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Market will sort it out.
Market will sort it out.
umm... not when there is a price distortion due to a negative externality coupled with information asymmetry.
Ahhh, yes, and you wouldn't like them to have such choice - after all, when forgetting yourself for a moment, you turn out to be hardline Soviet-style "communist" who wishes for legislated monopolies. [slashdot.org]
The landfills are full. They're overflowing, and it's getting into the groundwater. We're also using much higher amounts of fascinating and previously very expensive toxins such as mercury and chromium in the manufacture of household goods, and creating fascinating and useful toxins such as PCB's (which are mostly outlawed in the US but heavily used in manufacturing in India).
This isn't merely a "recycling to preserve resources" issue, although copper, gold, platinum, and varous rare earths used in transformers have become increasingly expensive and valuable to recycle. It's a poison control issue, and while humanitarian concerns make it wise to consider the fate of those who handle these toxins, it's also important to remember that they grow food we buy in some of these places, and they will _lie_ aobut the toxin levels of what they sell.
I have been seeing stories like these for several years. Although this situation is clearly undesirable, I have still to see anyone proposing a realistic alternative. The bottom line is doing proper recycling costs money, people do not want to pay.
To take something apart and separate the elements used in its construction may cost more than putting it together. Who wants to pay twice the price for anything?
The market pressure is all against any environmentally and safe recycling. The biggest part of most ele
Fund more biotech? We've already seen bacteria that evolved to feed on nylon. It should be possible to engineer a strain that can eat fiberglass, plastics, rubber, whatever. Depending on what the byproducts are, you might even be able to harness them to make energy.
So, ok, I'm not a geneticist, but this seems like a lucrative line of research. I'd be surprised if there aren't already people looking into it.
Not sure how well biotech would work for fibreglass. Nylon is hydrocarbon derived, meaning it shares the same basic building blocks as carbon based life, so microorganisms can make use of it. Firbreglass is silicon based. So far as I know, nothing eats that.
Plus, the fibreglass itself is less of a problem than the lead contaminates. If you could weed out those, then you could probably bury the rest safely. So far as I know, bio-remediation of lead is problematic, since it can't be broken down or render
The idea was to break down the fiberglass, which would make it easier to extract the lead. Run the remnants through a centrifuge-type machine or a strainer or whatever, and reuse the lead. However, I didn't realize that fiberglass is silicon based (although it makes sense now that you mention it). You're right, that poses a rather large problem.
It's silicon based, but binded by organics.
It works (for a suitably small value of 'works') elsewhere. There's a recycling levy on all consumer electronics where I live (British Columbia). It gets pretty large for big items - complete computers, big TVs, fridges and the like. Several other countries and territories have them now, too. It's technically illegal to put a defined list of electronics in the municipal waste system any more, you take them to retailers who are obliged to accept them for recycling.
It's almost a good system. I say 'almost' be
Doesn't make economic sense? Then don't recycle it... yet. Eventually materials used will become harder to come by (this is already happening quickly for numerous rare earth metals) and recycling e-waste will become economically viable.
Admittedly, this leaves is the (admittedly not at all trivial) question of safe storage in the interim.
Find a spot relatively far from sources of groundwater that people need and put it all in a pile there. Maybe cover it with some dirt to deal with the jaggies and keep it from oxidizing quickly.
I'm sure that there's a name for this.
"Fiberglass, for instance, is nearly worthless, what could anyone possibly do with the fiberglass from an old circuit board?"
Shred it and make a new circuit board after de-bonding and a re-deposit in the 'hot' oven.
"This fiberglass is mixed with small but significant amounts of lead, how would you remove the lead before sending the fiberglass to a landfill?"
Hi, my name is electromagnetic induction, and today I'll be slowly increasing your temperature to make different materials leach out of you in different
I have been seeing stories like these for several years. Although this situation is clearly undesirable, I have still to see anyone proposing a realistic alternative. The bottom line is doing proper recycling costs money, people do not want to pay.
The realistic alternative is to force people to pay.
Mandatory bottle refunds actually work, despite the dire warnings from the soda and beer industry, and fierce opposition from the reactionary right.
Similar with wreck deposits on cars. Likewise, when car buyers are forced to pay $500 extra, and get that back when they turn it in, far fewer wrecks will be found at the bottom of a lake with the VIN filed off.
We have governments and laws precisely because people are selfish bastards who can't be trusted to do the right thing unless forced. We can intellectually agree with many things, but when it comes to putting up, we aren't all that good at it unless forced with an incentive we can't refuse.
I have been seeing stories like these for several years. Although this situation is clearly undesirable, I have still to see anyone proposing a realistic alternative. The bottom line is doing proper recycling costs money, people do not want to pay
This is resolved here (Switzerland, and I think the EU too) for ages and very simply too.
You pay the recycling fee upfront on a device. Say a couple bucks on a mobile phone 10 bucks or such on a laptop.
This gives you the right to dump the device at any shop (selling such devices) at the end of it's lifecycle.
Of course here in my home province, they recently added a ECE tax which is supposed to before recycling home electronics and such. Which means that the money goes right into the coffers. Of course I can never find anywhere to drop off my electronics, except at the same places which already did it.
No surprise, the problem is that our country is (over)run by corporations, NOT the citizens, lest we put a stop to this ignorant and greedy behavior. Anything to grease the skids of our corporate assholes, so we don't get it the way of their monopolies and profit making schemes! Fuck the rest of us who don't "get" the bribes, er, lobbyist "gifts for influence." If you disagree, you are probably not a real American anyway, so fuck you too. America is for the people, not asshole corporations. Eventually
Do what I do and throw in in a ditch or lake. You've already paid for someone to fish it out and dipose of it properly.
Pointer to an old 60 Minutes story [cbsnews.com] on just this. The U.S. recycler in question was shocked that his dumpster-full of CRTs ended up in China.
As his comments about gender and intelligence as President of Harvard demonstrate, the guy has a talent for sticking his foot in his mouth.
I was talking with one of my friends who works in the oil business. He was going off how the cleaner energy technologies will never really take off while oil is 3-5 times less expensive. And sadly, I have to agree: efforts are, of course, being made but considering the amount of money that could be put towards green energy (or nuclear fission or fusion), it's very half-hearted. Cheaper is better in our society. And that applies to NIMBY projects too. It took about 20 years for people to really come around to attempting to recycle anything on a regular basis. It surprises me not in the least that people are tossing environmental concerns for cash.
I hope, someday, that we will learn that protecting our natural resources are part of the cost of doing business. Right now we're like a bunch of teenagers wondering how trigonometry is ever going to be useful in our lives. So we're being taught, but we're not really taking it in.
It took about 20 years for people to really come around to attempting to recycle anything on a regular basis
A lot of that was legislated.
I was talking with one of my friends who works in the oil business. He was going off how the cleaner energy technologies will never really take off while oil is 3-5 times less expensive. And sadly, I have to agree: efforts are, of course, being made but considering the amount of money that could be put towards green energy (or nuclear fission or fusion), it's very half-hearted.
Where's the problem? If oil really is that cheap, then it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to go with "green energy". And I'm unclear why you think insufficient money is being spent on renewable energy research. My take is that it's very ample and we're seeing diminishing returns on investment (for example, more efficient solar cells don't necessarily mean cheaper cost per watt of solar generating capacity).
I hope, someday, that we will learn that protecting our natural resources are part of the cost of doing business.
And how much would it cost to "protect our natural resources"? Suppose I chose to pay that cost rath
So how does one make a profit in this model. I understand that the likea of HP and Dell and Apple might use these fake recycling services as all they need to get material out of the country and have it end up in someone else's landfill. There is no expectation of profit, just minimization of the cost needed to generate good will. But to make a profit?
I pay for a truck. I pay someone or personally recruit legitimate firms to provide cover. I or one
Fake-recycler gets hardware donated for free.
They pay $X in collection costs.
They pay $Y to ship to China.
Chinese company pays $X+$Y+$Z to buy the hardware.
Fake-recycler makes $Z profit.
Chinese company pays $A to strip hardware to components (copper wire, metal cases, individual chips).
Chinese company sells components for $X+$Y+$Z+$A+$B to whoever is buying the wire and so on.
$X probably isn't very much. It's not like it's a delicate operation.
$Y is low because there are so many otherwise-empty containers g
Given the fine article here, I see that China is one of the bad boys in actually doing bad stuff, yet the http://www.ban.org/country_status/report_card.html [ban.org] web site has China listed as "Excellent". So something seems more than slightly fishy. Reading again, the site merely rates how the countries in question perform lip service to a set of 4 treaties and totally disregards how the countries actually act regards limiting pollution.
Sorry people, but this is a prime example of actions speaking louder than words.
This is one of the things people usually overlook when bashing America.
We rarely sign on to treaties and accords and fail to honor them; more often, we fail to sign on yet still follow the rules as if we had.
'This trade has become a thriving business. Companies called "fake recyclers" approach well-meaning organizations -- charities, churches, and community organizations -- and offer to hold a Recycling Day. The charity provides publicity, legitimacy, and a parking lot for the event. On the designated day, well-meaning residents
You can get anything you want at Natalie's Restaurant [slashdot.org]. (The punchline, half a decade later, is that the 21" CRT I salvaged from a dumpster still works, yet I've gone through one LCD monitor due to a failed inverter and a lack of easily-available spare parts since then.)
The only thing I've noticed in the five years since I wrote that parody is that it's getting increasingly hard to find surplus equipment these days. Product lifecycles are shorter, so consumption isn't reduced. It's sure as hell not getting reused. And it's only getting "recycled" in the sense that it's being dumped into the homes of people so poor that they melt solder off printed circuit boards over an open pit fire.
Recycling hardware for which you have no further use is a good idea, but if you're going to recycle your old electronics, do some research and find an organization that's doing it right [accrc.org]. ACCRC turns the scrappy scrap into scrap, turns the interesting scrap into art, and the non-scrap into computers that go directly to people in its own neighborhood.
Reduction in consumption creates no trash and no need to expend energy to refresh/recycle
Reuse eliminates the energy required to collect, sort, reform, and resell
Recycling is only a step better than trash, since the cost of creating the raw materials is not borne, but is offset somewhat by the need for all the reprocessing. It still uses a lot of energy. The biggest advantage is that the materials don't have to be mined.
As recently as 3-5 years ago you could go to a hamfest get a reasonably up-to-date laptop computer and save $500-700 from a new computer.
Now with new laptop with good specs going for $400-500, the margins are gone, so the hamfest guys are selling laptop computers for $300$400. There's no sense in buying used in that case since it has no warranty and will probably be less energy efficient than a new one.
The issue really is that we're getting so efficient at building new computers that it makes the old stuff
Did the author of this article, just blame the US, for the fact that China and Africa allow their citizens to poison the environment and dump hazardous chemicals into the water ? He should stop buying computer equipment, or call the African government with his complaint.
...or call the African government with his complaint.
I'm sure the President of Africa will be very interested to hear this complaint.
He emailed me quite recently, so I know for a fact he a is pretty approachable and down to earth fellow. His English is not very good though.
"Compare hybrid owners who drive more because they own a hybrid"
Or the hybrid owners who trade a perfectly good car, go $20,000 into debt because the hybrid gets better gas mileage (probably save them *at most* $500/year).
I wish people would realize the most environmentally friendly car is one that you already own. There's no pollution involved in making the new car, you're not disposing of the old car, and you won't have car payments. What's not to like?
http://ban.org/photogallery/index.html [ban.org]
Look at the human tragedy. Thank God today you don't live like that.
And it's no one's fault over here, no unsigned treaty, that could create that kind of depravity. Please just for once put down your politics and look a problem square in the eye: China's just got a bad culture and a worse form of government. It's shameful to allow people to live so rotten, period.
NO, before you get all guilt-ridden and try to heap the blame on "us": shameful, rotten, PERIOD, end of
Windows will continue to bloat up and so will Apple's OSes. Why doesn't the Linux community make a nice slim and secure distribution that will run on a 486/586 with only 256M of memory - or less?
I've been thinking about a non-profit for recycling these machines. Many many poor people could use them.
Why doesn't the Linux community make a nice slim and secure distribution that will run on a 486/586 with only 256M of memory - or less?
Some of the lightweight distros, like Peppermint, Puppy Linux, and several XFCE-based distros, would run quite nicely on a 486 with 64MB memory. If you insist on a heavyweight distro like Fedora, you've already made your feature/performance decision, and you haven't chosen performance.
fluxbox is a great window manager for something that low on ram.
I've been using Debian on my SBC's that have 64MB RAM and 200MHz Cyrix (Pentium compatible) CPU. As long as you don't use bloatware like Firefox, it runs just fine. You could probably run it with 32MB RAM if you manage to enable swap during installation, otherwise the installer causes OOM and kills itself. And then there are the various BSD variants, I am sure some of them still run on 486.
You are correct sir. I run debian on a Zipit z2. That device only has 32MB of ram, but has a whole desktop OS on it.
There are lot of linux distros sized for something with 256MB of RAM. Mind you no 486 will have that much. I run a full linux desktop environment on a handheld device that only has 32MB of RAM. Either you are trolling or uninformed.
DSL and puppy are both good choices.
What kind of memory do you need? If I have it I would be happy to mail it to you.
I would also be happy to help you find a distro that would suit your needs if this is a genuine interest.
My email is my username at gmail.com, in case you would prefer to contact me that way.
If you come across IBM type Ms lots of people would like to buy them.
I don't think PC recycling can be done.
It takes more work to disassemble a PC than it did to assemble it from those parts in the first place. When you're done, there isn't much of a market for old 128MB RAM chips, 30GB hard drives, 500 MHz motherboards, etc.
Is there a viable technology that shreds computers with giant steel rollers and sorts the flakes according to material, and sells aluminum flakes, etc. and sells them? Is there a safe heat process? There must be something, since there are companies that claim to provide certified recycling to meet government regulations. But I can't find one. All I can find is stories of third-world dumping.
It may be safer and better for the environment to dump old PCs in U.S. landfills than to send them to parts unknown for "recycling." We should be able to make landfills that can take appliances with heavy metals and electronic plastics without passing it on to the water supply.
Lots of poor folks could buy the computers you are describing, at the right price. A 500Mhz p3 +. 4 128MB ram sticks. would be 512MB total and a 4 30GB drives software raided together all running a lightweight linux distro should be fine for many folks.
I think you meant "the 3rd episode of the new season of Futurama".
The summary says the US is "one of four countries that have not ratified" but the link just lists four notable countries. Scroll down a bit and you will see that they list 15 countries haven't ratified any of the "International Toxics Agreements" (only 15 have ratified all). But is it worse than that since they only list 163 countries when there are 195(*) countries in the world. Assuming the countries they don't list haven't ratified on then that means there are a total of 47 countries that haven't ratified.
Technically the US is "one of four countries that haven't ratified", but technically it is also one of five countries that haven't ratified, and one of three, one of 12, one of 18 and one of 47 countries that haven't ratified.
(*) The UN has 192 member countries but excludes Vatican City, Kosovo and Taiwan.
I got a lot of old computer parts from the 1990's. Motherfracking Recycling companies near me are a darnned joke and refuse to take tech made before 2002. Then calls me picky and unreasonable when I ask them to take my 90's tech.
Then some want $50 to haul off a $15 CRT tube monitor that do.
Any ideas or suggestions? I don't want to throw them in a dumpster and have mercury leaks and all that, I don't want to harm the environment. I don't want to pay $50 a monitor to get rid of them either.
Are those types of businesses scams and frauds as well? How can I find one to take them for free. The Freecycle group in my area is a joke BTW, get a lot of no shows and then nothing happens and nobody cares.
You need to find out what companies are doing. Here we use a local recycling firm that does everything in the USA and Canada. The charge $14 per broken monitor though. I suggest asking at work or using google.
.. in mining, pound for pound.
To elaborate on what an AC already posted [slashdot.org], Best Buy has an electronics recycling program [bestbuy.com] in the US which will take all manner of products, regardless of where they were purchased. Use the drop-down menu on the right to see the rules for your particular state.
Generally they insist that hard drives be removed from computers -- apparently they don't want the responsibility of dealing with sensitive data. They also charge $10 to take CRTs, but they give you a $10 gift card in return. Say what you will about Best Buy's other practices; this is a very useful program.
Their standards statement [bestbuy.com] indicates they don't do anything dastardly with the stuff once they collect it. I'd be interested to know if anyone has direct experience with how they deal with it all.
Real wealth can only increase. -- R. Buckminster Fuller


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El Cirque du Soleil ofrece kits de prensa de sus diferentes espectáculos e información acerca de la compañía.
From 1994 to 2002, Jean-Jacques Pillet, choreographer and stage director, worked as the artistic associate of Jean Grand-Maître, the world-renowned choreographer from Quebec, collaborating in creation, as well as supervising and restaging various productions of his works.
His responsibilities with M. Grand-Maître led to opportunities to work as a choreographer and teacher with many leading dance companies in North America and Europe, including L'Opéra National de Paris, La Scala de Milan, the Stuttgart Ballet, the Munich Opera Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal and Den Norske Opera Ballet. In 1992 the Susan Dellal International Dance Competition in Tel Aviv honored him with its Best Dancer award.
From 2003 to 2005, Jean-Jacques was the artistic coordinator of the Cirque show Varekai, directed by Dominic Champagne. In 2007 he worked on the opening ceremonies of the Outgames in Montreal and for the Quebec singer Diane Dufresne. His also choreographed the Italian production, Tablò, staged by Serge Denoncourt, the prominent playwright and theatre director from Quebec.
Jean-Jacques' choreography for Quebec-made films includes the latest movie by director Olivier Asselin, Un Capitalisme Sentimental, as well as Macadam Tango, directed by Lyne Charlebois and Laura Cadieux la Suite, directed by Denise Filiatrault.
"I get a lot of inspiration from theatre," says Jean-Jacques. "But also from the sculptures of Auguste Rodin and Arturo Giacometti, which embody motion in stillness. My goal in ZED is to try and serve the subtext of the piece through acrobatics and choreography without ever falling back on choreographic flourishes. What interests me is to choreograph an emotion rather than a movement."

subset: commoncrawl


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Exclusive video with Carolyn Cross's terrifying account.
METRO VANCOUVER -- Carolyn Cross said Friday she owes her life to the heroic efforts of two pilots and a countless number of people after the small chartered aircraft she was a passenger in crashed and burst into flames at Vancouver International Airport on Thursday evening.
Cross said that almost as soon as pilot Luc Fortin told the seven passengers in the Thunderbird Air plane that he was turning back from a trip to Kelowna and returning to Vancouver because of an oil leak, she knew they were all going to die.
So she started writing a text message to her children on her iPhone, and seconds before the aircraft crashed on Russ Baker way she hit the "send" button.
"I looked at [Fortin's} hands and they were shaking, trembling, and at that moment I knew we were going to die," she said Friday in a telephone interview from Vancouver General Hospital.
"I calmly take out my iPhone and I start composing letters to my children. And it's an interesting thing that when you are very certain that you are going to die, you are in a moment of peace."
Fortin died of his injuries late Thursday. His co-pilot Mike Robic is still in critical condition, as is one passenger. Four other passengers, including Cross, are listed in serious but stable condition. Two other passengers, including Tony Zanatta of White Rock, have been discharged.
Two of the passengers in hospital have been identified by family members as Lorelei and Cameron Sobolik. Cameron Sobolik is the president of Vancouver-based Teligence, which owns a voice-enabled social network.
Cross, the CEO of a Vancouver biomedical company, said no one else in the passenger area realized what was going on until just before the crash.
"Halfway to our trip to Kelowna the pilot turns over to our group and says he's heading back to Vancouver because there is a small leak on the left side of the engine. I think he said a small oil leak and that it needs checking out and that he's sorry but it shouldn't take that long to get back.
He did so in a manner that made the guys in the back say "ahh, why don't we just continue to Kelowna if we are half way."
Cross said the pilots appeared to try and gain altitude on the way back to YVR so that they could coast to the runway. They didn't make it.
"They were doing such a good job, they got so close. I mean, 900 metres away. Just prior to the point of collision we were listening to the bad sound of landing gear not going down. "Clearly something was wrong there and the pilots shot each other a look and I knew that they were not going to make it despite a gallant effort.
"Then, I looked down to see if my cell phone was in service. I wanted to make sure my kids would get my letter and it did go, so I was at peace.
She said at the very end, something went horribly wrong.
"Suddenly, the pilots were yanking very hard to the left in a very awkward way and I went from looking at the runway to looking at the highway and we were going down into it and that's when the rest of the crew knew.
"We crashed and I immediately looked outside because I was at a door window and it was full of flames outside. So I couldn't go out. It smelled full of gasoline. I heard the sound of the other group popping out the back door and then they left and I knew I had to get out because the people in front of me were obstructed by my presence and my funny angle."
Cross said she had jarred her legs so severely that she couldn't walk.
"I went to get up and I could not walk. It was as if I had no legs, as if they were blown off. And I thought of my children, and God and the universe gave me the energy and I got up to the door. I said I don't know what I am going to do now because I can't get out of the plane, my legs, I can't get out of the plane.
"There were four people that pulled me out and carried me to safety even though the plane was in flames. It smelled of gas. And then they went back for more. And people were shouting "the plane's going to blow, it's full of gas, we smell gas" but they went back in. It was amazing.
"I laid in bed last night understanding how lucky I am and that I am alive because of these people. I want them to know how brave they were."
The aircraft had been chartered as a private rental by an executive group that had business in Kelowna.
Zanatta was injured but was later released and sent home. His wife Leanne said she didn't know the name of the group that had rented the aircraft but the passengers all knew each other.
"It was part of a business organization. It was a private rental," she said. "He's home. He can't talk right now. He's on some pretty major pain-killers, so we're all trying to regroup as a family."
Ian MacLeod, Teligence's general counsel, said the Soboliks were part of a group of business professionals who were going to Kelowna to participate in an "executive forum." No other passengers on board were employees of Teligence, a private company, but they all knew each other through a business association, MacLeod said.
He didn't know the extent of the Soboliks' injuries but was keeping in contact with family members.
"We just want Lorelei and Cameron to have as little injury as possible and to get back on their feet as soon as possible."
MacLeod said Teligence's senior management team is now trying to wrestle with the temporary loss of their president and will likely appoint a transition team until he is able to return to work.
"I can tell you that we didn't charter the plane and he wasn't on Teligence business. The group knew each other. They were travelling to an executive forum in Kelowna," he said.
"I don't think they are in any risk to their lives, but I don't know if he is gone for three months or longer. I think when you lose your senior leadership it has a very big effect. It is going to be a big challenge."


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CALN — Police are searching for a suspect wanted in connection with the overnight burglary of a Dairy Queen on Dec. 2 in the 1600 block of East Lincoln Highway.
According to the Caln Police Department, a man entered the ice cream shop through a window and stole cash from the business. The suspect's image was captured by the store's surveillance system.
The suspect is described as a white man in his 20s standing about 5 feet 10 inches with a thin build.
Anyone with information related to the burglary is asked to contact the Caln Police Department at 610-383-1821.
Follow Daily Local News staff writer Michael N. Price on Twitter @MikePriceWrites or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/michaelnprice


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Seeing the Forest Under the Trees
New Effect of Acid Rain on Forests: Too Many Dead Leaves a Bad Sign for Sugar Maples
December 7, 2011
Where have all the maples gone?
Scientists have discovered that nitrogen that falls from the atmosphere in acid rain can influence large tracts of sugar maples in North America.
The atmospheric nitrogen in acid rain can affect forest ecosystems by acidifying soils and causing nutrient imbalances.
Sugar maples in northeastern North America are especially vulnerable. Vast maple areas have been affected by this acidification process, which depletes soil calcium in already calcium-poor soils such as those of the Eastern United States.
In the calcium-rich soils of the upper Great Lakes, however, acid rain also wreaks havoc, ecologists have found. It slows leaf decomposition, leading to a pile-up of leaves and hindering new, young maples from sprouting up.
The researchers published their results on-line in the current issue of the Journal of Applied Ecology.
"The process has the potential to affect sugar maple-dominated forests throughout the Great Lakes region," says Donald Zak, an ecologist at the University of Michigan, "especially as nitrogen deposition continues in the future."
He and colleagues Sierra Patterson of the University of Michigan, Andrew Burton of Michigan Technological University and Alan Talhelm and Kurt Pregitzer of the University of Idaho conducted 17 years of nitrogen deposition experiments at rates that will likely happen by the end of this century.
"The effects have slowed the natural processes of decomposition, such as the decay of dead leaves, causing the leaves to build up and the forest floor to thicken," says Zak.
The leaf-littered ground has become a barrier to the small seeds of sugar maples, hence, numbers of young sugar maples--the forest's next generation--are dropping.
"There were significantly fewer seedlings in the nitrogen treatment area," says Patterson, the paper's lead author.
"Increasing the amount of fallen leaves on the forest floor caused a significant reduction in successful sugar maple seedlings," she says. "On the other hand, decreasing the thickened forest floor increased seedling survival."
"The surprising results reported in this study are an example of the value of long-term research," says Saran Twombly, a program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the work.
"Uncovering an unexpected link between nitrogen deposition and sugar maple seedling success depended on the ability to simulate increased nitrogen deposition year after year," Twombly says.
"The manipulations used to reveal the details of this link could not have worked in other than a long-term study."
Scientists need to rethink the myriad ways in which acid rain may affect forests, Zak believes, especially those made up largely of sugar maples.
"We need to learn to see the forest," he says, "that's under the trees."-- Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 firstname.lastname@example.com
A long-term experiment continues on sugar maple forests in the northern United States.
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Acid rain affects vast maple areas; it slows the process of leaf decomposition.
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Heavy leaf litter: Not a good sign for sugar maples; new seedlings can't get through.
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Scientists study atmospheric nitrogen deposition from acid rain and its effects on forests.
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A lovely stand of sugar maples, but for how long? The next generation is threatened.
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This photo gives us our first look at the 2015 Hyundai Genesis without camouflage. Posted to a South Korean blog, the photo reveals the all-new luxury sedan that is likely to debut at the 2014 Detroit auto show in January.
Although there are some lines in common, the 2015 Hyundai Genesis doesn't appear to share much in terms of design with the wild HCD-14 concept shown at this year's Detroit show. Instead, we see hints of Infiniti styling in the nose. It tapers toward a tall, trapezoidal grille and boasts large headlights ringed with LED running lights. The rest of the body is fairly plain aside from a prominent crease that extends from the front fender to the taillights.
The car seen here closely matches our spy photos (pictured below), which showed that the 2015 Hyundai Genesis will slightly evolve the design seen on the current luxury sedan. Inside, expect a major refresh that includes a toggle-style electronic gear shifter, a new horizontal arrangement for the dashboard, more wood trim, and some revisions to the layout of the climate controls and touchscreen.
Although it's not yet clear what engines and transmissions will be used in the 2015 Hyundai Genesis, we know the car will offer all-wheel drive in addition to its current rear-drive configuration. Hyundai CEO John Krafcik told us as much last summer, and the company recently confirmed its plans for a system called HTRAC, or Hyundai Traction.
The 2015 Hyundai Genesis is expected to launch in Korea later this year. Hyundai CEO Krafcik told us that the car will debut Stateside at the 2014 Detroit auto show in January.


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Jame and his brother Sam
James Johnson was born in Hyde in 1878, he enlisted in the Lancashire Fusiliers in 1896 and became a sergeant. He was a member of the army gymnastic team and appeared before royalty three times as Rachel said, as a gymnast. Much of his time in the forces was spent as a musketry, drill, physical training and fencing instructor, James was considered a master in the art of bayonet fighting. He was an outstanding runner and won many professional handicaps. He served in the Boer War and the First World War and even attended Queen Victoria's funeral. When he was 61 he volunteered to join up when the Second World War broke out but he was turned down as being too old.


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FOXBORO — Dominique Easley hopes to be more than just a number in your GameDay program.
"Name makes your jersey," he said.
For those of you keeping score out there, the 29th overall selection in the NFL draft last Thursday will wear No. 74 with the Patriots.
Inactive since he tore his right anterior cruciate ligament and medial meniscus during a non-contact drill in practice at Florida more than seven months ago — he tore his left ACL in a game in 2011 — Easley is anxious to start making a name for himself in New England.
"I can't wait," said Easley, who was presented a ceremonial No. 1 jersey from Patriots owner Robert Kraft and team president Jonathan Kraft during an introductory press conference held at midfield at Gillette Stadium Monday morning. "I haven't played a game since September."
At this point, Easley said he remains uncertain about the timeframe surrounding his return to the field.
"I'm meeting with the trainers," he said, "so we're discussing that right now."
Between injuries, the 6-foot-2, 288-pound defensive lineman managed to earn All-Southeastern Conference second-team honors at Florida in 2012 when he totaled 26 tackles, four sacks, 8½ tackles for loss and two quarterback pressures in 11 games.
Easley appeared in 32 games, starting 26, over a four-year career with the Gators, registering 72 tackles, 5½ sacks, 18 tackles for loss and nine quarterback pressures in that time.
That's all behind him now, though, his orientation to the Patriots' way having already begun.
"I got here (Sunday) afternoon and we just had dinner — all the rookies had dinner together (Sunday) night," said Easley. "Then (Monday) we just took care of physicals and we also just had a team meeting with Coach (Bill) Belichick — all the rookies."
The message from the coach?
There's work to be done.
"Everybody wants to be great," said Easley, "so we've got a lot of work to do."
In introducing Easley to the media, the elder Kraft pointed out the newcomer's strong military ties.
"His dad David has done two stints overseas, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, and his older brother David has also been in Iraq," the owner said. "So it's a great family."
Easley said those ties have helped shape him.
"That helped me as a man," he said. "There's no excuse for (anything) because they were put in situations that were life or death. So the life that we're living now is much easier than the life that they had to live."
Easley called the three days that transpired from the time he heard his name called late Thursday night to yesterday "a blessing.
"Growing up (in Staten Island, N.Y.) I never thought that I would actually be in this position," he said, "so for me and for my family it's been a real blessing."
That family now includes a son, 1-year-old Dominique II, whose name is inscribed on a gold chain Easley wears around his neck.
"I carry it around since he's not able to be here with me," said Easley. "So I carry him everywhere I go."
Glen Farley writes for the Brockton Enterprise of GateHouse News Service.
Pats' top pick Easley looking forward to getting started
FOXBORO — Dominique Easley hopes to be more than just a number in your GameDay program.


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Tuesday, March 5th, 2013
Brooke argues with Taylor, Rick refuses Caroline, and Bill wants balance.
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At the Forrester mansion, Brooke rants at Taylor that she's taking advantage of Eric. Taylor says it's none of her business and they are both very happy. Brooke tells Taylor to stop unpacking. She accuses her of getting Stephanie back. They bicker. Brooke says this will create a scandal for Eric. Taylor is amused she would bring up that word after all she's done in her life. Taylor says she knows Brooke discussed this with Bill and wonders if Katie knows she's having private conversations with her husband behind her back. Brooke sniffs that she and Bill are just friends and returns to her theme - Taylor is taking advantage of Eric. She thinks it's all about pushing her family out of the business and undermining them in the family. Later, Eric arrives. Taylor tells her Brooke feels she's using her seductive powers to lure him into her diabolical web. Eric chuckles - he'll talk to her. Taylor insists Brooke isn't going to let this go. Eric says if this is where Taylor wants to be; this is where she belongs. Taylor says it's good to be home.
Bill tells Katie, at home, that he's home for the afternoon due to canceled meetings. Katie seems less than enthused and takes Will up to the nursery. After, Katie bustles about and Bill asks her to sit down and kisses her. He wants to head to the bedroom, but Katie makes excuses about Will waking up. Bill reminds her they're a couple and suggests they get a nanny. She doesn't want one. Bill tells her they need balance. Brooke arrives and Will wakes up. Katie rushes upstairs. Brooke tells Bill that Taylor's moving in to Eric's. Brooke rants that she's using Eric for revenge and control. Bill asks if she's sure this is calculated. Brooke's certain of it, and won't let her get away with this.
Rick's at Dayzee's watching the door. Anthony knows he's watching for the girl; the singer. Maya enters. Anthony teases, "Look what the wind blew in." Rick welcomes her back and lets her know he took her table from the other waitress. She grins. Rick tells her she's talented and shares that when he's not working he likes to hang out, listen to good music, and meet interesting people. Suddenly Caroline shows up to 'kidnap' him. Rick says he can't leave. Caroline says she made them reservations at the trendy place. He says she knew he was coming here. Caroline pouts and cajoles and eventually shouts. Maya turns to look. Rick refuses to leave. Caroline walks out. Maya asks if it was his girlfriend. Rick nods. Maya doesn't like the way she spoke to him. Rick says he probably could have left, but he working there makes him feel good. He says she could help people feel good with her music.
Spoilers for Tomorrow on The Bold and the Beautiful:
Bill suggests an over-the-top plan to Brooke to win back some power at Forrester.
Hope goes to Liam looking for a favor.
Maya asks Rick to help her out.
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Manchester City have stolen a march on Premier League rivals Manchester United and Liverpool in the race to sign Feyenoord starlet Rodney Kongolo, reports the Sunday People.
The 15-year old midfielder is widely regarded as one of the brightest young prospects in Holland at the moment, and has featured for the Dutch national youth team.
Citizens boss Roberto Mancini wants to bring the talented teenager to the Etihad Stadium at the turn of his 16th birthday, and is ready to pay £1.5million for his signature.
However, the reigning champions will face stiff competition for Kongolo's services, as Manchester United and Liverpool both weigh up bids.
Sir Alex Ferguson sent Old Trafford scouts to watch the player in action against Belgium, while Brendan Rodgers also had representatives present, as he considers an attempt to lure him to Anfield.
At 6ft 1in, Kongolo's mixture of size and skill makes him ready made for the Premier League, and Feyenoord will have numerous offers to consider this summer.
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The Week Ending Aug. 9
Unpaid furloughs for IBM's Systems and Technology employees, a sign of the company's continuing struggles in the server arena, top this week's roundup of those that had a rough week.
Also making the list was Microsoft, which was the target of some pointed criticism from a former evangelist. A leading security company lost a key channel executive and a big data company lost its founder. Rounding out the list is a former SAP executive and his guilty plea in a bizarre shoplifting scheme.


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Posted by johnnyf on 2/12/2014 9:10:00 PM (view original):Can we dub this the WuTang strategy? Diversify your offense yall.
Posted by cjsweat on 2/13/2014 9:19:00 AM (view original):Um, in the NFL, even if you take Seattle and Jacksonville, they are inches apart. I actually predicted Seattle to win the Super Bowl because I thought they were better than Denver. There was't this great gap in talent between the two teams. Bad comparison
Posted by jtd79 on 2/13/2014 11:56:00 PM (view original):Wu-Tang Clan aint nothing to **** with!
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Beat writer Jerry McDonald stuck it out in Alameda all day, certainly much longer than many of the fans that arrived early, and he was rewarded with word that defensive back Charles Woodson is coming back to the Raiders.
Here's McDonald's story:
Charles Woodson is coming home, signing a one-year deal to return to the Raiders on Tuesday.
The contract reportedly is for $4.3 million, including a $700,000 signing bonus.
Sitting in the passenger seat of a black Suburban inching slowly toward the security gate, Woodson smiled broadly as a crowd of more than 100 fans chanted his name.
Woodson left at about 7:20 p.m., about five hours after he arrived. He had the driver stop the car so he could sign autographs for fans, many of whom turned around and drove back to the facility once they heard the news.
"I've got to go, so I can't get to you all. Don't worry, I'll be around," Woodson said.
A free agent visit by Woodson to the place where he started his career became an impromptu Raider rally, with word spreading via social media.
Once past the gate, Woodson looked toward the building, raised both arms in the air then walked inside, followed by a Raiders camera chronicling the event.
Wearing a blue Michigan T-shirt and blue jeans, Woodson, 36, re-emerged from the building accompanied by Hall of Fame cornerback Willie Brown and walked to the fence to acknowledge the crowd. He held a child's size No. 24 Raiders jersey with his name on it as fans chanted, "Come home Woodson, come home Woodson."
A Raider fan known as "Dr. Death," decked out in full costume, was delighted.
"Now that's what I came to see," he said.
Released by the Green Bay Packers, Woodson had found the market for his services soft, due to both his age and the fact that he has broken his right collarbone twice in the past three years.
Woodson was unavailable to the media, as were Raiders coaches and players, with the one-day window for this week's organized team activity having taken place Monday.
Woodson reportedly had an offer from the Denver Broncos, which apparently was not enough to get him signed. The New York Giants are also said to be interested.
Woodson visited the 49ers early in free agency but received no contract offer.
Fans began assembling in the back lot of the Raiders facility as early as 9:30 a.m., with two security guards hired by the team coming 30 minutes later. He didn't arrive until approximately 2:30, not that fans seemed to mind.
Antoine Johnson, who grew up in Oakland and attends Sacramento State, was wearing a University of Michigan No. 2 jersey with Woodson's name on the back, the number he wore on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy.
Later, when Woodson went to the fence, he acknowledged Johnson, who then pulled back the sleeve of his right arm to display a tattoo that said, "True to me." Johnson said he got it because Woodson has the same tattoo and Woodson is his favorite player.
Shine Nieto drove for more than three hours from the Tule River Indian Reservation in the Sierra Nevada foothills to be at the facility. He carried with him a white Woodson No. 24 jersey.
"I just wanted to be here to welcome him," Nieto said. "It's like when Marcus Allen came back to the Coliseum to light the torch. It's a special moment. Part of history.
Raiders players who were leaving after their OTA practice found themselves driving slowly through a gauntlet of cheering fans.
Fullback Marcel Reece even stopped, emerged from his car and exchanged hugs and handshakes with fans. So did defensive end Jason Hunter, who signed as an unrestricted free agent.


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By Sharon Begley
NEW YORK (Reuters) - With U.S. biomedical research under assault by everyone from patients to Congress for turning so few scientific discoveries into treatments, a leading finance expert says decisions about what studies to bankroll should be made the same way pension funds, mutual funds, and university endowments decide how to invest their money.
Those decisions should be guided by "financial portfolio theory," argues a paper published Wednesday in the science journal PLoS ONE. Applying portfolio theory to how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) allocates its $30 billion annual budget could cut the total years of life lost by patients by anywhere from 28 percent to 89 percent, the researchers calculate.
"We need a framework for deciding how to make allocations for biomedical research that is transparent, objective, rational and reproducible," Andrew Lo of the MIT Sloan School's Laboratory for Financial Engineering said in an interview. Lo, considered a leading authority on financial theory, co-authored the paper with MIT's Dimitrios Bisias and surgeon James Watkins of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
"What we're hoping is that scientists and policy makers collaborate on measuring success" and use portfolio theory as a guide for how much to invest in research into various diseases, he said.
The paper's basic concept was dismissed by patient advocates contacted by Reuters. Some pointed out that under the criteria the new analysis proposed, research into chronic diseases, rare disorders and illnesses like Alzheimer's that have eluded a cure would be deemed nearly worthless. NIH officials were not available for comment.
Broadly speaking, portfolio theory provides guidance on how much to allocate to different investments - stocks, bonds, oil futures, real estate - based on their risks and expected rates of return, or reward.
Just as investing in U.S. Treasuries poses different risks and promises different rewards than investing in coffee futures, government investments to combat one disease versus another yield different results.
Ordinarily, when portfolio theory is used to optimize risk/reward trade-offs, the rewards are dollars. The new paper argues that in biomedical research the rewards that count are reductions in years of life lost to disease.
The most efficient allocation of biomedical research dollars is that which maximizes years of life saved per dollar spent, the researchers argue. This means that curing a 2-year-old's brain tumor is worth 70-some years of life, while curing an 85-year-old's arthritis is worth essentially zero.
The researchers are quick to caution that the emphasis on years of life saved is only the first step. Once the application of portfolio theory to biomedical spending decisions is refined, additional criteria -- such as whether a given line of research reduces pain and suffering -- would also be factored in.
Biomedical researchers and patient advocates contacted by Reuters expressed several concerns about the recommendations.
One is that the years-of-life-lost approach fails to capture chronic diseases that do not cut lives short but do cause immense suffering. "How quickly a disease kills, and how many it kills, is only one criterion," said Scott Johnson, president of the Myelin Repair Foundation, which supports research aimed at curing multiple sclerosis. "Suffering and disability also count."
Rare diseases would also lose out, since (by definition) they affect so few people. Using years of life lost "is outrageous and completely crazy," said Susan Weiner of the Children's Brain Tumor Foundation.
Currently, the NIH allocates funding based on five criteria: "public needs"; the scientific quality of the proposed research; how likely a field is to make scientific progress (based on the foundation of existing knowledge and the number of qualified researchers); the need to have a diversified research program; and the need to support such infrastructure components as people, equipment, and facilities.
Using years of life lost as the measure of return on investment, some of NIH's investments have performed like Google's meteoric stock rise right after its initial public offering. Others have languished like Bank of America since 2007.
For instance, the study shows that spending on HIV research had a return of 9,100 percent, reflecting the fact that HIV/AIDS was originally near-universally fatal, and killed young people. Now protease-inhibiting drugs have turned it into a more manageable disease that doesn't cut as many lives short. "They really shot the lights out with protease inhibitors," said Watkins.
By the same analysis, cancer had a 50 percent return, while heart disease had a 1,000 percent return. Brain diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, had a negative rate of return: neither has been cured or even treated successfully despite the millions of dollars spent on research, and their incidence is rising.
Applying portfolio theory would drastically change how NIH spends the public's money. The Institute of Child Health and Human Development, whose research stands out for how many years of life it has saved, would get 23 percent of NIH's money rather than the current 7 percent. The Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, whose research has led to statins and other life savers, would go from 17 percent to 23 percent. The Cancer Institute would get 52 percent rather than today's 27 percent.
The losers would be the institutes that focus on diabetes (whose rate has soared, yielding a negative return on investment); the brain (a poor track record in terms of saving lives lost to Alzheimer's and other diseases), and mental health. All would be nearly zeroed out.
The authors wrote that they "would not suggest adopting a policy that would eliminate funding for any disease group." Even the riskiest investments sometimes pay off, which is why some investors buy pork bellies rather than, say, the S&P 500.
The researchers readily admit that years of life is a crude measure of success. Research on plastic surgery for burn victims, said Watkins, would lose out because it does not necessarily extend life, even though it greatly diminishes patients' suffering. Eventually, he said, NIH and policy makers would also take into account improvements in quality of life.
Another problem with applying portfolio analysis to NIH is that past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Researchers have made no progress against Alzheimer's, but maybe the big breakthrough is just around the corner.
Since NIH typically funds the most basic research it is not easy to predict returns. Authors of the new paper admit "the relation between NIH spending and changes in YLL is not nearly as direct as the relation between investing in the stock market and changes in one's net worth."
Also, portfolio theory assumes that if $1 invested today will yield $1.20 in five years, then $2 will yield $2.40. Doubling the investment doubles the return. But with NIH, the authors acknowledged, "it is not at all clear that doubling the budget of a given Institute will double its impact on future changes in YLL."
But even this rough analysis showed how much the NIH gets for its spending. "If policymakers truly understood the implications of our empirical results," said Lo, "they would be pushing for greater appropriations for the NIH expeditiously."
(Reporting By Sharon Begley and Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Diane Craft)


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The new station is now ADA compliant and GCRTA officials said it that will make it easier for transit riders to connect to bus and rail services at one of the city's busiest transfer locations. Work on the $20-milion reconstruction began in 2012 and the project was funded by a $10.5-million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant, which was awarded in 2010. FTA also provided $5.5-million in other funds for the project.
The new station, near Case Western Reserve University, replaces an aging rail station and bus terminal, built in 1956, with a modern facility that significantly improves access for pedestrians and people with disabilities. The project included complete reconstruction of the rail station and relocation of the bus terminal to the north side of Cedar Glen, eliminating the need for street crossings and enhancing pedestrian connections between the bus terminal and rail station.
"Cleveland deserves a safe, efficient and reliable transit system that meets the needs of its riders, and provides easy and affordable access to jobs and other opportunities throughout Cuyahoga County," said Acting FTA Administrator Therese McMillan. "This project helps to ensure that University Circle remains a vibrant, attractive neighborhood offering good transportation choices to hard-working families, students, and other residents."


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While the Blu-ray drive allows for huge gaming experiences that use up the whole 50GB that the discs can hold, an unfortunate side effect is that a lot of games have to have data installed on the PS3 because the data is read slower. Far Cry 3 is one such games, and PSLS can reveal that the game will take up a whopping 6.2GB.
That's so much space. I don't mind deleting the install data of games I'm not playing anymore, but I didn't think my 160gb PS3 would fill up this fast.
Sometimes I think the digital revolution is just a conspiracy by the hard drive manufacturers to force me to buy their products and waste my time downloading and deleting and downloading and deleting again.
why did sony ever feel the need for the installs on the PS3 i will never know why


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Quoted Textgot so big that I went to the doctor and he removed it.
Quoted from Lola
your Dr did send it off to get analyzed, right?
I would Look for a doc who does the slice then send it to their lab one slice at a time.. as you wait in the waiting room.. then go deep enough to be CLEAN.. even if it takes all day..
Please get the Cancer book and the Encyclopedia.. If both is not possible.. I might be able to type out the sups from NAP for cancer prevention..
I am wondering have you switched from BTD to GENO and what where some of the experiences?? did you 'fit' right away?
what were the obvious changes?
did it impact you as much as BTD did early on?


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PORTLAND, Ore. — Timbers coach Caleb Porter would like to get on with the match already.
It's been nearly two weeks since Portland visited Real Salt Lake for the first match of their two-leg Western Conference final. Salt Lake has a 4-2 lead in the goal-aggregate series.
The two teams meet again in Portland Sunday to decide who moves on to the MLS Cup.
''It's sort of like Groundhog Day talking about this game every day for the last 12 days,'' Porter told reporters on a conference call previewing the match.
Robbie Findley, Chris Schuler, Devon Sandoval, and Javier Morales all scored for Real Salt Lake in the opening match at Rio Tinto Stadium. The Timbers got goals from Will Johnson and Frederic Piquionne.
Portland's loss snapped a 10-game unbeaten streak that dated to a 4-2 loss to RSL in Salt Lake Aug. 30.
Porter ticked off the reasons the Timbers think they can overcome the deficit. Portland has just one league loss at home this season. They've had 11 shutouts at home. They've scored 32 goals at home. They've won six matches at home by two or more goals.
If they're successful, they'll become the first team in 10 years to come back from a two-goal shortfall in the second match of an aggregate-goals series.
But the Timbers can't play desperately, Porter warned.
''We're always looking to score two goals or more every single game,'' he said. ''So the worst thing we can do is look at that two-goal deficit and come out gunslinging and reckless to the point that we give up [a goal] and dig ourselves an even bigger hole.''
Real Salt Lake has not lost to the Timbers for the past nine straight matches in all competitions. RSL's last visit to Jeld-Wen Field resulted in a 0-0 draw.
Portland has not defeated Salt Lake since their first meeting after the Timbers joined the MLS for the 2011 season.
RSL coach Jason Kreis disagrees with the stance that all his team has to do is sit back and defend.
''We want to approach the match in an aggressive fashion, but we also recognize we are leading by two,'' he said.
Salt Lake will be without striker Alvaro Saborio, the team's leading scorer with 12 goals this season, because of a right hip flexor injury that also kept him out of the first leg.
He did not travel to Portland, Kreis said.
''We hope we can advance to give him a chance to play in the final,'' Kreis said.
Salt Lake defender Chris Wingert is also out for Sunday's Western Conference Championship second leg at Portland because of a broken rib and collapsed lung sustained in the first leg.
Meanwhile, Portland's top scorer, Diego Valeri, has struggled with an adductor injury, but practiced at full speed this week, Porter said.
''Today he looked as good as he has in months,'' Porter said.
The winner will advance to the MLS Cup against the winner of Saturday night's Eastern Conference final between Sporting Kansas City and the Houston Dynamo.
The conference winners will have another again have a two week wait until the MLS Cup match, scheduled for Dec. 7. Players accept the long layoffs for international play, Timbers midfielder Jack Jewsbury said.
''On one sense, it gives guys a bit of a breather to rest the legs a little bit that first week and then get back into things, like Caleb said, and then get a bit of normalcy this week,'' Jewsbury said. ''On the other hand, we're biting at the bit to get back on the field and play, because we weren't extremely happy with the first leg and know we can make up for that this weekend.''


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WHEN border collie Cooper isn't guarding the house, he's busy building it.
The two-year-old dog won best dressed at Howlong's Mutts in May yesterday, wearing a builder's shirt, hard hat and a belt of tools.
His owner Craig Vincent, who is in the midst of renovating his Howlong house, said Cooper had come down on his lunch break.
"We've got him off the site for the day, but we'll have him back working in the afternoon," he said.
About 300 people attended the Howlong Golf Club event, which tied in with the town's monthly market.
Darren Grono, also of Howlong, said he brought his two Dogue de Bordeaux dogs, Gypsy and Doza, along to help them socialise.
"They're just reliable, whenever you want them, they're there," he said.
"It's unconditional love really."
Organiser Karie Lowe said she was happy the sun came out after some morning rain.
"I thought we were going to have to call it soggy doggies," she said.
"We're very happy with the turn out."


text: Selectmen will hold a public hearing at 7:45 p.m. Thursday to discuss the town's proposed application for a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development. Selectmen want up to $1 million for a joint housing-rehabilitation program with West Bridgewater, but would like to hear suggestions from residents. Avon received a similar grant in 2009 and used it to make emergency repairs and to fix substandard conditions in 24 homes of low- and moderate-income residents, according to Kathleen Kelleher of Community Opportunities Group in Boston, which is helping write the grant. The hearing will be held in the Mary Buckley Meeting Room of the Avon town offices, 65 East Main St.


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I'm early for my appointment with Steve and Mary Caroline Stewart. I don't mind, though. It's the Historic District of Charleston.
I enjoy a walk around the block until I approach the Montagu Street residence. Solid walls enclose a four-story house built in the early 1800s on 1.25 acres, one of the largest residential properties in downtown Charleston.
The gardeners are at work on a Sunday. I'm about to go to the front door when I realize the gardeners are the Stewarts, who are known to be hands-on when it comes to maintaining their property.
They purchased the house in 2004 and later the house next to it, which, according to Steve, was part of the original property. They razed the second house to make room for the spacious, ornate gardens that landscape architect Sheila Wertimer would design in 2005.
Mary Caroline was involved in the design process, providing copious lists of plants that she wanted to use. "I wanted pink to be the major color in the garden in addition to parterres and an axis design," Mary Caroline says. "There's color throughout the gardens at all times of the year."
When the gate closes behind me, the sounds of Charleston fade away like stepping into another world. Water is a primary factor that contributes to this sense of privacy, and there are several fountains to be discovered throughout the gardens. Not only does the trickling water screen outside sounds, but it also lends a cooler feel to each outdoor room.
"In the early 1800s," Steve says, "bragging rights went to the owner with the coolest house, not necessarily the biggest."
And the Stewarts carried this concept into the garden, developing several sitting areas that take advantage of breezes and shade in addition to the water features.
"The gardens are designed to mimic the style of the house," Steve says. "The front of the house is formal, but as you walk to the rear of the house, it becomes informal. In the same respect, the gardens are more formal near the house and become informal the further you walk."
Much of the gardens are defined by straight lines and geometric parterres. The paths lead from one outdoor room to another. Sculptures, fountains or plantings direct my views with each discovery of a new room.
Oystershell paths originally were proposed to reflect old Charleston, but the Stewarts felt like that would require too much maintenance and be an inappropriate material near the pool. Instead, full brick paths were constructed on a sand base with swept mortar, but the loose seams and shifting bricks made it difficult to clean. Later, brick paths were mortared onto a concrete base.
As we walk out of the main garden next to the house, we enter the croquet court: a large square of manicured St. Augustine turf that serves many functions, such as weddings or fundraising events. Steve prefers to mow and edge the lawn rather than have the gardener do it. On one end is the largest of the water features: a 20-foot-long reflecting pool.
The poolhouse is in the corner of the property, farthest from the house but designed to architecturally reflect it. The area is surrounded by large beds of colorful annuals and perennials and statuesque Japanese maples. The poolhouse contains a kitchen and eating area with views all around the property, including the pool with an infinity edge. The cabinets were milled from sycamores that were removed during excavation, and the floor is visually anchored in the center with an antique millstone. The domed ceiling is a parabolic reflector that echoes back sound when I stand on the millstone.
We walk along the back of the property toward the carriage house. Originally built for horses, the carriage house is Greek Revival architecture and was no longer structurally sound. The Stewarts reinforced the infrastructure before converting it into a utility area with an apartment above it. Steve shows me how some of the original mortar has flaked away to reveal sand behind it, explaining mortar was expensive during the time of original construction and sand was often used to cut costs.
We step through a vine-covered arbor into the cutting garden that is next to the carriage house, an informal garden filled with a variety of perennials, espaliered magnolias on the back wall and Mary Caroline's favorite oakleaf hydrangeas. This is where Mary Caroline likes to experiment with different plants, and it's such a refreshing change from the formality in the rest of the gardens.
We approach the back of the house from the cutting garden. At one time, this was the work area that mostly was exposed soil and no landscaping that the Stewarts have transformed into a welcome area with mature crape myrtles and manicured turf. This area is contained by the tack house and kitchen house on each side.
The kitchen house (Federal architecture) was built in the early to mid-1800s with a Greek Revival portico added in 1850. It served as the slave dormitory, where cooking and chores were done, but now is leased to tenants. Steve says, "Many of our renters are college students that enjoy the surroundings but also appreciate the security of the walled property."
Steve points out a conscious design detail that I failed to notice. "There's very little sign of the 21st century in the landscape because all meters, all electrical boxes and all pipes are hidden."
He shows me the utility room in the single-story tack house that contains the gas-powered backup generator and all the meters. Downtown Charleston typically has low water pressure due to the age of the municipal pipes, but the tack room contains a booster pump to supply the property all the water pressure that's needed.
There are no air-conditioning units to hide since the house is heated and cooled by geothermal energy. The geothermal system is expensive but, as Steve points out, paid for itself in about six years, cutting their annual energy costs by about two-thirds.
We walk along the narrow portion of the property alongside the house, where citrus trees grow in planters, and circle back to the main garden on the other side of the house, where we started. We climb the circular staircase that takes us to the porch, where a breeze cools us down.
From this vantage point, we can see much of the gardens accentuated by stately Italian cypress and fruiting American hollies. This is one of the coolest gardens around the city.
Tony Bertauski is a horticulture instructor at Trident Technical College. To give feedback, email him at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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The Daily News' offices will be closed Thursday, Nov. 22, and Friday, Nov. 23, in observance of Thanksgiving. Offices will reopen Monday, Nov. 26, at 8:30 a.m. and remain open during normal business hours.
Metal Museum will hold Blacksmith Friday on Friday, Nov. 23, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the museum, 374 Metal Museum Drive. The event will include free museum admission and blacksmith demonstrations, and attendees can shop for unique items created by nationally recognized artists. Visit metalmuseum.org or call 774-6380.
The Circuit Playhouse will present "Ken Ludwig's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas" Friday, Nov. 23, through Dec. 30 at Circuit, 51 S. Cooper St. Visit playhouseonthesquare.org for times and tickets.
Memphis Botanic Garden will hold Snowy Nights in My Big Backyard Fridays and Saturdays, Nov. 23 through Dec. 15, and daily Dec. 17 through Dec. 29, except for Christmas eve and day. Cost is $5 for members and $7 for nonmembers. Call 636-4106.
The WRVR Toy Truck Drive benefiting Porter-Leath will be held Monday, Nov. 26, through Friday, Nov. 30, at Bud Davis Cadillac, 5433 Poplar Ave. Supporters can drop off toys, bikes, luggage and monetary donations to benefit children served by Porter-Leath, and Santa and live reindeer will be on hand for photographs for $5. Visit porterleath.org for details and a list of other drop-off locations.
Rhodes College will host Dr. Amy Singer, presenting "The Ottoman Conquest of Jerusalem," as part of its Communities in Conversation series Tuesday, Nov. 27, at 5:30 p.m. in Blount Auditorium of Buckman Hall on campus, 2000 North Parkway. Singer is professor of Ottoman and Turkish history at Tel Aviv University. Cost is free. Visit rhodes.edu.
Talk Shoppe and the Small Business Chamber will present "The Mastermind Principle: Based on the Book 'Think & Grow Rich' by Napoleon Hill" Wednesday, Nov. 28, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. at the Better Business Bureau, 3693 Tyndale Ave. Cost is free. Visit smallbusinesschamber.com or talkshoppe.biz.
BIG for Memphis will host Memphis Police Department Director Toney Armstrong Wednesday, Nov. 28, from 10:15 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Phelps Security, 4932 Park Ave. BIG brings together Memphis Police Department colonels and business leaders to impact the community. Cost is free. R.S.V.P. to firstname.lastname@example.com.
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Russian? anyone :<? Armory below, he has 82+ feat of strenghts. how is this possible? (the really rare ones) they are probly the ones that came up with the MMR bug and shit aswell.. i mean it cant be hard for blizzard to track those players? i mean that win loose..
Edited by Zerlog, 09 December 2012 - 11:50 PM.


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izard wrote:Hey All... [raises a glass to toast another successful burn for the Booby Bar].
Izard! Cheers! The Booby Bar Rocked!
izard wrote:Logan's bacon and maple syrup infused jack daniels on the other hand... "WOOohooHOOOoooHAaaa! Shmooooov!" That stuff needs to be mass produced. Wowza!
I concur! Did you try his rum and everclear kumquats? I scarfed those!
And BadDawg's everclear cherries were delicious.


text: 09/14/2011 (10:30PM - 11:00PM) (Wednesday) : CO-WORKERS ALEX (HANK AZARIA) AND HELEN (KATHRYN HAHN) TURN TO EACH OTHER FOR COMPANIONSHIP IN A MOMENT OF WEAKNESS, ONLY TO REGRET IT LATER - Alex (Hank Azaria, "The Simpsons," "The Smurfs"), is newly-divorced and trying to hold it together at work. His co-worker Helen (Kathryn Hahn, "Hung," "Wanderlust") lost her fianc� a year ago and while she thinks she has it together, she's on emotional thin ice. When they end up in bed together, the aftermath isn't pretty and they decide to remain friends�or so they think. As the two try to sort out their casual, intimate and beautifully awkward relationship, they are surrounded by an office full of crazy colleagues, including their boss Stephen (Anthony Head, "Buffy The Vampire Slayer," "Merlin"), Dan (Mo Mandel, "Modern Family"), Gregg (Al Madrigal, "The Daily Show") and Emma (Natasha Leggero, "Ugly Americans"), as well as office security guard Walter (Joe Lo Truglio, "Backwash").


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David Hartzell, Wood/Bell Distinguished Professor
Jim Dean, Dean of Kenan-Flagler Business School
Roger Perry, Chairman, UNC Board of Trustees, East West Partners
David Hartzell, Moderator Ross Cowan, Northwood Investors LLC Michael Franco, Morgan Stanley Jim Taylor,Wachovia Securities J. Ronald Terwilliger, Trammell Crow Residential
Speakers Bios
Attendees by Last Name
Attendees by Company
Get directions to the the Carolina Club. — Printer friendly version
Registration for the 2009 UNC Real Estate Conference is now closed. We will try, however to accommodate any additional persons as best we can in the days leading up to the conference. No additions can be made on the day of the conference. Call or email Susan Drake at 919-962-3219.
See the details from the 2008 conference.


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That story started 20 years ago, when Congress appropriated $289 million for a Milwaukee-area transit project. It was first slated for a bus-only highway between Milwaukee and Waukesha, but then-Gov. Tommy G. Thompson vetoed that idea in response to neighborhood opposition.Read the whole thing to see how this played out in Milwaukee politics, with Walker favoring buses over trains and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett favoring rail. Barrett was the Democratic candidate for Governor last fall, and now he's got his rail project approved. He's not seeking state money, and the the settlement in the lawsuit supposedly "prohibits the state from blocking the streetcar project."
Congress then took away $48 million, and state and local officials started a major study of how to use the remaining $241 million. The study recommended building a light rail system, adding bus-and-car-pool lanes to I-94 and expanding bus service.
Walker, then a state representative from Wauwatosa, was among the suburban Republicans who helped kill that plan, persuading fellow Republican Thompson to rule out using any state or federal money to study light rail.
In frustration, Milwaukee community activists filed two civil rights complaints against the state with the U.S. Department of Transportation in late 1998.
The complaints noted that many of the central city's African-American residents didn't have cars, but nearly all white suburbanites did. Therefore, activists argued, the state was discriminating against minorities by favoring freeways over public transit.
IN THE COMMENTS: Readers are pointing out that the proposed route for the streetcar does not extend into Milwaukee's minority neighborhoods.
The real goal of a lawsuit often fails to match up with the legal ground that is used to invoke judicial power. Similarly, political rhetoric often exploits values that don't square with what politicians are really doing. There are many reasons to play the race card, and only one is that you actually intend to serve the individuals you are leveraging your argument on.


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Mount Blanchard teacher investigated after boy disciplined
- Written by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOUNT BLANCHARD, Ohio (AP) — A northwest Ohio sheriff's office is investigating a teacher's disciplining of a kindergartner after the incident was caught on a surveillance camera.
Riverdale Local Schools has suspended the teacher for 10 days after the video was made public last week.
WTOL-TV of Toledo reported Thursday (http://bit.ly/1jPanSq ) that a sheriff's deputy visited the boy's father a day earlier and has opened an investigation.
The sheriff's office says it could be next week before their investigation is complete and provided to the Hancock County prosecutor.
School superintendent Eric Hoffman tells the station he has apologized to the parents and called the incident unfortunate.
The camera captures the teacher pushing the boy up against a wall and grabbing him by the face and shirt.


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Is it okay if I just leave my laptop laying around?
Short answer: No. Because laptops are light and portable, security should always be a concern. It is the responsibility of each student to protect his/her laptop. With this in mind, please consider insuring the laptop, purchasing equipment for its physical security, and installing anti-theft software.
Look to see whether your homeowner's insurance covers laptop theft. If not, consider purchasing additional coverage.
Laptop security kits are available from the Ithaca College Bookstore and from many retail establishments. These security kits allow a student to physically secure the laptop to a desk.
Several different software products are available to help find a laptop in case of theft. One of the more popular products is Lo-Jack. If a laptop is stolen or lost, notify the Office of Public Safety.
The Office of Public Safety can be reached at (607) 274-3333 or on the website.


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Top Hat
The show begins a UK tour in Wimbledon from August 12.
If you're looking for a nostalgic night out – and who isn't in these bleak modern times? – you can't do much better than 'Top Hat'. Dripping with class and full of old-school humour, this sassy stage version of the Astaire-Rogers 1935 musical provides a reassuringly enjoyable evening's entertainment. The farcical plot is merely a coathanger for a multitude of Irving Berlin hits to hang off – but you don't hear many people in this theatre complaining.
Stage star Jerry Travers meets and falls for beautiful model Dale Tremont, but due to a case of mistaken identity she shuns his advances. A gondola ride and many mishaps later and they're dancing 'Cheek to Cheek'.
Matthew White's witty production is given renewed energy by a new cast that's probably classier than the original one. Broadway veteran Kristen Beth Williams is captivating as Dale, as comfortable cheekily taking control in the hip-wiggling 'Wild About You' as she is being elegantly spun around in feathers. She and understudy Alan Burkitt (very capably standing in for Gavin Lee as Jerry) glide around the stage effortlessly and spark off each other very prettily.
As Latin lover Alberto Beddini, Alex Gaumond handles the issue of this dated racial stereotype with his tongue firmly in his cheek. Gaumond relishes every pompous affectation and is marvellously silly, while for a rather more English send up, Stephen Boswell does a superb line in sardonic one-liners as long suffering manservant Bates.
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|0844 248 5140
Average User Rating
4.8 / 5
Rating Breakdown
- 5 star:14
- 4 star:4
- 3 star:0
- 2 star:0
- 1 star:0
Amazing! Brilliant show!
I bought tickets to this to treat my mum and sister who are big fans of musicals, and in particular old time classics. From the second the curtain went up both they and I were mesmerized by the quality of the dancing, comedic acting, staging and costumes. The show held our attention to the very end and I'd definitely go back and watch it again and again! Hat's off to Top Hat.
What a brilliant show! I have always loved the film and the stage show did not disappoint. The sets and costumes were spectacular and the dancing was top class. I had a smile on my face the whole way through! That's what I call 'Entertainment'
What a wonderful show, it lived up to and beyond my expectations. An absolutely fantastic show from beginning to end, time just seemed to fly by. Great dancing, singing and a real musical farce that never stopped entertaining. Every single member of the cast were as near perfection as you can get. Loved every second.
Wonderful reception, great fun and perfectly dressed an played.
Matinee 7 September. Absolutely brilliant show! The music, the dancing, and the repartee kept my wife and me enthralled and entertained from beginning to the very end. The dancing skills and musicianship of all the cast (not one weak link) was absolutely excellent. What wonderful entertainment!
The original film version of Top Hat is one of my favourites and I was not disappointed by the stage performance at all. I thought the understudy Alan Burkitt, who played the male lead certainly had the charisma & talent of Fred Astaire, he was marvelous to watch! And the female lead had the wit & pizzaz of the one and only Ginger Rogers! In fact, the whole cast was just as captivating. The set design and costume were beautifully designed also. I would recommend it to anyone! I just loved it!
I have seen the original film version of Top Hat many times but found last night's stage version inspiring ! The lead male role played by understudy Alan Burkitt was masterful, his dancing was on a par or even better in some instances than the great Fred Astaire. The whole cast had a wonderful comedic approach and timing which appealed to all ages, and the standard of the tap dancing was the best I have seen on Broadway or in the West End. The Art Deco sets and 30's costumes are wonderfully interpreted.A show for London to be proud of.
An exceptionally good performance. The set changes are masterful for the smaller sized stage. . Great costumes. Wonderful mixture of dance, song and farce. I really enjoyed it.
Great show with lots of humour!
I went to see Top Hat to the Aldwych Theatre it Was great. Very funny, very lively. with nice costumes. It was perhaps the best musical I have ever seen. I had good funs, and I highly recomend this musical. I had seen alone, because I am french and was in Uk for business. I'll certainly go back with my wife this winter. Je suis aller voir the Top Hat au théatre Aldwych, c'était vraiment génial. très vivant, très amusant, avec de beaux décors et de beaux costumes. Les acteurs sont bons & on ne s'ennuie pas une seconde. J'était seul à Londres pour mon travail mais je retournerai certainement voir cette comédie musicale avec mon épouse. Je recommande vivement ce show. C'est certainement le meilleur que j'ai vu depuis des années.
Great mix of dancing, singing & humour. An old fashioned show, but in the best possible sense.
Beautiful show! I saw it last Thursday afternoon. I left the theatre feeling great. I think it was the best show I saw last week (I saw 3 musicals). The dancing, the music, the beautiful dresses, the funny cast. I can only recommend it to everybody. The story is timeless. I must also compliment the theatre. It has air-conditioning and my ticket was upgraded
Great show - good dancing from the whole cast, and a compelling storyline
Great fun. Lots of laughs. Good dancing. Nice music.
It was a great night, full of great music, superb scenery, great dancing and a splendid interpretation of those years of song and dance.
Brilliant feel good show. Can't recommend it highly enough!!!
Top notch, escapist fun with first-class perfomances. Full report here http://frontrowdress.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/top-hat-aldwych-theatre-friday-27-april.html


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I never thought much about what I do to avoid crashes. I tend to focus more on skills of the rider, less on the environment. This means focusing on things like practicing touching wheels, bumping, cornering properly, braking, and, while on group rides, riding with strangers whose skill levels vary greatly.
One generalization I'll make is that the racers that avoid crits tend to be less adept at pack handling skills. Yes, they're very strong, usually much stronger than an average crit racer. But strength doesn't make a skilled bike racer, skills make a skilled bike racer. Avoiding time to practice this skill means you can't develop it. This is why a high level non-cyclist athlete (like a runner) would have to start as an entry level racer. It's not fitness in question, it's skill.
Criteriums offer the chance to practice the same corner again and again. I can watch different racers take the same turn, and it'll become obvious pretty quickly who's cornering well and who isn't. I'll avoid the ones that make me uncomfortable and follow the ones who demonstrate, if inadvertently, their skill at riding.
At any rate the BF member posted some of the following things he does to avoid crashes. It's a good list of standard things to do, i.e. the foundation for a set of guidelines.
1) I avoid being in the middle of the pack, instead opting to be on the edges. This gives me more of an 'out' if something happens. Sometimes this leaves you in the wind a little more (or a lot in a cross wind).Of interest to me was point 3, staying near the rear. I spent a bit of time working on a yet-unpublished clip of the 2011 Tour of Somerville Cat 2 race, and there's one crash where I was far enough behind where I could safely make a sweeping move to get around the crash. One rider slows me up a bit (he was just getting around the crash himself) but you can clearly see that I pass something like 1/3 of the field in my move.
2) I try to stay to the front of the pack if possible. Not always easy with the way the pack moves.
3) If I can't be near the front, I stay near the rear. Staying in the rear takes a lot more effort, but lets me see things happen well before I usually get to them.
4) Stay to the inside of as many turns as possible. When someone falls in a turn, they slide to the outside. Staying inside means less likelihood of someone taking you out (but increases the accordion effect if you're not near the front).
Once the original post person ("original poster" or OP) put up his question, someone replied with a good but non-specific response.
...experience helps, a lot. Just like car driving experience... you develop a sixth sense that something is not right, and take evasive action before the actual wreck even gets started.That, of course, got me thinking again. "Sixth sense" can be just a well-trained response. For example, blind people have claimed to be able to feel walls from a couple feet away. Their skin tingles and they turn away. Under normal situations the blind people so affected seem to be able to back up this claim. However, when the folks running the experiment put ear protection on the same blind people (ear muffs), the now-deaf people slammed into the walls.
What happened?
The blind people heard minor differences in the echo of sound of whatever they and others were doing (footsteps, breathing, etc) and instinctively turned away from the wall. The skin tingling was a conditioned response to this stimuli (or rather to this different stimuli).
What was really happening is that the blind people heard different levels of echoes and they developed responses based on this.
Likewise a sixth sense for avoiding crashes is more about being able to read the riders around you, body language, faces, pedaling style, group riding style/skills, etc.
Other than a mechanical (unclipped sprinting out of a turn) and having a guy swerve across my front wheel intentionally, as far as crashing in a race, I haven't crashed since the early 90s. I've gone off course, slowed, stopped, etc, but not crashed.
(And to be totally honest, I've unclipped probably 10 times in that time period without crashing so that one crash was kind of my fault).
I think there are two things that make the nebulous stuff, the sixth sense stuff - reading others' body language and technical practice.
Reading others typically means making a quick judgment on whether I'll trust someone or not. I'll use prior experience in addition ("profiling"), so maybe a rider is smooth but I know that they make abrupt path changes, therefore I'll adjust for that. I've sat 1-2-3" off of a non-racer's wheel, someone I don't know, on a shop group ride, simply because everything about their riding announced to me that it'd be safe.
There are racers who've been in pelotons with me for literally 20 or more years - I trust them implicitly, understanding that even if they make an error they're equipped with the skills to help make it through the incident.
I'll also not-trust a rider and back off another rider for any number of reasons. I avoid squirrely riders, even working hard to get ahead of them. Ironically I usually think that seeing someone follow someone else too closely is a red flag - if I see someone too close and they don't look super savvy, I avoid the cone area behind them where the mayhem will occur when they crash.
"Super savvy" - ever seen a master at something? Musician, martial arts, car driver, bike rider? They have a quiet, steady confidence, very fluent, automatically do things that others have to concentrate on doing. Those are the riders you want to follow.
Rough pedaling style is a big sign. Not necessarily a particular cadence either, although more high cadence riders scare me than low cadence ones because it's harder to control a bucking bike at high cadence. Solo type riders seem to focus on cadence quite a bit, and they're also typically less comfortable in a field.
Poor form means the rider will be tired, i.e. they either normally have good form and are now exhausted (I fall in that category often) or they have poor form overall (some may claim that also applies to me).
Tired riders make mistakes, that's all there is to it.
I take my own experience into account. When I'm totally on the limit I get dizzy if I look around too quickly. I don't think it's just me - I just watched a Het Volk where a tired rider looks back in the final sprint, brushes someone, and falls over. Julian Dean once led out Hushovd for a Tour stage sprint, turned back, and fell over. It happens. So when I see a rider who looks like they're on the limit, ragged pedaling, eyes kind of glazed over, not looking around much, I figure they're at that dizzy stage.
Guys who turn in too early are scared of turns. That's a huge warning flag and it runs across all levels of the sport. To wit - watch any Tour mountain stage and you'll see some very strong racers who can't corner well. I totally avoid the early turners, or stay inside of them on the exit because they'll go wide. When things are moving right along in single or double file, cornering well usually means turning in later than earlier.
Those that turn in early by themselves, not following the field, they're especially dangerous. They're turning in early because they're scared - they don't trust the field to stay upright. But by turning in early they're setting themselves up to exit wide, right into the field, not the best way to make friends in the pack.
Of course, after they take out a bunch of the field, they'll probably pick themselves up and say, "Yeah, man, no one knows how to corner. The whole field ran into me."
It reminds me of the joke where an elderly wife calls her elderly husband.
"Honey, you should watch out. The radio is saying that there's a guy driving the wrong way on the Interstate."
"One guy? What do they mean one guy?! Everyone is driving the wrong way on the Interstate!"
Don't be that guy.
In SoCal one year, on some winding descent I'd never been on before (Lilac? near the Lawrence Welk place), I started it near the back of about a 20 or 30 rider group. I only stopped blasting by riders because I got to the lead rider of the group. Since I didn't know where we were going I just followed him. Later my friend overheard some comment like "That guy from Connecticut knows how to descend." No, I wanted to say, that's not right.
I know how to corner, therefore I can descend.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: I'm extremely risk averse.
That's why I do criteriums.
It seems illogical but it really isn't.
(Of course the fact that I can't climb or time trial helps in making this decision. If I could just drop everyone I'd do road races all the time.)
Based on some of that nebulous stuff, I feel much more comfortable in a criterium than a road race. I see more poor riding in road races than in crits, probably because a lot of guys who don't like crits don't like them because they don't handle their bikes well/properly in a group.
Road races also hit much higher speeds, regularly hitting 55-60-65 mph on descents in my personal experience. Crashing at that speed could be life changing; even a minor problem could be beyond a good bike handler's capabilities.
Therefore it makes sense that I stay with the slow crits, where we rarely exceed 40 mph and normally ride 25-35 mph on the straights. It's easier to read people when they take the same turn a few times; within a few laps I'm comfortable with who I'm comfortable with, and I already have flags on the riders I don't want to be near.
It's an interesting question, asked by someone who's consciously made moves to try and reduce risk. Ultimately the rider needs experience and knowledge to reduce the chances of crashing - experience as far as reading riders, groups, and making judgment calls, and knowledge in skills, tactics, and applying them both appropriately.


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I'm going the weekend of August 21-24 and I was wondering what is good to do/places to eat, etc. The Yankees are in town that weekend and I haven't been to Camden Yards, so that may be something for a Friday night.
We are staying in the Marriott at the Inner Harbor, which overlooks both Ravens Stadium and Camden Yards.


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New grant process for County
PLYMOUTH - Federal regulations have created a new policy for Marshall County.
An ordinance enacted by the Marshall County Council and Marshall County Commissioners has finalized a new policy regarding grants. The goal is better tracking of all grant dollars that come into the county.
During Marshall County's routine yearly audit by the State Board of Accounts, auditors informed the county that all grant money awarded to and the subsequent spending of, should also be part of the yearly county audit. While most grants sent to Marshall County are kept track of, several types of grants were more troublesome.
The county has undertaken many infrastructure projects taking advantage of federal matching funds. The federal government considers such matching funds as grant money and requires counties to account for how it is spent.
While that money is tracked in the county many times those records remain with the specific departments where the money is used. The county will now require pre-approval of grant applications by the Commissioners and County Council for each department requesting them along with a program plan for the grant should it be awarded to the county.
The new system then requires reporting of all grant money awarded and records kept in the County Auditor's office to make them readily and instantly available for reference, particularly at yearly audit time.
With County Auditor Penny Lukenbill nearing the end of her second term - two terms in 12 years is the limit on the office imposed by the state constitution - she told the Council she is concerned with leaving behind complete records of all grant money for whoever may be the next Auditor.
Part of the ordinance also calls for any position that will be funded with grant money to also be part of the salary ordinance for the county before that position is filled.
Currently several departments in the county take advantage of grant money to fund or partially fund additional employees.
The move is intended to tighten the administration of grant money and be sure that records are readily available for state and federal audits by the programs that provide the funds.