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by Margie Kelly, Communications Manager
Last month, industry giant Johnson & Johnson made a stunning announcement: it was prepared to eliminate a "most wanted" list of chemicals from its beauty and baby products lines by 2015.
Johnson & Johnson plans to phase out preservatives like quanternium-15, which releases formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, and triclosan, an antibacterial that may harm the human immune system. Another chemical that Johnson & Johnson pledged to eliminate is 1,4 dioxane, which has been linked to increased risk of breast cancer.
Johnson & Johnson contends the chemicals are safe and meet all government standards. However, as Susan Nettesheim, Vice President, Product Stewardship and Toxicology wrote, "…what matters most isn't what we think, it's what the people who use our products think."
For years, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics had been pressuring the company to make the switch. The Campaign's report finding cancer-causing formaldehyde in the iconic Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo raised a ruckus among parents who don't want to wash their children's heads with a notorious cancer-causing chemical.
As a result, Johnson & Johnson announced last year that it would remove formaldehyde from its baby products The latest news takes them a step closer to purging their product lines of dangerous chemicals. Kudos to Johnson & Johnson for their decision to make products safe.
Which brings me to Tide Free & Gentle laundry detergent and the Proctor & Gamble Company.
You've probably heard about or seen Tide Free & Gentle, which is marketed to moms with newborn babies. P&G spent millions advertising its "Proud sponsors of Moms" brand during the 2012 Summer Olympics, to great fanfare and celebration in the media.
Those ads never mention that Tide Free & Gentle contains 1,4 dioxane, the cancer-causing chemical Johnson & Johnson is phasing out of use. P&G is well aware that 1,4 dioxane is a chemical that should not be in its products. In 2010, the company reformulated Herbal Essences shampoo to eliminate 1,4 dioxane. Yet P&G has decided to leave the cancer-causing chemical in a detergent it markets to new moms.
Lori Alper, a mom blogger at Groovy Green Livin' and Healthy Child Healthy World Parent Ambassador, put up a petition urging Tide to get 1,4 dioxane out of its products. Nearly 80,000 people have signed the petition – will you?
Together we can get P&G to hear our concerns about cancer-causing chemicals in Tide and make the decision that Johnson & Johnson made:
"…we're changing them [chemicals] out because we're listening to the people who rely on our products, and we want to be sure they have peace of mind bringing our products into their homes and caring for themselves and their families. Nothing is more important to us."
Let's make Tide Free & Gentle safe for our families. Please sign the petition today!


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Watch the Live Meeting Here!
Aurora Hills is used primarily by 55+ Programs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
The area surrounding the community center, Virginia Highlands Park, features a sprayground, a tennis court, a playground and a picnic shelter.
Directions Transit Parking
Parking: Limited
Main Line: 703-228-5722 Facility Manager: Patrick Mallon 55+ Program Director: Lila Paig, 703-228-5722 Facility Scheduling Office: 703-228-4747, Option 2; Email
Inclement Weather Line: 703-228-4715
735 18th St S, Arlington, VA 22202 View Map
735 18th St S , Arlington, VA 22202
Aurora Hills Community Center Building
Community Center Sign
Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. (55+ Program).As needed for Rentals
Check out the regularly occurring activities taking place at Aurora Hills.
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subset: commoncrawl


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8:42 am
Haines apologized for screaming in his sleep again. Buck told him what I said about web fiction which earned the distinction "clever" then suggested I ask Haines for money. Twice a month Buck has plans for my paycheck; wants to drink it later. Thinks it will be $700. He sang this all morning:
I brought his shaving bowl in from the balcony. This is the song my mind sang all morning, pushed around a bit by Buck's bellowing:


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OCEAN CITY – With dozens of boats reporting double-digit releases including one local boat with a record 57 on Monday alone, the white marlin bite off the coast of Ocean City has been off the chart for the last week or so, perhaps confirming once and for all the sometimes questioned "White Marlin Capital of the World" title for the resort.
Throughout the summer, it became evident something special was going on with the white marlin bite off Ocean City. Momentum started building in early August when 550 white marlin were caught and released during the White Marlin Open and continued a week later when a record 558 whites were released during the Mid-Atlantic $500,000 tournament, the highest total in the 19 years of that event.
In the weeks since, it has been a common scene to see sportfishing boats returning to port with multiple white marlin release flags flying high, turning outriggers into high dollar clotheslines, but the bite reached a crescendo last weekend and into the early part of this week with most of the boats returning with double-digit releases. On Monday, perhaps the peak of the white marlin madness, Captain Jon Duffie and the crew on the Billfisher returned to home base at Sunset Marina with a stunning 57 white marlin releases, a new single-day record in Ocean City.
The 57 releases by the Billfisher crew came after the aptly named local boat returned with 22 white marlin releases on Sunday. Also on Monday, the nine boats that fished out of Sunset Marina caught and released 267 white marlin for an average of nearly 30 each. Among those with the highest single-day totals were the Cervesa (33), the Reel Joy (32), the Makara (32), the Tar Heel (30) and the Legasea (27).
Over at the Ocean City Fishing Center, the results were similar for the local fleet at the sister marina on Monday. The Moore Bills reported 25 white marlin releases on Monday, while the Playmate came in with 22 of its own. The Foolish Pleasures also had a big day on Monday after catching and releasing 23 on Sunday, while several other boats reported double-digit releases. At one point on Sunday, the All In out of the Ocean City Fishing Center reported having six white marlin hooked up at the same time.
"I've fished all over the world and this is as good as it gets anywhere," said Ocean City Marlin Club President and Last Call Captain Franky Pettolina. "It's been nothing short of amazing. Ocean City is called the White Marlin Capital of the World for a reason, and it's not always evident why, but when you see something like this going on, I think it certainly validates that title."
Sunset Marina Manager Brian Tinkler agreed with Pettolina's assessment, calling the recent white marlin bite one of the best on record, if not the best.
"I'd say all summer long has been one of the most consistent white marlin bites in recent years, but what we've seen in the last week or 10 days has just been off the charts," he said. "Some of our boats fish all over the world and they've said all week how they've never seen anything like this anywhere."
Over at the Ocean City Fishing Center, Manager Jennifer Blount got a chance to see the white marlin mayhem first hand on Wednesday after collecting fish reports from the returning boats all weekend.
"I was out there yesterday [Wednesday] and it was just amazing," she said. "White marlin were just swimming around the boat and cutting through the waves. I've never seen anything like it and most of these guys that have been around here forever are saying the same thing."
Offshore fishing is a fickle sport and the billfish could disappear as quickly as they arrived in the last week or so, but Pettolina believes a combination of factors has led to the spike.
"I think there are a bunch of factors at work here," he said. "Fishing by nature is cyclical and everything is just lined up perfectly right now. The closure of some areas to long-lining has certainly helped. The use of fish-friendly circle hooks has to be a factor, and I think it's just a little better technology available."
Tinkler agreed the conservation efforts of the sportfishing community over time have resulted in increased numbers of white marlin.
"Circle hooks have dramatically reduced mortality and, at the same time, increased the survival rate well into the 90-plus percent range," he said. "I have to believe that is a contributing factor. The conservation ethic of the fishing community is paying dividends when you see a bite like this one."
Pettolina said natural factors such as water temperature breaks and migration patterns have conspired to put the fish in the canyons off the coast, but technological advances have allowed local captains and crews to take advantage of the opportunity when it presents itself.
"There's this new breed of captains and they are just so dialed in that they are prepared when the bite goes off the way it has here over the last week or so," he said. "They have the best boats, the best technology and the best equipment. We're better informed and the tackle and techniques are just better."
With the uncertainties surrounding Earl and the potential impact on the resort area, it remains to be seen if the white marlin bite will pick up where it left off as the storm passes. In the meantime, the local fishing community is enjoying the record white marlin bite.
"It's certainly wonderful for the local economy and it's putting Ocean City on the map for all of the right reasons," he said. "We're not seeing a huge spike in charter traffic, but we are seeing a huge spike in folks getting down here and getting out on their boats. Folks are knocking each other out of the way trying to get out on those boats."


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THE REAL DEAL is coming July 10, 2018! A sexy, witty, and heartfelt brand new standalone romantic comedy from #1 New York Times bestseller Lauren Blakely, THE REAL DEAL is sure to make you swoon, laugh, and squirm at all the right moments. Pre-order your copy today! And don't miss the new cover below!
About THE REAL DEAL:
Sophie Kinsella meets Jennifer Crusie in your next favorite romantic comedy, THE REAL DEAL!
April Hamilton wants you to know she hasn't been on Craigslist since that time she sold her futon after college. She doesn't even spend that much time online. And even if she did, she would not be looking up personal ads. But going home alone for her family's summer reunion is an invitation for every single relative to butt into her personal life. She simply can't handle another blind date with the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker from her hometown. So when she finds the Craigslist ad for a boyfriend-for-hire, she's ready to pay to play.
Heading Home and Need a Buffer? I'm the REAL DEAL.
Theo Banks has been running from the past for years. He's this close to finally settling all his debts, and one more job as a boyfriend-for-hire will do the trick. He's no gigolo. Please. He's something of an actor, and he knows how to slip into any role, including pretending to be April's new beau — the bad boy with the heart of gold.
Even if it means sleeping in close quarters in that tiny little bed in her parents' inn. Even if it means spinning tales of a romance that starts to feel all too true. What neither one of them counts on is that amid the egg toss, the arm wrestling, and a fierce game of Lawn Twister that has them tangled up together, they might be feeling the real deal.
She only wanted to show her family once and for all that she had no need to settle down.
He didn't expect to have the time of his life at her parent's home.
They didn't plan on loving every single second of the game.
But can a masterful game of pretend result in true love?
✦ Amazon US ✦ Amazon UK ✦ Amazon Paperback ✦ Kobo ✦ Google Play ✦ BAM ✦ Indiebound
✦ Goodreads ✦
About Lauren Blakely:
A #1 New York Times Bestselling author, Lauren Blakely is known for her contemporary romance style that's hot, sweet and sexy. She lives in California with her family and has plotted entire novels while walking her dogs. With fourteen New York Times bestsellers, her titles have appeared on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Bestseller Lists more than eighty times, and she's sold more than 2 million books. In October, she'll release HARD WOOD, a standalone romantic comedy. To receive an email when Lauren releases a new book, sign up for her newsletter! laurenblakely.com/newsletter
Website ** Facebook ** Twitter ** Newsletter ** Goodreads


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Community Spotlight - Verite Rendition Influence Maps
Ever since alliances first started conquering space, players have wanted a way to visualize it. Today, one of the most popular resources for seeing who owns what are the Verite Rendition Influence Maps, created by Verite Rendition.
The Verite Rendition Influence Maps, which have been published since August 19, 2007, are territorial maps of New Eden, showing the expanding and contracting power and influence that alliances hold over space. Not merely just an indication of who holds sovereignty in specific systems, the Verite Rendition Influence Maps use a complex formula to determine which vast swaths of territory are actually under dominion of alliances. Different systems generate different amount of "influence" which are then transmitted to nearby systems. Whichever alliance is credited with the most influence on a system is then determined to be the owner on the map.
The map is published daily at 16:00 (with some exceptions for extended downtimes) and hosted on EVE Files. The latest version can always be found here, while historians wishing to explore the evolving face of sovereignty over the years can find the daily archive here.
He has also been able to expand into mapping other aspects of the game. The recent activation of API services on the EVE China server (Serenity) means that he now does an influence map for Serenity – it ended up being quite a different beast due to the small number of massive alliances, and the much slower turnover in sovereignty as a result. He was also able to expand into doing an influence map for Factional Warfare, which gives a basic overview of how much control the various factions have taken over their respective FW regions.
Since the map launched, it has far surpassed the expectations of its creator. He never expected his map to become as popular as it has become. It has grown to be far more important and more widely referenced than he ever thought it would be. In part, he attributes this popularity to the apolitical nature of the map. As it is automatically generated, it cannot be accused of bias, which in the highly charged world of EVE politics makes it possible to create something everyone on all sides can agree is roughly accurate.
Development History
The nature of sovereignty means alliances and power blocs can hold large chunks of space. For players, it's extremely helpful to get a high-level overview of space ownership and to track it on a regular basis to see who is gaining space and who is losing space. So an influence map was always something that simply made sense to have in one form or another.
The first maps (like Joshua Foiritain's influence map) were done by hand. This worked fairly well as it allowed for cleanly drawn maps complete with footnotes about what was going on in the EVE universe. But being hand drawn meant that it was done irregularly at best. Plus, there was a human factor in deciding which alliance owned what chunks of space, which didn't always sit well with EVE's player base. So there was some clear room for improvement by moving to automation, which would allow for regular map updates while removing the human factor in deciding space allocation.
Early in 2007, Paladin Vent created what would be the ancestor to the current influence map. This automated map was generally well received, but unfortunately he vanished a few months after starting the project, and with it his map stopped updating.
Enter Verite Rendition. Since Paladin had published an early version of the map code, it was possible for Verite to start putting the pieces back together. Mostly on a lark, since Verite was familiar with the various technologies Paladin used, he took a stab at rebuilding the map, intending to just temporarily do it until he returned. But as he never did return, Verite has become the permanent author of the map since August 19, 2007.
But Verite has not been content with the code he inherited. Though the fundamentals of the map have not changed, he significantly rewrote the code to make it faster, easier to follow, and more flexible for other uses. From the perspective of the players there have been a number of changes as well, as Verite updated the map over the years to keep pace with changes in EVE's sovereignty rules, changed the coloring system to make it easier to read, and modified how influence is spread to better match how today's power blocs allocate their holdings.
Player feedback has been instrumental in further improving the map, as throughout the years Verite's made numerous small changes based on player feedback. The important part is that automation means the map is apolitical, which in the highly charged world of EVE politics makes it possible to create something everyone on all sides can agree is roughly accurate.
Because it's fully automated, it takes very little work on a day-to-day basis to maintain the map. Other than keeping up with extended downtimes (where the API server is unavailable), the biggest maintenance job is actually coloring the map. The code takes a best-guess effort at picking colors for an alliance that will be easy to read and not clash with an alliance's neighbors, but as alliances expand, contract, and move, Verite still has to periodically re-color the map to ensure it remains readable and easy to tell apart neighboring alliances.
On a larger time scale, he sometimes has to make adjustments to keep up with changes to the sovereignty mechanics or the API. Luckily, those have not changed recently, so Verite hasn't had to make many updates to this part of the code for the past few expansions.
Ultimately the map was designed to be automated so that it would be practical to update it on a daily basis even if something should happen to him, which has meant it has needed little maintenance outside of catching up to gameplay changes.
Technical Details
As mentioned before, the maps are generated entirely automatically in order to remove accusations of human bias. The influence map is made through a combination of tools. The map renderer itself is a custom program written in Java over about 2100 lines of code, with the associated data stored in a MySQL database. There are some other data processing tools written in C++ simplicity, and then a few 3rd party programs such as cURL are used to glue it all together and handle moving the map around.
While the number of viewers vary day-to-day, the average map is looked at roughly 5000 times. The maximum number of views for any given map is 52K, from the day Band of Brothers fell in 2009. All together, the Influence Maps have been viewed 26 million times.
Verite Rendition |
And we must look at the man behind the Influence Maps, Verite Rendition himself. He has played the game for nearly 8 years and has touched on many different activities within EVE Online. He's run the gamut from mining to manufacturing to investing to technetium carteling to logistics to diplomacy to, of course, ratting and PvP. These days he mostly spends his time PvPing in null-sec (small gang and fleet), exploring, and doing some of the logistics that enables his corp to live out there.
In the future, Verite hopes to add additional functionality and features to the map. In particular, he hopes for a day when he will be able to take into account the EVE development indices, so that systems with high levels of activity (lots of ratting and mining) count for more than barren station systems that have been slowly accumulating over the years. While that data currently isn't available in the API, that would be the single biggest change to the map since its inception, and Verite believes it would much better reflect where an alliance's real influence resides.
The other concept he's been toying with is a power bloc map. The code makes it easy; the problem is that defining power blocs reintroduces a human factor. He believes it would be best if the person responsible for that was not himself, so that there's a clear separation between the person creating the maps (apolitical), and the person defining the power blocs (political).
Finally, Verite wants to let the community know that it's outpouring of support for his work and the map have been instrumental in its continued development. None of this would be possible without the help and support of the player base. He's been doing this for over 5 years now, so the continued outpouring of support means the world to him. And he's happy to see that so many players still find the influence map so useful in their day-to-day business.


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My daughters birthday was fast approaching and I've always known that she would be having a fairy party. As fairy parties are common these days, I wanted her party to incorporate elements that other fairy parties didn't have, so I decided on an enchanted pastel rainbow fairy party.
The colours were perfect and captured a sweet version of rainbows and the party included all the elements of an enchanted fairy party.
The dessert table was the highlight of the party. The cake and backdrop captured the scene of an enchanted forest. The sweet treats were styled in a way which enabled them to fit into this enchanted forest. The sweet treats included -
Butter-cream swirl pastel cupcakes
Butterfly cake pops
Pixie dust cake pops
Flower cookie tree
Cookie wands
Topiary tree cake pops
Mushroom marshmallows
Petite fairy floss tarts
Petite pastel rainbow cakes
Pastel macarons
Pastel rainbow layered jelly
Pastel rainbow layered pannacotta and I obviously had to include
A pot of gold chocolates at the end of the rainbow
As we had a huge variety of desserts I decided to have a separate drinks and candy table which the children could help themselves to. The little "fairies" and "peter pans" helped themselves to some Pixie Punch and treated themselves to some candy, which included -
Pastel marshmallows
Sour rainbow straps
Mint leaves
Pastel candy
Pastel fruit sticks
Pastel lollypops
For entertainment we had Fairy Good Times "Fairy Melody" attended the party. She transported the children away to a magical world of make believe, where their dreams began and enchantment commenced. The activities they participated in included -
A magic show with many giggles
Puppetry and many imaginative games &
Face painting
Fairy Melody also enchanted the children with her amazing voice, hence the reason for her beautiful name.
As a take home gift each child was given a bottle of pixie dust to enable them to be transported to this enchanted land once again and a personalised chocolate bar from the birthday girl.
The children's food table was also set up with some amazing childrens ghost chairs which I embellished with pastel butterflys.
I hope you enjoyed viewing my daughters party as much as I enjoyed styling it.
The great part is I get to style the exactly same party for another special girl next month.
Nat x
Credits -
Concept, Styling and Photography - Events by Nat
Cake, cupcakes, petite pastel cakes, topiary tree cake pops, flower cookies and wand cookies - Blissfully Sweet - http://blissfullysweetcakes.blogspot.com.au/
Butterfly cake pops, pixie dust cake pops, mushroom marshmallows, pastel rainbow jelly and pastel pannacotta - Events by Nat
Macarons - It's a cake thing (by Jhoanee) - http://itsacakething.webs.com/
Backdrop design and other printables - Pretty and Print - http://www.prettyandprint.com/home/home.html
Backdrop printed on Canvas - Buggyboo - http://buggyboo.com.au/
Backdrop printed on Canvas - Buggyboo - http://buggyboo.com.au/
Ruffle rainbow tablecloth - Saffy and May - http://www.facebook.com/saffyandmay
Cake stands, pannacotta jars and candy jars - Sweet Style http://www.sweetstyle.com.au/
Candy jars - Leo and Bella http://www.facebook.com/Leo.and.Bella
Children's ghost chairs - Mon Tresor http://www.montresor.com.au/
Children's ghost chairs - Mon Tresor http://www.montresor.com.au/


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There are a lot of subjects where I found textbooks to be very valuable when I was a student. History for example. One of my degrees is in Sociology where I read all the textbooks cover to cover. In Computer Science I tended to use textbooks more as a reference – a place to look things up – more than as something to read cover to cover. I'm sure that is the same for some but very different for others.
I've never really figured how to get the most out of a text book while teaching computer science. For the most part I haven't used them at all. I do have a lot of materials I make available to my students though. They have copies of all my PowerPoint presentations for example. Lots of them have information in the speaker notes. I also link to videos online. Some I've recorded and some by other people. Code.Org has some great ones for example. (https://code.org/educate/resources/videos) I also write up some "how to" for things I don't necessarily cover in class. This seems to work ok but lately I have been thinking I need more.
As I see it one of the problems with textbooks is that students don't read them. Flipped classroom (read this at home or watch this at home and we'll talk about it in class) seems to work for some people but I'm still skeptical. I've heard students complain about having to read 150 page books over a months time and wonder how likely they really are to be reading a textbook assignment. Even if they do, what do I have them read?
What I have decided to do is to write my own book. Now I have written traditional textbooks before. I've even gotten some good reviews on them. But for now I wanted something different. I want something short and to the point. Something as a reference or a "catch up" for missed lectures. So not pages worth of step by step hand holding. No pages of summary questions or exercises to assign. Just short explanations of concepts with some sample code to read.
I'm starting with my freshmen class. About a third of a semester is spent on learning some basic Visual Basic programming. We don't got very deep or cover too many concepts. Variables, if statements, and loops – that's about it. Including title, table of contents and index I'm at about 45 pages. I think that is about right. Of and about a third of that is stuff I don't lecture on because they are not core CS concepts but things students can use in their projects to make them more interesting. That way when I get the usual "Mr. Thompson how do I use a timer?" or "Mr. Thompson I want to use images in my user interface" question I can send them to the book. I have half a semester before I can try it out so I can tune it a bit.
For my honors programming class (we use C# there) I am shooting for between 75 and 100 pages. That is a full semester and we cover a lot more material. Once again I see this as a backup and not my main teaching tool. I've got the topics for the first quarter just about finished so maybe I can use that this semester as well.
Now I am wondering how others use textbooks. It's not a conversation I hear much about. Maybe I would have learned that if I had gone to school for education and not computer science? One of these days I want to attend a birds of a feather discussion about using textbooks.


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I've decided to stop the ability to comment to blogposts and articles on this blog. The content on the site is not really up-to-date any more and doesn't reflect the current state of much of the software used. As a benefit it also keeps out the spammers.
If you have any questions on the articles and how-to's posted here you are better of on my other site which is kept up to date as much as possible. The content covers the same matter (apache, mysql, php and mailserver), but also covers Leopard.
The DIYMacServer.com site is also equipped with a forum where you can ask all the questions you want.
Sorry for the inconvinience.


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Wow, my first post since moving to San Diego and it only took 52 days to do it! That's pretty horrible, I must admit. Here I thought moving to a new city would inspire me to be more active in my photography and blogging. Nope. Turns out moving and starting a new job means you have next to no free time. When you do find yourself void of responsibilities, all you really want to do is relax with your iPad and new season of Nikita on Netflix. Perhaps I'm projecting a bit… Clearly I really love that show.
For all the years I lived in San Francisco I never owned a car. It just wasn't necessary. I walked almost everywhere in that city, and loved it. It was a healthy way to get around and it allowed me a little time to myself. When I needed to go further than a say a mile, I'd take the Muni. And despite what many of the locals might say, we have a stellar mass transit system.
My apartment had a Walk Score of 98 and a Bike Score of 95. My office had a Walk Score of 92, a Transit Score of 100 and a Bike Score of 89. Basically I had the world, just steps away. San Diego, well it isn't quite the same here. Continue reading


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In nearly twenty years hosting the different dating series in The Bachelor franchise, host Chris Harrison has handled everything from confronting rule-breaking contestants to chasing down Bachelor star Colton Underwood after he hopped a fence and tried to quit the show.
But today it is Harrison who is leaving. ABC and producers of The Bachelor and its spin offs, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, have confirmed that the host is gone for good after fumbling a race-related controversy from the mothership program.
ABC Entertainment and Warner Horizon, the show's distributor and producer, acknowledged Harrison's departure today in a terse joint statement: "Chris Harrison is stepping aside as host of The Bachelor franchise. We are thankful for his many contributions over the past 20 years and wish him all the best on his new journey."
Harrison, 49, issued a more optimistic statement on his Instagram page, noting "I've had a truly incredible run as host of The Bachelor franchise and now I'm excited to start a new chapter. I'm so grateful to Bachelor Nation for all of the memories we've made together. While my two-decade journey is wrapping up, the friendships I've made will last a lifetime."
Representatives from ABC, Warner Horizon and Harrison did not otherwise respond to requests for comment.
The website Deadline reported Harrison's ouster, saying it came after intense negotiations culminating in a "midrange, eight-figure payoff" which would ensure the former host said little about the issue after the news was released.
Harrison has hosted The Bachelor and its spinoff shows since the series debuted in 2002. But he was sidelined in February, after an interview where he downplayed the significance of news that contestant Rachael Kirkconnell had once attended a party themed around the antebellum South, a period when slavery still existed.
The Bachelor was featuring its first Black star, Matt James. As the news about Kirkconnell spread, fans questioned whether the series had vetted its white contestants well enough to exclude contestants with racist issues in their past.
But Harrison derisively dubbed Kirkconnell's critics the "woke police," until a widespread backlash led him to issue an apology and step away from his hosting duties. "What I now realize I have done is cause harm by wrongly speaking in a manner that perpetuates racism and for that I am so deeply sorry," he said in one of two apologies posted on Instagram.
His initial comments were seen as emblematic of the show's ongoing cluelessness about diversity issues, as it struggled to feature non-white stars and respect their perspectives.
And the controversy over Kirkconnell – who James had picked as the season's winner during episodes pretaped last year — eventually overshadowed the season finale in March. James wound up rejecting Kirkconnell during the program's After the Rose special, which was hosted by former NFL player and author Emmanuel Acho. (he has since told People magazine he is once again "pursuing a relationship" with her.)
Harrison's departure was initially characterized as a temporary stepping aside. But news that former Bachelorette stars Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe would host the edition of The Bachelorette that debuted Monday (and that guest hosts, including comic David Spade, would lead this year's edition of Bachelor in Paradise) led to speculation about his long-term future with the franchise.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Study Identified | Summary of study | Brief SRA description | Manuscript title |
Azhurnaya development | Developmental time-course of Azhurnaya | 70 tissue/timepoints from Azhurnaya developmental stages | The transcriptional landscape of polyploid wheat |
PAMP | PAMP innoculation of seedlings | Leaves innoculated with flg22, chitin and water to study PAMP responses | The transcriptional landscape of polyploid wheat |
spike drought | Spikes with water stress | Water stress was applied to a double haploid population at early booting. RNA was sequenced from spikes. | The transcriptional landscape of polyploid wheat |
CS seedlings spike | Chinese Spring seedling (leaves and roots) and spikes at anthesis | Seedlings of Chinese Spring were divided into leaves and roots, and spikes were collected at anthesis. | The transcriptional landscape of polyploid wheat |
CS vegetative | Chinese Spring leaves and roots from seven leaf stage | Vegetative (seven leaf stage) roots and leaves were harvested from Chinese Spring. | The transcriptional landscape of polyploid wheat |
phosphate | Phosphate starvation in roots and shoots | Transcriptome profiles of wheat variety Chinese Spring (CS) in response to Pi starvation (−P) for 10 days. | Characterisation of the wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) transcriptome by de novo assembly for the discovery of phosphate starvation-responsive genes: gene expression in Pi-stressed wheat |
CS grain | Grain tissue-specific developmental timecourse | Analysis of the cell type specific expression of homeologous genes in the developing wheat grain | Genome interplay in the grain transcriptome of hexaploid bread wheat |
12dpa grain | Grain tissue-specific expression at 12 days post anthesis | Inner pericarp, outer pericarp and endosperm layers from developing grain of bread wheat cv. Holdfast at 12 days post-anthesis. | Heterologous expression and transcript analysis of gibberellin biosynthetic genes of grasses reveals novel functionality in the GA3ox family |
flag leaf | Flag leaf downregulation of GPC | Wild type bread wheat plants and GPC RNAi plants 12 days after anthesis | Effect of the down-regulation of the high Grain Protein Content (GPC) genes on the wheat transcriptome during monocarpic senescence |
grain dissection | Grain tissue-specific developmental timecourse | Transcriptomes of the aleurone and starchy endosperm tissues of the wheat seed (Triticum aestivum) at time points critical to the development of the aleurone layer of 6, 9 and 14 days post anthesis. | Gene expression in the developing aleurone and starchy endosperm of wheat |
stripe rust | Stripe rust infected seedlings | Pool of stripe rust infected wheat leaves | Genome analyses of the wheat yellow (stripe) rust pathogen Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici reveal polymorphic and haustorial expressed secreted proteins as candidate effectors |
septoria | Septoria tritici infected seedlings | Molecular mechanisms underlying the interplay between fungal pathogenicity and host responses at specific growth phases and the factors triggering disease transition. | Transcriptional Reprogramming of Wheat and the Hemibiotrophic Pathogen Septoria tritici during Two Phases of the Compatible Interaction |
fusarium 30 50h | Fusarium head blight infected spikelets | Near isogenic wheat lines, differing in the presence of the Fusarium graminearum FHB-resistance QTL Fhb1 and Qfhs.ifa-5A, under disease pressure (30 and 50 hai) as well as with mock-inoculation | Quantitative trait loci-dependent analysis of a gene co-expression network associated with Fusarium head blight resistance in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) |
nullitetra | Shoots and leaves of nulli tetra group 1 and group 5 | RNAseq of nulli-tetrasomic wheat lines (shoots and leaves) | Patterns of homoeologous gene expression shown by RNA sequencing in hexaploid bread wheat |
early grain | Grain tissue-specific developmental timecourse | Gene expression profiling of morphological stage of developing wheat grain | Evaluation of Assembly Strategies Using RNA-Seq Data Associated with Grain Development of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) |
stamen pistil | Comparison of stamen, pistil and pistilloidy expression | Transcriptional profiling of pistillody stamen, pistil and stamen in wheat line HTS-1 | Pistillody mutant reveals key insights into stamen and pistil development in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) |
stripe rust powdery mildew | Stripe rust and powdery mildew timecourse of infection in seedlings | Transcriptome Divergence and Overlap for Wheat in Response to Stripe rust and Powdery Mildew Pathogen Stress | Large-scale transcriptome comparison reveals distinct gene activations in wheat responding to stripe rust and powdery mildew. |
drought heat | Drought and heat stress time-course in seedlings | RNAseq of 1-week old wheat seedling leaves subjected to drought stress, heat stress and their combination before (0h) and after stress (1h or 6h) | Temporal transcriptome profiling reveals expression partitioning of homeologous genes contributing to heat and drought acclimation in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) |
4A dormancy | Grain developmental timecourse with 4A dormancy QTL | This study was to identify candidate genes underlying the 4AL QTL for grain dormancy in wheat. RNA was sequenced from pooled NILs segregating for the QTL | Transcriptomic analysis of wheat near-isogenic lines identifies PM19-A1 and A2 as candidates for a major dormancy QTL |
CS development | Developmental time-course of Chinese Spring | Whole transcriptome sequencing of wheat 3B chromosome | Structural and functional partitioning of bread wheat chromosome 3B |
CS 6 tissues | Six unreplicated tissues from Chinese Spring. | Seedlings, roots, leaves, stem, spike and grain from Chinese Spring | An improved assembly and annotation of the allohexaploid wheat genome identifies complete families of agronomic genes and provides genomic evidence for chromosomal translocations |
fusarium 0h to 48h | Timecourse of spikelets inoculated with fusarium head blight | Spikes from NILs for Fhb1 were inoculated with Fusarium graminearum. They were sequenced from 0 to 48 h post innoculation. | Suppressed recombination and unique candidate genes in the divergent haplotype encoding Fhb1, a major Fusarium head blight resistance locus in wheat |
crown rot | Coleoptile infection with Fusarium pseudograminearum (crown rot) | Coleoptiles inoculated with Fusarium pseudograminearum, mock and treatment were sequenced 3 days post infection. | The Fusarium crown rot pathogen Fusarium pseudograminearum triggers a suite of transcriptional and metabolic changes in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) |
magnaporthe | Leaves naturally infected with Magnaporthe oryzae | Symptomatic (Magnaporthe oryzae) and nonsymptomatic leaves were sequenced from Bangladesh. | Emergence of wheat blast in Bangladesh was caused by a South American lineage of Magnaporthe oryzae |
PEG | Seedlings with PEG to simulate drought | Seedlings had PEG 6000 applied from 2 to 12 hours. | N/A |
fusarium hormones | spikes innoculated with fusarium head blight and ABA/GA | Spikes were inoculated with Fusarium graminearum and ABA or GA. | Exogenous Abscisic Acid and Gibberellic Acid Elicit Opposing Effects on Fusarium graminearum Infection in Wheat |
CS flag leaf | Chinese Spring flag leaves, 6 timepoints | Chinese Spring flag leaves harvested from ear emergence to 30 days post anthesis. | N/A |
microspores | Microspores in tissue culture and cold | Microspores were harvested after tissue culture and cold treatment. | Analysis of wheat microspore embryogenesis induction by transcriptome and small RNA sequencing using the highly responsive cultivar "Svilena" |
septoria 2 | Zymoseptoria tritici infected seedlings | Riband seedlings infected with Zymoseptoria tritici. | Transcriptome and Metabolite Profiling of the Infection Cycle of Zymoseptoria tritici on Wheat Reveals a Biphasic Interaction with Plant Immunity Involving Differential Pathogen Chromosomal Contributions and a Variation on the Hemibiotrophic Lifestyle Definition |
CS fusarium | CS spikes inoculated with fusarium head blight | CS spikes innoculated with Fusarium graminearum. | Development and Validation of Thinopyrum elongatum–Expressed Molecular Markers Specific for the Long Arm of Chromosome 7E |
crown rot 2 | Shoots from NILs segregating for crown rot resistance | Shoots from NILs segregating for resistance to Fusarium pseudograminearum. Inoculated and mock samples. | Transcriptome and Allele Specificity Associated with a 3BL Locus for Fusarium Crown Rot Resistance in Bread Wheat |
cold | Shoots after 2 weeks cold | Shoots after 2 weeks cold to examine cold-induced lipid pathways. | Understanding the Biochemical Basis of Temperature-Induced Lipid Pathway Adjustments in Plants |
stripe rust 2 | Stripe rust infected seedlings | Timecourse of Vuka and Avocet+Yr5 innoculated with stripe rust. | The host-pathogen interaction between wheat and yellow rust induces temporally coordinated waves of gene expression |
synthetic | Developmental time-course of synthetic hexaploid | RNAseq of three tissues of nascent allohexaploid wheat and its following generations, their progenitors, and Chinese Spring | mRNA and Small RNA Transcriptomes Reveal Insights into Dynamic Homoeolog Regulation of Allopolyploid Heterosis in Nascent Hexaploid Wheat |
flag leaf senescence | Gene expression during a timecourse of flag leaf senescence | Triticum aestivum flag leaf senescence | Identification of transcription factors regulating senescence in wheat through gene regulatory network modelling |
CS meiosis | Chinese Spring early meiosis, early prophase | Transcriptome analysis of early meiosis in wheat in the presence and absence of the Ph1 locus | Genome-wide transcription during early wheat meiosis is independent of synapsis, ploidy level and the Ph1 locus |


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Smart Image Gallery allows to insert images, and pictures, in your blog, directly from the WordPress media library, or eternal images repositories (like: Flickr, Instagram or Google Images ). The images are searched, and inserted, from the article edition, without importing them to the WordPress media library. All you need to do is pick the search criteria, and the plugin will search in all available sources, allowing select the images that most closely match the blog's subject.
Smart Image Gallery allows insert the selected images by separated, or as part of a gallery. It is possible select between different galleries designs, included with the plugin.
- Insert images, or image galleries, in the blog's articles
- The easiest way to find images related with the articles
- Allows search for images in the WordPress media library, or external images repositories
- Allows to display the images separately or as part of a gallery
- Reduces the bandwidth consumption of your server using images hosted in external servers
- Allows insert the gallery in the website's sidebar.
The base plugin, available for free from the WordPress Plugin Directory, has all the features needed for search, and insert, images in the website's articles.
Premium Features
- Includes a wide number of images repositories (like:WordPress media library, Flickr, Instagram and Googel Images)
- Includes additional galleries designs (like: carousel and Classic Gallery )
Demo of Premium Version of Plugin
If you want more information about this plugin, or another one, visits my website:
The requirements depend of the images repository, some repositories require an API Key, or Client ID
Using Smart Image Gallery
Smart Image Gallery is an easy and intuitive plugin. Before search, and insertion of the images in the articles, will be necessary activate the images repositories. Go to the settings page of plugin ( from the menu option "Settings > Smart Image Gallery" ), and activate the available images repositories (the number of images repositories depends of plugin's version installed on your WordPress ). Each image sources has its own settings options ( for example: Flickr requires an API Key, and Instagram a Client ID)
After activate the images repositories, go to the article, and press the Smart Image Gallery icon over the content's editor. The action opens an popup window with a search box. Type the search criteria and press the "search" button, or simply press the carriage return key. The plugin displays the images available for each images repository. If the resulting images are not appropriated for the article, the plugin displays an "+" button at right of each repository, to get additional images with the same search criteria. Each image has associated a checkbox to be selected and inserted in the article. One time have decided the images to insert, go to the galleries design tab, and select the gallery to display (the available galleries, and its options, depend of plugin's version installed in your WordPress )
The plugin inserts a shortcode in the article, doing easy remove an image, or modify the gallery's settings.
Kijalizi hiki kinawezesha bloku 1.
- Smart Image Gallery
To install Smart Image Gallery, follow these steps:
- Download and unzip the plugin
- Upload the smart-image-gallery/ directory to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
- Activates the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress
- Go to the setting section of plugin, and activates the images repositories
Another method to install the plugin:
- Go to the plugins section in WordPress
- Press the "Add New" button, at top of page
- Press the "upload" link, and selects the zipped file with the plugin's code
- Finally, install and activate the plugin
Q: Why to use external repositories?
A: The external repositories like a Flickr, Picasa, Instagram, etc. include a big number of photos and images available for non-commercial purposes, furthermore, the external repositories reduce the bandwidth consumption from your web server.
Q: How modify the gallery design?
Q: Is possible remove a image from the gallery?
A: The plugin inserts a shortcode in the article, so will be required remove the image's data from the shortcode, and save the article changes.
Q: Are free the images selected with Smart Image Gallery?
A: Smart Image Gallery search images in general. You should check copyright of images. If you click on the image, will be loaded the original page where the image is published.
Q: Could be restricted the resulting images to an user?
A: This feature is only available for Flickr. Go to the settings page of plugin, and set the username for Flickr library.
If you require more information, please visit our FAQ page in:
Q: How to include all images in a Flickr Album?
A: Tick the checkbox: "Search by album Id" in the Flickr settings section (Accessible through the menu option: Settings/Smart Image Gallery), and then in the insertion process of the images in the pages or posts, enter the album's id as the search criteria. The action returns only the images belonging to the specified album.
Wachangiaji & Wasanidi
"Smart Image Gallery" is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
ContributorsTranslate "Smart Image Gallery" into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
- First version released.
- Improves the plugin documentation.
- Fixes an issue with the selection of Flickr images.
- Corrects some issues with the jQuery framework included with the latest versions of WordPress.
- Re-implements multiple features of the plugin.
- Uses the classes constructor of PHP5 in the Widgets creation
- Reimplements the Google Module, because the ajax.googleapis.com has been closed.
- Modifies some deprecated jQuery functions.
- Modifies the images repositories.
- Implements the integration with the Gutenberg Editor, the editor that will be included with the next versions of WordPress.
- Modifies the integration with the Gutenberg editor, replacing the deprecated methods with the new ones.
- Fixes a conflict with the latest update of the Gutenberg editor.
- Fixes a conflict with some themes.
- Solves a conflict with the Speed Booster Pack plugin.
- Includes the promote banner.
- The professional version includes the auto-update module.
- Modifies the language files and plugin headers.
- Modifies the blocks for the Gutenberg editor, preparing the plugin for WordPress 5.1
- Modifies the access to the demos.
- Includes additional sanitization process.
- Fixes an issue in the plugin's block for Gutenberg editor.
- Fixes an encoding issue in some ampersand symbols on generated URLs.
- Modifies the database queries to allow searching by all local images.
- Fixes an issue with the alt attributes in the galleries.
- Improves the insertion dialog.
- Modifies the banner module.
- Improves the plugin security. Special thanks to Bob, Security Researchers for WPScan and Jetpack.


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Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
NEW DELHI (AP) — Sakshi Chauhan has not left her house in a quiet inner-city slum in the Indian capital for the past six days on her doctor's orders.
The 22-year-old call center operator is recovering from a severe throat infection and the thick smog now blanketing New Delhi has made even breathing dangerous.
"The moment I step outside, I can't breathe properly," she said. "I have never seen this level of pollution in my entire life."
The 20 million residents of New Delhi, already one of the world's most polluted cities, have been suffering for weeks under a toxic haze that is up to 10 times worse than the upper limits of what is considered healthy. The pollution crisis is piling public pressure on the government to tackle the root causes of the persistent haze.
Air pollution in New Delhi and northern Indian states peaks in the winter as farmers in neighboring agricultural regions set fire to clear land after the harvest and prepare for the next crop season. The pollution in the Indian capital also peaks after Diwali celebrations, the Hindu festival of light, when people set off fireworks.
A declared public health emergency has remained in place in the city for the past five days. Schools have stayed closed and authorities have been handing out free anti-pollution masks to children.
New Delhi's government has introduced a system that restricts many private vehicles from taking to the roads for two weeks. It has ordered firefighters to sprinkle water from high-rise buildings to settle the dust, tried to snuff out garbage fires and ordered builders to cover construction sites to stop dust from enveloping the area.
India's health minister earlier played down the health consequences of the dirty air, insisting it is mainly a concern for those who have pre-existing lung conditions. Doctors in the capital, however, say many of their patients these days are complaining of ailments that stem from the filthy air they breathe.
Dr. Salil Sharma, a throat specialist, said that 95% of the patients he has been treating over the last 10 days are sick because of the foul air.
"I have patients from all age groups and most of them are nonsmokers who complain of breathlessness, chest congestion, fatigue and weakness," Sharma said. "In some cases, I had to put some patients on a ventilator because they couldn't breathe."
"We are right in the middle of a health emergency," he said.
A study published in The Lancet estimated that in 2017, air pollution killed 1.24 million Indians — half of them younger than 70, lowering the country's average life expectancy by almost 1.7 years.
India's Supreme Court on Monday said the capital choking every year "could not be allowed in a civilized country."
In a ruling that followed petitions filed by activists, the top court's judges ordered an immediate halt to the practice of farmers burning their fields in the neighboring states surrounding the capital.
Some people distraught over the pollution are considering leaving the city for good.
Devendra Verma, a street vendor, did not go to work for three days last week. He said he was too weak to leave his house as filthy air made him feel fatigued.
"The city is not livable anymore," he said. "Sometimes I think I should pack my bags and leave Delhi for once and all."
Associated Press journalist Shonal Ganguly contributed to this report.
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Blanche Eatery makes food that's fresh, delicious and packed with top-notch ingredients.
We like big, healthy, affordable, scrumptious lunches that fill you up.
We're also not adverse to the odd treat; you can't be good all of the time, but as long as it's got the best ingredients in, a little bit of what you fancy goes a long way to making every day a bit better.
By the way we don't like additives, preservatives, colourings….and we're not that keen on pre-packaging our food either.


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I think we all can agree that something like fire, tornado, flood, earthquake are all disasters and hopefully libraries have some sort of contingency plans when those events happen. But what about those "other" disasters. I say other because they may not meet the standard definition of a disaster, but when they happen all work stops or something majorly impacts your productivity.
Marie Kennedy posted "Disaster planning for e-resources" on Organization Monkey about her library's recent problems when EBSCO's databases went down earlier this month. "From a library perspective, when a major content provider goes down, it is a legitimate disaster. For electronic resources librarians, all the usual work stops and crisis management mode takes over." This is true for us as well. Even if a major journal goes down we start getting calls right away from doctor's wondering what happened. If our linking system goes down or a major database goes down, then all *blank* hits the fan.
Our operations are so dependent on certain programs that when they go down our access to information also goes down. It may not be a disaster in the traditional sense of the word, but it is still a disaster for information retrieval.
Marie describes the procedures her library use to inform library personnel and library users of situation. She also mentions how frustrating it was for her and her library's staff to go through this "without the help of EBSCO." In fact most librarians were reaching out through MEDLIB-L, Twitter, and other local listservs, to try and figure out why CINAHL, Discovery, and other resources were DOA.
EBSCO is just the latest resource, but this sort of things has happened with Ovid, PubMed and other databases or online journals. It also won't be the last resource to experience a "temporary outage." So what are your library procedures for dealing with these events? How do you notify your customers and does that vary according to the resource?


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Santa Cruz Digital Graphics
Santa Cruz Signs® is your very best choice for digital graphics in Santa Cruz. We have the highest quality digital graphics at the very best prices. Plus, we appreciate your business. Give us a call today and we'll show you why our customers love us.
Santa Cruz Signs can produce digitally printed graphics in brilliant full color for a wide variety of applications. Our printing equipment is the fastest, largest, and highest quality in Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, and San Benito Counties.
Besides vehicle wraps, wall murals, window graphics, event signage, banners and other applications described on other pages, we also can help our customers with the following:
- Wall Murals
- Floor Graphics
- Window Shades
Digital Graphics by Santa Cruz Signs are vibrant, durable, full color prints off our wide-format inkjet printers. These produce great advertising for floor graphics, wall murals, trade show exhibits, and any place else you can display a flexible or adhesive graphic. Contact us today and we can walk you through your options.
Santa Cruz Signs offers free estimates of digital graphics for businesses in Santa Cruz. If you want more options than digital graphics in Santa Cruz, we also offer ADA Signs, Banners, Blade Signs, Building Graphics, Custom Signs, Digital Graphics, Dimensional Letters, Electrical Signs, Event Signage, Logo Design, Monument Signs, Sandblasted / Routed Signs, Sign and Graphic Design, Vehicle Graphics, and Window Graphics with free estimates for businesses in Carmel, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Salinas, Sand City, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, Seaside, Soquel, and Watsonville .
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KAKLAB is created for digital content and cultural market, aiming to achieve a fair, safe, high-performance, scalable and versatile blockchain infrastructure. KAKLAB will be realized in two stages: building a distributed file storage system KAK File, and creating an NFT asset protocol through smart contract. In the first stage, KAKLAB will realize permanent storage of digital content achieved by IPFS underlying protocol; in the second stage, KAKLAB will realize multiple NFT-related protocols, cross-chain transfer, DApp development, etc. achieved by smart contracts.
KAK FILE is based on IPFS as the underlying technology, applying KAK as node incentive to achieve permanent storage of file data.
Like IPFS, KAKLAB stores and retrieves files based on content rather than address, any file resources stored in which will be generated with a unique hash value through an encryption algorithm. Since hash value of each file is unique, KAKLAB will delete duplicate files to ensure the uniqueness.
When requesting a file:
Only ask "Who owns this file" can you request a file from KAK File and then the node where the file is stored in the system will provide this file.
When verifying a file:
If you want to verify the file, you only need to compare the hash value of the file we got with the hash value we requested from KAK File. If the hash values are the same, then we get the correct and complete file.
KAKLAB implements KAK incentive and punishment mechanism to ensure nodes completely store files within specified time. Nodes need to deposit KAK first, after fulfilling their storage obligations, they will be rewarded and refunded.
Nodes in KAK File get reward from the following ways:
Storage reward: Storage service providers deposit KAK to become a storage service provider, and provide storage service within specific time to obtain rewards from customers;
Block generation reward: Storage service providers become validators through competition, and obtain rewards and fees through packaging blocks.
When the following rules are triggered, they will be punished or even emptied:
Consensus attack punishment: if a qualified node does not generate a new block required by the consensus mechanism, it will be regarded as a network attack;
Failure to submit the storage proof within specified time: if the delay time exceeds the generation attack threshold value, it will be considered as malicious offline that affects the security of the stored file.
Error in submitted storage proof: when a node has disk damage or data loss, it shall try to recover the data. If the proof submitted by the node deviates from the hash value of the customer's source file, and the data is not recovered within specified time, it will be considered as malicious destruction.


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Reading 1 Rom 6:19-23
Brothers and sisters:
I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your nature.
For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity
and to lawlessness for lawlessness,
so now present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness.
But what profit did you get then
from the things of which you are now ashamed?
For the end of those things is death.
But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God,
the benefit that you have leads to sanctification,
and its end is eternal life.
For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Responsorial Psalm Ps 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6
R. (Ps 40:5) Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Blessed the man who follows not
the counsel of the wicked
Nor walks in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the company of the insolent,
But delights in the law of the LORD
and meditates on his law day and night.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Not so the wicked, not so;
they are like chaff which the wind drives away.
For the LORD watches over the way of the just,
but the way of the wicked vanishes.
R. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.
Alleluia Phil 3:8-9
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I consider all things so much rubbish
that I may gain Christ and be found in him.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Lk 12:49-53
Jesus said to his disciples:
"I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright © 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Psalm refrain © 1968, 1981, 1997, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.


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Used BMW Cars in Central Lowlands
Evans Halshaw aims to help you find a used BMW car in Central Lowlands that's right for you. With a range of different BMW models, you can browse our second-hand BMW cars in Central Lowlands. Our dedicated in-house teams also gives you peace of mind as we constantly review and update our used BMW vehicles to offer you the best price. Explore online our used BMW cars for sale in Central Lowlands, or find out more by contacting our experts at Evans Halshaw.Where to next?
Quality car servicing at a price to suit all budgets. Book yours online today.
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Illustration: Barry Blitt
It's a hunt. It's therapy. It's a way of life. But has it gotten out of control? Aimee Lee Ball investigates why we spend the way we do.
Alas, our romance with shopping seems to be coming to an end—or at least it's up for careful reevaluation. According to research from Stanford University, more than one in 20 adults are compulsive shoppers, purchasing things they don't need, use, or even want. That's because shopping, once devoted to procuring necessities, has come to fill multiple emotional needs—it's entertainment, a bonding activity, a sport, a form of self-expression, and, quite often, a means of solace. "These days what you buy is a way to connect to others and showcase your personality and values," says Kit Yarrow, PhD, professor of psychology and marketing at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. So what happens now when more than five million people have lost their jobs since December 2007, and many of us are trying to curb our enthusiasm? Ironically, "when people feel economically insecure, they tend to reassure themselves by shopping," says George Loewenstein, PhD, professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The thinking is: "If I were economically secure, I would go shopping, so if I'm shopping, I must be economically secure." And that's just one thing to be aware of as you head for the mall. Here are a few others: 1. You'd Better Shop Around
The image of an angel and a devil sitting on a person's shoulders is not a bad metaphor for shopping. Using brain scans, researchers have shown that the nucleus accumbens, an area associated with pleasure and reward, lights up as people consider a purchase, while the insula, a structure that plays an important role in pain, is activated when they think about the cost. The two brain areas compete with each other to determine whether you will buy something. Your typical tightwad, says Loewenstein (who conducted the brain research with Brian Knutson, PhD, of Stanford), feels the pain of paying for things more acutely. Spendthrifts may not register it enough.
Buying a lot in one store can decrease your sensitivity to the pain of cost, says Loewenstein. "You hit the what-the-heck effect: You've spent $200; what's another $20 for a T-shirt?" He recommends going to various stores for different purchases.
2. Don't Buy Into Bargains
Another factor that can tip the brain's pleasure-pain dynamic is a bargain. Knutson and Loewenstein have shown not only how the brain weighs making a purchase but also how it reacts to price. The researchers gave subjects $20 to spend on a series of products they saw on a computer screen. When the shoppers considered the prices excessive, the insula became activated; when they saw discounts, their accumbens lit up like a Broadway marquee. The prefrontal cortex, associated with weighing gains and losses, also became active along with the accumbens—and this pattern predicted a shopper's decision to buy.
Sales, markdowns, two-for-ones, and outlet stores are all designed to hit our bargain-loving Achilles' heel. So are retail tactics we should be wise to, like buying an item for $29.99 because we tend to discount it to $20 instead of $30, says Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of the new book Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. "Even psychologists confess that they've been seduced." The anticipation of getting a good deal, says Shell, is what drives us toward the cash register, not the object itself—and as a result, we end up with stuff we don't particularly want.
Illustration: Barry Blitt
If paying for goods causes pain in the brain, credit cards are aspirin. Unfortunately, cards also create bigger headaches later on. "When you pay in cash, you see your wallet getting thinner," says Dan Ariely, PhD, professor of behavioral economics at Duke University. But when you use a credit card, the spending is abstract, "and that makes you trigger-happy." In one experiment at MIT, subjects were asked to bid on tickets to a sold-out Boston Celtics game. Half were told to pay with cash; the other half could use credit cards. "There's some evidence that the enjoyable experience of acquiring things has been paired with the touch and feel of the plastic, says study leader Drazen Prelec, PhD, professor of management science at MIT. "It's almost like smelling food when you're hungry. Shockingly, we found that bids were twice as high among the group that thought they would use credit cards."
Using cash is the number one antidote to overspending, according to experts. If you do pay with a credit card, beware of the trap "I've already got this debt, so it won't matter if I pile on more." Prelec compares it to the diet-blowing excuse "I ate one piece, so I may as well eat the whole cake."
4. A Bad Mood Can Cost You
That's what new research suggests. Jennifer Lerner, PhD, director of the Emotion and Decision Making Group at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, had participants view either a sad video (a clip from The Champ, in which a boy cries at the side of his dying father) or an emotionally neutral one (about the Great Barrier Reef). Afterward, she asked how much they'd be willing to spend on a sporty water bottle. Those who watched the poignant film offered almost 300 percent more. Sadness devalues one's sense of self, explains Lerner. The urge to pay more may be an attempt to elevate your own worth.
Illustration: Barry Blitt
Maybe it's karma: The mall has been blamed for killing America's main streets, stealing business away from mom-and-pop shops. But now malls themselves may be on the endangered list. In April General Growth Properties, which owns or manages more than 200 malls, filed for bankruptcy, and retail analyst Burt Flickinger III, managing director of the Strategic Resource Group in New York, predicts that up to 3,000 will close in 2009.
But with so many of us now depending on these places to socialize, de-stress, even exercise, what can we do when the local mall is shuttered? Mary Gresham, PhD, a clinical psychologist in Atlanta, suggests several alternatives. "When people shop, they almost go into a trance, a pleasurable state in which they lose their sense of time and are oblivious to other things," she says. But crafts—knitting, jewelry making, and quilting—create a similar response. And you still end up with a new material good.
6. Ration Your Willpower
"Our ability to fight temptation weakens, almost as if we get tired," says Duke's Dan Ariely. After engaging in activities that require willpower, you won't have as much energy left for other challenges, explains Kathleen D. Vohs, PhD, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota. So if you're using every ounce of discipline at the food court because you're on a diet, or you're trying to quit smoking, you'll be less able to pass up a pair of pumps in a display window.
Although Vohs says there's no easy way to build self-control, she suggests practicing it in small doses: Try sitting up straight, using your nondominant hand, and not swearing for a week. "I'm not willing to bet the farm," she says, "but we've seen small improvements."
4 more things to think about before you say "I'll take it."


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Last updated February 2018
You just landed, happy to start your vacation or anxious to make it on time to a meeting, and head over to claim your rental car. But before you're assigned your ride, you must face THE QUESTIONS about insurance coverage.
As with your own car, you want to make sure you have adequate insurance coverage for damage to the rental car, for damage to the property of others, and for liability lawsuits in case you have an accident. So it's worth understanding what coverage you have and what you need to add on before you pick up a rental.
Unfortunately, though, you can't count on receiving useful advice from the representative or even the rental car company's website; instead, you're likely to just get a sales pitch. And the coverages rental companies sell aren't cheap. For example, for a compact car rental from Budget, our shoppers recently were quoted a base price of $45 per day (plus tax and the usual jumble of fees). Adding Loss Damage Waiver coverage would cost an extra $28.99 per day. For another $16.25 a day, we could add Supplemental Liability Insurance coverage. Finally, if we added Personal Accidents and Effects coverage, we'd pay an extra $9.95 a day. For "full coverage," our total daily rate was $100.19—more than double the base rental rate.
Should you spring for this stuff? If you own and insure your own car, your personal policy likely protects you against big losses you might incur when renting, so the quick answer is "probably not." But we detail below some important exceptions and caveats. And if you don't own a car, there are even more issues to consider.
When renting a car, consider three risks to insure against:
- Damage to the car (physical damage coverage);
- Injuries to others or damage to other people's property (liability coverage); and,
- The rental-car company's loss-of-revenue while the car is repaired (loss of use coverage).
For the first two types of risks, most drivers already have sufficient coverage from a mixture of benefits on their personal auto policies, free perks from their credit card companies, and the insurance rental car companies are required to carry to register their cars. Although few of us carry loss-of-use coverage, as discussed below, most renters don't need it.
Coverage You May Already Have
Here's a rundown of the insurance protection you may already have:
Under a Personal Insurance Policy
If you're covered as a driver under your family's personal auto insurance policy, and that policy includes collision and comprehensive coverage, it will pay claims for physical damage to cars you rent, and you will pay your policy's deductible.
Similarly, the liability coverage offered by your personal auto policy covers you when you rent a car.
But most personal auto insurance policies won't cover car rentals outside the U.S., Canada, and a few miles into Mexico. And personal policies are unlikely to cover any rental car for more than a month.
If you are an employee driving a rental car on company business, your employer's auto insurance policy might provide coverage—but only if your employer has paid extra for it. Also, these policies usually cover only liability, not physical damage.
Automatic with the Rental
While the rental car companies themselves have to buy liability insurance to register their cars, most companies get only enough coverage to meet the required local legal minimum, which is often a low limit.
Although your personal auto policy won't cover you when driving abroad, the automatic coverage in some countries is very high. For example, Hertz automatically includes coverage up to €1 million per person for rentals in Italy, and rentals in Spain automatically include unlimited liability coverage. But, as you might expect, the limits in many other foreign countries are far lower—for example, less than $2,000 per injured person in Thailand and $20,000 per accident in Nicaragua. The moral, as usual: Check what you get before you pay for extra insurance.
From Your Credit Card Company
If you rent a vehicle using a credit card (as most renters do), you likely get free physical damage coverage—but not liability coverage—as a free perk from your credit card company. This coverage is standard on all American Express, MasterCard, and Visa cards. (Discover recently dropped its coverage perk.) But keep in mind:
- You get this protection only if you use the card for every phase of the transaction—to pay for the rental, for any deposit, and, with some credit cards, to reserve the vehicle.
- You must rent the car in your name (rather than pay for someone else's rental).
- You must decline the rental company's physical damage coverage.
- Coverage does not apply in certain countries. For example, Visa does not extend coverage for rentals in Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, and Northern Ireland.
- Coverage does not apply to certain types of vehicles. It usually excludes RVs, vehicles designed to carry more than eight or nine passengers, vehicles with fewer than four wheels, and trucks (even small pickup trucks with extended cabs designed to carry four or five passengers).
- Losses that occur while the vehicle is used in a way that violates the rental agreement are not covered.
- Coverage is typically limited to rentals that last no more than 15 days in the U.S. or no more than 31 days in foreign countries. You can't avoid these limits by returning the car and renting it again.
- Losses due to off-road driving are not covered, including when driving on any surface other than a bound surface, such as concrete or tarmac—a possible problem if you take a rented SUV over dirt roads to reach your campsite.
- Coverage may be limited to a maximum amount—say, $25,000.
- Certain kinds of losses (theft, vandalism) may be excluded.
Evaluating the Coverage Offered by the Rental Companies
If you're still considering buying extra insurance protection from a rental car company, it's important to understand that the coverage is secondary insurance. This means that if you have an accident that your personal auto policy covers—which includes most accidents that occur in the U.S.—before you can collect from the rental company's insurance you first have to file a claim with your own insurer. In other words, the extra insurance you bought from the rental car company for physical damage or liability really covers only your deductible.
Also, when considering plans find out exactly what you get, especially when renting abroad. In Nicaragua with Hertz, for example, paying $8 per day for supplemental liability coverage barely raises coverage limits above the automatic minimums—from $20,000 to $25,000 per person, $40,000 to $45,000 per accident, and $20,000 to $25,000 for property damage.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get details on insurance coverage rental companies automatically provide and what you get by paying extra. Most company websites provide very few, if any, details, simply providing brief descriptions of available coverage and instruct you to inquire at the rental counter for details and pricing.
The Loss-of-Use Gap
Neither your personal auto insurance policy nor your credit card company's insurance perks cover "loss-of-use" charges rental car companies increasingly enforce. Essentially, when rental companies blame their customers for damage to their cars, they make them liable not only for the cost of repairs, but for the theoretical rentals the company can't make while the vehicles are out of commission. These penalties are usually excessive. For example, even though you rent a car for $19/day, a rental company might charge you an undiscounted $45/day "rack rate" for the number of days it takes to repair it—even though the company rarely charges that full rate and even though it might not bother to repair the car.
Although the physical damage coverage you can buy from rental car companies covers loss-of-use penalties, we advise most drivers decline it. To us, paying an extra $20–$40 per day to cover the unlikely risk of losing $40–$100 per day for loss-of-use fees just doesn't add up.
If You Don't Have a Personal Auto Policy or Want Extra Insurance, Buy Coverage from a Third Party
Companies like Allianz (allianztravelinsurance.com), Bonzah.com, and RentalCover.com offer options that are primary insurance policies for rentals (if you have an accident, you don't have to file a claim with your personal auto insurance company). If you don't own a car, it's worth considering one of these plans, rather than paying what are usually higher rates offered by the rental companies. But note that these policies don't include liability or loss-of-use coverage.
If you don't own a car, you can also buy a "non-owners" auto insurance policy for rentals, which offers the same coverage types and limits that you'd get if you owned and insured a car. Because these policies aren't cheap, buying one makes sense only if you rent often.
If you're an American Express cardholder, it's worth considering enrolling in its "Premium Car Rental" program. For a flat fee of $24.95 for each rental you charge to your card, you get primary insurance that covers:
- Up to $100,000 of primary damage and theft coverage for the rental car.
- Up to $100,000 of accidental death and dismemberment coverage.
- Up to $15,000 per person for excess medical expenses.
- Up to $5,000 per person for excess personal property damage, with a maximum of $10,000.
American Express also offers a $19.95 per rental option ($17.95 in California) that provides somewhat lower coverage limits.
Apart from providing primary insurance, the American Express program is a better deal than what the rental companies offer in that you pay a (fairly low) flat fee for each rental (for up to 30–42 consecutive days, depending on the state). The rental companies typically charge $30 or more per day. So while the American Express fee for a one-day rental is not only less than what most rental companies offer, it's a screaming deal for longer durations.
Keep in mind that while there is no fee to enroll in the program, once enrolled, you'll automatically pay for the coverage whenever you rent. (You can, of course, avoid the fee by using a different credit card to rent.)
Avoid Bogus Damage Claims
Checkbook's editor recently experienced a common scenario: When returning a rental car, the company tried to charge him for damage that already existed when he picked up the car.
While it's impossible to completely insulate yourself from this problem, there are steps you can take:
- Inspect your car carefully when you pick up. Walk around it look for scratches and dents. Check especially the front air dam and rear bumper, which are frequently scratched or dented. Also inspect the interior.
- If you find any damage, point it out to a rental company agent and document it with a pic. Even if he or she tells you the damage is too minor, insist that it is documented.
- Ask how you can check on the documentation. If there's a paper form to fill out or a field in software, review what they record to make sure it's accurate and thorough.
- If you are charged for damage you didn't cause, ask the company to prove it with time-stamped photos. Ask for a record of rentals after you dropped off the car—if other rentals occurred, it's possible another renter or the company itself caused the damage. Provide any proof you have (photos, inspection notes) that you didn't cause the damage.
- If the company is unresponsive, dispute the charges with your credit card company.


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It is the policy of Thunder Soccer Club that all board members, employees, and carded team officials participate in a comprehensive background screening.
Thunder has partnered with the National Center for Safety Initiatives(NCSI) to implement a standardized approach to background screening. This includes a comprehensive background screening with a simple "Red Light/Green Light" clearance report issued in accordance with the recommended guidelines published by the National Council of Youth Sports. This is part of a national movement towards the standardization of safety programs for youth-serving organizations in this country.
Partnering with NCSI ensures that this process is convenient, secure and confidential.
If you have any questions or problems submitting your information, please call the National Center for Safety Initiatives at (866) 833-7100 x109.
Additional Risk Management Resources
US Youth Soccer Concussion Procedures and Protocol
Concussion Fact Sheet for Coaches
Concussion Fact Sheet for Athletes
Concussion Fact Sheet for Parents
USSF 2006 Youth Heat and Hydration Guidelines
Coaching Safety Checklist & Handling of Blood-borne Pathogens


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Monday, July 26, 2010
Hanging wallpaper
I can cross one project off the list - hang wallpaper in the study. I worked on it over the weekend. I started at 8pm after Robert had gone to sleep and finished it at 1am. 5 hours.
Although I think I could have finished it earlier if I hadn't been distracted by the contents of the refrigerator.
This room also stores a lot of Robert's toys and there is this bookcase on the other side of the room. I have a few ideas for this space which I will keep you updated on as it is by no means finished.
What do you think of the pattern? I was a little nervous at first but I'm really happy it and in the mornings, the sun catches the gold outlines of the flowers and really brings it to life. I wish I could capture it in photos to show you.
Would you be interested in a little step-by-step of the hanging process?
P.S. If you would like to see a before photo of the room please see here.


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Riga Secondary School No. 22 is a subordinate institution of Education, Culture and Sports Department of of the Riga State City Municipality.
School №22 is a school where students come to study: not just to acquire knowledge, but to learn how to apply it and defend their own opinion, not just something written in a textbook. It is a school where they understand how important it is to balance studies and student's personality and not to lose but, on the contrary, to find yourself in this chase for knowledge. Life at School №22 flows, carries away with it and bubbles and buzzes without ever stopping.