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Phil Davidson
Early in his life, it became apparent to Phil that he wasn't going to be a professional athlete or model. In eighth grade, he did the next best thing—he took a graphic design class. Before co-founding Creative Arcade, Phil had a design studio, worked at some pretty sweet agencies, "acted" in a Hollywood movie and taught college graphic design.
Jeff Ruprecht
Although he gets carded at the local craft brew pub, partner Jeff Ruprecht has been providing solutions to creative challenges for 20+ years. Brought up to cherish hard work and the fruits of one's labor, he has applied this attitude at some of the best agencies in Duluth. His experience from traditional to online marketing, and his down-deep urge to play and learn new things, keeps him busy today.
Jan Christenson
Jan brings over 20 years of web, application and digital development experience to Creative Arcade. His passion for technology and problem-solving led him to an education in computer science and math. While working for a variety of technology providers and advertising agencies during his career, Jan gained experience in a wide range of tools and technology. He found the perfect outlet for his curiosity in the constantly-evolving fields of web and application development. In 2017, he gained his certification to fly drones commercially.
Stephen Pestalozzi
Stephen brings 2+ years of professional design experience to Creative Arcade after he recently provided design and marketing support for the local culinary favorite, Northern Waters Smokehaus and providing freelance solutions locally. He is also one of the founding members of Stack Prints (stackprints.com), a local group of screen printing artists and a consistent contributor of work that is shown at Pr0ve Gallery on Lake Avenue.
Kate Rod
Kate found her passion for writing while in high school after becoming a reporter for her county sentinel. Her work ranged from writing personal column pieces to stories that showcased the people and events in her community. It was inevitable that her love of writing would carry over into college, where she majored in Communication and Organizational Behavior. In her more recent work, Rod was a Wellness Program Manager for HealthPartners, where she managed and developed communications to promote Essentia Health's employee wellness program.

subset: commoncrawl


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Costa Rica
Your daily English-language news source Monday through Friday
|What we published this week:
Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for more details
|A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page
|San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 21, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 99
Costa Rican squad easily
By Cody Gear
Special to A.M. Costa Rica
The Third annual Tropic Bowl ended with the national selection team losing decisively to the New England All Stars. The month of May has been a bad month for Costa Rica football. Early this month the Santa Anna Bulldogs were crushed by an American team from Chicago, 68-6. It appears that Costa Rica football although making progress, is not yet at the level of development to compete with teams from the United States.
The New England All Stars got off to an early lead Saturday and never looked back. Their fast-paced offense and speed was too much for the Costa Rica players to overcome. The national selection team had no answers defensively for the juggernaut offense of the All Stars. By the end of the first quarter the All Stars led 12-0.
The All Stars continued to pound a relentless ground game and won the game by a final score of 36-6. Nevertheless it was an interesting day of American football in Desamparados as there was a free clinic for children and an exhibition scrimmage between two minor league teams prior to the kickoff of the Tropic Bowl. The fans that attended seemed to enjoy the event.
Country will host session
on development for U.N.
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The country has invited representatives of the world's developing nations for a conference in mid-June.
The countries, which the foreign ministry calls renta media or "middle income," represent 70 percent of the world's population and 70 percent of its poor, according to Enrique Castillo, the foreign ministry.
The goal of the conference is to develop a new integrated approach to development. the sessions June 10 to June 14 are under the auspices of the U.N. Industrial Development Organization.
Some 40 countries, mainly in Latin America, have confirmed that they will send representatives, said Silvia Hernández, minister of Planificación y Política Económica.
Officials announced the goals for the conference Monday. The central themes are green industry, environmental sustainability and prosperity, said officials.
Ms. Hernández said that Germany, Japan and Spain, all considered developed countries, also will send representatives.
The middle income countries in the last decades have made an important contribution to global development through their elevated rates of growth and progress, said the U.N. The recent economic crises have had a negative effect on these countries, and the conference is to explore options.
Another goal will be to chart a course after the expiration in 2015 of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
Tourism chamber unhappy
airline dropped direct flights
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The national tourism chamber says it is upset because the Avianca-Taca airline is canceling five direct flights to Costa Rica.
The flights are from Guayaquil, Colombia, Quito, Ecuador, Los Angeles and New York in the United States and Havana in Cuba.
The chamber, the Cámara Nacional de Turismo , said that as a national flag carrier, the line should have more respect for Costa Rica.
The change means a reduction each month of from 180 to 220 flights, said the chamber and from 6,000 to 8,000 passengers a month.
The airline still is servicing Costa Rica, but in some cases passengers will have to take flights with intermediate stops.
Foreign direct investment
in 2012 was record for region
Special to A.M. Costa Rica
Latin America and the Caribbean received a record $173.4 billion of foreign direct investment in 2012. That was 6.7 per cent more than in 2011, according to the U. N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
The figures are attributable to the region's steady economic growth, high prices for raw materials and the impressive returns on investments related to natural resource exploitation, according to the report "Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean 2012."
The commission predicts that this year's foreign direct investment will range between minus 3 percent and plus 7 percent.
The report describes direct investment as increasingly focused on the exploitation of natural resources, particularly in South America. Manufacturing represents a fairly low proportion, except in Brazil and Mexico, it said
Brazil remains the main recipient of foreign direct investment, despite the slight 2 percent decrease recorded in 2012, when it received $65.3 billion or 41 percent of regional amount.
Other countries that posted higher figures than in 2011 were Argentina (27 percent), Paraguay (27 percent), Bolivia (23 percent), Colombia (18 percent) and Uruguay (8 percent). In Central America, the most striking results were El Salvador (34 percent), Guatemala (18 percent), Costa Rica (5 percent), Honduras (4 percent) and Panama (10 percent).
United States and European Union countries remain the main investors in Latin America and the Caribbean, with Canada and Japan also making significant contributions.
Coast guard gets station
on Nicoya's Pacific coast
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas will be setting up a new station at Puerto Coyote on the Pacific coast of the Nicoya peninsula.
The security ministry has reached an agreement with the Municipalidad de Nandayure. There will be about 15 members of the coast guard stationed there, and there are plans to build a $300,000 structure. The building is expected to be ready in about a year.
Key highway from airport
will see work until May 31
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
For the rest of the month work crews will be on the job from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. from the Puente del Castella bridge to the Juan Pablo II bridge. The highway will be closed yet again in the eastbound lanes. The highway has had its share of closures for repaving and other work this year. The work is under the supervision of the Consejo Nacional de Vialidad.
Or reader's opinionHe has fond memories
of airport's old eatery
Dear A.M. Costa Rica:
A wistful sadness welled up In response to the publicity release last week on the new "restaurants" that hungry travelers have to choose from at the Alajuela airport.
It is because of fond memories of the excellent and inexpensive "comida tipica" at the original cafeteria/restaurant in the old facility, where the food was always prepared and served with love by the attendants.
It seems to me upwardly mobile tourists of the kind that Costa Rica seeks to attract are not looking to replicate the same experiences of traveling in the States, but would prefer to partake of locally derived Tico food, if they had the choice.
Hari S.Khalsa
|What we published this week:
|The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2013 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details
A.M. Costa Rica
Third News Page
Costa Rica
advertising reaches
from 12,000 to 14,000
unique visitors
every weekday
in up to 90 countries.
|San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 21, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 99
|Unhappy bar and restaurant owners plan to
overturn big fees
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Unhappiness with the increases in the fees for liquor patentes are growing. And in Heredia a group formed to modify the law is spilling over the boundaries of the province.
Other restaurants and bars owners have filed appeals with the Sala IV constitutional court.
Michael Cannon of Poás Volcano Lodge reported Monday that he has been hit with a 28,800 percent increase. That, of course is because he was paying just 10,000 colons a year, about $20, to the Municipalidad de Heredia. Now he has to pay 360,000 colons every three months.
Cannon and others were responding to a story Monday recounting the plight of the owners of a small restaurant in Playa Chiquita who faces similar fees.
Ronald Villalobos, who operates Mariscos y Más in Heredia Centro, said he has organized about 60 patente holders under the banner of the Cámera de Patentados de Heredia. He said his group seeks a political solution to modify the big increase in fees and is working with Mariela Alfaro, a lawmaker with Movimiento Libertario, to draft appropriate changes.
Villalobos said that he will be in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí Wednesday for a meeting with patente holders there. He expects to see many more business owners.
As Cannon noted in an email, the new liquor law went into
|effect Aug. 7 "to the great and
irritated surprise of those of us who have a license to sell wines,
beers and spirits." He was told to start paying the fee in October.
"In my case I put a recurso de amparo in the Sala Cuarta and have refused to pay the tax,' he said, "and have persuaded the other patente holders of Vara Blanca to do likewise,
Other bar owners said they thought that the new fee was one reason some popular drinking establishments and restaurants went out of business. Of course, the economy also is a problem, and some cited the parade of new taxes sponsored by the Laura Chinchilla administration.
Daniel Gibson of the popular Hotel Tres Banderas in Manuel Antonio said that he is in the process of trying to sublet the liquor part of the business or perhaps close it completely. He also noted that businesses that are operating on a concession in the maritime zone also have faced meteoric rises in their fees, in one case from $200 a year to $3,000, he said. He predicted a long court fight.
Villalobos noted that the amount collected by the municipalities varies depending on the type of business. There also appears to be differences depending in which municipality the business is located. One bar owner in a beach community said his fee was less than $100 for the year.
The amount usually mentioned as a quarterly fee is 380,000 colons which is $770 at the current rate of exchange.
|Surprise environmental permit suspension
called indefensible
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A presidential decree last April 23 suspended for 90 days routine permits by the Secretaría Técnica Nacional Ambiental, the environmental agency.
The industrial sector is not happy.
President Laura Chinchilla and René Castro the minster of Ambiente y Energía, suspended the work of the agency while a commission studies a restructuring.
However, the decree did permit emergency permits, complaints, action on government applications and issuing permits for the installation of telecom facilities.
|Companies that are affected are
losing productivity and are in danger of ending their operations, said
the Cámara de Industrias.
Many projects require a determination of environmental viability, something that the agency issues.
Martha Castillo, executive vice president of the chamber, in a press statement called the decision to suspend work for 90 days an indefensible situation. She said the decree would cause labor chaos.
Not just industry is suspended. Permits from this agency are required for a broad range of activities, including property development.
|You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE!
|What we published this week:
|The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2013 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details
|A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page
|San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 21, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 99
|Study predicts little impact from global warming on tropical
By the Dartmouth news service
A new Dartmouth College study finds human-caused climate change may have little impact on many species of tropical lizards, contradicting a host of recent studies that predict their widespread extinction in a rapidly warming planet.
The findings, which appear in the journal Global Change Biology, offer new hope for survival of a creature thought to be doomed:
Most predictions that tropical cold-blooded animals, especially forest lizards, will be hard hit by climate change are based on global-scale measurements of environmental temperatures, which miss much of the fine-scale variation in temperature that individual animals experience on the ground, said the article's lead author, Michael Logan, a doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology.
To address this disconnect, the Dartmouth researchers measured environmental temperatures at extremely high resolution and used those measurements to project the effects of climate change on the running abilities of four populations of lizard from the Bay Islands of Honduras. Field tests on the captured lizards, which were released unharmed, were conducted between 2008 and 2012.
|Previous studies
have suggested that open-habitat tropical lizard
species are likely to invade forest habitat and drive forest species to
extinction, but the Dartmouth research suggests that the open-habitat
populations will not invade forest habitat and may actually benefit
from predicted warming for many decades.
Conversely, one of the forest species studied should experience reduced activity time as a result of warming, while two others are unlikely to experience a significant decline in performance.
The overall results suggest that global-scale predictions generated using low-resolution temperature data may overestimate the vulnerability of many tropical lizards to climate change.
"Whereas studies conducted to date have made uniformly bleak predictions for the survival of tropical forest lizards around the globe, our data show that four similar species, occurring in the same geographic region, differ markedly in their vulnerabilities to climate warming," the authors wrote.
"Moreover, none appear to be on the brink of extinction. Considering that these populations occur over extremely small geographic ranges, it is possible that many tropical forest lizards, which range over much wider areas, may have even greater opportunity to escape warming."
|What we published this week:
|The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2013 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details
Costa Rica's
Fifth news page
|San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 21, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 99
Oklahoma community hit
again by strong tornado
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A tornado with 320 kilometer per hour winds has killed at least 51 people and caused massive destruction in the central U.S. state of Oklahoma, destroying two schools and entire neighborhoods.
The Oklahoma Medical Examiner's Office said the death toll was expected to rise as rescue workers move deeper into the hardest-hit areas.
The 1.6 kilometer-wide tornado hit Monday afternoon and destroyed large swaths of Moore, an Oklahoma City suburb, injuring dozens of people, sending debris flying and setting buildings on fire.
Rescue workers have pulled several children alive out of the rubble of the schools.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin deployed 80 National Guard members to assist with search-and-rescue operations.
Fallin also spoke with President Barack Obama, who asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide any assistance she needs.
An earlier tornado killed two people in Oklahoma Sunday.
The National Weather Service placed parts of five storm-battered states, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas, under a tornado watch, meaning conditions are favorable for tornadoes to develop.
The same suburb of Oklahoma City was hit hard by a tornado in 1999. That storm had the highest winds ever recorded near the Earth's surface.
A tornado transformed the part of Moore directly in its path from a quiet middle class community into a field of debris. Rescue teams were digging through piles of wrecked wood, twisted metal and other rubble searching for victims who may have been trapped.
Rick Smith, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, just south of Moore, says the danger has not yet passed.
"We are going to be dealing with this for several hours it looks like and then, hopefully, after today it will quiet down for a while," said Smith.
Smith says storms are common at this time of year in Oklahoma and nearby states, an area often called Tornado Alley. He says the monster tornadoes are the result of humid air close to the ground and wind conditions both near the ground and high up in the atmosphere.
"We have had very strong winds aloft and at the surface that creates what we call wind shear, that makes the storms start to rotate, and then we have had upper level disturbance, a storm system in the upper levels of the atmosphere, that moved out across Oklahoma this afternoon and the storms went from nothing to intense, dangerous storms in less than an hour," he said.
No one can predict exactly where a tornado will come down within the wide area covered by a storm system, but Rick Smith says Storm Prediction Center forecasters do everything possible to warn people.
"We were in close contact with emergency school systems and everything and our forecast and our information indicated that this was going to be as bad or worse than yesterday and it looks like that has definitely been the case," he said.
Tornadoes on Sunday killed two people in communities south and east of Oklahoma City. On Monday, legislators in the state Capitol cancelled sessions and took shelter along with state government employees as the storm clouds passed over the city. A full assessment of death, injury and damage from these tornadoes is likely to take days and the threat of more tornadoes in the area is far from over.
Lad who sang in face of death
dies from his rare cancer
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Zach Sobiech, an 18-year-old whose battle with cancer became a global story, has died.
The Minnesota native became famous when his song "Clouds," which is about facing death, became a viral sensation on YouTube, topping 3 million views. The song was originally released in December of last year.
The video was so popular that a group of celebrities were inspired to create a video tribute in which they lip-synch the lyrics.
Sobiech was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, osteosarcoma, at 14 and was told a year ago that he likely only had months to live.
"Cancer may have taken Zach too soon, but he leaves a lasting legacy that most of us will never achieve," read a statement on the Children's Cancer Research Fund's Web site. "His message of love and hope delivered through infectious lyrics and memorable tunes have imprinted on the minds and hearts of millions around the world."
Sobiech also played in a band called A Firm Handshake, which released their second album, "Fix Me Up," this past February.
"It is with heavy heart that we announce the passing of our son Zachary David Sobiech," his family said in a statement obtained by the Today Show. "Our family has been blessed not only by his amazing presence in our lives, but also by the love and support of our family and friends and by so many people in the community. In particular we'd like to thank those people who listened with their hearts and helped Zach bring his message and his music to the world."
The Sobiech family requests that all memorials be directed to the Zach Sobiech Osteosarcoma Fund in lieu of flowers.
U.S. sees decline worldwide
in freedom of religion report
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The United States said the right to global religious freedom was challenged last year with governments often creating a climate of intolerance leading to hatred and violence.
In an annual report, the State Department said Monday government officials worldwide are often allowed to act with impunity while violating the religious rights of their countrymen. It said there often is uneven enforcement of religious freedom laws and introduction of new restrictions.
Secretary of State John Kerry said religious freedom is the birthright of every human being, but is often restricted.
The chief U.S. diplomat said religious freedom throughout the world is a national security concern for the U.S.
"When countries undermine or attack religious freedom, they not only unjustly threaten those who they target, they also threaten their countries' own stability. And we see that in so many places," said Kerry. "Attacks on religious freedom are therefore both a moral and a strategic national security concern for the United States."
He said the State Department found a "troubling" increase in anti-Semitism and named a new aide to monitor the problem. The report cited abuses in several countries, particularly in Venezuela, Egypt and Iran.
Kerry said there is a growing number of blasphemy and apostasy laws that often violate religious freedoms and are applied in a discriminatory manner. The report singled out Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iran and Eritrea for its pursuit of cases against individuals accusing them of blasphemy.
The report called Christians "a leading target of societal discrimination and abuse" in some parts of the world. But it also said Muslims, especially minority branches of Islam, also suffered, especially if they were considered by the majority to be "heretical or foreign."
The U.S. law on religious freedom calls for naming other countries it considers to be committing "particularly severe violations of religious freedom." Under the law, the State Department two years ago named eight nations as countries of particular concern: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.
The report said the respect for religious freedom declined in China and Iran in 2012 and stayed the same in the other six countries.
Senate says Apple ducks
taxes with off-short trickery
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A U.S. Senate committee says Apple has avoided paying taxes on billions of dollars in profits by setting up a complex network of off-shore entities.
The Senate panel says Apple created foreign subsidiaries with no employees or physical offices so it would pay little or no taxes on its earnings. It says Apple is holding $145 billion in cash, of which more than $100 billion is held offshore.
Apple chief Tim Cook is scheduled to go before the panel today.
It is common for multi-national corporations to use offshore subsidiaries to avoid U.S. taxes and the Senate report does not accuse Apple of any illegal activity. However, lawmakers say that Apple is using new methods to create tax havens and they are raising questions about loopholes in the U.S. tax code.
In its written testimony to the committee, Apple denied using tax gimmicks and noted that it paid roughly $6 billion in U.S. taxes last year.
Valley fever in California
causes transfer of prisoners
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A longstanding health problem in California's Central Valley has worsened in recent years, leading health officials to order the relocation of 3,000 prisoners from two state prisons. But the disease affects much of the population in some rural communities and, while it often goes unnoticed, it sometimes can be devastating for patients.
Dale Pulde is selling his California home because he's unable to meet his payments. The motorcycle mechanic and drag car racer was infected with valley fever in California's Central Valley and has mostly been unable to work. He used to race in the valley.
He would often have aches and pains when he returned to his home in Los Angeles and, one year, he developed a terrible cough. At first, he coughed so hard that he blacked out.
"Breaking out in welts and sweats. The doctors didn't know what to do, and they had me loaded full of prednisone and all kinds of different things, and it was basically getting worse," said Pulde.
In late 2010, doctors diagnosed him with valley fever, and he's been taking anti-fungal drugs since then, including one that costs nearly $1,000 a bottle.
Valley fever, known to doctors as coccidioidomycosis, is spread by fungal spores released into the air when the soil is disturbed. It's becoming more common as people move into once rural areas, including California's Central Valley and other semi-arid areas of the U.S. southwest, especially Arizona, and parts of Latin America.
Robert Kaplan is a specialist who teaches at the University of California, Irvine. He says half of those infected show no symptoms, while others have aches and fever. In a a minority of patients, he says, there is lung disease and, in 1 percent, more serious conditions.
"The most important one is meningitis, where it affects the lining of the brain and the spinal cord, and that can be a very, very bad disease," said Kaplan.
Valley fever can also spread to the bones and, at its worst, can be fatal.
It's hardest on people with depressed immune systems and, for reasons not yet clear, on certain racial groups, says Claire Panosian Dunavan, a specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"Filipinos, African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics and Asians," said Ms. Dunavan.
But others with little susceptibility are also vulnerable, like Seattle resident Sharon Filip. She is Caucasian and was healthy but contracted the disease while visiting Arizona. Now, she operates a Web site called Valley Fever Survivor with her son David.
"I was a shadow of who I was beforehand. And I should also say, I never had an immuno-compromised situation. I was not sick. I never was on medication," said Ms. Filip.
On the Web site, she has described her battle against the disease in graphic detail. She says valley fever should get more attention.
Ms. Dunavan, a physician, agrees.
"I think the first priority is to raise the awareness of patients and doctors who should be diagnosing it, trying to put people on treatment if it's warranted," she said.
There is so far no cure or vaccine to prevent valley fever, and reported cases are increasing. Doctors say, for now, early detection is the most effective way to fight the disease.
Coffee said to give protection
against a form of liver disease
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Coffee lovers have another reason to rejoice as a new study claims that regular consumption of the popular beverage can reduce the risk of a rare but serious liver disease.
According to research published by the Mayo Clinic, coffee intake can lower the chance of contracting primary sclerosing cholangitis, an autoimmune liver disease. The disease can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, liver failure and biliary cancer.
"While rare, PSC has extremely detrimental effects," said the study's author, Craig Lammert, a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist. "We're always looking for ways to mitigate risk, and our first-time finding points to a novel environmental factor that also might help us to determine the cause of this and other devastating autoimmune diseases."
The study monitored three groups of people, those with the disease, those with primary biliary cirrhosis, another autoimmune liver disease, and a group of healthy patients. The data showed a reduced risk of primary sclerosing cholangitis among coffee drinkers, but little effect on the primary biliary cirrhosis group.
According to Konstantinos Lazaridis, a Mayo Clinic hepatologist and senior study author, the research also revealed more differences between the two ailments than originally thought.
"Moving forward, we can look at what this finding might tell us about the causes of these diseases and how to better treat them," he said.
The findings were being presented at the Digestive Disease Week 2013 conference in Orlando, Fla.
Previous studies have shown some benefits to regular, moderate coffee intake.
A study of coffee drinkers released late last year in Europe claimed moderate coffee intake could reduce the risk of diabetes by 25 percent, while a Swedish study claimed coffee reduced the risk of developing breast cancer.
Yahoo antes up $1 billion
to purchase Tumblr site
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Yahoo, Inc., said it is buying blogging service Tumblr for $1.1 billion cash, giving the struggling Internet pioneer a much-needed platform in social media to reach a younger generation of users.
The deal, announced Monday, is a bold bet by Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer to revitalize the company by co-opting a Web property with strong visitor traffic, but little revenue.
Yahoo made clear it was sensitive to concerns that it might damage Tumblr by making it less irreverent or more corporate.
"Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business," Yahoo said in a statement.
The acquisition, which will use up about a fifth of Yahoo's $5.4 billion in cash and marketable securities, is the largest by far since Mayer took the reins in July with the goal of reversing a long decline in Yahoo's business and Web traffic.
Analysts said Yahoo appeared to be overpaying for a business that might not contribute to revenue for years, but said that Yahoo had to do something to plug a hole in its social media efforts.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney called it a long-shot/long-term investment but one that fits into Ms. Mayer's turnaround strategy.
"Fundamentals have been subpar for numerous years, in part because of the company's missing presence in social and mobile. Tumblr may help develop that presence," Mahaney said of Yahoo in a note.
Tumblr is one of the Web's most popular hubs of so-called user-generated content, drawing young people who use the platform to post pictures and text. Tumblr has more than 100 million blogs in its network, ranging from "White Men Wearing Google Glass" to housing-focused "The Worst Room."
Though Yahoo remains one of the Web's most popular destinations, it has seen its revenue shrink in recent years as consumers and advertisers favor rivals such as Google and Facebook. The deal is expected to increase Yahoo's audience by 50 percent.
Tumblr is certainly popular. It has tens of millions of monthly unique visitors. Analysts questioned what kind of contribution it will make to Yahoo revenue, since advertising on the site is in its nascent stages.
Media reports have pegged Tumblr's 2012 revenue at $13 million. The privately held company, based in Manhattan, does not disclose its financial results.
Yahoo expects that Tumblr will help boost revenue by 2014, Ken Goldman, Yahoo's chief financial officer, said on a call with analysts. He did not provide specific numbers.
"Even if revenue was $100 million, it means Yahoo paid 10 times revenue," said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis. "
Yahoo could quickly boost Tumblr's revenue by combining the Web site with its own sales force, said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser. Loading Tumblr up with banner ads risks alienating its users, however, and probably wouldn't provide a significant lift to Yahoo's overall revenue, he said.
"It's not clear that this deal will be favorable from a return-on-capital perspective," Wieser said. "One billion for one company is a big bet."
Gillis and Wieser were contacted on Sunday after the deal was reported by the online publication All Things D.
Ms. Mayer, on the conference call, described the Tumblr deal as an exception and said Yahoo was not necessarily planning lots of similarly sized deals.
Yahoo is one of several companies that have coughed up considerable money for buzz-worthy start-ups that hold promise. Facebook bought the popular social media photo site Instagram for $1 billion last year. In 2006, Google paid $1.6 billion for YouTube.
Shares of Yahoo rose as much as 2 percent in early trading Monday, but later fell back. They were up 18 cents to $26.70 in late-morning dealings. Through Friday's close, the shares had risen 70 percent since Mayer became CEO.
One question Yahoo may have to address is Tumblr's reputation as a home for pornographic blogs. At one point in 2009, about 80 percent of Tumblr's top sites had something to do with adult content. Today that number is closer to 5 percent, according to Quantcast data, but the image lingers.
Mayer said on the call that Yahoo's targeting tools would allow advertisers to zero in on specific demographics and content.
One area where Yahoo plans to ramp up advertising: Tumblr's dashboard, the main landing point, akin to a newsfeed.
Dealing with that and other issues may fall to David Karp, 26, who founded Tumblr in 2007 and will remain CEO.
Karp, a self-taught programmer who left high school in favor of home schooling, did not take part in Mayer's conference call. Media reports have suggested his take in the billion-dollar sale would top $200 million.
In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, Karp seemed to be less interested in money than in Tumblr's prominence.
"There are a lot of rich people in the world. There are very few people who have the privilege of getting to invent things that billions of people use," he said.
Two sentenced in Houston
for smuggling Indians
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A federal court in Houston, Texas, has sentenced an Indian citizen and a Brazilian national to three years in prison for smuggling illegal migrants into the United States.
Kaushik Thakkar and Fabano Amorim were also given two years of supervised release when their prison terms end.
Prosecutors say the two charged Indian citizens up to $60,000 each and conspired to smuggle them into the United States through South and Central America and the Caribbean. Many crossed into Texas.
A third defendant was given a 19-month prison term in February.
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Dominican Republic
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|A.M. Costa
sixth news page
|San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 21, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 99
bilingual speakers seem
to have two sound systems
By the Association for Psychological Science news service
Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate sound systems for each language, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.
The research, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, addresses enduring questions in bilingual studies about how bilingual speakers hear and process sound in two different languages.
"A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, but there's been a debate as to how," said lead author Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona. "There are two views: One is that bilinguals have different processing modes for their two languages — they have a mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language. Another view is that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by recalibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language."
Gonzales's research supports the first view, that bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or sound systems.
The study looked at 32 Spanish-English early bilinguals, who had learned their second language before age 8. Participants were presented with a series of pseudo-words beginning with a pa or a ba sound and asked to identify which of the two sounds they heard.
While pa and ba sounds exist in both English and Spanish, how those sounds are produced and perceived in the two languages varies subtly. In the case of ba, for example, English speakers typically begin to vibrate their vocal chords the moment they open their lips, while Spanish speakers begin vocal chord vibration slightly before they open their lips and produce pa in a manner similar to English ba. As a result of those subtle differences, English-only speakers might, in some cases, confuse the ba and pa sounds they hear in Spanish, explains co-author Andrew Lotto, associate professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at the University of Arizona.
"When most people think about differences between languages, they think they use different words and they have different grammars, but at their base languages use different sounds," Lotto said.
"One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different; they have a sound code that's specific to that language," he said. "One of the reasons someone might sound like they have an accent if they learn Spanish first is because their pa is like an English ba, so when they say a word with pa, it will sound like a ba to an English monolingual."
For the study, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English. Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two words — bafri and pafri — which are not real words in either language.
Participants were then asked to identify whether the words they heard began with a ba or a pa sound.
Each group heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the r getting a Spanish pronunciation.
The findings: Participants perceived ba and pa sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of r, or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of r.
"What this showed is that when you put people in English mode, they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers," Lotto said. "These bilinguals, hearing the exact same ba's and pa's would label them differently depending on the context."
When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception; they labeled ba and pa sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing. It was that lack of an effect for monolinguals that provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals.
"Up until this point we haven't had a good answer to whether bilinguals actually learn two different codes — so a ba-pa English code and a ba-pa Spanish code — or whether they learn something that's sort of in the middle," Lotto said. "This is one of the first clear demonstrations that bilinguals really do have two different sounds systems and that they can switch between one language and the other and then use that sound system."
This is true primarily for those who learn two languages very young, Lotto said.
"If you learn a second language later in life, you usually have a dominant language and then you try to use that sounds system for the other language, which is why you end up having an accent," he said.
Research on bilingualism has increased in recent years as the global climate has become more intermixed, Lotto noted. These new findings challenge the idea that bilinguals always have one dominant language.
"This raises the possibility that bilinguals can perceive speech like a native speaker in both languages," said Gonzales, whose own son is growing up learning English and Chinese simultaneously.
"The predominant view of late has been that bilinguals will never be able to perceive a second language beyond what a late learner is capable of, or someone who learns a second language late in life. So even if you learn two languages simultaneously from birth, you're always going to perceive one of them like a late learner," Gonzales said. "Our findings cast doubt on that prominent view in the bilingual literature."
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Agriculture secretary discusses aftermath of Eagle Creek Fire
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue made a stop at the Eagle Creek trailhead in the Columbia River Gorge on the evening of Tuesday, July 3, to learn about the Eagle Creek Fire, and hear about ongoing recovery efforts.
Perdue was attending a fire recovery roundtable discussion hosted by Rep. Greg Walden, and they were joined by Gov. Kate Brown and several other state and federal politicians.
The discussion centered on work that various state and federal agencies are conducting to restore areas of the Gorge damaged by the fire.
The Eagle Creek Fire was started by a then-15-year-old boy throwing fireworks into the Eagle Creek Canyon west of Cascade Locks on Sept. 2, 2017. The fire started close to where the representatives met. In May, the boy was sentenced to pay $36 million in restitution and serve 1,920 hours of community service. The fire eventually consumed more than 48,000-acres in the Gorge.
The highly popular Eagle Creek trail remains closed.
Lynn Burditt, U.S. Forest Service area manager for the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic area, discussed how various government agencies fought the wildfire, and spoke about ongoing recovery efforts. Firefighters spent more than 40 hours hosing down the lodge at nearby Multnomah Falls to prevent the landmark from burning, she said.
Burditt told The Outlook she was glad to get the chance to explain the effort of the Forest Service and other state agencies to address the issues still facing the Gorge.
"It's always wonderful when you have an opportunity to be in a place, experience that setting, and hear the story of why this place matters," she said.
At the roundtable discusion, Brown and Walden explained what the Gorge means to residents of the state.
"This is one of the crown jewels of Oregon," Walden said. "It's a tragedy this fire occurred."
"The Gorge is a special place for Oregonians. It feeds our souls," Brown added.
The visit was part of Perdue's fifth Back to Our Roots tour where he visits farms, wineries and other agricultural areas. All the locations he visited were in the Pacific Northwest.
"Much of our constituency is in the agricultural areas," Purdue said during a follow-up press conference. "It's important to get out and visit."


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Our Volunteer Corps is an energetic group of individuals dedicated to the support and promotion of Pennsylvania Ballet. Volunteers are some of our best ambassadors, helping to serve our organization and its growing needs.
Pennsylvania Ballet would like to recognize and thank all our current volunteers for their hard work. We sincerely appreciate the valuable time you spend with us.
To receive information regarding volunteer opportunities, please email Rachael Glashan Rupisan, Manager of Corporate Sponsorship & Special Events, at 215.587.6943 or firstname.lastname@example.com. Our Volunteer Corps program will re-launch this fall, please expect to hear about updates then.


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After learning lots of interesting facts about polar bears, we made this cute polar bear in the snow!
Materials needed:
- Polar bear template in black
- Cotton Balls
- glitter
- glue
- white paint
- paint brushes
- blue and black construction paper
- gooley eyes
Have the children cut out the polar bear template and glue it to the blue constuction paper.
Glue pulled apart cotton balls to the black template until it is covered in fur.
Next glue on a googly eye and black nose. I precut the noses for my children.
Final step, paint in the snow using white paint and then sprinkle on glitter!


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A common predatory spider found in many Australian houses. The Latin name for a Sydney Funnelweb Spider is Atrax robustus
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Whattttssssss going on y'all!
My name's Ty Stevenson.
I'm a homebrewing, Waters Brewer Owning, Marine Corps veteran, College Grad, Wolfdog owning, full time job having, ordinary dude who is writing these grammatically incorrect sentences in hopes of helping YOU, the homebrewer, out. From yourvery first beer, to owing your own brewery.
About Me:
I wake up between 4-6 AM every day, work on my business for a couple hours, take my dog on an hour walk, make my lunch, go to work at a winery (wish it was a brewery), come home, walk my dog again, watch some sports, work on more business, cook dinner, and spend the rest of my night with my loving girlfriend. Put that routine on repeat and that's the jist of my life. I also homebrew about every 3 weeks and I listen to a lot of podcasts revolving around brewing, business, and how to succeed at life. I grew up living in apartments and motels, with family friends, and was eventually taken in by my grandparents at the young age of 13 after my mom could no longer support me. Pops was in and out of my life for the better or worse, but we are friends now.My grandparents really made me the man I am today from disciplining me when I was being a stubborn teenager, to being there for every one of my baseball games for 13 years. They really taught me how to work hard, fight for what I believe is right, and always be kind to others. I became a Marine before the age of 18 and was in the reserves until the age of 23. Went to college at 18 and graduated at 23 with a management degree, all while being in the Marines. Have a background in construction and started working 2 days after graduation day.
I woke up at 3:15 AM one morning (not kidding) and decided I was going to start a buusiness, and thus Waters Brewer was founded, but that's a story for another day...
5 Simple Tips That Will Help Get You Through Any Given Brewday
This guide is NOT a foolproof plan to brew perfect beer every time, it's just some super simple tips that are easy to implement to make your life easier on brewday.
#1 - Make A Checklist
A day before you brew your triple gold medal, all America, world class beer, just make a simple check list of everything you know you are going to need. Maybe even type it up on excel so you can add/change and have everything right there for you for all your future brews as well. You can then just print it out and put a check next to the item when you know you have it.
It is something that if done correct, could just save your beer from failure.
You don't want to get all the way to the end of your boil and then remember that you forgot to buy that last 2 oz's of Centennial hops for your flame out addition... It might not be the end of the world but in your mind you know that you should have had those hops and that you could have made it better...
Or maybe you forgot to go buy new sanitizer and when it comes time to transfer your wort to the bottles, without a clean siphon/hose and bottles... Guess who is going to have to make a trip to the LHBS... And for some of us, that store is NOT too close.
You might have that checklist mentioned above, you could have all the ingredients and and everything is ready to go, but if you simply forget to do something because you got too hammered during/before brew day... You're gonna have a bad time... (coming from experience with this one)
I remember I was about to bottle my 10th batch I believe it was, an American IPA, I had some buddies of mine over because really, who ISN'T interested in the brewing process, it's a mysterious thing for most people. We were just shooting the shit and drinking some beers, started drinking around noon on a Sunday, nothing too crazy, but by the time I had finished sanitizing all my bottles and equipment we were at least like 4 beers deep and I get to bottling. I think everything is going smooth and I finish siphoning the last of the beer in to a bottle I had an realizatio...I forgot to add priming sugar to ALL of my bottles...So I had to go back, boil up some sugar, wait for it to cool some, and add it to each bottle separate. Needles to say this fucked up my carbonation levels when it came time to drink those beers.
I'm sure there are other stories of people getting hammered during brew day (and I would absolutely love to hear them), just try not to let it happen. Would you rather get hammered and possibly forget something, or stay sober and brew some bomb beer?
#3 - Write Down the Brewing Process
Don't just write down the brewing process, write down everything you did that day, what music you listened to, did you have friends over? How was the food you ate today? Get laid last night? Rainy or sunny outside, day of the week...
All of these things come in to the equation when it comes down to your brew. Some may be a little excessive, depending on how superstitious you are, but you get the point...
Write down as much as you can so that when you try your beer in a month of so and it turns out to suck dick, you can look back at your notes and see if you did anything wrong, or if it turns out bomb, you can replicate that exact brew.
If you're only going to write down a few things... write down the ingredients used, order/time you added them, and the temperatures.. Those are the things that will fluctuate the most from brew to brew.
#4 - When in doubt, sanitize it out
If you have to think twice about if you already sanitized something, or if you have to sanitize something, just sanitize it. It won't hurt you (most likely) to sanitize something again. The risk is just too high if you didn't sanitize. You could put your beer from the primary fermenter in to a bottling bucket with the priming sugar, and you forgot to sanitize that bucket, there's a great chance your beer could have got infected because you forgot to sanitize that bottling bucket.
#5 - Ask for help!
Don't be afraid to ask for help! There are soooooo many misunderstood ways to brew, brewing ingredients and equipment, and facts about brewing. There are communities out there such as Reddit/Homebrewing and HomebrewTalk, that are specifically designed to help out homebrewers. These sites will usually get you a reply or two within moments to help you on the spot for all your homebrewing questions, wants, and concerns.
You can always call your LHBS and ask them any questions you may have as well, the workers at those LHBS's tend to be super knowledgeable and helpful. You can always call a buddy that homebrews for help. Shoot, you can even email me if you need any help, especially if it comes to brewing water.
I hope this little guide helps even just a little bit and if I helped even one person make better beer, that's the goal right?
Thanks for taking the time to read this article and I hope you learned something new and gained some valuable knowledge that you can pass on to your homebrew buddies. As always, like, comment, share. Comment on my Instagram post about this and you'll get a picture of you'rs shown on Waters Brewer's Instagram account! Feedback/Comments is always appreciated. Have a day worthy of brewing!
- Ty Stevenson


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- Don't be fooled by last year's misleading stat line. Xander Bogaerts remains one of the best fantasy shortstops in the league.
Certain player types emerge every February and March as fantasy baseball owners prepare for their drafts and auctions. The specific players who fill those roles change, but the roles themselves carry over from year to year. Identifying the players who fit each archetype before you sit down to build your team can help you find hidden value and avoid impending busts. We'll take a look at the 10 most identifiable, enduring archetypes in our Player Profile series. In this edition, we consider The One-Year Blunder: Xander Bogaerts of the Boston Red Sox.
Xander Bogaerts regressed statistically in almost every meaningful way last season. He hit .273/.343/.403, his worst slash line across the board since his first full major league season in 2014. He hit 10 homers, compared with 21 in 2016. His strikeout rate jumped 1.2 percentage points from the previous season. After two straight seasons with a wOBA of at least .338 and offensive bWAR of 4.6, he had a .321 wOBA and 3.4 offensive bWAR last season. It was, in all ways other than the Red Sox team-wide success, an ugly season for Bogaerts.
Last year's regression has conspired to push Bogaerts further down draft boards than we've seen him in years. His average draft position is 83.17, which lands him late in the seventh round of a 12-team league, and late in the sixth of a 14-teamer. Those prices aren't indicative of a player the fantasy community has forgotten, but they don't quite reflect Bogaerts's actual skill or value. You've heard of a one-year wonder. Bogaerts is 2018's One-Year Blunder, and last year's setback is going to make him one of the biggest bargains of the season.
Let's first remember the player Bogaerts was heading into last season. At 24 years old, he was coming off two straight Silver Slugger campaigns. In 2015, his second full year in the majors, he hit .320/.355/.421 with seven homers, 35 doubles, 10 steals, 84 runs and 81 RBI. He was a solid four-category contributor, and the 35 doubles suggested there could be more power in his future. The growth Bogaerts already showed, and the near-guarantee for more, drove his ADP for the 2016 season up to 58.4.
That power showed up the following season when Bogaerts hit a career-high 21 bombs, rewarding those who believed in him at his escalating draft-day price. His batting average slipped to a still-impressive .294, and that was largely resultant of BABIP normalization. He set new career bests with a .356 OBP, .446 slugging percentage, .348 wOBA, 111 OPS+, 115 runs and 89 RBI. Bogaerts may not have showed the full offensive potential of fellow sub-25 shortstops Carlos Correa, Corey Seager or Francisco Lindor, but he clearly wasn't far behind. Even if he never reached their level, it seemed he'd be a perennial All-Star candidate heading into his mid-20s. Bogaerts's ADP shot up to 30.66 for the 2017 season.
Of course, Bogaerts would ultimately hurt those who believed in him last year as much as he lifted those who bought into his breakout the previous season, sending him tumbling down draft boards this year. That tumble is unwarranted. Bogaerts had built up enough good will, given his pedigree and previous two-year success, for the fantasy community to give him a pass on last year, even if he didn't have a good excuse to help explain it away. Bogaerts, however, does have a good excuse.
The Red Sox kicked off a four-game set with the Rays in Tampa on July 6. Going into that game, Bogaerts was hitting .308/.361/.455 with six homers and 20 doubles. In his first plate appearance of the July 6 game, he took a fastball from Jake Faria off his right hand. He missed just one game after the hit by pitch, but it clearly affected him the rest of the season. From that point forward, he hit .232/.321/.340 with a total of 18 extra-base hits in 293 plate appearances. Bogaerts hadn't had a prolonged stretch that bad since his first full season of the majors. That it came immediately after he was drilled on the hand by a fastball, and didn't take any time to let it heal, gives us a pretty good indication of what was at the root of his struggles.
Now with the hand injury fully in the rear-view mirror, there's every reason to expect Boagerts to pick back up on the trajectory he set for himself over two and a half years before a fastball derailed his 2017 season. That's enough for him to easily turn a profit at his ADP, but there's one more piece of hopeful news.
The Red Sox hired Tim Hyers, who spent the last two years with the Dodgers preaching the altar of launch angle, as their new hitting coach. There's legitimate belief he can inspire the same changes in Bogaerts as he helped bring to life in Justin Turner. Before Hyers joined the Dodgers, Turner had 31 homers in 1,687 career plate appearances. Over the last two seasons, Turner belted 48 homers in 1,165 trips to the plate. Bogaerts may not have the frame of Correa or Seager, but at 6'1" and 210 pounds, he's bigger than the 5'11", 205-pound Turner. If Bogaerts can focus on getting more lift more consistently, there may yet be even more power in his bat.
Don't let Bogaerts's injury-based setback fool you. That was nothing more than a One-Year Blunder. He'll be firmly back in the good graces of the fantasy community in 2018.


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Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
April 2018 | BY Brett Gillespie
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover, yeah
September 27th, 1983.
What comes to mind?
What if I include the quote from Bob Hawke?
"Any boss who sacks a worker for not turning up today is a bum"


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Research: Brainwave study of a One-Hour Hypnosis Session
By: Ann Clark, PhD, TNI Director of Research, Certified LBL Hypnotherapist
I am pleased to share information about the research of Marcus Sorensen, MSc, TNI Research Committee member, in this issue. This research comes from Marcus' master's thesis, completed as part of a Neuropsychology program, at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. His research was entitled Life between Lives (LBL) Regression Hypnotherapy, as measured via EEG (Electroencephalogram). He set out to investigate the differences in brainwave states between different phases of the LBL regression experience. His objective was to better understand how LBL hypnosis clients' profound insights arise, neurologically speaking.
Study Design and Procedure
Marcus hypothesized that there would be observable differences in brainwave states between the induction, deepening and experiencing phases of the LBL hypnosis experience. The experience was compressed into one hour to make the experiment feasible within the laboratory setting. Thirty-four subjects were recruited through social media to participate in the quasi-experimental study. Subjects ranged in age from 18 to 70 years and three-quarters were female. Subjects had no history of psychiatric illness, were currently free of any psychotropic medications or substances and scored at a normal or higher level, indicating how hypnotizable they were.
Marcus created an audio recording with the three phases of hypnosis experienced in the typical LBL journey. In the last 20 minutes, where the Experiencing phase took place, subjects were invited to enter a white room that contained a golden bowl and a spiritual presence, both of which represented the types of discoveries that may arise in the spiritual domain of the inter-life. The spiritual presence is revealed to be their higher self. After the individual completes the interaction with their higher self, the third phase is finalized by a standard LBL regression hypnosis emergence procedure. This includes suggesting ways for the individual to integrate the experience of the hypnosis journey and bringing them back to awareness of their body and the environment around them. The hypnosis instructions were pre-recorded to make the experiment suitable for proper EEG data analysis, as there would have been too much variation in what was going on at different times of the experience if there had been live interaction with the participants.
Each laboratory session lasted approximately two hours per participant, with 30 minutes of briefing and setup, 60 minutes of hypnosis with EEG recording, and 30 minutes of verbal survey, clean-up and integration afterwards. During the set-up, headgear with EEG electrodes were placed and secured. For the hypnosis, participants were seated alone in an air-conditioned and sound-attenuated room where the recording was played from loudspeakers adjusted by each participant to their preferred volume setting. Participants were instructed to close their eyes, and not to fall asleep or move for the duration unless necessary. Lights were turned off prior to commencing the hypnosis. At the end of the recording, the participants were brought out of hypnosis, and given time to integrate the experience. A follow-up interview was conducted immediately after the hypnosis and a follow-up questionnaire was sent out two weeks afterwards to check for longer lasting effects.
EEG data were processed in Brain Vision Analyzer software in several stages for each participant. Statistical analysis on group data from all 34 participants were analyzed with SPSS, using descriptive statistics and one-way Analysis of Variance.
There was a significant increase in Alpha wave activity between the induction and Experiencing phases in the parietal electrodes. It is normal to expect more Alpha wave activity in this area once the eyes are closed, but what was unexpected was that the Alpha waves continued to increase throughout the experience. This indicates that participants went into a state that was far detached from their physical bodies' input, especially during the Experiencing phase.
Another unexpected finding was that the Theta wave activity in the frontal electrodes decreased significantly between the Deepening and Experiencing. An increase in Theta wave activity was expected as participants entered the white room and started interacting with inter-life-related objects and presences, since Theta wave activity is associated with having emotional experiences, as well as retrieving and creating new memories. This prompted Marcus to analyze the different subparts of the Experiencing phase in more detail to try to understand what was happening. He then examined entering the white room, focusing on the golden bowl, focusing on the benevolent presence and discovering that the presence is one's higher self.
The theta band frequency was divided into two commonly used sub-bands of Theta 1 and Theta 2. Previous research has shown greater activity in Theta 2 when hypnosis is compared with meditation, and thus examining the narrower Theta 2 band may prove more revealing than looking at the whole theta band. He also examined Gamma frequencies, which have been correlated with sensory and cognitive association, especially related to imagery. Here is what he discovered.
Marcus discovered a significant increase in Theta 2 power between Presence and Presence meaning to self. This is what he expected. Secondly, he found a significant decrease in the Gamma waves between Presence and Presence meaning to self.
According to Marcus, the significant decrease in narrow-band frontal Gamma power (38-42Hz) observed between the Presence Focus to the Presence Meaning to Self-sub-phases makes sense when considering that this Gamma frequency is observed during sensory and cognitive association tasks in the brain. In focusing on the spiritual presence, participants were specifically invited to "notice the difference in feeling or color or intensity" of the presence, which would plausibly activate multiple sensory neural networks and thereby increase narrow-band Gamma power with the integration of the subjective sensory experience with thoughts.
The results of this research create a challenge to notions that an inter-life experience has to take place in a specific brainwave state. It is interesting to note, that there are effects that happen just because we have our eyes closed for a long time, and other effects that fluctuate depending on the perceptual or emotional experiences we are having. Marcus posits that the relative quietness of the parietal lobe over an hour or longer allows us to be detached from our physical experience during an LBL Regression Hypnotherapy journey, which in turn allows us to go deeply into our own inner landscapes. He suggests that the interplay between Gamma and Theta frequency found in the frontal lobe are linked with the possibility of having vivid sensory and emotional experiences in that setting.
This groundbreaking research gives us our first look at the neuropsychological aspects of the mechanisms of LBL regression hypnotherapy. There are many more exciting discoveries to come. ♥
Dr. Ann Clark, PhD, TNI Director of Research is a Certified LBL Hypnotherapist practicing in Birmingham, Alabama, USA.
Marcus Sorensen is a certified LBL Hypnotherapist practicing in London & Kent, UK, as well as Belgium & Holland
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...and I am working on a way for you to hear me.
My new focus as far as video quality goes is going to be audio. I know that audio is an integral part of the experience and so I am striving to bring quality audio into my videos. It is a challenge as my apartment has serious "room tone", but on the bright side it means even more smoking because hey, gotta experiment, yeah?
I also want to spruce up the scenery around here but as that takes do-re-mi-money, well, that will have to wait for the if and the when I have any. It wont take much, though, is the bright side of that.
Completely non-sequitur, I once owned a Camel standup ashtray. It must have been sturdy AF or perhaps I was less klutzy, because I don't recall knocking it over, which happens with my ashtray NOW but interestingly ONLY when it is full - though admittedly it does stay pretty full, because the supply of stubbed out filters and ash gets constantly replenished, so knocking it over when it's full is sorta like shooting fish in a barrel.
In other news, nicotine is a nootropic. So that means my cigarettes are like practically smart drugs, right? ;)