text:
Your transformation will begin immersed in a deep bath infused with natural healing herbs of Chinese mulberry and night blooming jasmine, followed by envelopment in an elixir of rose during which a full facial treatment combined with the warm therapeutic properties of moxibustion ensues. Complete your metamorphosis with pressure point touch therapy on the specific reflex zones of the ears scalp and hands, to release blockages and promote the natural healing ability of the body.
*Prices are subject to 15% service charge
Four hands work in perfect unison in a remarkable experience that inspires a harmony of the senses. The treatment begins with a soothing foot bath in purifying waters, leaving the feet soft and supple and the mind relaxed. Next two therapists work together in time and movement. First, providing a warm scrub that smoothes and replenishes the skin and later a harmonious massage that balances the body. The treatment concludes with a simultaneous head and foot massage leaving the mind uplifted, the body energised and the skin exotically fragrant.
Mandarin Oriental's bespoke "Time Rituals" encourage guests to book time rather than specific treatments, so that services can be tailor-made to meet individual needs. Each "Time Ritual" begins with a soothing foot ritual and is designed to restore a natural state of equilibrium.
This luxuriant treatment begins with our welcoming foot ritual, followed by an exfoliating body mask with ground lotus seeds, pepper and Chinese dates, once traded along the Silk Road. While enveloped in a silk cocoon, the body's own heat activates the therapeutic benefits of the mask, helping to strengthen and fortify the body's circulation system, and a hydrating facial cleanse leaves skin glowing. The experience continues with your body immersed in star anise and sweet orange bath while at the same time enjoying soothing bamboo and buckwheat tea, to take the healing properties of these age old remedies to the interior of the body. An individually tailored massage follows continuing your desire of detoxification, relaxation or regeneration.


text:
Planetary engine that can be used with real elevation data of arbitrary resolution, while being progressively enhanced by fractal algorithms. The fractal algorithms refine and introduce details down to centimeter resolution and can be parametrized by elevation and land class data. A completely random fractal terrain is possible too, or a terrain can be sketched in rough resolution with fractal generating the details. Level of detail ranges from thousands of kilometers down to centimeters, with full visibility. The engine is fully asynchronous, majority of the algorithms running on the GPU while the rest is distributed to multiple CPU cores.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Social Services
Home page
Ocean County Home
Income Assistance
Medicaid Program
Medicaid Program pg 1
Medicaid Program pg 2
Social & Support
Social & support pg 1
Social & Support pg 2
Contacts & Links
Holiday schedule
Related links
How to contact us
Board of Social Services
Linda Murtagh,
Virginia E. Haines,
Board of Social Services
1027 Hooper Avenue
Buildings 3, 4, 5, & 7
Toms River, NJ 08753
(732) 349-1500
(732) 244-8075
Email Board of Social Services
Google Map for Social Services
How to contact us
Social Services Home
Ocean County Home
Important Documents (PDFs)
DSNAP Locations, Dates, Times
Programs Administered Booklet
Notice of Privacy Practices
Notice of Privacy Practices (spanish)
Non-Discrimination Statements
Privacy Officers
Board of Social Services Mission Statement
The mission of the Ocean County Board of Social Services is to serve residents of Ocean County in the administration of approximately 60 programs.
The agency has expanded its mission to include a more pronounced emphasis on client responsibility and eventual self-sufficiency.
The Ocean County Board of Social Services continues to commit to an ongoing record of excellence in serving Ocean County's population.
The Ocean County Board of Social Services provides eligible county residents with financial, medical, and social services assistance. Assistance can be granted for emergency circumstances, as well as to meet ongoing needs.
Income Assistance Programs
Medicaid Programs
Social and Support Programs
Code Blue Program
Offices are located in Toms River, Lakewood, and Manahawkin. Not all offices are staffed for all programs.
Good News!
It is no longer necessary to visit one of our offices to file and complete NJ SNAP applications. All initial NJ SNAP applications may be made online at https://oneapp.dhs.state.nj.us/ or through the mail. You will be sent an appointment date and time for your interview which will be done over the phone!
If you are already receiving NJ SNAP your recertification will also be done through a telephone interview!
Of course, anyone who wishes to submit an application directly at any of our offices is still welcome to do so.
For anyone who wants to know if they might be eligible for help :
Board of Social Services
1027 Hooper Ave, Toms River, NJ
(732) 349-1500
Email us


text:
I just like flamingos.
Polly Tommey has great legs. She is a great actress and she and her great legs have had starring roles in many UK Sunday night dramas playing someone else's great legs. Polly Tommey highlights these body double roles in her acting achievements. She's the UK's Jenny McCarthy…only not as loud, or as influential or as effective in getting her message across. Even getting her baps out – almost – raised little more than an embarrassed chuckle and certainly not autism awareness. In spite of the fact that my friends know that Pwdin is severely autistic, when asked if they remembered this billboard (left) those that did (mainly living in London) didn't recall if they ever knew what it was for and most others said they simply didn't know. "Wonderbras?" "Boobies?"
Tommey is the editor-in-chief of the Autism Trust's propaganda rag The Autism Files. the magazine, edited and largely written (in the UK) by Polly Tommey – an actress, not a person with autism, not a scientist – describes itself as "the world authority on autism, Asperger's, ADHD, ADD and other related disorders." Having read a couple of editions there's alot more in it about Polly Tommey, her husband and her neurotypical children than there is about her autistic son Billy who, when he does get a mention, it's to draw attention to how brave, courageous and just super duper his family are for putting up with the lad – especially his mum. The remainder of the magazine has a limited number of themes for articles which are as follows:
To be fair, this isn't every edition because that would be way too much to fit in alongside all the advertisements for tests and "therapies" and supplements available from her husband's clinic.
Though she certainly doesn't have the celebrity wallop of Jenny McCarthy and, to her credit, Tommey is nowhere near as rude or crass the two do have a few things in common besides a penchant for peroxide. Tommy has used her child's condition to save herself from obscurity. She allies herself with Andrew Wakefield both believing that autism is caused by vaccines (although I don't actually think Wakefield can seriously beilieve this) and can be cured by giving them and their charities and businesses lots of money for unproven and implausable medications and supplements after, of course, paying big bucks for a whole battery of diagnostically useless tests.
While the Autism Trust professes to champion the rights of autistic adults they push the idea that the best place for them is in institutionalised care (that they hope to provide). Strange then, or perhaps telling, that when the sickening abuses of adults with learning disabilities at Winterbourne View, Bristol, was aired on BBC's Panorama, of all the UK autism charities Tommey's was silent. The only quote I can find from her relating to this was on the Naidex website promoting their procucts (disability aids etc). Here is the comment in full so no editing (though I probably will still get accused of it)
"As a parent it is thoroughly reassuring that there are events like Naidex offering such a wealth of information to parents and carers of disabled children and adults, especially in light of the upsetting footage shown by Panorama. There are so many knowledgeable and friendly people at the shows who are fully equipped to provide expert help and guidance, and I strongly recommend visiting to anyone looking for support and advice on care."
This documentary is truly shocking and contains scenes of horrific abuse of disabled adults and can be viewed in full here
Polly Tommey first really got noticed as the mum of an autistic child in 2004 when she and dear husband, Jonathan, appeared on the sensationalist Tonight With Trevor McDonald. If you've never seen the show it makes the Daily Mail seem moderate. They were there saying how they were successfully treating Billy's autism with secretin (a hormone involved in digestion). When that bandwagon slowed to a near halt Tommeys, Mr & Mrs hopped on to the biomedical interventions one gathering pace in the States.
Jonathan, a disciple of Patrick Holford, is now making money calling himself a nutritionist (a title that means very little – the protected term is dietician) and encouraging parents to put their children on highly restrictive gluten and casein free diets (a bit more about that here). These diets can and do lead to nutrient deficits but, don't fear, at the same £300 consultation, Mr Tommey will sell you all the supplements you could possibly need – if you uncritically follow his nonsensical advice – to make sure that your child get will these nutrients eating a regular diet would provide. Meanwhile, you can also purchase from him all you need to get rid of all the fungi and "bad bacteria" in their little bellies too.
Polly Tommy gets my back up. I think that's pretty obvious. She's always trotted out whenever there's an autism story that gets any media attention and quite often what she says is tempered, sensible and I have no problem with. Here's an example (she's talking about potential diagnosis of autism by brain scanning):
Very moderate but here is a woman who is a die hard supporter of Andrew Wakefield despite the fact he has been struck off the medical register in the UK, his studies have been proved to be not just unrepeatable but fraudulent and those studies lacked ethics committee sanction. Wakefield and Murch (a co-author) did not stop at one study lacking ethics board approval. One child involved in the further research at the Royal Free, Jack Piper, then aged 5 nearly lost his life as a result of a botched colonoscopy that was not "clinically indicated or justified." His bowel was left perforated in 12 places – technically an assault.
This is the woman who, by posing in her bra, got invited to 10 Downing Street to advise the Prime Minister of the day, Gordon Brown on autism policy. Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, author of Defeating Autism: a Damaging Delusion, himself a father of an autistic son made his own approach to PM Brown upon learning of Tommey's invite to #10:
"in the interests of children and families affected by autism, I hope that you will refuse support for her key activities – upholding discredited links between vaccines and autism and recommending unproven and untested fringe treatments"
"If she demands that the government invest more resources in researching alleged links between vaccines and autism, I suggest that she should be advised that this would be a waste of scarce funds. If she demands government support for unorthodox biomedical testing and treatment, I would further suggest that she should be advised that until there is good evidence for such interventions parents should be discouraged from imposing them on their children"
Here's Polly Tommey giving Wakefield yet another outlet for his contemptuous crap:
On one hand she poses as some kind of crusader for access to resources and for public funding to make autism easier to live with for all those affected by it and on the other she and her odious husband Jonathan are fleecing desperate parents of autistic children out of what little time and money they have in the pursuit of quackery: time and money better spent elsewhere.
If you still think she's ok and at least a more credible voice than Jenny McCarthy, then you should look at this…I recommend muting first though!
Jack Piper was not part of the Lancet study.
A cause of autismThere has to be a cause for anhntiyg.Faith and religion even have some basis in fact.If vaccines cause autism this doesn't mean that mercury cant cause autism.If GMO virus fragments cause autism then that doesn't rule out the first two.The problem is that all three and more are found in vaccines.One of the problems with epidemiology is that the world famous experts like Sir Dick Doll were paid 1 500 pounds each and and every day of their life by vaccine type companies. To receive such money for the major part of ones career may or may not have an effect on your data and what it tells you?I know what I would say or not say if offered 1 500 pounds each day to say whather vaccines are good or bad. And that is yesterday's money as the good epidemiologist is no longer part of the human race if ever he was. He did have the qualifications that should have made him aware of what is money for research and what constitutes a bribe?I put my money anyday on Jenny in preference to a Dick Doll.There are more than a million autism sufferers and Jenny does not have one in her family.Her degree in Google or whatever has enabled her to cure the uncurable.Power to her elbow and not to hands in pockets feeling for corrupt money?
What point are you making? That you dont like the music video she made in the 80s? or her tits? Or her legs? or you are jealous that the media like her moderate views? Or it is that you think it is wrong that she does not distance herself from Wakefield? Or that you think she does not care enough? If this is your point than I nearly missed it in your childish, bitter and pointless character assassination
Hi there, I am interested to know what makes you so sure that vaccinations do not cause Autism? How much research has there actually been on the subject. Do you know?
I suggest you keep an open mind and watch a couple of interesting You Tube videos and see if it makes you doubt a few things you may feel certain about at present. Watch the movie Autism made in the USA and also the interview with Jenny McCarthy on the Doctors show (search for Autism debate with Jenny McCarthy on the Doctors) and have a listen to some facts presented by J D Handley. All is not as it seems in the vaccinations and Autism debate.
The stats raised n the film Autism made in the USA where cases of Autism went up hand in hand with the number of vaccinations given to children increased during the 1990's. In the USA it increased from 11 in 1989 to 32 shots today. And it's not just the MMR which is two vaccinations. There are trace amounts of thalidomide (mercury) in most of the vaccinations. Mercury is one of the most toxic substances known to man yet it is being used as a preservative with little or no testing.
Do not believe everything you hear regarding what is released in the public domain regarding vaccinations being safe and can't cause Autism. Pharmaceutical companies business are billion dollar industries. And while some children have immune system vulnerabilities they are still receiving the same amount of vaccines whether they are a 5lb premature baby of a 10lb full term baby. That doesn't make sense and can trigger Autism in those who are vulnerable.
There are genetic markers which are now being identified which increase the chances of certain individuals developing Autism and vaccinations can be the catalyst.
Trust me and do not think you know it all. There is plenty still to learn on the subject. Personally I think Polly Tommey's heart is in the right place and as a voice for Autism I think she should be thanked not ridiculed. We need people to try and raise awareness regarding Autism which is at epidemic levels at the moment. But that is my opinion. Please just check out the things I have highlighted in this post and let me know your thoughts once you have watched them.
Agree. Open mind is the key, that way all of us can participate and give ideas and at the same time accept ideas of others. At least Wakefield did some research and drew some conclusions, not definite conclusions but something that others should have taken in consideration to pursue more needed research. We are talking about lives that are affected by this neurological condition, lives not only of the individuals who have it but their families as well and yet the pharmaceutical industry made it happen, I mean the financial support for more research stopped.
Yes I did mean thimerosal. Here are a few articles that discuss the the subject of genetic markers and autism.
What good to anyone does this scandalous gossip do? Hats off to both Jenny and Polly. How about focusing on helping those with Autism???
Opposing people who lie about autism is helping people with autism; it's not glamorous to mop up the messes Polly and Jenny make, but it's necessary, and as a parent who isn't interested in hating my autistic child, I appreciate Autismum's work – it won't get her cover stories in the grocery store rags, but it helps real children.
, the dose makes the poison. And it is coplmetely possible for us to come through exposures to things that we consider "poisons" without ill effects–the dose makes the difference. Water is a toxin, depending on the route of exposure and dose. But I don't see anyone getting their knickers twisted over water, per se, being "toxic." Vitamin C at a suitable dose can trigger miscarriage. Potassium is required for our survival, but it can also kill us. People have always been walking around with heavy metals in their bodies (zinc, anyone?), at considerably higher doses than those currently causing controversy (including mercury and arsenic). The irony is that probably many many people who get cacacoocoo over mercury wouldn't hesitate to ingest a metal like iron or selenium or to coat their bodies in an oxide of one like zinc or to drink from an aluminum can or use aluminum foil and they probably spend little to no time at all worrying about lead, which is all over the place. Mercury is a scare word, but if the fear is legitimate, we also ought to be going on and on about lead, arsenic, aluminum, PBDEs, POPs, and other known toxins that flow through our bodies–vaccines or not.
I think vaccines may well cause autism when given after numerous courses of antibiotics over a short period of time. The gut is left unprotected and unable to cope with the vaccines. You may scoff, but there are many parents who will tell you that very noticeable symptoms started suddenly and immediately after the vaccine and a number will also confirm that their children were prescribed antibiotics left, right and centre in the months leading up to the vaccine. Of course studies that show any sort of link to this would be discredited, as if it were proved, there would be grounds for compensation on a massive scale for all the families whose lives have been ruined.
Ivy Green, I agree 100% with what you are saying. That is precisely what Dr. Wakefield was studying and his license was revoked in the UK.


text:
Get DVD Talk Feeds
In 1831 a young French aristocrats, Alexis de Tocqueville, arrived in
the United States. He traveled the young country to see how their
experiment in democracy functioned. When he returned to France, Tocqueville
published a book about what he saw and experianced, "Democracy in America."
This book is required reading in many college classes today. Many
of its critiques and observations are still valid.
In The Party's Over, filmmakers Rebecca Chaiklin and Donovan
Leitch follow host Philip Seymour Hoffman on a similar odyssey across America
looking at democracy. Filmed in 2000, Hoffman attends the Democratic
and Republican national conventions, as well as the conventions of the
Christian Coalition, the Green Party, the Shadow Convention, and others.
He talks to such diverse people as Robert Reed, Willie Nelson, Michael
Moore, and Eddie Vedder. He talks to protesters at the conventions
and home town activists from across the country. He looks at how
the democratic process is (or isn't) working in America today.
When I heard about this film, my first thought was of Michael Moore.
He has made a career out of similar types of movies putting people on the
spot and highlighting what he believes are injustices in our society.
I figured this would be a film in a similar vein. I was wrong.
It struck me early on in watching the movie, that everyone involved was
trying to be neutral. To a very large degree they succeeded.
Hoffman attends a gun show and lets the dealers there explain why more
gun regulations are not needed. He does not goad them or ask them
leading questions. He doesn't quote gun death statistics at them.
He just talks with them. He then goes to the "Million Mother March"
where many people spoke out in favor of gun control. Again, they
are not confronted about their beliefs, just given the opportunity to say
how they feel.
The movie is not totally neutral, it would be impossible to make something
that every side thought was fair. There are more interviews with
liberal protesters than with their conservative counterparts. This
is mainly because there are not many conservative groups that protest.
In an interview with Barney Frank, the Democratic representative
from Massachusetts points out that the NRA is one of the most effective special
interest groups in the country, yet they never hold protests. As
he noted, when liberals get upset they march in the streets, when conservatives
get angry they vote people out of office.
The most interesting thing about this documentary is how similar the
Democrats and Republicans sounded. When Hoffman asked a delegate
to the Democratic National Convention why she wanted a Democrat in the
White House, she gave almost the same reasons Republicans gave: they
will improve education, bring dignity back to the White House etc.
There was a segment of the film dealing with the death penalty.
They showed many people protesting Bush's frequent use of capital punishment.
They did not give much time to people who support its use. Then they
cut to a presidential debate where Bush was defending his record on that
subject, and Al Gore was asked how he felt. He admitted that he was
in favor of the death penalty too. The moderator, Jim Lehrer held
his hands up and asked "What's the difference?"
Which is related to another theme of the movie: The two major
parties are not inclusive. There are a lot of people who are
not represented, and a lot of important issues that are not discussed at
all. Women, minorities, young people are not to be found in either
party except as tokens. Drugs and the rising prison population are
just never mentioned. It's as if these problems don't exist.
The film does not follow the candidates around the country. They
are not the focus. It's on the people the support them and those
who are active in politics that Hoffman is interested in. After the
conventions, it fast forwards to election day, and then has a brief segment
on the recount vote in Florida.
The main point of the film is to make people contemplate the political
system we have in the US. And it does that very well at that.
In showing so many activists of all different stripes, the film was almost
daring you to go out and do something if you don't like what your seeing.
After all, the people in the film did.
The DVD:
The Party's Over was released by Film Movement.
This company buys the rights to independent and foreign films, and then
releases them theatrically and on DVD at the same time. To be eligible
for purchase, a film have to have been entered into competition at one
of the major film festivals. Most that they aquire have won awards.
Since these are small art house films that not everyone is able to see,
it distributes them to a wider audience. Each DVD contains a short
and other extras. Making it an attractive package for those
who like independent film.
Film Movement DVDs are released monthly, and only
available by subscription. (Past DVDs are available through their web site
at a higher cost.) This cuts out the middle man and also allows them
to have a good estimate of the number of DVDs that they will sell for each
title. It is a very good idea, and one that I hope fares well.
The subscription rates are very reasonable.
The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0. There are no subtitles
and no alternate languages. The sound varies but is generally very
good. In some of the crowded convention scenes there is a lot of
noise, and it's hard to hear. The background noise in some scenes
gets distracting, but there really isn't anything the film makers could
have done about it, given the circumstances under which it was filmed.
The film is widescreen but it is not anamorphic. I think it is
a disgrace that Film Movement does not release their DVDs enhanced for
16:9 televisions. The people they are targeting, independent and
foreign film buffs, are the people most likely to want an anamorphic disc.
Other than that, there were some digital artifacts, but they didn't
jump out at you. Horizontal lines flickered as the camera moved perpendicular
to them, and horizontal lines had a stair step effect. It was not
as bad as many DVDs though. The dreaded edge enhancement is present,
but not to a great extent. In some scenes it is more apparent than
others, but it never gets annoying.
The colors were okay, not bright and dynamic, but not faded and dull.
Given the subject matter it was appropriate.
The Extras:
The Film Movement discs I've seen have very nice in terms of extras.
This is no exception.
There is one thing that was very negative about the disc though:
Before the movie, there is an unskipable commercial, almost two minutes
long, for Film Movement. They disable all the buttons (except "menu")
so you can not fast forward or skip to the next chapter. I thought
this was a strange thing to do, since most people who watch the DVD will
be familiar with the company already. Film Movements does not allow
their movies to be rented, so that can't be the reason either. I
was very disappointed in this.
Interviews: Three extended
interviews with Michael Moore (7 minutes,) Eddie Vedder (3 ½ minutes,)
and Billy Baldwin (5 ½ minutes.) These were good extras to
include. Moore's interview was the most interesting.
Commentary: Full length audio
commentary by host Phillip Seymour Hoffman and producer/co-director Rebecca
Chaiklin. I am always glad when a commentary track is included on
a DVD, and I've heard a lot of them. This one isn't the greatest,
but isn't a disaster either. The two filmmakers are able to espouse
a little bit more than they did in the film, and flesh out some of the
ideas that they illustrated in the movie. It doesn't add to much,
since they did a good job of covering things in the film itself.
Much of the commentary sounds like old friends reminiscing, which I guess
it is. "Do you remember when we filmed that?" gets asked a lot.
There are several long pauses. It was a good thing to include on
the disc, but it doesn't add much to the film.
Short: Eau: This
12 minute short from Belgium was directed by Dominique Standaert.
It is shot in black and white and takes place in the Congo in 1960.
Two people, and white Belgian man and a black native woman are trying to
flee a country in the throws of war.
This short is excellent. You feel the confusion and uncertainty
the characters do. It is beautifully filmed and well paced, it is
worth seeking out.
The dialog to this short is in French and English. Unfortunately,
there are burned in subtitles for the French portion, and none for the
English. I can not think why they did not have removable subtitles
to this film. It would have been very easy to do, and would have
improved the disc.
Other Extras: The disc also
contains a trailer for the feature, and one for Ginger and Cinnamon,
the next DVD in the series. There are text biographies of the host
and directors.
Final Thoughts:
I'm starting to like Film Movements. I wish they would spend a
little bit more time on encoding, and release their films enhanced for
16:9 screens, but they are still
young and hopefully will evolve. They put out good movies that
I would otherwise not have the chance to see. This film is no exception.
It is not an gripping film, there is not much confrontation or friction.
But it is a quality film. It's basically a look of the political
landscape during the last presidential election. Like Tocqueville's
book from over 170 years ago, many of the points it makes are still relevant
As far as the movie's attempt to get people interested and involved
in politics, I'm not sure how well it succeeds. You have to have
a certain interest in politics to begin with to even watch the film.
The movie isn't exciting and dynamic, but then again politics isn't either.
Even if it does not totally succeed, it is a very good effort.
If you are a political junky, this movie is highly recommended.
Recommended to anyone who is slightly interested in how our country works.


text:
many times! When I was in high School for example, I liked on girl, but I was so timid that I decided to ignore my feelings.
Another girl came to be during break or recess, and told me she wanted to be my friend. We talked, somewhat during the week.
And on Friday, she confessed to me outside the school saying that she fell in love with me since long time ago. I was perplexed and surprised, I couldn't respond to that. She told me that she will wait for an answer, that I can call her.
The next week, we were already dating.
Next thing I know, I feel in love (really in love, not just like) with a girl who often arrived at my neighborhood, she didn't have any friends around the neighborhood since she didn't live there. She just visited her relatives.
I approached and became friends. We were friends for months, and one day we both confessed our loves together over the phone.
We dated for two years.
While I was dating her, I started to like someone who was my Japanese classmate. I kissed her and run away. And came back when the class started.
Ahh! Such a long story.
But, surely, I am surprised most of you don't have any experience. I suppose I am not otaku enough?
GUYS!! GIRLS!! You need to get out more!! There is love waiting for you!!
brings back ALOT of memories.
okay, one time from my school, there was a guy i seriously loooved, not like those sort of fans.(guess what? he HAS fans ==)
but he was going to america for a long period of time because of his dad.
so his last day was spent with me(yay)
he sent me home to the bus stop. chatted as usual.
my bus came, i bid him farewell & went up the bus.
i was already in the bus, then i waved to him, & he did the sign saying 'i love you' & the bus left, even without giving my a chance to reply. sad huh? ):
on the day of his flight, my parents didnt allow me to see him off. well, i sneaked out of the house & went straight there.
really sadly, i JUST missed him where he went into the place where they having the 'passport checking' part.
but now we are still in contact
ohho :D
Sadly, no.
But i'll wait for my .."special" time!
look outside..(jj)
Few posters in this thread.
goldentsubasa wrote:
i dream about it allllllllllll the time!!!~~~
same here...:O
hm...theres so much shoujo scenes xD i probably forgot if one probably happened to me lol
song: Baby boy BY Dj Boonie
hope so but it's just a dream
peep****jyannaii SNOWCHAN desu!!
Yes... There was a guy I hated and he hated me. We'd fight everytime we'd talk, bc I thought he was arrogant and selfish and he thought I was annoying. But then some things happened and we ended up dating.
Yep but it's a little private XD
welcome to the real world
you know those mangas where the girl really likes a guy?
then the guy and girl become friends?
and they ask each other who they like?
and they give clues?but they never tell?
and then the guy starts asking "if somebody asks you to be their last dance would you say yes?" out of the blue?
but on the night of this dance2x or event the guy asks another girl?
thats what happened
more of teen cliche than shoujo though
Click for Gaara Mania!x)
Strangely enough yes
It was the classic Love Triangle, me being in the middle inbetween the two guys XD. But seriously yeah, honestly I thought they were just being nice with all the complements they were giving me and all that. Then one of them got really busy and I didn't get to see or talk to him that much, I wasn't upset but on the day he had to go he hugged me really tightly and told me that he liked me a lot. I was very surprised and didn't really know what to do in that situation, he just said that he was sorry he didn't say it before and that he won't be around much anymore then he let go and left. I felt bad for not noticing about that, that was when my other friend hanged out with me more and it was like that for 4 months. Then near Christmas, we were talking and I complemented him by saying "You're so nice, it's one of the things I really like about you" he simply replied "Just as I love you" that made me jump and stare at him. That's when he confessed about his feelings and hugged me then asked if it was ok to be my boyfriend, I said it was but I wasn't sure about my feelings for him yet. He said he would give me time to think about it so he did and 3 weeks later I confessed my feelings for him
It was quite an interesting experience
Don't worry, I don't bite ^^
nope sowwiee
hi~ im maria :D
hahahaha...story of my lovelife = LOVELY COMPLEX...seriously....hahaha :|
when there's an angel without wings, and when monkey loves fish..it's 13eyond...
welllll... umm so this guy n me were working at a haunted house... n he was my best guy friend.. he's a yr younger but he's omigosh so freaking tall... n i'm a short kid too n so it was freezing.... we worked in the woods [n damn! i got my new shoes all muddy n lolz it kinda melted-ish] so anyways first we had to walk in the haunted house, i got kinda freaked out cuz i couldn't find him anywhere... when i got out n me n my 2 friends n us got seperated from the staff but started going into the woods i got really scared for him so of course when he pped up later i freaked out so he hugged me to comfort me [n fyi we don't have a hug-buddy relationship..] so anyways later i'm at my post n he keeps popping up at my post cuz he wants to chat with me.. later i got hungry n he showed up again n tried n drag me away from my buddies so he could go feed me, loz. i kept saying how they were most likely hungry too but he's like no, he doesn't want them to come with us n i was starting to freeze so he dragged me to a small campfire n told me to roast myself so i toasted my feet n my shoes started smoking! that was scary! so he dargged me away saying how he wanted to dance n he knows i hate dancing. but he's very persuasive n finally got me to agree so okay we went to th ebig campfire where the food n a band were playing [ i know, weird: a band n campfires at a haunted house??] he stands in the center n positions his body to hold me n says lets dance... i was so nervous cuz i suck at dancing but i really wante to dance with him so i let im grab my hand and we're positioning ourselves when the band stops n say they're gonna have a break... so i immediately drops his hand n steps away. i turn n i sit in a chair n it was the only chair so he kinda dragged a chair to sit next to me n kept staring at me so freaked me out kinda, nervous wreak-that's me.. so i said i'm gonna go eat n he said he's not hungry so i went to get food.. i swear i could feel him staring at me... so i came back n was eating n i don't know what he said but he said something about how my hands looked cold n i'm like huh? i look down at my hands n he grabs one talking to me while holding my hand... pples were kinda staring... scary so i dropped his hand, swatting him saying i can't eat if he holds my hand. he has warm huge hands! they're so much bigger than mine! n so later after i eat i'm like we should probably go back to our posts so he's all sighing an dgrim but says okay. n this is where the shoujo manga scene comes in: so we're walking back n i keep shivering so he takes off his jacket n tries n force me to wear it. n i'm like [eyes popping out] "you're going to freeze! put ur jacket back on!" but of course he wouldn't he said that he was very warm n actually overheating... i retort saying he's overheating n i'm overfreezing but i don't want him to freeze so no i won't wear his jacket. we argued for a bit n he even chased after me because i wuldn't wear it, i really wanted to too but he might freeze n i didn't want that also it's embarassing :sweatingbullets:!! so later he's like fine! u'll just freeze tough! n i'm like okay! i will! so we just walk back togehter side by side to my post. cuz he was dropping me off. n when he left he gave me his adorable smile which left my 2 friends to harass me with questions!
--my shoujo scene... it goes on but umm that's enoughXP
The Past Me.. How Nostalgic..


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Performance Analysis and Monitoring with Perf4J
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It's a particular example of Murphy's Law that many developers are familiar with: after spending much time ensuring that an application is speedy and scalable in a staging environment, performance inexplicably falls off a cliff when released to production. Even worse is the case where things normally run fast, except for the boss or that important customer who complains that their operations always seem to run at a snail's pace. Detailed logging and analysis are crucial when it comes to tracking down these intermittent performance bottlenecks.
However, in today's world of service-oriented architectures and widely distributed applications, detecting the component responsible for a performance bottleneck can be exceedingly difficult. Consider what happens on the server in the relatively common scenario of a typical web 2.0-style application:
- An incoming web request is dispatched to the component responsible for generating the response.
- The request may need to be authenticated against an LDAP server.
- The controller component makes queries against a database.
- The controller component also makes calls to a third-party web service.
- The controller component aggregates all of the retrieved data into a set of business objects for display.
- The business objects are rendered and the response is sent to the user's browser.
- AJAX code running in the browser causes additional requests to be sent back to the server.
Answering the question "Why is my web page slow?" requires investigating multiple components and execution paths, and it requires detailed performance data from all of the application components in production.
Perf4J is an open source toolset for adding Java server-side code timing statements and for logging, analyzing and monitoring the results. For those developers who are familiar with logging frameworks such as log4j or java.util.logging, an analogy helps to describe Perf4J:
Perf4J is to System.currentTimeMillis() as log4j is to System.out.println()
How is this relevant to understanding Perf4J? Consider how most of us used to add logging statements back in the bad old days before good logging frameworks for Java were widely available. We used System.out.println() as a "poor-man's debugger", a quick and dirty way to output logging information. We quickly realized this was insufficient. We wanted logging statements to go to a dedicated log file (or possibly multiple different files), perhaps with those log files rolled on a daily basis. We wanted the ability to assign different levels of importance to different logging statements, and the option to have only certain log statements written in certain environments without changing any code, or the option to change the formatting for log statements in different environments. Thus, the rich set of features that log4j provides comes out of the original desire to have a "better" System.out.println() for logging statements.
Similarly, when new Java developers discover they need to add performance logging to code, they often do something like this:
long start = System.currentTimeMillis(); // execute the block of code to be timed log.info("ms for block n was: " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - start));
Later on, though, these developers find they want more information, such as aggregated performance statistics like mean, minimum, maximum, standard deviation and transactions per second over a set time span. They would like graphs of these values in real time to detect problems on a running server, or they would like to expose performance metrics through JMX so that monitors can be set up to alert when performance degrades. In addition, they want their timing statements to work with the common logging frameworks like log4j.
The goal of Perf4J is to provide these features in an easily integrated (and easily extended) open source package. Perf4J was developed here at Homeaway.com, where the widely distributed nature of our infrastructure and the high availability and performance requirements of our websites require in-depth performance analysis. Some highlights of Perf4J include:
- A simple stop watch mechanism for succinct timing statements.
- A command line tool for generating aggregated statistics and performance graphs from raw log files.
- Custom log4j appenders to generate statistics and graphs in a running application, with java.util.logging and logback support scheduled for subsequent releases.
- The ability to expose performance statistics as JMX attributes, and to send notifications when statistics exceed specified thresholds.
- A @Profiled annotation and a set of custom aspects that allow unobtrusive timing statements when coupled with an AOP framework such as AspectJ or Spring AOP.
The examples given below highlight how you can take advantage of some of these features with very little effort. For more details regarding how to integrate Perf4J into your code base, you'll want to review the Perf4J Developer's Guide.
Timing Code Blocks with a StopWatch
The org.perf4j.LoggingStopWatch class is used to add timing statements to code and print those statements to an output stream or log file:
StopWatch stopWatch = new LoggingStopWatch(); //... execute code here to be timed stopWatch.stop("example1", "custom message text");
The call to the stop() method records the execution time and prints a log message. By default, the base LoggingStopWatch class prints output to the System.err stream. In most cases, though, you'll want to use a subclass of LoggingStopWatch that integrates with one of the popular Java logging frameworks or logging facades, such as a Log4JStopWatch, CommonsLogStopWatch or Slf4JStopWatch. Here is some sample stop watch output:
start[1233364397765] time[499] tag[example1] message[custom message text] start[1233364398264] time[556] tag[example1] message[custom message text] start[1233364398820] time[698] tag[example1] message[custom message text]
Creating Statistics and Graphs Using the Log Parser
While the default stop watch output isn't a huge improvement over calling System.currentTimeMillis() directly, the real benefit comes from being able to parse this output to produce aggregated statistics and graphs. The LogParser groups stop watch output by tag and by time slice, generating detailed statistics information and, optionally, time series graphs using the Google Chart API. Here is some sample output using the default text formatting (csv formatting is also supported):
Performance Statistics 20:32:00 - 20:32:30 Tag Avg(ms) Min Max Std Dev Count codeBlock1 249.4 2 487 151.3 37 codeBlock2.failure 782.9 612 975 130.8 17 codeBlock2.success 260.7 6 500 159.5 20 Performance Statistics 20:32:30 - 20:33:00 Tag Avg(ms) Min Max Std Dev Count codeBlock1 244.0 7 494 150.6 41 codeBlock2.failure 747.9 531 943 125.3 21 codeBlock2.success 224.1 26 398 106.8 21 Performance Statistics 20:33:00 - 20:33:30 Tag Avg(ms) Min Max Std Dev Count codeBlock1 289.3 10 464 141.1 22 codeBlock2.failure 781.1 599 947 135.1 8 codeBlock2.success 316.2 115 490 112.6 13
Graphs for average execution time and transactions per second are generated as URLs to the Google Chart Server:
Also, since by default the LogParser reads from standard input, you can pipe a log file from a running server to the LogParser to get output generated in real time:
tail -f performance.log | java -jar perf4j-0.9.8.1.jar
Integrating Directly With Log4J
Much of Perf4J's extended functionality is made available through a set of custom log4j appenders. This allows developers to add analysis and monitoring capabilities piecemeal at deployment time through a logging framework that is familiar to many Java developers (and future versions of Perf4J will provide custom logback appenders and java.util.logging handlers). One such valuable piece of functionality allows Perf4J to expose performance data as attributes on JMX MBeans, and to send JMX notifications when performance degrades below acceptable thresholds. Since JMX has become the standard interface for managing and monitoring Java applications, exposing a Perf4J MBean opens up a wide range of functionality provided by third party monitoring applications. For example, here at Homeaway our IT department has standardized on Nagios and Cacti for system monitoring; both of these tools support querying MBeans as a data source.
The sample log4j.xml file below shows how to enable Perf4J appenders for JMX:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <!DOCTYPE log4j:configuration SYSTEM "log4j.dtd"> <log4j:configuration debug="false" xmlns:log4j="http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/"> <!-- Perf4J appenders --> <!-- This AsyncCoalescingStatisticsAppender groups StopWatch log messages into GroupedTimingStatistics messages which it sends on the file appender and perf4jJmxAppender defined below --> <appender name="CoalescingStatistics" class="org.perf4j.log4j.AsyncCoalescingStatisticsAppender"> <!-- The TimeSlice option means timing logs are aggregated every 10 secs. --> <param name="TimeSlice" value="10000"/> <appender-ref ref="fileAppender"/> <appender-ref ref="perf4jJmxAppender"/> </appender> <!-- This file appender is used to output aggregated performance statistics in a format identical to that produced by the LogParser. --> <appender name="fileAppender" class="org.apache.log4j.FileAppender"> <param name="File" value="perfStats.log"/> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout"> <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%m%n"/> </layout> </appender> <!-- This JMX appender creates an MBean and publishes it to the platform MBean server by default. --> <appender name="perf4jJmxAppender" class="org.perf4j.log4j.JmxAttributeStatisticsAppender"> <!-- The tag names whose statistics should be exposed as MBean attributes. --> <param name="TagNamesToExpose" value="firstBlock,secondBlock"/> <!-- The NotificationThresholds param configures the sending of JMX notifications when statistic values exceed specified thresholds. This config states that the firstBlock max value should be between 0 and 800ms, and the secondBlock max value should be less than 1500 ms. You can also set thresholds on the Min, Mean, StdDev, Count and TPS statistics - e.g. firstBlockMean(<600). --> <param name="NotificationThresholds" value="firstBlockMax(0-800),secondBlockMax(<1500)"/> </appender> <!-- Loggers --> <!-- The Perf4J logger. --> <logger name="org.perf4j.TimingLogger" additivity="false"> <level value="INFO"/> <appender-ref ref="CoalescingStatistics"/> </logger> <!-- The root logger sends all log statements EXCEPT those sent to the perf4j logger to System.out. --> <root> <level value="INFO"/> <appender name="console" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender"> <layout class="org.apache.log4j.SimpleLayout"/> </appender> </root> </log4j:configuration>
In addition to the JMX appender, Perf4J also provides graphing appenders that generate performance graphs that can be exposed through a web front-end using a Perf4J graphing servlet. A custom csv layout allows for easy import into Excel or another spreadsheet program.
Using the @Profiled Annotation for Unobtrusive Performance Logging
One of the downsides to adding performance logging statements in code (and logging statements in general) is that it reduces the "signal-to-noise" ratio of the code, making it more difficult to follow the critical business logic of a particular code block. To help alleviate this, Perf4J provides a @Profiled annotation that can be added to methods whose execution times should be logged, allowing the method body to remain free of StopWatch code:
@Profiled(tag = "dynamicTag_{$0}") public void profiledExample(String tagSuffix) { ... business logic only here }
Once the @Profiled annotations have been added, a Perf4J custom timing aspect can be enabled with an aspect-oriented programming framework such as AspectJ or Spring AOP. This aspect surrounds method calls with bytecode that creates and stops a StopWatch instance. The timing aspect can even be selectively enabled on specific classes at runtime using AspectJ's load-time weaving functionality. Therefore, by using load-time weaving you incur absolutely no overhead for those methods that don't have profiling turned on.
A Simple Example: A Web-Based Prime Number Generator
This example walks you through the steps of creating a real application that demonstrates most of the features of the Perf4J library. You can run the application yourself by downloading the perf4jPrimes.war file and running it in a servlet container. Note that the war file also contains the source code used to create the application.
For simplicity, the example contains just two main code files: a primes.jsp file that is used to display the generated prime numbers and accept user-specified parameters, and the PrimeNumberGenerator class that contains the actual generation code (which, for the most part, is delegated to the java.math.BigInteger class). There are three places where Perf4J is used to time code blocks:
- A Log4JStopWatch is created in code to time the entire page generation in the primes.jsp file.
- The PrimeNumberGenerator.generatePrime() method has a Profiled annotation.
- The PrimeNumberGenerator.randomFromRandomDotOrg() method also has a Profiled annotation.
If you look at the WEB-INF/classes/log4j.xml file, you can see that the following Perf4J features have been enabled:
- All of the individual stop watch logs will be written to standard output (note that your servlet container may pipe standard output to a file on disk). If desired you can use the LogParser directly against this output.
- An AsyncCoalescingStatisticsAppender has been created to aggregate stop watch logs and send them to downstream GraphingStatisticsAppenders and a JmxAttributeStatisticsAppender.
- Two GraphingStatisticsAppenders have been created, one to output mean execution times and one to output transactions per second.
Once you start up the web app in your webserver, you can access the primes generation page at http://servername/<rootContextLocation>/primes.jsp, where the rootContextLocation is determined by your webserver congifuration (also, for easy access, you can view the PrimeNumberGenerator source code at http://servername/<rootContextLocation>/PrimeNumberGenerator.java). On the primes.jsp page you'll see a number of different parameters for determining how to generate prime numbers. You can change the parameters and click the "Generate Prime Number" button to see how the parameters affect how long it takes to generate the number. After generating a bunch of numbers you should be able to see Perf4J output in three places:
- Raw log output is sent to standard output.
- The graphing servlet has been enabled at http://servername/<rootContextLocation>/perf4jGraphs. You should be able to see the mean execution time and transactions per second graphs by hitting this servlet.
- JMX monitoring has also been enabled. You can use the jconsole application that comes with the Java SDK to view the Perf4J MBean values. You will need to start your webserver with the -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote Java command line option. Then, if you start jconsole on the same machine running the server, you should be able to see the "org.perf4j.StatisticsExposingMBean.Perf4J" data values under the "MBeans" tab.
Since at this point you haven't enabled any TimingAspects to support the @Profiled annotations, the only stop watch output you will see is for the "fullPageGeneration" tag. To enable the TimingAspects you can use AspectJ load-time weaving. To do this you'll need to start your webserver with the AspectJ weaving agent command line parameter like so:
You can download the jar here: http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/pub/mirrors/maven2/org/aspectj/aspectjweaver/1.6.1/aspectjweaver-1.6.1.jar
When the agent is enabled, you should then see stop watch output for the "generatePrime" and "randomFromRandomDotOrg" tag names.
Pitfalls and Best Practices
Many attempts at application monitoring, whether for performance, stability, or semantic correctness, fail to optimally deliver their intended benefits. Either too much information is gathered in a way that makes it difficult to wade through a flood of data, or not enough crucial information is gathered at the point where it is needed most. And while all monitoring requires some amount of overhead, performance monitoring should be particularly sensitive to the additional overhead it incurs. The tips below should help you get the most out of Perf4J while minimizing any unintended effects:
- When deciding which methods and code blocks to profile, focus on the big fish first. In enterprise applications there are a cast of "usual suspects" when it comes to performance bottlenecks: database calls, remote method calls, disk I/O, and heavy computational operations that act on large data sets. Thus, you should focus on these types of operations when deciding what to profile. Also, since these operations typically take tens to hundreds of milliseconds, the overhead that Perf4J adds to these operations is orders of magnitude smaller than the native execution time and can be ignored for practical purposes. In fact, this is one reason why Perf4J purposefully uses System.currentTimeMillis (as opposed to System.nanoTime) under the hood to time code blocks: nanosecond granularity should not be needed when timing the types of code blocks in enterprise applications that are likely to cause problems.
- Perf4J is designed to offload performance analysis to a separate thread or process. When using the AsyncCoalescingStatisticsAppender, the executing thread pushes a log event onto an in-memory queue that is drained by a separate thread that sends the log message to downstream appenders. Thus, even if those downstream appenders do lots of intensive work like creating graphs or updating MBean attributes or saving to a database, the effect on the code block being timed is minimal and is unrelated to the amount of work done by those downstream appenders. Similarly, when writing timing logs to a file intended to be parsed and analyzed later (for example, using the Unix tail command as described above), the effect on the process being timed is solely related to the amount of time it takes to write the log statement, not the amount of time taken by the log parser.
- Don't forget the benefits of performance regression testing. In addition to detecting performance bottlenecks at runtime, Perf4J is very useful for creating performance regression tests to determine if code changes have a significant effect (either positive or negative) on performance. By creating a baseline with the initial version of your code you can quickly determine how a new version is going to impact performance.
- Take advantage of the @Profiled annotation and AspectJ's load-time weaving to decide which methods should be timed at deployment time. If you use the @Profiled annotation, you can liberally add timing around method calls and then decide which methods to actually time when you deploy using AspectJ's aop.xml configuration file. There is zero hit taken for methods that end up not being timed. While methods that are timed have a slightly higher overhead than when using StopWatches directly in code (AspectJ essentially creates a closure around the method being timed), this additional overhead should still be inconsequential when timing methods that take at least a couple of milliseconds.
Future Directions for Perf4J
Perf4J is undergoing active development and new features are frequently added. For example, future Perf4J versions will allow you to specify methods to be profiled using a separate config file, thus allowing you to time method executions even when you don't have access to the original source code. All features are prioritized based on user feedback and need, so try out Perf4J today if you would like to help shape its future capabilities. Better yet, as Perf4J is fully open source under the Apache 2 license, and the code is fully documented, you can extend it as desired.
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Great Tool!
Doug Ly
This is a great tool to keep track of the performance of our service layer.
My boss definitely like the statistics and how heavy the app is being used :-)
One bad thing is that the Google Chart API gets nuked when the request URI is too long!
Nice Graph
Srinivas Venkatappa
I would like the tool to progress in the direction of analyzing the database calls, as most of the performance problems are seen in the database areas.
Nagios support of JMX?
Keith Doyle
I am curious though on the comment regarding Nagios support of JMX. My investigation shows that this is particularly difficult, unstable and 'hacky' See www.agilejava.com/blog/?p=149 (not written by me btw). Would it be possible to elaborate on the approach used to tie perf4j jmx logs to nagios that has been adopted by Homeaway?
Re: Nagios support of JMX?
Alex Victoria
The basic Nagios/Cacti usage that we have at HomeAway relies on MX4J's HTTP JMX Adaptor. The server exposes the Perf4J data as described in this article using MX4J.
We then use simple command-line bash scripts to ping the XML MX4J interface from Nagios and Cacti. From there its simple to integrate into both of these products. Thanks to Perf4J, we have performance related alerts and historical charts (above and beyond the ones provided by Per4J) in these other applications.
Hope this helps.
Perfect tool
Srinivas Reddy
Thanks for such a nice tool.
Re: Nagios support of JMX?
Philip Gardner
Alex is right; MX4J exposes pretty much all the data we need in an easily consumable format. By adding "&template=identity" to the end of any MX4J url everything is output into XML. We then use a number of simple Perl scripts that consume that XML and run checks against our thresholds specified in Nagios. It's simple, but it works. We do the same thing for Cacti.
I've taken a look at some of the Nagios plugins you've linked to before and basically came to the same conclusion as you, as far as their usefulness.
If you have any other questions let me know.


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Gov. Bobby Jindal has appointed Sarah Voisin of Houma, wife of the late seafood advocate Mike Voisin, to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board.
Gov. Bobby Jindal has appointed Sarah Voisin of Houma, wife of the late seafood advocate Mike Voisin, to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board.
The board's purpose is to help strengthen and revitalize the Louisiana seafood industry and to identify threats and execute strategies to overcome them.
Sarah Voisin is the owner of Motavit Seafood, today one of the state's largest oyster outfits, and Wine Island. She will serve as a representative of the Louisiana Oyster Task Force.
Mike Voisin, oyster magnate and seafood expert, died Feb. 2 after fighting for slightly more than a week to recover from a massive heart condition.
Voisin helped found the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board and has served as chairman of a large number of organizations ranging from the National Fisheries Institute and the Gulf and South Atlantic Fisheries Foundation to the Louisiana Seafood Processors Council and Louisiana Oyster Task Force.
He was also a Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries commissioner and member of Terrebonne General Medical Center's board of commissioners.
Jindal announced two other appointments of local residents.
Chet Chiasson was chosen to serve on the Louisiana Board of International Commerce.
Chiasson, of Cut Off, is the executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission. Chiasson was nominated by the South Louisiana Economic Council and will be appointed to serve as a regional economic development organization representative of the board, which serves as the authority to advance the state's international economic sector.
Laura Badeaux, of Thibodaux, was appointed to the Louisiana Women's Policy and Research Commission.
Badeaux is the director of the Louisiana Center for Women and Government at Nicholls State University.
The Louisiana Women's Policy and Research Commission advises the governor on women's policy and addresses the needs and concerns of women in Louisiana.


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The Rules And FAQ
The rules, at least what I've got so far:
1. This is the Pit. Flames happen. If someone says something that offends you, ignore them, offend them back, or leave. Don't complain to the mods here or to GenMay admins because your feelings were hurt. The only reason people are ejected from the Pit is clear rules violations.
2. As a lot of Pit regulars post from work, do not use images that are NSFW. If you want to provide a link, warn that the link is NSFW.
3. Debates: these are the core of the Pit. Debate threads have a few requirements:
a) The title must reflect the topic.
b) You MUST state your own opinion. Simply posting someone else's work is not enough.4. Posting news articles and such.
a. If the link requires a login to read the article, either post a login or quote the relevant sections of the article.
b. If you post a link to an audio or video source, provide a synopsis for those who cannot view/listen.
c. Do not copy/paste more than the equivalent of a printed page. We can all click a link. Nobody wants to start on a thread that begins with five pages of text.5. Callouts
a. The title of a calloust MUST be "Callout: <person's name>"
b. "You suck" is not a valid callout. If you've got a good reason to call someone out, share it with the class. This means providing links and/or quotes relating to the callout.
c. you don't get to decide who wins the callout. The Pit does.
d. If the target of the callout does not show, they lose. As if it matters.6. This is not GenMay (aka spam rules)
a. No poster may have more than three threads on page 1 at a time
b. Callouts are not included in this limit. You may have no more than two callouts at once.
c. If you have three threads on the first page that were created more than two weeks ago, you may create up to two more.
d. You must contribute more than you spam. If the mods find your posts to be consistently lacking in content, you may be warned. Continued spamming will result in a KC or banning from the Pit.7. As if it weren't obvious ( Apparently it isn't ) Moderators have final discretion on nigh on anything. If you have a problem with that, feel free to ask, and then shut the fuck up if we keep our decision.
PM Questions to Nano or Kevin.
Im not elitist, Ive simply been marginalized by the preponderance of idiots in the world.
Last edited by PopeKevinI; 02-18-2007 at 06:06 AM..
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The FAQ:
What is the Pit?
The Pit is a forum designed to keep serious debates and arguments from clogging up GenMay.
Is the Pit as old as GenMay?
I don't know. It's been here at least since the [S]oapbox on HardOCP went away. That's when I made the move. It probably is, but I'm too lazy to ask the bigshots.
What should I post here?
It should be controversial, debateable, and at least somewhat intelligent. Not every news article, web site, and wacky idea can be debated. Politics and religion are a mainstay of the Pit.
So does that mean I should make a thread to tell everyone that God doesn't exist / that God loves them all?
No. First of all, there's no content. You're not presenting anything for debate above your own opinion, which can't be debated. Second, that's really nothing more than an inflamatory statement, and your thread will probably be locked for trolling. If you want to start an honest debate, you have to present your opinion and support it with facts.
Okay. Now what's this about callouts?
Callouts are for when personal issues get too big to be sorted out in the threads they started in. Rather than taking your problems and crapping them on every thread you see, you make a callout thread. See the rules if you want to know how to make a callout that won't get locked.
Whaa!!! I called someone out and he called me names! What should I do?
Call him names back. Or put him on ignore and pretend you're superior to him for no good reason. Or go running to your mother. I don't care. Just leave me alone.
I'm gonna go listen to some Linkin Park.
Fine. Beat it.
Burden Of Proof
If you post something, the burden of proof is on you to prove authenticity, if challenged. Source is not necessarily an admission of proof.
Im not elitist, Ive simply been marginalized by the preponderance of idiots in the world.
Last edited by PopeKevinI; 01-16-2007 at 07:48 PM..
New rules regarding locked threads:
If any mod--Pit or otherwise--locks a thread, they need to post why they are locking the thread. If a user pay-locks a thread, they need to PM both PopeKevinI and Nano to inform us that the thread was pay-locked. Include a link to the thread. We promise as our end of the deal to not divulge information on who pay-locked a thread. It is currently anonymous, and will stay that way...but we need to know.
Any thread locked without a mod posting why or a PM from a user pay-locking it is subject to being unlocked at our discretion.
To sum up the important part: If you pay to lock a thread, PM me and Nano and tell us you did it and link to the thread. If you don't, we will unlock the thread and you'll be wasting money.
THIS is your brain on drugs: "I'm not a positive thinker. I am a spiralling hexagonal vortex thinker that strobes multiple colors." -ry_goody
New rule regarding locked threads: yes, I actually have dice, and rolling them to see if your stupid thread gets to stay open makes me giggle.
I personally believe that there has to be a law that limits the power of the supreme court. -- R@$T@M@N
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New York, NY (PRWEB) March 28, 2012
Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers presented 86 abstracts and plenary sessions at the American College of Cardiology's (ACC) 61st Annual Scientific Session, including ground-breaking research on aggressive statin therapy, the prevalence of unrecognized cardiovascular disease symptoms in women, and morbidity associated with non-adherence to medication after stent implantation. The meeting took place March 23-27, 2012 in Chicago.
- Mount Sinai Researchers Show Aggressive Statin Regimen Reduces Fat Content in Coronary Blockage That Can Lead to Acute Thrombosis: Results from the YELLOW Trial
Of 87 patients enrolled in a Mount Sinai trial, half were treated with an aggressive regimen (40 mg) of Rosuvastatin, and the other half received standard lipid therapy. After seven weeks, the group that took Rosuvastatin displayed a 22 percent reduction in the amount of fat in the blockage, while the group with standard lipid therapy showed no significant changes.
"This study provides new scientific information documenting the beneficial effects of aggressive lipid lowering therapy in high-risk patients with coronary artery disease," said Annapoorna Kini, MD, Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and Professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "Furthermore, the YELLOW trial opens new avenues for evaluating the response of novel therapies in men and women in the United States and abroad."
- Mount Sinai-Led Study Finds Cardiovascular Disease Screening of 3,000 Women in OB/GYN Clinics Identifies Risk Factors and Symptoms
A multicenter study of 3,000 women in OB/GYN clinics across the United States, found that 87 percent had unrecognized cardiovascular disease risk factors and 42 percent had symptoms. More than half of women with no primary care provider were unaware that their cholesterol and weight put them at risk.
"Our study indicates that heart disease screening in OB/GYN clinics can play a crucial role in heart disease prevention and earlier intervention," says lead researcher, Roxana Mehran, MD, Professor of Cardiology, and Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Research and Clinical Trials at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Many of the women we screened did not have primary care physicians and were unaware that they were having symptoms of heart disease."
- Mount Sinai Develops New Imaging Approach To Visualize How Blood Flows Through The Heart
Partho Sengupta, MD, Director of Cardiac Ultrasound Research and Jagat Narula, MD, PhD, Director of Cardiovascular Imaging and Professor of Cardiology have assembled a worldwide team of researchers developing novel ways of visualizing directional flow of blood through the heart and its behavior in different disease states as portrayed in a publication that will be released in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology-Imaging. Using the same methodology, in a study presented at ACC, they characterized the effects of abnormal electrical behavior on the blood swirling through the chambers of the failing heart. This discovery will help improve diagnosis of heart failure and help researchers identify novel ways of using pacemaker therapy for treating it.
"This new imaging approach may help us design better therapeutic options for failing hearts," said Dr. Sengupta. "Seeing how blood flows through the patient's heart will allow us to personalize valve design and interventional procedures so that patients get optimal blood flow in their heart."
Dr. Narula believes that this technology will revolutionize the ultrasound field.
Dr. Narula was also recognized by the ACC with its Gifted Educator Award at the meeting.
- People Who Do Not Take Their Anti-Clotting Medication Have an Increased Risk of Stent Thrombosis: The PARIS Registry
To avoid stent thrombosis, a devastating and often deadly complication after coronary stent implantation, patients are required to take dual antiplatelet therapy, a combination of aspirin and a blood thinner. A multinational research team led by Roxana Mehran, MD, found that patients who did not adhere to the dual antiplatelet regimen six months after stent implantation had a four-fold increased risk for stent thrombosis. The team evaluated self-reported adherence among 5,016 patients. Of these, 310 reported that their treatment course had been interrupted, or that they stopped taking the therapy altogether.
"While only 310 patients claimed to be non-adherent, we expect the number may be much higher," said Dr. Mehran. "These findings show a very high likelihood of a major clinical event in these patients, demonstrating that continued education and monitoring of these patients is critical."
- People With Chronic Kidney Disease Are at Greater Risk of Developing Blood Clots
Mount Sinai researchers found in two studies that people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) develop blood clots much faster than healthy adults, and as CKD gets worse, so do the blood clots. They also found people with CKD and diabetes had more pathologic features of high-risk atherosclerotic plaque in their arteries than people with diabetes alone.
"We knew that chronic kidney disease increased risk for the development of adverse cardiovascular events such as heart attacks or strokes, but our study is among the first to show that CKD substantially increases clot strength and the rate at which clots develop," said Usman Baber, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "These results demonstrate a significant need to closely monitor the tens of millions of Americans with CKD to reduce the risk of a cardiovascular event."
- The Anticoagulant Bivalirudin Shows Promise in Significantly Reducing Complications Following Balloon Aortic Valvulplasty (BAV): The BRAVO Trial
The blood thinner bivalirudin has been associated with significant reduction in adverse events in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), also known as angioplasty, compared to heparin, but Mount Sinai is the first center in the country to study its use in balloon aortic valvuloplasty (BAV), a procedure that uses a balloon to open a narrowed aortic valve.
In a retrospective analysis led by George Dangas, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and presented in four abstracts at ACC by Jennifer Yu, a research fellow at Mount Sinai, the research team found that heparin caused major bleeding in 13.1 percent of cases where bivalirudin caused bleeding in only 4.9 percent of cases.
"The majority of the patients undergoing balloon aortic valvuloplasty are elderly and frail, and the larger sheath sizes required contribute to significant rates of bleeding complications," said Dr. Dangas. "The BRAVO data show that bivalirudin is a promising agent in significantly reducing bleeding events and improving clinical outcomes in BAV."
Additional Mount Sinai Presentations of Interest
In total, Mount Sinai researchers participated in 35 plenary sessions and 51 abstract presentations at the ACC meeting. Other notable presentations included:
- Data on a new cardiac nuclear imaging system that drastically reduces radiation exposure to medical staff.
- In a plenary session, Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Medical Center and Director of Mount Sinai Heart addressed the growing evidence connecting heart disease to cognitive decline and dementia.
- Two oral presentations on fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD), a disease of the arteries that generally affects women in their prime: The first showed that an S-curve in the carotid artery may indicate that the disease is present. If FMD is diagnosed appropriately it is very treatable; if not, it can lead to high blood pressure, stroke, and aneurysms. The second presentation provided the first observational data of people with FMD who have experienced an arterial dissection, a dangerous condition associated with significant morbidity including heart attack, stroke, and artery rupture, if left untreated.
"The hard work and dedication of our outstanding physician-scientists is exemplified by the enormous presence Mount Sinai has at ACC this year," said Dr. Fuster. "I am very proud of the efforts of my colleagues in Mount Sinai Heart in making such significant contributions to our field that will help change the way we practice cardiovascular medicine."
Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Named a "Legend of Cardiovascular Medicine" by the ACC
Dr. Fuster was named a "Legend of Cardiovascular Medicine," a lecture award established this year by the ACC that recognizes his international stature as an innovator and leader in the field of cardiovascular medicine. Dr. Fuster serves several roles at Mount Sinai, including Physician-in-Chief, The Mount Sinai Medical Center, Director of the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute and the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Cardiovascular Health, Director of Mount Sinai Heart, and the Richard Gorlin, MD/Heart Research Foundation Professor, Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
About The Mount Sinai Medical Center
The Mount Sinai Medical Center encompasses both The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Established in 1968, Mount Sinai School of Medicine is one of the leading medical schools in the United States. The Medical School is noted for innovation in education, biomedical research, clinical care delivery, and local and global community service. It has more than 3,400 faculty in 32 departments and 14 research institutes, and ranks among the top 20 medical schools both in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding and by US News and World Report.
The Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is a 1,171-bed tertiary- and quaternary-care teaching facility and one of the nation's oldest, largest and most-respected voluntary hospitals. In 2011, US News and World Report ranked The Mount Sinai Hospital 16th on its elite Honor Roll of the nation's top hospitals based on reputation, safety, and other patient-care factors. Of the top 20 hospitals in the United States, Mount Sinai is one of 12 integrated academic medical centers whose medical school ranks among the top 20 in NIH funding and US News and World Report and whose hospital is on the US News and World Report Honor Roll. Nearly 60,000 people were treated at Mount Sinai as inpatients last year, and approximately 560,000 outpatient visits took place.
For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org/.
Find Mount Sinai on:
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Today's Digital Daily
• Jean E. Palmieri
November 14, 2018
• Samantha Conti
November 14, 2018
• Katya Foreman
For cosmetics companies, beauty bloggers can mean big, big business.
The company said November comps rose 6 percent.
Strategic investment in product, marketing, digital content and infrastructure dented the bottom line over the past year.
No-nonsense bons mots are legendary in the technology and operations halls at David Yurman, the luxury jewelry brand.
The company in 2014 reduced its carbon-dioxide emissions by 50 percent versus 2005.
The company also said it was decreasing promotional event to protect brand equity.
The luxury group predicts its performance will see an upturn for the rest of the year.
Holiday sales for department store chain Karstadt helped reverse Arcandor Group's recent losses in the first quarter.
NEW YORK — In the midst of a $240 million effort to buy Italy's GFT SpA, first quarter earnings and sales at Plaid Clothing Group were down sharply.A report sent to Plaid bondholders and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, said…
NEW YORK — When the folks at Ralph Lauren announced in September that they would tour college campuses in a blazing red 18-wheeler truck, they said it was a two-sided adventure: On one side, a romantic take on hitting the road, Jack Kerouac and all…
The jobs front still presented a mixed picture in March: those who said jobs are "plentiful" rose, as did those who said jobs were "hard to get."
Results were impacted by costs related to the brand's March acquisition by TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners and merchandise issues.
NEW YORK — Sparked by 9 percent topline growth at HSN, among other gains logged by five of its six interactive operating units, USA Networks slashed its pro forma, fourth-quarter net loss to $34 million, or 8 cents a share, from a…
Ullman cites more 'value' for creditors.
If Black Friday weekend sales at brick-and-mortar stores were good, then online sales were even better.


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After a guy and a girl have sex, and the guys cums inside of her, this is the aftermath that a girl experiences once she gets up and goes about her day. This is the little wet surprise that will randomly secrete into your panties.
While I was working out after morning sex, I starting jubing while on the treadmill....FML.
by 50 Shades of Guru July 30, 2012


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DOVER, DEL.—Dale Earnhardt Jr. turned a track record lap of 161.849 m.p.h. to win the pole for Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Dover International Speedway.
The top four qualifiers Friday are all from the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. Points leader Matt Kenseth starts second, Ryan Newman is third and Carl Edwards fourth.
Other Chase drivers include: Jimmie Johnson starts eighth, Joey Logano 11th, Kevin Harvick 12th, Kyle Busch 14th, Jeff Gordon 16th, Greg Biffle 19th, Kasey Kahne 20th, and Clint Bowyer starts 23rd.


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Officials are studying a temporary fix for cracked seismic safety bolts on the Bay Bridge that could allow the new span to open as scheduled on Labor Day, but they said Wednesday that a decision had not been made on the work.
At this point, members of the Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee said, the longer-term repairs were still scheduled to be finished by Dec. 10.
Engineers were looking at a shimming idea — installing steel plates into the area of the broken bolts to help prevent movement during an earthquake, said Steven Heminger, an oversight committee member.
The temporary fix would be in place while long-term repairs occurred, he said.
The cracked bolts have derailed the scheduled opening of the new eastern span and led to millions of dollars in cost overruns on the $6.4 billion project.
The existing bridge, built in the 1930s, is not considered earthquake-safe, and years of cost overruns and construction as well as design delays have plagued the new project that had been scheduled to open on Labor Day with great fanfare.
The current problems started in March, when 32 of the 17-foot-long bolts that secure earthquake shock absorbers to the deck of the bridge were tightened.
Tests found that hydrogen had contaminated the bolts, which also were made of poor-quality steel, making them brittle. When tightened to high tension, the brittleness gave way, causing the cracks.
An investigative report faulted all entities involved in the design and construction of the bolts — Caltrans, bridge engineers at T.Y. Lin International-Moffatt & Nichol Design and contractor American Bridge-Fluor Joint Venture.
For example, investigators found that construction crews left the faulty bolts in open ducts for five years, exposing them for long periods to rainwater and marine air.
Investigators also faulted all parties for choosing to subject the bolts to "hot-dip" galvanizing, a corrosion-protection process that exposed them to the high heat that can increase brittleness and susceptibility to hydrogen.
Heminger said all parties should help pay for the repairs.
"If there's shared responsibility, we think there ought to be shared financial responsibility," Heminger said.
Investigators said a faulty design also complicated repairs. The failed bolts were installed in an area of the bridge beneath a concrete cap that made removal impossible.
The permanent repair is a steel saddle that would replace the clinching function of the failed bolts. It has been estimated to cost about $20 million.
Officials said a review of other bolts throughout the structure have found no further problems, easing concerns that they could also have become brittle from exposure to hydrogen.


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What's Up?
- 22.04.2015 •
Ilosaarirock warm up show
We'll be headlining the Ilosaarirock warm up show in Joensuu, Finland on May 8th!.. Read the rest ›
- 30.03.2015 •
"Set Alight" video out!
Check out the new official music video for Set Alight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyRnf7CkSyI.. Read the rest ›
- 14.03.2015 •
BARREN EARTH – "On Lonely Towers" available for pre-order!
BARREN EARTH's eagerly awaited third full-length album "On Lonely Towers", which will be released via Century Media Records on March 30th, 2015 in Europe, is now available for pre-order! Get the physical format of your choice at the Century Media EU webstore:
.. Read the rest ›
- 17.02.2015 •
Premiere lyric video for "A Shapeless Derelict"
The release of BARREN EARTH's eagerly awaited third full-length album "On Lonely Towers" is coming closer and now they have launched a lyric video for their brand new song "A Shapeless Derelict".
Watch the lyric video here: http://youtu.be/BqqmQTCqz-o
German fans click here: http://www.muzu.tv/barren-earth/a-shapeless-derelict-lyric-video-video/2363425/.. Read the rest ›
- 28.01.2015 •
"On Lonely Towers" to be released in March
Finnish progressive death metal outfit BARREN EARTH, now reinforced by Faroese native lead singer Jón Aldará, have just launched the title track of their highly awaited upcoming third full-length. The album will be entitled "On Lonely Towers" and will be released via Century Media Records on March 30th, 2015 in Europe and March 24th, 2015 in North America.


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The University of Zambia and China Urban Construction Design and Research Institute (CUCD) on 23 December 2012, signed a contract for the construction of the Confucius Institute at University of Zambia.
The minutes and the Design Contract were signed by Mrs Sherry Mary-Anne Thole (UNZA Council Chairperson) on behalf of University of Zambia and Mr Du Jianxia (CUCD Vice President) signed for and on behalf of the China Urban Construction Design and Research Institute. The signing ceremony was held at the office premises of CUCD in Beijing-China. The University of Zambia Vice-Chancellor, Registrar, Directors of Confucius Institute in Zambia, the CUCP Advisor and Senior Engineers witnessed the signing of the Contract.
Pursuant to the signing of the Design Contract, CUCD through the Peoples' Republic of China, will undertake to procure the services of a Chinese Construction Firm to come and construct the Confucius Institute at the University. CUCD indicated that the construction firm would move on site at the earliest in late March or early April 2013.