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Prosperous play's new oil estimates could influence pipeline plans
HOUSTON -- The resource potential of the booming Bakken Shale oil and gas zone is much bigger than previously thought, U.S. government geologists announced yesterday.
A new assessment of oil and gas reserves in that region by the U.S. Geological Survey concludes that industry could have access to almost double the amount of hydrocarbons previously calculated in parts of North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. That rapid increase in the reserve estimate comes mainly from a first-time assessment of the Bakken Shale's sister geologic zone underlying it, the Three Forks Formation.
The finding could have major implications for future oil and gas industrial activity in the region, particularly for pipeline companies.
A longer lifetime for Bakken exploitation may boost the economic attractiveness of building the vast majority of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project entirely in the United States, with or without a green light from the Obama administration. But the recent cancellation of a competing Bakken pipeline project could suggest otherwise.
TransCanada, the company proposing the massive Keystone XL project, has already indicated that the line would also be used to carry Bakken crude south to the Texas Gulf of Mexico coast. Overdependence on rail for moving oil out of Bakken fields has producers eager for new pipeline capacity, but the possibility of building just the U.S. segments of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would require no formal approval from the federal executive branch, is still only a vague idea that the company has not committed to.
Combining the Three Forks and the Bakken together, USGS now believes the region holds approximately 7.4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable crude oil. That about doubles the initial assessment the agency made back in 2008.
USGS scientists believe that the Three Forks Formation, which is deeper than the Bakken, is likely actually larger than the Bakken Shale, the formation that has been the target of drilling during most of North Dakota's recent oil boom. The government estimates that Three Forks holds about 3.73 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil, compared with 3.65 billion barrels for the Bakken Shale.
During a call to announce the new findings, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell called the findings "important information as we continue to reduce our nation's dependence on foreign sources of oil." Though some industry sources have produced higher estimates, Jewell indicated that Interior trusts USGS's calculations.
"This represents sound science by U.S. Geologic Survey scientists using the best available data, which includes data from industry, the state of North Dakota and Montana," Jewell said. USGS's second look at the Bakken region "is based purely on science and the best available information, and that's what this represents," she added.
The government's geological agency also increased its estimate of the natural gas potential for the region. USGS said the Bakken and Three Forks combined likely hold about 6.7 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, also about double the figures arrived at in 2008.
Three Forks now a factor
The 2008 Bakken geologic assessment did not include Three Forks, mainly due to the lack of apparent interest in it on the part of drillers back then.
"In 2008, there were almost no wells in the Three Forks, so no one really knew it was going to be productive at that time," said Stephanie Gaswirth, the lead author of the newest USGS assessment, during a telephone interview. "They didn't know that the Bakken oil had migrated that deep into it, and so I think that was part of the reason."
Three Forks is also more difficult and costly to exploit than the shallower Bakken Shale. But the oil and gas industry is still finding ways to make it profitable as companies have enhanced and improved their horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing capabilities.
"It's geologically different in that the reservoirs are mainly in a very fine-grained tight dolomite reservoir," Gaswirth said. "They're pretty different depositional environments."
North Dakota oil and gas regulators reported this month a preliminary statewide oil production of nearly 780,000 barrels of oil per day on average in February, up from about 738,000 barrels per day in January. The North Dakota Pipeline Authority says that 20 percent of the crude oil moved out of the Williston Basin -- which encompasses the Bakken and Three Forks -- was carried in pipelines, while 71 percent of it was transported out on rail cars.
The Keystone XL tie-in
The main section of the new Keystone XL line that TransCanada wants to build would extend from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Neb. The southernmost portion is under construction now, a line running from oil storage facilities in Cushing, Okla., to Nederland, Texas, with an extension to Houston and its Gulf refineries.
The northern route passes right through the Bakken and Three Forks oil fields, in eastern Montana. Jeff Share, editor of Pipeline & Gas Journal, said that this routing was strategic.
"TransCanada made plans a couple of years ago to scoop up as much of that Bakken oil as they can so Keystone would tie into that region," he said in an email. "The producers up there have been hamstrung because there is no major pipeline out of that region so they've had to resort to rail, especially to get it to the East Coast refineries."
Last year at a pipeline industry conference, Les Cherwenuk, a project director at TransCanada, told E&E that his company had no separate plans to build much of the northern route of Keystone XL to tie into Bakken output. He indicated that his company was intent on winning final approval from the U.S. government for the entire project and that no alternative plans would be pursued until after the Obama administration made its final decision.
Share speculates that building the line anyway, without crossing the border, may be one option for the company. Doing so would only require permission from state governments and permits from the Army Corps of Engineeers.
"TransCanada has always been a step ahead of everyone in looking ahead at transportation possibilities, so obviously they do have a backup plan in mind," he said.
But building Keystone XL from Montana to Nebraska may depend on the willingness of producers in the United States to help pay for it through contractual agreements. One project has already been scuttled because that willingness wasn't there.
One year ago, Tulsa, Okla.-based ONEOK proposed a $1.8 billion pipeline project to carry Bakken-region crude oil to Cushing. Last November, the company announced it was scuttling those plans, citing a failure to ink long-term contracts with oil shippers.
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Lesson Plan
Having My Say: A Multigenre Autobiography Project
|9 – 12
|Lesson Plan Type
|Estimated Time
|Eight 50-minute sessions
|Lesson Author
Champaign, Illinois
Students can be guided to make powerful connections between their life experiences and the world surrounding their individual narratives. In this lesson, Elizabeth and Sarah Delany's autobiography, Having Our Say, serves as a model for student texts. Students read and analyze passages from Having Our Say looking for specific examples of multigenre writing within the text. Students then choose to narrate a life event that has connections to or is informed by a larger event in their lives or in the world around them. They compose a multigenre paper that includes the autobiographical narrative essay as well as an informational nonfiction piece that provides context for and connections to the story from their life.
Autobiographical Narrative Component Peer Review Guide: This handout includes a chart to guide students in a thoughtful peer review of a classmate's autobiographical essay, but it could be adapted for use with any peer review.
Contextual Essay Planning Sheet: This handout provides a chart that guides students in thinking about the kinds of information an audience might need to know to understand their autobiographical essay.
In Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers, Tom Romano describes his ideal ELA classroom as one in which students "are both consumers and producers of all kinds of literature and media" (43). As students are exposed to or are expected to have gained "mastery" of certain genres, teachers can challenge students by asking them to combine genres into cohesive multigenre pieces. In her article discussing the use of multigenre writing assignments in her classroom, Nancy Mack states "I know that assignments must be innovative and interesting enough so that they appear unlike the old drudgery of hackneyed assignments. The format must be open and attractive to invite the possibility of doing something engaging rather than merely pursuing the trivial school game. Topics for writing should make use of the unique knowledge and skills that students already have, connecting school work in a respectful way to things that they value in their personal lives. The completed assignment should be personally significant and full of power and integrity for the author so that the writing itself demands to be heard by a real audience." (98) The writing assignments in this lesson do just that, as they challenge students to write in multiple genres with connections to stories from their lives.
Further Reading
Romano, Tom. 2000. Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Mack, Nancy. "The Ins, Outs, and In-Betweens of Multigenre Writing." English Journal 92.2 (November 2002): 91-98

subset: commoncrawl


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Every year, St. Benedict's Street Fair proves beyond shadow of a doubt that the people who live in Norwich are the best kind of people. In the vicinity of second-hand record shops, the city's finest music venue and its beloved comic book store, the relatively low-key mini-festival welcomes various local DJs to swing their unwieldy dreads to rhythms of continent-spanning dance music, and to blast their finest 12-inches out of 'stacks' sporadically assembled along the street. It's a day for the city's underlying voice to ring out; for hippies with rainbow mohawks to dance and pass wands of overpriced herb from one to another, and above all it's the day upon which mid-afternoon will be ushered in by a crowd of utterly uckfed 'grown-ups'.
I've always liked to think of The Go! Team not as a band but a street carnival - one not dissimilar to St. Benedict's Street Fair; as a collective of horns, trumpets, guitars, Theremins, flutes, Bollywood clips and many, many drums, all of which play themselves spontaneously for our amusement, the sole reason for their bolshy existence. Rolling Blackouts does a sterling job of suspending my disbelief. So while I concede that sample collage artist and songsmith Ian Parton has always been in the background, making the magic happen from behind The Go! Team's Wizard of Oz curtain; and that hopscotch-hip-hop, Duracell-powered superhero-MC Ninja probably dances amongst 'humans' in grotty Brighton nightclubs and perhaps for breakfast eats cornflakes, I maintain there's a potentially supernatural élan to the band's widescreen-pop gusto.
In the interests of Getting On With It, I'll quickly point out that this is The Go! Team's strongest effort yet; the initial fascination has eventually worn off, and Rolling Blackouts is patently their most satisfying, accessible record to date. For the first time the songwriting process has been founded on live instrumental ideas as opposed to samples. So although the sextet has never come across as musically conservative, the wide-ranging foundations necessary for maximising their very much maximalist ambitions are set firmly in place, and a raft of guest vocalists help to realise this potential.
'Back Like 8 Track' is the pick of the lot: a triumphant, trashy, coruscating melee of playground chants buried beneath brass-band oomph and jittery kinetic bass-lines. The sum of said amounts to a thumping racket that is - Lord knows how they pulled this one off - Even Better Than 'Ladyflash'.
In fact, across the whole album there's a broadness in scope that predecessor Proof of Youth - and even Thunder, Lightening, Strike - lacked. Between the dreamy Sixties heartbreak of 'Ready to Go Steady' (complete with sentimental spoken word interlude from Bordeaux balladist Lispector) and the title track's nebulous shoegaze-rock, it's clear that the stakes have been raised since previous outings.
By this token, not everything's quite so successful. 'Buy Nothing Day' is spot-on summer schmooze, save for a lifeless multi-tracked vocal from Best Coast's Beth Cosentino, whose intonations do more for me when refracted through the aforementioned title track's hazy Loveless-allure. But there's certainly no dearth of song ideas, as hyperactive hip-pop-noise-hop highlight 'Voice Yr Choice' attests.
Though they borrow from many eras and styles, The Go! Team's skill lies in their tightrope avoidance of nostalgia, and constant reassessment of how their music can be both antidotal to flash-in-the-pan trends and perfectly modern in itself - whilst eschewing (Heaven forbid) self-conscious counterculture. (To keep this up they'll need to make another leap forward forth time out, but now's not the time to worry about that...) What was once a solo-project for Parton's sample-based doodles has grown into an unmistakeable shared experience, characterised by the band's collective input; I don't want to believe the group consists of 'normal' people, because it moves and functions as a single body, like a roaming robotic jukebox from the future or indeed a rather noisy street carnival. Once experienced, the furious dynamic this synergy creates duly canons itself into the consciousness and isn't in any hurry to get out again, and that's absolutely fine by me.
8Jazz Monroe's Score


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|"Beep, Beep, Beep!"
|~ - Mr. Game and Watch
Mr. Game and Watch is the main character of the Game and Watch series of video games. He is also seen as a usable character in the Super Smash Bros. series of video games, first appearing in Melee. He is capable of using all sorts of items as weapons like a pump, a bell that he smacks enemies with, a giant key and more. He is never heard actually talking, and instead "speaks" in a series of sounds such as bleeps. He is also known for his notable Final Smash where he morphs into an octopus, and his tentacles trap enemies and hit them.
Wario Land 4
In Wario Land 4, a character that is very similar to Mr. Game & Watch appears as the Item Shopkeeper. She is an alternate form of the Black Cat's (which is actually Princess Shokora in her feline form) and serves as the shopkeeper of the Item Shop. She also appears as pictures on the walls of the level Hall of Hieroglyphs. A notable difference between Mr. Game & Watch and the Item Shopkeeper is that the shopkeeper has eyes.
Super Smash Bros. series
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Mr. Game & Watch makes his character debut in Super Smash Bros. Melee as the final unlockable character. He can be unlocked by playing 1000 Melee matches, beating Classic or Adventure mode with every other character, or by clearing Target Test with every other character. Afterward, the player must defeat Mr. Game & Watch on Flat Zone to unlock him. In All-Star mode, the Mr. Game and Watch team is always the final enemy stage. Here, the player must beat twenty-five Mr. Game & Watches.
Mr. Game & Watch is unique in that his movements are individual frames like with a Game & Watch game. All of his "voice" clips (including screams, taunts, and other such noises) are also sounds heard during various Game & Watch titles. Mr. Game & Watch is one of the lightest characters in the game thanks to his flat appearance, heavier than only Pichu and tied with Jigglypuff, which makes him easier to KO, and his attacks, while powerful, are slow. However, his movement attributes including dash, walk, fall, fast-fall speeds, traction, and gravity are identical to Mario's.
All of Mr. Game & Watch's moves also reference the various Game & Watch units. His neutral special is Chef, which tosses food from a frying pan. His down special is Oil Panic, which absorbs projectiles in a bucket that can be dumped onto opponents to deal a combined damage total. His up special is Fire, which springs him into the air with a trampoline. His side special is Judge, which has Mr. Game & Watch swing a hammer, its effects based on the number he holds up. His standard attack is based on Greenhouse, and his dash attack has him wearing the helmet from Helmet. For his strong attacks, Mr. Game & Watch's forward strong attack is the chair from Lion, his down strong move has him flip a manhole cover from Manhole, and his up strong attack is the flag from Flagman. His neutral aerial is the parachute from Parachute, his forward aerial is a package from Mario Bros., his back aerial is a turtle from Turtle Bridge, his up aerial is based on Spitball Sparky, and his down aerial is a key from Donkey Kong Jr.. His side smash is the torch from Fire Attack, his up smash has him wearing the helmet from Octopus, and his down smash is the hammers from Vermin. All four of his grab animations have him juggling the character like in Ball. His taunt has him ring a bell, based on the alarm feature of Game & Watch units.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Mr. Game & Watch returns in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, as an unlockable character. He can be unlocked by playing 250 Brawl matches, clearing Target Smash!! with 30 characters on any difficulty, or having him join the party in The Subspace Emissary; with either of the former methods, he must be defeated on Flat Zone 2 to be unlocked. While he has been made heavier, he is still the second lightest character in the game (now only heavier than Jigglypuff and tied with Squirtle).
In terms of his moveset, his neutral aerial has been replaced with the fishbowl from Tropical Fish, as the parachute is now a part of his up special move. His Final Smash is Octopus, which transforms Mr. Game & Watch into the giant octopus from the Game & Watch unit Octopus.
The Subspace Emissary
In the Subspace Emissary from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mr. Game & Watch clones made from Shadow Bugs are in direct command of the Halberd. In addition, according to the Shadow Bugs' trophy information, his body produces Shadow Bugs — a substance that is used to form members of the Subspace Army, which can be endlessly extracted from him. He doesn't revolt against the Subspace Army at first, as he is unaware of the concept of good and evil. After Meta Knight gets back the Halberd, he takes control. Snake knocks out all the Mr. Game & Watches out of an open window and into the Halberd's bridge, where they melt into Shadow Bugs that merge into Duon, except for the real one. Following the foe's defeat, a Mr. Game & Watch's trophy is left behind. This may mean that the false Mr. Game and Watches turned the real Mr. Game and Watch into a trophy, and one of the fakes stashed it within him. Fox McCloud attempts to shoot it but Princess Peach revives it and gives Mr. Game & Watch her Parasol. Mr. Game & Watch fiddles with it, then walks around with it in Game & Watch quartams, making Peach giggle. He then joins the party, helping the other characters throughout the game.
Mr. Game & Watch is the only major character to not have a snapshot.
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U
Mr. Game & Watch reappears in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U as an unlockable character. In Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, he can be unlocked by playing 90 Smash matches or by clearing Classic Mode 10 times, and must be defeated on Flat Zone 2. In Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, he can be unlocked by either playing 80 Smash matches or by clearing Classic Mode on Intensity 2.0 or higher with five characters, and must then be defeated on Flat Zone X.
His inclusion in the game was briefly hinted at in Pac-Man's reveal trailer, where at the end of the video, the screen compares the debut years between him, Pac-Man, Mario and Donkey Kong. His debut year is technically incorrect, because Mr. Game & Watch did not exist as a character until Super Smash Bros. Melee, and his Super Smash Bros. Brawl trophy description considers his debut to be 2002's Game & Watch Gallery. Despite being hinted at in the trailer, he wasn't officially confirmed to be in the game until its release, and was not officially revealed until afterward.
Mr. Game & Watch's appearance has been altered a bit, which includes having a smaller nose, and more rounded hands, as well as being smaller in size. While his moveset is unchanged from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, there are minor differences in his looks when performing certain moves. He is also given a new down taunt in which he sits down and sighs, based on Mario Bros..
In terms of customizations, Mr. Game & Watch is the only fighter who can be equipped with the Torch, Watch Battery, and Microchip equipment.
Game & Watch Gallery 4
Mr. Game & Watch, along with Mario, hosts the Gift Mode in the Gallery Corner. This is his only speaking role.
WarioWare series
Mr. Game & Watch makes cameos on the menus of WarioWare: Twisted! and in the 'Games' icon in the character selection screen in WarioWare: Touched!. Several audiences in The Invent-Off stage cutscenes from WarioWare: Smooth Moves resemble Mr. Game & Watch people. He also appears in the microgames that are based on the Game & Watch games.
Mr. Game & Watch-like people appear in WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$! in the multiplayer game Survival Fever. They cheer for the players, and will say "1,2,3!" when a microgame is about to start. They will cheer more if the player(s) beat the microgame, but if they fail they will boo the player and some will leave.
Donkey Kong Country Returns
In Donkey Kong Country Returns and its Nintendo 3DS remake, Mr. Game & Watch makes a cameo appearance in the background of Foggy Fumes. He is seen hammering a pipe.
Super Mario Maker
In Super Mario Maker, there is an unlockable costume for Costume Mario that looks like Mr. Game & Watch. It is unlocked by scanning a Mr. Game & Watch amiibo or clearing 100 Mario Challenge on Expert setting. Pressing +Control Pad up will make Mr. Game & Watch take out his bell. He also takes out a parachute from Parachute after jumping.


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I have about 4 hours of class time with Java and have an assignment due. I cant figure out how to fix my code. I know Im having issues with my print statements but I just dont understand it. Here is what I have and what is required: Calculate and display the monthly payment amount to fully amortize a $200,000.00 loan over a 30 year term at 5.75% interest. Please help.
package mortgagecalculator;
public class MortgageCalculator {
public static void main(String[] args) {
double annualInterest = 5.75; //This is the annual interest rate
double loanAmount = 200000; //This is the loan amount
double loanLengthInYears = 30; //This is the length of the loan in years
//Formuals bieng used are:
double monthlyInterest = annualInterest / 100 /12;
double loanLengthInMonths = loanLengthInYears * 12;
double monthlyPayment = (loanAmount * monthlyInterest) / (1 - Math.pow((1 + monthlyInterest), loanLengthInYears));
System.out.println("Annual Interest: 5.75%");
System.out.println("Loan Amount: $200,000");
System.out.println("Loan Length: 30 years");
System.out.println("Monthly Payment: " + currencyFormat.format(monthlyPayment));


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Great! Just fill out the form below by clicking on the collapsible sections. We appreciate your interest in joining our team, and look forward to reviewing your application.
Being involved in an accident can be stressful; having your vehicle repaired and restored to like-new condition doesn't have to be. Bates Collision is an Erie auto body company that offers reliable services for auto collision repair. We have been locally owned and operated since 1982. The employees at Bates Collision have decades of combined experience in helping our customers navigate through the repair process.
At Bates Collision, we understand that wrecks can be costly, not only to your wallet, but most importantly your time. The inconvenience of not having your vehicle to get you where you need to be can be quite frustrating. The employees at Bates Collision understand this and treat every customer's vehicle like it is their own. Their top priority is to get you back in the driver's seat of your own vehicle. Our staff is committed to delivering your professionally repaired vehicle back to you in a timely manner.
We work hand in hand with your insurance company to expedite the repair process and provide you with 100% customer satisfaction all backed by a written warranty. Contact our Erie Auto Body Shop for more information, or to schedule an appointment at (814) 899-7766!
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© 2014 Bates Collision®. All rights reserved.


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If you're one of the millions of Americans who is buried in credit card debt, or maybe you're having trouble deciphering the fine print on your 401(K)—that is, if you even have a 401(K)!—don't dismay. You can start taking steps toward closing your financial illiteracy gap right away with the sound, practical personal finance advice offered up in Reuben Advani's Financial Freedom.
Designed for young adult professionals but filled with crucial information that will financially empower readers of all ages, Financial Freedom is more than just your standard personal finance book, which offers up plenty of encouragement but very little actionable advice. Instead, this user-friendly guide stands alone thanks to the clear approach it takes to the topic of personal finance. So, no matter whether you are in the market for a new car, are looking to become a first-time homeowner, want to save up for your child's college education, or have decided to try your hand at investing, you'll find engaging, nonjudgmental answers to your most pressing financial questions in this invaluable resource. Jam-packed with financial guidance yet presented in a gentle, humorous manner, Financial Freedom will teach you: The ins and outs of the world of finance, including targeted advice on how to use its tools to create a better financial future for yourself; The difference between good debt and bad debt—as well as tips and hints for avoiding the latter of the two; The low-down on mortgages, auto loans, student loans, and credit cards; Strategies and techniques for investing in stocks, bonds, and real estate; And much more. When it comes to securing your financial future, building a strong foundation of financial knowledge and skills is the smartest thing you can do. Put yourself on the path to long-term financial literacy, independence, and success with Financial Freedom, which provides all the information you need to make sound financial decisions for a lifetime.What you'll learn Concrete strategies for increasing your financial literacy and cleaning up your financial situation, no matter how dire your financial straits may be How to take charge of your personal balance sheet by keeping constant track of your assets, liabilities, and equity How money market accounts, certificates of deposit, and bank accounts can help you maximize your savings and build your financial opportunities The differences between stocks, bonds, and the wide variety of available alternative investments, as well as techniques for investing in each type of financial instrument How diversification and active money management will enable you to build your wealth and achieve your long-term financial goals Who this book is for
Financial Freedom is a friendly, hands-on guide that is specifically geared toward college students and young, entry-level professionals who want to get their financial house in order, but it will also prove indispensable to a wide range of mid-career professionals, from those in desperate need of financial guidance to those who are already on the path to financial success.Table of Contents Assets Liabilities Equity Financial Feng Shui—Get Organized! The Personal Finance Panacea—Make More Money! Budgeting and Saving—Oh, No! Shopping—Oh, Yes! Credits and Debits Late night TV and Borrowing Financing a Home Buying a Car Financing an Education Debt Reduction Investment Basics Stock Market Investing Bond Market Investing Real Estate Investing Playing It Safe Financial Advisors Conclusion
About Reuben AdvaniSee more books from this Author


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Welcome!Hey there! I'm Holly. A 40+ year old insurance-nerd wife, mom, beauty lover, and about a million other things in between. This is the place where I share about our lives, what I'm currently loving, books I'm reading, plus-size style, beauty recommendations, health + fitness endeavors and anything else I'm finding interesting at the moment. Thanks for stopping by!
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Daily Archives: November 16, 2012
Fun Things to Read on Friday
Sound advice, I say.
Happy Friday!
I'm off of work today but my To Do List is about a mile long anyway. It must be the holidays! This weekend is going to be full of family dinners, anniversary celebrations, going away parties for friends, and picking up Garrett's mom at the airport for her first visit out here in almost 4 years! Cooking and cleaning, COMMENCE!
Hope you all have a lovely weekend, and while you coast into it, here are some fun things from around the internet.
- The Science and Art of Paleoifying – I've always said I'm more of a cooker than a baker. Baking = Too Much Precision. That said I really enjoyed The Paleo Mom's breakdown of Paleo Flours and how to use them.
- I need a serious haircut so I have been pinning like a mad woman to my All Things Hair pinboard. I wish I had the cajones to do this.
- Liz Wolfe always shares insightful things, but I especially loved her post on 4 Habits of Most Triumphant Clients (and people.) Plus she gets a gold star for the Bill & Ted reference. I think habits #1 and #3 are especially good ones to focus on during the holidays. If you can do just those two things, the holidays will be a win.
- Thanksgiving is going to involve A LOT of cooking. OHMAHGAWD. I think for my sanity the meals I cook the few days before will have to be super simple. For me, that usually means many MANY salads. Do you salt your lettuce? Well I do now after reading 10 Tricks to Make the Lazy Cook's Food Taste Better.
- I'm so intrigued by the sound of Smoky Bacon Ginger Banana Bread. Sometimes whacky sounding recipes are the best recipes!
- We have wood cabinets and white countertops. Why doesn't my kitchen look like any of these? Maybe in 2013 we will work on that.
- Considering running a race next year? Check out Fit Sugar's How to Train for a Race. Lots of awesome links to a multitude of training plans for 5ks, 10ks, Half Marathons, Martahons and Sprint Tris.
Any links to share? Awesome Thanksgiving recipes you can't wait to make? Inspiration for getting through the holidays without pulling out your hair? I am all ears…


text: A head board adds a finished touch to a bedroom, anchoring the bed as a beautiful focal point. For kids, especially, bedtime is a precious time for reading, reflecting on the day, and drifting off into sweet dreams. Your child's bed is an inviting and adorable oasis, full of comfy blankets and favorite stuffed animals. A headboard is the perfect way to give a completed look to the bed, and an opportunity to make the space extra special. If you have been wishing for a headboard on a plain bed frame, or want to add a headboard that won't take up too much space, a peel and stick headboard decal is the perfect solution! We are delighted to launch our darling new line of twin size headboard decals! Each of the charming designs coordinates with existing WallPops wall art so that you can create a beautiful theme in your childs room. The designs include sweetheart looks perfect for girls decor, stylish looks for boys rooms and designs that both can agree on! Check out our brand new line below!


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The School of Graduate Studies builds on Chowan University's strength in undergraduate education. For over 170 years, Chowan University students have excelled in a broad variety of academic disciplines and career fields. The School of Graduate Studies maintains this emphasis on academic excellence, service, and commitment to Christian higher education.
Small classes, individual attention, and a faculty dedicated to teaching define the Chowan University academic experience. Graduate students will discover a challenging, academic environment of learning, mentoring, and professional growth.
Chowan University facilities are available to all graduate students, including the Whitaker Library, the computer labs, and the Jenkins Wellness Center. Graduate students also are encouraged to be active participants in student life by attending musical performances, plays, art shows, and athletic events.
Applications for admission are evaluated on a rolling basis throughout the year. Early submission of the application for admission and all supporting materials will increase the likelihood of being selected for admission.
Earn a Master of Education (MEd) degree and advanced licensure in a program designed to meet the needs of working teachers.
The majority of the coursework will be held in the evening on Chowan University's main campus in Murfreesboro, located just off Highways 158, 258, 11, & 13.
Each MEd graduate student is assigned to a faculty advisor, who works closely with students as the student advances through the program. Advisors and other faculty will guide students as they conduct their action-based research projects and develop their graduate portfolios.
The MEd admissions policy is designed to select outstanding students who have demonstrated both academic competence and teaching ability. Each application is considered in light of all completed academic work, undergraduate grade point average, letters of recommendation, and a statement of educational and professional goals.
The Teacher Education Program at Chowan University is accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).
To apply to the School of Graduate Studies, applicants must:
In addition to the above requirements, International students must also submit:
The Admissions Committee for the School of Graduate Studies will notify you of an admissions decision by mail after your admissions file is complete.
The MEd program is specifically designed as a cohort program to be completed within 5 semesters. The degree requires 30 hours, with students completing 6 hours of coursework each semester.
EDUC 501 Action Research
EDUC 505 Diversity in Education
EDUC 510 Advanced Curriculum and Instruction
EDUC 515 Instructional Technologies
EDUC 520 Integrating Language Arts and Social Studies
EDUC 521 Integrating Mathematics and Science
EDUC 502 Analysis and Assessment of Student Learning
EDUC 530 Twenty-first Century Literacies
EDUC 540 Leadership and Collaboration
DUC 541 Graduate Product of Learning


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This story appears in the January 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine.
It was dark when Jesper Olsen fell.
Dark and cold. In wintertime in northern Greenland there's not so much as a single ray of sunlight for more than three months. The average temperature is 25° below zero F. The wind is brutal.
Jesper was equipped for the climate, just as he was prepared for the unruly dogs and the overloaded sled and the rugged terrain and the thin cross-country skis. He was even ready to fall. What Jesper hadn't anticipated was that as he tumbled down the sheer, rock-strewn slope, his knife would dislodge from the leather sheath on his waist and rotate in a perfectly unlucky way. Jesper landed on it. The blade pierced his right thigh.
His partner, Rasmus Jørgensen, did not see the accident. Rasmus had traveled a little ahead, his headlamp cutting a wedge in the darkness amid the black monolithic peaks and pale shoreline. Before losing his balance, Jesper had been positioned behind the heavy sled and 13 dogs, grasping onto the guide ropes, trying to control the team's descent. Now he lay sprawled on the ice-encased tundra, a gash in his ski pants and blood seeping down his leg.
They were 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle, in one of the loneliest and least hospitable places on Earth.
The desire to explore Greenland, which has been a Danish protectorate since 1721, first came to Jesper six years earlier, when he was a 23-year-old sergeant in the Danish Royal Life Guards, supervising troops at three of the Queen of Denmark's palaces. His official uniform included an enormous bearskin hat and a brass-buttoned jacket.
This was not his life's ambition. Jesper, who has pale blue eyes and dirty blond hair and a powerful, natural athleticism, craved the exact opposite of marching around in a fancy cap. He wanted an adventure. "I like to push myself," he says. It wasn't until 2008, after he'd left the Royal Guards to become a Copenhagen police officer, that Jesper got up the nerve to apply for an elite special forces unit that is legendary in Denmark for driving soldiers to the limits of self-deprivation and mental fortitude. He decided to try out for Sirius.
For more than 60 years, Sirius has been entrusted with patrolling northeast Greenland's 8,699-mile coast. The 12-man team visits each inch of the cracked and ragged coastline at least once every five years, formally supporting Danish sovereignty under international conventions. Sirius is the world's only military dogsled patrol. The job—low pay, no holidays—entails journeying with a partner and a dog team for 26 months and more than 5,000 miles. Injuries are virtually inevitable, as are hunger and exhaustion and frostbite. Team members are stalked by polar bears. There's no chance to visit family or friends, no opportunity to go on a date. They never even get to see a tree.
Jesper passed a battery of psychological and physical tests that winnowed down Sirius applicants. Only six people are chosen each year to replace outgoing patrollers. Women are eligible, though none have yet applied. Everyone must be under 30 to try out.
Just weeks before the Sirius trainees were to leave for an outdoor-survival program in Greenland, Jesper heard the news: He was the final man cut. He was devastated. "I was never going to apply again," he says.
He returned to the police force but could not stop thinking about the stark beauty and consummate challenge of the far northern wilds. His parents had supported his ambition; he did not have a girlfriend. So he changed his mind and tried once more. He subjected himself to the eight-month training regimen. He learned everything from meteorology to hunting skills to veterinary medicine; he memorized the shape of more than 600 fjords and points along the Greenland coast in case he lost his map.
This time, Jesper made the cut. As part of his final training, he leaped into icy water to simulate a sledding disaster, then lived for five days with only a small bag of emergency supplies, sleeping in a snow cave he dug with a tin cup and hunting arctic hare or musk ox to eat. At last, in July of 2010, he reported for duty at the Sirius base in northeastern Greenland, a collection of blocky buildings, connected with ropes so one can navigate in whiteouts, perched on a lonely spit of land. He was officially a Sirius patroller.
He found an ideal partner in Rasmus, a 28-year-old second-year patroller and former Air Force sergeant with a scruffy red beard, a weight lifter's might, and a Buddha-like unflappability. Together, in the Sirius wood shop, they built a 14-foot sled, the runners made of nylon and the boards joined with twine rather than nails for maximum flexibility. They named it Black Sun. They worked with their dogs until they felt like a cohesive unit.
In mid-October, when the seas froze—sledding just offshore is often the most efficient way to travel—they loaded Black Sun with 815 pounds of supplies and left base, following a route set by Danish military officers. With the other five teams, Rasmus and Jesper act as the only rangers in Northeast Greenland National Park, supporting scientific and sporting expeditions in the world's largest park, home to vast herds of musk oxen and hundreds of polar bears.
But four days into his first ever trip, Jesper stabbed himself in the leg. He lay on the snow, pain washing over him, fervently hoping that his dream of serving as a Sirius patroller had not slipped away just as it was beginning.
He convinced himself, within a few moments, that the injury was manageable. Probably, he thought, he'd landed on a rock. During his intense Sirius training, he'd learned to remain composed no matter how dire the situation, and he'd been indoctrinated in the Sirius ethos: Whenever possible, out on the ice, it's best to continue moving.
So without even peeking at the wound, without yet noticing the slice in his pants or the blood trickling down, Jesper rose to his feet. He retrieved his knife. Rasmus and he exchanged no more than a few words.
"You OK?"
Then each man grabbed a rope tied to the sled and stood solidly on his skis. "Ya!" Rasmus shouted. The dogs snapped their lines taut, and the sled, and the men, lurched violently forward.
Dogsledding exists at the intersection of chaos and skill. To keep the team moving, Jesper and Rasmus continually interacted with their dogs—whistling, scolding, cajoling, praising. They were crossing a peninsula called the Hochstetter Forland, bouncing over rocks, chugging up hills and sliding down, a fog of frozen breath, from both dogs and humans, forming a vapor trail hanging silently behind them. Shark-fin mountains rose out of frozen seas. Icebergs parked offshore looked like bleached battleships.
Normal sledding pace is less than five miles an hour. When Jesper crashed, they were a little more than halfway through the day's goal of 21 miles, part of a looping, month-and-a-half-long, 690-mile expedition north of the Sirius base, the shortest of three trips they'd planned for the year.
A day of dogsledding is constant and all-consuming work; Jesper hardly had time to give his throbbing leg much thought. A lunch break was not an option. The men grabbed sips of water, the dogs lapped snow. If the team is not in sync, a Sirius sled can feel like a body with 13 minds. The dogs, tethered in pairs on one long line, sometimes grow stubborn and lie down. There are fights, jealousies, love interests—Jesper and Rasmus's team had two females. The dogs can work together beautifully one minute, and the next become a snarling ball of flying fur, the snow dotted with bright blood.
"It's like being a cop again, when hell suddenly breaks loose," Jesper says. "You have to get in there and tear the dogs apart."
In this modern military age of Humvees and Abrams tanks, there's still no better way than dogsledding to traverse long distances in Greenland, where engine failure can be deadly. Numerous times, dogs have saved patrollers' lives. Sledding during the endless night, especially in fog, is often performed half blind. The dogs have stopped short at cliff edges and refused to move even when prodded. They also make a specific polar bear warning sound, a hissing growl, that lets patrollers know when to be alert.
Though Jesper and Rasmus were in the first week of their inaugural trip, they'd already agreed on a particular style. Some Sirius pairs prefer traveling light and fast; extreme weight-phobes cut tags from T-shirts and handles off toothbrushes and ration the fuel for their camp stoves. Jesper and Rasmus represented the slow and warm approach: They brought all the clothing they desired, and never worried about sacrificing a warm meal. Their motto, Rasmus says, was "We never run out of fuel."
So there was no hurry as they moved across the Hochstetter Forland. Patience and precision were more important than speed. Any miscalculation in the far north can be dangerous—put your gloves down in the wrong spot for an instant and they'll blow away. "You'll be punished if you're not doing everything right," Rasmus says. The only fatality in Sirius history, in 1968, occurred when a patroller became separated from his partners on a training ride, lost amid swirling snow, and was unable to survive the storm alone.
At the end of the day, Jesper and Rasmus halted the sled and launched into a precisely choreographed routine. While the northern lights blazed overhead in neon pinks and greens, Jesper set up the tent—some nights are spent camping, some in huts scattered along the coast—then unrolled the ultra-insulated sleeping bags and lit the stoves inside the well-ventilated shelter. For extra warmth, Jesper and Rasmus liked to use three stoves at once.
Rasmus carefully staked out the dogs, making sure they were separated enough to prevent contact. He then spent a little time with each one. "They become your family," Jesper says. Rasmus bear-hugged their proud lead dog, Johan; their cheerful female, Sally; their resident troublemaker, Indy; and their legend, Armstrong, who was in his tenth winter as a sled dog—a Sirius record, twice as long as most dogs serve. Armstrong had hauled a sled at least 25,000 miles, more than a lap around the Equator.
Rasmus knew that Armstrong was nearing the end of his career. There's no room at the Sirius base for retired dogs. And the dogs—as much wolf as pet—cannot be adopted. They must be euthanized, an act the patrollers do themselves with a pistol. Both Rasmus and Jesper say it's the most difficult part of the job.
Inside the tent, stoves running full throttle, Jesper and Rasmus finally thawed out. At minus 40°F materials like plastic become as brittle as glass. About 60 below, the dogs start to suffer; sores, from the sharp snow, open on their paws. At minus 70 you must stop and camp.
Dinner was a one-pot stew of tomato soup, pasta, cream cheese, and canned mini-sausages: not quite enough to replace the burned calories. Some patrollers lose as much as 30 pounds during a winter. Relationships between patrollers—for the better part of a year, the only humans they'll see—aren't always amicable. But once out on the ice, there is no option of divorce. Jesper and Rasmus were a harmonious match. The closest they came to a disagreement was over pipe smoking. Rasmus, following classic Sirius tradition, enjoyed an evening smoke. Jesper couldn't stand it.
As the stew simmered, Jesper finally had time to examine his wound. He wriggled out of his ski pants, and it was only then he saw the deep gash in his leg and the blood that had spilled—and continued to ooze—and he knew for certain he'd landed on his knife.
Jesper hardly reacted. He was a Sirius patroller, after all. He simply took out the first aid kit. He cleaned up the blood. And he patched himself up.


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BGE warns customers of higher bills in August
Baltimore Gas and Electric Company on Thursday said customers may experience higher-than-expected bills in August as a result of extremely high temperatures in June and July.
BGE said through its Smart Energy Savers Program and taking advantage of energy conservation tips on the Summer Ready section on bge.com, customers can better manage their energy use and help to alleviate the impact of high temperatures on bills.
"BGE wants customers to know that during the summer months, cooling typically accounts for approximately half of a customer's energy usage, and when temperatures are extreme, use will increase accordingly and in some cases may even double," said Jeannette M. Mills, vice president and chief customer officer for BGE. "Although electric commodity prices are down nearly 25 percent since 2009, increased energy usage during extreme weather can significantly affect customers' energy bills. Even though some customers may have experienced a multi-day outage from the derecho, and while customers do not pay for energy they do not use (such as during an extended outage), those customers may still see a higher-than-normal bill as a result of the significant number of days in July with extreme temperatures."
According to Weather Services International, there were 19 days in July when the temperature was at or above 90 degrees and three days when the temperature was at or above 100 degrees. The month of June also brought several consecutive days of high temperatures. In June 2012, there were 20 days when the temperature was at or above 80 degrees, 12 days when the temperature was at or above 90 degrees and one day when the temperature was at or above 100 degrees.
"It's important to remember that even customers who leave their thermostats at a set temperature will experience an increase in use when the temperature is extremely hot because cooling systems must work harder to maintain the set temperature," said Mills. "Additionally, old or inefficient cooling systems typically use more energy than newer, more efficient systems. To help alleviate the impact of extreme temperatures and to help customers better manage their energy bills, BGE offers a host of programs, billing options and other important information that customers should consider."
Through its BGE Smart Energy Savers Program, BGE offers many incentives, including rebates of up to $1,150 for participation in its residential heating and cooling programs. Customers can also enroll in BGE's PeakRewards program, designed to help reduce peak electric demand, which helps reduce energy prices and ensure the reliability of the electric system. BGE PeakRewards customers receive annual bill credits of up to $200 in the first year of enrollment and up to $100 every year thereafter.
In 2011, customers participating in the programs received nearly $30 million in bill credits and bonuses and bill credits will exceed $20 million this year alone. In 2011, the program helped reduce peak demand by more than 600 megawatts (MW) – equivalent to a medium-sized power plant – and as a result, last summer helped BGE avoid potential brownouts and blackouts, which could have affected all of its 1.2 million electric customers across central Maryland.
BGE also provides information on the Summer Ready section of its website, bge.com. Customers may access BGE's online energy calculator to learn more about how their homes use energy, as well as low-cost and no-cost measures they can take to improve the efficiency of their homes. Some examples include:
• Setting air conditioner thermostats at 78 degrees or higher. Every degree above 72 degrees saves 5 to 7 percent on cooling costs.
• Delaying the use of heat-generating appliances such as stoves, ovens, dishwashers and clothes dryers until after 9 p.m. when the temperature begins to drop.
• Taking shorter hot showers. Heating water is the second-biggest energy drain in the home.
• Having a professional inspection of central air conditioning systems to ensure optimal efficiency.
• Sealing gaps around windows, doors and wall outlets.
• Checking/adding insulation in attics to reach an R-30, the depth of 12 inches.
• Scheduling a BGE Quick Home Energy Check-up to discover opportunities for making a home more energy efficient.
• Taking advantage of BGE price mark-downs on compact fluorescent light bulbs which use approximately 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and burn cooler.
• Using only lights that are necessary.
• Consider unplugging computers, cable boxes and other electronics which stay on even when not in use.
BGE customers can also manage energy bills by enrolling in the Budget Billing program, which helps even out payments over a 12-month period. Also, qualifying customers can apply for energy assistance by visiting bge.com.


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@ Hi Tech Legion"In a bit of a different approach, the Noctua NH-L9 is available in the two models outfitted with mounts for AMD and Intel rather than releasing an Intel only piece or trying to make a "one size fits all" mounting solution. This plays out especially well, making mounting of either variety NH-L9 a quick and easy operation. Noctua was also conscious of the mini-ITX user using a kit that requires no backplate that may interfere with ITX components on the rear of the board. The small footprint of the NH-L9 blocks no other components, including PCIe slots on mini-ITX boards or RAM slots. The NH-L9 uses two copper heatpipes and contact block along with an aluminum fin array for exceptional heat dissipation. The NH-L9i comes out of the box ready to mount on Intel 1155/1156 sockets, while the NH-L9a fits FM1 and AM2/2+/3/3+ sockets."
Wednesday Web Reviews:
Samsung 840 512GB SSD Review
Silverstone Heligon HE01 Heatsink Review
OCZ Vector 256GB SSD Review @ [H]
OCZ Vector 256GB SSD Review
OCZ Vector 256GB SSD Review @ Hardware Canucks
Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SSD review
Noctua NH-L9i Low-Profile CPU Cooler @ DreamWare Computers
Asus F2A85-V Pro (A85X) Motherboard Review
GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 (AMD A85X) Motherboard Review
Cyberlink Director Suite 11 Review @HiTech Legion
CM Storm QuickFire TK Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review @ Techgage
Logitech G710+ Mechanical Gaming Keyboard @ Benchmark Reviews
CM Storm Quick Fire TK Mechanical Keyboard Review
Cooler Master Quickfire TK Gaming Keyboard Review @ Ninjalane


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Yesterday I came back from my third Oracle OpenWorld. This year I was not on a bloggers pass, so I feel less obliged to cover the event. But I know there are people out there that like to read about my experiences and I still like it very much at San Francisco, so here is a small write-up about my experiences at Oracle OpenWorld 2010.
The event started at Sunday, but later than usual: 12:30 PM I think, instead of 8:30 AM in previous years. For the first time I had to wait in a queue to register and receive the conference pass. I also received an Oracle Develop t-shirt, a conference book and the Appreciation Event wristband, but to my surprise no bag. The guy behind the counter pointed at the screen that said what he was allowed to give, and the screen said nothing about a bag. It felt strange, because except for Frits Hoogland, everybody seemed to wear that bag. Not really a problem, since I have enough of them at home. But I did not want to carry the stuff with me all day, so I decided to go back to the hotel and drop the book and t-shirt.
The sessions I saw on Sunday differed much in quality. I especially liked Cary Millsap's lesson in how to prepare for and deliver a presentation. Very inspiring. Even though I knew all content about messed-up apps already, because they are on his blog as well. I also like Richard Foote's presentation about indexes and Chris Muir's one on load testing APEX applications. In the evening, all ACEs and ACE Directors were transported to a very nice boat for a trip on the bay, with nice food, conversations and magnificent views of San Francisco by night.
On Monday I visited four sessions, which were all pretty good. First a live PL/SQL Challenge by Steven Feuerstein, with some interesting questions. No prices here, but Steven had created a secondary challenge for the people present at Oracle OpenWorld, where I won a second place and a 100 dollar Amazon gift card. Thanks Steven! Another session I enjoyed was Lucas Jellema's and Alex Nuijten's Xenogenetics session, about some use cases for using Java in PL/SQL, among others. In the evening I visited OTN Night, mainly for some food :-).
Tuesday I went to Oracle Closed World together with Frits Hoogland, where I saw a very good presentation of Kyle Hayley about Visual SQL Tuning with his Embarcadero product. The steps I intuitively take to solve performance problems with my explain plans and tkprofs were nicely illustrated with graphs. Pick as a starting point the table with the best filter predicates, then join down (to details) and then join up (to master tables). When visualizing all that, it becomes obvious. At Closed World I received a t-shirt which I wore on Thursday. This generated quite some comments ("Is that from Mogens? He is a funny guy.") and even from strangers who liked the "Meat.Beer.Explode." phrase. I returned to my hotel pretty early to do some preparation for my own session and in the evening I went to Ruby Skye for the Oracle Benelux Party.
Wednesday was my own presentation called "Oracle Database 11g's Result Cache". At Hotel Nikko in the Bay View room. This room was on the 25th floor and had a magnificent view of the bay. The session went well, and I was exactly on time. Unfortunately, I heard later that not everybody could see the SQL*Plus screen well, even though I had specifically asked the guy at the back of the room if he could read it... I received some interesting questions at the end, which I will try to answer in some future blogpost. Next up was the Bloggers Meetup, which was fun. And afterwards, Roel Hartman, Jacco Landlust and his girlfriend Margot and me went to the appreciation event, where I saw Don Henley, the Black Eyed Peas (slow start, but great ending) and two songs of the Steve Miller Band.
On Thursday I only saw two sessions, of which I really liked one. It was Jože Senegačnik's session called Query Transformations about all kinds of transformations the cost based optimizer performs when hard parsing queries. These transformations are visible in the 10053 trace file, which I rarely use. The session was great because it fitted great with what I already knew, but there were lots of interesting little details I did not know. After gathering at the OTN Lounge with some fellow ACEs and skipping the wrap-up party, I headed back to my hotel.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Yesterday I came back from my third Oracle OpenWorld. This year I was not on a bloggers pass, so I feel less obliged to cover the event. But I know there are people out there that like to read about my experiences and I still like it very much at San Francisco, so here is a small write-up about my experiences at Oracle OpenWorld 2010.
Posted by Rob van Wijk at 5:34 PM 1 comments Links to this post
Friday, September 17, 2010
Upcoming conferences
Tomorrow I'm off to Oracle OpenWorld for the third time in a row. I'm looking forward to a week attending great sessions, meeting friends, visiting the appreciation event, the Oracle ACE dinner and the Blogger's Meetup and presenting my session about the result cache. If you want to attend that session, the session details are:
Title: Oracle Database 11g's Result Cache
Date: 22-SEP-10
Time: 13:00-14:00
Venue: Hotel Nikko
Room: Bay View
I will also be giving the result cache presentation at two other conferences closer to home.
At October 5, Planboard - known for their successful Oracle DBA Symposiums - organizes their first Oracle Developer Symposium. This is a conference you should not miss if you are a Dutch speaking Oracle developer. One day, with three tracks: Database, APEX and Fusion Middleware. More details can be found here.
At October 27 and 28, ODTUG OPP 2010 will be held in Brussels. They have combined two conferences: one about PL/SQL and one about APEX, with 5 tracks in total.
Last wednesday I rehearsed the presentation at a knowledge session at CIBER. I will be making some adjustments, but the Wednesday version of my presentation can be downloaded here:
The powerpoint and the scripts.
Posted by Rob van Wijk at 9:53 PM 2 comments Links to this post


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Regular price
Inspired from the works and life of Artist- Agnes Martin, this printed stole is made using unprocessed griege homespun, handwoven fine Bengal cotton fabric which is near Zero-Carbon footprint, skillfully hand printed by Sanganeri artisans using fine brass metal printing blocks.
Handmade In India.
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Handmade In India.


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Lecrae's 'Man Up' Mission to Address Father Absence
"Be the last of a dying breed, it's time that we man up." That's the last line of the new "Man Up Anthem" from Christian rap group 116 Clique. The song is just one sliver of a growing campaign launched last year by rapper Lecrae, 32, and his Reach Records in Atlanta, to get young men in hip-hop culture to "man up" into responsible husbands and fathers across the country.
Lecrae, whose outspoken faith and creative rhymes have gained the attention of John Piper and BET alike, has skyrocketing album sales for a Christian hip-hop artist, landing on Billboard's top 200 and independent album charts. But the Houston native is determined to steward his recent fame to address chronic social ills affecting communities nationwide, one man at a time.
"Everybody on staff at ReachLife [Ministries] and the artists at Reach Records realized that biblical masculinity was one of the things lacking in culture, specifically urban culture," said Lecrae in a recent phone interview with Christianity Today. The Man Up Campaign—including a film, concert series, album, and curriculum for church and small group use—was born out of this deep need for a godly model of manhood, as well as Lecrae's own story.
Father absence is a systemic problem, particularly in urban contexts, that's proven to lead to higher rates of gang violence, incarceration, and suicide. As of 2007, the national rate of children born to single mothers was 40 percent. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 24 million American children—one in three—live in homes without their biological fathers. The Man Up Campaign, says Lecrae, addresses father absence by telling "young African American males that you're immediately an example for other African American males in the community at large. Not only are the young men challenged and encouraged by this, but also the young ladies, because they get to see what they should be looking for and how to encourage their brothers in the direction of taking leadership and responsibility."
Rethinking the $3,000 Missions Trip
Furniture Fit for the Kingdom
Faith in a Fallen Empire
'Daddy, Why Do People Steal from Us?'
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Okay, I'm gonna come clean–I don't like classical music that much. I know, I know, I should because I've played the violin since forever, but honestly…I have a hard time connecting emotionally a majority of classical music. Maybe it's the harpsichord that bugs the heck out of me, or maybe it's the piano accompaniments that really only serve to fill sonic space, or maybe I just haven't worked hard enough to find out which classical artists I would like.
I mean, I sure wasn't looking for Ólafur Arnalds. And I love him. So maybe I just haven't been looking hard enough. That'd be fair.
I happened upon Ólafur Arnalds in philosophy class last semester. Our professor had made split us into groups to choose something to define "Beauty," and one group played his piece "3055" as their example.
Whether or not Ólafur Arnalds could possibly be the answer to Plato's question of What is Beauty, I fell in love immediately with his music.
Think classical music with a contemporary twist–Arnalds brings in drums, nature sounds like wind and creaking wood, and the most delicate piano arrangements you may have ever heard. This is music to play while studying, sleeping, or showering at night, when you're feeling sad, lonely, or peaceful, when its rainy outside or right after the sun comes out of the clouds on a spring day.


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Kailua Beach, Oahu, Hawaii
Kailua Beach, Oahu, Hawaii
Originally uploaded by quangas
What would be the positive changes to one's body, mind and spirit if "living" food were substituted for the standard American diet (the SAD diet). Does eating fresh, natural foods in abundance -- UNCOOKED -- bring new-found energy and stamina and joy and zest for life? Or is it all hype? What really happens when we let go of processed, refined and animal foods? Do cells really rejuvenate themselves through food that has its life force intact? And how does it change us?
Posted by Naomi at 7:54 PM 1 comments


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Steven Rattazzi, Michael Sinterniklass, Dana Snyder and James Urbaniak appear on Sunday January 26, 2014 at 1pm at Cobb's Comedy Club! This event is part of SF Sketchfest.
Want action? Adventure? Comedy? Then look no further than "The Venture Bros."! A staple of Adult Swim's animated late-night shows, "The Venture Bros." follows the unpredictable adventures of twin thrillseekers Hank and Dean Venture. Join Steven Rattazzi (Dr. Orpheus), Michael Sinterniklass (Dean Venture), Dana Snyder (The Alchemist) and James Urbaniak (Dr. Venture) for an afternoon of all-things Venture Bros.
Cobb's Comedy Club
915 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 928-4320


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National Pain Strategy Announced by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
by Pamela Katz Ressler, MS, RN, HNB-BC, faculty Pain Research, Education and Policy Program, Tufts University School of Medicine, and PREP-Aired blog moderator
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced the federal government's first coordinated plan for addressing the immense burden of pain that affects millions of adults and children in the United States. The National Pain Strategy (NPS) is a direct result of recommendations put forth in the 2011 Institute of Medicine's report, Blueprint for Transforming Pain, Prevention, Care, Education and Research, calling for a cultural transformation in pain prevention, care and education as well as recommending a comprehensive population health-level strategy.
Patients, patient advocates, researchers, and pain-related professional groups such as the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) played an instrumental role in the development of the National Pain Strategy (NPS). Participants included Dr. Daniel Carr, the director of the Pain Research, Education and Policy Program (PREP) at Tufts University School of Medicine and the current president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. In discussing the importance of the National Pain Strategy and its relevance to the public health crisis surrounding opioid abuse, Dr. Carr stated "The NPS is comprehensive and far-reaching in scope. The other influential pain report released within days of the NPS — CDC's Guideline on Opioid Prescribing — extends current efforts focused upon reducing opioid abuse. I believe the opioid epidemic will be brought under control, in large part through public and professional education about the broad spectrum of options for treating pain, as advocated in the NPS. As the opioid epidemic recedes, patients, health care professionals, and policy makers will look to the NPS for guidance on enduring, systems-level solutions to improving the assessment, treatment and prevention of pain–and reducing disparities in access to quality pain care."
The Pain Research, Education and Policy program at Tufts will continue to lead the way in training leaders in the comprehensive field of pain, working to reduce the burden of pain and suffering for individuals, families and society.
Add comment March 24th, 2016


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Parallel Map and Reduce in Heron
I've been rather quiet lately, while I continue to labor away on Heron in the background. Rather than freezing the feature set and moving as fast as I can towards an official v1.0 release of Heron, I've decided to make it a bit more sexy by parallelizing the reduce and map operators.
Heron has several operators for list processing:
- map - Transforms a list into a new list, by applying a unary function to each item in the original list to get the values in the new list
- accumulate - Iterates over items in a list, combining each item with an accumulator value using a binary function.
- select - Creates a list by selecting items from another list that satisfy a unary predicate.
- reduce - Combines items in a list by applying a binary function to two items in a list in a nondeterministic order.
The current implementation of Heron runs these operations sequentially. However, of these operations the "map", "select", and "reduce" operator all can be parallelized (read as: run on multiple cores).
Releasing a language with the potential to be interpreted in parallel, without actually doing so in my default implementation, would be kind of anticlimactic so I decided that I really should try to get at least the map and reduce operators parallel.
If "map and reduce" sounds familiar, but you aren't sure where, MapReduce is the name of a framework for performing distributed computing on large data sets.
So why do am I doing all of this? Well because I am too darn lazy to learn how to do concurrent programming properly using threads. I figured it would be easier to make my language manage concurrency automatically for me. The irony is I still have to learn to use threads properly to make the implementation multithreaded. Oh well, at least I'm having fun, I think.


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Stacey Brook, Tippie College of Business, 319-335-1010
The Bears produce
The Bears produce
The Bears produce
Five weeks into the 2013 college football season, the Baylor University Bears are the most productive team according to a weekly ranking that measures offensive and defensive production compiled by a University of Iowa economist.
Stacey Brook, who teaches economics in the Tippie College of Business, compiles his top 25 teams by using an exhaustive formula that measures their offensive and defensive productivity. After all, he says, economists, stock analysts, and management experts measure a firm's performance based on its production, so why not apply the same measures to college football teams.
Stacey Brook
Following Baylor in his ranking come Oregon, Louisville, Florida State, and Washington. Alabama, ranked number 1 in both the AP and USA Today polls, is only at 31 on Brook's ranking.
"Alabama has not played as well on defense as they have in the past," he says. " Since 2009, Alabama's defense has been ranked in the top five, sometimes number one, and this year they are currently ranked 30 overall."
He expects Alabama to start rising as conference play begins and other defenses—like Baylor's—play tougher teams that lower their own defensive productivity. Alabama's defensive will then rise relatively to other teams reduced productivity.
Iowa is ranked at number 20. Michigan State, the Hawkeye's opponent in this weekend's Homecoming game, is ranked 18.
For his own ranking, Brook started with the presumption that productive teams—and, hence, better teams—score more points than their opponents and give up fewer points. After examining several measures, he finally settled on 18 statistics that best measure a team's productivity on each side of the ball, including yards gained, number of first downs, touchdown scoring percent, number of offensive plays, missed and made field goals, and turnovers. This season, it also takes into account the teams' conferences.
He then plugs those numbers into two lengthy formulas, one to measure offensive productivity and one to measure defensive productivity. Some statistics are weighted because his research has found that they are more important to a team's success.
Subtracting defensive production from offensive, he arrives at a list of the most productive teams.
And that's when eyebrows can start going up because his survey produces some curious divergences from the polls (he lists each week's latest rankings on his blog. For instance, Houston checks in at 13 in Brook's ranking, but is nowhere to be found in the polls, while Northwestern is at 16 in the AP poll and in 15 in the USA Today, but misses Brook's top 25.
He said such divergences are the inevitable result of using polls to measure something without first adequately defining what should be measured. Brooks' formula uses statistical measures and weighting, but the people who vote in the polls each have their own formulas.


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I would like to randomize the values of x and y in the following query:
insert into tab1 values (chr(x)||chr(y)||);
This would allow me to populate random values of strings in this table. I plan to use several of these random generators (concatenated) to populate several hundred thousand records.
Is there a function in PL/SQL or SQL that would do this ? The Dbms_random does not have a range restriction (am I wrong?). I would need to restrict the range of the x and y to be 65-90 incl for the chr function to return me characters of the english-alphabet.
thanks for your help.


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Masked vigilantes Charge (Jason Trost), Cutthroat (Lucas Till), The Wall (Lee Valmassy), and Shadow (Sophie Merkley) are rendered powerless by their archenemy (James Remar) and are forced to complete a series of deadly tasks in order to save the lives of more than 100 innocent civilians. Should they fail or refuse to cooperate, the entire town will be destroyed. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
All All Superheroes Must Die cast + crew photos
Movies.com, the ultimate source for everything movies, is your destination for new movie trailers, reviews, photos, times, tickets + more! Stay in the know with the latest movie news and cast interviews at Movies.com.
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I decided not to give one of the more explicit e-mails that i receive daily as an example !!!
Answers in Genesis ministries apparently has the answer:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/AfterEd ... aspx?id=14
Are they being serious, or is this an example of creationist humour ?


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Retired Marine confirmed as state parks chief
The state Senate on Monday confirmed retired Marine General Anthony Jackson of Fallbrook as state parks chief, easily overriding complaints from some Republicans that he sidestepped controversies involving a proposed toll road and protections for the popular Trestles surfing spot near San Onofre State Beach.
"This gentleman came in to lead the department during some of its roughest and most publicly difficult times," said Sen. President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat who championed his appointment.
Not all Republicans were convinced.
Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Lake Forest, accused Jackson of neglecting his duty by not intervening to prevent a special historic preservation designation for Trestles despite objections from the Marines. Officials at Camp Pendleton said such a move would compromise military readiness by interfering with training.
In turn, that threatens the renewal of the San Onofre State Beach lease with the Marines when it expires in 2021, Walters warned.
"Now more than ever we need the leadership in the parks department — something that Gen. Jackson has failed to provide," she said.
Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Solana Beach, said Jackson should have stepped in for another reason: the historic designation will be used as a tool to block the construction of the proposed State Route 241 toll road toward I-5 and San Onofre.
Advocates say a toll road is needed to relieve congestion and assure motorists of an alternative escape route in the case of an emergency, such as an earthquake.
"By taking that action, this nominee has effectively made it almost impossible for this to occur," Wyland said. "It is utterly irresponsible. It ignores the need for a vast community."
Jackson had his defenders, even among Republicans.
In a statement after the vote, Sen. Joel Anderson, R-La Mesa, called Jackson "well-qualified," citing his 36 years of military service, much of which was in command roles.
During the floor debate, Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, said Jackson has proved himself. "He has turned things around. Morale is up … He has a love of parks. He has made great things happen."
The vote was 28-4.
Gov. Jerry Brown tapped Jackson in November to run a Department of Parks and Recreation besieged by scandal. Department officials had hidden money at a time when budget cuts were threatening to shutter parks. There were also reports of paycheck padding and other financial mismanagement.
Jackson has drawn widespread praise for connecting with divergent park users, especially members of the Off-Highway Vehicle community. They spoke in his favor at an earlier committee hearing.
Jackson did not issue any formal reaction to Monday's vote. But in an earlier interview and testimony, he explained his positions on San Onofre.
Jackson testified that he could not take action because he was advised by the state's attorney that he should recuse himself. As former commander of Camp Pendleton he had previously been involved in decisions regarding the toll road and historic designation for Trestles. Today, he is in a different role, and represents the governor.
Jackson also said he did not feel it was the role of the parks director to intervene since the historical preservation commission was appointed by the governor and is supposed to act independently.
"You don't want a director telling a commission what should be on their agenda," he said.
Jackson signaled he would now oppose any toll road that threatened the park and its accompanying San Mateo campground.
"My job is to preserve and protect California State Parks for future generations," Jackson said.
Jackson oversees about 280 parks in the system, spanning 1.4 million acres of coast, forests and mountains. He oversees a budget of $574 million.
Jackson's salary is $150,112 a year.
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Norwich police have started a criminal arson investigation into a fire Thursday that killed a family pet and threatened the lives of a family of six living at a home at 500 W. Main Street.
Norwich police have started a criminal arson investigation into a fire Thursday that killed a pet and threatened the lives of a family of six living at a home at 500 W. Main St.
Norwich police Sgt. Peter Camp said the Norwich fire marshal's office is still investigating the 4:15 a.m. blaze but has called it incendiary in nature, or intentionally set.
Despite their loss, the displaced residents of the home are offering a public thank you to the good Samaritan who stopped at the house and ran to the front door to alert the sleeping family of the fire.
Arriving firefighters from the East Great Plain Fire Department found all of the occupants outside as flames shot from a burning pickup truck up the side of the front bedroom where one son had been sleeping moments earlier.
Fire crews were met with a thick toxic smoke, a mixture that included burning tire rubber and aluminum siding.
East Great Plain Chief Patrick Daley said the flames already had worked their way into the bedroom when they arrived. Firefighters fought the fire from inside and outside simultaneously.
Awakened by dog
Residents Melinda and Todd Barber were awakened shortly after 4 a.m. by one of the two family dogs, Slider, a boxer-pit bull mix.
"She gave a whimper, a noise like she was startled out of a sleep, then a long growl," Melinda Barber said. "I knew something was wrong. When the dog does something like that, you know something is up."
Barber and her husband got up, heard a car horn outside and looked out a front window to see a man running toward the house. He knocked on the door to tell them the front of their house was on fire.
Melinda Barber said she let out a shriek as she and her husband woke her daughter and three sons.
"I don't know who he is, but I want him to know my family appreciates what he did," Melinda Barber said of the man who reported the fire. "The whole front of the house was in flames."
'Saved our lives'
"This guy definitely saved our lives, no doubt about it," Todd Barber said.
Norwich Fire Marshal Kenneth Scandariato said the fire appears to have started in the area where the pickup truck was parked next to the garage. Ignitable liquids were found in the area.
Camp said the criminal investigation began as the result of "physical evidence and witnesses statements" obtained in conjunction with work by the fire marshal's office.
Slider, along with a pet python and tarantula, survived the fire. Chica, a pit bull, perished.
Hid under bed
Melinda Barber, in tears, said Chica sought cover under her son's bed and likely died of smoke inhalation.
"I think he bolted for a safe place, not knowing what to do," Barber said. "I was at the door, I had grabbed the one dog, calling for the other and just got a mouthful of smoke. I knew I couldn't go back in."
The Red Cross is providing the family with a place to stay, along with emergency needs. The city's building department condemned the structure because of the amount of damage from the fire, smoke, heat and water.


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100% from 20 ratings – Located in Hatfields Beach (0.4kms) – Builders
"Aaron did a bathroom re-build for us during the two week school holidays as we needed the bathroom before school started again.
Job was completed on time within the two week time frame and came in under cost, looks awesome and really is the best room of our house.
I would highly recommend Aaron and the boys for any work."


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Heading south on Central Avenue from Foothill Boulevard on Sunday, I noticed that the late Mi Pueblo restaurant in Upland was half-demolished.
I'll admit upfront that I know absolutely nothing about Mi Pueblo. It's been closed for months, if not years, with a chain-link fence around the property. It's a large-sized, low-slung building on the east side of Central and may once have been popular. It's at 11th Street and Central.
I'll try to follow up with City Hall to see what's planned there. In the interim, anyone know anything about the place?


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Reliant Stadium may be getting a new name
Texans fans on Wednesday largely shrugged off the news Reliant Stadium may have a new name, saying what happens on the field is what matters most.
NRG Energy, the parent company of Reliant Energy and the state's largest electricity retailer, confirmed it hopes to rebrand the South Loop sports complex as NRG Park, with every facility dropping the Reliant name for NRG, as in NRG Stadium, NRG Arena and NRG Center.
Surprise at the news of the proposed name change quickly gave way to jokes questioning whether the new moniker would improve the luck for the team with the worst record in the NFL last season.
"NRG Stadium? Not Really Good Stadium is overdoing it. Texans will turn it around," one fan tweeted.
NRG, which acquired Reliant's retail operations in 2009 and is dual-headquartered in New Jersey and Houston, said it will swap out every sign bearing the Reliant name at the Harris County-owned park before the football season begins this fall. The board of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corp. must approve the deal before work can begin, but company officials said they have been working closely with the agency that runs the park, as well as the Texans and Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, and are hopeful the plan will be approved.
The sports corporation issued a statement confirming the item would appear on its March 19 board agenda, but did not say what decision, if any, staff would recommend.
Reliant bought the naming rights for the Texans' stadium and surrounding buildings in 2002 for $300 million, the most lucrative deal of its kind at the time.
The 32-year agreement required Reliant to pay about $10 million a year, with 75 percent going to the Texans, 15 percent to the Livestock Show & Rodeo and 10 percent to Harris County. Those terms will remain the same, company officials said Wednesday.
Expansion mode
NRG Texas Retail and Reliant President Elizabeth Killinger said Wednesday the company "felt like now was the right time to really move to the family name so that as we bring more products and services to market, people will realize the relationship between the different companies."
The green-energy-focused company, currently peddling new products at the rodeo, is in expansion mode, having announced the acquisition of another retail electric business just this week.
Killinger declined to give an exact price tag for the cost to rebrand the Reliant complex, but confirmed it would be more than $100,000, and stressed that the company would be picking up the entire tab. She said it also plans to ask the county for permission sometime this springto outfit complex facilities with "sustainable energy enhancements" such as solar panels.
The Texans and rodeo deferred to NRG for comment on Wednesday.
The rebranding could mean costs outside the park, as well. While changing the name of a rail station requires the approval of the Metropolitan Transit Authority board, all of the maps and signs for Metro's train routes that reflect a stop at 'Reliant Park,' as do the automated announcements on the trains.
A smart move
Marketing experts said the Texans and rodeo do not have much to worry about, in terms of harm to their brand, and that NRG has everything to gain with the change.
Betsy Gelb, a marketing professor at the University of Houston's C.T. Bauer College of Business, said it is a smart move by a company whose name recognition in Houston is non-existent.
"If you want people to like you - and what corporation doesn't? - the first thing is, they have to know you exist," Gelb said. "One thing that NRG is trying to do here is to say: 'We're proud of being associated with Houston and this is a big-time way to do that.' "
NRG added its name to Reliant in 2010, the year after the acquisition, giving it a new logo and the tag line "An NRG Company," but has kept the Reliant name around. The new rebranding would eliminate the Reliant name from the complex altogether.
"Historically it has been a more difficult transition for professional teams when they have switched their stadium's naming rights from one brand to a different one that is completely unrelated," Rice University sports management professor Clark Haptonstall wrote in an email. "It will be an expensive transition for NRG to change all of the logos throughout the stadium and inside of the park itself, but they'll know how to do it."
Kirk Wakefield, executive director of Sports Sponsorship and Sales at Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business, said "it only makes sense to have a unified branding strategy."
"I'm a little surprised it took this long," he said, saying the move is "part of a long-term strategy with the goal of increasing brand health for NRG on a national basis."
'Married to the Texans'
The last time a Houston stadium was renamed was in 2002, the same year Reliant inked its naming rights deal, when Enron Field became Minute Maid Park, a change that was met with skepticism and orange juice-related jokes ("Beat them to a pulp").
Huffington Post blogger Susan Whitbourne, a psychology professor at UMass Amherst with an interest in sports fan behavior, said it can be "really tough" for fans to swallow stadium name changes. "There needs to be a lot of work done by a company, if they're going to be doing this, to build fan loyalty and not just take it as a given that everyone will be OK with it," she said.
NRG should not have a problem winning over diehard Texans fans.
"I'm not married to them," said a fan who calls himself Joe Texan. "I'm married to the Texans."
Dug Begley contributed to this report.


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From Openembedded.org
Older News:
- 2009-03-31: OpenEmbedded opens the stable/2009 Stable branch. Special procedure is applied to it which results in better support for our downstream users.
- 2009-03-24: FOSS Aalborg in Aalborg, Denmark, with a focus on embedded software. Mickey gives a talk about OpenEmbedded.
- 2009-03-06: Always Innovating is using OE to build software for their Touch Book.
- 2009-02-19: KOAN Software company announces it's KaeilOS distribution will join the OpenEmbedded project.
- 2009-02-10: OE has a new Logo -- Many thanks to Bug Labs who funded the logo development, and Mateo Zlatar for designing the logo.


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If you are about to post a recommendation for an author or book, please read this first:
If the author is you, consider: ordinary civility demands that before making a purely self-serving post, one needs to have established something of a right to such a post, which right is acquired by building a history of meaningful contributory posts to the forum. (And that is by no means some strange policy unique to the forums on this site.) It is quite rude to enroll on a forum for the sole purpose of touting your goods. If we have come to know you by your posts about books, we will be well enough pleased to find that you are now become an author yourself; but till then, just popping the door, shouting your "buy me!", and dashing off again while the door slams will not earn you friends (or readers), nor will your post survive long (only till I see it).
If you are not the author--or a friend acting on his or her behalf--you are still not excused from basic civility. A person established as a regular contributor to a forum will generally be cut some slack--how much varies from forum to forum, and here I'm fairly easy-going--when it comes to announcing some new product he or she has discovered. But "drive-by postings", as David Tate has so pungently described such things, are so obviously wrong that one wouldn't think it needs comment.
None of that is to discourage new members here from starting out with an author recommendation: that is not the point. Everyone has to start somewhere. It's just that the "price" expected of you for such a post is some meaningful comment on why you are so enthusiastic about the matter. Such encomia as "Wow, I really loved it, this is the best book I've read this month / this year / in my life, the author is really great, it's really wonderful" are basically requests to have your post deleted. No one expects New York Times Book Review standards, but we do expect that if you like it so much, you can and will be able to explain what the book is about (more or less)--which does not require spoilers--and in what ways the author has impressed you in telling the tale (or tales).
At bottom, I think that most of the explanation above is needless. Civilized folk know when they are behaving reasonably and when they are not.


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December 1, 1918
Dear Mother and Father:
This is the first of December and it really feels like it. When we got up this morning we found the ground perfectly white with frost and the puddles of water were frozen hard. It is the coldest day we have had but it is only a little below freezing. We would much rather have it this way than rainy and muddy as it has been ever since the middle of August or first of September.
We haven't a thing to do but sit around and wait for our orders to move and for transportation. In order to keep us from having too much time on our hands we are fixing up this place as though we were going to be here a long time. We have a bath house up now. That fills a long felt want. Where we were before we had a fine bath house but here there was nothing. We have a make shift one up now which is better than none.
I am still in my little dugout. When we first settled here we didn't expect to be here for over a few days as I didn't bother fixing my place up. But when it began to look as if we were in for a little stay here I got a little stove and fixed the place up. The Germans left dozens of little stoves around here and the railroad is lined with big hills of coal of all kinds so we are not lacking for stoves and fuel to keep us warm. I found a kerosene lamp so I can read or write letters at night so I don't have to go to bed at six every night now.
Several of the officers passing by have been curious to know what was down in here and have looked in. They think I have about the best place in camp. It's nice and home like and I have gotten rather attached to it.
I had a letter from Alice Atkinson this week and also from Mrs. Davis. Alice was still at Dunkirk, Belgium and was expecting to move in another day or two. Mrs. Davis was in Cedar Rapids. Mother probably has heard from her lately and knows more about her than I do. I judge that she is doing very well in Denver. I suppose I will be having some letters from home by the next mail that comes in.
We tried to have something of a celebration on Thanksgiving. The day was not cold.
Love from
© Copyright 2014 by Alice Kitchin Enichen, All Rights Reserved. No reproduction without permission.


text:
Availability: In stock
- Format:Paperback
- Subject(s):English as a Second Language
- Author(s):Clare West
- Available from: February 2010
A series of four books that provide extensive guidance and English practice in key areas of the language.
Availability: In stock
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The first in the popular series of four workbooks by this author, Recycling Elementary English provides revision and practice in four main areas: Situations, Vocabulary, Grammar and Writing. Recycling Elementary English can be used to supplement any elementary Coursebook, and offers useful extra practice for the Cambridge Key English Test (KET), and the Skills for Life Entry 2 examination.
- Contents
80 user-friendly units.
Clear, concise presentation in study boxes.
Wide variety of exercise types.
Regular recycling of grammar and vocabulary.
Illustrations to aid learning.
Ideal material for classroom use of self-study.
Advice on useful tools, activities and timetabling from teachers experiencing school closures.Read more
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text:
- Battery: 18V
- Blade Stroke: 7/8 in.
- Speed: 0-3,100 SPM (no load)
- Tool Weight: 4.1 lbs.
18V ONE+™ Reciprocating Saw with Anti-Vibe Handle
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