text:
This is a great way to go... Thanks for the review!
Channel D Pure Vinyl 3.1
Price: $279.00
Website: www.channld.com
Ripping Vinyl
Channel D's Pure Vinyl is software for ripping and listening to your records digitally. I don't know about you, but my LP-buying habits differ from my download-buying habits. The former is more varied and daring partly based on the fact that there's about one million times more LPs that interest me as compared to downloads. So my LP collection does not mirror my hard drive collection and sometimes, many times, I'd love to have access to my LPs from my computer. Channel D's Pure Vinyl to the rescue!
You can consider this review a follow-up to Michael Fremer's review that first appeared in Stereophile and as such I highly recommend reading Michael's review too (and check out his AnalogPlanet!). The notion of ripping vinyl only really works if the ripped results can stand up to the original. And I'll state right up front that sonically, 24/192 vinyl rips using Pure Vinyl sound lovely. They sound in a word marvelous and are the equal of or better many HD downloads in my digital library as long as you begin with a good-sounding piece of vinyl. But that's the easy part in my experience.
The Setup
For the purposes of this review, Channel D's Rob Robinson kindly loaned me his TC Electronic Impact Twin and some nifty converters, which he delivered, to allow my Rega P3 to connect to the Twin's front-mounted Neutrik combi jack/XLR sockets (these converters also supply resistive loading for my Denon 103 phono cartridge), and also to convert the 3.5mm jacks around back to standard RCA outputs which I connected to my Leben CS-300XS integrated amp. The Twin connects to your Mac via FireWire and performs the all-important task of taking the analog signal from the turntable and converting it into digital bits that your Mac will recognize (there are no phono inputs on a Mac). Since I'm going to use Pure Vinyl's RIAA EQ to unpack the digital signal, I do not need a phono stage in the loop. This is an important point—the idea that RIAA Equalization is best handled in the digital domain is something that Rob Robinson believes in wholeheartedly.
The physical connections are a snap, and the software side of the Impact Twin is also fairly basic and Channel D provides an instructional PDF to assist in this setup. If you've ever used a USB DAC, you can easily handle this task.
I'm going to glaze over I mean gloss over the myriad setup options offered by Pure Vinyl and get to ripping but if you are interested in all that Pure Vinyl (PV) can do, head on over to the Channel D website. I will mention that I used Pure Vinyl's RIAA correction set to the Standard RIAA Curve but there are many more pre-RIAA curves available (over 60) for 78s and mono records and more. I also chose to rip and save to the default 24/192 resolution because it sounds best, to me. Since you can also rip to 16-bit and 44.1kHz, 88.2kHz, or 96kHz, Pure Vinyl allows even those who doubt their ears the ability to rip to an inferior format (smile).
Pick a record, put it on your record player, open Pure Vinyl, click "Record", and once you've selected your preferences (I went with the defaults) and entered the Artist, Album, and Label information, click "Record". If you allow Pure Vinyl to auto-sense the needle drop (Recording Trigger in PV parlance), you just need to drop the needle and recording will start. If you opt for a manual approach click "Record" and drop the needle. If you selected the "Enable Recording Trigger" option, Pure Vinyl will pause recording at the end of side one when you lift the needle and automatically ready the second side of your virtual vinyl while you flip the real thing. Click "Click When Ready to Continue Recording", drop the needle and PV begins recording side 2. When its done, lift the needle and click "Stop Recording". That's it! You've just ripped a record. Simple, no?
There are essentially three options for playing back your virtual vinyl. The simplest is to drag and drop or load the entire .CAF file into PV and just play away. Another option is to create "iTunes Bookmarks" which creates virtual track markers so you can play individual tracks in Pure Music which uses iTunes for music library management. The third option is to "Render" the tracks which creates individual files for each song. Channel D recommends saving rendered tracks in Apple Lossless format and again you have the option of saving to any of multiple bit/sample rates from 16/44.1 to 24/192. Rendering the tracks also applies RIAA compensation (or whatever EQ you specified) to the saved file so you can play it back as a normal music file in any media player whereas the first two options require Pure Vinyl/Pure Music for playback.
Creating HD Digital Masters
What is a Digital Master Copy? This question bears more thought and space than is appropriate here but to my mind a good-sounding record is about as good as analog gets short of the analog master tape. Of course tape to HD digital (PCM or DSD) can sound great too as long as the transfer doesn't muck things up. But a good-sounding record can sound pretty damn good. And if we can digitize this, we have created what is for all intents and purposes a digital master that is, and here's the part that raises all kinds of problems, infinitely reproducible. My rips of The Doors' self-titled first album, The Stooges Funhouse, Robert Pete Williams' outstanding collection from The Legacy of the Blues Vol. 9, Bob Marley's superb-sounding Trench Town from Tuff Gong, and Jimi Hendrix's live version of "Gloria" on 12" 45rpm from Polydor sound pretty freaking amazing as vinyl rips. I would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between playing back the vinyl version and the 24/192 rip blindfolded.
Just for fun, I also converted the master rip of the The Stooges Funhouse to 16/44.1 to see if I could hear a difference. And I could. The CD-"quality" version sounded less open and airy, harsher and more congested and something like cymbals sounded flatter with 16/44.1 as compared to 24/192. The HD version also sounded more like vinyl. Again, you can rip to whatever format you'd like and if your ideas tell you that 16/44.1 is good enough, then good enough is what you'll get!
I actually enjoyed reading how Channel D talks about the importance of higher bit depths and sample rates and suggest you give it read. To paraphrase, "it sounds better!". And if you dare peak at your vinyl rips in a program like Audacity, you'll see plenty of musical information above the 20kHz CD limit (if you ripped to anything above CD-"quality").
More on Pure Vinyl's Features
Pure Vinyl can do a lot more than make an excellent-sounding HD digital copy of your LPs. The associated manual is 47 pages long and includes sections on Editing your rips to remove pops, an adjustable low-cut rumble filter, why you should enable "Sloppy Cueing" (exactly why you think you should), function as a Virtual Line-Level Preamplifier for additional line-level sources (if your attached device can handle it), connect a turntable and let Pure Vinyl handle RIAA in the digital domain, and you can even overlay custom artwork over your virtual vinyl!
A Powerful Tool
One of the most impressive (and fun) features of Pure Vinyl is the interface which makes me miss my records less. While I find the physical act of playing a record to be worth the effort and an enjoyable event in and of itself, Pure Vinyl is obviously a powerful tool for those serious about ripping their vinyl as well as for those interested in leveraging its built-in RIAA and other EQ compensation that occurs in the digital domain. To find an equal phono preamp with 60 or so pre-RIAA curves is no mean feat and its going to cost you a heck of a lot more than Pure Vinyl's 279 smackers.
Considering the task of ripping vinyl occurs in real time, the old maxim—do it once, do it right —applies and with Pure Vinyl you can rest assured you're doing it right.
I have similar experiences ripping vinyl. My vinyl rips sound "just like" the LPs to me - they sound like the analogue sound we associate with LP.
So clearly the problem with most digital playback isn't the digital aspect, but something else: 16/44 (instead of hi-res) or bad recording, bad transfer from tape to digital, or just bad mastering.
I can also confirm from my experience that a properly done digital RIAA curve will sound better than just about any built in curve on phono preamp. And it should: a software applied curve can be perfect and perfectly repeatable, whereas hardware applied one as in most phono preamps by definition won't be.
Mr. McGuire: "I just want to say one word to you. Just one word."
Ben Braddock: "Yes, sir."
Mr. McGuire: "Are you listening?"
Ben Braddock: "Yes, I am."
Mr. McGuire: "Filters."
I may be slightly off in the quotes, but it's the thought that counts.
Now this looks easy and fun! All I need is the Impact Twin and time. If I had a soft job like CG, I would have digitzed my entire LP collection
Thanks Michael
Are you going to spend time recording all of your LPs or was this more of a proof of concept? You were lent a A/D converter for the review, so are you going to buy one to digitize your records?
but it would be nice to have a pristine digital version handy after the inevitable occurence of vinyl scratches and divots. I miss the old turntable.
I am enjoying your work, Michael.
There's an interesting aspect to that. The RIAA equalization filter is a low pass filter of a kind, which means that impulse events - like ticks and pops from boogers or scratches in the vinyl - are elongated in time. If you remove just the samples where the clicks occur in the digital domain, prior to applying RIAA equalization, they will be far less audible.
It never ends, does it?
I knew Rob had selected it as a lower-cost ADC and was looking to reduce the number of variables getting started ripping LPs. No regrets. I leave mine on 24/7, it's reliable and its Sabre DAC is no slouch either. It's got regular line out RCAs by the way.
[Correction: the line outs are 1/4" jacks.]
I bought mine from ProAudioStar in Brooklyn, NY for about $300 more than a year ago via eBay. Checking today I see they now offer it for $260 and yes they are still listed on tc electronics' site as being a legit place to get it.
Only ripped a couple LPs with Pure Vinyl so far. The automatic track identification that happens as part of the track naming processs you do after the rip can be remarkably accurate --- not just with identifyng the spaces in between songs but also with trimming away the initial needledrop at the start.
Hey Michael. Did you have a phono stage sitting between Rega TT and Impact Twin? Or was the connection direct?
Also, got any more info on the unbalanced-->balanced adaptors?
Thanks in advance.
johndarko, Rob offers PureVinyl customers a $40 discount on custom-made cables. He uses very good, professional microphone cable and puts the loading resistors and (optionally, if needed) capacitors inside.
These adapters ML got are the same idea but without the cabling. They are standard RCA-to-XLR adapters but with the resistor and cap soldered inside.
The type of adapters/cabling you use depends on the ADC's inputs, whether or not you want to retain your turntable's cabling (or if you must retain it) and if you want to retain your phono preamp and so on.
This is some good reading: http://www.channld.com/computeraudio.html and hidden in one of the drop-down links is one where he shows some of the available options: http://store.kagi.com/cgi-bin/store.cgi?storeID=UUJ_LIVE&page=Custom_Cables&action=new
.....many thanks for the extra info deckeda.
Hi Michael, thanks for the review and for addressing the topic of digitizing vinyl. I used Pure Vinyl for a couple of years but it crashed several times and the editing part was too complicated for me. Michael Fremer also pointed out how technical and complicated the manual was.. I recently discovered Vinyl Studio software, costs only 30 dollars and is spectacularly easy to use. I find it much cheaper, and it works much better.
Greetings from Brussels,


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LA School Gives iPads To Students; Students Hack Protection; School Freaks Out And Halts iPad Program
from the to-the-surprise-of-no-one-but-the-school-district dept
Technology: what could often be the best friend of educators is usually treated as their worst enemy. Even when school districts make potentially positive steps, they're often undone by either the paranoia that giving kids access to the outside world will be permanently destructive or by failing to understand the consequences, especially the unintended ones, of putting technology in the hands of their students.
Case in point: the rollout (and now, possible rollback) of iPads to Los Angeles schools.
Following news that students at a Los Angeles high school had hacked district-issued iPads and were using them for personal use, district officials have halted home use of the Apple tablets until further notice.The only way the school district did not see this coming is through institutional blindness. Despite all evidence to the contrary, it expected students to use the devices only as intended, even when completely unsupervised. This is built on the assumption that instructions are rarely questioned and limits are rarely tested. The administrators aren't stupid but they are prone to believing their authority has more influence on students than it actually does. (This isn't completely unlike the blindness exhibited by parents who take very active steps to raise their kids to be drug and alcohol-free. and then are shocked when their kids experiment with the forbidden substances anyway.)
It took exactly one week for nearly 300 students at Theodore Roosevelt High School to hack through security so they could surf the Web on their new school-issued iPads, raising new concerns about a plan to distribute the devices to all students in the district.
"Outside of the district's network ... a user is free to download content and applications and browse the Internet without restriction," two senior administrators said in a memo to the Board of education and L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy. "As student safety is of paramount concern, breach of the ... system must not occur."
The second issue here is how easily the "protection" was hacked.This indicates that whoever approved this deal (and its attendant protection scheme) truly didn't understand the technology... or greatly underestimated their opponent. Allowing the students to take the iPads home with them only sped up the process.
Roosevelt students matter-of-factly explained their technique Tuesday outside school. The trick, they said, was to delete their personal profile information. With the profile deleted, a student was free to surf.
Soon they were sending tweets, socializing on Facebook and streaming music through Pandora, they said.
So, the question the district needs to ask itself is: does it want students to have a potentially useful tool that could further education, even off campus (and possibly "compromised")? Or does it want to treat the iPads like shiny books and lock them down further?
If the district wants the students to use the iPads to their full potential, then it has to accept the fact that they won't always be used the way it wants them to. Otherwise, it can lock them down with better security and keep them in the classroom, thus reducing their utility to that of any paper textbook -- only less so, considering students can take textbooks home. There's not a whole lot of middle ground. Expanding the iPads usefulness means reliquishing some control.
Schools tend to view "unapproved" use as something unequivocally bad, but the fact is, given the right incentives, students can think critically and solve problems, even the sort of "problems" (locking down devices) school districts tend to view as "essential" to ensure students' safety. This whole situation is full of "teachable moments," but sadly, it appears as though the district is just going to shut this down until it can figure out how to outsmart its students.
L.A. Unified School District Police Chief Steven Zipperman suggested, in a confidential memo to senior staff obtained by The Times, that the district might want to delay distribution of the devices.Yes, a nightmarish world of kids listening to music and interacting on social media will be inevitable unless the district shuts this program down.
"I'm guessing this is just a sample of what will likely occur on other campuses once this hits Twitter, YouTube or other social media sites explaining to our students how to breach or compromise the security of these devices," Zipperman wrote. "I want to prevent a 'runaway train' scenario when we may have the ability to put a hold on the roll-out."
Maybe, rather than using this breach as an excuse to step back into the past, the district could move forward. For instance, why not turn hacking into a postive experience, rather than a punishable offence? Install a new protection scheme and invite students to hack it. Have them detail the steps they took to deduce the weak spots, the research they performed to find possible solutions, and finally, map out the hacking process(es) itself. Then repeat. The district will learn something as well -- the untapped ingenuity of its students and the best ways to approach future protection schemes. And the students will be rewarded for exercising little used skills like logic, creativity and persistance.
It's all a matter of perspective. Reading Scott McLeod's "26 Internet Safety Talking Points" would go a long way towards turning this situation into a net positive for the district. Especially the last one.
Educating is always, always more powerful than blocking.There's a win to be had here, but only if the district wants it. And judging from the two statements it's made, it would rather opt for more control.

subset: commoncrawl


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Architecture and Music in Renaissance Venice (Thursday 21st November)
They say architecture is "frozen music", but this week has been a particularly noisy one for this art historian. First there was the Liturgy in History study day at Queen Mary University, where both the seminar room in Whitechapel and then St. Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield were filled with beautiful singing, including us lay people lending our voices to provide the drone of Perotin's thirteenth-century Viderunt Omnes. Then at Mellon Centre on Wednesday, the rector of Ranworth provided those gathered with a rendition of the Gloria attached to his church's medieval lectern in a round table seminar about the great rood screen.
This means that the Art History and Sound series, organised in the Courtauld Research Forum by Ph.D. students Michaela Zöschg and Irene Noy, is in very good company of a consideration of the sonic environment of the visual arts. This Thursday marked the second of three autumn lectures after a successful series of workshops last year.
Deborah Howard, the co-author of Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice, came to the Courtauld to demonstrate the methodology behind the book. Did the great architects, Sansovino and Palladio, while designing their temples to Counter-Reformation piety, allow provision for the Gabrielis and Monteverdi to achieve the same with their ground-breakingly sophisticated polyphonies?
Although audience surveys were used in the project, rather than this subjective evidence, much attention was given to presenting the results of computer modelling simulations to actually show what was happening to the sound in these churches. There was little problem in a shoe-box like the Ospedaletto – the sound quickly reverberated from off the roof to seem like it was raining down to the audience without any dissonance.
The monumental Il Redentore however proved more of a problem. It was fine for the daily offices of the Capuchin friars in the enclosed choir. However, for the great festival day when the choir were stationed under the mighty dome, the simulation showed how it would reverberate the sound waves like "a giant food processor", throwing down the carefully orchestrated polyphony that had been composed specially for the day as an utter muddle of sonic hummus. But it was shown how on such days, the church would be covered in tapestries, draped in hangings and filled with robed bodies, to give a much more promising situation, and that the composition would not be destroyed by the architectural setting. The same was demonstrated in a festally adorned San Marco, the sound given a clarity and vibrancy when the harmonies would have been all but obscured in an empty church. All well and good for Renaissance polyphony, but was this a happy accident rather than design? Did Palladio really reassure a frustrated Gabrieli at rehearsals it'd be alright on the night?
Deborah did admit that the results of the project merely reinforced their expectations. But the real achievement of this lecture was to make people aware of the methodology behind it. An architectural historian may wish for a silent, empty church when wielding a tripod, but now a building resonating with "molten architecture" should also prove equally rewarding for interrogation.
For more information and music tracks related to the project, visit www.yalebooks.co.uk/soundandspace.


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After feeding our economic gluttony with heaping helpings of commercialism on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, stuffed Americans could use a little sustenance for the soul today.
#GivingTuesday provides that opportunity.
The brainchild of the 92nd Street Y, a Jewish cultural center in New York, today's inaugural #GivingTuesday (GivingTuesday.org) is using social media to encourage Americans to set aside the Tuesday after Thanksgiving as an annual day of giving. The hashtag in the name emphasizes how Twitter and other social media markets are being used to spread the word.
In the Chicago area, 19 technology companies will celebrate #GivingTuesday by kicking off "Tech the Halls," a program organized by the crowdsourcing websiteGiveForward to pay medical bills for those with serious injuries or illnesses.
With more than 2,000 corporate partners and charities across the nation, #GivingTuesday aims to become an annual charitable part of the American landscape to counter news footage of Black Friday shoppers fighting over a slow cooker. We didn't see people camping outside of suburban charities last night so they could be first in line to volunteer, donate goods or write a check today, but lots of companies and nonprofits in the suburbs are embracing the good feelings of #GivingTuesday.
"We are very excited about giving back," says Greg Lernihan, co-founder, president, and chief operating officer at Schaumburg-based Convergint Technologies, which integrates electronic security, fire, building, and healthcare technology systems throughout North America. Lernihan says Convergint's 1,090 employees received an email Tuesday saying the company will donate up to $20,000 by matching donations from $50 to $500 that employees make to 501(C) 3 charities as part of #GivingTuesday.
Lernihan, 53, didn't know anything about #GivingTuesday until his wife, Marybeth, saw it in a newspaper article a couple of weeks ago.
"My wife brought it to me because we're into that sort of stuff," says Lernihan, whose company prides itself on employees living balanced lives that integrate "family, business and community." The company website notes the founders are both active in their churches. Lernihan and his wife are parishioners at St. Anne Catholic Community in Barrington, where they live. Convergint co-founder Dan Moceri and his wife, Sharon, belong to St. Gregory's Episcopal Church in Deerfield.
Friends and business associates at a division of Siemens, Moceri, and Lernihan left in 2001 to start Convergint in a Barrington basement, building a business that emphasizes values and beliefs.
"It's everything for us. One of our cornerstones is to give back to the community," Lernihan says, calling #GivingTuesday "a tremendous thing."
Some charities and businesses in the suburbs, from Anderson Animal Shelterin South Elgin to the Hinsdale Junior Woman's Club, are using Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to promote the idea of donating time or money to charities today as part of #GivingTuesday.
At the American Society of Safety Engineers, headquartered in Des Plaines, #GivingTuesday provides another way to bring out the best in its suburban employees and more than 34,000 members around the world. The 101-year-old safety society uses #GivingTuesday to urge members to donate personal safety equipment, clothing, food and other items to the victims of Hurricane Sandy, says Diane Hurns, public relations manager for the agency. The 55 employees in Des Plaines also host drives to donate to local food banks and adopt local schools to make sure kids have the supplies they need, Hurns adds.
At Convergint, #GivingTuesday has lots of competition from the other days of the week. Every third Friday in June, the company closes down its offices for Convergint Social Responsibility Day but still pays its employees to join in a day of service working for a food bank, homeless shelter or other charity in the community.
Last April, 31 Convergint colleagues (the company prefers that instead of employees) partnered with a safe drinking water effort called Poured Out on a trip to Haiti. The volunteers, 11 of whom returned to the island earlier this month, built a church/school and installed 47 residential water filters and three industrial filters for orphanages.
While we spend a lot of time during the holiday season focusing on consumption, giving has plenty of rewards, Lernihan says. Giving helps the community, the world and makes the givers happy.
"It's a good thing to do, as well as a good business thing," Lernihan says. "Every company should give back something, right?"


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text:
Archive for the 'RMS' tag
Commentary: "RMS hates cloud computing; says you should too"
See here for a much discussed article on how RMS has said he hates cloud computing. I'm usually pretty on board with what RMS says (after I filter out the uber-geek-bias), but I'm on the fence about this issue.
My counter argument to RMS's argument is: Damn!, but online services are just too handy to leave aside in order to maintain software development philosophical purity. Would you give up online e-mail, social networks, etc?
Besides, I love having fewer applications installed on my computer. I install and focus on the applications I really, really need and the other needs are served out there in the cloud.
RMS's comment strikes me as purely academic with little consideration for What Really Works. I hope that online e-mail doesn't go away, but I'd love to know how to make it more GNUy.


text:
Theoretical Economics 8 (2013), 751–774
Specialization and partisanship in committee search
Benny Moldovanu, Xianwen Shi
A committee decides by unanimity whether to accept the current alternative, or to continue costly search. Each alternative is described by a vector of distinct attributes, and each committee member can privately assess the quality of one attribute (her "specialty"). Preferences are heterogeneous and interdependent: each specialist values all attributes, but puts a higher weight on her specialty (partisanship). We study how acceptance standards and members' welfare vary with the amount of conflict within the committee. We also compare decisions made by committees consisting of specialized experts to decisions made by committees of generalists who can each assess all information available. The acceptance standard decreases (increases) in the degree of conflict when information is public (private). In both cases welfare decreases in the level of conflict. Finally, we identify situations where specialized committee decisions yield Pareto improvements over specialized, one-person decisions and over committee decisions made by generalists.
Keywords: Committee search, asymmetric information, interdependent values, specialization, partisanship
JEL classification: D82, D83, C72
Full Text: PRINT VIEW


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|Select the amount you would like to purchase your gift certificate for. We have gift certificates available for $20, $40, $60, $80, and $100.
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text:
Governor's Council on Health and Physical Fitness helps Illinoisans
start a healthy new year
'Healthy Worksite'
designation and We Choose Health 365 launched
Send a link to a friend
[January 14, 2014]
CHICAGO — As part of the effort
to improve the well-being of Illinois residents, the Governor's
Council on Health and Physical Fitness hosted a kickoff event on
Friday at the Gary Comer Youth Center in Chicago to encourage
Illinois citizens to participate in health and fitness activities
that will help them live healthier, happier and more productive
lives. Interactive sessions such as "Walk Across Illinois Counties
Bingo," "Cooking Matters" demo, "Are You Fitter Than a Fifth Grader"
and "Muscle Up With the Mascots" demonstrated how residents can
incorporate healthy habits into their lives.
"Good nutrition and regular exercise can
help reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure
and many other chronic diseases and serious health conditions," said
Illinois Department of Public Health Director LaMar Hasbrouck. "I
encourage residents to take charge of their health and to actively
participate in improving the health of their community."
Many people spend a large part of their day at work, so IDPH is
launching the Illinois Healthy Worksite Annual Recognition, a
program to engage healthy practices that benefit both the employer
and employees. Workplaces can seek the "Healthy Worksite"
designation at the gold, silver or bronze achievement level by
completing up to five criteria as outlined below:
1. Actively promote
and support healthy nutrition at work.
2. Provide and
encourage opportunities for physical activity at work.
3. Develop a
12-month Health & Wellness Calendar and an ongoing communication
plan to promote employee health and well-being throughout the year.
4. Demonstrate a
commitment to employee health and well-being by making it part of
the organization's mission statement, goals and operations.
[to top of second column]
5. Develop
lifestyle and disease management strategies and measure their
success annually.
To help workplaces succeed in becoming healthier and achieving
the "Healthy Worksite" designation, IDPH is also launching We Choose
Health 365, a wellness portal providing customized company
competitions, health tools and trackers, as well as education
materials. Participants will have 24/7 access to a food and calorie
tracker; recipes with local coupons; a weight and activity tracker;
exercise, walking and weight-loss company challenges; and more.
Register at www.wechoosehealth365.org and click "Join
Today." Also find out about the "Amazing
Challenge," coming Feb. 1.
Helping businesses and residents work together to improve the
health of their communities is one way IDPH is working toward
developing essential partnerships and implementing the department's
five-year strategy. For a copy of the strategic plan, go to
[Text from
Illinois Department of Public
Health file received from the
Illinois Office of Communication and Information]
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text:
Police: Robbery suspect released from parole less than week ago
Man convicted in 2005; parole ended March 19
Hamilton police say a man who is accused of robbing a store early Monday had just completed his parole for a previous crime.
Police said they were called to a Speedway gas station at 1095 Eaton Avenue just before 1 a.m. on a report of a robbery.
The clerk working at the store advised that a white man in his 40s entered the store, then demanded the clerk open the register and give him the money inside.
Officers were able to track the suspect at an address on NW Washington Boulevard, where they identified and arrested Delmar Whitesell, 36, and charged him with robbery.
Police said Whitesell was convicted for robbery with a deadly weapon in April 2005. He was released for this conviction from prison in January 2012 and released from supervised parole on March 19.
Whitesell is due to be arraigned Monday.


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COLUMBIA, S.C., Jan. 16 (UPI) -- Ex-South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who made headlines for going to Argentina to meet his mistress, said he will seek the congressional seat Tim Scott vacated.
"I am running because our country's future is at stake if we don't get our hands around runaway government spending in Washington," Sanford, a Republican, said in a statement Wednesday. "And, given our nation's long-term financial problems, we need more who have shown themselves to be leaders in standing up to the big spenders, regardless of party."
Sanford's successor, Gov. Nikki Haley, appointed Scott, a Republican, to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated when Jim DeMint left to lead the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Sanford's former wife, Jenny Sanford, announced Monday that she would not run for the House seat. Other declared or possible candidates include state Sen. Larry Grooms, state House Majority Whip Jimmy Merrill and state Rep. Peter McCoy, The Washington Post said.
Sanford, who also made headlines for refusing President Obama's stimulus money, said he was running for Congress because the U.S. economy has reached a "day of reckoning," National Review Online reported Tuesday.
"It seems that we're averting a new 'fiscal cliff' or crisis every few months these days, and what the numbers point to is that the trend is going to intensify," he said
He told National Review people shouldn't judge him by what happened before he left the governor's office.
"I think that the bigger issue is, don't judge any one person by their best day; don't judge them by their worst day," he said. "Look at the totality, the whole of their life, and make judgments accordingly."
In 2009 it was revealed that Sanford left the state to fly to Argentina for the liaison even though his office said he was elsewhere. A legislative committee voted to censure but not impeach him and he served out the remainder of his term.
The Republican primary was set for March 19 and a runoff, April 2 if necessary. The general election is May 7.


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When Williams and Trinity (Conn.) meet, usually the game has NESCAC title implications, even though it's always the second game of their season.
Williams athletics photo
Some weeks, our perceptions are shaken; other times, they're only slightly stirred.
This year, we've seen Top 10 teams fall, and many others earn just the narrowest of wins. But that's not an indictment on the higher-polled team. Rather, it's a testament to the underdogs' "leave it all on the field" mentality — that which pushes them forward even when the odds are stacked against them. Isn't that the heart of competition? Isn't that the reason the players play and fans cheer on Saturdays? Isn't that why we love football?
And the best part is that any team, from any conference, can bounce back the following week. Some teams play with the goal of the postseason, but many others play for pride or simply to do better than the year before. Ask undefeateds Ohio Wesleyan and Salve Regina and Whitworth if this was the kind of season they realistically saw ahead of them. Conversely, ask McDaniel, DePauw and St. Vincent if they expected to still be on the hunt for win No. 1 at this point in the year.
There is still lots of time left on the field for teams to reach their goals. Pat Coleman, Keith McMillan and Ryan Tipps will walk you through their own unique views of the weekend at hand.
— Ryan Tipps
Game of the week.
Ryan's take: Carnegie Mellon at No. 17 Wabash. The Little Giants experienced a fall from grace last week after a surprising loss against Allegheny. Can Wabash rebound in front of its home crowd? Carnegie, which sits undefeated, will provide a much tougher matchup than the Gators were for Wabash, which should give Wabash pause. CMU quarterback Rob Kalkstein leads the nation in passing efficiency and has thrown for more than 1,000 yards in just four games. The Little Giant secondary will have to be on its toes, and the defense will need to showcase its ability to force turnovers.
Pat's take: No. 4 UW-Whitewater at No. 13 UW-Platteville. At least it better be, since it's nearly a five-hour drive each way for me. The Warhawks' struggles on offense were somewhat put behind them last week in a 34-7 win against UW-Stevens Point, putting together three long scoring drives though Lee Brekke was just 12-for-30 passing. Now, UW-Platteville, on the other hand, has averaged more than 53 points against overmatched competition, including a 49-19 win against UW-Eau Claire. If John Kelly can have anywhere near the kind of success against UW-Whitewater as he did against Eau Claire, the Whitewater I saw the first two weeks is going to have a hard time keeping up. The Warhawks may need to make some significant changes on offense.
Keith's take: Trinity (Conn). at Williams. There's nothing on the line here but Saturday night pride, and perhaps a shot at the NESCAC title in November. And that's what makes it so appealing — that and a couple of very good defenses. With no playoffs and little top 25 recognition because they don't accept bids and start so long after everyone else (it's NESCAC Week 2), there are but a few opportunities for the spotlight games that bring out the best. The Bantams allowed 120 yards in Week 1, making theirs the nation's No. 1 defense. The Ephs weren't far behind, with 149 yards and a No. 3 national ranking. It's not uncommon for NESCAC teams to rank that high, espscially after one game — Amherst is fifth — but it could make points hard to come by. Williams QB Adam Marske was 22 of 27 for 277 yards in a 41-7 win over Colby. Trinity got 146 yards from RB Evan Bunker in the opener. These two teams, plus Amherst, are your main title contenders here, and someone is going to get eliminated on Saturday. Honorable mention, Elmhurst at No. 11 North Central (see below) and No. 2 UMHB at Sul Ross State.
Surprisingly close game.
Ryan's take: Spingfield at Union. Averaging nearly 375 yards a game on the ground, Springfield has rightly earned respect for its ground game. But 1-3 Union has been able to limit its opposition to less than half that per outing, and the Dutchmen's opposition has been more consistently challenging than that of the Pride, which carries a 3-1 record into its second week of conference play.
Pat's take: No. 10 Bethel at Augsburg. If you didn't hear me on the Around the Nation podcast this past week, Augsburg quarterback Ayrton Scott intrigues me. He's a speedy and shifty runner — my only question is whether that's going to be enough against Bethel, which will feature a much better defense than Hamline did last week. First-year starting quarterback Erik Peterson has completed 74 percent of his passes and throws for an average of 225 yards per game, but Buena Vista and Carleton haven't provided much competition either.
Keith's take: Juniata at Johns Hopkins. I'm going way out on a limb in this one, but the Eagles deserve a little notice. They're predictably 1-3, aren't outstanding at any one thing and have the recent history that would make Blue Jays players take them lightly. But Juniata lost by just a touchdown to Dickinson and Franklin & Marshall, and led Gettysburg early in a 28-7 loss. With the right combination of Johns Hopkins apathy and continued improved play by the Eagles, including sophomore QB Ward Udinski,who had 371 yards of total offense against Dickinson, this could be a close game into the second half.
Most likely Top 25 team to get upset.
Ryan's take: No. 15 Baldwin Wallace. I've been high on the Yellow Jackets since the beginning of last year, thinking they've been on the cusp of some really great things. A low-scoring overtime win against Muskingum last week, though, has my faith in BW rattled. Opponent Otterbein has yet to earn a blemish this season, but the Cardinals are saddled with a litany of ifs and buts. The Yellow Jackets need to find their momentum soon if they want to be playing deep into November.
Pat's take: No. 14 Illinois Wesleyan. Going out on a limb here because I don't think Millikin is actually quite ready to do so this year. I might come back to this in 2013 when it makes more sense, but this is my super upset special for the week.
Keith's take: No. 11 North Central. I might as well hop all the way on the Elmhurst bandwagon. With the nation's No. 2 rusher (Scottie Williams, 193 yards per game), No. 2 turnover margin (plus nine) and No. 3 scoring defense (Loras and Chicago were shut out, Trine scored 13), there's a lot to like. But the Cardinals are at home, and have played a power schedule in the first few weeks. They'll be ready for Elmhurst. The question is whether the Bluejays redefine the CCIW narrative, or stick to the script.
They'll be on your radar.
Ryan's take: No. 18 Widener. I can't help but think to a game earlier this year, where Wartburg thumped an opponent 73-0. The following week, the Knights failed to score even once against a tougher competition. Coming off a 90-0 win, Widener reminds me of that. The Pride won't be able to steamroll Lebanon Valley (3-1) the way they have their previous opponents, but a win should help validate Widener's ranking.
Pat's take: Lebanon Valley. Sorry, Ryan, I'm going in the opposite direction. A win would definitely validate Widener's ranking, though, that's true. Lebanon Valley will be a much tougher opponent than anyone Widener has faced (Widener's first four opponents are currently 2-12). Lebanon Valley has pulled itself out of the doldrums it was in a decade ago and is now a contender for the conference crown. A win here would secure that.
Keith's tak: Rhodes. The Lynx have more than just one of D-III's coolest mascot names. They've got wins over Wash. U. and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, and a very respectable 16-2 loss to nationally ranked Birmingham-Southern. Their next three games are on the road, but Macalester and Austin could be easy wins nonetheless. This week at Trinity (Texas), a team coming off consecutive humbling weeks, is the one time before late October we get to see if Rhodes is for real, or just had a fortunate first few games.
Which undefeated team is going to pick up its first loss?
Ryan's take: Millikin. It's very possible that the CCIW, which currently has three undefeated teams, will have just one left after the weekend is over. Millikin lines up against Illinois Wesleyan, neither of which have a blemish on their 2012 record. But I like the Titans for this because I like what they bring to the table defensively: seventh in the nation in total defense, allowing just 65 and 135 yards from rushing and passing, respectively. Illinois Wesleyan should be riding high going into the second half of its season, and that moment starts with Millikin.
Pat's take: Millsaps. I like what Millsaps has done so far this season, don't get me wrong. But I think the top of this five-team SAA is going to be pretty competitive and all three will take a loss at some point, perhaps two.
Keith's take: Ithaca. The Bombers put their 229-yard a game defense against Utica's 459-yard-per-game attack. Andrew Benkwitt is completing six passes per game to Jeremy Meier, and more than three each to Paul Smith, Matt Dunn and Jamie Murphy. As good as the Bombers have been statistically, not many teams have the personnel the Pioneers land.
Team most likely to salvage a bad season.
Ryan's take: LaGrange. An 0-3 start is not what the Panthers were hoping for, but the USA South slate should be much more favorable than the nonconference opposition, which has combined to go 10-1 this year. Don't count LaGrange out for a .500 season just yet, and this week against N.C. Wesleyan will be a good tell as to where they could end up.
Pat's take: DePauw. And there is a lot of salvaging to do for this reeling program. But scoring 28 against Carnegie Mellon is a nice start, and Wash U, which travels to Greencastle, Ind., doesn't have nearly the offensive firepower of the Tartans.
Keith's take: Redlands. As a playoff team last season, the Bulldogs didn't expect an 0-2 start. But what's done is done. The SCIAC slate opens against an Occidental program that's fallen on hard times, with the 233rd-ranked turnover margin and just 12 points scored. Time for QB Will King, who didn't start in the opener, to impress.
Which predator is ready to feast on the opposition?
Ryan's take: The Panthers of Chapman. Chapman will be squaring off against Whittier, and both carry a 1-1 record into the matchup. On the surface, they pair quite well: Both have had high scoring wins against Puget Sound, both had narrow losses to Whitworth and both have pretty impressive statistical rankings because of these games. But Chapman brings a run game that is going to grind the ball and be too much for the Poets to contain.
Pat's take: The Pirates of Whitworth. I was taught in my high school bio class that humans were the top predator on the planet. Who's with me? Whitworth has gone 4-0 so far without facing a program really capable of putting up a challenge, and unfortunately, I don't think Pacific is there either.
Keith's take: The Lobos of Sul Ross State. They might not beat the No. 2 team in the country, but you can bet A.J. Springer's gang is going to sling it around, making UMHB's defense work for its stops. Springer is fifth nationally in passing efficiency and has already thrown 14 touchdown passes


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Partners from The ROUTE 66 RV Network, North America's largest network of RV dealers, held a meeting last week in Thunder Bay, Ontario, with a team of Canadian dealerships to finalize the formation and launch of the ROUTE 66 RV Network in Canada.
"This is The Network's latest step in delivering on our consumer promise that 'Wherever the Road Takes You … You Can Count on Us,'" Rob Merrill, ROUTE 66 partner, stated in a news release. "Given the considerable amount of travel between Canada & the U.S., this move will ensure any ROUTE 66 customer who crosses the border will always have a friend they can count on."
Two Canadian dealers will be taking lead roles in helping establish and grow ROUTE 66 in Canada: Sylvia Thistle-Miller, owner of Triangle RV Centre in Sidney, British Columbia, and Ken Friedenberg, general manager of Arrkann Trailer & RV Center in Edmonton, Alberta. As of this release, the two dealers have identified nearly 10 other dealers from across Canada who have expressed an interest to joining ROUTE 66 RV Network of Canada
"Like the formation of The U.S. Network in 2004, these charter dealers will be very instrumental in the direction and growth of ROUTE 66 across Canada," said Dave Francis, partner at ROUTE 66. "We will work closely with them to define any Canada specific programs, as well as integrate the group with our roughly 140 U.S. ROUTE 66 dealer locations."
Sylvia Thistle-Miller of Triangle RV, 2011 British Columbia's Dealer of the Year says, "We're excited about this opportunity to lock arms with ROUTE 66 in the states. It is not only a terrific opportunity for our dealership but it offers an unparalleled value to our traveling Canadian customers in terms of RV service and camping at KOA."
Ken Friedenberg from Arrkann RV also expressed enthusiasm about this new opportunity. "As far as I know, this is the first time in the RV industry that dealers have reached across the border to work together and serve one another's traveling customers. It will not only benefit our dealership but also offer our customers great security and peace of mind when they RV in both the United States and Canada."
Additional dealers will be added to the ROUTE 66 RV Network in Canada with the recommendation from these charter dealers and other member dealers. Each dealership's territory will be clearly defined to ensure every dealership enjoys market exclusivity in offering The Network's unique dealer and consumer program benefits in the U.S. and Canada.
ROUTE 66 RV is planning to have an informational meeting in Louisville, KY next week for those Canadian dealers interested in learning more about ROUTE 66 RV Network – Canada. If you'd like to attend and will be at RVIA next week, contact Rob Merrill at (913) 908-3066 or [email protected] for more information regarding time and location.
The ROUTE 66 RV Network is the largest network of RV dealers in North America with nearly 150 locations in 44 states and provinces.


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If there is one thing that Dan Brown should be familiar with it's criticism. It seems to come hand-in-hand with writing a best seller these days, as like it or love it, the Da Vinci Code was both adored and abhorred in the same breath. Angels and Demons comes very much from the same mold, but as a suffering sequel, never really delivered the same punch as the opening pages of its forebear.
Some credit has to be given to Dan Brown for running together the initial plot. Like the Da Vinci Code, the blending of historical fact and fiction leads to a compelling yarn if you are far enough removed from the subject to really care. Art historians and the Church have both taken shots at Brown, the rest of us probably don't care enough to bother.
Stolen anti-matter from CERN finds it's way into a plot to rock the Vatican as it's College of Cardinals sit down to elect the next Pope. Given the short timeframe of a few hours, plenty of action is packed in, as Langdon reveals the Illuminati's secret path through Rome and (more or less) saves the day, the church and settles an age-old feud.
Whilst Angels and Demons (the novel) is reasonably written, the movie doesn't really stand up to the same scrutiny. Conveying the depth of the ideas from Brown's originals doesn't really work in a mainstream blockbuster: too much dialogue has to be compressed to maintain an entertaining pace.
What you are left with is Angels and Demons pushed through a sieve. To get the full experience, you have to be prepared to listen carefully to the hasty scripting before enduring the best of the action that it can deliver. The film is constructed in this rather basic Duplo style, which has you leaning in for the script and then back out again for the action.
Ron Howard brings Tom Hanks into the role of Robert Langdon once again, a role that never seems to stretch Hanks. Langdon has a meek moment where he looks out of his depth, before emerging into the know-all hero who leads us through the tale. He is supported by Ayelet Zurer as Vittoria Vetra who contributes very little along the way, save as someone for Hanks to explain things to.
But the movie suffers, like the original novel, and like Da Vinci Code before it, in handling the interesting idea it sets up. The result is an ending that becomes farcical, hanging on a helicopter-flying parachute-packing Catholic Camerlengo (Ewan McGregor). A brief uttering whilst dashing into the Vatican crypt is all that is given to bring plausibility to this, as he was a pilot once too. Phew (or boo, as the case may be).
Angels and Demons battles out across the age-old divide of science and religion. The fact that science's anti-matter "moment of creation" might literally undermine Christianity's creation story, isn't overly laboured, but you may well step away with more questions than you have answers: what was the original plan before Langdon cracked the code? Would it have worked if he didn't?
Angels and Demons on Blu-ray also marks itself for the extras package. It is one of the first titles from Sony Pictures to bring a new Movie IQ feature, part of the BD-Live options. Movie IQ appears as a play option, bringing up linking information online (thanks to Gracenote) so you can find out a little more about who people are and so on, as the movie is playing.
That's not to say Angels and Demons won't entertain. For those who enjoyed the Da Vinci Code movie, they'll find Angels and Demons very much in the same vein.
Rating: 15
Starring: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer
Directed by: Ron Howard
Extras: "Path of Illumination" interactive map, Movie IQ, CineChat. Featurettes: Angels & Demons: The full story, Rome was not built in day, CERN: Pushing the frontiers of knowledge


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*sigh* Fundamentalist community, let me pass on some advice to you I learned from the atheistic community:
If you have set yourself on fire, do not run.
Okay? Okay?? Please?
Look, D, you had two months to say to Harvard in private emails, "Im sorry, I shouldnt have been using that animation in my paid presentations. I wont use it again. I really do like 'Inner Life', though, and would love to use it in classroom presentations, from the BioVisions site, if that is acceptable."
I sat here, for two months, waiting for that to happen, anything to happen, and it didnt. Two months, on your own terms, you could have written a similar post to yesterdays. I would have given you the benefit of the doubt-- maybe you didnt know the credits werent visible to the audience, and I wouldnt have said a word beyond this, as its Harvards problem, not mine. This would have been a funny joke to those of us involved in dealing with you people, but it would have been a PR non-issue for you.
But after you set yourself on fire, you didnt douse it out with a bucket of ice cold reality and accountability. You ran. And youre still running.
Why not just state "I screwed up. Sorry everyone." and move on? Why the excuses? Why the denial? Why the passive language? Why the vague words and cryptic capitalizations? Why the writes and rewrites of your 'press release'? We know it wasnt written of your own volition, or it would have been done *before* Harvard had to take action. And, your behavior before this, regarding this issue, is not indicative of someone who made an innocent mistake. Its weird.
So what with this frantic running? Is the inability to say "I was wrong" a pathological feature of Creationists? Or are you hiding something? Or is it both? Or is it more?
And now we get Casey weighing in on the issue, according to cre8id at AboveTopSecret.com-- PBS/NOVA online - Intelligent Design on trial:
...to my knowledge, Discovery Institute has neither authorized nor received nor is making use of any presentation that used that animation. We have had nothing to do with creating or selling a DVD of that animation, nor do we have anything to do with placing that presentation on Google Video.I dont know what he is talking about with that last part, but the first part sounds similar to DIs claims post-Dover ("WE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH DOVER!"). Maybe Luskin is telling the truth. Maybe this was a magic non-science Creation-friendly narration with convenient edits that AiG or ICR would have killed for... but only Dembski could find it... but he cant tell us where... and he didnt share it with anyone... and its subsequently disappeared from the Internet...
But that simply isnt what Ive been told. Maybe this was all a silly Dembski mistake, blown out of proportion due to his decision to remain silent... But what if we find more videos of more DI fellows, presenting this animation?
*shrug* If youve set yourself on fire, do not run, DI. If youve done it, better admit it to Harvard now, apologize, and move on.


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In California, power over budgeting and taxation is centralized in the hands of a few elected officials in Sacramento. This has been the case since the 1970s when court decisions and Prop 13 robbed local governments of much of their power to make those sorts of decisions.
Unfortunately, centralization created huge risks for the state. If the Capitol doesn't work -- which is to say, if elected officials there can't figure out a way to compromise -- all of California suffers. It'd be less risky for all of us if budget and tax power was reduced at the state level and expanded at the local level. Yes, local officials who made bad decisions could do damage, but that damage would be limited to their local community.
Such restoration of local control is politically hard. The powers that be in Sacramento are not inclined to give up the control that centralization has brought them. Which is why the recent comments of Darrell Steinberg, the top Democrat in the state Senate, are so important. He argues that the only way to protect programs -- particularly in social services -- is to take them out of the fiscal mess in Sacramento and restore budget and revenue decisions over these programs to local governments.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
Steinberg told the Sacramento Bee:
"If anybody thinks that we can triage our way through another chapter of the state budget, I wholeheartedly disagree. The argument will be made that restructuring, realignment is too complicated. But compared to what? I don't see a pathway that doesn't involve significant restructuring of what the state should do, and what other entities of government should do."
Translation: Such programs are sure to be losers in Sacramento's budget wars. So as hard as it is, let's change the power structure and take responsibility away from the state.


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Recharging the battery pack on board without using any fossil source
Recharging the battery pack on board without using any fossil source
"Reusable" gas? I'm going to throw that into the same bucket as the ideas to put wind turbines on your car, or to drive the car backwards to "recharge" the battery.
There are only two possible ways to recharge the battery on board the car:
-recapture wasted energy:
--unneeded kinetic energy: already done with regenerative braking
--other waste energy, such has heat, sound, etc: impractical
-carry another fuel source
Another fuel source could be all kinds of things, such as another battery, gasoline (like Karma and Volt), and more.
The general answer to this is that it's not very practical. I was going to list several different kinds of possible fuel sources and explain for each one why it's basically just more practical to just use a battery (like Tesla) or just use the fuel only (like an ICE, basically), but that would have made this already too long post even more too-longererererer.
I'll just say that adding another fuel source would make the car a lot more complicated, and less efficient. There is a benefit of having an extra fuel source if it is easy to refill (like gasoline, hydrogen, or natural gas). When your tank runs low, you can refill to 100% in minutes. The battery EV is still at a disadvantage there. However, it's still far batter and more practical to just work on batteries that are have even more capacity and a cheaper price.
Now, the story could completely change if there was a fuel source that was much cheaper than gas or grid electricity + the battery cost. Suppose the hydrogen equivalent of the energy you can get out of 1 gallon of gasoline was just $0.01 (not going to happen). Well then, it would make a lot of sense to have a hydrogen fuel source, but then, yuo would think they would just use hydrogen at the power plant too, and so our Tesla Model S would be just fine. True enough, if the Model S also had a hydrogen tank, and there were refill stations everywhere, then you would get added convenience, but in the future, EV batteries are going to become cheaper and have a higher capacity. In that case, having a "backup" fuel probably won't be that necessary, and it won't be practical given the added cost and complexity.
Now, with all of that said, why do the Volt and Karma exist then? Well they were both built with the idea that it would be nice to drive on electricity if we can, but with the assumption that there won't be any practical battery available that can carry a real car more than a few dozen miles. And by "practical battery available" I mean a battery that will be cost effective in a real consumer car and will be available within a few years.
Simply put, back when the Karma and Volt were first conceived, I think the engineers and designers assumed that a car such as the Model S could not have been made within the next 15 or 20 years or even longer. So they set about working on a stopgap solution.
However, Tesla tackled the original problem. That is, can you make a pure EV car with a battery that has enough capacity to carry a "real" car (practical size, shape, and performance) and can you make it so that it won't be so expensive that no one would buy it?
So they were smart, they had a goal, and they figured out how to get there. They're building expensive EV's, but they're still "real" cars, and it will help them develop the tech and eventually, they will be able to make (or sell the technology to make, or inspire the industry to make) a car that is low cost enough for the middle class and practical enough for everybody.
Fisker and GM's stopgap solutions was a dual-mode hybrid drivetrain. Tesla's "stopgap" solution is to build expensive early adopter cars and as they trend towards mass market, the technology gets better and cheaper!
And maybe no one outside of Tesla was thinking like that before, but now we all realize that it makes total sense. It's the way almost all of the technology everyday people use today has made it to the market. Cell phones, laptops, color TVs, flat screen TVs, digital media players, and on and on and on. First this things are very expensive and they're only for the super wealthy. Then these things become cheaper and they're within rich of wealthy folks and enthusiasts. Then these things get even cheaper and they're within reach of the mass market. Then they get even cheaper and are available to pretty much everyone. The really cool thing is, that generally, the more mass market (and cheaper) the tech becomes, the better it gets! Later consumers pay far less than the early adopters did, but the quality is even better than it ever was before! Now, tech doesn't always follow that pattern exactly, but it's a general case.
My point of all of that rambling was to say that it's far better to focus on improving the capacity/performance and cost of the EV battery than it is to try and come up with some sort of hybrid drivetrain or powertrain. The exception to that would be if some amazing, new breakthrough technology shows up (like some crazy new fuel that's super cheap, for instance).
There are only two possible ways to recharge the battery on board the car:
-recapture wasted energy:
--unneeded kinetic energy: already done with regenerative braking
--other waste energy, such has heat, sound, etc: impractical
-carry another fuel source
Three actually.
-Use energy source that is outside of the car
--Wireless charging
--Solar panels
--Old plug in to the recharger (really short range solution)
--Sails, if you have some wind and don't mind tacking against the wind in busy road in case of headwind
I think all of these fall into category "not practical".
Wireless charging could be useful in future though, and solar (when they get to point of 90% energy capture, and really really cheap price) could be useful in extending the range in sunny day. But not today.
tag missing. "-carry another fuel source" is part of the olanmills message.
When you wrote "it would be batter to..." I was in hopes you would continue with "use a bettery". But, no luck. ;(
As for the Karma, Fisker knew very well something like the S would be possible. In fact, he was hired on, as a famous designer, to design the S. But he turned in successively lousier designs, and was canned. He immediately popped up in Europe (I'm sotempted to use "Urp"!) at the head of a new company with a far better shell design. TM alleged he'd planned that all along, and stole drivetrain info, etc. Their suit failed, possibly because Fisker wasn't enough of an engineer to do a competent swipe -- and the Karma showed that unequivocally. Certainly nothing of value of the S tech made it into that car!
typo: "so tempted ..."
Sorry, I forgot about two things I knew about (external power sources and Fisker's origins).
Another good example of an external power source are the electric tracks for slot cars.
PS thanks for correcting my mistakes. haha


text:
| 16.4°C Dublin
Ketamine, the horse tranquiliser used as a party drug, is to be upgraded to a Class B banned substance.
Announcing the move, crime prevention minister Norman Baker said he hoped to send a message that the drug is harmful - but at the same time raised questions over the effectiveness of the classification system to control drug use.
Ketamine, also known as Special K, will be reclassified from Class C to B in the face of mounting evidence over its physical and psychological harms.
Government drug advisers have uncovered evidence of users as young as 20 having their bladders removed due to heavy consumption of the drug.
Reclassification will mean the maximum penalty for unlawful possession of ketamine will increase from two to five years in jail, while the maximum penalty for trafficking offences will continue to be 14 years imprisonment.
But speaking at a drug treatment centre in west London, Mr Baker said: "I'm not sure in the very long term that the present system is a perfect one for drug control."
He went on: "What I do think is in the short term there's a message that needs to be sent on ketamine. In terms of where we're going in 20 or 30 years time, in terms of the optimum method of minimising drug use then I'm not sure.
"It certainly after all hasn't stopped drug use by classification. But what it does do is send a message to those who are interested.
"You have to assume some drug users actually care about their bodies, therefore saying to them this is more dangerous than that, what they will take into account and what they will actually do."
He went on: "The classification has a value in giving a steer to people at the very least. However, people still take drugs and are still getting convicted for having them."
"It's better to send a signal than not to send a signal."
The move comes as the father of 18-year-old Ellie Rowe, who died after taking ketamine, told an inquest in Winchester, Hampshire, how "one act of stupidity has destroyed our family".
Miss Rowe, from Glastonbury, Somerset, took the drug while attending the Boomtown Fair festival in Winchester last summer.
Mr Baker added: "Some substances, the long term consequences are not apparent when you first ingest it or take it, particularly in this case, the damage to the bladder.
"The impact on young people and fact that it appeared not to be immediately apparent to people, I thought it was right to reclassify that."
The minister, who was moved to the Home Office from the Department for Transport in October's coalition reshuffle, has previously shown sympathies to arguments in favour of legalising or decriminalising cannabis.
But he denied his stance on ketamine gave a "mixed message".
"I'm led by the evidence, where the evidence takes you is where you end up going," he said. "Anyone who says we should legalise every single drug is naive, and everyone who says we should have everything as a Category A drug is also naive."
He added: "That doesn't necessarily mean the classification and the approach is always right. It doesn't mean that."
"I wanted to go forward on the evidence base, wherever that takes you. It's not a sort of philosophical view. I'm not taking a libertarian view that everybody should be able to do what they want and we'll all have flowers in our hair and let it all hang out.
"But nor am I taking the view that we should be locked up and throw away the key.
"What helps is sensible analysis of the position and wherever that takes you," he said. "That may take you to an uncomfortable position."
Originally designed as an anaesthetic and tranquilliser, often used on horses during veterinary surgery, ketamine was banned as a recreational drug in 2006.
An estimated 120,000 people misused the drug in England and Wales during 2012/13, figures suggest.
In March 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May commissioned the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to refresh its advice on ketamine, which was last reviewed in 2004. The council recommended in December that the drug is reclassified to Class B.
Earlier, a report warned users of legal highs they are "dancing in a minefield" after a huge surge in the number of deaths linked to the substances.
The number of cases in which novel psychoactive substances - otherwise known as legal highs - were identified as the cause of death rose from 10 in 2009 to 68 in 2012, according to data published in the National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths (NPSAD) report, compiled by experts at St George's, University of London.
The figures, which include Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as England and Wales, also show the prevalence of the drugs in post-mortem toxicology tests increased from 12 in 2009 to 97 in 2012.
Professor Fabrizio Schifano, spokesman for the NPSAD, said: "The worrying trend is that these type of drugs are showing up more than ever before. Clearly this is a major public health concern and we must continue to monitor this worrying development.
"Those experimenting with such substances are effectively dancing in a minefield."
Online Editors


text:
Dog food reviews
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5 Star Premium Dry Food
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Artemis Company Artemis Fresh Mix Weight Management
Date of last review
Sun July 12, 2009
Recommended By
Average Price
Average Rating
100% of reviewers
None indicated
None indicated
Feeding guideline
A 50lb dog should be fed about 3.5 cups for maintenance or 2-1/3 cups for weight loss
Calories 3,293 kcal/kg.
308 kcal/cup (8oz. Cup)
Chicken, Turkey, Chicken Meal, Salmon Meal, Pearled Barley, Whole Brown Rice, Chicken Fat (Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Oatmeal, Millet, Potatoes, Dried Egg, Tomato Pomace, Salmon, Flaxseed, Natural Chicken Flavor, Salmon Oil (A Source of DHA), Choline Chloride, Dried Chicory Root, Kelp, Carrots, Peas, Apples, Tomatoes, Blueberries, Spinach, Cranberry Powder, Rosemary Extract, Parsley Flake, Yucca Schidigera Extract, Green Tea Extract, Barley Grass Extract, L-carnitine, Enterococcus Faecieum, Lactobacillus Casei, Lactobacillus Acidophilus, Saccharomyces Cerevesiae Fermentation Solubles, Dried Aspergillus Oryzae Fermentation Extract, Vitamin E Supplement, Iron Proteinate, Zinc Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Potassium Iodide, Thiamine Mononitrate, Manganese Proteinate, Manganous Oxide, Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin A Supplement, Biotin, Calcium Pantothenate, Manganese Sulfate, Sodium Selenite, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Riboflavin, Vitamin D Supplement, Folic Acid.
Guaranteed Analysis
Crude Protein, min. 20%
Crude Fat, min. 6%
Crude Fiber, max. 3%
Moisture, max. 10%
Calcium 1.5%
Phosphorus, min 0.8%
Sodium, min 0.2%
Zinc, min 160 mg/kg
Selenium, min 0.4% mg/kg
Vitamin A, min 16,500 IU/kg
Vitamin D, min 800 IU/kg
Vitamin E, min 300 IU/kg
Omega-6 Fatty Acids, min.* 1.7%
Omega-3 Fatty Acids, min.* 0.3%
DHA (Docosohexaenoic Acid) min.* 0.05%
*Not recognized as an essential nutrient by the AAFCO Dog Food Nutrient Profile.
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Registered: October 2005
Posts: 3953
Review Date:
Sun July 12, 2009
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First four ingredients are named meat products, good quality ingredients
The first four ingredients in this food are all named meat products. The first two of these are meat inclusive of water content (about 80%) and once that is removed it is likely that these ingredients would be more accurately placed somewhat further down the ingredient list (ingredients are listed in order of weight). However, since they are followed by two meat meal ingredients, we can have high confidence in the level of meat content of the food. There is a further meat ingredient 13th on the list. The latter of these this is too far down to make up a substantive portion of the food. That is salmon, a source of Omega 6 and Omega 3 essential fatty acids.
The main grains are rice and barley. Both are whole grains and good quality sources of carbohydrates and additional protein. Oatmeal and millet are further good quality grains in the food. The food contains a range of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as whole eggs. Flaxseed is a good quality source of Omega 6 and Omega 3 essential fatty acids, and the food contains a range of probiotics.
Overall, this is appears to be a good quality food with a good amount of meat and that uses high quality ingredients throughout.
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Changes at Antiochian.org
We're rolling out some changes to Antiochian.org that have been in the works for awhile. We apologize in advance for any problems as we iron out the remaining wrinkles in the new design. Now that we've completed our basic reorganization of the website's homepage and menus, we'll be turning our attention to the pages for each diocese, department and organization in the Archdiocese.
We've started redesigning the page for the Diocese of Toledo and the Midwest. Please take a look, and learn more about the flock of Bishop MARK. And as always, drop us an email at email@example.com any time you have a comment or question.
We've also added our new Featured Authors of the Archdiocese section at the bottom of our homepage, where we'll be continuing to bring you the latest from Fr. Patrick Reardon, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Fr. George Morelli and more. Within the next couple of weeks we'll be offering daily Scripture readings and Saints, with more features coming over the course of the summer. Thanks again for your patience. If you'd like to read more about our vision for Antiochian.org, check out this article, or this article, by our editor, Douglas Cramer.


text:
Mario Games
How to Play:
Move -
Jump (can x2) -
Mario Great Adventure 7
Mario Great Adventure 7 is very simple but also very different than most Mario games. You must collect all of the coins in each level and then proceed to the little castle and boom, done! There are 2 other differences: You cannot jump on enemies and you mushrooms give you 10 bombs to throw (J key).
44792 plays
More Super Mario Games To Play
Super Mario Flash
Super Mario Flash is a great game that mirrors Super Mario Bros. 3 with its overworld style maps and awesome gameplay
Super Mario Flash 2
Super Mario Flash 2 continues the legacy by emulating Super Mario World but is a more complete game than Monoliths Mario World 2
Super Mario World
The original SNES game Super Mario World is here. This game has become an all time classic.
Super Mario Bros 3
Super Mario Bros 3 is one of the greatest games ever made. 8 Worlds and many bosses and challenges await you.
Super Mario Crossover
What would happen if Contra, Zelda, or Megaman got mixed up with the Mario Bros. games?? Find out in Super Mario Crossover
Infinite Mario
Contrary to the name of this flash game, Infinite Mario actually does end at some point. The question is when?
Super Mario Bros 2
Play the classic Nintendo game Super Mario Bros 2! Choose between Mario, Luigi, Toad, or Princess.
Mario Cart
Mario Cart emulates the great physics and tight turns of the famous Mario Kart series. Do battle against 3 enemy racers!
Super Mario Bros
Relive some old school nostalgia with this true to the original remake of Super Mario Bros. for the NES!
Super Smash Flash 2
The sequel to the very popular and addicting super smash bros. Choose from 16 unique and interesting characters.
Super Mario Kart
Play the SNES rom Super Mario Kart! Choose from 8 characters and try to beat all 4 cups.
Super Mario Star Scramble 3
Collect 3 stars on each stage to move on while facing the usual line up of suspects like Goombas and Rex
Super Mario Crossover 2
Super Mario Crossover 2 is a great sequel with tons of nintendo characters like Link, Megaman, Mario, and more
Mario Kart Super Circuit
Choose from 8 different characters and race in 5 different cups in this awesome Mario Kart rom
Super Mario World Hack
A fun hack featuring the 8 secret levels to play from Super Mario World
Super Mario All Stars
Remastered Super Mario 1, 2, 3 and Super Mario the Lost Levels all combined into one game. Nice!
Donkey Kong Country
One of the best games ever made for the SNES. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong must fight their way through 6 worlds.
Mario Mushroom Adventure
Classic platform Mario flash game where you must clear 3 worlds of 4 levels each and of course rescue the Princess
New Strange Mario Bros
A fantastic rom hack featuring all sorts of new strange worlds to explore
Mario World 2
Monoliths Mario World II is a sequel to Super Mario World for the SNES. Play 6 different long and very challenging stages!
Marios Adventure 2
To beat each level, simply find the coin in the blue sphere to move on to the next level. Look out! It's harder than it sounds!
Mario Cart 2
Mario Cart part 2 adds new exciting tracks like Rainbow Road as you race against 3 other carts and collect items
Mario Ghost House
Mario must enter the spooky ghost house where ultimate horror and countless puzzles await him. Can you make it out alive?
Super Mario Crossover 3
The ever popular Super Mario Crossover 3 features new characters and a whole new mario style challenge
Mario Mushrooms
Mario must shoot the little mushrooms into the bigger mushroom in order to complete each level
Crazy Mario World
A crazy snes rom hack of Super Mario World. This game really does keep you on your toes!
Super Mario Racing
Super Mario Racing is a 2D side scrolling game featuring the usual list of suspects and items to throw at opposing karts
View All Mario Games
More Free Online Games
Sonic Games
Pacman Games
Megaman Games


text:
A controversial bill seeking to exempt members of parliament from the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act will be heard again this Friday. The proposal was the subject of a five-hour filibuster in Parliament last week.
Proposed by Conservative MP and former whip David Maclean, the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill is at the top of the list of private members' bills to be read this Friday in one of 13 five hour windows in the Parliamentary calendar.
The bill had a reading last Friday at which a handful of MPs who opposed it "talked out" the proposal by speaking on it for the full five hours, preventing it from proceeding to the next stage.
But according to a spokesman for Parliament, because the bill has passed the committee stage and is the furthest progressed of all the bills in the queue for time, it will move to the top of the queue and is likely to be the first bill to be read this Friday.
There is another private member's bill which could progress past the committee stage and would thus leap ahead of Maclean's, because his has already had a reading in the House of Commons.
The bill had its second reading on 19th January and was unopposed. Time had run out on previous bills, and in this case the remaining bills are called out. Any MP who objects at that point shouts "object" and the bill cannot proceed to the next stage on that day.
No MP objected at the second reading of the Bill, so it was taken as read without debate and it proceeded to committee stage.
The Public Bill Committee heard the bill and amended it on 7 February. At that hearing Maclean defended his controversial bill.
"I take the view that when we write on behalf of constituents or when a constituent comes to us we must be able to look them in the eye and say that in all circumstances, what they tell us will not get out – it is like a relationship with a priest," he told the committee. "We will write to an authority with their problem but we guarantee that that information will not be leaked by us or get into the public domain.
"I would not be able to function properly in fighting for my constituents if I could not give them a guarantee that when I write to the tax credit people or the Child Support Agency on their behalf, no one else will see what they have said. Of course we must have the right to do that," he said.
Critics of the bill say it makes a mockery of the FOI Act by putting the very people who created the law out of its reach.
One of the opponents of the bill, Simon Hughes of the Liberal Democrats, said last week: "It would be extremely bad politics and extremely bad law for us at this stage - when parliament is hardly the most well regarded institution in the land – to seek to exempt the Commons and the Lords from the FOI Act. The public want to know what we are doing and in particular they want to know how we spend money on their behalf. It would be regarded as beyond acceptable if we said you can't know some or all of the information about what we do."
Maclean said in Feburary that his proposal was not a blanket ban on FOI requests. "This does not apply to us as Members of Parliament writing to a local authority complaining about our own community charge or a personal matter. It does not apply to Members of Parliament writing as Ministers in their ministerial capacity. It relates purely to us as Members of Parliament in our official capacity dealing with public authorities."
But Maclean conceded that the kind of constituent information whose protection he sought was, in fact, already covered by an exemption in the FOI Act. "Theoretically there are provisions in the current Act which may protect that correspondence, but we are not the final arbiter on that. That decision may be made by someone else who decides that it is safe to release our correspondence."
Conservative MP Peter Luff challenged Maclean at the February Committee hearing, pointing out that section 40(2) already protects the personal information of identifiable constituents. Maclean admitted that the protection was already there but said there could be problems with third party authorities not complying with the Act.
"Clearly if one writes to a public authority and gives the personal details of a constituent, such as their CSA [Child Support Agency] claim, information relating to their children and so on, that information should be protected. It should quite clearly be protected under the current Act. However, inadvertently, someone may release it," he said.
Copyright © 2007, OUT-LAW.com
OUT-LAW.COM is part of international law firm Pinsent Masons.
Related links
The Freedom of Information Act
A transcript of the February Committee hearing
The order of Parliamentary business for the week


text:
His first appearance as a college punt returner was nothing short of forgettable, but Virginia Tech's Dyrell Roberts isn't one to dwell on such details, especially when the initial experience might as well have been a lifetime ago.
In 2008, Roberts was given the chance to return punts in his first college game as a true freshman against East Carolina. He spent the afternoon in Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium watching punts roll around on the turf and treating them more like live grenades as opposed to opportunities to make a favorable first impression.
"I was kind of nervous," said Roberts, a Smithfield High graduate. "I think I let every single one of them hit the ground. I told everybody to get away from it."
After Tech's 27-22 loss to ECU, he never got a chance to return another punt. The duties shifted in '08 to former Tech player Victor Harris.
Nearly four years and two season-ending injuries later, Roberts isn't scared of much. Yes, he has misgivings about returning kickoffs – even though he's Tech's career leader in kickoff returning yardage with 1,577 – but he'll do it this coming season if it feels right.
In addition to his wide receiver duties, he's looking for new opportunities to get his hands on the ball. Another crack at returning punts might be in his future.
"(Punt returns) are a little different (than kickoff returns) because you've got to catch the ball and see all those people coming, but once you get it in your hands, you can use quick moves and go," said Roberts, who is working at punt returner this spring along with sophomore Kyshoen Jarrett. "I like the freedom of punt returns. It's going to take time for me to get used to it, but I like where I'm at right now."
During Tech's scrimmage on Saturday, Jarrett managed to find an opening on a punt return and was credited for 88 yards and a touchdown, even though the return was whistled dead at least 35 yards before he reached the end zone. Roberts didn't return any punts during the live scrimmage periods.
After breaking his left arm Sept. 17 last season in Tech's third game of the season, a 26-7 win against Arkansas State, Roberts was redshirted to preserve his final season of college eligibility.
The broken arm came on the heels of Roberts losing the last five games of the 2010 season due to compartment syndrome, a condition that resulted in emergency surgery to relieve pressure in his left thigh after sustaining the injury in a game against Georgia Tech.
"I was supposed to be out of here last year," said Roberts, who has 63 career catches for 965 yards and five touchdowns, and who is working with the first team offense this spring along with Marcus Davis to try to replace Jarrett Boykin and Danny Coale – only the two most prolific receivers in Tech history. "Everybody was thinking I was going to be gone and out of Tech after I broke my arm, but it seems like everything worked out."
Though Roberts admitted being tentative this winter when he first returned from his arm injury, he said he hasn't lost any of his speed, clocking a hand-time 40-yard dash of just over 4.3 seconds during winter conditioning drills.
Offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring said he won't shy away from putting the ball in Roberts' hands. As a matter of fact, Stinespring wants to utilize him more, if Roberts is ready for it.
"We would like to be able to get the ball in Dyrell's hands as much as we can," said Stinespring, who added there are various packages in place to put Roberts in motion behind the line of scrimmage.
"I don't care how long you've played this game. I can't tell you it's like riding a bicycle. It's not. You just don't get right back on it. There's a lot of reps to get back into the feel of the game and the flow of the game and get his timing back. That's still part of it, but there's nobody working any harder to get it done than Dyrell."
Roberts said he had a meeting with coach Frank Beamer prior to spring practice to express his misgivings about returning kicks and a desire to "get away from it," but Roberts said he'd still do it if required. With so many chances to touch the ball potentially on the horizon, Roberts recalls a simpler time when he got about as many touches as he wanted.
"I feel like I'm in high school again," Roberts said. "I think the identity of our team has evolved…I like moving around and doing different things. I think it shows our versatility, and it can show that I'm back."


text:
If the Gaussian curvature of the metric $g= f^2(x,y)(dx^2+dy^2)$ is nonzero then $f$ cannot be constant. This can be expressed by stating that the (probabilistic) variance $Var(f)$ of $f$ is nonzero (in a suitable domain). If the metric $g$ has nonzero Gaussian curvature, then $f$ is nonconstant and therefore $Var(f)$ is nonzero. Can this conclusion be quantified? Namely, assume $g$ has curvature bounded away from zero on a suitable disk. Can one get a lower bound for $Var(f)$? This has immediate applications to a stronger version of Loewner's torus inequality with isosystolic defect term a la Bonnesen, see http://arxiv.org/abs/arXiv:0803.0690 and http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0553
Note 1. The Gaussian curvature of the metric $g= f^2(x,y)(dx^2+dy^2)$ is given by $K=\frac{-1}{2f^2}\left(\frac{\partial^2}{\partial x^2}+ \frac{\partial^2}{\partial y^2}\right)\log f$, so that the problem involves partial differential inequalities for the Laplacian.
Note 2. To restate the curvature hypothesis more carefully: we have a metric $r$-disk (for the metric $g$) where the curvature is bounded below by an $\epsilon>0$. The problem is to obtain a lower bound for $Var(f)$ in terms of $r$ and $\epsilon$ (certainly the estimate will become weaker as $r$ gets smaller).
Note 3 (reformulation along the lines of Robert's suggestion). On a fixed domain $\Omega$ of unit area in the $xy$-plane, we consider metrics $g=f^2(dx^2+dy^2)$ with the property that $\Omega$ contains a subdomain (say, a disk) $D$ on which Gaussian curvature $K\geq C>0$ and such that the $g$-area of $D$, i.e., $\int_D f^2 dxdy$, is at least $A>0$. We want to know whether there is a lower bound for $Var_\Omega(f)$ in terms of the constants $C$ and $A$. Is there an optimal lower bound, and if so does a rotationally symmetric metric on a disk $D$ attain it? A similar question for $K$ negative and bounded away from $0$.