text:
Last year, minorleagueball.com's John Sickels started a quick-hit review of every 2012 draft pick with snap judgements and quick stats. I thought it was a great project, a nice little way to see how the draft picks were faring. He petered out around the 17th round, and I took up his cause for just the Nationals picks and went through all 40 rounds at this link here. Apparently 2012's project was too much work for Sickels; he doesn't seem to be doing it this year. So I picked up the torch and did a Sickels-style analysis for all 40 of the Nats 2013 draft picks below.
(Note: stats are pulled from milb.com and/or fangraphs.com; put the player name into the search bar to get his seasonal stats). MILB has nice consolidated seasonal stats while fangraphs has better advanced stats. They do not include any playoff stats for those still playing after 9/2/13).
Finally, at the end of each writeup i'll put in a color coded trending line for the player: Green for Trending Up, Blue for Trending steady, red for Trending Down. This is just my knee-jerk opinion of the prospect status of the player system-wide. And yes I realize this is their first pro ball season, short-sample sizes, etc etc.
Without further ado:
Round 1: forfeited w/ Rafael Soriano signing, which as I noted in this June 2013 post cost the Nats a shot at one of several highly regarded pitchers drafted just behind our vacated spot.
Round 2: Jake Johansen, Coll Sr. RH Starting Pitcher. 1-3, 1.92 ERA with 51/23 K/BB in 51 2/3 innings between Auburn and Hagerstown, 34 hits. After signing quickly for slot (very quickly, like in 24 hours or so), Johansen joined short-A Auburn and was essentially unhittable through 10 starts. He was promoted up to low-A, got hit around in two starts and finishes the season with a 1.92 ERA, and a sub 1.00 WHIP. Johansen outperformed his poor college numbers somewhat, still walks too many batters, and still flashes a dominant fastball. Scouts continue to believe he'll end up in the bullpen, but until that situation presents itself Johansen will stay as a starter. He seems like he's bound for the opening day start in Hagerstown in 2014. Trending Up.
Round 3: Drew Ward, HS 3B. .292/.402/.387 with one homer, 25 walks, 44 strikeouts in 168 at-bats for the GCL Nats in the rookie league. A good average and a great OBP, but where's the power? Ward was reported to have a ton of power coming up but his slugging was lower than his OBP. He produced at a 142 wRC+ for the season, which is great, but I think he needs to show more power going forward. That won't be easy in his next stop; the stadium in Hagerstown is old and cavernous with huge walls; you earn every homer up there. Trending Up.
Round 4: Nick Pivetta, Juco RH Starting Pitcher. 1-1, 3.41 ERA with 18/12 K/BB in 29 innings between GCL and Short-A, 28 hits. Pivetta started 8 games but averaged less than 4 innings a start. For such a big guy (6'5″ 220) with such a reported fastball (upper 90s in short spurts) I would have hoped for more K's (18 in 29 innings). Outlook; bound for Hagerstown but seems like someone who may convert to short relief soon where he can maintain higher velocity in shorter outings. Trending Steady.
Round 5: Austin Voth, Coll Jr RH Starting Pitcher: 3-0, 1.75 ERA with 55/6 K/BB in46 1/3 innings between three levels, 33 hits. You read that correctly; 55 to 6 strike out to walk ratio for this U of Washington product. He pushed his way through two promotions on the season, ending up in the Hagerstown rotation. Another interesting stat: Zero home-runs in his 55 innings on the year. And these stats were done with pretty normal looking BABIPs; his FIP values were lower than his ERAs in short- and low-A. He seems like an exciting draft find and should be in the Hagerstown rotation in 2014. Trending Up.
Round 6: Cody Gunter, Juco 3B. .229/.294/.313 with 3 homers, 20 walks, 62 strikeouts in 214 at-bats for Auburn. 62 punchouts out of 214 at-bats; that's more than 25%. With so many Ks and so little power (.084 ISO), I'd be concerned about Gunter's future at the corner. Its possible he was just a bit young for Auburn as a 1st-year JuCo grad. Trending down.
Round 7: Jimmy Yezzo, Coll Jr 1B. .267/.282/.342 with 2 homers, 5 walks, 37 strikeouts in 243 at-bats for Auburn. Five walks in 243 at-bats?? That shows a pretty significant plate discipline issue. Yezzo came to the Nats with such a good hitting reputation in a decent baseball conference (the CAA); what has happened? Drafted as a first baseman, Yezzo needs to show some serious power improvement to continue at a spot which normally is where lesser defenders "end up" to keep their bat in the lineup. Trending down.
Round 8: David Napoli, Coll Sr LH relief pitcher. 1-0, 1.14 ERA with 28/10 K/BB in23 relief innings in Auburn, 16 hits. He had a very wild reputation coming out of college, but seems to have toned it down at Auburn to become an excellent relief pitcher. I'm a little disappointed to see him already get converted to relief, but his size and stuff seems to point towards situational lefty anyway. I could see him in Potomac in 2014 quickly turning into the next Ian Krol. Trending up.
Round 9: Jake Joyce, Coll Sr RH relief pitcher. 1-3, 5.22 ERA with 25/12 K/BB in 29 relief innings in Auburn, 37 hits. Joyce was unlucky (.381 babip) and his FIP reflects that (3.03 versus 5.22 era), but he still gave up a ton of base-runners (1.67 whip) and a ton of air-outs (0.62 GO/AO on the year). Given the fact that Joyce was a senior sign for very little money, he could seem rather expendible if he doesn't start strong in 2014. Trending down.
Round 10: Brennan Middleton, Coll Sr SS/2B. Did not play an inning in 2013; I cannot find any details of the injury. There are some reports that he injured his ankle towards the end of his senior season at Tulane; perhaps that injury carried over into the summer. He signed for a pittance and was not highly regarded; he could struggle to make a team out of spring. Trending down.
A quick note before continuing: you can see the effect very clearly of the new MLB draft rules by looking at the Nats draft picks here; our 8th,9th and 10th round guys signed for a combined $40,000 so the team could over-pay earlier in the draft. We got mostly cheap guys, senior signs with zero leverage as we got closer to the 10th round and the production shows. Then, starting at round 11 (where the slot per pick is a flat $100,000 and the signing bonus cap re-sets) we start to see more significant prospects get signed and coaxed out of remaining college eligibility. Its almost as if we should treat the 8th-10th rounders as closer to 30th round picks, all things considered.
Round 11: John Simms, Coll jr RH relief pitcher. 0-4, 5.70 ERA with 34/7 K/BB in 30 relief innings mostly in Auburn, 41 hits. His walks were low but hits were high. His ERA looks ugly but look beyond the top layer and you discover that Simms actually didn't pitch that badly this year. A ridiculously high BABIP of .438 contributed to his inflated short-A ERA; his FIP was just 2.38. Combine that with his 5/1 K/BB ratio and he has the makings of at least a good reliever in the system. Look for him in Hagerstown or Potomac's bullpen, where shorter stints should allow him to maintain velocity. Trending steady.
Round 12: Andrew Cooper, Juco RH relief pitcher. 2-1, 3.86 ERA with 16/7 K/BB in 25 2/3 relief innings mostly in Auburn, 29 hits. Drafted as a project, and so far he's pitched like a project. His numbers aren't bad or great in any direction. I'd suspect the team knew he needed some complex time so I could see him staying in Viera until next season's short-A starts up and repeating the level. Trending steady.
Round 13: John Costa, Juco RH relief pitcher. Did not pitch an inning in 2013; he had Tommy John surgery in March and won't be healthy until mid 2014. Likely stays in the complex league until short-season starts, then heads to the rookie league. Trending down.
Round 14: David Masters, Juco SS. .178/.246/.237 with 0 homers, 9 walks, 33 strikeouts in 152 at-bats for Auburn. Masters showed little power, little hit tool in general. He had a wRC+ of just 51 and slugged lower than his OBP. He's apparently a genius in the field though. But, you've got to hit to advance. If he's the defensive whiz that the scouting reports say, then he may get another shot in 2014. Note; as others have noted, Masters is a 2nd cousin to Mad Men star John Hamm. I hope this wasn't the reason we drafted him :-). Trending down.
Round 15: Isaac Ballou, Coll Sr OF/CF. .273/.381/.366 with 2 homers, 32 walks, 37 strikeouts in 238 at-bats mostly for Auburn. Ballou was Auburn's leading hitter by average and earned a promotion up to Hagerstown, where a 3/27 start dented his seasonal numbers. No reason not to see him in low-A again starting in 2014. Trending up.
Round 16: Willie Allen, Juco Corner OF from Oklahoma/Newtown, MA. Did not sign; I cannot find any reason; there's a link to his hometown paper that seemed to indicate that he was ready to sign and report. Perhaps something came up in his medicals. Allen also does not appear to have transferred to a 4-year school. Interesting question; how did a kid from Boston end up in an Oklahoma junior college program?
Round 17: Geoff Perrott, Coll Sr C. .308/.308/.308 in 12 at-bats for Hagerstown; Perrott was hurt most of the year and is providing late-season cover for the Suns' playoff push. A lost season for Perrott; hopefully he gets a chance to prove himself next season. Trending down.
Round 18: Cory Bafidis, Coll Sr LH relief pitcher. 2-0, 2.73 ERA with 22/13 K/BB in 26 1/3 relief innings mostly in Auburn, 18 hits. He got pushed to low-A too early, settled into short-A where he probably belonged to begin with, and pitched relatively well for 20 innings. Too many walks for a relief pitcher, though, he'll have to work on that. He mostly worked in 2 inning stints and never got any looks at starting. Trending steady.
Round 19: Niko Spezial, Coll Sr LH relief pitcher. 1-0, 3.32 ERA with 21/8 K/BB in 19 relief innings mostly in the GCL, 16 hits. Spezial started the season with Auburn but got the quick demotion after just 3 1/3 relatively non-descript innings. A college senior draftee, he did not belong in the rookie league. Nonetheless he pitched effectively for the record-setting GCL Nats. Spezial needs to show how he fares against someone his own age, which hopefully he'll get a chance to do in 2014. Trending steady.
Round 20: Brenton Allen, Coll Jr Corner OF. .186/.319/.271 with 1 homer, 15 walks, 31 strikeouts in 113 at-bats mostly for Auburn. A disappointing pro debut for Allen, a 9th rounder out of HS who chose UCLA at the time. Which makes his signing all the more curious; if he was a 9th rounder at one point, why sign for 20th round money? Why not go back for your senior season to try to build draft value? Nonetheless, he seems like he'll compete for a full season OF job in 2014 but will have to show a better hit tool. Trending down.
Round 21: Justin Thomas, Coll Sr LH relief pitcher. 1-0, 3.13 ERA with 28/3 K/BB in 23 IP split between FOUR levels. Thomas was well traveled this summer; he started in the GCL, got promoted to Auburn, then again to Potomac before settling back in Hagerstown for the bulk of the 2nd half. All he did in Hagerstown was post a 21/1 K/BB ratio in 15 2/3 innings. His ERA was a bit inflated versus his low-A FIP (2.56) and he remains the sole member of his draft class to broach high-A on the year (even if it was just for a game or two). He's clearly a leading situational lefty candidate with his control and should feature for Potomac in 2014. Trending up.
Round 22: Cody Dent, Coll Sr SS. .222/.310/.242 with 0 homers, 19 walks, 47 strikeouts in 153 ABs for Auburn. A light hitting senior sign middle infielder who strikes out one out of every three times isn't going to go far in this game unless he fields like Ozzie Smith. What's interesting is this: Dent is actually hitting BETTER than he did at Florida this year. A blogger on fangraphs dug into the numbers and found that Dent had an amazingly low babip his senior year in college. Trending down.
Round 23: Garrett Gordon, Juco Corner OF. .257/.356/.317 with 0 homers, 12 walks, 27 strikeouts in 101 ABs for the GCL Nats. We'd hope for some more power here for the undersized Gordon; he's listed as an outfielder but he caught in high school. Perhaps he's considering going back to the position. Trending down.
Round 24: Matt Derosier, Juco RH relief pitcher. 2-1, 2.43 ERA with 20/5 K/BB in 19 relief innings mostly in the GCL, 24 hits. Derosier may have been a Juco guy but he's young; he turned 19 in July of this year. After a brief stint to start the season in Auburn he pitched in middle relief for the GCL Nats, getting at least 4 long enough stints to earn a "grade" in my monthly starter grades. He posted good, solid numbers, nothing flashy, nothing bad. A 4/1 K/BB ratio is great. He'll move up next year, looking to stick as a younger member of the bullpen in low-A. One interesting point related to Derosier: despite his young age, he'll achieve rule-5 eligibility as if he was a college draftee, so he could run out his eligibility when he's in the very low-minors. Trending up.
Round 25: Travis Ott, HS LH starting pitcher. 3-0, 4.03 ERA with 32/12 K/BB in 29 innings in the GCL, 24 hits. The rare mid-20s round high schooler who signs, Ott was used as a starter in the GCL and was mostly good all year. His seasonal numbers were skewed by one bad outing where he gave up 6 earned runs in 1 2/3 innings in mid-July. This tall, lanky left-hander (6'4″ 170lbs) seemingly has room to grow and is very young; he turned 18 at the end of June. Looks like the Nats might have a find here. Trending up.
Round 26: Garrett Hampson, HS SS from Reno, NV. Did not sign; honored committment to Long Beach State (as confirmed by a local media site as well as PerfectGame). Hampson was a well regarded prospect heading into the draft (BA had him #84) and may have been a typical casulty of the new MLB draft reality; unless you're picked in the first couple rounds and will sign for slot, you're dropping.
Round 27: Bryce Harmon, HS LH starting pitcher from Richmond, VA. Did not sign; honored committment to East Carolina University. A big lefty clocked 87-91 but recruited by lesser baseball schools (per PerfectGame).
Round 28: Joey Webb, Coll Sr LH relief pitcher. 2-0, 1.89 ERA with 25/6 K/BB in 19 innings in the GCL, 13 hits. A college senior who turns 23 in a few weeks pitching in the rookie league? The definition of "too old for the level." But, Webb comes from a very small baseball school (NAIA's Menlo College in California) and may not have been ready to compete with a bunch of Division I guys in Short-A. Webb has almost no baseball pedigree (PerfectGame doesn't even have a profile of him) so he'll have to earn it going forward. Trending steady.
Round 29: Mike Sylvestri, Coll Sr RH relief pitcher. 3-1, 5.40 ERA with 14/9 K/BB in 18 innings split between Short-A and the Rookie league. Sylvestri started in Auburn, got shelled (12 runs in 8 2/3 innings) then threw a shutout in the rookie league (9 2/3 innings, 9 hits, zero runs). He's undersized (5'10", 180) and could have trouble getting out of rookie ball (as evidenced by his short-A experience). May not be long for the organization. Trending down.
Round 30: Ryan Ullmann, Coll Sr RH Starting pitcher. 3-2, 4.74 ERA with 38/13 K/BB in 49 1/3 innings, 64 h its. Ullman, like Webb, started in the rookie league being a senior coming from an NAIA (small). By the end of the season, Ullmann was in the Auburn rotation. He got 6 starts in Auburn with some up and down results (3 decent, one ok, two bad) that resulted in a 5.30 ERA all told. You can't teach size (he's 6'6″, 230). Ullmann closed in college and may return to the pen. Trending down.
Round 31: Willie Medina, Coll Sr SS. .228/.315/.237 with 0 homers, 9 walks, 24 strikeouts in 114 ABs for the GCL Nats. A .552 OPS playing as a 22-yr old in the rookie league is disappointing. Medina may struggle to make it out of Viera next spring. Trending down.
Round 32: Pat Boling, Coll Jr LHP: Did not sign, chose to return to U. of Georgia for his senior season. Bolling missed all of the 2012 season with an injury and redshirted, then had an uneven 2013 season (going from weekend starter to bullpen guy). Probably looking to either complete his degree or try to compete for a full time starter job a year removed from injury in 2014.
Round 33: Andrew Dunlap, HS C/RHP from Houston. Did not sign. Honoring a committment to Rice University. Research on Dunlap finds an interesting story; he apparently went to 3 different high schools all told (he moved around b/c because at the time he was a catcher and was blocked at the varsity level), was committed to Texas Tech at one point but then de-committed when he decided to become a pitcher and discovered he could hit 95-96 on the mound, transferred again and tried to gain a 5th year of high school eligibility, apparently failed, and had no "team" to play for this past spring. Nonetheless, he had multiple offers for scholarships (Rice, UNC and U San Diego) before going to Rice. BA did a Q&A feature on him in Feb 2013, so I'm guessing he was supposed to go much higher than the 33rd round.
Round 34: Jake Walsh, Coll Sr LH relief pitcher. 0-0, 1.40 ERA with 17/5 K/BB in 19 1/3 innings closing in the Rookie League. Promoted to Hagerstown on 9/3/13 to provide lefty bullpen coverage in the playoffs. He was probably too old and too experienced for the rookie league but showed enough promise to get a two-level call-up for the post-season. Lets see how he does in 2013, likely as a situational lefty/closer for Hagerstown. Trending up.
Round 35: Lukas Schiraldi, Juco RHP from Texas. Did not sign. The son of Calvin Schiraldi, Lukas was a 2nd year All-American Juco pitcher ranked #162 by Baseball America who has decided to transfer to U Texas Austin (like his father) instead of signing. Understandible; if Schiraldi succeeds for Texas next spring, he'll come into the 2014 draft as a high-powered college junior with much better earning potential.
Round 36: Reid Humphreys, HS SS from Missouri. Did not sign. Honoring committment to Mississippi State. Humphreys was the 2013 "Mr. Baseball" for the state of Missouri. He is also the brother of the Nationals' own Tyler Moore, who also was Mr. Baseball for Missouri and also attended Mississippi State.
Round 37: Karsten Whitson, RH starting pitcher from Florida. Did not sign, returning to U Florida for his senior/4th year. Whitson is an interesting story. He was San Diego's 1st round pick (9th overall) in 2010 and was drafted just behind Matt Harvey and just ahead of Chris Sale. In a move that surprised the Padres, Whitson refused to sign for slightly above-slot money and chose to go to school, turning down a $2.1M offer. After a great freshman year, Whitson struggled with arm pain his sophomore year and turned to Dr. James Andrews this past spring, performing a "cleanup" surgery on his shoulder to alleviate an "impingement" and costing him the whole season. Clearly Whitson needs to return to school and complete a full healthy season to regain draft value, so I don't entirely understand this pick. Maybe the Nats wanted to see if Whitson wanted to sign and rehab with the team as opposed to on his own (they did something similar with Robert Orlan last year). But that would have made no sense for Whitson; he's already in college on scholarship; why would he possibly have signed for round 37 money at this point in his career?
For me Whitson confirms what Keith Law always says when it comes to significant bonus money; take the money; you can always go back to college if you wash out of the minors. But you just never know what may happen; if Whitson suffers another injury or performs badly next spring, he'll be lucky to be offered $10k and will really wish he'd have taken that life-changing $2M bonus. When proposed with this scenario, my wife says "I want my kid to go to college" but the reality is this; that money may not ever be there again, and the kid can always go to college later. You have to take it if it is there.
Round 38: Caleb Hamilton, HS SS from Washington State. Did not sign; honoring committment to U of Washington. Seems like Washington's area scout liked Hamilton, so they made an impression on the kid and drafted him late.
Round 39: Robbie Tenerowicz, HS 2B/SS from California. Did not sign; honoring committment to UC Berkeley. He looks like an excellent Oakland-area product staying close to home. Made the Area Code team and was on some all-american lists. The Nats have drafted two middle infielders from Cal lately (Kobernus and Renda) so perhaps Tenerowicz will be a third in a few years.
Round 40: Shaun Anderson, HS RH starting pitcher from Florida. Did not sign; honoring committment to U of Florida. Baseball America had a nice little writeup on the 2013 draft's Mr. Irrelevant.


text:
Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
The Tax Assessor's Office has an in-house appraisal team. The staff conducts field inspections, develops and analyzes sales files, and monitors market trends. The Tax Assessor works to ensure that property values have been accurately and equitably appraised throughout the county.
Show All Answers
Ongoing construction, whether it is new construction or repair work, must be listed on your property listing abstract that is mailed out late December each year. The area for noting the construction is on the back of the form. It asks "Is there new construction here?" and then asks "Percent Complete January 1st.." If there is construction, answer "yes" and fill in your estimate of the % of the entire dwelling that is complete.
Revaluation is mandated by the North Carolina General Statutes governing property tax assessments; and it is necessary in order to maintain equitable and uniform property values among property owners throughout the county.
The Assessor and his staff are available to answer questions or discuss concerns about your value. Assessment appeal forms have been developed to assist residents in the revaluation appeals. Please visit the appeals page for more information.
A preliminary list of requirements for relief programs including the Homestead Exemption and Circuit Breaker is available online.
The Land Use Program allows for reduced tax values of individually owned property involved in agricultural, horticultural, or forestry management. Basic eligibility requirements for available on the Relief Programs page.
Licensed Motor Vehicles and Trailers are listed automatically when you register or renew your motor vehicle or trailer registration through the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. A licensed trailer includes any trailer that requires a registration, such as boat trailers, utility trailers, or camping trailers. Taxpayers receive a separate tax bill for each licensed motor vehicle or trailer approximately 3 months after it is registered.
Personal property like single wide mobile homes, campers, boats, and trailers, for example, are valued according to size and year. Motor vehicles are valued by year, make and model, in accordance with the "North Carolina Vehicle Valuation Manual."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Editor's note: The location of this event has since changed. Click here for more details.
Dan Farr occupies a handsome red-brick house in Draper's foothills, furnished in elegant floral patterns and generally tidy except for a child's toy here or there. He's a tall blond man with a broad jaw, and standing at his door wearing a polo shirt and a wry smile, he strikes you as modern-day nobility, a front-runner.
Then he shows you the undead guys in his closet.
Farr is full of surprises, and not just the movie-quality horror props he stuffs into the nooks of his idyllic home. It is this preppy, self-styled "serial entrepreneur" who in September will deliver to Utah's geek culture what it has long awaited: its very own comic book convention, or comic con.
"It's a kind of love of building entertainment," says Farr, known in his neighborhood for extravagant Halloween productions. "I personally am not a performer, but I love putting together events that make people happy."
And, in the case of comic cons, make people money. This week's 44th incarnation of San Diego Comic-Con International is expected to draw well over 100,000 ticket buyers as well as scores of luminaries from productions related to movies, videos and comic books. Its rapid growth, combined with a rise in appreciation for once-niche pop culture, has led cities nationwide to launch their own lucrative conventions, and now Farr aims to follow suit.
Star search • Farr witnessed his first comic book convention about four years ago while representing the 3-D model and animation software company he co-founded, DAZ 3D. Soon after, he resolved to attend as many conventions as possible, studying their basic formulas in the hope of one day emulating them.
"What are fans there to see? What's drawing them in the door, and once they're in the door, where are they spending their time?" he'd ask. After a couple of years of mulling it over, he and former DAZ co-worker Bryan Brandenburg agreed to host a show in partnership with MediaOne (which prints and distributes The Salt Lake Tribune). Salt Lake Comic Con would share the South Towne Exposition Center with the pre-existing GEEX Gaming and Electronics Expo and capitalize on the crossover appeals of comics, sci-fi, gaming and tech.
But for stars, you need fans. For fans, you need stars. To solve the chicken vs. egg conundrum, Farr paid top dollar to attract an early batch of premium celebrities who included "The Incredible Hulk" Lou Ferrigno, "Hercules" leading man Kevin Sorbo and "Battlestar Galactica" actor Richard Hatch. That first wave generated enough buzz that Farr could sweeten his sales pitch and secure the likes of Adam West and William Shatner (he of the 1986 "Saturday Night Live" cameo in which he famously implored overzealous "Star Trek" conventiongoers to "Get a life!").
"All the actors talk about the good ones and the bad ones," says Sorbo who works about five shows each year but is asked to go to between five and six a month of the desire for a high ratio of fans to stars. For his part, Sorbo says he's not too worried about how the inaugural Salt Lake Comic Con comes off. He has a condo in Deer Valley and has been coming to Utah to relax for about 20 years. "All the weight's on Dan's shoulder's right now," he says. "To me, it's a no-brainer. I look at it as vacation."
And to Greg Gage, owner of Black Cat Comics in Salt Lake City, it's enough just to have any comic book convention. "There's different kinds of comic cons," he says. "There are some that are comic-oriented and some that are more media- and actor-oriented. I don't know yet which this will be, but that's OK because it's about time we got one of these."
Geek is chic • As investment from Hollywood power players fuels interest in shows such as the San Diego Comic-Con and sci-fi and comic book genres, geek culture has, paradoxically, merged with the mainstream.
"You don't have to play 'Dungeons & Dragons' in your closet anymore," Farr said. "It's become cool to be a geek."
Cool, yes, but not necessarily cheap. Sorbo says an autograph from most celebrity guests will cost between $20 and $70. For him, they fall in the $30 to $40 range. If you just want to feel his Herculean grip, though, a handshake will only cost you the price of admission and the time you spend waiting in line.
Salt Lake Comic Con marketer and comic book aficionado Elaine Atkins-Manley says the signature-seeking attendees are "adamant about what they want. They'll plan months in advance. And they'll go with lots of cash and just be ready to fork it out, because that's what they do."
Many fans dress up like their favorite superheroes, acting out their roles in an alternate universe where all things are real except insecurity and daily worries. Pleasant Grove's Danny Haskell is molding a War Machine suit out of ethylene-vinyl acetate foam for the show, to pair with an Iron Man suit he built for his brother-in-law.
"I'm ecstatic," Haskell said. "I've always wanted to go to one, they've just been so far out of the way or out of my price range."
The Salt Lake event will also feature authors and a wide array of comic book artists who will draw in fans' sketchbooks for a fee as well as numerous panels and screenings with special guests. Even if you've never read a comic book, there's probably something for you.
"It's kind of like a Disneyland all under one roof," says Ferrigno, a lifelong comic book fan himself. "It's instant gratification. If I was young and George Reeves, the original Superman, came to town, I would give anything to go and see him."
Often, the diehards know more about the shows than the actors do, says Sorbo. "People know the schematics of my ship on 'Andromeda.' I just showed up and said my lines." (Easy, "Andromeda" fans; he said that with a laugh.)
Hatch, who visits Utah regularly to teach acting workshops and recently shot a short movie in Logan, said that the conventions particularly the bigger ones like San Diego have the added benefit of bringing together creative types for brainstorming sessions and networking. He may be Apollo and Tom Zarek to "Battlestar" fanatics, but he's still a very busy actor with a wide range of creative interests.
"When I go to conventions, I can collaborate with people that I may not get a chance to meet and have access to otherwise," he says. "It's part fun, and it's part business."
An easy act to follow • If the Salt Lake Comic Con sells out, more than 20,000 people will have attended the three-day festival, with a total attendance as high as 40,000, counting return visits. And it will sell out, "unless tickets just stop selling," Farr says. Saturday-only passes already are almost gone.
Farr first asked for just a single hall at the South Towne Exposition Center, with an option on a second, but he's now up to four and angling for a fifth. He attributes his marketing success to Facebook and Twitter, but says that even though it's probably not necessary, you can expect to see more advertising in traditional media over the next month.
"We want to spread out the demographic and reach people," he said. "It's not just the 18-to-30 demographic: We've got moms and grandmas coming to see Adam West and Burt Ward."
Farr wants to make the convention his "livelihood" and is assuming much of the financial risk for the inaugural show. He hopes a partnership with ABC4 and the CW will lead to more studio involvement, and he has also talked to the Governor's Office of Economic Development about future support. This year, Farr says the key is to strike a balance between building an event that is small enough to support the celebrities' autograph needs, but big enough to gain more backing next year.
"As an entrepreneur, most times you end up being more optimistic than the situation [deserves], but this has turned out to be one of those things that I felt I was very optimistic on how well it would do and I've been blown away."
Twitter: @matthew_piper
When • Sept. 5-7
Where • South Towne Exposition Center
Celebrity guests • Nick Gomez, Cerina Vincent, Adam West, Burt Ward, Manu Bennett, Ray Park, William Shatner, Richard Hatch, Tia Carrere, Lou Ferrigno, Kevin Sorbo, Sofia Milos, Claire Coffee
Writers • Jake Black, Larry Correia, Jessica Day George, James Wymore, Rhiannon Paille, James Dashner, Tracy Hickman, David Farland
Artists • Steve Argyle, Derek Hunter, Bill Galvan, Howard Tayler, Sal Velluto, Batton Lash, Arthur Suydam, Ryan Ottley, Tyler Kirkham
Tickets • Thursday only: adults $20, ages 11-16 $12; Friday only: adults $25, ages 11-16 $12; Saturday only (limited supply): adults $30, ages 11-16 $15; three-day pass: adults $50, ages 11-16 $30; VIP pass $150. Children 10 and under get in free on all days. Visit http://saltlakecomiccon.com/utah-comic-con-tickets/ for more information.


text:
Blue Earth County Public Health provides internship opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students. We host students studying for various degrees who have an interest in community or public health. Depending on staff availability, internships are available in the following areas:
Other areas may be considered if the student's fit is appropriate for department needs.If interested in applying for an internship or volunteering, please email us your cover letter and resume. Please include information about your internship requirements, including hours, timeframe, objectives, and area(s) of study as well as any preferences you may have regarding the focus of your internship.


text:
So I'm starting a new campaign for an existing gaming group soon, and I'd like to actually incorporate character backgrounds that the players will be creating (eventually). These aren't epic-novels or anything, usually just a paragraph or two of fairly basic background information.
Obviously, I can read through them all and try to write a plotline that incorporates everything, but is there a better way to handle that? I'd rather avoid having creating one adventure for each character, but at the same time I'd like to make the backgrounds actually part of an integrated story.


text:
One of the greatest things about having found my soulmate is that I have finally achieved pure contentment. Never in my life have I felt content and when I awoke on our second anniversary the feeling was overwhelming. I have always wanted to better myself, so I studied longer, worked harder, traveled further, and yet still desired more. Then I found Lucas and for once in my life I no longer needed more — I just want him and whatever blessings should come our way in the future will be icing on the cake!
We began our anniversary with a poolside breakfast at Luna Sea Pool Bar & Grill, where we indulged in delicious lattes and an even more delicious banana bread french toast with banana fritters.
Since we had spent the previous day alternating between the Somerset's two pools, we decided to spend the entire afternoon on Grace Bay Beach.
This twelve mile long beach on Providenciales is widely acclaimed as one of the most beautiful in the world. I consider myself a bit of a beach snob, since being near the ocean is my favorite place in the world, and I completely agree with its esteemed reputation. The water is an indescribable color of blue that truly takes your breath away! Guests can enjoy food and drink service, chaise lounge chairs, umbrellas and an array of water sports and activities, many of which are complimentary.
After a couple of celebratory rum punches, it was time for a dip in the inviting water, which was the perfect temperature.
After hours of fun, we needed something to replenish our energy, thus we headed back to the same place we had breakfast for a quick lunch of coconut shrimp and of course some more rum punch.
Then it was time to get ready for a special evening that the resort planned for us: a private dinner on the beach at sunset to celebrate our anniversary. For this memorable experience, we would be dining with our toes in the sand surrounded by the warm glow of tiki torches while dedicated wait staff delivered each course.


text:
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
Lawsuit Pushes for Mandatory Labeling of Eggs as "From Caged Hens," "Cage-Free," or "Free-Range"
For immediate release:
March 28, 2013
Megan Backus: 707-795-2533, ext. 1010 (office); 707-479-7872 (mobile); firstname.lastname@example.com
Cheryl Leahy: 310-375-2280 (office); 773-259-7760 (mobile); firstname.lastname@example.com
OAKLAND, Calif. – Today, the national nonprofits Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) and Compassion Over Killing (COK) filed a complaint in a federal district court in Oakland against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and Agriculture Marketing Service, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for failing to regulate animal welfare labeling on egg cartons. Rule-making petitions originally submitted to these agencies in 2006 and 2007 had requested that egg production methods be fully disclosed on the labeling of all cartons sold in the U.S. In spite of Congressional mandates, the agencies have failed to take any action to regulate the often-misleading claims and deceptive imagery widely found on egg cartons. Even the United Egg Producers, the U.S. egg industry's trade association, has endorsed federal legislation containing a similar labeling program.
Under the lawsuit's petitioned action, egg producers nationwide would be required to clearly label egg cartons with egg production methods, including the identification of "Eggs from Caged Hens." Co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit include several Bay Area egg consumers who have relied on deceptive egg carton labeling in their efforts to purchase eggs from hens not confined in cages. Bingham McCutchen LLP are assisting with the case as pro bono counsel.
Why are feathers flying about the labeling of egg cartons? While an estimated 95% of eggs sold in the US come from birds crammed inside tiny wire cages where they are barely able to spread a wing, deceptive images on egg cartons often suggest hens are raised in natural, outdoor, free-range settings where they can move freely, nest, raise their young, and forage for food. Today's lawsuit alleges that false or exaggerated claims about the welfare of hens are so prevalent in the egg market that concerned consumers are often duped into believing eggs come from hens provided a much higher level of care than they are in reality. The egg industry's own research suggests that many consumers are willing to pay more for eggs they perceive to have been produced by hens treated with a higher level of animal welfare.
"Not only is the egg industry cruelly confining hens in tiny wire cages, it's also deceiving consumers about that abuse," says Cheryl Leahy, general counsel for COK. "This misleading marketing needs to stop. Consumers—and animals—deserve truth in labeling."
"Labeling requirements would help consumers avoid purchasing eggs from mistreated hens," said ALDF executive director Stephen Wells. "It is long past due for these agencies to regulate the rampant false and misleading labeling used by egg producers to sell cruelly-produced food to well-intentioned shoppers."
Copies of the lawsuit are available by request.
ALDF was founded in 1979 with the unique mission of protecting the lives and advancing the interests of animals through the legal system. For more information, please visit aldf.org.
Compassion Over Killing (COK) is a national nonprofit animal protection organization. Since 1995, COK has worked to end the abuse of animals in agriculture through undercover investigations, public outreach, litigation, and other advocacy programs. COK is on the web at www.COK.net.


text:
HASTINGS, Mich. – Former major league outfielder Chad Curtis has been ordered to stand trial on charges he touched two female students at a Michigan high school where he was a volunteer strength trainer in the school's weight room.
After hearing testimony from the 15- and 16-year-old girls, Barry County District Judge Michael Schipper ruled Friday that Curtis is to be tried on five counts of criminal sexual conduct.
Schipper also told the 43-year-old Curtis he no longer is allowed to coach his 12-year-old son's travel baseball team.
Defense lawyer David Dodge Sr. has said his client denies any criminal wrongdoing.
Between 1992 and 2001, Curtis played for the then-California Angels, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees and Texas Rangers. He won two World Series rings with the Yankees.


text:
Fry and the Slurm Factory
← Previous | Navigation in production order | Next → |
Season 1 episode Broadcast season 2 episode | |||||
Fry and the Slurm Factory | |||||
No. | 13 | ||||
Production number | 1ACV13 | ||||
Written by | Lewis Morton | ||||
Directed by | Ron Hughart | ||||
Title caption | Live from Omicron Persei 8 | ||||
Title caption reference | Previous episode | ||||
First air date | 14 November, 1999 | ||||
Broadcast number | S02E04 | ||||
Title reference | Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | ||||
Opening cartoon | The Simpsons shorts - "Making Faces" | ||||
Special guest(s) | Pamela Anderson | ||||
Additional | |||||
| |||||
Season 1 | |||||
"Fry and the Slurm Factory" is the thirteenth episode of Futurama, the thirteenth and last of the first production season and the fourth of the second broadcast season. It aired on 14 November, 1999, on Fox. It guest-stars Pamela Anderson as Dixie. Fry is obsessed with Slurm, and when a competition comes out for him to see the Slurm Factory, he cannot resist. However, at the Slurm Factory, the Planet Express crew discovers the horrible truth about Slurm.
Act I: "Whimmy wham wham wozzle... let's party!"
Fry, drinking a lot of cans of Slurm, and Bender are watching All My Circuits, when a commercial for Slurm comes on. The commercial advertises a new contest; the grand prize is a chance to party with Slurms MacKenzie at the Slurm Factory on Wormulon. Then one of Fry's teeth falls out and he discards it in a pile of his other teeth.
Act II: "I've never seen anyone so addicted to Slurm."
Fry starts guzzling Slurm like crazy looking for the winning bottle cap, hoping to win the contest, but to no avail. Bender doesn't feel so well, running a fever of 900 degrees. After Zoidberg fails to find anything, the Professor takes the opportunity to test his new invention, the F-Ray. The Professor's device allows the crew to see inside Bender and find the problem, Amy's watch. While the Professor takes his environmental suit to the decontaminators, he leaves the F-Ray with Fry and Bender "to be kept out of the wrong hands." They immediately start using it to see inside of things, including Fry and the beautiful "Fembot". At the 711 Fry gets an idea and they start to use the ray to search for the Slurm can with the winning bottle cap. They look inside hundreds of cans throughout the city. Back at Planet Express, where Leela and the Professor are playing 3-D Scrabble, Fry and Bender decide to give up. After declaring his disgust with Slurm, Fry immediately goes to the refrigerator and takes out some Slurm. He begins drinking but quickly start choking on the winning bottle cap lodged in his throat.
Act III: "Something's rotten on planet Wormulon!"
Fry and all of his friends arrive on Wormulon, and are greeted by Glurmo, who will lead them on the tour, and Slurms MacKenzie. Glurmo takes them inside the factory to a garden with Slurm cans plants, where they encounter the Grunka Lunkas, little people mixing the ingredients and singing across the Slurm river. Everyone gets on a boat and they see a mysterious door at the middle of the tour, which leads them to begin asking questions about the secret ingredient of Slurm. Fry notices the river they are navigating in is made of Slurm so he wants to drink it, he falls in and Leela jumps in to save him; Bender jumps as well, just to fit in. Sucked down the drain, they wind up lost in an underground part of the factory with the Slurm of the river pouring into a sewer. Fry tastes Slurm from the river, only to discover it's not Slurm at all, and they begin nosing around inside a tunnel where they see two doors marked "Real Factory" and "Fake Factory", which is the factory they had come from. Fry finally sees Slurm cans in a conveyor belt and immediately drinks it, but stops when they discover the disgusting secret - Slurm is a fluid squirted out by a giant worm: the Slurm Queen! Meanwhile The Professor, Hermes, Zoidberg, and Amy finish the tour at the gift shop, and Glurmo notices that the others are missing so he decides to look for them, suspecting they had found the "Real Factory".
Act IV: "That's the secret ingredient of Slurm? Ewwwwww!"
Despite knowing the secret, Fry continues drinking Slurm and Leela knocks the can out of his hand, which makes the Slurm Queen see them. They try to escape, only to run in a circle and wind up back in the room with the Slurm Queen, where Glurmo captures them. The Slurm Queen wants them destroyed so they can't tell anybody about the secret ingredient. Bender is to be made into Slurm cans, Leela is to be dipped into a vat of Royal Slurm, transforming her into a new Slurm Queen. Fry is allowed to go free after being force-fed a taste of concentrated Super-Slurm, which is so addictive he can't stop eating it, even to save his friends. Still eating, Fry doesn't know whether to continue or to save his friends. He drags the vat over until he can release Leela. She saves Bender, and then dumps the Super-Slurm down a sewer grate, to Fry's horror, so much so he tries to bite his arms off to fit through the grate. They make their escape, and run into Slurms MacKenzie, who wants to escape with them, saying he is tired of partying all the time. When the Slurm Queen finds them, Slurms sacrifices himself to allow the crew to escape with the babes he had partied with for 40 years. As the Planet Express crew escape on the ship, the Professor contacts the authorities, who vow to shut down the Slurm factory. Fry realises this would spell the end for his favorite drink, and so tells the authorities to ignore the Professor, saying that "Grandpa's making up crazy stories again." The Professor points out the truth - that Fry's really his uncle from the 20th century - but in doing so only makes himself look more insane, meaning that the factory gets to stay open. As the Professor grumbles, the rest of the crew and Slurms' babes end the episode by partying away and Fry enjoys the Slurm for him.
This episode was named #21 on IGN's list of top 25 Futurama episodes.
Additional Info
- According to audio commentary, Glurmo's name was originally to have been "Slurmy Slonka" - furthering the references to Willy Wonka.
- Mixing Hydrogen molecules, with oxygen atoms to create water, as the Grunka Lunkas supposedly do during Slurm production, would actually cause a massive fire and blow up the tanks. Whether this was a hint to observant viewers of the upcoming plot twist or actually a goof is unknown.
- Perhaps the hydrogen atoms are passed through a semipermiable membrane, one which only allows protons to pass through, and the remaining energy, which would be seen as combustion if the reaction was triggered as such, would now be transferred to the electron, both creating the pure water and electricity at the same time, with no explosion neccessary.
- During the scene where Leela and the Professor, are playing 3D Scrabble, the Professor's current letters are F, U, U, T, A, M, and R (one A short of FUTURAMA due to 7-letter rack limit) in that order.
- Also the words on the other boards are One, Eye, Matt, Area, Prop, Only, Donut, One, and Emu.
- "Mars University" (1ACV11)
- Professor Farnsworth threatens to get both Fry and Gunther neutered.
- "Parasites Lost" (3ACV02)
- Click here to see cultural mentions made in this episode.
- The episode's plot is a parody of both Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Soylent Green.
- The Factory, the Grunka Lunkas, and Glurmo are references to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, more specifically the 1971 film adaptation, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
- The Slurm Queen's plan of marketing Leela's Slurm as New Slurm, and when everyone hates it, bring back Slurm Classic and make billions is a reference to what Coca-Cola did with New Coke.
- Slurms MacKenzie is a reference to Spuds MacKenzie, a former Budweiser advertising mascot.
- The Soylent Cola is the first of many references to Soylent Green in the show.
- 3D Scrabble, the game played by Leela and Professor Farnsworth, is a reference to Star Trek's 3D Chess.
- The translation mentions "the elusive yak-face". Yak face is a rare Star Wars figure of Saelt-Marae not released in the USA. Mint figures have sold for thousands of dollars. It was added because David X. Cohen owns one.
- When the Professor uses the F-Ray on Bender, his brain is shown to be powered by a 6502 CPU (a common CPU from the 1980s used in the Apple II, Nintendo Famicom/NES, and Commodore 64 computers).
- In the gift shop, the shirt Zoidberg wears says Slurm in Hebrew, adding to the Jewish persona of Zoidberg.
- One of the more popular souvenirs from Israel is a t-shirt with the Coca-Cola logo in Hebrew.
- Towards the end, as the cave-in is occurring, Bender turns back and says "Party on, Slurms" who responds "Party on, Contest Winners". This is a reference to Wayne's World, where Wayne and Garth would say "Party on, Wayne" "Party on, Garth".
Advert Voice: Odds of winning mathematically insignificant.
Fry: Hey, I like those odds!
Amy: You should try homeopathic medicine, Bender. Try some zinc.
Bender: I'm 40% zinc!
Amy: Then take some echinacea, or St. John's Wort.
Prof. Farnsworth: Or a big fat placebo. It's all the same crap!
[Fry and Bender see a fembot walk by.]
Bender: Hold still, sexy lady. [Bender uses the f-ray on the fembot but is stunned.]
Fry: What's wrong?
Bender: That's no lady!
Hermaphrobot: Damn, chico! One more upgrade and I'll be more of a lady than you can handle! Why you so stoopid, stoopid?
Bender: Hey, bite my shiny metal ass!
Hermaphrobot: You couldn't afford it, honey!
Bender: I can't see what's happening! Are we boned?
Leela: Yeah, we're boned.
Glurmo: [To the Grunka Lunkas.] Hey, I don't pay you to sing! You just used up today's bathroom break!
Grunka Lunka: Hard ass.
Glurmo: I heard that! [The Grunka Lunka whimpers.]
Fry: This is nothing. Back in high school, I used to drink 100 cans of cola a week, right up until my third heart attack.
Slurm Queen: As for you, you will be submerged in Royal Slurm, which, in a matter of minutes, will transform you into a Slurm Queen like myself.
Small Glurmo #1: But, Your Highness, she's a commoner. Her Slurm will taste foul.
Slurm Queen: Yes! Which is why we'll market it as New Slurm. Then, when everyone hates it, we'll bring back Slurm Classic and make billions!
Slurm Queen: Honey comes from a bee's behind. Milk comes from a cow's behind. And have you ever used toothpaste?
Fry: Whose behind does that come from?
Slurm Queen: You don't wanna know.
Fry: What about me?
Slurm Queen: You are free to go.
Fry: Yes!
Slurm Queen: If you can resist this concentrated Super Slurm! [The Glurmos grab him and sit him in a chair in front of a tub. The Slurm Queen fills the tub with a dark green slime.] It's so delicious, you'll eat until you explode! Oh, which reminds me, put a cover over that sofa, will you? Bon appétit!
- Fry says he can't swim, but he is treading water, once Leela jumps in to save him.
- Fry, Leela and Bender went down the drain in the Slurm river, yet when they open the door to the fake factory, it is revealed they are level with the river.
- The river may have been on a slope, making it so that after going down a drain on a high part of a river, one is level with a low part.
- The Slurm Queen says that milk comes from a cow's behind, but we learn in "A Fishful of Dollars" that cows are extinct. Milk came from cows, but no longer comes from them.
- Milk does not come from a cow's behind, at least in our time, and neither does honey come from a bee's behind.
- The Queen could have been purposefully lying to make Slurm seem less disgusting to the crew.
- When Leela is lowered into the royal Slurm (16:00) there is a stalagmite next to the pool and no grate, at 16:55 and onward, the grate appears and stalagmite is gone.
- The machine which was to recycle Bender to make Slurm cans has no back panel when it is first shown, the cave wall behind it can be seen inside the opening. It is dark inside the machine every other time it is seen.
- At the very end of the episode, Bender drinks a can of Slurm and says, "Hey, that's not that bad", yet in other episodes ("The 30% Iron Chef" for example) we learn that taste isn't one of Bender's 8 senses.
- Bender has been able to taste lots of drinks, so he may just not be able to taste solid food.
- In some shots, the hole in Bender's body disappears.
- When Slurms MacKenzie takes his sunglasses off in the tunnel toward the end of the episode, his eyes are briefly solid black.
Alien Language Sightings
Time: 01:19
Location: Rules of the contest
Language: AL1
Translation: The following species are ineligible: space wasps, space beavers, any other animal with the word 'space' in front of it, space chickens, and the elusive yak-face.
Time: 03:25
Location: Eye Chart
Language: AL1
n o
s q u i
n t i n g
f o u r
e y e s
- Amy
- Debut: Trixie
- Bender
- Boxy Robot
- Calculon
- Debut: Dixie
- Monique
- Fry
- Debut: Glurmo
- Debut: Grunka Lunkas
- Hattie
- Debut: Hermaphrobot
- Hermes
- Leela
- Prof. Farnsworth
- Mom (cameo, Robot Oil)
- Debut: Slurms MacKenzie
- Debut: Slurm master
- Debut: Slurm Queen
- Zoidberg
Episode Credits
- Writer
- Director
- Voice Actors
- Special Guest
- DVD Commentatary


text:
I've chatted informally with some folks about this question before and gotten some very nice insights, but I thought I'd toss it out to a wider audience because it is a continuing curiosity of mine.
Roughly, here's what I have in mind: Let $\mathcal{E}$ denote the eigencurve of some tame level $N$. At classical points, one has attached to the associated form an automorphic representation $\pi = \otimes \pi_\ell$. For $\ell\neq p$, there are results (though I've forgotten the author(s) and couldn't dig up the reference in the course of posting this) about the loci in the eigencurve corresponding to various conditions on the $\pi_\ell$. By conditions here I'm rather open-minded - things such as special, supercuspidal, bounds on conductor, etc., are all of interest to me.
My question is: What is known about the analogous questions for $\ell=p$?


text: Gaea was the great deity of the early Greeks. She represented the Earth and was worshipped as the universal mother who had created the universe and borne both the first race of gods (the Titans) and the first humans. Her husband was Uranus, the god of the sky. She presided over marriages and oaths and was honoured as a prophetess.


text:
Paul Keller, Quality America's President, has developed and implemented successful Six Sigma and Quality Improvement programs in service and manufacturing environments. Paul has been with Quality America since 1992, where he has:
Links to his works:
Paul has authored a number of well-received publications, including:
Before launching Quality America's training services in 1992, Paul specialized in Quality Engineering in the Masters Program at the University of Arizona. He applied these techniques as a Quality Manager for a consumer goods manufacturer (1990-1992), and an SPC Director at an industrial products manufacturer (1987-1990). In these roles, he developed company-wide Quality Systems to meet the demands of a diverse customer base, including the automotive and aerospace industries.
Paul may be reached via e-mail.


text:
Unlikely Chronicler of Jewish Neighborhood
The president of the New York Tattoo Society is an unlikely figure to launch what may be the most ambitious publishing venture ever to cover the Jewish Lower East Side. Clayton Patterson, a non-Jew whose long beard could be mistaken for that of a biblical patriarch, is the editor of the three-volume "Jews: A People's History of the Lower East Side," a project now nearing completion.
Patterson, who has been a fixture of the neighborhood since moving to New York City in 1979, has been working on the book since 2005. While the Lower East Side is known for having been home to millions of Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century, his book focuses on the life of the neighborhood after most of those immigrants left, and on the effects of recent gentrification.
"The genius of most of America was attached to cheap rent and an inexpensive lifestyle," Patterson told the Forward on a rainy Thursday afternoon. "Whether it be Madonna or Jackson Pollock or Jimi Hendrix or Rabbi Moshe Feinstein — all of these people were able to develop their ideas and their theories and their work because they had the time to deal with it. At $3,000 a month, you just don't have time to grow and develop."
In Patterson's sprawling and raucous 1,300-odd pages, Feinstein and other legendary Jewish figures rub shoulders with lesser-known characters. Someone looking for Allen Ginsberg might stumble upon Lionel Ziprin, a poet who studied the Zohar, fell in love with the same woman as Marlon Brando, entertained Thelonius Monk, received a flattering letter from T.S. Eliot and was the grandson of mystic rabbi Nuftali Zvi Margolies Abulafia. Ziprin's friend was musicologist Harry Smith, best known for his seminal Anthology of American Folk Music, who donated the world's largest paper airplane collection to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
A still unknown Philip Glass is described as directing movers to carry musical equipment to and from his sixth-floor walk-up. Educational Alliance students, like sculptor Louise Nevelson and artist Ben Shahn, make cameo appearances, as do film titans Louis B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn, on their way to transforming American popular culture.
"I'm not sure if most Jews are aware of how diverse the Jews are," Patterson said of the characters that fill his history. "Individuals who came through here changed the history of America countless times."
Though Patterson finished compiling most of the book's content in 2007, he has been trying to raise money for its design, printing and distribution. In November 2011 he succeeded in netting $13,000 from 72 backers by using the fundraising website Kickstarter.com, and now he is in negotiations with printers to produce the work. He hopes to have it completed in the next couple of months.
Patterson distinguishes his project from the landmark book "World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made," published in 1976. He said that the work, by Irving Howe with principal researcher Kenneth Libo, had a narrative point of view, while his own volumes allow more recent voices to speak for themselves. And speak they do: In about 160 essays, artists, rabbis and writers cover subjects ranging from shtieblekh to the shvitz.
The first volume, which focuses on the area below Delancey Street, was co-edited by Yeshiva University sociologist Mareleyn Schneider, who also contributed articles on such subjects as collector and archivist Danny Stein, late congressman Leonard Farbstein, and Jewish recipes using organ meats and "other awful animal inedibles." Another contributor is Suzanne Wasserman, director of the Gotham Center for New York City History at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. "I can't think of anything like it, with its mix of memoir, nonfiction and interviews," she said of the book. "It's got a little bit of everything."
The work that Patterson has done as a photographer, artist, local historian, documentary filmmaker, activist, collagist, curator, archivist and organizer is too vast to fit into any one category. The embroidered baseball caps that he has designed with his partner, Elsa Rensaa, have been worn by artist David Hockney, actor Matt Dillon and filmmaker Gus Van Sant, and he decorated a jacket for Mick Jagger. His Essex Street loft — once a sewing factory — contains hundreds of thousands of photographs as well as collections of street stickers and ephemera such as empty heroin bags. As an asphalt anthropologist, he documents graffiti as though it were his native tongue.
Patterson, 63, grew up in Calgary, Alberta, where he studied art and design, taught in a small country high school and once brought a sheep to class to show how a sweater is made. After moving to New York, he gained notoriety for filming the 1988 Tompkins Square Park Riot, in which police clashed violently with protesters and park habitués.
He has also had a longtime involvement with the neighborhood's Jewish community. In the 1990s, Patterson poured his energy into helping the 8th Street Shul, an institution that welcomed an eclectic group of worshippers who may not have felt accepted in a mainstream Orthodox congregation. For his role in helping to save the building, Patterson was elevated to the synagogue board. "Meshuga, right?" he asked during our interview.
This interest is reflected in his history. It includes entries on institutions like the Congregation Chasam Sopher, on Clinton Street, whose eternal light used to be turned off to prevent burglary. The book also includes a history of the Forward building at 175 East Broadway, by Yeshiva University librarian and curator Shulamith Berger, titled, "The Forward's Edifice Complex." In early days, when the office was on Duane Street, the reader learns, Forward typesetters "brought their lunches from home and hung them on sticks over the gas fixtures. As the food warmed up, smells of Lithuanian, Galician, and Romanian cooking filled the shop."
Over the years, the Lower East Side has continued to exercise a tremendous pull on the popular imagination. Wasserman captures such sentimentalism in describing Sammy's Roumanian Steak House: "Customers get to relive the poor Eastern European immigrant past in an expensive restaurant on one of the East Side's most not yet gentrified streets…. The Lower East Side became a site of Jewish identification, eventually even for those who had never lived there."
Patterson, meanwhile, has been conjuring additional topics for future volumes, from unions to a Jewish herb seller he runs into on First Avenue. He would also like to publish a volume about Puerto Ricans on the Lower East Side. Ambling through the neighborhood recently, he strolled over to a printer on East Ninth Street, carrying a mock-up of his latest project: a coloring book of Lower East Side legends, of which he may well be one.
"The Lower East Side was always a place people wanted to get away from," he said. "But the reality is, that's where the gold is, that's where the riches are. This is an end period, and what was before will never be again…. I wanted to capture as much as possible."
Gary Shapiro contributes to the Heard & Scene page of The Wall Street Journal.


text:
OGIO Mallet Putter Headcover
- In stock, ready to ship
- Inventory on the way
- Product shipped from our Melbourne warehouse.
Upgrade your headcover to reflect your individuality and leave no doubt which putter is yours. Protect your flat stick with these distinctive and durable headcovers.
- Fits most mallet-style putter heads
- Magnetic closure for a secure fit
- Thick and soft fleece inner lining to protect the clubhead
- Premium durable exterior fabric
All products ordered will be dispatched within 1-3 business days and shipped via Australia Post or Sendle.
Shipping costs will depend on the size and weight of your item. The larger and heavier the item, the greater the shipping cost. All shipping costs will be provided at checkout.
CMD Sports ships to all Australian states and territories as well as New Zealand. For certain items we also ship to North America. For all other destinations please contact our Customer Care Team.
In rare cases, packaging to products may be damaged in transit from our warehouse. CMD apologises for any inconvenience.
As per Australian Consumer Law, customers are entitled to a replacement (pending stock availability), credit or refund if the goods they receive are faulty, different to the product that was described or different to the product that was shown to them.
In the event of selecting the wrong size, please contact our Customer Care team who can advise whether that product is able to be returned. Please note that any shipping costs for these returns are to be paid by the customer and goods must be if the returned unworn in as new condition with tags if the return is approved. Unfortunately returns on clearance items is not possible.
Returns or exchanges are not provided in the case of product misuse or modification.


text:
Cheeseburger Casserole
This turned out delicious, hearty, filling and super flavorful and it tasted even better with ketchup drizzled over the top. I love McCormick Montreal Steak Seasoning (it makes all ground meats taste better) so I used that when browning the meat and omitted salt & pepper from later in the recipe to make up for it. I also accidentally cut it into 9 servings at first instead of 6, so the photo does not represent a full serving. This was also fantastic as leftovers and even after eating it for several meals in a row I was disappointed when I ran out of it!
Cheeseburger Casserole
Yield: 6 servings
- 2 large Yukon Gold or Butter potatoes, boiled or steamed whole, drained and cooled
- 1 medium garlic cloves, minced
- 1 small onion
- 1 small green pepper
- 1 cup mushrooms
- 1.25 pounds raw extra lean ground turkey breast
- 1 tablespoon McCormick Montreal Steak Seasoning
- 1/8 tsp ground cumin
- 2 oz Velveeta Light 2% Processed Cheese, cubed
- 1/4 cup low-fat evaporated milk
- 1/8 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
- 8 baked tortilla chips
- Preheat the oven to 350. Spray a 9" square baking dish with cooking spray.
- Put onion, green pepper and mushrooms in a food processor and pulse until chopped (or chop them by hand into small pieces).
- Peel and slice potatoes thin. Layer in the prepared baking dish. Bake potatoes until slightly crisp, about 10 minutes. Remove baking dish from oven and set aside.
- While potatoes are baking, coat a large nonstick skillet with cooking spray and bring to medium-high heat; add garlic, onion, green pepper and mushrooms. Cook, stirring frequently, until vegetables are tender, about 7 to 10 minutes and remove to a plate, cover to keep warm and set aside.
- Add turkey to the skillet with the steak seasoning and cook until browned, breaking up meat with a spoon as it cooks, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add cooked vegetables and cumin to turkey and stir to combine. Pour mixture over potatoes in the baking dish.
- In a small microwave safe bowl, combine cheese product, evaporated milk and crushed red pepper flakes; cover and microwave on high power until cheese melts, about 1 to 2 minutes. Spoon melted cheese over turkey and finish by sprinkling with tortilla chips.
- Bake for 35 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes before slicing into 6 pieces.
MyWW SmartPoints per (1/6 of the recipe) serving: (SP calculated using the recipe builder on weightwatchers.com)
Green: 6 SmartPoints/ Blue: 4 SmartPoints/ Purple: 1 SmartPoints
Weight Watchers Points Plus:
5 per serving (P+ calculated using the recipe builder on weightwatchers.com)
Adapted from weightwatchers.com


text:
This article is more than 1 year old
Australia giving snoop powers to employers
No consent needed for reading staff emails
The Australian government is considering extending email snooping powers currently restricted to security services to all employers.
Using the usual canard of terrorism, Australia's deputy prime minister Julia Gillard said today the government was considering giving employers the right to snoop on staff emails without consent.
Gillard said the move was about protecting "critical infrastructure", but not about "who did what at the Christmas party".
She said: "When we think of infrastructure, we think of roads and bridges and big things. But our technology is a big infrastructure issue these days. If our banking system collapsed, if our government electronic systems collapsed obviously that would have huge implications for society."
Australian civil liberties groups were less impressed, saying there was a danger of losing the balance between maintaining freedoms and providing law enforcement with sufficient powers to fight terrorism.
Legal restrictions on Australian firms reading staff emails vary from state to state. In New South Wales companies are free to read their staff emails at the moment - as long as they notify them first. If you are using a work address, work PC and a work server, then some form "ownership" is usually assumed.
From Gillard's comments it is unclear whether the changes would be limited to infrastructure companies such as utilities or apply for all businesses.
In the UK employers have full access to staff emails and phone calls and many larger companies have full-time staff to monitor staff communications.®


text:
The prime function of the County Collector is the collection of taxes.
The collector must collect the taxes due as shown on the Assessor's records.
It is the obligation of the taxpayer to see that his property is properly described and assessed on the tax books.
By state law your tax obligation is established on January 1st even if you move to another state the next day, you are still taxable for the year. The law makes no provision for pro-rating the tax bill.
It is the current owner's responsibility for paying all taxes due on the property.
We cannot accept payments for incorrect amounts.
Partial payments are not accepted.
The County Collector will not be responsible should you make payment of taxes on property other than your own or omit making payment on property you own.
You are responsible for updating addresses in the Assessor's Office. If you fail to do this, you will be held liable for all penalties incurred.
Any questions or errors must be brought to the attention of the Assessor's office before payment is made.
The Collector of Revenue has no authority to make any changes to the tax statement without the County Assessor's intervention.


text:
ISC East is back, will take place Nov. 28 and 29
By Martha Entwistle
Updated Mon November 5, 2012
ISC East has been rescheduled for Nov. 28 and 29 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City, Reed Expo's Ed Several told me in a phone call earlier today.
ISC East was originally scheduled for Oct. 30 and 31 was postponed due to Hurricane Sandy.
Details will be available on the ISC East site www.isceast.com this afternoon, Several said. Also, an email will go out to everyone who had registered to attend the event.
"We're making this as easy as possible," Several said. "We have an email going out this afternoon that will enable someone who is already pre-registered to click a button to say I'm interested in joining you again," he said.
Several said Reed and the Security Industry Association and other organizers have worked long days and weekends with the Javits Center to work out the details of rescheduling the trade show.
Typically, dates for trade shows are booked "years in advance� � we were able to do some maneuvering to get dates that will be four weeks after the original," Several said. "We couldn't do it any earlier," he said, noting that residents and businesses in the New York metropolitan area is still recovering from the storm.
The fact that many exhibitors have booths and other materials stored in the New York area makes the rescheduling a little bit easier, he said.
Is there a precedent for rescheduling a trade show this large? Several said that Reed had to postpone and reschedule a food industry trade show a few years ago. The show was to take place in Florida and had to be postponed because of a hurricane.
"What is unprecedented is the fact that New York City experienced a storm of this magnitude," Several said.
"I'm happy that SIA, the ISC East team, exhibitors and attendees were in constant contact and were able to the address [rescheduling the show] prior to the storm making landfall � and we've been quickly able to reschedule for four weeks later," he said.
"On November 28, we'll be ready to go," Several said.


text:
(visited by Gary Meddick and Simon Peet)
09-Sep-2005 -- Our mission started over a year ago when Simon Peet's sister, Vivien Robson of Montreal, emailed him that the confluence of 50° N 92° W was just south of the Town of Sioux Lookout where we live. Simon asked Gary Meddick, the GIS Officer in the same building Simon works, if he was interested helping to find out more about this project.
After visiting the website and finding the spot on a map, we planned on visiting the location last winter by snowmobile. However, due to some very heavy snow fall in the bush and slush on the lakes, we decided that getting to the confluence in the winter was difficult and risky, and we would wait until open water and go by boat.
Friday, Sept 9th, 2005 we grabbed a boat and headed out. The weather was great, sunny, high of 21°C, cool breeze. We crossed Abram Lake from the boat launch, traversed Abram Chutes and part of Minnitaki Lake, and headed into Troutfish Bay. After traveling to the back part of the Bay to get as close as possible by boat, we started out on foot for about a kilometre hike. If you have ever been in Northern Ontario, you may know about "blowdown": trees that have been blown over by the wind and make for slow going in the bush. Thankfully, we found some moose trails for part of the walk. After walking nearly 2 km's to cover 1 km, we found the spot. With all the tree cover at the site the best our Garmin Map76 could give us was 14.3m accuracy, good for up north under cover. We took the standard pictures of the GPS, the view, us, and headed home, all within an enjoyable 4 hour trip.
We would like to thank Vivien Robson for setting us on this journey and Mother Nature for some great weather.


text:
Anatoly Artsebarsky
Anatoly Artsebarsky is a cosmonaut who was born on September 9, 1956, in the Ukraine.
Artsebarsky became a cosmonaut in 1985. He has spent over 145 days in space on a single spaceflight. In 1991, Artsebarsky flew aboard Soyuz TM-12. The crew docked with the Russian Mir Space Station. Artsebarsky and a fellow cosmonaut stayed aboard Mir while the rest of the crew flew back to Earth after 8 days. Artsebarsky took six spacewalks during this mission. He spent over 33 hours walking in space.


text:
Shopping Basket: (0) Items |
SOURCE: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=209332 by Megan Hickey
Oct 23, 2012
Faced with a $298 million budget deficit, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has pledged not to raise taxes on homes, gasoline or retail purchases. However, he has not ruled out a cigarette tax hike for the city of Chicago.
Chicago already has the second highest cigarette taxes in the country, second only to New York City. As of June, the average total cost of a pack of cigarettes in Illinois was $10.25, cheaper than only New York's $12.50 per pack.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle proposed a plan Tuesday to raise the Cook County tax on smokes to $3 from $2. Faced with a large budget shortfall, Emanuel has not ruled out a similar increase for Chicago's tax.
"If we do consider the cigarette tax, it has to invest in children's health," Emanuel said in a recent press conference about the proposed 2013 budget.
But a tax hike won't necessarily mean more money for the city because many smokers have the option of driving across state lines to buy cheaper cigarettes. A pack in Wisconsin is about $7.98, which ranks it 11th in the nation. Indiana is 39th on the list at $5.56 a pack.
The Cook County Board acknowledges Chicago's smokers may take their business elsewhere if the tax hike is passed. "As taxes go up, consumption goes down, especially for cigarettes," said Cook County spokesman Owen Kilmer. "So we are actually expecting a revenue loss."
In Chicago, the combined tax on a pack is currently $5.67, which comprises four different taxes. The federal tax is $1.01; Illinois tax is $1.98; Cook County collects $2; and the city of Chicago collects 68 cents.
Any increase would come at a time when cigarette sales are already down although tobacco companies are still managing to profit through other products. Reynolds American Inc. posted a nearly 7 percent profit increase in the third quarter Tuesday. The tobacco giant can thank e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products. The company performed slightly under analyst's expectations and its stock price fell 58 cents to close at $41.94.
Reynolds American is the second largest tobacco company in the U.S. The maker of brands such as Camel, Pall Mall, and Winston posted $420 million in net income, or 74 cents per diluted share, a 6.6 percent increase from $394 million, or 67 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.
Total sales fell 3.7 percent, coming in at $2.1 billion from $2.2 billion in 2011. Sales of the company's tobacco products, in particular, fell 6.1 percent from $1.89 billion to $1.77 billion. In the company's conference call with analysts, Reynolds American CEO Daniel M. Delen blamed an "intensely competitive promotional environment."
Bonnie Herzog, analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, estimated that underlying tobacco consumption during the quarter was down 3.5 percent. If Chicago taxes are hiked further, Kilmer expects cigarette sales here to decline even further.
But this does not mean that tobacco companies such as Reynolds American are in danger. Herzog cited the company for its innovation in smokeless tobacco and e-cigarette brands. "RAI has transformed itself into a comprehensive 'total tobacco' company, with leading brands and a solid strategy for long-term growth."
However, the overall decline in cigarette consumption is not a short-term trend. Net sales for the last nine months decreased 3.6 percent from the same period a year ago, to $6.2 billion from $6.5 billion. Reynolds American posted $1.13 billion in net income for the last nine months, or 1.98 cents per diluted share, a 2.8 percent increase from the same period a year ago, which saw a net income of $1.1 billion and 1.88 cents per diluted share.
Tax hikes would only further this trend and result in lost revenue. But the health benefits exceed the costs, according to Kilmer, who cites a projected 7.2 percent decrease in youth smoking and the prevention of 18,400 children from becoming addicted to tobacco. In the long term, health-care costs savings could also reach $640.6 million.
As for the effects on Chicago's consumers, Kilmer explained that a sales tax cut on Dec. 31 would save Cook County taxpayers $86 million in 2013. "It will be cheaper to buy groceries and baby formula," Kilmer said. "Just not cigarettes."
All Rights Reserved The #1 Rated E-Cigarette® & The Best Way to Smoke® ®2007-2020 ProSmoke® Electronic Cigarettes - ProCigs™ |


text:
Since 1857, when Hampton L. Story built his first instrument, discriminating purchasers have marveled at the fine craftsmanship that makes every Story & Clark piano a treasure. Exacting standards for tonal excellence and quality at a superb overall value are the hallmarks of the Story & Clark name.
Today's Story & Clark pianos reflect the company's rich and unique American history of over a century and a half of innovation combined with expert craftsmanship in piano making. Melville Clark is generally credited with creating the first player piano as we know it today (the Apollo). In 1912, he invented the Marking Piano, which made it possible to record piano rolls from live performances with expression. This revolutionized the industry and was used until 1931, making it possible to preserve the historic performances of legendary greats such as George Gershwin and Fats Waller. The company went on to develop the first electric piano in partnership with RCA in 1939 and today they continue the tradition with PNOscan™.
Beginning in 2008, each Story & Clark piano comes standard with PNOscan, a state-of-the-art optical sensor invisibly installed under the keys, as well as discretely placed USB and MIDI ports. These innovations do not interfere with the touch, response or beauty of the piano in any way and yet open up a world of possibilities through connectivity.
Today, there is nothing you can do with a digital piano that you can't do with a Story & Clark acoustic piano with the proper accessories. In fact, the potential of Story & Clark acoustic pianos exceeds that of any digital, yet does not have the major drawback of most technology: obsolescence. Via PNOscan and ports, Story & Clark pianos give you the ability to connect with new MIDI devices, personal computers and the Internet and take advantage of new technology as it develops. Whether you want to learn to play the piano or are an accomplished professional musician, Story & Clark pianos are designed to meet your needs.


text:
• eke •
Pronunciation: eek • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, transitive
Meaning: 1. To add to, to supplement, to extend. 2. To barely scrape by with, to gain very little through very hard work or exertion (often used with out: eke out a living).
Notes: Please do not confuse today's Good Word with the interjection of fright sometimes emitted by children: "Eek!" They are not related. In fact, today's word has no relations according to the dictionaries. You can certainly derive a verbal noun, eking, on the fly, but referring to someone barely scraping by as an eker would be pushing your luck.
In Play: Today's is another Good Word tottering on the brink of extinction, especially in its original meaning: "Sandy Beach eked out the pleasure of the sun with occasional dips in a most refreshing ocean while she was on vacation." Here the word clearly means "to add to". The second meaning is by far the more common, though: "Susan Liddy-Gates repaired to Candy's Bar in hopes of eking a little fun out of that dismal day when she lost her first case since becoming a lawyer."
Word History: This word started out in Old English as ecan "add on, augment", a descendant of Old Germanic aukjan. It is easy to see that this word is related to Latin augere "to increase" and Greek auxanein "to increase." The roots of these words are found in several English borrowings such as augment and auxiliary "assistant, support-". If we switch the [a] and [u] and shift the [u] to [w] (common when [u] occurs before a vowel), we get the root of English wax [wak-s] "to grow" as in "to wax poetic". A few more changes and we get waist, an area well known for its growth and additions. (Today's excellent little word is an addition suggested by our old friend and Grand Panjandrum of the Alpha Agora, Mark Bailey.)
P.S. - Register for the Daily Good Word E-Mail! - You can get our daily Good Word sent directly to you via e-mail in either HTML or Text format. Go to our Registration Page to sign up today!


text:
North Korea is modernizing its technologies — as only North Korea can.
Foreigners are now able to bring their mobile phones into the country, with the caveat that they must purchase North Korean SIM cards upon arrival.
Now Koryolink, a North Korean mobile phone provider, plans to launch a 3G data service — but only foreigners can use it.
More than one million North Koreans use mobile phones, but not a onewill be able to use the new 3G network, according to the BBC.
Egyptian telecommunications firm Orascom, a partner of Koryolink, launched a 3G phone network in North Korea in 2008, but it can only be used for phone calls. (International calls, including to South Korea, are banned, the BBC reported.)
North Korea's moves to digitize itself, small as they may be, come on the heels of a visit from Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, who visited the country in early January with former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. After leaving, Schmidt wrote on Google+ that North Korea's isolationist attitude toward the Internet was damaging its economic growth, adding that it would be easy for 3G access to be enabled with the existing technology.
This is precisely what's happened — for visitors, at least. Locals, however, will still reportedly have yesteryear access that excludes foreign news.
LinkedIn Battling China's Real-World Social Networking
China's deeply-embedded notion of guanxi, which refers to personal relationships reinforced by mutual favors, is making it hard for Western professional networking sites to gain traction.
Guanxi doesn't bode well for US-based LinkedIn and French counterpart Viadeo, according to the South China Morning Post. The two social networks are trying to tap into China's vast Internet market, but the thinking is that guanxi will render professional networks moot because people do not want to meet — and cannot gain from meeting — people they don't already know. Having an extensive, hundreds-strong LinkedIn network is useless compared to having guanxi with the right person.
About one percent of LinkedIn's 200 million users come from China. The site is not available in Chinese.
Huawei Says It Has World's Speediest Phone
Chinese telecommunications equipment company Huawei has unveiled what it claims is the world's fastest smartphone.
The phone connects to the Internet two to three times faster than other WiFi-using smartphones, according to the Guardian.
The device, the Ascend P2, runs on Android. It can download music and videos in seconds, and high-definition films in minutes.
Huawei, which overtook BlackBerry in the fourth quarter of 2012 as the world's third-largest smartphone maker, was at the heart of a U.S. Congressional investigation last year over concerns that the company was a cybersecurity threat.
Mandiant Report: Fallout Still Falling
A report last week from cybersecurity firm Mandiant, which indicted the Chinese military in a perfectly grand cyberespionage campaign against the U.S., continued to generate stories.
China's hacking operations are becoming increasingly professional and, above all, huge, according to the Associated Press. China conducts "an order of magnitude" more cyberattacks than any other country, said a Rand Corporation analyst interviewed by the AP. The same expert also points out that the Chinese hackers take the weekend off — a sign that they are paid and not part of a ragtag operation.
Hackers have also embedded viruses into a fake file of the Mandiant report, according to ZDNet.com. The tainted versions of the report install malware that allows hackers to remotely control the computer.


text:
Find Our Latest Video Reviews on YouTube!
If you want to stay on top of all of our video reviews of the latest tech, be sure to check out and subscribe to the Gear Live YouTube channel, hosted by Andru Edwards! It's free!
Monday January 28, 2008 1:04 pm
Pave the Way With Nintendo
You want to redecorate your backyard but still maintain the fact that you live for Nintendo as far back as the original Gameboys. How about some bricks to liven up your yard? The creator had arranged them into a wall and in the ground back in 2006 and claims that they are still intact, unlike most of those portable gaming systems. Each one is $45.00 apiece, fairly pricey for something that just lies there. But we figure you can always turn your front bushes into leafy Mario Brothers to match.
Read More | Geiskes
Latest Gear Live Videos
© Gear Live Inc. {year} – User-posted content, unless source is quoted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License. Gear Live graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, videos, articles, blogs, forums, scripts and other service names are the trademarks of Gear Live Inc.


text:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 6, 2012
Contact: Bob Considine (609) 984-1795 Lawrence Ragonese (609) 292-2994 Larry Hajna (609) 984-1795
PICNIC PAVILIONS UNVEILED AT LIBERTY STATE PARK Newest Enhancement Marks Administration's Commitment to Make State Parks More Sustainable
(12/P100) TRENTON - A new picnic area featuring eco-friendly amenities and dramatic views of the Statue of Liberty and the New York City skyline is being unveiled at a ribbon-cutting ceremony today at Liberty State Park.
The picnic pavilions at Freedom Field, the first sheltered picnic area in the park, marks another milestone in the Christie Administration's Sustainable Parks Plan to enhance and expand park programs.
"These pavilions will enhance a location which is already a jewel in the New Jersey State Park system," DEP Commissioner Bob Martin said. "Families, non-profit and private groups will be able to access this facility for picnicking and enjoyment of the park. In line with Gov. Christie's Sustainable Parks Plan, the pavilions also will help generate more visitors and revenues to help make the parks more financially self-sustaining, while maintaining its environmental integrity."
"New Jersey prides itself on offering its visitors and residents stellar customer service. The picnic pavilions represent another great example of the state's commitment to convenient and safe amenities for people who come to the park to enjoy the magnificent views or reflect on the day," said Grace Hanlon, Executive Director of the New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism.
The two picnic pavilions, one seating 120 visitors and the other seating 80 visitors, are located at Eastern Terminus of Theodore Conrad Drive on the park property in Jersey City. Each pavilion has lights, electrical outlets and charcoal grills, and the facility is wheelchair accessible. A new restroom facility at the site was designed to be eco-friendly with translucent walls providing natural light, waterless urinals, low-water use toilets and electric hand dryers instead of paper towel dispensers. The exterior of the building is illuminated with LED bulbs.
The use of the picnic facility will be by reservation. An affordable day-use fee for each pavilion will be applied.
"The Freedom Field Picnic Pavilions will provide great picnicking options for larger groups and alleviate the high demand on the existing free, open-air picnic areas for the general public," said Lou Valente, Chief Project Advisor on Sustainable Parks for the DEP's Division of Natural and Historic Resources.
The Department of Environmental Protection began construction on the two pavilions, restroom facility, parking lot, paths and scenic overlooks last year. The $1.8 million project was primarily funded from New Jersey's Corporate Business Tax fund, with $200,000 provided by the Hudson County's Open Space Trust Fund and another $30,000 from the Friends of Liberty State Park.
The project was managed by the DEP's Office of Resource Development and the Department of the Treasury's Division of Property Management and Construction. USA Architects served as the project designer and engineer. Jeral Construction Services was the general contractor.
"These picnic pavilions serve the park's true purpose of bringing people of all backgrounds together to relax and enjoy life behind Lady Liberty - the world's greatest symbol of democracy and freedom,'' said Sam Pesin, President of Friends of Liberty State Park.
"The park is not just a state and regional treasure it is truly an oasis of green in our very urbanized county. The Freedom Pavilions will only add to the experience for all who visit Liberty State Park," said Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise.
Liberty State Park was dedicated on June 14, 1976 as New Jersey's bicentennial gift to the nation. The land that now makes up the park once housed the greatest concentration of freight and commuter rail facilities in the New York Harbor area.
Since 1976, the DEP has been committed to reclaiming the land from its industrial past and developing amenities, services and natural areas to provide a first-rate park experience. Liberty State Park draws more than five million visitors a year. It is New Jersey's most-attended state park and the second most-visited state park in the country.
In addition to wildlife habitats, fields, nature trails, bike paths and a two-mile waterfront walkway along the Hudson River, Liberty State Park also boasts destinations like the Liberty Science Center; Liberty Landing Marina; Maritime Parc and Liberty House restaurants; the historic Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal building; the Nature Interpretive Center; and the New Jersey Empty Sky 9/11 Memorial.
In November 2011, Governor Chris Christie announced the state's Sustainable Parks Plan designed to keep all 39 of New Jersey's state parks and more than 50 historic sites open, to provide affordable recreation to state residents. Components of the plan, which the Governor announced at Liberty State Park, include enhancing and expanding park programs and events to generate more visitors, with a goal of making the parks more financially self-sustaining.
This summer, Liberty State Park hosted a variety of events and attractions, including the Girl Scouts Council of New Jersey's centennial celebration and the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic.
For more information on Liberty State Park, visit: http://www.nj.gov/dep/parksandforests/parks/liberty.html
News Releases: DEP News Home | Archives Department: NJDEP Home | About DEP | Index by Topic | Programs/Units | DEP Online Statewide: NJ Home | Services A to Z | Departments/Agencies | FAQs
Copyright © State of New Jersey, 1996-2024 Last Updated: September 7, 2012


text:
August 28, 2012
Encourage students to study abroad at the Study Abroad Fair
Encourage your students to attend the Study Abroad Fair from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 29, in the K-State Student Union Ballroom on the second floor. Students will be able to learn about study abroad opportunities, costs and scholarship information.
They will get to experience personal testimonials about different countries from students and representatives as well as learn that a once-in-a-lifetime, unforgettable experience can be affordable.