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Calling him "dangerous," a Van Nuys Superior Court judge sentenced actress Jodie Foster's estranged father Friday to five years in county jail.
Before pronouncing a sentence, Judge Gregory Dohi said he was struck by Lucius Foster's lack of remorse.
"Despite your obvious charm, your compelling life story, you're dangerous," said the judge.
U.S. & World
Foster, 89, was convicted this week of 21 counts of grand theft and nine counts of contracting without a license. Each of the crimes were misdemeanors, meaning Foster would be sentenced to jail, not prison.
Don Cocek, Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney, called Foster "the Bernie Madoff of Sherman Oaks" after this week's verdict.
Foster was convicted of bilking at least 21 elderly and/or low income residents out of $5,000 down payments after promising them he was developing modular homes from shipping containers. No homes were ever built and when the victims sought their money returned, he ignored them.
At Friday's sentencing hearing, Cocek said another nine victims have come forward, including a chaplain at the Veterans Administration Hospital.
During the trial, the prosecutor said Foster used his World War II war stories, lies and personal charm to steal as much as $130,000 from prospective homeowners.
Several of the victims shared their stories at the sentencing hearing.
"Mr. Foster is not a good citizen since he lies since Day One," said Gerry Ramirez who told the judge he'd tried to get his money back.
Tom Marks stared down at Foster as he admitted he'd lost six to seven thousand dollars to someone he thought had been a friend. "I trusted you," he said.
Corrinne Unsell claimed her dealings with Foster almost led to a divorce. After signing a contract with Foster, her husband lost his job and their pleas for their money to be returned fell on deaf ears.
"Has he admitted how many lives he has ruined?" she asked. "It does not matter that Foster is 89 years old, we all know what he is capable of."
She asked the judge to lock him up to prevent other people from going through what she has faced.
The prosecutor called Foster "a predator" and claimed that while the jury was deliberating on Tuesday, Foster was already lining up new victims.
Cocek said Foster emailed one of them and claimed he would be out of jail in just 160 days.
Foster's daughter-in-law, Diana Foster, did take the stand on his behalf, but she also apologized to the victims.
"I care about this man," she said. "He's a generous man, a generous man. He's my father-in-law and I love you Lucius."
"I don't want to take my children, his grandchildren to see him behind bars," she said, adding that his age was also an issue.
In the end, however, the judge concluded Foster was a delusional man who had hurt the middle class and the lower middle class and would go on doing so unless stopped.
Just before he was led away by the bailiff, Foster genuflected.
Lucius Foster left actor Jodie Foster's mother before the actress was born.
A restitution hearing will be held in February.
Follow NBCLA for the latest LA news, events and entertainment: Twitter: @NBCLA // Facebook: NBCLA


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Measles is a very contagious
(easily spread) infection that causes a rash all over your body. It is also called rubeola or
red measles.
The measles vaccine
protects against the illness. This vaccine is part of the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) and MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella [chickenpox]) vaccines. Most children get the vaccine as part of their regular shots. This is why measles is rare in the U.S. and Canada.
Measles is caused by a
virus. It is spread when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or shares food or
drinks. The measles virus can travel through the air. This means that you can
get measles if you are near someone who has the virus even if that person
doesn't cough or sneeze directly on you.
You can spread the virus
to others from 4 days before the rash starts until 4 days after the rash
appeared. The virus is most often spread when people first get sick, before
they know they have it.
you have had measles, you can't get it again. Most people born before 1957 have
had measles.
The first symptoms of
measles are like a bad cold—a high fever, a runny nose, sneezing, a sore
throat, and a hacking cough. The
lymph nodes in your neck may swell. You also may feel
very tired and have diarrhea and red, sore eyes. As these symptoms start to go
away, you will get red spots inside your mouth, followed by a
rash all over your body.
When adults get
measles, they usually feel worse than children who get it.
usually takes 8 to 12 days to get symptoms after you have been around someone
who has measles. This is called the incubation period.
Your doctor will ask
you about your symptoms and examine you. If your doctor suspects that you have
measles, he or she may do a blood test and/or viral culture.
If you think you have measles, call your doctor so he or
she can report the illness to the local health department.
Measles usually gets better with home care. Take medicines to lower your fever. Also, get plenty of rest and drink lots of
fluids. Stay away from other people as much as you can so that you don't spread
the disease. If your child has measles, keep him or her out of school
until at least 4 days after the rash first appeared. Keep your child out longer if he
or she is not feeling well. Your doctor may suggest vitamin A supplements if your child has measles.
Most people get better within 2 weeks. But measles can sometimes cause dangerous problems, such as lung infection (pneumonia) or brain swelling (encephalitis). In rare cases, it can even cause
seizures or
If you have been exposed to
measles and you have not had the vaccine, you may be able to prevent the
infection by getting a shot of
immunoglobulin (IG) or the measles vaccine as soon as possible. Babies who are
younger than 12 months, pregnant women, and people who have
impaired immune systems that can't fight infection
may need to get IG if they are exposed to measles.
Getting your child vaccinated is important, because measles can sometimes
cause serious problems.
False claims in the news have made some parents concerned about a link between autism and vaccines. But studies have found no link between vaccines and autism.1
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases. Outbreaks can easily occur. For instance, a person from another country may have measles and not know it yet. If that person travels outside his or her own country, he or she could spread measles to people who are not immune. Also, if you travel to another country and you are not immune to measles, you may be at risk.
If you don't know whether you're immune to measles and you plan to travel, check with your doctor or local health clinic to see whether you should get the vaccine before you travel.
Learning about measles:
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) offers a
variety of educational materials about parenting,
general growth and development, immunizations, safety, disease prevention, and more. AAP guidelines for various conditions and links to other
organizations are also available.
This CDC website has information about vaccines and the diseases that can
be prevented by immunization. It includes the recommended
immunization schedules for children, teens, and adults. You can also find
information about vaccine side effects and safety, school and state
requirements, and immunization records. Interactive schedules are also
This website is sponsored by the Nemours Foundation. It
has a wide range of information about children's health—from allergies and
diseases to normal growth and development (birth to adolescence). This website
offers separate areas for kids, teens, and parents, each providing
age-appropriate information that the child or parent can understand. You can
sign up to get weekly emails about your area of interest.
The National Network for Immunization Information provides
information on immunizations, including each of the recommended childhood
vaccines, the recommended childhood immunization schedule, tips on using the
World Wide Web as a source of immunization and health information, and links to
other helpful sites. You can also search for the vaccines that each state
requires before entry into school or day care.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is an agency of the
United Nations. It has about 200 member states. WHO promotes technical
cooperation among nations on health issues, carries out programs to control and
eliminate disease, and strives to improve the quality of human life.
The Web site has information on many health topics, including health and
disease related to travel.
CitationsPeacock G, Yeargin-Allsopp M (2009). Autism spectrum disorders: Prevalence and vaccines. Pediatric Annals, 38(1): 22–25.Other Works ConsultedAmerican Academy of Pediatrics (2012). Measles. In LK Pickering et al., eds., Red Book: 2012 Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases, 29th ed., pp. 489–499. Elk Grove Village, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2010). Use of combination measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine. MMWR, 59(03): 1–12. Also available online:Cherry JD (2009). Measles virus. In RD Feigin et al., eds., Feigin and Cherry's Textbook of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, 6th ed., vol. 2, pp. 2427–2451. Philadelphia: Saunders Elsevier.Elliman D, et al. (2009). Measles, mumps, and rubella: Prevention, search date July 2007. Online version of BMJ Clinical Evidence: http://www.clinicalevidence.com.Gershon AA (2010). Measles virus (rubeola). In GL Mandell et al., eds., Mandell, Douglas, and Bennett's Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases, 7th ed., vol. 2, pp. 2229–2236. Philadelphia: Churchill Livingstone Elsevier.Mason WH (2011). Measles. In RM Kliegman et al., eds., Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics, 19th ed., pp. 1069–1075. Philadelphia: Saunders.Perry RT, Orenstein WA (2006). Measles. In FD Burg et al., eds., Current Pediatric Therapy, 18th ed., pp. 786–790. Philadelphia: Saunders Elsevier.
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Healthwise Staff
Medical Review:
John Pope, MD - Pediatrics & Thomas Emmett Francoeur, MD, MDCM, CSPQ, FRCPC - Pediatrics
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subset: commoncrawl


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Wikipedia: Seema Parihar is a former bandit and an Indian politician. She is a member of the Samajwadi Party. Parihar claims that her inspiration is Phoolan Devi, who was known as the Bandit Queen, and had also been a bandit before becoming a politician.
~ Biography
Seema Parihar was born in Auraiya in Uttar Pradesh, India in a poor Thakur family. She was kidnapped in 1983, at the age of 13 from her village of Bawine in Uttar Pradesh by dacoits Lala Ram and Kusuma Nian, and became a dacoit herself. In 1986, she married dacoit Nirbhay Singh Gujjar, but later returned to Lala Ram. Parihar became the leader of her gang, and engaged in looting, kidnapping and murder in the regions surrounding Bihand jungle and Chambal River. During her career, she killed 70 people, kidnapped 200 people and looted 30 houses. In June 2000, after 18 years of dacoity, she surrendered to Uttar Pradesh police. She was jailed, facing 29 charges, including 8 counts of murder and half a dozen of kidnapping. In August 2001, she said that she had received offers from political parties.
In the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election, 2002, Parihar supported Shiv Sena. In November 2006, she joined the Indian Justice Party, and ran as its candidate for the Mirzapur-Bhadohi Lok Sabha by-election in 2007.
In January 2008, she moved to the Lok Janshakti Party, and in October that year, switched to the Samajwadi Party. As of October 2008, she had been acquitted of 15 of the criminal cases against her, and was on bail for the remaining 14 cases.
In 2011, Parihar was appointed the head of the women's wing of the National Corruption Eradication Council, an anti-corruption organisation.
~ Popular culture
Seema Parihar played in the film Wounded - The Bandit Queen. This film is the first instance of Hindi cinema where a "bandit queen" played out her own real-life story on screen. Shot on location in the Chambal Valley, the film was released in 2006. The film went on to win the Critics Award at the Leicester Expo Bollywood film festival (United Kingdom) in 2005. In 2010 Seema Parihar also participated in season 4 of the Indian reality TV show Bigg Boss. This show aired on Colors from October 3, 2010 and Parihar was evicted on day 76 (week 11) from the house. Before participating in Bigg Boss, Seema Parihar was in jail and filed a petition in Allahabad High Court seeking permission to appear in the program. Allahabad High Court initially rejected her plea to appear. In June 2015, she appeared in a music concert in Delhi organised by Mox Music Company and Raj Mahajan where she told about her experience how spent 17 years in jungles.
For similar cases, see: Female Serial Killer Bandits


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The incense burning on the cookie tray in front of me is promising more refreshment than the melon I balanced between my moccasins and my new account of Truman Capote's life while unlocking the door to Laura's apartment an hour ago. Make a note of this: I have no desire to run, and after a night of staying awake listening to the thunder push its way through the rain and watching the lightening flash on the undersides of my eyelids, I don't have much energy for anything other than mixing coffee grounds with cardamom and water and watching froth form from my place on the counter by the stove. None of it is mine. I put the mug to my lips, taste the strength, taste the heat, and am grateful for the people who say they love me and the ones who don't say a thing. I believe in being swept away but haven't figured out how to let go. When I look at a tree I find I am still and stirred. What I see is amazing, overwhelmingly complex and strong yet beautiful, but what I don't see is that there would be no tree if not for its roots, as wide as the canopy.. and it's been said a billion times before, the analogy is old.. but true, and tough [for me]. Remember when we ate Panera bread donated to and rejected by the homeless shelter around the corner for dinner every night for a week? We heated tea in the microwave hoping the circuit wouldn't pop when we used the toaster at the same time, lest one of us would have to squeeze behind the banquet table and duck into the basement with the faint light of a cell phone. We watched the world from the roof and thought maybe, just maybe there was something we could do that would bring us fulfillment every day for the rest of our lives. We would rent the upstairs apartment just north of the Ben Franklin bridge and convince ourselves we were home. Maybe next year. I still want to know Jesus more than I want anything else. It's frustrating to you, right? It's frustrating to me too. More than anyone knows. I believe in love despite my inability to accept it when you tell me. The love I know heals your body, releases your broken spirit, fills your hidden cracks and corners with patience, understanding, reassurance. The love I know requires little to trust and much to escape from. There is no hesitancy. I'm tired, yes, but this is what I know: mangoes taste better when I eat the skin, and I'm ready to buy moccasin boots. Let the leaves fall. Take me to the mountains and let me move. Lead me to the river and let me flow.
And oh soul, arise.
August 25, 2011
What I know
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The Amish Tube Caddy is a storage system for your body baits such as Reef Runners, Husky Jerks, and Bombers. Individual tubes house your baits without damage and tangles. These tubes are clear for excellent visibility with a cap on each end for easy access. There are 17-7" tubes in each caddy.
We now have a Tube Caddy with 3 1/2" tubes for body baits, flies, harnesses, or spoons. There are 34 tubes and caps per box.
Baits in picture are not included.


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Review: Xi'an Famous Foods Opens Greenpoint Outpost
This article made possible by a donation to our Writer's Fund Raffle by In God We Trust
I'd just like to get this right out of the way and say that black magic works. I've dabbled in the dark arts and after all of the proper blood rites have been performed and incantations memorized, I've gotten exactly what I wanted.
Xi'an Famous Foods has opened a location closer to me than their East Village spot. Their new location in Greenpoint (86 Beadel St) is a ten minute walk from my house, and I'd personally like to thank the Dark Lord Clothos for making this possible.
For those of you not familiar with Xi'an in all its spicy glory, allow us to show you the way. Originally from Flushing, with two outposts in Manhattan, Xi'an Famous Foods has consistently been credited with helping the resurgence of traditional Chinese food here in New York. Specializing in traditional Western Chinese cuisine, Xi'an represents conventional Americanized Chinese food in much the same way the croissanwich represents French food. A very different beast indeed.


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Teaching Folklore
Folklore A-Z
American Folklore is a collection of North and South American folktale retellings categorized by region, ethnicity, and type. The complete collection is indexed and searchable by keyword. United States Folklore gathers folktales, tall tales, myths and legends by state.
Teacher Resources includes a glossary of folklore terms, recommended books, Web resources for teachers, and K-12 lesson plans.
ESL Reading provides practice reading English with short stories. Some of the ESL short stories have a listening component.
Lessons & Activities
For K-12 lessons and activities in myths, fairy tales, folktales, tall tales, Scholastic offers Tall Tales: Everything You Need. This resource features tall tale extension activities for grades 3–5, a unit plan on playing with language for grades 6-8, writing activities for grades K-12, and more.
In American Folklore: A Jigsaw Character Study students in grades 3-6 work in small groups to read and analyze elements of American tall tales.
The Kennedy Center ArtsEdge has three lessons using folktales and tall tales for middle school students.
- In Exploring American Tall Tales students in grades 5-8 examine the common elements of folktales and tall tales and discover how the tales reflect the American spirit.
- In Tall Tales Today students in grades 5-8 write an original tall tale set in contemporary America.
- In Writing Folktales students in grades 6-8 learn the characteristics of folktales, evaluate existing tales, and write their own tales.


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On Facebook, Daniel Nexon pointed me to this post by Steve Saideman, titled "Lamenting The Loss of the Light, The Ebbing of Grand Theory and The Decline of Old Boy Networks." Saideman's post itself is a commentary on Stephen Walt's and John Mearsheimer's ridiculous article, "Leaving Theory Behind: Why Hypothesis Testing Has Become Bad for IR," which will soon appear in the European Journal of International Relations.
Walt and Mearsheimer's article is absurd on many levels. But I mention it for how well it reflects my post, "Progress, Science, and Exemplars — or — When It Sucks to Be Young."
In that post, I mention that it is horrible for your career to be young in a science with loose exemplars — that is, in a field that is "non-paradigmatic" or a "revolutionary science." The more revolutionary the science, the looser the exemplars, the more "knowledge†and "experience†are both measured in years. The less things change — the less progress is made — the less youth matters relative to years of experience.
Or in diagrammatic form:
What's bizarre is that Walt and Mearsheimer agree with me! But this makes them sad. Walt and Mearsheimer would rather political science stay as anti-youth and revolutionary as possible, so that their power and influence could remain strong:
Over time, professions also tend to adopt simple and seemingly objective ways to evaluate members. Instead of relying on "old boy†networks, a professionalized field will use indicators of merit that appear to be impersonal and universal. In the academy, this tendency leads to the use of "objective†criteria—such as citation counts—when making hiring and promotion decisions. In extreme cases, department members and university administrators do not have to read a scholar's work and form an independent opinion of its quality; they can simply calculate the "h-index†(Hirsch 2005) and make personnel decisions on that basis.22
The second part of the paragraph is literally incoherent, attacking the use of an h-index by arguing it's a raw count of citation. Walt and Meirsheimer seem unable to do math, and so their inability to understand even basic fractions should not surprise you. What should be surprising is they are so openly defending the power aristocracy that comes from using subjective scores and the "old boys" network!
In fairness to Walt and Meirsheimer, the intellectual poverty they confess through their incoherent ramblings is not entirely their fault. Political science has been so revolutionary, so paradigmatic, so subjective for so long that few may know what a science actually is, or even understand the terms used to describe science.
Consider this earlier passage in Walt and Meirsheimer's article, in which the "worse than wrong" passage is intended to be uncontroversial:
Indeed, some senior IR scholars now rail against the field's grand theories. In his 2010 ISA presidential address, for example, David Lake described the "isms†as "sects†and "pathologies†that divert attention away from "studying things that matter†(Lake 2011: 471). Thus, it is not surprising that "the percentage of non- paradigmatic research has steadily increased from 30% in 1980 to 50% in 2006†(Maliniak et al 2011: 439). Of course, one could advocate for middle range theories while disparaging grand theories, and indeed Lake does just that. The field is not moving in that direction, however. Nor is it paying more attention to formal or mathematically oriented theories (Bennett et al 2003: 373-74). Instead, it is paying less attention to theories of all kinds and moving toward simplistic hypothesis testing.
The highlighted passage, originally by Daniel Maliniak simply means that empirical research is increasing, and that non-empirical research is declining, within political science. But Maliniak, and thus Walt and Mearsheimer, bizarrely use "paradigmatic" to refer to less paradigmatic (that is, less capable of progress) fields, and "non-paradigmatic" to more to more paradigmatic (that is, more capable of progress) fields.
Political science has been in the fever swamp for so long that the notion of progress as an outcome of normal science has almost entirely been lost. If Walt and Mearsheimer had their way, it might be lost, and the field simply divided into a stationary oligarchy of old boys network.
At one point in their article, Walt and Meirsheimer say that "the creation and refinement of theory is the most important activity in [social science]." This is nonsense. The most important activity in science is the prediction, control, and improvement of behavior. Theory can help, diagram can help, interviews can help, process tracing can help. But the paen to old boys network, and the nonsense that Walt and Mearsheimer try to pass off as a scholarly article, certainly doesn't.


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2 queries about corpse asana.
I'm sure someone (on the forum) said it isn't a good idea to use it if advancing on to paranayama and so on.
Why? Crowley recommended it as legit didn't he?
Secondly, someone told me that some factory workers who were suffering from slipped disks were told by their Doctor to lie on their backs every night but on the floor (i.e. what you and I would call "the corpse asana") as treatment. Sure enough , months passed after doing this exercise and their slipped disks were healed. How cool is that?


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Is your desire to avoid confrontation turning your kids into tantrum terrorists?
Little Isabella doesn't want to leave the park. Best I can tell, her Mom has reached the fourth two-minute warning for departure and every time The Little Princess hears the phrase "Come on honey, time to put on your shoes." she goes apoplectic and runs the other direction. Mom has yet to get off the park bench; I guess she's counting on parental telepathy at this point. After a brief interval, she tries a half-hearted "Honey … " from a safe distance, only to be met with more howls of protest. As if to explain the unfolding spectacle, the Mom looks at me and says, "She just loves the park."
But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here … let's go back to where it all begins.
No parent likes to hear their child cry. It's far more than annoying, it's emotionally unsettling. Child Development studies have shown that parents have an involuntary physiological response to the sound of a crying child. Agitation, increased heart rate—hearing a little one cry elicits a physical and emotional reaction not entirely unlike a panic attack. And, not surprisingly, when a parent hears one of their kids crying, their first instinct is to figure out the quickest way to make it stop. On more than one occasion, I've stumbled half-asleep into Pebble's room and scooped her out of her crib with a whispered "Daddy's here, you're okay." without ever knowing why she was crying in the first place. Sometimes she's had a bad dream and sometimes she's just bored and wants company.
After the basics of feeding, clothing and protecting your child from peril, your primary role is not Comforter-In-Chief, it's teacher.
Of course, very young children, who have not yet learned anything that resembles emotional nuance, have pretty much only one level of discontent—utter and complete anguish. At a certain age, there's no distinction between the agony of falling and cutting open your head and the agony of discovering that an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba is over. And because the volume and passion of the protests that accompany each of these crises is equal, it's not uncommon to see parents swoop in with equal concern and try to fix the situation with soothing, kind words and the inevitable bribes and negotiations that follow. This is how we get trained, from the time our kids are born, to do whatever it takes to keep them happy. What begins as an instinctual urge to meet the needs of an infant slowly morphs into an exhausted capitulation to the demands of a toddler. We get tired of fighting, tired of the theatrics, tired of hearing the word "No" come out of our mouths. Add to this fatigue the shame that comes with hauling a screaming four-year-old off the swing-set in front of the entire world and keeping oneself planted firmly on that bench seems like a valid, even sensible, option.
While this might be the perfect way to stop the waterworks or avoid a confrontation, it's also the perfect way to raise an entitled toddler who believes that all things are possible through tears. Our desire to avoid confrontation and make everything okay is, in fact,
making our kids into tantrum terrorists, ready to hold the peace and quiet of our lives hostage to their every whim. Sure, there are times when comfort and accommodation from Mommy or Daddy is the perfect remedy: a skinned knee, a bad dream, the death of Marley. Your child's fit about not wanting to eat her broccoli, however, is not one of those times. It's in precisely these moments that a parent has the opportunity to draw a clear and important line between what is and is not an appropriate reaction to life's little disappointments. It's also the perfect moment to show a child that there's a difference between genuine distress—which will always be met with love and care—and unnecessary drama.
All of this gets back to an important rule about being a parent in the first place. After the basics of feeding, clothing and protecting your child from peril, your primary role is not Comforter-In-Chief, it's teacher. Everything we do (and fail to do) is a lesson to our kids
about how the world works and what is expected of them in that world. To be sure, there are times when the appropriate lesson is "Don't worry, I'm here for you, everything is going to be okay." but somewhat more often the lesson needs to be "Hysteria is not an
acceptable method of expressing your desires and will never get you what you want."
In our hearts, we already know that these lessons are not interchangeable. Think about how horrified any of us would be to hear a parent tell a bleeding three-year-old to "suck it up and walk it off." We should be equally horrified when a meltdown over nap-time or the equal distribution of popcorn is met with cooing whispers along the lines of "Mommy loves you, if you stop crying we'll make cookies after your nap!" The only possible lesson a child can learn from such an encounter is that a tantrum is, indeed, an appropriate reaction to napping, eating veggies, sharing toys and anything else he's not thrilled about doing. Even better (from the kid's perspective), they've learned that if they bring enough fit and fury to bear on such outrages, their efforts will be rewarded with an afternoon of homemade baked goods.
I recognize that, sometimes, a worn out parent simply wants to bargain their way to a little serenity. As strongly as I feel about this subject, I sometimes find myself backtracking on hard and fast rules, in an effort to buy ten minutes of quiet to send an email or return a phone call. At the end of a long day, with dishes in the sink and laundry to fold, the path of least resistance can be very attractive. But in my heart I know that every time I bend the rules for a moment's peace, I am actually undermining my ability to enforce the rules in the future. Every time we catch ourselves thinking "I just don't want to fight about everything." we're guaranteeing that there will, in fact, be another fight.
Rather than trying to avoid every meltdown, we can end this behavior altogether by teaching our kids that wild outrage is not an equally appropriate response to physical injury and a lack of lemonade juice boxes. Doing so requires that we get past our desire to fix everything and, more importantly, summon the energy and resolve to let our kids be miserable when they so choose. A child left alone to perform her displeasure in an empty living room or whose theatrics are, invariably, a one way ticket to time-out, will learn soon enough that such behavior is ineffective and unacceptable.
Kids can be relentless; I am raising a five-year-old who could out-negotiate Congressional Republicans. But each time I buy his compliance rather than demand it, I am trading a split second of "easy" for a lifetime of defiance and debates. When quiet reason fails, it's time get our collective butts off the park bench and drag little Isabella kicking and screaming to the car. Yes, we'll wilt a little under the disapproving stares of the parents around us. Yes, we'll have to deal with a raving lunatic of a toddler who is trying to convince everyone in ear shot that she is being water-boarded. No, these things are not fun. This is the hard work of being a good parent and, like most hard work, it simply must get done.
Read more by JD Roberto: It Takes a Village, Idiot
Image credit: mdanys/Flickr


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If you are from the coast, begin with Fort Langley where the fur trade is celebrated all year around -- google the Fort Langley National Historic Site of Canada for more information. The town of Fort Langley is well worth a visit, too, especially if you are interested in antiques.
In Hope, visit the Hope Visitor Centre and Museum at 919 Water Avenue. Volunteers in Hope are opening up the 1849-and-later Hudson's Bay Company Brigade Trail across the Coquihalla range for hiking. The name of their organization is Hope Mountain Centre, and website address http://www.hopemountain.org/ -- on their website you will find information about the Hudson's Bay Company brigade trail project.
My sister and I then took an excursion to the east, not following the brigade trail but the track of Alexander Caulfield Anderson's 1846 exploration over the Coquihalla range to Kamloops. We paused at the Hope Slide, of course, and I have included photos of the valley that Anderson and his men walked up in the summer of 1846. The second is the view from the top of the Hope Slide west toward Hope along the Nicolum River valley; the first the view eastward up the Sumallo River valley, looking toward Manning Park.
This is not the view that Alexander Caulfield Anderson saw in 1846. More than 100 years after Anderson walked up this valley (January 1965) Mount Outram let loose an enormous landslide that fell into the valley of the Nicolum Creek and buried Outram Lake under 70-meters of rock and rubble. The landslide violently displaced the water and soft clay of the lake-bed, pushing it 30 metres up the side of the mountain opposite and knocking down all the trees. Four people died; two bodies still lie under the slide.
To the east of the Hope Slide lies Manning Park and our next stop -- Rhododendron Flats, where Alexander Caulfield Anderson began his climb to the top of the Coquihalla Range in 1846.


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Sustainability Policy
SRK recognises the importance of economic and social development, and we contribute to its realisation in many ways. In this context we have responsibility to encourage and support development that can be sustained environmentally, socially and economically for the lasting benefit of those involved. We do this through:
- Our own management and operational practices
- Our natural resources and wider consulting services
- Our relationships with clients and other stakeholders
Our consulting practices are central to the realisation of this policy and they will elaborate and implement it in a manner appropriate to their contexts and focus.


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In the current scenario, many enterprises have ignored the power of accessibility because most of the times they have been observed giving more focus on creating the most unique web designs. Due to this very own reason, the motto to serve the purpose of accessibility has also been ignored many times and the users in the later stages find themselves in the state of lurch where they are unable to access the information.
Majority of the developers are under the wrong impression about the accessibility and they think that eliminating the visual appeal will help to improve the over all functioning of the website. These types of misconceptions often lead to the downfall of the website. But with the changing times, these decade old perceptions have also been changing and as the result of this change, today majority of the online visitors are accessing the website by many ways. According to various web analysts, creating the accessible web designs can be instrumental in boosting the viral reach of the website. All together, it can play a constructive role in amplifying the viewership of the website as well.
If you feel that improving the accessibility of the website is a serious matter then it is significant for you to take a few measures to optimize the same. So here given below are some of the solutions, implementing which you can improve the accessibility.
Develop an Informative Content For The Graphics i.e images, videos, pictures
If you want to make your website expressive then it is vital for you to develop rich content for the graphics and write only those words which can easily understood by the online users.
Provide Logical Title to the Links
By giving a logical name to the link, you can easily navigate the users to desired search results. If you will give a reasonable title to the links, the users are most likely to understand what type of content are they going to get in return to their clicks. For an instance if you have clicked on the about us page then on the address bar a linked name âabout usâ will appear on your screen and then you will be directly steered towards the main site.
Select Some Suitable Font Sizes
You as the developer should utilize the font sizes in the form of percentages rather than using it in pixels or points. This initiative will permit the users to re-size the fonts from smaller to a larger size respectively.
Provide Comprehensive Details
The developers can avoid using unnecessary colors or bright hue tones which most certainly can avert the interests of the users. Suppose you are marking some buttons or required fields with a different name but if it is not well perceived by the online visitors then indicating them with easier words can be a suitable option.
Fill the Missing Links
If you want to avoid yourself from visiting the same page again then using the skip links can be the apt option. These missing links can play a key role in steering you directly to the desired pages.
Chose Easy Name For The Menu
The developers instead of naming the menu buttons like China' can also name it as âSelect Country Nameâ. Instead of naming it like Male or Female, you can also make it Gender. The name of the default items should be so expressive that a common online visitor can easily understand the main crux of that given link.
Forms Should be Titled Aptly
The forms should be created in logical and reasonable manner. The questions and answers should be inserted in the same line of the input field. The labels should be put on the same side of the input field.
Properly Insert the âHâ Tags
By using the proper headlines that too in a disciplined sequence will help the visitors to reach their destination directly. You can also hyperlink these headlines in a group and by clicking it on any of the links, you will be steered to the requisite topics. Similarly, during the PSD to HTML conversions, you are required to follow these rules and would have to place all the H tags in a sequence.
CSS Can be Beneficial
If you want to own a full control over the layout then using the cascading style sheet can be a better option. With CSS, you can change the horizontal or say linear design of the page without changing its visual layout.
Utilize Reasonable Page Titles
If you want that the online visitors should visit your page repeatedly then utilizing the reasonable page titles can be the option simply worth it. If you will put same name for every web page, the reader may get conufused and he may leave the page forever. So it is always recommended that you should keep some logical names for the page titles.
Make the Best Use of Colors
The colors in the website should be used in such a way that a user can easily understand the clear meaning of contents published in it.
Add Detailed Tag Elements with Acronyms or Abbreviations
When you are using the short forms or appreviations in your webpages then using the comprehensively defined tag elements can be the apt option. For an example if you are using the word HTML, then the user visiting the site may get confused and he may shift on to some another link in the website.
Utilize Language with Full Precision
You should use only those words which can easily be searched by the search engines. For an example it is better to the word âSelect Your Cityâ instead of New York. The language used by you should be precise and accurate.
Escape From Using the Word CAPTCHA
You should avoid using the word Captcha because there are many users are actually not well versed with the technical terms. So it is always recommended that you should try to make the forms as simple as possible.
Develop a properly Synchronized Form
The order submition form in your website should be developed in such a way that it can easily be understood by the amateur users as well. Even if theperson is not well versed with technology he will be able to operate it with an ease. The lack of technology should not create any hassle for them.


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Knowing that has helped me figure out how to be a better speaker, but it's also helped me to pay attention to introverts in my audience so I can do a better job connecting with them. Extroverts will come find me before a talk, raise their hands (sometimes too much), volunteer to do demonstrations, answer questions to the audience. Introverts need a bit more (and sometimes less) from you. Here's my personal list of 6 things you can do for the introverts in your audience when you're the extroverted speaker.
- Give fair warning: Introverts benefit from and need extra time to prepare--where an extrovert would jump in and wing it, the introvert skids to a halt without time to anticipate. So clue them in early about what to expect. One of my most prized comments on a feedback form said, "Thank you for taking us outside our boxes--and for warning us early on that you were going to do that."
- Provide openings: Just because people are introverted doesn't mean that they don't want to participate--from getting up in front of the room to try a public speaking exercise to just raising a hand to answer a question. But it falls to the speaker to make sure that she's not just calling on the more obvious extroverted volunteers, by taking questions from all sections of the room and staying aware and acknowledging of the quieter audience members. If you're speaking and notice someone who hasn't participated, make sure you ask what they think or whether they have a question.
- Provide closings: For starters, provide yourself some closings and stop talking long enough to let the introverts get a word in edgewise, since being the all-encompassing speaker can make introverts feel shut out and unable to contribute. Introverts also are great listeners...which might seem like a signal to keep talking. Don't. If you've brought an audience member up to demonstrate something, make sure to close out the experience with a thank you, round of applause for the volunteer and the closure she needs to escape back to her seat.
- Play to your strengths: Extroverts connect well with people, so make sure you are doing that even with the quieter audience members, using eye contact, moving around the room and other tactics to quietly let introverts know you see them, too. If you can give voice to their issues and concerns, do it--that's one of the strongest ways extroverts can give introverts a hand.
- Play to their strengths: If you're working on audience involvement, think through some alternatives that don't require people to get up in front of the room. What can they do in their minds, at their seats, or by turning to the person next to them? When it comes to making yourself available to audience members, do hang around so those who wouldn't question you in front of the group can approach you one-on-one afterward.
- Offer alternatives: I often do workshops where some participants wind up on video--and because I use ultralight cameras anyone can use, I clue in the introverts by suggesting they volunteer to operate the cameras if they don't want to be on camera. Don't be surprised if some introverts stretch themselves to be on camera, but do offer options so they don't have to do that if they don't want to.
Looking for famous speeches by women? Check out The Eloquent Woman Index of Famous Women's Speeches, with a wide variety of women speakers, types of speeches and topics to inspire your next speech. Each one comes with lessons for speakers, plus video or audio and a transcript, where available.


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Opera. Katerina Izmailova, the rich man's wife, who falls passionately in love with the worker, Sergei, poisons her father in law Boris, participates in the murder of her husband Zinoviy, and is finally deported to a prison camp, where she faces new horrors.
Premiere February 4, 2012
At last the Göteborg audience is able to renew contact with Katerina Izmailova, the rich man's wife, who falls passionately in love with the worker, Sergei, poisons her father in law Boris, participates in the murder of her husband Zinoviy, and is finally deported to a prison camp, where she faces new horrors.
Watch a clip from the performance.
Watch photoes from the performance.
Watch an interview with director Graham Vick
Graham Vick
Graham Vick, the great British director, is famous from stages such as the Metropolitan in New York, La Scala in Milano and the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. This time he is working on his first production in Sweden and as often in the past is collaborating with scenographer and costume designer Paul Brown. The internationally sought after Russian director Thomas Sanderling is strongly associated with the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and was personally acquainted with Shostakovich who liked to hear him conduct his work.
The West Swedish world soprano Gitta-Maria Sjöberg, with Copenhagen as her home stage visits The Göteborg Opera for the first time in the title role. In the role of Sergei we also have a Swede from the west of the country for whom the world is his workplace: the tenor Pär Lindskog. The third major role, Boris, is played by our own Mats Almgren, who has sung many significant bass parts both here and abroad.
Shostakovich's dramatic opera was a great success at its premier in Leningrad in 1934. Two years later Stalin saw a performance and the work was banned. After thirty years the opera was resumed in adapted form with the title Katerina Izmailova. This version was shown at Stora Teatern in 1984 under the direction of David Radok, with Elisabeth Erikson in the title role and Enzo Florimo as Boris. The production was an enormous success and invitations came for guest performances in Dresden, Bergen and Stockholm. One of the conductors was the composer's son Maxim Shostakovich.
Thomas Sanderling
Thomas Sanderling grew up in St Petersburg, where his father, the celebrated conductor Kurt Sanderling, was permanent conductor of the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He graduated from the Music School of the Leningrad Conservatory and went on to study conducting at the Hochschule für Musik in East Berlin, becoming Music Director of the Halle Opera at 24 years old. By his mid-twenties he was conducting in all East Germany's principal orchestras and opera houses, including the Dresden Staatskapelle and the Leipzig Gewandhaus and won the Berlin Critic's Prize for his opera performances at the Komische Oper Berlin. His CD of Shostakovich's Michelangelo Suite (premiere recording) directly lead to his becoming assistant to both Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein. In the early 1980s he became permanent guest conductor of the Deutsche Staatsoper Unter Den Linden, which led to his successful debut at the Wiener Staatsoper, conducting Die Zauberflöte. Immediately afterwards the Wiener Staatsoper invited him to conduct Le Nozze di Figaro - the first performance after the death of the great Karl Böhm. He has won many prizes and a competition and is particularly renowned for the German, Russian and French orchestral repertory.
Interview with Thomas Sanderling from BBC.
Historical photo
One of the greatest operas of the 20th century, Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was created at the end of the Soviet creative avant-garde wave of the 1920s. The young Shostakovich had become a star in the rising with the publication of his first symphony and the production of his first opera, the Nose, the production of which required enormous resources. Meyerhold, Kandinsky and Prokofiev were the artists of the day for those in the know, and in Paris the Russian Ballet was riding on a wave of thriumphal performances. In the years just after the Russian revolution, creative artists still enjoyed a relatively free life but this was soon to change. Lenin died in 1924 and within five years Stalin had more or less made himself totalitarian dictator.
Shostakovich's opera was not allowed to be performed abroad either and so no more was heard of it until the beginning of the 1960s, when Stalin had died and life as an artist had become somewhat easier. The composer decided to revise his opera, removing and reworking the trombone glissando passage and similar parts. The highest notes for the role of Katerina and the lowest for her father-in-law Boris were brought lower and higher, respectively. The scenes featuring the father-in-law's return as a ghost were removed and a large number of smaller changes were also made. However, the work was not performed under its new name of Katerina Ismailova to start with. Instead an especially selected audience who were informed in advance attended the first performance at the Stanislavski Theatre in Moscow in 1962 - a performance which was advertised as being Rossini's The Barber of Seville. The performance was a success and finally Shostakovich's masterpiece could be performed on stage, albeit in a slightly different form than the original.
The role of Katerina was most famously played by Galina Vishnevskaya, who also recorded an opera film of a slightly shorter version of the work four years later. In her memoirs Galina has told the story of the film, including the freezing river she had to dive into together with the artist who played her rival in the prison camp, Sonyetka. (The film is now available on DVD.) Galina's husband, famous conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, did not take part in the recording of the film. He had been denounced by the state and a few years later the couple escaped to the West, where they later recorded the original version of the opera for EMI. Two Swedish singers took part in the recording: Nicolai Gedda sung the lead role of Sergei and alto Birgit Finnilä sang the part of Sonyetka.


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Carrera de San Silvestre
In Madrid, football fans can live their dream by walking on the turf of a legendary football pitch, visiting the changing rooms, and sitting on the bench as though you were about to manage a game. You can do all this in the stadium of the Real Madrid football club, where other options include witnessing spectacular matches, visiting the trophy rooms and enjoying a meal overlooking the pitch. Madrid's other team, the Atlético de Madrid, is also a fixture at international competitions and is well-known for its performance in several thrilling matches. However, football isn't everything. There are other unmissable events such as the Madrid Tennis Open where you can see the world's best players in action. The city is also home to two famous athletics events, the Marathon and the San Silvestre race. Just another example of Madrid's wholehearted commitment to sport.
Turismo Madrid
Club Atlético de Madrid, S.A.D.
Estadio Vicente Calderón


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Follow RFF News on your cell phone. Text follow rff to 40404 you will receive txt messages with RFF News
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Have to say I am still lovin Russell! He tells them what he is going to do and they just let him do it. What is up with that? But I don't get why Shambo voted for him last night. And what was her message? 10-9-B? or was it an 8?
REWARD CHALLENGELets give credit where credit is due the difference in the Reward challenge was Natalie. Period. She won that challenge for her group. She extended her body waaaaaay out over the platform gripping it with only her feet and used her flexibility to reach much further than John was able to and that was the difference.
I didn't like Russell in the beginning but he is brilliant and for me, the best Survivor player ever. He's changed the way the game will be played from now on. (Not that it will work to mimic Russell's play because it can't be done.)
GMTA. Jeff thought not giving away the pie was a big deal and sealed John's fate too.
On a separate note, I just found out that the pilot for a new show I created with Mark Burnett, called LIVE FOR THE MOMENT will air at 8 pm on Thursday, Jan. 28th, 2010.
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"Harry Potter" actor Daniel Radcliffe set the record straight about smooching co-star Emma Watson.
Reportedly the actor was quoted as saying that Watson was "a bit of an animal" during their movie kissing scene. But in an interview with Reuters, Radcliffe explains it wasn't exactly the way he phrased it.
"When you're in this period of time when you do an interview and it's aired the next day, your quotes come back at you so quickly. On (TV show) "Daybreak" the other day ... Kate Garraway was interviewing me ... and she said 'Oh the kiss with Emma in this film, she's a bit of an animal, isn't she?' and I said 'yes', and then it was like I'd said it. Emma hit me on the arm as soon as we came off the red carpet (at the film premiere) and said 'What have you been saying to people about me?'"
U.S. & World
Fresh off the box office success of the seventh film in the series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I," Radcliffe previewed Part II, which is slated for a July 2011 release.
"The last movie is going to be really, really fast-paced and a load of action in it and it is like a war film," he told Reuters. "If we had done this book in one film, the stuff that would have got cut is most of this film.
"For me that is the most interesting part of the story, because it's where the characters develop and change.
"This film, despite the silence and slower pacing ... was the most chaotic to work on by quite a long way. It was mad. We all felt the pressure on this film to make it the best, because it's the last."
Asked about his feelings on filming the last-ever scene of the series, Radcliffe said: "There was just some very primal reaction. When you've spent 10 years in a certain place with a group of people, suddenly that goes ... you do sort of go 'What am I going to do now?' It was bizarre, because I knew I was doing a musical next year but that was all done, I knew that was going to happen, and I knew there was a definite option of one of about three films ... but at that moment I was really thinking ... 'What am I going to without all of you?' because it was those people I had learned so much from."
Selected Reading: Reuters


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Actress Mary-Louise Parker was left squirming in her seat during a joint video interview with her "Red 2″ co-star Bruce Willis this week after the action man grew increasingly hostile towards the presenter.
The pals recently sat down for a chat with Jamie Edwards, a reporter for British radio station Magic 105.4, to promote the new movie sequel, but the session, which was filmed for online audiences, turned awkward after Willis took issue with the journalist's question about their favorite shooting locations.
Turning the tables on Edwards, Willis is shown in the video footage saying, "Has any actor ever told you this. … This part is not acting, what we're doing right now. You might be, but we're just selling the film now. Sales. The fun part was making the movie."
Parker chimed in, adding, "The fun part happened, yeah," but she was visibly uncomfortable as Willis continued to respond dryly to Edwards' questions.
When Willis was asked how he would sell the film to potential audiences, he retorted, "I wouldn't. I would slash my hooves."
As the interview came to a close, Willis sarcastically told Edwards, "You have some great questions here Jamie. Great chat."


text: Sea Life an Tropical Stickers and Tattoos. CraftKitsandSupplies carries a large selection of Crafts Stickers and Crafts Tattoos. Crafts Stickers and Tattoos such as, Fish, Tropical Luau Stickers. Crafts Stickers andTattoos are a perfect crafts to supplement other craft projects. Geared for ages 7 and older, these crafts stickers are ideal for Girl Scout and Boy Scout projects.


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This site is the archived OWASP Foundation Wiki and is no longer accepting Account Requests.
To view the new OWASP Foundation website, please visit https://owasp.org
Assessment Criteria v2.0
This page is maintained by the Global Projects Committee to help assist Project Leaders with information about successfully running an OWASP Project. It will be updated from time to time, and changes will be discussed and announced on the OWASP-Leaders list.
OWASP created the project assessment criteria to define the quality levels for OWASP Projects with the purpose of evaluating all OWASP projects. The overall goal was to ensure that consistent quality levels are maintained by OWASP projects. This benefits both the external audience and those working on projects. The criteria allows the external audience to determine the quality of any OWASP project they are considering. For project members, it provides a method to measure the quality of their project in relation to other OWASP projects. Additionally, the criteria allows for excellent contributions to be recognized and projects which need further work to be identified.
Currently, OWASP projects fall into three primary categories:
- Tools
- Documents
- Activities and Research
The Tools and Documents categories are easily understood. The Activities and Research category is less obvious and is used for projects which either have multiple sub-projects or have project releases which fall into both the tools and documents category. Thus, Activities and Research can be used for parent projects that cover multiple smaller sub-projects. Some examples will make this clearer:
- Java
- .Net
- ...
- OWASP Guides
- Testing Guide
- Development Guide
- Code Review Guide
- ASDR (Application Security Desk Reference)
- OWASP OpenPGP Extensions for HTTP - Enigform and mod_openpgp
All existing projects and their current ratings are here. Any new OWASP project and its releases will be assessed based on the criteria below as well as any new Season of Code project. The goal is to eventually have all OWASP projects and releases, past and future, assessed under a version of this criteria. The initial set of assessment criteria was created for the OWASP Summer of Code 2008 and was designated version 1.0. The current version below was derived from version 1.0 and is version 2.0. Labelling any new criteria with a version number allows for graceful transitions to occur should any criteria change.
Assessing a project
Any OWASP project will consist of two critical pieces:
- the project's health
- one or more project releases
Each of these pieces will be have different methods with which they are reviewed.
People and Projects
Depending on the size and scope of a project, the roles below may be done by separate parties or a single individual may take on multiple roles. Roles vary in their level on involvement with the project, the areas of involvement, their lifespan with a project, etc.
- Project Leader
- Project Maintainer
- Project Contributor
- Project Reviewer
- Project Mentor
Each role will be described in the next revision of this document --Mtesauro 16:09, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


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You could argue that a networking technology never really goes mainstream until it is integrated into a system motherboard, making its use seamless and its cost invisible.
This is why Mellanox is keen on getting quad data rate InfiniBand ports onto mobos and is happy that two motherboard makers popular with the whitebox server crowd, Asustek and Micro-Start International, have opted to slap Mellanox InfiniBand circuits on some new boards.
The two mobo makers will be showing off the new boards at the SC09 supercomputing trade show in Portland, Oregon, next week, but decided to jump the gun and make their announcements Wedneday.
Asustek is putting the Mellanox ConnectX InfiniBand host channel adapter chip on its Z8PH-D12, which is a half-width, two-socket board based on Intel's Xeon 5500 Nehalem EP processors. The feeds and speeds of the Z8PH-D12 were not out yet, but it is a fair guess that it looks a lot like the Z8NH-D12, which has 12 DDR3 memory slots and two Gigabit Ethernet ports (plus an additional 100Mbit port for system management).
The Z8PH-D12 supports both 40 Gb/sec InfiniBand or 10 Gigabit Ethernet protocols, and can therefore support Fibre Channel over InfiniBand (FCoIB) or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) links from servers to storage.
MSI has put the ConnectX host channel adapters on its full-size MS-91D1 and half-width MS-91D2 motherboards for servers as well as the MS-92C2 "1U high-performance computing solution."
The feeds and speeds of these boards - and what looks like a server - were also not released yet, but will no doubt be available next week at SC09. They are almost certainly Xeon 5500 boards.
What we do know is that these mobos implement the ConnectX electronics on the board and provide QDR InfiniBand and 10GE connectivity. We'll let you know what is up when we find the specs next week. ®


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Alanis Morissette has announced an upcoming tour to showcase her latest, Havoc And Bright Lights, out Aug. 28. In addition to tracks off the new album, the shows will be supplemented with nostalgic doses from Jagged Little Pill and other classics from Morissette's angsty oeuvre.
As of late the singer-songwriter has been making more appearances on screen than on stage—both as a pragmatic but loosely ethical obstetrician on Weeds and as an ex-bandmate of Maya Rudolph's character on Up All Night. Morissette sounds excited to wield her trademark vocals before a microphone again, as she has said that the upcoming shows cover "the gamut of every chord choice and every emotion [she has] ever felt." As if anyone would expect anything else.
Aug. 25—Wellmont Theatre—Montclair, New Jersey
Aug. 26—The Paramount—Huntington, New Jersey
Aug. 29—House of Blues—Atlantic City, New Jersey
Sept. 24—Humphrey's—San Diego, California
Sept. 26—Fox Theater—Pomona, California
Sept. 29—Desert Breeze Park—Las Vegas, Nevada
Oct. 1—Henry Miller Library—Big Sur, California
Oct. 4—Center for Performing Arts—Vancouver, British Columbia
Oct. 5—Moore Theater—Seattle, Washington
Oct. 7—Crystal Ballroom—Portland, Oregon
Oct. 8—Knitting Factory—Boise, Idaho
Oct. 10—Paramount—Denver, Colorado
Oct. 12—State Theater—Minneapolis, Minnesota
Oct. 13—Riviera Theater—Chicago, Illinois
Oct. 15—Sound Academy—Toronto, Ontario
Oct. 16—Metropolis—Montreal, Quebec
Oct. 17—House of Blues—Boston, Massachusetts
Oct. 19—Palace Theater—Waterbury, Connecticut
Oct. 22—Terminal 5—New York, New York
Oct. 23—The Fillmore—Silver Spring, Maryland
Oct. 25—The Tabernacle—Atlanta, Georgia
Oct. 26—Ryman Auditorium—Nashville, Tennessee
Oct. 28—Bayou Music Center—Houston, Texas
Oct. 30—Stubb's Waller Creek Amphitheater—Austin, Texas
Nov. 1—Comerica—Phoenix, Arizona


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Large parts of eastern and northeastern Washington suffered significant storm damage on Friday, when high winds and heavy rains ripped through the region, toppling trees, cutting power lines and damaging cars and homes. Flash floods also damaged some areas.
As homeowners, businesses and vehicle owners pick up the pieces, here are some key things to know about insurance claims:
Direct damage to insured structures by wind, wind-driven debris and falling trees is generally covered under standard homeowners and business coverage.
As for vehicles: If you have comprehensive coverage, that will also generally cover damage to a car or truck from falling limbs, etc.
Immediately contact your agent or insurer, who can help walk you through the claims process. If the damage is severe enough that you cannot remain in the home, your policy may include some coverage for temporary living quarters.
Flood damage is usually only covered if you had flood insurance. Contrary to what many people think, flood coverage is NOT part of a standard homeowners policy. In Washington, the first stop for flood coverage is often the National Flood Insurance Program, a federal insurance program sold through local agents.
As for the damage, be sure to take pictures. Avoid making permanent repairs or discarding damaged property until claims officials can document the damage or loss. If you can safely do it, try to minimize further damage, such as covering broken windows.
Here's a more-detailed list of tips for filing an insurance claim after a natural disaster.
Monday, July 23, 2012
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Looking Down From 500 Miles above Earth's surface, you could watch the FedEx Custom Critical Delivery truck move across the country along 3,140 miles of highway in 47 and a half hours of nonstop driving. Starting off in Wilmington, Massachusetts, the truck merges south onto I-95 and keeps right at the fork for I-90. Then it winds its way across the width of New York State, charging past the airport in Toledo, through the flatlands of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming, snaking down the mountain passes and switchbacks above Salt Lake City, across the Nevada deserts and over to Sacramento, then down the highway toward San Jose and off at the California 237 exit, headed for Mountain View.
Neither Jim nor Carla Cline, a married couple who take turns at the wheel, has the slightest inkling that the large wooden crate in the back of their truck might radically change how we see our world. When they finally pull into the parking lot of a low warehouse-like structure around the corner from a Taco Bell, more than a hundred engineers, coders, and other geeks who work for a startup called Skybox Imaging are there to cheer the Clines' arrival. He and Carla delivered some dinosaur bones once, Jim tells me, leaning out the window as he idles by the curb. Elvis' Harley too. "Never saw anything get the attention this got," he says.
Dan Berkenstock, executive VP and chief product officer of Skybox, is in the cheering crowd, fidgeting with his half-filled coffee mug. In worn Converse sneakers, short-sleeved blue oxford shirt, jeans, and glasses, he looks younger than most of the employees at the company he founded, which has been his passion ever since he dropped out of Stanford's engineering school in 2009. Berkenstock's idea for a startup was far outside the mainstream of venture capital investment in the Valley, with its penchant for "lean" software plays and quick-hit social apps. But his company got funded nevertheless, and now Skybox has designed and built something unprecedented—the kind of once-in-a-lifetime something that makes the hearts of both engineers and venture capitalists beat faster. The Clines have just delivered the final piece: a set of high-end custom optics, which will be inserted into an unassuming metal box the size of a dorm-room minifridge.
"What would you say," I ask Jim, "if I told you that you had a satellite in the back of your truck, and these guys were going to launch it into space?" He grins.
"I'd say that's pretty damn cool," he answers. "If they can get it up there."
Data From Above
What can you really learn from 500 miles above Earth? Quite a lot, it turns out. Already, our limited commercial services for satellite imaging are providing crucial data to companies, scientists, and governments. —Sara Breselor
Forty years after humans first saw pictures of a blue and white marble taken from space, it's remarkable how few new images of Earth we get to lay eyes on. Of the 1,000 or more satellites orbiting the planet at any given time, there are perhaps 100 that send back visual data. Only 12 of those send back high-resolution pictures (defined as an image in which each pixel represents a square meter or less of ground), and only nine of the 12 sell into the commercial space-based imaging market, currently estimated at $2.3 billion a year. Worse still, some 80 percent of that market is controlled by the US government, which maintains priority over all other buyers: If certain government agencies decide they want satellite time for themselves, they can simply demand it. Earlier this year, after the government cut its imaging budget, the market's two biggest companies—DigitalGlobe and GeoEye, which between them operate five of the nine commercial geoimaging satellites—were forced to merge. Due to the paucity of satellites and to the government's claim on their operations, ordering an image of a specific place on Earth can take days, weeks, even months.
Because so few images make their way down from space every day, and even fewer reach the eyes of the public—remember how dazzled we were when Google Earth first let us explore one high-definition image of the planet?—we can fool ourselves into thinking that the view from space barely changes. But even with the resolutions allowed by the government for commercial purposes, an orbiting satellite can clearly show individual cars and other objects that are just a few feet across. It can spot a FedEx truck crossing America or a white van driving through Beirut or Shanghai. Many of the most economically and environmentally significant actions that individuals and businesses carry out every day, from shipping goods to shopping at big-box retail outlets to cutting down trees to turning out our lights at night, register in one way or another on images taken from space. So, while Big Data companies scour the Internet and transaction records and other online sources to glean insight into consumer behavior and economic production around the world, an almost entirely untapped source of data—information that companies and governments sometimes try to keep secret—is hanging in the air right above us.
Here is the soaring vision that Skybox's founders have sold the Valley: that kids from Stanford, using inexpensive consumer hardware, can ring Earth with constellations of imaging satellites that are dramatically cheaper to build and maintain than the models currently aloft. By blanketing the exosphere with its cameras, Skybox will quickly shake up the stodgy business (estimated to grow to $4 billion a year by 2018) of commercial space imaging. Even with six small satellites orbiting Earth, Skybox could provide practically real-time images of the same spot twice a day at a fraction of the current cost.
But over the long term, the company's real payoff won't be in the images Skybox sells. Instead, it will derive from the massive trove of unsold images that flow through its system every day—images that, when analyzed by computer vision or by low-paid humans, can be transmogrified into extremely useful, desirable, and valuable data. What kinds of data? One sunny afternoon on the company's roof, I drank beers with the Skybox employees as they kicked around the following hypotheticals:
- The number of cars in the parking lot of every Walmart in America.
- The number of fuel tankers on the roads of the three fastest-growing economic zones in China.
- The size of the slag heaps outside the largest gold mines in southern Africa.
- The rate at which the wattage along key stretches of the Ganges River is growing brighter.
Such bits of information are hardly trivial. They are digital gold dust, containing clues about the economic health of countries, industries, and individual businesses. (One company insider confided to me that they have already brainstormed entirely practical ways to estimate major economic indicators for any country, entirely based on satellite data.) The same process will yield even more direct insight into the revenues of a retail chain or a mining company or an electronics company, once you determine which of the trucks leaving their factories are shipping out goods or key components.
Plenty of people would want real-time access to that data—investors, environmentalists, activists, journalists—and no one currently has it, with the exception of certain nodes of the US government. Given that, the notion that Skybox could become a Google-scale business—or, as one guy on the roof that afternoon suggested to me, an insanely profitable hedge fund—is not at all far-fetched. All they need to do is put enough satellites into orbit, then get the image streams back to Earth and analyze them. Which is exactly what Skybox is planning to do.
The most important thing to understand about Skybox is that there is nothing wonderful or magical or even all that interesting about the technology—no shiny new solar-reflecting paint or radiation-proof self-regenerating microchip, not even a cool new way of beaming signals down from orbit. Dozens of very smart people work at Skybox, to be sure, but none of them are doing anything more than making incremental tweaks to existing devices and protocols, nearly all of which are in the public domain or can be purchased for reasonable amounts of money by anyone with a laptop and a credit card. There is nothing impressive about the satellites they are building until you step back to consider the way that they plan to link them, and how the resulting data can be used.
There are 1,000 satellites orbiting the planet at any given time, But only 12 send back hi-res images.
Berkenstock, John Fenwick, and Julian Mann first teamed up as grad students at Stanford to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize, which promised $20 million to the first group of contestants that could land a rover on the moon and send back pictures. The stock market crash of 2008 killed their funding, but the germ of the Stanford team's idea—to use cheap off-the-shelf technology in space and make money doing it—stuck with them, and they hit on the idea of building imaging satellites along the same principles. "We looked around at our friends and realized that we knew this unique group of people who had experience building capable satellites at a fundamentally different price point," Berkenstock says. "The potential was not just to disrupt the existing marketplace—we could potentially blow the roof off it and make it much, much larger."
The idea was to start with a CubeSat, a type of low-cost satellite that aerospace-engineering grad students and DIY space enthusiasts have been playing with for more than a decade. The CubeSat idea began in 1999, when two engineering professors, looking to encourage postgraduate interest in space exploration, came up with a standard design for a low-cost satellite that could be built entirely from cheap components or prepackaged kits. The result was a cube (hence the name) measuring 10 centimeters on each side, just large enough to fit a basic sensor and communications payload, solar panels, and a battery. The standardized size meant that CubeSats could be put into orbit using a common deployment system, thus bringing launch and deployment costs down to a bare minimum that made it feasible for a group of dedicated hobbyists in a university lab or even a high school to afford. All told, a CubeSat could be built and launched for less than $60,000—an unheard-of price for getting anything into orbit.
The first CubeSats launched on June 30, 2003, on a Russian rocket from the Plesetsk site, and entirely transformed the world of amateur space exploration. A group of Stanford students worked with a private earthquake-sensing company to put up something called Quakesat, which aimed to measure ultralow-frequency magnetic signals that have been associated by some researchers with earthquakes. One team sponsored by NASA sought to study the growth of E. coli bacteria. (True to form, the NASA team reportedly spent $6 million on its first CubeSat mission.) Other teams launched CubeSats to study and improve the CubeSat design itself. The concept proved to be so simple and robust that a website called Cubesatshop.com sprang up to help even the laziest team of grad students build a cheap satellite of their very own: Just click on each of the tabs (Communication Systems, Power Systems, Solar Panels, Attitude Control Systems, Antenna Systems, Ground Stations, CubeSat Cameras) to order the necessary parts.
After 10 years of CubeSat experimentation, it was left to Berkenstock, Fenwick, and Mann to realize that the basic principles of DIY satellite construction might be put to extremely profitable use. As the three men saw it, massive advances in processing power and speed meant not only that they could build a Sputnik-type satellite from cheap parts but that they could pack it with computing ability, making it more powerful than Sputnik could ever be. By extending the craft beyond the CubeSat's 10-centimeter limit to roughly a meter tall, they could expand the payload to include the minimal package of fine optics able to capture commercial-grade images. Sure, it would be significantly heavier: Whereas the smallest CubeSat weighs 2.2 pounds, the Skybox satellite would weigh 220 pounds. But Skybox's "MiniFridgeSat" could use software-based systems to relay imagery and hi-def video back to Earth, where large amounts of data could be stored and processed and then distributed over the web.
When Mann and Berkenstock first brought up this idea with Fenwick—a spectral guy with a shaved head who vibrates at a Pynchonesque level of intensity—it turned out that he knew a lot more about satellites than they did. One of his jobs before Stanford had been as a liaison in Congress for the National Reconnaissance Office, the ultrasecret spy agency that manages much of America's most exotic space toys. A graduate of the Air Force Academy and MIT, he took the job at the NRO after a series of laser eye surgeries failed to qualify him as an Air Force pilot. Even if Fenwick couldn't talk about everything he knew, he could help do the math and hook the team up with other smart people. More important, he understood not just the value the US government might see in Mann and Berkenstock's idea but also the threat. When I ask him whether his government experience came in handy in helping to design and build Skybox, he pauses and raises a hand to his head. "Every day I bite my tongue so I don't go to jail," he says, quite seriously.
Soon, in a Stanford management class, the three founders met the woman who would become their fourth—Ching-Yu Hu, a former J.P. Morgan analyst with experience in crunching big data sets—and together they wrote up a business plan. The four enrolled in Formation of New Ventures, a course taught by Mark Leslie, founder of Veritas Software. Leslie was impressed enough to get in touch with Vinod Khosla, of Khosla Ventures, who handed them off to Pierre Lamond, a partner of his at the firm. Lamond had been given a $1 billion fund to invest, roughly a quarter of which was supposed to go to "black swan" science projects—the sorts of ideas that would probably fail spectacularly but might pay off big, and at the very least would be fun to talk about at dinner parties. And sure enough, Lamond, who served as an intelligence officer in the French army before coming to California and ran half a dozen Silicon Valley companies over the past four decades, gave Skybox its first $3 million.
With the money, what had been a space company of young outsiders soon got a serious injection of Big Aerospace expertise. Worried about future fund-raising, Lamond soon felt (to Berkenstock's huge disappointment) that Skybox needed an experienced CEO. So he brought in Tom Ingersoll, a former McDonnell Douglas executive who had left to start a ground-operations outsourcing firm, Universal Space Network, that sold its services largely to NASA and the Defense Department. Ingersoll, in turn, recruited a host of scientific advisers who had spent their lives in the traditional aerospace industry and government-sponsored big science programs.
Chief among these advisers was Joe Rothenberg, who ran NASA's human space exploration programs and the Goddard Space Flight Center. Rothenberg's leadership of the effort to fix the Hubble Space Telescope had made him a legend in the small fraternity of men who ran America's space programs back in the days when they spent real money. When I first met Rothenberg, it was hard to understand just what he was doing there—despite the fact that he had no stake in the company, Rothenberg was working at Skybox two full weeks a month, looking for bugs in its systems. I soon realized that, to my surprise, he was there not to get rich but to help revolutionize space exploration.
Today's NASA, Rothenberg freely admits, has failed to build and maintain the qualified workforce it needs, "and a large fraction of them, quite frankly, are aging people who should be retired or in different jobs." Rothenberg looks at the young software engineers at Skybox and sees that they think in a fundamentally different way about how to solve problems, and he wants NASA to take note. "If you took somebody my age, 50 to 70," he says, "then took these guys and gave them the same mission, you'd get two totally different spacecraft. And the price difference between them would be 10 to one." The possibility that Skybox might serve as a model for a different way of doing things in space is a big reason why Rothenberg is there.
The Washington pedigrees of old heads like Rothenberg and Ingersoll might also come in handy. The disruptive threat that Skybox poses to the space-based commercial imaging market might also annoy some powerful people in the US government who could deny the company licenses, seize its technology or bandwidth, and place restrictions on the frequency and users of its service. Skybox has come as far as it has, Fenwick says, because the right people in Washington can see the use of its service. "If the wrong person gets pissed, they'll shut us down in an instant," he admits.
On one recent trip to Washington, Ingersoll says, a high-ranking government technologist warned him that "the antibodies are starting to form." On the same trip, a senior Defense Department official took him aside and counseled, "You better be thinking about the role you want the government to play in your company." To avoid any military-industrial squelching of its technology before launch, Skybox has loaded up on advisers and board members with high-level defense connections, including Jeff Harris, former president of Lockheed Martin Special Programs, and former Air Force lieutenant general David Deptula, who captained the Air Force's use of drones and who may see similar utility in a constellation of cheap satellites sending back timely video from above Earth's trouble spots. In the end, the government will likely commandeer some of Skybox's imaging capabilities under terms similar to those imposed on other vendors. But Skybox feels confident that its network will be so wide and so nimble that there will be plenty of images—and data—left over for everyone else.
The Skybox clean room, where the company's first satellite, SkySat-1, is being made, is a Plexiglas-walled rectangle the size of a suburban living room; it's also a place where any precocious 10-year-old with a few years of model-rocket experience might feel immediately at home. Fred Villagomez, a technician in his midforties, sits at one of three stations at a workbench examining the payload antenna feed through a pair of protective goggles and making small adjustments with an X-Acto knife. To the right of his work area is a bottle of acetone, of the kind that any mildly advanced basement model-builder might use to remove excess globs of glue. At the end of the bench are three surplus movie lights, which he is using to test solar arrays.
To an outsider's eye, there is something sweet and almost cartoonlike about how Skybox is hand-producing homemade satellites with a hobby knife, all in an effort to launch a multibillion-dollar business. Before coming to Skybox, though, Villagomez worked at Space Systems Loral, which produces high-end space behemoths on classified budgets. Kelly Alwood, the satellite's project manager, also worked at Loral after graduating from Stanford, and before that at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. Her boss, Mike Trela, who oversees both the satellites and the launches, worked at the space program lab at Johns Hopkins.
Ronny Votel, who looks like a blond USC frat boy minus the letter jacket and who codes in a graphic environment called Simulink, wrote much of the early part of the software that will help the satellite track objects on the ground and manage large-angle maneuvers. He met Berkenstock at Stanford and was the second person hired after Skybox received its initial $3 million in funding. "My first month on the job, I was vetting out telescope and optics packages," he recalls. "I had no training in optics. But we knew the math and how to order a book off of Amazon and how to write code and do sanity checks. I think it was fear that drove us to do a good job." The ground software alone will have 200,000 lines of original code, of which approximately 180,000 are already written.
That focus on software permeates Skybox's business. Take the cameras: Compared with most satellites, they are cheap, lo-res, unsophisticated. "One of the image-processing guys once joked that the images from the satellite are equivalent to those from a free cell phone that you would have given away in Rwanda," says Ollie Guinan, Skybox's VP of ground software. But by building homegrown algorithms to knit dozens of those images together, Skybox can create "one super-high-quality image where suddenly you can see things that you can't see in any one of the individual pictures." That focus on off-board processing means less work has to be done in the satellite itself, allowing it to be lighter and cheaper. "Think about your iPhone," Ingersoll explains to me during my second visit. "There was a time you had a phone, a Palm, a PC, and also a camera. Now the computing capability has improved to the point where it is fast enough, with a low enough power, at a low enough price, that you can integrate these functions into much smaller packages at a much lower cost."
Sending Just Enough Space Into Space
To cover the whole Earth with imaging satellites, Skybox needs to break free from the design patterns that have defined commercial satellite construction to date. This chart shows the relative scale of SkySat-1, set against its high-end (and low-end) alternatives. —Sara Breselor
Skybox's founders were inspired by the CubeSat, a tiny DIY satellite design—buildable for less than $60K—that roughly 100 teams have launched.
Essentially, Skybox scaled a CubeSat up to the size of a minifridge, packing it with computing. Total cost: under $50 million for a satellite that will last four years.
Launched by DigitalGlobe in 2009, this satellite takes ultra-hi-res photos and will last for nearly eight years. The downside: It cost an estimated $400 million to build.
Guinan is a black-haired Irishman who grew up poor and spent nearly a decade working in the Valley on visas with short-term expiry dates before eventually landing a good job at Yahoo. When he fled for Skybox, he took five of his best engineers with him, as well as a healthy respect for the elegant and powerful architectures that can wring information and intelligence from good enough hardware. The more emphasis the design team placed on software, the smaller and cheaper the hardware became—and the less power the satellite required, which helped with the rest of the design, mainly by making it possible to carry a high-enough-quality optics package at a ridiculously low weight.
Skybox also found ways of piggybacking on other people's technology. The image-reception system is built on top of a satellite TV broadcast protocol, the same one that allows DirecTV signals to get through an electrical storm or heavy rain. "They've put hundreds of millions of dollars into building these systems and making them as perfect as they can be," Guinan points out. "We took advantage of that." This means that Skybox will be able to use a 6-and-a-half-foot antenna to reach a dish the size of a dinner plate on the SkySat instead of the much more expensive, 30-foot antenna that commercial satellite-image companies typically require.
Between now and then, the real question is whether Skybox's VCs will be able to fund the company long enough to get SkySat-1 into space. Eight months after the satellite was complete, the team is still waiting for its launch provider, the Russian government, to deliver it to orbit. "The one piece of advice we got from everybody who came in here was 'Oh, don't worry about the launch vehicle,'" Berkenstock says with a wry look. After dallying with Elon Musk's SpaceX, the company decided to go with the far less expensive Russian plan, which would launch SkySat-1 on a decommissioned Soviet ICBM.
It was only after signing the agreement and paying part of the cost of the berth that Skybox discovered the catch: The actual launch date depends on both the Russian defense ministry and the office of president Vladimir Putin signing off. That paperwork has stalled in the Russian bureaucracy, and so the former Soviet ICBM has remained in its silo—and the Russians have no intention of giving Skybox its money back. But in May, the Russians finally approved the launch. The team is cautiously optimistic about a September date, with a second satellite heading up perhaps four months later.
For now, the would-be kings of space are forced to wait. One afternoon, Guinan takes me upstairs to see where the Skybox team will sit when the first satellite finally launches. "The NASA guys came around and said, 'You need more than a closet for an operations room,'" he says, as he shows me around the half-finished setup, which looks like something between a Monday Night Football broadcast booth and the floor of a call center.
As he shows me where the launch will be broadcast and where the racks of servers will go, it's obvious that his heart lies not in space but here on Earth, where he will stitch together the images as they flood in. In its own weird way, this vision of the future is just as inspiring as sending men to the moon. Yes, Skybox is planning to put the equivalent of cheap cell phone cameras into space, to beam the pictures down via something that is more or less DirecTV, to use cheap eyeballs to count cars or soybeans or whatever someone will pay to count. But the data those cameras provide might save the Amazon basin or the global coffee market—the uses are thrillingly infinite and unpredictable.
Yes, it takes astronauts to plant flags on the moon. But what the Skybox team has built is effectively a new kind of mirror, reflecting the entire planet in a continuous orbital data stream that will show us to ourselves in new and useful ways.
Provided, of course, that they can get it off the ground.
David Samuels (email@example.com) is a contributing editor at Harper's and author of The Runner and Only Love Can Break Your Heart.


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"Real cooking is an art form. A gift to be shared. I've had some fabulous meals from Rosie's kitchen, but the recipes in this book are my all-time favorites. The ones I ask her to cook again and again." —Oprah Winfrey
"She knows how to make low-fat food taste good!" —The New York Times


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Tagged: Alexi Giannoulias
A Lesson Before Lying
The English language is such that certain phrases, through overuse, become cliches because they tend to contain some inherent truth, some life-lesson validity, something worth paying attention to. That's why when Momma says "honesty is the best policy", you can be pretty sure that indeed, telling the truth is an excellent formula for leading a controversy-free life.
But this is US America, and in US American politics, the reverse seems to be most popular among the entitled electorate. I mean, how else can we explain the pure idiocy that runs rampant among big-headed suits who think they can get away with chasing skirts, hooking up in airport restrooms and misappropriating federal funds, without someone figuring it out, eventually?
This is the INFORMATION AGE, people. Technocracy trumps everything. Go ahead and lie to my face. No, really. Do it. Just know that I can uncover your lies and ruin your reputation with just a few simple finger strokes on my smartphone.
Yeah, my phone is smart, dude; much smarter than US Senate candidate Mark Kirk (R-IL), who once challenged on his myriad military record embellishments, is finally starting to remember what actually happened.
Yeah, he said he fought in Operation Desert Storm. That's a lie.
Yeah, he said he served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Uh… yeah, that's a lie.
And… yeah, Kirk also said he won the Navy's award for Intelligence Officer of the Year. Yep. You guessed it. That's a lie, too.
Of course, Congressman Kirk is admitting to all this stuff now, because he's being called out on it by the press — y'know, people with a lot of access to actual information. The irony here is that now Kirk — who based on character alone was an excellent candidate to defeat mafia-tied Democrat Alexi Giannoulias in the Illinois US Senate seat race — now appears less appealing to the public than his allegedly corrupt opponent.
Good grief, don't any of these guys know who Tim Johnson is!?!?!?
This, dear readers, is just further proof that baseball is the game above all games. We are adamantly vitriolic towards those baseball entities who lie about their past (Tim Johnson, Mark McGwire and Pete Rose come to mind initially), but in the political world, we've come to expect such shenanigans and are surprised by (or at least suspicious of) those who appear squeaky clean.
One thing is for certain: Kirk ain't gettin' my vote. And neither is Alexi. Yep, I feel another Frank Thomas write-in campaign might be necessary…
Hate me 'cuz I'm known to flip out, just don't hate me 'cuz I'm right.


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Some of the most interesting cover artworks I've seen are featured on Brandon Sanderson's novels. And although I am not exactly a fan of the covers for the paperback editions of his "Mistborn" novels released by Tor Books, the ones on the hardback editions are very interesting. However, seeing on Aidan's A Dribble of Ink and Adam's The Wertzone blogs the UK cover for the upcoming "The Alloy of Law", it got me thinking at the series of covers for the Gollancz editions of Brandon Sanderson's novels. Looking simple compared with the US editions, but equally efficient, these strokes of brush and bare touch of color work very well for me. It proves that a minimalist concept can work wonders on a cover of a novel as well. Brandon Sanderson's "The Alloy of Law" will be released in the US on 8th November by Tor Books and in the Uk on 17th November by Gollancz.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Cover art - "The Alloy of Law" by Brandon Sanderson
2 comments:
- John Dax said...
The cover you have posted here certainly works for me. Very nice indeed.
- April 8, 2011 at 1:36 AM
- Mihai A. said...
John, sometimes a simpler cover works better for me :)
- April 8, 2011 at 12:29 PM
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