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Monday, October 05, 2009
A blog I love -- DustJacket Attic
Her posts contain amazing imagery from photo shoots from tons of fashion magazines, such as Vogue magazines from various countries (a recent one was from Vogue Korea, a magazine I used to get when I lived there for three years) and now that I design jewelry, I'm finding that I look at these photographs in an entirely new way.
The glitter of diamond against fragile tulle and a black dress makes me think of putting together an elaborate pearl, crystal, and jet necklace -- not a bracelet, but a necklace because her neck is so elegant. (Photo from Vogue US, Oct 2009)
COLOR! My favorite thing. This makes me want to fire up the torch and make bead after bead in every possible combination of these colors. (From V magazine 2008)
And the shoes. Oh sweet heavens. It's all about the shoes. From someone who has had plantar fasciitis surgery and is now relegated to only wearing Birkenstocks and Danskos (hangs her head in sadness), gazing in longing at the type of shoes I used to blithely go out dancing in is sheer joy. Painful in more ways than one, but sheer joy. (From Vogue Nippon 2005)
Do yourself a favor, and visit her blog, add yourself to her many followers, and give yourself a daily eye-candy treat.
Now I'm off to visit the shoes.
7 comments:
Oh, I feel your pain (literally!) about the shoes! You're right - that's some blogging inspiration there!ReplyDelete
You know, Dansko has some pretty great Mary Jane styles, including Sally, Solitaire, Becca, Trixie, and Tillie.ReplyDelete
Oh what a total surprise. Thank you SO much for your great write up, I so very much appreciate it and you.ReplyDelete
Bloggers are the friendliest, coolest people around.
love DJ
Oh. Dear.ReplyDelete
I so loved this post!
First of all...you lived in Korea for 3 years??? Then you probably have some experiences that I can relate to as a new HK resident.
I also love your take on the local Vogue. I'm going to find me a copy of HK Vogue. I picked up a copy of UK Vogue by accident one time when I was traveling for business in China. I loved it! I was disappointed with the US version when compared to the UK version. I had bookmarked several things in the UK Vogue and my friends were flipping through. Then they asked..."what did you bookmark?" I said..."The articles." We both laughed that I bookmarked the articles in a fashion mag. Oh well! I'm a nerd!
And shoes! I share your same aching disappointment over cute, cute, cute shoes. HK is too much walking for me to wear anything but the ultra-practical shoes. I'll probably buy a bunch more shoes in the US (hard to find here), get more blisters, give 'em away, and go back to the comfy shoes...
Sorry for the long blather, but your post really resonated with me. :-)
Well you are in good company. I too have had to forgo heels. I not only had heel spurs, but now have arthritis in my feet of all places? Although I have never had a thing for shoes as some, I love the clothing and wish I could pull it off.
p.s. a great shoe with surprising support are "Finns" from Germany. They are a bit pricey but in no way look like othopedic shoes. They are handmade leather and can be re-built. I am saving for some.
love it- just came from that blog- always wonderful fashion photos at Dustjacket Attic!ReplyDelete
love it- just came from that blog- always wonderful fashion photos at Dustjacket Attic!ReplyDelete


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Customer Engagement | Pitney Bowes
The Next Frontier for Insurance Customer Engagement: Interactive Videos
Engaging content enriches the customer experience and builds a relationship with the policyholder in a way that traditional communications never could.
We all know that video has become a go-to resource for consumers, both for entertainment and education. Expressing complex information in a visual way helps people understand products and learn about brands, too. That can be particularly useful when you're in a complex industry like insurance, where billing statements, policy coverage and endorsements can't easily be broken down in a single phone call.
While insurance companies are continually searching for new ways to engage customers, few have ventured into the realm of video marketing. That's a missed opportunity: YouTube is the number two search engine in the world and a third of all online activity is spent watching video. Not only that, videos can improve the understanding of a product or service by up to 74 percent.
But, given each individual policyholder's unique situation, how can video help them understand services? The answer lies in personalized, interactive video communications. Personalized video encourages customer engagement by prompting information throughout the video. That information is aggregated with other data, so the video can be customized for each customer.
With an interactive online video service, insurance companies can answer policyholder questions before they become real issues, reduce call center inquiries and improve customer satisfaction.
Video + Data = Customer Satisfaction
So, what's the key to using personalized, interactive videos as customer service tools? High quality data. By combining customer information with real-time data about everything from weather to insurance policies to deductibles and billing statements, insurers can offer an unprecedented experience for customers that engages and educates on an individual level.
The big advantage to an interactive video as opposed to a static one is that the content can change to answer a user's specific questions. Insurers can create prompts that allow viewers to input the questions they want answered and then show them the content that's most relevant to their situation.
A fully functional, data-empowered, interactive video can perform many of the functions a call center does, which in turn reduces the number of total inbound inquiries that insurance reps have to field. And, when customers do call in, there's a good chance they will be more educated about their billing and policy options, thanks to the video.
These videos can become true business intelligence assets. With comprehensive dashboards that show video performance, viewing time, visits and success metrics, insurance companies can easily see what issues are most common among policyholders and which videos are the most engaging. That can help inform future sales and marketing campaigns, as well as policy adjustments.
Engage, Educate, Enrich
We've discussed before how modern document publishing systems can be utilized to provide personalized messaging and how insurers can better engage with customers. Interactive video is an exciting new option for insurance companies to engage and service their customers, as well as to help build brand awareness and customer loyalty.
At a time when many brands are scrambling to gain traction among their audiences, the more personalized and relevant the content, the better the customer experience. Engaging content enriches the customer experience and builds a relationship with the policyholder in a way that traditional communications never could.

subset: commoncrawl


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Tumblr of the Week: Love A Girl In Chucks
We knew that Converse Chuck Taylors on girls is a good look, which is why we decided to put a spotlight on Everything You Love to Hate's LOVEAGIRLINCHUCKS page. It's a great compilation of images and so we selected some of our favorites from the page to share with you here. Also, be sure to check out the Tumblr for more images, but we warn you – you could end up being sucked into that page for a minute, so be sure you do your browsing in your spare time.
Check out our 10 favorite images from LOVEAGIRLINCHUCKS.


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Surely Anthony Rizzo couldn't live up to all the hype surrounding his much-anticipated Cubs debut, but he did his best to try. Rizzo was 2-for-4 in his first game with the Cubs, including the game winning single, that turned into a double with two outs in the fourth inning. Rizzo also singled in his first at bat, which was originally scored an error, it was changed a couple of minutes later, and rightfully so, who gives him an error at home? While Rizzo was making his debut Randy Wells might have been throwing his last pitch as a member of the Chicago Cubs. Randy Wells has lost it, all of it, he could only last three innings, giving up three runs on six hits while walking four and striking out three. Thanks to Wells the Cubs got down 2-0 early before Rizzo and company charged back to take a 3-2 lead in the third inning. The Mets tied the game up in the fourth before Rizzo put the Cubs up for good in the bottom half. A huge effort from the Cubs bullpen today as Scott Maine, James Russell, Shawn Camp, and Carlos Marmol shut down the Mets the rest of the way. The game ended with Carlos Marmol earning his 100th career save, and one of his easier ones two. Five different Cubs had two hits in the win, Rizzo, David DeJesus, Luis Valbuena, Darwin Barney, and Steve Clevenger. While Anthony Rizzo won't be a savior for the 2012 Cubs season, he might have made this one the most enjoyable games to watch all year, the Cubs go for the sweep tomorrow afternoon. Full box score and highlights after the jump.
Game Highlights:
Rizzo Singles in First AB
Rizzo Game-Winning Double
Valbuena RBI Double
Thanks for reading,
– George


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Patrick Wallace Cayemberg Jr.
Born July 23, 1933, Red River, Wisconsin
Died May 15, 2010, Green Bay, Wisconsin
(This is a repost of sorts to memorialize my father-in-law. It's hard to believe that it's been five years since we lost him. His loss is still felt everyday by those who loved him. He touched so many lives and is missed more than I could possibly say.)
It was five years ago today, my husband, sons and I began a drive from Killeen to Green Bay, Wisconsin to celebrate my mother and father-in-law's 50th wedding anniversary. We hadn't made it past Dallas when we got the call that dad had died. It was completely unexpected and devastating to the whole family. What was supposed to be a joyous celebration turned into what would be a series of indescribably sad days.
I have a wonderful mother, step-father, and sisters and I added to that wonderful family an extraordinary set of in-laws that I love terribly. Losing my father-in-law was like losing a father and his absence is felt every single day. I know he watches over all of us and is able to see his family's accomplishments and his grandchildren's milestones. I can find some small solace in the fact that dad died the day after their 50th anniversary (the party we were traveling up for was to be the following weekend) and that dad passed while doing something he loved...volunteering.
So today, this post is in your memory, dad. You went on ahead of us to prepare the way. Until that day when you welcome each of us home...we love you.
"Patrick W. Cayemberg, 76, Green Bay resident, passed away unexpectedly, Saturday, May 15, 2010 while volunteering at the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon. He was born July 23, 1933 in Red River, Wisconsin to the late Patrick and Laura (Laurent) Cayemberg. Patrick was a graduate of Green Bay East High School, class of 1951. He served his country as a member of the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956, earning a Commendation as Specialist 3.
On May 14, 1960 he married Dolores (Lorie) Kuehl, with whom they had just celebrated 50 years of marriage. Pat "Big Daddy" worked for Schneider Transport as a truck driver for over 30 years. He enjoyed baking cookies, camping, country music festivals, making chicken booyah, gardening and wintering in Arizona. He loved Monday night dinners with the family, spending time with his grandchildren, volunteer work and going to the Friday night fish fry. Pat was an active member of the Knights of Columbus, SS. Peter and Paul Parish, the Teamsters Local 75 and the American Legion.
Survivors include his wife Dolores; four daughters: Cindy (Michael) Kolb, and Kent; Bonnie Cayemberg and Max Herrscher; Lori Ann (Joseph) Frisbie, Sam and Jackson; Karen (Bruce) Butterfield, Erik (Kristina), Vincent, and Delaney, all of Green Bay; one son, Richard (Cheryl) Cayemberg, Benjamin and Daniel, Killeen, TX. He is also survived by three brothers: Roland, Green Bay; Darold, Vulcan, MI; Glen (Sarah), Union Grove, WI; four sisters-in-law, Lorraine Ryan, Eden, WI; Alice Wood, Eden, WI; Helen Beisbier, Kewaskum, WI; Marge (Joe) Konkel, Wind Lake, WI; and many other nieces, nephews, relatives and friends.
In addition to his parents, Patrick and Laura Cayemberg, he was preceded in death by his father and mother-in-law, Romand and Leona Kuehl; brother, Wayne Cayemberg; sisters-in-law, Shirley Cayemberg, and Patsy Cayemberg; brothers-in-law, Vincent Ryan, Richard List, Donald Wood, and Alois Beisbier, great niece, Brittany Cayemberg and great nephew Jake Stanke.
Friends may call at the Proko-Wall Funeral Home, 1630 E. Mason St., on Tuesday (TODAY) from 4 to 7 p. m. Knights of Columbus Rosary Service 6:30 p.m. Parish wake service 7 p.m. Visitation will continue on Wednesday at SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, corner of University Ave and Baird St., after 9:30 a.m. until the time of service. Mass of Christian Burial 10:30 a.m. at the church with Msgr. Roy Klister officiating. Entombment will take place at Nicolet Memorial Gardens. Online condolences may be sent to Patrick's family at www.prokowall.com. In lieu of other expressions of sympathy, a memorial fund is being established. The family would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the volunteers, medical personnel, first responders and the ER staff at St. Vincent Hospital for their care and consideration.
Roll on Big Daddy, Roll on…"


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Cheesy Potato Casserole
Total TimePrep: 15 min. Bake: 35 min.
Makes2 servings
- 2 eggs
- 2 medium potatoes, peeled and grated
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
- 4 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled
- In a small bowl, whisk eggs. Stir in the potatoes, onion, bread crumbs, salt and pepper. Pour into a greased 1-qt. baking dish.
- Bake, uncovered, at 350° for 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Top with cheese and bacon. Bake 5-7 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.
Nutrition Facts1 cup: 535 calories, 24g fat (13g saturated fat), 268mg cholesterol, 1241mg sodium, 54g carbohydrate (7g sugars, 5g fiber), 26g protein.
Recommended Video
Jan 21, 2013
I made this dish tonight with a chicken dish and we liked it but we weren't awed by it. While mixing it together, I feared it would come out dry with the bread crumbs and no additional liquid. The texture was similar to a baked stuffing. I believe cutting the bread crumbs in half and adding some cream or milk might help this along.The flavors were very nice. It makes a good side dish if you know what to expect. We were looking for more of a cheesier casserole. My FIL liked it as well and saved what was left. One should note that this makes much more than a serving for 2. It was in a 1 quart casserole, but as a side, it was enough for 4.
Aug 18, 2011
The recipe didn't say to use cooked potatoes, so I shredded them raw, and I think the starch killed the dish. Also, the addition of bread crumbs was rather odd.
Mar 23, 2010
If you enjoy potato pancakes this ones for you. The bacon & cheese is the frosting on the cake.
Mar 10, 2010
No I couldn't because for 2 people and getting a 1 cup serving, the sodium content and the carorie count is far too high. I would love to eat this on a regular basis but it just won't fit into regular diet. It's good though.
Mar 9, 2010
Very good! I doubled the recipe, added a can of green chiles, 1 cup cubed ham, and omitted the bacon then baked as recipe said. Was perfect for the family.
Mar 9, 2010
This cheesy potato casserole is excellent and one we eat whenever we have the ingredients on hand. It's delicious and a keeper for sure. I am putting it in my recipe box and keeping it there for a long time to come.
Dec 28, 2009
I use frozen shredded potatoes instead of peeling and grating. Works very well.


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Bombshell Miniatures (BOM10063 Shaeldaryth Bladesong)
This Bombshell Miniatures model comes unpainted and unassembled. Assembly and painting required. Photos of painted miniatures are for demonstration and inspirational purposes only. Click here for assembly instructions.
- Sculptor: Patrick Keith
- Premium fantasy miniature in heroic 32mm scale
- Metal figure (assembly and painting required)
- Supplied with plastic 30mm base
- Suitable for fantasy RPG games and collections
- Not a toy. Contains small components and should be considered a choking hazard. Ages 14+
- Made in USA
Only 1 left in stock.
- Questions?
- Delivery
Dark Elf Dice ships fast!
- US customers usually receive delivery in 2-3 business days from the time a package is mailed (Priority Mail) or 4-5 business days (First Class Mail).
- Customers outside the US will usually receive delivery within 14-21 days.
- Delivery times are based on US Postal Service estimates. Although we ship fast, we unfortunately cannot guarantee an actual delivery date.


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Official Journals of the European Union - 2013
The Official Journal of the European Union (OJ) is the official compendium of EU legislation (L series) and other official documents of the EU institutions, bodies and agencies (C series...
PDF HTML ArcGIS Map Preview (1059 views) (103 Downloads)
Official Journals of the European Union (English)
This dataset contains the Official Journal (OJ) L and C series in XML Formex format. Grouped by year (since 2004) the resources are available for bulk download. For the current year the...
PDF HTML Excel XLS ArcGIS Map Preview (3619 views) (1978 Downloads)


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Katalin E. Kiss is Research Professor at the Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.Kiss, Katalin É. is the author of 'Syntax of Hungarian', published 2002 under ISBN 9780521660471 and ISBN 0521660475.[read more]
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City Meetings and Events Calendar
City Council Meeting
Regular Third Monday Meeting
- Date: 08/19/2019 6:30 PM - 10:30 PM
- Location: City Hall - Council Chambers
605 E. Main St., City Hall - Second Floor
Charlottesville, Virginia 22902
Regular meetings of City Council are held on the first and third Mondays of each month at 6:30 p.m. in Council Chambers (in City Hall on the Downtown Mall at 7th and East Main Streets) and are open to the public. Time is open for up to 16 speakers on subjects not scheduled for a public hearing at the beginning of each regular meeting. Visit our Community Matters sign-up page to request a time in advance. Additional time is open for speakers at the end of the each meeting. All speakers are asked to limit their remarks to three minutes.
Agendas of regular Council meetings are available in advance from the Clerk or on the Council website. The meetings are televised live on Charlottesville's Own TV10 and may also be viewed on-demand from our City meeting video archive. Meetings are also live streamed on TV10's Facebook page.
Upon written or phone request, the Clerk of Council will answer questions about Council business.
Persons with disabilities may request reasonable accommodations by contacting email@example.com or (434) 970-3182.


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Newton's Cradle is fun and scientific! The perfect tool to teach the basics of physics! Start a kinetic chain reaction with one ball or two!
Stands 4 1/2" high on a black base.
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For highly specific amplification for any PCR application
Each lot of HotStarTaq Master Mix Kit is subjected to a comprehensive range of quality control tests, including a stringent PCR specificity and reproducibility assay in which low-copy targets are amplified. HotStarTaq Master Mix Kit outperformed kits tested from other suppliers and ensures high specificity and superior performance in hot-start PCR (see figures "Higher specificity with different primer–template systems" and "Superior performance " and table). The innovative PCR buffer provided with the kit ensures specificity over a wide range of PCR conditions, minimizing the need for optimization (see figure "Tolerance to variable temperatures and magnesium concentrations").
The combination of high specificity and easy handling makes the HotStarTaq Master Mix Kit suitable for use with complex genomic or cDNA templates (see figure "Effect of hot start on RT-PCR performance"), multiple primer pairs (see figure "Specific amplification in multiplex PCR"), and templates isolated from difficult sources or very low-copy targets (see figure "Highly sensitive single-cell PCR"). It is also suitable for projects such as genetic screening, in which large numbers of samples are amplified.
Concentration: 5 units/µl
Recombinant enzyme: Yes
Substrate analogs: dNTP, ddNTP, dUTP, biotin-11-dUTP, DIG-11-dUTP, fluorescent-dNTP/ddNTP
Extension rate: 2–4 kb/min at 72°C
Half-life: 10 min at 97°C ; 60 min at 94°C
Amplification efficiency: ≥105 fold
5'–>3' exonuclease activity: Yes
Extra A addition: Yes
3'–>5' exonuclease activity: No
Contaminating nucleases: No
Contaminating RNases: No
Contaminating proteases: No
Self-priming activity: No
HotStarTaq Master Mix is a ready-to-use mixture of HotStarTaq DNA Polymerase, QIAGEN PCR Buffer, and dNTPs. HotStarTaq DNA Polymerase, a modified form of Taq DNA Polymerase, provides high specificity in hot-start PCR.
HotStarTaq DNA Polymerase is supplied in an inactive state and has no polymerase activity at ambient temperatures. This prevents extension of nonspecifically annealed primers and primer dimers formed at low temperatures during PCR setup and the initial PCR cycle (see figures "Superior performance in hot-start PCR" and "Higher specificity with different primer–template systems"). HotStarTaq DNA Polymerase is activated by a 15-minute incubation at 95°C, which can be incorporated into any existing thermal-cycler program.
QIAGEN PCR Buffer maintains specific amplification in every cycle of PCR by promoting a high ratio of specific-to-nonspecific primer binding during the annealing step in each PCR cycle (see figure "Increased specificity of primer annealing"). Owing to a uniquely balanced combination of KCl and (NH4)2SO4, the buffer provides stringent primer-annealing conditions over a wider range of annealing temperatures and Mg2+ concentrations than conventional PCR buffers. Optimization of PCR by varying the annealing temperature or the Mg2+ concentration is therefore often minimal or not required (see figures "Wide annealing temperature window" and "Tolerance to variable magnesium concentration").
HotStarTaq Master Mix Kit is highly suitable for a wide variety of applications, including challenging applications such as amplification of:
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22 How. 436
16 L.Ed. 395
December Term, 1859
THIS was an appeal from the District Court of the United States for the southern district of California.
The title of Dalton to the land which he claimed is set forth in the opinion of the court.
The board of commissioners confirmed the title, but the District Court reversed the decree, apparently upon the ground stated in the following exception:
Upon the trial of this cause, the United States district attorney offered to prove, by Daniel Sexton and J. S. Mallard, witnesses called on the part of the United States, that Henry Dalton, the appellee in this case, was not, at the time of the grant of the land to him in this case, a citizen of Mexico, but was an alien and a subject of Great Britain, which proof was objected to by J. R. Scott, counsel for appellee; but his honor the judge overruled the objection, and permitted the evidence to be given; to which the appellee, by his counsel, excepted, and prays the court to sign this his bill of exceptions, and make the same part of the record in the case, which is accordingly done.
The evidence of these two persons upon this subject was as follows:
Daniel Sexton sworn, and says:
1. Question. What is your name, age, place of residence, and occupation?
Answer. My name is Daniel Sexton; my age, about 37; I reside in San Gabriel; I am a farmer.
2. Q. How long have you lived in California?
A. I have lived in this part of California, county of Los Angeles, since the fall of 1841.
3. Q. Do you know or not Henry Dalton, the appellee in this case?
A. I do.
4. Q. How long have you known him?
A. I have known him since the latter part of 1844, or beginning of 1845.
5. Q. Do you know how long he has resided in California?
A. Yes; since the latter part of 1844 or beginning of 1845.
6. Q. Do you know the country of his birth?
A. He has frequently told me he was an Englishman.
7. Q. Do you recollect the last time he told you so?
A. Yes—in May, I think it was, in 1847; I was coming, in company with Mr. Dalton, from Azusa to Santanita; he told me that he was an Englishman; that he never was a Mexican citizen, and never intended to be an American citizen.
J. S. Mallard:
My name is J. S. Mallard; residence, San Gabriel; my age is 39, and a merchant by occupation; I have resided in California five years, and in Los Angeles county the same length of time, with the exception of four months. I know Henry Dalton, and have known him since January, 1850, as a resident of Los Angeles city.
Question. Do you know the rancho of San Francisquito?
Answer. I don't know that I do, only from report.
Q. Do you know the country of Mr. Dalton's birth?
A. I do not.
Q. Do you know whether or not Mr. Dalton, the appellee in this case, is a native of Mexico? And if not, state generally how you know the fact.
A. Some time in the year 1853, I heard Mr. Dalton say that he claimed not to be a citizen of the United States, nor of Mexico. I know it was in a court of justice, and think he was called as a juror; (the court reserved their decision.) I think he was under oath, but am not certain. I think it was in the Court of Sessions, whilst I was sitting as an associate justice; but I am not certain if it was in that court, or in a justice's court, whilst I was a judge of both courts. I think he was excused on that ground.
Q. Did you ever hear Mr. Dalton say, on any other occasion, that he was not a naturalized citizen of Mexico?
A. I do not recollect that I ever did.
Cross-examined by Claimant's Counsel.
Question. Did he say anything more than that he claimed not to be a citizen?
Answer. My answer is, that he did. My recollection is, that he stated, that while in Mexico, he had either applied to become a citizen, or had some papers made out; and that, from some reason, which I do not recollect, the business of his naturalization was not completed.
Q. Did he not say this, that the papers had been made out in Mazatlan, but that they had not reached him?
A. It might have been so; but my recollection was, that the action on his application had not been completed, and that, for that reason, he (Dalton) said he did not consider himself a Mexican citizen.
It was argued in this court by Mr. Brent for the appellant, and by Mr. Black (Attorney General) for the United States.
The arguments upon the point whether or not Dalton, if a foreigner, could hold lands in California, are omitted. Upon the question of the evidence bearing upon this fact, Mr. Brent remarked as follows:
II. It is submitted that there is no sufficient evidence in the record to show that he was an alien to Mexico.
All the evidence in the record upon the subject of alienage is in the deposition of J. S. Mallard, and answers in the deposition of Sexton.
The substance of the deposition of Mallard, on the point of alienage, is simply this—that the appellant, with the object of avoiding jury service, made loose declarations that he did not claim or consider himself to have been a citizen of Mexico. The witness, Mallard, nowhere says that Dalton admitted that he was born in England, but only that he did not claim to be an American or Mexican citizen. He may very well have been a Mexican citizen, and not have claimed to be one; but would that destroy his citizenship? The testimony of the other witness, Sexton, shows that, in 1847, Dalton declared he was not a Mexican citizen, and that he never intended to be an American citizen. The court will recollect that, in 1847, we were at war with Mexico that our forces were overrunning California in every direction, and that, even supposing Mr. Dalton to have been a naturalized Mexican citizen, it may not have been suitable for his interest to avow that fact, in the midst of the clamor of the war; or there may have existed a hundred motives why he would not have proclaimed the fact to the American, Sexton.
None of these declarations of Dalton are in a positive form. They were made to third parties, under circumstances not affecting this litigation, and they are not sufficient to rebut the presumptions that he was a Mexican citizen. If the court deem that a material presumption to sustain this grant against these loose declarations of his, we have the positive patent of the Mexican authorities, not issued improvidently by the Governor, but after near two months' consideration, and after due report from the municipal authorities that there was no impropriety in the grant. It seems to be a conclusive presumption from a genuine grant, that the grantee was naturalized, or otherwise competent to take.
3 Pick., 224.
United States v. Reading, 18 How., 8, 9.
The Attorney General contended that the alienage of Dalton was clearly and satisfactorily proved.
Mr. Justice GRIER delivered the opinion of the court.
The title of Dalton is found in the archives, and its authenticity is not disputed. The expediente exhibits:
1st. A petition of Henry Dalton, dated March 12th, 1845, at Los Angeles, setting forth that he is a resident of that city; that he is endeavoring to increase the number of cattle on the premises which he possessed, called Azusa, but that he lacked more land for that purpose; that the mission of San Gabriel owned a large plain adjoining his tract of Azusa, which was useless to them. It was accompanied with a diseno or map of the land. The quantity desired was two sitios.
On the 13th of March, Pio Pico, acting Governor, makes the usual marginal order for information, referring the petition to Father Thomas Estinega, minister to the mission of San Gabriel, to report.
March 26th. Estinega reports, that the tract solicited is one of those which the mission cannot cultivate, because it is deficient in water; and considering that Dalton offers to deliver him, as a gift for the Indians, five hundred dollars, he consents that a grant of the land be made to Dalton.
This petition was referred also the municipal counsel of Los Angeles, who reported in favor of the grant, and on the 14th of April certified their approval to the Governor.
On the 26th of May, 1845, Governor Pico orders a grant to be made out for two sitios, and sent to the Departmental Assembly for their approval.
June 9th, 1845. The Departmental Assembly, upon report of the committee on waste lands, to whom the expediente had been referred, approve the grant as in conformity with the law of August 18th, 1824, and the regulations of 21st of November, 1828.
In pursuance of this grant, judicial possession was delivered to Dalton, February 14, 1846, in due form, with a regular survey of the boundaries.
The only objection urged in this court to this title, as justifying its rejection, is, that Henry Dalton was a foreigner, and had not been naturalized, and was therefore incapable of taking a grant of land.
The counsel for the plaintiff in error deny both the law and the fact as assumed in this objection.
1st. They contend that it was no part of the policy of the Spanish or Mexican Government to exclude foreigners from holding lands; that the colonization law of 1824 invites for eigners to 'come and establish themselves within the Mexican territory, and gives them privileges against taxation,' &c., &c.; and provides that, until after 1840, the General Congress shall not prohibit any foreigner as a colonist, unless imperious circumstances should require it with respect to individuals of a particular nation.
2d. They contend, also, that the regulations of 1828 require the Governor to obtain the necessary information as to whether the petitioner is a person within the conditions required to receive a grant; that the expendiente found in the record shows a full compliance with the law; that the definitive title, which is a valid patent, recites that the petitioner was 'in the actual possession, by just title, of a rancho' known by the name of Azusa; that this is a legislative adjudication of the fact of the grantee's capacity to hold land, and per se a naturalization, if he had previously been an alien; that, at least, it affords a prima facie if not a conclusive presumption of the grantee's capacity to receive a further grant of lands.
3d. They contend, also, that any legislation repugnant to this policy of the Government of Mexico since that time originated in, perhaps, a just jealousy of their American neighbors, and was aimed wholly at them, and intended to apply only to the colonies bounding on the United States; that this is apparent from the edict of Santa Anna of 1842, which permits foreigners not citizens, residing in the Republic, to acquire and hold lands, and excepts only the Departments 'upon the frontier and bordering upon other nations;' that California was never treated as within this category, as the colonized and settled portion of it is separated a thousand miles from the frontier or border of any nation, and was at that time almost a terra incognita to the rest of the world.
4th. They contend that, by the Spanish as well as by the common law, a foreigner is not incapable of taking a grant of land, but holds it subject to be denounced in the one case, and forfeited by an inquest of escheat in the other; that the grant in this case being complete, neither the United States land commissioners, nor the courts authorized to adjudicate the Mexican title under the treaty, can exercise the functions either of denouncers or escheators.
5th and lastly. It is contended, that even if the court considered itself bound to declare this grant void by reason of the alleged incapacity of the grantee to take or hold, yet that there is no sufficient evidence to establish the fact of alienage against the strong presumption of the contrary, arising from the face of the expediente and definitive title.
The court do not intend to express any opinion upon the first four of these propositions, as the last suggests a sufficient reason for the confirmation of this grant.
In all cases, the testimony of admissions or loose conversations should be cautiously received, if received at all. They are incapable of contradiction. They are seldom anything more than the vague impressions of a witness of what he thinks he has heard another say—stated in his own language, without the qualifications or restrictions, the tone, manner, or circumstances, which attended their original expression. If a complete record title with ten years' possession could be divested by such testimony, its tenure would be very precarious, especially where the owner is surrounded by a population of settlers interested in defeating it. All the evidence on the record on the subject of alienage, besides that of a brother who proved himself an alien, is in the deposition of two witnesses. One states that Dalton, in order to avoid serving as a juryman, said 'he did not claim to be an American or Mexican citizen.' He might well have been a citizen, although he was not desirous of setting up such a claim on that occasion. The other states that in 1847, during the war, when the country was occupied by the American forces, he said 'he was not a Mexican, and never intended to become an American citizen.' At such a time, he may have had many motives prompting him to make such a representation. The Mexican Government had ceased to protect him, and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had not then made him an American citizen.
Now, assuming that these witnesses have remembered and reported the precise words used by the claimant in these loose conversations, they contain no positive assertion that he had never been naturalized, or was born out of Mexico. Such testimony ought not to be received to outweigh the prima facie (if not conclusive) presumptions arising from the exrediente and definitive title.
In this respect, this case closely resembles the case of United States v. Reading. (18 How., 1.)
The decree of the District Court is reversed, and the title of the claimant to the land in question is hereby confirmed.


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They didn't know exactly what to call it or precisely how to market it, but this vintage advertisement suggests Isuzu had at least one specific purpose in mind for the Trooper—escaping the equally confused local police.
In this Duke's of Hazzard-esque commercial from 1984, we see the Trooper flying through the air and evading capture by the law for the crime of driving a hard to define vehicle and whatever else a group of older church going women who know how to hoon would get in trouble for.
We can only wonder if the befuddled cops would have been so nice when they caught up to the Trooper if "Sport Utility Vehicle" was already a widely used term in 1984.


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NEW YORK, N.Y.—The creators of the cheeky animated TV series South Park are taking aim at Broadway.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone have written a musical comedy called The Book of Mormon that will open on Broadway in March 2011.
The two wrote the show's book, music and lyrics, along with Robert Lopez, one of the creators of the Tony-winning Avenue Q. The musical will be directed by Parker and Jason Moore, who directed Avenue Q.
Producers Scott Rudin and Anne Garefino said Wednesday that a theatre, casting and other production details would be announced later.
The Emmy-winning South Park premiered in 1997 on Comedy Central.


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London: Chelsea maintained their place at the top of the Premier League with a hard-fought 1-0 win over Stoke City at Stamford Bridge thanks to a late strike from Ashley Cole. Stoke looked to have held on for a deserved point until the 85th minute, when Cole cooly finished from close range to notch his first top-flight strike for two years and keep the Blues on top of the pile.
Brazil starlet Oscar made his first Premier League start for the Blues, while Petr Cech took the captain's armband as John Terry and Frank Lampard were consigned to the substitutes bench. Former Chelsea defender Robert Huth lined up for the visitors as they went in search of their first win of the season, having drawn their opening four league matches before their ignominious defeat to Swindon in the Capital One Cup.
The hosts began to dictate play from the off, with Stoke seemingly content to get as many men behind the ball as possible while allowing the likes of Juan Mata, Eden Hazard and Oscar to keep possession so long as they didn't encroach on the penalty area.
Despite their early monopoly of the ball, Chelsea were struggling to find a way to break down Tony Pulis' side and were fortunate not go a goal behind on the 20-minute mark. Glen Whelan whipped in a dangerous delivery from a free-kick to the right-hand side, John Walters ghosted in completely unmarked at the near post and flicked a header goalwards only to see the ball clip the top of the crossbar, with Cech motionless in the middle of his goal.
Chelsea responded with some sustained pressure and Branislav Ivanovic had a shout for a penalty waved away after he turned past Huth in the box, with replays showing he went to ground a little too readily for referee Michael Oliver's liking although there was some contact between the players.
The Blues continued to dictate without finding a way through to Asmir Begovic's goal, until Fernando Torres missed the best chance of the half for the hosts. Juan Mata clipped a simple ball over the top of the back four from the edge of the area, but the Spain striker couldn't quite bring it down on his chest and Begovic was off his line smartly to smother the danger.
Stoke's resilience was beginning to frustrate Roberto Di Matteo's side. David Luiz tried his luck with an ambitious free-kick and Hazard scuffed a cross-come-shot wide of the far post, which only added to the tension around Stamford Bridge.
Indeed, the hosts had Cech to thank for preventing their frustration from growing as the Czech keeper was twice called into action as the half drew to a close. First he denied Marc Wilson from long-range as Chelsea failed to close him down, before diving smartly to save from Michael Kightly's header after good interplay between Peter Crouch and Geoff Cameron.
Chelsea started the second half brightly and were denied another appeal for a penalty when Oscar burst through the middle before going down under a challenge from Huth. There was definite contact between the two although it was outside of the box, but referee Oliver opted to show a harsh yellow to the Brazilian for diving.
The Blues continued to hammer at the Potters' door, with first Oscar and then Torres being denied by the exploits of Begovic, before Crouch attempted a spectacular volley at the other end which sailed over the bar as Stoke tried to regain a foothold in the match.
Mata thought he had finally found a way through after some brilliant interplay between Oscar and Moses, but a terrific last-ditch tackle from Ryan Shawcross denied him at the near post. Then, just a moment later, Oscar cut inside from the byline and hit a low drive which Begovic just managed to cling on to with Mata waiting to pounce.
Both sides continued to look lively going forward going into the final period of the game. First John Obi Mikel wasted a great chance as he dragged his shot wide of Begovic's left-hand post following Torres' pass, before substitutes Michael Owen and Kenwyne Jones combined to tee up Matthew Etherington inside the area, who likewise fluffed his lines.
It was a miss which Etherington and Stoke would ultimately rue, however, as Chelsea finally broke the deadlock with just five minutes remaining. Ashley Cole burst forward with the ball from the edge of his own area and continued into the box after laying off to substitute Frank Lampard. He found Hazard, whose cross went beyond Mata and Cole was left to dink the ball over Begovic from just six yards out to the relief of the home fans inside the Bridge.
Stoke tried to rally in the closing minutes but Chelsea held on for all three points, keeping them top of the Premier League pile and putting pressure on the Manchester clubs ahead of their huge respective clashes against Liverpool and Arsenal tomorrow.


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We are thrilled to announce that Etherios is now part of West Monroe Partners. Etherios was a Salesforce Platinum Partner with a long history of delivering innovative solutions to our customers. Combining with West Monroe brings together two strong organizations who now have a combined practice to more than 125 CRM-focused professionals, allowing us to deliver even greater value to our friends and clients. In addition, West Monroe brings a wealth of additional capabilities related to Advanced Analytics, Operations Excellence, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Performance Services.
To read the full press release, please click here.
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Find local BMW Dealers and BMW Certified Inventory by entering your ZIP code
1500 Auto Mall Dr
Santa Ana, CA 92705-4737
Sales: (657) 231-5000
LOCAL ORANGE COUNTY CERTIFIED PREOWNED 2016 X6. WELL EQUIPPED WITH DRIVER ASSISTANCE PACKAGE AND PREMIUM PACKAGE. BMW FINANCIAL IS OFFERING VERY AGGRESSIVE FINANCING ON ALL VEHICLES SO NOW IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY. STOP BY TODAY AND TAKE A LOOK AT OF HUGE INVENTORY OUR PAMPERED VEHICLES. - Air Conditioning, Climate Control, Dual Zone Climate Control, Cruise Control, Tinted Windows, Power Steering, Power Windows, Power Mirrors, Leather Steering Wheel, Leather Shifter, Power Passenger Seat, Memory Seat Position, Wood Trim, Clock, Tachometer, Digital Info Center, Tilt Steering Wheel, Telescoping Steering Wheel, Steering Wheel Radio Controls, Sunroof, Moonroof, Driver Airbag, Passenger Airbag, Side Airbags, Keyless Entry, Security System, ABS Brakes, Traction Control, Dynamic Stability, Rear Defogger, Fog Lights, Intermittent Wipers, AM/FM, CD Player, Anti-Theft, Leather Interior Surface, Navigation System, 10 Speakers, DVD-Audio, Radio data system, Weather band radio, Automatic temperature control, Head restraints memory, Lumbar Support, Power driver seat, Steering wheel memory, Four wheel independent suspension, 4-Wheel Disc Brakes, Anti-whiplash front head restraints, Dual front impact airbags, Dual front side impact airbags, Emergency communication system, Front anti-roll bar, Low tire pressure warning, Occupant sensing airbag, Overhead airbag, Power adjustable front head restraints, Rear anti-roll bar, Power Liftgate, Brake assist, Delay-off headlights, Fully automatic headlights, High intensity discharge headlights: Bi-xenon, Auto-dimming door mirrors, Bumpers: body-color, Heated door mirrors, Power door mirrors, Auto-dimming Rear-View mirror, Driver door bin, Driver vanity mirror, Front reading lights, Genuine wood console insert, Genuine wood dashboard insert, Genuine wood door panel insert, Illuminated entry, Outside temperature display, Overhead console, Passenger vanity mirror, Rear reading lights, Rear seat center armrest, Sport steering wheel, Telescoping steering wheel, Dakota Leather Upholstery, Front Bucket Seats, Front Center Armrest, Heated Front Seats, Heated front seats, Power Front Seats, Split folding rear seat, Passenger door bin, Rain sensing wipers, 3.15 Axle Ratio Adaptive headlights, Bluetooth, Carpeted Floor Mats, Center Arm Rest, Child Proof Door Locks, Daytime Running Lights, Front Heated Seats, Heated Mirrors, HID Headlamps, Navigation System, Overhead Console, Parking Sensors, Power Lift Gate, Premium Sound, Remote Trunk Lid, Roll Stability Control, Side Curtain Airbags, Tire Pressure Monitor, Vanity Mirrors -
1500 Auto Mall Dr
Santa Ana, CA 92705-4737
(0 Miles)
Sales: (657) 231-5000
Year: 2016
Make: BMW
Model: X6 xDrive35i
Price: $30,888
Mileage: 42,693
Engine: 3.0L STRAIGHT 6 CYLINDER
Exterior Color: Alpine White
Interior Color: Canberra Beige/Black Dakota Le
Fuel Type: Gasoline
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City MPG: 18
Hwy MPG: 24
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Driving Assistance Package
Premium Package
Surround View
Included Packages
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Additional Options
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CO2 relevant vehicles
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Blow-by heater
Ambient Lighting
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LED Fog Lights
Navigation system
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BMW Assist eCall
BMW TeleServices
ConnectedDrive Services
Advanced RTTI
Remote Services
Enhanced USB and Bluetooth
Dynamic Digital Cluster
Oil Chg 10,000 mls/12 months
Variable Light Decoding
Daytime driving lights
Transport protection
Tier 2


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1. Cellphones in Hell
Americans threw out just shy of three million tons of household electronics in 2006. This so-called e-waste is the fastest-growing part of the municipal waste stream and, depending on your outlook, either an enormous problem or a bonanza. E-waste generally contains substances that, though safely sequestered during each product's use, can become hazardous if not handled properly when disposed. Those products also hold bits of precious metals like silver, copper, platinum and gold.
The Belgian company Umicore is in the business of reclaiming those materials. It extracts 17 metals from our unwanted televisions, computers and cellphones and from more ominous-sounding industrial byproducts like drosses and anode slimes. Umicore harvests silver from spent photo-developing solutions collected at American big-box stores and sells it to Italian jewelers. The company describes its work as "aboveground mining."
Umicore has roots in actual mining. In the late 1800s, during the reign of King Leopold II, the firm mined copper in the African Congo and shipped it to a riverside smelter near Antwerp. Today the same property houses a sprawling, state-of-the-art $2 billion smelter and refinery. Here, metals are recovered and processed. Then they are sold, sometimes to Asia, where they are used to manufacture brand-new electronics. It's a reshuffling of the colonial arrangement: an abundant resource is sent from richer countries to poorer ones, made into goods, then sent back. That resource is our garbage.
Umicore's smelter was burning furiously at 2,116 degrees Fahrenheit one afternoon last fall. Two heavy-set men in blue overalls sat in the control room, staring expressionlessly through heat-shielded windows. They were eye-level with the mouth of the smelter a pit 13 feet wide by 46 feet deep. A conveyor belt fed shredded circuit boards and scrap into the fire in a dim, fast blur. I imagined the black-and-white television in my mother's basement, or my first blue Nokia cellphone all the devices I'd gotten close to and outgrown spilling out and squealing like lobsters in a pot.
The metals exit the smelter's base as a glowing sludge. It streams into another caldron the height of a house. From there, it moves into tanks of acid. The acid is electrocuted. As electricity flows through the mixture, copper accumulates on the tank's end plate. I watched a giant claw move across the ceiling, rip out the plate and, with a violent whack, cleave off a gleaming layer of 99.9 percent pure copper, with the unmistakable sheen of a new penny. It was thrilling to see something so clean and recognizable emerge from such an alien process.
After explaining the final stages, Thierry Van Kerckhoven, Umicore's e-scrap manager, handed me another of the end products from this process: a one-kilogram bar of gold. It felt the way I thought it would, based on what you see in the movies: substantial, mesmerizing. It was worth about $24,000. "This gold is recycled gold," Kerckhoven said. "This gold is green gold."
Recycling feels good because we imagine it as just this kind of alchemy which Umicore achieves with impressive environmental controls. The centerpiece is a monstrous gas-cleaning-and-filtration system that captures and neutralizes enough of the carcinogenic and endocrine-altering chemicals produced from melting e-waste, according to Umicore, that the faint yellow emission finally released from its smokestack easily surpasses the European Union's air-quality standards. (Martin Hojsik, who campaigns against toxics for Greenpeace International, notes that the process followed by Umicore and its few, similarly equipped competitors around the world is "not entirely clean" but still "the preferable solution" for recovering metals from e-waste.) Ultimately, by weight, only 1/2 of 1 percent of the e-waste Umicore takes in cannot be safely sent back into the world in a usable form. "There is often a discussion of separating what is valuable from what is toxic," Christian Hagelüken, Umicore's senior manager of business development, told me. "But sometimes they are the same thing."
This may never be more true than for cellphones. They are the most valuable form of e-waste. Each one contains about a dollar's worth of precious metals, mostly gold. And while single phones house far less hazardous material than a computer an old, clunky monitor can incorporate seven pounds of lead their cumulative presence is staggering. Last year, according to ABI Research, 1.2 billion phones were sold worldwide. Sixty percent of them probably replaced existing ones. In the United States, phones are cast aside after, on average, 12 months. And according to the industry trade group CTIA, four out of every five people in the country own cellphones.
Umicore estimates that, together with its competitors, it received only 1 percent of all phones that were discarded globally in 2006. "This of course is a lousy percentage," Hagelüken said. "Computers are also bad, but phones are the worst." Our obliviousness has mostly kept them from being recycled at all. When we do bother, we may not know, or be able to control, where the "recycled" phones go. Many enter a secondhand market in the developing world through a receding series of middlemen.
Reuse, we are told, is as green a virtue as recycling. But with e-waste all the old ecological dogmas start to become ambiguous. Cellphones represent only a part of the world's e-waste problem. But they are a key to understanding how complicated it is. They also embody the kind of high-tech products that we will be throwing away more of: easier to upgrade than repair, increasingly disposable-seeming but also deeply personal. As governments around the world, from the European Union to New York City, propose or pass laws to require the recycling of e-waste, there's little consensus about what recycling actually means. No matter how close our relationship with our phones has become how faithfully we keep them with us, how we hold them to our faces and whisper into them we rarely wonder where they go when they die.
2. Cellphones in Purgatory
If we think at all about what to do with old phones, we may realize we can return them to the wireless industry. With the idea of extended producer responsibility gaining traction the notion that businesses should manage the disposal or recycling of their products most major carriers and manufacturers in the United States now run voluntary take-back programs. But because we stop wanting phones long before they're unusable, they also represent a kind of neglected value, there to be capitalized on. Seth Heine, who founded the company Collective Good in 2000, recognized this early.
Collective Good is a profitable business that, as the name suggests, Heine also sees as a vehicle for philanthropy. People send in their phones, and Collective Good sells the ones that still work into a global secondhand market. A portion of each phone's resale or scrap value goes to one of more than 500 causes ranging from the Red Cross to the Humane Society to the Obama campaign selected by the phone's donor. Used phones are sold to people overseas who can't afford new ones, and hazardous waste is kept out of landfills. "It's a self-cleaning oven," Heine says.
When I visited his office outside Atlanta a few months ago, Heine was introducing a new venture, GreenPhone.com, which pays donors directly for their phones. Mail a BlackBerry Pearl, for example, to GreenPhone, and Heine will cut you a check for $65. And because Heine still isn't entirely comfortable with all the paper consumption this entails, GreenPhone also plants a tree for every check it writes.
Heine is 40, a whip-smart and mildly self-righteous environmentalist with an M.B.A. and a boyish love of sports cars. There's a lava lamp on his desk, but also, hanging behind it, a motivational poster that says VISION. Recently, he moved most of his operation to a larger facility in Colorado. But phones were still arriving at the small Georgia warehouse when I was there; they come in prepaid envelopes printed off the company's Web site or from collection boxes at every Staples and FedEx Kinko's in the United States. Each month, Heine receives 20,000 phones of at least 800 different makes and models.
They were scattered around the room: silver ones, a battered flip-phone with a sticker of a wolf on it. A store in Beverly Hills had been sending boxes of gold-plated, limited-edition Dolce & Gabbana Motorola Razr phones, turned in when customers traded up for something even newer. "That phone can't be more than six months old," Heine said at one point. Later, he handed an employee a Nokia with a note rubber-banded around it. It was something a friend gave him at dinner; that happens all the time, he said, "when you're the Fred Sanford of phones."
Heine's business succeeds or fails based on how well it can assess and then realize the value of each phone. "I refer to that as the pachinko machine," he told me. "You dump in a phone and it rattles around. It's got to come out somewhere at the bottom." The question is, where?
Phones beyond repair, or with little value, are dispatched to Umicore for their gold. But because acquiring the phones costs so much all those individual, prepaid envelopes add up recycling them must be subsidized by reselling the reusable ones. The most valuable handsets find their way to a room across the hall from the storeroom, where two employees sell them on eBay. Most, however, are sold via private auction to a stable of about 20 different resellers. Some, once refurbished, will be sent to American consumers to replace broken phones under warranty or covered by insurance. But it's through the resellers, and the unfathomable network of resellers they sell to, that many also end up overseas, where the price of new phones can be prohibitively expensive.
American wireless carriers like AT&T and Sprint offer new phones below cost, or free, as incentives to get customers to sign lucrative two-year service contracts. Users in much of the world don't purchase contracts, though. They buy chunks of prepaid minutes instead and can transfer their phone from one carrier to another more easily. Foreign carriers have no incentive to offer great deals. Phones we get free can cost upward of $200 in Latin America or Africa where customers have less to spend. "A lot of people in the developing world will never own a new phone," Heine says. They depend on our castoffs.
Ever-changing technology means that specific phones work only in specific networks, but relatively few are obsolete everywhere in the world. As one reseller says, "There's always a place to put the phone." Small-time entrepreneurs known as aggregators prowl the Internet cobbling together orders of thousands of a single make and model. "There are many, many thousands of us," Joseph Khan told me. Khan, who lives outside Los Angeles, works as a limousine driver but has a side business in phones. Recently, he claims, he purchased several thousand Qualcomm QCT-1000's for $11 each and resold them in Ukraine for $121 each. The QCT-1000 was introduced in 1996. "The battery is the size of a printer!" Khan says.
The need to refurbish or even significantly repair most phones is another reason vast quantities of them end up overseas particularly in Asia, where cheap labor and replacement parts make the cost of fixing all sorts of phones with cameras and color screens and other features so low that many buyers do not even care if the phones turn on.
America's largest phone-recycling company, ReCellular, based in Michigan, sells millions of phones annually to 375 refurbishers in 40 different countries. Some of these refurbishers, Mike Newman, a vice president of ReCellular, told me, "are going to be highly sophisticated companies with really sparkling, huge plants," while others might consist of an entrepreneur with "10 small stores in the Dominican Republic who has, in the back of one of them, a place where 10 people are doing some refurbishing just sitting on some benches and old tables, taking off the housings and fixing them." ReCellular handles the phones from most of the major recycling programs in America sponsored by wireless carriers, including Verizon, Sprint and AT&T. It expects to receive seven million phones this year. Financially, according to Newman, the "backbone of these programs is the resale of usable phones."
It's hard to track ReCellular's or Collective Good's phones. But Jack Qiu, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who has studied the movement of used computers and phones in China, describes one route phones take. In Kowloon, in Hong Kong, Pakistanis and other immigrants (often asylum seekers) import phones from Europe by the shipping container. These are fixed or cannibalized for parts in stalls at a local market. In the past, Nigerians and other African exporters swept in to buy tens of thousands of phones at a time, particularly so-called "14-day phones" those that have been returned under warranty and used little. But recently, Qiu says, the markets for these phones have become saturated in African cities. So the Nigerians, needing to take their business to poorer African villages, have been leaving Hong Kong for Chinese cities like Guangzhou, where they can purchase cheaper, more heavily used phones from the larger refurbishing companies there. Many Nigerians have learned Mandarin in order to do business in Guangzhou, Qiu says, and the city now has an African-style coffee shop.
Africa is one of the biggest markets for used phones. Seventy-five percent of all phones in the least-developed African nations are cellphones and usage in many places is increasing by 30 or 40 percent per year. Their impact can not be overstated, particularly where roads are poor and settlements separated by great distances, places that land lines never reached and now have no reason to do so. Consequently, cellphones are not easily abandoned and, when they are, someone somewhere is still likely to see some value in them. Jim Puckett, the coordinator of the Basel Action Network, a nongovernmental watchdog group that focuses on e-waste, visited Nigeria in 2005. He describes, at one Lagos electronics bazaar, repairmen sitting on dirt floors under shelves of scavenged parts, jury-rigging phones back together, over and over again, until the things are absolutely dead.
"I've never seen the real end," Qiu says. "I've seen landfills in China full of used computer parts, but I've never seen a single landfill of used mobile phones or phone parts." The Chinese themselves "retire" between 200 million and 300 million phones every year, he says. These phones are sold in places like India, Mongolia, Vietnam and Thailand. And from Thailand, they are sold to buyers in Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Myanmar. In other words, the pachinko machine is global, and there are millions, or even billions, of phones still clattering down its channels.
In 2001, Basel Action Network filmed a documentary in Guiyu, China, a town overrun by shipments of old computers from recyclers in the United States and elsewhere. Guiyu's residents, including children, make their living sorting, dismantling and burning computer parts or bathing them in nitric and hydrochloric acids to recover precious metals. This not only mobilizes a device's hazardous constituents; it also creates new ones. The health consequences are immense; respiratory problems and elevated blood-lead levels in children are reportedly rampant in Guiyu and, around the time of BAN's visit, the nearby river contained up to 2,400 times the World Health Organization's acceptable threshold for lead.
In 2005, BAN found 500 shipping containers of electronics arriving in Lagos each month. Useless computers were being tossed into burning piles behind a marketplace. And the phones no matter how many ramshackle resurrections they experience will at some point presumably meet the same fate, Puckett says. "It sounds like a cellphone's just a little thing if you burn it it's not such a big deal," he explains. "But we're talking about mass volumes going to countries that have no infrastructure or ability to deal with it."
Moreover, manufacturers now sell "ultra-low-cost handsets" new, no-frills phones specifically for consumers in the developing world. Some cost less than $20. These phones, says Badii Kechiche, a market analyst with Pyramid Research, are what really fuels the spread of phone usage across Africa not the comparatively skimpy supply of our used ones. As a consequence, used cellphones just rare enough to stay out of the planet's globalized digital trash heaps so far may come to be more like regular junk. "If ultra-low-cost handsets are coming in," Kechiche says, "and they're much cheaper or cheaper than refurbished handsets, what's the point of getting a refurbished handset?" The people we rely on to take our garbage are not only losing their need for it. They're becoming firsthand generators of that same garbage.
In a study published last year, 34 recent-model cellphones were put through a standard E.P.A. test, simulating conditions inside a landfill. All of them leached hazardous amounts of lead on average, more than 17 times the federal threshold for what constitutes hazardous waste. Under a stricter state of California test, they also leached four other metals above hazardous levels.
The E.P.A. says modern American landfills are designed to keep toxics stewing inside from leaking out, so they don't contaminate surrounding soil or drinking water. But landfills do fail, says Oladele A. Ogunseitan, an environmental-health scientist at the University of California, Irvine, and an author of last year's study. More important, he notes, such landfills don't exist in the developing world. In many places, garbage is tossed into informal dumps or bodies of water or burned in the open air all dangerous ways of liberating and spreading toxics.
The electronics industry is greening significantly, though. E-waste take-back programs are starting to spread around the developing world. A landmark law, the RoHS directive, enacted by the European Union, requires all electronics manufacturers to drastically lower concentrations of hazardous substances, including lead, in their products. Nokia and Sony Ericsson are among those voluntarily phasing out other dangerous substances not covered by RoHS.
Still, according to Ogunseitan, there will always be risks, or at least unknowns, accompanying the improper disposal of such products. The compositions of consumer electronics evolve through long sequences of trial and error. "In a phone that you can hold in the palm of your hand, you now have more than 200 chemical compounds," he says, citing the results of an analysis of one new cellphone. "To try to separate them out and study what health effects may be associated with burning it or sinking it in water that's a lifetime of work for a toxicologist."
The laws governing the export of e-waste present their own difficulties. An international treaty restricting the movement of hazardous waste to the developing world, a 170-nation agreement called the Basel Convention, is ambiguous when it comes to electronics. Namely, when is an item repairable and thus freely exportable as a reusable product and when is it just hazardous waste? Nothing requires exporters to even test the products they ship. Consequently, exporting products for "reuse" is often used as a loophole to dump them. In any case, the United States has not ratified the Basel Convention.
Electronics recycling "has always been the used-car lot of the recycling world," Seth Heine laments. With no clear standards to follow, he enforces his own. He claims to thoroughly assess the condition of all his phones. He's also quick to send working phones with limited potential for reuse straight to Umicore rather than sell them for far more money to less scrupulous buyers in the secondhand market. Heine figures this means he is leaving $150,000 on the table each year, easily. (Several environmental groups I contacted, including BAN, singled out Heine for his integrity and seriousness about the environment.)
Mike Newman told me that ReCellular supports establishing standards for exporting phones. But he also questions their effectiveness. A company could say it doesn't sell irreparable or untested devices to the developing world, but, "How does any company really know where their phones end up?" he asks. "Once you sell them, they're not your phones anymore." Newman claims that ReCellular tests all of its recycled phones anyway. But on the day we spoke, there were lots made up of hundreds and thousands of phones (even up to 15,000) listed for sale on ReCellular's Web site and labeled Bulk Beyond Economical Repair and Bulk Used/Untested. Newman would later clarify: these phones were not from recycling programs. They were returned under carrier warranty programs; ReCellular acquires and resells tens of thousands of these devices too every month and doesn't bother testing them.
Given this state of affairs, you can't help wondering if throwing your old phone in the trash, and into the high-tech sarcophagus of an American landfill, could end up doing less damage to the environment than recycling it. But that ignores yet another crucial part of the equation. As Heine explains, even though what he sells will probably be thrown out eventually, if a phone gets three or four more lives, "it's absolutely better for the environment than having to make three or four more phones phones that wouldn't be recycled, either."
Reusing phones conserves natural resources, which reduces the environmental damage that comes with mining them. That damage isn't necessarily obvious. When I called Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council who specializes in solid-waste issues, he was less interested in discussing the toxicity of old electronics than the costs of mining a particular metal, tantalum, to build the capacitors for new products. Tantalum comes from an ore called coltan. Control of coltan deposits was a factor in perpetuating Congo's civil war in the late 1990s, and the people mining it there now, Hershkowitz says, rely on "critically endangered" gorillas for food. Tantalum is one of the metals Umicore can't recover from e-waste.
Much of the world's gold and copper, meanwhile, is mined in open pits, which means it is leached out with cyanide or sulfuric acid. Using data from the United States Geological Survey and mining companies' own reports, Earthworks estimates that mining the gold needed for the circuit board of a single mobile phone generates 220 pounds of waste. The environmental nonprofit calls this "an extremely conservative" estimate.
What's more, the world's supply of these metals is finite. So even as the E.P.A. plays down the risks of throwing e-waste into landfills, it also urges us not to. Tim Townsend, an environmental engineer at the University of Florida who has studied the toxicity of mobile phones for the E.P.A., sums up the absurdity of just tossing this stuff away: "If we know these metals are, overall, bad for us, it doesn't make sense to keep digging them up from the earth's crust and bringing them into the biosphere while at the same time we're taking the ones we've already got and burying them."
As with most environmental issues, then, no option for getting rid of a phone is free of trade-offs, and nothing is as simple as we'd wish. But the truth is, few of America's phones are turned in for "recycling" in the first place. (It's unclear how few. The figure of less than 1 percent, put forward in a groundbreaking report on phone recycling by the nonprofit Inform five years ago, is still repeated. ReCellular estimates that it's more like 10 percent now.) While a phone's small size may give even normally conscientious consumers a dispensation to slip it into the trash, there seems to be a more typical solution, what ABI Research estimates nearly half of Americans do: stick the thing in a desk drawer and leave it there.
Every recycler I spoke with talked about "the drawer." It turns out to be the real purgatory for phones. Using predictions from Inform, the United States Geological Survey estimates that in 2005 there were already more than half a billion old phones sitting in American drawers. That added up to more than $300 million worth of gold, palladium, silver, copper and platinum. Heine says he still receives phones in prepaid envelopes addressed to the Kentucky tobacco barn where he started Collective Good in 2000. It tells him that people get motivated, take the envelope, then stick that in a drawer for a long time.
"As soon as [a phone] makes its way into the drawer, it's hard to get people to dig it back out," ReCellular's Newman told me. I asked him how hard. "I have employees," he said, "who have them in their desk drawers."
3. Cellphones in Heaven
Given the intimate place of cellphones in our lives, why do we get rid of them so quickly?
Sometimes we don't have a choice. We switch to a new carrier and must buy a phone adapted to its particular network. (Late last year, Verizon announced it would eliminate this requirement.) Or we trade up for new features: first a camera, then an MP3 player, then a Web browser. Apple's iPhone promised to put an end to this chase by combining everything in a single, graceful device. But the industry knows the iPhone is just a momentary milestone in its race to replace laptop computers entirely and that we will follow, one revolutionary but not-quite-perfect device at a time.
Regardless, recyclers say that from their vantage point it's obvious that most phones are retired because of psychological, not technological, obsolescence. "There's some fashion driving all of this and, by its nature, fashion is not eternal," says Mark Donovan of M:Metrics, which tracks the wireless industry. Phones were initially an afterthought, given out free so that customers had something to talk into after buying the real product, the service contract. But carriers learned, as Donovan puts it, that "if you deliver something cool, and if it's a bit of a status symbol, people will pony up and pay cash for it." He adds: "People want them to become more than an awkward gadget. People want it to be an expression of their personalities."
Right now, there are roughly 470 models of phone for sale in the United States. About 16 new ones come out every month. Many are only slightly altered versions of existing phones, suggesting how easily we get bored how we'll crave something that slides, say, instead of flips open. (There are currently 46 styles of Motorola Razr; Motorola has, in fact, projected which colors and finishes we'll find most attractive through the year 2009.) And we have the perfect incentive to get whatever we want every two years when our contracts are up and the discounts for new phones roll around. When I asked Iain Gillott, an analyst with iGR, what makes a person get a new phone, he told me, "They're cruising through the Sunday paper, and they see a fabulous phone for 50 bucks and they say, 'Well, I haven't had a new one in 18 months.' "
Gillott estimates 50 to 60 percent of phones are replaced "because people get tired of the design." Otherwise, consumers want a new feature even, it seems, if there's no real need for it; according to M:Metrics, 82 percent of those with Internet-enabled phones do not go online. Steven Herbst, a psychology researcher at Motorola, told me: "All that pressure to have the latest something that people will be impressed by is compounded by the fact that all of a sudden somebody is doing something with their mobile phone that you can't do." In other words, it's because we've made phones such deep and indispensable extensions of ourselves that we dump them so quickly. Who can bear seeing himself as even slightly outdated or incapable?
"Somewhere during the last 100 years, we learned to find refuge outside the species, in the silent embrace of manufactured objects," Jonathan Chapman, a young product designer and theorist at the University of Brighton, writes in his book "Emotionally Durable Design." But designers and consumers have snared themselves in an unsustainable trap, Chapman told me, since our affection for many high-tech objects is tied exclusively to their newness.
"The mobile phone occupies a kind of glossy, scratch-free world," he says. Whereas a pair of jeans gains character over time, a phone does no such thing. "As soon you purchase it, you can only watch it migrating further away from what it is you want a glossy, scratch-free object." You might leave the plastic film over the display for a few days, just so you can take it off later and "give yourself a second honeymoon with the phone," he says. But ultimately everything that first attracted you to it only deteriorates. You start looking at it differently. "It's made of some kind of sparkle-finished polymer and it's got some decent curves on it, but so what? The intimacy comes more from the fact that, within that hand-held piece of plastic, exists your whole world" your friends' phone numbers, your digital pictures, your music and that stuff can be easily transferred to a new one. So you "fall out of love" with the phone, Chapman says.
Even the most idealistic visions of how e-waste should be recycled and reused take for granted that consumers and businesses will never reconsider why we are buying and discarding so many of those products, so quickly, in the first place. If the rush of castoffs isn't likely to stop, we need to clear a proper path for it, considering all the inevitable compromises and costs along the way and delivering those products to as consequenceless a place as possible.
There is no heaven for cellphones. Wherever they go, it seems that something, somewhere, to some extent always ends up being damaged or depleted. The only heaven I came across was what Chapman described. It is an image in our heads not of a place where we can send a used phone but one where we imagine each device when it's brand-new, right before we first get our hands on it. That illusion of perfection, no matter how many times we see it spoiled, will always lure us into buying the next new phone and sending the last one careering on its way.


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Roddy White reveals Falcons' game plan
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- Bring on those jams, Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner.
Atlanta Falcons wide receivers Roddy White and Julio Jones say they will be ready for the Seattle Seahawks cornerbacks' tight coverage at the line of scrimmage and all the trash talking.
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"We've got some good plays, some things we can take advantage of, especially some double moves on those guys, make them start and stop because they struggle with that,'' White told USA TODAY Sports. "Those guys want to grab and push you to the sideline and make you work that kind of way.
"Me and Julio are going to be a lot more physical this game. We're going to have to get after it real early. We've talked about it all week -- about basically just going out there and taking the fight to them.''
White was asked about some media reports that give the edge to Seahawks rookie Russell Wilson in the quarterback battle in Sunday's NFC divisional playoff game.
"If Russell Wilson is a better quarterback than Matt Ryan, then I don't know nothing about football. I'm going to quit. I'm going to retire before this game starts,'' White said. "Matt is ready to go. We're ready to go. We want to go out there and show everybody that we can win a playoff game.''
Jones torched the Seahawks for 11 catches and 127 yards in Atlanta's 30-28 win against Seattle last year.
"We just have to keep doing what we've been doing: Go out there and try to make plays because they're big, physical corners and very rangy,'' Jones said. "They're very talented and great athletes.''
Jones says he won't let a boisterous, cocky cornerback get inside his head.
"I can't hear them talking on film,'' Jones said. "I'm not a talker. I just go out there and do my job and be physical. We've had a great week of preparation. We just have to line up and play for each other.''
White and Jones feed off each other, with four-time Pro Bowler White serving as the older brother/mentor. White and Jones are the first Falcons teammates to post 1,00 receiving yards in the same season since Tony Martin and Terance Mathis in 1998, when the Falcons were NFC champions and lost to John Elway and the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl.
White finished with 92 catches and 1,351 yards, becoming the fifth player in league history to record three consecutive seasons with 90-plus receptions and 1,200-plus yards. And Jones, in his second season, emerged a lethal deep threat with 79 catches, 1,198 yards and a team-high 10 touchdowns this season. White and Jones have combined for 17 touchdowns and 2,549 yards. Combined they have topped 100 yards in a game 11 times.
"Roddy has stepped up as a leader and done a great job being one of those core mentors,'' Falcons coach Mike Smith says. "His work ethic and toughness are unbelievable. Roddy hasn't missed a snap. That tells you the type competitor he is. And Julio has a great understanding of what those guys are trying to do.''
The 6-3 Sherman was tied for second in the league with eight interceptions, while Browner is 6-4 and can knock receivers off their timing routes.
"It's going to be a good matchup, strength on strength and it's going to be fun to watch the guys compete, because they're going to be similar in size,'' Smith said. "That doesn't happen for Roddy and Julio most times, nor does it happen for those corners we're playing.
"It's going to be very competitive because our guys are ultra-competitive. And from what I've seen of Seattle's two corners, they're playing very well and with a lot of confidence.''


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Berkeley Group
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It doesn't get nearly as much attention in Western news media as it should, but the Syrian uprising is still underway as rebels from the Free Syrian Army work to push the military regime out of the country. And the rebels here seem to be relying heavily on motorcycles as a way of transportation.
Part of the problem with covering the uprising is the lack of outside media in the country, which means slightly blurry videos like the one below are some of our best resources for understanding what's going on in the hot spots. It makes the information harder to vet, but there's no obvious reason why this video isn't what it claims to be.
Specifically, this video purports to show an army of civilians and military defectors riding doubled-up on motorcycles through the Eastern city of Dayr al-Zawr. Whereas armed trucks (a.k.a technicals) were the choice of rebels in the relatively sparse Libya, bikes make a lot more sense in Syria.
The country is 32 times as population dense as Libya, and the fighting isn't open desert warfare but block-by-block street fighting. Can anyone identify the bikes? They look largely Japanese or Chinese-made Japanese knock-offs.
Video credit Ibn Dimashq Shaam News Network
(Hat tip to Sam!)