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Forward feature Moodz Paris from FRANCE ISSUE 920
Join us
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This is the second in a four part series about Initiatives 1100 and 1105. In today's post, I breakdown Initiative 1100. Next, a look at Initiative 1105. See the first part of the series here.
Yesterday, I listed the titles of the two initiatives. This is what voters will be seeing on the ballot. Today I will start by listing the 'brief summary' of Initiative 1100 and then break it down point by point.
Read a fuller explanation of Initiative 1100 – still incomplete in my opinion – written by the Senate here (Note: Opens .pdf). This is a must read document for anyone interested in the subject. If you want to go deep, read the complete text of 1100 here (I dare you. Note: Opens .pdf). The brief summary says:
This measure would direct the liquor control board to close all state liquor stores; terminate contracts with private stores selling liquor; and authorize the state to issue licenses that allow spirits (hard liquor) to be sold, distributed, and imported by private parties. It would repeal uniform pricing and certain other requirements governing business operations for distributors and producers of beer and wine. Stores that held contracts to sell spirits could convert to liquor retailer licenses.
I will break this language down point by point to attempt to explain the intention as I understand it.
1. Direct the liquor control board to close all state liquor stores
Washington State, a 'control state,' currently has a monopoly on hard liquor sales. This would eliminate this monopoly and close state-run liquor stores by December 31st, 2011.
2. Terminate contracts with private stores selling liquor
Currently state run liquor stores are run by private contracts. This terminates these contracts.
3. Authorize the state to issue licenses that allow spirits (hard liquor) to be sold, distributed, and imported by private parties
In the absence of state liquor stores, this would set up a system to license the sale of hard liquor.
4. It would repeal uniform pricing and certain other requirements governing business operations for distributors and producers of beer and wine
Let's start with 'repeal uniform pricing.' Currently every retailer who purchases liquor pays the same wholesale price. No one is allowed to sell for less than this price by law, although people find ways to work around this. Initiative 1100 would eliminate this provision. It would allow the sale and purchase of liquor at varying prices for different entities.
What does this mean? At present, let's say a bottle of wine sells for $20 wholesale and $30 retail. Every wholesaler pays the same $20 regardless of how much they buy of this or other wine. Initiative 1100 would allow wholesalers to pay varying prices. This means if a bottle of wine sells for $20 wholesale but I work out a deal with you because I am buying a lot of wine or because of…whatever…I can buy it for, perhaps, $17.50. Now when I go to sell it at retail, I can either make the additional profit, sell it for a less expensive price, or a combination of both. In other words, some wholesalers would see the $20 price; some could see substantially less.
Next let's talk about the 'certain other requirements' that are not elucidated in this sentence. Some of these are substantial. I have attempted to explain in Table #1 the ones I am aware of based on collating numerous sources. In addition to explaining what the changes would be in the law, I have listed what the effects would be and why this is being proposed, along with any concerns I have read in various articles. Please note, this list may not be complete.
Initiative 1100 would:
Table #1 |
Change in Law | Effects | Why/Concerns |
Dismantle the three tier system | Retailers would now be able to buy directly from producers rather than going through a middle person, the distributor.
This saves companies like Costco money by eliminating a middle person. |
Privatize the distribution and sale of spirits | This eliminates the state's exclusivity on spirits distribution and sales. | This allows companies like Costco to sell spirits. |
Repeal laws that bar volume discounting | Currently everyone who buys liquor pays the same wholesale price and no discounting is allowed based on volume sales. This would remove this provision. | This would allow people buying at volume to get discounts.
· Some have expressed concern that this would undercut the little guy who cannot purchase at volume. · Others have said that's the way the free market works. |
Repeal laws that bar centralized warehousing | Currently, centralized warehousing of liquor is prohibited. | Lack of central warehousing costs companies like Costco money. |
Repeal laws that require retailers to pay cash on delivery
Currently retailers must pay for shipments as they are received. This would mean they would not have to do so, essentially extending a line of credit.
I am not clear on why this is important to Costco and others.
· Some have expressed concern about subsequent ability to get payments. Delays in payments for small businesses could have a significant effect. |
Repeal laws that limit cross-ownership between the producer, distributor and retailer tiers | Current laws prevent cross-ownership of certain businesses across the three tiers. This eliminates those laws. | This Prohibition era law, referred to as a "tied house" law, prevents businesses from having direct or indirect financial interests across tiers in order to avoid monopolies. From the Senate: "Washington's tied-house prohibition was repealed by the Legislature in 2009 and direct and indirect financial interests between and among industry members and retailers are now permitted so long as the financial interest does not result in undue influence or have an adverse impact on public health and safety." I am unclear on how what is proposed in Initiative 1105 differs from what was passed in 2009. |
Repeal law that requires retailers to pay the same price whether a distributor delivers to them or they pick up their product from the distributor | Self-explanatory.
I believe the intention would be to negotiate a lower price if picked up from the distributor versus having the distributor deliver but have not seen any writing on this. |
Repeal laws that prevent producers from paying for shelf space in stores | Liquor business would be permitted to pay for prime time shelf-placement, like other businesses currently can. | Companies would be able to pay to have their products front and center.
· Some have expressed concern that they would get squeezed out by larger companies. |
Repeal laws that prevent distilleries, wineries and breweries from giving gifts to retailers
Current restrictions include gifts, discounts, loans, rebates, fixtures, equipment, and supplies to retailers. | This would allow companies to provide retailers with gifts and promotional items to assist with sales. |
Refocus Washington's Liquor Control Board | Currently the LCB focuses on regulation, enforcement, and sales. This would remove sales from the equation.
This is mainly just a by-product of privatizing liquor sales, although many see the LCB's dual role of enforcing rules and promoting liquor sales as a contradiction. |
Next up, a breakdown of Initiative 1105.

subset: commoncrawl


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Allison Keyes
Allison Keyes is an award-winning journalist with almost 20 years of experience in print, radio, and television. She has been reporting for NPR's national desk since October 2005. Her reports can be heard on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition Sunday.
Keyes coverage includes news and features on a wide variety of topics. "I've done everything from interviewing musician Dave Brubeck to profiling a group of kids in Harlem that are learning responsibility and getting educational opportunities from an Ice Hockey league, to hanging out with a group of black cowboys in Brooklyn who are keeping the tradition alive." Her reports include award-winning coverage of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York, coverage of the changes John Ashcroft sought in the Patriot Act, and the NAACP lawsuit against gun companies.
In 2002 Keyes joined NPR as a reporter and substitute host for The Tavis Smiley Show. She switched to News and Notes when it launched in January 2005. Keyes enjoyed the unique opportunity News & Notes gave her to cover events that affect communities of color on a national level. "Most news outlets only bother to cover crime and the predictable museum opening or occasional community protest," she said. "But people have a right to know what's going on and how it will affect them and their communities."
In addition to working with NPR, Keyes occasionally writes and produces segments for the ABC News shows Good Morning America and World News Tonight.
Keyes is familiar with public radio, having worked intermittently for NPR since 1995. She also spent a little less than a year hosting and covering City Hall and politics for WNYC Radio. Prior to that, she spent several years at WCBS Newsradio 880.
Keyes' eyewitness reports on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York earned her the Newswoman's Club of New York 2002 Front Page Award for Breaking News, and, along with WCBS Newsradio staff, the New York State Associated Press Broadcast Award for Breaking News and Continuing Coverage. Her report on the funeral of Patrick Dorismond earned her the National Association of Black Journalists' 2001 Radio News Award.
In addition to radio, Keyes has worked in cable television and print. She has reported for Black Enterprise Magazine, co-authored two African-American history books as well as the African American Heritage Perpetual Calendar, and has written profiles for various magazines and Internet news outlets in Chicago and New York.
Keyes got her start in radio at NPR member station WBEZ in Chicago, IL, in 1988 as an assistant news director, anchor, and reporter. She graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a degree in English and journalism. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Inc. and the National Association of Black Journalists.
When not on the air, Keyes can be found singing jazz, listening to opera, or hanging out with her very, very large cat.


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Dynamic Web Development with Seaside
Stéphane Ducasse, Lukas Renggli, C. David Shaffer, Rick Zaccone
with Michael Davies
with Michael Davies
Seaside is the open source framework of choice for developing sophisticated and dynamic web applications. Seaside uses the power of objects to master the web. With Seaside, building web applications is as simple as building desktop applications. Seaside lets you build highly dynamic and interactive web applications.
Seaside supports agile development through interactive debugging and unit testing. Seaside is based on Smalltalk, a proven and robust language implemented by different vendors. Seaside is now available for all major Smalltalk environments: Pharo, Squeak, GNU Smalltalk, Cincom Smalltalk, GemStone Smalltalk, and VA Smalltalk.
Dynamic Web Development with Seaside, intended for developers, will present the core of Seaside as well as advanced features such as Web 2.0 support and deployment. In this book you will learn how to design your own components and glue them together to build and deploy powerful and reusable web applications.
We are making this online book available to you for free. For a small fee, you can obtain a PDF, or a print-on-demand, softcover copy from Lulu. We wish to thank the European Smalltalk User Group, Inceptive.be, Cincom Systems, GemStone Systems Inc., and Instantiations for sponsoring this book.


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Health Care Law Upheld: Now What?
Now that the Supreme Court has decided that the Affordable Care Act can stand, it's time to think about what the law actually means for your medical coverage. The requirement that everyone buy health insurance (the individual mandate) has gotten all the attention, but there's a lot more to the health law. So let's review the changes the law has already wrought and those that still lie ahead:
- Health insurance providers can't cancel your coverage once you get sick – a practice known as "rescission" – unless you committed fraud or intentionally withheld facts about your health when you applied for coverage.
- Youth can be covered under a parent's plan until they turn 26.
- Children with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied coverage.
- Health insurance providers may not place a lifetime maximum on benefits.
- Insurers are required to give consumers rebates if they spend less than 80 to 85 percent of premium dollars on medical care. Insurers are required to issue this first round of rebates by Aug. 1.
Health plans created after Sept. 23, 2010, are required to cover certain preventative services without requiring copays, deductibles and coinsurance.
The law also expands Medicare's coverage of preventive services, such as screenings for colon, prostate and breast cancer, which are now free to beneficiaries. Medicare will also pay for an annual wellness visit to the doctor.
- If you are covered under a private Medicare Advantage plan, the law changes portions of the plan, cutting payments to some of those plans. Critics say that could mean the private plans may not offer many extra benefits that you may have previously enjoyed, such as free eyeglasses, hearing aids and gym memberships that they now provide.
- If you are older than 65, the law is narrowing a gap in the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan known as the "doughnut hole." That gap applies to seniors who have paid a certain initial amount in prescription drug costs and must then pay the full cost until they spend a total of $4,700 for the year. Then the plan coverage begins again. By 2020, the "doughnut hole" will be closed entirely.
- Starting Aug. 1, employers must provide health insurance plans that offer birth control as part of their preventative services.
- Adults with pre-existing conditions will not be denied coverage (this already applies to children).
- Most people will be required to have health insurance starting in 2014 or pay a fine. That penalty for individuals starts at $95 or up to 1 percent of income and grow in later years. For families it would start at $2,085 or 2.5 percent of household income. The Supreme Court noted in its decision that Americans could choose to ignore the mandate and instead pay the penalty, which they deemed a tax.
- People who don't qualify for Medicaid but still can't afford insurance may be eligible for government subsidies. The subsidies would be used to help pay for private insurance sold in the state-based insurance marketplaces, called exchanges, slated to begin operation in 2014.
- Applicants will not be rejected for insurance because of health status once the exchanges are operating in 2014.
- The Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the authority to expand Medicaid, but it can't strip states of all their Medicaid funds if they fail to participate in that expansion. Prior to the court's decision, analysts expected that about half of the people who would gain insurance under the law would do so through Medicaid. Under the Supreme Court's ruling, it's up to each state to decide whether it expands coverage to more people.
If a state does decide to expand Medicaid, people with an income at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level would be eligible to receive coverage.
Mary Agnes Carey reports for Kaiser Health News.


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TORONTO — Ezra Levant contends that an almost unanimous decision by North American media not to publish controversial Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in 2006 "did more to harm our culture and liberty than 9/11 itself."
The author and Sun Media newspaper columnist and TV host was speaking Dec. 4 at City Playhouse Theatre in Thornhill, at an event sponsored by Canadian Hadassah-WIZO's Hatikvah chapter. His topic for the evening was "Political Correctness and the Rise of Islamism."
Levant recalled his decision as publisher of the now-defunct Western Standard, a bi-weekly publication, to publish the cartoons. "They're news, and I'm a newspaper," he said.
Although he said he got a lot of support from Muslims and Arabs for his decision, he was the subject of an investigation by the Alberta Human Rights Commission, one of 14 such commissions in Canada.
"Of course I was guilty," Levant said. "I did something to cause someone else to feel some way."
More recently, Levant's Sept. 5 on-air rant on Sun News against Canada's Roma community prompted the Toronto Roma Community Centre to launch a hate speech complaint with Toronto police that is currently under investigation.
He likened the reaction to his publication of the Muhammad cartoons to the movie Minority Report, which featured a department of "pre-crime." Hatred and contempt are feelings, he said. "You are not normal if in your life you do not feel feelings… That's part of being a grown-up, to take those feelings and transform them into something positive.
"It's no longer acceptable to criticize Islam," he said. "We must tolerate offensive ideas."
Levant said that, rather, "the No. 1 way to fight back against radical Islam is by speaking the truth about it, by criticizing it.
"I want to know who the antisemites are – don't you?" he asked. "That way, you know who to like, who to vote for, and who to oppose."
He believes that Holocaust denial, too, provides "what the left would call a teachable moment.
"A hateful comment shouldn't be something to fear… It's a lot easier to call in the hate crime cops than to mobilize the truth about Israel, than to build a coalition with other students – Christian and Arab students. At the end of the day, not only will the country be stronger, but you will, too."
The right not to be offended is not a real right. It's a counterfeit right. It's another way of saying 'the power to shut someone else up.' And that is my deepest grievance with these so-called human right commissions. They undermine our real human rights," he said, emphasizing the word "real."
Levant said that "liberal human rights" can be traced to post-Holocaust Jews who pushed for "censorship" laws to prosecute John Ross Taylor, a pro-Hitler "eccentric" who "made it his life's hobby to try to convince Canadians to be fascists."
Levant noted that Canada's Jewish population, numbering less than 400,000, is now outnumbered by a Muslim population of just under one million.
"You cannot pass a law just for your team," Levant said. "I think it was a disaster that we eroded freedom of speech as much as we did, but it was harmless then."


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I've realized I'm the traditional type. When I find something interesting online, say a nice article on typography or an inspirational CSS snippet, I don't del.icio.us it: I want to save it locally.
That, and the fact that I amass a huge amount of information over the day, led me to search for what you essentially would call a PIM (Personal Information Manager) of sorts, to keep it all organized. I've tested Yojimbo, Soho Notes and Together which I feel are three top contenders on the Mac. But I feel Together has the most to offer. Here's why:
1. Drag and Drop
I love the ability of dragging and dropping stuff to a shelf on the edge of the screen, instantly saving them. All three apps offer this kind of functionality, but I found that Together's approach felt more fluid. Yojimbo on the other hand didn't fare so well. I wasn't able to import images directly to my library, for example.
2. Just the right features
Soho Notes is so, so bloated. It is full of features I never use (Contact Manager anyone?). It sure does what I want (and a ton more), but it has a tendency to be very slow. Together on the other hand keeps its feature set lean and focused on information gathering.
3. Intuitiveness
Together is intuitive. I love its Portrait Preview pane. It supports nested folders, tags, smart folders, all kinds of notes and snippets, and it's very lightweight and fast to boot.
If you're on a Mac in the lookout for a nice, simple and effective PIM application which supports .Mac syncing, download Together and give it a go. I'm sold.


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For water dough:
400g plain flour
225ml water mix with 1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp shortening or margarine
For oil dough:
200g plain flour
150g butter or shortening (room temperature)
For filling:
400g potatoes, cubed and cooked till soft
1 big onions, cubed
1 piece of chicken breast - cut small
3 tbsp curry powder
1 tbsp chilli powder
Salt and sugar to taste
1/2 cups of water
1. To make water dough: Place flour in a mixing bowl. Rub in shortening and add in the water. Knead into smooth dough. Leave aside to rest for 10 minutes. Divide into 10-12 equal portions. 2. To make oil dough: Rub shortening or butter into the flour to form oily dough. Divide into 10-12 equal portions.
3. Wrap oil dough inside water dough. Flatten the dough will a rolling pin and roll it up like a swiss roll. Then roll out the dough length wise again and roll it up like a swiss roll. Then divide the roll into 2 portions.
4. With the cut side portion on the table and roll dough into a circle. Fill the pastry with a tablespoon of filling, fold into half and crimp the edges.
5. Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Serve warm.
To make filling:
1. Heat pan with 2 tbsp oil. Mix the curry powder and chili powder with 3 tbsp of water to make into a paste.
2. Stir fry the onion until lightly brown. Add in the chicken and stir fry for a minutes and add in the curry paste. Stir fry until fragrant and add in the cooked potato and water. Cook until dry. Leave to cool.


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Now streaming on:
Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" is fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air. It has rich material and isn't clear what it thinks about it. It has two performances of Oscar caliber, but do they connect? Its title character is transparently inspired by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, but it sidesteps any firm vision of the cult religion itself — or what it grew into
The Hubbard character, named Lancaster Dodd and played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is indeed not even the film's most important. Top billing goes to an alcoholic adherent of The Master named Freddie Quell — played by Joaquin Phoenix, who in some ways seems to flow out of the bizarre persona he created during his meltdown, or whatever it was, two years ago.
This Freddie Quell has an unnatural and dangerous taste for booze in all forms. The film opens with him on board a U.S. Navy vessel in the Pacific just as World War II ends. As news of peace comes over the radio, he already has his plans made. He goes directly below deck and begins draining fuel from a torpedo. During the film, he will also create concoctions from paint thinner, coconut water, and something from a medicine cabinet — Lysol, perhaps. After he serves a potentially fatal cocktail to a migrant worker in a California cabbage field, he hastens to San Francisco and stows away on board a seafaring yacht.
This big boat belongs to Lancaster Dodd, introduced as a writer and apparently a rich one. (He later tells Quell: "I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist and a theoretical philosopher, but above all, I am a man, a hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.") He is in the process of founding a group, movement, cult, whatever, named the Cause, and the ship is en route to New York via the Panama Canal. He has been joined on board by many followers who will join Dodd and his wife, Peggy (Amy Adams), to celebrate the marriage of their daughter.
When Dodd discovers Quell is on board, his response is not to send him ashore. He finds a strange fascination in this tortured man, who describes himself as an "able-bodied seaman" but seems far from able inside a hunched and fearful body. Dodd seizes upon him as a suitable case for treatment, and there is a mesmerizing scene in which the two lock eyes over a table in the captain's cabin, and Dodd hammers him with questions, repeated over and over again. This is described as "processing," similar to the "auditing" Hubbard described in his book Dianetics.
The film is unclear about Dodd's earlier history and never mentions the science fiction that Hubbard began writing. When we meet Dodd, he is middle-aged, jovial, not above singing jolly tunes and acting the cut-up at parties. In meetings with East Coast followers, especially Helen Sullivan (Laura Dern), we see that the Cause has already attracted many recruits — and doubters, including John More (Christopher Evan Welch), who stands coldly in a doorway at one meeting and fires hostile questions.
The qualifications or cost for joining the Cause are never made clear, but some kind of fearful discipline seems to be in use, and Freddie Quell is quick to pick fights with those who oppose the man who has given him affection and guidance (and likes the taste of his hooch). Quell drifts in and out of reality, imagining rooms where the women have suddenly become unclothed. When it comes to sex, he has a powerful imagination, which we observe in an early scene where shipmates make a sand sculpture of a naked woman, and he uses it like a love doll to masturbate. (Not recommended.)
All around the film's edges are possibilities that Anderson doesn't explore. What, exactly, does the Cause believe, with its talk of past lives and ingrained prenatal injuries? "He's making it all up as he goes along," says son Val (Jesse Plemons). But "The Master" is not an expose, not a historical record of the Cause, Scientology or any other group and not really the story of its characters, who remain enigmatic to the end.
Enigmatic, but far from boring. Phoenix projects a fearsome anxiety as his eyes scan a room; there are flashbacks/fantasies involving a pre-war girlfriend who continued to occupy space in his mind years after she married and had children. There's no sense drinking gives him any pleasure; it medicates something we can only imagine. Hoffman, as Lancaster Dodd, suggests the charisma that a character like Hubbard must have had, and although Scientology has reportedly staged a campaign against "The Master," the film is vague about the Cause.
Why are these two opposites so strongly attracted? You could guess homoeroticism, but there too the movie is vague. Is it that each senses an intriguing challenge to his idea of himself? Always somewhere in the frame is Dodd's wife, Peggy, sweet-faced, calm, never missing a thing, always calmly there when she's needed.
This is the first movie filmed in 65mm (and projected in 70mm, in select markets) since Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" (1996). It's a spectacular visual experience. You notice that in particular when Dodd mounts a motorcycle on a huge flat plain and roars into the distance. Then he returns, just as Vincent Gallo did in "The Brown Bunny," although I doubt this is intended as a homage. "Now you do it," Dodd tells Quell. Quell roars off. Eventually Dodd and companions trudge off under the desert sun in search of him. Whether they find him, I won't say. What the motorcycle demonstrates, I can't say.
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of our great directors. "The Master" shows invention and curiosity. It is often spellbinding. But what does it intend to communicate?
137 minutes
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd
Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell
Amy Adams as Peggy
Laura Dern as Helen
Christopher Evan Welch as John
Patty McCormack as Mildred


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Sure, it tends to stick in the molars a bit, but it's extremely low in fat.
NOTE TO BAKERS: Icing tends to slide off of Styrofoam when displayed at an angle.
NOTE TO CUSTOMERS: Regard all cakes stored flat with extreme suspicion from now on.
If for some reason you feel compelled to have a photo of your grad on the cake, then this bakery obliges with either a traditional, "boring," photo, or the hip new "green-out silhouette" option:
And for those customers who may become confused, thinking they have to purchase a cake with someone else's photo on it, this bakery provides a helpful clarification:
But suppose your grad is spiritually inclined? How do you tastefully incorporate his or her religious views into a graduation cake? Well, this bakery shows us how...
And lastly, this bakery wants you to send your graduate a really heartfelt message.
Specifically: "Your face looks like a butt."
Oh, and "your cap is ridiculous, with its teensy little robot arm."
Victoria W., Maya J., Denise R., Leanna P., and Patricia B., "you're thanks here."


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The factory‐trained service technicians at Bickford Ford know your vehicle best and are ready to help you find the best tires for your specific model at the best price possible. In fact, we offer great tire deals on 16 quality name brands:
Other benefits of Bickford Ford tire services include:
The Ford Service Credit Card is a financing option that lets you pay for all service maintenance and repairs, including tire purchases and installation at Bickford Ford and other Ford Dealers across the U.S. It only takes a few minutes to apply and receive the decision.
Upon credit approval, you'll be provided with a credit line to assist you with all instore purchases, including:


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Thursday, May 19, 2011
Nike+ Sports Watch GPS
GPS this and GPS that, iPhone, Garmin, Polar, Timex, kind of get confusing. What to get? Which one works the best? How will it preform under conditions? Well this won't tell you that what this will tell you is that this is a pleasant addition to the mix.
The Nike+ SportWatch GPS powered by TomTom®: Never Run Alone Again
Think Less, Run Better
Put on your Nike+ SportWatch GPS, go outside and run. The Nike+ Sensor is optional. Tap the screen to mark laps and activate the backlight during your run, and personalize the data that you want to see during your run. For direct connect, USB contacts are built into the watch strap—just plug the watch directly into a USB port on your computer to upload run data and recharge the battery.
Enhanced Accuracy
Using GPS by TomTom with the Nike+ Sensor, you can start tracking your run instantly, and get accurate speed and distance information, indoors or out—even if the GPS signal gets interrupted. The Nike+ SportWatch GPS by TomTom tracks your time, distance, pace, heart rate and calories burned. It also shows your mapped route, with pace data, and changes in elevation on Nikeplus.com. And it's heart-rate monitor compatible with the Polar Wearlink+ Transmitter.
You'll Never Slack Again
View your Nike+ history (up to 50 runs) and PRs, and set automatic Run Reminders when a run hasn't been logged in the past five days. Run a personal best, receive an Attaboy. You can also find new routes, set personal goals and access training programs on Nikeplus.com.
Get Hooked Up With Nikeplus.com
Join challenges and connect with friends as a member of Nikeplus.com, the world's largest running club. View routes that your friends have run or shared, find the most popular areas to run and share your run activity on Facebook or Twitter.
Additional Details
English interface only
Weight: 2.33 ounces
Nike+ Sensor, quick-start guide and USB cable (for hard-to-access USB ports) included
One-year limited warranty


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Campaign-year aspirations for Obama's second term included closing the educational achievement gap and boosting college graduation rates to the highest in the world. But those lofty goals may have to wait, as lawmakers and Obama tackle a number of gritty funding-related issues that just can't wait.
First up is sequestration, the automatic, government-wide spending cuts set to knock out 8.2 percent of the funding to almost all of the Education Department's programs – unless Congress acts before the end of the year to avert the cuts.
Programs intended to reduce educational inequities will take a hit of $1.3 billion, according to the White House's Office of Management and Budget. Special education, already funded far below the levels Congress originally promised, will be slashed by more than $1 billion. Most of the reductions won't take effect until next fall, when the 2013-14 school year starts, but Impact Aid, which helps districts that lose revenue due to local tax-exempt federal property, would be cut immediately.
Education advocates are optimistic a plan will be hashed out that will leave most major education programs relatively unscathed.
"Even Republicans understand that cutting education spending is not something that is popular with voters," said Michael Petrilli, a former Education Department official and executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank.
What comes next is less certain. The Education Department refused to comment on its agenda for the next four years, but Secretary Arne Duncan, who has said he would like to stay on for Obama's second term, has hinted at the administration's focus. Petrilli and others closely watching the administration's signals on education say it's likely the focus will be on early childhood education and higher ed.
Pre-kindergarten was a major focus for Obama in his first term, when he strengthened Head Start's accountability rules and expanded his Race to the Top program to include pre-K.
In Congress, both parties agree that college costs are spiraling out of control, but there's not much government can do to control that. What it can control is student aid, and the debate about federal loans raises a familiar disagreement about the role of government. In 2010, when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, the federal government cut banks out of the process and started administering all loans directly. Many Republicans favor restoring the private sector's role in issuing federally backed and subsidized loans.
Higher ed also comes with a delicate set of ticking time bombs. Student loan interest rates, capped at 3.4 percent for new subsidized Stafford loans, are set to double July 1, the expiration date for a stopgap Congress passed last year. Pell Grants, the main source of federal aid for low-income students, face the same type of crisis as entitlements like Medicare and Social Security: a cost curve that's become difficult to contain as more people take part.
When it comes to K-12 education, the prospects increase for a tug of war between Obama and Congress.
Lawmakers are more than half a decade overdue to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The Education Department has been copiously granting waivers to No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era iteration of the act, giving states flexibility with performance targets.
There's bipartisan agreement in Congress that the law should be fixed and reauthorized. "While the administration's efforts to grant waivers are helpful for states operating under the tenets of No Child Left Behind, these fixes are temporary and piecemeal," Sen. Tom Harkin, the Democrat who chairs the Senate committee responsible for education, said in an email.
But the Obama administration has shown little desire to put the policy back in lawmakers' hands. Duncan didn't mention reauthorization in a lengthy speech in October laying out his agenda.
"Waivers are not a pass on accountability, but a smarter, more focused and fair way to hold ourselves accountable," Duncan said in that speech.
In a sign of the uneven pace of progress, a major stimulus-funded grant program to turn around the worst performing schools showed mixed results in its first year, according to Education Department data released Monday.
Two-thirds of schools that received School Improvement Grants showed an uptick in math and reading scores, although most of those schools were already making progress before the grants were distributed. But scores declined at more than one in four schools that had been improving the year before grants started. Duncan said turning around failing schools is a long-term process and that a single year of scores paints an incomplete picture.
Lawmakers are also eager to reclaim control of Race to the Top, the multibillion-dollar grant competition program Obama created in 2009 to prod states into changing laws and raising standards. The administration opened the competition to school districts this year, but with stimulus funds exhausted, the size of the program shrank dramatically.
"With Race to the Top, and then these conditional waivers, it is bypassing Congress and the process we're supposed to have, adding to uncertainty," Republican Rep. John Kline, the House Education and the Workforce Committee chairman, said in an interview.
Teacher assessments are at the heart of another potential flashpoint. Chicago teachers walked off the job for more than a week in September, largely over demands that their evaluations be tied to student test scores. Teachers unions enthusiastically backed Obama's re-election, but Obama's Education Department stayed neutral on the strike, and his former chief of staff, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, led the fight against striking teachers.


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This might be the most controversial piece I've submitted to UX Magazine. I gathered together an entire digital design agency to survey 20 years of Internet history and choose the five most important breakthroughs from a user experience perspective. Tears were shed. Blood was spilled. And in the end we compromised on six.
Why the user experience angle? Because whatever technological innovations are forming in the world's boardrooms and basements right now, in the end, it's our users who will choose the winners—with their attention, enthusiasm, and cash.
Here are they are in rough chronological order:
#1: America Online (AOL)
AOL may be fighting for its life today, but it was once synonymous with the Internet. At it peak it had over 30 million subscribers and even swallowed Time Warner. But that's not why it made our list.
AOL leads our list because it was the original online service for "non-computer people," offering a friendly graphical user interface in place of command lines and fostering communication among its members long before social became a buzzword.
Through force of will and enough direct-mail CDs to bury Luxembourg, AOL wrested the Internet from the techies, scientists, and academics who created it and made it so accessible your grandparents might even use it—and then they did.
Thank you AOL for bringing the Internet out of the labs and into our living rooms.
#2: Internet Search
No discussion of Internet highs can ignore the centrality and ongoing cultural impact of search. Countless billions have been invested in online shopping sites, products and services, games, media, and social sites. Yet search remains our most popular online activity:
- 92% of online U.S. adults use search engines to find information on the web—roughly six in 10 use it on a typical day [Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project]
- 93% of all Internet traffic is generated from search engines [Source: Forrester Research]
- In the U.S., search contributed to 1.2% of GDP in 2009 [Source: McKinsey]
No wonder it's so popular. You type some words into a box, and the information you seek comes back like magic. And increasingly it does work like magic: Anticipating our needs—even correcting our mistakes—at ever faster speeds.
Thank you Archie, Gopher, WebCrawler, Lycos, Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Ask Jeeves, MSN, AltaVista, Yahoo!, Google, Bing, and others for expanding our consciousness, saving us time and money, making us smarter, and settling every factual dispute we're ever going to have—on the spot.
#3: Amazon.com
It's hard to believe that not so long ago, selling goods online was a risky experiment with an uncertain future. This was the world Amazon entered in 1995 as "Earth's largest bookstore" and one of the first online retailers.
While many of its peers from those days are gone (See CNET's Top 10 Dot-Com Flops for a trip down memory lane), Amazon persevered to become the world's largest online retailer with $48 billion in yearly revenue and millions of products and services for sale. But what most impressed us is how it got there.
"Amazon is such a smart learning organization," Nancy F. Koehn, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, told Bloomberg Businessweek recently. "It's like a biological organism that through natural selection and adaptation just keeps learning and growing."
Through its culture of constant experimentation and tweaking, a willingness to quickly drop what's not working, and its clever use of customer data, Amazon doggedly popularized online shopping and established itself as the beau ideal for successful online retailers across the globe.
Thank you Amazon for finding your way through unknown terrain without a road map. You are the Lewis and Clark of e-commerce.
#4: Napster
We're not talking about the Napster that Best Buy just sold to Rhapsody, but the original start-up that ignited the music file-sharing frenzy and rocked the web 10 years ago. Napster's first act (1999 to 2001) was cut short by music industry lawsuits, but the forces it unleashed continue to transform and shape the global media marketplace today.
Napster boasted as many users as AOL at its peak. Like AOL, Napster popularized a technology it didn't actually invent, and succeeded for many of the same reasons:
- It was easy to use and understand
- It aggregated and standardized a previously fragmented landscape
- It was faster and more reliable than its predecessors
- It harnessed powerful social dynamics found in the real world
Napster paved the way for some amazing things that we take for granted today, like the ability to easily find, own, and share just about any song, album, movie, book, or story in the world. It is the mother of iTunes, Rhapsody, Netflix, and countless other services and websites that we use and love.
Thank you Napster. Because content really does want to be free—not free of cost necessarily, but free of boundaries.
#5: User-Generated Content
It's hard to believe that user-generated content (or "UGC") has only been a mainstream phenomenon since 2005. Even by Internet standards, its proliferation and growing cultural impact have been astonishing.
Through personal blogs, social networks, online communities and discussion boards, product reviews, wikis, news sites, travel sites, video, and photo-sharing sites, average citizens are exerting an increasingly profound influence over our culture and economy.
- In the U.S., 43% of Internet users are generating online content [Source: McKinsey]
- 49% of online users share content online at least one a week [Source: CMB Consumer Pulse]
Entire industries are being transformed. Retail, for one, will never be the same:
- 81% of people use consumer reviews in their purchase decisions [Source: Nielsen Online via BizReport]
- Online reviews are second only to word-of-mouth when it comes to influencing consumer-purchasing decisions [Source: Rubicon Consulting]
User generated content was even featured as Time magazine's 2006 Person of the Year, in which the person of the year was "you," meaning all of those individuals who are changing the nature of the information age as creators and consumers of user-generated content.
Here's another way of looking at it: Take Facebook, Craigslist, eBay, Twitter, Pinterest, Myspace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, and Yelp. Without the content produced by users, most of these modern icons wouldn't exist at all.
Thank you UGC. Customers may not quite rule, as some marketing pundits claim, but because of you they are no longer docile subjects either.
#6: The iPhone
Before the iPhone it was the same story every year. The "year of mobile" was upon us. The phone manufacturers would trumpet their latest incremental improvements and cosmetic enhancements as the next big thing. But something was missing. Then the iPhone debuted in 2007 and we all understood exactly what had been missing.
Five years later, Palm is history. RIM and Nokia are floundering. Windows mobile is kidding itself. And Android is successful because it's so much like the iPhone. Now that's disruptive technology.
The mobile revolution is in full swing and accelerating thanks to the iPhone's ease of use and endless possibility. And with almost six billion mobile handsets in use worldwide, mobile may well be the greatest business opportunity of all time:
- 90% of the world now lives in a place with access to a mobile network [Source: International Telecommunication Union]
- Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web-access devices worldwide by 2013 [Source: Gartner]
- Direct revenue from the sale of apps, in-app purchases, and subscriptions will hit $14.1bn in 2012 [Source: Canalys]
Thank you Apple for launching the real mobile revolution, and making all that came before you look ridiculous.
So only one question remains: Which great breakthroughs would you choose?
Search photo courtesy of Shutterstock


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Friday 27 January 2012
A tale of three water bottles
I started off with the green bottle. It was made by Aquasteel. I love it. It was lightweight and stylish and exactly what I wanted. Within a few weeks the bottle was knocked off the kitchen table, huge cracks formed around the nozzle. It was useless. I tried to contact the company to ask if I could buy another top but the email and phone number didn't work. I had bought it on holiday so I couldn't return it to the shop. I had to abandon it.
The next bottle was the tall purple one. I found it at Officeworks. It appealed because I don't really like the sucker tops. This had a nicer opening to drink from. Unfortunately it seems to open at the wrong sort of moment. It has dumped water on my camera, on the floor of the car and I get worried Sylvia will throw it on the bed when having a night time tantrum. It has been banned from my bag and from night time use but I love it too much to throw it out. It is great around the house during the day.
The last bottle is the little purple one. It is from Safeway supermarket. It is practical but is just not quite right. It is too small when I am riding my bike and reach for it in my drink holder. It just doesn't have the aesthetic appeal or pleasing feel of the other two.
The pursuit of the ideal water bottle continues. It is not an active hunt. But I hope one day I will get over the disappointment of the acquasteel and find another I can love and use.
Update 2014 - after trying lots of water bottles, I have now settled on the Thermos water bottles (see photo of a Thermos water bottle) which don't leak and stay cold in summer. The only problem is that the straw is hard to clean and gets dirty after a while. I need to look into replacement straws.
This post was inspired by Kari's post on water bottles.
31 comments:
I have the answer to your problems Johanna, the Life Bottle.
It keeps my tea hot, or water ice cold for about 8 hours, and as it is so well insulated there is no condensation. Although it could do with a sport lid attachment.
My regular bottle is metal one pint, navy blue with coloured spots. It goes everywhere with me.I have a 600mL Envirosax steel bottle and it's so good. I bough it on sale at the Co-Op Bookshop of all places and it's going strong 2 years on. I can't count the amount of times I've dropped this thing (esp. while full and heavy) and it'll ding, but keep on going. I kind of like the character the dings give it.
Check out this page and scroll down: http://www.envirosax.com.au/water-bottles.html
The kind I have is called a 'skinny bottle'. The only plastic parts are the top (which doesn't get much action, it would be pretty hard to drop it on the top) and the washer inside the top to keep it tightly sealed. I specifically didn't want a bottle with many plastic parts (because they degrade so quickly when they're getting so much use) and this one is perfect.I have a 18oz (around 500ml) Classic stainless steel Kleen Kanteen which I really really like. I have the loop cap and it's watertight, and has a fairly wide mouth. Another thing I like about them is that there's different types of caps that can be purchased separately.
They're a slight pain to get hold of (I got mine for my birthday last year, but I think my partner bought it from Amazon), but I carry it with me all the time. I definitely recommend them.I'm honoured to have inspired this post Johanna :) It was very fun to read - leading me to suspect my interest in water bottles is too strong to be entirely healthy! - and I hope you find the perfect one soon. They are a tricky item to get just right. I find kitchen shops offer alternatives to the normal sports-style and supermarket ones, so you could try some of those too (although perhaps you have)?
ReplyDeleteRepliesThanks Kari - I have seen some in kitchen shops - actually I bought the acquasteel in house and I am more likely to be in kitchen shops than sports stores so I will definitely keep my eye out there (actually thay are also in toy stores would you believe! I want to get sylvia one but baulk at the prices)
I love your commitment towards eliminating plastic bottles.
I really love your blog. You always have interesting content. Keep up the stellar work.It's hard to find the right water bottle and tea mug! I used to use the Sigg water bottles but the screw lids get really gross and mouldy (at least mine did), and I've tried Klean Kanteen which is great but I don't like the wide mouth opening. I recently bought a new one made by lifefactory. It's a glass bottle with a rubber sleeve. I like drinking out of glass more and it can go in my dishwasher which is great. Good luck in your water bottle search!
ReplyDeleteI used to have a water bottle but I hated the squirt top! I want to sip my water. I'm still looking for the ideal water bottle that's lightweight, won't rust, unbreakable, etc. . . seems it's a difficulty wherever you look!
ReplyDeleteFinding the perfect water bottle is no easy feat! I've been using a Camelbak water bottle and really love it!
ReplyDeleteMy water bottle is made by Earthlust (http://www.earthlust.com/). It has a screw top (I also don't like sippy tops) so will never pop open. I carry it in my everywhere, frequently with my camera and/or my laptop. It has been all over Melbourne and survived being flown around the world (kinda fun to open in flight when the contents are under more pressure than the aircraft cabin [1]).
[1] N.B. don't bring a bottle you care about in your hand luggage on international flights, even empty, they will take it off you.I recently aquired a stainless steel water bottle from a pharmacy here in Bacchus Marsh which has a top similar to your purple one which has stayed shut so far, I don't like drinking out of pop tops either, and the lid unscrews to allow for ice cubes and easy cleaning.
It is a Cheeki sports bottle & it is fantastic
Ditch the plastic!Ha, I have some ongoing projects like that myself! Usually with clothes a lot. As a water bottle, I usually use a simple green glass bottle that was a usual sparkling water bottle once and now is my personal water bottle. I somehow find that water from glass bottles tastes better than from plastic.
ReplyDeleteI am yet to find a water boottle that I like - I used to use the plastic ones until I found out that they harbour germs. The hunt is still on ...
ReplyDeleteI'm a big fan of the Camelbak water bottle, but it does have a bite-and-suck valve (which is kind of their signature). Through many years of camping, I've discovered that Nalgene bottles are indestructable (I've never broken one; lost a few, but never broken), lightweight, lids are replaceable (although I've never had a lid break, either, just the bit that holds it to the bottle). Dishwasher safe if kept away from the heating element (I usually just put mine on the top rack), and sporting goods stores (at least, here in the US) have inserts you can put into the wide-mouth bottles to reduce water flow, so you don't dump the entire thing on yourself. They also make narrow-neck bottles.
ReplyDeleteI like the Sigg ones. You do have to buy a valve top seperately if you want one. They're a bit pricy in Oz but pretty hardwearing - they do get dented (if thrown on the floor by a toddler for instance) but this doesn't seem to affect the coating inside. And it's easy to order replacement tops for the kids ones! We've had one adult and two kid bottles for more two years or so and have never had the mould issue someone describes above (despite living in sticky Brisbane). They do recommend washing the bottles and letting them fully dry regularly though - so I do this with mine once a week or so.
ReplyDeleteI held on to my favourite water bottle too long.. I got it for free from work, but it was fairly leak proof and didn't have a stupid sucker. But it was plastic, and I knew its days were numbered.... finally I dropped it one too many times and gave it a big crack. In the trash it went. I don't like its replacement.. it is metallic, but the lid is either a screw top which is annoying when biking or a sucker which I hate.
I am still toying with a good tea mug. I have oen that keeps things warm but it isn't a practical design for my loose leaf tea. I'd loev to find a mug that will allow me to put in loose leaf tea and sip away. Still on the hunt for the perfect mug.
I hope you find what you are looking for, too!
Thanks for dropping by. I love hearing from you. Please share your thoughts and questions. Annoyingly the spammers are bombarding me so I have turned on the pesky captcha code (refresh to find an easy one if you don't like the first one)


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The Indians wore cotton dresses, and carried bows of cane, and arrows also of cane with iron at the point. Such was the equipment of the Indians, and they marched under the command of Pharnazathres the son of Artabates. [...] The eastern Ethiopians- for two nations of this name served in the army- were marshalled with the Indians. They differed in nothing from the other Ethiopians, save in their language, and the character of their hair. For the eastern Ethiopians have straight hair, while they of Libya are more woolly-haired than any other people in the world.The appearance of the inhabitants, too, is not so far different in India and Ethiopia; the southern Indians resemble the Ethiopians a good deal, and, are black of countenance, and their hair black also, only they are not as snub-nosed or so woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; but the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians in appearance.
- Modern Indians are derived from two ancestral populations. The first one, termed Ancestral North Indians (ANI) were Caucasoids, the other, Ancestral South Indians (ASI) were distinct from both Caucasoids and Mongoloids in a Eurasian context.
- The ASI no longer exist in non-admixed form, but in various degrees of admixtures with ANI; the closest living population to the ASI are the Andaman Islanders.
- Upper castes are higher in ANI ancestry than middle and lower castes. ANI percentages of ancestry are correlated with Western Eurasian Y chromosomes (P=0.04) and mtDNA (P=0.08).
- Indo-European speakers are higher in ANI ancestry than Dravidian speakers.
We can see that (i) the relationship between Andaman Islanders and ASI is not particularly close, although they do form a clade in relation to the other populations, (ii) the relationship between CEU and ANI is fairly close (in this context). The authors further determine (in the supplement) that CEU and ANI do form a clade separate from the non-IE speaking Adygei from the Caucasus.
- Suppose postulated ancient Indian PIE speakers had a similar genetic makeup as modern Indians (i.e., a mix of ANI and ASI). Then, the absence of the ASI component outside South Asia cannot be explained.
- If ancient Indian PIE speakers had a purely ANI makeup, then the absence of the ASI component outside South Asia -as in (1)- can be explained. However, this would entail that sharply differentiated populations (ANI and ASI) co-existed in India without mixing for thousands of years; ANI-like PIEs spread from India with their languages; ANI and ASI admixed afterwards. To say that this scenario is not parsimonious would be charitable.
- The only way in which PIE languages may have originated in India would be if they spread without the spread of people. However, before the advent of writing and modern means of transportation and communication, the only way to spread languages was by migration of people.
The researchers also found that Indian populations were much more highly subdivided than European populations. But whereas European ancestry is mostly carved up by geography, Indian segregation was driven largely by caste. "There are populations that have lived in the same town and same village for thousands of years without exchanging genes," says Reich.
Reconstructing Indian population history
David Reich et al.
India has been underrepresented in genome-wide surveys of human variation. We analyse 25 diverse groups in India to provide strong evidence for two ancient populations, genetically divergent, that are ancestral to most Indians today. One, the 'Ancestral North Indians' (ANI), is genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans, whereas the other, the 'Ancestral South Indians' (ASI), is as distinct from ANI and East Asians as they are from each other. By introducing methods that can estimate ancestry without accurate ancestral populations, we show that ANI ancestry ranges from 39–71% in most Indian groups, and is higher in traditionally upper caste and Indo-European speakers. Groups with only ASI ancestry may no longer exist in mainland India. However, the indigenous Andaman Islanders are unique in being ASI-related groups without ANI ancestry. Allele frequency differences between groups in India are larger than in Europe, reflecting strong founder effects whose signatures have been maintained for thousands of years owing to endogamy. We therefore predict that there will be an excess of recessive diseases in India, which should be possible to screen and map genetically.


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Kennedy hugged and clasped hands with her lawyers as a six-person jury cleared her of driving while impaired, a misdemeanor. It had carried the potential for up to a year in jail, though that would be unlikely for a first-time offender.
"I'm incredibly grateful to the jury for working so hard on this case ... and to my lawyers ... and to my family and friends and so many other people who supported me," Kennedy said afterward. "I'm happy justice was done."
A human-rights advocate, Kennedy is a scion of one political dynasty - a daughter of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and niece of President John F. Kennedy - and a onetime member of another, as the former wife of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Her 85-year-old mother, Ethel Kennedy, and other members of their famous family attended the trial, which drew so much attention that it was moved from a small-town courtroom to a bigger courthouse in White Plains.
Prosecutors and Kennedy's defense lawyers agreed the 54-year-old took the sleeping drug zolpidem unintentionally, mistaking it for her daily thyroid medication, before heading off to her suburban New York gym on July 13, 2012. The trial centered on whether or not she realized she was impaired and should have stopped.
Despite the pill mix-up, "she is responsible for the chain of events that happened after that," prosecutor Doreen Lloyd said in her summation. She argued that Kennedy shrugged off the symptoms because she was busy.
Kennedy's defense said what happened was an accident, not a crime.
"The DA never should have brought this case in the first place," defense attorney William Aronwald said afterward. "Kerry Kennedy has the resources" to defend herself, he said. "What about the person who doesn't?"
Aronwald said prosecutors told the defense that they could not dismiss the case because doing so would create the impression that Kennedy was getting special treatment."All we asked the prosecution to do was view her as if her name was Mary Housewife," he said. "They were the ones who treated her differently because of who she is."
The Westchester County district attorney's spokesman, Lucian Chalfen, said the office prosecutes 2,500 impaired driving cases per year. "This case was treated no differently from any of the others," Chalfen said.
The prosecutor's office issued a statement saying "the jury heard all the evidence in this case and we respect their verdict."
Kennedy said she didn't remember anything that happened as she drove her Lexus on a New York interstate - swerving out of her lane, hitting a tractor-trailer, blowing a tire and continuing to the next exit, where she was found disoriented and slumped at the steering wheel, according to witnesses. Police said she failed several sobriety tests at the scene but passed several tests a few hours later at a police station.
"If I realized I was impaired, I would have pulled over," Kennedy testified.
A few days after the accident, Kennedy said her doctors believed it was caused by a seizure, stemming from a brain injury early in her life. Blood tests then found a small amount of zolpidem, sometimes sold under the brand name Ambien.
Kennedy's defense introduced a medical journal article saying that people who take zolpidem frequently don't recognize their impairment, and even the prosecution's toxicology expert acknowledged the medication could lead to someone "sleep-driving" without knowing it. Another Kennedy lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, said the drug "hijacks your ability to make decisions."
But the prosecutor said Kennedy's testimony contradicted science showing the drug works gradually. And Lloyd spotlighted Kennedy's shifting explanations of the episode, suggesting Kennedy was worried about her image.
Her family's storied and sorrow-filled history crept into the trial when Lefcourt asked about her upbringing.
"My mother raised us because my father died when I was 8," she said. "He was killed when he was running for president."
But Lefcourt told jurors in his closing argument that Kennedy was "not seeking advantage because of her family."
The trial, he noted, was "not a TV call-in program. This is an American court."


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Do you suffer from neck pain? If you do, you're not alone. Nearly 75 percent of American adults will suffer from neck pain at some point in their lives. And, looking at our anatomy, it's no wonder so many of us do. Though having your head perched on top of your spine gives you a great view of your environment,
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Feb 2024: 99.90 (+ more) Updated: Mar 18, 2024 7:09 AM CDTFeb 2024: | 99.90 | |
Jan 2024: | 100.24 | |
Dec 2023: | 100.11 | |
Nov 2023: | 100.38 | |
Oct 2023: | 99.68 | |
View All |
Index 2015=100,Frequency:
MonthlyData in this graph are copyrighted. Please review the copyright information in the series notes before sharing.
Source: Eurostat
Release: Harmonized Indices of Consumer Prices (HICP)
Units: Index 2015=100, Not Seasonally Adjusted
Frequency: Monthly
The Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices category "Electrical Appliances for Personal Care, Other Appliances, Articles, and Products for Personal Care (12.1.2/3)" is a classification of nondurable goods that includes electric razors and hair trimmers, hand-held and hood hair dryers, curling tongs and styling combs, sun-lamps, vibrators, electric toothbrushes and other electric appliances for dental hygiene, etc.; repair of such appliances; non-electric appliances such as razors, hair trimmers, blades, scissors, nail files, combs, shaving brushes, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, nail brushes, hairpins, curlers, personal weighing machines, baby scales, etc.; articles for personal hygiene such as toilet soap, medicinal soap, cleansing oil and milk, shaving soap, shaving cream and foam, toothpaste, etc.; beauty products such as lipstick, nail varnish, make-up and make-up removal products (including powder compacts, brushes, and powder puffs), hair lacquers and lotions, pre-shave and after-shave products, sun-bathing products, hair removers, perfumes and toilet waters, personal deodorants, bath products, etc.; and toilet paper, paper handkerchiefs, paper towels, sanitary towels, cotton wool, cotton tops, babies' napkins, toilet sponges, etc.
This category excludes handkerchiefs made of fabric (03.1.3).
This category is a subcategory of the Miscellaneous Goods and Services (12) and of Personal Car (12.1).
Information provided in the notes pertaining to HICP classifications can be found from the source at: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/prc_hicp_esms.htm.
Copyright, European Union, 1995-2016, http://ec.europa.eu/geninfo/legal_notices_en.htm#copyright.
Eurostat, Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices: Electrical Appliances for Personal Care and Other Appliances, Articles, and Products for Personal Care for Cyprus [CP1212CYM086NEST], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP1212CYM086NEST, April 13, 2024.


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New evidence confirms suspicions that early modern humans, which left Africa some 300,000 to 750,000 years after Neanderthals, probably interbred with the physically stronger hominid species. The contact likely happened in the Middle East, the authors said, sometime after early modern humans left Africa 80,000 to 50,000 years ago.
Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center and his colleagues analyzed a particular segment of the human X chromosome, one of the two sex chromosomes, known as dys44—an 8-kilobase intronic region that flanks the human dystrophin gene and has proved to be a useful marker for human evolutionary studies.Thanks to last year's complete sequencing of the Neanderthal genome, the researchers could compare the genomes of more than 6,000 modern humans with the ancient hominid, and found similar intronic sequences on the Neanderthal X chromosome, as well as on the X of...
"There is little doubt that this haplotype is present because of mating [of] our ancestors and Neanderthals," Nick Patterson of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University said in a press release. "This is a very nice result, and further analysis may help determine more details."
Correction: This story has been updated from its original version to correctly indicate that modern humans left Africa after Neanderthals. The Scientist regrets the error.


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Anais Gvani Italy Luxury Collection
Anais Gvani New York is a new, trendy fashion retailer specializing in handbags Anais Gvani ® is an high-end American brand of handbags by the world's largest fashion bags and fashion accessories companies based in Commerce, California. This brand products ranging from Anais Gvani sunglasses, Anais Gvani wallets, Anais Gvani purses to Anais Gvani handbags and so on
The Anais Gvani® classic collection includes the original handbags introduced by the Anais Gvani® New York design team. A brand originated from The Big Apple, Anais Gvani® (or "AG") bags take their name from New Yorkers' favorite parks and recreational hotspots. Physically, these purses are easily distinguished by the gold tone hardware that lends them that luxuriously modern look. The various gold accented chains, zippers, and logo decorations are handcrafted to perfection on each bag. Before AG products became available on Fashlets, they had already been drawing crowds at mall booths throughout the East Coast, such as the Westfield Trumbull in Connecticut, the Natick Mall in Massachusetts, and the Town Center at Boca Raton, Florida. Fashlets eventually took the collection online to make it accessible to shoppers everywhere. The collection currently features popular trends such as matte crocoskin and quilted textures, to original styles bearing the Anais Gvani® logo plate.
Disclaimer: GFM PHL 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗿 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗱. 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀


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"In the first quarter of 2012 we will launch online streaming," Yates announced. "I would say AS THE WORLD TURNS first, then looking at GUIDING LIGHT later in the year."
SoapClassics.com is the industry leader in bringing old format television programs back to loyal audiences using the latest information technology. In fact, remember the all-too-short-lived Classic Soap Channel that P&G once had on AOL? "Yes, we did all the encoding," Yates confirmed. "We were the technical facility for that.,"