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Oh, I wish I were an organized person! Peter Walsh asks in his book, "What is clutter costing you?" He thinks in terms of space, peace and relationships but after this week's decluttering experience, I'm considering the monetary costs. I have shared several ways to make money off the items you are purging. Now, I want to count the ways clearing out and getting organized can actually save money:
- Found money: I turned up a $3 Pinecone Research check in my cleaning this week. It's not much, but at times I've found $20 bills tucked into coat pockets and entire deposits that never actually made it to the bank.
- More tax deductions: I do a pretty good job organizing my receipts in January but if I often wonder how many more deductions I would find if I were more organized throughout the year. I'm sure there's a receipt here and there that have gotten stuck in the bottom of a purse or thrown away with the bag.
- Easily Finding & Using Coupons: This is probably the area I do the best with. When people see me in the store, they often comment on how organized I am. Having coupons sorted & at your fingertips means you never miss a deal!
- Knowing what you have so you don't overbuy: The flip side of the Eat From Your Pantry challenge is if your pantry were always organized, you could create meals from what's on hand all the time! On Sunday, I paid full price for a roll of packing tape—I had a shipment to mail and several game boxes to repair. Last night, I unearthed the roll I couldn't find.
- Paying Bills on Time = No Late Fees: This one is a pretty obvious one, but how many times have you paid a late fee or overnighted a check or package because you couldn't get it together to mail it on time in the first place.
I cringe at the money I've wasted over the years, but we're moving onward and upward! When I finally cracked and asked the hubby for help, I told him anything we found and any effects of the clutter just couldn't matter. The important thing is to jump in and get started. Five boxes and a bag of trash later, I feel a lot lighter! There is still a very long way to go, but we're making progress and every little bit helps.
This article is part of our New Year, New Budget series. We are concentrating on New Year's resolutions and helping you find ways to tackle them inexpensively. This week focuses on the popular "Getting Organized" resolution.
originally published in 2010


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Q1. A (n) ______ appearing on a web page opens another document when clicked?
1. Anchor
3. Hyperlink
4. Reference
5. None of these
ANS (3)-Hyperlink
Q2. Which of the following refers to the rectangular area for displaying information and running programs?
1. Desktop
2. Dialog box
3. Menu
4. Window
5. None of these
ANS (1)-Desktop
Q3.Which of these is not a means of personal communication on the internet?
1. Chat
2. Instant messaging
3. Instanotes
4. Electronic mail
5. None of these
ANS (3)- Instanotes
Q4. Is the layer of a computer system between the hardware and the user program?
1. Operating environment
2. Operating system
3. System environment
4. Utility software
5. Spooler
ANS (2)-Operating system
Q5.The symbols used in an assembly language are?
1. Codes
2. Mnemonics
3. Assembler
4. All of the above
5. None of the above
ANS (2)-Mnemonics
Q6.The list of coded instructions is called?
1. Computer program
2. Algorithm
3. Flowchart
4. Utility programs
5. None of the above
ANS (1)-Computer program
Q7.A memory bus is mainly used for communication between?
1. Processor and memory
2. Processor and I/O devices
3. I/O devices and memory
4. Input device and output device
5. None of the above
ANS (1)-Processor and memory
Q8.What is the name of the computer terminal which gives paper printout?
1. Display screen
2. Soft copy terminal
3. Hard copy terminal
4. Plotter
5. None of the above
ANS (3)-Hard copy terminal
Q9.Which of the following is non-impact printer?
1. Drum printer
2. Line printer
3. Chain printer
4. Laser printer
5. None of the above
ANS (4)-Laser printer
Q10.Which of the following memories needs refresh?
4. All of the above
5. None of the above

subset: commoncrawl


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[Thomas Clauser] had his basement flood last year when a hurricane swept over New England. The problem with flooding or leaking water is that chances are you won't notice until it's too late. He decided to protect against this in the future by building his own leaking water detector. It's a simple device that sits on the floor of his basement and triggers an audio alarm if water begins to cover the floor.
He used an old smoke detector for the build; a nice choice since it's loud, and designed for long-term battery operation. It also has a button for testing if the detector is working. [Thomas] removed the PCB from the smoke detector case and soldered wires onto the test button contacts. He cut a sponge to squeeze it inside of a PVC pipe connector housing. That sits against the floor, with the wires for the test button contacts placed through the sponge. If water is soaked up by the sponge it completes the circuit and triggers the alarm.
A few other design features really make this a nice setup. He notched out the bottom of the PVC connector so that water can flow freely, and added a switch to one of the probe wires lets him kill the alarm when inspecting the damage.


text:
Photo: Mathias Nero
I wish I had more pictures of this summer house in Dalnarna, Sweden, it is so beautiful. The house is designed by architect Maria Masgård, as a gift for her father. What a lucky guy! Go get the latest issue of Swedish magazine Residence to read more about it!


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There's nothing quite like [Elliot]'s cherubic sense of wonder and maniacal laughter after he tests his fully automatic AA battery-launching air gun. That fires 600 rounds a minute. At 200 feet per second.
We need to take a minute and say [Elliot]'s gun is stupidly unsafe. He used PVC pipe to hold air pressure, so that may… explode one of these days. Also, the AA batteries coming out of the end of the barrel have the same kinetic energy as a .22 rifle bullet.
The mechanics of the gun is a simple blow forward bolt. When he pulls the trigger, the bolt – and battery – are forced forward due to air pressure. After the bolt has cleared a plug, air is allowed to flow through the bolt pushing the battery along with it. Once the pressure in the barrel is back down to normal, a spring forces the bolt back into place and the 23 round magazine loads another battery. Simple, really. [Elliot] posted some pics of his gun on the spudfiles.com forum.
The gun is accurate to about 100 yards. It's a very impressive piece of engineering for a bit of PVC pipe, but we don't feel the need to copy this one. Check out the videos after the break to see this thing in action.


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Allentown Garden Club of New Jersey
About Us
Upcoming Events
Past Events
Hidden Gardens Tour 2013
Hidden Gardens Tour 2015
Hidden Gardens Tour 2019
Contact Us
By Laws
Officers & Committee Chairs
Offices and Responsibilities
Member Logon
Mar 14, 2013 - Monthly Meeting: Woodworking Project
Our own Norm Abrams, Bob Cottrell and team Cottrell, are back for another great garden woodworking project. Bob will provide project instruction and the materials needed. So get your tools ready for another great project.


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The Rolling Chain of Events Behind Texas Blackouts
What happened yesterday to cause the rolling power blackouts across Texas?
State Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, in a phone call with the Tribune today, stressed that conclusions are still tentative but said a chain reaction of problems involving the state's coal and gas plants appeared to be the cause — and wind plants were having trouble, too. So far no blackouts have been ordered today.
Electricity demand spiked in Texas yesterday as the cold weather struck, setting a wintertime record for usage. Summer usage is higher, but winter also can bring strong demand because about two-thirds of Texas homes are heated with electricity.
Initially, it appears, some coal plants went offline due to cold-weather problems, taking a large chunk of electricity out of the grid. Luminant, a major power-generation company, confirmed that its two coal units at the Oak Grove plant in Robertson County failed, as did two units at a coal plant in Milam County. "We are in various stages of start-up and operation for that group," Allan Koenig, a Luminant spokesman, said via e-mail. Three of these four units only began operating in the last few years; Fraser, who chairs the Senate Committee on Natural Resources, noted that they had new emissions-control technologies, and said one question was how those technologies had handled the cold.
Dave Knox, a spokesman for NRG, another power company, said that a cold-weather problem also caused a shut-down of its Limestone coal plant near Jewitt, Texas. The problem occurred yesterday, albeit after the early-morning crisis, and the plant returned to operating early this morning.
Natural gas plants were hastily turned on to make up for the coal-plant failures. But, Fraser said, some power cuts affected some stations for compressing natural gas — so without power they couldn't pump gas, causing some gas power plants to go offline. In addition, rules regarding "curtailment" of natural gas — who gets first dibs on gas when gas supplies are tight — were last revised in 1972, Fraser said, leaving some power plants at risk of losing out on supplies. A large minority of Texans heat their homes with gas, in addition to the needs of the power plants, so there was extremely high demand for gas during the freezing weather.
"We didn't have enough available gas," Fraser said. An affidavit filed yesterday with the Railroad Commission by Trip Doggett, the head of the Eletric Reliability Council of Texas, the state's grid operator, said that "certain gas suppliers may be curtailing natural gas to electric utilities or electric generation customers." Koenig, of Luminant, confirmed that "one of our gas plants has been curtailed due natural gas supply restrictions."
Wind generators also appeared to be having problems, said Fraser; he had received reports of some turbines shutting down because of issues with ice on the blades. "The wind was blowing yesterday, but I'm not sure wind generation was available because they had problems with ice," he said. (At an Iberdrola wind farm near Corpus Christi that the Trib visited yesterday, most turbines were spinning steadily, in response to the grid operator's call for maximum production. But the plant's operator, Daniel Pitts, said that a few machines were having issues because the cold air had affected the nitrogen in the hydraulic system that helps run the turbines.) Dottie Roark, a spokeswoman for ERCOT, said that yesterday morning between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., about 3,500 to 4,000 megawatts of wind was available (the state has about 10,000 megawatts of wind installed).
Is the problem solved? "We think we're probably going to be okay today, and obviously it's going to warm up from there," said Fraser.
In the next couple of weeks, after the crisis passes, Fraser said he would call a hearing on the blackouts to figure out what happened and how to fix it. He noted that there were "a lot of unusual circumstances" to this storm, and that while Texas was well-prepared for spiking electricity usage in the summer, "to my knowledge we've never been tested for an event during the winter." But it's clearly imperative to fix the system, he said. The Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT, met this morning and is also investigating the cause of the power-plant problems, spokesman Terry Hadley said.
ERCOT said this morning that 3,000 megawatts — the equivalent of nearly twice the output of the Oak Grove coal plant — remained offline this morning. But Roark, the ERCOT spokeswoman, said that the grid operator was unable to say which plants remained offline today "because this is considered protected information under market rules in a competitive market."
Texas Tribune donors or members may be quoted or mentioned in our stories, or may be the subject of them. For a complete list of contributors, click here.
Information about the authors
Learn about The Texas Tribune's policies, including our partnership with The Trust Project to increase transparency in news.


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The theory runs that the Black Death transformed medieval society. With a dramatic shortage of labour, the English peasant was able to demand whatever wages and terms they wanted – liberating the English from serfdom. Is this true? And what other impacts did the Black Death have on the medieval mind?
108 What has the Black Death ever done for you
Population in Europe
The only thing we can be sure of when looking at medieval population is that no one knows the answer. But the table here gives a rough range form the estimates I've been able to find. As you can see, England is a tiddler.
The Stature of Labourers, 1351
Medieval England was a structured and traditional society that valued stability far more than change. The statute was the barefaced attempt by the powers that be to keep everythiung exactly as it was. Here's the text of most of the Statute.
Whereas late against the malice of servants, which were idle, and not willing to serve after the pestilence, without taking excessive wages, it was ordained by our lord the king, and by the assent of the prelates, nobles, and other of his council, that such manner of servants, as well men as women, should be bound to serve, receiving salary and wages, accustomed in places where they ought to serve in the twentieth year of the reign of the king that now is, or five or six years before; and that the same servants refusing to serve in such manner should be punished by imprisonment of their bodies, as in the said statute is more plainly contained: whereupon commissions were made to divers people in every county to inquire and punish all them which offend against the same: and now forasmuch as it is given the king to understand in this present parliament, by the petition of the commonalty, that the said servants having no regard to the said ordinance, but to their ease and singular covetise, do withdraw themselves to serve great men and other, unless they have livery and wages to the double or treble of that they were wont to take the said twentieth year, and before, to the great damage of the great men, and impoverishing of all the said commonalty, whereof the said commonalty prayeth remedy: wherefore in the said parliament, by the assent of the said prelates, earls, barons, and other great men, and of the same commonalty there assembled, to refrain the malice of the said servants, be ordained and established the things underwritten:
First, that carters, ploughmen, drivers of the plough, shepherds, swineherds, deies [dairy maids], and all other servants, shall take liveries and wages, accustomed the said twentieth year, or four years before; so that in the country where wheat was wont to be given, they shall take for the bushel ten pence, or wheat at the will of the giver, till it be otherwise ordained. And that they be allowed to serve by a whole year, or by other usual terms, and not by the day; and that none pay in the time of sarcling [hoeing] or hay-making but a penny the day; and a mower of meadows for the acre five pence, or by the day five pence; and reapers of corn in the first week of August two pence, and the second three pence, and so till the end of August, and less in the country where less was wont to be given, without meat or drink, or other courtesy to be demanded, given, or taken; and that such workmen bring openly in their hands to the merchant-towns their instruments, and there shall be hired in a common place and not privy.
Item, that none take for the threshing of a quarter of wheat or rye over 2 d. ob. [2 1/2 d.] and the quarter of barley, beans, pease, and oats, 1 d. ob. if so much were wont to be given; and in the country where it is used to reap tby certain sheaves, and to thresh by certain bushels, they shall take no more nor in other manner than was wont the said twentieth year and before; and that the same servants be sworn two times in the year before lords, stewards, bailiffs, and constables of every town, to hold and do these ordinances; and that none of them go out of the town, where he dwelleth in the winter, to serve the summer, if he may serve in the same town, taking as before is said. Saving that the people of the counties of Stafford, Lancaster and Derby, and people of Craven, and of the marches of Wales and Scotland, and other places, may come in time of August, and labor in other counties, and safely return, as they were wont to do before this time: and that those, which refuse to take such oath or to perform that that they be sworn to, or have taken upon them, shall be put in the stocks by the said lords, stewards, bailiffs, and constables of the towns by three days or more, or sent to the next gaol, there to remain, till they will justify themselves. And that stocks be made in every town for such occasion betwixt this and the feast of Pentecost.
Item, that carpenters, masons, and tilers, and other workmen of houses, shall not take by the day for their work, but in manner as they were wont, that is to say: a master carpenter 3 d. and another 2 d.; and master free-stone mason 4 d. and other masons 3 d. and their servants 1 d. ob.; tilers 3 d. and their knaves 1 d. ob.; and other coverers of fern and straw 3 d. and their knaves 1 d. ob.; plasterers and other workers of mudwalls, and their knaves, by the same manner, without meat or drink, 1 s. from Easter to Saint Michael; and from that time less, according to the rate and discretion of the justices, which should be thereto assigned: and that they that make carriage by land or by water, shall take no more for such carriage to be made, than they were wont the said twentieth year, and four years before.
Item, that cordwainers and shoemakers shall not sell boots nor shoes, nor none other thing touching their mystery, in any other manner than they were wont the said twentieth year: item, that goldsmiths, saddlers, horsemsiths, spurriers, tanners, curriers, tawers of leather, tailors, and other workmen, artificers, and laborers, and all other servants here not specified, shall be sworn before the justices, to do and use their crafts and offices in the manner they were wont to do the said twentieth year, and in time before, without refusing the same because of this ordinance; and if any of the said servants, laborers, workmen, or artificers, after such oath made, come against this ordinance, he shall be punished by fine and ransom, and imprisonment after the discretion of the justices.
Item, that the said stewards, bailiffs, and constables of the said towns, be sworn before the same justices, to inquire diligently by all the good ways they may, of all them that come against this ordinance, and to certify the same justices of their names at all times, when they shall come into the country to make their sessions; so that the same justices on certificate of the same stewards, bailiffs, and constables, of the names of the rebels, shall do them to be attached by their body, to be before the said justices, to answer of such contempts, so that they make fine and ransom to the king, in case they be attainted; and moreover to be commanded to prison, there to remain till they have found surety, to serve, and take, and do their work, and to sell things vendible in the manner aforesaid; and in case that any of them come against his oath, and be thereof attainted, he shall have imprisonment of forty days; and if he be another time convict, he shall have imprisonment of a quarter of a year, so that at every time that he offendeth and is convict, he shall have double pain: and that the same justices, at every time that they come [into the country], shall inquire of the said stewards, bailiffs, and constables, if they have made a good and lawful certificate, or any conceal for gift, procurement, or affinity, and punish them by fine and ransom, if they be found guilty: and that the same justices have power to inquire and make due punishment of the said ministers, laborers, workmen, and other servants; and also of hostelers, harbergers [those who provide lodging], and of those that sell victual by retail, or other things here not specified, as well at the suit of the party, as by presentment, and to hear and determine, and put the things in execution by the exigend after the first capias, if need be, and to depute other under them, as many and such as they shall see best for the keeping of the same ordinance; and that they which will sue against such servants, workmen, laborers, [and artificers], for excess taken of them and they be thereof attainted at their suit, they shall have again such excess. And in case that none will sue, to have again such excess, then it shall be levied of the said servants, laborers, workmen, and artificers, and delivered to the collectors of the Quintzime [the tax known as the "Fifteenth"], in alleviation of the towns where such excesses were taken.
This text was taken from:
Fordham university, Medieval sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/seth/statute-labourers.asp
White, Albert Beebe and Wallace Notestein, eds. Source Problems in English History. New York: Harper and Brother Publishers, 1915.


text:
Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.
'The Scarlet Pimpernel' was a 3 part BBC 1 drama starring Richard E Grant in the title role. It was transmitted in January 1999. Elizabeth McGovern played Grant's character's wife, with Martin Shaw as Chauvelin, the head of the revolutionary French police, and the Scarlet Pimpernel's chief adversary. It also featured Christopher Fairbank, Anthony Green, Ronan Vibert, Emilia Fox, Denise Black, Gerard Murphy, James Callis, Peter Jeffrey, Suzanne Bertish and Jerome Willis.
The director was Patrick Lau; with producer, Julian Murphy.
The production was a co-production between BBC Birmingham and London Film Productions, and the Arts and Entertainment Network.
Thanks to John Greening for making the publicity card available.


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TechRadar Verdict
- +
An assured all-rounder
- +
Works well with any music
- -
Can sound a little stressed with very treble-rich material
Why you can trust TechRadar
Back in the eighties, when analogue was still the default source for the majority of music-lovers, Audio-Technica was one of the most common names to be found at the business-end of a tonearm, and the AT-F3 was a frequent choice for budget-to-midrange systems.
Now, a couple of revisions later and with a rather higher price (though not by much more than inflation), here it is again.
It's a moving-coil design with an output typical of the breed at 0.35mV, just in the middle of the range and well within the comfort zone of practically any MC-compatible phono stage.
The stylus is a straightforward elliptical type, fitted to a hollow aluminium cantilever. Compliance is quite high, matched well to the low mass, assuming a low-mass arm is used.
Distant memories suggest this used to be a lively cartridge, but not always a very subtle one, so it is good to be able to report an improvement in the latter area. It still doesn't have quite the insight of a true high-ender (none of the four in this group does, unsurprisingly), but its detail and clean treble make it a good performer both with lively and with laid-back sounds.
It does a very good job of separating out the performers in a group, but without losing the sense of ensemble. It's also (still) lively, though not excessively so and we found its tastes best flattered by classical, jazz and other acoustically recorded styles.
Just occasionally it can seem a little over-full in the low bass, but that's a minor sin and an easy one to live with.
Follow TechRadar Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/techradarreview


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Free New Hampshire Indemnity Agreements Legal Forms
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- Indemnity Agreements
- This Indemnity Agreement allows one party to protect another party against any future claims or other losses.
- Demand For Contribution Or Indemnity Form
- This letter allows one party to notify another that the duties outlined in the pre-existing agreement have been fulfilled, and that it is time for the contribution or indemnity obligations and subsequent payment.
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We're very happy at TTW to be hosting The Young Librarian Series. Check out the video interview between Series Founder Leah (the Librarian) White and Justin Hoenke, Teen Librarian at the Cape May County Library.
Also, here's Leah's introductory video that introduces her project:
The Young Librarian Series #1 from leah white on Vimeo.
Please check out the site!


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SACRAMENTO, Cal. (June 25, 2013) – Today, the California State Senate Public Safety Committee gave a unanimous "Do-Pass" approval to a bill which starts the process of stopping "Indefinite Detention" under the NDAA and other so-called federal "laws." The bill, authored by Republican Assemblymember Tim Donnelly was previously passed by the State Assembly by a vote of 71-1. It is is expected to get a vote in the Senate appropriations committee next, which is the final stop before a vote in the state senate. If it passes both, it'll go on to the Governor's desk for a signature.
California residents are strongly encourage to contact their state senator immediately to request a YES vote on AB351. (contact info here)
If passed into law, AB351 would make it state policy to reject "indefinite detention" powers from the federal government. It reads, in part:
It is the policy of this state to refuse to provide material support for or to participate in any way with the implementation within this state of any federal law that purports to authorize indefinite detention of a person within California. [emphasis added]
This language of AB351 goes far beyond what has been considered in most other states, which focus solely on indefinite detention powers under the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and nothing else. Donnelly's legislation broadens the scope by recognizing that indefinite detention should not be complied with no matter what federal law is used to justify it. Donnelly confirmed this broad scope, "AB351 will prevent California from implementing indefinite detention for any reason."
This would make a HUGE dent in any federal effort to detain without due process in California. As Judge Andrew Napolitano has said recently, such widespread noncompliance can make a federal law "nearly impossible to enforce" (video here). Quite simply, the federal government is going to have an extremely difficult time – at best – carrying out indefinite detention in California without the assistance of California.
1. Contact your state senator. California residents are strongly encouraged to contact their state senators immediately to request support for AB351. (contact info here)
2. Share this information widely. Please pass this along to your friends and family. Also share it with any and all grassroots groups you're in contact with around the state. Please encourage them to email this information to their members and supporters.
3. Join the NDAA activist group on Facebook. Connect with others, plan strategy, build a coalition, and help get AB351 passed!
Some opponents of the legislation claim that the US Constitution's "supremacy clause" prevents the state from taking this action. But this is a complete misunderstanding, not only of the supremacy clause, but of AB351 as well. There is absolutely ZERO serious dispute about the fact that the federal government cannot "commandeer" the states to carry out its laws. None. Even the Supreme Court has affirmed this multiple times.
In the 1992 case, New York v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress couldn't require states to enact specified waste disposal regulations.
In the 1997 case, Printz v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not command state law enforcement authorities to conduct background checks on prospective handgun purchasers.
In the 2012 case, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court ruled that a significant expansion of Medicaid was not a valid exercise of Congress's spending power, as it would coerce states to either accept the expansion or risk losing existing Medicaid funding.
In each of these cases, the Supreme Court made is quite clear that their opinion is that the federal government cannot require the states to act, or even coerce them to act through a threat to lose funding. Their opinion is correct. If the feds pass a law, they can sure try to enforce it if they want. But the states absolutely do not have to help them in any way.
The bill stops short of an express prohibition on all government agencies and employees within the state, but creates a powerful climate for follow up activity and legislation on a local level to give AB351 the legal force it needs to have a practical impact moving forward. The prohibitory language of the bill reads:
no agency of the State of California, no political subdivision of this state, no employee of an agency, or a political subdivision, of this state acting in his or her official capacity, and no member of the California National Guard on official state duty shall knowingly aid an agency of the Armed Forces of the United States in any investigation, prosecution, or detention of a person within California pursuant to (A) Sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA), (B) the federal law known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40), enacted in 2001, or (C) any other federal law, if the state agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the California National Guard would violate the United States Constitution, the California Constitution, or any law of this state by providing that aid.
By including a caveat at the end of this section – if the state agency, political subdivision, employee… – the bill is not an express prohibition on all agencies, political subdivisions, and employees, including the California National Guard. Rather, since no official determination has been made on such constitutionality as of yet, it leaves Constitutionality to discretion. But, the bill does create a legal backing to those sheriffs, law enforcement officers, and other agencies and employees, to refuse to assist the federal government in such activities based on their own constitutional determination. As Sheriff Richard Mack has been teaching around the country for years now, this is what should be done all the time already. (visit the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association for more information)
If passed into law, AB351 would also create a climate for each local community in the state – counties, cities, towns, etc – to step up and get involved. Once passed, activists would be encouraged to press their local governments to pass legally-binding ordinances to give the new state law additional force. The local legislation would do the following:
a) Express full support for the new state policy to "refuse to provide material support for or to participate in any way with the implementation within this state of any federal law that purports to authorize indefinite detention of a person within California."
b) Create an express prohibition on the use of any local government assets – funds, employees, and the like – to provide material support for or participate in any way with federal indefinite detention.
Once the state is blanketed with localities which have passed such measures, the practical effect would be even stronger than if AB351 had ordered them to do the same. Reaching this point would mean that support for the effort would be well into the mainstream around the state, and that resolve to ensure the resistance continues to victory is likely much stronger.
A number of local communities around the state, including Fairfax, San Francisco and Berkeley, have already moved in this direction by passing resolutions in opposition to NDAA indefinite detention. While activists would still be encouraged to take this path if AB351 fails, passage of the bill with its very specific policy intent will make accomplishing these local goals much less difficult.
If you live anywhere outside of California, please contact your own legislators regarding anti-NDAA legislation. If none has been introduced in your state or local community, you can email them The Liberty Preservation Act model legislation.
You can track the status of NDAA nullification in states around the country HERE.
- Understanding Texas Second Amendment "Sanctuary" Bills - May 4, 2021
- Federal Reserve's Latest Bailouts More Proof Bad Times Ahead - October 9, 2019
- Bill Dudley's Noble Lie: The Federal Reserve has Always been Political - September 10, 2019


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Tag: Wolverine
Born with super-human senses and the power to heal from almost any wound, Wolverine was captured by a secret Canadian organization and given an unbreakable skeleton and claws. Treated like an animal, it took years for him to control himself. Now, he's a premiere member of both the X-Men and the Avengers.


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Detox Facial
- 1 hr 15 min1 h 15 min
- 120 US dollars$120
- East Silverado Ranch Boulevard
Service Description
The Detoxifying Clay Mask and Detoxing Facial Massage is made to bring impurities to the surface. Once your treatment masque is finished, extractions will take place. Ending with a moisturizing mask to leave your skin supple and soft.
Cancellation Policy
ARRIVAL Please aim to arrive 5 minutes before your scheduled appointment time if you are a new client to fill out paperwork. If your paperwork isn't 100% filled out or signed, we will not be able to provide you with your scheduled service and will result in a cancellation fee. If you're an existing client, please arrive on time to your scheduled appointment. If you arrive after your scheduled appointment time for a service other than Sugaring Hair Removal or Custom Airbrush Tan, it may not be possible to extend the time available for your booked service; if your service is shortened due to your late arrival, you will still be charged the full cost of the service. If you schedule a Sugaring Hair Removal or Custom Airbrush Tan service and you are 5 minutes late to an appointment lasting 20 minutes or less OR 10 minutes late to a service lasting 30 minutes or longer, your appointment will be cancelled and will be charged half the service(s) regular price. CHANGING YOUR APPOINTMENT A minimum of 24 hours notice is required to reschedule/cancel a booked appointment without penalty. SICKNESS OR FAMILY EMERGENCY If you, or another person in your household, has an infectious or contagious illness, please contact us as soon as possible to reschedule your appointment for a later date. For your safety and that of staff and other clients, please do not come to your appointments sick. If it is assumed you are currently sick, your appointment may be cut short or cancelled and rescheduled for when you are healthy again. A one-time allowance of last-minute cancellation or reschedule will be permitted for sickness or family emergency ONLY! After that, the cancellation policy is in effect. If your appointment was a "no-show/no-call" you will be required to still pay the penalty. CANCELLATION + NO SHOW As a courtesy, appointment reminders are sent out 48 hours and 24 hours by text and email. If an appointment is cancelled or rescheduled within 24 hours of your appointment or results in a no-show you will be charged 50% of your service(s) as a cancellation fee. A credit card for all clients will be required at the time of booking. This is to protect your time that is set aside especially for you, as well as to protect our time which books up quickly. In turn, we promise to keep appointments on time, give you our full and undivided attention! REFUND POLICY You are paying for service providers time, product and other expenses used to provide you with a service. No refunds will be given for any reason on services or products. If you are unhappy with a service, you may contact us within 72 hours of your appointment to discuss your concerns and if a fix can be done to address your concerns, it will be done so if it is at the fault of application or product. Any concerns addressed after 72 hours of your last appointment, or if you failed to follow the proper aftercare instructions, will be charged at full price for the service. When purchasing online specials for services and/or E-gift cards, all sales will be final! If you choose to no longer want the "special" you purchased at that time, the discounted special price paid will be applied to your account and be used to other services. REGULAR SERVICE VS. VIP SERVICE , DISCOUNTS & PRICES VIP services are a discounted service when you rebook with your service provider when checking out at your appointment. If you did not rebook at the time of your last appointment, the price will not be honored and at your next appointment and will go to the regular service price. The VIP service must be rebooked for the following month of your last appointment, if it goes out of that following month the VIP price will not be honored and you will owe the regular price. If you rebook your VIP service and you cancel or reschedule less than 24 hours and/or no-show to your appointment your rebooking VIP price will not be honored at the following appointment even if it's still in the following month of your last service. Discounts; one monthly discount, check in and/or coupon may be used in a 24 hour window per client. Prices are subject to change anytime without notice. BALANCE OWED ON ACCOUNT From January 1st of each new year to the last day of the twelve-month calendar year December 31st; If you have an outstanding balance on your account (unpaid cancellation fees, unpaid no-show fees, unpaid rescheduling fees, or not paying your full amount due at the end of your service(s). We will send an invoice on the 1st of December each year to the E-mail you provided us with. Failure to provide us with the correct E-mail will still have you held reliable for your amount owed to Sugar Me Clean Beauty Lounge. If the payment is not received by the last day in December, December 31st, your invoice will then be sent off to a Debt Collector.
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Photo: Global XThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission.
The first American responses to the triple calamity in Japan were deeply empathetic and then, as news of the Fukushima nuclear complex's leaking radiation spread, a lot of people began to freak out about their own safety, and pretty soon you couldn't find potassium iodide pills anywhere in San Francisco. You couldn't even — so a friend tells me — find them in Brooklyn.
The catastrophes were in Japan and remain that country's tragedy, so we need to keep our own anxieties in check. Or harness them to make constructive changes in preparation for our own future disasters (without losing our compassion for those killed, orphaned, widowed, displaced — and contaminated — in northeastern Japan). But the weeks after the disaster have seen a deluge of bad information and free-floating fear in this country.
Bogus maps of radiation clouds heading our way began circulating, along with a lot of junk science, and all kinds of overwrought fears. Crackpots and quacks in internet postings, as well as a popular science writer in Newsweek magazine, predicted imminent earthquakes in California, with no grounds whatsoever, or with distorted scientific data. Too many of us combined a reasonable distrust of the authorities with a poor understanding of the science and the situation, starting with the fact that Japan is really, really far away from California, let alone Park Slope.
The great Sendai earthquake of March 10 should, however, teach us that the unexpected does happen, and there's no time to prepare for it — except beforehand. And what you do beforehand matters immensely. Japan was both impressively prepared and shockingly unprepared.
The country was indeed ready for a major earthquake, even a massive not once-in-a-century but once-in-a-millennium monster. Their earthquake drills and building codes are superb and — as far as I can tell (reporting has been anything but clear on this) — the temblor itself did remarkably little structural damage.
The country was far less prepared for a tsunami that would breach every protective sea wall and obliterate huge swaths of coastal habitat, even though sirens and evacuation plans went into effect almost instantly. It was even less prepared for the nuclear reactor disaster that quickly overshadowed everything else.
What not to bring
I live in earthquake country, so I've been told most of my life that I must have an earthquake kit. Almost anyone anywhere would benefit from having an emergency kit on hand: the usual flashlight, blanket, coins for pay phones (cell phones and cell-phone service die quick in disaster), small bills, portable water, and so forth. To really deal with an emergency, though, you not only need to pack, but to unpack.
Think of your mind as your most fundamental and important emergency kit. You have a great deal of what you'll need to survive there already, but if you're not careful, a lot of junk will end up piled on top of your excellent equipment. Lift up that big television of yours, for example, and gently lob it out the window. It will fill your head with hysteria, presuppositions, misinterpretations, stereotypes, exaggerations, and racial slurs that will leave you ill-prepared for what to expect when your world is turned upside down.
Be careful with newspapers, online media, and those emails your anxious friends forward to you. Watch out for experts who aren't (or who have an unspoken agenda), for authorities who lie and withhold crucial information, for hysterics, and those who fill in the blanks of disasters past, present, and future with invented scenarios. Be clear that a lot of the worst-case scenarios are just that, not breaking news (though what happened in Japan was and continues to be pretty horrendous).
A disaster is a big foray into the unknown and into uncertainty. We hate those things. We like to know what's going to happen. Even in our own quiet everyday lives, we like to fill in the blanks. The media feeds this urge during crises with a lot of speculation and a stream of stereotypes. After all, it's their job to know, and yet a disaster means a million unexpected things are going on all at once amid severely disrupted communications networks, which often means that they don't know either, that no one does.
Throw these words out right away
So start this way. Open up that disaster kit in your mind and throw out two words that cause so much unnecessary confusion and damage in a calamity: panic and looting.
Immediately after the earthquake, I saw a video of a group of Japanese in a wildly shaking office with a British-accented voiceover calling what they were doing panic. They were indeed moving rapidly and in all directions, but they were taking shelter, stabilizing objects that were falling off shelves, and generally doing just what people should do in such situations. The New York Daily News ran a headline several inches high that just read "Panic!" Maybe they were describing themselves.
The media likes to call any rapid movement panic, even when it's the wisest possible thing to do. When the World Trade Towers were collapsing in New York, the right thing to do was run — and most everyone did. That's not panic. That day, "panicked" people also carried a quadriplegic accountant down 69 flights of stairs, slowed down to keep pace with their coworkers, got all the kids safely out of their nearby schools, and helped the fallen to their feet. More than 60 years of disaster research makes it clear that, despite what you think you know, ordinary people generally don't panic in emergencies. So throw that out.
After both Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the word "looting" was used to justify shooting people down in the streets — the death penalty, that is, without benefit of trial — for what in ordinary times might otherwise be called "petty theft." In extraordinary times, when the electricity goes, and there are no functioning bank machines, credit cards, or banks, and in many places no shopkeepers, you may need to acquire the goods that sustain life by taking them, often from wrecked or abandoned stores. The alternative is hunger, thirst, cold, and misery. To me, that's not even theft. What we saw a lot of in Japan was people lining up to buy things in not-so-wrecked places where shopkeepers were actually still doing business.
Lots of reverse-stereotype articles have appeared about how Japanese don't loot. In fact, there are accounts of Japanese citizens taking things without benefit of purchase, but since they're not black, no one gets all that excited about it. Also there have been accounts of people getting really angry while waiting in line. I also saw a photograph of a guy siphoning gas from a minivan tipped up in some wreckage. Was it his? Who cares?
In crises, for some authorities, the media, and many outside observers, civilization tends to consist mainly of property relations, and so they pay more attention to whether someone's taking crackers than whether a grandmother is dying in the wreckage (while law enforcement goes after the cracker-taker). Throw that out. It's sludge in your mind. It causes needless deaths — both of those who get shot as "looters" and those in dire need who get neglected while property is protected. So far, this hasn't happened (as far as I can tell) in Japan, but it did happen in Port-au-Prince, New Orleans, and earthquake-wrecked San Francisco in 1906, and it might well happen when big earthquakes hit the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Seattle — as they one day will.
The idea that all Japanese are selflessly dutiful might be undermined by the story of the hospital near the Fukushima reactors where 128 elderly people were simply abandoned. "Most of them were comatose and 14 died shortly afterwards," the Guardian reported. Of course, six miles from that hospital were the "Fukushima 50" — the nuclear workers risking their lives to try to keep conditions at the plant from getting worse. What they are undergoing and what it will do to them we don't know yet. There is so much we don't know yet.
Other racial stereotypes suggested that Japanese are quiet and obedient and that this is a good thing — though one must now hope that they will be neither and demand a major transformation of the private corporations and public institutions that allowed their nuclear nightmare to unfold as it did. Which is to say that, like human beings everywhere, the Japanese vary, and no blanket statements fully cover them. For your future emergency, pack a real blanket or sleeping bag, but don't pack the usual set of clichés.
The human nature business
In a disaster, you will want to bring your identity, so we are often instructed, meaning some government-issued form of identification. But you will also want to bring a deeper identity, a sense of who you are and who we are. This matters greatly, because disaster tests our nature, even as it requires us to cooperate with those who are in it with us.
The usual emphasis on "panic" in disasters implies that, in a crisis, we're all sheep wheeling around idiotically, incapable of making good decisions, and selfishly trampling those around us. The emphasis on looting implies that, in a crisis, we're all wolves, taking ruthless advantage of and preying on each other. Both presume that during a disaster social bonds will break. In fact, as the records of disaster after disaster show, mostly they don't. In fact, those who study the subject (and reams of testimony by those who have lived through it) confirm that, in catastrophe, most of us behave remarkably beautifully, exhibiting presence of mind, altruism, generosity, bravery, and creativity.
Most of us.
Who, then, does it serve to imagine that we are wolves and sheep, fools and savages? Lee Clarke, a disaster sociologist and professor at Rutgers, wrote after Hurricane Katrina, "Disaster myths are not politically neutral, but rather work systematically to the advantage of elites. Elites cling to the panic myth because to acknowledge the truth of the situation would lead to very different policy prescriptions than the ones currently in vogue." That is to say, if we are wolves and sheep, and so not to be trusted, then they are the shepherds and the wolf-killers.
They want the right to police us, to boss us around, and to lie to us in a disaster (and the rest of the time, too, actually). They lie to us on the grounds that we will panic if we know the truth — and so they withheld critical information when Three Mile Island nearly melted down in 1979, when Chernobyl did melt down in 1985, when the pit where the World Trade Towers had been spewed toxic smoke for months in 2001, when a mass murderer was loose on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007, when the reactors in Fukushima started venting radiation into the surrounding environment. The media often repeats these lies and regularly fails to question authority even though the track record of lying in disasters is clear.
Officials in the U.S. lied in this disaster, too. The amounts of radiation that have reached these shores apparently are, as they have claimed, so minor as to be insignificant in a world already full of toxins and carcinogens, but they also suggested that much higher levels would be safe. Which is a lie. As is the idea that nuclear power is safe.
Authoritarian technology
In some respects the authorities here and in Japan have been completely crazy, not just in the aftermath of this disaster but every day since the dawn of the "peaceful atom" era of the nuclear age. Nuclear power is essentially an elaborate and unlikely way to boil water to turn turbines to create electricity. Its makers must mine, refine, and consolidate huge amounts of one of the deadliest materials on earth, uranium-235 (the less than 1 percent of naturally occurring uranium with 235 electrons; the leftover 99 percent, the less radioactive but nevertheless deadly U-238, becomes nuclear waste in the process). U-235 and the plutonium created from it are dangerous at every stage of the process. In addition, constructing a power plant requires a huge amount of carbon-spewing conventional energy, so there's never been a lot of logic to building them to bridge our move to renewable energy.
The delusional premise behind nuclear energy is that we can create this material and then contain it for the duration of its dangerous phase. For plutonium, that's 24,000 years, or about 15 times as long as something called civilization has existed. For uranium-235, that's 700 million years, a time so vast it's basically forever.
Fifty years into the nuclear age, we've had four major reactor accidents, along with a host of minor ones and leaks and ventings, and we still don't know what to do with the nuclear waste that plants like the ones at Fukushima produce even when no accidents occur. This is the "spent fuel" that the U-235 quickly becomes. It's still intensely radioactive and toxic; it's only "spent" in the sense that it's no longer useful for boiling water in reactors. It's still useful for bombs, dirty or otherwise.
There are better ways to boil water.
The Guardian reports: "The power plant at the center of the biggest civilian nuclear crisis in Japan's history contained far more spent fuel rods than it was designed to store, while its technicians repeatedly failed to carry out mandatory safety checks, according to documents from the reactor's operator."
This news suggests incompetence and untrustworthiness, but most U.S. nuclear power plants also have an overabundance of spent fuel rods in cooling ponds onsite. That's because the only plans for long-term storage of some of the more than 70,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste American nuclear reactors have produced, now heating those ponds, were also crazy. If there's one good, long-term reason to love Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Barack Obama, it's that they put a stop to a plan to dump some of the stuff in seismically, hydrologically, and volcanically active Yucca Mountain, Nev., a couple of years ago. Of course if the Republicans have their way, the dump will lurch back from the dead.
Further preparations
So in a disaster, unload the usual clichés and stereotypes. Do your best not to fill up the unknown with fantasy or fear. Don't assume the worst or the best, but keep an alert mind on the actual as it unfolds. Don't take scenarios for realities. Be prepared to reevaluate and change your plans again and again.
Which is to say that disaster is like everyday life, only more so.
Don't bring a lot of fear of the neighbors: if you're not rescuing them, they might be rescuing you, and afterward you may very well be building a community kitchen together in the ruins. In San Francisco, we have a website called 72hours.org, which acknowledges that you're likely to be on your own in a major disaster. There just aren't enough rescue personnel, firefighters, and so forth to respond on the scale such a disaster requires. So help yourself and the people around you.
In preparation, investigate local dangers, whether a refinery, a freight rail line on which toxics roll by, that big earthquake slated to hit New York, a floodplain, or a forest fire, and figure out what to do if the worst happens, since Japan reminds us that sometimes it does. And maybe you can even train your authorities not to panic in disaster and not to treat the rest of us like so many sheep and wolves. Try to ensure that they won't regard a major disaster as a major occasion for law enforcement rather than a time when civil society should pull together. Make sure they won't demonize or victimize the most needy in a crisis, as nonwhite people, undocumented immigrants, the poor, and the left-behind have been many times before.
Get a battery-powered, or better yet, hand-cranked radio and decide which media outlets you trust. Then sift through the news with care, because ordinarily useful news sources, too, fall prey to fear-amplifying rumor and government cover-ups and lies in a crisis. The left-wing media is no exception: I heard a fair amount of nutty nuclear stuff last week.
Learn some science about radiation, especially if you live near a nuclear power plant. And keep in mind that it's better to evacuate unnecessarily than undergo contamination unnecessarily. Don't forget to take Great-Aunt Helen. The triple disaster in Japan has offered countless reminders of just how vulnerable the elderly can be in an emergency.
If you want to do more, look into hazard reduction. This can mean learning how to turn off the gas lines in your home, or preventing a new nuclear power plant from being built in your neighborhood or on your planet. It can mean acknowledging that climate change is bringing us a superabundance of disasters — droughts, floods, heat waves, fires, rising seas, and more — and that we need to be better prepared than ever for calamity, even as we work to minimize the causes of climate change and its impacts.
And keep in mind that disasters start suddenly and end slowly. Some predict it will be five years before Japan recovers from the Sendai quake followed by tsunami followed by nuclear crisis. Remember as well that disasters often lead to permanent change. In that sense they're never over.
The U.S. was permanently changed by 9/11 and Katrina; Ukraine by Chernobyl — or maybe it would be more accurate to say the whole world by Chernobyl. In 2006, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev himself said, "The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month … was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later."
In the wake of its present disaster, Japan may already be changing, and that may not be a bad thing. In its wake, the future of nuclear power may change, and that might be a very good thing. One thing we know now: we don't know yet.


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A North Korean ship carrying weapons system parts buried under sacks of sugar was seized as it tried to cross the Panama Canal on its way from Cuba to its home country, which is barred by United Nations sanctions from importing sophisticated weapons or missiles, Panamanian officials said Tuesday.
The ship appeared to be transporting a radar-control system for a Soviet-era surface-to-air missile system, according to a private defense analysis firm that examined a photograph of the find.
Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli said the ship identified as the 14,000-ton Chong Chon Gang was carrying missiles and other arms ``hidden in containers underneath the cargo of sugar.''
Martinelli tweeted a photo showing a green tube that appears to be a horizontal antenna for the SNR-75 ``Fan Song'' radar, which used to guide missiles fired by the SA-2 air-defense system found in former Warsaw Pact and Soviet-allied nations, said Neil Ashdown, an analyst for IHS Jane's Intelligence.
``It is possible that this could be being sent to North Korea to update its high-altitude air-defense capabilities,'' Ashdown said.
One container buried under sugar sacks contained radar equipment that appears to be designed for use with air-to-air or surface-to-air missiles, said Belsio Gonzalez, director of Panama's National Aeronautics and Ocean Administration. He said Panamanian authorities expected to find the missiles themselves in containers that must still be searched. An Associated Press journalist who gained access to the rusting ship saw green shipping containers that had been covered by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of white sacks marked ``Cuban Raw Sugar.''
The U.N. Security Council has imposed four rounds of increasingly tougher sanctions against North Korea since its first nuclear test on Oct. 9, 2006.
Under current sanctions, all U.N. member states are prohibited from directly or indirectly supplying, selling or transferring all arms, missiles or missile systems and the equipment and technology to make them to North Korea, with the exception of small arms and light weapons.
The most recent resolution, approved in March after Pyongyang's latest nuclear test, authorizes all countries to inspect cargo in or transiting through their territory that originated in North Korea, or is destined to North Korea if a state has credible information the cargo could violate Security Council resolutions.
``Panama obviously has an important responsibility to ensure that the Panama Canal is utilized for safe and legal commerce,'' said Acting U.S. Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo, who is the current Security Council president. ``Shipments of arms or related material to or from Korea would violate Security Council resolutions, three of them as a matter of fact.''
Panamanian authorities believe the ship was returning from Havana on its way to North Korea, Panamanian Public Security Minister Jose Raul Mulino told The Associated Press. Based on unspecified intelligence, authorities suspected it could be carrying contraband and tried to communicate with the crew, who didn't respond. Martinelli said Panama originally suspected drugs could be aboard.
The 35 North Koreans on the boat were arrested after resisting police efforts to intercept the ship in Panamanian waters on Thursday as it moved toward the canal and take it to the Caribbean port of Manzanillo, Martinelli told private RPC radio station. The captain had a heart attack and also tried to commit suicide during the operation, Martinelli said.
Panamanian officials were finally able to board the ship to begin searching it Monday, pulling out hundreds of sacks of sugar.
The illicit cargo ``seems to be a type of missile, of rocket. Next to them there's another container that appears to have a type of control system,'' said Luis Eduardo Camacho, a spokesman for Martinelli. He said authorities had only searched one of the ship's five container sections, and the inspection of all the cargo will take at least a week. Panama has requested help from United Nations inspectors, along with Colombia and the UK, said Javier Carballo, the country's top narcotics prosecutor.
``Panama being a neutral country, a country in peace, that doesn't like war, we feel very worried about this military material,'' Martinelli said.
The governments of North Korea and Cuba made no public comment on the case.
In early July, a top North Korean general, Kim Kyok Sik, visited Cuba and met with his island counterparts. Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma said he was also received by President Raul Castro, and the two had an ``exchange about the historical ties that unite the two nations and the common will to continue strengthening them.''
The meetings were held behind closed doors, and there has been no detailed account of their discussions.
``After this incident there should be renewed focus on North Korean-Cuban links,'' said Hugh Griffiths, an arms trafficking expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Griffiths said his institute told the U.N. this year that it had uncovered evidence of a flight from Cuba to North Korea that travelled via central Africa.
``Given the history of North Korea, Cuban military cooperation and now this latest seizure, we find this flight more interesting,'' he said. ``
The Chong Chon Gang has a history of being detained on suspicion of trafficking drugs and ammunition, Griffiths said. Lloyd's List Intelligence said the 34-year-old ship, which is registered to the Pyongyang-based Chongchongang Shipping Company, ``has a long history of detentions for safety deficiencies and other undeclared reasons.''
Satellite tracking records show it left the Pacific Coast of Russia on April 12 with a stated destination of Havana, then crossed the Pacific and the Panama Canal on its way to the Caribbean. It disappeared from satellite tracking until it showed up again on the Caribbean side of the canal, on July 10, Lloyd's said.
The disappearance from satellite tracking indicates that the crew may have switched off a device that automatically transmits the ship's location after it moved into the Caribbean, Lloyd's said.
Mulino, the Panamanian public security minister, said the ship crossed the Panama Canal from the Pacific to the Caribbean last month carrying a cargo of sheet metal that was inspected by Panamanian authorities.
Griffiths said the Chong Chon Gang was stopped in 2010 in the Ukraine and was attacked by pirates 400 miles off the coast of Somalia in 2009.
Griffiths' institute has also been interested in the ship because of a 2009 stop it made in Tartus _ a Syrian port city hosting a Russian naval base. (AP)


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Kevin Carson
Who Owns the Benefit? The Free Market as Full Communism
There's a wonderful phrase for how capitalism works in the real world (I'm not sure who first came up with it, but I associate it with Noam Chomsky): "The socialization of risk and cost, and the privatization of profit."
That's a pretty good description of what the state does under actually existing capitalism, as opposed to the free market. Just about everything we identify as problematic about corporate capitalism — the exploitation of labor, pollution, waste and planned obsolescence, environmental devastation, the stripping of resources — results from the socialization of cost and risk and the privatization of profit.
Why haven't the cybernetic revolution and the vast increases in productivity from technological progress resulted in fifteen-hour work weeks, or many necessities of life becoming too cheap to meter? The answer is that economic progress is enclosed as a source of rent and profit.
The natural effect of unfettered market competition is socialism. For a short time the innovator receives a large profit, as a reward for being first to the market. Then, as competitors adopt the innovation, competition drives these profits down to zero and the price gravitates toward the new, lower cost of production made possible by this innovation (that price including, of course, the cost of the producer's maintenance and the amortization of her capital outlays). So in a free market, the cost savings in labor required to produce any given commodity would quickly be socialized in the form of reduced labor cost to purchase it.
Only when the state enforces artificial scarcities, artificial property rights, and barriers to competition, is it possible for a capitalist to appropriate some part of the cost savings as a permanent rent. The capitalist, under these conditions, is enabled to engage in monopoly pricing. That is, rather than being forced by competition to price her goods at the actual cost of production (including her own livelihood), she can target the price to the consumer's ability to pay.
That form of enclosure, via "intellectual property," is why Nike can pay a sweatshop owner a few bucks for a pair of sneakers and then mark them up to $200. Most of what you pay for isn't the actual cost of labor and materials, but the trademark.
The same is true of artificial scarcity of land and capital. As David Ricardo and Henry George observed, there is some rental accruing on the natural scarcity of land as a non-reproducible good. There's considerable disagreement among Georgists, mutualist occupancy-and-use advocates, and other libertarians as to whether and how to remedy those natural scarcity rents. But artificial scarcity, based on the private enclosure and holding out of use of vacant and unimproved land, or on quasi-feudal landlord rights to extract rent from the rightful owners actually cultivating arable land, is an enormous source of illegitimate rent — arguably the major share of total land rent. And regardless of any other steps we may be advocate, principled libertarians are all in favor of abolishing this artificial scarcity and — at the very least — letting market competition from vacant land drive down land rent to its natural scarcity value.
We favor, as well, opening up the supply of credit to unfettered market competition, abolishing entry barriers for the creation of cooperative lending institutions, and abolishing legal tender laws of all kinds, so that market competition will eliminate a major portion of total interest on money.
But while demanding the socialization of rent and profit may be frowned upon by capitalists as "class warfare," they're totally OK with the socialization of their operating costs. The main reason modern production is so centralized and both firms and market areas are so large, is that the state has subsidized transportation infrastructure at the expense of the general public, and made it artificially cheap to ship goods long distance. This makes large-scale, inefficient producers artificially competitive against small-scale producers in the local markets they invade with the state's help. That's why we have giant retail chains driving local retailers out of business, using their own internalized "warehouses on wheels" wholesale operations to distribute goods manufactured by sweatshops in China.
The past forty years' loss of biodiversity, deforestation, and CO2 pollution has occurred because the ecosystem as a whole is an unowned dump, rather than being a regulated commons. The state typically preempts "ownership" of forests, mineral deposits, etc. — often to the prejudice of indigenous peoples already inhabiting the areas — and then gives privileged access to extractive industries that are able to strip mine them of resources without internalizing the actual costs incurred.
As surprising as it might seem, there's a strong parallel between this free market vision of abundance and the Marxist vision of full communism. Carl Menger wrote of economic goods (i.e., goods subject to economic calculation because of their scarcity) becoming non-economic goods (i.e., that their abundance and near-zero production cost would make the cost of accounting greater than the production cost, if any). This parallels a major strain of thinking among socialists in the free culture/open source/P2P movement. They see the communist mode of production practiced by Linux and other open-source developers as the kernel of a new post-capitalist, post-scarcity social formation. Much as capitalist production started out in tiny islands inside the larger feudal economy and later became the core of a new, dominant social formation, commons-based peer production is the core around which the post-capitalist economy will eventually crystallize.
And we free marketers are also information communists. We want the benefits of knowledge and technique to be fully socialized. The largest single share of profit under the current model of corporate capitalism is embedded rents on the artificial scarcity of knowledge and technique.
In a society where waste and planned obsolescence were no longer subsidized, and there were no barriers to competition socializing the full benefits of technological progress, we could probably enjoy our present quality of life with a fifteen-hour work week. And in a society where the dominant mode of production was craft production with cheap, general-purpose CNC machine tools (as Kropotkin anticipated over a century ago in Fields, Factories and Workshops), the division of labor and the dichotomy between mental and physical labor would be far less pronounced.
Taken together, these two outcomes of free market competition in socializing progress would result in a society resembling not the anarcho-capitalist vision of a world owned by the Koch brothers and Halliburton, so much as Marx's vision of a communist society of abundance in which one may "do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic."


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This image of Comet Catalina was taken by Jose Chambo on December 21st, 2015. It shows the Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) in Earth's predawn skies and also shows the star Arcturus and the constellation of Virgo.
All posts by space
Enceladus, Rhea and Saturn's rings
This wonderful sight is brought to us courtesy of the Cassini spacecraft which has been studying Saturn and its satellites over the last decade. Enceladus can be seen above Saturn's rings while Rhea lies below them in this picture. The tiny Atlas (only 30 kilometers across) is also supposedly captured just to the left of Rhea, expertly hidden within one of Saturn's rings. This picture was taken using Cassini's narrow angle camera or Imaging Science System. Cassinia was somewhere between 2 million and 2.8 million kilometers from these Saturnian moons when this picture was taken.
Night time on Saturn and Tethys
Darkness falls on the night side of massive Saturn and its tiny moon Tethys. Tethys is literally quite tiny as it is just 1,062 kilometers across and in this picture, is just barely seen (thanks to being brightened by NASA in post production) in the lower left quadrant.
The Cassini spacecraft took this picture with its wide-angle camera, utilizing a special filter allows near-infrared light wavelengths. It was taken when Cassini was about 2.4 million kilometers from Saturn.
Rivers on Dione
These surface chasms on Saturn's moon Dione are of great interests to scientists. Some parts of the surface are covered by linear features, called chasmata which is in dramatic contrast to the impact craters that one would typically see on planet, satellites and other celestial bodies. This view from a distance of 110,000 kilometers was taken by Cassini Orbiter's narrow angle camera with North looking up on Dione.


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- In stock, ready to ship
Why We Love It
I think I squealed like a kid on a merry-go-round when I saw these matches! How stylish are these vintage looking matches on a coffee table or next to your favorite candle? The matches also make the perfect gift for animal lovers. These are not your traditional small box of matches, note the size when ordering.
- Matches: 4.25"W x 4.25" D x 1.125" H
- Matches about about 4" long
- Strike on side of box
- Contains about 125 matches


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June 21, 2024
SAC CITY, Iowa - This is not a press release from the Iowa Department of Public Safety. It is being distributed on behalf of the Sac County Attorney's Office.
The Iowa Department of Public Safety (DPS) is the largest law enforcement agency in the state. It includes seven divisions and several bureaus, all working together with local, state, and federal government agencies and the private sector to keep Iowa a safe place by following our core values: leadership, integrity, professionalism, courtesy, service, and protection. Divisions within the Iowa DPS: Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement, Iowa State Patrol, Iowa State Fire Marshal Division, Iowa Division of Intelligence and Fusion Center, Professional Development and Support Services Division, and Administrative Services Division. The Department of Public Safety is led by the Commissioner who is appointed by the Governor.
Iowa Department of Public Safety
215 E. 7th St.
Des Moines, IA 50319


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Progressive Hypocracy
Self-described "progressives" on the left have gone nuts over the past several years over creeping legislative and regulatory inroads made by religious conservatives. Fascism! They are quick to reply. The government can't tell us what to do with our own bodies, or in the privacy of our own homes! Abortion, homosexuality? Hey, that's our choice, its our bodies. NSA eavesdropping, warrant-less searches? Hey, those are our private phonecalls made from our private phones. Searches of private cars without probable cause to enforce seat belt use? Hey, what a great idea!
Boston Globe columnist Scot LeHigh editorializes against Massachusetts Democrats attempt to micro-regulate personal behavior:
THIS WEEK, the Massachusetts House of Representatives will face a telling test:
Can it resist a progressive Legislature's ever-present impulse toward pesky
paternalism?The issue is seat belts, and whether the police will be allowed to stop
motorists upon suspicion that someone in their vehicle is not wearing a seat
belt or only ticket them for that grievous offense if they have first been
pulled over for something else.
This is exactly why I am suspicious of progressives and resist making common cause with them, even on issues where we tend to agree. For while they talk the libertarian talk pretty well when they want to (abortion with its "I should control decisions over my own body" defense being the most obvious example), progressives also have a very strong streak of "we are smarter than you are and sometimes will tell you what to do because it is for your own good". As a result, for example, progressives support abortion because a woman should make decisions for her body without government intrusion, but oppose the legality of breast implants and vioxx because a woman should, uh, not be able to make decisions for her body without government intrusion (more on this here).
And what decision could be more about my own body than what level of protection I want to afford myself in a vehicle? If I choose, for whatever reason, not to wear a motorcycle helmet or a seatbelt, who cares? It may be a really, really stupid choice on my part, but its my decision for my own body, right? (By the way, I know that some people will make the 'taxpayers pay for your medical care argument', which I dealt with earlier in my post about government health care funding as a Trojan horse for fascism).
But even beyond the issue of individual decision-making, what about the 4th amendment issues? It is amazing but true that progressives and the Massachusetts legislature, who would never in a million years give the police, the FBI, or anyone under George Bush's chain of command the right to stop a motorist without probable cause to check for evidence of terrorist intent, are actually endorsing that the police have this power to stop motorists without probable cause for freaking seat belt use. Is this really the alternative we are being offered today - you can choose fascism to stanch the threat of terrorism or you can choose fascism to increase seat belt use?
I predict that the left may come to regret setting this precedent, as they have come to regret other expansions of government power that their political enemies have used as stepping stones for their own agenda. A good example is Title IX, which is beloved by the left for using the fact of federal funding to browbeat even private universities into changing their admissions policies, but has been used as a precedent by the right to browbeat private universities into accepting military recruiters. Government micro-managing of individual decision-making is only fun as long as you and your gang are the ones doing the micro-managing.
I would love to see someone in Washington making a consistent case for freedom of decision-making for individuals when the decision affects only themselves or others with whom they are interacting in a consensual manner. But I am not holding my breath.


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The jacket that talks to Facebook
Collision. Fire. Accidents. Chaos. In a rescue operation, it's no use trying to communicate via a small mobile phone display. But a jacket – now you're talking!
The EU Societies project is all about technology and communication in extreme situations, such as rescue operations following major accidents.
ICT researchers at SINTEF have been working on this topic for a long time, and the idea of developing a physical user interface for so-cial media came from seeing how limited a normal mobile phone is as an aid during a chaotic emergency situation.
Screen is a minus in an emergency
Most of our focus when we use computers is on the screen. We communicate via a display. But in an emergency situation, we cannot expect rescue crews to do their jobs while fumbling with a tiny mobile phone when they need to read and send messages. It doesn't just require full concentration – it also requires two hands.
Similarly, a firefighter called out to an emergency doesn't have time to put on anything special – he or she just grabs a jacket and helmet, and runs.
"Crews therefore need devices with a much simpler user interface. That was the basic idea behind making the jackets," says researcher Babak Farshchianof SINTEF ICT.
A group of students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) decided to create a prototype jacket that could communicate with Facebook.
They used the Arduino platform to create the physical user interface with social media. Arduino is a popular system used to develop physical prototypes that integrate with ICT. The platform that supports the jacket communicates with an ordinary Android mobile phone via BlueTooth. This means that the user does not get tangled in cables.
Keyboard in the sleeve
They bought a simple lined jacket from a popular sports retailer called XXL, and inserted the cables and sensors between the inner and outer layers. Then they put a battery-operated circuit in the pocket, which controls the sensors and microphone. All the cables and electronics are concealed from the user.
Instead of a telephone display, the jacket sleeve has a display sewn into it, showing a line of rolling text. The user will also feel a vibration in his or her neck, made via a small vibrator inserted in the collar. A vibration means that the person has received a message, which he or she can read by lifting an arm and looking at the display.
Rescue work is often carried out in large groups, with professionals from different units and organizations that need to communicate and coordinate their actions efficiently during a rescue operation.
"By using social media technology, we can enable these groups to communicate, and this jacket with a similar, customized user interface makes it easy and practical to use more ad-vanced ICT in demanding rescue work," says Farshchian.
Better adapted to needs
Easier access to social media is an idea that could be of interest to those with sight and hearing impairments, since these groups have problems using a screen. Being able to dictate and hear messages would not only be more user friendly, but also be better adapted to their needs.
Åse Dragland


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There's a glaring hole in President Trump's budget proposal for 2019, global health researchers say. A U.S. program to help other countries beef up their ability to detect pathogens around the world will lose a significant portion of its funding.
The ambitious program, called Global Health Security Agenda, was launched in early 2014, aiming to set up an early-warning system for infectious diseases across the world.
After the Ebola outbreak later that year the program was significantly ramped up with an additional $120 million dollars a year to expand the building of disease-detection systems to dozens more developing countries around the world. That ramped-up funding runs out in September 2019. And while Trump is keeping the original program he has not proposed continued funding at the current level.
Congress, which has the responsibility to adopt the budget, could end up restoring the funds.
Still, the proposal has critics worried. "Cutting this money is shortsighted," says Dr. Paul Spiegel, who directs the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University. "By downsizing this program, outbreaks may not be detected as quickly now, and in the end, the U.S. could wind up spending more money [to stop an emergency outbreak]."
In Trump's proposal, funding for the program would drop by about two-thirds, from about $180 million each year to about $60 million each year. As a result, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning to downsize its operations — or even close up shop — in 39 countries by September 2019. It will continue its work in 10 countries.
For decades, the CDC has been helping other countries stop dangerous, fast-spreading outbreaks, such as SARS in 2009. But a few years ago, the agency decided to try a different approach: Help other countries set up their own disease-detection facilities so they can find outbreaks before they spiral out of control.
Global Health Security Agenda has goals such as building laboratories that can test biological samples and creating a network of health workers who can detect dangerous diseases when they crop up.
At first, the CDC had only about $60 million in its budget for the program. Then in the summer of 2014, Ebola struck West Africa. The U.S. ended up spending billions of dollars to stop the outbreak both overseas and here at home. And all of a sudden, there was much more interest for the CDC's new disease-detection program. Congress allocated an extra $600 million to be used over five years.
Without that kind of funding, critics say progress made since 2014 will falter. "It takes years to set up a disease surveillance system in a country," Spiegel says. "It's a waste of money to stop now and leave a country after you've already invested a few years into the process."
Over the past few years, the CDC has used the extra funding to train more than 1,400 epidemiologist in 17 countries. And 16 countries now have a full-time epidemiologist dedicated to training more disease detectives, funded by this money as well. The program has also helped to stop several outbreaks in poor countries, including cholera in Cameroon and measles in Pakistan.
None of these outbreaks were close to coming to the U.S., as Ebola and SARS did. But scaling back this work still makes America vulnerable, says Ashish Jha, who directs the Harvard Global Health Initiative.
"We don't need to panic over these funding cuts," Jha says. "It's not like 'Oh my gosh! We need to fix this right away.
"But the cuts are a big deal," he says, "because infectious disease outbreaks are increasing not decreasing, and we are becoming more interconnected, not less interconnected."
And so, Jha says, the federal government is going in the wrong direction. "We should be increasing our investment in GHSA, not decreasing it," he says. "The program is really a great bang for the buck."
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Displaying items by tag: Sandra Bullock
Warner's expected Gravity street date, plus Tom Laughlin & Joan Fontaine RIP
All right, we've got a quick early update for you today.
First, in the event you missed it, we posted a new History, Legacy & Showmanship column from our own Michael Coate yesterday, featuring a look back at the original theatrical release of Superman: The Movie. Yesterday marked the film's 35th Anniversary. The piece features a good interview component too, so do check it out if you haven't read it yet.
Also today, after noting the passing of the legendary actor Peter O'Toole yesterday, this morning we must acknowledge the death of Tom Laughlin as well, star of the Billy Jack films. He was 82. You can read more on this here at the L.A. Times. Sadly, actress Joan Fontaine also died this past weekend at the age of 96. Fontaine was known for roles in such films as Jane Eyre, Ivanhoe, The Constant Nymph and Letter from an Unknown Woman, in addition to starring turns in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca and Suspicion (for which she was best known). More here at the New York Times. Both will surely be missed. [Read on here…]


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What are Virgin Flat Weft Hair Extensions?
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How to Weare Hair Weft?
4 Different Ways to Apply Weft Hair Extensions
How to wash your Hair Extensions?
How To Wash Your Hair
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🕔 Rinse the conditioner: Rinse the conditioner out of your hair extensions thoroughly with warm water. Make sure to rinse until all the conditioner has been removed.
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🕔 Air-dry your hair extensions: Allow your hair extensions to air-dry completely. Do not use a blow dryer or other heat styling tools to dry your hair extensions, as this can cause damage to the hair fibers.
🌟 How to Fix Dry & Frizzy Human Hair Extensions?
🌟 How remain smooth and tangle-free?
To see more hair care, please visit our blog page
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by Owen Waters
The 1920's, the Roaring Twenties, ushered in the technologies of radio entertainment and movies with sound tracks. Before that, 'the movies' had been silent moving picture dramas with subtitles. Now, with the addition of sound, they became 'the talkies.'
The new media of radio, as well as the newsreels that played before each movie, began providing people with new sources of information and entertainment. Henry Ford's mass production of motor cars was creating a demand for the dirt roads of the day to be hard-covered with tarmac. Progressive towns began boasting that, as well as a hard-covered main street, they also had a traffic light!
Television was still twenty years into the future, but the telephone was becoming a fashion statement, especially when its use was demonstrated by glamorous starlets in the movies. With the separate earpiece held up to one ear, they would loudly and clearly intone the magic words, "Hello, calling long distance!" in order to be connected with their intended party through a relay of human telephone operators. In the movies, if not in real life, they always succeeded in getting through on the first attempt.
Meanwhile, the young adults of the day, such as the fashionable flappers, showed their newfound freedom from tradition by dancing to the Jazz music that reflected their sense of lightness and fun.
By 1931, however, storm clouds were gathering over American society. On the one hand, construction of the Empire State building in New York City, the tallest building in the world to date, had just been completed. On the other hand, the economy was being dragged relentlessly down into the depths of the Great Depression. Bank failures were snowballing at a frightening pace as the economy collapsed inward upon itself, leading to unemployment rates in excess of 25%.
People became deeply insecure and were desperately searching for answers. Angry mobs began to listen to even angrier speakers, who sought political scapegoats to blame for their woes. Others, meanwhile, turned in the opposite direction, seeking solace from God.
It was into this economic and social darkness that Emmet Fox (1886-1951) began speaking in the United States about a technique that he called The Golden Key to harmony and happiness.
Emmet Fox was a New Thought author who proclaimed that the Golden Key technique would get you, or anyone else, out of any difficulty. The technique was simplicity itself:
Stop thinking about the difficulty and, instead, think about God.
To achieve this, people were told to make a mental list of everything that they knew about God and to repeat those sentences in their heads until their attention had shifted entirely away from the difficulty and onto a focus upon God. They would repeat lists of statements, such as: God is omnipotent; God is love; God knows all; I am a child of God; God is present everywhere; God is truth; God is with me now; and so on.
Then, the person had to put the difficulty out of their mind until the next time that they saw fit to use the technique. Some difficulties were harder than others to resolve and required several Golden Key sessions.
From extensive experience, Emmet Fox knew, without a doubt, that if the Golden Key technique were done correctly, it would work every time. The problem was, back in those days, no one really understood exactly why it worked!
After all, people asked, how can you solve a problem by turning your back on it and thinking about something else? And, they wondered, why would it only work if you raised your consciousness high enough? Couldn't God fix the problem regardless of how high you reached in your spiritual awareness? These were just some of the unanswered questions surrounding the mystery of the powerful and effective Golden Key technique.
Now, fast-forward to our current time period, and we find that the answers to such mysteries have become available. Better yet, we also have the knowledge and resources to greatly improve upon this original idea. The main lesson learned from this technique was this:
When you enter a higher state of consciousness, life's challenges become transformed.
Problems become solved, almost as if by magic. Upon closer examination, you see that there are two ways that this magic happens.
1. Problem situations are energetically healed by the higher consciousness, or;
2. Solutions are seen and these solutions are energetically created in the superconscious mind. One of the functions of the superconscious mind or soul is to create new realities as intentional energy fields which will then unfold and manifest in your physical life.
For FREE access to a modern-day technique inspired by the idea behind the time-proven Golden Key, updated for the modern era with the latest insights in spiritual metaphysics, visit:
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U Shape Kitchen Layout
The U-shaped kitchen is the most versatile layout for kitchens of all sizes because the layout offers continuous countertops and ample storage that surround the cook on three sides. In larger kitchens, this floor plan is spacious enough to be divided into multiple work stations for cooks to easily prepare a meal together without getting in each other's way. To maximize storage and keep countertops clutter free, conceal the microwave in a base wall cabinet and store cooking essentials in a Lazy Susan.


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Safety eyewear: Spectacles configurator
Off-the-shelf eye protection is a thing of the past! With just a few mouse clicks, you can design your own safety spectacles with individual colours, add your logo and get a no-obligation offer for the required quantity.
Design your very own safety spectacles today.
Individual safety spectacles for you and your employees are just three simple steps away:
- Select from different models of uvex safety spectacles.
- Upload your company logo and determine the colour of the frames and arms.
- Choose a clear, sunglare filter or specially tinted amber lens.
Click through to find your own safety spectacles!
Go to the uvex safety spectacles configurator here – the perfect gift for company anniversaries, for example.
uvex i-3
uvex i-3 safety spectacles simply fit, so they also have a high level of wearer acceptance.
uvex pheos
The fashionable look of uvex pheos makes safety spectacles a welcome addition to the working day.
uvex pheos s
Smaller design for smaller heads – but with the same comfort and protective properties.


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Gazing Forever on Christ - Truth For Life - December 10
So we will always be with the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 4:17
Even the sweetest glimpses of Christ are short-how transitory they are! One moment our eyes see Him, and we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; but then the moment passes and we do not see Him, for our beloved withdraws Himself from us. Like a roe or a young hare He leaps over the mountains of division; He is gone to the land of spices and no longer feeds among the lilies.
If today He deigns to bless us
With a sense of pardoned sin,
He tomorrow may distress us,
Make us feel the plague within.
How sweet the prospect of the time when we will no longer see Him from a distance but rather face to face-when He will not be like a traveler staying only for a night but will enfold us in the bosom of His eternal glory. We will not see Him for a little while, but
Millions of years our wondering eyes,
Shall o'er our Savior's beauties rove;
And myriad ages we'll adore,
The wonders of His love.
In heaven we will not be interrupted by care or sins; no weeping will dim our eyes; no earthly business will distract our happy thoughts. We will have nothing to prevent us from gazing forever on the Sun of Righteousness with tireless eyes. If it is so sweet to see Him now and then, how wonderful to gaze on that blessed face forever, and without a cloud rolling between, and never have to turn one's eyes away to look on a tired and sinful world. When will this blessed day dawn? Rise, unsetting sun! If to die is to enter into uninterrupted communion with Jesus, then death is swallowed up in a sea of victory and is definitely gain.
One-Year Bible Reading Plan
As a thank-you from us for your gift, we'll send along this month's resource: Voices for the Past: Volume 2
Click here to learn more about Truth For Life
From Morning & Evening revised and edited by Alistair Begg copyright © 2003. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.