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Pioneers for responsibly farmed pangasius recognized
Posted on 21 November 2012
Vietnam's pangasius sector will achieve its target to certify ten per cent of the country's pangasius production under the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) standard by the end of 2012.Vietnam's pangasius sector will achieve its target to certify ten per cent of the country's pangasius production under the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) standard by the end of 2012. This achievement was recognized during an event in Ho Chi Minh City today to share progress across the sector and commend certified Vietnamese pangasius producers.
In 2010, WWF, the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) and the Vietnam Fisheries Society (VINAFIS) signed a Cooperation Agreement to support efforts to improve environmental and social responsibility in the pangasius industry in order to achieve ASC certification. Parties to the Cooperation Agreement committed to supporting pangasius producers to achieve 100 per cent of farmed pangasius production for export under one of several certification schemes by 2015, with 50 per cent of this under the ASC by 2015, and 10 per cent by 2012.
About 30 of Vietnam's biggest pangasius producers are supported by the parties to the Cooperation Agreement; WWF, VASEP, VINAFIS – and in close cooperation with the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV), Anova and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) – in their efforts to achieve ASC certification.
Event applauds producers achieving ASC certificationThe event - organized by the Vietnam Directorate of Fishery (D-Fish), VASEP, VINAFIS and WWF, in close cooperation with IDH and SNV - brought together responsible pangasius producers and international buyers to applaud producers achieving ASC certification and to sign purchase agreements.
"These pioneering companies are setting an example for the wider industry. If the market responds appropriately, a major shift of the industry to responsible farming methods will be triggered," said Dr. Nguyen Huu Dzung, VASEP Vice President. "Adopting responsible practices will also increase the future sustainability of the industry in Vietnam, protecting income and employment for the long term."
Corporations including Vinh Hoan, Hung Vuong, NTACO and Hoang Long, recently achieved ASC certification and are among the biggest pangasius producers in the Mekong Delta. The ASC certification guarantees that the pangasius is farmed in a responsible manner with minimal negative impact on the environment, farm staff and surrounding communities.
Among the producers attending the event, Huong Vuong Corporation was the first producer to express its commitment to ASC, and recently achieved ASC certification for its farm in Phu Tuc in the Mekong Delta.
"Complying with the ASC standard is not only environmentally responsible, it's also good for business as it opens doors to new markets in Europe and the US," said Mr. Duong Ngoc Minh, Chairman of the Management Board of Hung Vuong Corporation. "With ASC-labeled products we can grow our business while assuring consumers they're buying a responsibly farmed product."
Most of Vietnam's pangasius farms are located in the Mekong Delta provinces of An Giang, Dong Thap and Can Tho. Farms vary in size from less than 1 hectare in size, to more than 100 ha. The sector is a major provider of employment in these provinces, particularly in the processing plants that fillet and freeze pangasius for export.
The fastest growing food production system in the world."Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production system in the world, and its rapid expansion has not come without impacts," said Chris Ninnes, ASC's CEO. "ASC certification recognises and rewards farms that are following responsible practices. This includes conservation of water resources, no misuse of antibiotics, responsible use of feed, and behaving in a socially responsible manner."
More than 90 per cent of world exports of pangasius is sourced from Vietnam. In 2011, Vietnam's pangasius export value reached USD1.85 billion representing 1 per cent of GDP - making it an important sector for Vietnam.
"Farmed seafood already accounts for about half of all the fish and shellfish we eat," said Jose Villalon, WWF's Vice President of Aquaculture. "When done responsibly, aquaculture presents a solution to meeting the increasing food demand of a growing global population. WWF applauds producers in Vietnam who have achieved ASC certification and we are committed to working with industry leaders eager to embrace sustainability."


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Used Car - 2005 Honda Accord EX V-6 Sedan AT with XM Radio in Hamilton, Oh
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About This 2005 Honda Accord EX V-6 Sedan AT with XM Radio
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EX V-6 Sedan AT with XM Radio
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2005 Honda Accord ReviewThis car review is specific to this model, not the actual vehicle for sale.
New gas-electric model brings power and economy.
The Honda Accord may be the best midsize car sold in America today. That's in spite of fierce competition and the introduction of several all-new models for 2005. The Accord simply does everything well. It may not be best in class in every single area, but we can't think of anything it does poorly. It's available as a four-door sedan or two-door coupe. Each offers a choice of four-cylinder or V6 engine and there's a range of interior trim levels. All those choices make the Accord suitable for many different types of drivers. For these reasons and others, the Honda Accord continues to be one of the best-selling cars in the U.S.
Honda redesigned and re-engineered the Accord for 2003. The big news for 2005 is the introduction of the Accord Hybrid, which achieves excellent fuel economy and generates almost no emissions. Even more impressive, the Hybrid delivers improved performance as well, thanks to its hybrid gas-electric powertrain. And, no, you don't have to plug it in.
The Accord sedans combine high technology and high quality with everyday economy of operation and keen attention to detail. The popular LX and EX models are terrific cars with comfort and convenience features that make for great daily drivers. Order the leather interior, and the EX becomes an affordable luxury sedan. The four-cylinder VTEC engine is powerful and responsive, delivering strong acceleration performance for passing. The Accord is also available with a powerful V6 engine, which adds another level of sports appeal.
A gorgeous coupe is available, featuring sporty styling that's unique from the sedan. The LX Coupe starts at less than $20,000 and makes for a quick, no-hassle, high-quality, sporty, two-door coupe that's great for commuting. Add the V6 and leather and it's an executive expressmobile for fast trackers. For enthusiast drivers, there's the Accord Coupe EX V-6 MT, equipped with the V6 and a close-ratio six-speed manual gearbox that will blow your preconceived notions about the Accord right off the road. If that isn't enough, a Factory Performance Package is available for the V6 Coupe.
Safety has been enhanced for 2005: All Accords are equipped with side-impact and curtain airbags. Otherwise the Accord lineup is relatively unchanged for 2005.
The Honda Accord comes in nearly three dozen combinations when all the engines, body styles, transmissions and trim levels are taken into account. Choosing one is easier than it may sound. The first choice is to decide whether you want a two-door coupe or four-door sedan. The second choice is whether you want a V6 or four-cylinder engine and whether you want a manual or automatic transmission. The third choice is whether you want cloth or leather upholstery.
Sedans are available in DX, LX, and EX trim. The DX ($16,195) comes with a 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine. Buyers can choose the standard five-speed manual or a five-speed automatic transmission ($16,995). The LX ($19,675) and EX ($22,100) sedans add a higher level of standard equipment. The EX is available with leather upholstery, a DVD navigation system, and XM Satellite Radio at extra cost. The LX V-6 ($23,800) and EX V-6 ($26,700) sedans come standard with the V6, automatic and more luxury equipment. Leather is standard on the EX V-6.
New for 2005 is the Accord Hybrid sedan. The Hybrid combines a V6 gasoline engine and an electric motor to provide significantly more power: 255 horsepower vs. 240 for the gasoline-only V6. It also gets substantially better fuel economy: 30/37 miles per gallon City/Highway vs. 21/30 for the standard V6.
Coupes are available in LX ($19,775) and EX ($23,000) trim and come standard with the four-cylinder engine and five-speed manual transmission. An automatic transmission is available. The LX V-6 coupe ($23,900) comes with the V6 and automatic. The EX V-6 coupe ($26,800) is a performance-oriented model, and comes with either the five-speed automatic or a six-speed manual transmission as a no-cost option; it also has leather seating surfaces.
Six-speed coupes also come with a cross-brace between the front shock towers. The new Factory Performance Package for the EX Coupe V6 combines a lowered suspension with an aero body kit and a chrome exhaust extension, all dealer-installed. For automatic models, the package includes the same 17-inch wheels and tires that are standard with the six-speed manual.
Safety: Anti-lock brakes are standard on all Accord models. EX V6 models come with traction control. As mentioned, side-impact and curtain airbags are standard on all 2005 Accords, in addition to the required dual front airbags.
The Accord is bigger than the pre-2003 models, yet it looks lower, thanks in part to its sleeker, raked-back windshield. The sharpened noses of the Accord sedan and coupe are reminiscent of an Acura RSX. The corners and sides of both bodies are carefully sculpted with a combination of concave and convex surfaces, in an attempt to achieve a muscular and agile look, with subtle and unique three-dimensional window glass, also intended to reduce wind noise. The aerodynamically efficient side-view mirrors are one of the results of wind tunnel testing. The sedan's drag coefficient (a measure of how easily it moves through the air) is 0.30, which is quite slippery. The Accord Hybrid sedan is even more aerodynamic, with a 0.29 Cd, thanks to its rear spoiler and angled antenna.
The Accord sedan and coupe share no sheet metal, although their faces do look alike partly because they both have angular headlamps. The coupe is a completely different beast from the sedan, however. Its flanks and rear deck are more shapely, flowing naturally and gracefully from the roofline. It yields a very aerodynamic 0.29 drag coefficient.
The Accord's doors are built using a unique method that makes them light and strong. You can clearly hear the quality in the sound when you close them. You feel quality, also, in the light touch required to open the trunk.
Honda engineers are particularly proud of the fact that all Accord models achieved five-star safety ratings for driver and front-seat passenger in the government's frontal crash test. Additionally, the coupe earned a five-star rating for front- and rear-seat passengers in the side-impact test, even without the optional side-impact airbags.
All Accord coupes and the majority of sedans are assembled in Honda's Marysville, Ohio, plant, though some of the sedans come from Japan and Mexico.
The Honda Accord's interior is smooth, firm, and quiet. For starters, it comes with great seats.
The seats in the sedan are generously wide and tall, with springs and urethane padding designed to reduce vibration. The driver's seat provides a one-with-the-car feel with good side support. It features a manual height adjustment or power adjustments on premium models. It jacks up plenty high for even the shortest drivers and offers good headroom for taller drivers. Front legroom is generous. A tilt-and-telescope steering wheel comes standard.
The seats in the coupe seem a bit different and feel even better than those in the sedan. You sit lower in the coupe. The side bolsters are more aggressive providing a more secure fit at the torso. The cloth looked classier in black; the light-colored cloth looked like it would show dirt over time. The leather is nicer than the cloth.
The sedan's bench seat is roomy and comfortable, especially for two people with the center armrest flipped out. The back seat offers decent support, though it's fairly flat. Rear-seat legroom is slightly better than in the Nissan Altima, but the Toyota Camry offers an inch more.
The Accord's trunk is smaller than that of other mid-size sedans, but the flat trunk floor makes loading easy. The Accord's trunk measures 14 cubic feet (though only 11.2 for the Hybrid version because of its extra computer and battery pack), compared with the Camry's nearly 17 cubic feet and the Altima's 15.6. The coupe's trunk is slightly smaller than the sedan's, holding less than 13 cubic feet.
The instrumentation is excellent, comprising large, clear analog faces with LED illumination, the latter a feature associated with higher-priced luxury cars. A big speedometer in the center dominates the instrument panel. The switchgear, primarily three big dials located in the center of the dash, is simple, if not particularly attractive. And automatic dual-zone climate control is available on EX models.
Honda's interior fit and finish is good. The available bird's-eye wood grain plastic trim looked interesting, the faux carbon fiber trim looked nice, and the brushed aluminum trim wasn't bad either.
Interior space is used efficiently, with the audio, climate and optional navigation system controls integrated into a single unit. This frees up space for exceptional cabin storage, including a good-sized glovebox, a big center console, a bin under the audio system that will hold 12 CDs, and door pockets deep and wide enough for a purse.
Attention to detail shows in every corner: coinholders, cellphone cord hooks, grab handles over every door, console lights, power outlets, sunglasses holders, sliding armrests for different-sized arms, convenient and versatile access to the trunk from the rear seat. The remote can open or close all four windows on LX and EX models. Up to eight cupholders are provided; a couple of them are big enough to hold a liter-sized water bottle yet feature spring-loaded prongs that can grip a paper coffee cup. But if you could distill this attention down to one example, it would be the solid, pleasurable and unique sound of the turn-signal click.
Three sound systems are available. LX V-6 models and above come with a six-disc in-dash CD changer, a 180-watt amplifier, and four twin-neodymium speakers with polypropylene cone woofers and soft dome tweeters. But here's the real-world test: We took the V-6 coupe six-speed on a flat-out blast through the Malibu hills, engine revving to redline, windows wide open, CD celebrating Bob Marley, and even with all that exterior noise, max volume on the sound system wasn't necessary for the full effect.
The available XM Satellite Radio is a great feature to have when traveling, because the stations don't change as you drive across the country. You still get ads, but fewer and less obnoxious ads than what you hear on FM. XM Satellite Radio is nic.
Driving Impression
From a driving standpoint, you're getting an outstanding automobile whether you choose a cloth Accord sedan four-cylinder automatic, a sporty V6 coupe or anything in between.
We think the four-cylinder Accord sedan is the best car in its price class. It strikes a perfect balance between ride and handling. The Accord rides more smoothly and more comfortably than the Nissan Altima. Yet its handling is controlled. The Accord handles better than the Toyota Camry yet it rides well. Its suspension smooths out bumps and ripples in the road, but isn't so mushy that your back-seat passengers get motion sickness. When pushed hard, it's balanced and fun to drive. We found it inspired confidence at high speeds on winding roads. It's smooth, poised and supremely stable.
The four-cylinder engine is smooth and powerful, with a high-quality, mature feel. It's strongest at higher rpm, but never gets buzzy. This 2.4-liter twin-cam four-cylinder engine delivers 160 horsepower at 5500 rpm and 161 pound-feet of torque at 4500 rpm. It's equipped with Honda's i-VTEC valvetrain, which means the valve timing is continually adjusted according to demands for strong torque over the entire rpm range. (Torque is that force that propels you away from intersections and up hills.) In short, it's responsive at all engine speeds. Yet it delivers excellent fuel mileage: 24/34 mpg City/Highway with the automatic. It gets even better mileage around town when equipped with the manual, earning an EPA-estimated 26/34 mpg. And it qualifies as a LEV-2 low-emissions vehicle.
The five-speed automatic transmission is incredibly smooth. The drive-by-wire throttle is programmed to cut the gas during upshifts, and its timing is perfect. It's not often that the performance of an automatic transmission is so tight that it stands out. The five-speed manual gearbox is especially wonderful. The gear ratios are perfect and the shifting is buttery smooth. It shifts beautifully, and seems to love aggressive downshifts. Acceleration with the automatic transmission was decent. With the five-speed manual, acceleration was strong, although you still need to downshift to keep the revs above 4000 if you want to accelerate quickly.
The V6 is light and powerful. This 3.0-liter V6 is rated 240 horsepower and 212 pound-feet of torque. Equipped with Honda's VTEC, its torque range broad and begins at relatively low rpm. The V6 gets excellent fuel economy: 21/30 mpg with the automatic transmission.
The Accord is a carefree car. Both engines run on regular gas, and there's no scheduled maintenance for at least 105,000 miles, except for oil changes, and even those are required only every 10,000 miles. It's also a clean car: LX and EX four-cylinder automatic sedans are available in California, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine that are rated as PZEV cars ($150), for Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle, which emit almost no evaporative emissions.
The Hybrid combines exceptional fuel economy with even better performance. With 255 horsepower and 232 pound-feet of torque, the Hybird beats the regular V6 sedan from 0 to 60 miles per hour by half a second, but gets much better gas mileage and has a range of 633 miles, 120 miles more between fill-ups than the Accord sedan with a gasoline-only V6.
The Accord Hybrid doesn't shout 'environmentally friendly' to those inside or outside the car. A small rear spoiler and a small HYBRID badge on the trunk lid barely hint that this car has a different powertrain. Inside, the only change is the addition of a bar graph below the speedometer that lets the driver know when the batteries are recharging and when the V6 engine is in its three-cylinder mode. Yes, you read that correctly: When cruising or in other light-load situations, the engine is designed to operate on just three of its six cylinders, though while driving you do not feel it make that transition. The engine also shuts off comp.
The Honda Accord delivers high levels of quality and performance and ranks at the top of class among mid-size, medium-priced cars.
The four-cylinder models deliver everything that has made the Accord the best-selling car of the last decade, while raising the level of what it means to be a modern four-cylinder sedan. Accord V6 models deliver sporty performance. The new Accord Hybird combines the sporty V6 engine with the fuel efficiency of an electric motor.
New Car Test Drive correspondent Larry Edsall reported on the Accord Hybrid from San Diego, with Sam Moses reporting from Hollywood and Mitch McCullough reporting from Los Angeles.
Model Lineup
Honda Accord DX Sedan ($16,195); LX Sedan ($19,675); EX Sedan ($22,100); LX Sedan V6 ($23,8); EX Sedan V6 ($26,700); Hybrid sedan; LX Coupe ($19,775); EX Coupe ($23,000); LX Coupe V6 ($23,900); EX Coupe V6 ($26,800).
Assembled In
Marysville, Ohio; Sayama, Tokyo, Japan; El Salto, Mexico.
Options As Tested
Model Tested
Honda Accord LX sedan automatic ($20,475).
3111 Dixie Highway
Hamilton, Oh. 45015
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Contact: Sales Manager

subset: commoncrawl


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CONCORD, N.H. — In 2002, Kelly Ayotte was a 34-year-old state prosecutor when she was called into the office of Craig Benson, the newly elected governor.
Benson, a Republican, told her he needed a legal counsel, a job Ayotte appeared keen to land. At the close of the interview, though, Ayotte concluded on an unexpected note.
"I would love to be your legal counsel," she told Benson. "But I would really like to be your attorney general."
"I liked her aggressiveness," Benson recalled this week. He appointed Ayotte legal counsel, and a year and a half later made her the state's first female attorney general when the man he had named to the post stepped down amid a scandal.
Ayotte's swift rise to attorney general illustrates what many say are core traits — steely resolve, a savvy read on people, and a keen ability to create opportunities. It also highlights what others see as her calculated, vaulting ambition.
Now, Ayotte, less than two years into her first Senate term, hailing from one of the smallest states in the nation, is being considered as a serious contender for the vice presidency, aided by a profile potentially helpful to the ticket. She has firmly established conservative bona fides but appeals to independents with a biography that her boosters call grounded and "normal" — a mother of two who lives in her hometown and is married to a landscaper who flew combat missions during the Iraq War.
Whether she wins the nomination ultimately may be dictated by national electoral politics — a New Englander brings little geographic benefit to former governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. And, if chosen, she could face questions about her role as attorney general in the state's failure to detect large-scale fraud at Financial Resources Mortgage, a New Hampshire firm that swindled millions from investors in a Ponzi scheme.
There is also the issue of her slim experience on the national stage.
Ayotte supporters are quick to note that she has logged close to the amount of time in the Senate that Barack Obama had when he ran for president. And although they don't draw the comparison, she, like Obama, is known as a cool head, able to separate emotion from fact — a trait that has won her support from pivotal Republican establishment figures.
"She's got ice water in her veins when it comes to pressure situations," said Steve Duprey, a leading Republican who, among others, recruited her to run for the Senate seat vacated by Judd Gregg.
Family and friends say that if Ayotte harbored political ambitions, it was never obvious when she was young. Her mother, Kathy Veracco, a well-connected lobbyist, said that growing up in Nashua, Ayotte, an only child (she has a step-brother and two half-brothers) never ran for office in school, preferring to devote her time to the ski team.
"Politics was never a big part of her life, other than knowing I did lobbying and talked about what went on around Concord," Veracco said.
In 1993, she graduated from the Villanova University School of Law and returned to New Hampshire to clerk for a state Supreme Court justice and enter private practice. Representing one of the Charlestown defendants in the 1994 Hudson, N.H., armored car guard killings, she learned the ins and outs of DNA evidence — knowledge that helped win her a slot in the attorney general's office in 1998
Ayotte was known as a detail-oriented prosecutor who earned the respect of police and fellow prosecutors, but was not comfortable with the gallows humor common in the office.
"She wasn't the one cracking one-liners," said Jim Rosenberg a colleague there. "She was always very, very careful."
She rose quickly in the ranks, and after a six-month turn as Benson's legal counsel, he tapped her for deputy attorney general and a little more than a year later, attorney general. Colleagues say her politics were never obvious in the office, though critics say she used her position to angle for higher office. Most obviously calculated, they say, was her choice in 2005 to defend the state's abortion parental notification law at the US Supreme Court.
The law, passed two years earlier, was the state's first significant restriction on abortion and among the strictest such laws in the nation at the time. It had been invalidated by two federal courts and the newly elected Democratic governor, who had just reappointed Ayotte to her post, opposed it.
Ayotte not only took the case to the US Supreme Court, but argued it herself. The court didn't fully agree and the law ultimately was repealed by the Legislature, but Ayotte earned a national stage on a pivotal issue that she would later trumpet during her run for the Senate. It helped her clinch key endorsements, including Sarah Palin's.
"Kelly Ayotte is very smart and very hard working," Rosenberg said. "But one can look back on some decisions and view some things as politically opportunistic. Taking that case to the Supreme Court was one of them."
Ayotte disputed that characterization, saying, "If I am going to pick and choose the laws I defend, I wouldn't be doing my duty as attorney general.''
In 2010, Ayotte came under fierce criticism in an open letter by former prosecutors who charged her with pursuing for political gain the death penalty in the case of a slain police officer. They cited a 2006 e-mail with the subject line "re: Get ready to run. . . " to Ayotte from a Republican strategist she had worked with in Benson's office. Ayotte wrote, "A police officer was killed and I announced that I would seek the death penalty." The strategist responded: "Where does AG Ayotte stand on the death penalty? BY THE SWITCH."
Ayotte said the e-mails and others made public were blown out of proportion in the heat of the Senate race and added, "I prosecuted that case in accordance with the laws of New Hampshire."
Ayotte said she decided to leave the attorney general's office and enter politics in 2009 because she was dismayed by the state of the country.
Opponents say she was lucky in the Senate race. She clinched the Palin endorsement at the height of Palin-fever during a lengthy primary battle against well-funded opponents and then faced a weak Democratic opponent. Efforts to connect her with the FRM scandal, as the Ponzi scheme was known, largely failed, despite a report in May 2010 by the state attorney general citing her administration for failing to follow up on consumer complaints to her office that were forwarded to the banking department.
"Voters looked closely at Kelly's record as AG and elected her by 22 points. That speaks volumes," said Jeff Grappone, Ayotte's spokesman.
Duprey said her win was owed, in particular, to hard work, including her embrace of the often unpalatable task of fund-raising calls.
As senator, Ayotte has been a reliably Republican vote — siding with her party in blocking votes on the Buffett rule to raise taxes on the wealthy and on a measure to make it easier for women to pursue pay-inequality claims. However, she sided with environmentalists in opposing a resolution that would have delayed a new power-plant emissions rule. Her weeks are spent in Washington, D.C., but she flies home on Thursdays to be with her husband and children who are 7 and 4, said her mother.
"I guess I have always brought her up thinking she can do whatever she puts her mind to, and she's always been successful doing that," Veracco said.Sarah Schweitzer can be reached at sschweitzer@


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Plethodontidae Gray, 1850
Plethodontidae Gray, 1850, Cat. Spec. Amph. Coll. Brit. Mus., Batr. Grad.: 31. See subfamilial accounts for complete synonymies. Placed on the Official List of Family-group Names in Zoology by Opinion 921, Anonymous, 1970, Bull. Zool. Nomencl., 27: 79.
English Names
Lungless Salamanders (Cochran, 1961, Living Amph. World: 31; Frank and Ramus, 1995, Compl. Guide Scient. Common Names Amph. Rept. World: 29; Stebbins, 2003, Field Guide W. Rept. Amph., Ed. 3: 168; Powell, Conant, and Collins, 2016, Field Guide Rept. Amph. E. North Am., 4th ed.: 39).
Extreme southern Alaska and Nova Scotia (Canada) south to eastern Brazil and central Bolivia; southern Europe; Korea.
The monograph by Wake, 1966, Mem. S. California Acad. Sci., 4: 1–111, was for many years the standard for evolutionary relationships. It is now superseded but remains a useful source for morphological character descriptions. Larson, 1984, in Hecht et al. (eds.), Evol. Biol., 17: 119–217, and Lombard and Wake, 1986, Syst. Zool., 35: 532–551, for discussion of phylogeny within the family as understood at that time. Sever, 1994, Herpetol. Monogr., 7: 276–337, discussed cloacal morphology and phylogeny in the family. Mueller, Macey, Jaekel, Wake, and Boore, 2004, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 101: 13820–13825, Chippindale, Bonett, Baldwin, and Wiens, 2004, Evolution, 58: 2809–2822, and Macey, 2005, Cladistics, 21: 194–202, provided the first substantial efforts toward a molecular phylogeny, the latter two formulating a flexible taxonomy that did much to elucidate phylogeny. Frost, Grant, Faivovich, Bain, Haas, Haddad, de Sá, Channing, Wilkinson, Donnellan, Raxworthy, Campbell, Blotto, Moler, Drewes, Nussbaum, Lynch, Green, and Wheeler, 2006, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., 297: 1–370, provided a discussion of the taxonomic history of this group, but followed the classificatory novelties of Chippindale et al., 2004, and Macey, 2005. Vieites, Min, and Wake, 2007, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 104: 19903–19907, also provided a tree of plethodontids, their taxonomic novelty being the union of Bolitoglossinae, Hemidactyliinae, and Spelerpinae in an enlarged Hemidactyliinae, the sister of Plethodontinae. Vieites, Román, Wake, and Wake, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 59: 623–635, employing complete mitochondrial genomes (but excluding certain kinds of evidence) and three nuclear loci, suggested a phylogeny and taxonomy of plethodontids that differed from the earlier taxonomies by Chippindale, Bonett, Baldwin, and Wiens, 2004, Evolution, 58: 2809–2822, and Macey, 2005, Cladistics, 21: 194–202, primarily in applying a symmetrical subfamilial taxonomy rather than the asymmetrical one that had been applied earlier to deal with topological instability among major groups. Petranka, 1998, Salamand. U.S. Canada: 157-416, provided account for the genera and species of the USA. Kozak, Mendyk, and Wiens, 2009, Evolution, 63: 1769–1784, reported on the phylogenetics of plethodontids as did Pyron and Wiens, 2011, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 61: 543–583, applying a dissimilar molecular dataset and a much larger set of terminals, arrived at a very similar topology, but accepted the older asymmetrical taxonomy of Chippindale et al., 2004, and Macey, 2005. Because symmetrical taxonomies are more informative and the alternative taxonomies are both consistent with the inferred trees, for purposes of this catalogue I (DRF) apply the Vieites et al., 2011, taxonomy and note in the records where the two recent papers differ in topology. For easy comparison, the earlier (2004/2005) Plethodontinae remains the same (containing five tribes: Aneidini (Aneides), Desmognathini (Desmognathus and Phaeognathus), Ensatinini (Ensatina), Hydromantini (Hydromantes [and Atylodes and Speleomantes if recognized]), and Plethodontini (Plethodon, but the subfamilies Spelerpinae, Bolitoglossinae, and Hemidactyliinae are transferred to an enlarged Hemidactyliinae. Hemidactyliinae contains four tribes: Batrachosepsini (Batrachoseps), Bolitoglossini (Bolitoglossa, Bradytriton, Chiropterotriton, Cryptotriton, Dendrotriton, Ixalotriton [a synonym of Pseudoeurycea], Nototriton, Nyctanolis, Oedipina, Parvimolge [a synonym of Pseudoeurycea], and Thorius), Hemidactyliini (Hemidactylium), and Spelerpini (Eurycea, Gyrinophilus, Haideotriton [a synonym of Eurycea], Pseudotriton, Stereochilus, and Urspelerpes). Vitt and Caldwell, 2009, Herpetology, 3rd Ed.: 430–432, provided a general taxonomic account and map as part of a much more general and extensive overview of biology. Zhang and Wake, 2009, Mol. Phylogenet. Evol., 53: 492–508, reported on molecular phylogenetics of salamanders based on mtDNA and provided an estimate of time since origin of the salamander families. Zheng, Peng, Kuro-o, and Zeng, 2011, Mol. Biol. Evol., 28: 2521–2535, reported on the estimated time of origin of this taxon. Blackburn and Wake, 2011, In Zhang (ed.), Zootaxa, 3148: 39–55, briefly reviewed the taxonomic history of this taxon. Powell, Collins, and Hooper, 2011, Key Herpetofauna U.S. & Canada, 2nd Ed.: 13–34, provided a key to the genera and species of the United States and Canada. Chen, Wang, Liu, Xie, and Jiang, 2011, Curr. Zool., Chengdu, 57: 785–805, on the basis of 11 protein-coding mtDNA genes, suggested that the Bolitoglossinae of Vieites et al., 2011, is paraphyletic with respect to remaining plethodontids as well as the Hemidactyliini. Wake, 2012, Zootaxa, 3484: 75–82, discussed and reviewed the taxonomy of Plethodontidae. Dubois and Raffaëlli, 2012, Alytes, 28: 77–161, provided a taxonomy of plethodontids based on others' work. Vitt and Caldwell, 2013, Herpetology, 4th Ed., provided a summary of life history, diagnosis, and taxonomy. Köhler, 2011, Amph. Cent. Am.: 36–92, provided keys, maps, and brief accounts of the species of Central America. Altig and McDiarmid, 2015, Handb. Larval Amph. US and Canada, provided an account of larval morphology of the species of the USA and Canada. Shen, Liang, Chen, Mao, Wake, and Zhang, 2016, Syst. Biol., 65: 66–81, provided an historical biogeography, rejecting the out-of-Appalachia hypothsis, of the entire family based on a large multilocus dataset.
Contained taxa (476 sp.):
External links:
Please note: these links will take you to external websites not affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History. We are not responsible for their content.
- For additional sources of information from other sites search Google
- For images search Arkive, CalPhoto Images and Google Images
- To search the NIH genetic sequence database, see GenBank


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Her Turn
"The more Jim pressures me to have sex, the more turned off I get," said Melissa, 31, who's been married for 7 years and is the mother of Heather, 3, and Zoe, 5 months. "To be honest, I've never enjoyed sex all that much, but things went from bad to worse after Zoe was born. We tried to make love once, about two months ago, but it hurt too much. That freaked me out. Plus, I got the baby blues really badly this time and to make matters worse, Zoe is colicky. Everyone told me she'd calm down after three months, but she's still crying night and day unless I'm holding her. Meanwhile, I feel like I'm totally ignoring Heather because I'm spending every minute trying to calm the baby. And on top of everything else, I'm exhausted trying to fulfill orders for my jewelry business. I make metal bracelets, earrings, and necklaces and sell them through consignment shops here in the Minneapolis area. I've built my business from the ground up and I'm terrified I'll lose everything if I don't keep up the pace.
"I've tried to explain to Jim how overwhelmed I feel, but he doesn't get it. About a month ago, I told him point-blank that I'm just not interested in sex while I'm under all this pressure. He said, 'You can't be serious,' and gave me a leering grin. This was right after dinner; the kids weren't in bed yet and the dishes weren't done!"
"Not that Jim would notice, since he never lifts a finger around the house. He's a high-school guidance counselor, so he gets home around 3:30 p.m. You'd think that having hours like that would mean he'd pitch in with the chores. But instead, he tosses his stuff on a chair, changes clothes, and goes for a run. After dinner (which I've cooked, naturally), when Heather still needs a bath and a bedtime story and Zoe is shrieking her lungs out, he decides that's the perfect time to start complaining about how we never have sex anymore. We end up in a fight, which almost always escalates to the point where we're screaming at each other about anything and everything.
"Sometimes the issues aren't all that huge, but we manage to jump down each other's throat anyway. A couple of weeks ago we had an argument about how Jim never picks up after himself, and it lasted three days. Eventually we got so mad we started throwing lamps and dishes, and finally Jim kicked the wall and broke his toe. Later I found Heather upstairs huddled in her bedroom closet crying.
"The next day I called my sister, Gail, and told her everything. She invited me and the kids to get away for a 'girls' weekend' at the lake cabin she and her husband own. Her daughter is about Heather's age and the two cousins love each other. Gail said she'd watch the kids while I relaxed. It sounded like heaven! But when I told Jim, he said he wanted to come, thinking that the change of scene and the chance to relax might make me feel sexier. I tried to explain that I need him to back off.
"Sex was never something I looked forward to, but I could always put up with it before. I'd just let Jim do his thing and kind of float above it. Evidently he was satisfied because he keeps talking about the 'good years' when our sex life was so great. All I can think is that it wasn't great for me. I do love my husband — he's a great guy and a good father and until this sex issue became so huge, we got along. But I really want him to stop pressuring me."
His Turn
"Melissa is very intelligent and creative, whether she's designing her jewelry or playing with our children. And she's beautiful, too. I love all those qualities, but I have to admit that one of the things that attracted me to her in the first place was that she bragged about all the sex she was having in college," said Jim, 34. "She was a wild woman and proud of it. She was 22 and a senior in college and I was 25. I'd just been dumped by my high school sweetheart — someone I'd been with since I was 15 years old. My friends encouraged me to go to a party to get back into circulation, and Melissa was there. I gravitated to her right away, attracted by both her beauty and her bubbliness. Before long she was telling me about all the guys she'd slept with, who seemed to number in the dozens. I was frankly intrigued by this — it was such an exciting contrast to my own long-term, monogamous relationship — and I got her phone number and called the next day.
"I kissed her on our second date. I was nervous because she was so much more experienced than I was, but she seemed fine with what I was doing. About a month later, we had sex for the first time and, again, she seemed satisfied. She was kind of passive, actually. I was surprised because I thought that with all her experience she'd take more initiative. But after that first time, she was always ready. That was so great! We had a good time out of bed, too. We're both into backpacking and camping and we love to read. We'd get into these intense, terrific discussions about books. After a year of dating, I proposed and we got married a year after that.
"The first three years of our marriage were great. Melissa never said no and we actually had sex five or six times a week. And we had lots of time for each other. She started her own jewelry business after a year of working for another designer, which meant she could make her own hours. I got home early from my job as a guidance counselor and had school vacations and summers off."
"We'd been married about four years when Heather was born. Melissa had a tough delivery and was really sore afterward. It took about two months for her to be comfortable having sex again, but eventually she was all right. The doctor said a lot of women go through that. Heather was an easy baby so Melissa and I managed to have sex fairly often. But it's been a whole different story since Zoe was born, five months ago. Again, Melissa had a hard delivery and said it hurt when we made love the first time after the birth even though we waited three months this time.
"Then she shut down completely. I would try to initiate something and she would say she was scared — that she couldn't get the pain out of her mind. I tried to reason with her, pointing out how enough time had passed for her to have healed completely, but she wouldn't listen. The other problem is that Zoe is a real handful. She has had colic from day one. We've talked to doctors and researched it on the Internet, but we haven't been able to get her to stop crying. Even so, I know that eventually Zoe will get over her colic and life will settle down. What concerns me, though, is that I can't foresee our sex life getting back to what it should be.
"Melissa actually told me that she wants a break from sex. Is it me? I'm in pretty good shape, if I do say so myself, and she certainly had no complaints during the early years. I have been totally faithful, unlike my own father, who was always fooling around. And I'm a good breadwinner, too. Why is she totally turned off ? I can't do anything right. If I make an overture — in spite of being pretty sure I'll be rejected — she starts in on all the things I do wrong. The last time this happened, she ranted about how I leave my clothes on the chair instead of hanging them up. This is not a federal offense in my opinion, but she wouldn't let up. I ended up kicking the wall and breaking my toe.
"A day later she told me she needed to get away with her sister. I was crushed. First Melissa rejects all my sexual advances, then she says she has to get away from me? I have to wonder if she's thinking about leaving me. After all, my first girlfriend bailed after almost 10 years. I don't want a repeat of that scenario. I want the old Melissa back. It's not just the sex, either. I miss the way we used to do stuff together, talk about books we'd read, even just watch Comedy Central and crack up laughing. I think about the good years and I can't believe we've ended up like this."
The Counselor's Turn
"After listening to both Melissa and Jim, I strongly suspected that there was more to the story than they had told me, or for that matter, than they had told each other," said the counselor. "One clue was that Melissa said she had never enjoyed sex and that she would 'kind of float above it.' Sexual trauma can trigger a psychological defense mechanism called dissociation. The sensation of leaving one's body is the brain's attempt to distance one's self from a traumatic experience or memory.
"Another fairly common reaction to sexual trauma is promiscuity. Survivors who behave this way often feel degraded and can't equate sex with love and respect. What Jim said about Melissa's college sexual experiences and the fact that Melissa had shut down sexually made me almost certain there was sexual trauma in her past.
"I was also interested in Jim's having been in a relationship from age 15 to 25. As he admitted, the fact that he'd had only one sexual partner during his entire coming of age contributed to his fascination with Melissa's being a 'wild woman.' Moreover, the failure of his first relationship had made him especially fearful of being dumped again."
"I decided to see Melissa and Jim separately for a while in order to elicit key information from each of them. With Melissa, I began by asking about her sexual experiences before meeting Jim. I did not, of course, let her know that Jim had told me in confidence about her promiscuity in college. I simply said that in order to help her with her current aversion to sex, I needed to understand her sexual history. She did not hesitate to tell me that she had slept with a lot of men before she met Jim. When I asked her about her first sexual experience, however, she was quiet for a long time. Finally, through a flood of tears, she told me what I was not at all surprised to hear. At 15, she had been date-raped behind a woodshed in the rural area where she grew up. 'I never told my parents, I never told my sister, I never told Jim, I never told anyone,' she sobbed. 'I just made myself forget about it. But then when I was in labor with Zoe, they gave me some kind of anesthetic that made me have a flashback. I could feel the guy on top of me. Then it was time to push and I came back to reality. But I can't get that vision out of my mind.'
"This was a powerful disclosure that helped explain why she found herself pulling away sexually and emotionally from Jim. Every time he got close, it reactivated painful memories and sensations from the past. I waited until her tears had subsided and then I reassured her that we could begin a healing process, even though 16 years had passed.
"In subsequent sessions, I also learned that when Melissa was 16, she had come home from school early one day and found her father having sex on the living room couch with her mother's best friend. Her parents eventually got divorced. Following closely on the heels of her rape, this episode added to Melissa's confusion about what healthy sexuality could be.
"With Jim, we talked about his philandering father. 'He had a lot of mistresses,' he told me. 'Once he took my brother and me to a woman's house and introduced us to her son. I'm not sure to this day whether he's my half brother, but I would bet that he is.' Because of his father's behavior, Jim wanted to do better and in fact stayed with his high school sweetheart for nearly a decade. He was deeply hurt when she left him but almost immediately made a firm commitment to the second woman he slept with, Melissa.
"Everything was fine as long as they had frequent sex because, as Jim put it, 'That was proof that I was loved.' When Melissa started rejecting Jim's overtures, however, he became frantic with worry that she would leave him. Yet the more he pursued her, the more she withdrew. The fights the two of them had about issues like Jim's habit of leaving clothes on a chair were side effects of the tension they both felt about their vanished intimacy. It didn't help that Melissa was suffering from postpartum depression and that she was sleep deprived because of a colicky baby."
"An important first step in helping them heal was to get them to share these new revelations with each other while I acted as mediator and facilitator. There were moments of great tenderness, particularly when Jim heard about Melissa's first sexual experience. He got teary-eyed and reached out to embrace her. She did not resist and they cried together.
"After that, I encouraged Melissa and Jim to start over when it came to sex. I needed to help Melissa reclaim the innocence that had been abruptly seized from her as a young teenager. To that end, I asked them to start with the childlike simplicity of holding hands in order to feel warmth and connection. Only by going back to that very basic level of trust could she begin to literally grow up again sexually — this time in a healthier way. I also asked them to spend time every day kissing and hugging without the goal of intercourse.
"These fairly common steps toward reclaiming intimacy helped. But the breakthrough came when I gave them a book of beautiful photographs of lovers kissing in the rain or nuzzling one another's cheeks or standing arm-in-arm gazing into a sunset. There were more erotic yet tasteful photographs as well. I asked Melissa and Jim to indicate what they liked and didn't like. At the next session, the couple could barely contain their elation over the fact that they had made love and had both enjoyed it. 'Having Melissa point to something erotic that she felt she would enjoy was the most amazing turn-on for us,' Jim said. 'Just knowing that she actually does have desires was incredibly good news.'"
"Melissa, in turn, was pleased that Jim was so pleased. She also took the exercise one step further by keeping a journal of her reactions to the photographs. She kept the writing to herself for a long time, but on Valentine's Day just over two years after Melissa and Jim first came to see me, she presented him with a booklet of original prose and poetry about her journey toward sexual healing. Jim was deeply moved, and during their next session he brought the book and opened it to a photograph that had inspired one of Melissa's most passionate poems. He pointed to it, and Melissa's eyes misted over as she looked at a photograph of a woman with her head resting peacefully on a man's shoulder while he tousled her hair. 'She looks so safe,' Melissa finally whispered. Jim tapped his shoulder and Melissa put her head on it. He began to run his fingers tenderly through her hair. 'You are safe with me,' Jim said softly. 'I love you.' Melissa snuggled in closer and said, 'I trust you. And I love you, too.'
"During the year that followed, I worked on communications skills such as allowing each partner to speak his or her mind without interruption and repeating what the other person said to make sure there are no misunderstandings. Jim became more involved in household chores and began cooking dinner several nights a week and handling Heather's bedtime. Not surprisingly, the bitter fighting over minor issues subsided on its own — and happily, the formerly fussy Zoe turned into a delightful, curious toddler who adores her older sister. Slowly, Melissa and Jim achieved a level of intimacy far greater than they ever had during their early years together.
"At this point, after three years of weekly counseling, Melissa and Jim see me only for an occasional relationship tune-up. The work we did has allowed them to maintain a satisfying sex life. Melissa has begun having orgasms for the first time in her life; that, in turn, has understandably made her far more interested in Jim's advances. Recently he was thrilled to report that she has begun making overtures herself. 'Not only is she not rejecting me, she's actually coming on to me,' he said. 'This is more than I ever hoped for.'
"'Jim always used to say that the first years of our relationship were the good years because we had sex,' added Melissa. 'But in fact these are the good years because now we make love.'"
"Can This Marriage Be Saved?(r)" is the most enduring women's magazine feature in the world. This month's case is based on interviews and information from the files of Betsy Sansby, MS, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Minnetonka, Minnesota. The story told here is true, although names and other details have been changed to conceal identities. "Can This Marriage Be Saved?(r)" is a registered trademark of Meredith Corporation.
Originally published in Ladies' Home Journal, June 2007.


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Conservative Website Pitches "Pork-Infused" Ammo Meant To Serve As A "Terrorist Deterrent"
Blog ››› ››› BEN DIMIERO
In a column at conspiracy website WND, gun activist Jeff Knox is promoting a company that sells bullets coated with "pork-infused paint" that are theoretically designed to "deter Islamists from martyrdom."
Knox heads a fringe gun group called the Firearms Coalition which recently proposed a successful resolution at the annual National Rifle Association conference urging the NRA to oppose any future restrictions on guns.
In his piece, Knox points to the May terror attack in London and asks why the two assailants didn't flee the scene and merely "waited around for the armed police." Knox posits that the men were waiting to be killed by police in order to become martyrs so they could receive "their tickets to Paradise - and 72 virgins."
While he says that there is debate among Muslims about whether "martyrs for Allah actually receive a reward of 72 virgins," Knox writes that the belief is pervasive enough to raise the question: "how do you deal with religious extremists who believe that dying for their faith is an Express Ticket to Paradise?"
According to Knox, a company in Idaho called "Jihawg Ammo" has come up with a "culturally sensitive" solution:
A company in northern Idaho has come up with a culturally sensitive approach. Jihawg Ammo has developed a proprietary system for infusing ballistic paint with pork. The special pork-infused paint is then applied to the bullets of loaded ammunition. The inclusion of pork in the paint makes the bullets haraam, or unclean. Under Islamic law, anyone who comes in contact with any haraam item is then unclean and must engage in a cleansing ritual. No unclean person can be admitted into Paradise. Do not pass Go. Do not collect 72 virgins.
"The objective of Jihawg Ammo is not to insult Muslims, nor even to send a terrorist to Hell," Knox explains. Instead, it is intended to "serve as a deterrent -- to place the promise of instant passage to Paradise into doubt."
Anticipating backlash to the concept, Knox explains that the company's motto is "Peace through Pork" and that the company insists "their ammunition is intended as a deterrent to would-be terrorists, not a threat or insult to peaceful Muslims."
At their website, Jihawg sells several different caliber of "pork-infused" ammunition, as well as various apparel featuring slogans like "Put Some Ham in MoHAMed, use Jihawg Ammo!"
Their site also features banner text claiming that "Jihadist's [sic] fear being defiled by pork, especially during Jihad" and urging customers to "Put Some HAM in MoHAMed" if you "hear the radical battly cry -- 'allahu akbar!'"
Before pointing readers to the Jihawg website and explaining that their products "should soon be available at select retailers around the country," Knox writes:
Readers of this column are in the unique position of being among the first to learn of this new, pork-painted ammunition, and as such have the opportunity to be thought-leaders on the social merits of the product. As a broader audience begins to learn about Jihawg Ammo, there will undoubtedly be much debate of the "cultural insensitivity" of the product and its makers. In anticipation of that debate, the folks at Jihawg ask how culturally insensitive it is to slaughter innocents in the name of one's religion?
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It was an ugly first half for the Oakland Raiders last week when they fell into a 23-7 first half deficit against the New Orleans Saints. Quarterback Matt Flynn was sacked five times and the Saints had no problems moving the football against a porous Raiders defense.
The Raiders' performance Friday against the Chicago Bears may have been even worse.
The Bears scored on each of their first four possessions of the game, including three touchdown drives in taking a 27-3 lead into halftime. Matt Forte scored on a 32-yard pass from Jay Cutler and Michael Bush carried for two scores on 10- and 1-yard touchdown runs, respectively. The Raiders only points of the half came on a 58-yard field goal by Sebastian Janikowski to end the half.
Flynn was just 3 for 6 for 19 yards before being replaced by Terrelle Pryor late in the second quarter. The Raiders had just 92 yards offensively heading into the break.
The debut of D.J. Hayden appears to be the only bright spot for the Raiders tonight. It is still just the preseason but the last two weeks for the Raiders have been anything but encouraging.


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Security Practices for Online Collaboration and Social Media
In my last blog we discussed how on-line tools for desktop sharing, audio and video collaboration, and enterprise social software play an increasingly important role in corporate business. We discussed how the industry is also seeing a trend toward "IT consumerization," where employees and other users experience new technologies before they are supported by enterprises. The first impact of this trend is producing more employee requests to access their personal social media accounts from their work computers as a way to manage both work and life responsibilities. The even bigger impact is that employees want to use these types of collaboration tools for enterprise business purposes.
We already covered how collaboration and social media tools are clearly beneficial to business: better information sharing, more efficient decision-making, and enhanced business relationships, among others. And trends are clearly indicating that collaboration will become a fundamental way of conducting many types of business activities in the near future. However, online collaboration tools, and external social sharing tools in particular, present security risks to the operation of enterprise networks and computing systems, as well as to the confidentiality of intellectual property and business information. But an organization that tries to completely ban external social media will likely find that employees may ignore the rules and use those tools anyway, by circumventing corporate processes. And this unauthorized, unmonitored, and uncontrolled use can increase the IT and business risks.
Through continual learning and process changes, Cisco IT is moving toward the right balance between the desires of employees to share and the business requirements of maintaining IT security, data, privacy, and asset protection.
In our latest publication we share how Cisco is addressing the security challenges of collaboration and social media tools through company policies, guidelines, and training for users as well as security measures in Cisco's collaboration technology and its network. Please take a look here and let us know what you think.
In an effort to keep conversations fresh, Cisco Blogs closes comments after 60 days. Please visit the Cisco Blogs hub page for the latest content.


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'The Killing' Un-Killed: Netflix Likely Reviving for Season 3
Don't worry, Rosie Larsen's murder has still been solved. But where previously it had been all but certain AMC's controversial murder-mystery drama 'The Killing' wouldn't live to see a third season, a new agreement with Netflix could pave the way for Detectives Holder and Linden to return to the Seattle crime beat for another go. So, who would get first crack at the new season, AMC or Netflix?
Nothing will ever undo the injustice felt by fans of AMC's 'The Killing,' when first season finale "Orpheus Descending" failed to resolve the central mystery teased throughout the run. However those upset by AMC's decision to pass on a third season may yet have reason to celebrate as Deadline has confirmed that AMC is near to a deal with Netflix to revive the Mireille Enos/Joel Kinnaman crime drama for an additional season.
Should a new deal come to fruition for 'The Killing' season 3, AMC would likely first air the episodes before their subsequent availability on Netflix. The prospect of a third season produced entirely through Netflix had earlier been bandied about, but the convenience of its breakout stars on retainer and upcoming holes in AMC's schedule left by 'Breaking Bad' and (eventually) 'Mad Men' prompted the cable network to re-enter negotations, now sharing costs with Netflix.
Adapted from Danish drama 'Forbryselden,' AMC's 'The Killing' debuted strongly in 2011, though its reputation scarcely survived the critical backlash of its first season finale, leaving a second season to markedly decrease in ratings. Evidently, a strong season 3 pitch from series developer and executive producer Veena Sud convinced AMC to consider the drama again.
No deal has yet been locked down, but what say you? Would you be happy to have another season of Holder and Linden solving 'The Killing?'


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Although the popularity of small group training isn't breaking news in the industry, it seems to have come full circle. 2011 has shaped up to be the year of fee-based small group training, which many people recognize as a "win-win-win" business model for clubs, trainers and members. In today's economy, health club members are being enticed by small group programs that allow them to get individualized trainer attention to meet their fitness goals at the right price.
By minimizing the cost barrier that may prevent members from purchasing personal training, successful fee-based small group training programs have the potential to create an additional revenue stream and greater time efficiency for the facility and its staff.
Fitness facilities worldwide are getting on the small group training bandwagon. In fact, the largest increases in personal training offerings from 2007 to 2010 were for small group and partner sessions, according to the IDEA Health and Fitness Association. Trending small group programs include multi-client personal training, interval or circuit training and small group Pilates sessions.
Small group training is only as effective as the efforts to support and grow the program. Here are five proven strategies for implementing a profitable and sustainable small group training program:
Develop programs with a start and end date. This strategy creates a progressive program with continuity and allows for member camaraderie and socialization. Facilities benefit from a program that is easier to manage on a small group schedule and a simpler way to track and compensate trainers.
Maximize program capacity and profitability. The key here is full sessions, not more sessions. Start slowly with fewer sessions at a lower price to help build demand. This way, facilities can consistently evaluate their supply/demand ratio and focus on selling out a program before fully launching it. Secondly, identify a pricing structure that is affordable during the initial launch. If there are four to six participants, for example, charge half the cost of an individual personal training session. Try enticing new participants with a free trial session and a discount on their first small group training package.
Implement sales and marketing initiatives. Stagger program start dates. This allows facilities to sell each week, quickly integrate new members and bring in a consistent revenue stream. Also, use a "sold out" marketing strategy to drive member interest and create urgency to buy now. In-club marketing and free passes can help drive awareness and participation.
Optimize the small group schedule and space. Create a small group training space on the floor or in a designated studio where people can see the training take place. Do not hold fee-based small group training classes in the main group exercise room where the mental mindset is "free" exercise. Choose equipment that is versatile, functional and that members will be successful using, such as incline bodyweight training, suspension training, heavy ropes, medicine balls or other functional training tools.
Position the training team for success. A small group training program not only sets up trainers for profitability, but the facility also will net more per program, and the cost to the member is less than individual personal training. Be sure the people you appoint to head up the program are trainers who are comfortable working with multiple clients at once or are group instructors who are also certified personal trainers. The bond that the trainers make with the group participants will only help with client retention.
When starting a small group program, beware of the no-shows. Facilities should develop clearly defined training policies that are shared with members at the start of the program, ensuring their commitment for a given time. Many facilities have found that four- to six-week small group training programs were most successful when it came to attracting and retaining members. The shorter duration decreased the number of potential schedule conflicts for members.
Space constraints can also inhibit a small group program. Make sure training is performed in an area that won't encroach on other members' space. Finally, to avoid empty classes, which can deter new class participants, invite employees to join small group classes. This way, empty spots are filled, and the staff gets a free workout.
Jesse Campanaro is vice president of sales for Total Gym. In this role, he has had first-hand experience coaching small group training. Since beginning his career in the fitness industry eight years ago, Campanaro has helped more than 500 commercial facilities around the world launch successful small group programs with the GravitySystem—Total Gym's fitness program that generates more than 3 million workouts every month worldwide.


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I know, I know, it's a vegetable...but I still get a kick out of saying it. On certain days, I find that it's important to remember all the things I can eat, rather than focusing on the things I can't. It helps to remember these things when you begin to feel that shopping for food has become a gluten war zone. I start imagining that space ships are zooming through the air shooting gluten globules at my van trying to stop me keep me from goal of finding gluten-free food.
The holidays are particularly bad for creating this effect on me. For both my husband and myself our family tradition was for holiday meals to be a special family celebration. With the Easter holiday coming up, I've been thinking about menus that we can have and these thoughts were on my mind while we were in Virginia last week. Since we moved to New York a few years ago, living here has created an expectation that there will be a certain amount of gluten-free food available for the Jewish holiday, Passover. I thought of this while I was shopping with the kids in McLean and I saw a bakery with a sign out front stating that they had all the Passover bakery items that you need. Wow, could it mean that they would have gluten-free Passover foods? My kids and I decided to take the chance and scope out their food. When we didn't find anything, so I asked the young lady behind the counter if they had anything that was wheat or gluten-free. She looked at me rather confused and asked me, "What's that?" I guess they don't do anything gluten-free for Passover.
Which brings me back to my dusty pile of Red Garnet sweet potatoes and I remember they are gluten-free. They are versatile, nourishing and healthy. The tuber will yield a scrumptious sweetness that feeds my southern soul and make me forget the world of gluten.
1 lb Red Garnet Sweet Potatoes, quartered
6 Tb Olive Oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
½ yellow onion, sliced thinly
1 tablespoon dried rosemary
Preheat oven to 425 deg. F. Pour olive oil into an oven proof baking dish (6 x 10). Then add the sweet potatoes, onions and sprinkle the spices over the top. Using your hands evenly coat the vegetables in the spices and olive oil. Place into the oven to roast for 1 hour. Stir every 15 minutes to ensure even browning. Serves 6.My children would have preferred to have me leave the rosemary off the sweet potatoes, but my husband and I loved this recipe. It's a keeper.


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Shades of gray
3.1 Phillip Lim sweater, Wasteland skirt, Equipment blouse, Isabel Marant sneakers, Proenza Schouler PS11, Karen Walker sunglasses, Vanessa Mooney necklace
Currently living in my go-to 3d cable Phillip Lim sweater, gunmetal, and asymmetrical skirts. Sometimes I feel like asymmetrical skirts should be retired by now, but when I'm able to make a 'new' skirt out of them by simply rotating it 90 degrees either which way, it's hard to let go of them. That versatility factor should always be kept in mind when shopping, huh? It makes the damage either totally worth it (with no regrets) or less detrimental to the wallet.


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Used Truck - 2000 Ford Windstar LX in Virginia Beach, Va
Please Call For Price
About This 2000 Ford Windstar LX
Vehicle Location:
Virginia Beach, Va
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Located at Towne Auto Brokers Inc in Virginia Beach, Va. Call Towne Auto Brokers Inc today at 757-962-8826 for more information about this vehicle.
Vehicle Options:
- Abs Brakes
- Air Conditioning
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- Cassette Player
- Child Safety Door Locks
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2000 Ford Windstar ReviewThis car review is specific to this model, not the actual vehicle for sale.
Ford's minivan gets adjustable pedals.
Every year auto companies unveil new features on minivans attempting to one-up the competition. When Chrysler came out with a sliding side door on the driver's side it caught everyone by surprise, including Ford, which had to make do with an enlarged driver's door until last year when the newest version of the Windstar finally got a second sliding door.
This year it's Ford's turn to be first: The Windstar is the first minivan to feature power-adjustable pedals. Short and tall drivers should be able to adjust the seats and pedals for the safest, most comfortable driving position.
A neat entertainment center is also available as an option (though Oldsmobile was the first with that one last year). In the area of safety though, Windstar still rates at the top of government crash tests with a five-star rating.
The base Windstar wagon comes with a 3.0-liter V6 engine and includes anti-lock brakes (ABS), air conditioning and dual airbags. With seating for seven, it starts at $21,315. The second sliding door is now available as an option ($500) on the base model. The 3.8-liter V6 is available for $685.
Windstar LX model starts at $23,965. Windstar SE retails for $27,615. The $30,610 SEL and $33,360 Limited comprise the top of the line. (A Windstar Van without carpeting and passenger seats is also available for $19,815.).
The 2000 Windstar's overall appearance has not changed much since it was first introduced in 1995, but it still looks contemporary. Windstar appears a little over-bodied. When bigger fender flares were added the track was not increased so the wheels do not fill them as well as before -- even with the bigger tires on the SEL. The SEL boasts a chrome-plated grille that gives it a more luxurious look.
Ford and Mazda have adopted Chrysler's design for sliding doors by neatly hiding the runners along the lower edge of the rear side window instead of being gouged out of the body side panel. This gives the Windstar a less utilitarian, more upscale look. The second sliding door is an option on the LX Windstar, but comes standard on the SE and SEL models. Power operation of both doors comes standard on the SEL version and is optional on the other models.
Power-operated doors allow opening the doors by the remote key fob from a distance, which is a real benefit when you've got an armload and it's raining. It's also nice for those who find opening and closing the doors a bit strenuous. The one shortcoming is that they move more slowly than manually operated doors which can be closed in literally no time at all. It takes a few seconds for the electric motor to close the doors. Kids love the power doors. A safety feature automatically stops the doors from closing if any object, such as a child's leg, is encountered as they close.
The Windstar is available in one length. It is among the largest of the minivans, and is directly comparable to the Dodge Grand Caravan, the Chrysler Town & Country, and the Honda Odyssey. Windstar's total interior volume with seats removed is nearly identical to these big minivans.
Starting at the front, the Windstar has a nicely designed and substantial dashboard that wraps around the driver. This positions the radio and climate controls within easy reach. Two cupholders are attached to a tray that slides out; spring-loaded sides allow them to accommodate a variety of drinking containers.
A convenient overhead console provides storage for sunglasses, coins and a remote garage-door opener. A wide-angle mirror can be used to keep an eye on what's going on in the rear seats. Another unique option is a small voice recorder attached to the sun visor above the driver. It can be used to quickly record notes and other ideas that might come to mind while driving.
Ford borrowed the adjustable pedals from its big Expedition sport-utility vehicle and they are just as useful in the Windstar. At the touch of a button, a driver with short legs can move the pedals nearer to the seat. This allows the driver to sit farther from the steering wheel, which not only improves control but also lessens the potential for injury from the airbag going off in an accident.
The SEL we tested came with a center console on the floor between the two front seats. In many ways this is inconvenient as it makes it difficult for adults to walk back to the rear of the vehicle. Of course it doesn't upset kids as they just clamber over it. Fortunately it is optional on all models.
New for 2000 is an entertainment center, which fits between the front seats and features a pop-up LCD TV screen, VHS tape player and ports for video games. This $1295 option could prove a godsend for long trips with the kids. It includes a pair of headphones so the driver and front-seat passenger do not have to listen to whatever movie is playing in the rear cabin.
The center row is available as a pair of bucket seats or a bench seat that can be positioned on the left or right depending on which door one wants to use for access to the third row. The third row is the usual bench seat for three people. It now comes with small rollers that make it slightly easier to remove. It still weighs in at about 100 pounds, which makes it a two-person job for removal. It is fixed to a track so it can be moved up to seven inches giving more rear luggage space or rear seat legroom depending on ones needs for the day. It can also be fixed in the same attachment points in place of the second row of seats if five seats and lots of cargo space are needed.
Needless to say, the seat backs fold down to provide a flat space with tables and more cupholders. Rear climate controls are available as an option as well as radio controls for separate rear use of the cassette while the front is switched to the radio. Kids will love the spacious feel throughout the Windstar while adults will appreciate the generous leg- and headroom, especially in the center two bucket seats. Access to the rearmost seats is not as easy with the second sliding door unless the center seat is moved to one side, which precludes access from that side.
Overall, the Windstar is the ultimate family vehicle offering maximum versatility. The addition of the second sliding door actually provides slightly more interior space but loses a storage pocket.
Driving Impression
Ford sells very few Windstars with the base 3.0-liter engine. It saves less than $1000 on the purchase price and uses only slightly less fuel than the larger 3.8-liter V6, which offers much better performance.
The 3.8-liter engine produces 200 horsepower, which makes the Windstar one of the quickest minivans available. If you want a satisfying driving experience opt for the bigger engine. It's amazing when one realizes that the acceleration of the Windstar with the 3.8-liter engine is the same as that of a hot sports sedan 15 years ago. Even with a full load of passengers the Windstar has enough power to allow for safe passing.
At times the transmission shifts a little abruptly but otherwise the Windstar's power train performs smoothly. It is a little raucous at high revs, however. Steering is about right with some feedback for those who want to know what's going on. The ride is smooth thanks to the longest wheelbase of any minivan and it is certainly a lot smoother than in any sport-utility vehicle. Likewise the handling, while not as crisp a sedan, is more stable than an SUV.
The SEL model comes with fatter tires (225/60R16) and bigger wheels (16-inch), which helps improve handling and stability substantially. Yet this package adds very little noise or ride harshness.
One unique option offered for the first time on a minivan is the reverse sensing system. A beeper sounds at an increasing pace when backing up toward a solid object such as a wall or a child on a bicycle. This beeper might make drivers feel like they are driving a big rig but it is a useful option in a vehicle of this size. Rearward visibility is limited and distance is difficult to judge because the back of the vehicle is such a long way from the driver. We find the reverse sensing system of benefit even when parallel parking on tight streets.
Ford has continued to improve the Windstar, although there was not a lot wrong with the previous model except for the lack of a second sliding door. While adding the second door Ford has taken the opportunity to improve the vehicle in several areas especially safety and even emissions. For example, side airbags are available as an option for the first time.
Those who purchase the top-of-the-line model and add optional features such as side airbags and the reverse warning system can end up with one of the most versatile and safest vehicles on the road. It's almost too good for the kids -- a luxuriously appointed Windstar is more appropriate for taking four to six adults on a long journey or downtown to the opera.
Model Lineup
Windstar ($21,315); LX ($23,965); SE ($27,615); SEL ($30,610); Limited ($33,360).
Assembled In
Oakville, Ontario, Canada.
Options As Tested
floor console, reverse sensing system ($505).
Model Tested
3500 Holland Road
Virginia Beach, Va. 23452
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Last Week's Winner: was Brett Millard (Kansas City) who wins themselves an bitchin' tee shirt from our good friends at African Apparel.
This Week's Prize: We're giving away a few David Choe's "Munko" Vinyl Figures as seen below.
We had some great entries this week that we couldn't run, either because they weren't sized right or had nothing to do with theme. Just to be clear, when the next theme comes out the old theme is officially over. Please don't send in more submissions for old themes. It makes up feel bad when you send us stuff and we can't post it up so please read the guidlines below:
- - This is a drawing/ illustration fun contest. Photography generally not accepted.
- - The size formatting is 600 pixels in width OR length - if they are bigger than this they will not be posted. So if you have a long skinny one, please make sure it is not over 600 in length or we will not be able to see it well.
- - Name your submission your first and last name. Example: john_doe.jpg
- - Include the words "Fecal Face" somewhere in the art so we know you created it (please do not to add it in later with Photoshop).
- - One submission per person by Friday at 12pm PST.
- - If you have a website (or two) please specify which one you would like me to link in the body of your email. Also, let us know where you're from!
- Send it all to freefridayz (at) fecalface.com.
#2 - Paloma Passetto (São Paulo, Brazil)
#3 - Rafael Vasquez (São Paulo, Brazil)
#4 - Jacob Ingalls (Seattle, WA)
#5 - Mat Held (San Francisco, CA)
#6 - Brian Butler (Miami Beach, FL)
#7 - Noah Guillen (Sandy, OR)
#8 - Grayson Castro (San Francisco, CA)
#9 - Eddy Lezama
#10 - Meena Alkordi (Charles Town, WV)
#11 - Mateo San Martin (Lima, Perú)
#12 - Jon Hanlan (Toronto, Canada )
#13 - Leonard White (London, UK)
#14 - Dilraj Mann
#15 - Brett Millard (Kansas City, MO)
#16 - Adam Kanter
#17 - Virgina Garcia (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
#18 - Andrew Hernandez (Houston, TX)
#19 - Rei Lem (Baltimore, MD)
#20 - Josh Powell (San Rafael, CA)
#21 - Adrianna Bamber (San Francisco, CA)
#22 - Laura Sanders (Memphis, TN)
#23 - Daniel Counce (Bartlett, TN)


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APL Library Board of Trustees
The board makes budget and policy decisions and oversees the staff. Established under state law by the City of Appleton, the library is governed by a nine-member citizen board of trustees including: one alderperson, one Appleton Area School District representative and seven other citizens appointed by the mayor. Most Board appointments are three-year terms.
Email addresses for Board Members are available on the PDF, below. To send a letter in the mail, you may use the Library's address: 225 N Oneida Street 54911, Attn: Board of Trustees.
Board Meetings
The Board holds its regular monthly meetings the Tuesday before the third Wednesday of each month at 4:30 pm in the Administration Board Room, except where noted. Board meetings are open to the public. Previous board meetings can also be viewed online.
Send a Question or Comment to Appleton Public Library.


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Kansas Tax Clearance Certificate:
Each applicant applying for a State of Kansas job vacancy must obtain a State Tax Clearance Certificate by accessing the Kansas Department of Revenue's website at http://www.ksrevenue.org/taxclearance.html. A Tax Clearance is a comprehensive tax account review to determine and ensure that an individual's account is compliant with all primary Kansas Tax Laws. A Tax Clearance expires every 90 days. All applicants, including current State employees, are responsible for submitting a valid and up to date certificate with all other application materials to the hiring agency. This is in accordance with Executive Order 2004-03. If you need assistance with the tax clearance, please contact (785) 296-3199.
Your application will be considered incomplete if an ACTUAL COPY of your Certificate is not submitted within 48 hours after the posting closes.
E-mail: TAX CLEARANCE CERTIFICATES to: email@example.com
The position you are viewing is located in the Topeka Gage Shop. This is a full-time, unclassified position with benefits. Pay begins at $15.38 per hour, depending on experience and/or the skill level of the applicant
Provides skilled mechanical work for the maintenance and repair of equipment in support of KDOT's construction and maintenance activities. This position does journeyman level skilled mechanical work in the maintenance and repair of heavy gasoline and diesel-powered heavy equipment. It diagnoses malfunctions and troubleshoots to determine cause of failure on complex systems. It provides skilled welding and fabrication work. It provides a full range of mechanical overhaul and repair of light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles and equipment.
The selected candidate for this position will be expected to have their own hand tools to perform the duties and responsibilities of this position. Click here to see KDOT's policy and a list of required tools. Applicants will be considered for the position without the required tools; however, the required tools must be available for use on the first day of work.
This CDL position is subject to drug and alcohol testing under the authority of the US Department of Transportation. The selected candidate will be required to pass a DOT drug test as a condition of employment in this position. A CDL must be obtained within 60 days of accepting employment.
Any Commercial Driver who has received a Confirmed Positive Test Result or the Equivalent and has not successfully completed all Rehabilitation Program requirements and follow-up testing requirements is not eligible for this position. (Per SOM 2.1.10).
Due to the nature of the work, incumbent may/will be required to work additional hours when needed, including nights and weekends. Additional hours will be assigned by the supervisor depending on the needs of the agency.
This position is subject to pre-employment physical testing. The selected candidate will be required to pass the screening as a condition of employment in this position.
For more details, download the full position description.
NOTE: If you lack any of the required experience and want us to consider relevant education, you must provide copies of your transcripts/certificates before the closing date.
Essential Requirements:
• Six months of experience in automotive and/or diesel mechanics to meet the needs of the agency.
• Education may be substituted for experience as determined relevant by the agency. Transcripts MUST be provided if substituting education.
When completing a job application for positions at KDOT it is extremely important that your application is filled out completely with accurate and specific information. Applications may be rejected if not completed entirely and the job duties are not specific.
STEP 1: Register by completing the online Personal Data Form.
(Skip this step if you already have an Applicant ID number.)
STEP 2: Complete and submit an ONLINE Application to the following Agency:
Transportation, Headquarters
OR Mail the PAPER Application to the following:
Eisenhower State Office Building - 1st Floor East; 700 SW Harrison St; Topeka, KS 66603-3754.
STEP 3: Submit additional required documents (including Tax Clearance Certificate) to the specific recruiter designated on this job announcement.
Include your name and job requisition number on all correspondence when submitting documents.
For further employment information or if a reasonable accommodation is needed for any part of the application or hiring process, please contact the recruiter, Jessica Mills:
Email: email@example.com
Phone: (785)296-3721
Fax: (785)296-0145
Veterans' Preference Eligible (VPE):
Former military personnel or their spouse that have been verified as a "veteran"; under K.S.A. 73-201 will receive an interview if they meet the minimum competency factors of the position. The veterans' preference laws do not guarantee the veteran a job. Positions are filled with the best qualified candidate as determine by the hiring manager. Additional VPE information can be found at http://da.ks.gov/ps/aaa/recruitment/veterans.htm.
Verification of identity and employment eligibility to work in the United States is required by federal law. For a list of acceptable documents that establish these criteria, please refer to the federal Form I-9. KDOT does not provide sponsorships.
The Kansas Department of Transportation is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
|Full/Part Time:
|Hiring Rate:
|Pay Frequency:


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Jewish World Review June 3, 2002/ 22 Sivan, 5762
Charles Krauthammer
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | At a dinner last year at the Russian Embassy, a senior Russian official expressed deep dismay that the Bush administration was preparing to eliminate large numbers of nuclear missiles without any coordination with Russia. I was astonished. "Mr. Minister," I said, "I never thought I would live to see the day when a representative of Moscow would complain that Washington is reducing its nuclear arsenal."
Most striking was the Russian's tone. It was not at all bellicose. It was plaintive. The fact that we were prepared to make unilateral arms cuts, whether or not Russia followed suit, was deeply disturbing to him. And everyone in the room understood why. It showed how little Russia mattered.
In the heyday of Soviet power, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko once defined a superpower as a country that has a say in every corner of the globe and without whose say nothing substantial can be achieved in any corner. The Soviet Union met that definition. In the Congo, Cuba, Germany, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Angola, Czechoslovakia, the Middle East -- everywhere -- Russia had a say, often a decisive say.
It was not only that it had the largest land army in the world or the largest nuclear arsenal. We tend to forget the kind of "soft power" the Soviets possessed. For decades, they offered the world an ideology that held extraordinary sway among the intellectual classes. Not just in the Third World. The power of the communist idea extended deep into the heart of the Western alliance, led by communist parties in France and Italy that had enormous followings.
Today communism has about the same cachet as alchemy. Yet at the height of its power, communist and socialist governments ruled half the world. The wonder of the post-Cold War era is that Russia could have suffered a collapse to strategic irrelevance without revolution or revanchism.
The Russians are not angry. They are simply hurt. And they were quite humiliated when we were preparing to unilaterally cut our nukes without even asking them for a quid pro quo. In the end, we acceded to Russia's paradoxical request and allowed it to give us that quid pro quo. Hence the Moscow treaty just signed by Presidents Bush and Putin.
It was a wise concession to Russian sensibilities. The agreement was three pages, shorter than your average high school term paper. It cost us nothing. And it gave Putin a magnificent signing ceremony and a place at the table. Even better, Putin and Bush then traveled to Italy and signed an agreement creating a strong Russia-NATO Council -- another milestone in easing Russia into the sphere of the West.
But for this to succeed we must understand that our relations with Russia are less a form of power politics than of psychotherapy. We are dealing with a country that has suffered the most cataclysmic loss of power by any country not defeated in battle. The goal of our Russia diplomacy is not strategic stability -- strategic stability is only an issue when dealing with enemies, and Russia is no enemy -- but the management of sensibilities.
When the Bush administration announced that it would be withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the usual chorus of reactionary liberals warned that this would be dangerous. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said it could trigger "Cold War II." Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger predicted a "more paranoid environment with Russia." The ever-reliable New York Times warned of the dark possibility of "a dangerous new arms race with Russia."
What predictable nonsense. Russia does not threaten the United States. The United States does not threaten Russia. Russia is not in military competition with the United States. It would therefore have no reason to enter into a ruinous arms race that would in any event be rather one-sided.
The critics were totally wrong. Russia's response to our withdrawal from the ABM Treaty was not to increase its nuclear weapons but to decrease them.
Why? Because, strategically speaking, the U.S.-Russian nuclear balance no longer matters, except psychologically. These nuclear weapons are not really military devices but tokens. During the Cold War, they were tokens of grandeur. Today they are tokens of parity -- a phony parity to be sure, but one whose appearance is worth preserving. Hence the treaty, hence the ceremony, hence the seat at the NATO table -- costless magnanimity in the service of the most important international realignment since the opening to China: strategic partnership with Russia.
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They say the devil is in the details, and following my recent purchase of a '11 VW Golf TDI, I wanted to see if such slight changes could really affect performance. I decided this was a great opportunity to test the effects of a tire-only upgrade on this vehicle's handling and braking. I swapped out my stock 17-inch Porto wheels for a set of 18-inch Detroit wheels from a '11 GTI. Both setups feature a 225mm width, but the real difference came from the 5 percent decrease in sidewall for the larger rim. Between the two there was a slight difference, noticeable but not dramatic, especially since both sets of wheels were wrapped in all-season rubber.
I then compared a street-legal motorsport tire, swapping out the factory all-seasons on the Detroits with a set of Falken Azenis RT-615K. Taking advantage of the ability to experience all four seasons in California, depending on where you go, it was fortuitous that October happened to be the test month. The day I had the Falkens installed, outside temperature was 112 degrees F and heat radiated off every surface. My first opportunity to test the tire came in the form of long, sweeping, 180-degree on-ramps to the 101 freeway. The Falkens dug in and I accelerated faster through the turn than I'd ever been able to on the all-season rubber. After 25 miles I jumped on Highway 23, Westlake to Malibu. I threw the DSG tranny in manual mode and attacked every corner without hesitation. Again, the Falkens held steady and gave consistent performance all the way through Pacific Coast Highway, even with the severe frictional forces and intense heat.
In an amazing example of what we call "earthquake weather," the next week brought temperatures averaging around 60 degrees, followed by several days of light to heavy rain. For a street tire, the Azenis performed well in the rain and at no time did the Golf lose contact with the road. As for the handling, I am not about to go all-out during a rainstorm in my brand-new car, (our insurance lacks a stupidity clause), but I felt confident that the tire wouldn't let me down. After the rain had passed and the roads dried out, but temperatures remained low, I did notice that the RT-615Ks needed to warm up before they really started to grip. Once they do, no complaints can be found.
Did the RT-615K transform the Golf TDI enough to satisfy my handling requirements? In short, no; but they alone came awfully close; the stock sport suspension is just to way too soft to see what these tires can really do.
- Proprietary casing design eliminates heavy steel construction with bead apex and turn-up technology, resulting in 8% reduction in unsprung tire weight
- Aqua tusk tread design incorporates three high-void, low-turbulence grooves
- Solid center rib increases the tread contact patch, helping to reduce wheelspin
- Motorsport tread compound formulated to maintain grip as temperatures increase
- Size tested: 225/40/18 92W RF
- Treadwear: 200; Traction: A; Temperature: A
Falken Tire


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TiggerDaWing wrote:I tried to make it silly in my post (no. 4) but, evidently, in these parts a horizontal position on lasagne is considered sensible
Not at all.
Gluttony and Lust are IMOO great together, as I try
always to double(at least)-up on 'DEADLY SINS',
esp. if in process of being criticized/communicated-with
by fundamentalist* types.
I figure, fun for now, & even if they're right, dead/in peaceful silence all the sooner.
(It is not because, as some here(who shall namelessly do stuff like dismember monkeys,
and stick their members in jars of formalin)- might imply,
due to the issue of lasagne happening to collide with my "relentlessly perverted"
I would have voted, but am bad at higher maths.
*fundamentalist sound to anyone else like a cross between a mentalist and a fundament?