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|2012-01-18, 06:32
|Link #3501
is Peking
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: London baby YEA!
Must really start the whole learning Japanese thing some time soon.
I think I'm going to learn the writing by writing stuff in English but with Japanese letters.
That and I will probably download Rosetta stone again - that was quite good actually. (recommend)
But I need to learn some Japanese before I go back there, It got kinda boring at times seeing as practically NO ONE speaks any English.
|2012-01-18, 09:00
|Link #3502
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: USA
Age: 29
You're going to want to take a more serious approach if you want to actually learn the language. Unless all you intend to do is use a few words for travel purposes, people do that all the time. But if you're talking about investing time and effort, you have to commit. Rosetta Stone is nice for learning a few words and sentences (to travel by) but it's no substitute for proper learning. You've got 175 previous pages in this thread, try looking at a few suggestions for beginners (not all 175 mind you, there lots of repeating things since there's people asking these types of things all the time).
|2012-01-20, 08:29
|Link #3503
Senior Member
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Half Australia, Half Tokyo, Bits and pieces in US
I would have to say though, why go to Kansai Gaidai and pick up Kansai-ben when you can immerse yourself in standard Japanese in Tokyo...
Tokyo Gaidai can be an alternative if you prefer public schools.
ICU and Sophia have very good Japanese courses because they not only accept Exchange students, but a large part of their regular students grew up overseas etc and do not have very strong japanese skills.
Waseda, Keio and Ritsumeikan are all great schools, and no doubt have good language programs but their main target seems to be the Japanese students. Of course they are international too, but not as international as ICU and Sophia, maybe.
Location wise, if you want to enjoy Tokyo without commuting for hours on a train, stick to Sophia, Keio, Waseda and Ritsumeikan.
Waseda and Sophia central tokyo, Keio can be different depending on the campus, ritsumeikan, I forgot where they are...
ICU and Tokyo Gaidai is on the fringe on Tokyo, and not very convinient...
|2012-02-06, 02:25
|Link #3505
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Vereinigte Staaten
Age: 26
I've kind of given up learning anything from this thread. I feel that I've I've reached the peak of whatever self-study can offer me and I'll just have to take the language in school if I want to go any further.
|2012-02-06, 02:41
|Link #3509
Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2012
I don't intend to. Just little lessons and the such I would appreciate. I stopped reading at paaage 5 maybe ? Just a bit past the part where a couple of users just started bashing. What I would like to learn are just simple things for now. Such as time, dates, short sentences, questions, etc.
|2012-02-06, 02:44
|Link #3510
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Vereinigte Staaten
Age: 26
*= There is, of course, the time-honoured method of taking a Japanese textbook, trekking into the mountains, and dedicating yourself to every lesson in the volume before returning to civilization like a boss.
|2012-02-06, 03:07
|Link #3511
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Vereinigte Staaten
Age: 26
Case in point: http://www.freejapaneselessons.com/lesson01.cfm
I used this a few years back and in conjunction with watching too much anime it seemed to make some sense. Read the first few lessons, learn the hiragana and katakana, and then when you watch anime, watch it subbed and try to figure out and and get an ear for the way they build sentences. A great thing about Japanese is that the sounds are very simple and thus easy to hear correctly.
Once you've gotten the basic pronouns and sentence structure memorized, make a point of thinking "how would that sentence be structured in Japanese?" whenever you think of something in English. This helps embed the workings of the language in your brain.
As for learning the alphabets, there being 50 symbols in each alphabet to learn looks difficult, but remember them in order (a i u e o, ka ki ku ke ko, etc) and rewrite them over and over again like crazy and you'll get it eventually. I used to take a sheet of lined paper, divide it into fifteen rectangles, and write the alphabet fifteen times, and then repeat the same process on the other side. I found that I didn't have to even fill the whole page before I could do it without mistakes.
Kanji, which is quite important, is a measure more difficult since you have to just memorize each character. But it's the kind of thing that you should honestly avoid learning until you've mastered the basics of the spoken language and the hiragana/katakana. Kanji is most important for nouns and verbs, especially more intellectual ones. You would write "sakana" (fish) as either さかな (hiragana) or 魚 (Kanji), but things like "Shogun" (general) or "hiragana" would probably always be written in Kanji ("將軍" and "平假名", respectively).
In addition to the above link I gave you, it would probably help a lot to get a set of audio lessons. Try "Pimsleur Japanese (90 half-hour courses)" or "Human Japanese" (a language software), I've looked at both and and they seem decent.
That's all for now. If you have complicated questions, ask someone who's actually Japanese.
|2012-02-06, 03:52
|Link #3512
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Vienna
|2012-02-06, 05:19
|Link #3513
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Vereinigte Staaten
Age: 26
|2012-02-06, 15:30
|Link #3514
IT Support
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Pennsylvania , United States
Age: 28
|2012-02-14, 17:16
|Link #3515
ARCAM Spriggan agent
|2012-03-10, 13:22
|Link #3517
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: USA
Age: 29
Flash cards are your best friends. After trying some techniques out myself (after my lovely Japanese The Written Language ran out of kanji to teach me), I'm just reading this other book filled with tons of Kanji and making flash cards out of every new one I encounter. I then look them up here (which is simple because the book gives the kana on top of the new kanji it introduces). And I add it to my flash card collection (the new book is this, btw, also includes listening practice with that cd).
|2012-03-10, 18:30
|Link #3518
Join Date: Mar 2012
would it be wise to get down hiragana first as well as concentrating on the spoken language then once I have a better grasp on the hiragana and spoken language then move on to the katakana and kanji??
It seems to try and learn all three syllabus's before having a better grasp on the language itself would just be confusing and take longer. I am hesitant to use the "romaji" because I want my brain to associate the sounds and words with the kana.
would it be better to just get the spoken language down first to at least a basic level then start to incorporate the written language like you do when your a little kid? You learn to speak before you learn to write as a child so would it be logical to learn how to speak the language first??
man its hard learning a language from scratch..
Last edited by word sux; 2012-03-10 at 19:26.
|2012-03-11, 20:25
|Link #3519
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Auckland, NZ
Hey there everyone
Over the past few years I've been dipping in and out as a translator. It's alright, I can get stuff done at a reasonable pace, but recently after trying to scanlate a manga one major glaring inconsistency has been thrown into focus: my kanji.
Basically all my work earlier was based off txt files, whether VN or LN; if I didn't recognise something I could just throw it into a translator. For that chaper I spent far too long agonisingly searching up phrases and turning what should have been a few minutes work into hours. It was not enjoyable.
So my question is, what ways do you guys have to learn kanji? Not looking for a quick fix solution, I know that's not how languages work. I'm also willing to spend funds for textbooks or whatever. Just need something that *works*. Ok well, everything works eventually, so maybe what I mean is.. something that works fast? But not expecting it to be that fast. Oh you know what I mean.
Thanks for reading~
|2012-03-11, 20:47
|Link #3520
♪♫ Maya Iincho ♩♬
I used www.amazon.com/dp/4789009637 and it has worked well for me so far. (and the work book) I've known so many people trying to learn the language and if you cannot at least partially dedicate yourself to learning grammar and the kanji it's almost pointless. But of course my goal is to be able to write, read and speak it.
|Thread Tools


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A 22-year-old man died Thursday after falling about 30 feet while climbing a rock formation in Rocky Mountain National Park, officials say.
Park rangers were dispatched at about 12:30 p.m. to the Batman Pinnacle on Lumpy Ridge on reports of a fallen climber, according to park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson. The ridge is a popular climbing area about three miles north of Estes Park.
According to witnesses, the man, whose name has not been released pending notification of his family, fell about 30 feet. Officials have not said what may have caused the fall.
The man is from New Jersey but was living in Fort Collins.
People at the scene began performing CPR within minutes of seeing him fall, but he could not be resuscitated, according to Patterson.
The man's body could not be recovered Thursday because it is located in steep, rugged terrain, and numerous severe thunderstorms moved through the area following his fall, making conditions too dangerous, according to Patterson.
Recovery efforts are expected to take place Friday.

subset: commoncrawl


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ESTHERVILLE?- Mass of Christian Burial for Kenneth A. Thiel, 88, of Estherville will be held at 10:30 a.m., Tuesday, May 14, 2013, at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Estherville with Monsignor Michael Sernett, celebrant. Interment will be at St. Patrick's Catholic Cemetery, Estherville He died Thursday, May 9, 2013 at Avera Holy family Hospital in Estherville.
Visitation will be from 5-7 p.m., Monday at the Henry-Olson Funeral Chapel in Estherville with a vigil service at 7 p.m.
Kenneth Arnold Thiel, the son of Walter and Luella (Dahle) Thiel, was born Dec. 20, 1924, on the family farm near Ringsted.
Article Photos
Kenneth A. Thiel
As a young boy Kenny moved with his family to the Gruver area where he attended and graduated from Gruver High School.
On Nov. 11, 1946, Kenneth was united in marriage to Marie Neppl at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Estherville. The couple raised their family and farmed their entire life in Emmet County. Along with his great passion and love for farming in his leisure time Kenny enjoyed fishing and in his younger years he enjoyed all types of sports. Most important to Kenny was spending time with family and friends.
He was a member of St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Estherville and Kenny was also a member of the Farm Bureau.
Left to cherish Kenny's memory are his wife of 66 years, Marie of Estherville; his children, Linda Pattison and her husband, Mike of Estherville; Brian Thiel of rural Estherville; Mark Thiel and his wife, Deb of rural Estherville; Lori Nissen and her husband, Randy of Estherville; daughter-in-law, Pat Thiel of Ankeny, Iowa; 18 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren.
Preceding Kenny in death were an infant son, Doug; son, Greg; three infant grandchildren; infant great-grandson; his parents and brother, Raymond Thiel.
Online condolences may be made at www.henryolsonfuneral.com.


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Angel in My Bed (Mass Market Paperbound)
Angel . . . or the devil in disguise?
On one final mission for the Crown, David Donally is hunting for a missing treasure. His only clue is a dazzling, gem-encrusted earring, and it is leading him to the most desirable woman he has ever known . . . an enchanting thief he once seduced and betrayed in the name of duty . . . an exquisite lover he'd believed was dead . . . his wife
Meg Faraday thought her former life was behind her--until the night the treacherous husband she'd eluded suddenly appeared. By rights she should despise the handsome spy who had captured her heart, then shattered it. But the fire between them still burns, and what was once an irresistible passion has now become a dangerous game of betrayal . . .
Praise For…
Desire simmers below the surface on every page of this nonstop, action-packed adventure and has you yearning for more.
-Romantic Times BOOKclub Top Pick 4 and 1/2 stars
"Grab your tissues and get ready...as you read...A love story both entertaining and gripping. A must read."
-Romance Junkies
"If you've not read her before, consider her a buried treasure and give her a try."
-All About Romance
Please bring on more heroes like David anytime.
-All About Romance


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Honey Brook Twp, PA—The final concert for Tel Hai's 2012-2013 season will be held on Friday, June 28 at 7:30pm in the Auditorium/Chapel on the community's campus located off Beaver Dam Road, east of Route 10. The group introduces themselves with a riddle: What has five horns, loves to play all kinds of music and provides incomparable experiences to audiences of all ages? That would be QuintEssentially Brass.
Founded in 2009, the Lancaster-based ensemble is devoted to surprising and delighting their audience by presenting the best in the brass quintet repertoire. Spanning five generations, the musicians believe that making great music takes hard work—but must always be fun for them and a delight for their audience. Their catalogue include baroque to jazz…sacred to secular.
On trumpet are Douglas L. Albert and Gene Clark. Mr. Albert is music department chair at Lampeter-Strasburg School district. A graduate of Millersville University he also holds a Masters in Trumpet Performance from Duquesne University. Mr. Clark is a Lancaster native and graduate of Franklin & Marshall College. Music has been his hobby of choice and the trumpet his instrument since the 4th grade.
Dr. Kristen A. Albert, French Horn, recently retired as professor of Music Education at West Chester University. She earned her degrees at Millersville University (BS), Shippensburg University (Master's) and her doctoral degree at the University of Delaware.
On trombone is Andy Walls who teaches guitar and music technology at Eastern York High School. He holds a BS in Music Education from Duquesne University , a Masters in Trombone Performance from University of Cincinnati College and an Artist Diploma in Trombone Performance from the Royal Conseratoire of Scotland.
Lifelong resident of Lancaster, Geoff Davis contributes the tuba completing the ensemble. He currently plays with the Lancaster British Brass Band and had performed with many other local and regional groups during his more than 50 years as a musician.
The performance is offered free of charge and the public is welcome to join Tel Hai residents and friends in this extraordinary concert. Directions can be found at www.telhai.org or using GPS input the 1200 Tel Hai Circle address.


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World number one Victoria Azarenka pulled out of the Pan Pacific Open citing chronic fatigue while Maria Sharapova was stunned by Samantha Stosur as the event lost its top two seeds on Thursday.
French Open champion Sharapova, Tokyo winner in 2005 and 2009, was upset by Australian Stosur 6-4 7-6 in a quarter-final filled with drama and high-quality tennis.
Azarenka withdrew before her quarter-final with German Angelique Kerber, having come into the WTA premier five event complaining of health issues.
The Belarusian, who won this year's Australian Open and reached the final of the U.S. Open earlier this month, struggled to complete her third round match the previous day.
"Before the tournament I wasn't feeling very good," said Azarenka, who had her blood pressure checked during Wednesday's win over Roberta Vinci.
"I had low energy. I wasn't myself. It wasn't possible today. Maybe it was tiredness from the whole season. I need to have some tests. It's a little bit unknown what it is."
Stosur next faces Russian Nadia Petrova, who ousted sixth seed Sara Errani 3-6 7-5 6-3 after battling back from a set and 4-1 down against her Italian opponent.
Eighth seed Stosur had won just one of her previous 11 meetings with Sharapova but seized the initiative by taking the first set when the Russian blasted a backhand long.
The Australian was taken to a tiebreak in the second after leading 5-3 but won a nail-biter 12-10 on her fifth match point after a wild forehand from Sharapova.
"When you don't take a few (chances) in a row you don't know what's going to happen," said 2011 U.S. Open champion Stosur. "I just kept trying to go for it and thankfully it paid off."
Sharapova was philosophical in defeat.
"She had the chance to win the match easily but I made it tough for her," said the London Olympic silver medallist. "I had my fair share of chances in the tiebreak.
"One point here, one point there - it just didn't go my way. I can play a lot better tennis than I have this week."
Following her walkover, fifth seed Kerber will face defending champion Agnieszka Radwanska in the semi-finals of the hardcourt event.
Pole Radwanska overpowered 10th seed Caroline Wozniacki 6-4 6-3 in the day's last quarter-final.
Updated Date: Sep 27, 2012 22:16 PM


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ATLANTA—Frantz Massenat scored 25 points as Drexel defeated Georgia State, 77-60, Wednesday at the GSU Sports Arena in the Colonial Athletic Association opener for both teams.
Freshman R.J. Hunter scored 23 points for Georgia State, which trailed by just four points at halftime, but Drexel (5-8, 1-0 CAA), the preseason favorite in the CAA, dominated the second half to hand GSU (5-9, 0-1 CAA) its fifth straight loss.
The win was Drexel's 17th straight CAA regular-season victory, dating back to last season. Georgia State was the last team to hand Drexel a regular-season loss in CAA play; exactly one year ago, GSU defeated the Dragons, 58-44, at the Sports Arena. Drexel's streak equals Richmond (1988-89) for the second-longest in league history and is one shy of George Mason's record of 18 in a row over the 2011 and 2012 seasons.
Hunter topped the 20-point mark for the third time in the last four games and the sixth time in his rookie season at Georgia State. A leading candidate for CAA Rookie of the Year, Hunter has already earned CAA Rookie of the Week honors three times this season. He finished the game 9-of-16 from the floor and pulled six rebounds.
"Drexel showed tonight why they were picked first in the CAA during the preseason," commented head coach Ron Hunter. "After a good first half, they played really well in the second half and we just did not have any answers.
"We will keep grinding and we will get better. For us to get where we want to though, we need a full team effort. We have to have guys step up and when they do, we will be a special team."
Sophomore transfer Cameron Solomon added a career-high 12 points for the Panthers, but Devonta White was the only other Panther in double figures with 11 points.
A tip-in just ahead of the first-half buzzer by Dartaye Ruffin gave Drexel a 37-33 lead at the intermission. After Georgia State scored the first bucket of the second half, the Dragons went on a 22-4 run to open a 59-39 lead with 11 minutes to play.
Drexel shot 65 percent from the field in the second half, led by Massenat, the preseason CAA Player of the Year, who scored 17 points of his career-high 25 points after the intermission. Damion Lee added 15 points on 5-of-7 shooting from three-point range, and Darryl McCoy pulled down 14 rebounds for the Dragons.
Georgia State will return to the court on Saturday hosting James Madison at 2 p.m. in the GSU Sports Arena. For tickets, visit GeorgiaStateSports.com or call 1-866-GA-STATE.


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HT: Go BlueBob. Tigers spring training games start today. In tribute to Ernie Harwell...
For lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone;
the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
~ Song of Solomon 2:11-12


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The Trojans held Coker scoreless over the final five minutes of the game to pick up their second win in a row.
Mount Olive (12-11 overall, 7-9 CVAC) took an early lead after Tomeka Prichard hit a three-pointer as the shot clock expired on the Trojans' first possession to extend her streak to 11 consecutive games with a three. But Ashley White's three-point play sparked a run of nine unanswered points for Coker (5-18, 4-13) and the Cobras took their biggest lead of the first half at 13-7 with 14:28 remaining.
Mount Olive scored the next six points to tie the game and Anita Rogers hit three-pointers on back-to-back possessions to give the Trojans a 22-18 lead with 7:35 left before halftime. Coker got as close as two points, but
Coker cut the lead to three as Rachel Kolbeck scored the first two baskets of the half to spark a 10-2 run and pull the Cobras within 39-36 with remaining. The lead was still three when
Coker cut the lead to single digits, but
Corley, who reached double figures in assists for the fourth time this season, dished out the record breaker on Boone's layup with remaining. Neither team was able to score until Boone found Sierra Medeiros under the basket for a lay-in with 33 seconds remaining.
Pirchard finished with 13 points for
Kolbeck led Coker with 18 points, while Temeca


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Original URL: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/19/apple_itunes_sales_to_date/
Apple sells 5bn iTunes songs
And 50,000 film rentals per day
Posted in Personal Tech, 19th June 2008 16:22 GMT
Apple has announced that over five billion songs have been downloaded worldwide through its iTunes online store in the past five years.
The virtual record shop was originally launched in the US as the iTunes Music Store back in April 2003, and it took Apple around four years to notch up three billion downloads worldwide.
But the latest figures show just how popular the library, which is said to contain about eight million songs currently, has become over the past year or so. Apple hasn't given much more away though, such as which nations are the heaviest iTunes music downloaders.
Apple also recently expanded iTunes' offerings to include SD and HD movies, and the company now claims that film fans are renting and buying in excess of 50,000 titles each day. This, Apple added, makes iTunes the world's most popular online film store.


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India Sex Selection - Recent attacks on women in India have spotlighted gender inequality there. In India, boy children have been preferred over girl children for centuries, in part because only boys can carry on the family's lineage, and also because the family must provide a dowry when their daughter gets married-even though dowries have been outlawed for half a century. As Fred de Sam Lazaro reports, the abortion of female fetuses has meant five boy babies are born to only four girl babies, but rising prosperity in India has led some families to view girls and boys as being of equal value. Keeping the Sabbath - The fast pace of life and the many distractions created by technology have led a Presbyterian pastor in Virginia to experiment with taking one day a week with her family without computers, work or even errands a day for "holy time." As Judy Valente reports, the idea is, for at least one day a week, to stop producing more and more, and learn to be content and appreciate the gift of that day the Sabbath. Jim Wallis - Bob Abernethy and Kim Lawton interview the social activist and CEO of Sojourners magazine about his new book On God's Side. Wallis advocates solving the country's major problems through a national Christian conversion that emphasizes serving "the common good."
Visit the Website: http://www.vatican.va
Episode #1631 / Length: 26 minutes


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Probably not.Can I order direct from Rockstar?
It is still available for pre-order on Amazon.com for PS2 and PSP for $39.99 and the Wii for $49.99, still listed as "Rating Pending". They may end up canceling pre-orders, but unless you have a competing vendor with a lower price that will assuredly ship, it won't hurt to try.Can I order direct from Rockstar?
Personally I thought Manhunt sucked, but I'm now looking to buy the sequel out of sheer ir
Nonsense. The summary made it perfectly clear why they don't want the AO mark: a number of cowardly stores refuse to stock AO games. Fewer stores means less visibility and fewer sales, even if they really only want adults purchasing the game. For a game that was expensive to produce, an AO rating can destroy the producers chance of making a profit. A Mature mark would get them into most stores with almost identical effectiveness (AO is 18+, while M is 17+ [esrb.org]).
Exactly as many people predicted, the ratings system, even a voluntary one, has stifled creativity. The ratings system resulted in incentives for stores to refuse to stock the highest rated games to appease the whiners. Not being carried in stores reduces sales, frequently to the point of ensuring the game will be a commercial failure. Developers and publishers to restrict what they do to avoid the top rating mark. End result: you get almost nothing specifically intended for the adult market. What you do get tends to be low quality and pandering, because shameless crap is the only thing likely to make money. The end result is that the highest rating becomes associated with pandering garbage, which just reenforces the entire cycle. You're pretty much guaranteed that some topics and some styles of gameplay that serious game developers might want to turn into a top quality title will either be watered down or simply never produced.
AO games never have this kind of budget.
The rating system is absolutely not supposed to be an artistic judgement on a game. It exists to rate content and is supposed to be neutral on artistic merit. (I'm sure I can find a brutally violent film
Was going to post this in the "UK BAN"-thread, but post it here instead.
I have always been a firm believer in films/games not making people more violent. Something happened to me, though, to sort of make me doubt my strong belief.
I bought Manhunt and played it. It was really fun, a great little sneak-and-kill game. But it was very violent and I did not really like being that violent but it was part of the game and making the gruesome kills was fun in a strange way. It was axhilarating to see how long you could sneak behind someone before you had to do the kill.
When I finished the game I played for a particularly long day and that night I had the most bizarre and gruesome dreams. I dreamt that I cleft people with chainsaws and ran over them with my car. Everything felt OK and I didn't have any moral complaints in my dream, which, if you ask anyone in my surrounding, is totally different from my personality. I am not a psychopath as far as I can tell.
I haven't had any such dreams since and I hope I won't again (though they weren't nightmares in the true sense since I wasn't scared in them, only by my reaction to them). What I'm saying is that I do believe we are affected by what we see/experience. At least if its done frequently enough.
In cases like very violent films or games, however, having a 18-year restriction on buying the game is enough. Grown up people can decide for themselves what they want to see/play. I felt desturbed by my experience and probably won't buy Manhunt 2 for that reason, but I certainly don't believe in denying the experience from anyone else who is old enough to make a grown up decision about this.
I have always been a firm believer in films/games not making people more violent. Something happened to me, though, to sort of make me doubt my strong belief. [...] When I finished the game I played for a particularly long day and that night I had the most bizarre and gruesome dreams.
When I play tetris for a particularly long time, I dream tetris. But it doesn't make me go out and stack blocks.
I support the idea of restricting games to adults. The problem is that I think most people over 18 aren't partic
Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.


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Letters to the editor for Sunday, September 22, 2013
"Cyber-bullying: 12-year-old girl commits suicide." This headline, in the Sept. 13 News-Journal, brought tears to my eyes. A young life ended because she was bullied online by her peers. This tragedy leaves many wondering why some kids turn to bullying. The answer may be as simple as it's easier to bully somebody than to work things out, manage your own emotions or learn to solve problems.
Look at adults who beat or intimidate their partners. They've never learned to effectively communicate. Instead, they bully. And the family lives in fear. Nothing is worked out, because the abusive partner always gets their way through force.
The connection between domestic violence and bullying is recognized nationally during the month of October. This month serves as a time to focus on increasing awareness about these issues. To begin the month, the Domestic Abuse Council Inc. is holding its second annual Purple Parade — a two-mile awareness walk for the prevention of both bullying and domestic violence. We invite you to "wake up to the issue" and join us on Saturday, Sept. 28, at 7:30 a.m. at Riverfront Park on Beach Street in Daytona Beach.
Healthy peer relationships, peaceful families and empowered communities deserve our attention. Together we can make a difference.
Cheryl Fuller
Ormond Beach
Fuller is chief executive officer of the Domestic Abuse Council Inc. Further information on the Purple Parade may be obtained by calling 386-257-2297, ext.27, or by visiting
Thank you for printing the letter titled, "In a salon, an unexpected lesson."
It was an unexpected lesson for me this morning and I am grateful. Every once in awhile we need to be reminded that there are other people in our "own personal world."
I will keep a copy of this letter and reread it often.
Toni Anderson
Holly Hill
Sunday's letters sure gave us a lesson on the First Amendment with respect to the seal of DeLand, all five of them. Of course, they failed to state precisely how the city was violating the law.
Let's see: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
There is a cross on the seal which could relate to Christianity, but that's a theology, not a religion. Roman Catholic, Baptist, Mormon, Islam — they are religions. Don't see any connection there. A cross could also represent the Red Cross, or even Red Cross shoes. Another letter writer saw a crucifix on the seal. Merriam-Webster defines a crucifix as "a model of a cross with a figure of Jesus Christ crucified on it." Don't see that on the seal, either.
A third writer seems to think that seal is going to turn the city fathers of DeLand into the mullahs of Iran. He also wants to know what those people would think if someone wanted the Islamic crescent on the seal. Well, you know, if this country had been founded upon the teachings of Mohammad, I guess it would be OK. As it is, those people want us to either convert or die. Good example.
Why don't they leave us alone and move to one of those European utopias?
Karl Diebold
Flagler Beach
Americans United for Separation of Church and State and other groups don't seem to understand that we have separation of church and state per the "establishment" clause in our Constitution. It does not protect people from religion. It says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." That means Congress shall not establish a theocracy.
Our founding fathers did not want a repeat of the Spanish Inquisition, the French Catholics persecuting Huguenots, or the Puritans forcing Quakers out of Massachusetts. It is meant to prevent the establishment of state churches such as the Anglican Church in England and the theocracies in the Middle East. It is to prevent religious wars here.
Our founders were religious men. Whether they were deists like Jefferson, or Episcopalians, Quakers, Congregationalists, or Jewish, they believed in God. They put religious symbols and phrases on public buildings, on the Washington Monument, and other places. There is no reason why DeLand cannot also have a symbol in its seal.
I am appalled when people want to remove the Ten Commandments from public places. Those commandments are the basis of an ethical system. We are in desperate need for better education and understanding of our history and of our ethical system. We need those things symbolized in the DeLand seal: faith, hope, and charity.
A symbol or religious phrase does not "illegally endorse" Christianity or Judeo-Christian beliefs. They are reminders that this country was "established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes" (from "The American's Creed").
The Constitution provides for tolerance and respect for people's moral systems and symbols.
Ruth Ann Fay
The city of DeLand should completely ignore those who have initiated the unwarranted attack on the city seal. Furthermore, if they decide to take legal action, the case should be thrown out; frivolous lawsuits that waste taxpayer money should not be heard.
The separation of church and state does not appear in our Constitution. The "wall" of separation that does exist, as penned by Thomas Jefferson in response to a letter from the Danbury Baptists, reaffirms the First Amendment which says Congress can't make any law which establishes a religion or prevents the free exercise thereof. To make the stretch that any religious expression of our Judeo-Christian foundation is illegal subverts our founding principles.
If you believe the seal needs to be changed, then the inscription on our Liberty Bell should be scratched out. We'd need to fly a helicopter over the Washington Monument and zap away the words "Laus Deo." The words etched on the walls surrounding the Jefferson Memorial would be obliterated. Our Declaration of Independence would have to be stricken from the record!
The representatives of DeLand can remove the seal if they believe that would represent their citizens; however, they should not do so because of threatened lawsuits. I hope the citizens stand up against this nonsense.
Ray Sanchez
Ormond Beach
Sanchez is founder and president of Volusia 912 Patriots.


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The difficulty of keeping up a Catholic Worker house
Even when a ministry ends, the effects and stories live on.
By guest blogger Karen Kirkwood
As I write an article about the Catholic Worker movement for U.S. Catholic, I've been reflecting on my own experiences on a Catholic Worker farm in the early '90s. Because our house, too, closed after a few years, "The life and death of a ministry," published in the National Catholic Reporter on Jun. 11 [1], by Rosalie G. Riegle, brought up many memories.
I think one of the difficulties in any social justice work is sustaining the work. The constant search for funds and materials, the high-turn over rate of volunteers, the difficulties inherent in living in community, and the endless needs of people all take their toll. Riegle mentions dreams and overextending. Yes. It is hard to keep one's feet on the ground when one's vision is so strong.
I remember the inordinate amount of time we spent in meetings in my three years on the farm. Perhaps the problem is our goals are not attainable, they only create a journey. But we long for the perfection of our dream. We must do the good we can in the situation we're in, and let the rest go.
The Jeannine House met needs while it could. Our farm housed an immigrant family of seven for six months. We provided a home base for several men who lived on the edges of society. The young man with schizophrenia who lived with us for years now lives on his own. Riegle is right; the stories matter. They are the heart of the Catholic Worker because stories are the only way to fully demonstrate the works of mercy in action.
Guest blogger Karen Kirkwood is a regular contributor to U.S. Catholic who lives in Washington.
Guest blog posts express the views of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of U.S. Catholic, its editors, or the Claretians.


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Reigning champion and five-time overall winner Serena Williams was a routine second-round victor Thursday at The Championships, Wimbledon.
The world No. 1 superstar cruised past 19-year-old Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia 6-3, 6-2 in 67 minutes on a calm day at the All England Club. The American great smacked nine aces and was not broken in the predictable matchup.
"She's incredibly promising, she does everything well," Williams said of Garcia. "Her serve is amazing, so I knew it would be a good match on the grass."
Williams was among those restoring order at the year's third Grand Slam event just one day after five former world No. 1 women exited the draw via upset or injury, including former champion Maria Sharapova and reigning two-time Australian Open titlist Victoria Azarenka.
The 31-year-old Williams is now riding a career-best 33-match winning streak and is a brilliant 76-3 since losing in the first round at last year's French Open.
Williams is also the reigning French and U.S. Open champion and owns 16 Grand Slam singles titles overall. She beat Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska in last year's final here to capture her third Wimbledon title in four years and also captured an Olympic gold medal at the All England Club last summer.
Her third-round opponent will be 42-year-old Japanese Kimiko Date-Krumm, who is the oldest woman to reach the third round at Wimbledon in the Open Era.
"I don't know how she's able to do so well," Williams said.
Meanwhile, former Grand Slam champs Li Na and Samantha Stosur also reached the round of 32.
The sixth-seeded Li posted a 6-2, 1-6, 6-0 victory over previously hot Romanian Simona Halep.
The bottom half of the draw was turned upside down on Wednesday, when the second-seeded Azarenka, third-seeded Sharapova and ninth-seeded Caroline Wozniacki all exited. Petra Kvitova, the 2011 Wimbledon champ, was the only top-10 seed in the bottom half to survive the carnage and did so thanks to a walkover win against Yaroslava Shvedova.
Halep could have posed a problem for Li, as she entered the All England Club after capturing titles each of the past two weeks -- first in Nuremberg and then in Den Bosch. After dominating the second set by winning 28 of the 40 points played, Halep was no match in the third as the 2011 French Open champ turned the tables and won 28-of-42 points.
Li had lost in the second round at Wimbledon each of the last two years after a quarterfinal appearance in 2011, and was coming off a second-round loss at this month's French Open after a runner-up finish at the Australian Open.
Stosur, the 2011 U.S. Open champ, had little trouble for the second match in a row this week. The 14th-seeded Australian cruised past Russian Olga Puchkova, 6-2, 6-2, after a 6-1, 6-3 rout of Slovak Anna Schmiedlova in the first round.
The competition will get a little tougher for Stosur in the third round, as Sabine Lisicki now awaits. The 23rd-seeded German, a Wimbledon semifinalist in 2011 and twice a quarterfinalist in the London suburb, thumped Russian veteran Elena Vesnina, 6-3, 6-1.
Eleventh-seeded Italian Roberta Vinci snuck into the third round with a 6-1, 4-6, 9-7 decision against Slovak Jana Cepelova, while other winners Thursday included 18th-seeded Slovakian Dominika Cibulkova, 32nd-seeded Czech Klara Zakopalova, American Madison Keys, the aforementioned Date-Krumm, Croat Petra Martic and Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova.
Cibulkova needed just 49 minutes to dispatch Spain's Maria Teresa Torro-Flor, 6-0, 6-1; Zakopalova topped German Annika Beck 7-6 (7-5), 6-3; Keys upended 30th-seeded German Mona Barthel 6-4, 6-2; Date-Krumm advanced with a 6-4, 7-5 triumph over Romania's Alexandra Cadantu; Martic claimed a 7-6 (9-7), 6-1 win over Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic; and Pironkova downed Czech Barbora Zahlavova Strycova 7-5, 6-3. Pironkova was a semifinalist here in 2010 and quarterfinalist in 2011.


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Sheffield Wind Officially Launched
SHEFFIELD, VT - The Sheffield Wind Project is up and running - officially. The huge blades have actually been turning in the wind for a week now, but Wednesday politicians, dignitaries, representatives from Green Mountain Power and about 500 people were on hand for the official ribbon cutting ceremony and celebratory barbecue.Some of those people, of course, included protesters who have been adamantly opposing the development of mountainous ridgeline wind farms for some time. They have argued that the turbines are inefficient, bad for the environment, and just plain ugly.Paul Burns, of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), issued a statement calling wind power "not only good for our economy, but good for our environment, too." Burns said there is "tremendous support" in the state for wind power.First Wind CEO Paul Gaynor said it's one of the most environmentally sound wind projects ever.Among those present for the ceremony were Gov. Peter Shumlin; Josh Bagnato, Environmental Manager at First Wind, developer; Paul Gaynor, First Wind CEO; Rep. Tony Klein, Chair of the VT House Natural Resources Committee; Max Aldrech, Sheffield Select Board; Avram Patt, General Manager of Washington Electric Company, one of the companies that will be receiving power from the project; and Rich Zimmerman, Senior Project Manager at RMT, a construction and engineering firm.


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My second job after leaving college was working in a robotics research company that built autonomous robot research platforms. So when Robot-Times scooped news on Freescale Semiconductors' new a modular robotics development system, and an entry-level robot for US$200 it certainly caught my eye. There is a lot of goodies in one package and the sensor modules look like a good place to start sensor experiments. All in all nice little bot kit. Click on headline or image to learn more..
Via The Robot Launch Pad


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Forum Post: Abney and Associates: Schemes Resurface
Posted 4 years ago on July 1, 2013, 1:56 a.m. EST by venlean19
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
"Pump and dump" is back! The old boiler-room scam of pitching nearly worthless "penny" stocks for a quick profit (for the brokers) has make a comeback, not that anyone missed it.
Like most quick-profit swindles, pump and dump relies upon the buyers thinking that the sellers have special inside information. They need to 1) act now and 2) buy no-name stocks that have a scintillating potential for huge profits.
In the past, pump and dump relied upon unsavory teams of brokers manning phone banks to lure suckers into their schemes. But in the Internet age, there are so many more ways to reach people through email, social media and phones, that the boiler-room guys have to be pleased as punch with the new opportunities to scam a whole new generation.
Now that these swindlers have new cyber-tools to spam your email box and other access points, they are back in business in full force. According to FINRA, the self-regulator of the securities industry, a new wave of pump and dump operations is "back in high gear."
This is what FINRA said in a recentInvestor Alert: "The latest McAfee Threats Report confirms a steep rise in spam email linked to bogus "pump-and-dump" stock schemes designed to trick unsuspecting investors. For years, fraudsters have used large-scale email pushes (what most of us call junk email, or spam) to lure potential victims into investment scams. Many of these emails tout a company's stock—typically small, so-called "microcap" companies—through false and misleading statements to the marketplace.
These false claims could also be made on social media such as Facebook FB +0.89% and Twitter, as well as on bulletin boards and chat room pages. Often the promoters will claim to have "inside" information about an impending development, or to use an "infallible" system that uses a combination of economic and stock market data to pick stocks. Some purport to allow investors to capitalize on a new technology, strike it rich in an emerging economy, or market-time their way to huge profits. Subject lines and short messages are designed to quickly pique interest and lure investors into buying the stock—all with the goal of creating a run-up in price.
In reality, the fraudsters sending these emails are often paid promoters or company insiders who stand to gain by selling their shares after the stock price is "pumped" up by the buying frenzy that they create through the mass email push. Once these fraudsters "dump" their shares by selling them and stop hyping the stock, the price typically falls dramatically—and investors lose their money or are left with worthless, or near worthless, stock."
The best way to avoid getting stung by these flim-flams? If something looks like spam and is too good to be true, route it to your spam can. That's where it belongs.
Related Article and Video:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/abney-associates-hong-kong-news-hong-kong-says-us-/ http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/758539/Warning-issued-following-online-romance-scams-%7C-Abney-Associates-Hong-Kong-Cybercrime-Reports


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Planning for Strategic Growth
Greg Parker on his plans for the next decade and how he intends to become a multibillion-dollar company.
To Expand or Not to Expand
At Parker's, we're focused on smart growth and are looking for the very best professionals in our industry. If you're interested in the opportunity to take your career to the next level, I hope you'll consider joining our team at Parker's. If so, email me at [email protected].
If you're a c-store owner, now may or may not be the best time for your company to add new stores to your portfolio, or perhaps for you to consider selling and cashing out at positive terms.
We believe in this industry and we are positioned to grow. If your business is one you feel we should look at, let me know. Every company has different needs, challenges and goals. Whether you decide to grow your company or to sell, I wish you every success.
Only you can answer these questions.


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MILFORD - The Pinchot Institute for Conservation's Common Waters initiative was awarded a 3-year grant to expand its efforts to support and maintain regional water quality in Pike, Monroe, and Sullivan counties.
The grant is part of a $35 million multi-year initiative by the William Penn Foundation to protect and restore critical sources of drinking water for 15 million people, many in major cities including New York (NY), Philadelphia (PA), Camden (NJ), and Wilmington (DE). The total set of grants fund an unprecedented collaboration of leading conservation organizations who will align their work to protect land, restore streams, test innovative approaches in ecologically significant places, and monitor results over time.
The overall initiative features eight "clusters" of sub-watersheds, constituting approximately 25 percent of the total Delaware River Basin across four states, where analysis has shown that investment in targeted efforts to protect or improve water quality in specific streams and rivers could deliver significant returns. Restoration and preservation efforts in these sub-watersheds not only contribute directly to the water quality in the Delaware Basin, but will also serve as incubators for cultivating a wide range of effective approaches for expanding investment across the watershed, and ultimately in other river basins across the country.
••• What they plan to do
Working with a diverse array of partner organizations and local governments, primarily in the "Poconos-Kittatinny Cluster," the Pinchot Institute and Common Waters will:
● Engage landowners whose properties are most critical to protection of water resources to build a pipeline of land protection projects and increase forest stewardship activity;
● Develop an outreach plan to promote understanding of the economic value of forests and water; ● Leverage public funds for land and water conservation within priority areas; ● Increase collaboration and coordination among organizations in the Cluster to ensure that knowledge and strategies are shared and integrated; and,
● Assess potential impacts of energy and related infrastructure development on priority areas.
Combined, the array of funded projects will permanently protect more than 30,000 acres with significant waterways, implement more than 40 restoration projects that will improve local water quality, pilot new incentives for landowners and businesses, provide replicable models for other locations in the watershed, and develop long-term water quality data for the watershed at an unprecedented scale.
The Delaware River watershed covers more than 13,500 square miles spanning New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. In addition to being a major source of drinking water, the watershed supports an array of water-related economic enterprises valued at $25 billion per year, as well as hemispherically significant habitat. Poorly planned development, deforestation, chemical runoff from farms, and storm water runoff in cities severely threaten the health of the watershed.
••• Why they are doing it
"Investing in forests in the upper Basin is crucial to maintaining the high quality and reliable flows of the Delaware River," said Al Sample, President of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation. "We are pleased to partner with the William Penn Foundation and the many organizations involved in this initiative to leverage coordination and investment across the broad geography of the Delaware River Basin."
"Healthy landscapes with working farms and forests in the Delaware River watershed produce abundant food and fiber and support vibrant rural economies. They also provide clean water, clean air, and valuable wildlife habitat that benefit their own communities and urban neighbors," said Jason Weller, Chief of USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service. "This partnership highlights how a cooperative approach for applying conservation activities on private and public land is essential for everyone in the watershed—whether they live in urban or rural areas."
"EPA values collaborative initiatives like this that help organizations build greater capacity and leverage critical resources needed to tackle the next generation of water protection issues," said EPA Region 3 Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin. "This new initiative will support efforts led by other active partners, such as the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, in advancing science, research and restoration work to protect the entire bay and river watershed. Building healthy and resilient watersheds is essential to protecting our nation's water resources, and ensuring a sustainable future for the communities that depend on them."
Andrew Johnson, Senior Program Officer for Watershed Protection at the William Penn Foundation, stated, "We look forward to making this work and data available to the public and hope to identify new evidence-based methods for avoiding or mitigating key stressors threatening water quality in major metropolitan areas, specifically urban storm water runoff, agricultural pollution, loss of forests in essential headwater areas, and aquifer depletion."
••• Who is who
• About the Pinchot Institute for Conservation – www.pinchot.org The mission of the Pinchot Institute is to strengthen forest conservation thought, policy, and action by developing innovative, practical, and broadly-supported solutions to conservation challenges and opportunities. We accomplish this through nonpartisan research, education, and technical assistance on key issues influencing the future of conservation and sustainable natural resource management. The Institute was founded in 1963 in Milford, PA.
• About the Common Waters Partnership – www.commonwatersfund.org Common Waters is a regional partnership of public and non-profit organizations and agencies focused on supporting the development of sustainable communities and working landscapes in the Delaware River watershed upstream of the Delaware Water Gap. Its primary focus is providing good scientific information at a regional level and encouraging cross-boundary communication. The mission of the Common Waters Partnership is to conserve clean water, natural places, and working lands through cooperation, scientific research, education, and technical assistance by and for the stakeholders of the region. The Common Waters Partnership is facilitated by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation.
Part of $35 million investment to protect drinking water
MILFORD - The Pinchot Institute for Conservation's Common Waters initiative was awarded a 3-year grant to expand its efforts to support and maintain regional water quality in Pike, Monroe, and Sullivan counties.


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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Average U.S. rates on fixed mortgages ticked up this week just slightly above record lows, keeping home-buying and refinancing attractive to consumers.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) said the average rate on the 30-year loan ticked up to 3.34 percent, above last week's rate of 3.32 percent.
Two weeks ago, the rate dipped to 3.31 percent, the lowest on records dating back to 1971.
The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage rose to 2.67 percent from 2.64 percent last week. The rate declined to 2.63 percent two weeks ago, also a record low.
Mortgage rates have been near record lows all year, helping fuel a modest housing recovery.
They have fallen further since the Federal Reserve started buying mortgage bonds in September to encourage more borrowing and spending.
All contents herein copyright San Diego Source ® 1994-2018


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All the glamour may be in Long Beach this weekend, but there was hardcore competition in Cleveland OH today, where 1,933 dogs gathered (on a Thursday yet!) for the Lorain County Kennel Club show. The nation's number eight dog, the Harrier, CH Downhome Family Tradition was there, as was the country's top Pekingese and number 19 all breed dog, CH Pequest Match Point, and the country's number one Keeshond, CH Daimler s Caviar Dreams.
They were joined in Judge Lester Mapes' BIS ring by the Golden Retriever, CH Easthill Broxden Pop Star, the Bernese Mountain Dog, CH Adesa's Floats Like A Butterfly, the Wire Fox Terrier, CH Jadee Top Secret, and the Puli, CH Cordmake Field of Dreams. The Keeshond came out of large breed and group entry (37 and 231 respectively) and kept of his head of steam going all the way to Best In Show. Congratulations to breeder/owners Terry & Diane Benz.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Posted by Billy Wheeler at 9:01 PM
3 comments:
Billy Wheeler you put me to shame!! I work for Iams/Eukanuba and I have teammates at both the Cleveland show and the National who are supposed to send me "on-the-spot" reports. But you have got me beat by a mile! MAJOR KUDOS TO YOUR BLOG!!!!!ReplyDelete
Thank you, Bev. We try really hard to make our reports timely, accurate, and fun. In the end, we all have the same end in sight, promote the dogs and protect our rights to keep them. I'm glad you enjoy the blog.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousDecember 11, 2008 at 10:21 PM
Pointer Best in CA... Giant Won the GroupReplyDelete
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My mom's my inspiration
For being an activist.
It took a lot of dedication,
To stand for justice.
She spoke out for others,
When they couldn't fight,
Our soul sisters and brothers,
Choosing morals over might.
Before it was popular,
She was a feminist,
Ignoring general populace,
Always the activist.
Being a birthright Quaker,
She walked the Quaker line,
To be a giver, not a taker,
Always looking for the spark Divine.
So Mother, write this for you,
Your caring my greatest gift,
On behalf of all my siblings,
Our thanks for a life well-lived!
Carol Dotterer


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Go inside the new 'Real World' house in San Francisco's old Avalon Ballroom
While the January air date for the 29th season of MTV's long-running reality show, "Real World," hasn't been set, San Francisco Chronicle contributor Alec Scott recently got a sneak peek at the Avalon Ballroom's makeover (think "Yellow Submarine" meets "Full House"). The concert venue served as the cast's home during filming. Click through the photos for a walkthrough.
December 3, 2013 10:44 AM
Photo: Pete Yang/MTV


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Great site, first time here. I am going to be rebuilding an XT-6 motor to transplant into my Brat. I am having problems locating pistons, bearings, etc.
With the mods that will be made to this motor, I would like it to be fresh when installed. Anyone have any lines on this stuff? Thanks, Ski
Welcome to Ultimate Subaru Message Board, my lurker friend!
|Welcome to Ultimate Subaru Message Board, an unparalleled Subaru community full of the greatest Subaru gurus and modders on the planet! We offer technical information and discussion about all things Subaru, the best and most popular all wheel drive vehicles ever created.
We offer all this information for free to everyone, even lurkers like you! All we ask in return is that you sign up and give back some of what you get out - without our awesome registered users none of this would be possible! Plus, you get way more great stuff as a member! Lurk to lose, participate to WIN*!
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Guest Message by DevFuse
XT-6 overhaul parts?
Started by skishop69 , May 19 2004 07:35 PM
4 replies to this topic
Posted 19 May 2004 - 07:35 PM
Posted 19 May 2004 - 07:53 PM
!st Subaru Parts comes to mind. Also some people use Carter Subaru. Do a search on parts in the archives and see what comes up. Welcome to the board.
Posted 19 May 2004 - 08:00 PM
Figured out where your gonna put the radiator yet?
Posted 20 May 2004 - 03:10 PM
I was thinking in the glove box. If I fold it into eighths it should just fit. Seriously, I know I have to relocate it but haven't put much thought to where. There will either be grille mods or it will be placed in the bed (somewhere).
'Hey, there's always room for Jello.'
'Hey, there's always room for Jello.'
Posted 20 May 2004 - 05:11 PM
Good luck - I would really like to see a cool solution to the radiator location issue. Making the nose of the car a couple inches longer would be the right way I suppose, but a lot of work too.
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INDIANAPOLIS -- A new study by researchers from the Automotive Safety Program at Riley Hospital for Children and Indiana University School of Medicine published online July 13, 2009 in the journal Pediatrics reports that the parents of children with special health care needs are doing a good job with the selection of the appropriate child car seat but still need help in using it correctly.
The study, one of the first to look at how children with special needs are transported by their parents and to compare this behavior with American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, offers advice on making transport safer for the child and less stressful for both the child and the parent.
Transporting a child with special needs can be difficult, especially for a parent who must do so without the help of another adult.
"Having a child with special needs can be stressful, but traveling with a child with special needs can be especially stressful. But the best way to decrease transportation stress is to know that you have put the child into the right type of car seat, that the seat is properly installed and that the child is positioned correctly," said the study's first author, Joseph O'Neil, M.D., M.P.H., Indiana University School of Medicine associate professor of pediatrics and a Riley Hospital pediatrician.
The survey of 275 drivers transporting children with special needs in their vehicles found that 82 percent had secured their children in car seats appropriate for their size, weight and condition, although the majority had at least one misuse. The researchers found such misuses as installation of the car seat in the vehicle's front seat rather than rear seat and utilization of front facing seats when weight and height dictated that the child should have faced to the rear. They also reported that 20 percent of the children would have benefited from additional body-positioning support.
"Like all kids, children with special needs have medical and dental appointments and many other reasons to go out into the community, so mobility is important. But it's essential that they get there safely," said Dr. O'Neil.
"The parents of children with special needs need to know that help is available from a growing number of physical and occupational therapists trained as child passenger safety technicians. Assistance and information can be found at www.preventinjury.org or www.nhtsa.gov, the website of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration," said Dr. O'Neil.
One of the biggest problems, the researchers found, was that only 8 percent of the drivers they surveyed had properly secured medical equipment including oxygen tanks, monitors, ventilators, and suctioning devices. In the event of a traffic crash these essentials could become dangerous projectiles. To address this safety hazard, Dr. O'Neil and colleagues have designed a device to secure them. A patent is pending on the specialized equipment carrier for which the Riley Hospital physicians are seeking funding to produce and market.
Children with special needs often require assistance while in the car. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends having an adult in the vehicle's back seat to monitor the child so the driver doesn't have to reach around to assist the child while driving. Dr. O'Neil noted that most kids are transported by one adult, as was the case of 70 percent of those in this study.
"We understand that most drivers are the only adult in the car with their child, but we also know it's not optimal. The driver needs to focus on driving, so we recommend pulling over and parking rather than reaching around to assist the child. The safety of the child is always more important than arriving on time," he said.
|Contact: Cindy Fox Aisen
Indiana University


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"Over his years with BNSF, Tom has had a tremendous impact in leading the finance team. This leadership and his strategic thinking have been critical to the continued growth of our company. As a longstanding member of the executive team, he also played a formative role in shaping BNSF's Vision & Values and Leadership Model and in building core aspects of our culture. We thank Tom for his incalculable contribution to our company and recognize the legacy he is leaving," said Matthew Rose, chairman and chief executive officer.
Hund has been in the railroad industry since 1983, holding multiple senior management and financial roles within BNSF and previously with Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, a predecessor railroad to BNSF. He has been chief financial officer since 1999.
Reflecting on his career, Hund said, "My years with this company have been beyond anything I could have imagined. The people, the culture and the rich heritage have been the things that mean the most to me and made my career here so satisfying."
Piggott has served in her current role since 2009. She previously served as vice president, finance and treasurer since 2006.
"Julie has been an integral part of the finance department and the company. We have tremendous confidence in her and she is uniquely qualified to be our next chief financial officer," said Rose.
Piggott joined BNSF in 1991 and has held various positions in finance, including successive roles as assistant vice president, strategic and financial analysis; assistant vice president, expedited services in consumer products and assistant vice president and assistant controller.


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Whether you're ragging your vehicle out on the street, taking part in an autocross or road course competition, or even something as specialized a speed stop event, your stopping potential is every bit as important as your going potential. Spending the extra bucks on a quality aftermarket brake setup is the upgrade that keeps on giving, and if performance and control are important to you, there's no reason why an aftermarket brake setup shouldn't be on your to-do list.
At the SEMA Show, the team at Wilwood unveiled their new W6AR Radial Mount brake calipers, which are a 6-piston caliper design with a nickel plated finish. Wilwood offers these parts with stainless or Thermlock pistons, and in a black or red powdercoat finish. They can also be ordered in a variety of bore sizes, from 1.12-inches to 1.75-inches, and can be made to fit rotors from 12.19-inches to 15-inches and widths from 1.10 to 1.25-inches.
The biggest selling point, besides the high quality construction and superior braking capability of the W6AR is its weight – just a scant 7.5 pounds.
Speaking volumes about the build quality and functionality of these W6AR brake calipers, the folks at Wilwood recently announced that they have joined forces with Shelby American to equip all of their Shelby vehicles, including the new GT500 and GT350 Mustangs with these W6AR units. And in fact, a new GT350 was on display in the Wilwood booth so we could get a good look at the new addition to the Shelby spec sheet.
Wilwood relayed to us that these brake kits represent a unit aimed at the hardcore street car crowd, such as the GT500 and even the import crowd, for example, and will be great for track days and similar events for these types of vehicles.


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A 2D screen cannot portray the necessary 3D clues that we as humans need to identify with an object as 'real'.
task: place an object on the table between a few obstacles. Now try to do the same thing using a computer monitor and remote controlled arm. Magnitudes more difficult.
It's not just about 3D. As you implied, we use more than our sense of sight to grab and hold something. But computers can only provide visual information.
Why can't I reach into my jacked to get the pistol that I can FEEL against my chest?
And if we're going to be using "first aid spray" as a healing potion, does anyone really care if it's equipped to a status bar on your screen or if you have to flip to a different screen view to choose it?
Counter argument:
http://www.quakeunity.com/file=2753 [quakeunity.com]
It's often claimed that 3D vision depends on having two eyes, and measuring the parallax (difference in viewing angle).
Close one of your eyes. Does the world look different? Is it suddenly 2D instead of 3D? No, it isn't. The brain also uses other clues, mostly size of well-known object, to construct the 3D world you see. A 2D screen (the retina of a single eye), together with the brain's image processing, is able to yield a 3D vision.
But leaves out the explanation, as suggested in the article comments. See Partial Identification [wikipedia.org].
To use, drop, or combine items, you must open it wide and look down at your own chest.
In RL you can feel where your kit is, and know by touch how to pull it out. Ditto for assessing wounds. The compromise of not needing to look in games is actually more realistic than looking at a virtual body.
Same problem with driving/flying games. You don't have the tactile feedback of the Gs of turns and climbs and descents, so the game has to compromise "realism" in another way to make the overall faked-realism effect work best.
Same problem with driving/flying games. You don't have the tactile feedback of the Gs of turns and climbs and descents,
Actually, there are benefits to not "feeling" the plane bank, pitch and yawl. As a pilot muself, I know that seeing is, by far, the most important sense when flying. Your other senses can easily be fooled. I certinly became a much beter pilot when I finally learned to rely only on my eyes. Playing Descent helped me a lot. When visiting friends, I used to fly MS Flight Sim. If I had a decent PC, I'd fly Flight Gear (http://flightgear.org/).
Sure, the first rule of IFR is your body can be fooled. But being a "better pilot" is not germane here, game realism is. Whether you think feeling the plane helps or hinders just isn't relevant, what's relevant is it is a huge portion of the actual experience.
To drag back to the actual topic, the cool thing is the body can be fooled: you can make remarkably convincing motion platforms by feeding in small clever motions & angles that
I certinly became a much beter pilot when I finally learned to rely only on my eyes. Playing Descent helped me a lot.
Seeing as how I've played Descent... remind me never to fly with you
I understand how when flying you need to turn off senses other than sight. However, when driving, feeling can be very important feedback. In one driving simulator I used for training, people kept rolling the vehicles (virtually) because you couldn't get good "feedback" from the steering wheel and brake pedal, and couldn't feel when you were going around corners.
In RL you can feel where your kit is, and know by touch how to pull it out.
Could you *please* feel your kit and pull it out in PRIVATE? Geez, man!
Fun? Fun?!?!?
If you want fun, get an Atari. Otherwise join us in the great game of navel gazing[*].
[*] Well, if you have to look inside your jacket, what else will you see?
The FPS convention that you're just a floating viewpoint with a gun attached has always bothered me; this is one of the reasons I lost interest in the genre after the novelty of Doom's first-person view wore off. Every time I'd look down and see nothing but a vague shadow, I'd completely lose suspension of disbelief.
Even in a game like Portal, where you can look at yourself whenever you like, the player model still only exists when you see it from outside. Look down and you're just a shadow.
It always makes
There are plenty of games where you can look down to see your own body. Of the most recent games, Crysis is one. You can see your legs [imageshack.us] or shoulders [imageshack.us] if you down or to the sides. If seeing parts of your character's body is such a big deal, look around and you'll be able to find many more games. IIRC even DOOM3 works like that, although I don't have it installer right now to check.
Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high spirits. -- Robert Louis Stevenson


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The question of how to handle the mailboxes of what are charmingly-called "leavers" was raised by Andy Knight of Essential in a blog post that focuses mostly on PST files. The problem of how to retain information when people leave is an interesting issue that has been with us since the earliest days of email. However, the escalating and ongoing requirements of preserving data for legal discovery and the use of online archives and other repositories such as SharePoint has made the problem more complex.
Long ago, dealing with someone who left the company for one reason or another (including those who unfortunately died when employed) was simple. HR normally called the email administrator up to say that "x's out the door" and their mailbox was promptly deleted. End of issue and time for another coffee.
A slightly more complex solution to the problem was to disable the mailbox for a period, usually of the order of 30 days, to allow co-workers or the person's manager to access the mailbox and retrieve whatever information was felt to be of interest. After the period elapsed, the mailbox was removed.
But then the legal community cottoned on to the fact that email contains many interesting and useful facts that can be used to prosecute law suits and the demands for access to mailbox contents began to grow. The first instance where email proved to be the missing piece of a jigsaw that most can remember was the "Iran Contra" affair when Oliver North deleted a message on an IBM PROFS system in 1986 only for the message to be recovered from a backup tape.
Retrieving email in those days wasn't much fun. It involved a lot of boring work to restore email servers from backup tapes. Typically you'd set up an email server with a configuration that matched the target server and then restore tapes, day by day, to allow lawyers to pour over mailboxes to look for smoking guns and other evidence. Vast quantities of forests were consumed by line printers as messages were printed off to be presented in court – if it wasn't on paper, a judge wouldn't read it.
Things are a lot easier today because email servers incorporate features to preserve messages. Of course, having the features is one thing, using them is quite another – a fact illustrated in the famous Apple vs. Samsung patent lawsuit where Samsung alleged that Apple didn't do a good job of retaining messages sent by Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive, at least not in such a way that the messages were discoverable to be provided to Samsung. Of course, Samsung's own email system (rejoicing in the splendid name "mySingle") didn't do such a great job of message retention either as it forced users to save messages manually before they were automatically removed from the servers on a biweekly basis. This goes to prove that relying on instructions given to users to preserve evidence isn't a great strategy.
Exchange 2010 (and 2013) offer an array of methods to preserve mailboxes, and once preserved their contents are available to multi-mailbox discovery searches and so should be capable of serving as a source of evidence. I don't like the methods outlined by Andy (putting anything in a PST is a no-no from my perspective). As I describe in "Exchange 2010 Discovery Searches: What about users who leave?", my preference is to put the mailboxes of those who leave into a state where they cannot be used and keep the mailboxes online until HR and Legal agree that it is safe to remove the mailboxes. Microsoft obviously agree with this approach because they have introduced the notion of "inactive mailboxes" for their Office 365 service, essentially a way of allowing organizations that use Office 365 to keep mailboxes around without being charged for their use. The feature is only available for the E3, E4, A3, A4, G, and P2 plans.
You cannot mark a mailbox as being "inactive" in Exchange 2010 or using an on-premises Exchange 2013 deployment. It would not surprise me if the feature surfaces in a future update for Exchange 2013 because it is natural to reuse good ideas. In the meantime, we still have to retain mailboxes.
Disk storage is relatively cheap (and getting cheaper) these days and the additional cost of keeping some mailboxes for a couple of months or even a year pales into insignificance when compared to the frightening costs that can quickly mount up in lawsuits, even if you work for a company that experiences relatively high employee turnover (the usual figure is between 8% and 10% annually, unless you work in a call center in which case turnovers of 80%-plus are not unknown)
Of course, you don't want new mail arriving into mailboxes that are no longer being used. Two reasonable approaches immediately suggest themselves as good solutions. First, create a distribution group (let's say "Disabled Mailboxes") and add all the disabled mailboxes to the group. Put a MailTip on the group to advise local users that they shouldn't attempt to email the group. Block incoming messages to mailboxes in the group with a transport rule. Something like the following would be a good start (always test code copied from the Internet to make sure that it works, meets your needs, and doesn't do bad things):
New-TransportRule "Block Email to Disabled Mailboxes" -SentToMemberOf "Disabled Mailboxes" -RejectMessageEnhancedStatusCode "5.7.929" -RejectMessageReasonText "Regretfully the user that you attempted to contact is no longer with Contoso Corporation" -Enabled $True
A customized DSN status code is used here. You can use the New-SystemMessage cmdlet to create customized text to go along with the status code.
Another approach is to clamp down on the mailbox's ability to receive messages by setting its properties with the Set-Mailbox cmdlet. For instance:
Set-Mailbox -Identity "Tony Redmond" -AcceptMessageOnlyFrom Administrator -RequireSenderAutenticationEnabled $True -MaxReceiveSize 1KB
This command limits the set of users who can send messages to the mailbox to "Administrator", who will only be able to send 1KB messages if they should try. The RequireSenderAuthenticationEnabled switch isn't strictly necessary but it provides another level of block by ensuring that only authenticated users (those who have accounts in your forest or are federated with your forest) can send messages to the mailbox.
This only scratches the surface of the many and varied ways that administrators deal with unused mailboxes on an Exchange server. I'm sure that you have your own favorite approach, agreed with and signed off by HR and Legal, just so that your hands are clean!
Follow Tony @12Knocksinna


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Charleen Haarhoff Ranked No. 93 In ITA Poll
By ODU Athletics
Jan. 10, 2007
NORFOLK, Va. -- Sophomore Charleen Haarhoff (Durban, South Africa) was ranked at No. 93 in the ITA Women's Tennis Poll released on Tuesday.
The second year Lady Monarch is ranked for the first time in her career after posting a 7-6 fall tournament record. During the fall, she captured a 1-2 mark against opponents ranked in the preseason ITA poll, which included herfirst ever victory over a ranked opponent, No. 37 Inga Beermann of Virginia Tech, at the William & Mary Invitational. Additionally, Haarhoff reached the quarterfinals of the William & Mary Invitational, the Round of 16 at the Wilson/ITA East Regional Championship, and the Round of the 32 at the Riviera/ITA Women's All-American Championship.
In December, Haarhoff was ranked at No. 23 in singles in the Mideast Regional Rankings and joined teammate junior Fernanda Luiz (Nova Lima, Brazil) in the doubles poll at No. 7.
The Lady Monarch women's tennis squad will take on five opponents featured in the team poll, including No. 13 Virginia Commonwealth, No. 26 William & Mary, No. 41 UPenn, No. 62 South Alabama, and No. 72 Richmond. The Old Dominion women's tennis team returns to action at the William & Mary Tournament in Williamsburg on January 20 and 21.


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Libgda is a (relatively small) database access library. It provides a wrapper like ODBC but with more features for accessing several database engines, a general data model for use with CSV or XML files, a metadata extractor that retrieves information about database objects in a common way, and a SQL console application (like mysql, psql or sqlite3 consoles).
AllTray is a program you can use on UNIX and UNIX-like systems, such as GNU/Linux or FreeBSD, running the X Window System. It is used to "dock" application software into the system tray (also known as the "notification area"). AllTray aims to be standards-compliant and work with any desktop environment/window manager+system tray combination that is also standards-compliant.
radare2 aims to create a complete, portable, multi-architecture, Unix-like toolchain for reverse engineering. It is composed of a hexadecimal editor (radare) with a wrapped I/O layer supporting multiple backends for local/remote files, debugger (OS X, BSD, Linux, W32), stream analyzer, assembler/disassembler (rasm) for x86, ARM, PPC, m68k, Java, MSIL, and SPARC, code analysis modules, and scripting facilities. It also has a bindiffer named radiff, base converter (rax), a shellcode development helper (rasc), a binary information extractor supporting PE, Mach0, ELF, class, etc. named rabin, and a block-based hash utility called rahash. Radare was rewritten as radare2, and the old version is only maintained for bugfixes.
gtkaml is an XML syntax and parser that extends the Vala.Parser and transforms all your tags into a valid Gtk+ UI class. It features a casual XML syntax for describing the way Gtk widgets are laid out in a (new) custom widget you're creating. Code "islands" (written in Vala) are used for widget signal handling and other methods/signals/properties that you're introducing. It doesn't depend on an external library at run-time, and it is much more readable than the usual UI boilerplate.
Epris is a D-Bus service and command line client to listen to music. Unlike xmms2 or mpd, it uses GStreamer and D-Bus. It supports all formats supported by GStreamer, and can play both video and audio. It supports gap-less playback thanks to playbin2. It has an extensible command line interface, a small memory footprint, automatic deactivation, and an easy D-Bus interface for other UIs.
A C library providing HTTP server functionality.
performance monitoring toolkit and API


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St. Louis, Mo. held a parade for veterans of the Iraq War in January 2012 that drew an estimated 20,000 participants and 100,000 spectators. Fifteen other cities are considering similar parades, but some argue that such celebrations should not be held while the war in Afghanistan continues.
As Iraq Veterans Return, How Do We Welcome Them?
By editor • Feb 7, 2012


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OMG! We're all going to die!
Nah...it's that it's "heading eastward" (e.g., to New York, etc.) that "makes it news."
Thanks SlashDot - where else could I get the weather report?
Thanks SlashDot - where else could I get the weather report?
I'm pretty sure iTunes has most/all of their discography [apple.com].
OMG! We're all going to die!
Well, eventually, yes . . . but most of us not today.
I live in Minnesota, and instead I'm cheering the cold: Yay, all the damn insects that hitched rides up here on trucks from the south are dying!
(While I'm very serious about freezing those pests to death, I'm glad the local homeless shelters have added capacity for this incident. I like bug suffering, but not people suffering.)
I like bug suffering, but not people suffering
This is my new motto.
I like bug suffering, but not people suffering.
Well said, citizen. The Federal Network would like to remind viewers that February will be "Kill a Bug Month." Join in, and do your part. Also, remember that Service Guarantees Citizenship.
Would you like to know more?
As a resident of Michigan, I can concur that this is the worst weather I have ever seen in my life. I am under 40, but I seem to remember getting hit by something similar back in the mid 90s. I am one of 10 people in the I.T. department at work that made it in today. Considering we have a staff of around 150 people, that's a lot of folks stuck in their homes.
And you dont even have the worst of it. Michigan was protected nicely by warm air coming off Lake Michigan; it was more than 10F colder in Indiana than it was in Michigan this morning.
We're not dead yet! I don't want to go on the cart!
Yeah, here in NE Ohio we're expecting lows about the same as we saw in 1994, while this is an unusual cold pattern it's not like it's unprecedented.
I was in northern Ohio in '94, as a college student with no car. I remember days so cold I didn't want to go out even at noon, and some really frigid walks to the grocery store a mile away. Of course I was also foolish enough to go out sledding one night when the wind chill was -30. It was hilarious to come inside completely dry and then turn wet as our clothes went from frozen to thawed. One friend had his eyebrows freeze to his hat.
Course, you guys often have it worst over there, but, in Boston today it was quite the opposite.
In fact, last I checked it was almost 60 F outside. This morning, the foot of snow we got a few days ago was melting so fast you could actually see the water vapor coming off the piles of snow, it was enough to make it the foggiest commute I have had in what seems like a decade.
Looking at the forcast, we are expecting this snap to hit us and bring it down to 16 tonight. That is one hell of a temp drop!
As a lifelong resident of Michigan, this is actually a normal winter. It is not bad, it is not "The worst" , it's a medium winter. I remember when Lake michigan was frozen past the visible horizon, I remember when we had 2 feet of snow in early November and so much snow you had 5 foot tall snowbanks in milder places like Grand Rapids.
You think this is the "worst ever" I laugh heartily at that. Please move to Houghton,MI or along the lake shore of Lake Michigan from Grand Haven northward. They see
My first thought too. Everybody laughed at the winter superstorm, but the radar image looks eerily the same.
Coldest in nearly two decades...
If you're under 40, you haven't seen this kind of thing before
Does whoever wrote this think that a decade is 20 years? Or am I slow this AM?
Meteorologists warn that the wind-chill factor could make it feel twice as cold
What the hell does "twice as cold" even mean? If it's intended to mean "double the negative distance from zero", then it's unit-dependent. The same with "half the temperature". Just give an actual temperature, instead of using vagary in an attempt to impress people with how cold it's doing to be.
George Carlin beat you to that rant. "If it's zero degrees outside today, and it's supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?"
While normally I'd agree with you, wind chill isn't actually a temperature. It's an imaginary reference temperature based on the heat loss rate of a human (comparing the rate with wind to the stagnant-air rate of a different temperature). So, "twice as cold" here has a logical definition: the heat loss rate of a human is twice as high.
This is a REAL Chicago winter... you kids have all gotten soft in the last 30 years. We used to have these all the time when I was a kid. I remember in about 1980, it had been this cold for sever days in a row so I had sever cabin fever (a condition resulting in the need to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE)... so I walked 1.2 miles in -40 temperatures to get to Montgomery Wards. (I just checked the distance using google maps) That's -40 REAL degrees (trivia: -40F == -40C), or -80F with the "Wind Chill".... I was very glad my dad came to pick me up and take me home, so I didn't need to make the return trip on foot.
Two pairs of jeans (the thick kind we used to have back then) were barely enough to keep my legs warm during that walk.
We've had these before, we'll have them again... shove off with the invented names like "Polar Vortex"... it's just WINTER.
PS: Maybe it's cabin fever getting to me?
LOL, why when we were kids we had it tough [phespirit.info]
And you try and tell the young people of today that
The NOAA lists -27F as the lowest recorded temperature in Chicago.
They also have a list of days with a temperature below -16F and 1980 wasn't listed.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lot/?n=chi_temperature_records [noaa.gov]
The lowest temperature I've personally experienced was below -20 F.
How much below I don't know because the lowest temperature marking on the thermometer I had was -20, and all the alcohol was below that. In fact it was all in the bulb. Huddled. I think if you listened carefully you could maybe hear it chattering.
Two pairs of jeans (the thick kind we used to have back then) were barely enough to keep my legs warm during that walk.
Jeans are absolutely the last thing you want to be wearing in cold weather. The cotton in them is hydrophilic, and that will only amplify the cold.
Even polyester is better than denim for cold weather...
Not that long ago (meaning.. 5 to 10 years) it was quite common in my area of northern new england to have a week or more of -30 at night -10 day. We've all been spoiled a bit the past few years by only a handful of days like that. What is unsual about this year is that we had a few of those days in mid/late December instead of the more typical Feb.
Also, while those -30, -40 etc numbers sound terrible, if you dress properly its not that bad and further, they usually happen betwen 4am and 7am and quickly moderate.
"Also, while those -30, -40 etc numbers sound terrible, if you dress properly its not that bad and further, they usually happen betwen 4am and 7am and quickly moderate."
The last winter like that I was still in high school (less than 10 years ago) and, unfortunately, the combination of waiting for the bus at 6:20am and teenage stupidity meant I was outside in -35F (-75F wind chill gusts) without a coat. Looking back, I'm starting to think I may have been a little bit retarded.
The last winter like that I was still in high school (less than 10 years ago) and, unfortunately, the combination of waiting for the bus at 6:20am and teenage stupidity meant I was outside in -35F (-75F wind chill gusts) without a coat. Looking back, I'm starting to think I may have been a little bit retarded.
As far as I can tell, that is pretty common among high school students.
They seem to be the only ones I ever see who are woefully under-dressed for the weather because they're too focused on being cool.
Someone, please, think of the pedants!
Pedant checking in. It's a balmy 233K out there.
Get your SuperSoaker ready and snow your friends! [io9.com]
This is all media drama. Real story here is how most people do not want to layer-up for weather like this. They will chance it wearing jeans, no hat (don't want to mess the 'do) and dressing just warm enough to make it to their car. This works great until car leaves you stranded because injectors gel'd up, or whatever. In this weather, walking a couple miles in the wind wearing only blue jeans, no hat/socks/mitts will easily f- you up. If you need to dress lightly, at least throw some appropriate gear in the trunk in case you *do* need to be out in it. Even new cars can have trouble in extreme cold.
I'd take it a step further and say the real story is that people are idiots. On a scale between Dangerously Oblivious and Zombie Apocalypse Prepper, most people heavily lean towards the former. Whether that's dressing for the conditions, driving for the conditions, keeping some basic emergency supplies in your car, having enough food in the house, having an emergency alternative heat source, etc. I'm not saying everyone needs a Unimog and a hardened bunker with a years worth of MREs in their backyard but
One of the articles (the last one linked to) says, "Brutal conditions are expected in Detroit, which has had only five days in living memory when temperatures stayed below freezing all day." I find that hard to believe. I live quite a bit further south than Detroit, and we probably have at least two or three days a year where that is the case. Looking at the forecast for Detroit, I suspect it is a conversion problem. If someone in America says, "There have been only five days in living memory that the temp in Detroit has not gotten above zero", someone outside of the U.S. might read that and think zero Celcius, which is freezing, and not -18 Celcius, which is what is meant.
, "Brutal conditions are expected in Detroit, which has had only five days in living memory when temperatures stayed below freezing all day." I find that hard to believe.
Large cities have heat traps over them - they tend to stay rather warmer than the surrounding countryside.
The Day after Tomorrow was released in 2004.
Suck it up, princesses.
I have the good fortune to live on Lake Michigan in Chicago, where there are beautiful mists rising off the lake as the waves smash into the ice piles extending off the shore, splashing on them, adding layer on layer of ice. Truly a fascinating sight.
This is the kind of winter I recall as a kid, blizzard of '78 being one vivid example. Snow piled up to the roof of our garage! It got so heavy that come Spring the snow melted to reveal the yard fences all bent out of shape. But the past several winters have been so mild, barely freezing at all the past two, that today there's almost a sense of a return to normalcy.
In "get off my lawn" mode, all this weather reporting drama is just silly -- when I was younger winter was like this on a regular basis. We were heartier for it too. I had grizzly chest hairs by age six.
Repeat After Me: No single weather event can be said to be proof or refutation of Global Climate Change.
All Global Climate Change says is that as the *average* global temperature increases the traditional weather patterns we have become accustomed to will change in unpredictable ways. Some areas may see colder winters, others warmer. Some areas will see increased rain, others will become deserts. In fact some places may have hotter, drier summers yet colder wetter winters. The problems come from the fact that we've put farms and cities in certain locations with the expectation that the weather would be stable over the long term.
You can't say any one hurricane is proof of global climate change any more than you can say any one cold winter refutes global climate change.
To write good code is a worthy challenge, and a source of civilized delight. -- stolen and paraphrased from William Safire


text:
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text:
Josh James Brolin (pronounced /ˈbroʊlɨn/; born February 12, 1968) is an American actor. He has acted in theater, film and television roles since 1985, and won acting awards for his roles in the films W., No Country for Old Men, Milk and True Grit.
Brolin was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Jane Cameron Agee, a wildlife activist who was a native of Corpus Christi, Texas, and actor James Brolin. Brolin was raised on a California ranch with little exposure to his father's acting career. His parents divorced when he was 16 and his stepmother is singer/actress Barbra Streisand. He became interested in acting after taking an improv acting class in high school.
Brolin started his career in TV movies and guest spots on TV shows before getting a more notable role as Brand Walsh in the Richard Donner-directed movie The Goonies (1985). He was considered for the role of Tom Hanson in the series 21 Jump Street; he and Johnny Depp were the finalists for the role, and at that time the two became friends. The role was ultimately awarded to Depp, but the two of them remained friends. Brolin guest-starred in an episode of the show in its first season.


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- Premier League
Fergie: Advantage Manchester in title race
Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson was pleased to see his side's 1-0 win over West Ham open up a gap above Chelsea at the top of the Premier League table.
The win at Old Trafford keeps United top of the league, one point ahead of local rivals and defending champions Manchester City who won 2-0 at Wigan on Wednesday.
Chelsea's 0-0 draw at home to Fulham - their second stalemate in as many games under manager Rafael Benitez - leaves the west London club seven points off the pace, and Ferguson believes that gap leaves the two Manchester clubs with the advantage in the title race.
"Tonight's results have drawn us away from Chelsea a little bit further," he told the Sun. "We're still ahead in the league but City are on our tails and it's going to be a long season."
United's win came courtesy of Robin van Persie's strike after just 33 seconds, but they were unable to increase their lead against the Hammers.
Ferguson, however, knows how vital such narrow victories can be in the final reckoning come the end of the season.
"The importance of winning 1-0 in certain games is that your opponents know the resilience is there," he said. "If you look at some of the really important 1-0s we've had... go back to beating Newcastle when they were nine points clear of us in 1996 our 1-0 that night won us the league.
"There are important 1-0 victories. We've had many of them."