text:
Aircraft manufacturers sharpen focus on raising rates and lowering costs
The Boeing 787 is being delivered, the Airbus A350 is taking shape, the A320 and Boeing 737 are to be reengined, and Lockheed Martin's F-35 is in the early stages of a 20-year production run. These aircraft will dominate manufacturing for the next decade, and they are no longer malleable concepts.
Material-system choices and structural-design decisions have been made; the balance between metals and composites is settled for the next decade. So where could advances in manufacturing technologies come into play, with so much decided already?
The answer is in pushing production rates higher and costs lower. Manufacturers see plenty of room for improvement, even with the big materials and structures decisions already made. "There is enormous opportunity to implement technologies to reduce cost even after the aircraft is mature, as we did over with the F-16 over the years," says Don Kinard, Lockheed deputy director and technical lead for the F-35 production system.
So development of manufacturing technology is continuing apace, even if the battle between composites and metallics has cooled now that Airbus and Boeing have put off their next-generation single-aisle airliners to the late 2020s. There are opportunities for advanced materials and manufacturing technologies, but they are different for each platform. "There will one level of technology enhancement on the A320NEO/737 MAX, a different set on the A350/787 and another on the 777X," says Rich Oldfield, technical director for aerospace at aerostructures supplier GKN.
"At an architecture level, in many cases the technology standard is set—we will not see a carbon wing on the NEO or MAX," he says. "Instead, where we will go is production enhancements; new technology being applied, not at a fundamental level, but around the edges of the architecture. Over the next decade, we see opportunities that demand different sets of technologies based on the primes, architectures and rates."
In the high-volume narrowbody market, following the dramatic shift to composites in the widebody Boeing 787, industry had been bracing for an all-out battle between carbon-fiber and advanced aluminum-lithium alloys for dominance on clean-sheet designs. But the decision to reengine existing single-aisles has delayed any showdown.
Opportunities to change materials on the NEO and MAX will be limited. "Probably quite a lot of the architecture and technology standard will remain the same," says Oldfield. "With the requirement to minimize change, the focus is on the engine-to-wing integration, pylon and nacelle—only where needed for the new engines."
If changes to the A320 and 737 are constrained, there is more opportunity on the A350 and 787, still early in their lives with much development work ahead, particularly on the larger A350-1000 and 787-10. "We could see some fundamental shifts on the A350-1000 and an opportunity to apply technologies quite significantly all around the architecture, on both the airframe and the engines," Oldfield says. Still in definition, the 777X could see more fundamental changes, including a carbon-fiber wing.
The bigger the change, the harder it is to make, but below the level of fundamental materials and structures choices there are ways to improve manufacturing processes and reduce airframe weight and production cost. "With a platform at the start of its manufacturing process, and not down the maturity curve, there is tons of work that can be done for cost and weight reduction," says Oldfield. "We are nowhere near rate on the A350, and there is a lot of machine development and process improvement we can do."
With the F-35 still in development, Lockheed is focusing on manufacturing improvements that can be made while minimizing engineering changes. "There is potential where a process is highly manual, such as fitting fasteners, or involves a lot of drawing interaction," says Kinard. "To change a skin would be extremely difficult and expensive. We would have to redo and recertify the design, and possibly do aircraft testing. At this point in the program, that is not likely," he says. "Block changes in the future will require structural changes, and we will have an opportunity then."
Leading the list are operations with high touch-labor or quality problems. "We spend a lot of time putting fasteners in the aircraft—all different sizes and types—looking at drawings, marking up skins and putting them in," he says. "We are implementing optical projection, projecting the information onto the skin." The laser technology, already used to position composite plies during hand layup, is mature. Others are less so.
"Augmented reality is still fairly out there but has huge potential, so we are doing pilot programs to bring three-dimensional engineering data to the mechanic level," Kinard says "Today, they use two-dimensional drawings, but the engineering is done in 3D. So we are working on turning engineering models into 3D drawings and taking iPads and iPhones and trying to understand how to use them [on the factory floor]."
In composites, automation is key. Carbon fiber provides the performance improvement required, but volumes must be increased and costs reduced as the 787, A350 and F-35 move into rate production. As the industry shifts from manual to automated layup, the speed with which carbon fiber can be deposited on mold tools has become the key driver.
"Deposition rate is critical, as it defines the capital assets required," says Oldfield. GKN is producing rear wing spars with integrated trailing-edge ribs for the A350. "There is a half-ton of material per spar, and we will produce 13 a month at rate for the A350. That's a huge value of carbon, so deposition rates have to be high," he says. Rates are not where they need to be, requiring advances in materials, tools, processing and inspection.
There are several levels of automation. Pick-and-place is hand layup using a robot to position the plies. Automated tapelaying allows flat or gently curved parts to be laid up at high speed, but more-complex components require slower automated fiber placement (AFP). Each demands a specialized and expensive machine, but that is changing. "You're beginning to see combinations of tape-laying and fiber-placement, and also pick-and-place, so you don't have to lay up huge parts with AFP when it's only needed on a small place," says Oldfield. "With the National Composite Center in Bristol, [England], we are looking at multi-head robots that use different technologies on the same part at the same time."
"In the past, you had an automated tape-laying machine and if you wanted to do another operation, you had to stop the automation and get into the tool to place a fabric ply or metal mesh by hand. With a modular-head machine, you can keep the automation going and have the flexibility and adaptability to use it on a variety of platforms," says Clint Church, aerostructures chief engineer at Aurora Flight Sciences, which supplies airframe sections for the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk and Sikorsky CH-53K.
As with automated drilling, sufficient volume is essential to justify the investment. "We are building so many aircraft, we can use a lot more automation," says Kinard. "We auto-drill and countersink over 90% of the holes in the exterior of the F-35. Robotic spraying is limited on legacy aircraft, but we have to very precisely control the thickness of coatings and could not do it any other way."
Because of the need to tightly control the stealth fighter's outer mold line, Lockheed is looking to automate inspection. "Measuring steps and gaps, the flushness of fasteners, is so manual," Kinard says. The company is using structured light—projecting a pattern onto a part so a vision system can measure its shape and compare it with the 3D solid model. "We save the data as we measure it, which gives us a record," he says.
The implications of automation for the supply chain are growing as composites gain ground against metals. "Composites are not new, but the 787 and A350 are converting the baseline for future platforms," says Church. "Composites are being held up as the high-end solution, and those that follow will adopt them where it merits or not." With composites established in the commercial-airliner and general-aviation markets, he expects regional and business aircraft to follow.
The build-to-print tradition that established a broad and competitive metal-structures supply base is challenged by the different nature of composites. To take full advantage of the stiffness, strength-to-weight, corrosion and fatigue properties of composites, they need to be designed into platforms earlier, says Church. "You can merge features into one component to save weight and assembly time, make it as one big piece rather than bolting it together, but you have to do it up front to make sure the loads go certain ways."
This should favor suppliers with design/build capability. "A metal solution is a more mature technology. You can get someone out of college who understands it and can design in it. It's a bit different with composites," says Church. In addition to producing the CH-53K main rotor pylon, Aurora is Sikorsky's airframe supplier-partner for the S-97 Raider high-speed helicopter. "Aurora is a mini-prime for whole vehicles and understands system engineering. We have a foot in the door of both prototyping and production. That helps us be a better design/build supplier," Church says.
In metallic structures, higher-tier players have their own supply chains making parts. But Oldfield does not believe the composites supply chain will be as deep. "The composites value chain is short," he says. "The supply chain is the materials supplier and the machine supplier—there's no one else. GKN is turning raw material into product, and on the A350 and 787, we can do the work within our own walls and not offload at all."
But competition within the supply chain brings down costs, and primes want to see the composites industrial base expand. For those companies that want to become suppliers, the capital cost of autoclaves and automation can be a barrier to entry. "The cost of composites is an inhibitor to growth, and automation is the key to driving cost down, but you need enough pounds per year to justify the machines," says Church. "Clearly, 787-sized programs do that, but how many others will?"
Out-of-autoclave (OOA) composites cured in ovens under vacuum-bag pressure are seen as a way to produce large parts, avoid autoclave costs and broaden the supply base. "GKN has development programs in both, and always does a trade, but in most cases the cost benefit of out-of-autoclave is completely outweighed by the performance of the part in the aircraft," says Oldfield.
OOA has been held back by lower mechanical properties than autoclave composites, but newer materials perform at a similar level, allowing use in primary structures, says Carmelo Lo Faro, vice president of technology for composites supplier Cytec. Bombardier is using an OOA prepreg material system from Cytec for the Learjet 85 fuselage. "I think it is niche process for producing very large structures that would otherwise need a large autoclave," says Church. "The processing time is not all that different and the cost of operating an autoclave versus an oven is in the margin."
Australia's Quickstep has developed a way of curing parts in closed tools using heated and pressurized fluid but has started by making conventional autoclave parts for Lockheed while it works to qualify its process for the F-35. Savings up to 30% are projected, "but we have to show it works, then design for it, which is where you get all the benefits," says CEO Philippe Odouard.
For a new process, qualification is an arduous undertaking. Lockheed is helping Chicago-based Sciaky qualify electron-beam direct manufacturing for the F-35. This promises to reduce lead times and material buy-to-fly ratios for complex titanium parts that are now forged by building them layer by layer instead. The initial component targeted is a flaperon spar, says sales manager, Bob Salo, but first Sciaky must gain process approval and part qualification.
"We could save a lot of money, but we have a long road to go. We have to validate the material, the process, then demonstrate structures—most of the applications are facture-critical," says Kinard. "There is a lot of opportunity for additive manufacturing, but there is a lot of conservatism. It would be a lot easier if it had come along 10 years ago." NOTE: Story has been modified to correct Sciaky's location.


text:
Group by: Date | Item Type | No Grouping
Number of items: 34.
Cecil, Rosanne, Parahoo, Kader, Thompson, Kate, McCaughan, Eilis, Power, Michael and Campbell, Yvonne (2010) 'The hard work starts now': a glimpse into the lives of carers of community-dwelling stroke survivors. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 20 . pp. 1723-1730. [Journal article]
Coates, Vivien, Dromgoole, Paul, Turner, Eileen, Brown, Florence, Davies, Ruth, Lowes, Lesley, McDowell, Joan and Thompson, Kathryn (2009) Insulin initiation in adults: evidence based or context driven? Journal of Nursing and Healthcare of Chronic Illness, 1 (1). pp. 105-112. [Journal article]
Lowes, Lesley, Davis, Ruth, Coates, Vivien, McDowell, Joan, Brown, Florence, Dromgoole, Paul, Turner, Eileen and Thompson, Kathryn (2008) A UK wide survey of insulin initiation in children with type 1 diabetes and nurses' perceptions of associated decision-making. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 18 (9). pp. 1287-1294. [Journal article]
McCaughan, Eilis, Parahoo, Kader, Thompson, Kathryn and Reid, Stuart (2008) Patients' satisfaction with a community-based, nurse-led benign prostatic hyperplasia assessment clinic. International Journal of Urological Nursing, 2 (1). pp. 14-21. [Journal article]
McDowell, Joan, Coates, Vivien, Davis, Ruth, Brown, Florence, Dromgoole, Paul, Lowes, Lesley, Turner, Eileen and Thompson, Kathryn (2008) Decision-making: initiating insulin therapy for adults with diabetes. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 65 (1). pp. 35-44. [Journal article]
Thompson, Kathryn, Casson, Karen, Fleming, Paul, Dobbs, Frank, Parahoo, Kader and Armstrong, Janice (2008) Sexual health promotion in primary care – activities and views of general practitioners and practice nurses. Primary Health Care Research and Development, 9 (4). pp. 319-330. [Journal article]
Cecil, Rosanne, Thompson, Kate and Parahoo, Kader (2007) Commentary on Cecil R, Thompson K & Parahoo K (2006) - The research assessment exercise in nursing: learning from the past, looking to the future. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 15, 395-402 - Response. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 16 (7). pp. 1380-1381. [Journal article]
McCaughan, Eilis, Parahoo, Kader, Thompson, Kathryn and Reid, Stuart (2007) General practitioners' perceptions of a community-based nurse-led assessment clinic for patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia. International Journal of Urological Nursing, 1 (2). pp. 126-132. [Journal article]
McLaughlin, Marian, Thompson, Kathryn, Parahoo, Kader, Armstrong, Janice and Hume, Allison (2007) Inequalities in the provision of sexual health information for young people. The Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care, 33 (2). pp. 99-105. [Journal article]
Thompson, Kathryn, Marley, Jerome, Taylor, Julia, Basketter, Vanessa, O'Neill, Kathleen, Parahoo, Kader, Hulme, Tarnya and McCaughan, Eilis (2007) A baseline description of the research, clinical practice and development needs of urology nurses in the United Kingdom. International Journal of Urological Nursing, 1 (1). pp. 36-46. [Journal article]
Thompson, Kathryn, Parahoo, Kader and Blair, N (2007) A nurse-led smoking cessation clinic — quit rate results and views of participants. Health Education Journal, 66 (4). pp. 307-322. [Journal article]
Williams, Liz, Caskey, Hilary, Coates, Vivien, Thompson, Kate and Stewart, Helen (2007) A survey of patients' knowledge of their diabetes medication. Journal of Diabetes Nursing, 11 (7). pp. 264-269. [Journal article]
Cecil, Rosanne, Thompson, Kathryn and Parahoo, Kader (2006) The research assessment exercise in nursing: learning from the past, looking to the future. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 15 (4). pp. 395-402. [Journal article]
Cook, NF, Deeny, P and Thompson, K (2006) Commentary on Cook F, Deeny P & Thompson K (2004) Management of fluid and hydration in patients with acute subarachnoid haemorrhage an action research project. Journal of Clinical Nursing 13, 835-849 - Response. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 15 (4). pp. 510-511. [Journal article]
Cook, NF, Deeny, P and Thompson, K (2004) Management of fluid and hydration in patients with acute subarachnoid haemorrhage - an action research project. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 13 (7). pp. 835-849. [Journal article]
Dolan, L.M., Walsh, D., Hamilton, S., Marshall, K., Thompson, K. and Ashe, R.G. (2004) A study of quality of life in primigravidae with urinary incontinence. International Urogynecology Journal and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction, 15 (3). pp. 160-164. [Journal article]
Thompson, Kathryn, Parahoo, Kader and Farrell, Brid (2004) An evaluation of a GP out-of-hours service: meeting patient expectations of care. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 10 (3). pp. 467-74. [Journal article]
Thompson, Kathryn, Parahoo, Kader, McCurry, N, O'Doherty, E and Doherty, A M (2004) Women's perceptions of support from partners, family members and close friends for smoking cessation during pregnancy--combining quantitative and qualitative findings. Health Education Research, 19 (1). pp. 29-39. [Journal article]
Parahoo, Kader, Ridley, Tanya, Thompson, Kathryn, Melby, Vidar and Humphreys, George (2003) A qualitative evaluation of information leaflets for gastroscopy procedure. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 9 (4). pp. 423-431. [Journal article]
Parahoo, Kader, Thompson, Kathryn, Cooper, Marian, Stringer, Maurice, Ennis, Edel and McCollam, Paddy (2003) Stroke: awareness of the signs, symptoms and risk factors--a population-based survey. Cerebrovascular diseases (Basel, Switzerland), 16 (2). pp. 134-40. [Journal article]
Thompson, Kathryn, Melby, Vidar, Parahoo, Kader, Ridley, Tanya and Humphreys, William G (2003) Information provided to patients undergoing gastroscopy procedures. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 12 (6). pp. 899-911. [Journal article]
McCurry, Nyree, Thompson, Kathryn, Parahoo, Kader, O'Doherty, Elaine and Doherty, Anne-Marie (2002) Pregnant women's perception of the implementation of smoking cessation advice. Health Education Journal, 61 (1). pp. 20-31. [Journal article]
Bracefield, H, Kirk-Smith, M, Slevin, Eamonn, Sutton, J and Thompson, K (2000) Music therapy in Northern Ireland. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 4 (1). pp. 63-76. [Journal article]
McCaughan, Eilis and THOMPSON, KA (2000) Information needs of cancer patients receiving chemotherapy at a day-case unit in Northern Ireland. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 9 . pp. 851-858. [Journal article]
Thompson, K.A., Boore, J and Deeny, P (2000) A comparison of an international experience for nursing students in developed and developing countries. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 37 (6). pp. 481-492. [Journal article]
Marshall, K., Thompson, K.A., Walsh, D.M. and Baxter, G.D. (1998) Incidence of urinary incontinence and constipation during pregnancy and postpartum: survey of current findings at the Rotunda Lying-in Hospital. British Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 105 (4). pp. 400-402. [Journal article]
HAUGH, PE, MASON, C, TRAINOR, BP, Kernohan, George, Thompson, Kathryn and MOLLAN, RAB (1994) AN EVALUATION OF THE ADEQUACY OF HEALTH VISITOR EDUCATION FOR NEONATAL HIP SCREENING. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 20 (5). pp. 815-821. [Journal article]
HAUGH, PE, MASON, C, TRAINOR, BP, Kernohan, George, Thompson, Kathryn and MOLLAN, RAB (1994) AN EVALUATION OF THE ADEQUACY OF HEALTH VISITOR EDUCATION FOR NEONATAL HIP SCREENING. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 20 (5). pp. 815-821. [Journal article]
Barker, ME, McClean, S, Strain, JJ and Thompson, KA (1992) Dietary behavior and health in Northern Ireland - an exploration of biochemical and hematological assocations. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 46 (2). pp. 151-156. [Journal article]
McClean, SI, REID, N, DEVINE, C, GRIBBIN, O and Thompson, Kathryn (1992) USING A MANPOWER DATABASE TO ANALYZE THE NURSE LIMBO STOCK. JOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, 17 (8). pp. 992-1001. [Journal article]
Strain, JJ and Thompson, KA (1991) Elevated estimates of iron status and calculated body iron stores in regular alcohol drinkers in the Northern Ireland population. Trace Elements in Medicine, 8 (2). pp. 65-69. [Journal article]
Strain, JJ, Thompson, KA, Barker, ME and Carville, DGM (1990) Iron sufficiency in the population of Norther Ireland - estimates from blood measurements. British Journal of Nutrition, 64 (1). pp. 219-224. [Journal article]
Strain, JJ, Thompson, KA, Barker, ME and McKenna, PG (1990) The effect of smoking on estimates of iron status and calculated body iron stores. Trace Elements in Medicine, 7 (1). pp. 25-27. [Journal article]
Strain, JJ, Carville, DGM, Barker, ME, Thompson, KA, Welch, Rob, Young, P and Rice, DA (1989) Smoking and blood antioxidant enzyme-activities. Biochemical Society Transactions, 17 (3). pp. 497-498. [Journal article]
This list was generated on Sun Sep 22 01:39:06 2019 BST.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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Statistical Analysis | News
Higher ed now has a new option for implementing computational statistics and predictive analytics in their courses and research programs. Revolution Analytics, which sells enterprise versions of open source programming language R, has launched a program specifically for colleges and universities that want to adopt the software. R is suited for use in statistical analysis and big data computation.
In the "Academic Institution Program," schools pay $999 annually for the company's latest edition of its Revolution R Enterprise (RRE) suite for an unlimited number of users as well as general support. The software can be run on workstations, servers and clusters either onsite or in a cloud environment.
The company already makes a free license available to individuals through an "Individual Scholar Program."
One institution that looks forward to participating in the program is Grand Valley State University. "We look forward to participation in the Academic Institution Program," said Professor David Zeitler. "It promises to provide a cost effective way to provide a true enterprise-level big data experience that our analytics and data science students need."
"By offering Revolution Analytics' robust predictive analytics software to universities and public service nonprofits, we hope to inspire the next generation of data scientists to tackle big problems with social and scientific significance," said Joseph Rickert, data scientist community manager at the company. "R is the most powerful and widely used statistical language and now academics and data scientists at public service nonprofits will have access to the same commercial version of RRE software used by large enterprises."
The company is offering a similar program to public service nonprofits.
Other institutional users have included the University of Buffalo in New York and the University of Utah.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal and Campus Technology. She can be reached at email@example.com or on Twitter @schaffhauser.
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The Network Week in Review and Look Ahead: September 19-23
TGIF! Before you start enjoying your weekend, check out The Network's top news stories of the week!
1.) 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report
Did you know that two out of five college students say the Internet is more important than dating, hanging out with friends, partying and listening to music? This is just one of the many findings from the Cisco Connected World Technology Report. Discover the rest of the findings here.
2.) Creating Videos that Resonate with Your Customers
Unfortunately, there's no sure-fire formula for creating viral videos. But videos that offer useful information, not just entertainment, can spark the most interest among customers. What B2B videos have you found most useful?
3.) How the Evil Networks of Science Fiction Became Your Best Friend
Science fiction networks have traditionally menaced humanity. But when they fail, we realize our reliance on them and how they connect us both singly and together. What is your favorite "science fiction network"?
4.) More Than Just a Vendor: How Cisco Differs from the Competition
For more than 25 years, Cisco has systematically invested in customer relationships and developed a reputation for doing whatever it takes to deliver on its commitments. Learn more about how Cisco sets itself apart from the competition.
Take a look at what The Network will be highlighting next week!
- The Future of the Social Web: Social Graphs Vs. Interest Graphs: Social networks seemed poised to take over the Web. In reality, they still have a ways to go in delivering targeted services to customers. Check out this new feature on Monday!
- Now Playing on the Intranet: Video for Internal Communications. Internal communications professionals are always looking for ways to get time-strapped employees to pay attention to company news. Today, enterprise social media tools have turned internal communications into a two-way dialogue, allowing employees to participate in discussions, share ideas, and ask questions.
And, that's a wrap! Have a great weekend everyone!
In an effort to keep conversations fresh, Cisco Blogs closes comments after 60 days. Please visit the Cisco Blogs hub page for the latest content.
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great review, thanks 🙂


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Belfast International Airport has slammed Aer Lingus for allegedly failing to give an "explanation that makes sense" over its decision to shift its services away from Aldergrove later this year.
The comments come after the airline confirmed that from this autumn, its operations at BIA would move to George Best Belfast City Airport.
While BIA conceded that it was "aware" talks had been going on between Aer Lingus and the City Airport for "quite some time," it said that it was yet to receive the explanation it had asked for.
[Source: Antrim Guardian]
Newry and Mourne District Council has received an earmarked first-round pass of $1.5m from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) through its Landscape Partnership (LP) program for the Ring of Gullion project, it was announced last Tuesday. The project aims to conserve built and natural heritage, increase community participation in local heritage, and increase access to and learning about the landscape and its heritage.
Development funding of $9,700 has also been awarded to help Newry and Mourne District Council progress their plans to apply for a full grant at a later date.
[Source: Examiner Newspaper]
Four suspected members of a group believed to be responsible for some of the most high-profile crimes in the southeast over the last two years were brought before Carlow District Court two weeks ago.
A total of seven men were arrested by Gardaí (police) two weeks ago as part of an intelligence-led investigation into the activities of organized groups, which are believed to be responsible for more than 70 crimes committed in Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary and Wexford over the past 12 months.
Gardaí said the crimes include aggravated burglary, armed robbery, ATM robberies, attempted ATM theft, unauthorized taking of vehicles, theft of plant machinery and criminal damage.
[Source: Carlow Nationalist]
A Cavan-born judge has been appointed to the hearing of cases involving several high-profile former Anglo Irish bank executives brought before the Criminal Courts in Dublin in recent days.
Cormac Dunne from Cavan town was present when, last Monday, former Anglo Irish Bank finance director, Willie McAteer, and the bank's former managing director for Ireland, Patrick Whelan, were charged, and again last Tuesday, when former Anglo Irish Bank chairman and chief executive Sean FitzPatrick was brought before the court.
All three men face fraud charges relating to giving unlawful financial assistance to 16 named individuals, including Ballyconnell businessman Sean Quinn and his family, in connection with the purchase of shares in the then Anglo Irish Bank Corporation Plc, now the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC).
[Source: The Anglo Celt]
Clare County Councilors have reacted angrily to the fact the council may have to pay $1,230 for the removal of telephone kiosks, which have been labeled as "magnets for anti-social behavior."
Two North Clare councilors last week requested that Clare County Council ask Eircom to remove telephone kiosks in Lahinch, which Councilor Bill Slattery claimed "are being used as public toilets and for other anti-social activity."
The phone-boxes are located on Main Street and at the Liscannor Road Junction in the resort town. "It is obvious that the kiosks are not being used," Councilor Richard Nagle stated. "Everyone has a mobile phone now."
[Source: Clare Champion]
There is four times as much oil off the coast of Cork at Barryroe than was originally thought, a discovery warmly welcomed by business leaders in Cork after the announcement last Wednesday.
Studies carried out in March this year show that there is between one and 1.6 billion barrels of oil at the oil field, four times as much was originally expected.
While the actual retrievable amount of barrels of oil will be dependent on drilling, production and other costs, there is still expected to be significant amounts entering the millions.
[Source: Cork Independent]
The number of couples getting married in Derry is on the rise, new figures reveal.
Provisional figures just released by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) reveal there were 527 marriages in Derry in 2011 with civil ceremonies accounting for almost one third (31%) of all marriages in the city last year.
In 2010, a total of 460 marriages took place in the city.
The latest figures further show that the average age of brides and grooms has come down for the first time since 2005.
[Source: Derry Journal]
A link to our local heritage was unearthed recently with the discovery of a number of partially-completed millwheels.
The hand-carved stone wheels were found in a bog land area near Creeslough by local hill walkers. This area was where the wheels would have been manufactured many years ago.
The important local history site is where skilled masons travelled to this area of flat-faced granite rock slabs where they marked out the circle and painstakingly chiselled the rugged face until it revealed the wheel outline.
Some of the slabs discovered are still in this uncompleted state.
[Source: Donegal Democrat]
The owner of a filling station in County Down has spoken of his frustration after fuel worth $12,300 was stolen.
John McCormick, who runs a garage in Crawfordsburn, said he had been left out of pocket after thieves made off with 7,000 liters of diesel.
He has appealed to the public to be vigilant.
It is understood to be only the second time in NI that a filling station has been targeted in such a crime.
[Source: BBC News]
A Dublin mom has told of how her son survived a near-drowning accident at the National Aquatic Centre – one year before a four-year-old tot drowned in the same pool.
On the day that tragic Logan Joyce (4) was buried, mom Denise Mahon spoke out about the similarities between his death and the "secondary drowning" of her son Callum (8).
Callum's accident is now to be included into the wider investigation taking place into Logan's tragic death at the popular family center on July 22.
[Source: Evening Herald]
The leader of the St. Michael's Scout Band, which has been a long-standing fixture at Ulster football championship matches and at Ulster finals in Clones, has stood down to make way for a younger person.
On July 22, Bernard O'Connor (70) led the band for the very last time, at the Ulster final between Donegal and Down.
At the start of the year, he had informed the Ulster Council that 2012 would be his last year as leader and, to his surprise, when he opened the match program, he came across a full page headed: "A Tribute to Bernard O'Connor."
[Source: Fermanagh Herald]
The price of a pint – that's what a North Galway man has been asked to pay back on a $102,000 debt to Bank of Scotland . . . and it will take him 400 years before it is paid off.
The debtor from Ballyglunin told Tuam Civil Court that the banks pressurized him to borrow almost $6.2 million and still owed them $4.3 million.
However, the court last week was dealing with a debt of $102,000 owed to Bank of Scotland who was seeking an installment order of $1,230 per month. However, they fell considerably short of what they were demanding.
It will take just short of 400 years to pay off this debt but Judge Geoffrey Browne said the bank would be around for a long time.
[Source: Galway Bay FM]
It was a dark and stormy night when Amy Winehouse performed at Other Voices – last Monday, a year after her death, producer Philip King remembers her visit.
When singers, musicians and artists make the journey west to Dingle to sing and play at Other Voices, they find themselves in a place that is between worlds at the edge of a continent, a place of exceptional physical beauty that they find inspirational. West Kerry has its own language and accent, a rich literature and a living music.
The itinerant musician and troubadour, weary from the impossible way of life that is the road, sense that here is a haven and good place to sing a song, to lay down a weary tune, a good place to rock and to roll.
[Source: Irish Times]
The locations for the wind farms in Co. Kildare which will form part of the $10 billion investment project announced two weeks ago have yet to be identified.
Element Power say that their Greenwire project will see 40 new wind farms constructed in the midland counties of Kildare, Meath, Westmeath, Laois and Offaly which will channel energy to the UK market via dedicated sub-sea cables. It says the initiative will create 3,000 long-term jobs and as many as 10,000 jobs in the construction phase.
[Source: Kildare Nationalist]
An Irish boy of 11 who flew to Rome by himself without a passport or boarding pass said that no member of staff asked him for any information.
Liam Corcoran said he was not asked for any documentation as he made his way onto the Jet2.com flight at Manchester Airport just days before the Olympic Games gets under way.
The Kilkenny youngster had wandered away from his mother during a shopping trip in Wythenshawe last Tuesday before travelling a few miles to the airport on a bus after finding a ticket on the floor. Liam told The Sun newspaper that he needed the toilet so decided to head into Terminal 1 of the transport hub – which has been welcoming athletes in the run-up to the Games. He said he walked through a body scanner and metal detector, but his lack of documents was not noticed by staff.
[Source: Kilkenny People]
A podium dancer in a Portlaoise night club had to curl up into a ball to protect herself from an assault by two women, which was committed after one of the women was asked to desist dancing on the podium next to the injured party.
Louise McStay, Pallas, Ballyfin Road, Portlaoise, and Shelly Delaney, Carlow Road, Stradbally, committed the assault at Egans Nite Club, Main Street, Portlaoise, on September 25 last year.
Inspector Martin Harrington gave evidence that the injured party was kicked while she was on the ground and suffered bruising to her back and legs.
[Source: Leinster Express]
The county saw one of this summer's rare sunny days July 20 as the Minister of State with responsibility for Sports and Tourism, Michael Ring, made a special visit to Ballinamore to officially open the town's newly-extended canal sidewalk/cycle-way.
The project was completed a number of months ago and has already proven hugely popular with local residents and tourists alike but the official opening that Friday could not have been timed better with local walker and Olympian Colin Griffin in attendance. Colin was instrumental in developing the idea for the walkway and he told the crowd gathered at Lock 5 how proud he was to see the new amenity become a reality in his hometown.
[Source: Leitrim Observer]
An old-aged pensioner who violently confronted security staff at Colbert Station with a knife has been told he will go to prison if he does not stay away from Limerick.
Anthony Goodman (67) of Charlemont Terrace, Wellington Road, Cork City pleaded guilty at Limerick District Court to producing the weapon during an incident last June 23.
Insp. Seamus Ruane said Gardaí (police) were alerted to a disturbance at Colbert Station at around 3:20 p.m. and that the defendant was apprehended in the Wickham Street a short time later.
He told the court that Goodman, who was known to the security staff, was later identified on CCTV.
[Source: Limerick Leader]
Senior Gardaí (police) along the Longford and Roscommon border have launched an investigation into an elaborate scam by a gang masquerading as collectors for Ireland's top seeded boxer in the upcoming Olympics, John Joe Nevin.
It is believed that thousands of euros may have been gathered in a bogus fundraising collection which duped numerous homeowners in parts of Longford and Roscommon.
The Leader understands three women, believed to be from the Mullingar area, targeted homes in the Lanesboro and Ballyleague area in recent weeks purporting to be fundraising for the Westmeath boxer. However Gardaí have established that this is not the case and that Mr. Nevin is not benefitting from the so-called collection.
[Source: Longford Leader]
Nuala Kennedy is a celebrated traditional Irish musician and internationally acclaimed flute player and singer from Dundalk, Co. Louth
On August 4 she will be headlining the Spirit Store as part of her European tour.
Touted as "spellbinding" and "a delight" by the Irish Times, her live performances inspired her return to the studio to record Noble Stranger, a road-tested collection of innovative originals and traditional songs recorded in Scotland with her touring band.
Kennedy uses her traditional music background as a springboard for the new album which offers a 12-song set on which her adventurous instrumentation and progressive arrangements shine.
[Source: Dundalk Democrat]
A series of sexually provocative and physically threatening and inflammatory mobile phone text messages, Facebook comments and private Facebook messages led to two 19-year-old men, formerly friends, coming to blows in the street and being found guilty of assault.
James Prendergast of Rockfort, Irishtown, and Barry Healy of Clogher, Hollymount, were charged with assaulting each other on July 17, 2011, after tensions over relations with Prendergast's girlfriend reached boiling point.
Westport District Court heard two weeks ago that a lengthy exchange of texts and Facebook private messages took place between Healy and Prendergast's girlfriend, Lisa Brett. During the exchange, Healy asked Ms. Brett to leave her boyfriend and form a relationship with him.
The events culminated in a fight between the two men in the early hours of July 17 in Claremorris. All relevant texts and Facebook messages were produced in court.
[Source: The Mayo News]
Members of the Skryne GAA Club and the entire community of the area are anxiously awaiting the latest reports from New York about the condition of a young local player who suffered serious injuries during a savage attack on her in a New York street.
Alisha Jordan (21) was in hospital awaiting surgery last Friday for serious injuries, which included broken teeth, a broken nose and crushing of her skull.
Her mother, Ailish, and sister, Colleen, have flown out to New York to be with Alisha.
[Source: Meath Chronicle]
Three people are in hospital in Co. Louth after a road accident in Co. Monaghan last Monday night.
It happened after the vehicle they were travelling in hit a tree at Mahercross on the Carrickmacross to Drumconrath road at around 10:40 p.m.
All three were taken to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda for treatment, where one male is said to be in a serious condition.
[Source: Irish Examiner]
Bord na Móna made loss before tax of $3.6m for the year ending March 2012, it was announced last Monday.
The company saw a marginal increase in total revenue, but EBITDA was down by 15.9% to $75.1m from $89.3m.
Bord na Móna blamed this on the prolonged closure of West Offaly Power Station while a refit was being carried out, and reduced fuel sales resulting from a mild winter.
There was also significant non-cash impairment to the company's resource recovery business of $29m.
[Source: Irish Examiner]
The chief executive of the Roscommon Herald newspaper has initiated High Court proceedings aimed at restraining his dismissal.
Lawyers for Brian Nerney secured permission from the High Court last Tuesday to serve injunction proceedings against Thomas Crosbie Holdings Ltd. at short notice.
Ms. Justice Mary Laffoy made the application returnable to July 25. The application for short service of the proceedings was made ex-parte (one side only represented). In his action, Mr. Nerney, Carrick Road, Boyle, Co. Roscommon is seeking orders including one restraining TCH Ltd. from terminating his contract.
[Source: Irish Times]
Veteran Sligo newsman Tommie Gorman has spoken of his toughest ever assignment and how the grueling eight-week Michaela McAreavey murder trial in Mauritius affected both himself and the bereaved families. .
In an in-depth interview with The Sligo Champion, RTE's Northern Editor tells how he was taken aback by the "distinct lack of taste" with which some aspects of the controversial trial was conducted; the palpable sense of pain and sadness endured by the McAreavey and Harte families; the "frightening mini-riot" which erupted at the announcement of the "not guilty" verdicts, and his own difficulties in being so far away from loved ones for so long. "It was by far the most difficult job I have ever done. There was no escaping the intensity of it, the sheer sadness of it, the unfairness of it. You would find yourself dreaming about it at night," Mr. Gorman revealed.
[Source: Sligo Champion]
Three members of Thurles Town Council, along with members of Thurles Hospital Action Committee, handed in a petition at Dail Eireann (Irish Parliament) signed by 8,548 people calling for the restoration of 22 beds in the Hospital of the Assumption.
The figure from the petition did not include the 5,000 names already gathered in a previous petition, making a total of over 13,000 who are against closing beds at the community facility.
[Source: Tipperary Star]
Dungannon Borough Council is bottom of the heap when it comes to dealing with littering issues, the Courier has learned.
According to recent figures, only two Fixed Penalty Notices were issued in the Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough over the course of one year, placing them second last in a list of council littering policies. Only in Strabane were less Fixed Penalty Notices for littering issued . . . it had none for the year.
The Courier has published several stories in the past dealing with the scale of littering in the Dungannon borough and the latest figures for litter notices makes for grim reading.
[Source: Tyrone Courier]
Neighborly concern led Gardaí (police) to discover an elaborate cannabis growing facility in the bedrooms of a house at 29 Elm Park, Tramore and a second cannabis factory at a second residence in the town.
Two bedrooms had been taken over by the harvesting of the drugs, with plants in various stages of growth and cannabis drying out on hangers in the wardrobe, while ready to use cannabis was also located in jars.
[Source: Waterford News & Star]
The Bishop of Elphin Christopher Jones had come out strongly against cohabiting couples last week, saying that it brings children into an "unstable environment" where the couple are unwilling to commit themselves to marriage.
The bishop made the controversial comments at a marriage jubilee celebration in Saints Peter and Paul's Church, Athlone, on July 22 attended by hundreds of people, including a large number of married couples from all over the diocese and their families.
[Source: Westmeath Independent]
A man has appeared before Gorey District Court on a number of charges relating to a fatal crash in Courtown Harbor on June 15.
Paul Byrne (19) with an address at Ballinatray, Courtown was arrested on Tuesday, July 24 by Gardaí (police) in Gorey and later charged. He appeared in court last Wednesday before Judge Gerard Haughton where he was formally charged with a number of offenses relating to the June 15 crash in which another 19-year-old man lost his life when the jeep he was in broke through a wall and into the harbor at Courtown.
[Source: Wexford Echo]
Four-time women's world boxing champion Katie Taylor was Ireland's flag bearer at the London 2012 opening ceremony.
The 26-year-old from Bray, County Wicklow, carried the Irish tricolor in front of Team Ireland at the ceremony which took place last Friday night.
As well as her world titles, Taylor has won five European titles, four EU titles and is an Ireland international footballer.
[Source: Belfast Telegraph]


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World War II hero gunned down in Glendale
Glenn Greening was an American hero.
He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1939 and was soon flying combat missions during World War II. In all he flew 86 combat missions in the South Pacific.
He won four bronze stars and an additional 20 awards.
"He'd seen so much," said Sgt. J. Bang of the Glendale police department. "I thought his military record was incredible."
Greening retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1967 at the rank of senior master sergeant.
After his retirement he worked as a salesman. He was married and had one daughter.
Greening traveled to Denver on Feb. 24, 1981 on a business trip. He met two friends in the bar of the Landmark Hotel for drinks around 5:30 p.m.
Greening went alone to the Colorado Mine Company in Glendale on the 4400 block of East Virginia Avenue at 7 p.m. and was finished by 7:45 p.m.
He and his two friends met at the Landmark Hotel bar at 8 p.m. At 9:30 p.m., the three men went to the Rodeo Lounge on the 400 block of South Colorado Boulevard.
A few minutes later, Greening left the lounge. There likely were a lot of people walking around in the parking lot at the time, Bang said.


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Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who was once a Republican, gave one of his first speeches as a Democrat Friday night.
Crist was the keynote speaker at the Manatee County Democrats' annual dinner. More than 300 people were in attendance, and many posed for photos with Crist.
During his half-hour speech, Crist mentioned several Democrats — Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and the late Robert F. Kennedy — but did not mention one man: current Fla. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican.
State Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, got one of the biggest cheers of the night when he introduced Crist.
"Please put your hands together and welcome our next Gov-" Rouson said, stopping short of finishing the sentence.
There's been widespread speculation that Crist, who switched parties in Dec. 2012, will challenge Scott in 2014.
Gov. Rick Scott Makes His Case For A Second Term
Crist certainly sounded like a candidate Friday evening; he spoke about immigration and the state's voting problems in 2012. He also talked about teachers and made a thinly veiled reference to Scott's proposal to give all teachers a $2,500 pay raise.
"It's nice to give people bonuses, it's even nicer to be good to them every year," he said, to applause.
Most of Crist's speech was similar to what he's said for months; he talked about his well-publicized hug with Obama in 2009 when Crist was governor, and how many in his former party criticized him. He told a story of his grandfather, who immigrated from Greece to the U.S.
After his speech, Crist told The Associated Press that he has not yet decided whether he is going to run for governor. He did, however, point out that he's speaking to Democratic clubs — last Saturday, he spoke to a group in Fort Myers.
Crist was elected governor as a Republican in 2006 and, facing a strong challenge from the right for the U.S. Senate nomination in 2010, ran unsuccessfully for that seat as an independent. He lost a three-way contest to Republican Marco Rubio.


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I'm rivalarrival, and I'm an atheist. Atheism is the lack of a belief in any god. It is not a belief in and of itself.
My Quick-Links[edit]
aim: rivalarrival Y!: rivalarrival5
irc://irc.foonetic.net rivalarrival or rival-eeepc (Channel #xkcd, usually) irc://irc.freenode.net rivalarrival drop.io/arrival mosio.com/rivalarrival
If you contact me anywhere, mention "Iron Chariot", or I'm likely to think you're a bot and screw with you mercilessly. :-)
Pages I like[edit]
- Ontological argument - I got a real kick out of Gasking's argument
- Cafeteria Christian
Pages I'm planning on working on[edit]
- Afterlife - expand
- Mother Teresa - criticisms are all links - drag them into the page
- Atheist vs. agnostic - Combining terms - gnostic atheism > agnotic atheism?
- Physics - expand
- Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed - wikify
- Hypothesis - expand
- Falsifiability - expand, add examples
- Omnipresent - expand


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TP interns Zachary Bernstein and Fatima Najiy conducted the research for this report.
President Obama's regulation mandating that health insurance plans offer free birth control is an issue that most directly affects women. And yet, the cable news chatter over this controversy has been driven mostly by men, according to a new ThinkProgress analysis.
From Monday through Thursday evening, the leading cable news channels — Fox, Fox Business, MSNBC, and CNN — invited almost twice as many men as women onto their shows to discuss contraceptive coverage.
Out of a total of 146 guests who discussed contraception, the cables invited 91 men compared to 55 women as commentators. In other words, males comprised 62 percent of the total guests who commented on contraception. Fox was the most gender stratified network — on the Business network, 10 of 11 guests were male; on the News side, male pundits took up 65 percent of the guest lineup (28 men vs. 15 women). Sixty percent of MSNBC's lineup was male (44 men vs. 31 women). And while CNN was more evenly balanced, it was still slightly tilted in favor of male perspectives (9 men vs. 8 women).
A note on methodology: The survey did not include male or female hosts of shows who happened to comment on the controversy. Some guests, like Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Joe Manchin (D-WV), appeared more than once during this stretch, but on different programs and networks. Each appearance was counted separately.
Contraceptive coverage is an issue where female perspectives should be heeded and understood. When it comes to contraceptive coverage, adding women's voices on everything from their experiences with insurers to the decision's impact on women voters can only make for a richer conversation. Hopefully, those individuals responsible for booking television guests will be more cognizant of gender sensitivities going forward.


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Cobalt blends performance and luxury in its boats and that is clearly seen here with the 360. She's an exciting express cruiser that makes a great weekender by combining performance and overnighting accommodations for four.


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The UK's biggest ever Lotto jackpot of £50.4 million went unclaimed on Wednesday, causing the draw to rollover with the estimated jackpot for Saturday's draw now £57.8m.
Camelot promised earlier this week that if the draw isn't won on Saturday, the prize will be shared out amongst the next tier of winners.
The huge pot has eclipsed the previous highest jackpot of £42 million shared by three winners in 1996.
The biggest cheque won on a single Lotto ticket was £22.5 million shared by work colleagues Mark Gardiner and Paul Maddison from Hastings in 1995, and the biggest ever individual Lotto winner is Iris Jeffrey from Belfast who won £20.1 million in 2004.
Saturday's jackpot is the result of 14 consecutive rollovers and follows the number of balls in the draw increasing from 49 to 59 in October, reducing the odds on a player's six numbers coming up from around one in 14 million to one in 45 million.
Camelot has claimed the "enhancements" actually give a better chance of winning and better odds of becoming a millionaire but the move has not been popular with all players.
However if no-one wins the jackpot today or Saturday, Camelot will enact new regulations which stipulate that it must be shared out.
The rules say that the jackpot has to be won in the first draw after it reaches £50 million, meaning that if no players match all six numbers the prize will be shared between winners in the next tier where there is at least one winner, most likely those who have just five main numbers and the bonus ball.
Camelot said this would make it "some of the best odds players have ever had to win a multi-million pound life changing jackpot".
A National Lottery spokeswoman said: "The National Lottery is all about millionaire making and Saturday's jackpot has the potential to make one of the biggest in our history.
"Don't delay getting your ticket as giant jackpots and millionaire making on this scale mean it is going to be one of our most popular draws ever. And remember each and every ticket sold helps raise more money for National Lottery Good Causes."


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Justin Bieber ex girl friend Selena Gomez has finally broken her silence following a shocking revelation that she had completed a two-week rehab program earlier this year.
Latina Magazine reports: The 21-year-old addressed the revelation for the first time on her Instagram, posting a picture holding a red drink, smiling, and enjoying herself on a boat ride in pristine blue waters.
"I've done everything I could to the best of my ability," she wrote. "Thank you for the unconditional love and cyber hugs. You inspire me."
The actress and singer was admitted to Arizona's Dawn of the Meadows on Jan. 5. According to E! Online, the singer then flew to Utah to promote her flick Rudderless at Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 20.
Gomez's longtime best friend Demi Lovato, 21, has also battled substance abuse and eating disorders in the past. The singer spoke out in support of her bestie during a recent E! News interview. "I've known her for 14 years, and we've been best friends. That's all of her business, and I just want to let her do her thing. And yeah, she's amazing. I love her."
We're glad to see Selena looking so healthy! Stay strong, chica!
Read more:
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Firstly we'd like to welcome you to the one stop shop for any type of giant bean bags that you would ever want to purchase online. We have a wide range available, with some being as cheap as £15! There is outdoor, kids, pet and of course, giant bean bags just to name a few. As well as this we also have accessories such as beans that you can use to refill yours with. We only have products from all of the biggest brands in the market so you can be sure that you'll get a quality product, such as brands like Fatboy, Bazaar, Hi-bagz and Poi Dog.
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[Read the rest of this article...]
So you've had a speaker or you've shown a documentary; what now? This webinar will give you tools to help your church engage not only your congregation but the community. We'll discuss a study you can lead on Wednesday or Sunday nights, as well as share ideas for events to educate and engage your community. From easy one-time events like hosting a Fair Trade fair to mentoring a child--we'll cover a lot of ground.
Our presenters are all members of the leadership team for the North Carolina Coalition Against Human Trafficking. NCCAHT is a statewide network of nonprofits, agencies and other organizations that work together to fight Human Trafficking in NC. Our first presenter is Patricia Witt of Partners Against Trafficking Humans NC.Kathy Kania of Life107 Ministries is our second speaker, and Pam Strickland of Eastern North Carolina Stop Human Trafficking Now will be last.
If you are aware of a good resource that should be included in our Resource Library, we would love to hear about it.
Click here for more information.
2640 Reynolda Road, Winston-Salem, NC 27106
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Chris Paton in Australia: Scottish Roadshow
Event Information
18 Oct 2010 6:00pm - 25 Oct 2010 9:45pm
- Various
- Australia
Other Information
- Cost: $20 pre-booked, $30 pay on arrival
- firstname.lastname@example.com
- 08 8395 7476
- Unlock the Past
Pre-Bookings have now closed. Tickets are still available for $30 at the venue for each night.
Chris will be visiting the following cities:
- Perth (Perth Function Centre, Goddard St, Lathlain - Perth Football Club): Mon 18 October
- Melbourne (Veneto Club, 191 Bulleen Rd, Bulleen): Wed 20 October
- Sydney (speaking at the History & Genealogy Expo Sydney) Fri & Sat 22-23 October
- Brisbane (Broncos Leagues Club, Fulcher St, Red Hill): Mon 25 October
PROGRAM (Perth, Melbourne & Brisbane) - (Sydney - see History & Genealogy Expo Sydney)
- 6.00pm - displays, book sales and pay on the day registrations open (those pre-booked collect tickets)
- 7.00pm - Chris Paton - Introduction to Scottish research. Introducing the major resources for Scottish research, including the recently updated ScotlandsPeople
- 8.00pm - break for refreshments, book sales and displays
- 8.30pm - Chris Paton - More records for Scottish research
- 9.30pm - Displays open for another 15 minutes
Other Details (Perth, Melbourne & Brisbane)
- meals are available at the Melbourne and Brisbane venues for those who wish to come early
- cost: $20 pre-booked; $30 pay on arrival (Perth, Melbourne & Brisbane)
- displays by Unlock the Past and major local family history societies. There will be opportunity to browse before and after the seminars, as well as during the break.
About Chris
Chris Paton is a professional genealogist and regular contributor to several family history publications, including Your Family History, Practical Family History, Family History Monthly and Discover my Past Scotland. Formerly a BBC television producer, he holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Genealogical Studies and runs the Scotland's Greatest Story ancestral research service (www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk). He also teaches online Scottish courses through Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd (www.pharostutors.com)
Sydney Expo
I attended both of Chris Paton's presentations at the Sydney Genealogy Expo on Saturday 23 October and found them very informative and entertaining. Hope he made it to the Sydney Opera House on Sunday.
Chris Paton Roadshow Victoria
I really enjoyed Chris Paton prestation at the Roadshow that was held in Bulleen. I felt it was a but out of the way as shown by such a small attendance. Maybe a more central location would have suited especially thoes who had to travel by public transport.
Also a cup of tea or coffee would have been nice during the break.
visiting Adelaide
Chris, it is a real pity that poor old Adelaide misses out on the Scottish Roadshow. Please put us on your itinerary next time.
re: visiting Adelaide
Pauline, Chris was only invited to the Sydney Expo. He is visiting relatives in Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane while in Australia, the reason he has meetings there.
Adelaide does kick off the national roadshow in November. There will be a talk there on ScotlandsPeople one of a choice of 18 talks - up to nine of which any one person can attend.
http://www.unlockthepast.com.au/events/history-genealogy-roadshow-australia-new-zealand/adelaide. Adelaide did have a 2 day expo in July, the only city (except Sydney) to have such an event this year.


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Back to All Events
Earlier Event: October 2DBSA I to We Tour: Seattle
Later Event: November 11DBSA I to We Tour: Akron
Melody regularly gives talks and leads workshops on a wide array of topics, including mental health, Islam, Iran, inclusion, writing, activism and more. As a mental health advocate and suicide survivor, she speaks about both struggling and thriving with mental illness. As an activist, she speaks out against Islamophobia, sexism, racism, homophobia, ablism, sanism, and other forms of discrimination. As an award-winning author, she regularly teaches writing workshops, gives readings, and appears at book signings. As an attorney, she speaks about improving mental health for lawyers and defeating stigma and discrimination within the legal profession (for law firms and CLE programs). See below for upcoming events, and to book a speaking engagement, contact Melody directly here.
Examples of speaking and workshop/seminar topics include (among others):
Islam in America / Muslim Americans / Jihad for Peace
Islam 101 + Cultural Sensitivity Training
Iranian-American Relations
Mental Health: Where the Personal Meets the Political: From Restraints to Recognition / From Adversity to Advocacy
Mental Health for Lawyers (including CLEs)
Inclusion / Diversity / Intersectionality
Disability Rights / Accessibility
Writing / Craft / Creative Nonfiction
Writing as Activism
How Rumi Can Change Your Life Too!


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The Greening of Kenya
Sacred Mountain
Not all the news from Africa is bad.
There's a place in Africa where ice lies directly on the equator. Twelve glaciers-all of them shrinking-follow striated ridges up the rocky flanks of Mount Kenya, which rises 5,119 meters (17,058 feet) into the East African sky. If you should visit from other parts of the world, look for a great solitary cone that bears a striking resemblance to two other mythic mountains, Mount Rainier and Mount Fuji, but is more than 2,000 feet higher than either of them. To the Kikuyu people who have lived around it for at least three centuries, Mount Kenya is the dwelling place of God.
Mount Kenya is also regarded as an extraordinary place by biologists, ethnoecologists, and development experts, who see this mountain as the epicenter of a critical experiment-the outcome of which could have important implications for the future of the continent. Mount Kenya is home to a rich array of biological wealth, including at least 882 plant species and a wide variety of wildlife-including elephants, black rhinoceroses, giant forest hogs, and highly threatened mountain bongos-that inhabit the surrounding forest lands. The region became a national forest reserve in 1932 in the midst of the country's colonial era, and portions of it were protected as a national park in 1949. In late 1997, the United Nations designated the Mount Kenya National Park and some of its surrounding forests a World Heritage Site in recognition of their extraordinary natural beauty and ecological importance.
This region is home not only to an abundance of nature, but also to a large number of people, many of whom live in poverty. People and nature have sometimes come into direct conflict in the area. In the early spring or late summer, bush elephants periodically emerge from the forest to raid farmers' crops-and have been known to wipe out a 10-acre farm in one night. Conversely, people seeking income through illegal activities such as logging, charcoal production, and marijuana harvesting have often set up operations in parklands, which can accelerate deforestation and increase the risk of forest fires.
But there is also growing recognition in the region that the future of the local people and that of their rich mountain ecosystem are inextricably intertwined. The experiment now under way seeks to replace destructive exploitation, whether by rampaging elephants or trespassing loggers, with a diverse economy in which the mountain's unique ecosystem provides key ecological services while the people learn a range of new skills aimed at protecting the ecosystem and producing new sources of income. With guidance from an initiative called Community Management of Protected Areas Conservation (COMPACT), Kenyans are engaged in new programs to provide fresh water to both people and crops, reforest degraded slopes, stop illegal logging, introduce more energy-efficient cooking stoves, provide new jobs in beekeeping or ecotourism, and keep elephants out of farmers' fields. COMPACT programs have also been established at five other World Heritage sites on four continents.
I had a chance to witness some of this renaissance when I traveled to Kenya last year, primarily to attend an annual meeting of the world's environment ministers-the Global Ministerial Environment Forum of the Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Just over a month earlier, Kenyans had peacefully elected a new president, overturning nearly four decades of one-party rule. That stunning political transformation generated widespread hope for significant improvements in both human and environmental welfare in the country. (See our interview with Wangari Maathai, Assistant Minister for Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife, on page 26.)
I had long been both an observer and a student of international environmental diplomacy, having been a member of Worldwatch Institute delegations to the June 1992 UN "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro and to the September 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. More recently, I had become something of a direct participant in this process as well, working as a consultant to UNEP.
Skeptics often wonder whether all of the rhetoric about the environment and sustainable development in these large UN gatherings adds up to any real change on the ground. It was partly with that nagging question in mind that, before leaving for Kenya, I made contact with Nancy Chege, a former colleague at Worldwatch who now works as the local coordinator for the aforementioned COMPACT initiative in the Mount Kenya region. Nancy invited me to come and observe.
More than half of all Kenyans live in poverty, according to the most recent estimates. Reducing this number is a high national and international priority, as reflected in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by nearly all of the world's heads of state at the UN General Assembly in the fall of 2000. These goals call for reducing by half the share of the world's people living in extreme poverty by 2015, reducing by half the number of people suffering from hunger or lacking access to clean drinking water; reducing infant mortality by two-thirds; and ensuring that all children are enrolled in primary school. The official Plan of Implementation agreed to at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 recognized a number of new targets as international goals, including significantly slowing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 and cutting by half the share of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015. Many observers wonder how realistic these goals are, and whether the poverty-reduction targets contained in the Millennium Development Goals are consistent with the more environmentally oriented targets affirmed in Johannesburg.
The efforts that Nancy Chege coordinates in the Mount Kenya region form just one component of the overall COMPACT program, which is also pursuing similar initiatives at Sian Ka'an in Mexico, Morne Trois Pitons in Dominica, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the Barrier Reef in Belize, and Puerto Princesa in the Philippines. The $6 million initiative is part of the Small Grants Programme of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the COMPACT initiative is jointly funded by the Washington, D.C.-based United Nations Foundation, which was created in 1997 to manage Ted Turner's $1 billion gift to the UN, and by GEF (a joint undertaking of the World Bank, UNDP, and UNEP set up in the early 1990s to channel funds from donor governments to projects in developing countries that contribute to global environmental protection).
In the mid-1990s, Nancy had helped me research a Worldwatch Paper I was writing on the role of the United Nations in environmental protection and sustainable development. Published not long after the Rio Earth Summit, the paper examined prospects for the numerous treaties and agreements that had been reached there, as well as for the multitude of international organizations given a role in carrying them out, including UNEP, UNDP, and the GEF. Nearly a decade later, international deliberations such as those at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development were increasingly concluding that what the world needed most was not new political agreements for environmental protection and sustainable development, but more concrete efforts to translate the rhetoric of sustainable development into on-the-ground reality.
With my official UNEP meetings over, I set off for the small town of Nanyuki to meet up with Nancy and see what I could learn about how this translation of rhetoric to reality was proceeding in the area where she worked. I saw that Mount Kenya was a towering presence in Nanyuki, which is a regular staging place for mountaineering expeditions. One of our first stops was at Nancy's small office in the middle of the bustling town.
On her wall I noticed a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) map of the broader region and the environmental conditions and challenges found there. Based on data from an aerial survey of the Mount Kenya forests conducted in 1999 by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) with support from UNEP, it showed widespread forest destruction linked with various illegal activities: charcoal production; logging of indigenous tree species such as camphor (Ocotea usambarensis), cedar (Juniperus procera), and wild olive (Olea europea); marijuana cultivation; and unauthorized agricultural settlements.
I learned that the information gleaned from the survey had generated a quick response from the Kenyan government, including the designation of parts of the region as a national reserve. This change in official status resulted in a shift in management of that area from the Forest Department to the Kenya Wildlife Service, which immediately launched a crackdown on illegal industries. Subsequent surveys show the logging of indigenous trees having declined by more than 90 percent since 1999, and the number of illegal charcoal kilns having fallen by 62 percent. In addition to providing the information needed for more vigorous enforcement, these survey and mapping exercises have provided critical input for people working to design the COMPACT projects and, by extension, for people who depend upon these projects for their livelihoods.
Later that day, we headed out of town and connected at a roadside refreshments kiosk with a Mr. Ngahu, a retired forest service official who was working on a project that is engaging primary school children in the restoration of local forests. Mr. Ngahu climbed into Nancy's jeep, and we headed up a bumpy dirt road through the Gathiuru Forest on the western side of Mount Kenya. He explained that the children are raising seedlings of native East African olive (Olea africana), East African pencil cedar (Juniperus procera), and other indigenous species, and planting them in degraded areas of the forest. Along the way, we visited Guara Primary, the school that Mr. Ngahu was working with, and were greeted warmly by the principal, who told us about the challenges he was facing owing to a large influx of new students. They were coming, he said, in response to a much-heralded pledge by the new Kenyan government to eliminate the school fees that had previously made even public primary school education unaffordable to many.
Continuing up the road, we were passed several times by people headed in the opposite direction on bicycles loaded with fuelwood, which supplies some 80 percent of the energy used in Kenya. We also passed agricultural settlements that are part of the controversial "Shamba" system, in which local people are granted permission to cultivate small plots of land for food in return for agreeing to plant tree seedlings. Unfortunately, the 1999 aerial survey had revealed that the system was in many cases being abused in ways that contributed to more deforestation rather than reforestation. Enforcement of the rules was being hampered by corruption in the Forest Department, to which the new government had responded by sending home some 800 officers pending interviews to establish whether they were implicated in the malfeasance.
The morning after my visit to Gathiuru Forest, we left Nanyuki and drove to the town of Meru, on the main ring road around Mount Kenya. We stopped along the way at Nkunga Sacred Crater Lake, in the Imenti Forest. In the local Meru language, Nkunga refers to a mythical seven-headed dragon that was said to inhabit the lake and to trap straying humans by biting their shadows and using its magical powers to drag them into the river and devour them. Nkunga Lake was treated as a sacred shrine as a result of the beast's presence, which meant that water could not be drawn from it, nor could firewood be collected from the surrounding woodlands.
In recent decades, devotion to the myth has declined-and so has the ecological health of the lake. One particular problem has been a fast-growing invasive grass (Leersia hexandra) that is covering most of the lake. To address this problem, one of Nancy's COMPACT projects is mobilizing local people to remove the weed with a hand-constructed wooden pulley system, and to turn the uprooted weed into marketable fertilizer. When their de-weeding task is completed, the local community will manage the lake as an ecotourism site featuring nature trails, picnic sites, bird-watching sites, rowboat facilities, and local mythological lore. The installation of a borehole is also planned, to provide the community with an alternative source of water that people will not have to descend steep slopes to fetch. This will not only stem erosion of the slopes but free up the women who formerly did the water-carrying to pursue other activities.
We continued our circumnavigation of Mount Kenya the following day, heading towards the town of Embu. Along the way, we visited several other COMPACT projects. At one of them, a coalition of groups is helping local farmers to establish beehives on the outskirts of the forest to generate income for environmentally friendly honey production. The farmers involved with the project have adopted the slogan "Trees for Bees," and are reportedly planting more trees both on their own farms and in the nearby forest, based on a new-found understanding that healthy vegetation results in more honey production and hence more income. The plan is for the local farmers to also work with the Forest Department and the Kenya Wildlife Service to monitor illegal activities in the forest, such as prohibited timber or marijuana harvesting. Other COMPACT projects in the Mount Kenya area include efforts to help local communities protect their crops from elephant raids by constructing a 14-kilometer-long protective solar-powered electric fence and installing wood-efficient cook-stoves at local schools in order to reduce fuelwood harvesting.
With our circumnavigation of the mountain now complete, Nancy and I headed back to UN headquarters at Gigiri, on the outskirts of Nairobi. There Nancy introduced me to Esther Mwangi, the Kenya Coordinator for UNDP-GEP's Small Grants Program, which oversees the Mount Kenya COMPACT projects. I also met Christian Lambrechts of UNEP, who was one of the forces behind the Mount Kenya aerial survey operations. We spoke of work still to be done in the Mount Kenya region and in other threatened areas, such as the Aberdare Mountains. I had wondered if progress on the ground was suffering from turf battles and other bureaucratic infighting, a common predicament in the development business. While these problems are not entirely absent, I learned that the Kenya Forest Working Group and the Mount Kenya Donor/Partner Forum it facilitates were serving as useful forums for coordinating among the various organizations working to safeguard Kenya's forests. Rather than tales of infighting, I mostly heard about mutual respect and collaboration across bureaucratic lines.
Meanwhile, I logged onto the Internet to check on the news from home, where ominous war clouds were gathering and Washington, D.C. was beginning to look like a military fortress in response to stepped-up concerns about terrorist threats. Over the next month, events at the United Nations Security Council in New York dominated headlines as the world moved steadily down the path that would lead to the launch of the Iraq War in mid-March. Although the world was deeply divided on the wisdom of that course, in Kenya I had seen promising signs that international cooperation was not only possible but already well under way on an altogether different UN pursuit-that of protecting the planet's natural systems and improving the quality of life of all of us who depend upon them.
Hilary French directs the Globalization and Governance Project at Worldwatch Institute.


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A Louisville man who was allegedly drunk when he fled from police and crashed into a motorcycle this summer is now charged with murder.
Nicholas W. "Nick" Snoddy appeared in Oldham circuit court on Friday shortly after a grand jury returned an indictment charging him with 10 crimes, including murder, DUI, wanton endangerment.
According to court documents, an Oldham County police officer witnessed Snoddy, 23, speeding on June 13. The officer attempted to stop him on U.S. 42 near La Grange.
Snoddy fled to Ky. 53, and the officer lost sight of his vehicle.
The officer called for additional officers to locate Snoddy, who reached speeds of more than 100 mph as he passed vehicles on Ky. 53.
Snoddy crashed head-on into a motorcycle driven by Westport resident Charley Klosterman near Old Sligo Road.
The impact of the crash tossed Klosterman from his bike. He was wearing a helmet and landed in the grass.
Police officers who had been chasing Snoddy stopped to aid Klosterman, as did several other drivers and a woman who lived nearby. But Snoddy continued to flee.
Emergency crews took Klosterman to University Hospital in Louisville, where he spent several weeks fighting for his life. He suffered a multitude of severe injuries, and doctors amputated a portion of his leg shortly after the crash.
His wife, Patty, created a website to update family and friends. In addition to the couple's three children and four grandchildren, Charley had 14 brothers and sisters.
Patty chronicled Charley's health as a rollercoaster of procedures, successes and setbacks. Nine weeks after his sunset motorcycle ride took a tragic turn, Klosterman died Aug. 18 at University Hospital. He was 65.
Snoddy's attorney, Steve Romines, cited the website when he appeared in Oldham circuit court on Friday, where Snoddy pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Romines told Judge Karen Conrad that he, Snoddy and Snoddy's parents monitored Klosterman's health via the website this summer.
When it became apparent that Klosterman might not recover from his injuries, Romines said he advised Snoddy to remain in Oldham County, rather than check-in to an alcohol and drug rehabilitation program out-of-state.
Following Snoddy's not guilty plea, Conrad discussed bond conditions with Romines and prosecutor Courtney Baxter.
Baxter requested a $500,000 full cash bond for Snoddy, while his attorney suggested a $1 million bond with surety, which allows 10 percent cash payment for release.
Baxter described Snoddy's alleged actions on June 13 as "egregious conduct." She said the sheer nature of his charges – allegedly fleeing police before and after the crash – illustrate the possibility of him being a flight risk.
Snoddy's blood-alcohol concentration registered as .21 – the legal limit in Kentucky is .08 – and he was driving on a suspended license as a result of a previous DUI arrest.
Shortly after his arrest in June, a district judge set bond for Snoddy at $50,000, and his parents paid 10 percent for his release.
Conrad said Friday she intended to increase bond from $50,000, although she needs time to review the indictment and Snoddy's interview with pretrial services.
Romines requested home incarceration for Snoddy, who is working full-time at an apartment complex in Louisville.
Snoddy left the Oldham County Jail on Monday morning after his parents posted his $150,000 full cash bond in Oldham district court.
His bond conditions prohibit driving, alcohol or illegal drug use and contact with victims or victims' families. Snoddy is charged with two counts wanton endangerment on behalf of two drivers – Austin Howley and Josh Smith – who police believe were put at substantial risk of serious injury or death as Snoddy fled.
Snoddy also faces wanton endangerment charges on behalf of two police officers that he fled, although the court did not prohibit contact with them as they are part of the investigation.
His charges include:
Snoddy's next court appearance is scheduled at 1 p.m. Oct. 18.
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Literature is ingrained in the history of New Orleans, and many authors have lived in and loved the city, both visitors and natives alike. You can enjoy a few different festivals celebrating this long lit history and current state of reading and writing, and one is the upcoming Words & Music Festival this week and weekend, Dec. 4th-8th. The event centers at Hotel Monteleone (214 Royal St), including the lobby and Carousel Bar upstairs in addition to rooms upstairs.
Both established and up-and-coming writers alike join together with other scholars, editors, publishers and performing artists to share their passions of the art of writing and reading. You'll find ticketed events to panel discussions, readings, writing sessions, manuscript critiques, book signings, music events and more. There's even a black tie award ceremony for writers who win the prestigious Faulkner-Wisdom Competition, a creative writing competition of previously unpublished work in categories such as narrative non-fiction, short story, essay and poetry, among others.
The 2013 lineup has many famous fiction authors, including Ron Rash, Tom Franklin and Moira Crone, in addition to many other eclectic national and international writers. Representing Latin American fiction is Horacio Castellanos Moya, who has written 11 novels and even won praise from the late Roberto Bolano, another famous and genius author.
Tom Carson is known for both his fiction and his work as GQ's film critic. Rodger Kamenetz is both a lauded Louisiana poet and a non-fiction writer featured on Oprah. As for locals, Christine Sneed and T. Geronimo Johnson both represent up-and-coming authors who have already garnered early praise for their novels, which partially feature New Orleans as a backdrop. You can find other writers on the lineup on the Writers Win blog.
The event is hosted by the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society, named for William Faulkner, who is a prestigious and important part of New Orleans' literary history. The Society not only celebrates the work of Faulkner, but it also promotes and supports writers in general, including multicultural members and project goals and men and women of all ages.
Visiting writers should not miss this event. Envelop yourself in history and contemporary movements in the literary world by attending the Words & Music Festival this year.


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Peter Harrison provides an account of the religious foundations of scientific knowledge. He shows how the approaches to the study of nature that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were directly informed by theological discussions about the Fall of Man and the extent to which the mind and the senses had been damaged by that primeval event. Scientific methods, he suggests, were originally devised as techniques for ameliorating the cognitive damage wrought by human sin. At its inception, modern science was conceptualized as a means of recapturing the knowledge of nature that Adam had once possessed. Contrary to a widespread view that sees science emerging in conflict with religion, Harrison argues that theological considerations were of vital importance in the framing of the scientific method.
'This is a brilliantly written and persuasively argued book, which will be required reading for anybody interested in the influence of religion on early modern scientific method and epistemology.' -David C. Lindberg, University of Wisconsin
'This book is a model of what probing intelligence, historical curiosity and impeccable scholarship can accomplish.' --Matthew Day, Church History
'…another outstanding study in the history of the relationship between science and religion.' --Lydia Jaeger, Science and Christian Belief
'I have learned much and have been stimulated to learn more about an area that the author has succeeded, with immense learning and beautiful prose, in opening up to the nonscientist or historian of science.' --Mark Elliott, Review of Biblical Literature
'In this extraordinary book, Peter Harrison seeks to show how the biblical account of the Fall of Adam affected the status and pursuit of knowledge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries…. Harrison has produced a brilliant and important scholarly work. He has taken a theme to which few have paid much attention, and shows its significance in striking detail.' --Edward Grant, Metascience
'That pessimistic, otherworldly Protestant theology helped to produce optimistic modern science is the major thesis masterfully defended in this well-wrought, meticulously documented book.' --Kalman P. Bland, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
'Peter Harrison is a foremost writer on the historical foundations of the relationship between science and religion. Along with two other monographs, and a host of articles, this work is of immense value to anyone who intends to delve beneath our ideological assumptions about the rise of science. The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science is erudite, very readable, and a formidable challenge to widely held scholarship in its field.' --James Lancaster, Symposia
'… remarkable and compelling... This book extends the historical canvas of Harrison's earlier The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science and does so with the absorbing historical insight that characterizes that earlier volume.' --Michael Fuller, The Expository Times
'Peter Harrison has written a fascinating and profound work which makes an important contribution to our understanding of the complex theological context which gave rise to modern science and its methods—and indeed to modernity itself.' --Charlotte Methuen, Journal of Theological Studies
'Harrison develops another delightfully counter-intuitive argument in this new book…. a compelling example of how religion interacted with the study of nature in the seventeenth century – a frequently fruitful relationship that helped lead to the development of modern science in often unexpected ways.' --Stephen D. Snobelen, Journal of Ecclesiastical History
'This is an exciting book. Its argumentation is very convincing and gives a new view of the role of religion in the development of natural sciences. The book links the disciplines of theology, philosophy, history, and physics in a fascinating way. It is the result of thorough research in the writings of many scientists in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. But Harrison is able to present this result in a smooth style, sometimes almost as a novel.' --Barend Kamphuis, Journal of Reformed Theology
'… this is one of the most insightful, carefully researched, tightly argued and helpful contributions on the relationship between the development of scientific knowledge and the influence of religion on that development that I have read.' --Dion Forster, Studia Historiae Ecclesiastica.


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I'm not a newlywed, but I sure do like to eat like one.
That is, ever since I discovered the Chocolate Mudslide Cookie recipe in the newly released book The Newlywed Kitchen: Delicious Meals for Couples Cooking Together by CakeSpy buddy Lorna Yee, Ali Basye, and photographed by Kathryn Barnard.
Now, I hear rumors that the savory recipes are good, and I can attest that the stories which accompany the recipes are sweet and engaging.
But what made me fall in love, so to speak, was the aforementioned Chocolate Mudslide Cookie. Comprised basically of chocolate on chocolate, with a little flour and butter thrown in, these cookies seemed not only easy to make, but sort of like a one-way ticket to pleasuretown.
Happily, the recipe lived up to all expectations, yielding a soft, rich, cookie which is absolutely redolent with chocolate and which is very nearly perfect. But I've found one way to make it even better: save a tiny bit of that warm chocolate mixture from step 2 (or better yet, make a little extra) and sandwich two of the cookies together with that. Now that's what I call sweet wedded bliss.
Chocolate Mudslide Cookies
Lightly adapted from The Newlywed Kitchen
Makes about 24 cookies
- 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped coarsely
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons cocoa powder (I used Hershey's Special Dark)
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
(Note: Original recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups walnuts, roughly chopped. I have nothing against walnuts but realized that I had none once I'd already started baking, and went without. They tasted fine!)
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- In a microwave safe bowl, melt the chopped chocolate with the sugar and butter. Microwave in 20 second intervals, until about 80 percent of the chocolate is melted. Stir the mixture, and the rest should melt from the heat of the melted chocolate. Let cool to room temperature while you do the following steps.
- In a small bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder. Stir to combine.
- In a large bowl, lightly beat the eggs with the vanilla. Slowly pour the microwaved mixture into the eggs in three additions, stirring between each addition. Stir the flour mixture into the chocolate batter until combined, then stir in the walnuts (if you're using them) and chocolate chips.
- On two baking sheets lined with parchment paper, drop heaping tablespoons of the cookie dough, leaving room for the cookies to spread (about 8 cookies per sheet). Use only the middle or upper rack for these cookies, as they may burn on the lower rack.
- Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes. They will be slightly soft when they come out of the oven, but will become more firm as they cool. If they last that long.
P.S. Interested in more of Lorna's recipes? Well, here's a little heads up: save the date for June 6, when we'll be having a Red Velvet Cake tasting at CakeSpy Shop! More details to come!


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Louise Shumaker, director of disability services at Hope, received the "Ability Award" from the Disability Network/Lakeshore on Tuesday, Oct. 23.
The award honors the work of those in the community who persist in the vision of creating communities without barriers for people with disabilities. The presentation, which included a resolution of appreciation from the Michigan Legislature and Governor Rick Snyder, took place during the network's Ability Award Reception and Ceremony, held at The Baker Lofts.
Shumaker has made a career of helping others with disabilities. She has been a member of the Hope staff since 1987, the same year that she graduated from the college with a psychology-sociology composite major.
The presentation celebrated her pioneering service at the college on behalf of people with disabilities, noting that establishment of her position at Hope predated the creation of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act by three years.
The college's office of disability services offers assistance to all students with disabilities both in the classroom and in day-to-day life on campus, seeking to equip them with skills which will promote independent living after they leave Hope and pursue careers anywhere in the world. Shumaker has mentored more than 500 students with disabilities during her 25 years at Hope. As one reflection of her dedication, following the evening awards event she was returning to campus for a weekly support meeting with a group of students.
Among other activities at the college, she has coordinated the annual Disability Awareness Week since initiating the event in 1988. Held during the spring semester, the week features a variety of activities designed to educate about disabilities and accessibility, from invited speakers, to descriptive-video versions of popular films, to the opportunity to participate in disability simulations.
Terry DeYoung, who presented Shumaker for the award, noted that the themes in her life of personal and professional development, of advocating for oneself and others, of education and promoting accessibility, parallel her own life experience. Born legally blind, she was in her 30s and a married mother of two when she enrolled at Hope part-time in 1980. It was following her contributions as an intern in the student development office, during which her responsibilities included work on behalf of students with disabilities, that the college invited her to create a more formal program and she joined the staff. In addition to her undergraduate degree from Hope, she holds a master's in interpersonal and family communication from Western Michigan University.
Beyond her work at the college, she has been active in working on behalf of those with disabilities at the local and state level as well. Among other service, she is a past president of the Michigan Commission on Handicapper Higher Education.
In 1995, Shumaker received the "State Advocate of the Year" award presented by the Statewide Independent Living Council, the Michigan Commission on Disability Concerns and the Michigan Association of Centers for Independent Living. In 1993, she received the "Michigan State Victory Award" presented by Governor John Engler as part of the national Victory Awards sponsored by the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, D.C. In 1994, at the invitation of the graduating class, she delivered the college's Commencement address.


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Evelin Kasikov
lives/works in London, U.K.
Evelin Kasikov created a project for her MA at St. Martins in London that is thrilling to anyone who loves graphic design and textiles as much as I do.
I had a difficult time deciding what to show you,
so here are random selections:
all photos courtesy Evelyn Kasikov
I am intrigued and admit full disclosure now that I am a bit jealous that she transformed the printing process into handmade cross-stitch embroidery. Bravo Evelin!
I urge you to spend time (run don't walk!) looking at her projects that include posters, sketchbooks, commissions and graphic design work. Evelin is generous with her images and shows many views of her work with nice juicy detail.
Please rush over to her site to explore here.