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Additional approvals in December have helped to outpace a recent high set in 2011.
The year 2012 proved to be a good one for FDA approval of new molecular entities (NMEs) and new biologic license applications (BLAs) by FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. For the month of December 2012 (as of Dec. 31, 2012), FDA approved seven new drugs to bring the total of NMEs and BLAs approved by FDA's CDER through Dec. 31, 2012, at 39, outpacing the 30 NME and BLAs that FDA's CDER approved in 2011.
December is typically an active month for FDA approvals, and December 2012 was no exception. For December 2012 (as of Dec. 31, 2012), FDA's CDER approved seven new drugs. Ariad Pharmaceuticals received approval for Iclusig (ponatinib) for treating adult patients with chronic, accelerated or blast phase chronic myeloid leukemia that is resistant or intolerant to prior tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) therapy or Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia that is resistant or intolerant to prior TKI therapy. Novartis received FDA approval for Signifor (pasireotide diaspartate) for treating adult patients with Cushing's disease for whom pituitary surgery is not an option or has not been curative. NPS Pharmaceuticals received FDA approval for Gattex (teduglutide [rDNA origin]) for injection for subcutaneous use for treating adult patients with short bowel syndrome who are dependent on parenteral support. Aegerion Pharmaceuticals received approval for Juxtapid (lomitapide) capsules as an adjunct to a low-fat diet and other lipid-lowering treatments to reduce low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, total cholesterol, apolipoprotein B, and non-high-density-lipoprotein cholesterol in patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia.
At year-end, FDA approved three additional new drugs. Bristol-Myers Squibb received FDA approval for Eliquis (apixaban), an oral Factor Xa inhibitor anticoagulant to reduce the risk of stroke and systemic embolism in patients with atrial fibrillation that is not caused by a heart-valve problem. In 2007, Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb entered into a worldwide collaboration to develop and commercialize Eliquis, which was discovered by Bristol-Myers Squibb. Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Therapeutics received FDA approval for Sirturo (bedaquiline) as part of a combination therapy to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. FDA also approved Salix Pharmaceuticals' Fulyzaq (crofelemer), a drug to relieve symptoms of diarrhea in HIV/AIDS patients taking antiretroviral therapy.
Also, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) received FDA approval for its BLA for raxibacumab, a monoclonal antibody to treat inhalational anthrax (see related story, "FDA Approves First Anthrax Antitoxin"). Raxibacumab was developed by Human Genome Sciences (HGS) in conjunction with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, US Department of Health and Human Services. HGS was acquired by GSK in July 2012, making raxibacumab part of GSK's portfolio. HGS received approval for raxibacumab as a new manufacturer based on its BLA submission earlier in 2012.
In addition to the new drug approvals in December 2012, FDA's CDER approved on Nov. 29, 2012, Exelixis' Cometriq (cabozantinib), a kinase inhibitor to treat progressive, metastatic medullary thyroid cancer. Through Nov. 20, 2012, FDA's CDER had approved 31 NMEs and BLAs (see related story, "The Class of 2012 for New Molecular Entities and Biologics"). The addition of the approval of Cometriq and the additional new drug approvals (excluding raxibacumab) for December 2012 (as of Dec, 31, 2012) brought the number of NME and BLA approvals by FDA's CDER to 39 for 2012 (as of Dec. 31, 2012).
Editor's Note: This story was updated on Jan. 2, 2013, to reflect additional year-end approvals.
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In my last post, Should the Door be Closed or Open, Nick Kearney commented that the star diagram was a better representation than the various continua I laid out. I agree; however, since the star diagram is composed of continua, I think when discussing a particular one, as I did in the last post, it helps to just show the one being discussed.
As show in the diagram below, I did some adjustments to it (you can click the diagram for a larger version):
Star Diagram of the Continua of Learning
As I noted in my last post, I put social learning and reflection on the same continuum (The Door), as the real purpose is that sometimes we need to be alone with our thoughts, while at other times we need to interact with others. And of course there are a lot of alternatives between the two (social reflection being one of them).
I also dropped the Purpose of Learning Continuum (intentional and incidental/serendipitous). While it is an interesting concept, I don't believe that it fits in with the diagram in that it does not help us to design better learning/performance platforms.
David Winter (@davidawinter) tweeted me with the suggestion of adding another continuum: Impact - 'reinforcement/augmentation' of existing understanding/behaviours/identity vs 'transformation.' After thinking about it, I believe it belongs on the Workflow Continuum (EPSS/performance support and training). However, I'm not sure which of the terms are better. I'm thinking that it should be called the 'Workflow Continuum' with augmentation on one end and transformation on the other. I believe that EPSS/performance support and training would be some of the options that lie between the two:
What are your thoughts?

subset: commoncrawl


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Is it too much to say that since the French Revolution, the left has been the source of virtually all political evils, and continues to be so in our day?
There can be no doubt that great cruelty and violence can be and have been inflicted in the name of preserving the existing order.
But when we compare even the worst enormities of the more distant past with the leftist totalitarian revolutions and total wars of the twentieth centuries, they are in general a mere blip. The entire history of the Inquisition, said Joe Sobran, barely rises to the level of what the communists accomplished on a good afternoon.
The French Revolution, and particularly its radical phase, was the classic manifestation of modern leftism and served as the model for still more radical revolutions around the world more than a century later.
As that revolution proceeded its aims grew more ambitious, with its most fervent partisans demanding nothing less than the total transformation of society.
In place of the various customs and settled ways of a France with well over a millennium of history behind it, the radical revolutionaries introduced a "rational" alternative cooked up in their heads, and with all the warmth of an insane asylum.
Streets named after saints were given new names, and statues of saints were actually guillotined. (These people guillotining statues were the rational ones, you understand.) The calendar itself, rich with religious feasts, was replaced by a more "rational" calendar with 30 days per month, divided into three ten-day weeks, thereby doing away with Sunday. The remaining five days of the year were devoted to secular observances: celebrations of labor, opinion, genius, virtue, and rewards.
Punishments for deviations from the new dispensation were as severe as we have come to expect from leftism. People were sentenced to death for owning a Rosary, giving shelter to a priest, or indeed refusing to abjure the priesthood.
We are plenty familiar with the guillotine, but the revolutionaries concocted still other forms of execution as well, like the Drownings at Nantes, designed to humiliate and terrorize their victims.
Given that the left has sought the complete transformation of society, and given that such wholesale change is bound to come up against the resistance of ordinary people who don't care for having their routines and patterns of life overturned, we should not be surprised that the instrument of mass terror has been the weapon of choice. The people must be terrified into submission, and so broken and demoralized that resistance comes to seem impossible.
Likewise, it's no wonder the left needs the total state. In place of naturally occurring groupings and allegiances, it demands the substitution of artificial constructs. In place of the concrete and specific, the Burkean "little platoons" that emerge organically, it imposes remote and artificial substitutes that emerge from the heads of intellectuals. It prefers the distant central government to the local neighborhood, the school board president over the head of household.
Thus the creation of the departments, totally subordinate to Paris, during the French Revolution was a classic leftist move. But so were the totalitarian megastates of the twentieth century, which demanded that people's allegiances be transferred from the smaller associations that had once defined their lives to a brand new central authority that had grown out of nowhere.
The right (properly understood), meanwhile, according to the great classical liberal Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, "stands for free, organically grown forms of life."
The right stands for liberty, a free, unprejudiced form of thinking; a readiness to preserve traditional values (provided they are true values); a balanced view of the nature of man, seeing in him neither beast nor angel, insisting on the uniqueness of human beings which cannot be transformed into or treated as mere numbers or ciphers. The left is the advocate of the opposite principles; it is the enemy of diversity and the fanatical promoter of identity. Uniformity is stressed in all leftist utopias, paradises in which everybody is the same, envy is dead, and the enemy is either dead, lives outside the gates, or is utterly humiliated. Leftism loathes differences, deviations, stratifications. ... The word "one" is its symbol: one language, one race, one class, one ideology, one ritual, one type of school, one law for everybody, one flag, one coat of arms, one centralized world state.
Is Kuehnelt-Leddihn's description partly out of date? After all, who touts their allegiance to "diversity" more than the left? But the left's version of diversity amounts to uniformity of an especially insidious kind. No one may hold a dissenting view about the desirability of "diversity" itself, of course, and "diverse" college faculties are chosen not for their diversity of viewpoints but precisely for their dreary sameness: left-liberals of all shapes and sizes. What's more, by demanding "diversity" and proportional representation in as many institutions as possible, the left aims to make all of America exactly the same.
Leftists have long been engaged in a bait-and-switch operation. First, they said they wanted nothing but liberty for all. Liberalism was supposed to be neutral between competing worldviews, seeking only an open marketplace of ideas in which rational people could discuss important questions. It did not aim to impose any particular vision of the good.
That claim was exploded quickly enough when the centrality of government-run education to the left-liberal program became obvious. Progressive education in particular aimed to emancipate children from the superstitions of competing power centers (parents, church, or locality, among others) and transfer their allegiance to the central state.
Of course, the leftist yearning for equality and uniformity played a role as well. There is the story of the French Minister of Education who, looking at his watch, tells a guest, "At this moment in 5,431 public elementary schools, they are writing an essay on the joys of winter."
As Kuehnelt-Leddihn put it:
Church schools, parochial schools, private schools, personal tutors, none is in keeping with leftist sentiments. The reasons are manifold. Not only is delight in statism involved, but also the idea of uniformity and equality — the idea that social differences in education should be eliminated and all pupils be given a chance to acquire the same knowledge, the same type of information, in the same fashion, and to the same degree. This should enable them to think in identical or at least in similar ways.
As time has passed, leftists have bothered less and less to pretend to be neutral between competing social visions. This is why conservatives who accuse the left of moral relativism have it so wrong. Far from relativistic, the left is absolutist in its demands of conformity to strict moral codes.
For example, when it declares "transgender" persons to be the new oppressed class, everyone is expected to stand up and salute. Left-liberals do not argue that support for transgender people may be a good idea for some people but bad for others. That's what they'd say if they were moral relativists. But they're not, so they don't.
And it is not simply that dissent is not tolerated. Dissent cannot be acknowledged. What happens is not that the offender is debated until a satisfactory resolution is achieved. He is drummed out of polite society without further ado. There can be no opinion apart from what the left has decided.
Now it's true: the left can't remind us often enough of the tolerant, non-judgmental millennials from whom this world of ubiquitous bigotry can learn so much. So am I wrong to say that the left, and particularly the younger left, is intolerant?
In fact, we are witnessing the least tolerant generation in recent memory. April Kelly-Woessner, a political scientist at Elizabethtown College who has researched the opinions of the millennials, has come up with some revealing findings. If we base how tolerant a person is on how he treats those he disagrees with — an obviously reasonable standard — the millennials fare very poorly.
Yes, the millennials have great sympathy for the official victim groups whose causes are paraded before them in school and at the movies. That's no accomplishment since millennials agree with these people. But how do they treat and think about those with whom they disagree? A casual glance at social media, or at leftist outbursts on college campuses, reveals the answer.
Incidentally, who was the last leftist speaker shouted down by libertarians on a college campus?
Answer: no one, because that never happens. If it did, you can bet we'd be hearing about it until the end of time.
On the other hand, leftists who terrorize their ideological opponents are simply being faithful to the mandate of Herbert Marcuse, the 1960s leftist who argued that freedom of speech had to be restricted in the case of anti-progressive movements:
Such discrimination would also be applied to movements opposing the extension of social legislation to the poor, weak, disabled. As against the virulent denunciations that such a policy would do away with the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for "the other side," I maintain that there are issues where either there is no "other side" in any more than a formalistic sense, or where "the other side" is demonstrably "regressive" and impedes possible improvement of the human condition. To tolerate propaganda for inhumanity vitiates the goals not only of liberalism but of every progressive political philosophy.
Even much of what passes as conservatism today is tainted by leftism. That's certainly the case with the neoconservatives: can you imagine Edmund Burke, the fountainhead of modern conservatism, supporting the idea of military force to spread human rights around the world?
Talk to neoconservatives about decentralization, secession, nullification, and you'll get exactly the same left-wing replies you'd hear on MSNBC.
Now I can imagine the following objection to what I've said: whatever we may say about the crimes and horrors of the left, we cannot overlook the totalitarianism of the right, manifested most spectacularly in Nazi Germany.
But in fact, the Nazis were a leftist party. The German Workers' Party in Austria, the forerunner of the Nazis, declared in 1904: "We are a liberty-loving nationalistic party that fights energetically against reactionary tendencies as well as feudal, clerical, or capitalistic privileges and all alien influences."
When the party became the National Socialist German Workers' Party or the Nazis, its program included the following:
The National Socialist German Workers' Party is not a worker's party in the narrow sense of the term: It represents the interests of all honestly creative labor. It is a liberty-loving and strictly nationalist party and therefore fights against all reactionary trends, against ecclesiastical, aristocratic, and capitalist privileges and every alien influence, but above all against the overpowering influence of the Jewish-commercial mentality in all domains of public life. ...
It demands the amalgamation of all regions of Europe inhabited by Germans into a democratic, social-minded German Reich. ...
It demands plebiscites for all key laws in the Reich, the states and provinces. ...
It demands the elimination of the rule of Jewish bankers over business life and the creation of national people's banks with a democratic administration.
This program, wrote Kuehnelt-Leddihn, "oozes the spirit of leveling leftism: it was democratic; it was anti-Habsburg (it demanded the destruction of the Danube monarchy in favor of the Pan-German program); it was against all unpopular minorities, an attitude that is the magnetism of all leftist ideologies."
The leftist obsession with "equality" and leveling means the state must insinuate itself into employment, finance, education, private clubs — pretty much every nook and cranny of civil society. In the name of diversity, every institution is forced to look exactly like every other one.
The left can't ever be satisfied because its creed is a permanent revolution in the service of unattainable ends like "equality." People of different skills and endowments will reap different rewards, which means constant intervention into civil society. Moreover, equality vanishes the moment people begin freely exchanging money for the goods they desire, so again: the state must be involved in everything, at all times.
Moreover, each generation of liberals undermines and scoffs at what the previous one took for granted. The revolution marches on.
Leftism is, in short, a recipe for permanent revolution, and of a distinctly anti-libertarian kind. Not just anti-libertarian. Anti-human.
And yet all the hatred these days is directed at the right.
To be sure, libertarians are fully at home neither on the left nor the right as traditionally understood. But the idea that both sides are equally dreadful, or amount to comparable threats to liberty, is foolish and destructive nonsense.


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Clark School Baja Team Tops in U.S.
A team of Clark School mechanical engineering students recently competed in the 2010 Baja SAE Carolina competition at the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research. They placed fourth overall and first out of the U.S. teams. A thousand students from 100 universities competed for three days in various design, suspension and maneuverability events. The final event of the weekend was a four-hour endurance race on a rugged and challenging off-road course. "We can all be proud of the Maryland team lead by Advisor Greg Schultz," said Clark School Dean Darryll Pines. "They competed well all weekend and finished 4th overall in a very competitive field." Here are the team's overall scores for the competition: Overall: 4th, 1st in the USA Earlier this year, the TerpsRacing Baja team placed in the top five at another competition in Michigan.
Related Articles: June 9, 2010 Prev Next |


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Joe Perry Explains His 'Writing Paradigm' With Steven Tyler
Joe Perry recalled how he and Aerosmith bandmate Steven Tyler established their "writing paradigm" in the band's early days.
He used the example of 1974 track "S.O.S. (Too Bad)" to tell Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show about the pair's creative process.
"Steven and I shared an apartment for most of a year," Perry said. "Our basic paradigm for writing is him playing drums and me playing guitar. He's a really inventive drummer – that's why his singing is so percussive. It takes him that extra length of time to write lyrics because he likes to use words that sound almost like a percussive kinda thing. He would play the drums and I'd play guitar, and he'd throw some weird backbeat in there, and I'd find a note to go with it, and we'd play back and forth like that."
He continued: "We'd have a cassette player running and he would start singing along. That's how that song ["S.O.S"] came together. We were set up in the living room with a little drum kit and a little amp, and definitely the melody and the flow for the song came out of that, that afternoon."
Aerosmith - 'S.O.S. (Too Bad)'
Be sure to listen to Ultimate Classic Rock Nights on more than 50 stations across the U.S. from 7PM until midnight, Monday through Friday. You can see the list of radio stations where it airs here.


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At the core of all real estate valuations is a deep understanding of local zoning laws. We are experts in interpreting local zoning regulations and land use laws for client's seeking to develop a property to its highest and best use or municipalities seeking to defend their zoning ordinance in denying variance approval. Our professionals work with municipalities, property owners, developers, and planning professionals preparing valuations and feasibility studies for use in litigation matters.
We also provide valuations, advisory services, and expert testimony for municipal and county board approvals. Our professionals are well respected, providing the essential deep local market expertise and independence required in zoning and land use testimony.


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An estimated 15.1% of U.S. children have experienced a major depression episode. Though signs and symptoms of mental health issues can be difficult to identify, know how to recognize warning signs so you're equipped to help your child when they may need it most:
• Sadness that last two weeks or more
• Withdrawing from or avoiding social interactions
• Out-of-control behavior that can be harmful
As a parent you want to take care of your child physically and mentally. But when you feel that something may be off, do not ignore the signs – calling 988 will connect you with critical support.
– Taylor Ketchum, APR, Jones PR, The Oklahoma 100


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Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
New York Times,
WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 – The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.
The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.
As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.
The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.
"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."
Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.
What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.
The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.
Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality.
Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.
This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.
The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.
But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats at home.
A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.
"All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in that area," said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets.
Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said.
"If they get content, that's useful to them too, but the real plum is going to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis," he said. "Massive amounts of traffic analysis information – who is calling whom, who is in Osama Bin Laden's circle of family and friends – is used to identify lines of communication that are then given closer scrutiny."
Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.
The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.
One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.
The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance.
Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials.
Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said.


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Jay Leno: Could his show be moving to 11 PM?
It's only a rumor, of course, but what is the Internet for if not to spread unfounded rumors? Tom Jicha of South Florida's Sun-Sentinel passes on this possible scoop, which he heard from "a friend with inside ties to the TV business" -- if Comcast winds up buying a controlling stake in NBC, "The Jay Leno Show" could wind up moving to 11 PM, clearing the way for local newscasts at 10. That would leave Conan O'Brien's "Tonight" with the midnight slot, and bring back the head-to-head competition between David Letterman and his ol' rival Jay.
"The affiliates are justifiably upset that Leno's low-rated 10 p.m. show is hurting their late newscasts," writes Jicha. "Giving them a 10 p.m. news window in front of Leno alleviates that and gives local stations an hour with a substantially larger available audience." Presumably, the newscasts, now 35 minutes long, would expand to fill the entire 10-11 slot; a lot of FOX affiliates already do this, and many of them compete quite effectively with the network programs airing at that hour.
Jicha suggests that if Jay's show is airing between 11 and midnight, he could go back to frontloading it with Headlines and Jaywalking, signature features that are now relegated to the last 10 minutes of his program, in order to give him a "35-minute jump on David Letterman." Of course, that might mean people would watch Jay's monologue and comedy bits, and then switch over to Dave at 11:35 rather than endure the Green Car Challenge, 10 @ 10, or the other less-popular filler segments that Leno has introduced.
I have a better idea. Give the affiliates 10-11 PM; air an abbreviated "Jay Leno Show" from 11-11:35; and keep Conan in his current time slot. It seems obvious (to me, anyway) that moving "Tonight" to midnight would be a huge loss of prestige for the franchise, and not exactly a vote of confidence from NBC. But why on earth does Jay Leno need a full hour? He's never been a particularly good interviewer. He's a comedian. Monologue, Headlines, another short comedy segment, and out. The affiliates are happy, Leno doesn't have to pretend to be interested in what Sandra Bullock has to say, and Conan won't lose face.
You're welcome, NBC.


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Pastures Weakened by Drought Will Require Time to Recover
LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska's pastures are starting to grow again, but the effects of last year's drought linger and might cause complications for producers, University of Nebraska-Lincoln forage specialist said.
Some might want to get their animals outside and into green fields, but drought-weakened pastures will not be able to feed these animals without sustaining further damage, said Bruce Anderson, UNL Extension forage specialist. However, there are ways to compensate for the loss and help pastures recover.
Although recent snow and rain provided moisture for pastures, the levels were still less than average. Considering the severe stress pastures experienced during last year's drought some might be dead or exhibit slow growth, the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources specialist said. Damaged pastures could take another year to recover.
Pastures throughout the state, especially those with bluegrass, have gaps that allow for weeds to establish. Noxious weeds like thistle and leafy spurge, as well as woody plants like brush and red cedar trees can take advantage of the weakened pastures.
"Weeds are a natural outcome when competitive ability of the plants is lowered," Anderson said. "Weeds become more opportunistic with less competition, so it's important to get them under control while patches are still small."
In general, drought and overgrazing damaged almost all pastures last year. The plants don't begin to recover until after they have started to grow, and extra stress can slow down that process.
"Pastures might be green and growing, but their ability to handle further stress has lessened," Anderson said.
Anderson suggests waiting 10 to 14 days later to let animals out for grazing. Feeding on leftover hay or other forages from winter for this extra time will give permanent pastures much needed recovery time.
"Any permanent pasture that was really stressed last year is going to have some really weak plants in it," Anderson said. "And we've got to be careful that we don't overstress those plants early in the spring."
Planting annual forages also can help relieve some of the pressure on stressed pastures and forage supplies. The drought severely depleted hay supplies last year, so planting oats, grasses and millets can compensate for some of that problem.
"These annuals can be very productive in terms of the amount of forage they produce to rebuild that hay supply," Anderson said.
With the recent rain, Anderson thinks some pastures might hold an opportunity for fertilizer. Application will not be appropriate in all fields, but might stimulate growth in others. In pastures that have enough moisture in normal years, fertilizer will help take advantage of existing rain moisture to help pastures recover.
Producers should still be careful with grazing even if they take these precautions. Anderson warns not to overstock in stressed pastures.
"We have to keep the stocking rate conservative to give plants a chance for a lengthy, long-term recovery," he said. "They cannot be continually grazed short."


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A file is a collection of letters, numbers and special characters: it may be a program, a database, a dissertation, a reading list, a simple letter etc.
Sometimes you may import a file from elsewhere, for example from another computer. If you want to enter your own text or data, you will start by creating a file.
Whether you copied a file from elsewhere or created your own, you will need to return to it later in order to edit its contents.


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Occupational Safety and Health Supervisor
(Certified OSH Supervisor)
Get free membership for the duration of your studies.
It doesn't matter if you're about to start or halfway through your Graduate. Join our community to get support with your studies or to access people that can help you navigate the world of work.
Prior to completing your online application, do feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. You can email us email@example.com
Apply today
Click here to apply online and start benefiting from membership. We look forward to welcoming you to our community.
the gateway to Chartered status
You are an experienced professional, combining strategic insight, risk expertise and business acumen and put the wellbeing of your people at the forefront to drive both individual and organizational performance.
Graduate Members have achieved a recognized and relevant degree-level qualification and are working towards the goal of Chartered status.
Chartered recognizes senior professionals who are changing the way organizations think and approach the management of risk and use their expertise and experience to deliver long-term value to both their organization and profession.
Apply for charted membership if you are:
Driven to promote your profession and best practice HSE Managing System, managing risk, Develop the safety culture
Passionate about achieving the highest levels of professional standing.
Committed to helping and supporting others.
To apply for Chartered, you will be operating at a senior level with a wealth of knowledge and skills responsible for managing significant at function, organizational and/or project level.
You will typically:
Work in an area of risk such as business continuity, compliance, crisis management, emergency planning, environmental management, health & safety, project management, quality, resilience, risk management or security.
Lead a business function such as facilities, finance, HR, internal audit, legal or procurement.
Be a senior decision-maker across projects, functions and organizations.
There are three routes to become a charted member:
Route 1
You have been a Member or Technical Member for a minimum of 3 years, PLUS have 5 years' demonstrable relevant experience working consistently at a senior level.
Route 2
You have a risk-related Bachelor's degree with honors, Master's qualification, professional qualification at level 6 (on the England & Wales Regulated Qualifications Framework or equivalent) Or be a Chartered Member or Fellow of a recognized professional body, PLUS 5 years' demonstrable relevant experience working consistently at a senior level.
Refer to our list of recognized professional bodies at the bottom of this page.
Route 3
You have no formal risk-related qualification or professional membership but have a minimum of 15 years demonstrable relevant experience working consistently at a senior level.
if you're a qualified and Competent practitioner with experience, move up to the next level
Technical Membership recognizes both the qualifications and experience needed by professionals working in a range of operational health and safety roles.
Technical membership requires at least a level 4 or 5 risk-related qualification and/or 3 years' relevant experience typically managing operational change and procedures, contributing to policy development and responsible for managing risks within an area of responsibility or organisation-wide objectives and projects.
You can apply to be a Member based on your:
To apply via the qualification route, you will need to provide evidence of completing a level 4 academic or professional risk-related qualification, recognized on the England & Wales Regulated Qualifications Framework or equivalent. Please note, we recognize both regulated and non-regulated qualifications.
Whatever your role, you make decisions that involve Safety Supervision, Environment Protection, and identifying and managing risk. If you have an interest in risk and safety management, Affiliate membership is open to anyone actively engaged in or considering a career in safety, health, and wellbeing or who has an active interest in the OSH sector and wants to connect to a global health and safety support network. and want to connect with our global network, and access a wealth of online resources and advice, then why not be part of our community and become an Affiliate.
How to become an Affiliate Member
Affiliate Member at 150 USD per year, We will then support you in upgrading to another category, depending on your qualifications and experience.
To find out if your qualifications and experience meet the requirements for our next membership categories please send an up-to-date CV, along with your certificates for any relevant qualifications, to our Membership team so we can check that they meet our criteria. Please do not send us original documents, good quality copies are acceptable.
Apply online today
Prior to completing your application online, do feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. You can email us firstname.lastname@example.com
Click here to apply online and we look forward to welcoming you to our community.
Start your path as a qualified safety and health professional
You have at least a level 3 risk-related qualification and/or at least 3 years experience in HSE, managing risks, typically providing technical support, advice, and guidance to others across an organization (or a client if a consultant) to support function and/or organisation-wide objectives and projects.
To progress to an Associate Member, you'll be able to show commitment to health and safety and have a clear understanding of health and safety through an internationally recognized, ASOSH-accredited qualification.
As an Associate, you will typically support, advise and guide others across an organization or team to support a function, project, or organisation-wide projects and objectives.
There are two routes to apply to be an Associate. Qualifications and/or Skills, competence, and experience
Membership benefits
In today's rapidly changing world of work and its ever-evolving roles and responsibilities, being part of a diverse and supportive network has never been more important.
ASOSH will benefit you whether you are an experienced professional or just starting out in your career.
As a ASOSH member you will:


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Friday, January 27, 2012
Scrap Potential
This is going on the back for a quilt top I just finished. I think I'm going to like the back as much as the front!
I cleaned and organized the studio for a full weekend of sewing. I did something a little different this time. I sorted all my prints by color and by value.
Sorting by value didn't take that long and it's not really scientific or exact. I simply made three stacks, light, medium and dark and put each fabric in a stack based on a quick glance.
It was interesting to find out that I buy pretty evenly between values. I thought there would be an abundance of medium value fabrics.
The advantage to sorting this way is when pulling fabrics for a project. It's much easier to "think" about value when choosing fabrics. I'm going to sort my solids this way as well, but that's a task for another day.
Have a wonderful weekend! I'm going to try to get all those backs made so I can baste and quilt this weekend.
44 comments:
- Esch House Quilts said...
What a great idea! I sort by color, but sorting by value too gives you such a complete picture of what you have and what you might need to buy more of.
Love your storage system too. It must be great to have it all right where you can see it :) - January 27, 2012 at 8:26 AM
- Michele said...
- January 27, 2012 at 8:29 AM
- RedSparrow said...
I love scraps! And your fabric stash is seriously impressive! I hope someday I can be that organized.
- January 27, 2012 at 8:31 AM
- Suburban Stitcher said...
wow! love the piece that you've made for the back...and LOVING your storage!
- January 27, 2012 at 8:32 AM
- Kelli said...
I love this post. The scraps, quilt top and I love how you sorted your fabrics. I wish I could say my stash looked that pretty or organized, but... oh well, one day!
- January 27, 2012 at 8:40 AM
- Cheryl Arkison said...
That is a very neat stash!
I too find it interesting that you had a good mix of values. Most people do buy in the medium range. - January 27, 2012 at 8:55 AM
- ~Niki~ said...
wow, much more organized than my stash LOL. mine are just in bins. not color coordinated like yours. happy friday!
- January 27, 2012 at 9:18 AM
- Melissa Corry said...
Your fabric looks so beautiful all stacked in rows!!!
- January 27, 2012 at 9:26 AM
- Annie said...
Ahhh.....a fabric collection to die for! It looks wonderful! I'm sitting here waiting to help you choose. LOL
- January 27, 2012 at 10:04 AM
- Karen said...
The fabrics look wonderful on the shelves. So neat. You must have pieces that are larger than a fat quarter. I have mine sorted by color but not by value. Doing that presents such an organized look. Like something you would see in a magazine photo.
- January 27, 2012 at 10:39 AM
- Debbie said...
oh how I love the way you sorted your fabrics. I always get stuck halfway through and end up with piles on the floor. the bins look like a great system, too! Thanks for sharing this..
- January 27, 2012 at 10:45 AM
- Terri said...
I think I have "stash envy"! I too color co-ordinate my fabric, but mine is not nearly as pretty as yours!
- January 27, 2012 at 10:54 AM
- heartsofhampshire said...
Sorry, but I am totally GREEN with envy at your stash and the organisation of it. I love that strippy quilt in those lovely turquoises- thanks for sharing
Heather x - January 27, 2012 at 11:01 AM
- Cascade Quilts said...
your stash is AMAZING! WOW, would love that stash myself!
- January 27, 2012 at 11:56 AM
- em's scrapbag said...
I'm currently making a quilt using the colors in your scrap pile. I think they are lovely. Your beautifully organized fabric is inspirint.
- January 27, 2012 at 12:08 PM
- Richard Healey said...
That is an amazing pile of material.
http://richardquilts.blogspot.com - January 27, 2012 at 12:25 PM
- FlourishingPalms said...
Love your sorting idea. It's just so danged pretty! I've got to get some of that shelving too. Thanks for sharing.
- January 27, 2012 at 12:34 PM
- Shanna said...
LOVING your fabrics!! They all look so nice to just dive in and create! I really like your cubbies :o)
- January 27, 2012 at 2:44 PM
- Rustic Barnyard said...
Such beautiful fabric. I look forward to having more time and money to invest in a stash. One day.... the kids are only little for so long. ;)
- January 27, 2012 at 3:31 PM
- Annie said...
Love seeing all that fabric rganisation and colors -love scrap potential too
- January 27, 2012 at 3:34 PM
- Mandalin said...
scraps make me happy!
- January 27, 2012 at 3:44 PM
- Bry said...
Your storage looks so pretty and organized! Would you mind sharing what your storage furniture is?
- January 27, 2012 at 6:21 PM
- Nicole said...
The back of that quilt is gorgeous! And what an inspiring set of fabrics!
- January 27, 2012 at 6:55 PM
- SusieDW said...
Very nice. Thanks for this, Jacquie. I sort by color and tend to overlook "value" often. Bad on me! I've got to learn to consider it more in my quilts. Looking back at finished pieces I can see the 'overlook' causes some issues. Value adds "pop" and guides the eye.
- January 27, 2012 at 7:39 PM
- Millie and Walter said...
Oh dear, I think I drooled on my keyboard. I sort my fabrics the same way, but I don't have nearly as much as you do and most people that have seen my stash think I have a lot!
Cindy - January 27, 2012 at 7:46 PM
- Patty said...
Your stash looks like a fabric store. I love it!
- January 27, 2012 at 8:05 PM
- Angela Nash said...
I love the idea of sorting by value as well as color.
- January 27, 2012 at 9:16 PM
- Donna said...
Sorting by value? Who would have thunk it? Love it!
- January 27, 2012 at 9:20 PM
- Mariel said...
I'm sure I've heard the word value........ But darn if it doesn't seem like I have. True beginner here. Thanks for the insight.
- January 27, 2012 at 9:32 PM
- Margaret said...
Wow, that's a lot of fabric! I love seeing it all sorted and organized. Maybe I'll do the same with my small stash this weekend.
- January 27, 2012 at 9:47 PM
- Lynn said...
I always love a peek into someones fabric organization, thanks! Love what the scraps have become!
- January 27, 2012 at 9:48 PM
- Emily said...
Your fabric stash is inspiring! I definitely wouldn't have an even amount of different values of each color. I tend to buy very saturated fabrics - too many "darks" I need a good lesson in balance. :)
- January 28, 2012 at 1:46 AM
- Unknown said...
Oh how I wish I had the space to show/store my fabrics like this - simply not possible in a 7'x9' box room - and what an amazing range of fabrics you have
- January 28, 2012 at 2:29 AM
- goletagirlwendy said...
Love your stash and the scrap back is very cute. Have a great weekend of quilting.
- January 28, 2012 at 6:20 AM
Could you tell us the name of your modular system? I have seen them with wire grid panels but never with solid panels like yours.
- January 28, 2012 at 9:50 AM
- Arita said...
Thanks for sharing your storage ideas. It's an amazing stash.
- January 28, 2012 at 11:48 AM
- lindsey said...
That is a great bit of sorting you have done there...the colours look lovely in the shelving unit.
I love your quilt back too...will look forward to seeing the finished product - January 28, 2012 at 12:40 PM
- Marcia W. said...
Wow! regarding your serious stash of yardage
I really like the pieced backing - looks like a quilt front - seriously pretty combination of colors - January 28, 2012 at 2:58 PM
- Valerie said...
I want to come live in your stash! beautiful!! How do you get your fabric folded so evenly?!
- January 28, 2012 at 10:15 PM
- Pauline said...
wow, looks great Jacquie, love the new top..and I have heaps of scraps, but sadly no imagination..lol..cant wait to see what you do... cheers
- January 28, 2012 at 10:47 PM
- Unknown said...
Love the scraps! I recently decided to sort fabric by color as well, and I'm really glad I did. I'm finding it much easier to sew from my stash bc I see prints individually, rather than as part of a collection.
Unrelated, I made my college roomie a quilt 2 years ago (http://thegirlwhoquilts.blogspot.com/2010/11/big-blocks.html). Last fall she had the quilt in her car, and her car was stolen. The quilt was never found, although her car was recovered. She was so upset and worried about telling me. I wanted to recreate the quilt for her, but that fabric line is very hard to find. I traveled from Seattle to Chicago to visit my mom this week and decided to stop by the shop where I originally purchased the fabric. Luckily, they still had a ton of it, and I stocked up a bit. When I was checking out, I noticed your name on their email list at the register! I started gushing to the employee about your blog. Small world! (Even smaller world, I know Katie from the SMQG, which I just joined when I moved to Seattle last year!) I feel like I *know* you now. :) - January 28, 2012 at 10:47 PM
- Deb said...
I need to sort my fabric as well. We just did a complete remodel of my sewing room (flooring, painting, furniture) so I haven't gotten to that part of it yet, but I'm sure that most of it will appear as greens!
- January 29, 2012 at 7:53 AM
- Kersten said...
I've tried posting a comment on this post a couple times but my phone is being stubborn on this particular post. So I'll try once again...
I wanted to say how much I LOVE your fabric stash! So many colors and prints to drool over. And look at all those FMF prints you have! I missed out when they first came around. I look forward to the reprint!! Unfortunately it won't be all the prints but even still, I am quite excited.
I look forward to seeing your bridges and red/white quilts finished!! - January 29, 2012 at 2:32 PM
- The Calico Cat said...
My take on value - you have a lot of medium dark & medium light...
Put black next to any of those medium stacks & they will lighten, ditto white...
(I took a class with Katie PM (Sorry can't be bothered to look up the spelling of either of her names) & she sorts into several piles - very dark, dark, medium dark, madium, medium light, light & very light... - January 31, 2012 at 7:08 AM


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Get Ready For Summer With a Swim Spa Fitness Kit!
With summer just around the corner, you may want to get in shape and start exercising to prepare. With the addition of the Swim Spa Rowing Exercise Kit, you'll be able to train for crew or simply build endurance and full body strength year-round in your Swim Spa.
The Benefits Of Water Rowing
Your All Weather Pool is not only a great way to entertain your family and guests, but you can reap the health benefits of staying active through swimming and rowing with the fitness kit! Water exercise has shown through research that it can improve your strength, body composition, muscle power, and even your flexibility.
Rowing is a wonderful way to get exercise in your spa. Aquatic exercise is easier on your joints and the warm water will have you looking forward to your fitness routine. You can pair rowing with swimming or use it as a standalone exercise. As this is a full-body activity, you'll engage your arms, shoulders, torso, and legs.
What's Included in the Fitness Kit?
After learning about the benefits of aquatic exercise and how a fitness kit can benefit you, you may be wondering what's included. With all of the following attachments, you'll be sure that you can get fit while having fun in your swim spa.
- 2 x 316 Stainless Steel Row Bars
- 2 x 316 Stainless Steel Wall Mating Clips.
- 4 x 316 Stainless Steel Attachment Pad Eyes for Accessories
- 2 x 44″ Blue Latex Bands with Locking Tongue Hooks
- 2 x 36″ Blue Latex Bands with Locking Tongue Hooks
- 2 x 18″ Blue Latex Bands with Locking Tongue Hooks
- 2 x Ankle/Wrist Bands with Loop Clips
- 2 x Handle Clips with Loop Clips
- 1 x High Strength Neoprene UV Treated Swim/Walk Belt Adjustable from 18-56″
- Vinyl Carrying Bag with Straps
Installation is a breeze with our fitness kit. You simply need to follow the instructions and the equipment will easily attach to your backyard swim spa. Thread each rowing arm into the connector, then you can thread each connector into your tub.
To use the rowing option, shorter bungee cords are used to connect the rowing arms together on the metal loops close to the handles. There are three different lengths to ensure anyone can use this equipment, all you need to do is choose the size that suits you best.
Next, simply attach one side of the longer bungee cords (2 of them) to the loops close to the handle, and then connect the other end to the spa itself. You can vary the resistance with different-sized cords. Simply sit on the step while holding the rowing handles, put your feet in the footholds, and you're ready to row!
With the addition of the fitness kit and our All Weather Pools, you'll be able to heal your body, get fit & feel great, anytime!


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Most business owners are cognizant of the prevalence of fraud in the digital world today. According to Experian's Global Fraud and Identity Report 2018, almost three-quarters of businesses believe fraud is a growing concern, and nearly two-thirds reported fraudulent losses over the past year.
What is Fraud?
Fraud occurs when an individuals' payment information is used without their authorization. When hackers breach your network and access your customers' or clients' sensitive cardholder information, they have many opportunities to commit fraud numerous times. Anytime someone falsifies an identity and "tricks" a system into thinking the person making a purchase is someone other than who they actually are, this is considered to be fraud.
Fraud is Pervasive in Today's Digital World
This is because the majority of business and consumer data remains vulnerable. As the value of digital information grows, so does the hacker's motivation to develop methods to avoid detection from the latest technologies.
The existing account setup process requires consumers to provide extensive amounts of personal information along with passwords and secret questions. And data breaches provide this information to cybercriminals. When this data is stolen, it's often used for fraudulent activities.
Fraud is a moving target just like the hackers. New tactics are evolving where criminals combine real and fake information to create new identities.
Most business owners just don't have a handle on this – and they lack confidence in their ability to protect their customers and their companies from fraud.
One of the reasons for this is that their initiatives are mostly reactionary rather than proactive as many continue to use legacy cybersecurity technology rather than investing in new, more sophisticated data protection solutions. As a result, every month that goes by increases their vulnerability and exposure to data breaches and fraud.
Fraud is an ever-present and growing risk
For businesses in e-commerce, managing the risk of fraud is a delicate balancing act between providing an ease of use for customers vs. fraud protection. They struggle with mitigating fraud and providing a positive customer experience. Unfortunately, the customer experience wins out in most cases, and businesses are willing to risk fraudulent losses over losing customers to their competition. Ironically, they are setting their businesses up for reputational damage where they will end up losing customers anyway, fail to gain new ones, and possibly face financial penalties and litigation costs.
The 2017 Cost of Data Breach Study from the Ponemon Institute, sponsored by IBM, puts the global average cost at $3.6 million, or $141 per data record. That's a reduction in the average cost in 2016, but the average size of data breaches has increased. It's also worth noting that the average cost of a data breach in the United States is much higher at $7.3 million.
More than 50 percent of businesses say they still rely on passwords as their top form of authentication.1 And business leaders know that using passwords isn't the most secure option. But customers are used to them, and business owners want to please them. They also complain that they lack the financial resources to adopt more advanced authentication methods when this would save them legal fees and penalties if/when their customers' accounts are breached–not to mention their reputation and the future existence of their business. This, of course, is very shortsighted.
How data breaches and fraud are connected
Data breaches and fraud don't usually occur at the same time and place. Cybercriminals won't steal a customer's information and turn around and use it for a purchase from the same business. So. it's not easy for a business to detect when a breach occurs.
Data breaches are typically detected by using specific security tools that monitor all payment activity. Merchants should follow PCI/DSS Standards to identify and prevent breaches and remain compliant. PCI-DSS audits will help you find vulnerabilities in your system and reveal inadequacies that must be eradicated.
A successful case of fraud spreads like cancer
If a hacker can get one password, they may have the keys to other password-protected accounts. The more online accounts people open, the greater their risk. And most people have quite a few. If the hacker can figure out the password to someone's email account, they may also have the key to their credit card and banking accounts as well.
You must remain vigilant to prevent data breaches and fraud.
What to do if you suspect fraud
A key indicator of evidence of fraud is in chargebacks where a customer disputes a charge on their credit card, and where you aren't paid for the service or product. If your chargeback rate increases above a 1% margin, this is a good indication that you're experiencing fraud.
In this case, you should hire a third-party auditor like an IT Managed Services Provider (MSP) to help bring you back into compliance and stop the thieves. They will detect where the problem(s) exist and if what they find indicates a data breach. PCI-DSS compliance requirements mandate that you do this to stop the fraudulent activity.
Of course, you should contact the card processor as well. They will connect you to the card providers who can often identify the point of access or detect a suspicious pattern of activity.
What You Can Do to Reduce Fraud and Data Breaches.
Use EMV Technology.
EMV (Europay Mastercard Visa) is the global standard to authenticate payment cards. EMV technology can help you protect your business from fraud. It ensures the card is legitimate and that the person using the card is the authorized user.
EMV chips are microprocessors that store and protect cardholder data. They use a unique cryptogram that's validated by the card issuer. This makes it more difficult for hackers to break the code and steal card information to commit fraud.
Today, if you don't use an EMV-capable terminal, and the transaction turns out to be fraudulent, you can be held financially liable for that transaction.
EMV has been used in the United Kingdom since 2004, and card-present fraud has gone down by 80% as a result. By comparison, without EMV in the U.S., fraud increased during this time by nearly 70%.
Protect Data in Transit by Using Encryption.
When credit card data is stolen, it's considered a data breach. Considering the number of card payments your business processes in a month, hackers may view you as the "Pot of Gold at the end of a Rainbow." In other words, your business is a prime target.
You can help stop the hackers from accessing data in transit by using end-to-end encryption (E2E) and point-to-point encryption (P2PE).
The advantages of end-to-end encryption are:
- That you don't need a separate key for the decryption of the data.
- You have flexibility in deciding what data to encrypt.
- You can choose specific configurations for more functionality.
- The file size is small, and the processing time is minimal.
Point-to-point encryption encrypts transmitted data as it goes through a designated "tunnel." This is used most often for credit card information that's encrypted from the point-of-sale (POS) to the credit card processor.
With encryption, if a breach does occur, and data is stolen, it will be useless to cybercriminals in its encrypted state.
Protect Data at Rest by Using Tokenization.
Tokenization breaks up a sequence of data into pieces such as words, keywords, symbols, phrases, and elements called tokens. Tokens can be words, phrases or even whole sentences. In other words, tokenization keeps cybercriminals from using data by replacing it with meaningless characters. Tokenization is helpful for businesses that store sensitive card data for re-billing. It's also one of the most effective and affordable ways for businesses to protect their customers' confidential card data.
Combining encryption and tokenization is one of the best ways to protect your business from the devastating effects of a data breach.
Secure Your IT Environment
- Ask your IT Managed Services Provider (MSP) to set up a next-generation firewall, anti-spam, and anti-virus solutions.
- Ensure your POS and router are on different networks and separate from other systems that access the Internet.
- Don't use your business POS for surfing the Web. This can expose it to viruses and result in vulnerabilities that can be breached.
- Assign separate login credentials for each user.
- Forbid sharing of login credentials and enforce this.
- Keep your user list up to date and disable accounts that are no longer needed.
- Only provide remote access for users with a clearly identified need.
- Don't leave remote access software turned on when unattended.
- Keep all software and anti-virus, anti-spam programs up-to-date.
- Regularly run and review scans for malware.
- Regularly have your MSP run vulnerability scans.
- Ask your MSP to train your staff on the latest security threats and what to do if they come across one.
- Train your staff how to detect unauthorized skimming devices that could be installed on POS or credit-card terminals.
Have Your MSP Train Your Employees on Cybersecurity Awareness.
Teach your employees about password security and make sure you enforce this behavior:
- Don't use words from the dictionary.
- Don't use names of family members.
- Don't reuse passwords from your other accounts.
- Don't write down your passwords or put them where others can see them.
- Consider using a Password Manager (e.g., LastPass or 1Password).
- Use password complexity (e.g., P@ssword1).
- Create a unique password for work separate from your personal use.
- Change passwords at least quarterly.
- Use passwords with 9+ characters.
- A criminal can crack a 5-character password in 16 minutes.
- It takes five hours to crack a six-character password.
- Three days for a 7-character password.
- Four months for eight characters.
- 26 years for nine characters.
- centuries for 10+ characters.
- Turn on Two-Factor Authentication if it's available.
Teach employees about ransomware and phishing threats. These appear to be from an official like the IRS or FBI. If a screen pops up that says you'll be fined if you don't follow their instructions, don't! If you do, the criminal will encrypt all your data and prevent you and your employees from accessing it. Teach them to:
Beware of messages that:
- Try to solicit your curiosity or trust.
- Contain a link that you must "check out now."
- Contain a downloadable file like a photo, music, document or pdf file.
Don't believe messages that contain an urgent call to action:
- With an immediate need to address a problem that requires you to verify information.
- Urgently asks for your help.
- Asks you to donate to a charitable cause.
- Indicates you are a "Winner" in a lottery or other contest, or that you've inherited money from a deceased relative.
Be on the lookout for messages that:
- Respond to a question you never asked.
- Create distrust.
- Try to start a conflict.
Watch for flags like:
- Misspellings
- Typos
Ask Your MSP to Help You with PCI Compliance.
PCI Compliance is not a one-time event but should be a continual process to ensure your IT systems are appropriately transmitting and storing sensitive data. It mandates that network and business practices are secure.
Failing to maintain compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) can ruin your small business if you get hit with a data breach.
It's not always easy to do this on your own. Your MSP can help by:
- Performing scans of your network to identify and eliminate vulnerabilities that can lead to data breaches.
- Monitoring network activity and blocking malicious activity before it can lock down or steal your data.
- Providing you the tools and resources to promote compliance.
- Implement data-breach protection solutions.
- Help you sign up for a breach assistance/cyber insurance program that provides for reimbursement of certain card brand fees that are charged if data is compromised. Some cover the costs of a data breach, which can be upwards of $100,000 or more.
Protect Your Business from Data Breaches, Fraud, and the Resulting Consequences
When you take all of this seriously, you're not just protecting your customer's confidential information; you're also protecting your business from fraud.
Most companies that experience a data breach will see a rise in cost to retain existing customers. And, they will also see an increased cost to acquire new customers. When you add these increases in cost to the loss of revenue from customers that choose take their business to your competitors, you'll soon see how your damaged reputation dramatically affects your company's bottom line.
You don't have to face this alone.
The right IT Managed Services Provider can be your best ally against security threats. From helping you with integrated and compliant POS systems to implementing technologies like encryption and tokenization, and providing compliance and breach assistance, the right IT Partner is worth every cent when it comes to helping you secure your business against the devastating effects of credit-card fraud and data breaches.


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Meeting between Salafists and liberal parties aim at breaking Muslim Brotherhood monopoly over decision making
Egypt's ultraconservative Islamist party has reached out to rival secular and liberal political factions in an unusual, behind-the-scenes attempt to unify their ranks and counter the Muslim Brotherhood's power in the country's new parliament.
An alliance between the salafists and nonreligious parties would be very difficult to reach and even harder to maintain, given the large differences in their ideologies. But the talks highlight the growing worries that the Brotherhood, fresh off its election victory, is starting to throw its weight around to dominate Egypt's politics and sideline others.
The talks, which took place over the past week, also show the strange bedfellows that can be brought together with Egypt's politics deeply in flux ahead of the convening later this month of the first parliament since the Feb. 11 fall of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
As a consequence, parliament may not be controlled by a unified Islamist front, but a divided one making choices on political considerations not purely religious ones. The Brotherhood and the salafists are both Islamist movements, but there have been frequent frictions between them during the election campaign.
The Salafi talks with liberals are startling because the movement is considerably more conservative than the Brotherhood and more aggressive in its vilification of secularism. salafists call for a strict, literalist implementation of Islamic Shariah law in Egypt and practice a Saudi-style segregation of the sexes. During the election campaign, some Salafi sheikhs railed against secular parties, telling Egyptians that voting for them would be un-Islamic.
With Egypt's multistage parliament elections almost finished, the Brotherhood is on track to win just under 50 percent of the legislature's seats. The alliance led by the main Salafi party, Al-Nour, holds about 20 percent, while multiple liberal, leftist, secular parties along with independents and remnants of Mubarak's regime make up most of the rest.
Talks between the Al-Nour Party and the two main liberal groups, the Free Egyptians and the Wafd Party, came in response to fears the Brotherhood is moving to monopolize key legislative positions including the parliament president, deputies and heads of its 19 committees, said Essam Sultan, a leading member of the Al-Wasat Party, which hosted the talks.
Parliament is also supposed to also create a 100-member panel to write Egypt's new constitution. In an interview with the Al-Ahram daily, senior Brotherhood official Ahmed Abu Baraka laid out what he called the group's vision for the panel's makeup — raising alarm that the Brotherhood was seeking to run the process. The group's leadership quickly distanced itself, saying Abu Baraka was expressing his personal viewpoint.
Such unilateral moves by the Brotherhood, ahead of the scheduled convening of parliament on Jan. 23, put other parties "under heavy pressure," said Sultan. "The minute I proposed these meetings, everybody agreed to come."
The head of the Salafi Al-Nour, Emad Abdel-Ghafour, confirmed the meetings but declined to comment on the possibility of striking alliances. "We look for wide national reconciliation because its not possible anymore to isolate any political faction or to run parliament through 50+1 majority," he said.
During the talks, Al-Nour leaders sat at the table with unveiled female members of the Wafd Party, Sultan noted. He also said they engaged in "very successful talks" with the Free Egyptians party, whose founder is Christian Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris. Sawiris is on trial on charges of showing contempt for religion after a Salafi party official complained over a tweet in which he posted a cartoon depicting Mickey Mouse with the beard of an Islamic conservative and Minnie Mouse in a black Islamic veil.
Sultan said that over four days, the parties agreed on general principle that parliament must not be run by a single party, distribution of positions should be based on the proportional weight of each party and parties with small representation should not be neglected.
They also talked about "what brings them together not what separates them apart. The priorities should be on laws related to health services, education, security and improve quality of life," he said.
"We want an end of dictatorship. We don't want to reinvent the old regime through a new dominant ruling party," Sultan said in an oblique reference to the Brotherhood.
He said the liberal parties also aired their concerns over the salafists' view of civil rights. Christian Wafd member Margaret Azer "talked to them (the salafists) about all her worries, and they responded to everything," he said. "It was very positive meeting."
Some liberals fear the Brotherhood and salafists could join forces in parliament to push through a heavily Islamic agenda. But there is also considerable distrust between the two groups. Brotherhood leaders say they do not want to lead alone and want a broad participation.
Mahmoud Ezzat, a prominent Brotherhood figure, commented on the Salafi-liberal meetings, saying, "Everybody is free to do what they want."
He dismissed the possibility of a Brotherhood-Salafi alliance with unusually harsh comments on the salafists. He described them as a movement with a wide spectrum that includes "remnants of the former regime and horrible personalities along with the moderate Islamists."
"Some of those who ran under the Salafi parties, when you look at their CV, they have nothing to do with salafists and now they are lawmakers," he said. "There are sane people ... but there are the fanatics."
The Muslim Brotherhood has been involved in politics since its foundation years in 1928, and even though it was banned under Mubarak's regime its candidates ran as independents in parliamentary elections. The salafists' first political experience came only after Mubarak's fall when the movement formed at least four parties, chief among them Al-Nour. Early in the election campaign, the two tried to form an alliance to run on the same candidate lists, but the salafists broke away, complaining that the Brotherhood was trying to dominate the partnership.
The Muslim Brotherhood and salafists share an ideological background that views Islam as not only a faith but school of governance. But their priorities differ, and the Brotherhood is seen as more pragmatic.
At the same time, the salafists deeply oppose secular parties. Some salafists used mosques to rally voters, some of them branding rivals as "infidels", and warning voters not to back the Egyptian Bloc, an election coalition led by the Free Egyptians Party, because it was backed by the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Sultan said it is too early for the talks to turn to a political alliance.
"I call this coordination, not alliance yet, since nobody signed anything yet," he said, and added, "It is not about getting how to divide the cake of parliament among us but we hope to revive the national unity that was in Tahrir Square during the revolution."


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Posts Tagged 'Hex [TV]'
Don't Read The Latin! Episode 89: TV Horror Part 1!
It's another long one! Your hosts Jennifer Lovely and Rhias Hall are joined by Jillian Venters of Gothic Charm School to discuss their favorite horror on the television! And Netflix. And Prime. Let's just say it's stuff you don't watch in the theater?
Tune in next time for their very excited discussion of favorites Hannibal and Penny Dreadful!
And since I, Handsome Husband Jim write these posts, I get to mention a show they didn't, the 1980s show Werewolf, which was one of my first exposures to horror and can be summed up as the Incredible Hulk TV series, just with a shockingly well made werewolf instead of Lou Ferrigno. And who was quite the player behind the scenes.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Giving has always proved to be good for health.. Giving to others has been shown to increase health benefits in people with chronic illness, including cancer and multiple sclerosis. One good deed a day is all it takes to be healthy both physically and mentally apart from all the exercises that you do. The one reason giving may improve physical health and longevity is that it helps decrease stress, which is associated with a variety of health problems. Giving to others gives an inner happiness to one.
The opportunity to do Karma or good to others awaits all of us. There is an opportunity for us as an individual to be bold and use our unique role as philanthropists to spark, and drive, large-scale social change. Whether as a social entrepreneur or by supporting a social cause, each one us have the opportunity to participate and do 'Karma'(Doing good to others). Karma will only help bring a positive change in your life, a change for the better.
Who knows…One day, you may look back and say, "I was there at the beginning—and I made a difference."
We kick start with our Karma Blogs from this auspicious Diwali week. GOQii's Karma Specialist Ruta will enlighten us regularly on the various Karma topics and Karma deeds. We kick start with the issue of Child Labour and how Education is every Child's right.
Burn all evils and embrace the Good
The festival of Lights has just passed and its been a good one week of celebrations with our families and friends. Festive season has just begun and will continue till the end of the year. It's that time of the month when we cannot enough of all the shopping both for ourselves, our loved ones and for our home. As children, we all have fond memories of these festival celebrations be it Dusshera, Diwali or Christmas with our families.
It's not enough to just think about our own kids and their well being. Sadly, like our children there are so many poor kids on the street all by themselves with no one to look after them and who have no idea what festivities are or what a festival like Diwali or Christmas feels like. These lesser privileged kids live their life each day as it comes.
Many of them are forced into begging and if it is not begging then they are forced into child labour. You might not realize but, there could be many new things in your house which might have been made by these tiny hands. The new Saree that you are wearing, the lantern that is lighting your home might just be some of the things that these children have lent their hands to.
It is not a good feeling when you see a child slogging to earn some few bucks instead of going to school and gaining some knowledge. Every child has the right to education. School ideally is the right place for them and not traffic signals and restaurants.
According to the World Labor report by International Labor Organization (ILO) child labor is considered as 'forced labor' because children are rarely in the position to give free consent to any activities performed by them as most aspect of their lives are determined by adults.
- Official figures shared by ILO in its 'World report on Child Labour 2015' indicates some 168 million children remain trapped in Child Labor while at the same time there are 75 million young person aged 15 to 24 years of age are unemployed.
- The largest numbers of children are employed in places like textile factories, dhabas (roadside restaurants) and hotels, or as domestic workers.
It's a vicious circle:
- The day when a child is employed it is the very day when the young mind is denied access to education which is actually his or her right. Lack of education leads to lack of opportunity which finally leads to poverty and also other bad habits.
- Child labor exists because there is a demand! Child Labor continues to be a concern in this day and age but because of the efforts of labor groups, governments, companies and ordinary people like you and me, the number of companies employing child labor is going down.
Simple steps that you could take to eradicate child labor:
- BE' a responsible citizen and ensure you do not employ child labor. Even if it means to employ as a house help to take care of your child
- As a consumer, you can make sure that the products you're buying do not employ child labor.
- ACT' as a responsible citizen and make responsible choices. Ensure that your society does not employ child labor.
- 'EDUCATE' and create awareness amongst people employing child laborers and the parents sending their children to work.
- Further, 'REPORT' cases of child labor.
So festivities or no festivities let us do our bit! Let us consciously try and help the deprived children and give them what they really deserve. There are many organizations that work for the welfare and betterment of children. Instead of burning your cash on crackers why not you could probably think of sponsoring one child's education.


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Frosting Creations are a new product from Duncan Hines that attempts to revolutionize canned frosting. Canned frostings typically come in basic flavors, such as chocolate and vanilla. With Frosting Creations, you get a can of plain frosting and can choose from a variety of flavorings to add to it to make flavors that are much more distinctive than those you'll usually find in the baking aisle. There are a dozen flavors and they include Caramel, Cherry Vanilla and White Chocolate Raspberry, as well as over the top kid flavors, like Cotton Candy and Bubble Gum. The flavors are concentrated and come in a powder that you simply stir into the plain frosting.
I don't typically use canned frosting, but I usually have one tucked away in the back of the pantry just in case, and I admit that I was very curious about how these new flavors would taste – especially some of the flavors that had a more "premium" sound to them.
The base frosting was your typical canned frosting, creamy and sweet but with little flavor. The flavor packets stirred in easily, with a little bit of vigorous stirring with a knife or spatula. I tried Orange Creme, Caramel and Bubble Gum. Orange Creme promised to be a creamsicle flavor and it did add a subtle orange flavor to the frosting. It was even better with a little bit of orange zest added to it, which popped the citrus more and let the frosting provide the vanilla. Bubble Gum looked and tasted like, well, bubble gum. It was not something I would eat again in all honesty – but I do know a few kids who loved it (especially on a chocolate cupcake) because they had never had anything like it before. My favorite was caramel, which did have a nice caramel flavor and tempered the sweetness of the plain frosting a bit. It's still not going to replace homemade, but it was a lot more interesting than most canned frostings I've had and would be great on a yellow cake.
Overall, I think that this is a really fun concept and can deliver a lot more flavor options than you could find with off-the-shelf frostings. It's fun to play with the flavors (especially if kids are involved) and couldn't be easier.
And if you want to know a little secret, you can use these flavoring packets with homemade frostings (American buttercream made with butter, confectioners' sugar and milk) for a very easy way to change the flavor of your frosting but start with a little bit tastier base.