text:
There's a strong argument to MakeTheMachineWorkHarder and avoid specifying the exact type of emphasis used, falling back to specifying things like "this is a quote", and "this is an alternate title" rather than "this is bold" or italic.
In most well-run wikis, typefaces have clear meaning. In Wikipedia articles for instance you can expect meta or editors notes in italics, alternate titles in bold, and so on. When converting these it would be better to figure out their semantics.
Even if that's not possible, BoldAndItalicsReasoning doesn't hold up - it misses all the important points about the problem and seems to assume that all the problems that will ever exist in wiki markup or extensions to it are known now. It's nabbing symbols left and right to overload for trivial purposes when there are dead serious purposes like use in URLs that a user has to learn in order to use the net at all. It's defying perfectly good conventions that there's no reason at all to defy, and which can be combined in very useful ways.
First, it's true that "a star (*) is the most used symbol to bold text online", but it's ALSO used for unordered lists in most wikis. That said, other marks like = mean one thing at the start of a line (see headings) and something else within text, so it's not wholly impossible to do.
It's astonishing to accept that "a slash (/) looks like slanted italics, so it is intuitive", when there is no precedent for this use and the slash is universally and necessarily used for extremely semantically meaningful categorizing in URLs, including every single URL with a slash in it that ever showed up on a TV screen.
It's unwise in the extreme to overload a character that is already widely used for a wholly different reason at an entirely different semantic level. At least overloading stars to mean "bold" and "list item" was arguably both syntatic. A bad convention like use of slash for italics would prevent its use in extensions of Creole that wanted to add say semantic links or embedded content or whatever. Such usage would extend the user's existing understanding of a slash, which is, to refer to a more specialized version or included item in a hierarchy. They would realize that they shouldn't try to use slashes unless they knew that hierarchy, exactly as they know for URLs. Above all, they wouldn't get confused about the "" that ALREADY EXISTS AT THE FRONT OF ALL URLS where it separates the protocol from the domain. See also colon.
Though two single quotes do look a bit like a double quote, both mediawiki and tikiwiki use this convention, and where that is true it's dangerous to defy all that data weight and try to invent a new convention.
The mediawiki use of single quotes for emphasis, so that 'bold', italic and 'bold italic' all use the same symbol, is perfectly acceptable. The tikiwiki convention of bold remains useful for alternate titles even if the mediawiki usage is retained, since there are reasons to bold things sometimes that are not alternate titles. Therefore use of the title convention could imply some reasonable default behaviour like to automatically create redirect pages to that page with the alternate titles, or notify the user that pages with those titles already existed.
The logic that "the underscore (_) was not chosen, because that could be confused for underlining" is absurd, since links normally appear underlined, and the title is exactly the text that does normally appear underlined in a link to that page. This proposal does not even dealing with underline. If it did, it would have to deal also with the fact that an ___alternate title__ could and should be both bolded (to signal it as a title) and underlined or linked (usually also therefore underlined) to the redirect directive itself (so it can be changed or its talk page accessed).
Using one symbol (the single quote) for the font/style choice works well enough in mediawiki and it avoids overloading symbols. There's no reason not to support the mediawiki and tikiwiki syntax in parallel for those who object very strongly to the use of slash and star to specify types of emphasis, and don't want this damage in their data.
I have not time to write a rhetorical argument in support of the above. The previous one makes it clear (as do the discussions on Meatball and elsewhere) that / is a poor choice for italics. I won't support it in the parser I am currently working on.
Forgot to mention: irc:freenode.net/socialtext and irc:freenode.net/mediawiki present a not-atypical "collision". (irc://freenode.net/socialtext and irc://freenode.net/mediawiki)
Re: slash precedence -- I've seen it since 1995 (when I got online) on the web, on usenet, on irc, and in personal communications. In plain text it reminds one of italics, and as those are commonly used for emphasis, it's appropriate syntactually. Semantically, it is also used for article titles and similar.
Though it breaks the doubled-operator convention, why not *emphasis (aka italics)* and **strong emphasis (aka bold)**?
Well, I've been online since 1985 and I've never seen it in use for the above. <shrug> But did you notice the use of // causes a collision within the Creole 1.0 specification for linking urls? http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/BoldAndItalicsReasoning states the double slash does not collide with any wiki, yet it collides with the use of free url links. In short, it collides with *every* wiki.


text:
Nathan Lewin, a lawyer for the Jewish group Chabad, said in a statement provided to The Associated Press that Chabad was the rightful owner and Putin's proposal was not acceptable.
"The collection must be returned to the Agudas Chasidei Chabad library at Chabad's worldwide headquarters in Brooklyn, New York," Lewin said.
Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court here last month fined Russia $50,000 a day until it returns the documents to Chabad.
On Tuesday, at a meeting of government officials at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, Putin floated the idea of transferring them to the museum as a way to resolve the impasse. He said all the sides in the dispute should "strive not to inflame the situation but search for a solution," The New York Times reported.
Russian news agencies reported that Putin criticized Lamberth's ruling, saying "discussion of this problem has taken on elements of confrontation." Russia claims the collections are state property.
Last month, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the ruling "an absolutely unlawful and provocative decision" and threatened a tough response if US authorities try to seize Russian property in an attempt to get the fines.
Russia had earlier halted all art exhibit loans to the US, fearing they would be seized and held hostage in the court battle. That's despite Chabad's assurance in court filings that it will not go after any art deemed culturally significant by the State Department – which is the case for major exhibitions. Such art is already protected from legal claims under the Immunity from Seizure Act.
There are two collections at issue: Some 12,000 religious books and manuscripts seized during the Bolshevik revolution and the Russian Civil War nearly a century ago; and 25,000 pages of handwritten teachings and other writings of religious leaders stolen by Nazi Germany during World War II, then transferred by the Soviet Red Army as war booty to the Russian State Military Archive.
The books and manuscripts, some hundreds of years old, record Chabad's core teachings and traditions.
The case has been dragging on for eight years, and efforts to get the materials returned date back decades, involving presidential administrations and members of Congress of both parties.
Lamberth concluded earlier that the records are unlawfully held by the Russian State Library and the Russian military archive, and in 2010, he ordered the Russian government to turn them over to the US Embassy in Moscow or to Chabad's representative. But Russia refused, leading to the fines, which Russia hasn't paid.
The Obama administration unsuccessfully urged Lamberth not to issue the fines, arguing they wouldn't help resolve the dispute, would be counterproductive and would hurt US foreign policy interests.
The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Greenspan Commission
Appendix D
February 27, 1982
Dear Chairman Greenspan and Commission Members:
As you convene for the first time today, the Nation will be watching
with great interest the work and progress of the National Commission on
Social Security Reform. As I wrote to you at the time you agreed to serve,
I can think of no more important domestic problem requiring resolution
than restoring the integrity of Social Security and to do so without penalty
to those dependent on the programs.
Every American, of every age, has an important stake in the success of
your work. Each of you comes to this Commission from a position in government
or the private sector through which you can make possible the successful
implementation of a truly bipartisan solution to this great national problem.
This Commission is the product of the leadership of both parties of both
houses of the Congress as much as it is mine. Therefore, on behalf of
all Americans I wish you success as you begin your deliberations.
Ronald Reagan
Chairman Alan Greenspan
and Members of the National Commission
on Social Security Reform


text:
Belgian farmers sprayed 790,000 gallons of fresh milk onto their fields Wednesday, furious over the low milk prices they say are bankrupting farmers.
Milk farmers' groups said world prices had sunk so much they are having to sell milk at half their production costs, leaving more and more farmers unable to pay their bills.
To highlight their desperation, about 300 tractors dragged milk containers through plowed fields in southern Belgium, dumping a day's worth of milk production in that region.
"It is a scandal to dump this, but we have to realize what the situation is," said Belgian farm leader Erwin Schoepges. "We need a farm revolt."
The crisis has driven many EU farmers into a "milk strike," with thousands refusing to deliver milk to the industrial dairy conglomerates that produce anything from skimmed milk to processed cheese.
Romuald Schaber, the president of the European Milk Board farmers' group, said up to half the milk farmers in some areas were refusing to deliver their milk and predicted the first shortages could hit some supermarkets as early as next week.
"We are looking at a real catastrophe. Nobody can produce milk at these prices," he said.
To raise milk prices from the current 18 to 24 euro cents ($.26 to $.35) a kilo to the 40 cents ($.58) they say it required to cover costs, the farmers are demanding tougher EU production quotas. More government support is essential to stave off bankruptcies, they claim.
But the Europe-wide protests have also suffered from a lack of unity among farmers, with many either objecting to the spilling of milk or the strike itself.
The 27-nation EU already pays for extra help to farmers in addition to the euro55 billion ($80 billion) it pays annually for support payments, market regulation, storage aid, rural development and other projects.
Since the recovery from World War II, farming in Europe has always been exempt from free market forces as governments sought to end hunger and rationing by paying farmers to increase food output.
By the 1990s, Europe's farms were paid to produce too much and the scandal of wasteful EU butter mountains and wine lakes prompted talks on reforming the industry to phase out state support. Quotas for milk production are scheduled to end in 2015.
Agriculture is still one of the most shielded economic sectors in the EU, but it has not been able to protect farmers from the global financial crisis that caused demand to crash.
"If we go on for another three months like this, 40 percent of French milk producers will be condemned to bankruptcy," said Pascal Massol, a Breton farmer who leads the French protests.
EU farmers group Copa said without quick EU action, farmers would lose euro10 billion ($14 billion).
The European Union opposes tougher quotas, seeking instead to abolish the practice to let market forces have a stronger influence on production.
"I understand their emotions," EU Farm Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said of Wednesday's milk protest. "It is a human reaction."


text:
Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
If you are interested in taking a driving safety course to dismiss your citation, please read the eligibility requirements and ineligibility restrictions.
You may be eligible for deferred disposition and have your violation dismissed. However, you will lose that right if you do not request deferred disposition at the court on or before your initial appearance date.
The information explains a system of points related to traffic convictions that cause surcharges to apply to individuals when reapplying for a driver's license.
Find acceptable forms of payment and how to pay online.


text:
Internet Safety
Internet fraud often consists of scams that con artists have been using for years - only now they have a new medium and new victims to exploit.Internet Tips
Here are some tips to help you navigate safely through cyberspace:- Make sure your children know never to give out their full name, address, or phone number.
- Never give anyone your bank account number, social security number, or other personal information that isn't absolutely needed to complete a transaction.
- Never give out your internet password. Your online provider will not ask for your password other than at first log-in. Change your password often and be creative. Use a combination of letters and numbers, uppercase and lowercase.
- Parents can install software to block access to sites with distasteful or hazardous content and control access to chat rooms, news groups, and messages from other subscribers.
- Shop online only with companies you know. If you don't know a company, ask for a printed catalog before you decide to order electronically.
- Use a secure browser that will encrypt or scramble purchase information. If you don't have encryption software, consider calling the company's 800 number, faxing your order, or paying with check. Or look for software that can be downloaded from the Internet for free.
Top Internet Scams
- Business opportunities of franchises that are represented as more profitable than they really are.
- Internet-related services that are not delivered, such as designing a website. Equipment that isn't delivered or is a lower quality than promised.
- Pyramid schemes offering a chance to invest in an up-and-coming company with a guaranteed high return. You invest and must ask others to do the same. But when the pyramid collapses everyone loses - except the person at the top.
- Work-at-home schemes where individuals need to invest money in start-up services but don't earn enough money to recover the initial investment.


text:
Israel To Probe Birth Control for Ethiopian Immigrants
Israel's Health Ministry has ordered an investigation into whether government employees or health workers prescribed a birth control drug to Ethiopian immigrant women as a way to control the population.
Newspaper Haaretz reported on Thursday that a senior official had decided to name a team to look into charges that Ethiopian women were given Depo-Provera shots in an effort to limit the growth of their community in Israel.
Confirming the report, a ministry spokeswoman replied in a written statement that the ministry would "re-investigate the issue which was examined in the past, to ensure that there was no such directive from any governmental or other Israeli public organization."
Suspicions that Ethiopian women had been coerced into receiving Depo-Provera arose in Israeli media a few years ago and again in a recent TV documentary linking the group's falling birthrate to over-prescription of the injectable contraceptive.
Israel's government already said in January it would review the case after a civil rights group accused the health ministry of racism.
The ministry has already ordered doctors not to renew Depo-Provera prescriptions unless they were convinced patients understood the ramifications, according to a letter from the ministry posted on the group's website in January.
Ministry Director-General Roni Gamzu said at the time that the decision did not imply he accepted the allegations by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).
In a letter to Gamzu in January, ACRI said "the sweeping use of Depo-Provera among Ethiopian women raises heavy suspicions that we are talking about a deliberate policy to control and monitor fertility among this community.
"The data … point to a paternalistic, haughty and racist attitude that limits considerably the freedom of Ethiopian immigrants to choose the birth control that is medically suitable for them."
ACRI said statistics from a major Israeli health provider showed it had administered Depo-Provera injections to 5,000 women in 2008, 57 percent of whom were Ethiopian.
Israel has denied any policy to curb the birthrate among the 100,000 Ethiopian Jews who have moved to Israel since chief rabbis determined in 1973 that the community had biblical roots.
Some Ethiopian Jews have made it into Israel's parliament and officer ranks in the military, but complaints of discrimination in schooling and housing are common.
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved Depo-Provera in 1992, its prolonged use may reduce bone density and it should only be used for longer than two years if other birth control methods prove inadequate.
The documentary, broadcast on Israeli Educational Television, shows a nurse filmed by a hidden camera saying Ethiopian women were given Depo-Provera because they "don't understand anything" and would forget to take birth control pills.
Rick Hodes, medical director in Ethiopia for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a non-governmental group that aids immigration to Israel, denied the accusation that women are coerced into receiving the injections before leaving their country for the Jewish state.
"Injectable drugs have always been the most popular form of birth control in Ethiopia, as well as among women in our programme," Hodes wrote on Twitter.
"Our family programme is, and always (has) been, purely voluntary." (Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)


text:
Dust from Halley's Comet to produce shooting star spectacle in skies above Bedfordshire
The Orionids meteor shower, visible until 7 November with the peak being around the nights of 20/21 October. At its peak, up to 20 meteors are visible every hour.
The meteors can be seen from around 9pm onwards but will be most visible after the moon sets at about midnight.
Stargazers across the county could be in for a real treat too with the skies set to be nice and clear.
A Met Office spokesman urged residents to wrap up warm, go outside, lie back and look up.
The spokesman added: "To see the meteor shower, you don't need a telescope, binoculars or any other equipment – all you need is your eyes.
"Find a spot away from bright lights and let your eyes get used to the dark – this will take about 15 to 20 minutes."
"Orionid meteors are known to be very fast, travelling at about 41 miles per second, and typically on the faint side, although with clear, dark skies you still have a good chance of spotting one with its persistent, long trail.
"The Orionid meteor shower is named as such because it appears to radiate from the constellation Orion, which is one of the most visible and recognisable in the sky throughout the world."


text:
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text:
Although it's known to everyone as St. Basil's, this legendary building is officially called "The Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin by the Moat". The popular alternative refers to Basil the Blessed, a Muscovite 'holy fool' who was buried on the site (in the Trinity Cathedral that once stood here) a few years before the present building was erected.
The Cathedral was ordered by Ivan the Terrible to mark the 1552 capture of Kazan from Mongol forces. It was completed in 1560. That's pretty much all the genuine history that's known about this celebrated landmark. There, however, scores of legends. Nothing is known about the builders, Barma and Postnik Yakovlev, except their names and the dubious legend that Ivan had them blinded so that they could not create anything to compare. Historians unanimously state that this is nothing but urban folklore.
Architectural specialists are to this day unable to agree about the governing idea behind the structure. Either the creators were paying homage to the churches of Jerusalem, or, by building eight churches around a central ninth, they were representing the medieval symbol of the eight-pointed star. The original concept of the Cathedral of the Intercession has been hidden from us beneath layers of stylistic additions and new churches added to the main building. In fact, when built, the Cathedral was all white to match the white-stone Kremlin, and the onion domes were gold rather than multi-colored and patterned as they are today.
In the 17th century a hip-roofed bell tower was added, the gallery and staircases were covered with vaulted roofing, and the helmeted domes were replaced with decorated ones. In 1860 during rebuilding, the Cathedral was painted with a more complex and integrated design, and has remained unchanged since.
For a time in the Soviet Union, there was talk of demolishing St. Basil's - mainly because it hindered Stalin's plans for massed parades on Red Square. It was only saved thanks to the courage of the architect Pyotr Baranovsky. When ordered to prepare the building for demolition, he refused categorically, and sent the Kremlin an extremely blunt telegram. The Cathedral remained standing, and Baranovsky's conservation efforts earned him five years in prison.
The Cathedral is now a museum. During restoration work in the seventies a wooden spiral staircase was discovered within one of the walls. Visitors now take this route into the central church, with its extraordinary, soaring tented roof and a fine 16th Century iconostasis. You can also walk along the narrow, winding gallery, covered in beautiful patterned paintwork.
One service a year is held in the Cathedral, on the Day of Intercession in October.
Opening hours: Daily from 11.00 to 17.00, closed on Tuesdays.


text:
Reducing Chrome's memory footprint is one of the team's top priorities this year. We've already seen up to a 45% reduction in GMail's memory usage thanks to improvements in V8's garbage collection process but we're really just getting started. One of our next experiments in memory use is aimed at tab hoarders (like myself). It's called Tab Discarding.
Tab discarding is available as an experiment in Chrome 46 and above.
For every tab you have open our renderer process usually takes around 50MB per tab, even though most people use just a single tab at a time. If you've got 10 tabs open there's at least 450MB of memory being spent just to keep your background tab state. This can get a little unwieldy over time.
One of our goals is to reduce the memory used on tabs you're not actually using. If I look at what tabs are consuming my system memory in the Chrome Task Manager, I'm really just 'using' one or two of the sites below whilst the other tabs in the background are unused.
That's where tab discarding can help reduce our memory usage.
Discarding unused tabs
Tab discarding allows Chrome to automatically discard tabs that aren't of great interest to you when it's detected that system memory is running pretty low. What do we mean by discarding? Well, a discarded tab doesn't go anywhere. We kill it but it's still visible on the Chrome tab strip. If you navigate back to a tab that's been discarded, it'll reload when clicked. Form content, scroll position and so on are saved and restored the same way they would be during forward/backward tab navigation.
We also have another new feature that allows caching all tab resources locally
which works nicely with tab discarding when you're offline. When the tab is
reactivated we offer you the choice to reload the cached version that was
previously loaded over the network. To enable page reloading from cache, you can
try out another experiment under chrome://flags/#show-saved-copy
You can try out tab discarding today by enabling it via
and relaunching Chrome. You can
control whether it's enabled or disabled via the same Chrome chrome://flags
A new page called chrome://discards
lets you list what tabs are currently
open and we try to share some insight into how interesting (we think) they are
to you, from most to least.
To test out the feature, you can either carry out your normal browsing behavior until your system is in a low-memory mode, or alternatively trigger a tab discard from about:discards by clicking 'Discard tab now'. This will discard the last tab in the list. You can also discard a particular tab from the list by clicking its corresponding 'Discard' button. A discarded tab will display with a [Discarded] prefix.
Tab discarding discards tabs in this order:
- Internal pages like new tab page, bookmarks, etc.
- Tabs selected a long time ago
- Tabs selected recently
- Apps running in a window
- Pinned tabs
- The selected tab
We've enabled the tab discarding experiment in Chrome Canary for Windows and Mac OS, with a Linux implementation coming soon.
Inspiration: hey there, great suspender
If tab discarding sounds familiar, it's because you've probably come across useful Chrome extensions that give you a slightly simpler version of this idea, such as the The Great Suspender. The Great Suspender aims to reduce Chrome's memory and GPU footprint by suspending tabs after a custom period of inactivity.
Similar to tab discarding, tabs can be un-suspended when you need to interact with them again. Great Suspender maintains each tab's title and favicon, showing suspended tabs in a dimmed state, making it straight-forward to navigate back to them any time.
Tabs in the background that I'm not actively using have been suspended, saving on memory. Tabs I am still actively using (GitHub and YouTube) are however still running as normal.
We actually had a great chat with the author of the Great Suspender extension while developing tab discarding and they're glad to see us natively tackling this problem in ways that are more efficient than an extension might be able to, such as losing the state of your user inactions.
Future improvements: the tab serializer
The tab serializer is a future piece of work we think may lead to significant improvements on our current approach to tab discarding. It takes the contents of a Chrome tab and serializes its *current* state into a binary blob. This binary blob can later be deserialized into a tab.
The serializer would serialize almost everything Chrome, Blink and V8 need to properly preserve a tab (something Chrome extensions tackling this problem historically haven't been able to easily achieve). Serialization would include the usual suspects: the DOM (with a lot of WebGL and Canvas included), CSS and the state of the V8 JavaScript VM.
If you use Android or ChromeOS, you may know that (similar to the tab discarding experiment covered in this post) we kill background tabs aggressively in order to ensure memory usage is low. The issue with the way we tackle this was that your tab would lose *all* of its state.
When you showed interest in the tab again, we would have to reload it and all your interaction with it would be lost. The tab serializer just approaches this problem in a way that gets you back to almost exactly what you were without requiring going back to the network. We look forward to sharing more information about this work at a later date.
Try out tab discarding and let us know what you think
We'd love to know whether this feature is useful to you and how it could be improved. Try it out, play around with it (especially if you're a tab hoarder!) and let us know what you think in the comments. :) We'd also appreciate it if you file tickets for any bugs you encounter on crbug.com.


text:
As a child, Michael Stone avoided sports. Now in his mid 40s, he's completed more than 100 triathlons, including 11 Ironman races, and 21 Xterra Triathlons—off-road triathlons that involve mountain biking and trail running.
Not such an unusual story perhaps, but the reason Stone shunned sports as a kid was because he couldn't see the ball, and his vision has progressively worsened so that he now is "legally blind."
"When I ride a bike or I'm running, I use my feet; I use every piece of information I can get through my other senses," Stone says. "I like to think of myself as the Forrest Gump of the vision world because technically I shouldn't have been able to do many of the things I was able to do."
Stone is straightforward about the many frustrations and challenges his vision loss has created. But, the two characteristics that shine through any conversation with him are an incredible tenacity to work around his vision-imposed limitations and a deep desire to make things better for others affected by blinding eye diseases. This sense of purpose infuses his approach to life. When he races, he raises money for research on eye diseases; he is a counselor and ardent advocate for people with blinding eye diseases; and he is an author whose book highlights the inspirational stories of people affected by eye disease.
Stone co-founded the Race to Cure Blindness, a fundraising program for Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB), and he and his family are deeply committed to supporting research that will eventually lead to treatments and cures.
Despite being so involved in advancing research for blinding eye disease for many years, Stone did not have a definitive diagnosis for his own condition. In 2003, he was told he had cone rod dystrophy, a retinal condition caused by many different gene mutations, but he did not know which gene was affected in his case.
In the past year, Stone's situation has changed. Through a series of coincidences and a collaboration with researchers at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and Columbia University in New York, Stone and his family now have answers about the true nature of the condition that affects them.
Connections and coincidences
It all started with a chance conversation that reconnected Stone with his old school friend, Dr. Alex Bassuk, now a pediatric neurologist with UI Children's Hospital and a genetics researcher in the Stead Family Department of Pediatrics at the UI Carver College of Medicine.
"I grew up with Michael, he is very good friends with my sister," Bassuk says. "They were talking about his eye disease and he mentioned that it was genetic, and my sister said, 'Oh, my brother does genetics and even works on eye diseases. You should talk to him.'"
From that initial conversation, Stone and his siblings ended up visiting Iowa City in December 2012 to meet with Bassuk and Dr. Vinit Mahajan, a UI ophthalmologist and expert in inherited eye diseases. The scientists took DNA samples and Mahajan conducted thorough eye exams.
The final link in the chain was the connection Mahajan and Bassuk had with Dr. Stephen Tsang, a physician-scientist and expert in retinitis pigmentosa at Columbia University in New York. This connection provided a critical opportunity to gather several generations of Stone's family in one place for testing—something that had never happened.
"Even in an age where genetic testing for disease has become incredibility sophisticated, the old school approach of examining family members—both affected and unaffected individuals—is a critical aspect in diagnosing an inherited condition," Tsang says.
"Michael's family is scattered across the country, so no one had examined the family all together, and with a condition that you think is inherited, that's usually very valuable to do," Mahajan adds.
Stone, his siblings, and his parents went to Columbia University for clinical exams, including specialized imaging of the family members' retinas, as well as blood draws to obtain the samples needed for the next-generation, whole-exome DNA sequencing. Mahajan went with the family.
"(Vinit) came out for that and kind of held our hands through the experience," Stone recalls.
With the results of the exome sequencing in hand, the three scientists combed through the list of possible gene variants, seeking one that fit the clinical profile they'd created through their detailed examination of Stone and his family members. Bassuk recalls the excitement of the moment as the three colleagues from their separate offices—two in Iowa, one in New York—emailed back and forth: "How about this one?" "What about that one?" Then, suddenly, hitting on a variant in the RPGR gene and realizing that it was a perfect fit.
About a year after their first meeting with Stone and his family, the researchers were able to show that the family's inherited eye disease is caused by a new variant in a gene called RPGR. Although this variant is new, mutations in the RPGR gene are already known to cause retinitis pigmentosa. The new variation causes x-linked retinitis pigmentosa, meaning the disease is passed on through the maternal line. The finding was published Jan. 31 in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.
"It's been a combination of the gumshoe detective in the field tracking down clues and the forensic pathologist in the lab. A high-tech, low-tech combination," Mahajan says.
Several hundred genes can cause retinal degeneration, which affects millions of Americans. Although there currently is no treatment for the newly discovered variant, identifying the specific gene can help direct the research and may ultimately lead to a treatment.
Michael Stone notes that successful gene therapies developed for retinal diseases—such trials currently are under way—might open the door for successful treatment of many other inherited diseases.
The Stone family has provided philanthropic support through the UI Foundation to advance the UI team's research, which they believe will lead to future treatments and cures.
Being able to help people is an underlying motivation for many physicians and scientists, but Bassuk says that this opportunity to directly help a friend was definitely special.
"It was really nice. I've been doing this for 28 years, and I've not had this kind of experience before," he says.
For Stone, who is set to compete in his 12th Iron Man race in New Zealand at the end of the month, having an answer that explains the disease that has affected his family for generations has been an emotional experience but also a very important step.
"There was definitely a process, and it continues to be a process," he says. "There is something very liberating about knowing what it is that you have—to take a very uncertain world and create a little bit of certainty. It reignites a purpose into your life, so it's very important, but it also reignites the concept of hope."
As someone who is passionate about helping others overcome the limitations imposed by eye disease and ensuring that patients and families know they are not alone in their struggle, the idea that the researchers are now advocating for him and for others affected by these disease is also very powerful for Stone.
"To know that you have some champions out there fighting for it is huge," he says.


text:
Is Your Hawaii Vacation Complete?
Posted on 06/22/2017 | About Hawaii
Your Hawaii vacation isn't complete without adding on a few bucket list excursions.
On many of the islands, you can discover hidden beauty with captivating helicopter tours. Connect with the Aloha spirit at an authentic island luau. Choose from a variety of tours including narrated sightseeing tours or guided excursions!
Here are just a FEW of our favorites:
USS Arizona/Battleship Missouri /Punchbowl Tour
- Visit historic symbols of freedom on this reverent memorial tour
- Stand aboard the USS Arizona Memorial
- Take a guided tour of USS Missouri known as "Mighty Mo"
- Drive through the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl Crater
Kualoa Ranch Horseback Adventure Tour
- Full-day tour of Oahu's largest cattle ranch
- See Hollywood's favorite Hawaii location where movies like Jurassic World, Windtalkers and Pearl Harbor were filmed
- Choose a one-hour ATV adventure or one-hour horseback ride through the ranch
- Buffet lunch provided
Hana Sky Trek
- Land/air combo features a Hana/Haleakala helicopter flight with a Hana limo-van tour
- Travel the scenic winding road to Hana
- Enjoy a picnic lunch followed by a helicopter flight over Hana's rainforest waterfalls and Haleakala crater
- Morning and afternoon trips available
Spectacular Haleakala Sunrise Tour
- Welcome a glorious new day as you witness the sunrise over the summit of the world's largest dormant volcano, Mt. Haleakala
- View breathtaking scenery at the awe-inspiring Haleakala National Park
- Includes coffee, pastries and a drive through Maui's Upcountry Kula District
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park & Waterfalls Explorer
- Full-day exploration
- Visit Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea Rainbow Falls and Hilo Town
- Guided tour of Thurston Lava Tube, Jaggar Museum and Punaluu Beach
- Picnic lunch provided
Kohala Zipline
- Experience views of Hawaii's canopy from suspension bridges, soaring platforms and thrilling ziplines
- Twin WhisperLines and smooth-stop braking ensure your safety and comfort, delivering an experience like no other for zipline enthusiasts and first-timers alike


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The map scales on the baseplate of Suunto compass are there to help you measure distances on the map. When the same scale is on both the map and the compass, the distance between two points can easily be read from the compass. Simply align one point to the start of the scale rotating the compass until the second point can be read from the applicable scale.
Even if your compass does not have a matching scale, you can use the available scales to make quick conversions to the map scale. Calculating distance is a key tool in tracking your speed and estimating how long it will take to get to the next landmark. If you don't reach a landmark in the estimated time, it is a good indication you are off track and it is time to take another reading to get you back on track.
Baseplates always have a direction of travel arrow that must point in the direction you want to go both when working on the map and when moving in nature. If the travel arrow is not set correctly, you can easily end up walking in the opposite direction away from your next landmark.
Suunto compasses intended for non-military use have red baseplate prints. This helps distinguish the baseplate markings from colors used for map symbols.
Many Suunto baseplates include other additional features to make navigation with maps easier. Some have holes that can be used for marking your starting point and places you intend to go on the map. Marking and adding notes directly on your map is good practice when navigating in unknown terrain.
Other Suunto baseplates include a magnifying lens for reading map symbols.
And some of the finest Suunto compasses have skid-proof feet on the baseplate to help keep the compass in place on the map. This is a nice feature when the outdoor elements are not cooperating!


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Pistorius trial witness: 'bloodcurdling screams' then shots
(Reuters) - The first witness at Oscar Pistorius' murder trial told the court on Monday she heard "bloodcurdling screams" from a woman followed by shots, a dramatic opening to a case that could see one of global sport's most admired role models jailed for life.
Taking the stand after the Paralympic and Olympic star pleaded not guilty to murdering his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine's Day last year, neighbor Michelle Burger testified that she was woken in the middle of the night by a woman shouting for help.
"I was still sitting in the bed and I heard her screams," Burger, who lives 177 meters (194 yards) from Pistorius' home in an adjacent housing complex, told the Pretoria High Court.
"She screamed terribly and she yelled for help. Then I also heard a man screaming for help. Three times he yelled for help," she said, speaking in Afrikaans through an interpreter.
Thinking it was a violent break-in - a possibility in crime-ridden South Africa - Burger said her husband called the private security firm guarding their upmarket Pretoria housing estate before the pair heard more shouts.
"I heard the screams again. It was worse. It was more intense," said Burger, a Pretoria University economics lecturer. "She was very scared," she added, her voice cracking with emotion.
"Just after her screams, I heard four shots. Four gun-shots," she said. "Bang ... bang, bang, bang."
"It was very traumatic for me. You could hear that it was bloodcurdling screams." After the final shot, the screams "started fading", she added later.
Throughout Burger's testimony, the 27-year-old Pistorius - described by Time magazine in 2012 as "the definition of global inspiration" and named as one of the world's 100 most influential people - sat impassively in the courtroom, staring at the floor.
The athlete, who was born without lower legs but reached the 2012 Olympic 400 meters semi-final using carbon-fiber "blades", argues that Steenkamp's killing was a tragic accident after he mistook her for an intruder hiding in the toilet.
Burger steadfastly maintained her testimony despite a probing cross examination by lead defense advocate Barry Roux.
After the first day's hearing, Pistorius left the court through a scrum of photographers and television cameras before being bundled into a waiting silver SUV.
Earlier, a somber Pistorius, dressed in dark suit, white shirt and black tie, stood before Judge Thokozile Masipa to plead 'not guilty' to murdering law graduate Steenkamp, a women's rights campaigner and familiar face on South Africa's celebrity party scene.
He also pleaded 'not guilty' to several other firearms charges, including one of discharging a pistol under the table of a posh Johannesburg restaurant and another of putting a bullet through the sun-roof of a former girlfriend's car.
When he entered the packed courtroom, Steenkamp's mother, June, followed him with her gaze. Her father, Barry, was not in court after recently suffering a stroke.
Prosecutors are seeking to prove that Pistorius fired four rounds from a 9 mm pistol through the door of the toilet in a deliberate attempt to kill whoever was behind it.
Steenkamp was hit three times, in the head, arm and hip. She was declared dead at the scene.
In his opening address, lawyer Kenny Oldwage, who with Roux forms part of Pistorius' defense team, sought to portray the state's allegations as an unwarranted character assassination of a young man deeply in love.
If the state succeeds in convincing Masipa of intent to kill, Pistorius could get life, in all likelihood a minimum of 25 years behind bars.
At his bail hearing last year, he admitted to culpable homicide, equivalent to manslaughter, which could see him put away for 15 years - or he could leave court a free man, with no more than a slap on the wrist and a suspended sentence.
Coming less than a month after the rape, disembowelling and murder of a teenager near Cape Town, the shooting of Steenkamp caused outrage and drew further attention to the high levels of violence against women in South Africa.
The trial before Masipa - juries were abolished by the apartheid government in the 1960s - is set to last a minimum of three weeks but with as many as 107 witnesses waiting to be called by either side it is almost certain to last far longer.
The proceedings have attracted massive media attention, with hundreds of foreign and domestic media camped outside the court, a reflection of Pistorius' status as a global symbol of triumph over physical adversity.
The trial is also being broadcast live, a first for South Africa, where, two decades after the end of apartheid, the justice system is often accused of favoring the rich and wealthy, who can afford the best lawyers and forensic experts.


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InfoZario: A combination of the words "information" and "impresario."
InfoZario's vision is to make everyone an impresario of information at their job.
InfoZario's goal is to share experiences and create learning materials to identify, organize, and share information DIFFERENT from those materials currently available, which are:
- Dense textbooks that are 500+ pages of theory, but lacking in the practical.
- Seminars or workshops with speakers who talk at you while showing incomprehensible slides.
- Webinars that are mostly sales pitches.
- Online courses that take forever to complete and that cost a bundle.
Instead, passionately certain that learning should be fun and entertaining–and in bite-size chunks–InfoZario is developing:
- Books that say what's important in 100 pages or less.
- Online courses presented in short modules, in a variety of formats, at a reasonable price.
- Live workshops of small groups, with each session lasting no more than 30 minutes.
- A networked community of "InfoZarios."
We don't presume that our way is the only way to teach everyone. That's why we're asking you to let us know the type of learning that is best–or worst–for you, and also what information skills you want to learn.
We'll share our ideas and progress, and hope that you'll comment throughout on the direction we are taking. For starters, we'd appreciate your comments on the learning materials we've just described.
But our weekly blog will not only be about InfoZario. We will also be sharing opinions, tips, and stories from the information trenches, both ours and from others.
Next week we write about what we think are the requisite qualifications to become an Information Superstar.
Leave a comment


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Editor's note: Scott Weiss is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and the former co-founder and CEO of IronPort Systems, which was acquired by Cisco in 2007. He blogs at http://scott.a16z.com, and you can follow him on Twitter @W_ScottWeiss.
People often ask me what the best path to becoming a successful entrepreneur is: "Should I go try and start a company now? Or go to grad school? How about working at a large tech company for a few years?"
I spent five years at a large technology company, two years at business school, and then two years in consulting before I went to a startup. Even with that experience, I still believe I was too green to jump right in and start a company. It's not that those experiences weren't valuable — it's just that the most valuable lessons for successfully running a startup come from actually working at a well-run startup. I'd go even further to assert that the startup should be based in Silicon Valley and backed by venture capital.
You could just start a company without any startup experience, sure, but you will have a significantly higher chance of success if you already know how to navigate a startup's unique challenges, including: raising money, changing product direction, and cultivating a culture. These are hard things to learn on the job, and you may have only one shot at the crucial "friends and family" round to get you started.
Why a Silicon Valley, VC-backed startup? If you just graduated from college, you probably haven't developed the experience or instincts to judge whether a startup has a great team, a differentiated product or is going after a large enough market. While certainly not perfect, the VCs have done a lot of this important vetting for you, and their decision to invest can be considered a boost of credibility and resources for the company. Also, within each technology region, there is a dense network of specialized talent, financiers, and service organizations (e.g. legal, PR, recruiting) that form a startup ecosystem. Silicon Valley is by far the largest ecosystem and therefore holds the most potential for job opportunities and the strongest network.
What about grad school or establishing a foundation at a large company? It comes down to relevance. The responsibilities, roles, contacts, context, culture, communications, risks, and instincts you need to develop to eventually run a successful startup are best found at a startup.
If you're trying to prepare yourself for entrepreneurship — the same two to four years at a startup isn't even comparable to the equivalent time spent in school or a large company. There are probably five to ten times more lessons and relevance at the startup.
The next step involves finding the right startup to join. As it turns out, I moved out to Palo Alto from Boston in 1996 with virtually no connections or contacts and more than $100,000 in school loans from business school. A few things I did are surprisingly still relevant today:
Prepare for a long haul. You'll need to move out here without a job while most of your friends have jobs locked up well before graduation. If you don't have enough savings, you may need to get a part-time job while you job hunt. If this step makes you nervous at all, you may want to reconsider the entrepreneurial job choice.
Research. Start by downloading the last four venture capital surveys from the San Jose Mercury News website. These PDFs summarize the last year of companies that have been funded by VCs. Included are the company name, amount raised, VC involved and headquarters city. This is a great list to start with because all of these companies have recently raised capital and are therefore likely in hiring mode. Build a spreadsheet, start researching and then rank these companies by your level of interest. Go to the VC websites, check all the online publications (e.g. TechCrunch, AllThingsD, etc.), and look up the company name URLs. While you are on the VC websites, you should look through all of the companies on their "portfolio" tab to see if any should be added to your list.
Focus. There are many different types of startups and many different jobs within a startup. If you can code, there will be obvious roles within engineering, sales engineering or quality assurance. If coding isn't for you, you'll need to figure out the best entry-level role to position yourself. Perhaps in customer care, product management, finance, inside sales, or business development. It will also help to choose between the type of startup: enterprise or consumer. The more you begin to focus, the more credible you'll become as you deep dive into the differences between the roles and the way the different companies go to market. You'll want to be as knowledgeable as possible before you start networking.
Make a target list. After doing all this research, narrow it down to 20 to 30 target companies and make a market map or web of every possible link to the company — names of the investors, management team, PR firms — every potential connection (I'm thinking similar to an FBI board targeting a mafia family, but not quite that creepy). Your best chance of getting an interview is if you have a "warm" referral into the company (i.e. someone you've met who can refer you to someone inside the company they already know). That's the goal. Continue to research the companies, the roles, the competitors, and the market so that you start sounding like you know what you're talking about.
Start networking. I pulled out the Harvard Business School alumni directory, the University of Florida alumni directory, and the McKinsey alumni directory. I sent emails to guys 15 years older than me with "Hey Steve, I'm a fellow Florida grad, blah, blah, blah, can we have coffee?" I went to every meet-up that had the word "Stanford" in it. Before I knew it, one coffee led to another and after awhile I started asking smarter questions and got stronger referrals.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of preparation and persistence throughout the process. It took me four hard months of preparation, research, focus, list-making and networking until August, 1996, when I received a warm referral into a little, 12-person startup named Hotmail. It ended up being the best job experience of my life and I was completely hooked.


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I was on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning, doing my best to explain the impact of the impending sequestration on federal agency operations -- including answering some tough questions from a group of students at Mount Vernon High School in northern Virginia.
In the course of the appearance, I hope I shed some light on some of the basic issues surrounding the sequester and potential furloughs of federal employees.
Here's the video:
NEXT STORY: Agencies Are Supposed to Avoid Furloughs


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SANFORD, Fla. — The parents of a teenager who was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer last year have settled a wrongful-death claim against the homeowners association of the Florida subdivision where their son was killed.
Local media reported Friday that an attorney for Trayvon Martin's parents — Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin — filed that paperwork in Seminole County and that portions of it were made available for public review Friday.
According to the newspaper, the settlement amount was marked out in five pages that it reviewed. Lower in the agreement, the parties specify that they will keep the amount confidential.
Benjamin Crump, the attorney for Trayvon Martin's parents, declined to comment Friday. He told The Associated Press that the filing was confidential.
A telephone message left Friday evening by AP with the homeowner association's attorney, Thomas R. Slaten Jr., wasn't immediately returned.
Martin was fatally shot in February 2012 by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman during a confrontation in a subdivision in Sanford, about 30 miles north of Orlando.
A month-and-a-half delay in Zimmerman's arrest led to nationwide protests in the racially charged case.
Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder in Martin's death. Zimmerman claims he was attacked and acted in self-defense, but Martin's family claims he targeted the unarmed 17-year-old mainly because Martin was black. Zimmerman's parents are white and Hispanic.
Under the terms of the settlement, Trayvon Martin's parents and his estate agreed to set aside their wrongful-death claim and claims for pain and suffering, loss of earnings and expenses, the Sentinel reported.
According to a cover page attached to the settlement that was placed in Zimmerman's criminal case file, copies of the settlement were given Thursday to Zimmerman's attorney, as well as to the prosecutor and the judge, the newspaper reported.
Crump has previously said he intends to file suit later against Zimmerman, and the settlement specified that Zimmerman was not part of the homeowner association's deal.


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Sec. 713 the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-12, 78 Stat. 265.
These Guidelines constitute "a written interpretation and opinion" of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as that term is used in section 713(b)(1) of title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-12(b)(1), and § 1601.33 of the Procedural Regulations of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (29 CFR 1601.30; 42 FR 55,394 (October 14, 1977)). Section 713(b)(1) provides:
In any action or proceeding based on any alleged unlawful employment practice, no person shall be subject to any liability or punishment for or on account of (1) the commission by such person of an unlawful employment practice if he pleads and proves that the act or omission complained of was in good faith, in conformity with, and in reliance on any written interpretation or opinion of the Commission * * *. Such a defense, if established, shall be a bar to the action or proceeding, notwithstanding that * * * after such act or omission, such interpretation or opinion is modified or rescinded or is determined by judicial authority to be invalid or of no legal effect * * *.
(1) Training plans and programs, including on-the-job training, which emphasize providing minorities and women with the opportunity, skill, and expericence necessary to perform the functions of skilled trades, crafts, or professions;
(2) Extensive and focused recruiting activity;
(3) Elimination of the adverse impact caused by unvalidated selection criteria (see sections 3 and 6, Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (1978), 43 FR 30290; 38297; 38299 (August 25, 1978));
(4) Modification through collective bargaining where a labor organization represents employees, or unilaterally where one does not, of promotion and layoff procedures.
An affirmative action plan or program under this section shall contain three elements: a reasonable self analysis; a reasonable basis for concluding action is appropriate; and reasonable action.
(1) Have or tend to have an adverse effect on employment opportunities of members of previously excluded groups, or groups whose employment or promotional opportunities have been artificially limited,
(2) Leave uncorrected the effects of prior discrimination, or
(3) Result in disparate treatment, the person making the self analysis has a reasonable basis for concluding that action is appropriate.
When an employer has reason to believe that its selection procedures have * * * exclusionary effect * * *, it should initiate affirmative steps to remedy the situation. Such steps, which in design and execution may be race, color, sex or ethnic 'conscious,' include, but are not limited to, the following:
The establishment of a long term goal and short range, interim goals and timetables for the specific job classifications, all of which should take into account the availability of basically qualified persons in the relevant job market;
A recruitment program designed to attract qualified members of the group in question;
A systematic effort to organize work and re-design jobs in ways that provide opportunities for persons lacking 'journeyman' level knowledge or skills to enter and, with appropriate training, to progress in a career field;
Revamping selection instruments or procedures which have not yet been validated in order to reduce or eliminate exclusionary effects on particular groups in particular job classifications;
The initiation of measures designed to assure that members of the affected group who are qualified to perform the job are included within the pool of persons from which the selecting official makes the selection;
A systematic effort to provide career advancement training, both classroom and on-the-job, to employees locked into dead end jobs; and
The establishment of a system for regularly monitoring the effectiveness of the particular affirmative action program, and procedures for making timely adjustments in this program where effectiveness is not demonstrated.
(i) The plan should be tailored to solve the problems which were identified in the self analysis, see § 1608.4(a), supra, and to ensure that employment systems operate fairly in the future, while avoiding unnecessary restrictions on opportunities for the workforce as a whole. The race, sex, and national origin conscious provisions of the plan or program should be maintained only so long as is necessary to achieve these objectives.
(ii) Goals and timetables should be reasonably related to such considerations as the effects of past discrimination, the need for prompt elimination of adverse impact or disparate treatment, the availability of basically qualified or qualifiable applicants, and the number of employment opportunities expected to be available.
Under title VII, affirmative action compliance programs adopted pursuant to Executive Order 11246, as amended, and its implementing regulations, including 41 CFR part 60-2 (Revised Order 4), will be considered by the Commission in light of the similar purposes of title VII and the Executive Order, and the Commission's responsibility under Executive Order 12067 to avoid potential conflict among Federal equal employment opportunity programs. Accordingly, the Commission will process
(1) Whether the conciliation agreement or settlement agreement was approved by a responsible official of the EEOC, and
(2) Whether adherence to the agreement was the basis for the complaint or justification.
Affirmative action plans or programs executed by agreement with State or local government agencies, or by order of State or local government agencies, whether entered by consent or after contested proceedings, under statutes or ordinances described in title VII, will be reviewed by the Commission in light of the similar purposes of title VII and such statutes and ordinances. Accordingly, the Commission will process title VII complaints involving such affirmative action plans or programs under this section.
(1) Whether the affirmative action plan or program was executed by an employer, labor organization, or person subject to the statute or ordinance,
(2) Whether the agreement was approved by an appropriate official of the State or local government, and
(3) Whether adherence to the plan or program was the basis of the complaint or justification.
Parties are entitled to rely on orders of courts of competent jurisdiction. If adherence to an Order of a United States District Court or other court of competent jurisdiction, whether entered by consent or after contested litigation, in a case brought to enforce a Federal, State, or local equal employment opportunity law or regulation, is the basis of a complaint filed under title VII or is alleged to be the justification for an action which is challenged under title VII, the Commission will investigate to determine:
(a) Whether such an Order exists and
(b) Whether adherence to the affirmative action plan which is part of the Order was the basis of the complaint or justification.
When a charge challenges an affirmative action plan or program, or when such a plan or program is raised as justification for an employment decision, and when the plan or program was developed pursuant to the requirements of a Federal or State law or regulation which in part seeks to ensure equal employment opportunity, the Commission will process the charge in accordance with § 1608.10(a). Other agencies with equal employment opportunity responsibilities may apply the principles of these Guidelines in the exercise of their authority.
(1) The Commission has found that the respondent is entitled to the protection of section 713(b)(1) of title VII; and
(2) That the determination is itself an additional written interpretation or opinion of the Commission pursuant to section 713(b)(1).
If adherence to an Equal Employment Opportunity Plan, adopted pursuant to section 717 of title VII, and approved by an appropriate official of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, is the basis of a complaint filed under title VII, or is alleged to be the justification for an action under title VII, these Guidelines will apply in a manner similar to that set forth in § 1608.5. The Commission will issue regulations setting forth the procedure for processing such complaints.


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Show All Answers
YESWork to the Southern Basin of the marina has been completed. We are now taking reservations for transient boaters. Please call 904-310-3304 for reservations or visit fhmarina.com/contact-us, complete the form and submit. We will email to confirm your reservation.Staff is on site from 7:00 am to 6:30 pm. MARINA REPAIR STATUS -
Bath House - OpenBoater Check In - OpenBoat Ramp - OpenDinghy Dock - OpenDock Store - OpenLaundry Facilities - OpenMooring Field - OpenSouthern Basin - OpenFuel Dock - We have been told to expect fuel dock completion in 2020.For more information please visit fhmarina.com .
Yes. There are over 20 great restaurants all within walking distance.
For Advanced Reservations or to be placed on the waiting list, visit the Oasis Marinas website and complete the simple form. We will review the request and confirm your dates.
If you prefer to call in the request, the number to dial is 904-310-3300 and select "RESERVATIONS" from the menu.
When approaching the marina, we listen on ch 16 and move then move to Ch 68 for information.
The rates are listed on the Fees page.
The marina is OPEN for business including the Day Dock. The Day Dock is available on a first come first served basis, The charge for Day Dock usage is $10.00 for boats less than 25' and $15.00 for boats 25' and larger. Maximum boat size for the Day Dock is 45'. Please contact us on Ch 16 prior to entering the marina so we direct you in.
Boat rentals are not available at Fernandina Harbor Marina. Please search "Boat Rental Fernandina Beach" for more information.
Amelia River Cruises and Ye Ole Pirate are physically challenged accessible vessels. www.ameliarivercruises.com and www.yeolepirate.com
The distance from the Fernandina Harbor Marina to the beach is about 2 miles.
WI-FI is available at the Marina. Although the signal is limited, it is available in most areas of the marina.
For your day to day needs, a small passenger bus circles the island on the hour with convenient stops at most places. The cost is $1.00 each time you get on.
Fernandina Harbor Marina Southern Basin was dredge to a depth of 8 feet. The outside wave attenuator has depths from 18 to 24 feet.
There is a hardware store within walking distance on the corner of Ash and 5th Street.


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On Wednesday, Jan. 11, at 11 a.m. PDT/2 p.m. EDT/7 p.m. GMT, @eWEEKNews will host its 51st monthly #eWEEKChat. The topic will be, "Citizen Development: No-Code Wave of the Future?" It will be moderated by Chris Preimesberger, eWEEK's editor of features and analysis.
Some quick facts:
Topic: "Citizen Development: No-Code Wave of the Future?"
Date/time: Jan. 11, 11 a.m. PDT/2 p.m. EDT/7 p.m. GMT
Tweetchat handle: Use #eWEEKChat to follow/participate, but it's easier and more efficient to use real-time chat room links.
Chat room real-time links: We have two: http://tweetchat.com/room/eweekchat and http://www.tchat.io/rooms/eweekchat. Both work well. Sign in via Twitter and use #eweekchat for the identifier.
"Citizen Development: No-Code Wave of the Future?"
We've been moving toward this for more than 15 years: The rise of citizen development of software apps. This is the creation—or ideation, if you will—of business applications and application features by the employees who use them.
Citizen developers is a clear trend as 2017 begins, and a specialized new IT business sector is springing up around it. Please note that nobody is saying the conventional—and, in many ways, unconventional—software development communities of skilled and experienced professionals are going to become irrelevant anytime soon.
However, since the turn of the century, a growing number of enterprise and consumer applications intentionally have been designed to be configured for specific use cases by line-of-business professionals who wouldn't know a line of code from a verse in a Shakespearean play.
But they do know how to follow a wizard, use a drop-down menu and follow directions. A lot has changed from the days of write code, test, debug, test again, debug, beta test, release GA—wash, rinse, repeat.
Some key data points:
Applications Are Being Developed Much Faster
More than half of organizations engaged in citizen development report that application builders are able to create applications in less than two weeks. Additionally, 42 percent of citizen developers are developing applications at least twice as fast compared to traditional development.
Citizen Developers Are Building Higher-Tier Applications
Citizen development is being used for all types and tiers of applications. Applications designed by citizen developers for mission-critical and long-term use (such as Enterprise Resource Planning and supply chain management) rose slightly to 45 percent in 2016.
Building Applications Is Becoming a Daily Responsibility
Building and maintaining applications has become more central to the way line-of-business professionals do their jobs. According to the Quickbase report, 76 percent of citizen developers consider developing applications as part of their day job, up from 68 percent last year.
Use Cases for Citizen Development Apps Are Growing
On average, organizations estimate that a platform supporting some portion of development by line-of-business developers could be used to build 26 different types of applications. IT help desk, project, asset and workforce management were selected among the top use cases for no-code development by survey respondents.
Customer-Facing Software Is Growing
The customer experience now more than ever is a key business driver. Applications must adapt easily and quickly to reflect rapidly changing customer needs. This year, citizen developers at 35 percent of organizations report building customer-facing web and mobile applications, up from 27 percent in 2015.
In this month's eWEEKchat, we'll want to know how your IT team is using citizen development techniques and what benefits are being derived from the approach. We'll also be asking the following, among other questions:
- What platform or toolset is your team using for collaboration and rapid development?
- How often are you iterating software?
- What issues are you seeing—and solving—in moving to citizen development/agile development?
- How would you describe the total ROI of your citizen/agil operation?
Join us Jan. 11 at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. GMT for an hour. Chances are good that you'll learn something valuable.


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Photos (high-resolution, cropped, enhanced) are available for purchase as laser prints or digital images (emailed or on CD).
Laser prints (8 x 10) @ $12 each plus $5 shipping per order.
Digital images as PDF or JPEG files - $7 per image. Files can be emailed, but you must be able to accept fairly large files.
Add $5 per order if requesting digital files on CD.
Contact Jill Johnson at email@example.com with photo numbers (last 4 digits of file name ns09dsc_xxxx).
Install latest flash player if you can't see this gallery, or click here to see the html version.
Ultra Media Gallery 6


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It's not this family who are bigots — it's the multicultural
thought police
The story sounds just too idiotic and outrageous to be true. A Rotherham couple, by all accounts exemplary foster parents for nearly seven years, took on two children and a baby in an emergency placement.
Eight weeks later, social workers came and took the children away — despite the fact that they were thriving — on the grounds that because the couple belonged to the UK Independence Party this was not 'the right cultural match'.
Astonishingly, the official in charge is still unrepentant. Joyce Thacker, the council's director of children and young people's services, has said that the children, who were from 'EU migrant backgrounds', had been removed to protect their 'cultural and ethnic needs' from UKIP's 'strong views' and apparent 'opposition to multiculturalism'.
Right decision: Joyce Thacker, Rotherham Borough Council's head of children's services, said social workers had been right to remove the three children from the care of their UKIP member foster parents
This is as ludicrous and illogical as it is sinister.
This apparently splendid couple have been treated as criminals merely because social workers disapproved of their political views — which happen to be shared, incidentally, by millions of fellow citizens. This is the kind of behaviour we associate with a totalitarian state.
The clear implication is that they were racists. But there is nothing racist about opposing multiculturalism. Indeed, many immigrants themselves oppose it. To damn this couple in this way is an appalling smear.
In any event, this was merely a short-term emergency foster placement. These children clearly needed as a matter of urgency a safe and loving environment — which by all accounts this couple gave them.
Ms Thacker said: 'I have to think about how sensitive I am being to those children.' Is this woman for real? Clearly, she is actually doing them harm by putting ideological dogma above the children's own needs.
The whole thing sounds beyond parody. But, alas, this goes far wider and deeper than this one incident.
In the early Nineties, I unearthed what, it is no exaggeration to say, was a climate of totalitarianism in social-work training.
Anti-racist zealots had captured the social workers' training body, and built into the social-work diploma the explicit assumption that society was fundamentally racist and oppressive.
What followed was an utterly chilling degree of intimidation and thought control. Blameless social work students were forced in tears to 'confess' to their own racism; some failed to qualify unless they identified racist attitudes even where none existed.
These and other politically correct dogma, and the requirement to enforce them, remain stamped into social-work culture like the name of Blackpool in a stick of rock.
The needs of vulnerable children and other social-work clients have been junked in favour of the overriding requirement to impose an ideological view of the world
As a result, the needs of vulnerable children and other social-work clients have been junked in favour of the overriding requirement to impose an ideological view of the world in which minorities can do no wrong while the majority can do no right.
Over the years, this has given rise to one horror story after another. Twelve years ago, an eight-year-old Ivorian child, Victoria Climbié, was tortured and murdered by her guardians under the noses of social workers who believed such behaviour had to be respected as part of African culture.
In the early Nineties, Islington council was revealed to have ignored the systematic sexual abuse and prostitution of children in its care because it was terrified of being called racist or homophobic if it disciplined black or gay staff perpetrating such crimes.
In Rotherham itself, the sickening sexual enslavement of under-age white girls by organised prostitution and pimping rings was largely ignored for more than two decades, in part because the abusers came overwhelmingly from Pakistani Muslim backgrounds.
And for years, would-be adoptive parents have been turned down by social workers because they are deemed to be too white, too middle class or in some other way fall foul of the politically correct inquisition.
All this goes far wider and deeper even than the failings of public sector professionals.
The grip of the Left on our culture has meant not just that many perfectly reasonable things are now deemed to be unsayable in civilised society.
More from Melanie Phillips for the Daily Mail...
- MELANIE PHILLIPS: No one has a human right to hide from justice behind a veil 15/09/13
- The election of Australia's new PM Tony Abbott is clear evidence that genuine conservative policies can win elections 08/09/13
- A rapier of steel under a blanket of bonhomie. What the bully boys of broadcasting today could learn from Frost 01/09/13
- An unholy war in the Guides and why we must ALL fight the secular bigots 25/08/13
- I despair of a Tory Party that bribes mothers to get others to take care of their children 04/08/13
- Shambles that just beggars belief. The 111 service has been a disaster from the start 29/07/13
- The Tories are just as desperate as Labour to hide the real truth about immigration 28/07/13
- At last! The PM'S acted over online porn. I just hope he sees it through 21/07/13
- Hope at last on the pathway to death - but the NHS still has a hole where its heart should be 14/07/13
Worse still, since political correctness stands truth and lies on their heads, people are vilified as extremists or bigots simply for telling the truth, connecting to reality or standing up for right over wrong.
Let us be clear: the claim that it is racist to oppose multiculturalism is the opposite of the truth. This is because multiculturalism does not, as is so often mistakenly believed, mean being tolerant of other cultures. It is a creed which holds instead that no one culture can trump any other.
That means you can't uphold human rights, equality for women or freedom of religious belief over cultures that don't uphold these values.
So multiculturalism inescapably involves abandoning certain ethnic minorities to violence, inequality and persecution. And that is truly racist.
Clearly, this row is an electoral gift to UKIP, coming as it does just days before the Rotherham by-election. And now it has spawned another similar accusation that a UKIP member was barred from volunteering for the charity Barnardo's.
Whether this is all an amazing coincidence of timing, or whether UKIP sympathisers are deliberately leaking the stories at the moment they will gain most attention, the issue at the heart of this controversy is all too real.
For what it illuminates is nothing less than our ongoing culture war, in which political correctness — which should really be called cultural Marxism — is being used by the Left to revolutionise society by undermining and subverting its core beliefs.
So, fundamental values embodied in issues such as immigration, national identity, marriage and family and many others are under systematic assault, while all who seek to defend them are vilified as bigots, swivel-eyed extremists and lunatics.
This has not been achieved by any one organisation imbued with mythical and conspiratorial powers. It has occurred over decades as a result of two main factors.
The first was the steady rise into power, across the universities, media, professions, political parties and civil service, of those whose opinions were shaped in the Sixties and Seventies by the New Left, which believed in the cultural transformation of society.
Ed Miliband, who said membership of Ukip should not be a bar to fostering is the most arrant hypocrisy.
The second was the demoralisation of the institutions which should have defended our culture — in particular, the Church and the governing class, which had become convinced of their own and their country's inevitable decline.
The result was what far-Leftists have called 'the long march through the institutions' — which all fell like dominoes.
Since this culture war has been fanatically prosecuted by the Labour Party — which consigns anyone who commits a politically incorrect heresy to the third circle of hell — Ed Miliband's condemn-ation of Rotherham's Labour council is the most arrant hypocrisy.
But the real problem is that David Cameron, in his obsession with rebranding the Tories, has not only failed to recognise that fighting the culture war is the great conservative cause of our time, but has even positioned himself on the wrong side.
Recent figures have shown that under Mr Cameron even more Labour 'cronies' are being appointed to quangos and charities than under the last Labour government.
And in 2006 he called UKIP 'a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists' — thus helping legitimise the kind of demonisation that has emerged in Rotherham.
In the wake of this row, Downing Street said the Prime Minister had not intended people to understand that all UKIP members were racist. 'Not all', eh? Well that's nice of him! Talk about missing the point.
What's needed is not just root and branch reform of social-work training. It's a leader who will halt this onslaught on Britain's core values and its terrifying descent into cultural tyranny. We need nothing less than a Winston Churchill for the culture war.


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Consumer Guides
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Is It Worth It To Work It?
Pop songs abound with fully loaded phrases disguised as harmless lyrical hooks. Here's one: work it. This finger-snapping command, which originated among black and Latino drag ball competitors as a way of acknowledging the labor of its self-constructed glamor goddesses — a house music staple made it famous, Teena Marie was an early adopter, and RuPaul brought it to the mainstream — has permeated the Top 40 in the cutthroat world of 21st-century fame.
"Work it" and its variations sometimes still signify the triumph of the underdog, as in Beyoncé's music, where labor and focus offer salvation to imperiled African-American girls. More generally, though, it's become pop's variation on Sheryl Sandberg corporate-feminist mantra, "Lean In": a call to prioritize individual achievement and rising class status in a highly competitive world.
To say "work it" is also to reference two cultures at the heart of popular music: the LGBTQ community, where it still signifies style as a source of power, and R&B and hip-hop, where it's become a signifier for sexual bravado and all-around self-confidence. Usually, that's where the idea of work stays in pop. But at music's always-active intersection of appropriation and race, different possibilities of what work can mean are causing trouble for three artists right now.
The Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, the English satirist-songwriter Lily Allen and the American indie-pop favorite Sky Ferreira are all conventionally attractive, heterosexually-identified women who fit the millennial profile of eclecticism and self-aware style. They don't have a lot in common musically, and at first glance the choices that have earned each criticism are very different, too. Azalea, whose debut album The New Classic and single "Fancy" are both in the Top 10, is a protégé of the hip-hop artist T.I. who rhymes in a thick Southern black drawl, despite being white and raised in a rural town nearly ten thousand miles from Atlanta. Allen, whose third album Sheezus became available this week, favors a Cockney accent over Americanisms, but risked criticism for exploiting black dancers in her video for the single "Hard Out Here" and playfully invoking Kanye West's Yeezus in her album's title track. Ferreira recently released a video for her song "I Blame Myself" that placed her within an otherwise all black male cast in a drug-bust scenario reminiscent of films like Boyz n the Hood.
Critics who have called out each artist on their choices are rightly demanding responsibility from these three women, especially Azalea, whose act really does seem like minstrelsy. But beyond this, it's important to ask why such crossings happen, and why they're happening again now. What do the appropriations made by Azalea, Allen and Ferreira have in common?
Azalea's commitment to hip-hop is undeniable. Allen's interest appears to be intellectual — wrapped up in cleverly turned lyrics and social commentary. Ferreira's seems almost coincidental. But apart from the apparent clumsiness of their choices, they do share a preoccupation: All gain emotional punch by pointing to underlying stereotypes about African-Americans working — specifically African-American men.
Today's aspiring divas may recall Tina Turner, Etta James or even Josephine Baker when they're being sexy. But when they get serious, they're more likely to be tough like boxers, deadly like drug lords, or mighty like the legendary folk hero John Henry, who could build a whole railroad, even if he couldn't save his own life.
Iggy Azalea claims her very right to rap because she has trained for years, perfecting her style in her adopted hometowns of Miami and L.A.. The life story she relates on The New Classic is one of unremitting toil: On its first single, actually called "Work," she raps about scrubbing floors as a teen maid, emigrating to America with no money and staying up night after night to master her flow. "Fancy" describes the fruit of this labor: Charli XCX's hook puts Azalea in the executive "fast lane, from L.A. to Tokyo," while the rapper's verses focus on how much her well-earned new money means to her.
Though it's not the only subject on The New Classic, Azalea's bootstraps-hiking origin myth dominates the album and focuses her persona. Her appearance is soft — she's also a model — but her attitude is hard, and distinctly masculine. Her best friends in rap are also all men; though she has toured with Beyonce and collaborated with Katy Perry, she is, as Perry once was, "one of the boys," preferring to feud with other women rappers rather than bond with them.
Assuming masculinity is as important to Azalea's shtick as is taking on blackness: She is, as Daphne Brooks once wrote of Amy Winehouse, a "hip-hop drag king." Pouring herself into the cartoon shape of a thug, Azalea fancies herself protected from the sexism she regularly encounters within hip-hop's gentleman's club. When the New York radio DJ Peter Rosenberg dwells on her waist-to-hip ratio during an interview — or worse, when fans try to sexually assault her during performances — she can deflect it with a chuckle and the voice she adopts, a male voice resounding with the evidence of her striving.
Lily Allen's strategy on her two much-debated singles is to question Azalea's brand of ambition through lightly funny songs critiquing female competitiveness. "Hard Out Here," the song whose video sparked protest because it showed the English rose surrounded by twerking black women, takes its inspiration from a very masculine source: the Three 6 Mafia song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," which won an Academy Award when it served as the centerpiece for the 2005 film Hustle & Flow. The song's conceit comes from Allen's use of macho posturing to insist on female power: "There's a glass ceilin' to break, uh-huh, there's money to make," she intones, later flipping the script further: "Forget your balls and grow a pair of tits."
Making fun of the drive to win even as she claims to embrace it, Allen mimics masculinity more lightly than Azalea does. Her whimsical, Afropop and jazz flavored sound keeps her light voice in a feminine zone; but her most interesting lyrics take her elsewhere. When Allen says "I want to be Sheezus" on her album's title track — a song in which she calls out peers like Lorde and Rihanna by name but later retreats from her challenge, calling it "dumb" and "embarrassing" — she is, jokingly or not, placing a male star at the apex of a list of divas. There's a conflict throughout Sheezus between this masculinizing urge to "lean in" and Allen's feminine desire to relax in the presence of her husband and two kids. "I'm here to make money, money, money," Allen croons, skewing the words yet another competitor, Jessie J, on the miserable anti-red carpet song "Insincerely Yours." Only the love songs here are genuinely comfortable. Yet Allen still invokes hip-hop and the traditionally male pastime of record collection in the unabashed party song "Our Time": "I've got quite a good record collection," she sings, enticing her friends to her lair. "Yeah I got everything that came out on Def Jam."
Allen's ambivalence about success, cast as a tension between male and female, makes for a richer listen than Azalea's posturing provides. Ferreira's video also contains some deeper layers of meaning, though its location in Compton — chosen randomly, according to director Grant Singer — remains problematic. The mixed-race Ferreira has pointed out that her own brother is half-black and that members of her family appear in the video, which pays homage to music she loves. Certainly the video is an odd mishmash. It begins with scenes that look like outtakes from the powerfully realistic film about the late Oscar Grant, Fruitvale Station, then incorporates dance routines reminiscent of Michael Jackson's gangland-musical video for "Bad." Scenes of Ferreira being arrested and sexually toying with police interrogators are intercut with moody shots of her black street friends.
The associations the video makes are strange and unsatisfying, but make more sense in relationship to the song it serves. "I Blame Myself" is Ferreria's response to questions about her own rocky career path, which has included much conflict with record labels over her image and artistic direction. The video was made months after her real-life drug arrest; she was not in Compton at the time, but in upstate New York with her boyfriend, Zachary Cole Smith of the shoegazer band DIIV. She is a self-styled rebel uncomfortable in the pop world. Confronting her own very different demons, Ferreira and Singer turned to a common story of labor on the margins: drug dealing in the African-American inner city.
Idealized and martyred in countless films, television shows and hip-hop verses, the drug dealer is the imaginary African-American worker in tragic mode. The role offers provisional power but almost always leads to defeat. For a white female artist to claim space within this story is puzzling, but also telling: Instead of stopping at the point where the black male represents hardness, Ferreira tries to connect with his vulnerability.
Asking whether Ferreria has a right to tell this story leads to a "yes or no" conversation. The story gets more interesting when we consider how tenacious these fantasies remain. Playing with the imagery and rhetoric of working-class or underclass black men doesn't seem to fit with the inspirational or sexually inviting messages most female pop stars produce. Yet even though black men are horrifically underemployed in America, with little opportunity for advancement, fantasies of their strength and prowess still capture the mass imagination.
There's a cultural connection between deeply embedded historical anxieties about the efficiency and strength of black workers (originally, slaves) and the tendency to marvel at black male bodies perfected through labor within the sports world and entertainment. African-American artists themselves have often turned these images around, and connected with the real people often behind them, finding pride and meaning in their stories. White male artists have done the same thing: think of Eminem's boxing fetish.
Now, women musicians are navigating a ruthless show business scene that mirrors the growing gap between haves and have nots. The pressure to outshine and outsell everyone else in the room is increasingly oppressive as major labels consolidate and indies try to maintain contender status. It's the same in other entertainment realms: Opportunities exist at street level, but rising is hard. It's easy to feel misunderstood and outcast. Maybe that's why artists as different as a brash white rapper, a cool British wit and a dance-pop iconoclast from L.A. are all stretching to find some part of themselves within the image of the stigmatized but alluring black male who gets business done.
It's the other side of what happened with Miley Cyrus's twerking controversy last fall. Then, as has happened many times before, black women's bodies signified pure pleasure, separated from the culture of both social customs (like dancing) and labor in which they've lived as Americans for hundreds of years. Maybe it's too painful for a pop song to consider how these women were forced to "work it," historically: as often mistreated domestic help, or, as Leslie Jones's troubling comedy routine about slave labor on last week's Saturday Night Live implied, as literal producers of those strong men who tilled American fields.
Then again, women have worked it that way before. In 1983, Donna Summer celebrated waitresses, seamstresses and cleaning women in her video for "She Works Hard for the Money." And she added a caveat: "You better treat her right," she said of her working women. That call for justice, however vague, brought a different message to the table. Instead of just working it, it's important to remember that there's still plenty of inequity that, as a society, we need to work out.


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