links to your website, you’ll have to master the techniques of cooperation with other webmasters, bloggers and journalists. This approach is known as “outreach”, that is, the method of establishing relations and achieving agreements with the purpose of getting links in articles, banners or any other ways.
Link building is closely connected with outreach – the search of suitable websites for posting links and holding negotiations with entrusted people. Your competence in establishing distant relations frequently has notable impact upon the cost and terms of link publishing.
Step1. The first thing you should do is to get a list of niche websites.This can be done with the help of ahrefs, another similar service or manual Google search. The latter method requires experience and skillfulness in mastering the search formulas – the way of comprising direct search queries. You can find their full description on the web. This is how you will get a list of websites that mention an outreach opportunity in the URL or title.
Step 2. Right after you compile a list of interesting websites, you have to analyze them. What you should do is to assess the parameters of materials (reviews, ads, banners etc.) and find opportunities to post articles on them.
Step 3. Then you need to prepare the emails you will send to the administrators of the chosen websites. This is a separate task – conduct Google search to find out how to write them. We should just underline that these emails should be personalised as much as this is possible. When composing an email, mention the web master’s name (if you know it), the list of resource specifications in the context and other things you consider important.
You have to create groups in popular social networks and post news linking to your website pages there. This approach works great granted that you have well-promoted groups. The more social networks you use and the larger the groups are, the better the effect is. This is obvious.
YouTube should be mentioned separately. If you have a channel with users, you can add a link to it to boost its link juice. Increase the number of videos and link to your website and social network groups in their descriptions. It is also possible to talk to the owners of the niche channels about getting links to your website.
Links from comments should also be referred to this section. It is not difficult to write them, but it’s complicated to find websites, the links from which will be valuable to you. The quality of posts should also be on a high level. Otherwise, the moderators will delete your comments.
You can also register your website in local catalogues, niche resources and other aggregators. This is useful for a local business. Before registering in such a catalogue, you need to check its parameters.
There are multiple services used for this purpose. Just enter the “wicheck website quality” phrase in the search engine and choose any of them in the TOP list. It doesn’t make any sense to publish information on websites that are under Google penalties and have poor parameters. It is reasonable to post less, but to make sure the platforms are of high quality. The benefits of this method are its free nature and relative simplicity of getting a link.
When it comes to website promotion, Wix doesn’t differ a lot from any other website builder. What you should mind here is the interface, not more. Different systems may have diverse dashboards, the order of placement, formats of tool presentation etc. The essence, however, remains the same. Similar methods of search engine optimization are applied to the website promotion.
The effort required for effective website promotion depends upon its type and niche competition. What matters most is the content. If it is available at the website, then it will have decent results even without external links. The more content is presented at the website and the higher its quality is, the better the web pages will be ranked. External optimization helps improve website promotion effect.
The essence of websites’ SEO in Google goes down to the fact that the search engine focuses on content quality, reacts to the behavioral factors and considers external links quality. Without them, your website won’t be able to get to the TOP.
Generally, quality and regularly updated content, mastering outreach techniques and well-promoted profiles in social networks is what you need to reach success. This is a surefire combination of key factors that works well both for Wix-based websites and those built with other website builders. | 2019-04-26T03:51:39Z | https://superbwebsitebuilders.com/how-to-get-your-wix-website-found-and-ranked-well-on-google/ |
Feeling well on T3 therapy has everything to do with the T3 stimulation being strong enough to get the temperature up to normal, and steady enough to be well tolerated. With T3, steadiness is everything.
1. To feel well while on T3 therapy.
2. To remain well after T3 therapy has been discontinued.
Accomplishing the first goal involves delivering sufficient T3 to break through the competition afforded by the T4/RT3 preponderance to generate a normal body temperature.
It also involves providing that T3 smoothly and steadily enough to generate smooth, steady, productive, and well-tolerated T3 stimulation of the cell.
With T3 levels, STEADINESS Is Everything. This cannot be over-emphasized.
Note: The fact that most of us have not noticed our breathing in the past 2 weeks is not a testament to the insignificance of the steadiness of pO2 levels. It is a testament to how well our bodies regulate our breathing to maintain such steady pO2 levels. If someone came up behind me, and clapped a hand over my nose and mouth unexpectedly, it would be only a matter of moments before I would be uncomfortable. And I would be uncomfortable long before my pO2 dropped all the way to zero. Likewise, because we have been administering T4-containing medicines for years and have not seen any great need to pay much attention to the steadiness of thyroid hormone levels is not a testament to the insignificance of the steadiness of T3 levels. It is a testament to how steadily our bodies convert T4 to provide for very steady levels of T3. The significance of the steadiness of T3 levels becomes obvious when one is providing the patient with T3 directly. And even though the half-life of T3 is 2.5 days, enough is gone within 3 hours of a missed dose that the patients can often notice the difference.
The lower the dose of exogenous T3 therapy the easier it is to keep the T3 level steady.
The second goal is accomplished by resetting the system, which is accomplished by “capturing” the temperature with T3 therapy.
The system is reset by giving T3.
Just giving T3? No, enough T3 must be given to get the patient’s body temperature up to normal.
Just up to normal? No, enough T3 so that the temperature goes up and stays up without dropping back down again.
I refer to this as “capturing” the body temperature.
This sometimes cannot be accomplished until T4 and RT3 levels have been depleted, or in other words, until the T4/RT3 preponderance has been removed.
This would explain why T4-containing medicines are not useful in bringing about the resetting phenomenon.
Personally, I feel that it is the depletion of the RT3 levels that is significant here. But depletion of RT3 levels comes about by the depletion of T4 levels.
The first and second goal are accomplished concurrently but are separate and distinct. For example, the second goal can be accomplished without the first goal being accomplished.
A person can be given enough T3 to capture her temperature, and reset her system without the T3 being administered steadily enough for her to feel well in the meantime.
A patient’s temperature of 97.8 is raised to 98.6 by gradually increasing her dose to, say, 45mcg BID. Yet, she notices no improvement in her symptoms even though her temperature is averaging normal. But as she weans off the T3 therapy, and her own steady endogenous supply of T3 comes back up well enough to maintain her now normal temperature, it becomes more and more steady.
As her T3 levels and body temperature becomes more and more steady around normal, her symptoms begin to subside, until they are resolved only after she is off the T3 therapy. This is not typical, but it does happen and does illustrate the point.
Another example (or precedent) of a “resetting” approach is the one that is commonly used in women who are having irregular menstrual cycles. Their female hormone blood tests may be in the normal range, but clinically, they’re having irregular menstrual bleeding. Frequently, it is not felt that there is something anatomically wrong with the patient’s ovaries or uterus, but that her female hormonal milieu has established itself in such a functional pattern as to be problematic. So, exogenous control is taken of the patient’s menstrual cycles with oral contraceptive pills, with the patient’s own endogenous hormonal production being suppressed, for a time. The patient is cycled for several months to artificially re-establish a pattern it is hoped her body can then maintain on its own once the ocp’s are discontinued.
Just as patients must frequently be cycled on ocp’s several times, so too do Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome sufferers frequently need to be cycled on and off T3 therapy more than once to fully re-establish the preferable thyroid hormonal milieu that corrects the symptoms, and that the patient’s own body can maintain naturally.
It sometimes takes more than one cycle of T3 therapy to even get the temperature up to normal (which is not necessarily the same as capturing the temperature). See below for explanation.
One explanation for this is that if a patient has a strong T4/RT3 preponderance, then the first cycle of T3 therapy (up to a dose of about 90 mcg’s BID) might not be able to break through the competition at the nuclear membrane receptor well enough to normalize the patient’s temperature; but only enough to deplete T4 and therefore RT3 levels somewhat, through negative feedback inhibition.
When the first cycle of T3 therapy is weaned and the patient’s own T4 production begins to come up again, with less RT3 around to compete against it, the T4 to T3 conversion pathway is more favored than previously (which favors a smaller T4/RT3 preponderance than previously).
At this point, if a second cycle is started, there is less of a T4/RT3 preponderance for the T3 to break through to stimulate the receptors, than there was prior to the first cycle. So the second cycle of T3 will have a better shot at normalizing the temperature, or at least of depleting the T4/RT3 preponderance more than was accomplished in the first cycle. And a third cycle (if needed) will often have a better opportunity than the second of getting more accomplished on lower levels of T3 therapy, and so on.
Some have wondered what is the defect that causes Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome .
I don’t feel there is a defect per se.
If there was a structural enzymatic defect, I don’t imagine that it could be corrected with T3 therapy in as quickly as 10 days in some cases.
I feel that Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome is a functional impairment because its onset and response to T3 therapy behave as such.
When you push a lawn mower into deep grass, it can become “overwhelmed” and begin to slow down. If you pull it out in time, it often speeds back up to normal on its own again. If you do not pull it out in time it can slow down further and stop completely.
Sometimes, the lawn mower has slowed down so much that it’s just on the verge of stopping when you pull it out. When this occurs, the machine can keep chugging along neither speeding up nor slowing down, and you can’t tell if it’s going to return to normal speed or if it’s going to stop completely. Sometimes, it can keep chugging along in this manner for a surprisingly long period of time. It seems to be just teetering on the edge, ready to lose its foothold and stall, or to gain the advantage and speed back up to normal. Here are three different and distinct modes of functioning: running normally, chugging along, and stopped. Yet in all three cases in our example, there is nothing mechanically wrong with the lawn mower. The blade, gas line, carburetor, and spark plug are all fine. It’s just that it’s a system in motion which has operational limits and an optimal operating speed. The machine can handle efficiently only so much grass per unit time.
Likewise, our bodies have operational limits and an optimal operating speed.
To further the analogy, please consider the explanation and picure below. If the lawnmower was chugging along, and there was some way you could give it a little push or advantage, you could help it to speed back up to normal (let’s imagine you had some sort of drill attachment you could use to speed up the top of the engine as it was spinning around). But if the engine stops, the drill attachment is not going to have enough power to start the engine, so you’re going to have to pull the starter cord. If the engine just stopped a few moments earlier, it may take only one pull of the cord. If it has been stopped since yesterday, it may take several. And if it has been in the garage since last season, it may take quite a few more.
This is very much like the way the thyroid system behaves. When people are under enough physical and/or emotional stress, their metabolisms can slow down. When the stress goes away, they frequently come back up to normal on their own again. But sometimes they don’t, and their system stays depressed, chugging along even after the stress has passed (but because there is a functional impairment does not necessarily mean that there is an anatomical or mechanical impairment). It may be possible to give them a little push (T3 supplementation) to help restore them to normal speed without suppressing their own systems completely. This is like using the drill attachment. In more long-standing and severe cases, however, supplementation will often not be enough. In such cases, restoration must “start from scratch,” by suppressing the patient’s own thyroid system completely for a short time (T3 replacement). This is like pulling the starter cord. When the person is being replaced with T3, her T4, TSH, and RT3 may be close to the lower limits of detection. Indeed, in more severe cases, one pull of the cord may not be enough, and the patient’s system may have to be completely suppressed more than once by cycling on and off T3 replacement therapy in order to reset the system well enough for it to begin functioning properly on it’s own again. Also, it is not uncommon for diminishing cycles of T3 supplementation to be needed after one or more cycles of T3 replacement in order to fine-tune or coax the system all the way back to normal.
In mild cases, the system can be reset (left with a net gain in endogenous T3 stimulation) without having to be very suppressed.
Please see analogy in the Concept Block above if you haven’t already.T3 therapy is given to bring a low temperature up to normal.But because of negative feedback inhibition of the pituitary gland, as more T3 is given by mouth, the body then makes less on its own (endogenous system is suppressed), and the temperature may drop back down again.At such a time the T3 dosage can be increased to bring the temp up again.In mild cases, the system is chugging along on its own well enough (because it is not too bogged by T4 / RT3 preponderance) that the T3 therapy can get through and capture the temperature before the system is very suppressed (this is T3 supplementation and is likened to the little push with the drill attachment in the analogy).
When the T3 therapy is weaned, the endogenous system comes back up again, often being able to maintain the normalized temperature on its own by virtue of a net gain in endogenous stimulation of the cell (resetting phenomenon).
In less mild cases, higher doses may be needed to capture the temperature and the temperature may not hold on its own after just one cycle for one reason or another (such as the first cycle being weaned too quickly); so another cycle may be needed for fine-tuning.
In less mild cases, higher doses of T3 (which cause greater suppression of the system) may be needed to capture the temperature.And, the body may not be able to maintain the temperature on its own when the first cycle of T3 therapy is weaned. And so, a second cycle (usually of lower doses) may be needed.The system might be reset to a degree, but perhaps not enough to remain normal after only one cycle.This may be due to a number of reasons such as weaning the first cycle too quickly, or because of outside stress, or unsteady T3 levels due to higher dosage levels/decreased compliance with dosage times, or some other reason.
In rather difficult cases, the system must be completely suppressed with T3 replacement in order to capture the temperature. Once the temperature is captured, the patient is likely to need less medicine to get her temperature up on subsequent cycles.
In rather difficult cases, the system is so bogged that T3 supplementation is not enough, and T3 replacement is needed.The system must be completely suppressed to remove the T4/RT3 preponderance before the temperature can be captured (this is likened to pulling the starter cord in the analogy).Note: Because T3 stimulation needs to be sufficiently steady to be very effective, the system can sometimes be completely suppressed with the temperature still not being captured. This can be due to T3 unsteadiness. The T3 may first need to be weaned (to let the T3 levels steady down) and then started back up again on the next cycle before the temperature can be captured. Lower doses which are easier to keep steady may then be able to capture the temperature (because higher doses on the previous cycle removed the obstructing T4 / RT3 preponderance).Before the temperature is captured, one can’t be very sure that the patient will need less medicine on subsequent cycles. But when the temperature is captured it marks the turning point in the resetting process such that one can then be very confident that the patient will be able to make progress by getting her temperature up on less and less medicine with each subsequent cycle (if any are needed) until the process is complete.
In difficult cases, the system cannot be completely suppressed and the temperature cannot be captured with the first cycle. But the first cycle may pave the way so that the next cycle can capture the temperature.
In difficult cases, the first cycle (with a maximum dose of about 90 mcg BID) is not enough to capture the temperature or to completely suppress the system.Note: If this does occur, it is usually more effective to wean off the T3 and to start another cycle than it is to increase the dosage level much higher (because rather than increasing significantly the effective stimulation of the cells, increasing the T3 level much more just tends to make the T3 level more and more unsteady).When weaning, the goal is to wean slowly enough that the temperature at least doesn’t drop lower than it is, even if it hasn’t been captured (c12).But it may be enough to break through and remove (through negative feedback inhibition) enough of the T4 / RT3 preponderance that the next cycle can completely suppress (or replace) the system, with the temperature probably being captured.
In more difficult cases, several cycles may be needed to completely suppress the system and capture the temperature. And then some cycles of T3 supplementation may be needed to fine-tune the system to maintain the temperature on its own.
In more difficult cases, it may take several cycles to completely suppress the system.Each cycle removes more and more of the T4 / RT3 preponderance until finally the system can be suppressed completely (p77).Once the system has been suppressed completely it is not uncommon for diminishing cycles of T3 supplementation to be needed (although they may not be) to fine-tune or coax the system to maintain the temperature on its own.So sometimes the endogenous system must be suppressed down, down, down before it can come up, up, up and maintain things on its own after the treatment has been discontinued.
Note: For T3 therapy, I recommend a T3 preparation that is compounded with a sustained release agent. It will be described more fully later (p112). But for now, suffice it to say that the starting dose is usually 7.5 mcg p.o. every 12 hours, and it is made in 7.5 mcg increments from 7.5 mcg up to about 90 mcg.
The benefits of T3 therapy are obtained by passing control of the thyroid system from endogenous control to exogenous control, and then back again (once through one cycle, or more than once through several).
Passing control of the thyroid system from endogenous control to exogenous control involves starting the patient on the starting dose, and increasing the dose by 7.5 mcg/dose/day if the patient is without complaints until the temperature remains 98.6 on average (which is almost always when the patients symptoms are most improved) or until the dose is up to about 90 mcg BID (in which case the T3 may be weaned off for a time, and another cycle can be started).
Once the patient’s temperature does go up to 98.6 under exogenous control on a certain dose of the T3, that dose is continued for a time. If while on that level of the medicine, the temperature drops back down again because of the body taking back control endogenously through negative feedback inhibition (I refer to this as compensation), exogenous control of the system is then regained and maintained by raising the dose to the next increment to bring the temperature back up to 98.6.
The patient may compensate to the T3 therapy again, and the exogenous dose can be increased again (up to about 90 mcg, see Note). As this process continues, less and less T3 is produced endogenously, and more and more is supplied exogenously.
The period of time from when a person’s temperature goes up to 98.6 with a 7.5 mcg increment, to the time it drops back down again, is what I refer to as a person’s compensation time.
Once the T3 dose is increased, such that the temperature is brought up to 98.6, it may be captured or it may drop back down again after a time (compensation time) due to negative feedback inhibition of the pituitary. Compensation times are predictable and average about 4 days.
If a person compensates to each of several increments of T3, the compensation time usually repeats itself. For example, a person with a 5-day compensation time (a 5-day compensator), might have her temperature go up on 30 mcg BID and stay averaging 98.6 only for it to go back down on the 5th day. Then, if it goes back up the next day when the dose is increased to 37.5 mcg BID, it may drop back down again 5 days later. This cycle will frequently repeat itself until the temperature doesn’t drop back down again.
Compensation times vary among patients. The compensation times of people who do compensate range from less than one day to about 3 weeks, with an average of about 4 days.
When a person’s compensation time (or three weeks if compensation time is not obvious) has passed by a couple of days and the temperature has not dropped back down again, I refer to the patient’s temperature as being captured (p75).
The benefit of a cycle has been pretty well obtained once the temperature has been captured, but it is often preferable to allow the patient to remain on that plateau of T3 therapy for a time before weaning.
This is the point at which control of the thyroid system has been completely passed from endogenous to exogenous control.
This does not necessarily mean, however, that a person’s thyroid system has been completely suppressed.
In less severe cases, or in the final cycle/cycles of therapy of more severe cases, T3 supplementation can often capture a patient’s temperature without completely suppressing the patient’s system.
In the beginning of more severe cases, one or more cycles of T3 replacement that completely suppresses the patient’s system may be necessary before the patient’s temperature can be captured.
It’s important to remember the difference between endogenous and exogenous T3 stimulation and it’s ideal to retain the best of both them.
When passing control back and forth between the endogenous system and the exogenous therapy, it is good to bear in mind their differences. The endogenous system is the indisputable world champion at generating steady T3 levels, but sometimes has trouble generating sufficient T3 stimulation.
On the other hand, the exogenous T3 therapy is excellent at providing sufficient T3 stimulation, but it is sometimes difficult to keep very steady.
The ideal situation of course is when the patient’s own system has been reset to provide sufficient T3 stimulation that is endogenously steady. And as discussed previously, this can often be accomplished by the passing control of the thyroid system from endogenous control to exogenous and back again, once or more than once.
It is important to keep the T3 levels steady since there are temperature thresholds above which or below which patients can experience temperature-mediated problems, even if there temperatures average normal.
The whole trick is to keep the T3 levels as Steady as possible during this process of passing control from endogenous to exogenous and back again.
One of the reasons for this is that patients can develop temperature-mediated problems when their temperatures are too high, or when they are too low (p18). So there is a range of temperatures (or window) within which people are less likely to experience temperature-mediated problems.
That temperature window is bounded on either side by temperature thresholds above or below which temperature-mediated problems (or side effects) become more likely.
So even if a temperature pattern averages about normal, if it is ranging so widely that it breaks through these thresholds, the patient may experience decreased benefits and some complaints.
Rapid changes in body temperature can leave patients with an unsettled feeling.
Another reason that steadiness is so important is that rapid changes in body temperature, in and of themselves, seem to be able to lead to decreased benefits and some complaints, even if the thresholds aren’t broken (p135).
Note: This is probably due to the fact that different enzymes change conformation, in response to temperature change, at different speeds; and because the reactions they catalyze have different rates. If the temperature swings through the optimal temperature too quickly, some of the quickly-responding enzymes and reactions may start becoming less efficient again just as some of the more slowly-responding enzymes and reactions are beginning to function well. But when the temperature transitions are more gradual, then more enzymes are able to function well at the same time, so that the patient is left with a more settled feeling.
When patients’ temperatures are fluctuating more rapidly (even if not beyond the thresholds), less time is spent by the system as a well-functioning unit, at the optimal temperature.
When patients’ temperatures are fluctuating rapidly, they are more likely to have an unsettled feeling, or to feel on edge.
For example, suppose you were a passenger in a car traveling 55 mph down a 4-lane highway (divided by a wide median, two lanes on either side). No other cars are in sight. As long as the car drives in one of the two lanes going your direction, and doesn’t drive off the road, you should be alright. But which do you think you would find more comfortable: for the car to swerve from edge to edge every 50 feet, or for it to drift from lane to lane every mile? If it were to swerve every 50 feet you wouldn’t be able to travel as far in the same amount of time (less benefit), and you’d likely not feel as well.
Thus, the height and steadiness of the T3 level is not only determined by the amount and administration of the exogenous T3, but also by the nature of a given patient’s endogenous response to it. One-day compensators can actually over-compensate and so need to be managed well to avoid problems.
Interestingly, how well T3 levels can be kept steady is not only a function of how the medicine is given, but also of how a patient’s body compensates to it.
About one out of ten people compensate to a 7.5 mcg increase in the T3 in less than one day!
They can compensate so quickly, they can even over-compensate, with their temperatures dropping lower than they were before treatment!
The following principles deserve close attention, since even though only about 10% of patients will be one-day compensators, if not managed well they can easily account for 50% of the problems in managing these patients.
Notice how much more jagged is the total curve for the one-day compensators. It is more difficult to keep the T3 level steady in one-day compensators, just by virtue of their being one-day compensators.
Generally speaking, the more rapidly patients compensate (the shorter their compensation times) the harder it is to keep their T3 levels steady.
Notice that if a rapid compensator is allowed to swing through the baseline temperature, like a child on a swing (by delaying dosage increases), greater amplitude of T3 unsteadiness often result.
Let’s say a father was pushing his daughter on a swing. If he stepped forward under her, such that just as she started to swing back he could catch her and push her up again, he could keep her within a narrow range of swing (see illustration above).
On the other hand, if he stepped backward, allowing her to swing all the way back before pushing her forward again, she would swing through a much broader range.
Likewise, if dosage increases are not made quickly (often) enough, when needed, the system can over-compensate (swinging through the baseline of total T3 stim.) resulting in a larger amplitude of T3 unsteadiness (especially if the delayed increases are made at times that resonate with the swings in the T3 level).
Consequently, body temperatures would swing through a broader range as well.
Swinging widely can be fun when one is on a swing set, but widely swinging T3 levels (T3 unsteadiness) can increase the chances of side effects.
If a person comes in and states that her temperature was lower the day after starting on the medicine than it was the day she started, that is your first clue she may be a one-day compensator.
Notice how curve B is smoother than curve A, with less unsteadiness, and smaller amplitude. Slow compensators tolerate rapid increases better than fast compensators tolerate slow ones.
Slow compensators often tolerate T3 therapy being rapidly increased quite well.
They often enjoy temperatures that are quite steady with small ranges of displacement.
Slow compensators tolerate rapid increases better than fast compensators tolerate slow ones.
Since you can’t tell who are fast compensators and who are slow compensators by looking at them, I recommend gearing the T3 therapy towards the fast compensators by increasing the T3 dose by 7.5 mcg/dose/day in all patients. This is not to be careless, but to be careful, and deliberate.
Because I know if I increase the dose each day as needed to keep the fast compensators steady and in good shape, I’ll avoid a lot of problems and disappointment, and the slow compensators will likely tolerate it well and do fine as well.
Remember this is only when the T3 needs to be increased at all. When the temperature is 98.6, there is no need for the dosage to be increased.
Note: A and B above are important also because of the ripples that are created in the T3 level.
Please see discussion that follows the picture below.
Suppose there was a little button 18 feet above the floor, on the wall of a room. And a young man has been told that if he can exert sufficient and continuous pressure on the button for a long enough period of time, he’ll have better than a 75% chance of having won an acceptance and $80,000 worth of scholarships to the university of his choice. Would that be worth a try? In the room are only a wiggly cane pole and a very large, very wide, and very heavy seesaw that is mounted to the floor. With the cane pole he can only push the button for a half-second or so at a time before the pole slips off the button. He realizes that he can reach the button if he climbs up and walks out on the seesaw. The seesaw is so heavy that when he walks out toward the end, it begins to lower only very slowly. He decides to back up and let the seesaw come up to its original position to get a fresh start. Would you recommend that he move out to the end swiftly, so that he can hold the button in for as long as possible before the seesaw lowers so much that he can no longer reach it? Or, would you recommend he move out to the end more slowly, and use the cane pole if he doesn’t reach the button with his hand in time? If he were going to try again, would you recommend he wait for the seesaw to come all the way back up to its original position and settle down, or not? For the analogy’s sake we’ll say that by moving slowly, his longest hold was only .75 seconds; but by moving swiftly, he was able to hold the button in for as long as 5 seconds, with the longest holds being when he let the seesaw settle down to get a fresh start.
[perhaps the patient would get a very large benefit, likened to the scholarships]. Even if the combination of the two conditions of normal temperature and steady temperature [likened to holding the button in steadily] can be accomplished for only a short time (hours or days) at first, it could answer a lot of questions. And the longer that combination of conditions can be accomplished [the longer the button is held in at a time], the better the therapeutic trial, and the better the chance of it answering a lot of questions. Because if a patient’s symptoms do improve greatly, it would strongly suggest that the symptoms are temperature-mediated and that the T3 therapy is likely to be on the right track [likened to his 75% chance of winning]. At that point, resolving the patient’s complaints may very likely be just a matter of getting things regulated such that the temperature stays normal and steady.
But when one starts a patient on T3 therapy to increase the temperature, the level of endogenous T3 often drops in compensation (p85), as does the temperature [likened to the seesaw lowering]. As the endogenous portion of the T3 level becomes smaller, and the exogenous portion becomes larger, that alone will tend to make the T3 level more unsteady and less beneficial [likened to having to use the cane pole instead of his hand], even if the T3 doses are taken properly and on time. So to maximize the amount of time spent with the combination of a normal and steady temperature, and the chances of a successful therapeutic trial, it is often best to get the temperature up to normal, with endogenous T3 making up as great a proportion of the T3 level as possible. And one’s best chance at that is often to quickly increase the T3 therapy on top of a steady endogenous platform before that platform recedes very much [likened to moving swiftly out and holding in the button as long as possible before the seesaw lowers very much].
The above is is why a steady platform of endogenous T3 upon which to build is very valuable [likened to a fresh start]. And this is why it is very important to start each cycle, including the first cycle, with a stable T3 level (Q13). It is also important to make the most of a nice steady start by taking the medicine very much on time from the start (p103), so as to keep the T3 level as steady as possible.
It’s important to keep the T3 level steady from the start since steadying it down again, once unsteady, can take weeks. In a rapid compensator this requires increasing the T3 dose rapidly enough to get the patient’s temperature up to normal, rather than just enough to make the T3 level unsteady.
The whole trick to this therapy is to start the patient steady and to keep the patient steady on the medicine.
If the patient’s T3 levels do get unsteady on the T3 therapy it may take several weeks to “recapture” that steadiness (p101), which may involve having to wean the patient off the treatment for a time to get a fresh start, and then starting it back up again.
If you don’t increase fast compensators quickly enough their temperatures will go back down when they compensate, and be as low as they ever were. But then, not only will their temperatures be too low but also they will be unsteady (because the higher the dose of exogenous T3 the harder it is to keep the T3 level steady), and they may feel worse than when they started.
If you’re going to give people T3 therapy, then you need to give them enough to get their temperature close to normal.
Otherwise, you’re not giving them enough to improve their temperature but only enough to make their T3 levels unsteady which increases their chances of side effects.
You and the patient may choose to increase the T3 more slowly than each day, which in some cases may work out quite well. But if you do, you must accept the 10% risk that this patient is a one-day compensator, and may not do very well. In which case, at the first sign of side effects, those side effects may be addressed (p129) and the patient may be weaned off the T3 for a couple of days to let the T3 level settle back down. At this point it may need to be decided to increase the medicine each day or not at all.
So T3 therapy (especially in those 10% of patients who are fast compensators) is a little like crossing a street that has a gutter filled with water. If you want to cross without getting wet then you may want to run fast enough and jump high enough to clear the water, or not jump at all.
Another good reason to increase the T3 medicine every day, if needed, is that in more severe cases it may take a few cycles before the patient notices much improvement. Even if the dosage is increased every day, going on and off one cycle could easily take over 4 weeks. Some cases are such that, at this rate, it will be over 3 months before the patient feels much improvement! It is a discouraging prospect at the outset, but increasing the dose every 3 days, could lengthen that time to 6 months. With that possibility looming it would seem unprofitable to dillydally.
Either the endogenous system should be in control or the exogenous therapy should be in control. Control should be passed smoothly, deliberately, and completely from one to the other. Backtracking in the middle of going on or off a cycle of T3 therapy can lead to difficulties and confusion.
To avoid the pitfalls of this approach, one should make deliberate (not tentative), and gradual (not necessarily slow, but they should be gradual) one-way transitions between endogenous control and exogenous control.
A patient has a temperature of 98.6F on 60 mcg’s twice a day of T3 therapy. Her doctor decides to wean her off the T3 to see her temperature remains normal as she weans, or if it doesn’t, to see if she can get her temp to 98.6F on less medicine during the next cycle. While the patient is weaning off the T3, her temperature starts to slip a little, so she and her doctor decide that she should go not wean off any more but go back up to the 60 mcg’s BID she was on. To their surprise and confusion, her temperature doesn’t go back up to normal when she gets to 60 mcg’s BID! This can happen and is probably due to T3 unsteadiness due to the changing T3 doses. If the patient had gradually weaned all the way off and remained off the T3 for a couple of days to allow her own T3 levels to steady down, and then started the next cycle, she might have well gotten her temperature to 98.6 on only 37.5 mcg’s BID. This may not make complete sense to you now, but it will after you read the rest of this manual. I just wanted to give you an idea of what sort of unexpected difficulties one can run into by deviating from the protocol.
It is more effective to continue increasing the dose of T3 until the patient’s temperature is normal (Q8), rather than to leave the patient on a smaller dose of the T3 for longer periods of time. This is especially true in more severe cases that require several cycles of therapy to be corrected. If one “dillydallies” in such a case, a patient could be treated for 6 months with very little improvement, and very little being accomplished.
Once a patient compensates to a dose of T3 very little more will occur over time.
Some may hope that if the T3 lowers the T4, and that lowers the RT3, then there might be less inhibition of the conversion of T4 to T3, more T3 stimulating the cell, more suppression of T4, less RT3, less impaired conversion, and so on. Clinical observations do not support this hope. Theory and clinical observation suggest that the above mentioned effect has already occurred during the time it takes a person to compensate (e.g.-within the 3 day compensation time in a 3-day compensator). Remember, the majority of T4 is converted to RT3 which suggests the body is quicker to produce RT3 from T4 than it is T3. Also, the half-life of RT3 is on the order of hours, not days. [Occasionally, however, a temperature that is already normal sometimes begins to increase with no further increases in dosage, requiring the dosage to be decreased (and in this way a few patients are automatically weaned as their own systems come back up)].
It is rather surprising to see how important the steadiness of T3 levels is. If there is anything that has become apparent in this work, it is that the steadiness of T3 levels is more delicate and significant than it seems we have previously imagined.
Consider this: There is a pharmacologic formula that states that one can calculate how long it will take to reach steady state when using a maintenance dose of a medicine without a loading dose, by multiplying the medicine’s half-life by 5.5.
The half-life of T3 is 2.5 days.
2.5 days * 5.5 = 13.75 days or about 2 weeks.
This means that if in the first two weeks of treatment (forgetting for the moment about compensation) the patient misses a dose or two, it will take a little longer to reach steady state.
That is, a patient’s T3 level of today has something to do with doses taken about 2 weeks ago.
But remember steadiness is nothing more than a patient’s level per unit time.
So if a person’s T3 level can be affected by the dosing of the past two weeks, so can the person’s T3 level steadiness.
Thus,if people miss a dose, completely or by a period of time, it puts blips, depressions, holes, gaps, or ripples into their T3 levels that can persist for 2 weeks.
If it patient is taking a sustained-release medicine that is delivered at a steady rate continuously over 12 hours then the level will be steadier if the medicine is taken on time so that there are no gaps or overlaps.
This is much like dropping a pebble into a puddle. The tiny stone touches only a small part of the water itself, but the ripple it causes spreads in all directions, all the way out to the limits of the puddle. Likewise, even though the half-life of one dose is 2.5 days, it’s influence on the next dose, and the next dose, and so on can last for up to two weeks.
So you can see, if you miss every other dose by 20 minutes here, and 30 minutes there, pretty soon you’ll have nothing but ripples. In addition, if one ripple happens to coincide with an upswing in the T3 level due to another ripple of unsteadiness, the ripples can become superimposed, which can cause higher peaks and lower troughs, and in this way things can get unsteady, with a person’s T3 level “resonating” itself out of control.
Once the T3 level becomes unsteady, due to not taking the T3 very well on time, it usually takes 4-5 day’s to settle down again when proper dosing is resumed. So it’s best to keep the T3 level steady from the start, especially since improvements can be lost before any side effects are experienced.
Evidence for this settling effect can be seen clinically. Suppose a person has a temperature averaging 98.6 on, for example, 45 mcg p.o. BID and is feeling very well. And if that person stopped taking his medicine very well on time, and noticed some of his symptoms returning, and then started taking his medicine on time again, it would usually take about 4 – 5 days for his T3 levels to steady back down, and for his symptoms to improve again. This settling effect can often be seen in the steadying of his temperature as well. Sometimes however, the steadying takes up to 2 weeks (not usually longer).
So you can see why it is so important to start patients steady and to keep them steady from the start, because if things get unsteady, they can stay unsteady for a couple of weeks.
Note: There are a few management techniques that can be employed in cases such as the one mentioned above, to steady things down hopefully a little more quickly, such as a T4 test dose (p129), and/or weaning the patient off the T3 and then restarting it; but it’s much better not to have to implement those things in the first place (especially the re-cycling because that can take a few weeks).
Another reason to start steady and keep steady is that ripples can cause a loss of improvement before they ever cause side effects, so it’s best to hold the T3 therapy as steady as possible from the start, because improvement can be lost with little or no warning.
The 2-week settling effect is another reason not to dillydally in getting patients to the dose they might need, but to move the patients along as deliberately as possible, because the sooner the patients can be brought to the right dose, the sooner the 2-week stabilizing effect can begin.
This is one reason also, that I don’t recommend making a lot of changes in a patient’s T3 dosage because of unrelated influences. For example, a patient has been doing well on 30 mcg p.o. BID for several weeks and gets a little fever because of a virus. I would recommend that the patient get through the several-day virus the same way he usually would with no changes in T3, because I don’t want to make 2-week changes, for 3-day vicissitudes. If I change the dose for a few days and then change it back again, it may take two weeks to again steady down as well.
This same principle applies to women doing well on a certain dose, whose temperatures go a little higher than 98.6 the 2 or 3 days prior to their period, or in the middle of the month at ovulation.
Changes in body function brought about by T3 can then result in a recalibration of other body systems, which probably helps the body’s function to remain improved after the treatment is discontinued.
There is another settling effect worth mentioning. This effect is seen when a patient seems to feel better and better on the same dose even for up to about 6 weeks later, or more. This is a little different than the reproducible and recognizable 2-week stabilization effect mentioned above. I feel this is not so much related to the pharmacodynamics of the T3 therapy, so much as it is in the results of the T3 therapy, especially with respect to other body systems.
It seems that once the thyroid system is being held in a favorable position, then the other systems can follow suit and function better also.
I feel that these other systems falling into a new balance of functioning in relation to the thyroid system and each other, is part of what solidifies the inertia of the new position (or mode) of functioning that helps the body’s function to remain improved even after the treatment has been discontinued.
Note: In the ropes and rings diagram above, we’ve pulled on the “Thyroid” rope. The thyroid rope is strong and it’s simple because it’s just T3 to get the temperature normal. It’s great when T3 does the job because the fewer the variables the easier the management. Nevertheless, some doctors find it helpful, and in some cases necessary, to pull on the “Adrenal” rope as well. Adrenal glandulars, DHEA, Florinef, and small physiologic doses of hydrocortisone (as per Dr. Jefferies’ work, “Safe Uses of Cortisol”), are some of the adrenal support measures doctors are using. (See Same Principles Applied Differently on page 205). The “Female” rope can be addressed as well as in Dr. Lee’s work, “What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause,” where he advocates the use of progesterone cream.
To summarize, the character of the process of resetting patients’ thyroid systems, and therefore their metabolisms, is like moving the position of a croquet ball on a sandy beach. The thyroid system has a great deal of inertia, and once it has settled into a certain position it tends to stay functioning in that same way. Imagine a croquet ball that has been sitting in the moist sand for a time. It has become embedded there. It takes a little effort to dislodge it from its position, but once it is free, it is relatively easy to roll along the sand. However, it’s position is more easily influenced by the wind and other forces as it rolls along the top of the sand, than it was when it was embedded. However, once you’ve let it roll to a new position, and held it there for a time, it will again begin to settle in and get embedded. Once it has become embedded in a new position it will have a tendency to stay there.
This is very similar to the way the thyroid system behaves. It may take some decisive and deliberate effort to begin to reset a person’s system, but once her temperature has been captured, it is frequently relatively easy to cycle her with diminishing cycles of T3 until her temperature is normal off medicine. During the cycling process, however, her temperature and symptoms may be more easily influenced by changes in sleeping habits or work habits, traveling through time zones, emotional stresses, and timing of doses. This is why it is best during the cycling process to take great care to keep everything as steady as possible while her system is being reset. Once the patient’s symptoms are completely corrected it is sometimes preferable to leave the patient on the same dose of T3 for several weeks after the temperature has been captured to give her system more time to “settle in” to its new mode of functioning before weaning the T3. Once off treatment, the patient might consider not making any drastic changes in her life for 3 – 6 months, to allow further embedding, to decrease the chance of relapse. Once settled in, the patient should again be less influenced by the vicissitudes of daily life.
When patients are treated with a cycle of T3 therapy, they often retain what symptomatic improvement they do get from that cycle, even if it is not complete. For example, a patient with a percentage index of 40% [patient feels 40% of what the patient imagines a normal person to feel like (c5)] may improve to 60% with the first cycle. That improvement to 60% often persists indefinitely, even if a second cycle is not started right away. With another cycle that patient may improve to 80%, and with the next cycle to 100%. There is a possibility, however, of factors pushing progress backward: if such a patient has progressed to a percentage index of 80%, and undergoes some stress, then his/her percentage index might slip back a step to 60%. | 2019-04-23T05:01:04Z | https://www.wilsonssyndrome.com/emanual/chapters/treatment-principles/ |
A new 5-Man Expert is now available at level 70 in Starfall Prophecy. Adventure into the domain of Lady Glasya and discover her dark dealings with the Oculons of Fire. A new title, Bane of the Bloodfire, is available for those who discover all the secrets that lie within!
* Fixed an issue with music in Alittu.
* Fixed an issue preventing players from being able to leave a raid after completing LFR.
* You can now bypass the LFR queue if you queue with a full raid and it should be instant. It is not required that you have the proper raid composition when queuing for this but you still must meet the gear requirements.
- Note: The roles displayed might not be relevant to what the boss requirements are.
* Rapidly casting Natural Healing now correctly grants stacks of Boon of Life as expected.
* Legendary Earthen Renewal now correctly consumes Opportunity procs granted by Warlock and Eldritch Armor procs granted by Harbinger.
* Random Chronicles: Increased the level 66+ platinum reward for players completing random Chronicles.
* Fixed an issue with Infiltrator Johlen where if Devastating Bomb timed out, Shadow Phase would not be removed.
The achievement “Surviving Obliteration” has been correctly changed to a Legacy achievement and removed from the Hammerknell Conqueror achievement.
* Changed the Artifacts that come out of the Chest of Shiny things in Tok’s Proving Grounds from “Bind on Pickup” to “Bind to Account on Pickup”.
* Fixed an issue with the achievement “Superiority Complex” not being granted properly if Cyril was killed with Mien of Superiority.
* Mind of Madness has been re-added to the Intrepid Adventures queue.
* Starfall Prophecy Weapon runes can no longer heal enemies in certain circumstances.
Un nouveau donjon expert niveau 70 est maintenant disponible. Aventurez-vous dans le domaine de dame Glasya et découvrez ses sombres manigances. Un nouveau titre, [Bane of the Bloodfire] ("Ennemi juré des feu-sanglant" ?), est disponibles pour ceux qui découvrent tous les secrets de cet endroit.
- Correction d'un bug qui empêchait les joueurs de quitter un raid après une recherche de raid.
- Il est maintenant possible de lancer une recherche de raid avec un raid déjà complet, et l'arrivée dans le raid est instantanée. Il n'est pas demandé d'avoir la bonne composition de raid pour lancer la recherche, mais tout le monde doit avoir les statistiques nécessaires (précision, statistique principale).
- Lancer Guérison Naturelle donne bien des accumulations de Bénédiction de vie.
- Renouveau de la terre consomme bien les procs d'Anathema et de l'Armure Eldritch.
- Le haut fait "Survivre à l'anéantissement" a été déplacé dans la catégorie Héritage, et a été retiré des prérequis pour le HF Conquérant de la Forteresse de Glasmarteau.
- Correction des HFs "Non, c'est impossible", "Course vers la destruction", "Envie et Ruine, Ordre, Chaos" et "Chaos, Ordre, Envie et Ruine".
- Correction des HFs suivants afin qu'ils donnent les bons titres : "Non, c'est impossible" et "Conquérant : Esprit de la folie".
- Les artefacts obtenus dans le coffre de la quête hebdomadaire "Oh ça brille" sont désormais liés au compte, et non plus à l'âme.
- Correction d'un bug qui empêchait le HF "Complexe de supériorité" d'être obtenu si Cyril était tué par sa mine de suprématie.
- L'Esprit de la Folie a été remis dans les aventures instantanées intrépides.
- Les runes d'armes de l'extension n'ont plus aucune chance de soigner les ennemis.
* Resolved an issue that could block accounts from adding a payment method within the RIFT Store.
* Fixed an issue with being unable to leave LFR without logging out.
* If queuing with a full raid for LFR, you no longer need to meet the gear requirements or have any roles selected. The roles displayed might not be relevant to what is required for the boss.
* Radiate Death now has a cooldown of 40 seconds and radiates to 2 targets (down from 6). Corrected a bug where Radiate Death would spread to less targets than intended and refresh DoTs in some cases.
* Singed Spirit no longer converts all damage to Ethereal when it procs. It instead increases all damage you deal by 12% when it procs.
* RIFTS: The achievement Stonesurge Champion is now correctly given when 150 rifts are closed.
* Phase 1 of the Fortress Assault has it’s own timer to complete now. This should give people more time to gather for the more difficult phases of the event.
* Hexathel now drops Planar Fragments in addition to its regular loot.
- Correction d'un bug qui pouvait empêcher certains comptes d'ajouter un moyen de paiement dans la boutique Rift.
- Correction d'un bug qui empêchait parfois de quitter la recherche de raid, à moins de se déconnecter.
- Si l'on lance la recherche avec un groupe de raid complet, il n'y a plus besoin de choisir un rôle ou d'avoir le cap de précision et de la statistique principale.
- Irradiation de mort a un délai de récupération général de 40 secondes et touche 2 cibles (contre 6 jusqu'à présent). Correction d'un bug qui pouvait faire se diffuser Irradiation de la mort à moins de cibles que prévu, et parfois réinitialiser les DoTs.
- Singed Spirit no longer converts all damage to Ethereal when it procs. It instead increases all damage you deal by 12% when it procs.
- Le haut fait "Champion de la pierre filante" est maintenant correctement donné lorsque 150 failles ont été fermées.
- La première phase de l'assaut a un timer propre, ce qui devrait donner plus de temps pour rassembler du monde pour les phases suivantes.
- Hexathel donne maintenant des fragments planaires en plus de son loot habituel.
La mise à jour 4.1 est officiellement reportée au 29 mars, ainsi que le carnaval des Elus.
La patchnote de la 4.1 fait plus de 3400 mots, sa traduction arrive morceau par morceau.
Venture deep into the prison created by the Alaviax to imprison the dragons of the Red Flight so as to never again be subjugated under their rule. With Mount Pyre sundered, the way is now open. Go forth and stop Queen Carli’s plan to bring forth the Apocalypse and fulfill the prophecies of Aia!
Thanks to our improved tinting system, your armor’s going to look better than ever. Not only have we updated our existing dyes so that the effects on your wardrobe are more accurate and more impressive (we have been adjusting individual armor pieces to maximize dye effects), but we’re also introducing 21 more dyes to increase options available to you, purchasable either together or individually!
Additionally, we have added another 27 Deep dye shades (darker than dark!) and these are all available immediately for free!
Arm yourself with the power of Eternal items!
The Carnival of the Ascended is back and better than ever!
Don't have Starfall Prophecy, but want to get the most out of 4.1's exciting new content? You can now purchase a copy of Starfall Prophecy using Credits or, if you're a RIFT Patron, Affinity!
* Fixed an issue with auto scrolling on Quest Log so that it now ends upon user interaction.
* Updated the quest sticky to properly show the Artifact tooltip and link to the Artifact tab.
* Removed Conquest from the UI.
* All mounts have been sent back to training and have learned how to walk. Even backwards!
* Experience gain from killing NPCs while sidekicking has been significantly reduced.
* The achievements pertaining to conquest have been added to legacy. In addition, the weekly and guild quests for CQ have been removed.
* Fixed a display issue with icons on the Artifacts Tab.
* Fixed issue with Alittu music entry stinger.
* Players on different home shards can trade items and coin with each other via the trade dialog.
* New Challenger’s Mark gear is available in the store now! Seals and Foci now have PVP versions that can be purchased with Challenger’s Marks!
* Level 65 boost bundle is now purchasable in the store along with trade skill boosts to 450!
* Individual Reward charge packs can be purchased in the store in quantities of 5, 20, and 50.
* Six new Alittu-themed Building Block textures are now available in the store. Three can be found under Metal, and three under Stone.
* New Music Boxes are available in the store.
* A new dye bundle is available in the RIFT Store under Cosmetics -> Premium: Celestial Bundle of Dye Buckets.
* Just like all Dyes these will not show up as usable until you log out and log back in after purchase.
* Wardrobe – Some additional weapon skins have been added to the Storm Legion section of the Weapon Cosmetics area of the Rift store.
* The Nightmare Thresher mount, Sinister Cappie mount & Umbral Baby Budgling pet are now available in the Affinity section of the RIFT store.
* The damage and dps stat of ranged weapons will no longer be used in combat calculations. All such calculations will use the main hand or two handed weapon only. Ranged weapons will no longer display damage or dps on their tooltips.
* Mastery: Divine Favor has been reworked. It is now a 1 minute cooldown that applies 6 stacks of Divine Presence to all nearby allies for 30 seconds. Divine Presence increases the healing you do to the target by 5% per stack. One stack is consumed each time you cast a heal on a target.
* Legendary Condensed Obliteration no longer fires Bound Fate while dead.
* Legendary Fae Mimicry: Now only affects 5 abilities for the damage increase.
* Legendary Summon Faerie Healer: Effectiveness has been reduced to 9% of maximum HP in PVP.
* Legendary Faerie Healer: Effectiveness in PVP reduced to 3% of max HP over 3 seconds (down from 9).
* Legendary Radical Coalescence damage bonus increased from 25% to 35%.
* Mien of Leadership: Now also increases incoming healing cast by other players by 30%.
* Devout Deflection talent no longer interacts with Guard.
* Eruption has been reworked and now causes 50% of overhealing to be applied to nearby targets. Only works on healing applied from the original caster.
* Legendary Rune of Impending Doom deals 60% more damage per Runestrike and Rune of Castigation.
* Legendary Light of Redemption healing increased by roughly 60%. It now scales more aggressively with spellpower.
* Jolt base Damage increased by roughly 40%.
* Legendary Icy Blow now increases air and water damage by 24% per stack for 20 seconds and stacks up to twice.
* Legendary Bosun's Blessing's bonus has been reduced to 20% per HoT on the target.
* Arcane Ward now also increases incoming healing cast by other players by 30%.
* Archon's Bulwark now increases support abilities by 200% (up from 100%).
* Healing Torrent will no longer incorrectly consume Boon of Life when it shouldn't.
* Veils no longer block healing done by other veils. Veils now reduce damage dealt by 50%. This penalty is reduced by points in Chloromancer, down to 0% at 61 points spent. This damage penalty also affects non-Chloromancer damage.
* Lifebound Veil healing is now counted as single target healing.
* Lifegiving Veil healing increased by roughly 15%.
* Wild Growth has been reworked. It is now an instant cast ability that consumes all of your charge to heal allies immediately. This healing is increased by 0.4% for every charge consumed. It also causes affected allies to recieve 40% increased Chloromancer healing from the caster. This buff lasts 0.1 second for every charge consumed by Wild Growth.
* Legendary Bloom now has a 2 second cast time. Healing amount increased to compensate.
* Vile Spores that come from Legendary Bloom no longer trigger Bulwark of Souls. These Vile Spores no longer benefit from the Timed spell bonus granted by Legendary Empyrean Ascension as they do not have a cast time.
* Living Aegis no longer shows too many reactives for Vile Spores.
* Rime healing increased by roughly 20%.
* Legendary Earthen Renewal now ramps up more slowly and heals for a reduced amount.
* Infuse Magic now ramps up at 12% per tick.
* Ground Zero is now off the global cooldown.
* Legendary Soul Bond now reduces cooldowns by 25% and increases Necromancer and Pet damage by 120%.
* Ignition talent now reduces mana costs of all fire spells (rather than just non instant ones) by 8% per point, up from 4%.
* Legendary Fusillade no longer grants Surging Cinders when Flame Bolt or Searing Bolt is cast. Passive bonus on * Cinder Burst is increased to 60%.
* Legendary Internalize Charge now has a 20 second cooldown and no longer costs charge. Now affects cast time spells for a bonus of 100% increased damage. Tooltip clarified to show this ability does not cost charge.
* Pyromancer's Blessing's internal cooldown has been reduced to 3 seconds. Thee tooltip now mentions this.
* Legendary Internalize Charge is no longer overwritten by Charged Blade.
* Mastery: Savage Blow: Now only stacks twice.
* Non Legendary Icy Cleave can now be correctly cast without a target again.
* Legendary Icy Cleave now correctly affects area of effect abilities that use chain or cone shapes to do their effects.
* Legendary Seismic Smash is now only consumed by damaging abilities.
* Legendary Tectonic Spike has been reworked. It no longer increases the damage of Aftershock or the maximum stacks of Tremor. It instead reduces the cooldown of Subduction to 4 seconds, and causes Subduction to also cast regular Seismic Smash when cast.
* Blossoms generated by Legendary Deluge now correctly apply Conservation if known.
* Resilient Growth is no longer double dipping on PVP adjustments.
* Endless Shards talent has been reworked to reset the cooldown of Icy Shards when reaching 100 Fury or Cunning.
* Titanic Spirit: Now also increases incoming healing cast by other players by 30%.
* Legendary Vorpal Salvo no longer deals 5 times as much damage when in Cunning. Now passively causes your next Stroke of Brilliance to deal increased damage after passing through harmony.
* Legendary Primal Avatar: Drake now counts as both Earth and Fire damage. Affects up to 20 attacks. Damage increased to 150% of AP.
* Furious Power no longer incorrectly increases AP by 4% per rank.
* Assassinate now has a 6 second cooldown.
* Legendary Poison Malice starting bonus has been increased to 275%, and now has a 1 second lockout where it cannot be cast after the first cast. It no longer incorrectly adjusts your Global Cooldown.
* Legendary Master of Poisons damage over time buff increased to 85%. Now applies to all damage over time abilities.
* Legendary Thread of Death damage penalty removed.
* Poison Malice can no longer be cancelled.
* Jagged Strike now has a 6 second CD.
* Dancing Steel now only affects up to 4 targets.
* Hundred Blades now only affects up to 4 targets.
* Legendary Hundred Blades now has a 2 second cooldown to prevent rapid reactivation.
* Deadly Dance now has its effect doubled on Bladedancer attacks.
* Improved Deadly Dance increased to 6% per talent point (up from 4%).
* Legendary Side Steps movement speed increase no longer ends when you stop moving. Duration reduced to 12 seconds.
* Side Steps is now correctly affected by the Counterbalance talent.
* Barbed Shot damage increased by roughly 100%. Targets affected by your Barbed Shot take 20% increased damage from your other Marksman abilities.
* Legendary Free Recoil now always forces Empowered shot to be instant. No longer applies a stacking buff, and no longer reduces the damage of Empowered Shot. Cooldown no longer decreased. Grants 3 CP.
* Legendary Rapid Fire shot damage reduced by 12%.
* Legenadry Deadeye shot damage reduced by 12%.
* Legendary Free Recoil causes empowered shot to have a 2 second cooldown.
* Legendary Flame Blitz damage bonus increased to 80%.
* Legendary Dark Descent has been reworked. It no longer causes finishers to refund combo points. Instead, the affected finishers deal 30% more damage. Emptiness is still not consumed by finishers when Legendary Dusk Strike is selected.
* Legendary Dusk Strike now has a 20m range. The energy penalty has been reduced to 10% per stack. The damage bonus has been increased to 30% per stack, and the buff duration increased to 20 seconds.
* Ebon Blades debuff increased from 5% per stack to 12% per stack.
* Legendary Emergency Response now has a 6s cooldown.
* Fixed a bug where Saboteurs would lose sticky bombs after sidekicking.
* Doubleshot now correctly grants you energy when triggering. No longer incorrectly grants the target energy.
* Legendary Ace Shot procs no cause it to have no GCD.
* Legendary Splinter Shot is now instant.
* Rain of Arrows is now channeled for 1 second. Fully channeling it causes it to persist for up to 5 more seconds.
* Guardian Phase: Now also increases incoming healing cast by other players by 30%.
* Legendary Curative Engine Tactician healing bonus reduced to 100%.
* Curative Torrent has been reworked. It is now a smart heal, and total healing has been reduced by roughly 20% to compensate for the conversion. It now has a wider zone (roughly twice as wide), and heals bounce much farther after initial application-- 25m instead of 15. It no longer heals pets during its initial beam, and the target of the initial heal can no longer be selected as the one target the heal bounces to. Now has a 13s cooldown.
* *NEW* 12 Points: Impurity Siphoning Flask: Removes 1 Poison, Curse, or Disease.
* *NEW* 28 Points: Wide Recalibration Matrix: Removes 1 Curse, Disease, or Poison from up to 10 party or Raid members. CD 10s.
* *NEW* 36 Points: Reanimation Battery: Brings the fallen ally back to life, restoring 50% health and mana. Usable in combat. CD 5m.
* Legendary Thunderous Strike no longer stacks twice. Debuff amount doubled to compensate. Duration increased to 45 seconds.
* Legendary Punishing Blow is now half as effective on damage coming from Death Blossom, and now correctly affects area of effect abilities that use chain or cone shapes to do their effects.
* Shield of the Hero: Now also increases incoming healing cast by other players by 30%, and now reduces non Paladin and non Void Knight damage by 25%.
* Alacrity no longer reduces PVP damage.
* Strike Like Iron increased to 50%.
* Legendary Icy Burst now scales with the number of AP on cast.
* Accord of Resilience: Now also increases incoming healing cast by other players by 30%. and now reduces non Paladin and non Void Knight damage by 25%.
* Reduced healing generated by Legendary Battlesong by 50%.
* Base Duration of Stand Tall increased to 2 minutes.
* Enduring Chants now increases the duration of Stand tall by 36 seconds per rank (maximum 180 seconds).
* Legendary Breaking Blow now consumes up to 30 additional Power maximum.
* Legendary Sergeant's Order is no longer overwritten by another warrior casting it.
* Legendary A Quick Death damage increased by roughly 35%.
* Added further optimizations to speed up LFR queue times.
* Fixed an exploit with the Maelstorm encounter.
* Phase 1 now has its own timer to complete. This should give people more time to gather for the more difficult phases of the event.
* Spiders no longer drop low-level loot.
* Reduced the price of Hexathel’s Individual Reward cost to 2.
* Thexahel no longer spawns adds.
* Attempted to fix the crash that has been reported for the Killthraxus fight in Temple of Ananke. Please note, that as this issue has not been able to be reproduced on our end this fix may not have worked.
* Many Starfall quests that previously did not have a minimum level now require level 65.
* A new weekly quest to complete the Cracking Xarth’s Skull zone event is now available from Jinan Tawniks in Alittu.
* A new weekly chronicle quest is now available. Pick up Celestial Tales from Viala Darkweather in Alittu.
* Strike Force Commander Korel in Alittu now offers a weekly quest to complete Planar Assault Adventures.
* New PvP daily and weekly quests are now available from Arthor Tourney in Alittu.
* Sidekicked players are now capped to level 67 in this zone.
* Sidekicked players are now capped to level 66 in this zone.
Players over level 65 participating in Nightmare Rifts will now get currency and other rewards.
Note that these rewards are NOT scaled up to lvl 70, but are instead the same as what a lvl 65 player would receive.
* The new Alittu Mystery Box has been added to the Rift store! It contains many new items themed around the town of Alittu as well as a chance at the new Alittu Dimension Key! The Imperial Wonders Mystery Box is now retired.
* The dimension rewards from Minions have been revised - almost 600 new dimension items have been added to the game that are exclusive to 4hour (Premium) missions! The 8 hour mission stashes contain the previous minion dimension rewards and 5/15 minute missions now only provide building blocks.
- A lot more information can be found at The Dimension Touring Company (Thank to Feendish@Greybriar)!
* Dimensioneers! The Dimension lists for Public (weekly) and Public (All Time) now report dimensions across all shards instead of just your own!
Added a new dimension permission (for personal and guild) for the ability of visitors seeing the list of items used in the dimension.
Dimensions – Check out the three new Dimension Scratchers: Passel of Potions, Candle and Torch Bundle, and Banner Bundle (Banner Bundle can be found in the Affinity section).
Dimensions – The dimensional bartender NPC will now stay at the location where it was placed rather than snapping to the heightmap.
The usable perimeter of the Strozza Estate Villa dimension has been increased by over 50%.
* Capes are now double sided!
* Empyrean Rage Runeshard can be correctly used on all level 65 Seals.
* Synergy Crystals: Healing effects should no longer incorrectly interact with HoT effects. Tooltips in synergy crystals are now more clear about this.
* Tenebrean Eel Lure will correctly fish up Tenebrean Eel sin both Deep and Shallow water.
* Crafting dailies now only reward planar attunement XP and coin.
Aventurez-vous dans la prison créée par les Alaviax pour enfermer les dragons du vol rouge afin de ne plus jamais subir leur joug. Maintenant que le mont Bûcher a été brisé, le chemin est ouvert. Mettez-vous en marche et arrêtez la reine Carli qui compte apporter l'apocalypse et réaliser les prophéties d'Aia !
Bien qu'il soit fait avant tout pour être accessible aux nouveaux raideurs, les Profondeurs Tartares contient tout de même grand nombre de récompenses qui sauront intéresser les raideurs plus expérimentés, avec entre autres la monnaie de raid et les améliorations actives.
Qu'y a-t-il de mieux que de récupérer un nouvel équipement ? Le rendre encore mieux, plus beau, plus menaçant, plus impressionnant, plus tout avec les teintures d'armure !
Grâce à l'amélioration de notre système de teintes, votre armure aura l'air encore mieux qu'avant. Non seulement nous avons amélioré les teintures déjà existantes pour que leur effet sur votre garde-robe soit encore plus fidèle et impressionnant (nous avons fait des ajustements individuels sur les différentes pièces d'armure pour maximiser les effets des teintures), mais nous ajoutons également 21 teintes supplémentaires pour augmenter vos options, achetables d'un coup ou individuellement !
Nous avons en plus ajouté 27 teintes sombres et profondes, et elles sont disponibles immédiatement et gratuitement !
Êtes-vous prêt pour le nouveau niveau d'artisanat planaire ?
Des tonnes de nouvelles recettes sont à disposition des artisans. Les meilleurs casques qui soient et des armes à distance ? Vous les avez. Des récompenses spécifiques pour chacun des métiers ? Évidemment. Un moyen d'accélérer l'apprentissage des métiers de récolte et d'obtenir encore plus de ressources d'un coup ? Bien sûr. Rejoignez R23-jk à Alittu !
Armez-vous de la puissance incroyable des objets éternels !
Les objets éternels représentent un tout nouveau niveau d'équipement dans RIFT. Chaque objet éternel est le meilleur de sa catégorie, et chacun possède des capacités qui peuvent changer le jeu, comme une réduction de dégâts pour tout le raid, une amélioration de la récupération de ressources, et des améliorations spécifiques à la classe !
Il y a deux manières d'obtenir un objet éternel : soit les trouver en monde ouvert, soit grâce à la suite de quête d'arme éternelle.
Pour en trouver en monde ouvert, c'est exactement ce à quoi vous vous attendez : tuez des trucs et vous pouvez peut-être découvrir une pièce d'équipement incroyable. Cependant, lorsque vous récupérez un objet éternel, il n'est pas aussi puissant qu'il pourrait être. Si vous voulez débloquer le véritable pouvoir de votre équipement, vous allez d'abord devoir faire ses améliorations actives. Mais la récompense d'obtenir l'un des objets les plus puissants de tout Telara vaut le challenge.
La série de quêtes qui vous permet d'obtenir une arme éternelle est similaire.
Le carnaval des Élus est de retour !
En plus de vos jeux et événements préférés, des tonnes de nouveaux objets sont disponibles. Il y a la nouvelle monture, les habits d'Usukhel, les ailes ténébréennes, le ballon Tasuil, et tellement d'autres !
VOus n'avez pas l'extensio, mais vous voulez accéder au contenu de la 4.1 ? Vous pouvez maintenant l'obtenir avec des crédits ou de l'affinité !
- Les boucles d'oreille sont maintenant disponibles pour tout le monde.
- Correction du scrolling automatique du journal de quête, qui s'arrête maintenant tout seul dès la moindre interaction.
- Toutes les montures on été renvoyées à l'entrainement et peuvent maintenant marcher. Même en arrière !
- L'expérience obtenue en tuant des ennemis en étant en tandem a été réduite.
- Les hauts faits liés à la conquête ont été mis dans la catégorie héritage. De plus, les quêtes hebdomadaires et les quêtes de guilde en lien avec la conquête ont été retirées.
- Correction d'un bug avec les icônes de certains artefacts dans le menu d'artefacts.
- Correction d'un bug concernant le déclenchement de la musique d'Alittu.
- Les joueurs de serveurs différents peuvent maintenant s'échanger des objets et de l'argent (ou or, ou platine) via la fenêtre de transaction.
- Les nouvelles marques de raid sont apparues ! Vous pouvez vous en servir pour acheter des sceaux.
- Un pack niveau 65 est maintenant achetable, avec un boost de métier jusqu'à 450 !
- Il est possible d'acheter des packs de charges de récompenses individuelles par 5, 20 et 50.
- 6 nouveaux types de blocs de construction sur le thème d'Alittu ont été ajoutés à la boutique. 3 d'entre eux sont dans la partie métal, et 3 autres dans la partie pierre.
- De nouvelles boites à musique sont disponibles dans la boutique.
- Comme tous les packs de teintures, ils ne seront pas utilisables tant que vous n'aurez pas fait une déco-reco.
- Plusieurs apparences d'arme de SL ont été ajoutées à la partie Armes de la section Cosmétique de la boutique.
- De nouvelles montures et un nouveau familier ont été ajoutés à la partie Affinité de la boutique.
- Les dégâts des armes à distance ne seront plus utilisés dans le calcul de dégâts. Tous ces calculs se baseront sur la main principale ou l'arme à deux mains uniquement. Les armes à distance n'auront plus de dégâts indiqués dans leur description.
- Pas prévu de réactiver la conquête non plus pour le moment.
- La tenue 'forgee par la comète' devrait enfin pouvoir être teinte par les elfes femmes... Et celui là je m'attends depuis des SIECLES !!
* Interactive doors and windows have been added to Dimensions! Check them out in the Store: Dimensions -> Interactive.
On va pouvoir ouvrir et fermer nos portes et nos fenêtres!!
Attention ce sont des items interactifs donc non redimensionnables. On peut inverser le sens d'ouverture.
Pour ceux qui veulent tester, j'ai mis deux portes de ce type dans le domaine Imari à l'étage de la villa.
C'est un grand pas pour les dims!
* Queens Foci is now up in the Looking For Raid menu 100% of the time.
en français : le Focus de la reine est ouvert tout le temps via la recherche de raid.
* Eternal Weapons - Raid Buffs now have a cooldown of 5 minutes.
* Fixed some missing sounds on primal lord abilities.
* Damage of Legendary Molten Wave reduced substantially.
* Legendary Deadeye Shot critical bonus damage reduced to 3.5x. Changed where this damage bonus is calculated to reduce its impact in certain cases.
* Legendary Calculated shot now also increases the damage of Channels by 20% while active.
* Zone Event: Feeding Frenzy: Fixed an issue where players would not get the achievement for completing the zone event.
* Raid Rift: Decay of Ahnket: Fixed Xerrax’s ability “Soul Rip” so that it cannot be reflected back on him.
* Raid Rifts: Egg of Destruction & Decay of Ahnket: Added new sounds.
* That amazing Statue in Tavril Plaza is now visible from across the bridge.
* Quest: The Queen of Suns: Asha, Orphiel, and The Queen of Suns now gather just outside of Kilcual only when defending Kilcual from the Storm Legion rather than forever.
* Quest: Power to the Legion: Fixed an issue that prevented a number of players from being able to see the power cells.
* Vostigar Peaks Jetpack Quests now have a minimum level of 70.
* Quest: Maze of Steel: Added new sounds.
* Quest: Source Decay: Bronze Goo in the Source Collectors should regain its form over time. That is if it doesn’t deconstruct all of the comet first. Best not to think on it too much.
* Quest: Return to Sender: Fixed an issue with Return to Sender that prevented towers from respawning after having the tracking device placed on them.
* Isabella at the Magician’s Tower no longer plays a subtle prank with the EULA on her porticulum master’s fine print.
* The citizens of Uttila have learned new, cognitive patterns and created their own postal service: there is now a mailbox near the Uttilan faction vendor. Send letters to all your friends and let them know!
* The Storm Legion has reinforced the defenses of the Maze of Steel, Fort Onocro, and Fort Strutio. Enter with caution.
* Updated the population of the Forgotten Forest to account for instant adventure mobs!
* Armes éternelles - Les buffs de raids sont maintenant applicable toutes les 5 minutes.
* Il faut être niveau 70 pour faire les quêtes du jetpack.
* Quête: Labyrinthe d'Acier: Ajout de nouveau sons.
* Quête: Pourriture de source: Bronze Goo dans les Collecteurs se régénère maintenant.
* Quête: Retour à l'envoyeur: Correxion d'un bug qui empêchait les tours de réapparaitre après avoir placé un marqueur dessus.
* Paragons will no longer incorrectly benefit from the talent "Unleashed" without putting points into it.
* The achievement “The Prosecution Ripostes” now implicitly indicates on how to actually trigger this achievement.
* Malannon: Added additional sounds to this fight.
* Rift assaults in the planes of Fire and Life have returned to Celestial Adventures!
* Instant Adventure: Tools of the Trade: Now functions better for those that have also done the discovery quest of the same name.
* Fixed an issue where players could not turn in quests in Scatherran Forest if they had also completed the quest, “The Shadow Market”.
* Asha and Orphiel no longer spawn as companions in The Front after completing the main story arc.
* Fixed an issue that caused the colossi in Vostigar Peaks to not show on the map for a week-- rather than a day-- after brutally murdering them for their shiny loot.
* Zone Event: The Tempest Rises: Fixed a bug where a cannon at the forgotten forest would spawn out of line of sight. Thanks go out to Aileen for this report!
* Quest: We Can Build It: Fixed an issue where quest items would not go into a player’s quest inventory.
* Quests: The following daily quests have been modified to better share progress for players in a party: “Leaving the Door Open”, “Mind the Mines”, “Return to Sender”. “Ashes to Ashes”, “Death From Above”, and “Ritual, Begone!”.
* Fixed the amount of Source Fuel needed for the Jetpack mount’s temp abilities to match the tooltip.
* Equipped planar fragments now prompt you if you try to recycle them.
* Les parangons ne profiterons plus du talent "Unleashed" sans avoir mis de points dedans.
* Malannon: Ajout de sons au combat.
* L'Aventure 'Tools of the Trade' fonctionne mieux pour veux qui ont déjà fait la quête du même nom.
* Correction d'un bug empêchant les joueurs de rendre des quêtes si il avaient terminés la quête, “Le marché des ombres”.
* Asha et Orphiel ne vous suivront plus si vous avez terminé l'histoire principale.
* Correction d'un bug qui faisait que les rares ne s'affichaient plus sur la map pendant 1 semaine (au lieu d'1jour) lorsque vous les avez tué une fois.
* Event: Correction d'un bug ou un des canons des forts était hors de ligne de vue empêchant la capture du fort.
* Quête: 'On peut le faire': Correction d'un bug ou les objets de quêtes n'apparaissaient pas de l'inventaire de certains joueurs.
* 6 quêtes journalières ont étés modifiées pour compter pour tout le groupe.
* Les fragments planaires équipées vous demandent confirmation lorsque vous voulez les désenchanter.
* Fixed an issue where Jetpack become stuck at incorrect area for Bahmi Female characters.
* A new Power Pack is available in the RIFT Store! Pick it up today and unlock the Nightmare Razorback mount!
* Fixed an edge case where the VFX for Drahknar’s “Fiery Pool” ability could persist on a player.
* Quest: Lost Messenger: A shade of Ambriel will now be at the turn in location if you have started any of the Ashenfell questline.
* Quest: Shadow Market: Turning in quests in Scatherran Forest while on this quest will no longer cause a continuity error that erases Tasuil from existence.
* Fixed an issue where invasions would run into Tenebrean Schism and Ashenfell.
* Invasions that cleave a bloody path of destruction through Bailghol will no longer get hung up on imaginary opponents.
* Quest: Circle of the Thirteen: Fixed an issue with pet healing skills affecting the Skub companion, and not the player’s pet.
* Marks of Prophecy can no longer be runebroken.
* Opie Whistle now has an 8-second activation time and can only be used within Vostigar Peaks.
* Quête: Messager perdu: L'Ombre d'Ambriel sera présente au point ou rendre la quête si vous avez commencé les quêtes histoires de la zone.
* Quête: Marché de l'Ombre: Rendre des quêtes dans la forêt ne fera plus disparaître Tasuil.
* Les invasions attaquant Bailghol ne devraient plus s'acharner sur des ennemis imaginaires.
* Quête: Le cercle des 13: Correction d'un bug qui faisait que les effet de soin du compagnon affectait le pet et non le joueur.
Maintenance hebdomadaire cette semaine mais pas de correctifs.
* /suicide will now successfully deal enough damage to kill the player.
* Fixed a bug preventing players from seeing another player's icon in the raid frame if they went out of line of sight.
* Fixed an issue where you would sometimes fall through the world when changing video settings.
* Adventure groups in the Featured Adventure and Intrepid Adventure queues will experience more variety of instant adventures.
* Vostigar Peaks has been added to the Instant Adventures zone rotation! Hit [.] and select Celestial Adventures to get in on the action.
* Fixed an issue with Zone Event notifications not properly displaying. Now, when the event is starting on a shard different from your home shard, the red alert text and flashing icon properly show in the UI and on the map.
* Raid Rift: Iron Legion: Fixed a bug where the slow aura could get stuck on you.
* Queens Foci: The weekly quest giver and the Mages of Alittu Quartermaster have now taken up camp in Camp Quagmire.
Quest: Through Hell and Back Again: Clarified in the quest that it must be completed in LFR difficulty.
* Quest: The Battle of Saint Taranis and the Echo of the Battle of Saint Taranis: Fixed an issue where sometimes Garn would not spawn in Saint Taranis.
* Fixed floating grass around the Moonshade Highlands porticulum.
* Quest: Gathering Power: Removed the ability to interact with Sourcestone Ore in Regents Fall. (This was mistakenly not removed in the Terminus revamp of yore!).
* Soul Bond should no longer incorrectly fall off your pet if it moves more than 30m from you.
* Wildfire Procs will no longer show too many reactive icons.
* Bind Life/Air Lash now correctly describe what focus state they require to be cast.
* Legendary Scything Strike has been adjusted to provide a reduced bonus, and its location in the math has changed so that it will be less potent when stacked with other effects.
* Side Steps will now correctly come off cooldown when it says that it does.
* Time Bomb and Charges should now work correctly after dying.
* The Vigil’s plan to stop Shadavarian by dropping a giant statue on his head did not go according to prophecy. Therefore they have removed their artwork from the Ceremony of Attunement chronicle.
* The Eye of Omnox trinket will no longer incorrectly be triggered by abilities other than damaging and healing ones. It will also no longer be overwritten when multiple players proc it at once.
* Tok Box can now only be used in either Allitu or Tok’s Proving Ground.
* Eternal: Hellion's Stompers should now correctly activate automatically when equipped and not persist forever.
* Correction d'un bug vous faisant tomber à travers le sol lorsque l'on changait les paramètres videos.
* Les aventures "Intrépides" et "Featured" seront plus variées.
* Correction des notifications annonçant des évents de zones: Elle apparaîtrons bien sur l'UI et sur la carte lorsqu'un évent apparaît sur un serveur différent du votre.
* Raid Rift: Légion d'Acier: Correction d'un bug qui faisait que l'aura de ralentissement restait sur les joueurs.
* Correction d'un soucis d'affichage avec le monstre de mort.
* Notoriety purchase limits are now character based instead of region based.
* Fixed the overly bright sky in the Volcanic Playground dimension.
* Fixed an issue with some lower level zone events giving lower level currency to lvl 65+ players that were properly mentored for the event.
* Characters in Intrepid Instant Adventures are now able respawn within the IA without problems.
* Assaulting forts during zone events should no longer occasionally reward low level essences.
Instant Adventures in Vostigar Peaks will now count towards the weekly quest "Planar Assault" as they should.
* Instant Adventures in Vostigar Peaks will now properly contribute to the objectives for the Celestial Adventures weekly quest.
* Accepting the map invite for LFR if queued while as a premade inside of a raid will now properly teleport you to the correct map.
* Queuing for LFR again after completing LFR will now properly place your raid in a new instance of that map and teleport you to the entrance. However, from this point forward, you will be considered a premade, not an LFR raid.
* Eternal Weapons now correctly allow spells to benefit from the bonus damage if they would push your mana below the threshold. Mana cost increase reduced from 100% to 10%.
* Arcane Aegis will now correctly grant the appropriate amount of armor to all affected players. Tooltip will now correctly describe the amount of armor granted.
* Death's Edict now correctly triggers Dominant Personality and Swift Control.
* Weathered will now correctly increase the health of pets.
* Legendary Condemn has been reworked. It no longer grants stacks of Deathly Calling when it expires. It instead deals increased damage. It still increases the stack cap of Deathly Calling to 10.
* Legendary Neddra's Grasp should now correctly apply Lingering Torment in all cases.
* After several…unfortunate side effects on test subjects during experiments with Materialize Soul, it has lost the ability to be cast while dead.
* Removed an extra damage number from Bind Life and Air Lash. This is only a tooltip change. Functionality remains unchanged.
* Points in Roaring Rapids no longer incorrectly also grant the benefit of Nature's Keeper.
* Cleanse now correctly describes how it affects the Focus bar when cast.
* Legendary Scything Strike can no longer be triggered on targets more than 35m away.
* Legendary Molten Wave no longer incorrectly has too large a range.
* Ethereal Beam has had its damage in PVP reduced by roughly 50%.
* Removed Charge counter from targets when playing as Saboteur.
* Charges will now correctly restrict your explosives again.
* Torrents can now trigger weapon enhancements such as Silver Tip Munitions.
* Touch of Life now notes in the tooltip that it has reduced effectiveness in PVP. This is only a tooltip change. Functionality remains unchanged.
* Weekly login gifts no longer have a chance to drop lock box keys.
* Level 60-65 Mercenary Equipment Caches will now give loot to players above level 65. Note that this will still be level 65 loot.
* The cosmetic cape “Sagum of Rain” has been added to the Uttila Resistance vendor at Glorified notoriety level.
* Added two new dimension items to the Uttila Resistance vendor.
* Reduced the recipe material cost for Blackthorn Burgers slightly.
* Fixed some missing wardrobe associations with a few in-game items.
* Opie got over her fear of Arkosian Hinterlands and Arjuros and these locations should no longer be a problem to teleport to.
* Correction du ciel de la dimension "Forteresse de l'apocalypse"
* Quête: Suivre l'argent: Il est maintenant spécifié que la quête doit être faite dans des donjons standards.
* Les IA de Vostigar comptent bien dans la quête hebdomadaire "Assaut planaire" et celles des "Aventures celestes"
* Quêtes journalières: Correction d'un bug qui réinitialisait l'avancement des quêtes lors du reset journalier.
* Accepter une proposition de téléportation via la recherche de raid quand on fait partie d'un groupe déjà formé téléportera bien dans la bonne instance du raid.
* Relancer la recherche de raid après avoir complété un raid avec la recherche de raid vous placera bien à l'entrée d'une nouvelle instance. Par contre vous serez considérés comme un groupe pré-constitué et non comme une "Recherche de raid"
* Les caisses de mercenaire niveau 60-65 donneront bien du loot aux joueurs 65+. Mais ca sera de l'équipement 65.
* Opie accepte maintenant de se téléporter à Arjuros et l'arrière pays Arkosien.
* Zone Events: Several changes have been made in an attempt to address the issue of the loot not being awarded consistently.
- Fixed Ahnket’s “Ray of Obliteration” so that it will no longer be able to be cast immediately after becoming unshielded.
- Ahnket’s “Ray of Obliteration” now ticks 3 times, previously 4 times.
- Ahnket’s “Ray of Obliteration” has had its cooldown increased to 35 seconds, previously 29 seconds.
- Crucia’s “Lightning Breath” has an increased warning delay of 4 seconds, previously 2 seconds.
- The “Shield” and “Heal” temporary abilities have been changed.
- “Shield” is no longer an absorption shield. It now mitigates 75% damage from Ray of Obliteration. Note: This ability ONLY affects Ray of Obliteration, and nothing else.
- “Shield” has had its duration increased to 8 seconds, previously 4 seconds.
- “Heal” has had the initial heal increased to 30%, previously 20%.
- “Heal” has had its heal over time effect increased to 8% health per tick, previously 5% health per tick.
- “Heal” has had its cooldown decreased to 15 seconds, previously 25 seconds.
* Fixed an issue with daily meta quests auto-completing on log out or crashing.
* Trinket: Cursed Claw: Energy Manipulation no longer consumes Claw Curse.
Tout ça... ça le passe en mode facile du coup?
* Carnage icons now show in custom nameplates.
* Characters can now join the appropriate starter guild successfully no matter what shard they are on.
* Fixed the display of Guild Quests in the Guild manager window.
* The Patron Treasure Map buff now properly boosts Captured Intel.
* When characters leave an instant adventure, they will return to the point in the world where they joined the adventure.
* Instant adventure groups that have at least one member not flagged for PvP will not be sent to instant adventures on PvP shards.
* Fixed a few problematic locations where rifts could spawn in Gedlonia.
* Quest: Hinder Crucia: The Maze of Steel: Fixed an issue where the daily Hinder Crucia Maze of Steel quests did not increment the meta daily Hinder Maze of Steel quest.
* Adjusted the dyed appearance of the Ceremonial Hero armor and helmet.
* Correction de pop de failles non prévues à Geldonia.
*Correction des teintures sur le torse et casque de l'apparences "habits de Cérémonie du héros"
* Fashion Week is back! Check out the winner of the recent wardrobe contest - Primarch Narsiro's Regalia Bundle!
* Non-premium wardrobe armor bundles have been permanently reduced in price!
* The costs for increasing item caps to tier 5 has been decreased for all dimensions.
* The item caps for each tier for all personal dimensions has been increased.
* Eternal Items with Passive effects now should work as expected.
- NOTE: After leaving a warfront, these abilities currently do not turn back on automatically. Players will have to unequip and reequip the item to restart the effect. We are currently investigating fixes to this.
* La tenue gagnante du dernier concours de tenue est disponible - Primarch Narsiro's Regalia Bundle!
* Les coffres de tenue non premium ont vu leurs prix baisser de manière définitive.
- NOTE: Un bug reste: Lorsque l'on quitte un champ de bataille, l'effet passif ne se rapplique pas automatiquement, il faut déséquiper et ré-équiper l'objet pour le déclencher.
Au début j'étais un peu blasée ... Des pnj moui, des statues jolies ! Des cailloux pfff ... Et puis ... Les fleurs et les arbres !!! "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY !"
* Available for a limited time: Unlock the Forgemaster's Inferno costume helm with your first purchase of a $19.99, €19.99 or £15.49 credit pack! Offer available until October 25th.
* Abyssal Saga Quest: Blood in the Water: Now has a Primalist option.
* Porting to or logging in near Calweddi will no longer result in a client crash.
* All adventures in the Celestial queue now grant Planar Defense Force notoriety upon conclusion.
* The Corrupting Inferno that could not be attacked in Gyel fortress has been moved to a nearby location so it can be killed.
* Jusqu'au 25 Octobre, le skin du casque "Forgemaster's Inferno " est offert pour tout premier achat d'un pack de 19.99 euros de crédits.
* Toutes les aventures célestes donneront de la réputation des forces de défense planaire à la complétion. | 2019-04-24T07:49:42Z | http://www.lagardedraconique.org/t1746p175-patchnotes |
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Other firms may well employ a Web developer to generate the site and sustain it when it is in operation. Based on their skilled specialty, web developers must be proficient in programming languages and frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, Python, or PHP. Whilst the Internet was initially designed to exchange data, the improvement of the World Wide Net and its multifaceted capabilities has led to an completely new marketplace. The development of 1 web page layouts in 2010 will concentrate on private profiles with a reduced corporate influence.
We will be covering unique approaches to mobile internet site design and style, mobile web-site greatest practices, and what you can do to easily make your website mobile-optimized! Responsive web style is accomplished by a internet developer including instructions (or lines of code) to re-size the internet design and style relative to the size of the device it is being viewed on. This is most typically achieved by readjusting the width and or height of specific components on the web page like images and navigation products. Nonetheless, creating internet sites customized specifically for mobile devices indicates you are going to have the possibility to experiment with mobile-certain attributes like GPS and cameras.
As customers increasingly are utilizing their mobile devices for the very same tasks as on desktops and due to this anticipate an equal and continuous journey across devices, there is a sturdy argument that your mobile web site must be a reflection of your desktop version. Position your navigation menu under the content material if your targeted mobile users want to see altering content material promptly. A single way is to just recall information that the mobile web user has previously entered.
It is not an uncomplicated decision to establish which mobile internet site is the right choice for a corporation. Note that we are focusing on on mobile web page design and style and, to a lesser extent, app style, but not responsive websites – while we’ll touch on RWD at points. Learn from them and take inspiration but never be afraid to come up with one thing new or challenge what is already out there. A mobile web site that is designed and arranged particularly for the mobile user IS a mobile optimized web site. With so substantially expertise and talent in one spot, we know all the ideal methods about how to design and style for mobile.
So with a non- responsive site, if an individual was to view this from a mobile device or a smaller screen, they would typically have to zoom in to read text and click on hyperlinks. Technically any domain can be viewed on a mobile device, butmobi web sites claim superior usability. Study them and define how navigation is going to function on your mobile website, rather than leave it up to improvement to define. The 1st step to making a profitable mobile web site is understanding who will be viewing your web-site. When it comes to responsive design, defining your grid and breakpoints is the backbone of your mobile web site design and style.
Workplace not needed — As an employer, restricting your hiring to a tiny geographic area indicates you’re not acquiring the greatest men and women you can. You will be designing digital communication projects, making net styles, managing photography library, and much more. Navigating the funhouse that is a internet development job board can make everyone query his or her sanity. S killer method Perform property syracuse ny discover all the assist and advice you will need account medical transcriptionist. The web designer is also an artist, supplying style and inventive direction for the web pages whilst operating to meet the desires, functions and brand image of the client. He specializes in creating interactivity, usability and expertise in between the internet user and the firm.
Freelancers charge diverse rates based on the type of perform needed of them, even if they are hired by the same client. We’re hunting for a talented Net Designer – your styles will be observed by over 1 million persons a week! Without having a passion for pushing themselves forward, net developers can quickly come across themselves obsolete. Hairdressers peterborough peterborough Work home syracuse ny fresher bpo great chance a practice manager.
A net developer is an umbrella term that encompasses most of the aforementioned net development roles. A UI Developer is equivalent to a front-finish developer in that she or he uses client-side technologies to construct the front finish of a web site, but differs in that UI developers put a lot more emphasis on a website’s design and aesthetic (typography, iconography, style principles).
There are about 35 to 40 jobs I can apply to without having truly stretching my AOS or AOC and another 15 that are stretches but not ridiculous ones. You will participate in the creation of sophisticated digital experiences and need to have a fundamental understanding of front-end internet improvement. Job, akron, oh, Does clear television perform in walsenburg cold, Psychiatrist p t clifton, tn, Physician (thoracic/cardiac), richmond, va, Ucl component time psychology courses job proffessions. Finally, you will be capable to perform in an environment exactly where you can establish your worth, your costs and salary, and your hours.
BAS shall be direct digital control (DDC) for providing decrease operating costs and ease of operation. The second category consists of the variety of systems located in most reduced to middle class home/developing automation systems of nowadays and the higher end systems of earlier. OMAC and the ISA Sp88 Operating Group have created informal standards for industrial automation design in packaging plants, called Construct To Pack and Make to Build, which focus on the interoperability of industrial automation equipment in plant applications. Is differentiable beneath practical constraints in the multidimensional space, the style issue might be solved analytically. Superior high quality: most customers anticipate their house automation systems to perform all the time, devoid of bugs or errors.
Complete help of standard communication protocols such as Modbus, BACnet and LonWorks present the indicates to communicate with and integrate different developing systems and manufacturers. It has been an ongoing journey of understanding by experience as these networks have been applied in new factory designs, replacing old systems and in updating and extending existing installations. You will discover how to program Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC’s) to system and handle systems equipped with comparable sensors and actuators. In some situations, the program has to be in a position to interface with other developing systems.
Founded in 1945, ISA is a top, international, non-profit organization that is setting the standard for automation by assisting more than 30,000 worldwide members and other professionals solve challenging technical difficulties, when enhancing their leadership and individual career capabilities. Kempf: We have encountered central creating controls and manage systems that focus inward on core constructing systems and do not include scalable provisions for monitoring, tracking, and trending the usage patterns or desires of the tenants. The other massive bangers of the continent have been Malaysia with 725, South Korea with 204 and Singapore with 193 per cent.
Kempf: We are specifying heat-recovery systems and controls (air, water, refrigeration), occupancy sensors integrated into the handle of lighting and HVAC systems, demand-based ventilation systems, and controls that optimize outside-air-ventilation distribution from core building systems. Categorizing residence/constructing automation systems in basic is extremely difficult thanks to the transform in utilised technologies.
I did not comprehend this was such a typical reaction back when I initial began writing about interviewing, way back at other corporations. A survey performed by Version One located respondents cited insufficient education as the most significant lead to for failed agile projects 77 Teams have fallen into the trap of assuming the reduced processes of agile improvement compared to other methodologies such as waterfall indicates that there are no actual guidelines for agile improvement.
The agile movement is in some approaches a bit like a teenager: extremely self-conscious, checking regularly its look in a mirror, accepting few criticisms, only interested in getting with its peers, rejecting en bloc all wisdom from the previous, just because it is from the previous, adopting fads and new jargon, at times cocky and arrogant.
There are a lot of agile processes: SCRUM, Crystal, Behavior-Driven Improvement (BDD), Test-Driven Development (TDD), Feature-Driven Development (FDD), Adaptive Software Development (ADP), Intense Programming (XP), and much more… On the other hand, the vast majority of productive agile teams have drawn from all these processes to tune their own specific flavor of agility.
Thanks Steve…this was seriously extremely useful.I not too long ago had a telephone screen with Google and this really helped me for preparation.I am a Mechanical Engineer who is operating as Software program specialist and virtually illiterate about the Algorithms,information structures(But I know how to use Java Collections) and all round application engineering.
Web designers help organizations generate user-friendly interfaces and make their internet sites and mobile apps as attractive as doable. You can browse the Agency’s current freelance jobs for writers at -work/ Vitamin T gives each on-internet site and off-web site jobs. Paladin Staffing is a specialist staffing and recruitment agency devoted to obtaining freelance and direct-employ jobs for creative people in marketing and advertising, graphic design and style and social media professions. The similar can be mentioned for a freelance designer living in a huge city, who has clients with tiny to medium-sized businesses. Have to have at least five plus years’ web or mobile app architecture style practical experience.
Craiglist – While you could feel of Craiglist of getting the place to buy and sell furniture or discover a new flat, there are truly lots of jobs posted to their internet site that are great for freelancers – specially if you happen to be hunting for freelance gigs from a specific place. During the early 1990’s, immediately after the introduction of the Planet Wide Web, there had been actually just a handful of internet sites on-line.
Never mention abilities that are not relevant to internet designing and it is futile to mention any professional practical experience that doesn’t pertain to web designing. Customized student expertise with a committed academic advisor and an whole Champlain group to assist you as you pursue your degree in internet style and development on the web. With a more quickly than average job growth via 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the field of internet style and improvement presents tremendous opportunity.
Read my other Hub, Search for All Freelance Writing Jobs at where I show you how to maximize your job search. HOJ supplies services comparable with Canada, UK, Middle East, Pakistan primarily based Computer software development and internet web-site designing firms. To get began, register online and upload your resume at -jobs-search You will be necessary to develop your portfolio when you are registered and are authorized. We are seeking for a neat, responsive, sleek web page for our Oil and Gas R&D based startup. For me, there is no such issue as seeking for a web site which has the millions of job provides. | 2019-04-20T06:25:20Z | https://www.bigracesolution.com/2016/02 |
Azure scheduler is a feature that allows users to schedule activities within Azure. Scheduler works by first creating job collections. This is a great way to automate the call of web services.
Click Custom Create, choose the region and give the job a name, notice that job collections are started as standard by default and can be changed to Free later.
Press the Next button to visit the next screen, where you can define the schedule as one time or recurring as shown below.
Press the Finish button the start creating the job.
Select Scale from the menu and change the job to free. The maximum limit for recurring job is once per hour for Free tier which means the job can run at most once per hour.
And Confirm by pressing Yes.
Click the History option from the Menu, select the Job from the drop down list and status as needed.
Clicking the job history enables the View History details button at the bottom of the screen, clicking the View history details will display any errors or message from the request.
Select the job you want to modify and then it will open a page where all the properties for the job can be modified.
This deleted all the data in the table, obviously there was a large number of different values for the column data. Now the first and most obvious thought we had was that only the first line was selected and run but actually that wasn’t the case.
A common thing overlooked by developers when writing code is the datatype. In this case the data column was varchar. So what comes after 1 in varchar?
11,12,13,2,111,111 and pretty much everything else.
The below code is a quick demonstration.
Keep in mind that implicit conversions occur when performing lookups, this often adds to query performance issues and as you can see in this case it can sometime cause data issues as well. Keep in mind that when performing implicit conversion SQL converts the target column into the data type used by the user and not the other way around.
The first time someone called me a SQL Guru it felt a bit odd coz I never considered myself one. But once the initial shock had worn off, I felt extremely proud about finally having attained a title that I have been aiming for almost all my career. However over time I have realized the title brings with it an enormous responsibility and that is something I wasn’t prepared for. While this post is from my personal experience I am sure most people will be able to relate to it. Attaining recognition is a double edged sword, on the one hand it feels great to be acknowledged, while on the other hand it adds a lot of pressure to keep earning that recognition.
Extreme pride in ones work and ability, after spending years learning and doing a job people naturally take pride in it and gain confidence in their ability, 9 times out of 10 this is a good thing. But the one time it’s not good is when the same pride turns to over confidence and an opinion or belief held by the Guru starts becoming preachy. I have done this and I know it was wrong and most importantly I have tried to refrain ever since. I have had long standing beliefs , things I have learnt or trusted from day one turned on its head by someone I felt didn’t know as much as I did.
Pressure to be correct all the time, this too is 9 times out of 10 a good thing, it keeps us on our toes. Constantly forcing us to check and double check our numbers. But sometimes the pressure of losing face is more than some can bear and rather than saying Mea Culpa it turns into an all-out slugfest with egos bruised everywhere. I reserve my right to be Human and make mistakes. Being a Guru doesn’t mean you can’t be wrong, it means you will try your best to be right.
Pressure to reinvent one’s self, nobody likes to be called a one trick pony. Once you become a Guru the challenge is to stay relevant constantly updating your skills, learning and trying out new things and incorporating it into your daily life. There are still only 24 hours in a day and more knowledgeable you become the harder it gets to choose topics of substance that others aren’t already doing. This pressure is a good thing but people reaction to it have been different.
Humility, it’s a feeling that mountaineers and astronauts get when they see the world from that high up. A sense of proportion in seeing how vast the world is, after you climb the hill and realize there is a whole world still left to conquer. Gurus often get their title before they have fully mastered all aspects of their field. A DBA well known for performance tuning might only have a slight idea of BI but is still called a SQL Guru and expectation is he knows everything. While all that goes on in the Gurus mind is look at all this stuff I don’t know.
Protecting a reputation; most experts I know don’t use alias or nicknames, they use their actual names be it in blogs, online forums, websites, social media etc. They put everything on the table, every time. With this comes a level of accountability as well as a nagging sensation you’re being quoted out of context or referenced and linked back to at the drop of a hat. For every point being argued I am sure we will find one expert for and one against it. People then leave it to the experts to slug it out.
Always being nice. Last time I checked I am human and there are still plenty of things in the world that annoy me to no end. However being a guru means that people also look up to you. Try to emulate you and in this comes one of our biggest challenges, being nice all the time. We need to always conduct ourselves professionally no matter how pissed off we are. We might want to scream our heads off at how stubborn the other guy is being but we can’t coz it sets a bad example and also only brings down others opinion of us. Every once in a while we explode only to write a sheepish email about how sorry we are and how we should know better, but in the end we are still human and will still get angry, frustrated or just have one of those days.
So in summary what I am trying to say is being a Guru is not the end of the journey as most people believe. It’s actually the start of a much more epic one. One that requires a lot of the values that got us started along our paths and we lost along the way. From a time when we didn’t know better, weren’t afraid to admit it and couldn’t care less what everybody else thought.
So call me an Amateur any day!! Coz it derives from Amare which mean to love, in other words “A person who does something for the love of it”.
Partitioning is a great feature for improving the way we manage our data. However we can also improve performance of select statements from the table as well. This requires a good understanding of the way partitioning works and how properly placing files on the disk can improve the IO performance. One common way that partitioning can improve performance for loading data is the sliding window method but in this post I am mainly talking about how to improve read performance. Before showing the improvements from partitioning it’s important to visit the indexes since a common belief is that a good index can provide faster data access than partitioning can.
We start off with a table that has 8.9 M rows in it.
As a benchmark I try fetching data for all customers of a particular age, the distribution of data by age is shown below.
CPU time = 3525 ms, elapsed time = 22752 ms.
So we have a baseline of 17 sec with a table scan as the execution plan.
CPU time = 0 ms, elapsed time = 26 ms.
CPU time = 4181 ms, elapsed time = 28139 ms.
Next we add a Non Clustered index on the REF_AGE Column to improve the ability seek and filter rows by age. Shouldn’t this prevent the need to do a scan on the entire table?
CPU time = 0 ms, elapsed time = 5 ms.
CPU time = 3900 ms, elapsed time = 26736 ms.
Even after filtering for rows with age 30 SQL still needs to fetch all the remaining columns , this will require an expensive key lookup and wasn’t worth it.
So when it comes to data warehousing just creating the index on the column doesn’t ensure it gets used especially since DW queries unlike OLTP queries end up fetching a significant portion of the data anyway. Now you could argue that no business case will fetch all columns from the table so the index should have included columns. And this would be right for an OLTP system , but in DW systems we design fact tables and all columns in the fact table are used in some query or the other and creating a different set of indexes with different included columns for each scenario is not practical or efficient and degrades Load performance too.
CPU time = 2652 ms, elapsed time = 15741 ms.
As you can see after two indexes and query hints we have brought down the execution plan to 15 sec. However imagine how many more indexes will be needed before all reports are done.
CPU time = 20592 ms, elapsed time = 20445 ms.
A single columnstore index can be used to answer any query off the fact table now. So I don’t need to create a large number of indexes on my fact table for all my other reports also I don’t need to include columns which creates additional copies of the data and increases the size of the DW. CS indexes work much faster when the data is being summarized, a common use case for DW queries.
Here I am not summarizing my data therefore there is no benefit from CPU batch mode execution and since I am fetching all the columns from the table there is no columns being eliminated. If I execute the same query with only half the columns in the table the execution time also drops to about half.
Now that we know how indexes will affect our query the next step is to create a partitioned table and see the improvements. After dropping all the indexes I create two different file groups, the primary FG now contains only the rows where age is 30 and the rest of the data has been moved to another file. Also the primary filegroup now has 4 files in it.
CPU time = 3806 ms, elapsed time = 24412 ms.
After executing the query I see that the performance has degraded to 25 sec, hmm so it looks like partitioning doesn’t improve performance?
But see what happens when I execute the same query this time forcing parallelism and thus using multiple threads.
CPU time = 1809 ms, elapsed time = 16313 ms.
The execution time came down to 16 seconds, this is the improvement obtained by just placing the data on multiple files. In my case I am using a single SSD drive on which all these files are located , image if there are multiple dedicated DISK LUNs the improvement would be better.
In this lengthy post I explain how to setup Azure AD Authenticated users such that they may be used to connect to SQL Database hosted in Azure. Users of Windows azure will note that the only way till now to connect with SQL database hosted in Azure was via User names and passwords created for logins. This is the typical SQL authentication format. However with large number of users connecting to the database and multiple applications connecting to the same database it can be cumbersome to manage SQL logins within the Azure database. A long time need for Azure developers was to allow some form of AD authenticated users to access the database since that was the industry standard for a long time. A place where all users can be managed from one place.
With the latest preview we are now able to add AD or domain authenticated users in Azure and then map them to contained users within the Azure database. Here is how you can do it.
Create an Azure AD and an Account.
Click the domain into which you want to add the user, you can repeat this step as many times as you need once for each user. In our case we will need an Database Admin AD Account as well as a Database Contained AD user account.
Create temporary password for the user in the below screen and share it with the user. The user will be prompted to change the password when they login next time.
Once created a domain cannot be delete until all users under the domain are deleted first.
Enter the Username and Password details for the Server Admin in the screen below, this is not the same as the AD account that was created in the previous Steps, this is the Azure equivalent of SA account.
Make sure the Check box in red is checked, this will automatically create the database as a V12, if you already have a server you can upgrade it as shown here.
Once the database is created we need to add our AD user as the Admin for this SQL Server.
Connect to your Azure database by selecting the database from within the management portal.
Press Select at the bottom of the scree followed by the Save button marked in Red.
Now you have added an AD Authenticated Admin account for your SQL Server instance. This azure account is important because only this account can create a contained user that authenticates with Azure AD.
Once installed you need to connect to your Azure database using the newly created and permission AD account.
Press Connect and open a new query window.
Before adding a contained DB user, go back to the first step and add an AD account for the contained user, the steps are exactly the same as creating the AD Admin Account.
Once the account is created you can start connecting using the contained user account, be sure to connect to the user database instead of the master database. Also if you get a message saying Password is expired make sure you’re not using the default temporary password generated by the Azure and that you have changed the password to a new value.
And that’s all there is to it, now you have AD authenticated users connecting to SQL Azure. This is especially usefule for connecting across domains where trust relationships are a problem.
Within the new portal, Click SQL Database> then the name of the database > followed by Server Version and then Upgrade this Server.
After verification there should be no more messages. Simply Press OK at the bottom of the screen.
When creating a new server in Azure you can simply check the box at the bottom of the screen where it asks the DBA username and password.
For a list of whats new in Azure V12 click here.
Very Large datasets GB to TB – Where to get them for free?
Every once in a while I need a very large dataset to work with, most often this required creating dummy data using one of my favorite data generators called Mockaroo. But sometimes a few GBs is not enough, at these times I turn to a little know feature of AWS (Amazon Web Services). AWS has provided a repository of public datasets that run in the 100s of GB ranging on everything from Climate data , NASA Satellite data , Census data , Economic Indicators, Transportation data etc.
Keep in mind the data is so huge the only way it can be provided is as an AWS Snapshot from which you need to create a volume. The size of the dataset range from 15 GB to 541 TB so there is something for everybody. Some of my favorites include Wikipedia Stats, Transportation data and Daily Global weather data.
A key part of every DBAs jobs is maintaining uptime. A DBAs capability is measured by the amount of Uptime he is able to ensure on servers he manages. An important part of this is calculating the uptime of the servers. While it might sound simple over the years I have seen different calculations being used to derive the uptime for a server.
However depending on where you work the definition of “down time” differs. For example a hosting provider doesn’t see it as downtime when the server is offline during non-business hours. Also the same amount of downtime might indicate different number of nines if measured over a leap year. Planned deployments are generally not accounted for under downtime since downtime implies unexpected shutdown. Sometimes the server doesn’t have to be down it simply needs to be unresponsive. If the server is unresponsive it doesn’t get counted under downtime since technically the server is still up, however the end user sees it as down, also its more difficult to measure unresponsiveness. Similarly network downtime doesn’t count as DB down time even if the DB is unavailable since there is nothing to fix on the database side.
Most often the DBA measures only the database uptime, if a server fails the down time of the server might be significantly higher compared to the database downtime e.g. when using clustering or mirroring.
While to concept of 5 nines is good to hear from a business stand point, the true measure of Server and Infrastructure health is “Mean time between failures”, a term the airline industry is very familiar with. The mean time between failures as its name suggests is the time duration between failures, put another way it’s the frequency with which errors happen on the system. How is this a true metric?
To achieve 4 nines you have a window of 52 min a year. This means you can have 1 failure of 52 minutes or 10 failures of 5.2 minutes each. This means in best case scenario the MTBF is either 1 year or in the worst case its once a month. Considering the above information would you still feel safe deploying mission critical databases to the latter? A drawback of the MTBF is that it doesn’t measure the duration or the impact of the failure, this means you can have a failure that lasted 2 days and then not have any other failures for the rest of the year and still end up with a number that looks really good. A combination of the two would provide a more complete picture on how frequently and how badly a server is affected by outages.
So the next time you decide to go with a hosting or cloud provider find out the much advertised Nines and the MBF before taking a call.
4 day training for MS SQL Server SSRS and SSIS with Wells Fargo in Whitefield Bangalore. It’s going to be awesome. Going to create and SQL Server Monitoring Application using SSIS and SSRS and hopefully a few other different types of Reports too.
Have you seen these ?? | 2019-04-25T14:05:23Z | http://www.enabledbusinesssolutions.com/blogs/2015/10/ |
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Checking out the casings on deal at the website is absolutely basic as well.
Next off, you require to guarantee you’re choosing a form that praises your face. A rounder face could should try a square shape as well as the other way around.
A distinction in the color of a side can affect the shape to look absolutely adjusted. It’s essential to try a few hues in the sizes and shape that fits you best. Concentrating on the tone of your skin is essential given that a few shades can be exceedingly extreme, or in actuality clean you out.
Consider your personal design while selecting a covering. On the occasion that you incline toward quirkier outfit, you can likely attract off an insane side. Although that despite whether your design is regularly excellent – loco glasses could be an incredible technique to create a perception!
They’re focused on bringing you spectacles at a sensible expense, despite whether your remedy is extra entangled than a lot of.
The frameworks are light and also slim. You can get the perfect fit making use of Warby Parker’s net estimating instruments.
Warby Parker uses simply the finest products obtainable. No matter of whether they’re making the frameworks from Japanese titanium or Italian cellulose acetic acid derivation, the developers visit the globe to bring customers the finest quality item.
Warby Parker’s websites make glasses on order and are readily available online. All you need is a new solution from an eye doctor. You can browse online for Warby Parker locations in the USA. Parker Warby eyeglass frames are also offered complimentary delivery as well as returns. Merely make certain that you maintain the initial receipt.
At Warby Parker, their motto is acquired a pair as well as provides a set. The act of basically offering glasses is consistently a temporary remedy.
Glasses have actually made some fantastic progression given that the difficult structures you used as a child or the specs your grandfather can never ever appear to find. Massive as well as square or superbly round cases in tortoiseshell, dark or also great colors have proceeded towards ending up being a trend and not just for trendy people and library sweethearts.
The most effective top qualities Warby Parker sunglasses are small as well as smart; along with they are quickly readily available online. Along these lines, not solely will you look magnificent in your new Warby Parker designs; nonetheless you’ll in addition realize that your cash money is being used to wonderful motivations also.
Warby Parker directions Not solely could an extraordinary match of glasses look great, yet they could relax very easy, enable you to see above anything you ever before have, and can influence you to neglect that even you are using them. All the same, there are, certainly, a great deal of glasses brands out there as well as they’re not all comparable.
Warby Parker directions That, along with eyeglasses, can obtain fairly pricey so you’ll most likely should take into consideration the glasses you purchase prior to you get them.
Parker Warby eyeglass frames supply single-vision as well as bifocal centerpieces. It doesn’t generally offer trifocal focal factors, so you’ll have to remember that Warby Parker directions .
Warby Parker directions Parker Warby eyeglass frames have a large amount placing everything on the line including sharp retro-hip cases, a smooth website, impressive service highlighting a home attempt the program, free sending as well as returns, as well as insurgent buzz that has actually been helping a substantial length of time.
An additional undeniable offering point for customers is value: without a doubt the majority of Warby Parker glasses supplies a sensible as well as inquisitively at a rate of $95.
Warby Parker directions One of the ideal points regarding Warby Parker Sunglasses is that it brags an effort on-at-home program. Warby Parker directions The program basically allows you to pick a strong 5 frameworks, after which you’ll obtain 5 days to test them out.
Warby Parker directions Finding out the size is the least demanding component because of the reality that one of the most essential estimate is the width of the structure. When you understand where you stay within the scope of slim to large, you ought to have a couple of options. Some of which can be somewhat balanced.
The glasses it offers are of excellent and also high quality. Every pair of glasses includes anti-glare as well as anti-scratch finishes in addition to UV security at no additional expense, which is an exceptionally suitable choice.
Next, you have to guarantee you’re picking a form that praises your face. A rounder face might require to try a square shape and the other way around.
A difference in the shade of a side can affect the form to look totally readjusted. It’s crucial to attempt a number of shades in the form and also size that fits you best. Concentrating on the tone of your skin is necessary considering that a couple of colors can be excessively harsh, or in reality laundry you out.
Consider your very own design while choosing a covering. On the occasion that you incline toward quirkier attire, you could likely drain an insane edge. Although that no matter whether your design is regularly excellent – loco glasses can be an incredible method to develop an impact!
They’re concentrated on bringing you spectacles at a reasonable price, regardless of whether your treatment is more entangled compared to most.
With concerns to glasses designs, Warby Parker is a genius. They supply a large array of designs, consisting of retro, timeless, aviator, vintage and also cat-eye.
From metal to pastels, the layout can be found in a selection of shades. Two-tone as well as tortoise ranges are in addition easily accessible.
Warby Parker’s eyeglasses are very easy to recognize. The frameworks are light and also slim. Planned to safeguard your eyes, the prime focus are made utilizing UV security, hostile to scratch, and against glare advancement.
You can obtain the perfect fit utilizing Warby Parker’s internet estimating instruments also. There’s a casing for each face compose! They run in width from slim, medium, and also broad, in enhancement, to deciding amongst common and reduced nose connect fits.
Warby Parker uses simply the finest products available. No matter of whether they’re making the frames from Japanese titanium or Italian cellulose acetic acid derivation, the developers check out the globe to bring customers the finest quality item.
Warby Parker’s sites make glasses on order and also are readily available online. Parker Warby eyeglass frames are furthermore provided totally free shipping as well as returns.
At Warby Parker, their adage is bought a set and offers a set. Continually, they figure what number of glasses has been sold at that factor coordinate that number as a present to their non-benefit partners. The act of basically offering eyeglasses is on a regular basis a short-term service. Preparing group members to disperse eyeglasses has long-haul advantages. By offering these individuals function abilities, they’ve been enabled to have a long-lasting effect.
Eyeglasses have made some remarkable development because the difficult structures you used as a kid or the specifications your grandfather could never ever show up to discover. Big as well as square or superbly rounded cases in tortoiseshell, dark and even fantastic shades have actually proceeded towards ending up being a pattern and not just for fashionable people and library sweethearts.
The very best top qualities Warby Parker sunglasses are modest and also wise; in addition to they are easily readily available online. Along these lines, not exclusively will you look fantastic in your new Warby Parker designs; nevertheless you’ll additionally realize that your money is being utilized towards excellent motivations.
Warby Parker directions Not specifically could an incredible match of glasses look wonderful, yet they could relax simple, allow you to see premium to anything you ever before have, and could influence you to overlook that even you are wearing them. Be that as it may, there are, obviously, a great deal of eyewear brands out there as well as they’re not all equal.
Warby Parker directions That, in addition to glasses, could get fairly pricey so you’ll presumably should take into consideration the glasses you buy before you obtain them.
Parker Warby eyeglass frames offer single-vision along with bifocal centerpieces. It does not typically use trifocal prime focus, so you’ll have to bear in mind that Warby Parker directions .
Warby Parker directions Parker Warby eyeglass frames have a wonderful deal placing all of it on the line consisting of sharp retro-hip cases, a smooth site, impressive service highlighting a residence attempt the program, free sending and also returns, and also anarchical buzz that has been working for a considerable size of time.
One more obvious offering factor for customers is worth: without a doubt most of Warby Parker glasses provides a practical and inquisitively at a price of $95.
Warby Parker directions One of the ideal things regarding Warby Parker Sunglasses is that it boasts an attempt on-at-home program. Warby Parker directions The program essentially allows you to choose a strong five structures, after which you’ll get five days to test them out.
Warby Parker directions Determining the size is the least demanding part in light of the fact that the most vital estimate is the size of the framework. When you make feeling of where you continue to be within the extent of slim to vast, you ought to have a few selections. Some of which can be rather balanced.
The glasses it uses are of good as well as high top quality. Every set of glasses includes anti-glare as well as anti-scratch finishes together with UV protection at no additional expense, which is an incredibly decent choice.
Looking with the coverings available at the website is genuinely basic as well.
Next off, you should guarantee you’re choosing a form that compliments your face. A rounder face might require to attempt a square form and vice versa.
A difference in the shade of a side can influence the shape to look completely adjusted. It’s essential to attempt a number of colors in the shape as well as size that fits you finest. Concentrating on the tone of your skin is important since a few hues could be excessively extreme, or in reality wash you out.
Consider your very own style while choosing a casing. In the occasion that you incline toward quirkier clothing, you can likely drain a crazy side. Regardless of the fact that no matter whether your style is regularly exemplary – loco glasses could be an awesome method to create an impression!
They’re concentrated on bringing you eyeglasses at a sensible cost, no matter whether your treatment is a lot more knotted compared to the majority of.
With regards to glasses designs, Warby Parker is a genius. They provide a wide variety of designs, consisting of retro, classic, pilot, vintage and cat-eye.
From metallic to pastels, the style can be found in a range of shades. Two-tone and also turtle varieties are in addition easily accessible.
The frames are light as well as slim. You could get the perfect fit utilizing Warby Parker’s web estimating tools.
Warby Parker makes use of simply the best products easily accessible. No matter of whether they’re making the structures from Japanese titanium or Italian cellulose acetic acid derivation, the developers see the globe to bring customers the best top quality product.
At Warby Parker, their adage is acquired a pair as well as gives a set. The act of primarily providing spectacles is consistently a temporary service.
Spectacles have made some fantastic progress since the troublesome structures you used as a youngster or the specifications your grandpa could never appear to locate. Significant and also square or magnificently rounded casings in tortoiseshell, dark and even fantastic shades have advanced towards becoming a trend and also not only for stylish individuals and also library sweeties.
The ideal top qualities Warby Parker sunglasses are small and wise; in enhancement to they are quickly offered online. Along these lines, not solely will you look wonderful in your brand-new Warby Parker designs; nonetheless you’ll furthermore understand that your cash is being utilized in the direction of terrific inspirations.
Warby Parker directions Not solely can an incredible match of glasses look terrific, yet they can rest very easy, enable you to see above anything you ever before have, as well as could affect you to forget that also you are using them. Be that as it may, there are, clearly, a great deal of eyeglasses brand names out there and also they’re not all equal.
Warby Parker directions That, as well as glasses, could get fairly expensive so you’ll probably need to consider the glasses you purchase before you obtain them.
Parker Warby eyeglass frames supply single-vision along with bifocal prime focus. It does not normally offer trifocal centerpieces, so you’ll need to bear in mind that Warby Parker directions .
Warby Parker directions Parker Warby eyeglass frames have a great bargain putting everything on the line including sharp retro-hip cases, a smooth website, outstanding service highlighting a home attempt the program, free sending out as well as returns, as well as anarchical buzz that has actually been helping a considerable size of time.
An additional indisputable offering point for buyers is worth: by much most of Warby Parker glasses supplies a practical and also inquisitively at a rate of $95.
Warby Parker directions One of the ideal features of Warby Parker Sunglasses is that it boasts an effort on-at-home program. The program basically enables you to select a strong five frames, after which you’ll obtain 5 days to check them out. After the five days, stand out the glasses back in the casing with the tag of delivery as well as you’re prepared.
Warby Parker directions Determining the dimension is the least demanding part because of that one of the most important estimation is the width of the framework. When you make feeling of where you stay within the range of thin to large, you should have a few options. Some of which could be rather well balanced.
The glasses it supplies are of great as well as high quality. Every pair of glasses features anti-glare and anti-scratch finishes in addition to UV security at no added expense, which is an incredibly good choice.
Next off, you should guarantee you’re picking a form that praises your face. A rounder face could should attempt a square shape and also the other way around.
A difference in the shade of a side could affect the shape to look completely adjusted. It’s important to try a number of shades in the form as well as size that fits you finest. Concentrating on the tone of your skin is essential given that a couple of colors can be exceedingly harsh, or in actuality clean you out.
Consider your personal design while choosing a case. On the occasion that you incline toward quirkier outfit, you could likely draw off an insane edge. Although that no matter of whether your design is regularly excellent – loco glasses can be an incredible method to create an impact!
They’re concentrated on bringing you eyeglasses at a practical price, regardless of whether your treatment is much more entangled than the majority of.
With regards to glasses layouts, Warby Parker is a genius. They supply a vast array of designs, including retro, classic, aviator, vintage and cat-eye.
Warby Parker’s glasses are understandable. The frameworks are light and thin. Intended to safeguard your eyes, the centerpieces are made making use of UV protection, hostile to scratch, and versus glow innovation.
You could obtain the excellent fit making use of Warby Parker’s web estimating instruments as well. There’s a casing for each and every face write! They run in width from thin, medium, and vast, on top of that, to determining among conventional and reduced nose connect fits.
Warby Parker uses simply the ideal materials available. Regardless of whether they’re making the structures from Japanese titanium or Italian cellulose acetic acid derivation, the developers go to the world to bring clients the best top quality thing.
Warby Parker’s sites make glasses on order and are available online. All you call for is a brand-new remedy from an eye doctor. You can browse online for Warby Parker places in the USA. Parker Warby eyeglass frames are furthermore used totally free shipping as well as returns. Simply make certain that you keep the first invoice.
At Warby Parker, their adage is acquired a set and also provides a set. Constantly, they figure just what variety of glasses has been offered at that factor coordinate that number as a gift to their non-benefit associates. The act of basically offering eyeglasses is frequently a temporary service. However, preparing group participants to distribute spectacles has long-haul advantages. By providing these people work capabilities, they’ve been enabled to have an enduring result.
Glasses have made some incredible progression because the burdensome frames you put on as a youngster or the specifications your grandpa can never appear to find. Huge and square or magnificently round coverings in tortoiseshell, dark or perhaps dazzling colors have actually progressed towards becoming a trend and also not just for fashionable people as well as library sweeties.
The very best qualities Warby Parker sunglasses are moderate and clever; along with they are quickly available online. Along these lines, not exclusively will you look remarkable in your brand-new Warby Parker styles; nonetheless you’ll furthermore recognize that your cash money is being made use of to wonderful inspirations.
Warby Parker directions Not exclusively can an unbelievable match of glasses look terrific, yet they could rest simple, enable you to see superior to anything you ever have, and could influence you to neglect that even you are using them. All the same, there are, obviously, a great deal of eyewear brand names available and they’re not all comparable.
Warby Parker directions That, as well as glasses, can obtain fairly pricey so you’ll presumably should consider the glasses you purchase before you get them.
Parker Warby eyeglass frames provide single-vision as well as bifocal centerpieces. It doesn’t normally offer trifocal centerpieces, so you’ll should bear in mind that Warby Parker directions .
Warby Parker directions Parker Warby eyeglass frames have a large amount putting all of it on the line consisting of sharp retro-hip casings, a smooth website, outstanding service highlighting a home try the program, cost-free sending and returns, and anarchical buzz that has been benefiting a substantial size of time.
One more obvious offering factor for buyers is value: by much most of Warby Parker glasses offers a reasonable as well as inquisitively at a price of $95.
Warby Parker directions One of the best things about Warby Parker Sunglasses is that it brags an effort on-at-home program. Warby Parker directions The program essentially enables you to select a solid 5 frameworks, after which you’ll get five days to check them out.
Warby Parker directions Identifying the dimension is the least demanding part due to that the most essential estimate is the width of the framework. When you understand where you remain within the extent of thin to wide, you should have a pair of options. Some of which could be somewhat balanced.
The glasses it provides are of excellent and also top quality. Every pair of glasses comes with anti-glare as well as anti-scratch coverings along with UV defense at no additional price, which is a remarkably suitable choice.
Next off, you require to guarantee you’re selecting a form that praises your face. A rounder face could should try a square shape and the other way around.
A distinction in the shade of an edge can influence the form to look totally readjusted. It’s crucial to try a couple of tones in the sizes and shape that fits you finest. Concentrating on the tone of your skin is important considering that a few colors can be exceedingly extreme, or in actuality wash you out.
Consider your personal design while picking a covering. In the event that you incline toward quirkier attire, you can likely drain an insane side. Although that despite whether your design is consistently exemplary – loco glasses can be an incredible technique to develop a perception!
They’re concentrated on bringing you eyeglasses at a practical cost, no matter of whether your solution is more knotted compared to many.
The structures are light and thin. You can get the optimal fit utilizing Warby Parker’s web estimating instruments.
Try not to offer the affordable costs a chance to deceive you. These spectacles are not successfully made. Warby Parker utilizes simply the most effective materials accessible. No matter whether they’re making the frameworks from Japanese titanium or Italian cellulose acetic acid derivation, the developers go to the world to bring clients the most effective top quality product. Warby Parker directions Amidst the growth procedure, every acetic frame is cleansed manually with a German wax substance prior to being rolled for a minimum of three days.
Warby Parker’s sites make glasses on order as well as are readily available online. All you need is a brand-new solution from an optometrist. You can look online for Warby Parker places in the USA. Parker Warby eyeglass frames are also offered cost-free delivery and also returns. Simply guarantee that you keep the first invoice.
Eyeglasses have actually made some incredible progression because the challenging structures you wore as a youngster or the specifications your grandpa can never ever show up to discover. Massive as well as square or wonderfully rounded housings in tortoiseshell, dark or perhaps dazzling colors have proceeded toward becoming a fad and also not only for trendy individuals as well as library sweeties.
The best qualities Warby Parker sunglasses are moderate as well as clever; along with they are quickly readily available online. Along these lines, not exclusively will you look magnificent in your new Warby Parker styles; however you’ll in addition understand that your money is being made use of towards great motivations too.
Warby Parker directions Not specifically could an incredible suit of glasses look fantastic, yet they can relax very easy, enable you to see premium to anything you ever before have, and can affect you to overlook that even you are wearing them. However, there are, undoubtedly, a lot of eyeglasses brand names out there and they’re not all equal.
Warby Parker directions That, in addition to eyewear, can get fairly pricey so you’ll probably have to think about the glasses you acquire before you get them.
Parker Warby eyeglass frames provide single-vision in addition to bifocal prime focus. It does not usually use trifocal focal points, so you’ll have to keep in mind that Warby Parker directions .
Warby Parker directions Parker Warby eyeglass frames have a good deal placing everything on the line consisting of sharp retro-hip housings, a smooth website, fantastic solution highlighting a home attempt the program, complimentary sending out and also returns, and also insurgent buzz that has been benefiting a considerable length of time.
One more indisputable offering point for purchasers is value: without a doubt most of Warby Parker glasses provides a practical and also inquisitively at a rate of $95.
Warby Parker directions Among the finest aspects of Warby Parker Sunglasses is that it brags an effort on-at-home program. The program basically allows you to pick a solid 5 frames, after which you’ll get five days to test them out. After the five days, stand out the glasses back in the casing with the tag of delivery as well as you’re ready.
It additionally has good plans on the off possibility that you don’t such as the purchased frames; you can return them in 30 days.
Warby Parker directions Figuring out the size is the least demanding component due to that the most vital evaluation is the size of the frame. When you understand where you continue to be within the range of thin to vast, you ought to have a couple of selections. Several of which can be rather well balanced.
The glasses it uses are of excellent and also top quality. Every set of glasses includes anti-glare as well as anti-scratch coatings together with UV defense at no added cost, which is an extremely good option.
Next off, you should guarantee you’re picking a shape that praises your face. A rounder face may should try a square form and also vice versa.
A distinction in the shade of a side can influence the form to look totally changed. It’s vital to try a few colors in the form and also dimension that fits you best. Concentrating on the tone of your skin is crucial considering that a couple of tones can be excessively severe, or in actuality laundry you out.
Consider your personal design while selecting a casing. In case you incline towards quirkier outfit, you can likely attract off a crazy side. Despite the fact that despite whether your design is regularly exemplary – loco glasses can be an incredible method to create an impression!
They’re concentrated on bringing you eyeglasses at a sensible cost, no matter whether your solution is a lot more knotted compared to many.
With regards to glasses styles, Warby Parker is a brilliant. They provide a wide variety of styles, including retro, traditional, pilot, vintage and cat-eye.
Warby Parker’s spectacles are understandable. The frameworks are light and slim. Meant to secure your eyes, the centerpieces are made using UV protection, hostile to scrape, and also against glare innovation.
You could get the suitable fit making use of Warby Parker’s net estimating instruments too. There’s a casing for each and every face compose! They run in width from slim, medium, and also vast, in addition, to choosing among basic as well as low nose link fits.
Warby Parker uses simply the best materials accessible. No matter of whether they’re making the frameworks from Japanese titanium or Italian cellulose acetic acid derivation, the developers visit the world to bring clients the finest top quality item.
Warby Parker’s websites make glasses on order as well as are offered online. All you call for is a new treatment from an optometrist. You can look online for Warby Parker areas in the USA. Parker Warby eyeglass frames are furthermore used free shipping and returns. Simply ensure that you keep the first receipt.
At Warby Parker, their slogan is acquired a pair and provides a pair. Consistently, they figure just what number of glasses has been cost that factor coordinate that number as a present to their non-benefit partners. The act of primarily offering spectacles is frequently a short-term service. Preparing group participants to disperse eyeglasses has long-haul benefits. By giving these people function capacities, they’ve been made it possible for to have an enduring impact.
Spectacles have made some remarkable progression since the burdensome frameworks you put on as a kid or the specifications your grandfather can never appear to discover. Massive and also square or fantastically round coverings in tortoiseshell, dark or perhaps fantastic shades have actually progressed toward coming to be a trend and not just for fashionable individuals and library sweethearts.
The ideal top qualities Warby Parker sunglasses are moderate as well as wise; along with they are conveniently readily available online. Along these lines, not exclusively will you look fantastic in your brand-new Warby Parker styles; however you’ll additionally recognize that your cash is being used in the direction of great motivations too. | 2019-04-21T04:27:31Z | https://themotherscircle.org/warby-parker-directions/ |
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