text:
The Dolphins snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
God, they are terrible.
They allowed Tim Tebow, who was sacked seven times and didn't seem to have a clue for 3 1/2 quarters to author a comeback victory. He helped the Broncos score two touchdowns and then get the winning field goal in overtime.
Owner Stephen Ross spent the entire final 5 minutes and overtime standing next to former Gators coach Urban Meyer. That doesn't mean anything short-term because Meyer isn't a coaching candidate today. But add him to the eventual list that will interest Ross. No doubt.
Also, the future of current coach Tony Sparano hangs in the balance tonight. Check back later for updates.


text:
After Hurricane Sandy (contd)
A small selection of photographs taken in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. | Article
The thumbnails above link to individual photo pages; if you'd like to link to a particular photo on this site, please link to the photo page, rather than linking directly to the JPEG file.
If you want to use one of these photos on your own site, you can download the JPEG file from the individual photo page. Please read the license first.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Narrow Results
Shop Side by Side Refrigerators
Side by side refrigerators continue to grow in popularity thanks to their modern styling and wide range of available options including full size counter depth. Similar to french door models a side-by-side fridge has two doors that open in the middle, but differ in that they use the full height of the unit for both the refrigerator and freezer sections. This provides much easier access to both frozen and refrigerated items, but because each side is a bit narrow it can be difficult to fit bulky items like frozen turkeys or pizza boxes. Below you'll find side by side refrigerator options like built-in water and ice dispensers, various CU FT sizes, and finishes like stainless steel, black and more.
Featured Refrigerator Videos
Abt stocks an extensive selection of side-by-side refrigerators from top manufacturers like GE, KitchenAid, Amana, and Electrolux. If you need help picking out the perfect fridge for your kitchen and your budget, please contact our appliance specialists at 888-228-5800.


text:
[Verse 1: Gnarex]
Gnarly tyrannosaurus, rollin' in a doorless taurus
Scoreless with a gorgeous whore until we hit the chorus
When we do, ill start forcin more than borin'
Conversation, you feel the vibrations from the pavement?
Patience? Fuck that, I need some fucking payment
Jk babe, I just think that you're amazin'
Ill do anything to take a tour of your basement
Use "Cadence", give you lame gazes
Fuck that, I just stole third base bitch
[Verse 2: TMode]
Better call the witch doctor, cuz I'm just spitting voodoo shit
Murder bitches, beats and the rap game, I am new to it
A lyricist, get near to this. so you can try to mirror it
If you want to get killed, then I can grant your dearest wish
Get pissed at me, no mystery that I will make you history
You just Mister Rodgers and I pity you like Mister T
Attacking ya vanacular like Dracula, loved like an acura
Spit wack shit at me. I'll spit it back at ya
Leave rappers dead, make faggots go and pull an Appomattox
Leave em red like the jumpsuit of an apparatus
You think you know crazy well I'm way past the madness
Kill the lazy rappers so that I can be the last of radness
Last of a dying breed of rappers who don't give a shit
About being mainstream, so shut the fuck up and live with it
I do what the fuck I want and say what the fuck I want
Think that I'm bullshiting you, I dare you to say I won't
Do I know that I'm the best, Mos Definetly
Rappers and hoes, kill em if they think they better than me
An atheist, murderin rappers and bustin believers
Sent to kill all pop singers and Justin Bieber
I'm an ill rhyme slinger and an ill line bringer
While you move on, I let my ill mind linger
Dealing with the downy kids, go and show that underbite
I'm the heat, win it all, at best you got the Thunder life
The future of the industry, so hand the pad and pen to me
Better blurt one out cuz the last few line have been cuss free
Mind so fucking psycho, therapist can no more fathom
Hate rappers that are faker than most bitch's orgasms
Embarrasing when they go hard like a fucking asian dick
Mouth must be an asshole, cuz they straight up spraying shit
While I chew up fake rappers like a rabbit with cabbage
Put my lyrics in your head and they'll give you brain damage
I'm at Kid Rock's concert with the Lochness Monster
Ask him for tree fiddy and shoot him with a rocket launcher
All these elders trying to tell me that I mis-behave
So I tell them fuck off Mister Gay, you must be friends with Mister Slave
I'm not acting out, maybe everyone else is just acting in
Cuz I've actually got brain cells, everyone else is lacking them
Rappers promoting bullshit, make kids drop out like a dead fetus
Making fuckers jealous, man you wish you could be this
Riding down the Jersey Shore, looking for a dirty whore
In a Ford, while I'm waving around a .44
Gnar tried to wake me up, cuz he heard me start to snore
Flipped the shit, ripped away half the car and part the door
Remix of Mathematics by Mos Def (Now (Yasiin Bey))


text:
Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults
Executive Director: Joseph J. McNulty
Address: 111 Middle Neck Road, Sands Point, NY 11050
Voice: 516-944-8900
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Web site: http://www.helenkeller.org
Publication: The Nat-Cent News
Editor: Dr. Robert J. Smithdas
The national center and its 10 regional offices provide diagnostic evaluations, comprehensive vocational and personal adjustment training, and job preparation and placement for people who are deaf-blind from every state and territory. Field services include information and referral and advocacy and technical assistance to professionals, consumers, and families. The Center also maintains a national registry of deaf-blind persons.


text:
Nothin' but Net: Sorry fans, it's not about you
Philadelphia, PA – If you've paid money to see the Miami Heat lately, you've been plenty disappointed.
Head coach Erik Spoelstra has made the decision to rest Dwyane Wade and LeBron James quite a bit over the last few weeks. It coincided with the end of the most famous streak since Susan Lucci couldn't win a Daytime Emmy, but the Heat are catching some lip from some people.
There is no way to deny the paying consumer is getting diddled. They shell out major dollars for tickets, hot dogs, sodas, beers, maybe a T-shirt and parking.
A family of four spends roughly $300. That doesn't factor in if the home team charges a little more when the Heat or Los Angeles Lakers or New York Knicks come to town.
The reason you pay to see those teams is to see LeBron or Kobe Bryant or Tim Duncan or Kevin Durant. The NBA is a superstar-driven league and we can blame it for that because no league markets stars over teams like the NBA.
There is no expectation that a player will suit up or dress. It's entirely up to the coach's discretion.
Could James, Wade and any of the myriad of San Antonio Spurs players who have sat a bunch this season played if the game was meaningful? Of course, but that's not the point.
The only thing that matters in these situations is if the coach believes he is doing what is in the best interest of his team. Translation: Is resting a player going to freshen them up for the playoffs? If a coach thinks that is the case, what recourse is there?
Commissioner David Stern fined the Spurs organization $250,000 when head coach Gregg Popovich took the extra step of not just sitting Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Danny Green in a Thursday night TNT game against the Heat, but flying them home that day, and commercial no less.
Popovich and the Spurs stuck a big old middle finger in the face of the NBA. The franchise was unhappy about scheduling and took this step, which was a purpose pitch.
Could the league forbid teams from flying players home the day of the game? Why not, but it's still costing the paying customer. That's who these benchings hurt most.
When kids don't get to see their superstars in action in person, it will hurt their idolization of them. Maybe they tell dad, "Don't bother next time." The league and the team just lost $200.
That's nothing.
The $250,000 the league collected from the Spurs when they pulled that stunt in Miami, that was real cash. Yet, the Heat weren't fined when they sat James and Wade. Why? Well, the Heat studs didn't fly home. Perhaps that was the act that really set Stern off.
What's fascinating is that in the two games in which sitting of players has been highlighted - both Spurs vs. Heat games - the two undermanned teams went 1-1. The Spurs lost in Miami, but were competitive until the final seconds. The Chris Bosh-led Heat actually beat San Antonio in Texas.
So what's the argument? Competitive basketball took place, it just didn't have the stars competing.
Aren't fans supposed to cheer for the name on the front of the jersey, not the back? Again, no, they're not, not in the NBA, which doesn't market teams a little.
So, is there anything the NBA can do so that fans aren't hurt?
Not one tiny thing.
Telling coaches rules on when they can or can not sit players is dangerous. That kind of thinking doesn't allow for competitive fairness.
It's not like the Heat can announce James and Wade will sit four months in advance when tickets are being purchased.
And here's the argument Mr. and Mrs. Public don't want to hear: these teams owe us nothing.
The NBA is a business and coaches' jobs are kept and lost based on success. Spoelstra does not report to any fans. He reports to his superiors in the Heat organization. Spoelstra's job is to win titles and he clearly believes the best way to do that is to sit James (who is already playing again) and Wade (who acknowledged, he's probably out for the remainder of the regular season).
The Heat's owners pay Spoelstra's salary, not the fans. That is abstract thinking skewered by the fact the most owners are loaded because of TV deals, not ticket sales.
The Heat have earned the right to do what they want. They won homecourt in the Eastern Conference around Christmas, and, with one more victory, would clinch homecourt throughout the whole playoffs.
What is the upside then to playing the stars? It's not like a team that's been together like the Heat, or the Spurs, need more reps in mid-April to iron things out.
The Heat expanded a lot in the pursuit of history with that 27-game winning streak.
The Spurs are older than organized religion.
All that can happen is possibly injury. That risk is not worth playing stars.
Sorry that fans are getting shafted in this, but there is nothing that can be done.
Coaches are doing what they think is best. Won't you be happy when the coach's decision leads to a championship?


text:
Sara's Meaningful Pieces
Like this entry? Favorite it below!
- Name:
- Sara
- Location:
- Santa Monica, CA
- Square Feet:
- 480
- Division:
- Tiny
- What I Love About My Small Home:
- I love all the natural light and windows throughout my place. It always seems sunny, cheerful, and uplifting. I also love the hardwood floors and the large living room. It feels airy yet cozy at the same time. The location is great, too...I'm walking distance from the Santa Monica farmer's market so I treat myself to fresh flowers every weekend. And lastly, I love that most of my furniture and decorations came from local flea markets and thrift stores. It is really satisfying to find an amazing deal on a great vintage piece. It's addicting!
- Biggest Challenge of Living in a Small Space:
- My biggest challenge is having a closet the size of a pea! I've made it work by filling practically an entire wall with an Ikea wardrobe. The other challenge is fitting all my stuff into a tiny space. I love antiques, tchochkes, art, fabrics, and furniture! I've only got so much floor and wall space, so I ask myself if I absolutely love something. If the answer is yes, I'll find a special place for it. Sometimes that means something else has to go. I try to surround myself with meaningful pieces but not let it get too cluttered.


text:
BMW 228i Suspension Control Arm Bushings Replacement Cost
Know what price you should pay to get your vehicle fixed.
Find a RepairPal Certified Shop
What is a control arm?
The control arm bushings are a component of the control arm. The control arm allows allow the wheel to travel up and down over bumps and helps to position the wheel in the proper alignment and its bushings allow the control arm to pivot.
How does the control arm work?
Control arm bushings are situated between the control arm and the attachment points on the body or suspension subframe. The bushings help to distribute impact force and absorb vibration. These reduce noise from control arm movement, as well as keeping the metal parts of the subframe and control arms separated.
What are the symptoms related to a bad control arm?
While the actual control arm may last the lifetime of the vehicle, the control arm bushings, often wear out as a vehicle approaches 100k miles. If the bushings are worn out, the suspension will make a squeaking sound when going over bumps. If they are severely worn, a knocking sound may be heard as the control arm makes metal-to-metal contact with the bushing bracket. With severely worn bushings, tire wear may be uneven and the vehicle may pull to one side or wander.
Can I drive with a control arm problem?
If the control arm bushings are worn, the result will be an annoying squeak when the car goes over bumps. In this case, the car can be driven. But if the bushings wear out considerably, metal-on-metal contact may happen between the control arm and the bushing bracket. This can cause further suspension damage and inconsistent vehicle handling. The control arm or bushing should be replaced.
How often do control arms need to be replaced?
While there is no prescribed frequency for replacement of a control arm, the bushings may wear out and need to be replaced as a vehicle approaches 100k miles. Driving aggressively or over rough roads can decrease the lifespan of the control arm bushings. On some vehicle models, the bushings are pressed into the control arms and may be replaced individually, but on other models, the bushings are permanently installed in the control arms. If the bushings wear out, the entire arm will need to be replaced.
How are control arm issues diagnosed?
A technician may diagnose a worn lower control arm bushing during a test drive of the vehicle. The condition may also present itself during a bounce test, where the technician will press down firmly on one corner of the front end of the vehicle to bounce the suspension and pivot the control arms. A severely worn control arm bushing may show up during a four wheel suspension alignment since the control arm determines the position and angle of the wheel.
How is a control arm replaced?
A technician will replace a lower control arm bushing by first lifting and supporting the vehicle in the air on a hoist and removing the wheel and tire. The lower control arm must be disconnected from the lower ball joint (attached to the steering knuckle) and from the vehicle frame or body. An upper control arm is disconnected from the strut tower on the body and from the top of the steering knuckle. Some control arms come with bushings permanently installed in them, while others require the bushings to be installed. It is common to replace related components - ball joints, tie rod ends, sway bar links - at the same time that a control arm is replaced.
RepairPal Recommendations for control arm issues
RepairPal recommends inspecting (and replacing if necessary) the ball joint at the same time that the control arm bushings are being replaced. Since the control arm determines the position of the wheel and tire, a four wheel alignment is also recommended after a control arm bushing is replaced.
What to look out for when dealing with control arm issues
Rubber bushings are adversely affected by heat and by petroleum products (grease and oil). It is important to periodically inspect the control arm bushings to make sure they are free from grease or oil. A severely worn bushing may alter the alignment of the vehicle. Also, in order to replace a control arm, the vehicle needs to be safely raised and supported on a hoist or a jack and jack stands.
Can I replace the control arm myself?
Replacement of the control arm bushings is generally an intermediate DIY repair. On some vehicles, the control arms come with the bushings already installed. On other vehicles, the bushings need to be pressed into their housings on the control arm before installation into the vehicle. In this case, the repair will be more difficult. Also, this repair requires that the vehicle be safely lifted and supported with a jack and jack stands. Failure to do so in a safe manner can result in serious injury or death.
- Repair shops in Pleasanton, CA
- Repair shops in San Ramon, CA
- Repair shops in Livermore, CA
- Repair shops in Danville, CA


text:
Bolero, from Madriz (1984)
Carlos Ceesepe was a Spanish painter and comic artist. Born Carlos Sánchez Pérez in Madrid, he chose his pseudonym through the pronunciation of his initials. With no formal graphic education, he published his first comics in the 1970s in Spanish underground publications like Carajillo or Nasti de Plasti from Barcelona, while publishing his series 'Slober' in the magazines Star and Bésame Mucho.
Comic from Carajillo (1975)
Later he published in the legendary and revolutionary magazine El Víbora, and then in Metal Hurlant and Madriz. In 1982, 'Dibujos' appeared, and a year later 'Barcelona by Night' was published, in which he integrated a few comics. Ceesepe eventually drifted away from comics however, and focused on painting.
Inspired by Picasso and Miro, Ceesepe has also designed various record covers and movie posters. He has exhibited in Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Japan and New York. He lived and worked in Madrid.


text:
It's a harsh realization for a fan base spoiled by success.
Missing the playoffs in back-to-back seasons was once unthinkable in Pittsburgh, a city home to one of the National Football League's model franchises.
Following last Sunday's debacle against Miami that dropped the Steelers to 5-8 and two games back of the final wildcard spot with three games remaining — the improbable has become the new reality.
Prior to Pittsburgh's 0-4 start, front office executives refused to concede the team was in a state of 'transition', despite the writing on the wall by the departure of several signature pieces during the offseason.
At this point, referring to 2013 as a 'transition' year would be understating the obvious.
The season is lost, and the once vaunted Steelers have succumbed to the ever-progressive nature of the NFL.
Sure, Pittsburgh reeled off three straight wins to position itself in the playoff mix in a less-than-stellar AFC by Thanksgiving, only to follow it up with a pair of losses to abruptly exit the conversation.
The most recent 34-28 loss to the Dolphins simply highlighted the struggles contributing to the downward trend.
Of course, a slew of injuries plaguing an already aging roster hasn't helped, but, injuries are part of the game.
Truthfully, aside from the offensive line, Pittsburgh has remained relatively healthy in contrast to previous years, especially at the skill positions.
The bottom line — quality coaching gets the most out of the personnel at its disposal.
See Bill Belichick in New England.
As with any underachieving team, the head coach takes a lot of heat, and Mike Tomlin is no different. His usage of timeouts and clock management on Sunday was poor at best, setting up a frantic final play that nearly bailed out his earlier decisions. Unfortunately, Antonio Brown stepped out of bounds, ending the game and the Steelers' playoff hopes.
The reality is, it should have never come to that.
While Tomlin is at the forefront, it's highly unlikely that his job is in jeopardy, nor should it be. Pittsburgh is a franchise of stability, where change at the helm is as uncommon as sitting at home in January.
As for the two coordinators, it's anyone's guess, much like their preparation and play calling throughout a vast majority of the year.
The rocky relationship between offensive coordinator Todd Haley and Ben Roethlisberger has been well-documented since Haley's arrival in 2012. Evidently, Roethlisberger's frustration with his play caller is growing with each loss.
In a postgame interview on Sunday, Roethlisberger was asked why the Steelers abandoned the running game in the second half after it had experienced noticeable success early on. He responded with, "No idea. Coach Haley is over there. You can ask him."
It's easy to point fingers, but you also can't ignore the franchise quarterback who has won two Super Bowls and spent his entire 10-year career in black and gold.
Trust me, Steeler Nation sides with Big Ben.
Rookie running back Le'Veon Bell has been a bright spot, providing Pittsburgh with some form of ground game that was previously non-existent. The second-round pick out of Michigan State did the same in the first quarter Sunday, rushing nine times for 38 yards (4.2 average), effectively exploiting a Miami defense that ranked 25th against the run. Then, for whatever reason, Haley called six, count 'em, six carries for Bell throughout the final three quarters, electing to go pass-happy instead of continuing to pound the rock on a snow-blanketed surface in a tight ball game. Makes perfect sense, right?
The most discouraging part — the defense was even worse.
Yet again, the Steelers were unable to get off the field in third-and-long situations, yielded several big plays and missed countless tackles considered to be routine.
There once was a time when Pittsburgh scored 28 points, the game was over. That now seems like a distant memory.
As beloved as defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau is in the Steel City, it's becoming more and more apparent that today's NFL offenses are one step ahead.
It's constantly referred to as a 'passing' league, yet Pittsburgh's secondary is, and has been, arguably the weakest unit on the team aside from the patented, yet sporadic, play of safety Troy Polamalu, when healthy.
Countless highlight reels on ESPN have featured Ike Taylor or Ryan Clark chasing a receiver into the end zone after getting burnt in coverage, with Taylor losing one-on-one matchups with the opponent's No. 1 receiver week in and week out.
Yes, a lot has to do with his personnel. But, LeBeau's once-dominant 3-4 scheme has clearly fallen behind. Very little pressure on the quarterback paired with creating even fewer turnovers is a recipe for defeat — something the Steelers are becoming all too familiar with.
Having nothing to play for this early in December doesn't sit well in Pittsburgh.
As stated by Tomlin himself: "The standard is the standard."
For the second consecutive year, that standard hasn't been met.


text:
aoffan23 wrote:Timedude wrote:Why makes the best sigs these days? I'm feeling a change of name, sig, and avatar coming up.
I tried J+B and Soap, but neither ended up getting done. They still make some pretty good sigs, but J+B's gone now so try Soap, he's got a thread for them in artwork.
I've actually got your Pearl Jam 10 sig done, but my Western Digital time
machine blew up. Blame Steve Jobs and his fruit company.


text:
BRISTOL, Tenn. – King celebrated the careers of three outstanding seniors but could not continue the celebration after being beaten by Mount Olive College in both games of Saturday's doubleheader, 6-3 and 4-0.
GAME ONE: Mount Olive 6, King 3
The Crusaders opened up with a four-run lead heading into the bottom of the fifth inning. The Lady Tornado had mustered only two hits to that point, but the bats started to wake up and make the game interesting with a three-run fifth inning to draw within one run.
Aubree Hutt (Bristol, Va.) led the inning off with an infield single, followed by hot-hitting Chrstina Melcher's single up the middle to put two on with no outs. Cora Millken (Jacksonville, Fla.) cranked a double to the deepest part of center field, scoring both runners and prompting a Trojans pitching change. King pushed one more run across the plate on an infield putout to the right side, making the score 4-3, but struggled getting any more offense together against the hard-throwing reliever.
King only had one base runner between the sixth and seventh innings, stalling any comeback while Mount Olive added two insurance runs in their half of the sixth.
Hannah Light (Coeburn, Va.) struck out the side in each of her first two innings of work, but the Trojans began to rough up the sophomore, tallying 12 hits and six runs, four earned, over her seven innings of work. Light (L, 14-4) struck out 10 total hitters, setting a new season and career high.
Mount Olive went double-or-bust in the second and third innings as four of their first five hits were two baggers. The Trojans put one run up in the second and third innings with two doubles in each frame. They scored twice more in the fifth to take a 4-0 lead after Christina Melcher's error at short extended the inning and Katie Moore hit a two RBI double to left. Rebekah McDaniel hit a leadoff, solo home run to begin the sixth inning while Danielle Mitchell hit a run-scoring double down the left field line to account for their sixth run.
GAME TWO: Mount Olive 4, King 0
Despite the fact that the Lady Tornado outhit the Trojans in game two, they struggled to get runners home. King stranded seven runners on the base paths in the nightcap, all in scoring position.
Rachael Wilmoth (Morristown, Tenn.) pitched at her best through six innings, allowing only one run (unearned) in the fifth before the Trojans scored three times in the final frame. She struck out three Mount Olive hitters and walked only one, but moved the ball around and kept hitters off balance al day long.
An error in the fifth led to Mount Olive's first run after pinch runner Megan Ready scored from second on Jennifer Jones' single to right field. Wilmoth retired the Trojans in order three times over the first six inning before the visitors put three insurance runs on the board in the top of the seventh. Christie Wright doubled home Robbin Kennedy and later scored on a fielder's choice before a third King error allowed one final run to score.
King led the seventh off with Aubree Hutt's second hit of the day, but Lauren Smith earned her second save of the day, retiring the next three Lady Tornado batters in order to end the game.
King honored three seniors prior to Saturday's games as they begin to conclude their collegiate careers. Kendall Brabson (Bean Station, Tenn.), Tiffany Harris (Tazewell, Va.), and Christy Kooch (Knoxville, Tenn.) were all recognized for their accomplishments and contributions to the Lady Tornado Softball program, as well as the King College community. Stephanie Mueller was also recognized for her contributions to the program as King's first softball All-American in its six-year history.
With the two losses, King drops to 27-16 overall and 11-9 in league play with two conference games to play. The Lady Tornado still hold on to the sixth spot in the Conference Carolinas playoff picture (by winning percentage) and will lock up their spot with one win against St. Andrews.
The team will take to the road against Tusculum for their final non-conference series of the season on Sunday, April 15, for two beginning at 1:00 p.m. King will conclude their season with a doubleheader against St. Andrews on Tuesday, April 17, at home.


text:
Difference between revisions of "Divrigi"
Latest revision as of 13:48, 29 June 2017
Divrigi is a town in northeastern part of Central Anatolia, on the edge of Eastern Anatolia.
Divrigi is an ancient town, which was once a Byzantine site. By the 12th and 13th centuries, it was the capital of Western branch of Turkic Mengücek Emirate, and the remains of Great Mosque of 1229 and a citadel remain from the period.
Get in[edit]
By air[edit]
Nearest airport is located in Sivas, about 180 km or 3 hours away by road.
By bus[edit]
By train[edit]
Divrigi has a train station. Daily trains from Istanbul's Haydarpaşa station (Doğu Express, departing 8:35AM and arriving at Divrigi 9:30AM next morning, 32.50 TL/seat, 26 TL/seat for students) and Ankara (Doğu Express, departing from Ankara 6:08PM, 20 TL/seat, 16 TL/seat for students; and Erzurum Express, departing from Ankara 1:30PM and arriving at Divrigi 3:45AM, 22.50 TL/seat, 18 TL/seat for students) are available. Sleeper cars are available at Doğu Express. For more info, see Turkish State Railways webpage [2].
Get around[edit]
See[edit][add listing]
Do[edit][add listing]
Buy[edit][add listing]
Eat[edit][add listing]
Drink[edit][add listing]
Sleep[edit][add listing]
The telephone code of the town is (+90) 346.
Get out[edit]
It's possible to move on further east to Erzincan, Erzurum, and Kars by daily trains.


text:
Dowlinger needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 88 designs submitted by 22 freelance designers.
International Electronics Recovery Coalition ( EIRC)
We are looking for a "look" that will carry nicely through our proposed international marketing campaign. look and feel are of paramount concern.
IERC was formed in response to the growing social, political and environmental concerns surrounding electronics recycling, computer recycling, and monitor disposal procedures and practices.
IERC's mission is to provide its customers with reliable and environmentally conscious means of disposing of their obsolete, broken or unwanted electronics ( e-waste ). The primary concern at IERC is and their members is to ensuring that disposal needs are handled in an environmentally safe and secure manner. IERC provides environmentally safe disposal methods by adhering to strong ethical and environmental practices through ISO compliant practices.
We Target is both the electronic recyling industry as members and potential service partners ( corporations and govt agencies Canada + USA as customers ) that require a business relationship to disposal of high volumes of electronic waste products. ie computer, medical, industrial, commercial waste
We feel that an official or authoritative styled logo similar to a certificate seal would be an approach that we have considered and would like to see as well as others.
We wish to have the logo compatible as a membership seal on member sites as well as being the corporate logo. We are open to interpetations and design concepts will be given their diligence
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


text:
Orlando and wife deny split stories
Orlando Bloom and wife Miranda Kerr has brushed off rumours that they are on the verge of splitting up.
The couple, who have been married for over two years and are parents to 23-month-old son Flynn, apparently decided to "take a break", In Touch magazine claimed.
But a spokesman for the pair denied their romance was on the rocks, telling The Sun: "They're spending the holidays together."
British actor Orlando has been in South Africa shooting his new film Zulu, while his Australian model wife has been jetting around the world.
She was in Spain recently to launch her new role as the face of fashion brand Mango, and has also been in New York, where she was spotted partying with Leonardo DiCaprio at his 38th birthday.
Miranda, who has modelled for Victoria's Secret, recently denied she was pregnant with her second child, writing on Twitter: "Someone hacked my account. It's ridiculous! I'm not pregnant!"


text:
Early Registration for Fall Semester 2001 courses at Texas A&M International University began on July 23 and continues through Aug. 3.
General Registration will be conducted by alphabetical sequence on August 24 from 11 a.m. - 7 p.m. at A&M International's campus, 5201 University Boulevard. Online registration is available at lasso.tamiu.edu for
students meeting requirements.
Students may register for courses leading to 54 undergraduate or graduate degrees. Returning students should see their faculty advisors for Early Registration; new transfer students will need to make an appointment with an advisor in the Registrar's Office by calling 326.2217.
Entering freshman must attend Orientation on August 15-16 for advisement and registration. The due date for payment of tuition and fees for those who register early is Aug. 23. Students who register early should be aware that registration will not be automatically dropped from the computer system. One must officially drop or withdraw from courses by calling or visiting the Registrar's Office.
Late Registration for Fall semester courses will end at 3 p.m. on Aug 31. A late fee of $20 will be assessed to all students registering late.
Fall semester courses at A&M International begin Aug. 27. The last day of Fall classes is Dec. 5, with final exams scheduled for Dec. 7-13.
For more information on A&M International's Fall Registration 2001, call the University's Office of the Registrar, 326.2250, visit offices located in the Sue and Radcliffe Killam Library, room 168 or go online, www.tamiu.edu/affairs/registrar/.
The Office of the Registrar is open from 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, and Friday and 8 a.m. - 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday.
Additional information on the University may also be secured by email at email@example.com.
Journalists who need additional information or help with media requests and interviews should contact the Office of Public Affairs and Information Services at email@example.com


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Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 31st May 2012 21:41 UTC
And thus, it ends. Despite a never-ending stream of doom and gloom from Oracle/Microsoft-funded 'pundits' regarding Google and Android (six hundred billion trillion gazillion eurodollars in damages!!1!), judge Alsup has just squashed all of Oracle's chances with a ruling that is good news for those of us who truly care about this wonderful industry: APIs are not copyrightable. Alsup: "To accept Oracle's claim would be to allow anyone to copyright one version of code to carry out a system of commands and thereby bar all others from writing their own different versions to carry out all or part of the same commands. No holding has ever endorsed such a sweeping proposition." Supreme Court, Ellison?
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RE[3]: Comment by shmerl
by lfeagan on Fri 1st Jun 2012 03:24 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by shmerl"
One of the critical sleight of hands Oracle tries to put into people minds in their statement is: "a license has always been required for an implementation of the Java Specification". To be a certified implementation of the Java Specification this is true. Dalvik, however, neither purports nor seeks certification. Dalvik simply provides an API that is similar or the same (in some areas) as that of a popular system.
So Google borrowed from Java's API, big deal. So long as Google doesn't claim that they are a certified Java (R) implementation with the cutesy little logo they should be in the clear.


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They'll get you in the end
August 9, 2009
Run For Cover Muthafucka
April 27, 2009
This town is coming like a ghost town. Mexico City videos in menu. CNN at the scene.
"A public health emergency of international concern. "CNN round-up.
A good man is hard to find.
April 24, 2009
Killer Poet. Keith Douglas
April 22, 2009
Extract from How to Kill
Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.
Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears
and look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the wave of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.
Keith Douglas (1920-1944) would have been 89 today. He is often called the best English poet of the Second World War, but even that is to do him a disservice. He belongs among the greatest Anglophone poets of his century. His influence has not yet been properly acknowledged, but a hint of his importance to later poets can be taken from a letter Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother in June 1962: 'Ted did a beautiful [BBC radio] program on a marvelous young British poet, Keith Douglas, killed in the last war… Both of us mourn this poet immensely and feel he would have been like a lovely big brother to us.' For Hughes's considerable indebtedness to Douglas, see my essay here.
Douglas was more than a major poet. He also wrote Alamein to Zem Zem, the best prose memoir of combat that I have read. In poetry and prose, Douglas lingers over images of war's nastiness and squalor, by which I don't mean the terrible hardships of war such as Owen writes about. His truths go beyond even Owen's range: Douglas tells us what it is like to kill, or to stumble across the rotting corpse of a dead enemy soldier, or to watch a wild dog digging up a fresh corpse, or to loot through the 'bran-tub' of a battlefied. 'Shall I get drunk or cut myself a piece of cake', 'Cairo Jag' opens; as one anthology primly observes, cutting cake is a euphemism for 'procuring a woman'. And the poem ends unforgettably:
But by a day's travelling you reach a new world
the vegetation is of iron
dead tanks, gun barrels split like celery
the metal brambles have no flowers or berries
and there are all sorts of manure, you can imagine
the dead themselves, their boots, clothes and possessions
clinging to the ground, a man with no head
has a packet of chocolate and a souvenir of Tripoli.
Description sourced from – http://war-poets.blogspot.com/2009/01/keith-douglas.html
Katherine Knight Cooked Her Husband
April 14, 2009


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On "Ku Klux"
Onwucheka Jemie
Hughes equates the Northern police violence of "Third Degree" and "Who But the Lord?" with the Southern violence of "Ku Klux." The police have the same "faces like jack-o-lanterns" as the members of the KKK in Ask Your Mama.
. . . .
Like Madam Alberta Johnson in "Madam and the Phone Bill," the narrator of "Ku Klux" is signifying and clowning around, sassing the white folks. He knows that anything he says will be used against him, and his knowledge gives him a certain freedom. He mocks his attackers' beliefs by saying he would believe in anything if they would just turn him loose; that is, he would accept their reading of reality only under duress. They are desperate to persuade him, but they also know it's useless. And the fact that he knows and says as much makes them even more frantic. The poem holds five hundred years of history in capsule, spotlighting the physical violence by which the West established and enforced the myth of its superiority over the rest of the world. . . .
"Ku Klux" is a leisurely account after the event; the victim has lived to tell his story, and can afford to mellow its memory with humor and sass.
From Langston Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry. Copyright © 1976 by the Columbia University Press.
Bartholomew Brinkman
Langston Hughs's poem "Ku Klux," like "Christ in Alabama" or "Park Bench" performs in a short lyric poem an incredible act of historical compression. In presenting a scene where a black man is accosted by members of the Ku Klux Klan, the five ballad stanzas of the poem revisit the whole history of race relations in America that has been structured on a master/slave dialectic. Although white and black no longer legally participate in a master-slave relationship, the white man is still "mister" and the black man is still a "boy." There is a race-based hierarchical relationship in place that is emphasized and essentialized by the white coats of the KKK and the "Nigger"-ness of the black man.
While the black man demonstrates his own subjectivity and agency as the speaker of the poem, the white men deny him this identity. "They took me out" can be understood as not only taking the black man out to "some lonesome place" to be tortured and murdered, but also as taking me out, of divesting the black man of his individual subjectivity. To them, he is not an individual person, but only a pejorative example of his race. However, even as the white men deny the black man's identity–which is necessary to sustain the oppressive white/black dialectic–they are dependent on him. They ask him, "'Do you believe/ In the great white race?'" They depend on his belief in and fear of whiteness in order to sustain the construction of whiteness itself.
The black man replies in the next stanza, "'To tell you the truth,/ I'd believe in anything/ if you let me loose.'" The black man is pleading for his life and is willing to believe in anything they tell him to if they will let him go. But this cuts to the heart of the white/ black dialectic. As Hegel suggests in Phenomenology of Spirit, the master/slave dialectic allows for an independent consciousness of the slave, but the being-for-self of the master is not certain because it is dependent on recognition of the slave who is not in a position to freely acknowledge the other. In "Ku Klux," the black man's belief is contingent on his freedom, so that while he is tied up his acknowledgment of whiteness can't be trusted.
But the white men fail to understand this contingency. One of them demands of the "boy," "Can it be/ You're standing' there/ A-sassin' me?" They take anything other than unqualified agreement as insubordinate and worthy of violence. In response to the black man, the Klan members "hit me in the head/ And knocked me down/ And then they kicked me/ On the ground." This stanza characterizes a history of race-based violence–on a personal, national and international level–that plagued much of the twentieth century. Hugh's ironic use of "A-sassin," however, suggests that it is this very back-talk, this verbal confrontation (as exhibited by the poem itself) that threatens to dismantle the construction of whiteness and kill the notion of the white man. Against such violence, the victim still has the power to call into question the system of their oppression and the identity of those who are dependent on such a system.
The final stanza repeats the previous demand more emphatically, "'Nigger/ Look me in the face–/and tell me you believe in/ The great white race.'" The black man, who has physically been placed in a subordinate position, is asked to affirm the identity of his torturers. He must do this through an articulation of his gaze (it is instructive to consider here bell hooks's notion of the "oppositional gaze" although it is specifically gendered) . But in order for the black man to look in the white man's face, the latter must remove his KKK hood–his sustaining marker of whiteness–and reveal himself as an individual. The white man's demand becomes a desperate plea: he is begging for the black man to acknowledge some essential whiteness that is not dependent on an oppressive dialectic, but is biologically inherent and assured. We do not get the black man's response to this last question (unless we consider it to be the poem itself) and we do not know his fate. But we are left with an impression of "whiteness" as fragile and poorly constructed, to be questioned even by a man under torture. Hugh's poem interrogates the history of oppression based on race and calls into question the very category of race itself.
Copyright © 2004 by Bartholomew Brinkman.
John Moore
Langston Hughes's "Ku Klux" explores laughter as a site fraught with ambiguous political possibilities. Hughes's poem engages the comedic on a number of levels. In shortening the name of the Ku Klux Klan for his title, Hughes highlights the comical alliteration in the organization's name. Moreover, Hughes uses as a title only part of a phrase. Said repeatedly, "Ku Klux Klan" can lose the strangeness of its sound and become easier to say. Said alone, however, "Ku Klux," becomes re-enstranged. In many ways, "Ku Klux" is an example of what Boris Ejxenbaum calls "enstrangement"—the idea "that the formation of lateral meanings, disrupting the usual associations of words, is the chief property of verse semantics" (26-7). Hughes's poem is in part about words made to sound strange, in situations fraught with the threat of violence and in the rhetoric surrounding organizations whose chief aim is violence. "Ku Klux" also rewrites the scenario depicted by Sterling A. Brown's "Sharecroppers" in a way that complicates the apparent optimism of Brown's poem. One way that Hughes does this is by characterizing the sound of an African-American voice by a clear and well-articulated phrasing rather than by the noise of black laughter.
"Ku Klux" is a strangely humorous poem. No one laughs in this poem, and instead it is the possibility that the man being lynched might be laughing that further incites the rage of the Klansmen. The threat of physical violence that results from the Klansmen's mishearing of their victim's response to a question is contrasted by the way that the poem is littered with a comical vision of the language surrounding the Klan. The poetic persona's response to one of the Klansmen's question is perhaps the most vexed point in the poem, the point at which the Klansman's enstranged and belabored language is most directly contrasted with a portrayal of comedy as dangerous. When asked if he "believe[s] / In the great white race," the poem's persona responds, "Mister, / To tell you the truth, / I'd believe in anything / If you'd just turn me loose" ("Ku Klux" 3-4, 5-8). We can contrast the strangeness of the sound of the question with the straightforwardness of the persona's response. The question itself is difficult to read aloud. The phrase, "the great white race," is difficult to pronounce not only because of three successive hard stresses, but also because of the succession of vowel sounds from "great" to "white." It is a phrase that seems to require practice to enunciate clearly, perhaps suggesting that the question is borrowed from a Klan chant or is otherwise part of a ritualized rhetorical act. The poem incorporates not only the belabored sound of this phrase, but also the possible reading of it as a bombastic and ritualized question. The Klansman's question is thus humorous whether we read it as the out-of-place repetition of a bombastic, ritualized chant or as simply clumsy speech.
The poetic persona's response can be read in two radically different ways, and each reading implies different things about the status of comedy in the poem. We might say that the response is a witty rebuttal to the belabored stuttering or ritualized bombasity of the Klansman's question. Alternatively, we might read the persona's response literally; he really would say anything, "If you'd just turn [him] loose." The situation is complicated by the fact that the first reading is in fact put forward by the Klansman asking the question—"The white man said, 'Boy, / Can it be / You're a-standin' there / A-sassin' me?" (9-12). As with the initial question, the Klansman's response is humorous. "A-standin" and "a-sassin" are comical reversals of racizalized representations of dialect akin to what Brown does with dialect in poems like "Scotty Has His Say." The humorous nature of the way that the Klansman struggles with language is part of what makes this poem difficult. The poem contrasts the belabored language of the Klansman with the calm, potentially witty response of the poetic persona. It is hard to not read the persona's response to the Klansman's question as a retort, especially given the fact that the question itself is said with either difficulty or bombast. Yet, if we read the poetic persona's response as a witty act of resistance, then we are left with a question that never really comes up in Brown's depiction of the sharecropper's laughter in "Sharecroppers." If the response is meant as resistance, how effective or well-advised of an act of resistance is it?
Hughes's poem stages the double-bind of a theory of laughter as political resistance. Though, as Chasar wants to suggests, black laughter might be able to go into spaces that black bodies cannot, what actually happens when the laughter arrives in these new spaces? In "Ku Klux," it is never quite clear whether the poetic persona mocks the lynch mob or whether his response is genuinely born out of fear for his life. This productive ambiguity allows Hughes to complicate the way that black laughter is staged in a poem like "Sharecroppers." Ralph Ellison, in his 1985 essay "The Extravagance of Laughter," repeats a story that was frequently rehearsed during his time at Tuskegee in the 1930's that offers insight into the problematic opened up by Hughes's poem. On their way back to campus, a group of Tuskegee students had been pulled over by two policeman, who "learned during the course of routine questioning that one of the group, a very black-skinned young man, bore the surname of 'Whyte'" (Ellison 168). The policemen were indignant—"'Cause it stands to reason that there's no way in the world for a nigra as black as that to pretend that his name is 'White.' Not unless he's blind-staggers drunk or else plum out of his nappy-headed cotton-pickin' mind!" (169). The two officers were even more indignant when they learned how Whyte spelled his name—"They made him write it down on a pad and then they made him spell it out—and I mean out loud!" (170). As Ellison explains, the story is humorous in a complicated way. A dangerous situation at the time, it was nonetheless comical in retrospect. Repeatedly retelling the story seems to have served a kind of ameliorating social function, offering the students a site of political resistance. Yet the retellings nonetheless "did nothing to change the Phenix [sic] City police, and probably wouldn't have even if they heard the recitation" (171). Moreover, retelling the story "didn't cancel out the unpleasantness or humiliation. Thus, back on campus we were compelled to buffer the pain and negate the humiliation by making grotesque comedy out of the extremes to which whites would go to keep us in what they considered to be our 'place'" (171).
Ellison's story illustrates that absurdist narratives of racialized violence have two functions for the communities in which they are told. They are on one level ameliorating narratives, offering both story-teller and audience an absurdist vision of everyday life. The real-life versions of the scenarios depicted by these narratives are violent and dangerous. Indeed, as Ellison observes, the specter of the Scottsboro trial was at the back of the story involving the two policemen, and the students at Tuskegee lived with the constant fear that every highway patrolman in the South still carried "a violent zeal" informed by a sense of justice having not been served by the trial's outcome (167). Retelling a narrative about the possibility of racial violence as an absurdist event—and, indeed, abstracting the narrative beyond the particulars of the originally dangerous event—allows the students to create an alternative rhetorical community. In retelling the story, they alienate themselves from the all-too-real everyday and recast ordinariness of violence as exceptionally ridiculous.
However, as Simon Critchley notes, humorous narratives often work as "(un)timely reminder[s] of who one is, and the nature of what Heidegger would call one's Geworfenheit, or thrownness. If humour returns us to our locale, then […] it can do this in an extremely uncomfortable way, precisely as thrown into something I did not and would not choose" (74-5). The very ambiguity that allows the narrative about the two highway patrolmen to be an absurdist escape from ordinary violence prevents the comedy from every fully eradicating the presence of that violence. In enstranging the ordinariness of racial violence, these narratives somehow manage to always remind one of just how ubiquitous that violence is. As Ellison observes, the students were fully aware of a certain futility implicit in the retelling of the story. Casting the event as humorous has no real impact on the actual practices of the highway patrolmen.
Hughes would certainly have been aware of the practice of telling absurdist narratives about racial violence, and he engages with this tradition by framing "Ku Klux" as a personal narrative about racial violence, one that from its very title seems to signal a comic vision. Moreover, the Klansman's clumsy negotiation of language fits into the framework of a humorously strange-sounding language set out by the poem's title. Like the story told by Ellison, the events described in "Ku Klux" center upon a white authority figure mishearing or misunderstanding a well-spoken African-American. Yet, unlike Ellison's story, the poem never clarifies whether or not the poetic persona's response is meant to mock or plead. Starting with the third stanza, Hughes begins the play with the framework of the absurdist narrative. The poem itself offers a reading of the persona's otherwise ambiguous response in the form of the Klansman's question, "Boy, / Can it be / You're a-standin' there / A-sassin' me?" ("Ku Klux" 9-12). If the Klansman's first question seemed to imply ritualized language, then the fact that the poem ends with the same belabored phrase becomes significant. The chant-like nature of the original question ("Do you believe / In the great white race?" (3-4)) and the utter confusion and anger of the Klansman at his victim's well-phrased response suggests that asking the question is not about getting any other answer than silent fear or a simple "yes." Any other answer simply does not fit the ritual. The poem ends, not with a "response" stanza, but with the repeated question, this time without an answer of any sort.
Though "Ku Klux" begins as a personal narrative that looks like the kind of absurdist narratives described by Ellison, by stanza three the poem shifts to an interpretive and structural framework dominated by the hegemonic power of white supremacy. Through this shift, Hughes places the poetic persona's response to the first question in an odd position. If it actually is a joke, then it seems to have been an ill-advised one. Within the structural space of the poem, it is a form of political resistance that seems only to have incited further violence. More importantly, however, Hughes chooses to allow the persona to be reminded of this fact through the comparatively clumsy voice of the Klansman. If the response is a joke, then it recalls the inescapable "thrownness" of the persona's world insofar as the joke is called ill-advised by the very person about whom the joke was made in the first place. Yet, if the response is not a joke, then the poem gives us an example of a situation in which a victim of racial violence is faced with the comically horrifying face—or, rather, jumbled words—of racism and chooses to respond with sincerity. In this second reading, sincerity never gets around the possibility of being read as a joke, as his attackers read his response as sarcasm nevertheless.
Hughes's poem offers us two alternative readings. Laughter might be a political weapon, though if it is it hardly seems effective. Alternatively, laughter might be a rhetorical fantasy perpetuated by absurdist narratives that only momentarily deflect the very real violence of racial oppression, and yet it is a fantasy framed within the way that the lynch mob reads the victim's response and thus, in some way, an inescapable framework of white hegemony. Yet, the poem does not reduce to either reading. The ambiguity arises from the fact that we cannot hear the tone of the poetic persona. As readers, we only know that the Klansmen hear the speaker's words in a particular way, detecting sarcasm in words that, without the added element of tone of voice, could just as easily be read as sincere.
As in Sterling Brown's "Sharecroppers," so much depends in this poem on how we hear the voice of the victim through the violence of figures of white hegemonic authority. In "Sharecroppers," the sharecropper's laughter appears well before the lines in which he actually speaks, and so Brown's readers hear the laughter first without hearing its particular tone. As Matthew Lessig observes, "Sharecroppers" differs from much of Brown's poetry in that it "conserves black dialect for the direct discourse of its martyred hero's dying words, thereby postponing a race conscious reading until it can be subsumed within the poem's class conscious closing appeal" (MAPS). While it is always a possibility that the sharecropper is African-American, the fact that we do not hear his dialect until the last two lines underscores the fact that though we are told that he laughs, we never actually hear his laughter. The dialect evident in the final two lines of the poem not only racially identifies the sharecropper, but also illustrates that there is a sonic dimension to his laughter that, though inaccessible to a reader, nonetheless played a significant role in the events described in the poem. That is to say, when the sharecropper's laughter is described in the poem, the lynch mob hears something that we, as readers, cannot. The dialect of the final lines suggests that sharecropper's laughter would be similarly toned by a kind of laughter-dialect.
Chasar argues that the desire "to manage the increasingly public sounds of black laughter" on the part of white Americans was driven by the anxious belief "that the constant supervision of, and rhetorical attention to, this noise was perceived as crucial for the maintenance of white superiority" (65). Shooting the sharecropper in the side is an example of such attempts at controlling the noise of black laughter. Brown stages the attempt to control black laughter in the formal technique of the poem. Laughter is narrated, not heard, and yet the noise of black laughter nonetheless plays a central role in determining the actions of the lynch mob. In a certain sense, the final two lines of the poem allow the reader to hear the particular tone of the sharecropper's laughter. Without the dialect, it is possible to read the sharecropper as white—and thus, read the mob violence as solely about union organizing. Yet, the addition of the African-American dialect racializes the encounter, and so the act of shooting the sharecropper in the side becomes also a response to the sound of black laughter, the aural reminder that unionization is taking place across color lines and so all the more threatening to the hegemonic power of the landlord.
The difference between "Sharecroppers" and "Ku Klux" is the difference between inarticulate sound and articulated response. In "Sharecroppers," there is only one way for the lynch mob to read the sharecropper's laughter, and we have to read that laughter through their immediate response. In "Ku Klux," however, the poetic persona's clearly-articulated response is somehow more ambiguous than the sharecropper's laughter. The difference may be that even if Hughes's poetic persona's response is meant as an aggressive retort (accompanied perhaps by a bit of sly laughter) the way that Hughes litters the rest of the poem with comical language suggests that the man's response is not quite the humorless laughter described by Chasar and staged by Brown. If the man in "Ku Klux" makes a joke, he is most definitely laughing at the Klansman. If he does not, the joke seems to frame his fate nonetheless.
Works Cited
Brown, Sterling A. "Sharecroppers." 1939. Anthology of Modern American Poetry. Ed. Cary Nelson. New York: Oxford U P, 2000. 483-84. Print.
Chasar, Mike. "The Sounds of Black Laughter and the Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes." American Literature 80.1 (March 2008): 57-81. Print.
Critchley, Simon. On Humour. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Ejxenbaum, Boris M. "The Theory of the Formal Method." Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views. 1971. Ed. Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska. Chicago: Dalkey Archive, 2002. 3-37. Print.
Ellison, Ralph. "An Extravagance of Laughter." Going to the Territory. New York: Random House, 1986. 145-197. Print.
Hughes, Langston. "Ku Klux." 1942. Anthology of Modern American Poetry. Ed. Cary Nelson. New York: Oxford U P, 2000. 520-21. Print.Lessig, Matthew. "Sharecroppers." Modern American Poetry Site. Web. 9 November, 2010.
Copyright © 2010 by John Moore.
Return to Langston Hughes


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Frozen Fleece
Pat Abbott 11/16/2011 2:23:11 PMGreat shot, Robin. Congrats on your finalist! #1423516
The Judges at BetterPhoto.com 11/16/2011 4:06:37 PMWow this is certainly not a typical photo. #9809461
Sheila D. Robertson 11/16/2011 4:09:06 PMCongratulations on this stunning shot!! #9809484
Jessica Jenney 11/16/2011 4:32:48 PMCongratulations, Robin-Lee on your fabulous finalist! #9809689
Phyllis H. Burchett 11/16/2011 5:01:36 PMawesome, congrats #9809951
Cheryl Winn 11/16/2011 5:51:30 PMLove it! Congratulations, Robin-Lee. #9810282
Patti Coblentz 11/16/2011 6:20:21 PMCongratulations on this terrific finalist, Robin-Lee!! #9810405
The Judges at BetterPhoto.com 11/16/2011 7:04:11 PMWonderful pattern and use of graphic line. #9810641
Sherran Andersen 11/16/2011 10:17:14 PMWould make a great puzzle. Congrats. #9811358
Summer A. Kozisek 11/17/2011 12:02:20 AMGreat capture, Congratulations on your finalist! #9811597
Usman M. Bajwa 11/17/2011 2:23:55 AMI see this at the TOP of Animals category Gold, Robin-Lee. Expect to see it get golden!!!
Diane E. Deming 11/17/2011 5:24:45 AMLove this, Robin. I agree with Usman that this should be a winner. Great shot and congrats on your finalist award. #9812444
Danny B. Head 11/17/2011 6:05:56 AMLove this! Congrats! #9812565
Ujjwal Mukherjee 11/17/2011 6:11:49 AMCongratulations....a superb image and finalist!! #9812592
Patricia A. Casey 11/17/2011 6:16:29 AMWonderful image! Congratulations on the FINALIST! #9812612
Joan E. Hoffman 11/17/2011 10:24:36 AMAmazing image! I love it! Congrats on your finalist Robin-Lee!! #9813494
ROBIN-LEE M. Vieira 11/17/2011 10:42:57 AMThank you so much everyone!!! :) #9813554
Jessica Jenney 11/17/2011 1:09:59 PMBig congrats on your fabulous First Place Win! #9814009
Joan E. Hoffman 11/17/2011 1:14:33 PMWTG Robin.... Very deserving 1st! #9814020
Claudia Kuhn 11/17/2011 1:24:49 PMLove this one Robin Lee, congrats on your first place winner #9814050
Mary K. Robison 11/17/2011 1:36:49 PMOutstanding capture, Robin ~
Terry Cervi 11/17/2011 1:44:17 PMWhat an awesome photo, Robin-Lee!! Congrats on your very well deserved First Place Win!!! #9814185
Ellen Hodges 11/17/2011 1:52:08 PMHuge congrats, Robin-Lee!! #9814220
Karen Slagle 11/17/2011 2:17:28 PMWhat an incredibly fabulous winning image, Robin-Lee. This is awesome, I love it...Congrats. #9814280
Patricia A. Casey 11/17/2011 2:21:08 PMA very huge congratulations on this win! Well done.....=^..^= #9814302
Patti Coblentz 11/17/2011 3:50:20 PMCongratulations on your 1st place win for this awesome image, Robi Lee!!! #9814606
Michael M. Petrizzo 11/17/2011 3:55:34 PMCongrats RL. Very happy for you. :) #9814616
R. J. Laudenbacher 11/17/2011 4:08:50 PMThis is a wonderful capture, Robin-Lee. Congrats on your First place winner! #9814642
Jeff Robinson 11/17/2011 4:10:53 PMCongrats Robin-Lee on this Wonderful Winning image!! #9814650
Joannie Bertucci 11/17/2011 4:33:36 PMI love that I can say...I knew you when! :-) Fabulous work and so very deserving of First Place Robin-Lee! An extremely unique composition and beautiful treatment! #9814742
JO ANN CLEVELAND 11/17/2011 4:34:00 PMWOWZA! Very well deserved First Place!
Congratulations on this awesome winner Robin-Lee!
jo ann c. #9814748
Amy M. Wilson 11/17/2011 4:34:48 PMCongratulations on your outstanding First Place winner, Robin-Lee!! #9814754
ROBIN-LEE M. Vieira 11/17/2011 5:21:04 PMThank you all so much for your very kind comments! This was such a wonderful surprise!! I am indeed in good company with so many fabulous and very talented photographers! Thanks a bunch! Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!!
Robin-Lee #9814987
Katherine Kuhn 11/17/2011 5:25:57 PMCongratulations on a wonderful capture, Robin-Lee!
Kathryn Wesserling 11/17/2011 7:34:05 PMI so love this picture, Robin-Lee. Congratulations on the 1st Place Gold. #9815340
Usman M. Bajwa 11/17/2011 7:34:30 PM:) :) :) #9815341
Patrick Rouzes 11/17/2011 7:37:34 PMBig Congratulations on your Gold Medal Winner, Robin-Lee! #9815355
Gerri R. Jones 11/17/2011 7:41:07 PMA superb animal capture...love it! Congratulations, Robin-Lee on your first place winner! #9815366
Steve M. Harrington 11/17/2011 8:47:43 PMA wonderful and most worthy winner, Robin-Lee! I had no idea you were on BP; I recognized your remarkable style, then saw your name. :)
Renee Doyle 11/18/2011 12:23:48 AMFabulous capture Robin-Lee!! Congratulations on this wonderful First Place Winner! #9815680
Danny B. Head 11/18/2011 3:20:12 AMNice to see this as a winner! Congrats! #9815852
Christopher Budny 11/18/2011 4:31:13 AMCongratulations! What a great story-telling capture! #9816061
Janet Fikar 11/18/2011 7:11:35 AMWhat a great image! Love it. Congrats. #9816378
David M. Montero 11/18/2011 10:43:59 AMAmazing capture Robin! Congratulations on your First Place win! #9816720
Robert Jensen 11/18/2011 12:19:17 PMGreat image #9816942
Lindley Johnson 11/18/2011 12:47:36 PMWhat a stunning image, Robin-Lee! Big congratulations on your First Place Win! #9817018
Judy Foxworthy 11/18/2011 1:06:30 PMBig congratulations, Robin-Lee!!! WoW! #9817069
Rona L. Schwarz 11/18/2011 9:23:44 PMThis is a brilliant composition, Robin-Lee and technically perfect! Big Congratulations on your First Place Win! #9818046
Tarun Bose 11/18/2011 11:23:26 PMBig congrats Robin-lee, for your first prize winner. #9818160
Mary Beth Aiello 11/19/2011 5:44:41 AMSimply gorgeous, Robin-Lee. Huge congrats on this beautiful FIRST PLACE WINNER. #9818509
Mitch Spence 11/19/2011 9:42:16 AMMarvelous Robin-Lee. An exceptional and exceptionally beautiful winner. #9818837
Gina Cormier 11/19/2011 9:59:45 AMStunning Robin-Lee!!! Congrats on this fabulous image!! #9818890
Bojan Bencic 11/19/2011 10:50:16 AMFunny title and amazing photo, Robin-Lee. Congratulations on your WIN! #9818977
Donna La Mattino Pagakis 11/20/2011 2:05:34 PMCongratulations Robin-Lee, a stunning win! #9821313
ROBIN-LEE M. Vieira 11/21/2011 9:22:16 PMThank you all so much for taking the time to leave such nice comments! I was happy to see this win...it's a favorite of mine. I wanted to take them all home to my barn:) Again, many thanks...I'm in good and very talented company here!!
Robin-Lee :) #9824017
Susan D. Royce 11/22/2011 12:19:17 PMGreat shot. Congratulations, Robin! Hope they all made it in from the cold :) #9825269
Harriet Feagin 12/5/2011 6:13:45 PMRobin, I just noticed this photo. It is stunning and brilliantly done. Congratulations. #9849651
Irene Colling 3/15/2016 8:17:47 PMWonderful photo Robin. A fave for me. Congratulations. #11447502
Daniella Puente 3/23/2016 8:07:57 AMLove this photo! #11450506
Exif: F Number: 4, Exposure Bias Value: 0.00, ExposureTime: 1/400 seconds, Flash: reserved, ISO: 160, White balance: Manual white balance, FocalLength: 54.00 mm, Model: E-3
Uploaded on 10/28/2011 7:47:44 AM
Copyright for this gallery photo belongs solely to ROBIN-LEE M. Vieira. Images may not be copied, downloaded, or used in any way without the expressed, written permission of the photographer.
Log in to follow or message this photographer or report this photo.


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Who's Rockin' Rode Microphones?
Who's Rockin' Rode Microphones?
By Hugh McKenna
Born out of Freedman electronics who were founded in 1967, Rode were one of the first companies to provide the project/home studio market with high quality, precision engineered microphones. Their range has expanded and profile increased greatly since the early 90's, with a huge range of artists using them in the studio and on-stage.
|The Mic
|The Details
|Who's Using It?
Rode NT1-A Vocal Pack
£149Something of a flagship mic for Rode. The NT1-A really delivers high end quality at project studio prices. Just check out Amy Winehouse recording on it's predecessor NT1with Mark Ronson.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - "We love the mics – they sound amazing."
Rode NT2-A Studio Solution
£229The NT1-A's big brother, with the same clarity and Australian build quality. The NT2-A also evokes the classic condenser mics of the 50's & 60's with a smooth response.
Here's Nashville engineer John Merchant putting the mic through it's paces.
Dave Catching Engineer at Rancho De La Luna (Queens Of The Stone Age ) - "Man, they are $@#$% crazy ass cool!!"
Rode M1 Dynamic Mic
£61While they've made their reputation with great condenser microphones Rode also make a number of great dynamics. The M1 is a perfect accompaniment for the M2 and M3 condenser mics, studio quality sound playing live.
You know it's robust and dynamic when a great beatboxer like Dub FX is using one.
The Hives - "RØDE looks and sounds great!"
Rode NT2000
£310With its dual diaphragm design the NT2000 offers a good deal more versatility and a rich sound quality. Variable polar pattern, high pass filter and pad are features not often found in microphones regardless of price.
UNKLE - "Really good all-round microphones"
Rode NT5 Matched Pair
When you think of a stereo pair it's often drum overheads that first spring to mind. The NT5 certainly do a stellar job, as the video below demonstrates, however it's always rewarding to get creative in the studio. Try the NT5s on acoustic guitar for a huge stereo sound or as an XY pair for gang vocals.
Bootsy Collins - "Pound for Pound RØDE mics are the best out there..."
Rode NT55 Matched Pair
If the NT5 are rock and roll then the NT55 are more refined classical. With cardioid & omni capsules the NT55 are ideal versatile mics to have on location and use in media and video production. Of course clarity and tonal balance never hurt in the studio, just check out who uses them along with his Classic II...
Duff McKagan (Guns And Roses) - "To me, the RØDE Classic II is the modern version of the great old tube mics we all love."
Their Classic II valve condenser is really a legend amongst top engineers such as Paul Epworth and the K2 makes this high end quality more affordable.
Eagles Of Death Metal - "Love your mics!"
Another Rode user is the engineer for the Soweto Gospel Choir. They've performed all around with world, alongside a diverse range of artists such as Bono, Queen, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Peter Gabriel.
One of the Dolphin staff had the good fortune to work back stage for the Soweto Gospel Choir at Edinburgh Festival and spotted NT4 mics being used upstage for ambient sound and we can see some Stereo NT1-A mics here being used closer up.
Now you can have the greatest mics in the world but without obeying some of the fundamental rules you won't get great sound. Luckily Rode President Peter Freedman has helped produce a tutorial showing how to improve your mic technique in (almost) 60 seconds.


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FOR FIVE years, Savannah officials and countless others have worked on a plan to improve the traffic flow on DeRenne Avenue, which approaches near-gridlock during the morning and afternoon rush hours.
Tuesday night, about 100 people showed up at Savannah Tech to see an updated plan. Briefly, it looks pretty good, except for a proposed median on the eastern end that would block access to some businesses.
But it's time for a reality check. No one should get their hopes up about getting Project DeRenne up and running anytime soon.
What's being proposed is a Cadillac fix - roughly $80 million to build a flyover and a traffic circle outside one of Hunter Army Airfield's gates and to make other improvements.
Unfortunately, the city has a Chevrolet budget - about $18 million in sales tax revenue in the bank.
City officials said Tuesday that they hope the state and federal governments will eventually kick in the remaining $62 million. But for the foreseeable future, that's unrealistic.
City Hall should remove any rose-colored glasses and observe reality. The feds are furloughing air traffic controllers because of the Obama sequestration. There's no resolution of the deficit-spending crisis in sight.
The state, meanwhile, has been squeezing nickels on transportation projects, except for critical needs like Savannah harbor deepening that benefit Georgia's economy.
State officials gave voters in Chatham, Effingham, Bryan and surrounding counties the option of paying an extra sales tax to help pay for Project DeRenne, a heavily used route for commuters who live outside the city and work here. But voters shot down the proposed T-SPLOST with both barrels.
"In a perfect world, we would be hoping to start construction in five years," said Susan Broker, director of Savannah's Citizen Office, on Tuesday.
To put it bluntly, Project DeRenne is stuck in neutral.
That's why it's time to start talking about a Plan B for Project DeRenne. This traffic chokepoint isn't going to fix itself.
What might a Plan B look like using the revenue the city has in hand? What will $18 million buy in the way of improvements? Will any of them be worth the expense?
Spending money to make sure traffic signals are timed for maximum efficiency is a legitimate expense. Perhaps there's a way to redirect some of the commuters around the clogs at the Montgomery Street and White Bluff Road intersections on DeRenne without building a costly flyover. Or perhaps not.
But it makes sense to explore other options. Getting trapped in the pie-in-the-sky mode doesn't solve anything. Also, the city must stay focused on what's happening along DeRenne.
Pam Miller, president of the Kensington Park Community Association, expressed disappointment in a letter to the editor that her neighborhood was left in the dark about the new CVS being built at the corner of Abercorn and DeRenne. She claimed it doesn't fit the agreed-to plan. If that's the case, then City Hall dropped the ball.
Ms. Broker said that ultimately, the completion of Project DeRenne will come down to funding. That's always been true.
But the ultimate truism - except in Washington - is that you can't spend money you don't have.
With T-SPLOST down the tubes, the city should look at the $18 million it has to make things better along DeRenne. That's less than a quarter of what's needed. But maybe it's enough to make a difference.


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Reviewed By Dana N (MISSION HILLS, KS) Reviewed for a 2014 Lexus ES 350 —12/6/2015 4:55 PM
This product is very sturdy and easy to install. It fits our Lexus well, except the lower edges are not well-secured; our dog can pull it off the seat a bit. But it is not a major problem because the canvas is heavy enough to stay in place.


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I don't think I'll ever find myself. For everything I accept about myself, I discover two more bad things that I find that I must work on. It's endless.
Conjuring up the past is not remembering; it is replacing.
Hell i never found myself, I maybe one day when I die and get off this big black hole we call earth.
If can't poke fun at yourself do not poke fun at other good chance you'll loose
I found myself in the mirror this morning.
I found myself in my SHIT.
i dont even know myself that well
alots been happening and my minds just a mess but.... i do hope i'll be able to act like myself more.
Being a lazy bum.
Project1001 wrote:
I feel like I have always find myself wearing a mask of someone else. When I see someone I wish to be. I sink myself into that person's shoes. My voice pitch changes, the regular decisions I make is completely different, my perspective changes, my appearance, choice of music, my mood, even my dreams change.
How I would proceed to change: I would usually find something on t.v. and say to myself, "I want to be her, wife material and yet childish. Mature when needed". A couple days I would imagine a life story for the character I am changing to, last day is for my change of appearance.
I only do this alone, but when my family is around. I don't speak a word, I have no idea why. It is not just my family that describes me quiet, it is my classmates and friends. I'd get into random conversations from time to time when I suddenly become outgoing.
Since I don't know myself, how am I supposed to find it?
This is more advice about the things you find rather then finding yourself but hopefully it will be helpful to some one anyways.
I've always been prideful (stemming from my IQ of 159 and floating along with ease) with a mean-streak a mile long, but what it took me a while to realize was that my true self was a prideful arrogant jerk and I'm still a prideful jerk, but in a different sense in that I learned to keep my temper under control and channeled my jerkyness in to a more sarcastic and joking manor and my pride into a more healthy "I know what I'm good at and I take pride in it" sense and have generally turned learned to accept and use my worse aspects in harmless or even good ways.
So moral of the story accept who you are if you don't like it or its harmful learn how to use those aspects in harmless or good way.
Oh did I ever, it resulted me undergoing a change I didn't expect, but all for the better. Like immitis stated above, it comes down to accepting yourself for who you are, accepting your strengths but also your weaknesses... discovering things you never considered..these things become your foundations and usually allow you to exceed and embrace a healthy confidence.
Gintama + Hunter x Hunter + Sword Art Online = Good times :D
Have you checked under your couch?
You can't kill the metal.... the metal will live on!
Well I don't even know who or what exactly is "myself" so I'm pretty much sure that'll be a lifelong journey of discovery. All I know is that of "being true to myself". I really try (especially recently) to just let myself be...me. I am voicing out my opinions, and I think that sometimes it may be on the border of decency and appropriacy, but I guess for now I'm just testing the waters and trying to be true to my own opinions (true to myself?). But it's not easy, because I'm now seeing parts of myself that I did not until recently, and I'm not pretty sure I like those parts. And being true to myself is not as easy as I previously thought as well...
I think its perfectly normal to do that. I think it means you're self conscious enough to realize the good and bad things of yourself so you'd rather see yourself in a different light.
I don't know in what context you mean by "found" yourself, but I've noticed that you do a lot of changing after high school and especially when you meet people of all diversities and ethnicity, because imo, it opens your views up a lot
nope! i have not yet reached enlightenment
ᕙ(͡°‿ ͡°)ᕗ
It doesn't matter if I did or not, because Alex found me.
*****Completely inactive, no other accounts*****
Nope. Still lost. No maps help.
http://www.youtube.com/user/thefortknighthood <-Follow us!
I found my true self about a year ago.
Sing sweet.....


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Informative article here:
Know your hooks?
Fun with fur and feathers
Post Reply
3 posts • Page 1 of 1
Know your hooks?
Mark Dillow
- Posts: 432
- Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2007 12:52 pm
- Location: Austin
Re: Know your hooks?
The part about keeping hooks shart is very important. Dull hooks are probably second only to dull reflexes for missing fish.
Re: Know your hooks?
Joe Robinson reportedly says he hasn't met a hook that didn't need to be sharpened.
Mark Dillow
Post Reply
3 posts • Page 1 of 1


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Although every reasonable effort has been made to insure the accuracy of the information contained on this site, absolute accuracy cannot be guaranteed. This site, and all information and materials appearing on it, are presented to the user "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied. All vehicles are subject to prior sale. Price does not include applicable tax, title, license, processing, documentation and/or electronic filing fees, and destination charges. Not responsible for typographical or data errors. See your local dealer for actual price of vehicles displayed.
Starting Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price, excluding destination/delivery charge, taxes, title and registration fees. Optional equipment not included.
† MPG - EPA estimated base engine/transmission. Note: F-150 SFE Package. Ford preliminary data. Pending EPA certification.
‡ Towing - Properly equipped.


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January-March 2006
Expanded access programs are conducted as research protocols in clinical settings and must be approved by the FDA and by ethical review committees or institutional review boards (IRBs). An expanded access program site may be located in a local doctor's office or a large university HIV research clinic (which is where I work), yet each must adhere to the regulatory agency's requirements for record keeping and safety reporting. While small clinics and independent physician researchers may use a single national IRB for ethical oversight, universities typically host a local IRB that must approve all human research conducted at that institution.
Clinical research sites typically get little if any funding from drug companies to run expanded access programs for investigational HIV drugs, yet these projects probably consume more site staff time than most conventional research studies. A few busy research sites, particularly those associated with large universities, have recently refused to open expanded access programs due to the uncompensated burdens of administration. If this trend continues, then in the future there will be fewer opportunities for patients to obtain access to desperately needed new treatment options.
When rushed and/or overworked, contract research organizations (CROs) -- third party clinical trial specialists often hired by drug companies to actually manage expanded access programs -- are more likely to misplace key documents such as signature pages, original financial disclosure forms, etc. This means duplicated effort for the sites if they have to print new forms, obtain new signatures, and send the signed forms to the sponsor again. Depending on the form, this may also result in a new IRB submission as well.
My experience at the local level is that the more I am rushed, the more likely I am to make a typo on a consent revision or some other form, or to miss one sheet out of the mountains of papers the investigator is required to sign. In the world of regulatory compliance, you can't just put a line through a typo and write the correction above it with your initials and date. You have to generate a document highlighting the correction, and generate a clean document incorporating the correction, and then get this copied and approved by the sponsor, CRO, and IRB.
The grants and contracts specialist at the research site has to do the same work for an expanded access study as for any other study. The host institution will take the same "overhead" fees from the company's payment. IRB processing and review fees are the same. Nurses, doctors and data managers have to do the same preparation in terms of becoming familiar with the protocol, the study forms, and the data recording and reporting processes, and must set up files and notebooks just like they do for any other study. All this takes time, which costs money.
Any time a patient with limited treatment options is enrolled in a study with a new agent, a resistance test should be done to make sure the patient's virus is sensitive to the drugs in rest of the ART regimen. If the only active drug is the investigational agent, then there is a risk of developing resistance since the patient will be on "virtual monotherapy." For a salvage study being used for drug development, sponsors usually pay for this resistance testing, and occasionally help pay for the optimized background regimen. For expanded access studies however, the resistance test must be paid for by the patient. If the patient has inadequate insurance coverage for this, the site usually ends up absorbing the cost. If the patient is unable to pay for the drugs in the new optimized background regimen, then site staff often ends up spending additional time to help the person enroll in compassionate use or the state's AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP).
Another major reason for the increased costs to research sites offering expanded access programs is the health status of the patients often enrolling in these studies. In a typical Phase II or III drug development study, there are tight inclusion and exclusion criteria designed to ensure the integrity of the data and protect patient safety by filtering out patients with very advanced disease. This also means that the likelihood of a study patient experiencing an adverse event is fairly low, and usually not expected.
This is not the case for expanded access studies. The patients who enroll in these studies are often very sick, to the point that the new drug is their last (but very slim) hope. The inclusion/exclusion criteria for expanded access studies are minimal. Patients with high viral loads, low to non-existent CD4 counts, and pre-existing conditions are allowed to enroll. Unfortunately, these patients are easily prone to severe illness. Furthermore, a sick patient will come to the clinic more often than a healthier patient, and will require more time from site personnel at every level.
Once a patient becomes a study patient, every adverse event, every illness, and every lab abnormality, even if it is obviously related to a pre-existing condition and not related to the study drug, must be reported to the sponsor and to the IRB. Moreover, the event usually must be reported several times, because there are usually follow up reports generated. It may seem irrelevant to a study drug that a patient with a pre-existing end-stage brain infection has a seizure after enrolling in an expanded access study. However, because there is no way to completely rule out that the drug did not exacerbate the condition to some degree, the event must be reported. Every follow up visit, every new lab report, and every recurrence of the event must be reported again, until the time when and if the condition is resolved.
In addition, each one of these adverse event reports then becomes a safety letter that is sent to every other site using the drug in research. These safety reports must be filed in each site's regulatory binder and reported to their IRB, and then documentation of IRB receipt must be filed and sent to the sponsor. This can result in multiple shelves of binders full of paperwork. Every on-study serious adverse event, from every clinic in the world doing research on the drug, must be filed at every site and reported to the IRB at every site that is using the drug in any research project. For example, during the tenofovir (Viread) expanded access study in 2001, I accumulated 10 full binders of safety report filings by the time the study closed. For a few months, I was processing up to 10 or more tenofovir safety reports a day, spending half my time on it. Most of these were obviously related to late-stage HIV complications, but since an association to the drug could not be ruled out, all of the events had to be reported. For every report and follow-up report on an adverse event related to pre-existing C. difficile or seizure disorder, there might be another report that could lead to a real association of the drug to a condition like renal disease or bone density problems.
We want to do everything we can to get potential life saving drugs to patients, but clinics also have to pay the doctors who diagnose and evaluate the events and the study staff who have to process the paperwork. In addition, the lab work for safety labs, if the patient's insurance doesn't cover it, often must come out of the site's budget. Expanded access studies often consider safety labs to be part of "standard of care." They expect reporting of all labs, including routine viral load, CD4 and CBC counts, but seldom pay for the cost of these labs.
The bottom line is until the FDA approves a drug, it can only be accessed through a research study. Even expanded access studies are by definition research studies, and can be audited by the FDA just like any other study. Therefore all the same work must be done to stay in compliance with Good Clinical Practice, multiplied by the fact that these studies, by nature of enrolling very sick people, can eat up a major percentage of the staff's work hours. Since the expanded access studies are often conducted at the same time as the FDA submission process, the drug companies often generate even more regulatory paperwork than normal.
Companies should be willing to pay the sites for the work they do on expanded access studies. The sad fact is that some research sites are now declining to participate in these programs because they are unwilling to take on the extra burden. It's not that the sites don't want to help people obtain early access to promising new HIV drugs; it's that they can't afford to pay the people who have to perform the significant amount of work involved.
Harry C. S. Wingfield, MFA, is a site regulatory specialist at a major U.S. clinical research institution.
The content on this page is free of advertiser influence and was produced by our editorial team. See our content and advertising policies.


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Masturbation may not be something that you chat about with all of your friends, but let's face it: it's a normal thing that most people participate in on a regular basis. Masturbating is nothing to be ashamed of and there's nothing wrong with wanting to pleasure yourself… but still, we all seem a little afraid to open up about it.
Whether or not you're one of those people who can talk about masturbating like it's no big deal or someone who keeps that bit of personal stuff private, take this survey. No one has to know which answers are yours! Just copy and paste the questions into the comments and start getting personal.
1. First things first: do you masturbate?
2. How often do you masturbate?
3. When did you first start masturbating?
4. If you have never done it, why not?
5. Did you ever feel afraid to pleasure yourself?
6. What is your preferred method of masturbation?
7. Do you talk about masturbating with your friends?
8. Has anyone ever caught you in the act?
9. Have you ever caught anyone else in the act?
10. Would you ever masturbate in front of a boyfriend or girlfriend?
11. Does talking about masturbation make you uncomfortable?
12. In your opinion, how much is too much when it comes to masturbation?
13. Where are you usually when you masturbate?
14. Would you ever consider masturbation a form of cheating?
15. Have you ever seen porn movies?
16. Would you get offended if a friend talked to you about masturbating?
17. How would you feel if you found out your crush thought about you when masturbating?
18. Has anyone ever told you that masturbation is wrong?
19. What would you do if someone caught you masturbating?
20. Would you ever do it in front of a pet?
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Philadelphia, PA (PRWEB) July 07, 2012
Eugene Allen, a retired police officer and teacher from Sicklerville, N.J., had a decision to make in February, after an MRI revealed a precancerous cyst in his pancreas. It had to be removed, but the question was how?
The active 60-year-old wanted to get back to the long walks with his dog and taking care of his in ground pool. He could go the traditional surgery route to remove the cyst or he could be the first patient at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital to have a surgeon perform a distal pancreatectomy and splenectomy with the da Vinci robot.
"It was a no-brainer," says Allen, whose surgeon Harish Lavu, M.D., FACS, an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery, performed the procedure in late March. "I wanted to get back to my life as quickly as possible. It was no doubt the right choice because the recovery time was cut in half."
A distal pancreatectomy, often used to treat pancreatic tumors and cysts, is a procedure in which the body and tail of the pancreas are removed, usually along with the entire spleen.
Allen could have undergone open surgery, which would have removed the cyst just as successfully, but it would have required a larger incision and longer recovery.
"This procedure is opening up doors in different ways," said Dr. Lavu. "It's making it easier on the patient because it offers up shorter hospital stays, less risk of infection and less scarring and bleeding. Most importantly, it gets the patients back to their daily activity quicker."
Only a few centers in the United States have performed a robot-assisted distal pancreatectomy.
With the robotic arms, a surgeon can perform delicate operations through tiny incisions, which are used to introduce miniaturized wristed instruments to remove the cysts or tumors and a high-definition 3-D camera to view a magnified image of the surgical site, enhancing visualization.
In Allen's case, the procedure, in which Dr. Lavu took 40 percent of his pancreas, was a preventative measure, removing a precancerous cyst that could have developed into a tumor. That cyst was found by his urologist after he had bladder stone surgery last October. His doctor then ordered an MRI and CT scan to get a better look. The tests later revealed the cyst, so he came to the Jefferson Pancreatic, Biliary and Related Cancer Center to see a surgeon.
Surgeons at the Center have extensive experience in performing pancreatic and related surgeries, the success of which clinical studies have shown is significantly improved when performed at high-volume centers such as Jefferson.
In a typical year, Jefferson surgeons perform over 200 pancreatic resections, including more than 120 pancreaticoduodenectomies—commonly referred to as Whipple procedures—and dozens of distal and central pancreatectomies.
Cysts can be benign, precancerous or cancer, but all represent a red flag. Catching any suspicious activity early increases the patient's chances of preventing any pancreatic cancer that may occur.
"These are the patients we can cure of pancreatic cancer," said Dr. Lavu. "The average age for pancreatic cancer diagnosis is 65, so catching this cyst and removing it at age 60, like in Allen's case, is pivotal. We removed that cyst before it had a chance to develop into anything more."
About 80 percent of diagnoses of pancreatic cancer are patients whose disease has progressed into the advanced stages, making it more difficult to treat. The remaining 20 percent of people who are diagnosed early with some form of pancreatic cancer are candidates for surgery.
Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals (TJUH) are dedicated to excellence in patient care and education. It is consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report among the nation's top hospitals. It has over 950 licensed acute care beds with major programs in a wide range of clinical specialties. TJUH is one of the few hospitals in the U.S. that is both a Level 1 Trauma Center and a federally-designated regional spinal cord injury center. TJUH patient care facilities include: Jefferson Hospital, Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience, and Methodist Hospital in South Philadelphia. Additional out-patient sites are located throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. TJUH is a part of Jefferson Health System and a partner of Thomas Jefferson University.


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This is how much knitting I accomplished this weekend. Not even out of the bag. To be fair, I was at a wedding in Virginia where it was approximately one billion degrees Fahrenheit. Then there was all that driving. Let's just say I wouldn't recommend undertaking an 11-hour drive in one day, then repeating the whole journey a day later in reverse. The good news: my first trip to a Cracker Barrel! And, you know, I got to take part in a friend's very happy day.
Considering the trip, I guess it's not surprise that when I got back home I was in the mood for an old friend and some garter stitch.
My love for this yarn is well documented, so I won't go into raptures again. I think it always wanted to be garter stitch; I just had to stop and listen. So far, I'm in love. Sweet, woolly love.
When I'm not freaking out about my dissertation, that is. I really hate freaking out about my dissertation — it's so predictable and unhelpful — but I'm having a hard time getting my schedule established and feeling productive. Which leads to a lot of garter stitch.
Sigh. Garter stitch is the best. This is going to become my outlandish woolly cape of fortitude and determination come fall …