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Name: Semir Sunsworn
Race: Sin'Dorei (Blood Elf)
Gender: Female
Profession: Bounty Hunter (or any other task for hire)
Age: 19
Height: 6'1"
Birthplace: Silvermoon City
Physical Description: Semir stands at a fairly average height for a blood elf, and has long blonde hair she keeps out of her face with a headband. She has a very youthful face, being barely an adult (while her own race still considers her a child), and usually has a curious gleam in her bright glowing green eyes. She is often seen in her dull-red, and comfortable, leather armor and carries around a matching pair of swords that appear to be of ancient Amani troll design.
History: Semir is very young, and is only just setting out into the world on her own. During her childhood (or younger childhood, at least) her parents left Semir in the care of relatives as they left with Kael'thas to Outland to find a better future for their race... and they never returned. Semir was inspired by the stories her mother used to tell her of the past, such as driving the fierce orcish horde back during the second war or the defeat of the Amani Empire during the Troll Wars. Semir was an adult! and to her relatives dismay, she decided to take the twin Amani troll blades her ancestors took as a trophy during the Troll War, and snuck away to make a story of her own. She left Silvermoon, and now makes a living doing whatever she thinks is fun.


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Join me every week for Win-It Wednesday. I'll be posting several 24-hour giveaways throughout the day to give you plenty of chances to win!
Renae from Madame Deals is the Deal Seeking Mom Store Expert for Kroger. At Madame Deals, she teaches others how to make dollars out of change with store deals, recipes, money saving tips, ideas on stockpiling and fun family activities.
In honor of Earth Day, Kroger is holding their annual Design a Reusable Bag Contest. Submit a bag design and be entered to win a number of prizes, plus receive a FREE standard reusable bag worth $0.99. Limit one free bag per household.
Steps to get your FREE bag:
- Log in or signup for a Kroger online account.
- Design your bag and submit.
- A credit of $0.99 for a Standard Reusable Bag will be added to your Kroger Shoppers Cad.
- The next time you shop, pick up a bag and scan your shoppers card. The $0.99 credit will be applied.
Designing the bag only takes a few minutes and makes a fun activity for kids as well! Once you have designed your bag, visitors to the site will be able to vote for your bag. The top ten bag designs will win prizes, including a grand prize of $1,000, (4) $250 Kroger Gift Cards and (5) $100 Kroger Gift Cards. Plus, Kroger has partnered with Café Press, allowing you to also print your personal design on a canvas shopping tote.
One lucky Deal Seeking Mom reader will win a $25 American Express Gift Card for Kroger's One-Stop Gift Card Shop so they can have their bag design printed on a Café Press reusable canvas bag!
To enter, design your own reusable bag for Earth Day!
Every reader has two methods available to enter this contest. Choose one or both for up to a total of 2 entries!!! You MUST create a reusuable bag design to win. There are no exceptions to this, and your design number will be verified by Kroger before a winner is announced!
If you are reading this in your email or feed reader, please CLICK HERE to visit the original blog post to enter. Email entries will not be counted.
Methods of entry:
1. Design your own reusable bag. Come back and leave a comment with your unique bag design number.
2. Follow @DealSeekingMom on Twitter and tweet the following to get people to vote for your bag. Be sure to come back and leave a separate comment with the link to your tweet! Make sure to insert your bag number in the #XXXXX area.
I entered Kroger's Reusable Shopping bag contest (via @DealSeekingMom). Vote for my bag #XXXXX so I can win up to $1K! https://bit.ly/ct5IH3
(1) $25 American Express Gift Card for Kroger Café Press
This giveaway ends at 9 a.m. ET on Thursday, 4/15 and is open to all U.S. residents 18 years or older. I'll use Random.org to select the winning comment. Winner will be notified by email and listed on my Giveaway Winners page. Winners must respond within 48 hours of notification to claim their prize. Good luck!
While you're in a contest entering mood, don't forget to check out the Giveaway Gathering for a variety of contests being hosted on Deal Seeking Mom readers' blogs!
This giveaway is sponsored by Kroger. I also received a $25 gift card from Kroger in order to print my reusable shopping bag.

subset: commoncrawl


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For second time in two days Brockton firefighters used Narcan to reverse the potentially deadly effects of a heroin overdose.
BROCKTON – For the second time in two days the Brockton Fire Department used the chemical spray Narcan to reverse the potentially deadly effects of a heroin overdose.
Firefighters from the department's Engine 2 got a report Thursday about a man passed out in the bathroom of the Dunkin' Donuts at 587 Main St. Firefighters met a man in the parking lot who said he had just shot up heroin in the bathroom of the restaurant with his friend and said he thought his friend might be dead, said Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Galligan.
Firefighters found a man in his mid-30s on his back in the bathroom. The man's face was blue, Galligan said. He had a pulse but was not breathing, Galligan said.
Firefighters assisted the man's breathing and then administered Narcan spray nasally.
"By the time the ambulance arrived, the person was up and speaking," Galligan said.
The man was taken to Brockton Hospital.
On Wednesday, Brockton Fire Chief Richard Francis had announced that all fire department personnel had completed training on how to administer Narcan, a brand name of the drug naloxone. All fire vehicles in the city have been equipped with the drug since Tuesday.
Six people have died of drug overdoses in Brockton in the past 12 days, according to officials, amid an epidemic of heroin overdoses and overdose deaths.
Even as the chief was speaking on Wednesday, a Brockton firefighter successfully administered Narcan to man who had overdosed on the train tracks behind North Montello Street.
Benjamin Paulin may be reached at email@example.com.


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Who we are
Heart of Florida Environmental is a Central Florida based solid waste company headquartered in Lake Panasoffkee, Florida. Heart of Florida Environmental and its affiliated companies have a history that dates back to 1999 in the waste industry. Heart of Florida Environmental currently owns and operates a Class I landfill located at 1032 CR 529A in Lake Panasoffkee, FL 33538. Heart of Florida Environmental is the DBA name of A.C.M.S., Inc. For information regarding our facility, operating hours, or disposal rates, please contact us at 352-569-0465.
Sumter Recycling & Solid Waste Disposal, Inc is located at 453 CR 489 in Lake Panasoffkee and operates a C&D landfill. What is a C&D landfill? That is where citizens and companies bring debris from various construction and demolition projects and dispose of it. For information regarding disposal rates or hours of operation, please contact us 352-568-0999.
Good Fellas Roll Off & Waste Disposal, Inc. specializes in renting roll off containers for construction and demolition jobs and for general clean ups. We service, Citrus, Hernando, Lake, Marion, Pasco, and Sumter Counties. We offer roll off containers from 10-40 yards. Call us today for pricing and delivery 352-568-0999 or 1-866-669-2783.


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Important: Due to our policy of continuing improvement, all information in our brochures and photos may vary from actual home. The right is reserved to make changes at any time, without notice or obligation, in colors, materials, specifications, processes, and models. All dimensions and square footage calculations are nominal and approximate figures. Please check with your local sales associate for specific and current information. *Starting prices may vary by region.


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Tag Archives: location
The Power of the Map
by John Calkins on October 9, 2012
Maps mean different things to different people. So what is a map?
My definition is simple: a map is an answer to a question.
There are three basic kinds of maps that answer three basic types of questions:
- The Location map answers the question, "Where am I?"
- The Navigation map answers the question, "How do I get there?"
- The Spatial Relationships map answers the question "How are these things related?"
Posted in Storytelling with Maps | Tagged John Calkins, location, mobile, navigation, power of the map, spatial relationships, storytelling with maps | Leave a comment


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The Rebound Effect: Student Studies DEET's Effect on Dinoflagellates main content.
by AMNH on
Puerto Rico is one of the few places on Earth with bioluminescent bays. A favorite destination for tourists, these inlets glow at night when swimmers agitate the waters' light-emitting dinoflagellates, or tiny photosynthetic microbes.
Seventeen-year-old Ryan wanted to understand whether the popular insect repellant DEET, worn by many tourists to ward off mosquitoes, had any effect on the dinoflagellates in these bays. His investigation, outlined in the essay The Effects of DEET on the Bioluminescent Dinoflagellate, Pyrocystis fusiformis, earned Ryan one of this year's Young Naturalist Awards.
Ryan hypothesized that the presence of DEET in the water would adversely affect the dinoflagellates' ability to luminesce. To test his prediction, Ryan used black garbage bags and duct tape to convert wooden shelves into near-complete darkness experimentation areas. He added several solutions with varying concentrations of DEET to flasks filled with dinoflagellates, also monitoring a control group that contained distilled water. After setting a timed lamp to mimic 12-hour cycles of daylight and darkness, Ryan agitated each culture with a swirl and measured their illuminance with a light sensor.
Upon recording the dinoflagellates' maximum illuminance each day, Ryan realized his results did not support his hypothesis. While dinoflagellates exposed to the lower (.01 to .1 percent) concentrations of DEET emitted significantly less light than the control group on the first day of the trial, they rebounded on the second day and performed as well as the control throughout the rest of the experiment. The dinoflagellates that experienced the highest concentration of the repellant (1 percent) died, leading Ryan to conclude that these organisms may rebound from the stresses of DEET up to a certain threshold.
Ryan acknowledges the limits of his investigation and hopes he can conduct another one in the future that would take into account the amount of DEET that leaves a swimmer's skin and enters the water. This information, he believes, "would aid scientists and conservationists in evaluating the policies regarding swimming in some bioluminescent bays."
To learn more about bioluminescent bays and to see live dinoflagellates, visit the Museum's exhibition Creatures of Light: Nature's Bioluminescence, which will open on March 31, 2012.
The Young Naturalist Awards is a nationwide, science-based research contest for students in grades 7 through 12 presented by the Museum. To learn more and to submit your own project, visit amnh.org. The deadline for the 2012 contest is March 9, 2012.
The Young Naturalist Awards are proudly supported by Alcoa Foundation.


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Dealing with Fatigue
I feel so exhausted from my treatments. What can I do to give myself more pep? Some say I should exercise, but won't I get short of breath, since after all, I have lung cancer?
Charu Aggarwal, MD, MPH, Medical Oncologist at Penn Medicine, responds:
Keeping fit and staying healthy is important for you while you get chemotherapy. If you cannot exercise to full capacity, take it slow, maybe start with exercise that is less intense or for shorter periods of time, and then build up gradually. How about trying something like yoga? It may sound crazy, but even a little exercise can help build your energy. Try walking around the neighborhood or a mall if the weather is bad. Ask a friend to join you for company and motivation! Learn more about managing fatigue on OncoLink.
Charles B. Simone, II, MD, Radiation Oncologist at Penn Medicine, adds:
Just like chemotherapy, radiation therapy can cause fatigue. The fatigue caused by radiation therapy is typically cumulative during treatment, meaning that patients feel more tired towards the end of treatment more than during the first few weeks of therapy. This fatigue can also last several weeks to even months after therapy. Most patients, however, say they feel like they have more energy within approximately 2 weeks of finishing radiation therapy, and they are feeling mostly back to normal within 1-2 months of treatment completion. Exercise, as much as tolerated, is important. Studies have shown that patients who exercise and who perform all of their daily activities they were doing prior to starting treatment are less likely to have significant fatigue than patients who stay at home and decrease their activity for the majority of their treatment course. If and/or when fatigue does start, I recommend taking a short 30-60 minute nap during the day or moving your bedtime up to an earlier time at night. Long naps during the day, however, can make you have more difficulty with sleep at night and can make you feel even more exhausted as a result.


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Special Big Head Edition, the Toppers are extra large!!
* 12 designer cupcake wrappers + 12 designer foam toppers per pack.
* Do not bake in these cupcake wrappers, they are for presentation purposes only.
* Fits standard cupcakes.
* Easy to assemble, simply slide tab into slot.
TIPS: For best results, follow these steps.
1. Assemble wrappers by simply sliding tab into slot.
2. Place baked, unfrosted cupcake inside wrapper.
3. Frost and decorate cupcakes as desired.


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Earlier this week I published a tough critique on the Common Core State Standards in regards to early childhood education by educators Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Ed Miller, who said the standards are "a threat" to young students. Here is a response to that piece, by E.D. Hirsch, founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of several acclaimed books on education issues, including the best-seller "Cultural Literacy."
By E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
Earlier this week Edward Miller and Nancy Carlsson-Paige raised some thought-provoking critiques of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). While I don't know whether early childhood educators were involved in the standards writing process, I do know that many early educators are pleased with the result. As someone who has studied how to best use the early years to close achievement gaps and give all children an opportunity to live happy, productive, engaged lives, I am also a supporter of the CCSS.
I don't argue that the CCSS are perfect (I would not even argue that about the Core Knowledge Sequence). And I agree with Miller and Carlsson-Paige that we should all be open to improving the Common Core standards once we have done our best to implement them well. I've seen more than a few sets of standards come and go; I will safely bet that the interpretation, the implementation, and most especially the assessments of the CCSS matter far more than the standards themselves. With that in mind, let's take a look at a few of the critiques Miller and Carlsson-Paige put forth.
The biggest problem with their criticism of CCSS is that they don't offer anything different or better than what we have now. They call for a rejection of the CCSS because of various perceived faults. But then they call for what, exactly? As far as I can see, they want more of the pre-CCSS status quo. Unfortunately, the status quo isn't working. The reading scores of 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress constitute the single most accurate indicator of the effectiveness of our schooling, and as we look at the low reading scores of 17-year-olds over the past few decades of reform, we see no real movement.
Of course, much more goes into reading at age 17 than early childhood education, and there has been some recent improvement among 9-year-olds in reading, especially among our lowest-performing students. Why hasn't this improvement carried into later grades? As I have argued many, many, many times, the fundamental problem is that American schools, including preschools, typically delay systematic efforts to build students' vocabulary and knowledge until far too late (usually the end of elementary school or even later).
Building word and world knowledge must begin in preschool if we are to have any hope of closing the enormous language gaps identified by Betty Hart and Todd Risley, or of enabling children to listen and read with comprehension. That's why the Core Knowledge Foundation has spent the past several years developing a new preschool–5th grade language arts program (grades pre-K–3 will be online, for free download, by summer 2013). Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is radically different from the most widely used elementary-grades reading programs. Through high-quality fiction and nonfiction, CKLA systematically provides students the broad background knowledge they need to do well in middle and high school. It was developed by researchers and teachers working together. In short, it takes the best of current practice and updates it with solid research: it is nothing like the status quo (and has the results to prove it).
With the troubling results of the status quo in mind, let's consider the end of Miller and Carlsson-Paige's critique. They close with this: "Our first task as a society is to protect our children. The imposition of these standards endangers them. To learn more about how early childhood educators are working to defend young children, see Defending the Early Years."Following that link, I arrived at a website with an open letter to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). The central point of the open letter is that NAEYC is no longer a strong supporter of it's mid-1980's statement on developmentally appropriate practice. The open letter states:
NAEYC has long played a valuable role in identifying and supporting best practices in early childhood education. The strong position NAEYC took with its 1986 publication, Developmentally Appropriate Practice, focused attention on respectful, child centered ways of working with young children…. NAEYC appears to have gradually retreated from its strong defense of DAP. The voices of its leadership have not been heard vigorously protesting the proliferation of standards and assessments or offering meaningful alternatives to them.
To NAEYC's current leadership, I say "Bravo!" NAEYC has recognized that research does not stand still, and the best practices from almost 30 years ago are not considered best practices today. NAEYC has consistently been dedicated to updating its advice on DAP; it issued major revisions in 1996 and 2008. I had the good fortune in the mid-nineties to meet and talk with the authors of NAEYC's guides on DAP, Sue Bredekamp and Carol Copple (Bredekamp has worked on each of NAEYC's DAP papers; Copple joined her in the 1990s). At the time, the Core Knowledge Foundation was creating a preschool program. I found them well versed in recent cognitive science, with a deep understanding of how preschool could enhance children's oral language development, which is critically important for all future learning.
Daniel Willingham, a professor of cognitive psychology, has explained that many long-held, widely shared beliefs about children's cognitive development—such as Jean Piaget's notion that it proceeds in discrete stages—have not been supported by newer, more sophisticated studies. Cognitive development is continuous, and a child's performance will vary day to day and task to task. (Even very young children can engage in critical thinking if they have been taught the necessary background knowledge.) In an article for teachers on DAP, Willingham asks them to "recognize that no content is inherently developmentally inappropriate." He then explains as follows:
Without trivializing them, complex ideas can be introduced by making them concrete and through reference to children's experience.
Of course, as teachers, you must also consider the cost if students do not fully understand a concept the way you had intended. The cost may be minimal, and the content may be worth knowing—even if in an incomplete way. For example, suppose your preschool students have learned about Martin Luther King, Jr., but you are having a hard time getting them to understand that he was a real person who is no longer here, and that fictional characters such as Mary Poppins are not here and never were. If it's hard for a 4-year-old to conceive of people living in different times and places, does that mean that history should not be taught until the child is older? Such an argument would not make much sense to a developmental psychologist. For children and adults, understanding of any new concept is inevitably incomplete. The preschoolers can still learn something about who King was and what he stood for. Their mistaken belief that they might encounter him at a local store, or that he lives at a school that bears his name, will be corrected in time. Indeed, how do children learn that some people are fictional and some are not? Not by a magical process of brain maturation. Children learn this principle as they learn any other—in fits and starts, sometimes showing that they understand and other times not. If you wait until you are certain that the children will understand every nuance of a lesson, you will likely wait too long to present it. If they understand every nuance, you're probably presenting content that they've already learned elsewhere.
I'll add that if they do not understand anything at all, you're probably presenting a concept that is entirely new to them. Don't wait for them to happen to learn it elsewhere; revamp your lesson plan to include the most basic of introductions and then extend your plan so that the children have time to think, explore, ask questions, and absorb related vocabulary.
In addition to their out-of-date concept of what is developmentally appropriate, Miller and Carlsson-Paige have an unfounded fear that under the CCSS, the early grades will be dominated by direct instruction. I would also be upset to see a classroom in any grade that never departs from direct instruction—as I would be sad to see a classroom entirely devoted to discovery learning, project-based instruction, or free play. Decades ago, Project Follow Through clearly demonstrated that direct instruction works well with young children.
Children have a lot to learn about the world, past and present. They need to learn some things as efficiently as possible—through direct instruction. But they also need opportunities to explore—through well-constructed spaces and activities that invite creative problem solving and role playing. There is nothing inherent in the CCSS that discourages early childhood educators from offering rich educational experiences using a variety of pedagogies.
As NAEYC has noted, the CCSS indicate what should be taught in ELA/literacy and mathematics. They do not dictate pedagogy or prevent teachers from offering a well-rounded curriculum, including the arts and social-emotional learning. In it's recent paper on the CCSS, which highlighted benefits of and support for the CCSS while also pointing out potential problems with implementation, NAEYC wrote:
Learning standards, or content standards, provide the "what" of education, but they do not describe the "how" of education. The content standards set the goal toward which teaching and learning opportunities are directed for young children. The "how" of learning should be aligned to the content standard through our understanding of best practices to increase the chances of attaining the goal, even as the goal itself needs to be aligned with our knowledge of children's learning processes…. Especially critical is maintaining methods of instruction that include a range of approaches—including the use of play as well as both small- and large-group instruction—that are considered to be developmentally appropriate for young children.
While Miller and Carlsson-Paige seem to think that academic content—gap-closing word and world knowledge—can't be delivered in a developmentally appropriate way, solid research shows us that it can. For example, the distinguished psychologist Robert Siegler has found that numerical board games (like Chutes and Ladders) can help preschoolers from low-income families increase their numerical skills and concepts. Would a classroom that spends 20 minutes playing Chutes and Ladders and another 10 minutes in a direct math lesson really be such a terrible "drill and grill" place (as Miller and Carlsson-Paige wrote)?
The CCSS do leave room for great teaching, but that does not mean that all interpretations of the CCSS have been either accurate or helpful. A New York Post article stated that "the city Department of Education now wants 4- and 5-year-olds to write 'informative/explanatory reports' and demonstrate 'algebraic thinking.' Children who barely know how to write the alphabet or add 2 and 2 are expected to write topic sentences and use diagrams to illustrate math equations." This is a misinterpretation of the CCSS. I am grateful to everyone who is trying to correct such errors. For young children, the focus of the CCSS is—appropriately—oral language.
Such misunderstanding of the CCSS brings me to a final point. All standards, even the CCSS, are goal statements that can be interpreted many ways. If the idea of all children sharing some core content is to come to fruition, somebody needs to come up with a model curriculum along with validated, curriculum-based tests. That curriculum need not say how to teach, but it does need to say what limited core to teach, grade by grade. (That core is all the more important, since teachers will still need time to address students' weaknesses and encourage them to pursue their interests.) Without a specific curriculum, and without tests that are drawn exclusively from that curriculum, word and world knowledge will continue to be taught haphazardly and incoherently, and our achievement gaps will not be closed.
I believe Core Knowledge Language Arts is an important step toward such a curriculum, and I would warmly welcome any funder interested in developing a curriculum-based test for CKLA. If we as a nation developed something of equally high quality for the middle grades, then dramatically more students would be able to take AP's and IB's curriculum-based courses and exams in high school.
The future of American education hinges on whether CCSS can be made to work. The alternative, despite the protestations of the critics, is more of the same ineffective and unjust practices that have placed the nation and its middle class at risk.


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