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Hailing from Brownsville, Texas, Gilbert Saldaña's (COL '19) political views transformed upon his arrival at Georgetown University, a diverse community compared to his hometown.
"I came from a very homogenous community where it was 90 percent Hispanic," Saldaña said. "Before I came to college, personally I considered myself fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I tell people now I don't think that can work. I don't think those two things can work out."
Forming friendships with people he did not encounter at home also changed Saldaña's perspective on social issues.
"One thing that I did change my mind on was LGBTQ+ issues for sure, just because, it wasn't a big thing where I came from," Saldaña said. "One of my roommates was part of that community, and I learned a lot from him."
Now a senior, Saldaña is still unsure about all the specifics of his political creed, but he remains open to learning about different perspectives. As president of the Georgetown Bipartisan Coalition, Saldaña is exposed to a range of opinions — libertarian, socialist, even apolitical — and aims to foster substantive conversations like those that changed his own mind.
This willingness to engage with diverse opinions characterizes most Georgetown students, according to Mo Elleithee (SFS '94), director of the Georgetown Institute for Politics and Public Service. Elleithee noted the stark contrast between his job at Georgetown and his "side gig," as one of the few Democratic contributors on Fox News.
"I come off the air and I look at my Twitter feed; it's full of people saying, 'I don't know what Fox has you on; why don't you go back to CNN or MSNBC where you belong,'" Elleithee said. "What gives me hope, and what I see differently here, and why we get so many political practitioners applying to be fellows in our program, is because I think the students here are more willing to listen, and they're more willing to engage, and they're less willing to feel comfortable isolated from one another."
Partisanship has intensified as the United States approaches the midterm elections on Nov. 6. Members of each party see the other as more ideological and extreme than their own, according to a Pew Research report. Although often characterized as imperfect by students, political discourse at Georgetown still contrasts with national attitudes, perhaps because of the inherent connections within the university's ideologically diverse student body.
Campus Political Diversity
Like Saldaña, Daniella Sanchez (COL '22) and Monique Wilson (COL '22) encountered new perspectives at Georgetown. The pair come from predictably blue regions — Southern California and New York City, respectively.
"Everyone is pretty much either Democrat or won't talk about it," Sanchez said.
Arriving at GU Politics' pre-orientation program "Campaign Bootcamp," which aims to give students a behind-the-scene view of campaigning, altered their views. Exposure to more political perspectives from her future classmates forced Sanchez to re-evaluate her beliefs.
"We were talking about racial injustice and at the same time the opioid crisis and how those two are intertwining. But then someone from Missouri actually said, 'Well, the opioid crisis is a very big deal among white people as well; it's not just a racial issue,'" Sanchez said. "That was really eye-opening, to see the different perspectives on the same issue."
The U.S. opioid epidemic plays a significant role in the nation's addiction crisis, which has led to a record 72,000 drug overdose deaths in 2017. Of those deaths, opioids were responsible for 49,000, according to AFP.
Before coming to Georgetown, Wilson's main impressions of Republicans revolved around "the mess that's going on with this administration."
"I never had Republican friends. Then I came here," Wilson said. "I just kind of assumed that Republicans are always very far right and I would never have anything in common with them."
For many, personal relationships facilitate meaningful engagement with different perspectives.
Georgetown University College Democrats Chair Maria Cornell (SFS '20) and Georgetown University College Republicans President Jake Lyons (COL '20) describe themselves as good friends who frequently discuss their ideological differences. Despite the friendship, neither has converted the other. When Lyons suggested their conversation may have moderated Cornell, she laughed out a resolute "no."
Cornell said growing up liberal ideas in conservative Idaho solidified her core beliefs; coming to Georgetown clarified her reasoning.
"I came in already with a very good understanding of conservative beliefs and why conservatives tend to believe what they believe," Cornell said. "If anything, I've probably gone more left, but in a much more educated way. I've been able to gain more nuance in my beliefs and arguments."
Lyons agreed, explaining how he and Cornell rely on each other's perspective.
"I will see very pressing topical liberal issues or things that Democrats as a whole are typically going off on, and I'm not hearing the reasoned side of it," Lyons said. "I'll go to Maria and I'll be like, 'Give me some nuance; give me the actual reason behind this.'"
Limited Club Cooperation
Cornell's and Lyon's organizations have also embraced bipartisan cooperation: GUCD and GUCR have hosted several events together this year, including a homecoming barbeque, annual debates and a commemoration of Sept. 11 on Healy Lawn. They also work with GBC to host consensus-focused roundtables, most recently a conversation about the opioid epidemic Oct. 25.
Even if the roundtable has no clear resolution, finding common ground is productive, according to Lyons.
"Polarization feeds into the deterioration of civil discourse in our nation," Lyons said. "By coming more to the middle, it would inherently improve civil discourse more because there would be more middle grounds on which to agree upon."
GUCR Vice President Peter Hamilton (COL '20) questioned the effectiveness of roundtables, which he characterized as full of qualifiers and fear of stepping on toes. Hamilton instead called for more debates.
"A great debate is going to inform you so much more about two different positions than a roundtable. A roundtable is built around building consensus," Hamilton said. "But that's not really going to give you an in-depth understanding of an issue."
Hamilton expressed concern that private conversations and stereotypes undermine public efforts for productive dialogue, recounting public insults from upperclassmen and corrupted first impressions because of his conservative views.
Joseph Murgida (COL '21), a centrist member of GBC, agreed Republicans are less likely to speak up. The fear of being wrong — among all students, not just conservatives — can allow for homogeneous discussions, according to Murgida.
"Because we are Georgetown students, we always want to be right, and thus avoid difficult conversations in which we can be proven wrong," Murgida said. "That's what's created a culture of polarization. We talk to only the people we agree with because they'll tell us we're right."
Understand, NOT Convert
Having a space for conversation and understanding others' motivations is more important than changing minds, Cornell said.
"Personally, I don't see people going to the extremes of each side as being the problem in our national discourse right now," Cornell said. "It's more how those fringes interact with each other, and the impact they have on communities."
Elleithee argued the tone of the national discussion has distorted partisanship.
"I don't think changing one's mind should always be the goal. I don't hate partisanship. I think parties are important," Elleithee said. "I think having two competing visions as to how to get to a shared world, a shared goal, is a healthy thing. The competition for ideas should make for better policy, should make for better government. The problem is the competition itself is no longer healthy."
Founded under the McCourt School for Public Policy in 2015, GU Politics has a slogan that responds to such tension: "Public service is a good thing. Politics can be, too." In one of their signature political discourse programs, GU Politics recruits five political practitioners as fellows each semester to host weekly discussions with students. Anyone can show up, and partisan fellows often attract attendees from the opposite side of the political spectrum, according to Elleithee. Elleithee referred to an example of a progressive student who never missed Grover Norquist's discussion section.
Last semester, GU Politics expanded its political discourse initiatives with a pilot version of Dialogue and Dine, which has hosted meals for approximately 45 students in total. The dinner strives to facilitate conversation in an ideologically diverse setting. The program has plans to expand the number of dinners hosted, according to Student Coordinator Katie Rogers (MSB '19).
"The reason we came up with Dialogue and Dine was because we felt while we had discussion groups and did try to foster that sense of discourse, we felt that there was an element missing," Roger said.
Politics — Minus Parties
Not all political organizations are tethered to current events, and some distance from national partisanship can stimulate productive conversation, according to Georgetown's main politically neutral clubs.
The Tocqueville Forum for Political Understanding, a political philosophy club, hosts a weekly Friday reading group. Its theory- and principle-based discussions foster understanding among attendees, who range from libertarians to staunch socialists, according to Tocqueville Forum President Micah Musser (COL '19).
Issues-based political discourse can be counterproductive to fostering mutual understanding, Musser said.
"We generally talk about principles, not issues. I think a lot of political conversation is very issues-based. If abortion comes up, people are on one side or another, it's a very issue-centered topic," Musser said. "We talk about more abstract principles, which impacts how you think about issues, but it's a way usually people have more ability to enter into a very understanding space."
The Philodemic Society, Georgetown's nonpartisan campus debating society, also operates its debates independently of the two-party framework; participants choose to speak in favor or against a given resolution. While not all topics are explicitly political — a Nov. 1 debate centered on the resolution "ignorance is bliss" — others address politically salient issues like gender-based quotas.
Choosing a broad range of debate topics, moving away from a competitive structure and building a community contributes to substantive discussion, according to Philodemic Society President Kathryn Li (COL '19).
"You have to be able to find value in other people's opinions if you're going to come and have a good time," Li said. "It's a place where it's encouraged to change your mind. There's no party line; there's no dogma that you need to show loyalty to."
Navigating National Politics
On Nov. 6, GU Politics will host a Bipartisan Breakfast, several speaker events and an election watch party in conjunction with student groups like GBC, GUCD and GUCR. The celebratory events are a very visible sign of bipartisan cooperation that may not reflect the whole nation.
"Any college campus is oftentimes divorced to some extent from the real world," Elleithee said.
However, he also expressed hope that Georgetown students will bring bipartisanship to their future leadership.
"This is true to your generation more broadly, that is, a much more collaborative and cooperative approach," Elleithee said. "People are more willing to listen and engage and understand than my generation is."


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Central City Co-Op
2515 Waugh Dr. Houston, TX 77006 Map It
- Address:
2515 Waugh Dr.
Houston, TX 77006
Although it diverges from the traditional definition of a farmers market, this self-serve co-op offers incredible local, sustainable, and organic produce at reasonable prices to the Houston community.
Each Wednesday, they have an open market featuring a selection of farm-fresh produce, free range eggs, local dairy, and dry goods. Shares of freshly picked produce can also be pre-ordered for pickup.
First-time visitors shop for free; otherwise, a low cost day pass or membership is needed.
Central City Co-Op is open Wednesdays 9 am - 6 pm inside Grace Lutheran Church.
Information on featured farms, pre-ordering shares, and more can be found at Central City Co-Op's website, listed below.

subset: commoncrawl


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Taxpayers are spending over $1 billion to send refined fuel to the Israeli military -- at a time when Israel doesn't need it and America does.
The Gaza Invasion - Powered by the USA
Robert Bryce
Editor's note: Generous support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.
Jan. 16, 2009 |
Israel's current air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip has left about 1,000 Palestinians dead, including 400 women and children. Several thousand people have been wounded and dozens of buildings have been destroyed. An estimated 90,000 Gazans have abandoned their homes. Israel's campaign in Gaza, which began more than two weeks ago, has been denounced by the Red Cross, multiple Arab and European countries, and agencies from the United Nations. Demonstrations in Pakistan and elsewhere have been held to denounce America's support for Israel.
It's well known that the U.S. Supplies the Israelis with much of their military hardware. Over the past few decades, the U.S. Has provided about $53 billion in military aid to Israel. What's not well known is that since 2004, U.S. Taxpayers have paid to supply over 500 million gallons of refined oil products -- worth about $1.1 billion –- to the Israeli military. While a handful of countries get motor fuel from the U.S., they receive only a fraction of the fuel that Israel does -- fuel now being used by Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and tanks to battle Hamas.
According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, between 2004 and 2007 the U.S. Defense Department gave $818 million worth of fuel to the Israeli military. The total amount was 479 million gallons, the equivalent of about 66 gallons per Israeli citizen. In 2008, an additional $280 million in fuel was given to the Israeli military, again at U.S. Taxpayers''s expense. The U.S. Has even paid the cost of shipping the fuel from U.S. Refineries to ports in Israel.
In 2008, the fuel shipped to Israel from U.S. Refineries accounted for 2 percent of Israel's $13.3 billion defense budget. Publicly available data shows that about 2 percent of the U.S. Defense Department's budget is also spent on oil. A senior analyst at the Pentagon, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press, says the Israel Defense Force's fuel use is most likely similar to that of the U.S. Defense Department. In other words, the Israeli military is spending about the same percentage of its defense budget on oil as the U.S. Is. Therefore it's possible that the U.S. Is providing most, or perhaps even all, of the Israeli military's fuel needs.
What's more, Israel does not need the U.S. Handout. Its own recently privatized refineries, located at Haifa and Ashdod, could supply all of the fuel needed by the Israeli military. Those same refineries are now producing and selling jet fuel and other refined products on the open market. But rather than purchase lower-cost jet fuel from its own refineries, the Israeli military is using U.S. Taxpayer money to buy and ship large quantities of fuel from U.S. Refineries.
The Israeli government obtains the fuel through the Defense Department's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, and pays for the fuel and the shipping with funds granted to it through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), another Defense Department program. (In 2008, Congress earmarked $2.4 billion in FMF money for Israel, and $2.5 billion for 2009.) The dimensions of the FMS fuel program are virtually unknown among America's top experts on Middle East policy. For his part, the Pentagon analyst was surprised to learn that FMS money was even being used to supply fuel to Israel. "That's not the purpose of the program," he says. "FMS was designed to allow U.S. Weapons makers to sell their goods to foreign countries. The idea that fuel is being bought under FMS is very, very odd."
The fuel program, in fact, raises a number of pressing questions. The shipments have occurred during times of record-high oil prices, when American consumers have been angered by motor fuel prices that in 2008 exceeded $4 per gallon. Given those high prices, it appears to make little sense for the U.S. Government to be promoting policies that reduce the volume of -- and potentially raise the price of -- motor fuel available for sale to U.S. Motorists.
The U.S. Fuel shipments are part of a sustained policy that has widened the energy gap between Israel and its neighbors. Over the past few years, the Israel Defense Force has cut off fuel supplies and destroyed electricity infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Those embargoes and attacks on power plants have exacerbated a huge gap in per-capita energy consumption between Israelis and Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. And that sharp disparity helps explain why the Palestinians have never been able to build a viable economy.
Edward S. Walker, former president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, says the fuel supply program is emblematic of U.S. military support for Israel. Walker, who has served as U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, explains that the FMF money allows the Israelis to "do with it what they want. They can buy equipment or fuel. It's their choice, not the government's choice. It's the only program where we give someone a blank check and they can use it any way that they choose."
Given the recent spike in oil prices, which helped send the U.S. and the world economy into a tailspin, and Americans still smarting from paying $4 at the pump, says Walker, "Why are we supplying fuel to Israel when we are paying such high prices?"
Since 1948, oil has been a critically important commodity for both the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli economy. And Israeli leaders have long worried about their energy security. In 1957, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion wrote in his diary, "The only sanctions which could defeat or break us are oil sanctions."
In 1967, Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Tiran precipitated the Six Day War. The Straits, writes Israeli historian Michael Oren in his book on the conflict, "Six Days of War," were "a lifeline for the Jewish state, the conduit to its quiet import of Iranian oil." In 1973, the Yom Kippur War (Arabs call it the Ramadan War) led to the Arab Oil Embargo, an event that still reverberates in the U.S., particularly in the fanciful political rhetoric about the desire for "energy independence."
The U.S.-Israel oil relationship goes back to 1975. In September of that year, Henry Kissinger, who was then secretary of state, struck a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that led the Israelis to partially withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula. The agreement required Israel to pull out of the Giddi and Mitla passes and relinquish the Sinai oilfields the Israelis had captured during the 1967 war.
In return, Kissinger agreed that America would provide multibillion- dollar economic and military subsidies to Israel. He also agreed that the U.S. would supply Israel with oil in case of any emergency. That agreement was formalized in 1979 about the time of the Camp David peace talks. It says that the U.S. will "make every effort to help Israel secure the necessary means of transport" for the oil that it purchases. The agreement concludes by saying that the U.S. and Israel will "meet annually, or more frequently at the request of either party, to review Israel's continuing oil requirement."
Since 1979, the agreement has been quietly renewed every five years. (The most recent approval of the document was done by the U.S. State Department in November of 2005.) The U.S. Does not provide any other country the same insurance.
Nor does any other country get anything close to the volume of fuel that Israel does under FMS. In 2004, more than 140 countries received FMS aid from the U.S. Of that group, only about 13 countries received fuel of any kind through the FMS program and the biggest recipient, after Israel, was Singapore, which got $7.3 million in fuel. That year, Israel received 17 times more FMS fuel than all of the other countries combined.
Why did the U.S. Defense Department begin providing oil to Israel in 1986? And why does the program persist, particularly given that Israel no longer sees its refineries as strategic assets? The Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which manages the FMS and FMF programs, referred questions about the program to the Israeli government. The press office of the Israeli Embassy in Washington did not respond to numerous requests about the program.
While the rationale for the oil transfers remains elusive, the facts behind Israel's refinery privatization are freely available. In 2006, the government sold the Ashdod refinery to Israeli tycoon Zadik Bino for about $500 million. And in early 2007, it sold the larger refinery in Haifa to a group led by Israel Corp., the shipping and chemicals conglomerate, for $1.5 billion.
The sale of the refineries marked a major turning point in Israel's attitude toward oil. In its earliest years as an independent nation, Israel's survival was made possible by using crude from the Soviet Union and Venezuela. From the 1950s to the late 1970s, Iranian crude was the lifeblood of the Zionist state. Later still, the Israelis relied on the Kuwaitis. Today, the Russians are providing much of Israel's crude needs. And the sale of the refineries is indicative of the Israeli government's confidence in its ongoing ability to purchase the oil it needs on the international market.
Nevertheless, the FMS fuel shipments to Israel have continued. The most recent shipments for which records are readily available occurred in July and October 2008.
On July 7, 2008, the spot price for U.S. crude oil hit a near-record of $141. That same day, the San Antonio Business Journal reported that San Antonio-based refiner Valero Energy Corp. had been awarded a contract by the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) worth $46 million to provide fuel to Israel. Valero has won a number of lucrative contracts from the DESC, the Defense Department agency that handles all of the Pentagon's bulk fuel purchases. On Oct. 9, the Journal reported that Valero had been awarded a $235 million contract under FMS. Bill Day, a spokesman for Valero, says that the company "doesn't talk publicly about its contracts."
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that U.S. taxpayers are paying the shipping costs to move the fuel from refineries -- many of them on the Texas Gulf Coast -- to Israeli ports at Haifa or Ashkelon. Shipping costs vary but one specific bid called for shipping costs of $.30 per gallon. Officials with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arm of the Pentagon that manages programs that "strengthen America's alliances and partnerships," has confirmed that the costs to ship the fuel from U.S. refineries to Israel have been paid for with FMF money designated for Israel by Congress.
The huge FMS fuel shipments are puzzling to the Israelis. Amit Mor, CEO of Eco Energy, an Israeli consulting and investment firm, has worked on energy issues in his home country for about two decades. In a recent e-mail, Mor says that "there is a paradox" in the fuel shipments that Israel gets from the U.S. He said that the privately owned Israeli refineries export jet fuel in "FOB prices," while the defense ministry imports jet fuel in "high CIF prices," with the funds of U.S. Military assistance.
FOB, short for "free on board," means that customers must take possession of the fuel at the refinery and then pay for all shipping and related costs to get the fuel to its final destination. On the other hand, as Mor explains, the Israeli military is importing fuel from U.S. refineries located 7,000 miles away, while incurring the CIF, short for "cost, insurance and freight," of moving the fuel that distance.
Mor says Israeli refiners have "complained about this issue" but have had no luck with the Israeli government. He goes on to say that "it is the U.S. government that insisted for some reason to continue with this historical, costly and inefficient arrangement."
Energy analysts squabble about a myriad of issues. But if there is one truism that draws near-universal agreement, it's this: As energy consumption increases, so does wealth. And while that truism holds for oil use, it is particularly apt for electricity. As Peter Huber and Mark Mills point out in their 2005 book, "The Bottomless Well," "Economic growth marches hand in hand with increased consumption of electricity -- always, everywhere, without significant exception in the annals of modern industrial history."
That statement underscores the significance of the FMS fuel shipments to Israel, many of which have occurred at or near the time that the Israeli military has attacked the electric power plants of its neighbors.
In late June 2006, Israeli aircraft fired nine missiles at the transformers at the Gaza City Power Plant, the only electric power plant in the Occupied Territories. (One of the original partners in the project was Enron, but that's another story.) The missiles caused damage estimated at $15 million to $20 million and, for a time, made Gaza wholly reliant on electricity flows from Israel. The 140-megawatt power plant, owned by the Palestine Electric Co., was insured by the Overseas Private Investment Corp., an arm of the U.S. government. Thus the U.S. was providing fuel and materiel to the Israeli military, which destroyed the plant, but it was also paying to fix the damage. Call it cradle-to-grave service.
The Israeli attack on the Gaza City Power Plant offers a stark example of how the FMS fuel helps assure that Israel stays energy rich while many of the citizens in neighboring regions live in energy poverty.
Two weeks after the attack on the Gaza City plant in 2006, during Israel's monthlong war against Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, Israeli aircraft attacked the 346-megawatt Jiyyeh power plant, the oldest electric power plant in Lebanon. Those attacks resulted in the largest-ever oil spill in the eastern Mediterranean. About 100,000 barrels of fuel oil that was stored in tanks at the Jiyyeh site flowed into the sea, creating an oil slick that stretched for more than 150 kilometers.
The attacks on the Jiyyeh plant occurred on July 13 and July 15. Those dates are important because they underscore the timing of the U.S. fuel transfers to Israel.
On July 14, 2006, the U.S. military issued two press releases.
In one of them, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that it would be providing up to $210 million in JP-8 jet fuel to the Israeli government. The other release, put out at 5 p.m. Eastern time, came from the Defense Logistics Agency, which said that it had awarded a $36.7 million contract to Valero as part of another JP-8 supply deal for Israel.
The July 14 release contains this rather bland description of the fuel deal: "The proposed sale of the JP-8 aviation fuel will enable Israel to maintain the operational capability of its aircraft inventory. The jet fuel will be consumed while the aircraft is in use to keep peace and security in the region. Israel will have no difficulty absorbing this additional fuel into its armed forces." The release goes on to claim that the "proposed sale of this JP-8 aviation fuel will not affect the basic military balance in the region."
While the attacks on the Jiyyeh plant were important, Lebanese citizens could get electricity from other power plants in the country. That was not true in Gaza, a province in which electricity has always been in short supply. According to the CIA Fact Book, the Gaza Strip ranks dead last -- 214th out of 214 countries and territories listed -- in the amount of electricity consumed. According to the Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Agency, in 2004, the average Gazan used about 654 kilowatt-hours of electricity. By contrast, the 7.1 million residents of Israel consume about 6,295 kilowatt-hours of electric power per person per year, nearly 10 times as much as the average Gazan.
Although more recent energy consumption data for Gaza is not available, there's no question that the endemic poverty in the West Bank and particularly in Gaza, is due, largely, to a continuing lack of energy resources. And the Israelis have frequently cut off the flow of fuel and electricity, which has exacerbated the Palestinians' energy poverty.
Over the past few years, the Israelis have cut off the flow of energy to Gaza as retribution for various transgressions. And those cutoffs have forced the Gaza City Power Plant to shut down for lack of the fuel oil it needs to operate. When the power plant is idled, most of the residents of Gaza City are left without power and overall power supplies in the Gaza Strip decline by about 25 percent.
In May 2006, Israel cut off the flow of oil into the Occupied Territories after the Islamic group Hamas won local elections. In January 2008, the Israelis closed the border crossings into Gaza, which resulted in a fuel shortage that closed the Gaza power plant. In April 2008, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency stopped distributing aid in Gaza after it ran out of fuel. The Israelis stopped the fuel flow as retribution for attacks that killed two Israeli civilians and three Israeli soldiers. In November 2008, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency was again forced to suspend work due to lack of fuel. The fuel shortage occurred after Israel closed the border into Gaza in response to rockets and mortar shells that had been fired into Israel from Gaza.
The disparity in energy consumption between the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza and their counterparts in Israel is just one element in the centuries-old story of tragedy and conflict in the region. But with the U.S. squarely on the side of the Israelis in the Gaza campaign, the potential for an angry backlash against the U.S. appears to be growing.
And that anger will likely only increase when Arabs begin to understand that much of the fuel that the U.S. is giving to Israel is being refined from Arab oil. The Valero refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, which has won several of the FMS contracts for Israel, is a big buyer of Mideast crude. During the second quarter of 2006, according to data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the refinery got about 40 percent of its crude oil from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.
In short, U.S. taxpayers are paying for U.S. energy companies to buy Arab crude, ship it across the Atlantic to refineries in the U.S., refine it, and then ship it back across the Atlantic so that the Israel Defense Force can use it in its wars.
While the origination point of the crude may only matter to part of the Arab world, it is becoming apparent that bloodshed in Gaza is further complicating America's efforts to gain credibility as an honest broker in the region. Anti-U.S. sentiment is not in America's long-term interest, says former diplomat Chas Freeman, a man whose r�sum� in international affairs extends back nearly four decades.
Freeman is a former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, as well as a former assistance secretary of defense. He served as Richard Nixon's chief interpreter during Nixon's visit to China in 1972. Now the president of the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank, Freeman says the FMS fuel program for Israel runs counter to long-term goals of resolving the Palestinian conflict and America's stated goal of protecting the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf. The Defense Department has assumed "unilateral responsibility for the protection of the oil trade in the Persian Gulf, and yet it's assuming responsibility for the delivery of aviation fuel for the Israeli military," he says. "That's confused and contradictory." The program, he adds, is "one of many elements of our relationship with Israel that is very hard to explain."
Freeman may be correct, but the House of Representatives has scant doubt about continued U.S. support for Israel. Nor has Congress shown much interest in the fuel shortages among Palestinians.
On Jan. 9, the 14th day of the fighting in Gaza, the House passed a resolution sponsored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "recognizing Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza." The vote was 390 to 5.
Two days before the vote, UNICEF estimated that 800,000 Gazans did not have running water and 1 million were living without electricity.


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** Medium-notable
*** Two saplings and a pile of mulch. It's the legal minimum that's required before you can call it "landscaping" and not just "a spill in the parking lot at Lowe's."
Howdy do, have we got a blog for you! And we bring news! On the plus side, we can finally announce the long-awaited* arrival of the rest of our flagship beers! On the downside, there's been a nontrivial uptick in "machete-related incidents."
Don't worry, it's for science.
And to commemorate this momentous** occasion, we're having a tasting featuring all four flagships at Giles Fine Wine in Medford this coming Saturday from 1-3pm! You've been to tastings before, you know the drill: we show up, growlers-in-hand; you show up and politely nod until we finish awkwardly stammering and hand you some beer. It'll be fun!
We'll be pourin' Extra Naked, Key Lime, Wasted Life, and Shut Up Kelly!
And what's more, our parking lot got (partially) paved! And there's landscaping!*** We don't entirely know what this means in the Grand Scheme of Things (i.e. whether or not it's a harbinger of our actually-long-awaited opening) - we still need to get approval from a handful of departments in City Hall - but at the very least, you can now walk through the parking lot without wondering if your tetanus booster is up to date. Progress!
Asphalt never looked so good!
We are now taking name submissions for the two saplings out front... Go!
* Not really
** Medium-notable
*** Two saplings and a pile of mulch. It's the legal minimum that's required before you can call it "landscaping" and not just "a spill in the parking lot at Lowe's."
7/27/2016 10:34:21 pm
Ah, ha, ha, ha...entertaining blog. Parking lot looks gooood. Wishing you all the best on Saturday! Love.
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BUBco Blog
Jared and Jimbo will tell you some things, sometimes.
November 2023


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Tension, tissue ischemia and technical error are known factors which can lead to anastomotic complications such as leak, stricture, and ulceration/bleeding. Currently surgeons evaluate tissue ischemia without benefit of any simple routine measurement technique to assess tissue viability. A new tissue surface probe (T-STAT microvascular tissue oximeter, Spectros Corporation, Portola Valley, California) provides continuous measurement of tissue hemoglobin oxygen saturation (StO2) and may have clinical utility for intra-operative assessment of blood flow in areas of surgical anastomosis. This is a pilot study to determine local StO2 during gut stapling using various staple sizes for the purpose of assessing the tool's ability to measure changes and the reproducibility of those changes with stapling. We sought to evaluate mucosal versus serosal measurements and to determine if the proximity to the staple line correlated with possible tissue ischemia. Measurements were made in 5 anesthetized adult swine during laparotomy. Various staple heights (Endo-GIA Autosuture, Connecticut, USA) of 2.0, 2.5 and 4.8 millimeter (mm) were used to transect small bowel (SB) and colon (C). Serosal and mucosal surface measurements were obtained at baseline and on each side (proximal and distal) of the transection using the T-Stat device at the staple line and 2 cm away from it. The baseline StO2 within the mucosa is significantly less than the serosa for both small bowel (serosa 61.1 +/-3 versus mucosa 48 +/-5, p < 0.05 t test) and colon (serosa 65 +/-4 versus mucosa 40 +/-13, p < 0.05 t test). There was no change in serosal surface oxygenation with stapling. Mean values of mucosal SB and C StO2 are presented in the Table with staple heights utilized (n = 20 measurements per viscus at each location, ANOVA * p
Session: Podium Presentation
Program Number: S076


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Dow Jones, Hang Seng, ASX 200 Outlook: Small-Cap Rally as Reddit Trading Frenzy Returns?
- Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes closed +0.13%, -0.05% and -0.23% respectively
- US ISM Manufacturing PMI rose to 61.2 in May, compared to a baseline forecast of 60.9
- Asia-Pacific markets are positioned for a mixed open. The HSI is testing a key chart resistance
Small-cap Rally, US Data, OPEC+, Hang Seng Index, Asia-Pacific Outlook:
The small-cap-centric Russell 2000 index rose 1.14% overnight, outperforming large-cap indices. This suggested that investors were probably rotating out from blue chips and into small- to mid-cap stocks amid inflation concerns. Rising retail speculative activity may signal an overheated market condition.
Stock prices of AMC entertainment and GameStop rallied 22.66% and 12.17% respectively, largely driven by a renewed wave of speculative activity by Reddit day traders. The so called "short squeeze" strategy in play here aims to force call option writers and short sellers to cover their losses by purchasing back the stocks from the open market, sending prices even higher.
The Dow Jones index closed modestly higher on Tuesday, buoyed by a stronger-than-expected ISM manufacturing PMI data that underscores economic strength. The reading came in at 61.2, exceeding a baseline forecast of 60.9 and also marking the twelfth consecutive month of expansion. Demand, consumption and inputs registered strong growth compared to April, with supply shortage and labor constrains pointing to further rise in price levels.
Strong economic readings buoyed reflation optimism, sending the 10-year Treasury yields higher to 1.615% - a one week high. Materials and energy sectors outperformed, while the technology sector suffered a mild pullback. WTI crude oil prices surged 1.5% to a fresh two-and-half year high of $ 67.90 as the OPEC+ painted a bright outlook for energy demand and stayed on course to gradually roll back production cuts. Higher oil prices may support energy, oil & gas as well as offshore marine sectors.
US ISM Manufacturing PMI – 3 Years
Source: ismworld.org
Asia-Pacific markets are positioned for a mixed start on Wednesday. Futures in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore are in the red, whereas those in mainland China, Australia, South Korea, Malaysia, India and Thailand are in the green.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index climbed over 1% yesterday, lifted the technology sector. Data shows southbound net inflow via the stock connection surged to HKD 5,295 million on June 1st as risk appetite of mainland investors revitalized. This could signal further price strength as the stock connections account for nearly a quarter of the entire trading volume on the HK stock exchange.
Hang Seng Index vs. Daily Southbound Net Flow – 12 Months
Source: Bloomberg, DailyFX
Looking back to Tuesday's close, 5 out of 9 Dow Jones sectors ended higher, with 43.3% of the index's constituents closing in the green. Materials (+2.91%), energy (+2.76%) and financials (+1.99%) outperformed, whereas healthcare (-1.56%) and consumer discretionary (-0.75%) trailed behind.
Dow Jones Sector Performance 01-06-2021
Source: Bloomberg, DailyFX
Dow Jones Index Technical Analysis
The Dow Jones index is challenging the 200% Fibonacci extension level (34,920) for a second time. A successful attempt may open the door for further upside potential, whereas a failed one may result in a bearish "Double Top" pattern. Prices remain within an "Ascending Channel" formed since early November, the ceiling and the floor of which serve as key support and resistance levels respectively. Bearish MACD divergence suggests that bullish momentum may be fading however.
Dow Jones Index – Daily Chart
Hang Seng Index Technical Analysis:
The Hang Seng Index (HSI) formed a "Double Bottom" chart pattern on the daily chart and may be positioned for further price gains. The index breached above the trend-determine 100-day SMA line with upward momentum. An immediate resistance level can be found at 29,344 – the 50% Fibonacci retracement as well as the neckline of the "Double Bottom". Breaching above this level may open the door for further upside potential with an eye on 29,778 – the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement.
Hang Seng Index – Daily Chart
ASX 200 Index Technical Analysis:
The ASX 200 index reached an all-time high on Friday after breaching above a key resistance level of 7,126 – the 261.8% Fibonacci extension. Prices have since opened the door for further upside potential with an eye on 7,200. The MACD indicator formed a bullish crossover and trended higher, suggesting that upward momentum is building.
ASX 200 Index – Daily Chart
--- Written by Margaret Yang, Strategist for DailyFX.com
To contact Margaret, use the Comments section below or @margaretyjy on Twitter
DailyFX provides forex news and technical analysis on the trends that influence the global currency markets.


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In late December, 2006, we learned of the death of former President Gerald Ford who was spoken of as a great public servant. Sadly, just ten days before Christmas 2006, our nation lost another great individual, one who truly lived up to the title of public servant but one which the majority of Americans will never know of. His name was Mr. Jim Durant, and he was a police volunteer with the Scarborough, Maine, Police Department. On the evening of Thursday, December 14th, while on duty, Mr. Durant was dispatched to the scene of a traffic accident, and under the direction of sworn officers he assisted others with traffic control duties. By all accounts, Mr. Durant had taken all the necessary safety precautions one would, and was wearing his reflective safety vest, was equipped with a proper flashlight, and was trained to perform this function. Sadly though, while performing this task Mr. Durant was struck from behind by a vehicle, and sustained critical injuries. He passed away the following day.
While the reality is you're more likely to be struck by lightning than be killed just because you're a civilian police volunteer, the fact of the matter is, depending on what duties you perform, it can be a dangerous task. Not surprisingly, Mr. Durant lost his life to one of the top reasons for the loss of life for all sworn officers in the United States--traffic related fatalities. Regardless of how many precautions one may take, whenever you place yourself in a position where there are moving vehicles passing by, accidents can and do occur. More information regarding this tragic loss may be found at the memorial page for Mr. Durant at the web link listed at the bottom of this article.
The Reality of Liability.
As in the very tragic case of Mr. Durant, no one can argue that the potential for injuries and/or death can and do exist when volunteers perform certain tasks equal to that of sworn officers. The important point, however, is how are the volunteers trained for these tasks, what policies and procedures are put in place to reduce accidents and injuries, how are they implemented and just as importantly, do the volunteers themselves understand the risk involved with the duties they are to perform?
With the new year upon us, now is a great time for a "liability check up" as it relates to your volunteers. As I discussed in my February, 2006, article, That Nasty L Word, there are three basic types of liability as it relates to volunteers: conceived, perceived and real, the latter being as the name implies, the hard and fast issues that relate to injuries and lawsuits which is what we'll focus on in this article and how to avoid them.
Train as if your life depended upon it.
When all is said and done, the fact of the matter is yes, there is real liability associated with using civilian volunteers in law enforcement, just as there is with sworn full time officers. Think about this for a minute--how is it that a law enforcement agency can hire a young man or woman, as young as 21 years old, perhaps with very little life experience, and put him or her on the street, by himself, with a gun and expect little liability in return? The answer is in addition to the extensive screening and testing before hiring them, they subject them to a well designed and demanding training program, which tests their abilities throughout the program. Upon graduation the officer must then undergo another extensive field training program for which they are again tested and graded on their capabilities to carry out the duties placed upon them. As such, your agency's volunteers should undergo and be expected to pass a standardized training course equal to, if not greater than, that of your officers for similar duties they may perform such as traffic control or other hazardous duties.
What's interesting to note is that although traffic related injuries are one of the top, if not the top cause of fatalities for our nation's law enforcement officers, it appears to be a very low priority when it comes to training. For example, of the over 600 hours and 42 "Learning Domains" required by California's POST to graduate from a basic police academy, only 12 hours are dedicated to "Traffic Accident Investigation," and of that only a small percentage of time is dedicated to officer safety in traffic situations. On the other hand, non-police agencies, such as state Departments of Transportation whose day-in and day-out job is to work the streets, roads and highways, spend a fair amount of time training their workers on personal traffic safety skills. Considering the low percentage of loss of life sustained by DOT workers, perhaps it may be worthwhile asking a representative from your state's DOT to conduct traffic control training for your volunteers as subject matter experts.
If it wasn't written, it wasn't said.
Policies and procedures manuals are for the most part a collection of documents that spell out what you've been trained or told to do and what not to do. While reading it will work wonders for anyone who has trouble sleeping, from a legal standpoint they are a "must have." As they used to drill into our heads at Radioman School in the Coast Guard, "If it was written, it wasn't said," and "if it wasn't documented, it didn't happen."
To put this a little more into perspective, I suggest to the attendees of my two-day volunteer management workshops to try visualizing yourself in court on a witness stand, being grilled by a attorney who is suing your agency for whatever it is a volunteer may have done to provoke the lawsuit. The attorney is asking you, "Mr. or Mrs. Volunteer Coordinator, you've told the jury that you specifically forbid your volunteers from doing XXX, can you please show me where this is documented?" If you can't, you had better prepare your agency to start writing out a big check to that attorney's client. The bottom line is the spoken word means very little in court, unless you can back it up with documentation or some very credible witnesses.
Long story short, if you don't have a written policies and procedures manual detailing what your volunteers can and cannot do, in addition to a training manual outlining their training program, now would be a good time to get started on one.
Statement of liability and potential for injury.
Another factor overlooked by some agencies is ensuring their volunteers understand the potential risks and their own personal liability involved while on duty. For agencies who use volunteers for administrative functions only, this may be a minor issue. However, as volunteers move from the office and into the field such as with Citizens on Patrol, Parking Enforcement Teams, Traffic Control Support, etc., the potential for risk and liability naturally increase. It's important for your volunteers, and for that matter, their spouses and family to understand the risk involved as people can, do, and unfortunately, will continue to be injured and killed while performing these tasks.
While injuries involving law enforcement volunteers are very, very low, the risk of lawsuits is unpredictable. Unfortunately there are always a few attorneys out there who are willing to file suit against your agency, hoping for a quick settlement to make it go away. The best defense against a valid lawsuit involving volunteers is the same for your sworn personnel: the knowledge that operating outside their scope of authority or policies could result in personal liability. Hopefully the volunteers you select are as professional as your full time sworn officers. However their not being in the field day to day, the reality of personal liability may not be as obvious to them. It's important that all your volunteers understand this, and one of the best ways to ensure it is with a Personal Liability Statement. Simply put, this form, to be read and signed by your volunteers, should clearly state that acting outside the scope, authority and/or polices and procedures of your department could subject that individual to a lawsuit against them for which the department will not defend. As such, they could be subject to monetary and/or property loss or worse, depending on the circumstances, jail time.
To sum it all up, just as a new officer is developed, so should the new volunteer be screened and trained in an appropriate manner to what their job entails. Agencies who treat their volunteers as staff members from the very beginning benefit from having just that, an unpaid staff member who will give you years of loyal service with an extremely high return on initial investment.


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In the mid-1980s, FAI introduced the RSST. In 1998, this was superseded by the Advanced Reactive System Screening Tool (ARSST). The ARSST was designed for hazards assessors who require basic information on process upset conditions.
The ARSST is based upon a small (5-20ml) spherical glass test cell. This test cell is then heated by a wraparound heater which can bring the sample temperature to 400°C. Due to the unique polynomial heating method, the sample is kept in a quasi-adiabatic mode and no heat is lost to the surroundings. The test setup also results in a low phi factor and the data can be applied directly to the process scale .
Description and capabilities:
• easy setup for fast test turnaround
• lightweight glass test cell with good mixing
• open or closed cell tests and small sample size
• flow regime detector distinguishes between foamy and non-foamy behaviour
• scanning and isothermal modes.
The ARSST measures the temperature and pressure of the system:
• rate of pressure rise
• heat of reaction
• heat of mixing
• total adiabatic temperature rise
• onset temperature
• tempering temperature
• self-accelerating decomposition temperature
• time to maximum rate.
You can also visit the Fauske website for more product details by clicking on their logo below:


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Argo Pro Introduces Private Company PROtectSM
Management liability product gives private companies access to various types of coverage
Argo Pro, a member of Argo Group International Holdings, Ltd. (NYSE: ARGO), an international underwriter of specialty insurance and reinsurance, announced today an enhanced product offering: Private Company PROtectSM. The packaged professional liability product gives private companies access to a range of coverage, including directors and officers, employment practices and fiduciary liability.
"Private Company PROtect will streamline our offerings to private companies, allowing them to pick and choose the policies that meet their unique needs," said Rich Edsall senior vice president, commercial management liability at Argo Pro. "By combining our D&O, employment practices, and fiduciary liability coverages under one policy, we're providing a new level of flexibility to our clients."
Private Company PROtect allows policyholders to purchase one or more management liability and professional liability coverage options with separate or shared limits. Each policy can be customized to meet specific risk-management needs.
Argo Pro is a leading provider of professional lines insurance products and services that can accommodate medium-sized and large organizations on an admitted and non-admitted basis. Through a single operating platform and a robust network of appointed wholesale and retail distribution partners, Argo Pro offers a broad, customizable portfolio of errors and omissions, and management liability insurance solutions.
For more information about Private Company PROtect, please visit: https://www.argolimited.com/argo-pro/product/private-company-protect/.
Argo Group International Holdings, Ltd. (NYSE: ARGO) is an international underwriter of specialty insurance and reinsurance products in the property and casualty market. Argo Group offers a full line of products and services designed to meet the unique coverage and claims handling needs of businesses in two primary segments: U.S. Operations and International Operations. Argo Group's insurance subsidiaries are A.M. Best-rated 'A' (Excellent) (third highest rating out of 16 rating classifications) with a stable outlook, and Argo Group's U.S. insurance subsidiaries are Standard and Poor's-rated 'A-' (Strong) with a positive outlook. More information on Argo Group and its subsidiaries is available at www.argolimited.com.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Ashley Heline
Argo Group Media Relations
Tel +1 (210) 366-5613


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Question: What's up with the stoning for picking up sticks in Numbers 15?
Answer: Good question. Seems severe right? The previous and following paragraphs in Numbers 15 give a pretty good indication as to what's going on. Let's first look at the story so we have a good understanding of the situation.
While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, "The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp." So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.
God wanted his people to keep the law and take it very seriously. Not just for the sake of behavior, but because of what was at stake.
They were about to enter the promised land where they would be surrounded by other people groups who would lead them away from the Lord. There were big consequences. The things that the surrounding nations were into were horrendous. Child sacrifice was among the sacrifice schedule for the nations around them.
What you'll notice is that there are two scenarios that are presented right before this story.
If someone sins unintentionally... (vs 22)
If someone sins defiantly... (vs 27)
What we find is that the punishment for someone who sins unintentionally could be lenient. They could be forgiven. However, if someone intentionally sinned in defiance of God's law; If they did it knowingly and willingly, THAT WAS A BIG DEAL. They were to be cut off from the people.
So, was it a big deal that the guy picked up firewood on the Sabbath... well it wouldn't be except that God had strictly prohibited people from performing their own work on the Sabbath. It was one of the main ten laws. This guy knew about the rule. Based on where this story appears, the author is giving us an example of someone who sinned defiantly. This guy had decided that the law given by God was not important to him.
Here's what one of the verses right before the story says:
But anyone who sins defiantly, whether native-born or foreigner, blasphemes the Lord and must be cut off from the people of Israel.
So the matter is not just breaking the law, but what a broken law meant. The person who intentionally ignores God's laws is saying something about God through his actions. He's saying, in effect, that God is wrong about his instructions. He's saying that God is not good. He's leading the way for mutiny and rebellion.
If he'd blatantly ignore one law, and did it publicly, it's easy to see how others might follow his lead. Now, once they entered the land, there would be tremendous pressure to give up on the laws of God. The laws of God were the people's protection against the enemies they would be surrounded by. If they didn't follow God's laws, they would be vomited out of the land. If they rebelled against God they would lose their protection. God didn't want that to happen, so he showed them how serious he was about them keeping the law.
So, the stakes are super high at this point in the story.
What's interesting about the story is that stoning the guy was not prescribed by the explicit law. You'll notice that when he does it, they don't know what to do. They wait for God to tell them how to proceed.
There is comfort in knowing that it was God's decision, not the people's. That's because God could look at the man's heart. Who knows, maybe he had plans that would lead hundreds or even thousands astray if he was left to his own decisions. Maybe he was planning to make child sacrifices to Molech. Who knows? Well, God did.
So, it's truly a unique story. There's no indication (that I'm aware of) that prescribes death for picking up sticks outside of this situation. This is a story that describes but does not prescribe this outcome.


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Democratic Governance Facility - Success Stories
The Democratic Governance Facility (DGF) was set up in 2011 by seven countries and the European Union to foster good governance, rule of law and democracy in Uganda. The Austrian Development Agency (ADA) has so far contributed 2.5 million Euros and was also entrusted to manage the EU's contributions to the programme (11 million Euros in two phases). More than 80 state and non-state partner organisations have benefited from the DGF so far, reaching millions of Ugandan citizens with messages about civic awareness, human rights and accountability. Partner organisations also supported vulnerable women and men in seeking legal redress and helped to recover misappropriated funds from corrupt individuals in different institutions. A new 5-year phase has started at the beginning of 2018. Building on previous success, it will emphasize knowledge sharing and collaboration between partners and increase the focus on gender equality and youth engagement.


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- Home
- Departments
- History
An Early History of the Township of Pine
"The Township of Pine was established in 1796. At that time it included that part of Allegheny County north of the Ohio and Allegheny rivers and west of the boundary between Jones' and Cunningham's districts. Its original limits comprised the whole of eleven current townships and parts of three others.
After the establishment of Ohio Township in 1803, Pine Township included much of Jones' and Douglass' districts that were situated in Allegheny County including all of Ross, Reserve, McCandless, Pine and Allegheny City, and parts of Richland, Hampton and Shaler Townships. With the excision of McCandless Township, the area of the township was established at its current size of approximately 17 square miles.
Thomas Rodgers has generally been regarded as the first settler within the present limits of Pine, having settled here in 1796. His son William and his grandsons George, William and Thomas all lived in and died in Pine except Thomas who died elsewhere. Samuel Beatty was also one of the early settlers in Pine.
The old Franklin Road was opened through the township early in its development and gave the first impetus to settlement.
Wexford, one of the oldest post-villages in this part of the county, was established in 1828.
Pine Creek, Little Pine Creek and several branches of the Connoquenessing rise in the township.
The farming land was of fair quality and farming was the sole occupation of the early settlers.
At the turn of the century, there were six churches in the township, with the oldest being Cross Roads Presbyterian, established in 1827 and still active today. The first house of worship was a log cabin, with a brick church erected in 1843 and rebuilt in 1860. St. Alphonsius Roman Catholic parish was established in 1864. Other churches included the West Union United Presbyterian Church organized in 1842, the Far View Baptist Church established in 1879, the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church and the Mt. Pleasant Presbyterian Church.
The first school opened in 1800 in the home of Francis Deery.
In 1860 the population was 1,021; in 1870, 718 and in 1880 was 773. The present population, taken from the 2010 census is 11,497."
Excerpt from the "History of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania" written in 1889.
Further Resources
For more information on the history of the Township of Pine, the Historic Committee published a book entitled "Township of Pine 1796 - 1996," which may be purchased at the Township office:
230 Pearce Mill Road
Wexford, PA 15090


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12 a.m. "Wrestling with Satan" – Documentary
(2009, Wild Eye Releasing) This modest documentary attempts to examine the inner workings of the Christian Wrestling Federation (CWF) which uses farm-league wrestling bouts to preach evangelical beliefs. Those watching for the purely voyeuristic/freakshow elements – like beefy grapplers frothing at the mouth over the coming apocalypse – will be well rewarded, but the picture suggests greater depth when it focuses on the machinations of CWF founder Rob Vaughn, who makes Vince McMahon seem the picture of honesty and restraint. Less of the latter and more of the former (as well as why Vaughn and the league parted ways in recent years) might've made for a more substantive picture; as it stands, it's an interesting sketch of a strident and unusual subculture. The disc includes several CWF matches taken from home video sources.
2:30 a.m. "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons: Spectrum Strikes Back" – Science Fiction/ Children's TV
(1967, Shout! Factory/Timeless Media) '60s Supermarionation adventure pitting Earth special agents, led by the square-jawed, indestructible Captain Scarlet of Spectrum Intelligence, against the Mysterons, evil space computers with the power to create exact doubles of people and objects to carry out their world domination plans. In "Spectrum Strikes Back," Scarlet and his Spectrum cohorts meet with the World President and scientists at a hidden base below an African game reserve to review new weapons in the fight against the Mysterons. But Captain Black – a former Spectrum agent now under the aliens' mind control – has infiltrated the mission and sent a duplicate of Spectrum officer Indigo (who, for some reason, is handling waitstaff duties at the conference) to steal the weapons and kill Scarlet and his allies. If that sounds convoluted for a '60s kids show with marionettes, it is, but "Captain Scarlet" was always the complicated black sheep of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Supermarionation stable. Darker in tone and plotting than its predecessors – the death toll in "Spectrum" alone is high for kid or grown-up TV – the series also featured puppets that were considered more "lifelike" than the Thunderbirds or "Stingray," with correctly proportioned bodies and more realistic movement. The gambit didn't work: the new puppets were more difficult to properly manipulate, and as a result, often looked static (or dead), and the stories, which frequently hinged on Scarlet's ability to escape any life-threatening danger, were considered pale retreads of other Supermarionation adventures. Viewed with 20/20 hindsight, "Captain Scarlet" is still an ambitious misfire, but the level of special effects – including the puppets – is impressive, and the show's sleek, futuristic design, which imbues everything from sets to the characters' striking fashion, is delicious eye candy (Barry Gray's brassy score qualifies as pure ear candy). Shout/Timeless' 4-disc set includes the entire series run as well as commentaries by Anderson and interviews with members of the writing and production staff.
3:30 a.m. "Salvage 1: Golden Orbit" – Action/Adventure
(1979, Sony Choice Collection) Enterprising junkman Harry Broderick (Andy Griffith), having built and piloted a homemade rocket to the Moon to reclaim abandoned Apollo Program tech, now sets his sights on a downed telecommunications satellite plated with gold. The CIA, in the form of Richard Jaeckel, plans to block Harry's space salvage dream, but there's a bigger and more immediate problem at hand: Harry's partner, astronaut Skip (Joel Higgins, "Silver Spoons"), is in deep trouble when his space station assignment goes dangerously awry. Though presented as a sort of TV-movie, "Golden Orbit" is actually a two-part episode from the short-lived "Salvage 1" series, which aired briefly on ABC in 1979. Griffith's folksy presence as the affable, enterprising junkman does much to preserve audience interest in the project, which might be tested by the rudimentary special effects and well-worn plotting. Sony Choice also offers "Hard Water," another two-part episode, with Harry and Co. engaged in a particularly prescient adventure: towing an iceberg to Southern California in order to solve a water shortage (!).
5 a.m. "Hello Pop!" (from "Classic Shorts from the Dream Factory, Volume 3: Howard, Fine, Howard") – Comedy
(1933, Warner Archives Collection) Theatrical producer Ted Healy (played by Ted Healy) frets up a storm on the opening night of his big musical show, and for good reason: his three "children," played by Healy's then-vaudeville partners, The Three Stooges (here, Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard), are loose in the theater. This two-color Technicolor short from MGM was considered lost after the surviving print was destroyed in the 1967 vault fire; however, a print was discovered in 2013 in an Australian private collection and restored by WAC. As a piece of Stooges history, "Hello Pop!" is priceless, but as a comedy short, it's for Howard-Fine-Howard completists only. The Stooges are stuck in sidekick gear, serving largely as moving targets for the irate Healy, whose hothead persona comes across as more boorish than smart-alecky. The Howards and Fine do get one amusing-alarming moment away from Healy when the musical's female lead sends them into a manic fit with an innocent kiss, but the team truly hit their stride after they left Healy the following year to begin their legendary shorts for Columbia. Also of note are the short's two lavish musical numbers, both culled from earlier films: the "Moon Ballet" number from the unreleased "March of Time" (1930) and Irving Berlin's "I'm Sailing on a Sunbeam" from "It's a Great Life" (1929). "Hello Pop!" is one of six MGM shorts featuring Healy and/or various iterations of the Stooges on Volume 3 of the "Classic Shorts" series; also included is "Roast-Beef and Movies" (1934), which features Curly with comedian George Givot and Bobby Callahan, and the Stooges' screen debut in "Nertsery Rhymes" (1933).


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In 1906 The four masted steel baroque sailing vessel sailed its last. It was on its way to the Columbia and it got stuck there. No one was killed. It has been sitting there decaying more each year. Soon it will be gone entirely.
We arrived just as the tide was moving in. Next time, I want to visit it at sunset on a clear day at low tide and actually be able to touch it.
I photographed while my husband played with the kids and dogs. We were only able to enjoy the spot for about twenty minutes before it began to really rain. We forgot the towels to wipe off the muddy dogs and tracked in more dirt to our already muddy, dented old van. We did remember spare clothes, though, as we were all wet. I took many of my photographs with a rain cover for my camera which was awkward to maneuver. Stil, I got the pictures I wanted, and the kids had a moment to run around before we packed up and headed next to Astoria. My husband grumbled about spending more time in the car than at the beach. I will take what I can get.


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It seems as though I'm not the only writer who visited Newgrange this year. Jane Smiley, a better and more successful writer, did as well and wrote about it for the New York Times (I just wrote about it for my blog):
Newgrange is a popular destination, and tickets are first come first served. It is called a "passage mound" or "passage tomb," but what is it really? If we are lucky, what we get when we visit an ancient site is a sense of the intelligence that designed and built the structure even if we might not understand what belief system they were acting under. Indeed, perhaps Newgrange is a giant calendar, a giant clock, a giant belief system, built without mortar, lost and present at the same time.


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Hollywood is a small town. You see the same people again and again. Like today, we sat next to Corey Haim at the pool exactly as we did one year ago. Corey, if he was before your time like he was mine, was a child star in the 80's, and he did movies with Corey Feldman. Haim starred in THE LOST BOYS and in my opinion had the best lines in the movie- he rocked it! Sadly, he is like the child actor's cautionary tale… big success, then drugs, leading to being broke, and no real transition from child star to roles for the adult Corey. When I watch LOST BOYS, I see such a talented actor… but that doesn't mean a lot in this town.
I happened to see Corey while visiting my sister. She still lives in the apartment we moved into when we first came to L.A. It is a complex called Oakwood, and almost everyone new to L.A. has stayed here while trying to get settled. It is big, with manicured grounds, pools, tennis courts, and furnished apartments overlooking the Warner Bros. and Universal studios… perfect for newbies. It also hosts a 'Child Actor Program' during Pilot Season, and caters to families with industry speakers, meet-and-greets with agents, and academic tutors. When we landed at THE Oakwood, I thought it was heaven- palm trees, sun, and an immediate group of girls just my age that I could hang with by the pool and walk our little purse puppies all day long. The girls I met were great and we all bonded and supported each other wishing the one running to an audition "LUCK!" and we meant it! We compared stories of being in our hometowns with kids who didn't understand what we were about… like even tho you may be on a national commercial, you are the most hated girl at school. I loved how my new friends understood me. The moms of the child actors are a different story. While some were very nice, others were the nightmare version of the sterotypical stage moms.
My first week at Oakwood, I met the resident who has lived here the longest- 36 years!!! I couldn't place her accent, but loved how she called me 'dahling' and walked her chihuahua at a snail's pace. She seemed to know everyone, and since I was new, she cornered me by the vending machines and told me her life story. Short version, she worked in some way in the "pictures" forever and loved Hollywood. She told me about working with Marilyn Monroe who was in this woman's words, "the sweetest and saddest girl in the world." I found myself thinking of an Eagles song my dad had me listen to called "Hotel California." Ms. Oakwood had checked out but had never left.
I could see how this town could suck you in and decades could pass while waiting for your big break. I thought about this when I saw Corey Haim almost exactly one year to the day… both of us in the same place. I have had a great year of adventures, and I wondered about him… so I did what normal people do.. I looked him up on IMDb. Happily, it seems he has had a insanely productive year with may projects in post-production. It just goes to show that you never know what is going to happen in this town of make-believe, and so, it's best to just take it day to day and not too seriously. Still, I'm going back to the Oakwood pool this time next year, and I hope that Corey is there… I think he in a weird way… Corey Haim is my good luck charm.


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Department Of One Size Does Not Fit All
When it comes to giving grieving advice, the best (as in, most helpful) might be:
Speak for yourself.
Hardly profound…but…really. Share your experiences and perspectives if asked to do so, but remember, they are just that. *Your* experiences and perspectives are not necessarily prescriptive for others. Preface your remarks with something along the lines of, "I can't speak to everyone's situation; this is what happened to me/my family, and this is what was helpful to me/us, and this is what was not…."
I have been reading up on grief experienced by families who have lost an adult child to addiction – a subject with which my extended family has had the misfortune to become acquainted with. In several online articles and forums, I came across three similar stories of parents telling how
* news of their child's death was greeted by silence from both friends and family;
* such silence was painful to these parents as they grieved their loss;
* people later justified their silence with, "I honestly didn't know what to say; I was afraid I'd say the wrong thing, and hurt your feelings…."
The similarity in these three stories was in the response of the parents to those people who explained or justified their silences. I am summarizing and paraphrasing their responses here, by quoting one particular parent:
" 'Hurting our feelings?' That's impossible!"
"It is *impossible* to hurt *anyone* who has lost a child – we have already suffered the worst hurt imaginable.
Say something, anything, to acknowledge our loss."
Her adamancy on this matter practically screamed from the text. And I thought, "Well…certainly, she's an expert on her own feelings, but why is she speaking in such absolutes – why is she presuming to speak for "anyone" (read: everyone) who has lost a child?"
Also, in several of the stories I read which both preceded and followed the It-is-impossible-to-hurt-us parent's story, other parents – those whom she had labeled as-impossible-to-hurt – spoke of how they *had* been further hurt, by unintentionally but nevertheless painful and/or thoughtless comments from friends and family, neighbors and co-workers, doctors and law enforcement officers. Some people's attempts at comfort came off as giving unsolicited advice to the grieving parents – often in the form of tacit or even overt religious proselytizing – or as passing judgement regarding the deceased, whose death was spoken of as inevitable ("his own fault;" "a foreseeable consequence of her poor choices") and therefore less shocking than losing a child in other ways, such as via auto accidents, illness, even homicide or suicide.
Moiself doesn't want to add to humanity's burden of of consistently and compassionately understanding when and how to comfort loved ones who've suffered these kinds of devastating, personal losses. It's complicated, to say the least, for both sides – the giving and receiving of condolences. As one poet friend so precisely and evocatively wondered,
"Many have traveled here, so why are there no better maps?" [1]
Better maps, indeed. Someday, we may have them. Until then, speak to and about someone's loss with love and kindness. When it comes to giving advice, speak for yourself. And only yourself. And *listen* to the bereaved, as if your life depended on it.
* * *
Department Of Is That An Infectious Parasite In Your Brain
Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?
"Toxoplasma gondii exerts a strange sort of mind control on rodents: Once infected with the brain parasite, they seem to lose their fear of cats and become more likely to get eaten. When they are, the microbe can make its way into the feline intestine to reproduce. But a new study argues that T. gondii's effects on rodents aren't cat specific; instead, the parasite simply makes mice more eager to explore and less fearful of any species that might gobble them up."
(Science, "Brain parasite may strip away rodents' fear of predators—not just of cats."
Given my previous advice, I shouldn't speak for my entire species, so I'll just say that moiself has no desire to gobble up a mouse or any rodent. However, I recently saw a mouse infected with (I'm guessing) toxoplasmosis.
I can't think of what else might explain its unusual, survival-fail behavior. Oh, and if you've never heard about the life cycle of the toxoplasma gondii, treat yourself to a brief overview of arguably one of Mother Nature's strangest, most face-palming, biological phenomena.
Dateline: Tuesday, 7 am-ish, leaving my house via the garage, to go for a walk. The sun is not quite up; as I walk down the driveway toward the sidewalk I notice something scurrying in the front yard, to the right, about five feet from me, in the dirt underneath our redbud tree. I approach the Scurrying Something, and see a mouse.
The mouse also sees me. Instead of freezing in place or fleeing, it raises up on its hind feet and looks up, its beady little eyes staring right at me. It begins to run in circles, first towards then away from me, and makes little leaps into the air and prances about, as if it is trying to attract my attention. Is this a batshit crazy mouse, I'm thinking, or is this behavior trying to distract me away from, say, its nest that is nearby? [2] Or…is this a horny mouse who's lookin' for love in all the wrong places, and it thinks I smell like cat pee? I'll admit that my regular shower schedule has lapsed during the COVID quarantine months, but hey – it's not THAT bad.
"Toxoplasma gondii …can only reproduce within the bodies of cats, and in mice, the mind-controlling parasite has evidently evolved to make mice unafraid of felines and even…sexually attracted to the odor of cat urine…."
( "Mind-Control Parasite Kills Mice's Fear of Cats Permanently,"
livescience.com )
Moving right along….
I'm bundled up against the 30˚ temp and fumble through my layers of clothing, trying to get my cellphone out of my pants pocket. I want to videotape this mouse's interpretive dance or whatever it is, and show it to my offspring, both of whom were biology majors and worked with mice in undergraduate research projects. Just as I get my phone and find the video mode, the mouse scampers toward me, which gives me pause (uh, what if it's rabid…and is that even a mouse-thing? [3] ). Manic Mouse gets to within less than a foot of my foot, does a little pirouette, then makes a beeline for our pear tree, which is about four feet away, by the sidewalk. I follow the mouse; it resumes its acrobatic antics around the pear tree's trunk and underneath the surrounding azalea bushes. The combination of the darkness, the rapidity of the mouse's movements, and my less-than-stellar cinematography skills makes for a poor video. I bid the mouse adieu and go for my walk, pondering, among other metaphysical wonders:
Why isn't it pronounced, tox-o-plas- MOUSE -is?
* * *
Department Of Just Wondering
#589 In A Never-Ending Series
Why do our big toes *not* have their own separate, special name? We have a unique moniker for the pollex, the short, thick first digit of the human hand: we call it the thumb, thus distinguishing it from the other fingers. But we have ten toes, and they're all just…toes. Okay, the first ones are the big toes, but, c'mon, what kind of pansy-ass distinction is that?
Is it because, unlike many other primates, humans' big toes are not opposable, and so the big toes get no respectable label?
I'm open to suggestions.
* * *
Department Of What Happens To Your Brain When You When You Read Celebrity News
Before You Go To Bed
The news in question was someone's Facebook posting of a Twitter announcement, from an actor, of said actor's newly-claimed [4] trans status. The announcement included, of course, the customary pronouns preference:
"… I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they…"
I read this before dozing off ~ 10 pm. Later, in the literal wee hours of the morning, I was awakened by the not-unfamiliar sounds of MH, getting out of bed to go to the bathroom but being not-quite-awake and forgetting where he was (read: he'd walked into a wall and was feeling around for the bathroom door).
Moiself, sitting upright:
You're in Hillsboro. And…
I stopped at "and." But, honest-to-the-gods-whose-existences-I-refute, I almost added, [5]
"…and your pronouns are he/his/him."
* * *
Department Of Speaking Of Gender [6]
A Firefighter Is Killed In California Wildfire Sparked By Gender Reveal Party
"… The problem with gender reveals has grown so out of control, the woman who popularized them begged parents to "stop having these stupid parties" on social media. The most recent fire in California was started when clouds of blue smoke for a boy preceded the flames, which the expectant parents tried to put out with bottled water. In 2017, an Arizona gender-reveal party explosion started a wildfire that burned about 47,000 acres."
( "After Gender Reveal Celebration Sparks Fire, Some Say The Parties Have Gotten Out Of Hand," Here and Now, 9-9-20 )
On one end of the scale of Humans Who Are Concerned About Such Things®, there's a small but vocal crowd which insists, "Gender is just a construct." At the other end are those for whom gender is such defining human characteristic that they cause wildfires by trying to announce to an ask-us-if-we-care world the sex of their not-even-born precious snowflake baby.
Maybe y'all are ahead of me on this, but moiself was gob-smacked to discover, which I did only recently, that more than one gender reveal party has started a wildfire.
To all future, even halfway serious considerers of holding a "gender reveal" gathering of any kind, please consider this: the only thing you will be revealing is probably no secret to those who know you:
"Congratulate us, we're having a _____
(humanoid offspring of narcissistic morons) ! "
Gender is not "just" a construct, if only "just" by the fact that for some folks, determining if a developing fetus is male or female gets their (non-gender-fluid) panties in a knot.
"Just-a-construct;" "the end all and be all of life." Perhaps these gender perspectives are the opposite side of the same coin… or, the adjacent sides of the same tetrahedron, considering the complexity of the issue? [7]
When I was pregnant with son K and then daughter Belle, our neighbors gave a baby shower/party for moiself and MH. Me being, well, me, my dear, tolerant friends knew better than to host a women/moms only event, and the guys/dads truly seemed to enjoy being included in the festivities. MH and I dared to wade through the murky waters of Being A Gracious Guest Etiquette ® by letting the party hosts know in advance that we did not want anything "gendered" – please, none of that pink or blue crap swag. [8] MH made it known that, in particular, any of those dreadful baby bows, which were popular at the time (mid-1990s) would be, how you say, not appreciated by the mother-to be. [9]
From what I've seen lately, those ridiculous bows are making a comeback. People: why are y'all doing this to your girl-childs?
The first time I saw a girl-baby with one of those forehead bands, I felt so…dispirited. Yet another reminder of how early it starts, for females: a few days out of the V-shute and the world wants to start decorating her already?
I queried the first sets of parental units I saw whom had accessorized their child thusly; I asked in (what I thought was) an open-minded, even-toned manner, about what the forehead bow-thingy was for? Each parental unit answered in the same way:
Gender-Crazed Parental Units:
"Oh, isn't it cute?! That's so people know our baby is a girl!"
Moiself :
"Oh…okay…well…your family and friends already know – I assume you've told them – your baby's name, and that she's a girl, right?"
"Yes, but other people don't. And with most little babies, you can't tell by looking at their faces whether it's a boy or a girl. "
"And it is important for 'other people,' including strangers, to know your child's sex, because…?"
Because it's never too early to slap on those expectations and assumptions, and treat baby boys and baby girls differently from the get-go, before they can even sit up.
* * *
Department Of Partridge Of The Week
This week's Partridge in our pear tree: Yeah, it's a repeat of last week. Because he didn't get his full shift in.
* * *
Pun For The Day
Yesterday, a clown held the door open for me – it was such a nice jester!
* * *
May evil clown laughter never haunt your dreams;
May you nonetheless find a way to "encourage her;"
May you come up with a really clever name for your big toe; [10
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Leslea Smith, from her poem "Terra Incognita," ( Cirque literary journal v. 3 #2 ).
[2] And if the mouse is nesting outdoors at this time of the year then it is a crazy mouse, as its offspring will not survive the cold.
[3] Nope. Small rodents "almost never" get rabies and are not a transmission source to humans, according to the CDC.
[4] I'm guessing; thus, the need for an announcement.
[5] I should have, but didn't want to wake him, or moiself , up any more.
[6] Which I sorta kinda was here (enough to pass it off for a segue), and definitely was back here
[7] Or, perhaps I need a different metaphor.
[8] I had amniocentesis with both of pregnancies; MH and I knew, well in advance of any baby showers, K's and Belle's respective sex…but I can't remember whom we told. I know we kept the names private until birth – which we'd been advised to do by a wise friend: "If someone doesn't like the name you've chosen and they think there's a gnat's ass of a chance that they can change your mind – and they always think there is a chance that they can change your mind – they will try, so don't tell anyone the name until it's on the birth certificate."
[9] Can you say, sling-shotted into orbit around Mars?
[10] And, it should go without saying, share it with moiself .


text:
Aaron from Shuttle was kind enough to send us along some pictures of their upcoming Car PC which they are showcasing on their virtual CeBIT website. It measures just 279(D) x 230(W) x 70(H)mm.
The "CarPC", an integrated device with a special designed power supply and thermo technology, features Shuttle's cross field design. Using car power supply, the system will auto shutdown after turning off the ignition key without losing data or system crash. Also, Shuttle's exclusive "fin flake chassis" radiate heat effectively. CarPC is not only for car use but also for difficult environments.
The interesting thing is that the CAR PC will be powered by your vehicles battery (11.2 - 32 volts). When you turn off your vehicle, the system will shut down properly without just powering off and hence save you from losing any data.
It will be based around the Intel 945GM and ICH7M chipsets and using mobile parts such as Intel's Core Duo T2400, notebook hard drive and SO-DIMM notebook memory. For onboard video it uses the Intel GMA950 and sound is provided by 7.1 High Definition also from Intel.


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21.0000 — 26.0000
Two ports are better than one! The UL Certified fast charging wall adapter features a rubberized finish in Fabrizios signature colorway. Capable of fast charging multiple devices at a time, the wall adapter features built in USB Type-C (20W) and USB Type-A (18W) outputs to charge a variety of devices. . . SPECTECH POWER PRODUCTS HAVE A ONE YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY FROM DATE OF PURCHASE.
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Customize your product based on the available color options and decorating methods. If you need more information, simply add this product to the Wish List and we will get back to you with answers.


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The one emotion every newly-minted art school graduate experiences is anxiety. Can I really make it? What do I do now? All my friends are getting jobs making $50,000 a year. Where does that leave me? I'll be lucky to get a job delivering pizza. I graduated from the University of Michigan School of Art back in 1985, ready to take [...]Continue Reading
The prophet Ahmilahk was a man, just like every other man. And, like every other man, he was the endless, eternal flame. What made him unique was that, from the moment of his birth, he felt his duality and believed in it. The prophet was born into a universe drenched in fear. Proud men feared humiliation. Careful men feared being in error. [...]Continue Reading
I set myself the goal of trying to pull off a commercial piece using the approach I've been exploring in my personal work (see "Ogygia", October 2nd, 2010), and this is the result. I'm happy with it, but it took me WAY longer than it should have. The issue for me is that, in my personal work, I'm not starting [...]Continue Reading
One of the things that always surprises me about doing Iron Empires stories is how much background work is required to build a consistent world. Every time I think I'm done, I sit down to paint a page and am confronted by something I don't know. "What does the inside of a Comoran spaceship look like? Is it ornately decorated [...]Continue Reading
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Time is money : supermarkets, suppliers and working-time
Newsome, Kirsty and Thompson, Paul and Commander, Johanna (2010) Time is money : supermarkets, suppliers and working-time. In: Work, Employment and Society Conference 2010, 2010-09-07 - 2010-09-09. (Unpublished)Full text not available in this repository.Request a copy
Retail supply chains are a central feature of contemporary service-based economies. For supermarkets to meet their profit and expansion targets the creation of a reliable and cost-efficient network of supply and distribution organisations is paramount. This paper explores the organisation of working-time within the supermarket supply chain. The paper draws on qualitative research evidence from three case-studies within four supermarket product lines notably; distribution and warehousing, biscuits and bakery, fish processing and fruit and vegetable processing. The research highlights that to ensure the 'perpetual motion' of supplying goods to store, workers within the supply chain are confronted in a number of ways. To guarantee the organisational flexibility and responsiveness necessary to meet this sporadic demand supply organisations are increasingly focussing on how working hours and work allocation is organised. The evidence highlights that the unpredictable demand for goods from the supermarkets dictates greater temporalities of labour within the supply chain. The paper will indicate that low skilled and monotonous work may be typical within the supermarket supply chain, but its intensity is increasingly affected by the pressure exerted by the supermarkets. Satisfying these demands can be also seen in the patterns of working time with long hours, extended shifts, compulsory over-time and porous working days evident in all product lines with supply organisations increasingly resourced by migrant and temporary workers. Theoretically the paper examines how the nature of working-time within the supply chain is increasingly shaped by the requirements of the dominant customer beyond the immediate point of production.
ORCID iDsNewsome, Kirsty, Thompson, Paul and Commander, Johanna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1629-1917;
Item type: Conference or Workshop Item(Paper) ID code: 45912 Dates:DateEventSeptember 2010Published Keywords: Management. Industrial Management, Commerce, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Business and International Management Subjects: Social Sciences > Industries. Land use. Labor > Management. Industrial Management
Social Sciences > Commerce
Department: Strathclyde Business School > Work, Organisation and Employment Depositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 14 Nov 2013 10:21 Last modified: 18 Jan 2023 13:12 URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/45912


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COMO Point Yamu — a contemporary oceanside resort perched above the Andaman Sea in Phuket — is excited to launch the new 'Phang Nga Bay Experience', which includes a seven-night stay in one of the resort's iconic villas, as well as a private Champagne cruise taking guests to the heart of the dramatic Phang Nga landscape.
Phang Nga Bay is one of Thailand's most prized national parks, located between southern Thailand's mainland and the island of Phuket — 20 minutes from COMO Point Yamu by private transfer. With this new experience, guests will step into the resort's Capricorn II yacht and sail away on a four-hour cruise exploring the bay's striking limestone cliffs and rock formations that jut out of the turquoise waters.
The cruise will also take in the 40 small islands that sprinkle the bay, each cloaked in forest and dotted with mysterious sea caves and hidden lagoons. Among these islands is Koh Tapu, or 'James Bond Island', so called after appearing as the island hideout of the villain Scaramanga in the Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun. Guests can explore this iconic setting, best viewed as the sun descends over the Andaman Sea.
Back at the Paola Navone-designed resort, guests will spend seven nights in one of COMO Point Yamu's three top villas, each with spectacular ocean views. The three-bedroom Andaman Pool Villa features an enormous infinity pool, with spacious indoor and outdoor dining areas and a kitchen; the Point Yamu Pool Villa is set across two floors, with two king bedrooms and a twin; and the COMO Pool Villa has four bedrooms, with a large ocean-facing infinity pool. Each stay will also include personal butler service and daily personalised villa breakfasts, as well as opportunities for relaxation and wellness at the resort's nurturing COMO Shambhala Retreat.
Andy Kunz, General Manager at COMO Point Yamu, says: "We are really excited to be offering our guests a seven-night stay, allowing them to get to know Phuket in a more personal, in-depth way. Our new Phang Nga Bay Champagne cruise will add another layer, allowing guests to discover even more about the area's interesting history, while taking in one of Thailand's most beautiful scenes."
The Phang Nga Experience is available from November 1st 2018 to October 31st 2019.
The experience includes:
Seven nights in the Andaman Pool Villa, Point Yamu Villa or COMO Pool Villa
Half-day Champagne cruise around Phang Nga Bay
Morning villa basket of fresh pastries, fruits and juice
Daily breakfast at La Sirena restaurant
Return airport transfers from Phuket airport
Bottle of Champagne on arrival
Seasonal local fruits (replenished each day)
Complimentary private bar with soft drinks and local beer
Personal butler service
The experience is priced at THB 324,800 for seven nights in an Andaman Pool Villa, THB 367,500 in a Point Yamu Villa and THB 437,500 in a COMO Pool Villa. Please note: prices may fluctuate in high season.


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the multitude's eternal clap
mattias tello
We all saw the oblivion
We all embraced it
We all fought for our ladies
We all died.
The only path we had to choose was the one to Massive Mental Origami
Rolling per Graves seeking a smoke
Some of us seeking for coffee
Or books.
Our way to find everything we're looking for
Is walking around the desert halls
Wondering why the world is like that.
Why there are buildings immensely tall,
Why is the oil scatting through those non-suicide nor-younger minds?
I wanna see the sunrise in Vermont
Lighting a smoke, thinking on my mother
Listening the multitude's eternal claps that come to me
And that I hear but do not recognize,
so I watch the south of the moon.
The moon
The moon is white, they said
And it is not made of cheese
But my friends keep thinking about it
And we all saw the moon
We saw the conquers' soup in a crater of the moon.
The crater wasn't white
It wasn't blue,
But I was
And I put my hand in the air and the teacher back then
Made me leave the classroom
I saw several islands named after Santiago
Joined by trains that ride the ocean
Fearing, hearing the cataclysm's rumor rising from the whirlpool
You, my lady, were shaking in the old farm with two beds
We hugged
And we both agreed we should sleep together
Your deep eyes hoping me to say
Everything is going to be ok
That I would die before anything happens
In the bus back home
I was asking god to make it quick
For you don't take me as
A liar.
more by mattias tello