text:
(written from a Production point of view)
Spencer Garrett (born 19 September 1963; age 60) is an actor who portrayed Simon Tarses in the Star Trek: The Next Generation fourth season episode "The Drumhead". He filmed his scenes on Tuesday 19 February 1991 and between Friday 22 February 1991 and Tuesday 26 February 1991 on Paramount Stage 8 and 9. Nine years later, he appeared as Weiss in the Star Trek: Voyager seventh season episode "Flesh and Blood".
Born as Spencer Garrett Heckenkamp in Los Angeles, California to actress Kathleen Nolan and former head of the talent agency Film Artists Associates Richard Heckenkamp, he attended Duke University and Fordham University. He studied acting with Sanford Meisner at The Neighborhood Playhouse, Jeff Perry, Robert Neff Williams at The Juilliard School, and Alfred Molina. In 1996 he received a Dramalogue Award for Best Actor in the stage play "Heartbreak", performed at the Hudson Guild Theatre. In 2007, Garrett was part of the ensemble of the drama Bobby and received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Best Ensemble Cast.
Garrett's career in front of the camera began around the year 1989, when he appeared in a made-for-television film called Love and Other Sorrows, a production that also featured Star Trek: Deep Space Nine guest actor Tim Ransom.
Garrett also had a brief role in the 1996 drama Ghosts of Mississippi which also starred Whoopi Goldberg, Susanna Thompson, Virginia Madsen, Brock Peters, Terry O'Quinn, Jerry Hardin, Bill Cobbs, Richard Riehle, Jordan Lund, and Thomas Kopache.
Since then, Garrett has had numerous television and some film appearances in supporting roles. Garrett has been working as a producer. In cinematic film, he played the Air Force Chief in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Some other Star Trek personalities had similar military roles, with Glenn Morshower and Eric Pierpoint playing a general and NSA officer, respectively. Robert Foxworth, Tony Todd, and Frank Welker also provided voices for the movie.
In 2013, he played the small-town sheriff in Iron Man 3 (with William Sadler, Miguel Ferrer, and Tom Virtue) and Andy Hayes in the Mad Men episode "A Tale of Two Cities" (with Gary Werntz).
In 2021, he was interviewed by StarTrek.com, looking back at "The Drumhead" and his other Star Trek connections. Garrett's godfather was Liam Sullivan, who loaned him a copy of TOS: "Plato's Stepchildren" (guest-starring Sullivan), which was the first episode of Star Trek Garrett watched since his childhood. [1]
Further Trek connections[]
- Murder One (1996, with Barbara Bosson, Clayton Rohner, Jack Kehler, Titus Welliver, Rick Worthy, David Andrews, Jack Blessing, and Ron Canada)
- Dark Skies (1997, with Jeri Ryan, Conor O'Farrell, Mitchell Ryan, and Tim Kelleher)
- Air Force One (1997, with Don McManus, Dean Stockwell, and Paul Guilfoyle)
- Newsradio (1998, with Stephen Root and Andy Dick)
- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2001, with Kelly Connell)
- Crossing Jordan (2003, starring Miguel Ferrer, with Clayton Rohner, and James Avery)
- Without a Trace (2003, with Enrique Murciano and Conor O'Farrell)
- Cold Case (2004, in which Garrett and fellow Voyager guest star Neil C. Vipond played younger and older version of the same character. The episode also featured Jay Karnes and Albie Selznick)
- 24 (2007, with James Cromwell and Tzi Ma)
- Leverage (2010, in an episode directed by Jonathan Frakes)
- Major Crimes (2016, with Jonathan Del Arco)


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- Home
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- Tantalum & Black Mother of Pearl Ring
Tantalum & Black Mother of Pearl
By Lashbrook Designs
Why Talking Is a Good Idea
Buying jewelry online is intimidating. We should know. We've been selling online for 17 years.
We've taken a totally different approach. A personal one.
Remember how experiences used to be intimate? Jewelry buying should be an intimate experience.
It isn't about having the largest selection, or selling the cheapest (i.e. low quality) jewelry. We're not aiming to be the Amazon of jewelry. We are a family-owned jewelry store in Modesto (California) that is very picky about quality and design. That's been our calling card since 1989.
Beautiful jewelry should stir the soul. Before selecting a piece for display we ask, "How does this design make me feel?"
In a world of infinite choice, it's nice to slow down and appreciate the work of master craftsmen.
Don't use your credit card to buy this. Not yet.
It's 5:40 AM in Modesto right now. Call us and see why we fell in love with this piece. One shouldn't ever have to buy jewelry online without asking all your questions first. Oh, that's right, that's what makes us different from the thousands of online jewelry sites out there.
When you call you aren't talking to an agent in a call center. Your talking to either Ron Yates, Ashton Yates-Woolley, Marissa Stewart, Mechelle Yates, or Justice Carillo at our Modesto store location.
Product Details
This zirconium Lashbrook ring has a beautiful inside sleeve of freshwater mother of pearl, truly a stunning piece. Ethically sourced and exquisitely beautiful, this mother of pearl is uniquely shaped by the sea.
Designer: | Lashbrook | Metal: | Tantalum | Inlay: | Black Mother of Pearl | Profile: | Flat | Width: | 7mm | Finish: | Polish | : |
Product Reviews
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subset: commoncrawl


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Hispanic Acculturation Secrets Unveiled
Hispanic Acculturation secrets were unveiled at the Keynote Speech given by Claudia Goffan, Hispanic Marketing expert and Target Latino CEO, at Hispanic Day on the Hill and she reveals some of them on this article.
As you may be aware, the Kansas Hispanic & Latino American Affairs Commission, with the office of Governor Sam Brownback, proclaimed Hispanic Day on the Hill at the Capitol in Topeka, Kansas that this year took place on April 1st- a day wherein Hispanics from Kansas come together to obtain updated information on key policy and meet with their legislators at the Capitol, and I was called to deliver a keynote speech on Hispanic marketing.
First of all, I'd like to thank the Kansas Hispanic and Latino American Affairs Commission with the office of Governor Sam Brownback for selecting me as their keynote speaker for such an important event for both their Latino and political communities. I was truly honored by the request.
I would also like to extend a special thanks to Adrienne Foster, Executive Director of KHLAAC and Mayor of Roeland Park, for organizing such an outstanding and highly attended event and for making me feel so welcome and introducing me to such a distinguished group of people.
I was positively impressed by Governor Sam Brownback who opened his home to us, for his eagerness to learn and understand the issues that concern the Kansas Latino community and Latinos in general.
I was overwhelmed by the impact my presentation made and the number of positive comments received from the audience. I hope the understanding of cultural differences and similarities continues as I see the impact it could exponentially have in the immediate future on the improvement of relationships with Latinos in Kansas and in the rest of the United States.
The audience was entertained and surprised when they found out that every 30 seconds a U.S. Hispanic turns 18 years old. Happy birthday!!! By the sheer numbers alone, the Hispanic market has become a key demographic, not just in states like California, Florida, Texas and New York but in Kansas as well.
The Kansas landscape has changed dramatically since the 2000 U.S. Census. The state's Hispanic population grew by 59 percent over the past decade. There are over 301,000 Hispanics that reside in Kansas – the 17th largest Hispanic population share nationally- and more than 37% of them are eligible to vote (higher than North Carolina with only 24%). And while U.S. Hispanics have a purchasing power of $1.2 trillion as of 2012, Kansas Latinos purchasing power is $5.6 billion and Kansas Hispanic businesses generated $1.3 billion in 2012.
Hispanic households spend almost as much as general market households and they earn about 70% of what these earn. Therefore and in relative terms, Hispanic households spend more. (Hispanic households spend approximately $40,123 each year, compared to $46,409 for general U.S. households. This gap is shrinking at a very fast pace)
Unfortunately, many of America's corporations – and it is definitely not limited to them – hang on to stereotypes instead of learning about the Hispanic culture and how it shapes the identity of Hispanic consumers and their communities. This disconnect makes it difficult for these companies to build trust, truly engage with, and begin to value U.S. Hispanics as viable consumers. After all, the ability to identify with an advertisement or a message is affected by identification with a society or the culture of that society.
And what is culture but a mental map which guides us in our relations to our surroundings and to other people? It may be tied to ethnicity on occasions but not necessarily so. Thus, the culture of people that live in the city will be different that the ones that live in a farm and so on. Understanding Hispanic acculturation becomes crucial to understanding the Hispanic culture tapestry that has been weaved in the U.S. and makes it different from the ones in their respective countries of origin.
Several years ago, I shared an article on the Hispanic Acculturation process and understanding segmentation on this same blog. Today, these circles still represent culture more than ever. Not segments. Not slices of the population. Cultures. Everybody in the Venn diagram below is Hispanic and depicting today's reality that about 70% of Hispanics are bi-culturals (and bilinguals to a certain degree) why are we still debating on what language to address this population and not concentrating on what message will resonate better depending on the level of Hispanic Acculturation? Bi-culturals have two sets of cultures, two sets of maps with which to interpret behaviors, messages, thoughts and everything they do as members of a society.
Bi-cultural Hispanics have two sets of codes and they can switch between them just as they can switch languages but only one can be prevalent at a time. Culture works in the same way than language. It can even be mixed and matched, conjugated, re-invented. Understanding Hispanic acculturation is one of the elements to understanding U.S. Hispanics. But remember that no one knows their own culture fully and to understand culture, you have to understand other cultures and their similarities and differences.
Of course, these are just a few of the Hispanic acculturation secrets. I promise there will be more in the future. Meanwhile, I hope that what has begun here is a long lived effort and the example is followed by many others.
Thoughts of the Day


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Recipe Source: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two. Julia Child and Simone Beck.
¼ oz (7 gm) of fresh yeast, or 1¼ teaspoon (6¼ ml/4 gm) of dry-active yeast (about ½ sachet)
3 tablespoons (45 ml) warm water (less than 100°F/38°C)
1 teaspoon (5 ml/4½ gm) sugar
3¼ cups (450 gm/½ lb) of strong plain flour (I used Polish all-purpose flour, which is 13% protein)
2 teaspoons (10 ml/9 gm) sugar
1½ teaspoon (7½ ml/9 gm) salt
½ cup (120 ml/¼ pint) milk (I am not sure if the fat content matters. I used 2%)
2 tablespoons (30 ml) tasteless oil (I used generic vegetable oil)
½ cup (120 ml/1 stick/115 gm/¼ lb) chilled, unsalted butter
1 egg, for egg wash
1. Mix the yeast, warm water, and first teaspoon of sugar in a small bowl. Leave aside for the yeast and sugar to dissolve and the yeast to foam up a little.
2. Measure out the other ingredients
3. Heat the milk until tepid (either in the microwave or a saucepan), and dissolve in the salt and remaining sugar
4. Place the flour in a large bowl.
5. Add the oil, yeast mixture, and milk mixture to the flour
6. Mix all the ingredients together using the rubber spatula, just until all the flour is incorporated
7. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and let it rest a minute while you wash out the bowl
8. Knead the dough eight to ten times only. The best way is as Julia Child does it in the video (see below). It's a little difficult to explain, but essentially involves smacking the dough on the counter (lots of fun if you are mad at someone) and removing it from the counter using the pastry scraper.
9. Place the dough back in the bowl, and place the bowl in the plastic bag (Photos 1 & 2)
10. Leave the bowl at approximately 75°F/24°C for three hours, or until the dough has tripled in size. (Photo 3)
11. After the dough has tripled in size, remove it gently from the bowl, pulling it away from the sides of the bowl with your fingertips. (Photo 4)
12. Place the dough on a lightly floured board or countertop, and use your hands to press it out into a rectangle about 8 by 12 inches (20cm by 30cm). (Photo 5)
13. Fold the dough rectangle in three, like a letter (fold the top third down, and then the bottom third up) (Photos 6 & 7)
14. Place the dough letter back in the bowl, and the bowl back in the plastic bag. (Photo 8)
15. Leave the dough to rise for another 1.5 hours, or until it has doubled in size. This second rise can be done overnight in the fridge (Photo 9)
16. Place the double-risen dough onto a plate and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Place the plate in the fridge while you prepare the butter. (Photo 10)
17. Once the dough has doubled, it's time to incorporate the butter
18. Place the block of chilled butter on a chopping board.
19. Using the rolling pin, beat the butter down a little, till it is quite flat. (Photo 11)
20. Use the heel of your hand to continue to spread the butter until it is smooth. You want the butter to stay cool, but spread easily.
21. Remove the dough from the fridge and place it on a lightly floured board or counter. Let it rest for a minute or two. (Photo 12)
22. Spread the dough using your hands into a rectangle about 14 by 8 inches (35 cm by 20 cm). (Photo 13)
23. Remove the butter from the board, and place it on the top half of the dough rectangle (Photos 14 & 15)
24. Spread the butter all across the top two-thirds of the dough rectangle, but keep it ¼ inch (6 mm) across from all the edges. (Photo 16)
25. Fold the top third of the dough down, and the bottom third of the dough up. (Photos 17 & 18)
26. Turn the dough package 90 degrees, so that the top flap is to your right (like a book). (Photo 19)
27. Roll out the dough package (gently, so you don't push the butter out of the dough) until it is again about 14 by 8 inches (35 cm by 20 cm). (Photo 20)
28. Again, fold the top third down and the bottom third up. (Photos 21 & 22)
29. Wrap the dough package in plastic wrap, and place it in the fridge for 2 hours. (Photo 23)
30. After two hours have passed, take the dough out of the fridge and place it again on the lightly floured board or counter.
31. Tap the dough with the rolling pin, to deflate it a little
32. Let the dough rest for 8 to 10 minutes
33. Roll the dough package out till it is 14 by 8 inches (35 cm by 20 cm).
34. Fold in three, as before
35. Turn 90 degrees, and roll out again to 14 by 8 inches (35 cm by 20 cm).
36. Fold in three for the last time, wrap in plastic, and return the dough package to the fridge for two more hours (or overnight, with something heavy on top to stop it from rising)
37. It's now time to cut the dough and shape the croissants
38. First, lightly butter your baking sheet so that it is ready
39. Take the dough out of the fridge and let it rest for ten minutes on the lightly floured board or counter
40. Roll the dough out into a 20 by 5 inch rectangle (51 cm by 12½ cm). (Photo 24)
41. Cut the dough into two rectangles (each 10 by 5 inches (25½ cm by 12½ cm)) (Photo 24)
42. Place one of the rectangles in the fridge, to keep the butter cold
43. Roll the second rectangle out until it is 15 by 5 inches (38 cm by 12½ cm).
44. Cut the rectangle into three squares (each 5 by 5 inches (12½ cm by 12½ cm))
45. Place two of the squares in the fridge
46. The remaining square may have shrunk up a little bit in the meantime. Roll it out again till it is nearly square
47. Cut the square diagonally into two triangles. (Photo 25)
48. Stretch the triangle out a little, so it is not a right-angle triangle, but more of an isosceles. (Photo 26)
49. Starting at the wide end, roll the triangle up towards the point, and curve into a crescent shape. (Photo 27)
50. Place the unbaked croissant on the baking sheet
51. Repeat the process with the remaining squares of dough, creating 12 croissants in total.
52. Leave the tray of croissants, covered lightly with plastic wrap, to rise for 1 hour
53. Preheat the oven to very hot 475°F/240°C/gas mark 9.
54. Mix the egg with a teaspoon of water
55. Spread the egg wash across the tops of the croissants. (Photo 28)
56. Put the croissants in the oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until the tops are browned nicely
57. Take the croissants out of the oven, and place them on a rack to cool for 10 minutes before serving. (Photo Above)


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Song of the Sausage Creature
by Hunter S. ThompsonThere are some things nobody needs in this world, and a bright-red, hunch-back, warp-speed 900cc cafe racer is one of them - but I want one anyway, and on some days I actually believe I need one. That is why they are dangerous.
Everybody has fast motorcycles these days. Some people go 150 miles an hour on two-lane blacktop roads, but not often. There are too many oncoming trucks and too many radar cops and too many stupid animals in the way. You have to be a little crazy to ride these super-torque high-speed crotch rockets anywhere except a racetrack - and even there, they will scare the whimpering shit out of you... There is, after all, not a pig's eye worth of difference between going head-on into a Peterbilt or sideways into the bleachers. On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.
When Cycle World called me to ask if I would road-test the new Harley Road King, I got uppity and said I'd rather have a Ducati superbike. It seemed like a chic decision at the time, and my friends on the superbike circuit got very excited. "Hot damn," they said. "We will take it to the track and blow the bastards away."
"Balls," I said. "Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers."
The Cafe Racer is a different breed, and we have our own situations. Pure speed in sixth gear on a 5000-foot straightaway is one thing, but pure speed in third gear on a gravel-strewn downhill ess-turn is quite another.
But we like it. A thoroughbred Cafe Racer will ride all night through a fog storm in freeway traffic to put himself into what somebody told him was the ugliest and tightest decreasing-radius turn since Genghis Khan invented the corkscrew.
Cafe Racing is mainly a matter of taste. It is an atavistic mentality, a peculiar mix of low style, high speed, pure dumbness, and overweening commitment to the Cafe Life and all its dangerous pleasures... I am a Cafe Racer myself, on some days - and it is one of my finest addictions.
I am not without scars on my brain and my body, but I can live with them. I still feel a shudder in my spine every time I see a picture of a Vincent Black Shadow, or when I walk into a public restroom and hear crippled men whispering about the terrifying Kawasaki Triple... I have visions of compound femur-fractures and large black men in white hospital suits holding me down on a gurney while a nurse called "Bess" sews the flaps of my scalp together with a stitching drill.
Ho, ho. Thank God for these flashbacks. The brain is such a wonderful instrument (until God sinks his teeth into it). Some people hear Tiny Tim singing when they go under, and some others hear the song of the Sausage Creature.
When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had threatened my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had something to do with the polo crowd.
The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they knew I would go for it.
Of course. You want to cripple the bastard? Send him a 130-mph cafe-racer. And include some license plates, he'll think it's a streetbike. He's queer for anything fast.
Which is true. I have been a connoisseur of fast motorcycles all my life. I bought a brand-new 650 BSA Lightning when it was billed as "the fastest motorcycle ever tested by Hot Rod magazine." I have ridden a 500-pound Vincent through traffic on the Ventura Freeway with burning oil on my legs and run the Kawa 750 Triple through Beverly Hills at night with a head full of acid... I have ridden with Sonny Barger and smoked weed in biker bars with Jack Nicholson, Grace Slick, Ron Zigler and my infamous old friend, Ken Kesey, a legendary Cafe Racer.
Some people will tell you that slow is good - and it may be, on some days - but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I've always believed this, in spite of the trouble it's caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba....
So when I got back from New York and found a fiery red rocket-style bike in my garage, I realized I was back in the road-testing business.
The brand-new Ducati 900 Campione del Mundo Desmodue Supersport double-barreled magnum Cafe Racer filled me with feelings of lust every time I looked at it. Others felt the same way. My garage quickly became a magnet for drooling superbike groupies. They quarreled and bitched at each other about who would be the first to help me evaluate my new toy... And I did, of course, need a certain spectrum of opinions, besides my own, to properly judge this motorcycle. The Woody Creek Perverse Environmental Testing Facility is a long way from Daytona or even top-fuel challenge-sprints on the Pacific Coast Highway, where teams of big-bore Kawasakis and Yamahas are said to race head-on against each other in death-defying games of "chicken" at 100 miles an hour....
No. Not everybody who buys a high-dollar torque-brute yearns to go out in a ball of fire on a public street in L.A. Some of us are decent people who want to stay out of the emergency room, but still blast through neo-gridlock traffic in residential districts whenever we feel like it... For that we need Fine Machinery.
Which we had - no doubt about that. The Ducati people in New Jersey had opted, for some reasons of their own, to send me the 900ss-sp for testing - rather than their 916 crazy-fast, state-of-the-art superbike track-racer. It was far too fast, they said - and prohibitively expensive - to farm out for testing to a gang of half-mad Colorado cowboys who think they're world-class Cafe Racers.
The Ducati 900 is a finely engineered machine. My neighbors called it beautiful and admired its racing lines. The nasty little bugger looked like it was going 90 miles an hour when it was standing still in my garage.
Taking it on the road, though, was a genuinely terrifying experience. I had no sense of speed until I was going 90 and coming up fast on a bunch of pickup trucks going into a wet curve along the river. I went for both brakes, but only the front one worked, and I almost went end over end. I was out of control staring at the tailpipe of a U.S. Mail truck, still stabbing frantically at my rear brake pedal, which I just couldn't find... I am too tall for these new-age roadracers; they are not built for any rider taller than five-nine, and the rearset brake pedal was not where I thought it would be. Mid-size Italian pimps who like to race from one cafe to another on the boulevards of Rome in a flat-line prone position might like this, but I do not.
I was hunched over the tank like a person diving into a pool that got emptied yesterday. Whacko! Bashed on the concrete bottom, flesh ripped off, a Sausage Creature with no teeth, fucked-up for the rest of its life.
We all love Torque, and some of us have taken it straight over the high side from time to time - and there is always Pain in that... But there is also Fun, the deadly element, and Fun is what you get when you screw this monster on. BOOM! Instant take-off, no screeching or squawking around like a fool with your teeth clamping down on our tongue and your mind completely empty of everything but fear.
No. This bugger digs right in and shoots you straight down the pipe, for good or ill.
On my first take-off, I hit second gear and went through the speed limit on a two-lane blacktop highway full of ranch traffic. By the time I went up to third, I was going 75 and the tach was barely above 4000 rpm....
And that's when it got its second wind. From 4000 to 6000 in third will take you from 75 mph to 95 in two seconds - and after that, Bubba, you still have fourth, fifth, and sixth. Ho, ho.
I never got to sixth gear, and I didn't get deep into fifth. This is a shameful admission for a full-bore Cafe Racer, but let me tell you something, old sport: This motorcycle is simply too goddamn fast to ride at speed in any kind of normal road traffic unless you're ready to go straight down the centerline with your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat.
When aimed in the right direction at high speed, though, it has unnatural capabilities. This I unwittingly discovered as I made my approach to a sharp turn across some railroad tracks, saw that I was going way too fast and that my only chance was to veer right and screw it on totally, in a desperate attempt to leapfrog the curve by going airborne.
It was a bold and reckless move, but it was necessary. And it worked: I felt like Evel Knievel as I soared across the tracks with the rain in my eyes and my jaws clamped together in fear. I tried to spit down on the tracks as I passed them, but my mouth was too dry... I landed hard on the edge of the road and lost my grip for a moment as the Ducati began fishtailing crazily into oncoming traffic. For two or three seconds I came face to face with the Sausage Creature....
But somehow the brute straightened out. I passed a schoolbus on the right and got the bike under control long enough to gear down and pull off into an abandoned gravel driveway where I stopped and turned off the engine. My hands had seized up like claws and the rest of my body was numb. I felt nauseous and I cried for my mama, but nobody heard, then I went into a trance for 30 or 40 seconds until I was finally able to light a cigarette and calm down enough to ride home. I was too hysterical to shift gears, so I went the whole way in first at 40 miles an hour.
Whoops! What am I saying? Tall stories, ho, ho... We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We shit on the chests of the Weird....
But when we ride very fast motorcycles, we ride with immaculate sanity. We might abuse a substance here and there, but only when it's right. The final measure of any rider's skill is the inverse ratio of his preferred Traveling Speed to the number of bad scars on his body. It is that simple: If you ride fast and crash, you are a bad rider. And if you are a bad rider, you should not ride motorcycles.
The emergence of the superbike has heightened this equation drastically. Motorcycle technology has made such a great leap forward. Take the Ducati. You want optimum cruising speed on this bugger? Try 90mph in fifth at 5500 rpm - and just then, you see a bull moose in the middle of the road. WHACKO. Meet the Sausage Creature.
Or maybe not: The Ducati 900 is so finely engineered and balanced and torqued that you *can* do 90 mph in fifth through a 35-mph zone and get away with it. The bike is not just fast - it is *extremely* quick and responsive, and it *will* do amazing things... It is like riding a Vincent Black Shadow, which would outrun an F-86 jet fighter on the take-off runway, but at the end, the F-86 would go airborne and the Vincent would not, and there was no point in trying to turn it. WHAMO! The Sausage Creature strikes again.
There is a fundamental difference, however, between the old Vincents and the new breed of superbikes. If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time, you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society. The Vincent was like a bullet that went straight; the Ducati is like the magic bullet in Dallas that went sideways and hit JFK and the Governor of Texas at the same time.
It was impossible. But so was my terrifying sideways leap across the railroad tracks on the 900sp. The bike did it easily with the grace of a fleeing tomcat. The landing was so easy I remember thinking, goddamnit, if I had screwed it on a little more I could have gone a lot farther.
Maybe this is the new Cafe Racer macho. My bike is so much faster than yours that I dare you to ride it, you lame little turd. Do you have the balls to ride this BOTTOMLESS PIT OF TORQUE?
That is the attitude of the new-age superbike freak, and I am one of them. On some days they are about the most fun you can have with your clothes on. The Vincent just killed you a lot faster than a superbike will. A fool couldn't ride the Vincent Black Shadow more than once, but a fool can ride a Ducati 900 many times, and it will always be a bloodcurdling kind of fun. That is the Curse of Speed which has plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME."


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Platelet-Rich Plasma Injection
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is a newer modality of treatment for the management of many orthopedic conditions including sport injuries. RBC (red blood cells), WBC (white blood cells), plasma, and platelets are the major components of blood. Platelets are small discoid blood cells with granules containing clotting and growth factors which are released during the healing process. On activation, the platelets accelerate the inflammatory cascade as well as healing by the release of the granules containing growth factors. Platelets have an average lifespan of 7–10 days.
A normal blood specimen contains only 6% platelets whereas platelet rich plasma (PRP) contains a much higher concentration of platelets. A PRP injection is generally recommended in the treatment of tendon or muscle injuries with a success rate of about 70% to 80%. Four to six weeks may be required for complete healing.
Special precautions are required in individuals with low platelet count, bleeding disorders, those on blood thinning medications or anti-inflammatory medications, individuals allergic to local anesthetic agents, those with active infections and women who are pregnant or breast feeding.
Your doctor will first draw 10 ml of blood from the large vein in your elbow. The blood will be centrifuged or spun to separate the platelets from other blood components. The entire process takes about 10 minutes. The platelet rich portion of the blood is then extracted.
The injured part of the body is anesthetized with a local anesthetic and PRP is injected into the affected area under ultrasound guidance.
After the procedure
Following the procedure, you can resume your daily routine activities but avoid strenuous activities such as heavy exercise or lifting.
You may experience some pain during the injection which may last for a couple of days. Cold compresses and pain medication may be prescribed for pain relief. Anti-inflammatory medications are to be avoided for up to 48 hours after the injection, as they can affect the platelet function.
Risks and complications are rare but can include infection, nerve or blood vessel injury, scar tissue formation, and calcification at the injection site following a PRP injection.
Call your doctor immediately in case of persistent pain or the development of any adverse reaction after the injection.


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The House Intelligence Committee's reenactment of the McCarthy hearings dramatized Marx's famous aphorism that history repeats itself, "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." The only thing this circus was lacking was ringmaster Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California") rising to declares that "I have in my hands a list!"
War was on the minds and lips of the Democrats. Rep. Denny Heck (D-Washington) compared Hillary Clinton's loss to the 9/11 attacks, because the killing of over 2,000 people on American soil is just like the publication of emails that exposed the corruption at the heart of Democratic party politics. Oh, and "the attack didn't end on Election Day" – because isn't that a Russian hiding under your bed?
If political humor, albeit unintentional, is your shtick, there was plenty of that: my own favorite was Rep. Jackie Speier – from where else but California? – likening Vladimir Putin to a tarantula spider who has "ensnared in his web" a whole list of Trump supporters, including Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Echoing a common phrase at the hearing, she declared that alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was "an act of war," although she gave no hint as to when the shooting will start.
Rep. Andre Carson (D-Indiana) asked: "Is an iron curtain is descending across Europe?" Yes, the Russians are going to rebuild the Berlin Wall – and make Angela Merkel pay for it. Of course, the US-erected iron curtain of anti-Russian sanctions doesn't come into it. Carson also took up a favorite Democratic theme: the GOP platform had been "changed" at the insistence of Trump supporters, a falsehood that's been debunked yet still persists. What happened was that an attempt to insert a paragraph calling for sending "lethal weapons" to Ukraine – which had never been in there in the first place – was defeated. But in the War Party's campaign of innuendo and fake news, facts don't matter: what matters is the effort to equate dissent from a foreign policy of perpetual aggression with "treason."
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) spent most of his time referring to the "dirty dossier" published by BuzzFeed, which has long been discredited, and bringing up the names of various Trump supporters, asking FBI Director Comey if they were targets of the investigation into Russian influence on the elections –knowing perfectly well that Comey would not and could not answer. The idea was simply to bring up the names in a forum in which they couldn't defend themselves: that's what the politics of innuendo is all about.
Aside from Schiff, the Speier-Carson-Castro trio, posing as defenders of our national security, were among the shrillest in their insistence that the Trump administration is a nest of Russian spies. Which is ironic, since the Daily Caller recently reported an odd coincidence:
"Brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives Thursday, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.
"Three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis. The two committees deal with many of the nation's most sensitive issues, information and documents, including those related to the war on terrorism."
Those three intelligence panel members are Speier, Castro, and Carson. Now aren't you reassured that our national security is in their capable hands?
These three were merely sideshows, however, because the head clown was undoubtedly the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California). Schiff's opening statement is a model of McCarthyite smear-mongering. His first target is Carter Page, an oil company consultant tangentially associated with the Trump campaign, who is attacked by Schiff for the "crime" of criticizing US foreign policy in a speech delivered while on a trip to Russia. He then cites the unverified (and largely nonsensical) "dossier" compiled by MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who paid his informants for dirt on Trump, to the effect that Page had a secret meeting with a Putin confidante. Page was supposedly rewarded financially in a murky sale of the Russian gas giant Rosfnet: he was also supposedly offered "documents" to be published by WikiLeaks, "which give the Russians deniability."
Let's stop here and ask a question: Why would the Russians offer Page "documents" that portray Hillary Clinton in a unfavorable light – presumably the Podesta/DNC emails – if WikiLeaks was going to publish them anyway? But logic has nothing to do with Schiff's conspiracy theory: the idea is to simply make "links" based on a bought-and-paid-for "dossier" and smear as many people associated with the Trump campaign as possible.
So what was the price of all this? What did the Russians want? According to Schiff, a Trump foreign policy that "de-emphasizes Russia's invasion of Ukraine and instead focuses on criticizing NATO countries for not paying their fair share." As "proof" of this sinister plot Schiff notes that Page, Paul Manafort, and other Trump supporters "attended the Republican convention" (!) in Cleveland where Russian ambassador Sergey Kisylak was also present. Kisylak was there along with 80 other ambassadors at an event dubbed "Global Partners in Diplomacy." Similar events, staged to acquaint foreign diplomats with the American democratic process, have been staged since the 1980s. Clearly a case of espionage.
Schiff then goes into the by now familiar trope about how the GOP platform was "changed" to remove a section calling for the provision of "lethal defensive weapons" to Ukraine, which would be "against Russian interests." To begin with, there was never any such provision in the platform, so it could not have been "removed."
Secondly, Schiff is betraying his own rather specialized interests here: on July 18, 2013, a fundraiser for Schiff's reelection campaign was held at the home of Ukrainian arms dealer Igor Pasternak in Washington, D.C. Price of admission: $2,500 a head, and $1,000 for guests. Why is Pasternak such a fan of Schiff's?
The answer may be found in a Washington Times story published in January, headlined "Ukraine Desperate for Surveillance Equipment in Stand Off With Russia," which details the efforts of the Ukrainian government to get around the Obama administration's reluctance to provide them with the "defensive weapons" Schiff is so eager to shower them with. Yet the Times tells us that Pasternak has somehow managed to get around the prohibition imposed by the administration, at least to a limited extent:
"In the meantime, a private, State Department-approved transaction has a Montebello, California, company, Worldwide Aeros, set to erect eight sensor-mounted towers that would deliver immediate surveillance along the southeastern border this winter.
"'This system will provide a much more robust capability to detect incursions into their territory,' said Drew Shoemaker, vice president of government relations for Aeroscraft, a division of Worldwide. 'It detects with the radar and then confirms with the camera.'
"With a maximum range of 40 miles, the Elevated Early Warning System, he said, 'can look quite a distance into whatever territory they are looking at. They can track movements of goods and services in and out of the rebel-held territories. There's still a large of amount of military equipment in there.'
"Ukraine eventually may opt for blimplike aerostats with even more powerful ranges.
"Worldwide Aeros was founded by a Ukrainian-born engineer, Igor Pasternak, who has won Pentagon contracts to develop different sizes and shapes of airships."
Follow the money. Pasternak is selling the Ukrainians military hardware, and is doubtless eager to sell them more – paid for by US taxpayers, of course. According to news reports, Pasternak is deeply involved with the Ukrainian government's military production, which is seeking to eliminate its dependence on Soviet era military hardware:
"On Jan. 3 [2017], as part of a long-term plan to adopt NATO military standards, Ukraine took a step toward ditching this Soviet military carryover.
"Ukroboronprom, Ukraine's nationalized defense industry conglomerate, announced a partnership agreement between the Ukrainian defense manufacturer Ukroboronservis and the U.S. company Aeroscraft to produce in Ukraine a variant of the US M16 assault rifle.
"'The M16 project was conceived some time ago, as the Ukrainian armed forces, border guards, and National Guard will with time switch to NATO standards,' Aeroscraft founder and CEO Igor Pasternak said during a Jan. 3 press conference in Kyiv."
Pasternak raises thousands for Schiff, and Schiff raises millions for Pasternak. It's a sweet deal all around.
Schiff bloviates that his campaign to restart the cold war with Russia is an ideological crusade: "We are involved in a new battle of ideas," he avers. "Not Communism versus capitalism, but authoritarianism versus democracy." Yet this is about capitalism – crony capitalism of the sort that enriches both Schiff and Pasternak. As Major General Smedley Butler put it in 1935: "War is a racket." And Schiff is one of the biggest racketeers in Washington.
The cynical, absurd campaign to tar the Trump administration as a Russian plot to take over America is based on noting but lies, innuendo, political opportunism, and naked greed. Trump famously pledged to "drain the swamp" that is Washington, D.C., and it was inevitable that Schiff, one of the nastiest of the swamp creatures, would arise from the muck screeching in protest.
Let him. He and his party are consigning themselves to the margins of American politics. Their loony conspiracy theories are so far removed from the concerns of ordinary Americans that the distance can only be measured in light years. Polls show that even the majority of Democrats don't think Trump's relations with the Russians involved illegality: independents and Republicans disbelieve Schiff's tales of Russian plots by an overwhelming majority. No normal person cares about Russia: but the Democratic activist base is very far from normal.
That doesn't mean that this witch hunt isn't dangerous: it is. The news that the FBI is investigating "far right" and "pro-Russian" web sites ought to send a chill up the spines of civil libertarians, no matter what they think of Trump. And for those who want to see a more peaceful foreign policy, the McCarthyite hysteria generated by Schiff & Co. is bad news indeed. Jackie Speier, for example, has in the past been a reliably pro-peace vote in Congress, but as the Democrats become the party of born-again neoconservatism, at least in the foreign policy realm, the pressure is on to toe the Russophobic party line.
At the dawn of the cold war, as McCarthyism was rising, the formerly "isolationist" (i.e. anti-interventionist and anti-NATO) Republican party became the party of warmongers: the alleged threat of a domestic "communist conspiracy" logically translated into an international crusade to "roll back" communism by military means. What we are witnessing today is a similar transformation of the Democrats. Which is, as Trump would put it, sad!
Get ready for a massive attack on our civil liberties, as the FBI takes out after "pro-Russian" "subversion," and the Democrats (in alliance with John McCain and Lindsey Graham) conduct their circus-like hearings throughout the year and beyond. A more sickening display of ideological emptiness and brazen self-dealing hasn't been seen the 1950s.
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I've written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.


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Sensitive health data processed by hospitals and insurers is under constant attack from malicious actors who try to gain access to health care systems with the goal to steal or extort personal health information. Change Healthcare has implemented a Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) solution based on Microsoft Azure Cloud services and introduces Intelligent Healthcare today.
Change Healthcare is enabling payers and providers to have immediate and granular control over their data by transferring the ownership of encryption keys used to encrypt data at rest. This allows Change Healthcare customers to make security changes without involvement by Change Healthcare personnel and have their cloud-based systems re-encrypted and operational without service interruptions. The BYOK management capabilities include revoking access to encryption keys and rotating or deleting encryption keys on demand and at the time of a potential compromise.
For the Intelligent Healthcare solution, Change Healthcare implemented Azure SQL Database Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) with BYOK support. TDE with BYOK encrypts databases, log files and backups when written to disk, which protects data at rest from unauthorized access. TDE with BYOK support integrates with Azure Key Vault, which provides highly available and scalable secure storage for RSA cryptographic keys backed by FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated Hardware Security Modules (HSMs). Key Vault streamlines the key management process and enables customers to maintain full control of encryption keys and allows them to manage and audit key access.
Customers can generate and import their RSA key to Azure Key Vault and use it with Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse TDE with BYOK support. Azure SQL Database handles the encryption and decryption of data stored in databases, log files, and backups in a fully transparent fashion by using a symmetric Database Encryption Key (DEK), which is in turn protected with the customer managed key called TDE Protector stored in the customer owned Azure Key Vault.
Taking advantage of BYOKs, customers gain more control over their data and can create, rotate and delete encryption keys, as well as grant and revoke key vault access to Azure SQL Database at any time. Revoking access in Azure Key Vault will effectively block access to all databases when the TDE Protector is inaccessible by Azure SQL Database. A SQL Database that doesn't have access to the TDE Protector cannot get loaded into memory and a live database that loses access to Azure Key Vault or the TDE Protector will go offline within 24 hours.
Overview of TDE with customer managed keys and Azure Key Vault integration:


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Steplift Install In Southport
Free Site Surveys Available by our Qualified Lift and Hoist Engineers (Not Salesmen). We can also provide approximate prices over the phone for the full installation of equipment, you can request a full colour brochure, or for a definitive quote we would need to carry out a Free full site survey for our engineers to assess layout, dimensions etc, and then we can provide a full quotation. Please contact us on 0151 4233738 to arrange a mutually convenient appointment for our engineer to visit.
- Heather Maddox


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- The deaths of prominent scientists
- The deaths of many notable figures (too many to link in entirety)
- Disturbing news about the environment, and news about news about the environment
Let me make a push for optimism, or at least try to put some things in perspective. There are some reasons to be hopeful. Specifically, look here, at a site called "Our World in Data", produced at Oxford University. These folks use actual numbers to point out that this is actually, in many ways, the best time in human history to be alive:
- The percentage of the world's population living in extreme poverty is at an all-time low (9.6%).
- The percentage of the population that is literate is at an all-time high (85%), as is the overall global education level.
- Child mortality is at an all-time low.
- The percentage of people enjoying at least some political freedom is at an all-time high.


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Help Centre
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What kind of help do you need?
What other people have found
Read how SilverCloud has benefitted real users. All personal details have been changed to protect client confidentiality
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The first and largest low-cost carrier (LCC) offering services in the Middle East and North Africa, Air Arabia has announced that it will launch direct flights from Sharjah to Milan, the capital city of Italy. From December 7, 2022, four weekly direct flights will connect Sharjah International Airport with Milan Bergamo Airport.
Air Arabia's growing network from Sharjah now includes Milan, allowing the airline's customers in the UAE and beyond to travel to Italy with a renowned value-driven product. Booking direct flights between Sharjah and Milan is now available on Air Arabia's website, through its call center, or through travel agents.