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Hands-on playthrough: Dead Space 3
All the elements that make Dead Space so endearing are back and better than ever.
Isaac Clarke has got to be the unluckiest man ever to don a space suit. He has barely survived the harrowing events of Dead Space 1 and 2 and lost the love of his life in the process, not to mention his sanity and a great deal of blood.
His constant run-ins with the space zombies known as Necromorphs and the mysterious artefacts known as Markers mean his brain is more scrambled than my breakfast. The poor chap can't seem to catch a break, and when we find him again at the beginning of Dead Space 3 his luck is as terrible as ever.
Enemies on all sides, both dead and alive, friends recruiting him for suicide missions and the reanimated corpses of the dead attempting to bite him right on the face. There's never been a worse time to be an unassuming engineer.
I got a chance to sit down and blast my way through the first three hours of the game to test my nerve against the most twisted abominations developer Visceral Games could come up with. This Dead Space picks up two months after the events of the previous game, with Isaac hiding out in a nondescript apartment on a nondescript space station.
I won't spoil too much, but he is required to vacate the premises in a hurry and quickly establishes an uneasy alliance with John Carver, the new military man who will be accompanying you throughout.
Surprisingly, Isaac's favourite lady, Ellie, needs saving again and Isaac happens to be the best (craziest) man for the job. You soon find yourself floating above the brand new ice planet Tau Volantis in the wreckage of a 200-year-old space disaster with alien monsters closing in.
Tau Volantis is where the majority of the game is set and the home of the markers, the alien monoliths that create Necromorphs, but I only got to see a small section of the planet's icy surface. The snowstorms that plague the planet do make a delightfully creepy change to the stagnant air of a spaceship as visibility and movement are low but death waits around every frozen corner.
For the first time in the series the campaign can be played co-operatively with the second player filling Carver's boots. This is an interesting change for a series that has relied on the isolation and tension of going up against a ravening horde of undead on your lonesome. Sadly, my playthrough didn't include any co-op, so we shall have to wait for the game's imminent release to see how it stacks up.
While I can't tell you how the co-op affects the gameplay, at least Visceral Games have promised some answers. In the first two Dead Space games, answers were thin on the ground, but the third entry is slated to finally explain some of the mysteries that have sat just beyond our reach since the series' inception.
What created the markers and what were they intended to do? What is the final form of a Necromorph? With the promise of answers to these questions, could we be looking at the end of Isaac's story? Probably not, as Dead Space is one of EA's premier moneymakers and one of their most endearing franchises of this console generation.
In the section I played, Isaac came up against human and alien enemies. As he escaped the space station he was holed up on, much of the gameplay felt more action-horror than survival-horror.
A scene involving a white-knuckle escape from a crashing space-train was undeniably exciting, but the fear of the first two games was thin on the ground. Fighting human enemies is a welcome change, but they just can't replicate the tension of a mutating space zombie jerkily advancing on you in the dark.
The humans also don't pose as much of a challenge as the Necromorphs, which is understandable really, but at least Isaac now has a primary antagonist: the new leader of the marker cult, Danik.
After escaping and warping to Tau Volantis, Isaac once again finds himself on a crashing spaceship (The man desperately needs some flying lessons). The race to find a space suit before you suffocate is fun and tense, and the ensuing zero-gravity section really takes the idea from Dead Space 2 and runs with it.
The view as you chase after an escape pod, through a 200-year-old debris field, with Tau Volantis looming ominously in the background is a sight to behold and bleakly memorable.
Visceral Games has been hard at work finding ways to improve the experience of Dead Space. With a horde of new Necromorph variants, Isaac is definitely going to have his work cut out for him.
The Waster is an example of one of the most common new enemy types. A shambling hulk in a space suit, it carries two ice picks in its frozen hands. Dismember the beast and you'll find it has a variety of new forms it can change into depending on how you choose to attack it.
Larger, more disgusting, enemies break up the action, but I won't spoil their reconstituted flesh forms for the reader. Let's just say, bring ammo.
Visceral has thankfully put a lot of thought into making the Necromorphs challenging again, as players returning from the other games will have all but mastered the traditional Necromorph variants.
Thankfully, the aliens are not the only faces to get an upgrade. Isaac also controls far better than he did before. This has been a long time coming as game tension shouldn't be derived from the character's inability to move fast enough. This time round, Isaac and Carver will adapt to their surroundings, taking cover naturally as need be and aim with the practised precision of someone who has survived two Necromorph outbreaks.
Aside from a controls spruce-up, much of the gameplay will be highly familiar to fans of the previous games. Dismember enemies to kill them, shoot the glowing pustule to bring down the larger enemies and swing your arms wildly when anything gets close.
This might sound like a negative, but the experience has been refined a lot since we first slipped into Isaac's suit, and considering this seems to be somewhat of a conclusion to the trilogy, refining what isn't broken is the best approach.
The weapons system has also been given a new lick of paint, with the creation and customisation of your tools far more up to the player now. The redesigned weapon bench allows you to dismantle the trusty plasma cutter and combine it with found parts to create something suiting your play style.
Realistically, this makes far more sense for Isaac, an engineer, and means you won't just be using the one gun you favour for the whole game. There's a certain amount of practice needed to fully take advantage of the new system as it is quite confusing (after three hours I still had no idea what I was doing), but being able to attach a flame-thrower to almost any weapon is an exciting prospect. If there's an object that wouldn't benefit from a flame-thrower, I don't want to know what it is.
While I didn't see enough of the game to say this is true of the whole story, the terrifying slow moments and jump scares were much rarer than in previous games. Much of the start is taken up with extended action sequences and light magnetic puzzles. This isn't necessarily a bad thing – Isaac scrambling for a space suit while his ship disintegrates around him is especially entertaining – but fans of the slow fear of the original could find themselves surprisingly rushed.
Dead Space 3 has a lot to live up to. The previous games were perfect examples of a sci-fi horror game done right. With the beleaguered Isaac Clarke making his triumphant return, all the elements that make Dead Space so endearing are back and better than ever, and the promise of some long-awaited answers means there's no reason not to say this could be the best Dead Space yet. The only question now is the co-op.
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Quote from: MorgnsGrl on January 03, 2013, 06:09:48 AMDH decided to write a vague thank you card and focus more on hoping his cousins are well etc. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!I was about to post a rather impish solution - and I still can't resist!.Since DH is the one who opened the gift and they are his relatives and since you were going to write the thank you notes (as I understood from your 1st post), DH could have called the relatives "on the sly" and "fessed up" while asking for their secret help. Eg:DH: "Aunt and Uncle, I messed up big time and need to beg for your help so I don't get in the dog house with DW. I'm already in trouble for opening presents without her being there, but I made it worse by not remembering who gave us what!!! DW is getting ready to write the thank you cards and if I can't tell her who gave us what (since DH would present the story as their present wasn't' the only one he forgot, they won't feel singled out), I'm sleeping outside! Please forgive me for not remembering, but could you please tell me what you gave us and not tell DW what an idiot I am?? "Gets you off the hook and humorously puts him on it. But a general thank you note from him is best to avoid any backfiring.
DH decided to write a vague thank you card and focus more on hoping his cousins are well etc. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!
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Part of National Museums Liverpool
The Knutsford Hoard includes 103 coins, 3 brooches, 2 finger rings and pottery fragments, discovered in 2012 in Cheshire.
The Roman Treasures of Cheshire, on display at the Museum of Liverpool until 19 June, are two examples of deliberately buried hoards of precious objects – hidden for safekeeping and never collected.
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Don't Complain – Change!
Tone down the complaints and approach diet, fitness with an optimistic outlook to reach weight-loss goals
Martha Beck is one of my favorite writers, and I frequently appropriate her ideas. When my tennis partner drops off her copies of O, The Oprah Magazine, I turn to Martha's articles first.
I especially enjoyed "Martha Beck's Anti-Complain Campaign," a timeless piece that appeared in the magazine a few years ago. Beck advises readers that if they want to make constructive changes, they need to refrain from whining and complaining.
Those behaviors, she explains, function like the whistle vent on a teakettle: As long as we can vent, we have no real need to change the situation. Complaining allows us to maintain the status quo. If we stop complaining, then we will build up frustration and eventually have to address whatever is bugging us.
After reading her article, I decided to undertake a three-day "no-complaining" regimen. Three hours after I made the commitment, I found myself complaining to my husband. And I didn't do much better over the next three days.
But I also started thinking about how often people ask me for advice on how to lose weight. I've learned from experience that a simple response — eat healthfully and exercise regularly — is profoundly disappointing because most people already know that. What they really want are answers to: How do I start? And how do I keep myself on track?
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To answer these questions, I prescribe a Martha Beck "no-excuse" regimen. Pick a date to begin, and then go cold turkey. Simply stop telling yourself that you are too old, too out of shape, too short of time, or too anything else to get fit. Repeated often enough, these excuses that we tell ourselves seem to become true when, in fact, they are merely props that hold the current status in place.
Remove the props and the truth starts to emerge. Perhaps you don't exercise because you don't like the options you've tried. Maybe they were too grim or too hard on your body. Armed with that insight, you will be free to explore new ways to exercise.
Maybe you'll admit that you overeat in the evening because you have a teenager who is making you tear your hair out. Or maybe you fill your stomach with a bowl of ice cream in front of the television at night because you are bored and lonely.
All kinds of pesky thoughts might surface, and you may uncover issues in your life that need your attention. But I can assure you that you will launch a self-discovery program that can lead to some constructive changes.
I admit that committing to a "no-excuse" fitness policy is daunting. If that seems like too much to tackle, ask a friend to join you for a three-week, no-excuses no-complaints program. Let me know how the two of you do.
Carole Carson, author of From Fat to Fit: Turn Yourself into a Weapon of Mass Reduction, serves as the coach for the AARP Fat to Fit online community.
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All over the world, species are becoming extinct at an astonishing rate, from 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than normal. The loss of biodiversity has become so severe that scientists are calling it a mass extinction event. To learn more about this troubling phenomenon, come to Bernardsville Public Library on Sunday, April 14 at 2:00 pm for a free showing of Call of Life, the first feature documentary to investigate this growing threat to Earth's life support systems.
Through interviews with leading scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and indigenous and religious leaders, the film explores the causes, the scope, and the potential effects of the mass extinction, but also looks beyond the immediate causes of the crisis to consider how our cultural and economic systems, along with deep-seated psychological and behavioral patterns, have allowed this situation to develop, continue to reinforce it, and even determine our response to it. Call of Life tells the story of a crisis not only in nature, but also in human nature, a crisis more threatening than anything human beings have ever faced before.
After the movie, there will be a discussion led by Rhea Landig, Director of Development for Species Alliance, the producers of Call of Life. Her involvement with the organization began seven years ago when she reconnected with the film's director, a childhood friend. The information she learned about the biodiversity crisis impacted her so profoundly that she began to raise funds for the production of the film that literally changed the course of her life. She sees her role as educating and advocating for a healthy, sustainable planet for all species.
Ms. Landig has also worked in the New York media and fashion industries for over 20 years and has extensive experience both in front of the camera as a spokesperson and behind it as a producer, editor, and stylist for print and television, including work for Lifetime Television, The Disney Channel, and The Rosie O'Donnell Show to name just a few. She has also done fundraising and other volunteer work with numerous non-profits including The Hunger Project, Youth at Risk, and various animal rescue and advocacy organizations.
There is no charge to attend the program, but advance sign-up is requested. Register online at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org and follow the link from Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 to sign up.


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Cavotec to showcase apron technology
Dubai, May 1, 2013
Cavotec, a global engineering group and airport systems integrator, will showcase its groundbreaking clean apron technology at the upcoming Airport Show 2013 in Dubai.
This is the latest concept in airport design: it eliminates non-essential mobile GSE vehicles, such as costly auxiliary power units (APU), from the apron and delivers utilities to the aircraft (air, fuel, power, water and wet services) via in-ground pop-up pit systems.
"To further support our growth in the region, we are highlighting Cavotec's clean apron concept as the new standard in aircraft utility operations at the Dubai Airport Show," said Juergen Strommer, managing director of Cavotec Middle East.
"With the system in place, airports are able to significantly reduce operating costs and in turn, realise dramatic increases in operational efficiency meaning faster turnaround times, reduced emissions and happier travelers due to an overall better airport experience.
"We will also take the opportunity to have a dialogue with our customers, which will allow us to listen to the technical requirements and challenges they face, thus incorporating customer input into the planning and design of our future products," he added.
Currently, Cavotec is fulfilling orders for frequency converters in Kuwait, pop-up pits for Salalah Airport, fuel hydrant pits and access covers for Muscat Airport, pop-up pits and pre-conditioned air units in Dubai, and pits with converters and pre-conditioned air units for hangars in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi.
The Group's most recent project is at the Emirates Engineering Centre at Dubai International Airport, which will employ Cavotec's unique pop-up utility pits and Pre-Conditioned Air (PCA) units for its four new Airbus A380 hangars. Delivery is due to start in the second quarter this year, with commissioning slated for the end of 2013.
The 13th edition of the Airport Show will take place from May 6 to 8 at Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. – TradeArabia News Service


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Benefits of Upholstering
Upholstering furniture can involve much more than simply changing the fabric on your furniture.Read more
Rubbish Removal: Cutting Costs, Hours, and Effort
Rubbish removal is an often overlooked aspect of home improvement, but it can turn out to be a serious cost. Make the most of your money by clearly outlining rubbish removal in your budget and your plan.Read more
Choosing Exterior Shutters for Your Home
Adding shutters to your home is a great way to increase value, security, privacy, and curb appeal. They're stylish and low maintenance, and there are plenty to choose from. The two main types of exterior shutters are plantation shutters and roller shutters.Read more
Blind Cleaning- Bring your old blinds back to life
Are your once beautiful blinds starting to look old and worn out, are they not operating a well as they did when new? Might be time to call in a professional blind cleaning and repair company.Read more
Roller Shutters
When we think and see Roller Shutters we tend to immediately think of security for a home or business. Roller shutters are a great way to add security and are becoming a very popular method of securing your home against theft while providing you with complete privacy.Read more
Exterior Window Coverings
We all like a little ambiance and privacy at home by dressing our windows with curtains, blinds or shutters. Did you ever consider external window coverings? The European roller style block out shutters have long been a common way to provide protection not only from harsh sun, wind, rain and hail but also they act as a security shield and reduce the level of external noise all while providing complete privacy. Block out roller shutters will also help protect your home and stop windows from shattering during a bushfire.Read more


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Protex™ Disinfectant Spray
A powerful one-step disinfectant effective against a broad spectrum of pathogens, including MRSA, HIV, Staph and many others. Useful in disinfecting ultrasound transducers, probes, mammography compressor plates and other hard nonporous, non-surgical surfaces.
I was looking for a disinfectant for NEMS probes for a finishing touch after cleaning. This product fills the bill. Does not have a strong odor during use and no noticeable residual odor. Read the label warnings carefully - this is strong stuff and you have to be careful with how you use it.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires that MSDS/SDS be available to employees for potentially harmful substances handled in the workplace under the Hazard Communication regulation.
Material Safety Data Sheet / Safety Data Sheet
Documents Available
Protex™ Disinfectant Spray 12 oz


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Graduate Women in Science Group Presents LectureUniversity of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Student Equity Excellence and Diversity
The Pacific Region chapter of Alpha Lambda, Graduate Women in Science, will celebrate one year of activities with a public lecture, "Return to Pono: Challenging the Values of Modern Science."
The illustrated lecture by Dr. Harriet H. Natsuyama will take place on Tuesday, January 27, from 6:30-8 p.m. in room 411 of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's Queen Liliuokalani Center for Student Services.
Natsuyama is a former GWIS president and a 1991 UH Distinguished Alumni honoree.
Alpha Lambda, established in 1921, is dedicated to promoting education and professional roles for women in science. The Pacific Region chapter was formally established at the GWIS national meeting in June 2008 in Rockville, MD.
Chrystie Naeole, a UHM doctoral candidate in cell and molecular biology, serves as chapter president. Membership is open to women holding graduate degrees in scientific disciplines who reside in Hawaiʻi, Alaska and other Pacific Rim areas.
The chapter is sponsored by the UH Mānoa Office of Student Equity Excellence and Diversity.
The event is open to the public. On-campus parking is available for $3. For more information, see http://www.gwis.org.
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Windows XP Is Down To 25 Percent Of PCs And Dropping
Microsoft, which is cutting off all support for Windows XP next April, is finally seeing customers moving off the aging, 12-year old operating system, Hood said on the call. As the XP deadline approaches, Microsoft is expecting to see enterprises re-up with volume licensing agreements.
"We continue to make progress on the XP install base and now a little over 75 percent of the PCs are running [Windows] 7," Hood said on the call. As more customers move off of XP, Microsoft is expecting their upgrades to have more impact on its volume licensing business than its Device and Consumer licensing segment, Hood said.


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Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Spring Practice
I was checking out MGoBlue.com and noticed there were some pictures of Michigan's Spring Practice. Initially, my intent was to find some pictures that might appeal to our female readers. As a contributor to a sports blog, I'll stoop to just about anything to entice women into coming here. Sadly, Michigan is in, well, Michigan, so practicing shirtless like they do at glamour school USC just isn't practical. Sorry, ladies.
I did look through the photos, though and was able to discover some interesting things about the 2006 team. Considering how Michigan's football team is more secretive than the Kim Jong Il regime, these photos are quite a coup. They do say that a picture is worth a thousand words. So, here are the pictures and my analysis.
First up, we have Ron English, reveling in his new role of Defensive Coordinator. As nice as the promotion is, I'm guessing that English was more swayed to stay at Michigan by the buttload of free Michigan gear. Even his whistle lanyard is maize.
Here we have new linbackers coach Steve Szabo. My first thought, 'damn that guy's old.' My second thought, 'that top thing he's wearing makes him look like he should be working in the sick bay of the starship Enterprise. "Dammit Lloyd, I'm a doctor not a miracle worker!"
Being old has good points and bad points. When he hears his players talking about 50 Cent, he'll probably wonder what the big deal is since four bits just doesn't go as far as it used to. On the other hand, old means grizzled and tough and mean. These are good qualities for a linebacker. When Szabo thinks of linebackers he probably thinks of guys like Dick Butkus, Chuck Bednerik, Sam Huff, and Ray Nitshcke. This should be a good thing. We can only hope.
I really shouldn't make fun of Mike DeBord here since I'm frequently caught in pictures with my face in a funny position, but I will anyway. DeBord is likely explaining something about checking the positioning of the safeties and linebackers by using the caveman-esque "point and grunt" technique. I'm not sure whose communication skills that reflects more poorly on, the offensive linemen or DeBord.
As far as body language goes, arms folded across the chest like this can mean a couple of things. Unfortunately, none of them are good. About the most positive interpretation one can put on this picture is that it's chilly in there and Lloyd Carr and Fred Jackson both forgot their gloves.
Lloyd Carr keeping a close eye on Chad Henne—like all of us fans are—and hoping last year really was just a sophomore slump.
My final thoughts, maize and blue make for some damn fine contrasting colors, probably the best out there. As always, the helmets are the best. At least we have that. And, I sure do use the word hope a lot when discussing Michigan football.
9 comments:
- Becky said...
You don't have to beg, you know. Just stop showing those god-awful coach vacation photos, and maybe the babes will come by more often.
Or just wait till those shirtless practices do happen - that was a really good strategy poorly planned.
- April 04, 2006 9:45 AM
- Yost said...
We're trying, we're trying. Trial and error here.
- April 04, 2006 1:45 PM
- surrounded in columbus said...
nice rundown on the new coaches (and the fashion statement). i guess i'm a tad more optimistic. there are a lot of kids coming back. injuries and other excuses aside, the players are there to have a good team next season.
besides, let's face it. what's the worst that can happen? another loss on the road opener? another loss to a poor conference team like minnesota, at home? another loss to tosu?
short of a losing season, we pretty much hit bottom last year. it was so bad even Lloyd felt he had to make broad changes to his staff. that's something he hasn't done since the '96-'97 off season.
and who knows? these changes might end up being good. it's a different group of coaches, supposedly a different approach, and maybe a different result.
and most importantly, these changes will either right the ship, or Lloyd's going to sink w/ it. commodore bill may be immune to criticism, but he has got to be feeling this in the wallet. it's tough to sell sky boxes for a team people don't want to watch.
so, "hope" isn't all that bad. last year, we/i didn't even have that.
- April 04, 2006 7:22 PM
- BaggyPantsDevil said...
I agree and am actually very optimistic about the 2006 season. I think Henne will improve, Hart will be back, the secondary has a lot of experience, there will be a new focus on sound defense, and the 7-5 season will provide a lot of motivation.
As has been pointed out over at mgoblog, there's no clearcut favorite for a number one team. Texas no longer has Vince Young, USC has lost a lot of playmakers, and OSU has only two starters returning on defense (and one of those is injured right now).
This could indeed be the year that a high preseason ranking is actually justified. I'm just hesitant to get out there and say Michigan should be a top five team and seriously considered a contender for the BCS title game.
- April 04, 2006 8:20 PM
- Kyle King said...
For what it's worth, BaggyPantsDevil, I did say Michigan should be a top five team, for some of the reasons that you mentioned.
As someone who watched his alma mater's storied program put up records of 5-6 in 1993, 6-4-1 in 1994, 6-6 in 1995, and 5-6 in 1996---a period during which I missed only one home game and attended Georgia games at Atlanta, Clemson, Columbia, Jacksonville, and Oxford, so I hardly suffered through it from afar---I can state with certainty that the strength of the Michigan program is attested to by the fact that 7-5 feels like the end of the world.
Few universities have been able to produce such sustained excellence that a season that ends with a loss attributable to atrocious officiating in a pre-New Year's Day bowl game constitutes the worst season in the adult lifetimes of so many of the school's alumni.
There's an old saying in college football: "It's the same distance from the outhouse to the mansion that it was from the mansion to the outhouse." That truth of that maxim is underscored by the fact that the Wolverines were nowhere near as far along the path to the outhouse as it might, at first, have appeared.
- April 04, 2006 11:13 PM
Kyle King rules! he has eased my fears and put my world back in perspective if only for a moment. I will now go attempt to make sweet sweet love to my wife if I can only get those damn naked coaches images out of my head.
- April 04, 2006 11:55 PM
- surrounded in columbus said...
thanks for the props on the program. i take it you're a Georgia fan? my neighbor here in columbus is an UGA fan, great guy, and finds tosu fans and their culture even more annoying than i do- so we get along famously.
and you are absolutely right- we are more than a tad spoiled.
a little side anectdote- wife and i bought a condo in s. carolina a while back. when just the two of us go, we fly. when we take the whole family, we drive (about 10 hours).
when our 14 yr old discovered that we flew on the trips w/ out the kids, she went into a whine about "how come you get to fly and we always have to driiiiive?"
i looked at her and in my best fatherly, "i'm going to teach you a lesson" voice said: "when you whine about having to drive to your beach house, don't you think you're pretty spoiled?"
she replied (w/out any hesitation, as only your 14 yr old, cheerleader daughter can do and get away with) "of course i'm spoiled and i like it that way!"
that's pretty much the michigan fans' look on life. we're spoiled, we're used to being in the top ten, beating tosu & nd at least half of the time (if not more) and we are going to pitch a fit over anything less.
and frankly, it doesn't stop there. when we do all of the above, we starting pissing and moaning about the 1 or 2 games we did lose and how come we don't throw the ball more on first down, and why aren't we playing for the NC.
and even on the odd year, like '97, when we do win it all, we immediately start complaining about not repeating.
we're spoiled, and we like that way.
- April 05, 2006 9:06 AM
- BaggyPantsDevil said...
I like your top five, although I still think Texas minus Vince Young is like a Vodka Martini minus the vodka.
Although there's still several question marks for Michigan, my head tells me things should actually fall into place for them this season.
But, my heart, which has been broken so many times in recent years, keeps holding me back. I still need more time to completely heal.
- April 05, 2006 9:35 AM
2007 is the year of the Wolverine.
This season is the final merit badge before we earn our real stripes next year.
- April 05, 2006 6:29 PM


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Linus Torvalds Answers Your Questions 326
by eldavojohn
Recently you spoke out about software patents and the patent process. But I was interested in what you said about how "nasty" copyright issues could get. You use SCO as the obvious nightmare case but what about violations against open source licenses like the GPLv3? Would you care if someone forked the Linux kernel and made major modifications to it and started selling it without releasing the code to the customers? What does your ideal situation look like for open source and commercial closed source? Would you just copy the Finnish model and aren't you afraid American experts are just as daft as American juries?
Linus: So I like copyrights, and even on patents I'm not necessarily in the "Patents are completely evil" camp. When I rant about patents or copyrights, I rant against the *excesses* and the bad policies, not about them existing in the first place.
The patent problems people on slashdot are probably familiar with: the system is pretty much geared towards people abusing it, with absolutely ridiculous patents being admitted, and it hindering invention rather than helping it. The failures are many, and I don't know how to fix it, but much stricter limits on what can be patented are clearly needed.
People were apparently surprised by me saying that copyrights had problems too. I don't understand why people were that surprised, but I understand even *less* why people then thought that "copyrights have problems" would imply "copyright protection should be abolished". The second doesn't follow at all.
Quite frankly, there are a lot of f*cking morons on the internet.
Anyway, the problems with copyright come from absurdly long protection periods, and some overly crazy enforcement. And don't get me wrong: I don't actually think that these problems show up all that much in the software industry. The case of SCO was not, I think, so much a failure of copyright law itself: sure, it was annoying, but at the same time it was really more about a psychopathic company with a failed business that tried to game the system. Tried, and lost. And yes, that fiasco took much too long, and was much too expensive, and should have been shut down immediately, but that whole "using the law for harassment" in the US is a separate issue independent of the copyright issues.
No, when I stated that copyright protection is too strong, I was talking about things like "life of author+70 years" and the corporate 95-year version. That's *ridiculous*. Couple that with the difficulty of judging fair use etc, and it really hinders things like archival of material, making of documentaries, yadda yadda...
So I personally think that IP protection isn't evil in itself - but that it turns evil when it is taken too far. And both patent protection and copyright protection has been taken much much too far.
Scale the term limits back to fifteen years or so, and copyrights would be much better.
When I'm designing a processor for Linux.
by Art Popp (29075)
I spend some time designing things in Verilog and trying to read other people's source code at opencores.org, and I recall you did some work at Transmeta. For some time I've had a list of instructions that could be added to processors that would be drastically speed up common functions, and SSE 4.2 includes some of my favorites, the dqword string comparison instructions. So...What are your ideas for instructions that you've always thought should be handled by the processor, but never seen implemented?
Linus: I actually am not a huge fan of shiny new features. In processor design - as in so much of technology - what matters more is interoperability and compatibility. I realize that this makes people sad, because people are always chasing that cool new feature, but hey, in the end, technology is about doing useful things. And building and extending on top of existing knowledge and infrastructure is how 99% of all improvement gets done.
The occasional big shift and really new thing might get all the attention, but it seldom really is what matters. I like to quote Thomas Edison: "Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration". And that very much covers CPU architecture too: the inspiration is simply not as important as executing well. Sure, you need some inspiration, but you really don't need all that *much* of it.
So in CPU design, what should really be looked at is how well the CPU is able to do what we expect. The instruction set is important - but it is important mainly as a "I can run the same instructions the previous CPU did, so I can run all your programs without you having to do any extra work" issue - not as a "what new cool feature would you want in an instruction set".
To a CPU architect, I'd tell them to do the best they damn well can in the memory subsystem, for example. Regardless of instruction set, you'll want a great memory subsystem end-to-end. And I don't just mean good caches, but good *everything*. It's a hell of a lot of detail (perspiration), and I guarantee you that it will take a large team of people many generations to do really well on it. There is no simple silver bullet with a cool new instruction that will solve it for you.
And don't get me wrong - it's not *all* about the memory subsystem. It's about all the other details too.
Now, when it comes to actual instructions, I do tend to think that the world has shifted away from RISC. I'm a big believer in being good at running existing binaries across many different micro-architectures - the whole "compatibility" thing. And as a result, I think fragile architectures that depend on static instruction scheduling or run in-order are simply insane. If your CPU requires instruction scheduling for one particular set of instruction latencies or decoder limitations, your CPU is bad. I detested Itanium, for this reason - exposing the microarchitecture in the instruction set is just insane.
No, I want out-of-order and "high-level" instructions that actually work across different implementations of the same ISA, and across different classes of hardware (iow, span the whole "low-power embedded" to "high-end server" CPU range). So for example, I think having a "memcpy" or "memset" instruction is a great idea, if it allows you to have something that works optimally for different memory subsystems and microarchitectures.
As an example of what *not* to do, is to expose direct cacheline access with some idiotic "DCBZ" instruction that clears them - because that will then make the software have to care about the size of the cacheline etc. Same goes for things like "nontemporal accesses" that bypass the L1 cache - how do you know when to use those in software when different CPU's have different cache subsystems? Software just shouldn't care. Software wants to clear memory, not aligned cachelines, and software does *not* want to have to worry about how to do that most efficiently on some particular new machine with a particular cache size and memory subsystem.
What would you have done differently?
by Rob Kaper
It's been over twenty years since the inception of Linux. With 20/20 hindsight, what you have done differently if you had had today's knowledge and experience back in the early days?
Linus: I get asked this quite often, and I really don't see how I could possibly have done anything better. And I'm not claiming some kind of great forethought - it's just that with 20:20 hindsight, I really did choose the right big things. I still love the GPLv2, and absolutely think that making Linux open source was the greatest thing ever.
Have I made mistakes? Sure. But on the whole, I think Linux has done incredibly well, and I've made the right decisions around it (and the big things have *occasionally* been about technical issues, but more often about non-technical things like "Don't work for a commercial Linux company even if it seems like such a natural thing to do - keep working in a neutral place so that people can continue to work with me")
Monolithic vs. Micro-kernel architecture
by NoNeeeed
Has there ever been a time in the development of the Linux Kernel where you've wished you'd gone the Hurd-style micro-kernel route espoused by the like of Tannenbaum, or do you feel that from an architectural standpoint Linux has benefited from having a monolithic design?
Linux has been massively more successful than Hurd, but I wonder how much of that is down to intrinsic technical superiority of its approach, and how much to the lack of a central driving force supported by a community of committed developers? It always seemed like the Hurd model should have allowed more people to be involved, but that has never seemed to be the case.
Linus: I think microkernels are stupid. They push the problem space into *communication*, which is actually a much bigger and fundamental problem than the small problem they are purporting to fix. They also lead to horrible extra complexity as you then have to fight the microkernel model, and make up new ways to avoid the extra communication latencies etc. Hurd is a great example of this kind of suckiness, where people made up whole new memory mapping models just because the normal "just make a quick system call within the same context" model had been broken by the microkernel model.
Btw, it's not just microkernels. Any time you have "one overriding idea", and push your idea as a superior ideology, you're going to be wrong. Microkernels had one such ideology, there have been others. It's all BS. The fact is, reality is complicated, and not amenable to the "one large idea" model of problem solving. The only way that problems get solved in real life is with a lot of hard work on getting the details right. Not by some over-arching ideology that somehow magically makes things work.
Avoiding the Unix Wars
by dkleinsc
Why do you think Linux has been able to (mostly) avoid the fragmentation that plagued the competing Unixes of the 1980's? What would you say helps keep Linux a unified project rather than more forked system like BSD?
Linus: So I'm a huge believer in the GPLv2, and I really do believe the license matters. And what - to me - is important for an open-source license is not whether you can fork (which the BSD's allow), but whether the license encourages merging things back.
And btw, before people go all "license flamewar" on me, I would like to really emphasize the "to me" part. Licensing is a personal choice, and there is no "wrong" choice. For projects *I* care about, and that I started and can make the licensing decision for, I think the GPLv2 is the right thing to do for various reasons. But that does *not* mean that if somebody else makes another choice for his or her code, that wouldn't be the right choice for *that* person.
For example, I'd use a BSD-like license for code that I simply didn't care about, and wanted to just "push out there in case somebody else wants to use it". And I don't think proprietary licenses are evil either. It's all fine, it's up to the original author to decide what direction you want to do in.
Anyway, to just get back to the question - I really do think that encouraging merging is the most important part for a license for me. And having a license like the GPLv2 that basically *requires* everybody to have the right to merge back useful code is a great thing, and avoids the worry of forking.
And I do want to say that it's not that forking is bad. Forking is absolutely *required*, because easy forking is how development gets done. In fact, one of the design principles behind git was to make forking easy, and not have any technical barrier (like a "more central repository") that held back forking. Forking is important, and forking needs to happen any time there is a developer who thinks that they can do a better job in some area. Go wild, fork the project, and prove your point. Show everybody that you can make improvements.
But forking becomes a problem if there is no good way to merge things back. And in Linux, it's not been just about the license.Sure, the license means that legally we can always merge back the forks if they prove to be good forks. But we have also had a culture of encouraging forking and making forking be something that isn't acrimonious. Basically *all* the Linux distributions have had their own "forks" of the kernel, and it's not been seen as something bad, it's been seen as something natural and *good*. Which means that now the fork is all amicable and friendly, and there are not only no legal issues with merging it back into mainline, but there are also generally no big personality clashes or bad feelings about it either.
So it's not that Linux doesn't fork, it's that we've tried to make forks small and painless, and tried to be good about merging things back. Sure, there are disagreements, but they get resolved. Look at the Android work, for example: yeah, it wasn't all happy people and no problems, and it took a while, but most of it got merged back, and without excessively bad feelings, I think.
by vlm
If you had to do GIT over again, what, if anything, would you change?VERY closely related question, do you like the git-flow project and would you think about pulling that into mainline or not?
Linus: So there's been a few small details that I think we could have done better, but on the whole I'm *very* happy with git. I think the core design is very solid, and we have almost zero redundant information, and the core model is really built around a few solid concepts that make a lot of sense. Git is very unix-like in that it has a few basic design things ("everything is an object" with a few basic relationships between the different objects in the git database) and then a lot of utility is built up around that whole thing.
So I'm very proud of git. I think I did a great design, and then others (and Junio Hamano in particular) have taken that great design and really run with it. Sure, it wasn't all that pleasant to use for outsiders early on, and it can still be very strange if you come from some traditional SCM, but it really has made my life *so* much better, and I really think it got the fundamentals right, in ways that SCM's that came before did not.
As to git-flow, I want to really re-iterate how great Junio Hamano has been as a git maintainer, and I haven't had to worry about git development for the last five years or so. Junio has been an exemplary maintainer, and shown great taste. And because I don't need to, I haven't even followed some of the projects around git, like git-flow. It's not what I need for *my* git workflow, but if it helps people maintain a good topic-branch model with git, then all the more power to them. And whether it should go into mainline git or not, I won't even comment on, because I absolutely trust that Junio will make the right decision.
Storage advancements in the kernel?
by ScuttleMonkey
Now that Ceph is gathering momentum since having been included in the mainline kernel, what other storage (or low level) advancements do you see on the horizon? (full disclosure: I work for Inktank now, the consulting/services company that employs most of the core Ceph engineers)
Linus: I'm not actually all that much of a storage guy, and while I'm the top-level kernel maintainer, this is likely a question that would be better asked of a number of other people.
The one (personal) thing storage-related that I'd like to re-iterate is that I think that rotating storage is going the way of the dodo (or the tape). "How do I hate thee, let me count the ways". The latencies of rotational storage are horrendous, and I personally refuse to use a machine that has those nasty platters of spinning rust in them.
Sure, maybe those rotating platters are ok in some NAS box that you keep your big media files on (or in that cloud storage cluster you use, and where the network latencies make the disk latencies be secondary), but in an actual computer? Ugh. "Get thee behind me, Satan".
That didn't answer the question you really asked, but I really don't tend to get all that excited about storage in general.
favorite hack
by vlm
I asked a bunch of hard architecture questions, now for a softball Q. Your favorite hack WRT kernel internals and kernel programming in general. drivers, innards, I don't care which. The kind of thing where you took a look at the code and go 'holy cow that's cool' or whatever. You define favorite, hack, and kernel. Just wanting to kick back and hear a story about cool code.
Linus: Hmm. You do realize that I don't get all that close to the code any more? I spend my time not coding, but reading emails, and merging stuff others wrote. And when I *do* get involved with the code, it's not because it's "cool", it's because it broke, and you'll find me cursing the people who wrote it, and questioning their parentage and that of their pets.
So I very seldom get involved in the really cool code any more, I'm afraid. I end up being involved in the "Holy sh*t, how did we ever merge that cr*p" code. Perhaps not as much as Greg (who has to deal with the staging tree), but then Greg is "special".
That said, we do have lots of pretty cool code in the kernel. I'm particularly proud of our filename lookup cache, but hey, I'm biased. That code is *not* for the weak of heart, though, because the whole lockless lookup (with fallbacks to more traditional locked code) is hairy and subtle, and mortals are not supposed to really look at it. It's been tweaked to some pretty extreme degrees, because it ends up being involved any time you look up a filename. I still remember how happy I was to merge the new lockless RCU filename lookup code last year.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, I actually wish more people understood the really core low-level kind of coding. Not big, complex stuff like the lockless name lookup, but simply good use of pointers-to-pointers etc. For example, I've seen too many people who delete a singly-linked list entry by keeping track of the "prev" entry, and then to delete the entry, doing something like
if (prev)
prev->next = entry->next;
list_head = entry->next;
and whenever I see code like that, I just go "This person doesn't understand pointers". And it's sadly quite common.
People who understand pointers just use a "pointer to the entry pointer", and initialize that with the address of the list_head. And then as they traverse the list, they can remove the entry without using any conditionals, by just doing a "*pp = entry->next".
So there's lots of pride in doing the small details right. It may not be big and important code, but I do like seeing code where people really thought about the details, and clearly also were thinking about the compiler being able to generate efficient code (rather than hoping that the compiler is so smart that it can make efficient code *despite* the state of the original source code).
Books, Books, Books
by eldavojohn
As a software developer, I have a coveted collection of books. A few of said tomes -- both fiction and non -- have fundamentally altered the course of my life. Assuming yours aren't just man pages and .txt files, what are they?
Linus: I read a fair amount, but I have to admit that for me reading tends to be about escapism, and books to me are mostly forgettable. I can't really think of a single case of a book that struck me as life-changing, the way some people apparently find some book that really changed the way they think.
That said, I'll point to a couple of books I really enjoyed. On the non-fiction side, Richard Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" was one book that I think is pretty influential. On the fiction side, as a teenager I enjoyed Heinlein's "Stranger in a strange land" a lot, and I have to admit to "Lord of the Rings" having been pretty important to me - but for a slightly odd reason, not as a huge Tolkien fan. For me, it was one of the first "real" books I read in English, and I started with a dictionary by my side, and ended it reading without needing one.
These days, I still read crap. I like my Kindle, and often read the self-published stuff for 99c. There are some real stinkers in there, but there's been a lot of "that was certainly worth the 99c" stuff too. I've also enjoyed just re-reading some of the classics I grew up with - I just re-read both the Count of Monte Cristo and the Three Musketeers, for example.
How do you deal with burn-out?
by kallisti5
You must of been burned out on Linux kernel development multiple-times over by now... how do you deal with it?
Linus: Oh, I really enjoy what I do. And I actually enjoy arguing too, and while I may swear a lot and appear like a grumpy angry old man at times, I am also pretty good at just letting things go. So I can be very passionate about some things, but at the same time I don't tend to really hold on to some particular issue for too long, and I think that helps avoid burn-out.
Obsessing about things is important, and things really do matter, but if you can't let go of them, you'll end up crazy.
So to me, some of the occasional flame-wars are really just invigorating. And the technology and the use cases end up changing enough that things never get *boring*, so I actually have not been close to burning out very often.
The one really painful time was some time during the middle of the 2.4.x series (about ten years ago), before I got to hand it over to stable maintenance, and we really had a lot of problems going on. You can google for "Linus doesn't scale" and various other threads about the problems we had back then, and it really was pretty painful. The kernel was growing and I wasn't keeping up, and BitKeeper and some fairly painful process changes really ended up helping a lot.
Describe your computer
by twistedcubic
Can you describe in detail your home and work computers, including processor, motherboard, and graphics card? And also say something about their compatibility with Linux?
Linus: My home computer isn't actually all that interesting: I don't need all that much CPU power any more, and for the last several years, my primary requirement (since CPU's are fast enough) has been that the system be really really quiet, and that it has a good SSD in it. If our cat deigns to jump into my lap while I'm working, the loudest noise in the room should be the purring of the cat, not the computer.
So my main desktop is actually a 4-core Westmere machine, not really anything special. The most unusual part of the machine is probably just the fact that it has a good case (I forget the exact case name now) which avoids rattling etc. And one of the bigger Intel SSD's. I think I'll be upgrading some time this fall, but I will have had that machine for two years now, I think.
My laptop (that I'm writing this with, since I'm traveling in Japan and Korea right now) is an 11" Apple Macbook Air from last year (but running Linux, of course - no OS X anywhere), because I really hate big laptops. I can't understand people who lug around 15" (or 17"!) monsters. The right weight for a laptop is 1kg, no more.
Re:The End
by Narnie
Speaking of ends, one day you'll pass on your duties. How do you envision the kernel and the Linux ecosystem after passing your reigns?
Linus: Oh, the kernel really has a very solid development community, I wouldn't worry about it. We've got several "top lieutenants" that could take over, and I'd worry much more about many other open-source projects that don't have nearly the same kind of big development community that the kernel does.
That said, I've been doing this for over twenty years now, and I don't really see myself stopping. I still do like what I'm doing, and I'd just be bored out of my gourd without the kernel to hack on.


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U.S. Rare Earths Announces Management Reorganization
Kevin Cassidy Brings Finance and Business Development Experience
By: PR Newswire
Dec. 10, 2012 06:22 PM
NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The officers of U.S. Rare Earths, Inc. (UREE; the "Company;" www.USRareEarths.com) announced today the following management reorganization, pending Board approval: Current CEO Michael D. Parnell has agreed to assume the role of interim COO, with Kevin Cassidy becoming interim CEO. Both changes are effective immediately. Daniel McGroarty remains President of U.S. Rare Earths.
"We thank Mike Parnell for his efforts to bring U.S. Rare Earths to its present level of development," said Kevin Cassidy, who takes the CEO position as UREE has received its drill permit for the Company's Diamond Creek property in Idaho. "We are focused on the 43-101 report for Diamond Creek as the first step in our Idaho-Montana Drill Program for 2013," Cassidy commented.
In other management changes, Greg Schifrin, COO and Director, has resigned both positions, effective immediately, to focus on other mining and exploration responsibilities. Mr. Schifrin's firm, Minex Exploration, remains under contract for U.S. Rare Earth's 2012 drill program.
Mr. Cassidy brings to the position in-depth experience in the financial services sector, as Managing Member and Founder of Logic International Consulting Group, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in the development of global trading businesses and the creation of the requisite infrastructure, management and support paradigms of said platforms. Previously Mr. Cassidy was a Founding Partner and Chief Operating Officer of Archeus Capital Management, LLC, a multi strategy hedge fund that managed in excess of $3.0 billion in assets, and served as Chief Operating Officer for Bank Julius Baer (BJB), based in Zurich. Prior to BJB, Mr. Cassidy was Managing Director of UBS, where he was the Global Head of Fixed Income Derivatives Support.
U.S. Rare Earths' properties in Idaho and Montana, including Lemhi Pass, have been recognized in the U.S. Department of Energy's Critical Materials Strategy publications to have significant showings of Heavy Rare Earth Elements, in particular for the five Rare Earths identified by DOE as being at "Critical Risk": Dysprosium, Europium, Neodymium, Terbium and Yttrium.
About U.S. Rare Earths, Inc.:
U.S. Rare Earths, Inc. ("USRE", "U.S. Rare Earths" or the "Company") is a mineral exploration, mining and claims acquisition company based in Lonoke, AR. Formerly Colorado Rare Earths, Inc., the Company holds over 12,000 acres of mining claims for rare-earth elements in Colorado, Idaho and Montana. In Colorado, these claims include the Powderhorn Property in Gunnison County, and Wet Mountain Property in Fremont and Custer Counties. Additional claims include the Lemhi Pass Property in Lemhi County, Idaho and Beaverhead County, Montana; Diamond Creek and North Fork Properties in Lemhi County, Idaho and the Sheep Creek Property in Ravalli County, Montana.
Rare earth elements are critical to many existing and emerging 21st century applications including clean-energy technologies such as hybrid cars and electric vehicles; high-technology applications including cell phones and digital music players; hard disk drives used in computers; microphones; fiber optics; lasers; and in addition, critical defense applications such as global positioning systems, radar and sonar; and advanced water treatment applications, including those for industrial, military, homeland security, domestic and foreign aid use. For more information visit www.usrareearths.com.
Safe Harbor Statement Some statements contained in this news release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and, therefore, involve uncertainties or risks that could cause actual results to differ materially. These statements may contain words such as "desires," "believes," "anticipates," "plans,""expects," "intends," "estimates" or similar expressions. These statements are not guarantees of the Company's future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other important factors that could cause its actual performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Such statements include, but are not limited to, rare-earth industry risks, estimates of mineralized materials, litigation risks, plans to raise capital, and board, management and governance risks.. Additional information regarding factors that could cause results to differ materially from management's expectations is found in the Company's SEC filings. The Company intends that the forward-looking statements contained herein be subject to the above-mentioned statutory safe harbors. Investors are cautioned not to rely on forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any obligation to update forward-looking statements.
SOURCE U.S. Rare Earths, Inc.
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Valencia are reported to have identified Chelsea striker Fernando Torres as a replacement for Tottenham-bound Roberto Soldado.
Reports in the Spanish press claim Valencia have already made contact over a proposed deal for the Spaniard, but will not pay more than £25 million to sign him.
Arsenal and Tottenham are set to go head-to-head in pursuit of Barcelona forward Alexis Sanchez.
The Chilean's future at the Camp Nou appears in doubt following the acquisition of Neymar, and Arsenal and Spurs could now reportedly offer Sanchez an escape route.
David Moyes admits it will take time until he is fully settled into his role as Manchester United manager.
The former Everton boss succeeded Sir Alex Ferguson at the beginning of July, and says he is still finding his feet.
Besiktas have confirmed they are remain interested in signing Emmanuel Adebayor from Tottenham, but their priorities lie elsewhere.
Spurs are prepared to sell the striker before the transfer deadline, although Besiktas admit they are more focused on defensive reinforcements than goalscoring recruits at present.
New Barcelona manager Gerardo Martino has wasted no time in identifying potential transfer targets after reportedly outlining five the club could pursue.
Martino, it is claimed, wants either Vincent Kompany, David Luiz, Dan Agger, Thomas Vermaelen, Jan Vertonghen signed in the coming weeks.
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Blood Drive
November 06, 2012
Time: 12:00 PM - 05:00 PMLocation: FLRon Jon Surf Shop to host Florida Blood Center's Blood Drive from 12-5 PM in the RJ Corporate Office parking lot across from Ron Jon in Cocoa Beach on Tuesday, November 6th.
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The excitement of having his first Breeders' Cup starter was tempered for Wilkes on Saturday with the news of the sudden death of Rauch, a co-owner and breeder of the 3yo gelded son of Candy Ride. Dr. Rauch, a director of the urgent care department at Leesburg Regional Hospital near Ocala, Fla., was 66.
Capt. Candyman Can worked a half-mile on Sunday morning over a fast track at the Skylight Training Center in 48 2/5 under jockey Freddy Lenclud. Wilkes hopes to give the sprinter his first look at Santa Anita's Pro-Ride surface on Tuesday morning.
"The work went well, the horse is very fit," Wilkes said. "He's carrying his weight real well. He's a professional racehorse. You lead him over there, and he tries hard for you every time. He trains himself. My job is easy. I just have to keep him happy."
A four-time stakes winner, Capt. Candyman Can was last seen finishing a fast closing second behind fellow Sprint contender Fatal Bullet in the Phoenix over the Keeneland Polytrack.
"I thought he ran a tremendous race," Wilkes said. "Not to take anything away from the winner, but we were spotting him weight (four pounds) as a 3-year-old, and we were the only one running at him at the end," Wilkes said.
Cost of Freedom – The 6yo gelding had a quiet morning at trainer John Sadler's Barn 56 on the Santa Anita backstretch Monday, only walking the shedrow after he had put in his final Breeders' Cup Sprint prep Sunday with a 6f move in 1:12 2/5 on the main track.
"He's doing fine," Sadler noted. "Tyler Baze will ride."
The California-bred by Cee's Tizzy was pointed for this same race last year, but was not allowed to run when he could not pass veterinarian checks. All systems are "go" this time around and the speedster looms a forward factor in the six-furlong feature.
Crown of Thorns – see Dirt Mile
Dancing in Silks – The quick California-bred gelding jogged Monday morning and will gallop up to his date Saturday in either the Sprint at 6f or the Turf Sprint at 6 1/2f.
"I'm leaning toward the main track," trainer Carla Gaines said at her Barn 6 headquarters on the Santa Anita backstretch. "He knows and likes that trip and that run down the hill (for the Turf Sprint) is a little tricky."
Dancing in Silks has won six races all together, including his last three, with the most recent coming at the 6f distance at Santa Anita in the California Cup Sprint on Oct. 3.
Joel Rosario, who is currently tied with Rafael Bejarano as the leading rider at the Oak Tree-at-Santa Anita meet, has the call on the bay speedster Saturday.
Fatal Bullet – A determined second in last year's Breeders' Cup Sprint, Fatal Bullet jogged once around the wrong way with the pony on Santa Anita's main track on Monday morning under exercise rider Martine Pare and won't work out again before the race.
"Everything is good with him," said trainer Reade Baker. "He had an easy five-eighths work in 59 and change last Friday on the Polytrack in Toronto (at Woodbine) and that's it."
Fatal Bullet will be reunited with regular rider Eurico Da Silva in the Sprint.
Fleeting Spirit – The 4yo filly, who will be trying a synthetic surface for the first time when she takes on the boys in the Breeders' Cup Sprint, remained in quarantine Monday morning.
Trainer Jeremy Noseda has given the riding call to Frankie Dettori, who was aboard the Irish-bred filly in her very first start, a maiden win at Nottingham in 2007.
Most recently, Fleeting Spirit put on quite a show in the Prix de l'Abbaye de Longchamp, when she missed the break and then rallied furiously to be beaten a neck in the 5f event.
Gayego –The 4yo Gilded Time colt walked the Godolphin Stable shedrow one day after turning in his final prep for the sprint, 5f in 1:00 4/5 on Nov. 1. He comes off an Oct. 11 score in the Ancient Title Stakes and has always savored Santa Anita, where he set a track record for 6 ½f (1:13.07) in the 2008 San Pedro Stakes as a 2-year-old.
Purchased by Godolphin following an unsuccessful Triple Crown campaign (after winning the Arkansas Derby, he ran 17th in the Kentucky Derby and 11th in the Preakness), he was shipped to Dubai where he claimed a group 3 victory and ran second in the Godolphin Mile.
"He was freshened up after his Triple Crown campaign," said Rick Mettee, assistant to trainer Saeed bin Suroor. "Paulo Lobo brought him back and ran him on the Breeders' Cup undercard last year (7th in the Damascus stakes) and then after that he set a course record sprinting over the Hollywood Park Cushion track surface for 6 1/2f (1:13.37). Then he was bought by Godolphin off that race specifically to take to Dubai and also because he had both synthetic and dirt form."
Gayego also won a Saratoga allowance race prior to the Ancient Title, bringing his 2009 tally up to three wins and a second. Jockey Garrett Gomez gets the call.
Join in the Dance –Join in the Dance, pre-entered in the Dirt Mile and Sprint, will run in the 6f Sprint according to trainer Todd Pletcher.
John Velazquez has the mount on Join in the Dance, who is still eligible for an entry-level allowance.
"The owner wants to take a shot," Pletcher said. "We're going to need the planets to align to win, but the horse is training very well."
Join in the Dance worked 4f in 47 flat Sunday at Santa Anita.
Kodiak Kowboy – Following a Monday morning work at Santa Anita's, Vinery Stables and Fox Hill Farm's Kodiak Kowboy was declared out of Saturday's Sprint. The 4-year-old son of Posse breezed 4f in 52 1/5.
"He worked well, but scoped bad," said Scott Blasi, assistant to Kodiak Kowboy's trainer Steve Asmussen. "He has to go on antibiotics and will be unable to run (on Saturday)."
Square Eddie – see Turf Sprint
Zensational – Trainer Bob Baffert was all smiles this morning following a 4f breeze from the 3yo Zensational, an Unbridled's Song ridgling pointing for the Sprint. The Zayat Stables runner came onto the track shortly after the break around 8:11 a.m. and worked a bullet in 45 1/5, the fourth in a series of speedy preparations at Santa Anita.
Previously, he drilled 4f Oct. 27 in 46 2/5, best of 11 at the distance, went 5f in 57 4/5 on Oct. 21, best of 19 at the distance, and went 6f in 1:10 3/5 on Oct. 15, best of 11 at the distance.
"He really he knows he's getting ready to run," Baffert said. "I broke him from the gate Oct. 15 and he knew it was time to get back to work. He just flew out of there that day and ever since then it's really sharpened him up; he's enjoying what he's doing right now and he's ready and strong."
Zensational rides a string of four victories into the Sprint, the last three GI scores in the Triple Bend Handicap, the Bing Crosby, and the Pat O Brien.
"You know, I've been trying to slow him down but he just does it so effortlessly, he's just incredible, he's just a fast horse," Baffert said. "He was born that way, I didn't do it to him."


text:
Totally over-the-top level of Papp-Hate, in my opinion. So hateful, in fact, that it is almost loving. After all, who goes through this much work to create such iconography if they don't care intensely about their subject...
Thank you to the unknown artist, and to Doucheblog Cycling for leaking the hate so we could expose it to the light. Oh, and Mr. Artist, Jesus just called to notify me that the Devil takes possession of your soul in 6 mos.
"Playas, they gonna play.
And haters, they gonna hate.
Ballers, they gonna ball.
Shot callers, they gonna call.
That ain't got nothin' to do
With me and you..."


text:
"Did you even read the specs? You sent me in there with a bunch of trannies.....Of course I can act. I won an Emmy for the GUIDING LIGHT for God's sake. You're my agent, you should....yes, it was 14 years ago, but..."
She ends up with a Guru where she guesses, "You're a GUIDING LIGHT fan." He replies, "I'm a guiding light."
And so it begins. The up-and-down life of an actress looking for work. Written and directed by Ben Fritz, there have now been three episodes released. Watch them all below:
- 4th Annual Indie Soap Awards Calendar & Rules: What You Need to Know
- Darin Brooks, Sean Hemeon & Olympian Tai Babilonia Join the Cast of Award-Winning BLOOMERS
- EXCLUSIVE: FARM HOUSE Coming In 2013, From SUNDAYS Creator Forrest Naylor
- MY SYNTHESIZED LIFE Starting Production; Cast Includes Brent Bailey, Jonathan Schwartz, Cindy Pickett, Katie Leclerc, Nicolas Coster, Barrett Foa, Stacey Oristano, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Sean Hemeon


text:
Massage - Massage Therapy
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text:
|2004-02-12, 23:26
|Link #41
Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Alexandria, VA USA
Age: 38
I'd strenuously disagree. Why have laws at all if society can take care of itself? The laws *weren't* there way back when, and a whole lot of malformed people were a byproduct.
|2004-02-12, 23:54
|Link #43
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: South East Asia
Without structures imposed to preserve a hierarchy and organisation, all civilization breaks down as each individual attempts to assert their individual preferences. The chain effect of this will shatter whatever mould the current civilizaion has. A small group of individuals will get sick of the situation and band together, creating laws yet again. If their influence is strong that they sway more to obey their laws, they will win and create a new society. If they fail... chaos continue.
Laws are the basis of civilization (society). Without them, civilization as we know it cannot exist.
Here's another thought. Laws are only laws when people choose to obey them whether willingly or out of fear from punishment. When nobody bothers about them continuously and they are not enforced, they are not really laws anymore. (Since we are all humans, stupid laws do come up as well...)
In a way, I see the restrictions against incest were laid down mainly to:
1. reduce genetic mutations (increase group strength)
2. encourage social bindings (marry another clan, build stronger inter-social ties)
2a. encourage social interactions (a guy sitting at home 'admiring' his female relations is not going to go out much is it?)
3. reinforce family as the basic unit of society
|2004-02-13, 00:02
|Link #44
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 35
Laws are to protect society from itself, and its natural tendancy towards chaos.
I haven't thought about it enough to decide my own opinion on the subject. There are good arguments to be made on both sides.
|2004-02-13, 00:39
|Link #45
Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Alexandria, VA USA
Age: 38
Couldn't agree more.
Ashibaka: so is a crime any less wrong if the man who commits it is unaware of it's criminal nature? That is to say, when a person is culpable of murder, does it matter whether he knows he did wrong or not? That intent of a criminal may enter into the execution of punishment, but it has nothing to do with the establishment of laws.
Last edited by Neon01; 2004-02-13 at 00:52.
|2004-02-13, 01:04
|Link #46
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: at home
The reason why people complain about Onegai Twins' incest rests in that the series attempts to break down our own barriers. It is the same with homosexual relationships in many such shows as CardCaptor Sakura, Fruits Basket, and more. I compare these because the themes are both sexual and at least more or less taboo still in society...
These anime are portraying incest or relationships very close to them, and homosexuality, in a positive light, which in turn makes us question our own beliefs and whether our own barriers have been built correctly.
These social taboos are certainly there for a reason, be it genetic, social, and/or familial, and to have them challenged is simply uncomfortable.
For me, watching Onegai Twins was disturbing for the above reason, especially when added to it were all scenes depicting the two little girls naked, a probably attempt to ridicule/question the lolita taboo.
At least anime hasn't tried to paint rape as a positive thing yet, unless you watch lots of hentai... which DOES paint rape as a positive thing, which has led to train molestations and more... perhaps not directly, of course...
The worst part of Onegai Twins was the simple fact that it was just not well done. Things were handled poorly, the story was in the end not closed well at all (how the * did they figure out who was the twin?), adding to the mediocre middle, and the characters just whined far too much about the same thing over and over, to the point where it became a nuisance mantra and made them seem extremely bland and one-sided. "Are we related? But maybe we're not related" Yegods!
To try to handle such a complex theme so poorly trivialized the whole social taboo theme, and in the end made Onegai Twins just a plain bad anime. Otherwise there'd be a lot more controversy instead of obscure whining about the incest issue.
|2004-02-13, 02:21
|Link #47
Join Date: Nov 2003
Oedipus then became King himself, and married the Queen, the old Kings wife, and his own mother. Both were unaware of their relation. They had children together.
When Oedipus and the Queen learn of their relation through means I cannot recall, the Queen hung herself, Oedipus gouged his eyes out with a buckle from her clothing and left Thebes to wander around in misery until he died. And just think of the children!
There. Thats the story of E.D Puss. Just so everyone knows.
EDIT: And Freud's "Oedipus Complex" is something rather different. But be aware that Freud's specific theories don't hold much weight with psychologists anymore.
Last edited by Fronzel; 2004-02-13 at 02:34.
|2004-02-13, 10:02
|Link #48
Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Alexandria, VA USA
Age: 38
I wanted to make it clear that my original question wasn't solely pertinent to Onegai Twins, there are other anime and manga in which incestuous relationships occur. For one more example look at the manga (and possibly anime - I haven't seen it) DNA^2.
On an unrelated note: the intro music in Onegai Twins absolutely kicks ass. I wonder where I can get more by that artist.
|2004-02-13, 12:07
|Link #49
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 35
|2004-02-13, 18:26
|Link #50
red eye from smokin'
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Parts Unknown
speaking of incest...i know this is old,
but at the end of DBGT when everyone goes their separate ways
Goten says, "Let's go home, mom." and carries her away like a groom would his bride on their honeymoon. n e 1 else remember that. (guess thats where the pairing in the doujinshi comes from.)
|2004-03-25, 05:52
|Link #51
Join Date: Mar 2004
I think i should post my two cents. I definately agree with what most of you said here. Especially about the three of twins in Onegai Twins never having met before. Let say for example, you grew up living together with a person who you thought was your sister. Then many years later, one day you two find out that you guys aren't related at all. Would your brother and sister relationship dissippate? I highly doubt it. To me, Incest is more of a family oriented thing. If you grew up as brother and sisters, whether you are related or not, you act and play the role of siblings. So a sudden discovery that you two are related shouldn't change the role you two had for many years. In that situation, if they eventaully became lovers therefore, would be pretty.... abnormal.
But in another situation, say you never met someone before, and when you get to know him/her, and gradually, you fall in love with each other. Your love continue to grow until one day you discover that you two are actually full blooded siblings. Then, would you disregard your current feelings for each other? Perhaps, but it would be very difficult thing to do i'd assume, even with the ackwardness of the new relevation.
Of course, the worst case scenerio is in Angel Sanctuary. Where two person play the role of siblings AND they are full blooded sibilings. That's why it's hard for many people to accept that kind relationship, even me whom i consider pretty open minded.
|2004-03-25, 10:15
|Link #52
A territory most absolute
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Finland
Age: 32
|2004-03-25, 14:48
|Link #53
the Iniquitous
for me incest its WRONG!! it just freaks me out, and i think i'm pretty open minded. However i love angel sanctuary!!!! the story has so much angst in it, and i love that. so i'm in a dilemma, I like the angst that an incest relation has, but i dislike the incest itself.
Many japanese authors actually like the theme ( even the book of " grave of the fireflies" has a hint of that) maybe because the are a little more openminded. For what i've read, japanese culture look at sexual themes like something a little embarrasing but not a sin. We in the western cultures are used to see sex as a sin and a reason to go to hell, so incest and homosexuality are even worse
And one more thing, may of you have said that relations between cousins are common in all the world except USA. I think you are wrong. Here in Colombia and all Latin America IMO incest even between cousins its still a taboo. Maybe its because our families are more closed together, so cousins are almost brothers and sisters. That's my case, i grow up with all my cousins like if we were brothers and sisters
anyway, its just my opinion
sorry for the bad english
|2004-03-25, 15:35
|Link #54
i am the mist
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Japan
Here incest in any form is taboo. I also think it has religious and medical implications here, such as 'incest is sinful' or 'you'll bear unhealthy babies', that kind of thing. But I saw a news feature about this topic on local TV once. There was a couple, they are biological brother and sister, and they were in love with each other for some reason. And so they had babies, and reportedly healthy ones. I guess they were pretty lucky. Well they left their family because of the forbidden relationship, and they aren't married.
They are discriminated socially here the same way as gays, despite us being a democratic society.
Enough of reality. I pondered in this one. There are multitudes of ero-games (bishoujo game/h-games) out there with an 'incest' theme. And the more annoying thing is: "they are not even related". There are so many of these games out there wherein the male character has a female love interest which is his 'adopted sister'. It means they are not biological siblings, but I guess they lived and grew together as brother and sister. I'd say what's up with that? Can I call it "legal incest"?? Though that relationship isn't immoral, don't you think I still promotes incestual relationships in general?
Why do some Japanese get turned on with a girl growling 'onii-chan!' to them in bed? Such fetishes...
|2004-03-25, 15:52
|Link #55
Team the box!
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Badside
I was told that the "medical implictations" in offspring of incest wouldn't start showing up until 2nd generation. It's probably not a solid line anyway, depends how the genes combine and such. The problem comes from the limited gene pool. Bad recesive genes can easily show up when both parents have them.
Incest in anime doesn't bother me. It's not me and my sister so I'm sort of seperated from the situation and I'm not bothered by it. Even in real life. If 2 siblings fall in love, fine by me. Not something I would do but they're not me. Similar to homosexuality. I wouldn't do it, doesn't mean you can't.
|2004-03-25, 17:52
|Link #57
Gomen asobase desuwa!
Join Date: Nov 2003
Age: 37
There are actually two censorship associations in Japan regarding games and media. They regulate what is legal and acceptable according to Japanese laws. They are also the backbone of the game/anime/manga/media/movie industry and is probably something similar to the NAACP in the United States - they are the ones that go to court to go around loopholes.
Sofurin - Ethics Organization of Computer Software: http://www.sofurin.org/
Medirin - Media Ethics Association: http://www.media-ethics.com/
Example A: Japanese national law forbids incestual relationships between siblings.
Response A: Although the Japaneses national law forbids sibling relationships it does not clearly specify that the two siblings need to be blood-related or not.
Example B: Recently the Japanese national law forbid any expression (games made after this law went into effect) of sexual conduct for a character that is under the age of 18.
Response B: The Japanese law did not state whether the character may or may not look under 18. Hence, even if the character looks like a middle-school or high-school student, the loop-hole exists where so long as we do not say they are in middle-school or high-school, or if we just state them as "all characters represented are over the age of 18" is perfectly legal.
Example C: Minors under the age of 18 cannot buy pornographic material
Response C: Even if the ero-game is released, it is perfectly legal then to alter and remove the ero-scenes all together when they are released in the console game market. Hence middle-school and high-school students can buy such games as they are not pornographic material anymore because there aren't any sex scenes involved.
Of course, these two organizations do not back the ero-game/ero-anime industry only. They are a major force that regulates and censors all forms of games, media, and the like to protect freedom of speech and expression as guarateed by the Japanese Constitution of 1945. Think of them as a group of expensive lawyers and union labor guys who gets into argument with the government every now and then everytime such alterations and amendments to the laws are made. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, sometimes each side has to compensate.
Hence, when you buy an ero-game, you are likely to see a stamp from either of these two commissions stating that "this game/media comforms to the standard regulations as mandated by [insert regulation committee here]."
|2004-03-25, 20:44
|Link #58
Join Date: Jan 2004
This is an interesting thread. Keep arguing it out guys! you fascinate me!. Hairy topics like incest tend to be very sore clashing points between cultural belief systems, and they thus inspire some great discussions between those of differing backgrounds if the environment is right and nobody is going to spill blood over it.
These topics bring out the ethnocentric ideals people possess (sometimes in their ugliest forms). By far the most prevelant online today is Amerocentrism, which personally drives me batty - it is arrogant and often pointless in its unwillingness to "see the other side" (this is not a bashing of american ideals, just a statement of the effects the cultural values tend to have). A discussion like this allows others to express their views for a change.
It's a great big world out there, and the cultural and social diversity is immense beyond reckoning. Somebody will dissagree with everything you say, and they will be RIGHT!. But so will you. All you believe, all you think and say, ESSPECIALLY when on a sensitive topic like this, is influenced, if not entirely governed, by your cultural conditioning. When it gets interesting is when the stronger minds (a reasonable percentage I am pleased to add) start to break away from these ethnocentric notions and actually to see the diversity for what it is an live with tolerance for the other mindsets around them.
Oh, and as a psychological thing for the guy who couldn't imagine a relationship with his sisters but could tolerate incest in onegai twins - The difference is that when you have known your sister all your life, or all hers, she is your sister. That is it. You can not question that the sibling relationship is there. when you meet her for the FIRST TIME as a grown (or growing), sexual entity, then you have DOUBT, even after proof of relation, because you have NEVER had that sister as a child, and as a child you affirm your sibling relationships strongly, daily, and this is a crucial factor. We all are aware of THIS factor in the problem, even if we do not realise it consciously, because we have experienced the affirmation of siblings through childhood (or substitute siblings in the playground for only-children - not nearly as healthy tho). This is why some of us can watch something like onegai twins, with complete comfort and tollerance or acceptance of the thematic ideas, but be repulsed by the notion of its introduction into our own familial situations. I would be interest to know the percentage of those for whom this is NOT the case, who were only children.
That's my lecture. Later!
|2004-03-25, 20:48
|Link #59
SL Aki fanclub president
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Germany
I really don't see anything creepy in there... what's so bad about it if it's among cousins only? Don't be so uptight.
The only creepy thing is if it's among first degree blood related persons, like parents and their actual (not adopted) sons/daughters
|2004-03-25, 21:06
|Link #60
Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 35
|Thread Tools


text:
You are on the JDBC Logger website.
JDBC Logger is an Open Source Java tool that intercepts and logs all database statements that use JDBC. It is intended for developers to monitor SQL statements generated by EJB, Hibernate or any other database access tool that doesn't display them in clear.
JDBC Logger 0.6 has been released, it is available from the download page. This version mainly brings a new integration module for Spring Framework, and some small bug fixes. We also provide now binary packages for download, the small demo applications are now available too. For Maven users, there is now an all in one package that provides the full functionality of JDBC Logger in one package, that can be used as the only dependency. For more information please take a look at the Integration with Spring page and at the updated Installation page.
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text:
FoneSync for Samsung phones allows you to synchronize your Samsung phone with your Mac in a few easy steps!
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text:
Submission + - Will new RIAA tactic boost P2P file sharing? (p2pnet.net)
newtley writes: "The RIAA claim that it'll stop suing people may have serious consequences. For the RIAA. When it dropped its attack on seven University of Michigan students, Recording Industry vs The People wondered if the move was linked to three investigations, with MediaSentry as the target, before Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Growth. Now, "LSA sophomore Erin Breisacher said she stopped downloading music illegally after hearing about the possibility of receiving a lawsuit, but now that the RIAA has stopped pursuing lawsuits she 'might start downloading again'," says the Michigan Daily, going on to quote LSA senior Chad Nihranz, as saying,"I figure, if there aren't as many lawsuits they will come out with more software to allow students to download more.""


text:
Don your prettiest and most fashionable chapeau and join the ladies of the South Suburban Chapter of Jack & Jill of America Inc. as they salute two "Trailblazing Women" at the Fairmont Chicago Hotel at their second Hat Luncheon on April 19.
Don your prettiest and most fashionable chapeau and join the ladies of the South Suburban Chapter of Jack & Jill of America Inc. as they salute two "Trailblazing Women" at the Fairmont Chicago Hotel at their second Hat Luncheon on April 19. The honorees: Barbara McKinzie of Olympia Fields, international president of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and Gwendolyn B. Lee of Homewood, national president of The Links Inc. Keynoting the $100 per person spring event themed Finding Your Passion and Fulfilling Your Purpose will be Valorie Burton, much sought-after life coach, speaker and author of Listen to Your Life, What's Really Holding You Back?, Rich Minds, Rich Rewards and Why Not You? 28 Days to Authentic Confidence, all published by divisions of Random House. Her newest is How Did I Get So Busy? The 28-Day Plan to Free Your Time, Reclaim Your Schedule & Reconnect with What Matters Most.
Members of the host chapter, led by its president, Tracey Alston, reside in the south suburban towns of Chicago Heights, Flossmoor, Frankfort, Hazelcrest, Homer Glen, Homewood, Matteson, Olympia Fields, Orland Park, South Holland and Tinley Park. Jack and Jill of America, Inc. is the largest African-American family organization in the country, and this chapter is dedicated to providing educational, cultural and social activities that stimulate and expand the minds of young children to enable them to become leaders and productive members of society. The chapter also provides scholarships and supportive services to the underserved. Over the years, more than $150,000 in scholarships have been awarded to students who otherwise may not have the means to pursue a college education.
For Openers – An exciting mix of classic and new works by Alvin Ailey, Robert Battle, Hope Boykin, Mauro Bigonzetti, George Faison and Elisa Monte will be featured tonight through Sunday at the Auditorium Theater as the renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater celebrates its 50th anniversary of showcasing African-American cultural expression and the American modern dance tradition. The genius of Alvin Ailey forever changed the perception of American dance. Today the legacy continues with Artistic Director Judith Jamison's remarkable vision and the extraordinary artistry of the company's dancers. Opening night features a live on-stage performance by the Grammy-winning female vocal ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock. Ticket prices for the five-day run are $30-$82 each; purchase at the box office, call Ticketmaster, (800) 982-ARTS or (312) 902-1500 or log on to http://www.ticketmaster.com.
Toyota Venza has partnered with the company's anniversary celebration by paying homage to Ailey's extraordinary artistry, providing a unique retrospective of the company's development. An art installation features Ailey archival footage coupled with sculptural elements from the African Diaspora.
Newsy Names – Congrats to a fave media sistah, the Defender's "Brenda Starr" reporter, Kathy Chaney, one of three finalists for the 2008 Peter Lisagor Award for "best in-depth reporting in a general interest publication" for her August 2008 story, "Gang Wars Make South Side City's Deadliest." The Lisagor Awards Banquet for Exemplary Journalism is April 24 at the Union League Club. Here's hoping, girlfriend!
Another fave media sistah, Mary Mitchell, Sun-Times' editorial board member and columnist, was honored at the Chicago Foundation for Women's 2009 Impact Awards, which recognizes advocates' work on behalf of women and girls, both in Illinois and nationally. The salute was held in Macy's Narcissus Room. Proceeds benefited CFW, a nonprofit that supports women's and girls' human rights through grants and advocacy.
Celebrating Women's History Month, the Black Ensemble Theatre Co.'s founder and executive director, Jackie Taylor, got her own day when Gov. Pat Quinn proclaimed Friday "Jackie Taylor Day" in Illinois at a ceremony in the Thompson Center followed by a live snippet of "I Gotcha: The Story of Joe Tex and the Soul Clan," currently playing at BET.
And a fave brutha, Greg Hinton, U.S. Cellular's senior director of Diversity Strategies, accepted his company's 2009 National Corporate Advocate of the Year Award from the Child Welfare League of America. When asked what the company did to deserve the national honor, Greg answered: "We did what comes naturally to us. We lived our values."
Maze with Frankie Beverly come to town June 20 for N'Digo's Gala.
Nielsen's communications maven Cheryl Pierson McNeil picked up yet another award Friday at the 21st Annual Boys & Girls Club MLK Legacy Gala at the Hyatt Regency.
Happy b'day to Hiram Jackson, head honcho of Real Times Media Inc., parent company of the Chicago Defender, among several other African-American newspapers; to Ariel Capital Management's major domo John Rogers Jr., and Hazel Bond, retired educator and golf and tennis enthusiast, who celebrated with kin and friends in her suburban South Holland home.
To read the rest of this article, subscribe to our digital or paper edition. For previous editions, contact us for details.
Copyright 2009 Chicago Defender. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


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Ambitious Teacher of English required within England
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Capita Education specialist Permanent recruitment consultancy service is designed to assist schools, academies and local authorities in attracting the most highly skilled candidates to their institutions.
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