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Just one year removed from playing for the NCAA national championship, Butler began their quest to become CBI champions by knocking off the University of Delaware Blue Hens 75 to 58 in the first round of the College Basketball Invitational presented by Zebra Pen.
Poor shooting plagued the Blue Hens in the first half, shooting just 38% from the field and 1 of 4 beyond the arc. Butler wasn't much better shooting at only a 36% clip, but converting 5 of 10 from the three point line to take an 8 point lead into halftime.
Butler continued the stifling defense, opening the second half with a 11 to 2 run and holding Delaware's leading scorer throughout the season, Devon Sadler, without a bucket until the 10 minute mark in the second half.
Delaware, making their first post season appearance in over a decade, briefly cut the lead to single digits but a 10 – 3 Butler run got the Bulldogs out in front by 15 and they never looked back.
Juinor big man Andrew Smith led the way for the Bulldogdropping 17 points and pulling down 7 boards. The Blue Hens recieved a great effort from Jarvis Threatt who scored 31 in a losing cause.
Butler will go on to face Penn, who beat Quinnipiac, LIVE on HDNet Monday March 19th. The Blue Hens finish the season 18-14.
Watch the College Basketball Invitational presented by Zebra Pen Monday night March 19th on HDNet as Pennsylvania takes on Butler followed by TCU taking on Oregon State. Sit courtside with us and follow all the action on our facebook page and by using the #CBI hashtag on twitter
Copyright © 2020 AXS TV - All Rights Reserved.


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Tax Accounting Adelaide help you grow your business, minimise tax, create wealth and save you money! We improve your business, minimise your tax and save you time. Call us now and let us help you on your road to success!
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subset: commoncrawl


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Do you follow Big Ideas Math on Facebook or Twitter? We share great resources and articles for teachers, post our new blog posts, and love to connect and hear from you.
If you don't have social media accounts, that's okay, too! Our new Social Media blog category will take care of that. On Fridays, we'll be sharing the links from the current week here on the blog.
Links from 05/13 – 05/18/2012:
- "What Exactly is 'Understanding?' And How Do We Assess It?" from Edutopia
- "Why We Should Never Fear Failure" from MindShift
- "6 Classroom Management Tips Every Teacher Can Use" from NEA
- "At a Bronx Middle School, a Day of Buying and Selling" from SchoolBook
And in case you missed this week's Big Ideas Math post:
Have a wonderful weekend!


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The Uptown District Shopping Center at 1030 University Avenue in Hillcrest, built in the early '90s, is a busy location. But vacancies have been popping up in the 148,638-square-foot urban center, anchored by Ralphs.
The shopping center was purchased more than a year ago for $81.1 million by Regency Centers Corp. of Jacksonville, Florida. According to their website, "Regency is the preeminent national owner, operator, and developer of dominant grocery-anchored and community shopping centers." The company owns around 347 retail properties, including those held in co–investment partnerships.
The most recent business to vacate was Pick Up Stix. There are 3 other Pick Up Stix outlets in San Diego and more than 70 in California (both company-owned and franchises). Their parent company is headquartered in San Clemente.
Just across the patio from Pick Up Stix was another fast-casual eatery, La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill. It closed more than a year ago and the space remains empty. La Salsa —based in Irvine — has another location in San Diego and one in Coronado.
A third eating establishment to close sometime back was Quiznos. The Denver–based company still has several Quiznos franchise outlets in the greater San Diego area.
Gregg Sadowsky, senior vice president with the Regency Centers Solana Beach office, said the lease for Pick Up Stix ended and they didn't renew. He added that Pick Up Stix didn't leave because of a rent increase, emphasizing that "rent is a function of sales." Sadowsky said La Salsa and Quiznos left before Regency took over. The company will be bringing in some "different fast-casual eateries," he added.
There are other vacancies, including a former pet store just east of the Radio Shack store. There's also a space above the AT&T store.
Regency plans a complete "re-do" of the shopping center to "re-invigorate it," said Sadowsky. He said it should begin in 60 to 90 days and be complete in "five to seven months."
Meanwhile, the adjacent former nightclub space — not owned by Regency— at 1202 University Avenue (at Vermont Avenue) is available again, but only as retail space.
More from SDReader
- More stories by David Batterson
- Why vacancies in Hillcrest? — June 1, 2018
- Last sandwich standing — May 31, 2018
- The upscaling of North County — May 19, 2015
- Space for a Shack in Hillcrest? — Sept. 13, 2014
- Another Closure at Chula Vista's Otay Ranch Center Mall — Nov. 23, 2012
With Gossip Grill now open in the space next to the empty nightclub, it could well re-energize that NE corner of Univ. and Vermont.
I contacted RadioShack public relations March 5, to see if their store will remain in the shopping center. The vague reply was: "We are not releasing a store closing list at this time. However, RadioShack will maintain market coverage as part of this plan, with more than 4,000 U.S. stores in the RadioShack footprint."
Here's a photo I shot today of the new pedestrian entrance, still under construction. It's a fine improvement over what was there.


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AmenitiesThe premier amenities at the AAA Four Diamond Osthoff Resort offer guests a wide variety of activities to choose from. L'ecole de la Maison, our cooking school, is designed for those who desire to learn new techniques and master culinary creations in their own home kitchen. Memorial Day through Labor Day, our 500 ft of private lakefront hosts a multiple array of water sport fun with recreation rentals while our Lake Deck offers delicious grill food and live weekend entertainment.
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EPSON XP 640 driver
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Download EPSON XP 640 free driver for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Install without CD the complete software for use, configure and install the EPSON all-in-one printer free, fast and easy.
The Epson Expression Premium XP-640 Small-in-One All-in-One Printer features copying, printing and scanning on the same device. It has integrated Wi-Fi system to print wirelessly, LCD screen to use the equipment without a personal computer and access to social networks for printing photos.
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Driver EPSON XP 640
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For install the drivers you must download the one corresponding to your operating system, execute it and follow the steps indicated in the installation wizard. Once this is achieved you can use your printer.


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Home Page
Front Page
September 14, 1999
(Last November the author of this article and several other Mobilians visited Cuba on a trip arranged by the Mobile-Havana Sister City organization. A US government embargo prohibits most travel to and other relations with Cuba by American citizens. This is the ninth episode. The tale will conclude in the next issue. Click here for the previous episode.)
by David Underhill
Our meanders around Havana left me as astonished about the role of religion in an officially atheist communist state as the Rev. Billy Graham had been in the Soviet Union. He went there shortly before its demise to evangelize for the American way of faith and life. Upon return he reported, with some apparent surprise, that religion operated rather freely and openly in the USSR.
This provoked such an uproar that he had to semi-recant his own observations. The bad news that people in Red Russia could--but didn't much care to -- practice any formal religion was an intolerable blasphemy to many believers here.
Despite my conscious resistance to decades of propaganda about state repression of religion in Castro's Cuba, I arrived there half expecting to find a cowering, covert faith, if any at all. But, like Graham, that's not what I saw.
The synagogue some of us visited was operating with no visible hindrance by the government or other authorities. The Catholic Church remains present across Havana, architecturally at least. One afternoon I halted on the sidewalk to gawk at a man trundling an eerie, elaborate shrine down the street on a handcart. "What is it?" I wondered aloud to somebody beside me. "Voodoo," he replied with a smile and a shrug.
And the Baptist church where I found lodgings had an open door that I simply walked through to inquire about a place to stay. After a couple days of getting acquainted with the folks there, I asked the pastor's wife about the prevalent American reports of religious suppression in Cuba. She laughed at that and said, I think, in the exchange of jumbled Spanish and English that ensued:
Look around you. We have regular worship services and many other activities here. People come and go as they wish. The same is true all over Cuba. If Christians want to have a church, they can.
This was illustrated at a nearby Methodist church. It stayed busy and packed. Music and hosannas poured from the building. Above the door in Spanish was the familiar: I am the way, the truth, and the life. You could hardly walk by without being invited inside or getting entangled in a theological discussion that had tumbled down the stairs and into the street.
Sunday morning found us at another church in a small compound called the Dr. Martin Luther King Center for reasons I never discovered. Like the Baptist church, this place also had some link with the American Pastors for Peace group, as displayed in a lively mural assailing the US embargo (el bloque) of Cuba. A window in the wall cleverly served as the windshield of a bus in the painting.
Only a battering ram could have compacted more worshippers into the sanctuary. One of the visitors from Mobile, the Rev. Bill Fountaine, was the preacher--via a translator. The service was a close cousin to any down home Protestant one in Alabama. Some of the hymns were identical--except for the Spanish words.
Perhaps behind the scenes and out in the countryside the government or the communist party work to frustrate and hobble religion. Starting and sustaining a congregation may be arduous. And whether by conviction, stigma, or a couple generations of communist re- education, we didn't see a mass trooping into churches that Sunday as part of people's weekly routine.
But keeping the faith was never supposed to be easy, and the refining fire does have some benefits. At least, religion as currently practiced in Cuba seems free from the moral hazard that has bedeviled especially the Catholic church for centuries across Latin America: being perceived as the concubine of the state.
The state evidently leans much harder on the commercial concubines than it does on any religion. Hookers stalking the tourists were not flamboyant. They would approach casually and never make a plain proposal at first. Their English was smoother than my Spanish. Two even coached me by plucking my bi-lingual pocket dictionary and locating the words I was groping for. Once they'd decided I was not an undercover agent, they would steer our conversation in a franker direction, while keeping an eye out for the cops.
When this sales spiel faltered, some turned blunt:
What is the problem here? Are you ill? Afraid of your wife or girlfriend? Not like me, think I'm ugly. Are you incapacitated? Are you (flutter of a limp wrist)? Are you broke? Do you want to keep me poor by keeping all your dollars?....
No, no, no....
Well then, what exactly is the problem....
Eventually she would give up--and then ask why you wasted this effort which she could have devoted to recruiting business elsewhere. She would persist with this pitch until you yielded a few bucks for her to go away. It was like being billed by a lawyer or cab driver for his time waiting while you decide what you're going to do.
So I'm not shocked at what happens one morning back at the Havana Libre hotel. I'd returned there because it has telephones, a cluster of them in glass booths beside a counter where clerks dial the number and collect the charges when you finish.
I had to call Radio Havana. Before leaving Mobile I'd gotten, through a previous visitor to Cuba, the name of someone who works there. For my trip I took a brief leave from hosting a morning chatter show on WABB-AM, but I resolved to finagle a way to do the program once from Havana. I had no plan for accomplishing that, other than attempting to contact this Radio Havana woman--and winging it.
A phone book listed a baffling array of numbers where she might be. I'd just have to start calling and try to explain myself to whoever answered.
I was sitting in the lobby fabricating my con man's patter in fractured Spanish when a lilting voice says in English, "Pardon, sir. You are not Cuban, yes?"
"Yes, not. How did you guess?" Oh my, what a fetching young thing she was.
"It is necessary. I am making a survey of tourists. May I ask questions, please?"
This was a novel opening line, indeed. What next? A clipboard and a University of Havana ID, that's what. She was legit, quizzing foreigners about tourist services to compile data for improving them.
When my replies had been marked on her checklist, I seized the opportunity to request a favor in return. She listened attentively as I detailed my need to call Radio Havana. "Would you call for me?" I begged, with all the dignity I could muster.
"Yes, of course."
I handed her my note with the name of the person I must find there. Her eyes widened. "I know her! I was intern last year where she works. It is close. I take you to her. Come, please." Fifteen minutes later I meet the name on my note and am entering the innards of Radio Havana's overseas broadcast center.
What are the odds against this occurring in a city of millions? It could make a believer out of an agnostic.
The staff at Radio Havana is intrigued and amused at the idea of piping a talk show from their studios to Alabama and back. A pair of them agree to participate as guests, and I decide to invite Jay Higginbotham from the Mobile contingent. (Earlier I'd suggested this some others too but they declined.) We will broadcast the following day.
Then the radio crew mention that I will have to cover, of course, the cost of the phone connection to Mobile. Plus, they must charge me something for the use of their facilities and personnel. The total will be $172.
It was an offer I couldn't refuse, since I was completely snared already on the notion of doing this program from Havana. Also, their fee was reasonable. These were talented, capable folks struggling with obvious shortages of basic broadcast supplies, and Yankee dollars have great clout in Cuba.
Would a hooker have believed me if I'd declined her company by saying I must conserve my money to rent Radio Havana for a couple hours? Could I have occupied CBS radio's main studio in New York for this price? Could I even have walked in off the street and gotten to it? No.
Besides, by pulling off this unique broadcast feat perhaps I would so please and impress the boss back in Mobile that he would reimburse me. It turned out that would happen on the same day Fidel Castro converts to capitalism.
Still, the next morning was worth all the maneuvering and money. Higginbotham and I did recorded interviews for use later on Radio Havana's shortwave world service. Then, as the moment arrived for the broadcast to Mobile, the phone connection died. There had to be some glitch. This is traditional in the trade.
When that got fixed a fine and informative time was had by all on both ends. Most of the callers from Mobile were friendly to my Cuban guests and genuinely curious about their views. And a few sour ones even seemed to delight in this rare chance to indulge in personal hostility toward actual commies, while grumbling at me for arranging it.
After the broadcast a bonus appeared. Somebody at Radio Havana knew somebody with a car who might be available to whisk me around the countryside. This experience wouldn't be free either, but it might be worth the modest cost. Our bouncy little ship would depart the next day for Key West, if the weather consented, and I had no other prospect for seeing anything outside the city.
(to be concluded next issue)


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1 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Mechanical Engineerng, Urmia University of Technology, Urmia, Iran
2 M.Sc. Student, Faculty of Mechanical Engineerng, Urmia University of Technology, Urmia, Iran
Main Subjects
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A lot of homeowners make the decision to upgrade their home to hardwood floors. However, all wood floors aren't the same. When you're thinking about making the change, there are a lot of factors you need to consider.
Whether you're laying down an entirely new floor, or replacing a damaged wood floor there are a ton of different varieties and options to choose from. Below you'll find the most common benefits of hardwood floors, as well as, recent trends you can implement in your own home.
Top Benefits Of Hardwood Flooring
Hardwood flooring is a very reliable and attractive choice for most homeowners. This style of flooring has been used for centuries, but in recent years we're seeing a resurgence in its popularity.
1. Easy To Clean
In comparison to carpets, hardwood floors are very easy to clean. All it takes is a simple sweep, mop and you're done!
2. Increase Home Value
By upgrading your current flooring to hardwood floors, or fixing up your current hardwood floors can greatly increase the value of your home. Carpet usually has to be replaced every few years, and is more susceptible to stains, but hardwood floors can last a lifetime.
Hardwood floors will increase the value of your home, and will increase the selling price of your home.
3. Long-Term Investment
Hardwood floors can last an incredibly long time. Especially, if you use high quality wood and take care of it on a regular basis.
They are also very durable and can withstand a lot of foot traffic, and other common day-to-day scuffs.
4. Variety
Hardwood floors come in a variety of types of wood, which can blend in or enhance any living environment. For instance, you'll be able to choose from different stains, wood colors, and tree species.
5. Overall Home Health
When it comes to the overall health of your entire home you just can't beat hardwood floors. Carpets usually trap dust, pollen, cat dander, and other common allergens. Hardwood floors allow you to avoid all of these, which make them a great choice for those who suffer from allergies.
Trends In Hardwood Flooring
Hardwood flooring trends change with the times. Below you'll find what's hot right now in wood flooring.
1. Dark Hardwood Floors
Dark hardwood floors are becoming more popular, especially in more modern and luxury homes. Dark hardwood gives your home a very classic look, and definitely makes a statement.
2. White Washed Floors
White washed hardwood floors can bring a lot of brightness to your home. If you have a home that doesn't receive a lot of light, or has a dark interior then you could benefit from white washed floors.
3. Vintage Hardwood
Vintage hardwood floors take a design cue from the wood itself. This style of design incorporates the wood's natural grain and imperfections into the wood. You can even use reclaimed wood to lower the overall price of the project.
Contact us for more information about hardwood floors, and hardwood floor installation. We can help you find the perfect hardwood floors for your needs.


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C271 - 1963 Presentation by Mr. Young at Irish Shell and BP House
02 October 1963
Presentation by Mr. Young at Irish Shell and BP House. Presentation in Mr. Young's office. Special for Irish Shell and BP Ltd.
- Filename
- C271-6823.jpg
- Copyright
- Copyrighted to SKP & Associates Ltd trading as Lensmen & Associates, Lensmen Photographic Agency and Lensmen Photographic Archive, Irish Photo Archive. wwwirishphotoarchive.ie COPYRIGHT AND RELATED RIGHTS ACT, 2000. Under the Copyright and Related Rig
- Image Size
- 1024x678 / 229.9KB
1960s B.P. Shell black and white Dublin Eire film photography group historical photos history pictures iIreland Irish Irish culture Irish gifts Irish heritage Irish history Irish images Irish people Irish photos Irish pictures Irish society news photos old photos old pictures old print photographs of Ireland photography print picture library presentation Republic of Ireland Shell the sixties
- Contained in galleries
- Search ALL, Search ALL, images of ireland 1960s, 1963 - Presentation by Mr. Young at Irish Shell and BP House


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This weeks Hump Day Acne Hero is……Sudocrem! Say whaaaaat??
I know, who knew Sudocrem could have so many uses beyond your toddling days? Well, I did. And do you know how I found out? My friend Jess told me. Do you know how she found out? She read the uses on the pot.
Et voila. I now have my very own little insider beauty secret, and I love nothing more than sharing said secret with people, watching their incredulity when I tell them — yep, it's basically a miracle.
True fact — I had a wedding to attend this weekend (as a bridesmaid no less) and my skin was in #breakoutforanevent mode. I'm sure you've all been there at some point? So I spent three dedicated nights of applying the "Sudocrem face" — a light layer of Sudocrem every evening — and lo and behold, my skin was looking pretty darn good (for me!).
The list of uses is bonkers, and I honestly don't know why all of our mothers prescribed us this in a heartbeat when the first spot, patch of eczema or sunburned face reared their ugly heads. Let's face it, these are all adult problems too. In fact, acne is apparently the most googled word, (after sex).
So go forth, use Sudocrem and conquer. You're welcome.
L x


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|unfurling each day
tiny shiny leaves expose
vulnerable flesh
|Ever amazed by spring's silent awakenings!
Our younger daughter is returning home from Paris Friday evening, (tomorrow:-) lots of laundry for Mamma while she sleeps and then packing again because I'll be leaving for a (mostly) silent meditation retreat Monday through Sunday. I'm so excited and a little sad as this is the last retreat for this particular constellation of lovely souls even though the teacher training continues through July. And I know, from experience that some of us will stay in touch and others will cross paths over the years as we do now and have in the past. It has been a phenomenal experience on so many levels. For me to have been able to attend two out of three retreats with the limitations of MS is incredible. Everyone is always so helpful (all day) but especially at the end of the day when I run out of steam and need a lot of assistance. It is humbling in a good way to be vulnerable, to be heard chanting prayers of gratitude in the morning, seen practicing yoga in the early afternoon, body strong and flexible and then to be lifted into my wheelchair by kind friends when my legs just won't move on their own as evening falls (and I do too).
It is humbling, it is a relief, it is a blessing to be held figuratively and literally by lovingkindness.
I'm deeply grateful for all of our teachers from IJS and The Awakened Heart Project, Sheila, Jeff, Jordan, Myriam, Lisa, Jonathan, for my colleagues and chevruta (study partner and also my cousin it so happens), and our little focus group that included participants from around the globe (both hemispheres). What a joy it will be to have a chance to teach and learn from/with our little kehillah (community) next week!
The Healing Womb will be gathering live tomorrow (Friday) afternoon if you'd like to participate. Information is above, we'd love to have you on the call.


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beenz.com has announced that it will shut down its service at the end of the day on august 25. the company was known for developing an online currency called beenz.
according to the company's website, it's allowed to discontinue service (the "beenz economy") at any time as long as it gives at least 10 days notice.
read more at beenz.com.
joel's opinion
it looks like this month is not good for online currency companies. first flooz.com suspended service and now beenz.com is ending its service completely.
i have to say that i really like the idea of online currency, but it just never caught on. i can honestly say that today is the first time that i ever went to beenz.com and i have yet to click on flooz.com. i have a feeling i'm in the majority, too.
user comments 11 comment(s)
|when? (11:08am est fri aug 17 2001)
whene will all .coms finally go out of biz and stop pulling all normal companies down with tehm? – by rr
|i agree… (11:10am est fri aug 17 2001)
who comes up with the stupid names? i always thought flooz sounded more like a porn site than an online currency. who would send their mom a flooz gift certificate? i sure wouldn't! – by m@
|let it die (12:08pm est fri aug 17 2001)
dot com's, it is good to see the suckers getting cleared out. now we can see what the internet is all about. – by rax
|bad concept. (12:23pm est fri aug 17 2001)
exchange a bad piece of paper currency(fru) for a bad piece of paper currency(beenz). what a concept. – by in gold we trust
|name for online cash (12:40pm est fri aug 17 2001)
i-bux. just a thought.
online credit seems like it would be a good idea, though. if they'd really like to promote something like beanz and flooz, then they should give away substantial amounts under coke bottle tops and in spam, enough to buy something worthwhile, to get the ball started. someone's got to start the ball rolling, or it's gonna fail.
i like mozorella, too!
|excuse me… (12:44pm est fri aug 17 2001)
beenz give me gaz… – by joe schmoe
|terminology and logic (12:58pm est fri aug 17 2001)
logic: first, for online payments or purchases, paypal is the way to go. especially for small retailers, paypal is excellent, as they handle all the credit-card and "virtual check" processing, and charge a lot less than most cc processors.
terminology: what's with "lt cox?" what kind of straight name is that? do you know what a lieutenant is? let me explain: "lieu" comes from "in lieu of," that is, it's holding a place, and "tenant" is something that occupies a space. so a lieutenant is a place-holder for s space-filler – that is, in mathematical terms, a zero, in place of something to fill the space.
bigots. furrfu! – by icesnake frostfyre
|lt means (1:31pm est fri aug 17 2001)
little, tiny
not that there's anything wrong with it. – by slorge gridlock
|re: lt. cox (1:51pm est fri aug 17 2001)
first that doesn't sound like the lt. cox that normally posts here, but even if it is there's someone who's been posting here for a while referring to this or that "gay" whatever.
all i have to ask is what era are you living in? the last time i heard someone running around talking that was back in the 8th grade in 1981 or thereabouts. either update to the present or deal with your fundamental insecurities. – by ziwiwiwiwiwiwiwwiwi
|beenz meenz meanz (9:18am est mon aug 20 2001)
went to beenz site – you can still register!!! can't believe they kept that link alive. think its a bit cheeky really. – by officewurker
|its time will come (9:29am est mon aug 20 2001)
i think that it's just a matter of time before this kind of thing will really be needed on the net. a third party making sure your not ripped off or over charged. i hate using my credit card to buy stuff. you have to be very trusting of the places you shop at. – by the_1_


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VJ, CEO of 3D Systems, introduces his plans for taking 3D printing from prototyping to production at IMTS 2016.
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23 Nov Digital web commitment
Family Homes For Seniors Senior Project Joins Digital Commitment Andalucía (ACD) which is a voluntary initiative promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Science (CEIC) of the regional government, which aims to bring the Information Technology and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to all Andalusian society. SL Family Homes For Older Seniors and makes available to its residents with a service portfolio is constantly updated in order to achieve greater levels of access to Information Society, with increasingly advanced use of ICT and safer environments .
Through Digital escort service, which is the term that defines how the volunteers of Andalusia Digital Commitment offer their knowledge to approach the Information Technology and Communication Network shares with residents volunteering their knowledge in the management of new technologies by teaching the operation of devices ranging from something as basic as a command of a TV or mobile phone, to more specific as a digital camera or a computer and computer literacy programs and programs cognitive stimulation or physical activity through the Wii.
Are established groups of 5 or 6 residents with a maximum frequency of twice per week and one hour per session. The groups are established in coordination with technical staff of each Center adapting their cognitive and physical potential to the level of activity.
These training activities were complemented by the ICT Advisory Service, which offers ACD Andalusian companies and citizens in general, andawareness campaigns, information sessions on a variety of short topics related to the use of new technologies, those are the days 'Educate toProtect', specifically on the safe and responsible use of them.


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Photoblog of my encounter with the Walang Hanggan Cast! 🙂
Well, my mom and I have been a big fan of Walang Hanggan since it started and we never missed a night of it! At the same time, my mom and I have this huge crush on Coco Martin that we just couldn't miss this one! 😉
They actually sold this booklet with faces of Coco Martin for autograph signing and just when I expected to only see Coco Martin up close,fortunately, I got to see all of them and say hi to them 😀
|Pogi mo, Daniel!! 😀
Julia Montes is just the sweetest and I was able to make beso! 🙂 When I was all feeling shy and starstruck, she really turned to me and said hi 🙂
|Kiss from Julia Montes 😀
|Joem Bascon said "Hi" to me too 😛
Anyway, the photo below is my most favourite. It never fails to make me laugh everytime I see it! Because it actually looks like I'm BFFs with Julia Montes and Coco Martin! HAHA. Bonding time? 😛
|Photo by Mr. Eugene Santos
|Photo by Mr. Eugene Santos
[X] Meet and greet my ultimate crush, Coco Martin – Off my bucketlist! ❤


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City Council
Regular Business Meetings:
- 7:00 pm
- January to October: 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month
- November & December: 2nd Thursday
Work Session Meetings:
- 6:00 pm
- 2nd Thursday of the month
Agenda Packets
Includes audio/video recordings
Archived Audio Recordings (1994-2016)
Recordings are available on the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives website:
1994 - 2016 Archived Audio Recordings
City Governance
The City of Lake Forest Park was incorporated in 1961 and operates as a non-charter code city with a Mayor-Council form of government. The Mayor and seven City Councilmembers are part-time, non-partisan elected officials who serve four-year terms. Municipal elections are held in November of odd-numbered years and terms are staggered so that no more than four positions are up for election every two years. All Councilmembers are elected "at-large," meaning they serve the City as a whole, as opposed to a specific district.
The City Council is the legislative body of the City. It enacts laws and regulations, establishes policy direction for the City, establishes tax and fee rates, adopts an annual budget, grants franchises, approves contracts for services, and payment of all City moneys.
Council Actions
Restricting the Use and Sale of Single-Use Plastics
Declaring Lake Forest Park a Welcoming, Inclusive, and Safe Community
Email all the councilmembers in the same email.
Municipal Code
The City of Lake Forest Park is governed under a Municipal Code.


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2018 International Conference on e-Commerce, e-Administration, e-Society, e-Education, and e-Technology (e-CASE & e-Tech 2018)
April 1-3, 2018, Osaka, Japan
We cordially invite you and your colleagues to participate and submit papers to 2018 International Conference on e-Commerce, e-Administration, e-Society, e-Education, and e-Technology (e-CASE & e-Tech 2018) which will be held in Osaka, Japan, April 1-3, 2018. We welcome submissions from all over the world and we encourage you to join us in Osaka, Japan to share your research and knowledge. To submit abstracts/papers for presentation or participate as an audience member, please visit the conference website for more details. All submissions will be subject to a double-blind review process. All accepted manuscripts will be published in the conference proceedings, under an ISSN reference, on CD-ROM support.
The objectives of the conference are:
1. Provide a platform for the researchers to seek further opinions, comments, and suggestions.
2. Contribute knowledge in the fields of e-Commerce, e-Administration, e-Society, e-Education, and e-Technology.
3. Provide wider opportunities for participants to interact and create networking.
4. Deliver your research findings to global audiences.
5. Participate in a truly international, interdisciplinary and intercultural event.
Osaka is known throughout Japan as an international and progressive business center and is the mover and the shaker of the Kansai region. The cherry blossoms (sakura) usually bloom in the last week of March and the first two weeks of April in Kyoto (roughly between 20 March and 14 April). In an average year, the blooms peak on April 1 in Osaka. Once they bloom, they are notoriously fickle: sometimes almost all the trees will come into full bloom (mankai) at the same time and stay in full bloom for a week or even longer. We believe that you will enjoy your stay in Kyoto. If you need any assistance, please feel free to contact us.
Conference Website: http://tw-knowledge.org/ecase
Online Submission: http://my-ecase.org/ecase
Enquiries: firstname.lastname@example.com
Submission Deadline: November 30, 2017
Conference Chairs
Wachara Chantatub, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Norbert Jesse, TU Dortmund University, Germany
Yixuan Wang, Nagoya University, Japan


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Of hypocrisy, that is. The Orthodox rabbinate in Israel was in a pickle. A bind. Facing a conundrum. They had vigorously and vociferously supported Donald Trump's presidential candidacy. When Trump was elected one prominent Israeli rabbi publicly said it was a sign that the Messiah was about to arrive. But there was a problem, and it had to be resolved fairly quickly. Trump's daughter Ivanka was a convert to Judaism, but Israel's Orthodox rabbis had previously stated that her conversion was not valid. What to do? How could they not accept the Jewish status of the daughter of the man they so desperately wanted to be president?
It seems it wasn't so complicated after all. The very rabbis who deemed the conversion not halachic (not properly performed according to Jewish law) were now willing to 'reexamine' the issue. Just last week Israel's chief rabbis released a statement in which they said a check list for proper conversion procedure would be put together, and once a rabbi was determined to follow that list all of his conversions would be considered valid. Interestingly the statement mentioned Ivanka Trump by name, adding that in a case like hers there would not be a need for investigation – her conversion would be valid, end of story.
What a relief! Just in the nick of time Israel's Orthodox rabbinate remembered that in fact Jewish law can be flexible. It is a good thing, because it sure would have been embarrassing (awkward! in today's vernacular) if those Orthodox rabbis had so warmly embraced Donald Trump while at the very same time so coldly rejecting his daughter. What would the Messiah have thought of that? We should be able to ask him soon. Now that Trump is going to be president, he should be here any day.


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PSY 285 Entire Course (UOP)
For more course tutorials visit
PSY 285 Week 1 Assignment: Experimental Research
PSY 285 Week 1 CheckPoint: Causation and Correlation
PSY 285 Week 2 CheckPoint: Locus of Control
PSY 285 Week 3 CheckPoint: Confirmation Bias
PSY 285 Week 3 Assignment: Attitudes and Behaviors
PSY 285 Week 4 CheckPoint: Obedience
PSY 285 Week 5 Assignment: Persuasion, Indoctrination, and Inoculation
PSY 285 Week 5 CheckPoint: Presence of Others
PSY 285 Week 6 CheckPoint: Symptoms and Remedies of Groupthink
PSY 285 Week 7 CheckPoint: Prejudice
PSY 285 Week 7 Assignment: Aggression
PSY 285 Week 8 CheckPoint: Conflict
PSY 285 Capstone CheckPoint
PSY 285 Final Project: Self-Analysis
PSY 285 Final Project: Self-Analysis (UOP)
For more course tutorials visit
Resources: Appendix A
Create a 1,750- to 2,100-word self-analysis of your attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in a social context.
Describe in detail the way you think and act with respect to the topics of this course.
Include appropriate examples to illustrate your understanding of the concepts presented in the course.
PSY 285 Week 1 Assignment: Experimental Research (UOP)
For more course tutorials visit
Describe one of the following experiments, which study human subjects, in 450 to 750 words:
A pharmaceutical company wants to test a new sleep aid.
An educational company is interested in determining whether their new math curriculum will raise standardized test scores….
PSY 285 Entire Course (UOP)


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Find out how to book The Brooklyn Tabernacle Singers by filling out this Booking Request Form (BRF)
Tuesday Noon Hour of Prayer: This is a focused time of personal prayer. All are welcome. Begins at 12 noon and ends at around 1PM.
Tuesday Night Prayer Meeting: Deacons, Pastors and Prayer Band members are available to pray with you before the prayer meeting. Doors open at 5PM. Meeting begins at 7PM.


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Mall changes
Maurice's closing, but officials hopeful for future
A women's clothing chain in the Tiffin Mall has announced plans to close later this month.
According to a spokeswoman for Maurices, 870 W. Market St., Ste. 30, the store's last day is to be Sept. 23.
Seneca Industrial and Economic Development Corp. President and CEO David Zak said the mall still has a real estate agency, a dance studio, a church, a Mexican restaurant and a tattoo shop. He also said other businesses are part of the complex, including Jimmy John's, AT&T and Cinemark.
Tiffin Mayor Aaron Montz said the closing of Maurices is a done deal, but he said city administration and SIEDC personnel are working with mall owners to plan future development of the site.
Last September, SIEDC announced Key Hotel and Property Management, a Toledo-based real estate development and management company, was to purchase the mall for $2.2 million from Tiffin Mall Realty.
SIEDC Development Coordinator Bryce Riggs said SIEDC typically has weekly contact with KHPM to help set the stage for future development.
Montz said mall ownership is negotiating with several companies, some involving retail, to locate in the mall.
"We definitely are working on bigger and better options," he said. "Some will occur yet this year. Some will not occur until next year."
Montz said it is important to gain the trust of businesses, so when they want to keep negotiations confidential, all parties abide.
"They don't want the information to leak out. … It could make those negotiations fall apart," he said. "Whenever we are working with any kind of business, if they ask us to keep things confidential, we do that up until the point that they allow us to make an announcement."
Zak stressed the importance of professionalism and confidentiality when working with developers.
"The economic development business, the game, the way it works … developers and businesses are willing to talk to us because we keep everything confidential," he said. "We work with them to announce it when they want and the way they want to.
"They may end up deciding not to come into the community. If they end up deciding not to, they don't want a bad reputation in the community. When Chipotle came, it wasn't the first time they looked at Tiffin."
Montz and Zak said if information leaks about negotiations, it could kill a deal and could hurt the community's relationship with other developers and businesses.
Montz said he understands why residents may become impatient, but he said announcements of new businesses coming will be made as soon as possible.
"Trust me when I say it. We absolutely love when we get to make an announcement of something new coming to Tiffin or of an existing business expanding," he said. "We never hold back from something just because we want to be the only ones that know. It serves no good purpose for us to do that."
Zak said another factor which could make people impatient is that economic development deals typically take six months to three years.
"I've seen stuff shorter than that and longer, but those were exceptions," he said. "Six months is lightning fast."
Zak said there are many positive factors working toward the improvement of the mall site.
"(KHPM) didn't purchase the mall for $2.2 million not to generate revenue," he said. "As you know, they're working actively to recruit tenants. Development doesn't happen overnight."
Montz said he believes one to three new businesses could be announced by the end of the month, but he said they can't be announced until contracts are signed and decisions are confirmed.
Although development is likely at the mall site, Zak said it may come in a different form than that of a traditional enclosed mall.
"There have not been any new enclosed mall built, to my knowledge, in North America in at least 10, maybe 15 years," he said. "The enclosed mall is not how people want to shop. But, I would say malls are being redeveloped in different ways all around the country."
Montz agreed.
"Malls across this country are dying," he said. "New construction on indoor malls have come to, almost, a complete standstill in the United States. If we think we are going to bring the mall back as the mall once was … that is not going to happen."
Montz still believes the future is bright for the property.
"What is going to happen … the site is going to go through stages and be fully redeveloped as a great place and a vibrant place for Tiffin. We have to have some patience.
"These things come in phases, they don't happen overnight."
Montz said he has complete confidence in the future of the site.
Zak said he also thinks the overall economic development momentum citywide could help the property.
"The first week I came to town (in 2014), the announcement of Gordon Lumber closing and Staples leaving was made," he said. "Look where we've come since then. There is change, there will be growth and there will be businesses that close. We like to look at, overall, where things are going.
"It's exciting to know the developers who own the mall have done successful development elsewhere. They are motivated and working on it."


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Songkran Activities: Visiting Temples
If you want to get involved in the traditional side of Songkran, visiting a temple is a great way to experience Thai culture and religion. Here we run down what you can expect when visiting a Thai temple as well as temple etiquette.
Which Temples to Visit
If you're in the heart of Songkran, Chiang Mai, then some great temples to visit include:
- Wat Chiang Man: Found in the north-east corner of the old walled city, this was the first temple built in Chiang Mai and houses two rare Buddhist statues: the Crystal Buddha and the Marble Buddha.
- Wat Suan Dok: found 1km west of the old walled city, this temple has a huge 500-year old Bronze Buddha, one of the largest in Thailand. The surrounding gardens are beautiful, originally being a royal flower garden.
- Wat Bupparam: Situated 500 metres east of Tha Phae Gate, this temple houses beautiful statues including a wood, gold leaf and green gemstone Buddha images.
Temple Ambiance
When visiting a temple for the first time, don't expect the Hollywood version of Buddhism in a Thai temple (a la the start of Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls) or you may be disappointed. Monks are remarkably friendly and many may practice their English skills with you or even offer to exchange email addresses.
Don't be too taken aback, enjoy interacting with them and be friendly while also respectful. The rules for monkhood are slightly relaxed in Thailand, so monks are allowed to eat and you may even see some smoking or using mobile phones. It's certainly a strange sight to see a fully robed monk waving incense around, then hear his phone go off, reach inside the folds and answer it!
Be sure to thank the monk before saying goodbye and give them a respectful prayer-like 'wai.'
A Traditional Songkran Temple Fair
Temple Etiquette
Typically, Thai temples include a courtyard with small worship areas scattered around. The sheltered areas containing Buddha statues are called Bots. When in the temple, follow these rules:
- Dress modestly. Even though you may have just come from water fights, remember that you wouldn't wear swim clothes to a church back home. So men and women should wear sleeved tops and your shorts should cover your knees (sorry girls).
- Take off your shoes, hats and sunnies before entering.
- Turn off your phone, take off your headphones and speak quietly.
- Step over the wooden threshold into the temple, not on top of it.
- When sitting in front of Bots, stand up when monks enter.
- Don't get in the way of locals who are there to worship.
- Back away from the Buddha images rather than turning your back.
- Don't touch the sacred objects.
- Do not point at a monk or a Buddha statue.
- Do not take photos of monks who are worshipping.
- Don't raise yourself higher than the Buddha statue (e.g. by sitting on the raised platform for a photo.
- When sitting in front of a Bot, have your legs tucked underneath you as the worshipers do.
Let's Go To the Temple
Visiting a temple in Thailand is a truly memorable experience. These temples can be found just about everywhere, many have elaborate designs, beautiful décor and come loaded with historical and cultural significance.
No Songkran adventure, or Thailand adventure could be considered complete without visiting a select few of these remarkable places of worship.


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Are you a Mac user? Then these tips are just for you to help you save time and be more efficient.
- Command-Space
- Finder control
- Gestures
- Text clippings
- Preferences
- Smart quotes
- Accents
- Print to PDF
- Search using Spotlight
- Copy/Paste
Read about all these tips in ComputerWorld's article, "10 magical productivity tips for Mac."


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Posts filed under 'Wallace Stevens'
Thirteen Way of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Hoon writes,
I can remember reading this in the lit books and thinking, "Eh?". I think when you're young you expect art, especially high art, to reveal something to you about life, instead of thinking of it as simply its own kind of artificial experience that occupies and hopefully improves the passage of time. So while "13 Ways…" deals with a serious subject, death let us say, the poem may not have a great deal to say to us other than: "Hey, this is a poem. Enjoy!"
Stevens seems to have posed himself the problem of whether a series of thoughts, impressions, he used the term sensations, sharing a common theme, but without clear logical continuity, could be somehow arranged to form an aesthetic whole, and enjoyed both as a whole but also as a disconnected, kaleidoscopic set. A verbal collage. What is needed to achieve then the barest sense of unity we might ask? While not saying much, and perhaps not to be agreed to by all, we will still assert that temporal art needs an opening, a progression of impressions or ideas, and a close. For a poem this can be achieved either semantically or phonetically, usually both. "13 Ways…" opens with a winter scene and closes with, let us say, the same scene. A certain degree of cohesion is thus achieved. In between the episodes expand and contract, and move through various moods, rhythms, and associations. The sections are brief, haiku-like, but perhaps self-consciously so, and not to be taken too seriously as such. ("A man and a woman are one. …")
The almost inevitable theme, given the large number of sections, is that death is everywhere, surrounding all we do (stanzas: 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13), in sex and love (stanzas: 4 & 7); and cannot be avoided (stanza 11); but possesses humor (stanzas: 2, 4, 5 – a blackbird whistling!), and like many of Stevens' own poems, a quiet, austere beauty (stanzas: 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 13). To fail to see the humor in "I was of three minds./like a tree /in which there are three blackbirds", and to search for some greater meaning there, well you might as well try to explain what semolina pilchards are. Many of the lines and sections end on unaccented syllables and this gives the work as a whole a generally unsettled feeling, which does resolve though quite effectively in the final verse. While a scansion of the poem is beyond the range of this discussion, such a metrical analysis would show such a wide variety of rhythmic patterns that the poem may be viewed as a study of metrical techniques. As such it deserves close reading, listening, study.
The work is anthologized a lot, so seems to achieve a satisfaction for a great number of readers, and has surely been imitated frequently, but I think that the failure of many of its imitators to achieve its level of popularity points towards the difficulty in finding an audience for this kind of loose associative structure (although I'm sure there are a lot who would disagree with that assertion).
A Postcard from the Volcano
Wallace Stevens
Listen (to Hoon read)
Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;
And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;
And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt
At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion-house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky
Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became
A part of what it is . . . Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,
Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,
A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.
Hoon adds,
Stevens' verse, as I found it in the various lit books I was brought up on, was always a puzzle to me. Nothing in it seemed to make sense. It all seemed lacking in purpose and, for lack of a better word, beauty. Much later in life, when I began to record poetry, my main motivation was a belief that hearing a poem recited, especially a difficult poem, makes it more comprehensible; since a certain amount on the meaning is encoded in the interpretation, in the prepared inflections of the reader. Thus it was natural that I should turn to a poet whose work I never felt I understood as a source for material to test this proposition. It was. then, a considerable and pleasant surprise to me that I should become so taken in with Stevens' work. But what surprised me even more than my being able to understand the stuff was the sense of lyrical delight that comes with reciting Stevens. The works are clearly conceived with much more than just a regard for semantics, but with a deep appreciation for the sound and rhythm of words. It was "A Postcard…", from IDEAS OF ORDER(1936), it's rhythm and phrasing, which first opened my ears to how carefully Stevens composes in this regard.
And so on to the semantics.
I hate to discuss the meaning of this poem since it seems so much better that the reader/listener should engage the poem repeatedly and have its meaning revealed, reconstituted, in such a slower, more personal and self-reliant way; and I encourage the reader to break off reading here to pursue such a course. But Stevens can be difficult, and not just for the novice reader.
Edward Hirsch in his book Poet's Choice(2006) gives a miserable interpretation of the poem under the chapter heading "Poetry Responds to Suffering". Responding to the "Volcano" mentioned in the title, and phrase "gutted world" near the end, he reads the poem as "a prophetic elegy for a civilization that will be destroyed". The sense is of a civilization in decline, but hardly destroyed.
The notion of a future generations handling, desecrating, our bones is not new. Hamlet's graveyard scene comes easily to mind. The ignorance with which these future children do so leads directly to, is subsumed by, the general naivete that they bring to past culture, the words of the past, "the look of things", their whole cultural inheritance. Indeed the central metaphor of the poem is the dilapidated mansion, which stands, quite simply, for this collective culture, but especially poetry. (Stevens' symbols can be frequently, and somewhat surprisingly, stiff and conventional).
Their miscomprehension of the past takes place in a physical world that is itself devoid of a sense of aesthetics, that "cries out a literate despair", eclipsing even the children's naivete. The children though are "still weaving budded aureoles", still growing halos of holiness and innocence. They walk past, presumably, the mansion on their way to school, and encounter it in their studies, where they may well "speak our speech and never know": will only dumbly come to terms with their inheritance, but will dimly sense in it a haunted, lingering, "storming", presence, the presence of the poet, the creative spirit of the past. This is the Volcano. The children's neglect is, of course, something that recurs with every generation. Similar to how Wallace himself, let us say, disdained the Romantics. This would be all quite depressing, especially to the restless dead; or the under-read, unappreciated poet of the present; were it not partially compensated-for by the ever rejuvenating presence of the sun which copiously "smears" the mansion, and the whole landscape, with the same spirit that originally informed the poet. (This triumphal compensation is the surprise that the poet has been setting-up all along).
So did Stevens foresee the destruction of civilization?
Certainly he saw the radio, and the telephone, and the movies that they
made, and these things, in their own ways, destroy or erode literary culture-
I think he foresaw that.
There will be more Stevens this week. And, Xu Zhimo.
The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm
Wallace Stevens
Listen (to Hoon read)
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
Hoon adds,
The poem is from Steven's TRANSPORT TO SUMMER (1947). He was 67
when it published.
For me it is remarkable how similar in mood this poem and music are. One thinks of Steven's affection for the tropics and his love of the guitar, which he himself played. I don't know if he played classical or not; or listened to Segovia who championed Ponce's work and made recordings as early as 1927, but it's nice to imagine that he had. The poem is in iambic pentameter, and though formatted as couplets makes more sense as verses of 4,5, 3, and 4 lines respectively. …The truth in a calm world,/ In which there is no other meaning, itself/ Is calm,
In this line it seems that Stevens, who was an atheist, is trying to demonstrate to the mind that requires a belief in a God-head, that the universe viewed from a non-believing point-of-view, is not necessarily chaotic; or at least has its own moments of meditation and quietude, that are as perhaps profound as those discovered by the believer. As in The Place of the Solitaire, and The Snow Man, the state of the mind is wonderfully reflected in the way the external world itself is presented to it. (Yes the guitarist is non-other than hoon).
(The music is of the Mexican composer Manuel M. Ponce (1882 – 1948), his Prelude No. 6 for guitar of 1930.)
The Place of the Solitaires
Wallace Stevens
Listen (to hoon read)
Let the place of the solitaires
Be a place of perpetual undulation.
Whether it be in mid-sea
On the dark, green water-wheel,
Or on the beaches,
There must be no cessation
Of motion, or of the noise of motion,
The renewal of noise
And manifold continuation;
And, most, of the motion of thought
And its restless iteration,
In the place of the solitaires,
Which is to be a place of perpetual undulation.
Hoon adds,
A Speculative Analysis
The poet goes to the seashore
and sees there a man playing solitaire with a deck of cards
on the beach, and is struck by the similarity between the man's game,
its ceaseless yet always varying repetition, and the action, motion, of
the sea itself. More though, the analogy is between the spirit behind
the game and the sea, that spirit being the mind.
And so he writes a poem about the nature of the human mind. It is a
series of mock edicts or decrees declaring that the mind is meant to be
as restless, even repetitious, as the sea, and that we are most
conscious of this mental restlessness when we are alone.
And so we are left to wonder: Is this entertainment? to the mind?
for it to see itself reflected in the vast mindless and unending
plungings of the sea?
Well, is it?
(The washing machine is, of course, yet another restless metaphor.)
Tea at the Palaz of Hoon
Wallace Stevens
Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.
What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?
Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
Hoon adds,
"One short poem for a man,
One giant leap for mankind."
is close to how I feel about this poem-
which, in the English language and its tradition and canon,
so greatly expands what a poem is and can be about.
Like stepping onto the moon?
better, perhaps, a nearby, undiscovered country;
a land that can be however strange as we can conceive it;
and the poet/reader, a solipsistic astronaut, moon-walker, sea-shore wanderer.
Solipsism is the theory that the self is the only thing that can be
known and verified, that the self is the only reality. The term is
often associated with Stevens.
Eliot had his wasteland, a broken decayed ruin of imagined past glories,
and Coleridge his Xanadu, and its haunted longings of the repressed self.
But Stevens sought, like the graphic abstractionists,
to put together whatever seemed to belong together,
knowing that that sense of belonging together grew out of the poet's mind
and therefore makes sense.
The model for Hoon with his anointed beard and his solipsism,
may well be Walt Whitman. For consider these lines from Song of Myself:
Divine I am inside and out;
and make holy whatever I touch or am touched from;
The scent of these armpits is aroma finer than prayer
This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.
I dote upon myself. There is that lot of me,
and all so luscious,
Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy.
— from: Song of Myself (first published: 1855).
(musical accompaniment courtesy of the Redford Gamelan Band)
The Snow Man
Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Hoon says,
I know it is turning spring-like in much of the country, but yesterday
Redford had snow.
But the real reason for posting Wallace Stevens' The Snow Man is that
it illustrates the use of music to accompany the recitation of poetry;
something I employ occasionally in my recordings. Adding existing music
to recitation often yields bad results when the two modes move against
each other, and cadences don't line up. But when appropriate musical
works, or fragments thereof, are discovered, or new music composed for
the occasion, and the modes are in synch, uncanny effects can result.
The music here is from Claude Debussy's Des Pas sur la Neige,
Footprints in the Snow, from his first book of preludes for piano.
I hope you enjoy it.
Wallace Stevens' The Snow Man is sometimes viewed as a depressing,
despairing work, but ought not be so.
Stevens believed that the mind was always interpreting reality,
projecting its own values into the world-at-large, as in religion,
romantic poetry, etc. Over time these interpretation fail to be
convincing to the mind and a new set of projections must be created.
This new way of looking at the world can only come about when the mind
tries to comprehend the world without illusions, which this poem tries
to do. A brisk, brusque, brittle, yet tranquil, sense of the world is
what then results.
Crossposted on Hoon's website, http://innerlea.com.
More commentary here.
The Man with the Blue Guitar
Wallace Stevens
Listen (Parts I to VI)
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."
I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.
I sing a hero'd head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,
Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.
If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,
Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.
Ah, but to play man number one,
To drive the dagger in his heart,
To lay his brain upon the board
And pick the acrid colors out,
To nail his thought across the door,
Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,
To strike his living hi and ho,
To tick it, tock it, turn it true,
To bang it from a savage blue,
Jangling the metal of the strings…
So that's life, then: things are they are?
It picks its way on the blue guitar.
A million people on one string?
And all their manner in the thing,
And all their manner, right and wrong,
And all their manner, weak and strong?
The feelings crazily, craftily call,
Like a buzzing of flies in autumn air,
And that's life, then: things as they are,
This buzzing of the blue guitar.
Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry,
Of the torches wisping in the underground,
Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light.
There are no shadows in our sun,
Day is desire and night is sleep.
There are no shadows anywhere.
The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows. Poetry
Exceeding music must take the place
Of empty heaven and its hymns,
Ourselves in poetry must take their place,
Even in the chattering of your guitar.
A tune beyond us as we are,
Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;
Ourselves in the tune as if in space,
Yet nothing changed, except the place
Of things as they are and only the place
As you play them, on the blue guitar,
Placed so, beyond the compass of change,
Perceived in a final atmosphere;
For a moment final, in the way
The thinking of art seems final when
The thinking of god is smoky dew.
The tune is space. The blue guitar
Becomes the place of things as they are,
A composing of senses of the guitar.
Read the whole poem here
There is, quite simply, no one like Wallace Stevens. He is the 'impossible possible' poet, a voice of such labyrinth like intellect, of such infinite talent, that at his best he risks making all other writing irrelevant. Michael Ondaatje once compared him to King Kong ('King Kong meets Wallace Stevens') – the comparison seems paradoxical and yet is strangely apt, because Stevens is to brain what Kong is to brawn – a beast so ferocious, so beyond all ordinary perspective, that we scarcely know where to begin to apprehend him. To read Stevens is to experience the same sense of awe one gets from a Bach fugue.
That sense of Baroque variation is particularly strong in Man with a Blue Guitar, which remains one of my favourite poems of all time, and the inspiration for the picture in my blogger profile. The connection to Picasso is apt as well, because Stevens' method (both here and elsewhere) could easily be thought of as cubist – the juxtaposition of a multiplicity of planes and perspectives, to create a holistic image that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Read the full poem. Listen to its rhythm, relish its images, marvel at its overall perfection. And then try not to find everything else you read disappointing.


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Welcome to Region 20 of the National Labor Relations Board. We conduct elections and investigate charges of unfair labor practices by employers or labor unions, serving parts of California and the state of Hawaii from offices in San Francisco and Honolulu. If you have questions, or wish to file a charge or petition for election, please visit one of our offices or call and ask for the Information Officer on duty. We can arrange to have someone speak with you in the language of your choice. We are also happy to provide speakers and materials to promote a greater understanding of the National Labor Relations Act.
San Francisco, CA - On February 28, 2018, Administrative Law Judge Sharon Steckler (the ALJ) issued her decision in Queen of the Valley Medical Center, 20-CA-191739, et al. finding that that Queen of the Valley Medical Center (the Employer) violated Section 8(a)(5) of the Act by unlawfully withdrawing recognition from the National Union of Healthcare Workers (the Union) and refusing to bargain with the Union with regard to the bargaining unit, the non-professional and technical workers employed at the Employer's Napa facilities. The ALJ also found that the Employer unlawfully threatened employees, denied them union representation during an investigatory interview, refused to provide information to the Union, and made unilateral changes to the employees' working conditions. In addition to the traditional remedy of requiring the Employer to bargain with the Union, the ALJ also recommended enhanced remedies including an extension of the certification year per Mar-Jac Poultry, 136 NLRB 785 (1962).


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For some, the advantage was starting with a low-expense franchise and hitting the ball out of the park. Franchise agreement is a legal document that tells every little thing about your enterprise to your franchiser and makes it clear that what top quality of solutions you are looking for and how they should keep it. There are some standard points that you need to take care whilst designing a franchise agreement. It is important to comprehend that relying on one monetary figure supplies an incomplete image of a franchise opportunity.
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List one advertisement across Australia in all regions OR list ten individual targeted sale opportunities. Cost-free franchise agreement sample can help you and give you suggestions but taking support of an expert franchise consultant is constantly recommended. And, on a much more good note, keeping on good terms with the franchisor can lead to much more opportunities.
Even if you weren't familiar with the franchise business model just before reading this, you've virtually definitely had dealings with some franchises currently in your day-to-day life. If you do uncover a franchise for sale, you will either have to be able to spend cash for the franchise or have it financed by means of a private lender or the Modest Enterprise Administration.
So you must take this step very meticulously and make a ideal franchise agreement with no loose holes. So when you open your franchise in some other component of the city, you get access to new marketplace. Numerous of the steps in the How to Start a Enterprise tutorial, for instance, also apply to franchises. As a franchise owner, your equity will grow as your business grows and becomes more lucrative.…


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The various points concerning the use of steroids and their legality as well as harmful effects
Steroids are substances the use of which is highly debatable and there is no clarity on the legality of it. Maximum numbers of steroids are banned substances and can be availed with the help of subscription. The best way to increase the hormonal activity in the body and testosterone is that you can always opt for Dwayne Johnson's new supplements from Fox news that are available in the market and function similar to steroids and are quite legal and do not let you get involved in doping.
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The harmful effects
Steroids are quite tricky and should always be used with the help of medical expert. The abuse of alternative steroids or use of banned substances can lead to following harmful effects-
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Jason Tarn
Jason Tarn is the Lead English Pastor of Houston Chinese Church (HCC), a multi-lingual immigrant church established in 1975 that stands as a pillar of the truth in the most ethnically diverse city in America. A native Houstonian, Jason was introduced to Jesus through the youth ministry of HCC. After receiving his bachelors from UT Austin, he returned to HCC to served their youth until moving to Vancouver, BC to complete an M.Div. at Regent College. Since 2008, Jason has been pastoring and preaching the gospel. In 2011, he returned once again to HCC to serve their English-speaking congregation. His passion is to bring healthy reform to the immigrant church that is rooted in sound doctrine and a missional vision. He is a husband to Theresa and father to their seven year old daughter .


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The Three Queens Are Coming!
After months of anticipation, we can't wait to see the arrival of the Three Queens this weekend!
The Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria and Queen May 2 will all be sailing into the city across the weekend to celebrate the 175th anniversary of Cunard.
On Monday, we will see a synchronised manoeuvre with all three boats on the River Mersey, along with the red arrows.
We can't wait!
Love from The Liverpool Gift Company.


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PRECIOSA ORNELA - News
Helena Chmelíková
Helena Chmelíková
She was clearly born with a certain amount of creative and manual skill. She then perfected the skill and talent, with which she had surprised those around her from any early age, when studying at the Glass Applied Arts Secondary School in Železný Brod, whereupon she was fully absorbed by the atmosphere of glass beauty.
Attracted by working with glass costume jewellery, she enthusiastically began to devote herself to this fi eld professionally after successfully completing her studies. She has acquired invaluable experience when conceiving simple and easy to produce costume jewellery collections. She always uses her own ideas and fun-fi lled solutions when creating exclusive costume jewellery to supplement fashion clothing by signifi cant fashion designers such as Josef Taptuch, Beata Rajská and Tatiana Kovaríková.
She is able to switch from luxurious and extravagant fashion show pieces to the preparation of hobby projects and the stylisation of new fashion trends at Preciosa Ornela, a.s. At present, her creations made from the beads and seed beads in the PRECIOSA Traditional Czech Beads brand are taking over the world via prestigious hobby magazines, such as Bead&Buton, Bead Style, Making Jewellery or Perlen Poesie.


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Corporate clients: (partial list)
- American Express
- Baker McKenzie
- Citigroup
- Hewlett Packard
- Iona College
- Lufthansa
- Juniper Networks
- Merck
- Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, NY
- Time Warner
- Bovis Lend Lease
- HCP Inc.
- Cymetrix
- Baxter
- National Australia Bank
- Varian
- Logitech
- Yahoo
- McAfee
- ebay (PayPal)
C Level coaching: (partial list)
- President, American Express Global Cards Division, CTO, CFO, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Risk Officer et al of American Express,
- President of Amex Japan (formerly head of the Bank of Tokyo)
- Comptroller, Hewlett Packard (became Chief Administration Officer with global responsibility)
- Successive senior partners and heads of Global Operations, Goldman Sachs
- Head of Finance, HR and Technology at Goldman Sachs (became co CEO, then Head of the NY stock exchange, then CEO of major Wall Street investment banking firm)
- Chairman & CEO of Cymetrix (recently acquired by Navigant in 2014)
- Chairman & CEO of HPC (largest healthcare REIT in the USA)
- CFO & Chief investment Officer of HPC
- Head of HR for Merck Pharmaceuticals
- Chief General Counsel, Time Warner (reported to the Chairman & CEO)
- Chief lawyer for Mergers & Acquisitions at McAfee
- General Counsel for Varian Medical
- Co-heads of Global Energy division of Citigroup
Entertainment: I'd like to highlight the coaching I did with the General Counsel of the world's largest media and entrainment company. Despite his exalted position (he reported to the Chairman and had oversight on all major legal issues mergers and acquisitions and governmental matters) he had never had a coach. I was able to give him some highly effective coaching to make him a more effective leader. He subsequently had me coach all his senior lawyers and then conduct a program for the whole legal department.
Financial Services/Banking: I coached the CFO of the global credit card issuance division of a financial services company. The CFO then asked me to coach several of his direct reports and subsequently conduct a year long coaching program for him and his team. I used a proprietary tool that measures team performance along twenty criteria and that gauges team progress over time. It was clear that by the end of of the twelve month period the team had improved markedly.
Internet: The head of Quality for a young, global internet based payment system firm asked me to coach him after he was reprimanded by a senior executive for communicating inappropriately in 'public' forums. This client not only had direct reports in Australia and Silicon Valley he also had a team based in Shanghai. Consequently he spent a lot of time either abroad or communicating virtually. He was a bit of a rebel and would be very honest and direct, even blunt about his opinions. This caused some to be upset with him. I helped him realize how he could be more responsive and less reactive. This gave him more gravitas and, within the context of the corporate environment, more respect from others. He is on his way to being given a greater responsibility as a result of his changed behavior.
Non-profit: I was asked by a world famous museum in New York City to help 'sort out' the disgruntlement and dysfunction within the Finance department of this museum. This involved interviewing everyone in the department to discover the flash points and form a diagnosis. The diagnosis included coaching some senior individuals and, in one case, respectfully suggesting to the CFO's second in command that it was time to go. He was a big issue and yet no one had been willing to tell him the truth and, with compassion and respect, ask him to stand down. He appreciated my input and the department began to sort itself out as a result of my intervention.
Pharmaceuticals: A global pharmaceutical company asked me to coach the regional Vice President of sales for Latin America. The coaching of this client was so successful that I began to coach his team (all country heads) as well as him. It was almost as if I was an additional team member who stayed close to them as their coach. This coaching relationship lasted for two to three years and was very rewarding. I am still in touch with the client years later.
Real Estate: The Chairman and CEO of a pan-USA medical REIT asked me for help in resolving a conflict between his CFO and Chief Investment Officer. I coached both of these two individuals to the point where they were able to collaborate well together. Along the way I was also able to coach the CEO who was also needing my advice as he was partially responsible for the problems that existed between his two direct reports.
Legal: The General Counsel of a multi-billion dollar global firm asked me to help him to reconstitute his legal department. I conducted interviews and coached various individuals that reported to the GC and then I coached the GC himself, as it turned out he needed leadership advice and counsel. His main concern was that some of his lawyers would resist his ideas for restructuring the department. I was able to get his team to buy in to the new ideas by involving them in the process of designing the restructure.
Technology: The technology head of a medical systems company was an Eastern European who came across as either incomprehensible or dictatorial by the manner of his communication. This very bright man was also dealing with a new team that included a company in Canada that had recently been bought by the client's company. So he faced a new team with elements hostile to the people and policies of HQ in Silicon Valley. I helped the client build relationships with all the Canadian elements to the point where I created the agenda for two in-person gatherings of the team, first in Colorado then New Orleans. I coached the client about the best way to conduct himself and how best to integrate all the disparate elements within his new team. As a result a cohesion and level of collaboration was achieved that was way beyond what had existed when he first took the reins.