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And so it came to pass that the last of the U.S. Big Three proclaimed that auto factory bundles would no longer be sold openly. And was there great wailing and moaning throughout the land?
There were a few dealers and scrap buyers who wondered aloud, "How will we know what to sell or buy scrap for?" Then they went back to their usual monthly go-rounds of haggling and bargaining. That's the way the buying and selling of scrap metal has been done for decades. Sure, the auto bundles did provide a starting point for some, but it was never carved in stone that grades like No. 1 dealer bundles and No. 1 busheling would rise or fall by the same dollar amount.
There have always been measures of give and take in ferrous scrap transactions, sometimes not in the most polite terms. An irate buyer or seller may suggest that the person on the other end of the phone line was descended from a canine mother or born out of wedlock. Or if not aloud on the phone, then to others in the office after the conversation. Maybe this is not as tactful as Miss Manners would recommend, but deals got done and the same buyers and sellers would be back on the phone again the following month exchanging pleasantries.
The bundles, both auto and dealer, were sold in July, and so was busheling as well as heavy melt and shredded scrap. Steelmaking did not come to a screeching halt because scrap sellers and buyers no longer had factory bundle prices. Over the years, the bundles benchmark had emerged as a "comfortable" yardstick and was widely used but the indicator also was criticized as outdated and often unrepresentative of industrial steel scrap prices.
Twenty years ago, General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp. all sold their upcoming monthly output of baled sheet steel scrap—averaging a total of some 150,000 long tons—within a day of each other. Normally, this occurred about five working days before the month ended—a five-day span in which buyers and sellers haggled.
GM halted its auctions in the mid-1980s and set up buybacks or contract sales with steelmakers. Ford slowly cut back the number of plants from which it sold bundles until only a few thousand tons were sold from its big Chicago plant each month, but Ford has not sold a single bundle on the open market from that facility for almost two years now.
The last to abandon the auction block was Chrysler LLC, which announced a few months ago that it would no longer auction its bundles each month. Instead, the automaker said it would sell them on a formula tied to a published price. Whether that will continue to be its practice is uncertain at this time. What is clear, as one of its managers said during the Steel Success Strategies XXIII Conference in New York in June, auctioning the bundles was not part of its plans.
But if the ferrous market has no benchmark for transactions, junk vehicles won't pile up on city streets and old refrigerators and stoves won't be tossed in creeks. The market participants will find or devise new mechanisms. It has happened before in the past decade. When the auto bundle sales were shifted to the last day or into the next month, buyers and sellers complained but the veterans already had done some polling and had a fair idea what they would pay for, say, shredded.
But the most critical issue was never pricing. It was supply. Today, unlike several decades ago, few steel mills carry much inventory at the mill. Some may have only a few days' worth, others a week or more, but none carries what was the traditional one-month's supply or more. That practice prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s, but better inventory management practices and freight scheduling have allowed many to operate without huge piles of scrap amassed outside their melt shops.
That also has put more stress on the cardinal rule of being a scrap buyer at a steel mill never run out of scrap. You can pay more for it, but don't run out. They'll fire you for that, and for good reason. No executive wants several hundred workers standing around waiting for a rail car or a single truck full of scrap to arrive.
So many buyers at steel mills and their most trusted scrap suppliers have come to what lawyers like to call a "meeting of the minds." They hashed out a mechanism to use when ferrous scrap prices are gyrating wildly and no one is sure what the final price will be. It's called the "price-to-be-determined" purchase order. Few may be pleased with the process, since they would prefer to know what they are paying for 10,000 tons of busheling, but that mechanism—and not the price of a factory bundle—has kept scrap flowing to the melt shops.
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The Korean producers 'seem to think they have a good case, but personally I wouldn't get overly confident.'
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Jun 3, 2014 0
COMMENTARY: Teen Titans Go! Has Licensed Toys Ready to Go
It's been a good year for superhero comics on TV, what with the success of DC Comics' Arrow and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., not to mention the planned fall arrivals of The Flash and Gotham. But let's not forget the animated side of small screen super-heroics, as the second season of Teen Titans Go! premieres next month. The series resurrects Teen Titans, which aired during the mid-to-late 2000s, as something wackier and anarchic. Both shows are based on the long-running comic book of the same name, which is centered on some of the best-known teenage characters in DC's pantheon.
Along with everyone's favorite young sidekick, Robin, the cast includes Starfire, Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy. While adept at defeating evil-doers, Teen Titans Go! more often depicts them hanging out unsupervised at their team headquarters, at which point trouble worse than any super-villain tends to break out. The series is a fun romp, not to mention a good antidote to the spate of more serious, live-action superhero adaptations of late. Teen Titans Go! is currently licensed by a number of toy companies, with items for collectors, young kids, and everyone in between. But in all cases, the property's lighthearted attitude shines through. Read the rest of this entry »

subset: commoncrawl


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Rokita offers Information Assistance for Special Election
Contact: Jim Gavin
(Indianapolis) – A large number of Marion County residents will be voting for their next Seventh Congressional District leader next Tuesday, March 11, to fill the remaining term of Julia Carson. Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita's office provides election day support and reminds voters that this election is no different than any other.
"As with all Indiana elections, our office is available to assist voters so that they may exercise their right to vote," Rokita said.
Questions regarding election-related questions can be answered prior to and during the Special Election by calling the Hoosier Voter Help Line or by visiting IndianaVoters.com and PhotoID.IN.gov.
Hoosier Voter Help Line
The Hoosier Voter Help Line, 1-866-IN-1-VOTE (1-866-461-8683), is a comprehensive resource designed to answer any election questions leading up to or on election day. Voters are also encouraged to use the Help Line to report suspected fraud or any physical obstacles to voting that they experience. Employees of the Secretary of State's office will staff the telephone line between 5:30a.m. to 6:30p.m. EST.
Hoosiers can check their registration status, locate polling places, and look up county-specific information by visiting www.IndianaVoters.com, a service made possible with the implementation of Indiana's statewide voter registration system (SVRS) linking together all 92 Indiana counties with several key state agencies.
PhotoID.IN.gov explains the basics of Indiana's photo identification (ID) law, including exemptions, what kinds of IDs are acceptable, how to get an ID, how to cast a ballot without an ID, how to vote absentee, and necessary documentation to obtain a free ID. The site walks voters through steps needed to obtain a free state-issued ID from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) as provided by law.
The website also allows voters to print off a checklist for required documents as well as an explanation of the law to take with them to the BMV.
For more information on these resources or any election related questions, please call the Hoosier Voter Help Line at 866-461-8683.
# # #


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Royal Mail to issue 'Doctor Who' stamps
LONDON (AP) — The many characters in the science-fiction show "Doctor Who" will be zooming through time and space on the edge of letters in 2013.
Britain's Royal Mail is marking the 50th anniversary of the popular show with a series of stamps featuring each of the 11 actors who have played the title role, known as the Doctor. Those featured include the most recent actor, Matt Smith, as well as past Time Lords such as David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston.
The series will also include a miniature sheet that brings together Second Class stamps featuring the Doctor's time-traveling machine and four of his iconic foes — a Dalek, an Ood, a Weeping Angel and a Cyberman.
The stamps honoring the cult British television program will be available starting at the end of March.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Reimagined poster art for your April Fool's Day viewing pleasure. Some of these feel so awesomely wrong they SHOULD be right. 😉
♦ Check out this EW gallery of 16 (im)posters for The Hunger Games. My faves are the ones for Roger Corman ("She-Devil Deathmatch in the Blood Arena") and Christopher Nolan ("Brunette Actress as Katniss").
♦ This "'What if…' Movies reimagined for another time & place…" gallery made me laugh all the way through. It's hard to pick a fave — they're all so clever and so realistic — but I especially adore the poster art for The Hangover, starring Jack Lemmon, Dean Martin, and Jerry Lewis, and Avatar, reimagined with Natalie Wood, William Shatner, and John Wayne (as seen below).
Related articles
- Office Pranks for April Fools' Day (officewithaview.co)
- Google does have the best April Fool's Pranks (amanwithaphd.wordpress.com)
- The History of April Fools' Day [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
- April Fools' Day makes for Internet silliness (news.cnet.com)


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Get excited about reading again with fun and interesting tips from our experts, including The M.D., our dietitians, and our fitness expert. In our health library, you will find all of the information you need to achieve your goals of making a healthy lifestyle change. So, start reading and start losing!
Here we have a collection of articles to help with your health.
Shuttle Running, Jumping Rope, and Pulling Through
In less than two months, our team of Real Food Warriors will tackle one of the most difficult races they have ever had to face.
"In less than two months, our training for the past 13 weeks will really be put to the test through this intense course," says Sean Wells, a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the NSCA, and the fitness expert at BistroMD. "The cardio techniques and power training activities will really help our warriors pull through some of the more difficult obstacles this race has to offer."
See what our warriors are doing to prepare for the four miles of cardio, the crawl through mud, and the overhaul of pulling themselves over walls.
Shuttle Running for Better Efficiency
"Shuttle running has really been an integral part of our training for the past few weeks," says Sean. "Shuttle runs are a great activity to do in preparation for a race like the Super Spartan Race. The swift intensity of running back and forth will help prepare our team for the changes in intensity they will face on the actual course."
Shuttle running also keeps you light on your feet, which is what our warriors will need as they make shifts between running and performing an activity. Agility is a major component of this race.
Achieving this efficiency in intensity will make for a steadier pace on race day. If you want to incorporate shuttle running into your own workout, all you really need is a set of cones, or a series of objects you can use instead.
Set the cones about four feet apart from each other. As fast as you can, run to one cone, run back to your starting point, then run to the second cone, and back, and then to the third cone. Give yourself a good amount of resting time (between 2-3 minutes), and then perform the drill again.
Jumping Rope for Power
"Not only does jumping rope promote power, but it also helps promote endurance, as it can be a very intense activity," says Sean.
Jumping rope can be performed in conjunction with your cardio routine, and should be done at one-minute intervals. Your maximum heart rate should be between 70-80%.
Rotate jumping rope with your shuttle runs, and even perform some cone weaves. Your heart should be racing at the end of these activities, so make sure you give yourself enough time to rest in between.
Pulling Up to Pull Through
"Many of the obstacles at the Super Spartan Race will require our warriors to hurl themselves over walls, and will require them to lift their own body weight," says Sean. "This is why pull ups are so essential to this workout. If you can pull up your own body weight, pulling through these obstacles will be easier."
Since pull ups require a lot of strength, start out by doing smaller reps. If need be, ask for help. Cross your ankles and have a friend give you a small boost. Do about three reps of pull ups altogether. Pulling up your own weight should get easier each time, so have a friend help you less and less each time you perform this activity.
Simply answer a few questions so we can figure out your weight loss goals and provide solutions for a lighter, healthier you. Our weight loss meal plans are designed to help real people achieve real and lasting success.
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China to Limit Foreign TV Shows on Video-Streaming Sites
Regulators Expected to Cap Amount of Content at 30%
BEIJING—China is set to impose a limit on the number of foreign television shows that Chinese online video-streaming services can offer, according to people familiar with the new policy, in its latest effort to control foreign-media content.
Regulators as soon as Thursday could require that foreign TV shows eventually make up no more than 30% of TV content on Chinese video-streaming sites, the people said. Currently, foreign shows make up more than half of the TV content of popular video sites such as those run by Youku Tudou...


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Fliptop necesitaba un nuevo diseño de botón o icono y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 318 diseños de 63 diseñadores freelance.
We need a button/favicon for our official "Follow" button.
Fliptop's follow button can be embedded on your website to let visitors subscribe to specific content (will typically be placed next to Email, Print and Share buttons)
Visitors can choose to receive updates via email, text message or Twitter when content comes out about a specific news topic, matching a particular job opportunity, or any other filter they specify.
We need a simple image that 1) is clean, 2) distinctive (e.g. no RSS icons, "+" symbols or anything that can be confused with another action), and 3) easily understandable.
Can explore symbols that represent subscribing, following, tracking, alerting, monitoring, receiving at match, getting notified of a match
To give a related, but not competitive example, see the ShareThis button/favicon, where they took a simple point expanding/connecting to two points to represent sharing - http://sharethis.com. We're looking for this level of simplicity, but obviously not representing sharing, but following.
General Internet consumer.
Visual keywords: inviting, fast, easy
We will be giving regular feedback.
Fliptop green is #54B848
Image should work in international markets
Please make sure there is no intellectual property infringement. We will ask the winner to assign us ownership of the artwork.
Require final version as a PSD, JPG and ICO files (for favicon)


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The federal government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the world, spending some $400 billion annually on everything from paper clips to fighter-jet training services. With its annual goal of setting aside 23 percent of the payout to go specifically to small businesses—about $80 billion or so—the government may seem like a dream client, an aspiration for the country's tiniest entities.
Navigating the process of landing government contracts is no easy task, though, especially for firms that have never done it before.
We profile six entrepreneurs who fought hard to procure large, multiyear federal contracts. Read on for tips from these contractors, now generating millions in business from the government.
—By Maggie Overfelt, special to CNBC.com
Posted 26 July 2014


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You are browsing all items of this content category sorted by date (most recent first). Note that forum posts/threads are not included here.
If you would like to search through the content then please refer to the Site Search page.
OST is hosting a hands-on LN 10.5 (and 10.6) workshop in Minneapolis October 16-18, 2018.
While using session ttaad4461m000-print range of audit file-it,It shows an error,"user has no permission at all".
Merino in The Netherlands is looking for consultants or experienced Key Users who want to make the next step. Merino is growing like no other partner in the world and is growing faster than Infor and is more and more the preffered Infor LN partner for the bigger Infor LN customers. Merino is specialized in Infor and comitted to the bone to LN. You- You love LN and you love to share your knowledge. You Love to work in an international team and you love to travel. You love to mentor young consultants and you love to be a true teamplayer. Passion and 'we never stop' describes you. You are honest, passionate and simply Good and you want to work with the best. Join Merino and do it now. We make sure you'll love the team and you'll be a proud member of the team. Join the best, join Merino. We move fast- do you?
Can anyone please let me know the reason of implementing the above mentioned solution in Infor ERP LN 6.1?
This solution has removed the input paramter "Revision" from the function tisfc.dll9010.generate.production.order and the dlls calling this function.
Infor LN Developer Required Urgently in USA - Shouls have H1B or Green Card holder
From my colleague:
"Looking for any consultant who has installed Infor OS on LN 10.6 version at any other ERP LN customer. If anyone has such experience, please let me know.
Kumar MadduriDirector of Enterprise Applications and Business ProcessesRPM Performance Coatings"
Dear all,
We are looking for a Baan Finance Functional Consultant.
Support and Incident resolution
Evolution: Gathering and analyse needs, Write funtional specification, Test, Support
French is a + / English Mandatory
Long term project: 6 months + extension
Start date: ASAP
Rate: Depends of the profil
EUROPEAN Nationality or Work permit for EU MANDATORY / No sponsorship will be offer.
Because of Security Clearance issues, they would prefer somebody from the UK
For our Israel based customer, we require 3 Senior LN consultants to join a very long term project (320 days).
There are 2 Warehouse and Logistic consultant needed, and one Project Order Management.
As much presence onsite as possible is required, with desirable split 3 weeks onsite, 1 week remote.
The consultants must have strong personality and vast experience in areas of expertise.
The customer's project needs experienced (at least 10 years ) consultants on LN Plan to Ship (P2S) module with deep knowledge and experience on:


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This couple likes to collect Porsches
They call them their girls who live in a crib.
But they're not girls and they don't live in a real crib.
They're the collection of 32 Porsche cars owned by Alice and Jack Gish that are housed in the couple's JLG Autocrib at 1 Sunset Hill Road in Brookfield.
The Gishes, he a Brookfield dentist, she, an educator, have been collecting Porsches since 1974, when Jack Gish, still in dental school, bought a 1970 Porsche 914. The car was a deep rich green, known as British racing green.
"We have an absolute passion, a respectful passion for Porsche cars," said Alice Gish. "We like things well done and the Porsche marque is."
"I've always liked them," said Jack Gish, 61, who is a walking Wikipedia of Porsche history. "Something about the look, the sound, the way it hugs the road and the technology attracted me."
That first car got a workout from him.
More InformationAbout the collection First Porsche introduced by Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche in 1938. Ferry's son, Ferdinand, "Butzi" Porsche, followed in his father's footsteps, ultimately creating the 911 in 1963. Jack Gish purchased his first Porsche in 1974; it was a 914 made in 1970. He and his wife, Alice, who are high school sweethearts, began to seriously build their collection of historically important Porsches in 1999. The Gishes built and opened a gallery at 1 Sunset Hill Road, Brookfield, for their collection of 32 cars and assorted Porsche memorabilia in 2011. The gallery is open by invitation only.
"I handled and ran it," he remembered. "I raced it, drove it back and forth to New York City. Over the years I was able, if I saw and liked a car, to purchase it. I'm still collecting today and upgrading the collection. I wanted to get Porsches that represented the history of the car."
And, that's exactly what the Gishes -- high school sweethearts in Queens, N.Y., and married 40 years with three children -- have done.
Their collection includes Porsches beginning with 356s from the 1950s and 1960s and ending with a 2003 996 Turbo. Between those dates are influential Porsches from each decade.
Two of the cars in the collection are associated with movie stars. One of them, a 1995 336 Pre A Speedster, was owned by Nicholas Cage; the other, a 917 RSK clone, was driven by Bruce Willis in "Death Becomes Her."
Though they owned a number of Porsches, they began building their collection in earnest in 1999, traveling throughout the U.S., to auctions and other places
"We chase cars," Jack Gish said. "We want and purchase Porsches that represent the history of the car."
Sometimes, the cars are found in unusual places. One was discovered in a farm field in New York state; it was not in good condition. Another was purchased from a man who needed money to buy a car for his daughter.
For nearly seven years, maintenance of the cars has been overseen by Kim Filler, a woman who also happens to be the financial officer of Gish's four-office dental practice. She treats and tends the cars "like they're porcelain dolls," said Jack Gish.
Of course, they're not really dolls. They're more like well-lubed James Bonds -- elegant, sophisticated and smooth on the outside, tough, innovative and capable of great power inside.
According to Jack Gish, four or five times a year, some of these beauties are entered into the Concours D'Elegance, competitions for the best maintained cars. Some, like their 1983 911SC Cabriolet and 1972 RSR Gulf, have won accolades at such events.
Jack Gish never races or drives any of his Porsches -- they are for show purposes only.
As the collection grew, some went into a garage in their home; then, with no room to spare, they built a carriage house for eight of them. When that space ran out, the cars, said Jack Gish, "were stored all over."
Finally, with a Porsche collection of some size and diversity, they decided to build the gallery.
"Having a gallery is a purposeful choice," he explained. "It is the culmination of our desire to show and share the history of the make and evolution of Porsche automobiles."
It took four years to see their dream come true.
They purchased the Sunset Hill property that formerly was the site of the Peter Piper School and then the Learning Center. Negotiations for that took two years and building, zoning and delays took another two, but, at last, this past year, the facility was finished.
Since it opened, "We've invited people into the crib about once a month for formal showings for car clubs," Jack Gish said. "We have parties for friends here, too."
But more than parties and formal showings, the gallery is "a learning center, really," said Alice Gish, 61.
Eventually, the couple wants the gallery, lined with big screen televisions for videos, "to be a place for school kids, for children to come through who want to connect with the history of the cars and what was happening nationally and internationally when they were built," Jack Gish said.
Until then, only organized, small groups will be invited in, but there's always a viewing available online at www.JLGAutocrib.com.


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HOUSTON, Jan. 22, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Buckeye Partners, L.P. ("Buckeye") (NYSE:BPL) plans to release its 2013 fourth quarter and full year earnings on February 7, 2014. Interested parties are invited to listen to the scheduled webcast of the conference call on the 2013 fourth quarter and full year financial results.
|February 7, 2014 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time
|On the Internet at the address above – either on a live or replay basis – or by dialing in to the number provided below
|Call In:
|Interested parties may participate in the call by joining the conference at
| Replays:
|Will be available through March 31, 2014 by dialing 800-585-8367 and entering the conference ID number 36221419 or listening to streaming audio at: http://www.media-server.com/m/p/nuibd4gv
Buckeye Partners, L.P. (NYSE:BPL) is a publicly traded master limited partnership that owns and operates one of the largest independent liquid petroleum products pipeline systems in the United States in terms of volumes delivered, with approximately 6,000 miles of pipeline. Buckeye also owns more than 120 liquid petroleum products terminals with aggregate storage capacity of over 110 million barrels. In addition, Buckeye operates and/or maintains third-party pipelines under agreements with major oil and chemical companies, owns a high-performance natural gas storage facility in Northern California, and markets liquid petroleum products in certain regions served by its pipeline and terminal operations. Buckeye's flagship marine terminal in The Bahamas, BORCO, is one of the largest crude oil and petroleum products storage facilities in the world, serving the international markets as a global logistics hub. More information concerning Buckeye can be found at www.buckeye.com.
CONTACT: Kevin J. Goodwin Senior Director, Investor Relations firstname.lastname@example.com (800) 422-2825Source:Buckeye Partners, L.P.


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By Orson Scott Card
This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here with permission.
An intelligence source, working for a government agency. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. He uses computers to crunch numbers and at the end of his work, out pops the truth that was hiding in the original data. Let's call him "Mann."
The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to fight. Well, that's not acceptable.
Cooking the Figures
He starts with his software. There are certain procedures that are normal and accepted in his line of work. But if he makes just one little mistake, his program does a weird little recursion and if there's any data at all that shows the pattern he wants it to show, it will be magnified 139 times, so it far overshadows all the other data.
He can run it on random numbers and it gives him the shape he wants. Unfortunately, the real-world numbers aren't random – they have a very different shape. All the numbers. Even his jimmied program won't give the results he wants.
All he needs is any data shaped the right way. And so he looks a little farther, and … here it is. It looks, on the surface, like all the other data that he's been working with. Other researchers working in his field, just glancing at it, will assume it is, too.
But it isn't. Because the source that gathered this batch of data had some other key information that takes it all away. The numbers don't mean what they normally mean. In fact, this number set is absolutely false.
If you use these numbers along with all the other data, however, the clever little program will pick them up, magnify them radically, and voilà! The final report shows exactly the shape he needs the numbers to have.
The trouble is, these numbers are supposed to be double-checked. Anybody who looks closely at his numbers and at his program will see what he's done. It's not hard to find, if you have the original data sets and can examine the program. He will be exposed as a fraud. It will do his cause more harm than good, if it's made public.
But he's not afraid. He knows how this works.
He doesn't show the program or the lists of his data sources to anybody.
Second, he is given a big boost by the fact that another researcher – we'll call him "Santer" – had his own axe to grind. He was also the author of a questionable report and got himself appointed to a position that allowed him to get to the final report before it's published, delete all statements about how "there is no way to reach a definitive conclusion," and replace them with his own conclusion, which is absolute.
And it works. Santer's report is accepted, even though it has since been proven false. Mann's report continues to be relied on, and no one questions it. The government agency issues the report which they know has been altered to fit preconceived conclusions.
Vast sums of money are expended on the basis of what he claims to have found. People's live are put at risk.
Mann and Santer didn't do it for the money, though grants do flow in their direction.
They did it for the cause. It's a noble cause. And even though the data don't actually say what they wanted them to say – in fact, they say the opposite – they are untroubled by that. Because the government actions that are being taken are the Right Thing.
Santer and Mann are true believers. They don't need evidence. Evidence is just something you create to persuade other people.
Here's the amazing thing about Mann's original report: He's not the only researcher working in this field. In fact, it's the job of many hundreds of researchers to refuse to accept his data at face value. After all, his findings disagree with everyone else's. Before they accept his results, they have a duty to look at his software, look at his data, and try to duplicate his results.
But nobody does it. Not a soul.
Nor, when it goes public, does anyone in the press check the results – because they want him to be right, too.
Steve the Canadian Businessman
Not until a Canadian businessman – let's call him "Steve" – took a look at the stats and got curious. Now, it happens that Steve is in the mining business; he also happened to be a prize-winning math student in college. He knows how to read number sets. He knows what good analysis looks like.
He also knows what cooked figures look like. He has seen the phony projections that companies use when they're trying to swindle people. Their results are too perfect. Mann's report looks too perfect, too.
So Steve starts digging. First, he read's Mann's original report. He finds it an exercise in obscurity. From what he published, it's very, very hard to tell just what statistical methods Mann used, or even what data he operated on.
This is wrong – it's not supposed to be that way. Scientists are supposed to leave a clear path so other people can follow them up and replicate their research.
The fact that it's so obscure suggests that Mann does not want anyone checking his work.
But Mann used government grants in his research. Which means he has an obligation to disclose. Steve contacts him, asks for the information. He gets a runaround. He gets pointed to a website that does not have the information. He tries again, and again gets a runaround – in fact, Mann sends him a very rude letter saying that he will no longer communicate with him.
Why should he? Steve isn't a legitimate researcher in that field. He's just a businessman.
But Steve is now sure there's something fishy going on, and he doesn't give up. He gets other people to help him. Finally they are pointed to a different website, where, to their surprise, they find that someone has accidentally left a copy of the FORTRAN program that was used to crunch the numbers. It wasn't supposed to be where Steve found it – which is why it hadn't been deleted.
Also, there was a little more carelessness – there is a set of data labeled "censored." Steve can't see, right away, what's significant about it, except that a score or so of data sets are left out of the censored data.
Steve looks at the program. He finds the glitch rather easily. He tries the program on random numbers and realizes that it always yields the distinctive shape that has caused all the stir.
Sorting out the data sets is much harder. He contacts a lot of people. He does what anyone checking these figures would have to do, and he realizes: If anyone had tried to check, a lot of this information would already have been put together.
He realizes: I am the first person ever to attempt to verify these astonishing, anomalous, politically hot results. Out of all the researchers in this field who had a responsibility to do "due diligence" before accepting the data, none of them has done it.
Finally he has all the original data put together. It includes more than just real numbers – it includes "extrapolated" data, which means that sometimes, where there were holes, Mann just made the numbers up and plugged them in. This is sloppy and lazy – but it's just the beginning.
What's crucial is that Steve now understands why the "censored" data sets are smaller than the ones Mann used. The full source data includes those misleading results that shouldn't have been used. But the "censored" data sets leave it out.
This means that Mann knew exactly what he was doing. This was not an accident. Mann ran the program on the data without the misleading numbers, and then he ran it with the misleading numbers. What he published was the results that made his ideological case.
Where's the Press?
This story is true. Anybody who cares to can verify the story. In fact, one of the leading science journals was prepared to publish Steve's results. But then, before publication, they kept cutting back and cutting back on the amount of space they would let Steve's report take up in the journal.
Finally the space they were going to allot was so small that they concluded Steve could not tell his story in that number of words, and therefore they decided not to publish it at all.
Meanwhile, serious publications did publish Mann's savage response to what Steve was saying on the website where he was putting up his results for everyone to read.
Notice: Steve is making all his work transparent to the world – anyone is free to check his data.
Mann is still hiding, denying, attacking – but not providing the full information. You still have to do detective work to ferret it out.
Now, if you were a reporter – you know, those brave guys and gals who are committed, body and soul, to "the public's right to know" – wouldn't you smell a rat? Wouldn't you jump on the chance to expose such an obvious fraud?
After all, there are now governments all over the world basing their decisions on Mann's false report. Crucial decisions are being made. Schoolchildren are being terrorized with dire projections of what will happen if Mann's report is not believed and acted upon. Vast sums of money are being spent. People are treating Mann's cause as a crusade – and his fake results are the chief weapon they use to prove their case.
Where's the press? Why am I able to tell you this story in full confidence that very few who are reading it will have ever heard it before?
Because Mann doesn't report to the Bush administration. The government agency for which the result was filed was a UN agency – specifically, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
And Mann's report is the famous "hockey stick" that "proves" that global warming not only is happening, but right now we're in the warmest climate period in the past thousand years.
Ah! You've heard of that report, haven't you! The press has been all over that one! Your kids are being taught about it in school!
You have friends who look at you like an idiot or the scum of the earth if you don't get energized by it, frightened by it, determined to act on that information. Don't you care about the future of the environment?
Why haven't you joined the cause? Why doesn't the Bush administration act to save the world from the most terrible threat imaginable?
It's like the opening of the "Talk of the Town" section of the February 12th New Yorker: "Except in certain benighted precincts – oil-industry-funded Web sites, the Bush White House, Michael Crichton's den – no one wastes much energy these days trying to deny global warming."
This statement is not just false, it's stupidly false. It speaks of such deep ignorance at The New Yorker – ignorance that they're actually proud of – that it makes one despair, for this is a magazine that once prided itself on knowing what it was talking about.
"By the time the IPCC publishes an assessment, it has been vetted by thousands of scientists," says The New Yorker – but we know that in fact nobody vetted the Mann paper, and nobody checked Santer except, of course, Santer – while he went ahead and removed statements of some of those "thousands of scientists" (p. 27).
In other words, whoever wrote this New Yorker piece did not check. He or she just spouted.
What is really being said here is, "We believe in the IPCC and anybody else who supports Global Warming. We believe it so much that we refuse to listen to anybody who says otherwise."
The only difference between this and Jim and Tammy Baker on the old PTL Club is that nobody says "Jesus." It's all faith, no science.
They're like four-year-olds putting their fingers in their ears and chanting "La la la la" until the person talking to them goes away.
The Hockey Stick Hoax should be a scandal as big as the discovery of the Piltdown Man Hoax. Bigger, really, since so much more is at stake.
But because the media are dominated by True Believers, they are doing everything they can to maintain the hoax, to keep the public from learning the truth.
What were those bad numbers Mann plugged in to get his fake results? Modern bristlecone pine tree-ring data in which recent tree rings showed the widths that would normally mean unusually warm weather.
However, these trees were located near temperature recording stations that showed lower than usual temperatures. So instead of being a sign of warmer temperatures, the tree rings are actually responding to the increased CO2 levels.
Even the heading on this bristlecone pine study clearly stated that the wider tree rings did not indicate higher temperatures. But Mann plugged them in as if they did, producing the one dataset that showed "warmer weather" (i.e., wider tree rings) in recent years, allowing the defective software to produce its hockey-stick result.
The bristlecone pine study was real science. Mann's use of it was deliberately fraudulent.
How Can We Know What's True?
All this can be checked. I didn't even change the names. "Mann" is Michael Mann; his co-writers on that hockey stick report are Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. "Steve" is Stephen McIntyre, and the writer of the report I'm working from is Ross McKitrick, who is a climate scientist. Their report is a chapter in Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming, edited by Patrick J. Michaels.
Do you know how True Believer scientists respond to this? Just like the ignorant New Yorker writer. There's no attempt to answer any specific charge. They simply dismiss any disagreement by saying, "All the smart scientists agree that global warming is happening; anybody who denies it is just a crank, and you should ignore them."
This is exactly the kind of bias that President Bush's enemies accuse him of having during the run-up to the Iraq War. They claim that Bush and his people only believed the intelligence reports that told them what they wanted to hear, and ignored the rest, claiming that "everybody knew" things that were false.
That's not what happened with Bush (but you don't actually have to prove accusations against President Bush these days). But with the Hockey Stick Hoax it can be proved – yet the very same reporters pay no attention at all.
It's "not a story." In other words, the very people who attack Bush as a liar are actually behaving exactly as they accuse Bush of behaving. Global Warming vs. Climate Change. If you pay close attention, you'll find that Global Warming alarmists are not actually saying "Global Warming" lately. No, nowadays it's "Climate Change.
Do you know why? Because for the past three years, global temperatures have been falling. Oops. The thing is, we've had twenty years since the Alarmists first raised the banner of Global Warming. They told us that "If This Goes On" by 2010 or 2020, sea levels will be rising so high that coastal cities will be flooded, famines will cover the earth, and … Oh, you know the list. They're still making the same predictions – they just move the dates farther back.
It's like those millenarian religious cults in the 1800s. Religious leaders would arise who would predict the Second Coming of Christ in 1838. When Christ didn't oblige them by showing up, they went back to their visions or scripture calculations or whatever they claimed and report that they miscalculated, now it was going to be 1843. Or whatever.
Here's the raw truth:
All the computer models are wrong. They have not only failed to predict the future, they can't even predict that past. That is, when you run their software with the data from, say, the 1970s or 1980s, and project what should happen in the 1990s or 2000s, they project results that have absolutely nothing to do with the known climate data for those decades.
In other words, the models don't work. The only way to make them "work" is to take the known results and then fiddle with the software until it finally produces them. That's not how honest science is done.
Why are so many scientists so wrong? First of all, there aren't all that many scientists. You hear about how "everybody" agrees about global warming. But who is "everybody"?
I had somebody at a conference get very angry with me for even raising a question. "I have a friend who's a climate scientist and he says that the Everglades are definitely drying up!" But that's not the question, I said. Global warming isn't even the question. The question is, what is causing global warming or cooling or climate change? Is it human carbon dioxide emissions or something else? Your friend is studying aquifers in one specific area. In what way is he qualified to speak about global climate?
The only answer I got was the answer you always get when you challenge the roots of someone's religion – fury, dismay, and a refusal to talk about it any more. That's what happens over and over. Who are the scientists who are qualified to speak? There aren't that many. It's the relatively few scientists who are studying paleoclimate and those who are working on contemporary data collection and collation and analysis.
And here's where it almost gets funny. Even the IPCC, which was so heavily biased in favor of Global Warming alarmism, could not get its pet scientists to agree that Global Warming in recent decades is even probably caused by human activity.
What Is Driving Global Climate?
Science isn't done by consensus. It's done by rigorous testing. When a hypothesis – or a computer model – fails to correspond to the actual real-world data, you throw them out. That's what the real climate scientists are doing. They have found, in recent years, a very close correspondence between global climate and variations in the amount of radiation the Earth receives from the Sun.
The light and heat we get varies depending on the distance and position of the Earth and the amount of radiation the Sun puts out. The Earth's distance and position seem to determine the big cycles – the Ice Ages – and the Sun's variations seem to determine the smaller climate cycles.
We have historical data indicating several global warm periods. There was one during the heyday of the Roman Empire; then there was a global cooling during the Dark Ages (beginning about 600 A.D.) The Medieval Warming kicked in about 950, followed by the Little Ice Age beginning about 1300.
The Little Ice Age ended in about 1860. You'll notice that most reports on our modern Global Warming set that as their base point, and leave out all prior warmings.
But those warm periods are real, as are the cool periods. Ice core samples from various places around the world back it up, as do ocean floor samples. In fact, the predictions based on the 1500-year (approximately) solar cycle are borne out everywhere.
There's now at least as much real-world evidence supporting the solar cycle as the cause of climate variation — including all of today's climate variation – than there was for, say, tectonic plates or the asteroid-caused extinctions at the time when they were first plastered all over the media as the hottest science news of their day.
It's not that it's really a secret. The book Unstoppable Global Warming by Singer and Avery tells us what the media could easily have reported to us:
"On 16 November 2001, the journal Science published a report on elegant research, done by unimpeachable scientists, giving us the Earth's climate history for the past 32,000 years – along with our climate's linkage to the sun" (p. 8).
They quote Richard Kerr of Science:
… the climate of the northern North Atlantic has warmed and cooled nine times in the past 12,000 years in step with the waxing and waning of the sun.
And Kerr quotes glaciologist Richard Alley of Penn State:
The … data are sufficiently convincing that [solar variability] is now the leading hypothesis to explain the roughly 1,500-year oscillation of the climate seen since the last ice age, including the Little Ice Age of the 17th century (p.8).
We're not talking about fly-by-night wackos. We're talking about leading scientists doing solid research.
And other scientists have found data that correlates closely with their findings all over the world. In other words, these solar oscillations account, completely, for the global variations.
The opposite is the case with the Global Warming alarmists. Their human-emitted carbon dioxide hypothesis is made ludicrous by the fact that most of the warming since the 1860s occurred before 1940, an era when human CO2 emissions were not significant. And we had significant global cooling between then and 1970, precisely the period when CO2 emissions were steeply rising.
CO2 really is rising, though. Any greenhouse heat effect seems to be dissipated by a newly discovered "Pacific Heat Vent." Moreover, CO2 emissions are provably involved in fertilizing vegetation wherever CO2 levels have risen.
Global Warming "Solutions"
We can't stop global warming or cooling. We simply don't have the power to do it. We can't heat up or cool down the sun; we can't jiggle the Earth in its orbit or change its position. We'd be idiots to try, even if such unimaginable powers came within our reach.
So we'll continue, as long as the human race persists, to have ice ages and warm periods, with relatively minor oscillations (like the Little Ice Age and our current warm period) in between.
In fact, what we have right now, while we are not yet as warm as the peak of the Medieval Warming (a fact that Mann and others have tried to deny or obscure), is a superb climate that is making life better for people all over the world. It's the cold periods that cause famines and population drops, and promote plagues and floods.
We should be grateful.
Instead we are being hit with dire warnings, every one of which is either false or a normal part of the Earth's history; our business should be to adapt to the unavoidable solar-caused warming, not to destroy the worldwide economy in order to prevent something that human activity is not causing.
Because the "solutions" proposed by the alarmists do not solve anything – and they admit it! The drastic proscriptions of the Kyoto Protocols, even if anybody were actually following them, would not have had any effect on Global Warming, even if it had been caused by human CO2 emissions.
Do you understand that? When Al Gore goes on and on about what we must do to save the Earth, he knows – and everybody involved with the Global Warming alarmist movement knows – that none of their drastic proposals would have the slightest effect on Global Warming even if it worked they way their fantasies say it does.
So why do they propose it? There are many personal motives, of course, but when you look at the non-solution "solutions" they propose, the pattern is clear: They are not trying to stop global warming. They are trying to punish the Western democracies for being richer than the rest of the world.
There are solutions to that problem (and I believe it is a problem), but they involve stabilizing bad governments, increasing international trade, and making unsafe parts of the world safer so they can take part in the global boom.
Not only that, but many of the programs the alarmists advocate are actually needed for completely unrelated reasons. It is a mark of our folly and blindness that we continue to be so ridiculously oil-dependent all these years after the oil embargo of 1973.
For national security, environmental, futuristic, and personal-happiness reasons we should be working hard to change our automobile centered culture into more civilized patterns that invariably make people happier wherever they are tried.
It can't be done by cutting back on automobile emissions or even by raising taxes on gasoline – especially because these changes are hardest on the poor and the marginal middle class.
But I'll write about how and why we need to cut back on our destructive love affair with that faithless mistress, the car, in another column.
What matters right here and now is that it is time for the world's scientists to apostatize from the Church of Global Warming. It is a false religion. It is based on lies, and its leading prophets know that it is because they're the ones faking the data or stretching it to ridiculous lengths to pretend that the real world hasn't already ruled against their claims.
It is time for our school systems to stop accepting the gospel of that false religion and start doing their due diligence. Our children should be taught about the demonstrable solar cycles and the whole human-caused Global Warming theory, along with the Hockey Stick Hoax, should be taught only as another example, after Piltdown Man and pre-Copernican theories of planetary movement, of how science can be corrupted when ideology gets ahead of the data.
It is time for us to laugh at the ideologues who try to pretend that any criticism of Global Warming alarmism is idiotic and unscientific. They are the ones who ignore the data; they are the ones who believe on faith alone, without evidence; and, most important, they are the ones who are trying to stifle the opposition without answering it.
The Global Warming alarmists are the anti-science religion that is trying to forcibly indoctrinate and convert everyone while suppressing dissent. And the news media are their patsies, their stooges, their puppets.
Right now, let's start demanding that whenever the local newspaper or TV stations say anything about Global Warming, they back it up with actual data that takes into account the solar oscillations, the real climate history of the earth, and the facts about what CO2 actually does in the atmosphere.
It's time to stop letting them lie pass along other people's lies. It's time for the news media to stop doing cocktail party "research" and dig down into the science and get it right.
Read It for Yourselves
I could not possibly array all the evidence here; you must read the books for yourself. Unstoppable Global Warming is a highly accessible book written for ordinary educated readers. It's the book I recommend most highly.
Shattered Consensus, on the other hand, uses the language of various disciplines of science to a degree that makes some chapters fairly difficult for untrained readers, though the key chapter I cited here, on the Hockey Stick Hoax, is quite readable and worth looking at by everybody.
S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years.
Patrick J. Michaels, ed. Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming.. (See especially: Ross McKitrick, "The Mann et al. Northern Hemisphere 'Hockey Stick' Climate Index: A Tale of Due Diligence," pp. 20-49.)


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Next-generation analytics is not about getting the right answer so much as asking the right questions. But what if agencies could get the data to help them discover the questions they need to ask?
Organizations need more than just a handful of analytic tools, according to officials with Teradata, a provider of analytics software. They need an entire discovery platform that weaves analytical tools together to help business users "uncover things they didn't know they needed to know."
To address this, the company recently unveiled the Teradata Aster Discovery platform that snaps multiple analytical engines into a common framework. The common interface lets business analysts investigate all types of data sources – structured, multi-structured or unstructured – without having to change formats of the analytical engines or rely on data scientists. Yet the platform is sophisticated enough to meet the analytical needs of data scientists, company officials said.
Many companies offer stand-alone technologies that independently run text, statistical or graph analytics, but Teradata has integrated them into a single platform, said Scott Gnau, president, Teradata Labs.
The firm's Aster Discovery Platform includes Teradata Aster SQL-GR, a graph engine, and the Teradata SNAP Framework (Teradata Aster Seamless Network Analytic Processing Framework). Key features of the platform include:
Teradata's integrated approach is important because both data scientists and analysts can be hampered by piecemeal big-data strategies, rudimentary tools and disparate tools, technologies, and processes, said Dan Vesset, program vice president for business analytics and big data with market researcher IDC. In fact, recent IDC research revealed that only 10 percent of organizations surveyed have the features and functionality needed to explore data and discover insights. To address the big data strategy void, "an integrated data discovery platform should be part of every organization's portfolio," Vesset said.
About the Author
Rutrell Yasin is is a freelance technology writer for GCN.
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Rutrell, with the explosion of big data, companies are faced with data challenges in three different areas. First, you know the type of results you want from your data but it's computationally difficult to obtain. Second, you know the questions to ask but struggle with the answers and need to do data mining to help find those answers. And third is in the area of data exploration where you need to reveal the unknowns and look through the data for patterns and hidden relationships. The open source HPCC Systems big data processing platform can help companies with these challenges by deriving insights from massive data sets quick and simple. Designed by data scientists, it is a complete integrated solution from data ingestion and data processing to data delivery. Their built-in Machine Learning Library and Matrix processing algorithms can assist with business intelligence and predictive analytics. More at http://hpccsystems.com
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PIGEON FORGE, TENN. - Set against the Great Smoky Mountains, Dollywood is surrounded by a green canopy of hardwood trees and colorful blankets of flowers that envelop every ride and attraction in the Tennessee wilderness.
The 150-acre theme park in Pigeon Forge traces its origins to the 1961 debut of the Rebel Railroad, a five-mile steam train ride into the foothills of the Smokies, complete with Indian attacks and train robberies. Over the years, rides and attractions were added until 1986 when country singer Dolly Parton became a partner and Dollywood was born.
With themed areas celebrating the history and culture of Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains, Dollywood is known for award-winning live entertainment showcasing country, bluegrass, gospel, rock 'n' roll and Appalachian music.
Like Pennsylvania's Hersheypark, Dollywood is one of the few theme parks in the U.S. to feature thematic touches and conventions reminiscent of Disneyland - from immersive architecture to signature foods to enveloping landscaping. Dollywood has more benches per visitor than any other park I've ever visited and enough rocking chairs to form a porch sitters union. It's cleverly done.
In 2010, Dollywood received the Applause Award, the highest honor in the theme park industry presented biennially by the International Assn. of Amusement Parks & Attractions. Previous winners include Europa Park (Germany), Efteling (Netherlands), Cedar Point (Ohio), Universal's Islands of Adventure (Florida) and the Magic Kingdom (Florida).
A closer look at the Top 10 rides and attractions at Dollywood:
1) Wild Eagle:The $20-million attraction was the first winged coaster in the U.S. when the Bolliger & Mabillard-built ride opened in March. Riders sit on either side of the track in a winged formation on trains themed as bald eagles in flight. The smooth-as-glass thrill ride delivers on the soaring-like-a-bird premise and represents a strong candidate for best new coaster of 2012 when award season opens.
2) Thunderhead: The 2004 Great Coasters International wooden twister featured the world's first station fly-through. The terrain-hugging ride, chosen as the best wooden coaster in the world by Amusement Today in 2005 and 2006, includes 14 bridges, 22 turns and 32 crossovers. The awesome twisting wooden coaster delivers a solid ride with plenty of airtime hops.
3) Mystery Mine: The indoor-outdoor coaster was the first Gerstlauer Eurofighter in the U.S. when the ride opened in 2007. Themed as a long-abandoned haunted coalmine, the special effects-laden ride features two vertical lifts and steep 95-degree drop.
4) Adventure Mountain: The 2-acre multi-level rope course, the largest in the U.S., is themed to resemble a rustic National Parks ranger complex. I could have spent an hour traversing the four challenging courses and quickly forgot that I was tightrope walking four stories above the ground tethered only by a harness.
5) Mountain Slidewinder: As the only ride of its kind in the U.S., the water toboggan swoops and swooshes through high-banked turns as riders navigate the twisting trough in tandem-seat rafts. The slightly ragged 1987 Slidewinder can leave you soaking wet or bone dry depending on the seat you draw and how high you careen through the turns.
6) Tennessee Tornado: The 1999 Arrow coaster features three inversions, including a 110-foot-tall loop and a sidewinder. The short-but-sweet aging coaster still holds up well after years of service.
7) Blazing Fury: Set amid an out-of-control fire in an old mountain town, the 1978 attraction combines an indoor dark ride with a steel coaster. A cross between Disneyland's Pirates of the Carribbean and Knott's Berry Farm's Calico Mine Train, the wonderfully weird and wacky throwback Blazing Fury delivers a surprising triple whammy finale for the unitiated.
8) Dollywood Express: The 110-ton coal-fired steam engine takes riders on five-mile journey through the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. The train debuted in 1961 as the Rebel Railroad, the predecessor to Dollywood. The locomotive's smokestack belches an endless cloud of charcoal gray smoke that smells like those old fireworks snakes and covers your clothes, skin and hair in soot.
9) Barnstormer: The 2011 S&S Worldwide Screamin' Swing reaches speeds of 45 mph as the pendulum arms pass through a smashed red barn. There always seems to be at least one rider who screams uncontrollably - adding a blend of shrill thrill and gallows humor to the ride.
10) River Battle: The 2008 interactive water raft ride pits boat against boat in a water cannon battle that leaves riders and bystanders soaked. The boat-mounted cannons don't have much range, leaving the riders at the mercy of the cannon fire from the land-based water artillery.


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Joe Mathis Jr. decided to pull his 20-foot boat, jet ski and pontoon boat from Lake Allegan when the water level dropped 18 inches. Other homeowners were not as fortunate, and their boats were stranded in lifts or grounded when Consumers Energy began altering water flow Sunday at the Calkins Bridge Dam as part of a state "contingency" plan for the massive upstream Kalamazoo River oil spill.
Consumers has dropped the lake 2 feet since Sunday at the request of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment. The idea is to slow the water flow in Lake Allegan to make capturing oil easier, as a precaution if oil ever reached the lake.
So far, oil from the Enbridge Inc. pipeline rupture has not made it past the Morrow Dam in Comstock Township and authorities expect to stop it there.
Some Lake Allegan homeowners question whether Consumers properly notified residents of the plan to lower the lake. In many areas, the receding water has left 15-18 feet of dry lake bottom showing.
"To my knowledge, there was no notification," Mathis said.
Still, he supports the effort, particularly if it helps upstream crews clean up the spill.
Consumers' spokesman Dennis McKee said the utility issued a press release Sunday, announcing the intent to lower the water level. It's unclear when it will be restored.
"We wouldn't have done it if they didn't tell us we needed to do it," he said. "Now we're waiting on the agencies involved with the cleanup to direct us to begin raising the level."
McKee said he did not know how many homeowners have stranded boats."In the areas where the water was shallower, there are probably some issues," he said.
E-mail John Tunison: firstname.lastname@example.com
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UK: Sainsbury's "stand-out performer" - Kantar
Sainsbury's was the "stand-out performer" in the UK's grocery market in the last three months, according to the latest data from Kantar Worldpanel.
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These, she said, would preserve farmland as a valuable resource, not only for production of food and fiber but as a preferred wildlife habitat based on the natural movement of animals, without human manipulation of the environment.
During her talk during the recent 22nd Annual Agribusiness Management Conference in Fresno, Southwick said her 95,000-member, Sacramento-based organization identifies closely with environmental concerns.
California farmers and ranchers, as they struggle with "a litany of laws" to stay in business, "need to capture the hearts and minds of society" and convince their urban neighbors of shared values and interests for a healthy environment, she said. "Farmers are committed to preserving resources for generations ahead."
CFBF has been working toward the restoration partnerships systematically with an eye on ensuring that farmers who voluntarily participate are not subject to liability if agency mismanagement results in harm to wildlife.
Against a curious backdrop of increasing agricultural output combined with sagging net farm income, she said, the state's farmers must cope with laws for water quality, air quality, wildlife, pesticides, and land use at the local, state, and federal levels.
Endangered species
Particularly burdensome are the endangered species laws, both federal and state, that govern use of land by those who receive water from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Noting that these species tend to follow farmland and California has more than it share of them, she said one might assume, given the emphasis on protecting them in California, that all such wildlife in the eastern U.S. must have already been killed off.
CFBF also challenges the science used to support regulations, all of which require "valid science" as a basis for implementation. It is in a pitched battle with environmentalists over the quality of land, water, and air, whether that is achievable, and how to get there.
Does is make sense, Southwick asked, to blame farming for problems in environmental quality, eliminate it and grow food somewhere else?
Or does it make sense, she added, to look at the whole problem, identify what are the real contributing factors, and make choices to meet the desired environmental quality?
Farmers want to be considered viable and a part of California's future "the same as any urban dweller and any of the critters we are trying to save though environmental programs."
"If we don't have land and water and at least adequate air quality, we can't grow crops," said Southwick, who formerly held posts as a water-law attorney with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and with private law firms and as a deputy attorney general for the state of California.
Do more with less
"And we are losing land and are expected to do more with resources available to us," she added, noting that land is being lost to farming because of redistribution of water supplies to urban and environmental uses.
Some of the redistribution is voluntary, but much of the pressures to do so stem from the very laws designed to protect the environment.
"This is more a sledge-hammer approach rather than using other tools to put together programs that will allow farmers to remain commercially viable while at the same time improving the quality of air, land, and water."
Noting that more than three-quarters of the farmland in the state is owned by individuals or families, she rejected as a myth of agriculture's detractors the notion of giant corporate farms abusing water resources.
Southwick said another "bane of our existence" is the CalFed Program, the consortium of 24 federal and state agencies assembled in the mid-1990s to resolve land and water issues in the state.
Farm Bureau, she said, initially advocated the plan and lobbied for legislation to establish it. In time, however, CalFed decided that farmers should bear most of the burden of solving the problem.
The CalFed position, she asserted, was to take agricultural land out of production and then redistribute the water formerly allocated for that farmland to urban purposes.
"We are currently in litigation with CalFed over that approach because we think it is neither environmentally sound nor in keeping with the principles we agreed to. If we don't have the resources, we can't put the food on the table."


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The art world lost a legend this week when it lost Blue Dog artist George Rodrigue.
Destin artist Don Sawyer met Rodrigue 10 or 11 years ago when he walked into and then spent the afternoon in Sawyer's gallery.
"He looked at my art and gave suggestions, then he took one of my pieces and put his Blue Dog in it," remembers Sawyer.
Sawyer still has the painting and would not consider selling it. In turn, Sawyer painted a portrait of Rodrigue's new dog, Harry.
"He is legend in New Orleans," said Sawyer. "Icon didn't apply to him. I have known two masters: Woodie Long and George Rodrigue."
Sawyer and Rodrigue remained in touch and met again for lunch in Baytowne on one of Rodrigue's subsequent visits.
"He was very dedicated to the arts. Everything he did revolved around the arts. He loved kids. He was sweet, most sincere. He bought an entire block in the French Quarter and refurbished it. I hate losing him. He was great. There will never be another," said Sawyer.
Local restaurateur AJ Tusa agrees.
Tusa was friends with Rodrigue for 37 years. They met at Tusa's restaurant in New Orleans.
"When he laughed from so deep inside himself everyone in the room became happy," said Tusa. "He was extremely warm hearted. He gave a lot of charity donations and helped survivors of Katrina. He helped in the inner city of New Orleans through his foundation and gave his personal money, some to students and some to artists. When people met him, they wanted to hug him as they sensed his sincerity. When he shook your hand you knew someone cared. There was nothing superficial," said Tusa.
Rodrigue created a different type of art, said Tusa, and he wasn't accepted in the New Orleans art world at first.
"No one's feet touched the ground in his paintings,� he said. �There was something magical about it. But there was a certain amount of sadness in his early pieces."
Freeport artist Eileen West managed a gallery in the Vieux Carre district of New Orleans back in the 1980s which carried many paintings by Rodrigue before Tiffany, the Blue Dog, came to him in a dream and made him a star. The older paintings were masterful images of the bayous and the people who lived there, she remembers: giant dark live oaks with draping Spanish moss, quiet reflections on the still water, and the people playing Bourre or strolling.
"He was an accomplished painter who loved his parish and then became an international celebrity," said West. "Louisiana is right to honor him; he has honored his home place."
In 1982 Rodrigue painted a work that has Tusa standing under an oak tree with his son. The painting was bought by Lindy Boggs. Tusa said the painting now hangs in the National Archives and became the artwork for the front cover of a phone book for southwest Louisiana.
"I used to tell him he put me in every motel in southwest Louisiana," said Tusa.
Years later Rodrigue painted the Blue Dog.
"There was something in the dogs' eyes that was mystical," he said. "Galleries have all kinds of art in them, but George had the Blue Dog.�
The Blue Dog paintings, which catapulted Rodrigue to fame, was patterned after the artist's own little dog, Tiffany, who hung out with him in his gallery.
Rodrigue painted a work for Tusa featuring five Blue Dogs, all wearing chef hats.
"I look at it every day and miss him, but he will be missed by many," said Tusa. "He loved to make people happy."
And, Tusa will miss his presence at his annual Christmas dinner, which Rodrigue always attended.
"We were privileged to be part of a group he was in," said Tusa.


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firstname.lastname@example.com | +44 787 499 87 98 | http://www.jasonjiafoto.com
MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Final Show
London College of Communication
12 Dec – 09 Jan
Elephant & Castle
London SE1 6SB
Switchboard: +44 (0)20 7514 6500
"As we approach the end of an
extraordinary twelve month journey,
I look at the work produced by the
class of 2012 with a sense of wonder
and admiration. With a central theme
of identity the 2012 MA show
'It Is What it Was' brings together the
thoughts, ideas and observations of 34
exceptional photographers. Their stories
are fresh and original and the manner in
which they are presented to the public,
contemporary and in some cases,
ground breaking."
Course Leader John Easterby
Built with Berta


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J.F. Lehman & Company Acquires IMECO, Inc.
Jan 04, 2013, 12:14 ET
NEW YORK, Jan. 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- J.F. Lehman & Company ("J.F. Lehman"), a leading middle-market private equity firm focused on the defense, aerospace and maritime sectors, announced today that certain of its investment affiliates have acquired IMECO, Inc. ("IMECO" or the "Company") of Iron Mountain, MI, in partnership with Company management.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20091221/NY29520LOGO )
IMECO is a leading independent domestic provider of turnkey marine electro-mechanical solutions for U.S Government and commercial customers. The Company's integrated maritime solutions include the design, engineering, planning, procurement and installation of HVAC, cargo handling, electric steering, propulsion and fire suppression systems for government and commercial vessels.
Roy Arnold, President of IMECO, stated, "J.F. Lehman & Company is an excellent partner for IMECO given the firm's unique expertise and relationships as well as capital to accelerate our growth. We look forward to continuing IMECO's proud history of providing innovative solutions to the maritime market."
"We are excited to be partnering with IMECO's management team," said Alex Harman, Partner at J.F. Lehman. "IMECO has built a highly respected brand name and outstanding reputation with U.S. shipyards by providing innovative, high quality engineered systems on a turnkey basis. The Company fits well with our firm's investment mandate and our existing portfolio of maritime services investments. We look forward to building on IMECO's tradition of success and expanding their position as a leading independent supplier of electro-mechanical solutions to the U.S. marine industry."
Gibson Dunn provided legal counsel to J.F. Lehman & Company. Ballard Spahr acted as legal counsel to IMECO, Inc.
About J.F. Lehman & Company
J.F. Lehman & Company is a leading middle-market private equity firm focused exclusively on the defense, aerospace, and maritime sectors. The firm has offices in New York and Washington.
For more information about J.F. Lehman & Company, please visit www.jflpartners.com.
SOURCE J.F. Lehman & Company


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RSVP to Attend the 125th Anniversary Block Party
IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law will host its 125th Anniversary Block Party on Saturday, September 28, 2013 from 11 am to 8 pm. Take advantage of the opportunity to network with Chicago-Kent faculty, staff and alumni. Enjoy live music from area bands featuring Chicago-Kent alumni and friends. Local Chicago vendors such as Par Bar, Al's Beef and Pazzo's @ 311 will provide tasty food offerings as well as beverage tastings from Lagunitas Brewery and Old Sugar Distillery. RSVP Today.
Attend a Fireside Chat with Block Party Sponsor Tony Magee, Founder of Lagunitas Brewery
On Thursday, September 26, Lagunitas Founder Tony Magee will participate a Fireside Chat at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law to discuss the challenges he faced building and running a successful start-up and what it takes to sustain the health of the fastest growing brewery in the U.S. In addition to the interview, this event will also feature an Audience Q&A and Lagunitas beer tasting. RSVP Today.
This event is co-sponsored by IIT Chicago-Kent, the IIT Stuart School of Business' Knapp Entrepreneurship Center and Lagunitas Brewing Company.
Volunteer at the 125th Anniversary Block Party
Roles include festival guides, building tour guides, or registration volunteers. Get a free volunteer-only t-shirt, free admission, and a free meal!
Contact firstname.lastname@example.com, to learn more or sign up.
Now Hiring for New Opportunity!
The Alumni Relations Assistant will lead organize the alumni relations database, perform data entry tasks and research alumni information. This is a great opportunity for someone looking for flexible hours close by, and to gain alumni contacts.
Email Katie Aune, email@example.com for more details. [top]
Want to connect with alumni?
Are you involved in leadership of a student organization and would like to:
Invite alumni to your events?
Find alumni speakers or panelists?
Partner with the Alumni Association on events?
Contact the Alumni Association at firstname.lastname@example.com for more information on how the Alumni Association can help connect you with the Chicago-Kent alumni community.
Main Chicago-Kent event
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Mavericks fall further out of playoff contention with loss to Suns
Dallas, TX – Goran Dragic scored a team-high 22 points and dished out 13 assists to lead the Phoenix Suns to a 102-91 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday.
P.J. Tucker and Luis Scola added double doubles for the Suns, who had dropped 10 straight games entering the contest.
Tucker finished with 17 points and 10 rebounds and Scola added 11 points and 15 boards. Wesley Johnson poured in 17 points despite being held scoreless in the second half.
Shawn Marion scored a game-high 22 points and pulled down nine rebounds and Dirk Nowitzki added 21 points and eight boards for the Mavericks, who will be eliminated from playoff contention if the Lakers beat the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday.
Dallas hasn't missed the playoffs since the 1999-00 season.
Dragic led Phoenix offensively in the first, netting 11 points in the frame on 5-of-6 shooting. The Suns trailed 10-9 with 8:15 remaining, but used a 19-4 burst to go up 28-14. Dallas scored the final seven points of the period, making it 28-21.
The Mavs outscored Phoenix, 15-7, over the first 4:10 of the second to take a 36-35 lead, but the Suns countered with a 19-5 burst to go up 54-41, and the visitors led 61-51 at the break.
Dallas opened the second half on a 12-2 swing to tie the game, but Dragic halted the run with a trey to give the Suns a 66-63 edge. The Suns would score the next nine points and took an 81-71 edge into the fourth.
Marion's hook shot pulled Dallas within four, 91-87, with 2:45 left. The Suns, though, opened a 9-2 surge to take a 100-89 lead with 47 seconds to seal the victory.
Game Notes
Jared Dudley scored 17 for the Suns ... Dallas outscored Phoenix 40-32 in the paint ... The Suns went 12-for-27 from 3-point range ... Vince Carter was the only other Mavericks player in double figures with 18 points.


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3/8 x 6tpi hook x 80"
- Item #: 38680
This is a bandsaw general purpose blade. The blade is 3/8" wide, 6TPI, hook tooth pattern and 6'8" long. This is M-K Morse stock in a hard edge flex back band. If you would like to insure your purchase please let me know before I ship. I will be happy to do this for you and the cost is minimal. Shipping on this item is free via USPS or UPS. I do combine shipping wherever possible. I do ship internationally. Just email me and I will quote shipping to your country.
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No Reviews. Write a Review


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Free ground shipping on all U.S. orders! Today only! Offer ends tonight at midnight EST.
The watermark in the lower right corner of the image will not appear on the final print.
by Al Bourassa
Cuenca Kids 129 by Al Bourassa - 8" x 8"
Luster Photo Paper
Rolled in a Tube
Assembly Charge
Cuenca Kids 129 poster by Al Bourassa. Our posters are produced on acid-free papers using archival inks to guarantee that they last a lifetime without fading or loss of color. All posters include a 1" white border around the image to allow for future framing and matting, if desired.
Ships Within
2 - 3 business days
THANK YOU to Carol Senske for featuring this artwork in the group Children of the World
What a beautiful capture of a lovely young lady, Al!
Al Bourassa replied:
Thank you Sue for your kind words.
All prints ship in durable cardboard tubes.
Fine Art America is one of the largest, most-respected giclee printing companies in the world with over 40 years of experience producing museum-quality posters and prints. All of our posters are produced on state-of-the-art, professional-grade Epson printers.
We use acid-free paper with archival inks to guarantee that your posters last a lifetime without fading or loss of color. All posters include a 1" white border around the image to allow for future framing and matting, if desired.
Posters ship within 3 - 4 business days in durable cardboard tubes.
Average Rating (5 Stars):
Michelle Daberkow
November 18th, 2018
George Hurley
November 18th, 2018
Diana White
November 18th, 2018
Diana White
November 18th, 2018
MELT YOUR HEART with the children of Ecuador. The parade on Christmas Eve in Cuenca, Ecuador is world famous, both for its pageantry, beauty, and length. The parade lasts about eight hours and it has some of the most colorful costumes, animals, horses decorated with food, dancing troupes, and many tributes to the baby Jesus on his birthday. The children are a huge part of the parade and are mesmerizing, so well behaved and so beautiful, as only children can be. The length of the parade took its toll on many of them, some even falling asleep in the saddle. I took 890 photos this date so you will get to see a few of these. I also have 39 videos of the dance troupes that I have uploaded to YouTube under the handle alabca starting with http://youtu.be/GAHITn7JWpU.This artwork is derived from a photograph taken December 24/11 at Cuenca, Ecuador, South America. NOTE that the Fine Art America watermark will NOT appear on any purchased product.I do hope you enjoy my work. Comments ar...
~ WELCOME ~ I thank you for stopping in. Please kick back and stay a while and PLEASE, do visit often. My NEW PERSONAL WEBSITE to direct folks to ALL of my work is http://souvenirphotostudio.neocities.org/ . BEAUTY is in the eye of the beholder, (that means YOU) so please enjoy your visit and let me know if you like what you see. Hopefully you like something enough to buy it, and that would make us both very happy! All artwork is COPYRIGHT protected and any use, copying, download or reproduction without the express consent of the artist or FineArtAmerica is strictly prohibited. If you desire a licenced electronic copy for use in advertising, brochures, banners, artworks of your own making, or the like, please email me...
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If you're not happy with a purchase that you made on FineArtAmerica.com, for any reason, you can return it to us within 30 days of the order date. As soon as it arrives, we'll issue a full refund for the entire purchase price. Please note - Fine Art America does not reimburse the outgoing or return shipping charges unless the return is due to a defect in quality.
Fine Art America sells thousands of pieces of artwork each month - all with a 100% money-back guarantee. We take great pride in the fact that hundreds of thousands of artists have chosen Fine Art America to fulfill their orders, and we look forward to helping you select your next piece!
All posters ship from our production facility within 2 - 3 business days of your order.


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Longtime photographer Greenberg speaks as Artsphere celebrates 10 years
At 84, local photographer Jerome Greenberg has witnessed seismic shifts in the landscape of his native city and in the tools of his chosen medium. On Saturday, as part of a series of events celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Amherst Street staple Artsphere Studio and Gallery, Greenberg will share stories about his life in Buffalo and his 70-year photography career.
Greenberg's photographs include street scenes of a city that has long vanished, as well as sensitive portraits of personalities whose names no longer register, or never did. He will be joined by painters Milton Weiser and Jacqueline Welch, who will also talk about their own successful art careers, which have been featured in solo exhibitions at Artsphere.
Saturday's talks are part of a series that coincides with the gallery's 10th anniversary show, which runs through April 27. The final talks in the series, featuring photographer Bogdan Fundalinski and mixed media artist Michelle Mazur, are slated for the final day of the exhibition. – Colin Dabkowski
Talks by Jerome Greenberg, Milton Weiser and Jacqueline Welch – When: 4 p.m. Saturday. Where: Artsphere Studio and Gallery, 477 Amherst St. Admission: Free. Info: 874-2863 or www.artspherestudio.com


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Sarcastic wrote:That's pretty wild. Yeah, if you're a fan of all that mayhem and won't be able to do just that in the new one, I can see your disappointment.
If there is a demo for DMC 3, I'll d/l it today. Looks fun.
And I can't not mention the background music by one of my favorite groups with, for sure, a top-3 current metal guitar virtuoso who's also one of the best composers in music.
There's no demo that I'm aware of, but I think there is a DMC collection for PS3.
I warn you though, DMC 3 is insanely hard. It's Ninja Gaiden hard. A lot of it has to do with the game not scaling well with the setup of your character at the start of the game.
There are easier difficulties, but I can't, in good conscious, play any game below normal difficulty.


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product description
Related Products:
Goodpasture, Tom
Fixed Blade Knives
Blade Shape - Drop Point
Finish - Satin
Jigged Bone
Stainless - 420
Stainless Steel
Antler & Bone
Kitchen Knives
Maker: Tom Goodpasture (click to see more by this maker)
Item num: 4497
Blade length: 4.00 in.Total length: 8.25 in.Blade height (at heel): 1.03 in.Blade thickness (near bolster): 0.07 in.Item weight: 2.88 oz.Blade: 420 stainless steel with a hand rubbed satin finishHandle: Jigged bone scales
Description: Tom Goodpasture is currently apprenticed to Mastersmith PJ Tomes. Under the watchful eye of his master, he has created these exceptional handmade utility knives. Light and fast in the hand, the 420 stainless steel blades have keen, long lasting edges and have been hand satin finished. The handles are formed from jigged bone. This material holds up well to heavy kitchen use and provides a sure grip. The scales are attached with four pins. Exceptional work throughout.
Availability: Not currently available


text:
Photographs (by George P. Landow) You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on images to enlarge them.
The Mahagandhayon Kyung (Monastic Institution), a kind of Buddhist Boystown that welcomes visitors. Left: one of the huts in the monastery. Right: a typical horse and cart.
Left: a young monk studying. Middle: robes — each monk has to have three — drying. Right: brooms resting against a banyan tree.
Left: one of the bright white stupas on the monastery grounds. Right: The honeycomb pagoda with 888 images of the Buddha.
The late morning, when the monks get their last meal of the day at midday.
Related material
created 17 April 2001; last modified 17 January 2016


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Box Raises More Money as It Awaits IPO
Web Storage Startup Gets $150 Million in Rare Financing After IPO Filing
Box Inc. bought itself some breathing room as it waits for a more suitable time to hold an initial public offering.
The online-storage startup raised $150 million in funding from private-equity firm TPG and hedge fund Coatue Management, the company said on Monday in a regulatory filing that also provided its latest quarterly results. The new financing—rare for a company that already has filed for an IPO—values Box at about $2.4 billion, people familiar with the matter said....


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One final day of matches to decide who goes to the MLS Cup playoffs and who calls it a day on 2013. The Chicago Fire are in New York for Sunday's biggest match, watch LIVE at 3:30pm CT on My50 / Time Warner Cable Sports Wisconsin and at 4pm on UniMas and La Ley 107.9FM!
Five Things You Should Know...
Scenarios – How do the Fire get in today?
We've called a lot of games the biggest of the year this season… That may be a product of starting 2-7-1 in your first 10 matches. Still, that stat produced last week about a slow start and playoff qualification still stands today if the Fire can grab just a point at Red Bull Arena.
With Saturday's results in Philadelphia and Toronto, there are now a number of ways the Fire can get in, even if the team loses. Click here for those and how they would finish in each instance.
Plain and simple, a win or draw at Red Bull Arena this afternoon is enough for the Fire to qualify for the postseason.
Still, Sporting KC's win at Philadelphia on Saturday makes the Fire's task with New York more difficult as the Red Bulls chase their first-ever piece of hardware in the MLS Supporters Shield. Only a New York win will get them there
Magee Golden Boot
Marco Di Vaio and Montreal were held scoreless in their 1-0 defeat at Toronto FC on Saturday, putting Mike Magee into pole position for the MLS Golden Boot. Though he remains tied on 20 goals with the Italian heading into today's game, the tiebreaker is assists with the Fire forward racking up four to Di Vaio's two this year.
- READ: MLS Goal Scoring Leaders
If Magee can bag one goal vs. New York, he'd like be the clear winner, though he'll have to wait to totally celebrate the honor as Vancouver's Camilo sits on 19 (and six assists) with the Whitecaps hosting the Rapids at 7pm CT. If Magee doesn't score and Camilo bags one, the Brazilian would take the Golden Boot crown.
In the "highly unlikely but just enough of a thing to have to mention" category, if Robbie Keane, who sits on 15 goals and 11 assists, scores five in the league's finale at Seattle tonight, he would win the Golden Boot Crown.
Whether or not Mike Magee wins the Golden Boot, there seems to be some early, popular sentiment around his campaign for league MVP. On Friday, seven of eight MLSsoccer.com editors put their support behind Magee, while pre-eminent American soccer journalist and friend of Chicago-Fire.com Steven Goff, publicly casted his ballot for the Fire forward as well…
The Captain's Armband
With Fire vice-captain Jeff Larentowicz suspended for this match, one question this week was who would wear the captain's armband in the event that club captain Logan Pause didn't start in his place.
Earlier this season, long-time Fire defender Gonzalo Segares wore the armband when Larentowicz was removed in the 70th minute of a 2-2 draw vs. Portland on June 8. He also captained the side in July's 3-2 friendly loss to Club America.
Asked Thursday if the coaches had talked at all about their choice in the event Pause doesn't start, Segares said, "We haven't talked about that. We're definitely losing a big leader in Jeff but other guys are ready to step in and do the job. Whoever it is, it doesn't matter. We're going to have 11 players that are going to be ready – everyone is mature enough to be a leader."
Regular Season Finales – A Fire History
On Friday I wrote about the three previous times the Fire have needed a result on the final day of the regular season in order to qualify for the MLS Cup playoffs.
Fire fans should have some confidence in the fact that the team is unbeaten in its last seven regular season finales, going 6-0-1 since last losing 1-0 at New England in 2005. The team is also 9-4-2 all-time in the final match of the regular season, with other losses coming in 1998, 2003 and 2004.
The Fire are also 23-12-9 all-time vs. Red Bull and 3-1-3 in their last seven matches with the only loss coming in last July's mid-day, midweek 100+ degree debacle of a match at Red Bull Arena.
Asked this week if he feels history is on the team's side heading into the match Segares said, "History doesn't matter. What matters is what's going to happen on Sunday. Red Bull is on a very good roll right now, they're fighting for the Supporters Shield. We know they're going to line up their best squad and they're in the same situation that we are. They need three points to get a trophy and we need three points to get in the playoffs. That's all there is."
Broadcast Opening and Info
Sunday's regular season finale will be shown in A LOT of countries around the globe. Our international fans should click here for tune-in information.
Closer to home the game will air nationally on UniMas at 4pm CT while local coverage begins at 3:30pm CT with the TrueCar pre-game show on My50 and Time Warner Cable Sports Wisconsin.
Dan Kelly and Kevin will open today's broadcast with a look back on the Fire's 2013 regular season campaign, from wretched beginnings, to Mike Magee and Bakary Soumare's acquisitions and all the other events that have led the Fire to a chance of finishing as high as third in the East today.
Catch a sneak peak of that piece below:


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Hi Guys,
I've been trying these for at least a year now, and still haven't landed a single one. Sometimes i catch the bar, or get my fingers to it. However, even if I did, i never land on the board, my weight is always backwards and i crash onto my back.
Here's a couple of attempts on video, The first one is a typical attempt (with a typical outcome:))
I don't do ones like the second one that often, but worth showing a different angle regardless.
Can anyone shed any light on what I'm doing wrong? This trick is doing my head in
What do i need to do to stop landing on my backside?


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Merchant_4: Fresh Work from International Designers
- Location: online only
- Website: merchant4.com
Store History
- Founded: 2007
- Founded by: Cheri Caso
- Headquarters: New York, New York
There are stores that tend to look alike, especially in the virtual world of online shopping. We won't name names, but they're the types of shops that carry the same 10 or 12 modern brands, have the same basic web layout, and feel almost indistinguishable from one another. Merchant_4 is not one of those stores.
It has a distinct, fresh style that's instantly recognizable — each time you return to their homepage, you know exactly where you are.
Founded by New York-based designer Cheri Caso in 2007, the online shop functions sort of like an art gallery for contemporary organic-modern furniture and home decor. Designers represented include Boym Parnters, Emogayu, Masakage Tanno, Lovi, and more. Prices tend toward the high end, but there are several tabletop items under the $50 mark.
Any first-hand experiences with Merchant_4? Share them in the comments!
• Scandia Senior Easy Chair, $2,850
• Scandia Junior Stackable Chair, $900
• GOM Rubber Magnets, $30
• Wood Glass Canisters, $20
• Molecule Dish, $48
• Kukubara Money Box, $300
• Kami M Cup, $42
• Utensil Rack, $25
• Yogurt Bowl, $25
• Tension Vessel by Emogayu, $110


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Bremen's Huff signs with Ancilla
BREMEN — It's a win-win.
The Chargers will gain a local talent, and Andrew Huff will continue his soccer career close to home as the Bremen senior signed on with Ancilla College recently.
"I really appreciate the opportunity Coach (Darren) Gallagher has given me, and being able to play college soccer at Ancilla means so much since I can continue to play close to home," said Huff.
Huff was a four-year varsity player at Bremen under Lions head coach Mark Yoder and will enroll at Ancilla next fall, where he plans to study business. While at Bremen, Huff garnered an All-Northern State Conference selection last fall and the team's Coaches Award his junior year.
"Andrew will give us some much-needed athleticism on the field next season," said Gallagher. "We have a core group of returners, and adding some quality local players will only make us stronger. Andrew is a great fit for Ancilla and our men's soccer program — we will expect big things from him."