text: The Technology Management MBA (TMMBA) Program will reshape the way you work in teams, evolve the way you think about leadership, and provide new perspectives for tackling complex business challenges. Attend this Online Information Session to learn more about the program, get your questions answered, and see if this 18-month journey is right for you. About TMMBA , The 18-month TMMBA Program is one of four options for working professionals who want to earn an MBA through the Foster School of Business. Designed for people who are passionate about technology and entrepreneurism, the program offers a comprehensive business management curriculum with an emphasis on innovation and leadership. Modeled on an Executive MBA format, students benefit from a full range of support and services. Classes take place at the Eastside Executive Center in Kirkland, where TMMBA students learn from UW Foster faculty who are thought leaders in their fields. Earning a Foster MBA from the TMMBA Program, you'll learn alongside talented peers and join an extensive network of high-caliber professionals and innovators from around the world. Register here!


text:
How and when did the COVID-19 pandemic begin? This morning, the World Health Organization is releasing its report on the origins of the coronavirus. NPR has obtained a copy, which says the virus was likely circulating months before a big outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December of 2019 and that it did not begin in a seafood market there. Peter Daszak is with us now. He's an expert on how animal viruses can infect human beings. And he was part of the team that went to China to prepare this report.
Good morning, Peter.
PETER DASZAK: Good morning. How are you doing?
KING: Good, thank you. Where do you at the WHO think this virus originated?
DASZAK: Well, what we're really saying is we don't know exactly whether the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan was the source or not. It still could be. But it's also possible that other places within the region were the origin, the place where the virus first got into people. In fact, you know, we've traced back from that market that the suppliers of food to the market, which includes wildlife from all across China, including places in rural China, where we know the nearest viruses in bats, for instance, exist and it may have started there.
KING: OK, let's talk about the there that you mean. You're talking about farms in rural China. We are using the term or have been using the term wildlife farms. Can you explain what these farms are?
DASZAK: Well, this is a network of wildlife farms that was really promoted over the last few decades in China as a way to alleviate poverty (ph) - very successful. People would catch wildlife, things like civets, ferret-badgers, raccoon dogs, bamboo rats and breed them in captivity and sell them to restaurants or wildlife markets for food.
KING: Is the idea here that the virus may have spread from one of these farms, which supplies the seafood markets in Wuhan, and that's how it got out?
DASZAK: Yeah, the reports suggest that that's a plausible pathway. In fact, when we looked at all the pathways that this virus could have taken, both the China team and the WHO team found this to be the most likely pathway.
KING: OK. Did you have access to everything in China that you needed to conduct a thorough investigation?
DASZAK: Yeah, I mean, this was a very well set up joint mission from WHO where China scientists were out there gathering data for the last few months, in fact, for the last year.
KING: So what you're pointing out is that most of the research that your team analyzed was completed by Chinese scientists before the WHO team went to Wuhan. There have been questions in the past over China's transparency around data, particularly when it comes to this virus. Are you concerned at all about transparency?
DASZAK: Well, at this stage, we've been given a whole series of pieces of new evidence, new data that's laid out in the report - dozens of graphs, tables of testing of different animals, of people, interviews. Right now, that's pretty extensive, and that's a lot more than many people thought we would end up being able to achieve. And I think that at this point, that's good enough to allow us to follow different leads and say one is more likely than another.
KING: I want to ask you about the theory that this virus leaked out of a lab in China, which the WHO report does address. Now, the former director of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield. Is one of the people who say they think this virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, likely referring to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The report calls that extremely unlikely. What evidence ruled out that lab is the source of the outbreak?
DASZAK: Well, what makes it extremely unlikely is that no evidence at all ruled it in. I mean, you know, I understand Dr. Redfield having a personal opinion about these things, and he's absolutely entitled to. I respect that. But where there's no evidence at all of a lab leak - and then you go to the labs and talk to the directors, to the staff. You ask them about, you know, do you test your staff? Were they positive? Do you - you know, what sort of conditions do you have in the lab? What's the safety conditions? Do you audit the lab? Do you train staff in an adequate way, you know, even psychological evaluation of staff before they're allowed to work there - hundreds of hours of training before they're allowed to work in the virus safety labs. These are well-run labs. No evidence at all of a lab leak.
KING: Lastly, I must ask you, the Biden administration has publicly questioned this report's credibility. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said we've got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it. Some of your colleagues in the infectious disease world have been skeptical as well. Dr. Anthony Fauci talked yesterday at a briefing. He said, I'd like to see the report first. I'd like to inquire as to the extent in which the people who were on that group had access directly to the data. How can you assure the Biden administration and other health authorities that your methodology was sound and without undue influence from China?
DASZAK: Well, I think that when you get questions like this, it's always good to defer to the great Dr. Fauci, who said he'd like to see the report before he passes comment. And that's what we need to do. We need to read these hundreds of pages of new information, you know, questions asked, data supplied. It's never been done before. This is the deepest understanding we have yet on the origins of COVID. Let's read it. Let's look at the conclusions, and let's look at what next recommendations need to be done. They're in there, and I think that will answer most people's questions. It's a valid piece of work with great depth and a lot of new information in it.
KING: Peter Daszak is a disease ecologist and president of the EcoHealth Alliance. He was one of the investigators who helped to write the report. Thank you for your time, sir. We appreciate it.
DASZAK: My pleasure. Great talking to you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

subset: commoncrawl


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Once at the top of the smartphone pack, Microsoft's current mobile operating system, Windows Mobile, has quickly fallen from grace. Luckily the juggernaut in Redmond, WA decided finally to do something about that. You call it whatever you'd like — a restart, a do over — but Microsoft has entirely changed course with Windows Phone 7, and they have broke most everything in the process. That means old Windows Mobile applications won't work, the entire OS has been redone, and practically nothing from the user's perspective has been carried over. A good thing when you're now playing in a world of Androids and iPhones. We have been testing out a non-final, never ever going to be released to market Samsung prototype Windows Phone 7 device for a week, and we're excited to let you know what we think of the operating system.
We're not going to review the actual hardware we received since it will never see the light of day, but we can talk about the hardware requirements and what that means for the platform. Microsoft has a reportedly over 200 page document that details what's required of the hardware powering Windows Phone 7. Some of that includes a minimum of a 3.7″ 4-point capacitive multi touch display, 5 megapixel camera, 1GHz CPU, all memory must be built-in (it can be microSD, just not user accessible), dedicated graphics chip, and three hardware buttons on the front. That would be the back, Start, and search buttons.
That baseline is pretty high end, and other chassis specifications will be a little more relaxed. Chassis 2 will apparently support other hardware configurations like slide-out keyboards, and we assume chassis 3 might allow for lower-to-mid specs, but the last part is just our assumption. Having a baseline requirement is a great thing and it's nice to see Microsoft taking more a stance with this new platform. We all can remember the mess that Windows Mobile became (we're talking hardware).
User Interface
If you were to call Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS UI minimalistic, you'd be right. Even if our sentence wasn't. The thing is, sometimes when using Windows Phone, things are so minimalistic, that it actually feels a bit too lonely and open. Don't get us wrong, it's nice to feel like you're not constrained to a certain window or foreground app, but at the same time, we can't help but feel that there could have been so much more done.
At the bottom of every application are Microsoft's action buttons. These are contextual buttons that offer added actions in almost every application on the phone. The thing is, they're pretty standard, and not that user friendly. At least not for us. We're not sure why Microsoft decided to implement and design something that actually gets in the way instead of helping. For starters, we found them to be tiny and poorly placed. Unlike Android where you have a menu key and a nice big popup of additional actions, Microsoft's approach is to have a tiny, tiny area reserved for these buttons at all times, wasting screen real estate while also cluttering up the view with pointless circles that are almost laughably small. The one saving grace is the ability to expand this action button view, but we can't but feel like it would have been better all around to move all the action buttons over, and let the user expand / close it when necessary.
Let's take the homescreen for instance… Apple's homescreen is pretty straightforward. You have app icons and you have folders which contain apps and they are all the same size, and that's about it. Android has the same basic logic, except you can add widgets, add shortcuts to different menus or applications, and even add live moving wallpapers among other things. Microsoft basically reinvents the mobile phone homescreen, and we're not sure we're in love with it.
Other annoyances with the UI? The scrolling. There's a very slight rubber-banding effect, but what happens is, when you get to the bottom or top of a scrollable list, the scrolling stops short and the content then sort of mashes up slightly. It's not that elegant, and especially on this not-amazing prototype phone, it looks pretty bad and pixelated.
Something else would be the fact that threaded text message conversations are all the same color. So, your messages and the other party's messages are all the same color which makes things a bit difficult to tell apart. We also can't stand the fact that the top upper status bar which contains the time, battery level, signal strength and other status icons, is basically hidden from view for the most part. You can have these icons show at will by tapping the always-present time in the upper right corner, but it's not that reassuring having this stuff hidden by default for freaks like us.
One last thing that really bugs us with the UI is that there is no application switcher. At all. On a BlackBerry you can hold the BlackBerry key, on Android devices you can hold the Home key, and on the iPhone you can double tap the home button. Just simply navigating back, back, back, back and back doesn't really cut it, and during every day usage, it got tired quick.
Home Screen / Hubs
Microsoft's new Hub interface is decent attempt to centralize different application data in a clean and pretty fluid manner. Apps will be able to create their own hubs, as will OEMs and carriers, but they'll have to follow some design guidelines that Microsoft has created. Yes, Microsoft will be limiting the scope of what third parties can do with hubs, and we think that's a great idea. Thing's like the navigation, and apparently even fonts will look uniform from hub to hub.
Hubs are a great idea in general, but the homescreen, filled with hubs, just comes off feeling unfinished and unpolished. Microsoft was sure to mention to us how they wanted the OS to just naturally speak for itself with clean, modern fonts and lines, and not be overloaded with fake 3D UI elements like drop shadows and the like. The thing is, it really comes off as feeling a little too plain for us, especially with the all black default color scheme. If you try and remedy that specific problem and you flip it the setting to use white instead of black, the phone is so bright that it's basically unusable.
You could argue the homescreen is the most important part of current smartphones, and in our view Microsoft really falls short here. It's definitely dynamic at times, but it's underwhelming for the most part and it sort of cheapens the other positive areas of Windows Phone 7.
Zune / Music
If you're a fan of the Zune music player, you'll no doubt be enthralled with the Zune app on WP7. It's clean, functional, and very hip looking. In fact, Windows Phone 7 is basically modeled after the Zune UI (in our view at least, since we didn't see WP7 debut until after the Zune). It contains everything you'd want in a music player nowadays, like video / music video support, podcasts, a built-in radio, and the Zune Marketplace.
We've never been huge Zune fans over here, but we do have to say using the music player on WP7 was a really pleasant experience. We'd absolutely put it second to Apple's iPod on their iPhone. It is miles ahead of anything coming out of RIM or Android at this point, and it's great to see a phone that is just as focused on multimedia as it is on say, email.
We're not going to lie, we really have no idea how people actually let the phone app get this far. When you first launch the application, you'd except to be at the keypad, so you can actually make a call, right? No. You're presented with the recent call history list. Just text splattered on the screen. No problem, you'll mosey on over to settings and change the default view so the keypad shows up. Ah, problem there. You can't make that change because it's not an option. So to make a phone call, you have to go into the phone and hit one of the poorly-sized action buttons below to bring up the keypad to make a phone call.
Another annoyance? Let's say you do for some reason want to actually call someone on your recently called list, so you don't have to bring up the keypad this time. Just tap the phone number in the list, and off you go. Not quite. Microsoft links the recent calls to "profiles" not numbers. It's the most insane thing we've ever seen. If you tap on the caller in the list, you don't dial the phone number, a profile view slides in and you then have to determine which number to call from there. Ok fine, but if you got a call from just a phone number, and not someone in contacts, it won't bring up the profile, it will just dial the phone number. Again, not quite. It will still bring up a profile view, but this time offer default options of calling or texting that number. A simple long press gesture could have solved these problems in our book. Long press to get options to text the number, save it to your contacts, or anything else. It's another little missed UI piece of the puzzle that gets really apparent when you use the OS a lot.
Actual phone calling works fine enough, though it can be a little confusing at times. Unfortunately Microsoft tries to be a little too hip by showing the background as transparent, and we just don't know what purpose this solves but a cheap UI effect. In our minds, you're either actively in the phone call (foreground), or the phone call is minimized (top status bar). But to have the phone application in the foreground not take up the whole screen and the view below it to be transparent doesn't really flow much. Maybe we're being picky, but with already frustrating calling experience, we'd have liked the phone application to just be a phone.
As huge Microsoft Office fans, using the email app on Windows Phone 7 is nothing short of fantastic. It's simple, easy to use, feature-packed (especially if you're on an Exchange 2007 or 2010 server), and really enjoyable. It's one of the only default apps to use a white color scheme instead of black, and it really looks great. Emails are organized in the hub very cleanly, with all, unread, flagged, and urgent sections that are flickable.
The transitions here work very well for the most part, but it's a little overblown at times and kind of wastes time if you're really hoping to and from emails in a hurry. Unfortunately, in this non-final version of the OS, PDF attachments were not supported. We've reached out to see if that will change in the first shipping Windows Phone 7 handset. There are little things we're not in love with on here, but they are pretty small… we don't like how there is no status bar for attachment downloads, it just says "Downloading" with no visualization of how much time or amount of data is left to download, we also don't like that by default, emails sent from the handset aren't immediately available in the sent folder. You have to manually sync the folder to view emails sent from the phone. Seems a little counter-intuitive. One last annoyance we stumbled across is that even with specific rules set up in Outlook 2010 on an Exchange server wit Outlook open, messages can slip through the cracks. It's not every message, and it's not the end of the world, but we haven't seen this happen on an iPhone, BlackBerry, or Android handset even once.
Something incredibly stupid with the email app, is the inability to remotely search for emails. With Microsoft launching this feature in Windows Mobile 6.1, and basically every other smartphone OS supporting it, it's pretty amazing how it isn't included. You're limited to whatever is locally stored on your device to search through. Microsoft did let us know they were open to revisiting this, so we'll have to see if it changes in the near future. For the meantime though, this really takes away from a great email application.
We absolutely love the keyboard on Windows Phone. It's so… clickable yet still virtual. It really flies, the predictions and corrections are awesome, and it's almost as good as the iPhone's keyboard. The iPhone has a more functional layout, and better access to symbols and corrections, but Windows Phone's keyboard is just about there, and easily our favorite second best software input device on a smartphone platform. Unfortunately, there's no multi-touch capability on it, but it's still very solid.
Microsoft's bread and butter is of course Windows and Office. So, what would a Microsoft mobile product be without a great implementation of Office? Windows phone 7 has its own Office 2010 hub complete with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and SharePoint access. Combine that with the great email app (we can call it Outlook), and you've got a pretty powerful mobile productivity software suite. Easily the best mobile Office experience, and why shouldn't it be?
Social Communication
Windows Phone is pretty social right from the out of box experience. You can link your Windows Live, Facebook, and Exchange accounts as you glide through the first time set up process. Windows Live, Facebook, and Exchange contacts are all integrated together in the main people view. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to control what shows up here, or limit it. For instance, we'd love Facebook to sync to our existing contacts in our address book and link up, but there is practically no interest in seeing every single Facebook friend listed in the people view. We have no found a way to filter out contacts by services or even groups and that's kind of frustrating.
Facebook status updating is built right into the device, but sadly your choices are only that and your Windows Live status. Twitter is nowhere to be found here.
The photos hub is interesting as it's an aggregated view of your local and remote photos, and sharing photos is a relatively easy task if you can figure out how. When tapping on an individual photo in a single view, nothing happens. You'd think there would be some overlay that pops over with action buttons, but you actually have to tap and hold the photo to accomplish this. Once there, however, you are greeted by a lot of sharing options. You can email the picture, upload it right to Facebook, send it in an MMS, or upload it to Windows Live SkyDrive.
It should be clear to everyone that Windows Phone 7 as a platform is not finished yet. The first handsets aren't rumored until September, October, or November depending on what site you're reading on which day, and the handset we have been using for a week won't ever be released and is meant only for developers to test apps on actual hardware. However, we have been playing around with WP7 for enough time, and the OS is well-enough along that we have got a great feel for it, regardless of any minor improvements before the first handset launches. Microsoft has no doubt broken course and gone in an entirely new direction, something that many people wish RIM would do, and we applaud them for that. They have created a brand new mobile operating system packed full of clean, modern, and sometimes even beautiful design elements.
We liked using the OS in general, though the experience for us felt a little too much like our time using the Microsoft KIN 2. The tiled homescreen seems a little too constrained and boxed in for us, and the non-frills design approach actually left the handset menus and navigational elements feeling bare and unfinished, rather than pure and unaltered. Not having any sort of menu for hoping back and forth between applications hampers your every day usage, and the animated transitions also start to feel old pretty fast. For a phone that was made from scratch and started on after the first iPhone was introduced, and for a phone that's not even in market yet, it unfortunately in our view falls short. There's practically no real innovation we can see with Windows Phone 7. It's a decent mashup of some already pioneered features like aggregated status updates linked with your contacts, customizable homescreens, and a mobile apps and music marketplace, but we're not sure that's enough to push WP7 ahead of the three big juggernauts. It's a fantastic featurephone, but as a truly competitive smartphone platform, we're just not sure at this point in time.
There is no killer application on Windows Phone 7, and we can't see an overwhelming reason to use one instead of an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android handset. Whether Microsoft's OS updates to the platform will be enough to change our minds in the future is up to them, but for now, they've created a decent mobile operating system from scratch, but it unfortunately still has that Microsoft feel. And that's not the best thing sometimes.


text:
At Derbycon 3.0, László Tóth and Ferenc Spala gave a a new presentation "What's common in Oracle and Samsung? They tried to think differently… " (Video). The main focus of the presentation was the Samsung encryption and a new framework called sandy but there was also a small Oracle part.
Laszlo and Ferenc showed how to decrypt Oracle database links in Oracle 22.214.171.124 and Oracle 188.8.131.52 using a small utility called "oradecrlink.py". In previous versions Oracle used DES to encrypt/decrypt database links. These database link passwords start with "05" (Oracle's indicator for DES).


text:
The Devil Made Me Do It
Book Two: Speak of the
Devil series
Coming July 1
Lily is working with
the angels to stifle the last of the demon outbreaks and to figure out how to
stop the Silence of God, so life can get back to boring normality. But all hell
breaks loose when she's stolen from school and brought face to face with the
devil himself. Lily has to find her way back home to Luc, crack the prophecy
that breaks the curse silencing God, and figure out how she and Luc can ever
really be together; but Lucifer has other plans for her that don't include her
ever getting out of Hell in tact.
Shawna Romkey,
teacher by day, writer by night (or day or whenever anyone leaves her alone
long enough to get some work done). Bestselling YA / NA paranormal author of Speak of the Devil. The second in the
series, The Devil Made Me Do It, will release July 1.
Shawna is from Kansas City, Missouri,
but resides in Nova Scotia in a house by the sea with her husband, two sons,
and currently two dogs but that's subject to change depending on the local
homeless dog population.
For more info, check out her website at


text:
Maytag has released a new tall tub dishwasher with a steam cleaning option to help loosen dirt and clean glassware to a shine. The tall tub has an oversize capacity and nylon coated racks to protect fragile stemware. A stainless steel interior helps hold heat so dishes dry faster. Options include sanitizing, delay settings and high temperature. It also has the jet clean II power module and is Energy Star qualified. It retails for around $600.
steam dishwasher
Is a Steam Appliance Right for You?
Steam is hot right now. It is showing up in a variety of appliance and is touted as the way to sanitize, freshen and even shorten cleaning times. Consumer Reports weighed in on steam use in appliances at abclocal.go.com sharing their opinion of steam's usefulness.
One thing to be aware of before even considering a steam unit is the cost:
Kimberly Janeway from Consumer Reports, says "Some cost twice as much or even more than the best buys we recommend, which don't have a steam feature."
The steam feature not only adds to an appliance's price, it also adds time to wash cycles. For example, for the clothes washers, it added as much as 25 minutes. For the dishwashers, it added up to 45 minutes.
Consumer Reports' Emilio Gonzalez just tested two washing machines with steam modes from Kenmore and Whirlpool. Both companies claim their steam features boost cleaning performance and remove stains better.
"While the washers did better at removing stains when using the steam setting, they still cleaned very well even without the steam," says Gonzalez.
Consumer Reports also tested the steam settings of Kenmore and Whirlpool dryers. Testers used wrinkled shirts exposed to cigarette smoke.
"The dryers got rid of most of the odors and wrinkles from the shirts, although there were wrinkles still left on the sleeves. So it's a refresher, but not a replacement, for going to the dry cleaner," says Janeway.
New dishwashers made by Jenn-Air, LG, Maytag, and Kenmore also have a steam-cleaning feature. Consumer Reports put them through one of its toughest food cleaning challenges: removing baked on brownie batter.
Janeway says "Steam only improved cleaning slightly on all four dishwashers."
So while steam may be the hot new trend in appliances, Consumer Reports says it's an extra feature that's not worth the extra money.
So, depending on your opinion of Consumer Reports, you have the beginnings of an answer to the question- Is a steam appliance right for you?


text:
Fractal Store - Fractal T-shirts
Fractal T-shirts. From basic and organic t-shirts to hooded sweatshirts, from small to 6XL. The models displayed are just examples. All fractals are available on all shirt models and colors, you can change the model and color. All t-shirts are also customizable and you can add your own text and even images to any t-shirt before ordering.


text:
7L & Esoteric - Rest In Peace lyrics
rate me
[Esoteric] Yo Friday night, feelin right, fuckin with this bad chick Gats click, now I'm hit, shit, watch the blood spit I fall face down, background is H-Town Needle drag, music stops, people call the cops For a rap cat, shot dead in the back Over a dame, for some reason of which I cannot explain My name was little known at this time 'less we use the Boston, Mass. as the measuring line My crime bein waxed, redirects, people's TV's set Maybe you're seein the checks, or see 'em as threats My fam cries at the wake, some guys do steaks With their eyes on my tape, realizin my surprisin fate Ten-to-five covered, then from five-to-eight Now the average rap fan starts to gravitate to the Ese-Esoteric, to see if they were sleepin on a dope MC whose skills need peepin [Chorus: Esoteric (7L)] It's tough stayin underground when you're six feet deep And major labels profit off of that, but then there's freak ("It's Esoteric"), ("Rest in peace") And now everybody's checkin for my posthumous release [scratched twice: RZA] "Death is a final step!" [Jadakiss] "You know dead rappers get better promotion" "Death is a final step!" [Esoteric] Check.. now as I look down, it's kinda tough swallowin the fact that I'm a dead rapper with a cult followin Legions of fans got their hands on my old jams And new fans, they were sayin "Oh damn!" at every punchline, and now the rumors break and hit Cause everybody knew that I was workin on some new shit Cats askin, "Who's on it? Who produced it?" Straight up, just ask deceased, let the man {"rest in peace"} All my old friends are now sayin that's a spiritual My mother wants my material Girlfriends sayin that I'm lyrical, fightin over rights Sellin R.I.P. t-shirts at open mics Fans thought the East/West was comin to South Got the Source van in front of my house XXL and Elemental runnin their mouth Got my dad depressed, he's bout to flip, put a gun in his mouth [Chorus] [Esoteric] Now majors havin bidding wars, and deals on the table Labels unstable cause my face is on cable Even underground critics say that I'm the best that did it Even though they shitted on my last hit-it I don't get it, Sony pimped me up in a week And now my acapella's flowin over wack commercial beats They shot my video, with an Esoteric stunt double in a Lex bubble, sayin it was footage from the night before the trouble No red tape, just sample clearances and mad guest appearances (Like who?) A lot of guys whom I never authorized As my mother looks into the skies to apologize Although I'm dead mom, my soul remains undaunted Now you can actually afford the things you wish you flaunted And even though every studio will be haunted I finally got the major label budget that I wanted


text:
Syuzanna Hakobyan (Armenia). Why I joined The FUTURE ARMENIAN (video)
Тhe video is available in Armenian.
The FUTURE ARMENIAN Initiative is represented by The FUTURE ARMENIAN Development Foundation. It is funded by Noubar Afeyan, Artur Alaverdyan, Richard Azarnia, Ruben Vardanyan.
All additional information will be forwarded to you in due course․
The list of new signatories is being updated on a daily basis.
Your registration is not yet complete.
A message has been sent to your e-mail address. Only after confirmation and receipt of the unique code the registration process will be considered complete.
If you have not received the email, please contact us at email@example.com, or call +374 60 700 800 (ext. 333).
Follow us on social media pages.


text:
Our B&B is located in the very heart of Venice at Calle Lunga San Barnaba, a few minutes walk from Ca' Rezzonico and Accademia.
The rooms are elegant, cosy and air-conditioned, all have bathrooms, and have been recently refurbished. At the groundfloor there is an oriental style tea-room and a nice garden with jasmine and wistaria plants. We want to make known to the guests the philosophy and the very healthy features of tea, which can be savoured in a relaxing and friendly environment reading books about Asia and other countries.
B&B Fujiyama is just a short walk from St. Mark's Square or Rialto or Accademia. Moreover is right next to the "Zattere" waterbus stop, where the lines for the islands of Giudecca, San Giorgio and Lido leave from. You also can reach easily the islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello and Venice Cruise Terminal.


text:
Keep Current with Edwina Buenor
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1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!
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text:
The Ancient Sources Water-filled Jewellery Collection produced by the Centre for Implosion Research is inspired by beautiful art forms from antiquity that objectify traditional wisdom and the universal truth of water as a sacred life force. This unique Collection continues and transforms the tradition of 'amulets': symbolic and beneficial jewellery.
The therapeutic properties of water are widely known throughout the world. The Celtic People were said to revere Water and many indigenous peoples use water as a central medium for healing and spiritual initiation.
The Ancient Sources water-filled Jewellery Collection includes jewellery forms used widely in the ancient world, found in the context of royal treasures, kingly burials and meaningful exchange. Reflecting the beauty between the giver and the recipient, the Ancient Sources Collection brings romance, quality and history into personal gift-giving.
The Centre for Implosion Research (CIR) has taken the innovative step of creating beautiful hand-crafted products combining the natural therapeutic qualities of wearing copper, filled with Energised Water. This unique combination has a particularly beneficial energetic effect.
According to customer testimonials and independent scientific reports, our products…
- Increase the user's vitality
- Speed up the healing process
- Provide Pain Relief
- Protect from electromagnetic pollution, incl. mobile phone and computer radiation


text:
The Artburn, Our Solar System pillowcase painting kit includes a pillowcase, non-toxic professional fabric paint, a brush and full instructions.
No need to stay in the lines as the paint is "transparent" so the black lines will show through even if you paint over them.
Hours of fun for children ages 4 to 13
Hot iron sets the colour. Machine wash and dry – the paint will stay vibrant for years
Paints are made in Canada and all pillowcases are hand printed in Canada
100% biodegradable clear plastic packaging


text:
Not yet.
Well, not really, anyway. But here's
my GPG key
, and some stuff on this site:
a small collection of wallpaper and logo ideas I had. Feel free to use under the terms of the GPLv2. (Yeah, that'll mark when this note was added, eh?)
My modified version of the Compact Menu extension. It uses a nice icon I found a long time ago. It looks nice; check it out.
Jesus on Deck
A small project done for a skit show at church. It's supposed to be a radio broadcast of a baseball game in which Jesus almost gets to the plate...
Ever wanted Kim Possible's Kimmunicator sound for your cell phone? No? Well, I did, and it's kind of fun to see people's reactions when they hear it go off out of the blue. In case you would like it, here it is.
Massassi Photoshop Tennis
A small, incomplete archive of old Photoshop Tennis threads on Massassi. Some really creative stuff in there.
Star Trek Sounds
A modest collection of sounds from Star Trek. You might like them for your cell phone or your computer, or nothing at all.


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Thu, 13 Jan
|The Kings Church
Emergency First Aid at Work
The QA Level 3 Award in Emergency First Aid at Work (QCF) qualification is designed for individuals who wish to act as an emergency first aider in their workplace.
Time & Location
13 Jan 2022, 09:30 – 16:00
The Kings Church, 33-35 Victoria Rd, Burgess Hill RH15 9LR, UK
About The Event
The QA Level 3 Award in Emergency First Aid at Work qualification is designed for individuals who wish to act as an emergency first aider in their workplace. Upon successful completion of this qualification, candidates will be equipped with the essential skills needed to give safe, prompt and effective first aid in emergency situations.
What's more, as a regulated qualification, employers can book this course for their employees and rest assured that they have fulfilled their legal responsibilities for providing quality first aid training, without having to undertake any lengthy due diligence checks introduced in the recent HSE changes.
We are able to conduct group training sessions at your venue or you may wish to join one of our open public courses of which we run various dates throughout the year, see details to the right.
Course programme:
This interactive one-day course is delivered using small group scenarios, in a friendly environment.
- The roles and responsibilities of an emergency first aider
- Assessing an incident
- Managing an unresponsive casualty
- CPR and AED use
- Recovery Position
- Choking
- Seizures
- Shock
- Wounds and bleeding
- Minor injuries
- Cuts, grazes and bruises
- Minor burns and scalds
Ofqual Accreditation Level 3 EFAW first aider at work (3 years)
We are a Qualsafe Training Centre which means our courses are approved and recognised by Ofqual Accreditation.
Kings Church
33-35 Victoria Rd,
Burgess Hil
West Sussex
Parking at venue and a coffee lounge.
Cancellations Terms:
Notifications by email: 21 – 15 days we refund 75% of the course fee, 14 – 8 days we refund 50% of course fee, 7 days or less no refund of course fee. You may wish to rebook on another date with no loss of refund.
EFAW Course
One day EFAW Level 3 First Aid at Work Course, Kings Church, 33-35 Victoria Rd, Burgess Hill, RH15 9LR
£105.00Sold Out
This event is sold out


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These Were the Highest Paid Rock + Metal Bands of 2020
Ten rock and metal acts were reported to have made some big-time bank in 2020, amid an unprecedented year that saw virtually no revenue from touring due to restrictions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. But they mostly trailed among the top-earning artists in 2020 overall, who largely dominated pop music.
Still, for longtime rock lovers and metalheads, the influential bands who made the newly unveiled list of the 40 best-paid musical artists in the United States last year probably won't come as any real surprise. The included groups are all classic rock or metal outfits that are firmly entrenched in global rock culture.
Starting with the highest-earning and descending, those bands were the Eagles ($16.3 million), Queen ($13.2 million), The Beatles ($12.9 million), AC/DC ($10.1 million), Metallica ($9 million), Pink Floyd ($8.8 million), Tool ($6.17 million), KISS ($6 million), The Rolling Stones ($5.69 million) and Aerosmith ($5.35 million). That's per Billboard's 2020 ranking, published July 19.
The Top 10 highest paid in pop and beyond were Taylor Swift ($23.8 million), Post Malone ($23.2 million), Celine Dion ($17.5 million), Billie Eilish ($14.7 million), Drake ($14.2 million), NBA YoungBoy ($11.9 million), Lil Baby ($11.7 million), The Weeknd ($10.4 million), Aventura ($10.2 million) and Eminem ($9.7 million).
But for as high as they are, the sums all represent a drop from previous years. As Billboard reported, it's "no surprise that the dearth of live revenue led to a precipitous decline in the paychecks of music's top earners, who collectively took home $387 million in 2020, down from $969 million in 2019. Even Swift, that rare artist with strong sales, streaming and touring numbers, saw her … pay drop from $99.6 million in 2018 (the last time she was on the list) to $23.8 million."
Below, see the rock bands' reported stats for their 2020 earnings:
10 Highest Paid Rock + Metal Bands of 2020 (From Billboard's Top Paid Artists 2020)
Eagles ($16.3 million)
Streaming: $2.7M
Sales: $970K
Publishing: $1.2M
Touring: $11.4M
Queen ($13.2 million)
Streaming: $5.5M
Sales: $5.3M
Publishing: $2.4M
Touring: $0
The Beatles ($12.9 million)
Streaming: $5.1M
Sales: $5.2M
Publishing: $2.6M
Touring: $0
AC/DC ($10.1 million)
Streaming: $4.3M
Sales: $4M
Publishing: $1.8M
Touring: $0
Metallica ($9 million)
Streaming: $3.9M
Sales: $3.7M
Publishing: $1.4M
Touring: $0
Pink Floyd ($8.8 million)
Streaming: $3.2M
Sales: $4.3M
Publishing: $1.3M
Touring: $0
Tool ($6.17 million)
Streaming: $823.4K
Sales: $557K
Publishing: $611K
Touring: $4.2M
KISS ($6 million)
Streaming: $431K
Sales: $348K
Publishing: $194.5K
Touring: $5M
The Rolling Stones ($5.69 million)
Streaming: $2.97M
Sales: $1.8M
Publishing: $1.17M
Touring: $0
Aerosmith ($5.35 million)
Streaming: $1.33M
Sales: $564K
Publishing: $840K
Touring: $2.7M


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Happy Sunday, everyone! Here's the latest food news from this week:
- Via Napoli reservations information is now available!
- The 2010 Epcot Food and Wine Festival Guide and Map are ready for perusal!
- Disney parks welcome a Meatball and Beer bar and a Crepes and Funnel Cake Sticks stand!
- Disneyland and Disney World 2011 Food and Wine Festival dates are available!
And thanks to Global Disney Pinvestigation for writing about our WDW Foodie Fest this week!
We're starting this week's Round-Up a little differently! I'm excited to showcase some pics of the upcoming restaurants in Epcot — La Hacienda de San Angel and Via Napoli!
First off, thanks to Eric Walker for this awesome pic of the newly painted Hacienda de San Angel!
And thanks to Epcot Explorer for these fantastic photos of the newly revealed Via Napoli!
Hoperatives has a great resource page on beers in Disney World, including varieties and prices and sorted by theme park and resort!
Craft Beer Restaurant Blog has a commentary about the beers on the menu for the 2010 Epcot Food & Wine Festival. Great read!
Mousesavers highlights some incredible deals from restaurant.com — we're talking discounts on discounts for House of Blues and Swan & Dolphin restaurants! (Thanks to Studios Central for the FYI on restaurant.com!)
Main Street Gazette sampled and reviewed nearly every flavor of Wonderland Tea. Fantastic article!
The Disney Chick makes an old Food and Wine Festival favorite — Beef Bites with Chocolate and Red Wine Sauce!
The Disney Blog shares his review of the new meatball sliders and beer bar at Portobello in Disney World's Downtown Disney.
Zannaland wonders which Disney candy fits your mood?
The Makin' Memories Blog shows us Part I of her Tables in Wonderland Great Movie Ride dinner experience!
Studios Central moseys on over to Hoop Dee Doo Revue!
A Taste of Disney makes 'Ohana Bread Pudding with Bananas Foster Sauce.
Eating (And Drinking) Around the World has a bone to pick with those bartender robots in the Space Mountain exit area!
Disney Parks Blog talks about one of my favorite desserts — Key Lime Pie!


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Postcard Catalogue...Canadian Pacific
Below is our postcard catalogue for Canadian Pacific. You can list postcards for a particular ship or shipping company by using our search screen or using the "Quick Links" to the right for popular searches.
100 postcards are shown on each screen. Use the links at the top and bottom of the list of postcards to view more postcards.
To view a full size image of a postcard (including the reverse) click on the thumbnail images of the postcards below. Postcards are graded according to my postcard grading criteria.
Displaying 1 to 100 of 156 postcards
Quick Links Allan Line Canadian Pacific Cunard Ellerman Lines Hamburg-Amerika Holland-Amerika Norddeutscher-Lloyd P&O Red Star Line Union Castle White Star Line Naval Search Full Catalogue New Additions
Copyright 2010-2016 www.Shipping-Postcards.com. All rights reserved.


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We are currently moving premises, please call to check delivery lead times
Product Information
Our ATS-333 control panel uses a Deep Sea Electronics DSE333 control module. The DSE333 is an Automatic Transfer Switch controller for genset and other applications. The module will monitor the voltage and frequency of the incoming AC mains (utility) supply and in the event of a failure, will issue a start command to the generator control system. Once the generator is available and producing an output within limits, the DSE333 will control the transfer device and switch the load from the mains (utility) to the generating set. Once the mains (utility) supply returns to within limits, the module will command a return to the mains (utility) supply and shut down the generator after a suitable cooling run. Various timing sequences are available to prevent nuisance starting on minor supply breaks. The module can be easily configured via the front panel. Further configuration options can be altered through the USB connection to PC software.
Please Note. This control panel type requires a DC supply to power theDeepSea control module. This is usually fed from the generator starting battery (12Vdc or 24Vdc). If this is not available a self-seeking power supply can fitted. This sources ac power from either the Mains (utility) or generator and converts it to DC for the module. This is an extra cost option please contact us if you require the self seeking power supply fitted to your panel.


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This listing is no longer available.
GUIDRY & CO. REAL ESTATE, Lafayette, LA. All offices are independently owned and operated. The data relating to real estate for sale on this web site comes in part from the IDX Program of the Realtor® Association of Acadiana; MLS Real Estate listings held by brokerage firms other than GUIDRY & CO. REAL ESTATE are marked with the MLS approved icon for IDX. "Information Deemed Reliable But Not Guaranteed". Copyright 2016 REALTOR® Association of Acadiana, All rights reserved.
Licensed & Regulated in the jurisdiction of the Louisiana Real Estate Commission, Members of the National Association of Realtors®, Louisiana Realtors®, Realtor® Association of Acadiana, Multiple Listing Service (MLS), Louisiana Commercial (www.lacdb.com), The Realtor® Commercial Alliance, Equal Housing Opportunity.


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Seattle Seahawks Wood Sign - 11"x17" Fan Cave Design
Hardboard wood signs are 1/4" thick, decorated with quality graphics to resemble an antique wood finish. A matte finish laminate top is added for greater durability and a precision cut smooth edge makes this a great indoor d??cor sign. Approximately 11"x17" in size.


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Search engine advertising and marketing is an ideal way in your small enterprise to compete with larger rivals. Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to assist businesses find out about and use the advertising alternatives supplied by serps, and new businesses focusing primarily upon marketing and promoting by means of search engines emerged.
Like seo (WEB OPTIMIZATION), search engine marketing (SEM) helps companies improve the best way content material is ranked by search engines like google and yahoo SEM helps firms deliver their products and services to the eye of audiences who're ready to purchase.
Initially known as search engine marketing," the shorter phrase search advertising and marketing" is now typically used as the umbrella term over WEBSITE POSITIONING and SEM The longer phrase search engine advertising and marketing" — or SEM — is now typically used to describe paid search activities.
In relation to search engine advertising (SEM) the Lengthy Tail refers to the keyword phrases which are extremely detailed and particular and may generate low volumes of searches and visitors, but add up to generate a majority of site visitors for sites with deep content or product SKUs.
Unlike PPC, place within search results aren't guaranteed, but in contrast to organic SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING, PFI guarantees a stage of frequency in indexing and permits optimization and submission of large numbers of pages inside a web site.


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Simply working smarter
with Philips dictation solutions
Mobility and flexibility are critical in today's fast-moving business environments. The Philips PocketMemo voice recorder gives you the freedom to work when and where you need to.
Automatic gain control for adjustment to optimum recording level
The priority index tone indicates urgent documents. Your urgent jobs get transcribed first.
End-of-letter index tone for easy file access
The warning tones for end-of-tape and low battery status ensure that no dictation is cut off. The end-of-letter index tone indicates the start of each document and number of recordings.
Professional editing via slide-switch operation
Easy and quick file editing via convenient slide-switch operation. It offers a fast response and is designed for single-handed operation.
Turbo wind for fast access to any part of the tape
The turbo wind function allows you to jump to any part of the tape within seconds and save you valuable time.
Visual indication with LED for showing record status and low battery
The status LED always shows if your battery is running low and the record status.
Audible end-of-tape and low battery warning tones for safe recording
The warning tones for end-of-tape and low battery status ensure that no dictation is cut off.
Voice-activation function for hands-free recording
Voice-activated recording is a convenience feature for hands-free recording. When enabled, recording will start automatically when you start speaking. Recording stops automatically after you stop speaking and restarts automatically when you start speaking again.
Transport lock for avoiding unintentional operation
With the transport lock activated, your dictation recorder is protected from unintentional operation.
Internal recharge of batteries for environment friendly use
Help protect the environment and save your money by simply recharging the batteries of your device instead of buying new batteries (optional Philips rechargeable batteries LFH0153 required).
Your recorder comes with
- Voice recorder
- 2 × AA batteries
- Wrist strap
Enter your software serial number
The VoiceTracer Speech Recognition Software only works with Philips VoiceTracer Audio Recorders. To download the installation file, enter the serial number, then click Download.
Find your serial number
The serial number can be found on the quick start guide in the product packaging.
- Headphones:
- 2.5 mm
- Microphone:
- 2.5 mm
- Acoustic frequency response:
- 400–4,000 Hz
- Output power:
- >100 mW
Package contents
- PocketMemo voice recorder
- 2 × AA batteries
- Wrist strap
- Product dimensions (W × D × H):
- 128 mm × 63 mm × 25 mm/ 5.0" × 2.5" × 1.0"
- Weight:
- 120 g/4.2 oz. (without batteries)
- Telephone pickup microphone LFH9162
- Meeting microphone LFH9172
- Clip-on microphone LFH9173
- Rechargeable batteries LFH0153
- Power supply LFH0142
Manuals and documentation
- User manual English (10.8 MB)
Marketing & sales material
- Leaflet English (327 KB)


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David Branch is making some changes to his Fourth of July celebration menu this year.
"I'm not doing ribs. I'm not doing beef brisket and other things that probably I would normally do," Branch said.
He's not alone. Rising inflation means that it's gotten more expensive to stock a party with the holiday's classic foods — about 11% more expensive than last year, to be exact. That's according to a new study that Branch co-authored, which calculated how much prices have risen for certain Fourth of July foods for a 10-person party. He's a food and agribusiness adviser for Wells Fargo, which means he follows industry price trends.
The costs of red meat and chicken are hitting wallets hard this year. Branch recommends being creative with other proteins, like shrimp or pork butt. The study, which uses data from May, shows that shrimp is 8.2% more expensive than it was in July 2021, and the price of pork has grown by 3.1%.
Sure, that's painful. But these increases pale in comparison to chicken breasts, which are a whopping 24% more expensive than they were in July last year.
Even though chicken or ground beef may still be less expensive per pound than, say, shrimp, Branch said it's important to factor in how many people you're feeding and how much protein you need for each serving. For example, you might need two pounds of ground beef for burgers but only one pound of shrimp for tacos, making burgers more expensive per person (and that's not even counting condiments or other toppings).
His advice? Do some research and calculate the costs per meal. You may find a certain kind of meat has much more bang for its buck, or that you're better off going vegetarian. Branch is having shrimp tacos this year after scoring frozen bags that were buy one, get one free.
There are many reasons why food prices have shot up. The pandemic has disrupted global supply chains. The costs of corn and soybeans, which are used in animal feed, have skyrocketed. In recent months, U.S. poultry farmers have culled millions of chickens as a bout of bird flu swept through flocks.
At the same time, the war in Ukraine is affecting wheat prices. Ukraine is one of the world's top wheat exporters, and Russian blockades have stopped millions of tons of grain from leaving the country.
With inflation at its highest rate since 1994, looking for sales and being creative with menus are good ways to lessen the economic sting this holiday weekend. And while the economic roller coaster continues, Branch recommends being flexible.
"It's just a difficult time," Branch said. "You can look for opportunities out there and still have a fun gathering with family and friends to celebrate the Fourth of July and not break the bank."
After all, enjoying a fireworks display doesn't cost a thing.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Husband and Wife Pin Buttons
$5.95 $9.95
The official Thin Yellow Line flag / Towlivesmatter Pin Buttons made into a high quality, American made, lapel pin. This design represents tow truck operators who put their lives to help others on the line of duty. The wearer of this pin supports the American Towing Industry and bring awareness of the slow down move over movement.
Each button is printed on high quality paper and then hand pressed by me using a commercial machine.Made from metal, yet lightweight and durable with a strong safety pin.
- Safety Pin Backing
- Made In The USA


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These resources have been reviewed and selected by STEM Learning's team of education specialists for factual accuracy and relevance to teaching STEM subjects in UK schools.
Get on your Space Cycle (Czech)
Show health and safety information
Please be aware that resources have been published on the website in the form that they were originally supplied. This means that procedures reflect general practice and standards applicable at the time resources were produced and cannot be assumed to be acceptable today. Website users are fully responsible for ensuring that any activity, including practical work, which they carry out is in accordance with current regulations related to health and safety and that an appropriate risk assessment has been carried out.
SpaceCycle(Czech).pdf 588.43 KB
Show downloads
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The following guest post is from Scott Primeau from Colorado Smart Communities, member of the Open Knowledge Foundation's Working Group on Open Government Data
Just over a year ago, Kevin Curry started the CityCamp movement to bring together local government officials, government employees, private sector technology experts, journalists, and citizens to share perspectives and insights about the cities in which they live and to develop practices for making their city governments more transparent, participatory, collaborative, and accountable.
In December 2010, I was proud to work with Kevin, Brian Gryth, Sean Hudson, Michele Hovet, Alissa Black, and Nicole Aro to organize CityCamp Colorado. During the camp, Kevin, Brian, Alissa, and I began developing a model Local Open Government Directive that cities and counties can use to promote transparency, participation, and collaboration in their governments. We modified, tailored, and improved the U.S. Open Government Directive for local government and, after the camp, we expanded the drafting process to about 30 more experts and supporters of the open government movement.
The Local Open Government Directive provides specific guidance for a city, county, or state government to develop information and data sharing practices, enhance and expand citizen participation opportunities, and collaborate with government employees, other government agencies, private sector experts, and the public.
The opportunities for transparency, participation, and collaboration described in the directive are becoming increasingly possible and efficient thanks to Internet technology and people's desire to reclaim our government. We will no longer accept the information government holds about us, our schools, our businesses, etc. being held behind government walls. We will no longer accept 3-minute opportunities to speak at a city council meeting on a weekday afternoon as an opportunity to participate. We will no longer accept government officials forcing their decisions about our lives without being involved in the process.
The model Local Open Government Directive is intended to be an executive initiated order or directive to the local government under the executive's legal authority. An executive leader, such as a mayor, should use this model to adopt a directive for the city to help institutionalize open government principles within the city government.
In partnership with OpenPlans, we are hosting the directive at opengovernmentinitative.org. There, you can view and download the directive and share it with others.
In addition, our friends at the Sunlight Foundation have created a site where you can sign up to show your support for this effort.
In the upcoming weeks and months, we will be reaching out to government officials to build support for the directive and to implement the directive in local governments.
We encourage you to show your support for the directive and to reach out to your elected officials to ask what they're doing to promote open government and to include the public, to include you, in your government's processes. Together, we can make our governments more transparent, participatory, collaborative, and accountable. Remember, we're building our governments; that means we all have the responsibility to be informed and to participate. Government officials have to do their part, and we have to do ours for open government efforts to be successful and for government services to work.
Finally, I'd like to thank all of the people I've been fortunate to work with through CityCamp Colorado and the Open Government Directive. Kevin, Brian, Sean, Michele, Alissa, Nicole, Phil Ashlock, and many others are some of the most motivated, hard-working, brilliant people I've had the pleasure to work with.
Cheers to the future of our government!
This post is by a guest poster. If you would like to write something for the Open Knowledge Foundation blog, please see the submissions page.


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Provincial and Local Taxation
Provincial and local taxation, also known as SALT, are fees and taxes that are imposed on individuals and licensed businesses. While the tax and license fees are different depending on location, the accounting specialists at Beaver Accounting Services Inc. can make sure that you aren't paying a cent over what you need.
With rules and regulations constantly changing, it is more difficult for individuals and companies to keep up.
Luckily, our team specializes in tax obligations. We also stay current with state tax deductions and refunds to make sure that you can get the most out of your accounts. Contact us now at (647) 473-5511 to get started.
Call Us TodayOur Specialists Can Help with Your Tax Requirements
It is important that you know what is required of you when it comes time to file your taxes. This includes knowing your tax requirements and obligations. Our specialists can help in all areas of local and state taxation. Here are a few services we offer:
- Multi-state individual taxation, compliant, and planning
- Nexus studies
- Compliance services including personal property tax
- Local/state tax dispute
- Internal tax account processing
- Local/state transactions
- Evaluation
- Audit representation and cloud taxation consultation
Important Documents for State Income Tax
Your tax deductions and returns are dependent on many factors, including where you live, where your business is conducted, your income and dependents. Here are some topics and documents that you should keep handy for when you file your income taxes or in case you get audited:
Personal and Dependent(s) Information
- Your social security number or tax ID
- Your spouse's name, social security number or tax ID
- Your dependents birthday, SSN, or tax ID
- The income of all adults living with you
Source(s) of Income
- Proof of employment
- Proof of unemployment
- Rental income
- Savings and investments
- Retirement income
- Charity donations
- Medical expenses and health insurance
- Homeownership
- Childcare
- Education
- Job expenses
Filing State Tax Deduction
We often find several ways to save our clients' money on deductions while filing state taxes. So even if the state tax is low in your state, it is important to file them. Not only is it an obligation, but it could end up benefiting you financially if done properly.
SALT Accountants
SALT accountants are explicitly trained on local and state laws. We stay up to date on the frequently changing policies and rules to ensure that you are aware and benefit from new tax structures. We also have years of experience working with business of all sizes. We will make sure you follow all tax requirements. Using our professional SALT accountants means that you're tax compliant, tax licensed and that your tax deadlines will be met.
Benefit from our tax planning services by getting in touch with one of our representatives today.
Beaver Accounting Services Inc. Can Help with State and Local Taxation
Investing in a SALT accountant today is an investment that will save you time and money later on. Contact one of our team members now for more information and to schedule a consultation. We can even prepare you ahead of time so you can be more confident with your next state and local taxation.
Contact Us


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There's an old comedy cliché about firemen holding a big net and asking people to jump to safety. Is this a fictional invention, or was there really a time when this was how we rescued people from burning buildings? If there was, what was the highest someone could leap from and be saved by a net being stretched between human hands? —Nate Solloway
Fictional invention? Comedy cliché? Spoken like a true child of our coddled age. You think life nets are mythical because jumping into a patch of canvas from, say, 75 feet up seems insanely dangerous. Dangerous, sure, but insane? I don't think so. Years ago, those trapped in the upper stories of blazing buildings often faced a simple choice: leap or fry.
Life nets were one of many gambits by which the urbanites of a century ago coped with the joys of city life. If disease, filth or poverty didn't get you, there was a good chance fire would. The ability to construct tall buildings profitably far outstripped the means to make them safe. Fatal fires were an everyday occurrence. Newspapers and reformers campaigned for tougher laws and better firefighting equipment, but it took decades before these improvements had any effect.
In the meantime, inventors came up with quick fixes, most based on the practical observation that if all else failed, you could jump. People have been improvising nets since the first multistory hovel went up in flames, of course—I find reports of rescues using rugs, tarps, even a raincoat. Now more elaborate gimmicks were proposed, some of them fanciful. One basically consisted of two giant mattresses.
The device that caught on was the Browder life net, named for the fellow who patented it in 1887. This is the iconic net of the cartoons, consisting of a rigid circular frame with a round sheet of fabric stretched across the middle from springs, like a trampoline. You unfolded the net on arrival at the fire scene, got 10 to 16 firemen to hold it at shoulder height below a trapped victim and hoped for the best.
The good thing, judging from old press accounts, was that a lot of times life nets worked. The bad thing was that seemingly just about as often, they didn't—deaths and injuries were common. The practical limit was believed to be six stories; New York City firefighters in 1900 routinely jumped into a net from that height during their training. Surviving a leap from a taller building wasn't out of the question. In a 1930 Chicago fire, three people jumped eight stories into a net: Two suffered minor injuries, and one bounced out and fractured her skull. One daredevil L.A. firefighter tested a life net from ten stories and landed without a scratch.
But that was rare. In the infamous Triangle garment factory fire of 1911, flames raced through the top three floors of a ten-story building in lower Manhattan. Scores of panicked workers, mostly young women, leaped from the windows. Some plummeted to the sidewalk even before firefighters arrived and set up their nets. Two women who had jumped together ripped through one net, followed close after by a third. Another woman landed in a net but died of internal injuries later. Deliverymen stretched out a tarp hoping to save some of the leapers; the first hurtling body ripped it from their grasp. With corpses literally piling up at the foot of the building, nets were soon abandoned as futile. In all, 146 people died.
Jumping from lower heights wasn't much safer. Leapers sometimes struck something on the way down, landed on a fireman or missed entirely. Things could go wrong even if you were on target. In 1910, four women made the mistake of clinging to one another as they jumped from a burning four-story factory in Newark, New Jersey. They tore through the net and were killed.
Despite these drawbacks, life nets remained a standard piece of firefighting equipment for years. As late as 1960, the Boston Globe saw fit to spend a full page explaining optimal leaping technique. (Hint: Jump in a seated position with your limbs out in front of you, trying to land on your butt or the small of your back.)
By the 1970s, though, life nets were on their way out. Hundred-foot aerial ladders had made rescue a less perilous proposition. The last mention of a net I could find was from 1983; current firefighting manuals don't discuss them at all.
Still, the fundamental problem remains unsolved. Improvements notwithstanding, people still sometimes get trapped by fire in tall buildings—witness the desperate souls who leaped from the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. Surely, you think, that qualifies as insane.
Maybe not. There you are on the hundredth floor, with a choice even starker than the one facing somebody staring down at a life net. If you jump, your chances of surviving are infinitesimal but arguably not zero. If you stay, you have no chance at all. What do you pick?
Send questions to Cecil via StraightDope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611. Subscribe to the Straight Dope podcast at the iTunes Store.


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Dj Quik
Dj Quik - U Ain't Fresh! songtekst
Je score:
(feat. Erick Sermon, Kam) [Verse 1: DJ Quik] I know you like to do ecstacy, and then forget where you are Be up in a room with a stripper, and your homie Lamar Now that's a nasty threesome, a straight mis-match Instead of bangin' on the broad, you'd rather open his hatch And start packin'... and get some dookie on your tip Don't look now, you got a loogie on your lip Next time video tape it, let us all see it This is Sir Herb, I'll put you on the web - you pervert The number 23 on the beats, 'bout to do ya Mister Blake A.K.A. DJ Quik talkin' to ya And I'll prove I'm proper and yo game is whack with 1 line I'll never put my name on a track that wasn't mine This hip-hip shit, is getting stupid again These niggas gun-tottin', fightin', gettin' rutless again There's a message in the Big Book, didn't you read it? It say if niggas don't remember the past, they gonn' repeat it So I'm into ???ated That ground heart-stated And we all made it If you want a hit, nigga, call David The first name basis, depends on how the pay is 50 under the table do it enough, don't need a label 'Cause I rob from the rich and I... gives to the ?floor? The ground-level ground shovel diggin' up some more So let's stay focused 'cause the chip is the prize Now put your shit in first, nigga, and shift it to rise And like Frank Nitti, ?We 2-degree? And you haters trippin' cause I got the key to the city Not a sissy but the hoes keep callin' us pretty And you mad 'cause the bitch got me on her titty Mr. Troutman talk me talkbox, do why diddy! And I'll tell you to your ear, nigga, you sound shitty I'll take your hoe up to the room and show her no pity So call me DJ Meow Mix 'cause we gets kitty (meow) Scratchin' all the fleas off of these Stayin' high off of trees Top villian, and enjoyin' the breeze And the time I'm spendin' in yo bitch, a supreme blast In the back of my S-500 playin' Dreamcast [Chorus] You Ain't Fresh [x7] You a busta, nigga! You Ain't Fresh [x7] You a busta, nigga! [Verse 2: Erick Sermon] Yo, yo, I'm into somethin' new, hoppin' through Quicker than the Compton Crew, and Y too Yo, what you wanna do? You ain't fresh! No contest - we cook like Raekwon the Chef And write for the skills, get set for the kill And prep for the meals, after that we chill The E-R-I-C-K is my name, I spell Bring it back like '92, with clientele And keep shit right, and make sure the sound excite Nigga in affect, like flashlight Quik and I do it 'til death In the house 'yall, blackin' out like Red & Meth Thick-boned women, in jeans and linen Yeah (whew!), make a nigga wanna go fishin' And when I walk by, girls singin' a song Like E... is like a phemomenon Ugh, al around the world they be bumpin' to E Shuttin' it down, right in your company I blow through like a gust of wind, through doors Tearin' down the roof, rippin' the floors 'Cause rap's no game, I pack heat, ain't afraid to pull it For what packs, I packs full of bullets Stop when I come through Big, Black, motherfucker fresh for '99 You suckas! [Chorus] You Ain't Fresh [x7] You a busta, nigga You Ain't Fresh [x7] You a busta, nigga [Verse 3: Kam] Kam got get-back So get up off my dick, rat Nigga, that shit whack You want a hit track? Where Quik at? Knick, knack, patty whack I only bone dimes How you tight? You don't even write your own rhymes It's been a long time Since you last heard from me Like Bill ass Hillary, "what's up?" Still love me, pretty young thang? City I'm from bang What's up, nigga? Real G's don't wear titty and tongue rings You's a fruity-o, you make the most excuses And keep a studio full of ghost producers Young boss heard You was tryin' to floss, nerd Hollerin' "which side is the realest?" Who you steal that from? (Mausberg) The street slang thief is your chief employment You live a life full of grief after brief enjoyment Fake gang bangers, when you see us, tuck all rags Adios, buenos dias, fuck y'all fags! [Chorus] You ain't fresh You ain't fresh...


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The Dolphins reached the 53-man roster maximum. Here's how:
- LS Winston Chapman
- P Matt Darr
- QB Brandon Doughty
- TE Thomas Duarte
- G Isame Faciane
- QB David Fales
- WR Trey Griffey
- S A.J. Hendy
- T Sean Hickey
- CB Larry Hope
- RB Storm Johnson
- LB Deon Lacey
- WR Rashad Lawrence
- WR Malcolm Lewis
- CB Jordan Lucas
- DE Cameron Malveaux
- DE Praise Martin-Oguike
- WR Mitch Mathews
- WR Drew Morgan
- DT Lawrence Okoye
- TE Chris Pantale
- CB Lafayette Pitts
- DE Joby Saint Fleur
- RB De'Veon Smith
- WR Damore'ea Stringfellow
- LB Junior Sylvestre
- DE Julius Warmsley
- T Avery Young
- LB Neville Hewitt
- LB Brandon Watts
- DE Nick Williams
- T Sam Young
Placed on IR:
- CB Tony Lippett
- LB Raekwon McMillan
PUP List:
Williams played in ten games between the Chiefs and Dolphins last season, finishing with eight tackles. He restructured his deal in March, but it wasn't enough to keep his spot in Miami.
Young was slated to make $1.2MM in 2017 per the terms of the extension he signed in the winter.


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"Every inch of that place, every grain of sand, wanted desperately to kill us."
That's a line from a compelling new novel about the Iraq War, written by former Marine Michael Pitre.
Pitre was a history and creative writing major at Louisiana State when he joined the Marines after Sept. 11. He became an officer and served two tours in Iraq's Anbar province working in logistics and communications.
His new novel, Fives and Twenty-Fives, follows an American road repair crew and bomb disposal team in Iraq. He tells NPR's Melissa Block about the crew's mission, the meaning of the book's title and balancing his loyalty to the Marine Corps with his desire to tell a realistic story.
Interview Highlights
On his characters' mission in Iraq
Their mission is to fill potholes — to repair the roads and highways of western Iraq so that the troops and supplies and civilians can move freely on them. The problem is the potholes are created by IEDs, roadside bombs, and the insurgent cells were planting IEDs in the same potholes over and over and over again. So when you go out to repair the potholes, you had to first clear the bomb that was waiting for you that had been planted overnight, typically. So it was just this endless grind of really brutal manual labor in a very dangerous environment.
And this was not my job; it was the job of a very close friend of mine named Ed ... who did this for a stretch in Iraq. And I asked him the question, "How many of those potholes had another bomb in them, Ed?" And he said, "Oh, every single one."
On why he wanted to write this book
I did not have an exciting, super action-packed Iraq experience, but my close, close friends did, and I was there with them when they did. And their stories weren't being told the way I thought they should. ...
I wanted to tell a story that didn't fetishize combat. It was a war story with very little real combat as we know it. Because war is work, right? It's sweaty and it's exhausting and sometimes it's carrying bags of concrete in the 130-degree sun and wondering if you're just going to get engaged by a sniper when your back is turned. And it was not glamorous and it's not SEAL Team 6; it's just work, and I wanted to tell a story about that.
On his decision to write part of the book from an Iraqi's perspective — that of a young interpreter named Dodge
The combat in Iraq, the fighting done by the Marines there, was not an end unto itself — we didn't go there to fight just to fight. The fighting was part of a larger military mission, and that military mission was the safety and security of the Iraqi people. That was the reason why I included a narrator who was Iraqi. It was really their war much more than it was ever ours and I wanted their story told as well. ...
It took some thought and it took some soul-searching. And I knew a number of interpreters, none of whom are direct inspirations for Dodge — he's really an invention. And putting myself in his shoes wasn't that hard, honestly, because you saw it every day on those guys' faces, that they had to go home to this at the end of the day when you got to go home to sunny California.
On the meaning of the book's title
Fives and Twenty-Fives refers to a tactic to maintain safe distances from possible roadside bombs. So if you were on a convoy and someone in the lead vehicle saw something suspicious that they needed to stop and investigate, the first thing everyone would do is scan 5 meters around the wheels of their Humvee to make sure that they weren't parked next to a bomb. So once everyone's cleared in their fives, they dismount and do their 25-meter sweep where they establish a larger zone of protection for the dismounted troops so you can know that if you're within 25 meters of the vehicle, you're safe.
But it also became a metaphor for protecting yourself. I heard it more than once in a Southern California bar. Two young Marines — very obviously young Marines by their haircuts — one of them's too drunk and his buddy says to him, "Hey man, watch your five and twenty-fives"; meaning, you know, stay safe.
On balancing his loyalty to the Marine Corps with his desire to tell a realistic story
My loyalty to the Marine Corps and to those with whom I served — those with whom I'm still very close — my loyalty to them led me to want to tell a true story. And as I was writing it — and this is, in all honesty, a manuscript that I never thought would be read by anyone other than my wife — I sent it out to my old friends from my old battalion and said, "Hey, read this." And the subject line was always "Read this and tell me if I have brought dishonor to our corps." And no complaints from them, which is what matters to me most.
On his frustration with the State Department and contractors in Iraq
There's no getting rid of that. That exasperation will last the rest of my life, I know. I mean you were dealing with a whole Marine Corps that was marched into this area of desert without a plan at all. And then you see around you contractors and folks who are really profiteering, was what a lot of it was.
And there's a line in the book in which [an American lieutenant] says to Dodge: Hey, I think we're gonna remember this war as the last time we were disappointed by our parents. And I do hold to that. There was this sense in Iraq that, you know, your dad had taken you on vacation and didn't bring gas money and you were stranded. So the Marines on the ground in Iraq did the best with what they had, but in the end there was no real strategy. We just dropped a lot of bombs and said, "We've taken over the country now." And that was sort of the end of the thinking, it seemed, and from there on it was improvisation. And that was a shameful way to treat the U.S. military and the volunteers who embody it.
On how he feels about the recent advances of Islamic State fighters in Iraq
It's absolutely gutting if you think about it too long. And I have stayed up late at night watching the news, unable to sleep, thinking about God, I've been in that town, I saw those people. And now that they're under the thumb of such brutality... [it] is truly gutting. ... You try to go to sleep, in my case anyway. I'm long separated from the service. You call up your friends; you have a heart-to-heart. And you try to move on with your life.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Another Blogging Marathon week. It is BM # 6 and I am doing Regional Specials again and will be posting 7 days of Rajasthani Delicacies. Today is Day 5 and here is my Rajasthani Special for the same.
- Heat ghee in a heavy bottomed pan.
- Add dalia to it and roast till golden brown.
- Add milk/water that you are using and cook dalia on low heat till it is cooked well.
- Add sugar to it and let it melt completely.
- Mix in raisins and almonds and take it off the heat.


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Computer Science and Engineering Building (EBU3-B)
Building Evacuation Procedures
Keep Yourself and Others Calm
- Shut down equipment that could become unstable or present a hazard.
- Gather your personal belongings such as glasses, prescription medicine, keys, backpacks/bags/purse.
- Touch closed doors before opening. If the surface is hot, do not open -- use another exit route.
- Quickly move to the outside of the building using the nearest door marked with an "EXIT" sign.
- Close, but do not lock, all doors as you leave. Take your keys with you.
- Do not use the elevators. Proceed to the nearest safe stairway.
- Be certain all persons in the area are evacuated immediately. Keep a list of all laboratory personnel near the exit of the lab/office that can easily be accessed and taken out of the building during an emergency. Use this list as a checklist to ensure all persons are out of the building. Advise emergency response personnel of any missing individuals.
- Help those who need special assistance - disabled, small children, etc.
- Report immediately to the designated evacuation area located near the building.
- Report any missing individuals and last known locations to emergency responders.
- Notify emergency responders about sensitive research, operating equipment, animals left in buildings, etc.
- For Computer Science and Engineering building, meet on Warren mall just south of the building or the Engineering quad near the bear statue.
- Wait for instructions from emergency response personnel. Do not re-enter the building.
Earthquake Procedures
During Heavy Shaking
- Quickly take cover under a desk/table or crouch in a corner away from large surfaces. Expect, at least, 30 seconds of strong shaking.
- After the shaking has subsided, quickly evacuate the building, using the stairs, to the designated gathering area on Warren mall just south of the building or the Engineering quad near the bear statue.
- Personnel will not be allowed to return to their work area until the building has been structurally inspected.
Fire Procedures
In Case of a Small Fire
- Grab the nearest fire extinguisher. Make sure you have an unobstructed exit available to you.
- Pull the finger pin located in the extinguisher's handle.
- Aim the nozzle at the BASE of the fire.
- Squeeze the handles, sweeping the nozzle from side to side until the fire is out.
In case of a Large Fire
- Pull the fire alarm and call UCSD Police.
- From a University phone: 911
- From a cell phone: 534-HELP [4357]
- Alert people in the area to begin evacuation. Assist those with disabilities.
- Close doors to confine the fire.
- Move to your designated assembly area away and upwind from the building.
- Have persons knowledgeable about the incident and location assist emergency personnel.
Emergency Phone Numbers
Fire, Police, Medical
From Campus Phone911
From Cell Phone858-534-HELP (4357)
Thornton Emergency Roomx 7-7600
Poison Center543-6000
Main EOC43609/43053
Main EOC FAX43514
EH&S Lab46418
EH&S Van994-3521
Campus Emergency Status Info888-308-8273
When Calling 911, calmly state:
- Your name, the building and room locations of the emergency.
- The nature of the emergency - fire, chemical, etc.
- Whether injuries have occurred.
- Hazards present, which may affect responding emergency personnel.
- A phone number near the scene where you can be reached.
Master Telephone Contact List
ChairDean Tullsen4-6181
Safety Officer*Matt Scott4-7122
MSO CSEDanielle Elias4-3712
* Holds Key Contact Information for each lab owned by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.


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Bringing agile and ITIL® together in an agile organisation
- Blog
- Agile
- Processes
- Service catalogue
- Service management
- AgileSHIFT
June 13, 2018 |
4 min read
- Blog
- Agile
- Processes
- Service catalogue
- Service management
- AgileSHIFT
Services are about people and processes and how technology enables the service delivery. These services need service management and, as a product manager, it has been useful to recognize that designing services is different to designing products.
In order to deliver a consistent, continuously-improving customer experience it is important to consider every aspect of the service; not only delivering a product but also how it is implemented and supported.
Our customers are local governments, we help them to transform their own service delivery and provide a more consistent user experience by moving their line of business systems to the cloud. This facilitates people's interactions with their local government, reducing the costs and improving the efficiency of those interactions.
Our initial focus is on product delivery and creating a user experience based on their requirements. In order to understand this in detail, we will create a service design blueprint. For example, that would show how someone submits a planning application and how that is handled by the service from submission to approval. We will then use this service design to ensure our technology supports the service delivery and facilitates continuous service improvement.
We take an agile approach, running four-week sprints and stacking up mini-projects which are passed to Scrum Masters. It's an effective way of working; tracking the success and how much resource we're using, identifying issues and problems in processes and using retrospectives to ensure continuous improvement.
It's an iterative approach to product development; doing something, validating it and regularly checking that we're building the right thing. This means any issues – if they do arise – can be rolled back easily. We validate what we're doing by doing through "show and tells" with the customer and user testing to continuously improve the user experience.
Agile and ITSM
So, alongside our agile product development, where does IT service management fit? There's always a lot happening and we're reaching the point where products are being more widely adopted by increasing numbers of customers. That's where I think service management helps, for example, using some ITIL® approaches – such as product portfolio and service catalogue.
As our organization has grown from 20 to 120 people in five years there are now many processes we need to introduce which we didn't have as a start-up, including incident management, portfolio management, customer satisfaction, capacity and capability management and risk management Our business is always changing and there's always room for improvement.
With IT service management supported by ITIL there's more structure around development processes and – especially with the adoption of agile and DevOps – it allows people space and autonomy to work within a consistent framework.
The ITIL update
For me, getting involved with the ITIL update is a great opportunity to understand how ITIL can be useful and how it can be applied to our way of working.
As for many organizations, we want to ensure we have the necessary structure to deliver a better service to our customers and ITIL has a long history of doing this on an organization-wide basis. We want to utilize best practices and we don't want to be reinventing the wheel.
The new version of ITIL is evolving and changing with the new and different ways that software services are being delivered. It's taking a range of approaches, from DevOps to agile, into account and I am happy to represent the way that we work during the design process of the next version of ITIL.
The learning never stops and it's about understanding what's useful and what can help us get to the next level of maturity without affecting the good things we already do.


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With original reporting by Kilgore Trout of the chronicle.su
Roanoke, Va.– Occupy Roanoke turned hilarious Saturday when career politician John Edwards (Criminal) attempted to subdue a crowd of hundreds with the soothing sounds of meaningless rhetoric and campaign promises.
Edwards was promptly chased away by an angry crowd who demanded from him explanations on his dubious voting record of transparency, neoliberalism and human decency. Lacking decency, the North Carolina Senator retreated back into the shadows so everyone could enjoy their day.
Decency is one of many criminal cases brought against the old money presidential candidate, who left his wife on her deathbed for another woman. [Editor's note: Edwards later told reporters he knew his decision would send a strong message to constituents that he is willing to give "whatever excuse" for anything shitty he may inevitably do.]
The Roanoke occupation continued as planned, Trout said, and will reside under the umbrella of Lebal Drocer, Inc. and her subsidiary, Chronicle.SU "until it gets boring."


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From ladotbikeblog:
Yesterday at USC Dr. Charlie Lane, associate senior vice president for Career and Protective Services, announced at a bicycle safety forum that the school is enacting a bicycle ban on Trousdale Parkway and Childs Way, the two major pedestrian thoroughfares on the USC campus. With near 80% of USC students self-identified as bicyclists (another survey estimated up to 15,000 bicyclists on campus), the effects of this new measure could be quite drastic. Given better planning and educational efforts, this situation may have been avoided.
A thing of the past? USC bans bicycles on major pedestrian thoroughfares.
No Bikes in the Bike Lane
The areas currently under ban for bicycle riding are Trousdale Parkway and Childs Way (map), the primary north-south and east-west thoroughfares through campus, each almost half a mile in distance. Trousdale Parkway is currently listed as a bike lane in Metro's new bike map and is listed as a bike path facility by google. As of Tuesday September 14, bicyclists must walk their bicycles on these two thoroughfares from 9AM to 4PM.
Pushing Bikes to the Periphery
USC's Depart of Public Safety (DPS) has decided that conditions have become so hazardous on campus that a ban needed to be put in place. In a survey of USC students, a majority had reported being struck by a bicycle 2 or less times in the past year. DPS blamed the safety problem on the enormous growth in bicycles over the past few years and attributed the rise in accidents to bicyclists "texting and sipping a latte while riding through campus".
What's the problem here? Hint: it's not the bike
The plan calls for the creation of bicycle parking facilities on the very edges of campus, making the campus core a pedestrian-only zone. The Department of Public Safety cited the expense and manpower involved in appropriately supervising bicycling on campus as a reason for needing to push bicycles to the edge of campus. Although Dr. Lane claimed that students also considered bicycles a problem on campus, it was later shown in his presentation that a majority of students considered bicycle congestion to be either "average" or "not a problem".
Further recommendations for the school include encouraging incoming freshman not to bring bicycles and stronger enforcement of bicycle restrictions.
Bikes on Campus – What's the Real Problem?
While Dr. Lane and DPS seemed to classify bicycles themselves as the problem at USC, it is the school's response to date (i.e. none) towards a growing bicycle culture which has caused the problem. The growing popularity of bicycles is a trend that should be embraced, not shunned; alternative modes of transportation should be encouraged at all times. By relegating bicyclists to the edges of campus, bicycles are being de-legitimized.
Other cities, like Copenhagen, have found innovative ways to accommodate high volumes of bicycle traffic
The Problem – Recontextualized
The problem, it seems, is not that a large number of bicycles are being ridden on campus, but rather the behavior of those bicyclists and the consequences of that behavior in relation to pedestrians. While DPS rightfully claims that they do not have the resources to police bicycle behavior, providing proactive solutions like education and infrastructure (rather than DPS's currently reactive solutions) provide a low-cost, long-term solution to bicycle congestion on the USC campus.
Currently, USC has no training, information, or classes on safe bicycle riding beyond a website mainly concerned with registration and parking. Inserted as an educational element during orientation or as an online seminar, USC could educate incoming students on how to not only ride safely on campus, but also the bicycling laws of Los Angeles and California. Because many USC students come from either out of state or even out of the country, they often don't know what is expected of them as bicyclists.
USC also has no on-campus infrastructure for bicycles. With nowhere clearly marked for bicycles, it is no surprise that bicycle/pedestrian conflicts have arisen as bicycle culture has become more popular. While instituting pedestrian-only areas within campus can be a sound safety measure, it needs to be coupled with equal bicycle-only infrastructure on campus. By providing space for bicycles, conflict with pedestrians can be minimized.
Berlin offers an unobtrusive, aesthetically pleasing option for creating pedestrian and bicycle space in the same area
While it certainly is true the there are limited opportunities for traditional bike lanes on a built-out campus like USC, there are still many creative solutions which would improve bicycle and pedestrian safety. On the current streets on the USC campus, bike lanes or Sharrows could be installed to give bicyclists greater confidence to use those roadways rather than pedestrian areas. On wider thoroughfares, aesthetically pleasing treatments could be applied to delineate space for pedestrians and bicycles which could easily fit into the campus' architectural theme.
Bicycle Parking
Bike racks don't have to be ugly
Another complaint against bicycles was the overflow demand for parking and the ugliness of existing bike racks. The idea that bike racks are ugly, however, is something of a dated concept. Art racks have been installed in major cities across the world and can add to the beauty of an area rather than detract from it. Even in Los Angeles there are examples of art racks which contribute to the street aesthetic.
"Bike" racks in front of Caltrans headquarters
Pennyfarthing racks at the LA Times Building
Additionally, providing U-racks at dormitories can function as longer-term or night-time parking for bicycles, freeing up the existing day-time racks on campus that currently get used for long-term purposes.
Going Forward
We hope that USC will reconsider its plans to marginalize bicycles on campus. With an innovative approach, bicycle/pedestrian conflict can be minimized at little cost. We also hope that USC will reach out to regional bicycle organizations like the LACBC or LADOT – Bikeways when considering how to accommodate bicycles on their campus.
Just updated your iPhone? You'll find new features for Podcasts, News, Books, and TV, as well as important security improvements and fresh wallpapers. Find out what's new and changed on your iPhone with the iOS 17.5 update.


text:
This application is entirely programmed in JavaScript. This was done intentionally, so that all encryption and decryption happens client-side. This means the code runs as a distributed application, relying only on GitHub Pages for infrastructure. It also means that no data about locked links is ever stored on a server. The code is designed to be auditable so users can investigate what is happening behind the scenes.
Please enter the password to unlock the link.


text:
Microsoft engineer Sam Xu says "it's time to move OData to .NET 5" and in a new blog post he shows how to do just that.
Like many organizations that host developer educational events, Microsoft has gone virtual amid shelter-in-place directives and a surge in remote work stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Microsoft's nod to the low-code movement, Power Apps, has been enhanced with a bevy of new features, including mixed reality, canvas/model support in a new mobile app, UX improvements and more.
In announcing .NET 5 Preview 2 today, dev team program manager Richard Lander offered up a rare personal note on how the developers are holding up under Microsoft's new "work-at-home" scheme.
In announcing today's second preview of the big, unifying .NET 5 that's going GA in November, Microsoft revealed the next-gen platform is already handling 50 percent of the traffic to the company's main .NET website.
Member of the .NET team working on Hardware Intrinsics and Numerics cites 411 issues that need attention, including some that just involve changing simple lines of text.
Microsoft is previewing Azure Edge Zones, providing ultra-low-latency edge computing to enable new scenarios for developers, customers, and partners.
With the web providing more and more tools, trackers, guidance and many other resources related to the COVID-19 pandemic, some developers are trying to help out with extensions that have begun appearing in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace.
Microsoft added and prioritized Azure cloud computing capacity as the industry as a whole experiences new strains such as an increase in remote work caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Eclipse Foundation unveiled Eclipse Theia 1.0, described as a "true open source" alternative to Microsoft's wildly popular Visual Studio Code editor.
"The Visual Studio team are all working from home and learning how to navigate the challenges that brings to our day-to-day lives," said program manager Jacqueline Widdis in announcing Visual Studio 2019 version 16.6 Preview 2, which revamps the Git experience, improves debugging, adds ML.NET Model Builder and much more.
Planning for a May 2020 debut of client-side Blazor, Microsoft released preview 3 of Blazor WebAssembly 3.3, which lets developers debug projects from Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code rather than browser-based development tools.
So what happens to productivity when an enterprise shifts its software development to a remote, work-from-home scheme? Having made the switch a few weeks ago, Microsoft mined its internal data to find out.
Visual Studio 2019 for Mac version 8.5 shipped this week, improving ASP.NET Core authentication and unit testing, adding support for Azure Functions 3.0 and more.
The burgeoning low-code application development space should and can do DevOps too, says Microsoft, which has detailed new tooling for its Power Apps and Power Platform.
The March 2020 update to Microsoft's wildly popular Python extension for Visual Studio Code focused on improving quality via bug fixes, but it did introduce a new debugger.
Microsoft is previewing F# 5, the latest iteration of its functional-first programming language, as it moves toward a unifying .NET 5 release in November.
Microsoft this week launched a new web site for WinUI, its native UI platform for applications running on Windows 10 devices, as a new version 3 is offered in beta.
Microsoft released .NET 5 Preview 1, the first iteration of what will become one framework to handle all .NET development projects.
Microsoft released Visual Studio 2019 version 16.5, with new features for .NET, C++, debugging and many more areas.
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