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Updated March 9, 2010
Treiber Police Photo
Awaiting trial for murder, Frenchman Jean-Pierre Treiber goes on the run and makes the police look like idiots.
Before the invention of television, head hunters rode on horseback into dusty towns and in their saddlebags were the wanted poster for the man they'd gone to find.
Today, a head hunter is a cop in a fast car with an earsplitting siren and a rotating red light, or he is cop in a helicopter equipped with infra-red camera equipment that turns night into day. And, today, because of 24/7 breaking news reports on television, the wanted poster has become obsolete because now we know the face of a man on the run like we know our own.
This became the case with the man on the picture above – Jean-Pierre Treiber – who was on the run from prison where he was awaiting trial for the kidnap and murder of two young women.
So familiar had become his face that his marked squint was even being targeted by stand-up comics and talk show hosts.
But Treiber's story is far from something to laugh about.
Two is company; three is a crowd
It was only 48 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, November 1, 2004, in the region of Burgundy, southeast of Paris. It was All Saints Day and a public holiday in most of Europe and the French actress Géraldine Giraud, 36, was spending the long weekend in the vacation cottage of her showbiz parents, the actors Roland Giraud and Maaike Jansen, in the Burgundy village of La Postolle (pop. 138).
The Girauds' and their daughter were looked on as "locals" by the villagers, the Postollieès and Postolliers, and their privacy was respected. Paris with its glamour and glitz, and beautiful and wealthy celebrities, was only 70 miles away, but to the villagers, sturdy country folk, it might just as well have been on the other side of the Atlantic for all they cared. They lived uneventful lives which was how they wanted it to be. In fact, the last time the region had been spoken of for a reason other than its splendid wines and delicious escargots de Bourgogne – garlic-buttered snails cooked in their shells – had been in 1946 when the serial killer Dr. Marcel Petiot, a local son, was guillotined in Paris for the murder of 26 people.
Whatever the Girauds did when at the cottage was therefore never something that the locals discussed, not among themselves and certainly never with the media; the Girauds knew that none of their neighbors would be sitting in a tree with a telescopic camera to snap them having a dip in their pool or entertaining their show business friends over a long weekend.
That All Saints Day weekend was no exception. The neighbors knew that Géraldine was at the cottage. They saw her grey Peugeot 206 in the driveway, but who she had staying with her was her business, they thought.
Géraldine Giraud was indeed not alone at the cottage. She had brought along another young woman, the 32-year-old Katia Lherbier, an aspiring singer. There were people in the show business world who also would have described Géraldine as "aspiring". Despite her parents' fame on the French movie scene, she had appeared in only three movies, but she was keeping her hand in with dubbing work.
On that Monday morning of the long weekend, the two women stayed indoors.
At one o'clock Katia, using her cell phone, called her older sister who lived in the town of Sens, also in Burgundy and a few miles from La Postolle. The sisters had planned to go to the movies that afternoon - La Postolle did not have a movie theatre, so they were going to go to the one in Sens - but Katia was cancelling the rendezvous. She was still in La Postolle, she said, and would be returning to Sens only the next day. They would go to the movies later that week.
At 8.30 p.m. Géraldine's cell phone rang. A friend was calling her. Géraldine told the friend that she was on the road, driving to Sens for dinner. Suddenly, the phone went dead. The friend called Géraldine's cell number again, but there was no reply and she decided that she would call again, but only the next morning. The following morning she did and again there was no answer. The landline telephone in the Girauds' cottage also remained unanswered.
The long weekend ended.
On Tuesday morning Géraldine's friend called again but when her call was still not taken, she called the Girauds' landline which also still remained unanswered. Katia's cell also remained mute.
In the course of the day the two women's families became concerned. It was not in the character of the two not to keep in touch. The following day Roland Giraud went to the police in Paris and completed form 12815-01 declaring his daughter and her friend missing.
Immediately, Géraldine's life and lifestyle became prime-time television news and it filled the front pages of the gossip media. The young woman was a lesbian and so was Katia.
It was only two weeks previously, on Thursday, October 14, that the two had met. Géraldine had snapped Katia away from another woman, an older woman named Marie-Christene Van Kempen. The latter was Géraldine's maternal aunt. A former opera singer she was giving singing lessons in Sens where she lived. One of her pupils lived - or rather as Van Kempen would say "boarded" - with her. The pupil was Katia Lherbier. Once, having introduced her pupil to her niece, she had to step back to watch the two young women fall in love, and to accept that they were going to spend the long weekend together in the tranquility of La Postolle.
Thus, the long weekend over, and neither the aspiring actress nor the aspiring singer giving any sign of life, had they perhaps fled from the wrath of a jilted Van Kempen? Or from the accusing eyes of Géraldine's family; Van Kempen was, after all, the sister of Géraldine's mother.
Or, had they slipped away to a place even quieter than La Postolle to cement their relationship? Géraldine's car was missing too, so it was plausible that they had set off by car for some secret destination. It did not take the police long to verify all the outgoing and incoming calls of Géraldine's cell phone and therefore to know that she had answered that final 8.30 p.m. call from the quiet, winding, 3-mile long road between the Burgundy village of Armeau (720 inhabitants) and the Burgundy town of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne (5000 inhabitants). Dr. Petiot had been Mayor of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne before he had moved to Paris there to begin his killing spree.
As is the procedure, the police began to check whether Géraldine and Katia's credit cards were being used. They were.
On that Monday, November 1, their cards had been used to withdraw money from the cash distributor at the Villeneuve-sur-Yonne branch of Bank Crédit Agricole. The transactions were registered at 9.50 p.m. In other words, just one hour and 20 minutes after the call to Géraldine's cell phone had abruptly ended. A spy camera was focused on the cash distributor and at 9.50 p.m. it had captured a man at the machine; he was rather tall, slender and had wispy fair hair.
The next day, Tuesday, November 2, the two cards had been used again for money withdrawals, but in Paris, 70 miles away. A spy camera had again photographed a rather tall, slender man with wispy fair hair at the cash distributor at the time that the money was being withdrawn.
On Monday, November 8, the card had been used again and spy cameras had again captured the user; a rather tall, slender man with wispy fair hair. He was snapped paying for provisions at a payout desk in a supermarket in Pontault-Combault, 12 miles south-east of Paris. Next, he was photographed walking from the shop, pushing a trolley packed high with his purchases.
Apart from their successes with situating where Géraldine had taken her final cell phone call and tracking the credit card transactions, the police appeared to have made no progress with what was most crucial - finding the two women. But 22 days later, on Tuesday, November 23, the Paris police, working with their Burgundy colleagues, took in for questioning a forest guide who fitted the description of the man who'd been using the credit cards. His name was Jean-Pierre Treiber. The arrest took place at a warehouse in the town of Blandy-les-Tours, close to Pontault-Combault. Treiber was helping out at the warehouse where a friend of his worked. He'd been doing odd jobs there for a couple of months, sleeping in a caravan parked on the site, but, as the friend would tell the police, he had often driven back to his home for a weekend. Treiber's home was in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne.
The police had already identified Treiber a few days before when he had again used Géraldine's credit card; he had bought gas from a Paris gasoline station. Checking the gasoline station's spy cameras they had then seen the same rather tall, slender, fair-haired man having the tank of a battered Peugeot 205 filled. Quickly, the police had found the owner of the car; a woman named Patricia Darbeau. She lived near to the town of Fontainebleau, 40 miles from Paris, and close to the warehouse and the shopping centre. She had not, she said, used the car for quite some time; she had sold it to Treiber but they'd not yet had time to change its registration. She described him to the police as a friend and had directed them to the warehouse.
Treiber, on his arrest, had the credit cards of Géraldine and Katia on him. When he noticed the police interest in the cards, he said, "Oh, so that's what this is about. They gave me the cards. Said they wanted to disappear and that I could use their cards." Asked about the cards he described himself as a friend of the Giraud family and said that he had known Géraldine for some years. At that stage the police believed that he indeed was a friend of the Giraud family because he gave them some personal details about the family, which as the police would say, only an intimate of the family could possibly have known. (The police respecting the family's privacy have not revealed the details.)
He also told the police that Patricia Darbeau, whom he described as his girlfriend, had been present when the two women had given them their cards. Darbeau would deny this. Her story would be that she had no knowledge of the two women, had never met them and had never even heard Treiber mention them. She also denied being Treiber's girlfriend; she was an acquaintance only, she said.
Two days later, on Thursday, November 25, Treiber was transferred from Paris police headquarters to the jail in Auxerre, another Burgundy town and birthplace of Dr. Petiot. He was held on suspicion of "kidnapping, illegal confinement, theft and fraud." Friends speaking to the media said that they were flabbergasted; he was, they said, a really nice guy and not a thief, and certainly not someone who would have harmed anyone.
Treiber, incarcerated, the police cordoned off his house in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. It was a modest, flat-roofed, two-story cottage with white-washed walls that stood within a large, untidy garden. There was a rickety shed in the garden.
While one team from Forensics fine-combed the house, another began to dig up the garden. The police were especially interested in the garden because their investigation had also revealed that Treiber had hired a motorized shovel from a hardware store in Sens. He had done so on Wednesday, November 3, three days into Géraldine and Katia's disappearance and he had again paid with one of the two credit cards. When questioned about it he had readily acknowledged the hiring of the shovel and said that he had to get rid of some shrubs.
Géraldine Giraud
In the garden the police found a strip of denim which they thought had been ripped from a pair of jeans, a set of keys to the Girauds' vacation cottage, a set of keys to Géraldine's Paris apartment, and her partly-melted cell phone. The objects had not been hidden as such; it was as if they had been dropped - intentionally dropped with the hope that they would quickly be found.
In the shed, among the normal array of gardening tools, the police found a half-used roll of adhesive tape and a half-used roll of electrical wire. Treiber, questioned, acknowledged ownership of the gardening tools, but he said that he had never seen the tape and the wire. Forensics removed all the items for testing for DNA profiles.
At 2.30 a.m. on Friday, December 10, a dark and freezing cold night, the police found two bodies wrapped in a blanket at the bottom of a disused well in one corner of the garden. The bodies were naked and an effort had been made to burn them. Because of the burning, the media immediately drew comparisons between Treiber and Dr. Petiot; the doctor had also burned the bodies of his victims.
Five days later, on Wednesday, December 15, the police issued a statement that DNA profiles had identified the two bodies as those of Géraldine and Katia. The two women had not been raped and neither had they suffered any physical violence, but they had been trussed up with electrical wire and kept silent with adhesive tape. They had died from asphyxiation due to the inhalation of the lethal gas chloropicrin. It is a gas that the Germans used against the Allies in World War I and today it is classified as a chemical warfare agent. An oily and colorless liquid, it must be handled with gloves, and safety glasses are to be worn by the handler. (In France, only farmers and foresters can buy chloropicrin. Farmers use it as a soil fumigant and to kill fungi and soil insects, and foresters use it to kill rodents. It is sold in hardware stores and gardening centers and a dangerous substance register must be signed.)
The police also announced that the same DNA profile had been found on the bodies, on the blanket in which the bodies had been wrapped and on the electrical wire and adhesive tape found in Treiber's garden shed. A different DNA profile had been found on a hair that clung to the adhesive tape. The two DNA profiles were being matched to those of 70 people, one of them Treiber and another Géraldine's aunt, Marie-Christene Van Kempen. As the police would point out Marie-Christene Van Kempen was not a suspect, but as she had shared her home with Katia, it was essential that she should also provide a DNA sample.
Where were the two killed? And why were they killed?
The police said that as Géraldine and Katia had not been raped, the murder motive had been theft; someone wanted the car and credit cards.
As for where the two women had been killed, the police said that this was something that they were still unable to say. Géraldine's car had however been found and it was being tested for DNA profiles. The car had been found on Wednesday, December 8, in the free parking bay of a Paris hospital. An attendant at the parking bay had summoned a tow truck to take the car, thought to have been abandoned as it had been parked there for more than a month, to the Paris municipal car pound.
On Monday, December 20, the Auxerre prosecutor changed Treiber's indictment to murder.
Their investigation had found that Treiber was in dire financial straits. Not having had a steady job for a couple of years he'd been working as an odd-jobs man earning around $750 a month. He had therefore run up a debt of $1500 on his credit card which had resulted in his bank cancelling the card and putting him on a credit risk register.
Treiber was returned to Paris and incarcerated in La Santé prison. It was in La Santé where Dr. Petiot was guillotined. That formidable killing machine would not however await Treiber. France having banned capital banishment in 1981, the maximum sentence for murder today is life imprisonment, and "life" means that a murderer could walk free after having served 18 years.
In La Santé, Treiber protested his innocence. When he chose to reply to questions, he changed his story often, but never his claim of innocence. He said that he had no idea how the women's bodies had ended up in the well in his garden. He repeated that he was a friend of the Giraud family. He could not recall ever having seen Géraldine's cell phone or her set of keys. He said that the adhesive tape and electrical wire were not his. He'd said he'd never even seen it. He would admit knowing Marie-Christene Van Kempen, but just to deny during his next interrogation that he did.
Would not hurt a fly
The year 2004 ended. Roland Giraud interviewed by journalists, spoke in anger of the slowness of the murder investigation. Yes, his daughter was a lesbian. Yes, she had never hidden her sexual preference for women. No, she had never spoken of a man named Treiber. No, he was certainly not a friend, not of Géraldine, and not of the family; they did not know him.
Treiber's friends on the other hand spoke up in support of him. Hunting companions, asked by journalist to tell them about their tall, blond friend with the big ears and the marked squint, said that he was "always calm and discreet, friendly, a good sort when out hunting, an excellent forest guard, and certainly not a bandit." Yes, they added, he was short of money, but that was not a crime, was it?
In 1989, at 26 years of age, Treiber, working for a gardening firm in his native Alsace (a French province on the French/German border), had married a young colleague, Marie-Pascale, the daughter of a physician; she was a single mother with a daughter. A year later, having moved to the town of Fontainebleau, south of Paris, Treiber and Marie-Pascale's only child, also a daughter, was born. Fontainebleau is surrounded by forests and it was there that France's kings used to hunt, and it was those former royal forests and its rich flora and fawn that had drawn Treiber to the region.
Working as hunting guide for the wealthy owner of a chateau, the Treibers lived well, but when killing animals became something unacceptable and unsociable, Treiber lost his job.
His next employment would be as a gardener when he took up with a couple who were running a small local restaurant.
When the restaurateur, identified only as François V, went off to serve a short sentence in jail for petty theft, Treiber started seeing the woman the man had left behind. Her name was Patricia Darbeau.
Treiber and Darbeau's love affair ended the Treiber marriage although neither Marie-Pascale nor Treiber took steps to start divorce proceedings. This was in 2003 and while Marie-Pascale and her two daughters remained in Fontainebleau, Treiber and Darbeau set off for Burgundy. Burgundy also has many forests, and again, it were those that drew Treiber.
Working either as forest guard or hunting guide or gardener, even already then as an odd-jobs man, Treiber moved around Burgundy and Darbeau patiently trailed along, and then they finally settled down in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, in a small house on a street that dead-ended into yet another forest. After a while the couple began to quarrel and Darbeau returned to Fontainebleau.
Living alone, Treiber got on well with his neighbors and, as they would tell journalists, he was always pleased to lend a hand when something had to be done in their gardens. But it was obvious that he had a financial problem because he had told them that, because of the high price of gasoline, he was unable to drive 30 miles to the town where his teenage daughter was lying ill. (Police have not revealed the daughter's name or what her illness had been, but Treiber was not totally truthful; it was not Treiber's biological child who had been ill, but the daughter Marie-Pascale had given birth to before she had met him.)
Marie-Pascale Treiber would perhaps be the one who would describe Jean-Pierre Treiber best. She's written a book about him (published by l'Archipel in October 2009, titled Ma Vérité – My Truth) in which she wrote of what he was like when she met him: "He was quite fantastic and a very hard worker. He must have weighed between 165 and 170 lbs for his five-foot-nine inches. He did twice as much work as anybody else. He was not an idiot, but dynamic, and never vulgar, and with lots of character."
Of the break-up of their marriage she wrote that once he had become friendly with the two restaurateurs he changed though. He started to use aftershave and eau de toilette. She wrote that he began to stay out at night. He also was no longer such a good worker because he was "the last to arrive at work and the first to leave."
"He really lost it," she wrote.
On Tuesday, March 1, Burgundy, indeed most of France and Europe under snow, the police called in on Marie-Christene Van Kempen at her house in Sens. They had gone to fetch her for questioning.
It was not however the police's first visit to Van Kempen's house.
In the week after the disappearance of her niece and Katia, "my student and boarder," as she had continued to describe Katia to anyone who would listen – the respective families, friends, the media – the police had turned up at her house with a search warrant. On that day they had found a chloroform-impregnated cloth in her cellar. So too a dead cat. Both items they had removed for further examination. Unlike chloropicrin, often called nitro-chloroform, with which Géraldine and Katia had been killed, chloroform, a by-product, is nontoxic if less than 0.34 fluid ounces are inhaled. Had their killer or killers (at that time Treiber was still unknown to them) tested the volume and speed of chloroform's toxicity on the cat in an effort to know whether it could be a fatal substance if inhaled by a human being?
But the police had allowed four months to pass before taking in Van Kempen and questioning her about the cloth, the chloroform and the dead cat. She replied that the cloth did not belong to her, she'd never used chloroform in her life and she'd never set eyes on the cat. (In France, a non-medical person can get hold of chloroform only by stealing it from medical premises or being illegally given it by medical workers.)
About Treiber, Van Kempen also had something to say. Like with the dead cat, she'd also never laid her eyes on him. She would insist on this even although the owner of a bar in Fontainebleau, the town where Treiber had lived before he set off for Burgundy and where his estranged wife Marie-Pascale and his ex-girlfriend Patricia Darbeau still lived, had gone to tell the police that Treiber, Van Kempen and Darbeau had come to his establishment a few days after the disappearance of Géraldine and Katia had been made public. Why had he waited five months to report the three's visit to his bar, the police had asked him. His reply was that at the time Treiber, whomhe knew by sight only, had not yet been a suspect in the murder case, and though he also knew Darbeau by sight, he had had no idea that the second woman, a stranger to him, was the aunt of one of the murdered lesbians.
Van Kempen was released. Thirty-one hours after having been taken in, she was free. Not only had the cops believed her, but they had tested the acoustics of her house in her absence to verify whether noise in the house could be heard in those of her neighbors. The reason was that some of her neighbors had reported that angry female and male voices, and thuds and groaning had come from her house that All Saints weekend. The house was soundproof, or at least, as soundproof as an old house could be.
Roland Giraud, asked by journalists about his sister-in-law replied that he had nothing to say. He would in future continue to refuse to speak of her, so too would his wife.
Next, the police took in for questioning another eight people who had contact at some time or other with Treiber. They too were soon released. The police even flew investigators to Poland to question a friend of Treiber who had moved there with his Polish girlfriend. The friend supplied a DNA sample. It would be announced later that his DNA profile did not match the three profiles which had been removed from the bodies, the blanket, and the wire and tape.
The spring of 2005 ended and so did the summer, and then, on Thursday, November 24, yet again a freezing cold day, Van Kempen was re-arrested and charged with "complicity to murder." Also arrested that day was Darbeau. She too was charged with "complicity to murder."
The police had changed their minds. They had come to the conclusion that theft was not the main motive for the double murder. The motive was a love triangle: Van Kempen, furious at Géraldine for having stolen Katia, had hired Treiber, an acquaintance if not a friend, to murder the two young women. Darbeau had known of the plan.
In February 2006, Van Kempen again walked free. So did Darbeau. They however remained indicted with "complicity to murder."
Darbeau had convinced the police that she had never met Géraldine and Katia and therefore could not have been present when they had given Treiber their credit cards and pin codes. Whether they had indeed done so she was not in a position to say, she said, but she preferred to believe in his innocence.
As for Van Kempen, the police had received the results of the DNA tests and hers had not matched the two profiles. As for those two profiles, they did not match Treiber or Darbeau's DNA profiles either. They were the DNA of two cops on the investigation team.
The indictments against Van Kempen and Darbeau would be lifted, but not until October 2008 when another two years had passed, and despite that three months before that, Marie-Pascale had told the police that her estranged husband had told her of how he had met two lesbians - an aunt and her niece - in the town of Sens. The police would not reveal whether Treiber had given Marie-Pascale the names of the two lesbians, but they did reveal that Treiber had told Marie-Pascale about the meeting in 2004 - the year of the double murder. He had told her in the last fortnight of July 2004, having just then met the two women. She was precise about the month and the year. As she told the police, July 14, a Wednesday, France's National Day, Treiber had spent in Sens, and it was on that day that he had met the two lesbians. Her certainty about her conversation with Treiber having taken place in 2004 was because within months of him having told her about the two lesbians, the news had broken that two lesbians had been murdered in the village of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne close to Sens.
Therefore, Van Kempen and Darbeau no longer suspects, the police were back with one suspect only: Jean-Pierre Treiber.
Prison life
Treiber's trial was set for the spring of 2010, so he had almost another two years of waiting. He was transferred from Paris's La Santé back to the prison in Auxerre, there to wait for his day of judgment.
At first he was a model prisoner. He was quiet and polite and liked by all. Compensated for his good behavior, he became overseer in the prison's work atelier where the inmates were making pencils for a manufacturer of small wooden objects whose warehouse was in the town of Bonnard, a few miles from Auxerre.
Time dragged though for this man who loved the outdoors. He became depressed. He spoke little, and certainly not to the warders.
Outside, in the free world of which he so much wanted to be part, his compatriots forgot about him.
On Tuesday, September 8, 2009, an unusually hot day for so late in summer, Treiber was back on prime time TV and on the front pages of newspapers and magazines.
He had escaped.
Hearing of his escape did not raise many eyebrows in France. Each year, half a dozen or more inmates go on the run. An inmate may not return from what the French call a permission – a day or a weekend at home or an afternoon of liberty to attend, for example, a funeral. Another may make a ladder from sheets and escape that way, and, until a few years ago when safety nets were strung across exercise yards, escaping audaciously and glamorously by helicopter, an accomplice lowering a cord from the chopper with which to whisk the inmate to freedom, had happened frequently.
Therefore, with Treiber on the run as well, both the written and the visual media wanted to know whether nothing could then be done to make France's prisons more humane.
Auxerre Prison
Auxerre Prison
For example, Auxerre's prison, built in the 19th century, has 183 inmates although it should have no more than 111.
Cédric Labigne, one of its warders and an official of the warders' union, UFAP, tried to explain on television news how a prisoner could have escaped. He said that at Auxerre there were just 45 warders and that they were unable to cope with the supervision of 183 men, men whose nerves were all stretched to the limit because of the overcrowding conditions of prison life. "We now have two to a cell. Some times even three to a cell. It was inhumane to lock people up like this. And it is inhumane to expect the staff to do their work properly," he said. He was echoing what other UFAP members had been saying for years.
Official justice ministry statistics seemed to endorse that all was not well in the country's prisons. They showed that from January 1 to August 19 of 2009, 81 prisoners in French prisons had committed suicide. The figure of 81 was immediately contested by the Paris-based International Prison Observatory (IPO) that monitors jail conditions and prisoners' rights in France. The IPO claimed that 88 prisoners had killed themselves in jail in that period. It also gave the figure for 2007 as 96, and that of 2008 as 115.
Justice-Minister Michelle Alliot-Marie, aware that French prisons holding 62,000 men and women in a nationwide prison capacity of 51,000, were among the most overcrowded in Europe, admitted that something had to be done. In a first step she announced that from early in 2010 prisons would be equipped with anti-suicide "kits." In such a kit would be tear-proof bedding and single-use paper pajamas to prevent cell hangings because those account for 90 percent of prison suicides.
She would also file a motion in parliament in the month that would follow Treiber's escape that there should never be more than one inmate per cell. The motion would be adopted after only one debate but, as critics would then point out, before it would be possible to implement such a rule more prisons would have to be built. And until then the number of suicides would undoubtedly continue to rise. So too the number of escapees.
On the run
Treiber's escape was, if not glamorous, then certainly audacious.
He had escaped in a large cardboard box.
The escape scenario resulted in many red faces, red faces not only at the prison, but also at the Ministry of Justice.
The story was that on that Tuesday morning, Treiber had gone to the atelier as usual and at10:30 he had joined his fellow inmates on their coffee break when he had spoken of how he would be seeing his lawyer that day. He would therefore, as he said, not be returning immediately to the atelier. During the day whenever a warder had asked the other inmates where Treiber was, one of the inmates, a man named Flavien Cosson, who was serving 20 years for the murder of his girlfriend, explained that Treiber was in consultation with his lawyer. It was not until 7:30 that night – seven hours having gone by – that the warders, on doing their habitual end-of-day head-count, had realized that Treiber had made a runner. At first Cosson had denied having assisted him, then he had confessed; Treiber, equipped with a set of warm clothing and a few objects with which to keep himself clean and neat, had climbed into one of the boxes destined to be driven to the warehouse in Bonnard, and he, Cosson, had covered that box along with all the other pencil-filled boxes with thick industrial cellophane. The boxes had then been fork-lifted onto a waiting truck and were driven off to the warehouse. (Cosson now risks having a couple of years added to the 20 he is already serving.)
At first the police could not work out where exactly between prison and factory Treiber had bid his box and the truck farewell, but the driver and his mate soon admitted that they had pulled up at a highway café close to the factory for a bite to eat and something to drink, and that, on their return to the truck, they had seen that there was a large hole in one of its canvassed side panels.
The factory stood on the edge of a forest, the 45-mile long forest of Orthe, and the police presumed that Treiber, a man of the forest, had descended at the café and had headed for the trees.
On the morning after Treiber's escape, more than a hundred police and gendarmes (militarized police who fall under the Ministry of Defense) began a search of Orthe forest. Treiber was however not to be found there and a mocking media pointed out that with a day and a night to his advantage he could already have booked into a hotel in any of the countries on France's eastern border.
But Treiber was still in France as he manifested by sending a letter to the weekly Paris-published news magazine, Marianne. He had posted the letter on Monday, September 14, seven days after his escape from prison, and he had posted it in the town of Monéteau (pop. 3,826) only four miles from Auxerre and 20 miles from Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. He wrote in the letter, which the magazine published, that he had not gone on the run, he was only reclaiming what the two women's real murderers had taken from him: His freedom. He described himself as having been close to suicide in jail, and he promised that he will be turn up for the opening day of his trial. But until then he will remain a free man. He had enclosed his prisoner's card bearing the number 13855 with the letter.
Treiber was to write more letters, each one posted in a town a little closer to Paris. He was obviously making his way to the capital. In one letter written to Blandine Stassart, a woman prison visitor with whom he had fallen in love (and apparently she with him), and addressing her as Hartzala – "little heart" in Alsatian – he wrote lyrically of the beauty of nature. (Alsatian is close to German which Treiber, though he was a non-achiever in school, speaks fluently.)
He also wrote of a "little old lady" who had given him some tomatoes although she had obviously recognized him.
And he wrote about overhead helicopters, and having seen newspapers with his photograph splashed on the front page when he'd gone to post her a letter. "I did not hang around," he wrote.
At the home of his "little heart" police found 152 letters he had written her from prison. In one he told her that he will, in the fall, see her in the forest of Bombon south of Paris and close to Fontainebleau where he had once lived. He will, he wrote, carve a large red heart on a tree and when the time came she should leave letters for him under that tree and he would leave some there for her.
Police immediately proceeded to the forest and soon they found a tree with a large red heart carved into its bark. On Friday, October 9, a warm and sunny day, 150 police and gendarmes in camouflage clothing began to stake out the forest, hiding in trees and under fallen trunks and in the forest's numerous small caves and coves. Night fell and still they were waiting for Public Enemy No.1, as the media had begun to call Treiber. There were even police in helicopters with infra-red equipment aimed down onto the forest, circling overhead as if in a war zone.
Then, towards 9 p.m. a car with two passengers – a man and a woman – drew up. The couple started to make love and the police and gendarmes watched, unable to step from their hiding places to move the two amorous lovers along. After a frustrating 45 minutes, the car finally drove off.
Soon afterwards, a man came walking towards the tree, but suddenly he stopped and cocked his head to one side as if he was listening to the silence of the night. Maybe in that silence he had heard a twig snap or maybe he felt the tension of the men hiding all around the tree, but he turned on his heels and ran away and before any of the police could run after him, he had vanished.
The man was obviously Treiber.
Not even trying to explain how they could possibly have failed to catch him on that day, the police would only say that they were certain that he was not hiding in the forest itself. He was, they said, hiding with someone who lived somewhere close to the forest.
More the police would not say, but a Paris newspaper printed two photographs of a man casually dressed in jeans, open-necked shirt and windbreaker walking along a street. The photos had been taken by a spy camera on that street.
The newspaper did not name the town or city where the photographs were taken, and neither had it explained how the photos had come into its possession. But the police immediately announced that they had launched an investigation to find the mole among their ranks, because they believed that only they knew of the existence if those photographs.
Meanwhile, Treiber remained on the run. His family and friends said that him being a man of the forests, as long as there was a forest left in France, he would remain free.
Roland Giraud, unable to put closure to the murder of his daughter, wanted to know how the police could be so incompetent. He also said that if anything proved Jean-Pierre Treiber's guilt, then it was his escape.
As for Marie-Pascale Treiber, in an interview in the Paris-based weekly VSD of 16/22 September (2009), she predicted that Treiber would never be seen again.
She said: "He is neither a serial killer nor a dangerous madman. He is without doubt a most knowledgeable forester. He knows every plant that there is and he can identify every bird's song. It is revolting what has been written about him. He is not a halfwit. I think the way he escaped proves this surely.
"He was not a good husband or father. He was even a bad father. But being a husband and a father was difficult for him because he loved nature so much. We must have been a kind of prison for him."
She said that he knew the forests of his native Alsace province well and as there were still many World War II German shelters and bunkers (Nazi Germany annexed Alsace during the war) in those forests, they would be a perfect setting to play "catch me if you can" with the police.
His trial remained scheduled for Monday, April 19, 2010. It would go ahead with or without him in the dock.
Weeks passed.
Crime reporters were writing that Treiber would no longer be in France; it made sense, they wrote, that he would have found someone in the milieu – criminal underground – who would have given him a fake passport. He could therefore be in just about any place on earth.
The police remained characteristically mute. And they continued to look like blunderers. "Tell us, what do you guys do all day?" the media asked.
Then it was Friday, November 20, and the day was ending but the office of Brice Hortefeux, France's Minister of Interior, called a press conference. The Minister was experiencing a bad patch in his career because of a racist remark he had made – he had said that one man of color was alright but that several caused a problem – so the journalists thought that he wanted to again explain that he was not a racist. But to their surprise, he wanted to talk about Treiber.
Said the Minister: "I wish to announce that Monsieur Jean-Pierre Treiber was arrested this afternoon."
That afternoon at 4:25, France's special intervention police, RAID (Recherche, Assistance, Intervention, Dissuasion - Research, Assistance, Intervention, Deference) had burst into a one-room apartment in the town of Melun, 30 miles south of Paris, and there they had found Treiber lying on a mattress on the floor.
He had been on the run for 74 days.
Certainly not Blunderers
Treiber behind bars yet again, the police no longer remained mute; they started to talk, they told their side of the story. Blunderers, they said, they certainly were not.
No sooner had Treiber escaped from Auxerre's prison than France's BNRF police (Brigade Nationale de Recherche des Fugitifs) that seek fugitives, began tapping the telephones (landline and cell) of the various members of his family, his known friends and former colleagues, and of men who had been in prison with him but had served their sentences and had been released. The BNRF also began staking out the homes of those they thought would be most inclined to give him shelter.
For a month the BNRF patiently watched and listened, but there was no sign of Treiber.
One friend the BNRF kept an eye on was a man named Michel Huys.
Huys, 57 years old, and Treiber had become buddies when they had worked together as forest guards during Treiber's Fontainebleau days. Although Huys did not have a police record, at Treiber's initial arrest in November 2004, he'd been among the seven people the police had taken in for questioning having suspected that he could have been involved in the murders of Géraldine and Katia. He still lived in the Fontainebleau region, on a small rented farm in the region of Fontainebleau. With him lived a woman, identified only as Marie-Thérèse F.
Huys had two friends. One was named Christian Top. He was a 56-year-old former security van driver, who, having been the victim of a hold-up, had taken early retirement. He had never clashed with the law. And he had never met Treiber. The other friend was named Régis Charpentier. He was 53 years old and he had indeed clashed with the law; he spent a total of 20 years in prison for violence and pimping. And he did know Treiber; in fact, they used to be great friends and used to go drinking together. Both Charpentier and Top lived in small towns close to Fontainebleau.
The police thought that if Treiber was going to turn to friends for help then he would turn to Huys and Charpentier, and the first clue that they were not mistaken was when a resident of the small town of Bréau, also in the Fontainbleau region and bordering a forest, reported having seen Treiber walk along one of the town's streets. Discreetly, the police put up a spy camera on the street, and sure, Treiber was filmed. As discreetly, the police handed two stills from the film to a Paris newspaper hoping that their publication would "smoke out" the fugitive. (There had therefore not been a mole in the police force, but the tactic had not worked because after the publication of the photos Treiber was not filmed again.)
However, with confirmation that Treiber was in the region, the BNRF put tracking devices on the cars of Huys, Charpentier and Top. It was something that took some time to accomplish because the cars were hardly out of sight of their owners.
Then, when it was already November and Treiber had been on the run for more than two months, Charpentier drove to the town of Melun, 10 miles from Fontainebleau where he parked his car and walked off. A couple of days later he was back on his way to Melun and again he parked his car and walked off. Each time he had parked on the same street. When he next pulled up, the BNRF's men were waiting for him and they saw him go into a seven-floor apartment building. They waited until after he'd left again to inspect the building and saw that one of the mail boxes was overflowing with letters and advertising flyers; the surname on the box did not surprise them - it was Charpentier. From the building's administrators the BNRF learned that the Charpentier who rented a 5th floor one-roomed apartment was a young woman; she was in arrears with the rent and had apparently abandoned the apartment. (There is a law in France that forbids landlords to evict tenants during the winter months of October to March, so Miss Charpentier had not been evicted.)
On Friday, November 20, Charpentier again drove to Melun, but before he could reach the apartment building, the heavily-armed and masked men from RAID stopped his car. He offered no resistance and quickly admitted that he was putting someone up at his daughter's apartment - and that someone was Treiber.
The BNRF, deciding that they had to arrest Treiber immediately or he might yet again get away, gave RAID's men staking out the apartment building, the order to go and get him. Also heavily-armed and masked, and wearing trainer to dull their footfalls, the men crept up the stairs and a few minutes later the door of the apartment gave way under the weight of their huge steel barrier-crusher.
About the moment when RAID rushed into the apartment, guns drawn, a policeman would say: "Treiber was not happy but that was understandable."
The only resistance he had offered the men was to lift an eyebrow.
At about the same time, RAID arrested Huys and Top. Huys, like Charpentier, was pulled from his car. Top was picked up at his home and from what the police said, he looked "really pleased" and "as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders."
Treiber, driven to Paris's police headquarters, replied with "no reply" to all questions, but Charpentier, Buys and Top, driven to Auxerre and locked up in its prison, opened up. They said that Treiber, emaciated, dirty, unshaven, his hair long, and so hungry that he was close to passing out, had turned up on foot on Saturday, October 10, a month after his escape, at Huys' farm. He had stayed at the farm, hiding in a barn, until Sunday, November 8, when Charpentier had taken him to the Melun apartment. Huys, in dire straits and unable to feed another person, had called in Charpentier, as well as Top, to help out, and eventually Charpentier had taken over completely.
There in the apartment in Melun, Treiber had lived a rat-like existence. The place had no furniture and no stove, so he had to sleep on a mattress on the floor and he heated the tins his buddies brought him on an electrical hot plate.
Apart from Charpentier, Huys and Top, the three women who lived with them were also arrested. So was Miss Charpentier. The four women were however released after 24 hours; under French law it is not a punishable offence to know that a fugitive is being given shelter. In order to be indicted one must actively participate in the harboring of a fugitive which the four women had not done. Miss Charpentier had not even been aware that Treiber was living in the apartment she had abandoned.
Top, Charpentier and Huys were indicted for "harboring and assisting a fugitive" but they too would be released. Top, after his release toldjournalists: "Ididn't contemplate the risk. When I heard that Huys had Treiber at his place, I immediately took a chunk of cheese and a pot of jam from my cupboard and took it to him. Now I tell myself that I'm going to do time for a guy I did not even know." Each risks three years in prison and a $68,000 fine.
As for Treiber, he was back under lock and key, incarcerated in a more secure prison, that of Fleury-Mérogis, south of Paris. The police had announced that they were reinvestigating the case because they had "new evidence" against him which needed "further investigation." The new evidence had come from a former co-inmate of Treiber who had given an interview to the Auxerre daily "L'Yonne Républicaine" while Treiber had been on the run. The man had told the daily that Treiber had told him that he had indeed known Van Kempen and Katia and that after the latter had taken up with Géraldine she had stayed at his house for a few days because Van Kempen had shown her the door. She had then set off with Géraldine. Where they were going, they had not told him.
The End
The year 2009 was over. Christmas had been cold; Paris had been under snow. In Fleury-Mérogis, France's largest prison with 3800 inmates (men, women and young adults) the days were long and passed slowly for Treiber. He wrote letters to his family and friends and told them that he was unable to live locked up. He wrote that he was going to kill himself. He was offered psychiatric help which he refused.
The men's section in Fleury-Mérogis is divided into five blocks – D1 to D5. Each consists of a large central domed area surrounded by cells. Cells are either for single occupancy or for three inmates; in order to prevent or at least to discourage homosexuality there are no longer cells for two in French prisons. A cell for one inmate measures 118 square ft., but as that is considered quite large, it can happen that another two inmates are moved in. When this is the case two will sleep on superimposed bunks and the third on a mattress which is removed during the day. Each sell has its own toilet and wash basin; whereas the women have hot water, the men have to make do with cold. Under the cell's barred window there is an embedded cupboard. A television set can be rented for $95 per month; it is fastened just below the ceiling, rather like those in hospital wards. Inmates are allowed to paste photographs and posters on the walls, and they can switch the light in their cells off when they wish as there is no longer a lights-out time in a French prison.
Inmates can either work or study – or do nothing if they so wish. The work, for which they are paid, can be anything from filling tiny packets with seeds to assembling large cardboard boxes to packaging small spare parts for France's car manufacturers, Renault and Citroën. The inmates are paid from $16 to $24 a day; half of it is withheld for the day of their release.
In a block's domed area sit the warders – there are two day teams working 6 hours and one night team working 12 hours. They sit at interphone panels which enable them to speak to an inmate without having to leave their desks. Each block has it own open-air exercise yard, its own disciplinary cells, its own high security cells each with its own enclosed exercise corridor, a medical area and rooms where the inmates can meet with their visitors and consult with their lawyers.
Treiber was in a single cell, alone. He chose not to work. He continued to write to his family and friends that he was going to kill himself. Despite such threats he was not put on suicide watch and his cell was not equipped with the tear-proof bedding and single-use paper pajamas of an "anti-suicide kit." A warder looked in on him on the hour every hour though.
The first month of 2010 passed. The name Treiber was no longer on anyone's lips.
On Saturday, February 20, it suddenly was again. Treiber had committed suicide. At 6 o'clock that morning the duty warder had looked in on him through the observation slot in the door of his cell, and saw him lying asleep on his bunk, "like any other morning." An hour later the warder had looked through the slot again and saw Treiber hanging from the bars in front of the cell's window. He was beyond resuscitation.
Within 24 hours the police announced that they had closed the "Giraud Case." It was Treiber who had murdered Géraldine and Katia.
The French media wanted to know how the police could possible have closed the case with so many questions still unanswered. Why did Van Kempen have chloroform in her cellar? Did she know Treiber? Did Treiber know Géraldine and Katia? Who drove Géraldine's car to Paris? How did Treiber come to have the two women's credit cards? Was he really so stupid as to have used the cards in less than two hours after the women's disappearance? Was he really so stupid as to have buried the two bodies in his garden? Would he have been so stupid as to have strewn about some of the two women's belongings in his garden? Had he ever bought chloropicrin? Where did he spend the first month after he'd made the runner from the prison in Auxerre?
There was also another question. On Sunday, October 11 of 2009, Treiber on the run, a 50-year-old friend of his was found hanging from a caterpillar tractor on the farm where he worked which was close to Fontainebleau. The man had burn wounds on his face and on the soles of his feet, but an anonymous police source, had told the French news agency, Agence France Presse (AFP), that the man had committed suicide. Did this man really commit suicide? Treiber was in the area at the time.
There will now be no answer to any of these questions.
Treiber left a suicide note – one line - scribbled on the outside of a folder in which he kept the letters he had been receiving from his family and friends. He had written: I have had enough of being taken for an assassin and to be deprived of those I love.
Two hundred mourners attended his funeral in the Alsace village of Soppe-le Bas where he was born and grew up. Among the mourners were his parents, his brother, his sister, his 20-year-old daughter, and the last love of his life - Blandine Stassart, his "little heart." They are all heartbroken at their loss.
Roland Giraud has spoken to the media of his family's anger and frustration. Anger at France's legal machine for not having made sure that Treiber could not commit suicide. Frustration at Treiber having escaped justice.
Did Treiber escape justice?


text:
The Many Uses for Castor Oil
In its pure form castor oil is light yellow in color. It has been used for decades in a wide range of applications. While many people know about medicinal uses few know about its industrial applications.
The substance is found in many cosmetics and in soaps. It is an excellent moisturizer though used by itself may produce an odor that is not so pleasant. When used with other ingredients consumers have no idea the oil is present until they read the ingredient list.
Castor Oil Uses
The oil is an excellent lubricant. It has been used in past decades to lubricate wagon wheels and moving parts. During World War I it was used as an aircraft lubricant. It can still be found as an ingredient in many industrial
lubricants today. The substance is used in manufacturing of some plastics and may be found in paints and varnishes.
The substance has been used for many generations to cure or aid in curing a number of physical ailments. Though not commonly used as a laxative today taking one half to a full teaspoon can ease the discomfort of constipation.
The oil is more than a laxative. It can help aid healing of the small intestine. It has anti-inflammatory properties so it can help ease the discomfort of many gastrointestinal ailments.
Mothers used to give their children a dose of the substance daily to fight off many illnesses. It has the ability to treat and prevent fungal infections. Mothers used to give the substance to their children in hopes of warding off
many types of infectious diseases. It was more widely used before the introduction of penicillin.
Castor Oil Treatments
Due to its anti-inflammatory properties the substance can be used to treat various joint and skin problems. To reduce or eliminate joint pain the substance is soaked into a cotton cloth. The cloth is then wrapped in plastic and
applied to the affected joint. A hot water bottle may then be placed over the painful joint. Unlike other rubs used for joint pain it will not blister when heat is applied.
The oil makes a great skin moisturizer. However, it can help improve many skin conditions such as psoriasis, and eczema. It will also work to clear up ringworm. It is one of the few natural substances approved by the FDA for use in
treating various skin conditions. Liver or age spots can be lightened or eliminated by using a little of the substance soaked into a cotton ball and applied on a daily basis.
There are many forms of the substance. For medicinal use it is best to purchase the purified form from a health foods or natural foods store. The kind found in the grocery or in other stores is not purified and is not meant to be
taken internally.
Pregnant women used this oil in the best to help induce labor. It should be used with caution in pregnant women and only on advice of a physician. It can be a handy substance to keep on hand at home in the family medicine cabinet.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
|2012-02-21, 00:58
|Link #61
Gamilas Rises
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 41
Well lets think of what else they had her doing. Her primary task seemed to be the early warning radar operator. She sometimes washed clothing (though that might have been a rotational duty for when they were on their own in the second season), She served refreshments during a time of stress as well as plan social activities when there was a need. She was in charge of the crew's mental health (the doctor was in charge of physical health). When they got new crew members in the third season she was tasked to make sure they fit into their new assignment and being sure everyone was prepared for their first space warp. She was in charge (department head) of all the service staff related to the crew needs (in charge of the cooking group, life support, those sorts of thing, though didn't preform those tasks herself in most cases). She was an excellent shot with a pistol though she rarely used that skill in combat as she was also the ship's nurse for most of their voyages. She usually was only needed as a nurse for surgery, or as the field medic (or if the doctor was too sauced to practise medicine...or perhaps that is not sauced enough to practise medicine). She was something of a all around knowledge person. Well educated. Not an expert in any field that I recall, but able to preform well at just about any task. She is a pilot as well (though only in the live action movie was she a combat pilot).
She's also the first of the crew recruited by the Captain that we are aware, as she beat the other main characters to the ship...somehow.
And remember nearly all these tasks are being done in a story written in the 1970s and every early 1980s, in Japan.
Just thought of something: I wonder...with the new females in the crew, and the posibility that some of the younger people have never seen this show before....if their will be shipping wars over Yuki or the other women? The traditional one is the Shima-Mori-Kodai triangle. I wonder what will happen this time around.
|2012-02-21, 09:13
|Link #63
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
This guy? Zero chance. He'll die. He won't come out of this alive at all.
|2012-02-21, 12:53
|Link #64
Gamilas Rises
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 41
Seeing that they are introducing later film characters early suggests to me that at least in the back of their minds they intend to do more than the first season. And hopefully they will get enough of a positive responce from this series to warrent continuing on with the remake. At least the second season. Its plot was a lot tighter than the first seasons and had a lot of action and drama. That and I really want to see the Earth Fleet of 2201 in action. Especially Battleship Andromeda.
Though I hope that if they do get to redo those battle scenes, they at least make an effort to make them looks like ships from both sides are being effective at the same time...rather than switching which side is being effective (example: Early on the Earth fleet fires on the Cometine ships..miss...the Cometines them return fire destroying the Earth ships...while seemingly not under fire anymore. Later the Earth fleet is attacked and being destroyed without being able to return fire (they are outranged). Later still the Earth fleet fires on the Cometines and starts wiping them out without getting shot at in return.) I don't think there is any instance in the series were both sides are firing there weapons and being effective like you would normally see in a fleet action.
The visuals of the Battle of Pluto we see in the trailer gives me a slight hope that they would be able to pull off the second season's Battle at Saturn off well, cause you can see both sides in combat and being effective...well at least I hope some other Earth ships can destroy the Gamilons at shorter ranges aside from Kodai's bother's ship. Because at least we see they are still fighting, even as they get picked off by the Gamilons.
After the second season they can take things in a number of directions based on what they want to do, as the stuff after the second season is less known, and structured differently.
Poking around:
The kid's name is Tōru Hoshina - CV: Motoki Takagi
His boss is Shinya Itō - CV: Toshihiko Seki
I do not recall them from any earlier production.
However I finally recognize the guy just before them on the list:
Hajime Hirata - CV: Fumihide Ise
This was one of the kitchen staff in the third season. Called "Andy Hardy" in the dub. No relation to the other Hardy (fighter pilot).
There is the easy to spot Sukeharu Yabu - CV: Cho. The younger heavy set engineer. He was known as "Sparks" in the dub.
The tall engineer with the stern look is Shō Yamazaki - CV: Hiroshi Tsuchida.
He is was only known as "Chief" in the third season dub, and was introduced as the new Chief Engineer during the third film.
The long haired pilot is named Hiroki Shinohara - CV: Daisuke Hirakawa. Never see him before.
I thought his was Akira Yamamoto, but obviously Akira Yamamoto is a woman now..the short whitish haired one with a Rie Tanaka voice.
The pilot with the short hair and scar over his eye is Saburō Katō - CV: Yoshimasa Hosoya. He is well known as "Conroy" in the dub.
ANN has more characters and their voices listed, but a few I don't recognize. Others I do recognize.
And one I think I recognize, but the name is slightly different.
I think we will see both of the other old captains in this series: Ryū Hijikata - CV: Unshou Ishizuka (Captain Gideon) who we saw for sure in the trailer, and Captain Yamanami, who I think they changed his name because his original voice actor died last year. So I think Osamu Yamaminami - CV: Masashi Ebara is the new version of Keisuke Yamanami - CV: Osamu Kobayashi. I could be wrong because I've not found this character's sheet so far.
Still no listing for Dessler's voice.
Last edited by Ithekro; 2012-02-21 at 14:36. Reason: Character details and corrections
|2012-02-21, 14:03
|Link #65
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
That mainly comes down to bad action series tropes where large scale combat gets simplified into simplistic curbstomps since the creators are lazy/on a low budget, and yes. It really annoys me how it's often a staple of action sequences in anime and western movies.
Also Ithekro? For the love of god. PLEASE USE PARAGRAPHS! There's no reason to have a 300 word chunk of text on an internet forum.
|2012-02-21, 14:17
|Link #66
Gamilas Rises
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 41
Working on it. Since it didn't seem like anyone had posted I just spent time looking up names and such to fill in the knowledge gaps that are bound to happen when one cannot read Japanese effectively. (Fortunately the Japanese used English for their image file names).
As someone that plays the Star Blazers table top space combat game since about 1999, this series has potential to answer some of the random mechanics questions that the original series didn't answer (particularly now that we see Earth energy weapons bouncing and then bending around Gamilon warships in the first battle). Having played as recently as last Saturday.
There are 46 days left....
Last edited by Ithekro; 2012-02-21 at 18:02.
|2012-02-21, 21:29
|Link #67
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Bad Chicken! Mess You Up!
I have been thoroughly enjoying the resurgence Yamato has been having over the last 2 years or so. To me its special because it was the first anime I ever watched before (in kindergarten on Channel 36). In a way it still has not lost its touch. The trailer runs so many ques from the original yet offering a newer generation of what made it special. What I enjoy seeing is the technical details within the anime such as ships, mechanics etc. The extreme details seem to be lost in many mecha anime these days. Plus it will be nice to have a proper space opera again.
|2012-02-21, 22:29
|Link #69
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
Is that game considered even remotely canonical in terms of stats or anything?
|2012-02-21, 22:53
|Link #70
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Bad Chicken! Mess You Up!
|2012-02-21, 23:30
|Link #71
Gamilas Rises
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 41
So it was Channel 36. I could never remember which station it was on in the mornings around 1980 and 1981.
As for the game, as far as I know it is since the stats are suppose to be from Japanese sources like the Roman Albums. The class names may or may not be canon. But I think the Japanese are even using the Star Blazers EDF Techical Manual for some of their own information, and some of them have been using those as the class names.
Power of the weapons and stuff is of course approximated to simulate how things look in the show. For example: In their first encounter with the Comet Empire's battleships, Yamato can destroy one at long range with two turrets worth of Shock Cannon fire. This translates to 6 points of damage from each battery for 12 points of damage. A Cometine Battleship has 126 hull boxes...but 12 boxes per row, with a critical hit at the end of each row. There is a 4% chance that a ship will explode from a critical hit. Yamato hits the critical spots every time she fires in the show.
However things like the Wave Motion Gun are toned down a bit. I guess in playtesting the idea that Yamato could basically destroy the other side of the table with one shot seemed imbalanced. She can still put out a decent amount of damage with it, ranging form 34 points of damage to 70 points of damage. The later versions have spread effects to cover additional hexes and can do more damage (Andromada does between 66 and 120 points of damage and can effect three additional hexes).
The longest and still more fustrating part of the game is missile fire...something that didn't happen all that often in the original show in ship to ship engagements. Since it is: choose and fire missiles: defend against missiles, results of missile attack...it can take up to a hour to resolve all the missile fire for one turn if everyone fires missiles and decides to try to shoot them down.
Some of us have been attempting to make a quicker resolution version of the missile rules and have managed to get large missile actions down to 30 minutes, but it favors the defense as with the new system, they cannot miss completely. We take all their possible defensive fire damage and translate that to a number of dice that can at most equal that number if one rolled the maximum possible numbers on those dice. Using the least amount of dice possible as the minimum amount of damage you can put out is the number of dice used rolling all ones. (If you had a max defensive number of say 78, you would use 3 twenty sided dice, 1 twelve side die, and 1 six sided die...if you have those avalible.) Whatever number you roll is the amount of missiles knocked out. (There are small range modifiers)
Last edited by Ithekro; 2012-02-21 at 23:53.
|2012-02-22, 07:53
|Link #72
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
This is why this show has got me so interested. It's the first military/sci-fi show out in awhile that doesn't feel overly flashy like allot of recent Mech shows are, and has allot of cool highly detailed retro technical details and designs.
|2012-02-24, 02:23
|Link #73
Gamilas Rises
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 41
I am way too excited about this show. It is like a piece of your childhood coming back...but also a part of my college days as I didn't start playing the game until college.
My mother had saved a bunch of my art and elementary school stuff for some reason. She found some of it while cleaning and I could recognized my extremely crude drawings of "Argo" verses the Comet Empire.
In High School I had pretty much forgotten about the series. Save in the shower once my mind started playing the theme song...and it looped because I couldn't remember how it ended. It bothered me that I had this song in my head with limited images just I could not remember what it was. Then at a Suncoast...there was the first few VHS releases of Star Blazers by Voyager Entertainment. Then I remembered it fully.
Now it will be back again...but still...I have to wait 44 more days plus however long it takes after it is released to see it.
|2012-02-25, 11:39
|Link #74
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
ah nostalgic excitement something I am completely unfamiliar with since I grew up only somewhat familiar with the Yamato series.
Though I have to ask Ithekro. Is there any particular reason why you're so excited about THIS Yamato series in particular? Haven't there been allot of Yamato remakes/re-imaginings over the years? I'll admit, the main reason I'm interested in this one is because is has a bit of a divergent aesthetic compared to the old series while still being the same thing. (all the designs look retro and old timey...but really crisp and up to date).
Just curious.
Last edited by Roger Rambo; 2012-02-25 at 11:51.
|2012-02-26, 01:41
|Link #79
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2009
Location: classified
Not sure if this has been posted here yet or not, but, Starblazers.com has a two part write up about the new series.
Part 1: http://www.starblazers.com/html.php?page_id=647
Part 2: http://www.starblazers.com/html.php?page_id=665
Not sure if Voyager ENT will try to acquire the new series and dub it or not, but it would sure be nice if a professional dubbing studio did.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing Johnny Bosh as Susumu Kodai, and Yuri Lowenthal as Daisuke Shima.
Kate Higgins would do Yuki Mori justice IMHO as well.
Starsha...hmmm....not sure about that one.
Dessler, would have to be smooth like Crispin Freeman or Michael Kopsa.
For Saburo Kato, gotta be Steve Blum. He's got the "jet-jockey" voice if I've ever heard one.
For Admiral Okita I'd use Michael Dobson.
|2012-02-26, 08:34
|Link #80
Sensei, aishite imasu
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Hong Kong Shatterdome
I just noticed several things looking at those links.
New bridge is FAR more compact. The guys in the front don't have to run a marathon to get to the other side of the room, and the captains decadent throne is only about a third it's original size. It seems like they're trying to be a bit more practical.
Also, it's fuzzy, but you can clearly see Akira wearing the Black Tiger squadron outfit.
|classic, remake, science fiction, space opera, yamato
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Knight Farm
Image of the Knight Farm located in West Warwick (Riverpoint), Rhode Island. A piece of this land was given to the town and is where the high school and middle school were built. See also: Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission: Statewide…
Tags: farm, Riverpoint, West Warwick


text: Blockbuster books about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and, of course, Abraham Lincoln seem to appear with such regularity that it makes you wonder if there's anyone else in American history who's achieved something significant. For the thrill of discovering America's forgotten stories, check out the books on this week's list. The writers of these titles have found stories that don't lack for drama (spies, shipwreck and assassination are some of their topics); they've just found them after some intrepid sleuthing and revived abandoned moments of American history in the process.


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Boots are one of those items in a man's wardrobe with serious staying power—over the course of a season (we introduced our Boot Guide in September, and have been updating it continuously ever since), as well as year after frigid year…especially when you invest in a solid pair like the waterproof, 5-star-customer-rated UGG® Australia 'Butte' above.
Today, we're focused on the near-indestructible genre of footwear that will carry your feet unfazed through the toe-chilling rain, sleet, snow and slush that January and February are bound to usher in. Any of the specimens below will match up impeccably with your toughest puffers and flannels (see above)—but if you need a dapper way to stay dry en route to work, consider the clean lines and graphic punch of pairs like the Sorel 'Sentry' and UGG 'Hannen' below, neither of which will look out of place grounding a suit or sportcoat (pull your wingtips out of your briefcase once you're warm and dry at your desk).
Start with our Editor's Picks below, then shop our full selection of Weather-Ready Boots. And remember: The best gifts for guys are as practical as they are stylish. A great pair of boots more than fits the bill.
(Top, L-R): Sorel 'Sentry' | Nike | The North Face
(Bottom, L-R): Sorel 'Chugalug' | UGG Australia | Sperry Top-Sider®
Check out our previous Boot-Guide Editor's Picks: Wingtip | Rugged
…And browse all 5 boot categories here:


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As some may figure out, registering on this forum can take a LONG time before your account is activated. The primary reason is because my time is limited and for every legitimate user there is 500 spammers that try to get an account. So I only check new user accounts when I have time to spend checking users.
One thing that can help you is to not use some odd user name because you will just be competing with the spam bots auto generating of names and when I see unrecognisable user names I just delete them rather than spending hours checking each one.
However if you are a legitimate user please be patient and keep checking back on the forum and I will eventually activate your account.


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Growing up, as I've often said, I was definitely a book worm and although it was none too healthy a combination I was equally as big a tv couch potato. As it sometimes happens those two parts of me happily collided with one certain book and television series, "Little House On The Prairie."
Around the age of eight I started reading about Laura Ingalls and her family and kept right on reading from Laura's beginnings in "The Little House in The Big Woods" to "Farmer Boy" about her one day husband Almonzo or Manley if you prefer. Although the television series showed up in 1974 and I didn't make an entrance until '76 the series stuck around till '84 and even later through the wonder of re-runs. Although the TV version didn't exactly follow the books I loved it all the same.
In all honesty, I probably remember way too much about those episodes. I remember Laura pushing Nellie down the hill after she'd been pretending to lose the use of her legs, I remember Albert being turned into a werewolf to teach a bully a lesson, Mary sewing with Ms. Whipple and so much more. I loved Laura and her family and wanted to do the things they did and possibly even dress like her. Back in those days there didn't seem to be as much merchandising of TV shows though so my chance to dress like a pioneer girl didn't come about. Granted there were those short years of my grunge phase where, as Dennis likes to say, I wore homemade granny dresses still it just wasn't the same. Beyond the day to day workings of that time era and the clothing one thing in particular that always held my interest was Lemon Verbena Perfume. It seemed like everyone on the show had a bottle of the stuff. I even recall one occasion when Pa said he planned on washin' up at the creek and that he might even use a little Lemon Verbena himself.
As a kid I always wondered what Lemon Verbena smelled like. I often checked in the beauty supply area to see if one day I might just run across it. It wasn't until recently, with the popularity of stores dedicated solely to body sprays, lotions and other scented items, that I came across an actual lemon perfume.
In the store it smelled great and I felt certain that this must indeed be what Laura smelled like. After getting it home and spraying it on myself I soon felt certain that I smelled more like a bottle of the Lemon Pledge that my Momma used to make us dust with. "Sigh"….that's me bemoaning the loss of a childhood dream and thirty bucks. While I still often spritz a few sprays round the house, mostly because I stupidly bought the biggest bottle of the stuff, I've about given up on lemon as a trademark scent. All the same I still have those fond memories of what I "thought" it would smell like.
So imagine my joy the other night when Dennis actually brought home some Lemon Verbena seedlings to plant alongside the other herbs we have out behind our deck. I realize I'm a bit unnaturally excited about the prospect of growing my own and perhaps trying to figure out how to create perfume with it but I've never claimed to be normal so I decided to do a little research just to see if it could be done. It seems that indeed it can be done but sadly you really need the essential oils from the plant rather than the plant itself. Not to be deterred I figured if life gives me Lemon Verbena I'll just cook with it instead of wear it!
Even though Lemon Verbena perfume recipes weren't too easy to come by the edible versions were in abundance. I found one particular site that I really liked: www.urbanhomestead.org
They gave several uses for the plant like using it to flavor chicken and fish, for a pound cake, to flavor whipped cream and a simple syrup recipe for drinks. This site then linked on to a cooking site called http://www.thekitchn.com . That site had several recipes but with summer coming up I thought the syrup would be great to try for adding to tea or frozen drinks.
If you don't know, simple syrup is a mixture of sugar and water that is brought to a boil then cooled so that it can be added to things like tea, even if cold, thus making sweetening a bit less gritty than merely dumping the sugar in straight. I'd like to say that I always knew about this but I had never been privy to tea time etiquette and condiments until one of my lovely board members, Mrs. Sondra Gwinn, gave me the recipe and uses of it so that I could help make it for one of the Friends of the Library Tea's. As much as I enjoy cooking it was pretty much a duh moment on my part because honestly it's much easier than trying to dissolve the sugar the regular way.
Using Lemon Verbena syrup kills two birds with one stone by giving you lemon flavored tea even when you don't have lemons. Here's how to make the syrup (recipe and directions from http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-lemon-verbena-simple-sy-51586 ):
Lemon Verbena Simple Syrup
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup fresh lemon verbena leaves
1/2 cup water
Chop and bruise the lemon verbena leaves in a small bowl. (Basically beat them up a bit by mashing them with the back of a fork or spoon). Put the sugar in a small saucepan with 1/2 cup water and stir to dissolve as it comes to a simmer over low heat. Let it simmer for just a couple minutes.
Stir in the lemon verbena and take off the heat. Let steep for fifteen minutes, then put in the refrigerator to cool completely. You can add this to your tea or other drinks to taste.
If you aren't much of a tea drinker here's a link for a cold and fizzy orange lemon combination:
This recipe calls for orange blossom water which I haven't often found around here so I'd suggest using a little orange extract that can be found in the spice isle alongside vanilla extract. Or perhaps a little orange zest.
With any luck it will be warm enough this weekend to get out and clean up the herbs that came back from last year and to plant the Verbena. As soon as I start getting a decent production of it I may try my hand at one of those cake recipes or maybe….I wonder how a Lemon Verbena stand would go over? Nickel a cup? Hope you have a lovely and maybe lemon scented day! Here's a little ditty to send you into the weekend: http://youtu.be/bhHrOgOkXZw
Amy Morgeson~Covert Chickens
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Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter Michael McDonald, whose track record includes stints with the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan, will kick off the Summer Concert Series at the Hyatt Regency Newport Beach at 8 p.m. Friday.
Known for fusing soul, pop and R&B; with rock, McDonald is the headlining artist at the hotel's "ReOpening Night." Sixteen performances, including Boney James, Jeffrey Osborne, Acoustic Alchemy, and Keiko Matsui and Hiroshima, are in the pipeline through Oct. 18.
"The Hyatt Regency Newport Beach puts the Summer Concert Series on each year because we enjoy bringing our guests and locals live music in our Hyatt's Back Bay Amphitheater — a beautiful one-of-a-kind amphitheater that is the perfect intimate venue for guests and locals to enjoy world renowned musicians," General Manager Daniel Kuperschmid said. "We enjoy hosting this event, which is a compelling experience for both local residents and visiting guests looking for the perfect summer evening."
Now in its 20th year, the series has previously featured Robin Thicke, Chris Isaak, Michael Bolton, Chris Botti and the Commodores, among others. Organizers estimate nearly 1,000 people will attend each concert.
These shows will also highlight the property's $15-million renovation, which granted makeovers to the grand front drive, porte-cochère, lobby, 407 guest rooms and suites, three new pools, extensive grounds and restaurants. The hotel, established in 1962, now also counts a location of SHOR American Seafood Grill among its attractions.
Season passes are available for $1,745, while tickets for individual shows range from $55 to $110.
For more information, visit https://www.hyattconcerts.com or call (949) 360-7800.


text: Gilmer County was part of the original Cherokee County, then divided to form Fannin, Dawson and Pickens counties. It is named for George Rockingham Gilmer, a state legislator, member of Congress and twice governor of Georgia. The county seat, Ellijay, grew on the site of a Cherokee village of the same name meaning "green earth."


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Manufactured for outstanding protection, comfort and long-life. Rubber insulating gloves are among the most important articles of personal protection for hybrid vehicle technicians. They should be rated at 1000V AC / 1500V DC (class 0) and inspected before each use. Incorporating high dielectric and physical strength, flexibility and durability, these rubber insulating gloves meet current ASTM D120 specifications and IEC EN60903 standards.
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Construction is set to start in the fourth quarter of 2013 and the company will sell the energy generated via a 20-year fixed-price contract.
BayWa, a Bavarian firm involved in agriculture, energy and construction materials, moved into renewable energy generation in 2011 with the purchase of a number of sites in the US and Australia.
In the US, BayWa acquired 70% of WKN USA from Windkraft Nord USA securing 110MW of projects.
"With the expiration of the PTC (production tax credit) fast-approaching, Baywa is pleased to have expanded its pipeline of late-stage acquisitions," said Florian Zerhusen, chief executive of BayWa Wind.
"We... are in the position to successfully complete late-stage projects."
The project has been renamed Brahms Wind by its new owner.


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The Daily Word in Golden Globes, inflatable ISS, TNG bloopers
Bloomberg calls for universal background checks for firearms sales.
Golden Globes winners. Also, some important celebrity tweets from the night.
Attempted robbery turned shooting in Kmart parking lot off of Carlisle.
NASA to build an $17.8 million inflatable extension to the ISS.
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" season 2 gag reel.
KOAT presents a slideshow of things people hate more than Congress.
Woman in Louisiana arrested for stalking herself.
News teams in southern California complain about the "cold" weather.


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Below are some photos and a partial list of Tropical plants typically available. Always a good idea to contact us for current availability and pricing!
Mandevilla (climbing) – red, pink, white
Gardenia bush and tree! Smells wonderful .
Bougainvillea (climbing)
Passionflower vine
Double petal braided hibiscus tree
Plumeria.. delicious scent!
Braided hibiscus tree – yellow, red, pink and more!


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Miguel O, Puerto Rico
- 12/31/2013
- Spanish
About Me
I am a full time dad, who works part time as environmental planning consultant and certified electrician. As a planner I like to pay attention to details, so I know what to expect, how to deal with unexpected events, and therefore get the most out of our vacation dollar. With this approach, I have had the opportunity to polish my researching skills. Besides reading lots about Disney, I always try to get as much information from friends, family, and strangers who have visited Disney recently, to take as many points of view as possible. In my personal time I enjoy listening to classical/jazz LPs, attending Broadway Musical, going to sporting events - especially soccer - and cooking healthy, savory dishes. I love tasting food from around the world!
About My Family
I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, one of four sons, - all soccer players! I come from a large family with wonderful parents, grandparents, uncle, and aunts. Family values and tradition have always been important to me. Life honored me by meeting my wife, a Pharmaceutical Industry Scientist and Project Manager, who could have been a professional singer if she pursued it. We got married three years after crossing roads at grad school. Another three years later, our son (now 8 years old) arrived in our lives, followed by our daughter 21 months later! Our kids are active as they come - no nap time here! - and enjoy having breakfast with Disney characters, anything related to Star Wars, themed pools and most of all, thrill rides.
About My Disney Experience
I visited Disney with my parents, brothers and grandmothers during my childhood. Now I get to plan and design these experiences to share with my wife and kids. It was during the planning of our first Disney vacation that I was amazed with all the info available to design a vacation for any family´s taste and budget. Also, during this first vacation, I came to appreciate the type of family experience that only Disney can offer, design for fun and relaxation! Since good food is a big part of my family´s vacation, we have come to love character and signature dinning. I enjoy experiencing what Disney offers that is not available anywhere else, and look forward to helping you discover it with your family!


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This week one of the "unquestioned aspects of America's political regime" has received unusual attention: the runaway expansion of the 'classified state' and its clients, seen quite vividly in the extensive powers given to the NSA by the American people. A recent Pew opinion poll suggests that a slight majority of Americans support these measures [2], but an outspoken minority has ensured that the controversy surrounding the NSA leaks has made front page headlines every day this week. The mainstream press is now turning its attention to who these contrarian rabble rousers are.
Nate Silver (who blogs for the New York Times) focuses on the United States House of Representatives:
|Image Source: Nate Silver. "Domestic Surveillance Could Create a Divide in the 2016 Primaries." New York Times. 11 June 2013.
Take, for example, the House's vote in May 2011 to extend certain provisions of the Patriot Act — including the so-called library records provision that the government has used to defend the legality of sweeping searches of telephone and e-mail records. The bill passed with 250 yes votes in the House against 153 no votes, receiving more of its support from Republicans. (In the Senate, the bill passed, 72-23, winning majority support from both parties.) However, the House vote was not well described by a traditional left-right political spectrum.
In the chart [above], I've sorted the 403 members of the House who voted on the bill from left to right in order of their overall degree of liberalism or conservatism, as determined by the statistical system DW-Nominate. Members of the House who voted for the bill are represented with a yellow stripe in the chart, while those who voted against it are represented in black
The no votes are concentrated at the two ends of the spectrum. The 49 most liberal members of the House (all Democrats) who voted on the bill each voted against it. But so did 14 of the 21 Republicans deemed to be the most conservative by DW-Nominate.
By contrast, 46 of the 50 most moderate Republicans voted for the Patriot Act extension, as did 38 of the 50 most moderate Democrats. [3]
This pattern - the pragmatic center upholding elite consensus while the radical wings unite against it - matches that described in the earlier "Far Left and Far Right" note. Despite all of their verbal animosity, the Tea Party and the Progressive Caucus voted together. When the data is plotted on a two dimensional spectrum the pattern is even easier to see.
|Image Source: Nate Silver. "Domestic Surveillance Could Create a Divide in the 2016 Primaries." New York Times. 11 June 2013.
Silver then notes:
You can find similar patterns in certain votes on policy toward the financial sector — for example, during the various bailout votes that were cast toward the end of 2008. More recently, votes on the federal debt ceiling have taken on some of the same contours.There is a large constituency in both parties that distrusts the national elite and supports radical reformation of our political system. At this time they are a minority. They may not remain so in the future. Few would have guessed in 1895 that the Progressive movement would (from the bottom up) capture dozens of municipalities, states, and ultimately both national political parties before a decade had gone by. Indeed, the progressive movement is the most important model 21st century reformers have. [5] Entire posts could be devoted to the lessons the progressive movement's success can teach us; today I will mention but one, relevant to the info-graphics presented above: resist the temptation to make this a one party affair.
What is the link between the financial votes and those on the surveillance state? In both cases, members of Congress were asked to trust the assertions of elites that significant harms would result if the bills were not enacted: terrorist acts in the event that the Patriot Act was not extended, or financial calamity in the event that the bailout was not passed or the debt ceiling was not raised.
As a matter of practice (but not necessarily theory), convincing someone that a future crisis must be averted requires a higher level of persuasion than making the case for a policy that is claimed to ameliorate some extant problem. Members of Congress who are members of their party establishments might be more inclined to trust testimony from financial or national security elites, and therefore might have been easier to pitch on these bills. (Emphasis added). [4]
If reform is to be complete, comprehensive, and permanent it cannot be a partisan endeavor. Decentralization, dismantling America's security theatre, and killing crony capitalism must be kept as far away from the "culture wars" as possible. If these reforms become the mantra of a single party instead of the starting point of both then they will not last.
It is time the radicals learn to work with their opposites across the aisle.
[1] T. Greer. "Far Left and Far Right - Two Peas in a Pod?"The Scholar's Stage. 10 April 2013.
[2] Pew Research Center. "Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic." (Washington: Pew Research). 10 June 2013.
[3] Nate Silver. "Domestic Surveillance Could Create a Divide in the 2016 Primaries." New York Times. 11 June 2013.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Lest this sentence be a stumbling block to some, let me clarify: I do not advocate a return to the programs or policies that the progressive movement championed (though its hostility towards corruption is much needed in this day and age), but suggest that we should study and imitate the methods progressive reformers used to spread their movement across the country and alter existing political structures at every level of American society.


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Sensabaugh retires as a Cowboy
Irving, TX – The Dallas Cowboys signed safety Gerald Sensabaugh to a one-day contract Thursday in order to allow the veteran to retire with the team.
Sensabaugh originally signed with Dallas as a free agent on March 10, 2009 and played his final four years in the league with the Cowboys.
A former fifth-round draft pick of Jacksonville in 2005, the North Carolina product started 84 of 112 games in his career and totaled 469 tackles and 14 interceptions.


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[Edit: November 24, 2013 After a few updates to Mac OS X, my photobooth isn't working with the few latest operating systems. I've decided to retire this photobooth project for now. I sincerely thank you to everyone who has offered their support and of course everyone who has smiled and captured memories in the photobooth. -David]
August 16, 2009: In the early stages of planning for my sister Helen's wedding, we saw advertisements for real photo booth rentals–like the ones you see in the arcade! We liked the idea a lot, but didn't want to spend the money (and why pay someone else for equipment you can use only for 1 day?)
We decided that we would use our Macs, Automator, and some brainpower to create our own, personalized photo booth that would function exactly how we want it to, cost little to operate, and be available for future special occasions!
I wrote an automator workflow that:
1. Prompted the user for their name (which was inserted in the filenames of the images)
2. took the user's picture 3 times
3. arranged the photos vertically in a strip
4. displayed the photo strip to the user
5. printed the photo strip
6. saved both the individual images and photostrip pdf file in a folder on the mac
Continue for more information and instructions on how to download…
Continue reading


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We started talking about language and politics in the upcoming elections a while back (like here on the English Only leanings of the Republican presidential candidates) and our last post was about a smart point about language and national security by Russ Feingold.
But in correspondence with a regular reader (tip of the big old straw hat to Prof. R!), this video on Romney came up:
The video had made a splash back in the winter. Up to about the 50-sec. mark, it's standard attack ad stuff, but then, the hammer: "he speaks French". "Just like John Kerry".
Want evidence that he can read a prepared text in French before a rolling camera? Then check this out:
I'll leave it to you to determine whether that counts as 'speaking French', but it's depressing to even make jokes (hey, I'm an optimist) about this stuff in attack ads.
Monday, April 16, 2012
More language and politics ... "he speaks French too"
Posted by Mr. Verb at 3:42 PM
Labels: Language and politics
3 comments:
I'm not an American but isn't it illegal to run for public office there if you speak another language fluently? I seem to recall something like that.
- Jonathon said...
Not illegal at all, as far as I know. There are some municipalities that may have laws requiring sufficient fluency in English, but I've never heard of a law forbidding someone from serving if they speak a second language. I doubt such a law would be constitutional.
Sadly, any stigma against speaking a foreign language in the US is purely social.
- Alex Rudnick said...
I'm pretty sure his French accent is better than mine. (Francophones: that's pretty passable, innit?)
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The Name of Jesus
Over the past two thousand years, more people on planet earth have known the name of Jesus than any other name. Since AD 33, over eight billion people, by one estimate, have claimed to be followers of this Jesus — …Read More
The King of Kings
The gospel of Luke ends with a supremely jarring statement: "Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into …Read More
Prayer and Culture
I recently headed the translation committee for our church body's new hymnal and worship book. Our previous hymnal included the choice of a modernized version of the Lord's Prayer. We found, though, that no one used it. Even the churches …Read More
Name Above All Names
Before I was regenerate, I was degenerate. I never looked into names and their meanings. I was looking with the eye but not through the eye, and hearing with the ear but not through the ear. My mind was disengaged …Read More


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Smellie-type obstetrical forceps, England, 1701-1800
Can a doctor's best intentions sometimes have unforeseen consequences? By attempting to ease a patient's distress might they actually be exposing them to other dangers? These are obstetrical forceps dating from the mid 1800s, made to a design inspired by the great pioneer of obstetrics, William Smellie. They were intended to grasp the head of a baby and help ease it out during a difficult birth. But why are they covered in leather? Smellie used leather for good reasons. By covering the steel instrument he created a softer surface which could lesson the chance of physical damage to both mother and child. The leather also created good contact with the baby's head – even after lubricating them with 'hog's lard' prior to use, as Smellie suggested. These forceps were also less alarming to birthing women. Naturally wary of the new-fangled instruments, they were said to be terrified by the clanking sounds of interlocking metal. So where's the problem? Although Smellie originally suggested changing the leather after each use, this was not always done and, as in this design, simply not practical. As one of his contemporary rivals pointed out "some part of the blood and waters must be sucked up by the leather, so that it gets betwixt it and the steel work and will corrupt and stink". Before the general acceptance of the germ theory of disease from the 1870s, users of such forceps unknowingly created a reservoir of germs. In trying to lessen the obvious physical dangers of a forceps delivery, a mother's life could inadvertently be put in even greater peril.
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Glossary: obstetrics
A branch of medicine dealing with the care of women. This care occurs during pregnancy, childbirth, and the period of recovery from childbirth.
Glossary: obstetrical forceps
An instrument used to assist the delivery of a foetus, usually during a birth where complications have developed. Numerous variations have been developed over time. The fundamental design has two separate looped blades with handles. These interlock to form a grasping instrument.