text:
I started growing breasts in third grade. Having been almost a full year younger than most of my fellow third graders (thanks to a move from Massachusetts to New Hampshire the year before), I was only eight years old.
I can easily remember the awkwardness and pain of all of a sudden "blossoming" in a part of my body that had been completely flat for the first 7.75 years of my life. As one who was always on the short side, my new body part was directly in line with the edge of my classroom desk, which meant for a lot more aching than was going on already.
It's interesting to think that as women we probably go from day to day with this part of our body settled and in tact, but yet we don't think about the beginning stages of it all. It's bizarre to conceive of the reality that they once "popped" and in the process hurt like hell and looked horrendous under any cotton-knit shirts. I wore a lot of Lacoste pique polos back then; I was doomed.
When my mother told me right before my 9th birthday I needed a bra, I cried for not just hours but days. I was a tomboy (hence the obscene amount of pique polos). I had been the only girl on my little league team, I had rocked a pixie cut for so long that before I started to grow boobs, I was often mistaken for a boy and I loved it. I couldn't understand why, as a girl, I couldn't grow up to be a professional football player. Growing boobs was just the absolute proof that I was, indeed, a girl and I couldn't avoid it. I won't even get into the drama that followed when I got my first period at 11. I'll just say it involved a lot of throwing of maxi pads in the bathroom.
My mother took me to a store where we picked out a nude-colored "training" bra for my breasts that were growing at a speed that made one wonder if they were in a competition with someone else on the block. The bra, boring and blah (my first and and last nude-colored one), clipped in the front for convenience and had this very minimal lace trim that I remember quite specifically. I hated that lace trim. I thought of it as some vain attempt to soften the blow of impending womanhood, as if it were mocking me and saying: "Here, take this lace trim as our condolences on your lost childhood and an example of which all your future bras will be made." Although all my bras that would follow would be lace (and black!), it was the attempt at an apology, a makeshift pat on the back and a missing shoulder for tears that never materialized that bothered me most. I was not ready to be a woman; I was not ready to have, well, a word my mother hates: tits.
By the time I was fourteen I was a 34C. This was also the age in which boys, having not only discovered boobs but are also dealing with their own issues like erections and fur in new places, realized that breasts have a far greater impact on them than they did in years past. When they were babies, breasts were for food; as they grew, they were interesting and foreign because they didn't have them. However around 13 or 14, boobs take on a whole different role — they're an aspect of sex, they're something they have an urge to see and at which to gawk. And as the girl with the biggest rack in my class, I was all but on display at all times. Do you know how many times my bra strap was snapped by a boy in those days? Let's just say I don't have enough fingers to cover the amount per week and, in case you were wondering, I have all 10 fingers.
The year I graduated from high school I was a 36D and had a boyfriend who would compliment my boobs so often, it became tiresome and embarrassing. I may have been an x-large in my chest, but in the rest of my body, I was a 6. As much as I loved clothes, I stopped buying anything. It was too much of a hassle to buy shirts and dresses, and by then, although still a tomboy at heart, I wore dresses almost everyday — with Chuck Taylors on my feet, of course. The fact was that my boobs were not going away.
Between 20 and now, my weight has fluctuated with my emotional take on the world. If I'm happy, I'm on the fluffy side for my five-foot frame; if I'm sad, I drop down to a 6 or 4, but no matter what the rest of my body does, my boobs do not change in size. The only thing that has changed them is being on the Pill which, thanks to hormones, has pushed them into the DD and DDD range. With the Pill, what it came down to was DDD boobs or really bad cramps; I chose the latter. Since having gotten the IUD, things have evened out, but not has perfectly as I had hoped.
I love my boobs. As a curvy girl who will never be skinny, although they're a bit big for me, they do work on my frame at this point in my life. And as much as I hate to admit it, I also love the attention I get from men because of them. I do not dress in provocative ways, and it's usually only in a summer dress in mid-July that I've actually received compliments from men, but still it's something. As someone who has never been comfortable with her looks (we can cover my French nose at a later date), I'll take the passing compliments from a stranger at a bar or a male friend — gay or straight (my gays really love my boobs), any day. [tagbox tag="breasts"]
But on the other end, I hate them too. They make shopping a bitch, they give me a back ache and the last person I was sleeping with would often point out how they were starting to sag and would eventually be to my knees. Yes, he was a prick to say that, but it was the truth. At 50, my tits will be down to my knees unless I do something cosmetically about it; and if I have kids and nurse them, well, we're just adding to the whole gravitational pull of it all.
I feel that at 34 I should be able to love myself completely — both in and out — but I don't. I have a love/hate relationship with not only some of my physical assets, but my personality quirks as well. I wonder if anyone is ever completely happy with themselves, head-to-toe, day after day, hour after hour, because if someone is, I'd like to meet them and shake their hand.
I have a 36D rack that, according to the saleswoman at Victoria's Secret last week, is actually a 36DD situation. However, as long as I can get away with it, I will squeeze myself into a single D cup and accept the asset/burden with which I was born. And if they're down to my knees at 50, I'll cry a bit and when you tell me to shut the hell up, I will bitch slap you with my right tit, because by then it will be easy.


text:
I would love to see that red hole
I would love to see that red hole
After a Wonderful 'session' like that one, I'd like to just cuddle naked with you, holding you close to feel your HEAT, until your breathing, and Pounding Heart calm down, and then Slowly lick you clean!
Keep smilin'!!
WISDOM is the Knowledge you've gained ... After you could have used it! _Me
Very hot...
Gregster, Gumby, Muffin Man, Zer00ry, Zero, Tech Superhero ,Gumbicito, King Gumby VII, King Gumby VIII,
King of NoVA, King with a Royal Scepter, Greggo.
Gingers are so freaking hot
Fucking hot buddy!!!
wow. amazing. simply amazing. Thank you for sharing your amazing self.
So sexy!!!!
Id love to enter your cute ass
Love your video, but how about a longer video and make it easier to see you cum.
mmm red heads are sooooo fucking hot!!
You are sooo hot, wish you were in my bed right now...
You are one red hot sexy little fucker. I'd love to make you feel good all over.
you, sir, are without a doubt, SUPREMELY SEXY and got it goin ON!! whoever ends up being your partner is one of the luckiest buggers around. cheers!
WOW.....great pic's and what a hot video. Those red pubes are so hot and you are such a sexy lad ;-)
Sure gave me a hard on.
I'd love to see that hot little butt of yours.....please ;-)

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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Head gasket replacement on 90 legacy
Posted 06 May 2004 - 12:41 PM
I am reaching the conclusion that there is something off on one side of the engine in my 90 Legacy. The car has slightly lower compression on the passenger pair of cylinders (125-130 psi vs 155-160 psi for the drivers side - all with throttle closed), it idles poorly, pulling plug wires has a greater effect on the drivers side. The car has also overheated before, as both the radiator and the thermostat are bad.
So my questions are -
1. If there is a weak head gasket, is there any predictable way to guess how long it will last? Other than the rough idling, the car runs OK.
2. Should there be any other symptoms with an impending failure? At the moment, both water and oil are clean.
3. Does the engine need to be pulled to pull the head? It looks pretty straightforward, but I have not disassembled a Subaru engine in over 10 years.
Posted 06 May 2004 - 01:44 PM
It was actually easier to put them back in.
I also did it without removing the intake manifold. You just have to be careful to slide the manifold gasket in as you are putting the heads back on and get the manifold bolts started before you touque down the heads.
Posted 06 May 2004 - 01:47 PM
Posted 06 May 2004 - 02:00 PM
If you go through with it, you ought to at least test the flow thru the radiator and get it fixed if its not up to par. Also, water pumps seem to go at around 100,000 miles and would be easy to change at this time.
Hopefully you can get some good info. on your Questions # 1 & 2 before you proceed. I don't think a small head gasket leak would show up in a compression test. You may have something more serious going on with your valves or the lower half of your engine. Good luck.
Posted 06 May 2004 - 07:25 PM
Posted 07 May 2004 - 09:51 AM
Posted 07 May 2004 - 10:50 AM
It sounds like the heads can come off in place if you just leave the bolts in the head instead of trying to remove them completely from the head.
Posted 07 May 2004 - 12:36 PM
Posted 07 May 2004 - 03:19 PM
From my past experience with Corvairs, I concur with your assessment on low compression. I have not seem significant issues until the compression dips at least below 100 PSI.
I also tried adjusting the large needle screw on the air intake after i removed and cleaned the air intake. This adjustement seemed to smooth out the idle a little, but it may have been mu imagination - Im not sure how to properly adjust it. I can see that it regulates the amount of air that bypasses the throttle plate, so its impact is primarily on idle.
Posted 07 May 2004 - 05:19 PM
close, it was a sedan. I dunno what other stuff you had to remove from the head, do you mean the valve covers and stuff, or are you talking cam sprockets and manifold and stuff?
If you did it on a '90 wagon 2.2 without raising the engine or taking anything off the head assembly, I am triuely amazed.
Also brute I dont think it's possible to remove all the bolts or any for that matter without removing the head. As for that screw, it's not supposed to be adjusted. You should try and put it back to where it was set from the factory, should have some paint on it to line it back up.
Posted 07 May 2004 - 07:52 PM
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text:
A Salt Lake City break-in goes awry for the intruder. In Michigan, a man gets prison for spitting in a cop's sandwich — those and other odd crimes in this edition of the bizarre blotter.
Victims help dude who broke in and bled all over their house
People at a home in Salt Lake City ending up saving the life of a man who broke in last week. The 20-year-old is accused of breaking out a window to enter the house, but cutting his arm badly in the process. The victims called 911, and one of them also realized he knew the intruder. "I met the kid the weekend before," said Pablo Solorio. "He knew my name. He was like, 'Pablo, help me! Help me! Help me!'" The intruder was taken to the hospital and is expected to be arrested when released.
— via KSL.com
Stiff sentence for spit sandwich
A man in Michigan's Upper Peninsula will spend a minimum of two years in prison for spitting in an officer's food. Dalton Ursulean, 24, was sentenced Monday for spitting into a snack wrap and serving it to a uniformed police officer in August 2012. Though Ursulean tested positive for hepatitis C, his attorney said he didn't know he had the infection — and the officer who was served spit did not get the disease. Prison was chosen instead of jail because Ursulean has three previous felonies, six misdemeanors and nine jail incidents.
— via the


text:
A national organisation of leasehold and apartment owners is being mooted after big bill increases on Auckland's Princes Wharf.
Stephen Suess, with a unit in Shed 23 on the waterfront, says rules governing such properties are too loose and his bills have risen hugely since he bought the property in 2005.
"With body corporate fees, there needs to be some sort of ground rules on how these are run," Suess said.
"New Zealand has consumer protection laws on the purchase of just about anything. Why not for apartments?
"In our building I've been told (by) my own and others' lawyers that the lease we have is so complicated that no one understands it. This should not be so."
John Briers, chairman for Shed 23 and the main owners' representative for that property, hit back at Suess.
"It's a great shame that an emotional outburst from one owner out of 82 has the potential to financially harm the apartment owners on Princes Wharf," Briers said.
He took issue with bill figures from Suess, saying charges were in fact much lower.
"The fact is that operating costs on the wharf have risen but nowhere near the 207 per cent claimed by him," Briers said.
"He has arrived at this figure by including the ground rent (lease) into the equation when in fact this has nothing to do with the operating expenses (body corporate)."
The ground rent had only gone up by 10 per cent since 2005 and the next rent review would not be until September 2014.
"As they say, true wisdom comes from being in possession of the true facts," Briers said.
Mark French, director of the wharf's site manager Dockland Management, said fee increases were in line with those in the area, particularly the Viaduct nearby.
Wharf property owners were not dissatisfied and the buildings required money to be spent to keep them up to a high standard at the property which was probably one of the country's most prestigious pieces of real estate, French said.
But Suess remains unhappy and is calling for change.
"I think there needs to be a national organisation of leasehold and apartment owners to represent us and our positions when it comes to negotiating with developers and the Government about laws," he said.
"Until we have this, apartment and land lease owners are basically and totally at the mercy of the land owners and developers."
One Auckland developer said: "It's not leasehold that's the issue but the structure of it and it is also the way we value land which is not the way land is valued internationally."


text:
An infographic I created for a MOOC at Stanford: Designing New Learning Environments. Made with too little space, too little skills, too little time and too little research. Lots of fun though.
Via catspyjamasnz
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Kim Flintoff's comment, June 13, 2013 2:12 AM
The website was redesigned and we disappeared ... This scoop is simply a flag about who's curating... We didn't expect anyone wold ever want to visit us.....
Regis Elo's curator insight, January 13, 2017 9:02 AM
LOVE #tecademics experience on line ....a matter of learning and earning http://er972073.tcdmcs.com/ambassador
Nik Peachey's curator insight, September 19, 2016 6:28 AM
This is a very attractive mixed media curation tool.
Louise Robinson-Lay's curator insight, September 23, 2016 2:38 AM
I just got onto this. They are very easy to set up and more focussed than sites like Pinterest. Curate a collection for each class and control how they look and the title.
Rod Murray's curator insight, April 2, 2016 11:20 AM
Making curation part of an information management process.
Rosário Durão's curator insight, April 2, 2016 2:17 PM
Making curation part of an information management process.
Norman René Trujillo Zapata's curator insight, April 4, 2016 1:33 PM
Making curation part of an information management process.
Denis Lundie's curator insight, August 8, 2014 8:30 AM
Really? 'Disruptive ELearning' - cool! I hope some substance follows soon ...


text:
By Brendan Conway
Natural-gas futures are ahead by 1.9% Tuesday after their steepest single-day loss in months on Monday. The gains recoup only a portion of yesterday's decline of 4.6%.
Calls for colder weather the next few weeks are one of the items lending a boost. From Dow Jones Newswires' Jerry A. DiColo:
MDA EarthSat, a private forecaster, on Tuesday said it expects a strong dose of cold weather to descend on the eastern half of the U.S. beginning next week. As winter approaches, some traders and analysts expect that rising gas-fired heating demand will keep a floor under gas futures.
"The market appears to still be in a buy the dip mode," said Dominick Chirichella, an analyst at the Energy Management Institute, in a research report.
In Tuesday's trading the United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG) is ahead by 2.2%.


text:
The co-founder of leading style blog Street Etiquette, Mr Joshua Kissi, on how he makes his sartorial choices.
Hailing from the Bronx, New York City, 23-year-old Mr Joshua Kissi is one half of the wildly successful style blog Street Etiquette, which he founded in partnership with Mr Travis Gumbs in 2008. On the website the duo document their unique vision of urban menswear to a daily audience of more than 20,000 readers, many of whom are directly inspired by their way of dressing. Prestigious publications including The New York Times and GQ have taken note as well, showering the site with accolades. Asked to describe the style sensibility that has made him a leading authority in contemporary menswear, Mr Kissi replies, "It's sometimes Afro-dandyism, sometimes mod, sometimes punk, with a touch of prep, a touch of Americana, and a touch of urban." And the final part of the formula? Rolled-up trousers. "I roll up everything, unless it's tuxedo trousers or something more formal," Mr Kissi laughs. Discover more of his views on style and dressing by watching the film below.


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"Have schools simply not paid attention to the past decade of technology, or is there a reason that these things aren't in place?"
Poor people exist. And attend school. And there's an odd notion that we shouldn't make things even more unfair for them than they already are.
A computer capable of e-mail, web, and dialup access can be had second hand for $15. I think we ought to be able to contract with local e-waste recycling companies and give these away.
And access would cost another $20/month in a world where (gasp!) many kids are going to school without breakfast and are relying on the school district to provide them with lunch, since their parents simply can't afford it.
Those people are, however, notoriously underrepresented on slashdot.
I understand that. I see it at my daughter's school, unfortunately. What really sucks, though, is that my daughter's education is drug down because of that. Equality is all fine and dandy, until you realize that your own child doesn't get what she needs, because she excels... and I don't have the money to move her to private.
Which obviously ignores the fact that people were capable of getting excellent educations for thousands of years without any of this electronic gadgetry.
Perhaps you could fill the gaps? Shocking, I know...
Teachers should be able to use technology to teach 50-60 students at a time, all with individualized instruction.
My sister's an elementary school teacher. She can use tech. She's not the bottleneck.
The bottleneck is the school board and the teachers' union. She's been begging the school board all year to get software she wants to use. It finally showed up last week, in March.
Report Cards *could* be damnably simple; radio buttons on a couple of web pages, with a few text boxes thrown in for detail. Instead, it's all done by hand just as it was done 150 years ago, because everybody else thinks it's alright as it is and it doesn't need to be changed. My sister spends close to a month doing report cards, then re-doing the ones the principal sends back.
Add in all the PC !@#$ that teachers have to look out for these days (they don't even want to mention "Christmas" now that there's rampant multi-cult sensitivities to consider). God help her if she gets a "slow" kid whose parents refuse to believe is slow. "MY PRECIOUS SNOWFLAKE IS NOT SLOW, DAMNIT!"
School IT is close to the bottom of the barrel, right next to lawyers' and doctors' IT. School, though, has the added encumbrance of school board bureacracy and a teachers union in the mix.
Hell at the temperature of the Sun's corona.
Blaming the teachers' unions proves you are a fucking retard who listens to too much Rush Limbaugh.
Where you should blame are the fucking Retardicans who demand to have a first-rate educational system while not wanting to pay a fucking dime of taxes to support it.
You want to know why school IT is "bottom of the barrel"? It's because the schools themselves are physically falling apart. Class sizes are 35 kids or larger now, up from 25 a decade ago, despite decades of studies showing that education quality declines with larger class sizes. Most schools have computers that are 6-7 years old and barely holding together, school infrastructure for email and web outreach is likewise a joke, and as likely as not it's all administered by the one tech-savvy teacher on staff who gets a measly 8-10 grand bonus per *YEAR* to spend an extra 20 hours a week trying to hold it all together with duct tape and baling wire.
They can barely convince teachers to keep teaching in the system as it is. Why? Because it's shit wages forever, you have to spend at least 5 grand a year on "continuing education" and take outside classes on your own just to fucking remain certified, you have to spend your own money on any classroom materials other than the books chosen by the curriculum administrators and the chalkboard or whiteboard in the front of the room, and then when the next budget crunch comes around, all the teachers in the state have to take a pay cut and then get blamed for being "the problem", like the fucking Retardicans and that college failout retard Scott Walker in Wisconsin pulled recently.
You want to have schools that teach well and give all kids an opportunity for a good education? LEARN TO BE WILLING TO PAY FOR IT. The US educational system, thanks to the Retardicans, is like trying to pay Yugo prices for a car but expecting you'll get a Lamborghini. NOT. FUCKING. GOING. TO. HAPPEN.
Next time, before spewing all that venom on how the US is not spending any money on education, please check your facts:
http://mercatus.org/publication/k-12-spending-student-oecd [mercatus.org]
"As we can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends more than any other country on education, an average of $91,700 per student between the ages of six and fifteen."
How much of this money goes to actually educating the kids after the unions take their cuts, I don't know. But saying that Republicans "demand to have a first-rate educational system while not wanting to pay a [...] dime of taxes to support it", is simply not true.
Throwing more money at the problem won't fix it.
Fix the families. Restore family values. Education and all other aspects of life will follow.
Fix the families. Restore family values. Education and all other aspects of life will follow.
I agree that parents are the problem, they need to take a more active role in their children's education, but what are family values? And how are they going to fix the educational life of any child?
I'm not being sarcastic, I actually want to know what "restoring family value" means, because as far as I've been able to tell its a dog whistle term for other things, most of which don't have anything to do with parenting and the few that do are about sheltering children from sex. None of which does dogshit to
LOL! I wonder how that data was collected? When I try to google Mercatus, the first auto complete is Koch brothers... The idea we spend on average ~$100k/yr/child is hilarious. The real number is ~$10k.
Simple check. There are 12 years between 18-6 ages. The average life expectation is 72 years. So roughly 1/6th of the population is of public school age. There are over $300m us citizens and so there are ~50m school age students. If we were spending $100k/student/year on it would be $5T/year or half the GDP.
Yes. When a parent goes out of their way to prevent their child from doing better than themselves, there is a cultural problem.
Which obviously ignores the fact that people were capable of getting excellent educations for thousands of years without any of this electronic gadgetry.
Are you sure? There were no Albert Einsteins back then.
We could manufacture goods too, thousands of years before factories or machinery. That fact doesn't imply we did a good job at it or did it efficiently
It's not a question of what can be done. Schools could educate with zero technology, but it would be inefficient, and the outcome would be poor. Schools should be doing the best possible job at educating students as efficiently as possible, so that students can better themselves, and so, as a result, our country can better itself.
Technology and the ability to use technology is very important in our society and is becoming more important. A lot of innovative things can be done with technology that would be of great benefit to the public and of great benefit to students and all involved.
You cannot "learn technology" or "understand technology" solely by reading about its history, who invented it, how it works, or reading about how its used.
There comes a point where practical exercise is absolutely necessary to obtain even a basic level of of familiarity and skill. "Book smart" only goes so far. You can read all the books about writing and literatuire that you want, if you never write anything, not even an essay, you will not be a good writer.
Certain technologies are so important to the world that students should be immersed in it, be required to use it daily and extensively, so that they master the technology.
Pen and paper and Books used to be in that category. Nowadays I would say Laptop and Keyboard and World wide web fall in that category.
And access would cost another $20/month in a world where (gasp!) many kids are going to school without breakfast and are relying on the school district to provide them with lunch, since their parents simply can't afford it.
That is amost certainly the nail in the coffin of the electronic notifications to parents system. Imagine the "social stigma" if a teacher sent email notices to most parents, but had to give Billy and Marcia printed notices because their families are too poor to have the Internet and can't get email? Or if Roger is a bright kid and he tells the teacher that his parent's email address is a gmail address he controls?
That, and if it is a notice that requires a signature of a parent (field trip authorization, etc.) it will have to be paper anyway.
"signature of a parent (field trip authorization, etc.) it will have to be paper anyway."
No, there are many ways to electronically sign things.
The point of a sig. is not that they can trace the ink back to your pen but that the design is not easy to copy.
"signature of a parent (field trip authorization, etc.) it will have to be paper anyway."
No, there are many ways to electronically sign things.
The point of a sig. is not that they can trace the ink back to your pen but that the design is not easy to copy.
How do you positively validate the identity of a parent in a household where the student is the most computer literate (and perhaps the only English speaker), thus responds to all of the parent's email? Give the parent a secureID dongle and hope they don't share the PIN with their much more computer savvy child?
How do you positively validate the identity of a parent in a household where the student is the most computer literate (and perhaps the only English speaker)
I wonder if they're sending those paper notices in English-only.
How do you positively validate the identity of a parent in a household where the student is the most computer literate
You require the parent to dial a phone number that is controlled by the school. On a touch tone phone, they will dial a "Permission slip ID number" printed on the form, they will type their "Secret Parent ID number", they will press 1 to grant permission, press 2 to deny permission. finally, they will be prompted to record a verbal granting of permission
IVR Voice: "After the tone, y
No, there are many ways to electronically sign things.
Of course there are, and as slashdot readers we probably know all about them. Try teaching every parent in the US how to use them.
Then make it as simple as looking at a pile of signed permission slips for a teacher who is dealing with 30 8 year olds who are waiting in line to get on the bus to go to the zoo.
I came up with a system for signatures on email documents that are used in emergency services. I thought it was trivial. I offered to provide the public key server for the system. I wrote up the step
I am a retired teacher (2002) and the union brass has done everything they could to impede computerization. All excess money has been drained into salaries, and nothing into smartening up the teaching staff so they know a hole in the ground from a nether aperture. This sounds bad, and it is. The structure of teaching salaries does not allow for competence in IT or any hard sciences. Teachers start with a teaching certificate at low wages and over 10-15 years advance in grade and in extra courses taken to a
Imagine the "social stigma" if a teacher sent email notices to most parents, but had to give Billy and Marcia printed notices because their families are too poor to have the Internet and can't get email?
I don't know you, but I'm guessing you've never been poor. Why? Because I was one of those kids who got free lunches. You can't hide your financial status if you are poor. The best you can do is not give a rat's ass about people who would judge you for your single mom's ability to earn a buck.
And there are a lot of reasons why you might not be on the email list that have nothing to do with being poor.
Or if Roger is a bright kid and he tells the teacher that his parent's email address is a gmail address he controls?
If Roger is bright enough to do that he's bright enough to beat his parents to the mail and it sounds like h
Yes but they are the minority.
Special treatment can be made for the few who cannot access the internet off of school grounds.
I am sure there are a few armless children who go to school as well. Should we ban all school work that requires writing or typing because of this minority?
Yes but they are the minority.
Special treatment can be made for the few who cannot access the internet off of school grounds.
I am sure there are a few armless children who go to school as well. Should we ban all school work that requires writing or typing because of this minority?
If you have 2 systems, then you're doubling the workload of the teachers since now they have to manage notices using 2 systems. I don't know where you go to school, but in many public schools, there are more than just a "few" students who either can't afford home internet, or whose parents are not computer literate.
And just wait until the lawsuit comes claiming that the wealthy students are being given additional opportunities over the poor students - is it fair to relieve the wealthy student of the burden
And just wait until the lawsuit comes claiming that the wealthy students are being given additional opportunities over the poor students
Much like making fun of the Amish on the Internet, this is a self-defending issue. If they can't afford $20/mo for Internet access, they can't afford the lawyer to sue.
If they can't afford $20/mo for Internet access, they can't afford the lawyer to sue.
The ACLU and many social issue legal aide groups work pro bono. The lawyers for the school district do not, and they are paid from tax revenue.
And some parents/children are not English literate. That does not mean that we send some kind of digital voice box home to all children because we have to make the lowest common denominator the default.
We already make concessions and have far more then 2 systems in place to cater to minorities.
And you do not need 2 systems for children who do not have a pc/internet, the cheapest alternative might actually be to supply them with cheap computers and internet access (the cost saved in paper and ink alone would
Another thing to consider, besides poor people, is the real world experience. And in that real world people still use a lot of paper. I'm in a technology company, but still using paper for notes, and printouts of documents for review or hand-outs during meetings.
Ditto previous places of employment. The idea that everything should be virtual doesn't exist in any place where I've worked. It is illogical to expect cash-strapped schools to be more advanced than billion-dollar corporations are.
And how much for the dial-up access each month? When the bank account is empty at the end of each month, net access becomes a luxury.
If said poor person lived in Comcast's footprint they can get 1.5Mbps for $10/month:
http://moneyland.time.com/2011/08/10/comcasts-internet-essentials-10-a-month-service-for-low-income-families/ [time.com]
There are some restrictions, like not having an active account for the past 90 days, so shut off the cable and wait a few months.
Poor is poor. $10 a month might as well be $100000 in the eyes of the poor. Raise the standard of living, first, then start expecting things of people. The problem we face is wealth disparity. There is no link between work and wealth. The poor are notorious for taking the hardest jobs and wrking the most hours.... well, aside from science postdocs, lol.
A computer no one has any clue how to use, configure, get help with, or deal with if anything goes wrong with it, and it needs internet access. Depending on how it performs it may be just a time waster, for a parent who could be doing something else, like.. parenting, rather than constant mucking with technology, or waiting for technology.
We could easily subsidize the purchase of, e.g. a Raspberry Pi if we eliminated some waste from the education system. For example, textbooks.
Let's take all the money that's spent on textbooks nation wide, and use that to commission a free (as in beer and speech) set of elementary school textbooks. You only have to do this once, because the three 'r's don't change. Once you've done that, you can reallocate your entire textbook budget for technology instead.
Not just poor people.
Not everyone can use e-mail. My mother, who would get custody of my children if I had any and something happened to me can't manage e-mail. She can cook and clean and drive, and she doesn't have Alzheimers, and has a decent pension income, but computers and e-mail are simply too complicated for her. Programming her VCR is too complicated for her. When I lived in the same city as she did, she could sort of manage, if I came by every day or two to help her out, but now that I'm 4 hours away it's simply not realistic.
If anything in that situation it would be the kid running the computing in the house (as happened even when I was in high school). Neither my mother nor father got to the point of using e-mail at home, although my father used e-mail at work and picked it up in his retirement, my mother, not so much (divorced).
Computers are any or all of expensive, complicated and insecure. Poverty is certainly a major issue, on both ends, running reliable IT systems isn't cheap, and if your e-mail system is down for the day does that mean you're not 'effectively communicating with parents' or some other regulation? A lot of guardians for children lack the capabilities to effectively manage any sort of electronic communication, and by extension that may make the system insecure. Paper isn't secure either, but e-mails to parents is the sort of thing begging to be hacked by some industrious students.
Yup, and so it comes down to funding. Drastically cut, replaced from 'normal' channels to lottery ticket salesbase for the income (at least here in Fl).
So... to fully fund everything - breakfasts, quality teachers, low seat counts,etc , The People need to get off the idea of "taxes are bad", taxes need to be levied, and the funds generated from such need to be dedicated to pre-k thru 12 education.
communicates with us primarily by e-mail, but is still required by federal law to have some things on paper.
Students do not give their password to parents.
You know that makes no sense, correct? I'll break it down for you.
1. Parent gives e-mail address to school (just as they currently provide other information at the time of registration). 2. Teachers now have this on file. 3. Teacher e-mails parent. 4. Parent receives e-mail.
Do you see any point in that process where the student supplies a password? Neither do I.
Sure, maybe you can come up with some retarded way to do things that would give the student such an opportunity. That would be an
As long as some people didn't have (or didn't want to use) electronic access, the school would have to have processes in place to handle paper-based communication. The good news is that paper-based works for everyone; as long as they have to do it that way for some, they can do it for all "for free" as far as process cost goes (which is not insignificant).
The alternative might save money (might not), but would require teachers either having to figure out each parent's preference independently, or to do all of their work twice for each student (again, not an insignificant amount of time they're spending on overhead).
This is a good part of the reason. Schools can't exclude some students, and so disseminating things electronically would make twice as much work for a teacher. But there is another thing going on, too. My girlfriend is a teacher. She used to teach middle school. She wasn't required to post homework assignments online, but there was at least a tiny bit of pressure to do so. She refused, and for what she thought were sound pedagogical reasons.
We live in an age of irresponsible children and helicopter parents. If an assignment is on the board and a middle schooler has to copy it down and keep track of his assignment book, he's learning something. He's forming a habit. That little boy or girl is learning to take responsibility for himself. Moreover, the parent will have to keep tabs on his or her kid, and ask about the homework assignments. In this way, the parent is contributing to the child's moral development. Now, I realize that this is considered a loaded term in our politically correct society, but responsibility is a matter of character, and building character is one of the things that goes on in school, and is certainly one of the things parents ought to encourage the development of. If a parent, instead, spends every evening looking up on the Web to see what the kid's homework assignment is, that parent is not being a parent but a valet.
In short, there's an argument to be made for not putting assignments and other things on the Web.
We live in an age of irresponsible children and helicopter parents. If an assignment is on the board and a middle schooler has to copy it down and keep track of his assignment book, he's learning something. He's forming a habit. That little boy or girl is learning to take responsibility for himself. Moreover, the parent will have to keep tabs on his or her kid, and ask about the homework assignments. In this way, the parent is contributing to the child's moral development.
Expecting the school system to be more of a parent than the parents is part of why the public schools are so fucked up. You know what this well-meaning but idiotic intention produces? Zero tolerance policies. That way, when a young child points a french fry at another student and says "bang bang" (something that was once viewed as harmless imagination like cops-and-robbers) he gets expelled because of the zero-tolerance policy concerning guns. The only "moral" he learns is to never respect authority, be
This is precisely the kind of reverse logic that inspired me to start the Open Slate Project. Many teachers confuse the process of doing school with learning. Both my sons regularly received low grades in courses they should have done well in, because they failed to turn something in on time. Think about that. What does "Math - C" really mean? That the student is average at math, or disorganized?
I too am disorganized, and forgetful
The argument that poor families cannot afford it does not hold water. In the Open Slate Project, students build and maintain their own slate computers, a modern day version of shop class.
Why has the project not been successful? Resistance to change. What IT has made it into schools is mostly as a course, like "keyboarding," or, like my sons, a student initiative. My younger son took notes on a Palm Pilot connected to a folding keyboard, then uploaded them to his iMac at home for editing. There were selective teachers who understood problem with a jammed backpack and lost worksheets, and were happy to have him submit homework by mail. They were the exception.
I thought home schoolers would be more receptive. They, as a group, are even more conservative, and are likely to condemn any and all use of IT in education.
I still think it is a good idea. I would like to hear from any of you who agree.
And nobody seems interested in spending a lot of money on schools. IT in primary schools is some of the most pathetic I've ever seen. They do a completely shit job of it and a large part is lack of funding. When there aren't enough people, isn't enough cash for good systems ans software, is it any wonder you can't attract people who are good at it and that they can't do their jobs well?
So first big money increase is that the schools have to overhaul their IT. They need a lot more of it and higher quality. If the system is going to be critical and required, it'd damn well better be implemented and supported properly. You can't say "Well just go find something online for free," when it is something critical to the success of the school.
Support for people using it, both teachers and students, would be massive too. I know every parent likes to think their kids are real clever with computers but here's a newsflash: They aren't. Regular kids know how to use them in the same way regular people know how to drive a car: They know the minimum necessary to make it work and lack any advanced problem solving skills. I can see that shit every time I play an online game and have to give people support in making Ventrilo or Teamspeak work. Here are people who like computers enough to play online games, and they still don't know enough to make a voice chat app work properly.
So this wouldn't be some magic thing that would just work. It would require a lot of infrastructure, support, and development and that costs money. Now in the end it very well could be worth it. Maybe it saves money in the long run, by replacing more expensive labour intensive things. Maybe it doesn't save money, but the increase in quality of education make it worth it. Either way the problem is you have to fund it first. Since people are not hot on providing extra funds to education, that is a non-starter.
But even if paper remains, that doesn't prohibit schools from also providing electronic access. My brother is a public school teacher, and he posts homework online for parents to check. There's a lot of electronic communication in his class, though I'm fuzzy on the details.
In my opinion, it should be a goal of our society to provide everyone with access to a web browser and email, at least. We're trying to do it for poor children in Africa, so why can't we also aim to do it for poor people in our own co
Any properly formatted document available on the web is also properly printable. Make the document for the web first, and print out things when needed. Depending on the percentage of parents connected, you can either print out copies first and hand them out to everyone, encouraging the more connected parents to recycle on said paper (opt-out style), or have students/parents request printed copies to be sent home (opt-in style).
Since they print the document up anyway, typing it up using something like Word
See the elementary school teacher who used a school issued PC and accidentally shower her grade school class porn. She lost her teachers license, the school had a lot of explaining to parents to do. The anti-virus on the PC was out of date and had become infected from some other site.
Given the nature of modern parents allowing connectivity out of school is always going to be scary for teachers and schools.
What they could do is provide lessons, plans, updates and communications from the school to parents. This still has some risk of the school web-server getting owned, but is a lot less than the risk of one of many-many machines doing something wrong.
It's a good thought, but you gloss over many things. First, not everyone has a good computer or Internet access. Second, can you imagine the support nightmare? I went through an online Masters program through a good school and it was almost impossible to get everyone online at the same time with working video conferencing. Tons of problems...tons of issues... Now add in to that people that just want their kid to go to middle school and you're setting yourself up for a lot of missed homework because the
My son's school does this and is an Alberta school, though it is a charter school so they tend to be more experimental with their processes...
One teacher started this blog and lots of others have followed and it now seems to be a formal thing still available under its original domain:
http://www.missmahsclass.com/ [missmahsclass.com]
My son's teachers communicate with us via e-mail; the school sends out newsletters via e-mail... My son gets assignments from the teachers via his e-mail when he's sick, and turns them in via e-mail
A) You can't assume every child and parent has access to the internet or computers. I work in a fairly normal catchment area of the UK and I'd say there are around 10% of families that fit into this category.
B) Too many excuses. You set homework online or through dedicated software and the pupils come back with 1001 excuses - "broadband wasn't working", "I couldn't download it", "it was in the wrong format", "printer was out of paper", "I've got it on memory stick and it still needs printing" All easily check-able and solve-able individually but not if you have 30 students. Give a child a piece of paper with homework on it, and if they lose it it's their fault (they could have come and collected a new sheet before the lesson), and if its not done it's their fault. Much much simpler.
My daughter has a couple laptops, a tablet, iPod... symptom of being a geek's daughter. Alas, many households don't even have a single computer. Many parents have never used a computer or even an easy and secure way to retrieve email.
Think PCI regulations are tough? There are regulations on who can see your child's report card. It may contain classroom information that could be used by a kidnapper. The parents may live in separate households (divorced, separated, etc.). Schools are not allowed to disclose
At least where I teach, we *are* connected. The school has a website that links to all courses, the grades are all in an online gradebook that families have access to, and on and on.
As with many systems, things aren't as well integrated as they could be. The ecosystem of ways to share is so rich that what we end up having is a cobbled together system where people use what's most comfortable to them -- some use online calendaring for assignments, others use a static web page, others a blog, others email distribution lists, others just use the online gradebook to post things, etc. It's tricky as the tech director to decide when to regulate and enforce a common solution for consistency and when to let the diversity flourish to allow for innovation. In our case, we've standardized on the online gradebook and some form of course website, but that's not to say the other forms don't flourish as well (sometimes well integrated into the required forms, others not).
There are, however, some real downsides.
The biggest downside is putting everything in electronic form gives parents a weird level of insight into our grading process. By allowing them to peek into everything we do, we no longer choose how and when to communicate with parents, and the result ends up being some weird expectations (parents who right in with anger and concern when there kids have a low average early in the semester when we've only graded 2 assignments, etc. etc.). I also find that by having moved everything online and made things much more public, we are ennabling a lot of parents to continue coddling their kids and lowering expectations for them. Certainly it seems like parents expect us to put everything online.
Note: I don't speak for all schools, but I can say that here in the Boston regional area, what I'm describing is not at all exceptional. I work at a charter, but the same kinds of expectations are there at the major public districts that surround our suburban town.
It takes a lot more time for a parent to pick up a phone or write a letter to contact the teacher... and I think that's how a lot of teachers like it.
I agree completely. The very act of picking up the phone and finding the correct number to dial filters out 90% of the parent calls, of which 99% are of no value to the student. Even when parents email me, I give them my phone number and ask them to call.
Also, I would never "comment" online. Anything written has to be extremely factual and to the point. Anything I write to a parent, I write under the assumption that this piece of communication could end up in court somewhere, and I word it appropriately. On a phone call, the parents will hear the unvarnished truth, I almost never sugarcoat. An email message however will contain much as much jargon, waffling, and ass-covering as I can fit in the 4 or so sentences I'm willing to write.
For example, I'm willing to write a parent to say that Johnny got a 43% on his last test, but I will never write that Johnny got that 43% by texting his girlfriend in class and not completing his homework. If they want to find that out, the parents have to call. Why is that? Johnny's parents will point out that homework is not part of the curriculum, the texting is irrelevent, and that clearly I am punishing Johnny for not completing his homework and because I have some weird problem with cellphones, being a luddite like all teachers. Then they will appeal the mark to the superintendent, claiming that I have a clear bias against their son as evidenced by the email I sent them, and threaten legal action.
The previous paragraph is a true story, happened to a coworker. Parents turned a failure into a pass.
So yeah, I very rarely write to parents due to logistical (can't answer all parents, serves as a good filter keeping away those that don't really care) and legal (written stuff is dangerous) reasons.
Los Altos school district has a pilot program with Khan Academy to do exactly this. Instead of lecturing in class and sending homework, they actually have kids watch the instructional videos, and the teachers help the students learn in class depending on their graphed and measured feedback. I'd say that Khan Academy is probably the leader in the next generation of education technologies. It is a free service and the organization is a non-profit. It is worth checking out.
The flipside of this issue is ine
I volunteer in my daughter's classroom, and I hate to be the one to break this to you, but mimeographs are alive and well in public education.
That said, I never understood why there isn't a website that parents can log in to to access homework materials at the very least. Maybe have all the homework on the website, identified with the section/chapter number, complete with parent material to help your student. You could roll parental communication into it as well, but just the homework alone would be prett
Your 3-year-old daughter is not setting up VPNs.
The reason your school hasn't gone full-bore with technology is because technology doesn't really revolutionize education.
Plus, it makes no sense to spend time and money implementing RSS for parents unless all the parents will use it.
Paper forms are the lowest common denominator and will be around for a long time.
Not sure where your kids go to school. But my son in law goes to a public middle school in Ohio, and we are kept informed by email frequently of what is going on. Grades are posted on some webservice we can access. teachers send weekly or biweekly summary emails.
Important notices are delivered by paper (given to the kid) and also announced by email.
So I guess it depends on schools and community and how tech savvy the teacher is...
What's the advantage to the school? You're talking about introducing highly complex IT systems that will require development and support, both of which are expensive. What's the school going to get out of this?
I work on (development, training, support, strategy, the whole lot) these sort of systems for a university, and even for us the list of "nice to have" features that aren't going to be implemented is huge (100+ items last time I looked). A lot of schools are adopting open source solutions such as Moodl
My wife is a first grade teacher in the school system I and my children attended. (I graduated high school in 1972, so technology had a whole new meaning back then.) I have volunteered for many technology-related projects, including a committee overseeing a complete overhaul/rebuild of the schools, so I have some first-hand experience with this.
There was a big national (sorry, U.S.) initiative in the 90's to get every classroom connected to the Internet. I participated in several "Net Days", or something like that, where we volunteers ran Cat5 through ceilings and musty basements and punched down net drops In every classroom of every school in our town.
After that initiative, finding net-capable computers to hook up was a problem (two of my wife's four classroom computers were formerly our home Macs); most school systems are stretching their budgets to put teachers (and mandated special Ed aides) in the classrooms and keep textbooks current; technology is a luxury few systems can afford.
Don't even get me started on staffing to maintain systems and networks. Most school systems get by with less than a tenth of what a comparable sized company would expect to have in place for IT support.
As someone pointed out earlier, there was a time not that long ago where you could not assume every home had a computer with decent access to the Internet, and you could not make it the primary means of communication without excluding too many people.
For a while, my wife paid out her (our) own pocket to maintain a web presence.
Things are improving; our town is using a system called X2 for web presence, report cards, communication, etc. But refer back to the support staffing issues. There is no real support; the system is maintained and updated by marginally technical personnel for whom this is a secondary responsibility (after, say, actually teaching), for a miserly stipend that works out to less than minimum wage if calculated by the hour.
I know some people who wish schools did a better job at this would be willing to spend the extra tax dollars to support it, but you'd be amazed at how many want more for less.
1. The middle school I left behind in Maine has students from 17 different countries, speaking 28 different languages. Unicode is not so well supported as we hoped it would be.
2. Many parents cannot even read their own native language, and their children translate for them. Surpisingly, their children are largely honest about what they bring home.
3. For parents that drift from one ISP to another, changing email addresses are normal. Forcing them to Gmail presumes they trust any single authority. Many come from places where the government will kill you for talking about something, and it need not even be subversive. Using Gmail scares them just because it is ubiquitous.
4. Parents who can't read also tend to not go to libraries, nor be able to type in their login name and password. Go figure.
It's a big world out there, even in America. Email is not yet universal, and I propose that we recognize that the parents that most need to be involved in their kids' education are also less likely to have it.
If we were to get teachers that actually could use computers, and administration actually interested in education instead of the sports programs, things would be very different.
But spending $22,000,000 on a new gym is far more important than computers in the computer lab or a chemistry classroom that is fully stocked with modern equipment, reagents, and textbooks.
Schools aren't connected with buzzword compliant social networking crap because there's no reason to think that it would help kids learn! I've worked in an education department's IT division before, and every time somebody tried to push through some sort of "social" or "connected learning" crap it was a total failure. It was underused and pointless. Nobody could ever demonstrate the slightest benefit, but the costs were massive.
Meanwhile, the real problems that could be solved with technology are being ignored. For example, I have this great statistic that shows that the further away a school is from the city centre the fewer books it has per student. That's insane! What does the physical location of a student have to their with the propensity to read? Why should schools in the country have fewer books? If books could be delivered electronically, students everywhere would have equal and fair access to literature, but noooo... the politicians are totally spineless, and don't have the nerve to tell the publishers to provide digital copies of their works. Copyright this, renegotiate that, it's so much effort... so fuck the kids, let the country bumpkins stay illiterate, what matters is that the honourable senator's kids go to a private school with a library that has three floors and subscribes to fifty journals.
My kids' school has something called "Wiz Kids" which is essentially a low grade social networking and collaboration/sharing tool. It allows them to post to boards, communicate with teachers and other students in their group (the teacher decides how wide groups are) and access resources provided by the teacher and other students.
The school uses "Parentmail" to communicate with the parents and other external groups (governors, PTA etc). This sends out emails with updates and notices, or SMS text messages for time critical information. It also has facilities for groups (PTA, board etc again) to share documents and communicate internally though we don't currently use that.
This is a primary school (kindergarten?) and I know many of the other primaries in the area use the same services. I guess they're quite widely used throughout the UK.
For the poorer kids, below a certain threshold there's money available to buy a netbook or similar. To the best of my knowledge no-one has claimed one though I could be wrong on that. Everyone has some sort of device that allows Internet access.
Some schools don't have IT staff or lump on top of a stuff members other job.
Some schools may have 1 tech covering 3-5 schools and they don't have the time to much more then a basic setup.
You're talking about fairly advanced topics when it comes to normal peoples' level of computer knowledge. E-mail would be the best method of content delivery, and it might work, but it would incur costs (at least at first). Schools move at the pace of their funding, and the U.S. educational system is horribly ridden with red tape as well as 'certain vendors' that wouldn't want that due to loss of money somewhere along the line. Also, schools have so many regulations to follow, so many student/teacher privacy issues, blah blah blah...ugh.
I've worked with California schools as a technical consultant/engineer in the past, and let me tell you... for the most part, the people on the ground (teachers, other staff) are respectable and well open to doing things like this (though they won't understand it one bit)... but the system itself is a total bitch. It ends up imploding upon itself very often, in my experience. Kinda sucks.
But the teacher tells the parents flat out that she doesn't respond to email. Why? Her job is to teach my daughter and twenty or so other kids. Not sit behind a screen and answer parent's emails and make blog entries. I think it's fantastic -- she's really dedicated to her work, and it shows. She will send an email if there's something important coming home that we really need to know about. It's typically short and to the point, because she has lesson plans to work on, papers to grade and other stuff to deal with. I can also imagine that by being upfront about her email policy, it likely cuts down on a lot of BS mail that parents would send. Not to mention a bunch of unsolicited advice -- imagine having 30-40 people telling you how to do your job.
But the district is by no means a bunch of Luddites. The district has a listserv and web pages. The principal and superintendent send weekly emails, as well as community updates. The kids have access to computers in the classroom, and they are working on getting iPads in all the classrooms (they currently have to rotate them). Technology is well-integrated to support the actual educational mission of the school. As I've visited the higher grades for one thing or another, there are ample computer resources available, and the district has wifi in all the schools. So it's there, and it seems that they have thought seriously about how to use that technology to get the job done.
As for bringing home papers, working on them, then bringing them back -- there's a big lesson about responsibility in there. Kids are very tactile and oriented towards things -- so the paper has a meaning. It's the same reason we give an allowance in cash and why they teach counting with things instead of numbers on a board only.
There is also the finance question, too. Given that the private sector is slowly dragging itself out of the last economic downturn, the public sector is lagging the public sector by a couple years. Our district is facing a $3M shortfall this year, so spending of any kind is being severely impacted. Groups like the PTA and some other educational foundations in the town have been doing a fantastic job with technology donations, but it's highly likely that teachers will be laid off and classroom sizes will rise again. We already have athletic fees, bus fees, numerous fundraisers and other ways of extracting money for the school already. And we are in a town that's relatively well off, where property values haven't been slaughtered too badly -- there are towns in far more dire situations. We still have some art, drama and elective classes left.
So add that all up and yeah, schools aren't going to go out and spend big money on new and unproven stuff. They will make what they have access to last longer, and do what they can to get the kids educated. I'm proud of the work they do, as they accomplish a lot with what they have, and they seem to have good leadership, too.
With a sample size of ONE, he has extrapolated that every public school is exactly like his child's school.
Using the same logic, every school in America provides every child with an email address, ha computers in every classroom, posts student grades on a secure web portal (infinite campus), and has a "virtual backpack" that school announcements are put in (dynamic web pages, one per school/grade)... How do Icome to this conclusion? Because that is what my school district provides/offers...
Who goeth a-borrowing goeth a-sorrowing. -- Thomas Tusser


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Mortal Kombat seems to have given the franchise a much-needed critical shot in the arm, but it's also been a huge financial success for Warner Bros. The game has reportedly sold almost 3 million copies so far, and has already paid for itself in the process.
"We are very pleased with the success of Mortal Kombat so far," said Martin Tremblay of Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment to MCV. He cited the sales number of nearly 3 million units. "With the launch of Mortal Kombat, we have already paid for the acquisition of the Midway assets, and we are just beginning to leverage this acquisition with much more to come."
Though the exact figure of the Midway acquisition was never disclosed, we do know that Warner Bros. offered a whopping $33 million for the assets after the company filed for bankruptcy in early 2009. Three million units would be more than enough to make up that amount, not to mention the income from generous helpings of DLC. Mortal Kombat was also one of the first games to offer a pre-sold DLC bundle, a trend which seems to be catching on.
Mortal Kombat debuted at the top spot of the NPD monthly sales figures, even beating Portal 2. Since then, the game has consistently consistently remained in the top 10 sales list, recently hanging in at July's #10 spot.


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Raed Fares, a pro-democracy activist from the Syrian town of Kafr Nabl, has helped lead that town's anti-government protests since the very early days of the Syrian conflict in 2011. This week, Fares is in the U.S., on only his second trip outside of Syria. Fares is attempting to rebuild support for the revolution among Syrian Americans. He speaks with NPR's Arun Rath about the conflict and the toll it has taken on his town.
Syrian Activist Seeks Support From Syrian-Americans
By editor • Dec 22, 2013


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The power of the crowd (Photo by laffy4k, Creative Commons)
With Sulia, Flipboard & Twitter, it's never been easier to keep abreast of topics that matter to you
Guest post by Brian Blondy
Crowdsourcing and aggregation are two key functions for the modern distribution of real-time content within the online news industry. If used properly, each is a powerful method for processing and delivering your interests in a clean and concise manner on information networks like Twitter, Flipboard and Sulia. To maximize the potential for how you follow the issues you enjoy hearing about, both must be embraced and utilized to supercharge your knowledge of online news.
You should know that visiting particular websites to keep up to speed about a specific topic is almost essentially a waste of time. Web surfing is inefficient, time consuming and runs the risk that you may not actually find what you were looking for. These days, one article or one opinion is not enough, especially when you're making a concerted effort to find information on the topics you care about most. Instead, you need to tap into crowdsourcing to target your precise interests online. Continue reading


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Here at the 2010 Election Desk at 30 Rockefeller Center, the NBC News political team and msnbc.com are gearing up for a busy evening of race calls, exit polls, and analysis.
NBC's First Read blog and msnbc.com's Decision 2010 hub will be updated throughout the day and tonight with real-time information on the top races. The hub will display individual race results via a national map, or you can find detailed Senate results, House results, or results for governor's races as well as a national overview in msnbc.com's newly designed election results section.
You can follow the team on Twitter: @chucktodd, @mmurraypolitics, @domeniconbc, @msnbcTomCurry, and @carriedann.
All day, all night and all through tomorrow, msnbc.com will provide video clips of the freshest political coverage from NBC News and MSNBC TV. All of the most recent video reports are at video.msnbc.com. You can also subscribe to the Decision 2010 video feed via RSS, follow Twitter updates @msnbc_video, or just launch the most recent politics coverage right into the msnbc.com video player.
Msnbc.com will have continuous live video coverage from 9 p.m.-3:30 a.m. ET. We will simulcast NBC News' broadcast coverage beginning at 9 p.m. ET. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams will be joined by David Gregory, moderator of Meet the Press, and NBC News Special Correspondent Tom Brokaw until 3:30 a.m. ET. From 11 p.m.-11:35 p.m., when the network breaks for local coverage, we will simulcast live coverage from MSNBC TV. The live stream will be available on Twitter via @msnbc_video and on the msnbc.com election dashboard at Decision2010.msnbc.com.
Finally, check out the best political pictures from around the country at photos.msnbc.com.


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Recent rainfall and melting snow has caused local flooding in many Iowa rivers.
Recent rainfall and melting snow has caused local flooding in many Iowa rivers.
While most of the flooding affects agricultural land, residents in low areas along rivers should be aware of local river conditions. Travelers who see water running across a road should turn around and take another route. Floodwaters can be unpredictable and it takes only a few inches of water to cause a vehicle to float.
As of noon Thursday, the National Weather Service had issued flood warnings for the following areas:
Minor flooding expected along the Mississippi River in Des Moines County north of and at Burlington until Saturday morning.Major flooding on the Wapsipinicon River near De Witt until Wednesday evening.Moderate flooding for the North Skunk River near Sigourney until Friday morning.Moderate flooding on the Iowa River at Marengo until Saturday morning.Minor flooding along the Cedar River near Conesville until Sunday.Minor flooding along the Iowa River at Columbus Junction until Sunday.Minor flooding along the Iowa River at Wapello until Monday.
Eight of the 14 Presidential Disaster Declarations since 2007 in Iowa were for flooding. Major floods often occur during late spring and summer, although heavy rains and flash floods can occur at any time. Despite that risk, only about 18 percent of the more than 53,000 homes, businesses and other structures in Iowa's high-risk floodplain areas are covered by flood insurance.
Now is the time to buy flood insurance, because there is a 30-day waiting period before policies are effective and most home insurance policies do not cover flood damage.
To find out more about federally-backed flood insurance, visit www.floodsmart.gov.
Check current alerts on local rivers at the National Weather Service's website http://alerts.weather.gov/cap/ia.php?x=1.


text: Darth Biscuit 12,806 Report post Posted August 7, 2012 Meant to post this the other day and forgot about it... NC passed this law earlier this year and it takes effect Oct. 1. A new law means you could be fined and charged with a crime if you don't pack up and leave when local emergency management officials issue a mandatory evacuation order. The General Assembly passed the legislation earlier this year. It goes into effect October 1. The law makes it a class-two misdemeanor to not leave when you're ordered to do so. Those who choose to ride out the storm could face a $1,000 fine and be removed from their home. http://www.wect.com/story/19185123/new-law-means-you-could-face-fines-if-you-ignore-a-mandatory-evacuation Trying to find a better link... it definitely affects people on the coast more, due to hurricanes... it's a big issue here in the Wilmington area, esp the beach towns. It's a tough one for me... I see why they call for mandatory evacuations, esp of towns like Carolina and Wrightsville Beach where's there's only one bridge out and it's dangerous to cross it once the winds get to a certain point, but should the gov't be able to force you out of your own home if you're willing to assume the liability for your own safety? Not so sure... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites


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Sponsored By
Upcoming Classical Music Performances In DFWThe love of classical music is something to be savored. This upcoming season promises the best of passionate performances by the best musicians in the country.
Places To Hear Classical Music In DFWWhen you are looking to be inspired, relaxed or mentally transported to another time or place, look no further than this list of places to get your classical music fix.


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Fall River Suspect Pleads Not Guilty To Fatal Shooting
A Fall River man accused of fatally shooting another man during a drug transaction, then taking his vehicle to a car wash to try and clean away the blood, has pleaded not guilty to murder.
Hiram Gonzalez was ordered held without bail at his arraignment Wednesday in Fall River Superior Court. Prosecutors say the 44-year-old Gonzalez met Brian Januario in March 2011 for a drug transaction.
Authorities allege Gonzalez shot Januario in his car, pushed the body out, then went to a car wash to get rid of the blood. Authorities say they still detected the 24-year-old Januario's blood in Gonzalez's car.
Gonzalez's attorney says there's no proof his client shot Januario. Gonzalez says he loaned his car to relatives the night of the slaying.


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The need to protect dolphins in the Mekong River from extinction is critical
The carcass was transferred to the Fisheries Administration in Phnom Penh for necropsy to determine the cause of death. This is the third dolphin to die this year, which brings the total number to 23 dead dolphins since 2010. The Mekong River Irrawaddy dolphin is Red-listed by the IUCN as critically endangered. WWF-Fisheries Administration's dolphin population surveys in 2010 estimated that there are between 78 to 91 surviving individuals, but the population is declining slowly. WWF is extremely concerned about future disappearance of the Mekong dolphin from the River, if mortality continues at this current rate.
The Mekong dolphin population is usually restricted to the 180-km stretch of the Mekong between Kampi and the Lao border, though occasionally seen outside this area. The carcass found near Phnom Penh is far from the typical home range of the population, though with the very fast currents of the wet season, it is likely the animal died far upstream and was washed down.
Entanglement in gillnets –a cheap and ubiquitous fishing net– is the best known threat to Mekong dolphins and believed to be responsible for the majority of adult dolphin deaths. In August 2012, the Royal Government of Cambodia issued a sub-decree to ban the use of gillnets in the dolphin habitat and while continuing to reinforce other laws related to fisheries. The small population and limited range also makes the population vulnerable to disease, inbreeding, and habitat loss.
As gillnet deaths continue within the dolphin's home range, WWF calls for firm enforcement of the Cambodian Government's sub-decree and reinforced patrol effort throughout the entire dolphin habitat. WWF also asks the local communities living along the Mekong River where dolphins live to fully support implementation of the laws by stopping the use of gillnets, which are prohibited, and collaborate with the Government's enforcement teams to protect the Mekong dolphin from going extinct, for the benefit of people and their environment.
Meanwhile, WWF and the Cambodian Government are continuing to conduct scientific research to determine other causes to dolphin mortality, especially in young calves. In support of the enforcement work by the Commission for Dolphin Conservation and Development of Mekong River Dolphin Ecotourism Zone, WWF also provided equipment and a series of training in skills necessary for effective law enforcement.
These collaborative efforts reflect the Kratie Declaration on the Conservation of the Mekong River Irrawaddy Dolphin signed in January 2012 by the Commission for Dolphin Conservation and Development of Mekong River Dolphin Ecotourism Zone, the Fisheries Administration and WWF, at the conclusion of three days of meetings involving national and international experts to discuss urgent conservation actions for the critically endangered Mekong River Irrawaddy dolphin.
The Declaration makes key recommendations for immediate conservation actions including: use new technology and methods to improve understanding of dolphin behaviour, population status, and causes of mortality; minimise or eliminate gillnet-related mortality through effective law enforcement and monitoring; and more direct involvement of local communities in dolphin conservation.


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Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The need for speed
I think most of the learning happens in the first few minutes of a figure drawing. These drawings are all from two minute poses. I just observe and make mental notes for the first 10 seconds or so. Then I try to link an emotional description to the pose with a single word. Sometimes it can be as simple as angry, funny, or powerful, but sometimes it can be complex like patriotic, evasive, or inertia. This little exercise converts the act of drawing into storytelling, and this is at the base of everything I try to do.
After that, I attack it with reckless abandon. Sometimes I go more linear and just use the tip of the drawing tool, but other times I'll lay the tool down and try to get every mark the tool will surrender. I never correct myself on the two-minute drawings. This is not about getting it right, but more about discovering what I have a tendency to get wrong.
Posted by brian at 9:31 AM
Labels: Figure drawing
6 comments:
- Sara Pichelli said...
with those few lines now I can see what you saw when you drew the sketches...very impressive...love your art.
- December 17, 2008 at 6:23 AM
- Jason C-M said...
"This is not about getting it right, but more about discovering what I have a tendency to get wrong."
See, stuff like this is why you're the most useful man on the face of the planet if you're looking for art advice.
- December 17, 2008 at 8:52 AM
- ColbyZ said...
These are great, what a good exercise.
- December 18, 2008 at 7:54 PM
- Leonardo Di Biase said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- February 5, 2009 at 2:33 PM
- Leonardo Di Biase said...
Thanks for a fascinating insight. It would have never occurred to me to attach a single word to a pose before trying to draw it. Very keen to try that for myself to see if it influences the mood of a sketch.
- February 5, 2009 at 2:35 PM
- aa said...
I really love the last one, thanks for sharing
- November 7, 2010 at 5:31 AM
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Bonifay, FL- The under 16 title game came down to two Bay County teams.
Mosley and Rutherford squared off at 1o'clock at Holmes County High School.
The Dolphins jumped out to an early two nothing lead after Joey Hair hit a triple, scoring Dale Erving from first base to make it 1-0. The next batter, Alex Simoneaux, hit a liner to short and was thrown out at first, but not before Hair made it home from third for the 2-0 lead.
In the top of the fourth Mosley added to the lead with a Mason Downey liner to third. The third baseman and shortstop couldn't handle it, Simoneaux scored from third. Mosley went up 3-0.
Still in the fourth, Mosley loaded the bases with 1 out, and Ryan Lackey hit into what looked to be the 6-4-3 double play. The Rams got the out at second, but the second baseman sailed the throw to first. So, Hair and Downey come home for the 5-0 Mosley lead.
Rutherford tried to rally in the bottom of the 7th when Zack Davis hit a single to center, and Dondrell Harris scored to make it 5-1.
But that's the only run Rutherford would get, Hair went the complete game on the mound for the 5-1 win.
The Mosley Dolphins are the Dizzy Dean State Champs. As winners and runner-ups both these teams will play in the World Series in South Haven, Mississippi starting July 24th.


text: Part of the Discovery of Paris Lecture Lunchtime Lecture Series Philip Mansel's principal areas of research are France, the later Ottoman Empire, and the history of courts. He is a member of the Conseil Scientifique of the Centre de Recherche du Chateau de Versailles. He is also an editor of The Court Historian, the journal of the Society for Court Studies, which he helped to found in 1995. His books include Louis XVIII (1981), Sultans in Splendour (1988), The Court of France 1789-1830 (1989), Constantinople: City of the World's Desire 1453-1924 (1995), Paris Between Empires 1814-1852 (2001), Prince of Europe: The Life of Charles-Joseph de Ligne 1735-1814 (2003) and Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II (2005). He was co-editor with Kirsty Carpenter of The French ÉmigrŹs in Europe and the Struggle Against Revolution 1789-1814 (1999). This Lecture will take place in the Lecture Theatre. Free, no need to book


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The Delaware County Daily Times (http://www.delcotimes.com)
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
VOORHEES, N.J. — From Kimmo Timonen's perspective, the upcoming Winter Olympics men's hockey tournament carries an aura special enough to have given him extra motivation to re-sign with the Flyers prior to last season.
Though Timonen, 38, dismisses the widespread notion that the Olympics were a prime motivator for the two-year extension he signed, he made no effort to conceal his excitement about lining up on the blue line for Team Finland for what would be his fifth Olympics. But the foot injury that has forced Timonen to miss the past two Flyers games must be significant, too, for after a full practice at the Skate Zone Wednesday, he said his plan to play in the Olympics would be green- lighted only if he plays for the Flyers before his scheduled departing time.
At least that's the way Timonen was looking at it on this day.
"I need to play this week," Timonen said ahead of a home game Thursday night against the Colorado Avalanche, and another Saturday against the Calgary Flames. Then it's off to Sochi, Russia ... or is it?
"This was the first hard skate in six days, so I'm going to see how it feels tonight and tomorrow and go from there," Timonen said. "Obviously, if you get two games (in) that's better than one. ... If I feel good (Thursday), then it's a coach's decision if they want to play me."
There doesn't seem to be much doubt that any "coach's decision" would be little more than a formality if Timonen is medically cleared to play.
"Well, if he's ready to play we're going to play him," coach Craig Berube said.
Though partially afflicted with the team-wide plague that often disables any Flyer's vocal chords when asked about injuries, Timonen nonetheless indicated he thought his foot was well on its way to recovery.
"It feels better every day," Timonen said. "Hopefully, it'll feel good (Thursday) because I want to play. I hate missing games.
"I'm just trying to get healthy here and that's the first thing on my mind. I'm pretty confident that I won't miss (the Olympics), with the way I felt today on the ice. If it gets really sore tonight or tomorrow, then maybe I have to worry about it. But so far it looks good; every day it's been better. But I have to focus on getting healthy first and playing in these two games if I can play, and go from there."
Coming off back-to-back road wins over the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks, the Flyers' overall team confidence seems to be percolating at a premium pace.
"I think we played our best hockey the last two games, which is very important, especially before the (Olympic) break," Jake Voracek said. "The standings are very tight and it's going to make a huge difference in the end if you're going to get two, three or four points (before the break).
"We can't really think about what's going to happen in the next three weeks, we have to focus on the next two games. They're two very good teams, a lot of balance in both teams. So we have to make sure we focus on Colorado, and after Colorado we focus on Calgary."
To Voracek, it's vital that his teammates take the time to re-focus near the end of the long break to prepare for the stretch drive. That looks good for the Flyers, who after the Olympics will play 14 of their remaining 23 games at home.
"Somebody's going to get a break and some guys are going to the Olympics," said Voracek, who will be heading to his first Winter Games experience for the Czech Republic. "So everybody should do what they've got to do, but make sure we're ready when we are back."


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Repair Jobs I've Completed
In this section, you'll see how thirty-five years of experience have helped me perform these fiberglass repair jobs. You'll see step-by-step, with photos, the entire repair process. Many sites on the Internet offer up before and after photos which look pretty, but it's more important to see what's happening during the actual repair process – and that will determine whether you're going to be riding your boat back to the dock or swimming back to shore.
Do It Yourself Boat Repairs
DIY boat repairs will save you lots of money on straightforward fixes by teaching you how to repair simple maintenance problems for free. Trust me - you won't find this type of information anywhere else on the Internet.
Along with learning how to do many simple boat repairs yourself by watching my simple step-by-step photo processes, you'll also have access to supply links and tips that will save you hundreds of dollars.


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I am thinking about getting my Work Wife an upgraded knife for Christmas. Looking for ideas. Filled out the stock form.
What type of knife(s) do you think you want?
Chef/gyuto knife
Why is it being purchased? What, if anything, are you replacing?
Christmas gift
What do you like and dislike about these qualities of your knives already?
I think she has an 8" Mercer Genesis chef knife from her school kit. It could be 10" though, I'll have to check. She takes excellent care of her knives but she does not sharpen them herself. A friend of hers does the sharpening for her on a belt. Can't give more detail than that but given that we live in the sticks it's probably the same belt he uses on tools in the shed. I don't see her learning to sharpen or doing any of her own sharpening, ever. It's a nicer knife than one might immediately think. Has served her well and she likes it.
What grip do you use?
Primarily pinch grip, some hammer grip depending on the occasion.
What kind of cutting motion do you use?
I'd say most of what she does is either rock-chop or push cut.
Where do you store them?
Knife kit bag.
Have you ever oiled a handle?
What kind of cutting board(s) do you use?
Exclusively plastic.
For edge maintenance, do you use a strop, honing rod, pull through/other, or nothing?
Nothing. Once in a blue moon a butchers steel.
Have they ever been sharpened?
Yes, see above.
What is your budget?
Hmmmm... Let's say $200.
What do you cook and how often?
5-6 days a week at a golf course grill. Primary knife tasks are vegetable prep followed by some protein slicing, mainly chicken breasts.
Special requests(Country of origin/type of wood/etc)?
Open minded at this point.


text: These small vibratory feeders for hazardous locations offer a Hi-Vi electromagnetic drive circuit that provides a solution to feeding, screening, and conveying applications. These drive units are CSA approved for Class II Division I, Group F&G hazardous environments. These feeders can incorporate design features such as tool-less removal of covers and screen inserts for trays. They have the ability to feed virtually any bulk material from micron size to bulky chunks. Special units can be ordered with multiple drives for greater capacities. A wide variety of standard and special trays are also available to meet practically any requirements. Eriez, Erie, PA 888-300-3743 www.eriez.comEriez


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Two American diplomats and two former Navy SEALs were brutally massacred in the Benghazi terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11 in what the Obama administration long mischaracterized as a spontaneous demonstration against an obscure, months-old, anti-Muslim YouTube video. The dissembling Obama administration then declared that justice would be done. And it has been, sort of, if you�re not to persnickety about how �justice� is defined.
One Mark Bassely Youssef is behind bars. There�s your Obama �justice.� No, this isn�t the militant who engineered the assault that left the blood of four abandoned Americans smeared on the wall of a U.S. outpost in Libya. No, he�s the man who produced the amateurish video that Obama et al. attempted to blame for the massacre they took no measures to prevent and no measures to defend against it when happened.
Yousseff is a shady figure who elicits little sympathy. He was on probation for bank fraud. He was using an alias in violation of his probationary terms, plus cutting other corners. So local authorities swooped down on him Gestapo-style, in the dead of night, and hauled him off to the slammer for a one-year hitch as a probation violator. The annals of law enforcement overflow with far more serious offenders whose far more egregious probation violations have been shrugged at and ignored. Not Yousseff. His amateurish videos will menace the Republic no more. He may not be a sympathetic scapegoat, but he�s a scapegoat all the same.


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Basketball's Coleman Named SEC Player of the Week
Communications Sr. Associate
BATON ROUGE - LSU's Shavon Coleman was named Southeastern Conference Player of the Week Monday as named by the league office in Birmingham.
Coleman, from Thibodaux, La., who joined the Tigers from Howard College this season, has scored in double figures each of the last four games and again came off the bench to score 14-of-his-18 points in the second half as he helped the Tigers rally from 16 points down in the second half to defeat Seton Hall, 72-67, last Thursday night in the SEC-BIG EAST Challenge.
The Tigers trailed by eight points at the half and twice trailed by 16 points, the last with 16:30 to play. LSU went to a press that caused Seton Hall multiple problems as LSU was able to outscore Seton Hall 40-19 the rest of the way.
The 6-5, 195-pound forward also grabbed six rebounds and three steals in the contest. He has recorded double doubles against McNeese State (25 pts-10 reb.) and Mississippi Valley (16 pts-11 reb.). For the season, Coleman is averaging 30.4 minutes a game, making 35-of-62 field goals (56.5%), 4-of-8 treys while averaging 17.4 points and 7.6 rebounds.
Coleman, a 6-foot-5, 195-pound junior forward from Thibodaux, La., was named SEC Player of the Week after scoring 18 points and gathering six rebounds and three steals in leading the Tigers to a win over Seton Hall. Coleman scored 14 of his 18 points in the second half during LSU's rally from 16 points down. He has four consecutive games in double figures with two double doubles. Three of his four double figure games came while coming off the bench. For the season averaging 30.4 minutes a game, making 35-of-62 field goals (56.5%), 4-of-8 treys, averaging 17.4 points and 7.6 rebounds.
Coleman is fifth in the SEC in scoring average, 10th in rebound average and fifth in field goal percentage.
LSU (5-0) is off this week for final exams but resumes its scheduled on Dec. 11 at the Maravich Center against Chattanooga at 7 p.m. Tickets are available online at LSUtix.net. Follow LSU Basketball on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/LSUBasketball and on Twitter @LSUBasketball.


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into thinking he was a conservative.
I would imagine that 99% of you fell for this lie. Anybody want to admit ?
Printable View
into thinking he was a conservative.
I would imagine that 99% of you fell for this lie. Anybody want to admit ?
He gave me some good solid conservative judges. :)
Moved to where this belongs.
Sure he did! But after some looking( not to hard) it is easy to realize that there are few conservatives in the top of the Republican Party as there are few liberals in the top of the Democratic Party. They are Socialist/communist/ fascist/corporate puppets instead, giving the nation away, allowing it to be invaded, all the while using Democracy to illusion us away from liberty and freedom. As government grows bigger thriving on failures of all involved.
This nation is and has been going down the wrong road for one hundred years more or less. It matters little if it is the left side of the road or the right side of the road. It is still, the wrong road !!!
Government cannot solve every problem, but it can encourage people and communities to help themselves and to help one another. Often the truest kind of compassion is to help citizens build lives of their own. I call my philosophy and approach "compassionate conservatism." It is compassionate to actively help our fellow citizens in need. It is conservative to insist on responsibility and on results. And with this hopeful approach, we can make a real difference in people's lives. (Applause.)
Compassionate conservatism places great hope and confidence in public education. Our economy depends on higher and higher skills, requiring every American to have the basic tools of learning. Every public school should be the path of upward mobility. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0020430-5.html
Well done Sonna. :D
Heaven forbid CU should be an echo chamber. We need posters like supercrash.
It keeps us on our toes. We must counter him!!!


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Friday, December 31, 2010
Weekly dose of George: Reflecting
Here is George, who seems to be reflecting on the passing of the old year and the coming of the new. But really, he's scanning the horizon for squirrels who would dare trespass on his territory.
Florabella's retro vintage action coupled with Kim Klassen's October layers texture. Found a cool texture tutorial here, at Shadowhouse Creations. A little different from my normal way of applying, and very interesting.
29 comments:
- Kay said...
Happy New Year to you and to George. Give him a big hug for me.
- December 31, 2010 at 8:46 AM
- WhatKarenSees said...
Such a sweet looking dog. Hope you have a wonderful New Year1
- December 31, 2010 at 8:52 AM
- Gardening in a Sandbox said...
Isn't George just so handsome. I like how you added the textures. Happy New Year.
- December 31, 2010 at 11:54 AM
- Char said...
great texture work and a great portrait
- December 31, 2010 at 1:31 PM
- Mary said...
very cool! but then, george is a very cool dude... :)
wishing you a joyous new year, dear kate!
- December 31, 2010 at 5:21 PM
- msdewberry said...
Geoerge is such a good looking dog, and he looks really friendly and personable too.
I have been playing with textures as well lately, I just recently downloaded some of them from Shadowhouse. It is a cool site and very informative.
Wishing you and your family a wonderful new year!!!
- December 31, 2010 at 5:26 PM
- Sweetpea said...
Heh CG, I think you might really be onto something with this new texture-whatever it is...very effective. I am especially fond of George's little list in the bottom left corner: Manicure, Shampoo, Hot Oil...no WONDER he always looks the stunner :>]]
HAPPY NEW YEAR to you & yours & that thar pooch!!!!
- December 31, 2010 at 7:07 PM
- Country Girl said...
Only his hairdresser knows, Sweetpea!
- December 31, 2010 at 7:46 PM
- lynnekovan.com said...
What a lovely shot of a beautiful boy. They are so intelligent aren't they. Happy New Year to you and George
- January 1, 2011 at 1:48 AM
- Kerri said...
Happy New Year! Can you give George a scratch for me? :)
- January 1, 2011 at 5:13 AM
- Noe Noe Girl...A Queen of all Trades. said...
I love George!
Happy New year Kate!
- January 1, 2011 at 8:35 AM
- ♥Kathy♥ said...
Happy New Year to you and George. He is a very handsome dude. =)
- January 3, 2011 at 4:43 AM
- Dylana Suarez said...
So cute! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
- January 3, 2011 at 11:53 PM
- The Japanese Redneck said...
Wow, great picture and I luv the texture.
- January 4, 2011 at 9:36 AM
- mrsnesbitt said...
Yes he is definately reflecting! Wonder if he will share his thoughts? lol!
- January 9, 2011 at 8:03 AM
- Lisa RedWillow said...
He is so so beautiful Kate.
- January 23, 2011 at 7:32 PM
- Isabel said...
I have enjoyed the visit to your blog. Beautifull photos and very nice mosaics! I'll be following you.
- January 25, 2011 at 4:40 AM
- Karena said...
Very sweet photo and I love Kims layered imaging.
Come and enter my Artful Offering and read a great Interview!
Art by Karena
- February 28, 2011 at 1:26 AM
- FrancescPhoto said...
Excellent shots!! Salut!!
- April 12, 2011 at 7:14 AM
- ♥ helen said...
a wonderful photo
- April 20, 2011 at 11:11 AM
- Danelle said...
I love the texture. It adds so much interest.
- April 25, 2011 at 5:53 PM
- { T G L } said...
The dog is adorable! And interesting choice to merge a texture with the photo.
Just started a photography blog myself so I am glad to lurk and follow for some extra inspiration. Happy to learn!
This Good Life
- April 28, 2011 at 1:06 AM
- Stacey Steimle said...
Awesome photo of George, love the backgrounds! Has George tried agility? I know most BC's are crazy about the sport.
- July 11, 2011 at 6:39 PM
- achieve1dream said...
He is so gorgeous!
- July 14, 2011 at 7:58 PM
- Teresa said...
This is a wonderful image, love it . . .
- August 3, 2011 at 10:10 PM
- Kacey said...
Love this photo of George! I'm hopelessly in love with him, you know!
- January 9, 2012 at 5:45 AM
- Shaun_ShutterBug said...
Those BG textures are stunning. And wha a sweet dog. Excellent imagery
- January 11, 2012 at 3:31 PM
- toko baju online said...
Thank you for posting this. It's exactly what I was looking for!
- April 25, 2012 at 11:52 AM
- Deborah said...
Fantastic. I'd love to use those textures as well. Beutiful. He is just lovely.
- August 6, 2012 at 9:40 AM