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"There are going to be some drastic changes for me, because I happen to be in that zone that has been targeted both federally and by the state and, you know, it doesn't work for me right now."
-Pro golfer Phil Mickelson on why California's tax increases may prompt him to leave the state
• • •
And you thought the rich didn't pay taxes.
Then again, as the "revenue raisers" were quick to remind Mr. Mickelson, the fortunate few still have plenty left even after the taxman takes half their income. So quit complaining and just lie back and enjoy it, right?
Alas — no matter how much our covetous culture demonizes them, the working wealthy are apt to do just the opposite. And if you think that won't make a difference to your state's economy, consider this: According to economist Art Laffer, 62 percent of the 3 million net new jobs in the last decade came from just nine states without an income tax.
States such as California and Illinois — which seek to punish the well-to-do with higher levies on earned income — are not only digging out of deficits, but the state of their economies gives new meaning to the term "basket case."
As I wrote on Dec. 9 ("To plug state jobs drain, try this plan"), if Minnesota wants to avoid becoming a cold California, it needs genuine, progrowth tax reform — not the $1.1 billion income tax hike Gov. Mark Dayton has proposed for 54,000 Minnesotans. Or even worse, the $2 billion worth of private earnings House DFLers plan to confiscate by adopting the second-highest income tax rate in the nation: 11 percent.
Why, there's even a "snowbird" tax just for those who summer at the cabin (all the while paying sales, gas and property taxes) but whose permanent residence in another state affords them a lower income tax rate. Can't have that, say the looters, especially if you're planning on hiking Minnesota's biennial budget another 8 percent.
The Democrats' greedy hand assumes it's "fair" to tax one set of Minnesotans and not others. But having different rules for different citizens is the antithesis of "fairness" and reeks of the arbitrariness of despotism.
Of course, there's only so much money at the top, so the DFL-controlled Legislature already has a 9.5-cent-a-gallon gas tax hike waiting in the wings, along with a quadrupling of the metro sales tax.
It doesn't have to be this way. In 37 states, as in Minnesota, one party controls the legislative and executive branch. However, the majority are moving in quite a different direction than St. Paul. So with apologies to Dickens, let's take a quick look at a "tale of two states."
North Carolina for the first time since Reconstruction has a Republican governor with a GOP statehouse. The first priority for lawmakers in Raleigh recovering from decades of Democratic rule is reducing the government's burden on working families (even wealthy ones) by reforming the tax code.
In fact, the only question in the Tarheel State is whether to assess a flat 5 percent rate on all income and retail sales (sound familiar?) or to eliminate the North Carolina income tax altogether by broadening the tax base.
The contrasts, predictably, don't stop there. While North Carolina is now embracing energy exploration, Minnesota's environmental lobby clings to our disastrous California-style Renewable Portfolio Standards; while North Carolina's newly elected Gov. Pat McCrory has announced he will not expand Medicaid enrollment, Dayton may be the nation's most enthusiastic chief executive implementing Obamacare; and while Raleigh is promising cleaner elections through a new voter ID law, Democrats in St. Paul are attempting to pass even less stringent voting standards in Minnesota.
Dayton likes to mock the reformers who suggest it's counterproductive to double down on big taxes here. "I've heard this for 30 years," he says, "everybody's going to leave the state …"
Funny, that's exactly what they used to say in California.
Jason Lewis is a nationally syndicated talk-show host based in Minneapolis-St. Paul and is the author of "Power Divided is Power Checked: The Argument for States' Rights" from Bascom Hill Publishing. He can be heard locally from 5 to 8 p.m. on NewsTalk Radio, 1130-AM, and on jasonlewisshow.com.


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Close to Iran, country is on the outs with UAE, Saudi, Bahrain and Egypt
ByAT Contributor
- September 19, 2019

subset: commoncrawl


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A Glam Great Gatsby Inspired Wedding at the Cavalier Golf & Yacht Club in Virginia Beach, Virginia
Art deco details and glitzy décor brought Jessica Laskowski (27 and a registered nurse) and Jack Zuckerman's (32 and a urologist) The Great Gatsby–inspired day to life. The waterfront wedding even had a green light at the end of a dock, just like in F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic book.
A lush, romantic bridal bouquet of blush peonies, roses, ranunculus, sweet peas and feathers was studded with crystal brooches. The art deco–inspired designs in the black, white and gold invitation suite hinted at the luxe theme.
Elevated on a bed of flowers, the couple's four-tier cake was dressed in white fondant and sprinkled with pearl shimmer dust. Jewels, strands of fondant pearls, sugar flowers and a white Z monogram completed the cake. Textured white linens topped the tables, along with silver beaded chargers, pearl napkin rings and a sweet box of caramel candies.


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Kick. Kick. Spotify.
If you don't have time to scour the blog daily, catch Radio's top 20 countdown, hit the clubs for what's going on there or steal your friend's Apple ID, let Kick Kick Snare's Featured Spotify playlist be your weekly one-stop-shop. Please click here to follow, and let our top picks from this week stream away! Note: the playlist is updated every Friday morning.
Follow our Featured Spotify playlist here.


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Racing Trick Stuff - Race Products
Trick stuff to make you go faster
The Hole Kit
Blair Equipment Co. introduces two new Rotabroach Master Kits. Each of the new kits is an all-in-one set containing 16 different sizes of Rotabroach Cutters for drilling holes in materials up to 1/4-inch thick. The fractional kit includes cutters from 1/4- to 3/4-inch and the metric kit includes sizes from 6mm to 20mm. Rotabroach annular cutters are ideal for use in metal fabrication, restoration, maintenance and electrical applications, spot-weld removal, plugging holes for welding, and automotive aftermarket installations. Each kit is packaged in a sturdy plastic storage case and includes an arbor assembly, extra pilots, center punch, washers, and instructions. Rotabroach Cutters can be used in handheld electric drills with 3/8-inch chucks and in drill presses. Visit www.blairequipment.com for more information.
Easy Installation
Edelbrock has made swapping your intake manifold simple and easy. It has three all-in-one kits for three different intake manifolds--EPS, Air-Gap, and RPM. These kits are designed to take the guess-work out of swapping your old intake manifold, while avoiding multiple trips to the parts store. Each kit includes the correct gaskets, new hardware, and sealant to ensure the proper fit. These kits are available for small-block Chevy engines (1957-1986). For more information, visit www.edelbrock.com.
Fast Fuel
In many forms of endurance racing, overhead refueling rigs, dump cans, and vent bottles can be seen throughout the pit area. Although the refueling process has evolved over the years, one concern still remains--how to transfer the unused fuel back into a central drum or container, for safe and easy storage. Aero Tec Laboratories (ATL) of Ramsey, New Jersey, has engineered a simple solution for race teams that struggle with such a problem. ATL is now offering its Drum-Break, a 2-1/4- or 1-1/2-inch female dry-break receptacle that threads into the 2-inch bung of any conventional 55-, 30-, or 15-gallon steel drum, instantly transforming that drum into a "quick-fill" storage container for residual fuel. Just plug-in any Redhead-style 2-1/4- or 1-1/2-inch male probe (single or double) into the Drum-Break receptacle as you would when refueling the race car. Race teams can now simply empty any unused fuel in a fast, easy, and most of all, safe manner. No more worrying about spills when struggling to use a conventional funnel and cumbersome jerrycans. When all residual fuel has been transferred from refueling devices into the storage drum, unscrew the ATL Drum-Break and replace the drum's steel bung cap. Check out www.atlinc.com for more info.
Breathing Easy
Moroso has just released its new breather kit for Sprint Car engines (PN 68850). The 8.5-inch, 1-3/4-inch diameter tube has a 180-degree bend and mounts to the valley pan of your Sprint Car engine. The kit includes a billet aluminum clamp with mounting holes. The filter element is washable and reusable for a long life, and the tube is anodized black for a lasting finish. For more information, check out www.moroso.com.
Gettin' Girlie
Is your wife, girlfriend, or daughter part of your pit crew? Then let them be the girls they are with these pink radios from Rugged Radios. Originally offered in an "over-the-head" model, the new pink color is now available in the "behind-the-head" model as well. The new pink is perfect for female professionals, passengers, and pit crew members. Both models feature a DNC microphone for clear transmissions and Rugged Radios' Clear Hear speakers for unsurpassed audio performance in extreme noise environments. Both models feature industry standard 5-pin intercom ports and 3.5mm audio input port for scanners, iPods, or other MP3 music devices. They also feature a built-in waterproof PTT (Push-to-Talk) button for use with mobile or handheld radios. Check out www.ruggedradios.com for more info.
Northern Radiators
Performance Bodies is excited to announce the addition of a new line of quality radiators to its already strong assortment of products--Northern Radiators. Northern has been manufacturing heating and cooling products for more than 40 years, and quality is a way of life and a commitment of all its employees. The new product line of two-core radiators is not only high-quality, but also a great value to the racer. Each of the five new radiators retails for $139.99. Performance Bodies has the following Northern Radiators stocked in its warehouse, which are available now:
- NOR209674 (19" x 22" - Chevy Outlets)
- NOR209679 (19" x 24" - Chevy Outlets)
- NOR209675 (19" x 26" - Chevy Outlets)
- NOR209676 (19" x 28" - Chevy Outlets)
- NOR209677 (19" x 31" - Chevy Outlets)
For more info, contact Performance Bodies at 800/722-4641 or online at www.performancebodies.com


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Road to Mac Office 2008: PowerPoint '08 vs Keynote 4.0The planned mid-January release of Office 2008 offers a significant overhaul of the productivity suite's look and features. Previous segments described new features in Word and Excel, with comparisons to Apple's Pages and Numbers. This article examines what's new in PowerPoint 2008 in contrast to Keynote 4.0, the first new standalone productivity application Apple released for Mac OS X. It also looks at why Mac Office 2008 is still missing applications from the Windows version of Office, including Project, Access, and Visio.
This report goes to great lengths to explore the origins, history, and maturity of Microsoft's PowerPoint. For those readers with limited time or who are only interested in what's due in PowerPoint '08 as part of Office 2008 for Mac, you can skip to page 2 of this report.
The Birth of PowerPoint and Other Microsoft Office Apps
Microsoft acquired PowerPoint in 1987 from a Mac software developer Forethought. That company was also the distributor of Nashoba's FileMaker database, and owned the FileMaker marketing collateral and documentation. Microsoft had been unsuccessfully competing against FileMaker with its own Microsoft File. In order to improve its productivity software offerings, Microsoft dumped File and entered talks to acquire FileMaker from Nashoba, as described in FileMaker Early History.
However, after beating Microsoft in the marketplace, Nashoba chose to publish its increasingly popular FileMaker product independently, although it had to scramble to develop new packaging and documentation to do so. That same year, Apple spun off its desktop applications into the new Claris subsidiary. Claris then bought Nashoba began porting FileMaker to Windows. Had Nashoba instead sold FileMaker to Microsoft, the history of Microsoft Office, Claris, and FileMaker would be entirely different.
Project, FoxPro, Access, and Visio
By 1990, Microsoft had released Word, Excel, and PowerPoint under the new name Microsoft Office, first on the Mac and later for Windows. The following year, Microsoft released Project for the Mac. It continued development of Project for Macs up until 1993, when the company began shifting all of its efforts into Windows. Even after Microsoft returned to the Mac in 1997, no new version of Project was ever released by the Mac Business Unit, and the old versions do not run natively on Mac OS X.
Microsoft still wanted to include database software in Office, so it acquired Fox Software in 1992; that company had cloned Ashton-Tate's popular dBASE product under the name FoxBASE, which was later renamed FoxPro. The product was popular on both DOS and the Mac, and Fox was in the process of porting it to Windows when Microsoft acquired it. While it was never included in Office, Microsoft continued to support new versions of FoxPro on the Mac and Windows through 1995. In the second half of the 90s, it was renamed Visual FoxPro after being folded into Microsoft's Visual Studio developer tools for Windows, which includes Visual Basic. This year, Microsoft discontinued Visual FoxPro entirely.
Microsoft also began selling its own database product called Access in 1992, which was never ported to the Mac. This was likely because Microsoft was already selling FoxPro for Macs. Between the period when Microsoft stopped development of Office applications on the Mac in 1994 and the reintroduction of Office for Mac in 1998, FoxPro for Mac died but there was no new attempts made to port Access to the Mac. By that time, Claris' FileMaker Pro was already a strong product on the Mac, and Microsoft determined that there wasn't a large enough Mac database market to fight over.
In 1998, Apple subsequently dismantled the remains of Claris and then reestablished FileMaker, Inc. as a new subsidiary. Unlike competitors to Word or Excel, FileMaker Pro has been able to maintain competition against Access in part because Microsoft only includes Access with the more expensive versions of Office and does not offer a Mac version. Without the assistance of bundling, Access has not been able to displace FileMaker. The company advertises FileMaker Pro as the most popular desktop database product, and Microsoft's Mac version of Office offers support for accessing data from FileMaker using Excel. There are also third party tools for working with data in Access from the Mac. FileMaker also just released a new consumer database product called Bento, previewed in First Look: FileMaker's Bento personal database for Leopard.
In 2000, Microsoft paid $1.3 billion to acquire Visio Corporation, which had delivered a clone of the Lighthouse Design Diagram! application for NeXTSTEP. The Omni Group delivered a similar product for the Mac called OmniGraffle (below), which Apple bundles on new Macs. Omni also offers a pro version, which can open and save Visio 2007 documents, leaving little reason to want a port of Visio in Mac Office.
Along the same lines, Marware's Project X (below) provides project management software compatible with Microsoft's Project files but developed specifically to take advantage of features in Mac OS X, leaving little demand for a Mac version of Project.
The Culture of Microsoft PowerPoint
Those developments left the MacBU to concentrate on only delivering the existing products within Mac Office 2008: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage. Both Word and Excel deliver features missing from other Mac tools, and Entourage exists primarily to serve as an Exchange Server mail client for Mac users in corporate settings. PowerPoint serves more as a placeholder propping up convention.
While Word and Excel both followed established software roles in word processing and spreadsheets, PowerPoint was an entirely new concept in desktop software when it appeared in the late 80s. PowerPoint is designed to serve as a virtual slide projector, making it easy to present visuals while speaking. Over the last twenty years, "powerpoint" has become a common term for presentation slides.
Yale University professor Edward Tufte has become an outspoken critic of common elements of PowerPoint presentations, particularly because the medium encourages the oversimplification of facts through the use of bullet points. Charts and other graphics commonly minimize detail for readability, and the limited templates in PowerPoint tend to make meetings and presentations boring and homogenized, while at the same time consuming the attention of the audience rather than focusing it on the speaker and the message.
Competition for PowerPoint
By the release of Office v.X in 2002, PowerPoint had fallen into a rut; neither it nor the Office 2003 version for Windows really offered anything new. In 2003, Apple released Keynote as its own new presentation tool. In addition to more sophisticated graphics and text editing tools, Keynote also revamped the overall interface.
It added a mini slide preview in a sidebar that supported drag and drop reordering of slides, as well as segment grouping features using indented slide sections that could be hidden using disclosure triangles. Hidden groups of slides are skipped during the presentation.
Keynote also exposed the advanced features of Mac OS X's Quartz Graphics to make it easy to create soft drop shadows and use free rotation, image masks, translucency, and reflections on placed objects, as well as enabling advanced transition effects between slides. It also presented automatic positioning guidelines to make it easier to center or align text and graphics on the slide. With a second display attached to a laptop, the presenter could also direct their presentation to a projector while watching a presentation timer, reading notes, and seeing a preview of the next slide on their main screen.
Following the release of Keynote 1.0, Microsoft dramatically improved PowerPoint in Office 2004. However, some of the matched features of Keynote were constrained by other factors related to Office. For example, while PowerPoint 2004 added soft drop shadows like Keynote's, they weren't compatible with the Windows version of PowerPoint. Microsoft also added a hundred new template designs and more transitions in PowerPoint 2004, although these were far simpler than the smaller number of professional designs Apple included with Keynote.
Since the release of Office 2004, Apple has introduced three more revisions of Keynote. The latest added nine new themes, voice over narration features, motion path animations, Smart Builds for automatically adding animation to photos, new text and transition effects, and the Instant Alpha tool for extracting backgrounds from photos.
On page 2 of 3: New in PowerPoint 2008: User Interface; PowerPoint Templates; PowerPoint Transitions; PowerPoint Tables; and PowerPoint Charts.


text: Jose Mas, CEO of MasTec, one of the largest builders of telecommunication and energy systems in North America, building everything from electric power lines, wireless infrastructure, natural gas pipelines and sources of renewable energy generation, goes undercover in his company for the third season finale of UNDERCOVER BOSS. Photo: ©Studio Lambert. All Rights Reserved.


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Order your piece framed, or just the copper
so you can frame it yourself to match your decor.
copper sizes: 11 x 14" | 16 x 20"
antiqued copper with hand drawn design. available in a standard black frame or just the copper so you can frame it to match your decor. only available in full antique finish. custom orders welcomed.
If stock indicates "0" quantity or "Sold Out", the item is still available for purchase
most pieces are made to order so please allow 3-5 weeks for creation and delivery
copper is meant for indoor use.
the antiquing process is unique to every piece, the final color will vary from image shown.
all artwork is hand cut, hand drawn, antiqued and assembled. there may be imperfections due to the hand made quality.
the edges of copper are VERY SHARP, please handle with care with unframed orders.
the copper used is very thin and fragile therefore can dent and bend easily so please handle with care.
Contact me with any questions.


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the one ply dance,ygmir wrote:just don't cry
use 1 ply
in the room of blue,
don't ask why
just comply,
when you leave a poo........
is a happy dance.
just drop your pants,
and take the chance......
brmannoob wrote:So, um is there any actual volunteering needing to be done, or do you have it all covered now?
(How about safe, sane and sober potties; and all-fucked up potties? You know people who care, and people who don't even know what there is to care about?)
Howdy Noob,
Thank you for asking. I live at Terminal City, at the butt-end, if you will. Feel free to try to find me and I'll gratefully take you out. It's a chill volunteer gig: you get fed, a t-shirt, and contribute to the community in a very important way.
See you on the playa.
Do I need an avatar to play here?
I'm no engineer but here is the deal.ygmir wrote:I have a quandary:
what's the difference between two ply and folded one ply?
seems, a wad is a wad........
I know there's an engineering type here that can elucidate...........


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From cybersnooping to governmental efforts to compile dossiers on everybody, privacy rights are under attack. With seemingly everyone being outed for something, people with HIV and AIDS are particularly vulnerable to having the information in their personal medical records used against them.
In a four-part series that began in the spring and will run over the next several months, writer Robert Vázquez-Pacheco explores the many issues surrounding the confidentiality of medical records for people with HIV and AIDS. This month's article discusses the special privacy issues of special populations with HIV -- prisoners, children and adolescents, especially homeless young people. Part I, published in May, discussed the laws governing the confidentiality of medical information -- what they are, who is allowed access to the information and for what, and attempts to limit or circumvent PWAs' privacy rights. Future installments will deal with medical records confidentiality in the context of the workplace and insurance, and with PWAs' legal and other recourses and patients' rights in general.
All information is valuable to somebody somewhere. Medical information about an individual's health is one of the most valuable types of information, its value determined by who wants it and for what. For example, insurance companies want medical information about people so they can predict how much they may have to spend on them. Pharmaceuticals manufacturers want to know how many people suffer from a particular condition so they can decide how much to charge for the drugs those people need. But sometimes the value of medical information is based more on the consequences of its disclosure; who has that information is sometimes more important than what the information actually is. Take HIV serostatus. Information about a person's serostatus often has serious consequences, particularly for the person who is HIV-positive. Those consequences depend on the individual's circumstances.
Now, as discussed in an earlier article in this series, legislative measures are in place to protect HIV-positive people from unwarranted disclosure of their medical information. But these measures, despite their good intentions, can offer only limited protections. As in life, problems arise through many complex and unforeseen circumstances. No law can predict everything that may happen, nor can it protect us from all of the possibilities. At best, it might guard against the more flagrant, predictable, or egregious violations, and only when those responsible for enforcing the law know what's happening. "There's the law and then there's real life," as a lawyer friend of mine said, meaning that sometimes the law can't totally protect an individual against what really happens.
We can see this in the case of two groups of HIV-positive individuals who remain acutely vulnerable to the negative consequences of serostatus disclosure, the incarcerated and the young, particularly homeless and runaway youth.
The Incarcerated
There was recently a statistic in the news about incarcerated people, something I read in an e-mail awhile back and then heard from a colleague at the Osborne Association. I also just heard it again on Oz, the popular TV soap opera about a men's prison. It's this: Currently there are approximately 8 million people incarcerated worldwide, and one-quarter of them (that's 2 million people) are imprisoned right here in the old land of the free. (The majority of them are black men, but that's another article.) According to the New York State Commission of Corrections, as of March 2000 there are 101,199 citizens in Empire State prisons. One advocate said that his agency "guestimates" probably around 10,000 of these inmates are HIV-positive.
Your rights as a citizen are hard to keep in prison, no matter what the law says. This is especially so when it comes to your right to privacy, and that includes your right to confidentiality as an HIV-positive person. Opportunities to break confidentiality abound in regular life -- I mean life outside jail -- so imagine how they multiply in the small enclosed world of prison. One prison advocate says that breaches of confidentiality are based on expedience, not necessarily maliciousness. In other words, they happen because people are trying to do something, maybe something good, or maybe something part of their job, and they are not being as careful as they should be. Of course, given a system that has gone from holding rehabilitation (remember that?) as its goal to one that is based on notions of retribution and punishment, one has to wonder.
According to the law in New York State, only authorized staff members of the Division of Parole, the Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives (including local parole boards), the Commission on Correction, the Department of Correctional Services, state correctional facilities, the Division of Youth, and the medical directors of local correctional facilities are supposed to have access to HIV information. Not to mention the courts. That still makes for a helluva lot of people who aren't supposed to know. One prison advocate told me, "In theory, the laws of confidentiality are kept."
But, ironically, the two main populations within the prison system who are not authorized to know are actually the ones who do know, and their knowledge has the most immediate impact on an HIV-positive prisoner's life. I am talking about the inmates themselves and the corrections officers, the guards. Both officers and inmates gain access to this information in various ways: They overhear conversations. They actually see medical records. They do a Sherlock Holmes and figure it out by observation and deduction -- elementary, my dear Watson! People everywhere have conversations they shouldn't have in front of or within earshot of others. Medical personnel or inmates can unwittingly disclose something when a guard or another inmate is present. Or medical staff can tell a guard in passing, by saying something like, "Listen I gotta get so-and-so to take his HIV medication." Officers regularly accompanying inmates to see the medical staff may hear or see all sorts of stuff they're not supposed to.
Medical records are supposed to be kept safe from unauthorized eyes. But that doesn't always happen: Sometimes a chart in use is left lying around an office and an officer or inmate might read it. When inmates are being transferred from one facility to another, their medical records go with them. Those records are supposed to be sealed, but often they are not. For instance, a summary chart may be attached to the cover of the "sealed" chart, so anyone seeing the chart can figure it out. Or charts may be coded in a particular way to denote HIV; again, folks can figure it out. The person simply carrying a chart in plain view through a prison or, if it's a transfer, through two facilities may essentially be carrying a billboard. Records can be erroneously released to others. One advocate told me about a case in 1997 where the names of members of an HIV support group were publicly posted (unintentionally, he assumed), a list for unauthorized people to see.
The medication schedule of inmates on protease inhibitors is hard to keep private. In prison, a heightened sense of awareness increases your chances of surviving your time inside. So generally everybody, guards and prisoners, is hyper-aware of who is doing what. Folks who publicly go to the infirmary regularly for whatever reason attract attention. Whether it's twice or thrice daily, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why Juan or Maria keeps going to the infirmary, especially when he or she isn't talking about it. Some HIV-positive inmates need translators when dealing with the medical staff, and these people might then share what they learn with others.
The way prisons are set up isn't conducive to confidentiality of any kind. It's not supposed to be. For example, inmates who are put in disciplinary segregation for violating a rule are put into what are called "S-blocks," where two people are put in a double cell. They are together almost all the time. There is no way you can hide either your medications or their side effects (diarrhea from various meds, nightmares from Sustiva, the protease gut, etc.) from someone who sees you all day every day.
So what are the consequences of these breaches of confidentiality? Back in the day, HIV-positive inmates were subjected to countless forms of discrimination, anything from threats to insults to isolation to physical attacks. Despite the rather limited extent of HIV prevention efforts in prisons, (remember, they still don't pass out condoms in prisons -- no need to, the theory goes, because folks there don't have sex; it's against the rules) at least the early anti-AIDS hysteria seems to have died down somewhat. That doesn't, however, make a prison term into a lunch at GMHC. Of course, people still can get treated badly. No matter what anyone says, once a person learns of another's positive serostatus, how that person deals with the pos inevitably changes, whether the person is a peer or someone in a position of authority. Sometimes it improves . . . and sometimes it doesn't.
To my knowledge, there is no record of any corrections officer or medical staff person being disciplined for a breach of HIV-related confidentiality. But then it seems there are no serious efforts to enforce the rules. From talking with officials and advocates, I don't get the sense that guards are specifically trained on the ins and outs of HIV confidentiality. According to one advocate, corrections officers are simply told not to do it -- reveal confidential information, that is. Of course, given the reality of prison life, and given the possible consequences, who's going to register a complaint against another inmate or a corrections officer anyway? One advocate told me he tells clients to choose their language carefully, to register their "concern" rather than make a complaint. Perhaps more of us should register our concern about what happens to people in our prisons.
The Young
Another population with unique issues is minors. People 18 years and older are legally considered adults; I'm concerned here about young people below the age of consent.
The law says minors can legally consent to STD screening and treatment, HIV antibody testing and treatment, and reproductive healthcare, including pregnancy testing and abortion, without obtaining parental consent. So many HIV healthcare practitioners will allow an HIV-positive minor to consent to his or her HIV-related care and treatment, especially when the young person either can't or won't get parental consent. Information about the young person can be disclosed to parents only when the provider determines that the young person is incapable of consenting to his or her own HIV-related care.
Did anyone else hear alarm bells? Most of the providers and youth advocates I spoke to seemed pretty principled, but it makes me wonder about young people outside of New York City. Not that all youth service providers in New York City are models of enlightenment, but at least here a young person has more options than the kid who only has the pediatrician he or she has been taken to since the cradle. When the provider has to pull out a manual to figure out what the possible treatments for HIV are, something tells me that this person might not be too concerned with the delicacies of confidentiality. When the provider has a social or business relationship with the parents, she or he may not take the young person's fear of violence seriously. But that might simply be my prejudice. And let me say to young people right here that disclosing to your parents may not be a bad thing, depending of course on your parents and your relationship with them.
Minors in the foster care system face a different situation. If a minor is tested anonymously, the information remains anonymous. But when the young person tests confidentially, that information will go into her or his medical record and the foster care or adoption agency does have access to those records. The foster parents or potential adoptive parents cannot, however, disclose that information about the young person except for the purpose of getting the minor care or treatment or providing supervision. More alarm bells.
An additional problem arises for young people when they test confidentially. Confidential HIV antibody testing generates a bill, and that bill has to go somewhere so that somebody can pay it. Private insurance is a problem, since the bill needs a billing address. Fortunately, Medicaid patients never see the bill. Now some programs here in New York City are quite creative in dealing with this private insurance billing thing. Some have a fund that just pays the bill for the young person. Others do something a little more complicated, where the bill is eventually written off. Obviously, not all healthcare facilities function this way. Besides, all of this is tricky because the parents do have the legal responsibility to provide for the child, including healthcare. One advocate told me, "Ultimately, the family has to be informed." But when and how that happens is legally up to the young person and the provider.
The problems of unsupervised minors -- young people not living with their parents or legal guardians -- are different. As we all know, there are many kids out on the streets for a host of reasons. The National Network for Youth says that approximately 1.3 million youths run away from home every year. That's more than 3,500 kids a day, another interesting and statistical factoid about the home of the brave. A good many of these kids return home, but a good number also end up homeless on the streets, dealing with a host of problems like substance abuse, crime, survival sex, violence, and illness. Many have very good reasons for having left home. Some even stand a better chance on the street than at home (which is a really scary thought), and these are the young people at highest risk for HIV infection. Like the incarcerated, they are a population forgotten and considered generally expendable by society. Many of these kids are also gay and lesbian -- as are, by some strange coincidence, a sizeable number of the kids who commit suicide. Funny how these things interconnect, ain't it.
For unsupervised minors who are HIV-positive, it is difficult to get care. Not all unsupervised minors want to go into foster care, which is where they can be sent when discovered by healthcare professionals. Some have developed their own home situations with peers, or they are in relationships. Often these living situations are better than being at "home" with an uncaring or abusive family or out on the streets alone. Others prefer that situation or relationship, however messed up it might be, to being in foster care. Providers are legally required to call Child Protective Services when they are dealing with unsupervised minors. The law is so serious about unsupervised minors that providers are expected to detain the kid physically if necessary. The young person is then remanded to the custody of foster care services, which may be good or may be as nightmarish as being on the streets. So anytime an unsupervised minor comes in for treatment, he or she runs the risk of being reported and being sent back to the family the kid fled in the first place, or ending up in foster care. Once in foster care, the child's medical information is subject to the above-mentioned regulation.
One of the negative consequences of the breaches of confidentiality encountered by both the incarcerated and young people is that, in both groups, both at-risk individuals and the larger communities have become hesitant to test for HIV. People see what happens when they test positive, regardless of the condition of their physical health, and they decide it's better not to know. There are no assurances that their HIV-related medical information will remain confidential, despite the law, and so many choose the mysterious risks of remaining untested -- and consequently out of care and treatment -- rather than the known risks of ostracism, isolation, physical violence, and other negative consequences of possibly being positive.
I imagine it's a hard and frightening decision to make. It also speaks volumes to the rest of us about the state of HIV prevention services in disenfranchised communities. It speaks to the need for broader HIV prevention educational initiatives that would include all government workers who can possibly interact with HIV-positive people.
Another issue just coming over the horizon is the impact of New York's HIV Names Reporting and Partner Notification Act, which went into effect June 1. If some folks aren't testing now because of the issues of confidentiality, what happens when they confront the prospect of having their names sent to the state?
It seems to me that the value of most HIV medical information is highest to the HIV-positive individual. No matter what uses insurance companies, pharmaceuticals manufacturers, parents, or prison guards have for this information, its protection from misuse or abuse is of singular importance to HIV-positive people, right up there with insurance and viral load. But until the rest of society understands the importance of keeping this information private -- or, more importantly, until society stops discriminating against HIV-positive people and people living with AIDS -- these confidentiality laws will have limited effectiveness. Yes, we have laws to protect individuals, to keep people safe from discrimination and/or harm, but you know what? A law is just the beginning.
Robert Vázquez-Pacheco is Director of Education and Organizing at the Audre Lorde Project, Inc., Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender People of Color Communities and a frequent contributor to Body Positive.


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Overlooked—literally—by the seventeen-deck Queen Mary 2, as she slid into her berth at Pier 92 on April 22nd, was the dead white bird. Laid out on its funeral barge beside the U.S.S. Intrepid, as flightless and obsolete as the dodo, Concorde wasn't going anywhere. The sleek dream of supersonic speed, the princess of whoosh, which got you there before you'd started, was now, officially, a museum piece. The future—as the mayoral bloviations greeting the ship's midtown docking affirmed—belonged to a hundred and fifty thousand tons of steel capable of grinding through the ocean at all of thirty knots (that's around thirty-five m.p.h. to you landlubbers). The latest and most massive of the transatlantic liners takes twenty times as long to carry you from New York to England as a Boeing or an Airbus. And that's the good news—the reason, in fact, for Commodore Ronald Warwick, the master of the Queen Mary 2, to brag, at the quayside ceremonies, that Cunard was poised to compete with the airlines for a serious share of the transatlantic business.
Like those of us who had sailed with him through Force 10 gales and thirty-foot swells, the Commodore may have been pardonably giddy at coming through the worst that the feisty ocean could throw his way on a maiden North Atlantic voyage and still getting to the Statue of Liberty on schedule. But could this be the start of something really big and really slow? We take for granted the appeal of velocity, that there is money to be made and pleasure to be had from the gratification of the instantaneous: the three-gulp Happy Meal, the lightning download, the vital cell-phone message that I am here and are you there? And where has this culture of haste got us? Baghdad, apparently, where the delusions of the get-it-over-with war are being compounded by the unseemly rush to exit, leaving the whole gory mess for some other loser to sort out.
It has been thus, as Stephen Kern, in "The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918," points out, ever since the orgiasts of speed at the turn of the twentieth century made acceleration the necessary modern ecstasy. In 1909, the Italian writer and artist Filippo Marinetti declared, in his "Futurist Manifesto," that "the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed." On an afternoon two years later, a sixteen-frames-a-second movie of the investiture of the Prince of Wales was developed in a darkroom on a British express train and taken to London, where it was shown the same night. Translated into military strategy by the overarmed Great Powers, as the historian A. J. P. Taylor liked to note, the imperatives of railway timetables drove the logistics of preëmptive mobilization. A pause to ponder was already a defeat. So modernity bolted out of the starting gate in 1914: Archduke shot, millions of men in gray and khaki precipitately herded into railway cars, carnage begun right on cue—before the Flemish mire slowed everything down and millions plodded to their doom.
For much of its history, Cunard has been part of this feverish hurry-up. In 1907, its flagship, the Mauretania, captured the Blue Riband for fastest transatlantic crossing, and kept it for twenty-two years, spurring jealous—and fatal—competition. A novel by Morgan Robertson, "The Wreck of the Titan; or, Futility," appearing in 1898, had featured a liner named Titan that cuts another ship in two simply "for the sake of speed." And the captain of the Titanic was blamed for sailing full steam, even in an area notorious for ice floes, in deference to the White Star Line's determination to wrest the Blue Riband from Cunard.
Abraham Cunard, a Philadelphia shipwright, had settled in Nova Scotia, in the loyalist diaspora, after the American Revolution. The loyalists, severed from not only their homes but the mother country, had good reason to want their mail delivery to take less than six weeks, the time often needed for sailing ships to cross from Britain to Canada or the West Indies. Abraham and his son Samuel prospered with a small mail fleet, and in the eighteen-thirties Samuel, watching George Stephenson's locomotive the Rocket hurtle along the tracks at thirty m.p.h., became convinced that on the oceans, too, steam propulsion was about to replace sail.
Paddle-driven steamers had been in common use in both American and British coastal waters and rivers since the early nineteenth century, and steam-assisted masted ships had crossed the Atlantic since 1819. But it was only in 1838 that the first full steam crossing was made, by the St. George Steam Packet Company's ship Sirius. Immediately, the journey was cut to two weeks (twelve days to Halifax, fourteen to Boston). The Sirius was followed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western, which added style to speed. It boasted a hundred and twenty-eight staterooms, bell ropes to summon stewards, a ladies' stewardess, and a seventy-five-foot saloon, decorated with panels celebrating "the arts and sciences."
Disdaining both opulence and reckless speed, Samuel Cunard offered something else when, in 1839, he made a tender to the Admiralty for the conveyance of Her Majesty's Mail: dependability, guaranteed by the novel presence of an on-board engineer. In July, 1840, the Britannia, the first of Cunard's packets, docked at Boston after a two-week crossing. A wooden-hulled ship with two masts and a central funnel, it was a footling eleven hundred and fifty tons and about two hundred feet long (compared with the QM 2's hundred and fifty thousand tons and quarter-mile length). In the port where the American Revolution began, Britannia was greeted with gun salutes, a performance of "God Save the Queen," and the declaration of Cunard Festival Day.
The word "historic" was much repeated over the public-address system last April 16th, as the Queen Mary 2 moved out into the Solent from its Southampton berth under a classically gray English spring sky. The maiden North Atlantic crossing was hugely subscribed, and, despite the famous superstitiousness of sailors, no one aboard seemed to have been deterred by, or even to have spoken of, the tragedy that cast a shadow over the ship's prospects even before the ship had been formally launched. On November 15, 2003, while the QM 2 was still in the shipyard at Saint-Nazaire, in Brittany, where it was being built, a gangway, bearing fifty people, collapsed, throwing some of them fifty feet to the concrete bed of the drydock. Fifteen were killed and twenty-eight injured. Many of the dead and injured were shipyard workers and family members and friends, who were visiting the liner before its sail to Southampton.
In defiance of ill omens, the transatlantic send-off was exuberant; for those braving the raw breezes there was sparkling wine on the upper-deck terrace. But anxieties about the target of opportunity presented by a mass of slowly moving Anglo-American steel precluded all but a vigilantly screened handful from the dockside "sailaway." A spirited band did what it could with "Rule Britannia" and "Life on the Ocean Wave," but neither was able to compete with a phantom soprano hooting from the loudspeakers. Then the ship's whistle drowned out everything else, and streamers were tossed from the decks, landing beside flocks of indifferently bobbing seagulls. Waving hankies were to be seen only in blown-up photographs of Cunard's past glory days mounted on walls in the ship's interior.
And where were the cows? Samuel Cunard had made sure that each of his packets was equipped with at least one ship's cow, to provide a steady supply of fresh milk, which, to anyone faced with trays of small plastic miniatures of "dairy-taste" creamer, seems like an idea whose time should come again. There would be risks, of course. During the fourth crossing of Brunel's immense Great Eastern, in 1861, the seas were so high that, according to one report, they not only tore off the paddles but knocked over the deck-mounted cowshed, sending one of the animals through the skylight of the saloon, where it landed on an understandably surprised barfly. This might have happened early in the morning, for in the halcyon days of the packets saloons opened for business at 6 a.m. and closed at eleven at night. A decent breakfast on the Britannia in the eighteen-forties was steak and Hock, which Cunard might think of adding to room service, as a more cheering way to start a day on the tossing waves than weak tea, overstewed coffee, and dried-out croissants. And anyone who has waited all his life for the moment when, from a blanket-wrapped steamer chair, he could interrupt his reading of Anita Loos or Evelyn Waugh to summon a steward for a cup of piping-hot bouillon will have to wait a bit longer, for on the QM 2, I regret to report, bouillon was there none.
What there is on the QM 2 is grandeur: lashings of it, Bel-Air baroque, heavy on the upholstery. The dominant style is officially described as "Art Deco," but it is more le grand style Ginger et Fred: sweeping staircases (especially in the triple-decker main restaurant); long, curved bars (very handsome in the Chart Room); leopard-patterned carpets; and, in one theatre, bronze bas-reliefs that feature disporting deities, as in the pre-multiplex yesteryear, though the athletic statuary posted at the doors summons up Albert Speer and "Honor the Komsomol," rather than Garbo and Groucho. Over the shipboard "art" a tactful veil should be drawn, but there is great art on the Queen Mary 2; namely, the exterior of the ship itself—a thrilling scarlet-and-black tower of a funnel and four heroically scaled brushed-steel propeller screws mounted on deck seven, as mightily torqued as anything from the hand of Richard Serra.
Even though the ship is a small floating town—twenty-six hundred passengers and thirteen hundred crew—it seldom feels crowded. It helps if you have a cool twenty-seven thousand dollars to spare, for then you get a share of the Balmoral Suite: 2,249 square feet of what the brochure describes as "sheer extravagance," including a dining area for eight; two interactive plasma-screen tvs; your own exercise equipment; and (the least they could do, really) "a fully stocked bar." For eighteen thousand dollars less, you rate a not so fully stocked bar and about two hundred and fifty square feet of elegant, if rather narrow, cabin and balcony. This would still be nearly two hundred square feet bigger than Charles Dickens's stateroom aboard the Britannia in 1842. For his thirty-five guineas, Dickens got a claustrophobic twelve by six: two stacked curtained bunks (no room to stow his trunk); two washstands, with jugs of water brought by stewards; a niggardly porthole, rather apt to leak; and a single oil lamp. But even this austerity was princely compared with steerage on such ships, where passengers slept communally in rows of swinging bunks "tween decks" and cooked in their own utensils without much help in the way of lighting or ventilation.
For the cabin-class passengers, the center of the Britannia, both socially and physically, was the grand, coal-heated saloon, which Dickens described, in "American Notes," as
**{: .break one} ** a long narrow apartment, not unlike a gigantic hearse with windows in the sides; having at the upper end a melancholy stove, at which three or four chilly stewards were warming their hands; while on either side, extending down its whole dreary length, was a long, long table, over each of which a rack, fixed to the low roof and stuck full of drinking-glasses and cruet-stands, hinted dismally at rolling seas and heavy weather. **
Dinner, taken on oilcloth-covered tables, which, predictably, aggravated the roll of crockery in heavy weather, was at one: roasted potatoes, baked apples, and much pork, in the form of pig's head or cold ham (for some reason, pig was thought to lie easiest on oceangoing stomachs). At five, a cheerless supper was served, usually of boiled potatoes and moldering fruit, washed down with brandy-and-water or wine, but then there was always the saloon to repair to. Those among the crew who could play a tune or two sometimes did, and there were a few books in the saloon. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century, when wooden hulls were replaced by steel and paddles by screw propellers, did a comprehensively stocked and magnificently panelled and furnished library become a crucial fixture. The heavily used library on the QM 2 runs the gamut from Danielle Steel to Tom Clancy; there is a wall of less intensively visited Everyman classics, and I found, improbably lurking amid the bodice-rippers and spy thrillers, Albert Camus's "The Plague."
Though the best thing about a week's Atlantic crossing is an eyeful and a day full of nothing other than the rhythm of the sea and the silvery curving rim of the world, and although Old Cunarder hands insisted that that was the way that crossings, rather than mere vulgar cruises, should be, Cunard is now owned by the mother of all cruise companies, Carnival Corporation. And the job description of its toiling entertainment directors begins with the abhorrence of a vacuum. So the gym rumbles with massed treadmilling; the Canyon Ranch spa is packed with heavy massaging; the herbal sauna is crammed with oversized marine mammals (bipedal). In front of the two huge theatres, passengers line up by the statuary to hear a glamorous string trio of Ukrainian musicians dressed in miles of retro-ballgown satin taffeta give their all to "Jealousy"; or watch spirited young British actors throw themselves into greatest hits from "Romeo and Juliet" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; or listen to lecturers like me pontificating about Atlantic history.
In the Queens Room, a frighteningly accurate bust of the actual Queen Mary, the present Queen's grandmother—a human galleon who seemed to sail fully rigged through state ceremonies as lesser craft chugged contemptibly about her—surveys Gavin Skinner and Lydia Lim, the dance teachers, as they steer giggly novices through the samba, cha-cha, or foxtrot, the "walk-walk, side-together-side" contending with the unhelpful motion of the waves. On the parquet, middle-aged "gentlemen hosts" hired to squire single ladies through the dances glide their partners around with courtly grace. After being screened for ballroom-dancing prowess and other credentials of respectability, the gentlemen hosts sign on for at least two voyages, and pay a token sum for the privilege. But if Gordon Russell Cave, an impeccably turned-out widower, is any guide, the hosts see their work more as vocation than as vacation: the purveying of shipboard happiness. The moments Gordon recalled with most pleasure were those befitting a preux chevalier. One widow told him, after he had walked her back to her seat, that it was the first time she had danced since her husband's death, four years before. "I think it helped, that little moment," he said.
Nothing aboard the ship, though, gets as much exercise as the jaws. Indeed, devoted chowhounds could spend the waking hours of the entire six-day voyage doing little more than grazing the vessel, bow to stern, since, as the ship proudly boasts, there is somewhere to eat something twenty-three hours out of twenty-four. Not surprisingly, things British are done best. If fish and chips with mushy peas is your idea of spa food (and why not?), you'll not be disappointed at the ship's pub. And, come four o'clock, the Winter Garden is packed with tea parties gobbling cucumber sandwiches made of regulation-issue white-bread triangles, while a tristful harpist completes recollections of rainy afternoons trapped in British seaside palm courts, even though the trees here are fake.
Upmarket on the eighth deck, the Todd English restaurant pretty much lives up to the starry reputation of the chef of Boston's Olives by offering potato-and-truffle love letters, succulent braised short ribs, and the inevitable fallen chocolate cake. But the best food on board is probably to be had at the Chef's Galley, where, in the style of a celebrity-chef TV program, Sean Watier, an exuberantly wisecracking chef, talks a dozen or so diners through the preparation of the meal. As he was about halfway through a mango-and-crab salad, things started to get exciting in a Quentin Tarantino kind of way. Sean capped his demo about the importance of really sharp knives by gashing his thumb. Later, while he was blowtorching the crème brûlée, he was asked about problems of cooking in heavy weather and was about to offer a breezy reply when the answer came from a phantom guest who had been there all along—the Atlantic ocean, which lifted us all up in its big cat's-paw and unceremoniously set us down again. It was exactly the "heave and shudder . . . as of the breast of a man in deep sleep" that Evelyn Waugh has Charles Ryder sense in the midst of his transatlantic crossing in "Brideshead Revisited." "Either I am a little drunk," Charles's wife, Celia, says as the cutlery starts to slide, "or it's getting rough." For me, back in the cabin, on deck twelve, with the floor at a tilt, and the bed the only safe place to be, the two conditions seemed mutually and unhappily self-reinforcing.
Though huge "resort" ships like the QM 2 come with acres of deck, big picture windows, and balconies, they go to great lengths to allow passengers who may have mixed feelings about the ocean to ignore it. The planetarium, the casino, the umpteen watering holes, the golf simulator, the spa, the disco, the ballrooms, the unceasing frenzy of entertainment in big dark spaces are all designed to keep the seawater well out of the way and even out of sight. But on this night old man Poseidon, evidently assisted by Tritons with serious attitude, was crashing the scene. On the Beaufort wind scale of 1 to 12, this one, howling around the ship like a marine banshee, was a 10, eventually getting up to seventy miles an hour, which is not far short of hurricane force. Likewise, the motion of the sea is measured by a range going from Moderate through Rough to High, the last being well beyond Very rough. That night and much of the following day, our piece of the Atlantic was Very high, beyond which the only available term is Phenomenal, and by then your cabin is probably filling with water and men in tuxedos are ushering women and children to the boats.
As the mango-and-crab salad and I became unhappily reacquainted, the gale certainly seemed to be turning phenomenal. Everything that could fall in the cabin did so, including me. The Queen Mary seemed to be locked in a frenzied dance with the elements, the ship reaching and rising and then, on the crest of the churned water, going into a wicked shimmy, its sides shaking and jangling like a belly dancer on spliff, before sinking back voluptuously into the trough. Eventually, a message came over the P.A. system from the Officer of the Watch, whose voice, resembling that of a firm but fair English schoolmaster, had already established itself as authoritative. It was not reassuring: "Code Bravo, Code Bravo, Code Bravo." And then it added, "Control group to muster." True, it spoke without much inflection, as if reporting a cricket score from a sticky wicket. But since the same announcement had been made earlier that day, followed by the information that this was a practice, repeat practice, fire drill, a real Code Bravo was not what anyone wanted to hear in this situation. An hour later, the announcement "Stand down" was heard, and another announcement, a bit later on, referred to a "minor incident, now completely under control."
The thing about a crew of thirteen hundred—which includes, after all, masseurs, cabaret singers, and wine waiters—is that not all of them are trained, in the British merchant-marine tradition, to keep mum about trifling things like a fire at sea on a maiden voyage in the midst of a Force 10 gale. It was, I was assured, a teeny-weeny fire, just a razor socket burning up in a crew cabin. At the time, however, it certainly made an impression.
The next morning, the sea was still Very High, but Professor Schama, due to deliver a lecture at eleven-fifteen, was Very Low (and, for that matter, Very Rough). But I was billed to talk about the man who had given the very first lecture aboard a Cunarder, the Cambria, in August, 1845: the African-American author and orator Frederick Douglass. Douglass was en route to what turned into a triumphal lecture tour of Britain and Ireland and had been befriended by the Hutchinson Family Singers (Asa, Jesse, Abby, John, and Judson), from New Hampshire. Staunch abolitionists, the Hutchinsons had the inspired idea that Douglass might give a lecture on the iniquities of slavery, notwithstanding the fact that among the passengers were several slaveowners from Georgia and Cuba. Douglass—with mixed feelings, one suspects—agreed, subject to permission of the captain, the famously capable Charles Judkins. Judkins, as it happened, was a former slaveowner (perhaps a slave trader) who had seen the light, and was happy to oblige. Standing on the saloon deck, Douglass began to read from the brutal slave laws of the south, when, predictably, he was drowned out by heckling and threats of physical assault from the outraged slaveowners. The Hutchinsons weighed in with inspirational songs but, until Captain Judkins called for the bosun and vowed to put the rioters in irons unless they desisted, the situation looked ugly. The Captain's gesture amazed Douglass, who began his tour of Britain (as he would end it) with an unrealistically awestruck view of British racial tolerance. About Cunard, however, he felt less charitable on the return journey, also on the Cambria, in 1847, since it accepted his forty guineas and assured him that he would be accommodated in cabin class, only to demote him to steerage when he boarded, a scandal that made the correspondence columns of the Times and drew from Samuel Cunard himself a public guarantee that this sort of thing would not happen again.
Duty required that, unsteady or not, I offer this history to any hardy souls who managed to lurch and stagger their way to the theatre. But was there enough left of the lecturer to get the job done? A sympathetic program assistant, Penny Folliott, had the answer: "Try the injection." I did, and whatever was in the nurse's potent syringe not only banished the queasiness but effected a startling transformation, whimpering academic translated into approximation of Russell Crowe in "Master and Commander." The talk got delivered, seated, and diagonally. I slid a bit. But the audience slid with me.
The Atlantic had definitely got our attention; its illimitable breadth, the great kick of its kinetic energy registered in our groggy bodies. We offered it our sincere respects. All the seats in front of the big windows were now filled with people mesmerized by the immense opera of the deep gray swell, the rolling waves as bulky and meaty as elephants in a temper. Every so often, beside ladies doing watercolors, a particularly angry, torn-up wall of seawater would slap and hammer against the window.
After a day of respite, the Atlantic returned—another gale, less brutal, but serious enough for deck joggers to be ushered inside by the crew. Shuffleboard was postponed again. Quoits were out of the question. But by this time most of us had got our sea legs and had learned to respect the motion of the ocean, moving with it. Foxtrot was recommenced in the Queens Room, and disco caught a new beat. For that matter, the towering ship itself seemed to be having a ball, breezing ahead to the rough music of the wind and the swell. And as the QM 2 forged along, so it became, for most of the passengers, no longer a floating resort hotel drifting innocuously into Caribbean harbors under postcard skies. This one, we told ourselves, appropriating some of the credit for its performance, was a liner, made for crossing, not cruising. "Oh, the passengers would like it," Commodore Warwick said, smiling, "if I told them that was the worst weather I'd ever sailed in, but . . ." The smile continued; the sentence didn't. He wasn't about to wreck our newfound talent for salty yarns. At the dockside celebrations in New York, he conceded that the crossing had been "turbulent."
When the Verrazano Bridge came looming through the gentle fog and the first tugs and pilots began to spout red-white-and-blue jets of water in dwarfish greeting, many of us were caught off guard by a sense of proprietorial affection. Emotions doubled. There was the catch in the throat as, right on cue, the morning sun picked out the Statue of Liberty and then travelled from plinth to torch with telegenic precision; there was the flood of memory, the empathy—even among the Queens Grill high rollers—with the destitute millions who had come this way through their own storms and stresses; and the jolt of recognition, as we made the turn up the Hudson, that this, too, had been, and was still, America, perhaps the one that really mattered.
All that, I suppose, could have been predicted. What took us by surprise, as we were ushered by Lydia and Gavin, kitted up in smart gray disembarkation suits, to the immigration desks set up in the ballroom, was a valedictory urge to wish the ship well, and to try and find the words to tell others who might normally opt for Newark Airport and the seven-hour air tube to Heathrow that they might want to give the QM 2 a go; that, mirabile dictu, there are worse things than being made to sit down and fill the eyes with nothing but sky and rain and wind-whipped water as a hundred and fifty thousand tons of big ship does what it can to ride it at thirty-five miles an hour. In fact, there are few things better. ♦


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Yan, 57 y.o.
France, Nice
Isolde, 28 y.o.
Russia, Moscow
Lyudmila, 28 y.o.
Ukraine, Kyiv
Zhanna, 39 y.o.
Ukraine, Kyiv
Yana, 37 y.o.
Russia, Nizhny Novgorod
Lyudmila, 65 y.o.
Ukraine, Dnipr
Anna, 61 y.o.
Ukraine, Chernihiv
Taisiya, 45 y.o.
Belarus, Minsk
Pedro Jose, 44 y.o.
Spain, Almendralejo
Elena, 39 y.o.
Belarus, Minsk
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Network Security
- Your account information remains private
- You are protected from any unauthorized activity
- Multiple layers of redundancy ensures that your video data is adequately backed up
How We Protect You
Iveda's networks are protected 24 hours a day by industry leading network firewalls that block unauthorized entry.
Multiple Layers of Redundancy
Every critical network component within our network from hardware to utility lines has an equally redundant component to ensure service stability and up-time.
Constant Monitoring
Iveda's IT team maintains and monitors our internal network and access to all critical systems to make sure your accounts are safe and secure.
Technology Updates
To keep up with evolving online threats, Iveda has adopted proven industry standards for technology that protects your video data.
Our Methods
Secure Transmission
Providing secure transmission of data is similar to using a courier to bring a valuable and sensitive document from one person to another. When the courier arrives at the sender's place, he would normally be asked to verify his identity. Once doing so, the sender would decide if the courier is the one he claims to be, and if he can be trusted. If everything seems to be correct, the locked and sealed briefcase would be handed over to the courier, and he would deliver it to the recipient. At the receiver's end, the same identity procedure would take place, and the seal would be verified as "unbroken." Once the courier is gone, the recipient would unlock the briefcase and take out the document, which can now be read. A secure communication is created in the same way, and is divided into three different steps.
This initial step is for the user or device to identify itself to the network and the remote end. This is done by providing some kind of identity to the network/system, like a username and password.
The next step is to have this authentication authorized and accepted, i.e., to verify that the device is what it claims to be. This is done by verifying the provided identity with a database or list of correct and approved identities. Once the authorization is completed, the device is fully connected and operational in the system.
Network video manufacturers commonly define 3-tier password-protection levels within their products. Most network cameras, support 'anonymous user access' (by default), which means that in the absence of a password, the camera images are available to everyone with access to the network. At the viewer access level, you can set that only certain viewers with predefined passwords may be allowed to view live images or alter camera configuration. The third level of access is the operator. Defined operators would have access to not only the live images, but also control pan/tilt/zoom functions if the product has such a feature, and access to the product's Web interface to check on port statuses and configure events. The highest level of access is the administrator. Defined administrators would have full access to the system and be able to define users, set alarm ports and make changes to the system's settings.
Another security feature is IP address filtering, which allows only defined IP addresses to access the product.
The final step is to apply the level of privacy required. This is done by encrypting the communication, which prevents others from using/reading the data. The use of encryption could substantially decrease performance, depending on the implementation and encryption used.
Privacy can also be achieved by VPN:
VPN (Virtual Private Network)
A VPN creates a secure tunnel between the points within the VPN. Only devices with the correct "key" will be able to work within the VPN. Network devices between the client and the server will not be able to access or view the data. The tunnel will allow for multiple programs to communicate securely. The VPN network can reside within a normal company LAN (Local Area Network), and/or over public networks such as the Internet. With a VPN, different sites can be connected together over the Internet in a safe and secure way. VPN connection is commonly used by business travelers to access their corporate network, wherever they are; for instance, from a hotel room. A VPN tunnel can be more or less secure depending on how complex the "key" and the configuration are.
Protecting Single Devices
Security also means protecting single devices against intrusions, such as an unauthorized user trying to gain access to the unit, or viruses and similar unwanted items.
Access to PCs or other servers can be secured by using user names and passwords, which should be of at least 6 characters long (the longer the better), combining numbers and figures (mixing lower and upper cases). In the case of a PC, tools such as finger scanners and smart cards can also be used to increase security and speed up the login process.
To secure a device against viruses, worms and other unwanted items, it is strongly recommended to have a virus scanner of good quality with up-to-date filters installed on all computers. And operating systems should be regularly updated with service packs and fixes from the manufacturer. When connecting a LAN to the Internet, it is important to use a firewall. This will act as a gate keeper, and will block or restrict traffic to and from the Internet. It can also be used to filter information passing through the firewall or restrict access to certain remote sites.


text:
Bathroom store London-
Edwins Bathrooms
Edwins Bathrooms
17 - 26 All Saints Road
W11 1HA London
- Washbasins
- Toilets
- Bathroom furniture
- Vanity units
- Mirrors / Mirror cabinets
- Baths
- Mirror
Arrange an appointment
Arrange an appointment with the dealer
Find route
Calculate the route to the dealer
Collections on display
These collections are currently in the dealer's showroom. Please contact the dealer for more information on the collections on display. Our dealers will be happy to provide you with more information.
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Washbasins (9)
Toilets (4)
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As part of IRONMAN ongoing race development and improvements, the IRONMAN Austria-Kärnten in Klagenfurt will be using a "Rolling Swim Start".
This method of start has been introduced into several IRONMAN events across the globe with positive feedback and outcomes.
What is a rolling start?
Athletes will line up according to their realistic (!) predicted swim time (self-seeding) and every five seconds, we will send out eight athletes. It will take approximately 30 minutes to get the entire field across the swim start line.
In effect, this will create a "time trial" dynamic for the race and for the determination of the final results.
How does a rolling start work?
In the morning you have the opportunity to check your bike and your transition bags. After your final preparations in the transition area you are going to the swim start at the "Strandbad Klagenfurt". There you will have the possibility to warm up. Embark in time for the pre-start demarcated. Go to the box according to your estimated swim time. The posted signs and our volunteers show you the designated areas.
You don't have to tell us your estimated swimming time in advance. But please note that it is your personal advantage if you file you neither too fast nor too slow. So you avoid being passed by other athletes.
Your time begins to run when you walk over the timing mat. It's directly in front of the water. Whether you start at 6:50 am or at 7:10 am, you always have 2:20 hours for the swimming competition.
Please note once again:
The predicted swim time does not have to be communicated to the race officials in advance.
Why change to a rolling start?
Do moderate swimmers have any advantage by starting in the front part of the field?
No, it is quite the contrary. If a moderate swimmer starts in the front part of the field, she/he will be passed by hundreds of fast swimmers which poses a needless risk for all involved parties. The cut-offs stay the same (2h 20min swim) and all athletes with a finishing time of more than cut-off time do not appear in the results list.
Only in this way can the smooth and secure flow mainly at ensuring equal opportunities for all athletes!
Start times:
6:30 am Start Pro Male
6:32 am Start Pro Female
6:40 am Start Age-Grouper – Rollingstart
Any questions?
Please do not hesitate to contact our IRONMAN office:
Email: [email protected]


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"Terminator" star Arnold Schwarzenegger needed more than a fake mustache and ponytail to fool unsuspecting members at Gold's Gym in Venice, Calif.
But since his attempted prank was for a good cause, the former Governor of California can be forgiven for falling a little short in the disguise department.
Schwarzenegger's visit to the workout center was to raise awareness and money for the After-School All-Stars, a nationwide program that provides free mentorship, tutoring and activities to students from low-income families.
Donors who pledge $10 or more to the charity at omaze.com (the same site that offered the chance to win a date with George Clooney) will be entered for a chance to win a day hanging with the Schwarzenegger in Los Angeles. The winner and one friend will be flown to L.A. where they will have the opportunity to "ride a tank, work out and smoke cigars" with the "Conan" actor.
If that's not enough to entice fans of the former bodybuilding champ to make a donation, Schwarzenegger will match every dollar pledged during the campaign.
On the video posted to his YouTube channel, Schwarzenegger as Gold's Gym employee Howard sidles up to a woman on the treadmill and asks, "Hi, how's it going? How many miles you running?" After taking out her ear buds she stops and peers intently at the erstwhile workout legend. "Oh my God. Hi," she says with a smile of recognition.
Another woman lifting weights was not so quick to see through the charade. "You look so familiar to me," she says after Schwarzenegger offers some tips on feeling the "burn."
"I wanted to have a little fun and raise money for a good cause, so I went to Gold's Gym in Venice in disguise," Schwarzenegger wrote alongside the video. "You can help! Please enter for a chance to ride with me on my tank and do some lifts together."
Schwarzenegger has been involved with After-School All-Stars since the early 1990s and continues to serve as honorary chair of the board. Other celebrities aligned with the charity include Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Jackie Chan, Kobe Bryant and Common.
Schwarzenegger's next big screen outing is "The Expendables 3," which is due to hit theaters on Aug. 15.


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The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the writing team for series four of Torchwood has been selected by Executive Producer and Lead Writer Russell T Davies.
- John Shiban
John Shiban is an Emmy Award nominated American television writer and producer. He has worked on The X-Files and its spin-off The Lone Gunmen, Smallville, Legend of the Seeker and Breaking Bad.
- Doris Egan
Doris Egan is an American screenwriter, producer, and writer. She has worked on Smallville, Dark Angel, and House.
- Jane Espenson
Jane Espenson is an American television writer and producer who has worked on both situation comedies and serial dramas. She is perhaps best known for her five-year stint as a writer and producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, work for which she shared in a Hugo Award, and as showrunner for Caprica.
- John Fay
John Fay is a British television writer who wrote two episodes of Torchwood, Children of Earth. His work includes episodes of Clocking Off, Blue Murder and Robin Hood. Fay spent several years on the writing staff of Coronation Street, and created the three-part ITV drama series Mobile.


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The Excavator
Saman Mohammadi"Take it to the wilderness
The Excavator
August 26, 2011
Into the jungle sun
Lookin' for the voice of reason
Inside this babylon."
- Jefferson Starship, from the song "Layin' It On The Line."
"The truth would certainly do well enough if she were once left to shift for herself. . . .Errors, indeed, prevail by the assistance of foreign and borrowed succors. But if Truth makes not her way into the understanding by her own light, she will be but the weaker for any borrowed force violence can add to her."
- John Locke, as quoted in the book, "Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition," by John Durham Peters.
"But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
- Andrew Marvell, a 17th-century English poet and Parliamentarian.
"Sixty three years ago right now I was aboard a ship, and I was heading to a place called Iwo Jima. And I led a division of men into combat, and over half of them were wounded or killed so that they could give you people liberty and freedom and justice for all. Now wake up."
- American WWII Veteran, from a speech at a City Council in February 2008.
"It is going to be absolutely horrible. We're going to have to watch the murderers, the social engineers who've done the attacks, grandstand as our saviours.
And as the public gets scared during a depression and during a war, they think you're going to go along with their takeover of America.
And it's time for every radio talk show host, every police officer, every pastor, every college professor, every school teacher, every doctor, every lawyer, every auto mechanic, every farmer, every rancher, every factory worker . . I don't care what you do. . to count the cost, to face history, to realize that while we've been tuned into a false reality of football and celebrity, and all the rest of it that people are such experts on, that reality has been going on all around you.
While you're busy out in the middle of a field watching a television, and you think that television is the only thing in the world, you didn't hear the wolves howling.
Now, the wolves are all around you, in the dark, and you can look out from the glow of the T.V. in the middle of this field we're in collectively, and see their eyes and hear their growling.
And the television is telling you, "Those are friends. Lay down. Show them your neck, they want to lick it. . .Lay down, the wolves are here to help." And many Americans are going, "Okay, alright, here's my neck." And we watch as Americans are grabbed by the wolves and drug out into the night."
- Alex Jones, speaking on his radio show on August 22, 2011.
"They're setting up the stage for violence in this country."
- Rep. Ron Paul, when asked about martial law in America.
"I wish to make people aware, so that they do not squander and dissipate their lives. The aristocrats assume that there is always a mass of men lost. But they hide the fact, they live withdrawn and behave as though these many, many men did not exist. This is what is godless in the superiority of the aristocrats; in order to have things their own way they do not even make people aware.
But I do not want that. I wish to make men aware of their own ruin."
- Søren Kierkegaard, (The Soul of Kierkegaard: Selections from His Journals. 2003. Dover Publications Inc: Mineola, New York. Pg. 118).
The presstitute media's censorship of Ron Paul, Alex Jones, the anti-Federal Reserve awakening, the American liberty renaissance, and the worldwide campaign for 9/11 truth and justice is fruitless.
A new political paradigm is emerging in America and other Western countries, and the treasonous power elite can't do anything to stop it. A great sea change in the opinions, sentiments and thoughts of the people about the legitimacy of the war on terror, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the global banking system is inevitable.
The tide of truth is rising higher, and political earthquakes are in the making.
The claim made by Western governments that post-9/11 anti-terrorism legislation is designed to protect citizens from Islamic terrorists and domestic terrorists is losing public support because it is a lie. Shadow networks within the CIA, Mossad and MI6 are the leading practitioners of terrorism, the most shameless engineers of chaos, and the biggest mass murderers of innocent civilians.
People know our governments are as guilty as sin when it comes to violating international law, committing acts of false flag terrorism like 9/11 and 7/7, engaging in mass brainwashing, and stealing public funds, all of which amount to an organized war on freedom, truth, peace and justice.
Molly Secours, a writer and filmmaker, raised the question, "Where are the Voices of Reason and Dissent?" on November 9, 2005. She wrote:
"In a democracy, the voices of dissent are imperative. Without them we are doomed to lapse into an unconscious sleepy obedience that ultimately results in domination and usually death and destruction.
Thank God for the Rosa Parks of the world and the many voices of reason and dissent who shed light on wars and injustice.
They are certainly present, we just don't get to hear from them very often."
Secours couldn't have been more right. Voices of reason and dissent are drowned out in totalitarian and closed societies by the rotten political establishment. In America, the clever trick that the traitors in power use against the American people is equating dissent with conspiracy theories and mental disorders.
Read the article by the treasonous media organization Media Matters called "Attack On DHS Travels From Conspiracy-Monger Alex Jones To Fox News," to see the word tricks that establishment pundits use to advance the political narratives and agendas that they support.
The writer of the article says Alex Jones, who is one of the most courageous truth-tellers of our age, is "conspiracy mongering" for commercial gain. Alex turned down high-paying jobs at radio stations, and yet the shameless liars at Media Matters falsely claim that he is after money.
The charge of conspiracy theorist is so baseless that I'm surprised people still believe it has any credence whatsoever. Another smear that is directed against truth-tellers is the "fringe" label. This smear has been used against presidential candidate Ron Paul, who is not fringe at all but is in fact a popular and transcendent political leader who can unite republicans, democrats and independents against the tyrannical establishment.
The truth is that the mainstream media, Congress, both political parties, Wall Street, and the White House are fringe, not Ron Paul, Alex Jones and other brave truth-tellers. These heroic voices represent a large majority of the American people who want a second American revolution, the restoration of the U.S. constitution, the destruction of the treasonous Federal Reserve System, the termination of the illegitimate war on terror, and an end to the criminal occupations in the Middle East.
The fight for American independence from the global banking empire and freedom worldwide will not be won easily. But there is hope.
Imagine if Ron Paul decided to sell out like the rest of the whores in Washington and didn't stay true to his spirit.
Imagine if Alex Jones never got angry and didn't start his own media empire to bring down the evil empire that is ruining America.
Imagine if all the people bought the propaganda that those who tell the truth about the 9/11 attacks and the Federal Reserve are just crazy conspiracy theorists.
America and the world is lucky that Ron Paul never sold out, that Alex Jones got angry, and that millions of individuals joined them in the fight for freedom, justice, peace and truth.
America and the world is lucky that Ron Paul never sold out, that Alex Jones got angry, and that millions of individuals joined them in the fight for freedom, justice, peace and truth.


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Home > Patients & Visitors > Health Library > Closed-Angle Glaucoma: Medicines to Avoid
If you have narrow drainage angles or you have long-term (chronic) closed-angle glaucoma, you may need to avoid medicines that widen (dilate) the pupil, the dark spot in the center of the eye. Having wide pupils when you have these other problems may cause acute closed-angle glaucoma. This is a dangerous condition that requires medical care right away to prevent lasting damage to your eye.
Some examples of prescription and over-the-counter medicines that may dilate the pupils are:
Talk with your eye specialist about medicines that you should not take.
Other Works Consulted
American Academy of Ophthalmology (2010). Primary Angle Closure (Preferred Practice Pattern). San Francisco: American Academy of Ophthalmology. Also available online: http://aao.org/ppp.
Current as of: May 5, 2019
Author: Healthwise StaffMedical Review: Adam Husney MD - Family MedicineChristopher J. Rudnisky MD, MPH, FRCSC - Ophthalmology
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May 5, 2019
Healthwise Staff
Medical Review:Adam Husney MD - Family Medicine & Christopher J. Rudnisky MD, MPH, FRCSC - Ophthalmology
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Bank of England Governor Mark Carney dampened expectations on the timing of the first UK rate hike innearly a decade yesterday, predominantly citing the recent slowdown in China and other emerging market economies as the main reason. "The outlook for global growth has weakened since the August inflation report," the BOE's Monetary Policy Committee said in a statement. The BOE highlighted that it is, by no means, in any rush to raise its benchmark interest rate and v…Continue Reading →
As predicted, the Federal Reserve kept short-term interest rates unchanged at near zero yesterday but signalled that a rate hike before the turn of the year remains a possibility. As was the case in September, the central bank's accompanying statement did not explicitly mention concerns over the Chinese economy as a reason not to raise rates for the first time in a decade. Last month they cited turbulent financial markets and uncertain economic developments overseas as reasons fo…Continue Reading →
Chinese shares were up overnight as GDP and retail figures beat expectations, helping to hide the fact that economic growth levels fell below 7% for the first time since 2009. China's economy expanded quicker than economists forecast in the 3rd quarter as the services sector propped up the world's second-largest economy. This suggests that monetary and fiscal stimulus is keeping Premier Li Keqiang's 2015 expansion target within reach ahead of his historic UK visit tod…Continue Reading →
While there is little doubt the BoE vote will result in an unchanged verdict on rates this afternoon, economists will be looking for signs in the minutes as to when the gradual policy tightening might begin. There are a few experts predicting another BoE rate setter is set to join Ian McCafferty to vote for a 25 basis-point hike this time around, however most will be looking for stronger indicators regarding the UK economy in the coming months before doing so. Inflation remains t…Continue Reading →
Oil prices have flattened over the last couple of days, halting a huge sell-off from Monday; investors are still cautious as fears remain over China's economic slowdown and hefty global supplies. The sell-off on Monday came after news that Chinese industrial profits slumped in August, with the biggest drops concentrated in producers of coal, oil and metals. Commodity and equity traders will get more evidence about China's economic performance tomorrow when final manufactu…Continue Reading →
The Federal left short-term interest rates unchanged ending weeks of debate whether it was the right time to end an era of near-zero rates in acknowledgment of the ever improving US economy and job market. A majority of Fed officials still believe the central bank will raise rates before the end of 2015, but the central bank showed a little less conviction with the number of officials in favour slipping to 13 from 15 back in June. Janet Yellen noted in a press conference after th…Continue Reading →
Speculation and anticipation is growing and not just among economists, as Fed Chairman Janet Yellen is running out of excuses not to raise interest rates at next week's Federal Reserve policy meeting. It seems that just about every indicator is saying a move would cause government bonds and the equity market little disruption but the debate remains whether the US economy has recovered sufficiently to allow the tightening of monetary policy to begin. Investors and the public…Continue Reading →
The US Dow Jones Index dropped over 1000 points on the open today amid extreme volatility in the markets as the Shanghai Composite Index finished it's trading session down 8.5% at 3209.91. The slowdown in the Chinese economy is having huge repurcussions not only in equities which have seen a massive correction across the board in commodities too. Both Europe and the US are feeling the heat; FTSE100 is currently down 4.5%; CAC down 7% & Dax off 6%. US Crude Oil has extende…Continue Reading →
The PBoC's overnight move to weaken its national currency, the RMB (Chinese Yuan), shows a significant shift in policy. They confirm they are to play a greater role going forward in the management of the exchange rate, sending ripples through the foreign exchange market. The move certainly comes at an opportune time for them following a series of weak macro trade data out of the country recently; exports have tumbled 8.3% in July from a year earlier and there has been a severe sl…Continue Reading →
The Federal Reserve kept interest rates at near zero once more last night but continued to fuel the ever intensifying fire of speculation concerning when the first rate hike in nine years will be. Chairman Janet Yellen primed the markets in her Statement with positive US economy sentiments, primarily citing progress in the US job market as the main instigator. The US unemployment rate has decreased from 10% in 2009 to 5.3% in July of this year. Yellen's wording of 'hiring g…Continue Reading →
After sliding on Friday Gold took massive dive overnight, plunging as much as 5.5% in morning trading, hitting a low of around 1072. This dragged a majority of commodities the same way as the dollar strengthened across the board as investors focus on the timings of a US rate rise. It was the first time Gold traded below $1,100 since early 2010 and its lowest mark since November 2009. Other precious metals subsequently followed suit; platinum down 3.8%, silver 1.8% and palladium trading…Continue Reading →
After a marathon 17 hour session of negotiations, Greece has finally reached a deal with its creditors; here's what we know so far: *The deal will unlock €82-86bn of funds for Greece - that's enough to keep it going for another three years *There will be no Grexit - European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker made that much clear *Greece will have to transfer €50bn of assets to a new fund, although it'll be based in Athens, rather than Luxembou…Continue Reading →
The man who shocked us all last week calling the surprise Greek Referendum, the then Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis' promptly resigned this morning despite the vote coming in as a resounding 'No' to accepting their creditors' reform proposals. He actually initially announced that he would only resign should the Greek public vote 'Yes' thus the result and his departure leave analysts and everyone else alike even more 'in the dark' a…Continue Reading →
The latest figures from the British Banking Association show that mortgage approvals reached a 24 month high in May. In the run up to the General Election April, the risk of an unknown coalition and a mansion tax slowed housing demand. Post-election, with a Conservative majority and interest rates still at 0.50%, buyers are back in force. May mortgage approvals edged up to 42,530 from 42,020 in April, the highest outturn since March 2014. The latest data supports the view of a reaccele…Continue Reading →
The Bank of England minutes for the MPC meeting ending on the 3June recorded that the committee voted unanimously (9 – 0) to leave interest rates unchanged at 0.50% and asset purchases (QE) at £375bn. Lower inflation is likely to dissipate, which is in line with previous comments from Mark Carney comments that the slowdown in inflation was transitory due to the sudden fall in energy prices. Any change from the MPC member voting from 9-0 would be seen as a signal that monetary pol…Continue Reading →


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the video only lasts 38 blocks, but the lights were near-green for 40, honest
Along the way, I also saw these relatively new buildings that are part of a school. By "relatively new," I mean, since the light rail was constructed, and also since g00gl3 maps took photos of it. That's the light rail power supply running across the top of the photo. It's 750V DC which is converted by an ETRIS S2000 3-phase onboard traction inverter to 3x533V AC at 1200Hz and a nominal 500 A to make those puppies hum.
|Earth and Jupiter not to scale. Relative orbits also not to scale. Moons of Jupiter and Earth: location unknown.
On g00gl3, it's just an empty lot. Now, though, it's Earth, and Jupiter. Cool! I never had buildings like that in high school. I wonder if they banish the weird kids to the Jupiter building. That's where I would have hung out. Earth is boring. If they had given me a beanbag chair near the Great Red Spot, a Walkman, and a good book, I would have been set. If there's any logic to it, they teach Earth Sciences in Earth, Geology, Weather, Geography, etc, and Astronomy, Cosmology, Astrobiology, Physics, etc in Jupiter. That's if there's any logic to it. In fact, they probably teach Music and Statistics in Jupiter, and Art and Shop in Earth. Because there's rarely any logic to it. The way school budgets are currently, they probably had to sell the Great Red Spot space for a Coca Cola ad.
Finally, check out this video of a light rail train passing me as I was waiting to to turn left at a light. I was not surprised by its approach, since the light, the sound of the train coming, and its pleasant little beep beep all let a cyclist aware of his surroundings know that a train was coming. Still, the street-level light rail train is up close and personal, isn't it? I was more worried about getting the right angle on those rails with my skinny tires as I turned. Get up. Go ride.


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Well, things never seem to go as planned! Poor Brian is rushing off to our nearest Sam's, which is 30 minutes away, to return our travel DVD player. We finally broke down and bought twin DVD players for the car so that our long trip tomorrow won't seem so long! But they forgot to include the car adapter. After spending 30 minutes on hold with the customer service rep while they checked to make sure they had one in stock, Brian is off and running. I know we'll be thankful tomorrow, but for now it's just irritating. So I should really get off the computer and finish packing! Four a.m. is going to come very early.
Oh, and I just discovered that somehow Camden's wool Gap Christmas sweater made its way into the washer and dryer. Needless to say, he won't be wearing it for Christmas.
We opened presents tonight, and Camden was ecstatic about his Hot Wheels set. We might as well not have even bothered with anything else once he saw that!
Okay, saying goodbye for the second time today! :)
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Missing parts!
Posted by Melissa at 8:43 PM
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