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Reality is beautifully out of joint in The Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine, which augmented the typical cartoonist's palette with photography, rotoscoping and 3-D sequences.
The pioneering movie, which finds the Fab Four sailing the seas of science, time and nothingness in hopes of saving a utopian world from a bunch of oppressive haters called the Blue Meanies, serves as a great example of a genre that gave animators free rein to explore the outer reaches of psychedelia.
Once unforgivably out of print but screening now at theaters and available Tuesday as a digitally restored DVD, Blu-ray and iTunes download, Yellow Submarine was directed by George Dunning and produced by Al Brodax, who had spent the previous three years helming madcap cartoon series The Beatles.
Yellow Submarine appealed to toon-happy kids as well as adults tripping on cannabis, LSD and expanding liberties. It quickly became, as its chief illustrator Heinz Edelmann explains in the painstakingly remastered film's audio commentary, the first non-Disney animated feature that didn't pull its studio down with it. "The history of animation up until then was the history of studios folding under the weight of an animated feature," said Edelmann, who died in 2009. (See two video clips below.)
Yellow Submarine also opened the doors of perception for many of the animated psychedelic experiments in the gallery above. Even The Beatles, who were descending into bitter dissolution and didn't even record their voices for the film, were ultimately swayed by its animated ambition. And they weren't alone.
"As a fan of animation and as a filmmaker, I tip my hat to the artists of Yellow Submarine," Disney and Pixar chief creative officer John Lasseter writes in an essay accompanying a bonus 16-page booklet, which shares space with the making-of documentary "Mod Odyssey," cast and crew interviews, behind-the-scenes photos, collectible stickers and more. "[Their] revolutionary work helped pave the way for the fantastically diverse world of animation that we all enjoy today."
Fantastic Planet
Designated psychonauts: Director and co-writer Rene Laloux and illustrator and co-writer Roland Topor, who previously collaborated on animated films Dead Time and The Snails.
The trip: Featuring a future world where humans (Oms) and alien gods (Draags) walk a psychedelic tightrope between harmony and extinction, Fantastic Planet is a intriguing allegory about science and superstition culminating in the birth of Earth. Like Yellow Submarine, but without the added cultural power of The Beatles, it's a sterling example of the trippy animation ambition of the late '60s and early '70s.Double feature finalist: This is a cheat, but live-action psychedelic cult classic The Holy Mountain from avant-garde legend Alejandro Jodorowsky is a perfect match. Both films were released in 1973 and there's even a Fab Four connection: The Holy Mountain was produced by controversial Beatles manager Allen Klein, and was partially funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
The Animatrix
Designated psychonaut: Various luminaries of Japanese animation, including Ninja Scroll's Yoshiaki Kawajiri and Cowboy Bebop's Shinichiro Watanabe, sublimely riffing on The Wachowski siblings' technocultural franchise The Matrix.
The trip: Although The Animatrix features nine short animated films, it coheres into a dazzling visual meditation on technology and control. There's plenty of intense action, but it also features psychedelic, philosophical entries like Koji Morimoto's Beyond, in which a pack of kids find an abandoned building where the Matrix's rules of gravity and power do not apply. Or Peter Chung's stunning Matriculated (above and below, mashed with Radiohead), wherein a machine captured by rebel humans is lured through a consensual hallucination in search of its own hidden humanity. It's a surprisingly moving mind-fry -- definitely The Animatrix's finest installment, and maybe perhaps the most impressive thing Chung has ever made.
Double feature finalist: Katsuhiro Otomo's foundational anime feature Akira. Its light trails, mammoth mutations and dystopian futurism are still capable of energizing psychic power almost 25 years after its debut.
Spirited Away
Designated psychonaut: Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, whose every movie could satisfy a psychedelic urge if viewed through the appropriate prism. The Oscar-winning Spirited Away is his undisputed masterpiece.
The trip: A self-centered girl enters an alternate reality of toil, terror and tenderness, taking viewers along for the surreal (and sometimes scatalogical) ride. Parents turn into pigs, everything shape-shifts into something else, and a callous matriarch lords over the proceedings, making for one of the greatest all-age psychonautic journeys of discovery ever made. Pound for pound, it's the greatest film on this list.
Double feature finalist: As much as I want to recommend Miyazaki's psychedelic heist The Castle of Cagliostro, the director's harder-hitting Princess Mononoke is a cautionary environmental fable of technology and violence that balances out Spirited Away's more youthful concerns. You might be mentally spent after this double feature, but you'll have witnessed some of the most imaginative animation ever committed to cultural history.
The Thief and the Cobbler
Designated psychonaut: Richard Williams, the underrated British-Canadian visionary who, despite toiling on this animated masterpiece for almost 30 years, was never able to fully realize it, making The Thief and the Cobbler an instant cult classic.
The trip: A western mash of the Arabic folklore of One Thousand and One Nights and the funny fables of the wise fool Nasreddin, The Thief and the Cobbler follows the humble Tack as he blissfully blunders his way through a massive war with one-eyed monsters. Filled with dizzying hand-drawn sequences that seemingly defy gravity and cinema's fourth wall, this ambitious caper began in 1964, featured contributions from animation greats (including some of Disney's famed Nine Old Men), was literally cobbled together and released in different versions by different studios and animators after Williams lost control of the film, and still survives as a fan-supported work print in search of a definitive version. It's a stunning head trip, and its cult credibility only increases as time passes.
Double feature finalist: Williams' animated version of A Christmas Carol, which is loaded with nightmarish and ethereal sequences that crown the crop of inspired Dickens adaptations. Or the much more obvious comedy noir Who Framed Roger Rabbit, for which Williams served as animation director. You can't lose, unless you're a stickler for a finished product.
Toon Trips, Driven by Bob Clampett
Designated psychonaut: Robert Emerson Clampett, the subversive, and reportedly self-promoting, mind behind Looney Tunes' greatest toons, some of the most surreal short films ever made. Sure, the rest of this list is filled with animated features, but sorry nitpickers: Clampett deserves mention anywhere the words "psychedelic" and "animation" appear.
The trip: Where to start? In his bizarre but benign 1938 short Porky in Wackyland, Clampett sampled surrealism (especially Salvador Dali). Later classics like the unhinged The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (above), The Old Grey Hare, Book Revue (below) and Draftee Daffy mashed hallucination and horror in freaky ways. Even Clampett's racially profane contributions to Looney Tunes' Censored 11 toons like the brilliant but offensive Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs are amped with velocity and imagery.
Double feature finalist: After Clampett's animania, you'll need a comedown. Try Fantasia, Disney's surreal and sometimes racially profane 1940 animated film, or its similarly disjointed original Alice in Wonderland. Both contain more than enough brain candy to keep psychonauts busy, although they've got competition from the original Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day's dream sequence, wherein a paranoid Pooh worried about someone stealing his drugs -- er, honey -- experiences a discomforting hallucination you can experience yourself, straight or otherwise, on Disneyland's purportedly innocent Pooh ride.
Fritz the Cat
Designated psychonaut: Animation pioneer Ralph Bakshi, who adapted comics legend Robert Crumb's strip of the same name to create the first X-rated animated film.
The trip: After spending 10 years animating Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle for Terrytoons, Bakshi spent the swinging '60s searching for something as strange and relevant as the turbulent world around him. By 1972, he had transgressively satirized sex, politics, race and drugs with Fritz the Cat, a lascivious lampoon led by a cynically horny feline set loose in New York. You can draw a straight line from the controversial Clampett to Bakshi, whose post-Fritz films like American Pop and Cool World changed the scope of animated film.
Double feature finalist: Bakshi's increasingly appreciated 1978 animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which director Peter Jackson sampled so hard for his Oscar-winning blockbusters that he actually tried to deny it at first. From its gruesome battles to its surreal magic, Bakshi's dark Tolkien tale makes a great counterpoint to Fritz the Cat's fully altered comedy.
Waking Life
Designated psychonaut: Director Richard Linklater, the indie auteur responsible for Slacker as well as higher-budget sleepers like School of Rock.
The trip: Built upon the foundation of Ralph Bakshi's rotoscoping benchmarks like Lord of the Rings and Fire and Ice, Bob Sabiston's custom-made Rotoshop software brought the talkative street philosophers, existentialists and nihilists of Linklater's Waking Life to remarkable life in 2001. It turned what could have been just a film of people talking and sometimes tripping into a visually captivating playground of ideas, whose darker corners are still somewhat estranging. (Who knew that self-immolation could be destabilizing in a cartoon?)
Double feature finalist: Linklater and Sabiston's impressive but polarizing A Scanner Darkly, adapted from Philip K. Dick's 1977 sci-fi dystopia about O.C. drug culture. Short-attention-spanners may curdle, but patient psychonauts will be rewarded for their time.
Mind Game
Designated psychonaut: The ambitious anime psychonauts at Japan's Studio 4C, who have also imprinted impressive animated exercises like Batman: Gotham Knight and Steamboy.
The trip: Mashing various rough anime styles into a single narrative encompassing the Yakuza, the afterlife and allegories like The Adventures of Pinocchio, director Masaaki Yuasa's Mind Game unfurls like a surrealist fever dream. Like Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler, it's something of an animation geek's treasure hunt, given that it hasn't yet received a home release worthy of its skill and ambition. Which means that most of the world has to first hack the internet to obtain Mind Game before the film hacks their minds in return.
Double feature finalist: The Tune, created by staunch hand-drawn animation loyalist Bill Plympton (who is a fan of Mind Game's similar escapades and styles). Actually, any Plympton animated feature, from I Married a Strange Person to Idiots and Angels, will fit this weird bill.
Designated psychonaut: The late, great anime standout Satoshi Kon, whose other features Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and even the comparatively straight Tokyo Godfathers would fit nicely here.
The trip: When a revolutionary machine called DC Mini allows scientists and other unsavory characters to explore their users' dreams, the line between fantasy and reality disappears, leaving chaos in its wake. Mostly a critical success, Paprika's vivid representations of dream and nightmare logic works on multiple levels, meaning that earnest narrative dissectors and open-minded psychonauts alike have more than enough brain candy to keep them busy for 90 minutes. (Cerebral sci-fi auteur Christopher Nolan used Paprika as a launch pad for his similarly labyrinthine mind-warper Inception.)
Double feature finalist: The Dream Machine, Kon's unfinished fifth film, which heavyweight Japanese animation studio Madhouse promised would be completed in accordance with his wishes. Before Kon passed in 2010, he explained that The Dream Machine would be a road movie starring only robots, which ironically might make it more human than the technopathic experiments of Paprika.
Blowback: What's Your Favorite Psychedelic Animation of All Time?
Rate our picks from the gallery above, or drop your own favorites, in the comments below.Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.


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|Biosequences .. Software .. Molbio soft .. Network News .. FTP
In article <363ce241.84284241 at netnews.worldnet.att.net>, <johnburgin at worldnet.att.net> wrote: >On Sun, 01 Nov 1998 13:26:27 GMT, gmc0 at ix.netcom.com (George M. >Carter) wrote: > >>johnburgin at worldnet.att.net wrote: >> >>snip..... >> >>>I repeat, where have I been wrong? I said that you can't have it both >>>ways. You can't use the immunity defense when things work and forget >>>about it when things don't. I repeat, what will the HIV serologic >>>status be for a person "immunized" against "a" strain of HIV? >> >>Oh, boy. I understand at least one area for your staunchly held >>beliefs: you're ignorant of fundamental immunology. >> >>Antibodies are produced by the body (B cells) in response to an >>infection. Their presence is tested by a variety of techniques and >>indicate the presence of that infection. The course of disease can >>then range from recovery (infectious agent is either eliminated or >>controlled) to failure to recover. Hepatitis infection, as well as >>HIV, among others are examples of diseases where the course can go >>either way. >> >>Even when the infectious agent is cleared, that response remains in a >>quieter state: the body is primed and aware in case it should >>encounter a similar pathogen again. >> >>Now, when a VACCINE is used, depending on the nature of the vaccine, >>there will be an antibody response to the antigens in the vaccine. So >>on an antibody test, a person will be HIV+ even though they have not >>yet been infected. The vaccine will not result in replicating virus, >>but just send the signals to the body to alert it to the possibility >>of a future attack. An EFFECTIVE vaccine will assure that exposure to >>any quasispecies of HIV is fended off. >> >>Vaccination-induced seropositivity is NOT the same as >>infection-induced seropositivity. >Vaccination-induced seropositivity is NOT the same as >>infection-induced seropositivity. >How do you know? How do you know? Because he reads the literature. It really helps in understanding. > > (There are many different kinds of >>vaccines, including whole-killed, live but disabled, subunit and other >>varieties; the "live but disabled" variety (my terms) >would you accept the term attenuated? >MAY represent a >>risk of the virus converting to "live and able" and thus causing >>disease). >> >>There are other risks associated with vaccines. >So, the bottom line is, we're, um, not quite there yet? > >> >> George M. Carter >> >Thank you George! Now I know everything that you do! The only >problem with this is that we both know that when you are diagnosed >with being HIV positive, whether from "infection" or immunization, you >are still HIV+. Why is that so complicated for you? >Is your employer or the health department or your patient, or hospital >that you work at going to know the difference? Actually, for the vaccines currently in trials, there *is* a distinctive and unique wester blot associated with vaccination. This is because no vaccine is using whole HIV, but just incomplete collections of antigens. >How will the test be >able to tell, with certaintly, that the seropositive status is from >"non-neutralizing" antibodies(I just love that term, it's so >"grounding") or the real McCoy? Obviously the only way one will know >for sure is if they don't develop AIDS. Isn't that special? It's not true, is what it is. See the above. > Look back to the early days of the polio vaccine trials. Do you >recall from your reading that there were a number(but I guess they >weren't "statiscally" important) of individuals that developed polio >from the vaccine? What a bummer. Do you think that maybe, assuming >for the sake of argument that with this HIV infection we are trying to >prevent, we could run into a similar problem? Two points: 1. Polio vaccine used whole, attenuated virus. There are no plans to use this approach with HIV. 2. Since you don't think HIV causes AIDS, what would this "similar problem"? You can't have it both ways. Carlton

subset: commoncrawl


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Proposed tip Please edit this page to improve it, or add your comments below (do not use the discussion page).
To share your vimrc file between all of your systems and environments, you have at least a couple of options.
Option 1: use
By using the
:source command, you can put your vimrc file and all its dependencies in a common directory (preferably under version control) and source those common files from each vimrc that needs them. In fact, you'll very likely just source one of them (the "main" one) and that will, in turn, source others.
For instance, the vimrc file in your Windows home will look something like:
source X:/path/to/common/dot-files/vim/my_vim.vim
Other systems need an equivalent of the above, using the system's file naming conventions. Cygwin, in particular, may have problems with DOS-style paths, so you are probably better off with Option 2, below.
Option 2: use symbolic linksEdit
Once you have the common files available somewhere you can make each
.vimrc that you need be actually a symbolic link to the common
.vimrc "main" file (see above). Under Unix and Cygwin:
$ cd ~ $ ln -s /path/to/common/dot-files/vim/my_vim.vim .vimrc
Do not forget that you can use
has() and
exists() to cope with the different capabilities offered by the various Vim builds and distributions.


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February 5: Hear Stafford Bibliographer, Jeremy Skinner
Wednesday, February 5, 7:00 pm at Oswego Heritage House, 398 10th Street. Jeremy Skinner will speak about the history of William Stafford's life as a writer from what he learned while developing the recently published master work William Stafford: An Annotated Bibliography. He will share Stafford letters and photos that have never been seen. Skinner will be introduced by Dr. Stephen Dow Beckham, a noted American historian.


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The award, presented at the institute's conference and expo in March, recognizes communities that demonstrate excellence in all facets of association operations and governance. The CAI awards are based on size, and Talltree South, with 150 garden-style units, fits into the medium category.
Located on Americana Drive, just inside the beltway, Talltree South is a diverse, multilingual community. The development was originally an apartment complex and was converted to condominiums in 1977.
In the application for the CAI award, Talltree South board President Dorothy Firsching says the condo association "stands out as 'most improved' through implementation of CAI guidelines."
Two years ago, new board members were elected after an extensive campaign for change. Since then, the condo association hired a full-service management company, Cardinal Management Group. The association joined CAI, and board members attended CAI classes and events.
Among other improvements cited by Firsching, the Talltree South board:
- upgraded its investment plan;
- created a quarterly newsletter, including a version in Spanish;
- developed a handbook for owners and residents for the first time in more than 20 years, also translated into Spanish;
- developed a website;
- synchronized enforcement practice with formal association rules;
- formalized vendor contracts;
- performed maintenance neglected for years and began to address expensive drainage and water infiltration issues, including excavation and construction of drains and swales;
- established committees, including a gardening committee and an informal group of translators;
- made significant progress in control of delinquencies; and
- updated the community's bylaws.


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Information submitted through the online complaint form also may be aggregated to analyze trends and statistics that may be released to the public. This aggregate information will not contain your personal identifying information. If someone reporting a complaint to econsumer.gov indicates that he/she is under the age of 18, the personal information gathered by the complaint form will be not be collected. Please read the privacy policy and the FTC's privacy policy.
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If you submitted a complaint, you can update or correct it by contacting us with your reference number.
Although your complaint will be accessible to numerous government agencies, it may or may not be accessed by them. You should not necessarily expect any agency to pursue your complaint on your behalf. Many government agencies bring lawsuits to protect the public-at-large, but do not intervene on behalf of individual consumers. Other agencies have an obligation to investigate each complaint. Read "Other Steps You can Take" for more information that can help you resolve your dispute.
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Narco-Tyranny in a Tiny Town: Covington, Texas Police Chief Arrested
According to William Grigg, Wade Laurence – "chief" of police in a small north-central Texas town – has engaged in actions that those he purports to serve and his own colleagues liken to a a reign of terror."
The post below – was authored by Grigg and posted to Republic Magazine.
For more from Grigg, check out his blog, Pro Libertate, read his posts here on CopBlock.org or check out his Wikipedia profile.
Thanks to my bud Greg Wamble for sharing the link.
Wade Laurence, Chief of Police in a minuscule town called Covington, Texas, has been arrested by the Texas Rangers and charged with using a fraudulent prescription to obtain controlled substances, a third degree felony. With the Chief free on $20,000 bail, the City Council is planning to meet this evening (March 9), reportedly to consider disbanding the police force. Under Wade's direction, the Covington PD has carried out what some residents of the town — including former members of the police force — describe as something akin to a reign of terror. In addition to fraudulently procuring prescription medications, Laurence has been accused of involvement in dealing drugs to local schoolchildren and illegal diversion of confiscated marijuana.
"They are scared to death now," says City Council member Martha Smith. "They lock their doors, they lock their car doors because they are scared of the police."
A report filed with the Texas Rangers by Officer Kayla Richardson (who provided a copy to Republic) describes how Wade — at the time a sergeant in the Covington PD — engineered the removal of Chief Dowell Missildine about a year ago. This happened after Chief Missildine began investigating Wade's suspected theft of hydrocodone pills (a controlled substance) from the department's evidence locker.
In his own report to the Rangers, Missildine relates how Wade had "asked me at one time if he could have Dr. [Petros] Chapanos fill some prescriptions in my name" for hydrocodone "because he stated that he accidentally threw his prescription in the trash…. I told Wade that I did not think he would do that because it was illegal." Missildine later documented that Wade had indeed used the Chief's prescription to obtain both hyrdocodone and Cialis. (Copies of those documents were provided to Republic as well).
Missildine recalled that he and Officer Richardson "had several conversations and she told me that [citizens] were complaining about drug activity and allegations of officers selling drugs to school kids and wanting her to do something about it. I told her I knew of most of the situations she was telling me about because of citizens contacting me also." Last October, after Wade had forced out Missildine and replaced him as Chief, Richardson — who was still on the force — told him that "she was afraid for her life and that she felt they [Wade and his allies on the police force] were going to set her up on a traffic stop and have her killed because of information she was aware of in reference to the hydrocodone case."
Shortly thereafter, Officer Richardson was also purged from the police force. She was not the only resident of the 250-person town — located a short distance south of Forth Worth — who is afraid of potentially lethal reprisals from the police.
"I'm scared people are going to start shooting me," Covington-area resident Tracey Baccus told Republic. Baccus, who runs a sewer service company, volunteers in local sports leagues as a coach and umpire. Roughly a year ago he became concerned when he noticed that a number of kids displayed the symptoms of drug use.
"Kids began to tell me that stuff was being sold to them by the police," Baccus recounted to Republic. "They said the police had assured them, `It's not drugs, it's prescription meds — and they're legal.'" The supposedly innocuous "meds" included what Baccus described as "military-grade" Xanax. He contacted Missildine with his concerns.
"We talked to DEA; we talked to everybody," he recalls. "I told Kayla [Richardson], and they took care of her. They even arrested her boyfriend in a City Council meeting."
Richardson's fiance, Clifton Shelby, was arrested during the same City Council meeting in which she appealed her termination.To justify this transparent act of retaliation, Chief Wade filed a complaint charging Shelby with "assault with a deadly weapon" for an incident on a local highway several weeks earlier that didn't involve a collision: As Shelby, who was driving his truck, passed Wade's Corvette on the wet and slippery road, he momentarily swerved into the other lane. Although Wade confronted Shelby at the side of the road, he didn't write a citation or file a complaint until much later — when it offered him an opportunity to humiliate both Richardson and Shelby by dragging him from a public meeting in handcuffs.
The threats and retaliatory harassment have only escalated since then. Covington Fire Chief George Burnett, who circulated a petition calling to disband the police department, was also threatened by Chief Wade.
"The police chief and three other of his police came down and were raising Cain about me getting this petition signed," Burnett told Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA. "They said I was raising a lot of trouble in town."
Council member Martha Smith, 69, was threatened with arrest when she visited the municipal office to request copies of the official minutes for the years 2005-2007.
After Smith made her request, the town clerk, Courtney Childress — Wade's girlfriend — "said that she wanted to talk to me," Smith informed Republic. The two went to a back room where Childress indignantly told Smith that "CPS had been called and were trying to get custody of her son." Smith, who had not called CPS on anybody, was puzzled by Childress's behavior, which was aggressive and confrontational. "It seemed like she was trying to provoke me," Smith related — an impression that was fortified when Wade and a Covington PD Detective named Andy Montgomery suddenly flanked Childress.
By this time, according to Smith, "I'd already put my hands behind my back." However, hauling away a 69-year-old female City Council member would require some evidence of a crime, and Smith hadn't provided any. She was allowed to leave — only to experience another shock when she went home.
"My 16-year-old foster son told me that a girl at school that day said that I was supposed to be arrested," Smith reports. "It seems pretty clear that they were trying to set me up, and that if I had even touched her [Childress], they planned to take me to jail."
This wasn't the only threat Smith has endured.
"I was told that if I talked to the Texas Rangers [about Wade and his associates on the force] they would find some way to frame me or my family for drug trafficking," Smith told Republic. "They said things such as, `We know who your grandkids are buying and selling from.' I asked them, `You want to have them tested?' I know they're not doing anything like that."
Threats having failed to silence Smith, somebody apparently decided to try a different approach: Sometime during the evening of March 1, the rear windshield of her SUV was vandalized. Both Smith and Scott Parker — another former police officer — told Republic that this took place on a night when Smith's home was kept under constant scrutiny by officers driving "blacked-out" Covington SUVs.
Three Covington residents — including two former police officers — suspect that Wade and an ally on the police force are improperly shipping controlled substances, out of state. A "Transport Notice" issued last September (a copy of which was provided to Republic) announced that Detective Montgomery — who, along with Chief Wade, threatened Council member Martha Smith — planned to carry drug paraphernalia "to K-9 trainer Marcus Rynak" in Sterling, Colorado. Sources close to the Covington PD claim that a large amount of confiscated marijuana that should have been shipped to a Texas Department of Public Safety facility in Waco have been illegally diverted to Colorado.
Covington is one of several Texas communities that are dealing with drug-related municipal corruption:
*As Republic previously reported, Constable Fred Walker of Texas's Shelby County allegedly ordered the illegal bugging of municipal officials in the village of Tenaha, which has been at the center of a multi-million-dollar drug asset forfeiture scam. Those charges were made in an affidavit filed by Roderette McClure, who was arrested last fall for breaking into the offices at Walker's direction. McClure, who on February 14 pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, told FBI investigators that Constable Walker "had him install surveillance cameras disguised as smoke detectors and hidden voice-activated digital recording equipment in the offices of Tenana Mayor George Boyers and deputy city marshal Barry Washington," reports the AP. "Walker said he wanted to `cover' himself over the traffic stops, most of which were conducted by Washington…."
According to McClure's affidavit, he and Walker ran a drug trafficking ring when Walker was City Marshal. They eventually embezzled roughly 500 pounds in contraband – including marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and hydrocone – from the Tenaha City Marshal's office evidence room. In November 2010, the pair received an extortion threat from someone identifying himself as "Jack Frost" who said he was aware that Walker and McClure were stealing confiscated drugs and selling them. This led them to "stage a burglary as a cover for the missing drugs" – and then to install the listening devices in city office buildings in order to find out who was aware the City Marshall was moonlighting as a drug lord.
*In late February, Willie Gandara, Jr., a Commissioner in El Paso County, was arrested as part of a multi-jurisdictional investigation into drug trafficking.The five-count federal indictment accuses Gandara – referred to in the document by the pseudonym "Godfather" — of possessing 110 pounds of marijuana and operating a so-called "stash house" for drug traffickers.
Last September, Willie Gandara, Jr., a County Commissioner in Texas' El Paso County, assailed what he called "wolves in sheep's clothing" who opposed the war on drugs. Such people, Gandara told the El Paso Times, are acting on an "ulterior motive." Legalizing drugs, insisted Commissioner Gandara, is a coward's approach to a social problem, as well as "an insult to our men and women in law enforcement, and the laziest form of parenting our children and youth about the effects of drugs."
Gandara directed those remarks at aspiring legislative candidate Beto O'Rourke, who has advocated legalization of marijuana as a way of reducing the profits accumulated by Mexican drug cartels. The cartels have benefited enormously from drug prohibition, which amounts to a huge price support program for some of the most vicious criminal personalities in human history.
If the charges against Gandara are true, it's likely that his attacks on drug war critics were inspired by a desire to preserve his illicit profits.
Shortly before Chief Laurence was arrested, Republic magazine made repeated efforts to contact him to respond to allegations that he — like Constable Walker and Commissioner Gandara — was playing both sides of the "War on Drugs." He declined to answer our requests for information.
"I was proud to be a police officer, but I can understand why people in Covington are afraid of the police force and want to see it disbanded now," Kayla Richardson lamented to Republic. "The police should be protecting people's rights, not intimidating and threatening them."


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1. ability - noun
· the quality of being able to perform; a quality that permits or facilitates achievement or accomplishment
Hypernym(s): quality
Antonym(s): inability
2. ability - noun
· possession of the qualities (especially mental qualities) required to do something or get something done; "danger heightened his powers of discrimination"
Synonym(s): power
Hypernym(s): cognition, knowledge, noesis
Antonym(s): inability
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'Open your eyes' Caritas tells Committee considering welfare changes
Catholic social justice agency Caritas has told a Parliamentary select committee to open its eyes to economic realities in its legislative oversight of government welfare changes.
'There's no point extending job queues by asking the "blind and the lame", and others in difficulty, to keep on proving they are seeking work,' says Caritas research and advocacy coordinator Lisa Beech.
'Increasing the size of the job queues at this time is unreasonable,' she told the Social Services Select Committee considering the Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill this week. 'Having 400 people in line for 10 supermarket check-out jobs rather than 200 is not going to make more work magically available. But it is making life much harder and more stressful for people.'
Under the Bill, an invalid's beneficiary who is reclassified as a 'job-seeker' will face a cut in income from $256 to $213 a week – effectively a benefit cut of $42 per week.
'The blind will not see, and the lame will not walk as a result of this legislation,' Lisa Beech told the Committee, 'But their incomes will be cut while they are sent out to search for jobs that are simply not there. That is far from being good news for the poor.'
Caritas CEO Julianne Hickey said that Caritas opposed the Bill because, like the Welfare Working Group which preceded the legislation, the Bill focused on the motivation and behaviour of individuals who receive benefits, rather than the economic and structural context of unemployment.
'Assumptions that the root causes of unemployment are to be found in the behaviour of individuals has resulted in legislation which focuses on individual behavior,' she said.
Caritas challenged the Select Committee to fulfil its constitutional role as representatives of the Legislature in overseeing the power of Cabinet – the Executive branch of government.
Lisa Beech told the Committee they had not yet been fully informed about the serious concerns of the community to the measures proposed in the Bill, despite three years of engagement by Caritas and many other organisations in the processes of the Welfare Working Group, Alternative Welfare Working Group and the Select Committee process around the first phase of welfare reform.
'The role of the Select Committee is not merely to rubberstamp decisions of the Executive, or to provide some kind of legal proofreading of minor details of legislation.'
Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand is a member of Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 165 Catholic aid, development and social justice agencies active in over 200 countries and territories.
Caritas written and oral submissions on the Bill are available here.
For more information contact Martin de Jong +64-4-496 1782 or +64-21-909 688


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Version 2.2 Out Now – Change Log Details
Kodax is a clean WordPress theme specially designed for showcasing items in a full screen slider.A beautifully designed multi-purpose WordPress theme, perfect for blogs, portfolios, company and personal websites. Kodax is clean minimal and sharp, putting critical focus on your content and photography.
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Have a completely unique website with your own custom images, Or if you prefer Kodax comes with Photoshop smart object slides that can be used to showcase your app. Our existing slides are provided as a single Photoshop file.
Full Feature List
- 700+ Google Webfonts,
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- Demo content files included,
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- WPML compatible and Multilingual ready (using multisite structure and free plugins like e.g Multisite Language Switcher or Multilingual Press),
- CleanTabs (value $6),
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What Our Customers Say
Get More From Us
Change Log
November 27, 2016 – Version 2.2
- UPDATED: Font Awesome to version 4.7.0
March 10, 2016 – Version 2.1
- FIXED: Issue where insert image button would return blank. - FIXED: Missing indexes notice for uninitialized options with WP_DEBUG turned on. - FIXED: Issue where Twitter widget set to theme design would not display tweets.
January 13, 2016 – Version 2.0
- FIXED: Issue where insert image button would return blank.
December 12, 2015 – Version 1.9
- ADDED: Support for WordPress native title tag - FIXED: issue that prevented Facebook Open Graph from getting custom logo when on page with no featured image. - FIXED: Comment form layout for non-logged in users in WP4.4
September 08, 2015 – Version 1.8
- UPDATED: Font Awesome to version 4.4.0. - UPDATED: TGM library to version 2.5.2. - UPDATED: Device screenshots PSD - UPDATED: Widgets construct method for compatibility with WP 4.3+ (removes debug notice). - FIXED: Bundled plugins can now be installed/updated when child theme is active. - FIXED: Issue where widget titles would not show on initial load in customizer.
August 08, 2015 – Version 1.7
- UPDATED: WPML related updates to widgets and search function. - UPDATED: Bundled plugin Envato WordPress Toolkit updated to v1.7.3 - UPDATE: Hooks can now execute shortcode.
Change Log Continued
// APRIL 26 2015 - FIXED: Conflict between Revolution Slider / WP4.2 / Theme that would render Revolution Slider editing controls non-functional. - UPDATE: TGM Plugin Activation library updated. - UPDATE: Security patch (http://marketblog.envato.com/news/wordpress-item-security-vulnerability/) // November 02, 2014 - Updated demo content - Updated 2 skins settings files - Updated WooCommerce Styles - Added WooCommerce Product Archive Customiser compatibility - Updated documentation regarding WooCommerce - Fixed tabs shortcode - Updated Google Web-fonts - Updated Fonts folder name changed from /font/ to /fonts/ to comply with WordPress standards. - Updated Font Awesome library // April 25, 2014 - Updated Theme Version Number // April 24, 2014 // - Optimized for WordPress 3.9 - Gallery text will now do shortcodes. // February 27, 2014 // - Updated: Includes Envato Toolkit, update checker - Updated: Documentation updating themes - Fix: Google Webfonts now work with font-variants - Fix: WooCommerce Widgets Style fix // February 11, 2014 // - Fixed: Shop product row alignment issue // January 04, 2014 // - Fixed: Bug where added manual quotes would not save correctly. - Fixed: Issue where sharing to facebook would not fetch correct site info. - Fixed: Issue where Isotope filter menu would not work correctly in WP3.8. // December 18, 2013 // - Feature: Hooks. Now very easy to add your own custom HTML/CSS to the homepage right from the back-end - Fix: Admin Panel CSS - Update: Documentation


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Since 1994, Hubble Space Telescope has been taking pictures of newly-born stars in the Orion Nebula and the southern constellation of Vela — two regions of space located roughly 1350 light-years from Earth.
Now, by stitching these pictures together, astronomers have created time-lapse movies of transient stellar phenomena known as "Herbig-Haro objects," beautiful jets of glowing gas (emitted by newly born stars) that are roughly ten times the width of the Solar System and travel through space at several hundred kilometers per second.
"For the first time we can actually observe how these jets interact with their surroundings by watching these time-lapse movies," said astronomer Patrick Hartigan, who led an international team of scientists in collecting the images and piecing them together. He adds:
Those interactions tell us how young stars influence the environments out of which they form. With movies like these, we can now compare observations of jets with those produced by computer simulations and laboratory experiments to see which aspects of the interactions we understand and which we don't understand.
The movies, compiled in the video up top, depict jets HH 1, HH 2, HH 34, HH 46, and HH 47. HH 1 and HH 2 are actually a pair of jets being ejected in opposite directions by a single star, as are HH 46 and HH47. Pictures of the jets were taken at various points in time between 1994 and 2008.
When stitched together, the images reveal that the stars eject jets not in a steady stream, but in "clumps" of gas that move at varying speeds as they're jettisoned by the young stars. When clumps of gas moving at different speeds collide, they give rise to what are known as "bow shocks."
You can read more about these supersonic interstellar jets over at NASA
Video clips and images via The European Space Agency's Hubble Website


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Environmental Science Option
The Environmental Science Option is available to students registered in Honours BSc programs in Biology, Chemistry or Geography. (Refer to the Faculty of Arts chapter for the Geography BA and BSc programs available.) Normally, students will register in the option during Year 1 or Year 2. Transfers into the option after Year 2 must be approved by the dean.
Students are
advised to take BI110, BI111, CH110, CH111, GL101 and GL102 in Year 1. Details of the requirements are given with the honours programs involved. Refer to:
Honours Biology with Environmental Science Option,
Honours Chemistry with Environmental Science Option,
Honours Geography with Environmental Science Option.


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Projects Abroad Human Rights Office – Cape Town, South Africa – Monthly Reports
Projects Abroad Human Rights Office - Cape town - Monthly reports - March 2012
This month saw the South African public holiday 'Human Rights Day'. The 21st March is a day in which we remember the massacres in Sharpeville and other parts of South Africa. On this day in 1960, police opened fire and killed 69 people at a peaceful demonstration against the apartheid pass laws. Although the apartheid laws have been abolished there are still many human rights violations taking place within South Africa every day. We as a human rights office come in to contact with just some of these people on a daily basis and know the importance of the work we do here. Below is an idea of the work we've been up to this month.
Social Justice
This month we were given a whole day to dedicate to the Bonnytoun boys in which we shut down the office and took all our volunteers and staff to the facility. The boys were free for the full day and so we were asked to prepare something to keep them occupied for the day. We decided to make our theme 'fun' and revolved our plan for the day around that. The morning involved a soccer tournament in which the boys from each dorm competed and we then had an awards ceremony where all the boys received some sort of medal. After lunch we ran three activities. A drama group, dance competition and some 'sports day' style games (such as the three legged race, egg and spoon and the wheelbarrow race). All of the activities went really well with just some of the highlights being a water balloon fight and a dance off from the boys at the end of the day to win a soccer. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, the boys, volunteers and staff alike.
Ruyterwacht Mock Trial
This month we only visited the mock trial a couple of times as we had to put it on hold due to the Easter holidays beginning in the schools. We are also keen to gain more interest in the project and get more children involved as most of those participating now took the program last year and so have already done it once. Once Easter is over our challenge will be to up our numbers and then really get the ball rolling with the mock trial program.
St Anne's
We are still going strong with the computer workshops at St Anne's. The women are really enjoying themselves, even though the work is very basic some of these women have never even switched on a computer before let alone used one to type up a letter or search the internet. These are skills which are invaluable to them.
Manenberg Girls
This social justice project has just begun again after the New Year and we have had a few meetings with the girls. It is the same group as before and is has been nice to reunite with them. The challenge now is to come up with some activities which will engage the girls. We are looking to arrange a dance competition in the near future as this is something which the girls enjoy and can relate to.
Legal Services
Lavender Hill Legal Clinic
Clients are continuing to come to Lavender Hill for updates on their cases and volunteers continue to assist them. Much of the work on behalf of the client takes place at the office and the visits to Lavender Hill just involve reporting back to the clients, gaining further information or consulting with new clients. It is a great opportunity for volunteers to get out into the disadvantaged communities and see the clients in the own communities.
Manenberg Legal Clinic
We are getting more and more clients attend the Manenberg Clinic giving volunteers lots to work on back at the office. Some of the cases have been very intense and sometimes hard for volunteers and staff to hear. Some of these clients have horrifying stories and it can shock volunteers and really open their eyes as to the dire situations some people live in. We do as much as we can to assist these clients though and hope that the little involvement that we do have with their lives can make a huge difference.
Kraaifontein Legal Clinic
This is another legal clinic which began at the beginning of the month. As the other two legal clinics are based in 'coloured areas' we wanted to open one in a predominantly black area. So far client numbers have been quite low and we are still in the early days of getting the word out to people. As the clinic is quite a distance from our office, we are hoping that interest in the clinic grows in the following few weeks, otherwise we may have to look to set up in a new area.
Case file's within the office
Volunteers have been working hard on cases with new clients walking into the office all the time. This month has seen some interesting refugee cases and clients who are struggling with Home Affairs for one reason or another.


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India Volunteers Embrace Diwali Celebrations
Projects Abroad India has organized Diwali celebrations at the Vallalar Illam orphanage in Srivelliputtur. Diwali is the most important holiday for millions of Indians. The 5 day long festival is also known as the Festival of Lights. Oil lamps are often placed in houses and streets to honor Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth and beauty.
On the first day of Diwali 31 volunteers from Projects Abroad arrived at the orphanage to be greeted by 70 children who marched to the entrance of the gate. A boy banged on the drums to welcome them. All the volunteers and Projects Abroad staff were given a lime as a symbol of welcome and a kumkum (red paste mixed with sandlewood) to put on their foreheads.
Rose Yelland from the UK office of Projects Abroad was there to join in the festivities. She had the pleasure of cutting a ribbon to open a new kitchen provided by Projects Abroad.
Rose said: 'We then headed to the garden and all the volunteers planted a tree sapling. Yoga positions were demonstrated by the kids followed by lunch and sweets served on a large banana leaf. Games and prizes were given followed by a customary fireworks display.
The excitement of the kids was a joy to see. An amazing day has been had by all. The project supervisor thanked all the staff for their hard work and Projects Abroad for donating £100 pounds for the kids' Diwali celebrations.'
Happy Diwali or Shubh Diwali to all!


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It's rare to come across a 'Warong' indigeniously built on a former abandon wooden house. Mak Long Warong Satay is a prime example where minimal renovation provides the right dining ambiance akin to an old Kampung village. I spotted this place a few weeks back when its big banner was hung on its entrance. Feeling the appetite for satay (skewered meat), I decided to stop by this place to fill my stomach.
Rows of satay are seen stacked up on the red container waiting to be cooked.
I ordered the Mak Long ABC too which tasted not bad at all. Instead of the usual shaved ice dessert, they also include pineapple cubes and a dollop of red beans on the side.
And here are the satays. We ordered the chicken and beef variants as you can see here.
Each stick costs RM 0.70 which is just about the price you paid elsewhere. I prefer the chicken flavour as the meat is tender and sweet.
The best way to eat these skewered meat is with nasi impit (RM 1.00) and cucumber and onions with the spicy satay sauce.
Warong Satay Mak Long
Tel: 012-2434866
Located along Jalan Puchong (Batu 6) after turning in from Old Klang Road.


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If you want to go diving on 14 WWII Japanese shipwrecks in the Philippines, you need to go to Busuanga Island in north Palawan and stay in The Puerto Del Sol Dive Resort and Dive Academy., which is only MINUTES from the WRECKS.
If you are in El Nido or Boracay, this is the place to come next for diving.The Puerto Del Sol Resort Hotel is is one of the best Dive Resort Hotels in Palawan, that surround Puerto Del Sol Bay on the West Coast of Busuanga Island, for Wreck diving 14 WWII Japanese Ship Wrecks.
The diving in Busuanga is a wreck divers dream, 14 wrecks at around 25 to 30 meters deep.They are better than Boracay or El Nido.You can dive three dives a day no problem. Most of the wrecks are only minutes from our Dive Resort and Dive Academy at Puerto Del Sol Resort.
Our Dive Acadamy and dive shop are very well equipped, plenty of space to wash your gear , nice classroom and terrace next to the restaurant easy entry onto our dive boats.
Also there are many activities available in our immediate area. Island hopping, snorkeling and diving our fantastic reefs,you can visit Calauit Wildlife Park and see African animals such as Giraffes, Zebras and Deer. WE also have Caves and waterfalls. Visit Black Island for its huge white sand beach that is more spectacular than Boracay.
At night watch the falling stars that are always visible due to our clear not polluted night sky.
When you are ready to eat and drink visit one of the Restaurants and Bars that surruound the Puerto Del Sol Bay.
Our Resort Hotel. The Puerto Del Sol Resort & Dive Academy, is one of the best of the Busuanga Resorts. Surrounded by mother nature at its best.


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- either on the last page of the game creation process OR (and/or?) on the "Awaiting Players" page, there should be a form where you can invite players to come join. ideally, this form would list your friends with check boxes by their names so you can auto-add them to the distribution of the PM that goes out.
This will improve the following aspects of the site:
- facilitating the creation and joining of games.
- a side benefit is that this gives high ranks an easy way to invite other "officers" to come play, eliminating the need for a "filter" against lower ranking players- another suggestion that has been made but rejected. another way to skin that particular cat!


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Posted in Other 30+ days ago.
Type: Full Time
Job Summary:
The Client Solutions Specialist II will be responsible for incremental business growth for their assigned targeted areas. This position partners with the field sales teams in creating a strategy to achieve this goal. The Client Solutions Specialist will educate customers on the Manheim Express Marketplace, and actively seek opportunities to grow the relationship by consistently outstanding service that will meet the dealer s business needs.
The Client Solutions Specialist II will manage assigned customer relationships for Manheim Express customers with the goal of providing a personalized experience. The Client Solutions Specialist will ensure that we deliver a personalized, low-effort, positive experience to our dealer customer by proactively collaborating with field sales teams, other Manheim companies, customers and local auction departments in order to ensure that customers expectations are met or exceeded.
Primary Duties:
Reviews customers performance and recommends solutions for improving conversion rate and/or market share.
Conduct thorough assessment of vehicle condition following the Manheim Express Inspection process.
Locate, start, move, inspect, and return vehicles on dealer s lots safely.
Understand basic NAAA frame/structure guidelines as well as common vehicle condition flaws and how to identify them.
Perform basic mechanical checks on vehicles including, powertrain, drivetrain, and electrical components.
Understand basic vehicle valuation methods and guide dealers on GFB and floor pricing.
Develop and strengthen relationships with dealers over the phone, online, at the auction through planned contact and meetings.
Partners with sales in educating, selling and training customers on Manheim Express products and services.
Collaborates with customer account team to identify opportunities for growth.
Generates leads to other channels (Next Gear, notification of newly registered dealers to sales, etc.)
Collaborates with Sales to plan, execute, and follow-up on targeted accounts.
Utilizes SalesForce.com for reporting, lead input and customer performance reviews.
Inform and educate dealers of changes in auction policies and procedures.
Demonstrates professionalism and sincere appreciation for the business relationships that have been established amongst the dealers and Manheim.
Functions as a solid team player and work closely with teammates, field sales, and customer care to create a superior customer experience.
Works with manager to ensure a consistent and effective online and in-lane customer experience, appropriate transaction processing, high customer satisfaction and service levels.
Visibly demonstrates safety commitment by following all safety and health procedures and modeling the behaviors related to such. Actively participate in support of all safety activities aligned with Safety Excellence.
Performs other duties as assigned by management.
Qualifications:Bachelor s Degree in related discipline or an equivalent combination of education and work-related experience required.
3+ years Auction experience or dealership experience strongly preferred.
Must have a valid driver s license and a safe driving record.
Effective communication (written and verbal) and interpersonal skills required.
Ability to engage customers in a consultative manner.
Motivated and ability to work with remote supervision.
Solid computer skills, including ability to use Internet and MS Office effectively.
Ability to adapt to and work effectively within a constantly changing environment.
Excellent customer service and problem-solving skills required.
Ability to perform repetitive tasks; manual dexterity.
Vision abilities required include close, distance and depth perception.
Ability to sit, stand or walk for prolonged periods of time. Ability to bend, stoop, squat, or kneel; ability to lift and hold at least 10lbs at waist level for an extended period of time; ability to lift up to 30lbs.
Exposure to moderate noise level, may be exposed to fumes and odors.
About Cox AutomotiveCox Automotive Inc. makes buying, selling and owning cars easier for everyone, while also enabling mobility services. The global company's 34,000-plus team members and family of brands, including Autotrader®, Clutch Technologies, Dealer.com®, Dealertrack®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, NextGear Capital®, VinSolutions®, vAuto® and Xtime®, are passionate about helping millions of car shoppers, tens of thousands of auto dealer clients across five continents and many others throughout the automotive industry thrive for generations to come. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta-based company with revenues exceeding $20 billion. www.coxautoinc.comCox is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer - All qualified applicants/employees will receive consideration for employment without regard to that individual's age, race, color, religion or creed, national origin or ancestry, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, physical or mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, ethnicity, citizenship, or any other characteristic protected by law.Statement to ALL Third-Party Agencies and Similar Organizations: Cox accepts resumes only from agencies with which we formally engage their services. Please do not forward resumes to our applicant tracking system, Cox employees, Cox hiring manager, or send to any Cox facility. Cox is not responsible for any fees or charges associated with unsolicited resumes.


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Associated Landscape Contractors of America
When was the last time you went out to dinner and were so happy with the service that you felt the staff deserved more than a 20-percent tip? More often than not, you probably feel like you're being overly generous in leaving a standard 15-percent tip. It seems that many businesses today don't provide customers with the service they deserve and for which they have paid.
Even so, some organizations still take pride in going out of their way to meet their customers' needs. The Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA) is one such group. ALCA is an association comprised of members from all aspects of the grounds-maintenance industry: landscape maintenance, installation and design/build contractors; interiorscapers; industry suppliers; landscape architects and educators. ALCA works to provide its members with information that will help them run a better business by offering a full range of programs and materials.
"One of the things that ALCA prides itself on in meeting the needs of its members is that we're the association to come to for business information," says Debra Holder, executive director.
For example, ALCA offers the Executive Forum, an opportunity for top managers to exchange ideas in roundtable discussions and hear well-known industry speakers. Annual Specialty Conferences also are planned, such as the Interior Plantscape and the Landscape & Grounds Maintenance conferences.
"Financial [and] management information in particular is an important focus for us," Holder explains. "We have several seminars on these topics at every conference."
Holder says the organization works hard at offering value-added information. "We feel so strongly that if [members] attend one conference or Executive Forum, we feel that the benefits alone from attending will more than pay for their dues," she says. To bolster this belief, ALCA offers new members a $50 coupon to use toward any educational event.
Certification is another specialized service of ALCA's. About 800 ALCA members currently are either Certified Landscape Professionals (CLPs) or Certified Landscape Technicians (CLTs). Holder describes certification as being "a qualifier. Consumers and specifiers feel more comfortable that they've achieved a certain level. It shows they do have the knowledge base. Certification helps to upgrade the whole industry."
Not only does ALCA benefit its members, however, but it works toward serving the industry as a whole. Holder describes how the organization encourages students to consider working within the grounds-maintenance field. "We want to promote landscaping as a viable career opportunity," she says. "We have materials that support these causes." In fact, ALCA has produced a brochure specifically designed toward attracting students-even as far as the colors used on the cover, which were chosen because they are attractive to kids.
Other member benefits include ALCA's monthly Landscape Contractor News magazine, its Safety Resource manual, full-color marketing brochures and a variety of manuals, guides and videos. (Members receive a 30- to 80-percent discount.) ALCA also represents industry interests to help affect legislation. ALCA informs members on the latest news through Legislative Alerts and columns in the magazine.
Membership costs range from $25 for student members to $5,000 for landscape contractors with sales greater than $50 million a year.
Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2020 Penton Media Inc.


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Sunday March 18,
Tags #algorithm, #attraction, #creative men, #creativity is random, #dating, #free will, #humans, #illusion, #moist robots, #parties, #shop around, #short term relationsips, #relationships
Woman: Okay, what's going on here? Dilbert: I'm creative. Studies show that women prefer creative men for short-term relationships. Woman: That plant is random, not creative. Dilbert: Creativity is random. If creativity were anything but random, someone would have figured out the algorithm by now. I notice that your pupils are dilating. That's a sign of attraction. My plan is working. Free will is an illusion. Humans are nothing but moist robots. Just relax and let it happen. Woman: This is weird. I'm actually attracted to you now. Dilbert: Thanks, but I'm going to shop around. Woman: My world no longer makes sense! Dilbert: Walk it off.


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The Forex world is constantly evolving and during its weekly trading hours there is a wealth of news a trader must keep on top of if they want to make the most money possible. Indeed, because the market can be affected by a number of dynamics, it is essential they know exactly what's happening at all times in order to avoid any unprofitable deals.
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The challenges facing prospective buyers of the least expensive homes in the U.S. are getting harder to overcome. The median down payment for the cheapest 25 percent of proper ..
An American assessment team found "far fewer" Yazidis trapped in northern Iraq than expected, making an evacuation mission less likely, as the flight of minority gro ..
U.S. import prices fell in July as a decline in the cost of petroleum products offset a rebound in food prices, keeping a lid on imported inflation pressures. The Labor Depart ..
Bond yields dropped to record lows across the euro zone on Thursday and the euro hovered near its weakest in nine months after Germany reported its economy shrank in the secon ..
Wal-Mart Stores reported a 2.8% rise in quarterly sales, helped by higher sales at its smaller-format stores, but U.S. same-store sales failed to show growth again. ..
BERLIN/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The euro zone economy ground to a halt in the second quarter of the year, drained of vigour by contraction in Germany and stagnancy in France. Zero ..
Lenders say these aren't the same products as the so-called "liar loans" that were pervasive before the housing bust. Instead, the loans are going to borrowers ..
We are going to lead it, period," Chief Executive Officer John Chambers told analysts on a conference call. In emerging markets, where the company faces sluggish sales an ..
Global gold demand saw a sharp year on year decrease in the second quarter of this year, according to the latest report from the World Gold Council. ..
British retailer Marks & Spencer (MKS.L) is close to having both its food and general merchandise divisions "firing on all cylinders" and expects a better Christ ..
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Obama: 'Remember how we felt after Sandy Hook'
- Victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting met with President Obama on Thursday
- Obama%27s comments came as gun-control advocates held a National Day to Demand Action
- President wants Senate to act on gun bills
WASHINGTON — Standing among a group of mothers who have lost children to gun violence, President Obama on Thursday attempted to increase pressure on Congress to pass a package of gun-control bills.
"We need everybody to remember how we felt 100 days ago and make sure that what we said at that time wasn't just a bunch of platitudes — that we meant it," Obama said in remarks at the White House. The audience for his speech included family and friends of victims of the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
The president's comments came as the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a gun control advocacy group led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, and Organizing for Action, a pro-Obama group spun off from his presidential campaign, held dozens of events across the country to demand action on reducing gun violence.
The Bloomberg-backed group also released a new television ad on Thursday featuring Sandy Hook families.
The legislative package that the Senate is expected to vote on next month when it returns from its spring holiday includes provisions to expand background checks on gun purchases, create new penalties for straw purchases and includes funding to bolster school safety.
"We have cried enough. We have known enough heartbreak," Obama said. "Now is the time to turn that heartbreak into something real."
But the Senate package won't include a ban on assault weapons nor will it set limits on the size of ammunition clips, both of which were key elements of Obama's gun plan released in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
The Senate, however, is expected to vote on an amendment to add the assault weapons ban to the Senate's gun bill. The assault weapons ban has only about the support of 40 members of the upper chamber, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Three GOP lawmakers — Sens. Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz — have threatened to block a vote on the gun package.
Lee said in a statement following Obama's speech that the gun proposals are "constitutionally problematic."
"The proposals the president is calling for Congress to pass would primarily serve to reduce the constitutionally protected rights of law-abiding citizens while having little or no effect on violent crime," Lee said. "It is deeply unfortunate that he continues to use the tragedy at Newtown as a backdrop for pushing legislation that would have done nothing to prevent that horrible crime."
Obama argued the gun proposals that the Senate is weighing are backed by a vast majority of Americans and that lawmakers have a duty to act. But a CBS News poll published earlier this week shows that support for tighter gun laws has diminished in the months after Sandy Hook.
Support for stricter gun control laws stands at 47% today, down from a high of 57% just days after the shootings, according to the CBS News poll. Thirty-nine percent want those laws kept as they are, and 11% of respondents want them made less strict, according to the latest poll.
After the Newtown shooting, "the entire country was shocked," Obama said. "And the entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different. Shame on us if we've forgotten. I haven't forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we've forgotten."
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is working on an alternative to the gun bill backed by Reid.
Beth Levine, a spokeswoman for Grassley, said that there is no timeline for release of the Grassley alternative but that it would be ready when Reid's bill is introduced.
Republicans and some conservative Democrats have objected to the inclusion of universal background checks in the Reid bill.
Contributing: Jackie Kucinich


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The National Association of Wabash Men honored its own — and welcomed new members to the alumni ranks — as part of the grand and cherished Wabash Homecoming Weekend, which included a special Athletics Hall of Fame induction ceremony, sports, music, and the spirit competition among the freshmen.
Activities got underway with Thursday's Chapel Sing! See photo albums above and at right!
The weekend has many highlights including Friday night Hall of Fame inductions, Saturday morning Alumni Chapel Awards, a noontime Celebrating Leadership Luncheon, and, of course, Little Giant football at 2 p.m.
It all kicked off Thursday morning when the Class of 2017 fraternity men and independents participate in one of the College's real "rites of passage" – Chapel Sing. The somewhat garbled sounds of "Old Wabash" will fill the air as freshmen are tested on their knowledge of one of the nation's longest fight songs.
For the first time ever, Wabash athletic teams were honored instead of individuals. Inductees included: 1908 Basketball, 1951 Football, 1977 Football, 1980-81 Wrestling, 1981-82 Basketball, 1982 Football, 1991 & 1993 Swimming, and 1994 & 1995 Cross Country.
Alumni took center stage Saturday before the football game. The 11 a.m. Alumni Chapel, honored the spirit of Barney Hollett '36, was hosted by the National Association of Wabash Men.
Award winners were: John Goodrich '67 - Fredrick J. Urbaska Civic Service Award; Jim Amidon '87 - Frank W. Misch Alumni Service Award; Dick Stephenson '62 - Clarence A. Jackson Career Service Award; Ethan Olberding '99 - Jeremy Wright Young Alumnus Award; Jimmy Haffner - Honorary Alumnus; Alison Kothe - Honorary Alumna; Fred Haase '71 - Alumni Admissions Fellow; James Durham '64 - Alumni Admissions Fellow; Jeff Been '81 - Career Services Fellow.
The generosity of Wabash men was celebrated at the annual Celebrating Leadership Luncheon in Knowling Fieldhouse. There was a special presentation honoring long-time Education Studies Professor Deborah Butler, who recently retired.
The Denison Big Red, 2-0 after wins over Earlham and Hiram, will visit for a 2 p.m. kickoff. The Little Giants opened just a week ago and cruised to a 69-0 win over Hanover.
The entire campus was decorated with decorations in front of the student living units on Saturday morning, and a banner contest took place at half time. The Class of 2017 carried on the tradition of crowning a Homecoming queen, as well!
The weekend is capped by the Homecoming Concert in the Fine Arts' Salter Hall. Come listen to the Wabash College Glee Club.


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Brewers' Lohse beats Pirates again, 5-3
3 hits for Maldonado, including one where he hit the cover off the ball
Kyle Lohse pitched effectively into the seventh inning, Carlos Gomez homered and the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 5-3 Friday night.
Lohse (3-1) improved to 11-2 in his career against the Pirates, allowing one earned run in a win against them for the second time in six days.
He fell one out shy of a complete game Sunday at Miller Park. This time, he was charged with three runs - two unearned - and four hits with three walks with five strikeouts.
Gomez homered deep to center to lead off the fifth and added an RBI single an inning later as the Brewers rallied from an early two-run deficit.
Charlie Morton (0-2) allowed five runs and eight hits in six innings while losing to Lohse for the second time this week. Russell Martin had two hits and two RBIs for the Pirates, who have lost six of eight.
Four Milwaukee relievers combined to allow five baserunners in 2 2-3 innings but did not allow any runs while stranding six. Francisco Rodriguez worked the ninth for his fifth save in five opportunities this season. His last three saves have come against the Pirates.
After not getting a runner past first base in their first three innings against Morton, the Brewers loaded the bases with no outs in the fourth. Scooter Gennett's double to right scored Ryan Braun and Aramis Ramirez. Khris Davis was thrown out at home on the play, but Martin Maldonado followed with a single to drive in Gennett and give Milwaukee a lead it didn't relinquish.
A day after scoring nine runs in the seventh and eighth innings, the Pirates pulled to 5-3 in the seventh on Andrew McCutchen's RBI double, but Will Smith came on and struck out cleanup hitter Pedro Alvarez with runners on second and third to end the inning.
The Pirates loaded the bases in the eighth, but Jim Henderson got Starling Marte to pop out to end the threat.
The game featured one of the more peculiar plays of the season when Maldonado literally hit the cover off the ball in the sixth inning.
Maldonado grounded to third, where Alvarez fielded a ball that's cover had partially ripped off. Alvarez threw the flapping, awkwardly floating ball toward first, but it fell well short of the bag, giving Maldonado an infield single.
NOTES: Pittsburgh SS Jordy Mercer was removed from the game with what the team called "discomfort" in his right ankle after Maldonado collided with him at second base during the third inning. Mercer stayed in the game the remainder of the inning. ... Less than 15 minutes before first pitch, the Pirates announced they acquired 1B Ike Davis from the New York Mets in exchange for minor-league RHP Zack Thornton and a player to be named. ... The Pirates went homerless after hitting four in an 11-2 win in the series opener Thursday. They entered Friday with 19 homers over their previous nine games. ... Playing each other seven times in a 10-day span, the Pirates and Brewers play the eighth of those meetings Saturday when Pittsburgh LHP Wandy Rodriguez (0-2, 7.31) faces Milwaukee RHP Matt Garza (0-2, 3.43).


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We have seen many spectacular demolitions, but the destruction of the Mobile Service Structure at NASA/USAF's Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, is perhaps the most striking of them all: instead of imploding down, the whole ultra-strong metal structure falls to it side and actually seems to bounce on the ground—shattering cameras a mile away—looking almost intact after the dust clears up. The sound, even from the distance, is deafening.
The Launch Complex 40—and 41—was the base for the largest US expendable rocket, the Titan IV. It started operations in 1965 with Titan IIIC rockets, and it was home for the legendary Mars Viking (1975) and Voyager missions, which has been crossing our solar system since 1977. The site was also the launch pad for the failed Mars Observer mission, as well as the successful Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, which departed Earth on October 15, 1997.
The last launch was for a Lacrosse-5 reconnaissance satellite, launched on April 30, 2005 on board a Titan IVB rocket.


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Some thoughts on "sex by surprise"
There's a lot going around in bloglandia and on the interwebs about WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange's sexual assault charge in Sweden; commentators are saying that Assange didn't really rape anyone, and these are trumped-up charges of "sex by surprise," which basically means that Assange didn't wear a condom and so days later the women he slept with are claiming rape. Totally unfair, right?
Well, no, I'm not sure it's that straightforward. The actual details of what happened are hard to come by, and are largely filtered through tabloid sources that are quick to offer crucial facts like the hair color of the women (blonde) and the clothes they wore (pink, tight), but it sounds like the sex was consensual on the condition that a condom was used. It also sounds like in one case, condom use was negotiated for and Assange agreed to wear a condom but didn't, and the woman didn't realize it until after they had sex; in the second case, it sounds like the condom broke and the woman told Assange to stop, which he did not. This is of course speculation based on the bare-bones reported description of events, but it's at least clear that "this is a case of a broken condom" isn't close to the whole story. (It's also worth pointing out that the charge is actually a quite minor one in Sweden, and the punishment is a $700 fine).
Withdrawal of consent should be grounds for a rape charge (and it is, in Sweden) — if you consent to having sex with someone and part of the way through you say to stop and the person you're having sex with continues to have sex with you against your wishes, that's rape. That may not sound entirely familiar to Americans, since the United States has relatively regressive rape laws; in most states, there's a requirement of force in order to prove rape, rather than just demonstrating lack of consent. Consent is more often used as a defense to a rape charge, and it's hard to convict someone of rape based solely on non-consent. Some states, like New York, have rape laws on the books which include "no means no" provisions for intercourse — basically, if a reasonable person would have understood that the sex was not consensual, then that's rape. It seems obvious enough, but those laws are not used nearly as often as forcible-rape laws; they aren't on the books in many states, and they're difficult to enforce even where they are.
Withdrawal of consent gets even trickier. It's an obvious enough concept for feminist thinkers who have spent more than 10 minutes considering the realities of sex and sexual assault: If you consent to sex but then at some point during sex withdraw that consent by telling your partner to stop, your partner should stop, and if your partner doesn't stop then that's assault. It's not too hard, for those of us who have had sex, to imagine how this works — I have a difficult time imagining any decent human being hearing their partner say "Stop!" in the middle of sex and not, you know, stopping. I can't imagine hearing my partner say "Stop" and not stopping. And if your partner is saying "Stop stop stop stop!" and you keep going, yes, you are raping them.
But the concept of withdrawing consent seems to be a little tougher for folks who think of sex as something women give to men (or men take from women); it's definitely a tougher concept for folks who think that sex inherently sullies women. I suspect that the thought process goes, If the damage (penetrative sex) has already been done, then the situation can't possibly turn into a rape, because the initial penetration itself occurred consensually, and it's that penetration that's the basis of the harm in any rape case. Consent, in that framework, isn't the point. The U.S. is a bit of a patchwork when it comes to withdrawal of consent laws, with some states recognizing that withdrawal of consent is valid and that it is rape if you keep having sex with someone after they've said no, and other states either not touching the issue or not recognizing as rape situations where consent is withdrawn post-penetration. Making the Assange story juicier blog-bait in the U.S. is the fact that we're deeply wedded to the notion of rape as forcible; despite many of our best efforts, a consent-based framework for evaluating sexual assault is not yet widely accepted. So we hear "she consented to sex but only with a condom and he didn't use a condom and now she's claiming he raped her" and we go, "say what?", because that's so far removed from the Law & Order: SVU sexual assault model. When, really, if you evaluate sexual assault through the lens of consent rather than force or violence, the picture starts to look a little bit different.
Whether withdrawal of consent is what actually happened here is impossible to tell, so I'm not suggesting that Assange is a rapist or that these charges are 100% definitely on-point; I have no idea. But neither do the commentators who are saying that Assange did nothing more than have sex without a condom. And it's important to counter the "haha sex by surprise those crazy Swedes" media narrative with the fact that actually, non-consensual sex is assault and should be recognized as such by law. Consenting to one kind of sexual act doesn't mean that you consent to anything else your partner wants to do; if it's agreed that the only kind of sex we're having is with a condom, then it does remove an element of consent to have sex without a condom with only one partner's knowledge. To use another example, if you and your partner agree that you can penetrate her, it doesn't necessarily follow that she has the green light to penetrate you whenever and however.
I'm not particularly interested in debating What Assange Did or Whether Assange Is A Rapist, and I'd appreciate it if we could steer clear of that in the comments section. Rather, I'm interested in pushing back on the primary media narrative about this case, which is that women lie and exaggerate about rape, and will call even the littlest thing — a broken condom! — rape if they're permitted to under a too-liberal feminist legal system. In fact, there are lots of good reasons to support consent-based sexual assault laws, and to recognize that consent goes far beyond "yes you can put that in here now." It's a shame that the shoddy, sensationalist reporting on this case have muddied those waters.
UPDATE: As greater clarity is brought to these charges, it sounds like it was a lot more than "they agreed he would wear a condom and he didn't." According to the Press Association, "The court heard Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner … The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on August 17 without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home." Emphasis mine. Kate Harding has more.
Comment published at http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/12/06/some-thoughts-on-sex-by-surprise/