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An Air-port or Sky-bay is a location where aircraft such as fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and blimps take off and land. Aircraft may be stored or maintained at an airport. An airport consists of at least one surface such as a runway for a plane to take off, a helipad, or water for take offs and landings, and often includes buildings such as control towers, hangars and terminal buildings.
Larger airports may have fixed base operator services, seaplane docks and ramps, air traffic control, passenger facilities such as restaurants and lounges, and emergency services. A military airport is known as an airbase or air station. The terms aerodrome, airfield and airstrip may also be used to refer to airports, and the terms heliport, seaplane base, and STOLport refer to airports dedicated exclusively to helicopters, seaplanes, or short take-off and landing aircraft. In some jurisdictions, the term airport is used where the facility is licensed as such by the relevant government organization (e.g. the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Transport Canada). Elsewhere the distinction is one of general appearance. Other jurisdictions define an airport by its having the customs offices etc expected of a port,[citation needed] though the more general term is airport of entry.
Smaller or less-developed airports — which represent the vast majority — often have a single runway shorter than 1,000 m (3,300 ft). Larger airports for airline flights generally have paved runways 2,000 m (6,600 ft) or longer. Many small airports have dirt, grass, or gravel runways, rather than asphalt or concrete.
In the United States, the minimum dimensions for dry, hard landing fields are defined by the FAR Landing And Takeoff Field Lengths. These include considerations for safety margins during landing and takeoff. Heavier aircraft require longer runways.
The longest public-use runway in the world is at Qamdo Bangda Airport in China. It has a length of 5,500 m (18,045 ft). The world's widest paved runway is at Ulyanovsk Vostochny Airport in Russia and is 105 m (344 ft) wide.
As of 2006, there were approximately 49,000 airports around the world, including 14,858 in the US., the U.S. having the most in the world[1]
Most of the world's airports are owned by local, regional, or national government bodies who then lease the airport to private corporations who oversee the airport's operation. For example, BAA Limited (BAA) operates seven of the commercial airports in the United Kingdom, as well as several other airports outside of the UK. Germany's Frankfurt Airport is managed by the quasi-private firm Fraport.
In the United States and Canada, commercial airports are generally operated directly by government entities or government-created airport authorities (also known as port authorities).
Many US airports still lease part or all of their facilities to outside firms, who operate functions such as retail management and parking. In the US, all commercial airport runways are certified by the FAA under the Code of Federal Regulations Title 14 Part 139, Certification of Commercial Service Airports" [1], but maintained by the local airport under the regulatory authority of the FAA.
Despite the reluctance to privatize airports in the US (despite the FAA sponsoring a privatization program since 1996), the government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) arrangement is the standard for the operation of commercial airports in the rest of the world
Airports are divided into landside and airside areas. Landside areas include parking lots, public transportation train stations, tank farms and access roads. Airside areas include all areas accessible to aircraft, including runways, taxiways, ramps and tank farms. Access from landside areas to airside areas is tightly controlled at most airports. Passengers on commercial flights access airside areas through terminals, where they can purchase tickets, clear security, check or claim luggage and board aircraft through gates. The waiting areas which provide passenger access to aircraft are typically called concourses, although this term is often used interchangeably with terminal.
The area where aircraft park next to a terminal to load passengers and baggage is known as a ramp (or "the tarmac"). Parking areas for aircraft away from terminals are called aprons.
Airports can be towered or non-towered, depending on air traffic density and available funds. Due to their high capacity and busy airspace, many international airports have air traffic control located on site.
Airports with international flights have customs and immigration facilities. However, as some countries have agreements that allow travel between them without customs and immigrations, such facilities are not a definitive need for an international airport. International flights often require a higher level of physical security, although in recent years, many countries have adopted the same level of security for international and domestic travel.
Some airport structures include on-site hotels built within or attached to a terminal building. Airport hotels have grown popular due to their convenience for transient passengers and easy accessablity to the airport terminal. Many airport hotels also have agreements with airlines to provide overnight lodging for displaced passengers.
"Floating airports" are being designed which could be located several miles at sea and which would use designs such as pneumatic stabilized platform technology.
The prices charged for food are generally higher than prices found outside the airport. However, some airports now regulate food costs to keep them comparable to "street prices". This term is misleading as prices often match the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) but are almost never discounted.
Some airport restaurants offer regional cuisine specialties for those in transit so that they may sample local food or culture without leaving the airport.[2]
Airports may also contain premium and VIP services. The premium and VIP services may include express check in, dedicated check in counters, separate departures and/or arrivals lounge, priority boarding, separate air bridges, and priority baggage handling.
These services are usually reserved for First and Business class passengers, premium frequent flyers, and members of the airline's clubs. Premium services may sometimes be open to passengers who are members of a different airline's frequent flyer program. This can sometimes be part of a reciprocal deal, as when multiple airlines are part of the same alliance, or as a ploy to attract premium customers away from rival airlines.
Sometimes these premium services will be offered to a non-premium passenger if the airline has made a mistake in handling of the passenger, such as unreasonable delays or mishandling of checked baggage.
Airline lounges frequently offer free or reduced cost food, as well as alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. Lounges themselves typically have seating, showers, quiet areas, televisions, computer, wi-fi and Internet access, and power outlets that passengers may use for their electronic equipment. Some airline lounges employ baristas, bartenders and gourmet chefs.
Airlines sometimes operate multiple lounges within the one airport terminal allowing ultra premium customers, such as first class customers, additional services, which are not available to other premium customers. Multiple lounges may also prevent overcrowding of the lounge facilities.
In addition to people, airports move cargo around the clock. Cargo airlines often have their own on-site and adjacent infrastructure to transfer parcels between ground and air.
Aircraft maintenance, pilot services, aircraft rental, and hangar rental are most often performed by a fixed base operator (FBO). At major airports, particularly those used as hubs, airlines may operate their own support facilities.
Some airports, typically military airbases, have long runways used as emergency landing sites. Many airbases have arresting equipment for fast aircraft, known as arresting gear – a strong cable suspended just above the runway and attached to a hydraulic reduction gear mechanism. Together with the landing aircraft's arresting hook, it is used in situations where the aircraft's brakes would be insufficient by themselves.
Many large airports are located near railway trunk routes for seamless connection of multi-modal transport, for instance Frankfurt Airport, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, London Heathrow Airport, London Gatwick Airport and London Stansted Airport. It is also common to connect an airport and a city with rapid transit, light rail lines or other non-road public transport systems, for instance the AirTrain JFK at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and the Silver Line T at Boston's Logan International Airport by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA). Such a connection lowers risk of missed flights due to traffic congestion. Large airports usually have access also through expressways from which motor vehicles enter either the departure loop or the arrival loop.
The distances passengers need to move within a large airport can be substantial. It is common for airports to provide moving walkways and buses. The Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has a tram that takes people through the concourses and baggage claim. Major airports with more than one terminal offer inter-terminal transportation, such as Mexico City International Airport, where the domestic building of Terminal 1 is connected by an aerotren to Terminal 2, on the other side of the airport.
The first use of the term "airport" appeared in a New York Times article in 1902, where Santos-Dumont stated that he expected New York to be the principal "airport" of the world in less than a score of years.[3]
The earliest aircraft takeoff and landing sites were grassy fields. The plane could approach at any angle that provided a favorable wind direction. A slight improvement was the dirt-only field, which eliminated the drag from grass. However, these only functioned well in dry conditions. Later, concrete surfaces would allow landings, rain or shine, day or night.
The title of "world's oldest airport" is disputed, but College Park Airport in Maryland, US, established in 1909 by Wilbur Wright, is generally agreed to be the world's oldest continually operating airfield[4], although it serves only general aviation traffic.
Another claim to the world's oldest airport is from Bisbee-Douglas International Airport Douglas, Arizona, USA, which had the first airplane in the state. In 1908 the Douglas Aeronautical Club was formed, starting with a glider made from mail order plans. This glider was pulled into the air by two horses and flown behind the Douglas YMCA building. In 1909 a motor and propeller were put on the airplane, making it the first powered airplane in Arizona. The airport's status as the first international airport in the USA is confirmed by a letter from President Roosevelt declaring it "the first international airport of the Americas".
Albany International Airport is the oldest municipal airport in the United States[5]. Shoreham Airport was created near Brighton, Sussex, England in 1910 and is Britain's oldest municipal airport today. Bremen Airport opened in 1913 and remains in use, although it served as an American military field between 1945 and 1949. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol opened on September 16, 1916 as a military airfield, but only accepted civil aircraft from December 17, 1920, allowing Sydney Airport in Sydney, Australia—which started operations in January 1920—to claim to be one of the world's oldest continually operating commercial airport.[6]. Rome Ciampino Airport, opened 1916, is also a contender.
Increased aircraft traffic during World War I led to the construction of landing fields. Aircraft had to approach these from certain directions and this led to the development of aids for directing the approach and landing slope.
Following the war, some of these military airfields added civil facilities for handling passenger traffic. One of the earliest such fields was Paris - Le Bourget Airport at Le Bourget, near Paris. The first international airport to open was the Croydon Airport, in South London, although an airport at Hounslow Heath had been temporarily operating as such for nine months.[7][8] In 1922, the first permanent airport and commercial terminal solely for commercial aviation was built at Königsberg, Germany. The airports of this era used a paved "apron", which permitted night flying as well as landing heavier aircraft.
The first lighting used on an airport was during the later part of the 1920s; in the 1930s approach lighting came into use. These indicated the proper direction and angle of descent. The colours and flash intervals of these lights became standardized under the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). In the 1940s, the slope-line approach system was introduced. This consisted of two rows of lights that formed a funnel indicating an aircraft's position on the glideslope. Additional lights indicated incorrect altitude and direction.
Following World War II, airport design became more sophisticated. Passenger buildings were being grouped together in an island, with runways arranged in groups about the terminal. This arrangement permitted expansion of the facilities. But it also meant that passengers had to travel further to reach their plane.
An improvement in the landing field was the introduction of grooves in the concrete surface. These run perpendicular to the direction of the landing aircraft and serve to draw off excess water in rainy conditions that could build up in front of the plane's wheels.
Airport construction boomed during the 1960s with the increase in jet aircraft traffic. Runways were extended out to 3 km (9,800 ft). The fields were constructed out of reinforced concrete using a slip-form machine that produces a continual slab with no disruptions along the length. The early 1960s also saw the introduction of jet bridge systems to modern airport terminals, an innovation which eliminated outdoor passenger boarding. These systems became commonplace in the United States by the 1970s.
Modern runways are thickest in the area where aircraft move slowly and are expected to have maximum load, i.e. runway ends. A common myth is that airplanes produce their greatest load during landing due to the "impact" of landing. This is untrue as much of the aircraft weight remains on the wings due to lift. Runways are constructed as smooth and level as possible.
Airports are uniquely represented by their International Air Transport Association airport code and ICAO airport code. An International Air Transport Association (IATA) airport code is often an abbreviation of the airport's common name, particularly older ones, such as PHL for Philadelphia International Airport. An airport sometimes retains its previous IATA code when its name, or even when its location is changed. Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut retains the IATA code BEY, from its former name of Beirut International Airport (BEY is from its French name, Aéroport International de Beyrouth). Hong Kong International Airport retained both its name and its IATA code when moved from Kai Tak to Chek Lap Kok in 1998.
The name of the airport itself can be its location, such as San Francisco International Airport. It can be named after some public figure, commonly a politician, e.g. Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, or a person associated with the region it serves or prominent figures in aviation history, such as Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport, Kingsford Smith International Airport, Will Rogers World Airport, Liverpool John Lennon Airport, Rio de Janeiro/Galeão - Antônio Carlos Jobim International Airport (Rio_de_Janeiro-Galeão_International_Airport), Imam Khomeini International Airport, or more recently Belfast City Airport was renamed George Best Belfast City Airport in memory of the football star born in Northern Ireland.
Some airports have unofficial names, possibly so widely circulated that its official name is little used or even known.
Airport names may include the word "International", reflecting their ability to handle international aviation traffic, although the airport may not actually operate any such flights; an example is Texel International Airport. Some airports with international immigration facilities may also choose to drop the word from their airport names (eg. Perth Airport, Singapore Changi Airport).
In the early years of the 21st century, low cost terminals, or even entire airports have been built to cater for discount airlines such as Ryanair.
Airport security normally requires baggage checks, metal screenings of individual persons, and rules against any object that could be used as a weapon. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, airport security has been dramatically increased.
The majority of the world's airports are non-towered, with no air traffic control presence. However, at particularly busy airports, or airports with other special requirements, there is an air traffic control (ATC) system whereby controllers (usually ground-based) direct aircraft movements via radio or other communications links. This coordinated oversight facilitates safety and speed in complex operations where traffic moves in all three dimensions. Air traffic control responsibilities at airports are usually divided into at least two main areas: ground and tower, though a single controller may work both stations. The busiest airports also have clearance delivery, apron control, and other specialized ATC stations.
Ground Control is responsible for directing all ground traffic in designated "movement areas", except the traffic on runways. This includes planes, baggage trains, snowplows, grass cutters, fuel trucks, and a wide array of other vehicles. Ground Control will instruct these vehicles on which taxiways to use, which runway they will use (in the case of planes), where they will park, and when it is safe to cross runways. When a plane is ready to take off it will stop short of the runway, at which point it will be turned over to Tower Control. After a plane has landed, it will depart the runway and be returned to Ground Control.
Tower Control controls aircraft on the runway and in the controlled airspace immediately surrounding the airport. Tower controllers may use radar to locate an aircraft's position in three-dimensional space, or they may rely on pilot position reports and visual observation. They coordinate the sequencing of aircraft in the traffic pattern and direct aircraft on how to safely join and leave the circuit. Aircraft which are only passing through the airspace must also contact Tower Control in order to be sure that they remain clear of other traffic.
All airports use a traffic pattern (often called a traffic circuit outside the U.S.) to assure smooth traffic flow between departing and arriving aircraft. Generally, this pattern is a circuit consisting of five "legs" that form a rectangle (two legs and the runway form one side, with the remaining legs forming three more sides). Each leg is named (see diagram), and ATC directs pilots on how to join and leave the circuit. Traffic patterns are flown at one specific altitude, usually 800 or 1,000 ft (244 m or 305 m) above ground level (AGL). Standard traffic patterns are left-handed, meaning all turns are made to the left. Right-handed patterns do exist, usually because of obstacles such as a mountain, or to reduce noise for local residents. The predetermined circuit helps traffic flow smoothly because all pilots know what to expect, and helps reduce the chance of a mid-air collision.
At extremely large airports, a circuit is in place but not usually used. Rather, aircraft (usually only commercial with long routes) request approach clearance while they are still hours away from the airport, often before they even take off from their departure point. Large airports have a frequency called Clearance Delivery which is used by departing aircraft specifically for this purpose. This then allows airplanes to take the most direct approach path to the runway and land without worrying about interference from other aircraft. While this system keeps the airspace free and is simpler for pilots, it requires detailed knowledge of how aircraft are planning to use the airport ahead of time and is therefore only possible with large commercial airliners on pre-scheduled flights. The system has recently become so advanced that controllers can predict whether an aircraft will be delayed on landing before it even takes off; that aircraft can then be delayed on the ground, rather than wasting expensive fuel waiting in the air.
There are a number of aids available to pilots, though not all airports are equipped with them. A Visual Approach Slope Indicator (VASI) helps pilots fly the approach for landing. Some airports are equipped with a VHF omnidirectional range (VOR) to help pilots find the direction to the airport. VORs are often accompanied by a distance measuring equipment (DME) to determine the distance to the VOR. VORs are also located off airports, where they serve to provide airways for aircraft to navigate upon. In poor weather, pilots will use an instrument landing system (ILS) to find the runway and fly the correct approach, even if they cannot see the ground. The number of instrument approaches based on the use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) is rapidly increasing and may eventually be the primary means for instrument landings.
Larger airports sometimes offer precision approach radar (PAR), but these systems are more common at military air bases than civilian airports. The aircraft's horizontal and vertical movement is tracked via radar, and the controller tells the pilot his position relative to the approach slope. Once the pilots can see the runway lights, they may continue with a visual landing.
Airport guidance signs provide direction and information to taxiing aircraft and airport vehicles. Smaller airports may have few or no signs, relying instead on airport diagrams and charts.
There are two classes of signage at airports, with several types of each:
Mandatory instruction signs are white on red. They show entrances to runways or critical areas. Vehicles and aircraft are required to stop at these signs until the control tower gives clearance to proceed.
Location sign, in this case for a taxiway.
Direction sign, in this case this way to taxiway B.
Destination sign, in this case pointing to a ramp.
Holding sign, in this case just before a runway.
Holding sign, in this case just before an ILS critical area.
No entry sign.
Exit sign, in this case seen when clearing a runway.
Distance sign, in this case showing 5000 feet before the end of the runway.
Many airports have lighting that help guide planes using the runways and taxiways at night or in rain or fog.
On runways, green lights indicate the beginning of the runway for landing, while red lights indicate the end of the runway. Runway edge lighting consists of white lights spaced out on both sides of the runway, indicating the edge. Some airports have more complicated lighting on the runways including lights that run down the centerline of the runway and lights that help indicate the approach (an Approach Lighting System, or ALS). Low-traffic airports may use Pilot Controlled Lighting to save electricity and staffing costs.
Along taxiways, blue lights indicate the taxiway's edge, and some airports have embedded green lights that indicate the centerline.
Obstruction Lighting
o Used to mark hazards
o Gives pilots a visual aid (usually creates a lane)
o Meant to be visible to pilots and not a disturbance to people on ground
Weather observations at the airport are crucial to safe take-offs and landings. In the US and Canada, the vast majority of airports, large and small, have some form of automated airport weather station, whether an AWOS, ASOS, or AWSS.[citation needed] Most larger airports also have human observers to provide additional observations to supplement the automated station. These weather observations are available over the radio, through Automatic Terminal Information Service (ATIS) or via the ATC.
Planes take-off and land into the wind in order to achieve maximum performance. Because pilots need instantaneous information during landing, a windsock is also kept in view of the runway.
Air safety is an important concern in the operation of an airport, and almost every airfield includes equipment and procedures for handling emergency situations. Commercial airfields include one or more emergency vehicles and their crew that are specially equipped for dealing with airfield accidents, crew and passenger extractions, and the hazards of highly flammable aviation fuel. The crews are also trained to deal with situations such as bomb threats, hijacking, and terrorist activities.
Hazards to aircraft include debris, nesting birds, and reduced friction levels due to environmental conditions such as ice, snow, or rain. Part of runway maintenance is airfield rubber removal which helps maintain friction levels. The fields must be kept clear of debris using cleaning equipment so that loose material does not become a projectile and enter an engine duct (see foreign object damage). In adverse weather conditions, ice and snow clearing equipment can be used to improve traction on the landing strip. For waiting aircraft, equipment is used to spray special deicing fluids on the wings.
Many airports are built near open fields or wetlands. These tend to attract bird populations, which can pose a hazard to aircraft in the form of bird strikes. Airport crews often need to discourage birds from taking up residence.
Some airports are located next to parks, golf courses, or other low-density uses of land. Other airports are located near densely-populated urban or suburban areas. In the 1980s, a conflict arose in San Jose, California, when a plane attempting to land at Reid-Hillview Airport (built in the 1930s) collided with a Macy's department store at the Eastridge Center. Many local residents tried to get the airport shut down, even though it had been there for fifty years: their neighborhoods (and the mall) were about a decade old.[citation needed]
An airport can have areas where collisions between airplanes on the ground tend to occur. Records are kept of any incursions where airplanes or vehicles are in an inappropriate location, allowing these "hot spots" to be identified. These locations then undergo special attention by transportation authorities (such as the FAA in the US) and airport administrators.
During the 1980s, a phenomenon known as microburst became a growing concern due to accidents caused by microburst wind shear. (For example, see Delta Air Lines Flight 191.) Microburst radar was developed as an aid to safety during landing, giving two to five minutes warning to aircraft in the vicinity of the field of a microburst event.
Some airfields now have a special surface known as soft concrete at the end of the runway (stopway) that behaves somewhat like styrofoam, bringing the plane to a relatively rapid halt as the material disintegrates. These surfaces are useful when the runway is located next to a body of water or other hazard, and prevent the planes from overrunning the end of the field.
Most airports have ground crew handling the loading and unloading of passengers, crew, baggage and other services.[citation needed] Some ground crew are linked to specific airlines operating at the airport.
Aircraft noise is major cause of noise disturbance to residents living near airports. Sleep can be affected if the airports operate night and early morning flights. Aircraft noise not only occurs from take-off and landings, but also ground operations including maintenance and testing of aircraft. Noise can have other noise health effects. Other noise and environmental concern are vehicle traffic causing noise and pollution on road leading the airport.
The construction of new airports or addition of runways to existing airports, is often resisted by local residents because of the effect on countryside, historical sites, local flora and fauna. Due to the risk of collision between birds and airplanes, large airports undertake population control programs where they frighten or shoot birds.
The construction of airports has been known to change local weather patterns. For example, because they often flatten out large areas, they can be susceptible to fog in areas where fog rarely forms. In addition, they generally replace trees and grass with pavement, they often change drainage patterns in agricultural areas, leading to more flooding, run-off and erosion in the surrounding land.
Some of the airport administrations prepare and publish annual environmental reports in order to show how they consider these environmental concerns in airport management issues and how they protect environment from airport operations. These reports contains all environmental protection measures performed by airport administration in terms of water, air, soil and noise pollution, resource conservation and protection of natural life around the airport.
An airbase, sometimes referred to as a military airport or airfield, provides basing and support of military aircraft. Some airbases provide facilities similar to their civilian counterparts. For example, RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, England has a terminal which caters to passengers for the Royal Air Force's scheduled Tristar flights to the Falkland Islands. Military airbases may also be co-located with civilian airports, sharing the same tower/air traffic control facilities, runways, taxiways and emergency services, but with separate terminals, parking areas, hangars and shelter areas. Examples of this are Bardufoss Airport/Bardufoss Air Station and Gardermoen Airport/Gardermoen Air Station, both in Norway. A special variant of a military airfield is the aircraft carrier.
The aircraft carrier is a warship that functions as a floating airport for military aircraft. Aircraft carriers allow a naval force to project air power great distances without having to depend on local bases for land-based aircraft. After their development in World War I, aircraft carriers replaced the battleship as the centrepiece of a modern fleet during World War II. Unescorted carriers are considered vulnerable to missile or submarine attacks and therefore travel as part of a carrier battle group that includes a wide array of other ships with specific functions.
Airports have played major roles in films and television programs due to its very nature as a transport hub, and sometimes because of distinctive features of individual airports. One such example of this is the The Terminal, a film about a man who becomes permanently grounded in an airport terminal and must survive only on the food and shelter provided by the airport. They are also one of the major elements in movies such as The V.I.P.s, Airplane!, Airport, Die Hard 2, Soul Plane, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, Home Alone, Liar Liar, Passenger 57, Final Destination, Unaccompanied Minors, Catch Me if You Can, Rendition and The Langoliers. They have also played important parts in television series like Lost, The Amazing Race, America's Next Top Model Cycle 10 also have significant parts of their story set within airports. In other programmes and films, airports are merely indicative of journeys, e.g. Good Will Hunting.
Several computer simulation games put the player in charge of an airport. These include Airport Tycoon and the sequels; Airport Tycoon 2 and Airport Tycoon 3. There is also a Japanese series of games called Air Traffic Controller.
An airstrip or airfield is a kind of airport that consists only of a runway with perhaps fueling equipment. They are generally in remote locations. Many airstrips (now mostly abandoned) were built on the hundreds of islands in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. Sometimes a few airstrips become full fledged airbases as strategic or economic importance of a region increases over time.
Each national aviation authority has a source of information about airports in their country. This will contain information on airport height, airport lighting, runway information, communications facilities and frequencies, hours of operation, nearby NAVAIDs and contact information where prior arrangement for landing is necessary.
|Commercial airline destinations by continent
North Africa:
Central Asia:
Western Europe:
|North America
Northern America:
|South America
South America:


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Happy Monday!
Despite the start of exam week it is a very happy Monday because it is my last Monday in college! Graduation is slowly becoming more real, and I am simultaneously getting more excited and terrified by the second.
(Thanks for hosting Katie!)
This weekend my friends and I attempted to live it up one last time while we're all in town for the weekend! Unfortunately, the weather was not super cooperative, but we didn't let that stop us too much 🙂
Marvelous is… The farmer's market is finally over! Just in time for me to leave… whomp, whomp. Luckily I have multiple farmer's markets at home that are pretty sweet, one of them is even open 7 days a week. I'm very produce spoiled but that is what happens when you live in the capital of a agriculture-heavy state. Lots of delicious produce!
Biggest rabbit I've ever seen, seriously it was larger than any cat I've ever owned.
I only ended up purchasing some apples (which are not nearly as good as they were in the fall, that season is more than over) and some farm fresh eggs, I have missed those suckers and they are sooo much better than store bought. I always buy them from a booth with this sweet old man because he always seems so grateful for the business and I love knowing the chickens are treated nicely. Happy chickens makes for tastier eggs.
Marvelous is… Art Crawlin'!
Dinner before hand at a new Asian restaurant: Taste Grill
I had the avocado roll, which was good but not different from any other mid-priced Asian restaurant.
Free wine samples! With a side of "you don't look old enough". It's getting old quick.
The cutest puppy I've seen in a while. I seriously considered just running off with him.
Modern dance in an art gallery. I'm in heaven.
Fro yo to round out the night.
Reeses peanut butter and chocolate yogurt with chocolate, Oreos and Reeses. I was craving chocolate and peanut butter in a bad way.
Marvelous is… Quatro de Mayo! Cinco de Mayo happened a day earlier over here. Something about having to teach a Sunday evening Pilates class and a 9AM finance exam made me think Sunday night drink was a poor choice. Something about wanting to graduate and not get fired, silly things like that.
Dinner at Black Cat Burrito to keep with the fiesta theme. Tortilla-less burrito with black beans, rice, mushrooms, broccoli and tomatillo sauce, with their delicious coleslaw on the side of course. Hit the spot. I'm sure going to miss these burritos.
Marvelous is… Milk (Stout) and cookies! With a side of Joy Ride. Somehow my friends and I have made a tradition of watching Joy Ride every year on reading day. I can't say it's my favorite tradition, because if you've ever seen Joy Ride you know it's a terrible movie, but cookies and beer make everything better.
I made these cookies and they came out quite tasty, even my gluten eating friends liked them. Then I washed them down with a beer, so much for gluten-free.
Marvelous is… Nostalgic college slideshows. My friend put one together of all of us (with some pretty hilarious photoshopped pictures) I'm going to miss everyone!
Marvelous is… My finance exam is DONE. It was my hardest exam so fingers crossed that I did okay! Only 2 projects, 1 speech, and 2 exams stand between me and summer. I. Can. Do. This. Can you tell I'm ready for summer?
Marvelous is… My family gets here on Saturday, which means tasty dinners out and extra pack help. Oh and quality family time of course.
Marvelous is… Breakfast plans with the roomie for tomorrow morning. I have a two day break before my next exam and will be doing my best to not spend the whole time studying.
Marvelous is… My first run in a couple weeks! My foot is still a little sore but it is feeling much better. I only did 15 short minutes today but it felt good to run again. The elliptical is starting to drive me crazy.
What made your Monday marvelous?
Any exciting summer plans?
How did you celebrate Cinco de Mayo?

subset: commoncrawl


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Michael Bublé - Tour Stop 148
Michael Bublé – TOUR STOP 148 presents a front row seat to the superstar's phenomenally successful sold out To Be Loved Tour which concluded in 2015 and was seen globally by over two million fans. Filmed for the big screen with superb 5.1 surround sound, Michael Bublé – TOUR STOP 148 showcases thrilling live performances of many of the Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter's biggest hits, including Home, Haven't Met You Yet, Cry Me A River and Feelin' Good. The performance is intercut with never-before-seen behind-the-scenes footage of Team Bublé bringing this moveable feast from arena to arena for two years. This must-see event includes a special 15 minute introduction with Michael Bublé EXCLUSIVE to cinemas – don't miss it!
1hr 45mins long
M Offensive language


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Add a bit of luxury to your lounge time with the unique yet understated style of the Roxy. The signature cross-threaded tufts and smooth curves add equal parts sophistication and sex appeal. Ideally sized for self-indulgence, yet generous enough to share with a friend.
8-way hand tied coil springs
FSC-Certified Wood (kiln dried)
Natural Latex Foam cushions
Organic wool
0% VOC finishes and adhesives


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No prior computer science knowledge or experience is necessary
Students will learn to design and implement computer programs that solve problems relevant to today's society, including art, media, and engineering. AP Computer Science A teaches object-oriented programming using the Java language and is meant to be the equivalent of a first semester, college-level course in computer science. It will emphasize problem solving and algorithm development, and use hands-on experiences and examples so that students can apply programming tools and solve complex problems.
This course will prepare students for the end-of-course AP Exam.
Meet the teacher
Rebecca Dovi is a nationally recognized AP Computer Science teacher, with 15 years of classroom experience. She serves on the Education Advisory Council for Code.org and served as a pilot instructor for the College Board's new Computer Science Principles course.
Learn more
about Rebecca.
The AP Computer Science A course teaches fundamental programming topics that include problem solving, design strategies and methodologies, organization of data (data structures), approaches to processing data (algorithms), analysis of potential solutions, and ethical and social implications of computing.
Term 1
Focus on the basic building blocks of computer science and programming tools. Topics include control structures, primitive and class data types such as arrays, ArrayList and Strings, methods, and recursions.
Unit 1: Intro to Java
Unit 2: Strings and Loops
Unit 3: Strings and One-Dimensional Arrays
Unit 4: Methods
Term 2
Learn how to manipulate data to create more sophisticated programs, with topics including class design, algorithm development and user-defined data types.
Unit 5: User-defined Classes
Unit 6: Advanced Classes
Unit 7: Algorithms
Unit 8: Two-Dimensional Arrays
Unit 9: Exam Prep
What's included?
Get everything you need to ensure students succeed in AP Computer Science.
Course materials
Our full-year curriculum includes video lessons and interactive activities and assessments.
Student forum
Students interact with their peers (both locally and around the world), and our course instructor and teaching assistants in a moderated, online forum.
Are you a student?
Let your school know you're interested in using Edhesive.
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Contact us to learn more.
Advanced Placement and AP are registered trademarks of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.


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Short Trip to Pohang
Pohang is a city in North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea, and a main seaport in the Daegu-Gyeongbuk region. The built-up area of Pohang is located on the alluvium of the mouth of the Hyeongsan River. The city is divided into two wards ("Gu"), Buk-gu (Northern Ward) and Nam-gu (Southern Ward).


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Schuller Kitchens
German fitted kitchens at their very best
German kitchens are renowned internationally for their quality and engineering and Schuller Kitchens set the standards. No two of the 95,000 bespoke kitchens they produce each year are the same. Each kitchen is sustainably constructed in an environmentally friendly way. The carcasses are compression and tension tested and come with more design freedom in form, colour and style than ever.
Schuller is Germany's leading kitchen exporter for good reason; their uncompromising quality means that their kitchens are designed for life.
– Uncompromising German quality
– One of the top 5 kitchen manufacturers in the world
– Vast and versatile variety of finishes
– GS Test Mark, Golden M, ISO 9001 and PEFC-certified
Alea Crystal
White High Gloss
Impeccable German kitchens
Schuller focuses on in-house production, permanent product design and quality control.
Schüller commits itself and has an active share in environmental protection by a responsible production, the use of recyclable materials as well as an investment of millions in state of the art product facilities, innovative heating technologies and heat recovery.
Quality for Schuller means quality of life – inside the home and for the planet.


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KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters Life!) - A hit Malaysian Islamic reality TV show kicked off its second season this week after drawing more than 1,000 hopefuls from the region in a sign of the religion's growing reach in Southeast Asia.
Combining a reality TV format with Islamic teachings, the "Imam Muda" or "Young Imam" show is a talent contest for male Muslims aged between 18 and 27 who can speak Malay, with the winner crowned an Imam or religious leader.
"The end result, we leave it to God but we want to do the best we can to attract youths to be closer to the religion," said Izelan Basar, station manager for the Malaysian satellite television station which produces the show.
The prime-time show features contestants in sharp-looking black suits who are judged on a variety of tasks including reciting Koranic verses, washing corpses, slaughtering sheep according to Muslim rules and counseling promiscuous young Muslim couples.
"Young Imam" first aired last year but was then only open to Malaysians. Its popularity led the producers to invite participants from other countries.
More than 1,000 hopefuls from Malaysia as well as neighboring Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and Thailand auditioned for the show's second season, and 10 were shortlisted, said Izelan.
Islam is the most widely practiced religion in Southeast Asia with more than 240 million followers, with Indonesia the world's most populous Muslim country.
"I hope that through Imam Muda, I'll become confident and strong to face any challenges," said Singaporean Mujahid Suhaimi, 20, one of the show's contestants.
The show will run for 10 weeks with the winner offered a job as an imam, or head of a mosque, a car, a cash prize of 30,000 ringgit ($9,922) and a four-year scholarship in Al-Madinah University in Saudi Arabia.
Reporting by Razak Ahmad; Editing by Liau Y-Sing and Robert Birsel


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Babyccino "Spring!" Curriculum
Babyccino has some fresh new material! The Spring 2014 curriculum has just landed last week, and the theme is "Spring!" - featuring the elements of the nature around us via plants, bugs, water, and earth. This growth-themed series will encourage young children to explore our world with their senses, communicate with creative art, and express themselves through music and movement. Due to popular demand, this particular 8-class curriculum includes classes and activities for the holidays of Lag Baomer and Shavuos. Join the Babyccino team and watch your community of little sprouts blossom!!
Buy-in will include this complete package:
- The rights to use the name "Babyccino"
- The Babyccino promotional material – text altered to your needs
- The philosophy behind Babyccino
- The method to promote the classes
- The complete classroom layout (including links for furniture purchases)
- The Circle Time "how-to" (including song playlist and links for props)
- The fully descriptive Fall 2013 Curriculum (including links for supplies)
The Curriculum consists of a "theme"/unit, the music playlist for that theme, and 8 detailed classes. (We will be selling 3 different curriculums throughout the year – 8 fall classes, 8 winter classes, 8 spring classes.) It basically lays it all out for you – you can practically spend one Sunday getting things together off the list of items detailed here, set them aside all ready-to-go, and never have to plan another mommy & me again. Seriously.
You should hit up the Babyccino facebook page to get an idea of what I'm talking about. There you can view full photo-documentation of all our previous classes and you'll see what it's all about.
Click here for a more detailed blog post about Babyccino and here to see what buyers are saying about it.
Happy Spring and Chag Sameach to you all!!


text: J.M. Porup has been a security geek since 2002, when he got his first job in IT. Since then he's covered national security and information security for a variety of publications, and now calls CSOonline home. He previously reported from Colombia for four years, where he wrote travel guidebooks to Latin America, and speaks Spanish fluently with a hilarious gringo-Colombian accent.


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Little Country Cars is dedicated to providing a comfortable and easy-going buying experience. We are a family owned dealership that is locally owned and proud to do business with a handshake and a smile. Little Country Cars offers high quality trucks, SUV's and cars that have all been looked over by a third party shop for safety and reliability. And though we're a small town dealer, we offer a full array of financing options to meet the needs of those with good and not-so-good credit alike.
Our website is maintained regularly so you can shop for your next vehicle in the comfort of your home, but if you need to talk to us we are only a phone call away. Feel free to come by the lot any time to meet us in person. We invite you to take a look at our vehicles, grab a bite to eat or play some Keno across the street at the Denton Daily Double and enjoy a pressure free car buying experience.
Our goal is for you to be so delighted with your vehicle purchase that you'll come see us when you need your next car and will happily recommend us to friends and family. Customer referrals are the ultimate compliment.
To learn more about our dealership and how we can help with your next vehicle purchase, please call or stop by in person. We look forward to meeting you.


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Molas are the brightly colored applique panels made only in the San Blas region of Panama by the Kuna Indians. Once the paper Molas are completed, have the children discuss their importance to the Kuna Indian women and their culture.
Grade Level: 4 – 6
Click here to see a Materials List and purchase products for this Lesson Plan.


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Exciting Growth at the Intersection of Person and Role-Taking
Some of our most dramatic gains in leader development owe much to identity growth spurts, which occur in the course of facing new challenges. They are effortful, sometime even painful, breakthroughs that transform our ways of thinking, feeling, and relating. They're occasioned by the felt demands of the roles we take. The demands are more than a call to action, they're a call for adaptive learning about self, situation, and what we must do differently in order to thrive.
Are you or someone you care about at this intersection of growth? Its arrival is accompanied by feelings of exhilaration and exhaustion, high hopes and perilous fears. It usually includes a pervasive sense that much is at stake, and that we have a significant opportunity to make a difference. Beyond the elation over "upsides" lie a sobering burden of responsibility, often more felt than fully understood. What can we do to make the most of this opportunity and fulfill its responsibilities?
Those are the questions I discuss in this article.
The Effects of Challenge
From infancy forward, there is within each of us an inherent curiosity and striving to be, to explore, to experience, and to orient ourselves in our surrounding world. We do not do this alone; it's always within a social context and in the company of others who reflect back to us what they see in us. With the best of parenting, teaching (school years), and supervision (in vocational life), we find encouragement in the responses of others as they recognize and affirm our insights and evolving competencies as persons.
In that way, we become known to others and to ourselves as independent centers of awareness with a capacity for intelligent adaptive action. A growing sense of our personal potential to initiate purposive action (agency), and to do so in ways that genuinely express our interests and preferences (personality) constitute core elements of our identity (unique self). And as we cultivate a mature attunement to our normative framework of moral beliefs about what is good, right, and proper, self-identity deepens.
This all occurs, of course, as we navigate the school years, post-secondary education, and early career experience. At some point, our challenges become less about individual task-oriented, practical abilities, especially as we aspire to manage and lead others. Then, challenges become more complex, our success becomes increasingly contingent upon the way we get work done through others. Cognitive, emotional, and relational aspects of working together co-determine our efficiency and effectiveness.
Those who seek careers in management tend to be achievement oriented. Presenting them with new or bigger problems or opportunities will typically represent a powerful stimulus for creative-productive action. It will intensify their focus and efforts – cognitive, emotional, and practical. As illustrated in Figure 1, rising levels of challenge will stimulate learning and gains in our capacity to perform…that is, up to a point (A-B). Beyond the inflection point we not only observe diminishing returns but actual declines in our capacity to perform.
This downward spiral (decompensation) is usually the result of accumulated stress, strain, and fatigue. These effects can build insidiously, just as the boiling-the-frog metaphor suggests. Although it may feel we are suffering these effects privately, it is others who will often first notice their adverse impacts, and not just at work. It's often those closest to us who witness our unvarnished emotional reactions and our insistent assertions that we'll get a handle on it.
Plotting Our Position on the Curve
As you scan Table 1, I am confident that some of the "warning signs" will be familiar, because you've been there yourself or because you've observed them in others. Most of us with confidence and a track record of "playing through pain" will rationalize, minimize, or deny feeling stuck. It will be embarrassing to acknowledge that our coping efforts are failing, that our struggles are affecting others. In the best of circumstances this defensive routine is shorter in duration, it's almost never nonexistent.
The most important reason to specify the warning signs of an approaching inflection point is to prompt attentiveness. By noticing these signs earlier, we are more able to come to grips with them in a timely and effective manner. Timely intervention, as illustrated in Figure 2, requires a "reflective pause" and perspective-taking at just the time when our focus is narrowing and intensifying. Feelings of desperation are beginning to activate defenses and close off our access to adaptive avenues of action.
However, with timely intervention, we can change the trajectory of the curve. In fact, we can perhaps facilitate a "jump" to another curve, achieving a more transformative quality of adaptive change and growth. Doing this requires the counter-intuitive use of the reflective pause mentioned above.
You will notice prior to the inflection points B, D, and F in Figure 2 are reflection points B1, D1, and F1. There is a downward dip in the new curve of adaptive development. It represents the pause, pulling our shoulders back from "wheel" for a moment. There is also an outward shift to the right, which indicates capacity growth that is will span even higher levels of challenge.
These are intervention points. The pause provides us with an opportunity to assess the felt the demands of our role afresh. It allows us to appreciate how those demands impinge upon us. In what aspects of the challenge are we finding ourselves overwhelmed, lacking the know-how or capacity to cope?
Although our individual reflection upon these matters may produce valuable insights and possibilities for action, it is the feedback from others, our stakeholders, that will prove especially helpful. It will help us appreciate what only they can see and report from their role and their experience of our presence and behavior. (For more on the vital importance of feedback, see my recent article on the Johari Window.) With increased self-awareness and other-awareness, we are better able to target key gap themes.
Coaching helps us acquire these data, actively and fruitfully process them for insight, and then translate those insights into work-relevant, role-specific development themes. In such "processing" the coach is there to offer a sufficiently tough quality of "love" (self-discovery & encouragement) to ensure that we formulate realistic ideas about what we need to do differently, where to start, and how to include and involve others in the process. After all, why ask for feedback if we're not going to invite constructive engagement, right?
There's much more to the process of leader identity development that occurs in the course of adult role-taking. And there is more to the art of being there for those we coach through this vital kind of personal growth. Both merit additional attention. However, one further thought I would leave you with is that of an "Arc of Virtue." It's the arc traced by the upward line of movement that intersects the origin of each new adaptive development curve in Figure 2.
I use these graphical illustrations because I hope they can help us better picture the constellation of forces at work in adult development. Knowing these graphics are based upon well-established theory and empirical research, should give us reason for optimism. But to bolster that point, let me share an even more fundamental truth: It is that none of this is out of reach for any of us unless we choose to believe it is beyond us. Don't make that mistake!


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The ebook filled with humor, comics and art
by John Garrett!
Did you ever notice that whenever good normal people are trying to live their lives, have a good time, or just plain get some work done…there's always some STUPID CLOWN around trying to ruin things?
Dealing with difficult people is hard enough in life -somebody should write a book on these clowns, or something.
Good news! The answer is here!
Pick up your copy of How to Deal with Stupid Clowns who don't know what the Hell they're talking about! today!


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Remarks for the Families Belong Together Rally
By Derek Penwell
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Deuteronomy 10:17-19).
We all take things for granted. Navigating our world day-to-day requires a certain amount of taken-for-grantedness. I take for granted that when I give the cashier a little blue piece of plastic that I'll be able to take my lima beans and Wonderbread and walk out of the Kroger unmolested.
I take for granted that when I go to Pizza Hut they're not leavening the dough with Drano.
I take for granted that when this rally is over, I'll get in my car to go home, and everyone else on the road will know to drive on the righthand side of the road.
Indeed, I take for granted that after this is over, I'll have a home to go home to.
Most of us take for granted that home is a fixed place that'll be there whenever we need it.
But not everybody in the world has a place they can call home. Because, I suspect, we all realize that home is more than an address with a few shrubs, a mailbox, and a toxic waste dump for your neighbor's 200 lb. Mastiff.
There are some people who feel like the place they were born and learned to call home is no longer safe enough to be anything like a home. And so they pack up their children and they come here in the hopes of finding a new home and new neighbors—and if not a home then at least a place that will protect their children from the violence and death they've grown to expect in the places they come from.
But now?
What happens now with the "zero tolerance" policy is that families in search of a home are torn apart. This administration has decided that children are an acceptable price to pay to keep people of color from "invading" our country.
This administration has made the strategic calculation that it's altogether acceptable to say to the parents of these children, as well as to intransigent bleeding heart liberals and progressives: "That's a nice baby you've got there. It'd be a shame for something to happen to her."
In just 6 weeks, thousands of children have been ripped from their parents' arms. Doctors tell us this kind of trauma causes lifelong mental, emotional, and physical harm. And there's still no plan to reunite these families, to restore to terrified parents and children the possibility of ever again finding a home together. The closest thing the folks in charge have got is locking up families in the same facility.
But that's not putting families back together; it's just crushing them in a new, more deniably evil way.
You see, home is where people welcome you . . . often when you've got no place else to go. In the world of the Bible not to have a home was to be vulnerable to violence and exploitation. Those who were most vulnerable because they often had no home were widows, orphans, and strangers.
In fact, more than any other commandment in the Hebrew Scriptures, the exhortation to care for widows, orphans, and strangers is more prominent than any other commandment . . . over three dozen times it's in there. You can find it in the Law, in the Psalms, and in the Prophets.
God holds a special place in God's heart for those who can't find welcome in this world, a home for those whose homes can no longer welcome them. A place to belong, a place where hospitality is extended.
As a person of faith, I have a vested interest in the issue of hospitality, of extending the hand of welcome.
In our culture, we tend to believe that hospitality has to do with things like potato salad and chicken casserole. But when people of faith talk about about hospitality, we've got our sights set on bigger things. Because cultivating hospitality is about having a disposition, an attitude of openness, which asks first about how to serve and embrace others—regardless of what the folks in charge think about it.
And if I'm being honest, I'm baffled by white evangelicals who think this president is a champion for Christian values. He hasn't done anything that if the Jesus they claim to follow showed up on the scene would cause him to say, "Yeah, nice job! That's totally what I had in mind."
People of faith have got to do better—Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Christians. All of us, people of faith and people of no particular faith . . . we bear responsibility for the treatment of widows, orphans, and strangers. And we can't sit idly by while innocent people, people just searching for a home under the banner of our protection are thrown in cages.
We've got to join our voices together to tell the government "No! You're not going to continue to commit atrocities against people of color in our name—just to score political points with racists and white nationalists! We will not allow it!"
Because don't kid yourself, you start welcoming the stranger to make a home among us, speaking up on behalf of the undocumented and those fleeing violence, you start advocating for sanctuary for those oppressed by the government . . . you're going to make the big shots in Frankfort and Washington nervous.
But maybe what we need most right now is some nervous politicians, politicians scared of our outrage, afraid of what we're capable of doing in the name of justice and love.
When we talk about welcome, about hospitality, we're not concerned with drawing boundary lines to indicate just who deserves it; we're interested in blowing open the doors and welcoming everybody in. To the people usually on the outside of polite society with their noses pressed up against the glass wishing someone would welcome them—we say, "Let 'em all in. Don't cross-reference the guest list; don't check I.D.s at the door, don't ask for the password and the secret handshake, don't make sure they're the right color. Look them in the eyes, embrace them, and say, 'Welcome home.'"
Because the real question to those of us who care about our neighbors is:
Are we willing to love the wrong people hard enough to make the folks in charge nervous?


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The Missing System Review
The Missing System from Matt Smith is a guide to blackjack betting. Matt claims that after reading his guide you'll be ready to profit in 30 minutes.
The Missing System from Matt Smith is a guide to blackjack betting. Matt claims that after reading his guide you'll be ready to profit in 30 minutes.
The Infallible System from Kenneth Salmon is promoted as an "easy, safe and affordable" system for making money from roulette.
The Numbers Game 2015 from Ian Lord is said to be a mathematical system for playing online casino's. It's said to manipulate a "secret" loophole in programs online roulette companies use.
500 Every week is a manual setting out four strategies for profiting on Betfair – sports betting and games. The user makes their own selections as required.
Winners Agency NAPS+ is a horse betting service that provides you each day with an email listing win or each way horse racing bets complete with stakes and prices.
Flaming Torch's blackjack system uses money management and a stop loss limit to deliver consistent profits. Shows you how to control your bets so you know when to bet big.
Ultimate Lotologist is a community where you essentially trade lottery scratch cards with other members. In order to take part and become a "qualified member" to start recieving lottery scratch cards from other members, you will have to buy four lottery scratch cards to send to four other members and invite a member to join the system.
Michael states that his Roulette Guy Secret roulette system makes it "simply impossible to lose" if you follow the rules and "don't vary from the instructions." His system is demonstrated in various forms, from an eBook to a two-hour training video and at a seminar where an instructor demonstrates Michael's system.
The Racing Roulette product by Darryl Baxter comprises 2 systems, one for horse racing and one for roulette which can be operated independently or in tandem. The author advises that he uses his roulette winnings to fund the horse racing bets.
The Risk Free Profit Club is a compilation of methods that can be used to make cash risk free including bookmaker bonuses, free slot machine plays, Bet365 special offer and arbitrage betting. A total of 8 strategies are included and a support facility is also included.
The World Best Roulette System by Michael Davis is an online casino software system that claims a winning rate of 94.6% using flat bets (No martingale).
Sign up here and I'll immediately email you Five ways to get a mathematical edge on the bookies, worth £40, COMPLETELY FREE of charge… what's more you'll also receive my e-letter, The Betting Rant… and again, it's COMPLETELY FREE.
I respect your privacy and will never pass
on your email address to anyone else.


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Wells Fargo Small Business Loans
A lot of times people have great ideas which they cannot make into reality because of their lack of funding. This is an obstacle for a lot of people who want to start a business and have a great business idea and an even better business plan but no money to finance it. This is where small business loans come in. With a small business loan you can set up your business and be done with it.
What are small business loans
Small business loans tend to help people set up their businesses. These only apply to businesses which are not that big and are going to have a small set up when they start initially. At times a small business loan can also come in handy for a company that is small in size but is in dire need of an inflow of finances hence with Wells Fargo Small Business Loans, companies can manage to stay afloat through the rough times and then pay back the loan slowly when things start to get better.
Specifics of Wells Fargo Small Business Loans
There are two types of Wells Fargo Small Business Loans that you can opt for; unsecured and equipment express loan. The Unsecured loan ranges from an amount of $10,000 to $100,000 and the contract term can last between one year to five years. There is no collateral required for this loan and the APR is fixed as well. While the equipment express loan also has an amount of $10,000 to $100,000, the APR may differ according to the equipment you are getting with the loan.
The Wells Fargo Small Business Loans are incredibly popular amongst small business owners because the terms of the loan are quite agreeable for a lot of people.
About Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo, the bank which offers Wells Fargo Small Business Loans is one of the most popular financial institutions in the country. It was founded in 1852 and is one of the oldest financial institutions which is still successfully operating. Their headquarters are located in city of San Francisco, America.


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Our first time there, an old soldier sold us three spinners and something called beef jerky. The spinners had red bodies, each with a gold wing to which a small adhesive strip, florescent orange w/four black spots, was attached. They were beautiful. They were expensive…."
by john brown
Driving down Oldfield road, you would pass houses that were built before George Washington was born. Ours was a white salt box colonial with green faux shutters. If you were to look in the living room windows one early winter evening in 1971, you would have seen a family of five playing some sort of game.
We were taking a vote. If the result was not unanimous, we were to forget about the whole thing. "Who wants to move to Oregon?" There we sat, three boys 9, 11 & 14, with, mostly steady hands raised. My father made few promises. A busy man like him knew how to temper commitment. My oldest brother had some reservations, but agreed, the move would be best in the long run. My other brother, had already left and begun anew. And even without the little aside from my father, "there's lots of good fishing," I was ready to pack my bags. That little aside, or maybe just the idea of it, stuck with me. You see, my one bonding moment with my father was when he took me along on a boat ride to Long Island Sound. Technically I was going to fish, but we were on L.I.S.. In the summer of 1971. I caught a six pack of beer in an onion sack. (The tepid beer, still drinkable as my father was quick to demonstrate.) And a full size Styrofoam surfboard. Happy that the kid wouldn't go home empty handed, we were back at the dock by 9:30am. The stern flag on his friends vintage Cris Craft speeder, rewrapped, in a plastic bag.
Still, my expectations, if not met, were wetted. Even if the water held little promise, the idea of fishing somehow did. Though the only pictures my minds slide could develop, were the convergence of mean spirited kids brandishing sticks on a suspect drain. Or of a noisy Hungarian family we knew, clamoring among slippery rocks, grasping at eels with their hands. And beery old men, leaving dull and staring Blue Fish on the front lawn. Blue Fish my mother would never clean. Blue Fish no-one would ever taste. All these memories were leading somewhere. So far, they were just memories of an idea, vague, uneven, unclean.
Something of that idea in my head was perceptible to my mother as well. Like the look of a young man who needs help with his homework. Who has a concept, or an equation, he can not maintain. Maybe it was my early history of day long road trips. The packing of supplies. Lonely days spent walking or riding my bike to another obscure part of the sprawling borough navigated by cyclone fences, churches and schools. My mother knew. She was a women always looking for clues. Anything that would spark the fire of passion in her boys. Evidence of the genius she knew existed, but had no proof. Anything that could ignite the precious coals of inspiration that she had long held in a tinder box of a hope. Whatever it was, she tucked away those memories, some idea of it, and of that little aside. And then, in secret, sometime while packing up the entire household by herself, she did the unthinkable, she responded to an ad by Ron Popeil. An ad for the "Pocket Fisherman." It would be a moving to Oregon gift. A gift that was for moving away from everything she had ever known.
The hope of Oregon was clean. Clean of expectations. Clean like fresh sheets. Clean like a brand new word worth repeating. Green. A word that popped up from back seats and every kind of conversation. A word that stood out like a New Yorker in blue denim jeans. We had to look up "Oregon" in the Encyclopedia. Find it on the map. West, straight across the continent. West of Idaho. Idaho. Idaho was a word we had never uttered in our lives. It made us laugh. An uneasy laugh brought on, no doubt, by the distance of it all. A new mathematics. A new scale by which we were to measure our surroundings.
It would be eight months before the family was all together in our new place. That time apart suddenly compressed when we found ourselves driving the dramatic roads and highways of the Northwest. Eager just to be in it. A part of it. Practicing new words, on signs, as they appeared. We were always near water. Confused at times, our internal compasses spinning.Where before, in our previous lives, water would lead us in a particular direction, here, in this new geography, water didn?t seem to know its place. Great arteries of it running from south to north. Running. Great gasping truths of it. And wherever we went, there was hope. The hope of a chance to fish. I took along my "little fishing thing," as everyone called it. And both parents began to make sure that I did. Now my wanderings had, what they thought, a singular purpose. It would be some time before I had the focus to meet those expectations.
One early trip was to Spirit Lake in southwest Washington. The consensus was that we, or I should say I, would be fishing most hours of the day. The distractions, on the surface, seemed minimal. I did manage to wet my line and to master a fishing knot. (There was a diagram sticker on the inside "tackle compartment" of the fishing things handle.) I deemed the basic cinch knot most efficient. Still do. There were just to many diversions. I was stuck on the beauty of the equation itself. Two + x = x + 2? The cycle of life revealed itself wherever I looked. The lake and the sky, the ground and the seed were ultimately the same. How did it survive the winter? It was July and there were still drifts of snow covered in pine needles, high against the trees. The water itself a cold breathing thing. You could see directly through it. I'd stare at the surface. One moment suspended in the membrane of a mountainscape painting, then with a slight change in consciousness, like the tuning out of a radio, I'd fall through to the bottom again. Sunken logs startling. Behemoths preserved. I'd plumb the lake in places with a sinker and report the depth back to camp. We paddled around in a numbered canoe. We visited a huge log cabin where there was a dock and were informed it was actually a "Lodge," for paying guests. We were escorted off the property by a skinny old man wearing a hat who had never met a little boy named Harry (my brother.) No. There was little time to fish.
And as suddenly as those times seemed to begin, they ended with an illness. It would be over a year before I could wander on my own again. A year and two months before I would fish. Perhaps I still needed time. Time to add it all up.
About the time I began to test the limits of my surroundings again, my parents bought into a piece of property at the edge of a National forest. A sidling piece of ancient thicket, on a fall line, along the upper fork of a river that sprouted out of a mountains volcanic seams. It was only about an hour away. A hour and fifteen if you counted time to stop at the tackle shop/general store on River Road, which became a matter of routine. Stopping for supplies was not so much a necessity as it was a connecting to the place. Unlike us, that store seemed to belong.
Our first time there, an old soldier sold us three spinners and something called beef jerky. The spinners had red bodies, each with a gold wing to which a small adhesive strip, florescent orange w/four black spots, was attached. They were beautiful. They were expensive. On the way to the car my father told me to "make 'em last!" I was pretty sure the jerky would. We were to be there three days.
You could tell the parents were proud and a bit nervous. Not quite realizing that if nothing came from their investment, it didn't matter. Owning a piece of the forest was like owning someone else's dream. A part of some idyllic Eden from an unsteady suburban theme. A bit woozily, the parents showed us around, pointing out trails, and most importantly, the boundaries. The property lines and the imaginary lines, outside of which, someone was still required to "stay with Johnny." With those things said, we dashed along the trail with my "fishing thing" my, Popeil Pocket Fisherman, in one hand and two of the costly spinners in the other. The boundaries quickly falling away. And my brothers, after surveying the pool I was going to fish and uttering some inane instructions, they disappeared into the crags and gray rocks.
It was surprising how well the little fishing thing cast. I liked the feel of the fluttering spinner under the surface of the water. And just like the crystal painting of Spirit Lake, I could tune out the surface scene and see the mottled colors of the bottom below. This time, picking out the regular pulse and flash of the lure blade. Here, because the water was moving, that device of consciousness required real concentration. The scene flipped back, and forth. The pulse of the lure. The static. The sky. The stream. And then, thug thug! My world changed forever. Survival mode. Mine and something else's. My arm was popping. It felt like a heavy square-headed dog biting at it's own leash. I would have yelled for help, but couldn't. What could someone else have done? The brain sending signals.Signals to the adrenals, to the heart. Not to my legs. I stood on a little tongue of volcanic rock watching my line walk around the simmering pool. It walked right to me and under me. Stretching against the rock until it broke. Not knowing what to do I walked towards camp. Then towards the sounds of my brothers fighting. Then, back to the edge of the place. The exact spot.
The brothers seemed to sense something and appeared from out of the same rocks and crannies that had absorbed them. I had no breathe, no words, no numbers, to relate to them of my seconds long experience. They had nothing to go on or to believe in, except the scent of adrenaline in the air. They tried to disappear again but the pull of it kept them within a visible perimeter. Nervously, I tied on my other spinner. It seemed like forever. I had to look at the little sticker in the handle again before remembering the knot. After noticing about four feet of frayed line, had to do it all again. The worry was more about losing another costly spinner than any concern about losing a fish. I still hadn't done the math.
A deep calming breathe that I learned in the hospital.
Another nice cast to the same spot across the pool. Falling into the oily dimension of the pool. Thug thug? same result. Though, this time, the line walked, briefly, on the surface, being chased by something longer than my leg. And, just like before, it all disappeared below the undercut at my feet. And like the popping of a pimple in your ear, my lure was gone. My brothers came, crab like, scrabbling over the rocks. Shouting questions and accusations. Log throwing? Ha. Then, they too went through the pacing motions of not quite knowing what to do. "Cast again!" "Do it again!" I lost my spinner. "Put on another one!" I only have one more. "Put it on! Dad's got it. "Oh?" But that question in their voice told me of their support on this issue. They were trying to convince themselves of what they had already seen. That, or the idea of it, we would work out on the trail back to camp. Where they would realize, they were supposed to be with me the whole time. My word, in this instance, would be the rule. They were my only proof.
I got the other spinner.
The weight of the words "that- is- the- last- one" slightly slowing my stride as we headed back on the trail, through a thousand shades of green.
The brothers lost interest before I could tie the lure on. This time, I kept the spinner shallow on the retrieve so that, perhaps, if the situation repeated itself, and I had no reason to believe it wouldn?t, I could get a better look at what it was I was dealing with. I didn't get the chance. After a couple of casts I pulled in a 14 inch trout. It was fatter than the pocket fisherman and I didn't really know what to do with it. I carried it to the trees where I strung it on a branch pulled from a low laying shrub. With it still gasping. I stumbled along the rocks to find my brothers.
In my pride, I had made a fatal mistake. They would not be denied their turns… and quickly lost, on a snag, "the last one" of my last precious lures. Happy that I was not going home empty handed, weak kneed, I returned to camp alone.
My mother's excitement bubbled over that I had finally caught something with "the fishing thing." She shared the sadness of my lure situation and of my having to tell my father. My father. He was ready to eat trout, with eggs and bacon. He would in the morning and marvel at the pink flesh of the fish.
Somehow they both had to bear witness to the origin of the thing. As if the pool itself would add it up for them. To somehow claim, for themselves, another piece of the waking dream. With the broken chop of their uneasy laughter stumbling between the trees we made our way back to the pool.
They stood tentatively on the rocks above, waiting for a little internal assurance or maybe, just a little stunned at the view. We made our way to the little jut of rock where I had stood and lost three dollars worth of tackle in less than two hours. My father worked his way out to the furthest point with my mother in tow. Him, splashing at the edges in some short goofy boots. Her, careful not to get her clean canvas shoes even a little wet. He stood there, bent at the waist, my mothers arm on and almost around his back. Had they ever been closer? Working out the shadows and the sky. Squinting, then becoming aware that the trick was to relax your eyes. My mother saw their reflection. Nothing more. Perhaps you could see something if you didn't breathe? They held their breathe. And the earth stopped spinning. Silence and the crowded lens of the pool emptied itself into the air. The membrane of it stretched, snapped back and shattered. My mothers hand a fist of shirt secured. Leaning back to take it in. The fish aloft using it's body as it always had. Except for the air. In defiance of it all. Pretty pictures. People who stare. It crashed again as the parents audible yelp echoed between the rocks and beneath the bridge some yards below. Their collective gasp coming back to us. "Je-sush, Je-sush." The burbling laugh of "what a scare!"
It took a few moments for them to process the snap shot negative taken in the black and white panic of the scene. Process it to color. Apply it to the pieces of their new life. As the image began to reveal itself, questions arose that had already been answered, by me, back at camp. The colors and tones continued to fill themselves in. A slow double exposure coming to life in it's watery pan. The answer to one question escaped them. "What was that on it?s lip?" "It was beautiful." "Something gold," "with something bright orange. Orange with… black dots."
We made another trip to the store.
The next morning my brother helped "scoop in" a Steelhead longer than his leg. People watched from the bridge and cheered. As we weren't quite sure what to do with such a thing in the shallow edges of the pool, we started to pick words out of the rattling shouts from above. Piecing the echoes together, we got… LET- IT- GO? RI-VER CLOSED. Oddly, the people on the bridge were pointing to the trees.
Any sadness we felt quickly dissipated as we climbed the bridge for a brief interrogation. We had entered the area from the road, well below the signs, and came up fishing behind them. That fact, and a brown and white "little fishing thing," incurred nothing but amusement and understanding. Anyway, we did let it go.
Somehow I had come to the beginning and the end. The tough and the most certain parts were over. The answer entered in correctly on the page. Everything would be different now. Catching fish would be more difficult, demanding. There were rules to learn. New dreams. Maybe, all leads to, and returns from the sea. The whole middle of everything lay below me, like the winding curves of a stream.
Originally published:
Issue Twenty-Four
February 2003


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March 28 and 29
If you really feel like splurging this week, head toAtelier Crenn for their haute-concept dialogue dinner with Pure Berlin. Like Atelier Crenn's fiercely modern French cookery, Pure Berlin is a restaurant and "culinary design studio" with firm German roots, but fresh gastronomic sensibilities. The night consists of eleven courses, five from each side and a final collaborative course. Tickets are $300 if you want both the food and their wine pairings.
3127 Fillmore Street, 415-440-0460
March 30
Short film buffs now have even more reason to hang out at Foreign Cinema, thanks to their "Future Shorts" Festival, taking place this Friday. This late-night evening begins with libations at 10 pm in the adjacent Lazslo Bar. At midnight, guests will be asked to take their seats in the Foreign Cinema courtyard. Movie-goers will be entertained by 90 minutes of visually striking, celebrated short films, like Spike Jonze's new film and Director Nash Edgerton's Cannes and Sundance hit "Bear". At the end of the night, guests will vote on their favorite shorts to be considered for the "Future Shorts" Audience Award.
2534 Mission Street, 415-648-7600


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Great flavours, delicious value
Whether you prefer beer, wine, spirits or premium sparkling, we have just the right drop for you – without all the usual fuss. Just like all of the products available at ALDI,
our award-winning liquor range offers excellent quality at an everyday low price.
Head to your local store and check out our handpicked selection today. Below you can explore the range in more detail.
Vintages may vary from store to store. Every effort is made to ensure the current vintage is displayed, however variations can occur.
Liquor is available in selected ALDI stores in NSW, VIC, ACT and WA. Due to liquor licensing limitations, liquor is not sold in any QLD or SA ALDI stores.
ACT Warning: Liquor Act 2010 - A person must not sell or supply liquor to a person under 18 years old on premises where the sale or supply of liquor is authorised or in a public place. Maximum Penalty $5,500; NSW Warning: Liquor Act 2007 - It is against the law to sell or supply liquor to, or to obtain on behalf of, a person under the age of 18 years; VIC Warning: Under the Liquor Control Reform Act 1998 it is an offence to supply alcohol to a person under the age of 18 years (penalty exceeds $17,000), and for a person under the age of 18 years to purchase or receive liquor (penalty exceeds $700); WA Warning: Under the Liquor Control Act 1988, it is an offence to sell or supply liquor to a person under the age of 18 years on licensed or regulated premises; or for a person under the age of 18 years to purchase, or attempt to purchase, liquor on licensed or regulated premises. For more specific legislation in your state or territory, visit our Liquor Licences page.


text: Have you wondered why you have not won in the keputusan4d yet? A lot of people all over the world buy the Lottery ticket and do you. And then they get the big money prize from their investment but you do not. It is actually a big question for large numbers of Lottery players. However,…Read More ?


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In order to make content that is the most useful, it would be very helpful if you would answer a few questions for us ... I promise it will only take a few minutes!
Please take this 3-minute survey.
We are trying to figure out who our audience is so we can create the most valuable content possible.
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New range of LED downlights Colibri – coming soon
We are pleased to announce a launch of the new affordable range of luminaires COLIBRI DL LED.
LED lighting market is desperate for high quality and affordable luminaires. The quality and reliability of the product has always been a priority for Lighting Technologies. At the same time, we strive to make our products affordable in terms of price for wide range of consumers.
Design of the new range is at the final stage, so LED downlights COLIBRI will appear on the stock soon.
Luminaire's housing is made of aluminum. Integrated driver makes the luminaires compact and light.
Mat PMMA diffuser creates soft lighting without bright spots of light source.


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We'd like to share our favorite podcasts and invite readers to comment on theirs. Our two favorites that we listen to religiously are blues shows: Texas Blues Café and The Roadhouse. We love Texas music so the Texas Blues Café fits right into our tastes. It is dedicated to promoting blues back into American culture; particularly artist that are influential to the Texas blues scene. Thus you could hear a range of music from blues, rock, and Americana. Typical is the latest feed which includes Too Slim & The Taildraggers; Randy Hansen; Michael Holt & The Trophy 500's; and Mark McKinney.
The Roadhouse promotes itself as "The finest blues you've never heard"; and yes, we agree with that assessment. It is broadcast out of the home of Tony Steidler in Iowa City, Iowa and each week he selects a broad range of excellent blues for his listeners. "From the Delta to Chicago, from pre-war to jump, acoustic, electric, harps, horns – it's difficult, if not impossible, to describe the emotions conveyed with such a simple form." This may be our favorite podcast and just take look at the The 210th Roadhouse Podcast to see why: Super Chikan, John Nemeth, Robert Lockwood, Bobby Jones, and Mitch Kashmar.
There are two additional feeds we download regularly. IndieFeed promotes a range of music and as typical of the above podcasts, we enjoy their Blues feed. Then there's Bob Boilen's All Songs of Considered. The best part of Boilen's show is that he provides tremendous insight into the industry, insight that he has gained from years in the business. Even though most of the music is more popish than what we normally would listen to - we can usually find a "gem" in each show. For instance, this year we've "discovered" M.Ward, Laura Gibson, and Dan Deacon. Thanks Bob.
We really would like to hear your suggestions - particularly any alt-country podcasts out of Austin - but basically anything else you recommend.
Joog: The term juke, as in Juke Joint or Juke Box, is believed to derive from the Gullah word joog, meaning rowdy or disorderly. This is the blog for MyJoog.com - a listing of live music that anyone can update. Here we will focus on artists, venues, and shows that we experience through our travels. Visit MyJoog.com to find live music in your area. You can contact us at info (at) myjoog.com.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Ticketmaster - Live Nation Merger
This week Ticketmaster and Live Nation announced a merger of the two companies and after reviewing this transaction, we can't see it being very beneficial to the average consumer. First, the joining of these two companies produce a near monopoly on ticket sale services. And not just in the United States. In the United Kingdom the new entity, Live Nation Ticketmaster, will control 70% of ticket sales. Expect concert tickets, service charges and transaction fees to increase - but that's not the worse problem. These companies already give preferential treatment to corporate sponsors or those purchasing with American Express. Already these individuals have access to choice seats - it is plausible in the near future that they may have access to a majority of seats. Live Nation Ticketmaster also plans to start selling high profile concerts by auction, effectively eliminating competition from the secondary markets provided by StubHub, LiveStub, and eBay. Another example of what's good for Wall Street is not particularly good for Main Street. Here at MyJoog.com we plan on stressing the thousands of venues where tickets are purchased outside of Ticketmast and Live Nation. There will still be daily opportunities to attend affordable shows at coffee houses, wineries and breweries, bars, and small music venues.
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Do you think you have the greatest room on campus?
Got a cool dorm room that you want to show off? Submit pictures of it on Twitter, Instagram, or both by 9/14 11:59 PM with #dukesdodorms to enter the Daily Duke's dorm room contest! We want to see what great rooms our fellow Dukes have decorated.
Make sure your page isn't private or else we won't be able to see your submission! Once we get all submissions, we'll choose the top 10 submissions to open up for voting. The top 3 voted rooms will win some bookstore swag!
Finalists should get friends, family, and anyone connected to the world wide web to come vote for their submission from September 16th until September 19th. Winners will be announced on the 21st.
May the best room win!


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If the Tennessee offense falls down in the middle of the forest with no one in sight, can anyone hear it turn the ball over?
The Tennessee defenders sure can't. They've gone deaf.
Unless you've been on Mars the past two months, they've been the guys keeping the hapless Vols (4-3, 1-3 SEC) in every game they've played.
The one game the defense didn't play well enough to win was Florida, and it definitely kept the team in range. However, the offense couldn't get out of its own way.
If my intramural football team took a knee three times and punted to the Tide on every offensive series, the game would have been closer.
The scoreboard said, "Alabama 34, Tennessee 14."
What it should have said was "Alabama 17, Tennessee 14, Tennessee offense minus 17." Great golf score.
Despite losing bonafide playmakers John Henderson, Will Overstreet, Albert Haynseworth and Andre Lott to the NFL, as well as Dominique Stevenson and Bernard Jackson, this unit played tough.
When defensive end Constantin Ritzmann went down in the preseason, the unit stayed strong.
When Kevin Burnett, who would have been the best player on this team, went down in the first quarter of the Wyoming game, this unit stayed strong.
When Kevin Simon, the former national defensive player of the year in high school and Burnett's replacement, went down against Rutgers, this unit stayed strong.
When linebacker Tony Campbell (grades) left the team, this unit stayed strong. You get the pattern here? This unit is tough.
Tennessee ranks third in the SEC, 15th in the nation, in total defense. The defense gives up 304.1 yards per game. That's it.
The unit ranks 29th nationally in scoring defense, and that includes the scores the offense hands to the opposition.
Neal said exactly what he thought of Alabama having 34 points.
"You get frustrated when things aren't supposed to happen, like fumbles or something taken back for a touchdown," Neal said.
"People aren't playing to their potential ... If somebody on the defense is that much better than the offense, you know, so be it. But when little stuff like mistakes happen, that's when you really get frustrated."
So what exactly is the problem here? We've already established it's not injuries. I don't know about you, but after seeing Florida, Georgia and Alabama in person, I refuse to believe it's talent.
Or, maybe it is.
"Any coach'll tell you, in order to have a good defense, you put your best athletes on defense," Neal said. "Even the big guys could probably dunk on your head right now. We've got athletes out here."
It's not talent. While I agree the defense is more athletic overall, the offense on this team is very talented. It's execution, folks.
Good teams do not turn the ball over four, five and six times a game. Good teams don't get delay of game penalties and false starts several times a game. Good teams don't take wonderful field position their defense gives them and not score (Exhibit A - Julian Battle's incredible individual effort of stripping the ball from Sam Collins and recovering, turning into a Casey Clausen interception in the end zone minutes later).
Good teams don't beat themselves, and the Tennessee offense has beaten itself three times already this season.
On the other hand, a depleted Tennessee defense has played well enough for this team to be 6-1, and all they get in return is questions about Kelley Washington after games.
Some of them blew up in the locker room. Wouldn't you?
While they won't just go out and say it, they're tired of 11 prima donnas losing games for them.
"If our offense doesn't improve, then I don't know, it could get ugly by the end of the season," Neal said.
Is it not ugly yet? With this being Halloween week, maybe it gets uglier. I can't imagine, but maybe it will.
Vols record raises concerns
Published: Wed Oct 30, 2002 | Modified: Sat Aug 06, 2005 04:37 p.m.


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Thomas University students who presented papers at the Alpha Chi National Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, are (from left) Daniel Todd Spear, Carina Spengler and Anna Layne Gass.
TU students present at Alpha Chi National Convention
Three students from Thomas University's Chapter of Alpha Chi, Georgia Lambda, presented papers at the Alpha Chi National Convention in St. Louis, Missouri on March 27-29.
Anna Layne Gass, a Psychology major, presented the results of her study "Racial Differences in Perception of Viewing and Funeral Behaviors" as part of the "Research & Creativity Forum." Carina Spengler, a Business Administration major, presented "Quality and Its Successful Management" in the session on Business Administration, and Daniel Todd Spear, a Humanities major, presented "Literary Fiction in a Web 2.0 World" in a session on American Literature.
Dr. Bonnie Woodbery, co-sponsor of TU's chapter of Alpha Chi, accompanied the student presenters to the convention.
"I am so proud of Anna, Carina, and Todd for delivering exceptional presentations in a highly competitive environment with over 300 students presenting papers," Woodbery said.
Alpha Chi is a National College Honor Society that admits students from all academic disciplines who are in the top ten percent of an institution's juniors and seniors. Invitation to membership comes only through an institutional chapter. Some 300 chapters located across the United States and Puerto Rico induct more than 12,000 members annually.


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Last year Bafana Bafana were humbled 2-0 by minnows Mauritius in the first round of southern Africa's annual regional tournament in Curepipe.
Coach Stuart Baxter and his squad will return to Curepipe face the Seychelles in their first game of the new-look regional competition.
The format of the event has been changed this year after the entry of the Seychelles, who have taken the number of participants to 13.
The teams are now divided into three group of four and play knock-out matches on successive days to determine the group champions.
Mauritius host the first group, and their opponents are Madagascar, the Seychelles and South Africa.
Bafana Bafana play the Seychelles before Mauritius take on Madagascar in a double-header on 26 February.
The two winners return to the New George V stadium the next day and the victor of the group decider advances to August's final mini-tournament.
The second group will be hosted in Namibia in April. It comprises Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique and the hosts.
In June, former champions Zambia will host Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland in the third group in Lusaka.
The three group winners will then join title holders Angola for the last of the mini-tournaments in August, where the winners will be crowned.
The Draw
Group A: Curepipe, Mauritius
Saturday, 26 February
Seychelles v South Africa
Mauritius v Madagascar
Sunday, 27 February
Winners meet in final match
Group B: Windhoek, Namibia
Saturday, 16 April
Mozambique v Zimbabwe
Namibia v Botswana
Sunday, 17 April
Winners meet in final match
Group C: Lusaka, Zambia:
Saturday, 11 June
Lesotho v Malawi
Zambia v Swaziland
Sunday, 12 June
Winners meet in final match