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Our team to face Cinderford on Saturday includes a first league start in more than a year for Jake Barron and a return to the squad from loan at Macclesfield Ollie Longmore.
Replacing the retired Gaz Rawlings we have Nick Gray stepping in to partner Rhye Davies in the second row. Emi and Matt return from international duty with Spain and Hungary. We also have an exciting return for Fergus Mulchrone getting back to his roots and playing at Heywood Road in a competitive match after 11 years. We also welcome back Chris Johnson from Huddersfield and Tom Brady from France. New boys Jarad Williams, Patrick Ah Van and Dan Matthews going the starting line up. Plenty of familiar faces in there too with 8 of our National 2 North winning team from two seasons ago.
Video HighlightsSale FC took on Cinderford RFC in this opening fixture of the National League 1 season at the CorpAcq stadium. Conditions looked ideal for rugby. Sale, however, struggled to get into their stride conceding possession and penalties from which the visitors took full advantage when on 5 minutes, a well-executed lineout from 10 metres gave the Cinderford forwards the platform to drive over the Sale try line, hooker Nathan Taylor the scorer. Fly half James Butler converted. More unforced errors from Sale returned the advantage to Cinderford who scored a second try on 12 minutes following a break by centre Jack Hayes who fed winger Sam Smith whose pace was too much for the covering defence as he scored close to the corner flag. Butler added the extra points with a well-judged kick from the touchline, extending the lead to 14 points. Butler kicked a straightforward penalty on 16 minutes. At this point, with Sale trailing 17 points to nil, the home side did begin to regain some momentum but were generally lacking a cutting edge. Having stemmed the tide, Sale conceded another penalty on 30 minutes following a high tackle by centre Fergus Mulchrone. Butler extended the Cinderford lead to 20 points. At this point Sale made a tactical switch, with fly half Chris Johnson replacing full back Jonty Rawcliffe, Emiliano Calle Rivas dropping into the full back position. The change almost had an immediate impact as Johnson kicked deep into the Cinderford 22, with winger Jack Moorhouse following up and charging down the clearance. A try looked to have been scored, but was disallowed. Sale kept up the pressure and were finally on the scoreboard with a debut try from winger Patrick Ah Van. With just seconds to go before half time Sale were awarded a penalty which Johnson drilled into touch inside the Cinderford 22. A textbook catch and drive saw the home team scoring, Jake Barron the try scorer on his return to action after a season long injury lay off. Johnson converted the try reducing the deficit to eight points, Sale 12 – Cinderford 20 at half time. With just 6 minutes of the second half played, Cinderford's Butler intercepted a mis placed pass from Calle Rivas and ran clear to score, he duly added the extra 2 points. Sale stuck to their task and within three minutes reduced the deficit with a try from hooker Ollie Longmore. The Sale cause was further damaged when Johnson received a yellow card having been adjudged to have committed a high tackle. With the Sale pack under pressure from Cinderford, the visitor's number eight, Harry Hone drove over the line, Butler converting. Minutes later Cinderford were gifted another try when a wayward pass from Calle Rivas was intercepted by Ed Bogue for the away teams fifth try of the day. The sixth wasn't long in coming, substitute Matthew Lane scoring to stretch the lead to 29 points. To their credit, Sale fought hard to prevent any further scoring from the visitors and did manage a try of their own from substitute Teddy Leatherbarrow. Final Score: Sale FC 22 Cinderford 46
|Sale FC
|7th September 2019
|National One
|Sale FC Rugby
|// position we will use later var lat = 53.4168822; var lon = -2.321488199999976; // initialize map map = L.map('sp_openstreetmaps_container', { zoomControl:false }).setView([lat, lon], 15); // set map tiles source L.tileLayer('https://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Imagery/MapServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x}', { attribution: 'Tiles © Esri — Source: Esri, i-cubed, USDA, USGS, AEX, GeoEye, Getmapping, Aerogrid, IGN, IGP, UPR-EGP, and the GIS User Community', maxZoom: 18, }).addTo(map); // add marker to the map marker = L.marker([lat, lon]).addTo(map); map.dragging.disable(); map.touchZoom.disable(); map.doubleClickZoom.disable(); map.scrollWheelZoom.disable();
|Sale Rugby Club, Heywood Rd, Sale M33 3WB, UK


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The Effect of State Savings on State Expenditure Cuts, Employment Changes, and Revenue Actions from 1997 to 2010
Hildebrand, Christopher J.
Larrimore, Jeff
Nearly all American states face some form of a Balanced Budget Requirement (BBR) limiting their control over fiscal policy by requiring that expenditures must not exceed revenues. During recessions, BBRs place significant fiscal pressure on state budgets as they struggle to cope with significantly reduced revenues and the automatic increase in some safety net spending programs. This thesis examines the role that state savings play in reducing the fiscal pressure faced by states through the three main avenues that states use to control their budgets: expenditure changes, net revenue actions (tax increases or decreases), and employment changes. State savings are expected to exert a significant positive relationship: as state savings increase, expenditure reductions, tax increases, and layoffs are expected to decrease, especially during periods of fiscal stress; savings act as a form of counter-cyclical fiscal capacity. To quantitatively examine this relationship, a series of multivariate OLS regressions with state and year fixed effects are performed using data from the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO). The results show that state savings do exert a statistically significant positive effect on expenditures, net revenue actions, and employment, although the results do not hold for employment during moderate or severe fiscal crises.
Permanent Linkhttp://hdl.handle.net/10822/557828
Date Published2012
Georgetown University
51 leaves
MetadataShow full item record
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By the Numbers. Physician Disciplinary Actions by State. Ranked by Total Board Actions in 2010 Unknown author (2011-09-19)

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Equifax Corporate Security has received notice that businesses are receiving fraudulent letters appearing to be from Equifax. These letters request that current or potential contractors register by submitting their company's financial information on a release form entitled, "Authorization to release financial information". Sample from this letter:
"Our records show that you are currently registered as a prospective contractor for procurements listed by the U.S. Federal Government.However after reviewing your records we have noticed that you have not submitted your financial release form. Your financial institution's privacypolicy may not allow it to release your financial information even to government institutions without your consent, therefore we must have suchform on file before we can move on with any procurement decisions."
The Authorization to release financial information requests that you provide the name of your financial institution and the account number and fax to (202) 652-4312.
This letter is a scam and not from Equifax. Other versions of this letter have been sent out to businesses purporting to be from the Department of Transportation as well as from other companies. These letters are a fraudulent means to obtain financial information. Please discard these letters.
If you have responded to this fraudulent letter, contact your financial institution immediately.


text:
From the monthly Column "On the Line", ShowSight Magazine, December 2018 Issue. Click to subscribe.
Herbs and Ayurveda Medicine
Modern medicine, both human and animal, is pretty incredible but excluding surgery, most cures are still based on plant extracts to cure, control or
prevent disease.
About 50,000 years ago humans became intelligent enough to observe which plants and substances animals instinctively sought out for healing. As our brains continued to evolve we watched elephants suck up muddy water loaded with vital minerals. On the other side of the world we learned to soak ourselves in clay pits and use herbs to treat disease and heal injuries.
Today, with our amazingly evolved brains, we've developed a wide array of surgical techniques but most medicines are still extracted from plants ("herbals") or clay compounds. We can't improve much on what nature created but pharmaceutical companies manipulate stuff through chemistry and composition so that they can be patented.
When a therapy or medicine works in veterinary medicine we know it because animals are not influenced by TV ads or the power of suggestion. So "stuff that works" is
worth noting.
Ayurveda is one of the world's oldest systems of medicine, dating back to 6,000 BC. It is a Hindu system of herbal medicine based on balancing the body through diet, body training, and breathing. Salihotra, considered an animal healer, wrote Ayurveda Materia Medica in Veterinary Medicine and by 1463 BC. the first recorded veterinary hospital was created using Ayurvedic botanicals.
Ayurvedic herbs (many of which are native to North America) are very effective and largely non-harmful-something which cannot be said of some prescription medications. In veterinary medicine there is no placebo effect. It works or it doesn't. Veterinarians have to be really astute diagnosticians. Unlike human patients, animals can't verbalize symptoms or where it hurts. Nor are they convinced by anything we say to them. So think about it—they are often the best tests for the use of herbs and (natural) diet.
Here are a few of my favorite natural medicines and herbs,
Ginger is used in Ayurvedic medicine to improve circulation and digestion, warm the body, and prevent or lessen nausea. Ginger also has powerful anti-inflammatory and anti-cancerous properties. It has a pleasant "sweet" taste your dog will not reject.
Turmeric is tasty to us and a pinch in your dog's food provides its active component, curcumin. It is used medically because of its anti-inflammatory and anti-cancerous properties and should work in dogs as well.
Dr. Julian Whitaker is a medical doctor known for his open-minded approach to all forms of healing. Dr. Whitaker says "I have always been intrigued by India's lower incidence of Alzheimer's disease, which is believed to be due, at least in part to their turmeric rich diet." Inflammation is known to be a factor in Alzheimer's disease and some other brain disorders, so it makes sense that naturally preventing or reducing brain and body inflammation would be of great benefit. I know, dogs don't get Alzheimer's (or do they?) but they do suffer from joint inflammation.
Ashwagandha, (Indian Ginseng) has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for over 2,000 years. A powerful adaptogenic herb, it is known for balancing thyroid hormones, something as troublesome in humans as it is in our breeding stock! Ashwaganda also relieves joint pain in people and pets and lowers human cortisol levels.
The use of herbs and grasses which your dog would seek out on his own (if he could get out of that fence or kennel run) should not be ignored. Of course he can't run in the woods and browse in a pristine meadow but that doesn't mean you, the superior brain in the bunch, can't apply the healing herbs nature provides.
For those who would reject this on the basis that "dogs are carnivores and don't need vegetables" may I remind you that the first thing even your pampered pooch will eat if given opportunity are the organs and intestinal contents. He knows where the good stuff is. He also knows it is not corn or wheat. No offense to our valued dog food makers, but it is also not ears, hooves and beaks.
So thank ShowSight magazine for allowing me to share this with you even at the risk of offending an advertiser. We are blessed with some of the best veterinary care in the world but most vets only know what they've been taught so after med school the best of them, like doctors, explore, learn and use "what works."
Those of you who remember Carlos Rojas and his top Dobermans, and other savvy handlers (and horse people) know how effective herbs can be in conditioning and keeping your animals healthy.
In your search engine type "thedogplace.org natural-medicine-supplements" for the skinny of supplements and for more info on ancient Ayurveda, type "thedogpress.com herbs ayurveda medicine".
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- May 2019
shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in
and fixed with 100μl of fixative solution per well, for 10 minutes at room temperature. The cells were then washed twice with PBS and 100μl of staining solution was added to each well. The plate was kept at 37° C, until the color development.
4x103-5x103 cells were plated in 96 well plate, well. Cells were transfected with reporter plasmid 18 -24 hrs after plating. After 48 hrs, cells were washed once with PBS
This protocol is for the detection of β-gal expression in fixed cells. It was performed on 96-well plates for initial screening of tTA transfected clone, and is a modification of Sanes et al., 1986
Cells grown overnight in YNBmedium wereinoculated in fresh YNB mediumand incubated at 30 ̊C with shaking at 200 rpm. Cells were harvested when the cell density reached to an OD600of 0.6-0.8.Cells were consecutively washed with sterile MQ water and YNB without phosphate (YNB-Pi) medium. Washed cells were inoculated either in YNB orYNB-Pimediumto the initial OD600of 0.1. Cells were incubated at 30 ̊C for 3-4 h, harvested and resuspendedin 100 μlYNB-Pimedium. Radioactive P32-labelled o-phosphoric acid(Jonaki# LCP 32)was added to the cell suspension to a final concentration of 1 μCi/mlandcells were incubated for 30 min.For determining phosphate uptake, a10-12 μl cell suspensionaliquot,after every5 min,was removed and kept on ice.To this cell suspension, 500 μl ice-cold YNB-Pimediumwas addedand cells were harvested by centrifugation at 5,000 g for 5 minat 4 ̊C.These cells were washed with ice-cold YNB-Pimedium thrice and resuspendedin 100 μlPBS(1X). 10-20 μl of this cell suspension was added to5 ml scintillation fluid and β-decay counts were measured in ascintillation counter(Tri-Carb 2910 TR Liquid Scintillation Analyzer, PerkinElmer).Scintillation counts were normalized to total cell number and plotted with respect to time. Total phosphateuptake was expressed as P32c.p.m/OD600cellswhere c.p.m refers tocounts per min
To preclude the possibility of human RNA contamination, cDNA prepared from internalized yeast was examined for the presence of human transcripts encoding Ccl5 and histone H3. However,no amplification forhuman genes was observed, thus, eliminating any possiblecontamination of THP-1 RNA with yeast RNA
Primersfor real-timePCR analysisweredesigned using Primer3 plus software and are listed in Table 4. To extractRNA from macrophage-ingested C. glabratacells, infected THP-1cells were washed twice with PBS and lysed in 1 ml ice-cold water. Lysate was centrifuged followed by two quick washes with DEPC-treated water andwashed yeast cell pellets were frozen on dry ice.For RNA extraction, yeast cells were disrupted with glass beads in trizol and total RNAwas isolated usingacid phenol extraction method described above.Optimal primer and cDNA concentrations were standardizedand qRT-PCR was performedusing ABI 7500 Fast Real-Time PCR System (Applied Biosystems).In brief, 0.5 μl cDNA,0.1 to 0.2picomoles of gene specific primers and 10 μl 2X MESA GREENqPCR™ Mastermix Plus containing SYBR green dye (Eurogentec)were mixed in thewellsof a 96-well PCRplate (Axygen). Final reaction volume was adjusted to 20 μl with DEPC-treated water. Transcript levels were quantified with an end-point value known as Ct(cyclethreshold). Expression of TDH3, which encodes CgGapdh,was used asaninternal control. The Ct defines the number of PCR cycles required for the fluorescent signalof SYBR green dye to cross beyondthe background level.Fold-change in transcript expression was determined usingfollowing formula.Fold change in expression = 2-ΔΔCtΔΔCt= ΔCttreated -ΔCtuntreatedΔCttreated = Ctvalue forthe gene of interest under treated condition -Ctvalue forthe internal control gene (TDH3) under treated conditionΔCt untreated = Ctvalue forthegene of interest under untreated condition -Ctvalue forthe internal control (TDH3) gene under untreated condition
shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in
Ferric-iron-reduction activity of Xanthomonas oryzaepv. oryzicolawas measured using ferrozine, a chromogenic ferrous iron chelator, as described previously (Velayudhan etal., 2000; Worst et al., 1998). For estimating the ferric reductase activity, Xanthomonas oryzaepv. oryzicolastrains were grown in 20 ml PS medium carrying appropriate antibiotics for 24 h to OD600 of 1. Cell free PS media was incubated under similarcondition to be used as control. Chromogenic ferrous iron chelator, ferrozine was added to a final concentration of 1 mM, and FeCl3was added as ferric iron source to a final concentration of 50 μM, and incubated at 28ºC. At regular time intervals, 1 ml aliquotes were taken from the test culture and control, centrifuged to remove the cells, and absorbance of the magenta coloured Fe2+-ferrozine complex in the cell free culture supernantant was measured at 535 nm by using control supernatant as reference. The Fe2+reduction activity was quantified as micromoles of Fe2+-Ferrozine complex formed
To perform immunoblotting or western blotting, appropriate amounts of total protein(ranging from 20-40 μg) were separated ona SDS-PAGE gel of 12%acrylamide concentration in Tris-Glycine-SDS gel running buffer. Protein separation was done at 70-100 V for 2-3 h using a MINI PROTEAN®3 electrophoresis unit (Bio-Rad). Followingseparation, proteins weretransferredto polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) membrane, using a Bio-Rad Mini Trans-Blot electrophoretic transfer unit in Tris-Glycine transfer buffer at 4⁰C. Before setting transfer assembly, PVDF membrane was first activated in 100% methanolfollowedby washesin the transfer buffer. The transfer assembly was set inaBio-Rad Mini gel holder cassette (170-3931)according to manufacturer's instructions. The transfer time and current settings varied depending on the size oftheprotein of interest. Post transfer, membranes wereseparated from the assembly and kept for blocking intheblocking buffer (0.1 % Tween-20, 5% w/v fat-free skimmed milk in 1X TBS) for 1 h at room temperature with shaking. Next,membranes wereincubated with appropriate dilutions of primary antibodiesin the blocking buffereitherfor 3-4 h at room temperature or overnight at 4°C with gentle shaking. Post incubation,membranes were washed thrice with 1X TBS-T, 10 min each,with constant agitation. After washes, membraneswere incubated with appropriate dilutions of secondary antibodiesconjugated with horseradish peroxidase (HRP) for 1 h at room temperature with gentle shaking. Next, membranes were washed thrice with 1X TBS-T, 10 min each,with constant agitation. To visualize proteins, membranes were removed from TBS-T, and theHRP substrate ECL plus (Amersham Biosciences, RPN2232) was uniformly added on top of the membrane. Chemiluminescent signalswere captured in the western blot imaging system (FluorChemTME system)
For protein extraction, cells were spun down at 4,000 rpm for 5 min and washed with ice-cold water. The cell pellet was resuspended in 250-500 μl of homogenisation buffer which contained50 mM Tris (pH 7.5), 2 mM EDTA, 1 mM phenylmethylsulphonyl fluoride (PMSF) (serine protease inhibitor), 10 mM sodium fluoride (serine/threonine and acid phosphatases inhibitor), 1 mM sodium orthovanadate (Tyrosine and alakaline phosphatases inhibitor) and 1X protease inhibitor cocktail (Sigma, P 8215). The cell suspensison was transferred to a 1.5 ml centrifuge tube and equal amounts of glass beads (0.5 mm size) were added. Cells were lysed mechanically by bead-beatinghomogenizer (MP Biomedicals, FastPrep®-24) atthemaximum speed for 60 seconds, five times each,with intermittent cooling on ice.After lysis, tubes were punctured at the bottom with the helpofasurgical needle, and the lysed cell suspension was collected in a fresh microcentrifuge tubes by putting the punctured tubes on top of the fresh tubes and centrifuging them at 3,000 rpm for 10 min. The supernatant was transferred toafresh microcentrifugetubeandprotein concentrationwasestimated usingtheBCA protein assay kit (Thermo scientific). Protein preparations werestored at -20°C until use


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Cocomelon Suit
This set is made perfectly for a sharp looking little gentleman. It's handcrafted to perfection and guarantee to make your little prince stand out. Pants are cotton blend and the inner shirt is 100% cotton.
Ships within 2-3 weeks.
can't find the color or size you want?
WhatsApp 16314885153
Email: email@example.com


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FZ Festival Women's Cali Crop Top Zone
FZ Festival Women's Cali Crop Top Zone
Sale Sold out
Regular price $45.00
Regular priceUnit price per
Sale price
You will immediately see how silky soft this crop top is the moment you touch it. The loose relaxed fit is complimented by the unfinished edges on the sleeves and hemline. This lightweight fun shirt is sure to be a summertime fav!
- Great summer shirt
- Soft and comfortable
- Very light weight fabric
- 3.5 oz., 65/35 polyester/combed ring-spun cotton, 40 singles
- 1x1 baby rib, relaxed crew neckline
- Raw edge sleeve and hem
- Cropped body with relaxed fit
- Side seams
For environmental and human friendly reason, this product is only made when you order it. Typically, this product will be made in about a week, we will send you tracking information as soon as it's in the mail.


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The self-help world is rapidly becoming its very own monster of neurotic self-assessment, critical analysis and spiritual materialism.
Aren't we fucking exhausted from constantly measuring ourselves yet? Or worse, having so many righteous expectations of others?
After all the books, courses and 'healing' you've done, at any point, have you ever TRULY felt fully relaxed as you?
It's impossible to be open and alive if there's always an expected deliverable at the end of all your 'work'.
That deliverable being a perfectly-cut-out spiritual mother-fucker version of you.
There are many variations of this playing out, but today I wanna' speak to the frameworks of 'the masculine and feminine' chit chat.
If we put as much energy into connecting to the conscious presence and filling up with our own love as we did into mimicking what we think the divine masculine or feminine would do and say, we'd be tantra masters.
When looking through the frameworks of masculine and feminine, we are examining the two opposing forces of energy alive within us all.
I'll try using a metaphor about a box of salad to describe the masculine and feminine aspects we all have and then sharing with you what I suspect might allow us more breathing room for a balanced, healthy relationship with self-healing and most of all, each other.
Picture a container filled with a delicious salad! Your favourite salad that has every colour and delicious flavour inside.
The masculine is the spacious, infinite intelligence and pure source. The highest purpose and consciousness of all, as pure existence. This aspect of us wants to be empty, the bottom line direction. It wants to be a space which can hold all without being identified with any of it.
Think, "the container".
The feminine is the ever-changing creative force that flows, feels, swirls, evolves and is an expression of all that's impermanent. This part of us wants to be love and give love. To feel full, feel heard, be seen and craves to be 'held' by a 'container'.
Think, "the salad".
When we starve ourselves of presence and love, we will covertly seek power and connection through control and manipulation.
If we're not taking responsibility to give the container the emptiness it needs and the salad the full flavour of love it desires, we will try to outsource it.
And at the same time, we all just need to fucking relax and stop trying to be so 'divine'.
"Trying" to be 'divine' is like trying to shit out of a butthole that's sewn up.
You can push all you like, but eventually, you'll either die of your own toxicity or explode.
We have to pull back on the try bit and just enjoy it. Realise we can do this stuff with less seriousness.
That we are fully capable of what it takes and lean less on consuming, seeking guidance and take more risks at self-trust.
You might stumble a little. But at least the scraped knee will remind you of where you fell and what to do differently next time.
You won't be trying to remember all the 'right' things all the time. You'll know it, you've got the bleeding knee to remind you. This is called embodiment.
If we take our eyes off the shadow and place it on giving ourselves what we (both aspects within) deeply desire/need, we'd be well on our way to being much happier chaps. Not self-centred stiffs.
Give presence and love a go yourself.
Effortlessly and ego-less-ly.
You got this!


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I think D/s plays a large role in a lot of fetishes - sometimes in an obvious way, and other times with more obscurity. I'm hoping I might be able to show that.
D/s can be done well, or done poorly. In some relationships the Dom/me can be abusive rather than dominant. In others, the sub can be controlling rather than truly submissive. I want to touch on some of these kinds of relationships, have a look at pairings that aren't right...when sometimes the couple don't know they're not right.
To me, it's a mental 'game' so much more than a physical one. And I'm hoping this story might be able to work on that.
Peri is a submissive who's not had a lot of life experience. She's curious about everything and trying to stand on her own, so she's ripe for learning, desperate for knowledge and eager to work out how she's going to fit into this new world. That gives me a lot to play with...I hope!
So there'll be a D/s theme throughout the whole story, but there'll also be D/s themes and characters in scenes within the story.
I think there are some writers who do fantastic D/s scenes, so I'll be reading and re-reading to make sure I can get the right kind of feel. One of the most amazing submissive voices I've read is the opening story in The Big Book of Submission. That story blew me away with the clever insight into the submissive mind. Stories like that give me somewhere to aim ... way way up high!!!


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Petah Tikva, Israel, January 10, 2017 — Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. (NASDAQ, TASE: GILT), a worldwide leader in satellite networking technology, solutions and services, today announced that it will release its fourth quarter and full year 2016 financial results on Tuesday, February 14, 2017.
Conference Call and Webcast
Following the announcement, Yona Ovadia, Chief Executive Officer, and Adi Sfadia, Chief Financial Officer, will discuss Gilat's fourth quarter and full year 2016 results and participate in a question and answer session:
Date: Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Start: 14:30 GMT / 09:30 AM EST / 16:30 IST
Dial-in: US: 1-888-407-2553
International: (972) 3-918-0610
A simultaneous Webcast of the conference call will be available on the Gilat website at gilat.com and through this link:
The webcast will also be archived for a period of 30 days on the Company's website and through the link above.
Conference Call Replay
Start: February 14, 2017 at 17:00 GMT / 12:00 PM EST / 19:00 IST
End: February 17, 2017 at 17:00 GMT / 12:00 PM EST / 19:00 IST
Dial-in: US: 1-888-782-4291
International: (972) 3-925-5901
About Gilat
Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. (NASDAQ: GILT, TASE: GILT) is a leading global provider of satellite-based broadband communications. With 30 years of experience, we design and manufacture cutting-edge ground segment equipment, and provide comprehensive solutions and end-to-end services, powered by our innovative technology. Delivering high value competitive solutions, our portfolio comprises of a cloud based VSAT network platform, high-speed modems, high performance on-the-move antennas and high efficiency, high power Solid State Amplifiers (SSPA) and Block Upconverters (BUC).
Gilat's comprehensive solutions support multiple applications with a full portfolio of products to address key applications including broadband access, cellular backhaul, enterprise, in-flight connectivity, maritime, trains, defense and public safety, all while meeting the most stringent service level requirements. For more information, please visit: gilat.com
Certain statements made herein that are not historical are forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words "estimate", "project", "intend", "expect", "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Gilat to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including, among others, changes in general economic and business conditions, inability to maintain market acceptance to Gilat's products, inability to timely develop and introduce new technologies, products and applications, rapid changes in the market for Gilat's products, loss of market share and pressure on prices resulting from competition, introduction of competing products by other companies, inability to manage growth and expansion, loss of key OEM partners, inability to attract and retain qualified personnel, inability to protect the Company's proprietary technology and risks associated with Gilat's international operations and its location in Israel.We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements for any reason. For additional information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties associated with Gilat's business, reference is made to Gilat's reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Gilat Satellite Networks
Doreet Oren
Comm-Partners LLC
June Filingeri, President
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Looking sultry in a lace getup, Jessica Best wakes up and knows immediately that she needs to cum before getting out of bed. She's clearly having a great time as her greedy fingers roam her bigtit body, but once this horny housewife starts masturbating nothing will deter her until she cums.
Date: December 24, 2022
Actors: Jessica Best


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I spent this weekend doing some cultural stuff in New York City, including a visit to the American Museum of Natural History to see their new exhibit: the skeleton of an enormous dinosaur from Argentina, one of the largest ever discovered. This species is so new it doesn't even have a proper scientific name yet, but "titanosaur" is fitting. At 122 feet long, it's so large it doesn't quite fit into the huge gallery room, so its head juts out into the corridor. And the paleontologists who unearthed it believe that it's a juvenile!
A panoramic view of the dinosaur in its full majesty. (Click for huge version)
Plant-eater or not, this doesn't look like a head I'd want looming over me.
Towering over the crowd.


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Hoping for an edge in this year's March Madness office pool? Have a longstanding argument with your friends on which team's fans are the most loyal? Always wondered how much of a difference it makes to be able to throw the last stone in the initial curling end? You can find your answers in the work of the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective (HSAC), a student-run organization dedicated to the quantitative analysis of sports strategy and management.
Since its founding in 2006 under the tutelage of "Moneyball"-cited statistician and Professor Emeritus Carl Morris, HSAC has been answering a variety of sports-related questions, employing often-sophisticated statistical models to get to the bottom of longstanding debates or offer context to those eye-popping and head-scratching numbers that excite, and boggle the minds of, sports fanatics and pundits all over the world. (The collective just posted its analysis of this year's March Madness college basketball tournament.)
HSAC member projects, which range from social media posts drawn from simple fact-finding exercises to senior theses engaging complex quantitative analysis, reflect what's current and relevant in the sports world, and they often emerge from spirited conversation during Collective meetings, which take place Tuesday nights in Winthrop House. According to HSAC faculty adviser and senior preceptor in statistics Kevin Rader, popular methodologies compare two groups (teams, leagues, player pools) or look at how things have changed over time. "Or a really extreme event happens," he explains, "something cool happens in the Super Bowl, and a decision needed to be made. Was it the right decision? Let's investigate that from an empirical perspective."
This past January, HSAC took to Twitter to answer a simple question many college football fans were likely pondering during Clemson's surprising national championship drubbing of Alabama, 44–16, namely: When was the last time the Crimson Tide gave up more than 50 points in a regulation game? The answer, according to HSAC: When they lost to Sewanee 54–4 way back in 1907. The tweet received close to 250 retweets and nearly 500 likes.


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Haskell Fundamentals
This session has ended. But you can still take this and other courses at the 47 Degrees Academy.
Haskell is a powerful Functional Programming language for building solid systems and ambitious projects. This course has been designed to cover the fundamentals of the language and provide beginners with enough knowledge of its features to be successful in developing projects in Haskell.
Course content
Simple constructs
- Simple definitions
- Definitions using pattern matching and guards
- Local bindings with
- Pattern matching over lists, recursion
- Higher-order functions: maps and folds
- Anonymous functions and partial application
Algebraic data types and type classes
- Record types, and record syntax
- Enumerations
- General shape of algebraic data types
- Differences from OOP modelling
- Polymorphic types: lists, trees
- First-order type classes:
- Automatic derivation
- Concept of purity and tagging with IO
doblocks: pure vs. impure values
- Basic console and file input/output
- Working with callbacks (example using
- Small introduction to streaming
Functional error handling
Eitheras polymorphic types
- Combinators to work on the happy path
- Dealing with errors in IO: exceptions
Higher-kinded type classes:
Functor and
- Looking at commonalities in maps -> Functor
- Notion of type constructors and higher-kinded clases
- 'Simulating' stateful computations in Haskell
- Looking at commonalities in bind -> Monad
- Monadic utilities
Higher-kinded type classes:
Applicative and
- Applicative as generalizing map to n-ary functions
- Applicative style programming
- Generalizing
- Execution model with thunks
- Cyclic and infinite structures
- Forcing execution to avoid leaks
- IO, exceptions and laziness
Async, STM, streaming, resources
- Spawning new computations with
- Concurrent execution, racing
- Concurrent access with Software Transactional Memory
- Managing single resources
- Managing pools of resources
Combining Effects
- Logging effects
- Monadic classes and stacks
- An algorithm with environment, state and logging
- Integrating with IO effect


text: About 30,000 customers — almost the entire population of the Connecticut suburb — were without electricity or Metro-North service for several hours on Monday after an 85-foot-tall black locust brought down by Sunday's massive windstorm shifted and fell into a power line. (Or attacked it, depending on your interpretation.) A spokesman for the town's utility company said it was the "first time I'm aware of anything like this happening." Meanwhile, it seems his colleague, NSTAR president Werner Schweiger, saw this coming: "It's critical to electric service reliability that we not allow trees to continue to grow near high-voltage lines," he said. Based on this incident, we're glad we're not the ones charged with standing up to Greenwich's apparently hyperaggressive trees.


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Sometimes I feel very strongly that life is like a training ground, and it teaches you today the things you'll need to know in the future. It might teach you patience, perseverance, tolerance, strength of character, understanding, compassion… All kinds of things that will help you as you get older and experience more. Of course, it might not even teach you anything, but is that the fault of life, or of your own obstinate character?
A lot has happened in my life. I've experienced a lot of things, and learned a lot of things. Some things I've learned along the way is that some things are worth it, even if they cause you pain – the pleasure you get from it is worth the pain, and so you continue to pursue it. As long as there's pleasure in it, of course!
I also learned that everyone has their issues or idiosyncrasies. A friend once asked me what I thought determined the quality of a relationship. I said:
"The quality of a relationship is determined by how much of the other person's emotional baggage you can handle, on top of your own…"
– Alan Howard
I made that comment about 9 years ago. Since then, I've not found anything to prove it wrong in any way.
Everyone has emotional baggage of some sort, and the older you are, the more you're likely to have. Even teenagers will have emotional baggage, even if it's not as much as someone in their 50's. But to that teenager, there's nothing more important than their baggage… It's theirs, and they'll hold onto it with all that they've got. And it only gets stronger as we get older.
Many years ago I went out with a woman who caused me a great deal of emotional pain. It made me fear going out with someone else who had similar emotional issues as she had. But over the years since then, I've learned we all have our shit to deal with, and none of us are perfect.
Sure, we can seek perfection, but that just shows we're afraid of dealing with the shit in ourselves and in others. We want to avoid it so much that we seek someone 'perfect'.
None of us are perfect, so how can we ever hope to find someone who is. And even if we did, why would such a perfect being want to dirty themselves with our imperfections.
I learned to be a bit more tolerant towards others. To avoid rejecting someone just because they had some emotional issues. Hell, I've got my share of issues, it's stupid of me to try and look for someone who doesn't have their own.
But how much of someone else's issues can we tolerate? That's the million dollar question, isn't it.
In February I met a woman online who had Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). At first I was a little scared because of my own past experiences. But as I got to know her, and got to understand how it affected her and was expressed, I started to feel I could handle it. I started to feel that with all the things I'd learnt over the years, and with how things were developing between her and I, that maybe my life had been preparing me for exactly this woman. Who I am now is majorly different to who I was 10 years ago.
The more we got to know each other, the closer we became. The person that she was, underneath the outer shell of emotional issues – and maybe even because of them – was the kind of person I've been looking for. Someone who would let me be me, who would accept how I wanted to have a relationship, and was looking for that kind of relationship herself. Someone who wanted someone like me, as much as i wanted someone like her. We fell in love, and everything seemed wonderful.
But it wasn't, because there were these emotional issues to deal with… In both of us. And the challenges of working through our issues in an online relationship. It's certainly not easy.
But we're still there, still working on it. I admire her commitment, and I admire her strength. Even in the midst of the pain we're both experiencing, we still want each other, and the pleasures that we feel the other person can bring us.
I love her, and oddly enough, I'm loving the growth I'm getting from our relationship. It's painful… But she's in pain too. The least I can do is join her in it.
Like everything, they say time will tell… I've said that a few times in my past. I'm saying it again as I look forward to this next great adventure of my life.
Thanks for reading! Please add your own thoughts below.
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text:
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10am - 3pm.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10am - 3pm.
Danmarks Museum for Lystsejlads celebrate its 20th anniversary with the opening of a new museum on the Frederiksø in Svendborg.
The museum's website is being updated and the English pages are not yet fully translated.
We kindly refer our web visitor to view the Danish pages meanwhile.
Kind Regards
Danmarks Museum for Lystsejlads


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Story by Tim CothrenUnderwater photographs by Steve Simonsen
Army Major Joe Claburn spiraled through a curtain of silvery bubbles. Retired Army Sgt. Shane Heath hovered motionless inches above a coral head waiting for a fish to come out of its hiding place. His one remaining hand gripped an underwater camera. Marine Sgt. Greg Edwards bounced slowly across the white sand bottom. He kicked up small plumes with the stubs of his legs. His slow-motion bounding made him look like Neil Armstrong moving across the lunar surface. Each man moved up, down, sideways, and diagonally in the water column with the grace of gravity-defying superheroes.
This February, Claburn and five other wounded soldiers traveled to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands to partake in scuba certification offered by an organization called SUDS [Soldiers Undertaking Disabled Scuba]. The group's founder, John Thompson, started the effort two years ago while visiting wounded vets at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. "You can't walk into a facility like that, see all the wounded men, and not get involved." John's experience in the military and time spent as a diving instructor combined to form this unique activity for the men. "Water is a great equalizer; these guys can do almost anything underwater that a person with both legs and arms can do."
I agreed to travel a few days ahead of Woodruff to shoot footage of the soldiers arriving in the Virgin Islands, and film their first dives. Sailing on the ferry from St. Thomas to St. John, Greg Edwards was taking his first look at paradise. "I've never been anywhere but Alabama and Iraq. This is awesome!" SUDS exists on donations, and the local islanders came out to help. Accommodations, food, and diving activities were all donated. Upon seeing the men board the dive boat, two large cash donations were spontaneously presented to Thompson by people having lunch on the beach, effectively covering the soldiers' diving expenses, which came to over $1,900.
Filming the story was going to be fairly easy. What concerned me was how the men would accept me, and how they felt about being filmed for a network news organization. The first night at dinner I had the opportunity to introduce myself to the group and explain the thrust of the story. My extensive background as a diver and my embedment with U.S. troops in Iraq gave me some credibility, but inside I knew that my obligation was to do the very best job, and shoot the very best material I possibly could for these guys to really tell their story.
Watching the men prepare for their dive was quite a sight. Various prosthetic arms, legs, feet and hands were popped off and traded for more waterproof substitutes, or just done without. Men with missing legs were carried by instructors across the beach and out to the waiting boat which was moored in about 4 feet of water offshore. Once onboard dual amputee Sgt. Edwards scooted across the deck on his hands, and assembled his gear. Most of the men were beginner divers, who had completed their classroom and pool training in the hospital. This would be their first experience in the open ocean where they would work with instructors to perform underwater drills for their safety and finish their requirements to become certified divers, capable of diving anywhere in the world they want.
Underwater, the divers broke into groups with their instructors. Some were practicing retrieving their air hoses in case it gets kicked away. Some were removing then replacing and clearing their facemasks, which is a vital skill. Claburn and his groups were swimming patterns with waterproof compasses, learning navigation. All the activity made for great footage and spoke to the fact that this wasn't just a dive vacation. These guys were really achieving and working towards something. Not everyone who sets out to become a certified diver passes their course, but these soldiers were doing extremely well.
Woodruff and Romo came down two days later, and almost didn't make it due to a snowstorm in New York. Over coffee the morning after their late arrival, I showed them raw footage of divers with missing legs flying like birds silhouetted against the sun. They were thrilled; it was gorgeous material. We joined the dive boat that afternoon and Bob did an interview with Edwards and Heath about how they were wounded, and what brought them to SUDS. Heath said that when he stepped on the bomb that would destroy his left leg and arm, he was laying in his own blood, crazed with pain, looking at his wounds and worrying, "Will I ever swim again?" He plans to go on to achieve advanced scuba certification.
Bob wanted to scuba dive with the soldiers, but his injury is so severe his doctors would not allow it. I was horrified when on our last day, while snorkeling on the surface, Woodruff took a deep breath and shot downward, zooming past me, my scuba gear and my camera all the way to the bottom to shake hands with Sgt. Edwards who was finishing his dive near the anchor at 35 feet. While filming him you can hear me on the tape exclaim into my regulator mouthpiece, "I really don't believe this!" Then Bob did it again and again. I wondered what his doctors would have said if they saw the footage, but I got some great shots of him with the diver together underwater. Bob later said, "What I have learned is that whenever people meet soldiers injured in these wars they want to help. They want to spend time with them. Learn more about them because so few in our country know many GIs in these current wars. And for those who lost their arms or legs there is nothing better than diving into the ocean with this sense of freedom."
In all I shot almost 6 hours of material. ABC News held the piece for a few weeks. It finally aired March 22, on the Sunday version of "Good Morning America." The total running time was just a little over 2 minutes, 25 seconds. As of writing this, another version is waiting to air on "World News Tonight."
For further information about SUDS, their activities and how to help them, go to http://www.sudsdiving.org.
Tim Cothren is a freelance cameraman and producer who works for ABC Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, Dateline NBC, PBS Frontline, Discovery Channel, Entertainment Tonight, BBC, ARD German TV, Australian Broadcasting, and A&E Biography. During the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Tim was the first network cameraman brought into the wreckage of the World Trade Center's twin towers by members of the NYFD, providing ABC News with exclusive footage that earned Tim his second Emmy nomination. In March 2003, he became an "embedded" cameraman with the U.S. Army during "Operation Iraqi Freedom." His specialty is underwater work. He currently resides in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Tim's Web site: http://www.islandmediagroup.com
Contact Tim: email@example.com
Steve Simonsen is the creator of the award-winning coffee table book "Living Art, St. John" and a regular contributor to Caribbean Travel & Life, Scuba Diving and Sport Diver magazine. Steve has built a career out of being an underwater, nature and travel photographer. He has been fortunate to carve his niche in nature, travel and fine-art photography by residing on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, crafting a style that showcases the spectacle of nature in the Caribbean.
Steve's Web site: http://www.stevesimonsen.com
Contact Steve: email@example.com


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What is sexuality? How would you describe your sexuality? How do you think the media portrays female sexuality?
Is it bad that I can't easily answer any of these questions?
Maggie Keenan-Bolger and Rachel Sullivan hope to unpack with their new play, The Birds and the Bees… Unabridged. It will open March 27th at Speyer Hall at University Settlement (184 Eldridge St). It's a devised theatre piece, meaning that it is a form of theatre where the script originates not from one particular writer, but from collaborative, usually improvisatory work by a group of people, or in this case, their wonderfully diverse cast of 25. Through the eyes of the cast and online surveys from more than 2,000 people, this group has put together an open, honest, and raw piece of work all about female sexuality. I had the opportunity to sit down with some of the cast members, and the creators, Maggie and Rachel to talk to them about the project.
BUST: Hey girls, what's your elevator pitch?
Maggie Keenan-Bolger: (to Rachel) Go for it!
Rachel Sullivan: It's a theatre piece, an art exhibit where a diverse cast explores female sexuality. The awkward, the poignant, the humorous… I'm missing one.
MKB: I think there's just three.
RS: I think it's four, but that's good.
BUST: How long have you guys been working together and how did you start this project?
MKB: Well, Rachel and I went to grad school together a number of years ago and we ended up doing our thesis project together, which was about women's experiences in public space. We had a really good time working with that population and found it interesting that during the process, sexuality never came up in any sort of overt way. It was alluded to, but it was never talked about in any sort of specific way so we were like "interesting, there's clearly something going on that makes it feel like even in a group of people who have experiences similar to your own, there's still something not quite acceptable about talking about sexuality". So I approached Rachel like, "I want this to be our next project" and Rachel jumped on board!
RS: And I think too, talking to a lot of our friends or just colleagues or people we know, any time sexuality came up in conversation you could watch people get a sparkle in their eye– they kind of want to talk about it, but a lot of people need a little bit of an invitation or push and then they just have so much to say or so many questions or ideas on things that they want to get out there… things they are working on in their head, and we thought. "That's a great way to approach a show because our whole goal is to stimulate dialogue, get people talking." You know, maybe we're part of that little nudge that helps bring it out.
BUST: One of the questions in your survey is 'Who is your role model when it comes to your sexuality? Peers, movie stars, characters in books, family?' Who are your role models?
MKB: I went to a summer camp for many years where a lot of the counselors and staff were queer, which was not something I necessarily knew when I was ten, but soon found out later on along the line and it was very much an [epiphany. I thought,] "Oh, these are awesome people who are totally open, totally out and amazing and very well adjusted and are people I would like to be like".
Cast Member Holly: I was really excited about this project because I didn't have any or many [sexual] role models when I was growing up. Later I became friends with more queer people, but when I was first coming out, there wasn't anyone I could talk to about it. Even my friends, who I was very close to and I felt like I could open up to more, had no basis in helping me and knowing what I was experiencing.
Cast Member Cole: As a trans man, [I notice how my] gender identity, which is not related to my sexual orientation, [seems to perplex others]…People conflate them all the time and ask me all sorts of questions about my sexuality on a daily basis and it confuses people. I wrote about it when metrosexuality started to become a word– now it's kind of outdated maybe, but that sort of made a lot of sense to me at the time because feminine masculinity was becoming sort of popular and acceptable as a way to present and it wasn't necessarily a gay masculinity. That made a lot of sense to me because I'm not gay identified, but I read as gay so people always assume I'm gay or ask me questions about my sexuality as if I date men primarily, which is not the case. I worked in upscale retail where [metrosexuality] was prevalent, so there was a peer group of co-workers who had that sort of presentation, and then I started to see that in the media too, and I looked to [certain celebrities] as icons…people who maybe have inherent queerness but aren't queer, like Daniel Radcliffe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Little guys that dress well. They're performers but they date women…if I had to align myself with some world it would be that one.
BUST: When you were casting, what were you looking for?
MKB: Diversity was really important to us– [we wanted to represent multiple spectrums of] age, gender, sexuality. Initially we had put out a call for female-identified and then got a lot of feedback from the survey that people really wanted to see transgender representations, which was awesome. So we reached out to Cole and some other folks and tried to find trans women as well, but were not as successful at that… it was important to us to have a wide variety of perspectives and ideas that could come to the table and could be part of the dialogue.
RS: Because it's a group created piece, we are limited by the two of us, we can't speak for every woman, and the 23 (cast members) of us can't speak for every woman either but it gives a bigger range. And one more thing. We had a nice qualification. You had to be nice. If there is any meanness… out. That was a biggie.
BUST: Cast members, what has this hands on project been like for you?
Cast Member Meg: It's more than "hands on": we do actually create it. There isn't a script, even at this point. It's been a process of doing exercises, improv games, a lot of brainstorming on paper together, and then creating little snippets, little snippets, little snippets, and what Rachel and Maggie do is kind of take a step back and look at the snippets and say, "Okay, it seems to me we need a scene on sexual health," and then we kind of go back to the drawing board… more brainstorming and more writing and then eventually as directors [of our] outside ideas, they'll say, that works really well, that doesn't work, let's change the order of this… but it's not just hands on it's… hands US.
Holly: I think what Maggie are Rachel are so wonderful at is taking a huge broad topic [like sexuality] and the surveys that over 2,000 people answered…and picking out what everyone is really interested in, and then finding out how the cast relates to it, finding the best way to create something and how theatrically it would work, fixing all these parts together…I don't understand how they do it.
BUST: Can you guys talk about what you want the audience to walk away with?
Holly: What I hope the audience takes away from this is open mindedness and a desire to talk more with other people or their friends or peers about what they saw and questions they have or things they never thought about before and just to open up a conversation about things they wouldn't normally talk about.
Meg: [It's] also [comforting to know] that there is so much diversity in experience– that there is no normal, and also that we all share, I don't know, the insecurity or the feelings surrounding [sexuality. We think,] "Oh, we're not normal" or "Oh, is this normal?" but everyone of us is feeling that same thing. So in addition to starting a dialogue, I would hope the audience also gets that, that there is a huge diversity, and that there isn't a normal.
Cole: So it's hard not to feel huge responsibility to represent the trans voice as [the] isolated trans identified cast member…I am the only really masculine person in the show there and it's very obvious that I'm different than everyone else. I don't know how to negotiate that yet. I'm still kind of new to the cast and working with that, but I mean, I feel it…I am wondering if the audience will understand that. That they might be expecting another women's show, another Vagina Monologues or something, and it's really much, much bigger than that.
MKB: I work as a sex educator around the country and everywhere I go, I'll get questions afterward and really, the underlying question is, "Am I normal?" And it can vary from really heartbreaking to funny, whatever. If you're different, then you're normal. If there's something that makes you feel wrong, then you are probably in line with other women who feel the same.
RS: I think it's really powerful to see people onstage that are giving a truthful performance. It's one of the most beautiful things about this type of work. It is such a moving thing…to see people get up there and be bold, whether they are telling a personal story or putting out a real opinion. I hope the audience can connect with one piece of the show and see something that maybe they don't normally see in the media and be moved and laugh. And I hope that maybe different types of people come and see the show because I think female sexuality is a part of everyone's world, whether it's a parent, a child, a partner, a colleague…I feel like it's part of our existence and I hope that [this play] can spark some [dialogue].
The show opens Wednesday March 27th at 8pm and runs through Saturday March 30th at Speyer Hall at University Settlement (184 Eldridge St NY, NY 10002). Tickets are suggested donation $10/$15/$25.
For tickets, click HERE.
Photo via thebirdsandthebeesunabridged.com


text:
Winter Wisdom
My favorite part of this quote is "make me lazy". For what else is there to do when it darkens so early and lightens so late? Of course, with all the lights and electronics now we don't have to experience the dark. We can stay up as long as we want and arise when we want.
But what if we spent even one evening with no lights, no electronics as the sky grew dark? As the chill came up? Maybe we would be lucky enough to have a stove or fire-burner to keep up warm. Or a small heater. And lots of cosy blankets over our knees. Warm sweater and maybe even half-gloves to keep our hands warm?
What do you imagine that might be like for you? Would you find yourself jumping out of your skin with nervous anxiety? Sitting for approximately 3 minutes and then giving up?
What do you imagine might be the benefits of spending time in the dark and quiet?
I have so many clients suffering from anxiety, stress, depression. Struggling with relationships. Struggling with knowing themselves in deeper ways.
And this brings me to one of my favorite poems by David Whyte, a poem that speaks to me about me. About how I don't spend enough time in the darkness pondering how I have made and or kept myself 'too small'.
Sweet Darkness
"When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own.
There you can be sure you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.
You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn
anything or anyone that does not bring you alive
is too small for you."
And often that 'anything' or anyone' that does not bring us alive is...us!
Leave a Reply.
Zoe ~
I am a catalyst for others, helping people continue, over their entire life span - preconception,
conception, in the womb and after - to grow, learn, heal so that each person can live their deepest longings.
This is my passion and purpose.
Adventurer, lover of beauty, seeking clarity, harmony & balance. Compassionate. Just. Fair. Grateful. Hugely grateful.
ONE more time: HUGELY GRATEFUL.


text:
What's the meaning of the Cadillac Logo »
Cadillac Logo
This page is about the meaning, origin and characteristic of the symbol, emblem, seal, sign, logo or flag: Cadillac Logo.
Cadillac's new logo loses its laurel wreath which adorns the fleet of vehicles from 1999 until 2013.
- 1,771 Views
Graphical characteristics:
Asymmetric, Closed shape, Colorful, Contains straight lines, Has no crossing lines.
Category: Corporate Brands.
Cadillac Logo is part of the Car Symbols group.
More symbols in Car Symbols:
Car manufactures logos and symbols and their meaning from all over the world. Find out what's the origin of your favorite automobile brand symbol. read more »
More symbols in Corporate Brands:
Just as a nation's flag expresses the distinct identity of a country, so, too, a logotype — typically a symbol or letters — helps to establish the name and define the character of a corporation. Effe… read more »
Have a discussion about Cadillac Logo with the community:
Use the citation below to add this symbol to your bibliography:
"Cadillac Logo." Symbols.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Web. 28 Nov. 2023. <https://www.symbols.com/symbol/cadillac-logo>.


text:
Cineplex Entertainment opened Calgary's first premium theatre in Seton including seven traditional screens, three VIP screens and an Ultra AVX screen. Cineplex Odeon Seton is the first of its kind in Calgary and will offer residents in the Southeast communities an exceptional cinematic experience. Unique offerings include service at your seat, expanded menu, adult-only-auditoriums, and reserved, club-style seats.
Connected to the Regional Retail District, the Entertainment District will entice with 40,000 sq. ft. full-service and quick service restaurants and related services.
Retailers & Services
Explore Seton's diverse array of retailers, shops and services.


text:
Hotel booking procedure by Symposia (conference secretariat)
- Save time and book an accommodation when registering to the conference;
- provide Credit Card details as guarantee of reservation;
- payment directly at check out (don't forget the city tax) when in Rome;
- bear in mind cancellation policy.
During the online registration to the 30th ECIS Conference you will also be able to book an accommodation in Rome. You can choose between a wide range of options, from hotels close to the Sapienza University to hotels near some other places of interest in Rome, but always well connected to the conference venue.
At the present moment a Preliminary Hotels List is available.
In order to finalize the booking you will be asked to provide Credit Card details, which will be used only as guarantee of the reservation. Symposia, the conference secretariat, will forward your booking request to the chosen hotel and once the availability is confirmed, Symposia will send you an official confirmation by email. Your card won't be charged during the booking procedure, as payment will take place directly at the hotel when checking out.
Don't forget that you will be asked to pay for the city tax as well, which in Rome amounts to € 4,00 per person per night for 3 star hotels and to € 6,00 per person per night for 4 star hotels.
The cancellation policy varies according to the hotel you have chosen.
For more information, please contact Symposia at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Other Hotels
Besides the ones suggested by Symposia, you can find some more Hotels on this map.


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Bears, Bombs and Popcorn
Some considerations when mining other cultures for source materials, by Judith Berman
[The cover] painting is a made-up decoration merely done in Pacific Northwest style ... meant to say to a reader "This novel is based on the mythology of the Pacific Northwest," just as covers for other kinds of fantasy use images from Celtic, Norse, or Japanese mythologies to signal "pick me up" to the right kind of reader. ([Name withheld], p.c. Feb. 9, 2005)
In the background of the cover for my novel Bear Daughter sits an object that resembles a piece of Native American art. It looks, in fact, quite a bit like a painted wooden screen made by a Tlingit Indian artist in the early 19th century to represent the hereditary Bear crest of the Tlingit Naanyaa.aayí clan. That screen, now in the collections of the Denver Art Museum, formerly embellished the Ground Shark House in what is today Wrangell, Alaska.
Having worked for a number of years with traditional Tlingit art, I immediately recognized the resemblance of the cover image to the Naanyaa.aayí Bear screen. It also resembles, to a lesser degree, two other screens. The first of these, likely a copy of the Naanyaa.aayí screen, was made for the Killer Whale House of the Kaagwaantaan clan of Klukwan, probably in commemoration of the genealogical links between that house and Ground Shark House. The second, which the Naanyaa.aayí screen likely copied, is known only from a fragment preserved at the Burke Museum in Seattle.
Upon seeing the cover, my first concern was that the background object might be another related Bear screen, one I didn't know about. Tlingit clan heirlooms like these screens are the focus, today as formerly, of deep emotions about one's connections to past and future generations. The right to display such heraldic designs is a hereditary prerogative often acquired--"paid for," as it is sometimes said--through the blood of one's ancestors. In earlier times wars were fought over misuse of crest objects. A validated Tlingit crest object, as I wrote to my publisher, is
like a national flag, a trademarked product logo, a memorial to dead relatives and ancestors, and a family heirloom with strong emotional associations, all rolled into one. There is variation across the [northwest coast] region in what these objects mean and how they are used, but the notion that they are in some fashion property and "copyrighted" is near-universal.
Some crest heirlooms remain in Native custody, like the Klukwan Bear screen. Many others, however, have found their way into museums and private collections. The means by which they have done so are frequently not pretty, and the objects have been the subject of repatriation claims and other legal actions. Given that the cover artist had likely used photographs as the source for the cover image, US copyright law, which extends to so-called "derivative" images of copyright materials, might also have been called into play. In short, using an image of genuine crest art on my book cover could have been problematic.
The publisher, agreeing with many of these concerns, queried the cover artist. As it turned out, the artist had worked from photos of several objects. The resulting design differed sufficiently from the originals that, the publisher was satisfied, no copyright would be violated.
Part of my concern with the cover image arose from the fine line I felt I was walking with the novel itself. Bear Daughter is based on Native oral traditions--myths and clan histories--from the North American northwest coast. These stories, so rich in drama and invention, have occupied a central place in my imagination since I first encountered them via my academic specialisation in oral literature. They played a crucial role in opening my eyes to just how limited our ideas about myth are, in Western culture generally and specifically in genre fiction. The Native literatures differ not just in their story lines and the attributes of their supernatural actors, but in underlying notions of self, society, spirit, body, virtue, fulfillment, life, death, the place of humanity in the world, and the moral nature of the cosmos itself. Once I had begun to understand them, I found it impossible to conceive of writing mythic fantasy using only the much-recycled European and Near Eastern materials.
The northwest coast stories are, however, the very subjects that crest art like the Bear screen illustrates, and everything that can be said about crest objects, including indigenous notions of ownership and "copyright," can apply to the stories as well. In writing the novel, I tried to go further than the cover artist had, and to render the specific sources unrecognizable. But my unease remained, and does so to this day. The alterations did not erase all the ethical issues that arise from using these stories--or source materials from other indigenous or colonised cultures.
At one point in our correspondence over Bear Daughter's cover, the publisher equated the cover design to fantasy-novel covers using images drawn from Celtic, Norse, or Japanese mythologies. The comparison seems to me to encapsulate a viewpoint common not just in mainstream US society, but quite widely outside the US as well. This viewpoint--which for lack of a better term I'll call the mainstream viewpoint--forms the framework within which Bear Daughter was published and marketed, in which most readers will experience the novel, and even in which, to some extent, the book was written. As uncontroversial as the viewpoint may seem, the assumptions underlying it go straight to the heart of my unease.
First of all, the mainstream viewpoint assumes there is no difference, for the purposes of commercial publishing, between stories belonging to cultures far-off in time (the ancient Celts or Norse, or medieval Japan) and those belonging to contemporary cultures (for example, many Native American ones). Or it fails to recognize that any Native American cultures are still alive.
Second, the viewpoint assumes that no distinctions need be made, for these purposes, between cultures ancestral to the dominant North American cultures; cultures ancestral to other developed nations (which, however, have minorities living, sometimes uneasily, in North America); and stories from colonised, often endangered cultures, whose people were the object of intended or accidental genocide, and whose colonisation is the sine qua non for the existence of the US and Canada.
A third assumption embedded in the mainstream perspective would have mythologies--those of our own as well as of other societies--as a type of source material no different from any other domain of culture. I am using the term "mythology" here in the anthropological sense: a body of stories about the non-human, superhuman, or idealized human, set in an earlier era, in which the world as we know it is established, and which are often deeply felt as sacred. Such stories lie at the roots not just of religions and worldviews, but often of social and political institutions as well.
Cultures can vary widely in how such charter stories are conceived of, and the degree to which prohibitions limit their use. Some groups may have few concerns about what other people do with their myths. Often, however, mining the myths of living religions for source material can pose what Laguna Indian poet Paula Gunn Allen delicately refers to as "special problems." Fatwas and burning embassies make the news internationally, but the consequences of other profound conflicts over the meanings of stories may never break the surface of mainstream cultural consciousness. Traditional Laguna Pueblo Indians, for example, attributed years of devastating drought, the radioactive tailings of a uranium mine, the nearby development of nuclear weapons, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons' publications on Keresan (Laguna and related pueblos) myth and ceremony.
We may not all subscribe to a world view in which misuse of sacred stories causes nuclear holocausts, but we can acknowledge potential effects on the psychological health of individuals and communities. Even when a group's charter myths do not form part of a religion in the usual senses of that term (as is true on the North American northwest coast), misuse of them can trigger a powerful sense of violation. And value conflicts over the meaning and proper function of stories are particularly fraught in the case of colonized and minority cultures, because generally their members have fewer avenues of recourse, and their voices and concerns are often drowned out. Laguna author Leslie Marmon Silko's widely praised Ceremony has accreted a secondary literature authored by white academics referencing Parson's publications. But the short article by Allen is to my knowledge the only publication to discuss the dismay traditional Laguna feel when sacred stories are exposed to the wrong people.
Another assumption of the mainstream viewpoint is that the expressive products of other cultures--traditional art styles, specific designs, stories, music and the like--are, in the absence of patents, trademarks, or copyright, free for the taking. But consider some examples outside the arts. A Mexican doctor patents the traditional method of processing tepezcohuite bark, a medicine used by Mayan Indians in Chiapas for centuries to treat skin lesions. The industrialist to whom the patent is licensed acquires not only a government monopoly over production, but control over part of the limited territory where pharmacologically active bark can be found. As time passes, tepezcohuite is used ever more widely in cosmetics and skin creams marketed internationally, but for Chiapas Indians, access to the wild tree is limited, its stocks are depleted, bark prices have soared, and meanwhile they receive no compensation.
Or a non-Native company called "Kokopelli's Kitchen" markets "Hopi Blue" popcorn--Hopi Blue Corn being a group of maize varieties selected and propagated over centuries by the Hopi Indians. This company is profiting from the labor, the name and whole-earth, mystical cachet of the Hopi, and from the name and distinctive image of a mythic character also of indigenous origin, and again the Hopi receive nothing (they may have to compete to sell their own product).
These instances of cultural appropriation--where members of a dominant culture appropriate and profit from a part of the cultural "capital" of a colonized minority--deal with the material realm. Such cases have received some media attention, especially in regard to patent issues. There is less awareness of the arguments many indigenous peoples have put forth for intellectual property protections for their traditional art and literature. This position is spelled out in article 29 of the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the most recent version of which was submitted to the UN Human Rights Commission in March of 2006:
Indigenous peoples are entitled to the recognition of the full ownership, control and protection of their cultural and intellectual property. They have the right to special measures to control, develop and protect their sciences, technologies and cultural manifestations, including ... oral traditions, literatures, designs and visual and performing arts.
Within the dominant cultures of Western nations, narratives are usually viewed as different from pharmaceuticals. This is especially true for oral traditions that might have no fixed form on a word-by-word basis. Both the mainstream viewpoint and copyright laws recognize authorship (and stemming from that, various degrees of ownership) of the specific form in which, say, a version of Cinderella is written down, but not the Cinderella story itself. (Although one US firm, Knight and Associates, is currently seeking patents for "storylines.")
Writing fiction is one way in which we in the West exercise one of our foundational values, freedom of expression. At the same time, in our economic systems, fiction is also a commodified product to be packaged, marketed and, hopefully, profited from just as are snack foods and skin cream. To the extent that bodies of folk literature are repositories of centuries of accumulated cultural invention and wisdom, we would have to see them as not all that different from bodies of traditional medicinal or agronomic knowledge. In this view, fiction based on other cultures could be a theft of someone else's intellectual capital. Many Native Americans feel that when a member of the dominant culture uses any piece of their culture as the basis of an academic career, a novel, or other venture leading to personal gain, without corresponding benefit to Native people, it's just another form of exploitation. Sentiment on this topic runs particularly strong in cultures like those on the northwest coast, where traditional notions of proprietary rights are well-developed.
Publishers who deal frequently with Native issues are increasingly recognizing indigenous concepts of ownership; the University of British Columbia Press, for example, now asks authors wishing to use contemporary images of Native crest objects to obtain written permission from the current holders of the heraldic prerogatives. Requiring permission for the use of clan-owned stories would be a logical next step.
At least one further mainstream assumption about using indigenous source materials is relevant here: that distinctions need not be too finely drawn as to the precise claims being made regarding the authenticity or accuracy of a book. An analogy with food labeling might clarify this point. In some parts of Africa, images on food packaging are expected to be literal representations of the contents (and thus smiling children or beautiful women are avoided). In the West, on the other hand, we might find images of, say, cherries not just on crates of fresh cherries, or on bottles of cherry juice, but also on products like Cherry Coke. A Western consumer will not necessarily expect that either the name or the image of cherries on a food label indicates any genuine fruit content. The cherries on a Cherry Coke label are essentially metaphoric, linking what's there--the liquid in the can--with what's not--actual cherries. (Cherry Coke does claim unspecified "natural flavors," which, according to US food and drug regulations, are any "flavoring constituents" derived from plant or animal materials.)
A similar range of meanings can be signified by markers of "Indianness" on a book or in its content--markers which might include not just cover art and copy but indigenous names, terms, images, mythic characters, and more. Such markers might, at one end of the range, be literal signifiers, a claim to a completely authentic Native viewpoint and accurate Native cultural, historical or biographical content. Farther along, the markers might be a claim that the book contains--with processing and additives possible--some degree of accurate information, of an authentic viewpoint, or are otherwise the product of what might be considered authoritative knowledge. At the purely metaphoric end, the markers might be like the cherries on a Cherry Coke can, claiming only a flavor or frisson of Indianness, or what of a mainstream consumer imagines Indianness to be.
This semiotic catholicism is deep-rooted in Western conventions of packaging, and it extends far beyond food and books. One could argue that as long as a given interpretive frame is well understood by the viewer, no misrepresentation is taking place. Most genre readers are likely to read markers of Celtic, Japanese, or Native American mythology on a book cover as a combination of literal and metaphorical, and will understand that they represent a mix of historical or ethnographic detail and the purely fantastic.
But the fineness of the line between metaphorical description and false advertising provides a constant temptation for abuse. Even with food-labelling laws, the boundary between the two is continually pushed, and US regulations are continually rewritten. Publishing, on the other hand, has only voluntary standards, and a percentage of purported non-fiction about Native Americans, from The Education of Little Tree to the recent memoirs of the "Navahoax" Nasdijj, inevitably turns out to be fraudulent.
Fiction, though, is made-up stuff, and fantasy is made-up stuff contrary to what we think is real; their content is by definition metaphorical and false. In that respect the analogy with food-packaging breaks down. Still, to the degree that even fantasy contains real-world referents, and particularly to the degree that a book makes implicit or explicit claims to authoritativeness, the potential remains for false advertising. I would class my author bio in Bear Daughter as such a claim to an authoritative voice. As rewritten by my publisher, it consists almost entirely of my qualifications as an anthropologist. The book does have ethnographic and historic accuracy in some realms of detail. But it is written by a non-Indian about imaginary people in a fantastic universe. There may be some genuine cherry juice, but it's much-processed with many additives.
The history of colonisation suggests particular caution in using metaphorical cultural markers, and claiming authority, in such a context. We would read the cherries on the Cherry Coke label quite differently if Coca-Cola had, in the not too distant past, led a campaign to eradicate genuine cherry trees--especially if we were the cherry farmers.
All of the foregoing may seem like a catalogue of reasons why I shouldn't have written Bear Daughter, and more generally why speculative fiction writers should avoid mining indigenous, colonised, and minority cultures.
But I wouldn't myself place all indigenous source materials off limits. For writers of the dominant society to avoid responding artistically to indigenous arts and literatures, even for the best of ethical reasons, for mainstream writers to designate minority writers as the only ones who are to write on freighted topics like race, colonialism, or the very existence of minority cultures (and making it the only employment they can get), merely repaints a corner of the colonial picture with the colors of guilt instead of greed and racism. Fictional Others may far too often be no more than a reflection of the writer's stereotypes, or a pornography of the exotic, but only through contemplation of difference and the history of difference is there opportunity for genuine transformation of colonial relationships. Freedom of expression is a necessary condition for real conversation; the point isn't to stop one person talking but to make sure others get heard.
But as important as decolonisation might be, the evolution of literatures, mainstream and otherwise, is also a worthy goal. The history of art and literature before, during, and after colonisation by the West has been a story not just of suppression and attempted eradication, but also, on both sides of the divide, of cross-fertilisation. This cross-fertilisation has brought about not only Native artistic and literary renaissances; it has also contributed to great transformations of Western art. I myself want to see what it will give birth to next--on both sides of the divide.
In a very personal way, that ground is where Bear Daughter originated. The issue of decolonisation did in fact shape the writing of it. By creating a fantastic version of pre-contact coastal peoples, imagining them as comparable in ways to valorised ancestral cultures of the West like the Homeric Greeks or the Anglo-Saxons of Beowulf, I hoped to strip away the stereotypes and preconceptions--some even held by academics--and communicate something true about indigenous cultures and histories.
But the primary impulses motivating the book arose, among other things, from my lifelong attachment to the northwestern forest and ocean, and the twenty-five years in which I have been immersed in the Native literatures of the region, attempting to understand the worldviews in which they were created. That still on-going process has given me new ways to think about many aspects of the human condition, including relations between humans and the natural world, and the problem of the self-as-body. These in turn resonated with issues of even more idiosyncratic interest, such as the profound sense of disempowerment some girls acquire at puberty.
Ultimately, whether my book and its packaging succeeds in negotiating the difficult ethical terrain is a judgement that isn't mine to make. I hope in the not-too-distant future to post comment from some Native American readers on my website or blog. What I am sure of is that my personal debt to Native thought is impossible to measure.
I have no outright prescription for other writers wanting to use materials from colonised or minority cultures, beyond self-education and thoughtfulness, and the short list of cautions that could be extracted from this essay. The challenge of how to approach the imaginative wealth of non-Western traditions is one each writer will have to take up on his or her own.
Steve Brown very kindly supplied me the information on the current locations of the Naanyaa.aayí and Kaagwaantaan Bear screens, and told me about the fragmentary third screen; Jean Wilson filled me in on UBC Press permissions policies. Thanks also to all those, Native and not, who over many years have educated me on these issues through word and deed. Since the issues are implied in nearly every conversation about traditional northwest cultures, you are literally too many to mention.
Works cited
Allen, Paula Gunn (2002) "Special problems in teaching Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony." In Allan Chavkin, ed., Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony: A Casebook, pp. 85-90. New York: Oxford.
This article first appeared in Vector 247. Back issues of Vector are available from


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Wodonga WAVES
You May Also Like
WAVES is Wodonga's new acquatic facility located at White Box Rise Estate. The facility includes a 50m x 25m outdoor heated swimming pool, toddlers pool, splash park with interactive play equipment, meeting / multi-purpose room, cafe, BBQ facilities and ample shade and parking.
Be sure to visit and stand under the large tipping bucket or try the water cannons. Open Seasonally, please contact for details and times.
Wodonga WAVES
Phone: (02) 6056 2066
8 Mactier Avenue
Wodonga VIC 3690
Postal Address:
PO Box 8185
Wodonga VIC 3690
Email: Click here to send an email


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There are so many films about Holocaust that I have lost the count. And all of them are equally great, delivering a heart-wrenching concept in a very delicate manner that can stop any heart from beating. Every single story has its heroes and villains. And sometimes, even there are villains, whose hearts become softer after experiencing compassion through love. Andrei Konchalovsky's "Paradise" is another view of our horrific past, that should make us ashamed and proud at the same time. Of course, there is no question that we should be ashamed of the killings and genocide that happened against humanity. But that's when we learn about the existence of good and bad people, we see the things that people do in order to survive or help others to survive. That's exactly what Konchalovsky shows in his film.
Filmed in black-and-white, "Paradise" follows three protagonists: Olga (Yuliya Vysotskaya) – a Russian immigrant who is the editor of Vogue Fashion magazine and serves the French Resistance; Zhyul (Philippe Duquesne) – French Nazi officer who is assigned to work on Olga's case; and young, handsome Khelmut – a high-ranked SS officer, who is appointed by his boss Heinrich Himmler (Victor Sukhorukov) to look into Olga's matter. These three different people from different backgrounds and pursuing different goals will face one another during the harsh times, and all of them will have one fate to share.
The film begins with the long and dark scene of prison corridor. Olga is taken here after being arrested by the Gestapo for helping two Jewish children. We see her speak French. The next scene takes us to another place – brighter and more hopeful. There, she begins telling her story. Zhyul – the Nazi officer, receives Olga's case to proceed with it immediately. Unable to resist her natural charm, the man agrees to release her in return for sexual favors. But due to unforeseen circumstances, he has to drop the case and that leads to Olga being sent to a concentration camp. The location of the camp is not specified.
There she meets Khelmut (Christian Clauss) – a golden boy of Nazi Reich. He is the ideal example of a man who, according to Hitler, will build its own version of paradise lead by the young generation. Young Khelmut is assigned to a senior commanding position in the same camp where Olga is sent to. Everything changes in an unpredictable way, when the two of them meet and recognize each other. A few years ago they have spent a playful summer together, which has left a visible and pleasant mark in their lives. As the story unfolds, the three heroes sit in front of a camera and are interviewed by someone. Throughout the film, all three of them reveal what has happened.
In conclusion, "Paradise" is an excellent, yet painful drama about Holocaust. Certain scenes may leave the viewer sick to the stomach. Still, it effectively reaches the audience's mind, keeping them busy from the beginning to the end. The best thing about Konchalovsky's film is that you can hardly compare it to any other war drama. It's a unique, beautiful piece of art that holds a perfect balance between madness and happiness, where some still hope to find their own paradise somewhere in between. Khelmut, Olga, and Zhyul are not bad people. Each of them tries to leave sweet memories behind. All three want to escape the hell they found themselves in. Perhaps, this film may be able to relocate them from one place to another, who knows? But that is only the tip of the iceberg; the rest of it they are yet to discover…


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Monstera Tree 1.5mt – Swiss Cheese plant
Monstera Tree 1.5mt
Plant Description
A Monstera Tree 1.5mt will be a wonderful addition to any décor and will look lovely in a home or office entrance. These realistic Monstera Tree 1.5mt have 4 vines running up the centre Totem Pole that are covered in big fat leaves. We have these available in 1.2mt, 1.8mt and 2mt sizes.
How To Order From Silk Trees And Plants Australia
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As you guys may have seen I have a brand new blog engine, which I've just finished building. Its been a pretty interesting journey to get to the point of writing my own blog engine but I thought I might share a little of why I wrote this blog engine and what it does differently.
I've been blogging some of my technical discoveries for a few years now and its been a really rewarding experience for me, both in helping me get to a deeper level with the technology I work with and also giving back to the development community as a whole. Its definitely something which I personally find valuable and a key part of growing my own technical expertise.
One of the things I have been really keen to do is to help the company I work for (Enlighten Designs) encourage blogging as a way of getting in touch with our local development community and building our reputation as passionate developers. As part of this I have been planning to start an Enlighten Technical Blog, to showcase the work and discoveries of our own developers and encourage writing as a way of expressing our enthusiasm for development.
I feel that a key factor for the success of a company blog is to share the benefits of blogging between both the author and the company itself. One of the ways to do this is to allow content articles to be re-posted from a company blog to a personal blog, and vice versa. By doing this we can allow the authors credit and recognition for their content and a personal reputation (via their own personal blog) while still showcasing the company as a whole and the development skills of the whole organisation. Historically however this has been a bit of a no-no in terms of SEO due to Duplicate Content penalties.
Syndication and rel="canonical"
Replicating content across multiple sites is referred to as syndication and up until recently there was no way of doing it without incurring some kind of duplicate content penalty. However recently Google decided to allow cross-site rel canonical links. These indicate to the search crawler the authoritative source of a pages content. This effectively means that Google will attribute search rankings to the original page over the copied content. This is really important for our syndicated content as it means that if we share our content we are unlikely to suffer any negative side effects, and may actually get a boost to our SEO ranking from the linking. This is great news as it means that sharing content between our personal and company blogs can be good for both parties.
Markdown is great, as a developer I really like writing in markdown as a web editor. I especially like that if the formatting I need isn't built in I can just use HTML inline to get what I'm after, and of course some great sites which I use regularly (StackOverflow and Github) are also heavily markdown based. For this reason it was important to me that when writing articles I'm still able to use this great edit tool. Below is a little of how this editor works in my blog engine. The engine also has an instant preview window so I can get a good idea of how stuff looks.
Redirects and URL manipulation
A key requirement for me was that all of the links from my old blog still worked when I changed over to the new software. This means that I either needed to use the same URL structure or build in a redirect engine. I chose the latter as it gives me more options in terms of URL structure and allows me to be able to customise URLs after posting an article.
Great Plugins
There are some awesome pre-made plugins for developing websites, and I used a few developing this software. Stuff like Bootstrap, DotNetOpenAuth, Disqus and Google Analytics save a lot of work and provide great solutions to common web problems. By using these I was able to greatly reduce the work required.
I have been wanting to give Azure a go for a while but up until now hadn't had a particularly good use case. But given most of my readers are in the US I thought this would be a great opportunity. I was really impressed at how easy Azure has been to get going, and it has some great management tools for running web applications and databases. I was particularly impressed with how easy and intuitive it was to build and deploy my site automatically from github. It took under 15 mins to go from not getting an account to having a working site with automated deployment and I didn't even need a tutorial.
Use it Yourself
As with most of my @home work this software is open source (under LGPL) and available via Github. The admin section isn't polished (but it is functional), and there's plenty more to add, so fork it and let me know what you think.