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Debs Bring Pride to the Community
It's fitting that our coverage of the Owl Club's 57th Debutante Ball should appear on Father's Day. The 33 honorees, fresh from their high school graduations and preparing for college, are sources of pride not just for their dads but for the entire community.
As many of the guests at the ball observed: These young ladies have accomplished more in 17 or 18 years than a lot of people have in a lifetime. More importantly, they understand the concept of playing it forward. Almost to a person, the Class of 2008 has mentored those who follow, providing living examples of the good that can come to those who study hard and live by the Golden Rule.
The debutantes presented at a ceremony held at the Marriott City Center were:
Elizabeth Chantel Adair, daughter of Marilyn A. Shelton and a graduate of Overland High School. She plans to attend Tougaloo College. At Overland, Elizabeth was a Link Crew leader, recipient of the AVID Award, a member of the track and field team and on the honor roll. She serves on her church usher board and volunteers at the Medical Center of Aurora. Her escort: O'Brian Terrell Brooks.
Adrienne Martie Elizabeth Bauduit is the daughter of Pamela Denise Tims-Bauduit and the late Harold S. Bauduit. She was student body president at Boulder High School and presided over the Colorado High School Activity Association. Adrienne also earned a Daniels Fund Scholarship and will use it to attend Spelman College, where she will enter a dual-degree engineering program with Georgia Tech as the first step in her goal of attending medical school and becoming an endocrinologist. Her escort: Joe Bernard Hall.
Siera Christina Bruce is the daughter of David Wayne Bruce and Necole Cecila Burnette. A member of the East High School drama team, Siera volunteered for Special Olympics Colorado and was cited for academic excellence by state Sen. Chris Romer. Her college choice is Sacramento State University in California. Her escort: Leonard Rashad Howard.
Maya Renne Burchette, also an East High alum, is the daughter of David L. Burchette and Loretta E. Pineda. Maya served on East's student council from 2006-08 and was on the Principal's Honor Roll from 2004-07. She was recognized as an Outstanding Senior Girl by Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, was involved in the Logan School mentoring program and gave time to Volunteers of America. Maya will attend Howard University. Her escort: Shaquille Najee Turner.
Christine N. Chitechi, daughter of Dr. Gilbert Chitechi Anangwe and Margaret K. Anangwe, is a graduate of Overland High School and will attend the University of Colorado at Denver. A member of the National Society of High School Scholars, Christine attended the Lead American Convergence and took part in the Arts 'n' The Hood summer camp. She volunteers at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center and was a member of Future Business Leaders of America. Her escort: Dexter Kemp.
Ashley Sanford Dennis, daughter of Arden Glenn Dennis and Andrea Dee Dennis, is a graduate of Eaglecrest High School where she was class valedictorian at commencement. She also received an Honors Diploma at graduation and was named Outstanding Senior. Ashley was a member of the Black Student Alliance and the Literary Student Society, the National French Honor Society and the National English Honor Society, and volunteered at Summit Elementary School. She will attend the University of Denver. Her escort: Arden John Dennis.
Deann Nicole Williams, daughter of Dwayne Ivory Williams and Deidre Ann Williams, is a graduate of Eaglecrest High School, where she served on the student council and was president of the Black Student Alliance. She has received academic letters and appointments to the Principal's Honor Roll and National Honor Society. Deann also received the Leadership for Tomorrow award and has volunteered on behalf of the March of Dimes and Food Bank of the Rockies. She will attend New Mexico State University. Her escort: Adrian Jerome Blackman.
Veronica Lavon Gilbert, daughter of Felix Gilbert and Kotane Gilbert, is a graduate of George Washington High School where she was active in Destination Imagination, Operation Nehemiah and the Fashion Club. An elementary school tutor and member of the National Honor Society, Veronica graduated as an AKA Scholar, Zeta Phi Beta sorority scholar and Kaiser Permanente Scholar. She will attend Xavier University. Her escort: Zachary Michael Pryor.
Elise Michelle Goodgaine, a graduate of Legacy High School, is the daughter of Maurice Goodgaine and Patty Dutch Goodgaine. She graduated with honors that include the Presidential Community Service Award, two academic letters, numerous athletic letters and a five-star diploma. Elise was active in student government and Leaders Challenge, and was honored at the Tribute to Black Youth put on by Denver chapter of The Links, Inc. She'll attend the University of Colorado-Boulder. Her escort: Valerian Riddle.
Mayia Grimes, daughter of Stanley Ray Burrell and Jeri Grimes-Burrell, graduated from Smokey Hill High School, where she was a teaching assistant, on the soccer team and belonged to the Clay Club. Mayia received an All-Schools art competition award and volunteered for the March of Dimes and the Invisible Children's Foundation. She plans to attend Westee Culinary College. Her escort: Mahad Fahieh.
Kamaria Gyashi Hakeem, the daughter of Ahmed Hakeem and Donna Norris, is a graduate of Denver School of Science and Technology. An enthusiastic volunteer, Kamaria has given time to the People's Fair, Denver Kids and Concerts for Kids. She has also counseled her peers about attending ethnic colleges. Kamaria has been honored by Delta Sigma Theta sorority and earned memebership in the National Honor Society. She plans to attend Colorado State University. Her escort: Negou Aman Seid.
Erin Biyan Hamad, daughter of James Craig Turner and Lodene McCray-Turner, graduated from Eaglecrest High School with an honors diploma and National Merit Award. At Eaglecrest, she was in the Photography Club, Black Student Alliance and World of Difference. She plans to attend the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her escort: Chauncey Dewayne Williams.
Carissa Sierra Hampton,daughter of Jessie Gaines Jr. and Rachel Gaines, is a graduate of Overland High School, where she was a cheerleader, Link Crew leader, member of the honor roll and recipient of an Exceptional Student Award. Carissa is a Now Faith youth minister and was recognized as an Outstanding Senior Girl by Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She plans to attend Colorado State University with the eventual goal of opening an after-school dance program to help children avoid unhealthy temptations. Her escort: Jamai Kaisseau Bowen.
Alysha Marie Harlan, daughter of Edward James Harlan Sr. and Jerry Ann Valentine-Harlan, was a member of the East High School poms squad and served as student manager of the school football team. She also was on the honor roll. Alysha participated in the Boys and Girls Clubs, the 2007 Nike 5K Run, a school supply giveaway to needy children, and mentored elementary school students. She will attend Hampton University. Her escort: Marqui Alexander Hill.
Lyness Lynese Hill, daughter of Beverly K. Hill, is a graduate of Denver School of Science and Technology, where she was president of the student government and captain of the varsity volleyball team. She will attend Colorado College on scholarships from the Daniels Fund and Rotary Club. In high school she was a Mock Trial participant and an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority Outstanding Senior Girl. Her escort: Joshua Jimmie Altman.
Eboni Larai Hobley, daughter of Emmett Hobley and LeChelle Yvonne Hobley, also is a graduate of Denver School of Science and Technology, where she was a member of the National Honor Society. She is also a Daniels Fund scholarship recipient and will use it to attend North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Eboni graduated with a Core Values Award and the Most Artistic & Creative Artist Award for Engineering Excellence. Outside the classroom, Eboni was a Montview Academy tutor, a childcare home assistant and a volunteer at Sunrise Assisted Living. Her escort: DeAundre W. Davis.
Taneyia Michelle Hoskins, daughter of Michael Lawrence Hoskins and Tayich Michelle Hoskins, was a cheerleader at Montbello High School, where she also served as first anchor for the Warrior Newscast and had membership in the National Honor Society. She was a Mile High Scholar in 2007 and graduated with a CU Succeed Scholarship. She plans to attend Colorado State University. Her escort: Marvin Lee Moore.
Ramia Sherran Hunter, daughter of Stephen Lyles and Phyllis Charles, Ramia is a graduate of George Washington High School, where she was in the National Honor Society, Gospel Choir, Creative Writing Club, Sudoku Club and served as a Link Leader. An Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority Outstanding Senior Girl, Ramia plans to attend Spelman College. Her escort: Chevale Manuel Cain.
LaKeisha Monique Jefferson, daughter of Thomas Edward Jefferson and Valerie Katrina Little. LaKeisha graduated from George Washington High School's prestigious International Baccalaureate program. She was included in Who's Who Among American Students, was designated an Outstanding Senior by Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, belonged to the Lady Patriots Dancers and had membership in the National Honor Society. She'll attend Spelman College. Her escort: Ashaun Dominique Drumgo.
Brittni N. Johnson, daughter of Andre James Johnson and Tommy E. Caner, Brittni was a cheerleader and member of the Junior ROTC Honor Platoon at George Washington High School. She belonged to the African-American Culture Club and was recognized as an Outstanding Senior by Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She plans to attend Clark Atlanta University. Her escort: Stephan Gater.
Rebekah Renee Johnson, daughter of Barbara Johnson and a graduate of East High School. Rebekah's skill as a dancer landed her admission to the Juilliard School; her academic prowess resulted in scholarships from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Sachs Foundation, as well as a Wilma Taylor Youth Scholarship. She also was a 7News Academic All-Star. Rebekah has been a George Washington Daycare volunteer, a Toys for Tots volunteer and participant in the National Council of Negro Women. Her escort: Otis Alex Pratt.
Sierra Dominique Jones, daughter of Derrich R. Dunson and Pamela Elaine Jones, served as Head Girl at Montbello High School in 2008. She also was on its track and field team from 2004-08 and was named Most Valuable Player. Sierra also was a cheerleader, serving as captain in 2004, 2005 and 2008, and placing third in regional competition during her sophomore year. Her extra-curricular activities include volunteering on a community clean-up crew and belonging to Montbello's Theater Club. Sierra will attend CU-Boulder. Her escort: Nathaniel Edmon Nekson Jr.
Francine N. Kabongo, daughter of Jacqueline Kabongo, was on the honor roll at John F. Kennedy High School. She helped raise money for children with the HIV virus in Kenya and belonged to the Cultural Commander Club. Francine will attend CU-Boulder. Her escort: Jean-Paul Kabongo.
Cenea Maree Kemp, daughter of Rodrick L. Kemp and Helen R. Kemp, was an accomplished tennis player at George Washington High School, where she was president of the prestigious Iternational Baccalaureate program and on the honor roll. Cenea, who also was a Mile High Scholar, received the Charlie and Ira Brown Award for Leadership and Sportsmanship and the Arthur Ashe Je. Leadership Award. She coached tennis, took part in the Harvest Run and was in Destination Imagination. She'll attend Colorado State University. Her escort: Leonard Andrew Quincy Dixon.
Allena Nicole Hodge McDonald, daughter of Jeffry Lee McDonald and Hjardist M. Hodge-McDonald, was Most Valuable Player on Bishop Machebeuf High School's 2007 softball team and was on the school's basketball team when it won the 3A state championship. She has volunteered for Habitat for Humanity and Big Brothers Big Sisters and received an Academic All-State Honorable Mention. Allena will attend the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. Her escort: Ryan Lee Sampson.
Assiyah Aliyyah Muhammad-Simmons, daughter of Martin Avery and Lennell Avery, is a graduate of George Washington High School and will attend Spelman College on scholarships from the Daniels Fund and Dedicated to Graduate. The grand champion of GW's Sudoku and Puzzle Club, Assiyah also belonged to the African American Culture Club, took part in the CU Pre-Collegiate and Scholars Program and served as president of the Denver Human Services Youth Advisory Board. Her escort: Emmanuel M. Ardaly.
Jordan Celeste Pettis, daughter of Richard Pettis and Debra Jones Pettis, is a graduate of Denver School of the Arts, where she was a National Honor Society member. Jordan was a Tribute to Black Youth honoree, and the recipient of the Good and Faithful Servant, Especially Me and Colorado Black Women for Political Action awards. She also participated in Peace Jam and the school orchestra. Jordan will attend Illinois Wesleyan University. Her escort: David Wardell Arterberry III.
Kia Wright-Jackson, daughter of Lonnie Tate and Kelli Tate, was senior class president and a cheerleader at Thomas Jefferson High School. A member of Park Hill United Methodist Church, Kia was a Hurricane Katrina disaster recovery volunteer. She will attend CU-Denver. Her escort: Dominique Devon Patterson.
Jourdan Elizabeth-Allena Sherman, daughter of Dallas Mozart Sherman and Judy Annette Sherman, is a graduate of Bishop Machebeuf High School, where she was vice president of Faces of Machebeuf and a cheerleader. Jourdan also belonged to the Delta Gems, El Pomar Youth of Community Service and took part in the 9Cares Colorado Shares donation appeals. Her college choice is CU-Colorado Springs. Her escort: Darius Brown.
Jenna Marie Smith, daughter of Tracy Maurice Smith and JoAnn Smith, is a graduate of Faith Christian High School and plans to become a registered nurse. Toward that end, she has volunteered at three nursing homes and received an academic scholarship to Regis University, where she will study nursing. At Faith Christian, she played varsity volleyball and basketball, and made National Honor Society and National Christian Honor Society. She attends Grace Church in Arvada. Her escort: Daniel Hunter Templeton.
Sydney Marenike Odion-Smith, daughter of Shannon Michele Smith, is a graduate of East High School, where she was on the honor roll and active in the Black Student Alliance. She also took part in Peace Jam. Sydney will attend Hampton University. Her escort: Ebenezer Nii Yebuerh.
Victoria Devan Turnipseed-Henderson, daughter of Vaughn Dupree Henderson and Valerie Turnipseed Henderson, graduated from George Washinton High School as a member of its prestigious International Baccalaureate Program. A cheerleader coach and student council member, Victoria was a Mile High Scholar and designee in Who's Who Among High School Students. Her volunteer work includes John Amesse Elementary School, Komen Race for the Cure, Food Bank of the Rockies and Volunteers of America. She'll attend Tuskegee University. Her escort: Eric Jamal Coleman.
Leah Njeri Waruinge, daughter of John Waruinge Gitau and Eunice Wanjiku Gathunji, is a graduate of East High School, where she was on the honor roll, a member of the National Honor Society and the Key Club. Leah also volunteered at Warren Village. She'll attend Whitworth University. Her escort: Martin Gitari Kimoni.
Pictures taken at the Owl Club Debutante Ball can be viewed at denverpost.com/seengallery
Denver Post Society Editor Joanne Davidson can be reached at 303-809-1314 or email@example.com. She has also written a column about the Debutante Ball for the print edition of today's Denver Post. It appears in the Arts & Entertainment section.


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MCADCafe Editorial
Jeff Rowe
Jeffrey Rowe has more than 40 years of experience in all aspects of industrial design, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing. On the publishing side, he has written well over 1,000 articles for CAD, CAM, CAE, and other technical publications, as well as consulting in many capacities in the … More »
Tool Maker Survival – Part 2
March 14th, 2012 by Jeff Rowe
It's no secret that many tool makers have experienced and are still experiencing difficult times.
By necessity, the tooling industry is transforming from its roots as a craft to a future as a complex business. For this transformation to be successful, the tooling industry as a whole must realize that it is not just undergoing a temporary downturn in business, but a radical restructuring. This restructuring is evident in not only mergers and acquisitions (consolidation), but also in cooperative and collaborative practices taking place between small- and medium-sized tool shops. Additionally, new business models are being developed by innovative toolmakers for supporting their ability to compete today and tomorrow with just about anyone, regardless of geographic location.
Restructuring an industry, however, is an extremely tall order because it involves cultural change as much as it does developing new business models. One of the toughest cultural aspects that must be recognized and addressed is the fact that although tool making historically has been regarded as a craft requiring high degrees of skill, unfortunately, it is increasingly becoming regarded as a commodity.
What, a commodity with no real distinguishing characteristics?
To a certain extent, yes, (although there are notable exceptions) because what was done by hand and eye by a select number of tool shops can now be performed by just about any shop anywhere, due to technologies (3D solid modeling, rapid tooling and manufacturing processes, high-speed machining (HSM), etc.) available to just about anybody who chooses to employ them. There is a remedy to this commodity perception; however, by seeking out niches and having outstanding product, material, process and customer knowledge, and many North American tool shops are embracing these practices.
Like virtually all other aspects of manufacturing, integrating technologies in tool making assist in becoming more competitive, but in the end, it is the creativity and adaptivity of people (both on the production floor and in the management office) to an ever changing business climate, in concert with appropriate technologies, that will ultimately win the battle and more business.
Tags: CAD, CAM, CNC, die, manufacturing, molds, stamping, tool, tooling
2 Responses to "Tool Maker Survival – Part 2"

subset: commoncrawl


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The Really Bad Things In The Indie Film Biz 2012/
I can't always be optimistic. My apologies.
I did start this HopeForFilm / TrulyFreeFilm blog in the hopes that community action could improve things for us all. My original lists of 75 problems of indie film remain relevant, alas; and with this latest addition we are almost at 100 such challenges.
But don't be bummed, every problem is an opportunity, right? To quote the great Walt Kelly of Pogo: "We are surrounded by unsurmountable opportunities." We just need the will, the strength, the hope, and the power to change them. 12 Steps to progress?
I admit, even blessed by my last name, even I can't be always be optimistic, at least not if I want to also speak the truth. Sometimes throwing a brick is an act of love; you know what I mean? And granted I've thrown a lot of bricks at this indie film thing. What can I say? There's a great deal really wrong with our culture these days and a hell of a lot that can hurt our business. We have to work together if we want to build it better.
Let's get started and call these "opportunities" out (in no particular order); maybe they are not so unsurmountable after all:
- Filmmakers are unable to earn a living even when they consistently make successful films. Budgets have been dropping over the years -- and fees go down with them. Movies are few and far between in terms of years for their makers and without overhead deals or teaching gigs, it's hard for a creator to stay focused on film unless one is wealthy. And of course, net profits grow more of a joke daily (although they don't have to).
- The acquisition price for US rights hovers around 10% of the negative costs -- and no one complains. Sometimes doesn't it seem like a cartel where all buyers got together and said "let's just offer less"? If no one breaks rank, other than occasionally, all the buyers benefit -- and the only thing that can drive things is passion -- and the markets are supposed to be devoid of that. We are better than just letting a market race to the bottom. We should be able to recognize that the health of a culture is dependent on those that create and innovate being able to live a financially secure life.
- "Oops, I Farted" is the dominate "specialized" title of desire in these United States Of America. Art film be damned. The gaseous (fictional) title is courtesy of producer Mike Ryan who used it as shorthand for what he saw as most companies' acquisition strategy: the audience-friendly falsely-transgressive youth-focused star title. Art film is dead. Distribution companies don't just aim to give people what they want. They also lead as everyone knows that people generally like what they want (The White Hare syndrome). Where are we being led?
- This is the last year of celluloid. Here's HwdRptr on it. What could be a better signifier of this than the fact that Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this year. People are writing sad eulogies & fond remembrances. Nostalgia arrives in the same year as a passing these days.
- Although women directors proportionally make up the as many directors as men do in documentaries, they are not even close in narrative features. This is true even if the Sundance competition is proportionally represented in terms of gender for the first time ever. It sure took a long time to reach this point. And how much does anyone want to bet that it slips back fast? And what of all the festivals that are not so progressive? Sure, folks say it really needs to always just be the best films, and I am not arguing for quotas anyway, it's just that we need to acknowledge that the system does not grant the same opportunities to everyone. And further, equal opportunity has never come close to providing equal outcome . We need to further the discussion of why there are not more women, youth, and people of color in positions of power in the entertainment industry. After all they are the top consumers; it would make sense they know better what the people really want.
- Great reviews -- even in the most important newspaper in the world -- have no effect. It used to be that indie & art film was good business because it was completely review driven. You did not need to do much advertising if the critics gave you love. Those days are dead and gone. Two films I produced this year, DARK HORSE and STARLET got excellent NY Times reviews, but fat lot it did them. DARK HORSE even hit the trifecta with awesome reviews in the New Yorker and New York Magazine (Time and LA Times too), but fat lot of good that did. Granted there are many factors to a film's lack of real cultural impact, but still: it once was that reviews like those films were worth a huge weight in gold. And not they are not. Critics were once our guide through the cultural landscape -- and that is how we selected our films. Maybe it is time for a change, but for now we not only haven't found it, but losing what we once had makes it even harder to distribute what once was recognized as quality.
- The NY Times and others are going after the film and television tax credits. These tax credits create jobs and spread wealth. These tax credits keep our #2 national industry afloat. Film is a migratory industry and these jobs will flea if they suspect tax policy is not stable. When the press goes after something in such a one-sided fashion, we have to wonder what really is afoot. Further, we have to start to get serious about combatting such wrong-headiness. We need to truly quantify the spend nationally in indie film. If anyone wants to help fund this effort, I would love to undertake it at the San Francicso Film Society (hint, hint). For more on this, see #13 below...
- People don't go to the movies anymore -- particularly young ones. My tale of my 12 year old son ("I don't like movies, although I love many that I have seen") got quoted globally. Sure, I need the statistics to back this up, and I hope you send them to me, but we all recognize that youth attendance is dropping. Isn't it time we woke up from our dream, and started making films that had real youth appeal?
- Virtual print fees suck (VPFs are how digital projectors were both financed and indie films are shut out of national chains). We had to turn down dates for DARK HORSE due to them. Sure we have a DCP but between the traditional film rentals you a pay an exhibitor and the VPF most indie films can't expect to make money. Let's say you pay 60% to the exhibitor and anticipate only a $2K gross. That leaves you with $800. And guess how much the VPF generally is? So you get nothing. And it is not just in the US that the structure does not work. Ditto for the UK.
- Even worse than not having any transparency in VOD numbers, there is not enough outcry about the lack of transparency in VOD numbers. How can we make all of this public?
- VOD is still treated as a second-class citizen as VOD premieres can't get reviewed in major media outlets. I am thankful we have On Demand Weekly, but when will the major media publications get wise to it? And why is this not happening now? Is it that they fear they would then lose the advertising for the movies? Would they not be opening up a new advertising revenue source? What's wrong with this picture?
- The US reports box-office revenue figures but not attendance. How do we know how our business is and culture is doing if we can't get access to the numbers? When will we truly have transparency in all things? I thought information wanted to be free. We were promised jet packs.
- We have yet to begin a real effort to quantify the spend on indie film, both directly and indirectly. If we don't harvest the data our work generates, we don't control the power that is rightfully ours. Since the only thing that talks in this town is money, we need to be able to speak accurately about how we create jobs, benefit communities, and generate wealth.
- The Digital Disaster is digging in deep. There are many aspects of this, but we particularly bury our head in the sand when it comes to preservation of digital works. Recommended best practices for digital data is to migrate it from your drives every 3 months. If you don't do that, you can not be assured you will have an archival quality copy. As of five years ago, very few cinema makers finished their work on celluloid -- which could preserve work for over 100 years. So in the race for technology to save us, we traded 100+ years for 3 months. Hooray, right? Read this.
- To quote A.O. Scott of the NY Times: "By the end of this year, The New York Times will have reviewed more than 800 movies, establishing 2012, at least by one measure, as a new benchmark in the annals of cinematic abundance." Grand abundance is not a bad thing; choices are wonderful when you know they are there. I even argue from a cultural point of view, this abundance is splendid. The problem is we still haven't evolved our culture or business infrastructure to adapt for this change. We still rely on the methods of promotion, discovery, consumption, & participation that were built in the era of scarcity and control. Without pivoting our methods towards this new reality, more movies don't get seen, more movies don't recoup, and more frustration abounds. Items #1 & 2 on this list are a direct result of this one.
- The industry undermines the possibility of creating a sustainable investor class. We all know about the Harry Potter "net profits". I have to admit though Napoleon Dynamite was a surprise; how can the creators only get 12.88%? Even it being legal, it's not right. The best thing any of us can do for our industry, culture, and community is to make sure that those that create, as well as those that support them, are able to be rewarded for the work they create. We are so far away from this being a reality, yet I see and hear so little discussion about it. This should be an urgent matter on all of our leaders' lips.
- There is not enough money to teach media literacy in the schools. We are bombarding kids with content and yet we don't give them tools to decipher it. let alone defend themselves against it. It's great all the conversation that Zero Dark Thirty has stirred up, but it only underlines the support we must give our children.
- Blog commenting burn-out is the law of the land. Comments were my favorite things on blogs. I used to get a lot here. Now we get "likes" and tweets. I started blogging because it seemed to me to be a community building tool. When it is one sided it is not community. Maybe it is me. Maybe I am writing in a style that no longer encourages commenting. Or maybe it is the community itself. Or maybe all the comments just end up on the facebook page. Whatever it is, it was more vibrant when people participated.
- There is so little that reads as truthful in the press. It was so refreshing to read this interview with Terry Zwigoff on The Playlist because he told it as he sees it. And that is so rare. It is a shame. Imagine a world where people recognized it was okay to share how you felt -- oh what a wonderful world that would be.
- We limit culture by the limits of what we support. I got to make movies because a few folks recognized that although they didn't personally like my films, there not only were those that did, but also that my films were furthering the cultural discussions. The success -- and now necessity -- of the various film support labs for screenwriters, fiction directors, and doc directors are invaluable, but they are also limiting. American documentaries are generally all social issue, personal triumph, and pop culture surveys as that is what our support structures encourage. Ditto on the fiction tale of triumph over adversity. And I love all those forms, but there is so much out there that is still being overlooked. And we even neglect the commercial forms. Where are the labs for horror films or thrillers, the genres that actually work in the marketplace? Where are those that really are trying to advance the cultural dialogue? Is there a way we can start to pivot to widen our reach? This may sound like something minor to most, but I do think we are doing our culture and community by not supporting more of what the audience wants. Can this be a symptom of the gatekeepers thinking they know best? How can we give the community a bigger say in what gets advanced?
- The bifurcation of the have and have-nots, I mean the tentpoles and passionate amateurs, has created a possibility gap. Indie film was once a farm team for the studios. David O. Russel, Ang Lee, Quentin T., Spike Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, and many many more of our current greats all came through true indie work. The next wave is being deprived of access to all the colors on the palate. The drop out of the mid-range picture means that some of our greatest hopes for the future will never get to mix for the Atmos Sound System, will never get to play with something beyond the Cannon 5D camera, will never get the opportunity to build out a full story world architecture. We are going to limit our dreams of the future by not giving new waves of artists access to experiment with all the tools that are available.
- Narrative film, despite firmly embracing micro-budget limits, has no staged-financing structure yet implemented. Although I definitely want to do something about this, there are very little options available for filmmakers other than raising all their money upfront. Now, many may argue that is irresponsible to shoot a film without full financing in place, one only needs to look at the doc world to see the positive results from staged financing. Doc films have proportional representation in terms of gender in the directorial ranks; could this be related to staged financing? Since indie will always be an execution dependent art form, wouldn't it make sense to have a structure that allows for proof of principal?
- Investors have nowhere to turn to get better information regarding non-traditional film investment. When they can only turn to the agencies for "expert" advice, they only get one side of the story. Yes, they can hire high-priced consultants, armed with all sorts of numbers, but where do they usually find these consultants? Why from the agencies of course! The agencies have tremendous insight for sure, just as these consultants do, but it is hard for change to take hold, when all our advice comes from the same source. Imagine if we had a real investors' summit, led by folks outside of the business or power centers? Imagine if we had services in place to train new investors in specific areas of what might become their expertise. Imagine if we had the structures in place which allowed these same investors to collaborate across projects.
- Where are the leaders in indie film? I was very inspired by both Joana Vicente's & Keri Putnam's move into not-for-profit commitment. Without them taking a first step, I probably would not have been willing to put down my project-producing magic wand for a time, and focus on rebuilding infrastructure for a time. But frankly I expected many more at this point to be committed to giving more back. Those that have made a life time of non-profit counter-balance that a bit, but I expected more. I started the blog because I thought if I spoke up, others would too. There have been many positive contributions to the blog, and yes new leaders have emerged to some degree, but frankly I would have expected more producers, directors, executives, and screenwriters to step up and say that we have a tremendous opportunity before us and we best act on it or else that window will close. I still believe it to be true: if you are not on the bus, you are part of the problem. There may be 99 Problems but make it clear that you are not one.
Just remember: Lists like this only make the foolish despair. We can build it better together.
And if that is not enough to get you through the night, I did write a couple of antidotes. You can always read "The Really Good Things In The Indie Film Biz 2012"


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Tags: Dating
Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930.
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April 7, 2018
by Clare Briggs · June 7, 2019
Tags: Dating
Clare Briggs
Clare Briggs is a famous cartoonist who lived from 1875 to 1930.
April 7, 2018
[caption id="attachment_122971" align="aligncenter" width="593"] Jersusalem Embassy[/caption]
From the New York TimesFrom the New York TimesFrom the New York Times:
The Trump administration declared on Monday that the United States does not consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank a violation of international law, reversing four decades of American policy and removing what has been an important barrier to annexation of Palestinian territory.
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Breaking News: The Trump administration will stop treating Israel's West Bank settlements as a violation of international law, a step that may doom peace efforts with Palestinians https://t.co/k3eUdMFXy3
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 18, 2019
[caption id="attachment_184912" align="aligncenter" width="512"] Roger Stone at book signing[/caption]
Roger Stone was found guilty on all 7 charges he faced in his Washington, DC trial.
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Jurors have returned a guilty verdict on all of seven counts including five counts of lying to Congress, one count of witness tampering and one count of obstruction of a proceeding. Stone had pleaded not guilty and maintained his innocence throughout his trial in Washington, DC.
Prosecutors asked that Stone be remanded pending sentencing, citing his issues with abiding by court orders since his indictment. Stone's defense pushed back, arguing he has not broken the condition of his release.
Stone's sworn testimony in September 2017 before the House Intelligence Committee forms the basis for most of the charges in his seven-count indictment, which includes allegations he misled the committee on several key elements of their probe. Stone was also charged with witness tampering by urging his former associate, Randy Credico, to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights before the committee.
Roger Stone departs the courthouse for lunch during his trial, Nov. 13, 2019, in Washington, D.C.
With the closure of Stone's case, so ended another chapter in the special counsel's investigation. Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors investigated Russian interference during the 2016 election and President Trump's efforts to undermine their probe for nearly two years.
[caption id="attachment_322423" align="aligncenter" width="709"] Creator: Trikosko, Marion S., photographer; Related Name: O'Halloran, Thomas J. , photographer [Public domain][/caption]
The public impeachment hearings resume Friday morning, with former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch appearing before the House Intelligence Committee:
Yovanovitch was removed as ambassador in May after Giuliani and other Trump allies attacked her in television appearances and on Twitter, claiming she was disloyal to the Trump administration. In closed-door testimony in October, she told lawmakers that Giuliani worked in tandem with Yuriy Lutsenko, a former prosecutor in Ukraine, to allege she was standing in the way of investigations into supposed Ukrainian interference in the 2016 campaign and Burisma, the energy company that had employed Hunter Biden, the former vice president's son.
Although her Ukraine tour was supposed to end in 2020, in late April she was "abruptly told" to return to Washington "on the next plane." She did not know why she was being recalled and met with the deputy secretary of state, who told her Mr. Trump "had lost confidence" in her "and no longer wished me to serve as his ambassador." The secretary also told her there had been "a concerted campaign against" her, and there had been pressure to remove her since 2018.
Yovanovitch was also mentioned in Mr. Trump's July 25 call with the president of Ukraine. The president said she was "bad news" and "going to go through some things," according to the White House summary of the call.
Her removal and treatment by the administration rankled many officials in the State Department, one of whom resigned in September over the secretary of state's failure to publicly defend her.
The hearing can be viewed here and join the commentareum in discussing events as they unfold.Comment →
[caption id="attachment_322423" align="aligncenter" width="709"] Creator: Trikosko, Marion S., photographer; Related Name: O'Halloran, Thomas J. , photographer [Public domain][/caption]
The ratings are in for the first public impeachment hearings in 20 years:
It was just by a hair, but the debut of the impeachment hearings against Donald Trump yesterday beat Robert Mueller's testimony before Congress earlier this year …barely.
With a grand total of 13,098,000 Americans tuning in to watch the televised opening of the House Select Committee on Intelligence questioning on Wednesday, Ambassador William Taylor and Deputy Secretary of State George Kent topped the 12.9 million who saw the former FBI Director's circumspect stint in the hot seat on July 25.
Having said that with Nielsen numbers from Fox News Channel. MSNBC, ABC, CNN, CBS and NBC now in, the 10 AM – 3:30 PM ET hearing stumbled against another big ticket testimony. The Wednesday event, that the former Celebrity Apprentice host insists he didn't watch, was down a hard 32% from the audience that eyed pink slipped FBI Director James Comey's appearance before our elected representatives in June 2017.
Of note, Fox News lead all networks with 2.9 Million viewers, followed by MSNBC (2.7 million), ABC (2 million), CBS (1.9 million), CNN (1.85 million), and NBC (1.7 million). The number was close the the viewship of the Mueller testimony, and nearly 32% less than the 2017 testimony of James Comey, the highest-rated congressional testimony of the Trump Administration.Comment →
[caption id="attachment_322423" align="aligncenter" width="709"] Creator: Trikosko, Marion S., photographer; Related Name: O'Halloran, Thomas J. , photographer [Public domain][/caption]
The first public hearings in House Democrats' Impeachment inquiry are set to kick off today in the House Intelligence Committee.
The House impeachment inquiry is set to burst into public view on Wednesday, as two key witnesses who raised concerns about efforts to pressure Ukraine will testify in the first open hearings of the probe.
Bill Taylor, the top diplomat in the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, will appear before the House Intelligence Committee to face questions from lawmakers and committee staff.
Both have already testified behind closed doors, and told members about they became increasingly alarmed that a delay in military aid to Ukraine was tied to the country launching investigations that would benefit the president politically.
Who is Bill Taylor?
William Taylor is the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, the chargé d'affaires. A West Point graduate and former U.S. Army officer, he earned a Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam, and has been a public servant for more than 50 years.
He has served in a variety of diplomatic roles under presidents of both parties, including a stint as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009.
In his closed-door testimony in October, he said U.S. aid to Ukraine had been explicitly tied to Ukraine's willingness to investigate Mr. Trump's political rivals. He also spoke of an "irregular channel" of policymaking including Giuliani, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, special envoy to Ukraine.
According to Taylor, there was a concerted effort by what he referred to as this "irregular, informal channel of U.S. policy-making" to pressure Ukraine to commit to opening investigations into unproven allegations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, as well as into the gas company Burisma.
Who is George Kent?
George Kent is the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, overseeing State Department policy toward a number of countries, including Ukraine.
A longtime diplomat, Kent served as deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Kiev from 2015 to 2018, according to his State Department biography. He previously worked on anti-corruption State Department initiatives in Europe.
Kent provided closed-door testimony echoing Taylor's statements to Congress. He said three officials had declared themselves in charge of Ukraine policy in May: Gordon Sondland, Kurt Volker and Rick Perry.
Kent also said Giuliani had engaged in a "campaign of slander" with no basis in fact against U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
Live stream of the hearings is available here from CBSN.com
Discuss all the days events with the Commentareum here at Ordinary Times.Comment →
November 20, 2019
Wednesday Writs: PGA Tour v. Martin
November 20, 2019
November 19, 2019
November 22, 2019
Weekend Plans Post: Checking out Television Prices
November 21, 2019
Thursday Throughput: Gamma-ray Bursts Are Bad Edition
November 21, 2019
Episode III: Revenge of the Great Episodes
November 21, 2019
November 21, 2019
November 20, 2019
Wednesday Writs: PGA Tour v. Martin
November 20, 2019
Chik-Fil-A: Why Can't a Chicken Sandwich Just Be a Chicken Sandwich?
November 20, 2019
November 20, 2019
Tulsi Gabbard Taps Out on Congress
October 25, 2019
Chik-Fil-A: Why Can't a Chicken Sandwich Just Be a Chicken Sandwich?
November 20, 2019
Pete Buttigieg Tops Latest Iowa Polling
November 12, 2019
Public Impeachment Hearings Begin
November 13, 2019
October 22, 2019
"How is that all that different from shunning someone for leaving the church they have always belonged to or for getting a divorce.(sic)"
It isn't.
Are these good things, useful things, behaviors we want to emulate? The example we should follow when we ask what Moral Behavior looks like?


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Find out why the National Electrical Code "25 ohms or less" rule may have less to do with power quality than you think.
Nearly all electricians and electrical inspectors are familiar with the National Electrical Code requirement in Sec. 250-54, which requires the resistance to ground of a single-made electrode (e.g., ground rod) to be 25 ohms or less. Unfortunately, it seems many electrical professionals don't actually test the grounding electrode system (GES) to ensure they're meeting this requirement. Even fewer of you feel testing the earth ground system is worthwhile. From a power quality perspective, you may be right.
A GES provides:
• A zero-volt reference for the supplied or derived power systems.
• A path to dissipate lightning or fault current (for higher voltage systems).
• A path for the dissipation of electrostatic currents.
A GES consists of two components: the grounding electrode conductor (GEC) and the grounding electrode.
You can choose a bare or insulated GEC (sized per Table 250-66) in copper or aluminum. The GEC connects the grounding electrode to the grounded circuit conductor, the equipment-grounding conductor, or both, at the main service equipment or the source of a separately derived system.
The most common types of grounding electrodes (identified by Sec. 250-50 and 250-52) are:
• Structural steel
• Metal underground water pipe
• Ground ring
• Ground rods
How to test. You should measure the resistance of an electrode with respect to the surrounding soil in the area. You can only do this by using the fall-of-potential method with a three-terminal, earth ground resistance tester. To properly test the resistance of a GES, you must follow some simple rules:
1. Disconnect the electrode under test from the rest of the electrical system. Considering this, it is not possible to test the grounding electrode system in nearly all circumstances.
2. Don't use a meter that injects DC current into the ground rod. Do not use standard VOMs.
3. Don't perform test measurements if the current on a GES is greater than 5A.
Contrary to popular belief, clamp-on earth ground resistance testers can be inaccurate in field applications. These testers require a low-resistance feedback loop with adequate spacing between electrode systems to provide meaningful readings. Many people often add a high resistance (caused by loose connections in the feedback loop) to the displayed value of the meter. Also, inadequate spacing between electrodes results in the meter only making a comparative bonding test, which almost always results in a low-resistance value.
Why do I need to reach 25 ohms? The most credible answer to this question is: 25 ohms is a reasonable value to strive for, given the average soil resistivity for most regions of the United States. Keep in mind, however, that 25 ohms is not a requirement when you install multiple electrodes. This is only a requirement for single-made electrodes, per Sec. 250-56. If you drive the first rod and get a resistance reading greater than 25 ohms, the NEC allows you to drive an additional rod 6 ft away from the first rod.
Let's say, for example, you drive a ground rod into the soil, but instead of testing that rod to see if it meets the 25-ohm criteria you drive the second. Once the two rods bond together, consider the GES complete. But if you don't take a measurement, how do you know your installation meets Code?
Reality check. In most commercial and industrial low-voltage power systems, technicians do not perform earth ground resistance testing. But this shouldn't surprise you. An informal poll of 50 electricians found only four performed earth ground testing in the past. The reasons cited for not testing were:
• The testers were too expensive.
• The test was too confusing and took too much time.
• Two rods are good enough (most common response).
Impact of power quality. Believe it or not, nearly all electronic equipment will operate properly without the benefit of a low-resistance GES. Power quality site surveys have shown that in situations where the grounding electrode resistance is between 5 ohms and 105 ohms, it doesn't affect equipment. However, you can trace most problems to poor quality connections on the equipment-grounding system. Therefore, you should pay less attention to the GES measurement and more to the impedance of the equipment-grounding system and the verification of low-resistance bonding connections between grounding planes.
What's the lesson here? Spend less time on the testing and qualification of the GES resistance and more time checking the bonding between locations and the equipment-grounding conductor impedance.


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Summer Saddlin'
Winter Wonderland
Horse Board
Details and Pricing
Map and Directions
Say Howdy!
Horseback Riding at Outback Trail Rides
Experience the northwoods from the top of a fine horse! We provide beautiful rides through cool, fragrant forests and wildflower meadows, bordering lakes and ponds in the beautiful Pillsbury State Forest. This Forest, where wildlife, birds, and fascinating flora abound, is the oldest State Forest in Minnesota, with over 14,000 acres of pristine trails. We also provide "Jr. Wrangler Day Camp," Riding Lessons, Birthday Parties, Hay Rides, Picnic Area, Campfires, and Overnight Camping. Check our Details & Pricing page for more information or call 218-746-3990.
Outback Trail Rides, Inc.
12210 Pillsbury Forest Road SW - Pillager, Minnesota 56473-2336 - Phone: 218-746-3990


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Nederland ISD's Hillcrest Elementary burglarized
Nederland Police are asking for the community's help in solving the Sept. 11, 2012, burglary of Hillcrest Elementary School.
During the early morning hours of Sept. 11, a burglar entered Hillcrest Elementary at 2611 Ave. H in Nederland. Once inside the building, the burglar entered several locked classrooms and removed a Nikon Coolpix camera, an undetermined amount of money and food items.
Anyone with information about this burglary is asked to contact the Nederland Police Department at (409) 722-4965.


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Osama Siddique
Osama Siddique has been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a lawyer in New York and Lahore, a reform consultant in Pakistan, and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. Currently, he earns a living by trying to persuade politicians, judges, police officers, lawyers and bureaucrats to change themselves. He was born in Lahore and mostly lives there. Snuffing Out the Moon is his first novel.


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Histones are basic nuclear proteins that are responsible for the nucleosome structure of the chromosomal fiber in eukaryotes. Nucleosomes consist of approximately 146 bp of DNA wrapped around a histone octamer composed of pairs of each of the four core histones (H2A, H2B, H3, and H4). The chromatin fiber is further compacted through the interaction of a linker histone, H1, with the DNA between the nucleosomes to form higher order chromatin structures.
Successful immunoblotting of histones must overcome an important consequences of histone composition, namely, their relatively low molecular weight. The molecular weight of histones effects both resolution of histone proteins in SDS-PAGE and their efficient transfer to nitrocellulose membrane. Good results are achieving by using high percent agarose gels and nitrocellulose with a pore size of 0.2 um to ensure optimal capture of histone proteins. We also suggest using high quality BSA in the blocking solutions rather than conventional dried milk.
Gel Electrophoresis of Proteins: A Practical Approach. Third Edition. Ed. B.D. Hames. Oxford University Press. Oxford, UK. 1998
Rockland Immunochemicals Inc.Limerick, PA 19468E-mail: email@example.com: 800.656.7625
Fax: 484.369.8654


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This week's pop culture picks come care of Jason Kottke, of Kottke.org -- a site that's been called the New Yorker of internet links. Jason tracks down the best the internet has to offer, and he shares two of his favorites with us this week: Jerry Beck's list of the 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected By 1,000 Animation Professionals, a Warner Bros.-heavy list topped by some Looney Tunes classics, and What the Space Shuttle booster saw, an HD video journey out of Earth's atmosphere.
(Embed or share Kottke's Internet Picks)
Michael Koman, Andrew Weinberg and Jason Woliner are the creative team behind [adult swim]'s hilariously funny and blood-soaked action-comedy Eagleheart, starring Chris Elliott. Koman and Weinberg had worked together as writers on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, where they were responsible for culling the clips played whenever Conan pulled the Walker Texas Ranger Lever. It was a job that required them to wade through hundreds of hours of Walker, Texas Ranger, and the inspiration for Eagleheart was born out of a desire to parody the show. But to call Eagleheart a parody of WTR sells it way short, as the show is much crazier and more comically-inspired than that.
Koman, Weinberg and Woliner join us to discuss the show's ability to cram an absurd amount of story into an eleven-minute run-time, making magic happen fast on Eagleheart's wild production schedule, and what inspires them about the show's star, Chris Elliott. Eagleheart has just begun its second season on Cartoon Network's [adult swim], airing Thursdays at midnight.
(Embed or share this interview with the creators of Eagleheart)
It's an upside-down world out there, and some days you just don't know what to make of it. Luckily for us, there's one man who can keep this country in order! Comedian Jordan Morris puts America in its place for the month of April 2012. You can find Jordan on Twitter @Jordan_Morris.
(Embed or share Jordan Ranks America)
Rachel Dratch is a comic actress best known to audiences as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1999 to 2006, and from recurring roles on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. Her new book is the very funny memoir Girl Walks Into A Bar...: Comedies Calamities, Dating Disasters & A Midlife Miracle. While there are a number of behind-the-scenes stories from her days at SNL in the book, it's mainly the story of life after the show, as Dratch dove head-first into the dating pool after years of using being busy with SNL as an excuse not to date. The titular miracle was an unexpected pregnancy at age 44, having been in a long distance relationship with the father for just six months prior.
Dratch joins Jesse to discuss her comedy background in Chicago, the development process of getting some of her most famous SNL characters to air, and the inherent humor of balancing midlife motherhood with a romance still in its infant stages. Girl Walks Into A Bar... is available now in bookstores everywhere.
(Embed or share this interview with Rachel Dratch)
For this week's Outshot, Jesse digs into the record collection and pulls out a vibrant classic: Swiss Movement, by Eddie Harris and Les McCann. The live album, recorded in 1969 at the Montreux Jazz Festival, was the first time the band had ever played together, and the record captures the feeling-out process as the group pioneered the soul-jazz genre. It crackles with life.
Is there a classic record that never fails to get your toe tapping? Let us know! Head on over to the MaxFun Forum and pick your own Outshot.
(Embed or share this Outshot on Swiss Movement)
Great show, as usual.
Chris Elliot has good genes. His father was Bob Elliott, of the Bob & Ray radio program. I was hoping to hear that mentioned.
Jeff Charles
I think it was discussed in the TSOYA interview with Chris Elliott himself: http://www.maximumfun.org/blog/2007/12/podcast-chris-elliott.html


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Check back soon for new events!
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Kurt Busch NASCAR Cup Series - Martinsville
October 14, 2008
Of course, we are referring to the special grandfather clock that Martinsville Speedway has been awarding its race winners for more than 40 years. But for Busch, the 2004 series champion, his clock is much more than just another piece of furniture.
"It's always a special perk and a bonus because that's what (me) and most drivers shoot for - that piece of hardware at the end of the day. It could be a small $5 piece that somebody made or an extravagant grandfather clock (like at Martinsville)," Busch said of the treasured heirloom. "I think that I won at Martinsville a bit too early in my career because I had no idea that they gave away grandfather clocks when you won there.
Busch still remembers today as if it were just yesterday when his special prize for winning the October 2002 Martinsville race was delivered.
"They're wheeling this thing in my front door of my house one day and I was like 'what are you guys doing, who bought this thing?'" Busch said with a chuckle. "It's the most beautiful grandfather clock that I'd ever seen. The most ironic thing about winning the clock was that my grandfather passed away the week before (that), so my clock's name is 'Al" and it's sitting right there in my foyer today. It's the best gift that I could have received after winning a race and losing my grandfather."
The late Clay Earles, legendary race promoter and patriarch of the family that founded, co-owned and controlled the historical Virginia half-mile speedway until 2004, was a visionary in many ways more than 40 years ago. Perhaps no better example of Earles' noted big-picture-thinking-with-down-home-charm method of race promoting was his selection of this special Martinsville trophy.
During the summer of 1964, Earles decided it was time for a "different" type of trophy for race winners at his track. His choice? A grandfather clock; specifically a grandfather clock produced by the Ridgeway Clock Company, a local furniture manufacturer. On September 27, 1964, Earles awarded the first Ridgeway Clock trophy to Fred Lorenzen, the winner of the Old Dominion 500 that afternoon.
"My grandfather was looking for a different type of trophy back in the early sixties," said current speedway president Clay Campbell, grandson of Earles and also a respected promoter in the racing world. "He didn't have to look far and he came up with a trophy that remains one of the most sought-after and unique trophies in all of auto racing. The Ridgeway grandfather clock is synonymous with winning at Martinsville. It's a big reason a lot of drivers want to win here."
Busch is hoping to win his second Martinsville special winner's trophy in this Sunday's TUMS QuikPak 500.
"They tell me that 'The King' Richard Petty has 12 of the clocks and Jeff Gordon has seven," said Busch. "I don't know what you could do with that many grandfather clocks. Nothing could ever replace the sentimental value we have for that first clock that we won because of the connection with my grandfather. I'm sure we could find a place for a second special trophy like that, though."
This weekend's schedule at Martinsville Speedway begins on Friday with practice scheduled from 12:00 noon till 1:30 p.m. Qualifying is set for 3:30 p.m. and will determine all 43 starting positions for Sunday's race. Saturday's schedule calls for practice sessions from 11:10 a.m. till 12:10 p.m. and from 12:50 p.m. till 1:50 p.m. Sunday's TUMS QuikPak 500 has a scheduled 1:30 p.m. EDT starting time and features live coverage by ABC-TV and MRN Radio.
--Kurt is looking for a "Pal" for "Al" in this weekend's TUMS QuikPak 500 at Martinsville Speedway. Say what? Read this week's advance that follows (and attached) to find out what it's all about...
--"Rain Man" back in action at Martinsville this weekend...Kurt, Pat and team are racing their "PRS-574" Miller Lite Dodge Charger in this weekend's TUMS QuikPak 500. This car debuted at New Hampshire in the June 29 Lenox Industrial Tool 301, where Kurt started 26th and used fuel strategy to win the rain-shortened race. Appropriately, Kurt named the car "Rain Man" after that race. "It's a pretty appropriate name when you consider what all unfolded during that race," Kurt said, in explaining his choice of the name. "I always loved that movie with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise hitting the road in that classic Buick Roadmaster convertible. I know that Don Miller always had that as a special nickname for (Ryan) Newman. It was my third win on the track and Penske Racing's fourth Cup win there, so it was pretty special." In its only other outing, "Rain Man" started 20th and finished 10th at Richmond on Sept. 7.
--Still a few seats remaining for the Kurt Busch Celebrity Poker Charity Tournament set for tomorrow -- Tuesday, Oct. 14 -- at the Sierra Gold Ultra Tavern in Las Vegas. Cost is $500 per seat and is limited to 100 players. All proceeds go to the Kurt Busch Foundation. For additional information, please contact Charlie Legeman at (248) 227-4616 or e-mail him at: email@example.com
For additional information on this venue, please visit http://www.goldentaverngroup.com/www/index.jsp
--Kurt's career record at Martinsville Speedway boasts one win, two top-five finishes, four top-10 finishes and one pole in 16 races. He has a 19.750 average start and a 21.125 average finish. "It was a pretty long learning curve for me to get the hang of racing at Martinsville," Kurt explained. "It's such a demanding track on the driver and especially the equipment. It's one of the toughest tracks to find your own space because there are so many cars and somebody is always on top of you. It's hard to protect your race car. That's the thing you have to do at Martinsville, know you're in it (race) for 500 laps and that you can't get into too big of a hurry in the early portions of the race because anything can happen."
--Kurt live at Barrett-Jackson...this Thursday (Oct. 16) between 4:10 p.m. and 4:20 p.m. local time in Las Vegas (PDT - 7:10 to 7:20 Eastern) at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino Events Center. Kurt will help auction - live on SPEED-TV - the Miller Lite Dodge he raced last year at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with all proceeds going to the Kurt Busch Foundation benefiting the Victory Junction Gang Camp. "The plan is for me to drive the car onto the stage, hop out of the car and begin the bidding," Kurt explained. "The car will be sold to the highest bidder." For additional information, please contact Charlie Legeman at (248) 227-4616 or e-mail him at: firstname.lastname@example.com .
For more information about Barrett-Jackson, visit www.barrett-jackson.com
or call (480) 421-6694.
--Kurt...more on racing at Martinsville Speedway:
HOW DO YOU PASS? "I hope that I have a fast enough car to be moving guys out of the way. This race track whether you're driving an Allison legacy car, or late model or even in the truck series, the front bumpers to the rear bumpers have always matched up to the point where you can lift somebody's tires up or get them loose in the fashion that you are racing him. It's not a life or death situation.
"With this new car, when you bump someone, the front part of the car still stays planted and that's where some of the excitement can change of this new car. If we want to make adjustments, we need to adjust to where we can race with the front of these cars - but sometimes that always isn't encouraged. And so, if you have a faster car, that driver 99 percent of the time can figure out a way to get by him."


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LAKE PLACID, N.Y. (Blugolds.com) - The UW-Eau Claire men's hockey team capped off its best season in school history with a 5-3 win over Oswego State (N.Y.) to claim the NCAA Division III National Championship.
Playing at Herb Brooks Arena – site of the 1980 'Miracle on Ice' – making their first Frozen Four appearance in school history, the Blugolds didn't need any miracles to cap off their amazing season, they simply were the better team.
Despite falling behind 2-0, the Blugolds never panicked and responded with four unanswered goals, and that was enough for them to hold on to the victory.
"It was a good game back-and-forth," Blugold coach Matt Loen said. "We've had a couple games where we've struggled to score goals and I was hoping tonight wasn't going to be that night … I think we just had to get one goal and then tying it up at two, that instilled more confidence in our team."
The Lakers were returning to the championship game for the second straight year, after falling to St. Norbert College last year, but it was the Blugolds who looked like they had been there before early in the game.
UW-Eau Claire controlled play early and came up with several scoring chances, but Oswego State goalie Andrew Hare came up with some key saves to keep his team in the game.
At 8:44, Isaiah Bennis (Sr.-Eau Claire, Wis./Memorial) was taken off for an elbowing penalty, giving the Lakers their first power-play opportunity. As time expired on the penalty, Oswego State put home a rebound past UW-Eau Claire goaltender Brandon Stephenson (Sr.-Saline, Mich./Saline) to take the 1-0 lead.
Just 31 seconds later, the Lakers scored again, this time on a nice 2-on-1 to seize the early momentum the Blugolds had gained.
"It's happened before, earlier in the season, but with the team we have, I trust my forwards and defense in front of me," Stephenson said. "We don't get rattled, there were two good plays they scored on and there was really nothing we could do about them.
"I just had to shake it off and still compete and do my job and keep my team in it."
Down two goals, the Blugolds turned to their leading scorer and All-American forward, Jordan Singer (Sr.-Lino Lakes, Minn./Centennial) to get them back in the game. At 14:17, the Blugolds went on their first power-play of the game, and just eight seconds in, Singer scored high glove side on a shot from the point to cut the lead to 2-1.
With time winding down in the first period, it appeared the Blugolds would head to the intermission down 2-1. But as fate would have it, a fortuitous bounce along the back boards popped the puck right out in front on the stick of Andrew Wilcox (Sr.-Rochester, Minn./Century) and he buried it to tie the game at 2-2.
In the second period, the Blugolds took their first lead of the game. Singer took a pass from Wilcox and came in and got a shot on Hare that he stopped, but Daniel Olszewski (Jr.-Janesville, Wis./Craig) was there to put home the rebound for the 3-2 lead.
With neither team scoring the rest of the way in the second period, the Blugolds were just 20 minutes away from securing the national championship.
Devin Mantha (Sr.-Sturgeon Falls, Ontario/Ann Arbor Pioneer) gave UW-Eau Claire some breathing room at 7:20 of the final period. Mantha took a beautiful pass from Jon Waggoner (Jr.-Fairbanks, Alaska/Lathrop) at the blue line and went in all alone on Hare and snuck it through his five-hole.
But Oswego State was not about to go quietly. At the midway mark of the period, a shot from the point deflected off a Blugold defensemen out front and got past Stephenson to cut the lead to 4-3.
With just over a minute remaining, the Lakers nearly tied the game on a scrum in front of the net, but Stephenson and his defensemen somehow kept the puck out of the net.
With Hare off for the extra attacker, David Donnellan (Jr.-Eau Claire, Wis./Memorial) fired a shot down the ice that hit the post, but Kurt Weston (Sr.-Roseau, Minn./Roseau) was there to put home the loose puck to secure the victory.
The empty-netter, gave Weston at least one goal in every NCAA playoff game for the Blugolds (2 vs. Saint John's, 1 vs. St. Norbert College and 2 vs. Utica).
"There's a lot of things going on, lots of emotions and I'm just excited for our team," Loen said. "It's a great accomplishment."
It is the ninth national championship in school history, with the most recent coming in 2009 for the women's cross-country team. It is the second national championship for the men's hockey team, the first coming in 1984 as they won the NAIA National Championship.
It is just the fourth NCAA National Championship in school history across all sports. Along with the women's cross country team, the softball team won in 2008 while the men's golf team took home the title in 2001.
Despite it being the final year of the NCHA, the Blugolds became the sixth different team in the conference to win a national title. It is also the 19th time in the 30-year history of the NCAA tournament that an NCHA team reached the championship game.
Singer capped off his phenomenal career, reaching his 100th career point, and finishing as the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. Weston, Stephenson and Drew Darwitz (Sr.-Woodbury, Minn./Cretin-Derham Hall) joined Singer on the All-Tournament team.
In all, ten seniors finished off their great careers with the title, including; Stephenson, Mantha, Singer, Wilcox, Weston, Darwitz, Bennis, Travis Peckskamp (Sr.-Sauk Rapids, Minn./Sauk Rapids), Andrew McCabe (Sr.-Eau Claire, Wis./Memorial) and Alex Bjerk (Sr.-Roseau, Minn./Roseau).
"A lot of it's because a lot of us have been together so long and we trust each other, Stephenson said. "It's more than on-ice chemistry, it's off-ice too. Off the ice, we're best friends with each other."


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By Rajendrani Mukohpadhyay
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.— Henry David Thoreau
Most of us appreciate that if it weren't for our skeletons, we'd be bags of protoplasm oozing on the ground. But beyond that, a common perception of bone is that it's simply an inert mineralized tissue that does only a few things: protect delicate organs, help us to walk, act as a mineral store and house the blood-making machinery.
But that perception has started to shift over the past two decades. Thanks to advances in cellular and molecular biology tools, experts now say that bone is a dynamic tissue that sends out and receives messages from organs. It even tweaks the functions of organs and actively participates in maintaining mineral and energy homeostasis throughout the body.
Old to newBone constantly turns over. This process is called bone remodeling and rebuilds the skeleton bit by bit. Bone remodeling is the reason you don't have the same skeleton today as you did 10 or so years ago.
Understanding how bone remodeling happens at the cellular and molecular levels was a challenge for decades because the mineralized matrix of bone, containing calcium and phosphate, had made culturing bone cells by conventional methods difficult. But now a clearer picture is starting to come into focus. There are thought to be three types of bone cells: osteoblasts, osteoclasts and osteocytes. Osteoblasts build bone by putting down the mineralized matrix. Osteoclasts chew down bone. They are unique in that they are the only cells in the body designed to destroy their host tissue. Both cell types sit on the surface of the bone.
The challenge of studying bone is most evident when it comes to the osteocytes, cells derived from osteoblasts that make up 90 percent of bone. Because they sit deep inside the bone, studying them had been especially hard, and the difficulty led a number of researchers to ignore the cells. As Henry Kronenberg at the Massachusetts General Hospital quips, the conventional thinking used to be that osteocytes were just "stupid osteoblasts that got buried and stuck in bone."
Lynda Bonewald at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, an immunologist and hematologist by training, became intrigued by the osteocytes inside the bone matrix in the late 1980s because of their striking resemblance to neurons with dendritic protrusions. When she asked experts in the bone field what osteocytes did, "I was told they were just placeholders," she says. "I couldn't accept that explanation. I started thinking of ways to make cell lines." Starting in 1997, Bonewald's group began to report osteocyte lines, such as MLO-Y4, which gave researchers a better idea of what the cells actually do. Osteocytes act as the mechanosensors of bone, probably sensing changes in fluid flow and how the skeleton is weighted during rest or exercise, a hypothesis Bonewald says histomorphologists proposed decades ago. She says osteocytes are probably not important as mechanosensors in the embryonic skeleton or very active postnatally during growth. But they are extremely important in adults. Osteocytes direct osteoclasts and osteoblasts where to degrade old bone and set down new material. They also secrete hormones. "Instead of being thought of as pitiful cells that got confused and stuck inside bone, they are now thought of as the master cells," says Kronenberg. "They are the brains of the outfit."
Not inertPerhaps the biggest shift in how bone is perceived is in its function as an endocrine organ. Bone used to be thought of as a tissue that responded only to a couple of hormones, such as the parathyroid hormone sent out by the parathyroid glands and estrogen made by the ovaries. But findings in the past two decades have given indications that the bone doesn't just passively take orders from other organs: It makes its own hormones to modulate mineral metabolism and energy expenditure.
In 2002, President Bush proclaimed the decade to be the National Bone and Joint Decade. The Bone and Joint Decade recently renewed its mandate for another 10 years to 2020. Every October 12–20, the Bone and Joint Decade and US Bone and Joint Initiative recognize the week as their National Awareness Week to inform the public about musculoskeletal disorders.
Rheumatoid arthritis causes inflammation of the joints. It occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks the healthy joint tissue. While many antiarthritic drugs suppress inflammation, they offer poor or no protection against bone damage. Therefore, a drug for both symptoms is being pursued. Read about a recent related study.
The role of bone in mineral metabolism came as a surprise less than 15 years ago when a hormone called fibroblast growth factor 23 was discovered. FGF23 "has potent effects on the proximal tubule of the kidney to regulate the reabsorption of phosphate," says Kronenberg. "It was interesting and surprising when it was first realized that the major source of FGF23 was the osteocyte." That osteocytes signaled to the kidneys when the body needed to hold onto phosphate alerted researchers to that fact that bone actively manages mineral metabolism.
The connection between bone and energy expenditure was first proposed by the group of Gerard Karsenty at Columbia University. His group used genetic approaches to show that leptin, the hormone released from fat tissue to regulate appetite and metabolism, inhibited bone formation through the nervous system. The work tied together appetite, energy metabolism and bone remodeling.
Osteocalcin was another surprise in the energy-expenditure picture. The protein has been cited in the literature for more than 40 years and is used as a marker for osteoblast activity. But "we didn't know what osteocalcin did," says Thomas Clemens at Johns Hopkins University.
In the 1990s, the Karsenty laboratory made a knockout mouse missing osteocalcin. The mouse was expected to have a bone phenotype, but, unexpectedly, it was a plump animal with only minor skeletal abnormalities. Around 2008, the Clemens group created a different mouse that lacked the insulin receptor on its osteoblasts. That mouse also became fat and looked just like the osteocalcin-null mouse that the Karsenty group had made a decade before. Like the Clemens group, the Karsenty group had made the mouse missing the insulin receptor in osteoblasts and had gotten the same phenotype. The mouse studies "linked insulin signaling in the osteoblasts to the production of osteocalcin," says Clemens.
The thinking now goes that insulin stimulates osteocalcin production by osteoblasts. The osteocalcin molecule gets stored in the mineralized matrix. When osteoclasts dissolve bone, osteocalcin enters the bloodstream. From there, researchers have shown, one of the post-translationally modified forms of osteocalcin increases insulin secretion from the pancreas and enhances the ability of adipocytes to use glucose.
Because bone remodeling demands a lot of energy, "this new paradigm really allows us to think about the skeleton as the sensor for metabolic activity and also as a fine-tuner for insulin sensitivity," says Clifford Rosen at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute. "It takes a lot of energy to make bone. We don't know anything about the dynamics of how these cells use their energy."
The knockout mice have been critical in revealing osteocalcin's purpose, but there is a question mark hanging over the extent to which osteocalcin influences the insulin pathway in humans, say Clemens and Rosen. "The mouse has given us tremendous insights, but moving to humans, it's much more complicated," says Rosen. "We need to get a better idea of how important is osteocalcin in fine-tuning insulin secretion."
Clemens and Rosen explain that in some mouse models osteocalcin looks to be critical for regulating the insulin pathway. But mice aren't metabolic equivalents of us, because their metabolic rates are 100 to 1,000 times faster than ours. Both Rosen and Clemens say the differences in metabolic rates raise the question of whether the osteocalcin effects seen in mice come about simply because of the peculiarities of mouse metabolism. "It's a big challenge," says Rosen. "How do we apply what we see in mice to humans?"
And that is exactly what the next research steps should answer, says Clemens. He says that, while association studies in humans seem to suggest osteocalcin has an effect on insulin secretion, there haven't been any studies that show a clear cause-and-effect relationship. Those kinds of studies are begging to be done.
Osteoporosis drugsUnderstanding fundamental bone biology has had great repercussions for one of the most recognized diseases of bone: osteoporosis. Osteoporosis appears in postmenopausal women, the elderly and people suffering from some diseases, such as anemia. The bones become fragile and easily snap. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, about 34 million Americans are at risk for the disease. By 2025, the foundation projects, osteoporosis will cost the American healthcare system $25.3 billion per year.
Osteoporosis happens when osteoclasts outstrip osteoblasts in performance. The reason postmenopausal women are more at risk is thought to be that estrogen indirectly inhibits the activity of osteoclasts. But after menopause, estrogen's protection disappears, and the osteoclasts start breaking down bone more quickly than osteoblasts can keep up. The speeding up of osteoclasts starts happening in the elderly for reasons yet to be deciphered. This causes elderly people to grow hunched, shrink in height and become more susceptible to broken bones.
But in the past 20 years, drugs have appeared to treat osteoporosis. Most of the ones on the market inhibit bone breakdown, or resorption, one way or another. One class of drugs is the bisphosphonates, which trigger apoptosis in osteoclasts. "The bisphosphonate category is probably about 80 percent of the osteoporosis drug use in the United States right now," notes Art Santora of Merck.
Another drug is a monoclonal antibody called denosumab, which is produced by Amgen. It is an inhibitor of RANK ligand, which was shown in the 1990s to be the key stimulator of osteoclast development through the Wnt/β-catenin pathway. By inhibiting RANK ligand, the drug prevents osteoclasts from maturing and chewing away the bone.
All these drugs are catabolic agents in that they stop the breakdown of bone. Given their numbers, Scott Simonet of Amgen says, "That area of the market is pretty saturated."
The excitement lies in drugs that can help build bone. The only anabolic agent on the market is a recombinant version of parathyroid hormone called teriparatide, marketed as Forteo by Lilly. The drug stimulates osteoblasts to put down new bone. Parathyroid hormone's classical role is to stimulate bone breakdown so that calcium is released to maintain serum calcium levels. But, for reasons not yet known, the hormone does the opposite and builds bone when injected once daily. The drug is effective for only 12 to 18 months.
Experts are excited about a drug that Amgen, in partnership with a company called UCB, has in phase III clinical trials. Simonet says that the drug is being developed for osteoporosis and fracture repair. The anabolic drug AMG 785 is a monoclonal antibody that targets a molecule called sclerostin.
The story of sclerostin best illustrates how molecular biology has been pivotal for bone therapeutics. In 1958, sclerosteosis was first described in two South African girls of Dutch-Afrikaner descent. Sclerosteosis patients have heavy, thick bones with large jaws and protruding foreheads; their thick facial bones pinch their facial nerves. Several research groups established that the gene involved was SOST and that sclerosteosis was a loss-of-function mutation of that gene.
"We didn't know where sclerostin was coming from, but, after several years of soul-searching, it became clear that it was coming from the skeleton," says Rosen. Coincidentally, at the same time, the Bonewald group's osteocyte lines were coming out. Those cell lines helped researchers establish in the mid-2000s that osteocytes were secreting sclerostin to stop bone formation. Amgen's AMG 785 shuts down sclerostin by blocking its inhibitory activity on osteoblasts.
Clemens and others take delight in pointing out that researchers had known about sclerostin's existence for many years. But once its molecular biology was established, it took less than a decade to get a drug against it in the pipeline. "It's really remarkable," says Clemens.
Lots more to doExperts interviewed for this story were unified in their upbeat enthusiasm for the future of molecular biology research into bone simply because there are so many rich hunting grounds in both basic and clinical endeavors. Experts are unrestrained in their enthusiasm when they say that new anabolic drugs will be developed in the next decade to help patients with postmenopausal, age- or disease-induced osteoporosis and skeletal fragility.
For basic researchers, there are many directions to pursue. For one, they need to understand how bone cells communicate and respond to mechanical and biochemical signals both at local and systemic levels. For example, "bone is an incredibly locally focused tissue," says Kronenberg. "If you break a leg, you want to fix that fracture right where it is. You don't want a systemic response to a fracture." How bone senses when to work locally and when to act globally is a question.
Another interesting idea that is emerging is that there is two-way communication between muscle and bone. "We always think of muscle affecting the skeleton" by pulling and pushing on the bones, says Rosen. "But there's the converse side: How does the skeleton regulate muscle?"
This is work Bonewald has undertaken in collaboration with the groups of Marco Brotto and Mark Johnson, also at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. "We took some of our osteocyte-conditioned media and put it on muscle cells. [Brotto] was absolutely blown away to see that the osteocytes secrete factors that support myogenesis," Bonewald says. "If you put the conditioned media on intact muscles that are contracting, it increases muscle force." She says the collaborators are working on figuring out the factors secreted by the osteocytes and how they affect signal-transduction pathways in muscle.
Be sure to check out the MCP Journal News in this issue for a story on osteoblasts!
Indeed, factors secreted by bones are high on the exploration list. This is especially true for the relatively new discovery that bone senses and possibly influences metabolism. In Rosen's opinion, "the skeleton is secreting lots of endocrine factors. We know about FGF23, sclerostin and osteocalcin. We don't know enough about those, and my guess is there are also other substances being produced."
As schoolchildren, our earliest encounters with bone are with the jangling skeleton hanging in the back of the high-school biology laboratory. But with new findings emerging about the inner workings of the skeleton, bones can no longer be viewed as stiff and inert structures that simply hold us upright. Bone is truly a dynamic, living tissue that is constantly listening and responding to the way we live.
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MTV Picks Up Fifth and Final Season of Awkward
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Well, this is Awkward: MTV has picked up a fifth season of the critically acclaimed comedy series, but also confirms it will be the show's last. That means Awkward will be back for one final round in 2015 before wrapping up for good. The show is curr… Read more


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Ian Mood
Ian grew up in Stoke on Trent, and attended Clayton High School. His passion for the city is undiminished and he returns to often to paint. His earliest memories are of sitting painting with his granddad, a well respected watercolourist in his own right, whose brushes Ian still uses to this day.
Ian studied Fine Art at the University of the West of England, Bristol, and divides his time between his home in the High Peak, Derbyshire and the West Coast of America. His work features amongst collections in New York and Cape Cod. He is a member of the Artists' Association of Nantucket where he was awarded the Frank Swift Chase Plein Air Award 2014.
'Ian Mood is an artist who is drawn towards the shifting vastness of the landscape; it's unpredictability and awesome might. Through his work he seeks to capture some of the defining qualities of our brooding landscape: how, in the space of a single walk one can experience all the vagaries of the English weather system – from being caught in a sudden downpour to the unexpected flash of brilliant light that breaks through the pearly canopy of low-lying cloud.' Michael Howard, Royal Society of Arts


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The Olympus Stylus 500 is a five megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom lens. The new model forgoes any optical viewfinder in favor of fitting in a fairly large 2.5" LCD display. Other features include an ISO range from 64 - 500, shutter speeds from 1/1000 to 4 seconds, multi-pattern or spot metering, xD-Picture Card storage, USB connectivity, and power from a proprietary Lithium Ion battery.
The Olympus Stylus 500 digital camera will ship in January of next year, with pricing set at $399.99.
Adjustment Resolutions
Large 2.5-Inch LCD, 5-Megapixel CCD, and All-Weather Design Combines with New Advanced Features and Functions
Melville, New York, November 29, 2004 – Olympus is proud to announce the next generation in its best-selling Stylus series of premium point-and-shoot digital cameras: the Stylus 500. Featuring an impressive 2.5-inch HyperCrystal™ LCD that is as bright as it is big, 5.0-megapixels of image resolution, and a compact, durable, all-weather body, the Stylus 500 demonstrates that power and elegance can co-exist in a stylish package that delivers brilliant images.
"At Olympus we believe that great design is fundamental to the functionality of our cameras," said Tomoko Matsunaga, product manager, Olympus Imaging America Inc. "When you merge superior performance with exceptional style, the result is an elegant looking camera that performs at the top of its class. With the introduction of the Stylus 500, Olympus has added advanced features and power to the lineup, such as a large, high quality LCD, 23 shooting modes and Album functionality."
Designed to Do More The bright, clear 2.5-inch HyperCrystal™ LCD with 215,000 pixels of high resolution puts the Stylus 500 in a class of its own. Because it is a HyperCrystal™ LCD, it delivers a high contrast image and 160° wide-view radius. So gather your friends around – your photos are viewable from above, from the side, and from below. And while conventional LCD screens appear dim against bright light, the HyperCrystal™ LCD provides excellent visibility in any light condition – on the beach or on the slopes.
The Stylus 500 Digital combines a 5.0-megapixel CCD sensor with Olympus' exclusive image processor, TruePic TURBO™, which significantly enhances image quality and delivers faster overall processing speeds for rapid startup, shutter release and playback. TruePic TURBO allows the Stylus 500 to capture information from all 5.0 million pixels with pixel "micro-smoothing" that delivers clearer and more color-accurate photos, even at lower resolutions. The result is high quality prints that can be cropped and printed to 11 x 14 inches and larger. The fast startup of less than one second and nearly instant shutter release time ensures high-speed response so you are always ready to take great pictures.
The compact, all-weather Stylus 500 can go virtually anywhere you can. The body is constructed of durable, lightweight metal with rubber gaskets throughout the interior to ensure that rain, sleet, snow or sand won't get in the way of great photos.
Delivering Style The Stylus 500 represents the next generation of the Stylus line. In addition to the durable, all-weather construction that made the Stylus famous, the Stylus 500 boasts a new flat-surface body design that takes the series in a new direction.
The look of the Stylus 500 is all about clean lines. Smooth, rounded edges make the camera comfortable to hold and easy to handle, and at a compact size of 3.9" (W) x 2.2" (H) x 1.2" (D), it fits snugly into a pocket and will not crowd a backpack. The circular lens barrier tucks away inside the camera body with a snap when powered on, and protects the lens with an impenetrable seal when closed, leaving the camera face smooth and flat. The back of the camera features a simple, functional design that emphasizes the large 2.5-inch LCD.
Designed for Excitement The Stylus 500 offers advanced features with point-and-shoot simplicity for taking flawless pictures. Designed to perform during a variety of occasions, 23 easy-to-use shooting modes can be accessed through the camera's menu, providing fully automatic exposure adjustments for shooting Portraits, Landscapes, Fireworks, and more. The camera's shooting modes now include two new underwater shooting modes and two Shoot & Select modes, which enable users to shoot rapid sequences of frames then select the best shot from the series and delete the rest.
The Stylus 500 will change the way you view your digital camera. Now instead of simply capturing images with the Stylus 500, you can think of it as a "Portable Photo Album" that goes wherever you go. With a new Album Function, photos can be easily organized into photo albums stored on the camera's xD-Picture CardTM. Create up to 12 individual albums of 100 images each, in the order you want to show them, and take your photos everywhere – your photo album will no longer be confined to your coffee table.
Intelligent Design Olympus photos are known worldwide for sharp, vibrant image quality. This is achieved through a number of key technologies, such as Olympus' high-quality all-glass lens (with aspherical lens elements), designed specifically for digital cameras. The lens provides the equivalent of 35 to 105mm, f3.1 – f5.2 in 35mm photography, with 12x combined total zoom (3x optical and 4x digital) to bring the action closer, and a Super Macro Mode that captures details as small as the wings of a butterfly.
The Stylus 500 also features an all-weather speaker and microphone, enabling users to narrate images with personalized audio captions. With its QuickTime® Movie Mode, the Stylus 500 can record movies of any length, limited only by the size of the memory card in the camera.
Designed to be Approachable Connecting the Stylus 500 to a computer is easy with the USB Auto Connect feature, which connects directly via USB 2.0 cable and requires no software. Or, If you prefer, forget the computer altogether. The power of PictBridge technology enables photos to be printed directly from the Stylus 500 to any PictBridge-enabled printer, such as the Olympus P-10 Digital Photo Printer, without using a computer. Printing and sharing images has never been easier, and the P-10's photo lab-quality dye-sublimation printing produces archival-quality prints in rich color.
OLYMPUS Master™ software provides the ultimate in digital imaging management. An intuitive user interface makes downloading to your computer quick and simple, and images are searchable by date or keyword in the Calendar View. And with one-click editing tools, such as red-eye reduction, images can be touched up before printing or emailing. Online support, templates, firmware upgrades and other user services are just a mouse-click away.
Availability The Stylus 500 will be available in January 2005. It includes: 32MB xD-Picture Card, Wrist Strap, Camera WIN/Mac USB Cable, Audio/Video cable, Li-12B Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery and Charger, Quick Start Guide, Basic Instruction Manual, Warranty Card, CD-ROM with OLYMPUS Master Software, and Camera reference manual.
U.S. Pricing Stylus 500 Estimated Street Price: $399.99 (U.S.)
ABOUT OLYMPUS IMAGING AMERICA INC Olympus Imaging America Inc is a precision technology leader, designing and delivering award-winning products for consumer and professional markets.
Olympus Imaging America works collaboratively with its customers and its parent company, Olympus Corporation, to develop breakthrough technologies with revolutionary product design and functionality that enhances peoples lives every day. These include:
Olympus Imaging America Inc is responsible for sales in United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. For more information, visit. www.olympusamerica.com.
*Specifications and design are subject to change without any notice or obligation on the part of the manufacturer. All trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective holder. ©2004 Olympus America Inc.


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Dec. 15, 2009
LONG BEACH, Calif. - Senior swimmer Anne Marie May has been named UCSBgauchos.com/Golden I Credit Union Gaucho of the Week for the second consecutive week after a phenomenal showing at the Finis Collegiate Invitational at Belmont Plaza.
May's best swim was in the 50 freestyle when she captured first place with a time of 22.34 seconds, which is the fastest time by a women's collegiate swimmer so far this season.
The time is also one of five NCAA "B" qualifying standards she achieved during the three-day meet.
May had an additional individual win in the 100 free, posting a time of 49.44 (a "B" cut). She took second in the 100 breaststroke, posting a time of 1:03.85.
The senior also assisted the Gaucho relays to four first-place finishes. In the 200 free relay, she led-off with a mark of 22.70 as the team posted a "B" qualifying time of 1:31.94. The Gauchos also achieved NCAA consideration times in the 400 medley relay (3:46.27) and 400 free relay (3:23.34). UCSB rounded out its top finishes with a first place 200 medley relay (1:43.58) with May swimming the breaststroke leg.
May will talk about her weekend and her swimming career at UCSB on Tuesday's Talkn' Gauchos. The show will broadcast from the Thunderdome and air live on AM 1490 KIST from 6-6:45 p.m., leading into the women's basketball broadcast vs. UCLA, on AM 990. For more information on Talk'n Gauchos, click here.