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Background Using Ontraport As Crm
When a smart is met by a strong CRM You get ONTRAPORT. It’s an all-in-one marketing automation tool that offers great features such as strong CRM, email marketing, membership websites, one-click WordPress integration, payment processing, affiliate management and more. Using Ontraport As Crm
We reviewed ONTRAPORT nearly two years ago, but Since then, the software has developed considerably, and they have added some new features that were amazing. It’s time. Also, although at first glance they have added important features have not really fine-tuned some older ones. Let’s explore it in more detail.
Company Overview
ONTRAPORT founder and CEO Landon Ray created ONTRAPORT while running another business, when he couldn’t find a CRM that will let him conduct his business. Launched in 2008 and conceptualized in 2006, ONTRAPORT has increased during the last couple of years and today they have. They have won several awards such as #2 nationally for CareerBuilder’s’Big Strides in Small Business’, #102 on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing companies in the nation, a place on the 50 Most Engaged Workplaces list, a Red Herring Top 100, and a Forbes Most Promising Companies list.
Who’s it not for?
It’s not ideal for large or companies. And in case you have thousands and thousands of clients, and send out a great deal of emails every month, ONTRAPORT could end up being rather expensive. Businesses that run traditional sales models and don’t really require marketing and autoresponder automation, can find cheaper alternatives.
Who is it for?
If you sell info products, offer instruction services, Education or online instruction, or conduct any type of paid membership website, you’ll absolutely love ONTRAPORT. It makes your life simpler by automating almost everything other CRMs will make you do manually.
Just like any other applications, ONTRAPORT has its own Pros and cons. It’s not ideal, and you will find things that its competitors can do better. However, it is one of the greatest — if not the best — marketing automation software solutions out there for small companies, particularly if they sell their products or services on the internet. Using Ontraport As Crm
Getting started
Getting started with ONTRAPORT is not quite as complicated as it was two Years ago. It does not provide a trial version just like most other CRMs, but does provide a 90-day money-back guarantee. If you think the item isn’t right for you or you’re not ready for this yet, you are going to receive full refund, no cancellation fee, no questions asked.
Signing up for ONTRAPORT is a little complex and you can only import Contacts in CSV format. Many CRMs permit you to import contacts in various formats, or perhaps straight from third party sources like Gmail, social networking channels, Yahoo, Highrise etc.. However, the import process is easy and streamlined, you can add new fields immediately, to fit from precisely the exact same page.
You can add new custom fields immediately while importing contacts
Also, there is no installation fee and you get 2 hours and implementation. It is also possible to get a free demo if you would like to have a peek at the machine before purchasing it.
Workspace and user experience
The program sounds somewhat less responsive than Infusionsoft, and their Main dashboard — though customizable — isn’t very intuitive. The dashboard displays a lot of boxes which display the metrics you choose, but it may be a little confusing.
Several CRMs like Salesforce, Groove, Nimble, Sprout offer powerful Social media integration to give you a better comprehension of your clients, ONTRAPORT is missing this feature. When we reviewed ONTRAPORT time, they had an app nor a website. Although, they have got an app for both iOS and Android now, not one of them is updated. We tested the latter and encountered too many problems to record.
Apart from the above mentioned qualms, we actually liked things Concerning the workspace: the interface is customizable, so the menus are strategically laid out, practical and standard naming conventions have been utilized, and there are quick add/manage buttons for every module. You are able to add custom columns as well as 150 custom fields to customize the work place according to your company requirements.
Probably the characteristic that is One of a Kind and most impressive in the workspace Is a quick menu that appears at the peak of the page when you click the small button at the upper right-hand corner. This fast menu features your workflows, any unedited objects, and pinned items. It is possible to easily pin any item by clicking the pin button highlighted in the screenshot below, so that you can instantly access your favourite formscontacts, landing pages or some other menus.
The work area really excels when you want to go Beyond simply managing and contacting your customers. By way of instance, you can make landing pages, sales cart, internet forms and a whole lot more by just dragging and dropping things.
When we compare the work area of ONTRAPORT and Infusionsoft, it functions Out that although InfusionSoft having a few additional features and bells and whistles, what you can do, the other can also do. A notable distinction is Infusionsoft’s campaign builder, which is more intuitive than its counterpart in ONTRAPORT.
Powerful API
Besides integration with third party programs that are several Like WordPress, Facebook, WISTIA, Twilio, KAJABI, EVERGREEN, GoToWebinar, Authorize.Net, Elavon, eWay, UltraCART, 1ShoppingCart, and ClickBank, ONTRAPORT comes with an API which lets you integrate it with virtually any computer software.
How popular is it?
Short answer is we’re not sure. They weren’t Exactly forthcoming about their client base, other than it extends to over 63 countries around the world. Using Ontraport As Crm
Advantages
Best value for money — you receive a CRM, an autoresponder, a shopping cart, WordPress membership websites, affiliate management and task automation for only a few hundred bucks. On the contrary, one of their main rivals Infusionsoft costs $1,999 kickstart fee.
You don’t even need your site because ONTRAPORT may also host your website since their sub-domain
Good customer service
Pricing — The most obvious advantage of ONTRAPORT is the affordability of the services. At $297/month with no setup fees and two hours of free onboarding calls, they are positioned quite inexpensively. What is important to consider with Ontraport is they offer you access to all of their features, along with the capacity to keep 25,000 contacts and send 100,000 emails. While some other tools might start at a lower entry cost, you’d likely pay 5-10x the cost of ONTRAPORT to the exact same degree of contacts & features. They’re scalable so that as your business grows, they can develop together with you so you don’t need to worry about switching systems afterwards. The offer of a 90 day risk free guarantee is practically unheard of nowadays along with month-to-month or discounted annual pricing alternative after the 90 day risk guarantee interval.
Great community — ONTRAPORT has award winning customer service via phone, chat, and email during most business hours. They are clearly dedicated to the achievement of the clients, holding a 97% satisfaction rate and all their reps work from one central location for easy communication between support and development. They updated all of their servers for redundancy, spent in a content delivery network to guarantee the fastest speed internationally and are continuously looking for ways to make their program quick and responsive. They also have a fantastic community of users on their Facebook user group, an education site that’s totally free to ONTRAPORT customers, a quarterly bootcamp and certified consultant course and an yearly business construction event in Santa Barbara, CA.
Unified system — ONTRAPORT is the automated engine supporting your marketing and advertising campaigns, seamlessly integrating your emails, landing pages, ecommerce and more along with your CRM so you may hyper-target your prospects and convert them to customers. Whenever you have different systems managing these operations all, your information is strewn about and it’s hard to be able to make data-driven decisions about your business. ONTRAPORT combines your marketing efforts into one so you have ONE place to call for support and ONE place to check out your organization data.
Custom objects — ONTRAPORT offers the capability to build custom objects that’s only accessible enterprise systems such as SalesForce, Marketo or Eloqua. Custom made objects permits you to make relationships between databases. Unique to your company.
ECommerce features — ONTRAPORT has a massive assortment of notable ecommerce features including automatic credit card payment sets and the ability to include upsells, cross-sells, cart abandonment and credit card expiration notification automation.
Disadvantages
Lacks some traditional sales modules such as chance management
No social networking integration
Weak mobile program, not regularly updated
including all the e-commerce and membership website features, ONTRAPORT should have a customer care module where clients can raise a ticket
No visible sales funnel
Both bundles allow 25,000 connections with 100K emails and 100K contacts with 100k emails. That means if you hit the top limit for your contacts, then you may only send four or even one email per contact per month , and purchasing email bundles can be pricey
The learning curve could be a little steep, especially when you wish to utilize the advanced features
Dashboard user interface — While you are able to create virtually any metric you’d like, their coverage dashboard is not particularly visually attractive as it doesn’t have graphs and charts. Using Ontraport As Crm
Automation effort builder — Even though Ontraport’s campaign builder is easy to use and sufficiently powerful, it works by adding text-based rules one under another. We locate the visual’flowchart’ design campaign builder utilized by a few of Ontraport’s competitors more intuitive to use.
Features of ONTRAPORT
Before we delve into the features of ONTRAPORT, Let’s first talk about the three newly added attributes: ONTRAforms, ONTRAPORT market, and ONTRAPORT projects, during the event named ONTRApalooza, in 2015.
ONTRAPORT Projects
Another intriguing and powerful recently introduced feature is ONTRAPORT Jobs. Essentially, it’s an training program which lets you have your business up and running. The CRM suggests projects based on your business needs and collects some data. When a project is chosen by you, you walk through the remaining part of the procedure. You keep with other features of the CRM, or can pause your job in the center, and resume it in the exact same point later.
Let’s say you want to market a product to get a monthly And you’re using ONTRAPORT for the first time, you’re probably have no idea what to do and where to start. This is really where Projects menu comes to your rescue; it’ll steer you to take care of everything from establishing a product to choosing subscription fee and so on.
ONTRAPORT Marketplace
Like a program shop, the ONTRAPORT market lets you Discuss ONTRApages, ONTRAmail and ONTRAform templates with the ONTRAPORT community. You can use templates or share the ones which you created along with other individuals.
When sharing your templates, then they can be chosen by you to Share at no cost, free for specific customers or you may even bill for your layouts in addition to content either a one-time fee or recurring subscription fee. The intelligent software system deals with everything, and you get 90% of the fee. This is obviously a higher value than many will realise.
Sequences
This is Create a series of follow up activities i.e. email, SMS, tasks, rules in addition to fulfillments. These sequences could be triggered by customers by your blog, email or any other supply, and the client’s request will be processed by ONTRAPORT according to the rules you defined, even while you’re sleeping.
Contacts
ONTRAPORT Permits You to store Many Different important details about your Clients in addition to prospects in a single display. While viewing a contact, you can send them an email or a text message, log a telephone call, manage their credit card, add a task… and the list continues on and on.
To update any area, just click the value from the Area, hit save button that appears right next to the field and enter the new value. Adding sequences and tags is also a matter of a few clicks. In short, the touch menu is straightforward yet comprehensive.
Messages
ONTRAPORT allows you to send normal emails, full colour, text messages Postcards, and last but not least, professionally equipped email templates called ONTRAmail. Depending on the pricing strategy you choose, you may send a specific number of emails each month, and if you have an extremely large clientele, you might end up having to purchase expensive additional messages. For text messages, you need to pay 2 cents per message — which ONTRAPORT claims is the cheapest in the business. Similarly, ONTRAPORT costs a bit under $1 per postcard.
The best thing about messages is that they are Two-way messages i.e. the answer from your customer can activate a sequence. Also, you may automatically insert merge fields to emails in addition to text messages i.e. original name/last name or some other information of this contact.
Rules
Activate actions or sequences based on if, subsequently states. For example, you can make a rule to recharge all diminished transactions, remove the contact send email notification add a tag and so on. Using Ontraport As Crm
Event management
Event management is yet another unique characteristic of ONTRAPORT that allows you to run and manage online events like webinars, teleseminars or events. You can monitor individuals who attended and inform the CRM to mechanically follow up with every group so.
Tasks
The job management automates most of the processes and saves a Whole Lot of time. It is possible to assign prospects to your relevant teammate, route prospects based on several indexes (zip code, job title, website visits etc.). You can make decisions of routing leads on a percent or round-robin basis.
It’s disappointing that you can’t add a new Job Rather you need to go to add a new undertaking when you are seeing your tasks. There is absolutely no calendar where you can view your tasks and appointments.
Settings
It Import contacts, custom fields, manage change the default value of the fields, handle broadcasts, and lead grading and routing.
Partner & Affiliate Program Management
This feature lets you handle your affiliate program. Create a partner centre and offer them the desired instruments. It’s possible to make affiliate programs for goods or partner kinds. You sanction them or can even automate commissions.
Revenue
You’ll, Should you run an Internet ecommerce business Love the revenue module of ONTRAPORT. Here you can see all the purchases made by your customers, products which you sell, create different reports such as earnings report, subscriber retention report, transaction log, open orders and more.
In Regards to e-commerce, while ONTRAPORT does The basics right, Infusionsoft defeats it into the punch. Primarily, ONTRAPORT doesn’t have a shopping cart as found in Infusionsoft. For similar functionality, you’ll have to incorporate ONTRAPORT with 1 Shopping Cart, a independent shopping cart merchandise. Handling payments in addition to managing payment programs is relatively simpler in Infusionsoft: Infusionsoft includes an integrated merchant accounts known as Infusionsoft Payments, a feature missing in ONTRAPORT.
Tracking
This menu tells who is engaging with your content. Unlike many other Analytic apps, ONTRAPORT monitoring not only demonstrates how many users are viewing your website, but in addition, it tells you who they are, precisely what pages they’ve seen, when they watched it and far more.
You can monitor users either by campaign Alerts articles, or by duration and get if someone downloads your merchandise to follow up; a prospect visits a landing page or anything else. Using Ontraport As Crm
Sites
This module create amazing in Addition to allows you integrate WordPress websites Landing pages by simply dragging and dropping. Last time we analyzed ONTRAPORT, this module did not operate on Google Chrome, but we were able to create a great landing page this time.
It’s a great feature for selling products or Online coaching services. You can host movies and websites for your customers, create unlimited membership amounts, and upgrade members.
ONTRAforms
You can choose to create opt-in or order forms using ONTRAPORT and then Host in your webpage. All you have to do is add your photos and texts, and publish As there are a lot of templates available. By employing this editor, customizing the cubes and using them over and over again is a matter of a couple of mouse clicks.
You can print your types as types that are static, Image or connection, or possibly a lightbox pop-up. The alternative that is most fascinating and smart is most likely the lightbox pop-up, which you can opt to get triggered when a person scrolls past proportion of the page, spends a specified timeframe on your site or plans to exit. A adequate pop-up tool on its own is rather expensive.
Cost
ONTRAPORT has recently announced a new pricing plan, Geared towards solopreneurs, called Basic. It offers only one login, is pretty affordable but lacks several key features. The rest of the 2 plans have not changed much since we last reviewed ONTRAPORT, and all the programs include a money-back guarantee.
Basic
$79/month, 1,000 contacts mails, ONTRApages webpages, beautiful email templates and SMS advertising automation to get you started right
Pro
Conclusion
ONTRAPORT as a CRM impresses, and as a business ONTRAPORT impresses, too. Their progressiveness is reflected in their merchandise. Like CRM vendors out there, it is a constant game of leapfrog with all the competition, and they play it well enhancing their merchandise. Their CRM is particularly suited to companies that do complex email marketing, and should you run an affiliate reseller program (which is an ideal method to run a little-cost independent sales group ), ONTRAPORT is a superb tool to manage that for you, also. Using Ontraport As Crm
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The meanings of military service projects utilises the First World War material held at the Queen Mary University of London, Royal London Hospital and St Bartholomew’s Hospital archives. The material from these archives has been divided into three broad categories; Home Front, Frontline and Medicine and includes a range of sources such as hospital journals, personal letter, photographs and newspaper cuttings.
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My Story
I've created this page because I want to make a difference. I'm inspired by the work of Lifewise and wanted to support them by raising money as part of my participation in Lifewise Big Sleepout 2017. Please help me help them by giving whatever you can using the 'Give Now' button. The more people that know about Lifewise, the greater their impact, so please also spread the word by sharing my page with your friends and family. Thank you in advance for your generosity, it means a lot!
We've created this team because we want to raise money and make a difference by participating in Lifewise Big Sleepout 2017. Please help us by giving whatever you can using the 'Give Now' button. The more people that know about Lifewise Big Sleepout 2017, the greater the impact, so please also spread the word by sharing our page with your friends and family. Thank you in advance for your generosity, it means a lot!
We've created this team because we want to raise money and make a difference by participating in Lifewise Big Sleepout 2017. Please help us by giving whatever you can using the 'Give Now' button. The more people that know about Lifewise Big Sleepout 2017, the greater the impact, so please also spread the word by sharing our page with your friends and family. Thank you in advance for your generosity, it means a lot!
Lifewise Big Sleepout 2017
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Lifewise is an innovative social agency that isn't afraid to do things differently. We go beyond meeting immediate needs - we help people turn their lives around for good. Lifewise supports people of all ages including families in need, those who are homeless as well as those affected by addiction, mental health issues and disabilities. Lifewise is a registered charity under the Charities Act 2005, registration number CC40248.
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Tuesday, November 6, 2012
USS Passaic-Bringing a Bigger Gun to the Fight
USS Passaic testing her XV-inch Dahlgren towards the Palisades.
When asked by a Congressional panel investigating the outcome of the Battle of Hampton Roads and the U.S. Navy response to future Confederate ironclads, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox simply replied, "build a bigger gun." Indeed, a bigger gun had been built: the XV-inch Dahlgren. At the time, there was no platform to use it on. Fortunately, engineer/inventor John Ericsson provided one.
Inside Passaic's turret, the XV-inch gun is on the far side.
While USS Monitor was a wonder of engineering, she did have flaws exposed during the Battle of Hampton Roads. Ericsson sought to fix that with his next generation of "monitor"-type ironclads. The first of the new generation of monitors was Passaic. Named for the town of Passaic, New Jersey, the ship displaced 400 more tons than the original Monitor. It housed a larger engineering plant and a wider hull for better sea keeping traits. The pilot house was constructed on top of the turret, instead of the front like the Monitor. With the bigger ship, workers placed one 42,000-pound XV-inch Dahlgren in the turret, along side one XI-inch Dahlgren. Firing a 352-pound shell, the gun itself was one of the largest weapons ever deployed during the war.
The new gun did have its problems. The barrel was purposely built short to protect the muzzle from being exposed to enemy fire. This led to the issue of smoke from each shot fired building up inside the turret. To deal with this issue, Ericsson designed a special "smoke box" to protect the gunners. While it worked, the box did slow down the rate of fire.
After launching at the Contential Iron Works (same builder as Monitor), Passasic steamed up the Hudson river to the Palisades cliffs, north of New York City, in early November 1862. Here, to a booming echo up and down the river, gunners test-fired the monster XV-inch gun with increasing amounts of gunpowder (topping out at forty-five pounds of gunpowder per shooting) and shot. Observers deemed each test a success, and determined Passaic was ready for action. The Passaic soon set sail for Hampton Roads to join up with Monitor. The Northern press boldly and brashly claimed that the Navy finally had its weapon against the forts of Charleston.
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Saturday, January 14, 2012
When old, must have 3 "LOWs"
One of my girl friends once told me that when we grow old, we will be very blessed if we have all 3 “LOWs” (in Cantonese, "LOW" means OLD). The first “LOW” we must have is our “Low Kung” (husband). Our husband is our companion, someone we can pick on when we become old and grumpy! LOL! (Just kidding). Actually, he is our best friend, the one we trust that we can be ourselves. He is the one we can confide in and rely on to take care of us for the rest of our lives. The second “LOW” is “Low boon” (our savings). This is necessary not for ourselves alone but for those who eventually ended up taking care of us. Our "Low boon" help relieve them from any financial difficulty as a result of taking care of us. The third “LOW” is a VERY important because this “LOW” is one that will keep us sane and brings us lots of joy! That is “Low Pang Yau” (Old friends). One biggest fear of growing old is loneliness but if we have lots of “Low Pang Yau” then we will not feel lonely and isolated. Statistic shows that seniors who are isolated and lonely tend to have more health problems and a poorer quality of life than those who have a good social network of friends and family. I think I have that. Just recently, my friends and I celebrated New Year together at a karaoke joint which belongs to one of my girlfriend's vocal teacher. We had a great time eating till we were stuffed, yakking till our jaws dropped, laughing till our stomachs hurt, singing our hearts out and dancing like no one was watching. We had so much fun and we almost brought the roof down! LOL!
Out of 3 "LOWs", I already have two. My Quay Lo and I are still working very hard to have enough of the 3rd "LOW" so that we can both retire in the near future.
My 1st LOW, my Quay Lo "Low Kung"
Here are some of my second “LOWs”, my wonderful “LOW PANG YAU” (old friends). We celebrated the New Year with a BANG!
I brought with me some food to share with them and one of them is a pasta salad. The karaoke place was dark and I could not take a nice picture of the salad. I guess I was too excited to go off to have fun and I forgot to take a photo at home too. I have made this salad before with same pasta but different other ingredients. They both tasted pretty much the same. I will share with you the recipe of one I made earlier which I have photos. There you go.
Wheat pasta salad with herb vinaigrette dressing
Ingredients for salad:
2 cups of wheat pasta of your choice
1 can garbanzo beans
1 cup pomegranate seeds
½ cup diced cucumber without seeds removed
2 slices of bacon, fried, and brokenshave parmesan cheese
water with salt
Method:
Bring water with added sea salt to boil and cook pasta for 9 mins till al dante. Drain pasta and set aside. Add in garbanzo beans, diced cucumber and pomegranate seeds. Put in the fridge and chill for 1 hour. Pour herb vinaigrette dressing over and toss to mix well. Serve warm or cold with shave parmesan cheese.
Ingredients for herb vinaigrette dressing:
½ cup white wine vinegar
dash of salt and pepper
½ cup fresh basil
¼ cup rosemary leaves
2 cloves garlic
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
Method:
In a blender add white wine vinegar, dash of salt and pepper, basil and rosemary and blend for 10 to 15 seconds. Add 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil and blend for another 10 to 15 mins.
29 comments:
May I just correct you on this one .... you have 4 "Lows". You forgot, you also have your Quay "Low" who pampers you to no end. :D Bonus!Oooh, bacon! I love the sound of the salad except maybe for the pomegranate seeds. Don't get me wrong, I love pomegranate, on it's own or as a juice but I could never understand how the seeds could be eaten in a salad, cake, etc. I mean, the seeds are so fibrous, it would have been equivalent to the fibres of a small piece of cardboard if I were to swallow everything from just one fruit. Sorry, I guess it's just me who's strange in my opinions since I haven't heard of anyone having that same opinion as me. Oh well ... I'm sure the tangy sweetness goes well tho.
Pomegranate is a very expensive fruit. Opps, would it be too rude to mention the price since you made the salad to your dear friends, hahaha!
Have you noticed that all the ladies were wearing black & white clothes? Was that the colour theme for that special occasion? The last time I went for a karaoke session was when I was working in S'pore.
@Baby SumoGood, smile more, and you will always stay young and pretty.
@Jessiehaha you can talk about price with me all day long. Yes, the pomegranate is very expensive here too. We all were black and white because the organizer of the party said that is the theme. No special occasion, just for fun.
You have lots of good friends and they are lovely ladies! I haven't gone to KTV for a long time! Sounds like you had a great time! Pasta salad is always a big hit in my house (kids don't consider it's "salad")...heehee.
@missyblurkitYou said the same thing a Ping. Yes I guess I have an extra Low then:D
@DianeSame here, we are worry of the inflation too.
@CCYes, wish you will have all 3 Lows and more.
@NamiYes, I have many good friends and they are all beautiful people. I am sure the kids don't think they are salad, to them, it is pasta but then it is a good way to get the kids to eat some vegetables as well since there are plenty in this pasta salad. LOL!
@LyndseyThanks Lyndsey. Hehe, you know lah, old lady almost reaching 60, gone through so much over the years, got lots of stories to tell. Hope I am not being long winded. hehe.. No worries about not liking the pomegranate seeds, I love frank opinion. Hugs
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A LITTLE ABOUT THIS QUAY PO
Before I was married to my "Quay Lo" (Guaylo) husband, I did not know how to bake or cook. Subsequently I learned some baking and cooking Western cuisine from him, and providing his food for him launched an interest in cooking in general. Many of my Chinese friends and family told me that "Quay" is the wrong spelling for devil in Cantonese. The right spelling should be "Kwai" or "Guay". Well, somehow I like the spelling "Quay" better although I have to agree that it does not sound very Cantonese. Try asking a Westerner to pronounce "Kwai" and you will probably hear "Quay" haha. Whether is "Quay" or "Kwai" or "Guay, just know the devil woman is me when you see Quay Po Cooks. My hubby said if people pronounce "Quay" as "Key" is even better because I am the key to his heart. LOL!
Only now, have I started to learn the traditional Cantonese cuisine of my Mum. She cooks fabulously and all her specialties are divine. These two interests, my husband's Western food, and my mother's traditional food, prompted me to document them so they will not be lost.
Here, I wish to share my cooking and baking experience with my readers. I also hope to inspire those who do not know how to cook or bake to do so because, trust me, if I can, you can too.
Something I'd like to mention is that I find that many people are rather unwilling to share their recipes. However, for me, I think differently. I think good recipes should be shared thus allowing as many people to enjoy it as possible. Unless those recipes are for doing business, I don't see why we want to keep them all to ourselves. So if you are generous in sharing your recipes, you are welcome to share on my blog. Send the recipes to me and better still with pictures of the final products and I will be very happy to post them them with credits to you of course.
Our cuisine is a deeply embedded part of our culture. When two cultures come together under the same roof the results in the kitchen can sometimes be comedic, sometimes confrontational, but more often it is a journey full of surprises and discovery. There is joy in our food. If we think upon this, it is intuitively obvious. This blog is a journey of joy and sharing, reflecting what the French like to call "joie de vivre" (joy of living). No one could be more different from one another then my husband and my mother. Yet one thing they share in common is knowing intuitively that food, cooking, and sharing can be avenues of joy in life itself. So herein, help yourself, to a little joy and , if you like it, share it with your own family and friends. Joy is something that should be shared.
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AWARDS
I wish to thank those who have given me AWARDS. I feel really honored and thankful to you all. I have decided not to display the awards in my blog or pass it on because I feel it is impossible for me to pass it on to all the deserving blogs. They are so many and I do not feel comfortable leaving anyone out. I hope you appreciate how I feel. Once again Thanks a Million for thinking of me.
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Santi Cazorla v Cesc Fabregas stats show Arsenal were right not to sign Chelsea star
As ridiculous as this claim would have looked at the start of the season as Arsene Wenger received endless criticism from Arsenal fans as well as ridicule from opposition supporters and pundits, it looks as though the Gunners were right to snub the chance to re-sign Chelsea’s Cesc Fabregas from Barcelona.
The Spanish playmaker started in brilliant form for the Blues, contributing two goals and 11 assists in his first thirteen games as he struck up a dream partnership with fellow summer arrival Diego Costa. Since then, however, the contribution to Chelsea’s attack has dried up significantly, and the tired-looking 27-year-old has only one goal and two assists in his last fifteen games.
In fairness, Chelsea fans will point to his total of five goals and 19 assists in all competitions over the course of the season as an excellent return, with the former Gunner’s style of play crucial to improving Jose Mourinho’s side sufficiently to make them far and away the best team in England this season. Arsenal fans, however, should not be so concerned about missing out on their former player.
Truthfully, looking at Fabregas on current form up against Wenger’s current choice of midfielders, it’s hard to see where he’d fit in, or if he’s really what they need. Wenger said in the summer that the decision not to re-sign his former captain was due to the presence of so many other similar midfielders, and it looks like he’s right; Santi Cazorla in particular has adapted superbly to a new deeper role this season, providing the kind of energy and end-product that the team so desperately needs from that area.
Although Fabregas’ overall goal contribution is higher, it is worth noting that with seven goals and ten assists, Cazorla is more of a goalscorer himself, providing the option of a stinging long-range shot from the middle of the park, as well as more of a poacher’s instinct than his fellow countryman.
With the likes of Olivier Giroud and Alexis Sanchez not as prolific scorers as Diego Costa, players like Cazorla, Mesut Ozil and Aaron Ramsey providing a bit more of a goal threat from midfield is essential. Fabregas never quite showed that in his time as an Arsenal player and doesn’t look like doing so for Chelsea either. It might well suit the Blues to simply let Fabregas be the creative hub of the team, but that’s still no need for Arsenal to feel like they’re missing much, as Cazorla has sufficiently evolved their game to suit their style far better.
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Who are Local Fibre Companies (LFC)?
Local Fibre Companies (LFC) are responsible for laying fibre cabling across New Zealand. As per estimates, by 2020, 75% of NZ households shall be fibre capable.
Depending on the region where you live in, we partner with one of the Local Fibre Companies to provide ultrafast fibre broadband services to you. The map below displays the current distribution of LFCs across NZ cities.
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wherein we consider the possibilities for participatory approaches to assessment of learning with digital badges, online learning, open courses, MOOCs, and beyond
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Motivating STEM Engagement in Children, Families, and Communities
By Daniel Hickey
This extended post is the second in a series of post about my work with non-profit STEM education start up called Iridescent. In a previous post I describe their Curiosity Machine and an evaluation I carried out of a program designed to encourage families to complete Engineering Design Challenges on that website from home, after attending two-hour weekly evening workshops. In this post I explore the challenges that organizations like Iridescent and science museums face in attempting to motivate inquiry learning in informal contexts. I am also using this post as my weekly contribution to the graduate education class on motivation that I am currently teaching.
In the last year, I have had the
pleasure of working with Iridescent Inc. a science education non-profit in
LA. Iridescent was founded in 2006 by an aerospace engineer named Tara
Chklovski. Tara and her colleagues are bringing three core engineering
design practices (curiosity, creativity, and persistence)
to girls, boys, and families, with a particular focus on underserved
minoritie
Over
the last two years, Iridescent ran a program that worked with parents and
their elementary-age children in two-hour workshops to help them complete
online Design Challenges. Each Design Challenge features
inspiring videos with practicing engineers who exemplify the engineering design
practices while they talk about their work and introduce a handful of more
specific engineering design concepts (such as lift and thrust).
As shown below, the home page of each Design Challenge features a simple
interface that allows even young children to keep track of their progress as
they (a) build a device in an effort to meet a specific engineering design
challenge, (b) post a photo or a video as evidence, (c) get feedback from
virtual mentors, (d) redesign their device, and (e) post a final reflection.
Over 50 Design Challenges are nicely arranged on the Curiosity Machine
website that keeps track of each family's progress. As I elaborated in a recent blog post, I helped Iridescent with a modest evaluation of
a project aimed at helping families engage in inquiry-oriented science
learning.
Home Page of an Engineering Design Challenge on the Curiosity Machine
The weekly workshops were only two
hours long; the real goal was getting families to complete design challenges
from home. The evaluation revealed that only a third of the families
reported submitting Design Challenges from home and fewer still appeared to be
starting them while at home. Because most of the families reported having
Internet access at home, this is mostly likely motivational issue. This raises
a question extends beyond the context of these Design Challenges into the
larger informal science community. For example, what could a museum put up on
the web that might motivate parents and children working together on an
investigation that builds on a special exhibit?
Given busy parents, compelling
videogames, streaming media, social media, and all of the other potential
attractors, this is a not a trivial motivational challenge. This challenge is
heightened by the fact that competing theories of motivation suggest two very
different approaches. In what follows I summarize these two approaches and
offer an alternative based on newer situative theories of motivation that I
have been exploring in my own research.
Applying Traditional Behavioral Models of Motivation
One class of approaches to
motivation follows from tradition behaviorist models of learning. These
approaches would focus on the "contingencies" in the environment that
encourage or discourage children and families from engaging in Design
Challenges from home. These perspectives would examine what likely suggest
some sort of incentives to motivate initial engagement so that each member of
the family would develop fluency with the necessary skills so that they could
learn to work together sufficiently so that the act of mastering the
Design Challenging would itself be a sufficient incentive so that the family
would choose to begin and complete a new challenge from home. This might be a
digital badge that contains evidence of success that families to could share
over social media. This might be free passes to a science museum. While it
seems unlikely, it certainly is worth imagining what sort of engagement would
be motivated by cash incentives.
The nice thing about imagining cash
incentives for learning is because it forces innovators and educators to
consider the criteria for earning the
incentives. Imagine if simply submitting a photo or a video of each device
created in a Design Challenge and posting a reflection would deposit a $100
credit at Amazon. Lots of families would post lots of hastily completed
devices. While some STEM learning might occur, much of the learning that would
take place in those families would be about how to complete the Design
Challenges as quickly as possible while still earning the credit. As nicely
summarized by Paul Chance in (1992) researchers working in the behaviorist tradition
have advanced guidelines for providing incentives to support learning. These
guidelines encourage success-contingent incentives
for meeting a specific criteria and discourage task-contingent incentives for merely completing the task. Recall
that each Design Challenges includes a specific engineering design challenge. For
example, the Suspension Bridge Design Challenge has families make a
suspension bridge from plastic straws, string, and tape that can hold as many
pennies as possible. After some testing, Iridescent might conclude that an
appropriate criterion is 15 pennies. This would make it possible to only offer
the incentive to families who upload a video or photo showing that their device
met that criteria.
Chances article offers a number of
useful guidelines for offering reward. Perhaps the most useful guideline is avoid using rewards as incentives. In other
words, don't offer rewards for things that people are already motivated to do.
Consider, for example, that perhaps parents don't need rewards to engage, but
children do. Perhaps the families might themselves offer some sort of incentive
(e.g., fast food, ice cream, five dollars) to their children for accomplishing
each design challenge. Another useful guideline is use the weakest reward necessary. Clearly a $100 incentive for
families is excessive. What about a $5 credit at the National Science Teachers Association
bookstore?
Other reward guidelines summarized
by Chance include reward at a higher rate
early and then reduce frequency, set standards that are well within reach of
the learners, and reward only the
behavior you want repeated. One feature of the Applied Behavior Analysis
(ABA) research that supports these guidelines is a reliance on single-subject designs. Such studies first
examine baseline behavior. They then adjust the contingencies in the environment
that reward desirable behavior and discourage undesirable behavior. Then the
see what happens. Given that the Design Challenges are served from a very
sophisticated website, it would clearly be possible to systematically tweak the
success criterion and incentives to find which combination leads families to
successfully complete the most Design Challenges.
Once obvious extension to this
approach would be some sort of competition. What if Iridescent put up some sort
of a "leader board" for each Design Challenge? Families could compete
to meet or exceed the current leader. This alone might have a tremendous impact
on family engagement. It is important to note that many strict behaviorists
would argue against using competition. In his famous 1948 book Walden Two, B. F. Skinner argued that
ABA could support a lifestyle free of war, completion, and social strife—much
like Thoreau's Walden. But the continuing
rise of market-oriented models of education and test driven reforms appears to
have led many educators and innovators have to embrace competition.
Additionally the emergence of "gamification" as an entire genre
suggests many possible ways to gamify individual Design Challenges and the
entire Curiosity Machine experience. Indeed proponents of gamification would
likely suggest turning the Curiosity Machine into some sort of virtual STEM Family Feud.
The Debate over Rewards
A very different set of suggestions
would follow from rationalist theories that came to dominate studies of
learning and motivation after the "cognitive revolution" in the
1960s. This perspective argues against the use of "extrinsic"
incentives to motivate family engagement. These perspectives argue that
extrinsic rewards undermine the authentic learning that occurs as humans
naturally try to make sense of the world around them. These assumptions are
consistent with "constructivst" and "discovery
learning" perspectives that came to dominate educational psychology in the
1980 and that are particularly influential in STEM education.
This perspective has been widely
popularized by the writer Alfie Kohn, via book such as his Punished by
Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other
Bribes from 1993. In his 1993 response to Paul Chance, Kohn summarizes
widely held concerns over the use of rewards for learning. These include that
that rewards are controlling, ineffective, make learning less appealing, and ignore curricular questions. A major issue with rewards is the
"overjustification" effect documented in hundreds of studies. This
occurs when free-choice intrinsically motivated behavior decreases after the
introduction of rewards. This debate has continued to simmered for decades. The
opening sentence of Chance's (1993) response to Kohn's response nicely captures
the disjoint between these two perspectives:
IT IS DIFFICULT to know how to
respond to Alfie Kohn's critique. It is so disjointed and so full of
misrepresentations of fact and theory that it is like a greased pig: one can
scarcely get a grip on it, let alone wrestle it to the ground.
A series of meta-analyses were carried out on empirical
studies of rewards in the mid-90s. In meta-analyses, the size and nature of the
experimental effect across various conditions are themselves subjected to
rigorous statistical analysis. While meta-analysis intended to resolve such
enduring questions, a set of competing meta-analyses reaching opposite
conclusions has only confirmed how irreconcilable these two perspectives are.
Supporting
Intrinsically Motivated STEM Engagement
Kohn and many other opponents
of rewards draw on primarily on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), as defined by
Edward Deci, Richard Ryan, and colleagues in the 1970s and which continues to
be very influential. SDT incorporates Bandura's prior ideas about of
modeling and self-effiacy in a much broader framework of innate human needs. As
nicely summarized in Wikipedia, the
theory focuses on three needs:
Competence concerns the assumption that humans
universally seek to control outcomes and experience mastery.
Autonomy concerns
the universal urge to be causal agents of one's own life and act in harmony
with ones integrated self (though not
necessarily independent of others)
Relatedness concerns
the universal want to interact, be connected with, and experience caring for
others.
Applying these theories would highlight the many things
that Iridescent is already doing right to motivate families to encourage
intrinsically motivated engagement in the Design Challenges, and suggest
further refinements. Specifically, the three primary implications of SDT
concern optimal challenge, performance feedback, and supporting
relatedness. STD would argue
against using rewards and competition, and instead suggest focusing on each of
these three areas:
Optimal challenge: SDT argues the learning
opportunities should be neither too easy nor too hard. If they are too
easy learners don't feel a sense of accomplishment; if they are too hard,
learners will have insufficient self-efficacy to engage. What I love about
the Design Challenges is that they appear to be just hard enough so that
younger children need help accomplishing the challenge. More specifically, the
younger children need help in using the disciplinary concepts (such
as load and tension) introduced in the videos to systematically
(rather than randomly) redesign their devices to accomplish the challenge.
Offer useful performance feedback. SDT provides extensive guidelines in giving
performance feedback, and it has been widely applied in the realm of classroom
assessment and grading. The reason Kohn included praise in the title of
his book is because of studies showing that teacher praise for behavior that is
"externally-regulated" (rather than intrinsically motivated)
undermines self-determination. This is one area where Iridescent might
do quite a bit of refinement and research. The prior study showed the most of
the feedback from virtual mentors was received by learners at least a day after
they had submitted their challenge, long after the materials and devices were
put away and some of the families had embarked on a new challenge. So further
refinement to both the technology and practices for providing feedback to make
that feedback more useful and used would be expected to improve engagement.
Help learners relate
to others. I think that Iridescent is already doing a great job with this
in the way that their challenges are designed. As I elaborated in my other
post, in my one opportunity to observe families completing Design Challenges it
was really endearing to watch a father gently but persistently use the
principle of thrust to help his
daughters redesign their "spinning machines" (made of a balloon,
clay, straws, and a ping pong ball). I regret that it was so noisy in the room
that I could not transcribe the recording, but got to witness the younger child
use that term herself in talking to her sister. From my perspective, this kind
of scientific relating is what is missing in many science classrooms. While I
think Iridescent's intuitions have been remarkably effective, I suspect a more
systematic application of SDT might point to additional innovations that might
motivate engagement. For example, right now most of the relatedness that is
supported appears to be within
families. It might be very helpful search for strategies to foster relatedness between families.
As we see here, SDT offers clear suggestions for increasing
intrinsic motivation and the high quality forms of engagement that have long
been shown to follow. Many of these are included in sub-theory of SDT known as Cognitive Evaluation Theory. CET
provides a practical framework for studying how social and environmental
factors support or undermine intrinsic motivation. Most importantly, these
principles would steer Iridescent away from any sort of incentives or
completion, as these are assumed to undermine intrinsically motivated
engagement.
The challenge here is obvious.
One set of motivational theories pushes in one direction, while another set of
theories pushes in another. Because rationalist theories have long dominated
educational and developmental psychology, teachers and parents are strongly
discourage from using rewards. But schools continue to be dominated by grades
and parents quickly learn that rewards and punishments appear to work. The
problem is that teachers and parents are likely to use rewards and punishment
in ways that even behaviorists would discourage. This problem seems to be
getting worse in schools with the rise of market-oriented approaches to
educational reform.
A Situative
Alternative
I have been
fascinated by this tension between behaviorist and rationalist perspectives for
my entire career. I first explored in the major area paper that wrote in 1993
in order to advance to candidacy in my PhD program. In that paper I argued that
the sociocultural theories of cognition and learning first articulately by
Vygotsky in the 1930s offered an alternative view for thinking about
motivation. I had read Lave and Wenger's 1991 book on Situated Learning and was intrigued that this emerging theory might "sidestep"
these nagging tensions over incentive. Thanks to the encouragement and patient
editing of Paul Pintrich, the paper was eventually published in Educational
Psychologist in 1997. That paper helped me land my first academic position and was
nicely taken up by the new scholarly community that was emerging at that time.
The 1997 article
led to invitations participate in several symposia. These included on one in
Sweden in 2000 that Simone Volet and Sanna Jarvela organized. The papers from
that symposium led to an edited volume in 2001 that gave this new community a name:
Motivation in Learning Context. This
name reflects a larger shift in Educational Psychology that had begun in the
late 1980s. Rather than applying basic theories that were first advanced by
Cognitive Psychologists and Developmental Psychologist, educational researchers
were increasingly interested in developing more useful "local"
theories in particular educational contexts. Generally speaking, this shift is
what continues to distinguish the research associated with the Learning
Sciences from Educational Psychology.
Around this
time, I also began collaborating with Mary
McCaslin, including a chapter that explored
her theory of "co-regulated learning." My real opportunity
came in in 2003 when Mary invited me to contribute to a special issue of The Elementary School Journal that she was
editing. I got to really explore the motivation implications of
"situative" theories of cognition that Jim Greeno and others had
formalized in the 1990s. The title of the article included Greeno's notion of
"engaged participation" as well as one of the most embarrassing (of
many) typos in my work. While Mary asked me to "tone down" my
argument, she allowed me to bypass some of the issues that one of the reviewers
had with my "stridently situative" approach. The paper explored six
aspects of engagement, and their implications for the design of learning
environments. What follows is an initial exploration of their implications for Iridescent's
goal of motivating extended family engagement completing Design Challenges from
home.
Internalization of goals and values. My
first point was simply an extension of situative theories of cognition. These
theories argue that knowledge primarily resides
in social context and only secondarily in
the minds of individuals. If we assume that this is true, then we can extend
that assumption to the goals and value that motivate engagement and learning.
While we obviously internalize goals and value from the context around us,
assuming that they primarily live in the social context pushes us to focus on
the social and cultural context for ways motivate engagement.
In the case of
Iridescent, this would lead to assume that most of goals and values that motivate
the children actually come from their family, while most of the goals and
values that motivate the family come from that larger sociocultural context in
which that family functions. At general level, this means that Iridescent's
efforts to motivate should be organized in terms of communityà
family à
child rather than the other way around. At a more specific level this suggest
the need for systematic ethnographic work that examines how the larger cultural
context motivates families to engage in scientific and how families motivate
their children to engage. Brigid Barron at Stanford is doing some
reallyi nteresting studies in this regard and could probably have some good
ideas about what this would look like around family engagement in Design
Challenges. I also just discovered what looks like a really nice paper by Middleton, Dupuis, & Tang (2013) that looks very promising as well.
Engaged participation. Building particularly on Greeno's 1998 presidential address to the American Psychological Association, there seems to be unique value in characterizing engagement as meaningful participation in a context
where to-be-learned knowledge is value and used. If participation in scientific
inquiry is not value by the family, the Design Challenges will be hard pressed
to motivate the children; likewise, if scientific inquiry is not valued by the
larger sociocultural context in which the family participates, Iridescent has
its work cut out for it. Of course this gets at why Iridescent, the National
Science Foundation and other foundations and museum work so hard to reach out
to women, racial minorities and other communities who continue to face
significant obstacles such as sexism, racism and impoverishment in their
pursuit of STEM education and careers. The design challenges already do a great
job by emphasizing female and racial minority engineers in their videos and
then offering their evening workshops in schools and libraries that serve
inner-city and low income communities. One idea is that having one of those
engineers actually come to the family science workshops might be really motivating
for families and children. What might be very compelling would be having those
same engineers serve as virtual mentors, particularly if the children and
parents strongly identified with the visiting engineers.
The role of identity in engagement. The role of identity is crucial
to engaged participation. While identity has traditionally been characterized
in terms of internalized goals and values, situative perspective characterize
identity in terms of our lived experience of participation in the social and
cultural practices of communities. Such identities are negotiated and are
assumed to reside primarily in those negotiations and only secondarily in the
minds of the individual or the members of a particular community. In
Iridescent's case this means self-report survey methods (like those that we
used in the prior evaluation) capture a view of identity that is at best
incomplete and possibly quite misleading. Rather, interpretive and
observational methods are needed to study the way identities are negotiated
between children and families and between families and communities. These
negotiations are also carried out around displays of competence and recognition
of that competence by the community. This means for example, that it is
important to help children and families learn to use the disciplinary concepts
(e.g., load and tension) introduced in the design challenges in ways that would be
recognized as appropriate by STEM professionals.
Legitimate peripheral participation. Lave and Wenger introduced the
notion of peripheral participation in 1991 to capture the importance of trajectories of participation. As
children and families negotiate their participation in the larger community of
STEM expertise, they can do so in ways that define very different trajectories.
Obviously, they are "peripheral" participants since they are not
practicing scientists and engineers. Legitimate
participation on the periphery defines an "inbound" trajectory.
This means that as children and families participate more and more
successfully, they are getting closer and closer to the community of practice.
This further argues for supporting authentic use of disciplinary concepts in
the design challenges. Rationalist "constructivist" models of
instruction argue against explicit instruction on such concepts, particularly
in informal settings. As elaborated above, these perspectives argue that overly
explicit instruction will undermine the child's natural curiosity that will
lets them discover what those concepts mean. From a situative perspective, it
is more important to help children and families to understand and use those
concepts in ways that experts would consider appropriate, in order to begin
building an "legitimate" trajectory from the periphery towards the
center of the STEM professional community. This perspective also suggests that many
kinds of informal assessments can actually be quite motivating, so long as
individuals are prepared for them and learners are able to succeed. For
example, these theories suggest that a simple quiz that children would be asked
to complete on their own (without their parents help) that lets children
demonstrate their newly gained proficiency with the concepts that they mastered
while completing the design challenges could have a substantial impact on most
children's nascent identity as a future STEM professional.
The importance of non-participation. Wenger's
1998 book on Communities of Practice helped
me appreciate that the things we don't participate
in define our identities just as much as what we do participate in. It helped
me realize that in many STEM classroom students are not really participating in
authentic STEM inquiry at all. As researchers like Leona Shauble and others
have shown repeatedly, the only inquiry in many STEM classroom is figuring out
how to get a good grade for the least amount of work. While STEM educators and
parents often blame students for this, this perspective lays the blame squarely
on the curriculum (and inappropriate use of tests of the learning from that
curriculum). Consider the trajectory defined by what critics call
"worksheet science." Students who participate more and more
successfully in memorizing and recognizing shallow definitions of terms and
completing simple procedure are unlikely to every find themselves in the center
of a particular community of STEM practice.
A Personal
Application
Mark Guzdial
These issues of trajectories and
non-participation in STEM learning have personal relevance for me and my own family. I was quite pleased a few years ago when my son Lucas enrolled in a computer
programming class in high school. I never learned to program myself and these
days it I find it quite a handicap. While I bought an Apple II+ computer in
1982 (!) and taught myself BASIC, an instructional technology professor discouraged
me from delving too deeply into technology or programming (because "it
changes too often"). While I still want to learn how to code, my non-participation
in programming clearly helped define my trajectory towards a Ph.D in Psychology
and satisfying career as a Learning Scientist.
Unfortunately, the curriculum in my
son's programming class was like the typical secondary computer science
instruction that Mark Guzdial chronicles in his Computing Education blog. The coding
worksheets seemed to have been haphazardly created to match various videos
located on the web. My son wanted to use the much more professionally-produced videos and
exercises that we were able to access via my university's account at Lynda.com,
but his teacher insisted that my son complete the worksheets as well (so teacher
could grade them).
After failing the first exam (which
appeared to directly mirror the worksheets), my son dropped the programming class
and instead enrolled in Journalism. His journalism teacher and curriculum were
both outstanding and my son quickly developed into a strong writer. He was soon
taking a turn each month on the weekly School
Diary a monthly column in the local newspaper. As many of my friends and
comments on the newspaper website pointed out, he seemed more thoughtful about
topics like climate and college tuition than many politicians. His columns
often sparked fierce debates on the paper's website. His class even elected him
to represent the school newspaper at debate between the two candidates in
Bloomington's 2015 mayoral race. The debate was moderated by the publisher of
the local paper and the other panelists included a political science professor
and reporter from the paper.
Lucas will be attending IU this
fall and currently plans on majoring in Journalism and Political Science. Just as my own career
trajectory was shaped by my own non-participation in programming, it seems
quite likely that my son's trajectory has already been shaped in much the same
fashion. Of course, as the child of two university professors, my son had
opportunities and advantages that are unfathomable to most of the families that
Iridescent targets in their programs. I think it is massively important to
increase the number of children who establish a legitimate trajectory towards
STEM careersearly on, and particularly do so for children of growing up in impoverished
families. I think this is particularly important for mathematics and science. For
many impoverished children, secondary-level math and science courses present
such an obstacle that they never even get into college, much less STEM careers.
I believe that Iridescent is on the right track to transforming these trajectories,
and would love to see many more such efforts. (Here is a previous post about our initial efforts to fix this problem in freshman Calculus)
Putting it all
Together
So what should Iridescent do? As
we saw above, the guidelines from behaviorist and rationalist perspectives were
both quite straightforward routes going in two very different directions. However,
one frustration that many skeptics have with these newer situative perspectives
is that they are just that: perspectives. In contrast to the prior
perspectives, situative and sociocultural perspectives fail to deliver straightforward
prescriptive guidelines that promise to result in desired ways of behaving or
thinking that are independent of context. In a subsequent post, I will elaborate
on one possible path forward.
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about this blog
New models of learning and new digital technologies require new approaches to assessment. We explore and discuss new approaches to assessment, with a particular focus on participatory approaches, digital badges, learning recognition networks, ePortfolios, and eCredentialing.
about these bloggers
Daniel T. Hickey, Professor of Learning Sciences, Research Scientist at the Center for Research on Learning and Technology at Indiana University, and leader of the Participatory Assessment Lab. You can email him at [email protected] and visit his academic profile at http://education.indiana.edu/hickey
Christopher D. Andrews, who taught CTE classes in Utah for 7 years and has a MA in Teacher Education from Brigham Young University, is a doctoral student in the Learning Sciences program at Indiana University. He is interested in how technology impacts assessment in education, participatory learning and practices in teacher education, and improving media literacy for all learners.
Rebecca C. Itow, a former California high school English teacher, is a doctoral candidate in the Learning Sciences program at Indiana University. She researches educator professional development in participatory spaces and the ways in which assessment choices impact learner engagement. Learn more about Rebecca and read her blog at rebeccaitow.com.
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SANDPOINT, Idaho — Thorne Research on Tuesday announced the development of a line of nutritional supplements targeting athletes under the banner Thorne Performance, in collaboration with Integrative Health Resources.
"Nutritional supplementation plays a significant role is athletic performance, and nutritional deficits and overtraining can lead to a diminished ability to recover and a greater likelihood of injury," stated Paul Jacobson, Thorne CEO. "Thorne Performance aims to be the leader in sports-based nutritional supplementation by meeting the demands of individuals who regularly engage in intense physical activity and lead active lifestyles."
"In many of our programs, including Life Time Fitness and Corvette Racing, we have seen firsthand the need for innovation in managing the metabolism of people who exercise at any level," added James LaValle, clinical pharmacist and CEO of Integrative Health Resources and partner at Thorne Performance. "The Thorne Performance credo, ‘Purely Driven,’ embodies our philosophy: products that are pure, targeted and of the highest quality. Coupled with a renowned team experienced in the needs of people who train, this new resource will help athletes at every level to push themselves to their personal limits."
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Abusive auditing and unfair reimbursement practices harm community pharmacists’ ability to provide critically needed patient counseling and care to seniors, according to a new survey released Tuesday by the National Community Pharmacists Association.
NCPA polled more than 350 community pharmacists about their recent experience with audits conducted by pharmacy benefit managers and other Medicare Part D plan intermediaries. The survey also asked about generic drug reimbursement caps known as maximum allowable costs (MACs).
Among the findings:
96% stated that a typical PBM contract has minimal or no transparency on how generic pricing is determined or what the reimbursement rate will be;
Almost 50% of respondents said that more than 10% of the time, PBMs set MAC reimbursement for generics below the pharmacy’s cost of simply acquiring the drug, much less dispensing and overhead costs; In addition, 92% said payments are not increased promptly to reflect a drug’s rising market costs;
3-in-4 pharmacists said audit requirements across Medicare Part D plans are not consistent, increasing their compliance burden; and
Nearly 87% stated that PBM reimbursement and auditing practices are “significantly” or “very significantly” affecting their ability to provide patient care and remain in business.
When asked which drugs had MAC limits set below the pharmacy’s cost of acquiring the product, more than 600 drugs were identified, including budesonide (for asthma); atorvastatin (cholesterol); clarithromycin (antibiotic); fentanyl patches (pain); hydrocodone (pain/inflammation); and methylprednisolone (steroid for allergic reactions, skin conditions and breathing disorders).
LoyaltyOne: Consumers less willing to share personal information with companies
CINCINNATI — Consumers continue to be cautious about sharing their personal information, according to an online survey conducted by LoyaltyOne, a global provider of coalition loyalty, customer analytics and loyalty services.
Among 1,000 respondents surveyed, LoyaltyOne found that 78% of them do not feel they receive any benefit at all from sharing information, up from 74% in 2011; less than half feel that companies use their personal data to better serve the consumer, an 11% slip from 2011; and 62% said they would share more personal data if it meant receiving relevant product and service offers, down from 66% in 2011.
"These responses point to an unmistakable trend. Marketers’ efforts to create relevant customer experiences through data need to be re-addressed or they run the risk of their efforts not resonating with customers," LoyaltyOne president Bryan Pearson said. "Consumers are disappointed. For years they’ve provided their valuable information and they’re not realizing something of suitable worth in return. If businesses don’t act quickly to demonstrate they have the consumer’s best interest at heart, they risk an erosion of the business-to-consumer relationship."
The survery also found that only 50% said they’d be willing to give a trusted company their religious affiliation, followed by their political affiliation and sexual orientation (both 49%), health information (36%), mental health information (26%), browsing history (24%) and smartphone location and number of sexual partners (tied at 15% each). Last on the list was their social security number (11%).
Pulitzer Prize-winner Peggy Noonan, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and singer Diana Ross now feature on the schedule for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Annual Meeting, slated for April 21-24 in Palm Beach, Fla.
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Winter Social Event!
Since exam season is not particularly exciting for most of us, Ilead:Grad is hosting a social event to bring you out of those exam blues. The event is a board game night at Castle, which is on the corner of College and Bathurst. The event will be held Saturday December 6th, from 5-8pm.
No board games are necessary, Castle will provide them for you, and Ilead:Grad will cover the cost of the games and any americanos you may want to enjoy. Please register for the event here.
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SC to hear plea to ban water supply to liquor industry in Maha
New Delhi : The Supreme Court today agreed to hear a plea seeking complete ban on water supply to distilleries and breweries in drought-hit regions of Maharashtra.
The Aurangabad bench of Bombay high court had recently asked the state government to curtail water supply to the liquor industry by 60 per cent from May 10, which would be operative till June 27.
A vacation bench of Justices A M Sapre and Ashok Bhushan posted the matter for hearing on May 23 after a lawyer mentioned the plea saying that instead of curtailed water supply, there should be no supply of water at all as the entire region is facing acute water shortage.
The bench, which agreed to hear the plea, said that filing petition on the issue is not going to solve the problem.
“From where the drinking water will come. There is n water. Do you think by filing petition water will come,” the bench said.
The counsel further said that people are dying in the region due to the shortage of water supply and there is a limited water stock available.
He said people are being deprived of the drinking water as it is being given to the liquor industries.
Earlier, the Bombay High Court had also asked Maharashtra to cut supply to other industrial units in Marathwada by 25 per cent after May 10.
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SplashData News
SplashData Announces SplashID 3.0
for all leading PDAs and Smartphones
Popular Palm OS identification and password manager now available for
users of Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone; Symbian UIQ and Series
60 Devices
SEATTLE - - June 22, 2004 - - SplashData, Inc., the leading developer
of “virtual wallet” applications for mobile devices, today
announced that its best-selling personal identification organizer, SplashID,
is now available for all leading PDA and Smartphone operation systems,
including Palm OS, Windows Mobile (Pocket PC and Smartphone), and Symbian
(UIQ and Series 60). SplashID 3.0 securely maintains personal identification
information on both the mobile device and desktop computer while offering
a host of features aimed at organizing and securing sensitive information.
The new Windows Mobile version of SplashID is now available for popular
Pocket PC models such as hp iPAQ and Dell Axim, and Smartphone devices
including the Motorola mpx200 and Samsung i600. The Symbian UIQ version
will work with the Sony Ericsson P900 and Motorola A925, while the Symbian
Series 60 version is compatible with Nokia 3650, 7650, and 6600 devices.
SplashID has long been among the most popular PDA applications available,
with the Palm OS version currently ranked among the top five selling Palm
OS programs at Handango.com, the world’s top resource for mobile
computing applications. The software safely and securely stores a variety
of sensitive, personal identification information, including user names,
passwords, credit card numbers, calling card numbers, bank account data,
PINs, medical insurance information, and more. Information is stored in
a secure, encrypted format and is quickly accessible on handhelds and
desktop computers. SplashID includes both handheld and desktop software
and data is automatically synchronized between the two.
“Our customers face the constant challenge of remembering an ever-growing
amount of numbers and codes. SplashID provides a handy means of securely
storing this sensitive information for access at a moment’s notice,”
said Clint Patterson, vice president of marketing of Handango. “Based
on SplashData’s history of success, we expect the new versions of
SplashID for Windows Mobile and Symbian to be just as successful as the
Palm OS version.”
Key features of SplashID 3.0 enable users to:
Create an unlimited number of templates with pre-defined field labels
for different information types such as “credit card numbers”
and “Web logins”;
Assign records to categories for filtering purposes, such as “personal”
or “business”;
Customize the way columns are displayed, including the ability to define
which columns will be presented on the screen based on the type of records
being viewed;
Assign icons to records, as well as customize field labels on a per-record
basis;
Specify which fields users wish to mask so that contents (such as a
password or credit card number) cannot be easily viewed by other individuals
while SplashID is in use on a handheld or desktop computer;
Secure passwords with a protected database file using Blowfish encryption;
Auto-generate passwords that meet specific criteria. (Many people,
especially those in data-sensitive industries, are forced by policy
to regularly change their passwords and it can be difficult to constantly
create memorable pass-codes);
Automatically create an encrypted back-up of the SplashID desktop
database file should data loss occur on the handheld or desktop.
Pricing and Availability
SplashID 3.0 is available at an introductory price of US$19.95 (normally
$29.95). A free 30-day trial version is available for download. SplashPhoto,
an image viewer that includes desktop companion software, is also available
for Symbian OS, and Windows Mobile devices.
Palm, Palm OS and PalmSource are registered trademarks of, and Palm
Powered is a trademark of, Palm Trademark Holding Company, LLC. Other
brands may be trademarks of their respective owners.
About SplashData
SplashData has been a leading provider of security applications and services for over 10 years. The company's secure password and record management solution SplashID Safe has over 1 million individual users worldwide as well as hundreds of business and enterprise clients. SplashData was founded in 2000 and is based in Los Gatos, CA.
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How does the US affiliate market differ from the UK? - Q&A
The main similarites or differences between Europe and the USA in an affiliate marketing sense are often debated. Some of these discussions are well-founded while others are conjecture-filled. So A4u decided to poll two key industry representatives from across the pond in an effort to separate fact from supposition. Geno Prussakov is founder of AM Navigator and Affiliate Management Days, whereas Jennifer Hoffman is the US General Manager of 7thingsmedia. Read on to discover their thoughts on the Euro/US divide.
Affiliate Marketing is known to be different in approach between the US and Europe. What would you say were the main differences?
Unlike in the UK, in the U.S. we worry who's going to be the next state to implement the "affiliate nexus" tax, and wonder how soon a federal solution will put an end to the so-called "Amazon tax" mess? We also seem to have fewer networks/platforms who are actively exploring attribution modeling. Thirdly, the major players are somewhat different too. Zanox/Affiliate Window and TradeDoubler who are really strong in the U.K. are hardly visible here in the U.S. where LinkShare, Commission Junction, Google Affiliate Network, and ShareASale support most of the network-based programs out there. Finally, in the UK, you have IAB's Affiliate Marketing Council (AMC), which helps regulate many important things. Here in the U.S. we could really learn from what the AMC is doing in Britain.
As a whole it is more similar than people think, true, there are differences but in theory and practice the job of an affiliate manager is very similar. Building relationships, pushing for coverage and getting buy in from the brand are the same, it's just the volume that changes. The US is - as commonly quoted - 10 times the size so with a bigger market there isn't the demand for intricacies as there is in the UK – in the UK affiliate managers and brands are squeezing every avenue possible to gain coverage and sales, US brands can get away with being less specific.
Both are thriving, however both have their own challenges, for example, the impacts of the affiliate Nexus tax in the US and the potential implications of the Privacy Directive in the EU.
One definite stand out difference I have found however is the price! Affiliates in the US are commonly as much about tenancy and launch fees (starting at $5,000 - $10,000) as they are pure CPA. Plus to attend Events in the US are considerably more than their EU or UK counterparts.
How are you expecting the Affiliate landscape to change across the US and Europe in 2012, if at all?
GP: Can't speak much for Europe, but in the US, with the wider adoption of social and mobile, I expect wider affiliate penetration into these two channels. We will also have more structured affiliate management education introduced in the US, Affiliate Management Days, of course, being one of the opportunities that I'm thinking here. More attention will also be paid to testing and optimisation (of landing pages, creatives, promos, etc). More advertisers will also turn to pay-per-call. And, finally, with the solutions that companies like HasOffers and Impact Radius are offering and promoting, I do expect that many more merchants will look in the direction of multi-touchpoint attribution.
JH: Across the whole I don't think the landscape will change a huge amount, the main trends we have seen in the past year will still be as apparent in 2012 and the industry can only continue to mature and thrive.
A particularly large trend we see in both the UK and US, which I only predict to continue is the growth of brands, especially SME's, fully realising the potential of affiliate marketing and prioritising resource to maximise this. They'll therefore not just see the channel as an Ecommerce tick box but one worthy of in-house resource or agency support.
Due to the entrepreneurial nature of the affiliate channel, new technologies will always continue to be tried and tested in this landscape – whilst larger brands / early adopters are aware of the opportunities of the likes of re-targeting and wider attribution models, there is still a long way to go before this is the majority!
Skimlinks, friends of the agency, are storming through the UK and US, however we are still introducing such tools across both sides of the pond in our various publisher/brand events.
Naturally another trend which will continue to grow throughout 2012 in the US and Europe is the launch of m-commerce and mobile tracking abilities as the use of mobile devices for online shopping increases. This views is also supported by various recent studies.
Within the EU, the Privacy law conversations will continue as brands, agencies, networks and affiliates try to understand and act on the the interpretation of the legislation.
There is a surge in UK Affiliates creating more direct partnerships with their advertisers/agencies. What can we learn from the US approach to direct communication?
GP: I don't know if there is such a thing as a universally-accepted and widely-practiced "US approach to direct communication"; but I personally like to view a healthy affiliate (and any business) communication channel through the framework of these 7 Rs:
Reachable — approachable and easy to contact
Responsive — not only listening, but hearing
Real — sincere, authentic and not wearing a mask
Realistic — aware of things as they are and transferring this awareness onto everything from estimates to goals and expectations
Responsible — liable to be called on to answer, even if the only person he/she is accountable to is him/herself
Reflective — able of pause and reflect on yourself, as well as capable of producing reflection in followers
Resonating — deeply empathetic towards followers, and capable of identifying with their feelings, needs, and emotions
JH: Again it's all about volume and quality of service. The US is a lot more commoditised so there's significantly less loyalty to the big affiliate networks, and the marketplace is somewhat fragmented.
The problems we see is that this can cause issues from both a quality and sales point of view. Brands and affiliates need to understand that there needs to be sound commercial terms for all parties to receive fair profit – whether that's the affiliate, the network or the agency! The most effective campaigns occur when all parties treat and respect each other equally.
Networks are getting a hard time at the minute and maybe they need to review their key USP's and ensure the advertiser and publishers are aware of their benefits – both short and long term.
When done correctly, either in-house or via an agency/network, the closer communication relationships with affiliates drive greater control over the correct marketing message, fuller promotions and as a result more loyal affiliates. All this creates a strong overall program performance and a brand ambassador mentality with publishers.
It seems the US has a high number of 'lead-based' affiliates in its grasp, whereas the UK works with more 'niche' affiliates. Why do you think this is?
GP: If we exclude the so-called "CPA networks" from the list (and we probably should, since most of them aren't characteristic of the overall industry), then I don't know if most affiliates will end up falling into the "lead-based" category. I would think that CPS and niche affiliates will actually end up holding a significant share of the affiliate market in the U.S. as well.
JH: A number of influential brands have and continue to be burnt with lead generation campaigns which has had a significantly detrimental impact on on the perception of the channel as a whole.
We find due to the distrust brands have within the UK of lead generation, they are less willing to allocate meaningful budget.
That isn't necessarily replicated in the US and lead generation has a cleaner place within Ecommerce and has a far greater reason for being. As a whole there is a bigger pot to delve in to and therefore a much bigger prize to be had – a brand in the UK with 50 stores will be known throughout the entire country however, a brand in the US with only 50 stores in a state would only be recognised in that state alone! Therefore the channel has a greater need to continue growing brands and enticing new customers.
As lead generation is more common practice in the US, most brands have much more robust back-end systems to allow them the ability to scrutinise quality leads and then effectively up-sell a looker into a booker!
What advice can you give to affiliates who are looking to increase their commissions in the US?
Simon Holland
Simon is the news and research reporter at Existem. Previously a technology journalist, he now spends his time investigating both future and developing trends in performance marketing whilst producing editorial content for performancein.com.
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Pennsylvania Fugitive Arrested After Sharing Police Department's Post About Him
Anthony James Lescowitch made it really easy for the Freeland Police Department in Freeland, Pa. to apprehend him.
On Monday evening, the department posted an update requesting information about the 35-year-old Lescowitch's whereabouts. For whatever reason, Lescowitch decided to share the status on his own Facebook page. According to Uproxx, police caught him after an officer messaged him, pretending to be an attractive woman who wanted to meet for a cigarette.
He was promptly arrested at the meet-up location 45 minutes after posting his status update. The Freeland Police Department posted a celebratory follow up alerting everyone that they had apprehended Lescowitch.
It makes you wonder how Lescowitch managed to stay on the lam for months.
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I'm not sure this question is well posed in the sense that the answer is non-unique. A simple example would be r=RotationMatrix[1,{1,0,0}]=RotationMatrix[-1,{-1,0,0}] are the same. So which one are you intending to find?
–
bill sAug 6 '13 at 13:08
The one where the angle is in [0,2 pi]. I think it is well posed as angle and axis are directly linked and you can provide a unique answer with a perfectly reasonable additional assumption.
–
DanvilAug 6 '13 at 13:43
Actually there was an answer earlier which was just fine but it was deleted?
–
DanvilAug 6 '13 at 13:46
@Danvil it was deleted because it was incorrect, so he deleted it. It was incorrect, as it worked only for the example you provided and could not be generalized.
–
rcollyerAug 6 '13 at 14:42
1
@Danvil I'm thankful I noticed the wink. It would have been a bad day, otherwise. :P
–
rcollyerAug 6 '13 at 16:38
4 Answers
4
There is no need to use Eigensystem or Eigenvectors to find the axis of a rotation matrix. Instead, you can read the axis vector components off directly from the skew-symmetric matrix
$$a \equiv R^T-R$$
In three dimensions (which is assumed in the question), applying this matrix to a vector is equivalent to applying a cross product with a vector made up of the three independent components of $a$:
{1, -1, 1}Extract[a, {{3, 2}, {3, 1}, {2, 1}}]
This one-line method of finding the axis is applied in the following function. To get the angle of rotation, I construct two vectors ovec, nvec perpendicular to the axis and to each other, to find the cosine and sine of the angle using the Dot product (could equally have used Projection). To get a first vector ovec that is not parallel to the axis, I permute the components of the axis vector using the fact that
In the test, I have to account for the fact that if the function axisAngle defined the axis vector with the opposite sign as the random test vector, I have to reverse the sign of the rotation angle. This is what the factor Dot[v, axis] does.
Explanation of how the axis results from a skew-symmetric matrix
If $\vec{v}$ is the axis of rotation matrix $R$, then we have both $R\vec{v} = \vec{v}$ and $R^T\vec{v} = \vec{v}$ because $R^T$ is just the inverse rotation. Therefore, with $a \equiv R^T-R$ as above, we get
$$a \vec{v} = \vec{0}$$
Now the skew-symmetric property $a^T = -a$, which can be seen from its definition, means there are exactly three independent matrix element in $a$. They can be arranged in the form of a 3D vector $\vec{w}$ which must have the property $a \vec{w} = 0$. This vector is obtained in the Extract line above. In fact, $a \vec{x} = \vec{w}\times \vec{x}$ for all $\vec{x}$, and hence if $a \vec{x} = 0$ then $\vec{x}\parallel\vec{w}$. Therefore, the vector $\vec{v}$ is also parallel to $\vec{w}$, and the latter is a valid representation of the rotation axis.
Edit 2: speed considerations
Since the algorithm above involves only elementary operations that can be compiled, it makes sense that a practical application of this approach would use Compile. Then the function could be defined as follows (keeping the return values arranged as above):
This is more than an order of magnitude faster than the un-compiled version. I removed Orthogonalize from the code because I didn't find it in the list of compilable functions.
Note that Eigensystem is not in that list, either.
Edit 3
The first version of axisAngle demonstrated the basic math, but the compiled version axisAngle1 (together with the re-defined axisAngle as a wrapper) is faster. One thing that was missing was the correct treatment of the edge case where the rotation is by exactly $\pi$ in angle.
I added that fix only to the compiled version (axisAngle1) because I think that's the more practical version anyway. The trivial case of zero rotation angle was already included in the earlier version.
To explain the added code, first note that for angle $\pi$ you can't read off the axis from $R^T - R$ because the resulting matrix vanishes. To get around this singular case, we can use the geometric fact that a rotation by $\pi$ is equivalent to an inversion in the plane perpendicular to the rotation axis given by the unit vector $\vec{n}$. Therefore, if we form the sum of a vector $\vec{v}$ and its $\pi$-rotated counterpart, the components transverse to the rotation axis cancel and the result is always parallel to the axis. In matrix form,
Since this holds for all vectors, it is a matrix identity. The right-hand side contains a matrix $\vec{n}\vec{n}^T$ which must have at least one row that's nonzero. This row is proportional to $\vec{n}^T$, so you can read of the axis vector directly from $(R+1)$, again without any eigenvalue computations.
Beautiful! (+1) My hamfisted approach to this has been an opportunity to learn.
–
ubpdqnAug 6 '13 at 22:28
Note (as you have outlined) you could also obtain the axis from NullSpace[m-Transpose[m]]
–
ubpdqnAug 7 '13 at 4:17
@ubpdqn True, but that takes more computation... as I said, you can read the axis off literally from the matrix a itself.
–
JensAug 7 '13 at 5:15
Actually for cases $\theta=0$ and $\theta=\pi$ the $R-R^T$ is a zero matrix and the axis is thus maps to {{0,0,0},0) in your code. The test set always skirts these "points". The eigensystem allows extraction of the eigenvector associated with eigenvalue 1). I agree with lack of simplicity or elegance using the eigensystem. I found it a lazy way to deal with these anomalous cases: integer*$\pi$. I think my code works now. Passes your test (up orientation of axis issue) and the "extreme" cases.
–
ubpdqnAug 7 '13 at 5:29
Maybe the easiest way to deal with the isotropic cases ($\pm$IdentityMatrix[3]) would be to append the rule axis /. {0, 0, 0} -> {0, 0, 1} to the result. The choice of rotation axis is arbitrary in that case and I'd fix it to be the z axis.
–
JensAug 7 '13 at 5:41
Presentations also has an EulerAngles routine that will return the two sets of Euler angles for any of the possible sequence of rotations specified by strings. For example, here are the two sets of Euler angles of the example for two different rotation sequences.
It doesn't seem to work with a rotation of $\pi$ about the {0,0,1}.
–
rcollyerAug 6 '13 at 14:39
@rcollyer, that is to be expected because the rotation group $SO(3)$ cannot be covered by a single chart. Each chart will have its cases that are problematic. I used this parametrization and it worked for the OP's question. Still using this and going with sols = NSolve[eqns[[2]] == 0, t] we get $t=0$ for your case. The technique I used for the axis of rotation should be fine for all cases, however.
–
Suba ThomasAug 6 '13 at 14:55
True, but I think it is amenable to decomposition into the generators of rotation, i.e. the rotations should have eigenvalues of the form $\pmatrix{e^{i \theta} & 1 & e^{-i \theta}}$, or for real rotations $\pmatrix{\cos\theta + i \sin\theta & 1 & \cos\theta - i \sin\theta}$. Thus, the angle is easily recoverable. As to the direction, I have not yet looked through your code.
–
rcollyerAug 6 '13 at 15:05
Thanks for pointing that out. With your approach the angle of rotation is ambiguous for the OP's question, i.e we don't know if it is +20 or -20, whereas with the parametrization I used only + 20 satisfied all conditions. Probably quaternions will give a unique correct solution, but I do not have the material before me now.
–
Suba ThomasAug 6 '13 at 15:20
Well you can choose the angle to be between $0$ and $2 \pi$, to fix the branch.
–
rcollyerAug 6 '13 at 15:25
Mathematica is a registered trademark of Wolfram Research, Inc. While the mark is used herein with the limited permission of Wolfram Research, Stack Exchange and this site disclaim all affiliation therewith.
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Fall's Most Unexpected Nail Color? Green in All Its Glory
The most exciting fall 2018 nail color is one you’ve probably never thought to grab off the polish wall: Green in all its variations. The shade has been permeating Instagram leading up to autumn, and there are a handful of particular shades that seem to be the most popular, from mossy forest green to Nickelodeon-level slime green.
We could have the runways to thank: Verdant greens gained steam last season because of designers including Tom Ford, Valentino, and Sonia Rykiel, and it continued during this past fashion month at Prada, Miu Miu, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh.
But—because not everyone can or wants to rock a neon green Versace suit like Blake Lively—the color trend made its way into beauty. First it was through hair, when celebrities like SZA, Kim Kardashian, and Dua Lipa went for bright shades, then it trickled down to nails, which is decidedly less noticeable but just as cool, as evidenced by Instagram:
Green nails look good running through your hair. They also look good while holding broccoli. As pop star Kim Petras demonstrated, neon green nail polish is so powerful it can even make a French tip cool again. It's is also a great way to add color to an outfit without overdoing it. Plus, uploading a picture of your green nail manicure means you have an excuse to caption it with every green emoji possible. Finally, the T. Rex and kiwi emoji can get the respect they deserve. Shop below for the best green nail polish shades for fall 2018.
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Intellect Orbs : Artifact
Description
Intellect Orbs are large, crystalline spheres, mounted on the end of a short staff. The staff is about one and a half feet long, and is comprised of strange metals and synth. The orb is a large sphere, about a foot in diameter, and appears to be made from a clear, quartz-like crystal. Inside the crystal are layer upon layer of highly detailed, painstakingly small facets. The outside of the crystal is perfectly smooth with no facets, however. It’s like the crystal was intentionally grown this way.
The staff ends is four, claw-like plates that extend, straight out, from the base of the staff. It appears that these metal “feet” are intended to lock the orb in place, and many have constructed tables that hold these unique items. It’s not uncommon to see them built so that the staff is not visible, and it appears as a simple crystal ball setting on a table.
The orb itself is held in place by a strange, four fingered claw of layered, geometric design. Three of the fingers hold one side, while a fourth “thumb” holds the opposite side of the orb. The strange claw doesn’t seem to match up to anything known or seen in the world. These strange claws travel about a quarter of the way up the orb. They hold the orb firmly in place, only allowing it to spin upon activation.
When activated, the entire crystal emits a strange, but pleasant, soft hum. The crystal will glow with faintly varying colors, and then flash blurry images thru-out it’s structure. These images are undecipherable, but appear to grow from the center, filling the entire orb. Then, they fade out as they wrap outwards around the crystal. Once activated, the crystal will also slowly spin within it’s setting.
Details
Level:
1d6+1
Form:
The Intellect Orb is a large crystal ball, set atop a staff comprised of strange metals and synth. It is held in place by a strange, alien-looking claw with only four fingers.
Depletion:
1 in 1d20 (5%)
Effect:
The Intellect Orbs can be activated with a standard action, but the user must be focused on an individual that is within immediate distance from the orb. When activated, this item allows the user to commune with a powerful information network. This network will grant the user information about a given target. These images will appear as blurry and indecipherable to any but the user. The orb will continue to project images of the targets past, and possible future for up to 1 minute before shutting down.
Many people believe these are fortune-telling devices, or even connected to the datasphere. However, there is actually a much more sinister intelligence behind these items. The machine intelligence, Deus Ex, deployed these devices into the world countless eons ago. He still maintains control and contact with the working ones. The images it produces are carried on his satellite network, and he controls every aspect of them.
Because of their origin, the images are often vague. Deus uses information gathered from satellites and the orbs themselves. This means that he can give extremely accurate images of most peoples past and current life. The satellites that Deus employs are massively advanced, and can even see details miles below the surface of the planet.
However, Deus can only calculate the most probable future events. This has proven to provide hit and miss predictions for any future images. Deus has accurately predicted many events through these items, but has seen more than one prediction end up way off of actual events. Because of this, Deus tends to be vague and mysterious with the information he delivers.
Finally, Deus controls the images sent through the globes. He uses these to both gather information and manipulate people. He can send images through that will hopefully guide the characters to wherever, or whatever, Deus wants.
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Worlds Within Worlds...
A blog about comics, yo-yos, anime, juggling, movies, music, esperanto, and any of my other eclectic hobbies...
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
On previews review...
Ok, so I know I haven't updated for a looong time now, and I'm sure no one is still actively reading, but maybe someone's still subscribed via RSS? In any case, here goes...
Chris has the new Previews Review up for October, and so much looks interesting. Money for me is super-tight right now so I probably won't actually be buying any of this for a while, but I have to agree with Chris when he said it looks like a good month. Here's some meta-commentary.. :)
Blue Spring
I have to say that I'm very interested in Blue Spring from Yaiyo Matsumoto. I haven't read any of his other works as of yet, but I saw the movie based on Blue Spring and was very impressed with it. The combination of great soundtrack, visuals, and Ryuhei Matsuda in the lead (also did a great job in Taboo, along with good supporting characters and an interesting story worked out well. I actually shouldn't focus too much on Ryuhei's character of Kujo since things really revolve around him and his best friend Aoki. Reminded me of the anime FLCL (Fooly Cooly) in terms of oozing with style and the relationship to music, but Blue Spring is much more of a straight-forward story (FLCL is too, but doesn't seem that way at first).
One thing I gleamed from a post in IMDB is that the kanji characters for youth/adolescence (seishun) mean "blue" and "spring". The title of this manga/movie however is literally Blue Spring (aoi haru), so kind of a play on words. But the story is certainly about adolescence, being a look at the life of various students in a school where there isn't a lot of hope to go around. I'm really curious to see if the manga goes into more depth on the individual stories that make up the movie. I enjoyed the Battle Royale movie, but ultimately found the original novel to be a much more engrossing and coherant experience, with a lot more time to dwell on the individual characters.
As If!
Wow, I never heard of As If before, but this looks really good. A strip about daily life at school that doesn't take itself too seriously but isn't just parody either? I'm in for that... and the artwork?
Something I've been saying for a while now is not to be too worried about manga influence. The US has enough inherant diversity in it (due to cultures mashed together and sheer size) that nothing too monolithic for too long. I think one of the greater influences I see happening is less about slavish manga copying and more about a general move toward more "iconic" storytelling (in McCloud's sense of things being stylized). That not everything has to be about realism and if your story isn't totally serious, it isn't a sin for someone's eyes to bug out or an anvil fall on their head from time to time. :) And not to pin too much on manga, comic strips in general have always tended toward iconic, and online strips seem to be really gaining footholds in popularity.
In any case, take a look at the art style of As If, especially comparing the first couple of strips with the latest couple. Eyes shrink, screentone becomes washes. The whole thing looks a lot less generic, and more personal. Congrats to Amy for some real progression as an artist through the life of the strip. Now I just need to sit down and read the thing. :)
Vanyda (The Building Opposite)
I hadn't heard of Vanyda, since I'm still a newbie when it comes to French BD. That cover image for The Building Opposite looked nice from a distance, but I wanted to see more. I found this page for L'annee du Dragon, which looks like a pretty interesting urban tale with an (imaginary perhaps?) dragon in it. Click on Gallery for a pop-up window full of a ton of full finished pages, character designs, and other stuff. I have to say that this guy is a great artist. Occationally, there is something that seems "manga-ish", but I probably wouldn't even be thinking in that direction if not for Chris's mention of Nouvelle Manga in relation to it. Very nice stuff...
The rest...
Wet Moon sounds interesting. I was tempted to go to an art school at some point... perhaps an interesting contrast to Paradise Kiss?
My Mom did some temp work at some point, so Temporary seems like an interesting concept. When I saw the page with preview art, I was a bit wary looking at the thumbnails, since I'm not usually into cramped styles as much. But as soon as I clicked around to get full-size images, I could see that it worked really well for this story and wasn't actually as cramped as I'd thought at first glance.
Of course I have to mention Walking Man. This looks like something I'll really enjoy. A lot of times I really love slide-of-life stories, especially those dealing with nature and going back to a slower pace of life. I love Yokohama Shopping Trip Log for just that reason (which better come out some day guys!), and I'm thinking this will work with me for exactly the same reasons. During the holiday, I took a couple of hours to go to a local park and walk around, snap pictures, and just generall relax and contemplate life. Comics, movies, animation or whatever that can capture that same sort of feeling without being boring are a rare gift I think.
Lastly, I've loved Sam Kieth's style for a really long time now. Some day I'll pick up the Maxx GNs to complement my back issues... I picked up Zero Girl a year or so ago and while the story isn't the most amazing thing ever, his style shows through as always and makes it worthwhile. Ojo sounds like something I'd really enjoy, especially with the word that his writing lives up to the visual aspects...
Anyway, cheers to everyone in the comics blogosphere. Don't count me totally out of the game yet. :)
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WSPR 2200M
I have been receiving many WSPR stations on 600M using a 40M Windom with 80M folded ends up about 30ft going directly to my TS-2000. Stations out to 1500kM from sunset to NLT 10PM local.
When I try to monitor 2200M using the same setup, I see absolutely nothing. I am at 136kHz using WSJTx and all settings same as those used above. Is this an expected outcome with this type antenna/Rx combo? Or do I have some specific problem.
I see other activity being uploaded to the wsprnet so know there are stations on.
For issues with this site, email the WSPRNET Admin Team or post to the site forum. Downloads and more information about WSPR program and the MEPT_JT mode, as well as other modes by Joe Taylor (K1JT), can be found at the WSJT Home Page.
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Release Dates
Community Stats
Summary
Arc System Works' high-resolution fighter returns with an entirely retuned fighting system, new stages, new characters, graphics, voices and the ability to create matches between old and new characters in the Generations Mode. Rock on with over 20 deadly combatants, including 2 new characters! All of your favorite characters have returned with new moves and an alternate EX version of each. Accent Core also introduces 2 reinvented fighters, A.B.A and Order-Sol that have never been seen outside of Japan.
Features:
Over 20 deadly combatants to choose from: All of your favorite characters have returned with new moves and an alternate EX version of each. Accent Core also introduces 2 reinvented fighters, A.B.A and Order-Sol that have never been seen outside of Japan.
Refined fighting game system with 3 new gameplay systems: Accent Core’s Force Break, Throw Escape and Slash Back systems give all the fighters’ new defensive and offensive capabilities.
New sights and sounds: New backgrounds, character voices and an introductory animation have been added for a fresh Guilty Gear experience.
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As data protection becomes a hot topic again with the publication of the ‘A Question of Trust‘ report, Professor Steve Furber asks if we should be worried. I have always assumed that government security agencies – GCHQ, NSA, etc – can snoop on what they like, when they like, and that this is in the interests […]
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Business owners speak up at La Jolla Shores Association meeting
Two business owners came before the La Jolla Shores Association (LJSA) at its July 11 meeting to reveal their companies were suffering due to the recent sudden enforcement of city codes.
Daniel Woods, four-year owner of Beach Shoot San Diego at 2160 Avenida de la Playa, attended the meeting with his wife and newborn infant to tell the LJSA about his wedding and adventure photography business being cut short.
“According to the municipal code, it’s illegal to pay a photographer for a photo taken on the beach,” he said. “That’s unfortunate because my livelihood has come to a halt.”
Woods said he has begun getting tickets from the La Jolla Shores lifeguards for violating municipal code 63.20.20 that states it is unlawful for a corporation to carry on a commercial operation on the beach. He said after four years of shooting images in the Shores area, the city is suddenly prosecuting him.
“There should be a legal way for a family to get their photograph taken on these beautiful beaches,” Woods said.
In that same vein, Camille Berry stood before the board in her blue camouflage fatigues and said that she helps her husband run a very small scuba diving business in Mission Beach called Poseidon’s Divers.
The couple teaches safety education and SCUBA certification at La Jolla Cove and offers specialized training for disabled veterans. But now they need a permit to operate in the Cove waters.
“We were alarmed by the idea of permitting because it would shut down our business,” she said.
The board thanked the petitioners for their comments, but took no action on the matters presented.
In other Shores news:
• Quiet Fourth: Police department community relations officer Alan Alvarez reported that four officers were assigned to The Shores during the Fourth of July festivities and it was an “extremely tame” holiday, with no outstanding arrests.
• Noisy ice cream trucks: Alvarez said ice cream trucks are regulated on the level of noise they produce, but there is no regulation on the number of trucks allowed in an area at a given time. “They are not allowed to block traffic, though,” he said.
• Poliferation of Pop-ups: Alvarez told the board that the closed tents that saturate the beaches during holidays and summer weekends are not allowed, but “if you can see inside the tent, you’re good-to-go,” he explained, claryfying that one side of a tent must be open at all times for it to be “legal.”
• Sewer Pumps: Those in pump station 27 will be replaced starting on July 16, according to Erin Demorest, representative for city council member Sherri Lightner.
• Park Patrol: The LJSA’s June request to the city for a ranger to work at Kellogg Park was denied due to lack of budget funds, but as a result of the query, La Jolla now has two extra police patrolling the area for the months of July and August.
• New Crosswalks: Resident Dan Allen requested the board add to its September agenda a request to the city for crosswalks on Princess Street and Torrey Pines Road, and another location east of Hillside Drive. LJSA does not meet in August.
• Unruly Seagulls. LJSA Chair Audrey Keane suggested someone be hired to put lids on the trashcans and shut down the park each night. Seagulls are pulling garbage out of the open bins and making a mess of Kellogg Park at the end of each day.
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Received citations as a main SEO factor of Google Scholar results ranking
Summary The aim of this article is to analyze the web positioning factors that can influence the order, by relevance, in Google Scholar and the subsequent evaluation of the importance of received citations in this ordering process. The methodology of reverse engineering was applied, in which a comparison was made between the Google Scholar ranking and another ranking consisting of only the number of citations received by documents.
This investigation was conducted employing four types of searches without the use of keywords: by publication, year, author, and “cited by”. The results were matched in the four samples with correlation coefficients between the two highest rankings, which exceeded 0.9. The present study demonstrates more clearly than in previous research how citations are the most relevant off-page feature in the ranking of search results on Google Scholar. The other features have minimal influence. This information provides a solid basis for the academic search engine optimization (ASEO) discipline. We also developed a new analysis procedure for isolating off-page features that might be of practical use in forthcoming investigations.
1. Introduction
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process employed to optimise websites and their content to place them in favourable positions in search engine results (Enge; Spencer; Stricchiola, 2015). SEO is also a well-established profession within the new industry of digital communication, as shown by the existence of a wide range of monographs, professional publications and academic work. Its purpose is to highlight and strengthen the quality of documents to increase their visibility to the algorithms that establish the ranking positions in search engines, particularly Google. This goal must be achieved without falsifying the characteristics of documents, i.e., without employing fraudulent means.
Google Search results pages are ordered by relevance (Google, 2017). According to Google, this relevance criterion is calculated based on more than 200 features. Google does not specify these features or their specific weight; they merely disclose partial and general information, including that the quality of the content and backlinks are the two predominant factors (Ratcliff, 2016; Schwartz, 2016). The reason provided by Google for this lack of transparency is to fight against spam (Beel; Gipp, 2010). If all of the details of ranking factors were made available, spammers could more easily place low-quality documents in favourable positions. Nevertheless, this black box policy works to the detriment of SEO professionals who conduct their activities ethically and whose work is hindered by a lack of reliable information.
Some SEO companies (Gielen; Rosen, 2016; Localseoguide, 2016; MOZ, 2015; Searchmetrics, 2016) conduct reverse engineering research to measure the impact of the factors involved in Google’s positioning process. In this research, many searches have been analysed to identify positioning factors based on the characteristics of pages placed in the first positions. Due to the great number of factors involved in the process of positioning, it is extremely difficult to establish the factors that are truly relevant and the extent to which they influence the final positioning of documents. In addition, Google’s positioning process is highly dynamic, with the algorithm undergoing dozens of changes per year (MOZ, 2017).
In recent years, SEO has been applied to academic search engines. This new process is known as Academic SEO (ASEO) (Beel; Gipp, 2009b, 2010; Codina, 2016; Martín-Martín et al., 2016a; Muñoz-Martín, 2015). Scholars are placing increasingly greater emphasis on enhancing the visibility of their articles in academic search engines. Articles appearing in the leading positions enhance their visibility, thus increasing the probability of being read and cited, and as a consequence, they are more likely to improve the personal h indices of their authors (Farhadi et al., 2013).
In many cases, the same optimisation procedures used successfully on Google Search are being applied to Google Scholar. However, Google Scholar has its own algorithm. Few studies have addressed the specific ordering factors employed by Google Scholar, and among those that could be cited are Beel and Gipp (2009b; 2009c; 2010); Beel, Gipp and Wilde (2010); Martín-Martín et al. (2014; 2017); Orduña-Malea et al. (2016).
The purpose of the present study was to analyse the features of the documents that can influence relevance rankings in Google Scholar. We are particularly interested in the citations received by documents. We aimed to assess the influence of the number of citations received in the ranking algorithm. The number of times that a document is cited is a key feature for determining the specificity of the Google Scholar ranking process.
We believe that the influence of citations is much greater than authors and publishers might believe. For example, the instructions to authors from academic journals provide guidelines regarding how to improve their ranking positions in Google Scholar (Elsevier, 2012; Wiley, 2015; Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017). In these guides, the citations received are not mentioned or are treated without the importance that they deserve.
This article reports the findings of a reverse engineering study that used a new method of analysis. This method allows us to block some factors of the algorithm of positioning, specifically those depending on external elements of ranked pages. In this manner, we could focus the study on a small set of factors with greater control. Our hypothesis is that if we compare the rankings applying only the number of citations received with the standard Google Scholar ranking in searches in which only external factors participate, then we can identify the weight of the citations in the set of these external factors. If the two compared rankings are similar, then the citations will carry significant weight.
This new methodology is possible because of Google Scholar’s advanced search form, which allows users to restrict the search fields to the author, year and source. Only external factors participate in these types of searches in which there are no keywords. In this way, the results obtained herein are far more reliable than those of previous studies using reverse engineering on Google Search without this control of variables.
2. Related works
Google Scholar has become an alternative to classic scientific citation indexing services, such as Web of Science (WoS) or Scopus. The positions of these commercial indexing services in the market could be jeopardised if Google Scholar offers a free product of similar quality. For this reason, Google Scholar has been analysed using several approaches:
Limited research regarding the process of information retrieval and search effectiveness has, however, been conducted (Jamali; Asadi, 2010; Walters, 2008). Few works about the intervening factors in ranking algorithms according to relevance have been published (Beel; Gipp, 2009a; 2009b; 2009c; Beel; Gipp; Wilde, 2010).
Unlike the process of positioning in Google Search, that used in Google Scholar has aroused little scientific interest, which is somewhat unexpected considering that it influences the articles that are read. It is widely acknowledged that the first items appearing on a search result list receive more attention from users than subsequent items do (Marcos; González-Caro, 2010). A better position in the ranking implies better chances of being found and read.
Some conclusions can be drawn from the existing works regarding relevance rankings in Google Scholar:
The keywords used in the search must appear in the document’s title to enable favourable positioning of the document (Beel; Gipp, 2009a);
The frequency of keywords in the text of the document does not appear to be a determining factor in establishing its ranking order (Beel; Gipp, 2009a);
Recent articles are more highly ranked than older articles (Beel; Gipp, 2009a) to compensate for the Matthew effect (Merton, 1968): articles with many citations tend to be ranked first; therefore, these articles have more readers and more citations and consequently consolidate their positions at the top (Martín-Martín et al., 2016b); and
The number of citations received is a determining factor in establishing the ranking order by relevance (Beel; Gipp, 2009c; Martín-Martín et al., 2014).
The latter conclusion is particularly relevant to the present study. However, these investigations have some limitations. In Beel and Gipp (2009c), all SEO features were analysed together; therefore, the variables related to on-page features were not blocked, and the results are not sufficiently clear.
In Martín-Martín et al. (2014) only searches by year were used. The central aim of the present research was to corroborate this conclusion by applying a methodology that establishes stricter control over variables. This methodology allowed us to obtain an accurate insight into the relevance of received citations in relation to all external features of the ranking algorithm in Google Scholar.
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The ludicrous always partakes of the unexpected and nowhere does the unexpected happen more frequently than on the ball field. One of the most laughable incidents occurred in a game between the Union and Hope Clubs played west of the Fair Grounds [in 1868], on which occasion the Union boys appeared in bright new uniform that had been ordered from the East. One of the Union nine selected for this game, Kieselhorst failed to put in an appearance, and Julius Smith was chosen to fill his position but the latter’s uniform had not materialized and he positively refused to go on the field without a uniform in which resolution he was determined, more particularly so, because he had escorted his sweetheart to the grounds and naturally desired to show up to the best advantage. Jule Smith and Kieselhorst were about the same height, but the former was of much larger and more muscular development. He was finally induced to don Kieselhort’s uniform and though it was a tight fit he was so anxious to show his lady love what a fine player he was that he put forth all his energy to outdo his fellow players. Jule Smith was a fine batter and when his time came he hit the ball with so much force that it went sailing way down centerfield while he himself flew like a winged Mercury to first base where he was encouraged to continue his running by the loud shouts of his companions “to make a home run.” At third base the shouts were more vociferous and urgent. Jule put in his best sprinting licks and landed safe at home amid the most terrific shouts ever heard on the ball field. When he recovered himself enough to look around it was to discover the players rolling around on the grass all convulsed with laughter and the game at a standstill. A friendly Indian, Rufus Lackland, came to his aid and escorted him to the dressing room where Jule was quickly brought to a realization of the fact that his pants had parted.
-E.H. Tobias, writing in The Sporting News (November 30, 1895)
I think this little story is a much better way to put the 1868 series of posts to bed than to have me write up some kind of ponderous essay on the significance of it all. If you've been following along, you already know my thinking as to the importance of the 1868 season and I'm not feeling the need to go over everything again. I'd rather just point out that Julius Smith, in a game that year, splint his pants while hitting a home run.
The match game of base ball, which was to come off on yesterday afternoon between the Hope and Resolute Clubs of this city, did not come off on account of a dispute arising between both Clubs - the latter Club having two players on their nine belonging to the Empire Club.
-Missouri Republican, September 27, 1864
And now we know even more about the Hope and Resolutes. The Resolutes were a bunch of cheaters and the two clubs probably didn't like each other much.
At first glance, the Resolutes attempt to use two members of the Empire Club in their nine doesn't appear to be that big of a deal. It wasn't uncommon for a club to use members of other clubs to fill out their nine for a match, if they were short players. The fact that the Hope protested this tells us a few things. First, the scheduled match was viewed by the clubs as something more than a friendly. There was something at stake in this match. It may have been simply pride or honor but it may also have been the season series.
Secondly, this tells us a great deal about the nature of baseball in St. Louis during the Civil War. The fact that there was a protest shows us that the game had developed beyond its social function and was seen as something more than physical exercise and fun. The game had developed a competitive function and the teams were playing to win. This is extremely important as it parallels the national evolution of the game Morris talked about in But Didn't We Have Fun? and Goldstein wrote about in A History of Early Baseball. This is more evidence to support the idea that St. Louis baseball, during the war, was dynamic and growing.
We see this kind of dispute, again and again, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, as teams are fighting for the championship under the auspices of the state amateur association and the association had to adjudicate the disputes. It's fascinating to see the same thing in 1864 when there was no official body to mediate between the clubs and enforce the rules of competition.
Sterling Price
While the war in the east had devolved into trench warfare and the seige of Petersburg by September of 1864, the war in Missouri, after a rather lengthy calm, had become, once again, rather dynamic. On September 19, 1864, Sterling Price invaded Missouri, with the goal of capturing St. Louis, and, by extension, the state for the Confederacy. It was, without a doubt, a desperate gamble and the last Confederate offensive west of the Mississippi.
On September 27, 1864, Price engaged Union forces at Pilot Knob. While a Confederate victory, the outnumbered Union forces held off Price's army long enough and bloodied them to such an extent that the idea of taking St. Louis became an impossibility. Price's secondary target was Jefferson City, the state capitol, but as he moved westward, he found the city too heavily guarded to take. While Price would continue to push westward, into Kansas, and engage Union troops through October, Pilot Knob really put an end to possibility of Price achieving any of his strategic goals.
The Battle of Pilot Knob
Also on September 27, Bloody Bill Anderson and his guerrilla forces road into Centralia, Missouri, stopped a train on the North Missouri Railroad, and captured twenty-three Union soldiers who were aboard the train. Anderson executed twenty-two of those soldiers, sparing only Sgt. Thomas Goodman, who Anderson took prisoner and planned to exchange for one of his men who had previously been captured by Union forces.
Bloody Bill Anderson
It should be noted, without excusing the actions of Anderson in Centralia, that Union forces had executed six of Anderson's men just four days earlier, after they had been captured following a skirmish near Rocheport. Executing prisoners is always a bad idea because it places your own men at risk, should they be captured. Sheridan and Mosby went through the same thing in the Shenandoah before coming to their senses and reaching an agreement about the treatment of prisoners of war.
Sometimes we romanticize the Civil War but it's important to remember that, like Sherman said, war IS hell. It's ugly, brutal, and violent. The worst aspects of human nature come to the surface, even among good men in a noble cause. War corrupts the human spirit and makes devils of us all.
On that pleasant note, we come to the end of 1864. Rather than put up a post summarizing the material from that year just yet, I'm going to push on and put up stuff from the beginning of the 1865 season. What I plan on doing is folding the 1865 stuff, through the Empire Club's anniversary game, into the 1864 summary and put up one page for 1864/1865. At that point this series is at an end and I'll try to put together some kind of broad overview of Civil War-era baseball in St. Louis. I will be pushing on into 1865 but nothing comprehensive; rather, I'll be covering the Empire Club's claim to the Championship to the West. So we have that to look forward to.
There was an interesting match of base ball Saturday afternoon, between the Hope and Resolute clubs, the former being successful. The total runs were: Hope 33; Resolute 21.
-Missouri Republican, August 30, 1864
This is the first reference I have to the Resolutes, a club that would exist and compete in St. Louis into the 1870s. They are one of my favorite St. Louis clubs because, in 1865, they held their baseball picnic in Illinois, less than a mile from my house. While people lived in the Granite City area beginning around 1830, the city itself wasn't founded until 1895 and the Resolute picnic is really the only 19th century baseball activity that I'm aware of in my hometown.
One of the things I've been thinking about is the names that these Civil War-era clubs choose to take. Union. Hope. Resolute. I think that says something about these men and what was important to them. Empire. Imperial. Enterprise. Liberty. These men were not all cut from the same political clothe and we could discuss the political leanings of the Empire and Union Clubs all day but I certainly have to believe that the times that they lived in had something to do with the names they choose for their clubs. It says something to name your baseball club the Unions in 1860. It says something to name your club Resolute in 1864. These names evoked very specific values and characteristics. There was post-war club in New Orleans named the Robert E. Lees and that name made a very specific political statement. But I'm really struck not so much by the Unions or the R.E. Lees but by clubs choosing to evoke hope and resoluteness in 1864. If our forebearers could summon such courage in the face of their difficulties than we can as well. Because, I believe, that it takes courage to be hopeful and resolute. Fear and cynicism is easy; hope is difficult. So let's be resolute in our hopefulness.
First grand Basket Pic-nic of the Hope Base Ball Club, to be given on August 4th, at Laclede Station, on the P.R.R. Cars leave precisely at 8 o'clock A.M. Tickets one dollar.
P.S. - An interesting game of base ball to be played on the occasion.
-Missouri Republican, August 2, 1864
The baseball picnic would become a bit of a fad in St. Louis and we'll see that in 1865. For now, I think this is the first reference I have to a baseball picnic. So I guess that's something.
Three days before this squib appeared in the Republican, the Battle of the Crater took place. It's become a bit of a cliche to call the Civil War the first modern war. I'm not even sure what it means when we say that but the Siege of Petersburg and the Battle of the Crater have always reminded me of the First World War. Now I've also seen references to the First World War as being the last ancient war and I really have no idea what that means. Wars are a product of their time and are neither ancient nor modern. That simply are. We apply the tools that we have to the problems that we face. They did that in both the Civil War and the First World War. All civilizations and societies thought, at some point, that they were modern. And all of them, at some point, became ancient. Time is a relative concept and pretty much everything depends on where you're standing.
A match of base ball was played on Sunday afternoon, September 27th, between two newly organized clubs of this city - Hope and Eclipse - which was a decided victory of the former. Umpire, David Coyle; Scorers, J. Fountain and J.H. Teahen...
-Missouri Republican, September 28, 1863
So we have two new clubs here - the Hope and the Eclipse - and the Hope would survive the war and be one of the more prominent clubs in the post-war amateur era. This is a significant sign of the health and growth of the game in St. Louis during the war years. As I've stated before, the war certainly stunted the growth of the game in St. Louis but it absolutely did not kill it. In the middle of war, amid all of the difficulties that the war brought, clubs were still being formed and the game was still being played. The week before this match was played, the Battle of Chickamauga was fought. I mention this merely as an excuse to post this:
And for those who are confused about the subtitle of this post, it's a lyric from the above-posted Uncle Tupelo song.
We have already mentioned that on Saturday next a grand contest at base ball will take place on the grounds of the Union Club, the proceeds to be devoted to the aid of the Fireman's Fund Association. The players for the occasion have been selected from the senior clubs of the city, and are all skillful adepts at the exiting game. The following are the selections:
The best player in any of the above positions will receive a prize not exceeding $10.
The Awarding Committee will consist of the President of each of the competing clubs, and D.N. Burgoyne, Esq., President of the Relief Association. Two Prizes of equal value are also to be offered - one to the fastest runner of the bases, and one to the player throwing the ball the longest distance. The prizes are therefore open to competition from all the senior base ball clubs of the city.
The match promises to be highly interesting and there is every inducement for a large attendance. The object of the tournament is praiseworthy and the entertainment will be good.
On Saturday afternoon the Union and Hope Base Ball Clubs played their final game for the championship of Missouri. The Union club won the game 41 to 22.
Was the Hope Club the last hope in denying the Union the championship? I'm not entirely certain but I think the Unions still had another game with the Empires to play in late October. It would help if I organized my notes and was able to check all of this stuff quickly.
A match of base ball was played on Sunday afternoon, September 27th, between two newly organized clubs of this city - Hope and Eclipse - which was a decided victory of the former.-Missouri Republican, September 28, 1863
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President Obama presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Israeli President Shimon Peres.
Originally published at Rubin Reports under the title, “The Real Meaning of the Obama Visit to Israel and U.S.-Israel Relations in Obama’s Second Term.”
The international media is speculating on Obama’s visit scheduled for late March. The argument is that he would not come unless he gets some breakthrough, that is, some Israeli concession, and he wouldn’t leave happy unless he received one.
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So what would this concession be? The most likely candidate would be a freeze on constructing building within existing settlements, as Israel gave him three years ago. At that time, despite a ten-month freeze, the Palestinian Authority only came to talks at the last minute, offered nothing, and then quickly demanded another freeze. In other words, Israel did precisely what Obama asked and got nothing in return, either from his government or the Palestinians.
Actually, it is not technically true to say “nothing.” Secretly, the U.S. government promised to accept that Israel could annex “settlement blocs,” (a promise originally made by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush) that is keep the largest existing settlements near the border, in exchange for territorial swaps in a peace agreement, and to continue building in east Jerusalem.
What happened? A few months later, a visiting Vice President Joe Biden threw a tantrum about an announced zoning board decision that at some future point Israel might build in pre-1967 Jordanian-ruled territory. In effect, that was a violation of the agreement.
Then, while not explicitly going back on the settlement bloc agreement without notifying Israel, Obama made a major speech in which he put the emphasis on Israel’s return to the pre-1967 borders (that is, giving up the settlement blocs), though he did leave the door ajar for territorial swaps. That was not breaking the pledge but certainly undermined it.
After doing what Obama wanted and then getting little or nothing in exchange, Israel is now faced with claims that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never made any concessions to get negotiations going. After going along with Obama, it is now said in the United States that he tried to undermine Obama or didn’t cooperate.
And after the Palestinian Authority repeatedly killed negotiations—even after Obama announced in 2010 that they would begin shortly at Camp David and Netanyahu agreed—it is a mainstay of mass media coverage that Netanyahu is responsible for the failure of negotiations to happen.
A friend joked that Netanyahu should change his first name from Benjamin to “Hard-line” since that’s the way he’s usually presented in the Western mass media.
Thus, Israeli cynicism should be—if people knew the factors behind it—understandable. After all, the sum total of international wisdom on the now-dead (but pretended to be alive) “peace process” is that this means Israel giving up things and getting nothing in return.
Yet Israel is prepared to go along with Obama again in some fashion. Why? Because it is necessary to preserve the strong relationship with the United States. Obama will be president for the next four years and some help from him is needed on the Iran nuclear issue, the likely growing threat from Egypt, military aid, and other issues.
That is political reality.
At the same time, though, the idea—again, prevalent in mass media coverage—that Netanyahu must “moderate” to form a government is not true. First, a very important lesson: Ignore everything said by Israeli politicians and media during the coalition-forming period because it is invariably misleading. This is what experience has shown virtually without exception.
Now, Netanyahu’s basic choice is to bring together at least two of the following three parties: The traditional liberal Yesh Atid led by Yair Lapid; the Sephardic religious Shas, and the right-wing Ha-Bayit Ha-Yehudi, led by Naftali Bennett. This is like the story of how you get the fox, the chicken, and the grain across a river without something getting eaten. It is very difficult.
Yesh Atid, led by Yair Lapid, has called for Netanyahu to work hard to get talks with the Palestinians going again. This has been treated as some major move of pressure. Of course not. That’s what Lapid is going to say and should say. And Netanyahu should also say—as he has done hundreds of times in the last four years—that he wants to get negotiations going.
Professor Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. See the GLORIA/MERIA site at www.gloria-center.org.
5 COMMENTS
Obama warded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to President Shimon Peres, The Legion of Merit was awarded to IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz in the name of President Barack Obama and now what medal will be awarded to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Obama when he comes? Any guesses? From being strangled with the constant concessions from Obama, Bibi might get The Purple Heart. To be sure, that Bibi will be put on the spot to concede Israel in some manner for the benefit of Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama warded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to President Shimon Peres, The Legion of Merit was awarded to IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz in the name of President Barack Obama and now what medal will be awarded to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Obama when he comes? Any guesses? From being strangled with the constant concessions from Obama, Bibi might get The Purple Heart. To be sure, that Bibi will be put on the spot to concede Israel in some manner for the benefit of Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Who in the hell do these two africians think they are to think they can just be presedent he is not our real presedent his name is barry, he is a lier conman and murder. he took GOD out of our nation and gave our land and jobs away to illigals hes heading over there to give more jets to Isreals enemies, He is going to try to give Isreals land away GOD gave the Jews that land not one piece of that land belongs to the dirty palenstines all of them should be killed or returned to IRAN the Hell where they came from TO aLL THE JEWS MOST AMERICIANS HATE OBAMA HE SUCKS. TO THE PRESEDENT OF ISREAL I WOULD FIGHT FOR AMERICIA AND ISREAL like god comands us to don't trust him or his ugly wife go to this page see small TV (IS OBAMA THE ANTICHRIST) JESUS SAID BAMAS WHOLE NAME IN HEBREW! ps hiswife looks like a guy in drag Rhonda from USA ps obama is a dick!
Who in the hell do these two africians think they are to think they can just be presedent he is not our real presedent his name is barry, he is a lier conman and murder. he took GOD out of our nation and gave our land and jobs away to illigals hes heading over there to give more jets to Isreals enemies, He is going to try to give Isreals land away GOD gave the Jews that land not one piece of that land belongs to the dirty palenstines all of them should be killed or returned to IRAN the Hell where they came from TO aLL THE JEWS MOST AMERICIANS HATE OBAMA HE SUCKS. TO THE PRESEDENT OF ISREAL I WOULD FIGHT FOR AMERICIA AND ISREAL like god comands us to don't trust him or his ugly wife go to this page see small TV (IS OBAMA THE ANTICHRIST) JESUS SAID BAMAS WHOLE NAME IN HEBREW! ps hiswife looks like a guy in drag Rhonda from USA ps obama is a dick!
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Magna carter women's tee
$19.00
This design is intended to create to put some scrutiny " the evolution of human rights" we have the Magna carta , the Universal declaration of human rights and many other legal instruments talking about the "the sanctity of human life " yet we continue to see large scale massacres, exterminations , wars , famine that disproportionately affect the Non -western world. This is a call to examine the "language of human rights"
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Healthy eaters: Ignore glycemic index, scientists say
From Science Daily
Good news for people who are already following a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and low in sweets: New research suggests these heart-healthy eaters don’t need to worry about choosing low glycemic index foods to lower the risk of diabetes and heart disease. Though the study was not designed to test the effects of low glycemic index foods on weight control, its lead researchers looked at studies that did focus on weight and found no clear proof of a benefit.
The glycemic index is a measure of how quickly foods containing carbohydrates, such as fruits, cereals and baked goods, raise glucose levels in the bloodstream. Conventional wisdom says that high glycemic index foods like bananas and pasta are “bad” for heart health and may increase diabetes risk. But in a clinical trial reported Dec. 17 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School found little evidence to support these claims.
Study volunteers followed carefully planned diets high or low in carbohydrates and with high or low glycemic index scores. Tests tracked the volunteers’ blood pressure, cholesterol levels and sensitivity to insulin at the beginning and end of each diet. The results showed little difference between high and low glycemic index foods, says study co-director Lawrence J. Appel, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of medicine and director of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
“We were really surprised,” Appel says. “We did not detect any clear benefit of the low glycemic index diets on the major risk factors for heart disease, and we found no evidence of benefit for diabetes prevention.”
The authors looked closely at other studies focusing on the use of low glycemic index foods in weight control. “The evidence has been inconsistent that low glycemic foods help people lose more weight or keep it off,” Appel says. “In looking at the causes of obesity and ways to combat it, a narrow focus on the glycemic index seems to be unwarranted.”
Several popular diets recommend choosing carbohydrates that score low on the glycemic index, but that’s not always easy. Only laboratory tests can determine a food’s glycemic index, and the results can be unexpected: Apples score low, but cantaloupe scores high.
Appel and study co-director Frank M. Sacks, M.D., a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, wanted to find out whether foods’ glycemic index matters to heart health and diabetes prevention. They recruited 163 volunteers from Baltimore and Boston — all of whom were overweight and had above normal blood pressure — and randomly assigned them to follow one of four diets. Each diet contained the same number of calories, but those calories came from foods that were either high or low in carbohydrates, and also either high or low on the glycemic index. The volunteers ate the day’s main meal at a research center and took home their next two meals.
After five weeks on their assigned diets, the volunteers switched to a different one. Researchers tested the volunteers’ blood pressure; sensitivity to insulin; and levels of “good” high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, “bad” low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and triglycerides — fat molecules, or lipids, that play a role in heart health. The low glycemic index diets did not lower blood pressure or LDL cholesterol, and they did not improve insulin resistance.
Women made up 51 percent of the study’s volunteers, and African-Americans made up 52 percent, so the results have broad relevance, says Appel, who offers simple advice for anyone overwhelmed by conflicting messages about diet and health.
“Get back to the basics that most people already know,” he says. “Don’t drink sugar-sweetened drinks. Try to eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Try to avoid sweets, salt, and foods high in saturated and trans fats. People who follow these principles will reap the benefits.”
Appel and Sacks led three earlier clinical trials that tested ways to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, providing volunteers with carefully designed diets and measuring the effects on key health indicators. Their work established the health benefits of the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) and OmniHeart Mediterranean-style diets.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Johns Hopkins Medicine. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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Clint Eastwood - 89-year-old Eastwood is the most recent celebrity to fall victim to a death hoax. Rumors spread like wildfire that he had died of a heart attack. But this is not the first time the actor has been declared dead, as there was a similar report back in 2017.
Dwayne Johnson - The Rock reportedly died while filming a stunt in 2014. "I would love to meet the person who is starting rumors of my death - to show them how a dead foot feels up their a**," he wrote on Twitter.
Celebs who were reported dead... but were still alive
Clint Eastwood is just the most recent target of a fake death hoax
Fake news comes for everyone, especially the rich and famous. It seems like every day there's another fake story about a celebrity or public figure. However, false rumors take on new weight when it comes to celebrity deaths. Many celebs have been reported dead, when in reality they're alive and breathing. Don't believe us? Click on to meet the celebs who were falsely reported dead.
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Gift Suggestions for Very Special Mothers
You think you have it tough? What must it be like for Chaz or Jason Gould or Frances Bean to pick the perfect Mother's Day gift?
BY Christopher Harrity
May 10 2012 1:40 PM ET
To Gloria Vanderbilt, from Anderson Cooper
OK, so your mother is famous for her great taste and artistic skills, among other things. She's slightly richer than God. Her decorating theme is sophisticated lunacy, so why not expand her collection with one of Click Mort's "recapitations?"
Click Mort’s work centers on indiscreet modifications to existing porcelain figurines. Each piece is a unique consolidation of two or more previously unrelated figures, with extensive cutting, sculpting, sanding, and painting required to unify them into a new, seamless whole. The result is kitsch resurrected in a still vaguely familiar but somewhat less cozy form.
These are both disturbing and very cool and playful. Think how cute one of these knickknacks would look among the Fabergé eggs and blanc de chine foo dogs?
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Almost every city in California faces significant long-term unfunded liabilities for medical benefits (Other Post-Employment Benefits, or OPEB) and pensions (Public Employees Retirement System, or PERS) of its retired workers. The liability is “unfunded” because the city hasn”t set aside enough money for it.
However, Alameda has been ahead of the pack in finding solutions. On Wednesday, the Island could become one of the first Bay Area cities to have its public safety workers contribute toward its OPEB liability. If the City Council agrees to the contract extensions, the city”s $91 million OPEB liability will be reduced by $47 million over the next 30 years due to this partnership — all at a small cost to the city. The alternative is for the OPEB liability to continue to increase and for the city to pay it alone.
This didn”t seem possible four years ago. In 2011, the prior council was told that the city”s general fund would have a deficit of nearly $21.8 million by 2015. The city”s auditor and treasurer claimed that bankruptcy loomed and they would have to “turn off the lights” at City Hall.
But the prior City Council and public safety workers partnered to work on the problem, and today the general fund has a positive balance of nearly $31 million. That”s a $52.7 million positive swing over the predicted doom-and-gloom scenario — the city had an $11.4 million budget surplus last year with a projected $8.7 million budget surplus this year.
Recently, city financial officers praised the structural changes and policies that bought the city time to address OPEB and PERS. We needed that time to build a strong financial foundation, and if you”ve ever built or renovated a home, you know that you must start with the foundation — not the finishing touches of paint, tiling, and appliances.
The proposed contract with public safety workers represents another strong step forward in solving OPEB. If the contract extension is approved, our public safety workers will become among the first municipal employees in the Bay Area to help a city fund its OPEB liability.
In 2011, city leaders began addressing escalating medical costs for current and future employees. (The city cannot change benefits for already retired workers.) Safety employees hired after June 2011 no longer receive spousal medical benefits upon retirement, which helped cut costs. Vesting of health benefits was standardized, and health insurance increases will be shared equally beginning in 2017. In 2014, the city set up a trust fund for OPEB, which is funded with approximately $300,000. It needs much more.
Now, the new council has a plan to add more funding to the OPEB trust. Importantly, the OPEB solution must be collectively bargained — the city does not have the legal right to impose a solution onto our employees, no matter how strongly some of our constituents wish we could. Under the contract extensions, the city will make a deposit of $5 million into the OPEB trust in January 2016 (funds already set aside in past budgets), and $250,000 per year for 10 years.
Employees will contribute to the OPEB trust out of their paychecks, in amounts which increase up to 4 percent of their wages. For the first three years of the contract, they will contribute $3 million while receiving a minimum of $1.2 million in salary and benefit increases over the entire extension (no increases in 2019 and 2021 with any increase based on a salary survey). This is a fair price to pay for the flexibility to fund OPEB.
Critics argue that the salary increases will hurt us on the PERS side, but keep in mind three key points. First, before the current contract, public safety employees went seven years with no raises. Second, while state legislation capped mandatory employee contributions for pensions at 12 percent, Alameda negotiated 15 percent contributions from our employees — the highest in the Bay Area. Finally, the city has no control over PERS and depends on decisions made by the state.
An independent actuarial firm evaluated the impact of this deal on our future OPEB liabilities and projected a cumulative savings of $47.3 million to the city over 30 years. While this doesn”t fully fund future OPEB liabilities, it provides the framework to finish the job.
Next, we”ll be in a position to make the finishing touches. Once our employees contribute to the OPEB trust, future increases in contributions can be bargained for to help strengthen the trust.
Alameda has an opportunity to lead the Bay Area in dealing with OPEB liabilities. Many people had a hand in getting us to this point. Now, the City Council must approve these contracts to bring Alameda closer to fiscal and service sustainability.
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Thermal imaging camera gives your smartphone night vision
Should you need to find your dog in the bushes, or for more paranoid moments spot a lurker in your garden at night, then it's thermal imaging technology you'll need. By observing and differentiating between the infrared radiation emitted from different objects, thermal imaging allows you to see in the dark, and even through walls, in a way that would be impossible for the naked eye.
Up until now this tech hasn't come cheap, but now a new breed of infrared cameras that can clip straight into your smartphone are changing that. One such camera, the Seek Thermal has just gone on sale in the UK for the first time. WIRED took a look at it at IFA in Berlin.
Advertisement
Katie Collins
The Seek plugs into the power socket of your phone, and is remarkably discreet. While the module is small, it certainly seems robust enough, and is clad in a protective waterproof case. Fire up the app and you'll get a live thermal image on the screen of your smartphone. The detection range is -40 degrees celsius to 330 degrees celsius and it has a 20 degree to 36 degree field of view. It can identify heat sources as far as 2,000 feet away or as close as 8 inches.
The Seek doesn't have its own battery, relying instead on power from your phone. The benefit of this is that there are no extra wires required and it doesn't need to recharged between uses. The downside is that your phone battery will probably take a massive hit when it's in use. You probably won't need to use the Seek consistently for long periods, but that might be something worth keeping in mind.
There are a variety of reasons you might want to use a thermal imaging camera, which range from tasks around the home to situations like search and rescue. In day-to-day use, it can be useful for tracing water damage within ceilings and walls and identifying its source, for discovering energy efficiencies in the sealing around windows and doors or for discovering the location of clogs within pipes. It also might be a useful accessory for hunters, campers and sailors.
The Seek Camera has been out in the US for a while, but it's now available in the UK and several other European countries on Amazon for £260.
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Sie sind hier:
Schedule
We have created a repository on Open Science Frameworkwhere participants can upload their posters and slides. We encourage everyone to take advantage of this opportunity to make their work available to one another as well as to those who are unable to attend the conference.
A pdf with the updated program (as of June 14, 2017) and all abstracts in alphabetical order can be found here .
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Calling it a way to “stop the bleeding” in the state’s public pension systems, Pennsylvania Senate President Joe Scarnati (R-Jefferson) says he would support a proposal to move all new hires into a new pension system similar to the 401(k) plans that are now commonplace in the private sector.
But he questioned whether it was feasible—legislatively and legally—to change unearned future benefits for current employees, which seems to be a part of Gov. Tom Corbett’s as-yet-unseen pension reform package.
Scarnati said moving all new employees into a 401(k)-style plan, a proposal contained in Senate Bill 2, would be a tourniquet on the $40 billion pension debt that continues to grow each year.
“Stopping the bleeding isn’t enough, but it’s the first step we can do,” he said.
Defined Contribution vs. Defined Benefit
Those plans—known as “defined contribution” plans—allow employees to invest their own contributions along with a matching share from their government employer. The risk of the investments falls on the employees, rather than on the taxpayers as in a traditional defined-benefit public-sector retirement plan.
Thanks to investment losses during the recession and a decade of deliberate underfunding by the state, pension payments are set to climb by about $1 billion in the next two state budgets.
Changing to a defined contribution plan for new employees would not change those cost increases, but it would reduce the long-term obligations by slowly closing the deeply indebted defined-benefit systems.
Scarnati’s comments came one day after Charles Zogby, Corbett’s budget secretary, told reporters the administration was likely to target both the benefits of new employees and the unearned future benefits of existing employees.
Likely Court Challenge
Scarnati said he was open to such an arrangement, but he said it would be more difficult to change benefits for current employees. Aside from stiff resistance from public-sector labor unions and Democrats in the legislature, he said a court challenge would be likely.
It’s pretty clear previously earned benefits cannot be changed, but the court record is cloudy on whether future benefits could be.
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Old Partner (Wonangsori)
Rated NR78 min.2009
"Old Partner" is the story of 30 years companionship between a 40-year-old Ox and an 80-year-old man. Neither time nor civilization can go against their companionship! At 80 years old, Choi has an old ox that has worked for him for some 30 years. However, there's something special about the way Old Choi treats this ox, which is so worn-out that it might be dead any minute. The old man is single-mindedly focused on the ox, instinctively turning to the beast when he hears the cowbell even though he's nearly deaf. One spring day, however, old man Choi learns that his ox only has a year to live, which will make big troubles for him.
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Whereas, since the last term of our circuit court Charles R. Welles suddenly terminated his mortal career under an attack of that fearful scourge, the cholera, which has desolated the hearts and homes of unnumbered thousands---Page 290Resolved, That by his death the bar of Springfield has lost a highly esteemed, upright and honorable member of the legal profession.
Resolved, That his strict integrity, his social character and christian virtues endeared him to his friends, secured the confidence of his acquaintances, and rendered him a useful member of society.
Resolved, That we deeply sympathise with his family and friends in their bereavement, but in the midst of their affliction we doubt not they experience consolation in the assurance that their loss is his eternal gain.
Resolved, That a copy of these proceedings be presented to the widow and family of the deceased, and to his honor, Judge Davis, of the circuit court, with a request that they may be entered at full upon the records of the court, and that the city papers be requested to publish the same.
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Friday, 27 April 2018
GOVERNMENT has stopped funding 18 pupils attending former
first lady Grace Mugabe’s private school under the Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics (Stem) programme after it emerged that the school
controversially benefited from the state-sponsored initiative, the Zimbabwe
Independent can report.
At the peak of her husband’s 37-year rule which came to an
end last November following a military coup, Grace expanded her empire to areas
such as real estate, farming and education.
She built a private school in Mazowe.
The Independent has learnt that government has since
stopped paying fees totalling US$3 800 per term for each of the 18 pupils
enrolled at Amai Mugabe High School under the Stem programme, forcing parents
to look for places elsewhere.
The Stem programme was meant to benefit pupils attending
government, council and mission schools but not elite private schools. Maximum
fees the government was required to pay was US$1200 per child per term.
In a year government was paying Amai Mugabe High School a
total of US$205 200 for the 18 students for three terms.
Following the withdrawal, government advised parents to
either pay for the fees individually or look for affordable schools for the
Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (Zimdef) to continue to pay.
The Stem initiative was introduced at the start of 2016. It
provides free education to Advanced Level students registered for Stem
undertaking subjects like Maths, Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry and
Biology.
In January, government suspended taking new entries under
the programme. The government is however paying for pupils who had already
enrolled.
An official from the ministry said government had stopped
paying for the fees at Grace’s school because it was privately-owned and also
because the fees were above the agreed threshold.
“When the policy was initiated, it was meant to assist
government, mission and community schools, or schools in farming areas. The
target was to help students from underprivileged backgrounds that are good in
science subjects. However, questions were asked as to why Grace Mugabe’s school
was enrolling students for Stem as it is a private school and did not fall
under the required schools. It was a controversial issue but then it was a
directive,” said the government official who preferred anonymity.
Contacted for comment on Wednesday Higher and Tertiary
Education, Science and Technology Development Minister, Amon Murwira confirmed
that government had stopped paying for Stem students registered at private
schools.
“All schools that were irregularly benefiting from Stem
including private schools, I stopped paying for them without fear or favour.
The policy is we do not pay for students enrolled at private schools instead we
pay for those enrolled at government, mission or council schools. The policy is
that the fees should not exceed US$1 200,” Murwira said.
During a tour of universities and polytechnics in Bulawayo
in January, Murwira said, there was going to be a forensic audit of the Zimdef
financial accounts.
“We are re-examining Zimdef and its allocations, its public
knowledge that we are doing a forensic audit on Zimdef. What we are trying to
find out with the forensic audit is how money has been used. It’s not a witch
hunting exercise but a fact finding mission so that we completely understand
what happened with the money,” Murwira said. Zimbabwe Independent
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Incorporate the church in Holy Cross's plans. Tear the school down and refurbish the church for use with the school--after all a Catholic school should have easy access to a church for ceremonies and prayers. I was married in this church 20 years ago as well as being confirmed myself in this church. Furthermore,I have seen multiple children baptized, confirmed, etc... here. The nearby community could use a rebirth which the church would definitely foster and the school will also foster rebirth. Join these two aspects together to make a whole and stop dividing the people (as Katrina did). The community and people would benefit emmensely from joining together without all the fighting and arguing.
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opera and concerts in london and beyond
Il Signor Bruschino
13 September 2009
The word 'youth' has its own special meaning in the world of classical music. Its upper boundaries often extend far beyond what any normal person would consider young. 30-ish? Try a 'youth' orchestra for size. Pushing 40? You can still pay 'youth' prices for concerts in Salzburg or Boston. And a 'young' tenor means anyone under 50. Basically if you've still got your own teeth, you're in.
British Youth Opera don't push it quite that far, but it's not packed with peachy-cheeked 19 year olds either. Most of the singers in this Rossini double-header were still students, but many, according to the programme bios, are on their second or third degree. And about as British as the average Chelsea player, too.
Spot on with the 'Opera' bit though.
When Rossini composed the two one-acters on show, he was younger than most of this cast. Both follow a plot Rossini was to return to time and again - threatened with an arranged marriage, the spunky heroine and her cunning lover outwit their bumbling elders and end up together, happy ever after. The music too shows all the signs of his mature style - no real showstoppers, but bags of wit and invention and sunny good humour. Only a terminal Rossini-hater could fail to come out smiling. It's a pity their awkward length (around 90 minutes a piece, no breaks) makes them difficult to package as a standard night at the opera.
They shared a low-budget set of plain white steps and drapes. This worked better for the drawing-room setting of Il Signor Bruschino than for La Scala di Seta, where the titular silken ladder leading to the heroine's bedroom was confusingly substituted by a red carpet - though hiding the multiple eavesdroppers behind empty picture frames was a genius touch.
Everything seemed fanatically well-prepared, packed with detail (though sometimes distractingly so) and the standard of performance was high. No new Pavarottis, but easily the equal of many regional or touring casts. The standout for me was Natalia Romaniw (the Welsh entrant in this summer's Cardiff Singer of the World contest). Despite being one of the youngest on stage, she was a confident, sassy heroine in La Scala di Seta.
Southbank Sinfonia provided able and equally youthful musical support - I particularly liked the sparing and inventive harpsichord continuo.
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Site Mobile Navigation
Cuomo Says He Makes History, Then Repeats It
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in Albany last month. Mr. Cuomo analyzes past and present goings-on in Albany and offers commentary on his own administration, often in glowing terms.Credit
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
How can New Yorkers know for sure? Mr. Cuomo says so — and has almost every week since he took office 16 months ago.
On his fifth day in office, he challenged lawmakers to “write a new page in the history book of New York State government,” and his administration has done just that more than 80 times, judging by the number of press releases issued by his office that described one of the governor’s actions as historic.
Sometimes the accomplishments seemed destined for some history books, like the legalization of same-sex marriage. But the governor has called a loan program for energy-efficient home improvements historic, as well as the creation of a new application process for economic development grants. The establishment of a Medicaid spending commission? That was historic, too.
“There’s that word again,” one Albany reporter, Liz Benjamin of the YNN cable network, noted as she live-blogged a news conference last year. And a Democratic state senator, Rubén Díaz Sr. of the Bronx, mocked the construct as he complained that the governor had staged a signing of the state budget for the news media before the Legislature had finished voting on it last month.
“Can you imagine: this was history in the making to sign into Law a Budget that had not been approved by the legislature ... only in New York,” Mr. Díaz wrote. (In his missive, Mr. Díaz reached for the history books himself, declaring, “The whole situation only reminds me of when Rome was controlled by emperors.”)
An eager student of history and of politics, Mr. Cuomo enjoys analyzing the political footwork of Albany power brokers present and past, and he frequently offers play-by-play commentary on his own administration — at news conferences, on speaking tours, and in radio interviews, video recordings and news releases.
On New Year’s Day, his office sent an e-mail to New Yorkers with the subject: “A Look Back at a Historic Year.” In a book his office produced touting his first year’s accomplishments, something was described as “historic” or history-making every other page — 21 times over 39 pages.
In appearances around the state, Mr. Cuomo has cued a PowerPoint slide with the proclamation, “A historic year.”
“Last year’s legislative session will go down in the history books as one of the most successful legislative sessions in modern political history,” Mr. Cuomo told an audience on Long Island in February. He repeated a variation of that line in Plattsburgh the next day, and in case anyone was worried that he was exaggerating, he added, “Literally.”
Mr. Cuomo rarely needs a thesaurus. When lawmakers passed his budget last year, he championed the spending plan as “historic” and “transformational.” When they passed his budget this year, he declared it a “historic” moment that would spur a “major transformation” for the state.
“Politicians as a class seem to be more concerned than most of us about their place in history,” said Robert Lehrman, who was chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore and now teaches at American University. “This is a sort of thing with a long historical tradition — I think maybe Plutarch was the first to use the term, though he probably didn’t use it in English.”
Mr. Lehrman, who wrote speeches for Mr. Cuomo when he was an assistant federal housing secretary, said Mr. Cuomo’s use of “historic” probably indicated “some hapless assistant press secretary in his office has a tic like that.”
“Anyone who knows New York knows that New York makes history every day,” he said. Mr. Cuomo declined to be interviewed for this article , but at a news conference last year, after one of his aides described an overhaul of the state ethics laws as “historic,” the governor reflected on the characterization, saying, “It’s a word I think that’s often overused in Albany — ‘historic legislation.’ ” But that observation did not discourage him. He continued: “I think it’s actually justified today. This is a historic piece of legislation.”
Some say his frequent use of the word comes at the risk of ringing hollow.
“A rich person does not brag about it — only the nearly rich does,” said Elvin T. Lim, an associate professor of government at Wesleyan University and the author of “The Anti-Intellectual Presidency,” a critique of presidential oratory.
And Martin J. Medhurst, a professor of rhetoric and communication at Baylor University, advised caution.
“Not only does the term lose its power, but it undercuts the credibility of the person saying it,” he said. “When people start noticing it over and over, they attribute that to the speaker trying to puff himself up, and that hurts the ethos of a communicator.”
His frequent citation of his place in history, according to rhetoricians, provides a frame for how he hopes the public in New York and across the country will view him — as someone who turned a dysfunctional state capital from a place of corruption to competence.
George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, said Mr. Cuomo, oft-mentioned as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, is trying to project that “he realizes that the country has ‘historic’ challenges, and he has met them in New York and can meet them in the country.” “If he’s going to run for president,” Professor Lakoff said, “he can’t just be the so-so son of a great former governor. What he has to do is make his mark on his own.”
Mr. Cuomo’s history lessons began early — his father, Mario M. Cuomo, was a three-term governor renowned for his philosophical oratory. The elder Mr. Cuomo was himself fond of citing history, and at one point, assessing a decade in office, he wrote, “We have tried to advance, in all areas of our public life, New York’s historic governmental mission.”
These days, at the Executive Mansion, the younger Mr. Cuomo recites for guests a history of the sprawling home. At the Capitol, Mr. Cuomo ordered the portraits of his predecessors rehung, and installed new exhibits and a historical timeline in the building. He often alludes to the tenure of previous governors (not always in flattering ways) and he refers proudly to New York’s historic role in the women’s suffrage and workers’ rights movements.
“Be proud — you’re part of history,” Mr. Cuomo said was the message he hoped would be sent by calling attention to history in the Capitol’s halls. “And it’s true. And when you think of what you’re doing that way, through that lens, you know, it brings you to a different place.”
A version of this article appears in print on April 28, 2012, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuomo Says He Makes History, Then Repeats It. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
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We've had conversations lately about illegal dump sites in HRM and the lack of trash cans throughout the city, but who's hosting the conversation about cleaning all this garbage up? Well, the Clean Across Nova Scotia clean-up, intersecting with a global movement, is launching today at 5:30 at The Hub.
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One of the most difficult symptoms related to Crohn’s disease is urgency. The need to get to a bathroom promptly, with little to no notice. It’s an embarrassing and stressful part of living with this invisible illness. You feel the uneasy pain and the need to go over, over, and over again. Each time calculating in your mind how many minutes it will take you to get to the nearest bathroom and plotting out your course and game plan.
Not even caring if it’s a public or private restroom because you honestly have no choice.
These past few weeks there have been countless times where that unwelcome pain hit my stomach. For days I could barely make it through feeding my son a bottle without having to hand him off to my husband after a couple ounces. I went to get my nails done and wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make it through the manicure. It’s kept me from running errands and changed my plans because of the stress related to the uncertainty. To those around you, you look carefree and comfortable. While on the inside you’re struggling to keep it together and fearing an accident. Doing meditation and deep breaths can help to temporarily calm down your insides… while trying to continue looking calm on the outside.
In social situations—whether you’re at work or out with friends, or at someone’s house—it’s even worse.
Luckily, I’ve found friends and family are extremely understanding when it comes to sometimes needing to use their bathroom.
It is what it is… and you know what, at the end of the day… everyone poops. It’s not ideal, but I think it’s safe to say whether you have Crohn’s or not… everyone’s had a time where they had “to go” at an inopportune time.
For those with Crohn’s the feelings and consistency are amplified tenfold. There’s nothing worse than public businesses and stores whose bathrooms are for “employees only.”
This is where the “Restroom Request Cards” come in. For those of us with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, we can register for a free card that allows us to discreetly share our needs when unexpected symptoms arise. You can keep it tucked away in your wallet or purse so you have it ready, just in case. The card provides peace of mind and the knowingness that you have a “free pass” to the use the bathroom.
Mentally, the stress and worry of bathroom issues is enough to make you want to isolate yourself and stay in your comfort zone at home. In my mind though, that’s letting the disease win and control me. I choose to control it as much as I can.
Just like all things in life, the difficult moments and times pass.
It’s not easy when you’re living it, but you overcome. The pain and struggle comes in waves, it’s not a constant. Keeping this in mind is a helpful way of staying strong and keeping a positive attitude. The limitations we place on ourselves while justified, don’t have to be a constant unless we let them.
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This is a place where I share my ideas and my writing and put into practice my hopes for greater connection, critical thinking and clear expression amongst people who care about our world, our communities, and each other. Social and political issues, writing, language, fathers and fathering - these are some of the things you'll find here.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Media madness
When I am in doubt over how to express my growing frustration and anger over what's happening with the media in Australia, I turn to the ever insightful Barista. Unable to formulate any clearer beyond 'Aaaargghhh!' my concerns about how the Howard government's newly passed media ownership laws will affect the media landscape, I've turned to Barista again. He has a great post disecting the latest moves by PBL, the media empire built by Kerry Packer and now run by his heir James. Barista notes:
Various pundits have been saying for months that James, being a bear with a limited range of interests, can’t keep media and gambling in his noggin at the same time, and will give up Nine, Foxtel and ACP. At the moment, the opposite is going on, and PBL is loose in the media supermarket created by Howard. As Stephen Mayne pointed out today in Crikey, PBL has been a loyal supporter of the Libs since 1995, when Kerry did what he could to put Johnny into government.
PBL’s obvious target is Fairfax…
To make matters worse – or murkier – Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd has also launched what has been described as a take-over bid for Fairfax.
Poor Fairfax – for so long now seen as the obvious target for take-over and more in the wake of Howard's media shake-up. Fairfax owns The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and the Australian Financial Review – it bugs me that my favourite weekend papers – The Age and Sunday Age – in fact the only ones I'll read, are in the firing line of a bunch of faceless grey suits who wish to make more money and settle old scores with various identities at Fairfax…
No matter what shape the final shenanigans of financial manouvering, shell companies, sell-offs, acquisitions, mergers and take-overs leaves our media in Australia, I'm sure of one thing – Howard's media laws will narrow the diversity of opinion in this country, and I do believe that threatens our capacity for a full and lively democracry.
Just recently, there was the story that an internal inquiry into the New South Wales police operational response to the Cronulla riots found – amongst concerns that police were inadequately prepared – that the riots were fueled by the media. According to the ABC:
The report also found the media played a significant role in fuelling the violence. The internal police review says much of the media reporting of the events leading up to last December's riots was inaccurate and a distortion of the facts. It says comments aired in the media, especially on talk-back radio, were at times racist, exaggerated and advocated vigilante behaviour.
This is not new. The Monthly's Issue 12 had a lengthy essay by David Salter disecting Alan Jones as a media player, which looked at his role in fanning the Cronulla riots through his radio broadcasts and talk-back last summer. What is new this time is the report is by a former NSW police commissioner, and I feel this aspect of its findings has been burried in the news. What is also significant is that so far I've only noticed the ABC carrying this aspect of the story. (Don't get me started the threat to public broadcasting and on the new 'anti-bias' regulations for ABC content! I'll come back to that another day, though Barista also has an excellent piece on that.)
What is clear is that the mainstream media is loathe to cover stories that criticise other key players in the media or their owners – unless they're opposition. The problem is exacerbated when we have fewer media outlets controlled by fewer owners. This story does illustrate the problems with the narrowness of Australia's media currently, and fuels the argument that the new media laws threaten diversity of opinion. This leaves us the poorer for it, and the media moghuls billionaires – again.
About Me
I am a writer and a reader, and believe in the power of words and images to make a difference. I make a basic living helping other people's words look good, and need to express my ideas in my own words and images to keep sane. I am also a father: my two young sons are currently the joy and challenge of my life, and I'm loving it.
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Members of the Tartan Terrors have performed on 4 different continents; in some of the most prestigious Festivals, Highland Games and Theatres of North America including; Lone Tree Center for the Arts, CO, Strand Capitol, PA, Oshkosh Opera House, WI, Dublin Irish Festival Dublin, OH, Newport Irish Festival, Newport, RI, and Good Morning America, a full list is available upon request. Join the phenomenon of the Tartan Terrors and see why Celtic Beat Magazine hails them as “the heirs apparent to the [Celtic] mayhem”.
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Aleksandar Kolarov halved the deficit shortly after, however, before Edin Dzeko netted twice in six minutes to put the Serie A outfit in front.
Hazard rescued Chelsea’s unbeaten start to the Champions League group stage but Keown still claimed Antonio Conte’s side ‘looked lost’ as their wait for a victory continued.
And the former Arsenal and England defender was critical of a number of players, saying Azpilicueta was ‘running around chasing shadows’ while summer signing Bakayoko was a ‘passenger’.
Roma came from 2-0 behind to secure a point in west London (Picture: Getty)
‘There were problems all over the pitch,’ Keown told the Daily Mail. ‘Hazard and Morata were breathtaking on the break but defensively, Conte did not get much from the Belgian.
‘Cesc Fabregas looked lost in midfield and Cesar Azpilicueta was running around chasing shadows.
‘David Luiz was supposed to be the firefighter in midfield but he did not stop Diego Perotti from coming in from the left into a central position. In some games, Tiemoue Bakayoko has almost been a passenger.’
The high-scoring draw follows two consecutive defeats for Chelsea, who have slipped to fifth in the table and already find themselves nine points adrift of leaders Manchester City.
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Illustration was a core function of my team; we relied heavily on a 3D into 2D pipeline. I was responsible for providing reference and guidance, working through thumbnails with the artists and helping choose best layouts and poses, giving feedback and paintovers, and I also had final approval.
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Female Cave Insects With Penises Have Sex for 40-70 Hours
In an excellent new discovery in Brazil, insects of the Neotrogla genus who live in caves have been discovered with completely role-reversed genitalia. The boss female has a penis and the male has a vagina, and they get after it for 40-70 hour stretches.
According to a study in Current Biology, this isn't the first female creature with a penis, but it is the only example where the "intromittent organ is also reversed."
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Nagri Peoples Fight for Identity and Existence
When IndiaUnheard called Ranchi Community Correspondent Priyasheela to speak to her about her video that chronicles the land struggle being waged by the people of Nagri village against the state, she was preparing herself to attend a torch light rally where thousands of protestors would march through the disputed land and hold vigil for justice. Their slogan, says Priyasheela, is one that resonates through Adivasi lands, hearts and minds across Jharkhand, from Netarhat to Nagri: We will give our life but not our land. The protestors were trying to push for a statewide strike in solidarity. More activities and programs are to follow, adds Priyasheela, until the state listens to the people’s demands and the judiciary gives their case a fair hearing.
“The Adivasis have always been expected to move away and make space for the so-called ‘development’ of the state,” says Priyasheela. “When the state of Jharkhand was formed in the year 2000 after a sustained agitation by the tribals, we thought that we would finally get our rights. We have been disappointed by our representatives in the government. So, the struggle for our rights continues.”
On 23rd November, 2011 the Jharkhand government attempted to grab 227.71 acres of fertile agricultural land from the villagers of Nagri village. The draconian Land Acquisition Act of 1984 was invoked and the land was ‘acquired’ for ‘public purpose’ and given to illustrious institutions like the IIM, IIIT and the Law University. The state tried to suppress a public outcry by using the force of the police and military. When the people refused to give up their land, the armed forces of state moved in and began to destroy fields which were ripening into harvest season. Villagers who dared to oppose were incarcerated. The High Court and Supreme Court iteratively dismissed the case filed by the people.
Finally, angered and discontent at the machinery of the state, the people rose in protest. On 4th July, 2012 they demolished the boundary wall constructed for the IIM. The protesters were lathi charged. A few were arrested. The government’s knee-jerk response only added fuel to the people’s emotions. Thousands of people joined in protest, as individuals and as organizations. An indefinite road block was organized along the highway. The issue began to be talked about. It became the focus of much dialogue and debate within the state. Soon enough, the opposition party in the state parliament joined in claiming support to the protests. The farmers declared that come what may, the monsoons were due to arrive and they would plough their fields.
IndiaUnheard asked Priyasheela if she thought that the opposition’s stance had helped the struggle.
Priyasheela sounds unconvinced. “Whatever they may say, all politicians are still joined at the hip. I don’t think I should entertain your question,” she says. “It’s a people movement, guided by the people’s sentiment, written in the voice of the people. Every adivasi child knows that the fight is for their lands and their life.”
She adds, “We are not against the IIMs and other institutions. We would be proud if Jharkhand had its own IIM. But do they have build it over over fertile agricultural land that gives us our livelihoods and feeds our families?”
She says that she is awaiting this year’s harvest. She is expecting a bumper crop. One whose grains, she claims, will have the taste of the good earth that belongs to them.
Help us set the record straight! Indigenous Peoples are putting their bodies on the line and it's our responsibility to make sure you know why. That takes time, expertise and resources - and we're up against a constant tide of distorted news and misinformation. By supporting IC, you're empowering the kind of journalism we all need, at the moment we need it most.
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My Account
The Surprising Truth About Dehydrated Fruits and Sugar
You are in a mood for a healthy snack, and you think of the fruits you bought last week. So, you head to the kitchen, only to find out that the bananas are bruised beyond recognition and the peaches are mushy. At this point, reaching for a handful of dried fruits seems like the best alternative. Wait a minute! Don't experts agree that dehydrated fruits are sugar bombs in disguise? Well, yes, but the truth goes way beyond a nutrition label. If you want to know what's up with this misunderstood food, here's what research has to say.
A New (Sugary) Perspective
When it comes to sugar, dried fruits are nothing like their fresh counterpart. The only problem with this claim? One cup of raisins(1) contains about 100 grams of sugar, while the same amount of freshgrapes(2)clocks in just 23.4 grams. Even though the numbers are self-explanatory, comparing dehydrated and fresh fruits based on volume alone is incorrect. Why? Because the dried version is smaller in size. So, we should instead compare the two kinds using an accurate unit of measurement - analyzing them piece by piece. This method shows that the calories and sugar in fresh and dried fruits are more or less the same, proving that both versions are equally healthy.
Small Size, Big Appetite
As the name suggests, dried fruits contain zero water. As they get stripped of their juices, they shrink, sometimes up to 75%. Take figs, for example: these plump, juicy fruits shrivel to the point of no return when they are placed in a dehydrator or left out in the sun. By turning into the bite-sized snacks we know and love, dried fruits are easy to overeat. More often than not, we end up eating more than we should in one sitting.
Added Sugar
Natural sugar is not the only type of sugar found in store bought dried fruits. Most brands tend to include lots of added sugar (artificial sweeteners, fruit juices, etc.) in an attempt to make the products more appetizing, because certain fruits, like cranberries, are kind of bitter and tart once dehydrated. Adding sugar to these fruits turns them into calorie bombs, which is why many people think dried fruits should be avoided at all costs. But, keeping these treats away from your pantry is not the solution. Instead, look out for a brand without sugary additives and preservatives, like Mother Earth Products.
To The Rescue
Another reason to keep dried fruits in your weekly (if not daily) menu is the nutrients. Despite their unique size-to-sugar ratio, dried fruits don't spike sugar levels like other snacks (candy, pastries, or chips). This makes them a healthier snacking option. Research(3) also proves these treats contain significant amounts of antioxidants, which help your body deal with oxidative stress and a variety of metabolic diseases. They are packed with other nutrients(4) including fiber, calcium, and vitamin A, C and K. All of these nutrients play a huge role in healthy weight management, to help you shed the extra pounds and keep fat buildup at bay.
Long Shelf Life
Dried fruits come with a long shelf life - an excellent choice when fresh produce is not an option. Whether you are a regular hiker or a weekend camper, these snacks are the best way to provide your body with enough energy to complete your tasks.
Final Thoughts
In terms of risk and reward, dried fruits can be readily described as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of snacking. While they come with some major benefits, including weight management, portability, and long shelf life, they could also affect your health because of added sugars or overeating. To avoid such scenarios, make sure you consume enough to keep your sweet tooth satisfied, and always trust brands that support the no-added-sugar philosophy. If you don't know where to start, Mother Earth Productsis the way to go. Thanks to our no additive attitude and family friendly approach, we provide you with high quality dried fruits all year round. #BuildingHealthyHabits
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X-MEN LEGACY #256
Written by Mike Carey
Penciled by Steve Kurth
Covers by MICO SUAYAN
“FIVE MILES SOUTH OF THE UNIVERSE”
When Rogue, Magneto and Gambit jumped into space on an intergalactic search and rescue mission, they had no idea that it would land them in the middle of an extraterrestrial war! And to make matters worse, the space station that serves as the battlefield for the conflict is slowly falling into a collapsing star. With time running out and the lives of Havok, Polaris and Marvel Girl on the line, these X-Men are in for a bumpy ride...
32 PGS./Rated T+ ...$2.99
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Poverty, Aid and Not Begrudging People That Need Help
Yes, there are some people who abuse the system. Of course there are. There are also rich people who abuse the tax system. Before anyone goes pointing fingers, just remember, abuse is not limited to the poor.
It was a common refrain in my family. When my mother and aunt speak about those days, they wax poetically about tomato sandwiches and bread with every meal (meant to fill an empty stomach when there wasn’t enough food).
I was poor growing up, but the difference between my mother’s life and my own? Without a doubt, I knew we were poor.
School clothes from Kmart (because there wasn’t a Wal-Mart in those days) purchased on layaway, no-name shoes, begging for every toy in commercials and receiving homemade Bermuda shorts from my grandmother for Christmas (true story). And that was just how being poor affected a selfish little kid who couldn’t understand why her parents didn’t love her enough to buy her all the things her friends had.
I was also there when my mother paid bills. I heard, without fully understanding it, the strain in her voice when the car broke down and she had to call a relative to borrow money to buy a cheap car so she could get to work. I know the feeling of sitting in a car with smoke billowing out from under the hood and walking a mile in tall grass on the side of a busy highway to get to a pay phone. (Kids, this was before cell phones — if your car died or you got a flat tire, you were hoofin’ it to the nearest gas station and praying you had a dime to make the phone call.)
In the grocery store, we had discussions about whether we could buy mustard or ketchup that week, and sometimes mayonnaise or salad dressing — but never both. How far could we stretch a penny to buy enough groceries to feed a family of three for two weeks? I don’t know how she did it, but that cart was full every time.
Why didn’t she apply for help? One of two reasons: pride or lack of knowledge. I think it was the latter. If food stamps and other forms of aid were discussed in popular culture 25 or 30 years ago, I wasn’t aware of it. My mother worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week — she didn’t have time to breathe, let alone find out how to get help. Because she didn’t know, I didn’t either.
Fast forward 20 years…
My oldest son was born a month early. His father and I were woefully unprepared. We left the hospital with nothing more than the few diapers and the sample can of formula the hospital provided. On the way home, still recovering from pushing life out of my body, we traipsed through the aisles of Wal-Mart, desperate for diapers and formula (and no, this isn’t a moment to debate whether I should have breastfed or not). We wiped out our entire bank account just to have enough to feed and diaper him for a week or so.
My mother-in-law is the one who told me about WIC — Women, Infants, and Children — an assistance program for low-income pregnant women and children up to age 5. I had no idea it existed, and I believed we’d never qualify. I wasn’t on welfare. I worked for a living, making over $10 an hour (and in the early 2000s, that was almost decent). Aid was for people who had no money at all.
Not only did I qualify but because we were in such dire need, they squeezed me in and got me on the program within a few days of my first phone call.
Now, 10 years later, I no longer qualify for aid, and I no longer need it. I’m broke, but I’m not in poverty. And although I wish people didn’t need assistance, I don’t begrudge anyone that needs help.
In fact, when someone says something about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, not taking a handout, and anyone receiving aid is abusing the system, smoke comes out of my ears. Every few months, I sat with other women, from all walks of life, teenage mothers, grandmothers raising grandchildren, working mothers just like me, hell, even single fathers — waiting for our WIC checks. There wasn’t one of us who wouldn’t have given anything to not need the help. But damn it, we were grateful for it, just the same.
Yes, there are some people who abuse the system. Of course there are. There are also rich people who abuse the tax system. Before anyone goes pointing fingers, just remember, abuse is not limited to the poor.
No one does anything all by themselves without help. Maybe your help didn’t come from the government. Maybe your help came in the form of someone who knows you and recommended you for a position. Maybe it came in the form of a family connection. Maybe you got lucky and met the right person at the exact right time. But none of us are an island unto ourselves, and we all move forward in this life with help.
So no, when we start talking about helping the neediest and poorest among us, I’m not in that camp of people ready to cut off benefits and deny access. Sure, I kept working and struggling until I finally reached a point where I didn’t need the aid (sometimes I needed it, but I didn’t qualify, unfortunately). I’m a productof that aid. Without it, we would have slipped further into poverty — a big, black hole that feels impossible to climb out of.
Not everyone on WIC or food stamps or housing assistance is gaming the system. Many people are working our butts off to make a better life for their families, and they need help. You can judge me and think I needed to make different life choices all you want…but that judgment and condemnation wouldn’t feed a hungry child.
When someone asks me if I really want my tax dollars paying to feed someone who doesn’t/can’t/won’t work, my answer is pretty simple. “Hell yeah.” Because no one deserves to be hungry — especially a child — and many of the people who need help are working, and it still isn’t enough.
Leave a Reply
I feel like these pieces always miss the point by failing to recognize the sacrifices made by those whose taxes pay for WIC and other programs. My fiancé and I agreed to delay getting married until after many of our friends, and we still have not yet had children (though we plan to soon), all as part of ensuring that we would be financially stable when the time came. But now, after grad school, we face extensive income taxes because that’s what it supposedly means to pay our “fair share.” But there’s no acknowledgement that we have our present incomes… Read more »
It’s not just the wealthy, but companies and communities that benefit from “unearned” government assistance. Government might use eminent domain to seize private property to expand an airports flight capacity. or even sell it to a private developer to build a hotel. There might be subsides for drilling or special protections put in place like caps on damages when companies get sued. Of course government gives special protections for itself. I suppose the idea is to save the tax payer from the effects of a legal judgement. Even the concept of bankruptcy is essentially a government bail out. On the… Read more »
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Canon 135mm f2L USM review: An oldie but a goodie
Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM: Capable but not the best telephoto prime for Canon
Achieving a DxOMark Score of 26 overall the Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM ranks reasonably highly on the DxOMark ratings for Canon compatible telephoto prime lenses. As you would hope for a prime the individual Lens Metric Scores indicate it’s a bright lens with a Transmission score of 2.3Tstop and there’s very little Distortion or Chromatic Aberration noticeable as illustrated by Lens Metric Scores of 0.1% and 4um respectively.
That said it only ranks 74th for all lenses tested on the DxOMark database and it’s not the best performing telephoto prime we’ve seen for Canon DSLRS either. The DxOMark Scores for telephoto primes tested on the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III confirm the Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM ranks 5th overall behind competition from Sigma, Carl Zeiss, Samyang as well as Canon’s own EF 100mm f/2 USM.
With an overall Lens Metric Score for Sharpness of 14 P-Mpix the Canon EF 135 f/2L USM ranks mid-table for a prime tested on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and its sharpness is comparable to the Canon EF 100mm f/2 USM Score of 14 P-Mpix.
Sharpness
Delivering best sharpness at apertures between f/2.8 and f/8 by the time you close down to f/11 sharpness does tail off slightly and although still reasonable at f/16 shooting with very small apertures like f/22 & f/36 are to be avoided. Sharpness at f/2 is not brilliant either but this is to be expected at such a wide aperture and simply closing down 1-stop to f/2.8 will improve things considerably.
Vignetting
Canon 135mm f/2L USM
135mm
f/2
135mm
f/4
135mm
f/32
If you’re buying this lens for creative shallow depth of field effects using f/2 then vignetting is an issue you should be aware of. It is optically very difficult to control edge shading at such wide apertures and the Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM is no exception with -1.33EV of shading at f/2. Close down to f/4 however and the problem is removed completely and doesn’t resurface at small apertures like f/32 either.
Further readings for the Canon 135mm f2L USM review: An oldie but a goodie
To provide photographers with a broader perspective about mobiles, lenses and cameras, here are links to articles, reviews, and analyses of photographic equipment produced by DxOMark, renown websites, magazines or blogs.
i don't like this kind of testing.
Canon 135L
This just shows how meaningless your new metric is. Your own measurements do not show any noticeable difference. There is almost none here: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=108&Camera=453&Sample=0&FLI=0&API=0&LensComp=756&CameraComp=453&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=2
Also, comparing 85 and 135mm can be tricky. For the same background blur, you need f/1.4 at 85mm vs. f/2 at 135mm (same physical aperture). The 135L is then really sharper, much less PF/LoCA.
BTW, nobody buys the 135L for sharpness - not that it is not sharp. It has gorgeous bokeh. Your "second hand" recommendation is really stupid.
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admin
Posts by admin
Today I did something I wanted to do for a long time: to throw away Eclipse. I’ve been using Eclipse for PHP development for some time now, and it always didn’t really feel good. It was a constant pain in the ass. And a fewtimes, it really seemed to fail to do what it should do: work!
The irritation always started right away: if you want to use Eclipse, it first has a load screen, that needs about 20 seconds to load your workspace. But then it isn’t over yet. It still needs to process all your projects before you can actually start using it. Ok, you could do some work while it was loading your projects, but it was awfully slow during that times.
After a while, when it was loaded, you could start programming. Great, but there were some general annoyances. First of all, autocompletion, I loved the feature. But the problem was, that when I typed a bit of text, and hit <Ctrl>-Space, it took a while before Eclipse brought up the autocompletion. Another very annoying thing, is that it sometimes had random slowdowns. You would type some stuff, and then you had to wait 30 seconds, and then you slowly saw your text being printed to the screen, character by character. In the meanwhile, I already saved the file and switched to Firefox to test my changes. Obviously, the changes didn’t work, because eclipse didn’t quite manage to save the file yet.
So, a while ago, somebody said that the PHP plugin for NetBeans was a lot better. So I tried NetBeans. But after a ‘sudo apt-get install netbeans’, there was one obvious (and bad) problem: my font settings weren’t used in NetBeans! It seemed like that is a general problem with Java when you’re running Compiz. But I wasn’t throwing away Compiz in favor of NetBeans. Also, Eclipse is Java too, so in my opinion, NetBeans probably could do the same thing.
So today, I finally decided to go with vim. Eclipse was just being too slow again. I made the decision that I won’t touch Eclipse for one month, and that I will use vim as replacement during that time. Lets hope I don’t come back crying to Eclipse. Though I don’t really think that will happen (vim really has some great features, and can do (almost) anything that Eclipse can). Also, I used matthew’s blog for a nice start to PHP programming with vim, and I hope I can keep going to use vim for this month .
Currently, I’m following college on Computer Science, in the Netherlands. And one of the things I hate about it, is that they weren’t able to teach me anything in the semester I’m there. I just go there, drink my Piña Colada, and sometimes I write some code in C#. C# is easy for me, and for the rest of the class. For me its really easy, when you consider when I did some Java programming. For the rest of the class, even the guys who didn’t have any programming experience at all, its easy too. Too easy.
Some people actually think that its supposed to be that easy, because nobody will be able to learn it otherwise. But then think about this: only about 2-3 people in my class (including myself), are able to actually tell you exactly what happens when you press the run button in Visual Studio. The rest of the class will just say that it runs the program you just typed. They never even heard of a compiler!
At start, this isn’t a problem at all, they are able to function perfectly in the college’s ecosystem, because they get the right job done. But later, when they have to use different programming languages, where they don’t get a shiny IDE like Visual Studio. They get in trouble because they don’t know how what compiling is, and how the hell they are supposed to do that.
Further on the road, there are more problems. They are so used to the fact that everything ‘just works’, they don’t take into account how fast something will be when you deliver something to customers who actually use the software. When you learn to write software like we do, you only program with small and simple examples. Yes, that is how its supposed to be done, but we did never learn to think about performance scaling. So, when a customer loads your program with 100MB of data (instead of the 5KB you fed to it), he will probably run out of memory, because you just stored everything in both variables and a database and it worked fine.
All these problems are very easy to overcome, when you just teach young students about what the memory is right away. Even better: learn them C. Then they need to manage the memory right away, and then they also know how some things that might seem as simple statements in C#, actually are very complicated things. This way, they think better whats behind some functions, and they actually think about the available memory, instead of mindless loading everything in the memory when it might seem usefull.
A lot of web developers know them, migrations. Migrations are the type of things that look very robust and easy to use when you read about them. The idea is that you got a set of revisions of your database, so you can maintain a history of your database structure. The thought behind it, is that if one of your fellow developers on your project makes a very stupid database edit, you can just revert it with the blink of an eye.
And now we’re going back to the real world. In the real world, we use SCM (Source Code Management) tools. And this means in a lot of situations, that you are doing stuff that is already there! And not only you’re duplicating behavior that already exists, but you also make the process more error-prone.
Like for instance, you’re using the SCM Git. And you are writing a migration, and you commit it. And then you pull from one of the other developers in the project. And then it seems that he also has made a new migration! Which means you got merge conflicts. So, what would you do then? You can rename one of the files, but which one gets which migration number? This isn’t really a big problem when you are working with just the two of you. But for bigger projects, it could be a huge problem when the maintainer pulls from a few developers, who all created a new migration. Then you need to do a lot of work to figure out in which order they should run.
But there is still some light on the end of the tunnel. Some projects like Ruby on Rails or Doctrine use timestamps as migration numbers. Because the chance that two developers commit exactly the same migration number is very thin, you would not have version control conflicts. Yes, they are right with that. But it only makes the problem worse. Because now the order of the migrations is purely determined by the time that each programmer creates the migration, not in a logical order.
Now the project maintainer pulls from those developers, and sees that there are no merge conflicts. Then he asks the migration tool to migrate the database. And it seems that all those migrations except for one fail! Why did this happen? The first migration simply dropped a table that the other migrations builded further on!
So, I’ve done my words about the pain of migrations, so I should also give a better solution. Well, this is actually quite easy, use one database schema instead of a revision system inside of a revision system. Let your SCM handle the differences between them, because that is exactly where an SCM is meant for. And of course there can still be conflicts. But instead of thinking in which order they should run, you only have to think about the database schema, which is much easier.
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Sen. Graham envisions scenario where US military intervenes in Syria
Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Daily Caller that he could envision using American military force as a part of a broader coalition to stop Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from continuing to attack his people.
Asked by TheDC at a reporter’s roundtable at the Foreign Policy Initiative’s winter forum, Graham said there was a scenario in which he could support using American military force in Syria on behalf of the Syrian uprising.
“I think it would have to be a part of a coalition,” he stipulated.
“The only way I see military force to be used, if the violence continues to escalate and there is basically a slaughter going on of the Syrian people by their government beyond what exists today. That could rally the world to engage the Assad administration. But as a standalone proposition — America going in, I don’t think so. As part of some force that’s requested by the Syrian people — the first thing is the Syrian people have to request it.”
When asked whether it was important for the Arab League to endorse such an effort, like they did in Libya, Graham said that they are an “important player” in deciding whether to engage militarily.
“I think they are important, absolutely. I think they would be an important player here,” Graham said.
“Seems to be that Assad had distanced himself from his neighbor in Turkey, that he has lost world opinion, and that if the slaughter continues I think it would be a responsible thing for the world community to consider intervening to protect the Syrian people if they request our efforts. But not as a standalone proposition.”
The United Nations estimates that 5,000 people have been killed since Syrians rose up against their dictatorial regime in March.
Graham spoke to a select group of reporters before he addressed the Foreign Policy Initiative forum. Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty addressed the forum earlier Tuesday morning, while Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Mark Kirk of Illinois, among others, are slated to speak Tuesday afternoon.
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Be very afraid to dip your fingers in to your home screen with this stunning shark attack 3D live wallpaper. Navigate your home screen in a finger ripping frenzy as the shark attacks touch points. Your going to need a bigger boat for sure.
This mean shark is hungry and waiting to be feed right on your home screen. Once false move and the shark attacks in a feeding frenzy tearing apart fingers in a bloody mess. A tasty snack till next time. This is a very hungry shark indeed!
Three marine environments to choose: rocky, sandy or reef.
Props now included: minefield, sunken ship or plane wreck.
✓ This is a live wallpaper not a game.
✓ After installation set this live wallpaper via the launcher icon of via your home screen wallpaper menu.
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Helping Out
April 22, 2009
FUNDRAISERS
*Registration has started for the 2nd annual Palos Bank Southwest Half Marathon. The 13.1-mile race is on May 3 and starts at 7:30 a.m. at Palos Heights City Hall, 76th Avenue and Illinois Highway 83. Registration is $55 and there is no on-site registration. To register, or to get course-route information, visit palosbankhalfmarathon.com or call 773-868-3010. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the South West Special Recreation Association, prostate cancer research and the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America.
*A garage sale fundraiser will be held from 9 a.m to 2 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at 1305 Sherborn Ct. N., Minooka. Admission is free. Proceeds support the non-profit group Mothers & More, Will County chapter. Call 815-828-0618.
DONATIONS
*People are encouraged to donate used eyeglasses at the reception booth in the Oak Lawn public library, 9427 S. Raymond Ave. The glasses will go to the Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity, a non-profit that provides free eye exams and eyeglasses to people in poverty-stricken areas of underdeveloped countries. Donations are accepted year-round. Call 708-422-4990 or visit vosh.org
FREE ADVICE
*Job seekers are invited to sharpen their interviewing skills at 7 p.m. Tuesday at St. Mary Immaculate Parish, 15629 S. Illinois Highway 59, Plainfield. Admission is free. Participants are asked to bring up to 20 copies of their resume. Call 815-436-2651.
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Beautify Your Backyard With This Glorious Data.
When first rising a garden, attempt to put as a lot effort into the primary mattress as possible. Land that hasn’t been used for a while wants an overhaul to start turning into a viable spot for plants. Often these areas both lack the proper vitamins or consistency of soil. If you happen to plan to make a backyard out of patch, make it possible for it has all the fitting pre-situations to planting. Pre-soak your seeds to keep them healthy. Drop some seeds into a small glass or other container, and fill it with water. This manner, your seeds are well-hydrated and can start growing with a head begin. The seeds will then have a greater chance at lasting and blossoming.
If you need a patch of inexperienced in your garden, take into account planting a floor cover instead of a garden. Lawns require a lot of water and maintenance. However, a floor cover often makes use of much less water, and sure varieties discourage weeds from growing. Many varieties of ground cowl have the green color akin to a lawn. You can save money and time with a floor cover.
When starting your organic garden, a great tip is to make sure you have the suitable timing when sowing your seeds. If your timing is off when planting a particular plant, you should have very disappointing outcomes. In the event you be sure you have your timing right, you’ll possible be happy together with your results. To grow an unbelievable crop of tomatoes, be certain that your planting space gets loads of light and has numerous room around every tomato plant. Tomato plants are solar hungry! They really want a minimum of ten hours of solar each day and the additional space between plants helps maximize every tomato’s succulence.
Compost could be very helpful once you decide to develop a garden organically, but lots of people do not know what compost is made up of. Compost is made up of things like outdated produce scraps, leaves, twigs, grass clippings and wooden-chips which have broken down into one thing similar to soil in texture. This wealthy combination is much superior to chemical fertilizers. Grow greens and fruits to drink. Often overlooked yet easy to grow are items that may be made into incredible and nutritious drinks. These berries and fruit juices may be frozen or canned or made into wine and hard cider. A properly made apple wine or blueberry wine can start at $10-12 a bottle, so this can be a profit obtainable with the garden.
During scorching weather, water your crops more incessantly and deeply.
Try to not let the chores related to your natural backyard construct up. There are specific little issues to help you keep up with your garden, even if you don’t have the necessary time every day to do every little thing. In case you put the canine outside, weed a number of spots within the backyard whereas your canine goes to the bathroom. When using fertilizer, moderation may be the key to success. Whereas it’s true that utilizing a fertilizer can improve your backyard’s productivity, it is better to apply it sparingly. An overdose of fertilizer could cause extreme development of the plant’s foliage with stunted development of the fruit or greens thereby decreasing your harvest.
Organic gardening could be a fantastic factor. By way of exhibiting some skill in the ways to help something grow is truly great. So that you could discover ways to make this be just right for you, check with the tips in this article. You will need to remember to use sunscreen to the again of your neck as well as your ears when you’re gardening. Many individuals deal with their face, palms and arms when they’re making use of solar block before going exterior to do their gardening. Your ears and the back of your neck will get a lot of solar exposure, so it is important to protect them too.
Decide what kind of pests you’ve in your backyard earlier than you apply a pesticide spray. No one pesticide can handle each pest problem and you might end up killing off the pests pure predators which is able to make the issue worse. Use rainwater for your organic backyard. Water will be collected in barrels when rain fall is at high levels, and then used in your garden during drought intervals. This may help to conserve water and provide your vegetation with all of the hydration they want. Most rain barrels have a spicket so you can connect your soaker hose on to the barrel.
By following these simple ideas, you will be able to get your backyard going with only a few hardy, straightforward decisions in crops. This will enable you to impress your folks, relations and the neighborhood at massive, along with your gardening experience. As your talent grows, you can transfer on to more difficult types of crops. Now, do not you feel better after reading all those suggestions? That was a whole lot of info to suppose upon and browse through, however no less than now you recognize what to do and where to start along with your gardening. Plus, you possibly can always refer back to the above checklist of tips in the event you forget. Fairly handy, huh?
Relax and enjoy the outdoors, whereas cultivating a delicious, stunning and fragrant garden. You will love making a salad out of the greens you’ve nourished.
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Project Summary
View and print project details including project summary, purpose, associations to Biological Opinions,
and area. To learn more about any of the project properties, hold your mouse cursor over the field label.
Please correct the errors noted below.
This project addresses the Rock Creek and Eastern Tributary Subbasins Recovery Plan objectives for Middle Columbia River steelhead. Some of the key research needs indicated in the recovery plan include genetic studies to identify genotypic variation; population structure assessment; exotic species effects on the recovery of steelhead; predation risk from native and non-native fish and birds; and identification of the natural water temperature in the lower river and whether fish could survive with higher average mainstem temperatures if in-stream diversity and side channel/floodplain habitats are present and diverse enough to provide thermal refugia.
Implement with conditions through June 2014. Sponsor to submit geomorphology and salmonid assessment report to the ISRP when completed by March 1, 2014. Funding recommendation beyond June 2014 dependent on favorable ISRP review and Council recommendation.
Conditions:
Council Condition #1
ISRP Qualification: Qualification #1—Sponsor to submit geomorphology and salmonid assessment report to the ISRP when completed by March 1, 2014.
Council Condition #2
ISRP Qualification: Qualification #2—Sponsor to submit geomorphology and salmonid assessment report to the ISRP when completed by March 1, 2014.
This project proposes to continue an ongoing effort to collect and analyze salmonid population and habitat data on Rock Creek for the ultimate purpose of identifying habitat restoration projects that would be most beneficial to the fish. The Rock Creek watershed appears to be an appropriate location for such an effort. The proposal indicates that this population is a focus of recovery efforts for the Mid-Columbia ESU.
The four objectives for this project are:
(OBJ-1) Understand the current habitat conditions
(OBJ-2) Protect and conserve existing good quality habitat and expand upon these focal areas
(OBJ-3) Identify protection/restoration sites and actions
(OBJ-4) Restore and enhance habitat
The general approach being taken is consistent with the guidance provided by the ISRP for years: identify restoration actions based on a thorough understanding of how the focal species are using the watershed. The technical background on the project activity to date was sufficient to illustrate what has been accomplished. However, key elements of the watershed assessment have yet to be completed (geomorphic assessment and juvenile fish assessment reports due in 2014). It appears that these reports will form the basis of a new EDT analysis that will be used to identify project locations and limiting factors. An evaluation of the technical adequacy of the process that will be used for project identification would require that these reports be included in the proposal. Therefore, Objectives 1 and 2 are justified in the proposal. However, the adequacy of the process that will be used to identify priority restoration sites (Objective 3) cannot be assessed with the information provided in the proposal. As a result, Objective 4 is not appropriate at this time.
The history and past accomplishments of this project are described briefly in the proposal. However, it appears that relatively little rigorous analysis of the fish or habitat data that have been collected to date has been completed. The discussion of results is similar in scope to that examined in the previous ISRP review (spring 2012) and is only slightly improved in terms of providing a comprehensive understanding of the situation. The proposal mostly contains a description of the types of data being collected and provides examples of some of these data including number of spawners and index of juvenile density. Additionally, the location of stream reaches that experience significant dewatering should be displayed. Also, it would be useful to know if the presence of non-native fishes in lower Rock Creek has had any effect on the survival of juvenile steelhead as they emigrate from the watershed. It seems that the reports due in 2014 on channel geomorphology and salmonid fishes will include detailed analyses of the data. The ISRP would require these reports and a description of the process to be used to identify priority projects in order to fully evaluate this proposal.
There is no explicit description of an adaptive management process associated with this project. However, there is a clear indication of an intention to use adaptive management principles as a foundation of the restoration process. Data being collected is intended to be used to identify high-priority projects. It appears that EDT will be the tool used to achieve this goal. Development of a more formal adaptive management process for this project could help ensure that the data being collected are used to fullest advantage.
Evaluation of data collected by this project to date was not provided in this proposal. The reports planned for release in 2014 should contain a thorough data analysis and a discussion of the implications for habitat restoration.
The proposal provides only a very high-level description of the relationships between this project and other habitat RME and habitat restoration projects in the Columbia Basin. They apparently are using some sampling protocols developed through the CHaMP and PNAMP processes. But the actual relationship between this project and the large habitat RME efforts in the basin, like CHaMP and ISEMP, is not described. It would seem that considerable leverage could be gained by aligning the sampling protocols being used in this study with efforts attempting to achieve similar objectives. The data management system described for this project in the proposal also might benefit by closer association with the large RME programs, which have developed very sophisticated data management systems.
The proposal generically identifies limiting factors for the Rock Creek watershed, but it also indicates that site-specific limiting factors can only be reliably identified once data collection and analysis is complete. This approach is technically sound. Water temperature is identified as a limiting factor in the proposal, and the work has also included pathogen sampling, although results of that sampling are not presented here. Is there any possibility that high temperatures have exacerbated disease or parasite problems in Rock Creek? The proposal does not address any of the key emerging limiting factors such as climate change, invasive species, or future development of the watershed. A careful assessment of how these things may affect restoration actions should be incorporated into the process being developed to identify priority restoration actions.
This project uses PIT tags and two instream PIT tag readers to assess juvenile steelhead movement, smolt production, and adult returns. The proposal clearly explains why PIT tags are the best choice for application in this project. However, it is not clear if an adequate number of fish have been PIT-tagged to get sufficient recoveries to make generalizations about fish movements.
4. Deliverables, Work Elements, Metrics, and Methods
The deliverables, work elements, and metrics associated with the collection of fish and habitat data for Rock Creek appear to be appropriate for project objectives. However, there was little description of how these data are being analyzed (other than that EDT is being used); some additional information on this point would have helped assess the technical merit of the analysis methods being used. Presumably, these items will be addressed through the reports planned for completion in 2014. It was stated that genetic analysis of steelhead is being discontinued. No information was provided in the proposal on how the information from this part of the study will be used to help inform habitat restoration priorities.
There is insufficient information provided to determine if the methods that will be used to identify the most effective restoration projects are scientifically sound. The use of EDT to examine these data is a reasonable approach. However, until the reports on system geomorphology and fish populations are completed in 2014, it is not possible to assess whether or not these data will be sufficient to accurately parameterize the EDT process. In addition, it would be wise to use EDT in conjunction with a second analytical approach. Consistent outcomes from the two approaches would add considerable assurance that the most significant projects are being correctly identified.
Specific comments on protocols and methods described in MonitoringMethods.org
The proposal was adequately cross-referenced with respect to the MonitoringMethods.org protocols.
===========QUALIFICATIONS FOLLOW================
The elements of this project related to data collection generally meet scientific criteria. However, proposal elements related to the identification and execution of habitat restoration actions are not adequately justified from a scientific standpoint. It is not possible to assess the technical merit of the project identification process until the geomorphology and salmonid population assessments are completed in 2014. The ISRP looks forward to reviewing these reports and the process to be used to identify priority projects. The ISRP should review the reports and the prioritization process as a package rather than individually.
Qualification #1 - Qualification #1
Geomorphology and fish population reports should be reviewed by the ISRP when they become available.
Qualification #2 - Qualification #2
The strategy for incorporating these data into the restoration prioritization process needs to be clearly described.
This project proposes to continue an ongoing effort to collect and analyze salmonid population and habitat data on Rock Creek for the ultimate purpose of identifying habitat restoration projects that would be most beneficial to the fish. The Rock Creek watershed appears to be an appropriate location for such an effort. The proposal indicates that this population is a focus of recovery efforts for the Mid-Columbia ESU.
The four objectives for this project are:
(OBJ-1) Understand the current habitat conditions
(OBJ-2) Protect and conserve existing good quality habitat and expand upon these focal areas
(OBJ-3) Identify protection/restoration sites and actions
(OBJ-4) Restore and enhance habitat
The general approach being taken is consistent with the guidance provided by the ISRP for years: identify restoration actions based on a thorough understanding of how the focal species are using the watershed. The technical background on the project activity to date was sufficient to illustrate what has been accomplished. However, key elements of the watershed assessment have yet to be completed (geomorphic assessment and juvenile fish assessment reports due in 2014). It appears that these reports will form the basis of a new EDT analysis that will be used to identify project locations and limiting factors. An evaluation of the technical adequacy of the process that will be used for project identification would require that these reports be included in the proposal. Therefore, Objectives 1 and 2 are justified in the proposal. However, the adequacy of the process that will be used to identify priority restoration sites (Objective 3) cannot be assessed with the information provided in the proposal. As a result, Objective 4 is not appropriate at this time.
The history and past accomplishments of this project are described briefly in the proposal. However, it appears that relatively little rigorous analysis of the fish or habitat data that have been collected to date has been completed. The discussion of results is similar in scope to that examined in the previous ISRP review (spring 2012) and is only slightly improved in terms of providing a comprehensive understanding of the situation. The proposal mostly contains a description of the types of data being collected and provides examples of some of these data including number of spawners and index of juvenile density. Additionally, the location of stream reaches that experience significant dewatering should be displayed. Also, it would be useful to know if the presence of non-native fishes in lower Rock Creek has had any effect on the survival of juvenile steelhead as they emigrate from the watershed. It seems that the reports due in 2014 on channel geomorphology and salmonid fishes will include detailed analyses of the data. The ISRP would require these reports and a description of the process to be used to identify priority projects in order to fully evaluate this proposal.
There is no explicit description of an adaptive management process associated with this project. However, there is a clear indication of an intention to use adaptive management principles as a foundation of the restoration process. Data being collected is intended to be used to identify high-priority projects. It appears that EDT will be the tool used to achieve this goal. Development of a more formal adaptive management process for this project could help ensure that the data being collected are used to fullest advantage.
Evaluation of data collected by this project to date was not provided in this proposal. The reports planned for release in 2014 should contain a thorough data analysis and a discussion of the implications for habitat restoration.
The proposal provides only a very high-level description of the relationships between this project and other habitat RME and habitat restoration projects in the Columbia Basin. They apparently are using some sampling protocols developed through the CHaMP and PNAMP processes. But the actual relationship between this project and the large habitat RME efforts in the basin, like CHaMP and ISEMP, is not described. It would seem that considerable leverage could be gained by aligning the sampling protocols being used in this study with efforts attempting to achieve similar objectives. The data management system described for this project in the proposal also might benefit by closer association with the large RME programs, which have developed very sophisticated data management systems.
The proposal generically identifies limiting factors for the Rock Creek watershed, but it also indicates that site-specific limiting factors can only be reliably identified once data collection and analysis is complete. This approach is technically sound. Water temperature is identified as a limiting factor in the proposal, and the work has also included pathogen sampling, although results of that sampling are not presented here. Is there any possibility that high temperatures have exacerbated disease or parasite problems in Rock Creek? The proposal does not address any of the key emerging limiting factors such as climate change, invasive species, or future development of the watershed. A careful assessment of how these things may affect restoration actions should be incorporated into the process being developed to identify priority restoration actions.
This project uses PIT tags and two instream PIT tag readers to assess juvenile steelhead movement, smolt production, and adult returns. The proposal clearly explains why PIT tags are the best choice for application in this project. However, it is not clear if an adequate number of fish have been PIT-tagged to get sufficient recoveries to make generalizations about fish movements.
4. Deliverables, Work Elements, Metrics, and Methods
The deliverables, work elements, and metrics associated with the collection of fish and habitat data for Rock Creek appear to be appropriate for project objectives. However, there was little description of how these data are being analyzed (other than that EDT is being used); some additional information on this point would have helped assess the technical merit of the analysis methods being used. Presumably, these items will be addressed through the reports planned for completion in 2014. It was stated that genetic analysis of steelhead is being discontinued. No information was provided in the proposal on how the information from this part of the study will be used to help inform habitat restoration priorities.
There is insufficient information provided to determine if the methods that will be used to identify the most effective restoration projects are scientifically sound. The use of EDT to examine these data is a reasonable approach. However, until the reports on system geomorphology and fish populations are completed in 2014, it is not possible to assess whether or not these data will be sufficient to accurately parameterize the EDT process. In addition, it would be wise to use EDT in conjunction with a second analytical approach. Consistent outcomes from the two approaches would add considerable assurance that the most significant projects are being correctly identified.
Specific comments on protocols and methods described in MonitoringMethods.org
The proposal was adequately cross-referenced with respect to the MonitoringMethods.org protocols.
===========QUALIFICATIONS FOLLOW================
The elements of this project related to data collection generally meet scientific criteria. However, proposal elements related to the identification and execution of habitat restoration actions are not adequately justified from a scientific standpoint. It is not possible to assess the technical merit of the project identification process until the geomorphology and salmonid population assessments are completed in 2014. The ISRP looks forward to reviewing these reports and the process to be used to identify priority projects. The ISRP should review the reports and the prioritization process as a package rather than individually.
There are not enough details in the project to conduct a scientific evaluation. This project likely needs more time than is available in the response loop to adequately develop this project for a meaningful ISRP review. The ISRP looks forward to reviewing a proposal when it is fully developed. As mentioned below, a few parts of this might be supportable if better justified.
A labeled map and a description of land ownership in project areas are both badly needed.
The issue/problem statement is not well developed, and as a result, there is no clear overall goal. How the entire project relates to the region as a whole is unclear.
A few Chinook have been noted to spawn in the lower end. Steelhead are the only species of interest (The presentation reported 143 Steelhead redds). Again, the background and goals are described as though the completed work was never done.
The merits of the seven specific objectives are in question as well their status and the need for the work to be done. One objective (#4 to assess juvenile abundance and distribution) appears warranted if clearly defined. The other six are either already completed, at least to an adequate extent, or inappropriate.
Obj. 1 steelhead genetics - see completed report in Annual Report. Several more years of 50 fish samples are “needed.”
Obj. 2 assess habitat conditions and limiting factors - Proponents need to justify and clarify the need for additional data based on what has already analyzed. The discussion in the Annual Report was insufficient.
Obj. 3 assess lamprey use - never justified or explained to reviewers.
For some reason this is identified as a new project as it indicates there are no past accomplishments. Yet the financial summary indicates $330K has already been spent, much of that Accord funds. Some of the funding went to “install two PIT-tag multiplex units in Rock Creek and subcontracted to USGS. Not all of the funding was spent to the end of the contract because there was limited time. The remainder of the FY2008 budget was carried over to the FY2011 budget. Then in FY2009 the Rock Creek Project started a two-year contract which is planned to end on May 31, 2011. We have a large subcontract with USGS to assist with the population surveys in Rock Creek as well as analyze the PIT-tag data.” This tangled web was confusing to reviewers.
An annual report has been filed for the period Dec 2007 through May 2009. However, for some reason that is quite disconcerting, those results are totally ignored in the current proposal.
So, regardless, there have been lots of data gathered. And there are PIT tag units and a USGS population survey subcontract apparently in place.
The project development, history, and most importantly its current status is in question.
There is little information regarding how this project relates to other projects in the region.
The fact that there are substantial numbers of channel catfish, smallmouth bass, walleyes, perch and other non-natives is a clear problem, and to the reviewers, puts the value of the entire project in question.
There are not enough details in the project to conduct a scientific evaluation. This project likely needs more time than is available in the response loop to adequately develop this project for a meaningful ISRP review. The ISRP looks forward to reviewing a proposal when it is fully developed. As mentioned below, a few parts of this might be supportable if better justified.
A labeled map and a description of land ownership in project areas are both badly needed.
The issue/problem statement is not well developed, and as a result, there is no clear overall goal. How the entire project relates to the region as a whole is unclear.
A few Chinook have been noted to spawn in the lower end. Steelhead are the only species of interest (The presentation reported 143 Steelhead redds). Again, the background and goals are described as though the completed work was never done.
The merits of the seven specific objectives are in question as well their status and the need for the work to be done. One objective (#4 to assess juvenile abundance and distribution) appears warranted if clearly defined. The other six are either already completed, at least to an adequate extent, or inappropriate.
Obj. 1 steelhead genetics - see completed report in Annual Report. Several more years of 50 fish samples are “needed.”
Obj. 2 assess habitat conditions and limiting factors - Proponents need to justify and clarify the need for additional data based on what has already analyzed. The discussion in the Annual Report was insufficient.
Obj. 3 assess lamprey use - never justified or explained to reviewers.
For some reason this is identified as a new project as it indicates there are no past accomplishments. Yet the financial summary indicates $330K has already been spent, much of that Accord funds. Some of the funding went to “install two PIT-tag multiplex units in Rock Creek and subcontracted to USGS. Not all of the funding was spent to the end of the contract because there was limited time. The remainder of the FY2008 budget was carried over to the FY2011 budget. Then in FY2009 the Rock Creek Project started a two-year contract which is planned to end on May 31, 2011. We have a large subcontract with USGS to assist with the population surveys in Rock Creek as well as analyze the PIT-tag data.” This tangled web was confusing to reviewers.
An annual report has been filed for the period Dec 2007 through May 2009. However, for some reason that is quite disconcerting, those results are totally ignored in the current proposal.
So, regardless, there have been lots of data gathered. And there are PIT tag units and a USGS population survey subcontract apparently in place.
The project development, history, and most importantly its current status is in question.
There is little information regarding how this project relates to other projects in the region.
The fact that there are substantial numbers of channel catfish, smallmouth bass, walleyes, perch and other non-natives is a clear problem, and to the reviewers, puts the value of the entire project in question.
The BiOp RM&E Workgroups made the following determinations regarding the proposal's ability or need to support BiOp Research, Monitoring and Evaluation (RME) RPAs. If you have questions regarding these RPA association conclusions, please contact your BPA COTR and they will help clarify, or they will arrange further discussion with the appropriate RM&E Workgroup Leads. BiOp RPA associations for the proposed work are: ( ) All Questionable RPA Associations ( ) and All Deleted RPA Associations (56.1)
The proposal has many objectives and it is expected that this ambitious project should generate much information that would be useful to others in the region. However, there is a need to prioritize among the objectives and work in a logical sequence that allows planning and funding to proceed in stages. The ISRP recommends that objectives that relate to obtaining access, assessing fish population abundance and productivity, and assessing habitat be supported. Specifically work elements presented below should be conducted if the sponsors can justify how this information will be used. The ISRP suggests using flow charts or similar methods to identify how contingencies will be addressed based on the baseline data.
Justification for sample sizes, whether they are sites, reaches, or fish, should be specified. Monitoring and evaluation should be described in more detail to ensure that success of the project can be effectively evaluated. Strategies for sharing information were clearly identified in the response.
Not-fundable elements: The PIT tagging work is not justified in the response. There seem to be no special circumstances or hypotheses identified here that could only be answered or addressed by PIT tag results.
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ICU-Related Depression Often Overlooked, Study Finds
TUESDAY, April 8, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- One-third of patients admitted to an intensive care unit develop depression that causes physical symptoms rather than the typical psychological signs, a new study finds.
As a result, their condition may go undiagnosed and they may not get needed help, the research suggested.
"It's a significant public health issue. We need to pay more attention to preventing and treating the physical rather than psychological symptoms of depression in ICU survivors," said study leader James Jackson, a psychologist and assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
The physical signs of depression included weakness, changes in appetite and fatigue, the researchers said.
"The physical symptoms of depression are often resistant to standard treatment with antidepressant drugs and we need to determine how best to enhance recovery with a new focus on physical and occupational rehabilitation," Jackson added.
The study involved over 800 patients with respiratory failure or a life-threatening blood infection called sepsis who were admitted to intensive care units in Nashville. Average age of the patients was 61.
Using various tests, the researchers evaluated the study's participants for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and functional disability at three months and one year after discharge. They also assessed the patients' quality of life.
The research, published online April 7 in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, found that 37 percent of the patients had at least mild depression at three months. Of these, two-thirds had mainly physical symptoms. One-third of the patients who were depressed still had symptoms at the 12-month follow-up.
While patients with a history of depression were more likely than others to experience symptoms of depression after their ICU stay, depression affected about 30 percent of those who had no mental health issue at the three-month and 12-month assessments. Meanwhile, only 7 percent of the patients developed symptoms of PTSD.
"Substantial time and energy has been invested in addressing PTSD in survivors of critical illness, but our findings suggest that it is less pervasive than depression," Jackson said in a journal news release. "Patients of all ages are at risk of developing post-ICU mental health and functional disabilities and more needs to be done to ensure that these impairments don't become permanent."
At three months, the study also showed one-third of the patients experienced disability in performing normal daily activities, such as eating, bathing and getting dressed without help.
More than one-quarter of patients also had trouble performing necessary tasks, such as managing money, making travel plans, writing a shopping list or following a recipe at three months.
Overall, the study found that patients treated in an intensive care unit are three times more likely to develop depression than the general population. Depression is also four times more common among people who have survived a critical illness than post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Some of the typical signs of depression include persistent sadness or feeling worthless, hopeless or "empty," according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
More information
The American Psychological Association provides more information on depression.
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Modal dialog
Do you want to tell the world that you tied the knot? Sending wedding announcements is a stylish and elegant way to declare your happy news. And they're especially important to send to those loved ones who couldn't make it to your ceremony. So if you have a friend who lives far away or a family member who unfortunately had a prior engagement, they'll be thrilled to receive your beautiful marriage announcements that celebrate such an important milestone in your life.
At Wedding Paper Divas our huge collection of chic wedding announcements has something for every style and budget. And when you're choosing a design, keep in mind the décor and color scheme of your wedding in order to find a card that matches the overall look and tone of your special day. However, not only do we offer numerous classy designs, but we also have a wide range of customizable options. With full control over everything from the color of the layout to the font style, you can tailor any card to match your personal taste. Also, some designs will even let you feature up to six pretty portraits on your wedding announcements. Everyone will certainly love seeing those stunning snapshots and it's also a great way to introduce your fiancee's face to the friends and family who have yet to see him.
When working on your wedding announcement wording, you can go ahead and make the language match that of your formal invites. Just remember to include important details such as your names as well as the date and location. And you can even add your own personalized messages as well. So whether you want to write something a little lighthearted or a verse that's more sentimental, as long as the wording on your marriage announcements reflects your personality, those closest to you are guaranteed to adore it.
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November 16, 2014wedding announcement
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Description:
Please note this product has elements that are designed to
look like glitter, but no actual glitter will be printed on this product. Professional tip: For a luminescent look, choose Pearl White Shimmer Paper.
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Catholic League
A week after Organizers of the NYC St. Patrick’s Day parade announced that they are ending a ban and allowing a gay group to march under its own banner for the first time, the president of the Catholic League said his group will not march in the parade.
The President of the Catholic League this week took issue after Mayor Bill de Blasio declined to march, and sponsors withdrew, from the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade amid a dispute over whether participants can carry pro-gay signs.
The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue is still steamed over the Empire State Building refusing to honor Mother Teresa and he says it’s not surprising that they’re going to “stiff” the newly elevated Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
There were protests on Capitol Hill on Friday from female lawmakers about the all-male panel of witnesses called to testify about what they believe is the Obama administration’s violation of religious freedom. The lawmakers said it’s a women’s rights issue.
Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan came to the South Bronx to bless a library, but he had no blessings — just harsh words — for President Barack Obama, who wants Catholic institutions to pay for birth control.
Catholic leaders upped the ante Monday, threatening to challenge the Obama administration over a provision of the new health care law that would require all employers, including religious institutions, to pay for birth control.
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Christian preaching is easily recognizable—you need a preacher with a Bible in a church. But what about less than Christian preaching? Can you have a preacher with a Bible in a church, but actually have something less than, something sub-gospel? Absolutely. Here are some warning signs:
1. Fail to identify the “God” being referenced.
In the West, we have grown complacent with the term “god.” Perhaps due to a strong Christian heritage, or perhaps due to a lack of awareness of our Bibles, we can easily fall into an assumption that people know who we mean when we use the term.
Consequently, there is a generic set of truths that are assumed to be true about God before the biblical content is added on top for a fuller, richer presentation. This is nothing new; it has been happening for centuries at the highest level of theological scholarship as well as in the pulpit.
But in the Bible, which God is being referenced tends to be carefully clarified. Elijah was not satisfied that the false prophets on Mt. Carmel also believed in a single, powerful god figure. Paul on Mars Hill was not prepared to start from where the philosopher-theologians had already arrived in their conceptions of a single divine being.
Perhaps one of the following should be underlined when referencing God in preaching:
A. The Person(s) of the Trinity. Perhaps it is appropriate to clarify who is being referenced in the passage. For instance, in the New Testament, the label “God” typically will refer to God the Father, although there are places where the whole Trinity is in view, or even God the Son. Why not be sure to identify the persons of the Trinity in order to help clarify that the text is speaking of the Father-Son-Spirit God rather than some sort of generic OmniBeing (as I’ve heard Glen Scrivener label this alternative approach).
B. The Character of God. Another way to identify and distinguish the true God from all false gods is to make reference to His character. This was Paul’s approach when preaching to pagans in Lystra and pagan-philosophers in Athens—he described God’s character as the life-giving, generous, patient, kind God who providentially works in circumstance and in the sending of His Son so that people will seek for Him and find Him as they turn from the worthless fashioning of gods in their own image (and this invitation has a terminus).
Within the context of the passage being preached, there will be something that can be offered to distinguish the God who is revealed there from the gods who need little revelation since we come up with them without any trouble on our own!
Christian preaching is easy to spot: preacher with Bible in a church. But maybe it is not so easy? Continuing this series on warning signs that your preaching may be slightly less than Christian.
2. Fail to hear the hiss of serpent-like independence in the way you view people.
We live in a culture that esteems and values and assumes the independence of individuals. Parents are pressured to raise independent children. Counselors seek to get people to a state of “healthy” independence. Advertisers promise us the fulfillment of wealthy independence. We are individuals and we will fight for our independence. The language of freedom and inalienable rights sounds as solid as biblical truth itself.
In the sixth century a certain Boethius defined a person essentially as a “thinking-choosing individual” ... all three elements may be true of us, but is this the sum of personhood? Ever since Genesis 3, it has seemed to be, but it is not the original design. What is more, the original design is still in operation, albeit broken on so many levels. Let me explain.
A. We experience life as thinker-choosers. I am presented with three options (three cookies or three jobs, whatever), and I think and I choose. Simple. But why do I think what I think? Why do I choose what I choose? Where are the values coming from that enable me to prefer chocolate chip over peanut butter . . . many people would argue that my preference for the former is irrational, but that just shows they have differing values.
Where do they come from? And I do make choices, but why is it that I always choose what I want to choose? Why is it, as sales people know, that we actually seem to buy based on what we love and then rationalize and justify our preferences?
B. We experience life as individuals. I have my own private thoughts and desires and dreams. I have my own private thought processes and struggles and difficulties. I make my own choices. There is a disconnect between me and others. Yet I also experience that my life is not really truly independent. My choices make a mark on family and friends. And often in my private independence, there is a loneliness and apparent lack. A beautiful sunset does little for me if I feel genuinely alone in that moment.
C. We were created as heart-driven relational responders. Our thinking is informed by our heart values. Our choices are driven by our wants. Our inherent design is profoundly relational. We will choose what we want, but we cannot choose what it is that we want. Our wants are free to roam around the gravity center of our heart-orientation, and in our sinful dead state, we are dead toward God as an alternative gravity center to our self-world.
Implication for preaching? If we are treating people as thinking-choosing individuals, we may be saying Bible truth to them, but our preaching will be less than Christian. We cannot simply educate people or pressure people into social conformity and call that gospel ministry. The gospel works not from the outside-in, but from the inside-out—it brings heart change that leads to life change. Boethius didn’t get that; let’s be sure we do.
Preacher in a pulpit with a Bible and some thoughts ... Christian preaching? Maybe. Here is another warning sign that our preaching may be offering something less than the gospel.
3. Fail to recognize the gravity of sin.
Too much Christian theology and evangelistic preaching assumes that everyone knows what sin is. Sin is sin, right? Stealing, lying, murder, adultery, etc. So obvious that there is no need to probe the issue; just be sure to make lots of noise about it. But what if our view of sin is altogether too shallow?
A. It is easy to make a lot of noise about half of sin. Everyone is inclined to hand pick which sins are their personal target and then make noise about such things. But the list of sins is typically truncated. It tends to be the ones that I don’t struggle with. But what about the deep sin coming to the surface in other ways? More on the root versus the fruit in a moment, but at the fruit level, what about the acceptable sins?
Why don’t we hear so much on the sins that tend to be an issue within the church? Too easily we aim our guns at people who haven’t even engaged us in our dialogue.
B. It is easy to rage against society, but what does that achieve? I know that theologically the world is clearly in opposition to God and His values. But at the same time, simple raging against people not present doesn’t achieve much. For one thing, if a non-church person happens to visit, they might feel like the church is a place for complaining and arguing with straw-man enemy figures.
For instance, I wonder if people would be so bold in statements about outspoken opponents of religion if they were present? So someone might hear and might actually paint an unhelpful picture of the church. Furthermore, church folk might hear and grow in their fleshly inclination to compare with others, thereby losing sight of the sin that is their own greatest problem. Fanning the flames of fleshly pride is not helpful.
C. In our noisy preaching about half of sin, we may be understating the issue altogether. Even if we add older brother behaviors to younger brother behaviors and make our sin lists more complete, we are still addressing the issue at the level of fruit rather than root and sap. When we treat sin as what comes out, we make it sound behavioral by definition. But the Bible treats sin as a heart-level issue.
The heart of the human problem is the human heart. Out of the heart spews all types of sin: the drunken orgy rebellion type and the prideful religious churchy type ... both from a heart dead toward God. The behaviours weren’t the ultimate issue with those two sons, it was their hearts—despising a relationship with father and loving self. The manifestation was different, but the hearts were equally lost.
Sin is too important to treat as a given. We have to diagnose the depths of the human problem if our gospel preaching is to offer an appropriately radical cure.
Peter Mead is involved in the leadership team of a church plant in the UK. He serves as director of Cor Deo—an innovative mentored ministry training program—and has a wider ministry preaching and training preachers. He also blogs often at BiblicalPreaching.net and recently authored Pleased to Dwell: A Biblical Introduction to the Incarnation (Christian Focus, 2014). Follow him on Twitter.
In reference to the trinity, why don't we begin by telling our church members that the "trinity" as traditional organized religion explains the Godhead is non-existent -- because the word trinity is certainly not referred to in the scriptures. And then ask these same people to search the scriptures for themselves to determine when -- if Jesus was not Almighty God in the flesh, He became our Saviour? One Lord, one faith, one baptism. Beside Me, there is no other. It's time to stop praying to -- or in this case preaching about -- the unknown God within our congregations. His name is Jesus -- the only name given under heaven whereby we can be saved. When churchgoers begin to realize how much God loved them -- even from the beginning -- and His willingness to do whatever it takes to bring us back to Him --questions about "preaching being less than Christian" will not even be a factor. Blessings!
Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Please do not deify the shadows of the one and only true God, Jesus Christ. "Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great: He appeared in the flesh, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory." 1 Timothy 3:16 NIV
In all of their years preachers are not awaire that God is Jesus with blood in him? They are as dense as the Muslims denying Jesus as being Lord. Preachers know what Jesus said to Philip. They know what Thomas said, but it goes in one ear out of the other. What is in the heart comes out in words and actions Jesus would not do or say. Religious preachers have never said that the body itself is in sin seeing God's Glory as hell. The body needs to have Jesus in it to be changed when God's light shines on it. Whoever is deceived by strong drink is not wise. I know what is on your mind, Guns. Guns are being aimed when no one is verbally engaging them in dialogue. Shots fired when speaking? Shot at a person. Shot at Jesus.
Wow. This is a great article. Sadly, we've sunk to a new low in these meta comments when people like Janice Mckendrick start trying to deny core Christian doctrines. I've been on these boards for years and have seen the slow move in this direction, but it's still jarring that we're here now. Sad too.
It is actually very basic. Jesus settled the debate a long time ago. He did not undermine the fact that man naturally would be curious about God and creation. He stepped forward and made a defining statement:Man has no business with God unless such access is sought through Him. No long-winded proselytizing, no equivocation. Simple and short. Trinity might there for formal theology but knowing Jesus will entail knowing both the Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus said no-one can know the Father unless the Son reveals the Father to him (Matt.10:27). It is such that seeing the Son is the prerequisite for seeing the Father (John14:6). Or is knowing Jesus not enough? From my perception, knowing Jesus will reveal the Father and usher in the Holy Spirit. When then did the concept of Trinity take a life of its own in Christianity? I have searched through the Bible and I am yet to see the mention of the word "trinity".
For the record, Matthew 28:19 was changed by the Roman Catholic church around 385 AD. Look it up for yourself -- they admit it. But even if we used Matthew 28:19 as the foundation for doctrinal beliefs, this scripture still states "in the name." What name? The name that the disciples used when they baptized new believers in Acts 2:38 and beyond. The name in which we are supposed to "do everything in word or deed." The only name given under heaven whereby we can be saved. The name (in this dispensation) of Almighty God who shed His own humanity on the cross for you and I. The name to which every knee shall bow. Yes, even in preaching, core Christian doctrines (i.e. religious/tradition) are supposed to align with the Word. When they don't, the teaching is false. Isaiah wrote, "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen: that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He: before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me." Colossians 2:9 states "For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." Revelation 1:8 states "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." Moreover, we know from reading the scriptures that the Lord does not give His glory to another. Therefore, we need to stop worshiping an "unknown god" and instead, accept our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ as the King of kings and Lord of lords. If we don't then there is only one question --- "Whom seek ye?" Blessings!
Janice- When Jesus was baptized, Who was the voice from Heaven which said, "?This is my beloved Son,[c] with whom I am well pleased.?? How do you interpret Spirit of God Who came in the form of a dove?
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Where To Play in Tampa Bay
Click on the icon to see specific details about places to play around the Tampa Bay Area. From Mario’s Pizza in Clearwater to the public courts on St. Pete Beach, they are a variety of places to enjoy a pickup game. Of course, if the court is provided by a business, we hope you’ll give them a little bit of your business.
If you know of any place not on our map, please contact us. And if you’d like to see beach volleyball some place, let us know that, too.
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Stealth Evo Travel Trailer Review: Aerodynamic Comfort
Stealth Evo travel trailers by Forest River offer an aerodynamic front profile that saves on gas and exquisitely designed interiors that make you feel right at home. From smaller units to large family sized floorplans, the Evo has something for everyone. With Evo, form meets function. Read our Evo travel trailer review to learn more about these incredible RVs.
Kitchen
A fully equipped kitchen is an important part of enjoying your RV. After all, one of the perks of having an RV is being able to cook up delicious meals for your family wherever you are and stick to your diet. Gluten free, vegan, vegetarian, whatever your needs your kitchen helps you meet them. Evo’s kitchen features a microwave with a carousel, 3 burner range with an oven, and a double door Dometic refrigerator.
Mechanics
If you’re planning on vacationing in the desert, you’ll appreciate Evo’s 13,500BTU air conditioner. An A&E awning allows you to enjoy the great outdoors, while being protected from the elements, while a 6 gallon DSI water heater promises a warm shower and hot water to get the dishes done. A full length rubber walkable roof is durable, easy to maintain, and sure to last for years to come.
Options
Evo gives you the opportunity to customize your RV to meet your lifestyle. You have the option to add an LED TV that ranges between 19″ and 24″. Aluma wall fiberglass exterior walls promise a lightweight RVing experience. A BBQ quick disconnect (frame mount) makes hooking up and disconnecting easy, while stabiliizer jacks give you the ability to camp on a variety of terrains.
If you’re interested in learning more about how the Evo travel trailer can meet your needs, contact us. As your experienced Utah RV dealer we have the knowledge necessary to help you find the right RV at a great price. View our Evo inventory online along with extensive photos and detailed information on each unit.
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Dimmable Red LED Bulbs - 5 LED per bulb
Have you made the decision to go LED in your retro yard ornaments but want to animate your display.
If you've done your research, you know that only dimmable bulbs can be quickly flashed on and off in your animated project.
These bulbs fit that bill! They are manufactured by Minleon and are the highest available grade of LED replacement Christmas light bulb available on the market at this time.
They have an E17 or intermediate base which is standard for a C9 Christmas light bulb so they will be compatible with your existing C9 stringers. If your cords have seen better days or you need to add to your display, check out our full line of C9 Cords.
Please keep in mind that the maximum run (light line) length for 18 AWG wire is 250 feet. (This means don't run a single circuit of 18 AWG wire longer than 250 feet.) Even with the low current specifications of this bulb, your wiring has a maximum length.
Bulb Shape
C9
Bulb Type
LED
Bulb Color
Red
Base Type
Intermediate (E17)
Base Finish
Nickel
Diameter
1 1/8"
Bulb Diameter
1 1/8"
Bulb Height
2 3/8"
Bulb Width
1 1/8"
Estimated Lifetime
50,000 Hours Approx. 90 Day Warranty
Voltage Rating
110V/120V
AMPS Usage
.008A
Watts
0.96W
Requires
C9 Cord or Spool
Environment
Indoor/Outdoor
Additional Specifications
Dimmable Replacement Bulb, 5 LEDs/Bulb
Additional Specifications
5 LEDs per Bulb
Worked Great
My wife decided that we needed to go LED last Christmas so I bought these bulbs for our C9 cords.
We like the color. They aren't the same as our old C9 bulbs but were really pretty. We didn't see our electricity bill go up as much as it has in past years.
I'm planning to use these again and may add some other colors - I like that I can alternate white with them if I want to.
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On December 17, A REALM AWOKEN (FFXIV Patch 2.1) will be released for Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. We had an interview with producer/director Naoki Yoshida about the new instanced dungeon details, descriptions of job adjustments, and a number of things on the horizon for players to look forward to.
The 10th LIVE producer letter was jam-packed with content...
Tell us about the 10th LIVE producer letter the other day. It was two hours long and jam-packed with content.
Yoshida: Yeah, I really needed a break. I kept getting thinking "hasn't it been two hours yet?" and hoping it would go by faster. (laughs)
Two hours seems like it's about the right length for these broadcasts.
Yoshida: Yeah, it gives us enough time to get through all of the content and through any of the broadcast hiccups we run into. (laughs)
Actually, we were surprised by all of the information that we had to pack into the 120 minutes.
Yoshida: I thought I might have been twiddling my thumbs at some point.... anyway, back on topic (laughs).
The broadcasts are pretty fun to watch. (laughs)
Yoshida: For the content of upcoming broadcasts, we've planned many improvements. For example, after talking with the community team staff, we've asked for some honest feedback about any issues with the broadcast so that we can make it more enjoyable for everyone. It's a hot topic on the forum, and we want to make sure everyone can enjoy the LIVE broadcasts, but also that the information gets conveyed to all players of FFXIV.
In patch 2.1, Eorzea is evolving from "Reborn" to an "Awoken."
Explain for us the title of patch 2.1 - A REALM AWOKEN.
Yoshida: In this patch, we are moving the game from "Reborn" to "Awoken." We chose this title because it is the theme of patch 2.1, where the powers which have been locked away and hidden will be exposed at last. For the story, "Awoken" will be a theme of the new quests in the main scenario. We have also planned sidequests in addition to the main scenario which will focus on Beastmen and a revolution within Eorzea. I hope everyone's looking forward to it.
Will any new characters appear?
Yoshida: Yes. There will be new characters, and, of course, the reappearance of old characters. Additionally, there will be some old enemies which will be "awoken" as well.
Will the large amount of additional story content continue in the future as well?
Yoshida: Patch 2.2 is actually scheduled to have about 1.5 times the amount of story in patch 2.1. The same applies to new characters which will appear in the story as it proceeds forward with each patch.
Was it easy to decide the title for this patch?
Yoshida: Actually, we did decide this pretty quickly. We worked with Michael, who's responsible for translation of the English version, and asked him for a key word that worked nicely, and "AWAKE" came up. Because this is the first patch, we decided from the onset that we would continue to use the word "REALM" from the original game title, so it came from those ideas.
So that's how you decided the title.
Yoshida: Yeah. After incorporating "REALM," the proposed title was "A REALM AWOKEN" and we decided to go with that. After we consulted with Oda, who's responsible for the world setting, we came up with the representation of this as a Japanese title. As a result of that, since everything in the world is waking up, we decided to use plural form "we" [referencing the Japanese title].
Then you set out to design the logo?
We had to ask Minagawa to hurry (laughs). I had to apologize that I gave him very little time (laughs).
(Laughs) Although the logo follows the original design, the font and color is very different.
Yoshida: For the font, we plan to change it with each patch. Since an air of unrest is arriving in Eorzea and the battles will be very intense, we chose a font which reflected that. Unlike the traditional FF series logos, we wanted people to instantly see a difference when comparing the different logos side by side.
Seems like a bit of nostalgia is built into the design also.
Yoshida: Yeah, I asked for it to look a bit like something of a 1980s or 1990s rock band, so that was intentional (laughs).
You intentionally chose the design in a rock band style?
Yoshida: I wanted it to look different from other things that we've seen recently, so that even as a web banner it would be a very different image from others.
The three pillars of MMO development
People will likely be using patch 2.1 as the litmus test to gauge future updates for the new FFXIV. Do you plan for future updates to be implemented on the same scale?
Yoshida: Generally speaking, we plan for the amount of underlying content to be about the same. One thing that will be different about patch 2.1 is that we are adding two entirely new systems - Wolves' Den (PvP content) and player housing. So to that end, there may not be as many new systems implemented with every patch.
Do you plan to proceed with the development of housing and PvP content over the next year?
Yoshida: To run a successful MMO, I believe that there are three important pillars that need to be emphasized. The first is PvE (Player vs. Environment) and fighting against monsters. Next is PvP (Player vs Player), where adventurers vie against one another. The third, is all of the elements which come together to allow players to feel like they are actually living a life in the game's world. If the game can be successful on all three of those pillars, the overall success of the game is much more likely.
So that's why all three of these pillars are emphasized in patch 2.1
Yoshida: Yes, that will be one part that differs from other patches. In the future, we will be building on each of these three pillars. There will be new monsters, new story and boss battles, and new dungeons. There will be new battlefields and rewards as well as additional content for PvP. We will add chocobo breeding and more housing content. All of these are in development.
The story seems to be an important pillar as well.
Yoshida: Yes, even though new FFXIV is an MMORPG, as part of the FF series, the story will become the fourth pillar. With each update we will continue to add to the scenarios, so the story will always be moving forward.
So really the work is made up of four pillars.
Yoshida: Yes. The three items I mentioned at first are the ones which allow a MMORPG to survive. In addition to those, we hope to continue to emphasize the story as the last pillar.
So the emphasis for future work based on the popularity of patch 2.1?
Yoshida: Yes, we have a lot of plans for the future of the new FFXIV and we will do everything we can to see it survive as a MMO.
Tell us a little more about what will make up these four pillars in patches for the new FFXIV.
Yoshida: Okay, so here's a bit more detail about PvE... we plan to add three dungeons with each patch. Additionally, new primal battles will be added with each patch. As you know there are many which ahve not appeared. In patch 2.1, we will be adding Good King Moggle Mog XII. While he was already present in the "old" FFXIV, he will be a bit special this time around with new battle elements. In patch 2.2, the main story will be supplemented with the next primal battle against Leviathan.
For future primal battles, will more than one degree of difficulty be provided?
Yoshida: In the future, primal battles will be released at the same time. For example, in patch 2.2, we will add both the hard and extreme mode Leviathan battles to the game. We will also be adding the extreme mode King Moggle Mogg XII in patch 2.2, so there will actually be three of these battles added at once in 2.2.
Is there anything else you can tell us about PvE battle content?
Yoshida: In every patch, either the Crystal Tower or the Binding Coil of Bahamut (the end game content) will be expanded. We will also be increasing the amount of available daily Beastman quests as well as smaller content such as treasure hunts with each update.
It was previously announced that the daily quests for the Beastmen would be tied to the existing story about the beastmen and added to each patch. After all of the beastmen of Eorzea have their stories added, what will happen?
Yoshida: By the time patch 2.2 rolls around, all of the beastmen stories will be present. Then, adding additional episodes will become the main focus. Of course, as we add new beastmen, new corresponding daily quests will be added as well.
Increasing your "Rank" through PvP
So, for the second pillar, you'll be adding the "Wolves' Den" as PvP content?
Yoshida: In patch 2.1, your PvP rank (the number which indicates your PvP prowess) will be able to be raised to a maximum of 30. Both your winning percentage and your playtime will be taken into account when calculating your rank ups. We will see how long it takes people to rank up when we consider subsequent additions.
When will it be expanded?
Yoshida: In the future when the "front line" is introduced, we will open up the PvP ranks and rewards for 31 and above, at which time you'll be able to play up to PvP rank 50. We will decide with each patch based on the average rank of the player population whether we need to add additional ranks and rewards to PvP.
In patch 2.1, what will the categories and play format of PvP be like?
Yoshida: You'll be able to participate in random matching with other adventurers at level 30, level 40, or level 50. Additionally, you'll be able to play with a party that you set up yourself at level 50.
Is it restricted to light parties?
Yoshida: Yes, that's right. While we plan to add full party PvP in the future, we want to first make sure we have the balance right with 4 vs. 4. By having too many players at once it would be difficult to assess the situation.
What's your vision for the future of PvP content?
Yoshida: Hmm... well, for one thing, we're looking into adding new game rules, such as a capture the flag mode which we have in development. We will also continue to expand the Wolves' Den itself, and will expand with "front line."
Player housing with so much content that it could have been its own expansion
So how about the third pillar and player housing?
Yoshida: In each patch, we will continue to add new objects such as furniture. You'll be able to do things such as cultivate Gysahl Greens in the field. We'll also be adding new play elements such as chocobo raising in the Chocobo stables which will be added in one of the upcoming updates to housing. We plan to add at least one element like this to housing with each patch.
It seems like a considerable amount will be added in patch 2.1.
Yoshida: Taking into account the development time, it's actually taken us about a year or more to get this content ready. If you include the planning time, it was even longer. We had to work really carefully to program and implement the specifications that we came up with. It took 6-9 months just to do the coding for the housing interiors. We had so much planned from the onset that we probably could have made player housing the focus of its own expansion disk.
Patch Notes to be published a few days before implementation
So when will the patch notes be published so that players can understand all of the patch details?
Yoshida: Like with old FFXIV, the patch notes will be published a few days before the implementation date. Once the update is just around the corner the contens of the patch will be lined out in the notes. Not including the recipes, item lists, and job adjustments, I've heard that the notes are already up to 35,000 [Japanese] characters at the moment. (laughs)
A whole new discussion will probably start around the patch notes.
Yoshida: Yeah, but it will be different before people try it out. We hope that once people see the whole picture, they'll come back and say "wow, that was a good patch."
Will it be divided up by light party/full party content?
Yoshida: Apart from the Crystal Tower which is alliance content, we plan for endgame content to be focused on a unit of eight players. For example, gathering Allagan Tomestones is good for a light party, but I feel like eight players is the smallest unit that should take on strong bosses.
Any reason in particular that you feel that way?
Yoshida: Yes, we want to make sure that there is space in the party for at least two people of each role. 4-6 players is a number which has been used frequently in recent MMOs, but I stuck with the figure of eight people since back in the design stage for the aforementioned reasons. You can have two each of healer and tank and four DPS in the present situation. Once we add the hybrid role (which serves multiple roles), you'll be able to have two players from each role, for a total of 8 people.
What's the basic concept behind that?
Yoshida: The underlying concept is that you can have eight players gathered of all different jobs, and each job plays a role in clearing the content.
So each job is like a piece of the puzzle. Can you clarify this at all?
Yoshida: Think about it in terms of blocks. In the current content, there are eight sockets to fit eight blocks into. We have designed the content around this planned configuration. Of course, we did not restrict the freedom of the community to challenge this job configuration, and we are aware that the planned configuration is not the only one that works when clearing content.
Limiting Downgrades, Emphasizing Upgrades
Talking a bit about the job situation, in the 10th LIVE letter and on the forum you mentioned job changes a bit. Can you talk about the development and the situation behind these?
Yoshida: As an example, in the Binding Coil of Bahamut, the roles of warrior and paladin should both be separate but similar. The design is based on the fact that the main tank and sub tank should not be fixed, so players should switch the main and sub depending on the situations. However, players have been getting through the content with paladin alone without the need for switching. As a result, the socket for this block has become distorted to "more easily" be filled with a Paladin, which essentially made it impossible for warriors to join. Of course players are focused on whatever makes the content most easily cleared, and as a result players have filled both of these sockets with Paladin blocks. It was a big mistake on our end, where we basically got the shape of the block wrong for this content we prepared.
Is there anything specific about Paladin which you got wrong?
Yoshida: I think the combination of moves along with Hallowed Ground can be used to the point where it is too strong.
In other words, people used paladins because that block was more easily fit into the socket.
Yoshida: Yes, and by adopting a two paladin configuration, it makes it even easier to complete the content.
And this was unexpected by the development team?
Yoshida: Yes, this wasn't what the development team had planned. However, like I said earlier, players are of course going to adopt the tactics which give them the highest success rate. As a result, this hugely inconvenienced players who loved to play as Warriors, and I'm really sorry to those players.
Also, from a healer's perspective, since a Warrior can take more damage than a Paladin, they may have felt that they were more dangerous tanks.
Yoshida: Yes, the timing of HP recovery from a healer's perspective is more difficult to determine with a Warrior tank. As a result, the healers suffered as well and this led to a lot of Warriors dying on the battlefield. I believe this is another reason that Warriors got a very negative reputation compared to paladins for tanking in the Binding Coil of Bahamut.
Holmgang as a one-time emergency use technique
How will you alleviate the situation created by the value of the Warrior "block" being relatively reduced?
Yoshida: In the Binding Coil of Bahamut, we hope this will ease up the situation a bit while maintaining the utility of Paladins. The difficulty of this dungeon was actually even higher than we anticipated. However, rather than trying to modify the content which would change the difficulty for everyone, we wanted to provide more advantages to using warrior. Allowing warriors to be just as important as paladins was the main theme behind these adjustments.
So that's the idea behind the Holmgang adjustment.
Yoshida: Holmgang is only one of the planned adjustments. When Holmgang is in effect, the HP will not go below 1. By using Holmgang for extreme content and recovering HP immediately, players will be able to continue the battle with the normal flow.
So this is just an emergency use skill.
Yoshida: That's right, the duration is very short. For example, in the case of the hard mode Titan, it would be better to use this for a high-powered one-shot technique like Mountain Buster, rather than a continuous damage technique like Tumult. I'm sure you can think of other uses as well. We wanted to make this attractive to use while not fundamentally changing the overall technical play of a warrior.
How do warriors and paladins vary?
Yoshida: Paladins are a strong defender, at all times. Warriors, on the other hand, tank by selectively using offensive or defensive actions depending on the battle. We imagine Holmgang to be used as an ace up a warrior's sleeve to avoid dying in an emergency. For Wrath, it became too complicated to balance defense, offense, and HP recovery, so we made adjustments to solve this problem.
Changes to other Jobs and Classes
Why the changes to bard?
Yoshida: We wanted to reduce the role of bard a bit because too many functions have been added. In patch 2.1 we plan to transfer one of these to other jobs.
Will removing this ability make it any weaker?
Yoshida: We're only removing one of the availabile abilities. Any change to damage dealt should be recovered by the additional actions that can be performed.
What about black mage?
Yoshida: For black mage, there's a bug related to casting speed which has put its DPS ahead of other jobs. In patch 2.1, we'll be fixing this, which should put the overall DPS of a black mage on par with that of other DPS jobs.
As a general policy, do you plan to perform downgrades to individual jobs or upgrades to other jobs in the future?
Yoshida: We don't plan to make negative corrections like this frequently in the future.
Any planned adjustments for other jobs?
Yoshida: For other jobs and classes, we are planning to make certain actions a bit more effective than before. As one example of this policy, we plan to expand the effect range of a Summoner's Bane a bit. We will announce more details in the next LIVE producer letter.
If you wait much longer we'll only be able to read it in the patch notes. (laughs)
Yoshida: We wanted to pre-announce a lot of the adjustments for warrior because of the current situation of that job. In the future, we will just talk about update items in general until we get close to the patch.
Average Item Level requirement of 50 in Crystal Tower
What are the restrictions on entry to the Crystal Tower?
Yoshida: Players will need to have reached level 50 and cleared the main scenario. Progress in other content will not be related. However, Crystal Tower will also be restricted by an item level check which will need to be passed for entry.
What are the requirements of the item level check and when will it take place?
Yoshida: The user interface display will be updated with a new field which shows the average item level of your equipment, and a check will be made based on this value. The timing of this check is carried out when the duty finder request is placed for Crystal Tower. If the number is not 50 or higher, an error message "the item level is not high enough" will be displayed.
Will any of the ancient secrets of the Allagan empire be revealed by completing the Crystal Tower?
Yoshida: Yes, there is a dedicated storyline. The scenario will begin in cooperation with the investigation of St. Coinach's Find. Cid will also be involved. As you clear the main quest, you'll be aiming for the Crystal Tower. The characters around Crystal Tower will be arranged in anticipation its infiltration.
Give us some more detail about the number and type of rewards that will be available from the Crystal Tower.
Yoshida: In the Labyrinth (the dungeon for the first stage of the Crystal Tower) which will be implemented first, four total boss monsters will appear. One treasure box is guaranteed to appear after defeating each one, and new exclusive items will be obtained from there. One treasure chest will found for each party, so if you look at the entire alliance, there will be 12 total items obtained in a single complete Crystal Tower run. The main items dropped ar armor. Since the armor drops successively, it may be difficult to decide exactly what you want. (laughs)
So the items could go to up to 12 different people. 50% probability at obtaining an item isn't that bad at all. Can you explain the system of lotting rights with the loot distribution?
Yoshida: As an example, imagine you defeat one of the bosses and one item appears in the treasure pool for your eight man party. You perform the "need," "greed," or "pass," as you normally do. If someone obtains a drop, regardless of the selected command, they will not be able to choose "need" or "greed" later on. This condition cleares at a specific time. You will be able to obtain an item up to once per week, but you can challenge the area as many times as you want.
So you should pass the items unless you really want them?
Yoshida: Yes. If you can obtain an item you want and you have not used up your lotting rights, please don't hesitate to "need" the item.
So this is unlike the Binding Coil of Bahamut, for example, where you can receive equipment as many times as you want.
Yoshida: There's a big difference between the two. The idea behind the Crystal Tower is that you can repeatedly challenge the tower with the goal of obtaining one specific item, and then go ahead and do other content once you receive that item.
Tell us a bit about the features of the monsters lurking in the Crystal Tower.
Yoshida: Groups of monsters are placed at regular intervals, and bosses will be encountered after defeating some groups of the monsters. This will repeat several times.
How strong are the monsters?
Yoshida: The battles are designed so that 24 people in three parties dealing damage at a certain level will be needed to defeat them.
So this content is designed so that you can help others.
Yoshida: Yes. By the way, the weekly restriction mechanism has been incorporated into the extreme mode primal battles. The three extreme primals quest can be completed once a week.
And as a reward for that you'll obtain a weapon with item level 90?
Yoshida: That's right. Please understand that once per week when you defeat the three extreme mode primals, you'll always obtain one weapon you like. A lot of players focus on the restrictions on the content separately, but if you look at everything together (binding coil, extreme primal battles, crystal tower, beastman daily quests, mythology tomestone limits...) it should be easy to set up a content rotation. Add in time spent with player housing and Wolves' Den PvP and there should be plenty to take on.
So the expected pattern is something like clearing the Binding Coil at the beginning of the week, then working on the extreme primals, then taking on Crystal Tower until you receive the item you're after, and last focusing on collecting Allagan Tomestones of Philosophy and Mythology until the counter is reset.
Yoshida: Sounds like a packed schedule, but you can do it a bit more efficiently (laughs). You should also try to do the duty roulette once per day. It's not just about doing it more efficiently, though, we're also increasing the content as a whole so that people can try out more systems without getting bored of any one piece of content.
How do you hope that groups play through the content?
Yoshida: The play style is free so I want players to play through whatever they feel like. However, if it was me... first I'd play through the duty roulette once per day. I'd also do three of the beastman quests per day. Since you'd generally be getting a good amount of Allagan Tomestones from other content, by the second day of the week, I'd be focused on taking on the extreme mode primals or taking a shot at Crystal Tower. Later on in the week, I'd work on crafting and participate in Binding Coil of Bahamut, and maybe by the weekend I'd work on Treasure Hunts with my free company and everyone else. I'd fit in Wolves' Den whenever I had free time. I hope that each player picks the content they like from among all of the content available.
The Alliance Targeting Window
Please tell us about the extra widget that appears at the top of the screen when you're in an alliance.
Yoshida: In the alliance widget, you'll see the HP and job icon of players in the parties which you are not a member of. We decided to pare down the display to that level.
You will not be able to see TP?
Yoshida: Some people may want to see the MP or TP of other members, but we have made it so that you can only check the HP of other parties' members. You'll be very busy, so you might find that you hardly even have a chance to pay attention to much more. (laughs)
What do you expect players to do with the job and HP information of the other parties' members?
Yoshida: We hope those players will be able to help out when other parties are likely to be wiped out. It's also possible to target players by clicking on them in the alliance widget so that they can be healed.
Even within the alliance, you've kept the party size of eight consistent.
Yoshida: Even though players will be able to defeat monsters together as one, it will be easier if players primarily focus on playing their given role within their party.
Plugging Away at Allagan Tomestones
Please tell us about the current situation and your future plans for Allagan Tomestones of Philosophy and Mythology.
Yoshida: Prior to patch 2.1, obtaining Allagan Tomestones of Philosophy and Mythology was one of the only methods of vertical character progression. The basic premise, though, was that players would progress as they took on the highest level equipment available in dungeons, and for players who find the highest level content difficult, Allagan Tomestones of Philosophy and Mythology would serve as an alternative to obtain high performance equipment by collecting them over a period of time, making the higher level content easier to take on. The idea was to create two directions for character progression.
OK, I understand. The tomestones were added as an item for players to plug away at.
Yoshida: The idea was that the most hardcore players would obtain items as drops from content, and casual players would gradually catch up. Although there would be a large difference at first, the gap would close over time. However, in the current situation, players have to repeat the same content in order to obtain the tomestones, and there really wasn't enough. We're sorry to have kept you waiting, but we believe that a lot of the content added in patch 2.1 will help solve this problem.
So it seems like you're creating different content for players who seek efficiency and those who want to play at a more leisurely pace.
Yoshida: Yes, and I'm sorry that the current situation really doesn't reflect that. For the highest efficiency, players can take on the new Pharos Sirius dungeon or the two hard version dungeons that we are adding. For players who prefer to collect the tomestones at a more leisurely pace, they can use the duty roulette and also work on other content such as the beastman dailies or treasure hunts.
Previously, you announced that you'd be raising the limit on the acquisition of Allagan Tomestones on Mythology - how far do you plan on raising the limit?
Yoshida: We are currently thinking around 450 tomestones per week, but the decision has not yet been finalized.
Duty Roulette and individual play styles
The duty roulette is part of dividing up the content into efficiency vs. leisurely pace?
Yoshida: Yes. For example, the low level content roulette applies to content up through the Rihtahtyn assault [Cape Westwind]. Because many people are experienced with this battle through the main quest, you'll be able to take it on without worrying too much about whether or not you have the skill to contribute.
The reward is low, so you probably won't be matched with other players who are only seeking efficiency. (laughs)
Yoshida: About half of the people who are playing the new FFXIV have not yet obtained any of the Darklight equipment yet. After reaching 50, most of those people are developing other classes and working on gathering and crafting rather than actively collecting Allagan tomestones. By taking on the low level duty roulette once a day, players will be obtaining 200 Philosophy tomestones. They can do this over time, little by little while playing other content, and at some point they'll see all the tomestones they've accumulated and decide to buy some Darklight equipment. Ideally, we want players to be able to collect them without even really thinking about it. Of course, if you're just worried about efficiency, please check out the other high level content. (laughs)
For the duty roulette which you can partake in once a day, is there any specific time after which you can try again?
Yoshida: Yes, it's 0:00 JST. For content that's on a weekly timer, the reset time is 0:00 JST on Tuesday.
Once you reach that time you can take part in it immediately again?
Yoshida: Your participation rights in the content are used up at the time of obtaining rewards after clearing the content. You'll want to complete participation in the content before the date changes in order to be able to go again.
So for weekly content, there's really no need to rush to take part.
Yoshida: Apart from the daily content which resets every day, you shouldn't really need to rush to participate in any content unless you wait until Monday.
After finishing the duty roulette, how will players be earning experience points outside of FATE battles?
Yoshida: For those who want experience? It's good to try out dungeons once per day since that can be a fun experience. Players should also try out treasure hunts and beastman dailies. After finishing the low level roulette, you may want to try the high level one.
A lot of players may not try the high level duty roulette even if they meet the entry conditions.
Yoshida: Until they obtain strong equipment from Allagan tomestones, I want players to be able to casually be able to accumulate to be able to afford that equipment. I also want to make a lot of options available to these players such as beastman dailies and treasure hunts. I don't want people to be focused on just one type of content, I would like players to experience a variety of content.
Designed to encourage leisurely play
In the low level duty roulette, can you also obtain Mythology tomestones?
Yoshida: You will obtain 10 each time. You can earn up to 70 per week this way. Of course, for players who are working on the low level duty roulette, they are not really working on obtaining mythology. Mythology equipment or Relic +1 weapons are probably something they are thinking about in the distant future. That said, once they start accumulating it little by little, at some point they will notice how much they have, and maybe start to think about the ways in which they could obtain in faster. At this point, that person might have some Darklight equipment and will maybe look at trying out Amdapor Keep or Wanderer's Palace to obtain more mythology tomestones.
Will there be any bonuses to the duty roulette, like obtaining a varying amount of Allagan tomestones?
Yoshida: The amount will always be fixed. In order to prevent any trouble during completing the content, we're also not doing anything like an fast clear bonus. There is the potential that we may change this in future patches.
Beastmen Dailies are convenient for players approaching level 50
Can you use the Beastman daily quests to earn experience points?
Yoshida: Because they can be taken on after clearing the Stone Vigil, they can be used by adventurers who are working their way up to level 50.
When you play through all the quests that you can take on in one day, will you obtain enough experience to go up by one level?
Yoshida: Because there is a limited number of quests per day, you will not earn quite so much experience, but you can go through the quests and obtain the rewards at your own pace because of the format. Rather than focusing on raising your level from just one kind of content, we're also putting a good experience value on the duty roulette.
From the second class onward, the content roulette will receive the armoury bonus, so leveling up should be pretty smooth.
Yoshida: Yes, for the second class and onward, players should definitely be able to earn experience efficiently through instanced dungeons. Those who still hesitate to partake in those dungeons will be able to leisurely level up in FATEs as well. We've also improved the experience values and given role bonuses to players who are currently missing from the duty finder queue.
Earning High-Performance Accessories from Extreme Primals
Tell us some more about the extreme primal battles.
Yoshida: This will be very difficult content. Until the method for clearing these battles is well-established it will be very difficult to clear. The scenario is unique because of the presence of the primals in the battles, so please stay tuned.
What's the time limit?
Yoshida: In the hard mode primals we have the limit set to 90 minutes, but we think players may get tired of the battle after that long, so we're considering shortening this a bit.
The item level of weapons available from the extreme primals is 90, but how strong will they be?
Yoshida: As far as the item level goes, they are the same as "Relic +1," but the exact parameters will be different. Since I believe it's good to have a variety of choices for the strongest weapons and armor which you can combine to fit the content you're taking on, they should be considered among the other top tier choices.
You plan for players to selectively use armor and weapons based on the situation?
Yoshida: Yes, I'm thinking that equipment of the same item level can vary in its proper use. For example, on weapons, you may want to have an emphasis on determination, or you may want to combine with other equipment and emphasize critical hits.
So you don't want players thinking that a particular weapon is not necessary when they have another weapon at the same item level.
Yoshida: Yes, I think for players to become really strong, they will work on collecting all of them, and they will adjust the equipment according to the planned tactics and the type of content.
In the 10th LIVE producer letter you mentioned that there would be some other items?
Yoshida: Separately from the weapon that you can obtain as compensation, there is a chance that an item will drop from the extreme primal. Additionally, a treasure box with accessories at a high item level will also appear.
Focus on Dialogue during the King Moggle Mog XII battle
Tell us about the story behind the extreme version of Good King Moggle Mog XII which will be added in patch 2.2.
Yoshida: We will talk more at that time, but this will be a brutal battle.
Is there anything else you can tell us about it?
Yoshida: We think there will be a lot of conversation about the speech bubbles that appear in the Moggle Mog XII battle added in patch 2.1, so it should be very interesting for now. (laughs)
For example, what kind of conversation will appear?
Yoshida: I don't want to ruin it too much, so please check it out (laughs). The words will be worthy of the Moogle's personality. The tempo of the song will change each time one of the minions are defeated, and you will have to attack various objects to remove them. There should be some sense of panic, but it will also be a comical atmosphere. It will definitely be different from Titan where you constantly feel that one mistake can lead to failure.
For the Moogle battle, what is the difficulty planned?
Yoshida: We believe that the difficulty will be between the hard Garuda and hard Titan primal battles. We recognized that there's a large difference between the difficulty of those two fights, so we wanted to add something to bridge the gap.
For the difficulty of hard mode Titan, is it what you originally expected?
Yoshida: We expected the difficulty of the hard Titan battle. However, as I mentioned, the difficulty step up was too large, so we wanted to add a range of equipment like in Crystal Tower and other places in the future so players don't feel like they absolutely need to win Titan right away.
Pharos Sirius, the hardest four-man dungeon
Tell us about the difficulty of the Pharos Sirius lighthouse.
Yoshida: In addition to Pharos Sirius, we will also be adding the hard versions of Haukke Manor and Copperbell Mines in patch 2.1 - all three of these will be the same difficulty. These are intented to be the most difficult dungeons that a party of four people can take on.
What are the restrictions for entry?
Yoshida: You'll need to be done with the main scenario.
Gil cost of Housing currently under revision
What will be the price of land available for housing?
Yoshida: We haven't decided yet (laughs). This morning (note: the interview took place on November 25), I confirmed the monetary values, but I had a few questions for the staff. I got some answers, but that led to more questions... I'm going to be talking to them some more right after this (laughs).
Are you basing the costs on a clean slate?
Yoshida: We're taking the economic situation of the entire world into account after reviewing all of the logged data. The cost fractions are decided roughly based on the size of the land. We determined the price based on a number of factors.
For the medium and large size houses, do you have a rough idea in mind of how many adventurers they can accommodate?
Yoshida: The medium size house will be for roughly 10-15 people, and I believe the large size house will be OK for 20 people or more.
Seems like some free companies have already begun restructuring in anticipation of the housing additions.
Yoshida: It might be a little early (laughs). The price of the land will lower in the auction countdown, and this content is planned to exist for a long time. By accumulating steadily with your companions, I feel like most people will be able to eventually afford it.
Item level is a key parameter for development
Above level 50 the item level becomes more important, but what role does it provide?
Yoshida: The item level is a measure of the item's strength. When we're balancing difficulty and item performance, the upper and lower limits are based on a formula. The item level is used as the criteria in this formula. For example, in patch 2.1, the item level of Allagan weapons will be raised from 90 to 95. Since the limits on the stats of item level 95 equipment is predetermined, the higher performance will simply be based on that formula.
Is this also an important parameter on the development end?
Yoshida: Yes, the number does have more meaning. For example, crafters can manufacture item level 70 gear which can be enhanced through materia melding and overmelding, but the performance of the armor would not exceed the numbers found on item level 90 gear.
For melding and overmelding, the upper limits are determined based on the item level?
Yoshida: The upper limit is determined based on a formula. If a person was doing the calculation it could lead to errors. However, because the calculations for the numerical values are carried out in advance, if the calculated damage outweighed the item level we could detect it automatically during development. Since it's calculated in advance, the appropriate value is automatically applied.
Speaking from a player perspective, the item level may be used as a gauge to measure progress in the game.
Yoshida: It's also intended to give a general gauge for the strength of adventurers as a numeric value. This should be further reinforced by the average item level display which will be added in patch 2.1.
Speaking about item level, what's the reason that you decided to raise the item level of Allagan weapons in the first place?
Yoshida: Many more people have acquired the HQ version of job-specific weapons compared to what we initially expected. The item level of the weapons available from the final encounter of the Binding Coil of Bahamut was also level 90, so we wanted to give players added motivation to continue to participate in this high level content.
The level of adventurers currently caps out at 50, but come patch 2.1, the highest item level equipment will be 95. Will this difference remain at this level in the future?
Yoshida: The item level will continue to go up while adventurers are capped at level 50. In patch 2.2 we plan to raise it by another step.
So it's better to consider the item level and character level as completely separate things.
For adventuers who reach level 50 later, they will be about 50 off from the highest item level, so it will be easier to compare adventurers to each other with the item level.
The current highest level is Allagan weapons at 95, so it will still be increasing.
Yoshida: Yes the difference is 45 from level 50; however, that's just based on the current situation.
Adding new content to foster more play in FFXIV
The amount of experience obtained from the main quest is determined by a percentage of a level for each range?
Yoshida: It's designed so that you can get to level 10 just from doing quests. You should be able to just about get to 20 between hunts and quests. Hunts and quests together should get you about 70% of the way to 30, 60% of the way from 30 to 40, and about 40-50% of the way after level 40. This doesn't include the extra experience that you get from going through the dungeons as part of the main scenario, etc., so it's actually even more. Completing a dungeon instance about three times is intended to give players one level after level 40, but right now we know that FATEs are the preferred method of leveling that most players have followed. With the addition of the beastman daily quests in 2.1, we think there will be more options to consider.
So the methods of leveling up will be increased.
Yoshida: Our goal with new FFXIV is is that leveling up isn't the only thing players are doing. We hope that they can get up to level 50 at a good pace on a class/job that they like. I want players to be able to enjoy the variety of different content on each of the classes or jobs so this can last a long time as a MMO.
Real life events with the development team and the World Tour
Do you plan to have more real life events with fan participation like the Titan challenge?
Yoshida: Because the Titan and Ifrit challenges were very popular, we plan to have events like this in the future in similar formats. We're hoping to have a real life event dedicated to showcasing the content every time we release a new patch.
Can you give us an example on the type of content?
Yoshida: The real life events carried out around patch 2.2 will have something showcasing the extreme Titan and hard mode Ultima Weapon battle strategies. We will follow up around patch 2.3 with events which showcase the hard and ultimate Leviathan battles.
Will there be events around the world so that others can enjoy them as well?
Yoshida: Yes, we're planning events soon for Europe and the United States. So far I've been the only one who's fought alongside other players, but we're planning to mix it up in the future. Of course I'll also be answering questions about the game and, if you want, take commemorative photos.
So people can look forward to enjoying the event-specific content with other staff members.
Yoshida: Yes. We'll probably link these up with producer live letters and broadcast them to the whole world live via the internet. We also plan, if possible, to have some exclusive good available to sell at the venue.
Will you be selling any new goods at the event in January?
Yoshida: We're working on it (laughs).
In which countries in Europe will you be holding events? Germany, France, the United Kingdom...?
Yoshida: The schedule might be a bit too tight to hold events in three different countries. For Europe, we will probably just hold an event in one country.
Will you be involved in other events besides the producer letter LIVE from Osaka and the world tour?
Yoshida: Yes. We're planning to invite about 200 players, and we'll also be touring major cities across the country apart from the world tour.
Do you expect these events to take place quickly over a short period of time?
Yoshida: We will try to get around the country over the course of a year, once every two or three months. For the world tour, since we'll be spending a lot of time traveling and the development work could stagnate, we'll try to keep the events spaced out over short periods of time.
FFXIV breaks new domestic MMO records
For the most part we've talked about patch 2.1 details so far, so please tell us about feedback you've received on the successes and failures since the launch three months ago.
Yoshida: While we began trying to relaunch from the failure of the old FFXIV, I'm delighted in the number of people who have experienced the new FFXIV. This has been the result of all the hard work from not only the development team, but also the management, advertising team, and everyone else coming together. We've had over 300,000 players and the highest MMO recorded retail sales domestically. We're definitely pleased with so far, and I'm especially relieved since I felt even more responsible since this was the latest installment of the FF series.
Any negative feedback?
Yoshida: There was a lot of problem with the software and players not being able to login for the 2-3 weeks around launch. Looking back now, I'm sorry to the valuable time that was lost for all the fans. The other day I took a look back at some older online shopping sites that had reviews which said "you can't log in to the game when you start it" and I felt sorry once again.
What are your prospects like right now?
Yoshida: I feel like we've gotten started in the right direction, but we need to focus on maintaining subscriptions in the future. In the past three years, the production team has worked hard, and we hope that all our effort has paid off and really shows in the final game.
Do you get a lot of inquiries about publishing overseas?
Yoshida: We're already working on it for China, and we've received other inquiries from countries like Russia, Taiwan, South Korea, and a number of other countries. We want to make the game as global as possible.
Aiming to make the game fun for all players
So any last messages to all the players?
Yoshida: The new FFXIV is still just getting started. Above all, we're focused on responding to player feedback and providing enjoyable content for everyone. We will continue working as hard as possible with this cycle and thank you for your continued support in the future. The world will be changing in patch 2.1, so we hope you're ready.
There's a large variety of content coming for FFXIV around the holidays and New Year.
Yoshida: The amount of content that we'll be adding at the end of the year in patch 2.1 alone is much more than you'd find in most games. It's something like 300-400 hours of content when all is said and done, so please look forward to it!
Yoshida: We wanted to reduce the role of bard a bit because too many functions have been added. In patch 2.1 we plan to transfer one of these to other jobs.
Will removing this ability make it any weaker?
Yoshida: We're only removing one of the availabile abilities. Any change to damage dealt should be recovered by the additional actions that can be performed.
I don't know if he stated what ability he's talking about somewhere else, but if you don't count any Archer abilities, the only Bard ability that causes damage is the AoE move, Rain of Death. Maybe since the arrows in the move's animation look like spears, it will move to the Dragoon job
I personally do not see anything wrong with the lockout timers being what they are (at least compared to the other options available). In 2.1 and hopefully in 2.2 the amount of horizontal content will increase more and more, making weekly content rotation a feasible thing to do.
All in all, what the lockout timers provide us is a better, more fixed drop rate that doesn't rely on RNG as much as it could. Slowing down the playerbase's progress is inevitable and no matter how it is done, somebody will be inconvenienced.
I personally understand why the hardcore population especially is not dealing well with the news, as they would probably prefer having no lockout timers with a lower drop rate to balance it off. On the other hand I don't see why the casuals should be the ones suffering by the endgame design not catering to their interests.
Either way the players will keep thinking up scenarios in their head that would be so much "better" for the progression design but with their own inherent flaws that they will never understand because, as I said it all exists only in their head.
I personally welcome our new lockout overlords with open arms. Sounds like 2.1 will be a blast.
I seem to be the only one who picked up the thing about the hybrid role during the interview. I'm somewhat hopeful it's a mistranslation since they used もし and ended with したら, which basically is a long way of saying "if". Trinity MMOs are not kind to hybrids that are standalone and not leaning to one of the three main roles. I've done that song and dance too much to think anything good will come of yet another attempt to stray from the trinity.
I seem to be the only one who picked up the thing about the hybrid role during the interview. I'm somewhat hopeful it's a mistranslation since they used もし and ended with したら, which basically is a long way of saying "if". Trinity MMOs are not kind to hybrids that are standalone and not leaning to one of the three main roles. I've done that song and dance too much to think anything good will come of yet another attempt to stray from the trinity.
In an MMO like ARR (and the style it's emulating)? That's very much true it's not kind to it, @#%^..it's not kind to support roles either. In an MMO like XI and other older MMOs? It's very kind to it with the only issue being balance is a ***** because it'll be "OP" in some regards but underpowered in other or "Just right" where it matters.
Like Blue Mage in XI, they didn't rebalance everything pre-ToAU regarding Blue Magic that didn't fall into the already "balanced against magic formula", but everything after has Blue Mage in mind. ARR they can't add in a Hybrid or Pure Support class mostly because of the bullsh*t 4 man = majority of content system and 8 man DF is very specific as if you lose 1 DPS you generally lose the entire encounter because of the people you're paired with at times.
Stuff like CT though? 24 man content had potential to allow Support and Hybrid roles in the ranks, but its just 3x8 same party configurations.
LebargeX wrote:
I'm definitely excited by all the changes. I just wish dailies, roulette, and treasure hunts really made up for running WP/AK. Looks like it's going to be a long time coming for my Vanya set.
Also, there was a rumor the tome cost for phil mats would drop, but he didn't mention it. Does anyone know where that rumor came from?
It's not a rumor, was stated explicitly on the forums. They just didn't go into details on HOW it would be reduced (final numbers) but instead of costing 2k+ tomes it'd be something like 1k or less.
Also, there was a rumor the tome cost for phil mats would drop, but he didn't mention it. Does anyone know where that rumor came from?
Its confirmed:
Hvinire wrote:
We understand that the cost of materials for 2-star crafts is a bit high when it comes to their ingredients purchased with Allagan tomestones of philosophy. Therefore, we will make the necessary changes to recipes that use more than 1125 tomestones and scale them down a bit so all of the recipes will no longer use more than 1125 tomestones.
Like Blue Mage in XI, they didn't rebalance everything pre-ToAU regarding Blue Magic that didn't fall into the already "balanced against magic formula", but everything after has Blue Mage in mind. ARR they can't add in a Hybrid or Pure Support class mostly because of the bullsh*t 4 man = majority of content system and 8 man DF is very specific as if you lose 1 DPS you generally lose the entire encounter because of the people you're paired with at times.
In FFXI Blue Mage was essentially DD that could solo due to its effective ability to deal damage, heal, and take a hit. However, this was in a land where soloing was sometimes a necessity due to the painful way you needed to wait around all day to group up and punch IT mobs to level. With FATEs, quests, and dungeons set up the way they are, there is not much demand out of necessity for a purely solo class. Playing summoner, I am often reminded of the Beastmaster job in FFXI. Black mage is an awfully similar to blue mage without the spell hunting (I can sure myself with psysick and protect with manawall/manaward).
Still, what I wouldnt give for blue mage to return. Loved the job and always will. I dont care if it is hybrid.
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Letter: Mahoney for Falmouth Town Council
l write to support Sean Mahoney for one of the seats on the Falmouth Town Council. As a long-time resident of Falmouth, I have witnessed first-hand Falmouth’s growth and the changes that have come with it, particularly along Route 1. It is my understanding that we are at another moment when Falmouth has the opportunity to shape how Route 1 is further developed. I believe that Sean has the necessary skills; he has proved to be a consensus builder and a creative problem solver, with appreciation for a vibrant economy and commitment to a healthy environment to help guide that development. Please join me in supporting Sean for Falmouth Town Council.
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The best Side of sri lanka trip
The best Side of sri lanka trip
It is vital to take into account that what may very well be suitable conduct, costume and language in your own personal country, might not be correct in Yet another. Please preserve this in your mind when travelling.
Along with the team's renewed violence came a renewed concern of infiltration in the armed forces. Next the prosperous raid on the Pallekelle army camp in Could 1987, the government performed an investigation that resulted while in the discharge of 30-7 troopers suspected of having inbound links Together with the JVP. To be able to prevent a repetition of the 1971 rebellion, The federal government regarded as lifting the ban within the JVP in early 1988 and permitting the group to participate once again from the political arena.
Tour town highlights of Colombo as well as the lakeside sights of Kandy or head more afield for rock fortresses and cave temples.
Just outside of Bentota (on our way from Colombo), we frequented one of many Ayurveda gardens that can be found in this area. The pinnacle gardener and trained Ayurvedic medical doctor confirmed us across the environmentally friendly and lush back garden and explained all about the different herbs and spices they expand, as well as whatever they are used for in Ayurveda medication and procedure.
Quite a few of those caves, like the well known Batadombalena along with the Fa-Hien Rock cave, have yielded quite a few artifacts from these people who find themselves at present the primary recognised inhabitants from the island.
The main Europeans to visit Sri Lanka in modern moments ended up the Portuguese: Lourenço de Almeida arrived in 1505 and found the island, divided into seven warring kingdoms, was not able to fend off intruders.
Surrounded by wildlife reserves, the going for walks trail leading to the mountain is a surprising stroll regardless of religious persuasion. Observing a stirring sunrise within the holy summit is very little wanting magnificent.
The food items is more tips here delightful, and they serve both of those Sri Lankan and western sort of food items, as well as BBQ. They have got theme nights every single night time with specific form of meals like Road food items, Indian, Mexican, Italian etc. The hotel is well known amid households with children, as they've a kids club and babysitting support.
We stayed at AVANI Riverside hotel in Bangkok and went to take a look at this AVANI hotel in Bentota. Our site It truly is just as awesome given that the 1 in Bangkok, fashionable, fresh, with big rooms. The situation is perfect, proper by Bentota Beach with a beautiful garden and swimming pool. They even have a gymnasium in addition to a spa Centre.
Rabana is obviously utilised on other events much too. As an example, when a freshly married couple will come house, Everyone is delighted plus they Perform the Rabana. So it really is meant for delighted situations. This is especially carried out by females and elderly girls but we as modest youngsters could also sign up for Using the elders.
Situated correct in the read the full info here heart on the islands lush, inexperienced interior, Dambulla sits with the centre of Sri Lanka's cultural triangle. The region, thought to be inhabited from as early because the 7th to third century BC,...
Intrepid prefers lesser, character-filled guesthouses than resort chains. When keeping in Sri Lanka, take pleasure in staying in little inns and guesthouses owned and operate by helpful locals.
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A massive, global ransomware outbreak has been hitting airports, banks, shipping firms and other businesses across Ukraine, Russia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, India and beyond.
Organizations ranging from Ukraine's central bank and Kiev's Boryspil Airport to Russian oil producer Rosneft and Danish shipping giant Maersk all appear to have had systems compromised by the attack.
Late Tuesday morning local time, the global pharmaceutical giant Merck confirmed it was hit by hackers, but the New Jersey-based company did not say whether the attack struck its computers in the United States or elsewhere. In Twitter postings, Merck said: "We confirm our company's computer network was compromised today as part of global attack. ... We are investigating the matter and will provide additional information as we learn more."
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported: "The attack was detected at computers in Merck facilities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey around 8 a.m., and the company acknowledged it in a statement a few hours later."
But by late Tuesday afternoon, it was confirmed that Merck wasn't the only health sector company affected in the U.S. by the attacks. Heritage Valley Health System, based in Beaver, Pennsylvania, issued a statement saying it facilities, including two hospitals, were affected by the same ransomware. "Heritage Valley Health System was impacted by a cybersecurity incident the morning of June 27," the statement notes. "This incident has been identified as the same ransomware attack that affected a number of organizations globally."
On Wednesday, Heritage Valley said it was "confident that it has identified the cause and is systematically restoring registration, clinical patient and ancillary care systems. Information technology teams in collaboration with cybersecurity experts continue to mitigate the situation in order to ensure ongoing safe patient care. We are diligently working to determine whether the incident involved any access to confidential information. At this time we have found no evidence that information has been accessed, but our investigation continues."
In addition, the multinational law firm DLA Piper, which has headquarters in the United States and Britain, also said it was attacked. "The firm, like many other reported companies, has experienced issues with some of its systems due to suspected malware," the company said in a statement posted on its website. "We are taking steps to remedy the issue as quickly as possible."
The new attacks follow the WannaCry ransomware outbreak that began spreading globally on May 12. Security experts say the latest attack may also be spreading thanks to it targeting a server messaging block - SMB - flaw in Windows, which has been patched by Microsoft.
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish anti-virus firm F-Secure, says this version of Petya has been demanding about $300 worth of bitcoins as a ransom payment, in return for victims receiving a decryptor. A handful of victims already appear to have paid.
Or Is Ransomware GoldenEye?
Security experts have been sharing samples of the ransomware and urging anti-virus vendors to immediately add signatures for the malware to their products to help blunt the outbreak.
One security firm has suggested that the attacks might trace not to Petya but a similar type of ransomware. Security firm BitDefender believes the ransomware is GoldenEye, and that it encrypts files on a PC as well as NTFS structures. "This approach prevents victims' computers from being booted up in a live OS environment and retreiving stored information or samples," BitDefender security researcher Bogdan Botezatu says in a blog post.
"Just like Petya, GoldenEye encrypts the entire hard disk drive and denies the user access to the computer," he says. "However, unlike Petya, there is no workaround to help victims retrieve the decryption keys from the computer."
EternalBlue Use Suspected
But security firms Avira and Symantec have both confirmed that the ransomware involved in these attacks is Petya. They say that like WannaCry, it is spreading via MS17-010, an SMB version 1 flaw that existed in all versions of Windows since XP and came to light in April, via a dump by the Shadow Brokers of "Equation Group" tools, which many believe to be from the National Security Agency. Microsoft quietly patched the SMB flaw - exploited by an Equation Group tool called "EternalBlue" - in all supported operating systems in March, followed by releasing free, emergency patches for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 8 users late on the same day of the WannaCry outbreak.
Ukraine Hit Hard
Initial reports suggest organizations in Ukraine may have been hardest hit.
File types encrypted by the Petya variant. (Source: F-Secure)
Ukraine's central bank, as well as numerous banks and businesses, including the state postal system and telecommunications agency, as well as at least one power distributor, apparently have been affected. Kiev's Boryspil Airport also warned that flight delays were possible.
"As a result of these cyberattacks, these banks are having difficulties with client services and carrying out banking operations," according to a statement issued by Ukraine's central bank, which blamed the outages on an "unknown virus."
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko reported that at least some government computer systems had been compromised by the ransomware. On Twitter, he posted a picture of a compromised government system. Security experts say the image showed the ransomware actively crypto-locking the contents of the PC.
Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Павло Розенко (Pavlo Rozenko) on Facebook. This is what Petya looks like when it's encrypting your drive. pic.twitter.com/RgPtfuWK7p
Ukraine's security council secretary, Oleksandr Turchynov, speaking just after news of the attacks broke, suggested that they may have been launched from Russia. "Already on first analysis of the virus, it is possible to talk of Russian fingerprints," Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council quoted Turchynov as saying, the New York Times reports.
Attacks Appear to Be Connected
Some security experts say multiple reports of new cyberattacks all appear to involve the same ransomware.
Russia's Rosnoft - one of the world's biggest crude oil producers, by volume - also disclosed via Twitter that it has been hit by "a powerful hacker attack" that has affected some of the company's servers. "We hope that this has nothing to do with the current judicial procedures," the statement added, in reference to a court case the producer is fighting against the Sistema conglomerate.
But Rosnoft says its production systems have not been affected by the attack. "A hacker attack could have serious consequences, but thanks to the fact that the company switched to a standby system for managing production processes, neither the production nor the preparation of oil was stopped," the company tells the Financial Times.
Copenhagen-based shipping group A.P. Moller-Maersk first confirmed attacks Tuesday afternoon, European time. It says business units in multiple regions, including Britain and Ireland, had been affected.
We can confirm that Maersk IT systems are down across multiple sites and business units. We are currently assessing the situation.
Moscow-based cybersecurity firm Group-IB tells Reuters that one of Maersk's logistics firms, Russia-based Damco, was also affected by the attack.
Attacks Continuing
Meanwhile, the attacks are continuing. "It is too early to tell what we are dealing with right now - is this another wave of WannaCry? A new variant? The same actors or - as we predicted some time ago - a new adversary taking the lessons that WannaCry provided and running with them?" asks Galina Antova, co-founder and chief business development officer at cybersecurity firm Claroty.
"We will know more in hours and days - but what should be very clear at this point in time is the fact that the threat landscape has evolved rapidly ... over the past few years - and that evolution seems to be speeding up in 2017," she says.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent out several alerts on Tuesday and Wednesday with links to ransomware resources similar to those the federal government promoted during the recent Wannacry attacks, including recommendations to contact the FBI if organizations become victims to ransomware assaults.
Included in the HHS alerts was also new advice to contact the Food and Drug administration's emergency line to report if a facility "experiences a suspected cyberattack affecting medical devices." During the Wannacry attacks, at least two unidentified U.S. hospitals reported that their imaging systems from Bayer AG had been infected (see HHS Ramps Up Cyber Threat Information Sharing).
About the Author
Schwartz is an award-winning journalist with two decades of experience in magazines, newspapers and electronic media. He has covered the information security and privacy sector throughout his career. Before joining Information Security Media Group in 2014, where he now serves as the Executive Editor, DataBreachToday and for European news coverage, Schwartz was the information security beat reporter for InformationWeek and a frequent contributor to DarkReading, amongst other publications. He lives in Scotland.
Operation Success!
Risk Management Framework: Learn from NIST
From heightened risks to increased regulations, senior leaders at all levels are pressured to
improve their organizations' risk management capabilities. But no one is showing them how -
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Learn the fundamentals of developing a risk management program from the man who wrote the book
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Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
maybe this time did a better job of keeping the original attitude/pose? or maybe there was just less attitude to start with in this drawing than the other one i posted. still think the original has more energy... not really sure why i'm doing these...
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
it wasn't supposed to take place in modern day, he was just supposed to be very average looking. but then i just drew him with a belt and a jacket... and he suddenly became too good looking to be average.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
recently i've been worried about lots of things and it's been causing me stomach pains... i don't know what i have to be so worried about since i've been relaxing at home, but doing these sorts of sketches calms me down.
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The Kansas City Center for Inclusion is here to serve the greater Kansas City community!
Our mission is simple:
To provide safe, inclusive LGBTQIA+ community spaces where people can come for education, resources, and activities, as well as support a more cohesive LGBTQIA+ community in the greater Kansas City area.
Our ...
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Google is still in the middle of testing its much hyped Google Glass eyewear-mobile computing hardware project, and it doesn't expect mass commercial sales to begin until the end of 2013. Now there's word that at least one eating establishment has said, "No thanks" to anyone who comes in wearing Google Glass.
The 5 Point Cafe diner and dive bar in Seattle announced on its Facebook page this week it has banned the use of the Google Glass device in its establishment, saying, " ... a** kickings will be encouraged for violators."
So why the early ban? GeekWire.com reports that, in a radio interview this week, 5 Point Cafe owner Dave Meinert admits that this action was made in part to be kind of funny, but he also wanted to show that his place, which apparently has a rather seedy reputation, would be safe from anyone who wanted to conduct themselves under the radar. He added, "People want to go there and be not known … and definitely don’t want to be secretly filmed or videotaped and immediately put on the Internet.”
We suspect that this will just be the first of many such places that will ban the use of Google Glass in their buildings and it shows that not everyone is happy about Google's vision of an "always on" eyewear product.
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Monthly Archives: July 2012
We’ve neglected this blog over the busy summer, but we’re back now and we have plenty to share! Over the next few weeks we’ll be posting about some of our favorite books from this summer, starting with one that absolutely blew us away: Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein.
Librarians don’t like to tell people they have to read something – reading is a highly personal endeavour, after all, and the book that makes one person swoon may make another want to throw something. Our motto is: a good book is a book you enjoy. If you’re not enjoying it, it’s not the book for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the perfect book for someone else.
But occasionally, a book comes along that makes us want to break this rule.
So this is why we’re daring to respectfully suggest that perhaps, maybe, possibly you might wish to consider reading Code Name Verity.
Why? What makes this book so special?
That’s a hard question to answer, because almost anything we could say about this book could be a spoiler, and this is a book where spoilers matter – really matter.
Here’s what we can tell you:
Code Name Verity is a story about the incredible bravery and indomitable spirits of a girl spy and a girl pilot during World War II. It’s about friendship and loyalty, sacrifice and love. It’s about enemies and unexpected allies, deception and truth wrapped so tightly together it’s hard to tell which is which. And if you’re anything like us, it will have you sitting on the edge of your seat, terrified for the fate of the characters but unable to stop reading.
This is a story that may cause tears, but I for one wouldn’t take even one of them back.
“But I have told the truth. Isn’t that ironic? They sent me because I am so good at telling lies. But I have told the truth.”
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Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Gear Up and Move With NOIX GEAR!
"To impress" or "To Express"? - Well, it could be both.
While it is true that fashion trends are every yuppies sort of medium to express his or her personality, many would agree that along with that raging hormone to self-expression is the longing to be noticed by peers.
The quest for yearning is endless and for unto it, NOIX GEAR is born. Here comes a young brand ideal to grow old with. NOIX GEAR in all its potential is well-driven to weather the test of times.
Established in 2016, NOIX GEAR is a lifestyle brand that takes its inspiration from the popular street wear and highlights fine details in-between.
It embodies an individual’s adventurous persona on a wide-range of influences ranging from street style, music, arts, and fun. There's so much variety of clothing designs and colors to choose from and each item comes in all sizes.
NOIX GEAR innovates and re-define what urban ‘street fashion’ is. It introduces a unique approach to COOL, CLEAN and COMFY streetwear that symbolizes an exciting lifestyle of a young blood on the GO!.
There is no better way than to gear up with an easy-to-wear COOL, CLEAN and COMFY streetwear that both express and impress. NOIX GEAR powers up with that global feel.
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"I absolutely love this CD!! I have heard some of his music on the radio. But, after listening to the entire CD, I find there is not one song that is lacking!! Each sing points straight to Christ. And, the music and compilation is just genius!! I am n..." Read More »
Contemporary
Often called America’s Worship Leader, Chris Tomlin returns with his new album, Never Lose Sight. As the songwriter behind the worship favorites “How Great Is Our God,” “Our God,” and “Whom Shall I Fear,” Chris’ songs lead people to the heart of Jesus and int...
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Straight from the radio to you…WOW Hits 2017 Deluxe Edition brings you the biggest Christian artists & songs! With songs about God’s love for us, trusting God to carry us through the difficult times, and being a light to the world. WOW Hits 2017 Deluxe Edition captur...
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Straight from the radio to you…WOW Hits 2017 brings you the biggest Christian artists & songs! With songs about God’s love for us, trusting God to carry us through the difficult times, and being a light to the world. WOW Hits 2017 captures the songs impacting ou...
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"This coming year marks 20 years since my life took a huge turn, a positive turn, toward Jesus. I got married last spring and a few weeks after our honeymoon, I took my new bride to the camp where that turning point took place - Young Life's Malibu Club in Canada, which is w...
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This deluxe edition of Jeremy Camp's I Will Follow features the hit “He Knows,” and includes 5 bonus songs, two of which are acoustic versions.Track Listing:Living WordI Will Follow (You Are With Me)He KnowsFinally HomeChrist In Me‘Til The EndCan’t Be MovedOnly In Yo...
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Jeremy Camp returns with the all-new album I Will Follow, which features his hit single "He Knows," as well as many other passionate and encouraging worship songs.Track Listing: Living WordI Will Follow (You Are With Me)He KnowsFinally HomeChrist In Me‘Til The EndCan’t B...
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StylusenWed, 19 Dec 2018 10:00:00 GMTWed, 19 Dec 2018 10:43:05 GMThttps://www.stylus.comGoogle’s Top Beauty Searches for 2018 Revealed This year’s most-searched beauty topics on Google included key topics, such as environmental consciousness and inclusivity. We highlight the most commercially relevant opportunities for brands and product developers to explore.
https://www.stylus.com/czkjplWed, 19 Dec 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/czkjplCES 2019 Trends PreviewThe largest consumer electronics show in the world, CES showcases the latest products and innovations from across the globe. Here are some of the key trends we’re expecting to see emerge from CES 2019, and the products that represent them. Check back on January 23 for our full coverage of CES 2019.
https://www.stylus.com/rqnwmmWed, 19 Dec 2018 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/rqnwmmUnlocking Life's RhythmsAs explored in our Selling Cyclical Beauty report, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the impact of natural cycles on their health. Now they’re getting in sync with their body clocks – using scientific research, smart tech and a holistic approach to maximise wellness and productivity.
https://www.stylus.com/ktgxnpMon, 17 Dec 2018 08:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/ktgxnpColour & Material Highlights from Design Miami/Each year, Design Miami/ unveils some of the most inspiring, unconventional and directional work on the design calendar. December’s edition in Miami, Florida, did not disappoint, with rising designers given a platform to show new avenues in their work through collaborations and gallery representations. Here are four of our favourites.
https://www.stylus.com/wwgyqzFri, 14 Dec 2018 11:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/wwgyqzMiami Art Week 2018: Brand ConceptsBrands have become key players in the peripheral revelry surrounding Design Miami/ and Art Basel (December 5-9), magnetised by the events’ continued cultural cachet and luxe-minded crowds. From creative clubhouses and brand-backed exhibits to projects with a firmly feminist agenda, we select 2018’s standout concepts.
https://www.stylus.com/jdqdqsFri, 14 Dec 2018 10:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/jdqdqsChristmas 2018: Product Design ValidationsWe revisit our three Christmas Design Directions for 2018 – Frost, Archive and Fantasia – to see how they came to fruition in festive spatial installations, seasonal gifting and celebratory adornments.
https://www.stylus.com/lqghybFri, 14 Dec 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/lqghybWake Up To Fashion’s New OrderSee our presentation video highlighting five industry gamechangers you need to get on board with, or risk becoming irrelevant and redundant.
https://www.stylus.com/rfrbjcFri, 14 Dec 2018 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/rfrbjcChristmas Retail 2018: Trends & Opportunities 2018 holiday sales are predicted to soar. Concepts that expedite gifting, exert brand stretch, power-up play or embrace experiential luxe promise retail wins now and long after Christmas. But with new forms of brand engagement surfacing, there are also missed opportunities. We dissect the highlights and future possibilities.
https://www.stylus.com/kyryjhThu, 13 Dec 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/kyryjhFree Rentals? Ba&sh’s 'Happy Hour' Retail TeasersHow much do you trust your customers? Possibly not as much as French womenswear brand Ba&sh. It’s currently seducing fans at its sociable new NYC store by allowing them to congregate on Friday nights for Happy Hour with Prosecco, manicures and free-to-borrow outfits (just return them by 7pm Monday, please).
https://www.stylus.com/yrlsmvThu, 13 Dec 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/yrlsmvDisney & Audi's Streaming Service for Driverless CarsDisney and Audi have announced a partnership ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that will see the entertainment giant develop a new streaming service for Audi's future autonomous vehicles. The project points to huge upcoming opportunities for media brands to take advantage of the free time consumers will gain when driverless cars hit the mainstream.
https://www.stylus.com/vnmxbsThu, 13 Dec 2018 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/vnmxbsExploring Eco-TourismWe take a look at the evolving trend of eco-tourism, and how hospitality brands are meeting growing demand. As research reveals 87% of travellers want to see the world sustainably, with 68% intending to stay in eco-friendly accommodation, brands have a clear opportunity to engage meaningfully with consumers.
https://www.stylus.com/nbgwdyWed, 12 Dec 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/nbgwdyAfrica: Fashion FocusAround the world, a new generation of designers, influencers, creatives and entrepreneurs are celebrating their African roots in accurate, thought-provoking representations of the continent and diaspora. We highlight the brands, retail concepts, media and collaborations making Africa a focus for the global fashion industry.
https://www.stylus.com/lrpbhvWed, 12 Dec 2018 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/lrpbhvNécessaire Launches Sex-Positive Bodycare Range Driven by the self-care movement, US start-up Nécessaire is expanding on The Bodycare Boom by exploring the lucrative sexual wellness industry.
https://www.stylus.com/dtfswkTue, 11 Dec 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/dtfswk10 African Designers to WatchProgressive creatives hailing from Africa are exploring the symbolism of traditional African ceramics and textiles in a modern context to breathe new life into global design. We select 10 designers to watch, including fine jewellers, fashion designers and photographers, who have a particularly fresh approach to colour and materials.
https://www.stylus.com/wjddphTue, 11 Dec 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/wjddph2018 Pop Culture ReviewWe’re looking back at 2018's key cultural inflection points – the moments that redefined cultural values – to highlight the entertainment sector's direction of travel for the coming year.
https://www.stylus.com/dbrhdnTue, 11 Dec 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/dbrhdnWeekly thought-starter #005Designing for longer product lifespans is not anti-consumerism. It’s a way to win favour with an increasingly critical and conscious audience.
https://www.stylus.com/thought_starter_005Mon, 10 Dec 2018 01:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/thought_starter_005African Beauty: Top 10 Indie BrandsThanks to increasing urbanisation and expenditure and a swelling middle class, Africa will soon become a dynamic region for beauty and personal care. Stylus highlights 10 independent brands showcasing ingredients, rituals, conscious values and untapped categories from the continent that will infiltrate and inspire the wider beauty market.
https://www.stylus.com/rftdgmMon, 10 Dec 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/rftdgmMidlife Women & WellnessWomen are approaching middle age with a more positive spirit than previous generations, but they’re also navigating more challenges. As celebrities help to ‘rebrand’ menopause and open up discussion around midlife health, new wellness solutions are springing up – from supportive communal forums to femtech devices. Stylus spotlights areas of opportunity for brands.
https://www.stylus.com/lfngmmMon, 10 Dec 2018 08:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/lfngmmTrend report lowdown: The Future of MoneyMake no mistake: the future of money has implications for every area of your business. Discover how new behaviours and technologies are uncovering a future that will affect all industries.
https://www.stylus.com/future_of_money_lowdownSun, 09 Dec 2018 10:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/future_of_money_lowdownAltruistic Christmas: Brands Courting Conscious ConsumptionThe increasing value of revealing eco-ethical brand behaviour, including nurturing a more mindful attitude to consumption (see The Brief), is swiftly filtering into the Christmas shopping frenzy. We track the brands flipping the focus by reframing the festive season as a platform to raise awareness and give back.
https://www.stylus.com/cnttwhFri, 07 Dec 2018 10:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/cnttwhThe Repair Economy: Top Product StrategiesAs the fight against waste gains pace, brands need to realise that designing for longer product lifespans is not anti-consumerism, but a way to stay in favour with a critical and conscious audience. We explore the innovations, products and ownership systems changing our relationship with possessions, and the role that brands can play.
https://www.stylus.com/qymjtzFri, 07 Dec 2018 09:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/qymjtzPantone Crowns Living Coral Colour of the Year 2019Global colour system manufacturer Pantone has announced its forecast Colour of the Year for 2019 as Living Coral (TCX 16-1546). The vibrantly soft shade is cited as a warm, nourishing hue that provides “comfort and buoyancy in our continually shifting environment”.
https://www.stylus.com/bnrlglThu, 06 Dec 2018 12:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/bnrlglBioreactor Set to Make Food on Mars for Future ColoniesDiscussion around climate-change-driven food shortages and the possibility of colonising other planets has begun to permeate mainstream discussion, and scientists are seeking ways to feed people using alternative, low-impact methods. One such example is Lappeenranta University of Technology’s (LUT) bioreactor, which is capable of creating food using air and electricity.
https://www.stylus.com/czszxgWed, 05 Dec 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/czszxgInstagangs: Gen ExtremeTheir OTT aesthetics and colour-saturated looks may seem cartoonish, but an underlying emphasis on self-care, body positivity and mental health is at the core of this emerging group. From extreme customisation to era-defying garments and gender-inclusive outlooks, meet Gen Extreme – the new tribe of influencers redefining the boundaries of self-expression.
https://www.stylus.com/mfckcrWed, 05 Dec 2018 08:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/mfckcrKohl Kreatives’ Make-Up Brushes for Motor Disabilities British start-up Kohl Kreatives is showing the beauty industry how to design for disabilities with a set of multipurpose make-up brushes.
https://www.stylus.com/rhkmrgTue, 04 Dec 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/rhkmrgGrocer Natoora Takes Radical Seasonality to the High StreetUpscale British grocer Natoora, which supplies “environmentally responsible” fruit and vegetables to almost 1,000 restaurant partners, is directing its focus on seasonality towards a direct-to-consumer retail concept – an upmarket grocery boutique in west London that solely sells seasonal produce.
https://www.stylus.com/cjrjgrTue, 04 Dec 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/cjrjgrCMF Industry View: Personal TechThe ever-evolving personal electronics industry is bringing exciting new developments to market – from customisable add-ons and craft aesthetics, to dual-tone finishes and recycled materials. We round up key colours, materials and finishes and highlight products from the likes of Google, Nintendo and Huawei.
https://www.stylus.com/vgjhsqTue, 04 Dec 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/vgjhsqSustainability Summit Advocates Monetising Waste"We have to find ways of giving what we unhelpfully refer to as waste a proper value; we have to monetise it," argued the Prince of Wales at the inaugural Waste Wealth Summit in London on November 22. Business in the Community (BITC), the Prince of Wales's responsible business network, held the event to address the pressing issue of sustainable manufacturing and consumption.
https://www.stylus.com/dvczysTue, 04 Dec 2018 08:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/dvczysWeekly thought-starter #004Money – it’s a gas. And with the advent of hyper-personalisation, it really is. Wave goodbye to painful interactions with banks; say hello to safe, streamlined services.
https://www.stylus.com/thought_starter_004Mon, 03 Dec 2018 11:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/thought_starter_004Costa Clever Cup Offers Contactless PaymentsBritish coffee chain Costa's latest marketing initiative offers customers a Clever Cup that can be used to pay for refills. It's the latest in a number of brand innovations in the contactless payment space that are set to transform the way consumers buy.
https://www.stylus.com/bhmdcpMon, 03 Dec 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/bhmdcpInstagangs: Beauty's Digital IllusionistsFrom glamorous CGI models to otherworldly digital manipulation, we highlight the new breed of digital influencers pioneering a modern beauty aesthetic that blurs the realms of fantasy and reality.
https://www.stylus.com/wytnnlMon, 03 Dec 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/wytnnlRetail City Guide: NYC, December 2018December in NYC pulses with high-profile openings, including the long-awaited return of an iconic toy store; permanent flagships for cult lifestyle brands; and supersized, exploratory formats from established retailers. Meanwhile, hospitality hots up as a luxury car brand swerves into dining, while art exhibits focus on America's pop-cultural giants.
https://www.stylus.com/hdxtgsMon, 03 Dec 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/hdxtgsRetail City Guide: London, December 2018London remains a hotbed of activity in the lead-up to Christmas and the holidays. Premium grocery stores, natural beauty boutiques and an indoor skate bowl spotlighting a new streetwear department are retail highlights, while the culture calendar is dominated by illustration exhibitions perusing social issues.
https://www.stylus.com/gfcplsMon, 03 Dec 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/gfcplsConsumers as Curious Food Curators: Food Matters 2018Sustainable futures and normalising lesser-known ingredients were key motivations for panellists and food producers at Food Matters this year. Brands showed that they’re exploring these ideas through innovative packaging, creative research labs and solutions that make consumers the active curators of their eating habits.
https://www.stylus.com/sbctbjMon, 03 Dec 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/sbctbjPatagonia Donates $10m Tax Cut to Eco CharitiesHaving strongly opposed president Trump's executive order to reduce the size of two national monuments in Utah, US outdoor brand Patagonia has now publicly rejected the Republican administration's corporate tax reductions.
https://www.stylus.com/pfwftnFri, 30 Nov 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/pfwftnToys Target Short Attention Spans & Mindful LearnersThe dominance of digital tech is affecting children’s expectations of entertainment – prompting analogue toy brands to reduce game times and augment action for shorter attention spans. Meanwhile, educational toys are embracing slow play to reinforce mindful interactions. We unpack how strategic timing is being used to reinvent old favourites this Christmas.
https://www.stylus.com/xkkchkFri, 30 Nov 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/xkkchkTop 4 Trends in Humanised Hospitality: Sleep + Eat 2018Through subtle use of tech, multisensory touchpoints and elevated green credentials, hotel brands can create consumer experiences that are enticing, effortless and ecological. At London's hospitality design fair Sleep + Eat, a plethora of hotel and restaurant designers dissected how to tap into this next-gen thinking.
https://www.stylus.com/gqljqlFri, 30 Nov 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/gqljqlHere’s why you shouldn’t ignore older consumers Stefanie Dorfer, our Retail editor, unpacks the potential of the silver economy – and reveals why the growing number of older consumers could be your next key demographic.
https://www.stylus.com/stefanie_dorfer_older_consumersThu, 29 Nov 2018 12:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/stefanie_dorfer_older_consumersDesigners Harvest Crystals to Craft Unique ProductsA desire for the unpredictable and imperfect is leading to explorations in ‘live’ materials that grow and develop in organic ways. We spotlight three influential projects where designers are harvesting crystals as part of their design process.
https://www.stylus.com/dmchvpThu, 29 Nov 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/dmchvpSummer 2020: Product Design InspirationGardens, pools and green spaces gain a heightened sense of luxury with consumers seeking to escape digitally-dominated interiors and reconnect with the natural world and physical body. Drawing inspiration from our S/S 20 Design Direction Journey, Summer 2020 revives the heritage appeal of hand-crafted details with highly decorative forms and exaggerated texture to beckon bare skin and awaken the senses.
https://www.stylus.com/lhkdwfThu, 29 Nov 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/lhkdwfBeach 2020: Fashion InspirationVacation dressing in the age of Instagram has seen the beach category explode. As temperatures continue to soar and the season gets longer, creating commercial summer product is more important than ever. For Beach 2020, we take cues from our Repurpose Fashion Forecast, which focuses on craft, humble materials and a resourceful spirit, celebrating both the natural and the man-made through a sustainable lens.
https://www.stylus.com/nnbydzWed, 28 Nov 2018 01:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/nnbydzKatie Baron talks the future of retail on BBC NewsKatie Baron, our head of Retail, gave her reaction to the BRC-Nielsen Shop Price Index, and the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, on BBC News earlier today.
https://www.stylus.com/katie_baron_bbc_newsWed, 28 Nov 2018 12:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/katie_baron_bbc_newsBeach 2020: Beauty InspirationCultural diversity, indigenous nature and warm, rich, earthy colour palettes inspire Beach 2020. Pulling from our S/S 20 Beauty Forecast Repurpose, this season is a celebration of both the natural and man-made, with ethical practices protecting the environment, and waste materials reused for beauty styling.
https://www.stylus.com/bbvnmsWed, 28 Nov 2018 10:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/bbvnmsBenchmarking Black Friday 2018Black Friday, increasingly an orgy of self-gifting, remains an epic deep-discounting frenzy. But while the figures are still rising, there’s a progressively equal split between those opting in and bailing out – spurring plenty of tactical considerations. Here are the most important factors, with case studies illustrating the keenest shifts.
https://www.stylus.com/yskfvxWed, 28 Nov 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/yskfvxFood Loves Tech 2018: Connecting Conscious DinersBrooklyn’s third annual Food Loves Tech conference (November 2-3) explored the intersection of contemporary dining and digital trends. Panels and exhibitors focused on food waste, promoting interaction, and tech that supports healthy eating.
https://www.stylus.com/pfwdvlWed, 28 Nov 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/pfwdvlThe Surprising Vice of Gen Sensible: GamblingA new report from the Gambling Commission has revealed that 450,000 or 14% of 11- to 16-year-olds in the UK gamble regularly, ahead of the 13% who drink alcohol, 4% who smoke cigarettes and 2% who take illegal drugs (Gambling Commission, 2018).
https://www.stylus.com/gzsppxWed, 28 Nov 2018 08:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/gzsppxSurviving the Post-Truth Era: Social Media Week London 2018At Social Media Week London 2018, marketers grappled with young consumers’ mistrust of – and departure from – social media. We pull together key directions as the industry prepares for future relationships with customers who want to take back control of their personal data
https://www.stylus.com/wfpctbTue, 27 Nov 2018 11:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/wfpctbBarbie’s Retro Beauty Hits the ShelvesFollowing Mattel’s Barbie ‘Dream Gap’ campaign aimed at Gen Alpha, the brand is shifting its focus to its older fans (Gens Y and Z) with the launch of a retro-themed make-up range.
https://www.stylus.com/qgrdhpTue, 27 Nov 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/qgrdhp10 Sustainable Colour & Materials InfluencersTackling sustainability is a vital challenge faced by brands and designers who are shaping the future of environmentally friendly design. We spotlight 10 progressive individuals and start-ups championing sustainability through innovative use of colour and materials – from revived deadstock and modified textiles, to pigments extracted from waste water.
https://www.stylus.com/mmztzmTue, 27 Nov 2018 09:30:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/mmztzmOrganising E-Comm: Asos’ New Wish-List Curation ToolE-commerce can be a vast and unruly space. Combatting the chaos, British e-tailer Asos is adding a critical layer of organisation to consumers’ e-commerce experience by adding a tool called Boards to its app – enabling shoppers to categorise their saved items more thoroughly, counteracting lost sales.
https://www.stylus.com/pqlylhMon, 26 Nov 2018 10:00:00 GMThttps://www.stylus.com/pqlylh
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WinZip System Utilities Suite v3.6.0.20
[16-Dec-2018]
WinZip System Utilities Suite – PC tools for better performance and a faster computer! Speed up your computer and keep it running at peak performance with WinZip System Utilities Suite, a comprehensive...
Able2Extract Professional v14.0.5
[14-Dec-2018]
Able2Extract is the only PDF converter on the market that effectively boosts your PDF productivity on Windows. Convert PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, AutoCAD and CSV formats. Get picture...
Download key generator for LinPlug SaxLab v2.1.7 VSTi -CHAOS
SaxLab's comes with a wide range of high-quality soundsets for bass, baritone, tenor, alto and soprano saxophone and an effects section that includes a specialized chorus and reverb, as well as extensive real-time modulation options.Special attention has been paid to making the performance controls as rich and responsive as possible, so that the instrument can be realistically played.SaxLab is the result of many years of investigation and programming. It uses not one technology, but a very carefully balanced mixture of various techniques, to obtain the most realistic sax sound you can get from a virtual instrument. Authenticy, Expression and Variation is a mustto obtain believable sax sounds. Better test SaxLab yourself.Team CHAOS | Feb 17 2014Secureupload.eu
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I randomly open fridges - yep - everywhere I go - I don't even know why and most of the time I open it and close it and can't even tell you what was in there - maybe it is my subconscious making sure I will have food if I am stuck there for a few days - very strange - I don't get it
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LAS VEGAS, July 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Relax and recharge has a new meaning for visitors at Caesars Entertainment Corporation (NASDAQ: CZR) resorts. While guests enjoy their stay, they can now conveniently plug in and charge their electric vehicles thanks to new EV charging stations at 13 Caesars' resorts and casinos.
In partnership with NV Energy, nearly all of Caesars' Northern and Southern Nevada resorts and casinos now have operational EV charging stations on site, in addition to Harrah's Resort Southern California. A total of 48 charging ports have been installed in guest parking lots as well as valet areas, and are available for guests to use at no cost.
Caesars is working to expand the availability of EV charging at its domestic resorts, with the next round of deployment planned for the following locations:
Harrah's New Orleans Hotel & Casino
Harrah's Philadelphia
Harrah's Resort Atlantic City
Horseshoe Casino Hammond
Once completed, the gaming-entertainment company will provide a wide network of charging stations spanning across the country from east to west.
Caesars' EV charging stations are on the ChargePoint network, allowing drivers to easily check station availability and find charging spots in real time through the ChargePoint mobile app, the web and car navigation units. The Level 2 charging ports at Caesars' stations accommodate both hybrids and all-electric models using the industry standard J1772 plug, and charge vehicles in less time compared to plugging in the average home garage. With more than 17,000 ports in North America, Europe and Australia, ChargePoint is helping to put more EVs on the road by making charging accessible wherever people go.
"We want to make it easy for our guests to continue their green habits while they stay and play at our resorts. Supporting the adoption of electrical vehicles is important to Caesars, and we are thrilled to make convenient charging another great amenity for our guests," said Eric Dominguez, corporate director of facilities, engineering and sustainable operations at Caesars Entertainment.
As an early implementer of EV charging technology, Caesars is promoting awareness and encouraging cleaner forms of transportation, which directly ties into the company's low carbon strategy and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A recipient of the EPA's Climate Leadership Award, Caesars has cut greenhouse gas emissions at its domestic properties by over 12 percent from 2007 to 2013 on an absolute basis, while reducing energy intensity by 20 percent.
"As a company, we aim to not only reduce our impact on the environment, but lead other companies and inspire our communities to take environmentally-friendly actions. We look at the EV station project as an essential stride towards a future of green transportation," said Dominguez.
The installation of EV charging stations is one of Caesars many programs to promote a low carbon economy and cleaner environment. For more information about Caesars' Corporate Citizenship programs, visit www.caesars.com/codegreen.
Caesars Entertainment CorporationCaesars Entertainment Corporation is the world's most diversified casino-entertainment company. Since its beginning in Reno, Nevada, more than 75 years ago, Caesars has grown through development of new resorts, expansions and acquisitions and operates casinos on three continents. The company's resorts operate primarily under the Caesars®, Harrah's® and Horseshoe® brand names. Caesars also owns the London Clubs International family of casinos. Caesars is focused on building loyalty and value with its guests through a unique combination of great service, excellent products, unsurpassed distribution, operational excellence and technology leadership. We are committed to environmental sustainability and energy conservation and recognize the importance of being a responsible steward of the environment. For more information, please visit www.caesars.com.
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Iris Row of Stars Constellation Bracelet
This beautiful bracelet features a sweet row of stars at the front, comes in gold/silver or rose gold tones and has an extender to make it easy to adjust the size,
Perfect for stargazers & lovers of pretty delicate jewellery these little bracelets are right on trend and would make a perfect gift or treat for yourself!
Nickel, Lead & Cadmium Free
Will add style whatever you're wearing.
Big Metal is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of fashion forward jewellery. There is a story behind every piece of jewellery from Big Metal. Each piece is created with much creativity, excitement and a lot of satisfaction.
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Avon Old Farms Hotel
Meetings at Avon Old Farms Hotel are anything but business as usual. Whether you opt for our beautiful Towpath Ballroom with its adjoining four-season terrace or any of our five smaller meeting rooms, your group of 10 to 150 will feel completely at home for your Connecticut meeting or conference. In fact, we have the capabilities to guarantee exclusive use of the conference space and hotel rooms for larger groups.
Our handsome New England conference center features windows to let in natural light as well as solid walls for added privacy. Additionally, our Connecticut meeting facilities feature high-speed wireless Internet. Meeting rooms are set according to your specific preferences.
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Defending their decision to abandon steps to collect $22 million in taxes from SEPTA, city officials have told City Council and the Philadelphia school district that a 2003 state Supreme Court opinion left them in a weak position to collect the money.
Gallery:
“The City determined that it was unlikely to prevail in a lawsuit to collect these taxes and was willing to negotiate a resolution to its claims as part of a long-term lease agreement with SEPTA,” wrote Rina Cutler, the Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Utilities in a letter to Council President Darrell Clarke and School Reform Commission Chairman Bill Green.
Since at least 1978, year after year, the city has dunned SEPTA for back taxes owed on properties it leased to commercial businesses at sites throughout Philadelphia. The transit authority built up a total bill of $22 million in delinquencies, interest and penalties through June 2014, according to the city’s own records.
Because the School District of Philadelphia is entitled to 55 percent of all collected city real estate taxes, the deal represents a loss of about $12 million for the schools.
SEPTA leases out dozens of storefronts on property it owns. Those properties are concentrated at Suburban Station, a massive underground complex that occupies four city blocks between 15th and 18th streets. The station currently houses numerous fast food restaurants, two newsstands, two Hallmark card shops, several fashion boutiques, a beauty supply store and a jeweler.
Last week, SEPTA said because Amtrak -- the previous owner of many of the properties -- didn’t pay taxes, they should be accorded the same rights. Congress granted Amtrak an exemption to all state and local taxes in 1982.
SEPTA had previously fought the property taxes all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The transit agency had argued space leased out to private businesses inside its highrise headquarters at 1234 Market St. was immune from property taxes because the space was used to raise revenues and reduce SEPTA’s expenses. The court disagreed in 2003, concluding that the property leased to commercial entities was not immune from taxes.
“Very simply, SEPTA is acting as a commercial landlord, which is clearly distinct from acting as a ‘metropolitan transportation authority,’” the justices wrote. “Therefore, SEPTA property leased to commercial tenants is not immune from taxation.”
SEPTA maintains that the court ruling only pertained to the office building.
“They knew our position [regarding the property taxes],” SEPTA General Manager Joe Casey said in an interview Friday. “The city knew we didn’t think we were liable for them.”
This year, the city gave up the fight.
The decades-long dispute ended sometime during negotiations that hammered out the agreement. SEPTA will not have to pay the taxes it has been billed for since 1978. SEPTA agreed to spend more than $50 million to improve city-owned infrastructure and maintain several miles of the underground concourse. Both city and SEPTA officials stressed the two items were not related. A SEPTA spokesman said there was no quid pro quo that led to the tax forgiveness.
“It was part of the negotiations with the city that has gone on a number of years,” Casey said. “This is one of of the many issues.”
In her letter, the city’s Deputy Mayor for Transportation wrote: “The City at one time believed that it could collect taxes from all SEPTA properties leased to commercial entities in the Suburban Station Concourse and continued to send SEPTA real estate bills. SEPTA responded that under current law, the Authority had no obligation to pay real estate taxes on transportation facilities.”
According to city Solicitor Shelley Smith, the fast food restaurants and other commercial businesses were “directly related to the operation of a transportation system.”
“Those businesses facilitate the efficient operation of the transit system by serving travelers en route,” she wrote in an email forwarded to Philly.com.
Smith did not provide information as to how the retail stores contributed to an efficient operation. She was not available for further comment.
“There are a couple of very well known Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases that say that a commercial hotel located at an airport and located on city or state or county ground is not taxable because you need hotels to operate an air transit system,” Bright said. “People get stranded or have layovers.”
But Bright said the businesses operating in complexes near the trains “presents a more difficult issue.” There is nothing in the City Charter or in the state statute that authorizes an exemption for any property that is used for anything other than transportation services, he said.
“There is a plausible argument that says you need places for the public to refresh themselves,” he said. “But there’s also the opinion that they don’t need a place to buy gold bracelets.”
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Responses to stever's Review
Review: We have eaten there at least 5 times in the last few months. The food was consistently good and the menu was quite varied. They have a buffet a couple of times a week; the food was good but we found the same items every time.
highly recommended!
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Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan pose for a group photo with participants of the 22nd APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting and their spouses ahead of a welcome banquet in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 10, 2014.
The recent Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting cemented China’s place as a Global Power. Recent critical agreements the Chinese made with both the U.S. and Russia demonstrates its geo-strategic position between the two former Cold War adversaries. Additionally, significant announcements by the Chinese government ranging from plans to invest heavily in a “New Silk Road” to seeking to solidify itself as a space power on par with the Russians and the U.S. adds to its growing prestige. China’s achieved its quest to undo the century of humiliation as the world witnessed the return of the Middle Kingdom atop the international system. 2014 will go down in Chinese history as the year this ancient civilization regained its prominence among the nations of the world and put it on a path to become the world’s leading economic and military power; however, internal and external challenges remain that may obstruct that path.
While Russia is competing with the U.S. for influence with China, China remains wary of Russia and therefore has also made significant deals with the U.S. During APEC, the Chinese made key agreements with the U.S. on climate change, tariffs; and rules and procedures governing air and maritime encounters between U.S. and Chinese Forces. Of these agreements, the governing air and maritime disputes elevates China in the minds of U.S. policymakers to the same degree the Soviets enjoyed during the Cold War. For China, this recognizes its growing military capability in the Asia-Pacific region and it that the U.S. and its Asian Allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia must take seriously. Finally, APEC allowed China to set the scene for its strategic initiatives to counter the U.S.’s Asia-Pacific Rebalance, which the Chinese view with suspicion, by promoting economic and diplomatic efforts of its own in the region.
The Asia-Pacific Dream
China’s answer to the U.S. Asia-Pacific Rebalance is the announcement of its Asia-Pacific Dream that would better connect Asia to markets in Europe by investing heavily in land and maritime infrastructure throughout the region. While China has benefited from the U.S. led international economic system, China seeks to transition to a model more akin to its historical roots where China, and to some degree India, was the epicenter of the global economy. As the U.S. remains pre-occupied with the instability in the Middle East, China, through its Renminbi Diplomacy, is rapidly shifting the loyalties of many Eurasian nations who would be beneficiaries of China’s investment strategy, and eventually squeeze the U.S. out. While the U.S. can provide military protection in the near-term, its own fiscal challenges will allow China to outcompete the U.S. for influence in the long-term. Despite its growing clout in the international arena, China has significant challenges it must overcome internally and external challenges from other regional powers to include the “swing vote” in the region, India.
Adjusted for purchasing power, China’s economy is now the world’s largest.
Despite this impressive achievement, there are warning signs that China’s economy is entering a period of less rapid growth. Recent data from China forecast slower growth in its industrial sector, a key component in the government’s efforts to raise the standard of living for its people. Without sustained growth, China faces potential political unrest as its unemployment rises and causing a down-turn on the standard of living for its people. This will place greater stress on its social-welfare system as the implications of its “One-Child Policy” create an unstainable model where fewer workers support a larger aging population. This along with further environmental degradation from industrial pollution means China will get Older and Sicker before its gets Richer. This will either lead to positive internal reform or a more dangerous and nationalist China attempting to avert collapse.
India as Swing Vote
Historically, India and China are two vast ancient civilizations that served as the political, economic, and cultural foundations of the Asia-Pacific region. These two nations, through cross-cultural trade and interaction, shaped the regions from Central Asia to South East Asia. This ranged from religious influence, Buddhism, to cuisine such as Thai food, a blend of Chinese and Indian flavors mixed with indigenous ingredients. Despite these interactions and influences, China’s and India’s direct entanglements with each other have been limited as a result of the geographical separation from the Himalayan Mountains. And for most of that early history, China, a unified nation, engaged with a fragmented India. Today, China confronts a unified India whose population will exceed China’s population by 2028.
The PAK-FA test program has been aggressive, and meant to bring the aircraft to maturity by 2016. Three prototypes are currently flying with the flight tests – two are used for flight testing at Zhukovsky, a third prototype has recently been delivered to the Russian Air Force 929th Chkalov State Flight Test Centre in Akhtubinsk for testing. A fourth FAK-FA prototype was damaged by fire after a demonstration flight arranged for an Indian delegation. The pilot was unharmed and the fire was extinguished quickly, but the aircraft itself was damaged (see photo above).
The role of India in the international arena will also change the balance of power as both Russia and the U.S. increasingly seek India as a counter-balance to China’s rise. India’s and Russia’s relationship date to the Cold War and continue today as Russia serves as one of India’s major weapons supplier to include co-development of the Sukhoi PAK-FA stealth fighter. This may provide India the means to compete militarily with China’s emerging 5th generation stealth fighters. At the same time, the U.S. has increased its military-military engagement with India and seeks to become a major supplier of weapons to the Indian Armed Forces. Not only is the U.S. traditional sale of military hardware with India, but also seeks opportunities for joint ventures in the future. Of course, China is also increasing its dialogue with India as a means to incorporate it into its future plans for the region and mitigate creating a future regional peer adversary.
A Multipolar World
The APEC meeting introduced the world to the return of Great Power Politics, where the unipolar world of the post-Cold War has come to an end. The economic shift between the U.S. and China along with the competition between Russia and the U.S. for China’s influence has returned China to its historic position as the Middle Kingdom. Its strategy to invest heavily in the Asia-Pacific region will further cement its central position both regionally and internationally. However, challenges remain both internally and externally. Without necessary reforms, China risks becoming older and sicker before its gets richer, this may create a more dangerous China. However, a Rising India, along with Russian and U.S. engagement with India may temper China’s ambitions and create a future “Gang of Four” – Multipolar World – a balance of power envisioned by President Richard Nixon to maintain global peace.
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9 Outdated Training Beliefs Shropshire
Sometimes it's good to go old school, but sometimes it's old for a reason. If you have any doubt about this, please read the following article to find out what the old-fashioned exercise myths exposed.
9 Outdated Training Beliefs
Provided By:
1) Always wear a weightlifting belt
‘Wearing a weight-training belt for non-maximal lifts has shown to decrease the body’s ability to recruit the muscles that stabilise the spine,’ says trainer Joel Proskewitz (thestrengthcompany.co.uk). ‘They can help keep your core braced during maximal compound lifts, but too many people wear belts when sitting on a bench for a biceps curl exercise, which is ridiculous. Strengthening your core through planks and deadlifts is the best way to keep the spine stable all the time.’
2) To lose weight, train in the fat-burning zone
It’s true that there is only one way to lose weight, but exercising in the fat-burning zone – around 65 per cent of maximum heart rate, so that almost all the calories you burn come from fat – isn’t it. ‘You need to burn more calories than you consume. That’s how you shift fat, regardless of the activity or intensity,’ says performance consultant Karl Bickley (fit2race.co.uk).
3) Fat turns into muscle
‘Fat and muscle are two very different tissue structures and you can’t transform one type into another,’ says Proskewitz. ‘However, building muscle tissue will facilitate the accelerated burning of fatty tissue, making you leaner and stronger.’
4) Exercise before eating
The theory goes that it’s best to train on an empty stomach, because this creates a calorie deficit that speeds up your metabolism for the rest of the day. ‘The best time to train is when you have time to train hard and effectively,’ says Bickley. ‘Research suggests that the best time is between 5pm and 6pm when our body temperature is highest, but I’d advise you to train when you find it best suits you.’
5) Running is bad for the knees
An 18-year study at Stanford University in the US found it was non-runners who were more likely to suffer osteoarthritis, a painful degenerative joint disease, than those who ran regularly. The findings suggest that pavement-pounding can strengthen the connective tissues that stabilise the knee joint, preventing pain in the long term.
6) Muscle is all about genetics
‘Your unique blueprint for how you look is genetic: for instance, you have no control over bone structure,’ says Dr Nick Evans, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon (drnickevans.com). ‘But even though you are born with a fixed number of muscle fibres, you can make your muscles bigger through regular strength training.’
7) Training hard risks a heart attack
Men who train strenuously for 2hr 20min each week reduce their chances of having heart problems by 40 per cent, according to a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. However, lifting heavy weights or holding static moves can raise blood pressure. The Blood Pressure Association recommends people with high blood pressure should only lift weights under supervision of a qualified trainer.
8) No pain, no gain
‘The muscles must work hard during exercise and the “good” pain you feel from muscle burn is necessary for growth,’ says Proskewitz. ‘But this pain should be tolerable. Any pain that is too much to bear indicates that you are pushing too hard and is likely to result in injury.’
9) Lift light and long to improve muscle tone
‘There’s no such thing as training for muscle tone, but you can train to increase muscle size and burn the fat that covers the muscle,’ says Proskewitz. ‘Lifting a heavy weight fewer times will build muscle and burn fat, helping you look leaner.’
If you want to post a new 10K personal best, run faster for longer on the pitch or vaporise your love handles, then look no further than interval training. This involves running at a faster-than-normal pace for a set amount of time before slowing down to recover, then repeating this pattern. Boost your cardio fitness with these high-intensity workouts.
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The Coalition have announced the official release date for Gears of War 4 on the Xbox One. The game is set to arrive on October 11th, this fall for Microsoft’s big black box.
The news went out on the Xbox News Wire and on Major Nelson’s blog, where it was explained that the third-person shooter, starring JD Fenix, the son of Marcus Fenix, will go live later this year with a band of “new heroes”.
The posts also mention that the game will have a multiplayer beta that commences later this month on April 18th. Gamers who played Gears of War: The Ultimate Edition will be eligible for participating in the multiplayer beta later this month. It hasn’t received a whole lot of fanfare because so far the stuff they’ve showed for the upcoming game just looks a-okay and not really rocket-busting.
Oh, and the Gears of War: The Ultimate Edition eligibility also applies to those who played the busted up version on Windows 10.
I haven’t seen enough or heard enough about Gears of War 4 to get excited in anyway whatsoever. The only cool thing is the fact that you can face-kick someone while leaping over cover. This move will come in handy because having enemies opposite of your cover was a common thing in the previous Gears of War games, and it was annoying leaping over the cover just to completely get clobbered because you end up standing face to face with them instead of beating the snot out of their crooked nostrils.
For the most part, The Coalition will have an uphill battle trying to convince people who gave up on the series after Gears of War: Judgment to come back and give the series another go-around. I imagine fanboys will come out in droves for Gears of War 4, but the non-fanboys will be tougher to convince to get on board.
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Exclusive! Beauty Street Style Straight From London Fashion Week
What’s Your Reaction?Thanks for your reactionDon’t forget to share this with your friends!000000
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Exclusive! Beauty Street Style Straight From London Fashion Week
The fashion crowd has descended upon Europe for London's turn at Spring 2014 Fashion Week. While the runways are filled with warm-weather pastels and springlike makeup palettes, London's streets are rife with crisp autumnal style. And Adam Katz Sinding of Le 21ème is there on the ground to capture the best hair and makeup exclusively for POPSUGAR Beauty.
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Which Countries Speak Swahili?
posted on November 15, 2018
A question on a lot of Swahili learners’ minds: Where can I speak Swahili?
You’ll be pleased to know Swahili is one of the most widely spoken languages in Africa. In fact, it is considered the lingua franca of East Africa, and is an official working language of the African Union.
But what about in day-to-day life?
Swahili is currently an official language in four countries – Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Let’s go through each of them.
Tanzania
Tanzania is where you will find the most grammatically correct and formal version of Swahili. In fact, it is kind of an inside joke in the region that Tanzanians are the grammar nazis of Swahili, always correcting the Kenyans on their slang ways of saying things.
When you do visit Tanzania, you will notice that it is actually very important to learn Swahili while there. Many Tanzanians do not speak English well, and communicate only in their tribal language and Swahili. For example, many Masai will only speak Kiswahili and Kimasai, many Chaga will only speak Kiswahili and Kichaga.
Therefore it’s important to know at least some Swahili so you can communicate, unlike say, Uganda or Kenya, where English is widely spoken.
Kenya
While “proper” Swahili is found throughout Tanzania, it’s a little bit different up in Kenya.
First, we’ll start with the subtle differences.
The Swahili in Kenya is a lot more direct and impersonal than it is in Tanzania. You won’t see people stopping to exchange four to five greetings on the street as you do all the time, and you won’t hear shikamoo being said nearly as often.
As a further example, when you ask for something in Tanzania, you generally use the phrase Naomba, which means “I would like”.
In Kenya, they more often use the phrase Nipe, which means “give me”.
Kenyans will often tell you they find it odd to use such a polite phrase when you’re simply asking for something. Tanzanians on the other hand always find it important to be as polite as possible, even if it means being over polite.
Another interesting thing you’ll find in Kenya is the Swahili spoken in the capital, Nairobi. In fact, you can get by in Nairobi without any Swahili at all, as many Kenyans, especially young Kenyans, prefer to speak English.
When they do speak Swahili, they sometimes prefer to communicate in sheng, a type of street/slang version of the language. One funny sheng word I heard used was mbleina, which means “complainer”. Sheng is constantly changing, and is very popular with the young crowd in Nairobi, who typically mix it with English while talking.
Uganda
Swahili in Uganda is interesting, because it is actually not so widely spoken. The most spoken language in the country is actually Luganda.
However, as Luganda is the language of the Luganda tribe, it is not appealing for many Ugandans to learn. For this reason, Swahili and English were made official languages of the country, in order for them to find a common tongue.
As a result, it’s very rare the Swahili is the first language spoken in any interaction in Uganda, unless of course it is within a Kenyan or Tanzanian community in the country.
Learning Swahili is not necessary on a visit to Uganda – English will be far more helpful!
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The first thing you should know about the Congo is that it’s enormous. There are over 200 languages spoken in the country.
The second thing you should know is, the official language of the country is actually French.
There are four other nationally recognised languages: Swahili, Lingala, Kituba and Tshiluba.
While Lingala dominates the capital and much of the western side of the country, the borders shared with Tanzania and Uganda on the eastern border is largely Swahili speaking.
One thing to note is the Swahili in the DR Congo can be quite different from the Swahili in Tanzania, as many people speak local variations of the language, the most popular being Kingwana.
Nonetheless, basic Swahili will still get you very far in these parts.
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2015 Committee lays out goals for a smaller, nimbler College of Liberal Arts at U of M
In an age of declining state appropriations and budget priorities shifting to the next whiz-bang scientific breakthrough, how does a College of Liberal Arts preserve its heart and soul and prepare for a leaner future?
Late Friday afternoon, an eloquent 21-page report arrived in the email of faculty, staff and students in the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts (CLA). Someone forwarded the email to me from a home address. These are sensitive times.
“The Future of the College of Liberal Arts,” an interim report [PDF] prepared by the CLA 2015 Committee, is frank about the outlook: The college’s “budget is shrinking, and it will continue to shrink under nearly every plausible scenario.”
'Pretty good is not good enough'The report, prepared by a 30-member committee of faculty, staff and students from the Twin Cities campus, lays out 14 goals and recommendations for a smaller, nimbler college that focuses on students yet shares the university's overarching goal to become a top research institution.
“Put another way, and with apologies to the residents of Lake Wobegon, pretty good is not good enough,” according to the report. “CLA does not accept mediocrity, or even pretty good; CLA aims for distinction in everything that we do: teaching and learning, research and discovery, outreach and service.”
The College of Liberal Arts, according to its website, currently is home to 553 tenured or tenure-track faculty, 16,716 students, 45 programs and departments, and countless staff.
In February, the 2015 Committee recommended about $5.6 million in cuts to deal with the immediate budget crunch. Then members turned their attention to the future.
“I think it’s (the report) part wakeup call, part vision statement and, we hope, part of a unifying call to action,” committee co-chair Christopher Uggen said in an interview this weekend. “We want to make some smart choices and have a clear-eyed understanding of the rough patch that we’re going to hit, but then also have a vision for emerging on the other side stronger and unified.”
Beyond the spreadsheetThough Uggen (pronounced you-gun) says that higher education is frequently “confronted with short-term budget problems,” this time around it’s not possible to simply “turn your collar up to the wind and ride it out.”
Christopher Uggen
“I think the core working belief of the committee we held fast to is that we need to do things for academic and scholarly reasons,” said Uggen, a Distinguished McKnight Professor and chair of the sociology department. “Yes, we’re looking at finances, and we need a sustainable economic model, but it is in service of our academic mission and our scholarly vision. That is a much different orientation than pulling up a spreadsheet and saying, ‘Where can we cut?’ ”
The report notes that fewer degree programs likely will be offered but it doesn’t spell out which ones are on the chopping block. That’s a decision Dean James A. Parente Jr. faces in coming months. No doubt Parente and the 2015 Committee will be pressed for details at the town hall Tuesday morning in the Regis Center.
A ‘student-centric’ approach“The college needs not just fewer programs from its current portfolio, but also new programs that address the questions that will become important,” according to the committee’s report. “The programs must not be burdened by legacy structures, but instead be organized in a student centric fashion. A successful future will arise from cooperation in creative ways that forms a new critical mass and new value for the college and our students.”
The report recommends looking hard at duplicative liberal arts education not only within CLA but also in other colleges at the U — and across the state of Minnesota.
“The state needs both the University and MnSCU [Minnesota State Colleges and Universities], but neither the University nor MnSCU nor the state can afford duplication,” the report notes. “One current example of this is the duplication of liberal education and, more generally, liberal arts curriculum across the colleges in the University of Minnesota. There must be coordination within and across institutions so that every entity has a well defined mission and the needs of students and the state are met as efficiently as possible.”
This issue also was raised by President Robert Bruininks in his recent state of the university speech [PDF]. "Today, colleges that once complemented each other’s offerings are now competing with the same degree programs for the same students, and campuses in every legislative district are competing for scarce capital funding," Bruininks wrote.
I asked Uggen if he has observed insecurity among colleagues, that unnerving feeling of having targets on their backs.
“I think that’s all unavoidable, and I think that’s one of the reasons we, as a committee, want to operate with transparency,” he said. “We want people to know exactly what we’re thinking, exactly what we’re talking about ... because of those anxieties. I certainly feel them when I’m wearing my department chair hat. How is this going to affect the staff in my unit? How is this going to affect my undergraduate and graduate students and my faculty?”
Defining a liberal arts educationBut how do you explain the importance of a liberal arts education and define it to a public looking to science and technology for future jobs? The outcome is not readily visible, a source explained recently: “We don’t have hearts growing in jars. We don't have solar cars.”
And that issue shows up in budgeting. The report notes that most other colleges at the university receive “considerably greater state support” per student ($3,350 in CLA vs. $10,000 in the College of Biological Sciences, for example).
“While it is often said that sciences subsidize the humanities, it seems that at Minnesota, the humanities subsidize the sciences,” according to the report’s first footnote.
The CLA report is worthwhile reading, particularly for this passage on the role of a liberal arts education:
“The liberal arts remain essential subjects for a productive and participating citizen in modern society. They ask difficult questions that demand broad understanding and address some of the most important issues that confront our nation and the world. Examples are easy to find. You need an understanding of history, culture, religion, and language to appreciate and navigate the shifting ground of diplomacy and politics; leaders who lack that understanding affect war and peace around the world. You need to understand economics to survive in the current climate, and economics without ethics has led to a world-wide recession. Justice and equality; belief and truth; the beauty of the written word, a work of art, or a musical passage; these are how we find a life worth living and search for its meaning — these are the liberal arts in the 21st century.”
Correction: An earlier version of this post said the town hall would be held in Rarig Center, according to the 2015 Committee's report. The town hall will be in Regis Center. The post has been updated with the correct location.
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Comments (2)
Submitted by James Hamilton on April 26, 2010 - 9:36am.
I find it interesting (and disturbing) that the report calls for avoidance of duplication in liberal arts education in the state generally yet insists that the CLA continue to act "across the range of liberal arts." Other Minnesota schools will no doubt read this as a threat to their own programs.
There is more than a touch of arrogance to be found here. Perhaps the CLA should re-consider its desire to become one of the top general purpose CLA programs in the U.S. and focus its resources on specific programs. The position in which it finds itself nationally is no different than the situation it describes in Minnesota.
Mr. Hamilton's comment about focusing on specific programs is right on point. If he read the actual document, he would see that is exactly what the college is proposing; in fact, it suggests that programs may be cut to half of what they are now!
Regarding duplication of access to a liberal arts education: our current state higher ed system was created before technology made many educational features available regardless of geography. We need to re-examine that system, taking into account that on-line courses are extremely expensive to create and offer.
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Corrine Stavish 6/25/19 Tuesday 2 pm
Corinne Stavish specializes in personal and historical narratives and biblical interpretative tales that are warm, witty, thoughtful, powerful and poignant, and enhanced by a lively performing style. Featured at festivals nationwide, Stavish has also been a keynote speaker at the National Storytelling Conference, a Detroit Jewish Woman Artist of the Year, a contributor to Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul and The Storyteller’s Companion to the Bible, and author of four award-winning CDs. Stavish serves on the Board of Directors of the International Storytelling Center and is a College Professor in Humanities at Lawrence Technological University. "An experience not to be missed … Stavish grabs your attention in the first minute and doesn’t let you go until each of her spellbinding tales reaches its satisfactory conclusion." Detroit Metro ParentVisit Corinne's Website All ticket sales are final.
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The Vatican has denied the Catholic Church covered up a case of a priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys in the US from the 1950s to the 1970s.
It has been alleged the Vatican ordered a church trial of Father Lawrence Murphy be stopped, after the priest wrote a letter to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict.
Arthur Budzinski, 61, says he was repeatedly molested at the St John's School for the Deaf in suburban Milwaukee 40 years ago.
His daughter Gigi says it has had a huge impact on the whole family.
"We're happy that it finally got out there to the people. He fought for 37 years," she said.
"He met with members of the Vatican in 1974 and still nothing was done for him.
"It started when he was 12 years old. He reported it to many people - Milwaukee police, St Francis police, and no-one helped him. No-one helped him and his classmates and his friends."
As Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope was in charge of a Vatican department responsible for investigating cases of alleged abuse.
Successive archbishops in Wisconsin were aware of the allegations but did not act, and there was no criminal prosecution.
The Vatican was finally contacted in 1996, but the department which Cardinal Ratzinger oversaw decided not to take action.
Cardinal Ratzinger's deputy ruled that the alleged molestation occurred too long ago and the accused priest should instead repent and be restricted from celebrating mass outside of his diocese.
The Vatican says there was no cover-up because the cases are already in the public domain.
'Hurt and disappointed'
Meanwhile a group claiming to be clerical abuse victims has staged a press conference outside the Vatican, where they called on the Pope to explain why more was not done.
Peter Isely is a spokesman for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. He says Father Murphy was sexually assaulting children in the confession.
"We're Catholics from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and survivors. We need to hear from him [the Pope] - why he did what he did," he said.
"A man who raped and molested children in our archdiocese - we need to know why he did not let us know about him, why he didn't let the police know about him, why he did not condemn him, why he did not take his collar away from him."
Barbara Blaine is from the same group and says those affected are extremely distraught.
"[We are] hurt, disappointed, to learn that the church officials here - including the Pope - have actually been more concerned with protecting the privacy and reputation of child predator priests rather than the innocent children," she said.
The two say they were briefly detained by police outside the Vatican because they did not have a permit for a news conference.
The latest claims of a cover-up come just days after the Pope rebuked Irish bishops for their handling of half a century of sexual abuse of minors by clergy.
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Guess what, y’all!? I’m a Daring Baker! For over four months now, I’ve been jealous of the members of this tasty fraternity. I’ve seen cheesecake pops, breads, braids and cakes. I don’t bake much (except for my beloved biscuits) but when it’s time to bake great things, I think I do it well.
I’ve only made a cake once in the past seven months and I thought it time to brush up on my baking skills. I’ve heard that cooks don’t bake and bakers don’t cook, but I can do both, so here we are!
This month’s challenge was hosted by Chris at Mele Cotte. She chose a Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream from Great Cakes by Carol Walter. A filbert is a hazelnut, a gateau (Ga-TO; plural is gateaux but pronounced just the same) is French for cake, a praline is a caramel covered pecan and buttercream is a type of frosting.
Since I am deathly allergic to tree and groundnuts, this challenge really started out being a challenge. I don’t substitute or attempt to compensate my recipes with nuts. I simply go without. I shy away from sesame and granola because more often than not, their tastes and aromas are reminiscent of nuts.
I don’t like the feeling of my throat and mouth constricting. I can’t work in a restaurant or other food establishment because of my allergies. If I could find a generous benefactor, I’d totally start a nut allergen-free restaurant or bakery. My world is scattered, covered, smothered and chunked with nuts. Living in the Southeastern United States, nuts are a part of daily life. North Carolina is a lead producer of peanuts, (it’s actually a legume, but we’re not going to split hairs nor start arguments here) and they are listed on every menu in almost every restaurant. You find them in salads, drinks, desserts, and even thrown on the floor as decoration. It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world!
I think of my gluten/casein-free and vegan friends and I realize that they have to overcome challenges in every day life to enjoy food and the lifestyles they lead. If they can do it, I can do it, too!
I won’t post the original recipe as is because I had so many substitutions. I won’t post the procedure either, unless it’s germane to something specific. If you’d like the recipe, I’m sure 1000s of my fellow DBers have it on their blogs. I halved the recipe because A) it was allowed B) I wasn’t sure how the substitutions would affect the overall outcome C) I wanted to make a mini-cake. My mom’s birthday is on Friday and she is in love with chocolate the way I’m in love with bread.
This gateau recipe has many parts that have to work together to make the whole.1 Faux Filbert Genoise1 recipe sugar syrup1 recipe Soynut Buttercream1 recipe Apricot Glaze1 recipe Ganache Glaze, prepared just before using3 tablespoons soynuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
What? Soy nuts? What are those? They're roasted soybeans. I discovered soy nuts almost a year ago. A friend was snacking on them and gave me a small bag to try. They can be used just like nuts. They act like nuts, taste like nuts, and can even fool that most die-hard nut fan. They come shelled, raw, roasted, boiled, salted, unsalted, and in “butter or whipped” form. They’re available at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and other specialty retailers but you MUST be careful because many of the packages say: May contain wheat, eggs, nuts or parts of nuts, because they might be manufactured in plants that use those items.
If you’re allergic, sensitive or have any doubt to your allergen state, DO NOT eat/buy those products labeled as such. Too many times have I been tricked into eating such an item and I got a no-expense paid trip to the emergency room with an Epi-Pen stuck in my leg. Not fun. Not cool. Adrenaline rush, my ass. Adrenaline is no joke and not fun when it’s rushing artificially to your heart to prevent you from dying.
OK, sorry…I just want you to know how serious it is.
I had no problems making, scaling, or baking the cake. It turned out sweet, uncharacteristically moist, and oh-so delicious. I was quite surprised. The oat and wheat flour gave it a textured mouthfeel that I assume is akin to a nut-made cake.
Sugar Syrup Makes 1 cup, good for one 10-inch cake – split into 3 layers1 cup water¼ cup Dixie Crystals Extra Fine Granulated Sugar In a small, yet heavy saucepan, bring the water and sugar to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, add the liqueur. Cool slightly before using on the cake. *Can be made in advance
Soynut Buttercream1 recipe Swiss Buttercream1/3 cup soybean butter
Blend ½ cup buttercream into the soybean butter, then add to the remaining buttercream.Whip briefly on med-low speed to combine.
I am so glad I didn’t have to make the praline paste for the original cake. The only paste I’m comfortable making is garlic paste. I cannot tell you how glad I am. The only reasonable facsimile other than tahini (which I cannot stand; it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth) I thought I could use was soybean butter. It’s like peanut butter, but better because I can eat it! I had some Soybean Butter from Trader Joe’s and it was easy to use.
Well…it wasn’t easy at first. The soy nut butter is supposed to be refrigerated and so I had to warm it up a bit in order to blend it in the Swiss buttercream. I used the microwave, pressed the POPCORN button and went over to the mixer to fret over the buttercream. The scent of peanuts filled the air. “Oh, wow. The microwave is doing its job. Let me check on it.” This is what I found:
I’m slightly embarrassed about this. Go ahead, laugh. I did.
The soybean butter was burned with crusty bits in the middle, and had burned through the bowl. I thought it was microwave safe….I guess not. Or maybe I shouldn’t have pressed POPCORN. Fifteen seconds would have been suffice.
Place the butter in a separate clean mixing bowl and, using the paddle attachment, cream the butter at medium speed for 40-60 seconds, or until smooth and creamy. *Do not overbeat or the butter will become toooooo soft.*On med-low speed, blend the meringue into the butter, about 1-2 Tbsp. at a time, over 1 minute. Add the liqueur and vanilla and mix for 30-45 seconds longer, until thick and creamy. Refrigerate 10-15 minutes before using.
Buttercream is a precarious fellow. If it’s too hot, it melts; Butter contains water and the slightest movement can make those water molecules come gushing out, ruining your hopes and dreams. This happened twice this week. I used dried egg whites because I hate saving yolks for something I’m never going to use them for.
Apricot Glaze Good for one 10-inch cake2/3 cup thick apricot preserves1 Tbsp. water
In a small, yet heavy saucepan, bring the water and preserves to a slow boil and simmer for 2-3 minutes. If the mixture begins to stick to the bottom of the saucepan, add water as needed. Remove from heat and, using a strainer, press the mixture through the mesh and discard any remnants. With a pastry brush, apply the glaze onto the cake while the cake is still warm. If the glaze is too thick, thin to a preferred consistency with drops of water.
OK, so I used strawberry preserves and I used the microwave again. This time I checked to make sure the bowl was microwave safe. It was. Thank God.
Set vanilla aside. Break the chocolate into 1-inch pieces and chop finely with a heavy knife. Transfer into a medium sized bowl and set aside. Heat the cream and corn syrup in a saucepan, on low, until it reached a gentle boil. Once to the gently boil, immediately and carefully pour over the chocolate. Leave it alone for one minute, then slowly stir and mix the chocolate and cream together until the chocolate is melted and incorporated into the cream. Carefully blend in vanilla mixture. If the surface seems oily, add ½ - 1 tsp hot water. The glaze will thicken, but should still be pourable. If it doesn’t thicken, refrigerate for about 5 minutes, but make sure it doesn’t get too cold!
OK, so I didn’t do any of that either. My boyfriend for the evening, Microwave, came in handy. I put the cream in another microwave-safe bowl on high for about 3 minutes, added the chocolate, covered it with Saran, and waited 5 minutes. I then whisked in the vanilla to combine the chocolate and cream. I worked in a restaurant where I had to make ganache nearly every night and there was no microwave. I had to heat cream on the stove and then add the couverture pieces to it.
"I got the golden ticket!"
If all chocolate tasted like Ghirardelli, I'd eat it more often. Most American-made chocolate tastes awful.
Assembling The Cake Cut a cardboard disk slightly smaller than the cake. Divide the cake into 3 layers and place the first layer top-side down on the disk. Using a pastry brush, moisten the layer with 3-4 Tbsp. of warm sugar syrup. Measure out 1 cup of buttercream and set aside.Spread the bottom layer with a ¼-inch thickness of the remaining buttercream. Cover with ½ of the whipped cream, leaving ¼-inch border around the edge of the cake. Place the middle layer over the first, brush with sugar syrup, spreading with buttercream. Cover with the remaining whipped cream. Moisten the cut side of the third layer with additional sugar syrup and place cut side down on the cake.Gently, press the sides of the cake to align the layers. Refrigerate to chill for at least 30 minutes. Lift the cake by sliding your palm under the cardboard. Holding a serrated or very sharp night with an 8-ich blade held parallel to the sides of the cake, trim the sides so that they are perfectly straight. Cut a slight bevel at the top to help the glaze drip over the edge. Brush the top and sides of the cake with warm apricot glaze, sealing the cut areas completely. Chill while you prepare the ganache.Place a rack over a large shallow pan to catch the ganache drippings. Remove the gateau from the refrigerator and put it the rack. With a metal spatula in hand, and holding the saucepan about 10 inches above the cake, pour the ganache onto the cake’s center. Move the spatula over the top of the ganache about 4 times to get a smooth and mirror-like appearance. The ganache should cover the top and run down the sides of the cake. When the ganache has been poured and is coating the cake, lift one side of the rack and bang it once on the counter to help spread the ganache evenly and break any air bubbles. (Work fast before setting starts.) Patch any bare spots on the sides with a smaller spatula, but do not touch the top after the “bang”. Let the cake stand at least 15 minutes to set after glazing.To garnish the cake, fit a 12 – 14-inch pastry bag with a #114 large leaf tip. Fill the bag with the reserved praline cream. Starting ½ inch from the outer edge of the cake, position the pastry tube at a 90 degree angle with the top almost touching the top of the cake. Apply pressure to the pastry bag, moving it slightly toward the center of the cake. As the buttercream flows on the cake, reverse the movement backward toward the edge of the cake and finish by pulling the bag again to the center.Stop applying pressure and press the bag downward, then quickly pull the tip up to break the flow of frosting. Repeat, making 12 leaves evenly spaced around the surface of the cake. Make a second row of leaves on the top of the first row, moving the pastry bag about ¾ inch closer to the center. The leaves should overlap. Make a 3rd row, moving closer and closer to the center. Add a 4th row if you have the room. But, leave a 2-inch space in the center for a chopped filbert garnish. Refrigerate uncovered for 3-4 hours to allow the cake to set. Remove the cake from the refrigerator at least 3 hours before serving.Leftover cake can be covered with foil and kept in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
We were allowed to decorate the cake anyway we wanted and I was so happy about that. I could only find my #826 tip. I couldn’t my shoebox full of tips, needles, disposable pastry bags, and offset spatulas.I could not get that buttercream on the cake fast enough. As a matter of fact, the piping was kinda shotty. I just wanted it to all be over at this point. I was still pissed about the soy nut butter burning up my little bowl.
Originally, crushed, chopped filberts are to be sprinkled in the middle. I took roasted soy nuts and did the same.
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comments:
Great adaptation Nik. Be careful with that allergy. I am trying to figure out why I have to choose between being a cook or baker? Why cant you do both well . Im going to look at us as food artists working in many mediums.
Your faux hazelnut gateau recipe sounds so good I'm going to make it for itself, not as a substitute for anything. Of course I love anything with oats in it :)Your adaptations are brilliant & I'll bet the soybutter made a great combination with the buttercream. Your cake is really pretty, too.glad you are a Daring Baker!
I like how you made a bunch of substitutions and changes but still stayed true. Anyway I can save on the amount of dirty dishes or stove top boiling I have to do, the better. Great idea with the roasted soybeans, they sound like a winner to me.
lunchbuckets: I'm glad you're laughing. I'm dumb. I should have known better.
kat: Yay! Thanks! I think you're a totally awesome cook, so that means a lot coming from you.
silverrock: I know pine nuts aren't real nuts, but I stay away from them because I think I have "sensitivities" to them. I figured out today that they don't keep after about 2 days in the fridge. They can get soft and soggy.
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It's All Good: Who needs seating when you've got the sauce?
Aug. 22, 2010
Written by
News Journal
Hours: 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, April through November.
Contact: 419-610-7122 or 419-524-7427.
The goods: Ribs, chicken and sandwiches, all smothered in Ronald Moton Sr.'s award-winning barbecue sauce, plus side orders such as cole slaw and potato salad.
Worth noting: Catering is available. According to the menu, "The King of B-B-Q Ribs specializes in full-service catering for weddings, picnics, family reunions, birthday parties, retirement parties and more." Call to order.
Ronald Moton Sr. has been "The King of Ribs" since the mid-1980s, and he has the references to back up his claim.
Three years running, he has earned the Golden Pig award for best sauce at the Carolina Mountain Ribfest in Asheville, N.C.
From a cherry-wood-fueled grill and tent on Lexington Avenue, he serves up pork, beef and chicken slathered in the signature sauce he's rightfully proud of.
"We don't use what you call a rub," Moton said. "A rub is only good for the topping of the meat. ... All I want is something plain. I want the salt to melt into the meat and make it taste good."
I arrived a little before the King's ribs were tenderized quite to his standards, but they were cooked through, so he cut me one to sample.
His "red gold" is mild, balanced and subtly sweet and sour, with a certain something that eludes me.
There's a distinctive flavor in there I recognize, but I can't put my finger on it. The flavors are so delicate and blended, the meat really shines through.
Moton said the recipe was reverse-engineered from the sauce his mother made long ago when she worked at the Blue Note in Mansfield.
"She forgot the recipe after she got older," he said. "She and I sat down one day and drawed up some of the things that go in the sauce. We came up with 21 different spices. Now I've got that down to only about nine."
By some miracle, he simplified the recipe, made it more pure, and managed to retain its amazing depth.
After sampling the ribs, I had a decision to make for my order. Purely in the interest of thorough scientific research, I thought I should try something else.
Perhaps a sandwich. Pulled pork? Beef brisket?
Pork? Beef?
Aw, heck. Both!
And let me tell you, the sauce is great on the ribs, but coating all the little bits of fork-tender shredded meat, it really gets a starring role.
I had planned to eat half of each sandwich, then save the rest for dinner, but I was back in the fridge finishing the leftovers within an hour.
Moton spends much of the summer trucking his signature flavors to competitions all over the country, but he's never considered leaving Mansfield. His parents moved his family here in 1960, when he was 11.
"This is where all my family is," he said.
He has 10 brothers and sisters, three children and six grandchildren.
"And the grandkids are even better than cooking the ribs," he said, beaming.
Melissa Ramaley is a copy editor and page designer for the News Journal. To invite her to your favorite restaurant, e-mail [email protected] with "It's All Good" in the subject line, or call 419-521-7231. Find an archive of restaurant profiles at MansfieldNewsJournal.com/entertainment.
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NB: This post is part of the “Piercing the Monetary Veil” symposium. Other contributions can be found here.
Martha T. McCluskey–
Basic legal ideas about taxation stand in the way of proposals for ambitious fiscal policies to address pervasive economic insecurity among both middle class and lower income households.
The conventional legal framework posits two primary functions for taxation. First, taxes raise revenue to finance government goods and services. Second, taxes redistribute resources, transferring money from some private interests to others based on ideas about distributional equity. Taxes also regulate private economic behavior, but this third function is generally treated as supplementary and subordinate, with economic ordering mainly directed by basic legal rules and the administrative state.
This seemingly benign conceptual frame implicitly locates economic productivity in a distinct and underlying private market sphere, with government taxing and spending cast as taking value from those who have created it. From this starting point, households can receive public support either as beneficiaries of forced public charity or as responsible consumers willing and able to pay an equivalent amount in taxes. If progressive taxing and spending programs are construed as involuntary, inherently inefficient, transfers of money from productive market winners to support less capable market losers, then that public support will tend to appear to generally inscribe rather than relieve conditions of precarity and powerlessness.
This conventional frame obscures how taxation creates money as a means for generating and distributing economic power and insecurity. Tax theory tends to ignore how law constructs and governs money, treating money as a neutral measure of social contribution.
On the eve of December 1, 2017—as members of the United States Senate prepared for a late night of political contestation—Senator Bernie Sanders made the Republican tax bill a human rights issue. Senator Sanders drew attention to UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston’s then-ongoing investigation into how “extreme poverty” implicates human rights in the United States. Alston later met with Senator Sanders, and, after concluding his visit, castigated the Republican tax legislation for its potential to exacerbate already historic levels of economic inequality and extreme poverty. In the wake of the finalization of the tax law—one of the greatest tax transfers of wealth to the rich in modern times—numerous activists also decried the human rights implications of radical economic disparities. Alston’s trip to the United States might nevertheless have seemed controversial to other observers precisely because it treated extreme economic inequality and poverty as human rights concerns. As a formal matter, the United States has never ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and even its assent to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) consisted of many formal reservations that render the treaty almost entirely non-justiciable in US courts. More generally, as Alston’s preliminary report noted, legal institutions in the US have been notoriously reluctant to apply the language of “rights” to address social and economic justice claims.
For contemporary scholars and activists invested in challenging extreme inequality and concentrations of corporate power, however, human rights may prove controversial for a different reason: the long-shadow of the left critique of rights. Since at least Karl Marx’s critique of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, many left thinkers have been suspicious of the conceptual foundation and practical implications of human rights. For Marx, the Rights of Man helped underwrite a regime of private property law that stifled “genuine human emancipation,” while simultaneously absolving the state from addressing social and economic domination in the sphere of “civil society.” On this account, just as the state recognizes the formal equality of all persons, it simultaneously abdicates responsibility for private forms of discrimination and social domination—rights to hold private property offer no comfort to those without means to acquire food, shelter, or housing. More generally, leftists have long observed that a narrow focus on formal equality obscures and ratifies substantive inequalities. Indeed, many subsequent critics—including notably early writings of the Critical Legal Studies Movement—contend that the promulgation of legal rights can exacerbate conditions of oppression. Contemporary scholars note how rights claims are invoked to prevent the redistributive taxation of privately held capital, to protect the rights of corporate entities to “speak” as in Citizen’s United, and to weaken the power of labor unions with “right to work” laws.
Today, thinkers have updated these critiques to consider how human rights law can function as a form of “neoliberal governance”—these critics stress that complying with human rights norms often requires states to make certain “reforms” that align with political and economic agendas that favor “free market” principles. As Naomi Klein observes, the neoliberal economic programs championed by Reagan and Thatcher spread across the globe during the 1970s and 80s at precisely the same time when international human rights NGOs also flourished. Jessica Whyte’s astute analysis argues that even the social and economic human rights frameworks of the twentieth century were designed to be “flexible” enough to allow for the implementation of new forms of neoliberal economic governance. While I cannot do full justice to these critiques in the space here, it is important to note that they ultimately rest on a set of concerns about the kind of normative vision of the “human” that human rights laws underwrite. Anthropologist Talal Asad, for one, suggested that “the historical convergence of human rights and neoliberalism may not be purely accidental,” since human rights notions of “self-ownership” and “self-preservation” align with neoliberal economics’ understanding of human beings as pieces of “human capital” always striving towards greater self-augmentation. Consider, for instance, whether a theory of human rights imagines human being as, in Marx’s critique, “egoistic individuals” preoccupied with holding and consuming private property, or in contemporary terms, as entrepreneurial creatures always seeking to maximize their individual capital and credit-worthiness; when such a theory of human rights is implemented in practice, critics worry that the legal protections it offers will focus primarily on creation of “free markets” and justify policies that intensify social and economic stratification. Perhaps more distressingly, left critics of human rights also worry that particular rights regimes encourage and produce different self-conception among rights holders—if a human right to private property or wealth accumulation is enshrined in law, it helps establish a framework for how people evaluate their own, and each others, life projects.Continue reading →
Paying for corporate tax cuts with revenue raised from grad students and universities sounds like a parody of a Republican tax bill. Unfortunately–like many seeming parodies these days–it was all too real. The tax bill that originally passed the House would have taxed both graduate student tuition waivers and university endowments above a certain level, measured per-student.
The tax on tuition relief wasn’t in the version of the bill that passed the Senate, and has been dropped from the bill entirely in the reconciliation process—thanks largely to grad students and their unions, who led a wave of protests against the provision. The endowment tax, however, remains intact despite the best lobbying efforts of university administrators.
Understanding the various versions of the bill in relation to both grad students and endowments provides a valuable window into the political economy of contemporary academia. In particular, Congressional Republicans have unintentionally revealed the ways in which the labels of “school” and “student” are only partial descriptors of contemporary universities and the people who study at them.
On December 5th, I joined hundreds of people from 32 states in Washington D.C to protest the Republican tax bill. We packed the hallways outside of the offices of seven key members of Congress, and mic-checked one another so that people’s stories about the bill’s devastating consequences could be heard. A group of us – around 130 in total – refused to leave when the Capitol police arrived, and were arrested.
It was in many ways not an unusual act – the next day, more than 200 people were arrested in D.C. demanding a Clean Dream Act. I’m heading back to D.C. today for another protest, joining hundreds more in a last ditch effort to head off the tax bill.*
Many people have thanked me for what I did two weeks ago. Perhaps it’s because I’m a law professor. Or perhaps it’s because so many of us are wondering what more we can – or must – do to save our democracy and bring about a more equal society.
Confrontational protest and civil disobedience are an indispensable part of the answer. Here are five thoughts on why I decided to participate in the protest, and what it means to me, and what I hope it might mean to some of you. Continue reading →
If the details of the House and Senate tax bills under consideration in Washington make your eyes glaze over, it’s because they’re supposed to. The tax-writers, as they often do, are using the technicalities of the tax law to mask major changes in national economic policy. It’s fairly well-known that both bills are stacked in favor of the wealthy. But the details of the tax bills (please don’t call them “tax reform”) contain a neoliberal agenda that, if enacted, will punish good governance, reward capital over labor, and favor the old over the young.
So, even as politicians rail publicly against tax loopholes, both parties use the tax code to reward favored industries and citizens. The current tax code, for instance, favors owners of capital, wealthy dynasties, highly-paid workers, and industries including tech and pharmaceuticals as well as finance, insurance, and real estate.
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Best hotels in Montesquiu
What's Montesquiu Like?
If you're looking for a place to get away, look no further than Montesquiu. Whether you're planning to stay for a night or for the week, the area around Montesquiu has accommodations to fit every need. Search for hotels in Montesquiu with Hotels.com by checking our online map. Our map displays the areas and neighborhoods around all Montesquiu hotels so you can see how close you are from landmarks and attractions, and then refine your search within the larger area. The best Montesquiu hotel deals are here with our lowest price guarantee.
Where are the Best Places to Stay in Montesquiu?
Below are the number of accommodations by star rating in Montesquiu and the surrounding area:
• 18 4-star accommodations from USD 78 per night
• 41 3-star accommodations from USD 45 per night
• 16 2-star accommodations from USD 38 per night
• 4 1-star accommodations from USD 56 per night
Things to See and Do in Montesquiu
Things to See near Montesquiu:
• Montesquiu Castle Park (0.9 mi/1.4 km from the city center)
• Salt del Mir (3.2 mi/5.1 km from the city center)
• Castell de Milany (5 mi/8 km from the city center)
• Salt del Molí de Salgueda (5.4 mi/8.7 km from the city center)
• Monastery of Santa Maria (5.6 mi/9.1 km from the city center)
Things to Do near Montesquiu:
• Ethnographic Museum of Ripoll (5.7 mi/9.1 km from the city center)
• Ruta del Ferro (5.8 mi/9.4 km from the city center)
• Monastery of Sant Joan de las Abadesses (8.6 mi/13.8 km from the city center)
• El Ter Industrial Museum (9.3 mi/15 km from the city center)
Choose one of the following to unlock Secret Prices and pay less on select properties.
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Chiropractic Care
Welcome to Optimal Health Chiropractic and Massage Clinic, where we provide a range of chiropractic services for car accident injuries, personal injuries, back pain, sports injuries, and other health conditions. Learn more about our approach to chiropractic care and how we can treat your acute or chronic pain resulting from injury.
Chiropractic Care for Auto Injuries and Personal Injuries in Edmonds
An injury can dramatically affect your quality of life. Overnight, you may not be able to participate in activities you enjoy or go to school or work, because of an auto accident, slip and fall, workplace accident, or other accident.
The good news is chiropractic adjustments can promote healing in injured tissue by bringing blood flow to the area. This increases circulation, activates healing, and reduces inflammation so your levels of pain decrease.
Once we have stabilized the area, we can provide adjustments that promote healing, reduce pressure, and restore mobility to tissue that was damaged. When you are well enough for it, we can even show you stretching and strengthening exercises to help you get back to full health.
Edmonds Chiropractic Care for Back Pain
Over 50 percent of working Americans say that they experience back pain at some point in the year. If you are among them, you know how difficult it can be to stay focused when your back spasms.
Let our chiropractor identify the source of back pain and promote relief through spinal adjustments. We can help you with back pain, neck pain, slipped discs, muscle strains and sprains, shoulder tension, and more. You no longer have to live in pain.
During an initial consultation, we will locate the pain and assess the extent of injury. We will then provide a series of adjustments that reduce tension and pain, promote back health, and restore your energy levels.
Treating Sports Injuries in Edmonds
Too often, individuals let a sports injury sideline them from the game. We can help you heal from recent or old sports injuries with targeted chiropractic adjustments. Our techniques are pain free, do not require you to take medication, and focus on restoring the health and mobility of impacted tissue.
With all of our conditions, we focus on providing gentle and light care that will not place you in any pain. You will feel relaxed and refreshed with treatment. Once you are healthy, we can provide lifestyle tips that help you maintain a pain free life and maximize your health and wellness.
Stop by Optimal Health Chiropractic and Massage Clinic Today!
To get advice and chiropractic care tailored to your unique health care needs, we invite you to call us at Optimal Health Chiropractic and Massage Clinic now to schedule your chiropractic consultation. Simply call 425-329-7266 or complete our online appointment request form to take this important health and wellness step now.
At Optimal Health Chiropractic and Massage we care about your well being and want to make sure you always have access to the very best in healthcare and medical advice. That's why you can always call us any time to speak directly to one of our Doctors about your health. Just call the number above or click the button and e-mail us your question and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
Most of us pay little attention, if any, to the daily functioning of our many physiological systems. Our hearts beat, our digestive systems digest, and our various hormones, such as those deriving from the thyroid gland, adrenal gland, and pancreas, do what they do. It's all good... until it's not. ...
Proper Overindulgence Over The Holidays
The term "overindulgence" is probably best assessed as a red flag, especially with respect to consistent overconsumption of high-calorie comfort food and desserts during the holiday season. An overall healthier perspective could be described as "indulgence" regarding ...
The 5 Senses
The five senses, that is, the sense of sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell, provide us with necessary information regarding the world around us.1 These precious capabilities enable us to navigate our environment with seemingly instantaneous feedback with reference to our actions and ...
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Tim Green to make Sunny 102 Book Club appearance
This month’s tasty read for the Sunny 102 Book Club is Tim Green’s The First 48, and as a special treat, Green will be on hand at this Wednesday’s book club meeting at the DeWitt Barnes & Noble.
Sunny 102 (WZUN) morning man, Big Mike Fiss, who has known Green since his days at Liverpool High School, says he’s thrilled that Tim will be joining him to discuss his latest novel.“There’s a rumor going around that I taught him everything about football and keeping fit, and that he’s used me as a character for a few of his novels,” joked Fiss.
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Effective Ways to Choose the Best Recycling Company
Many businesses across the country are serious about recycling. Some require their employees to separate plastics, cartons, glass bottles, and other materials, while others even teach corporate social responsibility through training and seminars.
But, the truth is, even if your company is accustomed to these practices, you have no control over what happens to your scrap and waste materials once they leave your facility. So, many corporations today turn to plastic buyers in Michigan to help put their junk to good use.
If you’re thinking about sending your scrap and waste material to a recycling company, better partner with someone efficient, reliable, and trustworthy. Here are some ways to pick out the best of them:
Learn About the Best Practices in Industrial Plastic Recycling
Before anything else, you must understand what should happen to your plastic scrap and waste as soon as it leaves your facility. Research the correct steps in transporting, processing, and converting these items into industrial-grade products. Try learning about the best practices and the latest technologies that make recycling sustainable and more efficient.
That way, you’ll know what you’re looking for in a good recycling company. As you meet with different teams from the industry, you’ll be confident in talking about your business needs and expectations from the potential partnership. You’ll also spot the flaws and loopholes in their proposals that can be deciding factors in your selection process.
Ask Around for Recommendations
Asking friends, family, or business partners is a good starting point for finding the best recycling company. These people will more likely recommend a facility that has left a positive impression on them because of their skills, reputation, or sustainable practices.
You can also browse the internet and look for websites that recommend top recycling facilities in your area. List them down and find online reviews and customer feedback that can attest to their abilities and qualifications.
Check the Company’s Recycling Certifications
Successful businesses know the value of certifications. Aside from giving them prestige and professional credibility, these documents show the company’s commitment to its craft since getting certified isn’t that simple. Owners and their employees are required to undergo several training programs yearly to update their skills and knowledge that’ll help uphold the standards of the recycling industry.
Find a company that has achieved major certifications in the country or even worldwide. Working with them means getting a reliable partner who continuously improves their business practices. You can count on them to have the latest, most efficient systems and processes critical for your success.
Find a Company That Issues a Certificate of Destruction
When businesses send their plastic scrap and waste in a processing facility, they automatically think these things get recycled. Most of the time, that’s true, but because of sudden changes in laws and restrictions in the industry, some recycling companies ship their excess materials to dumpsites and landfills.
To make sure your items get recycled, find a partner that issues a Certificate of Destruction. It’s an in-depth documentation of how your plastics were processed and prepared so people can use them again. Aside from giving you peace of mind, it protects the integrity of your business by ensuring your scrap and waste are put to good use.
Operating a sustainable business is instrumental in leading positive change for the environment. And, a simple way to start is by giving new life to your scrap and waste material. Get in touch with Seraphim Plastics LLC for plastic recycling in Michigan.
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Weʼve raised £243 to support Tommy Brown, a quadruple amputee after contracting meningitis at just 5 months old.
Crowdfunding is a new type of fundraising where you can raise funds for your own personal cause, even if you're not a registered nonprofit.
The page owner is responsible for the distribution of funds raised.
Story
On April 22nd I will be running the London marathon for the 4th time. I am trying to raise as much as I can for an inspirational young boy who always lives life with a smile despite being a quadruple amputee after contracting meningitis at just 5 months old.
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Celebrityandmodels.com is a conscious coupling of all that you can imagine about your favorite movie, TV show, song, music video, sports, fashion, or the latest gossips from the lives of the celebs and models you love to hear about.
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If you have AVG software then see:
[http://www.avg.com/special-toolbar-how-to-disable-search-tlbrf.tpl-mcr1 AVG Antivirus and Security Software - AVG Security Toolbar Help New Tab Search]
See also [[Troubleshooting extensions and themes]]
Try "about:config" & for a full description see this support article:
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Location+bar+search
It basically takes you into the background settings & allows you to either "reset" or use another url. I set mine to the UK Google Feeling Lucky & pasted in the following location
http://www.google.co.uk/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=
I can't claim credit - I found it in the following blog:
http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/how-to-change-your-firefox-location-bar-search-engine/
& I'm very grateful to Angsuman Chakraborty, Gaea News Network - Thank you Angsuman!
Helpful Reply
I have XP and Firefox, I had the same problem,I left clicked on that small gray triangle next to the right of that troubling Y of the yahoo , then at the bottom of options left clicked on "manage search engines"then I highlighted yahoo on the next chart, then clicked on" remove" and then clicked on OK,then I exited from Firefox and again returned to Firefox, this time before Firefox come on the screen, there came a small message on screen, saying two options to choose : "notify me before change to my settings" ..and...."allow changes to my settings"....it was marked on the first option ,I removed that marking and marked the other option to "allow" and then clicked on ok....this time when I exited from Firefox and came back, that persistent yahoo was not there anymore and Google was there...if you don't mark on "allow" option ,yahoo will come back again and again...but I don't know is it safe to "allow" changes ?!...do it on your own risk...but anyway it works
I have XP and Firefox, I had the same problem,I left clicked on that small gray triangle next to the right of that troubling Y of the yahoo , then at the bottom of options left clicked on "manage search engines"then I highlighted yahoo on the next chart, then clicked on" remove" and then clicked on OK,then I exited from Firefox and again returned to Firefox, this time before Firefox come on the screen, there came a small message on screen, saying two options to choose : "notify me before change to my settings" ..and...."allow changes to my settings"....it was marked on the first option ,I removed that marking and marked the other option to "allow" and then clicked on ok....this time when I exited from Firefox and came back, that persistent yahoo was not there anymore and Google was there...if you don't mark on "allow" option ,yahoo will come back again and again...but I don't know is it safe to "allow" changes ?!...do it on your own risk...but anyway it works
Helpful Reply
I went to Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions, roughly following the instructions for the "Disable all extensions" thing, and was thus apparently able to remove both Yahoo! Toolbar and Yahoo! Search.
I agree, though, that Yahoo needs a class action lawsuit. They made it incredibly difficult to get rid of that thing.
I used the "troubleshooting extensions and themes page", here:
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Troubleshooting%20extensions%20and%20themes
I went to Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions, roughly following the instructions for the "Disable all extensions" thing, and was thus apparently able to remove both Yahoo! Toolbar and Yahoo! Search.
I agree, though, that Yahoo needs a class action lawsuit. They made it incredibly difficult to get rid of that thing.
This solved the problem immediately, whereas virus scans, removal of add-ons and endless searches in help forums and pages had failed.
I'm very grateful to the anonymous user who suggested the remedy which involves tweaking the "about:config" page (see http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Location+bar+search).
This solved the problem immediately, whereas virus scans, removal of add-ons and endless searches in help forums and pages had failed.
There is no need to do the about:config. This is much easier and this one works. The about:config doesn't.
I got the Yahoo search bar without realizing it while downloading a free program. There should be a law against companies loading things such as this without express permission. Anyway, I was able to remove it from Firefox as follows: In the Yahoo search bar at the top right of your page there is a down arrow. Click on it and you will see a short list of choices and one is "Manage Search Engines". Click on that and remove Yahoo (and any others you don't want) from the list. I removed all except Google and now my Google search bar is back. Yay! Hope this works for you, too!
There is no need to do the about:config. This is much easier and this one works. The about:config doesn't.
I got the Yahoo search bar without realizing it while downloading a free program. There should be a law against companies loading things such as this without express permission. Anyway, I was able to remove it from Firefox as follows: In the Yahoo search bar at the top right of your page there is a down arrow. Click on it and you will see a short list of choices and one is "Manage Search Engines". Click on that and remove Yahoo (and any others you don't want) from the list. I removed all except Google and now my Google search bar is back. Yay! Hope this works for you, too!
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}
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