text:
The issues have to play out. The discussions have to be had, the grass roots have to weigh in, and through all of that, you'll have personalities who will emerge. —Jon Huntsman Jr.
SALT LAKE CITY — Former presidential candidate and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Monday he wants to see what happens over the next year before deciding whether to run again for the White House.
"Politics has always been a healthy bit of serendipity. It's really hard to forecast where things go and how events play out. We don't have any plans at this point," Huntsman said. "We'll see how the year plays out."
For now, Huntsman said, his plans are to spend more time in Utah. He owns a condo in downtown's City Creek development, though he and his family currently live in Washington, D.C.
There has been speculation Huntsman would make another bid for the presidency in 2016, although Norm Ornstein, a political scholar at a conservative national think tank, recently suggested 2020 might be his best shot.
Huntsman, who was in Utah to attend the inauguration of his former lieutenant governor, Gov. Gary Herbert, said he's committed to working within the GOP to improve its chances of winning the presidency.
"If the long haul is a commitment to doing what's right for the country, and if there is a role for a single voice to play in maybe reshaping my party, which desperately needs to be retooled, then we're up for that," he said. "But I don't know what shape or form that's going to take. There's a lot of work to be done."
Over the next year, Huntsman said, he will be talking about the issues he hopes will help broaden the GOP's appeal to voters, including immigration, education and competitiveness, all of which he championed as governor.
The Republican Party, Huntsman said, "must stand for something and must have a long-term vision that brings people together of all backgrounds, of all places. We have just failed to do that in the last few election cycles."
Huntsman dropped out of the presidential race in January 2012 after a disappointing third-place finish in the New Hampshire primary. He endorsed the party's eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, who failed to stop President Barack Obama from being re-elected.
Asked whether the GOP is ready to listen to what he has to say, particularly because he is often seen as more moderate, Huntsman said the party is currently divided.
"It's hard to know what the party is," he said. "The party right now looks a little bit like Yugoslavia after the fall of communism. You've got six or seven independent entities out there that are all trying to figure out what the future looks like."
It will be some time before the party decides whose vision to follow, Huntsman said.
"The issues have to play out," he said. "The discussions have to be had, the grass roots have to weigh in, and through all of that, you'll have personalities who will emerge."
Huntsman said he's not thinking of himself as the choice to fill that role but said he'll be an active participant in the process. Next week, Huntsman and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., will be introduced as the new leaders of No Labels, a national organization that promotes bipartisanship.
Huntsman stepped down as governor in 2009 to become U.S. ambassador to China under Obama. He had been rumored to be a possible pick for secretary of state, but the president has nominated Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
That chapter of his life, serving in the Democratic administration, is over, he said. Still, said Huntsman, the subject of an interview Sunday with the New York Times Magazine, "that doesn't stop the chatter."
E-mail: [email protected], Twitter: dnewspolitics


text:
How about IE performance? Too bad to even mention?
It's still running.
Laugh all you want but I have had it running on IE 8 (Windows 7 64 bit) for the past 5 minutes and it is still stuck at the first stage. So I think we have a legitimate reason why Internet Explorer was not included...
Also got a warning that "A script on this page is causing your web browser to run slowly."...
IE7 (on WinXP 32 bit) stops at the first test because of a script failure. Are you sure it still ran?
On my somewhat elderly x86_64 Linux system
If you're suitably masochistic:
http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page [tatanka.com.br]
How about IE performance? Too bad to even mention?
I started it on the latest IE 9 Preview, but it seems like it's taking at least around 3-4 times as long time to finish as Chrome or Firefox, so I aborted it.
The scary bit is that the world is quickly moving in a direction where serious desktop applications will be written in... Javascript.
So much for Java,
The web browser is the new platform.
It feels like going back 20 years in time.
The web browser is the new platform.
It feels like going back 20 years in time.
Except that you now need what was then a supercomputer just to run Hello, world.
Well, there is a difference this time. Last time (1995-2000) they tried to make javascript run on the server side. This is nonsense.
Today, it's just the client getting thicker. Which is fine in my view, and JavaScript fit the bill.
If you hadn't noticed, every synthetic benchmark released from a browser vendor favoured their engine, at time of release. At least Google had balls to call it v8bench.
While I believe all benchmarks (and non-comprehensive ACID tests) to be 3dmark-style pissing contests where they encourage developers to fast-path specific used functions, I have more confidence in Mozilla producing another (Dromaeo also tried to have a more realistic workflow).
While I believe all benchmarks (and non-comprehensive ACID tests) to be 3dmark-style pissing contests
I want a benchmark that shows a large Slashdot article loading over 3G (at -1, no Javascript). For some reason it still completely freezes Firefox.
Sadly, it's the only browser out there with Noscript and Adblock.
Its not like only MS and Mozilla as browser vendor released their own benchmark in with their product is doing good.
Besides, whats so bad about it? Ain't it obvious they are gonna include in their benchmarks stuff that they feel is important and as a consequence - made it good during browser development?
It just shows that other browsers than FF lack in some areas, with might - or might not - be important.
Attacking Mozilla for doing the same thing every other major browser maker does (not that your post was, but other posters have) is silly.
One of Mozilla's longstanding issues with some of the other benchmarks is that they test toy problems that take longer to set up than to run. Yes, that favors browsers with JS engines that set up for execution quickly, and that portion of the engine is important. It doesn't show the real speedups for intensive applications in the browser, though. Optimizing the slow parts is the priority of most people right now, and getting the application set up a little faster at the beginning isn't as big a deal unless you have a lot of small scripts in one page.
An earlier blog post by Sayre [mozilla.com] and some of the comments to it display some of the issues.
Why don't they just grab the (say) 200 most visited sites on the internet, copy the JavaScript and use that to benchmark instead?
Because the amount of time it takes to run the javascript on the top sites is pretty small (which is what the IE team was talking about around IE8's release). Performance on those sites mostly doesn't depend on whether your JS engine is the one in Chrome dev or the one in IE7. I only say "mostly" because I wouldn't be surprised if gmail is in the top 200.
If you're going to worry specifically about JS performance (which is an assumption; the IE team is still saying that this focus is a mistake and to some extent they're right), you want to be benchmarking things that are gated on JS performance. That means identifying t the things that are slow with current JS engines and that people would like to be doing but can't because of said slowness, whatever those things are, and benchmarking those.
Lies, damned lies and benchmarks.
Have you considered that it may well be the other way around?
If Mozilla, Google, MS, Apple or whoever truly believe that those particular aspects of a browser are the most important, doesn't it make sense that they would optimize their browsers for those aspects? I think it makes sense that they would write tests for the exact same aspects that they have been optimizing their browsers for, -because- they believe these are the key aspects.
Lacking an objective measure, all you can do right now is decide with whom you agree the most and probably use their browser or another browser that ranks well on their test - if these benchmarks are a critical decision factor for you.
Would be funny is someone releases a benchmark which shows that their software is less capable than others.
I use Firefox exclusively on my laptop. Speed is not its strong point. The main reason that I use FF is for a few add-ons that I now find necessary (mostly Vimperator to get vi keybindings). Speed is a reasonable trade off for me to have such a customizable browser, and I always assumed that the speed loss may have been due to the XUL stuff.
I think that FF being slow is common knowledge these days. I think that Mozilla is trying to show that the reason their browser is slower on some (most) things is becaus
other benchmarks were released by Apple (sunspider) and Google (v8) (and the last one is actually from Mozilla)
I believe Mozilla is actually always striving for the best of the community unlike the 2 big giants, they've always proved to do so. (afaik!)
Sunspider shows Safari as fastest, V8 Chrome as fastest (at least last I checked), and the Mozilla bench was a more mixed result.
but anyway back to the point, why would you believe Google and Apple and not Mozilla?
The charitable way to look at it is that each vendor writes a benchmark for the aspects of the browser which they think are most important, and those aspects are also obviously what they've put the most development emphasis on since they're regarded as the most important.
If you write a benchmark against your top development priorities and a rival eats your lunch despite having a different set of development priorities, you're probably not a top-tier vendor.
Well... Mozilla _has_ concentrated on low RAM usage in the past. The actual memory usage of Gecko is significantly lower than its competitors if you load some pages and measure it.
At this point, they're actually trading off space for performance (e.g. making some core objects slightly bigger to improve certain performance characteristics).
Well... Mozilla _has_ concentrated on low RAM usage in the past. The actual memory usage of Gecko is significantly lower than its competitors if you load some pages and measure it.
Not that I want to complain but comparing memory usage for Firefox and Opera on my work laptop (running Windows Vista Business 64-bit, C2D) and Firefox and Safari 5 on my home system (fully patched OS X, Core i7) I have to say that Firefox is disappointing when it comes to memory usage. Compared to Opera it's a resource hog on my work laptop, if I start Opera and Firefox at the same time and use Opera over the day with only some minor Firefox usage it will still use 50% more RAM than Opera at the end of the
Interesting. One question. Is this a Firefox profile with extensions installed? If so, which ones? Whenever I've looked over here (Linux and Mac), recent Firefox has used less memory than recent Opera....
Well, the memory usage definitely gets worse if I have Web Developer, Firebug, Screengrab and YSlow installed. But even without these add-ons it still feels like memory usage could be lowered, if performance reflected the amount of RAM being used then I wouldn't mind it most of the time but when the browser as a whole still feels sluggish compared to Safari, Opera and Chrome it kind of annoys me.
It is mostly a general feeling of sluggishness compared to Safari (on OS X) and high memory use compared to Opera (on Windows). As an example, I had to restart it earlier today after it topped 1 GiB of RAM, since then I've had 3-4 tabs open, all containing internal web service function listings and current memory usage for firefox.exe is supposedly just short of 300 MiB (though this is with Web Developer, Firebug, YSlow, Adblock+ and Screengrab installed). As a comparison, my current Opera session has been
For this particular Slashdot page right now, with both browsers opened fresh for it, Firefox 4.0 beta 6 uses 23 megabytes less resident memory than Chrome 5.0.375.125 does. It also uses about 1800 megabytes less virtual mapped memory, not that that matters nearly as much, but it's a big number in difference.
Epiphany 2.30.2 uses 11 megabytes less residential still, but about as much virtual as Chrome.
Galeon 2.0.7 uses about the same residential memory as Firefox and about twice as much virtual.
Midori 0.2.6 uses 5 megabytes less residential than Firefox, and about 1850 megabytes more virtual.
Arora 0.10.2 uses about twice as much residential memory as Firefox, and about twice as much virtual.
Dillo only needs 11 megabytes to render the page, but that doesn't have JavaScript and only shows a handful of comments without being able to get more.
Fennec 1.0 uses about the same memory footprint as Firefox 4.0 Beta 6, despite being the small-device Mozilla browser.
What is your exact complaint about Firefox's memory use? Are you still experiencing the huge memory leakage and growth from the 2.0 series?
What is your exact complaint about Firefox's memory use? Are you still experiencing the huge memory leakage and growth from the 2.0 series?
What I want is low RAM usage
Ok, so you want a lighter, leaner browser...
and more features/plugins.
And at the same time more feature-rich.
Wait, what?
It's gotta be one of your extensions. I run Firefox non-stop for a week at work and rarely close it during that week. I have noticed no leaks.
This is testing, debugging and running various web pages at work developed by some less than stellar programmers (and some very competent ones too.) I frequent Slashdot and a few other places around the web for reference material as well. I couldn't tell you how many tabs I open and close on a weekly basis.
I've got 8Gb, why does Firefox still constantly swap to disk?
If I open a bunch of pages RAM usage says (eg.) "about 500Mb" for firefox.exe but the pagefile-delta column constantly says "I'm thrashing!" and the browser is almost unusable. Wait ten seconds for each mouse click to do something.
As made popular in the Pirates of the Caribbean films? Fortunately theres plenty of prior art on this legendary sea monster, so they can't sue you.
Or the original Clash of the Titans years before Johnny Depp was on 21 Jumpstreet? Or in 1870 when Verne mentioned it? Or in 1830 when Tennyson wrote of it?
It's also an actual myth, many of which are feature in the Titan films and in Pirates of the Carribean films, too. I don't think they need to worry about a trademark over an old Norse fishing legend.
Google wins in their test [googlecode.com]! (that curiously heavily exploit recursion and other good parts of the V8 engine)
Microsoft wins in their tests [microsoft.com]! (that curiously heavily test only DirectX acceleration)
You forgot the part about Apple winning in their test (sunspider), and the curious cache of the values of the sin() function in their JS engine that just happens to be the right size for that test.
Fundamentally, browser makers optimize their engine for what they consider important. They also put the things they consider important into benchmarks. The result is somewhat predictable.
One other thing, by the way: I fully expect that on Kraken shipping Chrome and Opera are faster than Firefox 3.6.
One other thing, by the way: I fully expect that on Kraken shipping Chrome and Opera are faster than Firefox 3.6.
Firefox 3.6 is pretty sluggish compared to the latest 4.0 betas, and I beleive that b6 will have a lot more JS optimisation enabled.
So yeah, I'd expect FF 3.6 to be the slowest of the bunch. Excluding IE of course, which is in a whole different league of slow.
Actually, there are probably several empty leagues between FF/Chrome/Safari/Opera and IE
> So yeah, I'd expect FF 3.6 to be the slowest of the bunch.
Right. Which is consistent with other JS tests, so no mysteries or benchmark-skewing by Mozilla needed there...
> Actually, there are probably several empty leagues between FF/Chrome/Safari/Opera and IE
That may or may not be the case with the IE9 betas, depending on which benchmarks you use. Though there's some weirdness; see http://blog.mozilla.com/rob-sayre/2010/09/09/js-benchmarks-closing-in/ [mozilla.com] the paragraph starting "One last issue that
Actually FF4 nightlies beat IE9 in many of the IE9 testdrive tests. FF4 has the same Direct2D, Direct Write, and DirectX 9 hardware acceleration that IE9 does but FF4's javascript engine is better which gives it better FPS in those tests. FF4's javascript engine is a lot faster and there's still lots of room for improvement. FF4 Beta 7 will have the new javascript engine but it's already been merged to the nightly trunk branch so you can try it now if you want. Firefox had hardware acceleration first (in ni
We believe that the benchmarks used in Kraken are better in terms of reflecting realistic workloads
Or just better in terms of reflecting where their product is strongest?
Isn't it just a little bit suspicious when the browser people release a benchmark that scores their own browser as the fastest? Intel's benchmark in 2002 [pcworld.com] was known to have emphasized performance traits specific to Intel chips.
My browser's performance has always been "good enough". Can we talk about ergonomy, reliability, compatibility, please ?
compare http://bit.ly/bFQ17C [bit.ly]
Meanwhile, when I actually use my web browser in the real world, Chrome seems much faster than Firefox. So what do I need any kind of synthetic benchmark to tell me what I already know? I'll find out who's faster when they release a non-beta. If performance matters that much to my experience, I may switch, but whoever I use better support the types of plug-ins that I want. Chrome is just about there. It's nice to see rapid innovation and competition in the browser again.
"Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context."

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The Chicago Bulls had the entire All-Star break to ponder their two-game losing streak, which they will try to halt Tuesday night when they visit the New Orleans Hornets.
The Bulls lost at home to the San Antonio Spurs and in Boston to the Celtics before the break. Most of the Bulls took time to relax and heal up, but two Chicago players had dates in Houston.
Luol Deng and Joakim Noah played in the All-Star game and both availed themselves nicely. Deng, who participated in his second All-Star game, netted 10 points in 17 minutes and Noah had eight points and 10 rebounds in his first appearance.
"I felt I might as well go out there and just give it everything I've got," said Noah. "I had a lot of fun. I haven't slept in three days. That's for real."
Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau can't be too enthused about that last part. Things aren't easy for Chicago after the break. After Tuesday night, the Bulls host the Miami Heat on Thursday, visit the Charlotte Bobcats on Friday, then head to Oklahoma City to play the Thunder on Sunday.
The Bulls begin the final stretch 1 1/2 games behind the Indiana Pacers in the Central Division. They should receive a huge boost when former MVP Derrick Rose returns, although, according to Rose, that's not that close to happening.
The Hornets were playing good ball before the break. They won four of their last five and have four of their first five after the All-Star Game in their building.
New Orleans toppled Phoenix and Portland at home and Detroit and Atlanta on the road in the last two weeks. Eric Gordon missed two games in a row before the break with a sprained right hand, but he should be available Tuesday night.
First overall pick Anthony Davis has been impressive in his rookie season, averaging 12.5 ppg, 7.5 rpg and 1.87 bpg. He was on the winning Team Chuck squad at the Rising Stars Challenge and had 11 points.
"Next time I'm here, hopefully next year, hopefully can't wait to play in the All-Star Game on Sunday," Davis said.
Ryan Anderson, the league's leader in 3-pointers made, finished third in the 3-Point Contest.
The Hornets won this season's only matchup with the Bulls, an 89-82 victory on Nov. 3 in Chicago. The Bulls had won eight straight before that setback, but are unbeaten in the last four trips to the Big Easy.


text:
Interested? Need more info?
Email us any questions you have to email@example.com, or to talk/text about our snakes call our sales team (714) 900-1603 direct for more information.
Corn Snakes make some of the best starter pets out on the market! With there readiness to accept frozen thawed and there docile nature, there's few reptiles your better starting off with! Not only are these animals great starter reptiles but they have personalities that will interest both new and veteran keepers alike! Corn snakes also have a lot of 'paint jobs' or mutations that are relatively affordable when compared to many of the Python mutations!


text:
From Gerris
GfsSource is used to associate a source term to a variable.
The syntax in parameter files is:
[ GfsSourceScalar ] [ GfsFunction ]
The dimensions of the GfsFunction are the dimensions of the variable per unit time (except when the variable is the pressure "P", see next).
When GfsSource is used for the pressure "P" used by the GfsSimulation solver, the source term is a "volume source" (or sink) S such that:
- ∇.u = S
- Rayleigh-Taylor instability
- Boussinesq flow generated by a heated cylinder
- Collapse of a column of grains
- Air-water flow around a Series 60 cargo ship
- Forced isotropic turbulence in a triply-periodic box
- Flow created by a cylindrical volume source
- Boundary layer on a rotating disk
- Poiseuille flow
- Bagnold flow of a granular material
- Poiseuille flow with metric
- Poiseuille flow with multilayer Saint-Venant
- Hydrostatic balance with solid boundaries and viscosity
- Hydrostatic balance with quadratic pressure profile
Source {} V -9.81
Source V T
Source V -1
Source U (x > -0.375 ? 0 : 10.*(FROUDE - U))
Source U 0.1*(U - Ubar)
Source V 0.1*(V - Vbar)
Source W 0.1*(W - Wbar)
Source P F
Source V W*W/y
Source U 1
Source V 1
Source V -cos(ALPHA)
Source U sin(ALPHA)
Source U 1
Source V 1
Source U A*P/NL
Source V -1
Source V -rho


text:
This doesn't happen very often, but I'm going to come right out and say it. Nick Saban is right. It is unfair that the loser of today's SEC Championship will be relegated to a non-BCS bowl game.
This doesn't happen very often, but I'm going to come right out and say it.
Nick Saban is right. It is unfair that the loser of today's SEC Championship will be relegated to a non-BCS bowl game.
In case you're not an SEC fan, No. 2 Alabama and No. 3 Georgia face off in Atlanta tonight for the right to face No. 1 Notre Dame in the BCS Championship.
The SEC Championship winner has traditionally gone to the Sugar Bowl, unless it gets selected for the BCS title game. Usually, the two teams that play for the SEC title aren't ranked as highly as the Crimson Tide and Bulldogs are currently, meaning whoever loses that game has no right to complain they don't get a BCS bowl prize just for showing up.
That's not the case this year, as Saban has pointed out. This year, the loser between the Tide and Bulldogs likely will fall out of the BCS bowl picture entirely because Florida is sitting at No. 4 and will leapfrog whoever loses.
"It's not really a great scenario," Saban said Sunday. "You play your way into the (SEC) championship game, which means you're the best team in your division. … It doesn't seem quite right, but it is what it is. I don't really know what me commenting about it is going to do to change it. But I don't feel good about it."
That makes two of us, Nick.
Now, I'm not saying the Gators aren't qualified to go to a BCS bowl. They are more than qualified. But a loss in the conference title game shouldn't eliminate Georgia or Alabama from the most lucrative bowl games.
It won't happen, but I'd like to see the loser of the SEC title game play Florida in the Sugar Bowl. Can you imagine Florida-Georgia II in the Big Easy? Forget about the world's largest cocktail party. This would be the world's largest party. EVER.
Or how about Muschamp vs. Saban Part II? Muschamp has already avenged last year's loss to LSU and Florida State. Could he make his former boss the next victim?
Alas, we'll never know.
This is just another reason why the BCS is a failure. I can easily accept Georgia or Alabama losing and falling out of the upcoming playoffs because they aren't ranked high enough. It's hard to accept that those teams won their division and will have to give up a spot in the Sugar Bowl to a team that didn't even make the conference title game.
Nick was right. The system once again has got it all wrong. But if you're a Gators fan, it's all right.
On to the picks.
Speaking of just plain wrong. Georgia Tech might play in a BCS bowl if it beats FSU in the ACC title game. The Seminoles will make it right. FSU 38, Tech 13.
South Florida's miserable season is finally coming to an end. They'll get a chance to end on a positive note against Pittsburgh. I don't see it. Pitt 24-20.
Central Florida gets a rematch with Tulsa for the C-USA title. Tulsa will make it 2-0 against UCF — 28-23.
Georgia and Alabama meet in the SEC championship. Winner gets Notre Dame for the national title. Loser looks like it'll get a mouthful of Chick-fil-A. Sorry Bulldogs fans, looks like you'll be staying in state the rest of the year. Alabama 31, Georgia 21.


text:
Seniors key to El Paso-Gridley's success
Two years ago, after defeating El Paso-Gridley in the sectional final at Paxton, Bloomington Central Catholic head coach Deb Coffman was asked if she saw similarities in the budding Titans and her Saints at that same stage.
Coffman acknowledged some similarities at the time. She also had a little more insight on the EPG girls than most others. Her niece was a member of that team in 2010.
Chelsea Kessinger is now a senior and one of the leaders of the Titans who will bring a 29-1 record into tonight's semifinal contest against Champaign's St. Thomas More. Tip off is set for 8 p.m.
"Growing up watching Aunt Deb and her teams play, I feel we've seen the experience and know what to work for," Kessinger said Thursday after a shoot-around at Redbird Arena.
Kessinger is one four seniors who have been key to helping bring along a team that had never won a sectional title before this season. The other three are Jenna Souhrada, Mattie Buchanan and Darian DeVary.
Central Catholic's teams that won state in 2010 and finished second in 2011 grew up together in Coffman's system. Whether the Titans win it all or settle for fourth place, one key attribute is evident between EPG now and BCC then — the upperclassmen helped bring along the underclassmen.
That is how it has worked for the Titans. Each senior has a strength that has helped the team to a 29-1 record. All can provide a scoring punch while also doing the dirty work either inside or on defense.
The headlines and stat sheet have juniors Rebekah Ehresman, an all-state guard, and Codee Schlipf on top most of the time, but it is the play of the seniors that have been picked up by the underclassmen who are seeing how to accept their roles.
Success isn't really new for Kessinger and Souhrada. Although neither two have state finals experience, directly. Both have been close to programs that have had success — Kessinger with her connection to the BCC program, and Souhrada with EPG's football program.
Souhrada's father was a successful head coach for the Titans, and the El Paso Comets before the merger. The Comets took second at state in 2002 when Jenna was just a kid.
"It feels good, I've been there, going to a state-championship game before," Souhrada said. "But I think the community really helps. Everyone in the community has been so great and so encouraging. They've decorated the town and it's good for our confidence."
An added edge for the Titans is being so close — not only to Redbird, but to each other, as well.
"I see us as more of a family that works together," Kessinger said. "All the way from the freshmen to the seniors, we love each and we worked together perfectly."
Souhrada added, "The best part about us is we truly are a family; we do everything together, we're like sisters. Graduating will be like leaving my sisters behind."
The beat will go on for El Paso-Gridley after this weekend. What Kessinger, Souhrada, Buchanan and DeVary can look back on after this season is the role they played in developing one of the state's best programs. For them, they've already won — and did so in style.


text:
The Finnish Girl is an absorbing tale of loss, regrets, and secrets that highlights the little known history of Finns in Wisconsin. The novel opens in 1983 on a farm in far northern Wisconsin as fourteen year old Danny discovers that his mother Lempi has committed suicide. The story then backtracks to Milwaukee in 1967 when Lempi is thirty-four years old and working at fictional Bremen College. Her mentor, Pauline, from her hometown of Clover helped her get a job there.
Agnesian HealthCare's monthly domestic violence awareness program, Shine On Sessions, will review the dynamics of a violent relationship in the program, Teen Dating Violence, at 6 p.m. Monday, September 21, at Fond du Lac Public Library. The program is free; no registration required.
The overview, facilitated by Amy Rodriguez, Agnesian HealthCare's Domestic Violence Program prevention educator, will cover the warning signs of a violent relationship.
The Fond du Lac Public Library's popular Storytimes programs resume on September 15.
All Storytime programs are drop-ins (no registration required) full of age-appropriate fun stories, songs and activities. Programs change weekly. Adults are encouraged to stay with their children; all children 5 and younger must be accompanied by an adult.
Since the earliest days of railroading, Fond du Lac has been a hub. In her program, Following the Train Tracks, at 6 p.m. Thursday, September 17, local historian Tracy Reinhardt will share stories and photos from Fond du Lac's early days of railroading, including depots and famous wrecks.
The Clean Waters Project and Lake Winnebago Quality Improvement Association will present Agricultural Efforts for Healthy Waters at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, September 30, at the Fond du Lac Public Library.
The title may sound like a typical beach read, but Summer Secrets by Jane Green is a rich, well developed story about how alcohol and its related disease and addiction can impact generations of a family across an ocean and on two continents. Anyone reading this book will relate to something as it deals with the heart and soul of society and real life issues. It is a sensitive and honest account and the author has made it as true as anyone could make it.
The Cherry Harvest by Lucy Sanna is historical fiction set in 1944 in Door County. Thomas and Charlotte have a farm and cherry orchard. Son Ben is fighting in Italy, and daughter Kate is looking forward to going to the University of Wisconsin. The family is struggling with rationing and with finding people to help with the upcoming cherry harvest. Charlotte's life is all about the farm and her children.
Chris Harrison has been the host of ABC's hot series The Bachelor since 2002 and has spent his career helping men and women find their soul mate. Who better to write a romance novel? The Perfect Letter is Harrison's writing debut and, I have to say, this guy really knows his romance. Not bad for a first attempt. Light and easy, it is a must-read for Bachelor fans and hopeless romantics everywhere.
Artists are invited to submit samples for a special exhibit in the Fond du Lac Public Library's Langdon Divers Gallery. The All Hallows Eve exhibit from October 7 to November 4 will complement the library's annual Fond du Lac Reads program – one book for the whole community, with programs to match.
Behold! The Power of Reading summer program at the Fond du Lac Public Library runs through August 15 with rewards for time spent reading.


text:
Original URL: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/30/apple_foxconn_deal/
FLA, Apple and Foxconn shake on new deal for Chinese workers
Critics argue some abuses are still being ignored
Posted in Business, 30th March 2012 05:52 GMT
The Fair Labor Association is claiming to have secure assurances from Apple and its supplier Foxconn that they will make sweeping changes to workers' pay and conditions at the latter's Chinese plants in line with the FLA's latest report, but critics have argued they don't go far enough.
As Apple CEO Tim Cook wraps up his eventful trip to the People's Republic this week, the non-profit released the findings of its initial month-long report into conditions at three Foxconn plants in China, at Guanlan, Longhua, and Chengdu.
It found substantial problems with working conditions including excessive overtime, health and safety risks and management dominated unions.
Firstly, the FLA reported that all three factories breached its limits of 60 hours per week including overtime and local Chinese limits of 40 hours a week plus 36 hours overtime per month. In some cases employees worked more than seven days in a row without the required day off.
The health and safety issues at Foxconn are well documented, since a fatal explosion rocked the Chengdu plant in 2011, and the FLA said that 43 per cent of the workers it interviewed had experienced or witnessed an accident.
Finally, the FLA found that the union at Foxconn is dominated by management representatives and therefore doesn't provide true worker representation according to the law of the land.
To address these problems, the FLA said Foxconn and Apple had agreed to comply with FLA and Chinese legal limits on working hours, reducing monthly overtime hours from 80 to 36. To be fair to Apple it had already begun to 'micro-manage' hours at the plants to ensure compliance.
The FLA added that Foxconn would increase its workforce "significantly" to maintain capacity while reducing workers' hours.
It also said that Foxconn agreed to develop a compensation package to ensure workers are protected from the loss of income incurred by reduced overtime, and added that workers cheated out of overtime payments would be retroactively paid according to the results of an audit.
More importantly, the FLA said it is conducting a cost of living study to make sure that workers' salaries meet its requirements for basic needs.
Groups have argued in the past that despite raising wages, Foxconn also charges staff for living costs such as dorm rooms and that once these extras are deducted from their pay it makes excessive overtime the only way for workers to earn a living wage.
On the health and safety front, FLA said that it would force Foxconn to record all accidents resulting in injury, not just those incurring a production stoppage. It added that progress has been made to reduce risk and improve operating procedures.
Finally, Foxconn agreed to ensure management doesn't interfere with the election of union representatives and said it will adapt its internship program to ensure a "productive, healthy and safe educational experience" for interns.
"The Fair Labor Association gave Apple's largest supplier the equivalent of a full-body scan through 3,000 staff hours investigating three of its factories and surveying more than 35,000 workers. Apple and its supplier Foxconn have agreed to our prescriptions, and we will verify progress and report publicly," said FLA president and CEO Auret van Heerden.
"If implemented, these commitments will significantly improve the lives of more than 1.2 million Foxconn employees and set a new standard for Chinese factories."
Fair play to the FLA then. There were some who doubted the organisation's neutrality given Apple is a member but its report has been pretty damning of conditions in the plants, although Apple will say it has already been working to address many of them.
Critics, however, argued that the inspection really just uncovered the tip of the iceberg – it only visited three factories initially and there were reports from non-profit group Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) that factory bosses were tipped off about the inspections, giving workers extra breaks and hiding underage workers.
Debby Chan, a project officer for Hong Kong-based SACOM, questioned the low number of interns working at the factories during the inspections – 519 compared to an average of 27,000 per month in 2011.
"On page ten, the report concedes that the use of student labour is to cope with the problem of seasonality. However, it has not found cases of interns who were forced to work at Foxconn, the victims of involuntary labour," she told The Reg.
"The use of student workers seems to be very insignificant in March. There can be two reasons: (1) it is low season in the factories; (2) students were sent away because of the factory inspections."
Indeed there is no mention of the problem in the accompanying FLA press release aside from vague assurances about adapting the internship program in the future.
Also missing are mentions of the harsh management practices which many believe contributed to the suicides of countless Foxconn staff in the past. Even the word 'suicide' is not mentioned once in the report.
Chan argued that while none of the abuses uncovered in the report are new, they may be taken seriously this time.
"The labour rights violations stated in the report have been mentioned a long time ago. Apple simply ignored those issues," she argued.
"The demand from consumers now for ethical Apple products is an impetus for changes in the supply chain. However, to make the change sustainable, there must be participation from the workers. They should have the right to form genuine unions through democratic elections."
She also rejected claims that the cost of Apple and other goods could rise as a result of changes to pay and conditions at the factories, saying that labour costs form only a tiny percentage of the final sales price.
In the end, Apple and Foxconn have until July 2013 to make these changes and if consumer pressure continues then the guarantees are likely to be met, but there are few ways to genuinely know what goes on inside these factories without the threat of continuous, unannounced and fully independent inspections.
Apple did not immediately reply to a request for further comment on the news. ®


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Hittite Microwave Corp., a supplier of complete MMIC-based solutions for communication and military markets, announced that it will introduce nine new products at the 2010 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium and Exhibition. IMS 2010 will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, CA, May 25-27, 2010. During the exhibition, these and other Hittite Microwave products will be on display. A live product demonstration area will showcase some of the company's latest products, and an exciting instrumentation product raffle will be held in our 20' x 30' corporate exhibit, booth #2105.
Visit our booth and enter the drawing to win a new HMC-T2100 Synthesized Signal Generator. The HMC-T2100 is a compact but powerful signal generator which covers 10 MHz to 20 GHz, and is easily configured for both laboratory and high volume testing environments. A HMC-T2100 synthesizer will be working during the show in our live demonstration area. One lucky raffle winner will be selected at random and announced in our booth at 3:00 pm PT on May 26, 2010.
Hittite's booth will incorporate a live product demonstration area where engineers can interact with some of our latest products. Products to be showcased in the live product demonstration area include:
Hittite will be introducing the HMC-T2100B, the first battery operated, 10 MHz to 20 GHz Portable Synthesized Signal Generator. Designed to fulfill signal generation needs in the field or on the bench, and priced at only $14,998, the HMC-T2100B provides the highest output power, lowest harmonic levels and broadest frequency range compared with portable signal generators of similar size and cost.
The HMC1010LP4E and the HMC909LP4E are two new low cost, highly flexible RMS Power Detectors for RF power measurement/control in Cellular/3G, LTE/WiMAX/4G, broadband, test equipment and military applications between DC and 5.8 GHz. The HMC1010LP4E offers 60dB dynamic range over DC to 3.9 GHz and is priced $1.99 each at 10,000 piece volumes. The HMC909LP4E offers a broadband single-ended RF input with 40dB dynamic range over DC to 5.8 GHz and is priced $1.49 each at 10,000 piece volumes. Both products have improved modulation performance and power dissipation coupled with an industry-first 4-bit programmable integration bandwidth control interface eliminating the need for cumbersome analog control voltages.
The HMC920LP5E introduces Hittite's new DC Power Management product line. The HMC920LP5E is an active bias controller that generates a regulated drain voltage and actively adjusts the gate voltage of an external amplifier to achieve constant bias current. It can be used to bias any enhancement and depletion type amplifier operating in Class-A regime with drain voltages (VDRAIN) from 3 to 15 V and drain currents (IDRAIN) up to 500 mA. The HMC920LP5E is housed in an RoHS compliant 5 x 5 mm QFN leadless package with an exposed backside paddle to improve thermal characteristics.
The HMC881LP5E and HMC882LP5E are tunable low-pass filters (LPF) with adjustable cut-off from 2.2 to 4.0 GHz and from 4.5 to 7.6 GHz, respectively. A 0 to 14 V control signal allows the adjustment of pass-band cut-off from the lowest to the highest frequency allowable in only 150 ns. The LPFs maintain stopband rejection of at least 35 dB out beyond 30 GHz.
The HMC890LP5E and HMC891LP5E are tunable band-pass filters (BPF) with two independent voltage controls for adjustment of pass-band frequency and bandwidth. Filter center frequency is adjustable from 1.0 to 2.0 GHz and from 2.0 to 3.9 GHz, respectively. Pass-bandwidth is adjustable to ±3% of filter center frequency. Like the companion low pass filters, return loss is 10 dB and the BPFs maintain stop-band rejection of at least 30 dB out to 9 GHz. The HMC881LP5E, HMC882LP5E, HMC890LP5E and HMC891LP5E are available in compact, RoHS compliant 5 x 5 mm QFN SMT plastic packages and are specified for operation from -40° to +85°C.
Additional Newly Released Products from Hittite:
The HMC910LC4B introduces Hittite's new Broadband Time Delay product line. The HMC910LC4B is a broadband time delay with 0 to 70 ps continuously adjustable delay range. The delay control is linearly monotonic with respect to the control voltage, (VDC) and the control input has a modulation bandwidth of 600 MHz. The HMC910LC4B is housed in an RoHS compliant 5 x 5 mm QFN leadless package with an exposed backside paddle.
The HMC854LC5 is the company's first multiplexer product. Designed for 28 Gbps data serialization, the HMC854LC5 latches its four differential inputs on a rising edge of the input clock. The device uses both rising and falling edges of a half-rate clock to serialize the data. The HMC854LC5 is housed in a ceramic RoHS compliant 5 x 5 mm QFN leadless package.
The HMC850LC3C adds a 2:1 Fanout Buffer to Hittite's High Speed Logic product line. The HMC850LC3C is designed to support data transmission rates up to 28 Gbps, and clock frequencies as high as 20 GHz. The HMC850LC3C also features an output level control pin, (VR) which allows for loss compensation or for signal level optimization. The HMC850LC3C is housed in a ceramic RoHS compliant 3 x 3 mm QFN leadless package.
The HMC841LC4B, HMC842LC4B and HMC843LC4B are three new additions to Hittite's High Speed Logic product line. The HMC841LC4B is a D-Type Flip-Flop designed to support data transmission rates of up to 43 Gbps, and clock frequencies as high as 43 GHz. During normal operation, data is transferred to the outputs on the positive edge of the clock. The HMC842LC4B is a 1:2 Fanout Buffer designed to support data transmission rates up to 45 Gbps. The device can also operate with clock signals up to 28 GHz. During normal operation, input data (or clock) is transferred to both output channels. The HMC843LC4B is an AND/NAND/OR/NOR function designed to support data transmission rates of up to 45 Gbps, and clock frequencies as high as 25 GHz. The HMC843LC4B also features an output level control pin, (VAC), which allows for loss compensation or for signal level optimization. All three parts operate from a single -3.3V DC supply and are available in a ceramic RoHS compliant 4 x 4 mm SMT packages.
The HMC974LC3C is a SiGe, monolithic, ultra-fast window comparator with level latched output driver with reduced swings. The window comparator is based on the HMC674LC3C single comparator and incorporates two such comparators and additional output logic. Three output ports detect whether an analog input signal is above, below or between two reference levels supplied at its input. The HMC974LC3C is housed in a ceramic RoHS compliant 3 x 3 mm QFN leadless package.
Samples and evaluation PC boards for all SMT packaged products are available from stock and can be ordered via the company's e-commerce site or via direct purchase order.


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COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh – A bus packed with Muslim pilgrims plunged off a bridge into a muddy ditch early Monday in Bangladesh, killing at least 16 people, police said.
The bodies recovered from the bus included children, said local police officer Ranjit Kumar Barua. Rescuers took another 15 people who were injured to a hospital, and the rest of the occupants were not hurt.
The accident happened in Cox's Bazar district, 296 kilometers (185 miles) south of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka.
Barua said the bus was carrying 43 people returning from a shrine of a local Muslim saint Mujibur Rahman Maizbhandari.
Road accidents kill about 10,000 people every year in Bangladesh, the government says. Crashes often are blamed on rash driving and faulty vehicles.


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Welcome to Ultimate Subaru Message Board, my lurker friend!
|Welcome to Ultimate Subaru Message Board, an unparalleled Subaru community full of the greatest Subaru gurus and modders on the planet! We offer technical information and discussion about all things Subaru, the best and most popular all wheel drive vehicles ever created.
We offer all this information for free to everyone, even lurkers like you! All we ask in return is that you sign up and give back some of what you get out - without our awesome registered users none of this would be possible! Plus, you get way more great stuff as a member! Lurk to lose, participate to WIN*!
* The joy of participation and being generally awesome constitutes winning
** Not an actual guarantee, but seriously, you probably won't regret it!
Serving the Subaru Community since May 18th, 1998!
Brat Build!
Posted 30 April 2011 - 01:04 PM
Oh i forgot to mention I also got my tool box home from school, so now I have real tools again (and yes my tool box is painted WRB)
Posted 30 April 2011 - 04:57 PM
This is how much I took off the top and added below the mount. It does have a shorter throw but could be a bit better
Posted 02 May 2011 - 12:29 PM
Here is a link: http://www.ultimates...ead.php?t=33784
Posted 02 May 2011 - 01:07 PM
Posted 02 May 2011 - 03:58 PM
It's a bad thing you gave me that link... All of mine need them those seat belt covers would be nice too! Thanks, I may have to wait a bit to get one, but that's on the list of things to get now!
I hear ya. I've already got two from him and I've got two more coming. They are so awesome.
Posted 02 June 2011 - 05:05 PM
Brought my drive shaft in today, going to have a new one made, and soon I'm going to be having power steering lines made up. I bought another project so that's why this has been on hold. Now that that one is mostly wrapped up, time to get back to my real project!!
Posted 03 June 2011 - 12:29 AM
I am going to get my new (old) Brat back on the road and enjoy it this Summer, rebuild my 2 extra ea81 engines and sell them and any duplicate parts and put the money into a modernized drive train (not sure if 2.5 or 2.0 turbo).
You have done a heck of a job... I'm having my 12 year old rebuild one of the ea81's and he wants the Brat when he can drive... I hope he picks up 1/2 as much as you did from your Dad.
I'm adding this to my favorites page... now get back on it... I can't wait to hear this thing is running!
Posted 03 June 2011 - 05:39 AM
Posted 16 June 2011 - 07:09 PM
Work has been crazy busy and I have been saving so I can pay off most of school before I go back in the fall, but I really need to get back on this thing. I haven't heard anything about my driveshaft, was hopping it would be finished by now, sunday I plan on working on the power steering lines, and maybe some of the wiring.
Things left to do as of right now
Program ECU (not sure how to do this)
create a map (not sure how to do this...)
The rest of the wiring
Put in the new driveshaft
power steering
put my wheels back on (they are on my lego right now)
fuel lines
fuel pump
and then there's stuff like rust work in the bed and such, but that's no big deal that could even wait until the winter again.
Posted 17 June 2011 - 01:58 PM
(did that work?)
Posted 18 June 2011 - 06:56 AM
That helped!
I actually have an impreza I need to work on this weekend, but I'm hoping I can work on the brat at the same time....
Posted 01 July 2011 - 01:31 PM
Posted 02 July 2011 - 02:38 AM
Curious... looking to do something similar.
Posted 02 July 2011 - 11:43 AM
Posted 07 July 2011 - 06:04 PM
Posted 08 July 2011 - 04:03 PM
Power steering and alternator are on, and I finished up my power steering lines. I also added a relay box for my megasquirt and finishing up the wiring..
Posted 08 July 2011 - 04:11 PM
Posted 08 July 2011 - 08:26 PM
Posted 09 July 2011 - 06:36 PM
All that's left
And a body shot for fun! (yes the wheels have changed, the good ones are on my lego, but I'm swapping them back this week)
Posted 10 July 2011 - 11:35 AM
You gonna pretty it up with some new paint when done?
Posted 10 July 2011 - 12:03 PM
Posted 10 July 2011 - 04:37 PM
As for paint, I did that last year, so nope. I may repaint the engine bay, and do a bedliner, but that's about it.
Ahhh.... pics don't do it justice. Get a quality bedliner, cheap ones look like crap and really don't hold up even if you haul NOTHING! Looking forward to the finished product, granted never really finished.
Posted 11 July 2011 - 04:11 PM
Posted 11 July 2011 - 05:49 PM
Posted 17 July 2011 - 07:35 AM
And I had some fun too
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The Coal City varsity girls basketball team advanced to the championship game at the Lisle Holiday Cage Classic with a 47-31 win Saturday night over Wheaton Academy.
Britta Spelde led Coal City with 12 points, six rebounds, three assists and two steals. Nicole Borgetti and Emily Halliday had nine points each, Madyson Bunton had eight points, Brittany Jezik had six points and Carly Pavils had three points for Coal City.
For complete coverage of Monday's late championship game at Lisle, visit morrisdailyherald.com or read Thursday's newspaper.
Coal City 38,
St. Francis 32
At the Lisle Holiday Cage Classic late Friday, Halliday's 27 points and 10 rebounds powered Coal City to victory.
Minooka 44,
Providence 43
At the Lincoln-Way East Medieval Classic on Saturday, Brooklyn Bachmann hit the winning basket with 2.2 seconds left as Minooka (10-3) completed a rally from a 29-16 halftime deficit in the third-place game.
Kelly Carnagio and Erin Heide shared the Minooka points lead with 12, and Bachmann added 10.
Minooka 53,
Sheppard 19
At the Medieval Classic on Friday, Heide had 14 points, Carnagio had 10, Sydney Arlis had nine and Bachmann had eight to lead Minooka.
Seneca 43,
Illinois Valley Central 34
At the St. Bede Lady Bruins Christmas Classic on Saturday, the Lady Irish (13-3) completed a 4-1 tournament by finishing in fifth place. They were led by Danielle Hauch with 14 points and six rebounds, Mallory Misener with 13 points and Anna Baker with 10 points and four rebounds.
"Great team effort today," Seneca coach Barb Beck said. "Sealed it shooting 8-of-10 from the foul line in the fourth quarter."
Newark 50,
Latin 38
At the Lisle Holiday Cage Classic on Monday, 14 points from All-Tournament selection Jasmine Mitchell and 13 from Nicole Lawrence helped Newark finish fifth.
"We did a great job of rebounding, and Nicole stepped up and made some huge 3s," Newark coach Brian Holman said.
Newark 53,
St. Francis 46
At the Lisle Holiday Cage Classic on Saturday, Newark featured 16 points from Mitchell, nine from Kristine Zitt and 8 from Nicole Lawrence in consolation play.
"Jasmine was a force tonight, and we did a great job controlling the boards," Holman said.
Wheaton Academy 44,
Newark 42
At the Lisle Holiday Cage Classic on Friday, 14 points from Zitt and nine from Lindsey Larson led Newark.
Reed-Custer 79,
Flanagan-Cornell 68
At the Marseilles Holiday Tournament on Saturday, Reed-Custer won in consolation play behind 15 points from Logan Zavala, 14 from Travis Schoonover and 11 from Tyler Allen.
Kewanee 69,
Dwight 43
At the Marseilles Holiday Tournament on Saturday, Triston Dircks scored eight points and Devin Connolly, Colton Fieldman and Collin Irvin had seven each for Dwight in the championship semifinals.
Hartem 46
At the Marseilles Holiday Tournament on Monday, Kyle Robison scored 23 points and Trevor McDaniel had 13 for Gardner-South Wilmington.
Woodland 56,
At the Marseilles Holiday Tournament on Saturday, Brendan Elens scored 20 points and Kyle Robison had 11 points and 15 rebounds for Gardner-South Wilmington in consolation play.
Morris vs. La Salle-Peru, Ottawa, Pontiac
Morris lost all three duals at home in close decisions. For Morris, Andrew Smith (113 pounds), Kenny Baldridge (132) and Trevor Allbert (160/170) went 3-0, Tony Menozi (106), Jarred Bernard (120) and Dalton Ness (220) went 2-1 and Dominic Byerly (126), Cody Decker (145) and Emmet Chouinard (152) added wins.
"These three teams are as evenly matched as they come and it comes down to the key swing matches and bonus points, and we lost on both of those today," Morris coach Jon Lanning said.


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Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 4th Feb 2013 11:04 UTC
"On January 31st, 1997, Final Fantasy VII was released to the Japanese public. This single game both revolutionized and raised the bar of Japanese style console role playing games. It success was so staggering, it placed Squaresoft firmly on top the the the genre, displacing the Dragon Quest series created by the rival Enix company. The story of how this game came to be has a story more expansive than the game itself. It starts, as most stories do, with it's prequel." An insanely detailed - although missing certain parts, here and there - look at Final Fantasy VII's engine. As in, 211 pages detailed. You might want to grab a coffee.
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RE: The irony of Final
by email@example.com on Mon 4th Feb 2013 12:53 UTC in reply to "The irony of Final"
RE[2]: The irony of Final
by BallmerKnowsBest on Wed 6th Feb 2013 17:33 in reply to "RE: The irony of Final"
if they keep 'improving' the series like they did so far ( 13, 13-2, 14 ),
Don't forget 8. And X. And X-2.
they will get the 'final' part with ease.
Here's hoping. Maybe then we'll start seeing RPGs that are actually RPGs again, instead of just interactive spank material for creepy anime nerds.


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The annual CROP Hunger Walk hosted in Sturgis is 2 p.m. on Sunday at the First Baptist Church of Sturgis, at the corner of Fawn River and Lakeview.
For more information contact Jane Warner at 651-5787 or Earl Arend at 651-6798.
Choose the plan that's right for you. Digital access or digital and print delivery.


text:
Thick, dense and chewy cookie bars fully loaded with two kinds of chocolate chips, candy, coconut flakes and nuts. One of the best things about them is they're fully customizable in an anything goes kind of way.
If you made them once a week for an entire year they could be different every single time.
I love that.
They are a great way to clean up your pantry especially if you have a lot of odds and ends leftover from Christmas baking.
Into these particular bars is a decadent mix of semi-sweet and white chocolate chips, mini Reese's pieces, toffee bits, coconut flakes and walnuts. All total – three and a half cups worth. Every single bite sends shock waves straight to your sweet tooth.
In a good way.
The next time you open your cupboard and a bunch of crinkly, partially filled bags of baking goodies jump out don't shove them back in. Congo bars. Now you know.
Make them.
{'Cause we could all use a little sugar-coated, candy-laden sweetness in our lives.}
Thick, dense and chewy cookie bars fully loaded with two kinds of chocolate chips, candy, coconut flakes and nuts. One of the best things about them is they're fully customizable in an anything goes kind of way.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease or (line with parchment) a 9" x 13" baking pan.
- Melt the butter and stir in the brown sugar then the salt and vanilla until well combined.
- Allow to cool slightly then add the eggs one at a time beating well after each addition and scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl.
- Stir in the baking powder and flour then all the chips/candy and nuts.
- Scoop the batter into the prepared pan spreading it edge to edge with a wet spatula.
- Bake 30 to 32 minutes until they rise and are golden on top. A toothpick in center won't come out clean - the middle may still be slightly gooey but will set up as they cool.
- Cool bars completely before cutting. Best if you can let them set overnight. Store tightly covered at room temperature up to 5 days.
Adapted from King Arthur Flour


text:
Three parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting stood their ground in Chicago Sunday and prepared to tell their story in Springfield this week. They hope it will sway Illinois lawmakers to limit high capacity ammunition magazines.
Mark Barden's 7-year-old son Daniel was one of 26 people killed in the December shooting along with 6-year-old Ben Wheeler who's mother is also here to help pass the legislation.
Illinois Senate Bill 1002 would limit the number of rounds per magazine to 10 and stiffen penalties for those who use larger clips.
Monday, the Sandy Hook parents, including the mother of 6-year-old Dylan Hockley, will testify in Springfield, like they have in other states, hoping their stories will make a difference on the vote.
"The person who killed my son carried ten 30 round large capacity magazines into Sandy Hook Elementary School," said Nicole Hockley, Dylan's mother. "He chose to leave the smaller capacity magazines at home, he chose to have the best kill rate possible by using high capacity magazines which only exist to deliver as many bullets as possible in the shortest time frame. "
Governor Quinn wants the bill passed before the end of the current general assembly session in two weeks. It's a vote that, right now, is very close.


text:
Summer is Here! Central Library will close at 6 pm on Thursdays and will be closed Sundays until September. Enjoy!
Log in
We are what we read. But how do we decide what to read? Normally we don't have a systematic program for our reading life. Perhaps a friend told us, or the "customers also bought this..." on Amazon.com, or our last book mentioned it, or we heard it on NPR or Oprah. These are all great, but there's many other ways. Try the Now Read This through our website. Or, if you want a Read-a-Like based on an author you like, try our Books and Authors database (or try Good Reads or LibraryThing).
But, if you want to get super serious, we have tons of books that are about books (i.e. bibliographies, "treasuries," "anthologies," "companions").
Based on Age:
1001 children's books you must read before you grow up, 100 best books for children, The Book of virtues for young people : a treasury of great moral stories, Black Books Galore! Guide to great African American children's books about girls, 500 Great Books for Teens, Disabilities and disorders in literature for youth : a selective annotated bibliography for K-12, The Ultimate Teen Book Guide
"I just want the classics!" (usually this means great literature, not necessary from the Classical period):
Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Magill's survey of world literature, Literature Lovers Companion: the essential reference to the world's greatest writers—past and present, popular and classical, Assessing the Classics: great reads for adults, teens, and English language learners, The modern library : the two hundred best novels in English since 1950, Harvard Classics series (has the actual writings)
By Genre:
Short Story Writers, The Essential Mystery Lists, Harold Bloom writes several books, e.g. on British Women Fiction Writers, Asian American Women Writers, Major Black American Writers, Classic Science Fiction Writers, and more.
To find the major books in an academic field, like philosophy or physics or astronomy, look for an introductory book. They usually have primary sources and "further reading" sections.
Racial or Cultural Identity:
African Writers, Sacred fire : the QBR 100 essential Black books, Concise encyclopedia of Latin American literature, Native American literatures : an encyclopedia of works, characters, authors, and themes
Movements and Places:
Literary movements for students : presenting analysis, context, and criticism on commonly studied literary movements, Promised Land: 13 books that shaped America, The Oxford companion to American literature (we also have these for Austrialian, French, Canadian, and more); Michigan in the Novel (really cool book list of novels set in MI or about MI)
Have fun reading, and slow down to think!
Posted by Matt Smith at 03/08/2012 04:00:35 PM
Books for: Kids, Teens & Tweens


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Getting children interested in the topic may be as hard as getting them to eat vegetables. The following titles for preschool through teen readers find the joy in being healthy, whether through realistic voices or characters, empowering youth to make their own choices, revealing fascinating facts about what goes on underneath our skin, or encouraging readers to lead active lives. Here's to reading for health!
-Joanna K. Fabicon


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Those strolling through Ashland's Historic Railroad District will find a little bit of Paris at the corner of A and Fourth streets.
Kelly Sacks, a founding partner of Noble Coffee Roasting, is offering up sweet and savory crepes in a new open-air shop with a half-dozen tables just north of Noble.
"A crepe is something that's a little lighter than what we normally eat," she said. "It's quick, very versatile about what you can put in it and only takes a couple minutes to cook.
"I wanted to create something quick, fresh, delicious and satisfying — and this is it."
Open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, Kelly's Crepes features both breakfast and lunch offerings, with its most popular being spinach with pine nuts, goat cheese and garlic butter for $6.75.
"It's a good balance of tastes," said Erin Douglas, an Ashland resident who dropped by for the spinach-feta crepe on a recent afternoon. "I'd get it again — and this is a wonderful, sweet environment for lunch. It needs a salad, though. There's no salad here. A crepe is like a snack; if you're hungry, better get a couple of them."
Sacks' crepes are made from a batter of eggs, flour, whole milk, butter and salt. Butter is browned for a deeper, nuttier flavor. Gluten-free crepes are available for 50 cents extra.
Another favorite so far has been the pulled pork with Carolina slaw and barbecue sauce at $7.25, Sacks said. You can also get an egg, bacon and cheese crepe at $6.75, a ham and cheese with dijonaise at $6.50, tuna with red onion and cucumber at $5.50 and the vegetarian hummus with cucumber, goat cheese and olives for $6.75.
Douglas' lunch companion, Amy Smythe, chose the tuna crepe and said it was good, but she, too, wanted a salad. "Great outside setting here," she added.
Ashlander Alberta Swan called the spinach-feta crepe "excellent, just perfect, with quick service and wonderful atmosphere. I knew it was a treat. Now, I'll get home and eat practical."
For those with a sweet tooth, Sacks offers Nutella with banana and powdered sugar for $5, lemon curd with strawberries for $5.50, raspberry with mascarpone for $5.50, cinnamon with sugar and butter for $4 and fresh lemon juice with sugar, $5.
"The crepe with powdered sugar and lemon juice is the classic," said Sacks. "I call it the cinnamon roll of crepes ... and when the weather's perfect and you're sitting in the shade — most seats are shaded — with a nice breeze, it's all just about perfect."
Sacks is a veteran of many restaurant operations here and in Portland. She was a founding partner in Noble Coffee and worked for years at the old Ashland Bakery Cafe.
She offers to-go crepes in a cardboard cone. Coffee (Noble's Pompadour or its decaffeinated World Tour), tea and soda are available, and Sacks encourages diners to bring other drinks from Noble if they prefer.
When cooler weather arrives in September, she plans to lock it all up till spring.
"Amazingly delicious," said Ashland resident Isaiah LaBounty of his lemon-sugar crepe. His mom, Lisa LaBounty, notes her spinach-feta was "amazing, light and crispy."
John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at email@example.com.
Crepe crusader
Those strolling through Ashland's Historic Railroad District will find a little bit of Paris at the corner of A and Fourth streets.


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Archives for: December 2008, 13
Been a little busy!December 13th, 2008 , by Cassandra
Okay, it's been since FEBRUARY since I posted. So sorry!
The last time I blogged I was pregnant, and we were preparing to put our condo on the market to sell it. After that it is a blur....
Our condo sold the first day it was on the market, we househunted for a month or so before we found our new home, and we closed on it in 25 days and moved in. The moving days were crazy - I was 8 months pregnant and having Braxton-Hicks contractions like crazy. The movers left a chair in the living room for me to sit in, and set up the La-Z Boy for me in the living room in the new house. I directed traffic from the chairs.
I unpacked like a madwoman knowing that once the baby was born I'd get nothing done, and that is pretty much what happened. Seven weeks after we moved in (and one week early), Nathaniel Hudson Firemark was born. He was 6 lbs. 5 ounces and 19.5 inches long.
Giving birth was an amazing experience. I had hoped to give birth without any medications at all, but after 16 hours I had only dialated 5 cms and my blood pressure was high and Nate's heart rate kept dropping, so my OB recommended an epidural and pitocin. Given the circumstances, I was willing to do that - though I have to say I did not feel like I needed the epidural for pain management. We did a hypnobirthing class, and I found that it really worked for me! Anyway, four hours after I got the epidural I was fully dialated, and 20 minutes of pushing later, Nate was born. Incredible experience overall, and the medical staff was amazing both during and after delivery. Nate was put right on my tummy and we looked into each other's eyes for the first time. For me, it was like looking into the face of God. I was filled with awe and joy.
Since his birth, we've hardly gotten anything unpacked. Still working on a few areas of the house! Motherhood so far has been wonderful, challenging, exhausting, fulfilling, and joyful. Nate is a calm, happy baby, and I love watching him explore the world day by day. So fun!
I have lots more to share about health, the BTD, and motherhood, but I'm wiped out. I do promise to write more frequently and keep up with the blog a bit more.
In the meantime, here is a link to photos of Nate and the rest of us:
That oughta keep you busy for a while.


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The fracking industry is one of the most secretive and deceptive industries in the country. They've managed to operate with little to no oversight from the federal government, and they've kept their secret fracking formulas from being revealed to the public, even though the chemicals they're using are leaching into groundwater supplies and poisoning men, women, and children. Mike Papantonio talks about how the fracking industry is accomplishing all of this with Mike Ludwig, a reporter for Truthout.org.
ALSO SEE: Gas Rush: Fracking in Depth.


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WASHINGTON — Roger Clemens' lawyer toyed with Brian McNamee's memory and attacked him from several directions at once. The attorney even put an easel next to the witness with the words: "MISTAKE. BAD MEMORY. LIE." Eventually, there came the inevitable question: "Do you sometimes just make stuff up?"
McNamee has frequently taken long pauses before answering questions in three days on the witness stand, but he didn't hesitate this time. He leaned into the microphone and said softly but assuredly: "I didn't make it up."
Clemens' chief accuser was on the stand for two hours of aggressive cross-examination Wednesday on one of the most important days — perhaps the most important — in the perjury trial of the seven-time Cy Young Award winning pitcher. Clemens is charged with lying when he told Congress in 2008 that he never used steroids or human growth hormone.
McNamee has testified he injected Clemens with both, and the credibility of Clemens' former friend and longtime strength coach will no doubt be the No. 1 topic when the jury starts deliberating the case.
Going for style over substance, Clemens lawyer Rusty Hardin was as colorful as his outfit — bright orange tie, cream-colored suit — and continued his practice of mispronouncing the witness' name as mac-nah-MAY instead of MAC-nah-mee. He skipped from topic to topic without warning, often confusing McNamee while trying to sow seeds of doubt in the jurors' minds.
McNamee, who has now spent 12 hours on the stand with more to come on Thursday, alternated between fidgety and focused. At various times he looked curiously at the courtroom ceiling, draped his arm around his chair, or leaned forward to scratch an itchy foot while Hardin was asking questions. McNamee sometimes seemed perplexed by simple yes-or-no questions and stumbled through an answer about his birthday.
Other times, he was more firm and direct. He complained when Hardin asked him a convoluted, multipart question: "Which one do you want me to answer?" "Pick one," Hardin replied.
Hardin was perhaps most effective when he got McNamee to agree that his memory about events connected to Clemens had improved once McNamee began cooperating with federal investigators looking into steroids and baseball.
"Is it true that ever since you began making these accusations about Mr. Clemens, your memory and versions of what happened and details have sort of evolved?" Hardin asked.
"Yes sir," McNamee answered.
Hardin asked if McNamee had "intentionally lied" to investigators.
"Yes sir," McNamee replied. McNamee testified earlier in the week that he originally minimized Clemens' involvement with performance-enhancing drugs in what he said was an effort to protect the pitcher.
Hardin worked the same angle when McNamee had trouble remembering what was written on the cover of a book McNamee started writing but never published.
"You remember little details all the way back to 1998 … but you have to have me show you the cover of your book before you know what's on it," Hardin said.
Referencing the easel, Hardin would cite various statements and ask McNamee to put them in the category of "mistake," "bad memory" or "lie." McNamee conceded to one case of a "bad memory" before court adjourned for the day at noon because of a juror's schedule conflict. McNamee returns to the stand Thursday.
McNamee says he gave Clemens injections of performance-enhancing drugs in 1998, 2000 and 2001. During questions about the 1998 injection, Hardin inadvertently introduced evidence he had sought to keep away from the jury.
McNamee testified that he overheard a conversation between teammates Clemens and Jose Canseco about steroids in the Toronto Blue Jays clubhouse, a conversation the judge had ruled could not be brought up by prosecutors.
Having overheard Clemens and Canseco, McNamee said he therefore was certain Clemens was referring to steroids when Clemens later asked for a help with a "booty shot" in early June 2008. Hardin stressed that Clemens didn't use the word "steroids" and could have been referring to a shot for the vitamin B12. McNamee has said he first injected Clemens with steroids later that month.
McNamee also testified for the first time about a conversation he said he had with Clemens about steroids following Clemens' 2003 season with the New York Yankees. McNamee said that Clemens had planned to retire and "wanted to change his workout program and get bigger." McNamee said Clemens asked, "Do you still have that guy?" who can supply the drugs. Clemens eventually decided to keep playing and returned in 2004 with the Houston Astros.
Hardin was incredulous that McNamee didn't relate that conversation to federal investigators or while being interviewed for the 2007 Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.
"Bad memory," McNamee said, adding that nothing ever came of the conversation.
Hardin also sought to prove that McNamee had tried to profit from the publicity following the 2008 congressional hearings, again pointing out a tie with the logo of a friend's company that McNamee wore to grand jury testimony and an appearance McNamee made on Howard Stern's radio show.
"Is it true you have been seeking to take advantage of the fame you have achieved by making accusations against Roger Clemens?" Hardin asked.
The government objected to the question, and Hardin withdrew it before McNamee could answer.
The trial is in its fifth week and is danger of losing a third juror to boredom. Prosecutors expressed concern Wednesday as to whether Juror No. 13 has been sleeping during testimony. Two other jurors have been dismissed for sleeping, leaving 12 jurors and two alternates.
The juror would have certainly stayed wide awake if she could've heard the bitter exchange before the jury was brought in for the start of Wednesday's testimony. Clemens lawyer Michael Attanasio was upset that McNamee has repeatedly implied that he gave HGH shots to former Clemens teammate Andy Pettitte, a fact ruled inadmissible by the judge. Attanasio said the McNamee-Pettitte connection was further implied by the way the government had redacted an email exchange between McNamee and Clemens.
"Mr. Hardin will come tackle me if I move for a mistrial, so I won't," Attanasio said angrily. The first attempt to try Clemens last summer ended in a mistrial when prosecutors showed the jury a snippet of videotaped evidence that had been ruled inadmissible.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton didn't disagree with Attanasio's point, but he scolded Attanasio for taking such an accusatory tone toward the government over what could just be an honest mistake.
"That's what our political world is now, and it's coming into the court," Walton said.
"You fight hard," the judge added, "but you don't have to throw dirt at each other."


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A new origin for iron meteorites discoveredUniversity of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology
HONOLULU - An article in the prestigious science journal Nature, published this week, goes a long way toward resolving a controversy about asteroids and meteorites that has raged in the scientific community since the 1960s. What do key data about the cooling rates of material inside these heavenly bodies indicate about their makeup and formation, and the origins of planets? Studies of Moon rocks show us that the rocky planets were formed by giant collisions between planetary embryos 4.5 billion years ago that lasted for 50 million years and ended with a mighty impact on the Earth that created the Moon. Now a research team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMA) and the University of Hawaii (UH) has discovered evidence in iron meteorites that shows that planetary embryos, approximately 1000 km is size, formed less than one million years after the birth of the solar system, and quickly began colliding. Iron meteorites are widely thought to be pieces of once molten cores of about 100 asteroids 5-200 kilometers in diameter that took millions of years to cool and billions of years to collide and break up. But according to researchers, Jijin Yang and Joseph Goldstein (UMA) and Ed Scott (UH), this view is wrong. The molten cores, they argue, formed in planetary embryos up to 1000 km or more in size that broke apart in only a few million years -- long before they cooled. Scientists have proposed several theories over the decades to rationalize the diverse cooling rates of iron meteorites thought to come from a single core. One is that either the data, or the computer simulations using those data, are faulty. A second theory is that a major impact fragmented the core and scrambled up the pieces. A third idea is that the asteroid was never hot enough for a core to form so that the metal chunks were spread throughout the silicate mantle.Yang and his coauthors developed a new theory by figuring out how long iron meteorites took to cool down. A set of iron meteorites from a single molten asteroidal core enclosed by a rocky mantle would all cool at the same rate because iron metal conducts heat much more rapidly than rock. But two independent techniques showed that the set of irons cooled at rates that differed by as much as a factor of 50. "We realized" said Scott, "that the accepted explanation for the origin of the iron meteorites must be wrong." After trying many different ideas, the researchers discovered that if a metal body 300 km in diameter were to cool without any silicate mantle, samples a few km from the surface would cool 50 times faster than those near the center. But how could a metallic body of this size have formed in the asteroid belt? Until last year, there was no plausible answer to this question. But a paper published by researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz showed that Moon-to-Mars sized planetary embryos didn't just stick together when they collided, as previously inferred. In half the impacts, the smaller bodies would have been torn apart by glancing collisions. Yang, Goldstein, and Scott deduced that a glancing collision by a planetary embryo 1000 km or more across with a molten core could have formed the 300 km metallic body in which the meteorites cooled.
"We used to think that iron meteorites come from asteroids that formed and melted long after the unmelted meteorites called chondrites had formed" said Scott. "But the latest dating techniques show just the reverse. Iron meteorites come from the first generation of bodies that formed less than one million years after the solar system was created, and the chondrites formed over the next few million years. Our work therefore shows that planetary embryos 1000 km across formed in less than one million years and that debris from these bodies survived in the form of meteorites and asteroids." Another UH meteorite researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, Sasha Krot, recently proposed that a group of chondrites once thought to be the oldest meteorites may have formed in a giant collision between planetary embryos over 4 million years after the birth of the solar system. "These are very exciting discoveries" says Klaus Keil who heads the cosmochemistry research group at the University of Hawaii. "They have dramatically changed our understanding of the first few million years of Solar System history." This work was funded by NASA.***Article Information: Yang, J., J. I. Goldstein, and E. R. D. Scott (2007) Iron Meteorite Evidence for Early Formation and Catastrophic Disruption of Protoplanets. Nature, v. 446, p. 888-891. For more information, please also see the Planetary Science Research Discoveries article http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/April07/irons.html.For interviews, please contact: Edward R.D. Scott, Planetary Scientist, Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa. Email: email@example.com, Phone Number: (808) 956-3955 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Contact: Joseph Goldstein, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, College of Engineering (413) 545-2165, firstname.lastname@example.com
For more information, visit: http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/April07/irons.html


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Tarzan Tickets
Tarzan Tickets on Broadway are sure to sell fast. Tarzan is Disney's newest Broadway Show. Tarzan Broadway tickets are selling at record pace. Don't delay, order today!
Tarzan Schedule and Dates
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One of the hottest shows, Tarzan the Broadway Musical will be traveling soon. Like Disney's other productions, The Lion King and Beauty & the Beast, Tarzan is a smash hit with audiences and critics alike. It's also a tough ticket - the other two Disney productions have been going strong since the last decade, and Tarzan is one of the most popular shows in years. Get your Tarzan show tickets from Gotickets.com.
Based on the hit Disney movie, Tarzan the Broadway Musical tells the tale of an infant whose parents died in the African jungle, leaving him to be raised by gorillas until a visitor from civilization named Jane discovers him, and he discovers his true roots and his attraction to her.
Directed by Tony Award winner Bob Crowley, Tarzan will feature an expanded score by Phil Collins, who earned Oscar and Grammy Awards for the music in the movie including the hits "You'll Be in My Heart" and "Two Worlds." This will be Collins' first crack at a Broadway show, and the score includes eight new songs that weren't in the movie.
Get the best Tarzan Broadway show tickets and Richard Rodgers Theatre tickets from Gotickets.com.


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Former Sydney Roosters, Parramatta, Dragons and Newcastle coach Brian Smith has opened up on his suspicions of performance-enhancing drug use in the National Rugby League, casting doubt on one current leading player.
Smith, now a part-time assistant at Super Rugby team the Brumbies, weighed into the scandal surrounding the Australian Crime Commission's findings on sport, explaining his eyes had been opened to the murky world of illegal substances in rugby league more than a decade ago.
The 58-year-old, sacked by the Roosters last September with a year to go on his deal at Moore Park, also revealed suspicions about one of the competition's present elite players.
"A pretty fair player who fitted the 'before' photo in a body-building mag left my club as we did not think he would get 'the rig necessary to cut it in the NRL'. To our surprise, he bobbed up at another club just a couple of seasons later looking like the 'after' photo!" Smith writes in an online column.
"He has absolutely carved it and is now one of the top line in our sport. Did he cheat to get there? I have no proof. Perhaps the latest big investigation will uncover the validity of these types of accusations or innuendos to clear that player or condemn those who have taken the short cut."
As many as seven NRL clubs are thought to be implicated in the ACC findings on drug use, match-fixing and links between Australian sport and organised crime.
Smith, whose first-grade coaching career stretches back to 1984, delivered his views in a piece for the website The Roar. He reveals he had first been made aware that the sport was not entirely clean in the late '90s when he was coach of the Eels.
"I had a wake-up call about this in my time at Parramatta," Smith said. "A rival club's new wonder boy was carving up the comp in the front row with almost superhuman efforts week on week. This guy had been a run-of-the-mill reserve grader for a couple of seasons but now he was selected for State of Origin!
"I went to the SFS to watch him and only him, and my eyes nearly popped. The following day I called a meeting with staff and all the front-rowers explaining fully what I had seen and what was now to become the standard required at Parra.
"As you will have guessed by now, within a short time the wonder guy was done for prohibited drug use."
That player, it is assumed, is Rodney Howe, the former Melbourne, NSW and Australia prop who was in 1998 banned for 22 matches after testing positive to the banned steroid stanozolol.
NRL clubs are expected to be told by Tuesday whether they have players under the microscope accused of doping.
Auditors have already been sent to Manly, Cronulla, Penrith and Newcastle, leading to speculation they are among the clubs being investigated. There are rumours that at least one big-name player is bracing himself being targeted as a result of the ACC report.


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The accuracy of these pitch tracking systems has been growing by leaps and bounds year after year. Now we are to the point where it is extremely accurate and it will only get more and more precise as time goes by.
Perhaps the best aspect of the new technology is that it works the same for all teams and all players during a game. The technology can't be manipulated by the whims of umpires or the antics of players and managers. The strike zone is the same for rookies as veterans, the same for sunny weather and rainy weather, the same in the 1st inning as the 9th, and the same for close games as blowouts.
It also frees up the home plate umpire so he can concentrate on other things, like determining whether or not the batter swung or held back on a check swing or whether he was hit by a pitch or whether the pitcher balked.
We need two new team owners in our two Redszone-based fantasy baseball leagues. Both are free 5x5 roto dynasty leagues hosted on Yahoo. Both leagues are 9-10 years old. We have a great bunch of guys but two owners have gone off the grid. If you are interested in joining a fun dynasty league with other members of Redszone please let me know!
Nah............I like things the way they are. The occasional instant replay on calls is ok with me, but let's not leave the game in the hands of computers. No thanks. If I want that, I'll fire up some OOTP. It's a whole lot less interesting than the real thing.
Frankly, I could care less what some crazy manager would have thrown over a blown call. If you want to be entertained by someone losing their cool, find something else. I watch baseball for other reasons.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
Human element. The way the game is meant to be played. Those who say this will be labeled by "the new age thinkers" as old-fashioned or out of touch. That is fine. I also hope "the new age thinkers" will understand when the old-farts call them out of touch with the human element of the game and the enjoyment that is derived by some who like the way it has been done since the game's inception. Of course some things have changed since the beginning (actually lots of things), but umpires and the things they do seem key to a lot of people who love the game.
Small market fan... always hoping, but never expecting.
Has it been tested in a game?
On different batters or is it just a three dimensional box that sits in the same place for every hitter?
Software is a very volatile item, hardware is prone to breaking down and malfunctioning and giving out bad data.
Talking about instituting a computer based strikes/ball tool is one thing implementing one is likely a far cry form "in place" when you want to use it to replace umpires.
Sure the technology is richer than ever before, but saying "it's in place" is at best a inaccurate statement... one might say it's almost a wild pitch.
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