text:
¿Qué Pasa, Lou?
According to Lou Dobbs, we've been completely wrong about him. Wrong about his stance on illegal immigrants. Wrong about his reasons for quitting CNN after twenty-seven years. And wrong about his newfound political aspirations. Well, we might actually be right about that last thing. Jeanne Marie Laskas meets the man we thought we knew
"How do you feel?" Lou turns to me and says. We're in the back of his silver Audi midmorning on a steel gray New Jersey day, and we're heading from the country, where he lives, to the city, where he does his radio show, about an hour and a half away. He's working on a Wendy's cheeseburger, a Diet Coke, and a small chocolate Frosty.
"How do I feel?" I ask. He throws his shoulders back, like, How hard a question is that? He's a Brahman bull of a man with puffy hands and a dainty silver bracelet, and he's in truck-driver attire: orange thermal shirt, green overshirt, John Deere cap.
It's taking me a moment to catch up to Lou's abrupt change in subject. Feelings? We had been talking about NAFTA, how he supported it—"I was there before Clinton, for Chrissake!"—and how this position, along with so many others, goes completely against the Lou Dobbs–ian economic-isolationist mythology that exists in American culture today. Mythology—that's been his main point. As in: a false collective belief. As in: so much utter bullshit. And: "I let the liberal mainstream media define me. That was my mistake. I was stupid, and I was arrogant." He's made this point often over the past few days, not with rage so much as regret, and after he said it this last time, he fell silent, gazed with some interest out his window, so apparently he's found some reason for switching subjects.
"Uh, I feel good," I answer.
"Happy?" he says.
"Well, sure—"
"Right," he says. "You wouldn't say, 'I feel goodly' or 'I feel happily.' So why do so many people say, 'I feel badly'? They'll say, 'Oh, I'm sorry, I feel so badly about that—' "
He looks at me, expecting something. He is a man who speaks surprisingly softly, until he doesn't anymore, and he becomes a fabulous booming tuba: "Why do they say that? It's incorrect. It should be just 'I feel bad.' "
"That's true—"
"That doesn't bother you?"
We spend a few solid minutes on this, on adjectives, adverbs, various shameful usage errors. It's wrong! It makes no earthly sense! He needs to look something up, pulls out his laptop. I make the mistake of noting he uses a Mac, saying that's funny; I had him more as a PC guy.
"What?" he says. "It's bad? It's good? What?"
It's nothing. Absolutely nothing. I tell him I have a Mac. "We have something in common," I offer.
"Oh, so you're above me," he says. "For you, it's normal. For me, it's simply a departure."
It goes on like this. Hours and hours like this. Days like this. It doesn't matter if it's a serious topic. It doesn't matter if it's an utterly asinine one. Lou engages, Lou fires. Lou doesn't duck. Lou doesn't retreat. Lou reloads and Lou refires. That the battles are nearly always of his own making does not go unnoticed.
"I'm so damn combative," he says, laughing. "Jeezus. I'm sorry."
"Yeah, you could dial that back," I say.
"Another thing I need to work on—"
"I'd put that one toward the top of the list, frankly."
"Yes, dear."
I can't say exactly how it is I've taken on the role of nagging wife over the past few days I've spent with Lou. It is not the only persona he calls out in me. Mother, campaign manager, shrink, cohort, brat. The thing about Lou is, there's a lot to him. And you can say anything to him. In fact, the more you take him on, the more Lou you get. It is an oddly fascinating sport. Hanging out with Lou Dobbs is like reluctantly going over to the nerdy smart kid's house (because your mother made you) and he turns out to have the keys to an entire amusement park.
I have spent a good deal of my time with Lou trying to fix Lou, urging him to become more, well, normal. (Really, you can say anything to him.) I have frankly told him that I would like him to stop being the guy with the wacko political views and join the sane crowd. "I am going to get right on that—" he has said, and I have told him how much I appreciate that, because I am having a hard time reconciling the Lou in my mind—a big, bouncy head on CNN going on and on about illegal immigration in ways I rarely could stand to listen to, or, more accurately, didn't see a reason to bother listening to—with…this Lou.
This Lou is solicitous. Vastly intelligent. A fun guy to debate, because he believes so passionately in what he's arguing about—whether it's adverbs or border security or mashed potatoes. People where I come from would enjoy this Lou. I wonder why he's allowed himself to say foolish things (illegal immigrants spread leprosy; Obama should produce his birth certificate) that welcome others to so easily turn him into a cartoon.
Say "Lou Dobbs" in a room full of the left-of-center crowd and you're likely to hear ugly words. Racist. nophobe. "Populist madman," said Fortune recently. "Blithering idiot," said Times columnist Thomas Friedman. "Hysteria and jingoism" were the words The Nation picked.
There's little doubt that Lou is often just…reckless. Spouts without fully considering the implications, then finds himself stuck defending something even he thinks is ridiculous. Get Lou talking and you find he's so much more nuanced than any of his ill-conceived sound bites. The real Lou has potential. Here is a public figure who has seemingly little control over his own image. I suppose it's that flaw that leaves me sitting here, next to Lou, thinking: This guy's a fir-upper.
It's important to note here that his radio program, just two years old, already scores about a million listeners a week. So he gets plenty of love.
You are the best Lou! I hope you run for the Presidency! Keep speaking up and speaking out.… you have a HUGE following.… you are EXCELLENT!!!
Thanks for speaking out for America as we once knew it. Our Great America is over for the very reasons you were speaking out about. Our borders, our health care, our politics, our military, and on and on and on. But, at least you told it like it is! Thanks!
Just like Captain Sully, you steer this ship and all on board, really well!
But what of the hate? If, as he maintains, it comes from a place of misunderstanding, if his image among his detractors is wrong, if he thinks he's let others define him so terribly incorrectly—doesn't he have any interest in doing something about it?
"Of course I do."
"Then why are you giving me such a hard time trying to fix you?"
"I'm sorry if I'm ruining your day—"
"I am just trying to help."
"If you help me any more, my ego will be the size of a belt buckle."
One morning, Debi, his real wife, answers the door. She tries to manage the three tiny barking dogs protesting hysterically and without consolation about how horrible life has become now that a stranger has appeared in the foyer. She is on crutches. "The parking lot at Rite Aid," she tells me. "I was carrying packages, I couldn't see, I stepped in a pothole." She wears shiny black oversize men's Nike high-tops—the only thing that will fit on her swollen foot. She makes loving notice of Kurby, the apricot toy poodle, "the alpha," shivering like a tiny outboard motor before me in a spasm of terror. She points her crutch at Kurby, pets him with it, says, "Kurby, forgodsakes."
Debi is Mexican-American, which makes no sense whatsoever, given that Lou is supposed to be anti-Latino and anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner, at least if you listen to the chattering class. I've never heard Lou use his wife's ethnicity to defend himself against the charges of racial intolerance. Apparently he never…goes there. Debi's mother, from Mexico, lives here on the farm. Lou and Debi have been married for twenty-eight years and they've raised four kids together. The youngest, twin girls, are both at Harvard, and the house has a hushed quality, an empty-nest feeling of now what?
In the kitchen, Lou holds his phone, waiting for a call, and Debi leans on her crutches, and the two tell me farm stories, saying how much they love this place, 300 acres of rolling pastures with white horse fencing, and chestnut mares grazing, and Cobretti the stud. And the annoying mini horse, Scoobie, they got talked into. Oh, and one time they got a goat. Oh, that was funny. They put the goat in the back of the pickup, drove home laughing. What the hell, a goat! The goat, when they got home, went bonkers, kicked and screamed and ran in circles while they chased, until finally it kicked its way through the fence, into a pasture, through another fence, while they continued to give chase. They lost it. Days later, they spotted it at a neighboring farm, grazing, happy as sin. "We need to go tell them that's our goat," Debi said to Lou. He agreed. Then they thought about it some more. They got to talking about the meaning of the phrase "our goat." They decided they didn't have the goat long enough for it to be considered "our goat," and so they ran quietly and triumphantly home.
In the kitchen, looking out the back window at the trees in silhouette, they tell tractor stories and swan stories, too. Yeah, and this farmhouse, Remember when this was just one tiny window back here? Oh, he forgot about that! And remember the roof? Oh, the roof! They are a couple with inside jokes, an inside language. She calls him "husband." He calls her "wife." She reminds him of a financial thing he has to read on the radio today, and he pours her tea. He thinks her crutches are too short, worries about her back. She thinks he knows nothing about broken ankles, or backs, and he should stay out of it.
Later, when she's out of the room, I tell Lou, "I really like your wife."
"Me, too!" he says.
"I'm just saying…"
"You mean what is a nice, normal, intelligent person like her doing with a silly old bastard like me?" he says.
"I didn't say that."
"Yeah, you did."
Yeah, I guess I did.
We head to the living room, cozy and dark and filled floor to ceiling with books. Kurby hops on Lou's lap, and Lou strokes his back, and Kurby drops dead asleep. For the record, Lou likes big dogs, used to have big dogs. "But now all we have left are these little squirrels."
We return to the subject of Lou being stupid and arrogant.
"Politically, you do get lumped in with the wackos," I point out.
"Who's doing the lumping?" he says. "Is it The New York Times? Is it The Washington Post? The L.A. Times? Look, I've sat down with those editors. I'm an inconvenience. Well, first I was an inconvenience. Then I became an obstacle."
"I'm throwing 'paranoid' in with stupid and arrogant," I tell him. Because this is kind of infuriating. To say he's let others define him is to take no responsibility. He knows better than that.
"Maybe a dash of lazy, but not paranoid," he says.
I tell him it's annoying to hear him go all victim here. "Listen, if your image is wrong, fix it! Explain yourself to people."
"I really don't know why anyone would want to bother."
"Taking the time to rethink or reexamine my positions on anything," he says. "I guess I despair of the possibility, or I don't think people are interested in the reality. I think their preconceptions are all very comfortable, and I'm not sure they'd go to the trouble to really understand, nor am I sure I could build an argument as to why they should go to the trouble to find out who the hell I really am and where I'm coming from."
"Well, you can't just surrender to being misunderstood by the MSNBC crowd," I say.
"I can't?"
"Not if it's not true. And you should stop making guest appearances on Fox News, by the way. It's not helping things."
"Why should I not go to Fox News? Should I go to MSNBC?"
"Yes! Mix it up. Talk to the people who disagree with you."
"Do you think they'd have the guts to bring an independent onto MSNBC? Are you shitting me? Are you kidding? Have you looked at their ratings? Have you looked? They're scared to death. They have a corporate agenda. MSNBC is GE's gift to the Obama administration! 'And please, give us some more defense contracts. It's all good!'"
"That's probably not the way you want to approach them—"
"I never said I wanted to approach them."
"Well, we're going to have to do something about your image before we launch the campaign."
"I am not working on your presidential campaign if you don't start working on your optics. And that means no more appearances on Fox News. I'm sorry."
He closes his eyes. He wants me to go home, I can just tell.
"I never said I'm running for president," he says.
"You never said you aren't."
"No, I haven't. I'm not ruling anything out. I don't know what I'm going to do."
"You're running for president."
"If you say so."
"You're considering it."
"I am."
"You're talking to Debi about it?"
"I am."
"And she says?"
"I think that's off the record—"
"But she's not against it—"
"She's probably more open to considering it than she's ever been."
"Oh, my God, you're running for president."
One hundred and eight first-person references in seventy-one minutes for this president last night. He was saying "I" or "me" more than one time a minute. And before we get into my thoughts criticizing the president and his first-person references, we're gonna talk about your thoughts. I want to hear from you. 877-55-DOBBS. 877-55-DOBBS. As always, yours is the most important voice on this broadcast.
At the radio station, Lou tells me he's surrounded by Communists. Slade, his ecutive producer, waves when he hears the pronouncement. Slade's 30, energetic, fiercely liberal, has worked with Lou for seven years, possesses brainpower mighty and flexible enough to enter and inhabit Lou's mind and exit it unscathed each day. "How many do you want?" he says to Lou, and Lou says, "I'll take three," and in moments Slade returns with a small stack of Chips Ahoy cookies. Slade retains possession of the bag, rationing the sugar throughout the broadcast, weekdays from 2 to 5 p.m.
On radio, Lou is more relad than he ever was on CNN, which is probably as much a factor of the medium as it is of Lou's overarching sense of emancipation. The rumors that he was unceremoniously dumped from CNN last November are inaccurate. The real story, he insists, is far less exciting than that—the end result of months of negotiations he can't detail, and neither can CNN, because both signed a "nondisparagement agreement." It was an amicable parting, Lou insists over and over again, each time wistfully making mention of his "old friends over there." It was sad, he says. If he was angry about anything, it was the direction of the network, which he largely saw as "uninspired—and the plummeting ratings certainly didn't contradict my opinion." He was with CNN for nearly thirty years, was right there alongside Ted Turner when the damn thing started, so of course watching it slip away was hard. But hey, things change; it was like one day you wake up and find the whole neighborhood's gone to shit. Mr. Independent. He no longer fit. And why did he no longer fit? It wasn't that he'd changed politically or stylistically, at least not since his remake, when he morphed from Moneyline business anchor to fretful populist on the renamed Lou Dobbs Tonight in 2003. He had started Moneyline way back in 1980, became Wall Street's premier emcee, successfully holding a beat all his own on a franchise he had built on his own. In 1999 he left CNN briefly in a surprise move to catch the dot-com wave and head Space.com, a Web site about astronomy. The venture was unsuccessful, and he returned with much fanfare to CNN in 2001. The U.S. economy and its attendant political landscape had vastly changed in the interim, and so had Dobbs. Champion of the American middle class! That's how the revamped Dobbs came to define himself in the wake of September 11 and corporate scandals. Secure America's borders, keep Americans safe—not just from creepy terrorists lurking in its shadows but from the "elites" within, from the greedy CEO SOBs intent on robbing the middle class of the American Dream itself. On Lou Dobbs Tonight, he came out swinging, and he held tighter and tighter to his narrative in the face of controversy, dedicating broadcast after broadcast to issues of illegal immigration and the evils of outsourcing. The show earned him a huge following, spiking as high as 2.1 million viewers, and plenty of awards, including an Emmy for Lifetime Achievement.
Critics said the Champion of the Middle Class act was a tricky sell for Dobbs, seeing as he was a Harvard-educated rich guy with a fancy estate and his own private jet.Then again, he was a self-made man, having grown up without privilege in rural Texas and Idaho—football player, student-council president, Ivy League scholarship, train ticket east to the unknown. When he emerged Lou Dobbs the populist, he was so hard to peg. A mishmash of contradictions: anti-outsourcing, anti-globalization, pro-international-trade, pro-free-enterprise, anti-corporatism, pro-choice, pro–Second Amendment, pro-gay-marriage, pro-gays-serving-openly-in-the-military, pro-military, anti-war-in-Iraq-and-Afghanistan.
Lou's standing at CNN was strong when Bush was in office, but then came Obama. "Did I become stupid in 2008 but I was a genius in 2006?" he says. "Because in one instance I'm criticizing Obama and the other I'm criticizing Bush? I mean, good Lord, give me a break. It's staring you and everybody else in the face. It's an absurdity. It's an inconsistency. And by God, it's pure hypocrisy."
As for his own role in the break with CNN, he is quick to defend and deflect. Did he simply go way too far out on a limb when he gave voice to the birther-conspiracy fringe last year? Even Bill O'Reilly steered clear of that one.
"Eight days," he says to me. "I talked about it on TV for eight days. In nearly thirty years' worth of broadcasting. That makes me a birther? Give me a break. I said all along that I believed Obama was a citizen. But if so many people were demanding to see the long-form birth certificate, why wouldn't he just produce the damn thing? I wasn't questioning his birthright. I was questioning his political instincts."
Whatever his intentions or his calculations, the birther mess was the beginning of the end. Lou became a marked man: the anti-Obama voice at a network that may have claimed to be moderate but that Lou saw as overly pro-Obama.
And how, he wonders, does that square with his anti-Bush voice? Does anyone remember how much he ragged on Bush? Does anyone remember he called for Bush's impeachment? No, he thinks, no one seems to remember that. Read his last two books, both best sellers. War on the Middle Class (2006) and Independents Day (2007). Anti-idiots-in-Washington: That was his theme. Those books were written when Bush was in the White House. In chapters like "The Imperious Presidency" and "The Politics of Deceit," he excoriates Bush for failing America, deceiving America, running roughshod with the Constitution. Bush. Republicans, Democrats, throw the bums out! That's Mr. Independent! But now that Obama is in office, he thinks, the mainstream national media can't handle Lou Dobbs, can't handle criticism of its chosen leader, Barack H. Obama. (He always puts the H in there.) That, anyway, is his version of the falling-out with CNN.
Of course, Mr. Independent still calls himself Mr. Independent. But tune in to his radio show and you hear all the conservative talking points, all the Barack H. Obama bashing, the come on, freak out with me, people! tone with which he invites callers to join him in eulogy as this country takes its "sharp left turn" to hell. I can't even listen to that Lou, not for very long. I can't listen to him cheer the oncoming East Coast blizzard as evidence that Al Gore is a blubbering fool. Radio Lou, to me, becomes a dull hum, like so many other dull hums—not nearly as frightening as Beck or as deranged as Limbaugh or as egomaniacal as O'Reilly, but among the same chorus. Why is radio Lou not more like personal Lou?
I am certainly not the first to notice a difference. Affable is the word that often comes up from reporters, even staunch critics who meet Lou Dobbs for the first time. He's Mike Huckabee without all the God; he's Bob Dole after the 1996 campaign. (He could tell jokes!) He's Ronald Reagan with a reachable heart. And yet affable suggests he works at it, a glad-handing smiling salesman with some charm offensive. That isn't it at all. His ego is an aura, of course, substantial enough to affect barometric pressure, of course—no entertainer and no politician could survive without as much—and lurking beneath is a temper you suspect could explode with little warning. But on top of that he's soft, empathic. Before I got to his house this morning, he called my hotel to tell me there was snow. "It's a light coating, but it is accumulating, so if you want to factor that into your travel plans…" When I got us lost in Times Square a few days ago, all turned around on the way to a destination I promised him I knew by heart, he could sense my frustration, my disgust with my stupid self, and rather than make the easy jokes, he charged chivalrously forth to find help. He sent me an e-mail hours after one of our times together to apologize for a comment I may have perceived as cruel. "I meant that it's charming—not a negative at all." When I asked him about his dainty bracelet, he flashed a guilty smile, said, "I look like a man who wears jewelry, don't I? Don't I?" daring me to disagree. He then explained it was a twenty-fifth-wedding-anniversary present from Debi. "Aw, that's really sweet," I said. "That's exactly what I said when I opened it," he told me. "And I put it on, and let's leave it at that." He believes in the value of nice. He likes books with happy endings. He likes symmetry in design. He enjoys watching birds. He knows only a private God. He stopped going to church at age 6 because he could not bear the image of hell.
We're eating dinner at the Tick Tock Diner, and Lou's ordered a massive plate of roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy. "Okay, so are we done?" he says. We have been chewing in silence for a few minutes, and he's getting bored. "Well?" he says, like a kid inviting another out to play. "What else do you want to talk about? Where have I left the traveled path, and how may I return to conformity and comfort?"
I tell him I'm switching gears. "I've decided to be nice. I want to know the real Lou."
"Oh, my God, you're finding your empathy place—"
"This is me, trying to understand."
"Yeah, well, this is me, trying to overcome my own fatigue with the issue of people not understanding me."
"Never mind."
I spill my beer. He hands me a pile of napkins. I tell him I have a friend, an Iranian-American, who said she was afraid to meet Lou because he'd probably cover her up in bubble wrap and ship her back to the motherland.
He's going to make me explain? He's going to pretend he didn't get the joke when he appeared on The Daily Show and they greeted him with a little Mexican band playing? I go right to the heart of the issue, right for the gut. If I'm going to fix Lou, I'm going to have to show him just how broken I think he is. I tell him about some time I spent last summer reporting a story in the blueberry fields of Maine, raking berries with migrant workers from Mexico and Central America, living for a time in their camp.
He looks at me, trying to appear engaged. It is, I realize later, a kindness. Or perhaps a patronizing. Like, he's never heard this shit before? Like, he's not been sitting in the mud of the illegal-immigration issue for the past seven years? Like, he didn't grow up working in the potato fields alongside legal and illegal immigrants?
I go on and on, all virtuous. Listen, Lou, you shouldn't blame these people. You shouldn't blame the illegal immigrants; they're just coming here to make some money to feed their families back home. And if our spoiled-brat high school kids won't work in the lettuce fields and the orange groves, we should be glad someone will. We should be thanking the migrant workers for picking our food—not shunning them, forcing them to hide and live in squalor. And if our greedy growers won't pay a living wage, well, shame on us for allowing that. Shame on us! We sit in our restaurants and eat our fresh lettuce and our juicy tomatoes, and it's because of the migrant workers—legal or illegal—that we spoiled-brat Americans can afford that feast.
"Finally we agree on something," he says. He slurps some potatoes. He is so sick of having this conversation with idiots who don't listen, fools who simply buy the anti-Dobbs rhetoric put out by activist groups needing a villain. That's how he sees it. A propaganda war he lost because he was stupid or he was arrogant or he was just plain reckless.
"Look, I've said from the beginning that the illegal immigrant is the only rational actor in this whole mess. I have said it a thousand times." He picks up his phone and calls Slade. "Can you put that thing up on the Web site again?" he says. "The thing about illegal immigration?" It's a video montage I look at later, more than thirty snippets dating back to 2003, of Lou saying, "The illegal immigrant is the only rational actor in this whole thing," over and over again.
"Have I not said I've got great respect for the work ethic, the family values of most illegal aliens working in this country? Have I not said that their wages should be increased?"
_ "How can we get to the employer who is so shamelessly exploiting the illegal alien and so shamelessly flouting U.S. law?"_
"Why are you willing to support a system that is exploitative of people whom we all respect, who have a terriffic work ethic, who are outstanding human beings?"
His defense of the immigrant himself—the person here legally or here illegally—has, he says, been not just overlooked by the activists who speak out against Lou Dobbs, but viciously distorted.
And the media, he says, eat it up.
"It's inconvenient to the national liberal media to disturb themselves with the thought that maybe what they're witnessing really is sordid and they shouldn't be a part of it," he says.
Lazy. In the Dobbsian view of America, the mainstream media isn't evil because it's liberal but because it's lazy. And Washington is utterly corrupt, has sold out, Democrats and Republicans alike. And corporate America is an insatiable pig. He is getting revved up. He rights his posture. He shakes his head, like a dog with a fresh kill. "These people HAVEN'T GOT THE GUTS! The liberal media, political parties, haven't got the GUTS to ask the questions. You know, why is there illegal immigration? Because both political parties sold out to the illegal employers who make up the business establishment. That's why there's illegal immigration!
"Why is there a border-security problem? It's a calculated cost of doing business, that's why. A terrorist strike? Oh, they think, the hell with that. They think, What does that take out? Ah, how many people does that really take out?"
He requires no prompting for any of this; he is a lone man at a diner, raging over a plate of turkey. "Look at what we're talking about in this country over the last decade. Middle-class jobs being outsourced. No one wants to take the time to say, hey, those are real people who are really being devastated by public policy, by default, by business practices. No one gives a damn. No one seemingly in power gives a damn. And what the hell happened to a national press that's supposed to look out for folks? Oh, it's not popular to be concerned about American citizens and the American dream—what this nation stands for. No no, that's an inconvenient narrative. Let's focus on political correctness; let's talk about the orthodoxy of right thinking. You know, this shit has an impact on the body politic, an ennui that has settled on this nation, a disengagement, an alienation, a polarization. And then we retreated to the Obama magical mystery tour with seemingly the entire national media cheering him on and setting boundaries as to what can be asked and what can be said. And as to the issues that really matter, well, who cares? And the issues that really matter are: Why in the hell are half of our kids in high school, Hispanic kids, black kids, dropping out of high school? Oh, we're a big, rich country, we have time to be fools, and there will be no consequences. Well, ask those millions of kids who are dropping out of high school what the consequences are. They're collateral damage; hell, they don't matter.… That's the attitude of the power structure in this country! We've had a thirty- or forty-year war on drugs in which the poor, the minorities, are the victims. Oh, the hell with that, we can accept that collateral damage, they don't matter: That seems to be the tacit statement of values on the part of the American establishment! You, me, who have a vote? We're as guilty as anybody."
He pushes his plate away.
I wonder what to say. I fight the urge to turn into his mother and tell him to eat. I see something wonderful emerge in his display of anger, passion, and eloquence. I see an honest man—a supercharged fighter fighting the only way he knows how: by arguing his righteousness whether anyone is listening or not. I see a candidate. Could he survive a bid for the White House? Will he really go for it? The national mood has never been more receptive to an independent contender. He doesn't seem to be courting the tea partiers who need a leader—or they're not courting him. He has told me of several secret meetings in Washington, power lunches and power dinners about things he can't yet talk about. One morning Slade produced an article about Senator Chuck Schumer having met with Lou Dobbs to talk illegal immigration, to compromise, to think through the problem together.
"Oh," Lou said, looking at it. "I guess I'm allowed to talk about it."
"Schumer sure spilled," Slade said.
Lou told me he's meeting with people on all sides of the illegal-immigration issue. He wants them all in the same room, and he wants them all to talk this thing out. "We are going to solve this damn thing. Solve it."
He insists the mission is the act of "a private citizen." Nothing more. He has substantially tempered his position on illegal immigration. He has softened his language, doesn't say "illegal alien" anymore. He has appeared on Telemundo publicly announcing his support of amnesty.
In reaction, the folks who created loudobbsforpresident.org, along with many others, have withdrawn their support of his potential candidacy, calling Lou a hypocrite.
I would not vote for him for dog catcher now. I was a strong supporter of you, Lou. But, I see that your colors are not red, white and blue.
I return several times to the question of whether or not Lou is planning a presidential run. It seems so obvious—the softening of the rhetoric, the reaching across the aisle to the likes of ultraliberal Schumer—and it seems so Lou. Can this guy not run for president? (And no, forget any of that talk of him going for the Senate—Lou only goes big.) So why won't he just announce his White House bid? Early one afternoon, he promised he'd give me something on this. He kept hemming and hawing all day. Seven hours later, he finally said, "Let's just say it would be reckless to say anything other than 'we'll see.' "
"Jesus H. Christ! That's what I waited all this time for?"
"I'm sorry."
"I really hate you right now."
"I'm sorry. It would be reckless!"
"So, be reckless!"
He thought that one over, seemed to savor the notion. I never saw eyes actually twinkle like that. "Are you sure that's what we want in a president?" he said.
We're riding home. I've shut up. I'm tired. He's tired. We've been arguing all damn day. I am starting to talk like him. Damn this. And hell that. And Jesus Christ.
It's late. It's like two degrees outside. New Jersey is a solid brick of ice. Scott, his driver, is driving. Lou is back here speaking softly, without purpose, spurting tired thoughts.
"I wish I didn't care, I'll tell you. But what, I'm supposed to just shut off my brain and close my heart? Just simply let go?"
"…I mean, if you have any intellectual capacity at all! My God! Go figure!"
I thought for sure he would have wound down by now. I thought he'd move off politics, off America, off the indignation. Doesn't he ever simply daydream about…breakfast or something? Golf? About what's awaiting on the TiVo at home?
He sees something out the window. "Whoa," he says. "Oh God, Scott! Scott! Oh, Scott, will you do me a favor? Will you, please? Will you turn around and go into the Rite Aid parking lot?"
"Yes, sir."
"I just have to check. Have to see. Oh Jesus."
Scott pulls the car into the lot, and Lou jumps out. No coat. Just his shirtsleeves. He motions for Scott to follow him with the car, aim the headlights. The store is closed. There are no cars at all here. Lou is searching. Scott is searching. Lou sees it, points! He comes running back to the car.
"Can you freaking believe it?" he says to Scott.
"No, sir."
"Can you believe it? It was three months ago that Debi fell! THREE MONTHS? Are you shitting me? They can't fill a freaking pothole? THEY DON'T EVEN CARE! CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? What if some old lady falls into this thing? It could do more damage than a broken ankle. Can you believe this?"
"No, sir."
He goes back to the pothole, and Scott puts the window up, but we can hear Lou clear as a foghorn all the same. "THEY DON'T EVEN CARE! I should sue! CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?"
The injustice is unbearable, and he stands out there trying to bear it, in the bitter cold, like a snorting bull, steam coming out of his nose and his mouth. "THEY DON'T EVEN CARE!"
_Jeanne Marie Laskas is a GQ correspondent_.


text:
A Higher Level API to BigML.io, the public BigML API
Project description
BigMLer - A Higher-Level API to BigML's API
BigMLer makes BigML even easier.
BigMLer wraps BigML's API Python bindings to offer a high-level command-line script to easily create and publish datasets and models, create ensembles, make local predictions from multiple models, and simplify many other machine learning tasks.
BigMLer is open sourced under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
Please report problems and bugs to our BigML.io issue tracker.
Discussions about the different bindings take place in the general BigML mailing list. Or join us in our Campfire chatroom.
Python 2.7 is currently supported by BigMLer.
BigMLer requires bigml 0.7.3 or higher.
BigMLer Installation
To install the latest stable release with pip:
$ pip install bigmler
You can also install the development version of bigmler directly from the Git repository:
$ pip install -e git://github.com/bigmlcom/bigmler.git#egg=bigmler
For a detailed description of install instructions on Windows see the BigMLer on Windows section.
BigML Authentication
All the requests to BigML.io must be authenticated using your username and API key and are always transmitted over HTTPS.
BigML module will look for your username and API key in the environment variables BIGML_USERNAME and BIGML_API_KEY respectively. You can add the following lines to your .bashrc or .bash_profile to set those variables automatically when you log in:
export BIGML_USERNAME=myusername export BIGML_API_KEY=ae579e7e53fb9abd646a6ff8aa99d4afe83ac291
Otherwise, you can initialize directly when running the BigMLer script as follows:
bigmler --train data/iris.csv --username myusername --api_key ae579e7e53fb9abd646a6ff8aa99d4afe83ac291
For a detailed description of authentication instructions on Windows see the BigMLer on Windows section.
BigMLer on Windows
To install BigMLer on Windows environments, you'll need Python for Windows (v.2.7.x) installed.
In addition to that, you'll need the pip tool to install BigMLer. To install pip, first you need to open your command line window (write cmd in the input field that appears when you click on Start and hit enter), download this python file and execute it:
c:\Python27\python.exe distribute_setup.py
After that, you'll be able to install pip by typing the following command:
c:\Python27\Scripts\easy_install.exe pip
And finally, to install BigMLer, just type:
c:\Python27\Scripts\pip.exe install bigmler
and BigMLer should be installed in your computer. Then issuing:
bigmler --version
should show BigMLer version information.
Finally, to start using BigMLer to handle your BigML resources, you need to set your credentials in BigML for authentication. If you want them to be permanently stored in your system, use:
setx BIGML_USERNAME myusername setx BIGML_API_KEY ae579e7e53fb9abd646a6ff8aa99d4afe83ac291
BigML Development Mode
Also, you can instruct BigMLer to work in BigML's Sandbox environment by using the parameter ---dev:
bigmler --train data/iris.csv --dev
Using the development flag you can run tasks under 1 MB without spending any of your BigML credits.
Using BigMLer
To run BigMLer you can use the console script directly. The –help option will describe all the available options:
bigmler --help
Alternatively you can just call bigmler as follows:
python bigmler.py --help
This will display the full list of optional arguments. You can read a brief explanation for each option below.
Quick Start
Let's see some basic usage examples. Check the installation and authentication sections in BigMLer on Read the Docs if you are not familiar with BigML.
You can create a new model just with
bigmler --train data/iris.csv
If you check your dashboard at BigML, you will see a new source, dataset, and model. Isn't it magic?
You can generate predictions for a test set using:
bigmler --train data/iris.csv --test data/test_iris.csv
You can also specify a file name to save the newly created predictions:
bigmler --train data/iris.csv --test data/test_iris.csv --output predictions
If you do not specify the path to an output file, BigMLer will auto-generate one for you under a new directory named after the current date and time (e.g., MonNov1212_174715/predictions.csv). With --prediction-info flag set to brief only the prediction result will be stored (default is normal and includes confidence information).
A different objective field (the field that you want to predict) can be selected using:
bigmler --train data/iris.csv --test data/test_iris.csv --objective 'sepal length'
If you do not explicitly specify an objective field, BigML will default to the last column in your dataset.
BigMLer will try to use the locale of the model both to create a new source (if --train flag is used) and to interpret test data. In case it fails, it will try en_US.UTF-8 or English_United States.1252 and a warning message will be printed. If you want to change this behaviour you can specify your preferred locale:
bigmler --train data/iris.csv --test data/test_iris.csv \ --locale "English_United States.1252"
If you check your working directory you will see that BigMLer creates a file with the model ids that have been generated (e.g., FriNov0912_223645/models). This file is handy if then you want to use those model ids to generate local predictions. BigMLer also creates a file with the dataset id that has been generated (e.g., TueNov1312_003451/dataset) and another one summarizing the steps taken in the session progress: bigmler_sessions. You can also store a copy of every created or retrieved resource in your output directory (e.g., TueNov1312_003451/model_50c23e5e035d07305a00004f) by setting the flag --store.
Prior Versions Compatibility Issues
BigMLer will accept flags written with underscore as word separator like --clear_logs for compatibility with prior versions. Also --field-names is accepted, although the more complete --field-attributes flag is preferred. --stat_pruning and --no_stat_pruning are discontinued and their effects can be achived by setting the actual --pruning flag to statistical or no-pruning values respectively.
Additional Information
For additional information, see the full documentation for BigMLer on Read the Docs.
0.3.4 (2013-08-09)
- Adding –max-parallel-evaluations flag
- Bug fixing: matching seeds in models and evaluations for cross validation
0.3.3 (2013-08-09)
- Changing –model-fields and –dataset-fields flag to allow adding/removing fields with +/- prefix
- Refactoring local and remote prediction functions
- Adding 'full data' option to the –prediction-info flag to join test input data with prediction results in predictions file
- Fixing errors in documentation and adding install for windows info
0.3.2 (2013-07-04)
- Adding new flag to control predictions file information
- Bug fixing: using default sample-rate in ensemble evaluations
- Adding standard deviation to evaluation measures in cross-validation
- Bug fixing: using only-model argument to download fields in models
0.3.1 (2013-05-14)
- Adding delete for ensembles
- Creating ensembles when the number of models is greater than one
- Remote predictions using ensembles
0.3.0 (2013-04-30)
- Adding cross-validation feature
- Using user locale to create new resources in BigML
- Adding –ensemble flag to use ensembles in predictions and evaluations
0.2.1 (2013-03-03)
- Deep refactoring of main resources management
- Fixing bug in batch_predict for no headers test sets
- Fixing bug for wide dataset's models than need query-string to retrieve all fields
- Fixing bug in test asserts to catch subprocess raise
- Adding default missing tokens to models
- Adding stdin input for –train flag
- Fixing bug when reading descriptions in –field-attributes
- Refactoring to get status from api function
- Adding confidence to combined predictions
0.2.0 (2012-01-21)
- Evaluations management
- console monitoring of process advance
- resume option
- user defaults
- Refactoring to improve readability
0.1.4 (2012-12-21)
- Improved locale management.
- Adds progressive handling for large numbers of models.
- More options in field attributes update feature.
- New flag to combine local existing predictions.
- More methods in local predictions: plurality, confidence weighted.
0.1.3 (2012-12-06)
- New flag for locale settings configuration.
- Filtering only finished resources.
0.1.2 (2012-12-06)
- Fix to ensure windows compatibility.
0.1.1 (2012-11-07)
- Initial release.
Project details
Release history Release notifications
Download files
Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.
|Filename, size & hash SHA256 hash help
|File type
|Python version
|Upload date
|bigmler-0.3.4.tar.gz (64.4 kB) Copy SHA256 hash SHA256

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Chair Taylor will call the meeting to order.
Chair Taylor will address the Board and present the Chair's Report.
Chair Taylor will offer opportunity for open comments.
The purpose of this item is to present for approval a proposed FOP contract for 2007-2008.
The UNF bargaining team and the FOP have tentatively agreed on a new collective bargaining agreement. The FOP's membership ratified the contract with their vote on February 27-28, 2009. The agreement requires Board ratification.
Vice President Stone and Mr. Leonard Carson will address the Board and present the FOP collective bargaining agreement
Proposed Action: Approval. Motion and second required.
Chair Taylor will adjourn the meeting.
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text:
retiring remanufacturer 2963 units
I am retiring and am selling remaining inventory for a fraction of their worth. I used standard numbering...if you need interchange let me know.
Part NumbersShow Details | Hide Details
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|NOTICE: All World, LLC is a venue for companies wishing to buy or sell their surplus auto parts inventories. Names, brands and products named on these pages have registered trademarks belonging to their respective owners. Representation of inventories on these pages is the responsibility of the listing companies.


text:
Calendar | Indian Education Summit: Pre Conference Event
Indian Education Summit:
Pre-Conference Event
Common Core Literacy and the School Library
Looking for new ways to reach your students as readers of text in all formats? Join your school library colleagues to collaborate and share ideas as you explore multiple literacy strategies using the Common Core State Standards.
Hosted by the South Dakota State Library Development Services, this event is in conjunction with the South Dakota Indian Education Summit . Located at Cedar Shores Resort in Chamberlain, this pre-conference event takes place on Sunday, September 29, 2013, from 1:00-4:00 pm.
This no cost pre-conference is for librarians, library aides and administrators. It is a great time to ask questions and get information about school libraries and their role in South Dakota. Plan to attend this unique training opportunity and then stay for the rest of the conference!
Completing the form below only registers you for the free pre-conference held on Sunday, September 29 from 1:00-4:00 pm. To attend the full conference September 29 - October 1 you will also have to register at IES summit .
Kathleen Slocum
Continuing Education Coordinator
605-773-3131, Option 5, 2


text:
Schools Superintendent Candidate Engle Says Digital Education is Key
by Jack Mayne
Dr. David Engle, a candidate for superintendent of the Highline School District, says keeping the schools moving forward on an established forward track while financing was critically low is the most important goal he would face in the job.
There are three finalist candidates for the district superintendent's job and the first was Engle. The other two candidates will face public questions Thursday and Friday evenings at 6 p.m. in the council chambers at Burien City Hall.
Engle, a Washington native that now lives in New Jersey and is seeking a return to his native state, was asked what he would say is a "compelling examples of educational innovation" in the Highline District.
"The portfolio of schools that you currently have developed and expanding really stand out to me," Engle said. "The work you did at the Tyee complex, converting a large, comprehensive high school into three smaller schools aimed at personalizing the educational experience around thematic structures is really an innovative and interesting project and you have really good leadership.
"The teachers that have been drawn to that really come there because their heart says this is really a good way to engage kids, challenge them and prepare them for college and for citizenship. The district has quite a portfolio of schools, if you look at the secondary schools especially," Engle said.
The district needs to prepare students to the high technology job future but that no single school can meet all the requirements.
Engle said he has learned from his recent employment as executive director of Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., how completely integrated digital technology already is in fast moving companies.
"I am not sure we have done enough, yet, to integrate technology to the degree that prepares the student for that kind of workplace," he said. "The velocity of change in that kind of workplace around the use of those (digital) tools is outstripping our current ability to render students as knowledgeable users and able to work in that arena.
"I think we have a lot of work to do gather speed" to meet those needs, but lack of money will be a problem.
Engle said he thinks the "portfolio approach," is the best way to work toward the goal, and not attempt to make overarching changes in the entire district.
"That will be an important part of our work going forward," he said.
What does he bring?
When he was asked what his forte was for working with the district staff and board of directory – and with the community – Engle said it was his ability to capture the "priorities and the things that matter and forming a sense of sanity around the noise that is currently in the system" about change. He says he want to "bring back the sense of joy and passion to teaching and to learning."
"I have a pretty good eye for things that look like panaceas but aren't," Engle said, adding that he also can spot "reforms that take us to places we shouldn't go and, as a superintendent, intervene."
"I think what I can bring to the district that will be most interesting to the community is a really good sense about how the integration of technology can assist our efforts going forward," he said. "Coupled with that, a really good instructional perspective that says at the end of the day, it is still a human business, about human interface. It is about providing teachers with the kinds of tools that really do advance learning . . ."
Technology has forced a faster pace of change to education that Engle said he brings "a lot of expertise to."
The candidate says a lot of mistakes have been made around technology integration into schools.
"I learned from those (mistakes), I won't make them again," Engle said. "If I do make mistakes they will be entrepreneurial and new."
He also suggested that bringing back and keeping fine arts and music in schools was important, but financial considerations now make finding ways difficult.
"Without their own funding stream, it is almost impossible," Engle said. "That is a challenge now, and we have to find a way to do this.
Linking teacher evaluations
Engle was told that the Highline District is starting to renegotiate a new teacher evaluation process and was asked what his approach would be to using student test results in teacher evaluations.
That is not a "fair practice," Engle said.
"In terms of face validity, sure, we ought to be able to measure what a student learned this year, give him a test next year and see what the growth was and apply that to a teacher's evaluation," Engle said. "However, progressive educational practices in good schools say that every teacher shares in the learning and teaching process (where) every teacher is helping student's read well, for instance. If that is true, who do you assign the reading gains to and how do you do that appropriately?"
The superintendent candidate said that a small change in the grades of students could propel a teacher who was highly rated one year to be a low rated one the very next year.
"That is due to chance, if anything," Engle said. "That is a very risky measure to apply to a high stakes environment. It will be challenged and it will fail us. That is a very unreliable and volatile piece of information.
"That being said, I think we need to use all the data we can to help improve instruction and use assessments for learning so that we are able to improve the performance of our students."
Another problem is that "we don't have the resources" to test every teacher in every part of the curriculum "so I think we have to back off from thinking that is a panacea."
When it comes to evaluating students, he said the old A, B, C, D, F system has been used for a long time and has been ingrained with parents, but a new "standards based rating" of students will take "really intense programs" by the district to make sure parents understand how it works.
"I think it has to be a really careful project and you can't just do it and hope that people will understand it. You can do a lot of damage with no particular gain."
Engle's background
He was born in Tacoma and began as an elementary classroom teacher in Yelm. Engle has been a high school principal in Bellingham Public Schools, Seattle Public Schools and Bellevue Public Schools. He was superintendent of North Platte Public School District in Nebraska from 2008 to 2011 and is the former executive director of Educational Testing Service in New Jersey.
Next Candidate: Dr. Joshua Garcia, tonight (Thursday, Feb. 23) from 6 – 7:15 p.m. in the Burien City Council Chambers, 400 SW 152nd Street.


text:
Friday, November 21, 2008
7 Things to Do After Installing Kubuntu & KDE in General
1. Install Flash 10
To install the official Adobe Flash plugin (Flash 10) for Firefox, install the adobe-flashplugin package:
sudo apt-get install adobe-flashplugin
2. Install Java 6.0
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin
3. Install GIMP: I don't know why KDE doesn't ship with GIMP. It is obviously the best image editor other than Photoshop. One of the reasons for this could be that GIMP is an GTK based app.
sudo apt-get install gimp
Initially GIMP will look ugly but we can change that easily later on.
4. Turn off Wallet: The wallet must be one of the most irritating thing ever made for PC. It keeps on nagging for your password after every 5 min. So here is how you stop it.
K Menu > Applications > Settings > Wallet Management
Now look in your System Tray (it is normally at the extreme right side on your panel) for one brown colored icon. Right click on it and select configure wallet and then uncheck Enable KDE wallet subsystem.
5. Play DVDs:
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2
if this doesnt work for some reasons use this command:
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh
6. Make GTK Apps Beautiful: If you try installing Gnome apps like GIMP, Firefox in KDE they will look ugly because they are based on GTK. To make them look like a normal (and beautiul) KDE app type this in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install gtk-qt-engine-kde4
Now got to K Menu > System Settings > Appearence > GTK Styles and Fonts
Here select the option Use my KDE style in GTK applications
also select Use my KDE fonts in GTK applications
Now your Gnome apps will start looking pretty too. After using the above settings my GIMP started looking good before using that GIMP looked like some Windows 98 software :P
[thanks Tombuntu]
7. Add Avatar: You can add cool avatars for your account.
Go to Settings > About Me > Password and User Account
Well KDE 4.1 motto says 'Don't look back' well I have decided that from now on I won't ever try KDE. On the very next day Plasma crashed and I had to reinstall Ubuntu.
14 comments:
- AnonymousNovember 23, 2008 at 7:51 AM
Try PC/OS or Mint they are ready to go out of the box.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousNovember 23, 2008 at 10:43 AM
> Well KDE 4.1 motto says 'Don't look back' wellReplyDelete
> I have decided that from now on I won't ever
> try KDE. On the very next day Plasma crashed
> and I had to reinstall Ubuntu.
Funny didn't you start out saying that Kubuntu is considered a poor implementation of KDE? So why would you dismiss the whole KDE desktop based on the way *buntu presents KDE?
Try _any_ other distro that actually supports KDE and you may change your tune, or have a valid point if something fails. Also, know that the KDE developers have repeatedly said that KDE4 shouldn't really be used and expected to be superstable until KDE 4.2 in January.
I am using Kubuntu 8.10 on my work laptop and I am quite satisfied with it. About KDE 4, I have been using it since its 4.0 version. 4.1 seems much better and plasma never crashed for me. But it still seems to be missing some good old KDE features (like right-click > copy-to / move-to, extract archive here etc.).ReplyDelete
I don't like OpenSuSE because of its clunky package management system, otherwise it is also good.
- AnonymousNovember 23, 2008 at 5:20 PM
I've been using KDE 4.2 (trunk) on my work laptop and it has never troubled me. Considering I support 3 global customers as a database administrator, this should tell you that its stable and usable.ReplyDelete
Although I use Kubuntu and have had no trouble with it at all, you are better off using Mandriva for KDE4.
"right-click > copy-to / move-to"
It's already available. Just enable it in Dolphin Settings on General tab.
Regarding the original article, yes I agree that currently Kubuntu is not the best distro to check KDE 4. Mandriva and openSUSE are more polished in this area.
I also don't agree with point 4. KWallet is a very handy feature for securely storing your password. You just once enter the master password and then all the app and web page passwords get entered automatically. I like this a lot.
As other also said it is very foolish to decide to not try KDE based on a test of not the best distribution. It is even more so foolish because in Linux world things change very quickly so it is smart to frequently check how other things progress. KDE 4 is changing especially fast. I myself didn't like KDE 4.0 at all. After only 6 months 4.1 is already a lot better and from what I can see about 4.2 it is going to totally rock.
- AnonymousNovember 24, 2008 at 12:50 AM
If you want to get any of this stuff. Make sure to add the medibuntu repository.ReplyDelete
YES! I agree with each of those except #7. It's nice but not necessary. Why Ubuntu doesn't install Java I don't know and I can't stand kwallet. I'm sure it's useful, but I find it extremely annoying.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousNovember 24, 2008 at 8:41 AM
You are mixing distribution decisions (like kubuntu not containing gimp in a default installation) with your opinion of the usefulness of a particular kde application...ReplyDelete
thats not very sound
i suggest you all to try fedora 10. it is rock solid. and it has plymouth .and it has solar comet. and it has the power of redhat and 11 million usersReplyDelete
- AnonymousDecember 16, 2008 at 5:34 PM
yeah, I got rid of the wallet too.ReplyDelete
I don't like password managers in general. Besides, I'll forget the passwords if I don't use them regularly. And that sucks when I'm on a different comptuer.
- AnonymousJanuary 30, 2009 at 5:27 PM
You come across as a very immature person who doesn't really understand how KDE works with distributions.ReplyDelete
I think you owe your readers and the KDE project an apology.
@ Anonymous:ReplyDelete
"You come across as a very immature person who doesn't really understand how KDE works with distributions.
I think you owe your readers and the KDE project an apology."
I think you are right, here is my apology
Im a newb to linux and really thank you for the help.what about burning a iso cd?ReplyDelete
Here is your answer:


text:
Selecting your vehicle's make, model, and year allows us to display only parts and items specific to your car's model and year.
Part# ACP6052
5 Reviews
OPGI Price: $416.99
Part Type: (A) Aftermarket product, usually an enhancement product
Years: 1962-1972
Sold As: EACH
2018 DeVille Catalog Page: 148
The Pro6Ten Compressor is a 10-cylinder bolt-in replacement for the original GM Frigidaire/Harrison A-6 compressor. This new design is specifically engineered to fit original A-6 mounting brackets and AC hose assemblies. This highly efficient compressor offers smooth and quiet operation, which results in less vibration and engine drag for improved performance and mileage. Sold per each, the compressors are available in either natural or polished finish and include the single pulley and clutch assembly.


text:
Singapore GP 2010
Thursday Press Conference
DRIVERS: Nick HEIDFELD (BMW Sauber), Heikki KOVALAINEN (Lotus), Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes), Vitaly PETROV (Renault), Mark WEBBER (Red Bull)
Q: Vitaly, a lot of new circuits coming up that are new to you. This is the first one. What do you do to prepare for a new circuit like this?
Vitaly PETROV: Play PlayStation. Then I try to watch as much as possible the videos from on-board cameras and the team helps me a lot to prepare. I do some simulator work at home and watch a lot of videos from the on-board camera and bits like this.
Q: A lot has been talked about your future. What is your attitude to that as there are some quite heavy hitters being muted to come into your team?
Petrov: I am not worried. I do my job. I know what I am doing. Why must I worry? They must worry. I think I will continue to do my job and I think everything looks good.
Q: Is this a good circuit for Renault given how well the cars went in Monaco?
Petrov: Yeah, I think it is a good circuit for our car, our team. I think we will be quite strong here. I hope everything will be good for us. We will see.
Q: Where is the car strong?
Petrov: Braking, through the corner, exits, everywhere a little. It will be good, I think.
Q: Heikki, the battle with the Virgin cars is the most important for you I guess at this stage of the season.
Heikki KOVALAINEN: Yes, absolutely. We want to finish ahead of them in the championship, so the direct competition is against them and we are not developing our car anymore, so we are not expecting to move forward. That will be our task for next year, I think. At the moment we are trying to maximise the performance we have got and I think we have a good chance to stay ahead of Virgin, so that is our target.
Q: What is your future with the team? Are you signed for next year?
Kovalainen: I know where I want to be. That's all I can say. Otherwise let's leave it at that at the moment and just focus on the coming weekend.
Q: And the future of the team. How do you see that?
Kovalainen: I think there is a lot of potential and I think it will get better. The car will get quicker, so I see it is a very strong future for the team. Who knows how long it will take to arrive at the very top but I think it has got all the potential and the team has got all the commitment, so I think it is a strong option.
Q: Is this a busy grand prix for you as a driver for Lotus?
Kovalainen: Yeah, fairly busy. It is one of the busier ones for us. We have a lot of our partners coming to see the race and we pay a lot of visits to different events, so it is going to be quite a busy weekend for us but it is no problem.
Q: Nico, a circuit you like I imagine giving that you had your best ever result here?
Nico ROSBERG: It is probably not one of my favourite race tracks but it is a very challenging track which makes it interesting and also to get the perfect lap is very difficult here as there are so many corners, bumps, curves, different types of corners, so it is good. I have always had a good run here. I think I go well on this track, so I look forward to coming here every time.
Q: Is the potential for rain a bit of a worry? How is that going to affect things?
Rosberg: Yeah, it is a bit of a concern. How is it going to be if there is a lot of rain with the lights, with everything on the track, rivers and things like that. It is very much unknown. But until now I think it has been alright, especially for qualifying and the race. It shouldn't be wet but first free practice could be very interesting tomorrow.
Q: That is your weather forecast, is it?
Rosberg: I have been here since Sunday and it is pretty much the same every day, so I think that is a good possibility.
Q: The team or the car seem to be better in the race rather than qualifying. Is that a correct take?
Rosberg: It is difficult to say. Maybe we have had a bit of a tendency like that recently but I am not sure. I think in general we are on a level behind the top three teams at the moment and trying to stay ahead of Renault and I think we can do that towards the end of the season.
Q: Mark, is this a better circuit for Red Bull than the last two?
Mark WEBBER: Yeah, I would say so. Without doubt we knew Spa and Monza were going to be probably a little bit more challenging for us. We know we have a fantastic car wherever we go in the world but we probably wouldn't go to Spa and Monza every day of the week to take our opposition on because there are not many tracks like that on the calendar. We are definitely focused on the tracks where we have the most of them and this is a similar characteristic to how most of the circuits are if you like, so we expect to be a bit more competitive here.
Q: And yet you haven't actually finished here?
Webber: I have only had two races. I think I have had a gearbox and a brake failure. But Brazil was a rubbish track for me in the past and I won there last year. I am ticking a few boxes off, so I hope to do well this weekend.
Q: When you look at the championship how do you see it?
Webber: Well, I am leading. There are a few guys that have got a few less points here and there but it is still very interesting. It can move around a little bit either way in a negative or positive way for some people quite quickly. It's certainly a nice position to be to have a few more points if you like. I'd certainly rather have them than not have them. It doesn't matter if it is two guys, five guys or eight guys, it doesn't really change your role or how you go about your job. I am coming here to try and win the race and that's what we are going to try and do.
Q: It is very tight at the top. Would you prefer to see a few drop off?
Webber: Well, eventually they will. Will five of us go to Abu Dhabi? The chances are it could, but it might be unlikely. It might be four. It might be three. It might be one. Who knows. None of us know. But what I do know is that we have to finish races, keep hanging in there. We need to be in the hunt at Abu Dhabi. That's the important thing. Leading the World Championship in Singapore is not the important thing, leading it at the end is the important thing.
Q: Nick, you have actually had three different jobs in the space of a month which is not bad in Formula One.
Nick HEIDFELD: If they would be paid well, yes.
Q: And if you could do them all at the same time?
Heidfeld: Even better, yeah.
Q: But it is quite a fairy-tale return in many ways, isn't it?
Heidfeld: Yes, it is. It was not an easy season for me being a third driver but when the opportunity came along to drive with Pirelli that was an important step for me to get back into the car, to get driving and possibly it could give me an advantage for next year. But when I had the chance to drive for Sauber from Singapore onwards, obviously I had to grab that chance.
Q: Is this a difficult circuit to make a comeback on?
Heidfeld: Yes, but I won't complain as it is one of my favourite tracks. I couldn't wish for anything better.
Q: It is anti-clockwise and we have got four anti-clockwise circuits out of the next five.
Heidfeld: Well, I have tried to stay fit for the whole season. I have not been in the car a lot but I have a simulator at home which I worked in. At least I was lucky enough to do quite a lot of miles with the Toyota car, testing for Pirelli and that should help.
Q: Have you got a particular aim for this race?
Heidfeld: Well, as usual I want to perform to the maximum. I want to get the most out of the car but especially for the first weekend it is going to be important to get into a rhythm with the cars and with the tyres as I have not driven this car one kilometre yet. I don't know this year's tyres as they have changed from last year, so that's going to be quite important to just learn things quickly.
Q: (Mat Coch - Pitpass.com) Mark, talk to us about the dynamic within the team. Obviously the two of you in the team are going for the championship; historically, it's proven that two guys in the same team doesn't really work coming down to the wire - Williams '87 and McLaren a few years back. Talk to us about how the two of you are working, how you get on professionally at the moment?
Webber: Actually, not a lot has changed to be honest, since we started working a few years ago. It's always been reasonably tight between both of us. The team is doing its absolute utmost to give us both the same opportunities to get the results done, which is the case: to try and beat Ferrari and McLaren week in, week out. To do that, you need to be performing collectively as a group all the time. Seriously, it hasn't changed too much. Yes, we are coming to an interesting part of the season but every race has been important this year, so our relationship in Bahrain and also the dynamics in the team have been very, very similar to be honest. The briefings after some races this year have been a bit interesting but that's to be expected. There's some good healthy rivalry within the team but personally it's been very rewarding and challenging for myself and I've enjoyed every part of the season so far this year mostly. Part of that rivalry - if you want to call it that, you guys like to call it that, but obviously the competition is pushing the car forward as well. That's what is a big part of this team going forward is both of us pushing hard on development, understanding, working with Adrian and his people. We have some incredibly clever guys and that's also very rewarding, to work with them, so we both know we're in a good opportunity, probably more so me because obviously Seb (Vettel) hasn't been around as long and there will be times when he doesn't drive competitive cars. At the moment I'm driving one and really enjoying it.
Q: (Chris Lines - Associated Press) Can I get thoughts from all you guys - putting aside Nico's weather forecast - on the prospects of racing on a wet track at night, what the challenges will be?
Webber: Well, we haven't experienced the rain under the lights yet at this venue. I think one of the biggest things we would like to experience sooner rather than later - if we need to - is the spray. The spray off the cars is also something that we don't really know how it will work with the clarity of the lights coming through. My money is on that everything will be fine, I don't think there will be any huge problems. It will be the same rules as normal tracks. If it's too heavy we obviously can't race. It doesn't matter if it's day or night; if the track is too wet, we can't have a car race. It's not about trying to race each other, it becomes a survival thing, but we'll leave it up to the guys to make sure that it's safe enough to try and stay on the track. If it's safe enough to stay on the track, then I think it will be a normal Grand Prix.
Q: (Frederic Ferret - L'Equipe) Nick, what have you learned in the Pirelli tests and what do you expect for next year?
Heidfeld: I will speak quietly! It was very interesting, obviously, starting to test with Pirelli and helping them develop the tyres. First of all, I think they've done a very good job until now because there wasn't much time for them after they basically learned that they would supply tyres for next season. At the beginning, we mainly focused on working on constructions. We briefly started with compounds, made some good and major steps forward and I believe it will be a good tyre that we will see next year, but there are still a couple of tests to come and it's difficult to know exactly what's going to happen during those tests, but so far they have been reliable, no technical problems whatsoever. The grip level is within the range, so it looks positive for now.
Q: And for next year for you, does it make you a man in demand?
Heidfeld: Well, as I said, it should be a help, having driven for Pirelli. Some people would argue that it would have been better to stay testing and have even more of an advantage for next year but as I just said, when I had the chance to sign for Sauber for this year I definitely wanted to come back. I want to race, I believe I can do a good job. I've signed only for this season, the situation for next year is completely open with Sauber but also with other teams with which I have already been in talks over the last couple of weeks.
Q: (Bob McKenzie - The Daily Express) Mark, you keep surprising people, you keep popping back to the top. Of the contenders, three know how to win championships, two of the teams know how to win championships. You and Seb are the outsiders in that regard and the team is also new to these strata of competition. Do you think that puts you at a disadvantage?
Webber: Well, in any case where you have slightly unchartered waters it obviously comes with a degree of inexperience but there's also that great thing that you are incredibly hungry for it - not that McLaren and Ferrari aren't - but obviously we as a team at Red Bull totally understand how unique this opportunity is and we're incredibly excited about trying to have a crack at winning some championships this year. Yes, you're right, JB (Jenson Button), Lewis (Hamilton) and Fernando (Alonso) have won more titles and hats off to them, it's an incredible thing to have, and something that all of us on the grid would love to have, but I don't treat them any differently to guys that really haven't. I can't. I have respect for all the competitors and that's the way it is. They have been there but we're not leading the championship by mistake. We're here because we have scored the points, you can't go and buy them, you've got to earn them on the track and we've done that. We're looking to add to that pretty solidly this weekend. It's a track which should be OK for our car; it's bumpy and a few things here and there which have been pretty good for us in the past, so we're optimistic that we can continue to chip away, keep boxing and it's important to do that in the next few weeks and then the closer it gets the more exciting it will be.
Q: (Bob McKenzie - The Daily Express) Do you find the pressures different and are you up to them for the next few races?
Webber: Yeah, I'm not treating this like a normal race, but I'm not far off it. We've got to come here and it's similar how it was at the start of the year. We've got to try and get the best as we can out of the car, as they will be, and we'll see after qualifying where we are, and then we'll do our best for the race. Very, very... usually you get what you deserve in this game. We know non-finishes are not part of the menu, so we need to make sure we don't do that and I need to keep scoring. It's absolutely as boring as anything but that's what it is: getting as many points as I can and keep chipping away and winning makes a difference. That's what our goal is, to try and do here. It's completely suicidal to sit back and say 'OK, I can pick up fifth and sixth'. That's not good enough. We know that in Monza, those kind of races, well particularly the race that I had there wasn't what we want to do for the rest of the year and we're looking forward to some podiums in the future and that's what we need to do at this stage, to keep it alive - well, not to keep it alive but keep massively in the hunt.
Q: (Sarah Holt - BBC Sport) Hallo Nick, I want to know if you can elaborate a bit more on the conflicting emotions that you've had since last season, up until today? Did you ever think that your F1 career was over, was finished?
Heidfeld: No, I never thought it was over. Of course you're never one hundred percent sure, but as I said, we've always been in contact with teams and there was and is interest from different teams, so I always believed that I would be back.
Q: (Mat Coch - Pitpass.com) Nick, following on from that, in Melbourne, you took over the chairmanship of the GPDA from Pedro (de la Rosa). You've now taken over his seat; is the GPDA chairmanship something that you're probably going to have to relinquish to someone else, or is that something you intend on fulfilling for the rest of the season?
Heidfeld: No, (Rubens) Barrichello took over this job two races ago, I think, because at that time, I didn't know that I would be here now. I took over the Pirelli job and wasn't at the circuits anymore and it's quite important for the director of the GPDA to be at the tracks, to look at the circuits, to be there at the meetings, so Rubens is doing that now.


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Jeff wanted the Rails logo on the cover of the book but was informed by Apress that David Heinemeier Hansson has been "politely resisting" permission to use the logo, and has said in the future, it will only appear on his books.
I'm going to show you why that was really bad.
Exhibit A.
Exhibit B.
That's a very cool thing. From one logo, we now have a small iconic vocabulary. However, both of these images are illegal. Any "word" in this vocabulary would also be illegal.
If DHH genuinely intends to assert his trademark, he has to take legal action against both the Newcastle Rails user group and the company RoundHaus for trademark dilution - either filing suits, or sending cease and desist letters. If he fails to do either of these things, any attempt he makes to assert his trademark ownership in court can fail because he permitted trademark dilution to occur.
I'm not suggesting this action actually occur. It's not that big a deal, in this case. But the legal details make an important point very, very clear: asserting that kind of control requires being actively hostile to your users.
One of the reasons trademark law sucks so much ass is because it doesn't recognize legitimate uses made by members of a community who have a legitimate community claim to partial ownership of intellectual property. An open source project has a large number of authors, but the trademark on it can (and in this case does) belong to just one of those authors. Obviously, DHH is Rails' primary author, but as obviously he is not its only author. He is, however, the only one of Rails' authors whose rights as a Rails author are protected under the law.
That situation is legally perverse, and can lead to some demented outcomes.
If DHH decided to sue some other Rails author for using the Rails trademark - in some alternate universe, where DHH was replaced by Bizarro DHH, some total douchebag alternate-reality evil twin - if that were to happen, and Bizarro DHH had also taken the steps of suing RoundHaus and the Newcastle group - no other author of Rails would have any method of resisting Bizarro DHH. Technically speaking, Bizarro DHH could even sue to have the word removed from another person's resume. This would apply even for prominent members of the Rails community well-known for their contributions to the framework. The law only recognizes the one author. The law does not match reality.
The only way to make the law match up with reality is to build some kind of nonprofit org and transfer the trademark rights to it, and then come up with a whole nightmarish beauraucratic tangle of bylaws to accomodate decision-making. It's madness, and it's way too expensive to be practical. But the alternative, obviously, is equally nuts. Obviously DHH isn't going to sue anybody to take the word "Rails" off their resume - but it's equally obvious that the mere fact that Bizarro DHH could if he wanted to is totally insane.
Trademark rights are destructive to the cooperation and trust necessary for successful open source projects.
Although I work mainly with Rails and blog a lot about Rails, this isn't really a Rails thing. It's just an example of how totally awful US copyright and trademark law is. If it bothers you, give money, time, and attention to the copyfight, because it needs to be fixed.


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Wickford Appliance
About Us
Since 1977, Wickford Appliance has been the area's leader in Appliance & Lighting sales and service, and TV sales. We pride ourselves on our family business values, treating you as we would want to be treated and providing the best experience. Service after the sale is vital and we are dedicated to servicing our products. Community focused, we pride ourselves on our local involvement.


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Concerning The Ageless Wisdom Writings On The Jewish People
The following thoughts are offered for consideration by people of goodwill who seek to reconcile their interest in and respect for the books of Alice Bailey with the occasionally controversial statements found in the books about the role of the Jewish people in the divine Plan for our world.
Comments on the Jews, found in many of the books that Alice Bailey wrote under dictation from a Master of the Wisdom known as Djwhal Khul and often referred to simply as "D.K." or "the Tibetan", have raised questions in the minds of many people of goodwill ever since the books began to be published eighty some years ago. However, because that material existed in printed form, it was accessible, for the most part, only within its proper context and the reader studied it within the larger parameters of the Ageless Wisdom: the ancient spiritual teaching handed down from time immemorial and undiluted by the contemporary trends or culture of any particular period in human history. Now the growth of technology has made it possible to offer the books in CD-ROM format, with its easy and rapid search capabilities. Material that once was available only in its proper and larger context can now be extracted and given worldwide distribution on its own, and this phenomenon is happening via the Internet. There are a number of websites devoted to attacking the writings of Alice Bailey and the Tibetan, and as the publisher and holder of copyright for those books, we are asked to respond to inquiries questioning the spiritual legitimacy of these teachings.
An additional factor to consider is society's increasing sensitivity to and respect for differences of race, religion and culture, which makes some of the Tibetan's comments seem even more surprising. In part, this is an effect of the growth of "political correctness", and surely the increasing awareness of the effects of words, and their origin in thought, is contributing to the greater good of all. However, the Masters of the Wisdom, known collectively as the Hierarchy, have never attempted to adapt Their teaching to politically correct standards. A Master speaks from the level of pure Truth because his vision encompasses the vast sweep of the Plan through history and of our planet's role in that Plan.
The Writings of Alice A. Bailey
The books that the Tibetan wrote with the cooperation of Alice Bailey between 1919-1949 were intended to be the intermediate phase of a three-part release of the Ageless Wisdom planned by the Hierarchy to precede and condition the New Age, the Aquarian age. As we look at the world scene, we can see the enormous significance of the role played by the Jewish people and the State of Israel particularly in the last one hundred years. This may explain, in part, why the Tibetan focused such special attention on the Jews. Because the establishing of right relationships between all aspects of our planetary life is the goal of the Plan, this makes the achieving of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East—the pivotal point for so much of the world's conflict today—essential.
Some people wonder why, when human history is replete with examples of "man's inhumanity to man", the Tibetan seemed to single out the Jews for special criticism. Everything that the Tibetan wrote needs to be studied in the context of the entire body of teachings which promote goodwill, tolerance and mutual respect. Comments on the Jewish people must be read in their entirety, which includes mention of the splendid contribution of the Jewish people in many departments of human life. Criticism of separative tendencies in Zionism must be read in the context of biting comments on the subterfuge of the Vatican, materialism in the Christian churches, and "churchianity" in general. He was also outspoken in his opposition to American isolationism, Soviet totalitarianism, fascism, Nazism and the great evil embodied by Hitler and his closest associates, and to pacifism during the World War—all of which compromised the essential oneness of humanity and the spirit of responsible freedom.
It is that spirit of love and of inclusive identification which seeks to evoke the understanding and cooperation of the esoteric group in healing the fundamental human problem of separatism. Many people of goodwill are working diligently to find a solution. However, the unique aspect of esoteric teaching is that it challenges the student to penetrate to the causal level of all human problems, where the spiritual origins of the problems can be identified and lasting solutions can be precipitated into human consciousness. Perhaps that is why the Tibetan was unstinting in his criticism of Zionism, which sought to solve the problem of the stigmatisation of the Jewish people by giving them their own homeland rather than working for their integration into existing nations.
History as Interpreted by the Ageless Wisdom
A study of the history of the Jews as presented in the Ageless Wisdom may bring a deeper understanding of both the greatness of their achievement and their karmic debt. The origins of the Jewish people date back, the Tibetan says, to a period far earlier than what is related for us in the Old Testament. So ancient is the place of the Jews in the destiny of the human race that the Tibetan says "the Jew embodies in himself, symbolically, the history of humanity".
History, as interpreted by the Ageless Wisdom, covers a span of time so vast as to be incomprehensible to the human mind. Within the Plan, humanity, as the fourth and mediating kingdom in the evolutionary unfoldment of life on earth from densest matter to pure spirit, plays a crucial and pivotal role. Modern humanity, according to the Ageless Wisdom, is entering a new age known as Aquarius. In a much earlier epoch, governed by the constellation Gemini, the zenith of human achievement for that time was achieved by a group of Jewish disciples who are said to have been the founders of the modern Jewish people. According to ancient spiritual teaching, this highly developed group rebelled against "the command to enter, free and untrammelled, the place where light is to be found. They sought to hold that which they had gathered and to dedicate it to the service of God" (Esoteric Psychology, Volume I, p. 397). Three of this group who "revolted from the drama of detachment" became the founders of the modern Jewish people.
To put this event in historical context is virtually impossible, the Tibetan says. "So ancient is the race that nevertheless today no nation in the world but has its roots in that group which—in old Lemuria—had advanced so far that all its foremost people stood upon the path of discipleship. There are no racial strains in the Western world which are not offshoots of this oldest select people, with the exception of the Finns, Lapps and those nations which show definite mongoloid strains." The original three disciples and their family groups were the ancestors of three major racial groups, which can be generalised as follows:
1. The Semitic race or races of Biblical and modern times; the Arabs, the Afghans, the Moors and the offshoots and affiliations of those peoples, including the modern Egyptians. These are all descended from the eldest of the three disciples.
2. The Latin peoples and their various branches throughout the world, and also the Celtic races wherever found. These are descended from the second of the three disciples.
3. The Teutons, the Scandinavians, and the Anglo-Saxons, who are the descendants of the third of the three disciples.
(See Esoteric Psychology, Volume I, p. 400)
This common origin, this karmic history shared by so many of the world's people today, has been lost to sight, and clearly this view which precedes documented history cannot be verified by science. But if one approaches this teaching intuitively, it can help to shed light on why the Ageless Wisdom views the role of the Jews, which constitute only a small percentage of the world's current population, as so significant.
It also helps to clarify why the Jews, "as a whole, constitute the solar plexus of the planetary Logos; their problem is being used today to focus, qualify and condition the world feeling-nature and the emotional reactions of the sensitive nature of humanity and of the planetary Logos. Forget not that the Personality of our planetary Logos is not yet perfect, hence the fact that His body of manifestation, the planet, is not reckoned as being one of the sacred planets. Through the Jewish people throughout the world, feeling—sympathetic or antagonistic, expressive of love or conditioned by hate—is being gathered to a focus in the planetary solar plexus centre, preparatory to a great and permanent change. It is for this reason that I have said to some of my pupils that when humanity will have solved correctly the Jewish problem, and when it has been resolved in a humanitarian and sound manner, then the energy of the planetary solar plexus centre will have been raised to the heart and a great transmutation will have taken place" (The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, p. 87).
We would stress the Tibetan's statement, "Through the Jewish people throughout the world, feeling…is being gathered…". This implies that the feeling nature of all human beings, not just those currently incarnated in Jewish bodies, is being stimulated through their reaction to the problems centred in the situation of the Jews. We have all had a hand in the creation of this problem over the millennia, and it is up to all people of goodwill to solve it by right thinking, loving attitudes, and an unwavering identification with the fact of the one humanity.
Race in the Ageless Wisdom
Another frequent misinterpretation of the Ageless Wisdom centres on the term "Aryan", the name given to the Indo-European family of languages and speakers of those languages, and much later distorted in Nazi Germany to apply to a specific race. Esoteric teaching uses this term in its application to an evolutionary stage in consciousness. To quote the Tibetan on this:
"When I use the word 'race' I deal not with man-made or pseudo-scientific differentiations of nations and races or types. I deal with a state of consciousness which is the Aryan or mental consciousness or state of thinking; this finds its exponents and its 'race members' in every nation, without any distinction or omissions. This I would have you carefully remember, for there is no new race in process of appearing, from the territorial angle; there is only a general distribution of those persons who have what have been called the sixth root race characteristics. This state of consciousness will find its expression in people as far apart racially as the Japanese and the American or the Negro and the Russian. It posits an ability to function with clarity upon the mental plane, to collate information, rightly to interpret and relate that information, and to create the needed thoughtforms or concepts for those interpretations" (The Rays and the Initiations, pp. 593-94).
Another point of concern for many is the Tibetan's unwavering opposition to Zionism. He believed that the Jewish problem could be solved only by their integration into the world's nations, not by setting the Jews further apart in a separate nation. However, almost all the writing that developed from his collaboration with Alice Bailey was completed before the state of Israel was founded in 1948, and Israel has been a reality for sixty years. The situation is not helped by critical, hateful thinking towards either the Israeli citizens or their neighbours. Rather, all people of goodwill are obligated to bring loving understanding and compassion to all affected by the suffering resulting from the long-standing conflict in the Middle East. All who espouse spiritual values must approach the situation of the Middle East with a realistic appraisal of present circumstances and a focus on creative change leading to better conditions for all concerned. It is a difficult challenge but not an impossible one. And it is worth every ounce of effort we can bring to bear upon a just resolution, for "When humanity has solved the Jewish problem (with the understanding cooperation of the Jew) and overcome ancient antipathies and hatreds, it will do so by fusing the problem in one vast humanitarian situation" (The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, p. 77).
Goodwill and Free Will in the Ageless Wisdom
Under the divine Plan for our world, humanity is left free to work out its own destiny. To quote the Tibetan a final time: "The Jewish race is a symbol of humanity in its mass sense; in the resolution of its conflict and in the taking of right action, a great step forward in human liberation will take place" (The Rays and the Initiations, p. 640).


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VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI spent a peaceful night in Les Combes after undergoing a brief surgical procedure yesterday to repair his right wrist, which he fractured in a fall, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi said this morning.
Last night, I forwarded to Father Lombardi a photo taken as the pope left the hospital. Our eagle-eyed photo/graphics editor, Nancy Wiechec, noticed something in a close-up of the pope's left wrist — the one that is not in a cast. This morning, the papal spokesman told me that before the surgical procedure, the pope's doctors had inserted a small intravenous catheter into his left wrist to deliver pain medication if needed once the local anesthetic wore off. "It was removed last night," he said.
The pope "slept well," woke up, celebrated Mass this morning and had breakfast as normal, the papal spokesman said. The right-handed 82-year-old pope also is getting used to using his left hand and, of course, is disappointed that he can do no handwriting, Father Lombardi said. He did not, however, say how the pope is dealing with not playing the piano.
He also said the pope would continue his vacation in the northern Italian Alps and would travel tomorrow to Romano Canavese, the hometown of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, his secretary of state. The pope is scheduled to recite the Angelus at noon with people gathered in front of the parish church in the town about 50 miles from Les Combes.
On Friday, the pope will celebrate evening prayer with priests from the Diocese of Aosta, the spokesman said.


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Atlanta Police DepartmentHome Menu
The Director of Community Engagement and Events is responsible for coordinating specific high profile police/community events, enhancing existing community focused initiatives and handling large scale internal morale boosting activities. She has established relationships with relevant corporations, community-based organizations and individuals whose interests broadly align with the mission of the Atlanta Police Department to help make APD a models community policing city.
If you would like to partner with the APD on an event, please contact Ms. Espy at your earliest convenience.
Police In the Park
- Date: 07/22/2017 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
- Location: Old English Ave Elementary School
627 English Ave
Atlanta, Georgia 30318
What: The Atlanta Police Department will be partnering with Vertical Church for "Police in the Park" and "Burgers and Backpacks." The event will feature games for kids, backpack giveaways, health screenings, soccer demos, music, fire trucks, Atlanta Police Mounted Patrol, free haircuts and free burgers for attendees. Back packs with varying school supplies are given to children ages K-12th grade. A parent/ guardian must be present with the child to receive a backpack and supplies, with no exceptions. Backpacks and supplies will be given on a first-come, first-served basis.
When: Saturday, July 22, 2017, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.
Where: 627 English Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30318 (old English Avenue Elementary School)
Who: The Atlanta Police Department in partnership with Vertical Church and Atlanta Fire Rescue. Sponsors for this event include; CEI Hair Schools, Atlanta Lions Club, Soccer in the Streets, iHeartMedia Atlanta and the City of Atlanta Office of Emergency Preparedness.


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Sales: 1 844 463-3910
Services: 1 844 463-3909
Stock #: 17317
V6, 280ch / 262lb-pi, 8 passengers, Heated Front Seats, Honda Sensing Suite Technologies (adaptive cruise control, camera...), Power Moonroof, Apple CarPlay / Android Auto, Remote Start!!
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It stands as Honda's most capable, efficient Pilot yet. With the addition of Earth Dreams™ technology, we've designed the Pilot to thirst for adventure, not fuel. The 6-speed automatic and available 9-speed automatic transmission with available idle stop feature have contributed to improved fuel economy ratings* over last year's model. It's roomy interior seats up to eight passengers (seven on the Touring trim) and their gear. The heated front seats and available heated second-row outboard seats will keep them comfortable when you hit the road, while the available one-touch second-row seats make getting in when you're on the go a breeze. And features like the 8" Display Audio System* with available Honda Satellite-Linked Navigation System™* and available Honda Rear Entertainment System with Blu-ray™ capability, they'll stay happy all along the way. This year, we've added more confidence to every trip with the available Honda Sensing™ safety and driver-assistive technologies, including the Rear Cross Traffic Monitor system* and Road Departure Mitigation (RDM™) system*. Finally, the modern, sleek exterior of the Pilot doesn't just catch attention – it steals the show. And while its refined interior surrounds you in comfort, it keeps you and your passengers rolling in style. The Pilot is confident, refined and ready for anything. Are you?
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- - Fits true to size, take your normal size
- - Loose fit, use the belt to pull it in at the waist
- - Mid-weight, slightly stretchy fabric
- - Model is 177cm/ 5'10" and is wearing a FR size 36
Eye-catching patterns are always at the heart of Humberto Leon and Carol Lim's KENZO collections. This floral-print stretch-cotton jumpsuit is adorned with playful ruffles and a waist-cinching sash. Style yours with a pop of blue.
Shown here with: Eddie Borgo cuff, Fendi cuff, Nicholas Kirkwood shoes, KENZO bag.
- - Black and white floral-print stretch-cotton
- - Ruffled collar and front placket, belt loops, tie-fastening sash, two side slit pockets, two back patch pockets
- - Button fastenings along front
- - 97% cotton, 3% elastane
- - Dry clean
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