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TEHRAN, July 26 (UPI) -- The Iranian government said Friday it expected the president of the North Korean parliament to attend the August inauguration of President-elect Hassan Rouhani.
Rouhani ran as a moderate, when compared to conservative leaders he beat in June presidential elections in Iran. He replaces President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was ineligible to run because of term limits.
Kim Yong Nam, chairman of the presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea, is due to visit Aug. 4 ceremonies in Tehran for Rouhani, the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported Friday.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi said Kim was attending at the official invitation of the government.
"All the heads and high-ranking officials of the world states have been invited to the swearing-in ceremony of the Iranian president-elect," he said.
Rouhani, a Shiite cleric and former nuclear negotiator, said he'd reach out to members of the international community when he takes office next month.
Iran and North Korea are the subject of international scrutiny because of their controversial nuclear programs.
North Korea has carried out three nuclear tests since 2009 and Iran is suspected of pursuing the technology needed to manufacture a nuclear weapon.
Iran and North Korea began military cooperation in the 1980s.


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3M Company (NYSE: MMM) is a diverse conglomerate that produces a broad array of products and materials for both consumers and businesses.
-Seven Year Revenue Growth Rate: 5.1%
-Seven Year EPS Growth Rate: 6.3%
-Seven Year Dividend Growth Rate: 5.0%
-Current Dividend Yield: 2.42%
-Balance Sheet Strength: Extremely Strong
3M Company (NYSE: MMM), once called the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, was founded in 1902. The company, now with 80,000 employees, produces products like Scotch tape, projector systems, Post-it notes, Tartan track, and Thinsulate. This is a conglomerate that produces products for many industries and for both personal and business use, and their manufacturing, research, and sales offices are all over the world.
Business Segments
The company is divided into five business segments:
Industrial Business
This segment provides adhesives, abrasives, filtration systems, fasteners, and specialty materials to a variety of industries. This is the largest segment, accounting for about 32% of sales.
Safety and Graphics Business
This segment provides display films, reflective materials, projection systems, and the like. This segment accounts for about 18% of sales.
Electronics and Energy
This segment provides products for electronics and energy businesses including films for LCD screens and splicing products for signal cables, and accounts for about 18% of sales. Nearly two-thirds of sales from this segment come from the Asia Pacific region.
Health Care Business
This segments provides several products in the areas of wound care, oral care, drug delivery systems, and more. This segment accounts for about 17% of sales. The bulk of sales come mainly come from the U.S. and Europe, as the products are more targeted towards developed countries.
Consumer and Office Business
This segment provides solutions for the home and office, and includes well-known products like Scotch tape. This segment accounts for about 15% of sales. The U.S. accounts for over half of sales from this segment.
Price to Earnings: 16.5
Price to Free Cash Flow: 19.3
Price to Book: 4.1
Return on Equity: 27%
(Chart Source: DividendMonk.com)
Revenue grew at a solid rate of 5.1% per year on average over this period.
Earnings and Dividends
(Chart Source: DividendMonk.com)
Earnings grew at a 6.3% rate over this period, and dividends grew at a rate of a bit over 5% per year on average.
The company keeps the dividend payout ratio fairly low at under 40% currently, and at most in the mid-forties during the bottom of the latest recession when earnings were weak. The current yield is a modest 2.42%, but the company does have a streak of 55 years of consecutive annual dividend growth, which is only surpassed by seven other companies that I'm aware of.
Approximate historical dividend yield at beginning of each year:
How Does 3M Company Spend Its Cash?
Over the last three years, 3M generated approximately $11.8 billion in free cash flow. Over the same period, the company spent $4.7 billion on dividends, $5.7 billion on share repurchases, and $3.5 billion on net acquisitions.
An issue here is that unlike most dividend growth companies, 3M tends to issue quite a number of shares. Over this three year period, the company issued over $2.5 billion worth of shares, and this trend stretches back far into company history. The issuing of these shares mitigates a significant portion of the share repurchases that the company does.
Balance Sheet
Total debt to equity is under 35%, total debt to net income is only 135%, the interest coverage ratio is nearly 38x (which is substantially above average), and despite the history of acquisitions, goodwill accounts for less than 45% of equity.
3M's balance sheet is among the strongest out of the companies I publish reports on, and is the strongest or among the strongest in its industry.
Investment Thesis
3M Company is a highly diversified industrial/engineering company that makes a lot of the small pieces or details of technologies and products that define a developed economy.
Consumers know the brand mainly from office supplies, but most of the sales come from business-to-business transactions.
Over the last two decades, developing markets have played an increasingly important in growth for the company, as they've made up a larger and larger percentage of the total corporate sales. During the last ten years, sales to developing markets have jumped from 21% to 34% of sales, and this figure is expected to increase to the 40-45% over the next five years according to their latest investor presentation.
The company takes a layered approach to expansion into new markets. What this means is, their five business segments come into play in stages as an economy develops. In the earliest stage of development, 3M's industrial and energy products are most relevant. In middle stages, safety products and consumer products start being the focus, and in the later stages health care sales start to become more available.
The company expects to continue with their organic growth, and to continue with their acquisition policy at a rate of $1-$2 billion in net acquisition costs per year. Recent acquisitions include electronic toll collection technology, language software, and advanced technical ceramics.
Since the company primarily sells to businesses, their sales tend to be more volatile during recessions than a defensive consumer company.
The company spends in the ball park of $1-$2 billion on research and development each year, and must continue to innovate and/or make smart acquisitions in order to remain competitive and achieve good returns for shareholders.
Conclusion and Valuation
The company has a particularly strong balance sheet, more than five decades of consecutive annual dividend growth, and a diversified global position.
A downside is that, quite simply, the sum of earnings growth and the dividend yield is not particularly attractive. With under 6.5% earnings growth (and lower dividend growth), and a dividend yield of under 2.5%, the sum of EPS growth and yield is under 9%, which is lower than many of the companies I cover. Since the sum of EPS growth and dividend yield is a proxy for the expected rate of return for the investment (assuming a static stock valuation), this leaves a bit to be desired.
This is directly related to the $2.5 billion worth of shares issued over the last three years, which was mentioned in the section about how the company spends its cash. The company issued over $500 million worth of shares in 8 out of the last 10 years (the exceptions being 2008 and 2009), and these figures increased to nearly a billion dollars and over a billion dollars, respectively, over the last two fiscal years. This significant issuance of shares opposes their share repurchases, and so despite the fact that the company has cumulatively spent nearly $18 billion on share repurchases over the last decade, the total number of shares has reduced by less than 12% in total. Share repurchases boost EPS growth, and issuing shares at this magnitude counteracts a significant portion of that.
At the current rate, that's around 1.4% of the market cap each year in share issuance which goes against EPS growth. Going back to the aforementioned sum of EPS growth + dividend yield, adding this 1.4% back to that sum would boost the sum to around 10% which is up where many of the companies I cover tend to be. So the amount of shares issued each year is what is leading to a consistently lackluster combination of growth and yield. In the absence of these issued shares, the buybacks would be contributing another 1.4% or so per year to EPS growth.
The Gordon Growth Model can be used to estimate ranges of fair value for the stock. The dividend growth rate averaged 5% over the last seven years, and the most recent quarterly increase was over 7.5%. Due to the particularly strong nature of the balance sheet, a conservative discount rate can be used to focus the fair value assessment on risk-adjusted returns.
Using an expected 6% dividend growth rate and a 9% discount rate, the fair value is only $85, which is under the current share price of around $105. Due to the low yield, the model is particularly sensitive, and reducing the discount rate to 8.5% boosts the fair value to $102.
Currently, the combination of yield and growth just isn't there to fully justify the current valuation at $105 in my opinion. That doesn't necessarily mean the investment is poor; investors that are paying $105 for the shares may be expecting an acceleration of growth or willing to accept annual returns in the 8.5% range or lower, and changes of either of those two variables can adjust the fair value assessment considerably. Analysts currently predict 9% average EPS growth over the next two years, which is higher than the past period. That type of growth in the high single digits, if sustained for long periods, would raise today's fair price substantially.
Last year, I reported that the company appeared to be fairly attractive at $75/share while it was trading at $88/share. It is now up to $105/share while I calculate a fair value of only around $85 with a 9% discount rate. Although the balance sheet is strong and the company is diverse, I don't see a fundamental reason based on current performance to justify the current stock price (at least with any reasonable margin of safety) compared to other investments on the market that can offer a combination of growth and yield that is a percentage point or two over what 3M has been offering.
I do not view the stock as particularly overvalued, but with their significant issuance of shares which weighs down their EPS growth a bit, I'll be looking at other companies or waiting for a lower price. Rather than making a declaration about the fair value of the stock, I'd simply recommend to investors to pay special notice towards what they expect future EPS and dividend growth rates to be and what rate of return they'd minimally expect out of this stock to consider it a good buy at $105.
Full Disclosure: As of this writing, I have no position in MMM.
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subset: commoncrawl


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Landon Donovan is back on the U.S. national team.
Sort of.
A 35-man provisional roster for July's Gold Cup was released by tournament organizers Friday and Donovan's name was on the list. But the key word here is provisional because the roster can -- and will -- change before the U.S. begins play in the tournament July 9 against Belize in Portland, Ore.
Donovan hasn't played for the national team since August and U.S. coach Juergen Klinsmann, who said he has been following Donovan's comeback from his self-imposed sabbatical closely, doesn't think Donovan is fully fit yet. But with the U.S. team playing a summer schedule heavy with World Cup qualifiers, he said he would likely use a "B" team thoughout much of the Gold Cup, opening the way for Donovan's return.
Donovan is the national team's all-time leader in both goals and assists
Donovan's Galaxy teammate, defender Omar Gonzalez, who is currently with the national team, was also named to the Gold Cup roster.
The provisional roster (in alphabetical order):
Corey Ashe (Houston Dynamo), DaMarcus Beasley (Puebla), Kyle Beckerman (Real Salt Lake), Alejandro Bedoya (Heisingborgs), Anthony Beltran (Real Salt Lake), Matt Besler (Sporting KC), Carlos Bocanegra (Racing Santander), Will Bruin (Houston Dynamo), Edgar Castillo (Tijuana), Joe Corono (Tijuana), Brad Davis (Houston Dynamo), Mikkel Diskerud (Rosenborg), Landon Donovan (Galaxy), Brad Evans (Seattle Sounders), Benny Feilhaber (Sporting KC), Joshua Gatt (Molde), Herculez Gomez (Santos), Omar Gonzalexz (Galaxy), Clarence Goodson (Brondby), Alan Gordon (San Jose Earthquakes), Tally Hall (Houston Dynamo), Bill Hamid (DC United), Stuart Holden (Bolton), Eddie Johnson (Seattle Sounders), Sean Johnson (Chicago Fire), John McInerney (Philadelphia Union), Oguchialu Onyewu (Malaga), Michael Orozco (Puebla), Michael Parkhurst (Ausburg), Nick Rimando (Real Salt Lake), Brek Shea (Stoke City), Jose Torres (Tigres), Chris Wondolowski (San Jose Earthquakes), Bobby Wood (1860 Munich), Graham Zusi (Sporting KC).
Clippers: Don't blame Chris Paul for Vinny Del Negro's exit
Compare Tiger Woods' swing through the years with helpful GIF
Serena Williams advances to the fourth round at the French Open


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The U.S. Army had a problem, a big problem: 165,000 gallons of some of the deadliest war materials known to man, including napalm, chlorine gas, mustard gas and sarin, a nerve gas developed by the Nazis, tiny doses of which can kill in minutes. After stockpiling these weapons of destruction for decades in its Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, the government decided the time had come to dispose of the hazardous wastes but didn't know how.
The solution? In l961, authorities drilled a well 12,000 feet deep, far below any aquifer, and over the next five years pumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic wastes into a cavity in the rock miles beneath the surface.
One problem: Not long after the pumping began, Denver and nearby suburbs began to experience swarms of earthquakes. Most of them were quite small, less than 3 in magnitude, but in a region that rarely experiences earthquakes, 1,300 earthquakes in four years raised questions. Then, in August 1967, a significant earthquake — magnitude 5.3 — shook the city of Denver and the nearby suburb of Commerce, with damages that totaled over $1 million.
The Army stopped pumping the toxic wastes into the injection well. Geologists discovered the liquids had been pumped into an existing fault deep in the "basement" rock. The fault had begun to lose strength and slip, even after the pumping stopped
For city officials, this was alarming, but geologists were intrigued to discover it was possible to trigger earthquakes along existing fault lines, and a team of scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey soon launched into an experiment in an oil field with known earthquake faults in Rangely, Colo. The goal? To learn what volume of fluid pressures were required to trigger earthquakes, and to see if seismic activity could be stimulated and then brought to a halt. The experiment worked, on a small scale, and encouraging results were reported in the journal Science in March of 1976.
Oil deposits often collect around faults,
such as these depicted in the Silverthread oil field in Upper Ojai.
Graphic from Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources.
"We may ultimately be able to control the timing and size of major earthquakes," the team, led by C.B. Raleigh and J.H. Healy, speculated. They suggested drilling wells along the San Andreas Fault, and injecting water to release seismic pressures with little earthquakes. They hoped in this way to prevent the legendary "Big One," an earthquake comparable to the massive and ruinous l906 San Francisco earthquake, which has a 3 percent to 30 percent chance of occurring in the next 30 years in California.
"They actually proposed this idea, to drill wells and pump in water and trigger small earthquakes along the San Andreas," said William Bilodeau, who chairs the geology department at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. "And they got fairly far along in the planning process and then people began to say, 'Wait a minute — what happens if we set off a really big earthquake? What's the [legal] liability?' "
At the Oil Museum in Santa Paula, a current exhibit on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, backed by an industry group, explains how the process works to release hydrocarbons from "tight" rock formations with high pressure blasts of water, sand and chemicals. The exhibit declares that fracking is safe, but doesn't once mention the need to dispose of mineralized water deposits brought up from underground by fracking. In this way, the exhibit parallels what industry advocates and supporters say about fracking and don't say about oil field disposal wells.
Sandra Burkhardt, who speaks for the oil companies in the Western States Petroleum Association, a petroleum trade group, in a presentation in May to the Santa Paula Chamber of Commerce said that "The science doesn't support the idea that fracking causes earthquakes."
At a meeting of the Air Pollution Control District at the Ventura County Government Center, Peter Foy, a county supervisor from Simi Valley, declared on June 11 that "There is no history of fracking ever causing an earthquake, ever."
This omission of disposal wells misleads. In a 1990s report to the Environmental Protection Agency on injection of fluids from fracking operations, Craig Nicholson, a geophysicist and researcher at U.C., Santa Barbara, found examples of earthquakes set off by the injection of fluids in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Nebraska and Ohio, among other locations. He said in an interview that fracking, by its nature, generates "micro" earthquakes of low magnitude as it fractures the rock. Of greater concern when it comes to earthquakes are disposal wells. Fracking brings large volumes of "produced water" — salty water trapped in the rock underground — to the surface, which is typically separated from oil products and reinjected into underground cavities or porous rock formations. Fracking itself may not set off large earthquakes, but the injection of fluids from fracked wells can, especially when the fluids from many wells are collected and injected.
"It's fairly clearly established that when you inject large volumes of fluid into the ground, you can trigger an earthquake if it's along a fault," Nicholson said. "In the field we make a distinction between inducing an earthquake and triggering an earthquake that would otherwise naturally occur sooner or later."
Monterey shale graphic from DOGGR shows fault zones, oil fields and aquifers.
In other words, although fracking does induce or "cause" tiny earthquakes, the small volumes of fluid involved are unlikely to trigger a bigger quake. But the injection of large amounts of fluids, especially into disposal wells that concentrate fluids from numerous different wells, can trigger large earthquakes. The question of safety arises in Ventura County because our area has many well-known earthquake faults and because the county is in the midst of a well-documented oil boom.
Oil companies are buying land and mineral rights in Ventura County, encouraged by a 2012 report from the U.S. Energy Information Agency revealing that beneath much of the Central Valley and the Central Coast is a huge oil deposit called the Monterey Shale. The agency reported that this formation has more than 15.4 billion barrels of oil. Now, with fracking and other "well enhancement" techniques such as acidization, this oil can be accessed and produced.
According to a front-page story by Timm Herdt in the Ventura County Star in April, Vintage Petroleum, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, has purchased hundreds of leases in the Santa Paula and Fillmore area in the last six months, investing millions of dollars, and snapping up rights to more than 9,000 acres.
"We do have this Monterey Shale formation in our county," said Supervisor Linda Parks, District 2, "And we are looking at a potential oil boom, because now the industry has these new techniques for oil extraction that they didn't have previously, including the acidizing of wells."
Acidizing rock uses less water than "frack jobs" back East — between 10,000 and 100,000 gallons, according to petroleum engineers — but replaces the water with between 3 percent and 25 percent of hydrochloric acid. Industry advocates insist these techniques are safe, but Ventura County has seen what can happen when oil wells go wrong, especially in an earthquake.
In 2006, in Upper Ojai not far from Summit Elementary School, on Feb. 24, an old well blew out and began spewing huge volumes of fluids to the surface. The blowout could not be "killed" — brought under control — for three months. The incident was not reported to the nearby school or to the press, but the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) did report it to the state's Office of Emergency Services, which reported it to other agencies, according to California Department of Fish and Wildlife records.
Alexia Retallack, of Fish and Wildlife, was surprised to hear that the blow out took three months to bring under control, but said that if the fluids — which were brine water with some light and heavy oils, according to her records — were contained to the property and did not impact state water supplies, the oil company fulfilled its responsibilities to her department, despite the fact that thousands of gallons of fluids boiled up from the broken casing. An international team of blow out experts, called Boots and Coots, now a Halliburton subsidiary, was flown in from the Middle East to plug the blow out, which cost at least $4 million.
Looking at the 76-page well report compiled by DOGGR on the blow out on Ojai #36, petroleum engineer Tom Williams called the three-month battle to control the well "very messy," pointing out that the well casing broke off below 3,000 feet. Ultimately, the well was abandoned completely.
"They were having a hell of a time," he said. "You can't really tell what is going on from the report, which includes no diagrams and is totally inadequate, but they were redrilling and sidetracking and deepening — they just had a whole bunch of problems with that well."
Paul Hofmeister, a landowner and contractor in Upper Ojai, said that his team dug a holding pond for the blowout, which DOGGR estimated to be 9,000 gallons. He said the blowout immediately followed a nearby earthquake, and brought "brine water [that] had some oil and gas in it" to the surface at 700-900 pounds per square inch.
DOGGR records show that a 3.1 magnitude earthquake on the San Cayetano fault occurred at noon on that day, about nine miles northwest of Fillmore, at about nine miles below the surface.
Extracting oil near an earthquake fault and through a major aquifer in Upper Ojai that supplies groundwater to Ojai and Santa Paula alarms many locals, including Michael Shapiro, a filmmaker and activist who led the successful effort to prevent the multinational Waste Management corporation from building a dump in Weldon Canyon near Ojai. In May, Shapiro told a planning division hearing at the government center:
"The San Cayetano Fault runs for about 45 kilometers right through the heart of the oil fields in Upper Ojai," he said. "This is a major fault with a slip rate of between 1.3 and 9 millimeters a year. Scientists don't know when it's going to fail, but it's not a matter of if the big one will come, but when. This fault is capable of an earthquake from between 6.5 and 7.3 in magnitude, and that ups the ante of required scrutiny, so that we don't have one of those perfect-storm catastrophes."
A U.S. Geological Survey of California faults, published in 2008, estimated that the San Cayetano was the sixth most active in the state, capable of producing an earthquake greater than 7 in magnitude, with an 8 percent chance of failure in the next 30 years.
Despite Shapiro's testimony, and the testimony of many other locals and experts, the planning division nonetheless approved a permit for small local oil company, Mirada, to drill wells in the Silverthread oil field near the San Cayetano fault, in part because the company promised not to frack.
Parks continues to call for tighter regulation.
"I think the most important thing is to protect the drinking water for the west county," she said. "[The state agency] DOGGR has reported hundreds of spills from oil companies over just the last 10 years in Ventura County. If we can ensure safety by requiring the use of less toxic chemicals, or protect the aquifers by taking a stronger role, we should do that."
Complex geology of Monterey shale puts oil fields
and earthquake faults not far from groundwater aquifers.
Parks acknowledges that the county government agencies don't want to step on the toes of state agencies such as DOGGR, and are waiting for action from the state, which currently does not regulate fracking. Besides keeping records of oil operations, DOGGR also oversees injection wells for the risk of water pollution, under an agreement with the Environmental Protection Administration.
A review of DOGGR's oversight by the EPA in 2011 was critical of DOGGR for lax enforcement of injection well standards. A consultant for the EPA, James Walker, challenged DOGGR's Division 2, which oversees Ventura County oil production, for failing to protect groundwater from pollution from old or idle wells.
"In our view, underground sources of drinking water are not adequately protected in idle wells," Walker wrote. Walker said the agency let old wells with casing not cemented to modern standards remain in operation, potentially allowing the mixing of oil or gas with groundwater. Oil companies can pay as little as a $100 a year to leave a well idle.
The division oversees 1,010 injection wells in the county, of which 423 are idle. According to records from DOGGR cited in the report, there have been three instances of wells "shut in" for violating pressure standards from 2005 to 2010, but none for pollution violations.
"The District may need to put more of an emphasis on enforcement," wrote Walker for the EPA.
The EPA also asked the Ventura County division about public hearings on oil well issues. Division 2 of DOGGR replied that "No public hearing has ever been conducted in this District."
Meanwhile, in March, the Anterra Corporation, a waste management firm that serves oil companies, proposed to drill a new Class II injection well on county property closer to fracking sites being developed in Santa Paula and Fillmore, according to county planning documents.
Parks let her opposition to the idea be known.
"I want to make sure we are not polluting our surface or groundwater," Parks said. "I don't think it's appropriate to use county land as a dispensary for what could be pollution."
A representative for Anterra in Santa Paula would not comment.
Fran Pavley, a state senator whose district includes Thousand Oaks, proposes to protect groundwater and regulate fracking with a bill, SB 4, intended to provide greater transparency than is offered by DOGGR, which works closely with the oil industry. Although the fate of her bill remains uncertain, Pavley argues that she has worked collaboratively with industry, regulators and environmentalists, and says the alternative to her comprehensive bill could be even worse for the industry.
"Several counties in the state are looking at regulating the practice of hydraulic fracturing," she said. "I've told the oil companies directly to their face that if the public doesn't feel that the regulations are adequate, than there's going to be a tremendous outcry."
According to an USC/Los Angeles Times poll published in June, about three in five California residents oppose fracking through aquifers. Despite the concern, Gov. Jerry Brown has not taken a position on the bill or on the regulation of fracking.
Fear of fracking — and earthquakes
Geologists interviewed for this story, including Bilodeau of CLU, Craig Nicholson of UCSB, and Thomas Rockwell of the State University of San Diego, did not dismiss the risk of disposing of fluids generated by oil wells in fault zones, but all stressed the already high risk of earthquakes in Ventura County.
"The whole region of the Ventura basin is shortening in a north-south direction by nearly 1 centimeter a year, which is very significant," said Rockwell, who wrote his dissertation on Upper Ojai geology. "You wouldn't think that would be much, but over a thousand years, that means almost 30 feet of shortening needs to occur, and if this occurs in one large failure, that will result in a major earthquake."
Bilodeau points to a 2011 paper that maps a fault that runs directly under Ventura Avenue, and is now believed to link up with four others. "Linkage of the Ventura/Pitas Point fault could generate a magnitude 7.3 earthquake, while rupture in association with other regional faults could produce even larger events," concluded a team of five geologists, including James Dolan of USC. A magnitude 7.3 earthquake would release the energy of exploding about 1.3 million tons of TNT, which is roughly a thousand times the energy released by the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Nicholson said that one of the faults that extends into the Ventura basin failed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. That quake, assessed at a 6.7 magnitude, killed 57 people, injured 8,700, and caused $40 billion in damage, making it one of the worst natural disasters of the 20th century.
"If there was no oil production at all, you would still have major damaging earthquakes in Ventura County," Nicholson said. "That's why it's difficult to separate out the potential for an even higher level of earthquake risk. Oil production has been going on in Ventura County since the turn of the century and there are no indications that the amount of earthquakes has increased in this time. All geologists are saying is that you do have to be careful, and if you're an oil company and you drill into a large fault and start pumping large volumes of fluid into that fault, then all bets are off."


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Hi ladies (and maybe gentlemen!), this is my second blog and it's all about my cards and other projects made for sale. If the card is sold, but you would like to order the same, this isn't a problem at all. Just contact me on this e-mail address: firstname.lastname@example.com. Thank you.
dinsdag 25 september 2018
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Hollyhock House
U.S. National Register of Historic Places (National Park Service), added May 6, 1971. U.S. National Historic Landmark, designated April 4, 2007. L.A. Historic-Cultural Monument #12, adopted January 4, 1963.
Hollyhock House was built for the wealthy oil heiress Aline Barnsdall from 1919 to 1921. The house is named after Barnsdall's favorite flower - the hollyhock - which Wright used as a central decorative theme throughout the house. In his autobiography, Wright expressed his desire to create a unique architecture for the location: "Hollyhock House was to be a natural house in the changed circumstances and naturally built; native to the region of California as the house in the Middle West had been native Middle West." The Hollyhock House is part of a larger site, Olive Hill, purchased by Barnsdall to also include a repertory theater company and public performance space. Wright was living in Tokyo, Japan and working on the Imperial Hotel while the house was constructed. He delegated the supervision of the project to his son Lloyd Wright and R.M. Schindler.
Reflecting the Mediterranean climate of Los Angeles, the Hollyhock House's design melds exterior and interior living space through terraces for each room. An intricate circulation pattern is built around an inner courtyard. Wright designed the furniture for the dining room and the living room, as well as geometrically patterned art glass for the windows. The hearth in the living room is built of concrete block in contrast to the use of brick in Wright's earlier designs. The fireplace also has an elaborately designed bas-relief and is surrounded by a small moat, thus incorporating the elements of earth, water, fire, and air.
Set on a cast-concrete base, the Hollyhock house has canted walls of hollow terra-cotta tile covered with stucco. Ornamentation including stylized hollyhocks are made of cast-concrete. Masonry walls covered with stucco extend out from the major ground floor rooms to enclose terraces.
In June of 1919, Barnsdall purchased the 36 acre Olive Hill property for $300,000. Several years before closing on the property, she had commissioned Wright to build her home, a performance theater, as well as a furnished house for the theater company director ("Residence A") and an apartment building for the actors ("Residence B"). Barnsdall became disenchanted with maintaining the property and convinced that her theater would not become the cultural center she dreamed of. In December of 1923, she offered the Hollyhock House and the surrounding land to the City of Los Angeles for use as a public park. It was not until 1927 that the city accepted Barnsdall's offer under revised terms. As a condition to her donation, Barnsdall lived in Residence B on the Olive Hill property on and off from 1928 to her death in 1946.
Ada Louise Huxtable writes that the Hollyhock House has "no established or identifiable style" and bears the influences of "Aztec, Mayan, Egyptian, and Mexican pre-Columbian" architecture. In particular, the upper exterior walls pitched at 85 degrees are reminiscent of Mayan architecture. During the early 20th Century, pre-Columbian excavations were underway, sparking an interest in these ancient civilizations. Wright saw exhibits of pre-Columbia architecture as early as 1893 at Chicago's world fair and in 1915 at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Wright was silent on the issue of the home's historical influences, preferring that his work not be seen as derivative but rather as a completely new indigenous form of architecture which he coined "California Romanza".
Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings, UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List, Submited by U.S. Department of Interior, January 2008.; Friends of Hollyhock House website, Hollyhock House History; Available at http://www.hollyhockhouse.net/hhhistory.html.; Hoffmann, Donald. Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House. New York: Dover Publications, 1992.; Huxtable, Ada Louise. Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Penguin Group, 2004.; Karasick, Norman M. Art, politics, and Hollyhock House. 1982.; Lind, Carla. Frank Lloyd Wright's California houses. San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1996.; Steele, James. Barnsdall House: Frank Lloyd Wright. London: Phaidon, 1992.; Smith, Kathryn. Frank Lloyd Wright, Hollyhock House and Olive Hill: buildings and projects for Aline Barnsdall. New York: Rizzoli, 1992.; Rabin, Jeffrey L. "Hollyhock House Restoration Starts", Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2000.; Wright, Frank Lloyd. An autobiography. New York: Horizon Press, 1977.; Storrer, William Allin. The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog.


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Artist's description:
This is one of the 40 images from my solo exhibition "Dancing on the wings of freedom" (Lithgow, NSW, Australia, 2016) which featured small winged and nectar-drinking creatures: butterflies, bees, dragonflies, cicadas and Australian native birds. All prints in this collection are a limited edition of 25.
This image of the Jacintha Eggfly (Lat. Hypolimnas Bolina Jacintha) was taken in Singapore in 2012. The blackness of the butterfly's wings is contrasted by large translucent bluish dots, and the lacy whitish edges.
Most of my images are available in a range of sizes and on different kinds of photographic and fine art paper, including Inkjet Pro Fine Art Paper320gsm, Inkjet Hahnemuele Bright White Rag Paper 310gsm, Inkjet Canson Rag Photographique Paper 310gsm, and Inkjet Hahnemuele Museum Etching Paper 350gsm. Please ask me if you wish to place a special order and I will do my best to fulfil your wishes. Please note that prints on fine art paper will be shipped flat to avoid damage to the extra sensitive print, which may slightly increase the shipping cost. I will provide you with a special shipping quote prior to your placing the order if applicable.
Materials used:
Kodak Lustre Professional Archive Paper
Jacintha Eggfly (2012)
Photograph by Leonarda Kovacic
- Photograph on Paper
- From a limited edition of 25
- Size: 16 x 12 in (unframed) / 16 x 12 in (actual image size)
- Signed and numbered on the back
- Style: Photorealistic
- Subject: Animals and birds
- Hurry only 1 left in stock
This artwork is sold by Leonarda Kovacic from Australia


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Chromatik is a color-based search engine that processes images and focuses on their color content.
Search for images and then filter the results by clicking on the color palette.
Refine your search by location, tags, photo owner.
MuMa, the Music Mashup, is an innovative search engine dedicated to music.
It collects songs and information about it (artists, titles, albums, lyrics, concerts, tweets, pictures, biographies, prices...) from the Web and displays it into a unique mashup way.
MuMa also analyzes the content of songs, allowing you to search through music by chords, moods, genres, or years.
Voxalead is a unique search engine that searches into multimedia content (audio and video).
Type any keyword you want and you will instantly get relevant results: thanks to Speech-to-Text technologies, Voxalead not only processes the external information of content (like the title or the description), but it searches inside the video/audio.
Image Wall generates mosaic representations of images using other images.
Built with technologies used in Chromatik, this application allows you to choose any image (URL or file) and makes a creative photomosaic out of it.


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Quick list of pretty basic stuff that DPS never seems to notice but probably should. If you can get your guys to keep an eye out for this stuff, your life will get a lot easier.
– Knockback/knockup: If at any point the tank goes flying through the air, you need to slow your dps. Knock backs very often come with a threat reduction. Knock ups usually don't but usually isn't always. At the very least, the tank isn't generating any threat while running back to a mob.
– Roots/snares: Usually if a mob is able to root the tank, it will do so and then run away and hit the tank from range. While the tank is rooted, he is generating zero threat. If you are able to dispel the root, don't hesitate, just do it. If a mob has a snare or slow on the tank, realize that if you pull aggro or if the tank gets knocked away or is in some other way far from the mob, the tank is going to take a long time to get there and start generating threat again.
– Stuns: These are the tank killers. When a tank is stunned he loses all of his avoidance and can find himself dead rather quickly in some situations. If you can cleanse the stun, do it. If you are a healer, step up the heals. If you are a dps, you need to be aware that a stunned tank generates no threat. This is particularly dangerous when a tank gets stunned at the very beginning of a pull. There are a lot of mobs in TK that get stun happy
– Debuffs: If a mob puts a debuff like a damage reduction or attack speed slowing, dps has to realize it and know that threat is going to be lower (Tidewalker or the leviathons in BT come to mind).
– Casters: If a mob has a lot of Random Secondary Targetting spells, then all that time spent casting is time spent not hitting the tank so the tank will probably be short on rage. There are some robots in TK that are particularly bad about this and iirc they also have a knockback.
– Charge: Sometimes mobs with a charge will drop aggro when they charge so stopping dps is a good idea (think Doomwalker or the ogres in Gruul's Lair). Even if they don't drop aggro, realize that the tank is generating zero threat while the mob is running back to him.
– Mind Control: Mind controlling mobs usually do not target the person who has the most threat. Keep in mind that most threat is not necessarily the same as the person with aggro so dps needs to stay below tank's threat, not just below aggro gain. If the tank gets MCed, dps should stop so that the tank can easily regain the mobs. MC is usually not a threat wipe so if DPS stops, the tank can do a shout as soon as the MC ends and the mobs should goback to him. I always advocate killing MCed players, but that is probably a bad idea when it's the tank. Also, if the tank wants to get in on the fun (I usually do) of killing the MCed player, he isn't going to be generating any threat on the mob so you might as well hold off on dps and help kill the guy who got MCed.
– Aggro wipes: This is almost always a boss thing, I can't think of any trash mobs that just plain wipe their threat list (except for a few that do it when they charge). This is one where it is the tanks responsibility to pick up the mob just as much as it is the DPSers responsibility to lay of for a few seconds. Hydross, Leotheras, Doomwalker, and Illidan are the ones I can think of who have mid-fight aggro wipes. A good tank won't have trouble picking the boss up as long as dps restrains themselves. These are usually pretty easy to deal with since it is generally a major mechanic of the fight so its not going to catch anyone by surprise.
– Fear/Reflect/Interrupt: There are some cases where the tank needs to keep his global cooldown clear so that he can interrupt a heal or some other important spell or so that he can break a fear. During that time the tank is doing nothing for threat but heroic strike. Likewise, if there is a something that the tank must reflect, he will just be sitting there waiting for it to be 100% sure he has enough rage to get the reflect off. (Spell Reflect should be effected by Focused Rage IMO but that is a whole other discussion). Like aggro wipes, this is mostly a boss only type of thing and is generally a major mechanic so people tend to be conscious of it.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to add a comment with anything I missed. The idea is that this is pretty basic stuff that DPSers can and should be aware of instead of mindlessly smashing their fireball button.


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While most Americans are horrified by alleged mass murderer James Holmes, he has also developed quite a fan base.
The twisted fans of the 24-year-old accused of killing a dozen people and injuring many more at an Aurora, Colo. movie theater have congregated on the Internet.
There are already several blogs devoted to the self-described "Holmies" that shed light on the strange culture.
Here's a graph posted to Tumblr explaining the demographic of people who identify as "Holmies:"
A drawing for the fans. Note the plaid shirt, which is a recurring theme in "Holmie" culture because that's what he was wearing at the theater:
This chat excerpt was making the rounds on Tumblr in which Holmies express their desire for everyone to have a "Jimmy."
There are also a lot of memes that reference slurpees because of a video from high school science camp that reveals Holmes' dream was to own a slurpee machine.
Here's a Photoshopped tribute to his "soul-penetrating eyes," as described on his Match.com profile:
This blogger wrote about her letter to James Holmes:
Here are thoughts from the same blogger on why she finds Holmes so attractive:


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Join Hertz Local Edition Corp (HLE) as a Branch Manager Trainee! Each year, many talented people join HLE, and the best become future Branch Managers of our Hertz Local Edition branches.
Our program provides hands-on training in: Sales, Operations, Customer Service, Finance & Accounting Management, Revenue Management, Fleet Management, and most importantly: People Management.
Hertz rewards its employees with competitive compensation packages including: hourly pay, overtime pay, and performance based bonuses. Branch Manager Trainees will progress through the training curriculum within their first nine months of employment. You will also receive the use of a company car upon entry into the Branch Manager ranks.
The Management Training Curriculum program provides a clearly defined career path to a Branch Manager in as little as 12-18 months! Our promotions don't stop there; our top level management regularly comes from the training ranks.
Your journey with Hertz will start off as a Branch Manager Trainee, quickly progressing into a Management Associate, while quickly gaining experience for a future Branch Manager role.
In addition to our competitive compensation package, Hertz also provides world class benefits, which include:
- Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
- Life Insurance
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Up to 4 weeks of paid vacation a year (* depending on employment level)
- 401(k) Retirement Plan
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan & Employee Discounts
- Supporting achievement of location sales and margin goals
- Ensuring positive customer experience, making Hertz #1 in car rental company experience
- Achieving individual sales goals and customer service goals
- Growing sales utilizing business-to-business sales tactics
- Upholding company standards by ensuring cars are presentable to customers
- Clean and service facilities/vehicles to ensure customer satisfaction
- Strong communication and multitasking skills
- Ability to drive multiple types of vehicles
- Ability to read and understand driving directions and maps
- Proficiency in English
- Valid driver's license in good standing
- Minimum Associates Degree or Equivalent Industry Experience
- Previous held Leadership roles i.e., Campus, Community or Sports
- Previous sales and/or retail customer service experience
Applicant must possess all auditory, speaking and communicating capabilities necessary to complete the responsibilities detailed above. The essential functions of this position include, but are not limited to, the following such as sitting, standing, walking, bending and twisting, climbing, driving, speaking, hearing, writing, lifting, typing, filing, seeing and reading. Knowledge of equipment operation such as computer terminal, telephone, portable, copy machine and fax machine is required.
EEO/AA: Females/Minorities/Disabled/Vets


text:
In OS X Mavericks and later, QuickTime Player (version 10.0 and later) converts legacy media files that use certain older or third-party compression formats.
When you open such a file, a window with a progress bar shows that the file is converting. To stop converting, just close the window.
Media files that use many of these older formats will not be compatible with future macOS releases, so you should save the converted file before closing it. Conversion doesn't modify or replace the original file.
To preserve the quality of the original file, the converted file might be larger than the original.
Learn more
- QuickTime Player uses Apple ProRes to convert legacy formats used in video workflows, such as those encoded with the Animation codec. It uses H.264 to convert other older or third-party media formats.
- Learn what to do if QuickTime Player can't open a file.


text:
Home >> Course Descriptions >> College of Business Administration
Export/Import Operations and Practice
Three semester hours.
Introduction to export and import procedures, international trade terms and applications, government regulations affecting trade, international commercial banking facilities and practices, commercial credit and practices, foreign trade documentation, and export/import traffic forwarding.
Home - General Information - Student Services -
Academic Undergraduate Regulations -
Undergraduate Degrees - Academic Graduate Regulations -
Graduate Degrees - Course Descriptions - Faculty -
Appendix A - Appendix B - Appendix C - Appendix D


text:
Culturally Fixated is delighted to welcome back - by popular demand - the wacky, hysterical and musical
Reed Diamond!
For a Spectacular Musical Extravaganza, otherwise known as the
Cult Fix Christmas Special!!!
Ladies and Gentlemen, there are no words.
We sing, we dance (thankfully not recorded in the podcast), laugh, cry and hurl.
It's everything you could ever want in a Reed Diamond Christmas Special.
We discuss The Mentalist, Bones, Franklin and Bash as well as his new series Wayward Pines.
That's the coherent part.
Reed also introduces you to two of his favourite Christmas scamps, sings and plots and plans his wishes for the future. We also put to rest the Turkey/Goose debate, as well as touching upon absurd crowd pleaser Duck sized Horses.
It's all of the awesome.
Mobile Link
Episode 3.12 - Christmas Special
We've very good. Practically not offensive at all.
Nevertheless, those of an especially sensitive nature might want to brace themselves.
Practically nothing. Reed is a man of principle.
Christmas Special
Reed Diamond - our 3rd chat - HERE!
Reed Diamond - our 3rd chat - HERE!
Reed Diamond - our 2nd chat - HERE!
Reed Diamond - our 1st chat - HERE!
Say hi to Reed on Twitter. Don't be shy - he's delightful - @ReedDiamond
Subscribe to Culturally Fixated on iTunes!
Fancy more of our inane chatter? You'll find us on twitter as @SteveCult and @Drneevil


text:
When it comes to homewares with an artsy twist, you can't go wrong with Eastbourne Art. With their range including everything from tea towels to ironing board covers and doorstops, you can feel assured that they have something you're gonna love!
Tea towels are often placed in and around the kitchen in spots you're really bound to notice, such as over the handle of the oven door – so they ought to look nice! These hand-printed tea towels are woven from hardworking linen, to keep up with day-to-day household chores.
Tea Towel Black Sheep design on excellent quality oatmeal European Linen. Individually hand printed using non toxic Eco inks.
Care Instructions– Gentle Wash. Drip dry. Iron on reverse side.


text:
Wall Mounted Modern Tv Cabinets For Small Living Room Designs
Some decades ago, television had become the pivotal furniture for every house. It was new, innovative, and brings sound and image to the family. They usually place the television in the living room, where all the family members can enjoy all the entertainment brought by the television network. Of course, with the low quality and the big size, you need a lot of spaces to put the television. Nowadays, television is getting smaller and smaller. The big resolutions result in wide angle and the thickness of the television itself. We can see innovations of the television and flat screen is the most favorite type of the television. With flat screens, we can see the image in much more pure and clean way. The design of the flat screen also becomes more stylish and elegant. Therefore, there have been many improvements in TV cabinets for flat screens.
As you can see from many interior designers, TV cabinet is now no longer "inhabited" by the television. There are also some spaces provided for the drawers, sound speakers, and for the CD collections. Briefly said, TV cabinet is versatile and also become the pivotal furniture for your house. And since TV is no longer placed in the living room, there also some variations of TV cabinets which are suitable for bedrooms and even in the kitchen. All you need to do is finding the correct and the right TV cabinets for the appropriate rooms. TV cabinets for flat screens also need consideration of the weight, length, and the height. For example, for 20 inch wide flat screen television, you need at least half meters additional for your cabinets. Don't forget if you need some components for your sound speakers, then it's better to make some spaces more.
Color would be another interesting decorating stuff you might want to explore more. The flat screens TV usually have the solid-monochromatic color, which is black. This color is actually pretty accessible for other color. If you want to be neutral and simple, then some beige and deep brown TV Cabinet for flat screens is a save option. Meanwhile if you want to give a contrast appearance, you can try to give elegant white color for the cabinets.
Read more »


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GRC in the Cloud: Holding Vendors to TaskBy Tony Kontzer | Posted 08-22-2011
GRC in the Cloud
In Summary:
Who: IT leaders from Unisys, biotech firm AMAG and forensic investigators Stroz Friedberg
What: Discussing the governance, risk management and compliance issues raised by enterprise use of public and private cloud services
Why: To provide perspective and advice on an often-overlooked aspect of cloud migrations
Amid all the handwringing during the past few years over the perceived security shortcomings of the cloud, much less attention has been paid to the relatively subtle areas of governance, risk management and compliance. The irony is that one of the biggest security concerns about the cloud--namely, the commingling of different companies' data in the same cloud environment--is equally important to GRC needs.
The spate of high-profile data breaches that hit companies such as RSA, Epsilon and Sony earlier this year provide a cautionary tale. Each company was heavily criticized for not responding quickly enough with details of the breaches.
Yet, if that data had been stored with public cloud providers, it could have taken several days just to figure out where the servers housing the data were located, further prolonging public response, says Eric Friedberg, co-president of digital risk management and investigations company Stroz Friedberg.
"We have seen clients have substantial logistical problems [with the cloud]," says Friedberg. "When they have to do any investigation of their data, the structure of cloud computing companies is not designed to be responsive to that query."
That nonresponsiveness-by-design can become a problem in many ways. For instance, a company that's being sued is often obliged to cease recycling backup tapes and to disable auto-delete functions in order to ensure investigative access to data. If that company's cloud provider doesn't allow such steps--either because it's unable to do so or because it's contractually bound to auto-delete the data of hundreds of other customers every other week--it can find itself facing significant legal exposure.
For guidance on how to protect your organization, read the accompanying article GRC: 7 Questions to Ask Your Cloud Provider.
"Legal teams shouldn't wake up to those risks when there's an incident," says Friedberg. "They should be aware of those risks ahead of time so they can be prepared to respond."
Some observers believe that such inherent cloud computing risks are due to the fact that cloud vendors have no motivation to offer the kind of visibility into their environments that discerning enterprises should be demanding.
"Visibility is something [cloud providers] are not interested in providing to you," says John Pironti, president of IT consultancy IP Architects and an adviser for the Information Systems Audit and Control Association. "They want to be able to move things around to run their business more efficiently."
That's why Pironti advises his clients to limit their cloud endeavors to commoditized services such as CRM and human resources and remain in firm control of their mission-critical systems. He points to one client that had invested heavily in a new cloud service, replete with a huge advertising campaign, only to see the service rendered completely unavailable at launch when a four-day outage hit Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud, taking down the service's cloud backbone.
"When it all works, it's great," says Pironti. "But when something fails, you may find yourself having challenges."
GRC in the Cloud: Putting the Brakes On
For all these reasons, some companies simply have no appetite for public cloud services, preferring to invest instead in private clouds that allow them to apply their own policies and controls. But even that level of control didn't provide enough peace of mind for Unisys, the $4 billion-a-year IT services provider that actually helps customers build their own clouds and provides an array of vertical software as a service (SaaS) offerings.
Unisys has been rethinking its entire internal services strategy because of the meteoric growth in demand for access among its more than 20,000 employees. Workers want to connect to corporate networks and applications not only from their company-issued devices but also from their personal mobile devices, says Patricia Titus, the company's chief information security officer.
After embarking on an ambitious strategy to build a comprehensive private cloud, Unisys decided to take a hard look at the way consumer tools were seeping into the corporate environment; it then put the brakes on its cloud efforts.
"We wanted to stop the train from going really fast forward so we could research the whole consumer trend," says Titus. "The entire governance structure needed to change. We'd pushed through an unacceptable use policy."
Specifically, Unisys had underestimated the disruptive impact that mobile computing would soon have on its services, and it had to evaluate what users really needed access to and how they'd access it. This would allow the company to build services capable of supporting an array of devices out of the gate.
Then Unisys did what Titus says too few IT organizations do today: It asked its users what they needed. The results? Users wanted access to a far smaller subset of applications than IT had originally thought. This significantly lowered the company's expectations for its first forays into the cloud, which Titus characterizes as "pre-pilot."
Rather than try to migrate as many apps as possible to the cloud, Unisys focused instead on optimizing the most-desired apps for a variety of form factors. In doing so, it established seven categories that each device--from laptops to tablets to smartphones--had to satisfy to be given access to the company's network.
For instance, supported devices had to be able to use public-key infrastructure to meet Unisys' requirements for a secure network connection.
Once it settled on the devices it could support, Unisys began building customized versions of its first cloud applications. So far, these apps have been limited to relatively lightweight services, such as those for booking travel or tracking weather. In the process, the company gained important insight into the need to mitigate certain risks on mobile devices.
For instance, it learned that instead of enabling users to increase type size at will, it needs to build apps that automatically generate a fixed, readable type size that can't be easily seen by so-called shoulder surfers. This will become more important as the company migrates increasingly sensitive apps to the cloud.
Titus' takeaway from all this is simple: Take a measured approach to the cloud. Although many companies are jumping in with both feet, Titus is much more comfortable taking it slowly so she can minimize possible disruptions to the business.
"It's difficult for me, from a compliance perspective, to say, 'Let's everyone run to the cloud,'" says Titus. "We have a rigorous change management process, and I don't want to put that at risk."
GRC in the Cloud: Holding Vendors to Task
Reducing the risk the cloud presents clearly is a matter of diligence--whether that means scaling back a cloud strategy and looking more closely at emerging computing trends, as Unisys has done, or patiently holding vendors to task, the approach taken by AMAG Pharmaceutical.
AMAG, founded in 1981 as Advanced Magnetics, began its cloud evolution in 2008, eventually entrusting a wide range of systems--including HR and ERP, expense reporting, and paycheck applications--to third-party SaaS and hosting providers. In each case, Nathan McBride, executive director of IT for the biotech company, determined that whatever risks existed were not significant enough to prevent him from proceeding down the cloud computing path.
But when McBride discovered Egnyte's cloud-based file server offering, a crucial element was missing--the product didn't work with any external single-sign-on (SSO) product, and McBride wasn't willing to overlook that. The company was just eight months into sales of its current flagship product, Feraheme, an intravenous iron compound that helps treat iron deficiency anemia. Sales of the product have grown from $2 million in 2008 to more than $66 million in 2010.
With so much at stake, AMAG required sufficient governance capabilities to ensure that it could securely store critical regulatory data and be able to share it and collaborate with external partners and agencies.
McBride knew he didn't want to move forward with Egnyte without external SSO, so he assumed a more minimal risk, using Google Docs to establish a temporary document collaboration repository, complete with audit capabilities that helped mitigate security concerns. In the meantime, he made clear his reservations to Egnyte, which in turn joined forces with an SSO vendor, Okta, to develop a custom API that would enable AMAG's users to log into Egnyte through Okta's portal.
A few months later, AMAG went live with Egnyte, establishing it as the standard for department-level document storage. However, it also preserved its Google Docs environment as an option for users.
By being firm on his requirements, McBride had, in a way, wrestled the cloud so that he could ensure it afforded adequate governance for AMAG. He says that being so diligent with his vendors has helped him get past each of their flaws--and make no mistake, McBride points out, they all have flaws.
"We had requirement specifications, and when we applied that framework, there were lots of vendors who weren't up to snuff," he says. "If you're willing to mitigate those [flaws], you can still integrate those services into your business. It requires diligence like you wouldn't believe, but if you're willing to do it, the diligence just becomes part of your job."
There are far more companies in AMAG's shoes, depending on public cloud providers to serve as their introduction to the cloud. McBride's advice is to view cloud vendors as you would any other IT provider: as a partner that should be invested in delivering business results without compromising your company's governance and compliance efforts or testing its appetite for risk.
In the best GRC relationships between enterprise customers and cloud vendors, "It's a constant collaboration and communication partnership--where all partners know they have a stake--that makes it work," McBride says. "These vendors don't want to lose customers."


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finally i have some scrapbooking pages to show you! i took them outside and hung thenm in a tree in the backyard to photograph them!
and for this first layout, it is very suiteable as it is about my ever growing love for gardening :)
i love that snail patterned paper (panduro) and i saw those dot effects somewhere online and thought it gave so much to the page. and simple; circle punch + glue dot!
and since i didn´t have an "O" to spell "love" i used a felt heart instead.
i know this is a poor excuse for a photo of a 2 pager, but it still is :) i tried to bind the 2 together by using the same green patterned papers for the circle accents.
i love the fact that you can use your blogposts and transfer them onto a scrapbook layout, but as i usually scrapbook in swedish i seldom do use my blogposts (as i always blog in english!), but this time i did. i used my writing from this blogpost earlier this week. i thought that it captured exactly what i wanted to say in both blog and layout.
ok, thats all from me today. but tomorrow or friday i have a wardrobe refashon post in store for you!


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Likes: [vid_likes]
Info: how to download music from youtube free how to download music free from youtube 2019 download music from youtube free 2019 how to download music from …
how to download music from youtube
Video Tags:
Tag: videoclipuri mp4 download
MP3 converter app for iOS (iPhone/iPad)
Likes: 230
Info: MP3 converter app for iOS (iPhone/iPad)
How to convert audio to MP3 on an iPhone of iPad.
In this video, I show you how to use the very cool Voice Record 7 app in iOS to convert any audio file to MP3 or a number of other formats.
Here's how to do it:
1. Locate any audio file on your iPhone or iPad, or directly from an app like GarageBand
2. Share or export the audio file
3. When the share screen appears, scroll to the right and select the "Voice Record 7" app
4. The audio file is imported in to the app
5. Choose the "advanced convert" option
6. Set the parameters to your liking
7. Convert your file
8. Send your new MP3 file back to your Files app
9. You are DONE! Use your new MP3 file anywhere!
== Related Videos ==
How to download MP3/WAV files to an iPhone/iPad –
How to share/export your GarageBand iOS songs –
How to convert to MP3 using a web site –
How to import MP3, M4A and WAV files in to GarageBand iOS –
How to manage files in GarageBand iOS –
== Pete Recommends ==
Full list of the audio and video gear I use is at:
Note – Links provided in this video description may be affiliate links, meaning that if you choose to purchase products using these links, a small commission may be paid to me for referring you. Thanks for helping me and the channel.
Releasing Music – DistroKid – (7% off first year)
Video Editing (Desktop) – Adobe Premiere Pro
Video Editing (Mobile) – LumaFusion
Design & Images – Canva –
== Web & Social ==
Web –
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Email – [email protected]
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Free intro background!!! Mp4, m4v youtube converter (read desc for a tutorial) and with music!
Likes: 99
Info: Hey here is a tutorial!
1-copy this link (if on mobile, click the share and copy link)
2-open google, chrome
3-search *youtube converter* and enter
4-click the link on the top (below the search)
5-paste the link
6-click start
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text:
Troubled actor Shia Labeouf stunned reporters at the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany on Sunday by walking out of a press conference after answering only one question.
The Transformers star is attending the annual Berlinale event to promote his latest film, director Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac, but has turned heads with his scruffy appearance and missing tooth, which he reportedly had filed down for a new movie role.
However, LaBeouf's bizarre behavior reached a climax on Sunday when he abruptly bowed out of a press conference alongside co-stars Uma Thurman, Christian Slater, Stellan Skarsgard.
Following his first question, about onscreen sex scenes, the actor gave a bizarre response and walked out after telling the crowd, "When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much."
LaBeouf's trawler quote previously hit headlines back in 1995 when French soccer star-turned actor Eric Cantona uttered the same bizarre words at a press conference following his assault conviction. He also left the event without uttering any further responses to the media.
No explanation for the actor's departure had been given as WENN went to press, but LaBeouf drew attention again hours later when he walked the red carpet for the film's premiere wearing a brown paper bag on his head.
The 27 year old, who was dressed in a black tuxedo and bow tie, had the words "I am not famous anymore" scrawled across the bag, which had two small holes cut out for his eyes.
The phrase appeared to refer to his recent Twitter.com declaration stating his intentions to retire from all public life following a plagiarism scandal in which he admitted copying the story for a short film from a graphic novel.
He has also been hitting headlines for his alleged temper troubles after he was accused of becoming embroiled in an altercation at a pub in London last month.
Troubled actor Shia Labeouf stunned reporters at the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany on Sunday by walking out of a press conference after answering only one question.


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With ILIR BAJRAKTARI
Who should take this class?
Anyone interested in effectively using on-camera flash or speedlights to add or enhance lighting and shoot on the go in any situation.
What you will learn
On-camera and off-camera flash is a very useful tool, but it's also one of the more difficult ones to understand and use correctly. To avoid blown-out, unflattering images, photographers must carefully deploy these powerful little devices, but the results can be well worth the effort. From lighting a dark scene, to filling harsh shadows, to creating multi-light strobe setups, the Flash is a versatile weapon in your lighting arsenal.
This 2-day Field Guide is aimed to demystify that 430ex or SB-800 you've got lying unused, or even your built-in flash. We'll show you what's what with guide numbers and bounce and fill. Get comfortable shooting and adjusting on the fly, by knowing what to expect. You'll be amazed how much of a creative tool your modest little flash can be.
What to bring
Your camera and external flash/speedlight if you have one
If you are not already comfortable and proficient with controlling exposure through aperture / shutter speed / ISO, as well as color (white balance), motion blur and the like, please consider taking Field Guide I first.
Meets 2 consecutive weeks


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Latest Leak Shows NSA Engaging In Economic Espionage -- Not Fighting Terrorism
from the flying-pigs dept
As more and more information about the NSA's global surveillance capabilities emerges through leaks of material obtained by Edward Snowden, the US authorities have been playing the terrorist card heavily. That is, they concede that they have been spying on pretty much everyone, but claim that it was only to fight terrorism, and thus to save lives. In particular, the NSA insists it is not spying on anyone for the purposes of industrial espionage -- here's what it wrote in an email to the Washington Post on the subject just a couple of weeks ago:
"The Department of Defense does engage" in computer network exploitation, according to an e-mailed statement from an NSA spokesman, whose agency is part of the Defense Department. "The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber."
Despite the screaming asterisks, like many other statements on the subject from the NSA, this one turns out to be untrue, as the Brazlian TV program "Fantastico" revealed on Sunday, drawing on new leaked documents provided by Glenn Greenwald, who lives in the country:
The internal computer network of Petrobras, the Brazilian oil giant partly owned by the state, has been under surveillance by the NSA, the National Security Agency of the United States.
The Fantastico article goes on to give more information about the attacks on the company's internal networks, and points out that Petrobras is hardly a terrorist organization:
a top secret presentation dated May 2012 is used by the NSA to train new agents step-by-step how to access and spy upon private computer networks -- the internal networks of companies, governments, financial institutions -- networks designed precisely to protect information.
The name of Petrobras -- Brazil's largest company -- appears right at the beginning, under the title: "MANY TARGETS USE PRIVATE NETWORKS."
The name of Petrobras appears on several slides, as the training goes deeper in explaining how data from the target companies is monitored.
The yearly profits of Petrobras are over 280 billion reais -- US$ 120 billion. More than the GDP of many countries. And there are plenty of motives for spies to want access to the company's protected network.
Here's one of them:
For example, the details of each lot in an auction [of oil drilling rights] set for next month: for exploration of the Libra Field, in the Bay of Santos, part of the Pre-salt. Whether the spies had access to this information is one of the questions the Brazilian government will have to put to the United States.
Once again, the NSA's rebuttal of these claims is weak and unconvincing:
Former Petrobras Director Roberto Villa considers this the greatest auction in the history of oil exploration. "It's a very peculiar auction. The auction of an area where we already know there's oil, there's no risk", he says. What no one else should know, Villa says, is which are the richest lots. "Petrobras knows. And I hope only they know." He considers that such information, if stolen, could give someone an advantage. "Someone would have an edge. If this information was leaked and someone else has obtained it, he would be in a privileged position at the auction. He'll know where to invest and where not to. It's a handy little secret."
It is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters, and terrorist financing.
Or, you know, it could provide US companies with insights about which were the best lots in the forthcoming auction of seabed areas for oil exploration, or about highly-specialized deep-sea oil extraction technology, in which Petrobas is a world leader. After all, why wouldn't the NSA drop some useful hints about such things to US companies as a way of justifying its huge budget?
We collect this information for many important reasons: for one, it could provide the United States and our allies early warning of international financial crises which could negatively impact the global economy. It also could provide insight into other countries' economic policy or behavior which could affect global markets.
This latest attack on Brazil's flagship enterprise will make the country's already strained relationship with the US even more difficult. But the Fantastico story on the NSA program, which is apparently called "Royal Net", is about much more than those bilateral relations:
Besides Petrobras, e-mail and internet services provider Google's infrastructure is also listed as a target. The company, often named as collaborating with the NSA, is shown here as a victim.
There are also first details of other, hitherto unknown, spying programs and capabilities:
Other targets include French diplomats -- with access to the private network of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France -- and the SWIFT network, the cooperative that unites over ten thousand banks in 212 countries and provides communications that enable international financial transactions.
The NSA presentation contains documents prepared by the GCHQ -- the British Spy agency, from a country that appears as an ally of the United States in spying. The British agency shows how two spy programs operate. "Flying Pig" and "Hush Puppy" also monitor private networks which carry supposedly secure information. These networks are known as TLS/SSL.
This confirmation that man-in-the-middle attacks are used by the NSA to intercept data, along with detailed information about the high-level economic espionage that is going on, underlines why the Fantastico report is so important, and why it is well-worth reading in its entirety.
The presentation explains how data is intercepted, through an attack known as "Man in the Middle". In this case, data is rerouted to the NSA central, and then relayed to its destination, without either end noticing.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Filed Under: brazil, economic espionage, nsa, nsa surveillance, surveillance
Companies: petrobas


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Hi I've been following the Cineform developments at NAB regarding Raw conversion and I must say they seem to be doing a great job. Well done !!!
As somebody seriously looking at Cineform as a possibility for my DI workflow I think it would be good to outline customers top 5 features we would like to see for the Mac platform. Windows users pleas feel free to contribute too.
As somebody already using DVCPROHD and HDCAM as well as a future RED owner my top 5 are.
1. HD Link working without emulation on Mac (DVCPROHD Conversion being my first priority 24/25p then HDCAM)
2. AJA Kona 3 Support (SD,1080,2K, monitoring and output of Cineform would do me just fine at the moment, both NTSC and Pal formats 24/25p 50/60i)
3. As their is no other DVI-D 2K Monitoring option (please correct me if I'm wrong) Full support NTSC and PAL for Blackmagic HD Link Pro.
4 Blackmagic HD Link Extreem support (I sometimes work with Blackmagic products, having this supported would really cover all the basics.
5. ..........Thats it. My wishlist !!! With these items support I could see myself using Cineform for a long time to come.


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LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner was on stage at Business Insider's IGNITION conference this morning where he spoke about where he sees the company in the next 5 to 10 years.
Weiner invoked the "social graph," a term popularized by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to describe the web of connections between users on his service. LinkedIn has taken that concept and tweaked it into a global network of professional social connections.
LinkedIn currently has more than 187 million members and is adding 2 per second. Weiner says there are 3.3 billion professionals in the world, and LinkedIn wants to be the professional digital identity for all of them. LinkedIn also wants every company in the world to maintain a profile on LinkedIn, and use the service to hire, market and sell.
Linked in will eventually become an "economic graph" that "maps the global underpinnings of the global economy," Weiner said.
In short, LinkedIn seeks to profile every company and every profession and provide a digital resource for users to figure out what skills and connections they need to get their foot in the door in a particular area.
"The idea is to remove as much friction from that graph as possible," Weiner said. "To allow human and economic capital to flow where it's most needed."


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Create an Account - Increase your productivity, customize your experience, and engage in information you care about.
View All Calendars is the default. Choose Select a Calendar to view a specific calendar. Subscribe to calendar notifications by clicking on the Notify Me button, and you will automatically be alerted about the latest events in our community.
September 25, 2019, 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM @ Duvall Visitor Center
Planning Commission meetings are open to the public. The public is welcome and encouraged to attend and observe.
If ADA accommodations are needed, please contact the Planning Department at 425-788-2779.


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The C1XS X-ray camera, jointly developed by the UK's STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has successfully detected its first X-ray signature from the Moon.
Credit: RAL/Brunel
The C1XS camera is a Compact Imaging X-ray Spectrometer that uses x-rays to map the composition of the lunar surface and in doing so, will offer up clues as to the origin of the Moon. The C1XS X-ray spectrometer was constructed at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, in collaboration with colleagues at ISRO, who designed and constructed the main Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe. The instrument is a technology development of the D-C1XS instrument which successfully conducted science operations at the Moon aboard ESA's SMART-1 mission between 2003 to 2006.
C1XS will provide high resolution coverage of the lunar surface in X-rays, and will provide an absolute measurement of the elemental abundances of the rock forming elements Mg, Al and Si under normal solar conditions and several other elements during solar flare events. This first measurement was three minutes of observation taken in the vicinity of the Apollo landing sites during a solar flare. The is measurement is also noteworthy because C1XS collected data from a source that was reportedly 20 times below its minimum effective detection threshold.
Geochemical data will allow for advances in several areas of lunar science, including a detailed study of the nature of the crust. In combination with information to be obtained by the other instruments on Chandrayaan-1 and the data already provided by the Smart-1, Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions, this information will provide a more detailed look at some of the fundamental questions that remain regarding the origin and evolution of the Moon.
Credit: ISRO
From: Space Daily
Read more...


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Celebrity Gossip
Nina Roz and I are close people – Beenie Gunter
On several occasions Nina Roz and Beenie Gunter have been seen in company on each other and it has always raised questions if the pair is having an affair. Following our interview with Beenie Gunter, the GunTalk singer did not rubbish rumor but also did not conform the affair.
"Nina Roz and I are close people" Gunter said.
Nina Roz has severally denied dating Beenie Gunter. Do you think the pair is an item?
Celebrity Gossip
Seanice Kacungira named among Africa's Most Influential Women in Business
By Our Reporter
Former radio personality Seanice "Lojede" Kacungira has been recognized by Africa's Most Influential Women in Business and Government and Titans: An award ceremony that took place at the Hilton Sandton, in Johannesburg – South Africa.
The awards are the leading African recognition programme honoring excellence in the private and public sector. The programme covers 23 economic sectors and has for the past nineteen years independently recognized those leaders who are at the pinnacle of their industry.
"Nominees undergo a rigorous multi-tiered judging process," says Annelize Wepener, Chief Executive, of CEO Global. "The highest possible standard is maintained throughout the judging. Those individuals whom have been recognized as winners in their field can be assured that they have truly excelled."
The SADC South leg of the recognition programme is the first part of CEO Global's recognition programme that takes it around the continent to 8 regions. In each of these regions, country and regional winners are identified.
Seanice, who has set up what can be termed Africa's first Indigenous female run Pan African Digital Agency with physical offices in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, Blu Flamingo Digital Africa, is also the Founder of the Digi-Con Academy, which has to date trained over 25,000 young men and women in all things digital.
"It feels surreal to be recognized, this means so much to me, but at my core I'm really just about the work and pursuing the highest level of excellence for myself and those I have the privilege to work with," Seanice said about the award.
Seanice was awarded in the category of Business and Professional Services.
Celebrity Gossip
Pastor Bugembe to use concert money to build 6,000-seater church
By Staff writer
Pastor Wilson Bugembe today held a press conference at his Nansana based temporary church where he will also hold his upcoming concert 'Tuzimbe'. His concert is slated for 31st August at his church in Nansana and will be accompanied by other artistes doing both gospel and secular music.
During the press conference the pastor revealed that all monies collected that day will be used to construct a well furnished church with sitting capacity of over 6,000 people. The said church is expected to be completed by January 2020.
Bugembe urged all his fans to flock his Light The World Ministries church and also not to politicize his concert by wearing attires with political colors especially the berets because he was warned by police not to allow politics to interfere in his concert or risk being stopped from performing.
Pastor Bugembe has over years domeyhits albums and singles like Kani, Ani, Yellow, Njagala Kumanya, Akawala Ako, Sibiwulira, Wanaza, Biribabitya, and Lengera Embaata among others.
Celebrity Gossip
Kenyan DJ Pierre Makena coming to Uganda
By Staff Writer
Kenyan Female DJ Makena will be coming to Uganda and particularly to Bbunga based nightlife spot Nomad bar and grill. The grill is slated for 7th September in a night themed "All ladies affair party". DJ Pierre will be joined by DJ Lola from Uganda.
Event will be hoosted by NTV's MC Esco, DJ Ace and DJ Kerb. The DJ Makena is also an actress and TV host and has served in the inaugural season of popular reality music show, Tusker Project Fame.
Determined to network with industry bigwigs, she poured herself into her duties and soon enough, climbed through the ranks becoming a camerawoman. The calls she so desperately longed for also started pouring in as the producers of TV drama series Tahidi High contacted her for a role.DJ Pierra Makena won best supporting actress for her role in When Love Comes Around at the annual Nollywood and African Film Critics awards held in Los Angeles.
- Entertainment News2 days ago
Here's What to Expect at 2019's Nyege Nyege Festival (300 Artistes; 4 Days Nonstop Fun)
- Celebrity Gossip3 days ago
Beenie Gunter drops 25 track 'No Fear' album
- Celebrity Gossip3 days ago
Leaked: Comedy Store to fly in WIZKID in final show this year
- Celebrity Gossip3 days ago
Frustrated Winnie Nwagi fails to perform after payment
- Entertainment News2 days ago
Nyege Nyege; The Greatest Uganda Story Never Told (yet).
- Celebrity Gossip4 days ago
Coco Finger, Beenie Gunter lite up Gulu
- Celebrity Gossip3 days ago
Spice Diana seeks to revive OS Suna career in new collaboration
- Celebrity Gossip4 days ago
Winnie Nwagi Beats Up Journalist; "Go Take Vinka or Nina Roz Pics"


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Nicki Minaj Has the Blues in Vogue
Nicki Minaj has the blues.
In a photo from her Vogue feature, pop music's colorful pink lady is painted blue. It's not quite a Smurfette shade but it's a rich turquoise that one might expect from the often candy-coated 'Super Bass' singer. Is she trying out for a role as a Na'vi in the next installment of 'Avatar?' Nah, she's just posing for the fashion bible.
Wrapped in lowcut, drapey scarlet red dress accessorized with a pink curly wig, a belt and over-the-elbow gloves, Minaj looks mature and grown up, not to mention incredibly fashion forward. The animated, cartoonish element of her image falls by the wayside in this frame-worthy shot.
Minaj declares that she'd "do a really good job as a prosecutor" if she followed her initial desire to be a lawyer. She also reveals she lives in a condo in Los Angeles, due to the weather and to escape "bad memories" back east.
She also refers to her outrageous get ups as "costumes, not outfits," revealing that many are custom-made or imported from Japan.


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Francesco / 29 / Employer - Wannabe Musician
"T-shirt and shorts are perfect in the hottest day of the italian summer! And you can also ride a bike! "
1.Where you come from?Livorno
2.Where are you going?
Italia Wave Love Festival
3.Where you would like to return?
I would like to go back to primary school
4. 3 albums of the moment
Wire - Chair Missing
Pink Floyd - A Sacreful of Secrets
These New Puritans - Beat Pyramid
5.Last website you visited
Elephant On Air
6.Last book you read
"Rock The Casbah", M. Levine
7. What have you had for breakfast?
Only strong black coffee
8. Tell me a remarkable thing that makes me remind of you
Convert a melodic element into a rhytmic element
Sunglasses: SUPER
Tee: Italian Army Wear customized by me
Shorts: H&M
Sneakers: Topman
Bag: Zara


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Picasso and L'Amour Fou
Mystery, Magic, and Love in Picasso, 1925–1938: Picasso and the Surrealist Poets Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Part of the dissertation, in revised and expanded form, will be published by Yale University Press in 1986 under the title Art as a Form of M
Picasso's 'Caseta,' His Memories, and His Poems
Through the Eye of Picasso, 1928–1934: The Dinard Sketchbook and Related Paintings and Sculpture New York
Musée Picasso: Catalogue sommaire des collections Musées Nationaux
One of the principal revelations of William Rubin's great Picasso retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1980 was the section devoted to paintings and sculptures of the early Thirties which celebrated the artist's mistress of the period, Marie-Thérèse Walter. "Has sheer physical passion ever been made so palpable in paint or bronze?" I wrote in these pages at the time. However, these works are far more than sublime pinups. They have to be seen in the light of Surrealist theories of "convulsive beauty," of art as something "marvelous" and "magical," "uncanny" and "hallucinatory"—all of which has been demonstrated by Professor Lydia Gasman in her exhaustive dissertation, "Mystery, Magic, and Love in Picasso, 1925–1938: Picasso and the Surrealist Poets" (1981).
In the last few months we have had further opportunities of seeing l'époque Marie-Thérèse anew in the light of Professor Gasman's revelations: at the recently opened Musée Picasso in Paris, which is particularly rich in works of this period. Meanwhile, nearer home, William Beadleston, Inc. has put on an exhibition, in New York, "Through the Eye of Picasso, 1928–1934," 1 consisting of works from the collection of the artist's granddaughter, Marina, which provide a microcosm of this fascinating period and which confirm that Professor Gasman has shed more light than anyone else not only on l'époque Marie-Thérèse but on the dark depths of Picasso's psyche.
To understand the full impact of Marie-Thérèse Walter on Picasso's life and art, we have to go back to the beginning of 1927, when the artist's marriage to the beautiful but fiercely jealous Olga Koklova (formerly one of Diaghilev's ballerinas) was foundering, and his one and only attempt at leading a life of fashionable respectability was ending in resentment and rage. Years later, the artist recalled that he was tempted to put a note on his door: "Je ne suis pas un gentleman." He was fed up, he said, with nice little evenings at the theater followed by nice little dinner parties; fed up with watching an English governess accompany his overprotected son, Paulo, to dancing class in a Hispano-Suiza driven by a liveried chauffeur. (Ironical that Paulo should end up, thirty years later, chauffeuring his father in the very same car.)
In 1927 Picasso was forty-six years old—an age when the démon du midi is apt to strike. Picasso's demon had been unleashed by André Breton, leader of the Surrealists. In later years the artist played down the role of Surrealism in his art before 1933 (a line that few art historians accept), but he could hardly deny the role that Surrealism played in his life. For a decade or more—mid-Twenties onward—the influence of Breton and his followers was paramount, not least in helping to liberate Picasso from the bourgeois straitjacket that Olga had tried, with some success, to impose on it. Breton's concepts of sex and love are especially relevant to the works of this period. Concepts such as "l'amour fou," a love that would detonate the psyche, could best…
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Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly get ready to 'Rumble'
One is from Fox News, the other Comedy Central. They might as well be the Capulets and the Montagues.
But despite their opposing sides on the political spectrum, something almost like — gasp! — friendship has evolved between Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart. The two have frequently appeared on each other's shows, exhibiting actual respect for the other's views.
On Saturday, Stewart and O'Reilly will square off in a mock debate in Washington, D.C., to be streamed online for $4.95, with half the proceeds going to charity. As the two prepare for the clash in their respective corners — the event has been dubbed "The Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium" — Stewart and O'Reilly took a moment to reflect on their unique relationship.
"I think he idolizes me secretly and that's what it's all about," says O'Reilly.
Stewart, in turn, compares them to "The Princess and the Pea."
"And I'm going to go with me as the pea," he says.
But both, in separate phone interviews, also quickly follow those descriptions with praise. O'Reilly calls the "Daily Show" host "a good guy" and "very talented."
When it was suggested that their relationship is one based on both mutual respect and mutual disgust, Stewart laughs but says: "I enjoy talking to the guy. I find him very entertaining. He's got a good sense of humor. He's smart. I think he comes by his views honestly. I can't say I agree with him.
"He's like comfort food for me," added Stewart. "I feel like I grew up around these guys. He's my shepherd's pie."
Their 90-minute debate, which will follow Wednesday's showdown between President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, will be conducted like a presidential debate (albeit with less strict time restraints) and moderated by CNN's E.D. Hill. The sold-out event at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium will be live-streamed at TheRumble2012.com.
The "O'Reilly Factor" host says their tete-a-tete might actually be more substantial than the "over-rehearsed" presidential debates. Their event, says O'Reilly, will cover about five issues, like the economy, terrorism and "why Stewart's a communist."
"We're actually going to talk honestly here," he says. "With us, we'll just let it fly: This is the way I feel, this is how I see it. There's none of that censoring or calculating. That's one of the reasons I wanted to do it."
It was O'Reilly who approached Stewart with the idea
"I didn't have much of a choice," says Stewart. "First of all, how'd the guy get my number? Second of all, he just calls up and says: 'Stewart. O'Reilly. Debate."'
The two have occasionally appeared on each other's programs since 2001. O'Reilly has called the "Daily Show" audience "stoned slackers" and "dopey kids." Stewart, a famous critic of Fox News, in 2008 created "a safe zone" on "The Daily Show" for O'Reilly to confess what scares him about Obama.
"The thing that always strikes me as surprising is when people say, 'How can you talk to that guy?"' said Stewart. "I have people in my family that make that guy look like Ralph Nader. This idea that somehow people whose viewpoints you can't quite wrap your head around are not worthy of engagement strikes me as bizarre."


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