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Former Ambassador to Britain Joseph P. Kennedy has earnest words with granddaughter Mary Courtney Kennedy, 2, who sits on lap of her mother, Ethel Kennedy at Mc Lean, Va. on Nov 29, 1958. The occasion is a reception for Edward Kennedy and Joan Bennett in Bronxville, New York as following their wedding. Sitting on Amb. Kennedy's lap is Bobby Jr. 4; and David, 3, is between grandfather and mother and on right, are Kathleen, 7, and Joe, 6, all are children of the Robert Kennedys.
Even those smitten by the Camelot legend have never mustered much love for Joseph P. Kennedy. Upstart Boston Irish millionaire, early player in the movie industry, then the Securities and Exchange Commission's founding chair under Franklin D. Roosevelt, he brought his public career to a banana-peel close by serving as our disastrous ambassador to Great Britain back when World War II's clouds were eyeing their rainmakers. He might be a footnote today if he hadn't fathered all those damned kids.
As David Nasaw—Dad's most sympathetic biographer to date—well knows, total rehabilitation isn't in the cards for an unrepentant appeaser (even the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 didn't deter Ambassador Kennedy from advocating a deal with Hitler) and hysterical dabbler in anti-Semitism, not to mention a sharp-eyed Wall Street buccaneer who'd have purely loved Bain Capital if it had been around in his day. Nonetheless, The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy does its valiant best to leave us thinking well of the old artificer.
What makes Camelot's only begetter surprisingly bland company for most of The Patriarch's 800-plus pages is that Nasaw's pasteurized respect is no substitute for the harsh awe an Irish-American Ahab should inspire. But since the author undertook the project at the behest of the late Teddy Kennedy and Jean Kennedy Smith, who's now the only member of the brood still with us, aggressive insights may not have been on the menu.
For starters, Nasaw has no noticeable interest in scrutinizing Dad's psychology, rich turf for anyone who cares to understand the family's role in American life. Along with his ferocity in shoving his progeny toward democracy's pinnacles, the combined sense of mission and entitlement—and the um, cocksure values Kennedy passed on to his sons from cradle to mostly too-early graves—are arguably his major contribution to history.
Like so many proudly self-made men, he didn't start from scratch. Far from being the mere saloonkeeper of legend, his own father, P.J. Kennedy—who more or less did—was "one of East Boston's most prosperous, respected and powerful politicians," an influential ward boss as well as a successful liquor importer. Even though P.J.'s son never got into the better clubs at Harvard, he did go there, not exactly shanty—Irish schooling. Nonetheless, Joe definitely married up. Rose Fitzgerald, the daughter of Boston Mayor John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, was quite the catch in her day.
Set on becoming a banker—"Banking could lead a man anywhere," he later explained, since it had tentacles pretty much everywhere—Kennedy found the way barred by the snooty WASPs who controlled most of the city's financial institutions. Since they weren't about to hire an Irish Catholic for any post higher than teller, he took and passed the test to become a bank examiner instead, the ideal backdoor way to acquire expertise. By age 25, he'd become the president of an East Boston savings and loan.
Unlike virtually every other Kennedy biographer, Nasaw disputes the idea that a powerful goad to Joe's ambitions was his resentment at being disdained as a Papist parvenu by Boston's patrician caste. Yet many incidents here confirm the grudge, including how he got the hell out of Beantown as soon as his expanding business interests permitted. (Hyannis Port summers aside, the Kennedy children grew up mostly in New York; though Bobby got slagged as a carpetbagger when he ran for the Senate from there in 1964, it was really more of a homecoming.) "Boston is a bigoted place," Joe told one intimate, and no doubt he spoke from experience.
Nasaw does better at refuting the myth that Kennedy owed much of his fortune to bootlegging. "It flies in the face of everything we know about him," he convincingly says; achieving respectability loomed too large in Kennedy's priorities. The bootlegger canard may have been fueled by the fact that he made a bundle importing Haig & Haig and Dewar's Scotch after Prohibition's repeal in 1933. But apparently no hard evidence tying him to illicit hooch has ever surfaced, and plenty of people were looking.
Still, Nasaw may not be the most industrious gumshoe when it comes to evidence of the nefarious in Kennedy's business dealings. Toward the end of The Patriarch, we're told that a longtime associate with whom Joe had fallen out warned him "that he knew enough to sink Kennedy and that if Kennedy dared to do anything to threaten his livelihood … he would open doors that Kennedy needed closed and locked." Since Dad apparently found the threat credible enough to back off, you may wonder what was behind those doors. Nasaw is remarkably incurious about the answer.
Luckily for Kennedy, insider trading wasn't illegal in the Roaring Twenties (and wouldn't be until the 1930s, when he banned it as the first head of the Securities and Exchange Commission). The big money started rolling in once he turned freelance stock speculator, a path to wealth that uncannily prefigured today's financial-sector manipulations. "In many regards, he was his own hedge fund" is one of Nasaw's sharper observations about then's kinship with now, and the verb that recurs in his descriptions of Kennedy's complex market maneuvers is "juggle." Then Dad turned prescient eyes toward Hollywood.
Not only was there overlooked gold to be made in its hills. By and large, the East Coast establishment hadn't yet recognized the vulgar, disreputable movie biz as an investment opportunity. The public-relations coup for Kennedy, who was always looking to better his social profile along with his fortunes, was that he quickly became the respectably "American" (for which read not Jewish) face of the film industry in adulatory magazine profiles. Back East, he'd been the victim of WASP bigotry, but now he was the beneficiary of another kind of prejudice. At one point, he had a hand in running no less than three studios and a theater chain.
This part of the saga has recently been told better by Cari Beauchamp's admirably thorough (if sometimes wearying at a forest-for-the-trees level) Joseph P. Kennedy Presents. Her book doesn't leave Nasaw with much to add except an ungentlemanly take on the most notorious episode of Kennedy's Hollywood years: the affair with silent-film star Gloria Swanson that began with his offer to put her messy finances in order and ended in the debacle of Swanson's starring in director Erich von Stroheim's never-completed Queen Kelly. Elsewhere, Nasaw is irritatingly coy about the ruthless and competitive satyriasis Dad would end up passing on to his sons. Since the Swanson liaison is too notorious to elide, our biographer swings back and forth between forgiving boilerplate—"There was no one quite like her"—and fatuously Kennedy-channeling contempt: "The inescapable truth was that for Joseph P. Kennedy, Swanson was another sexual conquest, one of many he would fit into his busy life."
The romance's upshot was her outraged discovery that he'd looked out for his own financial interests while leaving her situation as dire as ever. But Nasaw, revealingly, chooses to smirk at her innocence: "He was a businessman." You can practically hear Bugs Bunny drawl, "Ain't I a stinker?"
By most accounts, Nasaw's included, Kennedy was a good and maybe inspired choice to head the newborn Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Roosevelt's first term. A big part of his attraction was that he was one of the few nationally prominent businessmen who was also a prominent Democrat; even making millions hadn't turned Joe away from the party both his father and his father-in-law had prospered in. On his end, Dad was blunt about the post's attractions: "I told [FDR] that I did not desire a position with the Government unless it really meant some prestige to my family," he wrote his oldest son, Joe Jr., who was later killed in World War II.
No fox knew his way around the Wall Street henhouse better. Though Kennedy was on the job for under a year—October 1934 to September 1935—he operated vigorously and successfully on multiple fronts. First, he had to reassure a market so Chicken Littled by the Securities Exchange Act and FDR's imprecations against Wall Street that the shortage of new stock offerings had caused trading to slow to a crawl. Kennedy's first radio address as SEC head convinced America's financial sector he'd come to save and not bury it: The new rules, he promised, would be "simple and honest. Only those who see things crookedly will find them harsh."
Second, with no experience of our nation's capital, Kennedy had to organize and staff the new agency from scratch, bringing, among other future bigwigs, eventual Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to head up the section in charge of bankruptcy oversight. Third, under huge time pressure, he and his team had to devise the new rules the SEC would enforce—uncharted territory then. Creating the template for federal regulation of market shenanigans during the next, mostly prosperous half-century, the SEC stint marked Dad's peak as a public servant.
If FDR's genius at casting people apparently failed him when he named Joe our envoy to the Court of St. James, who's to say he didn't intuit that there was no better way of marooning and wrecking a potential rival? In any case, at whatever cost to our relations with Britain, Roosevelt had to keep Kennedy—by then among the best-known Irish Catholics in the country—on a leash until the 1940 election was done with. A Joe decisively estranged from the administration was a Joe who might either toss his own hat in the ring or decide to endorse FDR's Republican rival, Wendell Wilkie. Yet the latter seems never to have been a possibility. While business interests might have logically placed him in the GOP's camp, he still didn't cotton to patricians. Aside from his not having much use for Wilkie, an earnest dunce whom Joe seems to have pegged as a loser despite their shared isolationism, a major concern—as usual—was the effect of breaking with the Democratic Party on his children's future political fortunes.
Almost from the moment he landed in England, however, Dad was in it up to his bow tie with Britain's most pro-appeasement if not outright Fascist-sympathizing elements, not least for the Kennedyesque reason that they represented entree into high society. Repeatedly, he infuriated Roosevelt by going public with his own agenda, which was peace at any price. Even after Hitler had gobbled up Czechoslovakia and begun eyeing Poland, Nasaw writes, Kennedy "continued to regard him as a rival business leader with whom it was possible to negotiate one's differences."
At times, his naïveté (or disingenuousness) was splendid, as when he recommended in the spring of 1939 that Roosevelt pay attention to "public opinion" in Germany and Italy—two countries where no such entity was in effect. Though he devoted considerable effort to pie-in-the-sky schemes to resettle Germany's threatened Jews in colonial Africa, Kennedy saw Hitler's Jewish hang-up primarily as a maddening impediment to everything being hunky-dory between democracies and dictatorships. In fairness, if he'd managed to save lives, his motives would have been irrelevant.
Meantime, as the Brits' increasing disgust with him and FDR's lack of use for his advice began to go public back home, he took to blaming his PR troubles, with increasing vehemence, on international Jewry—fortunately for him, mostly in private correspondence. This makes Nasaw rightly queasy but also leads him into some peculiar attempts at rationalization. "The Kennedys had to blame someone for the criticism," he writes—why, one wonders?—"and who better than Europe's most venerable scapegoats." Similarly gauche is Nasaw's reluctant acknowledgment that Kennedy's dread of the looming European conflict led him to advocate giving Hitler "more than he justly deserved." Justly?
Once war started and then France fell, Joe became, in the words of Churchill's diplomatic adviser, Sir Robert Vansittart, "a very foul specimen of double-crosser and defeatist." He told everyone who'd listen—a category no longer including anyone in the White House or State Department—that Britain was doomed. But that hardly deterred him from taking care of business before heading home in late 1940. As America's leading importer of Dewar's and Haig & Haig, "Kennedy had, while still in London, pulled all the strings he could to secure precious cargo space for his Scotch," Nasaw writes. "He now had enough of it stockpiled in American warehouses to last the war."
It's at around this point, of course—with Dad's public career, though not his moneymaking skills, in shards—that the next generation starts edging into the limelight. Though Joe was an affectionate if often absentee father, his high expectations were on steely exhibit throughout—and well after—their formative years. Yet Nasaw's soft-focus treatment of Joseph P. Kennedy, Proud Parent and Sponsor, shies away from contemplating how relentlessly he molded them to serve his ego. It also underestimates Dad's marketing genius, because the Kennedys were never just a family; as early as the 1930s, they were a brand.
His understanding that the right sort of publicity could endow the family with not only fame but prestige may have been his most satisfying revenge on the Brahmins. Even today, the upstart Kennedys—not the Lodges, not the Cabots, not even the patrician Bushes—define our notion of that contradiction in terms, American aristocracy. That may be because they were the first to make the oxymoron more glamorous and implicitly accessible than it was forbidding.
Conceivably, Jack's Harvard senior thesis on the Munich pact might have been worth publishing on its merits, but only Dad could have arranged for Henry Luce to write the foreword of Why England Slept and for heavyweight New York Times columnist Arthur Krock to give his son's prose a going-over. An indefatigable Kennedy shill (one of many) who went on to boast of helping to swing a Pulitzer Prize for JFK's later book Profiles in Courage, Krock may well have been on Joe's payroll for decades. Typically, while faulting Krock for his "disturbing" readiness to be suborned, Nasaw doesn't knock Kennedy for doing the suborning.
So it went, from Jack's campaigns for Congress and then the Senate to the presidency—with Bobby taking the attorney general's job at Dad's insistence (and despite both Bobby's and Jack's qualms) to groom him for the succession, even as Teddy stepped into JFK's old Senate seat. Nobody seems to have asked the youngest Kennedy brother whether he even wanted the job—or the older ones either, for that matter. Dad's will ruled.
Then again, give the kids credit for living up to their billing. The zeal for public service that euphemized Joe's drive for dynastic power may have been a myth they started out being stuck with, but if so, they'd hardly be the first actors to end up believing their own roles—including the firebrand liberalism that never went all that deep in Jack but that Bobby embraced after his brother's death and Teddy then made good on for almost four decades in the Senate. While the sons still seem valiant despite their sins, Dad just seems bleak. Nasaw keeps assuring us of Kennedy's ebullient charm, but the closest Joe comes to likability is in the sportive note of some of his correspondence with old cronies. Pity, which he never invited and presumably would have loathed, is the only reaction to knowing he lived to see two of his sons assassinated before he died in 1969, eight years after the stroke that left him half-paralyzed and speechless except for one word: "No."
Hence the decades of tabloid-minded blather about the "Kennedy curse," whose hifalutin' equivalent usually involves dragging in the House of Atreus sooner or later. Yet such hyperbole only testifies to how we've got no other family myth that equals this one. So should we thank Dad or blame him? Maybe the safest compromise is just to be glad he wasn't our father. Unless, from a different point of view, he was.


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I installed netbeans using
zypper install netbeans. Trying to run it, I get the "loading" splash screen which is proceeded by a small popup which asks me if I want to register my copy and receive some benefits. Once that popup is gone, I'm left with a big beige screen and nothing else. It's almost like netbeans can't be displayed. Running
netbeans from the command line does not give me any output or error messages.
I also had this same issue when I was trying to install it using the
.sh file found on their website.
I'm running opensuse 11.4 with dwm as my window manager. I'm also using the AMD's fglrx graphics driver (I have also experienced this issue using the default open source driver shipped with opensuse).
EDIT When trying to run
sudo netbeans, I get:
/usr/share/netbeans/6.8/bin/../platform11/lib/nbexec: WARNING: environment variable DISPLAY is not set
And no display. This is not same behavior as when I launch as a regular user.

subset: commoncrawl


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CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he's flying to Cuba to begin radiation therapy Sunday, one month after undergoing surgery that removed a cancerous tumor.
That will put him in Cuba at the same time as Pope Benedict XVI, who arrives on the communist-governed island on Monday after a visit to Mexico.
Chavez has been recovering from a Feb. 26 surgery in Havana that removed a tumor from the same spot in his pelvic region where another tumor was extracted eight months earlier.
"Tonight, I'm leaving for Havana," he said in a televised meeting with aides Saturday. "I've decided, on the recommendation of my medical team and also my government political team, to begin now, as we're going to begin on Sunday, radiation therapy treatment."
Chavez described it as a "complement to the surgery that I underwent" last month.
Chavez returns home to Venezuela after surgery
"Yesterday, they took out the last stitches that were left from the operation. Everything's very good. I've been walking much better. … Without any sort of complication, thanks to God," he said. "And now, a month after the operation, we're ready for radiation therapy, which will last about four, five weeks."
Chavez didn't indicate whether he would be in Cuba the entire time. Chavez also didn't refer to the pope's upcoming visit to Cuba.
The 57-year-old president describes himself as a Christian. He has regularly clashed with Roman Catholic leaders in Venezuela, but during his illness has often publicly expressed faith in God that he will overcome cancer.
Chavez has not identified the type of cancer nor the location in his pelvic region where the tumors have been removed.
After he was diagnosed with cancer in Cuba last year, Chavez underwent an initial surgery in June that removed a tumor the size of a baseball.
He then had four rounds of chemotherapy and said tests showed no signs of any cancerous cells. But last month, he announced he was returning to Cuba for 고스톱 surgery to remove a lesion that proved to be malignant. He has described the most recent tumor as measuring about 2 centimeters (0.8 inches).
Chavez had said earlier this month that he would undergo radiation therapy but had not given details about when it would begin or where he would be treated.
Chavez is running for re-election in October and vows that his illness will not get in the way of that political goal.
His rival, opposition leader Henrique Capriles, has criticized Chavez's handling of his cancer, saying that the president should be releasing complete details about the illness.
Chavez defended his decision to return to Cuba rather than undergo radiation treatment at home. He said he will be treated at the same medical center in Havana where his cancer was originally detected and where he had both of his operations.
"I know that this decision surely will be criticized by some embittered spokespeople of the opposition. However, I'm sure … in this decision the great majority of Venezuelans are with me," Chavez said.
Last year, Chavez shaved his head during chemotherapy after his hair began falling out as a result of the treatments.
Now, as he starts radiation therapy, some of the potential side effects of the treatments include fatigue, abdominal cramping, nausea or vomiting, said Dr. Michael Pishvaian, an oncologist at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center who is not involved in Chavez's treatment.
The radiation is usually administered for a short period on a daily basis, Pishvaian said. "I would imagine that he probably could go about his daily activities even being a president."
Following radiation therapy, patients typically need two weeks to a month to recover from the effects of the treatment, Pishvaian said. "Then he should actually be pretty much back to normal, but will be on sort of high alert for watching to see if the cancer comes back again."
As Chavez was finishing his televised remarks, he said: "I'm leaving to continue this battle, the battle for life."
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Melissa McClelland and her pals would like to invite you to the Ladybird Soiree 2014, on April 23 in Toronto, a fundraiser to raise money for the Ladybird Animal Sanctuary, a volunteer-run animal rescue charity they founded. As a massive animal lover myself, I wholeheartedly hope you attend and throw giant buckets of money at them! I actually have a somewhat relevant story for you here. I just took a little break from writing this newsletter to take my dog for a walk. At the dog park, there was a dude there who was taking his parrot for a walk too, which was pretty sweet. At one point he put the bird (not sure if the bird was a lady, but let's make that assumption for increased relevance) up on a tree branch, and when he reached up to get her back down, she totally pooped all over his arm! Ha ha ha!
The Ladybird Soiree will feature intimate performances by Jim Cuddy and Whitehorse, and you can also take part in a killer silent auction which includes items like tickets to Aretha Franklin, guitar lessons by Luke Doucet, and much more. Info & tix here: http://www.ladybirdanimalsanctuary.com/site/ladybird-soiree-2014/


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When Charles Webster was a member of the Maine House during the 1980s and 1990s, he and his Republican colleagues routinely proposed bills that would create restrictive voting laws—or, as Webster sees it, legislation to tamp down on the rampant threat of voter fraud. "Every year we tried to solve this problem," he says, "and it was always a partisan vote," with Democrats supporting laws intended to increase turnout. As a result, Webster says, "We have one of the most loosey-goosey, lax election laws in the country."
Others would call Maine's voting laws a striking success. Most states struggle to get citizens to the polls; national turnout for a presidential election hasn't topped 60 percent since 1968, and turnout for midterm elections hovers in the 30s. That puts the United States far below the participation level in other Western democracies. Yet for the past four decades, Maine has stood apart. With an array of regulations that encourage voting—the state has allowed voters to register on Election Day since 1973—Maine consistently places among the top five states for turnout. Seventy-two percent of the eligible population voted in 2008 when Barack Obama carried the state.
Republicans like Webster, who now chairs the state GOP, argue that too many people are voting in the state—at least, too many illegal immigrants, out-of-state college students, and people who live in hotels. "What I don't want is somebody coming in stealing elections who doesn't live in the town," Webster says.
The political winds shifted Webster's way after the 2010 elections—not just in Maine but across the country. Maine was one of 11 states where Republican majorities won control over both legislatures. This was the first time in four decades that Democrats had been out of power in the state, and the new Republican majority acted fast. After trying and failing to pass a voter--identification law, they succeeded in repealing same-day voter registration. Republican Governor Paul LePage signed the bill in June.
The push against voting rights in Maine is just one example of the most direct assault on ballot access since the Jim Crow era. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the influential corporate-funded group that writes model bills for Republican state legislators, has pushed Republicans across the country to impose new restrictions on voting and to overturn progressive laws like Maine's. "I don't want everybody to vote," ALEC co-founder Paul Weyrich said three decades ago. "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, states have passed a steady stream of reforms to make it easier for people to vote. Now Republicans are pushing to make voting more difficult. "This is a hard-fought privilege," one Florida state senator said earlier this year. "This is something people die for. You want to make it convenient?"
The most headline--grabbing effort has been the creation of laws requiring voters to have photo identification at the polls. Five states—Texas, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Kansas—have enacted strict photo-ID laws since the beginning of the year. Democrats argue that these laws have clear political motivations. Studies indicate that the groups most likely to vote Democratic—the young, elderly, poor, mobile, and minorities—are the ones whose members tend to lack a photo ID. The rules are often configured specifically to favor the Republican base at the expense of excluding likely Democrats. In Texas, for example, showing a military ID or a concealed-gun license will get you a ballot, but a college ID won't. As many as one in four African Americans lack the identification these states now require, leading Georgia Congressman John Lewis to call the laws "poll taxes by another name." (Under the Voting Rights Act, voter-ID laws in Texas and South Carolina must be approved by the Department of Justice because of those states' history of minority-voter suppression. At press time, the department had not yet ruled.)
But as stifling as voter-ID laws might be, a plethora of manipulations to voter-access laws pose an even larger threat. Numerous states recently have cut back on early voting, which had made it much easier for the working poor—people who often can't get off work on Election Day—to cast a ballot. In 2008, around 40 million Americans took advantage of early voting. That number will almost surely be lower in 2012, thanks to Republican efforts in states like Ohio. Thirty percent of Ohio's ballots in the last presidential election were cast by early or absentee voters. In March, though, the Republican--controlled legislature reduced the state's 35-day window of early voting to 24 days of mail-in voting and just 11 days of in-person early voting. Florida also shortened its early-voting window and made things even trickier for voting-rights advocates by rewriting state laws to impose steep fines on voter-registration organizations if registration forms contain even minor mistakes. The League of Women Voters, the group at the forefront of registering voters across the country, shuttered its Florida voter-registration operation as a result.
Florida is also one of a handful of states that have rolled back voting rights for former felons. In Iowa, Governor Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, had signed an executive order in 2005 granting voting rights to felons as soon as they left prison. On his first day in office this year, Republican Governor Terry Branstad rescinded that order, removing 100,000 voters from the rolls with a stroke of his pen.
Republicans have pushed these new restrictions under the pretense of reducing voter fraud. "Protecting the integrity of our elections is central to ensuring our government has the full faith and confidence of the citizens it represents," Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said after he signed a photo-ID law. "Requiring photo identification to vote will go a long way to eliminate the threat of voter fraud. If you need an ID to buy cold medicine, it's reasonable to require it to vote." But there is scant evidence of voter fraud in any state. The Brennan Center for Justice concluded in a 2007 study that fraud was so "exceedingly rare" that a voter is more likely to be struck by lightning than to cast a fraudulent ballot. "It's a red herring," says Eric Marshall of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. "It's a reason for them to pass restrictive legislation and limit access to the ballot box."
That's certainly been the case in Maine. When House Speaker Robert Nutting first put the repeal of same-day registration on the table this year, he argued that the measure was intended to ease the burden on county clerks overwhelmed by the number of first-time voters showing up on Election Day. When county clerks testified against that section of the bill, saying same-day registrants did not overwhelm them, the Republicans were left to rail against the threat of fraudulent voting. The only problem: No such threat exists in Maine. Only two successful prosecutions of voter fraud have occurred in the 38 years since same-day registration became the law.
Webster, the state party chair, makes no bones about the political reasons for new voting restrictions. He calls the groups that support same-day registration the "welfare coalition": "It's the give-me groups. It's the groups that want government spending." Webster has been equally explicit in his effort to prevent college students from voting in Maine—though the U.S. Supreme Court's 1979 ruling in Symm v. U.S. clearly established that college students could register in their school's district. Webster combed through voting rolls earlier this year and published a list of 206 out-of-state students he believed may have committed voter fraud; the secretary of state, a Republican, opened an investigation. Yet after two months of digging into the allegations, the secretary's office found that none of the college students voted improperly.
At first blush, same-day registration might seem like a small-bore issue that wouldn't affect all that many potential voters. But 60,000 Mainers—of 750,000 total voters—took advantage of the regulation during the 2008 election, and 20,000 did so during the 2010 midterms. "Same-day registration is one of the most important measures that states can introduce to improve voter turnout," says Ann Luther of the Maine chapter of the League of Women Voters. Indeed, the nine states with same-day registration have, on average, 7 percent higher turnout than the states without those rules. That's particularly useful for younger voters. "When we dig into why, the answer is fairly straightforward," says Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote. "They're new to the process, and they're highly mobile."
Mainers are fighting back against the repeal of same-day registration. Protect Maine Votes, an organization made up of 18 voting-rights groups, gathered more than 70,000 signatures in less than four weeks to get a referendum on this November's ballot to overturn the new law. While Protect Maine Votes is urging voters to continue the state's history of open elections, Republicans are relying on the fear of stolen elections. "In the end, the issue will be: Do people believe our system is free of fraud, or do they believe it's got fraud?" Webster says. "If they believe it's free of fraud, then they'll keep the law."
While the referendum's organizers say they're confident that Maine voters will support same-day registration, they worry about what happens to voter participation in future elections if the referendum fails. "I don't know how far it will drop the first year," says David Farmer, communications director for Protect Maine Votes, "but I absolutely believe that the [type of] people who registered in the last two elections will go and try to vote and not be allowed."
The pushback against restrictive voting laws is picking up some steam outside of Maine. In early September, Democrats on a Senate Judiciary subcommittee held a "Barriers to the Ballot" hearing. National groups like Rock the Vote have also begun to raise awareness about the impact of these new regulations. "It appears some of these politicians are more interested in deciding who the electorate is than in letting the electorate decide who represents them," Smith says. "And that, to me, is something worth standing up against."


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Career Opportunities
The Value of a Liberal Arts Education
Students with a liberal arts education are prepared for today's evolving world of work. Liberal arts graduates are attractive to employers because they have developed the skills necessary to adapt in an ever-changing workforce. Yet many individuals do not understand what a liberal arts education is, why it is appealing to employers, or how students can prepare for careers related to liberal arts.
The liberal arts provide general knowledge and develop intellectual capacities. A liberal arts education prepares students to work in a variety of jobs, whereas other types of education enable students to develop professional or vocational skills for a specific job.
Thomas University offers the following liberal arts programs:
A liberal arts major provides a student with broad knowledge about the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. With assistance from an academic advisor, students have the option to tailor their major to best suit their individual needs and abilities.
How Do Employers View a Liberal Arts Education?
Many employers know that a liberal arts education prepares students for successful careers. In 2000, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) surveyed employers across the country to determine what they look for when they hire new employees. The survey showed that employers tend to focus on finding graduates with the right skills rather than the right major. The majority of employers surveyed indicated that a new employee with the right skills could easily learn the specifics of an industry.
The survey also showed that employers desire transferable skills, skills employees take with them to any job, such as written and verbal communication skills, the ability to solve complex problems, to work well with others, and to adapt in a changing workplace. These transferable skills are characteristic of a liberal arts education. For details about the National Association of Colleges and Employers survey, go to the NACE survey press release.
An AT&T survey also found that liberal arts majors advance more quickly to middle and senior management positions than their colleagues who pursued other fields of study. This survey reflects what many employers already know: A liberal arts education equips graduates with many of the skills they need to be successful. These graduates become employees that are ready to learn.
How Can Liberal Arts Students Prepare for Careers?
As students pursue a liberal arts education and prepare for a career in a variety of industries, they can take these steps to make themselves more marketable to potential employers:
Students can meet with their advisors to brainstorm about possible careers options. They can conduct informational interviews of people in jobs of interest and ask about the skills they should develop and opportunities to develop them. These professionals might know about internship opportunities to help students learn more about a particular career and other related professions.
A liberal arts education can also provide an excellent foundation for students who wish to pursue graduate study in health care, law, business, or other fields. Graduate schools look for candidates who will succeed in graduate-level study. Candidates with a liberal arts background are appealing, because they demonstrate an ability to learn and succeed.
The value of a liberal arts education goes far beyond its economic value. Liberal arts graduates are equipped with the skills to become valuable community members. They understand problems, generate solutions, and communicate those solutions to others. In many ways, a liberal arts education is education for life — it prepares graduates who can adapt and thrive in an ever-changing world.


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Photo: CBS Baltimore
One student was shot Monday morning at Perry Hall High School in Baltimore County, authorities confirmed to CBS Baltimore.Authorities confirmed to CBS Baltimore that the shooter was a student at the school.
The shooter is in custody.
While authorities have yet to confirm either boy's identity, The Baltimore Sun is reporting a 15-year-old boy is in police custody.
The injured student, a 17-year-old boy, has been taken to Maryland's Shock Trauma centre. Officials have not commented on the boy's condition but CBS Baltimore reported the injured student has been taken to Shock Trauma and is in critical condition.
Photo: CBS Baltimore
CBS Baltimore reported the student was shot in the back in or near the cafeteria. "We do not believe at this time he was targeted," Baltimore County Police Chief Jim Johnson said in an early-afternoon press conference.
One of the students said a person dressed in all black entered the cafeteria and shot three times, according to a parent who called in to CBS Baltimore.
An instructor grabbed the suspect after the first shot was fired, Johnson said. A second shot was fired when teachers grabbed the suspect.
"I heard two large bangs and I saw people running and it was chaos and everybody ran outside, and the principal told us to stay in the grass area and away from the cafeteria," another student witness told CBS Baltimore.
Parents told CBS Baltimore reporters on the scene there was a threat made on Facebook in reference to the school. However, that has not been confirmed.
The Atlantic Wire reported the Facebook page allegedly belonging to the shooter listed as its final update "First day of school, last day of my life. t(~_~t), fuck the world."
That Facebook page has not officially been linked to the shooter but is believed to belong to the suspect, both CBS Baltimore and The Atlantic Wire reported.
Johnson said it was inappropriate to comment on the suspect's motives at this time. The suspect is in custody at police headquarters.
While police have not discussed a motive with media on the scene, CBS Baltimore reported students have said the shooter was bullied.That has not been confirmed.
Johnson stressed that only one person was injured in the shooting. Any other students seen taken out of the school on stretchers were suffering emotional distress but were not injured.
Police are not disclosing any information about the gun used in the shooting, but would say the gun is in custody.
Police have confirmed to The Associated Press that there is no active shooter on campus.
CBS Baltimore has live coverage of the scene:
Students in or near the cafeteria were evacuated first. CBS Baltimore reported some students are still in the building and have not yet been evacuated.
The remaining students, about 2,300 attend Perry Hall, were evacuated to a shopping centre across the street from the school.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was at the school last week addressing English teacher, The Baltimore Sun reported. Perry Hall is considered one of the better high schools in the state.
Students consistently achieve high maths and reading scores on standardized tests.
Today was the first day of school for students at Perry Hall, The Baltimore Sun reported.
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$17.00 $11.90
You save 30%
More Styles In This Collection
See all Styles
The DryFlx Headband is ultralight and designed for any activity. Its 360º reflective design is perfect for outdoor action from dusk to dawn. The DryFlx Headband is highly breathable, with quick-drying fabric, and offers increased moisture-management.
- 360º Reflectivity
- 4-Way ULTRA STRETCH
- UPF 50+ Sun Protection
- Lightweight
- Moisture-management
- Quick-drying
Fabric Content
Exterior: 49% Polyamide, 47% Polyester, 4% Elastane
Interior: Fastwick Extra Plus fabric
Care Instructions
- Hand or machine wash in warm water with mild soap
- Do not use fabric softeners
- Do not bleach
- Do not machine dry
- Do not iron
Ultraviolet Protection Factor (UPF) measures the amount of UV radiation that penetrates a fabric and reaches your skin. A fabric rated with a UPF of 50 will allow only 1/50th of the sun's UV rays to pass through. In other words, it blocks 49/50ths or 98% of the UV radiation. UPF 50+ is the highest possible rating. Samples of fabrics have been tested for UV protection by LEITAT—Textile Technology Institute in accordance with the standard AS/NXS4399:1996 "Sun protective clothing--Evaluation and Classification."


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Artist's description:
Portrait of a woman....
Mixed Media Painting on canvas....
Mix of digital photo collage / manipulation done by me..creating an original and unique artwork that was exclusively Giclée printed at GAP-Grafic Art Prints ( Certified Studio by Hahnemühle in Barcelona ).
Using an Epsom Stylus Pro 9600 printer ..with UltraChrome K3 Pigmented Inks on Hahnemühle Museum Etching paper 350 gsm / 100% cotton pulp / acid free.
Then the print is perfectly mounted on a streched canvas using gel medium as a glue.
After that I begin a new creative process in which I retouch the surface of the work using colour pencils / acrylic paints and also cover all the surface with multiple layers of gel medium and acrylic resin ,creating some extra texture.
All this tech/ creative work takes several days to be accomplish.
After all the layers got "mature" the piece was finished with a couple hands of matte varnish.
Giclée print with UltraChrome K3 pigmented inks.
Hahnemühle Museum Etching Paper 350gsm.
Amsterdam Royal Talens gel medium 080.
Acrylic resin.
Derwent colour pencils.
Winsor & Newton acrylic paint.
Royal Talens acrylic paint.
Liquitex Professional Matte Varnish.
Professional canvas 40 x 40 x 3.7 cm
Ready to hang ..no need for framing because the canvas edges are also painted.
Named, dated, and signed on the back.
Certificate of Authenticity.
© 2016 Paulo Vilarinho aka Vila.
Materials used:
Hahnemühle paper...Derwent colour pencils....Ink...Gel medium...Acrylic resin...Varnish.
Jane (2016)
Mixed-media painting by Paulo Vilarinho
$490Free shipping
- Mixed-media painting on Canvas
- One of a kind artwork
- Size: 15.75 x 15.75 x 1.46 in (unframed) / 15.75 x 15.75 in (actual image size)
- Ready to hang
- Signed on the back
- Style: Urban and Pop
- Subject: People and portraits
This artwork is sold by Paulo Vilarinho from Portugal


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Wednesday, December 31, 2008
A little perspective, if you please
We highly recommend it. In fact, we'd especially recommend it to those in the comments sections of this blog and others who have started to freak out at the seeming disparity between the Jays signings and those of other teams, notably the Yankees. Because it's patently ridiculous the way that some are even trying to make some sort of point by comparing the Sabathia-Burnett-Teixeira signings with the Jays' scouring of the fringes to sign a handful of minor league free agents.
"They get C.C.! We get Mike Maroth! Fire J.P.! Fourth place! Gargggrggrghrghr!"
The Yankees, you have to remember, are in full restocking mode. They've lost a number of aging players with big contracts, so they can make all of these signings and maybe more, and still be under last season's payroll number. That's what they are doing now, and they are setting the market for the rest of the league, because they always have. There shouldn't be any cause for alarm.
The Jays' are on minor-league and marginal signings at this point, likely because are waiting (like everyone else) for some more movement in the free agent market amongst the more austere teams. There are lots of big names still on the board, and our guess is that some of them will be left scrambling for dance partners by the time February rolls around.
Besides, the Mike Barrett signing is a greatish one, both for the Jays and for the player. He gets the chance to get out of PetCo Park, and the Jays get a guy who was a Silver Slugger winner as recently as 2005. The signing also provides insurance in the event that Rod Barajas turns into a tubby pumpkin again.
We could definitely see Barrett taking playing time away from Barajas, especially if the latter backslides as he did in the final six weeks of last year.
That's a wrap on 2008
As 2009 lingers alluringly on the horizon, we look forward to turning over the calendar page and taking on another year. Have a great New Year's celebration, and we'll see you on the other side.
5 comments:
- eyebleaf said...
Happy New Year, Tao. Here's to the playoffs in 2009. Cheers.
- December 31, 2008 at 6:34 PM
Tao, Barrett was good what 4 years ago? He hasn't been that great lately AND he fights with his aces! You wanna see Doc on the DL because Barret had a fit? I don't. It's a cheap signing, so no harm no fowl. THe pitchers however....he could have gotten Ponson and Colon for dirt cheap who actually pitched in the AL East last year, no? Ponson did decently enough, Colon not as much but both guys are better than Clement AND Maroth! Whatta joke, AJ ,CC and Teix go to the Yanks, Penny to Boston , and the Jays get Barrett, wow. JP is waiting for what? There are at least 25 teams waiting to get in on the cheap guys and how many are left. Adam Dunn isn't coming to TC, Manny isn't, the Cubs are signing Milton Bradley so that leaves Burrell and Giambi. Giambi will probably go to Oakland or Tampa and Burrell the highest bidder. What does that mean for Toronto? That means that they are fucked!
- January 2, 2009 at 10:37 AM
- Tao of Stieb said...
"No harm no fowl"?
Does that mean we have to punch you in the gob for a chicken dinner?
- January 2, 2009 at 1:20 PM
- Brendan said...
What's "TC"? Toronto City?
- January 2, 2009 at 9:45 PM
Maybe he lives in England where all the sporting teams have a C after the name like Everton FC (for dummies) FC is football club. Riccardi has had the money for seven years to restock the minors, make dramatic splashes on the free agent side, trade away aging players that are only pinch hitters or role players and did nothing in his eight years in Toronto. As usual, Toronto displayed weaknesses in certain areas in 08 that could have become strengths in 09. Instead of addressing those needs immediately, Riccardi did what Riccardi does every year. He waits until there is nothing left in the pot and then tries to add a player that is more liability than asset. Last year he picked up Mench and Wilkerson and tried to pass it off as the moves that would ensure a world series win. Riccardi knew Jannson, McGowan, and Marcum would be on the shelf in 09. Three starters as question marks. He waits until the last minute to sign Maroth and Clement and by that time, Rogers shareholders say no more money for baseball. A good General Manager addresses a teams needs immediately, because they don't know what the future holds. Toronto's Gm waits until the last minute and then blames everything or everyone else for his own failures and incompetence in his job.
- January 13, 2009 at 2:11 PM


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The Double-finger Ring Collection by Mano y Metal
{ i t e m }
QUE VES {thin bar double-finger ring}
double-finger ring // handmade with ♥// hand stamped // adjustable // original design // one-of-a-kind♥
{ i n s p i r a t i o n }
"Que Ves" is Spanish for "What are you looking at" for the person who needs people to back up and doesn't appreciate staring.
{ m o r e }
view entire double-finger ring collection: here.
{ d e t a i l s }
Please note the following details in the "note to seller" box at the check-out.
1. ring sizes? (both fingers please)
2. which hand? - left or right
3. will you wear it with the phrase facing you? (so YOU can read it when you wear it) OR facing the world? (so ONLOOKERS can read it when you wear it)
{ s t a t s }
▲It is original Mano y Metal design.
▲One of a Kind item (even if I duplicate it- it will never be identical).
▲It is 100% pure Aluminum.
▲It is adjustable so can fit *most* ring sizes.
{ i n f o }
- Current Turn-around time: Handmade takes time! Please allow 7-10 *business (*weekends & holidays do not apply) days for the handmade production of the ring to be crafted for you before it ships.
- Custom? Yes! I customize products, check out the full Custom Options Collection here.
- More: View all the Mano y Metal Double-finger rings currently available here.
- Questions? Visit the FAQ page here.
{ f y i }
- I do NOT stamp on the back/inside/reverse of any items.
- It is recommended to remove the ring when washing the dishes & for frequent hand washing to preserve the black ink the letters are oxidized with. Gracias!


text:
Gates: 6:30pm
Doors: 7:30pm
Show: 8:00pm
Seating: $35
Standing Room: $25
Tickets are non-refundable
To redeem a Gift Certificate, please contact firstname.lastname@example.com or 845-679-2744.
About Laith Al-Saadi
In 2016, Laith Al-Saadi won America's hearts and a spot in the finale of NBC's The Voice. Now he's poised to bring his authentic blend of blues, soul and classic rock to audiences around the nation and the world.
Laith Al-Saadi has always had the perfect combination of Midwestern hustle and incredible musical chops – honed at the University of Michigan school of music in his hometown of Ann Arbor, and on stages across the country working with legends like Taj Mahal, Luther Allison, Buddy Guy, Son Seals, Gregg Allman and B.B. King.
"Laith is one of the most diverse talents we have," said Maroon 5 frontman and 'The Voice' coach Adam Levine. "Incredible guitar player, incredible singer."
Entertainment Weekly called Laith Al-Saadi "a power performer who is so legitimate and memorable."
Audiences have agreed, propelling Al-Saadi's most recent release, REAL, to the top of the blues chart for five weeks and the top 20 album chart for two weeks. Laith also had four singles in the top ten iTunes singles charts, and his albums In The Round and Long Time Coming spent time at the top of the rock and album charts.
Guitar World Magazine has called Laith Al-Saadi a cross between "Danny Gatton and Buddy Guy at their best," and Guitar Center crowned him one of the top four blues guitarists in the United States.


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Nationals keep farm system stocked in offseason
VIERA, Fla. -- There are high expectations for the Washington Nationals this year in the National League East, both externally and within the organization. Typically, these types of contending teams look to acquire big league talent to help put that championship puzzle together.
The offseason trade the Nationals made, sending lefty prospect Robbie Ray to the Tigers for Doug Fister made perfect sense. Bringing in veteran catcher Jose Lobaton by dealing pitching prospect Nathan Karns to the Rays also seemed to fit. What was off script, however, was getting two prospects in return from Tampa Bay as well, both of whom are on Washington's new Top 20 Prospects list.
VIERA, Fla. -- There are high expectations for the Washington Nationals this year in the National League East, both externally and within the organization. Typically, these types of contending teams look to acquire big league talent to help put that championship puzzle together.
The offseason trade the Nationals made, sending lefty prospect Robbie Ray to the Tigers for Doug Fister made perfect sense. Bringing in veteran catcher Jose Lobaton by dealing pitching prospect Nathan Karns to the Rays also seemed to fit. What was off script, however, was getting two prospects in return from Tampa Bay as well, both of whom are on Washington's new Top 20 Prospects list.
"Not only were we able to get a player in Lobaton we feel good about, at the same time we were able to replenish the system to a degree with Felipe Rivero and Drew Vettleson, who are very interesting guys," Nats farm director Doug Harris said. "Robbie Ray, we really valued his talents, but maybe Rivero slides into that hole a little bit. You gain some years of youth vs. Karns in the deal. And we get an outfield prospect we're excited about."
The Nationals are most fired up about the guy at the top of the list, understandably. Lucas Giolito, the organization's top pick in the 2012 Draft, is preparing to get his professional career really going in 2014. The top high school arm in that class, Giolito had Tommy John surgery at the end of that summer, missing nearly all of the 2013 campaign. He'll have limits on his innings and pitches, within a given outing, but fans of the South Atlantic League should get ready to see the big right-hander in action.
"We're excited about him going out and competing for a full season, getting him through five months," Harris said. "His talent has been well-discussed. For us, it's just him continuing to learn the process for every fifth day, build that routine and get the feeling what it's like to compete with 24 other men over the course of a championship season."
While Giolito and A.J. Cole are the only members from the Nats' system on the Top 100 Prospects list, Harris is fairly pleased with where the organization is currently. The big league roster might be fairly set right now, but there's a group of talent amassing at the upper levels, ready to be called upon when there's a need, and there's another wave getting ready to push up behind them.
"There are the players who either had the chance to play in the big leagues briefly or are on the verge of that, and we have more volume with them this year," Harris said. "Then we have a group of younger kids who have some ceiling to them that we're really excited about. As a whole, we feel really good about where the system is right now."
Three questions with Sammy Solis
Left-hander Sammy Solis was a second-round pick of the Nationals in the 2010 Draft and has missed considerable time due to injuries.
MLBPipeline.com: This is a different spring for you, now that you are fully healthy. What has your mindset been like?
Solis: The arm hasn't been a factor at all. I'm just coming out here and working hard. That's all I can do, not stress, not force anything, because the decisions aren't up to me. I'm coming out here like just another guy, working hard, and we'll see what happens. I would say I like this a lot more, trying to prove my skill rather than just get healthy. I think it's nice to be out here and be 100 percent, not worrying about anything other than going out there and getting the ball in the strike zone.
MLBPipeline.com: If things go well and you throw the ball the way you're capable of, you could have a chance to help out in Washington in the near future. Is that something you keep in the back of your mind, or do you not? Is it fun to go out and try to compete like that?
Solis: I think it's both. If you base your play off of "Am I going to make the next cut?" things aren't going to happen. I'm going out there every day throwing like I know I can and let the decisions be made by skipper or the front office. I think it's both ways. I want to think about it. At the same time, you don't at all.
MLBPipeline.com: There are a lot of expectations for the big league team. How does that trickle down to guys fighting for jobs, or for guys who will be in Double-A or Triple-A, that if you do get up, there are expectations of success?
Solis: I'd rather that there be high expectations than no expectations. I think it's exciting having a team that's competitive and able to possibly win a World Series. Possibly having the chance to be a part of that is more exciting than if we were some other team that wasn't contending.
Camp standout: Steven Souza Jr.
Souza was not on the Nationals' Top 20 list a year ago. That's not surprising, given that he was entering his sixth season with the organization since being a third-round pick in the 2007 Draft out of the Washington high school ranks and had yet to get out of A ball.
Things finally started to click in 2013 with a move to Double-A, where he continued to refine his approach at the plate while showing some power and baserunning acumen. A solid Arizona Fall League campaign led to his addition to the 40-man roster and an invite to big league camp. And he's now No. 14 on that Top 20.
Though he certainly got off to a good start, going 5-for-10 with a pair of doubles in his first taste of Grapefruit League action, it's more about how he's acted and gone about his business than anything production-wise.
"It's his first Major League camp and he's gone about his work with a great deal of maturity, a great deal of detail," Harris said. "He hasn't wavered from his approach one iota, even though he has an opportunity to show people some of the power potential he possesses."
Souza has hit as many as 23 home runs in a season, doing that in just 97 games in 2012. Over the past two seasons, he's cut down on his strikeouts, continued to draw walks and hit for a higher average. That's exactly what the Nats' brass has seen from him this spring.
"He's really continued to be disciplined with his approach, line drive after line drive, alley to alley," Harris said. "We know there's power in there, but he hasn't wavered from his approach. I really tip my cap to him in his first camp."
Breakout candidate: Solis
Ever since coming out of the University of San Diego in 2010, Solis has shown just how effective he can be on the mound. The only problem has been keeping him there for extended periods of time.
The big left-hander has yet to throw more than 100 innings in one season. Solis has the potential to be a very efficient starter, one who rarely issues walks and has the three-pitch mix to succeed at the highest level. With his arm issues now seemingly in the rearview mirror, he has the chance to fulfill his potential and have a huge 2014, perhaps even helping out in Washington at some point.
"It's not out of the question," Harris said. "His stuff we've seen in short spurts certainly has the opportunity to play at that level. When you look up at the end of the year, I think we're all going to be thrilled with where he is and what he's done."
Jonathan Mayo is a reporter for MLB.com and writes a blog, B3. Follow @JonathanMayoB3 on Twitter.


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Clean & easy to use theme for your portfolio needs. It is just one page and has a smooth scrolling animation between sections.
Template is using standard WordPress pages. When you create a page the theme generates related navigation button automatically.
- 6 different colors. You can choose them from theme options. (See screenshots)
- Automatic slider
- Pretty Photo lightbox clone
- Valid XHTML 1 .0 Strict & Valid CSS 2 .1
- 6 Full layered PSD files
- Footer, Header and Slider is customizable from theme options
- Cufon Font Replacement
- Built-in Contact Form with email validation and customizable from theme options
ColorsLight | Green | Black & white | Pink | Red
Tested in all major browsers including ie6 & Chrome.


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Policy 270.05A
Google Services Guidelines for Faculty and Staff
Originator: Office of Information Technology
Subject: Google Services Guidelines for Faculty and Staff
- Introduction
- This document addresses UMUC's guidelines for student use of Google Apps for Education (GAE) as well as other Google services that are not covered under the UMUC GAE agreement (Google Services).
- UMUC provides its faculty and staff GAE services to support the educational and administrative activities of the university, and to serve as a means of official communication by and between users and UMUC.
- This document was developed to ensure that these services are used for purposes appropriate to the university's mission.
- Google Apps for Education
- GAE services are services that fall under the Google Apps for Education agreement and do not require users to agree to separate terms of service or privacy policy.
- The GAE services include the following:
- GMail
- Google Calendar
- Google Groups
- Google Talk
- Google Docs
- Google Drive
- Google Sites
- Google Video
- Google Contacts
- The GAE services are subject to change.
- Other Google Services
- University users accessing other Google services should be aware that this functionality is not covered under the GAE agreement.
- These services currently include variety of applications, but the list is subject to change as Google modifies its offerings under the GAE agreement.
- Faculty and staff utilizing other non-GAE Google services must be aware that user and content data may be collected and consolidated to be used by Google as permitted under their current policies Google may collect the following data types:
- Personal information (name, e-mail address, telephone number and credit card numbers)
- Device information (hardware model, operating system, device identifiers, and mobile network information)
- Collect and store details of searches or queries made
- Telephone log information (calling party, forwarding numbers, duration of calls and types of calls)
- Cookies that uniquely identify your browser
- Collect and store information about your actual location
- If possible, when using Google services for university business, the data collection features listed in Section III(c)(1)-(6), should be turned off. If assistance is needed, please contact the IT Help Desk.
- Additionally, over time the university may enable or disable UMUC account access to specific non-GAE services as it deems appropriate.
- Usage
- In order to use any Google service as provided by UMUC, all participants must be aware of, agree to, and adhere to the following:
- When utilizing any Google service with your UMUC account, you are bound by the UMUC Acceptable Use Policy .
- As stated in the UMUC Acceptable Use Policy, faculty and staff utilizing university resources acknowledge that UMUC has the ability to monitor, use, and disclose their data to appropriate authorities.
- GAE and other Google services are to be used for UMUC business only, and the employee must refrain from merging their personal Google service accounts with a UMUC Google service account.
- Employees should adhere to the UMUC Acceptable Use Policy 270.00, University of Maryland University College E-mail Guidelines Policy 270.10, and the UMUC Guidelines for Participation in Social Media in the use of their Google Services account.
- Data Protection Responsibilities
- Users of Google services must comply with the following guidelines when storing, maintaining or transmitting university information.
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Protected Health Information (PHI]: If you must transmit PHI by e-mail outside the university's domain, send the PHI as an encrypted attachment.
- Social Security Numbers, Financial Account and Credit Card Numbers: This type of data is protected by the Maryland Personal Information Protection Act, as well as other state and federal laws. If you must transmit such information outside the university's domain, send the sensitive information as an encrypted attachment.
- Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA): Student educational records are protected under FERPA. If you must transmit student information outside the university domain, send the protected information as an encrypted attachment.
- Intellectual Property Rights and Participation of External Users: Google Apps permits users to invite other Google Apps users, both within the university and outside the university, to view data, co-edit documents, and use other collaboration tools. You are responsible for controlling access to data appropriately and for preventing accidental or undesirable file sharing in order to protect University of Maryland University College intellectual property stored, maintained or transmitted in Google Apps.
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European Commission - Press release
State aid: Commission launches major initiative to modernise state aid control
Brussels, 8 May 2012 - The European Commission has adopted a Communication on State Aid Modernisation (SAM), setting out the objectives of an ambitious reform package. In the broader context of the EU's agenda to foster growth, state aid policy should focus on facilitating well-designed aid targeted at market failures and objectives of common European interest. The Commission also aims at focusing its enforcement on cases with the biggest impact on the internal market, streamlining rules and taking faster decisions. The Communication identifies a number of actions with a view to implementing these objectives. The main elements of the reform shall be in place by the end of 2013.
Joaquín Almunia, Commission Vice President in charge of competition policy, said: "Economic forecasts currently indicate that growth in the EU will remain low for some time. In this environment Europe must tap the full potential of a competitive internal market and, in a context of fiscal consolidation, governments must focus their spending on growth-enhancing priorities. I expect our state aid reform to help public authorities make more efficient use of scarce public resources and design public support to firms so that it helps achieve the EU's growth objectives while limiting competition distortions."
The Communication on State Aid Modernisation launches a far-reaching reform process and identifies three main and closely linked objectives.
First, state aid control shall support sustainable growth and contribute to improving the quality of public spending by discouraging aid that does not bring real added-value and distorts competition. For this purpose, experience developed in the context of State aid control could be embedded in the EU Semester recommendations to Member States. Aid shall support flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in a pro-competitive way, maintaining a level playing field in the internal market. To this end, the Commission will develop common principles for the compatibility assessment of national support projects and revise and streamline some existing texts, such as the Environmental, Regional or Risk Capital Guidelines (see MEMO/08/31, IP/05/1653 and IP/10/1636), as well as the Guidelines for the Rescue & Restructuring of firms.
Second, state aid enforcement shall focus more on cases with the biggest impact on the internal market. This will include stronger scrutiny of large and potentially distortive aid as well as enquiries by sector, across Member States. At the same time the analysis of cases with limited effect on trade can be simplified by reviewing the regime of exemptions, in particular the General Block Exemption Regulation adopted in 2008 (see IP/08/1110 and MEMO/08/482) and, possibly, the Regulation on small amounts of aid adopted in 2006 (see IP/06/1765 and MEMO/06/482). This can only become possible if Member States improve the quality of submissions and comply even more with EU law.
Third, procedures shall be streamlined to deliver decisions within business-relevant timelines. Also, rules and concepts shall be better explained, including a clarification of the notion of state aid and a modernisation of the Procedural Regulation.
The Commission will seek further contributions from Member States, European institutions and stakeholders on all elements of the package in the coming months. The main elements shall enter into force by the end of 2013.
The SAM initiative is part of the broader goal of a more comprehensive coordination of national economic policies to achieve the common objective of sustained, inclusive and sustainable growth. State aid control also has a strategic role because it helps Member States to improve the quality of their public spending.
Public support for companies must target and fix market failures. This can be done, for example, by facilitating access to capital for creditworthy SMEs, protecting the environment, encouraging the use of renewable energies, investing in research and innovation or attracting investors towards weaker regions. If in such areas private investors provide insufficient finance and consider that risks outweigh possible rewards, state aid may be authorised by the Commission. But public support should only go up to the socially optimal level and should complement, not replace, private spending.
The communication can be found at:
on the DG Competition website in all official languages.
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A group of Master Gardeners from the Brunswick County Community Extension Service, all of whom live in Carolina Shores and the Carolina Shores Golf Course, have all come together for a beautification project that benefits everyone.
A small island of land on golf course property that that leads to the entrance of the golf course had become overgrown and unsightly but, because of the golf course's financial difficulties, the course could not do the necessary pruning and landscaping that it had previously done before.
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Firehouse is pretty decent, if you have to go franchise. And your not near a Jersey Mikes. Or a Blimpies. Or Jimmy Johns. I'm in Bergen County, and the only nearby Jimmy John's closed in Lodi. I might still choose Jersey Mikes, which opened down the street from that JJs and may have run them out of town. When i first started going to Firehouse though, I was a little annoyed by the high counter that hid the actual sandwich making process from the customer. And I don't know if it's official policy but on a few occasions, on take out, I get home to find that i was stiffed on the pickle. I checked before leaving recently, and noticed it absent yet again, and asked the counter girl. who seemed overly nervous and she said when they run low on the slices in the evenings, they are told to stiff the takeouts – what she actually said is only provide it "on request", but of course most takeouts are trusting it's in there and won't know to request it – it's on the front sign as included. I always keep the low sodium Vlasics at home so its a small thing, but important enough to those of us that don't have much of a life beyond our sandwiches otherwise.
Review: Firehouse Subs
There's a new franchise sweeping the lunch crowd streets in Boise called Firehouse Subs. Oh joy, another sandwich shop. We have so many already. But Firehouse has a faithful following in the other 45 states they do business in, so I thought I'd give them a try.
Firehouse was started by two firefighter brothers, thus the name and firehouse theme in the restaurant. They actually have a great story, which you can learn about here: http://youtu.be/pjSXc2nDwJI
The restaurant is clean, warm, and inviting, and their staff is just the same. The menu looks pretty much the same as any other franchise sub shop, except for the clever firefighting names like Hook & Ladder. However, they have a unique process that sets them apart. Quiznos toasts everything; Subway offers 20 different vegetables and sauces to choose from; and Firehouse steams their meat before plopping it on the bread so that it is nice and hot and juicy. Does it really add anything to the experience though? I'm going to have to say yes.
Firehouse Subs Has the Best Meatball Sub of Any Franchise
Upon first walking up to the counter, I was taken back by all the menu choices. They all sounded great, so how was I to choose? I succumbed to the marketing genius behind their Meatball Sub posters stating "The Best Meatballs, Guaranteed". It was cold out, I was especially hungry, and hot meatballs and melted cheese swimming in marinara sauce sounded too good to pass. I was given the choice of regular, sweet marinara, or spicy. I went with the spicy, thinking a little heat in winter sounded good.
This sandwich was beautiful! The already hot meatballs and sauce were loaded onto Firehouse's signature soft and slightly sweet hoagie roll. It was then topped with surprisingly high-quality provolone cheese and ran through their toaster. This toasting process resulted in a perfectly crunchy crust on the bread, and a bubbling and slightly browned cheese melted all over the sandwich. It was awesome! The spiciness I requested came from red chili flakes, which were heavily sprinkled all over the sandwich. It was very "five alarm" indeed, a bit too much so actually. It would have been perfect with half as much chili heat, but I gobbled up every bite regardless.
My biggest impression of this sandwich was that everything was higher quality than competitive sub shops. The bread was exceptional and had a wonderful soft chew to it; the marina tasted like real small batch marinara; the cheese was real cheese that melted like real cheese rather than a plastic byproduct; and the meatballs were meaty, non greasy, and pretty dang tasty. Just look at them!
I greatly enjoyed this sub, and have to agree it was the best meatball sub from a chain that I've had.
Speaking of chains, I was curious about the leader of the pack's sub sandwich, so I ordered one the other day to compare. Firehouse's slogan, "Our way beats their way" is true in this case. Here's what Subway handed me.
The appearance of this sandwich doesn't come anywhere close to Firehouse's. Flimsy skinny bread that's barely thick enough to stay together, barely enough cheese to recognize, and only a hint of marinara sauce. The only thing it has going for it are the veggies, but they were clumsily thrown on, resulting in uneven distribution and a sloppy appearance. No care was given to presentation whatsoever. Typical of Subway. But I was hungry and it looked appetizing enough, so I inserted and chewed. I've had Subway's meatball sub numerous times before, but after eating Firehouse's version, this thing seemed like a joke. The marina was bland, and the meatballs tasted fake and overly processed. If Firehouse's meatball sub gets 4.5 out of 5 stars, Subway's sitting at a mere 2 stars for their version.
But how about health and calories? Let's compare my footlong Subway Meatball Marinara with my large (footlong) Firehouse Meatball.
As you can see, Firehouse's meatball is a nutrition disaster. This is not a sandwich to eat when dieting to lose weight or when recovering from a heart attack. But for the rest of us, enjoying this delicious delight once in awhile is probably worth it. But if you're calorie concerned, you could always elect to order the standard Medium size and shave off 470 calories. Either way, this is a delicious sandwich that blows Subway's away in taste, appearance, and enjoyment factor.
A Review of Firehouse Subs Italian Sandwich
So pleased was I with Firehouse's meatball sub, that I thought I'd give them a chance with one of my other favorite sub flavors… Italian. This sandwich also looked beautiful. It was stacked high with Genoa salami, pepperoni, and ham, lettuce, tomato, that same high quality provolone cheese, Italian dressing, and a sprinkling of dried herbs, all sandwiched between that same beautiful hoagie roll.
Boy was I excited to dive in! But upon my first bite, I immediately discovered a major problem with this sandwich. The ham was a sweet Virginia ham, LOADED with sugar. It was so overpoweringly sweet that I couldn't taste any of the Italian meats. To add insult to injury, the Italian dressing was also quite sweet. Sugar is not what I want on an Italian sandwich. I want spicy, zippy, salty, and fatty. I was so disappointed. This sandwich was nowhere near as good as their meatball sub.
True to form with Firehouse's other sandwiches, this guy was significantly higher in calories and fat than Subway's versions; over 500 more calories in fact! I'd be alright with that if it also tasted amazingly better, but it does not and is nowhere near worth it. Higher quality, yes. Better taste, not really.
Firehouse Subs Could be the Best Tasting Sandwiches in Boise, but They are Very High in Calories
So there you have it. Firehouse Subs offers significantly better quality sandwiches than their biggest competitor, but not all of their sandwiches taste better (unless you really love sugar glazed ham). I appreciate their attention to detail, their clean atmosphere, happy employees, and great bread. But be warned that most of their sandwiches are very high in calories and fat. Worth experiencing though.
The Bald Gourmet eats at Firehouse Subs for the first time, and falls in love with their Meatball Sub.
12 Comments + Add Comment
The Virginia honey ham is their worst idea to put on the Italian… switch it out for pastrami and thank me later
I ate sat firehouse subs, moorestown nj
Had a smoked house brisket sandwich/ it was not satisfying at all, meat if it was meat was sliced so thin it was barely noticeable/ drenched with bbq sauce made it sickening/ sweet I e tea was light brown water, I'm in the land in of great sandwiches, probably will not return
Good review. It was nicely balanced.
Completely agree with the Italian review. Way to sweet. I received a gift card so I will take your advice and try the meatball, Thanks!
Edit: too sweet.
Thanks for the thorough and informative review. I was trying to decide which want to go for tonight and you helped make up my mind. Ever try Quiznos? I really liked their subs but they all closed down around here. Take care!
The sodium in the Subway meatball sub (2570) is way too high. The Firehouse house sodium (3290) is insane. I'm sure a lot of restaurant food is just as bad but seeing it in print really brings it home.
They also have one of those awesome coke machines where you can create any flavor of any soda you desire. Sometimes I go there just for that.
I love hearing from my readers, so please go ahead and leave a comment!
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