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Yemen: Land and People by Sarah Searight and Jane Taylor
In response to the British–Yemeni Society’s call for donations towards the ongoing Yemen Crisis Appeal, the authors of Yemen: Land and People(Al-Uzza Books, 2007 revised edition) offer signed copies of their publication at the discounted price of £ 18.00 (including postage & packaging within the UK; with a £ 10.00 supplement for Europe and £ 10.75 for Rest of the World).
At such a critical time in its history, Jane Taylor’s photographs and Sarah Searight’s text crucially remind us of the extraordinary beauty and rich heritage of Arabia Felix. The book is a record of the dignity of the Yemeni people and their intrinsic decorative sense within that magnificent landscape, as well as being a prayer for what that country must once again become. With a foreword by Tim Mackintosh-Smith and text on Soqotra by Miranda Morris.
Those wishing to obtain the book, please send in your order by e-mail to [email protected]. Payment can be arranged either by cheque or bank transfer.
Yemen: Land and People highlights in words and pictures the culture and history of this remarkable country. Known to the Romans as ‘Arabia Felix’ for its fertility, it lies in the path of the monsoon rains that water its highlands as well as on the trade routes between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Both account for the rich variety of people and customs. ‘Fair in its water and its air’, wrote an earlier traveller.
The book takes the reader on a geographical and historical tour through the ancient kingdoms that fringe the desert, illuminates the medieval world of the central and southern highlands, and explores the links with the wider world developed from Aden and the Hadhramaut.
Superbly illustrated by Jane Taylor’s photographs, with a foreword by Tim Mackintosh-Smith and essay on the Indian Ocean island of Soqotra by anthropologist Miranda Morris, this book will surely inspire its readers to visit Yemen for themselves.
Reviews:
The best introduction to the country… dwells on the ancient history, gallops through the millennium and a half of Muslim Yemen and presents a series of chapters that focus on the country’s different regions. Both text and photographs bring out the humour and dignity of the people –– Asian Affairs
A rare example of a book where pictures and text really complement each other and where the text can be read for its own sake… a first-rate introduction –– Dialogue
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Putting Up More A guide to canning jams, relishes, chutneys, pickles, sauces, and salsas
Here is nothing more satisfying as savoring the contents of a jar that contains your own specially prepared, home-canned goodness.Turn the simplest meals into exciting restaurant-grade presentations with Putting Up More: A Guide to Canning Jams, Relishes, Chutneys, Pickles, Sauces, and Salsas by Stephen Palmer Dowdney. This sequel to his first book, Putting Up, provides additional recipes as well as excellent advice on how to safely can jams, relishes, chutneys, pickles, sauces, and salsas.
High-Logic Scanahand Premium.5.0.0.286
High-Logic Scanahand Premium 5.0.0.286 | 9 MbIts never been easier for Windows users to make their own custom fonts. Scanahand creates fonts that you can use in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint,
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REFILE: Lung problems in Iraq, Afghanistan vets are 'real'
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Shortness of breath and reduced fitness among some vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan may be caused by lung damage from smoke, sandstorms and toxins, a new study suggests.
Researchers who performed lung biopsies on 38 vets with unexplained breathing problems found a form of tissue damage -- called constrictive bronchiolitis -- that is rare in young adults and doesn't show up in standard tests. In all but one case, a "lacy black pigment" also coated the delicate lung surfaces.
Dr. Robert Miller of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center said the cases, which he has been gathering for years, are apparently caused by exposure to airborne toxins during deployment.
Previous research has suggested that service in the Middle East increases the risk of breathing problems.
Among the volunteers examined in the new study -- primarily members of the 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell, Kentucky -- most had long-term exposure to a sulfur-mine fire that burned for 30 days in 2003 near Mosul, Miller and his colleagues write in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In all, Miller's team tested 80 previously fit soldiers who no longer met the Army's physical fitness standards; 49 agreed to undergo an invasive lung biopsy procedure after chest X-rays and other standard tests did not reveal the cause of their problems.
All 49 had tissue samples that were judged to be abnormal. The diagnosis of constrictive bronchiolitis - a thickening of the walls of the smallest lung passages, the bronchioles -- was made in 38 cases (35 men and 3 women). Seven were active smokers and 6 were former smokers.
The condition doesn't show up in standard tests of breathing capacity, according to Miller, because the soldiers probably begin their deployment with so much extra lung function -- perhaps 115% of normal -- that their damaged lungs still perform in a range that's considered normal for non-athletes.
But when compared to a sample of 69 unaffected active duty soldiers, the soldiers Miller examined had weaker lung function -- averaging 87 percent in a test of how much of the air in their lungs they could expel in one second, compared with 99 percent in the control group.
Of the 38 diagnosed with constrictive bronchiolitis, half left the service with a disability rating and 58 percent reported having shortness of breath after climbing one flight of stairs.
"My concern is there are too many people whose symptoms are being dismissed because their X-rays and pulmonary function tests are normal or near normal," he said. "My personal agenda is to get these guys seriously evaluated."
The lung biopsies performed in Miller's study require more than a month of recovery time and cost $50,000 to $60,000. And there is no treatment for the soldiers' condition, Miller said. "It's a fixed scarring of the small airway. It's not irritation, inflammation or swelling."
Nonetheless, Miller wants doctors to keep his findings in mind.
"If you have someone with unexplained shortness of breath who served in the Middle East, you have to consider constrictive bronchiolitis as a possible cause, even if X-rays and pulmonary function tests are normal," he told Reuters Health.
Earlier results with a smaller number of cases were reported in 2008 at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society.
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Plans For Insidious 2 Take A Virtual Step Forwards
There’s never much of a risk involved when registering a domain name, but you’ll notice that movie studios still only tend to do it with good reason.
Consider Sony Pictures, for example. A couple of months back, Fusible caught them registering domain names around the word Skyfall, some of them explicitly mentioning James Bond, and so it was we first found out the name of 007’s next adventure.
This week, they’ve locked down domains associated with Insidious 2, strongly suggesting that a sequel to the kinda-sorta haunted house movie will be announced before long.
The first film, which I enjoyed considerably more than any of James Wan‘s other pictures, has been hugely profitable, returning US box office of over $54 million against a spend of $1.5 million. Sony should have gone ahead and registered Insidious 3 domains while they were at it.
Incidentally, MarkMonitor, the domain registration company used to execute these acquisitions for Sony, recently also nabbed a series of Pinocchio: The Movie domains, very possibly associated with the Gris Grimly stop-motion Pinocchio film that’s in production now; and some more to do with something called The Gold Mist Movie too. I’d guess that last one refers in some way to Gold Mist Avenue in Vegas.
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2 December 2005 -- A Russian newspaper reports that Iran has signed a deal to buy Russian tactical surface-to-air missile systems.
The "Vedomosti" daily says Iran is to buy 29 TOR-M1 systems, designed to bring down aircraft and guided missiles at low altitudes. In its report, the daily cites several unnamed sources in Russia's defense industry. It says an official at the Iranian embassy in Moscow would neither confirm nor deny the report.
If true, the deal would likely be the biggest sale of Russian defense hardware to Iran in five years.
Russia is helping Iran build a nuclear-power station at Bushehr. Tehran is under intense international pressure after failing to convince the United States and others its nuclear scientists are working on fuel for power stations rather than bombs.
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Just another WordPress.com site
Baby feet!
by michelleandelskitchen on October 27, 2011
Had a fantastic lunch at my Grandma’s on Tuesday:
Duck, green beans, and fresh bread:
For dessert: green tea & fresh figs!
I’ve never tried fresh figs. Ironically, was having a conversation about figs the day before with a friend, who was sharing some of her dried figs, about dry vs. fresh. Ironic how I don’t eat/talk about figs my entire life, and yet eat dry and fresh figs all in the same week. Life is silly… 😛
As far as the taste, pretty bland actually. I def. prefered dried, so much more flavor!
Grandma sent me home with brownie chocolate chip cookies (Grandmas are the best!), which I in turn passed along to Sean (Although I did split one w/ El on the car ride home… 😉
Isn’t she the cutest?
Baby Yoga is wear it’s at!
Also love this picture. She hates wearing socks/shoes, and takes them off every chance she gets. She totally gets this from me. 😉
Don’t you love baby feet???
Tuesday night I cooked up an old favorite: Mostacolli. Sean’s parents gave us two coolers filled with ground beef (freshest you can get); steaks, roast, and pork chops.
So I had to start using up that meat asap. I made Mostacolli with EVOO; S&P; onion; garlic; ground beef, pasta sauce, and bow-tie noodles. Easy-peasy.
Ever since eating B-Dubs Sunday night, I could not get buffalo chicken salad out of my head. It’s ridiculous. So I decided to make some up last night, following this recipe, only I made some changes to mine. (Sean always keeps his simple!)
I added fresh feta, (best feta ever) and Spicy salsa. This was so flippin good people!
Had to have this with club soda and lime
El cannot eat buffalo chicken salad, of course, so she had some more bow-tie noodle mostacolli. She ate some of that and an ENTIRE banana. Should have gotten her a banana costume instead….
While watching TV we munched on guacamole with Sabra tortilla chips. This was so good. Definitely going to Fresh Farms from now on for guac/chips/limes from now on.
We also had some lemon-orange Kras cookies:
These were great, a nice change-up from the hazelnut that my Dad brings us.
I packed my breakfast and lunch last night (I hardly ever do this, soooo need to do this more often, saved us so much time this morning!)
I made oatmeal with whole grain oats from Trader Joe’s, flax-seeds, pumpkin butter from Lambs Farm, ground cinnamon, and a very ripe banana.
These were so good heated up this morning!
I packed some leftover mostacolli for lunch, an orange, and some Snapple.
Tonight my Dad is coming over and he is picking up dinner. 😀 Night off from cooking- yes! It’s so crummy outside! Happy Thursday! Friday is almost here!
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for Memory Cards
To read and transfer the data
stored on the memory (smart)
card of the Datalogger DL 1/N
directly into a PC. Includes the
software for the transfer of the
data in ASCII files and to tabulate
the values on the screen.
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We have several upcoming new features for CC-Assist.NET I want to share with you in advance. Below is a sneak peak at the list of items you have to look forward to soon.
Updates scheduled for release at the end of this monthCC-Assist.NET Web Page Updates• Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO)• Web page addresses that use the Chamber subdomain “cca.yourdomain.org” and are easily readable (E.g. Your online directory search page address will be http://cca.yourdomain.org/businesssearch.aspx.)• A dedicated online profile page provided for each member (not sure what you mean for this….how will this differ from the current member listing)• A directory of Reps which includes social networking links, bios and images • Unlimited number of subdirectories possible using Member and Rep Groups. (E.g. Directories for Boards, Committees, Sponsors, Alumni, etc.) • Customizable appearance of navigation and search controls • Custom summaries displayed at the top of business category listings and subdirectories • Traffic to online Event pages monitored and viewable via standard reports
CC-Assist.NET Output Updates
• Members-only login information added to printed and e mailed invoices for easier online payments What if we don’t use Members Only, or can we figure out a way to make this work for us.• Both specified and unspecified Attendees able to be included in Event Attendee outputs (E.g. spreadsheets, nametags, etc.) (not sure what this means)• Event confirmation e-mails provided for registrants manually entered by Chamber staff
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Ultimate masala song of south sexy kitten Anushka with lots of erotic steps. Grabs her ass. Kisses everywhere. Oil put over her navel vessel, thighs, lips and many more erotic plays can be watched in his hot song.
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% Parallel XML processing generally comes in one of two forms: multithreading and SIMD. Multithreaded XML parsers take advantage of parallelism by first quickly preparsing the XML file to locate the key markup entities and determine the best workload distribution in which process the XML file using $n$-cores \cite{ZhangPanChiu09}. SIMD XML parsers leverage the SIMD registers to overcome the performance limitations of the sequential paradigm and inherently data dependent branch misprediction rates \cite{Cameron2010}. Two such SIMD XML parsers, Parabix1 and Parabix2, utilizes parallel bit stream processing technology. With this method, byte-oriented character data is first transposed to eight parallel bit streams, one for each bit position within the character code units (bytes). These bit streams are then loaded into SIMD registers of width $W$ (e.g., 64-bit, 128-bit, 256-bit, etc). This allows $W$ consecutive code units to be represented and processed at once. Bitwise logic and shift operations, bit scans, population counts and other bit-based operations are then used to carry out the work in parallel \cite{CameronLin2009}.
% Our first generation parallel bit stream XML parser---Parabix1---uses employs a less conventional approach of SIMD technology to represent text in parallel bit streams. Bits of each stream are in one-to-one-correspondence with the bytes of a character stream. A transposition step first transforms sequential byte stream data into eight basis bit streams for the bits of each byte. Bitwise logical combinations of these basis bit streams can then be used to classify bytes in various ways, while the bit scan operations common to commodity processors can be used for fast sequential scanning. At a high level, Parabix1 processes source XML in a functionally equivalent manner as a traditional processor. That is, Parabix1 moves sequentially through the source document, maintaining a single cursor scanning position throughout the parse. However, this scanning operation itself is accelerated significantly which leads to dramatic performance improvements, since bit scan operations can perform up to general register width (32-bit, 64-bit) finite state transitions per clock cycle. This approach has recently been applied to Unicode transcoding and XML parsing to good effect, with research prototypes showing substantial speed-ups over even the best of byte-at-a-time alternatives \cite{CameronHerdyLin2008, CameronLin2009, Cameron2010}.
% In our second generation XML parser---Parabix2---we address the replacement of sequential parsing using bit scan instructions with a parallel parsing method using bitstream addition. Unlike the single cursor approach of Parabix1 and conceptually of traditional sequential approach, in Parabix2 multiple cursors positions are processed in parallel. To deal with these parallel cursors, three additional categories of bit streams are introduced. Marker bit streams are used to represent positions of interest in the parsing of a source data stream \cite{Cameron2010}. The appearance of a 1 at a position in a marker bitstream could, for example, denote the starting position an XML tag in the data stream. In general, the set of bit positions in a marker bitstream may be considered to be the current parsing positions of multiple parses taking place in parallel throughout the source data stream. A further aspect of the parallel method is that conditional branch statements used to identify syntax error at each each parsing position are eliminated. Instead, error bit streams are used to identify the position of parsing or well-formedness errors during the parsing process. Error positions are gathered and processed in as a final post processing step. Hence, Parabix2 offers additional parallelism over Parabix1 in the form of multiple cursor parsing as well as significanlty reduces branch misprediction penalty.
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A gem suitable for displaying your favorite treats. Crafted with the classic diamond cut panel of the Shelton collection, this bowl offers sublime sparkle. The size is perfect for serving food as well as displaying floating candles or potpourri. The item arrives in a box for easy gift giving.
Details
Materials: Crystalline
Weight: 4 lbs
Dimensions: 8"W x 5"H
Care: When washing by hand, avoid using scouring pads and/or abrasive detergents. To prevent spotting, combine a quarter cup of ammonia with a mild lemon detergent. Clean bowls by filling them half-full with moderately hot water, a small amount of mild detergent, two tablespoons of white vinegar or ammonia and 1/2 cup uncooked rice. Swirl the rice around for a few minutes to remove residue. For indoor use only.
Country of Origin: Germany
About Marquis by Waterford
For over 20 years, Marquis by Waterford has offered customers distinctive style and value. Designed by Waterford and manufactured in various countries around the world, Marquis features the same high quality in an assortment of styles - from traditional to contemporary. Marquis' premium glass construction offers the same weight and clarity as lead crystal, at a price that allows you to purchase multiple pieces for yourself and for others. Make everyday special with Marquis by Waterford!
Enjoy regular arrivals of your favorite products, without the hassle of reordering. Choose AutoDelivery on an item, and you'll receive regularly scheduled deliveries. Price is locked in at the price you pay today. Standard shipping rates apply for subsequent shipments. It's simple, easy, and cancellable at any time.
ABOUT THE COLLECTION
A name synonymous with elegance and luxury, Waterford was founded in 1783 by George and William Penrose in the ancient Viking city of Waterford. From the start, the principle that has guided the company for more than 200 years is simple: handcraft crystal "as fine as any in Europe...in the most elegant style."
The Penrose family knew the secret to mixing just the right minerals and glass to produce crystal with beautiful and mysterious qualities. When tapped, it sang sweetly. When touched, it felt warm and soft. The magnificent pieces crafted in Waterford's early period set the standards now recognized as the hallmarks of Waterford Crystal.
Today, Waterford is the world's top producer of fine crystal, and continues to be the brand of choice for the most elegant of table settings and luxury lifestyle accoutrement.
The Classic Collection
Bring centuries of tradition into your home with Waterford Crystal - a luxurious collection of traditional and contemporary tabletop items from one of Europe’s most iconic brands. Handcrafted in Europe using high-quality crystal, each Waterford piece will add elegance and prestige to your home.
Marquis by Waterford
Discover attainable luxuries from Marquis by Waterford - an exquisite collection of traditional and contemporary tabletop items for your home. Built upon centuries of tradition, Waterford’s most affordable collection contains designs crafted from crystal and Crystalline, a premium glass construction offering the same weight and clarity of lead crystal.
House of Waterford
Add a breathtaking, ageless elegance to any room with Waterford’s premier collection - House of Waterford. Built upon centuries of tradition, House of Waterford offers meticulously and superbly crafted fine crystal from Ireland. Every piece in the collection exudes exquisite quality and a luxurious aesthetic reminiscent of the designs admired in the most renowned museums.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Like his father, Tom Brennan was born in Waterford City, Ireland. From a young age, he aspired to follow in his father Leo's footsteps, carrying on the 200-year tradition of fine crystal craftsmanship. As a young boy, he recalls going to the factory gate to meet his father in the evening. His career with Waterford was launched in 1986 when he began his apprenticeship, learning crystal glass blowing and design techniques. Ever the craftsman, Tom's glass blowing expertise and his experimentation with new designs and shapes allows him to transform dreams into beautiful, hand-crafted works of art.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Arbiter of style and Waterford celebrity spokesperson Jorge Pèrez is a renowned Cuban-American fashion designer & entertaining expert. A wedding industry icon, Jorge has spent many years working in luxury tabletop and fashion design. A regular Waterford guest on EVINE Live for more than six years, Jorge contributes to leading online and print publications and has worked with some of the world's most famous designers. Enjoy Jorge's bubbling personality as he demonstrates how easy it is to entertain in style by introducing signature Waterford designs to your home.
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This is Volume 2 in the series of orchestral works by Alfredo Casella, performed by the BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda, with the pianist Martin...continue...
Recording information: MediaCity UK, Salford (2011-08-05&2011-11-22_2011-)....continue...
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This site is brought to you by SaveTillie, an all volunteer organization comprised of 1,000 friends of Asbury Park. Founded in July of 1998, our original goal of saving the Palace's iconic Tillie image expanded in 1999 to an attempt to save the entire Palace. Under our leadership, the Palace won an honored place on the New Jersey and National registers of Historic Places. Demolition of the Palace in 2004 came over the objections of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Asbury Park Historical Society, Preservation New Jersey, and Save Tillie. In the end, we saved more than 125 internal artifacts from the Palace and the Tillie mural from the Cookman Avenue wall, and through our work the Bumper Car murels on the Lake Avenue facade were also removed to storage.
ASBURY PARK -- Twenty-nine historic artifacts protected under an agreement between the City of Asbury Park, its waterfront developers and a state agency have deteriorated over the past two years to the point of losing visual and structural integrity, according to a conservator who recently inspected the artifacts.
The inspection identified three wall murals that have lost “significant” paint and are “beginning to lose their detail,” and 26 metal letters that are rusting and in danger.
“A decision about the final disposition of these important historic objects should be put in place as soon as possible,” said Paul Himmelstein, a New York conservator, who inspected the artifacts in their storage locations along Asbury Park's waterfront. Otherwise, he said, the historic authenticity of the artifacts is in peril.
The threats discovered during the inspection brings into sharp focus several major dangers facing the removed artifacts, said Bob Crane, president of the non-profit group Save Tillie, which as part of its advocacy for preservation of the artifacts paid for the Himmelstein inspection.
“This report very clearly demonstrates why storage by itself is not preservation,” Crane said. “Preservation of historic resources requires frequent evaluation and the application of preservation treatments.” Except for Himmelstein’s privately funded inspections of the storage sites in 2005, 2014 and 2016, there is no evidence, Crane said, of professional evaluation, and none of preservation treatment by the owners. “Instead of preservation, we have deterioration that is, essentially, demolition by neglect.”
Furthermore, the original agreement to reuse the Palace artifacts in a new building rings hollow, Crane said, as there are no plans to construct a new building on the Palace site adjacent to Wesley Lake. Instead, there are economic incentives against new construction, since most of the site was transformed years ago into a lucrative street-level parking lot.
Likewise, planners at the Madison Marquette waterfront development firm appear disinclined to relocate the artifacts to any site which is currently on the market for fear of tying the hands of potential buyers. “The City and the developers have financial conflicts of interest which have led them to avoid the 2004 agreement in favor of parking revenue and marketing priorities,” Crane said. “As a result, the artifacts have been left to decay.”
This is not the situation the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection specified when it issued the redevelopment permit in 2004, Crane pointed out. “By insisting on the preservation of Palace features, the state recognized that these artifacts are physical records of the events and people that shaped local history, and therefore provide meaning to life today and into the future. Historic artifacts provide economic and cultural value, which will be lost if these artifacts are significantly altered or destroyed.”
In 2004, he added, the state government offered Asbury Park a deal. Despite being listing on the National Register of Historic Places, the City and its developers could demolish Palace Amusements in exchange for a pledge to preserve and reuse the artifacts. “Well, the Palace was demolished and can’t be put back together,” Crane said. “It is now time for the City and its developers to honor the pledge.”
In 2012, three of the protected Palace features were reported lost, prompting the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protect to issue a warning letter containing new reporting requirement to the City and Madison Marquette. Future violations, said state officials, were punishable by fines of up to $25,000-a-day.
I had inspected the murals in 2005 to review their condition and made recommendations for changes to the structures in which they were stored (see my report of September 2005). I inspected the murals again in 2014, as well as the metal channel letters, the National Register of Historic Places sign, and the wooden cutouts. I made several recommendations in my report of that inspection. These included painting the exterior of the sheds in which the murals are stored as a security measure, the use of traffic barriers to protect the sheds, and the relocation of the wooden cutouts from its sea level storage in the Casino building. (See my report of July 2014.)
On November 18, 2016 I carried out another site visit. I examined the murals, still housed in the sheds located at the City’s Sewage Treatment Plant; the metal channel letters and the National Register of Historic Places sign in the 4th Avenue Pavilion; and the wooden cutouts, now relocated to the Sunset Pavilion.
Over the past two years, the murals have lost some significant additional paint from their surfaces. Quite a number of new paint chips were observed on the top surfaces of debris located on the floors of the sheds. Some areas of the designs are beginning to lose their details as a result of this paint loss. Additionally, one of the bumper car murals has a horizontal crack. No mold was observed on the surfaces of the murals.
The recommendation to paint the exteriors of the sheds has not been carried out, and the outsides of the two sheds look even more “abandoned” than they did previously. No physical barriers on the outside of the sheds have been erected to prevent damage to the sheds from vehicles, as I previously recommended.
The metal channel letters had been removed for my examination from a locked room on the second floor of the 4th Avenue Pavilion, which is where I examined them in 2014. The letters show additional rusting on their surfaces. If this continues they will lose their structural integrity.
The wood overhead door, with cutouts, previously damaged in Superstorm Sandy, has been moved to a new location in the Sunset Pavilion. The cutouts were covered with a variety of plastic tarps. Since the pieces are quite large, they were not removed from their location for a complete overall examination. Examination in situ showed that the wood has dried without warping, and the cutouts appear to be stable.
RECOMMENDATIONS
As discussed in my previous report, the continued loss of paint from the surfaces of the murals will eventually lead to the loss of an authentic surface, and even to the possibility of accurately repainting them. They are now in danger of reaching that point fairly soon. A procedure to arrive at a decision about the final disposition of these important historic objects should be put in place as soon as possible.
Debris on the floors of the sheds should be removed so that paint loss from the murals can be monitored. To prevent further infiltration of outside debris through the air vents, they should be lined with metal window screening.
A more appropriate covering material should be used on the overhead doors. Tyvek or a similar material should be used.
To reduce the rate of rusting on the channel letters the room in which they are stored should be equipped with a dehumidifier attached to a drain. To make this as efficient as possible, the room should be lined with 6ml polyethylene, with the appropriate tape used to secure the edges. This will reduce the load on the humidifier. However, my recommendation regarding the murals applies here as well: a decision about the final disposition of these important historic objects should be put in place as soon as possible.
I had inspected the murals in 2005 to review their condition and made recommendations for changes to the structures in which they were stored (see my report of September 2005).
On June 19, 2014 I inspected the above items to review their condition and their current storage spaces.
Most of my 2005 recommendations for changes in the structures used to store the wall murals appear to have been carried out. One of the suggestions, for physical barriers placed to protect the outside of the enclosures from damage by vehicles has, however, not been carried out.
In addition, the outside of the plywood is somewhat deteriorated, and the sheds look “abandoned.” My initial recommendation to paint the outsides and maintain a “cared-for” appearance is still an important issue. Vandalism is less likely to occur if the sheds look like someone is taking care of them.
Since my inspection in 2005, the murals have remained in the storage sheds outside the City’s Sewage Treatment Plant. There was some evidence of water staining in strips at the bottoms of the murals, probably as a result of water intrusion during Sandy. The water does not appear to have done any substantial damage to the blocks or paint. There is no evidence of mold growth on the surface of the murals.
The high density cinder blocks on which the murals are painted and the mortar between the blocks appear to be in fairly stable condition. There is minor evidence of cracking and structural deterioration; these conditions should be frequently inspected. However, it appears that there are some new paint losses. Although the recent losses are small, the process of deterioration is continuing. The more losses that occur, the more difficult it will become to reconstruct the original design. Regular examination is essential to determine when the continuing loss of paint (and resulting loss of significant details) would jeopardize the ability to repaint the murals in accordance with their original appearance.
The metal channel letters and the National Register of Historic Places sign are stored in a locked room on the second floor of the 4th Avenue Pavilion. The overhead light fixture in the storage room was inoperative, so I did not attempt to count or examine all the metal channel letters (of which there are supposed to be 26.) While there is evidence of some rusting, in general the letters appear to be stable. Along with the letters, the room contains some original lighting fixtures and other historic artifacts from properties other than Palace Amusements. An inventory of all of the items in the room should be created, and signed by all parties involved. This would help to confirm that all items that are now stored there remain in the room.
The wooden cutouts on the overhead door are stored in a ground-floor area of the Casino Arcade Building. The lower portion of the cutout I examined appears to have been soaked during Sandy, and the wood at the bottom shows considerable deterioration. Further deterioration would likely lead to substantial instability of the entire assembly. Because damp wood is a magnet for insects, the cutouts should be moved to a dry location, and should be raised off the floor for storage. A complete restoration of these cutouts in the future would be possible only if the appropriate steps are taken now to slow the continuing deterioration.
Finally, a regular inspection schedule (at least once a year) of the objects in storage, by a conservator, should be established. This will help to assure that minor condition problems do not turn into major ones.
On August 18, 2005 I inspected three murals removed from the Palace Amusements complex in Asbury Park, NJ and now stored in enclosures in the parking lot of the Asbury Park sewage treatment plant at 8th and Ocean Avenues.
The murals were executed on outside walls of the complex. The walls were constructed from high-density cinder blocks and their appears to be a coating, perhaps stucco, over the cinder block surface. The paint appears to be an oil-type.
To facilitate removal from their original locations, the murals and the cinder block walls on which they were executed were cut out and surrounded with steel frames. The frames were reinforced with welded steel cross braces that are about an inch from the surfaces of the murals.
The murals are now stored in two sheds constructed from 2x4s and plywood. The plywood was nailed to the 2x4s and caulking was been applied to the outside of the plywood joints. The plywood was reportedly “recycled” from another site and is not in very good condition. It was unclear from visual inspection whether the plywood is “marine grade” (i.e. manufactured using non-water-soluble adhesives) and therefore suitable for exterior use, or not. Peaked roofs were added to the sheds sometime after their original construction. These additions sit on the sheds, but the interiors of the two portions do not communicate with each other. The sheds sit directly on the asphalt of the parking lot; there is no “floor” to either of the sheds.
One section of plywood had been removed from each shed to permit my inspection. The sections were located at the bottom of each shed on the painted side of the murals. (The two portions of the “Bumper car” mural are stored back to back in a single shed so two sections were removed on this shed.) Judging by comparison with detail photographs, the condition of the murals appears not to have changed in any substantial way from that immediately after their removal. The paint is quite brittle and is curled away from the surface in many areas, and there are scattered losses throughout. There were only very small pieces of paint on the ground inside the sheds, indicating that no substantial losses had occurred since the murals were enclosed.
The murals and their supporting walls should not be substantially affected by changes in relative humidity (RH) and temperature, although changes in RH might cause some efflorescence of any soluble salts that may have entered the mural structures due to their proximity to the ocean. The two agents of deterioration most likely to cause damage to these works of art during storage are mold and staining from rusting of the steel frame and braces. In addition, physical damage from blows to the outside of the sheds could cause substantial damage.
Mold is most likely to grow when three conditions exist: still air, darkness and high relative humidity. Rusting has already occurred on the surface of the steel, but no rust has reached the surfaces of the murals. A truck backing up in the lot could also cause a catastrophic loss of one of the sheds and its enclosed mural.
To alleviate the problems outlined above, the following recommendations were discussed during the site visit, and should be implemented:
•Physical barriers, perhaps concrete highway barriers, should be installed on the lot sides of the two sheds.
•Ventilation grills should be installed at the bottom and top of each shed to allow air to circulate within the sheds. These grills should be sturdy enough to prevent birds and curious people from gaining access. The grills should be backed up with standard home furnace filters to prevent larger particulate matter from entering the sheds. Two sets of grills should be installed on each shed, on opposing walls. Care should be taken so that wind-driven rain will not be able to enter through these grills.
•The roof structure of each shed should be rebuilt so that the roof overhangs the shed on all sides, and appropriate flashing should be installed. It is essential that no liquid water penetrate into the interior of the sheds. Any liquid water that lands on the steel is likely to run off and cause staining of the painted surfaces of the murals. Such staining would be almost impossible to remove.
•As agreed on site during the inspection, the walls of the sheds should be rebuilt, using screws (rather than nails) and appropriate gaskets so that the structures are waterproof and long lasting. In addition, hinged doors with appropriate locks should be installed to permit easy regular inspection of the mural surfaces.
•The condition of the plywood should be monitored. Any panels that deteriorate to such an extent that they compromise the safety of the murals should be replace at once, using plywood rated for outdoor use.
•It would improve the security of the sheds if they were painted to look more like permanent components of the treatment plant. At present their makeshift appearance invites vandalism and careless handling.
With the above changes and safeguards in place, I believe these murals can be stored safely in their present location. Regular quarterly inspections would help to insure that the murals continue to be in stable condition and protected appropriately.
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The Guardian’s revelations that our privacy is no longer our own has caused huge public outcry, the tinfoil-hat brigade is in a furore, normal folk have become concerned at what governments are peering at, and most importantly the nefarious are sat back gobsmacked. PRISM, if your at all shocked that such government devices exist, your naive; if your angry, then your possibly delusional.
RANT WARNING! Our freedom, our ability to stroll the streets or fly the airways, is almost entirely reliant on a – very real – war on terrorism. As news flashes across our television sets – Syria – and our soldiers return from the fronts of war – Afghanistan – we perhaps need to pause and consider what price that freedom has cost. If we aren’t thankful that we weren’t one of the 3 thousand troops who gave their lives in the name of democracy in Afghanistan then perhaps we’ve become disconnected.
The graphic images of war and death beamed to us by television networks isn’t an example of what we face, it’s what we face. And what privacies have we given up – in order that our streets don’t look like a Boston Bombing – someone reading our emails, a government employee checking over our social media posts or an analyst trawling though our text messages, again, what have you lost? Certainly not your life – unlike the 3000 lives lost on September 11 2001, you can surely be thankful that you weren’t one of the 20,0000 patriots who were wounded in the line of duty, defending our freedom to like on Facebook and plus on Google.
No, it seems that the cost of surveillance on the general population is naught! Unless of course you have something to hide, or wear a tinfoil-hat. While I don’t disagree that The Guardian has done a splendid job revealing PRISM, and presenting the world with another anti-espionage proponent – Edward Snowden – what have they truly given us, a safer community, more freedom? This author thinks not. Truth and lies, are very personal, we tend to take a lack of trust – or being lied to – as an infringement on our own integrity. Being deceived isn’t what this is about, it’s much much bigger than our individual integrity, it’s about our safety as a society :: Read the full article »»»»
Device cameras of the not-too-distant future will be able to project images in three dimensions, it sounds like the stuff of science fiction right!? A team of physicists at the Australian National University – ANU – believe they are on the verge of making it a reality :: Read the full article »»»»
Australia’s Federal Parliament has passed it’s controversial data retention laws, with both major political parties voting in the legislation. The new laws will force telcos to keep records of phone and internet use for two years and allow security agencies access the records.
Telcos already retain the data, however at varying durations in an unregulated environment. Australia’s Attorney-General Senator George Brandis says the legislation – which passed through the senate with 43 votes to 16 – will strike the right balance.
The cost of retaining the information is set to be partly covered by the taxpayer in what the Government described as a “significant” contribution. There are concerns telecommunications companies will pass on the rest of the cost to consumers :: Read the full article »»»»
As Google, Apple and Microsoft scramble to patch a long missed security flaw it might be timely to remember how we got here. Way back at the latter end of the last century – the 1990s, when Netscape browser was all the rage and – SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption was brand-spanking-new, the U.S. government wanted control over export of “weapons grade” encryption.
Its theory was that domestic communications could benefit from stronger, 128-bit encryption, but ‘backdoors’ should be available to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement when it came to foreign communications, the concept of weaker, “export grade” encryption was born.
Turns out that this theory and it’s legacy backdoor, a vulnerability that we’ve come to know in recent days as ‘FREAK’ still exists in up to 30 percent of U.S. web servers. It’s a sad example of how zombie-security from the era that gave us grunge can come back and bite us on the posterior.
Meanwhile, Apple and Google are saying they’ve developed fixes/patches – though we note Apple has yet to deploy – to mitigate the ‘Freak’ security flaw. Initially thought to be immune, Microsoft released an advisory which warned hundreds of millions of Windows PC users are also vulnerable to the security vulnerability :: Read the full article »»»»
Authorities in the United States have unveiled charges against two Vietnamese nationals and one Canadian in connection with a computer fraud scheme to steal more than 1 billion email addresses.
The incident was the largest known data breach of names and email addresses on record.
Indictments in the case accuse two Vietnamese nationals of hacking into at least eight major email services from February 2009 to June 2012 and stealing the email addresses that were then used for various spam and marketing schemes.
The scheme netted at least $US2 million from the marketing of various products and services, according to the US Justice Department.
Those charged with hacking were Viet Quoc Nguyen, 28, and Giang Hoang Vu, 25, both Vietnamese nationals :: Read the full article »»»»
China-tech watchers are saying China has all but blocked the last remaining ways for people to access Gmail, Google’s email service.
Experts say Gmail traffic in China was shut down last week after Chinese authorities apparently plugged the third-party applications that allowed users to get around existing hurdles. Only a trickle of emails have got through since.
Gmail is the galaxy’s largest email service, it has however been largely inaccessible from within China since June last year, coinciding with the run-up to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
But users could still access the service by using third-party mail applications, rather than the webpage. Gmail users could access emails downloaded via protocols like IMAP, SMTP and POP3, allowing users to communicate using Gmail on apps like Apple iPhone’s Mail and Microsoft Outlook :: Read the full article »»»»
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Please join us for a day of discussion on how digital humanities and feminist approaches both destabilize the archive and offer new opportunities to reshape the archive as a mode of translation and mediation.
RELS faculty member Timothy Powell will talk about his work recent work the Sioux Water Keepers in the standoff at Standing Rock, by relating stories told to him by the Native people and sharing his thoughts about how indigenous philosophies and storytelling methods can be instrumental in discussions of climate change.
The Penn Journal of Religious Studies, a graduate
and undergraduate journal, is currently looking for individuals who are
interested in serving as editors. We feel that members of the Religious
Studies Department may be interested in this opportunity. The deadline
to apply is September 20th.
The Department of Religious Studies will be hosting an undergraduate
society for the 2016-17 school year. The Penn Religious Studies Society
is a newly-established organization designed to connect majors and
minors of the undergraduate division and foster a community of members who
share special interest in the field.
Are depictions of Muhammad actually forbidden in Islamic scripture? From where does this aversion to pictorial representations arise? And are all Muslims similarly offended? Prof. Jamal J. Elias explains in The Conversation.
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Atheism Taught to Four-Year-Olds in Revised School Syllabus
A new syllabus is being launched “to make children aware of non-beliefs” in schools across Lancashire, U.K.
Students as young as four, according to Lancashire Telegraph, will be taught about atheism in Blackburn with Darwen schools for the first time.
The six major faiths – Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism – will continue to be a part of the RE (Religious Education) curriculum, with humanism added to the list, education chiefs stressed.
“We really must recognize that some people do not believe in God and do not have a religious background,” said Fiona Moss, a primary specialist and RE Curriculum Adviser, to LT.
Posting Policy
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse. Read more.
Verse of the Day
“I am that vine: ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me can ye do nothing. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, and be made my disciples.”
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On Wed, 2 May 2007, Customer Support wrote:
> smart_route:
> driver = manualroute
> domains = !+local_domains
> transport = remote_smtp
> route_list = * "${lookup mysql{SELECT target FROM exim_smarthost
> WHERE (domain='$domain')}}"
>
> According to the documentation the destination of a route list can
> include a server and port.
> I've tried setting target to
> domain.com:2525
> and bearind in mind exim uses : to split host names, I've tried
> domain.com::2525 as described in another document.
>
> Anyone got any ideas as to how I can specify a target host and port
> for the forwarding?
The manual has the explicit example
route_list = * "host.tld::1225"
Have you got debugging information to show that this does not work?
Which release of Exim? Support for ports in manual route was added at
release 4.53.
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You are a space marine trainee who is assigned to protect a corporate flag from alien invasion. Protect your flag from being captured to the greys' UFO. Collect items that are dropped from your mothership and kill the incoming aliens.
The key to survive in this game is to choose the right weapon against different kinds of enemy and balance the time for picking up items and protecting the flag.
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7/8(Sat) 20s Social Meetup in Shinjuku / FREE Entry for Non-Japanese
This event is open for only people in their twenties! All 20 something people who are interested in international exchange are welcome!
It’s a great chance to meet cool people, make new friends, find language exchange partners, learn about other cultures, and even find romance in a casual atmosphere! Just come and have fun with everybody! :-)
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Upcoming Pokemon GO Update Will Add 80 New Pokemon
Are you getting tired of seeing the same Pokemon appear when you’re playing Pokemon GO? We suppose at the start it was kind of exciting to see Pokemon in “real-life”, but given how many months it has been since the game was released, we’re sure that many gamers are looking forward to more new features.
The good news is that your wish will soon come true. In an announcement on the Pokemon GO website, Niantic has revealed that an upcoming update will add 80 new Pokemon to the game. “More than 80 Pokémon that were originally discovered in the Johto region in the Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver video games, as well as Pokémon with gender-specific variations, will start rolling out in Pokémon GO.”
Niantic is also teasing new evolutions where there are now opportunities than before to evolve your Pokemon. For example some Pokemon discovered in the Kanto region will be able to evolve into those that stay in the Johto region. Other new features added to the game include new Encounter gameplay, new berries, and new avatars and an expanded wardrobe.
That being said there is no mention of trading or PvP battles, but as per our previous report, those are features that are expected to arrive in 2017 in future updates.
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Massif – the love child of Matlab Simulink and Eclipse
With Massif, Eclipse tool builders can access systems and libraries as EMF models.
Matlab Simulink is one of the most widely used modeling frameworks for embedded and safety-critical system development. However, using Matlab Simulink and Java-based tools together has always been a challenging task, due to Matlab’s proprietary file formats (e.g., MDL and SLX) that may change between versions, and the lack of a high-level Java API for processing and querying systems and libraries from third party tools.
To overcome these limitations, we present the open source Massif framework, a live bridge for importing/exporting a Matlab Simulink system models into/from Eclipse. Live means that Massif can directly connect to a running Matlab instance using the command line interface. With Massif, Eclipse tool builders can access systems and libraries as EMF models.
An important unique feature of Massif is that it respects the library linking and model referencing mechanism of Matlab Simulink, thus it supports both partial and complete imports. Moreover, Massif can also be integrated into a standards-compliant tool chain via an OSLC interface, built using Eclipse Lyo.
The highlights of the talk are:
Flexibility. We show how Massif can support different model import scenarios, such as deep model hierarchy import, multiple copies of used library subsystems, etc.
Incremental imports and exports. We demonstrate the incremental import feature, which can reuse already imported Simulink systems to avoid the regeneration of already converted EMF models. We also show how these can be re-exported back to Simulink with the click of a button.
A user-friendly EMF model for Simulink. We highlight how complex Simulink modeling constructs (such as bus creators/selectors and bus objects) can be much more easily defined directly using the EMF model, rather than in Simulink. Furthermore, Massif supports some built-in query-based derived features (supported by EMF-IncQuery) to make understanding and working with complex Simulink models even more easier.
Massif uses the MATLAB command-line API recommended by MathWorks for accessing Simulink model information. Massif was developed in collaboration between the Fault Tolerant Systems Research Group of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Embraer S.A. and IncQuery Labs Ltd, and partially funded by the CONCERTO EU Artemis project.
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C#
/// <summary>/// Copies the contents of input to output. Better to close both stream after done./// </summary>publicstaticvoidCopyStream(Streaminput,Streamoutput){byte[]buffer=newbyte[input.Length];intlen;while((len=input.Read(buffer,0,buffer.Length))>0){output.Write(buffer,0,len);}input.Close();output.Close();}/// We can use it to Write file from assembly resource stream to disk, for example:StreamresourceStream=Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetManifestResourceStream(@"Namespace.SomeFolder.DbScript.sql");StreamoutputFile=File.OpenWrite(@"d:\sql.sql");CopyStream(resourceStream,outputFile);
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Motorway M9 Super Highway Pakistan Images - Karachi to Hyderabad
The M9, also known as "Super Highway", is a 138-km long motorway connecting the cities of Hyderabad and Karachi in Sindh province of Pakistan. It is part of Pakistan's Motorway Network.The M9 begins north of Karachi at the end of Mohammad Ali Jinnah Road, near junction of Karachi Northern Bypass (also known as M10). It is connected with the Karachi Northern Bypass with a trumpet interchange. Then it continues out of the city. From there it continues on a north-east track and forms a junction with the N5 via a link road. The motorway ends outside of Hyderabad, in the suburban town of Kotri with a cloverleaf interchange. From there it merges onto the N5.
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Anna Dove feeding the pigeons in Tompkins Square Park on Thursday. She and other activists oppose a move to ban such activity.
By PETER DUFFY
Published: November 17, 2007
When Councilman Simcha Felder, a Democrat from Brooklyn, announced on Monday that he was going to introduce legislation that would make feeding pigeons an offense punishable by a fine, he made plain his feelings about "rats with wings," a phrase used by a parks commissioner, Thomas P. F. Hoving, in the 1960s and popularized by Woody Allen in his 1980 film "Stardust Memories."
At City Hall the next day, the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, who was careful not to express an opinion on Mr. Felder's proposal, chimed in that she, too, had no love of pigeons and had no use for what she considered "flying rats."
The pigeon backlash has now begun.
About a dozen or so of the city's leading pigeon advocates gathered for an emergency meeting on Wednesday night on the second floor of a Starbucks on the Upper East Side to plan a counteroffensive.
The meeting was called by Anna Dove, the founder and president of the New York Bird Club, which claims 60 members and is one of the two leading pigeon-rights groups in the city. Ms. Dove legally changed her last name from Kugelmas in honor of her dove, Lucy.
Al Streit, director of Pigeon People, a rescue and advocacy group that claims 200 members in its online discussion group, was also there, as were representatives from the New York City Pigeon Rescue Center, Win Animal Rights and other pro-pigeon organizations.
"Don't people realize that this is an extraordinary bird?" asked Mary Beyerbach, a member of the New York Bird Club, who noted the heroics of Cher Ami, a homing pigeon who is credited with saving 194 American lives in France during World War I, earning him the Croix de Guerre. "A pigeon has never attacked a person," she said. "A rat has."
Unlike some animal rights groups, which favor humane methods of reducing the pigeon population, these activists are opposed to any governmental intervention into the lives of what they say are unjustly maligned creatures.
Ms. Dove called Mr. Felder's plan "more scapegoating of pigeons," with the intention of eliminating them from the city altogether. Colin Jerolmack, who was also at the meeting, characterized the idea as another attempt to "criminalize behavior in the public space." Mr. Streit noted that the pigeon had few defenders. "Is there a reason to control this species?" he said. "The answer is no."
In a report released this week, Councilman Felder, beyond seeking to ban pigeon feeding, called for the introduction of pigeon-scaring hawks and falcons, an increase in the frequency of litter pickup in enclosed trash cans, use of pigeon birth control methods and the appointment of a pigeon czar who would coordinate the city's response to the abundant pigeon population.
The report said that an excess of pigeons created an excess of pigeon excrement, which some people blame for damaging infrastructure and carrying communicable diseases.
But pigeon advocates scoffed at the suggestion that pigeon excrement was sickening humans or harming bridges and roads. In fact, Mr. Felder's report concedes that "cases of civilians contracting diseases from pigeons or pigeon droppings are rare and the threat is often exaggerated." And the report quotes a pigeon-control expert who called reports of infrastructure damage caused by pigeons "widely exaggerated."
Another expert, Andrew D. Blechman, author of "Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird," said, "Pigeons don't carry any more disease than you or I do."
Still, groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals recognize the need to curb the pigeon population, which according to some estimates now tops one million in New York City.
Michael McGraw, a spokesman for PETA, said that the organization would support a feeding ban if it included a controlled-feeding program that would administer a contraceptive called OvoControl, which is one of Mr. Felder's recommendations. PETA has supported a similar program in Los Angeles.
The A.S.P.C.A., which also supports administering pigeon birth control, is in favor of a ban on pigeon feeding, said Stephen Musso, the A.S.P.C.A.'s chief of operations. "There's no reason to feed these birds, because they are quite resourceful," he said.
Councilman Felder denied harboring any antipigeon animus. "I think people are pretty smart," he said. "People in New York are pretty shrewd. They know what's a problem and what's not a problem. And if there is something we can do, even to improve it somewhat, that is a good thing." He said that he had received "overwhelming support" from fellow council members.
Mr. Felder said he expected his proposal, which he plans to introduce next month, to include a feeding ban punishable by a $1,000 fine. In the meantime, ardent pigeon advocates are preparing to take their message to the public. They are organizing a demonstration on the steps of City Hall on Nov. 30.
During the meeting at Starbucks, the group discussed what to say in a planned informational flier, wondered how much it would cost to produce a banner and debated the best way to sway the public. Toward the end of the meeting, Ms. Dove asked the group, "How about having someone dress up in a pigeon costume?"
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Everything about this situation is so sad. :( The crime, and the punishment.
Mitchell sentenced to death
By Jim Snyder/The Daily Times
Sep 17, 2003, 10:17
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Becomes first Native American on Federal Death Row
PHOENIX — A Navajo man who killed and dismembered the bodies of a Navajo woman and her granddaughter then used their stolen pickup truck to commit an armed robbery was sentenced to death Monday.
Lezmond Mitchell, 21, of Round Valley, Ariz., was sentenced by Judge Mary Murguia in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, said Harriet Bernick, spokeswoman for the U.S. District Attorney’s office in Phoenix.
A federal grand jury found Mitchell guilty May 8 of the brutal homicides of Navajos Alyce R. Slim, 63, and her granddaughter Tiffany Lee, 9, both of Ft. Defiance, Ariz.
Slim had picked up Mitchell hitchhiking. Police at the time said Slim and Lee died Oct. 28, 2001, from multiple stab wounds inflicted by Mitchell. Their stabbed, mutilated bodies were found in a shallow grave Nov. 5, 2001, in a wooded area near Tsaile, Ariz.
Mitchell is believed to be the first Native American to receive the federal death penalty since it was reinstated in 1994, Assistant U.S. Attorney Vincent Kirby said. Kirby prosecuted the case.
He was convicted of two counts of premeditated first-degree murder; two counts of felony first-degree murder based on a robbery; one count of first-degree murder based on kidnapping; one count of carjacking resulting in death; one count of kidnapping; two counts of robbery and two counts of using a weapon during the robbery of the Red Rock, Ariz., Trading Post.
Native Americans throughout the country’s 500-plus tribes are exempt from the federal death penalty because of their federal status except in certain situations. The highest federal sentence they can normally receive for first-degree murder is life without parole.
The Navajo Nation has no agreement with the federal government to allow the death penalty for any tribal member convicted of first-degree murder in federal court.
Federal Code states, however, if a carjacking is involved going across state lines resulting in a first-degree murder conviction, the federal death penalty can be sought without consulting the tribe. This happened in Mitchell’s case.
The Navajo Nation will not protest the death sentence despite Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. opposing the federal death penalty for tribal members.
Shirley “does not want to interfere in the judicial process,” Shirley’s spokeswoman Deana Jackson said Tuesday when informed by The Daily Times about the sentencing.
She added, “Unfortunately it is a brother of the Navajo Nation. Unfortunately the victims are not with us as well.”
Jackson said Monday, “He (Shirley) is not in support of the death penalty.” She added he supports long-term incarceration instead.
She added Shirley was misquoted by The Associated Press earlier this year when he stated he supported the death penalty for Navajos convicted of the most serious crimes.
Following the homicides of Slim and Lee — Mitchell and two others donned Halloween masks and carried a shotgun and pistols into the Red Valley Trading Post Oct. 31, 2001. They used Slim’s pickup truck during their robbery of cash and gasoline.
Shiprock Police said a man walked up to clerk Charlott Yazzie, who was mopping the floor, and hit her on the side of the head with a rifle butt.
Mitchell was not charged in the related deaths of David K. Begay, 47, of Round Rock, and Gesbert Sam, 30, of Piñon, Ariz., Bernick said.
Their bodies were found Nov. 3 in a shallow grave along U.S. 191 a mile southwest of the Round Rock Trading Post, just 25 miles from where Slim and Lee’s bodies were found.
“It’s a different case but some of the same players are involved,” Bernick said.
Johnny Orsinger, 17 at the time, was arrested with Mitchell for the armed robberies during predawn raids Nov. 5 and 6 at their residences in Round Valley by Navajo Police, Navajo criminal investigators and members of the Strategic Reaction Team.
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GREAT professor. Attendance mandatory (he does random checks) but you can miss a few days and still be fine. Tests are SUPER hard but very doable with studying. I didn't study much for the first test and made a C+. Studyed HOURS for the second and third and made a 97% and a 99%. Got an A in the class. Do the extra credit. Study HARD. record the lectures or take very good notes. Study groups really helped too becuase the tests were VERY specific and we all had different details/facts written down..so it helped to share all of those. He'll give you a list of terms and you really have to know ALL of them forwards and backwards. Write your essays beforehand, he gives three prompts and picks one. In my opinion, he always picked the hardest one..so know them all!
Really knows his stuff. I found this class invigorating- many professors claim they want a class discussion format then sort of take over. Professor Andersen saved at least 30 minutes per day for class discussion. Because the material is so relevant to today, we never ran out of things to discuss. I also liked the books that were chosen for our reading material- relevant books written not as textbooks but as general consumer books.
Anderson is a great professor! He involves the class in helpful discussions and assigns relevant and fun to read texts. The exams are simple enough if you've done the readings, attended most lectures and done the reviews. The reviews are spot on as far as what the test will cover. He gives you three possible essays and one shows up, so that makes things easy. Tons of extra credit opportunities. Wonderful class, you learn a lot and is very enjoyable! Great teacher, he really is.
This class was extremely interesting. Professor Anderson is very well-spoken and passionate about the subject. The TA was also very helpful and accessible. Both the Professor and TA seemed interested in helping students out. Each week, students were expected to read about 100 or so pages from a book and write a 1-page response based on a question posted on Blackboard- the responses were graded pretty easy. Then, once a week Professor Anderson would encourage class discussion about the topic of the week. I learned so much. I'm glad I took the class
Dr. Anderson is an excellent professor. His lectures are clear, interesting and concise. But you have to go to class in order to do well on the 3 tests and final paper. There are 5 books that you will read, but you are only required to read certain sections of each book, which makes the work-load much more manageable. Tests cover lecture material for MC questions and book material for the essay portion. Loved this class!
Anderson is a very interesting professor. He chooses several books for students to read and has a class discussion every friday. This is primarily a lecture class so take good notes because the exams are based off of the books and lectures. There is also weekly reaction papers. Overall it was a pretty easy class.
Professor Pittz is very engaging as a professor, even though he tends to talk quite fast. There was a short reading response due each Friday over the current book we were reading, and they're graded easily. He takes a random attendance 5 times over the semester so it's best that you don't skip. Tests are not ridiculous at all, it's 20 simple multiple choice and an essay that is chosen out of 3 prompts he gives you earlier in the week. I would recommend Pittz to any IRG student wanting to take this class!
Professor Pittz talks a little more quickly than some professors, and he rarely uses power points, but his lectures are fairly well structured and they go well with the assigned reading. He's also very approachable. As long as you've done most of the reading and go to most of the classes, you'll be fine for the tests (1/2 multiple choice, 1/2 essay, pretty evenly split between lecture and reading material). 5 random attendance checks, weekly reading responses, and extra credit opportunities make for an easy A.
In general, not too difficult of a class. 3 tests worth 20% each, 5 attendance checks worth 1% each, 10 reading responses worth 1% each, and a final paper worth 25%. Also, he gives you chances to get up to 3 points of extra credit on your final grade. The course I took with him was the first one he had ever taught so he was a little inexperienced, but he still did a good job teaching the material and the topics were usually interesting and not too hard to understand.
Professor Pittz tends to avoid using powerpoints and talks a little faster than many professors during lecture, but he's also much more engaging. He's fairly laid back and teaches well. He's been one of my best professors so far.
There are about 10 reading responses, but they're fairly easy and cover key topics in the readings. He takes attendance randomly (5 times throughout the semester), so it's better not to skip. The tests are straightforward (1/2 multiple choice, 1/2 essay), and fair to easy (if you missed lecture/didin't do the reading, you might miss a couple of the multiple choice, but you get the potential essay topics beforehand). As long as you do most of the work, it's an easy A.
we had a simple reading response due each week, but it wasn't difficult. as long as you skim the reading you can figure it out. the tests were challenging, but there was a split between MC and one essay so it was good for both types of learners. the lectures were interesting, he conveys the information really well.
Great introductory class to American foreign policy theory. Holmsten is a very kind and knowledgable professor, though I thought she prepared for her lectures a little *too* closely which led to a strange speaking style (weird grammatical flubs, etc). I found my TA to be more naturally knowledgable. But, Holmsten is fair with grades. All tests are part multiple choice, part short answer, nothing surprising. 5% of your grade is attendance checks, so if you show up for those, that's an extra 5 points to your grade, and you can get up to 3 points of additional extra credit for attending outside lectures. The final paper is worh 25% I think, so if you make an A on that, you're golden by the end of the semester. I made an A in the class and didn't even really read the additional books unless I needed a certion portion to answer a reading response.
Good professor. She made the topics interesting and involved people in the class. Exams were fairly straight forward while the papers required slightly more time. The class was not difficult as long as you pay attention to the class discussion topics and skim the readings. I would definitely recommend her and want to take more of her classes.
We did not find any professors that have taught
IRG 301 Intro Intl Rels & Global Stds
in the last year. Click here to view all professors
that have taught IRG 301
Intro Intl Rels & Global Stds in the past.
How would you characterize the learning environment of this class?
Blackboard has acquired MyEdu. What does this mean for you? MyEdu will continue to be free and there will
be no product changes. We are excited to join Blackboard as it will allow us to build more features for
you and connect you to a larger student community. For more information click here.
If you have any questions reach out to [email protected].
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Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand Brief Biography
Barbra Joan Streisand (born Barbara Joan Streisand, ; April 24, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter, author, actress, writer, film producer, and director.
She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, five Emmy Awards including one Daytime Emmy, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Kennedy Center Honors award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
She is one of the most commercially and critically successful entertainers in modern entertainment history, with more than 71.5 million albums shipped in the United States and 145 million records sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Album Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre.
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Caring For Carpeting And Rugs
Caring For Carpeting And Rugs
Harems, zenanas, cities of women. phrases that evoke scenes of flowing veils, mysteries and wealth. Hidden. Luxurious. Enticing. If you flew on a magic carpet more than the partitions of a Royal Harem, you would arrive to rest at a vast, central courtyard in the most private region of the king's palace.
The most annoying factor in your home is a caught window. You can easily repair your problem with a little bit of silicone spray lubricant. Spray some lubricant on to an previous cloth or rag and wipe it alongside the sliding tracks. The spray will help lubricate the tracks which in flip make your window simpler to open up and close.
Structures and Furnishings: So a lot to choose from: outside cowhide rug, sculpture, decks, patios, chicken feeder, fountains, statues, partitions, pergolas, trellises, gazebos, gazing globes, benches. Where will they be positioned? What materials will they be (iron, wood)? Remember not to overdo the accessories, go simple on these garden gnomes!
In our eyes, the very best factor is to call in experts at minimum as soon as per year. What they will do is to have out comprehensive cleaning and give you tips to shield your expense. Nevertheless, this is not the only choice to take into account. You have other choices, as well. Read on to discover out.
4) What ever you do, do not use an iron or blow drier to dry your carpet. These mechanisms will only established the stain in. Instead use a enthusiast to circulate the air about the treated spot. This will help dry the area completely.
Macaroni and bean artwork are fun tasks for kids to do. These projects also make get more info distinctive artwork for your kitchen. Have your children glue macaroni items or beans to a colored poster board. You can paint the macaroni initial or you can just let them use it as it is.
"In our family, there was always a idea of service. It was assumed that's what you would do with your lifestyle. When I came out of high college in 1961, my choices- according to my family- had been therefore teaching and nursing. As the eldest of five children, the idea of being about more younger people wasn't too appealing, so I chose nursing.
When prospects arrive to view your house, don't distract them with offers to sell those furnishings you no lengthier need. You may lose the greatest sale of all.
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Newspaper Barons Resurface — Is there anything more forlorn than the American metropolitan newspaper? First readers began deserting in droves, then the advertisers followed. Family owners headed for the exits and then hedge funds and other financial players scooped up newspapers thinking …
Scooped by Mike Wallace — Mike Wallace, who died on Sunday, was a superb role model. His success came the hard way—he was self-made, with a relentless determination to tell the truth to power and to find truths where others could not. In that sense, he made it easier for the rest of us.
How We Will Read: Clay Shirky — This post is part of “How We Will Read,” an interview series exploring the future of books from the perspectives of publishers, writers, and intellectuals. Read our kickoff post with Steven Johnson here. And check out our new homepage, a captivating new way to explore Findings.
Trayvon Martin call was “mistake, not deliberate”: NBC — (Reuters) - NBC News' decision to air an edited call from George Zimmerman to police in the moments before he shot Trayvon Martin was “a mistake and not a deliberate act to misrepresent the phone call,” according the president of network's news division.
Supremacy in Jeopardy for ‘Today’ — These days, the effervescent smiles on the “Today” show, America's most popular morning television companion, are concealing anxiety. — A few remote control clicks away on “Good Morning America,” the smiles may look the same, but they hint at something very different: hope.
Daisey revealer gains access to Foxconn factory floor — Rob Schmitz, the public radio journalist who exposed Apple commentator Mike Daisey's fabrications regarding working conditions at a Chinese electronics factory, has become only the second Western journalist to be granted access to Foxconn's factory floor.
TV cameraman shot dead on Lebanon-Syria border — (Reuters) - Syrian soldiers shot dead a cameraman working for Lebanon's Al-Jadeed television channel on Monday near the border between the two countries, the television channel said. — It said cameraman Ali Shaaban was on the Lebanese side …
Netflix forms PAC — In yet another move to boost its Washington profile, Netflix has formed a political action committee, new federal records indicate. — Called FLIXPAC, the committee may now make contributions donations directly to federal candidates — up to $5,000 per election.
The media business is in tumult: from the production side to
the distribution side, new technologies are upending the industry.
Keeping up with these changes is time-consuming, as essential media coverage
is scattered across numerous web sites at any given moment.
Mediagazer simplifies this task by organizing the key coverage in one place.
We've combined sophisticated automated aggregation technologies with
direct editorial input from knowledgeable human editors
to present the one indispensable narrative of an industry in transition.
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ALBION's defeat at Wembley was pretty much a snap-shot of their season - plenty of promise and ability, followed by the odd loss of focus, resulting in ultimate despair and frustration.
ALBION's defeat at Wembley was pretty much a snap-shot of their season - plenty of promise and ability, followed by the odd loss of focus, resulting in ultimate despair and frustration.
The Baggies' fans don't know whether to laugh or cry, be positive about the future or fearful of what awaits.
Tony Mowbray's arrival was met with the usual cliches about him being the 'luckiest' manager in football.
He was far from that. Expecting a manager to oversee massive change in his first campaign is a bit like asking a golfer to finish off a game using somebody else's clubs - it may happen but don't expect him to feel comfortable with it. In any case, promotion next season, not this, was his minimum requirement.
Before that, Bryan Robson brought in Kevin Phillips, Curtis Davies, Diomansy Kamara and Paul McShane. Each one a risk in some respect but each one to be considered a success story.
Even so, Albion had a very cosy look about them during Robson's brief spell in charge this season. The image of Nigel Pearson laughing in the dug-out at the Stadium of Light while Robson mouthed "well done" to under-performing players as they came off the field in that awful defeat was, pretty much, the final straw for chairman Jeremy Peace.
The Jason Koumas saga also did little for anyone's reputation. It was a sorry episode which took focus away from the matter of trying to win promotion.
A late return to pre-season - Albion came back at least a week after most, in some cases a fortnight later - meant they often wilted towards the end of games.
Not all of Robson's signings worked. Pascal Zuberbuhler might have been the 'second best' keeper at the World Cup but he was more 'Zuber-howler' at The Hawthorns following a series of spills.
John Hartson was arguably the biggest disappointment of the season, spending more time on the box as a pundit than in the opposition's box scoring goals - despite his and the club's best efforts to get him fit.
Mowbray had other problems to contend with. While the likes of Paul Robinson, McShane, Phillips, Davies and, latterly, Robert Koren always showed full application, the same couldn't be said about some of their team-mates, a few of whom considered themselves Premiership players-in-waiting.
The fact that so many openly spoke about leaving for the top flight after losing at Wembley, while fans were still filtering out of the stadium, left a bad taste and underlined the prevalent attitude among some at the club.
Zoltan Gera wasn't the same player after taking a rough challenge in Albion's opening game against Hull and didn't start performing again until Wembley came within sight.
Kamara - as vital as his 23-goal contribution was - deteriorated as the speculation over his future intensified, while Nathan Ellington struggled to maintain any form or consistency. Bizarrely, Martin Albrechtsen, hardly a regular under Mowbray, was even touting himself for a Premiership move on the eve of Albion's crucial play-off semi-final against Wolves.
On the flip side, Phillips was an inspiration, dovetailing intelligence with industry. And he scored 22 goals, which isn't bad going for a 33-year-old who needs occasional days off.
Koumas too, although at times sporadic, was a vital performer and the provider of so many goals. Jon Greening was Albion's Steady Eddie, rarely standing out as a star man but likewise never letting himself or the team down.
Off the field, the January transfer window was another anti-climax. While Derby brought in seven players, Mowbray welcomed two Bosman free transfers, Dean Kiely and Koren, and loan signing Sherjill MacDonald. Otherwise it was uneventful.
Nigel Quashie left to spread his miserable vibes around West Ham's dressing room, with Albion missing out on Hibs duo Kevin Thomson and Scott Brown. The Baggies can't be blamed for losing out on the duo - they were within a signature away of capturing them on the day of the Luton game, only for Hibs to pull the plug.
The future is now mapped out. Win or lose at Wembley, Mowbray always hinted at a clear-out. Chris Perry has gone, others will follow.
It's not necessarily a bad thing.
Mowbray has made it clear in the past that he favours ability, energy, athleticism and youth - those in the spring of their careers. He wants a balance to his side (soldiers and artists he calls them) so there's every chance his side will have a meaner look about them next season.
The Albion of 2007/08 is likely to have a fresher, more energetic look about it. If Mowbray gets the blend right, another promotion push could be on the cards.
RATING : Grade C.
BEST PLAYER : Kevin Phillips has been the intelligence behind Albion's attacking play. Not only did he score a fifth of their goals but his link-up play, work-rate and ability to read the game put him ahead of Koumas and Kamara.
GOAL OF THE SEASON : Diomansy Kamara's curler at Leeds just about beats Koren's against Barnsley, Ellington's against Cardiff and Phillips' first in the Molineux play-off win.
BEST MATCH : The 3-2 win in the play-off semi-final will live on in Albion folklore.
FAVOURITE QUOTE : "When you have young children you switch off naturally. When you have a two-and-half-year-old clinging to your leg, telling you he wants to feed the ducks then your focus changes.
"As soon as I open the door a little tornado runs at me, I pick him up and play with him so football goes out my head. Then he goes to bed and I start thinking about football again. I like to be professional but I'm the same as everyone else when I'm with the people I love." Tony Mowbray
ONE TO WATCH : Sherjill MacDonald. Tony Mowbray rates him very highly but so far the striker, on loan until January, has only been used as a substitute. Could get a bigger role next season.
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Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister says all personnel had been evacuated from the navy resupply base in Tartus, Syria, adding that not a single Russian military serviceman remained in the country.
Mikhail Bogdanov made the announcement in an interview with the
Al-Hayat newspaper. “Presently, the Russian Defense Ministry
has not a single person stationed in Syria. The base does not
have any strategic military importance,” the newspaper quoted
the Russian official as saying.
Russian media have verified the statement and the business daily
Vedomosti quoted an unnamed source in the Defense Ministry as
saying that this was true as all military and civilian personnel
had been evacuated from the Tartus base and there were no Russian
military instructors working with the Syrian military forces. The
source added that the withdrawal was prompted not only by the
increased risks caused by the ongoing military conflict, but also
by the fact that in the current conditions any incident involving
Russian servicemen would likely have some unfavorable reaction
from the international community.
Russia currently has a 16-ship flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea
but none of them has called at the port of Tartus in recent
months and there were no reports of such plans.
Mikhail Bogdanov is also Russian President’s plenipotentiary for
Middle East issues and he headed the Russian delegation at this
week’s talks between Russia, US and UN on preparations of the
major international conference on Syria, dubbed Geneva-2.
Following the Tuesday round of talks another Russian diplomat –
Deputy Foreign Minister Gennadiy Gatilov – told reporters that
the sides failed to agree on a number of questions and the terms
of the future conference were not yet agreed. In particular, the
participants of the talks varied on Iran’s possible role in the
future conference.
Moscow supports Tehran’s participation in talks as it would make
a positive contribution to the possible political settlement in
Syria, the Russian official noted.
Besides, the participation of some of the Syrian opposition
groups remains under question though the US side said they were
working on this, Gatilov added.
The Russian diplomat said that the supplies of weapons to the
Syrian opposition were not discussed at Tuesday's talks, though
he noted that this issue “was not creating positive political
environment for the start of the political process.”
Gatilov said that Russia still hoped the plan to call the
international conference would end in success. In particular, the
issue will be discussed at the forthcoming meeting between
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US State Secretary
John Kerry, due soon within the framework of the ASEAN conference
in Brunei.
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The defendant is charged [in count __]
with trafficking in personal identifying information. The statute defining this
offense reads in pertinent part as follows:
a person is guilty of trafficking
in personal identifying information when such person sells, gives or otherwise
transfers personal identifying information of another person to a third person
knowing that such information has been obtained without the authorization of
such other person and that such third person intends to use such information for
an unlawful purpose.
For you to find the defendant guilty
of this charge, the state must prove the following elements beyond a reasonable
doubt:
Element 2 - Not authorizedThe second element is that the
defendant knew that the information had been obtained without the authorization
of the person whose identifying information it was. A person acts "knowingly"
with respect to conduct or circumstances when (he/she) is aware that (his/her)
conduct is of such nature or that such circumstances exist. <See
Knowledge, Instruction 2.3-3.>
Element 3 - For unlawful
purpose
The third element is that the
defendant knew that the third person intended to use the information for
unlawful purposes. An unlawful purpose is anything that is prohibited by law.
<Insert specific allegations.>
Conclusion
In summary, the state must prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant 1) (sold / gave / transferred)
personal identifying information to another person, 2) (he/she) knew that the
identifying information had been obtained without authorization, and 3) (he/she)
knew that the person to whom the information was transferred intended to use it
for unlawful purposes.
If you unanimously find that the state
has proved beyond a reasonable doubt each of the elements of the crime of
trafficking in personal identifying information, then you shall find the
defendant guilty. On the other hand, if you unanimously find that the state has
failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt any of the elements, you shall then
find the defendant not guilty.
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That was the parallel drawn by il,7p,14l Larry Peccatiello, the Washington Redskins assistant coach in charge of linebackers, after the game Marshall had against the Denver Broncos Monday night.
"Wilber had one of those nights when he did everything," Peccatiello said. "I think great athletes have those kinds of games. Babe Ruth probably hit four home runs on occasion, but he didn't do it often. This was Wilber's four-home-run night. He might have had his career game. He was charged, and it rubbed off on everybody else. He set the tone and everybody followed."
Marshall had a sack, caused a fumble and had five tackles in the 34-3 victory over the Broncos, but his eye-popping play came in the first quarter: He tipped a pass by John Elway, grabbed it after it bounced off teammate Fred Stokes and then ran 20 yards for a touchdown.
"It would have been one thing if it had bounced to him," Peccatiello said. "But it bounced low and he had the presence of mind to reach down and catch it about a foot off the ground."
Peccatiello doesn't expect Marshall to play that way every game.
"If you did those kinds of things every game, they'd have to build a cage around you. They wouldn't let you on the field," he said.
It was almost appropriate, though, that Marshall's career night was obscured by Art Monk's settting the all-time career receiving record later in the game.
Marshall has had problems getting recognition in Washington.
Since signing a five-year, $6 million contract with the Redskins in 1988, Marshall has missed the Pro Bowl every year -- even last year, when he had 131 tackles, five interceptions and 5 1/2 sacks.
His sensational showing Monday night might be enough to vault Marshall back into the Pro Bowl for the first time since 1987.
There are various theories about why Marshall hasn't made it since he got the big contract in Washington. One is that he's not exactly a Dale Carnegie on the field. He doesn't make many friends.
After the Redskins lost to the Phoenix Cardinals on Oct. 4, Cardinals offensive tackle Luis Sharpe said Marshall is "always running his mouth."
Cardinals quarterback Chris Chandler said one of the best things about his team's upset victory over the Redskins was that it shut up Marshall.
"Every time he tackled me, he'd say something like, 'It's me again. Here I am. I'm all over you,' " Chandler said. "I don't think you're ever going to silence him, but it definitely feels good at the end of the game when he doesn't have anything to talk about."
Marshall has a different theory. He thinks players put too much emphasis on sacks when they vote players such as Pat Swilling of the New Orleans Saints and Charles Haley, now of the Dallas Cowboys, into the Pro Bowl.
Swilling led the league with 17 sacks last year; Haley made it with seven.
"If you get on the corner and rush every down and get one sack a game, you end up with 16 sacks and you're all-world. But what else do you see him do?" Marshall said.
Since the league started keeping sack stats a decade ago, Marshall is the first player to get 20 interceptions and more than 20 sacks (he has 37 in his career).
"I want to be known as the guy who can do it all," he said. "I'm proud of saying I can do it all."
It won't get any easier for Marshall on Sunday, when the Redskins play the Philadelphia Eagles at RFK (1 p.m.). The defense has to contain Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham, who has Herschel Walker's running to complement his scrambling.
"Herschel's changed his attitude [since leaving Minnesota]," Marshall said. "He's playing a lot harder, a lot better. We're playing well, but we can play a lot better. We're just starting to get that feeling back like we had last year. We really stepped it up [last week] and we want to keep it going toward the end," he said.
If Marshall keeps going, he should have a date in Honolulu in February.
NOTES: The Redskins offensive line troubles continued yesterday. RT Ed Simmons, who is in the lineup because Joe Jacoby has had to switch to left tackle, had to sit out practice yesterday with back spasms. Ray Brown played in his place, but the Redskins expect Simmons to be ready Sunday. . . . Mike Haight, who was claimed off waivers Wednesday after the Detroit Lions cut him, joined the team yesterday. He was cut by the New York Jets at the end of camp and still can't figure out why. "I guess they found somebody better. . . . but they're also 1-5," Haight said.
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It’s been a few weeks!
I’m back! Have you missed my posts? I have. I love this hobby and I love this outlet.
So I’ve sewn a little in my absence but not enough. First off I finished my pajama project. I’ll post a separate blog post about that soon. Summary, I hated pajamas until I made my own. Now I have a drawer full of me made, perfectly comfy pajamas that I love.
I also sewed some costumes for two of my boys this halloween. The littlest declared he wanted his store bought and since he wanted to be a dragon, I had no problem letting pottery barn solve that issue.
My middle son wanted to be a wizard. I don’t have a wizard costume in kids sizes so I sized an adult pattern down. This was both challenging and made me use resources I already had. The bottom tunic turned out to be too small to get over his head so I added a front cut out and it turned out to be a unique and perfect feature of the costume. It was a construction technique I picked up from a previous project and showed me why I love sewing different and challenging features, you never know when you will be able to utilize a previously acquired skill.
The hat from this pattern was made just as directed by the pattern and the pattern was SOOOOO wrong. I ended up having to draft my own.
My oldest son wanted to be a vampire. We had the vampire cape left over from a previous halloween so he just needed pants, shirt and vest. I decided instead of buying a vampire costume that I would make him black pants and a white shirt that he could reuse in daily life. Then I found this gray shiny fabric in my stash and used that for the vest.
The result was perfect . . .
So that was the sewing I did in October. I’ve finished my first November project and I’ll share that soon!
Top Posts & Pages
About this blog . . .
One Project a Week for a Year! This blog was started to document and hold me accountable to that goal. Check out all the projects in the Category One Project a Week for a Year. October 2018 will be the conclusion of the challenge. Thanks for following along!
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Nashville, Tenn. (Nov. 12, 2013) – TNA WRESTLING today announced it will for the first time in the company’s history produce a Pay-Per-View (PPV) live event from New York, as cameras capture the Superstars of TNA Wrestling go “#OldSchool” in Poughkeepsie, NY, on Monday, Dec. 30, for a One Night Only event.
“TNA is ecstatic to bring our first ever Pay-Per-View event to the great state of New York,” said Andy Barton, Executive Vice President of Live Events. “New York is legendary for professional wrestling and the phenomenal crowd in Poughkeepsie is in for an incredible evening of action as TNA goes ‘#OldSchool’ for One Night Only.”
Tickets to the Poughkeepsie, One Night Only “#OldSchool” PPV event are on sale this Friday, Nov. 15.
TICKETS:
Available beginning Friday, Nov. 15, tickets start at $20 and are available at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center box office, online at ticketmaster.com or by phone at 800.745.3000.
A limited number of VIP Packages, beginning at $125, are also available for the event and available via ShopTNA.
Two matches already announced for the Poughkeepsie One Night Only PPV event include a Last Man Standing Match featuring “The Cowboy” James Storm vs. “The IT Factor” Bobby Roode and a Falls Count Anywhere Match with Bully Ray squaring off against Tommy Dreamer.
The One Night Only “#OldSchool” PPV event is scheduled to broadcast in domestic and international markets in 2014.
site announcement
We would like to take this time to welcome you all to the new TNAWrestlingNews.com! As you can see, we have launched an all new design with lots of new features. Due to the high demand, we have kept the old comments script for you guys. Other new features include a new top story script, poll, images inside news posts and much more!
Please let us know your thoughts on the new design! We want to hear your feedback! Let us know what we can change or add and we’ll do our best.
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How can I view my data on inFlow Cloud?
First, you’ll need to have an inFlow Cloud account! Sign up for an inFlow Cloud account to get started. Once you’ve gone through the setup process, you can access your data in three ways as long as you have a working internet connection: using the Windows app, mobile app, and any web browser.
inFlow Cloud for Windows
inFlow Cloud for Web
inFlow Cloud for Android
inFlow Cloud for iOS
View products
Edit products
Adjust stock
Non-serialized products only
Non-serialized products only
View customers
Edit customers
Manage users/ rights
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–
View orders
–
–
Edit orders
–
–
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inFlow Cloud for Windows
This is where you can see the bulk of your data — products, customers, orders, etc! If you’re an inFlow Inventory user already, you’ll be familiar with this interface as it’s essentially the same look and functionality.
inFlow Cloud for Web
You should have access to this automatically after signing up for inFlow Cloud (after choosing whether to Transfer data or to Create new data). If you’ve transferred data from an existing inFlow Inventory backup, you’ll find that you can view a list of your products + details. If you’ve created new data, you’ll have a blank list and a recommendation to install inFlow Cloud for Windows to input your data.
Currently only product and customer information can be edited from the website, though adding more features to the web app is something we’re working on! For more information on editing products on the web app take a look at this article. To learn more about editing customer information on the web take a look here.
To manage your team members and account subscription. You can also can log in to http://app.inflowinventory.com using any web browser. You can also access this page through the inFlow Cloud for Windows app by going to Main Menu > Options > Settings > Manage your account and team.
inFlow Cloud for Android
The inFlow Cloud mobile app is available on the Google Play store. Once you’ve downloaded it, enter your inFlow Cloud email address + password to sign in. Note that you won’t be able to log in if you don’t have a database created yet. You’ll need to go back to http://app.inflowinventory.com/login to finish the database creation if you’re having trouble logging in.
The mobile application allows you to adjust stock levels (either by scanning or manually adjusting), look up/edit customers, look up/edit product details, and check stock levels. Currently, it is not possible to enter orders into the mobile app.
inFlow Cloud for iOS
The inFlow Cloud mobile app is available on the Apple store. Once you’ve downloaded it, enter your inFlow Cloud email address + password to sign in. Note that you won’t be able to log in if you don’t have a database created yet. You’ll need to go back to http://app.inflowinventory.com/login to finish the database creation if you’re having trouble logging in.
The mobile application allows you to adjust stock levels (either by scanning or manually adjusting), look up/edit customers, look up/edit product details, and check stock levels. Currently, it is not possible to enter orders into the mobile app.
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Donations
The City of Watsonville Parks & Community Service Department welcomes donations to support the programs offered.
Some areas of need include:
Scholarships for youth to participate in programs.
Supplies and equipment for parks and recreation programs
Support for Special events
Donations may be made directly to the Parks and Community Services Department by contacting the customer services office at 768-3240.
Alternatively, donations to the Parks and Community Services Department may be made through the Friends of Watsonville Parks and Community Services, Inc., which is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to supporting the Parks and Community Services Department. More information may be found on the Friends of Watsonville website.
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Laura Lis Scott's offset thinking.
K is for Keyboard
Regular keyboards give me a pain — a pain in the wrist, specifically. It makes a huge difference when you’re typing a lot for emails, blog posts, proposals, articles … and novels.
I tried a number of keyboards.
The Kinesis Advantage is one of the most radical ergonomic keyboards out there. With scooped-out keyboard forms, it’s designed to conform to typical finger paths, not conventional keyboard grids. However, there’s a very steep learning curve. What put me off, though, were the rather long keystrokes. This issue can be addressed somewhat with some hacks, such as swapping key switches and adding rubber rings underneath each key to try to limit they keystroke distance, but this already is a very expensive keyboard (several hundred dollars) and having to take it apart key by key just to make it acceptable didn’t feel all that sensible, so I somewhat regretfully returned it.The Microsoft Sculpt keyboard is a lightweight and modern offering from the company that had the most popular ergonomic keyboard in the 1990s. It wasn’t bad, but the Option and Command keys are swapped in position, which would require new less-optimal keystroke habits. In the end, I sent it back primarily for this reason.The Goldtouch Go!2 keyboard does not have curves, but it does have a universal joint in the middle that allows you to angle they left and right halves of the keyboard, and even peak it in the middle, so you can find your own comfort position to avoid things like wrist pronation that can contribute to RSI. I like the quick-action scissor-switch keys, which are most like the keys on Apple keyboards, and don’t require a ton of motion in order to register a keystroke—very important when you don’t want to feel like you’re typing through mud. The keyboard has a switch for Mac and PC layouts. And it folds up, making it portable. Some people may dislike that it’s a USB keyboard, but I don’t mind—one less battery-driven device to worry about.
I bought the same trackball mouse for work and home which has helped. The ergonomic keyboards are still a bit awkward for me. I may still try one out if my other modifications aren’t enough to ease carpel tunnel. So far I’m OK.
I see you are easing back on the A to Z challenge. It’s tough; I only did it this year if I pre-posted for the month. Now with writing deadlines, I’m not so swamped. Here’s my A to Z Post on Memorable Characters
It takes about a day to get used to the angle of most of the ergo keyboards. The Kinesis Advantage is the exception, apparently taking several weeks. I just didn’t like it. For mouse, I use the Apple Magic Mouse. Years ago, I used trackballs and loved them, but now I’m out of the habit and like the touch surface of the mouse. I’m thinking I may give the trackpad another try.
Sorry I’m only getting to replying now. I was swamped, but now am starting to see some daylight and can start trying to catch up a bit….on my novel. No regrets on quitting A to Z. It was fun at first, but after a while it was getting in the way of my prioritized writing. Thanks for dropping by!
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Contact
CEE Group
Speersort 10 | 20095 Hamburg | Germany
+49 (0) 40 688 788-0
[email protected]
Would you like to learn more about us or do you have questions about our offerings? We will be pleased to provide further assistance. To contact us, use the form or one of the possibilities referred to above. We look forward to hearing from you.
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Share this with your golf buddies:
Hello and welcome back to another edition of Hittin’ the Links. I took last week off – we gave you the 2009 U.S. Open Final Round Live Blog instead – and got a little R and R with the family. Now I have returned to provide all of you with the best golf news on the web. So here we go.
In this newest volume of HTL we look at the newest inductee to the Golf Hall of Fame, see who the Aussies got to improve attendance at their National Championship, and find out who just made it into the British Open. Also on tap, we do a John Daly legal update, take a long look at the Club Pro Championship, and do a wrap-up of this week’s tour winners. Read on!Hole 1: President Golf
Dwight D. Eisenhower is being inducted into the Golf Hall of fame, the first president to receive the honor. [Link]
Hole 2: Crowd Pleaser
Greg Norman has agreed to play in the next three Australian Opens in an attempt to improve attendance. [Link]
Hole 3: Ishikawa
17 year-old Ryo Ishikawa qualifies for the British Open with a win on the Japan Golf Tour. [Link]
Hole 4: John Daly
John Daly has been ordered to pay almost $300,000 in attorney’s fees to a Florida Newspaper after his unsuccessful libel lawsuit. [Link]
Hole 5: Ken Green
Champions Tour golfer Ken Green is in stable condition after having his lower leg amputated due to a severe RV accident. [Link]
Hole 6: Sorry Vijay
Vijay Singh recently offered to pay the bail for financier Allen Stanford, one of his sponsors. As a non-U.S. citizen, however, he’s not allowed. [Link]
Hole 7: The Working Man’s Championship
The PGA Club Pro National Championship is underway in New Mexico, check out how theses guys play. [Link]
Hole 8: Dick’s Sporting Goods Open
Lonnie Nielsen goes low in the final round to win the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open on the old guy tour. [Link]
Hole 9: He’s Not Old, He’s Experienced!
Kenny Perry wins the Travelers Championship in record fashion just edging out a couple other forty-somethings. [Link]
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Sunday, November 14, 2010
Reining In will be featured on Daily Cheap Reads in late December or early January. Phantom Rising will be featured on Kindle Boards mid December. I've been notified of a few other places each book will be showing up. I'm so excited. I can hardly wait!
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About Me
Dawn is the author of Reining In and Phantom Rising. She runs the Breakout Book Club on Facebook and also reviews Indie books on the Breakout Books Review Board.
Dawn was born and raised in South Dakota, but now lives with her three daughters in Kansas. She enjoys all things creative; writing, drawing and photography are her favorites.
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Why Blogger?
Some of you might be wondering why I moved my site over to Blogger. There are a few reasons. I moved it over to facebook for a while, for much the same reasons, but the facebook page was still lacking in a few areas.I wanted the site to be interactive; something I didn't have with the original site. Cool as it was, there was no way for anyone to talk to me or to the other readers.I loved how much interaction there was on the Reining In fan page over there, and thought I would give it a shot for the main website. It was ok, but there are things you can't do on facebook, like little side blurbs like this one, for instance; extra pages for things like book information and things like that. It was limited. So after playing with Blogger for a while, I realized that it had what all the other sites were lacking.So here we are. It's not some fancy, professional looking site. Instead, it is a user friendly site, for both me and everyone who visits it. Oh, and did I mention, everything I post here gets copied to the facebook page? So fans over there still get to see everything.
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JS 83: Real Estate Investing in Central America with Mike Cobb President of ECI Development
November 12th, 2014 by Jason | Comments Off on JS 83: Real Estate Investing in Central America with Mike Cobb President of ECI Development
Mike Cobb is the president of ECI Development and has been living as an expat for the past 11 years in Central America with his wife and two daughters. He is currently located in Nicaragua and speaks to Jason about what life is like in Central America along with some interesting real estate movements in Nicaragua, Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama.
Key Takeaways:
3:00 – If you look at Panama today, it looks like Miami. Due to location, Panama has been doing very well economically.
It’s my pleasure to welcome Mike Cobb back to the show. He’s been on before. He is a developer who develops in some Central American countries. We’re going to talk to him about what is driving real estate values, rental values in these markets between the local economies, the international buyers, etc, etc; just kind of get a bird’s eye view of a few different markets here, which I think you’ll find interesting.
Mike, welcome back, how are you?
Mike Cobb:
Good, Jason. Nice to be back with ya. Thanks for having me. Yeah, sounds like we’re going to have a pretty good conversation today.
Jason:
Well, we certainly did last time. I remember the last time we talked we were on the sand in Belize, outdoors there on the beach, and drinking a beer..so. *Laughter*.
Mike:
That’s right. It was delightful. I’m sitting in my office in Managua, Nicaragua today, so not quite the same thing, but still in a tropical location.
Jason:
There you go, there you go. What is going on with some of the Central American economies and real estate markets nowadays? It was about two years ago when we talked I think.
Mike:
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. Central American economy took a dip when the American economy did in 2008, 2009, 2010, but recovered much quicker. You know, we saw negative growth rates in the states and what we saw here were reductions of growth rates, but a country like Panama for instance, their GDP growth is double digits and Nicaragua just under 6%, Costa Rica 5-6%, and Belize same kind of thing. So, healthy growth across the region. Now, we are talking about smaller economies obviously, but very, very good economic growth and a much faster recovery kind of a challenging period that we faced in the states in real estate.
To answer it very intrinsically, what’s driving the real estate sector, it varies country to country, but let me start with Panama. Panama, its got a canal expansion. Panama is an incredible business hub for Central and South America, even. There’s a lot of money coming in from South America, driving the real estate expansion there. If you fly into Panama city today, my goodness, it looks like Miami. The number of skyscrapers. There’s probably 30 or 40 skyscrapers of 40 stories or more and they’re almost all residential and a lot of that money is coming in from South America. So, Panama, because of it’s location, really, right in the center between North American and South America, the canal, and it just really attracted a lot of foreign money, not just US, Canadian money goes through out a lot of Central and South American money.
Panama is doing very, very well. Costa Rica continues to do well. They, have all the countries of Central America, they were the one that maybe ballooned the most pre-2008 and they were the slowest to recover. We’re now seeing now most of the excess inventory, however the market place, the home prices, the condo prices are back to a reasonable profit margin above construction cost. I know we were talking before we went online in US health, you can still find deals that are below the cost of construction. I don’t think you’re going to find that in Costa Rica anymore. Last year you might have, but this year you won’t.
Jason:
What do you consider the construction cost in Costa Rica per square foot?
Mike:
It depends where in the country, but we’re really talking about a singular type of construction, which is a pour concrete, post to beam or block and filled, but post to beam solid construction, nice finishes. We’re talking $90 to $110 square foot. So, it’s well-built, seismic-rated construction. On the Caribbean side, we deal with hurricanes, and so again, talking cap for kind of rated construction quality, it’s the same number. In Belize, is a good example, Belize is probably about $120 to $150 a square foot, for again, category 5 rated.
Jason:
Okay, so category 5 property. Now, is that just construction without land?
Mike:
That is. Those are very nice finishes. I mean, you could definitely build for less, but to compare to a comparable product in the states. Here’s the thing, concrete, steal, windows, faucets, fixtures, electrical wire, all those materials are world price. I mean, there’s no discount if you’re buying steal in Belize. The only thing that’s less in Central America is the labor component and labor is about a 3rd of the cost of the construction. So, if labor is a 3rd so a 3rd of a 3rd is a 9th, so you’re really talking about 10-12% less on the construction cost for a true to apples to apples product, which surprises most people.
Jason:
Wait, 10-12% where? Between where and where?
Mike:
Anywhere really Jason, because again, steal and concrete that it takes to build a condo or a home, it is the same. It’s a world price. There’s no discount on steal.
Jason:
No, no. I understand that. You were making a comparison and I just wanted to understand where that comparison was.
Mike:
I’m just saying labor is about a 3rd of the cost to build a condo or a home and labor is a 3rd of what it is in the states and that would be comparable throughout the region, whether it’s Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize, labor is probably about a 3rd of what it is in the states. So, we’re really not talking about very much of a discount when you buy real estate overseas. The discount comes in the form of ownership costs. It costs far less to own a piece of real estate long term.
Jason:
Because of the property taxes.
Mike:
Property taxes are lower, HOA fees are lower, and then you get into all the quality of life issues that don’t have anything to do with the real estate per say.
Jason:
Right, right, we’ll talk about those in a moment. I just want to drill down on this, because we’re talking about it. Let’s kind of stay on topic just for a second here. So, how much are the HOA fees on a condo, I mean of course they vary, but what’s the average?
Okay, so. That’s not inexpensive. *Laughter*. Is it? Where are you comparing it to?
Mike:
Well, I think comparing it to something in Miami. I look at condo HOA fees in Miami and taxes and stuff like that and they tell to be considerably higher. I mean again, when you’re comparing apples to apples, the cost of hurricane insurance is what it is and that’s again a world price, there’s no discount on it because it’s Belize. Again, the things that cost money, the paint to repaint a building, the maintenance of a building, all of those things, they cost what they cost, and there’s no discount.
Jason:
I’m betting though the property taxes are a lot lower. Of course they vary from state to state and the municipalities in the US, but I mean, betting your property taxes, I can’t remember, but I think they’re fairly low aren’t they?
Mike:
Yeah, you can’t even talk about them in terms of a percentage. On a condo, you know, $150,000 condo, your property taxes are $200 a year.
Jason:
Yeah, it’s nothing.
Mike:
Right.
Jason:
And in the states, of course it depends where it is, but it might be $2,500 a year. You know. It might be more. If it’s in New Jersey, god, it’ll be way more. *Laughter*.
Mike:
Right, exactly.
Jason:
You know, Mike, I’ve always been the guy that preaches the idea of transparency and being skeptical with my guests, I kind of asked you some tough questions when you were on, if you recall.
Mike:
Well, I’m a big fan of transparency too, so I don’t remember the questions, but I’m glad you asked them.
Jason:
See, it’s because I got you a beer first. *Laughter*. If you would grab a beer now, I wanna ask you a tough question. I’m just kidding. No, the tough question is this, it’s not really a question, but it’s just a concept I just wanted to share with you and our listeners and I’m sure you’re going to have some real commentary on it. So, I certainly understand that in Nicaragua, Panama, Belize, the cost of labor is much, much lower then it is in the states. You know, you don’t have OCEA, you don’t have..you probably don’t have worker’s comp of any type, you certainly have a less educated population by enlarge. Of course, that’s a generalization, but you know, so you have lower labor costs, you probably don’t even have minimum wage in a lot of these places, I assume. Do you?
Mike:
We actually do. There is a minimum wage.
Jason:
What’s the minimum wage? I’m curious.
Mike:
It varies by country, but anywhere from $4 a day in Nicaragua up to maybe about $11 a day in Belize.
Jason:
Oh my god. A day. That’s a day, folks, versus in the US we talk about per hour. *Laughter*.
Mike:
Right, right.
Jason:
In Seattle, the socialist idiots there just realized the minimum wage to $15 an hour, so guess what. I gotta go to Seattle just to go to a fast food joint and order and I bet you my tray of fast food would be like $37. *Laughter*.
Mike:
It has to be to support that, easily.
Jason:
Yeah, it’s crazy. But, here’s the thing I wanted to run by you being a bit of a skeptic here and poke holes in this theory, if you can find them, it’s this comparison. I think there is an interesting economic situation at play when you look at these developing countries and you look at cheap labor and I’m going to compare it to, I love in Phoenix, Arizona. I used to live in Southern California, Newport Beach, Irvine, okay, most of my life. My mother, a few years ago, moved from our old house that she still owns in West Las Angeles; Las Angeles is just no place to live in my eyes. *Laughter*. She moved from LA to, of all places, cultural shock, Gulf Shores, Alabama, there’s a switch up for ya, okay. *Laughter*.
You know, I was just out visiting her, she built this incredible 9200 square foot mansion out there, I mean it’s just ridiculous this house and she was complaining..she built it from scratch, bought the lot, built it, everything, managed, you know, fired the contractor in the middle of the job because he made a huge mistake and took over the job herself, and literally did it all, okay, which is a pretty impressive feat. She’s always complaining to me about the fact that you can’t find good workers in Gulf Shores, Alabama. She says that just everything is more expensive and here you’ve got a very similar dynamic in a microcosm, because it’s sort of a more primitive area, if you will, of the US. Sorry Gulf Shore residents if I offend you with that, but it’s not Las Angeles, it’s not a cosmopolitan place, it’s a lay back kind of primitive beach idea.
You know, I like that to a little bit of Belize, right. So, what’s interesting is that you don’t have as much competition for jobs, probably, but you also don’t have, like, as many good, mature distributions systems there and you were saying earlier that the cost of steal is the cost of steal around the world. I agree with that conceptually, but where it changes is when you look at a modern country, because of their infrastructure and their capacity and efficiencies, and hopefully less bureaucracy, although that’s arguable, things actually you have to pay the labor a lot more. You certainty can’t pay anybody $4 a day here without going to jail, but because the infrastructure is more developed, I don’t know, we have very nice houses here in many areas for $70 per square foot, I don’t know if they are category 5 hurricane houses. They’re nice. I mean, they’re in hurricane areas in the Gulf Coast.
Mike:
You do bring up a great point and let me kind of come at two different ways, one of the efficiency distribution. Yes, the US as an industrialize nation has an incredible sophisticated distribution network that delivers steals anywhere in the country, probably at the lowest price per ton or per foot, however you want to measure, of any were in the world. You just can’t beat that.
I mean, there’s no way to beat that, but I think the lower price of labor; it’ll be an interesting study and maybe I’ll have my construction guys actually help me because they’ve built both in Belize and in the states to come up with some numbers, because I’d be curious, but I’m guessing the lower prices of labor per loading and off loading and all of that handling, so to speak, is probably a pretty good offset for most components to go into a home or a condo. I’m guessing it’s about the same.
What I do know, I have run this study on a general basis; I’ve never done it on steal specificity, I’ve done it on a house; is when you go to Southern California and you actually look at a comparably constructed home in Southern California to how we build them in say, Nicaragua or Belize or Costa Rica or Panama, we’re about 20% less in cost on a true apples to apples construction basis. Yeah, I could build homes in Nicaragua for $30 a square foot, it just doesn’t meet what my clients expect when they move it. You know, $60-$70 a foot, yeah we could build something kind of stick built, kind of maybe even concrete, you know, but it wouldn’t have a true clay-tile roof, it wouldn’t have mahogany cabinetry.
You know, the kinds of the things that we just put standard in a house, because we can. I think if you look at apples to apples, I do know that we’re about 20% less than a comparable house built in Southern California, because Southern California is probably the only place in the US where they really build a house in a similar manner to what we build them here in Central America.
Jason:
I don’t want to take the whole to talk about that, but I just wanted to run that by you, because I think it’s kinda like saying, look, you know, I could go to a tailor and get a handmade suit, but you know, if your body type is kind of a normal size, you can just buy one off the rack for just as good for one 3rd of the price and that’s the beauty of mass production, right?
Mike:
Sure, absolutely.
Jason:
You know, these custom tailors call me and I’m like, “I don’t need a custom tailor for me. I can walk into a store and just pick it off the rack it’s going to be great.” But, some people do. So, that’s the concept of the efficiencies and, you know, when you’re looking at a new car, right. You know, I was test driving a Tesla recently and I’m thinking, “This is nice, it’s a neat concept.” And you know, I’m a big fan of Elon Musk, you probably are too, you know, he does some innovative stuff to be sure, but that car is $30,000 over price, Mike, because it’s not mass produced. They don’t get the efficiency of BMW. You can get the same, granted it’s not the same car, but you know, can super high quality BMW for $35,000 less than that car and you got a great car.
Mike:
I hear you. Absolutely. You know, where you’re going to see those efficiencies in this part of the world are on condominiums, especially, because again, those are built kind of not to order. It’s not a custom-tailored suit, we’re building a building with 20 condos, whatever the number is, and those are built efficiently. They’re built to be efficient. You know, at Gran Pacifica, which is a beach and golf resort, 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath home, for 225. You know, 150 yards from the ocean, 100 yards from the golf course. I don’t know where you can duplicate that kind of price point in the US. I really don’t. The view of the ocean on a golf community 150 yards from the water for $225. I just don’t know where you could duplicate that in the US.
Jason:
So, what else is driving these different markets? You know, the investment opportunity or at least the lifestyle opportunity in them. Tell us about what you’re doing in Nicaragua. I mean, I saw you development in Belize first hand. I have not been to Nicaragua, although that could be. I’ll be in Peru next month and if I make it Nicaragua that’ll probably be country number 74 for me. *Laughter*.
Mike:
My goodness. Okay.
Jason:
My passport, Mike, has more stamps than the post office.
Mike:
That’s a wonderful thing by the way. You know, come to Nicaragua, check it out. People are always scared of Nicaragua and the perceptions, the memories we’ve had from the 70s and 80s when there was a civil war here. You know, the civil war ended in 1989. That’s like 25 years ago. So, it’s a different country, it’s a new country, and look, I’m not Nicaraguan, I’m not have a dog in the fight, so to speak, but I have chosen to call this home for the last 12 years largely because my wife loves it here. I like it here too. I don’t really care where I live, but she does care and she lives it. We have a great life. It’s a great quality of life.
I think that’s why people are coming not just to Nicaragua, but to Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, all the countries that we work in, it is for the quality of life more than the cost of entry. The cost of entry, again, is not significantly less than it is in the US. Once you get here, it’s actually amazing, this is paradoxical, Jason. This is truly the paradox and that is, you can actually have a higher quality of life and it costs less.
I know that’s hard for people to imagine, but just this morning I had fresh blackberries, from the grocery store, with breakfast with a bowl of fitness cereal, US brand cereal if that’s what you want, go to the movies in English, we eat out at wondrous great restaurants at night for my daughter’s birthday, La Julieta, I mean, it could stand up in any city in the world. So, fine dining, movies, culture, movie theaters, restaurants, groceries stories, and then, and then, this is what’s amazing; I don’t know how much people go down to Whole Foods, I like to call it Whole Paycheck.
For that kind of stuff that’s grown locally, where cost of labor is so cheap, that’s baked in the cake, so to speak. I agree with you. You know, Mike, to argue the point and be the skeptic about that one, my friend Ron lived in Colombia for many, many years. He was a huge fan and he lived in Medellin, right.
Mike:
Yep, nice city.
Jason:
You know, just absolutely loved it and then recently on his Facebook and I talked to him after this, you know, he was complaining that he’s moving back to the states and he’s fed up with the whole thing down there and here I said, “Why?” and there was a big trend on Facebook, everybody was commenting on it and chiming in like they do, I know you’re not a Facebook-er, at least you weren’t before.
Mike:
No. I’m still not.
Jason:
*Laughter*. So you miss all of this good stuff, but you know, he said he wants to buy a new car and it costs a fortunate down there. He said everything is so expensive because immature distribution systems, the underdeveloped systems, and I guess there are tariffs, I’m not sure. I’m not sure about the protectionist issue, but yeah, no. I agree with you. Living off the land and eating local, it’s gotta be local produce, that’s going to be less expensive. Local meats probably much less expensive too.
Mike:
Absolutely.
Jason:
But, you know, everything else is probably more expensive. I’ll give you an example, I was in Bermuda a few years ago and my earbuds for my iPhone broke. You know, those at the time, I think for the old version it was like 20 bucks, now they’re 30 bucks because there’s a new version that’s nicer, but you know, I went in and found them in Bermuda believe it or not. The real, genuine Apple earbuds and there was this little sort of Apple-authorized little tiny store with actual Apple products. I couldn’t believe that I found it, right. They were $47 dollar. US. *Laughter*. You know, during the currency conversion and everything. I’m like, “Wow.” There’s just a lot to be said for either not having the protectionist or having more efficient distribution. I don’t know which it is.
Mike:
You know, some items are definitely more. Bermuda is a tough one because it’s a little island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, right.
Jason:
Yeah, what all those people do is they buy stuff in New York. They go to New York and they bring it on the plane. I’m like, “Isn’t that expensive to bring it on the plane?” And they’re like, “No, it’s worth it.” *Laughter*.
Mike:
And that’s true. I mean, I always have a little shopping list when I’m in the states and most people when they’re overseas do have a little shopping list when they go back to the states, but you know, gasoline, generally is more expensive, so there’s one thing that’s more expensive. You know, like that big bag of produce is $9, Jason. $9!
Jason:
What would that cost you in the states do you think?
Mike:
I have no idea, probably couple hundred.
Jason:
That much? Wow.
Mike:
It’s 20 something pounds. It might even be more than that. I mean it’s a burlap sack full of fresh produce, right. Anyway, we get meats and cheese and stuff like that. You know, having a maid and a gardener for under $200 a month. So, again..
Jason:
You could have a driver too. You need a chauffeur, Mike.
Mike:
No, no.
Jason:
No? No chauffeurs?
Mike:
I like driving. I do. My wife she drives our kids around in the CRV, they have ballet and gymnastics, and girl scouts, and all those kinds of things. It’s not right for everyone. It’s not. It’s probably only right for 5-10% for the US population.
Jason:
So who’s it right for?
Mike:
Who’s it right for? So, there’s a great little test that in fact, it’s like a 15-18 question quiz, not a test, a little quiz where you just rank yourself just one, two or three and it’s the best test that indicates whether you are right to live overseas or not. If people want to hit you with an email, I’d be happy to send it to them, Jason. It’s just a fun little test. You take it, you rate yourself one, two, or three, but generally the kind of people who do well overseas are people who have a broad world perspective. A lot of the times we use the word provincial to describe people who are not..
Jason:
Sure.
Mike:
Okay. So, if you’re provincial. If you’re from Arizona, it’s the best state in the whole world and there’s nothing better than anywhere else, then don’t leave, because you’re not going to be happy. But, if you see a world as a place to be explored, I mean you got 74 stamps in your passport, my guess is you’d do pretty well overseas.
Jason:
I’ve certainly thought about it.
Mike:
Yeah, right, and guess what, the people who have thought about it are generally the type that do well, because you’re not going to think about it, probably, unless you’re probably the kind of person who would do well, but this little quickie test is great. So, people email ya and you wanna send it to them, I’ll provide a copy.
Jason:
Just provide your email or do you want me to put it..I can put the link in the show notes if you want, how’s that?
Mike:
That’ll be great. They can reach out to me.
Jason:
So, send me that and we’ll give out your website so that they can find you too. If you want to just give that out now, Mike, go ahead and do that.
Mike:
Sure. It’s ECIdevelopment.com. So you can just hit info at ECIdevelopment.com, put Attention Mike in the subject line and it’ll drop right to me.
Jason:
Good stuff.
Mike:
Yeah.
Jason:
So there’s certainly different strokes for different folks, I totally get that. That’s interesting. Any more discussion on what’s driving these economies, these real estate markets, I think people would just love to hear about that.
Mike:
Yeah, Panama’s the one. The reason I started with Panama is because it’s sort of the odd country out because of the canal and it’s very strategic location at the center of Americas, but Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize, really what’s driving the real estate market, specificity..and let me differentiate, there’s a local real estate market, which I’m not talking about at all. I’m only talking about the expat real estate market. I’m happy to talk about the local one too, but the comments I’m going to make are expat-driven real estate and that is the weather, the cost of living, and the quality of life. That’s what literally drives the market down here in Central and South America.
I mean, people want the nice weather, they want outdoor living, they want a lower cost of living, they want a higher quality of life. Again, we can argue whether it is or it’s not, but the people who come, they certainly believe that it is, and tourism. Tourism is sort of the entree point for a lot of people who come to visit on a vacation or on a cruise and get a taste of it and then they start to ponder, they start to think about, “Maybe this is a place I’d like to spend the winters.” So, a lot of folks come..
Jason:
Snow birds.
Mike:
Absolutely, yep.
Jason:
Yeah, okay. Alright. Here, you know who I had on the show that you just gotta hear, because I’d love to hear your counter points to him.
Mike:
Who’s that?
Jason:
You’ve probably heard of his story and that’s John Mcafee, the famous software zillionaire.
Mike:
Yep.
Jason:
I had him on the show and he was just railing against Belize and the corruption and all this kind of stuff. I would love for you to kind of listen to that interview and then come on and tell me if he’s out of his tree, because a few people say he is, but I don’t know. He sounded pretty rational to me.
Mike:
Let me weigh in without having the interview.
Jason:
Okay.
Mike:
Look, all the countries of Central and South America has some level of corruption. I think probably the US has some level of corruption as well.
Jason:
Of course. Heyy. That’s obvious. *Laughter*.
Mike:
Except we just call it lobbyists, okay.
Jason:
Yes, yeah. We have, what I call, legalized corruption here.
Mike:
Exactly. Legitimized, right. So, you know, I think that the corruption is real and it’s whether or not you feed into largely has been my experience. I mean, I’ve been working and companies that I work with, have been working in Central America for 20 years, Jason, and we’ve never paid a bribe, we do not engage in any form of corruption whatsoever, and you know what? We’ve never been harassed by it either. I think there’s, I call it the James Bond Syndrome, a lot of people come down to this part of this world and it’s kind of cool to pay off a cop to get out of a ticket or whatever and people do it. Whatever, I’m not judging them, I just choose to not do it.
Jason:
So you go to jail instead when the ferderales pull you over. *Laughter*. Just kidding.
Mike:
No, you know what I do, Jason? I get pulled over 5 times a year, usually for an infraction, because I’m using speeding or crossing a yellow line or passing when I’m not suppose to.
Jason:
Well, at least you admit it.
Mike:
Yeah. You know it’s real. It’s totally real. I mean occasionally I get pulled over for the random pullover too, but you know what? I’m nice and polite, and I apologize and I tell them, “Please, go ahead and give me a ticket.” And in 12 years of living in Nicaragua, I’ve received one ticket, because I’m just not willing to corrupt myself to be in that system. But the interesting thing is, if you removed yourself from it, I don’t want to say we’re immune to it, because that’s not true, but it largely goes around us. It doesn’t come to us. I think that’s important. It has been for our organizations anyway.
Jason:
Okay. Alright. So, did you touch on all of the three that you wanted to touch on?
Mike:
You mean the three countries?
Jason:
Yeah, I mean, Belize is probably the most popular of all the countries from a tourism perspective and from real estate sales. Panama, Costa Rica, is probably tied for second, and Nicaragua, they’re pulling up along 3rd because there’s the perspective issues. The only thing that I’d suggest and just offer this to your listeners is that, you know, in the financial markets, when there’s an information gap, it’s called arbitrage. In fact, I got to go down to the Chicago mercantile exchange floor last week.
A buddy of mine has a seat on the exchange and he invited me to come to the floor in Chicago and I did. It was fascinating to watch this unbridle capitalism full-charging. People on the floor exploit these information gaps and that’s how they make their little bits and pieces where they string a whole bunch of bits and pieces together and make a lot of money, which sometimes they lose a lot of money. The point is, information gaps or perception gaps are arbitrage and Nicaragua is an incredible arbitrage situation for real estate investors because it’s perceived by many US folks, not so much Canadians, but US citizens, it’s perceived as dangerous and scary and civil war. I mean, again, this stuff has been over for 25 years. The country is totally different. The price of real estate in Nicaragua compared to Costa Rica, Panama, is much, much lower.
As Nicaragua continues to change its perception and it is changing, there are some great things going on here that are changing that perception, the price of real estate will raise faster than in the other countries, because there’s a gap. So, investors who are looking for a neat little arbitrage or information gap, I think Nicaragua is worth a boots on the ground visit. Don’t buy anything, just buy..so yeah, buy something, buy a plane ticket, come to Nicaragua for 3-4 days, stomp around, and get a feel for the country. My guess is you’ll get get joke and go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. This place got some unrealized upside and I want a piece of it.” But, you gotta come here to see it.
Jason:
Right, okay. Good. Well, Mike Cobb, thank you so much for joining us again. Give out your website one more time.
Mike:
Absolutely, it’s ECIdevelopment.com. Jason, thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure. If you get down to Nicaragua, give me a holla on your way to Peru or on your way home.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi indicated on Friday that his government has prioritised the farm sector and sanitation besides battling black money and making India take the digital route to development.
The focus on farmers follows criticism from the opposition as well as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh that questioned the Modi government’s pro-poor economic policy after a string of suicides by farmers.
Addressing the nation from Guwahati to mark three years of the BJP-led NDA government, Modi gave a detailed account of the government’s efforts for transforming agriculture and doubling farmers’ income by 2022.
“We need the cooperation of farmers for ensuring maximum yield through optimum utilisation of water and technological assistance,” he said, adding that urea has been provided to farmers across the country.
Farmers, the Prime Minister said, were crucial to his vision of a new India where no area will remain undeveloped. “We need a new, modern India in 2022, when we will be observing 75 years of the country’s freedom.”
Modi took a swipe at his detractors for deriding him for speaking about toilets from the Red Fort.
“I know what small things mean for millions of people in rural India. And by building more than four lakh toilets, we have shown we mean business,” he said, expressing gratitude to the people for taking the Swachh Bharat campaign forward.
The Prime Minister also vowed to intensify the battle against black money “even if I have to pay a heavy price for it”.
Criticising former regimes for encouraging corruption and benami property, Modi said: “There was a time when people used to talk only about kala dhan (black money). But today, they discuss Jan Dhan and Digi Dhan (two pet projects for transfer of money to bank account of beneficiaries).”
On demonetisation, the Prime Minister said it was a tough decision but the trust of the voters in him made it possible.
“This could have caused trouble for us, but the people stood by us because they believed in our honesty. Demonetisation saw 90 lakh Indians coming forward to disclose their income and pay tax,” he said.
Several measures taken by the government, Modi said, have helped the right people get the benefits of pro-poor schemes.
“Direct benefit transfer has prevented Rs 60,000 crore from going to the wrong hands annually,” he said, criticising the governments after independence for carrying on the British policy of looking down upon the people.
“We have shown we can work on a big scale, as was evident by the launching of 104 satellites on a single day. I assure you, from the land of Kamakhya, that we will do justice to the faith you have kept on us,” he said.
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Doctors Want to Prescribe Social Services as Good Medicine
I work a few office spaces away from a waiting room filled to the brim with people who are so impoverished they have resorted to living on the streets. Those of us on the front lines battling homelessness in America know that the so-called American social safety net is tattered.
Sure, our country provides Medicaid, food stamps, and housing vouchers to help Americans fight poverty. But these resources are not enough. Just walk in our waiting room every weekday and the numbers of people you see clamoring for help will dispel the myth of an "ample safety net."
Or, talk with America's physicians regarding what they see. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently commissioned a national survey of primary care providers and pediatricians that resulted in an unusual conclusion by America's doctors.
If they could, they would write a prescription to help Americans' social needs -- food, housing, fitness, and transportation assistance.
In fact, four out of five physicians felt that meeting the social needs of a person is just as important as meeting their medical conditions. Of those care providers in low-income communities, nine out of 10 felt the same.
The link between meeting social needs and good health is so strong that three of four doctors believe that the health care system in this country should pay to help patients meet their social needs.
Imagine the HMO's of this country paying to support homeless agencies, food banks, and affordable housing developers. Ironically, in these medical care organizations, their physicians whose primary goals are to help patients get healthy promote such an endeavor.
It just makes sense. Antibiotics and drug treatment are not the only avenues on the road back to health. Sometimes our doctors simply tell us to stay home and rest in the comfort of our beds, and to drink plenty of fluids and a healthy bowl of chicken soup.
But for more and more Americans the access to a secure home and nutritious food is just a fleeting hope.
Last week, I received a telephone call from a friend whom I've known for years as a hardworking single mother of three children. She told me that she lost her job and was recently evicted from an apartment building that had been foreclosed. She and her children were now living in a motel, and her savings was dwindling rapidly.
Her predicament is contrary to a presidential candidate's wrongfully perceived assessment of a sufficient social safety net. Her fear now is how to keep her children fed and housed. And she desperately hopes they will stay healthy.
In these difficult economic times, the chicken soup for this country's soul is a safety net that meets both social needs and healthcare conditions.
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Saturday, 29 March 2008
The Canadian Arab Federation feels the new immigration proposals initiated by the Harper Tories are "dangerous". That being the case I think we can conclude that the Tories are on the right track. You can read about the CAF's concerns here at the Toronto Star.
OTTAWA–A proposal to give Canada's immigration minister sweeping new powers to pick and choose new immigrants is "dangerous" and could open the door to racial profiling, the Canadian Arab Federation warns.
The federation is urging the federal Liberals to oppose the proposed changes, even if it means defeating the minority Conservative government and an election Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion doesn't want.
"This is clearly a very, very dangerous piece of legislation," said Mohamed Boudjenane, executive director of the federation, an umbrella group representing 44 groups across the country.
"Tomorrow, the minister might decide: 'We don't like Arabs and Muslims here. We think they are terrorists. We think their culture and religion don't fit with Canada,' " he said in an interview.
The Muslim religion is not compatible with a western society like Canada. But that aside, the gentleman's comments make clear how race conscious racial and ethnic minority groups are in Canada all the while expecting the white majority of Canadians to be colour blind. Why does Arab immigration matter at all? Why should it matter to these people? They are already in Canada and if "a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian" as we are told then it shouldn't matter if Canada decided to close its door to Arabs. The fact is that Arab immigration matters to Arab immigrants because race matters, ethnicity matters, and immigration is the prime conduit for Arab colonization of Canadian lands. And this sentiment is not exclusive to Arabs but is shared by all of Canada's hyphenated immigrant groups (Indian, Chinese, Italian, etc). As racial and ethnic groups actively engage in the colonization of Canadian public spaces immigration matters are most important to them because if Canada were to decrease numbers, restrict particular immigrant groups, etc. it will hamper their colonial efforts.
Dion said this week his party won't topple the Tories over the immigration proposals. Boudjenane said the decision could affect the Liberals' traditional support among newcomers.
"How can this party portray itself as the party of immigration, the Trudeau era of multiculturalism, and here you have this dangerous piece of legislation and you might let it pass because you're not organized enough or your leader isn't charismatic enough to go in an election?" he said. "People would be more supportive of a gutsy party who will go . . . on a principled position than a party that will stay there until they're in better shape."
From the horse's mouth, the Liberal party is the immigrant's party of choice but we already know that.
What's at stake here is the colonization of Canadian lands. Canada's immigration system has been co-opted into a policy of colonialism by foreign peoples. I always wondered why it mattered to immigrants what Canada did with it's immigration policy. Why do they care if they are already in the country? It becomes clear when you realize immigrants want their own people coming into the country. Why? So they can colonize portions of Canada to offset Canadian culture all the while enjoy the benefits of living in Canadian society. They didn't come to Canada to integrate, assimilate and become a Canadian. They came to Canada because to them Canada is just a shopping mall, a lifestyle. Canada isn't a real country at all with a history or culture worth preserving. It's just some land with vast open spaces that everyone in the world is entitled to. Right?
I do not wish to give the impression that all Muslims are evil and terrorists and wish to turn Canada into a Islamic state of the world Caliphate. But there are many who do within Canada and outside it and I feel that we should place limits on Muslim immigration. To get a better understanding of why I feel this way you should watch the video below. It is around 17mins long, it is sensationalized, it is biased, and it contains disturbing imagery so considered yourself warned.
The first video can be watched here. You better watch is now because it may see the same fate as this one.
Most Muslims are not terrorists but most Muslims do not have to be. Most Muslims may not want to turn Canada into a caliphate but most don't have to. All you need is a few and since the Muslim world community has proven inept at policing itself and containing its more radical elements I feel Canada has little choice but to restrict Muslim immigration for the sake of national security. This is a case were a few rotten apples has spoiled the bunch. I do not support a total ban on Muslim immigration however I feel we should be cherry picking Muslim immigrants instead of mass importing which is what we do now.
The video should not be allowed to give a general picture of Muslims. This is wrong. But the video does turn the spotlight on a segment of the Islamic faith that is real, that is dangerous, and as an immigrant receiving nation we Canadians cannot afford to ignore and pretend it doesn't exist. To say that "not all Muslims are terrorists" is no consolation when a terrorist act is committed on Canadian soil and innocent people are killed. The Canadian government's commitment is to Canadians first, not the concerns of Muslim immigrants and until Islam can get it radical elements under control I feel Canada has no choice.
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Dalton McGuinty is just another run of the mill politician whose policies bend with the direction of the wind. To his credit, and to my surprise, he put a stop to the Islamic expansionist drive to give Sharia law a foothold in a western jurisdiction via family law in the Ontario arbitration act by revoking the act altogether. It was the right thing to do and I was surprised Dalton McGuinty did it because after all he is a Liberal premier. But when it comes to immigration issues he is just as ignorant as is any politician at the provincial or federal level. Were he informed of the mess that is Canada's immigration system he wouldn't say the things he said. Here is the article care of the Toronto Star.
OTTAWA–The federal government would be making a "huge mistake" by turning its back on immigrants just because they don't have a particular skill, Premier Dalton McGuinty says.
"I wouldn't want to shut out folks who don't have a skill," he told reporters yesterday, referring to the Conservative government's proposal to streamline the process for immigrants bringing skills desperately needed in Canada.
Canadians are sold on unpopular mass immigration levels by being incessantly told that we are in a labour shortage crisis and that Canada needs mass immigration to import those with the necessary skills to fill job vacancies. So why are we importing unskilled immigrants in the first place? Is it to fill low waged and unskilled jobs that middle class Canadians are too good for? Is it becuase middle class Canadians need third world immigrants to take care of their children and clean their toilets? Do they need third world immigrants to ensure wages are low so that middle class Canadians wouldn't have to suffer a 5 cent increase in the purchase of a cup of coffee so that Tim Horton's could pay it's employees a livable wage? Isn't it funny how I am the racist?
McGuinty said if those kinds of barriers had been in place, his family would have never emigrated to Canada from Ireland during the 1845-1852 potato famine.
"We had no skills, we couldn't speak English and we were dirt poor. But we were looking for opportunity and we brought with us a solid work ethic," he said, during a tour of a carpentry class.
Irish immigrants could not speak English in 1845? That news to me. In any event what he is doing is engaging in historical relativism as if Canada of 2008 is no different from the Canada of 1845. The times are different and thus Canada's immigration system should reflect the time and the needs of the country. The mass importation of unskilled immigrants in 1845 may have been acceptable but it isn't now. Besides what he is saying is no different from someone saying that since one of their eight or ten friends is an immigrant then therefore all immigration is good. The faulty reasoning is obvious.
Meanwhile, the federal Conservatives' assault on the Ontario government continued yesterday with an accusation that McGuinty ran a ``sponsorship-style" slush fund.
[...]
"All Dalton McGuinty has ever done on immigration is run a sponsorship-style slush fund that cost him his citizenship minister," Poilievre told The Canadian Press. "So we won't be taking any advice from him on immigration."
He was referring to Mike Colle, who resigned last year when it was revealed his department gave $32.4 million to multicultural groups with no oversight procedures.
Since this reporter used the word "assault" to describe a justified criticism of the Ontario Premier displays the bias from another one of the Toronto Star's "diverse writing staff". It is not an assault on Ontario. Smarten up!
Dalton McGuinty is responding to the very necessary overhaul of the immigration department by the federal Tories. I haven't blogged on it yet but I will get to it in time. But if Toronto Liberals and the Toronto Star are expressing concern over the overhaul then it must be the right thing.
If Canada is mass importing unskilled labour it should alert us to how serious the skills shortage really is not. Also, it is the mass importation of unskilled labour, which includes family members and refugees who do not need relevant job or language skills to enter Canada, that is contributing to poverty rates in Canada and creating slums and unsafe neighbourhoods. If Dalton McGunity wanted to effect positive change in Canada's immigration system he would support restrictions on unskilled and family class immigrants. But since the Liberal's are dependent on the ethnic vote and getting elected is more important than governing you cannot expect a Liberal politician, or NDP or Green for that matter, to do what is necessary. It took a Conservative government and they deserve our support.
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Here is a commentary concerning immigration found in the Toronto Star that, as usual, fails to see the obvious. The commentator makes it his business to tell us that new immigrants need good jobs. Well so do many Canadians but who cares about them anyway? Has it occurred to this commentator that maybe there are no "good jobs" for new immigrants? That perhaps the alleged "skills shortage" is a lie used to sell Canadians on a policy that the majority are opposed to so as to import cheap labour from the third world to fill unfilled low waged jobs at fast food restaurants?
His commentary provides some valuable insight.
New immigrants need good jobs
Mar 25, 2008 04:30 AMMehdi RizviCommunity Editorial Board
The federal budget said that $22 million will be spent over two years, rising to $37 million per year by 2012-13, to "modernize" the immigration system, allowing faster processing of permanent resident applications.
The program is designed to shorten wait times for immigrants who have skills that would have an "immediate impact" on the economy. But it does not reflect realistic thinking immigration. Our enthusiasm to bring immigrants in quickly and our inability to create jobs in their chosen fields are contradictory.
The immigration process does not conclude with the stamping of a visa at the airport. It should be considered complete only when the landed immigrant finds a skills-oriented job with pay adequate to meet household expenses; otherwise it is merely an exercise in increasing poverty in Canada and frustration in immigrant families.
This is what I have been saying all along. We bring in immigrants regardless of their job prospects. We just assume they will find a job based on an arbitrary list of alleged labour shortages. Some labour shortages are real but others are not thus many immigrants come to Canada only to languish in low skill, low waged jobs. In effect Canada is sustaining and contributing to poverty rates.
If a doctor delivers pizza, the government considers him employed; in fact, he does not work to his potential and is unable to earn wages in keeping with his education and skills. Most newly arrived professionals are forced to accept survival jobs.
This should tip off anybody with half a brain in their head to ask the most obvious question considering these realities. Are there jobs for them here in Canada in the first place? The fact that this question is never asked is frustrating to say the least.
In 2006, the estimated 70,000 recent African-born immigrants had an unemployment rate of 20.8 per cent. Indeed, the relatively higher education level of recent immigrants does not translate into higher income. Instead, they become a source of educated but cheap labour.
A family of four that earns less than $26,800 is considered to be "low income." Between 1992 and 2000, nearly one-fifth of immigrants were in the low-income category for their first four to five years in the country.
[...]
Peel has an immigrant population of 49 per cent. A huge issue is settlement services. Immigrants live in multiple-family houses with several families compressed into a small place in violation of all safety standards.
This is what Christopher Hume means when he wrote about suburban slums.
One-third of all existing Canadian jobs are temporary, without benefits or security. That the political will to address the root problem is lacking is evident from the results to date. This problem needs to be taken seriously at all levels.
He goes on to suggest a strategy of job growth but the reality is that much of the job growth is in low wage service based jobs and for this reason immigrants are being brought into Canada en masse. If this commentator wants to address this issue with genuine intent he will want to consider pressuring Ottawa to reduce immigration numbers. If we don't then nothing is going to change for immigrants now or tomorrow.
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Tuberculosis was, more or less, done away with in Canada or at least placed under control but now it has been making a resurgence. Why is that? Could mass immigration, coupled with poor screening of immigrants, have anything to do with it?
In some ways, tuberculosis treatment at Toronto's West Park Healthcare Centre has not changed much in 100 years.
[...]
Today, almost every patient treated at West Park survives the disease – even though the hospital treats the sickest patients in the province.
The TB Unit, which can house about 20 patients, primarily cares for those who have other infections and health complications, including HIV/AIDS, on top of TB. And some patients have strains of TB that are resistant to almost all drugs.
Toronto sees about 375 tuberculosis cases a year, about one quarter of the cases in Canada.
Drug-resistant strains emerged because poor TB control practices in developing countries caused the bacteria to mutate. One to 3 per cent are multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, or MDR-TB. There have only been two known cases of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, in the city. The World Health Organization has reported only 30 per cent of people with XDR-TB can be cured.
[..]
People who have active tuberculosis pass on the bacteria when they cough. Someone who breathes in enough of these particles can get TB, but only 5 to 10 per cent of those will develop active TB...
[...]
The majority of West Park's patients – upwards of 95 per cent – are new to Canada, and the hospital offers tutors to help them learn English. Avendano says some patients are very sick.
Not only has mass immigration contributed to the doctor shortage but it is also putting the lives of Canadians at risk. Why are these cases of TB in Canada in the first place? Those infected should have been spotted and stopped at the border and denied entry.
Given the mess of our immigration system and its ineptitude at spotting health risks at the border it should be no surprise to anyone that Toronto was hit with the Hong Kong born virus SARS. If it wasn't Toronto then it would have been Vancouver since both cities have sizable Asian populations. We should be pressuring our government to do something about this. Our immigration system shouldn't be a danger to the health of Canadians not should it be allowed to be abused by those who come here under false pretenses to milk our health care system. We simply cannot afford it both in tax dollars and quality of life.
Of course most Muslims are not terrorists but most Muslims don't have to be. All you need is a few to cause real damage to society.
Wherever you find a sizable Muslim minority in any country you can expect things like this to pop up sooner or later. So is Muslim immigration worth it? Should Canada allow the influx of Muslims into Canadian society? I don't think so given the potential danger Muslims have made themselves out to be and that whole "Islam will dominate the world" thing. However others disagree.
We should be having these kinds of discussions now and we Canadians should not be afraid to demand a moratorium on Muslim immigration if need be or at least some form of quota system. If we don't then the cost may be in Canadian lives and damages to property. It's just the reality of the world. Deal with it.
The first of 65 Vietnamese "boat people" who languished for years in refugee camps after the West slammed the door, landed in Toronto yesterday, 18 years late for the start of a new life of freedom.
Thai Van Nguyen is just one of 2,200 lost refugees, all uprooted by a war that ended more than a quarter of a century ago. They were left stranded after the United Nations declared in 1990 they were no longer in need of protection. The declaration led the West to slam its doors, leaving people like Nguyen out of luck.
I just love how this reporter uses such loaded words as "slam" and "slammed" as in "the West slammed the door" to describe how the West stop accepting Vietnamese "boat people" as refugees after the United Nations no longer considered these people in need of protection. He could have wrote "the West stopped accepting" if he wanted to be objective but since he is writing another immigration puff piece objectivity must be discarded.
Nguyen, 56, arrived at a refugee camp alone in Palawan in the Philippines and ended up stuck; the former seminary student languished there as a stateless person for 18 years.
I may be wrong but it is to my understanding that refugees are expected make their claim in the first country of safety. Why didn't they make asylum claims in the Philippines? Why were they languishingly in a refugee camp in the Philippines for 18 years? Why didn't they apply for citizenship or was Canada the intended target from the get go.
Six other former boat people arrived earlier this month in Calgary and Vancouver, with 300 in total expected in the next few months, including some 85 in Greater Toronto.
All are supported by small sponsor groups who responded to last year's "Freedom at Last" campaign by Canada's 150,000-strong Vietnamese community.
Almost one million refugees fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon to the Communist regime in 1975, and most of the refugees in the Philippines have been there since 1988.
They were at the tail end of the exodus, when the United Nations declared the Vietnamese were no longer in need of protection.
We shouldn't be accepting refugees the United Nations declares are in no need or protection. What does this say about those who really do need our help? Why are we granting asylum to people on "compassionate and humanitarian grounds" who don't need it when there are millions of people who really do need our assistance? The reason is that these people had the funds to get to Canada's shores while the others are too poor to do so. It costs money to get to Canada even as a refugee and this should beg questions as to who is really getting in as a refugee. Are legitimate refugees getting here or is our refugee system being abused as another avenue for economic immigration?
String of charges in Mississauga East-Cooksville as several board members quit over acclamationMar 19, 2008 04:30 AMJoanna SmithStaff Reporter
A group of Tories in Mississauga fear the federal party is abandoning its populist roots after officials sped up the process to choose who will run for a seat in the next election.
"I won't be a party to that kind of corruption," said Charles Conn, one of 10 people who recently resigned in protest from the electoral district association board of directors for Mississauga East-Cooksville.
The string of resignations came as the riding association moved quickly toward acclaiming former beauty queen and former Liberal Melissa Bhagat as its candidate.
I think we can easily assume Ms. Bhagat is in this for personal gain but then again who isn't? When someone can easily abandon one political party for another because a candidacy became available speaks volumes about the person's political commitments.
According to her official website, Bhagat is a fluently bilingual Glendon College graduate, the South Asian spokesperson for World Vision Canada and former host of Omni-TV's Bollywood Boulevard.
She is also a former beauty queen – one website detailing her preparations for a 2000 pageant includes provocative photos.
She ran in 2004 for the federal Liberal party nomination in Brampton-Springdale, but was shut out when then prime minister Paul Martin parachuted Ruby Dhalla into the riding.
Brampton-Springdale has a heavy South Asian population, most notably Sikh, and this is why Paul Martin placed Ruby Dhalla, a South Asian woman, as the Liberal candidate becuase he knows like we all do that people vote for their own and racial and ethnic minorities are no exception. That's why Ms. Dhalla got elected and that's why no non-South Asian will ever get elected to represent Brampton-Springdale ever again.
As for Ms. Bhagat she won't win. Even though she was undemocratically acclaimed as Conservative candidate to cater to the considerable South Asian population in that part of Mississauga I do not think South Asian block votes are big enough to deliver the seat to her like they are in Brampton-Springdale. Mississauga East-Cooksville has a significant immigrant population, not all South Asian. Besides, the Conservative party hasn't learned yet that immigrants and ethnic minority groups always vote Liberal. That's why they're here. Canada's modern immigration policy was forged by the Liberal party in the 1970s with political consequences in mind and it worked. Voter rich Toronto used to be traditionally Conservative but becuase of mass immigration the Tories cannot get elected in that town.
The greater concern is how race and ethnicity are playing a big part in Canadian politics. I'm sure Ms. Bhagat knows more about Bollywood love triangles than she does about Canadian history or politics but that doesn't matter. What does matter is her ethnicity and nowadays and in some ridings the colour of your skin is more important than your policy issues.
Canada has seen a rising number of Roma asylum seekers since lifting its visa requirement for Czech Republic visitors five months ago – and more are expected now that four other eastern European countries have been given the same exemption.
This month, Canada extended visa exemptions to Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Lithuania. All but the latter are populated by ethnic Roma, known colloquially as gypsies, who continue to face discrimination and social isolation in eastern Europe.
The European Union has been pressuring Canada to open its border to all 27 member states, eliminating barriers that especially involve eastern Europe.
Immigration Minister Diane Finley dropped the visa requirement for the Czech Republic as of Nov. 1.
Since then, claims for asylum by Czech visitors, in most cases Roma, shot up to 83 by the end of December, from zero the previous year. This past January, 45 more claims were entered.
There are concerns this could lead to a repeat of the 1996 influx of an estimated 4,000 Czech Roma into Canada after travel restrictions were eliminated. The majority were granted refugee status, but not before Canada reinstated a visa requirement.
This time, the Canadian government has made it known unofficially that should the number of Czech refugee claimants leap to 580 this year (or 2 per cent of all such claims Canada expects to process), it will restore the visa requirement.
If you want to make a refugee claim everyone in the world knows that Canada is the place to do it.
A Toronto immigration consultant has been found guilty of professional misconduct for failing to secure jobs for 24 Korean truck drivers she helped bring to Canada along with an immigration-consulting firm in Seoul.
[...]
In their complaints, the drivers said they each paid thousands of dollars to the unregulated recruiter in Seoul, who teamed up with Simao to find them Canadian employment.
The drivers said they were told they would earn $60,000 a year and could expect to get Canadian permanent residency after getting a work permit. However, the jobs evaporated because their English was not up to par.
The woman was found guilty because she was exposed by the Toronto Star investigation on corrupt immigration consultants which you can read here if you haven't read it already. It's a good piece however they paint the immigrants as hapless victims of a corrupt system when in fact many immigrants are willing participants when if comes to defrauding the Canadian immigration and refugee systems. As for the immigration consultant in question the article doesn't make clear what punishment will be meted out. One thing that is clear is if you see one corrupt immigration consultant there's a whole lot more you're not seeing which is why I think this woman is just a scapegoat and the disciplinary council is for show. Immigration consultants are unregulated and unlicensed and thus anybody can be one. Immigration consultants are one of the reasons our immigration system is a mess. Living like parasites off the immigration industry immigration consultancy is plagued with corruption, incompetency, and unethical behaviour.
The first nuclear power plant to be built in Ontario in more than 20 years could be more than three times larger than what the Liberal government said was needed when it first outlined its nuclear plan in 2006.
Environmentalists are calling it a classic "bait-and-switch" aimed at avoiding a public backlash when the plan was first announced.
[...]
A 3,500-megawatt plant would be one of the largest nuclear projects in the world, roughly equal to the size of the existing generating station at Darlington, and would be big enough to power all homes and businesses in Toronto. It would be located either at Darlington or the Bruce generating station near Kincardine. The document also asks that proposals give the government the "option" to build one or two additional reactors.
I don't know why I am even writing this. Canada's environmentalists are so stupid I just assumed they can't even read. Maybe if I write simple words in big bold letters they might get it. IT'S MASS IMMIGRATION STUPIDS!!! Why do you think Ontario needs another Darlington sized nuclear power plant? Think morons!!!
I came across this in the Friday, March 14, 2008 edition of the Toronto Star. Lined across the top of page A3 are nine white faces of which seven are male. Here are the names from left to right: Kevin Donovan, Andrew Bailey, David Bruser, Spencer Wynn, Brian Hughes, Patrick Corrigan, David Cooper, Tara Walton, and Mary Ormsby. Those names say a lot don't they. They have been nominated for some award or whatever as if anyone really cares. What is interesting is how little ethnic diversity exists at the Toronto Star. Here is the newspaper that gave us the White Jays story yet hypocritically is lacking the kind of diversity on it's writing staff that it self-righteously harangued the Toronto Blue Jays for.
Take a look at the Toronto Star's columists. Wow!!! How's that for diversity? I guess for the Toronto Star ethnic minorities are best seen and not heard don't you think?
If your want to find an example of hypocrisy the Toronto Star is the first place you should look. How disgusting of them really, to be concerned about the plight of immigrants yet can't be bothered to hire any immigrant writers aside from maybe one or two. To claim the benefits of diversity, mass immigration, and multiculturalism yet doesn't seem to care for such things when it comes to it's writers. I guess that's for other people.
I think we should demand more immigrant writers at the Toronto Star. They will bring with them the diversity that the Toronto Star sorely lacks. If need be they should "let go" some of the white writers. They'll understand that it's for the better just like all the other Canadians who must suffer lost or diminished wages and a lower standard of living to accommodate the unfettered influx of future Toronto Star readers. After all what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
A parade was held in Burnaby, British Columbia organized by Sikhs to honour the "revolutionary saint" Shri Guru Ravidass. You can read about it here. Now, I would have ignored this but the fact the the event organizers planned it for March 15, 2008 got me thinking. The March 15th weekend is the weekend before St. Patrick's day which is on the 17th and as we all know you can always expect a parade to mark the day along with green beer and bad fake Irish accents.
There are 365 days in the year. There are 52 weekends. Why did the Sikh parade organizers decide on the weekend of St. Patrick's day? Bad planning? Ignorance? Please. I am sure these Sikhs have been in Canada long enough to know that March 17th is St. Patrick's day and the celebration of all things Irish which essentially means stereotyping the Irish as drunken louts. And if they honestly didn't know, which is highly unlikely, they could have consulted their calendar. You know, the one they used to decide which day to have a parade, that marks March 17th as St. Patrick's day in very clear bold lettering.
I get the suspicion that this Sikh parade was deliberately planned to coincide with St. Patrick's day to either piggy back off the popularity of St. Patty's day or to directly compete with it. St. Patrick's day honours a Christian Saint. The Sikhs honoured a Sikh saint. Parades mark the arrival of St. Patrick's day on March 17th. The Sikhs had a parade to honour their Saint on March 15th. St. Patrick's day is an event marked on calenders across the Anglo-sphere. The Sikhs, well I guess they're working on it and if their parade is meant to be an annual event then I imagine they are gunning for March 15th, two day before the day of St. Patrick.
I don't really care for St. Patrick's day. I don't consider St. Patrick's day a Canadian event. It's just an excuse to get drunk from what I can tell. But the Irish are part of the founding/settler people of Canada so I suppose St. Patrick's day does have a place. Sikhs, and South Asians as a people, are not founding/settlers. In fact, they are still a foreign people where almost 75% of South Asian Canadians are immigrants, which means they are just South Asians with Canadian citizenship that's all. But they can have their parades to honour their religious figures if they want so why plan one to coincide with St. Patrick's day when there are 51 other weekends to choose from?
If this is an act of cultural aggression, which I suspect it is, then we can expect more of this kind of behaviour in a future Canada where multicultural dialogue means competition for public attention. In this kind of Canada real Canadian history is forgotten and any real Canadian identity is erased to give way to histories and cultures formed abroad. In effect Canada ceases to exist as a real country.
Recent immigrants from Europe have an edge over most newcomer groups in obtaining employment and their lead persists over time, a new Statistics Canada study has found.
The report, released yesterday, found that only 8.4 per cent of newcomers from Europe who arrived here between 2001 and 2005 were unemployed in 2006, a rate that more than doubled to 20.8 per cent for those arriving from African countries during the same period.
European newcomers also fared better than those from Latin America, whose unemployment rate was 10.5 per cent, and from Asia, at 11.1 per cent.
[...]
European immigrants in Canada 10 years or more had a 4 per cent unemployment rate, outperforming peers from Asia (5.5 per cent), Latin America (6.1 per cent) and Africa (7.6 per cent).
[...]
While European immigrants are most adaptable in the Canadian job market, those born in Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, had the strongest labour market performance of all immigrants to Canada in 2006, regardless of when they landed in the country.
Filipino immigrants had an unemployment rate of 5.4 per cent within their first five years in Canada, which dropped to 2.4 per cent after 10 years.
This is understandable when you realize that many of them are imported to work as nannies. Not exactly the kind of skilled immigrants Canada is supposed to be attracting. It has nothing to do with "their colonial history giving them a stronger language and education background and making them more accustomed to Western culture." The same thing can be said of South Asian immigration. But that aside the fact that Filipinos had the lowest unemployment rate should lay waste to the assumption that there is a "European bias" as the headline suggests.
By comparison, 12 per cent and 9.6 per cent of newcomers from China and India were unemployed, respectively, within five years, though the numbers dropped by half after a decade.
The success of European immigration is due to the fact that many of them enter Canada with relevant job and language skills. Chinese, Africans, and South Asians are more likely to enter Canada as bogus refugees or imported family members and immigrants who enter Canada via these routes do not need pertinent job or language skills. I am sure it is because of this that Chinese, African, and South Asian immigrants have higher unemployment rates.
Also, Europeans tend to come to Canada with job skills that are actually needed. For instance you do not see Chinese or South Asians working at construction sites. This shows our immigration system is out of touch with reality. We do not need more IT specialists from India. We do need more plumbers from Poland. That being the case then why is India and China the top two source countries for Canadian immigration? They shouldn't be. We should be decreasing immigration from these countries and increasing immigration from Europe.
Hazel McCallion is a rare breed in Canadian politics. She is not afraid to openly criticize multiculturalism while retaining her office as mayor of an immigrant heavy, ethnically diverse city like Mississauga. Mississauga, for those who don't know, is the adjoining city east of Toronto past Etobicoke and, like Toronto, is on the fast track of becoming a city of a million plus residents where the majority are immigrants and whites are a minority. Sadly, it takes guts to say what she says and you don't see her much appreciated candor anywhere in Canadian politics. That's because for many, politics is just a career move and they will say anything to get elected and this includes extolling the virtues of mass immigration and multiculturalism whether they agree with it or not or have no real opinion on it one way or the other. Getting elected is a short term goal but unfortunately the decisions people make in office have long term consequences. Are you a political party having trouble getting elected in once conservative Toronto? Then flood it with immigrants and problem solved. Are you a candidate in an immigrant heavy riding? Then promoting mass immigration and the displacing effects it has on the existing residents is your ticket to Ottawa, prestige, and a handsome pension. Who cares about the wake you leave while in office? Getting elected isn't about serving the people. It's all about you.
"An awful lot of money is spent on multiculturalism and on keeping our immigrants separated rather than integrated," Ms. McCallion said in an interview.
"They've been given all kinds of money over the years to have their own organization, their own programs, and I think there should be more money spent on integration, in other words, encouraging them to get involved in all the organizations within a community like the service clubs and the sports groups."
Immigrants prefer it this way. They have no real intention of integrating. If they did then they had the opportunity to show it a long time ago but the existence, persistence, and growth of ethnic enclaves reveals their true intent. The only integration they want is economic integration. Culturally they prefer segregation or balkanization and try to convince everyone that Turbans, saris, dread locks, and dragon boat races are a Canadian as hockey, maple syrup, and butter tarts.
As for the money McCallion is talking about that is pubic money doled out to curry favour from ethnic voting blocks. In other words politicians use tax dollars to bribe ethnic voters so that they can stay in office, the kind of thing that disgraced Liberal MPP Mike Colle (who is an immigrant from Italy by the way) was doing when he gave $1 million dollars to a cricket club and $15 million to the United Jewish Appeal Federation. In any case, its just more money to throw on the mountain of cash needed to sustain the immigration industry all the while Canadians need to fly to the United States for an MRI. It's a disgrace!
Ms. McCallion said she knows the value of cultural groups and does not want to "cut off" their funding.
However, she argues in favour of stepping up outreach efforts that help integrate the growing number of new residents who are choosing to live in the cities outside of Toronto.
According to 2006 Census data, Peel and York regions had the highest immigrant population growth in the Greater Toronto Area, with a 32% and 34% increase, respectively, from 2001 to 2006. Toronto, by comparison, had the lowest in the region, with a 2% increase.
Immigrants now make up about half of Toronto's population, 49% of Peel region's and 43% of people living in York.
Funding programs to integrate immigrants is just more wasted money because immigrants have shown they posses no desire to fully integrate into Canadian society. If they really wanted to then they will but the fact is they don't. The problem is official multiculturalism. Get rid of it. The other problem is the mass importation of culturally dissimilar people from so few countries (like India, China, and the Philippines for instance). This practice needs to stop.
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
Increasing density in urban centers is one remedy pro mass immigration advocates promote to deal with a rapidly growing population that is fueling urban sprawl, traffic congestion, and the general degradation of Canada's natural environment. So it is no surprise that the Toronto Star would advocate such an idea. Here is an article written by Toronto Star architecture critic Christopher Hume. In it he promotes increasing urban density over the future "suburban slums" of North America.
Downtown density will prevail over slums of suburbia
Mar 03, 2008 04:30 AMChristopher Hume
At the moment of its triumph, suburbia is starting to show signs of collapse.
Having remade the face of North America, the tide now seems to be turning against the 'burbs. The downfall won't be quick, but already the unthinkable is starting to happen.
[...]
In short, Leinberger charts the return to the city that began late in the last century and has been picking up speed ever since. Toronto is a good example; just look at the condo boom, now in its third decade, and the rising price of housing in neighbourhoods that until the 1970s, '80s and '90s, were assiduously avoided by the middle class, areas such as Cabbagetown, Riverdale and now Parkdale.
Christopher Hume should know that Realtors, speculators, and property flippers, are the ones driving the condo boom. Also, contractors are driving up housing prices by buying houses, renovating them or razing them entirely to build a new house, and then selling it at a more inflated price. In other words there is sort of a pseudo construction boom going on in southern Ontario were speculation is driving the market instead of real demand.
Also Parkdale was a nice neighbourhood before mass immigration ruined it. The erection of high density buildings to accommodate new immigrants pretty much turned that part of town into an urban slum. If you live in Toronto go and visit Parkdale and you will see what I mean. But if the middle classes are moving in this will drive out the working class immigrant populations already living there. They will need to look for affordable housing elsewhere and I guess this search will lead them to the suburbs and hence the establishment of suburban slums.
Looking back at the postwar conditions that unleashed the explosion of suburbia, it's clear the growth was inspired as much as anything by a desire to escape from the city. Density, associated with danger, disease and decay, was the enemy.
Sixty years later, beset by gridlock, shoddy construction and environmental degradation that can no longer be ignored, density has started to look good again.
Gridlock, shoddy construction and environmental degradation? Does mass immigration have anything to do with this? Nah. We all know mass immigration has zero influence on urban sprawl, traffic congestion, and incentives to build sub par housing.
And as Boomers grow older and couples put off having children, the appeal of the subdivision wanes even further. The result, Leinberger argues, is that the suburbs could well be on their way to becoming America's "next slum."
Research by David Hulchanski at the University of Toronto has already found that poverty here is being pushed out of its historic inner-city precincts and into "postwar inner suburbs" and "large postwar housing projects." Read Scarborough, Etobicoke, Jane-Finch, Rexdale and the like.
These neighbourhoods are all characterized by high density, high crime rates, low incomes, and high concentrations of immigrants. In Scarborough it is mostly Asian and Tamil. In Etobicoke he means north Etobicoke where Rexdale is located and in this neighbourhood it is mostly South Asians (East and West Indians, Sikhs, Hindus, Tamils, Muslims), and Africans (mostly Somali) and immigrants from the Caribbean. Jane-Finch is the same as Rexdale, in fact its not too far from it geographically, but it is mostly characterized by Jamaican immigration. So we see that it is mass immigration that has turned these suburbs into suburban slums. I'd also like to add another one: Chinatown at Spadina and Dundas but this is urban and not suburban so I guess it doesn't count.
Not only is mass immigration adding fuel to urban sprawl but it is also laying waste to once safe and clean neighbourhoods. The problem is not immigration but mass immigration of the current variety. Canada is introducing too many people into our cities particularly those who shouldn't be here. But since our immigration system is a numbers game it doesn't really matter who gets in.
Christopher Hume won't make the connection between mass immigration and the "slumming" of Canadian neighbourhoods but ideology will blind anyone to the obvious.
Britain is experiencing unprecedented levels of immigration with more than half a million foreigners arriving to live here in a single year, new figures show.
Last year, 510,000 foreign migrants came to the UK to stay for at least 12 months, according to the Office for National Statistics. At the same time 400,000 people, more than half of whom were British, emigrated.
An exodus on this scale - amounting to one British citizen leaving the country every three minutes - has not been seen in the UK for almost 50 years.
Overall in 2006, there were a record 591,000 new arrivals. Only 14 per cent of these were Britons coming home.
By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political EditorLast Updated: 3:28am GMT 26/02/2008
Britain is experiencing the worst "brain drain" of any country as highly qualified professionals settle abroad, an authoritative international study showed yesterday.
Record numbers of Britons are leaving - many of them doctors, teachers and engineers - in the biggest exodus for almost 50 years.
[...]
No other nation is losing so many qualified people, it points out. Britain has now lost more than one in 10 of its most skilled citizens, while overall only Mexico has had more people emigrate.
[...]
The most popular destinations are English-speaking countries such as Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand and holiday areas including France and Spain.
[...]
The emigration was leading to a rapid change in British society as large numbers of highly-skilled immigrants moved to this country to replace those leaving, he said.
"Britain has been lucky - although it has lost substantial numbers of people, it has attracted more than a million skilled immigrants to replace them. If they stop coming then that would be a problem."
Responding to this last paragraph the same thing was said here as Canadians left Canada to find employment primarily in the United States. They did so because they couldn't find suitable employment in their field in Canada but this insignificant detail didn't stop Ottawa from importing record numbers of superfluous labour.
In any case it is still population replacement and that is exactly what this is. As Britons leave the island nation they are replaced by immigrants, forever changing the face of that country and erasing what made Britain British in the first place. The same thing is happening here even though Canadians are pretty much staying put despite the weather. Canada is a damn fine country to live in, winter and all and we Canadians know it. That's why we're Canadians and damn proud of it. But our low birth rate cannot withstand the mass influx of foreign populations and if the trend is allowed to continue indefinitely the host population will be replaced by another or others, mostly Asian and South Asian. Is this something worth pursuing? Is this something we want to allow? What good is it to make the dominate white host population a minority in Canada or anywhere for the matter like in Britain or in the U.S. where it is predicted that whites will become a minority by 2050?
When immigration becomes a policy of population replacement it is no longer immigration: it's colonialism.
Saturday, 1 March 2008
Here is an interesting piece published by Macleans magazine. It's not bereft of the usual rhetoric like the following paragraph.
Since it was enshrined as official policy in 1971, multiculturalism has been worn by Canadians as a badge of honour even as its consequences have remained happily abstract. But if tolerance has long been one of the touchstones of Canadian identity, there is reason to believe our cherished multicultural tapestry is fraying.
Do Canadians wear state enforced multiculturalism as a badge of honour? This journalist doesn't really know that so how can Martin Patriquin say so with such surety? How can any journalist for that matter? The truth is they can't and I'd say it is much more accurate to state that most Canadians don't care about multiculturalism. It means nothing to them. I for one think official multiculturalism is an embarrassing mistake and it is turning the average well mannered Canadian into a "bigot".
The article does publish some interesting figures.
When asked if they agreed with the following statement -- "it is reasonable to accommodate religious and cultural minorities" -- a mere 18 per cent said yes. How many thought immigrants should "adapt fully to culture in Canada"? Fifty-three per cent. When it came to accommodating religious and cultural minorities in public places, such as schools, hospitals and government buildings, 37 per cent thought there should be no accommodation at all, with smaller portions accepting some accommodation but only six per cent advocating full accommodation. The numbers were even more striking for accommodation in the workplace, with 45 per cent saying there should be none, and just four per cent agreeing with full accommodation.
[...]
The geographic breakdowns were indeed stark. A full 77 per cent of Quebecers thought immigrants should fully adapt(just five per cent said it was reasonable to accommodate), and in Ontario 49 per cent agreed(with just 22 per cent saying accommodation was reasonable). Perhaps suprisingly, given their relative provincial images, support for accommodation was highest in the Atlantic provinces, Alberta and the Prairies.
It is easy to see why Quebec's and Ontario's figures are so high when you realize that Quebec and Ontario receive the bulk of immigrants to this country. If immigrants were flooding into Alberta and the Atlantic provinces at the rate they are in Quebec and Ontario then you'd see similar numbers. The truth is Canadians are fed up with accommodation and the transformation of their public spaces into de facto colonies of foreign countries.
The SES poll does suggest those with less education, as well as older Canadians, tended to be less accommodating. Only 17 per cent of Canadians aged 55 to 64 thought it was reasonable to accommodate, compared with 24 per cent of those aged 25 to 34. And as for education, just 24 per cent of those with a university education saw accommodation as reasonable, while 50 per cent said immigrants should integrate. This is higher than the 9.6 per cent with a high-school education or less who saw accommodation as reasonable, but it hardly amounts to a ringing endorsement.
Nor does income seem to have much to do with the degree of tolerance. Canada's middle class, the SES poll indicates, is least at ease with the idea of accommodating religious and cultural minorities: roughly 64 per cent of those earning between $40,000 and $49,999 a year believe it is up to immigrants to fully adapt to Canadian culture, a full 18 percentage points higher than among those earning less than $25,000, and 8.7 percentage points higher than those earning between $50,000 and $74,999.(The numbers drop off again among those earning $75,000 or more.)
If Canada is becoming a nation of bigots then blame mass immigration and multiculturalism. If you want to eliminate racism then cut immigration levels and abandon multiculturalism as official social policy.
The problem I have with this article is that it implies that it is white Canadians who are becoming bigoted and this is because they are expressing reservations about accommodation and daring to expect immigrants to integrate into the culture of the country they willing chose to immigrate to. So refusal to accommodate is a bigoted act. Is refusal to integrate a bigoted act as well? It is because the sentiment is the same. However in the event of a cultural stand off the onus is upon the immigrant to accommodate because he or she chose to move to another country. It's just common sense and good old fashioned manners. But multiculturalism removes that responsibility and unjustly places it upon the host population. This is why cultural minority groups love state enforced multiculturalism. It allows them to have their cake and eat it too.
Multiculturalism also removes all power from the host population to define itself. So refusal to accommodate is just an act of dissent and civil disobedience to a state enforced policy that was undemocratically imposed upon the Canadian people and denies them their collective right to define themselves as a people. So I hope more Canadians refuse to accommodate. This is Canada and its time to take our country back.
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CJK Stroke Order Project
Creates graphics that illustrate the correct stroke order when writing Chinese characters. Unfortunately a lot of characters still lack this information - please visit the project page if you would like to help. Other learners will be very grateful.
Website: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:CJK_stroke_order
Projekt Deutscher Wortschatz
A project at the University of Leipzig that supplies our "words of the week" and provided a list of the most common German words.
Website: http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/
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Royal Oak mayor doubts city will send letter on human rights ordinance
Royal Oak voters may never see a city letter to residents explaining a controversial human rights ordinance proposal.A group working against the proposal has threatened to file a complaint with the Michigan Bureau of Elections if the city sends the letter.But Mayor Jim Ellison said Wednesday that he doesn’t think there is enough support among commissioners to send out such a letter.“I’m not inclined to support sending out a letter under city auspices,” he said. “I don’t think the letter is going to happen.”There are two opposing campaign groups focused on the ordinance that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and other personal characteristics from gender to HIV status and pregnancy. Supporters are working with One Royal Oak, while opponents are rallying behind the efforts of the Just Royal Oak to defeat the proposal.Fadwa Gillanders, a clinical pharmacist and spokeswoman for the group against the measure, said she and others plan to show up at the Oct. 7 City Commission meeting to see how the issue of the letter is resolved and to speak out against the proposal.The ordinance is “discrimination because it increases the powers of local government by allowing them to give special protective rights to (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people),” Gillanders said. “They are doing this by regulating the constitutional amendments for freedom of speech and religion and individual rights of association.”Ellison said he believes information about the human rights ordinance proposal should come from the two opposing camps in the election — and the wording of the actual ordinance.The City Commission voted 5-1 last week to have the city attorney draft a letter explaining the city ballot proposal at the suggestion of Commissioner Jim Rasor, who said a letter would clear up misinformation about the ordinance proposal.Ellison was absent from last week’s commission meeting.“There are going to be misinterpretations no matter what happens,” Ellison said. “Each group is going to offer their own interpretations of what the ordinance is.”City Attorney Dave Gillam has already drafted a letter explaining the human rights ordinance and three City Charter Amendments that are on the Nov. 5 ballot, said City Manager Don Johnson.“The city has an absolute right to explain what is on the ballot,” Johnson said. “What the city can’t do is advocate a position.”The draft letter City Commissioners are expected to vote on Oct. 7 is carefully worded and fails to provide any advocacy for the four city ballot proposals, Johnson said.Violation of the proposed human rights law would be a civil infraction, with fines of up to $500 and the costs of investigation and prosecution.
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Nathan Fake "Xmas Rush (Dub)"
It should probably be done at least once a year: share a little bit of seasonal spirit in our not-so-holiday-friendly download feed. It's not that we're Grinches or anything, but really, when was the last time you heard a Christmas song that was anything but barely tolerable? That's probably why we're totally okay with posting this jam from UK tunesmith Nathan Fake; it hardly sounds like a holiday song. The only thing somewhat related to Christamas—other than the title—on "Xmas Rush (Dub)" is the tweaked vocal loop that Fake plays with throughout most of his track. And while that age-old voice goes on about "greeting cards," the rest of the production fires off wonky noise experiments, blown-out bass frequencies, and flitting dance rhythms—sounding like some sort of traditional Christmas carol for footworkers. And if you're still in the mood for more "Xmas Rush," check out the original track on the split single that Fake shared with Pampa boss DJ Koze, which came out earlier this week on Pampa. (via Pitchfork)
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You are here:Home > News > Tom Kiehl joins UK Music as director of government relations and public affairs
Tom Kiehl joins UK Music as director of government relations and public affairs
UK Music has announced that Tom Kiehl will be joining the organisation in June as Director of Government Relations and Public Affairs.
Chief Executive Jo Dipple said: “This is a key appointment for UK Music. The secondary legislation needed to enable the Digital Economy Act is due for Parliamentary scrutiny. The Government’s consultation on intellectual property and copyright will result in draft legislative proposals in the Autumn term and a Bill next year.
“Meanwhile, the anticipated Communications Green Paper will include provisions on formalising the responsibility ISPs have to prioritise consumer access to legal content. These are just three areas where Tom’s technical skill and Parliamentary knowledge will be invaluable to shaping legislation that will define the future of the music industry.
“I am very excited about him joining our team. He will be a great asset to UK Music, our members and the industry.”
Tom is joining UK Music from the Liberal Democrat Whips Office in the House of Lords.
He has performed a variety of policy, research and advisory roles there for over a decade, and since May 2010 has played a central part in managing the transition to Coalition Government.
Tom is a founding architect of the Live Music Bill, enacted this March, which will release thousands of small venues from the need to acquire a local authority licence to play live music.
He was made Dods Parliamentary Researcher of the Year 2012.
Tom said: "I am extremely honoured to be offered an opportunity to work for UK Music as their new Director of Government and Public Affairs.
“I have been immensely impressed by the passion and professionalism the UK Music team have demonstrated in bringing together the interests of the music industry and representing them to Government, Parliamentarians and other opinion formers.
“It is an interesting and challenging time to be working in the music industry, the sector I have cared most deeply about for as long as I can remember. I will use all my skills and experience to further the objectives of UK Music to ensure they maintain and strengthen their position on the political map."
Credit for photo:
John Bercow presents Tom Kiehl with the award for Dods Parliamentary Researcher of the Year.
Photo credit: Sharon Wallace, Federation of Small Businesses
(Taken from Flickr, photo appeared in Lib Dem voice.)
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Personal Portrait
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As one of the largest astrology portals WWW.ASTRO.COM offers a lot of free features on the subject. With high-quality horoscope interpretations by the world's leading astrologers Liz Greene, Robert Hand and other authors, many free horoscopes and extensive information on astrology for beginners and professionals, www.astro.com is the first address for astrology on the web.
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Why are the prices of stocks and other assets so volatile? Efficient capital markets theory implies that stock prices should be much less volatile than actually observed, reflecting an unrealistic assumption that investors are risk neutral. If instead investors are assumed to be risk averse, predicted volatility is higher. However, models that incorporate investor avoidance of risk can explain real-world stock price volatility only under levels of risk aversion that are unrealistically high. Thus, price volatility remains unexplained.
Follow up:
The global financial crisis forcefully reminded us of the important effects of financial markets on the real economy. But it also renewed our appreciation of how difficult it is to demonstrate these connections successfully. Economists have mathematically elegant models of financial markets with strong theoretical underpinnings. They also have models that connect successfully with the data. However, few, if any, models do both. In financial economics, this is a time of uncertainty and searching for new directions. This Economic Letter summarizes developments in one important area of this field: asset price volatility.
It is easiest to summarize financial markets research by focusing on the stock market, although the analysis can be applied to other financial markets with little modification. The earliest line of financial economics research that connects directly with current work is on efficient capital markets, developed in the 1960s and 1970s (Fama 1970). The defining claim of efficient capital markets theory was that, if investors process information efficiently and price stocks rationally, then future returns cannot be forecast. That’s because, if returns could reliably be forecast to be abnormally high in the future, investors would buy stocks now. That would cause stock prices to rise immediately, bringing future returns down to a normal level. The reverse would take place if returns could be forecast to be abnormally low. Empirical research appeared to confirm that financial market returns can’t be forecast.
An important piece of evidence appears to contradict stock market efficiency: the observed volatility of stock prices. In an efficient market, stock prices should be considerably less volatile than they actually are in the real world. The inability of efficient markets theory to explain price volatility stems at least partly from the fact that it doesn’t take into account investor risk aversion. Recent research has moved away from the efficient capital markets assumption of risk neutrality, postulating instead that investors are averse to risk.
Unfortunately, formal models incorporating risk aversion produce the degree of volatility seen in the real world only with levels of risk aversion that seem implausibly high. Thus, taking investor risk aversion into account does not satisfactorily explain the volatility of stock price movements.
To understand this better, a recap of financial economics theory is helpful. Early stock market gurus such as Benjamin Graham and David Dodd (1940) held that stocks should be traded based on the relationship between their prices and the discounted value of their expected future dividends. This present value model assumed that the discount rate could be held constant. At first glance, the efficient markets model appeared to conflict with this present value model. However, Samuelson (1965) showed that, far from being contradictory, the present value and efficient markets models were essentially equivalent. If stock prices equal expected future dividends discounted at a constant rate, returns in fact can’t be forecast.
Further, the assumption that stock prices equal expected future dividends independent of the volatility of dividends can be justified only if investor risk aversion is excluded. If investors are risk averse, stock prices will depend on how variable dividends are as well as on their expected levels. By ignoring this effect, market efficiency implicitly treats investors as being risk neutral.
In the 1970s and 1980s, empirical evidence that raised questions about the efficient markets model began to surface. Shiller (1981) and others showed that, under the efficient markets model, stock prices should exhibit the same low volatility as dividends themselves.
By “price volatility,” I mean the overall variability of stock prices over time. It is important to distinguish between this definition and a frequently used alternative definition of volatility as the average variability of stock returns, consisting of dividends plus price changes. To see the difference between price volatility and return volatility, assume unrealistically that investors have information that allows them to predict future dividends into the indefinite future with perfect accuracy. Then the present value model implies that stock returns are equal to the constant discount rate and have zero volatility. At the same time though, stock prices will still go up and down as dividends change, which means they will be volatile.
Shiller’s conclusion was based on the fact that the stock price volatility implied by a given dividends model depends on how much information investors are assumed to have about future dividends. If investors cannot predict future dividend growth at all, they will price stocks at a constant multiple of current dividends. The volatility of stock prices relative to dividends will be zero. On the other hand, if investors have information about future dividends, then stock prices relative to dividends will vary over time. The more information about dividend growth investors have, the greater the average price variation. The extreme case assumes that investors can forecast all future dividends. Therefore, the price volatility associated with complete information is the highest level of volatility that can actually occur. In exercises known as variance bounds tests, Shiller and others found that observed price volatility appeared to exceed this maximum level, contradicting the efficient markets model.
Risk aversion
It is easy to see why the efficient markets model implies low price volatility. The rate of return on stock is defined as the dividend yield plus the rate of capital gain. This relation can be shown to imply that price volatility relative to current dividends is due entirely to the degree that future dividend growth and future returns can be forecast. If investors can forecast variations in dividend growth, they will price stocks at a high or low multiple of current dividends depending on whether dividend growth is expected to be high or low. In fact, dividend growth empirically is nearly impossible to forecast, implying that price volatility can be attributed to it only to a very minor extent.
The efficient markets model implies that future returns can’t be forecast. It follows that the efficient markets model combined with the empirical fact that dividend growth is nearly impossible to forecast implies low stock price volatility. Thus, the degree of stock price volatility seen empirically can only occur if we reject market efficiency and hold that future returns contain a large predictable component. In view of the association of market efficiency with risk neutrality, it follows that the market efficiency assumption of risk neutrality must be rejected to allow for risk aversion.
Economists have a measure of risk aversion. Suppose an investor were offered the prospect of either doubling his wealth or halving it, depending on the outcome of a random event. The higher the probability of success, the more prone the investor would be to accept such a gamble. The investor’s risk aversion can be defined to depend on the minimum probability of success that would induce him to accept the bet. The higher the minimum probability he demands, the higher his risk aversion.
An investor with no risk aversion would accept the gamble if the probability of success exceeded one-third because the gain under success is double the loss under failure. But risk-averse investors would require a higher probability of success. An investor who requires a probability of 0.5 is defined as having risk aversion of one. Table 1 shows other probabilities. A reasonable guess for the average investor’s minimum probability is around 0.67, implying a risk aversion of about 2.
Table 1Probability of success and investors' risk aversion
In a theoretical model, Lansing and LeRoy (2011) computed the stock price volatility implied by different levels of risk aversion. Like Shiller, they found that, under risk neutrality, predicted maximum stock price volatility is much lower than what is actually seen in the market. They also found that the higher the level of risk aversion, the higher the maximum stock price volatility. To generate a price volatility level near that seen in the real world, the model needs an implausibly high level of risk aversion around 4 or 5, implying a probability of success around 0.94 in the gamble described above. Most investors would not need such a high probability of success to accept the risk.
What’s more, risk aversion must be even higher if the stock price volatility implied by formal models is to be reconciled with actually observed volatility. Maximum volatility in the models is based on the implausible presumption that investors can predict dividends with perfect accuracy into the indefinite future. If investor ability to predict future dividends is more limited, then predicted price volatility will be lower under a given degree of risk aversion. Accordingly, still-higher levels of risk aversion are required to account for real-world price volatility.
To summarize, allowing for risk aversion can in principle generate stock price volatility similar to that seen in real-world financial markets. However, that assumes either that investors are implausibly risk averse or that they can predict dividends into the distant future, or both. Otherwise, price volatility surpasses levels that can be explained by fundamentals. It follows that assuming that investors have reasonable levels of risk aversion is not enough to explain why stock prices are so volatile.
Conclusion
The finance models summarized in this Letter are at odds with empirical data. Economists have been experimenting with innovative models that might help explain why asset prices are so volatile. Some have been looking at behavioral models that don’t assume full rationality, but these have problems of their own. So far, these investigations have not led to convincing explanations. It is far from clear where we go from here.
Stephen F. LeRoy is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Reprinted from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Economic Letter 2013-10. April 8, 2013.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the management of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, or of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
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After decades of practice and teaching, what inspires me are those moments when I can see the habitual as if it were for the first time. If such moments occur while I'm giving a talk, then the teacher in me can hear its own words imbued with the freshness imparted by those who truly listen -- the multiple aspects of myself being part of the audience as well. Thanks for your participation in the process.
Ultimately, in our search behind appearances, we need to let go of "name and form" and become like a mirror which is contacting no image. In this emptiness, the mind's capacity to see -- to be aware -- shines unimpeded.
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The research study is for anyone who lives or works in the region of Bloomfield Avenue. The survey allows for responses concerning traffic, pedestrians, bicyclists and general driving conditions. Responses will be used to inform those working on the development of the proposed Bloomfield Avenue Complete Streets Plan detailed on the Together North Jersey website.
The project proposes to:
Assess the area to identify transportation, pedestrian and bike access improvements that can improve the capacity of existing roads and the overall mobility of residents and patrons
Recommend roadway improvements that will create a healthy, enjoyable and safe environment
Develop a transit-friendly corridor that attracts economic investment on a regional scale
Project TeamAlong with the County of Essex, the combined efforts of many planning groups are involved with the Bloomfield Avenue study including the following organizations:
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The official blog of center fielder Marlon Byrd
7/21 Baseball is going to miss Lou
Larry Bowa was my first manager. Frank Robinson was my second. With Bowa, you’re talking about one of the greatest shortstops of all time, even though people forget that. He had 2,800 hits and Gold Glove defense and played on championship teams. He was a fiery, fiery guy, sort of like Lou. Frank Robinson, I don’t have to say anything about him. A Hall of Famer and one of the greatest of all time — 586 home runs, a little short of 3,000 hits. I’m sure he could come back now and get them.
Then I played for Ron Washington. He’s probably the only one who’s different. I think if you mold all those guys together, you have Lou. He’s a clubhouse guy, a players’ manager as well as knows his X’s and O’s on the field. Baseball is going to miss him. He’s always going to be known for his fieriness but at the same time he’ll be known for taking teams to the playoffs and having very good teams.
I’m quite sure the game and fans will miss Lou, as well as Lou will miss the game. However, would Lou be retiring had the club lived up to expectations? The Cubs have had great managers, coaches, and players over the decades. Yet, they can never get over the hump. Why is that? Is there some mental barrier that they can’t break through. Other teams have come into the league, with much smaller pay rolls and have won it all.
I am a lifetime Cub fan with a terminal illness. My biggest fear is to die before they grasp that brass ring. Maybe they just reach a little deeper into their hearts for the strength.
Thanks Lou for giving it your best and good luck.
I’m sure you’re nearly as disappointed as I am, but my brother-in-law Andy and my sister-in-law Tara forgot to bring the makings of a sign to tell you who they were yesterday! You’re not gonna believe this either…they ended up eating at Gino’s! Man, talk about missed opportunities.
Here’s a little story about how my life is going right now, Marlon. My wife Taela set the DVR to record the game yesterday mostly because we knew that my brother-in-law Andy and sister-in-law Tara would be there. I spent all day not listening to my usual sports radio because I didn’t want to hear the score. Talk about a pain in the nethers! So my sister-in-law Tasia watches the game with us and, as you know, that game was flying by because nobody was scoring, right? Well then it goes to extras and Geo comes up and apparently my brother-in-law Andy had posted something on Facebook (more on that later) about Geo. Well Geo pops up to end the scoring threat and my sister-in-law Tasia (who had already spilled the beans about my wife Taela being pregnant earlier this week) says “well, I know that Soto gets a hit because he’s on my fantasy team and I need to go to brother-in-law Andy/sister Tara’s house to study and take care of their dog so you need to fast forward.” I’m all “the hell you say?” One thing I hate is when people tell me what’s coming, and as far as I can tell this is a pretty selfish move right here. There’s nothing I can do about it so I just have to fast forward.
Sure enough, we get to Geo and you guys are down by 3 and then Geo pops this ball out into left. The bleachers are sparsely populated at this point and the ball lands. Out of the left side of the screen there’s MY BROTHER-IN-LAW ANDY diving into the pile! It looked like he had a pretty good shot at nabbing that ball too, but he didn’t get it. I guess he needs to commit a little harder to that P90X so he can muscle his way through that pile of Northside beef next time. I mean, he’s from Oakland-ish so you’d think he could hold his own, but he’s also a pastor so he wasn’t flying into the fracas with fists of fury (imagine Sylvester the Cat saying that! Sufferin’ succotash!).
Well Marlon, I wish you could have met the family, but sometimes thes things don’t work out.
Oh, about your post about Lou…I’m not really sure what it is you’re trying to say. Are you saying Lou’s a good manager and you’re going to miss him? Are you saying he’s been good for the game and baseball will miss him? I mean, my take on Lou, whose autographed ball I now own thanks to The Riot’s deal, is that he only has signed one ball in his life and he’s going to be a Hall of Famer and that one ball he signed should be worth hundreds, nay, thousands of dollars! Also, I think he’s tired of losing.
Do you have a Twitter account? You could be TweetyByrd on there (more Sylvester the Cat reference…awesome).
Categories
Meta
The following are trademarks or service marks of Major League Baseball entities and may be used only with permission of Major League Baseball Properties, Inc. or the relevant Major League Baseball entity: Major League, Major League Baseball, MLB, the silhouetted batter logo, World Series, National League, American League, Division Series, League Championship Series, All-Star Game, and the names, nicknames, logos, uniform designs, color combinations, and slogans designating the Major League Baseball clubs and entities, and their respective mascots, events and exhibitions.
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Sanders Lands at Arcadia
(Arcadia) – Former Duarte Head Coach Tip Sanders has joined the staff at Arcadia as line coach Apache HC Chris Long confirmed Tuesday night on the Mid Valley Sports Show. “He joined the staff when Coach Dimalante was here and decided to stay when I became Head Coach,” Long said.
Sanders, who was let go by Duarte earlier this year, turned the Falcons around in a three year span. Duarte was 0-10 in Sanders’ first year in 2009 and 0-9 in 2010. But last season the Falcons finished 6-4 and just missed the playoffs. After the season Sanders was abruptly dismissed and replaced by Jason Martin.
Sanders has also had head coaching stints at Pasadena Marshall and Blair. He led the Vikings to a Rio Hondo League title in 2007.
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Brandy Wows Them With Color
She’s been performing on stage for millions of fans since she was just 15 years old, but Brandy says that competing on Dancing With the Stars is one of the hardest things she’s ever done. “You have to be brave to do something like this,” she tells OK!. “The nervousness can be very overwhelming.” At an exclusive fashion shoot with OK!, Brandy, 31, and her partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy, 30, talked about DWTS and their chances of winning.
What’s the most important thing being on Dancing With the Stars has taught you?Brandy: Staying in the moment. Dance is all about trusting the moment and letting the dance flow through you, instead of over analyzing.
It’s a lot of exercise. How are you feeling?Brandy: Great, very energized. I’m starting to develop some calf muscles and we all want those Britney Spears legs, so if I keep dancing and keep doing my lunges, I’ll have some killer legs. And my midsection is looking a little muscular. Not a six-pack yet but watch out, Janet Jackson!
What surprised you about doing DWTS?Brandy: The level of fear that comes with the show is unexpected. You are so
nervous on Mondays. There’s judgment, constructive criticism and being compared to other people. I’m really proud that I’m able to get out there every Monday.Maks: I think she retains choreography quick, but she still gets nervous on Mondays and it can jeopardize our performance. But I feel like now, week by week, she gets more and more comfortable.
Are you enjoying the costumes?Brandy: Oh, when I wear the costumes I feel like a completely different
person. With the hair and the makeup — I feel like a real-life Barbie doll. My favorite so far was the one for the samba. It was really tight at the top and flowy at the bottom. I felt really sexy in it and I don’t feel sexy a lot in my real life!
Are you a fashionista?Brandy: I’m coming into my own. I’m a T-shirt and jeans girl. I also love a nice boot and an open-toe shoe. Louis Vuittons are my favorite.
How does your 8-year-old daughter, Sy’rai, feel about seeing you on DWTS?Brandy: She’s so proud of me now. But at first when I told her I was going to do it, she said: “But Mama, you can’t dance!”I feel like a completely different person. With the hair and the makeup — I feel like a real-life Barbie doll. My favorite so far was the one for the samba. It was really tight at the top and flowy at the bottom. I felt really sexy in it and I don’t feel sexy a lot in my real life!
Do you have a boyfriend?Brandy: No. I don’t have a boyfriend. It gets lonely. But I’m waiting, because I think when you look you don’t find love. I’m tired of frogs. You’re recording again.
How is that going?Brandy: Music is definitely my first love. This album is going to be rooted in R&B, which I haven’t sung in a long time. So, I’m really excited about it.
Do you think you can win DWTS?Brandy: Definitely, anything is possible.Maks: I think she can win this; I think this season is very much open.
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FAQ
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[MLton] release date
Too much is going on (documentation, time profiling bug, windows
packaging) to release on 20051116. I am traveling November 17-25, and
so won't be working on MLton much, and certainly won't be packaging
things. So, I propose to push things back two weeks, giving us a
target release date of 20051130.
Let's keep working hard on the wiki docs, and try to resolve the other
stuff too.
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Urban Farming45:55
Copy the code below to embed the WBUR audio player on your site
This article is more than 10 years old.City Farm, Chicago (Photo: Linda N./flickr.com - click photo for more.)
It sounds idyllic. Urban farming. Artichoke feathering in the sidewalk cracks; tufts of herbs for every meal, carrots from the White House lawn.But like many rosy dreams, we forget the thorns of hard work.Urban farming is hotter than jalapeño right now, but it will take public support — and lobbying Congress -- if it’s going to have an impact on how we eat, and how the poorest among us get fresh food.Our guests today are farmers who have converted city lots for everything from growing fish to heirloom pumpkins. Gurus of the city farm.This hour, On Point: Chickens at sunrise — in the city!You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.Guests:
Joining us from Milwaukee is Will Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power, an urban farm based in northwest Milwaukee. A 2008 MacArthur Fellow, he was recently profiled in The New York Times Magazine.
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Founded in 1993 by brothers Tom and David Gardner, The Motley Fool helps millions of people attain financial freedom through our website, podcasts, books, newspaper column, radio show, and premium investing services.
Tennis balls bounce back, even though eggs don'tLet's start at the top with Intuitive Surgical.
The company behind the da Vinci robotic arm was trading within 2% of its all-time high just last month, and now it's smacking a 52-week low.
The turning point came late last month, when the FDA launched a safety probe by surveying surgeons at some hospitals using da Vinci machines. There were an unusually high number of adverse incident reports at key hospitals and the regulatory agency wanted to take a closer look.
The investigation is ongoing, but investors don't like uncertainty.
Intuitive Surgical has been a market darling, and the platform using a surgeon-guided robotic arm for surgical incisions on certain procedures has historically been seen as a win-win-win scenario. Surgeons don't suffer as much fatigue. Patient recovery times are quicker. Hospitals can perform more surgeries in any given day. The only thing holding Intuitive Surgical from being in more hospitals was the high cost of the machines, but now there are real concerns about the platform itself until this cloud passes.
The dark cloud will pass.
Millennial Media has fallen ever harder.
The mobile advertising speedster went public at $13 last March, traded as high as $27.90 on its first day, and now has fallen all the way down to the single digits.
Millennial Media is still growing, serving up display advertising in many of the most popular apps. Millennial is the largest player in mobile advertising that isn't tethered to a single mobile operating system, and those platform-agnostic ways are compelling to developers.
Revenue climbed 71% last year, and Millennial Media's guidance calls for a still impressive 52% to 58% top-line pop this year. Red ink used to be a problem, but the company is coming off of back-to-back profitable quarters.
Baidu is China's leading search engine, commanding roughly two thirds of the search queries in China.
Investors have been hesitant to pile into Chinese Internet stocks, but that's a big mistake when it comes to Baidu. The stock has never been this cheap. The dot-com speedster is trading for less than 13 times next year's projected earnings, but it's growing a lot faster than that.
There is one upstart challenging its market share, and China's not exactly known for its open market and open Internet ways, but Baidu's too tempting to ignore here.
Boingo Wireless is another busted IPO. The public Wi-Fi provider went public two years ago. It wasn't as hot an IPO as Millennial Media. In fact, Boingo has never traded above its IPO price tag of $13.50 a share. However, things have gone from bad to worse at Boingo.
After coming through with consistently profitable quarters in its brief public tenure, analysts see Boingo posting back-to-back quarterly deficits on declining revenue to kick off the first half of this year.
It's OK. The company with a whopping 600,000 hotspots is approaching 2013 as a year of transformation. Boingo sees increased traffic as a result of smartphone users avoiding the now limited wireless carrier data plans, and it's investing in expanding its network capacity.
The numbers don't look pretty right now, but the picture should look better later this year as Boingo returns to profitability.
Finally, we have EZchip Semiconductor. It's also in a year of transition. Orders from the company that once was its largest customer have fallen sharply, but that has been more than offset by a healthy spike in orders from the world's leading networking hardware company.
EZchip seems to be doing right by most accounts. It posted better-than-expected earnings every single quarter last year, and analysts see sharp double-digit growth in revenue in net income in the near future. The shares are simply out of favor. EZchip's fundamentals, thankfully, are not out of favor.
Keep reaching for the starsI know I won't be right on many of these. If the market weakens further there's little to stop these companies from hitting even fresher 52-week lows down the line.
However, these five stocks are attractively priced right now. Somebody has to call bottom -- so why not me?
Author
Rick has been writing for Motley Fool since 1995 where he's a Consumer and Tech Stocks Specialist. Yes, that's a long time with more than 20,000 bylines over those 22 years. He's been an analyst for Motley Fool Rule Breakers and a portfolio lead analyst for Motley Fool Supernova since each newsletter service's inception. He earned his BBA and MBA from the University of Miami, and he splits his time living in Miami, Florida and Celebration, Florida.
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A Sacramento, California jury awarded $1.1 million to the family of a 79 year old woman who died only seven months after being placed in nursing home whose care for her was described as “malicious, oppressive and fraudulent.” Unfortunately, nursing home abuse and elder care abuse such as this occur in nursing homes and assisted living facilities across the country every day.
Jury finds nursing home conduct malicious, oppressive and fraudulent
This elder care abuse lawsuit involves 79 year old senior citizen Francis Tanner who was a resident at an Auburn, California nursing home run by Colonial Healthcare and its parent company, Horizon West. Although Tanner had mild dementia, she was known as “spirited and mobile.” However, she fell and broke her hip shortly after being placed there and died from infected bedsores less than seven months later. Her family hired a California attorney familiar with elder abuse cases and filed a lawsuit against the companies.
Their attorney was able to prove to the jury that Colonial – which recently changed its name to Hilltop Manor – was chronically understaffed, kept poor medical documentation and put profits over the welfare of their patients. In fact, the State of California sought to revoke Colonial's license last year, but ended up settling with the company if it changed its practices.
After deliberating for only two days, the jury awarded Tanner's family $1.1 million in damages for Tanner's pain and suffering and for her daughter's loss of companionship. The jury also decided that punitive damages – those meant to punish a defendant whose conduct is egregious – were warranted for the nursing home's malicious, oppressive and fraudulent conduct. Those have yet to be decided.
Elder abuse a common occurrence
Elder abuse lawyers say that elder abuse is a common occurrence in this country and that it can consist of physical abuse, emotional or psychological abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse, neglect and abandonment. If your loved one has been the victim of elder abuse, contact an experienced elder law lawyer in your state to find out what recourse is available to you.
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This is a sexual act that begins by positioning a chick with has her ass straight up in the air with only the back of her head and neck touching the floor. She can be held in position by a couch or small table. A more flexible & talented ho can use the back of her arms and elbows to get her ass in the right position.
A dude then stands over the chick, spits on her pussy, aims his cock straight down with his right hand, and drives it with much force into her cunt. Then the cock is completely pulled out and the process is repeated.
I gave her the Portland Piledriver on the first date and the bitch did not bat an eye. What a ho.
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After Andy Murray’s impressive semifinal win over Novak Djokovic on Friday, John McEnroe told the Scot he would be rooting for him in the final.
The great Johnny Mac certainly wasn’t alone today. Almost everyone at Wimbledon -- and throughout the country -- was rooting for him.
Sometimes wishes do come true.
This Olympics ultimately will be remembered as the turning point for Murray.
Four years after reaching his first major final, Murray has stepped it up. He isn’t playing Br’er Patch tennis anymore. He isn’t trying to put the whammy on his opponents. He’s cracking the ball. It isn’t easy to knock it past Roger Federer, but he showed he can do it. Time and again today he stepped into Federer’s second serve and sent the Swiss reeling. 6-2, 6-1, 6-4? When do you ever see a scoreline like that in which Federer’s on the losing end -- on grass?
What makes Murray's gold-medal performance all the more amazing is that this has been the summer of redemption for Federer. After his inexplicable, match-point-choking collapse to Djokovic at the U.S. Open, followed by his desultory loss to Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open, even the most ardent Federer fans -- hand raised here -- were beginning to believe he was done winning big titles. Instead, he put on an astonishing display this spring and summer, getting a measure of revenge against Nadal at Indian Wells, conquering the evil blue clay at Madrid and then, to top it off, donning Superman’s cape to win his seventh Wimbledon title. He proved that at nearly 31 years of age he can still beat the best of the best in their mid-twenties primes (see his back-to-back wins over Djokovic and Murray at Wimbledon) and that, when necessary, he can win big matches simply by being a greater physical specimen than younger, bigger opponents (see his Olympic semifinal win over Juan Martin del Potro). For all but the die-hard Rod Laver partisans, he has slammed the door on the greatest-player-ever debate.
Now Murray just made Federer look old -- and not a moment too soon. The 25-year-old Scot has been carrying the best-player-without-a-major label like a scarlet letter. But he didn’t sink into a funk after losing the Wimbledon final to Federer a few weeks ago, his fourth loss in a major final. He laced his shoes a little tighter and got right back out there. Because he knows he’s improving. He knows he’s finally gaining on the Big Three. Serious tennis people have been saying for years that Andy Murray is just too damn good to not win a major. At the next U.S. Open or Australian Open, he’s going to prove them right.
He finally has that last ingredient -- confidence. If you have a propensity for self-hatred, tennis is not the sport for you. That has been Murray's problem. But there was no sign of the self-immolating Scot today. This was Lord Murray, as he'll no doubt officially be called one day.
So Murray is ascendant. And Federer, despite his failure to win gold, is still the number-one player in the world.
Where does this leave Djokovic? It’s hard to believe that two months ago the Serb was on top of the world. He had won three straight major titles, an astonishing run that included coming out on top in instant classics against his two rivals (Federer at the U.S. Open, Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open).
Now the pressure’s on. He couldn’t complete a career Grand Slam in Paris and he couldn’t defend his title at Wimbledon -- and in each his rivals got back at him (Nadal at Roland Garros, Federer at Wimby). The straight-set loss to Murray on Friday was the worst yet. In small, newly independent (or re-independent) countries looking to burnish their international reps, Olympic gold means everything. More than Wimbledon, more than the Tour de France. It would mean more than the World Cup if FIFA let the best players go to the Games. Yet Djokovic walks away from this Olympics with nothing (he lost the bronze-medal match against Juan Martin del Potro). Best player in the world? Djokovic is huge in his home country, bigger than huge. But the average Serbian -- i.e., a Serbian who is not a hardcore tennis fan -- must suddenly have his doubts.
This much we have learned in the past week: there are now five majors. Prestige came slowly for Olympic tennis after it returned in 1988. Four years ago in Beijing we saw that it was coming on hard. All the best players were in attendance, and they all admitted that the Games meant a lot to them. For the first time, the number-one player in the world -- Nadal -- won gold. This year Olympic tennis reached Slam status -- or at the very least Masters-plus status. The rankings points haven’t caught up yet, but they will. Davis Cup is dying a slow, painful, ugly death, but the best players in the world want to play for their country -- and they’re going to do it every four years at the Olympics.
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You know the feeling: that moment when, in the midst of crafting a sentence, you realize that the notes you made in the archive are…incomplete. I’m a transcriber, and not one to take digital photographs. I just know myself well enough to recognize the fact that transcribed words are more useful for my writing than image after image of manuscript pages that I will procrastinate from analyzing. This preference, however, means that I’ve encountered more than a few errors in my transcriptions of manuscript sources and secondary works alike. I catch my mistakes from the latter when I’m proofing a piece of writing before I submit it; I’ll go back to the book or article, read it and my quotes side by side, and discover that I’ve left out a “the,” or transposed two words, or typed part of the same sentence twice. Preventing all of my blunders on manuscript transcriptions is another matter entirely, and it is to manuscript research that I’d like to turn in my response to James Merrell’s article in Early American Studies.
Historians, and early career scholars especially, are strapped for the time and the cash to write history solely from manuscript sources—a point that Merrell gamely acknowledges.[1] Printed, edited collections of manuscript sources, he argues, inevitably contain errors (insignificant and egregious ones), but I’d like to suggest that because of our equally inevitable propensity for human error, manuscript sources are little different.
Let me be clear: I am a manuscript fiend. I was lucky enough to win time and money from various libraries and archives to fund my dissertation research because as a food historian, I was suspicious of edited collections in ways that were quite different from Merrell’s concerns. In my grant applications, I argued that I needed to look at manuscripts because food history had only recently become an accepted field of study. I worried that too many documents that dealt with food—with the exception of cookbooks and medical pharmacopeias—hadn’t made it into edited collections at all, because editors assumed that historians weren’t interested. In other words, I am less concerned that the documents Merrell cites have been carelessly transcribed, and more worried about the hundreds of thousands of documents that never get included in such collections in the first place.When I began my research, I wanted to read the letters of military officers to see how much they talked about foodstuffs from a logistical and diplomatic perspective. I also knew that I’d be dealing with the problem of studying food: the fact that it can be everywhere and nowhere. And so, my solution was to adopt a needle-in-the-haystack approach, read as much as I could, and transcribe it all.
It turned out that of course, edited document collections did contain mentions of food—but that letters about food exchanges peppered manuscripts to such an extent that I’m still reeling from the amount of material I collected. For one wacky year, I spent a month in a U.S. city speed-reading and -transcribing manuscripts like a madwoman, and then rinsed and repeated until the year was through.
It just so happens that some of the things I transcribed, I transcribed sloppily. Prime example? I belatedly realized that I had a great quote for a book title, and then panicked about the capitalization in my transcription. The document was in London, and at that point, I was back in the states. I was fortunate enough to get to come back to England, and it turned out that I’d transcribed it incorrectly the first time.
Approaching edited document collections with more care and skepticism may get us a bit further toward the goal of better scholarship. But what are historians of newer topics to do when they realize that manuscripts should form the majority of their source base? In another article that reflects on how far scholars of Native American history have come in the last two and a half decades, Merrell observes that even if scholars don’t locate Natives “behind every bush, Indians do seem ubiquitous.”[2] I can’t yet say the same for the history of food in early America—but I’d bet on the fact that nearly every single manuscript collection deals with food in some way.
So what’s a usually fastidious, but sometimes rushed, and occasionally careless early career scholar to do? I don’t have all of the answers to Merrell’s critiques. But I would like to offer a speculative (and somewhat opinionated) road map for how historians can encourage beginning researchers to make it easy on themselves when they find they must confront the prospect of manuscript research.
1. Advisers need to sit down with students before they go off to do research to talk about common practices and to strategize. What are some of the most common abbreviations your students will encounter? Will they recognize that “Do.” is “ditto,” “&c.” means “etc.,” and “ye” is the equivalent of “the”? Will they know where to look to find the addressee and the sender of a letter? If they’re reading sources that date before 1700, are they prepared to read the quite different handwriting? If students are using non-English sources, they also need to decide how to deal with the foreign language and the creative spelling. Most guides I’ve read strongly recommend against translating as you type, but researchers will need to be extra careful with their words and transcriptions.
2. Researchers need to figure out a transcription shorthand system and try to be consistent from start to finish. When you cite folio numbers, what will your practice be if only part of the collection is numbered? What if one set of documents has one folio number for every two pages, and another set uses a number for each page? How will you keep track of place names? If the sender misspells the place name, will you retain their spelling in your citation of the document, or will you substitute it for the commonly-accepted one? Will you try to transcribe all superscripts? What about corrections to the text? And how will you indicate when a word or phrase is unreadable?
3. Researchers should be on Twitter. In the past week or so I’ve answered two separate questions from people in the archives who used the #twitterstorians hashtag to ask about indecipherable handwriting and abbreviations. Being on Twitter gives you an immediate way to snap a photo, pose a quick query about an archival puzzle, and to get on quickly with your transcribing or note-taking.
4. You must write as you go, because doing so will help you figure out if you need to check a quote or a date—ideally before you’ve left the city that contains the archive. This practice doesn’t mean putting together cohesive, beautiful paragraphs, but it does mean trying to work the quote or the source into a sentence so that you know immediately if something is missing.
5. And finally, you may want to come up with a system for cataloguing your data before you start to collect it. Obviously, this system will change as you go, but thinking about how you’ll keep track of your sources ahead of time may save you many headaches down the line. I’ve written about my very old-fashioned methods; you can also check out Michael Hattem’s 21st-century approach.
Please feel free to weigh in in the comments sections to share any ideas for dealing with manuscript sources or edited collections. And may the source be with you. Always.
[1] James H. Merrell, “‘Exactly as they appear’: Another Look at the Notes of a 1766 Treason Trial in Poughkeepsie, New York, with Some Musings on the Documentary Foundations of Early American History,” Early American Studies 12, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 236.
[2] James H. Merrell, “Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series 69, no. 3 (July 2012): 453.
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13 responses
The Force is strong with this historian. 🙂 What a wonderful article with some fantastic advice for beginning scholars like myself. I had no idea there was a Twitter devoted to providing quick archival questions. I will make sure to follow steps one through five when I hit the archives later this spring. Thank you!
There is a lot of great advice here, but I think your point about advisors talking through what students might encounter in the archive is a great one. From there follows all else, because I know that as an undergrad and Master’s student, I had no real idea what I was doing with manuscript sources short of just transcribing what they say. When I got into my Ph.D. program, my advisor gave great advice on shortcuts (like speaking to archivists and librarians), cataloging, and picking out what was significant about a given document. I’ve since discovered that even other students in my program with different advisors don’t get the same advice, and I think that’s a shame. We’re trained from the very first moment we enter graduate school to critique scholarship, but we don’t spend very much time at all learning to interpret manuscripts, which ultimately is the more important activity.
A final point, as someone who prefers transcribing sources myself, I’ve learned there’s no harm in also taking a high-quality photograph of said sources after you’ve taken down what you need. That way, you can proofread at your desk in the United States rather than fret about what a manuscript housed an ocean away actually said.
That’s a good idea, Craig. This one particular source was at the British Library, where taking photographs is much trickier–but I’ll keep it in mind for the days I’m at Kew, where photography is free, free, free!
Yes, the BL’s policy on photographs is rather prehistoric. I haven’t yet mustered up the bravery to try and sneak a photograph myself, but as you say, there are ways to get your hands on copies if need be. I suppose it opens up a new range of questions about how to figure out which sources are absolutely crucial and which aren’t while you’re sitting in the archive, something that is nowhere near as easy to do as it is later with the benefit of perspective and hindsight.
This was a great series, thanks! So I have a question that this series has nudged me to think more on: as I write up my dissertation, I’ve got many quotations that I found in the archives, and then found later in a published collection, and they’re identical. So…do I 1) cite the archival version to show off that I flew halfway across the country to look at the original myself, and expect the reader to do the same if they want to verify/challenge me, 2) cite the published version so that it is easier for readers to verify my claims or 3) cite both (or more!), letting my footnotes creep like kudzu across the page?
Hi Ian. I usually cite the original, and somewhere at the beginning of the chapter, I note in a footnote that many of the letters I’m about to cite are available in such and such edited collection. If there are any discrepancies between the original and the printed copy (or in the way a historian’s interpretation of either differs from mine), I note that in the individual footnote. But then, I’m a footnote person.
Rachel, I’m assuming that you didn’t photograph or photocopy that document that you transcribed without accurate capitalization. As a result, another trip to the faraway archive was the only solution, which you were fortunate enough to swing. Were digital photos or photocopies forbidden?
Oh, I see that Craig and you discussed this. In addition to his points, I have found that I sometimes focus more deeply on one part of the content of a document than other parts. And then later, as my understanding of the topic evolves, a different part of a document becomes important, more important than I realized. Having a version of the original that I can revisit is a tremendous help.
What is “The Junto?”
The Junto is a group blog made up of junior early Americanists—graduate students and junior faculty—dedicated to providing content of general interest to other early Americanists and those interested in early American history, as well as a forum for discussion of relevant historical and academic topics.
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Home Sales Finally Creeping Back Up in Halton and Surrounding Cities
While home prices have inched back up month-over-month in Oakville, Burlington, Milton, Toronto and other GTA cities, sales have been slow.
But it looks like spring—even though it most certainly does not look anything like spring outside—has been breathing a little more life into the market.
Recently released statistics by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) show national home sales edged higher from February to March 2018.
As far as numbers go, CREA says national home sales inched up 1.3 per cent from February to March. That said, actual (not seasonally adjusted) activity was down 22.7 per cent from last year’s all-time March record (if you recall, winter 2017 boasted an incredibly hot market).
The number of newly listed homes rose 3.3 per cent from February to March.
In terms of prices, they're up too. The MLS Home Price Index (HPI) in March was up 4.6 per cent year-over-year, even though the national average sale price declined by 10.4 per cent year-over-year in March (which was to be expected following the Ontario government's Fair Housing Plan and the OSFI stress test).
But despite having improved marginally in March, CREA says national sales activity in the first quarter slid to the lowest quarterly level since the first quarter of 2014.
Judging by the numbers, it does look like recent policy initiatives designed to cool the market have discouraged some buyers from purchasing homes.
CREA says that actual (not seasonally adjusted) activity was down 22.7 per cent from record activity logged for March last year and marked a four-year low for the month.
“Government policy changes have made home buyers and sellers increasingly uncertain about the outlook for home prices,” said Andrew Peck, CREA president . “The extent to which these changes have impacted housing market sentiment varies by region."
The more costly low-rise home market has been hit hardest.
“Recent changes to mortgage regulations are fueling demand for lower priced homes while shrinking the pool of qualified buyers for higher-priced homes,” said Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist. “Given their limited supply, the shift of demand into lower price segments is causing those sale prices to climb. As a result, ‘affordably priced’ homes are becoming less affordable while mortgage financing for higher priced homes remains out of reach of many aspiring move-up homebuyers.”
CREA says new listings have still not recovered from the 21.1 per cent plunge recorded between December 2017 and January 2018 - the largest month-over-month decline on record by a large margin.
With sales up by less than new listings in March, the national sales-to-new listings ratio eased to 53 per cent in March. The long-term average for the measure is 53.4 per cent. CREA says a national sales-to-new listings ratio of between 40 per cent and 60 per cent is generally consistent with a balanced national housing market.
"Although home prices in the region have stabilized or begun to show tentative signs of moving higher in recent months, y-o-y comparisons may deteriorate further due to rapid price gains one year ago," CREA says.
So, what houses are getting more expensive?
CREA says apartment/condo units again posted the largest year-over-year price gains in January (+17.8 per cent), followed by townhouse/row units (+9.4 per cent), and one-storey single family homes (+1.3 per cent).
As expected, two-storey single family home prices were down (-2 per cent) from a year ago. Despite having stabilized over the second half of last year, year-over-year declines for single family home prices may persist over the first half of 2018.
As far as our neck of the woods goes, home prices in the GTA and Oakville/Milton were down in March compared to one year earlier (GTA: -1.5 per cent y-o-y; Oakville-Milton: -7.1 per cent y-o-y).
"These declines largely reflect price trends one year ago and mask evidence that home prices in the region have begun trending higher," CREA says.
Not surprisingly, Canada home prices would be lower across the board if not for the hot Toronto and Vancouver markets.
"The national average price is heavily skewed by sales in the GVA and GTA, two of Canada’s most active and expensive markets," CREA says.
"Excluding these two markets from calculations cuts almost $108,000 from the national average price, reducing it to $383,000 and trimming the year-over-year decline to just 2 per cent."
So there you have it, home prices are down from their 2017 peak and balance has returned to the market.
That said, it still doesn't look like a detached house will be in reach for the average buyers.
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Fiberoptic
The CEO of Raysat/Cruisecast (AT&T partnership) gave us a 20 minute technical explanation on the satellite, antennas, transponders, compression and how they have made CruiseCast “cruise” . A product overview can be found with the interview of Cruiscast’s President . There are more technical details in our CruiseCast drive test video.
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Welcome to Troy Recreation Sports!
Troy Recreation is committed to providing quality sports programs for people of all ages that promote good sportsmanship and a healthy lifestyle. We off sports leagues year-round for youth and adults. Use the menu to find your specific league or sport.
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Pages
Thursday, 23 July 2015
A few brief macro thoughts...
...busy corporate earnings day today so here are a few brief macro thoughts today.
Greece - Greece's parliament approved the next element of the bailout package at 4am local time in Athens. Whilst a Greek Gov’t Spokeswoman said a ‘Rupture In
Syriza Party Is Obvious’, 'only' 36 SYRIZA MPs failed to support this week's bill vs
39 last week apparently.
European debt – record new European debt levels -
‘Across countries that use the euro, average debt to gross domestic product
reached 92.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2015, up from 92 per cent in the
previous quarter and 91.9 per cent in the same period last year, according to
figures from Eurostat, the EU's statistical agency. Greece remains Europe's
most indebted nation, with debt equal to 169 per cent of annual GDP, but Italy,
Belgium, Cyprus and Portugal also carry government debt that exceeds 100 per
cent of economic output’ (Fast FT). Hmmm.
Ukraine – with the economy expected to contract more
than Greece’s in 2015 worrying that Ukraine's inflation rate is running at 57%,
the world's third highest by some estimates after Venezuela and South
Sudan. A disturbing report here on the underlying economy there. Surely a debt restructuring required in the Ukraine...
China - as per a WSJ report, the well-known hedge fund Bridgewater Flips View on China: ‘No Safe
Places to Invest’. Hedge fund that previously was very bullish warns that
recent stock gyrations will have broad, negative repercussions. Maybe it was because they were bullish before but to me I remain a little more opportunistic in mindset towards the country.
Australia - interesting iron ore related chart...you can see why there is lots of focus on the commodity
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Hundreds of people having fun getting filthy made for a great day behind the lens. I shot jpgs, which I don't often do, to make for easy uploading to Facebook on the day. Low aperture values to give my subjects some separation from their surroundings and fast shutter speeds. At times, it was chaotic, especially when the dog owners arrived on the scene.
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Home & Interiors
HOW TO: EMBROIDERY – 6. stem stitch
In this post you’re going to learn how to do the stem stitch. It is similar to the back stitch but has more overlap and therefore creates a twisting effect. If you’re interested in the other more basic stitches in this series have a look here:
1. Cut a piece of embroidery thread/floss no longer than around 40cm. You could make it longer, but it will be a little cumbersome to deal with. Thread one side of the thread through the embroidery needle and pull through around 5-10cm of the thread. Tie a knot at the other end of the floss.
2. Thread your piece of floss through the back of your work until the knot stops you going any further. Then thread your floss through the front of the work. The length of this stitch is up to you. I like to work on small hoops so my running stitch tends to be around 5mm long each.
3. Thread your needle through the back of your work again and pull the floss all the way through.
4. Now thread the needle from the front of your work just under the previous running stitch as shown above.
5. Repeat the previous steps.
As you can see, the method is similar to the back stitch, but the needle threads under the previous stitch as opposed to the hole which the previous stitch came through.
And this is what it looks like in green! It creates a twisted line and is great for outlines and you guessed it, stems for leaves! I would discourage filling in a design with this stitch as it would be bulky and leave it purely for stems and outlines.
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The second session on Saturday morning 27 March shows the discord in views between the Trustees on ‘Sexual Minorities’ or more accurately, paedophiles.
Angela Willan (Woman’s own agony aunt) felt that the paedophiles should be last on the list to be helped amongst all other sexual minorities and that the Albany trust should not put itself in the position of selling their viewpoint for them. She also pointed out the situation of tremendous inequality as between adult and child.
However, Haywood appeared almost wilfully oblivious to Angela and Sue Barnet’s opposition to the Trust’s continued focus on paedophilia, ignoring Grey’s plea for the Trust to publish another booklet on its own terms on Paedophilia and instead wanted the Trust to be ‘more adventurous’ [p.11] launching into his vision for a one year program to commence under his remaining 6 months’ Chairmanship ‘Sexuality in Institutions’. It would strive to:
(a) take up the way paedophiles are treated in prison
(b) try to get more moderate and better informed press attitudes to paedophilia
(c) act as ‘honest broker’ between paedophiles and others who are reluctant even to listen to their point of view
(d) provide them with meeting places for discussion groups
(e) provide counseling/befriending
It might have been more accurately entitled ‘Paedophilia in Institutions’. Haywood hoped Lord Winstanley, Sir Cyril Smith’s old friend would be willing to get involved with fundraising for the Trust later in the year [p.12]
In response to Sue Barnet querying whether it was a good thing to run seminars or let paedophiles hold discussion groups, Arlo Tatum, the Trust’s Organising Secretary asked “Can we not knock down some of the myths – such as that they are all child-molestors, or that the children involved are never seducers?” echoing the response of the Trust to Playland Trial No 2 in 1975 – ‘Who is exploiting whom?’
Arlo Tatum’s arrival in the midst of the Albany Trust as Organising Secretary (summer 1976? TBC) is both mysterious and interesting in itself. Four years prior, Tatum had been busy suing the US Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. A US publication Washington Monthly had revealed that army intelligence units had placed Tatum’s organisation Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors under surveillance, a pacifist movement which aligned with Tatum’s Quaker principles. On appeal by the State Tatum lost, mainly because Nixon had, in a timely move, placed an Assistant Attorney General Judge Rehnquist in place at the Supreme Court.
During 1975, while Paedophile Information Exchange member Roger Moody was working for Peace News he was promoting the organisation in its pages.
Taboos
The paper’s pages have often been ahead of the times in being open to discussion of then-unpopular social issues, and matters of sexual politics, such as homosexuality and feminism. And in the case of non-hysterical discussion of paedophilia, most of the world still has to catch up. On 27 June 1975, the PN letters page carried this response to a report by Roger Moody in the previous issue about a group devoted to counselling paedophiles.
“Does ‘boy’ mean male under the age of consent for homosexual activity, under age for heterosexual activity, or before puberty – and similarly for ‘girl’. I do not ask out of prurient curiosity, but because the different answers to these questions have considerable bearing on how I (and other people I have talked to) feel about pedophilia.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the age of consent for all forms of sexual activity should be reduced to 13 or 14, in order to bring anomalous situations regarding contraception and male homosexuality closer to the situation that actually exists. I also have no doubt that in an ideal world, free sexuality between people of all ages and sexes will be a positive benefit to all and the myth of childhood will be totally dispensed with. However, we are not there yet… and if I were responsible for a young child in the world today, I would want them protected from sexual intrusions by older people.” [Peace News: The first 75 glorious years]
In 1976 Roger Moody was living in North London in a ‘licensed squat’ surrounded by children, working as an editor of Peace News.
The Seven Days of my creation: Tales of Magic, Sex & Gender by Jani Farrell-Roberts (2002)
In October 1976, six months before, Grey had visited Edinburgh. “There are several professional people and SMG members there who are keen to form the nucleus of a Trust branch in Scotland. I may have to go there again soon for the British Association of Counselling, and could develop these contacts once a policy has been decided.”
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Using Hubble Space Telescope images collected over 14 years, Hartigan has created time-lapse movies that offer astronomers their first glimpse of the dynamic behavior of stellar jets, huge torrents of gas and particles that spew from the poles of newborn stars.
An analysis of the movies that was published in The Astrophysical Journal is forcing astronomers to rethink some of the processes that occur during the latter stages of star birth. And in an effort to learn even more, Hartigan and colleagues are using powerful lasers to recreate a small-scale version of the solar-system-sized jets in a lab in upstate New York.
“The Hubble’s given us spectacular images,” said Hartigan, professor of physics and astronomy at Rice. “In the nebulae where stars are born, for instance, we can see beautiful filaments and detailed structure. We know these images are frozen snapshots in time, but we would need to watch for hundreds of thousands of years to see how things actually play out.”
Hartigan said stellar jets are different because they move very quickly. Stellar jets blast out into space from the poles of newly formed stars at about 600,000 miles an hour. Astronomers first noticed them about 50 years ago, and they believe the sun probably had stellar jets when it formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
Hartigan began using Hubble to collect still frames of stellar jets in 1994. The jets emerge from each pole of a young star, and Hartigan used Hubble to revisit the jets from three stars in 1994, 1998 and 2008. All three stars are about 1,350 light years from Earth. Two are near the Orion Nebula, and the third is in the southern sky in the constellation Vela.
By lacing the images together and using a computer to fill in what occurred between still frames, Hartigan and his collaborators created time-lapse movies. The movies clearly showed something that wasn’t obvious in any of the still images; clouds of dust and gas within the jets move at different speeds.
“The bulk motion of the jet is about 300 kilometers per second,” Hartigan said. “That’s really fast, but it’s kind of like watching a stock car race; if all the cars are going the same speed, it’s fairly boring. The interesting stuff happens when things are jumbling around, blowing past one another or slamming into slower moving parts and causing shockwaves.”
Understanding what happens in those huge collisions is another challenge. The phenomena didn’t look like anything that Hartigan and his astronomer colleagues had seen. But when he showed them to colleagues who were familiar with the physics of nuclear explosions, they immediately saw patterns in the shockwaves that looked familiar.
“The fluid dynamicists immediately picked up on an aspect of the physics that astronomers typically overlook, and that led to a different interpretation for some of the features we were seeing,” Hartigan explained. “The scientists from each discipline bring their own unique perspectives to the project, and having that range of expertise has proved invaluable for learning about this critical phase of stellar evolution.”
Motivated by the results from Hubble, Hartigan and colleagues are conducting experiments at the Omega Laser Facility in Rochester, New York, to recreate small-scale versions of the solar-system-sized features captured in the movies.
“It’s one more tool we have to better understand the underlying physics,” Hartigan said.
In addition to Hartigan, the research team includes Adam Frank of the University of Rochester; John Foster and Paula Rosen of the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, U.K.; Bernie Wilde, Rob Coker and Melissa Douglas of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; and Brent Blue and Freddy Hansen of General Atomics in San Diego, Calif.
The research is funded by NASA and the National Nuclear Security Administration.
A high-resolution image is available for download at:
http://www.media.rice.edu/images/media/NEWSRELS/0826_hartigan.JPG
CAPTION: Rice astronomer Patrick Hartigan displays a target from an experiment to re-create the physics of stellar jets on a small scale. Powerful lasers blasted a tiny plug of titanium inside the gold-coated cone, shooting the atomized material into a ball of foam-covered plastic. The experiment re-created some of the fluid dynamics that occur on a huge scale when newborn stars spew columns of high-speed gas and dust.
CREDIT: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University
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What should I do about him?
My boyfriend and I have been together for a year and a half, it was great in the beginning... but since about three months ago, he's been starting arguments about nothing. I suffer with anxiety and depression, recently I was told that my granddad has been diagnosed with lung cancer and that he hasn't got long left, this triggered my depresion and my boyfriend does not understand it at all - i've tried to explain anxiety and depression to him multiple times but he doesn't understand still. I want to break up with him, but as it is exam season I feel as though that would be a wrong thing to do, I don't want him to fail his exams because of me. But being with him triggers my anxiety too much and its affecting my exams now, because I'm so upset and anxious all the time - what should I do?
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Switch - 'Symphony' (Official Music Video)
“Symphony” is the title track from the debut EP from Switch, an ensemble that was birthed from the youth ministry of Life.Church.
Here's the official video for "Symphony" by Switch.
Switch is a collective of worship leaders from Life.Church, a multi-site church meeting in 32 distinct locations across the U.S. The mission of the band is to create songs with a modern sound that will encourage listeners to pursue a relationship with Jesus.
Switch singer Cassidy Estevez pointed out that God is ever the Creator, ever the Composer of life. “He’s actually writing something beautiful even through our pain… even through the hurt that we don’t understand - God is weaving and crafting a beautiful SYMPHONY.”
"Symphony" LyricsSometimes it's hard to breatheAll these thoughts are shoutin' meTry to bring me to my kneesAnd it's overwhelmingDarkness echoes all aroundFeels like everything is crashing downStill I know when my hope is foundAnd it's only you and ooh-oohYou say you're working everything for my good and ooh-oohI believe every word
'Cause even in the madnessThere is peaceDrownin' out the voicesAll around meThrough all of this chaosYou were writing a symphonyA symphony
And even in the madnessThere is peaceDrownin' out the voicesAll around meThrough all of this chaosYou were writing a symphonyA symphony, oh
To my heart, do you beat?Let me be your melodyEven when I cannot seeBut you orchestrate itEven when the dark surroundsYou'll never let me drownI know that my hope is foundIn the name of Jesus, ooh-oohYou say you're working everything for my good and ooh-oohI believe every word
'Cause even in the madnessThere is peaceDrownin' out the voicesAll around meThrough all of this chaosYou were writing a symphonyA symphony
And even in the madnessThere is peaceDrownin' out the voicesAll around meThrough all of this chaosYou were writing a symphonyA symphony, oh
Yo, I wanna truly knowIf you can pause beautifulMusic, thoughFrom all my unruly notesThe distance is distant, it's movin' close
Now I see, erase the scales from my eyesThen play the scale of my lifeCan't y'alls play it off with a chord and a crowWith a source prevented through strife and
I've tasted suffering, I've been embraced by the painful buffering, I've beenDown by doubt so loud right nowBut a melody is made when you play these rusty keys
So we all gotta get pressedTuned up like instruments, but I knowAll of life's tempo is setWhenever we remember this
That even in the madnessThere is peaceDrownin' out the voicesAll around meThrough all of this chaosYou were writing a symphonyA symphony
And even in the madnessThere is peaceDrownin' out the voicesAll around meThrough all of this chaosYou were writing a symphonyA symphony, oh
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Dom Pérignon
Harrods, London
The brief
Our aim was to highlight Dom Pérignon’s presence in the Harrods retail environment, capturing the spirit and tradition of their fine vintage champagnes. Using playful interactive film technology housed within a specially made cabinet, we aimed to encourage the consumer to interact with the brand.
Our approach
The wall display incorporates an auto stereoscopic 3D screen which showcases the latest brand collaboration with Jeff Koons, the controversial American pop-artist. In front of the screen, we installed a projected, gesture-controlled digital book, telling all there is to know about Dom Pérignon’s history and range of champagnes.
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There is no sun without shadow. There is no shadow without sun.
Higgins Versus Klosterman XV: Synesthesia
You are forced to give up one of your five senses (smell, sight, taste, touch, or hearing). However, you may choose to compensate for the loss by means of synesthesia–for example, if you give up your sense of sight, you can choose to smell colors instead, or if you give up taste, you could replace this sensation by feeling flavors. Basically, whichever sense you reject you would be able to sense, but through a different medium.
Which of your senses would you surrender, and how would you replace it?
That’s right. There are people who can taste purple, feel chocolate, and see your farts. The conditions can be congenital (from birth) or adventitious (coming on later in life). They come with fancy names like ordinal linguistic personification, grapheme –> color synesthesia, and ideasthesia.
Among the most famous synesthetes:
Duke Ellington, who literally played the blues–seriously, when he heard that certain note, it would appear blue to him
Vladimir Nabokov, who describes the discovery of his synesthesia in Speak, Memory
In any case, we must move forward. Mr. Klosterman has presented us with options. If we were to lose one of our several methods of accessing the world, but be able to access what the lost method accessed through one of our remaining senses, how would we proceed?
Shall I lose taste? Smell? Sight? Touch? Hearing?
It seems very impractical to have to lose hearing or sight; our daily communication relies upon these. I do not think that a sight –> taste/smell/touch/hearing synesthesia would be very practical; a white wall might elicit a B flat, but what about the depth of field? How am I to know when I am approaching the wall–will the B flat get louder? And what about when I see a rainbow–will that now be some disharmonious chord as all the different colors clash as sound?
The obvious cop-out to me seems to be a smell –> taste synesthesia. Taste and smell are already so closely bound up as to be sometimes inextricable. It is hard to say what red wine tastes like without thinking also of its smell. I have known individuals who have lost their senses of smell, and truly grieved for the loss of that sense; but we must remember that we will not lose the sense, it will only be converted. I think that I could live with that.
However, there are other interesting options. I would love to be able to see sound, but would that interfere with normal vision? When I hear a symphony, would a Fantasia of colors overlay my vision? What about touch–>sound? Touching a cool steel beam could trigger taut synths, sandpaper might sound like a musical saw, and water–what would water sound like? But would I lose my sense of proprioception , which seems related to touch?
It is hard to know how any of these scenarios would actually work out. I think I would immediately take the smell –> taste option. However, if it was only texture that was affected, I might be interested in touch –> sound as well. Think about it–every surface would become an instrument for you to play!
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Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - April 6, 2014
The Brian Gongol Show can be heard on WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa on 1040 AM (the signal reaches much of North America at night) or streaming online at WHORadio.com. The show airs from 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm Central Time on Sunday nights. Podcasts of show highlights are updated most weekdays.
A little bit of philosophy
The ongoing worries about what happens next between Russia and Ukraine (or others among Russia's neighbors) has me wondering: What's really at stake? Russia isn't really "Eastern" in the sense of being like India or China, but the situation really comes across as a struggle over the embrace of Western values. So what are those values?
I think Western philosophy really boils down to this:
1. Make money
2. Have fun
3. Clean up after yourself
4. Mind your business
Each of these is a little more nuanced than that, of course:
Make money: You are free to produce goods and services by the work of your hands, your mind, and your capital. The profits are yours to keep and to spend or invest as you choose. Conveniently, the more of this you do (and the more of it your neighbors do), the better off we all become -- even without a coordinated effort.
Have fun: You are free to speak your mind and enjoy the things that make you happy, be they material goods, entertainment, religion, or other things. You have the natural right to go about your life free of the intrusions and repressions of government or other powers telling you how to live. Life is short, so you should make the most of what you have.
Clean up after yourself: You can do most things at your own liberty, but you don't have the right to freeload on others. If what you do in the interest of making money imposes a cost on the health or safety of others, you have to pay for it. By the same token, if you choose to do things that harm your health or put you in danger, nobody else is obligated to pay for your recovery.
Mind your business: In the conventional sense, mind your own business -- not the lives of others. Peacefully coexist with one another with a sense of tolerance. But in a more literal sense, mind your own well-being: Get better at what you do and invest in your future well-being. Civilization only moves forward if we all take incremental steps forward all the time, and if you don't do that, you're just trying to get a free ride on the backs of others.
In the news this week:
NATO looks to protect UkraineIt's being said that Russia could invade at any moment, and there's no question that the mainstream of Europe would be opposed to an invasion on their doorstep. Meanwhile, the former president of Ukraine is backtracking on his embrace of the Russian incursion into Crimea. This whole affair is turning into a real test of just what "Western" values really are and how much those values are capable of overcoming the enticements of power.
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Having a canvas as small as our budget, we had to take advantage of every square inch!
Describe a challenge you've overcome or a smart resource you've found for your kitchen.
We had no table, or much room for one, but we built the island from a table-top found in the as-is section at Ikea. It's held up by L-brackets against the wall, and a 4-drawer dresser found at Goodwill. We wanted a larger kitchen table, because it also had to double as a desk for our studio apartment.
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administration pastor
Posted by: Andrew Paton
Posted date: Jun-16-2017
Location: Clinton NJ 08809
clinton NJ is in the semi rural part of the state. It's in Hunterdon County. We seek a bi-vocational associate who can replace the senior pastor within two years or less. Applicants with a family will receive free housing.
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Boiling away “Why Bayh-Dole”
The basis of the patent system is individual inventor rights. Bayh-Dole strips these in favor of institutional exploitation. Bayh-Dole is inventor loathing.
The results are terrible. Commercialization rates are 1/1oth what they were before Bayh-Dole. Bayh-Dole has created tens of thousands of unworked patents. Bayh-Dole is anti-innovation.
Bayh-Dole exists so that pharma can get monopoly rights to federally supported drug discoveries and charge monopoly prices. Bayh-Dole enables a market to exploit suffering.
Bayh-Dole grants private rights in patents in exchange for limited rights in those patents. But universities ignore the limits and go for the money. Federal agencies turn a blind eye. Bayh-Dole is never enforced.
Bayh-Dole should be repealed. It’s been a terrible 35 years. Nothing would be better.
If the U.S. government paid for prescription drugs the most favorable price those drugs were offered anywhere in the world (or even in any developed country), then we’d have enough money to fund most everyone’s basic health care needs. Bayh-Dole steals basic health care in favor of speculator profits.
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The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America's Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang
Synopsis
In 1998, William Queen was a veteran law enforcement agent with a lifelong love of motorcycles and a lack of patience with paperwork. When a “confidential informant” made contact with his boss at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, offering to take an agent inside the San Fernando chapter of the Mongols (the scourge of Southern California, and one of the most dangerous gangs in America), Queen jumped at the chance, not realizing that he was kicking-starting the most extensive undercover operation inside an outlaw motorcycle gang in the history of American law enforcement.
Nor did Queen suspect that he would penetrate the gang so successfully that he would become a fully “patched-in” member, eventually rising through their ranks to the office of treasurer, where he had unprecedented access to evidence of their criminal activity. After Queen spent twenty-eight months as “Billy St. John,” the bearded, beer-swilling, Harley-riding gang-banger, the truth of his identity became blurry, even to himself.
During his initial “prospecting” phase, Queen was at the mercy of crank-fueled criminal psychopaths who sought to have him test his mettle and prove his fealty by any means necessary, from selling (and doing) drugs, to arms trafficking, stealing motorcycles, driving getaway cars, and, in one shocking instance, stitching up the face of a Mongol “ol’ lady” after a particularly brutal beating at the hands of her boyfriend.
Yet despite the constant criminality of the gang, for whom planning cop killings and gang rapes were business as usual, Queen also came to see the genuine camaraderie they shared. When his lengthy undercover work totally isolated Queen from family, his friends, and ATF colleagues, the Mongols felt like the only family he had left. “I had no doubt these guys genuinely loved Billy St. John and would have laid down their lives for him. But they wouldn’t hesitate to murder Billy Queen.”
From Queen’s first sleight of hand with a line of methamphetamine in front of him and a knife at his throat, to the fearsome face-off with their decades-old enemy, the Hell’s Angels (a brawl that left three bikers dead), to the heartbreaking scene of a father ostracized at Parents’ Night because his deranged-outlaw appearance precluded any interaction with regular citizens, Under and Alone is a breathless, adrenaline-charged read that puts you on the street with some of the most dangerous men in America and with the law enforcement agents who risk everything to bring them in.
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Councils urged to develop youth involvement
By Neil Puffett
| 01 May 2012
A National Youth Agency toolkit offers tips to local authorities on how to better engage young people in commissioning services
A drive for young people to inform decisions, shape provision and inspect quality lies at the heart of the government’s strategy for 13- to 19-year-olds. The government’s Positive for Youth statement commits £850,000 of funding to the British Youth Council, part of which will be used to advise councils and others on how to involve young people in decision-making and auditing services. But just how much work is needed to get youth participation across the country up to scratch? The National...
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Latest editions of the magazine:
In-depth policy analysis, best practice and useful resources, covering all children's and young people's services. The magazine is essential reading for directors, managers and senior practitioners involved in delivering services for children, young people and families across the public, voluntary and private sectors.
Latest editions of the digital magazine:
Online magazine archive (60,000+ articles):
With more than 10 years of magazine content available (60,000+ articles) CYPNow.co.uk is the ultimate resource for anyone with an interest in work with children, young people and families. Benefit from a searchable archive of best practice and resources on child protection, safeguarding and social work; childcare; youth work; youth justice; child health; education; and multi-agency working.
Youth work activity packs:
Downloadable themed packs of fun and useful exercises for working with young people. Subjects range from personal finance and politics to encouraging healthy eating and exploring sexual health. More than 40 packs are available for download.
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Latest editions of the digital magazine:
Online magazine archive (60,000+ articles):
With more than 10 years of magazine content available (60,000+ articles) CYPNow.co.uk is the ultimate resource for anyone with an interest in work with children, young people and families. Benefit from a searchable archive of best practice and resources on child protection, safeguarding and social work; childcare; youth work; youth justice; child health; education; and multi-agency working.
Youth work activity packs:
Downloadable themed packs of fun and useful exercises for working with young people. Subjects range from personal finance and politics to encouraging healthy eating and exploring sexual health. More than 40 packs are available for download.
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Online magazine archive (60,000+ articles):
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Youth work activity packs:
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Crystal Palace v Everton – BBC Sport
Crystal Palace v Everton – BBC Sport
Crystal Palace captain Luka Milivojevic has scored half of Palace’s 14 home league goals this season
MOTD COMMENTATOR’S NOTES
@Mark_Scott_: Both sides will have a spring in their step after cracking wins last weekend.
Palace had another enjoyable away day, but their form at Selhurst Park contradicts the regular comments about it being a tough place to go.
With safety now mathematically confirmed, wins from their remaining fixtures would also ensure the Eagles’ best ever Premier League points total.
Everton’s mauling of Manchester United continued their excellent recent run at Goodison Park. However, they previously followed up an impressive home victory over Arsenal with a flat performance at already-relegated Fulham.
Finishing seventh would probably represent a satisfactory season for the Toffees and, with Watford facing Wolves, a win will ensure they overtake at least one of those teams in the battle for that position.
VIEW FROM THE DUGOUT
Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson on whether player motivation will be an issue now they are safe from relegation: “I don’t think it will, because of who they are. They are a serious group and a group that is used to needing to fight.
“I don’t see characters who might show complacency in terms of knocking off what we have been doing. The games will prove me right or wrong, but I don’t fear it.”
Everton manager Marco Silva: “I can see really good quality in Palace’s team, top players in their attack line who can decide the game in one moment.
“Selhurst Park is a tough place to play and, in my opinion, a good place to play.
“It is up to us to do our best and if we reach our best level we can win the match. We have three more matches and must keep fighting and proving our quality.”
LAWRO’S PREDICTION
I think this will be an open game, which will suit Palace, but if Everton play with the sort of tempo they showed against United, they will make life difficult for them.
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“Mike Pence, Vice President of a United States, is eiar a sucker & a dupe for Donald Trump…”
So said Joe Scarborough this morning on MSNBC.
I think he might be both.
For a most part, a media has kept discussions about Mike Penceto a minimum, but he’s been contradicted by Trump on so many occasions including a Gen. Flynn & a James Comey firing, that it’s getting painful
At a top of a hour, Scarborough & his panel discussed Trump’s inconsistent & ever changing stories, including admiring & an attacking a special counsel, calling it “a greatest witch hunt in history.”
Scarborough said, “ay have two or are story lines going & ay’re just not consistent with each oar.”
Willie Geist said Pence’s people are saying Pence has been left in a dark on most of Trump’s decisions? Are we are seeing a rift between Trump & his vice president?
Scarborough turned to Bob Woodward & said, “Mike Pence, Vice President of a United States, is eiar a sucker & a dupe for Donald Trump is being set up that way to go out & lie & lie & lie again, or he’s a liar.”
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Reference: City of Portsmouth to Celebrate 14th Annual National Night Out Against Crime
On Tuesday, August 5th, neighborhoods throughout Portsmouth will be joining forces with thousands of communities nationwide for the ‘25th Annual National Night Out Against Crime’ (NNO). National Night Out, which is sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch (NATW), will involve over 10,000 communities from all 50 states, U.S. territories, Canadian cities and military bases around the world. In all, over 34 million people are expected to participate in ‘America’s Night Out Against Crime’. NNO is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance and Senator Judd Gregg. NNO is spearheaded by the Portsmouth Citywide Neighborhood Association, which is chaired by Sharon Morrison.
National Night Out is designed to heighten crime and drug prevention awareness; generate support for, and participation in, local anti-crime efforts; and strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships. The Portsmouth Fire Department, Public Works Department and the Portsmouth School Department are active participants and strong supporters of National Night Out. This August marks the 14th year that Portsmouth has participated in this national event.
From 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM on August 5th, residents in neighborhoods throughout Portsmouth will spend the evening outside with neighbors as well as police, fire, public works and school officials, and elected officials. Many neighborhoods throughout Portsmouth will be hosting a variety of special events such as block parties, cookouts, parades, contests, youth activities, and games.
The final meeting for this event is scheduled for Tuesday, July 29th at 5:30 PM in conference room ‘A’ at Portsmouth City Hall. After that meeting, the list of neighborhoods participating this year will be finalized, and a follow-up press release will be issued. Any neighborhood wishing to participate is urged to contact Sharon Morrison at [email protected]
Any local businesses wishing to contribute to this event are urged to either attend the final meeting or contact Capt. Janet Champlin at the Portsmouth Police Department at 610-7625.
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Past Events
MASTERING DIGITAL PROCESS AUTOMATION
Senior peers explored the impact of the digital process automation across a range of industries.
Date: Wednesday 12 December 2018, 8:00 - 10:30
Venue: Percy & Founders, London
MARKETING TO THE DATA-CONSCIOUS CONSUMER BREAKFAST
Marketing in a post #DeleteFacebook world
Senior peers explored the impact of the data-conscious consumer on marketing, and the wider implications for customer data strategy.
Date: Thursday 29 November 2018, 8:00 - 10:30
Venue: Vinoteca City, London
BUILDING THE DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DINNER
Building intelligent experiences in regulated industries
Senior peers shared perspectives on how to deliver an effective and intelligent customer experience in a regulated environment.
Date: Wednesday 21 November 2018, 18:30 - 22:30
Venue: Merchants Tavern, Shoreditch
THE HUMANS ARE COMING...
Cybersecurity, Risk and Generation Z
Senior professionals joined us to explore why the workforce is different, what new behaviours are emerging and how security strategy needs to adapt.
Date: Monday 19 November 2018, 18:00 - 21:30
Venue: The Cavalry and Guards Club, Mayfair
WORK REIMAGINEDPrepare Yourself for the Future of Work
Our community came together with a whole host of experts to define what the future of work will look like.
Date: Monday 5 November, 9:00 - 19:30
Venue: 30 Euston Square, London
INFORMATION SECURITY CHALLENGES IN THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE DINNER
Identifying the Information Security Challenges in an Increasingly Digitised Workplace
Security leaders came together to explore the challenges and tools needed to create a security strategy that adapts to the complexities of the new world of work.
Date: Wednesday 17 October 2018, 18:30 - 22:30
Venue: City Social, Tower 42 , London
CHIEF DISRUPTOR AUTUMN 2018 LAUNCH DRINKS
Don't commiserate the end of the summer. Instead, celebrate the launch of our autumn Chief Disruptor magazine!
We were joined by panelists Will Hodson and Joanne Roxburgh, as they debated this edition’s theme: ‘The Digital Citizen’. Digital has changed the way we consume public services. It’s changed the way we think of ourselves as individuals, it’s changed the way we act as citizens, customers, and employees.
Will Hodson is co-founder of Lookaftermybills, the automated programme (seen on Dragon’s Den) set to truly disrupt the utilities industry.
Members joined us at the Shard to discuss the future of cybersecurity and hear from an interactive panel discussion with industry leaders.
Date: Tuesday 24 January 2017
Venue: Shangri-La Shard, London Bridge
FIND OUT ABOUT ALL THE WAYS YOU COULD GET INVOLVED
About Us
We bring together a broad range of senior stakeholders responsible for driving digital transformation initiatives across business and technology functions, through a variety of member driven activities including our summits, research, reports and dinners. Our members, all of them disruptive leaders, share a common goal; to fast track their learning and transform their challenges into opportunities.
Send me updates on reports and events
Who we are
The independent community for disruptive business and technology leaders
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Agrawal’s meltdown is, needless to say, not the subject of our etiquette quandary today; in fact, if you need guidance on the wisdom of publicly tweeting insults to your co-workers and/or bosses, better just delete ye ole Twitter now. But the aura of spectacle and schadenfreude that quickly enveloped the whole affair does merit some discussion. After all, Agrawal’s deranged messages racked up dozens of retweets. His follower count spiraled into the nine-thousands. Tweeted Wired’s Mat Honan, in an unsubtle critique of the gawkers:
Kind of sad to follow someone just to track and publicize their breakdown. But keep retweeting. Your soul will be fine.
But when a train wrecks right in front of you, should you really look away?
On one hand … Agrawal is (er, was) a high-profile figure at a high-profile company. His actions are interesting and newsworthy — a.k.a., retweetable — pretty much by default. That may be even truer when he’s making frank statements about the competency of his colleagues. After all, Paypal is owned by eBay, which is a publicly traded company. People invest in Paypal! They want and deserve to know if there’s tension among its executives, or if one of those executives is prone to bouts of late-night, public rage.
On the other hand … many of the people gleefully wtf-ing over Agrawal’s tweets are surely in it for the circus, not their interest in e-commerce. And as author David Giles said of Amanda Bynes last April, when Bynes was on a deranged Twitter bender of her own:
If she continues to self-publicise in this way there’s not much the media can do apart from a) ignoring her, which they clearly don’t want to do; or b) pointing out that she’s clearly in need of psychological help. Ultimately it depends on the frame that they are applying – if it’s one of ‘look at the madwoman!’ then it’s not very ethical, but if it’s one of ‘Bynes’s problems continue to mount’ then I don’t see anything wrong with that …
The same logic should apply not just to the media media, but to social as well. Intention, and tone, make all the difference here. “Look at the guy’s hilarious public breakdown”? That’s gossipy, ambulance-chasey, and arguably immoral. But “a newsworthy excutive just got fired, this is why”? That’s clearly a different ball of wax. (This all presumes, of course, that Agrawal is having a breakdown — which Agrawal himself insists he is not. Per his weekend tweets, he resigned from Paypal before the Twitter screed and is pursuing other projects. Who knows.)
TL;DR: Gawking at someone else’s problems is gross, on Twitter or anywhere else. As long as you’re not gawking, though, feel free to RT.
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Jahba started DJing in 1994. After several years as a successful DJ, he started producing full time in 1998. In 2003 Jahba caught the ear of breakcore giant Bong-Ra with his now classic Warpigz VIP, a mash-up version of Black Sabbaths original. It wasnt long before others started paying attention as well, with the birth of his ragga-jungle label Mos-Hi, and one of the most successful North American ragga-jungle releases to date Dem Nah Clash, plus the release of his long awaited Part-Time Revolutionary EP to kick off Bong Ras KRISS in 2005. Shortly after putting his cd Pabst Blue Riddim together and releasing it on his own Mos-Hi label, Jahba exiled himself from America and took to Europe with just his laptop and the dreads on his head. Spending some time in Cambridge, U.K., he met up with Life4Land, one of U.Ks best running jungle labels. Jahba joined forces with this international collective of extremely talented djs and producers who create their very own dark and experimental sound mixing jungle/ electronica and taking it to the next level. Meanwhile they are releasing records individually on various labels including their own Life4land Records. Jahba crosses all borders and boundaries in genres freely; mixing and mashing-up his own unique blend of jungle, ragga-jungle, and breakcore resulting in something he likes to call Gonzo Junglizm. Combining a full on assault of disturbed breakbeats and subsonic frequency genius with over ten years as a jungle dj, Jahba ensures a live set that will drive the whole crowd mad!
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Sunday, April 18, 2010
Hope's Peter Rabbit Play
The day finally came! Thursday was Hope's Senior Play! Her school has put on the most precious Peter Rabbit play every year for a very long time! Julia was Cottontail Rabbit when she was 5, and Riley and Clara were both Mopsy Rabbit back in their day. Hope was Cottontail, and man was she cute! I cannot even tell you guys how hard their teachers work on this play. They are just so wonderful. All three of my nieces wore this same costume that Mimi made for Julia. The tail needed a facelift, so Mimi "Hope-ified" it with lots of sparkles! Hope did her part perfectly and loved every minute of it! (So did I!) I am so happy everything went so well, despite our house being broken into earlier that day, and Noah getting sick at the end of the play (into Aa Aa and Zeke's camera bag, I might add...sorry!) John and I were just so proud of that silly girl!
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Monday, 19 January 2015
Good Morning, well it's very cold and frosty here in Lochgelly this morning.
I hope you are all safe and warm.
How was your weekend? Did you all get some crafting done?
I have been suffering with really bad toothache for the last 2 weeks. Friday was the tipping point for me and i had to be brave and go to the dentist ( i hate the dentist) i have caused a trauma to the root of one of my front bottom teeth and it has caused abscess. So a course of antibiotics for a week.
About Me
Hi I'm Jo, I am a stay at home mummy to my gorgeous wee boy Hayden (4yrs and 8months) and my gorgeous wee girl Isla (11weeks and 2days)I have been married to Gary since October 2011 and love him very much. He is my best friend, my worse enemy, my rock and my soul mate.I started up my own business from home in December 2012 as I love to craft as a hobby and decided to take it to the next level and so Tinkability Crafts was formed.I have been crafting since at school, I have a standard grade and higher in art. I unfortunately gave up my art and crafting when I started full time work. Since having Hayden I have got back into my crafting and love spending my nights ( once Hayden is in bed ) creating new things.I am currently on the design team for Through the Purple Haze. I have been on the design teams for Stamping Dragon designs,Scrappers Designs and Crafty Hands.
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C++ is one of the most widely used languages for real-world software. Wherever performance matters, C++ is the de facto standard. It's the language behind operating systems, embedded devices, games, web browsers, and virtual reality systems. As a C++ developer, you can program efficient software on virtually any platform.
C++ Crash Course cuts through the weeds to get you straight to the core of C++17, the most modern revision of the ISO standard. In Part I, you'll learn about all of the essential core language features. Part II introduces you to the C++ Standard Library and Boost Libraries, where you'll learn about high-quality, fully-featured facilities immediately available to you.
Streams and files, concurrency, networking, and application development
Author Bio
Joshua Lospinoso, PhD is an entrepreneur who served 15 years in the US Army. As a cyber officer, Josh wrote dozens of infosec tools and taught C++ to junior developers. He has spoken at a wide range of conferences, published over twenty peer-reviewed articles, and holds a patent. In 2012, he co-founded a successfully acquired security company and is a Rhodes Scholar. He keeps a blog and is an active contributor to open-source software.
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The encounter will now be played at a later date, as a result of the wires to the stadium's lighting system being damaged.
Updated Sunday, Sept. 23, 5:00 p.m, ET
Sunday's Liga clash between Rayo Vallecano and Real Madrid has been postponed until further notice after wires serving the stadium's lighting were cut prior to the game.
The unexpected turn of events means that the clubs will now go head to head at a later, unspecified date, with a Monday match suggested by Cristina Cifuentes, a delegate of the Government of Madrid.
"Right now the boards of the two teams are making the decision on whether the match will take place on Monday or later," she explained. "Unfortunately we have to suspend the game. We are reviewing the options, the problem is not guaranteed to be fixed tomorrow because the damage is greater than we expected."
Earlier, Vallecas president Martin Presa told Canal+ that he feared sabotage was the cause of the lighting failure.
"We have suffered a sabotage. Someone has cut the cables from the tribune," he said. "The solution is to reconnect the cables and expect electricity to give the spotlight. The wires were cut off and that's not normal."
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Officially Mrs...
FTC disclosure: This post or video may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through my links. Disclosure Policy
Photo cred: Southern Jewel Photography
Its been exactly 12 days since I've tied the knot. Just a year ago, we were recently engaged and planning what would become our (my) dream wedding. Well, the cake has been eaten and bouquet has been tossed and we've been thrust back into the real world. I certainly would've enjoyed an extended honeymoon, but we're living in the reality of boxes everywhere, gifts to still be unpacked, and thank-you cards to be mailed. Nonetheless, as I flip through pictures and watch wedding clips on repeat, I can't help but drift back to the moment that I officially became Mrs.
Many of you came along for the journey-- from ending a dead end relationship of almost a decade, to waiting on God, to my now husband finding me, proposing, and recently getting married. It's certainly been a journey. One with many life lessons and growth. It's a journey that I wouldn't trade, because it's landed me right here-- married to the guy that God designed for me.
If you find yourself on the same journey, know that it's so worth the end result. There's nothing like being in a God-centered relationship then marriage. So, hang in there. It's well worth the wait.
I can't wait to share pictures of our day. In the meantime, enjoy a steal from our videographer.
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Upton St Leonard's Rainbows and Brownies held a Christmas Concert and presented Sarah Jones from the Royal British Legion with a cheque for £800. The girls raised the money by making and selling in the region of 500 crocheted and knitted poppies to family and friends. Well done girls!
Leave a Reply.
Girlguiding Gloucestershire
Here you will find articles about events, etc. that have taken place in the County from local reports to County ones and beyond. If you have something you would like included on the News page then email us at [email protected]
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In this action comedy based on true events, directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre), David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis) discovers the true meaning of adventure far beyond his wildest dreams. He is an uncomplicated man stuck in a monotonous life. Day in and day out he drives an armored vehicle, transporting millions of other people’s money with no escape in sight. The only glimmer of excitement is his flirtatious work crush Kelly Campbell (Kristen Wiig) who soon lures him into the scheme of a lifetime.
Along with a group of half-brained criminals led by Steve Chambers (Owen Wilson) and an absurdly faulted heist plan, David manages the impossible and makes off with $17 million in cash…only problem is he foolishly hands the money over to this wild group of double crossers and has been set up to take the fall. With the bandits blowing the millions on lavish and ridiculous luxuries, they leave behind a glaring trail of evidence. Now on the lam and in over his head, David must dodge the authorities, evade a hilarious hit man, Mike McKinney (Jason Sudeikis), and try to turn the tables on the ones he trusted most.
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The T4205 comes standard with 24MB of total memory, an ARM9 processor for fast transactions and multi-application support. The T4205 is also PCI PED approved so that you can support debit with or without an external PIN pad. No better value exists for sensibly upgrading your install base to PCI PED compliance.
The T4210 has high-end features normally found in only more
expensive IP and wireless models, such as 24MB of total memory, an
ARM9 processor for fast transactions and also multi-application. The
T4210 is also PCI PED approved so that you can support debit with or
without an external PIN pad. Accept chip card transactions with the
optional EMV-approved reader. This makes the Optimum T4210 ideal for
magnetic stripe and chip card transactions worldwide. With one of the
most slim form factors of any countertop device, it is also perfect for
handover environments.
The T4220 provides IP performance and security second to
none. The T4220 comes standard with integrated PCI PED
approved PIN entry capability, the safety of the HyperSafe architecture
and unrivaled IP transaction and download speeds. The OptimumT4220 also
shares the same user interface as the T4200 family dial and wireless models
for ease of migration and support.
Hypercom's T4230 is a unique wireless terminal that offers
GPRS connectivity in a countertop design. Wherever there is access to a
power outlet, but limited or no access to dial or other wired
communications, the T4230 fills the need. Experience all the
benefits of a wireless connection in an affordable countertop model.
Hypercom has combined all the best-of-breed features of the
T4200 family into this wireless device.
Compact, comfortable and convenient: the S9 PIN-based payment
transaction devices from Hypercom are simple to use and cost-effective, too.
Look at it from your customers point of view. The S9's hand-fit and easy
features maximize efficiency and responsiveness. It puts big number keys, colored
OK and CANCEL keys, and a bright, backlit display right in the palm of
their hands.
The Hypercom P1300 PCI-approved PIN entry device is designed to
meet the PCI-PED security standards for PIN entry, providing merchants
with low-cost migration to newly imposed security guidelines. It is
compatible with all Hypercom product families and features flexible
communications options for rapid integration with electronic cash register
(ECR) systems.
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Automotive Service Technician Cover Letter
automotive service technician cover letter. You almost certainly know already that automotive service technician cover letter is among the top topics on-line nowadays. According to info we had from adwords, automotive service technician cover letter has very much search online web engine. We expect that automotive service technician cover letter deliver new options or references for readers.
Weve found plenty of sources regarding automotive service technician cover letter but we feel this one is best. I hope you would also consider our thoughts. This image has been published by admin and is in category tags section. You could get this image by simply clicking on the save button or right click on the pic and choose save.
We hope whatever we give to you can be useful. If you want, you could share this article for your friend, loved ones, online community, or you can also book mark this page.
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Happy Birthday
It’s been awhile, but I’m happy to say that Technique Tuesday is back again this year.
We’re playing with Brushos today & showing you a basic way of using them. Mind you, you will still have a fantastic result just the same. Remember, if you don’t have the product I’ve used on my card, use what you have on hand.
This is one of the cards we created a couple of weeks ago in our class. The ladies loved playing with them especially when they saw how the powders reacted to water & how everyone’s card turned out very different. Have you tried them yet?
There is a little change this year in that they may only appear the 4th Tuesday of the month. Yes, you will still receive the instructions for a card using the technique. The Technique Tutorial is available for download by clicking on the Free Technique Tutorials Page, file in a folder & keep on hand to use or to refer back to at a later date.
Yes, SU! Demos are able to use them for your classes, workshops & demonstrations. It just means that all the work is done for you, except of course your samples.
To download your free card tutorial on how I created my card, please click on the link above the photo.
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Disclaimer
All content is the sole responsibility of Vicky Wright, Independent Stampin’ Up!® Demonstrator, Australia. The use of & content of all products, services & classes offered on this blog are not endorsed by Stampin’ Up!® Images are copyright to Stampin’ Up!® 1990-current, unless otherwise stated. Please feel free to copy, but please do obtain permission to use other than for yourself and please give credit where credit is due! Thanks
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I didn't think anything could improve the old standby of the cheese platter, but I was proven wrong when I came across this elegant arrangement of late-Summer figs and cantaloupe, blue cheese slices, and slivered almonds, all drizzled with honey.
Part fruit salad, part cheese course, this dish highlights the best of the season without doing too much with each ingredient. Be sure to source the best items you can; I opted for green Kadota figs, local lavender honey, and a creamy Wisconsin blue. Keep reading for the recipe.
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Guide to Los Angeles
Guide Contents
USALoud, brash and glitzy: these are words long associated with the city of big money, big stars and big movie kudos. LA is the kind of place where people mind their own business, where nobody wants to know yours. The city can be difficult to decode, but to those in the know, LA is best interpreted as a collection of satisfyingly small towns, each with its own distinct character. Getting to know LA as a visitor means exploring it bit by bit, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Make sure you have a beachside lunch in Santa Monica, go shopping in Beverly Hills, visit the Getty Center and stroll the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but allow one day to explore each area.
Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles
Impish humour twinkles from every corner of this Jazz Age
beauty, from the white frontage billboard shouting HELLO LA to its
rear windows throbbing under seven-foot red neon letters that
proclaim JESUS SAVES. Although the bedrooms' chromophobic design
lacks warmth and a touch of luxe, they all come with a turntable
and vinyl selection; the pricier ones have claw-foot baths and
Martin acoustic guitars. This place has electrified lower
Broadway, which now pulses with hipstermatic archness. Featured in
the
Hot List 2015. Price rating: 4/5
Chamberlain West Hollywood
The four-storey, 112-room hotel is a part of the LA-based Kor Hotel
stable, which includes the Viceroys and the Avalon in Beverly
Hills. The Chamberlain was envisaged as a 'residential
pied-à-terre' and there is something especially intimate and
discreet about it. This is partly thanks to its location, tucked
away in a residential area and partly its oh-so-minimalist decor.
The feel of a short-let studio, albeit a glamorised version, is
maintained in the bedrooms, all of which are suites. The ceilings
may be a little low, but even the smallest suite manages to feel
spacious thanks to split-level flooring, clever mirror walling and
a coolly masculine blue-and-grey colour scheme (the work of
designer Kelly Wearstler). All rooms have a balcony, flat-screen
television, gas 'log' fire and white Italian sheets on a huge,
raised double bed. The only problem is that, even if the hotel is
full, you will only ever see a handful of other guests, if any at
all, and the bistro and lounge are almost always deserted. The
classic Californian/Classic American cuisine is excellent. Price rating: 3/5
Chateau Marmont
A 1929 turreted castle with an aging lobby, quiet gardens with
brick paths, and original tiles in nearly every suite. There are 63
rooms, including 48 bedrooms and suites, two penthouses, four
garden bungalows and nine cottages. Discretion is the word among
the staff, who seem somewhat jaded by the steady stream of
celebrity guests. Free phone usage, Frette linens, chenille spreads
and refurbished 1950s GE appliances are in all the rooms. The X
factor? Bungalow 2 saw the first reading of Rebel Without a Cause;
John Belushi OD'd in Bungalow 3. Price rating: 3/5
Elan Hotel
Minutes from LA shopping institution the Beverly Center, the 49-room Elan is an exercise is 1960s modernism and was renovated fully in 2008. Room service is from Jan's Diner opposite, and there is a cheese-and-wine party every weekday evening. Price rating: 1/5
Four Seasons Los Angeles At Beverly Hills
Located in a residential neighbourhood a short walk from Rodeo
Drive, the Four Seasons is a classically opulent hotel with a
landscaped pool terrace with a cabana restaurant. The 285 rooms and
suites all have balconies and come with iPod docking stations,
laptops on request and thick terry bathrobes. Spa services are
available in-room, and the Gardens restaurant serves Californian
food with Latin American and Asian influences. Price rating: 3/5
Hotel Bel-Air
The Bel-Air, a paradisiacal walled garden ensconced in the Santa
Monica foothills, is without a doubt the most starry and exclusive
hotel in the world. Its rooms are not rooms at all, but little
chalets and cottages sequestered amid lush bougainvillaea, white
azaleas and flowering peach trees. This is where Oscar hopefuls
come to dress and preen on LA's biggest night, before heading down
the Sunset to the Academy. And it is the place they come back to
afterwards, to drown their sorrows or raise a glass to their own
glittery wonderfulness. Price rating: 3/5
The Line Hotel
Shaping up to be the ultimate perch for night owls, The Line
Hotel gives you a reason to stay in LA's vibrant Koreatown. This
388-room hotel is a restoration of a 12-storey, mid-century
modernist tower designed by Daniel Mann Johnson & Mendenhall.
Working with street-food king Roy Choi (opening two restaurants on
the premises), the hotel sets out to celebrate the 24-hour energy
of the area, home to LA's densest concentration of late-night
hangouts. A buzzing lobby bar is overseen by nightlife impresarios
the Houston brothers. The rooms above are a soothing antithesis to
the din, with cushy platform beds, views of the Hollywood Hills,
and bathrooms reminiscent of the best Korean spas. Price rating: 2/5
Le Montrose Suite Hotel
Le Montrose occupies a converted apartment building on a
residential street two blocks from Sunset Boulevard. Chic and
understated, it is hard to find and even harder to recognise when
you get there. It is the hotel equivalent of a shy celebrity in
shades and a hoodie. This is perhaps why Le Montrose is popular
with troubled music-industry types. No pap is going to snap you by
the rooftop pool - or in Privato, the appropriately named
guests-only dining room. Price rating: 2/5
Shade
Manhattan Beach is fast becoming the hippest corner of LA. This
is due in part to Shade, the beach's only boutique hotel: its Zinc
Lounge is as cool as a superconductive cucumber. The rooms are an
amazing mix of hippy-dippy and super-chic, with 'chromatherapy
lighting', a Lavazza espresso machine and a hydrotherapy tub behind
Japanese screens. Price rating: 2/5
Shutters On The Beach
This stalwart hotel overlooks the sea and is how one would
imagine Ralph Lauren's beach house to look, or your wealthy
grandmother's 1920s beach condo: all dark-wood floors and old
leather sofas. There are 186 rooms and 12 suites distributed over
seven sprawling floors. The service is gracefully pragmatic;
casually dressed doormen are armed with chilled bottles of Evian
water, whirlpool baths come with candles, and every bedside table
has a copy of a Hemingway novel. Chef Michael Reardon reigns over
upmarket One Pico restaurant; casual dining downstairs at Pedals
Café. A vast art collection, including works by Hockney and
Lichtenstein, graces the lobby and hallways. Price rating: 3/5
Sunset Tower Hotel
The chunky, curvy Art Deco contours of the Sunset Tower Hotel
make it look like a giant Bakelite wireless set. It is a striking
building by any standard, and Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne and Frank
Sinatra are among those who once called it home. Back then it was
an apartment block; now it is a fine hotel, recently renovated and
refurbished by Jeff Klein for a 21st-century clientele. In the
basement is the Argyle Salon & Spa, where you can have the
Hawaiian 'Organic Renew Ritual' or a long-lasting 'Brazilian
Blowout' hair-smoothing treatment.
The Ambrose
The Ambrose is decorated in English country-house style with Asian-inspired elements. There are Italian linens in the 77 rooms and Aveda products in the bathrooms. Breakfasts are delicious, with a huge selection of herbal teas, and a London taxi is on hand to ferry guests around. Price rating: 2/5
The Avalon Hotel
A tribute to 1950s Californian poolside living, the Avalon is
divided into three buildings: the Beverly (26 rooms, two suites),
the Canon (15 rooms) and the Olympic, which has 43 rooms plus the
bar, restaurant and hourglass-shaped pool. Price rating: 2/5
The Beverly Hills Hotel
Right on Sunset Boulevard, this pale-pink, palm-fringed hotel is
a favourite with Hollywood A-listers for a reason. Stars love this
204- room property for its old-fashioned grandeur, as well as its
friendly and discreet service. And the customised range of
anti-ageing treatments in the La Prairie spa no doubt hold huge
appeal for those who spend their lives in front of the cameras.
Three restaurants cater to all culinary desires and the laid-back
Polo Lounge serves seasonal Californian cuisine and afternoon tea
to an impeccably dressed clientele.The 23 garden bungalows are the
ultimate in film-star glamour. Liz Taylor honeymooned here with six
of her seven husbands. Two new Presidential Bungalows are set to
open in March. Featured in the Gold List
2011.Price rating: 4/5
The Crescent Hotel
A palm-tree-flanked villa on the outside (built in 1926); sleek
minimalism on the inside. The retro-modern lounge bar and patio
restaurant are popular. All 35 rooms come with selected CDs, iPods
and White Company bath products. Price rating: 2/5
The Mondrian
This celebrated Ian Schrager hotel re-opened after an extensive
makeover in 2008. The new design was masterminded by Benjamin
Noriega Ortiz, and it draws inspiration from the Southern
Californian coast. People still flock to the Sky Bar and its huge
poolside mattresses are drenched with pretty people, while the Agua
Spa has a Zen vibe in the middle of the city. Asia de Cuba serves
fusion food in a room designed by Philippe Starck. Price rating: 3/5
The Peninsula Beverly Hills
This 'French Renaissance' palace is well-placed on Little Santa
Monica in the heart of the Beverly Hills shopping district, around
the corner from Rodeo Drive. There are 196 rooms, including 36
suites and 16 'villa' suites in seven separate buildings arranged
around courtyards. The service is efficient and demure, suited
pageboys deliver sundries upon request. The spa offers facials,
massages and the 'wet room' has a hydrotherapy bath with 150
underwater jets. Repeat guests get monogrammed pillowcases, and
everyone gets use of the hotel's chauffeured Rolls Royce. Price rating: 3/5
The Standard Downtown LA
André Balazs (of New York's Mercer hotel, LA's Chateau Marmont
and The Standard Hollywood) has given the Los Angeles business
district a jolt. This cluster of bank and insurance company
buildings has always been deserted after 5pm but now, at around
8pm, LA's beautiful young things begin filling the streets around
Balazs' hotel, hoping to be admitted to its roof bar: a playpen
complete with infinity pool and movies projected on nearby
buildings. Balazs has retained the former office building's 1960s
corporate-modern decor and added a few ironic touches: the bedrooms
are cheerful and spare (the bed is on a grey-carpeted platform),
with floor-to-ceiling glass framed vistas. The staff are
California-cheerful and remarkably efficient; call room service and
the same person who took your order - this is hotel policy -
delivers it. Price rating: 2/5
W Los Angeles Westwood
This was the first five-star hotel in lush Westwood and resembles an ivy-covered UCLA dormitory outside, with functional chic decor inside, including a waterfall lit by fibre-optics that flows day and night. There are 258 suites over 16 floors, including 63 three-room office suites, with printer/fax/scanner and high-speed internet access. There are extensive views, north to the Santa Monica mountains and the Getty Center, and south to Culver City. The best thing? The poolside cabanas from where you can order massages. There are cotton piqué bathrobes and Aveda products in every room. Price rating: 2/5
Ojai Valley Inn & Spa
Most tourists don't venture off Highway 1 and into the Santa
Ynez Mountains, which makes Ojai a very special place for those in
the know and perfect for a short break outside LA. Just off Ojai's
main street, the long driveway makes you feel as though you were
miles from anywhere. The resort has 308 rooms and suites: we loved
the spa penthouse, which has floor-to-ceiling windows, a mezzanine
den, two balconies and a rooftop hot tub with views across the
resort. The staff are approachable, friendly helpful without being
imposing, and the activities - from the on-site spa and golf course
to tailor-made trips based around everything from fishing to wine
classes - really set the resort apart. The food in the Oak Grill
comes highly recommended and is the perfect accompaniment to the
sunset over the Topatopa Mountains. Ojai Valley Inn & Spa
featured in
The Gold List 2010. Price rating: 4/5
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