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On Aug. 20, 2010, the Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation closed ShoreBank, the nation's first and leading community bank, and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. The closure was not unexpected. Reports of the bank's problems—and a potential rescue—had been circulating for months. But the closure brought to a bitter end an iconic example of progressive social enterprise.
During its 37 years, ShoreBank Corporation became the United States' leading social enterprise of its kind: its for-profit bank subsidiary was the largest certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) in the nation. Its social impact was significant: more than $4.1 billion in mission investments and more than 59,000 units of affordable housing financed. In 2008, ShoreBank had more than $2.4 billion in assets and earned more than $4.2 million in net income. It had inspired a national movement of community development financial institutions, shaped federal community investment legislation, and served as a role model for dozens of progressive banks. The company also had influence abroad, overseeing social and economic development projects in more than 60 countries and working with Muhammad Yunus to capitalize Grameen Bank and administer microloans to the poor.
So why did ShoreBank fail? What lessons can the social enterprise community learn from its record of success? And what can be learned from its closure?
The full answers to these questions will take years to answer, as the legal and regulatory process of winding up the bank's affairs continues and the FDIC will not complete its study of the bank until August 2013. This has limited the freedom of participants to speak fully about their experience. But we have had the privilege to speak with two of ShoreBank's founders and others who are familiar with the bank's history and activities.1
To extract lessons from ShoreBank's failure one must understand its remarkable history. ShoreBank innovated at every turn—economically, socially, and organizationally. For almost four decades, it stood for the proposition that neither race nor wealth nor geographic location should bar an individual from access to capital to buy a home, build a business, or develop a community. The bank's motto, "Let's Change the World," served as a marketing device and a rallying cry for progressive community activism. In time, however, it also became a political red flag, stirring to action opponents of the causes ShoreBank advocated.
Various explanations have been offered about why ShoreBank failed. One view holds that the bank was capsized by the financial tsunami brought on by the subprime mortgage crisis. Another view holds that it was management errors and misjudgments by regulators that made the bank vulnerable. And still another view holds that it was the highly partisan politics of Washington, D.C., that prevented the needed capital infusion. Although there is some evidence for each theory, none is complete in itself.
Part of the challenge of extracting lessons from ShoreBank's failure is to disentangle various economic, governance, and political factors and understand how each contributed to the bank's demise. In his famous study of the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Essence of Decision, Graham Allison examined the actors, events, and conditions of the 1962 confrontation through three conceptual lenses: rational decision making, bureaucratic decision making, and political decision making. No single lens provided an adequate perspective to understand all that took place, but the three perspectives complemented one another and shed light on the considerations facing President John F. Kennedy and his administration. We employ a comparable approach, looking at ShoreBank's operating environment, culture, and decision making to illuminate what is known—and not known—about the organization.
ShoreBank was founded in 1973 in Chicago by a small group of colleagues from the Hyde Park Bank. In the late 1960s, Ronald Grzywinski, Hyde Park Bank's president, and his colleagues Milton Davis, Jim Fletcher, and Mary Houghton had launched a successful urban development division focused on a minority-owned small business loan program. They were community activists as well as bankers, with a passion for changing the economic future of inner-city neighborhoods. These were the days of redlining, a banking practice that systematically denied credit to people in urban, low-income, minority neighborhoods. Nonprofit economic development organizations, although strongly mission driven, were limited by their ability to attract philanthropic support. As professional bankers, the colleagues envisioned a different approach to address the twin problems of access to capital and urban decay.
The vision was simple and radical: The bank would become an "agent of change," promoting economic redevelopment by supporting viable inner-city businesses that would provide goods, services, jobs, and housing. A commercial bank could leverage capital from deposits and make loans to amplify the impact of its shareholder equity.
A 1970 amendment to the Bank Holding Company Act placed all bank holding companies under the supervision of the Federal Reserve Board. Two years later, the board issued a list of permissible activities, which included allowing bank holding companies to invest in community development corporations if the primary purpose was community development for low- and middle-income people. "That led us to expand our idea—from using a bank to using a bank holding company," remembered Mary Houghton, a ShoreBank co-founder. Luckily, the Federal Reserve Board then issued a favorable interpretation of its own regulation that reinforced the belief that the bank could be a community development organization.
In August 1973, the founders acquired a small bank, the South Shore National Bank, with $800,000 of equity capital from a small group of private investors and a $2.25 million loan from American National Bank. After the Federal Reserve Board approved the creation of ShoreBank Corporation in December of the same year, the new bank began operating under the auspices of the holding company. This structure enabled the founders to join regulated banking activities with economic development activities. Grzywinski and his co-founders believed that access to credit was only one of the keys to successful community development. Affiliated for-profit and nonprofit organizations were needed to support local entrepreneurs with higher risk lending and to provide technical assistance services. As a bank holding company, ShoreBank could offer a more potent mix of financial products and tools to boost economic development. In 1973, this dual mission approach was a radical idea.
The intention, explained Grzywinski in a 2008 interview, was to "use all of the bank's resources to bring about redevelopment" in an "almost totally minority neighborhood with all of the symptoms of deterioration." Said Houghton: "Our goal was to actually reverse the deterioration in the housing market [in Chicago] and be a catalyst for appreciation in a specific local market. If we hadn't concentrated our efforts but had … dispersed our lending in a larger catchment area, we wouldn't have really changed the nature of a market."
ShoreBank differed from traditional banks in both what it did and how it did it. These differences created social value for the community, but they presented challenges because they often came at a financial cost. According to the bank's founders, it took a decade to achieve breakeven for banking operations. On the deposit side, lower deposit minimums—designed to make the bank available to all regardless of socioeconomic level—meant smaller account balances than the industry average. Time and creativity were needed to create a sustainable model for serving these accounts profitably. Moreover, ShoreBank's loan business had smaller average transaction sizes than traditional banks, which meant that fees collected as a percentage of administering the loan were less than larger loans typical in upper income markets, although they required the same administrative time. And, as Houghton explained, loan officers were asked to make assessments of community improvement a priority: If it was good for the community long-term, then they were asked "to go to extra lengths to find a way to structure the deal so that it was bankable."
Mission mattered. The ethos of moderate financial returns and strong social returns was made possible, in part, by the expectations of ShoreBank's investors. ShoreBank stock was privately held by a small group of shareholders (which ultimately grew to 75), including religious organizations, nonprofits, and community organizations, as well as insurance companies, banks, and trusted corporations and individuals. As Grzywinski explained, this composition meant that all the investors in ShoreBank "invested with the understanding that the primary purpose of their investment is to do development and not maximize return on capital."
At the same time, ShoreBank needed ongoing access to growth capital, in part because of the bank's modest profitability and the limited pool of socially inclined capital available in the United States. The closely held nature of ShoreBank by a small number of mission-aligned investors created some long-term structural issues. Grzywinski explained that none of the shareholders, including the founders, had any liquidity for their shares. "That's a real problem," he said, "and it's a real limitation on growth."
For the first decade ShoreBank focused almost entirely on the South Shore area of Chicago because the bank founders wanted to work with local decision makers who had a deep understanding of the markets in which they were working. In the early 1980s ShoreBank began lending to a growing number of people and businesses in adjacent neighborhoods, and in 1986 it opened a new branch in another Chicago neighborhood with similar needs.
This expansion was tied to the founders' goal of creating a replicable model. That belief was realized in 1987 when an invitation came from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation for ShoreBank to help start a banking operation in rural Arkansas, called Southern Development Bancorporation. ShoreBank helped raise the capital and managed the bank for a number of years until Southern Development Bancorporation's board took over. Not long after the Arkansas project, ShoreBank initiated a program in Michigan, and then in Cleveland and later in Detroit.
In 1997, ShoreBank became the first banking corporation in the United States to address environmental issues. Through a partnership with Ecotrust, an environmental organization in Portland, Ore., ShoreBank Pacific was created as a federally regulated bank focused on the underbanked area of environmental business development. The mission was timely and the founders viewed it as an opportunity to expand ShoreBank's deposits and operations.
In each market where ShoreBank created a federally regulated bank, it also created an associated nonprofit—such as ShoreBank Enterprise Cleveland, ShoreBank Enterprise Detroit, and ShoreBank Enterprise Pacific (later renamed ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadia)—which predominantly focused on higher risk business lending. The founders saw these additional activities as critical to their theory of change. Incorporated as nonprofits, the organizations were largely self-financing through their operations, supplemented by grants, and were not financed by the ShoreBank holding company.
ShoreBank also started other nonprofits and for-profits to further its social mission. For example, the Center for Financial Services Innovation grew out of an opportunity to deliver asset-building services to the underbanked. ShoreBank executives often were asked to speak in the United States and abroad about their mission-driven approach to banking and to partner with other social entrepreneurs. In 1988, ShoreBank organized a for-profit consulting company to manage all of this activity professionally.
By 2008, the ShoreBank Corporation was a complex organization consisting of three circles of activity. (See "The ShoreBank Corporation Network, 2008" chart below.) The center circle—ShoreBank, the for-profit, federally regulated banking business—accounted for the bulk of its $2.4 billion of assets, making a variety of community-focused loans. The second circle included the nonprofit organizations that provided complementary services to banking and nonbanking clients. A third circle was composed of the contractual and consulting services, which enabled ShoreBank Corporation to assist other mission-driven organizations. It is important to note that the FDIC's closing of ShoreBank affected the Midwest bank, but not the other components of the holding company, which now operate as independent organizations.
ShoreBank's growth brought problems, however. In Community Capitalism, Richard P. Taub described internal challenges created by ShoreBank's rapid expansion. He noted the heavy travel schedule of ShoreBank's founders, and a management structure that required much direct supervision. He also noted that ShoreBank had difficulty hiring future leaders who had top banking skills and a commitment to social values. ShoreBank's Cleveland and Detroit banks were never as robust as the original Chicago bank, and Taub pointed to the challenges of operating in neighborhoods that suffered even greater levels of deterioration than Chicago's South Shore.2 In our interviews, the ShoreBank founders discussed how they realized that markets such as Cleveland and Detroit required more management oversight than the bank was sometimes able to deploy as well as banking tools that were matched to cities with failing manufacturing industries and less homogeneous economic conditions.
These challenges were seen as part of the learning process; they never forced a rethinking of ShoreBank's mission or its business model. Over time, the ShoreBank Corporation was "modestly profitable," to use Grzywinski's words. From 1998 to 2008, the bank achieved about an 8 percent return on equity with net loan losses only slightly higher than those of commercial banks. By the end of 2009 ShoreBank Corporation was the nation's leading entity of its kind. The for-profit bank was the largest certified CDFI in the United States. And the holding company's subsidiaries and affiliates had made $4.1 billion in mission-driven loans. Through its international activities, ShoreBank provided consulting services in more than 60 countries and trained almost 4,000 bankers who provided approximately $1 billion a year in international community development loans.
This catalytic role was one of the most satisfying outcomes for the bank's surviving founders, Grzywinski and Houghton. "We have made it legitimate for ourselves and others to use the nation's banking system to advance the cause of development," said Grzywinski. More broadly, we have contributed … to democratizing the availability of private nongovernment credit to lowincome and otherwise disadvantaged people. And we have done that in many parts of the world."
Unfortunately, the world was about to change.
ShoreBank's social enterprise accomplishments ran headlong into the 2008 financial crisis. The impact was most severe on the bank's risk management and capital requirements. Management felt strongly that lending money, particularly to lower income people disproportionately affected by the economic crash, was imperative. It focused on customers who had been the victims of subprime lenders, and started a 2008 Rescue Loan Program to help refinance mortgages. But as the financial crises deepened, loan losses accelerated. Precise data are not publicly available, but by the end of 2008 ShoreBank had increased its loan loss estimate to $42 million (vs. $6 million in 2007) and recorded a net loss of $13 million (vs. net income of $4 million in 2007).
The FDIC and Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation took formal action to address ShoreBank's deteriorating financial condition in 2009. In April, the regulators rated ShoreBank as a "problem bank." (Their January 2008 ranking was "fundamentally sound.") This led to a visit from state and regional FDIC officials and, at ShoreBank's request, a meeting with FDIC officials in Washington, D.C. The parties entered into a consent decree—known as a "cease and desist" order—that was formalized on July 20. Loans were revalued downward, and the need for new capital grew.
Capital is to a bank what water is to a person in the desert—the key to survival. ShoreBank began raising capital by issuing shares of common stock to private investors in the first quarter of 2009. The bank initially needed $20 million, but as its situation worsened throughout 2009, capital needs were reassessed. By July 2009, the bank was seeking $50 million to $60 million; this was revised to $80 million, and then $100 million by the end of 2009.3
The capital campaign was by turns difficult and exciting. The challenge of raising money during the nation's most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression was daunting. But progress was made. By May 2010, ShoreBank had raised $146.3 million from 53 investors. But private capital alone wasn't sufficient in the nation's new banking environment. The private funds were placed in escrow, contingent upon ShoreBank's receipt of $72 million from the Treasury Department's Community Development Capital Initiative (CDCI), part of the wider Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) initiative. In late 2009, President Obama approved extending TARP to cover CDFI banks, thrifts, and credit unions certified as targeting more than 60 percent of their activities to underserved communities.
As ShoreBank's fundraising continued, a new management team was installed. On April 30, 2010, George Surgeon, longtime senior ShoreBank executive and CEO of ShoreBank's banking operations since 2009, assumed the role of CEO of the entire holding company. At the same time, David Vitale, a highly regarded Chicago banking executive and civic leader, came on board to raise capital. The new leadership submitted ShoreBank's CDCI application on March 1, a full month before the deadline, and on May 19 the FDIC's Chicago Regional Office recommended that ShoreBank receive CDCI funds and forwarded the bank's application to the FDIC's Division of Supervision and Consumer Protection for further action. On May 26, ShoreBank Corporation announced further changes, bringing in a new executive leadership team to support Surgeon. Vitale became executive chair and a new president, chief operating officer, and CFO were announced—all of whom had successful track records in the mainstream banking industry. Grzywinski and Houghton officially retired.
ShoreBank's situation was in public view, and a number of Illinois supporters, notably Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) urged the Treasury Department's acceptance of the CDCI request. Rumors circulated that ShoreBank had "friends in high places," particularly at the Obama White House.4 On May 21, television personality Glenn Beck set out to "expose" ShoreBank as something other than a "really good local bank." He asked why Wall Street heavyweights such as Goldman Sachs were pledging millions to assist ShoreBank, insinuating political motives. Republican legislators openly questioned the administration's support for ShoreBank at the same time new rules were being drawn for the financial services industry.5 The political temperature of the rescue escalated.
ShoreBank's funding request required a review and vote by an interagency group representing the FDIC and other federal banking agencies. This CDCI Interagency Council considered ShoreBank's request on May 26 and again on June 2—and, according to FDIC Inspector General Jon T. Rymer, deferred a vote both times because of concerns about asset losses and the bank's ability to raise capital. Each time, the bank renewed efforts to reassure regulators. In early June a rumor surfaced that unnamed Federal Reserve Board staffers believed ShoreBank would need $300 million of additional capital to survive. Finally, on June 15, ShoreBank's application was considered for a third time. The council remained divided: The FDIC recommended that ShoreBank receive CDCI funds, but representatives from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve Board, and Office of Thrift Supervision voted no. As a result, the application was not forwarded to the Treasury Department for further consideration. Without CDCI funds, the assembled private capital could not be released from escrow, leaving the bank severely undercapitalized. That settled ShoreBank's fate—it would have to be closed.
From June to August, negotiations took place as to how ShoreBank would be closed. There were few bidders. Negotiations among FDIC officials, ShoreBank's new officers, state regulators, and potential investors gave rise to the idea of creating a newly chartered institution to purchase the assets of ShoreBank—including banking operations in the Midwest, but not the other assets of the holding company. This became reality with the creation of Urban Partnership Bank, which was granted an application for deposit insurance and a state charter by Illinois on Aug. 16, 2010. Four days later, ShoreBank was closed by order of the state of Illinois and Urban Partnership purchased its assets.
Urban Partnership Bank currently operates as an FDIC-insured bank whose mission includes promoting economic sustainability and serving the needs of low- and moderate-income groups in Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit. It is owned by the financial institutions, foundations, companies, and individuals that sought to continue ShoreBank. Twenty-two of the 53 investors, representing $139 million of the $146 million pledged to save ShoreBank, transferred their investments to Urban Partnership Bank. Three of Urban Partnership Bank's current senior leaders were executives who had joined ShoreBank during the period of FDIC supervision and resolution.
The closing of ShoreBank presents a fascinating set of puzzles for analysts. Conventional wisdom suggests that ShoreBank was a victim of simple economic realities: too little capital in the face of an unexpectedly deep recession. Some might argue that this shortage was caused, in turn, by ineffective risk management and a history of operating decisions that settled for a below-market return on investments. But we believe these arguments are flawed or, at best, incomplete. The bank needed capital, true, but so did hundreds of other US banks during the financial meltdown. The bank's operating policies and risk management had succeeded for 35 years, through recessions and industry crises, and it was rated highly by regulators until the 2008 financial crisis. It responded well to the crisis, and the regional FDIC office recommended it receive CDCI funds.
Another possible analysis is that ShoreBank suffered because it was not seen as "too big to fail." Had it been much larger, the federal government might have saved it from collapse. But the federal government was not concerned about smaller banks or banks that were socially beneficial, in other words, "too good to fail." Had ShoreBank's catalytic role in the communities it served been more broadly understood and accepted, it might have mustered the necessary political support for a rescue package.
A third possibility is that the interagency vote against CDCI funding for ShoreBank was a politicized vote. On May 14, Fox Business Network commentator Charlie Gasparino reported that Wall Street bankers "personally" told him there was "political pressure put on them to bail out ShoreBank." No details were offered. The support of Democratic legislators and past contacts between ShoreBank executives with members of the Obama administration, including Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett and President Obama himself, prompted Republicans to challenge the ShoreBank bailout. John D. McKinnon and Elizabeth Williamson reported in The Wall Street Journal on May 20, 2010—before the interagency votes—that questions raised by members of Congress about ShoreBank's alleged use of political influence were greatly complicating its efforts to raise private capital from large banks and CDCI funds.
"Republican lawmakers began two inquiries into the rescue of a pioneering Chicago community bank by some of Wall Street's biggest financial firms, saying political considerations appear to be at work," McKinnon and Williamson wrote. "Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein was personally making fundraising calls to other banking executives, seeking private sector pledges totaling $125 million for the failing community development lender, Chicago's ShoreBank Corp. After initially declining to invest, Goldman itself promised at least $20 million in recent days."
According to McKinnon and Williamson, on May 19, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote a letter to the White House to complain. "It is important to avoid even the mere appearance that Mr. Blankfein is attempting to curry favor with the administration by contributing money to save the White House's favorite community bank," Issa wrote. In a second letter to President Obama, Republican lawmakers cited assertions by some bank representatives that the White House pressed them to contribute to the ShoreBank fundraising. Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the top Republican on the House Committee on Financial Services (a long-standing critic of community development banks), and Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) said the allegations "raised questions as to whether the government was rescuing a politically connected bank while letting hundreds of others fail." 6
The ShoreBank story virtually defines the toxic politics of Washington today. Rather than spend $72 million, with the potential of repayment, to support a bank with a multi-decade track record of adequate liquidity and positive economic development impact—objectives favored by both Democratic and Republican administrations—the Deposit Insurance Fund has been saddled with a loss of more than $330 million. The reason? After ShoreBank was closed, the FDIC entered into a loss-sharing agreement with Urban Partnership Bank in which FDIC absorbed a large share of $329 million of losses to provide the new bank with a healthy balance sheet. (This estimate was revised to $452 million in January 2011.) Meanwhile, the investigation by Rymer, prompted by Republican members of Congress, concluded there was no wrongdoing by either ShoreBank or the FDIC. According to Rymer, the large investors in ShoreBank and Urban Partnership Bank invested "primarily because they believed in ShoreBank's mission and they did not feel pressure to invest as a result of the FDIC chairman's calls." 7
Beyond this lesson in toxic politics, there are several big-picture lessons to be gleaned from the closing of ShoreBank. First, an organization's social mission must be balanced with financial realities. A social mission should serve as a powerful incentive to strengthen an organization's operating systems from the harsh consequences of the economy, competition, or a hostile environment. Clearly adequate for normal times, ShoreBank's credit and risk management processes were not sufficient to withstand the full force of the financial meltdown. Concentrating most of its loans among low- and moderate-income people and businesses in inner-city Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit fulfilled the bank's social mission, but it also exposed it to significant risk during an economic downturn. The rapid deterioration of the bank's assets and loan portfolios was magnified by regulatory resets, as loan portfolios had to be revalued downward with the deepening recession. This damaged the bank's balance sheet and exacerbated the need for new capital. The lesson here is clear: For market-based social ventures, mission should be highly integrated with and responsive to the changing realities of the market.
ShoreBank also provides a cautionary lesson about new organizational models and resource limitations. There was genius in the idea of using a bank holding company to own and operate for-profit and nonprofit entities focused on the same social mission. And the founders' passion for replicating the model and assisting others to learn from it was admirable. Like all experimental ventures, there were failures and successes and demands for ongoing learning and refinement. At the same time, legitimate questions remain about whether the resources of the holding company were sufficient for the breadth of its activities. Could ShoreBank have achieved the same results through partnerships with independent nonprofits rather than by housing them within the holding company structure? There is an argument for coordination and control through a holding company structure, but particularly in the new economy, there is a counterargument for more flexible, less burdened organizational models.
Lastly, did ShoreBank succeed in hiring enough new leaders—both strong in banking knowledge and passionate about the social mission—who could run the many pieces of the holding company? Operations in Cleveland and Detroit were disappointing, but the operations were not shut down. Should they have been? Could resources have been more effectively used elsewhere, in some of the more specialized lines of business that produced healthier financial and social impact? Experimentation is necessary and expected, but learning—and making changes, including some that are painful—is vital.
In the end, ShoreBank leaves an almost four-decade legacy of innovative ideas: It demonstrated that careful re-engineering of the market-based banking system can achieve adequate profitability and deliver strong social impact. ShoreBank also proved to be a catalytic presence in its community, in the banking industry, and throughout the world. We believe this is a dual legacy that matters and endures.
ShoreBank's commitment to progressive banking lives on in the community development banks it inspired and, more directly, in the Urban Partnership Bank, whose mission is closely aligned with what ShoreBank's once was.8 ShoreBank Pacific lives on through OneCalifornia Bank (now One PacificCoast Bank) and ShoreBank International is now a leading financial advisory firm. Last, many of the nonprofit entities now operate as independent nonprofits (mostly under revised names) and continue their original missions of aiding economic development through investment, research, and consulting services.
Taken together, ShoreBank provides an important lesson about value creation that is social in nature. In late 2008, Grzywinski said that although ShoreBank had failed to prove that a broader social usage of capital was an idea whose time had arrived, "certainly it was an idea we think is on the right side of history." Indeed, the world needs radical, more effective, scalable approaches to address social problems. These will come only from those who are willing to operate in uncharted territory. Innovative organizations like ShoreBank, which harness the capitalist system to produce positive social outcomes, continue to offer promise for the future.
ShoreBank was never perfect, but it was too good to fail.
James E. Post holds the John F. Smith, Jr. Professorship in Management at Boston University. He is co-author of Redefining the Corporation: Stakeholder Management and Organizational Wealth. In 2010, he received the Aspen Institute Faculty Pioneer for Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of business and society.
Fiona S. Wilson is assistant professor of strategy, sustainability, and social entrepreneurship at the Whittemore School of Business & Economics at the University of New Hampshire.


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We show that, in a model of modified gravity based on the spectral action functional, there is a nontrivial coupling between cosmic topology and inflation, in the sense that the shape of the possible slow-roll inflation potentials obtained in the model from the nonperturbative form of the spectral action are sensitive not only to the geometry (flat or positively curved) of the universe, but also to the different possible non-simply connected topologies. We show this by explicitly computing the nonperturbative spectral action for some candidate cosmic topologies, spherical space forms and flat ones given by Bieberbach manifolds and showing that the resulting inflation potential differs from that of the sphere or flat torus by a multiplicative factor. We then show that, while the slow-roll parameters differ between the spherical and flat manifolds but do not distinguish different topologies within each class, the power spectra detect the different scalings of the slow-roll potential and therefore distinguish between the various topologies, both in the spherical and in the flat case. (Based on joint work with Elena Pierpaoli and Kevin Teh)

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MILL CREEK, Wash. (KOMO) - Mill Creek Police are asking people to watch out for a package thief who is posing as a delivery man.
Investigators said the crime even fooled neighbors who were right outside their homes.
Police released the home security video showing the man pretending to deliver a package at the Oh family's house, but detectives said the box was empty and the man's real intentions were revealed when he snatched two packages from their porch on the 3200 Block of 145 Place SE.
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The public is encouraged to contact Mill Creek Police Investigations with information or tips at email@example.com or by phone at 425-337-1115


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The Grand Theft Auto video game franchise has now shipped 125 million units worldwide, Take-Two Interactive chief executive officer Strauss Zelnick revealed at the Credit Suisse Technology Conference overnight.
The figure shows an 11 million unit increase compared to the 114 million shipped as of September 2011.
"Grand Theft Auto has the highest quality of any title, which is why it is the standard-bearer in the business. It's why it's sold 125 million units.
While no complete breakdown of sales has been given, a Take-Two representative did tell GameSpot that GTA 4 accounts for 25 million units.
GTA 5 is set to launch for Xbox 360 and PS3 in spring 2013.
Source: GameSpot


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I wasn't sure whether I had lost my wits or just gone to the dogs recently when I decided to walk a mile for a scholarship in John Harrington's name. Our beautiful, very successful Mora Tree Research center was just renamed the John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center in his memory, and part of the festivities included a 10K run and a one-mile dog friendly run/walk.
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Ring sizes and chain lengths can be adjusted to suit you. When placing your order please advise us of your ring size or desired chain length and we will make any necessary adjustments. If you are buying jewellery as a gift and are not sure of sizing please feel free to get in touch for advice. There is no charge for adjusting ring sizes and chain lengths on the first occasion.
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If your item is in stock it will be sent as soon as any requested adjustments to sizing or fit have been made. For made to order items please allow 6 weeks for the making process prior to shipping. Your jewellery will be packaged in our signature McCaul Goldsmiths jewellery boxes. All items are fully insured whilst in transit and are sent using a tracked and signed for service. Visit our T&C's page for more information and estimated delivery times.


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Information about state
nekdezitmusitebuzny (16)Link for other - http://buildstate.net/stat.php?nick=nekdezitmusitebuzny
Description : Pal do píče
Number of inhabitants : 16
This state is very benighted. There is no modern civilization showings.
State nekdezitmusitebuzny has got 16 inhabitants. People live on disastrous level at shabby lodges. You're doing really horrible work, people don't like you, because they have to live in awful conditions. Try to increase your population and the level of living will be better. But so far it is misery and suffering.
Funds : 0.1 billions.
Stock exchange : no
Exchange rate to dollar : 52:1
General evaluation of economic situation is :
practically non-existent. Economy of the state is on freezing point.
Football and ice-hockey team : no
Number of sporting centres : none
Big cultural centre : no
Cinemas, theatres and museums : unavailable
Inhabitants are frighteningly dissatisfieds with you.
Environment is on disastrous level.
Contact us
If you have any questions about the game, please contact us.


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January 28 to February 3, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra presents its 21st annual New Music Festival (NMF) – this year focusing on music from Nordic cultures, particularly Iceland.
The festival is a typically intrepid NMF mix, marrying outstanding local and Canadian artists with distinguished international visitors. Here's a quick rundown:
Local stars: the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, led by Alexander Mickelthwate; the Canadian Mennonite University Chorus; Prairie Voices; WSO principal violist Daniel Scholz (featured in Giya Kancheli's Styx); Groundswell Ensemble; and composers Vincent Ho, Jim Hiscott, Gordon Fitzell, Michael Matthews, Diana Macintosh, and Jesse Plessis (a student at Brandon University who recently won the Canadian Music Centre's Emerging Composer award).
Canadian guests: cellist Shauna Rolston (performing a new concerto by Vincent Ho for carbon fibre cello and orchestra), dance troupe La La La Human Steps, composers Alexina Louie and Tim Hecker.
International visitors: violinist Jennifer Koh, composers Kaija Saariaho, Daniel Bjarnason, Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Gavin Bryars, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Atli Heimir Sveinsson
Venues: Centennial Concert Hall, Westminster United Church, Winnipeg Art Gallery
In line with Glenn Buhr's long ago comment that "the New Music Festival is better than Christmas: it lasts longer, and it's way cheaper", Festival passes are a distinct bargain: $99 (regular) $89 (senior) $59 (student). For more information please visit newmusicfestival.ca.


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The economy in the U.S. expanded more than previously estimated in the third quarter as a narrower trade deficit and gains in inventory overshadowed a smaller gain in consumer spending.
Gross domestic product grew at a 2.7 percent annual rate, up from a 2 percent prior estimate, revised figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 82 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a 2.8 percent gain. Household purchases climbed at a 1.4 percent rate, the least in more than a year and down from a previously reported 2 percent rate, and income gains were also cut.
"We're just muddling through," said Brian Jones, a senior U.S. economist at Societe Generale in New York. "The mix between final demand and inventories was far less favorable. The consumer spending numbers are a reflection of the fact that job growth remains sluggish."
The report helps explain why Federal Reserve policy makers have said they'll continue to pump money into the economy to spur growth and reduce joblessness. At the same time, an improvement in housing, employment gains and healthier household finances may help underpin consumer purchases, the biggest part of the economy.
Economists' estimates for GDP, the value of all goods and services produced, ranged from 2 percent to 3 percent. The economy grew 1.3 percent in the second quarter.
Jobless Claims
Fewer Americans filed first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments last week as the labor market disruptions wrought by superstorm Sandy ebbed, a report from the Labor Department also showed today.
Applications for jobless benefits decreased by 23,000 to 393,000 in the week ended Nov. 24. Economists forecast 390,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.
Stock-index futures held earlier gains after the reports on optimism lawmakers will reach an agreement in budget talks. The contract on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index maturing in December rose 0.4 percent to 1,413.2 at 8:55 a.m. in New York.
The slowdown in consumer spending last quarter reflected fewer purchases of auto fuel and services such as utilities, insurance and financial transactions, the Commerce Department report showed. Household purchases rose at a 1.5 percent rate in the previous three months.
The third-quarter gain in consumer purchases was the smallest since the second quarter of 2011 and fell short of the 1.9 percent median forecast in the Bloomberg survey.
Copyright 2014 Bloomberg. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright 2014 Bloomberg. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


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Freedom in the World
You are here
2012 Scores
Freedom Rating (1 = best, 7 = worst)
Civil Liberties (1 = best, 7 = worst)
Political Rights (1 = best, 7 = worst)
Large demonstrations were held on February 20 to demand democratic political reforms. Although the king responded with a revised constitution that won approval in a July referendum, the protest movement continued to press for more substantive curbs on the monarch's power. Parliamentary elections held on November 25 resulted in a victory for the Islamist opposition Justice and Development Party, with Abdelilah Benkirane named prime minister. Meanwhile a bomb attack in a Marrakesh café in April killed 17 people and wounded some two dozen.
Morocco gained independence in 1956 after more than four decades of French rule. The first ruler after independence, King Mohamed V, reigned until his death in 1961. His son, Hassan II, then ruled the country until his death in July 1999. Thousands of his political opponents were arrested, tortured and killed, while many simply disappeared. In 1975, Morocco and Mauritania occupied Western Sahara; after three years of fighting the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, a Sahrawi nationalist guerrilla movement, Mauritania withdrew from the portion it claimed. Morocco then annexed the territory in full. A planned referendum on Western Sahara's future—attached to a UN-monitored ceasefire agreement in 1991—never took place. In the last few years of his life, Hassan initiated a political opening. Several political prisoners were released, independent newspapers began publishing, and a new bicameral parliament was established in 1997.
King Mohamed VI inherited the throne in 1999. He declined to expand political freedom much further in the first years of his reign, apparently aiming to check the increased influence of Islamist political parties. However, he removed longtime interior minister Driss Basri, who had led much of the repression under King Hassan, and allowed exiled dissidents to return to the country.
Parliamentary elections held in 2002 were recognized as generally open. Over a dozen political parties participated, though independent journalists and other critics of the king were harassed and detained.
In May 2003, local Islamist militants with purported links to Al-Qaeda mounted a series of deadly suicide bombings, targeting symbols of Morocco's Jewish community in Casablanca. The government responded by enacting a harsh antiterrorism law, but it was subsequently used to prosecute nonviolent opponents of the king. An anti-immigration law was also passed, ostensibly to fight illegal immigration from sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2004, King Mohamed inaugurated the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER), tasked with addressing the human rights abuses perpetrated by the authorities from 1956 to 1999 and providing the victims with reparations. The commission was headed by a former political prisoner and allowed victims to testify in public hearings. It submitted its final report in 2006, including a series of recommendations for legal and institutional reforms designed to prevent future abuses. Critics of the IER complained that it did not hold perpetrators to account for their actions, and that its recommendations did not lead to major structural changes. Human rights abuses continued to occur on a regular basis, albeit on a smaller scale; political Islamism remained especially circumscribed. Moreover, the authorities were intolerant of further discussion of past abuses. In June 2008, a court in Rabat ordered the private daily Al-Jarida al-Oula to stop publishing IER testimony.
The 2007 elections for the Chamber of Representatives, the lower house of Parliament, drew 37 percent of the eligible electorate, the lowest turnout in Moroccan history. The Socialist Union of People's Forces (USFP), previously the lead party in the governing coalition, fell to 38 seats. Its chief ally, the conservative Independence Party (Istiqlal), won a plurality of 52 seats. Opposition parties, which had criticized the elections as unfair, gained fewer seats than expected. The largest, the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), placed second with 46 seats. Istiqlal leader Abbas el-Fassi was appointed prime minister.
El-Fassi appeared to have fallen out of favor by 2008, as former deputy interior minister Fouad Ali el-Himma, a close associate of the king, organized the Modernity and Authenticity Party (PAM) to contest local elections in June 2009. The new party led the voting with more than 20 percent of local council seats, followed by Istiqlal with about 19 percent. Widespread vote buying, bribery, intimidation, and other forms of manipulation were reported, and analysts regarded the official turnout figure of 52 percent with some skepticism. Despite the challenges to Istiqlal's leadership, el-Fassi remained prime minister after a cabinet shuffle in January 2010.
In 2011, the political environment was shaken by protests inspired by popular uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. Demonstrations demanding democratic political reforms were held across the country on February 20, and the resulting protest movement, named for this date and comprised of students and activists, continued to press for change throughout the year.
After naming a commission to draft a new constitution in response to the protests, the king presented the proposed document in June. It preserved most of the monarch's existing powers, particularly in the areas of religion and security, and he retained authority over key cabinet positions. But he would now be required to choose the prime minister from the party that wins the most seats in parliamentary elections, and consult the prime minister before dissolving Parliament. Among other provisions, the draft constitution also gave official status to the Berber language, called for gender equality, and emphasized respect for human rights. Although the February 20 movement rejected the changes as insufficient, the main political parties encouraged voters to approve the document in a July referendum, and it reportedly passed with over 98 percent of the vote.
Parliamentary elections were held under the new charter in November, resulting in a victory for the opposition PJD, which took 107 of the 395 seats in the lower house. Istiqlal placed second with 60 seats, followed by the National Rally of Independents with 52, the PAM with 47, the USFP with 39, the Popular Movement with 32, the Constitutional Union with 23, and the Progress and Socialism Party with 18. Ten smaller parties divided the remainder. The February 20 movement and some Islamist and leftist groups had called for a boycott of the vote, but turnout was 45 percent, an increase from the low figure reported in 2007. Abdelilah Benkirane of the PJD was named prime minister, and he formed a coalition government with Istiqlal, the Popular Movement (a party of rural notables), and the Party of Progress and Socialism (the former communist party).
Morocco is not an electoral democracy. Most power is held by the king and his close advisers. Even under the 2011 constitution, the monarch can dissolve Parliament, rule by decree, and dismiss or appoint cabinet members. He sets national and foreign policy, commands the armed forces and intelligence services, and presides over the judicial system. One of the king's constitutional titles is "commander of the faithful," giving his authority a claim to religious legitimacy. The king is also the majority stakeholder in a vast array of private and public sector firms.
The lower house of Parliament, the Chamber of Representatives, has 395 directly elected members who serve for five-year terms. Sixty of these seats are reserved for women, and 30 for men under age 40. Members of the 270-seat upper house, the Chamber of Counselors, are chosen by an electoral college to serve nine-year terms. Under a rule that took effect in 2009, women are guaranteed 12 percent of the seats in local elections.
Given the concentration of power in the monarchy, the country's fragmented political parties and even the cabinet are generally unable to assert themselves. The PJD, which won the 2011 parliamentary vote, has long been a vocal opposition party, even as it remained respectful of the monarchy. By contrast, the popular Justice and Charity Movement, also Islamist in its political orientation, is illegal, though it is generally tolerated by the authorities. Other Islamist groups further to the political right are harassed by authorities and not permitted to participate in the political process.
Despite the government's rhetoric on combating widespread corruption, it remains a structural problem, both in public life and in the business world. Morocco was ranked 80 out of 183 countries surveyed in Transparency International's 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index.
Although the independent press enjoys a significant degree of freedom when reporting on economic and social policies, the authorities use restrictive press laws and an array of financial and other, more subtle mechanisms to punish critical journalists, particularly those who focus on the king, his family, the status of the Western Sahara, or Islam. Rachid Nini, editor of the daily Al-Massae, was detained in April after the newspaper published articles on alleged corruption involving the royal palace and PAM leader Fouad Ali el-Himma. The paper had also called for the repeal of the 2003 antiterrorism law. Nini was sentenced in June to a year in prison for disinformation and attacking the "security and integrity of the nation and citizens," and an appellate court upheld the sentence in October.
The state dominates the broadcast media, but residents have access to foreign satellite television channels. It was reported in June 2011 that Information Minister Khalid Naciri obtained the dismissal of both the chief editor and the Morocco correspondent for Dubai TV after the station reported on calls to boycott the July constitutional referendum. The authorities occasionally disrupt websites and internet platforms, while bloggers and other internet users are sometimes arrested for posting content that offends the monarchy.
Nearly all Moroccans are Muslims. While the small Jewish community is permitted to practice its faith without government interference, Moroccan authorities are growing increasingly intolerant of social and religious diversity, as reflected in arrest campaigns against Shiites, Muslim converts to Christianity, and those opposed to a law enforcing the Ramadan fast.
While university campuses generally provide a space for open discussion, professors practice self-censorship when dealing with sensitive topics like Western Sahara, the monarchy, and Islam.
Freedom of assembly is not well respected. The February 20 movement remained salient throughout 2011, holding weekly demonstrations to protest the constitutional reforms and often drawing thousands of participants. Detentions and violence by police were reported, including disburse a protest in Rabat in May.
Civil society and independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are quite active and operate with more freedom than in many states in the region, but the authorities monitor Islamist groups, arrest suspected extremists, and harass other groups that offend the government. Moroccan workers are permitted to form and join independent trade unions, and the 2004 labor law prevents employers from punishing workers who do so. However, the authorities have forcibly broken up labor actions that entail criticism of the government, and child laborers, especially girls working as domestic helpers, are denied basic rights.
The judiciary is not independent, and the courts are regularly used to punish opponents of the government. Among the prisoners pardoned during 2011 were several from the so-called Belliraj case whose terrorism convictions in 2009 were widely seen as political fabrications. In April 2011, a bomb exploded in a Marrakesh café filled with tourists, killing 17 and injuring two dozen. Morocco blamed Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. On October 28, Adel al-Othmani was convicted of planting the bomb and received the death sentence; five other accomplices were given harsh sentences. Arbitrary arrest and torture still occur, though they are less common than under King Hassan. The security forces are given greater leeway with detainees advocating independence for Western Sahara, leading to frequent reports of abuse and lack of due process.
Many Moroccans have a mixed Arab-Berber ancestry, and the government has officially recognized the language and culture of the Berbers.
Women continue to face a great deal of discrimination at the societal level. However, Moroccan authorities have a relatively progressive view on gender equality, which is recognized in the 2011 constitution. The 2004 family code has been lauded for granting women increased rights in the areas of marriage, divorce, and child custody, and various other laws aim to protect women's interests.
The numerical ratings and status listed above do not reflect conditions in Western Sahara, which is examined in a separate report.


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Daily Freeman Life Editor Ivan Lajara talks about journalism, living in the Hudson Valley, language, the Web, cats and even politics. But he shouldn't.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Debatable links
* The American Presidency Project is mandatory reading for political science aficionados, bloggers, historians, journalists and curious bystanders. It has everything you want to know (and don't) about presidents, from Nixon's "Checker's Speech" on Sept. 23, 1952; to old presidential debates from 1960 and 1976 through this year; to day-to-day data on the current Gallup poll:
* If you are more of a visual person, check out all the presidential television ads from 1952 to today -- it's delighfully sickening -- online at http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/, which begins with a 1956 quote from Adlai Stevenson: "The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process."
No wonder Stevenson lost.
The most (in)famous, is LBJ's "Daisy Girl":
* Actual debate question from the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate.
* A cool feature from PBS, which will televise the Friday debate in Mississippi, is "Budget Hero":
PBS' "Vote 2008" site has more. Check the links, especially the "Interactive NewsHour/NPR 2008 Election Map."
* The New York Times also has a map. The best part is that you can speculate winners and make your own, like a fantasy sport.
Debate parties
* Exclusive Screening of "Full Battle Rattle" and Debate Watch Party (Fundraising):
The event begins at 7 p.m. with at screening of "Full Battle Rattle", a film about life inside the U.S. Army's Iraq simulation in California's Mojave Desert at the Rosendale Theater on Main Street. A question-and-answer session with director Tony Gerber will follow.
The Debate Watch will be across the street at 9 p.m. at the Bywater Bistro, 419 Main St.
Bring items for care packages for soldiers that we will be assembling for shipment to our servicemembers in Iraq.
Admission is $20.
The event is Hosted by Hudson Valley for Obama and the Marbletown Democratic Committee.
For more info, call (845) 687-7374 or send an e-mail to e-mail email@example.com. Suggested Care Package contents: a personalized message of support from the you, an AT&T prepaid international phone card, snacks/candy, playing cards, reading material, shampoo/conditioner, tooth paste/tooth brush, sunscreen, hand sanitizer.
* Woodstock For Obama:
Hosts Lester Strong and Pat Courtney Strong can fit about 15 to 20 people at their home in the Zena section of Woodstock. The Strongs have "multiple TVs and can accommodate people who really need it to be quiet, as well as those who like to comment."
The event takes place at 8 p.m. at 61 Van Dale Road, Woodstock
* HVSS Debate Watch Party:
From the site: "Come join your neighbors and watch the debates at the Hudson Valley Sudbury School. The school does not endorse either candidate for president, but we feel that it is important that people get a change to learn more about each candidate."
The event, which was listed on the Obama Web site, takes place at 8:30 p.m. at the school, 84 Zena Road, Kingston. The host is Jeff Collins. Call (845) 679-1002.
Sponsored by the Shandaken Democrat Club, the event, hosted by Nick Alba, begins at 8 p.m. for discussion and socializing and takes place at the Boiceville Inn on Route 28 in Boiceville.
The event promises a big screen projection TV. And this:
"Let's come together and talk about our ability to bring an end to the insanity that has been running this country. Expect lively discussion with like minded citizens. Let's cheer on Barack as our incomparable Democratic candidate overpowers his incompetent Republican rival, and let's explore how we can contribute to the effort to bring about the real change that our nation so
desperately needs. A great variety of reasonably priced food and beverages are available.
* watch obama win
A small party to watch the debate, hosted by Toni Mufson (who apparently doesn't like capital letters), begins at 7:30 p.m. at 44 Wilmot Way, Phoenicia. Call (845) 688-5868
* The Great Debate
The event, hosted by Nekisha Thompson, takes place at 8:30 p.m. at "Fort Obama," Bement Avenue between Mansion Street and Cottage Street in Poughkeepsie. Children are welcomed, as are snacks and beverages.
* Come watch with us!
The event, hosted by Kari Rieser, takes place at 8 p.m. at The Rieser household, 322 Union St., Hudson:
"Come share the first debate with fellow Obama/Biden supporters from the Hudson area. Bring an appetizer or something to gnosh on and your favorite libation and share the night with us. We do have two cats, so if you are horribly allergic, think about it."
* Obama Debate Watching Venison Chili Party:
The event takes place at 7:30 p.m. at 28 Mellenville Square, Mellenville (that's not Ellenville in Southern Ulster County, but Ghent in Columbia County).
Host Brenda Shufelt says in the online listing: "Come and join us and some friends to watch the first presidential debate. We will be serving homemade venison chili (because in the blue states we eat venison and in the red states we're vegan) and elderberry pie for dessert. Join us to cheer Obama on. Bring a beverage of your choice."
The parties above were taken from the freakishly named my.barackobama.com (What's up with the "my"?)
Republicans rejoice, you are not alone in the mid-Hudson Valley:
* Cindy Lee Travis's Debate Watching Event
The event begins at 7:30 p.m. Saugerties. Sign up for directions.
* Louis Tolchin's Debate Watching Event
The event begins at 7:30 p.m. in West Hurley. Sign up for directions.
The Republican Party's parties were taken from McCain Nation.
I'll stick to the Colbert Nation (now with Emmy!).
Friday, September 19, 2008
What's in a name
Take the Sarah Palin baby name generator, inspired by the unusual name of the governor of Alaska's kids: Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow and Piper.
My name would be "Chin Trout"
Other names:
For 101st district Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston: Nixon Hailfire
For challenger Robin Yess:Recoil Mush
For U.S. Rep Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley: Filter Skate
For George Phillips: Bomb Locamotive
For Barack Obama: Tarp Lazer
For Joe Biden: Beans Harpoon
For John McCain: Steam Fangs
And for Sarah Palin herself: Flack Gobbler
Go figure.
What happened to the images
Here is a link to today's front pages from around the world, like the one below for United Daily News, published in Taipei, Taiwan:
I'm so glad I don't speak Chinese right now.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
(All the headlines or sub-headlines use "meltdown"):
Have you noticed the other patern? Her name is Elizabeth Rose, a specialist with Lehman Brothers MarketMakers. She probably had dirt on her eye, as similar photos move every day in the wires.
Random management statement generator
I clicked on the "create" button six times and pieced the sentences together.
The end result was, "We need to generate ubiquitous niches to strategize integrated users in order to improve world-class systems to syndicate extensible synergies and enable enterprise content to optimize dynamic networks."
Scott Adams' "Dilbert" has a more amusing "Mission statement generator."
Here's one:
"Our mission is to proactively leverage existing unique data to allow us to interactively initiate corporate meta-services to stay competitive in tomorrow's world."
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Sweet links
* The U.S. Department of Agriculture has numbers on food production for a variety of years, which allowed me to come up with the average high fructose corn syrup production per person per year.
The Corn Refiners Association's web site is http://www.sweetsurprise.com/.
The American Medical Association recently authored "The Health Effects of High Fructose Syrup."
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
This nonsensical line from the column "Corn syrup (advertising) bad for you" comes from the movie Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail.
The answer, of course, is:
"What do you mean, an African or European swallow?"
If you really need to know, Jonathan Corum actually did the math for both African and European swallows.


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March 16, 2010
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - For the first time in five seasons UC Santa Barbara baseball games will air live on commercial radio, giving fans the opportunity to catch the Gauchos when they can't make it to the ballpark. And, for the first time in UCSB baseball history, the games will be streamed live online, giving fans all over the world the opportunity to follow the Gauchos.
Beginning with the Saturday, March 27 home game against the University of San Francisco, 23 total Gaucho games will be broadcast live - that's over half the team's scheduled games! The games will air locally in Santa Barbara on AM 1490 KIST and will stream live online by clicking here .
This gives UCSB fans a chance to follow the Gauchos - currently 8-4 and riding a five-game winning streak - during the stretch run of the season as important Big West Conference series will be broadcast as the team fights for a Regional berth.
Including the weekend series vs. USF the following series are also scheduled to be broadcast: April 9-11 at Cal Poly, April 16-18 vs. Cal State Fullerton, April 23-25 at Long Beach State, May 1-2 vs. UC Riverside, May 8-9 vs. Cal State Northridge, May 14-16 at UC Irvine, May 22-23 vs. UC Davis and May 28-30 at Pacific. The games are being broadcast courtesy of Nelligan Sports Marketing , which produced UCSB men's soccer games, men's and women's basketball games and Talk'n Gauchos, UCSB Athletics' weekly radio show.
Steve Wendt, who handles play-by-play for UCSB basketball team's and is the host of Talk'n Gauchos, will handle play-by-play duties for the baseball broadcasts. Wendt, a 2000 alum of UCSB, has vast experience broadcasting baseball games, as he has also served as a broadcaster for several professional baseball teams.
UCSB continues its 11-game homestand with a three-game weekend series vs. New Mexico State this weekend and a Tuesday, March 23 home game vs. UCLA before its series against USF.
To purchase tickets, please call (805) 893-UCSB, visit the Ticket Office located inside the Intercollegiate Athletics building on campus or click here.
Season tickets are still available for UCSB baseball games with season plans starting as low as $50! Plus, all fans who purchase a season ticket will receive a free UCSB hat! Click here for more information.
The baseball team, along with all other UCSB teams, are part of the Gauchos Give Tickets program. Gauchos Give Tickets provides the opportunity for local businesses, non-profit, and charitable groups to attend regular season Gaucho home games for FREE! Along with the free tickets, groups can receive recognition during the game, participate in game promotions, and get a visit from Olé!.
Back again for the 2010 season is the Baseball Buddies program which allows youth teams to come to weekend Gaucho games and take the field with the Gauchos! The teams will also receive autographs from their favorite players and sing the 7th Inning Stretch. Please contact Alan Cassinelli in the Marketing office at (805) 893-4629 for more information or e-mail him email@example.com.


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Orly adores his wife
Miranda Kerr modelled in the Dior show in Paris today for Fashion Week. Her husband Orlando Bloom sat front row with a camera, gazing up at her adoringly as she came down the runway, like he's fresh from the village and has never been to a fashion show. It's actually kinda cute. And I am happy for him that he's so happy because I did feel sorry for him when Kate Bosworth scammed him into a set up pap situation a few months ago. I'm told he seemed very concerned about it afterwards, worried how his wife would react. It turned out OK. Because Kate's game is sad and pathetic.
Orly will next be seen in The Three Musketeers due out October 21. The trailer is below. It looks meh for me, even though I do love Matthew MacFadyen's voice. Orly plays the villain. I think I might be into that.


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PAMM Free Second Saturdays presented by Target
August 11, 2018 @ 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
|Recurring Event (See all)
Second Saturday of the month
Event Navigation
Free Second Saturdays, sponsored by Target, will include special free activities from 1 to 4 p.m., including family-friendly tours and chances for children to create art.


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Item Description
Independence Grand Pic Nic Party
Author: No authors specified.
Date: July 5, 1858
This invitation was to a party to be held at McAllister's Hall in Osawatomie, Kansas Territory, on July 5, 1858. Music was to be provided by Smith's Band. Supper was provided and tickets cost $2.50. The back of the invitation listed 27 dances that would be performed. This party was sponsored by several individuals from Osawatomie, Indianapolis, Paola, Stanton, Lane City, Lawrence, and several other communities.
Location of Original: KSHS Call Number: K 394 So1 Vol. 1
Item Number: 102578 Number of images: 2
Keywords: Balls (parties); Community life; Daily life; Dance parties; Lykins County, Kansas Territory (see also Miami County, Kansas); Miami County, Kansas (see also Lykins County, Kansas Territory); Osawatomie, Kansas Territory; Parties
pg. 1
pg. 2


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Welcome to the TEDI BEAR Children's Advocacy Center web site. Our name stands for Tender Evaluation, Diagnosis and Intervention for a BEtter Abuse Response. The center is a partnership between the Department of Pediatrics at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University and the James and Connie Maynard Children's Hospital at Vidant Medical Center located in Greenville, NC.
We are an accredited member of the National Children's Alliance and a member of the Children's Advocacy Centers of North Carolina. We are also one of nearly 800 children's advocacy centers across the country serving who are, or may have been, victims of child abuse or neglect.
TEDI BEAR Children's Advocacy Center serves alleged victims up to the age of eighteen. The center provides a child-friendly environment to help heal the trauma that typically accompanies abuse or neglect. TEDI BEAR also helps the parents or other caregivers of abused children, provided that the caregivers have not committed or contributed to the child's abuse. Alleged offenders are not permitted on the premises. All services are provided with the focus on the child.
TEDI BEAR was founded in 1992, and is a subspecialty clinic within the Department of Pediatrics, Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. ECU is the third largest public university in the State of North Carolina. The Brody School of Medicine, together with Vidant Medical Center, supports TEDI BEAR CAC, with assistance from major grant funding by the North Carolina Governor's Crime Commission, the Vidant Health Foundation, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, and the National Children's Alliance. Also, donations from civic organizations, including Women for Women, and individual benefactors provide critical support for TEDI BEAR.
TEDI BEAR's staff consists of pediatricians, physician extenders, social workers, child life specialists, therapists, community educators, a multi-disciplinary team coordinator, and office support staff. Each year TEDI BEAR cares for more than 600 children from 29 counties in eastern North Carolina. Our goal is to provide comprehensive, coordinated child-centered services, education and outreach by specially trained experts in the the field of child abuse in order to ensure child safety.
Register to take a tour of our clinic.
Register for Stewards of Children training on how to prevent child sexual abuse.
To learn more about Stewards of Children, please click on the Frequently Asked Questions summary below.


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The past couple of weeks has seen a concerted defence of the British media by, er... well the British media. Articles such as "Don't Make us North Korean", "We must defend a free press" and so on have been a spectacular case of special pleading. So many people who cross the boundary between politics and journalism, from Boris Johnson to Paul Goodman, have been rushing to tell us why any regulation amounts to the end of the free press as we have known it.
Well frankly Bul***it.
The fact is that the Press has been ignoring its own (self) regulators for years and- it is now blindingly obvious- have been routinely breaking the law of the land with impunity. As more charges are brought against News International, is it not a scandal that the same management, in the shape of Rupert Murdoch and his family, remains in control of the largest private media business in the UK? Is it not outrageous that the Express refuses even the toothless sanctions of the self regulator, the Press Complaints Commission, and continues to publish stories that are completely false, about the EU for example, with no realistic sanction even possible against them?
The self serving special pleading coming from across the media, from right to left, is not a sign that some kind of new regulatory regime is wrong- it is simply a sign that the media as a whole opposes it. Frankly the "feral beast" spends far more time examining the underwear of those in the public eye than it does unearthing the web of corruption that has clearly existed in the political-journalistic combine. Scandal is measured in the playground human interest of who is sleeping with who, and not the real public interest of who-owes-who and how much. The British press has conspired to suppress stories that are in the public interest in order to promote its own interests. This is why such figures as Guido Fawkes briefly acquired some influence- because they did make a few glancing blows against the establishment, which the wider media refused to do, unless it suited their own agenda.
The press are trying to get their retaliation in first to circumvent whatever Leveson is going to say. Given that he has had to circulate various drafts of his report, the media already knows that the Leveson report is going to be pretty blunt about their failings and scathing about their crimes.
The British media in the past few years has grown careless with arrogance. The fact they are circling the wagons in order to try to prevent any trespass upon their perceived freedoms is frankly contemptible. It is the action of a harlot seeking to defend her raddled trade on the grounds that at least she has sold her honour professionally.
Within reason, the Leveson report should be adopted, and those who pretend that any regulation means a North Korean press should be treated with the disgust that they deserve. The Milly Dowler phone hack was only the most appalling of the crimes committed by the thousand by an unaccountable and irresponsible media. These cases should not merely attract criminal charges, they should also attract professional opprobrium too- and no journalist with any integrity should oppose this.
Pity that it turns out that so few journalists are prepared to accept that their profession is guilty of considerable wrong-doing. "They just don't get it", as we said of MPs. Now we should make damn sure that the media does "get it" and ensure that they do not use their power to weasel out of whatever the necessary measures are that come out of the Leveson inquiry.