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Website UPS
Job Description:
The PT On Road Supervisor is responsible for supervising the daily performance of service providers to ensure quality service, improve performance, and maintain compliance with environmental, health and safety requirements. He/She encourages sales lead participation through maintaining mutually beneficial customer relationships. The PT On Road Supervisor supervises others within the department.
The PT On Road Supervisor works with service providers to maximize day to day proficiency and ensure packages are delivered in a safe, timely, and professional manner. He/She participates in the development and implementation of work process plans to maximize center proficiency and achieve business results. This position reviews and analyzes work processes and work schedule information (e.g., exception reports, volume delivered/hour, miles driven, car set up, hours worked, accidents, etc.) to identify opportunities to reduce costs and improve performance.
Employees will work Monday through Saturday, 2-5 day workweek. Part-time management employees are generally expected to work 5 1/2 hours per day and are paid weekly. Medical, dental, and vision benefits are offered to employees and their eligible dependents based on the number of hours worked. Additional benefits include educational assistance, 401K, discounted stock, and paid vacations/holidays.
Job Responsibilities:
- Completes administrative tasks (i.e., performance reviews, accident reports, service failures, training) in a timely, accurate manner to facilitate the execution of the dispatch plan through the Service Providers.
- Uses the Balanced Scorecard and Quality Improvement Process to monitor workgroup performance against business goals.
- Completes required audits during on-job supervision rides to ensure adherence to UPS policies and procedures.
- Utilizes technology (Orion, PAS, Telematics, etc.) to identify opportunities for performance improvement and risk mitigation.
- Communicates with customers to respond to service concerns, build relationships, and determine solutions that meet business goals.
- Uncovers business opportunities to forward this information to the proper department (i.e., dispatch supervisor, center management, and business development) for follow up.
- Encourages service providers to identify and forward volume development opportunities to management.
- Creates a customer focused work environment to emphasize service and focus on building the business.
- Communicates customers' business needs to employees to provide an understanding of job responsibilities and how actions impact customers.
Job Requirements:
- Assesses Business Needs: Demonstrates a general understanding of ways to identify and measure the current needs of the customer or business; uses the business need to help define the project's requirements.
- Health and Safety Knowledge: Demonstrates basic knowledge of injury and crash prevention techniques; demonstrates a basic understanding of job methods; identifies root causes of injuries and auto crashes; recognizes and reports unsafe working conditions.
Qualification & Experience:
- Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance Knowledge: Demonstrates a basic understanding of the functions, regulations, and procedures of compliance agencies or governing bodies; takes a leadership position in programs that reduce risk and enhance safety.
- Small Package Operations Knowledge: Demonstrates and explains proper processes, procedures and methods for small package operations; demonstrates a basic knowledge of common tools, equipment, and technology used within the operation.
Job Details:
Company: UPS
Vacancy Type: Full Time
Job Location: Shrewsbury, MA, US
Application Deadline: N/A


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As of this moment, there are five NFL teams, including the Bucs, looking for head coaches. And just to be clear: In the grand scheme of things, you would have to consider all five openings as "good" jobs. After all, there are only 32 NFL head coaches in the world. But some positions are better than others. Today, we rank the five openings from best to worst:
1. St. Louis Rams
The Rams have gone 15-65 over the past five seasons, including 2-14 this season. So at first glance, this seems like a dead-end job. But this might be the best available job for three reasons. They have a franchise (although possibly fragile) quarterback in Sam Bradford, left. They have the No. 2 pick in the draft. And they have a projected $45 million in cap space for 2013 (more than any other team), meaning they can overhaul the roster in a short period of time. In addition, they could parlay the No. 2 pick into a slew of draft picks. Or, if they're not sold on Bradford, the Rams could spend the second pick on a quarterback (Robert Griffin III, let's say) and deal Bradford to a team that is sold on him. Either way, the Rams are holding an enviable hand of cards. Bottom line: The pick of the litter.
2. Miami Dolphins
The Dolphins went 6-3 in their last nine games, including a one-point loss at Dallas and a three-point loss at New England. They finished 15th in the NFL in total defense and 11th in rushing offense, so this is not a horrible team. The talent is there. Unfortunately, that talent does not include quarterback. It seems as if the Dolphins are still trying to replace Dan Marino, above, who retired after the 1999 season. True, franchise quarterbacks are hard to come by, but if the Dolphins can find an upgrade (maybe Matt Flynn or Kyle Orton), this team has a chance to be good right away.
Bottom line: Any unemployed coach (and even a few employed ones) would love this job.
3. Kansas City Chiefs
Injuries are a part of football, but the Chiefs lost two key players in the first two games of the season in Pro Bowl safety Eric Berry and All-Pro running back Jamaal Charles. They also had to do without quarterback Matt Cassel, above, for the second half of the season. By that point, the Chiefs were 4-5 and had to turn to a woefully ineffective Tyler Palko. If you're convinced that Cassel, who is 28-26 as an NFL starter, can play, then this is a decent opening. The Chiefs are committed financially to Cassel, so if you're not a fan, that's a problem. The owners (the Hunt family) and GM Scott Pioli are well-respected. Then again, we're still waiting for Pioli to have major success without Bill Belichick by his side.
Bottom line: Not bad, but not great either.
4. Tampa Bay Bucs
The attractiveness of this job depends on two things: Do you believe Josh Freeman is a franchise quarterback? And do you believe the Glazers when they say they're going to spend money? Freeman still has plenty of believers among NFL analyst types, which is good because the Bucs are not going to start from scratch with another QB. The new coach is going to be married to Freeman for the foreseeable future. There are some other parts in place (a potentially good defensive line, for instance), but the roster has more questions than answers. Hey, if the franchise was in good shape, there wouldn't be an opening. Ultimately, it comes down to whether you trust the Glazers and GM Mark Dominik to give you the support you need by doing their jobs well.
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Explore all your optionsBottom line: Hard to have faith in the Glazers and Dominik based on recent history.
5. Jacksonville Jaguars
This is a job for a beggar, not a chooser. What makes this job so unappealing is that the Jaguars have nothing at quarterback. Seriously, have you seen Blaine Gabbert? The defense isn't too shabby (sixth in total defense in 2011), but there are holes all over the roster, especially on offense. There is one thing that makes this job intriguing: New owner Shahid Khan seems enthusiastic and might be willing to spend gobs of money just to make a splash. But fan support is not great and, overall, this seems like an opening that only someone desperate for an NFL head coaching job would truly desire.
Bottom line: Only for really young up-and-comers or really old down-and-outers.
tom jones' two cents
tom jones' two cents

subset: commoncrawl


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Acer is looking to be part of what the company hopes will be a hot new market – the mini laptop.
The company Tuesday showed off its new Aspire one, a small form-factor, ultra-portable computer at the Computex trade show in Taiwan. The Aspire one is designed to use Intel's new Atom N270 chip, also unveiled Tuesday at Computex.
Acer's new computer, which comes with 512MB or 1GB of RAM memory, runs either the Linpus Linux Lite operating system or Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP Home software. It also comes with built-in 802.11b/g WiFi.
"The fact that HP and Dell, the big names in the market, are interested really shows the potential of the market," said Jean Zhu, a spokeswoman for Acer. "We definitely expect the market to double this year."
Acer isn't alone in betting on the market for new ultra-portable computers – also known as the netbooks. Intel is giving its potential growth a lot of weight.
"We see a lot of demand for more affordable products," Chris Tulley, a spokesman for Intel, said earlier this week. Noting that the majority of households in emerging markets have no PCs, and that the majority of households in mature markets have one PC, "We see an opportunity to have more devices per household and potentially one device per person," he said.
Tulley added that the company expects netbook and nettop sales to outpace growth of traditional laptops and desktops.
A netbook or ultra-portable laptop is a relatively inexpensive, small form-factor laptop designed for basic applications like Web surfing, e-mail and writing. A nettop is similar, except it's in a desktop package. Both are designed to use less power than their traditional counterparts but aren't powerful enough for serious power users or gamers.
Acer's Aspire one laptop measures 9.8 x 6.7 x 1.4 inches. The screen is 8.9 inches measured diagonally and the keyboard comes in at 89% of the full length of the computer. "We wanted to make sure our keyboard is comfortable enough for people to type," said Zhu. "We were very conscious that it's a good user experience."
Intel's Tulley said "many" companies like Acer are in the process of developing ultra-portable devices based on the new Atom chips. Sean Maloney, an Intel executive vice president, showed off both nettops and netbooks based on the new chips at Computex on Tuesday.


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Public invited to Illinois Prairie Path Archives open house Aug. 11 at North Central College
Jul 18, 2014
The public is invited to meet volunteers who helped build the Illinois Prairie Path and view materials from the organization's archives during an open house Aug. 11 at North Central College.
The Illinois Prairie Path Archives Open House takes place from 1 to 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 11, in the lower level of North Central College's Oesterle Library, 320 E. School St., Naperville.
The College in early February accepted delivery of the Prairie Path archives, which previously had been stored in Wheaton. Materials in the collection now available for public viewing include photographs, illustrations and other items that chronicle the 50-year history of the path that inspired the rails-to-trails movement in the United States.
The 62-mile trail stretches across Cook, DuPage and Kane counties and is a former right-of-way for the defunct Chicago Aurora & Elgin electric railway.
At the Aug. 11 open house visitors can view a restored, narrated film strip that the founders presented to build support for the project. The film recruited community members into active volunteers, including some who have volunteered for the Prairie Path since the 1960s. Guests may also meet and hear presentations by several legacy volunteers who helped build the path.
Scheduled presentations include:
· 1 p.m. "The Red Caboose Trail," Dick and Nancy Wilson will highlight decades of innovative volunteer projects by Boy Scouts.
· 2 p.m. "Promoting the Vision for a Public Path," Experience the premiere showing of the restored persuasive 1964 film that was exhibited more than 400 times.
· 3 p.m. "Wheaton Friends of the Prairie Path," George Johnson and Don Westlake will tell a citizen action story about the path's first mile.
· 4 p.m. "The Founders: People of Vision, Courage and Determination," Carol Doty will describe how fellow volunteers and mentors provided inspiration.
· 5 p.m. "Prairies of the Path," Keith Olson and Larry Sheaffer will talk about prairie sites, prairie burns and Monarch butterflies.
· 6 p.m. "Let's Build the Bridge," participants who helped build the Volunteer Bridge in 1983 will share their stories.
Visit the Illinois Prairie Path's website at ipp.org for updates about the open house.
The Illinois Prairie Path Archives are part of the Suburban Studies Archives at North Central College. The Illinois Prairie Path's 14 founders included the late Warren Keck of Naperville, who taught biology at North Central College from 1947 to 1969 and the late May Theilgaard Watts of Naperville, a naturalist who spearheaded efforts to create the trail.


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AnnaBellas-Mom says: "When we first got Annabella, we thought she was a boy. Her name was Harrison at the time and she loved this blue binkie. Now I wish it was pink... girls rock!"
Well even after a little bit of gender confusion, Annabella seems to be a super happy, super squee parrot!
-Sally Squeeps
Do you have a squee pet that you want to share with the world? Send us your pet pictures and stories, and they could end up on Daily Squee!


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Is chestnut a part of your childhood memory?
For me, definitely. When I was a kid, there was no chocolate or cookies at home, we mostly snacked on nuts, bananas or sweet potatoes. In the late summer or fall when chestnuts were readily available, my mom would cooked them in simmering water.
Roasted chestnuts were for those people owned a fireplace or oven, most of us back then had neither one :)
But the street vendors created one "roaster" - a giant barrel or wok (5' or 160cm- wide) was filled with steel beans. After it's heated up, the vendor added in chestnuts, then kept stirring (or shovelling) the whole content with a shovel. The result was, every single chestnut would be evenly "roasted". I call it the art of labor.
After I moved out of Hongkong, I didn't come across any impressive scene about chestnuts until this year...
Two weeks ago in our neighborhood area there were a few fiestas related to chestnuts. Last week I saw a little girl dress up as a chestnut cook at a Halloween party.
To keep this chestnut sentiment going, I specially made some chestnut-based cream, the chocolate in here only helps to solidify without interfere the flavor. But since the chestnuts hold some moisture so the cookies are preferably harder.
Recipe of chestnut & white chocolate cream
(enough to fill 20 sets of cookies)
- 65g chestnut puree (I used about 10 nos of fresh chestnuts to make)
- 30g white chocolate, finely chopped
- 70ml double/heavy cream
- Place the chestnuts in a small pot covered with water, and bring it to boil, lower to simmer for 40 minutes or until the chestnuts are done.
- Peel the shells and puree the chestnuts, add some cream for help.
- Slowly melt the white chocolate over the double-boiler. Fold the chocolate into the chestnut puree. Let the cream cool off in fridge (it will thicken a little bit) before use it to fill the cookies.


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Mr. Speaker, thousands look to Canada every year as their new home, a place to pursue their dreams. Financial burdens should not stop them from coming to Canada.
Could the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration tell us what he has done to make it easier for immigrants to come to Canada?


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ROM Managers, Renamers & Dats
- A popular ROM management program. Designed to help you maintain and organize your emulators roms collection for various gaming systems.
- Another popular ROM management program.
- Another ROM manager.
- A program that can sort ROMs based on flags in the filename Eg. Sorting all US (U) and Japanese (J) ROMs.
- It's a simple program that makes it easy to control what types of ROMs you keep on your PC. MCM lets you easily rename or delete all MAME ROMs and data files by category - Adult, Quiz, Mahjong, Puzzle, etc.
- Use this tool to locate MAME ROMs that will play on your machine.
- Do you have 100000s of roms that have been renamed using TOSEC and Good Tools? If so then you probably have GBs of extra roms such as bad dumps, overdumps and unwanted translations. Use this free app to delete them from your collection using filters.
- This program makes it very convenient to convert a large amount of GoodMerged 7-Zip archives into formats that emulators can read.
- GoodTools is a common name for set of Rom Renamers for a wide variety of systems. Created by Cowering, they are distributed as .exe files with a built in database. The GoodTools are some of the oldest rom renamers still in existance.
- What "No-Intro" does is fill some .dat files, to be used with ROM-Managers, with information about the known ROMS released.
- TOSEC is an acronym standing for "The Old School Emulation Centre", and is the name of an organisation dedicated to creating a database project, cataloguing the complete software libraries of old computer and console platforms.
- A great source for disc verification DATs.
Input Mapping Software
- Automate your applications. Maybe used for these games, that have trouble to get working in a cabinet (most wrappers seen to made in this utility)
- Powerful scripting application that can be used to write wrappers. Can compile custom scripts to executables.
- Program to simulate keypresses from joystick inputs (useful for some emulators)
- PPJoyKey is an application to convert keystrokes into Windows joystick input via the PPJoy Virtual Joystick interface.
- VJoy Virtual Joystick is a software application and virtual driver system that allows keyboard input to be translated to joystick input.
- Great software for keyboard and mouse emulation. (By Jonathan)
- This is a Mame analog joystick map editor. Loads/Saves Mame ini files that can specify analog control map for specific games. Some example ini files included. Save the ini files to the Mame's ini folder (create one if it's not there). Name the file [ROM].ini. (By HeadKaze)
- This is a application to auto quit your emulator under a amount of idle, which you define in the ini file.
List Generators
- LCD text file generator for creating *.lcd files to send to a LCD attached to your PC's com port, typically used in a Mamecab in conjunction with Mamewah or other frontend. (By Silver)
- This utility uses a free SQL engine (SQLite) to create an internal table from MAME's -listxml output that can be used to generate MAMEWah game lists. It also can be used to generate batch files for Cakemeister's MAME Movie Maker. ListGen is a fast, open source way to filter game lists. (By Cakemeister)
- A windows GUI based application that also uses MAME's xml output file to allow you to create custom filtered lists of games based on your input criteria. (# of buttons, joystick type, monitor orientation, etc) The program can create numerous output files for many popular front ends as well as generic formats like XML, CSV, and batch files. Open source and freeware. (By NOP)
- MultiMAME is a command line application which makes multiple emulators and/or subset of games look like a single emulator. (By Lilwolf)
- Utility for generating MaLa game lists for emulators other than MAME. (By Spiderstyle)
- Create Custom Mame Cfg Files Automatically. (By Morpheus)
Video Tools
- Program to change the screen resolution (inc. from a commandline)
- UltraMon is a utility for multi-monitor systems, designed to increase productivity and unlock the full potential of multiple monitors.
- Program for setting custom resolutions. See Custom display modes (Windows) - Powerstrip
- Tool for generating cfg files with resolutions to match closest authentic resolution for games. (By MinWah)
- Another tool for generating cfg files with resolutions to match closest authentic resolution for games. (By Gavin Benson)
- A simple tool programming videocard drivers to support 15 Khz AND arcade resolutions. Supports ATI Catalyst, NVidia ForceWare, Matrox PowerDesk and various 3Dfx Voodoo3/4/5 drivers. See Soft-15khz. (By SailorSat)
- iRotate uses the hardware rotation capabilities of the video card to rotate the screen.
- softSpin's screen orientation support utilizes the rotation capabilities present in most of today's graphics card drivers.
- The mng2avi is a utility which converts MNG video files into AVI video files. It does this by first breaking down the MNG file into a series of pngs, then running a VirtualDub script to create the AVI file. Optionally, mng2avi can be used to create demo loop movies directly from MAME's MNG output. (By Cakemeister)
- Another mng2avi program. (By Silver)
Audio Tools
- Control volume with your spinner/trackball/joysticks/buttons. (By Ahofle)
- This little utility lets me map a single button/control on my control panel for Volume up and down that works regardless of emulator.
- Run this utility before and after you run an emulator and it will restore the volume last set for it. (By HeadKaze)
- Run this script on system startup to lock the sytem volume at a given level. (By Kelroy)
- Ambience runs in the system tray to play audio samples randomly or in order. While designed to play the Arcade Ambience samples it can play any samples on a primary or secondary sound card. (By TheShanMan)
Control Panel Software
Johnny 5
- Johnny5 is a label layout program, controls viewer, and artwork generator. You take your own background image and add where you want your labels to go, such as Up, Fire, etc. Johnny then takes information from controls.dat to populate the labels and creates a psudeo-interactive display from it. Optionally, Johnny can just save the display to a file via command-line. J5 can also display instruction cards, control panel images and supports the command.dat. Johnny also includes a GUI. (By Howard Casto)
You can find full information about Johnny 5 controls viewer on at http://www.mameworld.net/tigerheli/johnny
- CPMaker is a label layout program, control panel layout program, controls viewer, and artwork generator. The CPMaker GUI, which was released in February 2006, allows the user to easily create his or her own control panel out of artwork pieces. (By Cakemeister)
- CPViewer is a label layout program and controls viewer.
- jcrouse says this about what CPViewer is:
- "CPViewer is an add-on for Mame. More specifically for the front-end you use to launch your Mame games.
- It uses a file called controls.ini (part of controls.dat) to lookup the controls for a particular game. 'It then displays them on the screen so you know what buttons and movements perform what actions in the game that is currently highlighted in your front-end.
- Did you ever sit do to play a little and decide to try a new game? Then ask yourself, "What buttons do what?"
- Well if the game has been documented in the controls.ini file, this won't happen again. Simply press a hotkey (one of your control panel buttons) and a graphic of your control panel will be displayed with all of the character movements or button assignments displayed so you know what buttons perform what actions. It's that simple." (By John Crouse)
- CPWizard is a control panel editor, control panel (controls.dat), game info (listinfo.xml/Catver.ini/nplayers.ini/HallOfFame.xml), game history (history.dat), mame info (mameinfo.dat), special moves (command.dat) and hiscore (story.dat) viewer.
- CPWizard is a CP editor and viewer with a graphics library designed to build a custom CP. It runs resident in the icon tray and can be invoked by pressing pause in Mame without the need for command line options. It can export CP as images or bezel artwork that can be toggled on or off inside Mame. It also supports emulators other than Mame. (By HeadKaze)
LED Software
- Arcade LED Control software and Animation Editor. Supports LED-Wiz, PacLED64, PacDrive, and U-HID lighting and output controllers. (By Arzoo)
- LEDWiz SDK. (By RandyT / MikeQ / HeadKaze)
- PACDrive & U-HID SDK. (By HeadKaze)
- LuminAudio Engine™ is a "light organ" application for the LED-Wiz and LED-Wiz+GP Lighting and output controllers. (By RandyT)
- Scripts to help integrate the LuminAudio Engine™ software for use in Front Ends. (By AlexDog69)
Front-End / Jukebox Plugins
- MaLa LEDWiz plugin (By Loadman & Edge)
- MaLa plugin that plays wav files (By Loadman)
- Mala plugin for UltraStik 360 (By FatFingers)
- Arcade LED Control software and Animation Editor (LWAX format). Supports LED-Wiz, PAC-Drive, and U-HID lighting and output controllers. (By Arzoo)
- GameEx plugin that supports LEDWiz, PACDrive, BetaBrite, BPP-440, CrystalFontz, PJRC, ProLite hardware devices. It also supports Speech and Sample event driven effects. (By HeadKaze)
- GameEx plugin for UltraStik 360 (By HeadKaze)
- Other MaLa Plugins
- Other GameEx Plugins
- Jukebox Plugin System. See Jukebox Plug-Ins (By Unclet / Space Fractal / HeadKaze / Loadman)
Screen Savers
- Emulator Screensaver (By Howard Casto)
- Mame Screensaver (By Tom Speirs)
- Randomly loads a new random MAME ROM for a specific amount of time (which you specify). Useful for arcade cabinets in which you want to randomize your game selection (e.g. have your games run a new random game for each different day). (By emb)
- TB_ScreenSaver is a Windows 2000/XP/Vista picture screen saver that displays pictures from a user-specified directory using one of nine formats. TB_ScreenSaver supports MAME by displaying MAME pictures then running the games. (By Kenneth W. McKirahan)
File Renamers
- Program to rename files using text editor type functions like Quick find, Replace, multiple Undo/Redo, Macros and of course normal editing. (By Oscar)
- Bulk Rename Utility is a utility which allows you to easily rename files and directories, based upon extemely flexible criteria. Add date-stamps, replace numbers, insert strings, convert case, add auto-numbers, process folders and subfolders....plus loads more! (By Jim Willsher)
- Batch rename multiple files in a single click! A great time saving tool for managing your file collections, such as digital photos, mp3 music, movies and so forth. (By Dan)
- A neat little program written by Howard_Casto (author of the Dragon King Front End) that allows you to easily rename files. A great program that will attempt to rename screenshots by cross-referencing with a given list of game filenames. (By Howard Casto)
- An easy to use tool to help rename png/avi files to match your rom/zip files. Uses fuzzy logic to match names that are similar.(By NOP)
- Image renamer. Immediate Progress Report on Fuzzy Matching, folder selection as opposed to list copy-pasting, treeview of results for easier match picking, software-controlled file renaming. (By Fatone85)
- Image renamer. Run Skinny Match, and you will be asked to browse to your rom, and art paths. You can use the 'Add Path' button to add additional art paths. The first art path that you enter will be the primary path that is used for matching. Any additional paths will have the art renamed, if the names in the secondary paths match the names in the primary path. (By Tempest)
Run Files as a Service
- This utility lets you start and stop any program as if it were a Windows System Service. This is especially useful for starting programs in the background even if you have Windows set up to boot directly into your Frontend. (By Xiangyang Liu)
- Another program for running apps as a service. (By Dieter Schmeer)
Emulator Wrappers
- Wrappers are small utilities used to "wrap" an emulator to automate it's launching and exiting.
Misc Tools
- Program to create virtual drives (useful for mounting CD images)
- FE to help compiling Mame and applying diff patches. Supports Mame 32/64 and MameUI 32/64. (By HeadKaze)
- Hiscore diff's for all MAME versions without hiscore support (107u2 - current). (By MKChamp)
- Hide Windows boot up screen, cursors, desktop and boot straight into a Front End. See Hiding Windows (By Tom Speirs)
- Hide Windows boot up screen, cursors, desktop and boot straight into a Front End. See Hiding Windows (By Lave Laar)
- The MameInterop SDK is a collection of source code projects to help with writing applications that communicate with Mame using it's built in output system developed by the MAME Team. (By MAME Team / HeadKaze / Howard Casto)
- Program to control hardware through the COM/Parallel ports including LEDWiz, PACDrive, IO Warrior and Keyboard LED's using a scripting engine. It can communicate with Mame and other software as well as display artwork on a secondary monitor. (By Howard Casto)
- Play video files using Windows Media Player in fullscreen. Will exit when ESC is pressed or the video has finished playing. (By HeadKaze)
- Attach a webcam to your cab and take snaps or video's of visitors. Play them back later in your Front End. (By HeadKaze)
- A hard disk usage visualization tool. An extended pie chart displays all major files and folders. (By Steffen Gerlach)
- Several useful joystick utilities are located at this site including Clear Calibration Utility (clear the calibration of your joysticks), DXTweak 2 (Tweak various settings such as deadzone), JoyIDs Utility (change the Id's of your joysticks), Poswdm Utility (Allows you to see axis and button data).


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This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Washington • The people behind Freedom Path don't want you to know who they are or who's giving them money. What they want is for you to re-elect Sen. Orrin Hatch.
This shadowy group, funded by secret donors, has produced a series of ads that either promote the senator or attack his Republican rivals.
Hatch says he knows little about Freedom Path and has nothing to do with it, but a Salt Lake Tribune investigation has uncovered strong ties between this organization and the senator.
Freedom Path is loaded with former employees of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of sitting GOP senators. And these employees worked at the NRSC when Hatch was named the vice chairman in 2008.
Mike and Lindsey Slanker, of Las Vegas, were among them. Mike Slanker now makes Freedom Path's ads, while at the same time owning a company providing online assistance to Hatch's campaign. And his wife, Lindsey, is a paid fundraiser for the senator.
These links illustrate the new world of campaign finance, where court rulings have allowed outside groups to raise and spend unlimited money but only if they keep the candidate at arm's length.
Super political action committees, many with similar ties to the politicians they support, have dominated the presidential race, often spending more on advertising than the candidates themselves.
Freedom Path isn't exactly a super PAC. It's a tax-exempt nonprofit. This legal distinction means the group never has to identify its contributors no matter how much the companies and individuals give.
Former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist, one of Hatch's opponents, has been Freedom Path's primary target. He isn't calling for the group to get out of the race, but he does want to know who's behind the attacks.
"I think organizations have just as much right as people to participate in politics, but there should be visibility on who is funding them and where that money is coming from," said Liljenquist.
Government watchdogs, such as Fred Wertheimer, take a stronger stance.
"The most dangerous money in American politics is unlimited contributions and/or secret money, because they are vehicles for buying influence over government decisions," said Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group advocating for stricter campaign finance controls. "The money they are using to finance campaign expenditures needs to be disclosed in order to defend against corruption."
Freedom Path isn't the only outside group weighing in on Utah's Senate race or the only one shielding its donors from the public. The American Action Network, a prominent national GOP group led by former Sen. Norm Coleman, also produced an ad slamming Liljenquist, while the tea party-fueled FreedomWorks has been running a Retire Hatch campaign for months.
But the pro-Hatch Freedom Path is the only one that has gone to considerable lengths to preserve the anonymity of its employees, board of directors and donors.
Anonymous • Finding any information on Freedom Path is difficult. The group has a Salt Lake City address, but it's a virtual office shared by a number of companies. Phone calls go directly to a generic voice mail. Its website includes no names.
As a nonprofit, it legally must have a board of directors, identified on publicly available documents. But in reaction to a Tribune records request, the IRS says it has "no record of tax-exempt status." That could mean Freedom Path hasn't filed yet, has sought an extension or the IRS has questions about its application. The IRS has started to review such applications more closely, causing some groups to complain that the probes are politically motivated. (See story on A15.)
The only known person directly associated with Freedom Path is J. Scott Bensing, a Nevada lobbyist whose name appears on the group's scant filings with the Federal Election Commission.
Bensing said he incorporated the group in January 2011 and its IRS filing is pending. He said he's a member of the board but refused to divulge any other participants.
"The other board members are Utahns and value their privacy," he said.
Beyond Freedom Path, Bensing appeared to have two lobbying clients the Nevada Department of Transportation and Zuffa Inc., parent company for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Zuffa is a major Hatch supporter, with its executives and affiliated employees contributing $58,000 to the senator's re-election effort.
The group has lobbied Congress to fight online piracy, and Hatch has been a leader on that issue.
Bensing has also contributed to Hatch's campaign, writing a $1,000 check last November.
He said his donation was not Zuffa-related and he would not say whether his clients have also given to Freedom Path, only reiterating that all of its donors will remain anonymous. A Zuffa spokesman said the corporation hasn't given money to Freedom Path, but he couldn't speak for the executives or affiliated companies like the Station Casinos.
November Inc. • The Freedom Path staff, including Bensing, Mike Slanker and its two lawyers, all worked together at the National Republican Senatorial Committee when former Nevada Sen. John Ensign led the group and Hatch was his second in command.
Bensing and Slanker were among Ensign's closest advisers, and they are partners in a full-service political consulting firm, November Inc.
Their company became embroiled in a sex scandal that led to Ensign's resignation last year. Ensign had an affair with a married campaign staffer whose husband worked on his Senate staff. The senator helped that man get a job at November Inc.
The company remains a force in Nevada politics, representing Sen. Dean Heller, who replaced Ensign, while also providing services to the NRSC and Hatch's campaign.
Dave Hansen, Hatch's campaign manager, said Bensing and Mike Slanker have never directly worked for the senator, but Hansen did meet with Slanker in January 2011 to explore such an arrangement.
"There was some discussion about whether Mike would be involved," Hansen said. "He said, 'I have some other things to do,' and he didn't exactly specify."
That same month Bensing created Freedom Path, though the group's first ad, which supported the senator's efforts on a balanced budget amendment, didn't appear on Utah televisions until July.
Hansen said it was only after that first ad that he learned Slanker and Bensing had started a pro-Hatch group.
"I know in some things it is better not to ask a lot of questions because you don't want to know some of the stuff that is happening," he said.
But Hansen did talk to his lawyer and checked on the legality of continuing to employ the Slankers' companies on the campaign.
Lindsey Slanker runs a fundraising operation under the name October Inc., receiving $37,000 in payments from the Hatch campaign in 2011. And Mike Slanker owns Autumn E-Media, which the Hatch campaign paid $34,000 in the past year for website support.
These three companies are intertwined, sharing logos, P.O. boxes, phone numbers and email addresses. November Inc.'s website refers to Autumn as "an in-house team to assist online and Web-based campaigns," while October Inc.'s mission statement says it has experience creating political nonprofits.
The firewall • Slanker's connections to both Freedom Path and Hatch's campaign are most likely legal, according to Matt Sanderson, a campaign-finance attorney based in Washington, D.C.
He noted that other outside groups share vendors with candidates, and the Federal Election Commission has said that is fine as long as there are separate employees working on the accounts and those employees don't discuss their work with each other.
"The FEC would start from the presumption that they are separate," said Sanderson.
Bensing said November Inc. is aware of the law and follows a strict "firewall policy" when it serves clients that could get into trouble for coordinating.
Freedom Path also must follow rules on how it spends its money. Nonprofits can use only half of their cash on ads supporting or opposing a candidate. Most of it must be spent advocating for a political issue.
In practicality, all of Freedom Path's money so far has been spent supporting Hatch. Its issue-advocacy ads have supported a balanced budget amendment and opposed health reform, while at the same time touting Hatch's role in these efforts.
The political ads have attacked Senate challengers Liljenquist and Chris Herrod largely on two state legislative issues government transparency and public employees earning a pension while staying on the job.
The group has filed only one FEC report, for its latest ad against Liljenquist, which cost $130,000. Bensing said the group has spent $160,000 on an ad criticizing the new health-reform law. Freedom Path has not filed any information on the money spent on fliers mailed to the homes of likely Republican caucus attendees or Web advertisements.
Outside groups • Hansen said he likes Freedom Path's ads, while the senator wished they would get out of his race.
But Hatch would not ask Freedom Path to stop its activities as long as other outside groups are busy trying to influence voters.
"I have nothing to do with any outside group and frankly wish they were all out of there," he said. "I'd just as soon have them all out of there and let us run our own campaign."
Hatch said he had "some ideas" who was behind the group but wasn't positive, and he said he has not asked people to give money to Freedom Path or any other outside group.
Hansen said it made no sense for pro-Hatch groups to stand down, while FreedomWorks, the tea-party organization, has spent more than $571,000 so far questioning the senator's conservative credentials, including a TV ad now running that links the senator to the national debt.
"I'd be more than happy, if FreedomWorks would get the hell out of this race, for every other group to do the same thing," Hansen said.
But FreedomWorks argues that its activities are far different from those of Freedom Path.
"FreedomWorks has been around since 1984. We are going to be around for years in the future," said Russ Walker, who runs the group's super PAC. "Freedom Path is set up for one purpose, and that is to get Orrin Hatch re-elected."
He argued Bensing and Slanker created a group to "confuse voters," picking a name that was close to FreedomWorks.
"Their effort is definitely to obscure who they are and to make people think they are different than they are," he said.
Bensing denies that.
"The name was not meant to confuse," he said, "nor are we looking to slight FreedomWorks. I'm not out to pick fights with them or do things that are counterproductive to what they want to do."
Hansen noted that FreedomWorks also has a nonprofit parent group that can shift money from undisclosed donors to its super PAC, which it has done repeatedly as it fights Hatch through the mail, online and over the airwaves.
Well-funded outside groups like FreedomWorks, American Action Network and Freedom Path are likely to ramp up efforts in the weeks to come.
Republicans gather Thursday to select delegates to the state party convention, which will take place in late April. Those delegates have the power to select the party nominee, but only if 60 percent of them back one candidate. If not, the top two would face off in a June primary.
Twitter: @mattcanham
Outside spending
Political organizations are spending big to persuade Utah voters to either re-elect Sen. Orrin Hatch or give an upstart Republican a chance to take his spot in Washington.
Here are the groups and how much they have spent so far:
Purpose • Opposes Hatch
Amount • $571,000
Purchased • TV and radio ad, mailings, polls
Freedom Path
Purpose • Supports Hatch
Amount • $280,000
Purchased • TV ads, mailings
National Rifle Association PAC
Purpose • Supports Hatch
Amount • $13,500
Purchased • Mailer
American College of Radiology PAC
Purpose • Supports Hatch
Amount • $77,000
Purchased • Mailers
Source: Federal Election Commission


text: hopefully someone can help me out with this one: how would I transfer files from an NTFS partition to a fat32 partition? by "transfering" I mean having two different partitions (NTFS and fat32) and transfer data from one to the other; not converting NTFS into fat32. thanks for your help.


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This was published 9 years ago
George Brandis urges penalty for arts organisations rejecting corporate sponsorship
By Lisa Cox, Andrew Taylor and Lucy Carroll
Arts Minister George Brandis has promoted moves to block government funding for organisations that refuse corporate sponsorship following the ''preposterously unreasonable'' termination of Transfield's sponsorship of the Sydney Biennale.
And Senator Brandis appeared to include tobacco companies among sponsors that arts companies should not refuse. He said when pressed about tobacco sponsorship on ABC Radio National: ''I don't think that arts companies should reject bona fide sponsorship from commercially sound, prospective partners on political grounds - I don't.''
Senator Brandis has written to the Australia Council asking it to develop a policy that would deny funding to events or artists that refuse private sponsorship after the Biennale board severed ties with Transfield over its involvement in processing asylum seekers offshore.
Senior members of the arts community have reacted strongly to Senator Brandis' view, with many divided on the merits and the decision to sever Transfield's sponsorship.
Sydney Festival director Lieven Bertels said artists were entitled to ''decide if they will accept someone's money''. ''The Arts Minister should remind himself of the freedom that political parties keep for themselves to refuse donors based on moral principles.''
However, Mr Bertels also noted that while artists had protested about funding from a business that had ties to offshore detention centres, they had not raised concerns about funding from the government.
''The government is ultimately the body that has put in place the policies that the artists are criticising,'' he said.
Arts entrepreneur and director of the Hobart Baroque Festival Leo Schofield said it was ''ridiculous'' the Biennale would cut their 40-year tie with Transfield, arguing it would ''send the wrong signals'' to any businesses contemplating sponsoring the arts.
''This impacts throughout industry and will make business very wary. Transfield has done wonderful things for the arts in Australia and they haven't done it for cynical reasons. They've done it because it's a passion.
''How arts organisations find the money to pay for events is not the artist's business,'' Mr Schofield said. ''This is a gross example of people exhibiting self-importance that they haven't earned.''
Biennale board members hit back at criticisms from Senator Brandis that they had delivered an ''appalling insult'' to the Belgiorno-Nettis family.
Acting chairman Andrew Cameron said the board had contacted Senator Brandis' office ''and given them the facts and we haven't heard back from them''.
Mr Cameron said it was the decision of his predecessor, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, to end Transfield's sponsorship of the Biennale.
However, his statement appears to contradict last week's announcement from the Biennale board, which announced the severing of ties with Transfield over the company's involvement in the offshore processing of asylum seekers.


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
Please call the City of North Salt Lake Public Works at (801) 335-8726. City ordinance states that outdoor watering is not allowed between the hours of 10:00 am through 6:00 pm and outdoor watering is also not allowed between October 15 through April 15 (Ord No. 8-1-6 E). (The following dates are subject to change depending on drought restrictions, etc.) Violators will be given a warning and if the problem persists, could be subject to penalties.
Show All Answers
According to recent EPA life cycle analyses (see above reports) recycling of waste materials has a lower impact on the environment than incineration with energy recovery, which provides substantial benefit over landfill (as described in the EPA solid waste management hierarchy). However, recycling and waste-to-energy are not mutually exclusive and each is best applied to a different subset of the wastes we generate. After all recyclable materials are removed from the waste stream there is still plenty of waste which can be processed in our waste-to-energy facility. I suggest that recycling, particularly a curbside collection program, should be considered on its own merits, as another method of disposing of our waste. These are some links with more information about waste-to-energy.
More information about the system operated by Wasatch Integrated can be found at: http://www.wasatchintegrated.org/
I-15, Highway 89 and Redwood Road are owned and maintained by UDOT (Utah Department of Transportation). If you have any questions regarding these streets contact Region 1 at (801) 620-1600. All other streets are owned and maintained by the City of North Salt Lake. Call The City of North Salt Lake Public Works at (801) 335-8726 if you have questions regarding city streets.
You may contact the City of North Salt Lake Public Works at (801) 335-8726.
Call the City of North Salt Lake Public Works at (801) 335-8726. Your name will be put on a list, and a member of the streets crew will come to your house for an inspection. Depending on the severity of the situation, the concrete may be replaced, lifted, grinded, or nothing may be done. All work will be done by City crews or a City contractor.


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Welcome to a Special Interview TwoMorrows Tune-In Podcast. Today on the show, host Chris Marshall presents an in-depth conversation between Back Issue writer Richard A. Scott and voice talent extraordinaire Gary Owens (Space Ghost, Laugh-In). Most of the interviews that are conducted for our various magazine and publications are done over the phone. This is a real treat because not only does Owens talk about his long career and also has some funny and interesting stories involving many of his famous Hollywood and Animation friends but he also a does a few of his voices along the way. You can read the full interview in Back Issue #30 – our Saturday Morning Heroes Special – it is on sale now. Thanks goes out to Richard A. Scott and Gary Owens for allowing the airing of the interview and special thanks to John Morrow and Editor Michael Eury.
e-mail Chris with questions and/or comments.
He may even read it on the next Tune-In!


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A federal appeals court has overturned President Obama's controversial recess appointments from last year, arguing he abused his powers and acted when the Senate was not actually in a recess.
The three-judge panel's ruling is a major blow to Mr. Obama. The judges ruled that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board are illegal, and the board no longer has a quorum to operate.Please bookmark!
But the ruling has even broader constitutional significance, with the judges arguing that the president's recess appointment powers don't apply to "intrasession" appointments — those made when Congress has left town for a few days or weeks.
The judges signaled the power only applies after Congress has adjourned sine die, which is a legislative term of art that signals the end to a long work period. In modern times, it means the president could only use his powers when Congress quits business at the end of a year.


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Cargo Terminal on City Sphere from
Load up the cargo plane for an air delivery! Get busy loading the cargo at the LEGO City® Cargo Terminal! Open the cargo plane doors and help the workers to move the conveyor belt into position. Load the boxes onto the belt and push them into the plane! Use the ATV and the forklift's adjustable forks to pick up the gold bars and drive them through the cargo plane's opening tail. Then, fill up the tanks with the Octan™ truck, radio the control tower and taxi off for another delivery! Includes 5 minifigures with accessories: pilot, controller and 3 workers.• Includes 5 minifigures with accessories: pilot, controller and 3 workers• Features a cargo plane, control tower, conveyer belt, Octan™ truck, forklift and a buildable ATV• Cargo plane features opening doors and tail, 4 engines and a sleek design• Control tower features rotating radar dish, antenna and space for a minifigure• Conveyer belt features adjustable and moving conveyor• Accessories include a pallet with 2 storage boxes and 12 gold bars, a pallet with tires, a pallet with 6 cargo boxes, a crowbar and a coffee cup• Open up the doors and load up the cargo!• Lift the heavy loads with the forklift• Get clearance from the control tower and prepare to take off• Fill up the plane with Octan™ gas• Cargo plane measures over 6" (17cm) high, 22" (57cm) long and 17" (44cm) wide• Control tower measures over 10" (27cm) high, 3" (9cm) wide and 2" (6cm) long• Forklift measures over 2" (7cm) high, 3" (9cm) long and 1" (5cm) wide• Conveyer belt measures over 1" (3cm) high, 5" (13cm) long and 3" (8cm) wide• Octan™ truck measures over 1" (3cm) high, 2" (7cm) long and 1" (3cm) wide


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Sara Levine appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #437. She is most recently the author of Treasure Island!!!
Listen: Play in new window | Download
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Seeking elusive parrot memoirs.
Author: Sara Levine
Subjects Discussed: Ways to state exclamation marks in conversation, unreliable narrators, verbal flair, taking qualities away from a character to create a voice, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, on Levine not believing that an author has a "real" voice, the academy perspective, unnamed protagonists (referred to as "UP" during the conversation), surrounding an unpleasant character with very nice people, how to separate an author's viewpoint from a character's unpleasant perspective, displaying items on tables, writing a book of short length, early drafts of Treasure Island!!!, being edited by Alice Sebold, parrots in heat, getting rid of fat jokes, stereotypical dialogue, American fiction that plays it safe, scabrous characters in contemporary fiction, political correctness and market conditions, creating family details, the inverse of a Facebook profile, placing the emphasis on ego, thinking of a book as a mindspace, not giving readers handles, Lydia Davis, the book's Cymbeline-like ending, the endings of Victorian novels, four core values, author vs. character temperament, not being a good reader, Alain de Botton, "The Essayist is Sorry for Your Loss," vocational experience, how to determine how to treat a parrot terribly, reading books about parrots, thinking about gender, living a life a certain way, and reading Stevenson biographies.
Correspondent: I'm not sure how we can say this while also respecting Stevenson. Shall we say Treasure Island Chk Chk Chk? Should we say Treasure Island — maybe Island with extra exuberance?
Levine: Yeah. I think it's the exuberance I want.
Correspondent: Treasure [in high-pitched voice] Island!!! Something like that?
Levine: Yeah.
Correspondent: Okay. The author of Treasure [in high-pitched voice] Island!!! Sara Levine. How are you doing?
Levine: I'm fine. Thank you.
Correspondent: I'll try to do less of that as the conversation progresses. But anyway, I wanted to first of all ask you about just what it takes to create such a winsome unlikable character and to perpetuate that for so long. How much do you feel is going over the line or enough? What do you need to do to invite the reader in to someone who is quite literally ineffable? There is no name for this character. So what of this? How does this start?
Levine: Well, how does it start? Or how do I do it? I guess those are the same.
Correspondent: How do you do it?
Levine: Well, I've always been interested in unreliable narrators. And part of what interests me is that there's this gap between the narrator and the author, the implied author. And so I think what you have to do is vary that gap. If the character's completely unlikable, despicable all the way through, the reader will toss the book aside. But I guess with this narrator, I thought, well, I'll let her have a few things. I'll take away compassion. I'll take away generosity.
Correspondent: You took away quite a bit. (laughs)
Levine: Yeah, I took away a lot. But I will give her language. I will give her verbal flair. And I think that maybe that's what keeps people interested.
Correspondent: Verbal flair? As opposed to the flair in Office Space. I mean, what do you mean by this?
Levine: Well, I just think she has a — I would say, a syntactically ambitious voice. It's a very written book.
Correspondent: Taking qualities away. I mean, how did so many qualities get taken away over the course of this? I mean, is this just your inevitable reaction to generating conflict? To create someone who might even be described as sociopathic on some levels.
Levine: And has been. Well, you know, Stevenson himself had this idea about character formation. He said that it's a kind of psychic surgery. And he described how he did Long John Silver, in fact. And he said, knife in hand, he thought about a friend of his. Henley. And then he cut away all his finer qualities. And left him with courage, but not much else. And I think that's what I was interested in doing. Was taking somebody that I knew, but taking away those qualities that would help her on her passage. You know, for comic purposes.
Correspondent: So the verbal flair and the syntax — this is something of a buffer. This invites the reader into broaching someone who is just really unlikable normally, do you think?
Levine: I think. I mean, I think there has to be verbal energy there. She's funny. If she weren't funny, I don't think it would be so fun to be in the company of someone like that.
Correspondent: So humor is the secret way with which to peer into these sordid human qualities.
Levine: Perhaps. Perhaps.
Correspondent: So really much of this was just really a way of keeping yourself entertained. That was really the m.o. for this book?
Levine: Well, yeah, and I'm also always interested in perception. What of my favorite parts of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility is this tiny little part where the sister-in-law is talking about the money that her husband was supposed to leave to the girls. And within the course of one paragraph, although it's third person, you watch her rationalize how they shouldn't give the money to the girls. Maybe they'll just give her some dishes. They'll give them even the second best dishes. And so with this book, I think I was interested in rationalization and ego and certain psychological patterns. And so I wanted to let her be devious in ways. Ways that I think all people are devious. For the purposes of the story, she's more devious than most.


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Antares - Red Supergiant Star
What's in a Name: | Greek for "Rival of Mars" (Ares is Greek for Mars). Sometimes Antares is mistaken for Mars when they are close together because both are red. |
Claim to Fame: | Brightest star in the constellation Scorpio, the Scorpion. 16th brightest star in the sky (apparent visual magnitude = 0.9) |
Type of Star: | Red Supergiant (M1 Ib Spectral Class) |
How Far Away: | 325 light years away |
How Big: | 300 times as big as the sun (More than twice the diameter of the Earth's orbit). |
How Bright: | 3000 times the sun's luminosity (Mv = -4.5) |
Where to View: | In the constellation Scorpio, the Scorpion (Star Map). |
When to View: | July through August from Northern middle latitudes |
Last modified March 25, 2005 by Travis Metcalfe.


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What Kind of Whey Protein is Best?
We've had a few people writing in and asking what type of whey protein is best for them to add to smoothies, yogurt, and other foods.
Are you an athlete that uses whey protein powder to add protein and nutrients to smoothies, yogurt, or other foods? Whey protein is sold all over the place and there are far too many choices, so I'm here to help.
Here are my criteria for a good quality whey protein powder:
- UNDENATURED whey protein. This means it was not pasteurized at the high heat, which renders many healthy components of cow's milk useless, and denatures (chemically changes) the proteins. Un-denatured proteins contain the natural forms of L-cystein, L-glutamate, and glycine that provide the raw materials for your cells to make glutathione. If you haven't heard of glutathione, it is simply one of the most powerful antioxidants our bodies can use. It is responsible for detoxifying our cells and reducing oxidative stress and free radicals. It increases the activity of other antioxidants in our bodies. If the only type of whey protein you're getting is pasteurized and denatured, you're missing out on a huge benefit.
- Protein from cows that have NOT been treated with hormones such as rBST or rBGH. These hormones are used to increase the milk production of many cows in America, but are not allowed in Canada, Europe, and Australia. Some claim that they are safe, primarily the manufacturer of the hormone and government, but many others believe they can increase estrogen in human bodies – not a good thing for fat loss or overall wellness.
- Whey protein powder should have as few ingredients as possible. My top pick is usually unflavored – no sweeteners, artificial or natural, and no extra ingredients. If you want some flavor, look for Stevia, natural chocolate or vanilla, and minimal other ingredients. There's no point in putting harmful ingredients, colorings, and flavors into your body when you're trying your hardest to keep it running clean and strong.
- Some of my favorite brands include Natural Factor's Whey Factors, Bluebonnet Whey Isolate, and Dr. Mercola's Miracle Whey, – look for <100 calories, <3 grams of sugar, 15+ grams whey protein per scoop (approximately 20 grams or ¼ cup), undenatured, hormone-free. Beware of whey protein powder drinks which are often loaded with sugar (it's a much better idea to add it to a fresh smoothie or whole-food drink) and watch out for whey "candy bars."
- Whey protein can offer a lot of benefits if you're choosey with your brands. Like all nutrition decisions, stay away from a list of 20+ ingredients and chemical additives. You usually get what you pay for.
Please send us your questions for our Expert Sports Nutritionist, Kelli Jennings to "Ask the Sports Nutritionist". Kelli Jennings is a Registered Dietitian with a passion for healthy eating, wellness, & sports nutrition. For more information go to www.apexnutritionllc.com.


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The new Smartcolor JV150/137 series guarantees high performances, creativity and versatility in brilliant color images printing.
The optimal solution for who is looking for a highly professional product at an affordable price.
High printing speed up to 56.2 sqm/hr draft quality
High resolution up to 1440 dpi
Printing size 1360x1420mm, 1360x2500mm
Several inks configurations
Nozzle control unit (NCU) and nozzle recovery system (NRS) for uninterrupted production
Print without interruption
and versatile inks
The ISS * system (Ink Supply System) allows continuous feeding of printing ink. When a cartridge is finished the system starts automatically to use another cartridge while continuing to refill the print head with new ink. The cartridges can be replaced without stopping the machine and gaining valuable time. This system has numerous potentialities: it is possible to program the SmartFlat JV-150/137 to print without interruptions during work breaks or even overnight. The SmartFlat JV-150/137 can be provided with a double CMYK or a configuration with opaque white, Light cyan and Light magenta. The SmartFlat JV-150/37 is particularly suitable with Smartcolor UltraGrip + inks, ideal for outdoor applications thanks to their ability to firmly attach themselves to the substrate and dry quickly. The applications produced will be extremely resistant to weathering and scratching: Smartcolor offers maximum coverage and shine as well as a perfect seal from 3 up to 5 years!
The ISS system can only be used with CMYK mode.
Print objects up to
25cm thickness
Our SmartFlat plotters can print objects up to 25cm thickness. Thanks to a revolutionary extremely robust but lightweight printing surface, the SmartFlat series does not limit creativity, especially in industrial inkjet printing. Thanks to the ability to load any kind of rigid or flexible material, SmartFlat becomes the indispensable solution for any company that wants to range from prototype to mass production or customizing each application to 100%.
Thousands of possible
Innovation is the basis of the daily activity of the Smartcolor staff, which experiments on new materials the perfect combination of SmartFlat plotters with the latest generation of ecological, odorless inks, specially formulated for the various print media: forex, dibond, Plexiglas, glass, leather, wood, ceramic, polyurethane and drywall, but also iron, aluminum, copper, brass and silver, natural fabrics such as cotton and silk, synthetic fabrics, and many more. The Smartcolor staff studies and realizes the best printing solution in terms of materials, time and costs, in a real creative laboratory where materials and objects can be transformed into a thousand different ways and return to the market with an invaluable added value: uniqueness.
Main printing technical
Waveform control for a print of incomparable quality.
Accurate positioning of ink drops. Aligned jet of ink drops, with almost perfect point circularity, guarantees a precise positioning of ink drops with a clear and uniform printing of letters, lines, angles, etc. Optimized waveform to minimize the risk of nozzles leaks.
Productivity maintenance
The NRS system replaces the defective nozzles with working ones until the technician arrives for maintenance. This feature enables uninterrupted printing and continuous productivity.
* 1 NRS: Nozzle Recovery System, Nozzle Reset System
* 2 It is possible to exclude 10 nozzles per nozzles row.
Stable printing thanks to ink circulation system
MCT is a standard feature included in order to effectively prevent the deposit of white and silver pigments in the ink lines by regular ink recirculation. This system avoids issues and ensures stable printing since the beginning of the run. In addition, MCT contributes to the reduction of waste ink, supporting environmentally friendly and cost-effective applications.
Prevention of print quality problems - NCU*
The JV150 is equipped with the original Mimaki automatic NCU system. The clogged nozzles are automatically detected and cleaned by the NCU system. If the problem is not solved by cleaning, the JV150 automatically activates the NRS nozzle reset function and printing is resumed. These features significantly reduce print waste caused by clogged nozzles during a continuous print run.
Type of printing:8-channel 8-color single ink-jet head |
Resolution: 540, 720, 1440 dpi max |
Drop: variable, minimum 4 pl |
Speed:Max 56.2 sqm/h draft quality |
Maximum print size:Max 1360x1420mm, 1360x2500mm |
Printing height: Max 250 mm |
Material height management:Laser sensor |
Type of inks:Ultra Grip®, Ultra Latex®, UltraTex®, Ultra UvLed® |
Colors: 2 CMYK, CMYK LC LM WW, CMYK WW VV |
Interface: USB 2.0 |
Software: SmartRip® |
Accessories: antistatic bar |
Power supply: Industrial power supply 380 volt: Power supply socket 400V, 4p + t, 16A. The line must be protected by a 16A differential magnetothermic switch with a sensitivity of 0.3 ... 40A 4 pol |
Energy saving: Automatic Sleep Mode |
Operating system: Windows® 8 / 8.1 (32/64-bit) - Windows® 7 Professional or Ultimate (32/64-bit) |
CPU:Intel® Core ™ i5 or superior |
RAM:4 GB minimum |
Video resolution:1280 x 1024 resolution or higher |
Free space on Hard Disk:250 GB or greater |
Hard-disk file system:NTFS Format |
Drive: DVD-ROM drive |
The applications work at 32-bit but maintain the usual efficiency even on Windows® 64-bit system.
Separate control tower containing electronics and touch control panel.
Automatic height recognition sensor, for printing shaped and irregular materials and objects of different sizes.
Perimeter security sensor placed along the base of the machine to protect the operator during printing.
The light indicator, useful for easily monitoring remote production, indicates when the set-up is complete, printing is in progress or is completed.
F200: 1360 x 1420mm
F300: 1360 x 2500mm


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2006 International Awards Gala
At the 2006 IIE International Awards Gala, held on September 19, 2006 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City, IIE was pleased to recognize three exceptional honorees for their commitment to promoting international exchange and developing leaders from around the globe who will help address international needs and have a positive impact on our world.
IIE presented its Opening Minds Corporate Leadership Award to Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., in recognition of its commitment to education and furthering global awareness in U.S. classrooms. The innovative Toyota International Teacher Program helps U.S. educators to expand their professional skills, increase cultural awareness, and enhance their understanding of environmental issues around the world, and bring this knowledge back to U.S. students.
IIE honored the Freeman Foundation with its Stephen P. Duggan Award for Mutual Understanding in honor of the foundation's commitment to improving understanding between the United States and Asia. In recent years, the Freeman Foundation has used an innovative model of philanthropy to provide emergency assistance to students from Asia studying in the US on several important occasions, including the Asian currency crises in the late 1990s, the 2004 tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina.
IIE also recognized Edward R. Murrow with the Fritz Redlich Alumni Award, which was accepted by Murrow's son Casey in honor of his late father. In 1932, Murrow was hired as Assistant Director of IIE, where he arranged for European scholars who were at risk in their home countries to lecture and teach at U.S. colleges and universities, an early forerunner of IIE's Scholar Rescue Fund. Murrow continued to serve as an IIE Trustee until his death in 1965.


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Sprint 4G Rollout Updates
Friday, February 17, 2012 - 1:06 PM MST
As many of you have seen and heard, Sprint 4G Rollout Updates is preparing a long series of announcements of Network Vision updates. We have been teasing you for over a week now. Well, we are prepared to release one market name to you. S4GRU has been able to obtain information that Sprint's Network Vision contractor Samsung is actively working on Network Vision and LTE deployment in the Sprint San Francisco Bay Market.
The SF Bay Area Market includes nearly 900 sites to be converted to Network Vision. Preparation for deployment is well under way and work will begin soon. The entire market will take approximately 6 months to complete. This means that NV/LTE will not be completely live in the area until approximately October/November. But in the interim, the market will be brought on line one site at a time, tower by tower. So there will be many usable locations in Northern California by the time LTE devices start to be sold in the next few months.
Note that Sprint has several markets in Northern California, including South Bay (San Jose area), Upper Central Valley (Sacramento area) and Lower Central Valley (Fresno area). These areas will receive separate deployments and will not be a part of the SF Bay Area Network Vision deployment. You can stay tuned here to Sprint 4G Rollout Updates for more information about these and other markets in the future.
S4GRU currently does not have many more details about the rollout in San Francisco at this time. Hopefully in the not too distant future, we can provide a neighborhood by neighborhood analysis of this deployment like we have been able to do in Chicago.
With the release of San Francisco today, that brings the total of Network Vision markets announced to eight. Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Baltimore and Kansas City as announced by Sprint. Chicago and San Francisco announced by Sprint 4G Rollout Updates.
Stay tuned to Sprint 4G Rollout Updates. Early Monday morning we will be releasing another Network Vision/LTE market. This time from Sprint Network Vision partner Alcatel/Lucent. Check in at S4GRU.com for all the latest updates! Become a member today. Membership is free and easy.
Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Information about the source: The information for the San Francisco deployment and all of our Network Vision information has been obtained by several internal sources close to the Network Vision program who choose to remain anonymous. The documents will not be released to protect source anonymity.
EDITED 3/5/2012: To include market map.


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Stonehouse Woodworks, British Columbia, Canada
Stonehouse Woodworks, located in beautiful Golden, British Columbia, builds handcrafted log homes as well as restores heritage log cabins and antique timber frame buildings. Traditional craftsmanship and attention to detail are central to each of our striking custom log homes and log home restoration projects.
New Log Construction
Saddle Notch Custom Log Homes
At Stonehouse Woodworks we build beautiful, custom log homes in Golden, BC.
Full scribe, saddle notch construction is the most common style of handcrafted log house.
Dovetail Custom Log Homes
Stunning dovetail log homes have become one of Stonehouse Woodworks' signature products.
Our handcrafted dovetail log homes are built using traditional techniques and premium Douglas Fir logs.
Post and Beam Custom Log Homes
Stonehouse Woodworks builds hybrid log homes and post and beam log homes.
The combination of feature log work and conventional framing lends itself to unique and modern log house designs.
Heritage Log & Timber
Antique Log Homes
Stonehouse Woodworks of Golden BC is passionate about salvaging antique log cabins and hand hewn timber frame buildings.
The history contained in the walls of an old log home can be skillfully restored.
Reclaimed Wood
Stonehouse Woodworks offers reclaimed historic wood and antique building materials: hand hewn barn beams, salvage lumber, wide plank flooring and weathered barn board.
BC School Of Log Building
BC School Of Log Building
The British Columbia School of Log Building operates as a separate division of Stonehouse Woodworks.
Our comprehensive log building courses are offered in the beautiful mountain town of Golden, British Columbia, on the Alberta, BC border.


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In April 2010, as the world's airlines were grounded by volcanic ash, all the signs indicated that the Campaign for Real Ale's annual conference would be poorly attended. It was due to take place on the Isle of Man, halfway between Britain and Ireland in the Irish Sea. The island's capital, Douglas, is a short hop from British airports but no planes were taking off or landing.
When the doors of the conference hall opened, I expected to see a thin trickle of CAMRA members. But they came rushing in, several hundred of them. They had come by train and ferry. Such is their legendary enthusiasm for beer, there's no doubt that some would have rowed or even swum to get to Douglas.
This year, the conference will be based in Sheffield in Yorkshire, more easily accessible by train or car. And there will be much to celebrate, for CAMRA, founded in 1971, is 40 years old. It started with four members, had grown rapidly to 29,000 when I joined in 1976 and today boasts a membership of 125,000. It's a power in the land. Its officials are routinely called in by both British and European parliaments to discuss such matters as levels of excise duty and the imbalance of buying and selling power between supermarkets and pubs. For example, CAMRA's chief executive Mike Benner addressed members of the European parliament in Brussels in December.
But equally important, it's CAMRA's beer festivals—at least 12 a month, culminating in the Great British in London every August—allied to the rise of craft brewers that have put the seal on the campaign's success and vitality over the past 40 years. It's a uniquely British institution. The image of the Brits—introverted, victims of the stiff upper lip—could not be more misplaced. Go to any major soccer or cricket match, and you'll witness a different side to the island race: passionate and committed.
And it was that passion and commitment to traditional British beer that fuelled the rise and influence of the campaign. It will come as a shock to most CAMRA members to learn that their organisation is rooted in Britain's imperial past. But it was the Victorians' determination to remain loyal to ale and, in particular, its cask-conditioned version that led to the rise of this remarkable consumer revolt a century later.
In The Beginning
In the 19th century, a small island had painted half the globe red. While mainland European countries remained largely rural and agricultural, Britain was a powerhouse of industry and innovation. It exported its products throughout the world, beer among them. The holds of sailing ships were weighed down with great oak casks of British ale that eventually slaked thirsts in India, Australia, the Caribbean and North America.
William Bass started a tiny brewery on a patch of land in Burton-on-Trent in the late 18th century and a century later his sons had turned the company into the biggest brewery in the world, making more than one million barrels a year. Thanks to new technology, British brewers had developed a style of beer—pale ale—that bewitched the world. Great brewers such as Gabriel Sedlmayr in Munich and Anton Dreher in Vienna came to Britain, and Burton in particular, to see how pale ale was produced. They returned home, determined to make their dark lagers paler in colour. The first truly golden lager from Pilsen was made possible by a malt kiln imported from England.
British brewers, pumped up with imperial pride, saw no need to switch to lagering—cold fermentation and maturation—even when they rapidly lost most of their overseas trade to the new type of European beer. Brewers in Britain still had a large internal market to satisfy and they could now move beer around with comparative ease thanks to the rise of the new railroad system.
The question is obvious: if British brewing was so successful, why was it necessary to launch a consumer movement in the 1970s to protect its major beer style? The answer lies in Canada. In the 1960s, a Canadian called Eddie Taylor owned the rights to a lager beer called Carling Black Label. He was successful in his own country but Canada has a small population and he thought greater success could come in Britain, one of the biggest beer-drinking countries in the world, where the natives more or less spoke the same language as he did.
In a whirlwind few years, Taylor changed British brewing beyond all recognition. To produce Carling he needed breweries and pubs—at the time 80 percent of beer in Britain was consumed on draft in pubs. Within a few years, he had bought and merged a number of breweries in the north of England to form Northern United Breweries. He added the famous London brewer Charrington to the pot, followed by Tennents in Glasgow. His greatest coup was to talk mighty Bass into joining a group he renamed Bass Charrington. By the end of the 1960s, Taylor controlled 20 percent of the brewing industry, owned 10,000 pubs and enjoyed an annual turnover of £900 million.
And he'd frightened the life out of other big brewers, who huddled together for comfort. A series of mergers and takeovers produced what were dubbed the Big Six: national brewing groups that included such famous and historic names as Courage, Tetley, Truman, Watneys and Whitbread. The emergence of the Big Six coincided with the development of a national network of new super highways—Britain's motorways. The national brewers could move beer around at speed but they wanted a new type of beer that was not perishable like cask ale and had a longer shelf life. For all his bravura, Eddie Taylor had not achieved overnight success with Carling lager. The Brits were doggedly determined to remain true to ale. The response of the Big Six was to fashion a new type of ale called keg beer that was filtered, pasteurized and artificially carbonated.
And Then Came The Keg
With the aid of expensive promotions on TV and billboards, tens of thousands of pubs were flooded with such keg brands as Watneys Red, Double Diamond, Tartan and Worthington E. Traditional handpumps that pulled cask beer from cellar to bar disappeared and were replaced by garish boxes that delivered cold and fizzy keg beer.
Watneys Red was the most visible and risible of the new keg beers. The word "red" had nothing to do with politics and came from an earlier beer called Red Barrel. But the brewery thought it would win support from young people marching against the Vietnam War by promoting the beer on billboards with the use of lookalikes of Chairman Mao, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro. Watneys misread the mood. The demonstrators were against the war but they weren't pro-communist. Sales of Watneys Red were poor, aided by the fact that it was a truly abysmal beer.
Nevertheless, due to the simple fact that the national brewers owned large pub estates, keg beer was elbowing out traditional cask. Smaller breweries taken over by the nationals were ruthlessly closed and scores of popular cask beers were axed. It seemed that the onslaught of keg beer was unstoppable. But then came the counter attack.
Four young men who enjoyed a pint were dissatisfied with what was on offer in pubs and they decided to take action. Their names were Michael Hardman, Graham Lees, Jim Makin and Bill Mellor. Hardman, Lees and Mellor were all journalists and knew not only how to write good articles, but also had the ability to produce press releases that caught the attention of fellow scribes.
The four agreed, following a boozy trip to Ireland and a considerable intake of Guinness, to return home and launch the Campaign for the Revitalisation of Ale. They called a conference, and about thirty people turned up. When the Guardian, a national newspaper, wrote about the fledgling organization and gave the address of honorary secretary Lees, the post office for several days delivered sacks of mail from beer lovers clamoring to join.
"If anyone had told the four of us, as we returned from Ireland in 1971, that CAMRA would have 125,000 members 40 years later, we would have sent him to see a psychiatrist," Hardman recalled. "But just as we were resigning ourselves to losing the kind of beer we loved, we were inundated by applications for membership and offers of help from hundreds, and soon many thousands, of drinkers. These were the people, many of them with a great deal of knowledge about how beer was brewed and which pubs served good ale, who were behind the astonishing success of the campaign."
A further conference changed the name to the more manageable Campaign for Real Ale—CAMRA for short—and the organisation was up and running. It had an elected leadership of volunteers called the National Executive and soon local branches were springing up like mushrooms at dawn. Three cramped rooms above a bike shop in St. Albans, a small market town 20 miles north of London, proved inadequate to house the half-dozen staff members who coped with the fast-growing membership, and the campaign soon moved to occupy a three-story house nearby.
A members' newspaper, What's Brewing, was launched, followed by the annual Good Beer Guide, which listed all known pubs still selling real ale. The impact the campaign could make was shown in 1973, when 600 members turned up to protest against the closure by Bass Charrington of a brewery in the English Midlands. Some came dressed as undertakers and laid wreaths on a coffin outside the threatened brewery. The media lapped it up.
CAMRA had discovered a groundswell of opposition to the national brewers. When the campaign staged its first national beer festival in 1975 in a disused flower market in London's Covent Garden district, it found itself almost overrun by the unexpected number of people that turned up. Forty thousand flocked to the festival and drained it dry of beer. Eight hundred new members were recruited.
The campaign was active at the political and intellectual level. A series of well-researched and well-argued papers were sent to the government analysing the lack of consumer choice in many parts of the country as a result of the activities of the national brewers. In Britain, brewers are allowed to own pubs that are restricted to selling the beers of the owning breweries—these are known as "tied houses." Pubs not directly owned by brewers are known as "free houses" but CAMRA showed that many of these were effectively tied to brewers as a result of cheap loans and discounted beer. The Labour government in the late 1970s made some half-hearted attempts to restrict the activities of the Big Six, but the attempts to give consumers improved choice were abandoned when the Conservatives returned to power.
In 1979, Watneys announced it was discontinuing production of Watneys Red, proof—if it were needed—of CAMRA's growing influence and the public's dislike of keg beer. But the national brewers had another shot in their collective locker: lager. As more and more British people enjoyed cheap packaged holidays in the sunnier parts of Europe, they discovered a taste for cold beer. Carling Black Label had come of age and other big British brewers switched to lager production.
By any definition, the first lager beers were an abomination. They were often brewed as quickly as ale and were not truly lagered or stored. They were also weak—the British version of Heineken was just 3.6 percent—and had little in common with the robust beers brewed in Germany and Czechoslovakia. But, backed by enormous advertising campaigns and a few unusually hot summers, sales of lager started to increase.
The Weak Shall Inherit the Earth?
In the late 1970s, Whitbread, brewers of the British version of Heineken, said they expected lager to account for 80 percent of the British beer market by 2000. That hasn't happened but lager has come to dominate the beer scene: it's the biggest-selling beer in the take-home sector and runs neck and neck with ale in pubs. If the inexorable rise of lager seems like a failure on CAMRA's part, it would respond by pointing out that it was formed with the specific aim of saving traditional ale as brewers switched to keg. And the campaign was busy in other areas. Thanks to its influence, the late 1970s and early 80s saw the first flowering of the microbrewery revolution. Homebrewers keen to go the extra mile, along with some experienced brewers made redundant by the national giants, seized the opportunity to widen the choice of cask ale.
The best shop window for the new micros was CAMRA's ever-growing beer festivals. In particular, the Great British Beer Festival, which moved around the country before settling permanently in London, was and remains the most important event of CAMRA's year. The festival features hundreds of cask ales, stages regular beer tastings by leading writers, and incorporates the annual Champion Beer of Britain competition. Panels of judges choose beers in every sector, ranging from Mild to Extra Strong Bitter, culminating in the announcement of the overall champion beer. Winners of the prestigious award have seen their sales grow, in some cases beyond the capabilities of the available brewing equipment.
In 1989 a major report into the beer industry by a government-backed body called the Monopolies & Mergers Commission had enormous impact. It proved everything that CAMRA had been saying since its foundation: the Big Six acted as a cartel, fixing prices; they made grotesquely high profits by over-charging for lager; they dominated the so-called "free trade" through loans and discounts; and they put up barriers to smaller brewers finding a road to market.
The report was grist to the mill for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She disliked vested interests and powerful corporations, and she was determined to tackle the power of what was facetiously dubbed "the beerage." But her solutions were naive. The big brewers were told to turn most of their pubs into free houses and allow in other brewers' beers. The Big Six responded with a collective razzberry and sold off either their pubs or their breweries, or in some cases, both.
The result has not been beneficial to consumers. Most British pubs are now owned by non-brewing pub companies—"pubcos" for short. The top three pubcos ironically control more outlets than the Big Six. They have brought a gas station approach to running pubs: get 'em in, fill 'em up and send 'em out again. The pubcos have sweetheart deals with the new global brewers that now dominate Britain. Most of their beers are supplied by the globals with massive discounts and are then sold at inflated prices to drinkers.
The old Big Six have been replaced by overseas giants. Heineken is now Britain's biggest brewer. The former Bass breweries are owned by Molson Coors, A-B InBev brews both Budweiser and Stella Artois at former British brewers' plant, while Carlsberg owns the celebrated Tetley ales. Their interest in ale is minimal: Carlsberg will close the Tetley brewery this year while A-B InBev has put up for sale Draught Bass and several other cask beers it now owns. Draught Bass was once by far Britain's biggest-selling cask beer, worth more than two million barrels a year. Unloved and unwanted, sales have plummeted to 60,000 barrels.
The Monopolies & Mergers commission report had a powerful impact in a different direction. Millions of pub-goers and beer drinkers were aware there was something seriously wrong with the brewing industry. In the finest British tradition, they decided to support the underdogs—the remaining family and regional brewers, and the new wave of micros. Their sales started to increase, as did CAMRA membership. Within the space of 20 years, CAMRA has seen its numbers double, treble and quadruple.
The micros have their own umbrella organisation: the Society of Independent Brewers. It works closely with CAMRA and their joint lobbying achieved a significant victory in 2002 when the government introduced Progressive Beer Duty. The scheme enables brewers who produce up to 60,000 hectoliters a year (about 51,000 U.S. barrels) to pay less excise duty than bigger brewers. The result has been an astonishing growth in the number of craft breweries.
Julian Grocock, chief executive of SIBA, credits the close relationship with CAMRA: "Today's revolutionized British independent brewing industry has its roots in the groundswell of consumer resistance that CAMRA first mobilized forty years ago, "inspiring not only surviving family companies, but also microbrewers who have brought imagination, innovation, and unprecedented choice and diversity to an age-old craft."
Today the total number of British breweries stands at more than 700, four times as many as when CAMRA was founded. Choice and diversity for drinkers has never been better.
The Impact
CAMRA's activities have not been confined to Britain. It was active in setting up the European Beer Consumers' Union, which has groups in most European and Scandinavian countries. EBCU lobbies national and European governments and has played a crucial role in safeguarding the future of lambic brewing in Belgium. The impact in the United States is more complex. There's no equivalent of CAMRA: I spoke back in the 1990s at a meeting in Manhattan with a view to starting an American beer consumers' movement but the few people who attended suggested there was little enthusiasm for the idea.
But there has been cross-fertilization in other ways. The U.S. had small craft breweries before Britain, but such legendary figures as Fritz Maytag at Anchor Brewing in San Francisco and the late Bert Grant in Yakima Valley always stressed the influence of British beer on their activities.
And there's no doubt that the Great British Beer Festival sparked its American counterpart. I remember showing Charlie Papazian round the Great British when it was held in Leeds, Yorkshire, and he returned home to fashion his plans for the Great American equivalent. The number of Americans who now regularly attend the Great British and the Brits who make the journey in the opposite direction are testimony to a shared love of good beer.
The revival of interest on both side of the Atlantic in such historic beer styles as porter, stout and IPA is a further indication of the shared interests and passions of beer lovers and brewers in both countries. The growth of craft brewing has reached Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand now has a small but vigorous CAMRA-inspired consumer group. Australia, in common with the United States, is just too big a country to have an effective consumer movement but its annual Beer Expo in Melbourne, inspired by the Great British, will encourage more craft breweries to fire their mash tuns.
"None of us had foreseen the incredible growth of the microbrewers that now offer all discerning drinkers hope for the future of good beer—not only in Britain but also in North America and around the world," notes CAMRA founder Michael Hardman. "If CAMRA can claim credit for a tiny part of this success, and I believe we can, it is just reward for all the hard work and time given freely by so many people."
The Future
Complacency is not a word that appears in the CAMRA lexicon. There are still major issues to be tackled. As a result of intensive lobbying for several years, the big national pub companies are now taking greater interest in cask beer. They have little choice, as sales of global lager brands are now in sharp decline and younger drinkers are showing great interest in ale. A case in point is a pub called the Blacksmith's Arms in CAMRA's home base of St. Albans. The pub was owned by a large pub company that 10 years ago removed all but one of the handpumps on the grounds that the pub was used mainly by students who had no interest in cask beer. Under new ownership, eight handpumps have been installed, more are planned, and sales of cask beer are about even with lager. And it's still mainly a student pub.
The biggest threat to cask beer—which can be sold only in draft form—is the dramatic and tragic loss of pubs. Mike Benner, CAMRA's chief executive, calls Britain's pubs "the shop front for real ale. A good pub brings out the best in British society, drawing people from all walks of life together."
Around 30 pubs a week are closing, mainly in areas of high unemployment and poverty. Pub closure is a complex problem. It's fuelled by a recent ban on smoking in public places, and difficulty in getting to more isolated pubs by car as a result of a strict drunk-driving law. Above all, Benner cites the grossly unfair competition posed by big retailers, noting "The huge price gap between pubs and supermarkets is crippling the trade, closing pubs and leaving people stranded alone in their living rooms with a can of cheap supermarket lager." The big national stores sell beer supplied by the global brewers at little above cost price and sell it often more cheaply than bottled water. Pubs struggle to compete.
But the rate of pub closure is starting to fall and independent research indicates that pubs that offer a good choice of cask beers are more likely to survive than those that have a poor or non-existent range.
The best news of all for CAMRA is that young people are the new flag-bearers of cask beer. Beer festivals are packed to overflowing with enthusiastic young people tucking into pints of natural beer. The campaign should have no problem maintaining a powerful presence on the beer and pub scene with a new and younger task force of volunteers.
To the siren voices that criticize CAMRA for being rigid and inflexible in its support of just one style of beer, the response is a simple one: their mission statement is to campaign for real ale, nothing else. And as cask beer is the only growth sector of a declining beer market in Britain, nothing will move the campaign from its chosen course.
Roger Protz has been a member of CAMRA since 1976 and has edited the Good Beer Guide from 1978-84 and 2000 to date. He is the author of 20 books on beer, including the World Beer Guide. He thinks John Lennon was the best Beatle, but George Harrison was seriously under-rated. He was almost a professional jazz musician instead of a journalist, but has passed on his talents to elder son Adam, studying music at Sheffield University, and younger son Matt, who plays bass guitar in the rock group The Vertigos.


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Between January 1997 and March 1999, the defendants illegally disposed of construction waste such as concrete and waste cut-off bridge pilings into the East Bay and Pensacola Bay during the construction of the Garcon Point Bridge. Illegally dumping construction wastes into bays can damage habitat for fish and other aquatic life.
The plea agreement calls for Odebrecht to pay a $1 million fine and also pay $2,423,000 in restitution to the Garcon Point Restoration Trust for cleaning up and restoring East Bay and Pensacola Bay. In addition, Odebrecht also will pay $42,000 to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Law Enforcement, $20,500 to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, $10,500 to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Submerged Land Section, $2,000 to the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office and $2,000 to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission's Marine Patrol.
Odebrecht also has agreed to purchase and donate 60 acres of land in Santa Rosa County to the state of Florida and pay $500,000 to the Florida Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund to supplement the financing of future environmental crimes investigations in Florida. This is the largest federal penalty to date for an environmental crime in the Northern District of Florida.
Doddi, Spry and Romero will potentially face maximum sentences of one year in prison and/or fines of $25,000 per day of violation.
The case was investigated by EPA's Criminal Investigation Division, the U.S. Department of Transportation-Office of Inspector General, the FBI, the U.S. Coast Guard-Criminal Investigative Service and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection-Division of Law Enforcement. It is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida in Pensacola.
SOURCE: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency