text:
In the fifth course of the Deep Learning Specialization, you will become familiar with sequence models and their exciting applications such as speech recognition, music synthesis, chatbots, machine translation, natural language processing (NLP), and more.
By the end, you will be able to build and train Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) and commonly-used variants such as GRUs and LSTMs; apply RNNs to Character-level Language Modeling; gain experience with natural language processing and Word Embeddings; and use HuggingFace tokenizers and transformer models to solve different NLP tasks such as NER and Question Answering.
The Deep Learning Specialization is a foundational program that will help you understand the capabilities, challenges, and consequences of deep learning and prepare you to participate in the development of leading-edge AI technology. It provides a pathway for you to take the definitive step in the world of AI by helping you gain the knowledge and skills to level up your career.


text:
Photo Credit NIAID
# 6925
In addition to this morning's UK announcement (see HPA Reports New Novel Coronavirus Patient) and this afternoon's ECDC epidemiological update (see ECDC Update On Novel Coronavirus) we now have an update from the World Health Organization on the 10th known novel virus infection.
Novel coronavirus infection –update
11 February 2013 - The United Kingdom (UK) has informed WHO of a confirmed case with infection of the novel coronavirus (NCoV). The case is a UK resident who developed symptoms of illness on 26 January 2013. Laboratory investigations on respiratory specimens have revealed both an Influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 infection and a confirmed NCoV infection. He is hospitalized in intensive care unit.
Preliminary investigation reveals that the patient had a history of travel to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Further investigation into the case is ongoing.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has instituted stringent infection control measures around the patient and identified contacts who may have been exposed to the patient during his illness.
This is a sporadic case and does not alter the current WHO risk assessment on NCoV but the new case does indicate that the virus is persistent. As of 11 February 2013, a total of 10 confirmed cases of human infection with a novel coronavirus have been notified to WHO.
Based on the current situation and available information, WHO encourages all Member States to continue their surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) and to carefully review any unusual patterns. Testing for the new coronavirus of patients with unexplained pneumonias, or patients with severe, progressive or complicated illness not responding to treatment, should be considered especially in persons residing in or returning from the Arabian peninsula and neighboring countries.
Any clusters of SARI or SARI in health care workers should be thoroughly investigated, regardless of where in the world they occur.
New human cases and clusters should be promptly reported both to national health authorities and to WHO.
WHO does not advise special screening at points of entry with regard to this event nor does it recommend that any travel or trade restrictions are applied.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Source : EV Thompson
Source Title | Important Maine Maps, Books, Prints and Ephemera |
Description | This auction, best understood as a sale of inventory rather than of a collection, nevertheless represents a concerted effort by Mr. Thompson to gather in a single place as much of the books and ephemera relating to the history of Maine as could be practically acquired. For future collectors of Maine material this catalogue becomes their inevitable companion, a bibliographical and price guide to much that a Maine collector may ever want or see. |
Scope of Text | "It is my hope that this catalogue will be of use to collectors, dealers, librarians and curators who deal with Mainiana. In general, there is virtually no literature that covers Maine maps after 1800, or with the field of Maine ephemera." |
Total Records in AED | 614 |


text:
Alexander the Great, King of Macedon
Ruled 336-323 B.C.
August/September 2013
When St. John Chrysostom visited Alexandria in A.D. 400, he asked to see Alexander's burial place, adding, "His tomb even his own people know not." It is a question that continues to be asked now, 1,613 years later. Alexander died in the Mesopotamian capital of Babylon in 323 B.C., perhaps from poisoning, malaria, typhoid, West Nile fever, or grief over the death of his best friend, Hephaestion. For two years, Alexander's mummified remains, housed in a golden sarcophagus, lay in state, a pawn in the game of royal succession. Finally, it was decided that Alexander would be buried in Greece at Aegae, the first capital of the Macedonian kings. But according to ancient sources, his hearse was hijacked near Damascus and the corpse taken to Egypt, first to Memphis, and, some time between 298 and 283 B.C., to Alexandria, the city he had founded and named after himself.
There, Alexander was interred in at least two tombs in different locations, the more notable of which ancient authors, such as Strabo, Plutarch, and Pausanias, identify as a mausoleum called the Soma, meaning "body" in ancient Greek. The Soma was repeatedly robbed—the golden sarcophagus was melted down and replaced with one made of glass or crystal. Even Cleopatra took gold from the tomb to pay for her war against Octavian (soon to be the emperor Augustus). There were subsequent visits to the tomb by numerous Roman emperors and then, beginning in A.D. 360, a series of events that included warfare, riots, an earthquake, and a tsunami, threatened—or perhaps destroyed—the tomb by the time of Chrysostom's visit. From that point on, Alexander's tomb can be considered lost. And despite centuries of relentless searching by archaeologists, authors, and amateurs, it remains so.


text:
Individuals who have been placed under arrest are first transported to the Central Jail, which is located at the Main Jail at 14470 Harlee Road, Palmetto. Upon arrival, they must complete the following steps:
While the staff at the Central Jail is dedicated to ensuring the prompt processing and release of eligible arrestees, the amount of time required to complete this process may be affected by the volume of arrestees being processed simultaneously and/or the availability of information from state and national databases.
All arrestees who do not bond out of jail will routinely appear before a judge within 24 hours after arrest. The judge will inform the arrestee of the charge(s) and, if appropriate, will set a bond amount.
In misdemeanor cases, the judge may accept a guilty plea and release the arrestee on his own recognizance or time served. In felony cases, the judge may raise or lower the bond. The judge may order the inmate screened to be released on Supervised ROR. This process takes longer for the inmate to be released due to the screening process.
Booking receives the results from first appearance around 11:30 A.M. each day from the Clerk of Courts. If you are calling for bond information on a newly arrested person, please wait until the results are received.
Inmate property can be released to family or friends after an inmate completes a property release form specifying the intended recipient. Property may only be released when the property form has been signed by the inmate. A government-issued photo ID is required to receive the property. The Property release request usually takes 48 hours to process.
Once an inmate receives his or her housing assignment, he or she can contact family and friends by calling collect from phones in the jail. Family and friends must be willing to accept the charges.
Inmates cannot receive incoming telephone calls and MCSO employees are not permitted to deliver personal messages to inmates.


text:
Editor: Focus Medica
Publication Year: 2011
Publisher: Focus Medica
Single-User Purchase Price:
Unlimited-User Purchase Price:
Category: Health & Medicine - Medicine
Video Count:
Book Status: Available
Table of Contents
The FOCUS Animated Pocket Dictionary of Urology, the first ever animated dictionary in the subject, is a comprehensive reference source for the definition of terms related to the urinary system, and the genitourinary diseases and disorders. A must-have resource for physicians and students who would greatly benefit from this module, it covers related terms and definitions. All the definitions have been graphically described with breathtaking, state of the art 3D animations.


text:
Next: Avoiding Recompilation of Some Files, Previous: Arguments to Specify the Goals, Up: How to Run make
The makefile tells make
how to tell whether a target is up to date,
and how to update each target. But updating the targets is not always
what you want. Certain options specify other activities for make
"No-op". Causes make
to print the recipes that are needed to
make the targets up to date, but not actually execute them. Note that
some recipes are still executed, even with this flag (see How the MAKE
Variable Works). Also any recipes
needed to update included makefiles are still executed
(see How Makefiles Are Remade).
"Touch". Marks targets as up to date without actually changing
them. In other words, make
pretends to update the targets but
does not really change their contents; instead only their modified
times are updated.
"Question". Silently check whether the targets are up to date, but do not execute recipes; the exit code shows whether any updates are needed.
"What if". Each '-W' flag is followed by a file name. The given
files' modification times are recorded by make
as being the present
time, although the actual modification times remain the same.
You can use the '-W' flag in conjunction with the '-n' flag
to see what would happen if you were to modify specific files.
With the '-n' flag, make
prints the recipe that it would
normally execute but usually does not execute it.
With the '-t' flag, make
ignores the recipes in the rules
and uses (in effect) the command touch
for each target that needs to
be remade. The touch
command is also printed, unless '-s' or
is used. For speed, make
does not actually invoke
the program touch
. It does the work directly.
With the '-q' flag, make
prints nothing and executes no
recipes, but the exit status code it returns is zero if and only if the
targets to be considered are already up to date. If the exit status is
one, then some updating needs to be done. If make
encounters an
error, the exit status is two, so you can distinguish an error from a
target that is not up to date.
It is an error to use more than one of these three flags in the same
invocation of make
The '-n', '-t', and '-q' options do not affect recipe
lines that begin with '+' characters or contain the strings
'$(MAKE)' or '${MAKE}'. Note that only the line containing
the '+' character or the strings '$(MAKE)' or '${MAKE}'
is run regardless of these options. Other lines in the same rule are
not run unless they too begin with '+' or contain '$(MAKE)' or
'${MAKE}' (See How the MAKE
Variable Works.)
The '-t' flag prevents phony targets (see Phony Targets) from being updated, unless there are recipe lines beginning with '+' or containing '$(MAKE)' or '${MAKE}'.
The '-W' flag provides two features:
would do if you were to modify some files.
is actually
executing recipes, the '-W' flag can direct make
to act as
if some files had been modified, without actually running the recipes
for those files.
Note that the options '-p' and '-v' allow you to obtain other
information about make
or about the makefiles in use
(see Summary of Options).
Next: Avoiding Recompilation of Some Files, Previous: Arguments to Specify the Goals, Up: How to Run make


text: Wreaths are perfect for sending direct to a funeral as a mark of respect. Available in both contemporary and traditional designs, our wreaths come in a wide variety of styles, colours and sizes. Funeral Wreaths are probably the best known of funeral and sympathy tributes, their ornate circular design is extremely versatile.


text:
Easy to set up, easy to use due to legally compliant measuring menus (i.e. according to TRGI 2018)
Extremely accurate and DVGW-compliant measuring results
Leak tightness checks of gas pipes according to TRGI 2018 and liquid gas pipes according to TRF 2021
Easy to use due to automatic pressure build-up; quick and easy data storage
Professional pressure/leak detector for installation, maintenance and service of gas and water pipes. Specially designed to carry out reliable leak tightness checks, load tests, serviceability tests, temperature measurements in accordance with existing rules and regulations.


text:
Calling Indie Game Developers…
Hi, Guildmaster Phill here! I am currently looking for a game developer to collaborate on a project with (And yes, it is Adventurers' Guild related.) I have little idea about how to going about finding such an individual, as I need someone whom I can trust and isn't necessarily just looking at this as another… Read more »
Mini break notice
In case you did not notice, since episode 18 is now all uploaded, I'm taking a little break. However, this break will be very short, because I'll be starting the upload of Episode 19: Violent Instinct on January 16th. Look forward to it! I'm not going to lie, the last part of last year was… Read more »
Comic Convention debrief
Alright! As some of you were aware, I had a mostly Adventurers' Guild themed table at an indie comic convention recently! I never got around to talking about how it went in detail, as I have been very busy lately (I was going to say extraordinarily busy, but this level of business does seem to… Read more »


text:
Skip Navigation Links | |
Exit Print View | |
man pages section 7: Device and Network Interfaces Oracle Solaris 11 Information Library |
- DTrace function boundary tracing provider
The fbt driver is a DTrace dynamic tracing provider that performs dynamic instrumentation at function boundaries in the Solaris kernel.
The function is the fundamental unit of program text. In a well-designed system, the function performs a discrete and well-defined operation on a specified object or series of like objects. Most functions are implemented by themselves calling functions on encapsulated objects, but some functions —so-called "leaf functions" — are implemented without making further function calls. The Function Boundary Tracing fbt provider contains a mechanism for instrumenting the vast majority of functions in the kernel and offering the instrumentation as a set of DTrace probes.
The fbt driver is not a public interface and you access the instrumentation offered by this provider through DTrace. Refer to the Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide for a description of the public documented interfaces available for the DTrace facility and the probes offered by the fbt provider.
See attributes(5) for a description of the following attributes:
dtrace(1M), attributes(5), dtrace(7D)
Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide


text:
Visonicom EZCast dongle VMD-EZ156 is a universal WiFi display adapter that supports EZCast, Miracast, Airplay and DLNA standards and protocols.
With universal wireless display dongle users can easily mirror the video, photo, game and files from PC/Notebook, Android phones/tablet PCs, iPAD/iPhone, to HDTV or projector through HDMI port wirelessly (EZCast for all users, or EZAir for iPAD/iPhone users, or EZMirror for Android phone/Android pad users), or push all the video, photo, and files to from the above mentioned devices to HDTV or projector (DLNA).
Product Features
* Cross Platforms support: iOS, Android, Windows, MAC OS
* Multimode support: Built-in EZCast WiFi Display Technology, Miracast, DLNA, Airplay
* Highly integrated Actions SoC
* Simple to operate
* Most compact size and lower consumption under 2w
* Fast connection & low latency for superior user experience
* H.264 1080P full HD video decode
* LPCM Audio Decode
* HDMI v1.3 video output
* HDCP 2.x
* Auto channel selection with high quality video stream
* Build in WiFi support IEEE 801.11 b/g/n up to 150Mbps data transfer rate with WiFi Direct capability
* Flexible power using TV standard USB port (need to support up to 400mA) or external USB power supply
Hardware Feature | |
CPU | Actions AM8251 600MHz |
ROM | NAND Flash 128MB |
OS | Linux |
Wi-Fi Module | External 802.11b/g/n 150Mbps 2.4GHz |
Software Feature | |
EZCast | Support Windows/Mac OS/Android/iOS |
DLNA:DMP | Display photo, audio and videos base on DLNA protocol for Windows/Android/iOS |
Miracast (EZMirror) | Native support Miracast function(Certified with WiFi display) |
Airplay (EZAir) | Support iOS with EZAir |
Soft AP + Repeater | Smart phone can connect through EZCast-AP to another WiFi router |
Remote Control | EZCast APP for Android/Windows/iOS/Mac |
UI | Standard GUI for all platforms |
Interface Definition | |
AV Output | HDMI 1.3 type A male |
USB | USB HSOT *1 for firmware update only |
Power | 5V/400MA USB cable USB type A to Micro USB |
LED | Working Status (optional) |
For retail sales please refer to our official online stores:
Please kindly note that we never sell at multi-vendor retail sites, nor sell to the sellers on multi-vendor retail sites, thus we are not responsible for them.


text: Rayson Ho wrote: > > The sad thing is that that aren't any good compilers that target > Athlon. And keep in mind that AMD is using the Intel compiler for > running SPEC. I suspect the compilers they used (Intel C++ 5.0.1 build 010727Z, Intel Fortran 5.0.1 build 010727Z, and Compaq Visual Fortran 6.6) are pretty up to date. Interesting they chose to use Intel's compiler on their chip. > > A lot of tuning is needed in order to get good SPEC results. But if you > look at real world applications, AMD is same or better that Intel, even > for FP code, and also the price is cheaper too. > > http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=45000277 > The problem with Ace's and several other standard sites is they don't actually compile the applications. They just live with what the app vendor did which is mostly irrelevant for folks who compile their own codes. That does apply for people who use a Winxx box though so it is relevant to that audience. I can guarantee the binaries I generate for a P4 will not run on any Athlon though. (SSE2) Wes


text:
10 slices of white bread cubed (see note)
¼ cup melted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
pinch of ground nutmeg
½ cup raisins (soaked)
6 eggs lightly beaten
¾ cup white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt
3 cups hot milk
Preheat oven to 375 and spray a 9" x 13" baking dish with cooking spray. Put your raisins in a small dish and cover them with boiling water and ½ teaspoon of rum extract (if you don't have rum extract, just leave it out, but its very good).
Cube the bread (you can leave the crusts on or take them off, whichever you prefer). Place the bread cubes in the prepared baking dish and set aside.
Heat the milk, sugar, butter and salt until the butter melts (I use microwave), add vanilla & spices and whisk in the beaten eggs (whisk while adding the eggs).
Drain the raisins (throw away the liquid) and sprinkle them over the bread cubes. Pour the egg -milk mixture over the bread cubes. Let this sit for 15 minutes (important).
Before baking, sprinkle the surface with a little cinnamon sugar (or just sugar) and bake 30-40 minutes (my oven takes 35 minutes). Bread pudding is done when knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Serve warm (not hot) with whipped cream or ice cream.
NOTE: This recipe works better with bread that isn't super fresh/soft. Specialty breads like brioche or egg bread work well.
NOTE: When making this for company, I use raisin bread, and I let it sit out in the air for a couple of hours to remove some of the breads moisture. I don't add other raisins.
NOTE: I hope you will all go over to Sweet as Sugar Cookies and take a look. Lisa, is hosting the neatest "Sweets for a Saturday" post. Tons of sweet goods to inspire you!!!


text:
The amd-driver-installer--8.982.8.3-x86.x86_64.run fails to install on my newly built rig [Sabertooth 990fx + Fx8350 + 32GB RAM] running Mint Nadia(64-bit). It fails with "DKMS part of installation failed. Please refer to /usr/share/ati/fglrx-install.log for details".
########### fglrx-install.log ###############
Check if system has the tools required for installation.
Uninstalling any previously installed drivers.
Creating symlink /var/lib/dkms/fglrx/8.982.8.3/source ->
DKMS: add completed.
Kernel preparation unnecessary for this kernel. Skipping...
Building module:
cleaning build area....
cd /var/lib/dkms/fglrx/8.982.8.3/build; sh make.sh --nohints --uname_r=3.5.0-17-generic --norootcheck....(bad exit status: 1)
[Error] Kernel Module : Failed to build fglrx-8.982.8.3 with DKMS
[Error] Kernel Module : Removing fglrx-8.982.8.3 from DKMS
Deleting module version: 8.982.8.3
completely from the DKMS tree.
[Reboot] Kernel Module : update-initramfs
I tried contacting AMD, and other than autoreply I got nothing AMD->Thanks for supporting people who buy your professional line of graphics cards !
The opensource driver works well except for one thing - 10 bit / per channel colour support (My monitor has a 8 bit panel but a wider LUT).
I did read in this very forum that a patch was needed to make the driver work for Kernel Versions > 3 but it was mentioned that the patch was not needed for 64-bit.
Any help is appreciated.


text: Embark on a seafaring adventure in a brand-new series from bestselling author MaryLu Tyndall. After witnessing the death and destruction caused by the Civil War, Colonel Blake Wallace is eager to leave his once precious Southern homeland for the pristine shores of Brazil and the prospect of a new utopian community. Widow Eliza Crawford seeks passage on Wallace's ship harboring a dirty secret—and a blossoming hope for a fresh start. But will dangers from the sea and from man keep them from the peace and love they long for?


text: The goal of TrueMPG is to measure the actual miles per gallon of all vehicles sold in a given month. Calculations start at the trim level, taking into account EPA fuel economy data that includes engine size and drivetrain factors that affect a vehicle's MPG ratings. TrueMPG aims to illustrate the actual MPG's of each brand, manufacturer and vehicle segments to give consumers, media, and the industry a better understanding of fuel efficiency. To ascertain TrueMPG, TrueCar utilizes the EPA's average fuel economy rating using 45 percent highway and 55 percent city driving behavior. The overall industry MPG is 21.4 for February 2011.


text:
ARRL UHF/Microwave Band Plan Committee Seeks Input on 6 and 3 Centimeter Bands
Last year, in recognition of the need to update the published band plans for our UHF and microwave bands, the ARRL Board of Directors formed the UHF/Microwave Band Plan Committee to develop revised national plans for the amateur bands between 902 MHz and 3.5 GHz. After receiving extensive user input, the committee completed its task and the resulting band plans were approved by the Board in July 2012. The committee has now received an additional assignment to conduct a similar update to the 6 and 3 centimeter bands.
In order to do this effectively, we need to know how various segments of these bands are now being utilized around the country. You can help us by sharing what you know about local usage in your area and by asking other users whom we may not have reached -- both individuals and groups -- to do the same.
Benefits of Band Plans
The FCC has left management of our highest bands to the Amateur Radio community. It's up to us to promote activity on our bands and to minimize possible conflicts among incompatible uses. The increasing interest in microwaves for communication and experimentation -- along with advances in technology and the proliferation of new digital modes -- presents exciting opportunities for amateurs. Band plans should provide room for existing applications, for experimentation and for new uses and technologies.
Regulators are under pressure to find room for ever-expanding commercial and consumer technologies, and our slices of spectrum are at risk from such pressure. While our 5 and 10 GHz allocations are not under imminent threat from the government's National Broadband Plan, sharing our collective internal knowledge of current practices and planned applications around the country is still beneficial in many respects.
The Update Process
The purpose of these band plans is not to tell you what to do or where to do it. Rather, it is to share information about how you are using our bands now and about future plans and projects that will make use of them. Thus, the first and most important step is to collect information from you so that we have a better picture of the various uses and projects going on around the country. We know that practices may differ from one geographic region to another, often driven by local conditions or needs. We also recognize constraints that will prevent one plan from fitting every user group. Our current band plans defer to the formal determinations by regional frequency coordinating bodies.
After gathering data, we will evaluate the range of uses and draft a revision for each of the bands under consideration. Those drafts will be published for your review and comment and amended as necessary, after which the proposed plans will be brought to the ARRL Board of Directors for final approval.
What We Need From You
You may know other amateurs or groups who are using -- or have plans to use -- the 6 and 3 centimeter bands. Please share this request for input with them and encourage them to respond. We're not tallying "votes," so collective input from user groups will be more helpful and faster to compile than multiple copies of the same data from individual group members.
During our work on the 33, 23, 13 and 9 centimeter bands, we also invited input concerning the 6, 3 and 1.25 centimeter bands for our later use. If you have already responded concerning these bands, we thank you for doing so. You do not need to submit your comments again, as we have them already compiled and will consider them during this round of the committee's work.
If you have not previously submitted comments concerning our 6 and/or 3 centimeter allocations, we would like to hear from you. We ask that you use the forms below to record your own input, whether as an individual or representing a group, and use the accompanying reply format in order to help speed the compiling of the responses. Use a separate page for each band for which you wish to provide input. If you feel the need to provide more lengthy explanations or discussion, please see "Submitting Additional Information" below.
- Column 1: The general frequency range of each activity, in decimal megahertz.
- Column 2: The mode or modulation type employed, using common descriptors such as FM voice, ATV or video, high-speed data, weak-signal digital or FCC designators.
- Column 3: The approximate bandwidth (in kilohertz) of an individual signal and the number of simultaneous signals needed to perform the function or application.
- Column 4: A description of the function or activity, such as repeater control, D-STAR data link, satellite input/output, real-time video, voice repeater output, EME or weak-signal terrestrial.
- Column 5: Whether the activity is current ("C"), under development ("D") or proposed for the future ("F").
- Column 6: Reasons for selecting a specific band or segment for the activity and/or any conditions that would preclude conducting the activity in another segment of the same band or on a different band, such as operating limits of modified commercial gear, noise between xxx and yyy MHz from adjacent non-amateur bands, frequency restrictions faced by operators in other countries / regions, unique propagation characteristics or existing satellite frequencies.
Submitting Additional Information
We also welcome comments you think would be helpful in completing our work. If, for example, you have specific knowledge as to trends in the use of adjacent non-amateur bands or expansion by primary users where we are secondary that may impact the future use of our bands, please share it with our Microwave Band Plan Committee as a separate narrative.
Please submit your response via e-mail or via an online form by January 14, 2013. If you have questions about the reporting format, you may direct them to the same e-mail address.
Thank you for helping us to collect this important information.
Rick Roderick, K5UR
ARRL Microwave Band Plan Committee Chair
5 GHz Uses (25.5 kB)
10 GHz Uses (25.5 kB)


text:
iPhone photographers are getting improvements in panoramic efforts with the latest version of the AutoStitch iPhone app. You can use AutoStitch 3.0 to create iPhone panoramic images up to 20MP in size. The app will also adjust for brightness variations across a range of images. AutoStitch 3.0 also allows you to share your images on Facebook or via email from within the app.
AutoStitch 3.0 runs $2.99 and is available through the App Store in the Photography category. The full App Store name is AutoStitch Panorama.


text:
Santa's Elves
Santa's Elves are generally regarded as a species of slaves whose sole purpose in life is to execute the will of Santa Claus, who brutally subjugated their entire race several centuries ago. Due to years of inbreeding they may no longer properly be considered Elves and have really become more like Smurfs.
Origin of Santa's Elves[edit | edit source]
There are several conflicting theories concerning the origin of these merry little blighters. While some maintain that all of Santa's Elves are in fact, clones of a single, legendary Master Elf, others argue that this merely represents Duchy of the Arctic Circle agitprop intended to exaggerate the potency of Santa's legions. Recent genetic research indicates that Santa's Elves are direct descendants of Wood Elves, a conclusion which is supported by their preternatural skill with longbows, a trait previously attributed to an assumed mastery of ninjutsu. It is likely that during his tenure as a Teutonic general Klaus Santaschen (as he was then known) he raided the Black Forest in order to guarantee a sufficient supply for his cloning experiments and sadistic sexual appetites.
History of Santa's Elves[edit | edit source]
During World War I Reichsmarschall Klaus Santaschen sent young Corporal , in charge of a team of experimental Robot Commandos, on a series of secret missions into the Black Forest and Lothlorien Woods to kidnap as many local Elves as possible. During the war several million Elves were captured and subjugated, boosting Deutschland's industry to such a great extent that Germany easily triumphed over the Allies. Unfortunately during the war the rate of attrition among the Elves caused them to be hunted nearly to extinction. Santaschen was deeply involved in researching Elven physiology to try and find a way to prolong their pathetically short lifespan when German citizens, elated with their victory, promptly blamed it on The Jews and elected Bismarck and The Party of Hitlertude to power. Hitler quickly turned on his former mentor, believing that slave labor could much more efficiently be provided by such easily exploitable minorites as Dark-Side Mormons and metrosexuals.
Santaschen immediately fled the country on his secret atomic sled, carrying as many Elves as he could reasonable stuff into a large burlap sack. Relentlessly hunted by Hitler's legendary French Foreign Legion, Santaschen eventually settled in the Great White North, where he used his connections to powerful Jewish Banking Klans to obtain sufficient resources to build his Workshop and a Concentration Camp for the Elves, with the eventual goal of regaining his stolen throne. Unfortunately Santaschen only successfully carried with him pi Elves, counting segments, which necessitated a program of forced breeding. The limited number of Elves combined with natural uranium deposits under the Arctic soil quickly caused a series of grotesque and bizarre mutations. After only a few generations Santaschen was unable to breed the Elves himself, and instead resorted to lacing their icing ration with prodigious amounts of Viagra.
Unfortunately, before Santaschen had enough Elves to being running his enterprise, they rebelled against his tyrannic rule and murdered him. The Elves, however, did not realize they had a traitor among their number. Knecht Krampus Ruprecht, feeling some distorted sense of loyalty to his cruel Flash Master, he lovingly revived his master's body through the use of advanced technology and the secret writings of the Necronomicon. Much has already been written about the resulting Silent Night of Long Knives; by the end of it Santaschen had assumed both the name Santa Claus and complete domination of his realm.
At this point the Third Age is generally seen as having commenced, though some nerds argue otherwise.
Santa's Elves of the Third Age[edit | edit source]
After KrisKringleNacht, Santa Claus and Krampus took several measures to ensure that the Elves would never be able to revolt again. These included a program of forced sex between cousins (The Alabama Protocol) and a diet which consists entirely of vanilla icing, specifically formulated to give the Elves enough energy to work and then quickly sugar crash into docility. Santa also took advantage of his burgeoning knowledge in the field of Necromancy to enlarge his workforce with millions of elvish zombies, who serve him in an utterly faithful manner as long as they are never given salt. For this reason they are kept far from the reindeer and the icing ration is made with olestra.
The Elves work 22-hour days in Santa's Toy Workshop before their brutally enforced sex regimen; their undead counterparts labor ceaselessly, desiring only that their master's plan of world domination comes to frutition. The only holiday observed by the Workshop is Cinco de Mayo, where those Elves yet living rejoice for the companionship and blessed labor of their undead bretheren, who actually do not get the day off, though Krampus is said to be considering such a boon if armaments production increases sufficiently in the third quarter.


text:
Former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown is thinking about running for governor of Massachusetts.
The Republican told WFXT-TV he's going to "keep all options open" about his political future.
Brown said the best thing he can do for himself and for his peace of mind now "is just to hang tight and recharge and be active."
Brown was defeated last year by Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Brown also suggested that his decision to not run again in the upcoming special Senate election had to with the prospect of having to defend the seat again next year if he won.
Fox News Channel recently hired Brown as a contributor.
Brown says he's hoping to use the opportunity to challenge elected officials to put the country's needs ahead of partisan interests.


text:
Giant fossil fleas found, according to reports in Nature News, ScienceShots 29 February 2012, and Nature DOI:doi:10.1038/nature10839 published online 29 February. Chinese and French palaeontologists have studied nine flea specimens from Daohugou and Huangbanjigou in China. The insects varied from 8 to 21mm (0.3 to 0.8in). Living fleas vary from 1 to 10mm (mostly less than 5mm) in length. The fleas had robust mouthparts with saw-like projections on their siphon-like structure they used to feed. Modern-day fleas have a smooth siphon.
Michael Engel a fossil insect expert at University of Kansas, commented: "The mouthparts are certainly overkill for piercing the hides of early mammals and birds. It really appears as though they were specialised for working their way into some heavy hides, such as those on dinosaurs". They also lacked the spring loaded legs that enable today's fleas to jump so spectacularly. The research team concluded: "Their special morphology suggests that their earliest hosts were hairy or feathered 'reptilians', and that they radiated to mammalian and bird hosts later in the Cenozoic". Engel suggests the fleas were ambush specialists, "hiding in the periphery and then scrambling onto the host for brief periods to feed before bolting again" and added "they could have attacked dinosaurs or possibly pterosaurs". The Nature News article commented: "But perhaps the only way to be sure would be to find fossil fleas caught in the act of feeding on dinosaurs". The Daohugou specimens are dated as 165 million years old and the Huangbanjigou specimens as 125 million years old. This makes them the oldest fossil fleas as well as the biggest.
Editorial Comment: Both people and dogs are probably glad such big fleas are extinct, and only little fleas are left, but did you notice the uniformitarian thinking – today's fleas bite animals, therefore fleas have always bitten animals. The Nature News writer is correct in saying the only way to know what they ate would be to find one in the act of eating. Since these fleas are dead, no-one can observe them eating anything, so the belief these newly discovered fossil fleas used their robust mouthparts to attack dinosaurs is pure speculation. Their large strong siphon with saw-teeth would have been just as effective for penetrating plants and feeding on plant juices. Furthermore, if these have been correctly classified as the oldest fossil fleas, then they provide no evidence for evolution of fleas from any other kind of insect. The fact they are extinct is evidence there were once more kinds of fleas than there are now.
Altogether, these fossil fleas are good evidence for the Biblical history of fleas: they were created as fully functioning creatures that ate plants and the world was once a much better place for vegetarian fleas, and therefore dogs and people, but it has gone downhill due to human sin and God's judgement. Many giant forms have died out as part of the overall degeneration of the world and some creatures have survived by becoming parasites. (Ref. insects, arthropods, parasites)
Evidence News 14 March 2012


text:
The phone has been ringing off the hook at Tann Electric since a winter ice storm roared through Kansas City last week.
Frozen tree limbs crashed on power lines and ripped the meter housings apart from homes, leaving 387,000 homes without power. John Tann, president and owner of Tann Electric, said all 15 of his electricians responded to the disaster, the worst ice storm in Kansas City's history.
"Our philosophy is to get the power back on to the people as soon as we can," Tann said. "We've been fairly successful in getting people's power back on the day they call us."
Tann Electric, a 10-year-old service company in Lenexa, Kan., specializes in electrical and datacom work for residential customers. In the first few days of the ice storm, freezing rain covered the streets of Kansas City, transformers blew and entire neighborhoods turned pitch black. Tann said his customer service crew handled hundreds of phone calls.
"The thing that I've compared it to is the Jerry Lewis Telethon," Tann said. "We tried to handle every call that came in. I know that we've had some customers say that they couldn't get through, but we try to answer the phone and take calls every day."
Tann Electric temporarily lost power, but with its computers on backup and its phone system still in operation, they continued to take service calls.
"We had a few less lights, but we kept on going," Tann said. "Since the storm, we have probably taken 250 calls."
The Lenexa, Kan.-based division of McBride Electric, an electrical contracting company which has corporate offices in San Diego, also was busy with storm repair work. Robin Yessen, McBride Electric's division manager, said the company spent much of its time in the early days of the storm's aftermath rebuilding service entrances. "The ice storm pulled a lot of meter housings away from homes," he said. "Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) asked us to bring the meter housings back to code."
He added that there are some concerns about utilities doing "quick-fix repairs" to restore service.
"No one knows if the equipment's been compromised," he said. "Are the lugs damaged? Is the drop from the utility damaged? Is a loose fitting going to cause arcing and sparking? The problem may not be apparent once the electricity's turned on. In one case, a utility contractor had wired around a meter. Electricity creates heat that will cause failure over time, so bad repairs may not be apparent immediately."
The danger of fire is also of real concern for the electrical contractors and homeowners, Tann said.
"One of the fire departments here in town said we've had more fires in the last five days than we've had in the last five years," he said. "The services are coming down and then they get arcing on the back of their house."
Very few of Tann's customers had backup generators, but they may think about getting them now that Kansas City has had two crippling ice storms in five years.
"We've had enough long-term power outages here that people after 1996 were talking seriously about it and then they forgot it," Tann said. "This might make them think more about putting up a permanently installed backup system or a temporary backup system where they can roll a generator outside and bring a cord in and throw a transfer switch and be powered back on."
McBride Electric's Yessen said the radio ads that his company ran several days after the storm drew many calls.
"It's not like we're trying to corner the market," he said. "But this could be a good time for homeowners to upgrade their equipment — particularly if homeowner's insurance policy covers it. We have seen grounding problems in about 80 percent of the homes we've inspected. We've installed about 50 ground rods.
"I don't know if our company's going to turn any profit (on this work), considering transportation and per-diem costs. But we're happy to help out, and I think it shows people the quality of work we do."
Other Kansas City area electrical companies have had a busy week. Thomas Hiemer, principal and owner of TM Sales, a rep agency in North Kansas City, Mo., with a strong focus on utility work, said his manufacturers have been "working around the clock" to make the products that utilities need to restore power.
"We worked all through the weekend to bring material in and allocate it to the various utilities and the various customers," he said. "There are thousands of lines and poles that are down. Of course, to replace them, you need ground wire. We have a manufacturer of bare copper that has worked all through the weekend to get bare copper for grounding to the utilities.
"Milbank Manufacturing makes the sockets and thousands of those have been pulled off the wall. Each utility has its own specifications, so we've been taking substitute meters available from all over the country, taking them to all the utilities to have them sign off that, 'Yes this meter will work with this modification.' Every utility has their own version of how they want their meter socket, whether they want to have a fifth terminal or a separate lug, or whatever it is that they want.
"Our manufacturers have been extremely responsive, especially Millbank Manufacturing, Allen Wire, and Tyco. Without them doing what they've done, people would still not have power. You can't turn the power back on in the home unless you've got a new socket to put the new meter in. You've got to ground all the transformers, and you can't do that without the ground wire, and you can't hook up the wire without the hardware. Plus, we've been supplying the overhead wire too. It's been real interesting."
Hiemer said that while the Kansas City metropolitan area has had some big ice storms over the years, no other storm has been of this magnitude.
"Just from the ice storms we have had in the past, we knew that we needed to gear up, so we contacted our manufacturers and said, 'Get ready. Can you put some extra manufacturing capacity just for our type of products?' They did and it's paid off big dividends."
He added that with some of the utility products that were in highest demand, his company has done three to four months of business in four or five days.
"This was the storm of the century," he said. "We've had them bad before, but not to this extent. A large tree that has an inch and a half of ice on it, that could be an extra six tons of weight. When six tons comes down on top of a power line, it's not going to withstand that. It just rips everything right off the wall."
Mark Gauldin, operations manager for Temple Electric's Kansas and Missouri locations said the last few days have been a "whirlwind."
"What day is it? It may sound like a stupid question, but when you don't go home, you just don't know what day it is," Gauldin said. "We haven't left here since Tuesday night, when we first started realizing what was happening."
Temple Electric, a Dallas-based utility specialist, supplies KCP&L with about 80 percent of its material. Temple has had a person on site at KCP&L facilities and also has been working with other utilities, including Western Resources and Utilicorp. It also pulls stock from its other locations around the country, including Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.
Along with battling with power outages at three of its four Kansas City metropolitan locations, Temple Electric has been supplying utilities with transformers, wires, poles, meters, sockets, ties and wraps.
"We had enough materials for the first three days, and after that we've basically moving material in and out," said Gauldin. "After two days we've already sold as much as we sell in 30 days. In one location, we've done a month's worth of business in two days.
"The flow of material has not been a problem, and the supply chain has been real good. Our customers said they were really surprised that the material got to them as quick. We pull from 28 manufacturers.
"Everybody may complain about KCP&L being slow in getting the power back on, but I don't think people have any idea what it takes to move materials just so we can get it to them. They've got 300 crews working, and that's pretty phenomenal. This will be definitely one that they'll be writing about in the record books."
Gaulden said a well-timed acquisition has helped Temple Electric service the need for utility products. In addition, the company had also been getting ready to move to a larger facility and had already hired on new staff and rented moving trucks when the storm hit.
"There was a utility distributor that went bankrupt here in Kansas City about two months ago, and we purchased their inventory and facility. There's probably a million dollars of material that we had to pull from. We really had a gold mine, but we didn't realize it at the time.
"We were trying to figure out how we were going to move it. Well, we certainly figured it out. We've probably shipped in $400,000 or $500,000 in the last two days and we've brought in probably $700,000 or 800,000. We've moved a million dollars of material in two days.
"Our branch here normally does $20 million. We're going to do a third of this year's business in a month's time. The last time the ice storm hit people said, 'We had a good year this month.' That's about what it will amount to."


text:
About |
Prosig provides turnkey data capture and analysis systems for a wide range of applications with particular focus on NVH and acoustical testing for the automotive, aerospace and power generation Industries. The company designs and develops its own products and its engineers have decades of experience in solving real-world noise and vibration problems for major organizations throughout the world.
Prosig's product range is divided broadly into two areas: general purpose, flexible data acquisition and analysis systems (P8000 & DATS) or custom condition monitoring systems (PROTOR).
The P8000 capture hardware and DATS analysis software focuses on the capture of noise & vibration and associated data for mobile and laboratory applications. The P8000 series features a range of 24-bit measurement hardware. These systems can be configured with between 4 and 1024 channels and have signal conditioning options for accelerometers, microphones, strain gauges, thermocouples and powered transducers. Additional options also offer support for capture of data from CAN-bus, GPS and IRIG inputs. The DATS software package has over 35 years of development behind it and integrates capture from the P8000 systems with analysis and reporting capabilities. DATS also offers a wide range of data import and export from other measurement and analysis systems.
Prosig PROTOR systems are sophisticated condition monitoring systems for large scale rotating machinery, primarily in the power generation industry. The systems provide reliable, online, 24/7 condition monitoring of turbine generator, main boiler feed pumps and other auxiliary plant equipment. In addition to over 30 power stations worldwide, PROTOR is in use in steel mills, paper mills and monitoring other large scale machinery. The PROTOR-mobile system is a smaller, portable version of the PROTOR system and can be used for short term studies or in problem solving situations.
Prosig was established in 1977 by members of ISVR (Institute of Sound & Vibration Research) at Southampton University. The company's goal is to provide customers with the best available hardware and software for noise and vibration measurement. The existing UK headquarters, in Fareham UK, were completed in 1982 and Prosig USA, Inc. was founded in 1986. In 2001 an engineering center was opened in Detroit to provide high quality support to customers in the area. Prosig maintains a network of agents to support business in Europe, India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and South America.
The company remains focused on producing reliable, high quality, integrated measurement solutions that allow their customers to achieve best practice and use the latest tools available to the test engineer.


text:
JOBSs: Online Job Board
Job Opportunities Benefiting Southern Students (JOBSs) is an online job board available to students and alumni looking for full-time or part-time work, co-ops, internships, and on-campus student employment.
Log In
Troubleshooting JOBSs Login
Q. I tried to reset my password through the Forgot Password function, why haven't I received it yet?
When JOBSs sends out a new password to your Southern email account make sure to check your Junk folder, unfortunately, this is where your new password may end up. It could take up to approximately 20 minutes for your Southern email to receive your new JOBSs password, thus do not request multiple new passwords.
Q. Why does JOBSs load so slowly?
Are you using Internet Explorer? Try using Firefox and the speed should pick right up!
Q. JOBSs is telling me that my username is incorrect, why?
Your username should be your Southern email account. For example:
Check the spelling of both your email and your password. If you are an alumnus and you no longer have access to your Southern email, please call our office receive further instructions. If you are a new or transfer student, you may not have access to JOBSs yet, you will receive a welcome email from JOBSs indicating your new access soon.
Q. JOBSs is telling me that my MySCSU and/or Southern username and password combination is incorrect, why?
JOBSs does not use the same username and password combination as your MySCSU or Southern accounts.If this is your first time logging in please refer to the JOBSs welcome email sent to you to retrieve your initial password. Once you sign in with your initial password, JOBSs will allow you to reset your password to one of your choice. If you should ever forget your password, you may use the JOBSs Forgot Password function to receive another.
Q. I reset my password through the JOBSs Forgot Password function, but the password they sent to me isn't working, why?
If you have reset your password multiple times, you need to make sure that you are using the most updated password. Passwords generated from JOBSs can take up to 20 minutes to be delivered to your email account.If you have made too many incorrect login attempts JOBSs will ask you to enter a verification code shown on the screen. If you cannot read the verification code shown, you may regenerate the image.


text:
Spectacular Summer Fails Will Have You Laughing All the Way to Autumn
Summer is awesome. Until it's not and you learn firsthand that summer can be a real big pain in the butt...or head...or arm...or any other of our numerous body parts.
Sure, summertime is filled with lazy days swimming, catching some rays and generally taking in all the sun-soaked days filled with warmth, but sometimes things wrong.
So, while you're out on the boat, tooling around on some attraction at your local water park or enjoying a relaxing day of fishing, remember that while things may be great, they can always take a turn for the whoops in less time than it takes you to say, "Pour me a cold one."
Happy summer, everyone! And, please, do yourself and everyone else around you a favor by being careful, lest you end up in one of these hilarious clips.


text:
Faizon Love -- Katt Williams PULLED A GUN ON ME!
Faizon Love Katt Williams PULLED A GUN on Me
Faizon Love tells TMZ ... Katt Williams PULLED A GUN ON HIM during a heated argument outside a Hollywood nightclub Tuesday night ... shortly before Katt was cuffed by cops and taken to the station.
Love tells us ... he was parking his car near Supperclub, when he saw Katt ... and they got into it over a $50,000 debt Katt allegedly owes him.
Love says, "Once the argument escalated, Katt went to his car to go get his gun to pull it out on me."
"Fortunately, one of my homeboys who was there took the gun out of Katt's hands."
Faizon continues, "Come to find out the gun he pulled out on me was not even loaded. My homeboy gave it back to him ... then we went in the club."
Minutes later, Williams was arrested for a possible gun violation ... but Love insists he is NOT the person who called the cops.
"I am just extremely upset that his punk ass would pull a gun out on me and even play with me like that," Love says ... adding, "He better chill his ass out."
Katt was released from custody that night. After being released, Williams told us he did nothing wrong.
As for Faizon's allegations -- we reached out to Katt ... so far no response.


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By Michael Bachelard, Sumba and Indonesia
CATTLE on the island of Sumba, Indonesia's most impoverished region, are burdened by many crucial social functions - they carry tradition, family pride, money and, of course, meat on their backs.
But when Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono agreed in Darwin in July to encourage Australian agricultural companies to ''invest in the Indonesian beef and cattle industry'', the burden on these beasts grew heavier still.
The Indonesian side pinned on them the hope that Australian money and knowledge would provide desperately needed economic development to an island on which nearly 40 per cent of five-year-olds are underweight.
Ms Gillard no doubt hoped Australian goodwill on livestock to Sumba might be a diplomatic win, encouraging Indonesia to relent on the punishing import quotas debilitating the northern Australian live-cattle trade.
So far these expectations have come to nought.
While a Taiwanese company, Biofarm Plantation, is measuring out the cheap hectares on its new East Sumba investment, not a single Australian beef producer has yet checked out the island.
''There is enough land, so much empty land,'' Gidion Mbilijora, the Bupati (regional leader) of the dirt-poor province, said this week.
''President SBY strongly hinted when he came directly here from Darwin that Australian investors would follow. They have not.''
Mr Mbilijora firmly believes in the potential for a booming livestock industry in Sumba.
''It is very big,'' he says.
The need is certainly huge. A preschool teacher, Femmy, says that in the dry season her students often come to class hungry because their families have no food. Many must grub in the forest for sweet potatoes.
But the challenges, also, are enormous.
Since the rolling hills of this island were denuded of their cover of fragrant sandalwood trees hundreds of years ago, the topsoil has been washing away. Driving along its high ridges shows the island's bare bones - piles of volcanic rocks exposed as the soil blows and washes downhill into the valleys.
Much of the sparse vegetation is blackened, the result of a ''scorched earth'' farming style, with grass burnt each dry season to encourage green shoots.
Horses, cattle and goats pick their way among the rocks and scorch marks looking for fresh nourishment.
Rainfall is lower here than in most parts of Indonesia. It's adequate, but there is little water storage, so children and women must fetch and carry.
Mr Mbilijora is confident, though, that there is enough good land, goodwill and potential to sustain thousands or tens of thousands of head of cattle.
''There is 400,000 hectares of basically pasture land … it shouldn't be too much of an issue in handling a larger investment,'' he said.
Joni, 20, a cattle herder in the village of Napu, would like to see a bigger industry. ''It is good land,'' he says. ''Sometimes in the dry season the cows are skinny, but they don't die.''
Joni dropped out of school at 15 to herd 50 head of cattle owned by a local farmer. His great hope is that, when one has a calf, his boss gives it to him.
As things stand in Sumba at the moment, it's the only thing that will help Joni start building some wealth of his own.
Michael Bachelard travelled to Sumba as a guest of World Vision.


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Amityville: A New Generation (1993)
Author: Josh G.
Submitted by:
Josh G.
Date : 2008-06-27 11:05
Directed by:
John Murlowski
Written by:
Christopher DeFaria and Antonio M. Toro
Ross Partridge, Lala Sloatman and Julia Nickson-Soul
Reviewed by:
Josh G.
Most horror movie series run their course until eventually, near part four, its evident that the plug should be pulled, as was often the case with viewers of the
Amityville Horror
films. Of course, we now know that while the features were heading to video release, the films just wouldnt stop. Some may have called it
The Amityville Curse.
Amityville: A New Generation
, which is usually referred to as part six (though its actually the seventh film in the series), took an approach much like its predecessor
Amityville 1992: Its About Time
, using an evil item as the plot center. Replacing a clock with a mirror, it was fright time once again. But would Amityville be able to pull some creativity out of its pocket? It was highly improbable.
A photographer, Keyes Terry (Ross Partridge) takes a picture of a homeless man (Jack R. Orend) and gives him some cash. The man generously, but suspiciously, gives Keyes the only possession he has: an old mirror passed down through his family. When Keyes takes it home to his apartment, his girlfriend Llanie (Lala Sloatman) finds it unappealing and orders it to be removed. The couples neighbor Suki (Julia Nickson-Soul), an artist, asks for the mirror and sets it up at her place. She absolutely loves its design. But no sooner does the spooky Amityville aroma seep through the building, as the mirror kills off an unwanted visitor of Sukis. Suki is later knocked off as well with the terrible mirror forcing her to hang herself. Meanwhile, Keyes is having recurring nightmares about an odd home, where he plays a killer who shoots his entire family at the dinner table on Thanksgiving. He has some connection to the dream; to the homeless man; to the mirror. It wont be long until his past is revealed, and the reflective evil is fully unleashed.
Sure, the film sounds average, but its so much less than your already low expectations that precede it. At least this sequel has some familiar faces. Terry OQuinn (1987's
The Stepfather
; TVs
) plays Detective Clark, a man who repeatedly returns to the scenes of the supernatural murders, also acting as an aid for Keyes to discover his foggy childhood. Slasher fans will rejoice when Llanie and Keyes friend Janet Cutler appears. Shes played by Barbara Howard, the victim of a door-bursting axe in
Friday the 13th The Final Chapter
as Sara. However, the most notable horror homage goes to the
A Nightmare on Elm Street
series, where not one but
Freddy alumni make screen appearances. Robert Rusler (playing Sukis abusive date Ray) is most noted for his role as Ron Grady in
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddys Revenge
. Dont forget Lin Shaye (playing Nurse Turner) who some may recognize as both the teacher in the original
Elm Street
, and a cameo as a nurse in the following years
Wes Craven's New Nightmare
Do you think that the fun is just getting started? Well, youre wrong. If it wasnt for the word
being mentioned, the famous Amityville house scarcely appearing in the mirror, and a striking plot piece similar in details to the true events, youd swear this was an
sequel. The entire script is silly and dramatic, and the first sex scene (theres two) doesnt fit in smoothly with the shots, clearly a pointless attempt to show off Sloatmans chest. The acting is only fair, and the expressions on the main characters faces are unconvincing. At least the make-up effects are done alright. Its not a very bloody movie, with the only major bloodletting coming from a mans face being shot off. Even then, its no bloodbath. The sappy I never had a father storyline of Keyes isnt worth the attention that its given. Overall,
A New Generation
just doesnt have enough drive to spook anyone on subject matter alone.
Although the characters, save for Suki, are drab and colorless, you can still tell them apart. Thats a plus! All you have to know is: theres the main guy, his blonde girlfriend, the pointy-nosed lady, her dark-haired husband, and the black guy. Thats it! No doubling up on blonde girls or common-mouthed heartthrobs. Suki is the only fun character, who even when possessed, will make you side with her. She seduces Janet Cutlers husband, Dick (David Naughton) and doesnt even keep secret about it when friends come over. Her mind is carefree, and her paintings of demons are very well done. Shes had a scary obsession with dancing demons ever since she was a little girl, and she wants to make her dream come alive. She pulls a rope that makes all of her demon paintings shake, as if they really are dancing. Its hilariously creative. But like all dedicated artists, Suki begins to see real demons. Are they products of the Amityville mirror? Well, theyre green, red eyed, and created with poor special effects. All we care about is seeing something like this happen after the minutes of boredom we have endured thus far.
The story with Keyes past is concluded, and the audience finds it just as uninteresting as when it was introduced. Keyes develops this wild thought in his head that he too will shoot his family just like the person in his dreams. What does his girlfriend suggest? Llanie pitches the idea of shooting herself and Keyes friends with a red-dyed water-filled super soaker. Yes, thatll apparently solve everything! You find yourself crossing your fingers in hopes that for the finale, some redemption will be made for the poorly constructed beginning and middle. What you get is a predictable, eye-rolling, uneventful sendoff with bad character reactions and shitty lines. Not even Terry OQuinn could have saved this. I will say that I enjoyed one part of
Amityville Part VI
(or is it
Part VII
?). Aside from Suki, the art show was wonderful to observe. Whoever painted those pretty demon pictures have true artistic inspiration and talent. From this computer I sit, all I can judge
A New Generation
with is for not having enough Amityville, and using too much sequel expectation status. New ideas arent always
ideas. If you spot this on its mediocre barebones Lions Gate DVD, dance with the demons as far away from it as possible.
Trash it!
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text:
Presented by imaginary beasts
Produced by special arrangement with the children of Shirley Jackson, and Catalyst Management, LLC.
By Shirley Jackson
Directed by Mathew Woods
Ensemble: Laura Detwiler, Denise Drago, Lauren Foster, Molly Kimmerling, Amy Meyer, Bob Mussett, Jennifer Taschereau
November 2nd – November 16th, 2019
Charlestown Working Theater
442 Bunker Hill Street, Charlestown, MA 02129
The Beasts on Facebook
Trigger warning: psychological horror, emotional trauma, spooky ghosts
Critique by Kitty Drexel
"Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long."― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
(Charlestown, MA) imaginary beasts' latest production, Unusual Things Have Happened: Tales of Everyday Horror brings the psychological pain of everyday anxiety into sharp focus. The beasts tell six stories adapted from the works of Shirley Jackson in a style that they have named "narrative theatre." Cast members dictate the action onstage just as a third-person voice narrates the passages of a book. It looks and sounds like a one or two-person Greek chorus.
The vignettes that make up the production examine the commonplace terrors that women experience on the daily: isolation, powerlessness, and disorder. There is puppetry, mime, and yes, scene narration. The narrators are like impartial babysitters watching their human companions toddle towards danger. They might stop them, but where's the fun in that? Continue reading


text:
Sunsweet Growers Inc., based in Yuba City, CA, announced that Dane Lance will take on the role of CEO. He is also the company's president. Arthur Driscoll, II, former CEO, is retiring.
Lou Paradise, president and chief of research of Topical BioMedics, Inc., Rhinebeck, NY, participated in the Second Annual Forbes Healthcare Summit entitled, "Empowering the Patient Revolution."
Doylestown, PA-based Steaz appointed Ralf Lottermann as chairman of the board and Linda Barron as CEO.
In Memoriam
Remembering Bernie Lucich
After a two-month fight with esophageal cancer, Bernard "Bernie" Lucich passed away at the beginning of October.
A mainstay at industry events for decades, Lucich was the sales manager for World Organic Corp. and Licata Enterprises. He greeted many a tradeshow attendee at the Licata booth with a smile while wearing his I Love Lucy tie featuring the Vitameatavegamin episode.
Al Licata, Ph.D., company chairman, said Lucich "was part of our family" and would be "sorely missed." He was passionate about Ohio State football and his customers, "often taking orders at 4 a.m. or on Sundays to accommodate their needs," says the company.
Lucich was the co-founder of Nature's Concept, and then formed Vita-Vista. Both companies were bought by Licata Enterprises in 1991. Prior to that, Lucich worked for Marion Laboratories and Signet Laboratories.
Published in WholeFoods Magazine, December 2013


text:
USA Wins! Celebrate As If You Were in South Africa!
Soccer and music blend together to create an atmosphere that is unique only to the beautiful game. For 90 minutes, players are serenaded by supporters who don't ask for tips in return, just that magical goal that sends them into hysteria.
As you read this, USA supporters in South Africa are almost certainly singing into the night celebrating today's dramatic, stoppage-time win over Algeria that secures the U.S. Men's National Team a place in the knockout stages of the FIFA 2010 World Cup for the first time since 2002.
Music is how fans communicate with their team and inspire them to victory. They live and die with every pass and their emotions fill every song and chant. Whether it be drums in South America, the vuvuzela in South Africa or good old fashioned singing in England, music can be heard in stadiums around the world.
Music and soccer are not always a perfect match as Shakira demonstrated with her official FIFA 2010 World Cup song, "Waka Waka - Time for Africa." Criticism for the song was immediate as South Africans demanded to know why a Colombian singer was chosen to write and perform a song that represents their continent and features African elements throughout and yet, not performed by an African.
What has become synonymous with Africa at this year's World Cup and has provided the background track to the world's biggest sporting event is the vuvuzela, the plastic horn South African fans use to cheer on their beloved Bafana Bafana (The Boys, The Boys). Noise levels inside stadiums have reached deafening levels, broadcasters are filtering out the noise as much as possible; even the players have complained. (This editor's dog hides under the sofa.)
But happily, the buzzing drone of the vuvuzela is not all that South Africa has to offer when it comes to music. To celebrate, we suggest you check out "This Land is Mine: South African Freedom Songs" from Smithsonian Folkways, which features songs that you can sing while sitting on your couch watching the next World Cup match.
Your neighbors will thank you for not breaking out your vuvuzela.


text: The news last week was all about Facebook's dodgy IPO. Investors are filing suit against Facebook about withholding "negative" assessment on its business prospects. This IPO not only "Zucked up" Silicon Valley's supposed tech bubble, but it has created the suspicion that Facebook willfully exploited the innocence of the small investor. But something even dodgier than a potential stock market fraud is going on. The social network is taking something much more important than money from its nearly one billion members. By sabotaging what it really means to be human, Facebook is stealing the innocence of our inner lives. Oh, Zuck: Facebook's bumpy start just got a little worse It may even be Zucking us up as a species. Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tells us there's a "shift" from an analog world in which our identities are generated from within, to a digital world in which our sense of self is intimately tied to our social media presence. But this shift to a Facebook world of incessant "friending," Professor Turkle correctly warns us, is a "seductive fantasy" which is weakening us both as individuals and as a society. The problem, she explains, is that a "capacity for solitude is what nurtures great relationships." But in today's always-on social media world, our solitude has been replaced by incessant online updates, which both weaken our sense of self and our ability to create genuine friendships. I call this shift from the private to the public self "digital narcissism." Behind the communitarian veil of social media, we have fallen in love with ourselves. But this is a super sad love story. Because the more we self-broadcast, the emptier we become; and the emptier we become, the more we need to self-broadcast. Opinion: We expect more from technology and less from each other Facebook isn't alone, of course, in offering this seductive fantasy of a radically transparent digital society in which our self esteem is determined by our updates, tweets and check-ins. And yet with its almost billion members and nearly $100 billion public market valuation, Facebook is shaping the digital narcissism of early 21st century culture more than any other social media company. Most of all, Facebook is destroying our privacy as discrete individuals. And it's not just our kids who are revealing everything about themselves to their thousands of "friends" on Facebook. As Aisha Sultan and Jon Miller note in a chilling piece, "Facebook parenting" – our obsession with posting data about our kids - is "destroying our children's privacy." Sultan, a parenting columnist at the St Louis Post-Dispatch, and Miller, a researcher at the University of Michigan, whose article was based on interviews with 4,000 children, argue that we've created what they call a sense of "normality" about a world where "what's private is public." Kids are growing up, they explain, assuming that it's perfectly normal to reveal everything about ourselves online. "And our children will never have known a world without this sort of exposure. What does a worldview lacking an expectation of privacy mean for the rest of society?" Sultan and Miller conclude with the eeriest of questions. What it means, of course, is that we are creating a world in which our sense of identity, of who we actually are, is defined by what others think of us. Social media's ubiquity means that we are losing that most precious of human things – our sense of self . Our devices are always on; our "Timeline" (Facebook's product which greedily attempts to capture our entire life narrative) is there for everyone to see; we are living in public on a radically transparent global network that, by 2020, will be fed by 50 billion intelligent devices carried by the majority of people on the planet. But the situation is actually more dismal than even Sultan and Miller acknowledge. The distinguished psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan have written about an entire generation of young men who, they say, have been "desensitized to reality" by online gaming and pornography. But what Zimbardo and Duncan forget to add is that much social media is no less addictive that gaming or porn. Yes, digital narcissism is a narcotic. But unlike online gaming or pornography, it is desensitizing all of us – young and old, men and women alike – to reality. Imprisoned in our delusional social media bubbles, our Facebook saturated world has become a self-referential stream of real-time updates about what we just ate for breakfast. Don't worry about whether the Facebook IPO is creating an economic bubble. The real bubble are the billions of delusional social media bubbles which are distorting our real sense of self and weakening genuine social interaction. So what to do? It's time to wake up to the truth about social media. Networks like Facebook have turned us into products in which their only economic value is our personal data. Like any other addiction, we need recognize its destructive reality. Facebook is free because it sells our most intimate data to advertisers. Forget about last week's dodgy IPO. The fraud is on anyone who has ever used Facebook. Last year, I quit Facebook. It's a growing movement. I hope you'll consider joining me as a Facebook resistor. But the solution goes beyond leaving Facebook. Our addiction to digital narcissism can only be broken by a new regime of strict self-censorship. For many of us, perpetually high on the narcotic of self-broadcast, this won't be any easier than quitting smoking or kicking that online porn or gaming habit. But remember, the less we publicly announce about ourselves, the more mysterious and thus the more interesting our private selves become. There are political solutions too. We need to support governments in both the E.U. and the U.S. to protect online privacy through "do not track" legislation; force companies like Google to be more transparent with their use of our data and even enshrine, as the EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding is bravely championing, a "law of forgetting" on the Internet. The market can also play a role. Let's embrace new technology which allows data to degenerate over time so our online data, like real world trash, eventually decomposes. Let's support Internet start-ups like the strictly private social network EveryMe and the defiantly private search engine DuckDuckGo. And let's recognize, once and for all, that "free" is never really free and that we are much better off paying for apps and services that absolutely guarantee the protection of our private personal data. At the dawn of our brave new networked 21st century world, we are faced with two options. Either, we succumb to the narcotic of digital narcissism, turn ourselves inside out and let our kids inherit a world in which the quiet mystery of the disciplined private self becomes a historical artifact. Or we fight our growing addiction to social media so that we are no longer enslaved to the personal update, the tweet or the check-in. Privacy or publicness? It's not a hard choice. Zuck-up or save the species. I trust you'll know which one to make. • Follow @ajkeen on Twitter


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The driving conditions in Singapore are horrendous and a hugh distant from a "First World" society as far as driving is concerned. I have seen enough complaints and newspaper forums complaining about the bad habits of the drivers in Singapore that I have decided to start this discussion page. This journal will help to keep track of all the letters and comments published on newspaper and online.
Some of the bad driving habits in Singapore are:
– Tailgating
– Not signalling before filtering or turning
– Speeding
– jump queuing
– Not giving ways to motorist, cyclist and pedestrians
– road hogging
– No stopping at STOP signs
– Beat red light (esp when no traffic camera at the junction)
– dishonest insurance claims
– drink driving
– using handphone while driving
Many of these problems can be easily solved if the authority wants to, but no attempt or effort being carried out to stem out these bad driving habits. How often do you see traffic police on the road for example? Why no traffic camera installed in those frequent queue jumping areas? Why so few speed trapping cameras? Why no programs initiated by the TP to galvanise volunteers to help catch violators of traffic rules? Why no laws to peg the fines to the income levels of the violators since the rich can well afford the small fines and there are many rich people in Singapore? Why police does not take up a citizen's reuqest for investigation (such as a hit and run case), instead pass the buck to the insurers?and the list goes on …..


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Welcome to BusTopia.com. If you're into vintage Volkswagens, you've come to the right place! We've got photos, how-to articles and mountains of technical tips and information to help you with your Classic VW restoration project. Most of the golden nuggets found on this site relate to 1958 - 1967 bugs and buses, but a VW is a VW, so a lot of the info and tips here should interest you Ghia, Notch, Bay Window, Thing and Squareback gearheads too.
Looking for a schedule of up-coming VW Car Shows? Check out our: "VW Car Shows, Swap Meets and Events Calendar".


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The easy way to take the confusion out of organic chemistry
Organic chemistry has a long-standing reputation as a difficult course. Organic Chemistry I For Dummies takes a simple approach to the topic, allowing you to grasp concepts at your own pace.
This fun, easy-to-understand guide explains the basic principles of organic chemistry in simple terms, providing insight into the language of organic chemists, the major classes of compounds, and top trouble spots. You'll also get the nuts and bolts of tackling organic chemistry problems, from knowing where to start to spotting sneaky tricks that professors like to incorporate.
- Refreshed example equations
- New explanations and practical examples that reflect today's teaching methods
- Fully worked-out organic chemistry problems
Baffled by benzines? Confused by carboxylic acids? Here's the help you need—in plain English!
Enjoyed this book? Then be sure to check out our other books on BooksNavigation.


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List of Social Security Numbers
Below is a list of all the group numbers for the 762 of social security numbers. Group numbers are assigned in the following manner: Odds starting from 01 up to 09, Evens from 10 to 98, Evens from 02 to 08 and Odds from 11 to 99. The first numbers were assigned in the 1930s, so the group number provides some idea as to how long ago a particular number was issued.
Click on a group number to access numerological information about numbers in that group, including whether a given number may have been issued.
762-XX-XXXX - Tennessee


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Christians Concerned Over Acquittals in Orissa, India Violence
NEW DELHI (Compass Direct News) – Only 24 people have been convicted a year after anti-Christian mayhem took place in India's Orissa state, while the number of acquittals has risen to 95, compounding the sense of helplessness and frustration among surviving Christians.
Dr. John Dayal, secretary general of the All India Christian Council, called the trials "a travesty of justice."
Last month a non-profit group, the Peoples Initiative for Justice and Peace (PIJP), reportedly found that as many as 2,500 complaints were filed with police following the violence in August-September 2008 in the eastern state's Kandhamal district. The violence killed at least 100 people and burned more than 4,500 houses and over 250 churches and 13 educational institutions. It also rendered 50,000 people, mostly Christian, homeless.
Police, however, registered only 827 complaints and arrested fewer than 700 people, even though 11,000 people were named as attackers in those complaints, according to a PIJP survey.
"The manner of the judicial processes in the Kandhamal fast-track courts is tragic where all too many people have managed to escape conviction for crimes as serious as conspiracy for brutal, premeditated murder and deliberate arson," Dayal told Compass.
Among those acquitted was Manoj Pradhan, who allegedly led mobs that killed Christians and burned their houses a few months before he became a state legislator from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Facing charges in five cases of murder and six of arson, Pradhan has been acquitted in three cases.
On Thursday (Sept. 24), the judge of Fast Track Court-II, C.R. Das, acquitted Pradhan and another suspect, Mantu Nayak, on charges of killing Khageswar Digal for refusing to "reconvert" to Hinduism, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI). Digal was a 60-year-old Catholic and resident of Shankarakhol area in Chakapada Block in Kandhamal.
"The court acquitted the BJP MLA [Member of Legislative Assembly] and Nayak due to lack of proper evidence against them," Special Public Prosecutor Pratap Patra told PTI.
The Rev. Ajay Singh, an activist from the Catholic Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, said Digal's son testified in court that he was witness to the killing of his father and knew the killers, and yet the accused were acquitted.
"It was a brutal murder, possibly a case of human sacrifice," Singh said.
Digal was dragged from a vehicle before being killed on Sept. 24 last year – one month after the assassination of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP) leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati by Maoists (extreme Marxists), which triggered the violence as Hindu extremists wrongly blamed Christians.
Singh spoke to the son of the deceased Digal, Rajendra Digal, who said his parents left their village after the violence and took shelter in the state capital, Bhubaneswar.
The elder Digal, who owned a grocery shop and 35 goats, returned to his village to see his house and livestock. After selling some of the goats, he boarded a public bus to Phulbani, Kandhamal district headquarters, to start his journey back to Bhubaneswar around noon on Sept. 24. As the bus started, however, some assailants allegedly led by Pradhan stopped the bus and dragged Digal out. They also broke his leg.
The attackers were said to have taken Digal to his village, where they looted his shop. Then they allegedly took him and eight of his goats to a nearby forest, where they feasted on the goat meat throughout the night.
When Rajendra Digal heard about it, he informed police, who allegedly took no interest in the complaint. Twelve days later, his father's body, naked and burned with acid, was found 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the village. His genitals had also been chopped off.
Rajendra Digal said he believes his father may have been the victim of human sacrifice involving ritual feasting and torture.
Shoddy Probe, Lack of Evidence
A representative of the Christian Legal Association (CLA) said the police had been conducting investigations improperly.
The CLA source pointed out that in another Fast-Track Court-I case in which Pradhan was one of the accused, police had wrongly recorded the age of the informant, Bhutia Digal.
"The court observed that if the police could not cite the age of the informant correctly, how could they have investigated the case properly?" said the source, adding that such discrepancies were found in far too many cases.
During the violence in August-September 2008, the BJP was part of the ruling coalition with a local party, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). The latter recently broke ties with the Hindu nationalist BJP, blaming it for violence in March, a month before the state assembly election.
The BJP lost the April-May election, and the BJD emerged as the stand-alone ruling party. It is believed that the state administration began taking action against the assailants only after the coalition split in March – six months too late, which possibly provided enough time for suspects to remove evidence and threaten witnesses.
Witnesses are still being threatened or bribed, according to rights groups.
On Thursday (Sept. 24), the day the BJP legislator was acquitted, the fast-track court also released five others accused of arson in the Tikabali area of Kandhamal in a separate case, reported the PTI.
Singh said the witnesses were either intimidated or bribed and therefore turned hostile to prosecutors in court. Friends of the accused took the witnesses to the court in their vehicle, he pointed out.
Dayal said the Orissa High Court should have taken notice of the increasing number of acquittals.
"A man now an MLA seems to be beyond the law," he said. "I would demand a high-powered judicial review by the High Court of Orissa itself, or failing that, by civil society, which should set up an independent commission of retired judges and senior lawyers."
Singh said police investigations and prosecutions were a "sham." There is also "a pressing need for witness protection," he said.
He added that there were reports of witnesses being intimidated and threatened in various villages, such as Dodingia, K. Nuagam, Phiringia and Solesoru. "Police are not entertaining complaints of the threat to the witnesses," Singh said.
Dayal highlighted three essential problems: The quality of the charge-sheets prepared by police; the role of the public prosecutor in pressing the charges as prepared by police; and the circumstances under which eyewitnesses, "often sons and daughters of those killed, cannot attest to the truth or are forced into silence," he said.
"India does not have a witness-protection program, and surely Kandhamal has none at all," Dayal said. "Witnesses have to pass through an aggressive environment which affectively silences them. They are human beings and fear future violence, having seen brutal violence in the past."
Singh and Dayal demanded that the cases be heard outside Kandhamal, preferably outside Orissa state.
First Life Sentences Handed Down for Orissa, India Killing
A fast-track court in Orissa state on Sept. 23 delivered its first life sentences for those convicted of murder in 2008 violence in Kandhamal district, sentencing five people to life imprisonment for their involvement in the killing of Pastor Akbar Digal.
Digal, 40, pastor of a Baptist church in Tatamaha village under Raikia police jurisdiction in Kandhamal district, was killed on Aug. 26, 2008 after refusing the slayers' demand that he forsake Christianity and convert to Hinduism. His body was reportedly cut to pieces and then burned.
He is survived by his wife, Ludhia Digal, and five children.
Additional Sessions Judge Sobhan Kumar Das of Fast Track Court-I at Phulbani district headquarters sentenced Sabita Pradhan, 30; Papu Pradhan, 30; Abinash Pradhan, 29; Dharmaraj Pradhan, 32; and Mania Pradhan, 28, to life in prison and a fine of 5,000 rupees (US$104). The five were arrested after Pastor Digal's wife filed a First Information Report on Aug. 29, 2008.
Previous to these sentences, two fast-track courts had sentenced 12 people to prison for terms ranging only from four to six years. The government set up the two fast-track courts to try nearly 900 cases related to anti-Christian violence that erupted in August 2008. The first conviction was determined on June 30.
The special Phulbani court also sentenced six others to three years' rigorous imprisonment on Sept. 22 for an arson attack on a journalist's house in Kandhamal's Phiringia village on Dec. 12, 2007.
Police had arrested 11 people in this case, but the court acquitted five for "lack of evidence." Convicted were Ganpati Kanhar, Rabindra Kanhar, Parmeshwar Kanhar, Daleswar Kanhar, Tuba Kanhar and Vijay Kanhar, whose ages range from 25 to 40 years. They were also fined 4,000 rupees (US$83) each.


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Over the past decade, West Africa has emerged as an increasingly important player in the global illicit drug trade. Although the region has historically not been a drug producing one -- with the important exception of marijuana -- it has become a platform for predominantly Latin American drug traffickers moving their illicit commodities toward lucrative European and Middle Eastern markets. The cocaine traffic alone is worth more than a billion dollars a year, according to a 2013 report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The region -- stretching along the African coast from Nigeria to the east to Senegal on the west, and extending deep into the Sahara Desert in countries such as Mali and Niger -- is plagued by weak states and corrupt governments, making it attractive to criminals of all sorts, who thrive in lawless lands. And it's not just criminals. The region is also home to various bands of Islamist militants, some of whom are involved in the drug trade.
Now, a commission of prominent West Africans is calling for fundamental changes in drug policies in the region. Last week, the West Africa Commission on Drugs, issued a report, Not Just in Transit: Drugs, the State and Society in West Africa, calling for the decriminalization of drug use, treating drug use primarily as a public health issue, and for the region to avoid becoming the next front line in the failed war on drugs.
The commission is impressive. It was initiated by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan of Nigeria and headed by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, and includes other former heads of state as well as a distinguished group of West Africans from the worlds of politics, civil society, health, security and the judiciary.
And so is its very existence. It marks the entrance of West African civil society into the international debate on drug policy in which calls for fundamental drug reform have gained increasing momentum in recent years. In 2008, former Latin American heads of state and other luminaries formed the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, and in 2011, Annan and other world luminaries and former heads of state came together to form the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Now, West Africa adds its voice to the chorus calling for change.
"We call on West African governments to reform drug laws and policies and decriminalize low-level and non-violent drug offenses," said Obasanjo upon the report's release last week. "West Africa is no longer just a transit zone for drugs arriving from South America and ending up in Europe but has become a significant zone of consumption and production. The glaring absence of treatment facilities for drug users fuels the spread of disease and exposes an entire generation, users and non-users alike, to growing public health risks."
"Most governments' reaction to simply criminalize drug use without thinking about prevention or access to treatment has not just led to overcrowded jails, but also worsened health and social problems," added Kofi Annan.
The report won kudos from American drug reformer Ethan Nadelmann, head of the Drug Policy Alliance.
"First Europe, then the Americas, now Africa," he said. "Drug policy reform is truly becoming a global movement, with Kofi Annan and Olusegun Obasango providing the sort of bold leadership that we've also seen in Latin America. Maybe, just maybe, West Africa will be spared the fate of other parts of the world where prohibition-related crime, violence and corruption spiraled out of control."
But some analysts, while welcoming the report, suggested that it did not get at the heart of the problem in West Africa.
"The report focuses on public health, and that's great, but I'm not sure that's the issue," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution who has published extensively on West Africa. "Nor are there generally large prison populations due to the arrests of low-level drug offenders. There is increasing drug use, and many addicts don't have access to public health. That, however is not because they were arrested, but because Africa in general doesn't have access to public health," she pointed out.
"In some senses, the commission report is preventative -- it warns of policies that would be counterproductive -- but it is not going to solve West Africa's problems," Felbab-Brown continued. "And the harm reduction approaches that dominate the discourse in Europe and the US are not really apropos for West African public health issues. The increasing focus of the international community is interdiction, but that accounts for only a small fraction of the total traffic, and the report doesn't deal with what kind of alternate law enforcement there should be, or who should be targeted."
But others thought the criminal justice and public health emphasis in the report were a step down the right path.
"The report's message about alternatives to criminalization for use and minor offenses is important in criminal justice terms -- to discourage the horrible over-representation of minor drug offenders in prisons in the region -- but also as a reminder that there are no such alternatives unless the health and social sectors develop those alternatives," said Joan Csete, deputy director of the Open Society Foundation's Global Drug Policy Program.
"Health ministries need to be as important around the drug policymaking table as the police, which is far from the case in most of Africa today," she added. "Services for treatment of drug dependence in the region are absent or of appalling quality. Improving health and social support for people with drug dependence is a key to drug policy reform in West Africa."
And Felbab-Brown agreed that while measures like drug prevention and treatment wouldn't solve the region's problems, they would still be helpful.
"We're already seeing quite a bit of heroin in the region, and we are seeing increasing use," she said. "These are cheap and prevalent commodities, the traffickers partake in kind, and user communities are being established. In a sense, developing strategies to prevent use, get treatment, and prevent the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C is useful because there are more and more users."
"The big trafficking issues are around the intersection of very poor, very weak, very corrupt, and often very fragile states with state participation in various forms of criminality," she said. "Drugs are just another commodity to be exploited by elites for personal enrichment. Elites are already stealing money from oil, timber, and diamonds, and now there is another resource to exploit for personal enrichment and advancement," she argued.
"One narrative has it that drug trafficking has caused fragility and instability, but I think trafficking compounded the problems; it didn't create them," Felbab-Brown continued. "There is a systematic deficiency of good governance. Many of these states have functioned for decades like mafia bazaars, and the trafficking just augments other rents. There are rotten governments, miserable institutions, and poor leadership around all commodities, not just drugs."
"The states are not monolithic," Csete noted. "Some have high-level corruption, some are aggressive in trying to fight money-laundering and other elements of organized criminal networks, some rely heavily on traditional interdiction methods. Some of these countries have relatively strong democratic systems and relatively strong economic growth; some have governance institutions that are less strong."
The state of the states in West Africa influenced the commission and its recommendations, Csete said.
"Legalization of drugs -- production, sale, consumption -- was not judged to be politically feasible or necessarily desirable by the commission," she explained. "I think the commissioners generally perceive that generally these countries do not yet have a political climate favorable to debate on progressive changes in drug policy. The whole idea of the commission and its report is to open those debates -- high-profile people from the region saying things that sitting officials do not find it politically easy to say."
"These are newer post-colonial states," Felbab-Brown noted. "Are we having unreasonable expectations? Is this like Europe in the 13th Century, or is that some of these countries are doomed to exist in perpetual misgovernance?"
While there may be concern in Western capitals about the specter of West African drug trafficking, many West Africans have other, more pressing, drug policy concerns.
In its 2013 report, the UNODC noted that the importation of fake pharmaceutical drugs from South and Southeast Asia into the region was a problem. Joey Tranchina, a longtime drug policy observer who has recently spent time in Mali, agrees.
"Having traversed Mali from Bamako to Mopti, except for the usual oblique indigenous references to smoking weed, the only personal experience I have with drug crime is counterfeit pharmaceuticals from India, China, and Russia," he said. "They're sold cheap in the streets to people who can't afford regular meds and they take the place of real pharmaceuticals, especially malaria and HIV drugs. These drug scams are killing people in Mali," he said.
"Most people in West Africa don't see drug trafficking as that much of a problem," said Felbab-Brown. "If it's mostly going to Westerners, they say so what? For them it is a mechanism to make money, and those drug traffickers frequently become politicians. They are able to create and reconstitute patronage networks around drug trafficking, just as they were once able to get elected with money from blood diamonds."
It seems that, to the degree that drug use and drug trafficking are West African problems, they are problems inextricably interwoven with the broader issues of weak, fragile, and corrupt states that are unable or unwilling to deliver the goods for their citizens. The West Africa Commission on Drugs has pointed a way toward some solutions and avoiding some failed policies already discredited elsewhere, but it seems clear that that is just the beginning.