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NHL Winter Classic Cancelled: The 6 Dumbest Decisions in NHL History
By (Featured Columnist) on November 6, 2012
1,887 reads
1 of 9
The loss of the Winter Classic is the low point of the 2012 lockout...so far
Rob Carr/Getty Images
When the NHL cancelled the Winter Classic on Friday (ESPN), the integrity of the 2012-2013 NHL season—if there is any season at all—may have been compromised to the point of irrelevance.
As if the 2012 NHL lockout has not been absurd enough to begin with, the loss of the 2013 Winter Classic now resonates as one of the dumbest moves the NHL has made in years—perhaps ever.
The 2013 Winter Classic promised to be the one of the biggest events ever for the NHL, a huge boon not just for the NHL but for the state of Michigan, in general and, more specifically, for the city of Detroit.
The game itself—an Original Six matchup between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings— had all the potential to have the highest attendance of any NHL game ever as 115,000 fans were expected to attend the event.
But it went deeper than that.
The 2013 Winter Classic was going to be the first time a Canadian team had played in the game and it was assumed thousands of Maple Leafs' fans were going to make the short trek to the Big House to watch their team play.
Beyond that, 15 days worth of events were slated to take place at Comerica Park leading up the game itself.
To say the loss of the 2013 Winter Classic is a financial disaster for many is a gross understatement.
Thus, the 2012 NHL lockout has now entered the realm of true stupidity, the epitome of idiocy on a very grand scale.
Is the 2012 lockout the dumbest decision the NHL has ever made? Let's take a look at the all-time most bone-headed decisions and actions made by the NHL over the years and find out.
Let's start off by looking at a few really terrible decisions that did not quite make the list, but which are all worthy of a dishonorable mention.
Dishonorable Mentions
The NHL Draft Lottery is an example of a really dumb move on the part of the NHL
Abelimages/Getty Images
The NHL Draft Lottery
I am not really sure how either the NHL or NBA came to the conclusion that a draft lottery was the fairest way of going about awarding the No. 1 overall pick in the draft to a team.
Sure, it arguably has some sort of deterrent effect on teams tanking the season in order to gain the top pick. But honestly, any team that has any integrity at all would not engage in such tactics anyway.
The NBA Draft Lottery came into being in 1985 after the Houston Rockets were suspected of tanking the season in order to get the top pick. Almost a decade later, the NHL followed suit after the Ottawa Senators were suspected of doing the same thing so they could gain the top pick in the 1993 draft.
Notably absent from resorting to any sort of lottery system is the NFL, the annual draft of which is one of the most anticipated events of the NFL offseason.
If you compare the NHL lottery to the NBA lottery though, it makes your head spin and one has to ask the simple question: Why?
With the NBA lottery's weighted system, in its current format, the worst team has a 25 percent chance of getting the top pick.
With the NHL's current weighted system, the worst team still has just over a 48 percent chance of retaining the top pick.
How exactly a team is deterred from tanking a season when it knows it still has almost a 50-50 chance of getting the No. 1 overall pick is something that makes sense to only the powers that be who run the NHL.
Rule 48
Rule 48 is a prime example of how sometimes an idea with good intentions, when put into effect, can meet up with pretty crummy results.
In the summer of 2011, after open ice hits to David Booth and Marc Savard left both players with concussions—not to mention that a persistent concussion was sidelining the face of the NHL, Sidney Crosby, for an indefinite period of time—the NHL modified Rule 48 (NHL.com).
As modified, Rule 48 now reads as follows:
In theory it sounds good and it makes sense.
Its actual application, however, has been less than optimal and has led to a lot of confusion.
Hits to the head are being looked at more as to the offending player's intent as opposed to the actual outcome of the hit.
Obviously, the problem here is how does one know what another player was intending? Certainly, there are some circumstances where the intent is obvious.
But for the borderline events, unless the NHL has been utilizing mind-readers, how does one really know what someone's intent was?
If the real intent is to do away with these devastating sorts of injuries, then wouldn't the implementation of rules like the NFL's aggressive approach to head-shots and defenseless players make more sense?
The Divisional Format
It was during the 1998-1999 NHL season that the current playoff seeding format was implemented.
Is it one of the worst decisions ever made by the NHL? No.
But it is clearly not one of it's better ones either and it is riddled with inconsistency.
Under the current format, the three divisional winners in each conference get the top three seeds for the playoffs. After the first round of the playoffs, teams could then be re-seeded and this could create more confusion.
The problem with this is that a weak divisional winner could get a top three seed even if the No. 4 or even No. 5 seed had a better record. On occasion, that divisional winner would get ousted in the first round by a No. 6 seed, who would then go on to play the No. 1 seed and re-seeding would then take place.
It is very similar to the situation we saw in the NFL two years ago when the 7-9 Seahawks won the NFC West and got to host the Wild Card game against the 11-5 New Orleans Saints. Sports fans everywhere know how that game turned out.
This past season, we saw the Florida Panthers get the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference and they got to host the No. 6 seeded New Jersey Devils—even though the Devils finished eight points better than the Panthers in the regular season. Not surprisingly, the Devils won in seven games.
In the 2008 playoffs, we saw something similar when the Washington Capitals claimed the No. 3 seed and took on the No. 6 seeded Philadelphia Flyers, who finished one point better than the Caps. Again, the Flyers prevailed in seven games.
It is not a huge problem, but even the NHL knows there is an issue there.
At the beginning of the year, the NHL proposed a change to a four-conference format, with each conference having eight teams (tsn.ca). The top four teams from each conference would qualify for the playoffs and they would then play each other within the conference, with the top seed playing the No. 4 seed and the No. 2 and No. 3 seed playing each other. The ultimate conference champions would then meet in the third round and the winners would then vie for the Stanley Cup.
It certainly makes sense and is a lot more fair and balanced than the current system which can lead to some very odd scenarios.
6. International All-Star Game Format
The lineups for the 2001 NHL All-Star game are introduced
I know there are many people out there who really liked the concept of the International format the NHL used for the All-Star game from 1998-2003.
I am definitely not one of them and I know there are a great many hockey fans who agree with me on this.
For fans who are somewhat new to the sport, some history might be helpful here.
The 1998 Winter Olympic games marked the first time professional hockey players were permitted to compete in the Olympic games. The NHL, to its credit, embraced the idea. To promote the idea, the NHL made a rather radical change to the format of its All-Star game.
Instead of the traditional Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference matchup, the format switched to an International style pitting one team, comprised of North Americans, against a team of any players not from North America, called the World All-Stars.
This is another example of good intentions gone bad.
Part of the problem is that the format made for some rather odd bed fellows. Players who were teammates in the All-Star game would turn around and be at each others throats just a couple of weeks later.
The North American team was comprised of players from Canada and the USA. Without question, Canada and the USA have had one of the bigger rivalries in Olympic hockey history over the years. Beyond that though, the North American squad was, invariably, comprised of mostly Canadian players.
The United States' representation was always rather shallow.
The problem was even more pronounced on the World squad where you had players from the Czech Republic, Russia, Finland and Sweden all playing together and then trying to rip each others heads off just a couple of weeks later.
No, there is no real evidence that anyone allowed their national pride to impact their performance—but the whole situation was obviously not the most ideal of circumstances.
You also had the issue of players from the same NHL team, who would have remained teammates if the current format was in place, having to face each other due to the International format.
The bigger problem was how the format diluted the talent pool, particularly on defense.
While there was a plethora of quality forwards for both sides to use, blue liners were a different story. Instead of getting to choose from the best defenders in each conference, the International format of the game impacted the depth each team could put on the ice to try and match up against the great forwards.
That is not to say the defensemen were bad, far from it.
But the International format usually resulted in teams being put on the ice that were not as solid as they could have been if the current format of East vs. West had been utilized.
After all, players like Jaroslav Modry or Dmitri Yushkevich are not exactly recognized by most hockey fans as all-time great defensemen. Yet both were on the World team during the International format era.
Thankfully, the experiment ended in 2003 and we went back to the usual Eastern vs. Western conference set up.
It was a novel idea by the NHL—but not one of its brighter decisions.
5. The South Shall Rise Again?
The Phoenix Coyotes are a good example of the issues the NHL has had in expanding to southern locations and climates
Matt Kartozian-US PRESSWIRE
One of the more questionable decisions the NHL has made over the years has been the decision to expand to cities and regions where there is barely a snowball's chance in hell of that location actually seeing snow, as opposed to expanding to Canada and returning the game to its roots.
This is particularly true as to the Eastern conference's Southeast division. Up until this past season, the Southeast division consisted of the Washington Capitals, Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes, Atlanta Thrashers and Florida Panthers.
It snows in Washington D.C quite frequently. But the white stuff is awfully hard to come by in Tampa, Miami, Atlanta and Raleigh.
True enough, the Hurricanes and Lightning have hoisted the Stanley Cup in recent years. But if you look at attendance figures from the 2011-2012 season, only the Caps and Lightning averaged attendance numbers that were in the top half of the league.
But the Panthers ranked 21st and the Hurricanes 22nd. Without a winning team making a serious playoff run, fans in these southern locations, more often than not, stay away.
What is worse is that the NHL did not learn from its past mistakes as far as Atlanta was concerned. After the Atlanta Flames flamed out and moved to Calgary, the league felt it could do better the second time around.
As we all know, things did not work out at all and the Thrashers relocated to hockey-starved Winnipeg this past season. The Jets, meanwhile, had 100 percent capacity at the MTS Centre, the smallest arena in the NHL, this past season.
The Western Conference is far from immune to this problem. The NHL, over the years, has placed teams in Phoenix, Anaheim, San Jose, Nashville and Dallas.
The Coyotes, Stars and Ducks ranked in the bottom fifth of the NHL as far as average attendance was concerned last season.
The Coyotes' financial woes, in particular, have been well documented. Whether the team ends up moving to Quebec remains to be seen, but such a move would certainly see a reversal in attendance figures similar to what we saw in Winnipeg this past season.
The decision to bring the NHL to southern cities had potential but, in another of Gary Bettman's seemingly never-ending demonstrations of poor judgement, wouldn't it have made more sense to look to Canada for better expansion opportunities?
Admittedly, the United States has better media outlets and bigger markets and better profit potential. But the key word there is potential.
There are cities in Canada that would be euphoric if the NHL were to head there and the resulting economic impact would be immense, to say the least.
Quebec, Hamilton, Saskatoon, Halifax—the list goes on and on.
When the lockout eventually does end, and if the NHL ever gets into an expansion state of mind, let's hope Gary Bettman does the smart thing and brings hockey back to its roots.
With Bettman though, San Diego, New Orleans, Atlanta (the third time is the charm?) or even Las Vegas probably have a better chance of getting an NHL franchise than a deserving Canadian location.
4. The Crease Rule
Brett Hull scores one of the most controversial goals in Stanley Cup playoff history
I know there are many people in Buffalo who will think I ranked this too low. Many of them may think the "crease rule" is the all time dumbest decision the NHL has ever made.
I wouldn't say it is the dumbest decision—but it sure ranks up there.
In a recurring theme here, the NHL had good intentions when they enacted the "crease rule". The idea was to prevent goalies from continuously getting run over by players crashing the net.
The NHL wanted goalies to be able to do their job without having to compete not just with the puck flying at them, but with forwards and defensemen slamming into them at the same time.
So Rule 78 was enacted—and it just did not work like it should. The part that caused so many problems was Rule 78-B which read as follows:
Unless the puck is in the goal crease area, a player of the attacking side may not enter nor stand in the goal crease. If a player has entered the crease prior to the puck and subsequently the puck should enter the net while such conditions prevail, the apparent goal shall not be allowed.
With the rule enacted, goals were getting disallowed at an alarming rate. More than 100 were waived off in the 1998-1999 season. Even more were reviewed and re-reviewed to see if a technical violation had taken place.
The whole thing was quite inconsistent. The NHL was strictly enforcing the rule, but you would still see goals being allowed in one game that looked almost identical to goals being disallowed in other games.
Everything reached its apex, though, in Game 6 of the 1999 Stanley Cup finals. Leading the series 3-2, the Dallas Stars looked to clinch their first ever Stanley Cup on the home ice of the Buffalo Sabres.
The game would go into a third overtime. It was there that Brett Hull scored one of the most controversial goals in NHL history.
Anyone who has seen the goal (and if you have not then please watch the video) knows when Hull scored the Cup-winning goal, his left skate was clearly in the crease before he fired his winning shot.
No Goal. That was what the Sabres fans claimed—something they still claim to this day.
The NHL explained that Hull actually kicked the puck to a better shooting position with his left skate, which was outside the crease at the moment, and he therefore always maintained possession of the puck even though his left skate entered the crease before he fired the winning shot.
There is still no absolutely correct answer and the debate on this issue has raged for over a decade.
That summer, the NHL modified the rule to make it more interference-based. Players can be in the crease before the puck—they just can't interfere with the goalie before the puck gets there. This version of the rule is pretty much what we have today.
But the "crease rule", as it formerly existed, was an utter disaster that led to one of the most debated moments in NHL history.
3. The Hiring of Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr
Can you pick out the fools who cannot solve a labor dispute from this picture?
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
If you wanted to truly learn the fine art of how to effectively manage a labor dispute then the current leadership of the NHL and NHLPA are fine examples of what not to do.
The 2012 NHL lockout is rolling down the tracks to being an even bigger disaster than the 2004-2005 lockout. Who do we have to thank for this hockey cataclysm?
Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr. The hiring of these two men is collectively one of the dumbest decisions made by the NHL and the NHLPA.
After an entire season was lost to the 2004-2005 lockout, one would have thought both sides might have wanted to take a different approach if and when the next CBA needed to be addressed.
The NHLPA, however, just has no identity when it comes to its leadership and, quite frankly, they really don't know what sort of style they want for their leader.
Bob Goodenow certainly was not the answer. Yes, he helped the players in the 1992 strike just before the playoffs began. But his role in the 1994-1995 lockout—that ended with a shortened 48 game season—and the 2004-2005 lockout—where an entire season was lost—can only be viewed with negative emotions.
Ted Saskin came on, seemed to be too soft and was fired two years later.
Paul Kelley lasted less than two years.
So after all this, the NHLPA turned to Donald Fehr. Now think about the logic of this for a moment.
You are the only professional sports league to ever lose an entire season to a labor dispute and who do you hire as your new executive director at a time when a new CBA is going to have to be negotiated?
Only a guy whose resume included being the head of the MLBPA during a strike in which the World Series was inexcusably lost.
Is it any wonder the 2012 NHL season might be lost too?
Not at all, especially when you consider the other terrible decision involved here.
In February 1993, Gary Bettman became the commissioner of the NHL. Things have not been the same since.
Whereas this article focuses on several dumb decisions, Bettman's tenure has been a collection of them. He has been a part of every other bad decision mentioned in this article.
On the labor front, how can you give anyone who has led the sport into three lockouts—one of which resulted in the only time a major sports league lost an entire season to a labor dispute—anything but a failing grade. And that is being kind.
It is all the more mind-numbing when you consider one of the reasons Bettman was made commissioner was to bring an end to the labor stoppages in the NHL.
But it is not just the labor stoppages that make Bettman such a disaster as commissioner.
His southern expansion plans, as mentioned earlier, are another issue. His continued reluctance to bring the NHL to Canadian markets that would rabidly support the NHL is another.
To be fair though, the NHL has grown considerably under Bettman's leadership and hockey revenue has unquestionably increased. After all, that is what the 2012 lockout is all about.
The southern expansion has not been all bad either as the Stanley Cup has made its rounds in Raleigh, Tampa and Anaheim in recent years.
But the labor stoppages, especially these last two, show that Bettman is a commissioner who has no concept of what really matters—the game itself. The integrity of hockey is what matters most, not maximizing one's profit from the game itself.
Gary Bettman has shown time and again that he just does not get this. Everything he builds up he gradually destroys. It is an endless cycle causing irreparable harm to the NHL.
The combined hiring of Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr were horribly dumb decisions—decisions from which the NHL might never recover.
2. The 2012 Lockout
Just an example of why the 2012 lockout is so frustrating
With the Winter Classic being cancelled, the 2012 lockout has now climbed the ladder of stupidity to almost the top rung.
If the season is ultimately lost, it will most definitely get there.
The 2012 lockout ranks so high on the dumb decisions the NHL has made because of what the game has already lost from it and what it might lose moving forward.
After the 2004-2005 lockout, the NHL had rebounded more effectively than many of us could have dreamed.
There were legitimate superstars playing the game at an incredibly high level.Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos, and the Sedin twins, just to name a few, created a new level of excitement.
The Winter Classic was born and became more popular than anyone could have imagined. Up until the 2012 lockout, it was well on the way to becoming a New Year's Day tradition like the Rose Bowl or other college bowl games.
Hockey-related revenue had grown by $3.3 billion since the last lockout. There was so much positive momentum being built that the thought of allowing another stoppage to derail all that momentum just seemed absurd.
As this article has demonstrated though, the NHL likes to deal in the absurd.
What makes the 2012 lockout such a dumb decision by the NHL, NHLPA and pretty much all involved is that with so much on the line, the sides could not effectively resolve a dispute that was not nearly as complicated as the one before it.
The key issues were really how best to split up that $3.3 billion in hockey related revenue and how to do this and honor the players' existing contracts.
And neither side can figure out how to do this. Even when they more or less agree on a 50-50 split in revenue, they just can't see the forest for the trees.
With the Winter Classic hanging in the balance, the two sides could not even agree to meet and try and save the marquee event.
Now we have the NHL losing roughly $720 million in revenue so far, and we have lost the Winter Classic, a game that was probably going to set an all-time attendance record.
Sad is one way to describe the situation.
Completely dumb and idiotic is another.
As ESPN reported earlier on Monday, the two sides have agreed to meet and have actually been talking all weekend. People are very cautiously optimistic. One would like to see these people come to their senses and salvage some sort of season.
That would at least dull the sting of this completely needless 2012 lockout.
But the stinger will still remain lodged under the skin of hockey fans for many years to come.
1. The 2004-2005 Lockout
ESPN reports on the cancellation of the 2004-2005 season
As dumb as the current lockout is, it still must be placed a notch below the disaster that was the 2004-2005 lockout—at least for the time being.
When you are the only major sports league to lose an entire season to a work stoppage—well that is about as dumb as it gets.
It does not matter that the 2004-2005 lockout dealt with more complicated issues than the current one. When you lose an entire season, you have failed. Plain, simple...end of story.
The 2004-2005 lockout was filled with words and phrases that could not be defined, not even by those who were using them.
The NHL used the phrase "cost certainty" as though it was something any sports fan could understand. None of us still completely understands what they were talking about.
The NHLPA put its own definition on the phrase—salary cap.
The NHLPA was dead set against any sort of salary cap, so much so that they were willing to sacrifice the season to make a point.
Now, sure, revenues were not what they are now, and there was no Winter Classic to motivate anyone. But still, the two sides negotiated like complete buffoons and, in the end, it was the fans who paid the most.
The two sides did not even try and negotiate until December of 2004 and by then, time was running out quickly.
With the clock ticking loudly, the NHLPA ultimately agreed to a salary cap so long as it was not linked to hockey related revenue. The NHL rejected this.
Right up until the 11th hour, the two sides inched closer to each other. At the very end, they were quite close with the NHL offering up a deal with a $42.5 million salary cap and the NHLPA countering with a $49 million cap.
With so much on the line, and the two sides separated by just $6.5 million, one would have thought the two sides could maybe do something smart, like split the difference and agree on a salary cap number of around $45.75 million.
But as we know, they could not and the 2004-2005 season was lost.
When things were finally resolved, the depth of each sides stupidity was fully resolved. Oh, the owners got their salary cap but because it was tied to revenues, it ended up being much higher than the owners could have expected.
The salary cap for last year was $64.3 million. For those keeping score, that is quite a bit more than the $49 million the NHLPA had offered
The ripple effect of this bad deal the owners made for themselves has, of course, led to the current stalemate.
Hockey fans everywhere are hoping beyond hope that the two sides will be able to be smarter this time around and not trash an entire season.
All either side has to do is study the 2004-2005 lockout more closely to gain a better understanding of how it really is true to be careful what you wish for.
Hopefully, then, the NHL can avoid making an even dumber series of decisions than they made eight years ago.
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Trapped in an Elevator
Elevators have transformed our cities and our lives, but how safe are they? Airing November 2, 2010 at 9 pm on PBS Aired November 2, 2010 on PBS
Program Description
(Program not available for streaming.) New Yorker Nicholas White was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. How did it happen? How do elevators work? Are they safe? Why are so many people afraid of them? Across North America, elevators move 325 million passengers every day, most of the time without problems. But will the elevator-wary be comfortable handing over the reins to computers? Once brawny but simple machines, elevators are now getting a brainy makeover and reaching new heights. "Trapped in an Elevator" reveals the secrets of these ubiquitous machines and investigates personal stories of those who have been caught inside when they do fail.
Trapped in an Elevator
PBS Airdate: November 2, 2010
NARRATOR: A man goes into an elevator on a Friday night and spends 41 desperate hours trapped inside.
NICK WHITE (Survivor of Elevator Failure): It occurred to me I was going to die in there.
NARRATOR: Riding elevators is an inescapable fact of life. The elevator industry says they move at least 10 billion passengers a week - more than the world's population.
LEE GRAY (University of North Carolina at Charlotte): They are one of the most dominant forms of transportation in modern life.
NICK PAUMGARTEN (Writer, The New Yorker): It's like going into a magic box.
JOHN MENVILLE (Elevator Consultant): It's a machine. You can't ever forget it's a machine.
BRUCE POWELL (Mathematician): Everybody has an elevator story.
RICHARD K. PULLING (Otis Elevator Company): What would the world be like if there weren't elevators?
PAUL GOLDBERGER (Architecture Critic, The New Yorker): The elevator made skyscrapers possible.
NARRATOR: We can't see how they work, so we don't really think about elevators, unless something goes wrong.
CARL ROBBINS (Anxiety and Stress Disorders Institute of Maryland): If you're trapped on an elevator, you can't get to a safe place.
SALLY WINSTON (Anxiety and Stress Disorders Institute of Maryland): For the time that you're in it, you're stuck in it. You really can't climb out.
NARRATOR: So what's up with elevators? How safe are they? What are your chances of getting trapped? Right now on NOVA.
Being trapped in an elevator is a real nightmare. For a young man who's working late at his New York office, this nightmare is about to become a reality.
It's Friday, October 15, 1999; 11 p.m.; the McGraw Hill Building, in midtown Manhattan.
NICK WHITE: I was the production manager for Businessweek magazine. I was working up on the 43rd Floor. I'd worked for the company for 15 years. It was a typical manic New York Friday, and we were just trying to get it done as fast as possible, so we could get out of the building and go do our weekend thing.
NARRATOR: Nick White decides to go outside for a quick smoke.
NICK WHITE: I went down for a cigarette break, and little did I know that, when I walked back into the elevator, it was going to be the unluckiest day of my life.
NARRATOR: White goes back in the building. He says "Hi," to the man buffing the floors and heads for the elevator bank he's been using for 15 years. He enters car 30, the third on the left, and presses floor 43. The elevator begins to ascend.
NICK WHITE: And on the way up, it sort of jolted while it was in the middle of its acceleration, and the light kind of, like, went out for a millisecond. And I realized that, you know, some...there was some kind of malfunction.
NARRATOR: White's trip should have taken less than a minute, but it would take longer than that, much longer. Seen through the eye of a security camera, White, in car 30, starts pressing buttons.
NICK WHITE: I hit the intercom button, expected to hear the man at the desk say, "What's going on?" But there was no response on the other end. Where is this guy? Why doesn't he answer the intercom? I didn't have a watch, and didn't have a cell phone either. And I began to feel frustrated. This was really inconvenient.
NARRATOR: Locked in a box, Nick White is completely alone, and his long nightmare has only begun.
Nick White was riding one of 58,000 elevators in New York City, which, together, make 30 million trips a day. You can't see them from the street, but without them this modern city would grind to a halt. In fact, it wouldn't exist at all.
PAUL GOLDBERGER: In the 19th century, if you were standing here and looking at this skyline of lower Manhattan, the tallest things were church steeples.
Then, when the combination of elevator and the steel frame came into existence, we began to get tall buildings, and then, suddenly, it was a whole other world.
NARRATOR: Elevators helped transform New York from a village to a city.
PAUL GOLDBERGER: The elevator also completely changed the economics of real estate, too, because, in the days before elevators, the top floor was the least expensive, because it was the one that was the biggest hassle to get to. You had to walk up the most stairs. Suddenly, all that turned upside down, literally, and the top floors became the most valuable, 'cause they were just as easy to get to as the bottom floors, but you had the view and the light and all the great stuff that comes from being high up that elevators made possible.
NARRATOR: Over the years, elevators have changed the entire fabric of urban life. The city limits haven't changed much since 1898, but the population has more than doubled, thanks to elevators.
Born and raised in Manhattan, Nick Paumgarten has written about elevators and their impact for The New Yorker magazine.
NICK PAUMGARTEN: Without elevators there wouldn't be this kind of a city. There wouldn't be density and everything that comes with density. You know, cultural ferment, you know, economic activity, just people living on top of people makes the city interesting, great, strange, difficult, all those things.
NARRATOR: Inside every tall building, deep in the core, are the elevators that bring life to the steel and concrete that surround them. Hidden from our view, elevators create the heartbeat of New York and, for that matter, every modern city in the world.
In the United States, elevators carry a staggering 325 million passengers a day. Next to our cars, they're the most common form of transport. But we take them for granted, perhaps because we can't see how they work.
NICK PAUMGARTEN: It's like going into a magic box, where you walk in and then, a few seconds later, you come out into a totally different reality.
NARRATOR: If elevators are magic, then John Menville knows all the tricks. He's maintained elevators in New York City for 47 years.
JOHN MENVILLE: This is the normal world of elevators that the public sees every day. You push a button, you get in the elevator, and you go to your floor. However, there's another world of elevators that no one ever sees.
This box that you stepped into, the elevator cab, is part of a larger system that includes the elevator itself; the counterweight; the motor that drives it; the pulley, we call the sheave; the cables that suspend it; the governor, which monitors the speed of the elevator; and the controller that tells it where to go. When you move in, the elevator doors close. The elevator will move, so that when the cab moves up, the counterweight moves down. And as the elevator moves down, the counterweight moves back up.
The cables that suspend the elevator are steel cables, but we call them ropes. One rope has to, by code, be able to hold the entire elevator plus its full load. But we can use four, five, or six, or eight or ten, to maintain the traction that we need.
This is the elevator motor that drives the elevator. And this is the sheave that the ropes run around.
We use steel guiderails to keep the elevator in position. Along those rails, we have rubber rollers that ride, that guide the elevator on that rail and gives us a nice smooth ride.
Okay. At the bottom of the hoistway, we have a buffer, which is like a large shock absorber. Now, if the elevator comes down and, for some reason, passes the bottom floor, it would hit the buffer so no one gets hurt. As the elevator approaches, it slows down, and it will stop approximately six inches before it touches that buffer. The car is now level with the lobby floor.
NARRATOR: That's it: "Elevators for Dummies." One thing's clear: with all those cables, elevators are built to deal with gravity in a serious way. And they'd better.
NICK PAUMGARTEN: There's something about being in that box which obscures the fact that you're in this dark shaft hurdling upwards at, you know, however many miles an hour, in a state of muted terror.
NARRATOR: Such terror was justified long ago. When elevators were young, they were dangerous.
LEE GRAY: Safety was the key issue in the 19th century, because elevator accidents were fairly common. There were instances where machines failed, and because of that, cars fell partially or down shafts.
There's an accident where a young man looked into the shaft to see if the car was coming up. It wasn't coming up; it was coming down. They found his head three floors below.
NARRATOR: Elevators are derived from mechanical hoists. Since ancient times, they've been used to haul freight up and down, powered first by hand and later by machine. In 1852, man named Elisha Otis revolutionized elevators by inventing a way to make them safe.
LEE GRAY: What we're looking at is a model of Elisha Otis' original safety device. One of the wonderful things about the device was its simplicity. It consisted of three primary components, and it operated automatically.
The first was a series of long teeth that run all the way down both sides of the elevator. The second component was a wagon wheel, spring-mounted underneath the crossbar of the freight platform. The third and final component were a series of levers that were attached to the spring, that could engage and catch on the teeth. The spring, when it was kept in tension by the weight of the car, held the levers up away from the teeth, such that, when the platform operated, it could move up and down the guide rails operating like a normal elevator.
If the rope would break—and this was a very common occurrence in warehouses in the 1850s and 1860s—the spring would push down, forcing the levers into the teeth, holding the platform in place and keeping everyone safe.
NARRATOR: In 1854, at the New York World's Fair, Otis demonstrated his new invention on himself. Every hour, he was hoisted high and the rope was cut. For this spectacle, Otis was allegedly paid $100 by the fair organizer, P.T. Barnum.
LEE GRAY: Scientific American reported on it, the New York Times...that here is a device that really will prevent elevator accidents.
NARRATOR: Once they were no longer death traps, elevators began to appear in extravagant mansions, like the Biltmore estate, constructed by George Washington Vanderbilt, in the 1890s.
To keep himself and his guests from breaking a sweat, Vanderbilt installed two electric passenger elevators that were among the first in the country.
LEE GRAY: Well, the excitement of riding an early elevator, like this, is the transparency of the car, where you see the walls moving past you, you see the cables, you pass by windows on the outside. Being in a machine like this is absolutely amazing.
NARRATOR: In its heyday, this elevator was cutting-edge technology, but, by today's standards, it's slower than molasses.
LEE GRAY: It's not about speed; it's about this wonderful, gracious movement from floor to floor, almost a kind of movable room.
NARRATOR: This elevator has been operating without accidents for a hundred years, with most of its original parts intact, including the motor in the basement.
LEE GRAY: It was both state-of-the-art—powered by electricity, this dynamic new power source—and it was as safe as anything could be for that time period.
NARRATOR: Thanks to Elisha Otis, passenger elevators like these became indispensible to modern life. Based on the success of his invention, Otis went on to found what it is still the largest elevator company in the world.
MAN IN ELEVATOR: We're going faster, is this normal?
WOMAN IN ELEVATOR: Jesus, Ann, you pushed the button too hard.
NARRATOR: Elevators are no longer deathtraps, but when it comes to the movies, falling elevators are a surefire crowd pleaser.
JOHN MENVILLE: It only happens in the movies.
They get everything wrong.
There isn't a safer way to travel. There really isn't. It's the only way to go.
NARRATOR: Standing 28 stories tall, this windowless monolith is packed with elevator shafts, 14 to be exact. It's the North American test site for the Otis Elevator Company. Here, elevators freefall every day, as technicians develop and refine safety brakes.
An empty, stripped down elevator platform is weighted down with 12,000 pounds of lead, which is the maximum load rating of the elevator. The car will be hoisted and dropped, repeatedly, to test the two brakes, or safeties, mounted under the car against the rails.
The two brakes are activated by a cable attached to the cab that loops up and over a device called the governor, at the top of the hoistway, in the machine room. When the car goes too fast, centrifugal force moves the arms on the governor outward and locks the wheel. The cable jerks tight and yanks a lever that pulls the brake's shoes against the guiderail.
OTIS ELEVATOR SERVICEMAN: Okay, John. It's test three; bombs away.
NARRATOR: It's not like the movies. The car stops in less than four feet with a force of one G or less.
Like the first safety brake invented by Otis, the modern brake system is completely mechanical, so it'll work, even if there's a power failure, because it doesn't have any electrical parts.
Otis is one of a handful major companies that manufacture elevators. The industry spends a lot of energy to make sure that elevators never fall.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: July 28th, 1945: New York City was smothered in a blanket of fog.
NARRATOR: People in the industry say the only known freefall, in the entire history of the modern elevator, occurred when an Army bomber crashed into the Empire State Building. It severed the cables of an elevator, sending a woman 78 stories to the basement, and she survived.
NICK PAUMGARTEN: The people in the elevator business will tell you, you know, it's the safest thing in the world. You know, I think we have to take everything with a grain of salt, but, as far as modern living goes, elevators are pretty safe.
NARRATOR: Statistics underscore that cars can be dangerous, and that airplanes are relatively safe, but only 26 people die in elevators every year, mostly service personnel. Odds are you won't meet your fate in an elevator, but that doesn't mean that nothing bad ever happens.
After a smoking break, Nick White tries to return to his office and gets trapped in an elevator. Several hours have now passed, and, for some reason, the security guard in the lobby hasn't noticed his frantic movements on the video monitor or answered his calls for help on the intercom. Increasingly desperate, he goes for the doors. Some elevators have door locks, but these open easily.
NICK WHITE: And there it was, just a cinderblock wall, straight in front of my nose, with three 13's there. That was marked around, I would guess, the 13th floor. There was one chalk; there was one in a, in, like, a Scripto, one of those permanent pens; and one in red spray-paint, all on top of each other.
NARRATOR: Car 30 is an express elevator that goes from the lobby to 39th floor, and White realizes he's stuck near the middle of a long concrete shaft. He rings the bell.
NICK WHITE: It's just a little brass bell, going "ring-ring-ring." I think they all have the same note and the same tone, and we all know it, and it's really annoying. But when you're on the 13th floor of a shaft from 0 to 39, how are they going to hear this little bell?
So then I would, like, turn it off for a minute, and I'd open the doors, and I'd look up and I'd look down. It was literally like an abyss. I'd go through sessions of yelling up and down, louder and louder, different things. Instead of like, "Excuse me, is anybody there?" to like, "Yo! Help! I'm stuck in an elevator."
NARRATOR: Elevators get stuck for good reason. They're designed to shut down when they sense something's wrong, which means sometimes people get trapped inside. Rob Tinworth is one of them.
ROB TINWORTH (Film Editor): I walk out of the office, and I come and hit the elevator button to take my two stories down to the bottom. We're on three here, we're going down to one. So I hit the button for one, the door closes, and then the lift drops what must be a foot, two foot, stops; drops another foot, two foot, and then nothing happens. I hit the door open button, and the door doesn't open.
And I'm quite clearly stuck in a lift. "Ah, I'm stuck in a lift." So, first thing I do is get my phone out. It's completely dead. So I turned to...every elevator has that mysterious phone. So I think, "There's got to be something in here." And sure enough, under here, there's a telephone. And I'm expecting, you know, bat phones to go off in some place. I'm expecting people to start roping in through, you know: "Oh my God! There's someone stuck in the lift! Let's, let's get him out!" And so I pick this phone up, and on the other end of the line there's just this, "Hello?" Like, "Yes, what can I do for you?" Which is fair enough. I've, I've just called them. And she says, "Great. We'll send someone around tomorrow afternoon." And I say, "I don't think you're entirely understanding the situation. I'm stuck in the lift now."
CHRIS (Otis Elevator Company): Otis service, Chris speaking. How can I help you?
NARRATOR: Instead of speaking to someone in his building, Rob Tinworth was speaking to an operator at a remote call center, like this one.
FEMALE OPERATOR 1 (Otis Elevator Company): And it won't come down? It's stuck on what level? Do you know?
NARRATOR: Otis pioneered this service. And here, in central Connecticut, Otis operators answer between 5, - and 6,000 daily service calls about the elevators they maintain in North America.
MANON COLLINS (Otis Elevator Company): Personally, on a daily basis, I average about 100 to 150 calls. We cover all of the United States and Canada, including Guam, Saipan and Bermuda, and nine different time zones, as you can see behind me on all the different clocks.
FEMALE OPERATOR 2 (Otis Elevator Company): I have a trapped passenger there, in the elevator. She's not sure what floor she's on.
NARRATOR: Otis won't say how many daily calls involve trapped passengers, but claim they can dispatch local mechanics within 15 minutes.
RAYMOND ESTEVES (Otis Elevator Company): The most stressful calls is when you have people stuck in elevators, obviously. This should be a fairly basic call.
NARRATOR: This call, like many, involves a stuck elevator, but no one's trapped inside. Elevators have moving parts that get heavy use. A shutdown could be triggered by a number of things: a power failure, a loose chain, a worn switch, even a small object, like a dime, that gets wedged in the door.
JOHN MENVILLE: The most common problem is that the doors don't close. The doors don't close, the elevator won't move. There are parts that have wear and tear, that break. It's a machine. You can't ever forget it's a machine.
You don't get too mad if you car doesn't start; you get somebody to come fix it.
NARRATOR: Fair enough, but when your car won't start, you're not locked inside. Which brings us back to Rob Tinworth, who's been on the phone with a small independent service company. He's been told help will arrive in two hours. But after waiting 15 minutes, rescue comes in the form of a friend.
ROB TINWORTH: I hear voices from outside, and one of my colleagues. I can recognize their voice. So I shout out. I say, "Tristan, I'm stuck in a lift! I'm stuck in a lift!" He says, "What?" So I say, "I'm stuck in a lift!" And he starts to open the door from his side, and I can see a crack of light. It turns out I haven't dropped 10 feet. I've probably dropped about six inches. So I just step out of the elevator, onto safe, steady, happy land.
NARRATOR: There are no available statistics on stuck elevators, but odds are good you'll never get trapped. But for some, the dice, it seems, are loaded the wrong way.
SHERRY DAVIS (Financial Advisor): My name is Sherry Davis, and I have been in, stuck in elevators three separate times. I just think that the forces of nature wait for me to get in an elevator by myself, and something bizarre happens.
Ohhh, scary.
I have not, since that third time, been in an elevator by myself. And that has been over 10 years.
INTERVIEWER: Could there be a cure to make you feel good about them again?
SHERRY DAVIS: Well, a friend of mine said that I should try going into an elevator with someone I was close with and have sex with them. And that would wipe out all the bad memories.
INTERVIEWER: Did you try that?
SHERRY DAVIS: I haven't found somebody I want to do that with, but I am looking.
NARRATOR: There are other, more conventional remedies for curing elevator fears.
At the Anxiety and Stress Disorder Institute of Maryland, Sally Winston and her colleagues try to help people who are truly terrified of elevators, even if they've never been stuck.
SALLY WINSTON: A fear of elevators is actually quite common. It comes to our attention when it interferes with somebody's life.
COLLEEN KISTNER (Anxiety and Stress Disorder Institute of Maryland Client): There were years that I couldn't even get on elevators. It had nothing to do with thinking I was going to, you know, go up to the 10th floor and plummet to the bottom. It was more about the doors closing and never opening again.
NARRATOR: After taking the stairs for many years, Colleen Kistner decided to face her fear, a form of claustrophobia.
CARL ROBBINS: So where are you on a scale of one to 10, where one is completely relaxed and 10 is the worst panic you ever had?
COLLEEN KISTNER: I'd say I'm at an eight.
CARL ROBBINS: You're at an eight right now? Okay, alright. Well, why don't we...
NARRATOR: Carl Robbins has been treating Colleen by using elevators to induce her fear in a controlled way.
CARL ROBBINS: Okay, now this is a little different. Let yourself feel the peak. Ride the wave of anxiety. You're doing great.
COLLEEN KISTNER: The door's not opening. I didn't like that.
SALLY WINSTON: In the treatment, you deliberately go and you induce the anxiety, and then you learn to relate to the anxiety in a different way.
CARL ROBBINS: What are you feeling now?
COLLEEN KISTNER: It's scares me.
CARL ROBBINS: It's really scary?
CARL ROBBINS: There's anxiety, and then there's the fear of the anxiety, which amplifies it, which makes one more afraid of it. And so it's this self-perpetuating, self-amplifying loop, until it escalates into this sort of all-hell-break-loose experience.
COLLEEN KISTNER: It's that...see, the door's not opening. Ugh.
I'm afraid I'm going to faint. I'm afraid I'm going to vomit, I'm going to have to change my underwear. I'm afraid I'm going to start screaming. And ultimately, depending on my stress level, there is a fear of death.
CARL ROBBINS: Did you die, go crazy or lose control?
COLLEEN KISTNER: No, but I came close.
CARL ROBBINS: You came close to what?
CARL ROBBINS: Oh, you came close in your mind?
CARL ROBBINS: The goal of treatment is not getting rid of symptoms, but it's getting to the point where the symptoms are okay.
NARRATOR: To look down on the world, Colleen must accept the fact that, for a few brief moments in her day, her life will be controlled by a machine.
SALLY WINSTON: The elevator triggers the fears, because, for the time that you're in it, you're stuck in it. You really can't climb out. And if something happens, even though that's a very unlikely event, you could be trapped for a while, at the mercy of something or someone else.
NARRATOR: Nowhere could this have been more true than in the Twin Towers, New York's tallest buildings until that terrible day in 2001.
JOHN MENVILLE: If you looked across the street, here, to the east, this whole skyline was filled with the two enormous towers. They're, you know, a hundred and ten stories high. They covered the entire skyline. It was really impressive, and we really miss it.
NARRATOR: In the late '60s, when construction began on the towers, John Menville helped install the elevators and would spend 30 years maintaining them. These would be the tallest buildings in the world, but, elevators, it seemed, had reached a limit.
JOHN MENVILLE: In order to get people up to the top, you need a significant amount of elevators. That creates a problem. When these elevators now all have to come to the lobby, you've used about 90 percent of your space in elevators, okay? So the first portion of this building is basically useless, which means nobody's going to build it.
NARRATOR: But build they did. The architect believed elevators could be used in a completely new way.
JOHN MENVILLE: His idea was to start out by building a 44-story building, which only uses 30 to 40 percent in elevator space. We added on another 44-story building on top of it. And then add another building, on top again, which used the same elevator space, again, as the two below it.
So now, when you wanted to go to someplace from 44 to 74, you took the express elevator—this blue one. They went from the lobby to 44, the first sky lobby. Then you had to change, and you took one of these other elevators, again, to get to your floor.
And if you worked above 78, you took another express elevator to the 78th floor, which was the second sky lobby. Take you less than a minute, about 50 seconds, and then you would cross over and you would travel on these orange elevators to your floor.
If the building wasn't built with the sky lobby concept, it wouldn't've been done at all.
NARRATOR: Using sky lobbies, the designers cut the number of elevator shafts in half. There were 99 elevators in each tower, moving up to 100,000 passengers every day.
JOHN MENVILLE: Very rarely did you ever wait for an elevator, but there was a constant movement of people. I mean it was just like a factory, spitting out people or sucking them in.
CHRISTOPHER YOUNG: It was a beautiful day. And it was really pretty views from up there on the 99th floor. I was leaving the tower. I switched over down at the 78th floor, which was like the sky lobby, into one of the large elevators. I was all alone when I got onto the elevator. I was taking it down, and right as I was getting down to the lobby floor, and starting to slow down...but then there was a huge jerking of the elevator, and it was followed by a big gust of wind and a boom.
...really didn't know what was going on, so I hit the emergency button. Someone eventually responded to it and told me just to stay in there.
I would occasionally hear some sirens or something. But I never really knew what was going on outside the elevator.
The next real big event was when there was just a huge shaking of the elevator. I was pretty scared at that point. I was trying the doors, couldn't get the doors to open. And finally, when the power went out, apparently that released the locks. I could open the doors myself.
I was literally about a foot off the lobby floor at that point. Everything was covered in a huge amount of this sort of grayish pinkish dust.
I just started walking out the huge blown-out windows of the building...saw a couple firefighters. They were leading me away...rumble...someone says, "Run." And I did. I ran.
NARRATOR: One minute after Chris Young steps out of the elevator, the building starts to collapse, and he runs for his life.
CHRISTOPHER YOUNG: And the dust cloud came over me, and I balled up on the ground until it passed and really dissipated.
NARRATOR: Among the thousands lost on 9/11, an estimated 200 died in the elevators. But Chris Young's elevator carried him to safety, leaving him to wonder what it means to be among the lucky ones who survived.
CHRISTOPHER YOUNG: That's been very sobering, trying to figure out what that means in your life, because it's almost overwhelming how profoundly the world changed in the time that I was in that elevator.
NARRATOR: Compared to the epic tragedy of 9/11, Nick White's nightmare may seem trivial. But after 14 hours in an elevator, his situation has actually become quite serious.
White is stuck in a six-foot-square box, with no food, no water, no bathroom. Security cameras show workers maintaining elevators nearby, but, amazingly, no one hears his shouts or sees him on the monitor or answers the phone at the security desk in the lobby. He fears he'll dehydrate before he can be rescued.
NICK WHITE: So thoughts started coming to my mind, after all the yelling and after all the signaling, how severe could this be? It occurred to me that I was going to die in there. And what a way to go. They'd say like: "What happened to Nick?" "Well, he got in an elevator and never got out."
NARRATOR: With thoughts of death his only company, White is scared and alone, but thankful his elevator was not full of people when it got stuck.
Studies show people are comfortable surrounded by a minimum of three square feet of empty space. On crowded elevators we have only two square feet, if that, which may explain a few things.
PAUL GOLDBERGER: A bunch of strangers are all pushed together, like sardines, in this little tiny space. If they're not already talking, and they don't know each other, they just kind of stand next to each other and kind of wait it out.
NICK PAUMGARTEN: Your mind kind of goes blank. You just stare into the middle distance. It's like sleeping.
PAUL GOLDBERGER: In other words, you're just sort of putting everything on hold, and then you get out.
NARRATOR: Otis Elevator Company estimates that up to 85 percent of all high rise buildings have no 13th floor. Superstitious people feel safer without it, or maybe there's a secret floor the government doesn't want us to know about. And speaking of buttons...
JOHN MENVILLE: As you'll notice, there are a lot of buttons in the elevator. However, there's one button that doesn't work. The "Door Close" button will not close the doors no matter how many times you push it. Actually the "Door Close" button does serve a function: it lets people think that they have some control over the elevator, although that's not the case.
NARRATOR: Waiting for an elevator may sometimes seem like an eternity, especially if it makes you anxious, but the average wait time for an office elevator is about 20 seconds. So here's a question: when you push that button, what happens while you stand and wait?
JOHN MENVILLE: This is the elevator controller. It's the brains of the operation. It knows where the elevator is, where the elevator was, and where it wants to go. If you get into an elevator and push a button, you'll activate a relay that'll tell the elevator where you want to go, and it will take you there.
NARRATOR: Relays are electromechanical switches grouped together to perform like a simple computer. For over a century they've been used to decide which car to send when you press the button.
BRUCE POWELL: The logical answer is to send a car that's closest. But what if that car has 10 people on it? Would you want to get on that car?
NARRATOR: The car that could get there first always answered the call. This formula made wait times short, but could lengthen travel time if the car had to make a lot of stops. But elevators have become a lot smarter with the advent of modern computers.
In Times Square, a revolutionary new control system was adopted at the Marriott Marquis, one of the busiest hotels in New York. Tourists and conventioneers ride to the lobby on the eighth floor. Here, the 45-story atrium is a surreal contrast to the busy street below, and elevators are the main attraction.
MICHAEL STENGEL (Marketing Vice President, New York City Marriott Hotels): On average, over the last 10 years we've run more than 90 percent occupancy. Any given day, we have probably between 4,000 and 8,000 people in the building. It's quite a busy place.
NARRATOR: The hotel has been a cash cow for Marriott since the day it opened, but the architects hadn't planned on all the elevator traffic, and guests had to wait forever.
CHRISTOPHER RAWSON (Theater Critic): I just want be able to get out of my room and go down to the show, and so I'm pushing the button. I can look out the window and there they are, all the Broadway theaters laid out below me, but the damn elevators don't come!
MICHAEL STENGEL: We had nothing but complaints of people waiting for elevators. We had to find something different.
NARRATOR: You can't add elevators to existing buildings without tearing them apart. So instead of adding muscle, Marriot added more brains by adopting a new control system called "destination dispatch."
MICHAEL LANDIS (Schindler Elevator Corporation): Instead of just an up or down button, you have a keypad, and the keypad wants to know what floor you want to go to. It's as simple as pushing your destination, in this case, 33. It's telling us to go to our left to elevator B. The elevator is identified by the insignia over the top. Also, as you step into the elevator, you'll notice that there is a destination indicator, so you confirm where you're going. And now you step in and simply enjoy the ride.
NARRATOR: For passengers, it's simple enough, but the change is profound. Before destination dispatch, control systems never knew where people were going until after they boarded the car and hit the button.
MICHAEL LANDIS: The main thrust, there, was to get the elevator to the demand as quickly as possible...really wasn't looking to the second part, which was, "How do you get you to your destination?"
NARRATOR: When passengers enter their floor on the keypad before they board, the system uses totally different formulas, or algorithms, to decide which car should answer the call.
BRUCE POWELL: The control system takes the information from each of the waiting passengers, and tries to put people with...who are going to common destinations on the same car. So that will minimize the number of stops.
NARRATOR: The number of stops was cut in half, making travel times shorter, and boosting the capacity of the whole system by a whopping 30 percent.
MICHAEL STENGEL: The customers are tremendously happy, especially customers who stayed here for the first 15 years or 16 years the building was open. They feel like they've come to a new hotel.
NARRATOR: Destination dispatch is here to stay. But for some, it's a problem, because there aren't any buttons to press in the car.
NICK PAUMGARTEN: I guess this is the new-fangled elevator. There are no buttons. You push the buttons in the lobby and it takes you someplace. Supposed to be cutting edge...makes me uncomfortable. I'm used to pressing the button and having the illusion of control over the elevator.
NARRATOR: Putting your fate in the hands of an elevator can make even seasoned veterans feel helpless and trapped. For Nick White, that helpless feeling intensifies, and there's no end in sight.
White has been trapped for 24 hours and fears that no one is downstairs to monitor this enormous building. He's running out of ideas and opens the doors to urinate down the shaft, hoping that if there is someone in the lobby, they will somehow notice he's trapped.
NICK WHITE: So little by little, my, my options were running out, and it all became a mental battle. I did drift off into kind of a half-state of consciousness, if you call it sleep.
Then I would actually be waking up, and the cliche of waking up into your own night-, nightmare? This was it. This was, you know, there's just, like, no other way to describe it. It was like: Boom. I'm still here? Boom, I'm still here? And the bells going off. Boom, I'm still here?
NARRATOR: White hopes he'll be rescued on Monday morning. But without a watch, he doesn't know that Monday morning is still 34 hours away.
Elevators can give us nightmares, but they can also make dreams come true. On the Persian Gulf, in Dubai, sprouting high rises are transforming marsh and desert into a kind of Vegas on steroids. Here, one quarter of the world's construction cranes are being harnessed to put this city on the global map.
All modern cities have an iconic centerpiece, and Khalifa Tower, Burj Khalifa, is the tallest building on the planet, a half-mile high. It's a vertical city filled with apartments, stores, offices, and a fancy hotel.
The Burj Khalifa has more floors than any other building.
And it's got the highest rising elevator in the world.
RICK PULLING: When you see it just standing there, it's really tough to tell that it's over 800 meters tall, twice the height of the old World Trade Center.
NARRATOR: It will take more than five years of construction before Burj Khalifa can open for business. Rick Pulling, from Otis, oversees the finishing touches on the elevators, which enable the world's tallest building to actually function.
RICK PULLING: As buildings reach these supertall heights, we run into the mechanical limitations of elevator technology.
We're on the 141st floor entering the B.S. machine room, where we have our 100-ton machine. It's the largest machine made by Otis. And when we say 100-ton machine, that's not the weight of the machine, that's the amount of mass that it can support.
NARRATOR: As elevators rise higher, cables get longer, and therefore heavier. In the world's highest rising elevator there are six and a half miles of cables, weighing almost 30 tons. Because of this weight, this elevator is approaching the practical limit of how far elevators can go.
If elevators continued to rise, their cables would get so heavy they'd eventually snap under their own weight. And in tall buildings long cables have other limitations.
Skyscrapers sway in heavy winds, making elevator cables vibrate like giant guitar strings, which may cause snags and damage to the walls of the shaft. Motion sensors are installed at the top of the tower to detect sway and slow down the elevator to avoid problems.
But slowing elevators creates its own problem, because speed is crucial to high-rise living.
RICK PULLING: The higher you go, the faster you need to go. No one would want to spend five and six and seven minutes in an elevator. We can turn the machine as fast as we can supply power. We could be 15 meters a second, 20 meters a second, 30.
NARRATOR: But speed must be limited to eight meters a second in the down direction, so the middle ear has time to adjust to the changing altitude, just the way it does on airplanes.
RICK PULLING: So while, technically, we can go very, very fast, human factors—ear pressure—say, "No, we can't accommodate that. We don't feel comfortable. My ears feel a little bit clogged as a result of this ride.
NARRATOR: So elevators can only go so far and so fast. As Burj Khalifa reaches completion, Otis engineers spend their days adjusting the elevators to optimize the limits of the technology.
RICK PULLING: These are really the magicians. They set doors, leveling, acceleration. Ultimately, the goal is to not know you're moving, and yet actually be moving at eight meters a second through this building.
NARRATOR: For tenants paying thousands of dollars per square foot, the ride must be smooth and quick.
Inside this narrow spire, 57 elevators are linked with several sky lobbies to carry an estimated 3,500 occupants to and from their floors. Two elevators are "double deckers" which take passengers to two floors at once, effectively doubling their capacity. But even with all the clever engineering, elevators and tall buildings may be reaching another limit.
PAUL GOLDBERGER: Most of the super supertall buildings today are usually built for vanity reasons, not for real economic reasons. They're so expensive to build, and there's so much wasted space with all those elevators. So it's strange that the elevator, which is the necessary thing to make skyscrapers possible, also kind of gets in the way when you get really, really, really tall.
NARRATOR: But wherever size matters, the urge to go tall will no doubt persist. As skyscrapers grow higher, people must discover new ways to get to the top in a quest for the elevator of tomorrow.
The elevator of tomorrow may be installed, not in a skyscraper, but on a ship. In the not too distant future, the "advanced weapons elevator" will be lifting bombs to the flight deck of a new aircraft carrier. It's the first and only elevator in the world held up by magnets, and it doesn't have any cables at all.
INTERVIEWER: What's, what's holding this thing up? You're just telling me there are no cables?
DOUG RIDENOUR (Federal Equipment Company): There's no cables whatsoever.
INTERVIEWER: It sounds sort of sketchy to me. How can this possibly work?
DOUG RIDENOUR: Well, it's, it's not black magic—there is a lot of science that goes behind that—but the size and weight of this elevator is by far one of the largest. We raise and lower about 36,000 pounds on this elevator platform.
NARRATOR: It all sounds a bit farfetched, but think of it this way. Conventional elevators are lifted on cables, by spinning motors. This elevator is also lifted by motors, but they don't spin. They're linear motors, and instead of using cables, they're attached directly to each corner of the elevator.
DOUG RIDENOUR: This is the motor that we see right here, this and one, two, and, over in this corner, three and four. That's in four corners of the elevator.
NARRATOR: Inside each motor are magnets that interact with electric coils lining the shaft. As current pulses through the coils, the magnets and the platform are lifted.
DOUG RIDENOUR: These magnets have an attractive force of about 50,000 pounds. They are permanent magnets, just like you would have on your refrigerator, but if you had it stuck to your refrigerator, you'd never get it off.
NARRATOR: Linear motors now provide power to high-speed Maglev trains. They're the hidden force behind high-tech roller coasters. But they've never been used to propel elevators, not to mention an elevator on a rolling ship loaded with tons of bombs.
If it survives the rigors of Navy life, someday we might all be passengers on elevators powered like this one. But someone has to be the first to ride it, and Doug has drawn the short straw.
DOUG RIDENOUR: I think we've cycled this thing probably up and down 4,- or 5,000 times so I feel a little bit confident that Charlie will get me back down.
INTERVIEWER: Charlie, it's in your hands. What do you think?
CHARLIE: I wish him luck!
NARRATOR: Although the Advanced Weapons Elevator doesn't go all that far right now, without cables, there's no practical limit to how far it could go in the future.
DOUG RIDENOUR: There's no limitations on the overall height. We could make this, you know, in a 2,000-foot building, if we wanted to. It's not a problem.
The elevator industry's been basically the same for the last hundred years. I see, in the next, you know, 10 to 20 years, with the increase of much taller buildings out there, this is the way you're going to need to go.
NARRATOR: It's Sunday, 4 p.m., and Nick White has now been trapped for 41 hours. He's exhausted and scared to death, when the voice on the intercom pulls him out of his delirium.
NICK WHITE: I heard a voice, saying, "Is there anyone in there?" And it was sort of a bemused voice, and I said yes. And they-the person, said to me, "What are you doing in there?" And I said, "I, you know, I work here. I was going, I was going to my job." And I said, "What time is it?" And he said, "It's 4 p.m." And I said, "What day is it?" And he said, "It's Sunday."
NARRATOR: A mechanic gets the elevator working, and soon White puts his ear to the door and hears Car 30 moving toward the lobby.
NICK WHITE: And I was like, "Yes, yes!" I saw that I was at the lobby level. The light hit my face, and I sprung out of the elevator. And a security guard came up to me, and I said, "Someone could have died in there." And he said, "I know."
NARRATOR: After 41 hour trapped in an elevator, Nicholas White's ordeal is finally over. White filed suit against Rockefeller Center Management, which maintains the building, and the New York Elevator Company, which serviced the elevators. Both companies admitted negligence. White settled for $200,000 dollars.
Rockefeller Center Management said the elevator shutdown was most likely caused by a voltage dip in the power grid that occurred at 11:21, Friday night. But the question that they've never answered is why no one came to White's rescue.
NICK WHITE: I never found out what exactly happened with anybody. I know what didn't happen. They didn't see someone on a security monitor for 41 hours. It's common sense. That's why the monitors are on the desk. I have no clue what the heck they could have been doing.
NARRATOR: The lengthy ordeal of Nicholas White was the result of human error in not detecting the problem for so long. Elevators are machines that sometimes fail, but this unusual case may be a sign that they have, in a sense, become a victim of their own success. We trust them to always do what we want, because they do...most of the time anyway.
Broadcast Credits
Trapped in an Elevator
Narrated by
John Lithgow
Produced by
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Janet Driscoll Smith
Written and Directed by
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Edited by
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Mark Knobil
Andreas Bjørck
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Elevator Models
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Online Editor
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Audio Mix
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Location Support - Dubai
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Elevator Consultants
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Archival Material
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Special Thanks
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
Alexander Hotel
Anne Werth
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Dina Zavdi
Emaar Properties PJSC
Jim Bos
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Coordinating Producer
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A NOVA Production by New Wrinkle, Inc. for WGBH Boston
© 2010 WGBH Educational Foundation
All Rights Reserved
Image credit: (elevator) © WGBH Educational Foundation
Manon Collins
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Full program available for streaming through
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I have one of two that Remington first made in M-24 and was wondering if anyone else has a rifle in that cal? The cost of ammo is incredibly high and thought maybe (Timntn) or someone is reloading them. Looking for info.
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Origin-destination survey for commuters to UNITEN
DSpace/Manakin Repository
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dc.contributor.author Yew Onn, Lem
dc.date.accessioned 2009-03-20T09:42:23Z
dc.date.available 2009-03-20T09:42:23Z
dc.date.issued 2003
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/436
dc.description.abstract The Origin-Destination (O-D) survey is important in describing transportation in a study area. This survey has information on the travel and transportation made between zones of a study area. Properly designed, this study will identify the passenger movements where and when trips begin and end, the socioeconomic characteristic of the trip market, the purpose of travel, the mode of travel and the land use type at the beginning and end of the trip. This cross section is taken to be representative of the average travel demand on the system at the time the survey is performed. en
dc.language.iso en en
dc.publisher UNITEN en
dc.subject Origin and destination traffic surveys--Malaysia en
dc.subject Transportation--Malaysia en
dc.subject Universiti Tenaga Nasional en
dc.title Origin-destination survey for commuters to UNITEN en
dc.type Thesis en
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bio website init.se
location Stockholm, Sweden
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Email address: [email protected]
answered When distributing a CRL over HTTP, what is the optimal refresh time? What logic affects this decision?
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6 out of 7 rated this helpful - Rate this topic
Introduction to the Active Directory Schema
In Active Directory the schema contains definitions for the universe of objects that can be stored in the directory, and it enforces the rules that govern both the structure and the content of the directory. The schema consists of a set of classes, attributes, and syntaxes that represent an instance of one or more classes in the schema. A class is a category of objects that share a set of common characteristics. It is a formal description of a discrete, identifiable type of object that can be stored in the directory. Each object in the directory is an instance of one or more classes in the schema. An attribute describes the characteristics of some aspect of an object. Attributes define the types of information that an object can hold. For each class, the schema specifies the mandatory attributes and optional attributes that constitute the set of shared characteristics of the class. The values assigned to attributes define specific characteristics. A syntax is the data type of a particular attribute. Syntaxes determine what data type an attribute can have. Active Directory uses a set of standard syntaxes. The predefined syntaxes do not actually appear in the directory, and you cannot add new syntaxes. An everyday example of an object is a vehicle, which can belong to the class of trucks, the class of motorcycles, or the class of cars, and so forth. A car can be described by its make, model, and color. These are some of the attributes of the car. In the example of the car, the possible values for the color of the car might be red, blue, or gray. The syntax for color might be the nomenclature (such as 2B1R2Y) that denotes specific combinations of primary colors that comprise what one sees as the colors of automotive paints.
The schema specifies the relationships between classes of objects. Each object stored in the directory is an instance of one or more classes in the schema. User , Computer , and printQueue are examples of classes in Active Directory. For example, if the schema contains a class called User , the user accounts, Sue and Mary, are two objects in the directory that are instances of the class User . The object Mary might contain an optional attribute defined for this class called phoneNumber . This attribute for the object Mary of the class User might have the value 555-0100.
For example, the attribute phoneNumber can be defined to take values of the syntax String(numeric), which means that the value can contain only the digits 0 through 9.
The base schema that ships in Microsoft Windows 2000 contains all of the class and attribute definitions that are used by Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 components.
The schema itself is represented in Active Directory by a set of objects known as "schema objects." For each class in the schema, there is a schema object that defines the class. This object is called a classSchema object. For each attribute in the schema, there is also a schema object that defines the attribute. This object is called an attributeSchema object. Therefore, every class is actually an instance of the classSchema class, and every attribute is an instance of the attributeSchema class. Storing the schema in the directory has many advantages. One example is that when user applications locate the schema in the directory, they can read the schema to discover what types of objects and properties are available.
Administrators and applications can extend the schema by adding new attributes and classes or by modifying existing ones. Schema definitions are required by applications that need to create or modify objects in Active Directory. Applications that are "directory-enabled" are programmed to recognize the attributes and syntaxes that are required to interact with the directory.
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How to reply like the A.I.; "Sherry." "I know, ok? Relax." "Sherry!" "I KNOW!"?
burnoutguy314Posted 11/28/2012 9:14:10 AM
In single player mode if you spam the partner call button while waiting at a door, your character can call out to your partner. If you spam it however, your partner replies in agitated tones, with replies like "I know! Relax!", "I heard you the first time!".
Only the A.I. in single player seems to reply like this, as I have tried to replicate the same situation in a co-op game-- my human partner spams while they wait at a door, I hold B and tap up on the directional pad each call out my partner makes, but my character always says "ok!" and never the hilarious animosity the A.I. gives.
Has anyone ever triggered the agitated responses, or is it something only the A.I. can do?
Lucca2Posted 11/28/2012 9:33:08 AM
Jake's "Stop being needy!" or 'You mental?! i die of laugher when he says those
if you want play resident evil 6 with me, drop a line
tevin1569Posted 11/28/2012 12:26:28 PM
When your partner does it, just keep holding circle and pressing no or yes.. Because after a while their voices will sound annoyed. I pretty sure.
Hayato182006Posted 11/29/2012 12:41:46 AM
Only the A.I. can reply in such a manner, sadly.
PSN: Hayato182004 | MHTri Name: H Man | ID: PEECKX | Hunter Rank: 51+ US Server
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I need help (and you'll probably flame me)
(318 Posts)
MrsMorton Tue 20-Nov-12 13:13:02
I met DH when he was married and I was the OW, I'm not going to talk about my guilt etc but believe me it is ever present.
We have been together (not in an affair) for seven years and married for three. He has older children from his previous marriage, the youngest is 18 and I'm 31.
He absolutely does not trust me, last night a friend called me and DH sulked all night and is still sulking. Another friend who's DH has just DIED, texted me at midnight and I got a hard time for that as well.
Will he ever trust me? Is it my fault for being the OW? Is it because he knows how easy it was for us to get together? It's such a depressing way to live. I don't even contemplate doing things like going for works Xmas do because I know that even asking him if I can go will make him accuse me of something and I will get loads of texts asking me where I am and what I'm doing.
The only thing I've ever done to make him think this is I had emails on my account which were rude/flirty from before we met, I had forgotten about them & he logged on and found them.
Wishing you the strength you need MrsM
waltermittymistletoe Thu 29-Nov-12 17:04:15
Well done for contacting counsellors. It will be really good for you.
There's no big rush on the solicitor either so you do it in your own time!
I think it's so sad that you feel that way about your own home. And it's things like that that make me sure leaving is the right thing for you!
Just hold on to the thought that life will be so much better when you're free of this stuff. smile
MrsMorton Thu 29-Nov-12 15:40:38
Not yet. Work has been bonkers but I have emailed some counsellors so looking forward to checking my emails when I'm back in the office.
Need to stay strong and remember the bad times as well. If I said to him about FB he would probably say "well have an account then" but like you said that's not the point. He doesn't get it.
I actually got the slow train home yesterday because I didn't really want to go home.
waltermittymistletoe Thu 29-Nov-12 15:18:42
(I don't really want one in any case)
But that's beside the point, isn't it?!
I'm glad you've strenghtened your resolve because it's all too easy for them to suck you back in with a little kindness. They pull you donw that much that scraps of decency make you think it's not so bad.
He can probably sense you pulling away and that's why he's doing it.
Honestly, he's an utter bastard and even utter bastards can be nice some of the time.
Have you spoken to a solicitor? You're doing really well.
MrsMorton Thu 29-Nov-12 12:54:55
I'm not certain he would be reasonable about this. I have a plan that I think would suit us both from a practical perspective.
I had to re-read this thread today to strengthen my resolve because he's being nice and it reminds me of some really good times we had.
Then I remember him storming off when we were on holiday in Mexico because I had men as friends on Facebook. Obviously I don't have a Facebook account now, (I don't really want one in any case).
Read more now. God he sounds vile! You did his ex a service...
Of course you don't deserve it FFS!
I think you need to have a good long chat with him and tell him that you can't live like this. I am sure that there are insecurities on both sides due to the way the relationship started but they need to be addressed properly by both of you.
oohlaalaa Thu 29-Nov-12 11:22:52
On paper it makes sense for him to move out, but is he a reasonable man?
Do you think you could move out, and serve him with legal papers for the property to be sold?
Selling the property would be a clean break.
Charbon Tue 27-Nov-12 23:44:29
I'd second the advice about going to a solicitor. Can you get a recommendation through work and try to see someone during work time or during a lunch break?
I honestly think that talking to someone who is paid to advise you about your legal rights will strengthen your resolve. You've got more than enough grounds for unreasonable behaviour. If he won't leave and you decide to, AFAIK you can get a legal charge put on the house to protect it as an asset of the marriage, but a lawyer would advise more.
Inertia Tue 27-Nov-12 21:35:48
If you're not worried about being in immediate danger of physical violence, your best bet would be to see a solicitor before agreeing to anything. Your husband has been messing with your head for so long that you have no confidence in your own judgement on home/ relationship matters. Do you have a trusted friend or relative that could come along to solicitors meetings and take notes for you?
I certainly wouldn't go down the road of defaulting on the mortgage, because that's certainly something that could come back and bite you.
Do you really want to stay in the house? Or will it just turn into something else which allows him control over you after you've split? Being financially independent is an advantage that many women in your position don't have , so don't waste the opportunities that this provides you with.
I'm glad you've made the decision to protect your wellbeing. Yes, you were both wrong to have the affair and break up the family- but that mistake doesn't have to become a lifelong cascade of guilt and suffering emotional abuse; you're making great strides with ending the mistake.
MrsMorton Tue 27-Nov-12 21:31:40
Betty, I know deep down that's what I need to do. Thank you. It's still not easy though, I know that's what will happen though.
Bettyintheburbs Tue 27-Nov-12 20:53:12
Just go. Houses aren't homes if we're not happy in them. Lawyers can sort it all out without you continuing to live there. Your happiness matters more than anything, so get packing.
waltermittymistletoe Tue 27-Nov-12 15:50:24
*well if he won't leave
Cannot type today!
waltermittymistletoe Tue 27-Nov-12 15:49:02
Well if we won't leaven (and I don't think he will) you stop paying the mortgage if that's what it takes to get free and safe.
A couple of months non-payment won't cause a huge amount of damage in the long run. It will give you time and money for a deposit on somewhere and to see a solicitor so you can get the ball rolling to sell the property.
Your priority must be to get away from this man. First and foremost.
I genuinely wish you the very best of luck with this. You need to see a solicitor. Tomorrow if possible.
InNeedOfBrandy Tue 27-Nov-12 14:44:55
MrsM I know your going to lose your home that you love ect and I know it's going to be hard. I know I'm not just saying it I know.
I really don't think he will leave, you could try it but I think the nastiness and control will be stepped up and you'l never break free. Or it will end in you calling the police and him stalking you and a never ending cycle of abuse/him moving in 3 doors down/letters/threats/emotional blackmail/real blackmail/threatening not to maintain financial resp to your parents/threatening to tell work/
I really hope he hasn't got any inappropriate photos of you.
I really think the best thing to do is pack your shit and get out of there. Imagine how it will be to have your own house, decorated how you want, no ghosts from the past and no way of him just turning up on the door step.
MrsMorton Tue 27-Nov-12 14:43:58
I know, that's the problem. Although we own it jointly, I pay the mortgage and he wouldn't be able to afford it on his own. If he stayed then I don't know whether I would be able to pay the mortgage and rent somewhere for myself whereas if I stayed, I would happily help him with rent/deposit somewhere else. I could afford to buy him out of the house I think in the longer term.
I don't think he would agree to moving out, I was just wondering if there was anyone with any experience of how to go about this.
He pays the electricity, council tax, gas and water and I pay the mortgage and buy groceries and pay into savings. That's how we split things.
waltermittymistletoe Tue 27-Nov-12 14:39:49
Why do you want to stay in the house Mrs?
I think the decision to leave is absolutely the right one. But I'm not sure why he would agree to moving out since it will be you ending the relationship?
MrsMorton Tue 27-Nov-12 14:30:20
I have been thinking on this and I think I want him to leave and me to remain in the house. I think (hope?) he is rational enough to maintain our financial responsibilities to my parents, not least because he will benefit from them in the longer term. I don't know how to go about this though. Do I tell him I'm not happy and I want him to leave? Then he will expect to be able to work things out. FFS I can't even ask him what time he will be home from work without him saying "why do you want to know", if he's going out for a run he will question me if I ask him where he is going. It's driving me potty.
I stayed away with work last night and I'm just bracing myself for a hard time when he gets in.
oohlaalaa Mon 26-Nov-12 19:41:55
Personally, I would sort out as much as you can without telling him. Get the removal men in when he's at work, and not around to manipulate. I wouldn't pre warn him, but maybe that's just me. It saves the confrontation on moving out.
Get a lawyer
Get packing
Get the hell out
You are allowed to save yourself, you know
Best of luck
AnyFucker Mon 26-Nov-12 17:54:25
It's time for you to get professional legal advice
tadpoles Mon 26-Nov-12 16:47:15
I recognise very well all the signs of a controlling type of man who wants his partner to be miserable as my father was like that. He was particularly nasty to my mother while he was having one of his many affairs - it's projection of their own guilt onto the innocent party and also, by turning the innocent party into the baddie, it gives them them the illusion that, as the wife is so flawed, then it's ok to be screwing someone else.
Honestly, a normal man wouldn't still be banging on about how you got together in the first place.....that's just nuts. Are you sure it isn't HIM who is having an affair?!
tadpoles Mon 26-Nov-12 16:43:14
"My brother mentioned that a friend of his said I was fit and I knew IMMEDIATELY that the comment would cause friction and sure enough he sulked for two days before bringing it up with me. "
All in now clear - he realises that he is a difficult, controlling bugger and that he is lucky to have you at all. From the sounds of it you did his previous wife a huge favour by taking him off her hands. I would be very grateful if I were her.
He won't change. As you were quite young (and possibly inexperienced/naive) when you met him, you probably didn't spot the red flags. He is obviously a lot older than you and probably worked out that he would be able to seduce you and also ensure that you would carry more than your fair share of the burden of guilt. He probably wouldn't have been able to have any success with a more experienced woman or a woman whose radar was more closely honed. You were probably flattered because he was older and came on strong, and maybe also felt that, because he was already attached, he must REALLY like you in order to take that kind of risk.
I remember being in my early 20s and having a massive crush on a man who was married in his early thirites. I just couldn't understand why he didn't go for it as I simply had no concept of the reality of having a relationship with a married man and all the issues that go with it. That simply didn't enter my head. So what you did, from your perspective, was understandable. He, on the other hand, knew precisely what he was doing.
Like I say, he knows that he will find it difficult to attract another woman - especially a single one of childbearing age !!!!
Also, if you ever want children, you might just kick yourself that you wasted the best years on your life on someone who is a miserable git.
Just saying.
TeaMakesItToTheTop Mon 26-Nov-12 15:58:48
Get yourself to a solicitor to understand handing over the business and extracting yourself/your family.
Talk to your bank about protecting joint debts/cards.
And rightmove will give you ideas on cost and locations and what's available.
If needs be, you can stay in a travelodge until you've got somewhere.
You could do that in two or three days.
Your next choice is to either leave the house and don't tell him you've gone, or to tell him you're going and leave the house. Do you have your plan yet?
Is there anything else holding you back?
I hope this helps you get your head in the right place. My DS and I had nothing. Just deck chairs, pans and toys until my work colleagues heard about it and rustled up beds, a sofa, a telly and some boxes. I remember it as the calmest and most relaxing couple of months of my life because I was free of all crap.
MrsMorton Mon 26-Nov-12 14:46:20
Oohlah, thank you for that. It's not too far from my situation and whilst it's obviously shit, it helps that someone else has trod the ground before me.
Join the discussion
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Obama gives ground on taxes in latest offer, as Boehner's office calls it 'right direction'
Dec. 17, 2012: A man walks past the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington.Reuters
Both sides in the federal talks to avert a year-end fiscal crisis signaled late Monday that significant progress had been made, with sources saying President Obama had offered a higher threshold for tax rate increases and with House Speaker Boehner's office calling it "a step in the right direction."
The late-day developments followed a 45-minute meeting between Obama and Boehner at the White House, underscoring the seriousness of the talks as the deadline approaches for a deal to stop massive automatic spending cuts and tax hikes from kicking in at the start of the new year.
Obama's most recent offer included $1.2 trillion in increased revenue over 10 years, with tax rate hikes on individual income above $400,000, a source familiar with the negotiations told Fox News. That would be a sharp departure from the president's past stance against maintaining the existing low tax rates on any income above $200,000, or $250,000 for couples. The latest offer would cut the deficit an estimated $2.4 trillion over a decade.
The two sides are getting close, but significant issues remain, a Republican source told Fox Business. They are said to have agreed to at least $1 trillion in spending cuts and at least $1 trillion in new revenue through a mix of tax rate increases on top incomes and tax code reform, though the details have yet to be worked out.
"Any movement away from the unrealistic offers the president has made previously is a step in the right direction," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said, though he also criticized the specific mix of spending cuts and tax hikes Obama has proposed, saying it "cannot be considered balanced."
The speaker last week offered Obama a compromise by proposing a tax rate hike on those making over $1 million.
Raising the debt ceiling also is emerging a sticking point in negotiations, and indeed, a large part of the looming fiscal crisis stems from Congress' past failure to agree upon an adequate deficit-reduction plan, as mandated by the previous deal to raise the debt ceiling.
Boehner's office called the story "highly misleading."
Boehner and other Republicans have so far refused Obama's demand that he be given the authority to raise the debt ceiling whenever he wants. At issue, though, appears to be whether to include a one-time increase in the debt ceiling as part of this deal. While Boehner may be offering to include an increase that lasts a year, Obama's latest proposal called for a two-year extension.
If no deal is reached, the Bush-era tax rates will expire, resulting in a significant tax hike on nearly all Americans next year.
Both sides are caught between the demands of the other, and their own parties. Many congressional Democrats want to raise taxes on households making more than $250,000. Boehner's offer marks a much higher threshold than they prefer.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Barcelona Dominate Rayo Vallecano 0-5
Jasper Juinen
It didn't matter that Tito Vilanova's side has been lackluster on defense this season, or that most of their defensive starters are injured--with Messi and Cesc running the show, it's all offense in Barcelona.
This Barcelona side has learned their lesson. They lost the Liga last year in games like today's--when they had every excuse in the world to drop some points: FIFA virus, early-season exhaustion beginning to set in, and problems with performance away from Cataluña. You name it, they had it today. But this Barça would not let it slip. Not for a second. With Lionel Messi leading the way, and a reanimated Cesc conducting from midfield, Barcelona dominated Rayo Vallecano--a feisty side that's tough to soundly demolish--in Vallecas (a tough stadium for any side) 0-5 today, piling pressure onto Real Madrid.
They started off the game well enough, refusing to let Rayo touch the ball--as is their wont--and maneuvering themselves slyly up the field. Cesc, Messi, Villa, Xavi--they all showed up at different times. In the 20th minute, David Villa struck, opening the door for Barça to take control. But Rayo would resist until early in the second half, when Leo Messi silenced Vallecas minutes after the starting whistle.
After the 0-2, the game became much easier for the blaugrana: they had previously been dominating possession, but Rayo had done a good job of riding out the worst of it, constructing a strong defensive wall and waiting for their opportunity to tie the game. After the 0-2, Rayo began to sense that the game was really slipping away, and began to open up, allowing Cesc and company to start doing some real damage.
Barça, as we have come to know, are a team that lives and breathes space: when they have it, they do crazy things with it; when it's not there they get a little hamstrung. And today was no different: as soon as Rayo began to try to make their move out of a defensive posture, Barça found the seems. Finally, in the 78th minute, Xavi found a snaking diagonal ball to make it 0-3.
It was like turning on a faucet: suddenly all the goals came quickly. Two minutes later, it was Cesc celebrating next to the somber Rayo goal (Rayo coach Paco Jémez was ejected minutes earlier for arguing). Minutes later, Messi doubled his tally, and gave his side a manita, a five-goal win that has a particular significance in Spain because they decided to name it (think "hand"...five fingers).
Ultimately, Barça won a game that could have been tough in a flashy style that mainly manifested itself in the last ten minutes. Rayo seemed determined to make their lives a bit harder, and almost managed to complicate things. But, as has been the case this season, the Catalans had no problem in the end.
Which is just the way Tito and company want it--and is just what they forgot to do last year.
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This is where Nebraska is really lacking. Many states already consider this child abuse. The state will have to pay for the medical needs of this drug baby for years.
Not to mention, all the children sickened repeatedly by the exposure to second hand smoke. It costs medicad billions of dollars treating these children. There needs to be a law to protect our children from the number one cancer killer, cigarette smoke. Doctors need to speak out on this danger, as it truly is child abuse!!Just go to the Nebraska DHHS website for the stats.
And how about the mother in your county hitting a three year old with a hanger, resulting in a large bruise to the back? Child Abuse Hotline was called Monday and Hope they responded!!!!
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Afro Samurai
Afro Samurai Achievements
The Samurai Ghost5
Collect 5 mementos in "THE EMPTY SEVEN'S STORY".
1. Before heading down the lift that becomes available to use after killing all the android ninjas, the memento is in the back right corner, you should see it during the enemy encounter, but cant reach it untill the force field is droped, by killing all the enemies.
For 2-5, it will depend on which lever you pull first which will result in a stone coming out of the wall, allowing you to reach the area, there are three spots, I started with the left one, then did the middle, then the right one, so my info will come from doing it in this order.
2. (Left Wall Area) Before entering the Boss area, go to the right, and at the end of the walkway will be the memento.
3. (Middle Wall Area) On the ledge that has the Otsuru Bear, continue over the edge and drop down and the memento is right there on the ledge.
4. (Right Wall Area) The memento is located on the first ledge after jumping up the initial rock that comes out of the wall, once up on the first ledge head left to the furthest most ledge, and there will be the memento.
5. (Right Wall Area) When facing the Boss Chamber door head to the left and the memento is at the end of the path.
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Game Info
Namco Bandai
Namco Bandai
US January 27, 2009
Europe March 13, 2009
No videos available
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User Score is based on 614 user ratings.
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Scientific Method / Science & Exploration
Suspended animation becomes a reality?
An interesting experiement reported on this past week put mice into state of …
The study involved exposing mice to H2S in concentrations up to 80 ppm, and that the effect is in direct relationship to the concentration of the gas. The mice take fewer breaths, from 120 per minute to less than 10, their metabolic rate and movement slows dramatically, and their core body temperature decreases from around 38?C to near 15?C. In effect, the mice were operating at about 10% their normal rate. Better yet, after 6 hours of exposure the mice were normal once returned to normal air.
H2S can inhibit one of the enzymes in the electron transport chain, thereby stopping or slowing down cell respiration to a point of near stasis, it appears. The authors of the study can see practical applications for this:
"We think this could be of great benefit for many situations in medicine... ...It should work the same for us as it did in mice. We have the same basic chemistry."
I?m intrigued by the possibilities this offers. I think it may well be a while before we see it tested on humans, but should it work, perhaps Philip J. Fry?s journey to the future might not be so far fetched?
Antarctica glaciers melting
The British Antarctic Survey has recently completed an extensive study of the glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula, and the results are far from positive. Using aerial and satellite images dating from 1940 to 2001, researchers have shown that over the past 61 years, 87% of the 244 glaciers examined have retreated. This is an abrupt change in many that were previously advancing. The trend appears to be escalating, with current losses at about 50 meters each year. Some glaciers are retreating significantly faster, with the Widdowson glacier losing more than a kilometer each year.
The cause for this retreat, unprecedented in 2,000 years, is most likely due to the increase in temperatures in the area ? the Antarctic has warmed five times faster than anywhere else on the planet ? although rising sea temperatures cannot be ruled out. The real danger is that the retreat of these glaciers will fuel the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet, an event that would raise sea levels by seven meters.
In other climate change news this week, the US Government is employing an outspoken skeptic of climate change to fight in its corner against environmental groups in a court battle. Flying in the face of scientific consensus, experts in the field referred to David Legates? arguments as ?standard skeptic crap? that had been discredited. I expect the next move will be calling for Trofim Lysenko to testify in evolution cases. Happy Earth Day.
Genesis coasts the celestial currents
Space flight currently has some drawbacks. One of which is the high cost per pound and large amount of fuel needed to get anywhere in the vast emptiness that surrounds the charming little blue-green ball we like to call home. When designing trajectories for spacecraft, engineers have traditionally used a a simplified method of calculating the route, known as a two-body problem. Thus, for a trip to the moon, the first half of the route would be determined by the gravitational relationship between the Earth and the spacecraft, and the latter half by the relationship between the moon and the spacecraft. Taking into account both the Earth and the moon at the same time proved to be too difficult. The problem with a two-body solution is that it leads to inefficient trajectories that require a lot of fuel.
Now new work in the field has given scientists a better understanding of the gravitational relationships between bodies in the solar system, and what they dub the interplanetary superhighway, a network of tubes that cross the solar system. By taking advantage of these gravitational currents, rather than fighting them, it is possible to travel using gravity, thereby cutting back greatly on the amount of fuel needed. An example of this is the spacecraft Genesis, which travelled to the L1 lagrange point (a region of space between the Earth and Sun where the gravitational pulls and centrifugal force are balanced) to collect samples of the solar wind, and later crash landed in Utah. Instead of expending large amounts of energy flying back to Earth, the craft took a more circuitous route, via another lagrange point, L2, on the far side of the Earth. This made Genesis the most efficient spacecraft yet, needing only 4% of its mass as fuel, compared to around 50% for the Apollo and Galileo missions.
E-mail worse for your IQ than cannabis
A study conducted by one of my alma maters, King?s College London, on behalf of Hewlett Packard, claims to show that the constant distraction of e-mails, IMs and SMS messages is taking a toll on the intelligence of the workforce. IQ levels dropped by around 10 points on average following distraction with new e-mail messages, compared to a loss of around 4 points following a crafty spliff. The researchers found that the greatest damage was done by the lack of discipline in handling the never-ending stream of messages that disrupted work flow and caused the brain to constantly change direction, leading to tiredness and loss of concentration. At least e-mail doesn?t cause you to gain weight though. And no one does random e-mail testing.
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December 2013
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Nature Blog Network
Tweet Blender
The Decline of Seagrass Meadows
Bay Scallop on Eelgrass
Other species also use eelgrass
Shark Skin Technology
Recently, CBS covered a story of researchers investigating the pattern on shark skin, and how it is able to resist fouling organisms that are common on other long lived, large marine vertebrates such as whales and turtles. This has major implications for the boating industry, and come companies have already begun to capitalize on the unique structure of shark skin to use as coatings for boats. This isn’t necessarily news, as shark skin coating has been investigated as an anti-fouling mechanism for the NAVY for some time. The idea behind that research is that a) fouling organisms settle on ship hulls and grow, increasing drag forces of the hull in the water, b) this increased drag reduces the ships efficiency and adds considerable cost to powering the vessel, and c) the pre-existing anti-fouling methods are either cost and time prohibitive (hauling the ship out on dry dock) or extremely harmful to the environment (such as using copper or tin based bottom paints). The adverse affects of the bottom paints used were extremely harmful to the environment, leading to accumulation in the sediments of ports and bioaccumulation through the food chain. The adverse affects led to the ban of tributyl-tin , TBT, bottom paint in the US and many countries abroad. Additionally, some states are beginning to ban copper based paints as well.
In comes the shark skin, whose scales and denticles (tiny “skin teeth” ) are arranged in a diamond shaped pattern. The pattern of sharks skin is already effective at reducing drag forces. So by merely mimicking the pattern, drag should be reduced along a ships hull. Add to that the lack of spores being able to settle onto this skin pattern, and you have a bottom coating that is much more efficient for boats and more safe for the environment.
But now, researchers are interesting in a different kind of biofouling – bacteria and the medical industry. Some research, according to the CBS article, indicates that Sharklet patterned plastic had significantly reduced numbers of bacteria on it when compared against a smooth plastic sheet. This has major implications for the health industry, as some bacteria are difficult to kill, and many places like hospitals and doctor’s offices, as well as schools and public offices, are bacterial breeding grounds (although I guess technically anywhere is a bacterial breeding ground of some sort). This material may be important for use combating infections, by coating commonly touched places with the shark skin patterned material.
Interesting stuff.
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Unemployment Rate Surges To Highest Since 2011 - Gallup Polling
Tyler Durden's picture
With ADP out of the way, and providing no guidance to an extreme NFP print one way or another, we once again turn to Gallup. As a reminder, a few days ago we showed that things are bad and getting worse for America's job prospects following direct polling land as relates to unemployment on a seasonally unadjusted basis. Today, the polling group has released its seasonally adjusted unemployment number and how it compares to the BLS' own estimation of the labor market. In a word: it is not pretty (which, again, is good for those who are hoping and praying St. Ben will keep the monetary Kool Aid running for a little bit longer): at 8.6% it is over 1% higher than the BLS' reported print, and is the highest since the end of 2011.
Source: Gallup
Your rating: None Average: 4.5 (6 votes)
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Preschool children learn about trees from William Woods students
12/22/2011 Mary Ann Beahon
"What kind of animals make their homes in trees?" That was one of several questions posed to Fulton Preschool children recently by William Woods University students.
Most of the answers were "spot on," with the youngsters naming birds and squirrels. However, one of the children jokingly tried to tell the others that alligators live in trees.
As a service-learning project, members of the Knowing the Woods Club at WWU recently presented a "Getting to Know Trees" program for the children in the preschool located on campus.
Kelcie Spradley of Fenton, Mo., president, and club member Anna Farha of Oklahoma City presented the educational program for the youngsters.
Since it was so close to Christmas, much of their presentation focused on Christmas trees, which delighted the children. Among the things they learned was that it can take up to 15 years to grow an average-sized Christmas tree.
The children wanted to know why trees change during the winter, why some trees don't lose their leaves, and why "Christmas trees" stay green. The children also were interested in how a tree is used in every way, from being used to make wood to everyday items they use themselves.
This was the second year members of Knowing the Woods presented a tree-related program to the youngsters as a service-learning project. Spradley said group members are looking forward to planning and participating in future events.
The preschoolers learned fun facts about trees from all over the world and locally. They also learned about numerous products and items that are made from trees and that every part of the tree is used for something - nothing is wasted.
Additionally, the children learned about what happens to trees during the winter season. The WWU students also assisted the youngsters in drawing Christmas trees after the discussion.
Kelcie Spradley (left) and Anna Farha make a presentation about trees to children in Fulton Preschool.
Spradley helps youngsters draw Christmas trees.
Preschool children draw Christmas trees with assistance from Anna Farha.
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Nature vs. Nurture
When we judge our children's birthparents, we often judge our children.
by Lois Melina
When we think about raising children, most of us are believers in genetics. Besides the natural drive to carry on our family line, we also associate reproducing ourselves with replicating our genetic material. We want and expect to have children who reflect the best in ourselves and in our partners, and we subscribe to the belief that our DNA is the most likely way to create them. This is why infertile couples go to great lengths to achieve pregnancy-many of them convinced that even one person's DNA in the mix is better than none.
When we think about adoption, most of us find ourselves swinging on the nature vs. nurture pendulum. Whether we've already had biologic children or are looking at adoption because of infertility, we must believe that environment plays a significant role in the development of children before we can seriously explore adoption.
It is interesting to watch ourselves move from thinking our child must have an IQ equal to or above ours, athletic ability like Mom's and musical sensitivity like Dad's, to thinking that our child will develop intellectually because we will read her books, will be athletic because she will grow up in a family that takes her hiking as soon as she can walk, and will appreciate music because music is heard at home.
This thinking lasts, I sometimes tell adoptive parents, until the child reaches adolescence, at which point we conclude, "No, it was genetics after all." The comment never fails to get a laugh, because we recognize that adolescence is when children who once seemed so familiar take on beliefs that seem alien to us.
What is not so funny, however, is that adoptive parents sometimes credit themselves for their children's positive qualities, while blaming the birth parents for those aspects they don't like. We are certain that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is due to something that happened to the child before or soon after birth. We comment on how personalities are genetically determined. It's similar to a mother saying to her husband, "She gets that from your side of the family."
Certainly, biology is responsible for many individual differences in human beings. However, as adoptive parents, we should be aware of the ways we think biology is showing up in our children. Our attitudes convey subtle messages about who they are and whether they "fit" in our family.
Most parents wrestle with explaining complicated ideas to their children, and adoptive parents often have some tough things to explain. We want to know how to tell a Chinese girl that she was abandoned so that she doesn't feel like she isn't valuable. We want to know how to tell a teenage boy that his birth father raped his birth mother so that he won't think that the man he may be most like was violent towards a woman.
What is most important is not what we tell our children about their birth parents, but what we think about them. Our feelings will come through regardless of the words we use. So will our thinking about whether our children are like their birth parents-whether we expect or fear they will "turn out" in a certain way. Rather than trying to construct explanations to communicate something different, we should change the beliefs we hold in our hearts.
Do we have a mental picture of the unnamed birth father as having raspberry-colored hair and multiple piercings through his lower lip? Do we see this image when our two-year-old defies us, imagining that his adamant "no" is warning of rebellion that is sure to get out of control during adolescence? One couple had their daughter's birth mother live with them during the last stages of her pregnancy. During that time, the birth mother sat on the couch eating snacks and watching TV. As their daughter grew up, they became concerned that the girl's interest in TV was a sign that she was "lazy"-just like her birth mother.
Years after the placement, one mother was still livid that her son's birth mother had neglected him while she smoked crack. The birth mother was in jail, "and as far as I'm concerned," the adoptive mother said, "they can throw away the key."
If such children grow up to be oppositional, lazy, or drug-dependent, will it be because of a biologic predisposition to those traits, or because their adoptive parents gave them a message about how they expected them to behave?
Even adoptive parents who are sympathetic toward their children's birth parents may have negative attitudes toward them that they don't even acknowledge. We may say, for example, that the birth mother wanted to keep her child but knew that she couldn't raise a child at that time in her life. But we may be thinking, "I would have found some way to keep her." It's no surprise then, when the child grows up thinking "If my birth mother had really cared, she would have found a way to keep me. I must not be worth caring about."
And when the teenage father with piercings and dyed hair is our biological son, we see his confusion and kind heart. When it is our sister arrested for drug abuse, we remember the late-night giggling when we shared a bedroom, and hope that she is able to spend her time in jail working on her recovery. When it is our father who sits on the couch watching TV rather than developing outside interests, we wish he had a fuller life, but we know he cares for us. We are able to distinguish between their actions and the basic goodness that we know is there. We know it is there because we have known them in a variety of contexts, over many years, in many situations. Many of us have only limited contact with our children's birth parents, usually during the greatest crisis of their lives.
One mother asked me how she could tell her daughter that her birth father was serving a life sentence for a felony. "I've met him and he's such a wonderful guy, but he makes poor choices. How can I explain that to her?" I knew the message would come through because she believed in her heart that the birth father was a good man.
Seeing fundamental worth in our children's birth parents and forgiving them when their actions fail to bear witness to that worth is no more than we do for our own relatives and in-laws. And, in truth, our children's birth parents are as much a part of our extended family as our in-laws. They share decades of history as well as DNA. They have helped shape our children. Together with them, we share the mighty responsibility for the growth and development of a human being. We are connected to them, not by biology or law, but by our love for a child.
Some behavior of the birth parents may be incomprehensible to us. Their actions may not be ones we would or should condone. Nonetheless, we have an obligation to forgive them and strive to see their inherent worth.
It's actually not difficult to find their value.
It's right there in our children.
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Child Development, Family, Health, and Education Research
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Tell me more ×
I have recently been experiencing weird behaviour in my development environment when running ASP.Net websites locally on my Windows 8 development computer via IIS8. I have observed the behaviour on two separate websites (one is an old, bloated ASP.Net website with thousands of lines of code and a lot of bad-practice; the other is a new, light-weight ASP.Net MVC with less than 600 lines of code in total and hopefully not so many bad practices).
Both sites are being run through IIS8 locally (i.e. not through Visual Studio's local web server, nor through IIS Express). The problem occurs whether debugging or merely using the sites - regardless of whether VS is open or not.
After serving a small number of requests (perhaps 5 or less), if the app pool isn't refreshed, any future requests will hang indefinitely (until stopped from the browser/client - i.e. I never receive a response and the browser continues waiting). Once this occurs, the only way to get a response is to force stop IIS via the iisreset -stop command. Also, it's client agnostic - I've had the problem happen on Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, and via Fiddler.
I'm not really sure how to troubleshoot this - I've looked in Event Viewer and see nothing registered at all, nor does anything obviously wrong show up when I view processes (CPU and RAM usage are completely normal). It doesn't appear to be something wrong in one of the site's codebases.
The problem only began to happen with the second site a couple of days ago - though I can't recall making any changes which could have caused it to occur.
I guess it's a bit hopeful to expect an answer to this one, but: Is there anything obvious which exhibits these symptoms - and, if so, what can be done to fix it?
Failing that, what diagnostic tools are likely to help me identify the cause? I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the internal workings of IIS and don't really know where to look (though, I certainly have tried putting my Google skills to use, I promise!).
Thanks in advance for any who take the time to help with this! I'm happy to provide further details on request.
share|improve this question
Just FYI, running IIS on a client machine for dev purposes may fall explicitly outside of the scope of ServerFault. – phoebus May 7 at 20:39
Yeah, I was wondering about that - but it seemed more appropriate than Stackoverflow to me and I'm not sure where else I should ask it. The setup is designed to mimic our production environment as close as possible (short of actually working on Windows Server) and this seems to be more a problem with the workings of IIS/Windows than with anything specifically related to development. – Zac May 7 at 20:43
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Ten Questions: Jacques Garcia
By Arlene Hirst
Courtesy of Decoration Jacques Garcia
The interiors star is famous for his opulent style, which he employs in hotels and restaurants from Marrakech to Miami Beach, as well as in spaces for private clients like the Sultan of Brunei. This fall, he journeyed to High Point, North Carolina, for the semiannual furniture market to introduce his latest collection for Baker. We caught up with him there.
1. Why did you decide to work with a U.S. manufacturer instead of a French company, given France's great tradition of ebenistes [master craftsmen]?
Here in the United States the quality is much better than in Europe. And in America there is both quantity and quality. Ebenistes were famous in the past for their individual pieces but not for mass production. And Baker has not only craftsmen but also salesmen.
2. You are famous for your wonderful color palette. But for this furniture market you made everything white. Why?
For 15 years I've been known as a person who worked with a broad range of colors and used elaborate materials: velvets, brocades and damasks. I reinvented this look in the '80s. So it was time for a change, time to go back to pure form.
3. Why is it the right time for pure form now?
It's because shape is global. Americans, Europeans, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Arabs. It doesn't matter where they are from—they all want the same thing.
4. Is there a reason why you think this is true?
They go to the same hotels, which are all decorated the same way. They eat at the same restaurants. They shop at the same couturiers; fashion today is international. Airports—they're all the same. Aesthetically, national identity no longer exists. From that we conclude that people want simplicity, luxury and elegance.
5. How do you define luxury?
Luxury is the simplest thing in the world: It is knowledge. Otherwise it's only money. People get rich in four years and know nothing except that they have $50 billion. Their sole reference is the hotel room in which they stay. And their decorator tells them that if you don't have this Picasso, you don't exist.
6. Are you designing other products?
I've started a second line for hotels and restaurants with two Italian companies [Interna and Zonca]. After all, 50 million people eat in my restaurants every year; five million sleep in my hotels.
7. Do you have a favorite design?
My favorite thing is the next one I design. And the next piece I discover.
8. We've heard that you are a wonderful shopper. Where do you go?
I love flea markets. Whenever I'm in a new city, I ask where the locals shop. I found a stool yesterday in High Point—a tabouret made in France for Napoleon I.
9. What are you working on?
I have three big projects. I am redoing two hotels: the Mamounia in Marrakech and the Danieli in Venice, as well as a special exhibition in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. We will re-create the atmosphere and the space as it was known to Louis XIV. All royalty will be there for the opening. ["When Versailles Was Furnished in Silver" uses pieces borrowed mainly from Denmark's Rosenborg Castle and England's Windsor Castle, although almost every European country is represented. The exhibition runs through March 9th; ChateauVersailles.fr.]
10. What would you say is your design philosophy?
My philosophy is simple. It is to make life better, to add attitude and warmth.
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I downloaded the latest Oracle versions for studying. (I don't have a metalink account because I am actually not working)
I want to install Oracle Database 11g + Oracle Developer Suite 10g on the same Windows XP Desktop. I did the following steps :
- Install Oracle Database 11g in ORACLE_HOME "C:\oracle\product\11.1.0\db_1".
- Create a database DEV
- Startup database DEV, listener and configure sqlnet.ora+tnsnames.ora
- Connect to the database with sqlplus system@dev => connection succeeded
- Install Oracle Developer Suite 10g in ORACLE_HOME "c:\oracle\product\DevSuiteHome_1" and choose Installation Type "Complete (1.13 GB)"
When I install Oracle Developer Suite 10g I receive the following error:
Oracle Developer Suite 10g ( cannot be installed into existing Oracle9i or higher Oracle Home.
I don't understand why I receive this error. Oracle Developer Suite creates a separate Oracle Home, so I don't understand why the error says that it tries to install into an existing Oracle Home.
What must I do to solve this problem?
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Some of the first problems busy freelancers & entrepreneurs run into is a time management crunch. As they take on more work, job tracking the tasks for each client becomes more demanding. Having a centralized hub to communicate and share files with team members quickly becomes a necessity when you get busy: it’s deciding the best project management software to use that stops most people in dead their tracks.
Managing Multiple Jobs and Virtual Team Members
Project Management Software Viewpath with Gantt ChartSo how do you manage multiple jobs with many other team members that need access to client information and files? A great tool to start with is Viewpath. Viewpath is an online project management software with a free edition that does not expire. This powerful program does not get enough time in the spotlight and deserves a long overdue introduction. This writer uses it every day.
Though the free version has some limitations it’s a great place to start and see if you can actually get your process down to repeatable steps. Getting your brain down on paper can be very revealing. You can expect to change your process many times as you grow. The experience will also show you what good project management software is capable of without making you rush through the process so you can learn and try at your own pace.
With all team members on board it’s easy to track which tasks are on time and late with simple red dots marking the late tasks. Extending due dates or moving project start dates can be done by dragging the project visually or entering the desired date into the correct task.
Project Management Software Viewpath with project openThis all ties in nicely with the resource management aspect in the Gantt chart where you can take a quick peek at who is overbooked and who can accept more work. You can create unlimited projects and invite unlimited guests. “Guests” will be your virtual team members and can view tasks that have been assigned to them within a project to access files, mark them complete or a percentage complete, as well as add notes and links.
Project Management for Beginners
Project Management Software Viewpath with timelineThe beauty of starting with project management software early in the game is that you can get an idea of how much time it takes just to outline jobs and track progress so that you aren’t surprised by it later. You might even find that you dislike this aspect of the work and, knowing that, will help you hire the right kind of people later on down the road.
If you are new to project management software there are a few things you should know. These programs are big. They may look simple but they are capable of running hundreds of jobs and tracking hundreds of employees. There is a template creation process, reporting function, separate views, multiple categories and personal logins.
Being big means they can grow with you but they also require more attention at the start. Many freelancers dive in and find out quickly that to truly utilize all the functions it takes hours of learning and even more time planning. This time investment may feel like a turn off at first but asking hard questions only streamlines the process for later. Of course there is always the option of using it for the tasks you need immediately and learning as you go but don’t expect a quick “end” to the learning curve.
15 Hacks for Viewpath That Will Save You Time:
1. When selecting multiple rows at a time, hold shift and don’t click inside the check boxes—click to the left to make a large selection.
2. You can change multiple dates or resource names at once by selecting all the lines you want and jut typing the first letter of the name or the date.
3. Confused about making templates? Just create a job, create all the tasks and the next time you want to create a similar job, just choose to “create from existing” job instead of the template option.
4. The time-tracking clock does not work in free edition so stop clicking it.
5. Missing a job? You probably closed the tab. Go home, then to the project tab and double click it.
6. Archiving jobs is better than deleting.
7. Resources not showing up on a job? Go to a different job with resources in it, select them all, click edit copy and then edit paste into new job.
8. The little arrows move around everything you select, not just one task. Make sure only one task is selected and then place it in the hierarchy.
9. Don’t skip the tutorial. It’s super simple and takes about 3 minutes.
10. Tasks showing but can’t find them on the timeline? Check your year in the date column. Sometimes jobs get entered in for the wrong year and poof! They disappear.
11. “Duration” means how many days or hours you will let someone attempt to complete the task. “work” is how long you expect them to take and can be found in the dropdown menu of each header.
12. The home screen requires you hit the continue button in the middle of the screen before revealing the program when you first log in. Yes you are in the right place.
13. The free version does not expire but if you don’t login for over 4 months you may not have an account when you come back.
14. If you indent a task (move it to the right with an arrow key) the task above it will become a bold header. You can’t mark headers complete. They will become complete when all the tasks under them have been completed.
15. Create a task at the end of each project that says “ready for billing”, if the billing date goes past due it serves as a nice reminder.
Lifehack Expert team has shared their favorite productivity tools that increased their efficiency and made their life better What is Your Favorite Productivity Tool?
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Twitter Trends
These Konrad Kirpluk illustrations would not be out of place as a mural on the wall of an urban setting, but thankfully, they are actually just designs for potential Adidas wear. Can you not imagine how sick these kooky, oozing graphics of a bunny in a jumpsuit would look on a T-shirt?
Konrad Kirpluk is a U.K.-based illustrator who specializes in using vector graphics in various pop art styles. Commonly seen in his art pieces are hyperbolic characters with graffiti artwork influences. I’m most impressed with Kirpluk’s skill of emulating felt-tip marker strokes in the digital realm.
Implications - Consumers are obsessed with expressing their individuality, as it’s seen as an ideal in first-world nations. As a method of invoking particular identity characteristics, sneaker corporations often align themselves with particular subcultures. Corporations in other industries may also consider aligning their wares with particular subcultures as a way to gain credibility and ultimately garner consumer business.
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Contact Us: (225) 765-6565
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Heart, section through the middle
Heart, section through the middle
Heart, front view
Heart, front view
Ultrasound, normal fetus - heartbeat
Ultrasound, normal fetus - heartbeat
Ultrasound, normal fetus - heartbeat
Ultrasound, normal fetus - heartbeat
Patent ductus arteriosis (PDA) - series
Patent ductus arteriosis (PDA) - series
Congenital heart disease
Causes, incidence, and risk factors:
Congenital heart disease is often divided into two types: cyanotic (blue discoloration caused by a relative lack of oxygen) and non-cyanotic. The following lists cover the most common of the congenital heart diseases:
These problems may occur alone or together. The majority of congenital heart diseases occurs as an isolated defect and is not associated with other diseases. However, they can also be a part of various genetic and chromosomal syndromes such as Down syndrome, trisomy 13 , Turner syndrome , Marfan syndrome , Noonan syndrome , and DiGeorge syndrome.
No known cause can be identified for most congenital heart defects. Congenital heart diseases continue to be investigated and researched. Drugs such as retinoic acid for acne, chemicals, alcohol, and infections (such as rubella ) during pregnancy can contribute to some congenital heart problems.
Symptoms depend on the specific condition. While congenital heart disease is present at birth, the symptoms may not be immediately obvious. Defects such as coarctation of the aorta may not cause problems for many years. Other problems, such as a small ventricular septal defect (VSD), may never cause any problems, and some people with a VSD have normal physical activity and a normal life span.
Signs and tests:
Diagnostic tests depend on the specific condition.
Treatment depends on the specific condition. Some congenital heart diseases can be treated with medication alone, while others require one or more surgeries.
Expectations (prognosis):
How well a patient does depends on the specific defect.
Complications depend on the specific condition and treatment.
Calling your health care provider:
Call your health care provider if you suspect that your child has a heart problem.
Avoid alcohol and other drugs during pregnancy. Doctors should be made aware that a woman is pregnant before prescribing any medications for her. A blood test should be done early in the pregnancy to see if the woman is immune to rubella. If the mother is not immune, she must avoid any possible exposure to rubella and should be immunized immediately following delivery.
Poorly controlled blood sugar levels in women who have diabetes during pregnancy are also associated with a high rate of congenital heart defects during pregnancy.
Experts believe that some prescription and over-the-counter medications and street drugs used during pregnancy increase the risk of heart defects.
There may be some hereditary factors that play a role in congenital heart disease. Genetics does appear to play a role in many diseases, and multiple family members may be affected. Talk to your health care provider about screening.
Expectant mothers should receive good prenatal care. Many congenital defects can be discovered on routine ultrasound examinations performed by an obstetrician. The delivery can then be anticipated and the appropriate medical personnel (such as a pediatric cardiologist, a cardiothoracic surgeon, and a neonatologist) can be present, and ready to help as necessary. Such preparation can mean the difference between life and death for some babies.
Review Date: 12/21/2009
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Subscribe Feedback English
look up any word, like mixie:
1. Turffin
To send in private message or post on social media a photograph of the beer you intend to drink before you drink it.
A way to say "This is my property (or turf), be jealous and don't touch."
"Chad keeps Turffin me his lame PBR."
"I actually found a Dogfish Head 120 minute IPA, I am so Turffin this!"
rss and gcal
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I'm wondering if it possible to use the %G variable to include config =
based on group membership.
Basically, my setup is this:
Samba configured as a member of a Active Directory Domain using WinBind =
authentication and account management. I want the ability to have a
different config file loaded for a Students and Staff.
Is this even possible??
Thanks in advance!!
David J. Lucas, CCNA
Oyster River Cooperative School District
Phone: (603) 868-5100 ext. 41=20
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2006 might not have been the best year for some PC genres, but for strategy gamers, it was awesome. 2006 saw the release of plenty of great city-builders, RTS games and turn-based strategy titles. Even so, there were a few titles that stood head-and-shoulders above the crowd -- titles like Galactic Civilization II: The Dread Lords. GalCiv II is a conquer-the-universe "4X" title that's enchanted Palpatine-wannabes since it was released last February. It was with great anticipation then, that I downloaded the latest beta version of Dark Avatar, the expansion pack for GalCiv II. What, I wondered, could Brad Wardell and his Stardock team add to a game already overloaded with strategic depth?
A lot, as it turns out.
The game will ship with a new campaign that begins directly after the end of The Dread Lords. The Dread Lords have been defeated by the Drengin and a coalition of other races. Naturally, the Drengin being Drengin, they turn on their "allies" and proceed to beat them into the ground and enslave them. Then, on the verge of subjugating the entire universe, the Drengin find themselves fighting a civil war. The Korath clan of Drengin split from the main empire, determined to wipe all non-Drengin from the universe. The main empire, realizing ruling the universe is no fun if you have no one to lord over, must now face down the Korath in order to make the universe safe for oppression and slavery.
Unfortunately, my preview version didn't come with the campaign. That didn't really bother me. Like most GalCiv II fans, I usually bypass the campaigns to go directly to the heart of the game, the sandbox mode. It was here I'd get a chance to play against the Korath as well as the Krynn Consulate, a race of religious paranoids determined to convert the universe -- for their own good, of course. I fired up a the game, started putting together a medium-sized galaxy game with five opponents, and found a whole bunch of new stuff being thrown at me before I even started.
Galactic Civilizations II has always been pretty good when it comes to allowing players to customize their experience. Now there are a few more options in the mix. The first was primarily cosmetic. In addition to customizing my own race, I could now create my own customized opponents with their own pictures, names, colors and ship styles. The ship creator has been beefed up with plenty of new ship components (including places to display empire symbols on ships) and quite a few racial ship templates have been added. That should make it much easier to add in Klingons, Vorlons, TIE fighters or any other sort of copyright violations players would like.
More significant is the new "personality" tab. This allows the player to actually customize the way the AI will play against the player. Sliders determine not only how smart the AI is but how it plays. The player can also adjust the AI's financial acumen has, their ethical alignment, their natural abilities, even the way they speak to the player. The key slider, though, is the one marked "CPU usage." This determines how long the AI has to make its decisions. More time to think means the AI will be better able to handle its empire in the late game when there are dozens of planets and hundreds of starships to manage. Judicious use of the personality tab will let more peaceful players duel with customized trade warriors while hard core experts can effectively create a genuine expert mode.
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Tell me more ×
The minhag at kiddush levana is to wish shalom aleichem 3x. It is prevalent to do so even if someone was wished shalom aleichem and he reciprocated back aleichem shalom. Is there a reason that one needs to be the initiator of the blessing?
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That is the Nusach of Kiddush Levana. I am not sure what you are asking? – Gershon Gold Apr 10 '11 at 4:37
Perhaps giving a blessing of peace is sufficient for the purpose of kiddush levana. If 3 people preempted by wishing me shalom aleichem first and I had the opportunity to say aleichem shalom 3x, why doesn't that qualify? – YDK Apr 10 '11 at 5:36
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1 Answer
up vote 2 down vote accepted
Because we just just finished saying a few verses with curses for our enemies, we then say Shalom Aleichem at Kiddush Levana to those around us, to highlight that we were not referring to them.
The Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 426:2 (page 574 of vol. 4 of the Mishna Berura) quoting the Tur, says that "answering is like asking", and implies that you would not have to say Shalom Aleichem if you already responded Aleichem Shalom to 3 people.
share|improve this answer
That makes things easier, Danny. (Thanks msh) – YDK May 11 '11 at 15:47
@YDK , Danny : It would only seem to count if they said it to you after you had already said "Tipol..." otherwise it's not serving it's purpose. – Double AA Dec 20 '11 at 2:30
@DoubleAA, Perhaps, though I would suspect that there are multiple interpretations for saying shalom aleichem that are disconnected from tipol. – YDK Dec 21 '11 at 16:08
@DoubleAA, That's logical, though I wonder if the curses are the sole reasoning behind Shalom Aleichem. – YDK Dec 21 '11 at 16:12
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Hypenotized by Apple
Watching the cloud of hype around last week's release of the new iPhone, I was struck by the way Apple's psychological influence over the tech industry continues to grow. I'm having trouble thinking of any recent technology product, let alone a smartphone, that got such heavy coverage for both its announcement and its initial shipment.
Apple's PR miasma is also starting to twist the thinking of people in the tech industry who ought to know better. Apple's gradually becoming the yardstick against which other tech companies are measured -- and since Apple is such a unique company, it's almost impossible for anyone else to measure up.
Case in point: A recent commentary by a CNET reporter, writing about RIM (link):
"There is no RIM hype machine and when a new BlackBerry is released, hardly anyone in the major media outlets care. And if they don't care, neither will the average consumer who doesn't know too much about the tech industry and won't read columns like this; they rely on the NBCs of the world to get by. So if RIM wants to more effectively compete against Apple, it needs to do everything it can to follow the Steve Jobs formula: secrecy, compelling products, and a great PR team. If it does, look for RIM to not lose as much ground as you may think. But if it doesn't, Apple will run amok."
Problem number one with this thinking is that Apple and RIM don't sell to the same markets. RIM's core is middle-aged business professionals; Apple's is hip twentysomethings. I'm not saying there is no overlap, but I've spoken to plenty of RIM users who would be embarrassed to carry a music-playing, video-watching hunk of eye candy like the iPhone into a business meeting. It's like announcing to a client, "I spend my work time on YouTube."
The second problem is that Apple's skill at PR has somehow turned into an excuse for reporters not to do their jobs. The implied message in the CNET article is, "if you don't put on a spectacle, the press will ignore your products." Excuse me, but isn't the press's job to dig out the real value and separate it from the hype? Don't we pay you (or sit through your ads) to look past the PR and fancy speeches and advise us on what really matters? If we just wanted someone to echo the latest hype, we could get all our news from blogs.
But the third problem is the one that worries me the most. Apple is almost uniquely good at marketing. Its communication power is a combination of longtime company history, Steve Jobs' personality, and a culture that values perfection in marcom. Any tech company that makes its goal to match Apple's flash is going to look bad by comparison.
If anyone from RIM is reading this, please listen to me closely. I beg of you, don't be chumps. You're Canadian, for God's sake. You don't do sexy. You do humble and inoffensive.
Steve's from California. He's a pop culture icon from the '70s; the Madonna of technology. If you try to imitate him, you're going to look like mom and dad pogo-dancing when Rock Lobster comes on at a wedding reception.
Not pretty. Not pretty at all.
Which brings us to Microsoft's latest marketing plan.
Word on the street is that Microsoft is planning a huge advertising campaign this fall to pimp its image. Microsoft executives say they have finally tired of taking all that abuse from the Mac vs. PC ads, and they're going to fire back with their own cool advertising this fall.
Remember what I said at the start of this post about Apple twisting the minds of tech company managers? They have done an incredible number on Microsoft, the sort of thing I used to dream about when I worked at Apple.
Welcome, Microsoft. Seriously.
When I was at Apple, one the competitive team's central goals was to goad Microsoft and Intel into targeting us in public. We used all sorts of tactics to irritate them. We printed bumper stickers that read "Honk if your Pentium has bugs." We hounded them in online discussions. We did press and analyst tours demonstrating all sorts of annoying flaws we'd found in Windows.
The whole idea was to get them so pissed off that they would lash out at us in public. Because we knew that when a market leader attacks a challenger, it just makes the challenger more credible.
So what is Microsoft doing? It's attacking the challenger. Microsoft VP Brad Brooks specifically called out Apple in a recent speech (link):
"There are a lot of myths out there in the marketplace today, a lot of myths around Windows Vista...we know the story is very different than what our competitors would like our customers to think.... Windows Vista is the safest OS in terms of security vulnerabilities in its first year of operation, safer than any other commercial or Open Source OS in its launch. Now, I don't hear Apple making claims about security around a product that is that great.... The other big thing that's different this time around is that we've got a pretty noisy competitor out there. You know it, I know it. It's had an impact, been a source of frustration for you, but today, that line, we're going to start to challenge. We're going to get our story back out into the marketplace.... We've got a highly vocal minority out there in Apple. They kind of look at this and say, hey, you know what, you're kind of boring with the mundane message; it's not cool. They tell you it's the "i-way" or the highway. Well, you know what--we think that's kind of a sad message."
Macintosh share is still just a small fraction of Windows' share, but Microsoft is treating Apple like not just a challenger, but as the opinion leader. Microsoft is responding to Apple's marketing, and what's worse, it's bragging about it in public. What an incredible turnaround from Steve Jobs' first days back at Apple, less than ten years ago, when Bill Gates appeared on the big screen and Jobs publicly kowtowed to him.
It's easy to say what Microsoft shouldn't do, but a lot harder to say what they should do. They do have an image problem, and they do need to do something about it. Here's my take: Apple has always been the cool one, and always will be. Microsoft has traditionally been the safe one. Not as flashy as Apple, but dependable and prudent; the choice that'll never get you fired. That's why 80% of the public has chosen Windows over the years. Rather than trying to act cool, which is destined to end in embarrassment, I think Microsoft should apologize for the problems with Vista, give a timeline for fixing them (I think many of them actually are fixed by this point), and then move heaven and earth to make sure people see them deliver on that promise.
The ironic thing is that Brooks actually did some of that in his speech:
"We had an ambitious plan. We made some significant investments around security in this product. And you know what, those investments, they broke some things. They broke a lot of things. We know that. And we know it caused you a lot of pain in front of your customers, in front of our customers. And it got a lot of customers thinking, and even yourselves and our partners thinking, "Hey, is Windows Vista a generation that I want to make an investment in?" "
That's not a bad start, but in today's Apple-soaked industry atmosphere, the snide comments on Apple dominated the coverage. The best example was the Wall Street Journal's business and technology blog, which headlined its article, "Microsoft Ready to Hit Back at Mac Guy" (link).
So now every Microsoft ad in the new campaign is going to be judged on whether or not it's as clever and cool as an Apple ad. I'd like to ask for a show of hands -- who thinks Microsoft can out-cool Apple?
And as for RIM, well, I'm sure you could do a better job of PR than you do today. But don't try to be sexy. A message more like, "real men use a thumb keyboard" is probably the ticket for you.
Thanks to mjelly.com for featuring Mobile Opportunity in the latest Carnival of the Mobilists.
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Paul Bogart, an Emmy Award-winning director who launched his career during the days of live television in New York and later was a prolific director on the groundbreaking 1970s sitcom "All in the Family," has died. He was 92.
Bogart died of age-related causes Sunday at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C., said his son, Peter.
Beginning as a stage manager and associate director in the early 1950s, Bogart progressed to directing shows such as "Kraft Theatre," "The United States Steel Hour" and "Armstrong Circle Theatre."
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He later directed numerous episodes of the acclaimed 1960s dramatic series"The Defenders,"for which he won an Emmy in 1965.
He also won Emmys in 1968 and 1970 for directing episodes of "CBS Playhouse" and shared an Emmy in 1986 as supervising producer of "The Golden Girls" when it won as outstanding comedy series.
From 1975 to 1979, Bogart directed nearly 100 episodes of producer Norman Lear's "All in the Family," the award-winning series starring Carroll O'Connor as lovable bigot Archie Bunker and Jean Stapleton as his sweet-natured, "dingbat" wife, Edith.
"Paul was a wonderful man; a wonderful, sensitive director who understood comedy brilliantly," Lear said Tuesday. "If there was a noble man among comedy directors, that was Paul."
Lear said Bogart was the "kind of thoughtful director who found humor in the nooks and crannies of things, so you were always surprised to find laughs where you didn't realize might be possible."
Bogart won an Emmy for outstanding directing in a comedy series for "Edith's 50th Birthday," a two-part 1977 "All in the Family" episode in which Edith encounters a rapist.
In a 2001 interview with the Archive of American Television, Bogart recalled suggesting a different approach for that memorable episode of the series, which was taped before a live studio audience.
Ordinarily, he said, "people shoot [a] scene and then they stop, the audience applauds, the actors go get some water, change their clothes, whatever they have to do, and we start another scene."
But he recalled saying, "If we're going to raise any tension here, we can't give the audience a chance to release their tension until the very end. So we have to do it straight through, going from scene to scene to scene to scene without a stop. So that's what we did.
"By the time Jean evaded this man, threw a hot pan of biscuits on him or something, and he screamed and fell back, the audience went wild, started to stamp on the bleachers and scream as she ran out of the house. That was the one place where I couldn't go into the next scene right away because they were still screaming."
The episode "was a big success and to do it that way was the wise thing," Bogart said. "I'm sure I did something good then because the audience did not have a chance to release its feelings until the crucial moment."
Bogart said in the same interview that he had joined "All in the Family" at the urging of O'Connor — "He liked me from the old days" — but he was "very hesitant because I did not like the half-hour comedy experience. It eats you up."
"You start on Monday, you struggle with a script, it's sent for repairs. It comes back, you work on it — you fix it, you fix it, you fix it. On Friday you'll do it twice before an audience. It works or it doesn't work. Or if it works and you think, 'God, I pulled that one out of the fire,' and you're happy and you go home satisfied, you just have to think that on Monday you're coming back to start this process all over again.
"It's endless. It's the Chinese water torture."
Bogart's many credits as a director include the series "Get Smart," "Archie Bunker's Place"and "Bagdad Café" —as well as the 1967 TV re-creation of Hal Holbrook's one-man show "Mark Twain Tonight!" and TV movies, including "You Can't Take It With You" (1979) and "The Heidi Chronicles" (1995).
Among his films as a director are "Marlowe" (1969), "Skin Game" (1971) and "Torch Song Trilogy" (1988).
Born in New York City on Nov. 21, 1919, Bogart served in the Army Air Forces during World War II as a tail gunner but never saw action.
Before the war, he answered an ad to become a puppeteer with the Berkeley Marionettes in New York, where he met his wife, Jane, the daughter of the puppet creators who put on shows in area schools. They had three children, Peter, Tracy and Jennifer, and were later divorced.
Bogart is survived by his children; his sister, Jeanette Gavaris; five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
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Jonas Wagell
Jonas Wagell (born 1973) is a Swedish architect and designer located in Stockholm. He is trained in graphics, marketing and management, design and architecture at institutions such as Konstfack, Beckmans, Berghs and Parsons and has a back record in strategic project management. The studio JWDA maintain a multi-disciplinary focus on brand management, architecture and product design. This applies well on design concepts and enforcing brand value - and we love co-operating with like-minded professionals. And hey, it's more fun too! Wagell is a restless soul with a strong nerve for entrepreneurship which has brought him to develop the prefab house concept Mini House and the design label Hello Industry.
Bulky Sugar Pot by Jonas Wagell for Muuto
Bulky Sugar Pot
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Inside Worship
a vineyard resource for worship
ArticlesInterviews & Stories • Worship Basics For Church Planters
Worship Basics For Church Planters
Steve Nicholson
A conversation with Steve Nicholson
Cutting Edge: There are new church planters who have never been on a worship team, never led worship…and now they need to start thinking about it. Where should they begin?
Steve Nicholson: Figure out your basic worship philosophy: “What are we doing here, and who is it for?” There are several aspects to that.
One goal we have for worship at our church is that it is participatory. A big goal is to get wide participation. We want everyone singing together as much as possible. That turns into an immediate goal. It’s not so much about the performance as it is oriented toward what gets a group going. So the songs you choose must be singable by the average person.
Another aspect of worship philosophy is, how are you going to handle the people who have never been in church before and then come through the door? The lyrics must be understandable without somebody having to know Bible terms or religious lingo. For example, we don’t sing songs about the Lion of Judah, because that won’t make any sense to some people. They might think, “What is this? Some kind of cult that worships lions?” So we don’t do that.
If you’re going to do a song that has an obscure word or a biblical reference, either don’t do it, or explain ahead of time what it’s about. Once in a while, a worship leader can get by with putting an asterisk in the lyrics and then something at the bottom that explains what it is. But the point is, you must consider all these things. What are your requirements for the worship team? Do they need to be members? Do they need to attend the church at all? Are you going to pay them?
There are a lot of churches that pay all their musicians. You receive a certain quality when you do that, but you also give up certain things when you do it.
CE: Many non-musicians don’t understand how complicated music is. There are instruments and sound systems and lyrics and chords and rehearsals. How can we bring this whole set of issues to their awareness, particularly on the technical side?
SN: The more people that are involved, the more difficult any job is going to be. In particular — for example, with sound systems — it’s important to consider whether a key value your church is going to have is volunteer usability. When you’re making those decisions, you may not want to buy a sound system that is so complicated that only a professional could run it.
Usually it’s better to have something that’s both simpler and more limited in what it can do. If it’s easy, you can train volunteers to use it. By and large, volunteers are who you’re working with unless you get to to be a really big church. If you’re Willow Creek, it’s not an issue, but it is for just about everybody else in the universe. Those are important questions.
Also, the worship leader is probably the most important part. A pastor needs to understand that a worship leader leads people into worship with his voice — not with his instrument.
A worship leader might accompany her voice with an instrument, but there are many very good worship leaders who actually don’t play an instrument. And you don’t have to have somebody who plays something. Far more important is the ability of somebody to worship “on the outside,” so to speak…a person who can emotionally connect with a group of people such that she draws the people into worship.
Some people are excellent musicians, but they can’t do that. Being able to play an instrument fantastically doesn’t mean you can be a worship leader. Even if you can sing fantastically, it doesn’t mean you can be a worship leader. There is a very particular emotional relational component that is absolutely essential. That is far, far more important than the musical capability.
Now certainly, if a person can’t sing at all or they can’t hold a note, that’s a pretty significant inhibition! But you just need to understand what you’re looking for.
The best worship leaders are able to have just the right touch of not just singing, but also the right words, the right exhortation, the right prayer just at the right moment. They stick things in at certain places, not only between songs, but sometimes in the middle of a song. They do things that emotionally impact the group and draw them deeper into the worship. If you can find somebody who can do that, then you have gold.
CE: Is there a way to train people in those things?
SN: I have never been able to train somebody to do that. They’ve either got it or they don’t.
CE: They can get better?
SN: They can, mostly by hanging around somebody who is better, and sometimes by gaining confidence. Occasionally it’s just a confidence issue. Maybe someone is just not used to being in front of people. But in general, somebody who has difficulty relating to other people emotionally is probably never going to be able to get there.
CE: That said, let’s talk about quality control. When a church is smaller, the quality can typically be lower. It generally increases as the church gets bigger, and there have to be trade-offs. Sometimes there have to be difficult conversations. What does a pastor have to be ready to think through and do as the church is growing?
SN: I think the biggest thing is that you should never make long-term promises to anybody. Maybe have people join a team for a set term. At the end of the term, you have to decide whether you’re going to “renew” with them or not.
Ask them, “Would you consider being on the worship team for the next six months?” The key is “for the next six months.” Maybe this is where pastors and leaders fall off the wagon. But after the musician says yes, you should send a letter or e-mail back that reiterates what you said: “My understanding is that you’ve agreed to do this for the next six months,” etc. Then keep it on file. Six months later, you can pull it out and say, “Our agreement was for six months.”
That’s generally good advice for dealing with any kind of commitment that might be ticklish in the church. Have the conversation. Then put the conversation in writing right away so that the person has the record on the front end, rather than a cloudy memory six months later.
CE: In the relationship between a pastor and worship leader, tension and even a sense of over-dependence can sometimes exist — especially with a pastor who doesn’t have musical experience and who relies on the music leader. How can you work to set up this relationship in a healthy way?
SN: I’ll say two things. First, the biggest thing that leads to tension with pastors is when there is not a clearly articulated philosophy of worship. What happens is that the pastor tries to micromanage worship: “Show me your set list.” “Tell me exactly what you’re doing.” “Don’t sing this song — but do sing this one.” That generally creates conflict.
The most important way to avoid conflict is to clearly articulate your philosophy. Lay down some lane boundaries. For example, you might agree that songs have to be singable and understandable.
The goal is to get everybody participating in worship. Your boundaries are simple, basic things. But if you can agree on them, many conflicts go away right there. I think sometimes pastors micromanage because they haven’t actually stated the common philosophy. But worship leaders are generally artistic people. And artistic people have a tough time when someone else is trying to micromanage them.
On the flip side, the second thing I’d say is, sometimes the problem is the worship leader. The pastor has simply chosen the wrong person.
Occasionally, I’ve heard statements which indicated that a few worship leaders felt like the main purpose of their worship was self-expression. It was the self-expression of their artistic abilities. I would immediately say to them, “Then this is the wrong business. This is not where you belong, because this isn’t about your self-expression. It’s about you facilitating a group’s expression.”
In a very real sense, the worship leader needs to be more pastor than musician.
CE: When would you advise starting to pay a worship leader?
SN: I would pay somebody when we’ve developed enough where we have multiple worship teams that need pastoring and training; where there are now three, four, maybe five actual worship leaders. I’d pay somebody to train them and coach them and so forth. That’s what we pay people for in the church in general. We don’t pay people to lead. We pay people to coach people who lead.
CE: There are so many opinions about worship. Opinions come from the people in church. They come from the outside. They come from other worship leaders. Early on in a church, especially, when there are so many ideas being tossed around, how do you weigh things? How do you know which opinions to take seriously?
SN: Someone leading worship needs to have a pretty thick skin, because it’s very typical to get at least a couple of comments every week. “I went to heaven. That was the best worship ever. I loved the way that song went.” And two minutes later, a different person will come up and say, “I couldn’t worship at all. I hated that song. It was terrible. Please don’t ever do that song again.”
It’s really a no-win scenario. Trying to please everyone’s worship taste is a losing battle. So you have to decide up front not to do that. The only measure that counts is widespread participation, and the only way you can measure that is by looking.
Look at people. Look at their bodies. Look at their mouths. Are they singing? Are they participating? Look at these things, because likes and dislikes will kill you.
CE: If the main value is participation, you may have to bring that in gradually — correct? For example, you might also be working on a degree of ethnic diversity or theological diversity.
SN: I’ve certainly done that. I’m not afraid to challenge people to stretch their “worship muscles.” In a sense, it’s like introducing a new song. When we introduce a new song, I understand that participation will be low at first. But we’re looking for it to get picked up. And there will always be early adopters. But that’s a reason why we don’t do new songs all the time.
I generally think that one new song a week is probably the limit that you want to do. That way we stretch people a little bit, but they still get to have something familiar the rest of the time. You can stretch people, and you can introduce new things a bit at a time, but your goal is still participation.
CE: That’s the overriding goal.
SN: Yes…that they will worship God.
CE: In the last few decades, how have you seen worship music change? And where do you see it going?
SN: Thirty years ago, the kind of worship we were doing in the Vineyard at the time was very new and revolutionary. That is no longer true. Many churches do the same kind of worship. You could walk into a Presbyterian church or a Catholic church or a Baptist church and, in many cases, hear much the same kind of music. There are still some really old fashioned, traditional churches still out there, but not very many.
The concern is that it has all gotten very commercialized, particularly in the last 10 to 15 years.
With the commercialization has come a tremendous loss of creativity. There is this mainstream taste that everything commercial caters to, and that’s all you ever tend to get.
Even if somebody comes up with something really good that’s different, how do you find out about it? It’s difficult. Someone can put it on YouTube, but how do you find this needle in the haystack? Sometimes it can be harder for creative people to get a hearing. Maybe young people today seem to be a bit slower at putting their own style of music into worship songs than my generation was.
But then again, maybe it’s more complicated because there really is not just one style anymore. The flip side is that some things are easier. Again, you can do songs on the web, on YouTube, and so forth. There is a positive side to that too.
CE: It seems that in your generation, the music style was probably 200 years behind, and your generation of the Vineyard got it up to speed! Now, for us, it’s still relevant, even if we haven’t put our complete young-people stamp on it. It’s still rock music.
SN: Yes, maybe it doesn’t need to be as revolutionary now.
CE: And now good worship music exists without us having to be quite as creative. Modern worship’s not bad…even when it’s kind of bad.
SN: I think that’s a significant change in the past few decades. It has its pluses and minuses.
One other thing is this: I don’t think we have enough worship music that caters to men. I think the general repertoire of available worship music leans pretty heavily on the “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” concept. I think it can leave many men kind of cold. The Vineyard’s tradition leans to intimacy, but then it also might mean it leans towards the feminine side.
CE: I don’t want to kiss Jesus at all.
SN: Right! I, at least, find that a little difficult to relate to. My feeling is that men need songs they can yell to.
When you think about where men sing outside the church, it’s at football games, or soccer games. They’ll sing fight songs. Sometimes in armies, men would sing. But it was a particular kind of singing. It was war songs. Fighting songs. That’s something we can work on. We need more songs you can yell to.
The overriding goal is for everyone to worship God.
Written by: Steve Nicholson
This article was originally published in Cutting Edge Magazine Vol.15 no10: Worthship
Image taken from the original Cutting Edge Magazine Design: Art Direction & Design by Spindle Studios,,
Added: 2012-06-11 | Filed under: Interviews & Stories
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Aaron Cross, an agent from Operation Outcome played by Jeremy Renner, manages to escape from being executed as the CIA decides to dispose of their black ops programs and terminate their field agents. (Video: Universal Pictures)
An anxious world confronts the question: Can a Bourne-again movie succeed without Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, without Bourne himself, and without a Robert Ludlum book as the production's turn-by-turn guide? Yes, it can. "The Bourne Legacy" is a solid success, primarily though not entirely because of Jeremy Renner. He's a star worthy of the term as Aaron Cross, another haunted operative who, like Jason Bourne, is as much a victim of the government's dirty deeds as a covert super-agent. But the production is impressive too. The director, Tony Gilroy, who wrote the screenplay with his brother, Dan Gilroy, has taken reliable elements from the Ludlum canon—nothing revolutionary here—added humanity, heated that up to genuine passion in the person of Rachel Weisz's government research scientist, Marta Shearing, and staged a global cat-and-mouse game with hurtling energy, uncommon intelligence and admirable clarity.
Jeremy Renner takes over the franchise in 'The Bourne Legacy.' Universal Studios
And with a resourceful solution to the problem of continuity. The beginning of the new film overlaps the end of the previous one. An unseen Jason Bourne is still at large in Manhattan and David Strathairn's steely eyed crisis manager barks out, once again, "People, listen up, we have an imminent threat." What worries him is the prospect of all sorts of vile stuff going public—not only about Bourne, but about other secret programs using genetically enhanced agents, like Aaron Cross, to do unspeakable things on behalf of their unsuspecting nation.
What's been worrying the studio that created the Bourne franchise is the imminent threat of a torrential revenue stream drying up. But such concerns are abated by the first few minutes of "The Bourne Legacy," dramatic scenes that track Aaron Cross's travails in the wilds of Alaska, and they're banished by what follows, a succession of straight-ahead and thoroughly satisfying action sequences set at the intersection of black ops and big pharma. (Robert Elswit did the cinematography, which, for my taste, is too much in everyone's face, but consistently brilliant all the same. John Gilroy, Dan's fraternal twin, did the intricate editing.)
Where Jason Bourne's abiding concern was figuring out his true identity, Aaron Cross is obsessed with scoring a new supply of the chemicals that he's dependent on, thanks to his genetic makeover. Without much exaggeration, the new plot can be seen as a junkie's international quest for a fix, interspersed with his handlers' efforts to find him and terminate him in the process of shutting down the program that produced him. The smart part, though, is that we're with him all the way because it's not his fault that he can live, or at least flourish, only with the green and blue pills that sustain his various enhancements.
One of the many smart parts of his relationship with Marta is her ambiguous role in having empowered him. She insists that she was in it only for the science—a claim with faint overtones of Nazis following orders. She's also attracted to the ordinary mortal he might be, once he's detoxified and his enemies stop chasing him. "Why do you have to stay enhanced?" she asks tenderly at one point. "Why is it important to you?"
For a hero and heroine who never have the down time to make love, they're as compelling a couple as you could ask for. Ms. Weisz has never been more affecting, or, better still, more vital; the script puts her at the center of some harrowing drama, and, in the bargain, gives her a chance to scream a bloodcurdling scream. Mr. Renner takes over the screen, and the franchise, with unforced authority. As an actor, he's tightly wound and interestingly inward, with frequent flashes of warmth. As a star, he's a quick-witted, well-spoken strong man whose vulnerability hints at a tragic sense. During the climactic chase of "The Bourne Legacy," the bad guy is, in the Ludlumesque lexicon of the enterprise, a beta project with minimized empathy. Mr. Renner's Aaron is an alpha project with minimized affect, but plenty of empathy to prevail.
After three decades of marriage, Kay, played by Meryl Streep, persuades her husband Arnold, played by Tommy Lee Jones, to attend a week-long counseling session to spice up their relationship and reconnect with each other. (Video: Sony Pictures)
Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep in 'Hope Springs.' Columbia Pictures
'Hope Springs'
A surprise that sneaks up and moves you, "Hope Springs" has the courage of its awkwardness, and this is said admiringly in the spirit of the film, which is irony-free and unfashionably earnest. The framework is simple: A husband and wife in late middle age, their sexual and emotional connections essentially defunct, plunge into a week of intensive marriage therapy. The most awkward—and, for a while, off-putting—section is the long preface, in which Kay (Meryl Streep), must convince unwilling Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones), to take the plunge. He's such a curmudgeon—played by a gifted actor who's been phoning in curmudgeonly performances for much too long—that you wish she'd just give up and walk out on him. But she perseveres, and the movie perseveres with affecting, sometimes startling candor, and eventually delivers on its promise by confronting the dark fears and furtive hopes of a couple no longer young.
The most unexpected aspect of the film is its emphasis on sex and physical intimacy. Kids don't want to think about their parents having sex, and the movie business, ever more focused on youth, usually shrinks from the subject of sex in later life, or falls back on discrete editing as if to say yes, these quaint oldsters want to do it too, but we'll spare you the details. This film, obviously made for an older audience, embraces the subject explicitly, and sometimes hilariously, or quite clumsily, with equal emphasis on feelings, and on helping its repressed, inarticulate couple find the words to express what they feel. That's the work of the therapist, Dr. Feld, who's played absolutely straight by Steve Carell. While pleasant jokes are made about him—Feld is a local celebrity in the small town of Great Hope Springs, Maine—he serves his patients, and the story, with calm intelligence but none of the self-mocking humor that's become the actor's trademark.
The film, directed by David Frankel from a script by Vanessa Taylor, is being sold as a comedy, which it is not, though it gives its stars what they need to take their roles comically, as well as seriously. That's clear from the outset, when Arnold rebuffs Kay's anxious invitation with the announcement that he isn't feeling well because he had pork for lunch. At this point in her career Ms. Streep could enchant us by doing a vacuum-cleaner commercial, but she captures us here, in her very first scene, when Kay surveys herself uneasily in a mirror while we savor the familiar features that time has changed, and the beauty that shines undiminished. Mr. Jones has become an icon of scowlingly jowly dyspepsia, so it's good fun when Arnold, reluctantly following Dr. Feld's prescription for a first therapeutic step, allows Kay to caress him. ("Does it feel good?" she asks. "Feels like you're petting the dog," he replies.)
If the whole film were played for laughs it would be heavy going, given the broad-brush direction—every action has a visible reaction. Much of the script, in fact, is framed as teachable moments, and, once again, that's said with admiration. At a time of epic crassness in the entertainment industry, here's a movie that truly does want to teach the possibilities of change at whatever point in life, and that expands its emotional vocabulary only at the pace of its patients, who are slow but devoted learners.
The expansion is matched by a growth in complexity; both Kay and Arnold come to learn that they aren't the people they believed themselves, or each other, to be. That's what therapy is supposed to do, of course, but it's still moving to follow their crabwise progress, and to watch two wonderful actors find flashes of beauty in unlikely moments. (This is less surprising for Ms. Streep than it is for Mr. Jones, who brings Arnold to a pained, spiritual nakedness.) "You know how you think you're always headed toward things?" Kay says, recalling the lost optimism of her youth. "Hope Springs" heads the two of them toward hard-won wisdom in a journey well worth taking.
Rival politicians Cam Brady, played by Will Ferrell, and Marty Huggins, played by Zach Galifianakis, battle for a congressional seat in North Carolina. (Video: Warner Bros.)
'The Campaign'
If ever a campaign season's idiocies and hollow pomposities needed to be punctured by sharp satire or held up to fearless ridicule, this is that season, but "The Campaign" isn't the movie to do it. Its premise is intriguing enough: Two blithering idiots, played by Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, run for a previously uncontested Congressional seat in North Carolina. And the filmmakers—director Jay Roach, working from a screenplay by Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell—play with, or at least toy with, some potent ideas: the fulsome thrum of empty rhetoric; the pervasive power of money, the behind-the-scenes influence of a couple of brothers named Motch, who might conceivably be taken for a couple of brothers named Koch. (My favorite idiocy is less political than intellectual; it has Mr. Ferrell's candidate being coached, as in a game of charades, on the words of the Lord's Prayer.) Instead of biting wit, though, the movie settles for sketch humor, standard-brand raunch and toothless slapstick that trivializes everything it touches.
By doing so, it clarifies an essential difference these days between mainstream movies and cable TV. On HBO Mr. Roach directed a pair of provocative films with a lot to say about contemporary politics: "Game Change" and "Recount." Here, with a bigger budget to justify and a wider audience to please, he's back in the safe mode of his Austin Powers comedies, as well as "Meet the Parents" and "Meet the Fockers." His new movie does emphasize, by inadvertance, the daunting task of addressing our situation in comic terms. Maybe the surreal realities of the current campaign really are beyond satire, ridicule, parody or ready comprehension, but this ultimately puerile gagfest has little reach and less grasp.
DVD Focus
"The Town" (2010)
Jeremy Renner first achieved fame (and an Oscar nomination) for his role as the bomb squad sergeant in "The Hurt Locker," but he also gives an electrifying performance in this strong dramatic thriller directed by Ben Affleck. Working both sides of the camera, Mr. Affleck plays a bank robber named Doug MacRay; Mr. Renner is James Coughlin, Doug's lethally volatile partner in crime. The cast includes Rebecca Hall as a bank branch manager, Jon Hamm as a remorseless FBI agent and, in smaller roles, Blake Lively and the late Pete Postlethwaite.
"The Devil Wears Prada" (2006)
David Frankel directed this popular film, a cheerful morality play clothed in clothes. Its main distinction is Meryl Streep's portrait of a tyrannical fashion editor, Miranda Priestly, who can administer a lethal tongue-lashing while barely moving her tongue. Anne Hathaway is Andy, Miranda's clueless young assistant. Ms. Hathaway's fresh beauty makes Andy's innocence convincing, up to a point, while her acting suggests darker motives. But she seems to have been directed to sell innocence and ambition as commodities, or, in the spirit of the film, as brands. (Innocence! Ambition! Fresh!)
'Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' (1964)
It's comparing pebbles and mountains, but Stanley Kubrick's Cold War masterpiece reminds you what political and social satire can do at its peerless best. And what is that? Satire can, as this film does, render unfathomable folly fathomable by scaling it up to the dimensions of comic lunacy. The screenplay, credited to Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George, provides a canvas like none other for the talents of George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, Slim Pickens, Peter Bull and, in the roles of Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley and Dr. Strangelove, Peter Sellers.
Write to Joe Morgenstern at [email protected]
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Tell me more ×
If I keep the power cord plugged in all of the time, will it damage my laptop?
share|improve this question
Welcome to! Please provide a meaningful title for your questions. "Laptops damage" does not tell anyone what the question is about. I took the liberty to fix this. – sleske Aug 1 '10 at 21:10
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2 Answers
No, quite the opposite. LiIon batteries (which all modern laptops use) wear out from being discharged, so using mains power when possible is advisable.
For more details see e.g.
Actually, the best thing for the battery is to charge it to ~%40, take it out and store it in a cool (not freezing) place, as it deteriorates quicker when it's warm. However, that may not be practical, because
a) some laptops don't work well without their battery and
b) This means you will have to remember to charge your battery before you can actually use its full capacity; this might be annoying if you often use it on the road.
In that case, best thing is to always keep the laptop plugged in, to avoid cycling the battery.
Actually, the best thing is to periodically plug and unplug the battery so it swings between 80-90% charge, but again this is probably not practical, as it has to be done manually.
share|improve this answer
add comment
If you keep it plugged in, the battery will not have a chance to discharge. This will cause increased temperature and chemical reactions will begin to shorten the life of the battery. This will affect the battery length in the long term, but batteries can be replaced.
It will not permanently damage any components other than the battery.
Basically if you want to keep it plugged in all of the time, remove the battery at about 40% charge and store it in a cool dry place.
share|improve this answer
-1 LiIon batteries will not deteriorate if they are not discharged (they deteriorate from being discharged). – sleske Aug 1 '10 at 21:12
@MarkM: LiIon batteries are mainly worn out by charge/discharge cycles, so avoiding these is important. See e.g. – sleske Aug 1 '10 at 21:16
@sleske - Perhaps you should read this -… – MDMarra Aug 1 '10 at 21:16
@sleske - In the article you linked, they even recommend removing the battery if using the notebook on outlet power for extended periods of time... perhaps you should read your own material. – MDMarra Aug 1 '10 at 21:19
Let's not get religious; it's a battery. Also, I up voted this answer. – James Watt Aug 1 '10 at 21:44
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BUSINESS > Turkey leading software piracy market: Microsoft
ISTANBUL - Reuters
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Software piracy problemc has social aspects, Microsoft’s Tamer Özmen says. DHA photo
Turkey follows China in software piracy among Microsoft markets, which places the country off of the global company’s top 20 markets list, the local chief executive of the company has said.
In spite of being world’s 17th largest economy, Turkey follows South Africa in the Middle East and Africa region and takes the 25th place in terms of the size of Microsoft’s markets, Tamer Özmen, the chief executive officer of Microsoft Turkey, told Reuters.
“Turkey is the second-largest country after China in terms piracy within the Microsoft world. We are a country that does not like to pay for labor. We do not let others steal our assets, but we can accept using others’ possessions without paying for it, even at the company level. This has to change socially,” he said.
The rate of illicit use of software in Turkey is 62 percent, the market value of which is estimated at $526 million, according to the latest data from Business Software Alliance. These figures put Turkey among the largest countries in terms of pirated software along with China, Russia, India, Indonesia and Argentina.
The majority of information technology investments go toward hardware and the rest to software according to data from International Data Corporation, a global data provider on information technologies.
“The software sector in England, France and Germany is 11-fold larger than the software sector in Turkey. It is possible that [the country] may turn into more of an importer country and an economy that does not produce [high-]value-added goods,” Özmen said.
Interest in Fatih project
Özmen said Microsoft wants to take part in the Turkish government’s Fatih project to replace traditional blackboards and textbooks with electronic boards and tablet PCs.
“We are showing our work to TÜBİTAK [the Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey] for the Windows 8 [operating system] to be used in the tablets. [Google’s operating system] Android was chosen. We do not think that there is a competitive environment and believe that every system should be available to maintain a true competitive environment,” he said.
Microsoft plans to introduce its search engine, Bing, in the domestic market in 2014, he also said.
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mara mcglothin
12/8/2012 11:03:53 PM
JOHN I truly wonder -When did it become obscene to be successful.? B. Gates does a lot of good things with his money, and afterall if he wants to burn it that is his perrogative. There sure are a lot of haters out there that can't seem to see anyone be successful. The fact remains that people own their own inventions and have a right to decide how much they cost, and people who cheat and copyright infringe should be punished severely.
john albay
12/8/2012 12:05:18 PM
@mara it is not capitalism it is the swindling for profit of a monopole of a few people for mega profits but then the world is not perfect!! Even Bill gates knows his money is disgusting and he tries in his own way to help,but his money is not used properly and does little to help the people.If his product was cheaper than no one would copy it: The same for rolex watches if they were cheap no one would copy them.copying is flattery and the masses want to be cool Like the stars and the rich.
Ali Karp
12/8/2012 9:26:10 AM
Why use Microsoft products? Turks should discover, Linux, OpenOffice, Google Docs, etc. That'll put Microsoft in place.
mara mcglothin
12/6/2012 9:06:25 PM
Copyright infringment is alive and well in all sectors in Turkey. Just go to Pazar and see how many RLauren shirts you can buy, or Louis Vuitton shoes, or Rolex watches, none of which are real! This is not new, but has been going on for at least 30 years that I can attest to personally. Why would Microsoft be any different. JOHN We call this capitalism. If you own it, then you can decide how much is paid for the product. It won't matter, still some will steal the technology.
12/6/2012 12:00:55 PM
There are too many thiefs in Turkey, not only stealing software. Look at all houses, buildings. Why are there always iron bars protecting windows and doors? Because there are thieves everywhere. What do they show on the TV-news? Thieves and car accidents. Why is this so? Maybe something wrong with the government as they cannot deal with this problem. Or the bribes are too tempting.
john albay
12/6/2012 11:18:46 AM
The cost of the software is far to high (just look at the profits they make) lower the cost of the software and it will not be pirated.
Faruk Beisser
12/6/2012 10:10:18 AM
Now, now, who would commit computer piracy in Turkey? I know no one. This fellow just wanted to have his pic in the news. And thank heaven, the schools did not get the trash called Windows 8!
Ryan James
12/6/2012 8:44:09 AM
It's "Deniz Feneri" everday, everywhere in Turkey.
Dennis Kavaz
12/6/2012 6:46:04 AM
Dear Mr. Tamer Ozmen whenever the U S wonted (though Turkey did not have much) Regardless Turkey would have given to the U S, Furthermore after 50 years of alliance you are sill accusing Turkey of (being a thief) stealing copy rights from Microsoft. Though illegal all the same to day everyone copies one another why not an ally?
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"Nickelback Is Not for Me"
David Marchese
Despite mildly enjoying all the Nickelback I've ever heard (for those of you scoring at home, that's "How You Remind Me," "Photograph," and "Rock Star"), I most assuredly will not be joining millions of others in buying the band's new album, Dark House, when it comes out this Tuesday. Actually, I could get that shit or free. So let me say this: Unless work requires it, I will not be listening to the new Nickelback album.
Historically, the members of Nickelback and their fans respond to that kind of critical antipathy with accusations of snobbery. Considering that I like what I've heard from the band and still have no desire to hear more from them, is "snobbery" a fair label for my position?
Maybe. Trying to puzzle out the answer to that question makes me feel like I'm stuck inside a mind maze. Full of simplistic lyrics about relationships, partying, and aspirational fantasies, set to catchy melodies and lite-metal motifs, Nickelback tracks strike me as the musical equivalent of beef jerky -- marginally enjoyable, momentarily satisfying, fundamentally gross. And like beef jerky, Nickelback doesn't add anything valuable to my life.
Yet I like Journey. What gives?
Maybe, unlike with Nickelback, it's simply that enough time has passed for me to enjoy Journey in a manner that doesn't make me feel as if I'm endorsing the values the band espouses -- crass pandering, an aura of smug masculinity, poofy hair. All of which is to say that I enjoy Journey ironically. Yet when I listen to "Ask the Lonely" or "Wheel in the Sky" there aren't quotation marks around my enjoyment. But Journey or AC/DC or Van Halen or countless other non-vital bands with worldviews similar to Nickelback are comfortable for me to consume in a way that the chartbusting Canadian quartet is not.
Perhaps my real problem with Nickelback is that when I see those four hosers, and I imagine their fans, they seem so different from me. And not only because Chad Kroeger admitted to putting his pecker in his mouth. I know people who like the bands I mentioned above. Sure, maybe those people enjoy them from the same ironic cultural vantage point as I do, but there's something in that music that speaks to us. I don't know one Nickelback fan.
Maybe an example will help illustrate what I mean. (And I'm not talking about auto-fellatio.) It took me a couple minutes to realize that the thing on the cover of Dark Horse is a big-ass belt buckle (I think). I am relatively unfamiliar with large belt buckles. Nickelback obviously assumed that the people buying the album are into large belt buckles and the cultural meaning behind them. You know, cowboys, dudes from Jackass, and whatnot. That stuff is wasted on me. Basically, I'm living in a different world than the band and its fans, one where the assumptions and iconography don't fly.
That may be an unfair attitude. But is it snobbish? As a reference point, here are some other things I'm not interested in:
Chain restaurants. NASCAR. College sports.
And here are a couple facts about my family:
My grandmother is illiterate and worked for decades in an industrial Laundromat. My brother works in the train yard for the Canadian National Railroad.
Is using my family to prove that I'm not a cultural snob a pathetic attempt at blatant pandering? Ask Nickelback. They seem to have a handle on that sort of thing.
Listen: Nickelback, "Gotta Be Somebody"
Watch: Nickelback's Chad Kroeger talking about "Gotta Be Somebody"
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Sunday, October 17, 2010
Setting Parity on DES Keys
DES keys are 8 bytes, of which only 7 bits of each byte are used for the key. The least significant bit is used for parity and is thrown away for the actual encryption/decryption (resulting in a 56-bit key for single DES). Mostly, it seems, the parity is ignored by DES implementations, but occasionally a system using DES will check the parity and reject the key if the parity is not odd (or so Google tells me, I've never actually seen this happen). The parity bit was intended to prevent corruption or tampering with the key.
The DES parity calculation works as follows:
00001001 = 9
• for each byte, count the number of bits that are set. For the example byte above, 2 bits are set
• if the number of bits set is odd, do nothing
• if the number of bits is even, set or unset the least significant bit to make the count odd
In the example, the new value for the byte would be
00001000 = 8
Reading through Erlang's crypto support for DES and DES3, it's up to the caller to use a valid key. For example, the NIF making up crypto:des_cbc_crypt/3 is defined as:
DES_set_key((const_DES_cblock*), &schedule);
DES_ncbc_encrypt(, enif_make_new_binary(env, text.size, &ret),
text.size, &schedule, &ivec_clone, (argv[3] == atom_true));
DES_set_key() is an OpenSSL compatibility function that, in this case, is identical to DES_set_key_unchecked(). The corresponding checking function, DES_set_key_checked(), returns some information about the key: -1 (if the parity is even) and -2 (if the key is weak).
So I was curious how to go about setting the parity in a functional language. It turns out to be quite easy:
-export([set_parity/1, check_parity/1, odd_parity/1]).
set_parity(Key) ->
<< <<(check_parity(N))>> || <<N>> <= Key >>.
check_parity(N) ->
case odd_parity(N) of
true -> N;
false -> N bxor 1
odd_parity(N) ->
Set = length([ 1 || <<1:1>> <= <<N>> ]),
Set rem 2 == 1.
set_parity/1 uses a binary comprehension to read 1 byte at a time from the 8 byte key.
check_parity/1 checks whether an integer has an odd or even parity and returns the integer XOR'ed with 1 if the parity is even.
odd_parity/1 counts the bit set by using a bit comprehension to return the list of bits that are set. The modulus of the length of this list returns oddness/evenness.
To test if this is correct, we can check if a few cases (all even bits or all odd bits in a key) work and then test that a key with corrected parity produces the same cipher text as the uncorrected key:
test() ->
<<1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1>> = set_parity(<<0:(8*8)>>),
<<1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1>> = set_parity(<<1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1>>),
K1 = <<"Pa5Sw0rd">>,
K2 = set_parity(K1),
Enc = crypto:des_cbc_encrypt(K1, <<0:64>>, "12345678"),
Enc = crypto:des_cbc_encrypt(K2, <<0:64>>, "12345678"),
<<"12345678">> = crypto:des_cbc_decrypt(K2, <<0:64>>, Enc),
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Lamentations 4:5-15 (New Revised Standard)
View In My Bible
5 Those who feasted on delicacies perish in the streets; those who were brought up in purple cling to ash heaps. 6 For the chastisement a of my people has been greater than the punishment b of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, though no hand was laid on it. c 7 Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk; their bodies were more ruddy than coral, their hair d like sapphire. e 8 Now their visage is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as wood. 9 Happier were those pierced by the sword than those pierced by hunger, whose life drains away, deprived of the produce of the field. 10 The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food in the destruction of my people. 11 The Lord gave full vent to his wrath; he poured out his hot anger, and kindled a fire in Zion that consumed its foundations. 12 The kings of the earth did not believe, nor did any of the inhabitants of the world, that foe or enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem. 13 It was for the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed the blood of the righteous in the midst of her. 14 Blindly they wandered through the streets, so defiled with blood that no one was able to touch their garments. 15 "Away! Unclean!" people shouted at them; "Away! Away! Do not touch!" So they became fugitives and wanderers; it was said among the nations, "They shall stay here no longer."
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1. With yarn, tie Tootise Rolls to the wreath frame until it’s full.
2. Mix in clusters of truffle “ornaments,” securing them with yarn.
3. Tie wide ribbon into a bow and attach to the top of the wreath.
4. Tie one end of the narrower ribbon to the scissors, and the other end to the wreath frame.
5. Hang wreath; tell guests to use the scissors to help themselves to an individual serving.
DIY Edible Candy Wreath craft project designed by Stephen Campbell. Photo by Lori Foy.
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Princess Anne still celebrating
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) - It was a moment like no other in the history of Princess Anne High School. The student body stormed the field following the Cavaliers 21-0 win over Kempsville.
You would think the Cavaliers had just won the state championship, but they had instead just ended a 42-game losing streak.
"Seeing all those people rush the field, it was life changing," said defensive end Dondre Thomas.
Senior Jake Keech is the only member of this year's team to play four years with the Cavaliers. While many of his teammates were leaving the team, the 160-pound guard kept the faith through their difficult times.
"It was very frustrating, heartbreaking, discouraging. You get a lot of kids who come out here and quit after one season We do have a lot of players who stuck it out and it says a lot about our character," said Head Coach Ray Gatlin.
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I'm wondering how wizard identification works. In my story, a bartender only serves wizards of age, but how does he know? Do they carry I.D. around like we do? Or is there a magical test that the bartender can easily do to check their age?
If there is a test, how does it work? Does it give age? Name? Address? Can it be tricked (like Fred and George tried to trick the Goblet)? Does the person have to willingly submit to the test or can anyone walk up and find who you are?
I have lots of questions! Thanks so much for any help!
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Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Why I'm Pro Choice
I was raised to be pro choice, literally. My father is a medical doctor who was trained during the pre- roe v. wade era. He saw first hand the effect that lack of legal and safe abortion had. I remember him coming home from work one day and stating how important it is that it is legal and safe because otherwise women die. Remember the scene from Dirty Dancing when Penny is crying on the bed and Baby runs to get the doctor? My Dad was that doctor in a rural part of Kentucky for many years. I heard stories about the bleeding, the hangers, and the self sterilization that occurs when abortion is not safe and legal or even when women are just too afraid to seek it due to the stigma. My family is Christian and I was raised that sex before marriage was a bad choice. In my family you lived with your poor choices, because choices had consequences. Because of this much of my youth I was personally pro-life. But because of the teachings of my father I was always politically pro-choice. Who was I to tell someone else what to do.
As I grew older I learned how many children were stuck in the foster system, how many American children go unadopted every year. I started to understand that there are good and bad times in life to have children, and talked to friends who had abortions. Through my young adulthood I became personally and politically pro-choice. These convictions were solidified as I worked in Reproductive Health throughout my time in Peace Corps Namibia, America Service Corps in India, and my Masters in Public Health in the US. All over the world and here girls and boys, women and men are given incorrect and half information about their sexual health. Reproductive health in all it's aspects became one of my passions.
Now as a future (in 4 months) physician being trained in Family Medicine I am seeking training to become an abortion/termination provider. I love to have prenatal visits and deliver babies. I also love to educate about contraception. As a family physician I look forward to being able to take care of women and families throughout the different stages. To me providing comprehensive care means being able to provide most all of the clinic services my patients need. As a family practice doctor providing safe legal abortions I know I will be living up to the lessons my father taught me as a child and saving women's lives and futures.
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Beginning in March 2010, the IRS engaged in an unprecedented campaign of harassment against conservative groups, either through denials or delays in approving their tax-exempt-status applications, or through endless and burdensome audits.
In notable contrast, liberal and "progressive" organizations got approvals with remarkable speed. The most conspicuous example involves the Barack H. Obama Foundation, which was approved as tax exempt within a month by the then-head of the IRS tax-exempt branch, Lois Lerner. From media reports and firsthand accounts, we also know that the IRS disproportionately audited donors to conservative causes and leaked confidential tax information concerning conservative groups in violation of federal law.
This IRS politicization is not an isolated problem. It is an inevitable result of the broader efforts to regulate and, in fact, suppress political speech.
Social-welfare organizations are permitted to engage in a range of political activities promoting their causes or beliefs, so long as these activities aren't their "primary purpose." This has been generally understood to mean that they must spend less than 50% of their total resources on political activities.
The IRS had little interest in 501(c)(4) political activities until the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform. That law barred dedicated political-advocacy groups from soliciting and spending soft money—funds that aren't subject to tight federal campaign-contribution limits and are used for issue advocacy and party-building.
This IRS restraint was doubtless reinforced by the fact that virtually all politically active (c)(4)s, mostly labor and environmental groups, were ideologically liberal and their activities were not attacked in the mainstream media or by the political establishment. Meanwhile, Republicans financed their political activities largely through candidate-specific campaigns and party and congressional committees.
Yet McCain-Feingold had the unintended effect of making 501(c)(4) political activities far more important than they had been, since the law's ban on soft money doesn't apply to such groups. Thus, it prompted the creation of conservative 501(c)(4)s—although there is little hard evidence of improper political activities by any such groups, whether liberal or conservative.
The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United further increased the importance of the groups by invalidating the restrictions against much political speech by corporations. This freed 501(c)(4) groups, which ordinarily are organized as corporations, to engage in the express advocacy of political causes and candidates.
The Obama administration made clear its deep dislike of Citizens United and of the various new conservative groups spawned by the "tea party" movement. The IRS bureaucrats took the hint. No express order from senior administration officials would have been necessary. Like other federal enforcement agencies, the IRS has always been well-attuned to even subtle guidance from the White House, Congress and the political establishment.
Thus, the IRS crackdown on conservative organizations was a direct and inevitable consequence of political and policy messaging by the Obama administration, and by the campaign-finance reformers who share these views. Congressional Democrats are also to blame, since many of them have publicly—as with Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees the IRS—or privately urged the IRS to go after conservative tax-exempt organizations.
Ignoring their own share of responsibility, campaign-finance reformers and their allies are now pressing to broaden the IRS crackdown to apply to all tax-exempt organizations. In their view, the problem is not only with express political advocacy, but with all tax-exempt activities that might have political overtones, or be related to political issues. Indeed, many argue that such organizations should be conspicuously apolitical.
This is wrong as a matter of law and policy. Congress doesn't have to provide tax-exempt status to social-welfare organizations, but having done so it cannot discriminate by the kind of advocacy in which such groups engage. To say that such activities can have no political implications is an insult to common sense. In a vibrant democracy, every major policy debate has political implications.
The spirited debate about policy issues should be at the core of social-welfare organizations. Politics is how we govern ourselves and political speech is essential to self-governance. The fact that 501(c)(4) group contributors aren't subject to campaign disclosure requirements is a good thing.
There is nothing inherently evil about anonymous political speech. It is firmly anchored in our political and legal culture and was used by the Framers during the founding. Hamilton, Madison and Jay published their Federalist Papers under a pseudonym. The fact that the IRS was able to target conservative donors—similar to the way donors to the NAACP were targeted at the height of the civil-rights battles—shows how disclosure can lead to speech-suppressing government actions.
The courts have long held that the IRS cannot use subjective, "value-laden" tests in administering nonprofit status. As the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stated in one leading case, Big Mama Rag, Inc. v. United States (1980): "although First Amendment activities need not be subsidized by the state, the discriminatory denial of tax exemptions can impermissibly infringe free speech."
The proper lessons of the unfolding IRS scandal are twofold. First, any effort to have the IRS police advocacy activities of social-welfare organizations is bound to be clumsy and prone to degenerate into either selective or broad witch hunts. Second, the remedy is not to further limit political speech by nonprofit entities—which would certainly raise significant constitutional issues—but to encourage such speech by imposing fewer restrictions.
Messrs. Rivkin and Casey served in the Justice Department during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. They are partners in the Washington, D.C., office of Baker & Hostetler LLP.
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Perdido 03
Perdido 03
Sunday, September 30, 2012
NYSED Commissioner King: An Education Reform Hypocrite
He goes on to write:
How is he doing this?
Oh, right - it's because
b) Because he's a hypocrite.
1. He appropriately credits a dynamic teacher with inspiring him yet aids the current culture of ed reform that - let's be honest - would take away dynamics due to more test prep.
I along with countless other teachers am dynamic in the classroom but once it becomes official and my students test results dictate if I pay my mortgage and feed my children I can't help but think I would become less dynamic due to being forced to focus more on the details of a standardized test that dictates my future.
He spent a mere three years as a teacher yet is the "top dog" in this state as far as education goes - two of those years in a charter where true discipline codes exist yet he knows full well that the same codes of behavior is NOT backed up by the many districts in this state the way there were for him at the charter.
The guy is Ivy League educated yet is clueless to the common sense idea that as Da Vinci once stated:" The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance."
The guy most likely, as many who have left the classroom for higher positions (APs, Principals, Superintendents etc.)still thinks of himself as an educator. I've had some personally tell me this once a teacher always a teacher crap. I shout BS on that - I always have. Get back in the classroom, get chalk on your pants and shirt, wait in line with the rest of the students at the water fountain. Play the many parts a teacher does within a day for more than just three years. I can go on and on - any teacher reading this knows the deal.
As a New Yorker who grew up "in the neighborhoods," I'd like to know specifically Mr. King what neighborhood did you grow up in that taught you to be such a hypocrite and treat and expect from others what you did not experience or give your own children - Not the neighborhoods I grew up in - I would have gotten my ass kicked.
2. Well said, anon.
And that Da Vinci quote is emblematic of every corporate education reform I can think of - from VAM to high stakes accountability to online schooling to blended learning to merit pay to - well, you get the idea.
1. Yes I do RBE. Keep up the great work.
3. Yes, and now we have Exxon Mobil on network TV tooting the horn of the Common Core reform. Isn't this kind of like putting the fox in the hen house, saying he's there to benefit the hens? I hope the irony doesn't pass anyone with a brain..
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I Feel That I Have a Lot of Different Sides to My Personality
Totally This......
People judge by looks, we all do, even me.people see me as very sweet, quiet and kind of weak. Someone who hasn't got much grit I guess. At times I feel like people put me in a box and put limits on me.
There are other sides to my personality rather then just being sweet and nice. I would like to think I am strong, more wise then people give me credit for as well as a lot deeper. I also know I am a lot more complex then people could ever imagine. They think I am happy and always calm but they can't see the storm that is going on inside me and in my eyes. They assume I never lose it, never have meltdowns and am forever calm. It just isn't true. I look young and am tiny but I think a lot older and more deeply then others my age. They don't know my past, what I have come through to get to this point. I guess the lesson learnt is never assume you know a person and never assume there is just one layer to someone. There are many layers to a person and I guess we have to select carefully who we reveal these too.
4 responses
• 0
I know how you feel, when people look at you and make judgement of you. I don't like being treated like I am ugly or repulsive. I am no different than them. We are all human beings, bleed the same.
Jan 19
• 0
I don't think you are weak. You are human. I understand thinking deeply, I do it often.
Jan 18
• 0
Yes. I am similar but completely different.
Jan 14
• 0
Jenni, you are very wise and very old for your years. There will be a special person that will see this about you very soon...and they will understand these things about you without your having to say a word! I know it. You'll be amazed when they mention that they "get" you...Don't feel alone because you aren't, Someone very special is around the corner, don't miss them and do not be shy to notice them when they show up!!! xxxxxxx
Feb 12
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Reply to this comment
NothingButTheTruth writes:
in response to lenorealexander3#776736:
I dont know where you have gotten your numbers. It costs almost nothing to continuously monitor. Hospitals already have these machines. It saves hospitals an average of $110,000 for every "code" they avoid. As I said, the hospitals that are doing this, have gotten down to almost zero. This is actually a case where everyone wins
I got the numbers from the article - read it.
The $5000 is the monthly amount of the $60k.
I can't attest to the figures the article presented, but the point is fixing the problem likely is cheaper than: (a) lawyer costs of defending a lawsuit; (b) thousands or millions in a lost damage claim.
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Take the tour ×
I recently installed tomcat on my OS X 10.5 box and while I was playing around with the ~/profile I accidentally put in a bad alias and saved it. Long story short every time I open up the Terminal app it tries to launch the alias and hangs up and is unresponsive with keyboard commands.
I tried deleting my Home folder -> Library -> Preferences -> com.apple.terminal.plist
This did not work.... However when I create another user on the system the Terminal works fine.
It's prob some hidden file in the Home directory I assume? But I have had no such luck with rigging my Mac to view hidden files. Please help!
share|improve this question
superuser.com or apple.stackexchange.com would be better places to ask this. – user135 Oct 27 '10 at 18:11
If you have root enabled on the machine (From what I recall, OS X ships with root in some sort of disabled state, but you can enable it), you should be able to log in as that and fix your files. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Oct 27 '10 at 18:14
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Oct 27 '10 at 18:19
This question came from our site for professional and enthusiast programmers.
4 Answers
Are you the only user? If so on a new users name (give them admin priveledges) do the following:
sudo rm /home/useryoumesseduptheterminalfor/.bash_profile
or if its just called '.profile':
sudo rm /home/useryoumesseduptheterminalfor/.profile
that will remove the file and you will again be able to use terminal without hangups.
share|improve this answer
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pressing Shift-cmd-. should toggle showing hidden files in finder, without having to use the terminal. Do this, find your .profile file, open it with textedit and fix your mistake.
share|improve this answer
Ahh - this may only work in 10.6.. – xdumaine Oct 27 '10 at 18:36
Only works in file dialogs, not the actual Finder windows. (But still probably the easiest way, all others are destructive or fail with FileVault) – Daniel Beck Oct 27 '10 at 18:42
add comment
You can display the hidden files in the terminal with the following command:
cd /Users/newuser
ls -al
All the files which contains a "." in front of the filename, are hidden files..
If you have found the file you need you can view the content with the following command:
cat .hiddenfile OR less .hiddenfile
Then copy out the things you need for restoring the .profile file. I hope that's what you wanted..
share|improve this answer
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How about doing:
$ sudo mv -i /Users/YourMainAccountName/.profile /Users/YourMainAccountName/busted_profile
from the new user you just created?
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Pres. Obama to outline 'new course' for NASA at Thursday event
However, the White House's proposed overhaul of NASA's funding structure has so far piqued many members of Congress, some of whom charge it would leave the agency without a clearly defined mission or means to get there.
Among early the early critics are Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tx.) and David Vitter (R-La.), who have questioned the logic behind the administration's emphasis on research and have promised to fight the end of the shuttle program.
Still others fear the effective end of NASA's shuttle program will result in thousands of lost jobs, at Kennedy Space Center or elsewhere. Bolden himself confirmed as much in an interview with reporters last week, noting he felt the elimination of agency positions was a "very serious and real concern."
"But this is what we call progress, unfortunately," Bolden said. "If you look at every area of technology in this country, as you advance there are fewer and fewer manual-type jobs. That's what happens when you advance technology."
"We're doing everything within our power ... to help everybody understand we're expanding the amount of programs we have so that we can try to put people to work who are interested in being a part of the space program," he continued. "Are we going to be able to employ everybody that used to work in shuttle? No, we're not. But that was never a vision."
Still, the president's NASA budget will require congressional approval -- a period during which lawmakers will have the opportunity to amend, if not totally reverse, the administration's proposed changes.
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Run/Review HR7010 Report
Employee Set-Up & Maintenance in SCUPPS overview.gif
Run/Review HR7010 Report
icon-pdf.gif Printer-Friendly PDF Version
HR personnel run and review the HR7010 report after they have added or updated specific information on an employee’s record in SCUPPS to ensure that the data will pass via the interface to SEMA4. This report will display the status of transactions as either passing or failing the interface, and will also include an error code and brief explanation for transactions that are failing. There are two versions of the HR7010 report. A brief description of each version is shown below.
This variation of the HR7010 displays the transactions for the current pay period, the two prior pay periods, and one day, the status of these transactions and any data differences between SCUPPS and SEMA4.
This variation of the HR7010 allows you to select the period of time for which transactions are displayed. This variation is typically used to review future dated transactions.
web.gif Refer to HR7010 SEMA4 Interface Audit Report for detailed information regarding the HR7010 report.
web.gif Refer to Interface Errors for descriptions of interface error codes.
Note: It is suggested that campuses run a full HR7010 report each pay period and that reports are retained for a period of three months.
star.gif Transactions are not sent through the interface until the pay period in which they are effective.
This step-by-step instruction is complete.
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Knowledge: How Hemp Oil Cures Cancer And Why No One Knows
Knowledge: Why Baby Carrots Are Killing You
Thursday, November 15, 2012
The Creepy Reptilian Conspiracy Theory
One of the most bizarre conspiracy theories has to be the one that suggests a race of reptilian-like race of humanoids are taking over the planet.
People who believe this theory also think some of the reptilians include world leaders like George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth II, and celebrities like Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie.
TruTV checked the evidence to see if the conspiracy is more than just a theory.
In the season premiere episode of Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura, the team investigates a harrowing story of full-body transformation, politicians hellbent on world domination and lizard people who may be among us.
Here's the full story behind this bizarre conspiracy theory. Is it the terrifying truth or silly hogwash?
Angkor Wat
Like the pyramids, the famous temple of in the jungles of Cambodia was built by early reptilian settlers as a communication channel to the stars. Some believe that these ancient centers may also have been where selective interbreeding took place between reptilians, recreated here from an eyewitness account, and human victims.
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The Royal Family
In the 5th century A.D., the Reptilians took advantage of the collapse of the Roman Empire to establish the Merovingian dynasty, a line of kings that first produced Charlemagne and eventually the rest of European Royalty. The reason the Royals continue to interbreed is because the reptilians don't want to dilute their genetic makeup with more human genes.
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Evidence Of Reptilians
Some pinpoint the arrival of reptilians on earth to 10,000 years ago. When they arrived, so the story goes, they built the pyramids at Giza in the exact formation of the constellation Leo. This arrangement might have been some kind of interstellar communication device that fell out of use when the Earth's axis tilted slightly away from Leo and toward Taurus.
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What The Experts Fear
Why are governments spending billions on a space station when unemployment is high and the economy is in tatters? Because the reptilian leaders of worldwide governments are preparing to return to their home planet and need to create an advance base out of the eyes of normal human beings.
Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos
Missing Children?
During the Middle Ages, the reptilians were also stealing children. In those days, however, they deflected blame away from themselves by creating the anti-Semitic myth of blood libel — the rumor that Jews needed the blood of Christians babies to bake their matzo. For centuries, the reptilians have been responsibility for the violence persecution of the Jews. Some conspiracy theorists believe that, to this day, reptilians steal children to perform bloody rituals.
Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos
Breeding Between Aliens And Humans
It's not a coincidence that it was a reptile that brought Adam and Eve's downfall. Some believe that the story of the Garden of Eden is actually a story about how the reptilians came to Earth, tricked primitive human beings, and claimed all of Earth's bounty for themselves.
Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos
The Reptilians Want To Enslave Us
The reptilians' obsession with keeping their bloodline pure resulted in an obsession with genetics. The money thrown at the human genome project came from secret reptilian backers. Their purported plan is to understand the human genome so that it can be manipulated to create reptilian slaves that will drive out the human race.
Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos
Jennie Gosbell aka Susan Reed Found Dead
Gosbell, who wrote an expose about the Reptilian race under the alias "Susan Reed," was found dead in her swimming pool in the Bahamas. But what caused her to drown? No one can say with certainty. A posting on RINF News (which follows Reptilian stories) noted that it doesn't matter what the coroner says: "The death would be ruled suicide if psychotronic maser [sic] weapons were used and there would be no evidence of murder."
Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos
Psychics Freak Out Over Reptilians
This woman and her friend, who claims to be a Reptilian shape-shifter, act like they can communicate with other lizard people. But we remain unconvinced.
Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos
The Secret Army Base
Jesse Ventura's team found what their contacts claim is a clandestine military facility in the desert, which the Reptilians will use as a launching point for a world takeover. But without solid evidence, all of this is just one big theory.
Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos
Do Reptilians Control The Presidency?
Why should a democracy have an almost king-like figure ruling at its head? When the U.S. became the first democracy in the 1780s, the reptilians helped to draft a government in which a significant amount of power is vested in one man — or, in this case, reptilian. That way the reptilian rulers were still able to control most of the power in the new nation.
Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos
David Icke Believes
Icke has written: "The reptilian and other entities, which are manipulating our world by possessing 'human' bodies, operate in frequencies between the Third and Fourth densities. These are referred to as 'hidden spaces and planes unknown to man.'" Should we believe him?
Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos
Source: TRUtv
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I want to inject the myscript.php code into my handler page. Here are the source:
var myArr = Array();
function myfunc(){
// some code
function handleArray(arr){
// some code
$("container").observe('click', function(evt){
new Ajax.Request('myscript.php', {
evalScripts: 'true',
onFailure: function(e){
onSuccess: function(t){
<script type="text/javascript">
var myArr = Array("hello", "world");
<div id="abc">some html code</html>
Basically I have my functions defined in my handler page, and myscript.php holds the necessary data for handler page to handle. While the above does make an Ajax request to myscript.php, the returned code does not get evaluated. It shows as Object Object instead of treating it as html. I ported the same code to jQuery and set datatype:"Script", everything works fine. While switching to jQuery is not an option to me since the entire code base is built on top of prototype, I would love to know how I can have prototype to treat the returned page as script.
I do noticed there is a similar thread Prototype Ajax.Updater Eval Javascript Functions that says wrapping the function as anonymous function and turning on evalJS flag will solve the problem, it doesn't seem like a workaround in my case as I have couple of variables and functions declared, I have no idea how to make all of them anonymous. Any help will be greatly appreciated and let me know if you need more info.
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1 Answer
The evaluated script blocks will be processed in the scope of the Ajax functions, so...
becomes a local variable in that function only. It is unavailable and discarded moments later. Make the returned script (myscript.php) update global myArr instead.
share|improve this answer
Well, in my case putting var is optional as variables are global variables already. Making this change does not solve the issue. – John Dickson Dec 3 '10 at 21:09
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Will My Top Chip Stock in 2012 Outperform Again in 2013?
In the video below, Eric Bleeker discusses why Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE: TSM), a company he singled out as the top chip stock heading into 2012, performed so well last year. A transcript follows the video.
Austin Smith: Eric, I wanted to talk to you and revisit some of the top chip stocks of 2012.
Eric Bleeker: Yeah. At the end of 2011, I had actually suggested that a company, Taiwan Semiconductor, was the top chip stock for 2012.
Well, I'm now looking back and since that call, Taiwan Semi is up about 50%. Why is this happening? It would be easy to dismiss chip manufacturing as just a commoditized business. Doesn't it strike you as a commoditized business?
Austin: It does, although there is some advanced technology there. I mean, it's not a business I would really be excited about owning.
Eric: Exactly. But so many unique trends are playing out, and the innovation at this bleeding edge is leading to huge consolidation within the industry, which is improving gross margins once again, is being able to bring large customers to Taiwan Semi, and the result has been a 50% increase since I made that call, which, for a company of its size, is awesome. It's also a company paying out 3% plus dividends the whole way.
Let's look at it. What's the situation? Well, right now we not only have Taiwan Semi basically executing in a consolidating industry that's pushing out the smaller players because it's so expensive to keep moving up, technology-wise. They're also looking at getting Apple as a customer, who is doing everything they can to get out of Samsung's grasp.
That's driving them from the story, but what's truly amazing is just the raw dynamics. Their big competitor, Samsung, has to produce 500 million of its own phones or mobile devices next year. That doesn't leave a lot of capacity for other players.
GlobalFoundries is a great competitor, too, but they're much smaller. Taiwan Semi, you just have to go through them. They're becoming a toll booth. The one big concern for them is Intel, but there's no guarantees that Intel is even going to enter the manufacturing market.
I think the only troubling issue with Taiwan Semi, and what could hold them up is valuation. They're about 17 P/E, but if we look at the triumvirate of mobile players, where ARM owns the architecture, Qualcomm owns the design, and Taiwan Semi owns the manufacturing, Taiwan Semi is actually the cheapest-trading of that group. [Qualcomm is also a key customer of Taiwan Semiconductor.]
Do I think we'll see another 50% gain in 2013? No. It's just a little too big at this point. Its P/E is probably not going to expand to the level there, but do I think it's a great stalwart in your portfolio? Yeah. It's still a great chip stock to own in the year ahead.
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Yes, remove personalization. No, do not remove personalization.
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Static initializers
August 29, 2011
Globals and singletons are already well-known as a design antipattern, but they have an interesting additional cost. Consider a global (I include file-level static in this category) value that has initialization code. That code must be run at startup (which leads to the static initialization order fiasco, though that is not the point of this post).
Because this initialization code is run at startup, before even main() is entered, it is in the critical path for startup. It turns out that even simple code must be paged in off disk, which can lead to disk seeks, and disk seeks murder your startup performance.
This is not hypothetical: with ChromeOS we found that innocuous-seeming static initializers in Chrome were actually affecting the bottom line of startup performance. (Note: that observation comes from a coworker; I'm not sure whether he was using a non-SSD machine at the time or if it also happens on SSDs. Just guessing, but paging in more code, especially code that is non-contiguous, must have some non-zero cost even on the SSDs that ChromeOS relies upon.)
Because of this cost we attempt to track static initialization on our performance bots and prevent new checkins from adding more. (Ideally we'd remove them all but progress is slow.) I recently looked into how this works and I thought it'd be useful to write it down before I forget.
How constructors are implemented
The compiler creates, for each object file, a function that contains the constructors for the file. Pointers to these functions are collected in a table at link time. At startup, __do_global_ctors_aux iterates through the table and calls each function. (Here's a nice page that walks through the disassembly.) Conceptually, to judge the cost of all static constructors you might want to do something like sum the size of all of these functions, but for our purposes we care about disk seeks; even doing more work in a single static constructor is fine if we reduce the total number of functions paged in, which means the size of the constructor table is the statistic of interest.
The table of functions shows up as the .ctors section of the executable. You can dump table via commands like (note that the first entry is -1, the rest are addresses):
$ objdump --full-content --section=.ctors path/to/binary
or in gdb,
(gdb) x/1000xg &__CTOR_LIST__
The gdb output is perhaps useful since it will decode little-endian for you. (N.b. that "g" trailing the "x" command prints 64-bit pointers; adjust as necessary locally.)
For a Chrome binary I glanced at the ctor list appears to be in pointer order, which means you can see how much of the resulting binary they span by subtracting the last entry from the first. From my random debugging build: 30mb, not good.
Constructors versus static initialization
Note that data that is initialized to a constant is implemented in a different way: the constant value can just be placed in the right place at compile time, so there is no cost. In contrast, C++ objects that have constructors involve code and must be computed at runtime. You'll also sometimes encounter code that initializes variables with function calls (like we did with the mysterious IcedTea crash).
You might also notice that static data can be shared between multiple instances of the same executable, while initialized memory is private; see my post about how memory works for more on that.
I noticed with some interest that the Go programming language, designed in part by compiler hackers, neatly sidesteps some of the above problems: by defining initialization order carefully ("The importing of packages, by construction, guarantees that there can be no cyclic dependencies in initialization.") and by only allowing simple values as constant initializers. See their manual for more.
What to do about it
Mozilla hackers have found that Linux is pathologically bad in how it runs the resulting ctor list, and it looks like they have at least considered fixing that manually. We have chatted about doing the same, but fundamentally I believe the way to keep startup fast is to do less. See also my earlier post about performance.
It appears that the generated functions that run these constructors get names starting with _GLOBAL__I_. This means a call like
$ nm out/Debug/chrome | grep _GLOBAL__I
will dump a list of all files that have a global constructor. Go delete some code!
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Look into our crystal ball...so Tim and Moby can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about crystals! In this BrainPOP movie, they’ll clue you in to the mineral composition of some common crystals, and they’ll even tell you about some crystals that you might have sitting in your kitchen cabinets. In the process, you’ll learn why crystals have color and why they form in such regular shapes. You’ll also discover why a scientist would ever want to x-ray a rock! Rock on!
Watch the Science movie about Crystals »
What are crystals and how do they form?
What is a lattice?
How can you grow your own crystals?
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Nature's Government 1st edition
Science, Imperial Britain and the 'Improvement' of the World
Nature's Government 0 9780300059762 0300059760
Details about this item
Nature's Government: 'Nature's Government' is a daring attempt to juxtapose the histories of Britain, western science, and imperialism. It shows how colonial expansion, from the age of Alexander the Great to the twentieth century, led to complex kinds of knowledge. Science, and botany in particular, was fed by information culled from the exploration of the globe. At the same time science was useful to imperialism: it guided the exploitation of exotic environments and made conquest seem necessary, legitimate, and beneficial. Drayton traces the history of this idea of 'improvement' from its Christian agrarian origins in the sixteenth century to its inclusion in theories of enlightened despotism. It was as providers of legitimacy, as much as of universal knowledge, aesthetic perfection, and agricultural plenty, he argues, that botanic gardens became instruments of government, first in Continental Europe, and by the late eighteenth century, in Britain and the British Empire. At the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the rise of which throughout the nineteenth century is a central theme of this book, a pioneering scientific institution was added to a spectacular ornamental garden. At Kew, 'improving' the world became a potent argument for both the patronage of science at home and Britain's prerogatives abroad. 'Nature's Government' provides a portrait of how the ambitions of the Enlightenment shaped the great age of British power, and how empire changed the British experience and the modern world. Richard Drayton was born in the Caribbean and educated at Harvard, Oxford, and Yale. A former Fellow of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, and Lincoln College, Oxford, he has also been Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia.
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UBM Tech
UBM Tech
Hot, cold, and broken: Thermal-design techniques
By Paul Rako, Technical Editor - March 29, 2007
Both heat and cold can have an adverse effect on your circuits. At extremely high temperatures, chips may burn up (Figure 1). More commonly, if your design is subject to temperatures you did not expect, many of the parts may fall out of specified limits. When this scenario happens, your circuits may not perform as you would expect. Equally concerning is a scenario in which circuits' temperatures go from hot to cold and then back again. Such situations can cause thermal shock and can even destroy components. Many engineers do not worry about the performance of their circuits at low temperatures, but this lack of concern is a mistake. The performance of semiconductor devices can change dramatically at low temperatures. The base-emitter junction voltage of bipolar transistors rises significantly in low temperatures (Figure 2 and Reference 1). "To design an amplifier that can operate on 1.8V at negative temperatures, you need to consider that VBE [base-emitter voltage] will increase by 130 mV from room temperature to –40°C," says Francisco Santos, product-development-engineering manager at Analog Devices. "This situation will force the designer into a different set of amplifier architectures."
Many amplifiers, such as the Analog Devices AD8045, speed up when they get cold (Figure 3), whereas others, such as the AD8099 slow down when they get cold. "Most of the trouble with cold in bipolar is low-voltage operation," says Bill Gross, now retired, former vice president and general manager of signal-conditioning products at Linear Technology. He says that higher base-emitter voltage and lower current gain make it more difficult to meet specifications. "Lower input impedance and mismatches in beta [current gain] cause bigger problems in the cold," he says, "especially if they are trimmed for room temperature. The higher gm [transconductance] is easy to compensate for by changing the operating current, but then the slew rate varies."
Low temperatures cause oscillations, instability, overshoot, and poor filter performance. The parts-per-million measurement can change your component values at both high and low temperatures. If you expect the IC die to work from –55 to +85°C, there are only 60° from a 25° ambient to the hottest temperature, but there are 80° from ambient to –55°C. So, make sure that your error budgets examine both the hot and the cold regimes. James McLaughlin, professor of electrical engineering at Kettering University (Flint, MI), says that, as you heat silicon past several hundred degrees, it "goes intrinsic." In other words, the temperatures would get high enough that the dopants would migrate through the lattice, and there would be no more PN junctions, just a block of conducting, impure silicon. Would the bond wires explode, or would the silicon continue to melt until it vaporized?
The damage to ICs running at higher temperatures can be subtler. Martin DeLateur, consultant and former product engineer at National Semiconductor, points out that at temperatures higher than 165°C, the molding compound starts to carbonize. At this point, the molding compound turns into a hard, gray material. Outgassing, the slow release of a gas that some material trapped, froze, absorbed, or adsorbed, causes the release of polymer additives, such as fire retardant. At low levels, this outgassing can impact an IC's short- and long-term operation by adding ions or surface effects to the chip. The bond wires, which may be conducting excessive current, also carbonize the mold compound. This excessive current can cause the hardening of carbon tubes, which might melt the bond wire yet keep it conductive inside the tube. Eventually, the higher thermal expansion cracks the passivation, die, or carbonized-molding compound and causes massive failure. (Military specifications define excessive current as that exceeding 1.2×105A/cm2; thus, the military insists on hermetically sealed packaging for ICs.) No charring or degradation occurs when there is no plastic on the die. Oil-well-instrumentation companies often test and characterize silicon ICs at 200°C for use in their products. These products have limited lifetime but work far longer than if they were in plastic packages. ICs have shorter lifetimes even when die temperatures are less than 150°C.
In 1884, Dutch chemist Jacobus H van't Hoff first proposed the Arrhenius equation, and Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius physically justified and interpreted it five years later. In the equation, k=Ae(–Ea/RT), k is the rate coefficient, A is a constant, Ea is the activation energy, R is the universal gas constant, and T is the temperature in degrees Kelvin. Arrhenius initially applied the equation to chemical reactions to describe the speedup of reactions with temperature (reference 2 and reference 3). Engineers now also use it to describe the shorter life of electronics when they run at high temperatures. The equation implies that every 10°C rise in temperature halves the lifetime of the part. Thus, it is essential to reduce silicon temperatures in your designs. If you can reduce IC temperatures from 85 to 65°C, you quadruple the life of those components.
The cause of problems can be not only the static presence of heat or cold, but also the change from one temperature to another. In extreme cases, thermal shock can rip boards and parts into pieces. Temperature gradients, such as those that create small voltage errors, can also cause problems due to the thermocouple effect of the solder and pin materials (Reference 4). Moreover, the temperature gradients themselves can be dynamic. The late Bob Widlar, a pioneering electronics engineer who worked at National Semiconductor, Fairchild, Maxim, and Linear Technology, once received prototype silicon that stopped working at 1 kHz. Widlar discerned that waves of heat were radiating outward from the output transistors. These waves propagated symmetrically through the silicon die. The problem was that the IC had two reference nodes that were unequally spaced from the output transistors. Operating at 1 kHz, one of the referenced nodes was in a thermal trough, while the other was in a thermal crest. This situation so unbalanced the bias circuits that the part stopped working properly. Because of these thermal gradients, some power-supply designers prefer to use controllers rather than ICs with built-in power FETs. With controllers, the heat from the FETs does not wash across the same die and over the amplifiers and reference circuits.
Analyzing heat
Analyzing heat in your circuit is a three-step process. You estimate the heat produced inside the IC. Then, you estimate the heat that the board or heat sink removes. Finally, you estimate the ambient temperature in which the part will be operating (Figure 4). DC analysis is often trivial when you are estimating the heat that the component produces: A resistor with 1V across it and 1A going through it produces 1W of heat. Estimating the heat that ac or undefined signals produce is more problematic, however. For one thing, the quiescent current that runs from the power to the ground pin is always dissipating a dc-power term. A part with 10V power rails and 5 mA of quiescent current produces 50 mW of heat. However, under operation, that quiescent current may change somewhat. Bias currents and base-drive currents usually increase when they encounter ac signals. The biggest challenge is figuring out how much heat the output current of the part is creating. This estimation may not be obvious. A part can deliver sizable power to a load, but if the output transistors are either all the way on or all the way off, the power the part dissipates internally will be relatively small. With conventional totem-pole output stages, like those that most amplifiers use, outputting a rail-to-rail square wave is not the most thermally demanding task. The worst-case heat production inside the IC occurs when the part outputs a square wave with an amplitude one-half of the power-supply span. If the part is working on ±12V rails, a ±6V p-p square wave creates the most heat in the output stage. A sine-wave output has lower internal heating. If the signals are complex or indeterminate, it may be difficult to estimate the true worst-case heat production of the IC. Reactive loads with large capacitive or inductive components further complicate the power-dissipation estimation. The voltage and current are not in phase, so the simple assumption about a half-swing square wave becomes false.
You can use Spice to estimate power dissipation if you can characterize the signals that the ICs will be passing. You must ensure that the Spice models are proper and that they give reasonable results on a few test signals in which the power-dissipation calculation is trivial. Figure 5 shows a Spice schematic. The power that the chip dissipates differs from the power that arrives at the load. Figure 6 is the Spice plot of the schematic in Figure 5. It shows oscillation in the red trace at start-up. Whether this oscillation will occur in the circuit is anyone's guess, but it should cause you to look for this behavior after you build the prototype. Bear in mind that clicking the W button in Orcad Capture displays only the quiescent power consumption of the chips. To get the operating power dissipation, use the power markers on the schematic and then use the rms-math function on the plot program to give the average power dissipation in the part.
The board or heat sink removes heat from your IC through convection, conduction, or radiation. Conduction removes heat primarily through the metal lead frames and board copper. Once board copper or a discrete heat sink spreads the heat, then convection transfers the heat by providing enough surface area for the heat to dissipate into the air. Radiation is rarely a viable method of heat removal. Satellite designers use radiation because no other way exists to remove heat from the system. Because looking out into space presents a radiant temperature close to absolute zero, the temperature differential is large enough to allow a sufficient amount of heat to transfer to space, so the satellite electronics do not burn up.
Convection involves some complications. For example, airflow has an effect on commercial heat sinks (Figure 7). Note the five-times improvement in thermal resistance with high airflows. Heat sinks that use forced-air cooling have thinner and more closely spaced fins, as examination of a fan-type CPU cooler will prove. If your product has no fan, the heat from your IC will conduct and spread out and then transfer to the air inside the unit. Then, as the whole unit heats up, the heat transfers convectively to the ambient air, along with some conductive transfer if the unit is sitting on your legs. The thermal resistance of the case material then becomes important. A plastic case more slowly transfers heat from the inside to the outside ambient than does a metal case.
Engineers who work on noncabin electronics for fighter jets understand that a jet operates at altitudes as high as 70,000 feet. At that elevation, the air is so thin that convective cooling becomes ineffective. These systems have a cold plate with ethyl-glycol cooling passages that guarantee that the plate will get no hotter than 80°C. Every part physically contacts a metal heat spreader that can take the heat from the components to the edge of the board. At the edge of the board, a thermally effective clamping system presses this heat spreader to the sides of the case. The side of the case takes the heat down to the cold plate on which the case resides. Thermal grease ensures the maximum heat transfer to the cold plate and ensures the maximum transfer from ICs to heat sinks.
Most electrical engineers are comfortable with using thermal resistance as a thermal-analysis technique. You express thermal resistances in units of degrees Celsius per watt. You simply multiply the number of watts you estimated in the first step to get the degrees-in-Celsius temperature increase that the part will experience. Several cautions are in order here. Look for the subscripts on the thermal-resistance specification on the part's data sheet. The thermal resistance from die to case, ΦJC, is not a useful measurement. IC or package designers at the semiconductor manufacturer may care about the IC's temperature rise as heat flows from the die to the case, but you need far more information. The next spec you frequently encounter on the data sheet is the thermal resistance from the junction to ambient, ΦJA. This value measures the temperature rise when the part is not connected to a heat sink or soldered into a PCB (printed-circuit board). Darvin Edwards, a Texas Instruments fellow, points out that ΦJA is a useless measurement for most engineers when predicting junction temperature. "What matters is the thermal resistance from the die to the board [ΦJB] and the thermal resistance from the die to the package surface [ΦJC]," he says. "We use two JEDEC [Joint Electron Device Engineering Council]-standard boards to measure ΦJA to show the engineer it is not a package constant. One is single-sided, and one is multilayer. If you have ΦJB and ΦJC specifications, you have a far better chance of estimating a realistic temperate rise of the IC." He also points out that engineers must remember that the ΦJA measurement takes place with no other chips on the board. When power-supply and other heat-dissipating chips are around the IC and when the board is in a restrictive plastic enclosure with no fan, the actual temperature rise is higher than the ΦJA measurement suggests (Figure 8). Also bear in mind that little heat transfers from the plastic top of most ICs. Epoxy plastic has a 0.6 to 1W/mK (meter-Kelvin) thermal conductivity, and copper has 400W/mK thermal conductivity. Thus, copper is 400 to 600 times more thermally conductive than plastic, and the design of the PCB to maximize thermal conduction is critical.
More sophisticated methods exist for estimating heat removal from the board. National Semiconductor's Webench on-line-design tool uses Flomerics' Flotherm thermal-analysis software to calculate part temperatures in still air. All the usual simulation caveats apply. If your circuit has a fan and some airflow, its temperature will increase less. If it has an enclosure and other parts inside, its temperature will increase more. Flomerics uses finite-element-solution techniques (Reference 5). Figure 9 shows the result of analyzing a computer case for heat generation and airflow. Many other finite-element solvers can analyze this problem, as well. For example, a solver from Comsol can perform multiphysics, so it can solve partial differential equations for more than one problem, such as the thermal response of a part that has a changing thermal conductivity based on its temperature. TI's Edwards points out that his company provides two levels of thermal-modeling abstraction: ΦJB resistance and the Delphi-compact-model standard. Flotherm, Icepak, and many other thermal-analysis programs use these models.
The final step in heat analysis, estimating the ambient temperature, is fundamental. A motorcycle with an air-cooled engine undergoes a certain temperate rise over ambient as you drive it. If the ambient air gets 10° higher, so does the cylinder-head temperature. Your electronic system is the same. For example, your chips may operate at 50°C on your lab bench where the air is 25°C. When you place those chips in a 50°C ambient temperature, the chips' temperature will reach 75°C. In this step of analyzing heat, engineers sometimes fail to account for the ambient environment in which their parts may have to work. Aside from simply working, those parts must also survive. For example, the rework-paint oven in an auto plant exposes all the electronics to higher temperatures than they would ever see in a car's remaining lifetime. Mercifully, the parts can survive this treatment because the automaker does not power them up during this process. Many engineers do not appreciate how extreme the environment can get. We all know satellites in outer space can have temperature swings from a few degrees above absolute zero to hundreds of degrees Celsius as they go from the shade to the sun.
Challenging environments abound here on earth, as well. Bruce Robinson, test-development engineer for Nissan America, works at the automaker's desert proving grounds in Arizona. He reports that Nissan generally estimates maximum temperatures as: 46°C ambient day temperature, 81°C interior-air temperature, 111°C maximum instrument-panel-surface temperature, and 82°C interior-component temperature. In other words, you can boil water on the top of the instrument panel. Think about this fact if you design vehicle electronics.
Without question, most engineers trip up when they fail to understand the nested levels of ambient temperature. For example, imagine designing a part that goes on the optical-pickup unit of a CD player (Figure 10). You might assume that, because the part is for a consumer product, it could operate at 0 to 70°C. Think twice. The part on your lab bench may be operating in a 25°C environment. However, the optical-power unit mounts inside the CD drive. Other components inside the drive heat the air. The unit may not have a fan. Even worse, the player resides in a computer. The drive must work in that ambient temperature. The inside of the computer has its own heat sources and fans. The outside-world ambient temperature adds on to all this heat. So, the 25°C ambient temperature you measured on the bench becomes 40°C in the computer and 50°C inside the CD drive. Now, what if you put the computer in a hot upstairs room in Ecuador? The part might have to operate at ambient temperature far above 70°C. It is your job to make sure that it can still meet specifications and that the high temperatures do not radically shorten the product's life.
A dose of reality
Performing design estimates and Spice simulations is fine, but, at some time in the development process, you must face the reality of what you have designed. Reality involves prototyping the circuit in the correct form, fit, and finish. Then, you can use various measurement techniques to verify all the nice theory you've done so far. It is imperative to re-create the expected operating environment as closely as possible. Your priorities are to determine first whether the circuit will break, then whether it will last, and finally whether it will work as expected in all conditions.
You may recall that a poorly designed and installed in-flight-entertainment system caused the crash of Swissair Flight 111 on Sept 2, 1998 (Reference 6). Arcing from wiring of the in-flight-entertainment network ignited flammable covering on insulation blankets and quickly spread across other flammable materials. If the designers at the small company that produced the system had insisted on testing in the 8000-foot-altitude atmosphere of a passenger plane, they would have understood that the disk-drive heads flew closer to the platters and that the heat of the entire system was difficult to remove. TI's Edwards points out that 10,000 feet of altitude reduces the convective cooling of systems by 20%. Verifying that all the engineering assumptions correlate with reality is the only way you can ensure that the design will perform electrically as well as thermally. The 229 passengers on Swissair 111 lost their lives because the in-flight system's designers bypassed this reality check.
Two essential measuring devices for all engineers are their sense of touch and their sense of smell. Most of you are all too familiar with the pungent odor of melted electronics. Those with good olfactory senses can even smell the subtle odor from a chip that is approaching 70°C. You can also put touch to good use on circuits that contain no lethal voltages. If you can hold your finger on the part for more than five seconds, the part's temperature is lower than 70°C. Most people overestimate the heat they sense with their fingers. Often, they estimate a temperature of 70°C when it is only 50°C. If you wet your finger, wipe the part with it, and the part sizzles, you are in trouble, because having any part at a temperature higher than 100°C is bad news. Again, the ambient temperature around your lab bench is the most beneficial environment.
Once you have made rough estimates, you must do some real measurement. Most DVMs (digital voltmeters) have accessories that allow you to connect thermocouples. Fluke and other vendors make handheld instruments that accept two thermocouples for measuring the chip along with the ambient temperature around it. You should measure the IC's temperature increase over the ambient temperature. National Instruments, IO Tech, and many other data-acquisition-equipment manufacturers can help you set up measurement systems with hundreds of thermocouples, thermistors, and platinum RTD (resistance-temperature-detector) sensors. Be careful regarding the size of the sensor and the gauge of the wires. When you measure a small IC, the thermocouple wire can conduct heat away, just like a heat sink can, and this conductance lowers the measured temperature. Many manufacturers also offer noncontact-IR (infrared) detectors. When using them, however, note the emissivity of the surface you are measuring. "Emissivity" is a measure of the thermal emittance of a surface—the fraction of energy an object emits relative to that of a "black body," or thermally black surface. A black body is a perfect emitter of heat energy in that it emits all energy it absorbs and has an emissivity value of 1. In contrast, a material with an emissivity value of 0 would be a perfect thermal mirror (Reference 7). A shiny metal package has low emissivity and would thus yield a lower-than-actual-temperature reading. Flat-finish black paint has an emissivity of 1, which is the value that IR detectors measure against. To achieve an emissivity value of 1 for your electronics, you can spray them with flat-finish black paint or simply put a piece of clear tape on the metal package, which yields an emissivity value approaching 1.
Read more In-Depth Technical Features
Many savvy semiconductor manufacturers measure the temperature of the die itself, even when the part is operating in a circuit, using one of the ESD (electrostatic-discharge) diodes that are available on every input, output, and control pin of an IC (Figure 11). You can use this method for ICs having reset or CS (chip-select) lines. You can use many other pins for the measurement, as well. Because the forward drop of a diode is directly proportional to current, you can put the chip into an oven and run a small current through the ESD diode. Most people in the industry feel that a current of 100 μA does not cause any self-heating of the diode. You need not power up the part to measure the diode voltage; you can use any input or output pin above the power pin or below the ground pin. The internal ESD diodes on the pin clamp that pin to approximately 0.6V. If the pin is a reset that needs to remain high for the part to work, then pull the pin above the power pin. As the oven temperature increases, the ESD diode's forward voltage falls from about 0.7 to 0.53V. Similarly, if the extra pin is a chip select that must remain low for the IC to operate, you can pull that pin below the ground pin and take your data for that ESD diode. If the pin is an output, check with the manufacturer to ensure no extraneous currents will prevent the full 100 μA from traversing the diode. You must measure this data for each kind of IC you are measuring; different processes have different voltage/overtemperature relationships. When you are ready to measure the IC as it operates in your circuit, you inject 100 μA into the pin to raise it above VCC or pull 100 μA from the pin to drop it below ground. Then, you can measure the voltage difference and infer the die temperature.
The ESD method is valuable but has limitations. If the IC delivers hundreds of milliamperes, voltage drops may occur internally on the VCC or ground-metallization and bond wires. These voltage drops may add to or subtract from your ESD-diode-voltage measurement. You should consult with the application group or even the IC designer if this situation occurs. To counteract the voltage drop, you can stop the power delivery as you are taking the measurement. Be aware that the thermal time constant of silicon chips is microseconds, so you must take the measurement with a fast scope or acquisition system to ensure that you have not measured the ESD diode's forward voltage after the diode has cooled substantially.
Another worry with the ESD-diode method is that IC chips are not isothermal—that is, they do not have equal or constant temperature with respect to either space or time. Measuring the ESD diode does not always ensure that you have measured the hottest point of the die. The concern here is that the ESD diode, which is always on the edge of the chip, is cooler than the output transistors. You can take an IR-thermal-camera image of the IC die as the IC operates (Figure 12). The bright, white spot in the figure is a full 25°C higher than the edge of the die where the ESD diode resides. The part may need derating when it operates at elevated temperatures (Reference 8). At 150°C, the part may not meet the circuit's needs.
You can use an equally valuable method as the ESD-diode technique to measure the temperature of FETs, even as they operate. This method takes advantage of the fact that the on-resistance of a FET is directly proportional to its temperature. The higher the temperature of the FET, the higher its on-resistance is. By noting the on-resistance at various temperatures, you can infer the temperature of the FET by measuring the voltage across it and the current through it while it operates in the on mode. This method works even for integrated FETs in power-supply chips. Remember that self-heating is always an insidious phenomenon in electronics, so, when you take your on-resistance data in an oven, you must apply a short, fast rise-time pulse current to the FET to ensure that the die is at the same temperature as the oven.
Taking the measurement is just one component of checking reality to verify your assumptions and estimations. You also must create the ambient temperature if it is not readily available. Automobile companies keep test tracks in Arizona and Canada. For electronic testing, a benchtop-test chamber or a temperature-forcing system, such as Thermonics' T-2500E model, may work acceptably (Figure 13). Be sure to use cables and test leads that can withstand the heat. Brown BNC cables have higher temperature ratings than the more commonly available black U58 style (Reference 9). A quick blast from a heat gun may heat up the IC, but be careful; you can easily destroy a part with a heat gun. Freeze sprays are somewhat safer but have the disadvantage of causing frost to form on your circuit and short-circuit the electronics. Test chambers can create ambient environments, including temperature, pressure, and humidity. You may need all three to fully simulate your ambient environment.
In conclusion, you must keep the hazards of thermal design in mind as you design electronic systems. Be wary of external influences that can wreck your design. Communicate with other engineers who are adding their own circuits that will add heat to or subtract it from your circuits. Just as critically, communicate the thermal issues to the mechanical engineers on the team. They can be your best allies to ensure a good thermal design. And when the manager removes the fan and converts the case from metal to plastic, have your thermocouples and test chambers ready to show him why that is a bad idea.
1. Pease, Bob, "What's All This VBE Stuff, Anyhow?".
2. "What Causes Semiconductor Devices to Fail?"Test & Measurement World, Nov 1, 1999.
3. Osterman, Michael, PhD, "We still have a headache with Arrhenius,"Electronics Cooling.
4. Williams, Jim, "Measurement techniques help hit the 1-ppm mark,"EDN, April 26, 2001, pg 117.
5. Rako, Paul, "Beyond Spice,"EDN, Jan 18, 2007, pg 41.
6. Stoller, Gary, "Doomed plane's gaming system exposes holes in FAA oversight,"USA Today, Feb 16, 2003.
8. "Thermal Techniques, Apex AN11," Apex Microtechnology.
9. Kirkwood, A, and Eric Albrecht, "Coaxial Cable Types".
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Coastal Falls at Liberty 6-1
March 2, 2013
Lynchburg, Va. - Coastal Carolina women’s tennis dropped a 6-1 decision at Liberty on Saturday in the Chants’ second Big South Conference match of the weekend.
Coastal’s record now sits at even, 4-4 overall, 1-1 in the conference. Liberty improved to 3-5.
The Flames took two of the three doubles matches to claim the first point of the match.
Coastal’s No. 2 pair of Vanessa Ortiz and Mikaela Davies lost a tough 8-5 match to Brittany Yang and Jessie Boda of the Flames. Dominique De Wit and Libby Scott provided an 8-6 win at No. 3 for the Chants, but the win was too late as Rebekah Jenkins and Nicola Wellman had already downed Shelby Bates and Kourtney Kowal at No. 1 to seal the doubles point for the Flames.
Liberty continued to build its lead in the first singles match as Brittany Yang defeated Kourtney Kowal at No. 4, 6-0, 6-1. Coastal then cut the lead in half after freshman Libby Scott took a 6-1, 6-1 win at No. 1 over Cameron Richard. Liberty, however, would not allow the Chants to earn any more points, as Rebekah Jenkins, Alexandra Sheeran, Nicola Whellman and Valerie Thong won the remaining singles matches, closing out the 6-1 win for the Flames.
“Today was a difficult loss coming off yesterday’s first conference win,” said head coach Catherine Hewitt. “The girls competed, fought hard and were well prepared, but came up short today. Moving forward with our season we look to be more motivated for our big matches.”
Coastal returns home Monday for a conference match against Longwood. The match is set to begin at 2 p.m.
Coastal Carolina vs Liberty
3/2/13 at Lynchburg, Va.
Liberty 6, Coastal Carolina 1
Singles competition
1. Scott, Libby (CCU-W) def. RICHARD, Cameron (LIBERTYW) 6-1, 6-1
2. JENKINS, Rebekah (LIBERTYW) def. Bates, Shelby (CCU-W) 6-4, 3-6, 6-2
3. SHEERAN, Alexandra (LIBERTYW) def. Davies, Mikaela (CCU-W) 6-2, 1-6, 6-2
4. YANG, Brittany (LIBERTYW) def. Kowal, Kourtney (CCU-W) 6-0, 6-1
5. WELLMAN, Nicola (LIBERTYW) def. Robinson, Alicia (CCU-W) 6-3, 4-6, 10-7
6. THONG, Valerie (LIBERTYW) def. De Wit, Dominique (CCU-W) 6-2, 6-3
Doubles competition
1. JENKINS, Rebekah/WELLMAN, Nicola (LIBERTYW) def. BATES, Shelby/KOWAL, Kourtney (CCU-W) 8-5
2. YANG, Brittany/BODA, Jessie (LIBERTYW) def. ORTIZ, Vanessa/DAVIES, Mikaela (CCU-W) 8-5
3. DE WIT, Dominique/SCOTT, Libby (CCU-W) def. THONG, Valerie/RICHARD, Cameron (LIBERTYW) 8-6
Match Notes:
Coastal Carolina 4-4
Liberty 3-5
Order of finish: Doubles (2,1,3); Singles (4,1,6,3,2,5)
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01. Thru Our Scars
02. Abyssal
03. Conspiracy Of Silence
04. Blinded By Fear
05. Mafia
RATING: 8.5/10
You look at the cover art, check out the band name, read the album title, and get the peculiar feeling of something being a tad askew. But the seemingly strange contrast between the understood style of Italy's FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE and the album cover and title logically connect after one reads the lyrics and/or concept synopsis. It just so happens that the "tad askew" part applies to the music as well, in the case of the "Mafia" EP in the most laudatory sense, as the follow-up to last year's debut "Oracles" — itself a winning technically-oriented death metal album with a symphonic twist — outdoes its predecessor in terms of creativity and at least equals it from the standpoint of DM heaviness.
It is a virtual guarantee that "wow" will not only be among the first words out of your mouth during the opening moments of "Thru Our Scars", but will be uttered with increased frequency all the way to the end. "Mafia" is just that kind of album. It is extremely rare that an EP released subsequent to a full-length album — and a debut at that — is such a significant step forward in a band's musical progression. Though unquestionably "Oracles" is a product of the highest quality, the incorporation of symphonic pieces amidst the storm trooping became fairly predictable after a certain point. That is not the case with "Mafia" where a smartly chosen array of eclectic and classy elements does more than offer contrast; it is part and parcel to the success of the song. Such is the case with the violin playing of guest Maria Letizia Massetti and clean vocal parts of bassist Paolo Rossi on "Thru our Scars", which fit shockingly well amidst an otherwise merciless DM onslaught that rivals, even exceeds, that of acts like BEHEMOTH.
But it doesn't stop there. The seven-minute "Abyssal" includes infamous Sicilian mobster Totò "The Beast" Riina's vociferous speech about the mafia's de facto usurpation of State control, as taken from the "Il Capo dei Capi" miniseries (spoken in Italian and translated via the lyrics into English) and serving as a sort of thematic encapsulation in keeping with the group's description of the album concept (as follows). "The album focuses on the connection between racketeering and illness. It's like a hidden sickness that consumes us from deep within and that can't be erased unless you decide to wake up and face it. "Mafia is like an octopus whose tentacles grab everyone's free will…". And there you have the connection between cover art and album title.
Moving on, "Conspiracy of Silence" pummels as relentlessly as it stuns with the seamless inclusion of melodic leads and another round of singing that is well suited to the arrangement, while the cover of AT THE GATES' "Blinded by Fear" comes off as though it was always intended to be a part of "Mafia". Even stranger for its effectiveness in completing the circle is the closing title track; a three-minute piano piece from guest player Francesco Ferrini that forebodes with flair, not unlike a dramatically suspenseful score from the silent film era.
Hearing is believing. You too will be impressed with just how richly textured a merciless death metal assault like "Mafia" can be. But it's "only" an EP, right? If "Mafia" is any indication of the direction FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE is headed, then start bracing yourselves now for the sophomore full-length. Watch out!
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Rene (4 Apr 2011)
"Re: the Uprising over Koran burning--?"
The radical extremist muslims in Afghanistan and other countries will use absolutely any excuse to go on a rampage and wreck havoc, plunder, and murder. (Does anyone over there ever actually WORK for a living?) If they were not killing people because of the Koran burning, it would be something else, you can be sure. That's all they know.They are children of the devil.
They are rioting over a pastor in Fl. burning the Koran. Well, in THEIR country, you can't even walk down the street with a BIBLE under your arm--- and they are killing Christians all around the world by the thousands in hate-filled INTOLERANT muslim nations right now! I am sick and tired of them kicking Jesus around and kicking Christians around! And they have spent years and years trying to kill off the Jews in Israel. They have bombed them, ripped them apart, knifed them, shot them, blown them apart, destroyed their children and babies, and they are yelling about America being intolerant because of what this pastor did. These radical extremists are the most INTOLERANT, extreme, hate-filled bigots in the WORLD! Try walking down the street in Saudi Arabia or Iran with a BIBLE under your arm and in five minutes, they will be taking off your head! And what happens to the BIBLES in these countries? They burn them! And before they ever even get to a majority in America, they will be trying to kill Christians and burn and outlaw BIBLES over here! Does anyone doubt that THAT is their ultimate intention? They are already declaring shari'a law in some areas and trying to get the entire country under shari'a law. They murder their own relatives at the drop of a hat. They have no regard for women and treat them like animals! They are running around in Afghanistan screaming about OH those awful INTOLERANT Americans burning our Koran! I think it's great that they are finally getting a taste of their OWN medicine!!!!
They are vile, disgusting, lying, radical, bloody, demon-possessed, hypocritical, bigoted, hate-filled, war-mongering, intolerant, murderous killers, every last one of them!!!!
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Brood cicada hatch [Archive] - Fly Fishing Forum
: Brood cicada hatch
Dble Haul
07-02-2004, 03:08 PM
Has anyone been able to experience the brood cicada hatch that was/is supposed to happen this year? I'm curious to know if it's as epic and biblical as I've heard it previously described.
07-02-2004, 06:06 PM
Mark, I don't know jack about the little buggars but, I was in Cinci as my wife grandmother turned 100 a couple weeks ago most were gone but trees were still wrapped in plastic sheeting.
07-02-2004, 06:25 PM
I'm not sure if it's the same cicadas but this happens about ever seven to fourteen years... depending on species and location. You haven't seen anything biblical until you get to Australia. :chuckle: Talk about cicadas!
Here in Ontario you'll get them annually but the big brood hatch about every fourteen years. They don'thave mouths so they won't be eating crops etc, like Locusts. IT will just get noisier. Here it usually happens in late July - mid August. Those buzz saws you hear on a hot afternoon.
You'll just notice more cases on the tree trunks than usual...and nothing more.
No big deal really.
07-04-2004, 09:44 PM
On the North Shore of MA we hear them every 17 years. They occur at different times in every location. We should be about due up here in the next 2 or 3 years.
Always found them a currious occurence.
Dble Haul
07-06-2004, 09:01 AM
I've been informed that the hatch was in epic proportions out in Ohio a short while ago. I just wondered if anyone else had experienced it in other parts of the country.
Thanks for the responses.
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Two people killed, three wounded in separate early morning shootings
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on December 01, 2012 at 8:53 AM, updated December 01, 2012 at 9:39 AM
The New Orleans Police Department reported Saturday that two people were fatally shot and three people wounded in separate early morning shootings. The first of the two incidents took place shortly after 2 a.m. when a 28-year-old man was gunned down in the Pines Villages neighborhood.
Police said he was shot in multiple times and found on the ground of a parking lot of a lounge near the 4300 block of Downman Road. He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
In the second shooting, a woman was found lying on a sidewalk in the 2800 block of South Roman Street around 2:40 a.m. Police said she had been shot several times and was pronounced dead on the scene.
NOPD said three other people were injured including a man who was shot in the head and listed in critical condition. A 32-year-old woman was shot in the arm and another man had a gunshot wound to his body--both were listed in stable condition, police said.
Police believe the shooting was started outside of a house when an argument was sparked between the victims and the alleged shooter, who after opening fire, quickly fled the scene.
The identities of both of the fatally-wounded victims were not released pending family notification. No arrests have been made yet in either shooting and police said the investigation is ongoing.
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Reply to this comment
TinyBubbles11 writes:
in response to Txtrnsplnt062:
Neighborhood Festivals is the true answer. When communities invest time and energy into their neighboring parks, there is no need to travel downtown. Music, food, shade and shelter, is the true way to introduce children into La Familia.
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Have a listen
What: PrettyMouth, Satan in Clothes
Where: prettymouthmusic.bandcamp.com or download on iTunes
More info: facebook.com/prettymouthmusic
M arie Litton, Lief Sjostrom and Ryan Longenecker are all part of different Denver bands, but together, they're PrettyMouth.
They describe their music as dark folk, and everything about their first record, Satan in Clothes fits that label perfectly. On the surface, it's the sepia-toned album art that features a skeleton, the album title and the song titles ("Morning Terrors," "The Devil You Know," "Sinisterly"). Of course, what really matters is the music, and Sjostrom's cello and Longenecker's drums provide eerie backing to Litton's dark songwriting and light, slightly twangy voice.
We got the trio on the phone to talk about the record, which is only a few weeks out of the gate, and how they got together in the first place.
How long have you been together now?
Marie Litton: Me and Lief started playing together in February -- last February -- and Ryan joined us in March, so not very long.
And you recorded the album pretty soon after that, right?
ML: I recorded the record in June. We did it real quick.
Lief Sjostrom: She had most of the songs written already and she found us. Then she had to pound out three or four more.
Marie, I've heard it wasn't easy finding players who suited your voice well.
ML: Well, I'm in another band called Lil' Thunder and the band's great and they suit my vocal style, but my voice is soft, so I have to have a good sound guy to push it. It's hard to find people that want to play quiet. The other people I had been playing these songs with were trying to make a rock band, but I didn't want to be in a rock band ... It's hard to find people who want to play like this.
So how did you find these guys?
ML: I had met Lief at a party, but I had no idea he played cello. I went and I saw him (play in February) and I was like, "Oh my God, he needs to play in my band." I needed to start something new. The band he was playing with was about to fall apart, so he was looking for somebody, and so it worked out perfect. And I worked with Ryan's girlfriend, who said he was a drummer who wanted to be serious about music. It worked out great. It worked so effortlessly.
Tell me about Satan in Clothes. It's certainly dark, as advertised.
ML: Dark folk is the best way I can describe it. My voice is twangy and it's a little darker, it's a little depressing. I think everything I write is more on the depressing side, this is just a lot more -- I wouldn't say country -- but I need a word...
LS: A little more singer-songwriter?
ML Yeah. It's different.
Are you working on anything new?
ML: I'm gonna start writing a new record right away.
Ryan Longenecker: That's what Marie is doing. Me and Lief are in two other bands and we're also working super hard to promote this record and get it into the right hands, and hopefully start touring in spring of next year.
ML We're trying to get shows and be a working band. That's our main thing right now. I've been in a lot of bands in the town, but this is like... We all want to be a bigger band. We all want to make this happen. We're pushing it. We wanna do this thing.
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One person injured in gas ignition
Fire crews respond to Giovanni’s Pizza in Montecito
Claire Scholl, NewsChannel 3 Assignment Editor,
POSTED: 11:18 AM PST Feb 06, 2013 UPDATED: 08:05 PM PST Feb 06, 2013
Giovanni's oven fire
A cook is recovering from injuries he got in an explosion inside the kitchen at a Santa Barbara pizzeria.
It happened at Giovanni's on Coast Village Road around 10:30 Wednesday morning.
Fire fighters say the pilot light had gone out for the pizza oven. They believe gas had been leaking for some time.
When the cook went to re-light the pilot, pressure from the explosion knocked him to the ground.
He was taken to the hospital but is expected to be o.k.
The Gas Company checked out the restaurant and determined it was safe. Giovanni's is back open for business.
Giovanni's, 1187 Coast Village Road, Montecito, Ca
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Background Checks for Businesses - KULR-8 Television, Billings, MT
Background Checks for Businesses
Posted: Updated:
The recent arrest of the alleged Billings rapist, who is a registered sex offender, is leading to questions about companies and background checks.
Background checks are not full proof and are not mandatory. Background checks can be anything from matching the resume with social media to a thorough criminal check.
Toby Griego worked at Mattress Land for seven months and then was arrested Monday for two sexual assaults of Billings women.
Although a Google search of Toby Eugene Griego shows that he is a registered sex offender, employment specialists say using Google for background checks is inconsistent.
"The most important thing is for an employer to have a consistent process and to make sure that they're pulling background checks and checking references that are consistent with the position they're hiring for," said Maria Sewell, Billings Job Services employment specialist.
Mattress Land president Craig Barthel tells us in the twelve years he has run the business, he does not know of an employee committing a crime. He says no one knew Griego was a registered sex offender in New Mexico. Barthel could not comment on the exact process his company goes through for background checks because of pending investigation
Employment specialists say businesses must follow the same specific process of checking and things can be missed.
"Often times, employers will pull background checks on somebody statewide so if they are not pulling a full nationwide background check they may not necessarily know that that person has been convicted in another state of a crime," Sewell said.
Background checks don't always mean criminal checks either.
"Basically character references," Sewell explained. "It's basically a way for an employer to know that they're hiring the right person for the right job."
Mattress Land's Barthel says his heart goes out for the victims and he commends law enforcement for the great job they did in arresting Griego.
Employment specialists say companies conduct checks based on the kinds of jobs people apply for. Employers pay for the background checks.
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46 USC § 60304 - Presidential suspension of tonnage taxes and light money
If the President is satisfied that the government of a foreign country does not impose discriminating or countervailing duties to the disadvantage of the United States, the President shall suspend the imposition of special tonnage taxes and light money under sections 60302 and 60303 of this title on vessels of that country.
Historical and Revision Notes
46 App.:121 (5th sentence words after semicolon).
R.S. § 4219 (4th sentence words after semicolon); Feb. 27, 1877, ch. 69, § 1, 19 Stat. 250.
The words “If the President is satisfied . . . the President shall suspend the imposition” are substituted for “none of the duties . . . shall be levied . . . if the President of the United States shall be satisfied”, the words “does not impose” are substituted for “have been abolished”, and the words “special tonnage taxes and light money” are substituted for “duties on tonnage above mentioned”, for clarity.
46 USCDescription of ChangeSession YearPublic LawStatutes at Large
19 CFR - Title 19—Customs Duties
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Got 2 more question to go for a good grade please pretty please help
0 pts ended
1.)Three forces, given by F1 = (1.80 j ) N,F2 = ( - 5.00 i + 3.00 j ) N, andF3 = ( - 46.0 i + 49.0 j ) N, act on an object togive it an acceleration of magnitude 3.85 m/s2.
(a) What is the direction of the acceleration?
° (from the positive x axis)
(b) What is the mass of the object?
(c) If the object is initially at rest, what is its speed after13.0 s?
(d) What are the velocity components of the object after13.0 s?
( i + j ) m/s
Answers (1)
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Honorary Bachelor’s Degree Bestowed on Third WWII Veteran
Honorary Bachelor’s Degree Bestowed on Third WWII Veteran
Providence, R.I.--A World War II veteran who was wounded in action and held captive for six days by German soldiers was awarded an honorary bachelor's degree recently by Providence College.
Dr. Malcolm Ekstrand, a retired podiatrist from Warwick, R.I., was honored by College President Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P. '80 during a ceremony at the Scandinavian Retirement Center in Cranston, R.I., where he resides. The guests included Army, state, city, and College officials; executives and staff members from Scandinavian Home, Inc.; and family and friends of Ekstrand.
"This generation has done so much for this country, and Dr. Ekstrand has done so much for our country and community," exclaimed Father Shanley prior to reading a citation and presenting the diploma to the beaming 87-year-old.
Ekstrand was the third World War II veteran to receive an honorary bachelor's degree this year from PC. George Fisher and Paul V. Salley were awarded diplomas during Commencement Exercises in May. All three were members of the U.S. Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) that trained at PC in 1943 and 1944 and are the first in College history to receive honorary bachelor's degrees.
The ASTP was a rigorous training program instituted in 1943 by the Army at more than 120 American higher-education institutions. The goal was to train the best and brightest military recruits in key academic disciplines in the hopes of having them contribute to the anticipated rebuilding of Europe.
The nearly 400 young men enrolled in the ASTP at PC were suddenly called to service in March 1944 and never returned to complete their education. Thirty-seven members of their group, Unit #1188, were killed in action in Europe. A memorial plaque was dedicated to them at PC's War Memorial Grotto in 1998.
At the ceremony, Father Shanley remarked that the occasion had deep meaning to him. Like his father, the late Joseph V. Shanley '49, Ekstrand served in World War II, and both Shanleys were patients of Ekstrand's at one time, noted the president.
Father Shanley said he recently read Unbroken, the story of a World War II prisoner of war's survival, resilience, and courage. The account "reminded me of what people like Dr. Ekstrand and my father went through. They did it quietly. As Tom Brokaw ('05Hon.) said, this was the 'Greatest Generation.'
"To me," continued Father Shanley "this is personal. I can't be more thrilled to see you, Dr. Ekstrand. You and others like you served bravely, generously, and courageously."
A story of survival, faith
A member of the 26th Infantry Division (Yankee Division) of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, Ekstrand recalled how he felt his life was spared by God several times amid action just behind the front lines in late April of 1945. His troubles began one day in northern France, shortly after he had completed six months of KP duty for troops who were part of General George Patton's Third Army.
He was driving his superior, Captain Samuel Sims, when the pair briefly got out of their Jeep and were shot immediately and captured by German soldiers. Ekstrand was shot in the right shoulder--he later learned the bullet had actually entered the lower, left side of his back--while Sims was wounded in the arm.
Despite a series of harrowing incidents in which he didn't know if he would survive, Ekstrand--now separated from Sims--spent six days in a German hospital in Straubing. Given only water and one slice of bread a day, and not provided medicine, he was rescued when American forces captured the city.
Ekstrand later was taken to a U.S. military tent hospital, flown to a hospital in England, and then transported via a hospital ship back to the U.S. While in England, he was presented the Purple Heart by his uncle, U.S. Army Capt. Donald Smith.
Ekstrand recalled that the doctors he saw at the field military tent hospital were amazed he had lived since the bullet had passed through his entire back. He was convinced his life was spared thereafter because he repeatedly sought the Lord's aid. During the six days he was captured, he repeatedly read his New Testament and prayed.
"I said all week, 'Lord, help me,' over and over. There was no logical reason I was alive. The Lord was really good to me," he said.
Following his remarks and the degree presentation, Ekstrand was praised by several speakers, including R.I. Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, Cranston Mayor Alan Fung, and Brig. Gen. Brian Goodwin, assistant adjutant general for Army, R.I. National Guard. Other military personnel who attended were R.I. Army National Guard (R.I.A.N.G.) Lt. Col. Ellis Hopkins '02G, R.I.A.N.G. Major Michael P. Manning '97 & '08Hon., and Majors Tucker Shosh and James Tuite of PC's Army ROTC Patriot Battalion.
"It's an honor and a privilege to be here," Goodwin told Ekstrand. "We stand on the shoulders of greatness."
Catholic and Dominican
About Providence College's Catholic and Dominican Identity
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Online Debate: Trolls, haters, tone and content
There has been much online discussion about online discussion and heated debates about the worth of heated debates, especially following an infamous Twitter ‘flame war’/debate/discussion about rape jokes, sexism and other things that seemed to be lost as the debate went on, and turned into a debate about the debate.
In some sense, the debate has been useful, and in other ways, it’s been circular and I fear a lot of what has been said is repeating others and not adding anything new so I was loathe to comment unless I had something I thought would add something new to the debate about the debate about the debate…
As much as it is useful to interrogate that nature and tone in which debate with people, both who we agree with mostly, and those we disagree with entirely, I feel like much of the debate is more and more ignoring that content of which we are debating about. That goes for the debate of sexism, writing about women’s issues, but also for debate in general. For me, what we are responding to or debating about tends to be more important than how we say it.
In that sense, arguing that we should all be friendly to each other is both obviously true and all encompassing but at the same missing the point. I choose on how to respond to things based on a number of things, including whether or not I’m actually trying (and it is possible) to convince someone of my point of view, or and this should not be dismissed, to signal my own disapproval even though it is likely the person I’m responding to has no chance in hell of coming closer to agreeing with me.
But beyond that, there is a difference between responding fiercely and ‘rudely’ to someone who say, advocates for women’s rights as opposed to someone who says that women are to blame for rape, as well as a whole number of offensive things. If I responded to the later in a mean or ‘unproductive’ way, I make no apology. Focussing on how I responded rather than what I was responding to misses the point. The sexist commenter may put his or her opinion across in a polite way or a crude offensive way, but it doesn’t really change the content of what he said, and I would not give someone like that credit for putting across what they said in ‘thoughtful’ and ‘nuanced’ manner. The content of what this person said was offensive and that’s what I’m responding to.
For me, the problem is that the flame wars that crop up all the time on a range of different subjects can lose their original meaning when one responds in a certain tone, and becomes a debate about how you respond rather than the issues we’re responding to, which begs the question why I’m writing this in the first place, I guess.
But I think it’s useful to respond to in order to bring it back to think about the content we’re debating, rather than the tone. I have been the victim of many trolls and online haters, and attacks over the years, which is both frustrating and sometimes demoralising, but this does not mean that I hold back from responding aggressively when I think it is justified i.e. I’m not interesting in debating with Zionist commentator Ted Lapkin and so when I saw him on the street once, I didn’t stop and ask him for a cup of coffee to discuss our ideas, but let fly with a bunch of insults, which I suppose he enjoyed as much as I did, but the point was to indicate to the people around us where I stood.
Another example is often when I’ve campaigned around same-sex marriage rights, a number of times homophobic bigots and haters will come up to you and call you a whole number of things, and responding probably won’t convince that person to think that homosexuality is not wrong, but responding, often stridently, often meant passers-by who would usually just keep walking, would stop, sign the petition and become more interested in the issue because they were outraged with what the bigot was saying and agreed with my response.
The thing that gets to me about my own trolls and haters is not necessarily that they call me a worthless writer that no one reads (except them 24/7), but where they stand on the issues. I’m not just a worthless writer, but one that invites ‘hoards of refugees to invade our shores.’ I delete the trollish comments because in the end, there’s nothing to really respond to. Where as I might allow through other comments that disagree with me entirely, but this does not mean I have respect for their ideas or debating tactic, merely it is useful for the discussion to convince others around me, and not necessarily the person I’m responding to.
There may be differences in how a right-wing troll might attack me, and the exact tone I might use when attacking a right-winger, but what really should define it is the politics of the arguments and what side you’re on.
2 thoughts on “Online Debate: Trolls, haters, tone and content
1. My own feeling on this issue is that it depends what you’re trying to achieve. When you argue with somebody, you might be trying to change their opinion, or you might be trying to ostracise them. For the former, being nice is more successful. For the latter, being aggressive is more successful.
My own preference is to lean toward the former wherever possible. Largely because this is how I would prefer to be treated. But I’m not saying anybody else has to agree. Where we draw the line is something we each have to decide I guess.
2. It’s a delicate situation that has to be judged on a case by case basis and sometimes you end up isolating yourself, even if you think the person cannot be convinced. That’s another factor I hadn’t considered.
I know I’d rather not be isolated, but sometimes, from certain groups it isn’t such a bad thing to stand for principle instead of worrying about being respected amongst a certain group.
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apropos of nothing
Now Who the Heck Is Going to Pay for All These Movies?
Because they've been responsible for Indiana Jones 4, Iron Man, and Kung Fu Panda — three of the highest-grossing movies in another record-busting year for Hollywood — we'd naturally assumed that Paramount was okay on money these days. As usual, though, we were completely wrong! The Financial Times reports today that the studio has just lost a deal for $450 million in financing that would've gone to pay for 30 upcoming movies, including surefire hits like J.J. Abrams's Star Trek reboot and Transformers 2. Apparently what happened is Paramount had been bargaining with Deutsche Bank for the funding, but walked away after failing to agree on terms of the loan. Then, in a possibly related story, Deutsche Bank decided to shutter its film financing unit.
Studio sources tell Nikki Finke that this isn't as awful as it sounds, and that Paramount will just seek financing for individual movies on a one-to-one basis from other partners, at least until the current credit apocalypse is over. But Finke also wonders how much the soured deal has to do with Paramount's upcoming divorce from DreamWorks, which, along with Marvel, has been responsible for most of the studio's recent big hits. We bet Deutsche Bank just found out about Paramount's sinister plans to put Shia LaBeouf in everything and, quite reasonably, decided to get out of the movie business.
Paramount forced to suspend $450m financing [FT]
Paramount Financing Loss: Crisis Or Not? [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
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January 2013 Archives
Negotiation: Getting past some of the barriers we erect for ourselves
Negotiation can look like this.
Adapted from more on 360 BY-NC Esthr/Esther Dyson
A lot of people I talk to are kind of reluctant to try to change any terms when they're presented with a contract to sign in their daily lives. It's true that a lot of the contracts we're presented with in daily lives really -aren't- negotiable (ever read the back of your Best Buy receipt, or tried to customize the iTunes terms of service?) But we also do sometimes have real contracts in front of us, with real people on the other end - and yet, a lot of people never negotiate. Here's a few theories I have about why people don't negotiate:
• Negotiating about contract terms is not worth my time!
Often associated with "I didn't read it", and with a side order of
• "This is too complicated for me to understand"
• "It doesn't really matter what I agree to", and/or
• "They're not out to get me, so it'll all be fine."
• Negotiating about contracts is rude
• Negotiating about contracts is really scary!
As to the first reason for not negotiating: if you subscribe to any version of this, you're just being ridiculous. If a contract is too complicated for you to read, it is -very likely- not to favor your interests. If the other party wants to deal with you fairly, they'll be willing to rewrite it in ways you do understand, or they'll encourage you to review it with an expert, such as your own lawyer. Also, it -does- matter what you agree to; which you'll find out if you ever end up in legal interactions about the contract, or even if you need to continue business dealings with the other party in the future. And while the other party may not be out to get you, even the most honorable contract-drafter writes their contracts to deal with their own issues and needs; most drafters write to give their "side" as many advantages as possible.
Rude negotiators, negotiating rudely.
Arguing Penguins BY-NC-ND nouQraz/Adam Arroyo
As to the second reason: it's totally possible to be extremely rude when negotiating, if you behave rudely while you're doing it. However, if a polite request to discuss the terms of a contract is met with offense, the offended party may be trying to intimidate you into signing something that's not advantageous to you. That's definitely not always true - there are people who are actually offended by requests to negotiate. But that offense may indicate some other reasons to be wary of doing business with those folks - they may not very good at treating business as "business".
As to the third reason: yep, negotiating can be scary. Especially if you are not used to, or just not comfortable with, asserting yourself. Especially if the other party has something you want, or has more power than you (be it social power, economic power, physical power, etc.) Especially if you think asking to negotiate may take the whole deal off the table.
These reasons not to negotiate are harder to counter, because they are totally valid feelings. I will say that asserting yourself (usually, often, sometimes?) gets easier the more you do it - and can be way more dysfunctional at the other end of the spectrum (see, e.g., Donald Trump.) I will say that asking to negotiate with people who really do have the intention to do business will rarely result in them taking the whole deal off the table - though they may, in fact, refuse to make any changes. And finally, I will also say that, if someone wants you to sign a contract with them it is almost always because -you- have something -they- want, too - and that gives you some power to build from!
Coming soon: times when I have negotiated about copyright, and about other issues. In the meantime, have I left anything out? What other things have you seen that have made it hard for people to negotiate?
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About this Archive
November 2012 is the previous archive.
February 2013 is the next archive.
I'm @CopyrightLibn on Twitter.
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Book #32 in the series Animorphs by K.A. Applegate.
Animorphs #32
by K.A. Applegate
Summarized Plot:
While morphing a starfish to get an earring out of a tide pool crack, Rachel gets cut in half by a mischievous boy and ends up becoming two Rachels. But the two halves of her are also polarized: a mall-crawling, airheaded, cowardly one with a sense of duty and an ability to plan, and a psychotic, violent, courageous one with an ability to attack and no decent foresight or memory. The Animorphs are trying to destroy an Anti-Morphing Ray built by the Yeerks, but their issues trying to deal with a Rachel too afraid to fight and a Rachel too out-of-control to take orders end up overshadowing the mission. But soon, through each of their failures to function as a whole person, they realize they need each other as much as they hate each other, and Ax and Erek come up with a way to blend them together again . . . as long as they can be convinced to carry it out and accept their opposite as part of themselves again.
About this book:
Narrator: Rachel
New known controllers:
• None
New morphs acquired:
• Jake: None
• Cassie: None
• Marco: None
• Rachel: Starfish
• Ax: None
• Tobias: None
• Rachel makes it clear in this excerpt that she can morph while wearing earrings, just like she can with skintight clothes. This suggests that jewelry can be incorporated.
• Ax knocks Mean Rachel out temporarily with a blow to the head. Knocking someone out with a blow to the head is not safe and it is not likely to cause loss of consciousness without being followed by deliriousness or possibly lasting harm. In other words, "just knock her out" is a very unsafe thing to do to temporarily disable her.
Best lines:
Cassie: "We have a problem."
Rachel: "We do?"
Cassie: "Jake, we were at the mall. Some girl shoved Rachel and--"
Jake: "Oh, man, what did you do, Rachel? You have to learn to restrain your--"
Cassie: "She cried."
Jake: "What?"
Cassie: "She cried. And ran away. And cried."
Marco: "Who cried?"
Cassie: "Rachel."
Marco: "Rachel cried? You mean a little wetness, like maybe something was in her eye?"
Cassie: "I mean like 'Boo hoo, that girl was so mean.'"
Marco: "No."
Cassie: "Yes."
Marco: "No. No. The sun does not rise in the west, the Chicago Cubs don't win the World Series, Scully never, ever believes Mulder, and Rachel does not cry. These are the things I know."
Cassie: "Boo. Hoo."
Erek: "I can't stay long. I just came to update you guys on the mission."
Mean Rachel: "To the Yeerk pool! Let's get some flamethrowers!"
Erek: "I gotta stop hanging around with you people. You people are just plain strange."
Nice Rachel: "I remember it was chilly. I had, like, goose bumps?"
Marco: "I used to read those books."
Ax: "Rachel had books in response to cold?"
Nice Rachel: Jake had touched something still alive and strong inside me: duty. Stupid word! Stupid idea! No, not a stupid idea. But definitely a stupid word. I mean, it sounds like "doody." I mean, puh-leeze. I had to go and get killed because of something that sounds like you're talking about what dogs do on the lawn?
Next book: The Illusion, Animorphs #33
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The Mark and the Mole
By E Walk
(Copyrighted by the author)
Edited by Radio Rancher
Chapter 19 - We Can Make It Work
I woke to the feeling like little bugs were crawling on my body. I opened my eyes to see Mike leaning on an elbow and moving the finger tip toward the prize that was standing semi erect. When he touched the tip of my penis, he uttered, "Oh my, I wonder what this hole is for?"
I pushed him away, "I'll show you after I go to the bathroom, if you wish."
Mike wasn't making it easy on me, "I'll go to the bathroom with you to make sure you do it correctly."
After we relieved ourselves, Mike and I stepped into the shower. As we were washing each other's bodies, Mike looked at me, "Doug, I really don't feel real good about today. I am so afraid that someone is going to be hurt. Let's hope and pray that it is not Chad or any of his brothers and sisters. I just feel like I want to take them, especially Chad, and put them in an impenetrable chamber."
I held Mike's face, "Michael, the police have everything under control. Besides, Chad and Tim would feel like we were usurping their responsibility. Michael, we just need to think positive. I know that it is not going to be easy, but we can make it work. Now let's get dressed and then make sure the young ladies are awake. Chad will have our butts if we aren't there in time."
When Mike and I were dressed we went to check on the young ladies. Kendra opened the door, "Hi Uncles, we will be ready in a couple of minutes. We just need to finish fixing the girls' hair."
The young ladies appeared shortly and they were dressed very simply with gray skirts and white blouses. They had on nylon hose and flat shoes. It was a simple outfit but they all looked great. Kendra and Grandmother had done a great job getting the ladies outfitted.
We made our way to Dad's house and good smells were emanating through the house. Dad was sitting having coffee and reading the paper and Chad was busy making sure that nothing was burning. Right after we arrived, Tim and Kevin entered the kitchen followed by Billy and Bobby. They looked all polished and shining.
Chad directed everyone to the dining room table that had already been prepared and made Billy and Bobby put a dish towel around their necks much to their chagrin. They didn't complain too loudly because they started to eat the casserole that Chad served them. Everyone was just about finished when Chad stood, "I cooked; the rest of you get to take care of the cleanup while I get ready."
Chad disappeared, and as we finished eating, we took our utensils and plates to the kitchen and Kendra and Jenny took care of the clean up.
It was 9:15 when we assembled to go to the church and Chad issued some last minute instructions. "The only time I want us to be together is when we are in the sanctuary at the church during the memorial service. We will take all three cars so that we aren't all together."
Billy looked confused, "Chad, why can't we be together? You are all my brothers and sisters."
Chad sucked in his breath, "Everyone, please listen to me, there are some bad people out there that did not like our father very much and I am afraid that they might try to hurt us. Please, do as I ask, so we can get back to the safety of Dad Doug and Dad Mike's house."
We went to the three cars and I noticed that we were being followed by two other cars. I saw that Detectives Frazier and Taylor were in one of the vehicles. I didn't know who was in the other vehicle, but I assumed they were undercover policepersons as well.
When we arrived at the church, we were met by Father Lawler and Todd Gussler. Mr. Gussler started, "I think you should all stand in the centrum and visit with anyone who might like to talk to you."
Chad shook his head no, "Mr. Gussler, I do not want us to be standing together. There are some things happening that indicate we should not do that. We will stand around and one of the adults or Kevin and Kendra are to be standing with them. Tim and I will be the focal point so that the younger siblings are not exposed to danger."
I think everyone was surprised by the number of people who kept appearing. The sanctuary was almost full by the time Todd gathered us and took us to the waiting area. Father Lawler had everyone join hands and said a short prayer.
We stood at the door of the sanctuary and watched the official procession that preceded Father Leahy and Father Lawler. They were followed by the VFW honor guard and then Mike, Dad and I were escorted to our seats by the ushers.
We had not seen Chad as he issued the last minute talk to the other brothers and sisters. He handed them each two carnations and told them they should genuflect when they reached the front of the sanctuary and then place a carnation on each of the closed caskets.
I don't know how he did it, but he had seven different colors of carnations so that each of the young people was carrying a different color of carnation.
After the procession was completed and the young people were seated, I have to admit that it was one of the most touching funeral services that I have ever attended. There were a bunch of wet eyes in the congregation but Chad and his brothers and sisters weren't shedding any tears. When we were escorted out of the sanctuary, Chad made sure that everyone was in different cars. I was beginning to get a little afraid that he might be becoming paranoid.
After the brief service at the grave site, the military honor guard fired a five gun salute in honor of Mr. Harmon. The four youngest Harmon children covered there ears. I looked around and they were dispersed among the crowd.
As the military honor guard turned and walked away, the two men we saw last night at the viewing grabbed Chad. The older of the two barked, "Okay shit head, we want our share of what that creep left you. We saw all of those envelopes that people were leaving last night and today. We want our share and we want it now. Otherwise you will not be around to share in the money."
The two creeps grabbed Chad. I couldn't believe how calm Chad seemed to be as he answered. "First sirs, I have no money, and no one has given any money to me. For your information, my sire, who you claim to be your father, threw me and my sons out."
Chad looked up and saw that Detectives Taylor and Frazier were behind the two culprits with two other policepersons. Chad watched as the rest of the assembled people moved away. It was like everyone was guarding the other six children. When Chad was satisfied that everyone was safe, he smiled, "Why don't you go ahead and kill me too, like you did Mr. and Mrs. Harmon. But I'm telling you right now you will get nothing from their estate. You two are going to hell."
The two creeps were caught off guard, "We didn't kill no one. We just want what belongs to us."
The four police officers immobilized the two creeps and Chad just slumped to the ground. Father Leahy and I both went to him. Chad looked totally white, and all I could think was that he had a stroke or a heart attack. Father Leahy looked at me, "Doug, Chad will be fine. He just needs to recover from all of the adrenalin that must be flowing through his system. I cannot even imagine a person this young being so unselfish and brave."
I was holding Chad, and everyone else who still remained was crowded around. Father Leahy looked at everyone, "I suggest that everyone go back to the Walkers' houses and get your things and start home. Doug and Chad will be along shortly. I think there are some details that need to be taken care of but Chad will fine. He has been under quite a bit of strain. I'll make sure that nothing happens to him. You better go and make sure that Mark and Jon are okay."
The rest of the family left and Father Leahy and Father Lawler were sitting beside me. I was holding Chad and finally he revived, "Dad, I guess I was pretty stupid wasn't I?"
Father Leahy put his arm around Chad, "Son, what you did was rather stupid, but you were very brave. You were trying to protect you brothers and sisters but what if something had happened to you. Who would have taken care of your sons?"
I thought Chad was going to react violently but I was surprised at his answer, "Father Leahy, my sons would still have Dad Doug, Dad Mike, Granddad and Grandmother Walker to take care of them. Besides I had enough faith to believe that nothing else bad could happen to me. To be honest with you, I am not sure that those two thugs are the people who killed Mr. and Mrs. Harmon."
We had just stood to get ready to leave when we were approached by two well dressed gentlemen. The older man started by asking, "Are you Chad Harmon?"
Chad started to walk toward the gentlemen, "I'm Chad Walker. How may I help you?"
The older man yelled, "Grab him Larry."
The younger of the men grabbed Chad and started to pull him away and Chad was really struggling. The older man pulled out a gun and pointed it at the rest of us, "Stay where you are. We are going to make sure we get what we should have from the scumbag's estate. We didn't kill them for nothing."
The two murderers didn't realize that Detectives Frazier and Taylor had been told to stay with Chad and snuck up behind the two gentlemen. They had their guns pulled, "Drop that gun, or you are going to be missing a part of your body and if anything happens to Mr. Walker, we may forget all the training we ever had and start firing indiscriminately into pelvic areas."
The gentleman who was holding Chad released him, and Chad slipped behind the two detectives. Both men raised their hands and were handcuffed and had their rights read to them. As the two detectives were taking the two suspects to their car, Detective Taylor called back, "Chad, it might be good if you got out of town as quickly as possible. You seem to attract a lot of riff raff."
Chad started to laugh, "Detective Taylor, you mean I collect all of the riff raff that Mr. Harmon left behind, don't you."
Chad came back to us and hugged Father Leahy and Father Lawler, "Fathers, thank you for everything that you have done for me and my family. Even the service was beautiful if you can say that about a funeral."
He kissed the Fathers on the cheek and climbed in the last remaining car and we returned to the funeral home where we were met by Mr. Gussler. Mr. Gussler handed Chad an envelop, "Chad, the refund check and the memorial envelopes that were left at the home last night and at the church today are in this envelope. I am sure that there will be more funds arriving since there has been so much media hype. I am thinking that once the press gets wind of what happened to you today, there will be even more hype and money."
Mr. Gussler hugged Chad, "Good luck from here on; you deserve it."
We had Chad's car and he handed me the keys, "Dad you drive, I don't think I am in any shape to drive."
When we got to Dad's house, everything was packed and as we climbed into the vehicles, Dad announced, "We'll stop at the McDonald's at the outlet mall so we can save time. We can eat as we drive. I think we have had enough excitement for one day."
Needless to say there was very little conversation in Chad's car which I was driving. I felt like I shouldn't be pushing Chad too hard. After we stopped for the burger which was all he wanted, he asked, "Dad, you and Dad Mike will make sure that we can all stay with you, won't you. I'm scared, I'm only sixteen and now I have two sons of my own and three brothers and three sisters that I need to look out for. Dad, there is no way I am going to be able to take care of all of us without any skills."
I was relieved, "Chad, please believe me. Mike, Dad, Grandmother and I will do everything in our power to make sure that all eleven of you children have a good life. With this many of you, you may not always have the biggest and best, but you won't be missing anything. Now why don't you get some rest before we get to the desert oasis in the middle of Des Moines where your sons are being kept captive?"
Chad looked at me, "Dad, thank you for caring about us. I do love you and Dad Mike. I feel so safe with you but I am afraid of what will happen to us."
I wanted to pull Chad next to me and hug him but couldn't because I was driving. "Chad, everything will work out. The star didn't lead you to Grandmothers house by mistake. Someone is looking out for all of you. So please just let it happen naturally. It may not always be easy, but if we all work together we can make it work. Chad, I want you to realize that the recent events are causing a drastic change in Mike's and my life. I am not complaining; we are having to adjust our lifestyle."
Chad started to laugh, which was good to see, "Yeh, I guess it will be difficult for you and Dad Mike to refrain from running around in all of your naked splendor with your splendiferous cocks showing and beckoning to each other."
I could hardly control myself, "Chad, we Walker men don't use words like that."
"Dad, what are you saying? Do you not want me to use the word cocks? Would rather I had said peckers, rods or penises?"
"No, I am telling you that our friends would never understand the meaning of splendiferous. They might think you were talking about something dirty."
"Oh, you mean like suckable cock?"
This was a side of Chad that I had not seen previously, I was wondering if there was something about him I didn't know.
As we were nearing the house, Chad switched characters again, "Dad, I'm sorry, what I have been saying was totally inappropriate. I think my mind has been overtaken by the events of the last several weeks. Please forgive me."
After I stopped the car in the driveway, I put my arms around Chad, "Son, I was not offended by anything you said. I just wasn't expecting it from you. In fact I am glad that you can act like a teenager sometimes. Chad, I am going to say this only more time; Mike, and the rest of us, will make sure that you only have the best that we can afford. Chad, we have grown to love you and the twins and I am sure that we will love the other eight children just as much, but we are going to need your help and we certainly do not want you to try to do everything by yourself."
Chad and I walked into the house and everyone was eating some sort of food from a crock pot. No one was complaining so Chad and I sat down and started to eat. It was like it was a meal in one pot except that we had a pineapple salad with cottage cheese.
As we were eating, Grandmother explained, "I had an architect and a construction expert here today while everyone was gone and they drew up some tentative designs as to how we can make this house accommodate all of us. They are proposing that we make two rooms in the basement with a bathroom for Chad and his sons. They want to make three bedrooms in the attic which they will heat and air condition for the five guys. The ladies will have two bedrooms and there will still be a bedroom for any guests."
Mike's mother was laughing, "Yep, Henrietta has it all planned and the boys will have bunk beds and every one has to take care of their own space. She even made out a list of choirs that each of the young people needed to take care of." She looked at Kendra and Kevin, "You better be careful or you will need to do some work too."
Dinner ended and Chad and Kendra were feeding Jon and Mark while Tim and Kevin were supervising the cleanup. All of the guests had departed and we thought everyone was asleep. Mike and I went to our room and had taken our shower and crawled into bed. I was telling Mike about the ride home when there was a knock on the bedroom door.
Chad quietly asked if he could come in.
Mike and I were naked but we pulled the sheet over us. Mike spoke so Chad could here, "Come in Chad."
Chad entered, "Dads, I guess I acted rather foolishly today. I not only put myself in jeopardy, but I put everyone else who was still there at risk. Dads, I know that you would have taken care of Jon and Mark, but please promise me that you will take care of my brothers and sisters and Jason and Jeremy. They are all going to need so much love in the next couple of years."
Mike and I pulled Chad close and Mike almost whispered, "Chad, I can't believe that after everything you have been through in the short period of time, that you are more worried about everyone else than yourself. Chad, we love you and promise that we love all of the others just as much."
Mike hugged Chad and then I grabbed him and squeezed, "Chad, I have already told you we would do everything that we can do to make sure everyone has the best that we can provide."
Chad climbed off the bed, "Dads, I love you and thank you for everything that you have done. Really I just came to check on the cock, dick, prick, rod or penis situation in this room so I could send a report to the dickaholics society."
I threw my pillow at Chad as he ducked and went out the door. I pulled Mike close, "I think he is one very intelligent young man. We need to get all of the children enrolled in school and now."
Mike looked at me, "What happened to days without stress?"
Author's Note: If you would like to read more of this story and other interesting stories, you might wish to go to
Editor's Notes:
Let's see, days without stress; I don't think that is going to happen.
Chad is certainly one remarkable young man. He is certainly also one lucky young man as well.
It also seems there were more than just the two murderers looking to get what they thought was their fair or not so fair share of money that the Harmons left. I guess some people are not as nice as Chad and his new family.
I am certainly ready for more of this wonderful story.
Darryl AKA The Radio Rancher
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Generic name for all types of artificial achoholic beverages whose intoxication effect is all illusion and not chemical.
Synthale is the synthetic version of ale or beer, for example, commonly programmed into Starfleet crew replicators as an alternative to the long-lasting detrimental effects of natural overimbibing. The pleasurable stimulus can be shrugged off at any time, but any potency of liquor is available.
Robert Picard groused that his brother's apparent loss of palate came from drinking too much artificial synthehol, but Picard said that it only heightened his appreciation for the real thing.
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Take action now:
Did Bob Barr swipe his immigration policy from Barack Obama (or Bush, McCain, Clinton,...)?
Libertarian Party contender for president Bob Barr was interviewed by Neal Boortz a few days ago, and the audio and a partial transcript is here. Part of the conversation involved immigration matters, and based on that I have trouble seeing any major difference between Barr's positions and those of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, George Bush, Teddy Kennedy, and on down the line. In fact, it's like his campaign was the recipient of a blank cardboard box with just the word "POLICY" stenciled on it.
On the audio, he implies that he supports a form of amnesty where illegal aliens who are caught in the interior, as long as they passed a background check, would get to remain. He doesn't specify whether that would be as a "guest" worker or whether they'd get on the "path to citizenship". Asked about this, he says:
"I think as a practical matter, that makes a lot of sense. I'm not sure how you would go about rounding up millions of people and trying to deport them. The key here is security..."
Now, compare that to BHO:
"We are not going to send [illegal aliens] home... I want us to have an honest conversation about this." ...Mr. Obama said many illegals have "settled," "bought property" and have children who are U.S. citizens. He said the country would have to devote "all our law enforcement resources to rounding up people without papers, even if they weren't causing any trouble," and once that's done, the country would have to "empty out our jails..." ..."Imagine what that would look like, basically detaining, putting in jail 12 million people. We're not going to do that..."
And, in fact, all of those listed above have made similar arguments. And, all of those arguments are wrong: they offer a false choice and fail to note other alternatives such as attrition. Under that plan we'd enforce the laws now and reduce non-emergency benefits to illegal aliens, causing many to leave voluntarily. Neither an amnesty nor mass deportations would be required.
Barr also said that neither the Dems nor the GOP are making border security a priority. To a large extent that's false, since the leaders of both parties supported "comprehensive immigration reform" and all three major candidates support some form of border enforcement, or at least pretend to.
As a political matter, Barr's position makes little sense (unless there's "something else" involved). He doesn't seem to have an ideological standpoint on this issue, and aside from using them to get the nomination there's little reason for him to reach out to the extremist libertarians on this issue. On the other hand, there's nothing to differentiate him from the three major candidates on immigration, an issue that many people care about and that the vast majority of Americans would care about if someone were able to explain everything involved in this issue.
Barr is also going to face a lot of heat from the GOP; see for instance Sean Hannity's attempts to portray him as someone who'd like to make crack and heroin legal. He's going to be ferociously attacked by he has no effective way to fight back against McCain. McCain's weakest point is immigration, yet he can't attack him on that issue since their positions are basically the same.
If Barr saw the light and decided to very aggressively go after all three major candidates on this issue he could have a very powerful impact on the presidential race. He'd have to explain everything involved, including topics that are frequently ignored such as the political power that foreign governments have been able to obtain inside the U.S. and the fact that illegal immigration is an indicator of political corruption. He'd also have to deflect attacks from those who support illegal activity, but that really isn't that difficult. And, he'd have to aggressively attack his opponents on this issue such as by sending his representatives to their campaign events to ask them embarrassing questions designed to point out the hugely obvious flaws in their policies and designed to discredit them.
However, based on what I've seen so far it looks like Barr isn't going to run an "insurgent" campaign but simply one designed with other goals in mind.
5/17/08 UPDATE: Barr appeared on the Glenn Beck show a few days ago and continued to sound as sleazy and misleading as his opponents as well as other hacks who support massive and/or illegal immigration. Asked whether he'd "ship [illegal aliens] home or not", Barr said:
When you find them, you ship them home, absolutely.
What Barr forgot to mention was that, based on what he's said earlier, that would only occur after having granted an amnesty, and he's only referring to those who came after the amnesty or those who didn't take part in the amnesty. He then said that he'd fine employers and was asked about the border fence. He said he wouldn't build it:
First of all, I think it would be terribly costly. And whatever border fence you build, people are going to find a way to get around it, go under it, go over it, somehow... I think it would look absolutely awful. And even though it`s a fence to keep people from coming in, as opposed to the Berlin wall, it gives the same impression. Not the impression I want to give the world about America.
Needless to say, it's not difficult to find other hacks saying something almost identical to that.
Fri, 04/11/2008 - 09:12 · Importance: 4
Fri, 04/11/2008 - 21:47
Just another dumbshit running for President. Join the crowd.
Sat, 04/12/2008 - 02:09
Fred Dawes
No Light only BS. eh is dead on.
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ST. PETERSBURG -- For Red Sox starter Clay Buchholz the moment Game 3, which ended on a walk-off homer from Jose Lobaton, started to shift in the Rays' favor wasn't Evan Longoria's game-tying three-run homer in the fifth, but a would-be foul popup in an inning that yielded no runs.
Rays manager Joe Maddon, who claimed his team was burned by Fenway's dimensions in a pair of losses in Boston over the weekend, watched the quirks at Tropicana Field benefit the home club.
"The turning point was the [Ben] Zobrist foul ball that hit off of whatever it hit off of, and it turned into 20 more pitches after that," Buchholz said of Zobrist's fourth-inning at-bat, which ended up being a walk in a 34-pitch fourth inning. "Sometimes a team has got to make their own breaks, and that was a break."
Buchholz escaped that inning by striking out Matt Joyce, but the Rays capitalized the following frame with a single and a one-out double preceding Longoria's big blow. It was the only three runs allowed by Buchholz, who pitched six solid innings in the no-decision, striking out five and allowing seven hits and three walks.
"You got to figure out a way to make it through it," Buchholz said of not letting frustrations boil over in the fourth. "I felt like I made some pretty good pitches that inning. A couple of them didn't go my way, but they got a good club over there. They hit some good pitches and they hit mistakes really well."
Buchholz's biggest mistake of the night was the changeup to Longoria, an inside pitch that caught enough of the plate for Longoria to make him pay.
"Buchholz is pitching his typical game here. We cannot do anything with him," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "We get some guys on base, he would make a pitch, and then finally Longo got it, finally Longo got him. And then it ties it up right there and all of a sudden it's a different world."
Longoria, like most of his teammates, had struggled against Buchholz and said he went to the plate with a pair of men on just trying to hit the ball hard up the middle.
"So I figure if I try to do too much it could be a bad thing," Longoria said. "He threw a two-seamer on the first pitch, got in on my hands, and I just barely got enough of the next pitch. It was a changeup that just stayed up enough for me to get enough barrel on it."
Buchholz retired the final four batters he faced in the 104-pitch outing before turning the ball over to the bullpen.
"Clay came out, he kept the game under control," manager John Farrell said. "He worked at a methodical pace to keep the crowd out of it. Did a good job of controlling the running game, and he doesn't give in in key moments or fastball counts. Six strong innings there tonight."
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How to Spot the Mike Daisey in Your Own Life
The Mike Daisey/Apple/Foxconn/This American Life fiasco can teach us more than how to properly label your one-man theater monologues. It gives us a little retroactive wisdom about the common traits of people selling big fabrications, and how they can be found out.
There are Big Lies, involving statistics and conspiracies. Then there are Small Lies, a.k.a. Little White Lies, like the one about why you didn't call your overly needy friend on Friday. Then there are fabrications: stories that mesh the truth and advantageous fiction to deliver something seemingly more valuable than it really is.
Coworkers fabricate to get ahead, scammers fabricate to get your money, enemies fabricate to spread tales about one another, and storytellers can fabricate to push an agenda. And, more often than not, even the richest fabrication can be undone with a little simple thinking and testing. Here's how to develop a good eye for in-person lie detection, some rather simple investigation methods, and a sense of history for how yarn-spinners have come undone.
Early, in-person lie detection
In some cases, you will have the chance to hear a fabrication told directly to you, in-person, out-loud, from the source. If you know what you're looking for, and you know ahead of time to look for it, you can use any number of clues from the teller to determine a story's veracity. They don't always work, because some people are, as the Stones put it, practiced at the art of deception. But it never hurts to look.
You can try to read their body language. Specifically, you're looking for negative body language that shows a desire to avoid direct engagement: crossed arms, looking off to the side, rubbing and scratching of the neck, and the like. You're also looking for overcompensation, in the form of stiffness and unwavering eye contact.
In the speech itself, you can keep a mental tally of "But" statements and statements that start with "Well,". You can also try trapping them with a telling choice or "redirecting their misdirection".
Then again, there are other reasons people may exhibit these traits—maybe even being nervous about finally telling the truth. And some people are just really good at winning people over. Gawker editor Adrian Chen had actually met with Mike Daisey before his fabrications became known, seeking to poke holes in some of the very same details that were later uncovered as false. But Chen ultimately found Daisey "so convincing," because Daisey's statements were "so detailed and full of compassion and humor." And, as Chen admits, they played to his compassion for the issue of labor standards in China, and his guilt in questioning someone trying to change them.
And this is exactly where you, the person who believes something is fishy with the facts story, will do better than the person who's great at reading body language.
Ask the people who would know, then ask the person who said it
When disgraced New York Times reporter Jayson Blair was found to have made up or plagiarized pieces of numerous articles, there was one detail that hit a very sad note, louder and more telling than just one reporter's lies. Many people knew they were misquoted, or quoted without being spoken with. Plenty of folks involved with Blair's stories, average folks and highly visible figures, couldn't remember seeing Blair at places and events he wrote about. But they didn't bother to bring it to the Times' attention, partly because they figured it was (sadly) business as usual, but mostly because nobody ever asked them.
The same goes for the experts who wondered about the seemingly fake agencies and crazy stories they hadn't read about anywhere else in Stephen Glass' work). Before Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer for a fake story about an 8-year-old heroin addict, people working in law enforcement and social services spoke amongst themselves about how nobody else could have known about such a thing. Mountaineers had always been doubtful of the tale told in Three Cups of Tea. And before an NPR reporter working in China typed something like "Shenzhen translator Cathy" into a search engine, his colleagues were all questioning the details of Daisey's monologue. How could, for example, union workers at a Shenzhen factory afford to regularly meet in Starbucks, which, in China, are notably more expensive than in the U.S.?
The point is, there are usually people involved in a fabrication, because few people are going to believe a fantastic story that nobody else was around to witness. People lend credibility to a tale, and fabulists know all too well that most people on the peripheries of their fable won't go out of their way to shoot them down. Appropriating people, and maybe even quoting them, is a strong bonding agent to hold a tale together.
But all you have to do to melt it is to pick up the phone, or just write an email, to someone who was involved in the story. If they back up what the person said, then no harm done—you were just wondering and wanted to hear it for yourself. If they can't quite remember, or see things differently, that's a big warning sign. And if the person telling the tale claims that it's hard or impossible to get in touch with those people, or tries to explain upfront why they're going to disagree, well, that's a warning sign, road flares, and an air raid siren.
At newspapers I've worked at, I've seen at least two cases of fabrication come undone in similar fashion. One was quick, because the source being quoted was a legend in his field and dead for at least a decade. Another came to light because a quoted source saw his name in a Google Alert and realized he'd never talked to the writer. And I'm fairly sure I was around for a third case involving a stark disagreement between a police officer and a reporter, but I'm hazy on the details, and memories can be easily overwritten by "better" versions.
Which brings us to how to know when it's time to check with the people around a story: the perfect detail.
Look into perfect details
Janet Cooke had the saddest heroin addict you could find in the Baltimore/Washington region. Stephen Glass had a 15-year-old hacker demanding a lifetime subscription to Playboy. Jayson Blair had tobacco fields and cow pastures just beyond the windows of a Virginia home. And Mike Daisey had 12-year-old workers, men with crippled hands who called the iPad "a kind of magic," and a version of Shenzhen and its factories that were exactly as bad as many of us wanted to believe.
Facts are messy, and almost never as dramatic as they should be. Really great and true tales come from finding the big drama in sometimes small things, not finding little things to make big drama. And embellishment is to be expected when retelling dramatic, important moments. But when someone tells a story that involves a perfect anecdote, a great moment that captures perfectly some larger belief they have, that's when you should feel free to question the people and the facts in the story.
Stephen Glass, speaking at an ethics panel in 2003, freely admitted that his perfect little moments came from self-doubt about how good his story was, and whether it would win acceptance:
"I would be working on a story and find it not to be good," he said. By inventing racy details that improved his stories, he hoped that "people would think better of me, and I would think better of me." Instead, the published lies only increased his low self-regard. An ugly feedback loop, you might say.
That need for approval, the desire to seem clever, came up in another telltale sign of a fabrication: a straight-up admission by the teller that they've lied about something else.
Look for them to say that they're lying
The easy irony in Daisey's monologue is the moment when he tells his translator that "We are going to lie to a lot of people." It's in the context of Daisey explaining his plan to pose as a businessman to obtain tours of Chinese factories, but in the context of what we know, it's telling. And it's happened before.
Jose Antonio Vargas wrote a much-respected piece about his life as an illegal immigrant for the New York Times Magazine. It was, in essence, a first-person narrative about lying through much of his life to hold onto a better life for himself and his family. But the piece was first rejected by the Washington Post, because in checking the details of his story, and his modern life, the Post found a few notable inaccuracies, and became uncomfortable with the whole enterprise.
It sounds really pedantic and, to some, probably wrong-headed. But when someone tries to sell how they used their finely-tuned skills at deception for the benefit of this story they're telling, one that is ostensibly true in every other regard, it's a tough call. As Derek Powazek put it:
There's a reason that journalists are trained not to do this, and it's not just highfalutin professional ethics. It's far more practical: If you lie to get the story, it throws the entire story into doubt. Tell the audience you're a liar and they stop believing you. Or, at least, they should.
What's the biggest whopper you've ever unraveled, and how did you do it? Let's hear about it in the comments.
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Parrot's MiniDrone quadrocopter on show at CES 2014 in Las Vegas.
Parrot's MiniDrone quadrocopter on show at CES 2014 in Las Vegas. Photo: Adam Turner
Thanks to the attachable wheels you can actually drive the MiniDrone around on the floor or even drive it up a wall and across the ceiling.
When the original AR.Drone reached Australia a few years ago it really raised the bar in terms of consumer-grade remote control flying machines. It was certainly a step up from the cheap and nasty USB helicopters in terms of stability and performance, as you'd expect from the AR.Drone's $349 price tag.
I had plenty of fun putting the original AR.Drone through its paces, controlling it from iOS and Android devices. My key complaint was that it's just too big and unwieldy to fly inside, in your backyard or even in a park full of trees. You really need an open field and even then you have to watch out for cross winds once you get a few metres off the ground.
Since then we've seen the AR.Drone 2.0, which I haven't tested, but it retains the same design and the $349 price tag so it doesn't really address my fundamental frustrations with the concept. Now at CES 2014 in Las Vegas, Parrot has unveiled a prototype of the tiny MiniDrone which is expected to reach Australia later this year.
The MiniDrone draws on much of the same technology found in its big brother, including cameras and sonar to monitor the ground for improving flight stability. One of the key differences is that the MiniDrone relies on Bluetooth 4.0 rather than Wi-Fi for remote control from an iOS or Android device. This reduces the range to about 15 metres, plus the drop in available bandwidth means you don't get a live feed from the cameras in the drone. When using the full-sized Drone I found it too hard to watch the screen while I flew, because I needed to keep an eye on the Drone so it didn't get away from me. This is less of a problem with the Mini, so the lack of the camera feed is disappointing but not a deal-breaker.
This little drone is only 15 centimetres across, roughly a third the width of its big brother. The MiniDrone weighs 50 grams, although you can add thin plastic wheels to the sides which bump the weight up to 70 grams. Originally I thought the wheels were only optional safety guards for the rotors, which seemed like a good idea. But thanks to the attachable wheels you can actually drive the MiniDrone around on the floor or even drive it up a wall and across the ceiling. Parrot also unveiled the new ground-based Jumping Sumo remote control vehicle at CES, which I might look at in detail another day.
The MiniDrone certainly feels more stable than the full-sized AR.Drone I tested, partly because it's smaller and partly because it's inherited the improved flight stability features introduced with the AR.Drone 2.0. The MiniDrone is small enough to rest on your palm and you can even gently flick it into the air and engage the rotors. You can control it by tilting your mobile device and driving virtual joysticks on the screen. There's also a flip button which sees it do a quick 180 forward roll in mid-air.
One of the advantages of the MiniDrone's compact design is that it's a lot more robust, especially when you're using the wheels as crash guards. The full-sized AR Drone is easy to damage if you land roughly on a hard surface and when I tested it a few years ago I managed to snap a plastic cog driving one of the rotors. With the MiniDrone these kinds of components are fully enclosed, so it's less prone to damage and thus you're less likely to run into the expense of replacement parts.
Flying time with the MiniDrone is 8 to 10 minutes on a single charge, depending on whether you've got the extra weight of the wheels. Thankfully the battery is still removable so you can charge up a few batteries and have them ready to go, although this is less of a hassle if you'll be using the MiniDrone around the house. If you're taking a full-sized AR.Drone out to an open field then it's more important to have extra flight time up your sleeve.
The only real question that hangs over the MiniDrone is pricing. You'd expect it to be cheaper than the $349 full-sized AR Drone 2.0, but I'd really love to see it at less than $200. At this price it's still an expensive toy, but if you've sunk money into a few cheap and nasty USB helicopters you might see the value in upgrading to Parrot's slick MiniDrone. It's certainly one to watch out for this year.
Adam Turner travelled to CES as a guest of LG.
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Call for used computer (r)
Burmese Relief Center--Japan
DATE:June 13, 1995
Dear Friend,
Thank you for your prompt response.
We agree that shipping to Thailand would be prohibitively
expensive. Furthermore, it is impossible for anyone in
Thailand to receive anything like that without exorbitant
customs fees.
What we suggest, is that you ask around for someone who is
going to Thailand. A computer can be carried in as personal
luggage with no problem. Even if it is carried in parts by
several people, we could collect the boxes there. If anything
could be carried to Thailand this summer, it could be delivered
to the hotel in Bangkok where we stay while we are in the city.
At any time boxes could be mailed from Bangkok directly to
the clinic, the address of which we can provide.
The other alternative is to have it carried to Japan. Many
teachers in Japan spend their summer vacations in Thailand, so
it is quite easy for us to have supplies carried to Thailand.
Once the boxes are in Japan, they could be sent to our
residence/office by the Japanese equivalent of UPS or
delivered to a Burmese association office in Tokyo.
Our residence/office address is no secret, but we would rather
not publicize our Bangkok hotel. We will, of course, provide
that information to anyone who can deliver any supplies.
Ken and Visakha Kawasaki
Burmese Relief Center--Japan
266-27 Ozuku-cho
Nara-ken 634
Tel: (07442) 2-8236
Fax: (07442) 4-6254
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tagIllustratedThe Two Companions Illustrated Ch. 05
The Two Companions Illustrated Ch. 05
(In which our hero, Jorge, settles some old affairs, honors some old traditions and pulls off the hat trick with Serenity's lovely ladies in our little ship on the edge of the black.)
As Serenity climbed out of the ionosphere of New Kashmir, River was idly singing Mera Joota Hai Japani from an old Bollywood rasta about leaving while she danced in the pilot's seat and calculated atmospheric drift, relative velocities and trajectories to their next destination. However the majority of her brain was devoted to analysis of the complex emotions she had observed in the two couples in Inara's shuttle yesterday. That was a puzzle worthy of her attention.
Mal looked on in bemusement and then drifted down into the galley thinking _ "She's going to outgrow this boat someday and I'm going to need a new pilot."
Jorge had just come up from the hold where he had been leading a capoeira session. Even Jayne and Zoe were learning the fundamentals after Jorge explained that it had been invented by a people who were in chains and that it could even be used if you were in handcuffs. Jayne figured that it could be a useful job skill and Zoe just wanted an excuse to kick Jayne's butt.
Taking a seat beside Jorge, Mal inquired "You ever want to be a pilot, Jorge?"
"You mean besides a shuttle? Well when I was a kid, I always figured I'd end up a ship's pilot. My Ma was a pilot and I think my Pa was one too."
Mal queried "You think your Pa was a pilot?"
"Yeah" Jorge responded "'cause intra-crew procreation sex was always prohibited due to inbreeding fears. The mother's usually knew but occasional ship meet-ups were often multi-day free-for-alls so that alliances could be maintained between ships without jealousy rearing its ugly head. Kids were never told their dad's name. Pilots and mechanics usually got first crack at using the engine room and that's where My Ma told me I got started and I know that she had a weakness for other pilots."
"Huh." Mal responded.
"Property and rank always got handed down from Mother to Daughter and my only hope of an officer's berth was to become a pilot. However, as a kid, what I did was hang around with the cook and the loaders and mechanics where I could make myself feel useful. I felt that men were mostly for muscle and in a fight if necessary. Decision making was a female prerogative. Those old ramrod officer women always intimidated me and I didn't like being up in Officer Country. I probably wasn't cut out to be one anyway."
"Yeah," Mal replied "I felt the same way about officers and that's why I didn't become one either. But what you say about female inheritance and tradition got me to thinking. My ma came from a ship's crew family and Reynolds was her and my grandma's name. I always thought that the reason I didn't know my Pa's or Grandpa's name was cause my Ma and Grandma got taken advantage of and abandoned. And I always thought that my sister inherited the ranch on Shadow cause I ran off and joined the Independents. But If what you say is true of ship's family traditions, I didn't run away from any responsibility. I just avoided being a ranch hand for my sister."
Mal continued "And take Zoe: her ma was a captain but she was the sixth daughter and there was no way she could inherit anything and all her older sisters just used to boss her around. At least with me, she only has one boss, plus if I get kilt, she gets the boat."
Jorge laughed "Welcome to the world of the super-numeraries. I guess we're both soldiers of fortune for the same reason. But look at it from a female point of view: why would a woman who worked hard all her life on a ranch or a ship want to turn it over to some Hun-dan just because he consented to be the father of her children?"
As Mal sat lost in thought, Jorge continued. "You know that a woman can be just as fond of her freedom and her self-possession as a man. Just because she falls in love doesn't dictate that she has to stop being herself or give up everything she is to being somebody's 'helpmate'. Even if they have a kid, they don't become the property of some man. What happened at the Heart of Gold should have taught you that.
"Oh, you heard about that, huh?" Mal responded.
"Yeah, that has become a favorite story among companions. You're big damn heroes with them and other sex workers." Jorge continued.
"Great, now I'm a hero among wh..." his voice trailed off as Mal remembered who he was talking to.
"Careful now, I can hurt you" Jorge quietly remarked.
Mal relaxed when he realized that Jorge was only kidding. "I'm sorry. I'm just starting to realize that being a companion isn't about selling your body to the highest bidder."
"That's right, Mal, what's being sold is skill, insight, knowledge, expertise and understanding. The fact that the body is involved is no different from an actor, dancer, surgeon or even a soldier."
Mal grinned "Yeah, when we got paid, it was for putting our asses on the line and for making sure our asses stayed where they were supposed to be when things went south. When you put it that way, being a companion is just as respectable as anything I've ever done and probably more respectable than a lot of things I've done."
Another thought crossed Mal's mind. "Say, you wouldn't be speaking in the interest of a certain female companion, would you?"
Jorge threw up his hands. "Actually, Im speaking against the expressed wishes of a certain female companion and I don't want her to find out about it. Besides, as hard headed as you both are you probably deserve each other." Suddenly sober he continued "Mal,trust me, she really does love you and as her friend, I want her to be happy. I think you're a good man and I sense from the way you look at her that you are just as much in love. Anyway, if you bring her pain, I'll just track you down and shoot you."
"Shoot me?"
"Yes, you know, politely."
Mal and Jorge both laughed and Jorge continued "But seriously, you and Inara have been my saviors and I owe you at least dinner. I have enough food that I liberated from my cousins to fix a meal for both of you. If I fix it for the crew, Jayne will just eat most of it without even noticing anything about it."
"Ok, given that line of reasoning," Mal replied "If Inara accepts, so will I."
Inara accepted with some misgivings after Jorge asked her to accept the meal as his parting gift and begged her to give Mal a chance if he could be on his best behavior.
Jorge began to prepare for the meal. The next evening, ship's time, Jorge escorted Mal to Inara's shuttle where she greeted them dressed in a very fine kimono bound with an ornate obi around her waist. She served them both with tea and had them remove their shoes and socks prior to washing their feet. Jorge then taught Malcolm how to wash Inara's feet. When Mal remarked on her long graceful toes, Jorge and Inara looked at each other. When Jorge started to speak, Inara interjected "It's my story, I'll tell it."
"Prior to leaving Earth-that-was my family were miners in the astroid belt before the invention of the gravity drive or generators: real old school rocket prospectors. Because what we did was considered highly valuable to society, we were given one of the last gene-mod permits before they became totally illegal. The mod allowed us to grip with our toes in micro-gee when we needed both hands. The mod bred true and all my family have long toes. In fact my nickname was stub-toe because everyone else had much longer toes. It was said that my great aunt would dial down the grav in her room and hang from the ceiling to sleep. She claimed that it improved her posture"
Mal looked at her to tell if she was pulling his leg but then decided to play along. "I always wondered about those sharp little canine teeth of yours. Hey, let go of my thumb with those toes!"
Jorge just grinned and handed Mal the towel to dry off her feet. "We are all equals now. Let me pour you some fruit juice batidas and then I'll get the food from the galley." Jorge brought back a beautiful seafood vapata and moquia that he had spent all afternoon and a great deal of saffron and other aphrodisiacs in it's skillful preparation. As Jorge shared the the meal, he kept them well lubricated with cachaca and rum. He also kept the conversation light but kept praising Inara's beauty until he actually had her blushing.
When Jorge started to feel his own arousal he judged that it was time to withdraw and he bid them both good night, placing a do not disturb sign on the hatch to Inara's shuttle.
Feeling slightly uncomfortable in the absence of his 'wingman' and anxious not to say the wrong thing and screw up once again, Mal decided to complement Inara on the job of redecorating that she and Kaylee had done on her shuttle.
"Thank you Malcolm, especially after you made a special trip to get my things back on Bena. It's not easy living out of a trunk, even if I'm not entertaining clients."
"I was glad to be of assistance but I'm real sorry that the mess I got you into ruined your reputation with your upper class clientele. I realize now that you probably had to work pretty hard to develop your client base." Mal apologized.
"Mal, My client base turned out to be as fickle and undependable as the petty criminals who made up yours. I never told you this but I did not come from wealth. I was not royalty descended from a priest or priestess. My family were as hard working as yours and even though I enjoy the finer things in life, I can live without them. Right now I am enjoying dealing with people who have to work for a living. I don't see it as as a step down but more like a breath of fresh air."
Inara continued "As the saying goes, a door doesn't close without another opening somewhere else. At least now your reputation is 'solid' as Niska put it and people see you as someone who can get the job done no matter what. I just hope that your reputation of having a conscience doesn't get in the way of your client's general lack of one."
Mal grinned at the backhanded compliment. "I bet you say that to all the fellas."
"No, Mal I don't and at least I think it's time to be honest with each other. It's just you and me in here. You've never been my client and after Miranda I'm not really your tenant anymore. I chip in to help keep this boat in the air and I'm as much a part of this crew as anybody else. We've faced death, hardship and hard times not to mention thieves, thugs, con-artists, psychotics and cannibals. You don't own me and I don't own you, we're pardners."
Mal replied "Careful now, you don't want to be putting yourself in the same category as Jayne if you call yourself crew. But,... well yes, I guess we are business associates and pardners in a way."
Inara answered "Mal, I believe the term is criminal co-conspirators."
Mal smiled "And I do believe that you are the most beautiful criminal I've ever conspired with."
"Why Malcolm, I think that is the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Try not to faint, occasionally I do say the right thing."
"And you should stop while you're ahead." Inara leaned forward to begin what became a very passionate kiss. When his hands started to roam, she stood and unwrapped her obi and let it fall to the floor. Her kimono hung open, revealing an expanse of skin along her left side and a gaping darkness between her hip and the garment. As he stared into that looming darkness that defined her waist, the awareness came to both of them that if he reached into that darkness to pull her to himself, everything would be different. The 'verse would change for both of them. As Mal looked up into her eyes, Inara spoke "Mal, when we were trapped in that horrible vault at Mr. Universe's I vowed that if I ever survived I would never be afraid again. I also vowed that if you came back alive I would never be afraid to express my feelings for you."
Mal's eyebrows came up "What do you have to be afraid of?" he asked without thinking.
The corners of Inara's eyes crinkled she smiled in bemusement and remarked off-handily "Well, Jorge did promise to come back and shoot me if I screwed this up."
"You too? How well does he shoot?"
"Wings off a fly, Mal." She joked.
"We better do it right then." as he reached into her kimono to pull her close into a mutually hungry kiss.
Both their hands were busy, his with exploring the beautiful mystery of the woman he had wanted so long and hers with unbuttoning his shirt and exploring his chest. When she was pushing his suspenders off his shoulders, Mal felt her unbuttoning his pants and looked down in astonishment to see her toes nimbly releasing and then stroking his manhood.
When he looked up in astonishment, Inara's eyes were laughing. "Malcolm, you are so attractive when you're speechless." She then urged him to his feet and started kissing again while removing his shirt and he followed suit with her kimono. Inara pulled him close with her arms around his neck. As she lifted one leg to wrap around his waist her big toe grasped the waistband of his tight pants and she shucked him like an ear of corn. Suddenly, both of them were as God (or their mothers) made them.
Malcolm grinned at her "You're pretty handy with those toes of yours, aren't ya?"
Inara grinned back "Captain sans pants, you truly have no idea." and hooked his knee from behind with her ankle. They both tumbled into the bed which quickly became the setting for a mutual carnal devouring. The white-hot passion fueled by pent up desire more than made up for the lack of finesse. Still, he managed to hold himself back until she peaked before joining her in a wild bucking climax.
"Wo-cao Inara...I've broken wild horses that were tamer than that ride." She just purred in contentment and snuggled against his broad chest. He began a slow stroking of her lovely rump and legs that gradually descended into the dark mystery of silken curls that lay at the juncture of her thighs. Mal then began a careful repetition of the stroking and patterned probing that Jorge had carefully taught him earlier.
Under the influence of the aphrodisiacs and the siren song of her own nerve endings, Inara at first did not recognize the technique that her first lover perfected on her nether regions so long ago. But then the teacher in her kicked in and she snapped to the realization that this was just too good to be the product of a gifted amateur, and she at first suspected some kind of cheap trick on Mal's part. Gradually her own arousal and the grudging admiration of his grasp of the complex technique plus the inspired riffs that he brought to the composition with his tongue and lips convinced her that Mal really was worshiping the goddess at the altar of her cinnabar gate. When he finally sucked her yin di into a wavering crescendo she sailed into a soaring all-consuming orgasm that left her shivering. The realization that Mal had taken the trouble to learn and Jorge to teach made her understand that she truly was loved and that people she truly cared about cared enough to gift her with this kind of pleasure.
Unbidden tears came to her eyes and sobs of gratitude shook her frame. Mal looked up in confusion, "I wasn't that bad, was I?"
A crooked smile broke across her tear-stained face"Oh Mal!" and she pulled him up to deliver a grateful kiss which became even more passionate until she worked down his torso to engulf his rising staff of jade in her own symphony of worship to the goddess. When she rose up to impale herself on his upthrust mast, they both embarked on a mutual labor of love that left them gasping and exhausted.
Inara finally propped herself up on one elbow and asked with a grin "Oh captain, my captain... what happens next?"
It was Mal's turn to look at her in bemusement "Truly, darlin', I have no idea."
"Good answer, Mal."
"Uh, Inara...'
_"Oh, no here it comes."_ she thought.
"How am I doin'? ...I mean as your lover." Mal asked as if he really expected a truthful answer.
_"Mal, you dummy."_ she thought _"he really does deserve this."_ "Well Malcolm, to tell you the truth, you're really not my type. I usually prefer my lovers to be married because it makes everything less messy. But...I forgot! You are married! Or you are according to that little piece of trash that suckered you twice, left you naked and sunburnt and nearly got us all killed. What was her name, Saffron, Yolanda,.. Bridge-work?"
As Mal detected the twinkle in her eye, he realized she was yanking his chain. He rose up to pounce on her. "You little minx... I'm gonna tickle you until..."
But she was ready and spun under him so that her toes were under his armpits before he could get anywhere near her.
"Hey, no fair!" Mal cried and clamped his arms down to pin her feet. Inara held him at bay with her powerful thighs while he hung over her pressing down. As he looked at her, dressed in nothing but a healthy glow and a sheen of sweat, his gaze traveled down from her feral grin past her heaving breasts and her lightly rounded abdomen to the thicket of dark wet curls and the swollen lower lips which still gleamed with the products of their passion.
As his body responded and his face softened from mock rage to lust, Inara also responded by gradually lowering her knees to her chest so that his rising manhood met her womanhood and he entered her welcoming love channel.
"Perfect docking Captain." she quipped.
"Permission to come aboard, Mam."
"Permission granted, Captain."
As he resumed a slow but powerful rocking she embraced his well muscled broad back and buttocks with caves and forearms. With a sigh and a whisper barely loud enough to hear she murmured "You're doing fine Mal...we're both doing fine."
Jorge had pulled out a bottle of fine old rum and was settling down to a well deserved drink in the galley. Zoe walked in and turned a chair around and straddled it to sit across the table from him. When Jorge produced a second glass and offered it to Zoe she thanked him and clinked his glass in a toast. "To the Captain and Inara getting sexed. Those two been dancin' around and snappin' at each other so long that I was considerin' gittin' em drunk and tossin' in a bunk my own self. Glad to see that you got it done up proper."
"Thanks, Zoe; but I sense that congratulating me is not all that you're about." as Jorge poured another round of rum.
"You're right, maistre. I trust you're aware of the old ship's tradition of gettin' a shipmate sexed when they come of age?"
"Right, adult virgins are bad luck, they invite disaster." He leaned closer and lowered his voice "I trust that this is not for Doc Tam's ears."
"Right, now I got my share of cashy money after our last job and I know I can't afford your normal companion rates but I figured you might cut a fellow crew mate a deal and still do her up right."
Jorge was about to reply that he would consider it an honor to do it for nothing when River stepped down from the passage to the cockpit. "Not so fast. I'm not doing it if she isn't. She needs it more than I do. She 'ain't had no lovin' since January, February, June or July'." quoting an old song called 'Harvest Moon' and laying a tender hand on Zoe's shoulder. "She flies true but she's been banged up pretty bad. Remember Jorge, you took an oath to offer sexual healing to the sick at heart and the bereaved."
Zoe demurred "Oh River, bao-bei, I don't know if I'm ready."
River just cocked her head and gave Zoe one of her 'looks' as if to say "_Right, as if I couldn't read your state of mind_." "Besides, Wash thinks it's a great idea."
Zoe burst out laughing "That sounds like my Man. He always did want to watch."
River leaned close to Zoe's ear. "You can't lie to me, you're as wet as the lake region of Londinium at the thought."
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Storing Grains
storing grains
Bulk Grain Storage Guidelines
Storing grains? Everything you need to know about grain storage bags, containers, and the key factors that will effect your bulk whole grain storage life and nutritional value.
• Oxygen
This bountiful element is the key ingredient in oxidation; a process that adversely changes the chemical properties of whole grains. To preserve whole grains, oxygen must be removed. Airtight containers help, but very few are 100% effective. The best solution is to use a small, safe, chemical-filled packet called an oxygen absorber, which, when used correctly, will remove up to 99.5% of oxygen from storage containers.
• Moisture
Generally, the higher the moisture content in the product, the shorter its life. Moisture allows bacteria and mold to grow, causing whole grains to turn rancid more quickly. Moisture breaks down food. The warmer the water the faster the breakdown.
• Temperature
When storing grains, temperature is one of the most important factors in determining shelf life. A general rule is the lower the temperature the longer the shelf life. Storing your whole grains in the garage with a room temperature of 90 degrees during the day and 50 degrees at night is very hard on your whole grain storage and will cut your shelf life tremendously. In addition to storing your whole grains cool and dry, it is also important to keep a stable temperature. Fluctuating temperatures can cause your whole grains to deteriorate over time. Optimal storage recommendations include storing your whole grains in a cool, dry, dark area with a constant temperature between 50 and 60 degrees. We realize that is not always achievable, so we suggest storing your whole grains as close to the optimal recommendation as possible. In short, store your whole grains in a cool, dark, and dry environment.
• Type of Packaging
When storing grains, the type of packaging can drastically affect shelf life of whole grains. Whole grains should only be stored in food-grade containers. These containers do not contain any hazardous chemicals and are safe for storing whole grains even for long periods of time. Grain storage containers not approved for food use include trash or garbage bags, paint cans, and industrial plastics that have been used or designed for non-food purposes. Oxygen absorbers are essential for long-term shelf life. It is recommended to have whole grains packaged in either a #10 can or metalized food grade plastic bag with an oxygen absorber. This process is sometimes referred to as "nitrogen packed" because once the oxygen is removed all that remains is nitrogen.
• Protection from insects, rodents, and chemicals
This is especially important when deciding how to store your whole grain. Food grade containers such as #10 cans and metalized food storage bags (mylar bags) are great for storing grains. Mylar bags work perfect as grain storage bags. Quality #10 cans are double enamel coated inside and out, so they will not rust. The metal and enamel coating protects whole grains from insects and rodents because they cannot smell the whole grain through the can. Metalized food storage bags are similar to the #10 cans in their ability to protect whole grains from insects and rodents. It is important to remember to not store your whole grain storage near any chemicals including household cleaners.
Storing Grains
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How Nate Silver Predicted Obama's Win
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Throughout last year's election, Nate Silver ran a fascinating website called FiveThirtyEight, named after the number of electors in the United States electoral college. Silver is a statistician, and he spent every day applying his considerable math chops to the various problems of the election -- namely, who would win, where, and by how much. By aggregating and analyzing publicly available poll data, Silver developed a series of statistical models that predicted, with stunning accuracy, what would happen on election day.
Silver got his start as a baseball statistician before he started FiveThirtyEight. A New York Magazine profile from last fall explains:
...At his day job, Silver works for Baseball Prospectus, a loosely organized think tank that, in the last ten years, has revolutionized the interpretation of baseball stats. Furthermore, Silver himself invented a system called PECOTA, an algorithm for predicting future performance by baseball players and teams. (It stands for "player empirical comparison and optimization test algorithm," but is named, with a wink, after the mediocre Kansas City Royals infielder Bill Pecota.) Baseball Prospectus has a reputation in sports-media circles for being unfailingly rigorous, occasionally arrogant, and almost always correct.
When Silver turned his attention to politics, his baseball stats experience came in handy. Silver's models are predictive, meaning that his intent was to figure out what would happen on a certain date (November 4) based on the trend and accuracy of all the available data. This is a little different from what most political pollsters do -- their typical task is to take a snapshot of the electorate on a given day, then analyze that. From the New York article:
As pollster John Zogby put it to me, "We take snapshots. And when you take many snapshots in a row, you get motion pictures."
Similar to how a sports prediction seeks to predict a larger outcome (like which team will win the pennant), based on achieving a series of sub-goals (teams winning various games and playoffs), Silver saw the presidential and congressional elections as a series of smaller games in each state (primaries) that would select the players (candidates), who would eventually compete in the World Series (the election). He had tons of data coming out each day from existing pollsters. He just needed a methodology to use that data, and pull good predictions from it. The New York profile continues:
So he came up with a system that predicts a pollster's future performance based on how good it's been in the past. In finding his average, Silver weights each poll differently—ranking them according to his own statistic, PIE (pollster-introduced error)—based on a number of factors, including its track record and its methodology. One advantage of this system is that, during the primaries, the system actually got smarter. Because each time a poll performed well in a primary, its ranking improved.
For the general election, this gets trickier, since you have polls coming out every single day and you can't know which ones are getting it right until Election Day. You can, however, weigh these new polls based on the pollster's history, the poll's sample size, and how recently the poll was conducted. You can also track trends over time and use these trend lines to forecast where things will end up on November 4. You can also, as Silver has done, analyze all the presidential polling data back to 1952, looking for information as to what is likely to happen next. (For example, how much the polls are likely to tighten in the last month of the race, which they traditionally do.) You can also run 10,000 computer simulations of the election every day based on your poll projections. (Think of this as sort of like that scene at the end of WarGames, where the computer blurs through every possible nuclear-war scenario.) As of October 8, the day after the town-hall debate, Silver's simulations had Obama winning the election 90 percent of the time.
In the end, Silver got it right. His models predicted the popular vote within 1 percentage point as well as predicting 49 of 50 state races correctly. After the election, Silver has continued to analyze special topics, like the Coleman/Franken recount, and his work there has been entertaining as well as enlightening (see his post on real Minnesota ballots entitled Brett Favre Beats Lizard People).
If you're interested in politics, statistics, or even baseball, I think you'll enjoy the New York profile of Silver, which came out before the election was decided. For a bit of after-the-fact analysis, check out this New York Times article from November 9. In any case, Nate Silver is a kind of nerd hero for me: a man whose statistical superpowers brought him to national prominence. Let's hear it for math!
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February 5, 2009 - 9:54am
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Al Roker
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For those without comedic tastes, the so-called experts at Wikipedia have an article about Al Roker.
Al Roker, shown here shortly after his birth.
Perhaps the most well known fat person, other than the late Orson Welles and Shrek, is Al Roker. The origins of Al Roker remain unknown but there are several generally accepted theories:
1. God took a really really huge dump and later blamed it on Satan the Stooge.
2. Al Roker was an experiment created and funded by Taco Bell Labs in order to create a human being that was a perfect eating machine that is only physically capable of running on Taco Bell food
3. Al Roker is the illigitimate "love child" conceived during a brief affair between Oprah Winfrey and Chef Boyardee founder Ettore Boiardi, in the back room of his Italian restaurant, Giardino d'Italia, at East 9th Street and Woodland Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.
4. Being the skilled weatherman he is, Al Roker has predicted the next ice age and is wisely storing up fat to hibernate for the next millennium.
As for Senario No. 2, unfortunately once Al Roker was born they had to scrap the project when he emerged from the womb black. Eventually Taco Bell Inc. reached the source of the problem when they found out that the incompetent basement meth chemist they hired to do the job forgot to throw in the gene for Mexican American.
The Chemist was first forced to apply for jobs in Detroit for a month; and then held prisoner in Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp and then murdered after which the failed George W. Bush assassination plot, still in the "planning" phase, was used to cover it up. Al Roker however was released into the wild and picked up by a family of traveling banjo minstrels who eventually settled down in southeastern Pennsylvania. As Al Roker's age increased and his maturity decreased his weight moved exponentially skyward, almost doubling every day.
edit Youth
Albert J. Rokenpiece during his Sumo Wrestling years at Yale.
Before High school, and Fat Camp before that, coincidentally Al Roker was consuming 350 pounds of raw taco meat and 20 liters of sour cream per day and Mountain Dew, almost half his body weight. Typically the food was beer-bonged into his gaping jowls and the sour cream was injected directly into his bloodstream. Subsequently, his blood is 70% raw cholesterol, 25% Mountain Dew and 5% naturally produced heroin to suppress the constant pain associated with his stretched out skin.
In the future Al Roker is expected to quite easily surpass the mass of the Earth, drawing the Moon closer to the planet's surface, therefore the only foreseeable plan is to rocket him into the Sun (thus, Al's lifelong budding interest in the study of Meteorology) as well as the dreaded Effect of Dragons on Global Warming.
Some Tree hugging hippy bastards think that it's wrong; claiming that "cows are people too" but the one thing that they're forgetting is that no just and loving God would knowingly put that atrocity into existence. No just and loving God besides taco bell, that is.
Regarding Al Roker's increasing weight, scientists have arrived at the following equation. A = B Where A equals Al Roker and B equals Fat.
edit Social Status and issues
A lot of people "appear" to be Al Roker's friends and admiring colleagues, but we know of course that that's impossible. Al Roker's size requires a constant expulsion of gas and human gas is normally made up of methane and fecal matter. Al Roker's is pure vaporized cannabinols. Being around Al Roker for about 30 seconds is like smoking a gram of Cannabis Indica (common indica strains include White Widow and Northern Lights for all you Brandon Rolands wanna-bees out there).
In addition to this, just like Marlon Brando in his last days; Roker has a tendency to shit pure liquefied McDonalds Chicken McNuggets of 5-Methoxy-Dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT), normally naturally produced in certain barks and found in certain types of toad venom along with bufotenin. In addition to this, Al Roker urinates LSA dissolved in reagent grade ethyl alcohol.
In conclusion, the only reason Al Roker has friends is because they invariably perceive him as cool due to the Magic mushroom hallucinogenic cloud of malodorous fecal matter that surrounds him due to his ever-present gravitational pull.
On a personal note: this author weeps the loss of Katie Couric to the stinky claws of the gas cloud, and her fantastic gams. Al Roker once took a massive shit. That shit was later named Atlanta.
edit The Al Roker "Truffle Shuffle" Disaster
In 2004, Al Roker attempted the "Truffle Shuffle" off the coast of India. The resulting tsunami cost tens of thousands of people in Thailand their jobs and their homes. Some 8,000 people died. The UN barred pressing charges for the murders on Al Roker because the supreme court deemed him not a person (see Roe v. Gay).
They only solution was a 27th trimester abortion. Al Roker, still lodged in the ocean where he committed the horrible shuffle, was injected with 27 hundred tons of whale anesthetics. This only agitated Al Roker who let out a sigh of disappointment - This sigh became known as Hurricane Katrina.
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Subject: Re: Clarence Braxton
Author: Etoile (Authenticated as Etoile)
Date: May 16, 2012 at 6:38:06 PM
Reply to: Re: Clarence Braxton by Rachael
First of all, I'd definitely age him up a bit, or lose some of the more "adult" things about him. For example, I remember reading something (actually that someone posted on the Lounge here a while ago) about how some precocious kids can read at an advanced level, but even though they know all the words and get the gist of what it's talking about, but they don't really understand the deep meaning right away in the same way that an actual teenager or adult would. Maybe he's like that and the fact that he doesn't fully process more complicated things that he reads becomes a plot point (and the fact that he likes to memorize passages could be a sign of that, like he thinks that memorization shows understanding when it really just shows that he has a good memory for things like that). Or maybe he doesn't swear, because that strikes me as something a twelve-year-old trying to be mature would do rather than a nine-year-old. Maybe you should let him have more "fun" hobbies like art or music. Maybe he has moments where he's kind of bratty or immature or unnecessarily rude. Maybe all of this thoughts, even though they're intelligent, still have a childlike whimsy and naïveté in his understanding of the world (or lack thereof, in some cases). There are a lot of possibilities to make him more childlike, or to make his personality fit his age better.
Are those the kinds of things you were thinking of? Do you want any more suggestions? Examples? (I'm trying to think of characters that balance intelligence with age well, and maybe it's because I don't read/watch a lot of things with characters who are younger than teenagers, but I actually can't think of any examples outside of my own characters' backstories...)
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Most of the time we see a Wii mote controlling something tangible, it's more for entertainment value like an airsoft gun or Rovio. The Casmobot lawnmower, developed by scientists from the University of Southern Denmark, is actually quite useful if you loathe outdoor chores. It can be steered into grass-cutting action via the tilt of the controller synced with Bluetooth. Alternatively, you can drive it for a lap around the border of the yard and then put it on autopilot to mow inside the designated zone. We wouldn't run in front of it while its in motion, though, it's probably not as forgiving of interruption as a roomba. Researcher Kjeld Jensen also suggested applying the same technology to your grandmother's wheelchair, but we really don't think she'd appreciate that. See it for yourself in the video after the break.
[Via Switched]
Casmobot lawnmower is a slave to the flick of a Wiimote
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Generally favorable reviews - based on 19 Critics
Critic score distribution:
1. Positive: 15 out of 19
2. Negative: 0 out of 19
1. It's an immensely successful movie - and far and away the most emotionally charged, psychologically uneasy and diabolically suspenseful thriller Polanski's made since his heyday. [27 Jan 1995, p. 26]
3. Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
As vivid and suspenseful as Roman Polanski has made this claustrophobic tale of a torture victim turning the tables on her putative tormentor, one is still left with a film in which each character represents a mouthpiece for an ideology.
4. 89
Death and the Maiden is a streamlined razor-ride of a movie: taut, riveting, and a psychological horror show that will leave nail-marks in your palms for days afterwards.
5. Reviewed by: Staff (Not Credited)
The material is well served by director Roman Polanski, who knows well how to instill a subtle, claustrophobic sense of dread in an audience and has put together a rather elegant potboiler.
6. Reviewed by: Kim Newman
Even by their high standards, the performances of Weaver and Kingsley here are impressive, and Polanski ratchetts up the tension nicely. A chilling and thought-provoking piece.
7. Reviewed by: Caryn James
Mr. Polanski's brilliance with the camera turns Ariel Dorfman's well-meaning but pretentious play about human rights into a harrowing experience.
8. 75
Polanski, working from a fluid script by Dorfman and Rafael Yglesias ("Fearless"), gives the story its due. He creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic tension to rival his "Knife in the Water" and "Repulsion".
9. 75
10. Polanski directs the film without a wasting a moment. The occasional humor does nothing to relieve tension but, as in a Hitchcock picture, has a way of increasing it.
11. Reviewed by: Staff (Not Credited)
Death and the Maiden never fulfills the evocative promise of those initial frames...Beyond that, you have to settle for a craftsman working with more precision than inspiration. But Polanski at half-speed is still hard to beat. [27 Jan 1995, pg. E.1]
12. 70
It's an exceptionally intelligent and controlled piece of direction, and for once Polanski didn't hide his emotions in a death's-head grin. The movie is raw and passionate and unresolved in a way that's unique among his work.
13. Even though he's psychologically expanded his source, the material is a bit too schematic to work as much more than a scaled-down thriller.
14. Sigourney Weaver isn't quite up to her most demanding scenes, but Ben Kingsley is expertly enigmatic as the stranger, and Stuart Wilson is excellent as the husband who doesn't know whom to believe. [27 Jan 1995, p. 14]
15. Reviewed by: Scott Rosenberg
16. 60
Polanski stages some lovely moments, particularly Paulina's candlelit dinner in her closet. But he also undercuts the high-minded ideals of Dorfman's original by exposing its radical chic pretentions.
17. 50
18. Reviewed by: Desson Howe
Polanski touch -- apart from a little suspense here and there -- is limited. And the story, which Ariel Dorfman adapted from his radical-chic play, is too contrived and smug to really hold.
19. 40
Weaver's overacting and Dorfman's bold-faced dialogue oversell the scenario. Only Kingsley's sly turn gives Death And The Maiden any real feeling of disquiet.
User Score
Generally favorable reviews- based on 12 Ratings
User score distribution:
1. Positive: 4 out of 5
2. Negative: 0 out of 5
1. JayH
May 10, 2009
Intense and compelling, excellent direction by Roman Polanski. Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley are amazing. Never a dull moment, very fast pacing. Fascinating story. I was not fully satisfied by the ending, but not sure if there would be any better way Full Review »
2. Sep 19, 2013
Simply one of the best movies done on the aftermath of the South American dictatorships. We should never forget the tyranny of the Catholic Church over the centuries and the legacy it left behind. You don't know if she is crazy or not. She was an unknown at the time but you could tell she was on her way up. Full Review »
3. Oct 7, 2011
Simply awesome: one place only, but... The film is smart and leaded by three amazing actors. The highlight are the numerous dialogues between complicated characters, with every defends his own point of view. And no flashback, no "tadam!" revelations, the viewer makes his own reflections, and it's the evidence it is a good movie... Full Review »
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71.6 ° F
Full Weather
Georgia braces for 2nd snowstorm in 2 weeks
ATLANTA (AP) -- When snow fell on Atlanta two weeks ago, downtown streets of the South's business hub were jammed with unmoving cars, highway motorists slept overnight in vehicles or abandoned them where they sat, and students were forced to camp out in school gymnasiums when roads turned too treacherous for buses to navigate.
Things promised to be different Tuesday, when another round of rain, sleet and freezing rain was expected to begin walloping the area.
That's not necessarily because city and state officials are going to be better prepared -- although they promised they would be -- but because many people aren't going to take a chance that they will get trapped again.
"Basically, everyone from the office is going to be working from home" on Tuesday, said Dakota Herrera as he left a car park in downtown Atlanta to go to his office Monday.
Atlanta has a long and painful history of being ill-equipped to deal with snowy weather. Despite officials' promises following a crippling ice storm in 2011 that they would be better prepared next time, the storm that hit the area Jan. 28 proved they still had many kinks to work out.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal indicated on Monday that he and other state officials had learned their lesson. Before a single drop of freezing rain or snow fell, Deal declared a state of emergency for nearly a third of the state and state employees were told they could stay home if they felt conditions were too dangerous. Schools canceled classes, and Deal urged people who didn't need to be anywhere to stay off the roads. Tractor-trailer drivers were handed fliers about the weather and a law requiring chains on tires in certain conditions.
That kind of reassurance was a hard sell with some.
"I'm not counting on it," said Terri Herod, who bought a large bag of sand and a shovel at local hardware store. "I've been in Georgia on and off for 20 years. It's usually the same scenario: not enough preparations and not enough equipment."
The governor apologized and announced the formation of a task force to study the problems. This time, ice posed a major concern.
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this weeks sermon
this weeks sermon
not the best typer
science and math vs prey and faith or should I say a cost benifit analyas vs charity , should i walk to the store for just the carton of milk or drive even though it cost more in fuel then the milk and only saves 85 steps . community , commonwealth, communication , communion , what we have in common, we have talked of our personnal trinities and our dualities , if you look at our common even amoungst our personnal bodies , our eyes , our hands and our fingers , arms , legs . the reflection without a mirror , the duality of chiose , like Law and your chiose of either side of the house , the two party syatem , community , which side of the track , communication talking or listening , communion - have it or not , the duality of chiose , science and math vs prey and math - the phalisy of progress - The Lord and the thieves on the mount - did pythagorass prey - is math a product of discovery - theft or faith - is the theory of pie faith and belief because its true or a principle of science and math because its true , truth is one paths are many - but is the principle of duality which if you look at the body you know is a fact a reason to war between dualities - do you cut a hand off because one writes and the other doesnt - the stupidity of both war and lack of insight the natuer of acceptance , as the earth and the planets of the solar system and the sun revolve around fire as the core much like our third eye another sermon last week due to the fact that it all is a product of science and math and can be proved even held together by science and math - but if you look closly at this universse you will see ever so closley and slowly that the whole system moves ever so slowly around us , sun included =- Why you may ask or believ it or not , duality and the natuer of acceptance , this miricle or explanation the of a miricle is simple due to the fact that we exist here , so do th kindoms of plant and animal , regardless you are s\cience or math or prey and faith , we prey , it only takes one , a prey from the hear4t , has much power as the trinirty and the seat of the flame - our core the sun itself
pie its amount vs the amount of preys ever said
priase the Lord
peace jjakh
Comentarios for this Forum Topic
Love - is it chemicial , emotional or real ?
praise the lord
peace jjakh
wow , wow , wow , wow , wow
ain't life grand like a torino
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The movie cult classic finally comes to the gaming arena but is it too little too late? by Mike Chasselwaite
January 23, 2006 - Starship Troopers is a mindless shooter that vaguely reminds us of the movie. If you didn't like the movie, you probably won't like this game. And if you loved the movie, you probably won't like this game either. The game lacks depth. It's like an arcade shooting gallery featuring an over-populated race of alien insects to fire at. There are millions of them. And somebody has to kill them all. That would be you. Get busy.
Having to kill all these insects is like being handed a broom at your new job and told to sweep the warehouse. Shooting these bugs becomes a job, and not a likeable job. Okay, it's a better job than cleaning up a sweatshop but only barely. After a full day of bug shooting you'll be glad when your shift is over and you can do something more intellectual - like watch TV.
Planet Hesperus is overrun with viscous alien insects of the large and fast variety. The planet, which is close to Earth, was colonized by man and was considered a virtual Garden of Eden. But when the bugs invaded, the place went to hell. It's your job as a space marine to take control of the planet, protect the human population and kill those bugs dead.
To aid you in your task you will have a carbine and a shotgun, both with secondary features such as a grenade launcher, scope and rocket launcher. The carbine comes with unlimited ammo, and you're going to need it. The shotgun propels multiple shell blasts that can cut down entire rows of these bugs. The grenade is also a great weapon. It can take out a large chunk of enemies but you have to stop firing the gun to use one.
The enemy is relentless. They literally swarm you. At times you will be able to make out where they are coming from by pinpointing the strange sounds they make. Oddly you can't do this all the time. Although you will be able to hear them you can't tell where they are coming from all the time and this can be serious if they get the jump on you and surround you out in the open. You might face as many as 50 of these creatures at one time and if you don't cut them all down you lose. It's not an easy game by any stretch but the challenge doesn't vary despite different missions.
You are outfitted with a super suit and a shield that will regenerate. Abilities include running, jumping and crawling. Unfortunately the other marines in your squad aren't fortunate enough to have developed these skills. When under attack by such huge swarms of bugs it's nice to have some backup. On occasion you will have a squad attempt to take some of the load off of you but these guys seem more intent on offering themselves as a sacrifice to the enemy. They will shoot but they aren't great shots. They don't run, they don't crawl and they don't take cover. They just stand around until they get mowed down. You can't issue them any orders so you don't feel responsible for their imminent deaths. They all look the same and they repeat some of the same lines way too many times. Since they all look and act like clones you don't feel any attachment to them when they die.
Hesperus is a huge planet with varying terrain. It's not static. Objects in the environments are interactive which makes the planet a believable platform from which to conduct your business. Troops are engaged in various background animations and radio chatter fills the air. The voiceovers are every bit as good as the movie - if you like cliches. Much of the dialog is tongue-in-cheek with healthy doses of humor though some of the lines do get repetitive.
Things can be difficult to see at night as the lighting either washes things out or doesn't provide enough illumination. There isn't much in the way of slowdown but the animation of the bugs is stiff and jerky. They emit an unsettling squeal that sounds like a pig caught in an auger. The explosions and other weapon sounds are very powerful and satisfying. They display realistic girth and create some nice bass rumblings. The music keeps the tension in high gear but it too starts to repeat.
Starship Troopers would make an excellent arcade game. It's got lots of enemies, plenty of firepower, tons of action and a very good chance of your character getting killed which would force gamers to toss in more quarters. Unfortunately the game loses its appeal as a home game. It's like inviting the funny drunk you met in the bar last night to your party only to find out that after an hour he repeats the same stories over and over. In this way Starship Troopers is fun for a while but only as long as the definition of "a while" does not exceed one hour.
• Epic battles featuring 300+ bugs with individual AI on screen at once, 20 times more action than gamers have ever seen before.
• 19 different types of non-humanoid enemy bugs to encounter.
• License that covers the whole Starship Troopers universe. The books, films and TV series are just the beginning.
• Voice-over commentary by Casper van Dien, aka Johnny Rico, now the general who introduces each mission.
• Nine weapons, each with dual function attacks.
• 12 single player levels including a mix of huge real-time battles on an epic scale and solo 'infiltration' missions.
• Varied Combat Environments - indoor and outdoor levels, including the wide-open battlefields, a secret laboratory, claustrophobic bug nests, abandoned mines and lonely outposts. Plus LAN and online modes including death match and co-op mode.
By Mike Chasselwaite
CCC Freelance Writer
Rating out of 5
Starship Troopers (PC)
The planet looks lived on. It's huge and well detailed, the character models look like clones and move like robots.
Nice weapons. They are very effective but there isn't much variety.
Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Good sound effects and voiceovers but like everything else in this game it becomes repetitious.
Play Value
The multi-player mode might give you some reason to take up arms again.
Overall Rating - Good
System: PC
Dev: Empire Int/Destineer
Pub: Strangelite
Release: Dec 2005
Players: 1 - multi
Review by Mike
Review Rating Legend
1.0 - 1.9 = Avoid
2.0 - 2.4 = Poor
2.5 - 2.9 = Average
3.0 - 3.4 = Fair
3.5 - 3.9 = Good
4.0 - 4.4 = Great
4.5 - 4.9 = Must Buy
5.0 = The Best
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Windows XP Updates
Important End-of-Life Notice Regarding Windows XP
Microsoft will stop support and security patching for Windows XP on April 8, 2014. The international security community believes that Windows XP computers will be heavily targeted by organized crime and hackers as soon as Microsoft ends support. We strongly recommend that you migrate to a supported Windows platform, such as Windows 7 or Windows 8, before the end of March 2014.
Microsoft periodically releases security patches for Windows operating systems. Downloading and installing these updates will help protect your computer from viruses and threats.
Installing Critical Updates
1. Open Internet Explorer » Go to
If a "Security Warning" or a prompt to install software appears, confirm it is from Microsoft, and then click "Yes."
2. Click the button titled Express.
Windows Update Express Install
3. Wait briefly while the site scans your computer to see what updates are needed.
4. At the next screen, click the Install Updates button.
5. Any needed high-priority updates will be downloaded and installed. If you are prompted to restart after the updates have been installed, do so.
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Our Voice: Spend part of Veterans Day learning the stories our veterans' lives tell
November 10, 2013
Vets Day Parade
Hundreds of people lined the streets of West Richland Saturday for the annual Veterans Day Parade. They were treated to the usual assortment of military vehicles, motorcycles, marching bands, fair queens and candy tossing participants.
RICHARD DICKIN — Tri-City Herald
Each life has a story. It's why people read obituaries of people they don't know. It's why celebrity gossip grabs our attention.
It's why we encourage you to take some time to enjoy the Veterans Day insert in your Tri-City Herald today. See what we mean.
This 16-page special issue honors veterans living and deceased, even those currently serving.
It tells a small part of their story, however briefly.
Also in today's paper is a special photo spread by award-winning Herald photographer Kai-Huei Yau. It includes vignettes and portraits. You know the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words."
Today's paper also has a feature story on a recent Honor Flight to Washington, D.C.
The point is: Veterans are not just some distant or elusive symbol. They are our friends and parents and children. Each of these men and women -- and thousands more -- has ties to the Mid-Columbia.
Many schools have Veterans Day assemblies so kids can meet and listen to local veterans. It's meant to honor the vet, but it also goes a long way toward instilling respect and understanding in the student.
There are lots of other ways to honor a veteran this weekend. You can find a list of those Mid-Columbia activities online at bit.ly/vetevents.
In years past, we have used the space on this page to encourage people to thank a vet. And people actually do it. We know because it's not unusual to get a handful of Thankful Thursday letters expressing gratitude to our veterans and from veterans who are the recipients of someone thanking them.
This year we also are thinking about how someone's life stories can get lost. In the case of a veteran, some of those who served don't want to talk about their time in the military. Or maybe we don't listen the way we should.
And not all stories have a happy ending. But each life has a story -- and a lesson.
It's extremely likely that you have a veteran in your family tree or living on your block. And it's those stories we are interested in hearing -- and remembering.
So your assignment this year is to 1) thank a vet and 2) in some way help to preserve their stories. It can be a note on your Facebook page, a video interview, it can be a journal entry or a letter.
Look at today's insert for inspiration.
And, to the vets, thank you. We may not fully understand your experience, but we appreciate your service.
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Admin Panel The Downey Patriot
Hone your female intuition
"You've come a long way, baby," wasn't just an ad for Virginia Slims cigarettes during the late 1960s - it was also a dubious signifier for the gains women had made in society.
"As women, we have spent so much time and effort living up to the standards of a patriarchal society that we've almost completely disconnected from our own deepest, authentic truth," says Leela Francis, author of "Woman's Way Home: Navigating Your Path to Embodied Power," (, which includes techniques and tools from her Vividly Woman Embodied Leader Tools and Training.
" 'What do women want?' Sadly, many women today aren't even sure; but by tapping the power of her inner wisdom, a woman can have the life of her dreams."
* Recognize when ego and intuition are pulling you in different directions. "Having witnessed the outcome of choosing ego over intuition enough times, I've seen how counterproductive ignoring intuitive wisdom can be," Francis says. "I can't help but notice that I sense the most friction when my ego is winning that inner tug of war." The ego is a perpetually hungry creature, never satisfied, whereas higher intuition has a contented nature that aligns with your personal integrity. Wisdom's signals are palpable, but we've become so masterful at ignoring them that we don't recognize them when they occur. Both the ego's plea and intuition's nudging are able to be sensed in one's body as distinctive body sensations. Listen inwardly for these sensations, for example, when someone is trying to sell you something questionable.
* Be available for those intuitive moments in which you can witness yourself, objectively, on every level. Intuitive power gives us a profound ability to see ourselves from a bird's eye view on every level - sensually, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. These intuitive moments don't have to be random; you can cultivate your mind to be more on the look out for sensations that are taking place in your body in each moment, and especially in situations that require you to make a difficult decision or choice. Be aware of your body as it goes through its daily activities and, at the same time, consider all levels of your self when doing so. This higher awareness enables women to have all aspects of their selves peacefully coexist and work together for a more whole and happy life.
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Public Statements
Roe Statement on Latest Unemployment Numbers
Location: Washington, DC
Today, Congressman Phil Roe, M.D. (TN-01) released the following statement on the unemployment numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the month of August:
"August marks the 43rd month in a row that unemployment has been above 8 percent. This is unacceptable, and a far cry from the economic recovery the president believes to be underway. We are not "doing fine.'
"The workforce has now dropped to its lowest level in 31 years because people have stopped looking for work, yet the president continues to ask for patience and insists we are on the right path. If the workforce were as large as it was when President Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 11.2%. Simply put, we shouldn't celebrate lower unemployment numbers because people stop looking for work, and we shouldn't continue to settle for the status quo when it clearly isn't working.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Anglicizing)
Jump to: navigation, search
Anglicisation or anglicization is the process of converting anything to more "English" norms.[1][2]
Social anglicisation[edit]
Social and economic anglicisation was an objective of the English crown in the Celtic regions of the United Kingdom, in Ireland, Scotland and Wales.[3] Social anglicisation was also a feature in some sectors of society under the British Empire.[4][5]
Anglicisation of language[edit]
In terms of language, anglicisation is a policy of use of the English language, such as was one of the causes contributing to the Boer War.[6][7] The adoption of English as a personal, preferred language is another form of anglicisation. Calvin Veltman, following the methods of analysis developed in Quebec, Canada for establishing rates of language shift, uses the term to refer to the practice of individuals in minority language groups who cease using their mother tongue as their usual, preferred language and adopt English instead. When such individuals continue to speak their mother tongue, they are referred to as "English-dominant bilinguals" and when they cease to do so, they are referred to as "English monolinguals". Rates of anglicisation may be calculated by comparing the number of people who usually speak English to the total number of people in any given minority language group.
Anglicisation of non-English-language vocabulary and names[edit]
Anglicisation within a language is adapting oral or written elements of any other language into a form that is more comprehensible to a speaker of English; or in general, of altering something so that it becomes English in form or character.[8][9] It is also called anglification, anglifying, or Englishing.
Anglicisation of loan words[edit]
The term 'anglicisation' sometimes refers to the process of altering the pronunciation or spelling of a foreign word when it is borrowed into English. Personal names may also be anglicised. This was common for names of antiquity or of foreign heads of state, and it has also been common among immigrants to English-speaking countries. There have also been cases of deliberate change during periods of international stress or war, for example, Battenberg was deliberately changed to Mountbatten.[citation needed]
Non-English words may be anglicised by changing their form and pronunciation to something more familiar to English speakers. For example, the Latin word obscenus /obskeːnus/ has been imported into English in the modified form obscene /əbˈsiːn/. Changing endings in this manner is especially common, and can be frequently seen when foreign words are imported into any language. For example, the English word damsel is an anglicisation of the Old French damoisele (modern demoiselle), meaning "young lady". Another form of anglicising is the inclusion of a foreign article as part of a noun (such as alkali from the Arabic al-qili).[citation needed]
Anglicisation of non-English place names[edit]
Some foreign place names are commonly anglicised in English as English exonyms. Examples include the Italian cities of Roma, Napoli and Milano, known in English as Rome, Naples and Milan, the German cities of Köln (Cologne), München (Munich) and, more subtly, Hannover (Hanover), the Danish city of København (Copenhagen), the Swedish city of Göteborg (Gothenburg), the Dutch city of Den Haag (The Hague), the Spanish city of "Sevilla" (Seville), the Egyptian city of القاهرة Al-Qāhira (Cairo), and the Moroccan city of مراكش Marraksh which had been called "Morocco" in medieval English literature and is renamed "Marrakesh" in modern-day English writings. Such anglicisation was once more common: nearly all cities and people discussed in English literature up to the mid-19th century had their names anglicised.[citation needed] In the late 19th century, however, use of non-English names in English began to become more common. When dealing with languages that use the same Latin alphabet as English, names are now more usually written in English as they happen in their local language, sometimes even with diacritical marks that do not normally appear in English. With languages that use non-Latin alphabets, such as the Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Korean Hangul, and other alphabets, a direct transliteration is typically used, which is then often pronounced according to English rules. Non-Latin based languages may use standard romanisation systems, such as Japanese Rōmaji or Chinese (Mandarin) Pīnyīn. The Japanese and Chinese names are spelled in English following these spellings with some common exceptions, usually without Chinese tone marks and without Japanese macrons for long vowels (Chóngqìng to Chongqing (重慶, 重庆), Shíjiāzhuāng to Shijiazhuang (石家莊, 石家庄), both in China, Kyōto to Kyoto (京都) in Japan).
De-anglicisation has become a matter of national pride in some places and especially in regions that were once under colonial rule, where vestiges of colonial domination are a sensitive subject.[10][11] Following centuries of English rule in Ireland, Douglas Hyde delivered an argument for de-anglicisation before the Irish National Literary Society in Dublin, 25 November 1892; "When we speak of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation', we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and, indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English."[10] Despite its status as an official language, the Irish language has been reduced to a minority language in Ireland due to centuries of English rule, as is the case in North America where their indigenous languages have been replaced by that of the colonists. In the process of removing the signs of their colonial past, anglicised names have been officially discouraged in many places: Ireland's Kingstown, named by King George IV, reverted to its original Irish name of Dún Laoghaire in 1920, even before Irish independence in 1922; India's Bombay is now Mumbai, even though this is not the oldest local name (see Toponymy of Mumbai) and "Bombay" is still commonly used in the city; Calcutta is Kolkata and Madras is Chennai. Bangladesh's Dacca is Dhaka. Many Chinese endonyms have become de-anglicised: Canton is now more commonly called Guangzhou (廣州, 广州), and Peking is generally referred to as Beijing (北京), although this reflected a name change from Beiping (Peiping) to Beijing (Peking) with the de-anglicisation of the name taking place after the name change to reflect a pronunciation change in Mandarin.
In Scotland, many places' names in Scots Gaelic were anglicised, often, but not always, accidentally due to Ordnance Survey mappers not being native speakers of Gaelic. Often the etymology of a place name is lost or obscured, such as in the case of Kingussie, from "Cinn a' Ghiuthsaich" (The Heads of the Pine Forest).
In other cases, established anglicised names have remained in common use where there is no national pride at stake: this is the case with Ghent (Gent, or Gand), Munich (München), Cologne (Köln), Vienna (Wien), Naples (Napoli), Rome (Roma), Milan (Milano), Athens (Αθήνα, Athina), Moscow (Москва, Moskva), Saint Petersburg (Санкт-Петербург, Sankt-Peterburg), Warsaw (Warszawa), Prague (Praha), Bucharest (Bucureşti), Belgrade (Београд, Beograd), Lisbon (Lisboa), and other European cities whose names have been familiar in their anglicised forms for centuries. However, the de-anglicised names now often appear as an alternative on maps, in airports, etc.
Often the English name reflects a French origin, sometimes unchanged from French, e.g. Cologne, sometimes changed slightly, e.g. Vienna (Vienne), Venice (Venise). The English city-name for the Czech capital – "Prague" is taken with spelling unaltered from the French name for the city, itself descended from the Latin name for the city (Praga), which had been borrowed from an earlier Czech name (pre-dating the /g/>/h/ shift).
Sometimes a place name can appear anglicised, but is not, such as when the form being used in English is an older name that has now been changed. For example, Turin in the Piedmont province of Italy was named Turin in the original Piedmontese language, but is now officially known as Torino in Italian. English-language media can sometimes overcompensate for this in the mistaken belief that the anglicised name was imposed by English speakers and is cultural domination.[12] The International Olympic Committee made the choice to regard the city officially as "Torino" throughout the 2006 Winter Olympics.
Historical anglicisation of personal names[edit]
In the past, the names of people from other language areas were anglicised to a higher extent than today. This was the general rule for names of Latin or (classical) Greek origin. Today, the anglicised name forms are often retained for the more common persons, like Aristotle for Aristoteles, and Adrian or (later) Hadrian for Hadrianus. However, less well-known persons from the antiquity are now often given their full name (in the nominative case).
For royalty, the anglicisation of personal names was a general phenomenon, especially until recently: Charles for Carlos, Karoly, and Karl; Frederic for Friedrich or Fredrik, etc. Anglicisation is still the rule for popes, including recent ones: Pope John Paul II instead of Ioannes Paulus II, Pope Benedict XVI instead of Benedictus XVI.
Medieval Scottish names[edit]
The anglicisation of medieval Scottish names consists of changing them from a form consistent with Scottish Gaelic to the Scots language, which is an Anglic language. For instance, the king known in Scottish Gaelic as Domnall mac Causantín (Domnall son of Causantin) is known in Scots as Donald II of Scotland, son of Constantine I of Scotland.
Anglicisation of immigrant family and personal names[edit]
Most Irish names have been anglicised. A good example of this can be seen in the surnames of many Irish families – for example, Ó Briain has often become O'Brien, Ó Rothláin became Rowland, Ó Néill became O'Neill, and some surnames like Ó Gallchobhair may be shortened to just Gallagher. Likewise, native Scottish names were altered such as Somhairle to Sorley, Mac Gill-Eain to MacLean, and Mac Aoidh to MacKay. Many Welsh names have also been altered, such as "ap Hywell" to Powell, or "ap Siôn" to Jones.
German names have also been anglicised (from Licht to Light) due to the German immigration waves during times of political instability in the late 19th century and early 20th century. A somewhat different special case was the politically motivated change of dynasty name in 1917 by the royal family of the United Kingdom from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor. Incidentally, Saxe-Coburg is an anglicisation of Sachsen-Coburg.
In India, amongst others, a lot of Bengali surnames have been anglicised. Banerjee, Chatterjee and Mukherjee are anglicised forms of Bandhopadhay, Chatophadhay and Mukhopadhay respectively.
In some cases ethnonyms may be anglicised from a term in another language (either the language of the group described or the language of another people).
Anglicisation within other non-English languages[edit]
A more recent linguistic development is anglicisation of other languages, in which words are borrowed from English; such a word is known as an anglicism. With the rise in Anglophone media and global spread of British and American cultures in the 20th and 21st centuries, many English terms have entered popular usage in other tongues. Technology-related English words like internet and computer are particularly common across the globe, as there are no pre-existing words for them. English words are sometimes imported verbatim, and sometimes adapted to the importing language in a process similar to anglicisation. In languages with non-Latin alphabets, these borrowed words can be written in the Latin alphabet anyway, resulting in a text made up of a mixture of scripts; other times they are transliterated. Transliteration of English and other foreign words into Japanese generally uses the katakana script.
In some countries such anglicisation is seen as relatively benign, and the use of English words may even take on a chic aspect. In Japan marketing products for the domestic market often involves using English or pseudo-English brand names and slogans. In other countries, anglicisation is seen much more negatively, and there are efforts by public-interest groups and governments to reverse the trend; for example, the Académie française in France insists on the use of French neologisms to describe technological inventions in place of imported English terms.
See also[edit]
3. ^ Marc Caball Poets and politics: continuity and reaction in Irish poetry, 1558-1625 - Page 114 - 1998 "... Ulster counties with English and Scots settlers was soon set in motion. The plantation concept was underpinned by the crown's objectives of economic and social anglicisation of these areas. The two east-Ulster counties of Antrim and Down, ..."
4. ^ Radhakamal Mukerjee A history of Indian civilization Volume 2 - Page 411 1958 "For some decades it appeared that the dissemination of Western learning would bring about a complete social anglicisation and wholesale conversion of the people to Christianity in Bengal. But a cultural counter-movement soon started in ..."
5. ^
6. ^ Language planning and policy in Africa - Page 202 Richard B. Baldauf, Robert B. Kaplan - 2004 "... them (the Afrikaners) to become Anglicised (Watermeyer, 1996). Afrikaner resistance against Anglicisation is, among other factors," said to have contributed to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, which the British won (see e.g. Moodie, 1975)."
7. ^ Success with Asian Names: A Practical Guide for Business and ... - Page 32 Fiona Swee-Lin Price - 2007 "names: anglicisation. Anglicisation is the process of adapting a name to make it look more like an Anglo-Saxon name so that it is easier for English speakers to use. Names from most Asian countries are not structured like Anglo-Saxon names."
8. ^ anglicise - Free Online Dictionary Retrieved: 2013-10-21
9. ^ Cura's supreme English-English-Tamil dictionary: Revised, enlarged and updated Retrieved 2010-05-11
11. ^ ""de-anglicisation", in Free Online Dictionary". Retrieved 2013-10-21. "the elimination of English influence, language, customs, etc."
13. ^ Messenger, Chris (2002). "The Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became "Our Gang"". State University of New York Press. Retrieved January 29, 2014.
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US & World
2 Encrypted Email Services Shut Down to Avoid NSA Snooping
Two encrypted email services shut down on Thursday, citing concerns related to NSA surveillance and government requests for user data.
Private communications startup Silent Circle preemptively shut down its encrypted email service on Thursday evening, an unexpected move that came just a few hours after Lavabit, another encrypted email provider, allegedly used by Edward Snowden, decided to close doors rather than comply with a national security-related investigation.
"We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now," wrote Silent Circle's CTO and cryptographer Jon Callas on the company's blog, after explicitly pointing to Lavabit's earlier decision. "We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now."
Silent Circle, a startup founded by former U.S. Navy Seal Mike Janke, and well-known cryptographer Philip Zimmermann (pictured above), provides encrypted phone calls, text messages and video calls for $10 a month.
In a phone interview with Mashable on Friday, Janke said they had been thinking about this decision for a while, but Lavabit's announcement gave them the final push to not only close down the service, but to also wipe the servers and destroy them, removing "every and all traces of email in the entire architecture," he said.
The main reason behind their decision, however, is that even encrypted email isn't completely safe, he said.
"Email is fundamentally broke," Janke said, explaining that even perfectly encrypted emails leak metadata — the sender's IP address, the subject of the email, the time it was sent and received. "All those things are really, really sensitive information that governments can use to pinpoint and track you, and know who you're communicating with and where you're at and what time."
Janke said that 50% of Silent Circle's total users, though he declined to give a specific number, used the encrypted email service. Most of them, according to Janke, were supportive of the company's decision. And although Janke admits the action was abrupt and without prior warning, it had to be because many Silent Circle users are government employees around the world or people that might have been targets.
"If we send an email saying, 'in 12 hours we're shutting off email,'" Janke said, "it doesn't take but a half hour for a government agency to send you a National Security Letter."
Despite the current service being effectively destroyed, Janke revealed they're working on a fully encrypted and peer-to-peer email service which could be unveiled in the next few months.
A few hours before Silent Circle's decision, Lavabit had announced it was suspending its service.
The reasons behind Levison's decision are as yet unclear, though his full statement hints that he is under gag order following an unspecified request from the U.S government. (Levison didn't respond to Mashable's requests for comment.)
CNET reporter Declan McCullagh speculated on his Google Plus page that the reason might have been that the FBI served Lavabit with an order to intercept Snowden's, or other users', passwords.
The two companies' surprising decisions do appear to be ideologically motivated, but they are business decisions as well. Both Lavabit's and Silent Circle's business models are built on the promise of private communications and their advertised inability to comply with surveillance orders. Hence, it makes a lot of sense from a business perspective to fight government snooping. "If we turned evil, then you're still covered," Phil Zimmerman told Mashable in a previous interview, alluding to the value of protecting user data at any cost.
"Lavabit and Silent Circle's extraordinary behavior demonstrate not only their principles, but that they understand the business they're in," wrote computer scientist Matt Blaze on Twitter.
CryptoCat, a browser-based encrypted chat service, also announced it would do the same if necessary.
In an email to The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, Snowden praised Lavabit's decision, and warned about the dangers of forcing companies to shut down to protect their users.
Will other companies have to do the same thing Silent Circle and Lavabit did? In his statement, Levison finished with a dire warning.
Image: Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images
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"some music was meant to stay underground..."
Ignitor Announces New Album "The Spider Queen" Release Party
Texas metallers Ignitor have issued the following update about a release party for their upcoming album "The Spider Queen:"
"The CD release party in Austin at Encore Records is on October 3rd! 7PM...Free adult beverages, and when you buy the new CD, you get a free Ignitor patch. Encore Records, 1745 Anderson Lane, Austin, Texas."
Ignitor's other upcoming tour dates are as follows:
10/9 Red 7 Austin, Texas
10/10 Smokin Aces Mission, Texas
1/8 2010 Emos Austin, Texas
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Please share this article if you found it interesting.
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[Python-Dev] PEP 351 - do while
Andrew Koenig ark at acm.org
Sun Oct 1 18:58:41 CEST 2006
> (I don't think this has been suggested yet.)
> while <enter_condition>, <exit_condition>:
> <body>
This usage makes me uneasy, not the least because I don't understand why the
comma isn't creating a tuple. That is, why whould
while x, y:
be any different from
while (x, y):
My other concern is that <exit_condition> is evaluated out of sequence.
More information about the Python-Dev mailing list
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PALISADE — When Carroll Quarles came to the relatively tiny town of Palisade from Jackson, Wyo., in 1995, Jacie Taylor had been raped and murdered six months earlier.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the Mesa County Sheriff's Office were on the case. But Quarles, the new police chief, got involved running down the rumors running through the methamphetamine culture.
He dug holes to try to find buried copies of a video that tipsters told him had been made during the murder. He chased down bogus leads about the murder being a hit for drug debts.
He followed a hunch that the murderer could be a serial killer. He studied up on serial killers of women until he could riff on their traits and habits like a forensic psychologist.
When Robert Dewey was convicted of Taylor's murder in 1996, Quarles made sure all the evidence collected by his department remained in the department's freezer. He suspected someone else was involved.
In early December, he learned that was true. Quarles took part in meetings on the matter until this week, when he was included in a half moon of attorneys and law officers on display for the announcement that a wrongly convicted man would go free and new charges would be filed against someone else.
Quarles now is involved in a new investigation as law officers circle back and delve again into the evidence lockers and reinterview those who mostly have moved on from this now-quiet town and from the drug culture that set the stage for a lurid murder. Nancy Lofholm, The Denver Post
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Simulink 3D Animation
Plane Take-Off with HUD Text
This model is a variant of the vrtkoff example that shows also how to display signal values as text in the virtual scene and a simple Head-Up Display (HUD).
The text is sent to virtual scene using the VR Text Output block. This block formats the input vector using the format string defined in its mask (see sprintf() for more information) and resulting string is sent to the 'string' field of the associated VRML text node in the scene.
The HUD behavior (maintaining constant relative position between the user and the Text node) is achieved by defining a ProximitySensor that senses user position and orientation as it navigates through the scene and routing this information to the translation and rotation of HUD object - in this case a VRML Transform that contains the Text node.
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