text:
Waldorf Fruit Salad
Waldorf Fruit Salad is perfect and light for your Christmas morning breakfast, or along with waffles, French toast, or breakfast casseroles.It's a sweet and juicy mixture of seasonal fruits lightly coated with a honey Greek yogurt "dressing" and some toasted walnuts for crunch.
Waldorf Fruit Salad
Do you make a special breakfast on Christmas morning? I always see recipes for holiday-inspired cinnamon rolls, or hear people talking about their Christmas morning tradition of making and eating a mountain of pancakes, and I am kind of jealous. We've never really had a Christmas morning breakfast tradition. Partially because we need to get in the present opening before heading off to church or to visit family. But really, a lot of it comes down to the fact that after our Christmas Eve carb-fest, nobody is really in the mood for a bready, doughy, sugary breakfast. I'm usually happy to just munch on one of these.
And now that I have kids of my own, the last thing I want to do is slave away in the kitchen when I could be watching them unwrap all of their brand new toys and games and other cool stuff. And then, undoubtedly playing with the wrapping paper and boxes.
Ain't nobody got time for that.
So over the years, Waldorf Fruit Salad has kind of become out Christmas morning breakfast tradition.
I'll make it up the day before (leaving the walnuts on the side so that they don't get mushy overnight), and then for those that just want a light breakfast, they can grab a bowl, and for those that want to pick on some cookies or pastries that we undoubtedly have around, this is a nice, healthy breakfast "side dish".
I like the mixture of red and green grapes for the holiday colors, the apples add a nice crunch against the soft and juicy grapes and oranges, and well, I just love bananas. Gently toss it all in a light coating of honey yogurt dressing with some nice, toasty walnuts, and you have something more fun and festive than a plain old fruit salad.
Here's the Waldorf Fruit Salad recipe…
Waldorf Fruit Salad
- 2 apples peeled (if desired) and chopped
- 2 oranges cut into supremes or segments, juice squeezed from membranes after cutting out the segments, and reserved (see Note 1)
- 1 banana cut into chunks
- 2 c grapes halved if desired (I like to use a mixture of red and green)
- 1/2 c plain Greek yogurt
- 1 T honey or to taste
- 1/2 c walnuts toasted
- Combine all of the fruit in a large bowl and mix.
- In a small bowl, combine the yogurt, honey, and juice reserved from the orange and stir until smooth.
- Pour the yogurt mixture over the fruit, add the walnuts (see Note 2), and toss gently to combine.
I have lots more fruit recipes on my Pinterest board…
Follow Brianne @ Cupcakes & Kale Chips's board Fruit Recipes! on Pinterest.
Need some more Christmas morning breakfast ideas?
Plus a few from my friends…
- Eggnog Cinnamon Rolls from Inside Bru Crew Life
- Overnight Banana Stuffed French Toast from Crazy for Crust
- Red Velvet Pancakes from RecipeGirl


text:
All properties listed are repossessions, and may include:
You may obtain additional information on the properties you are interested in by clicking on the address.
The properties are filtered by county on the left hand side of the page. If a county name does not appear on the list, there are currently no properties available in that location.
The list is subject to change as properties are continually sold and added. Please check for updates.
CalVet's repossessed properties are marketed by the Listing Agent shown on the information page for the property. You will find the Agent's name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address (if available). Please contact the Listing Agent for additional information about the property and our procedures.
All CalVet repossessed properties are subject to prior sale.
1227 O StreetSacramento, CA 95814866-653-2507 (Toll Free)916-503-8318 (Direct)916-651-9085 (Fax)E-Mail:
firstname.lastname@example.com Hours: Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Guantanamo strike grows
The military is sending additional medical personnel to the Guantanamo detention center in Cuba, where more than half the inmates have joined a hunger strike to protest their open-ended detention, a camp spokesman said on Monday. Less than 40 reinforcements will arrive by the end of this month, said Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House, a spokesman for the detention operation at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base. House said the new arrivals would include a doctor, nurses, corpsmen and medics, who will supplement the 100 medical personnel already on duty. The military counted 84 of the 166 prisoners as hunger strikers on Monday and was force-feeding 16 of them liquid meals through tubes inserted in their noses and down into their stomachs. Six were hospitalized for observation, House said.
Show seeks Mars tourists
Applications are now being accepted by the makers of a Dutch reality television show that says it will deliver the first humans to the Red Planet in 10 years. The main requirements are strong health, good people and survival skills, being 18 or older, and having a reasonable grasp of the English language. The non-profit company, called "Mars One," aims to land its first four astronauts in 2023 to attempt to establish a colony on Mars. Mars One founder Bas Lansdorp told a New York press conference on Monday that organizers had received 10,000 messages from applicants in more than 100 countries in the past year. A range of potential pitfalls might prevent the project from becoming a reality, including the inability to return to Earth, the small living quarters and the lack of food and water on Mars.
Hagel gains new perspective
US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday at the end of a three-day trip which saw him touting strong backing for the nation despite differences over Iran's nuclear project. With US-Israeli relations strained over questions about the imminence of the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program and Hagel dogged by his past criticisms of Israel, the Pentagon chief has stressed his full support for the Jewish state in his first visit as the US' defense secretary. Speaking on Monday, Hagel said he came away with a fresh perspective on the country's situation after a 90 minute helicopter tour of the occupied Golan Heights in the north, accompanied by Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon. "I had been in those areas in my many visits here, but I'd never seen it the way that the minister had it laid out for me, the north along the border," Hagel told reporters.
Sinn Fein head testifies
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams on Monday denied that he only went to police nine years after allegations of child abuse emerged against his younger brother to save his political career. The trial of Liam Adams heard that Gerry Adams did not tell police until 2009 that his brother had allegedly confessed to the abuse as they walked together in Dundalk in 2000. Gerry Adams was giving evidence against his brother in a Belfast court, where the latter faces 10 counts of alleged sex abuse against his daughter Aine, including rape. However, the former West Belfast MP denied that he told Liam Adams he would "hit him with a hammer" if the allegations made by Aine Adams were true or that he withheld the information because of his political career.


text:
Build-It! Using DUPLO Materials
Monday, December 18, 2017 - 9:30am to 10:30am
Build It! Using DUPLO Materials
Ages 3-5 welcome!
Build a foundation for engineering with Duplo! Create airplanes, drawbridges, seesaws, cranes and more! Parents are welcome to join the fun as young builders learn about shapes, colors, patterns, and counting. This class also includes FREE admission to Friday Indoor Playground after class!
Res $119/Non-Res $137
Class #16219 9:30a-10:30a
Mondays 10/30-12/18


text:
Why should you book a tour of Tallinn with us?
We are born in Estonia and have the knowledge, experience and contacts to provide you with a tour of Tallinn in Swedish.
Our guided day tours include Tallinn's Old Town, Kadriorg Palace, Birgitta Monastery ruins, the newly reopened Seaplane Harbour, the wooden buildings of Kalamaja, Tallinn's TV Tower, notorious prison and much more.
Read more about our tours and attractions in Tallinn.
Tallinn is a vibrant and affordable modern city with a fascinating history. Plus the city is very compact with most attractions located in or near the central city and well within walking distance. You have time to experience a lot in just one day in Tallinn.
Want to know more about Tallinn and Estonia, as well as finding the best attractions to visit? Then do not hestitate to book a Private tour in Tallinn.


text:
Syria trends
Mining underused data
The run-up to the crisis
No amount of quantitative data can do justice to the depth and complexity of the crisis that broke out in Syria in 2011. It can, however, provide a much-needed dose of historical perspective around a conflict whose narrative is now dominated by relentless bloodshed and geopolitical rivalries.
The data presented here highlights a number of trends that shaped Syria's domestic landscape in the years before the uprising and ensuing armed conflict. The Syria of the late-20th and early-21st centuries witnessed deepening environmental, socioeconomic and governance challenges. The war may have eclipsed these problems, but it has not resolved them—on the contrary, many such trends have been exacerbated, and will come back to the fore as the war's worst violence ebbs.
This snapshot of the day before therefore aims to do more than account for the country's breakdown: It offers a set of benchmarks against which to track the governance issues that will continue to bedevil Syria the day after.
The raw data belongs to the World Bank's open source repository, which focuses on "global development" thematics such as demographics, economics and climate, and contains roughly 1500 datasets specifically pertaining to Syria. Although the data is free to access, the process of parsing, cleaning, analysis and visualisation entails considerable work and inevitable editorial decisions. The selection below is our best attempt at paring tens of thousands of figures down to their most relevant, reliable and readable core. To the extent possible, we will let the data speak for itself, and therefore restrict commentary to the minimum.
Environment & agriculture
Available statistics offer valuable context relating to climate change, which is frequently invoked as a trigger for the crisis. One clear takeaway is that average temperatures increased markedly over the past half-century, especially during the hottest times of the year.
Meanwhile, Syria's unpredictable rainfall and regular summer droughts leave agriculture wholly dependent on irrigation. These factors also historically led authorities to prioritize food security, through top-down policies controlling the agricultural sector.
Reliance on irrigation in turn renders water security a paramount concern, which has become all the more urgent as overall rainfall has declined in recent decades.
Even as rainfall declined, average annual cereal yields tripled over the same 50 year period. Notably, however, that overall increase coincided with spectacular year-to-year variations. Against this backdrop, the disastrous harvest of 2008—which corresponds to the drought often blamed for catalyzing the uprising through mass rural displacement—clearly has numerous precedents, and thus offers at best an incomplete account of environmental factors.
A more compelling explanation lies in the transformation of Syria's agricultural sector, especially in the decade before the uprising. Following his takeover in 2000, Bashar Assad dramatically liberalized the food market-as seen in skyrocketing imports and exports. Shifting to intensive agriculture often at the expense of traditional farmers, Damascus invested heavily in water intensive "cash crops" like cotton, while doing little to offset the impact in terms of water security.
The socioeconomic impact on rural communities was devastating, cutting the agricultural workforce in half between 2000-2010. The consequent, unregulated growth of cities inevitably fed the conflict, which saw peripheral, informal neighborhoods play a central role, along with depleted rural areas.
In the meantime, Syria's demographics were evolving in other equally important ways. Most obviously, and much like the rest of the Arab world, its population remained astonishingly young—with Syrians under 35 averaging 80 percent of the total population throughout the past half-century.
This massive youth concentration relates to the country's relatively recent transition from high birth and death rates to the lower ratios that typically accompany economic development. Specifically, the effects of better healthcare and lower fertility rates only started to remodel the population pyramid in the 1980s.
Given time, this transition would have produced a more balanced distribution of age groups. But in 2010, on the eve of the uprising, Syrians between 20 and 35 years old happened to be the fastest growing cohorts, forming an unmistakable youth bulge.
This surge coincided with the emerging "connectedness" that characterized Syria under Bashar's rule, in contrast with his father's era.
Meanwhile, young Syrians reached employment age as more free market policies began to erode the country's socialist introversion. In particular, spiking foreign direct investment—peaking with the post-2008 normalization with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, France and the US—reflected a measure of integration into the global economy.
In reality, however, the economy was far less energetic than it appeared, with apparent growth largely driven by rapid inflation.
Indeed, the defining characteristic of this era was, arguably, ordinary Syrians' declining purchasing power. (Other relevant phenomena such as the concentration of wealth in cities like Damascus, Homs and Aleppo, growing inequality and the increasingly ostentatious lifestyles of the elites are more difficult to visualize through available data.)
Moreover, a reformist drive intended to kickstart the sluggish, statist economy created more burdens than benefits for the average Syrian. One useful measure of this tension relates to CO2 emissions, which serve as an effective proxy for overall economic activity in fossil fuel-reliant countries. Data on CO2 shows how the 2008 cut of fuel subsidies impacted transport, heating and other basic services, creating a powerful sense of regression.
Another indicator with particularly direct relevance to the 2011 crisis concerns the proportion of state spending on the Syrian army. A clear build-up occurred in the aftermath of the 1973 war with Israel, followed by the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. This surge was largely subsidized by the Soviet Union, as part of an alliance that fizzled in the mid-1980s. The subsequent collapse of military spending helps explain the dismal state of the Syrian army in 2011, and the subsequent recourse to homegrown and imported militias, direct Russian and Iranian involvement, and so on.
Déjà vu?
There are many ways of telling the story of the 2011 breakdown, and none will prove fully satisfactory. While the data above cannot illuminate the conflict as a whole, it does shed light on a number of issues that remain as relevant today as they were in 2011. Such data may provide building blocks for more ambitious analysis aimed at grasping not just the roots of the conflict, but also Syria's trajectory moving forward.
What we know for sure is that the war has solved nothing, and indeed has piled new layers onto decades-old social, economic and environmental woes. Given the unlikelihood of any genuine reform or reconciliation, the risks are high that familiar problems will reignite conflict in the years ahead. For now, nobody—whether Damascus, its friends or its enemies—has anything on offer that would arrest that drift.
16 April 2018
Illustration credits: numbers by Pixabay; countdown by Wikipedia / licensed by CC.
Black holes
Satellite imagery has been used in various publications to illustrate the magnitude of destruction of Syrian cities such Aleppo, Homs, Dayr Zor and Raqqa. One promising but underexploited form of such imagery is that provided by light signatures: maps that capture the average intensity of nighttime illumination in a given locality. By way of example, Synaps has been exploring a set of free images, representing monthly nightlight averages spanning April 2012 to July 2017, made available by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a branch of the United States Department of Commerce. While such images are by nature abstract and impressionistic, they can nonetheless provide valuable insight into the social, political and economic trends that have transformed—and continue to transform—the country.
Perhaps most strikingly, they capture the degree to which large swathes of the country have been plunged into literal darkness over six years of war. While all of Syria's communities have suffered immensely throughout the conflict, such blackouts capture the more extreme levels of dislocation endured in certain localities. The shift from illumination to pitch black may signify one of several developments, or, most often, a combination thereof: physical destruction incurred by relentless aerial bombardment and/or systematic looting; depopulation, as communities were forced to leave en masse; lack of resources sufficient to sustain a basic economy, including power generation; and the absence of sociopolitical structures providing any but the most perfunctory forms of governance. A somewhat subtler but no less critical corollary of these emerging black holes regards the degree to which Syria has lost, since 2011, its overall cohesion as a state and a society, with the country's various constituent parts increasingly separate from and alien to one another.
These images, moreover, are not merely a testament to the destruction that Syria's war has wrought: they are also a stark, visual reality check at a time when Syria's neighbors and the international community are increasingly tempted by the notion that the conflict is drawing to a close, and may soon permit the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees to their ruined homes across Syria. For the moment, however, no actor has demonstrated even the outline of a plan that would re-establish a degree of livability in these areas. Absent such a plan, discussions of potential returns to Syria remain decidedly premature, and indeed run the risk of generating momentum toward propelling vulnerable civilians back into the void from which they fled.
From integration to archipelago
A birds-eye view of Syria underscores the country's atomization, most strikingly through the sparseness of light patterns across large swathes of rural, mostly agricultural territory in northern, eastern and southern Syria. If light signatures in such areas once resembled the Milky Way—with population centers linked together by more or less contiguous strings of less intense light sources—they now look increasingly like a disjointed constellation or archipelago, with islands of light surrounded by total or near-total darkness. Perhaps the most startling example of this trend is the transformation in light signature in the fertile territory along the Euphrates river, which runs from northern-central to southeastern Syria.
This shift has two likely explanations. First, Syrian government tactics—which rely heavily on indiscriminate aerial bombardment—have emptied out entire towns and villages in response to the presence of opposition armed groups. Second, conditions of wartime scarcity have predictably led to the concentration of resources—including electricity, and fuel to power generators—in population centers, which Damascus has understood as central to its survival. As a result, internally displaced persons (or IDPs) from rural areas have largely gravitated toward urban areas in which they expect to secure some minimum threshold of security and basic necessities. (That such migration is not reflected in increased light patterns of cities hosting IDPs presumably reflects those cities' own resource shortages and out-migration.)
This trend, moreover, has dramatic implications for Syria's future. For one, these wartime dynamics of rural-urban migration and preferential resource allocation have reinforced longstanding imbalances in Syria's rural-urban equilibrium, which by many accounts helped fuel the conflict in the first place. Relatedly, the hollowing out of many rural, agricultural areas has the potential to incur longstanding demographic and economic knock-on effects, with which all stakeholders will need to grapple if any semblance of stability is to take hold in the foreseeable future.
Visual turning points in the war
Satellite imagery, here used in monthly averages, captures the way that different parts of Syria went dark at very different moments during the conflict. This timeline includes just a few examples of striking turning points.
Central Syria and sectarian fissures
The Syrian conflict arguably was at its ugliest in central Syria, where it exacerbated latent sectarian tensions and tended to pit certain Sunni constituencies against Alawites and small numbers of Shiites, while Christians and other minorities stayed largely on the sidelines.
While all sides suffered enormously, rural Sunni communities incurred the most thorough disruption. Zoomed-in images from central Syria capture this trend, showing discreet pockets of depopulation—or at least constant blackouts—where there were once small Sunni towns and villages between Homs and Hama and between Hama and Aleppo. Christian and Ismaili localities around Homs and Hama also were largely untouched, and thus fall in areas that remain bright.
For their part, the cities of Homs and Hama remain well-illuminated—particularly when compared with the much larger city of Aleppo, which has been all but extinguished. The mostly Sunni city of Hama has endured by mostly abstaining from the rebellion, haunted by the ghosts of its own 1982 showdown with Damascus. Homs, however, endured widespread inter-sectarian violence; its continued visibility, therefore, is likely attributable to the continued operation (and associated light pollution) from its oil refinery and other industrial facilities. That being said, higher quality images would convey the uneven distribution of damage and depopulation within Homs, whose poor Sunni neighborhoods have been largely levelled.
In sum, this image is telling for what it says about the violent fallout between the regime and various Sunni constituencies, particularly in rural and semi-rural communities. Such dynamics will persist and potentially deepen in the period ahead, not least because the Syrian government is likely to devote disproportionate resources to restoring services and rehabilitating infrastructure in territory that has been relatively loyal throughout the conflict.
The southern front
South of Damascus, light signatures reveal two distinct patterns that have crystallized in the period since January 2013. First and most striking is the patch of relative normalcy represented by Suweida governorate (also known as Jebel Druze) to the southeast, where the majority Druze population has painstakingly maintained its neutrality vis-à-vis Damascus.
This contrasts dramatically with the overwhelmingly Sunni Hawran region to the capital's south and southwest, which early in the conflict became a bastion of opposition influence and, as such, has suffered widespread displacement and destruction. Likewise noteworthy are small pockets of Christian territory, which—much like the Druze community—have maintained a studious neutrality.
A second, subtler pattern lies in the two tendrils of illuminated territory that cut across the Hawran: one stretching south from Damascus to Daraa city and the Jordanian border, and the other southwest up to the Israeli-occupied Golan heights. These heavily fortified axes offer a potent representation of the Syrian government's strategy throughout the southern front and elsewhere in opposition-controlled Syria: fall back to defensible, strategically vital positions, consolidate a foothold, and set about pounding surrounding territory into submission.
These trends further reflect the aforementioned dynamics of rural displacement and increasingly pronounced communal divisions visible across the country.
Wanted: lights at the end of the tunnel
Recent months have witnessed a pronounced shift in the international discourse on Syria. Increasingly, outside actors—ranging from the Lebanese, Turkish and Jordanian governments to their European counterparts and the United Nations—appear to be setting their sights on "the day after," contemplating ways that Syrian refugees might begin to go home. Spring 2017 ushered in a limited but significant precedent in this respect, with tens of thousands of refugees returning from Turkey to areas of northern Syria following a mixture of Turkish and Syrian Kurdish operations to evict the Islamic State. Some areas witnessed a measure of revival that more granular imagery could help confirm, monitor and analyse effectively.
While this arguably represents a positive development, any discussion of returns to Syria deserves a large measure of caution and indeed concern. A growing narrative among Western and regional states supposes that active warfare has been the primary factor keeping Syrians from heading back to their cities, towns and villages. The reality, of course, is far more complicated, inextricably bound up with the patterns of social, political and economic degradation that have evolved throughout the conflict, and which are certain to persist or even intensify in the near-term.
Although the images discussed above help visualize the deep fractures incurred by Syrian society over six years of war, fault-lines existed long before its outbreak, and they were many: between competing cities, urban and rural, rich and poor, or various communal entities. Those fault-lines, however, have by now stretched into chasms. These will not be bridged in the near- or medium-term, in large part because no party to the conflict has demonstrated the slightest willingness or ability to build bridges. In just one striking example, the Syrian government has shown no interest in encouraging large-scale returns to areas it has reconquered; on the contrary, so far it has evinced an inclination toward social re-engineering in ways that threaten to exacerbate rather than rein in the country's dissolution.
For as long as this remains the case, there should be no illusions: Syria's conflict is far from over, and efforts to fast forward to repatriation will remain naïve at best and criminal at worst. Just as nightlight imagery helps illustrate major developments during the conflict's escalation, it can likewise provide a powerful tool for documenting patterns of revival across different regions of Syria—particularly if deployed at the neighborhood level. Indeed, a recovery process driven by inclusive, forward-thinking urban policies would produce an altogether different light signature relative to one defined by cronyism and discrimination. International actors will inevitably play a role in propelling Syria along one trajectory or the other, and satellite imagery will prove one of various avenues for shedding light on the precise nature and implications of that role.
11 September 2017
Grateful credits: Rouba Wehbe for the creative cartography, Charles Maalouf and Alameen Najjar for technical advice, and NOAA for the data.
Ask Google
The Syrian tragedy has produced vast quantities of information, making it arguably the best documented conflict in history. While such information is indispensable for those seeking to document the conflict and untangle its many convoluted threads, its sheer volume can also be overwhelming—seeming, in a sense, to reflect the war's chaos rather than making sense of it all. Synaps is exploring ways to extract meaningful insight from these mountains of data. Some options are deceptively simple, requiring little more than a web browser and the right mix of empathy and creativity.
A prime example is Google Trends, a tool that enables users to identify patterns in Google searches performed by people around the world. The system tracks keywords as they are "googled" over time, and presents data as a percentile of the strongest show of interest during the period considered. In Google's own explanation: "A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. Likewise a score of 0 means the term was less than 1% as popular as the peak."
Applied to the Syrian conflict, this tool can highlight social trends and point toward key junctures in the war's trajectory. While the insights it offers are naturally imperfect and impressionistic, they can nonetheless prove a useful complement to other forms of research. Here are a few examples of relatively straightforward applications.
Syrian society goes dark
As the uprising kicked off in March 2011, Google searches in Syria reflected unprecedented inquiries regarding "virtual private networks" or VPNs, namely software that anonymizes the internet user, protects him or her from intrusive surveillance, and enables access to banned websites.
Interest in such software proved intense from mid-2011 to mid-2013, a period during which the regime gradually ramped up its suppression of a society that was not yet as geographically and politically fragmented as it is today. June 2011 marked a shift in the regime's approach from tentative and ambivalent reform and repression to an all-out crackdown; June 2013 constituted another major turning point, with the massive use of chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus completing the process whereby President Bashar Assad essentially renounced any prospect of future reconciliation. It may be that, after that date, the segmentation of society was such that covert uses of the Internet declined-with Syrians either submitting to the regime or living in areas with which all bridges had been burned.
Incidentally, the sudden popular recourse to VPNs in the midst of the uprising was seeded by the regime itself in the period that preceded the conflict. In November 2007, the Syrian government officially banned the use of Facebook, citing security issues relating to Israel. In February 2011, it unblocked the social platform, either as a sign of goodwill in the face of mounting popular frustration across the Arab world, or to better equip itself to monitor such discontent, or both. The initial ban did less to deter Syrians than encourage them to explore VPNs. Specifically, they turned in 2009 and, even more vigorously, in 2010 to Hotspot Shield, software that remained popular during the uprisings.
The semi-public space
Regardless of escalating repression and widespread efforts to evade surveillance, Syrian adoption of social media followed patterns similar to—albeit slower than—those in less tightly contained societies. Whereas Western countries generally embraced as early as 2008 social platforms in general, and Facebook with more particular enthusiasm, the same process only kicked-in and accelerated in Syria as a result of the Arab uprisings: a relatively flat curve up to January 2011 became a steep upward slope, gradually eclipsing more traditional online sources of news such as al-Jazeera. The political trigger of this explosion in social media interest suggests the emergence of a "semi-public space" organized, at least initially, around the exchange of politically relevant information.
The elusive peace process
Google Trends offers few insights into rebellious patterns of behavior, due to self-censorship and VPNs. It does, however, present useful indications on how people in Syria respond to the conflict's more innocuous forms of politics, notably peace talks.
The following chart tracks Syria-based Google searches for cities where key diplomatic events occurred in connection to the Syrian conflict. A striking peak of interest occurred in January 2014, as the United Nations hosted the "Geneva II" peace conference, which was designed to revive, update and operationalize the "Geneva I" agreement brokered in June 2012. Although Geneva II negotiations ended with no deal, they generated far more attention than the previous, more fruitful talks. A likely explanation is that Syrian society combined, at that point, a genuine eagerness for a political solution and some measure of hope that it could still be attained.
By contrast, Geneva III and IV, held respectively in January 2016 and February-March 2017, spurred both marginal and declining interest. The parallel "Vienna Process"—which as of October 2015 brought together key international players such as the United States, Russia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia—generated less curiosity still. The opposition conference held in Riyadh in December 2015 prompted a level of interest slightly superior to the launch of the Vienna Process. Finally, talks organised in the Kazakh capital Astana, which have drawn considerable coverage by mainstream media and become, de facto, the primary venue for Syrian peace talks, have left Syrians cold. Digging deeper into the data and its geographical distribution across the country suggests that what little attention they have garnered, unlike other rounds of negotiations, has been centred in Damascus.
Fear of escalation
A search for Valium or Diazepam—an anti-anxiety medication widely used to manage stress in Syria—brings up a relatively stable graph, with a striking anomaly: on 18 June 2017, interest surged, notably in the Damascus and Aleppo governorates. On that day, two events set eerie precedents: on one side, the US for the first time downed a Syrian warplane; on the other, Iran launched ballistic missiles into Syria, allegedly targeting the Islamic State, but more likely in a show of force aimed at deterring Washington.
Although many Syrians express that a certain numbness has set in surrounding the horrific events in their conflict, this recent spike suggested a still-untapped reservoir of anxiety at the prospect of things getting worse still.
Finding refuge
A search for different keywords suggesting a desire to leave Syria reveals trends that follow, predictably, the arc of the conflict. Syrians initially stayed put, showing, if anything, less of an appetite to leave their country than they did in the preceding period. Interest later grew as violence escalated and hope for the future plummeted. It culminated with the sudden summer dash to Europe in mid-2015, and dropped markedly thereafter—in reaction, no doubt, to radical European countermeasures and a general realization that this exit route was closed. Meanwhile, the spike of interest for the word "visa" in January 2016 is linked to a specific event, namely Turkey's imposition of a visa regime on Syrians entering by air or sea.
For now, it would seem that Syrians who remain in Syria have largely given up on looking for emigration prospects, at least through Google searches—as opposed to offline networks and various forms of social media, which have developed into increasingly sophisticated tools for orchestrating emigration.
The data provides more unexpected insights also. People googling "ta'shira," the formal word used for visa, or "Schengen," happen to be concentrated in Damascus, where the most legitimate forms of travel seem to remain an option in the minds of those enquiring. Elsewhere the colloquial for "visa," the keyword "emigration" as a generic query, "asylum" and even "smuggling" dominate.
Finally, the data highlights a somewhat counterintuitive seasonality: during the four years where trends were clearest (2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015), peaks occurred in September. This may correspond to the ominous approach of winter, or to a new cohort of young men who, not being registered in university, became susceptible to being drafted.
Again, the insights provided by these data are partial and subject to interpretation—but they are also highly suggestive, raising questions that can be further unpacked through qualitative fieldwork. Synaps will be continuing to explore how this and other open-source data tools can augment our own fieldwork-centric methodology.
31 July 2017
Illustration credits: Syria on the globe by Wikipedia; Arabic keyboard (modified) by Wikipedia; Hubble Ultra Deep Field by Wikipedia / licensed by CC.


text:
Sign up for our mailing list!
Isabelle Cohen is a PhD student in Economics. Prior to starting her PhD, she worked as a Research Associate at Duke University, and as a Research Manager at the Centre for Microfinance in Chennai, India. Her research interests are primary in development economics and public finance, particularly around impact evaluation, governance and international development aid.
This three-part series will cover the following materials:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Data Analysis in Stata
Part 3: Stata Programming
Prior knowledge: A basic understanding of variables (nominal, ordinal, continuous), descriptive stats (mean, standard deviation), correlation, and regression will be assumed.
Technology requirement: Please bring a laptop with Stata installed. You can install a trial version of Stata. Please arrive 15 minutes early for installation assistance.
Registration note: To participate in multiple parts of this intensive, please be sure to register for each day separately.
About | Contact | FAQ | Location | Work for Us
D-Lab | University of California, Berkeley | 350 Barrows Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-3030 | firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
Boerke Company
Rockler Retail Group Inc. leased 7,210 square feet of retail space in Mitchell Plaza at 1725 S. 108th St., West Allis, from Bouraxis Properties LLC.
Lady Jane's Haircuts for Men leased 1,490 square feet of space at 4975 S. 76th St., Greenfield, from Sun Greenfield LLC.
Gerald Nell Inc.
KleenMark Services Corp. leased 3,200 square feet of industrial space at 3725 N. 126th St., Unit K, Brookfield, from Sunset Investment Co.
Grubb & Ellis|Apex Commercial
Larson Engineering leased 3,628 square feet of office space at 1126 S. 70th St., West Allis, from 1126 West Allis Operating Associated LP.
Helsan Development
Creative Openings leased 3,770 square feet of space in the 3070 Building in Helsan Business Park in Richfield. Helsan Business Park is located directly across from Cabela's.
Mid-America Real Estate
TJ Maxx leased 25,000 square feet, Ulta Beauty leased 10,000 square feet, Charming Charlie leased 7,500 square feet, rue21 leased 5,100 square feet and Hallmark leased 3,368 square feet in the Shoppes at Fox River, 1200 Sunset Dr., Waukesha.
NAI MLG Commercial
Quality Health Solutions Inc. leased 14,049 square feet of space at 19601 W. Bluemound Road, Brookfield, from 19601 Bluemound LLC.
RFP Commercial
Great Lakes Warehousing leased 31,200 square feet of industrial space at 4200 39th Ave., Kenosha, from Carter Property Management.
Ministry Health Care leased 22,285 square feet of office space at 11925 W. Lake Park Dr., Milwaukee, from Westminster Funds.
Braden-Sutphin Ink Company leased 19,453 square feet of industrial space at 4480 N. 124th St., Wauwatosa, from The Wagners Companies.
The Hudson Business Lounge LLC leased 11,082 square feet of retail space at 310 E. Buffalo St., Milwaukee, from Crabel Real Estate Partners LLC.
Benefit Plan Administration of WI leased 7,006 square feet of office space at 11270 W. Park Place, Milwaukee, from GLL Properties Inc.
Wireless Neighborhood LLC leased 1,694 square feet of retail space in Sendik's Towne Centre, 18815-19115 W. Capitol Dr., Brookfield, from Phillips Edison and Company.
Boerke Company


text:
The Great Pumpkin Fest Kid Friendly Halloween Fun At Great America
Kid-friendly Event Features Trick-or-Treating, Mini Pumpkin Decorating, A Hay Maze And More
SANTA CLARA, CA –The Great Pumpkin Fest at California's Great America opens September 30 and runs Saturdays and Sundays through October 29 (closed October 22). The festival is a non-scary daytime event for the entire family and has become a Bay Area tradition for the extended Halloween season.
Guests 12 and younger can race through a hay maze, decorate mini pumpkins to take home as souvenirs, color PEANUTS™ pictures and dance in a foam pit. They will also enjoy wearing their costumes and Trick-or-Treating with the PEANUTS™ gang. The Great Pumpkin Fest activities take place from Noon-4 pm, while the entire park is open from 10am-5:30pm for daytime fun.
The beloved movie "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" will continuously show in Planet Snoopy; additionally, the park will present book readings of the PEANUTS tale.
Every activity for The Great Pumpkin Fest takes place inside Great America's Planet Snoopy kids area, where 14 rides designed for younger children add to the excitement. All Great Pumpkin Fest activities are included with admission.
2018 Gold Passes are now on sale for the lowest price of the season at www.cagreatamerica.com and include unlimited admission for the rest of 2017 and all of 2018, including Halloween Haunt and WinterFest.
California's Great America is a 100-acre theme and water park located in Santa Clara, Calif. that contains thrill rides, family attractions and live shows. The park opens for weekends in March, operates daily Memorial Day through mid-August, continues weekends through fall with Halloween Haunt, and the season concludes in December with WinterFest.
California's Great America is owned and operated by Cedar Fair Entertainment Company (NYSE: FUN), a publicly traded partnership and one of the largest regional amusement-resort operators in the world. The Company owns and operates 11 amusement parks, two outdoor water parks, one indoor water park and five hotels. For more information, see www.cedarfair.com.


text:
Fleetwood tenor Alfie Boe is to join the cast of Les Miserables on Broadway.
The former TVR mechanic will once more play the role of Jean Valjean, this time at the Imperial Theatre in New York City, from September 1.
Thank you so much for all your wonderful messages about me going back into Les Miserables on Broadway
He first performed the role in 2010, as part of the O2 Arena concert performance marking the musical's 25th anniversary, before joining the Queen's Theatre cast in for a five month run in 2011.
Boe's major professional break-through came on Broadway, as Alfred Boe, in Baz Luhrmann's production of La Boheme in 2002, for which the cast received a Tony Honors(CRCT) Award in 2003.
He will take over the role on Broadway, where the show's revival production opened in March last year, from Tony and Olivier Award winning actor Ramin Karimloo.
He sent a series of Tweets following the announcement, saying: "Thank you so much for all your wonderful messages about me going back into Les Miserables on Broadway. Overwhelmed by all your beautiful messages, much love.
"Can't wait to join the cast of @LesMizBway. Sending my love and respect to all."


text:
Baby Calendar Month 24|23, May 2011
Baby Development
Your child has grown so much. In the last year physically you can expect your child to have gotten taller, probably in the range of 3 to 5 inches and the same amount of weight in pounds. Your toddler's vocabulary is most likely between 50 and 100 words. Boys tend to talk a little less and later than girls on average.
Your toddler probably tries to negotiate stairs alone and usually by a combination of walking and scooting. He can most likely open and close a door now too. This skill set is enough to set a parent's nerves on edge and require more extensive baby proofing activity.
Fine motor skills are becoming more refined. Expect your little one to stack a tower of blocks 3 to 6 high and some clumsy attempts as self-dressing.
Remember she does not need to look like a child model at home. Let her enjoy her success and let her wear the mismatched outfit proudly around the house.
Two years is often when parents introduce potty training. Don't push it by the calendar if your child is resistant or isn't showing signs of readiness, like showing an awareness of when he needs to go to the bathroom, an ability to stay dry for extended periods and an interest in the potty.10 Steps to Successful Potty Training
Nutritional Needs
After age two, parents can adopt a lower fat diet for their toddlers. Whole milk can be switched to 2 or 1 percent now. Children who are not milk drinkers may be deficient in calcium. Other common areas that children don't get enough nutrients in include iron, vitamin C, A, B6, and folic acid. If your water is not fluoridated consider supplements.
A variety of healthy foods such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables and lean meats will insure a healthy diets but reality is that often toddlers become resistant to all kinds of foods or stuck on a handful of favorites. If this occurs, just keep offering the nutritious foods and encourage your child to at least try a bite or two.
Back Up Your Child's Diet With Vitamins
Quick and Easy Snacks For Your Toddler
Well Child Visit
At this visit, your child's vitals will be checked and growth checked. The pediatrician will likely ask questions about your child's fine and gross motor skills, language and social development and sleeping and eating habits. Don't hesitate to ask any questions about your child's health, diet or development. You should definitely follow up on any advice and any concerns you may have. If your child seems to be losing skills or lagging significantly behind peers in any area of development, ask your child's physician to do a developmental assessment.
Tips for Mom and Dad
As your child turns two this is an excellent time to introduce your child to new responsibilities and limits as well as opportunities. Give your child chances to socialize with other young children, but realize much of their play will still be side-by-side rather than truly interactive. Don't push a shy child to become an extrovert as you will overwhelm him and possibly make him retreat further. Rather model confidence and friendliness and provide opportunities for him to socialize without pressure.
Playground outings, visits to places where the play is open will be better than one on one play dates for some toddlers. Watch your child for signs of anxiety or frustration and intervene before a crisis or tantrum occurs.
Give your toddler chances to do chores, such as unloading silverware from the dishwasher, or washing off his play table, or sorting laundry with you. Gradually increasing a child's responsibilities is likely to be more successful than sudden chores at five years of age. Also, allow your child increasing chances to make choices. Limit her options to two or three in the beginning as not to overwhelm the toddler.
Remember that toddlers can seem tyrannical at times due to their inflexibility in regards to routines. If you always cut grilled cheese into triangles, don't offer an open face sandwich and expect it to go over well. Keep things to a regular schedule and routine when possible. Don't expect flexibility from two-year olds, it's not in their repertoire.
Related Articles
Be the first to add your comment, or ask a question.
Add Comment
You are commenting as .


text:
Calgary, Alberta
Currie, the third and final phase of the redevelopment and reintegration of the former Canadian Forces Base Calgary, continues to evolve as one of the most progressive communities in Calgary. The roughly 200 acre (80.9 hectare) development combines a mix of housing and retail, green space, heritage commemoration and a walkable urban design that is just minutes from the downtown core. Located in the heart of southwest Calgary, Currie will be a contemporary urban village where work and play rest in perfect balance, with vibrant amenity spaces just steps from your door. Following on the success of Garrison Woods and Garrison Green, Currie is a showpiece community for the latest in urban living.
The new community at the 200acre (80.9 hectare) site is based on the principles of smart growth and sustainable community design. The vision for Currie will build on the successful designs at Garrison Woods and Garrison Green to create an even denser community with a richer mix of land uses, housing types, and servicing innovations to achieve a more complete and integrated neighbourhood. Currie was designed to set a new standard in sustainable development. This includes traffic-calmed streets and pedestrian networks that bring most residents within a five minute walk of shops, parks, and public transportation.
Canada Lands Company has entered into a joint venture agreement with the highly respected Embassy Bosa Inc. for the development of 23 acres of mixed-use retail and multi-family residential development in the heart of the community.
As part of its commitment to memorializing the historical legacy of its sites, Canada Lands Company held a special ceremony in 2010 to formally dedicate two special commemorative parks: Valour Park and Victoria Cross Park. These linear parks pay tribute to Canada's military and to those who served their country during the Second World War. Community engagement is ongoing regarding public art and greenspace initiatives as the community continues to evolve.
At full development, Currie is expected to include approximately 5,700 housing units of various types, 250,000 square feet (23,226 square metres) of retail space, roughly 615,000 square feet (57,135 square metres) of office space and 23 acres (9.3 hectares) of parks and open, accessible public areas.
For more information about Currie please visit www.currielife.ca.
Calgary, Alberta
Kelvin Whalen


text:
One of the benefits of your credit union membership is a no-cost TruStage Accidental Death and Dismemberment (AD&D) insurance policy from CMFG Life Insurance Company (paid for by Elevations Credit Union). AD&D coverage pays you or your loved ones a cash benefit after an accident results in a covered injury or loss of life.
To receive $1,000 Coverage Amount of AD&D coverage at no-cost or obligation, all you need to do is file a claim.
In addition to your no-cost coverage, you may want to consider strengthening your protection with higher levels of AD&D insurance. Why? Because $100,000 in coverage, which can cost about $10 a month*, can be an affordable way to help protect your family from the lasting impact of an accidental death or serious, permanent injury. And, acceptance is guaranteed. There are no medical questions or health exams.
Don't miss this opportunity to take advantage of your credit union membership. Sign up now for your no-cost or additional AD&D insurance protection.
Did you know
Acceptance is guaranteed. No one will ask you health questions or expect you to submit to a medical exam. If you're a credit union member over the age of 18, you can't be turned down.
Your coverage cannot be canceled as long as your premiums are paid, the group policy is not terminated, and you remain a member of a participating credit union.
There's a realistic inflation protection benefit. Every two years, on the anniversary of your coverage, additional coverage will be increased 5% at no added cost to you. Over the years, you can get up to a 25% increase maximum.
TruStage® insurance products are made available through TruStage Insurance Agency, LLC. Life insurance, annuities, & accidental death & dismemberment insurance are issued by CMFG Life Insurance Company. TruStage® Auto & Home Insurance Program is issued by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and other leading carriers. To the extent permitted by law, applicants are individually underwritten; not all applicants may qualify. Discounts are not available in all states and discounts vary by state. For auto insurance, a consumer report from a consumer reporting agency and/or motor vehicle report will be obtained on all drivers listed on your policy where state laws and regulations allow. Please consult your policy for specific coverage and limitations. The insurance offered is not a deposit, and is not federally insured, sold or guaranteed by your credit union.
Corporate Headquarters 5910 Mineral Point Road, Madison WI 53705
*Other coverage amounts are available. One no-cost coverage offer per credit union member.
This site is best viewed with a standards compliant browser.
Your savings federally insured to at least $250,000 and backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government. National Credit Union Administration, a U.S. Government Agency


text:
What will happen when the gas stations are forced to close down.
What will happen when the gas stations are forced to close down.
Uncle Paul,
Calm down. What your speaking will eventually occur but it is a long way away. I don't know where you live but here in northern Ohio all those old leaking tanks you speak of are getting replaced.
The transition is coming , it'll just take time. A lot has to do with how long the established auto manufacturers delay their EV programs. They have been talking a lot about what they are planning on doing but talk is cheap.
Elon is pretty much on his own, he knows it and is not going to slow down.
Perhaps the ICE manufacturerez will start making EVs
It was interesting to witness how at the Geneva Motor Show this year, every leading auto manufacturer had an ev concept, or several. Volkswagen plans on having over 20 vehicles within several years, GM is even investing in a charging network, and there are ev concept cars from EVERY SINGLE BRAND out there. Even the super cars are following suit. Bentley, Audi, Mercedes, Lamborghini, Jaguar, Porsche...ev's are coming from them all. As long as affordable options exist - and auto makers make them stylish - people will naturally choose electric more and more.
Gas stations will never be FORCED to close, at least not because of how you describe them to be as an environmental hazard. This is ludicrous, just as is the thought of all-ICE cars being banned everywhere, it will not happen. Maybe high density urban areas or parts of urban areas will ban them for pollution reasons.
However, some/most will be forced to close due to lack of demand, but make no mistake gasoline will be sold for a long time yet just in much less quantities and less number of places. Much like ICE cars, they will be far surpassed by EVs at some point not because they are outlawed, but because EVs offer a superior value proposition.
The 'Fuel' stations of the foreseeable future will be a mixed bag of gas pumps, plug in charging stations, convenience store, cafe/restaurant or other amenities. The simple ol gas station will cease to exist. But not just for lack of demand for gas, just switching to or adding charging wont be enough to keep a lot of the existing places open just for the simple fact that most people will charge at their home or work or other destination.
Video rental stores were never FORCED to close, nor were drug stores forced to stop selling film, film developing services, and typewriter ribbon, nor were gas stations and stores forced to stop selling kerosene. Demand just ceased to warrant the shelf space and dedicated resources.
Gas stations on the fringes will go out of business first. This will make gasoline less ubiquitous, thus taking away a lot of the advantage the the technology enjoys today. I envision rural areas may be the first places to switch over to electric vehicles since their gas stations are likely to be more strained economically while essentially all rural people have electricity access. I envision this will happen within a decade of the first 200 mile range pickup truck hitting the market.


text:
The Honeywell Chronotherm III allows you to program the temperature for specific days and specific times. If you have custom programmed your Honeywell to fit your schedule, but your schedule has changed, consider resetting the programmed options and adapting them to your new schedule. You cannot globally reset the functions, so you will need to reset each setting manually.
Step 1
Open your Honeywell Chronotherm III's cover panel to view the programming buttons.
Step 2
Push the "Day" button repeatedly to reset the programming to a certain day. If you want to reset the programming for each day, simply pick one to start with.
Step 3
Push and hold the appropriate "Period" key for three seconds. For example, if you wanted to reset the "Leave" programmed time or the "Return" programmed time, push and hold the "Leave" or "Return" button. The temperature will clear from the display screen when the period is reset.
Step 4
Repeat the process for each day that you want to reset the program. When you are finished, push "Run Program" to run the system manually. You can also begin setting your new program schedule, if desired.


text: Marina Motorsports was first formed in 1995 with the partnership of five automotive enthusiasts. Over the years board members have come and gone, but three of the original founding members remain, Robert McCaffrey, John Moulton and David Murphy. Our fourth long standing board member is Ronald Cowen. Our fifth and latest board member is George Jaksha. Marina Motorsports became registered as a non-profit 501 (c) (4) corporation in 1996.


text:
About Our TeamThe FUSION HVAC Team
HVAC Specialists in Chesapeake, VA
Are you looking for heating, air conditioning, insulation, or ductless system services in Chesapeake or Virginia Beach? At Fusion Heating, Air Conditioning & Insulation, we bring extensive knowledge and experience to provide you with a wide range of services dedicated to helping you achieve maximum comfort.
We know that when a problem occurs with an HVAC system, there can be a number of factors that are causing the issue. Because of this, our Chesapeake HVAC experts make it a point to make sure all components are in optimal working order, allowing you to solve any and all comfort or energy efficiency issues.
Call (757) 938-6709 for your free estimate.
Benefits of Choosing Us
We know that when you are dealing with an HVAC system problem in Tidewater or areas surrounding Virginia Beach, you need specialists who can help you with all of your needs. Because of our training, we are able to handle air conditioning, heating, and insulation issues without working with multiple contractors.
- More than 25 years of experience
- One-year customer satisfaction guarantee
- 24/7 availability
- Partnership with the best equipment distributors
- Ductless mini-split heat pump systems
- 50% annual savings on utility bills
- One-year maintenance agreement
Over the course of our career, we have always lived by one golden rule: treat people the way we want to be treated. It is with this mentality that we provide our customers with the best possible service and care. The way we see it, if we were paying for a service, we would want to be treated with respect, honesty, and with the solutions we need. This is what you can expect with our team.
When you call our company, we will put together an approach that is designed to tackle all problems with your HVAC system, not just provide a quick fix on one component. By doing this, we make sure your problems are solved so you don't have to worry about another issue in the near future. We proudly extend our services to customers in the areas around Virginia Beach, including Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Norfolk, and Suffolk.
Ready to begin? Call (757) 938-6709 today.


text:
Perhaps you're working extra hard these days to hang onto your job, or, if you're looking for work, you're using every avenue you know to find a job. In either situation, better check out your waist-line if you're serious about having a job in the future. That's because if you're carrying too much weight – enough to be considered overweight or obese – then this is a concern to employers. studies have shown that not only do overweight workers have higher absenteeism and health care costs, but they are less productive. Such statistics become even more important as companies are keeping only key performers and are scrutinizing ways to trim health care costs.
In addition, several courts have recently ruled that employers also must pay for weight-loss surgery for overweight employees who need operations for work-related injuries. The courts have stated that the weight-loss procedures are needed to guarantee the successful repair of the initial injury.
For job seekers, the nearly 10 percent unemployment rate means that they may need to be even more proactive in trimming the waistline. A Wayne State university study found last year that over weight workers are viewed negatively, and nowhere is that more evident than in the hiring process, especially if they're applying for a job with face-to-face interactions.
It appears employers think they are doing what they feel they need to do, but how do you feel about this as well?
Source: Gannett


text:
Preparing for My Test
- Category: Uncategorised
- Published: Tuesday, 08 September 2015 13:51
- Written by Super User
- Hits: 124375
Fact Sheets for Patients:
For the majority of tests there is no special preparation required. Your health care professional will inform you of any specific requirements for your test, for example if you need to fast prior to the test.
Labtests provide a range of specialised tests, which due to their technical nature require special collection procedures or are only offered at specific collection centres. - Please refer to "Collection Centres by Test Type" for locations.
Patient Test Instructions are available here:
Blood Test Safety Information
Faecal Occult Blood Tests
Faeces for Culture
Fasting Blood Tests
Semen for Fertility
Semen for Post Vasectomy
Glucose Challenge Gestational Diabtests
Glucose Tolerance 2 Hour Test
Pinworm (Threadworm) Specimen Collection
Skin Sensitivity Test
Sputum Culture
Timed Urinary Microalbumin Tests
Urine for Culture
Urine for Creatinine Clearance and Cytology
Urine Collection for Chlamydia or TB Testing
24 Hour Urine for HIAA
24 Hour Urine Collection In Hydrochloric Acid Containers
24 Hour Urine Collection in a Plain Container
How to Self Collect A MRSA Swab Sample
Urine For Culture In Pregnancy
Vaginal self collect specimen
Collection and Transportation of Faecal Elastase, H.pylori antigen, Clostridium difficile and Faecal Calprotectin
Patient Collection, Storage and Transportation for Reducing Substances
If you have any questions regarding these Patient Test Instructions, please Contact Us or call Labtests on 09 5747399.


text:
Angelina was my maternal grandmother and she taught me how to make traditional Italian biscotti. The photo you see of her to the right was taken when she was just 16 years old and is one of my favorite photos of her, although I know she would disagree!
Over the years I've recognized that although I grew up with my grandmother's traditional biscotti, the licorice bite of the anise seed can be an acquired taste... so in addition to the traditional biscotti, I developed other flavors that do not have the anise seed and I hope you enjoy. In addition to handmade biscotti, I offer several different baked goods. There is a complete, well, almost complete, list of my offerings available to view on the "Our Products" page.
I have held my California Cottage Food Operators Permit for several years now, and obtaining this allows me to bake and sell from my home. My dining room was home to my bakery for many years, but I've recently expanded into the living room! My bakery space is clean, efficient and a beautiful, bright place for me to work. After having used commercial kitchens in the past, obtaining my CFO permit also allows me to be in complete control of my baking environment, which being a bit of a clean freak, is a bonus for me and I believe you too. There are a few photos of the bakery on my "Photos" page, but I am working on posting additional images. I welcome anyone to come in for a bakery "tour" and I do offer tastings of biscotti as I do at the markets I attend.
Angelina's Family Kitchen is a licensed, registered and insured CFO in Solano County, Calif, #201252
Well, our Benicia Farmers' Market Season is about to begin and we hope to start it off with an outstanding day! Benicia Mainstreet has me in my usual spot, I am right in front of Java Point and Heritage Pantry and Spice. If you've not yet visited Heritage Pantry and Spice, please do so! Not only are the owner's incredibly nice folks, but their store is loaded with treasures for that special occasion or perfect gift... Hmmm, local handmade biscotti perhaps? Heritage also makes amazing sandwiches, I know, I eat them on market night for dinner! So check them out!
Every Thursday from April 26th - October 25th 4-8 pm
This year's events will be posted as days and details get closer...
Thank you for visiting my website, everything you see here I did myself so I must apologize if it appears to be a tad "rustic", because it is!


text:
Friday, May 15, 2009
Tea Review 98 - My Cup of Tea (x4)
Breakfast Tea
Earl Grey
Pure Green Tea
My Cup of Tea
I tend to approach breakfast teas with a bit of trepidation. Most that I've tried run the gamut from so-so to downright wretched. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I was a milk and sweetener kind of guy. I'd actually rate this blend at the higher end of the range. It has a nice flavor even without anything added.
While I like a good Darjeeling as much as the next person, I've found that all Darjeelings are not created equal. I've also found that they tend to be rather sensitive to high temps and oversteeping. While I wouldn't put this one at the top of my Darjeeling list it certainly was not without its charms.
Pure Green
A nice, subtle green here. Hard to tell exactly what it was, but I'd guess that it hails from China. It suffers only by comparison to the very strong sencha I've been drinking lately, which tends to deaden my appreciation for subtler varieties.
Earl Grey
This might be a perfectly nice Earl Grey tea, but since I'm not a fan of that sort of thing I'm not the person to weigh in on its merits or lack thereof. It is quite pungent, so if strong Earl Grey is what grabs you, it's might be right up your alley.
Adagio Teas triniTea Tea Maker
Zarafina Tea Maker Suite
No comments:
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Fall is upon us, and as for me, that usually means getting ready for two events…the Khaki Ball and U.S. Navy Birthday Ball.
For those of you who don't know, my husband's in the U.S. Navy. Every year, the Navy promotes First Class Sailors to Chief Petty Officers. Once selected, they go through this grueling selection process for 6 weeks or better known as "select season." If they make it through, we all come together and celebrate at the Khaki Ball. The word "Khaki" signifies the uniform all Chief's wear.
While my husband is already a Chief Petty Officer, we always go to the ball to celebrate with the new selectees. Here's a pic from this weekend!
So now, let's get on with today's content.
Have you ever seen the movie Zootopia? If you haven't, be sure to check it out! It's about this rabbit who pursues her dream job to be a cop in the big city of Zootopia!
And, very quickly, she realizes this "perfect" world came with some surprises. And now, she's forced to work through them in order to keep her "dream" job.
Have you ever had this experience with Facebook ads?
Imagine, you going into the Power Editor or Ad Manager with the perfect offer, ad format, target audience, and you just know you're going to knock it out of the park.
And then, all of a sudden, reality hits and you realize your perfect plan isn't so perfect…
Well today, I want to share what you need to do in the next Facebook ads campaign to recover from this sudden dose of reality.
Ready to dig in? Click the video below to check it out!
Now, I want to hear from you! Do you test your Facebook ads? If so, what's one thing you learned? If not, what's stopping you? Leave your questions and comments below.
Did you like this video? Click the "share" icon above this post and spread the love on social media.
In the meantime, do you have any Facebook ad topics you'd to learn about? Shoot me an email at hi [at] tamekanallen [dot] com.
Until next time,
P.S. Want a FREE Facebook Ads Strategy Session + Campaign Audit? Click here to schedule request your free campaign audit.
Want to Create High Converting Facebook Ads?
Then check out my FREE Checklist where I share my best tips to creating Facebook Ads that convert.
Enter your info and download it NOW!


text:
I just got back from the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) office at Logan Airport.
I was there to pick up my jacket that was left at a TSA checkpoint last Saturday.
It's my favorite Microsoft [ SUBSCRIBE ] jacket that I got at last year's Gnomedex.
After getting back to Boston, from SXSW, I gave TSA a call with the jacket's description.
They called this morning and told me to drop by to pick it up.
Reunited and it feels so good.
Happy Saint Patrick's day to the receptionist at Massport!
Thursday, March 16, 2006
TSA found my jacket
1 comment:
And I guess the luck of the Irish was with you. Sometimes, lost and found really does work. A year or so ago, a friend asked me to bear with him while he stopped at the lost and found in Grand Central to see if they his PalmPilot that he'd left on a train.ReplyDelete
I thought, "no way." But there was a big basket of lost PalmPilots and sure enough, my friend's was there. I usually assume it's not worth the effort - that whatever I've lost is gone.
But I think I'd better change that attitude...
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
We have earlier proposed a 2-channel imaging technique: Adapted Polarisation State Contrast Imaging (APSCI), which noticeably enhances the polarimetric contrast between an object and its background using fully polarised incident state adapted to the scene, such that the polarimetric responses of those regions are located as far as possible on the Poincaré sphere. We address here the full analytical and graphical analysis of the ensemble of solutions of specific incident states, by introducing 3-Distance Eigen Space and explain the underlying physical structure of APSCI and the effect of noise over the measurements.
©2011 Optical Society of AmericaFull Article | PDF Article
OSA Recommended Articles
Debajyoti Upadhyay, Michael Richert, Eric Lacot, Antonello De Martino, and Xavier Orlik
Opt. Express 19(5) 4553-4559 (2011)
Nicolas Vannier, François Goudail, Corentin Plassart, Matthieu Boffety, Patrick Feneyrou, Luc Leviandier, Frédéric Galland, and Nicolas Bertaux
Appl. Opt. 54(25) 7622-7631 (2015)
François Goudail and Matthieu Boffety
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 33(9) 1880-1886 (2016)


text:
A.K! Not a pale mild, but a light running bitter that seems to have been pretty popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As I've said before, I tend to think of the bitters I brew as falling into two general camps: pale, hoppy, golden bitters, and copper-coloured, malty, amber bitters. Of course, the amber ones are still hoppy, and the pale ones are often malty, but you get the general idea. I often look for an AK recipe when I'm thinking about brewing something in the first camp---and in fact, looking over my brewing logs for the last two years, I've brewed more AKs than any other historical beer.
In Amber, Gold, and Black Martyn Cornell says the following about the distinction between AK and other bitter beer:
"Brewers seem to have maintained a deliberate difference between the two types of bitter beer: lower-gravity, lighter coloured, less-hopped AK light bitters, served relatively soon after brewing; and slightly darker, hoppier, stronger 'pale ales', often designated 'PA', stored for some time before sending out."
"Less-hopped" is of course a relative notion, and needs to be understood in the context of the very high hopping levels you often seem to see in these older recipes. Cornell quotes a Victorian drinks writer, Alfred Barnard, describing an AK as "a bright sparkling beverage of rich golden colour and … a nice delicate hop flavour". That about sums up what I'm going for.
All the AK recipes I've brewed have come from the Let's Brew recipes posted by Ron Pattinson and Kristen England at Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. Lots of them include some American six-row, giving the beer a grainy taste. Continental pale malt and adjuncts like flaked corn and invert sugar also seem to be quite common. This one is based on the 1933 Kidd AK---I followed the recipe exactly (well, scaled to 3 gallons), except that I moved the final hop addition from 30 minutes to 20 minutes because I wanted a bit more hop flavour. I usually use Wyeast 1028 or 1469 for these beers, but I was in the middle of brewing a bunch of belgian stuff when I made this, so I just used half a packet of Nottingham instead.
Appearance: Pale golden colour, and crystal clear. Almost looks like I have an American lager in my glass. Decently thick head that lingers a while.
Smell: Grainy malt. Slight herbiness, with some citrus and blackcurrant.
Taste: More of that grainy malt, along with light lemon and blackcurrant. Subtle but there's plenty going on.
Mouthfeel: Carbonation is a little higher than I'd like. Really lovely dry and lingering finish from the hops.
Drinkability & Notes: Just what I'm looking for during the summer. Drinkable and light at 3.9%, but more complex than it first appears.


text:
Investing in the markets can be an intimidating minefield, particularly to newcomers. F.F.M. has made investing a more simple and enjoyable experience by, taking the guesswork out of understanding the markets, how to invest and who to trust.
Latest Blog
Russia & China will have their own "Ratings Agencies"
As we have mentioned before, Western ratings agencies have always been "overrated" and much credibility has been lo...
Litecoin falls to ASIC mining
If you have been mining lite-coins with GPU cards, and have noticed that you are generating a fraction of what you...
Harley Davidson- Profit taking from a EUR/USD Trade
The reason that most investors end up losing their initial investment is GREED. When they do make money the deals get bigger until an "ALL IN" mentality prevails.
Take some profit, this months investing has taken the form of a Harley Davidson 883 Iron. Nice for 3 days work.
Where Investors Come First
When did the Politicians forget that they are Public Servants?–The people
Finance is the art of passing money from hand to hand until it finally disappears" – Robert W. Sarnoff.


text:
Remember former NFL linebacker Nate Webster? Eh, probably not. Despite the fact that he won a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and started for the Denver Broncos in his final season in the league in 2008, he didn't earn a ton of accolades for his play on the field. No Pro Bowls. No All-NFL awards. No Hall of Fame mentions. And yet, we get the feeling you'll never forget his name after what we're about to tell you.
Webster, who played for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2004 and 2005, was just sentenced to 12 years in prison for—get this—sleeping with an underage girl who just so happened to be the daughter of one of his former assistant coaches in Cincinnati. He started sleeping with her back in 2009 when she was just 15 and allegedly threatened to hurt her if she told anyone. His lawyer tried to dispute those accusations by saying that he actually started sleeping with the girl when she was 16—the legal age of consent in Ohio—but Webster went on the record back when he was first arrested and told police that he'd started sleeping with her when she was 15. So, he was found guilty of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor and given 12 years behind bars.
Crazy. Like we said, we bet you'll remember his name now—just not for the right reasons.
RELATED: The 20 Biggest Fails of the 2011 NFL Regular Season (Video)
[via Huffington Post]


text:
Eleanor & Park
Rainbow Rowell
"Eleanor & Park reminded me not just what it's like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it's like to be young and in love with a book."—John Green, The New York Times Book ReviewBono met his wife in high school, Park says.So did Jerry Lee Lewis, Eleanor answers.I'm not kidding, he says.You should be, she says, we're 16.What about Romeo and Juliet?Shallow, confused, then dead.I love you, Park says.Wherefore art thou, Eleanor answers.I'm not kidding, he says.You should be.Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you'll remember your own first love—and just how hard it pulled you under.
Reviewed: 2019-10-23The characters are well written and a lot of fun. The plot... meh.
Reviewed: 2018-09-284.5 stars
This book is just lovely, sweet and heartbreaking. And it is clear from the beautiful fan art present on-line that this book has touched many a heart.
See updates below for a visual journey of this story.
Reviewed: 2018-01-03
Eleanor & Park is a love story set in the 80۪s. If it didn۪t already have that going against it, it۪s a star-crossed affair between two teenage outsiders, so it seems like it should just be the worst kind of clich̩d teenage drivel, but it isn۪t. Unlike the usual outsider protagonists I۪ve run across in YA romances- the ones who are actually super attractive and cookie-cutter but just don۪t know it despite being constantly reminded- Eleanor and Park feel genuinely outside the place they۪ve been forced to inhabit, like the only place they truly belong is with each other. Which I guess is really what young love is all about- finding that place where you really fit, even if that place is a person.
This book was devastating, but not for the reasons I would have anticipated. Maybe I۪m too cynical, maybe I۪ve read one too many doomed young love stories, but it wasn۪t the romance or its inevitable fallout that crushed me. I did find it believable and sad and beautiful in all of its teenage messiness and intensity, but it was the reality of Eleanor۪s family that had me tied up in knots.
I had a stepfather with whom I did not get along. He wasn۪t abusive, per se, and he came from his own traumatized childhood, but to some degree I can empathize with Eleanor on a level that goes beyond the surface. My step dad was very judgmental, since I was everything he would have never wanted in a child of his own. Instead of being an athletic, outdoorsy country kid, I was a bookish wallflower who avoided kids my own age. And like any kid with a step parent, at some point I felt that my mom had chosen him over me, knowing how little we could get along. His opinions were vocal, and when he must have thought he was being funny, he was actually tearing my self-worth apart, not to mention he was incredibly strict. A lot of what he had to say was internalized, which I guess is typical of thin-skinned teenagers who are already struggling with identity. (On a side note, we reconciled somewhat as we both got older and learned to make adjustments for each other). But back then I felt afraid, like walking in the living room was walking into a minefield. So take this, and multiply it many times and you have Eleanor۪s putrid stepfather, Ricky.
Eleanor has her newness, her poverty, her wild red hair, and her size already working against her when she arrives on the school bus one morning, and the popular kids are quick to go for the jugular as soon as possible- she is soon christened Big Red. But their treatment is nothing, really, compared to the soul-sucking hell that is her home life. Some reviewers have speculated about (or rather, expressed exasperation with) Eleanor۪s passivity in the face of the torment she receives at school, but I think these people just don۪t get it. High school bullies are a dime a dozen, but when you have Satan as a step-father, you learn to keep your head down; not rocking the boat would be a life-saving imperative for someone in Eleanor۪s situation, and that kind of passivity doesn۪t just go away when you walk out the door in the morning. For reasons not initially disclosed, Eleanor has been living apart from her family and at the start of the novel is just moving back in, forcing her to completely relearn her own family dynamic. Her mother is worn down and desperate to keep things together, and her siblings can۪t quite figure out where their allegiances lie. Ricky is a beer-swilling white trash asshole, a ticking time bomb of alcoholic rage- and possibly something even more sinister. Eleanor۪s position in the household always feels temporary; she can be discarded whenever Ricky damn well pleases, because her mother is too afraid (and frankly, too stupid) to do anything about it. (Seriously, at one point Ricky screams at the kids I could get rid of all of you! Who would let a man like that within 500 feet of their children?)
Park, on the other hand, has advantages Eleanor can only dream about. He۪s not a popular kid, but he has his own place in the general hierarchy, and his family is, if not perfect, at least averagely dysfunctional. His parents are sappily in love, even after years of marriage, and he has just about all of the material goods a teenager could want. But as a half-Korean kid in whitewashed Husker country and the smaller, more delicate son (compared to his father and brother), he still feels himself to be an outsider.
His first impressions of Eleanor are about as far away from love at first sight as possible, and hers aren۪t much in his favor either. Forced to share a bus seat by the territoriality of small town teenagers, they barely stand each other at first. Of course, this gives way to tolerance, to friendship, and eventually to that particular brand of intense love that only teenagers desperate for acceptance are capable of. They don۪t speak much at first; their attraction builds as they share the things they love with each other, starting with Park۪s comic books. I would be lying if I said falling in love over the original issues of Watchmen isn۪t kind of dreamy, because it is. Comics, music, and books soon become romantic currency between them, as they share more and more of each other and build their universe of two.
Since we all know the course of true love never did run smooth, especially in YA, there are difficulties beyond the schoolyard. Eleanor۪s stepdad would send her away (again) if he knew about Park, and her mother is just as culpable in keeping them apart, since anything that would remotely rock the boat is strictly forbidden. Park۪s family, though initially skeptical (especially his mother), accept Eleanor and their time together at his house becomes a respite that just can۪t last; small towns have big mouths.
I won۪t go any further into the specifics of their relationship, or the tipping point in the narrative, to save on spoilers, but just a bit more on the family issue. I was on edge through this story, hoping not only that Eleanor and Park would find a way to be together, but that Eleanor and her siblings would get out of that horrible house- with or without their pathetic mother. I know I should be more sympathetic- battered women are not asking for it or any other victim-blaming nonsense- but it couldn۪t be more obvious that Ricky had to have been clearly bad news from the earliest days. When your boyfriend forces one of your children out of your home, you don۪t marry him. You just DON۪T. So I struggled with finding sympathy for Eleanor۪s mom, but I felt torn up inside thinking about her brothers and sister. There have been complaints about the open-ended nature of the romance; I thought it was realistically handled, but I really could have used closure for her family situation.
I have really dragged this one out, but I think the point I۪m trying to make is that this is some really top-notch stuff. Not just for YA, but in general. Rather than just being generic star-crossed relationship drama, it has depth throughout and makes us (or at least me) care about all of the people involved, not just the eponymous leads. I۪m looking forward to reading more of Rowell in the future.
(Cross-posted at booklikes.com, http://atroskity.booklikes.com/post/962642/review-eleanor-park)
Reviewed: 2017-12-075 stars
Initial Impressions:AHHH the ending!!!
I honestly didn't think I was going to fall in love with this book, so hats off to Rainbow Rowell because I DID. It was rather different from what I expected but in an amazing way. Highly recommended!!
Review originally posted on The Book Addict's Guide: Simply put: I loved ELEANOR & PARK and I totally didn't see it coming. I was definitely enjoying the book the whole time – Don't get me wrong there – but I did not expect to fall in love with it. Based on everything I had seen, I was expecting ELEANOR & PARK to be a cute, upbeat love story with a strong musical connection. Obviously the music tie-in was still there, but E&P is definitely a lot deeper than I originally thought.
Eleanor has a troubled home life. Her mom and dad are separated and after her step-dad Richie kicked her out last year, our story begins with Eleanor returning home to live in a cramped house with her mother and 4 siblings. Park has a great family in his parents, brother, and grandparents who live next-door, but he still doesn't quite fit in. He's one step away from being the focus of the bully's attention at school with his soft, Korean features and obvious different tastes in music (punk) and reading (comics).
The best part about ELEANOR & PARK is how naturally the two incredibly different characters fell together and fit so perfectly. It all started one day on the bus and from there, Rainbow Rowell takes the reader on an extremely moving journey to bring the characters together and really form a strong bond between the two. Yes, there were times when I was frustrated with the characters, but that's just a natural progression of a story and well… high school.
What really pulled me in was Eleanor's story line and how truly difficult her home life was. She was an outcast in her own home, never allowed to act naturally and sometimes I found myself questioning, what even is acting naturally for Eleanor? Her step-dad is an absolute terror, her mom does nothing about it, and Eleanor has to try to keep an eye on the little kids while still trying to hold all the pieces of her life together. My heart just went out to her!! And I felt slightly murderous towards her step-father.
I admit that I wasn't entirely sold on the book until the very end. I won't spoil anything, but there came a certain point in the book where the whole story took an enormous shift and I had such a strong array of emotions that simply overwhelmed me. While the book is a bit heartbreaking overall due to Eleanor's situation, it's also heartwarming to see these two characters learn how to love each other, never before feeling capable of it.
Reviewed: 2017-01-02That went downhill very quickly. The hit book that supposedly everybody loves...but I don't get at all. Eleanor and Park are two teenagers who eventually build a friendship and then a relationship after he lets her sit next to him on the bus. But what could have been your typically teenage romance ends up being something else.
Eleanor is a poor white girl who was once kicked out of her family's home by her drunk and abusive step-father for a year. She stayed with neighbors, until her mother came one day and picked her up. But her stepfather is still abusive.
One day she meets Park, a half white, half Korean boy on the bus. He lets her sit next to him and over time they develop a friendship and then romantic relationship based on comics, music and other shared interests.
I thought the book started off kinda "eh" but began to pick up steam. Then I saw that all this book was about was their relationship and how it develops. Their home lives are still secondary to the plot, which is unfortunate since both are actually a LOT more interesting than the relationships. Park has issues being the older son (but shorter than his brother), as well as his appearance and occasional difficult relationship with his white father.
I was shocked to find I somehow missed that most of the story takes place in Omaha, Nebraska. So I must look in askance at the portrayal of Park, being half white and half Caucasian, plus two black friends of Eleanor. Other than some jokes about Park being Chinese, etc. in the beginning of the book, I find it hard to believe that none of the non-white characters experienced much racism. It could be that the alternating viewpoints of Eleanor and Park cuts that aspect out, but other reviews seem to indicate that Rowell did ZERO research for what Park's or DeNice's or Beebi's experiences might have been actually like.
I also wanted to know what happened to Eleanor's family in the end. Park's family comes to a sort of understanding with each other, but Eleanor's young siblings are left without their eldest sister an a mom who is unable or unwilling (or both) to get them out of harm's way.
At the beginning, I was pleased and thought I had found a YA book I actually really liked. It was a little amazing to see how quickly it went downhill for me. I can't say I recommend it. There really is no plot and I side-eye the lack of historical research the author has done.
Reviewed: 2016-11-01read
Reviewed: 2015-08-26Rainbow Rowell is officially one of my new favorite authors. This book...it was quirky and the characters were a bit odd, but that's why you love them. That ending though... I teared up a bit.
Reviewed: 2015-05-14Ugh you stupid emotions and tears, go away. Such a cute and realistic love story between teenagers in the 1980s. Eleanor and Park are so much alike that it was frustrating at times when all their little arguments would stem because each of them are self conscious and afraid to tell the other what is going on in the head, but that is what made the story realistic because teenagers are that way. The ending was incredibly tear inducing. Very glad I gave this book a go. My only "beef" with it is that Eleanor's likes and dislikes pretty much matches to Park's with very few exceptions, have a mind of your own girl. But overall very well deserved 4 star book and I look forward to reading more of Rainbow Rowell's books.
Item Posts
@maragtzr3mo 5d
@maragtzr completed
- #eleanorpark... on 2014-03-28
@maragtzr3mo 5d
@maragtzr began
- #eleanorpark... on 2014-03-19
@nouna18119mo 3d
@nouna1811 completed
- #eleanorpark... on 2019-03-10
@nouna18119mo 3d
@nouna1811 began
- #eleanorpark... on 2019-03-10
@chelzygirl9mo 12d
@chelzygirl completed
- #eleanorpark... on 2019-03-02
@zoeslibrary1y 4mo
@zoeslibrary completed
- #eleanorpark... on 2017-02-21
@zoeslibrary1y 4mo
@zoeslibrary began
- #eleanorpark... on 2017-02-20
@pterodashtyl1y 6mo
@pterodashtyl completed
- #eleanorpark... on 2018-06-01
@pterodashtyl1y 6mo
@pterodashtyl began
- #eleanorpark... on 2018-05-31
@attawaykl1y 9mo
@attawaykl completed
- #eleanorpark... on 2014-04-02
@attawaykl1y 9mo
@attawaykl began
- #eleanorpark... on 2014-03-19
@kennedianne1y 10mo
@kennedianne completed
- #eleanorpark... on 2018-01-15
@kennedianne1y 11mo
@kennedianne began
- #eleanorpark... on 2017-12-29
@aylai2y 3mo
@aylai completed
- #eleanorpark... on 2015-06-01
@aylai2y 3mo
@aylai began
- #eleanorpark... on 2015-05-29
© 2019 libib.com / All rights reserved


text:
More Inspiration
For $1.99/month (less than the price of one cappuccino, one movie rental or a pack of gum…) or $18/year or more you'll receive unlimited access to all Improvised Life content and its vast archive.
Help us fund (ad-free) the MANY hours of writing, research, and cold hard sweat that goes into curating and editing Improvised Life.
something nice from a walk in the park, or a peculiar pebble you found on your way , dry flower seed (-pods ) -and imagine to let them grow ; an old glass marble , a button, ribbon or decorative stone you took from an old bag or jacket that you love ; burnt-low-candlestick from spec.eve. shell . a key(to happiness : ) . marzipan-heart. fave coffee beans . dried flower heads. beautiful dry beans . little piece of paper or fave tape you worked with ..maybe write something on it , a keyword, spontaneously or a little reminder ..maybe fold over , because you could add up things for a certain while and then look at the jar (when in need of happiness , also for friend ). (and maybe then let go for new wonderful things to come to you). wrapped little sweets (bonbon, choc-bean, small cookie). symbols for what you like , e.g. a star, Sun, Buddha, pendant, prec.stone. title or line of fave song . dried spice.
finally , to come back to original idea ,let the sun shine into it, sing into it, let a friend say something into it, catch a few birdsongs and smiles; quickly close the jar ..and empty it out into the sky before refill ???
I feel that our hearts could be such jars ,filled with the good (also that which came out of difficult; the little gifts of life ), so maybe this is just an 'external' reminder .
The good thing is, when you let go, the idea stays (or a flower grows), but you make room for something new, wonderful . And 'it' knows it's welcome : )
ps . maybe a picture every day , saying what's in it .
What a lovely riff of ideas. Thank you Sahana. I love "I feel that our hearts could be such jars…."
A slightly similar idea in an advertisement for a community funding program (from lottery revenue) in Western Australia…
Really good, thanks!
If the Improvised Life is a source of creativity, inspiration, ideas and change in your daily life, please consider becoming a Friend with Benefits. A little bit goes a long way towards helping us publish fresh AD-FREE content each day.


text: The Long-tailed Wood-Partridge (Dendrortyx macroura) is a little-known Mexican endemic, found in highland forests characterized by a dense shrub layer in the center and south of the country. Although not considered globally at risk, it is protected by Mexican law; the main threat is habitat loss by deforestation. The Long-tailed is a large-sized, forest-adapted, Neotropical quail. The sexes are alike in plumage. This quail measures from 29 to 42 cm in length, with a body mass of 350 to 465 g. A sedentary species, it feeds mainly on the ground on seeds and small leaves, and on trees and brushes on small flowers and fruits. It roosts at night alone or in pairs in trees or brushes, singing from there at dawn and dusk. This is a monogamous quail, the breeding period lasts from April to August. The Long-tailed Wood-Partridge builds its nest on the ground and lays a clutch of 4 to 6 eggs; newborns are precocial and nidifugous.


text:
Jerusalem — Israel said it intercepted a ship Wednesday carrying an Iranian shipment of advanced rockets bound for Palestinian militants, claiming it proved Tehran could not be trusted in international nuclear talks.
The announcement came hours after Israel said it struck two Hezbollah fighters as they tried to plant a bomb near the Syrian-Israeli frontier and just over a week after Israel reportedly bombed the Iran-backed group inside Lebanon for the first time since 2006.
Israel has long accused Iran and Syria of providing military aid to Hezbollah and to Palestinian militant groups, and the military spokesman's office tweeted that the ship was carrying weapons "capable of striking anywhere in Israel".
Iran's Arabic-language Al-Alam television channel quoted a military official in the Islamic republic as denying the Israeli report, calling it "totally without foundation".
Coinciding with a visit to the United States by its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel latched onto the weapons shipment to chide Western powers for negotiating with Tehran over its nuclear programme.
"While Iran is conducting these talks, smiling to the international community, it continues to arm terrorist groups, continues to perpetrate terrorism around the world," Netanyahu said in a statement.
The military said the Syrian-made weapons aboard the "Klos-C" were shipped overland to Iran and then onward towards Gaza by sea before being intercepted in the Red Sea between Sudan and Eritrea.
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told reporters that "dozens" of surface-to-surface M302 Syrian-manufactured rockets were found aboard the ship, adding that the crew had "fully cooperated".
Lerner said Israel had followed the shipment for "several months" and that the military knew "for a fact" the Iranians were behind it.
Militants in Gaza, which is governed by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, have fired dozens of rockets at the Jewish state since the beginning of the year, and Israel has responded with air strikes killing both militants and civilians.
Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said the weapons were destined for Islamic Jihad, a smaller Islamist movement which had become "the armed wing of Iran in the Gaza Strip".
Hamas, meanwhile, was "hesitant for the moment to link itself with Iran again", he said.
- 'World powers wrong on Iran' -
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad joined Iran in denying the Israeli account. "The movement has many other ways of procuring weapons," said an Islamic Jihad official, charging that was seeking a pretext to attack Gaza.
Israel, the region's sole if undeclared nuclear-armed state, has long accused Iran of seeking to develop atomic weapons, charges vehemently denied by Tehran which insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.
The P5+1 -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany -- are set to hold another round of nuclear talks with Iran aimed at a comprehensive agreement later this month.
The ship interception report came just hours after the Israeli army claimed to have hit two Hezbollah fighters along the Syrian border with the annexed Golan Heights, without specifying what weapons were used or whether the targets were killed.
Hezbollah did not immediately comment, but Syria accused Israel of firing four rockets from the Golan.
Army chief General Benny Gantz charged that "Iran is supplying arms to its satellites in the north (Hezbollah) has well as in the south (Gaza)."
Last month Israeli warplanes reportedly bombarded Hezbollah positions inside Lebanon for the first time since the 2006 war, prompting a threat of retaliation.
Israel is bent on halting any transfer of weapons to Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters across the border to aid Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime as it battles Sunni-led rebels.
In May 2013, Israel launched two raids targeting what it said were arms convoys near Damascus destined for Hezbollah, and in November there were reports of an Israeli strike against a Syrian air base where missiles for Hezbollah were located.
Syria has long provided arms and other aid to Hezbollah, and served as a conduit for Iranian military aid to the movement.
Israel has accused Iran of trying to establish similar supply lines by sea to Gaza.
Israeli commandos in 2011 seized a ship carrying what Israel said were Chinese-made arms from Iran bound for Gaza militants. And in 2002, Israel seized 50 tonnes of weapons from the vessel "Karine A" on its way to Gaza.