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The Naked Jungle (1954)
The Days of High Adventure: A Journey through Adventure Film
Director: Byron Haskin
By Roderick Heath
Eleanor Parker's death last December at the marvellously ripe age of 91 saddened me greatly. On top of the loss of a link with history, Parker had long been one of my favourite female stars from classic Hollywood. I'd had a powerful crush on her ever since first seeing her in Scaramouche (1952), where she whips up a storm as the hero's fiery actress-mistress. The Naked Jungle is sublime stuff for the Parker fetishist and a quintessential work of '50s adventure cinema. Adapted from an admired short story by Carl Stephenson, the film was produced by George Pal, a former animator who moved into live-action films and became one of the most successful filmmakers feeding the science fiction craze of the post-War era, commencing with Destination Moon (1950) and When Worlds Collide (1951). Pal had evident ambitions to become the next Cecil B. DeMille, to whom he paid overt tribute by adapting two of his failed projects, When Worlds Collide and War of the Worlds, and mimicking his mix of epic largesse and religious piety. The quasi-biblical flavour of tribulation and transcendence found in Pal's movies was corny, but bolder than rivals staking out a place in the scifi race in seeking to capture the psychic polar extremes of the era.
Pal's brand reached its height when he hired Byron Haskin to direct War of the Worlds (1953). By that time, Haskin had been working in films for 30 years, having made his directing debut in the late '20s, but was known mainly as a cinematographer until he made the superb Technicolor hit for Disney, Treasure Island (1950). His work with Pal was the next high point of his career, as the pair developed a grand, hysterical, almost hallucinogenically lush Technicolor brand of scifi cinema with War of the Worlds that plugged vividly into the era's fantasies and colonised the minds of a generation of budding filmmakers: Joe Dante, Paul Verhoeven, Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, and a host of others have paid homage to it over the years.
Haskin, like Jack Arnold and Gordon Douglas, actually directed only a handful of scifi films but remains associated with the genre because he did his most famous work in it and indeed seemed most at home there. The much-derided Conquest of Space (1955) ended the Pal-Haskin partnership until they reunited for The Power (1968), but that sadly confirmed how out of place their brand of craftsmanship was in the late '60s. Haskin had, in the meantime, continued to work occasionally in the genre, directing important episodes of the TV show "The Outer Limits," including the famous 'Demon with a Glass Hand' episode by Harlan Ellison, and the eerie cult film Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964). The Naked Jungle was the immediate follow-up to War of the Worlds and represented a digression into period exotic adventure, though it has aspects in common with scifi cinema's "creature feature" impulses insofar as the climax involves combating a monstrous animal force. Here, the monster is entirely earthly and real, but no less alien. And yet for much of its length, The Naked Jungle is not a film about man vs. wild, but rather a tale of man vs. woman, though the two are definitely linked within the narrative logic.
The Naked Jungle is definitely of a piece with When Worlds Collide and War of the Worlds, with its emphasis on collapsing "civilisation," individuals standing in the way of almost cosmic-level nihilism, and Haskin's powerful, colour-sodden, cleanly contextualised images of fire, corrosion, and calamity. However, it avoids piety, perhaps reflecting the strong influence of coscreenwriter Ben Maddow, blacklisted at the time and fronted by Philip Yordan. Maddow's incisive gall inflects the film's vision of a capitalist empire run by a repressed yob and very literally eaten away by hive-mind labourers; or perhaps because of its historical 1901 setting, the need for such reassurance was negated. But it certainly has the same thematic stresses as other Pal films, with the emphasis of the film as a whole on the peculiarities of human willpower to both create and destroy and the ghost in the machine itching to tear the works down. There's an intimacy, however, to these transcendent/apocalyptic visions that far outstrips many of Pal's inheritors in modern cinema of spectacular destruction like Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay. As War of the Worlds finds its poetic center in a young woman's anguished recollection of lost peace and safety, so The Naked Jungle is, for most of its length, squarely and as unabashedly as you could get in the '50s, about sex. The title isn't entirely a tease in that regard: animalistic impulses threaten self-appointed titan Christopher Leiningen (Charlton Heston) from within and without. Parker is Joanna, a mail-order bride from New Orleans who travels via steamboat to Leiningen's coffee plantation in the Rio Negro area of the Amazon jungle.
When Joanna arrives in Leiningen's whitewashed castle filled with trappings of Western civilisation tediously brought in by boat, a trove Joanna is intended to round off, she finds the workforce of tribal folk more welcoming than Leiningen, whose Olympian attitude apparently borders on contempt for her. After several exchanges of strained politesse, Joanna finally loses her cool in a memorable eruption of verve: "Yes – I am exactly as represented. I speak several languages, play the piano, converse intelligently, and have very nice teeth. Would you care to count them?" Joanna then compares herself to a horse Leiningen bought, though at one point Haskin frames him with a statuette of a stallion, indicating he's the would-be stud. Leiningen's response is even franker in its conceit: "You're very beautiful – intelligent – accomplished. There must be something wrong with you." He soon enough sniffs it out: Joanna is a widow, a friend of Leiningen's brother who recommended herself as the best candidate after he asked her to help him find a wife for the Amazon plantation owner. This leads into the film's cunningly portrayed central problem. Leiningen is a virgin, having begun his empire building as a teen and resisted the temptation to sleep with the native women: "They have a name for the white men who sneak into the native villages at night. I was determined that no one would ever call me by that name." As such, he's initially repelled by the thought of a sexually experienced wife. Gleeful metaphors abound as Leiningen and Joanna compare her presence to the never-played piano he had shipped in. "A good piano sounds better when it's played," Joanna retorts pithily, and we all know what she means. Leiningen's adamantine control begins to crack almost immediately. Taunted by Joanna's preference of her own perfume to the brands he had imported, he gets drunk, kicks down her bedroom door, and splashes scent all over in a moment of tactile, erotic frenzy before his willpower returns.
Leiningen begins schooling Joanna in "what you're up against" in introducing her to both the world he's carved out with his two hands and the glowering force of sexual frustration. The plantation used to be a swamp, but the water is now held back by lock gates (plot point!); Leiningen extrapolates that a similar mental gate is required to hold the physically and spiritually corrosive power of the jungle—nature itself—at bay, pointing out one of his workers who has Mayan ancestry, "one of the greatest civilisations the world has ever known," but who has devolved into a head-hunter. Lest we mistake Leiningen for one of them exploit-the-natives capitalists, fellow planter Gruber (John Dierkes) turns up with a full head of steam, believing some of his contract workers have run off to Leiningen, and indeed he finds two hiding amongst Leiningen's crew, identified by the whip marks on their backs. Leiningen outwits Gruber with the aid of the state commissioner (William Conrad), who's been waylaid by Gruber to help reclaim the workers, by the somewhat torturous but successful ploy of accusing the two men of murder—the shrunken head carried by another worker is used as a prop. His move to hang them gives the commissioner pretext to intervene and hold them for trial, rather than deliver them back to Gruber's tender mercies. Joanna meanwhile is momentarily shocked out of her formidably wide comfort zone by the spectacle of a native justice ritual that results in a man being killed. She abuses Leiningen's foreman Incacha (Abraham Sofaer) for letting it happen, but, of course, the dead man is Incacha's son.
The Naked Jungle looks back over its shoulder to fetid melodramas like West of Zanzibar (1927) and Red Dust (1932) in using a jungle setting as mimetic canvas to paint perfervid fantasies, whilst its themes both pay heed to and mock late Victorian Freudian theories of repression as the key to constructing civilisations. Neither Haskin nor Heston and Parker step back from the campy edge to the hothouse melodrama, and indeed push gleefully toward and over the edge as Leiningen moves from chilly Pharaonic recline to panther-like lunges and poses over the piano as he probes Joanna about her past and her knowledge of men with the energy of a prosecutor grilling a murderess, with Parker's blue eyes registering insult and provocation and converting them into energy. Parker, just before delivering that crack about pianos, rises whilst pounding a discordant note on the keyboard, as if the soundtrack has invaded the movie itself to declare infinite offence. Relations devolve into a comically grotesque show before the commissioner as Joanna tries to inform him that she's leaving but not because the Amazon has proven too much for her, whilst Leiningen tries to feed her dictatorial cues, and the film moves into the territory occupied by Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk as Technicolor satirists of bourgeois gender relations.
Young Heston's odd mixture of physical strength and ability to play febrile personalities was rarely better exploited as Leiningen strikes poses worthy of Bauhaus sculpture, a study in masculine strength who almost immediately starts crumbling within when confronted by Joanna's all-but-irresistible cache of feminine virtues. Whilst Heston had made his mainstream debut in a DeMille film, the invocations here of primal struggle with plague and flood more clearly point the way forward to his role as Moses. Yet as a protagonist, Leiningen more recalls John Wayne's Matt Dunston in Red River (1948), a haute macho icon with a vein of rich hysteria just under the surface, and like Dunston, Leiningen engages in a titanic, almost mythic enterprise only to feel the ground slipping out from under his feet: "I was afraid you were disappointed in me," Joanna announces excitedly as she cottons on to Leiningen, "Instead you're afraid of me." Superman loosens up and confesses to having read the books of poetry he has piled around the house. The moment with the perfume has its mirror later as Joanna entices him to put insect repellent on her back, in a scene that approximates the temperatures inside supernovae whilst not even resolving with the traditional kiss. The kind of primeval power a man can obtain in the jungle is transmitted by signs and legends: "Beyond that next bend, your husband has more power than a king," the commissioner tells Joanna on the boat taking her upriver toward this Amazonian Heart of Darkness. But the jungle's power is signified at the same moment, as the captain of the steamboat (Romo Vincent) notes birds flying far out of their climes, the first mark of something happening deep within that heart that can upend the peace treaty Leiningen has made with the earth.
The tension and mystery about what's out there are built carefully but marginalised for most of the first hour of The Naked Jungle. It's made amusingly clear just how dreadful it could be, as the commissioner confirms he's ventured upriver to find out what it is, and utters the dread word, "Marabunta!" to Leiningen, who is so alarmed he makes sure no one could possibly be listening before allowing the conversation to continue, whilst scorer Daniele Amfitheatrof lets loose with his oft-repeated theme of the threat for the first time, a wild-sounding, high flurry on wind instruments that sounds like a bird's fearful cry. When Leiningen decides to go with the commissioner, he packs Joanna along, intending to send her across land to catch a boat out. But the signs of dread proliferate, with wildlife and villages all deserting the locale. A floating canoe proves to have a dazzlingly clean skeleton in it, albeit still clad in clothes that identify it as Gruber's. Finally the heroes are confronted by the awesome sight, far more destructive and dangerous than any monster of myth, of the Marabunta: a colossal column of soldier ants, or, as the commissioner dubs it, "40 square miles of agonising death," devouring all in its path, and working irresistibly toward Leiningen's plantation. Leiningen, of course, decides to defend his turf, pitting immoveable object against unstoppable force. Joanna half-coerces him into letting her stay rather than leave with the baleful commissioner, pointing out that her presence gives him power over the workers. Not taking chances, however, Leiningen steals a leaf from Cortez—surely a deliberate echo—and burns his workers' boats to prevent escape.
The Naked Jungle belongs in a blurred genre zone. In addition to its variation on the themes of Pal's scifi series and an historical adventure, the story patterns and audience-appeal tropes recall films like The Hurricane (1937) and The Rains Came (1939) as sexy dramas set in exotic places with climactic deus ex machina transfigurations, and looking forward to the '70s craze for disaster movies and the horror films of an oncoming age. Although there's little overt gore in the film, the visceral nature of its implied horror laid groundwork for a significant subgenre. Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) followed the model of the Haskin-Pal film in concentrating on a tense romance foregrounding calamitous animal attacks in a vision of truths behind the human condition, and beyond to the craze for animal-attack films in the '70s exemplified by Jaws (1975), by which time the metaphorical force of this narrative pattern as displaced portrait of invasive forces eating at the western body politic would be more starkly obvious. Paul Verhoeven, a fan of War of the Worlds in his youth, may have remembered The Naked Jungle for Starship Troopers (1997), where the ideas are the same but the bugs bigger, whilst Spielberg quotes it for a gleefully nasty trope in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), though there, the ants eat the communist. Most intriguingly, perhaps, Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo likewise essays the same theme in the same setting. There, the secret brittleness of Haskin's white übermensch was exchanged for Herzog's beautiful, nonconformist visionary, but both heroes test their own potential to gain dominion against natural forces and fail in a fashion that confirms them as titans who refuse to become Promethean victims, but instead find revelation in loss. The common link between Pal's monster movie and Herzog's arthouse drama is the immediate sense of existential peril, a vivid interest in the contrast of powerful individual humanity against implacable surrounds.
In Leiningen's case, this comes in contending with a force that overwhelms and outwits his efforts to hold it off, but finds other things in defeat. Not least of which, natch, is that it seals the deal in his marriage, and the mission is changed not just by the threat of the ants but of Leiningen's changing perspective and circumstance to become one of protection, and not mere defiance. Haskin's sense of style is unobtrusive and yet undeniable: the cinematography by Ernest Laszlo, a fin-de-siècle trumpet blast for the beauty of Technicolor Academy-ratio pictorialism as the widescreen age was burgeoning, offers rich depth of field and space in the boxy format, seeking out balancing elements in compositions, and smooth tracking shots that dog the characters incisively, like the deft little track forward as Joanna and Leiningen provoke each other as she plays the piano. A keen eye for colour coding is plain as the white walls of Leiningen's buildings, his outpost of civilisation, and are echoed by the characters' dress. Joanna arrives clad in a blazing white jacket, an emissary of alien cleanliness and angelic beauty that makes her instantly iconic to the native workmen, whilst Leiningen first appears filthy and clad in earthy colours. Later, as the two stand together to form a united front for the native labourers, both are dressed in pale hues matching the house, symbolising their unity with the world they're defending, not long before the insinuating masses of black ants begin crawling over the plaster. Pulsating greens dominate exteriors and, as disaster comes, fire rendered in nightmarish hues call back to War of the Worlds, as Leiningen's last bulwark against the invaders burns away.
Haskin and Pal's special-effects team do more restrained work here than in Pal's other scifi works, offering painterly matte depictions of the oncoming swarm, first glimpsed as a great, grey, teeming gash in the jungle, and then cleverly layered shots of the ants crawling on limbs, stripping away leaf and stem, and reducing Leiningen's plantation to a skeletal desert. The sense of staging reaches a crescendo in the film's most famous and excerpted scene, as Leiningen's rotund lock keeper (Jack Reitzen), performing the vital task of keeping the canals Leiningen's dug as a barrier to the ants filled with floodwater, falls asleep at his post, with the camera tilting down from his sleeping face to note the masses of ants crawling up his legs. Awakening, he's flung into a thrall of terror, screaming as his eyes are eaten in their sockets by the horde.
Haskin returns to the same image, of a man's hand curling up in pain as the ants swarm on his body, the second time with Leiningen himself as he makes his last desperate effort: whereas that binary moment of him rubbing fluid on Joanna's body carried potent erotic meaning, here the corporeal sensation is equally powerful and far more terrible, whilst the efforts of both men to hang on to life is reduced to the singular picture (interestingly, the poster of Saul Bass's new-age variation of the story, Phase IV [1972], depicts an ant burrowing its way out of a hand) that calls back to Luis Buñuel's love of crawling ants as symbol of irrepressible forces, the tingling sensatory quality of dozens of tiny feet evoking the finest patterns of the nervous system. Of course, Leiningen fares better than his employee and escapes the gnawing death to induce his own destructive flood, destroying the lock gate entirely and allowing the waters to wash the ant horde away, saving lives at the cost of rolling back his labours. Leiningen is caught by the boiling waters, but lurches his way out of the mud and into Joanna's arms on a water-logged plain as the end title appears. It profits a man everything, it seems, to lose his world but gain his woman.
7th/02/2014 to 8:46 pm
Heston seemed to made for these hyperthymic roles, his oeuvre is loaded with them. In the more subtle ones, he's much more interesting, but few other actors could've done the less subtle ones as well as he did. I watched this one with wide eyes as a kid, the ants were much more creepy than a lot of other 'monsters', although the sheer mindless force of nature aspect brings to mind "The Monolith Monsters". Parker, as usual, has 'It' shooting out of her performance even in the fetid jungle – "Scaramouche" wasn't a one-off sexual power display, that's for sure . (A fave for me, too) Heston has to carry the film, in the end, and his clenched teeth prolly could've 'et every ant alive, but I guess they had to destroy to have something to rebuild. My Dad had this one classed with "Elephant Walk", where destruction due to Mother Nature lead him to declare, "Ants or elephants, they'll just look at each other and he, (Heston or Peter Finch) will say, "My love, I know a place in the jungle where tigers rule the land and always cross one valley….." I'll take Heston in "Secret of the Incas", thank you.
8th/02/2014 to 1:15 am
Van, great comment as usual. Heston was something of a Shakespearean actor by training and affect: I saw, once, long ago the no-budget indie film version of Julius Caesar where he played Antony from 1950 (not to be confused with the one he made in the '70s), which showed that aspect of his acting plain from the start, and he was so rarely cast as regular joes because he just didn't look or sound regular. Although he did a deft job at combining epic scale with blue-collar vibe in 55 Days in Peking. Notice also that he's one of the very few American actors of that time who could stand before someone like Laurence Olivier or Jack Hawkins and not look as if he's afraid for his bowel control. And Parker, well, she was class all the way. Both of them here are, admittedly, rather "old-fashioned" in their acting display, turning line readings and body cues into a kind of interpretive dance. But I like that.
8th/02/2014 to 9:21 am
I don't know if I should thank you for this post because you brought back memories of a film that was buried in the recesses of my brain. All the vividness of the ant attack came back, and it truly horrified me as a child, which is why I also categorize this as a horror film. These days, I might be more interested in the sexual dynamics, as you make a wonderful case for their potency, and Technicolor is always a treat. OK, thanks, Rod, for this jog down memory lane and the resurrection of a small gem.
8th/02/2014 to 9:58 am
Yes, Mare, I can totally see this registering as a horror movie, although it's basically only one scene that has real horror quality, but so many that came after it have exploited the same basic phobic reaction. The ant angle tends to dominate everyone's thoughts about it, and for good reason, and yet it only occupies about a third of the film. Anyway, glad to send you down memory lane, even if it's to…dark places.
13th/02/2014 to 9:01 pm
"The Naked Jungle is definitely of a piece with When Worlds Collide and War of the Worlds, with its emphasis on collapsing "civilisation," individuals standing in the way of almost cosmic-level nihilism, and Haskin's powerful, colour-sodden, cleanly contextualised images of fire, corrosion, and calamity."
Excellent point! I was all ready to jump in here with Haskins' direction of the original Outer Limits' most rightly celebrated episode ("Demon with the Glass Hand") but I should have known you would never let that go by as a connoisseur of science-fiction and fantastic cinema. And after that I would have posed THE WAR OF THE WORLDS and ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS, but you had that in short order as well. There is a convergence of some very great talent on THE NAKED JUNGLE. You start off with the lovely Eleanor Parker, who recently passed. Ironically, despite all those great performances in the 50's she will always be known as Baroness Schraeder in THE SOUND OF MUSIC, a fact that both delights and disturbs me at the same time. She is terrific in this film. Yes I agree the special effects were admirably restrained here, and as Marilyn mentions the ant attack is a segment that stays with you over many years. Alas it is about sex.
Exceptional essay.
13th/02/2014 to 10:03 pm
It's funny, Sam, I just finally got to watch "Demon with the Glass Hand" a few days ago, and boy is it a beauty. Haskin's direction of Ellison's script is vividly cinematic and powerful in a way I don't find a lot of highly touted modern "cinematic" television to be. Yeah, Parker's association with The Sound of Music is understandable on one level — extremely popular film — but a bit like Philip Seymour Hoffman being chiefly remembered for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. What is striking about Parker's career is that like a lot of movie stars from the time, some of their best-reviewed movies at the time are hard to take now — Interrupted Melody, her third Oscar nomination, is pure schlock — but others still stand tall, like this. In sheer acting terms, I'd like her to remembered particularly for Caged which is awesome, and her in it.


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Conversing with your Laser Printer:(See disclaimer below)
To extract information from your printer in PJL telnet to its IP address, port 9100 (or by serial, see below), and send it these commands:
<Control+[>%[email protected] <Enter>
Then copy and paste the following commands:
To access USB Host mode on the Touchpad (to plug in a Keyboard/USB Drive/etc), you need:
I found 3 or 4 of these at a garage sale a few years ago for a few bucks, and I am (surprisingly) just cracking them open now.
On the front, it is marked as D-Link DWL-120 11Mbps Wireless USB Adapter, on the back is FCC ID# MXF-WL280, H/W: B2, F/W: 2.25
On the bottom of the PCB, we have the following chips:
I got this little "Anadigi GPS-R02 DIY" car gps kit from eBay seller anadigi-hk, and it was mailed direct from Hong Kong.
Ok, I got this set of 3 USB SD Card adapters from eBay seller flash-mart.
The picture shows the innards of one, and a full one. They come in multiple colors. They're nice because you can insert an SD card and put the cover back on. I'm thinking in particular about USB hard drives for the MSNTV2s with these.
Phidgets are an easy to use set of electronic building blocks for low cost sensing and control from your PC. Using the Universal Serial Bus (USB) as the basis for all Phidgets, the complexity is managed behind an easy to use and robust Application Programming Interface (API). Applications can be developed quickly in Visual Basic, VBA (Microsoft Access and Excel), LabView, Java, Delphi, C and C++.http://www.phidgets.com/
BlackDog is a fully self-contained computer with a built-in biometric reader and a host of other powerful features. Unlike any other computing device, BlackDog is completely powered off of the USB port of your host computerhttp://www.projectblackdog.com/


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So my cousin Scott got married on Saturday….
I was so happy and I know the rest of the family was ecstatic. It was the first Mc-kids wedding! As, Colin and I left them all at home for our special day. Truth be told Colin and I don't have magical stories of how we got together, nor do we have friends so getting married alone was an easy decision for us. Our wedding would've been pretty heartbreaking otherwise – no nice speeches about us 😉
*the foot pop – princess diaries 😉 lol and I like to grab my husbands head when we kiss – it reminds him, he's MINE!
Ya, I wore a casual green dress instead. As most of you know from my facebook, I got super sick on Friday. We're talking writhing in nausea pain Colin even skipped jam (that's rock star slang) to look after me. I have been nauseous ever since. We even had to leave the wedding early….
…..but not before having a great time with our family <3
*FYI Lyndz was rocking that fascinator and I love it!
…and eating some awesome foods. I had so much pie. YUM!!
If I'm being honest I felt pretty hot and sexy in that green dress and don't worry – I wore shorts under it 😉 Apparently my aunt Mary used to do the same thing. Funny, I don't think we're anything alike…..
We forgot to take a full length shot of my dress, so I obviously put it back on today so you could all see it 😉
* Fuzzy pics – and tousled, slept in hair = I'm hot….a hot mess.
My other aunt Allison <— 2 L's I know! and I talked about running the entire time we were there. It was pretty awesome. She wants to run a half marathon together, with Colin and my Uncle too. I am totally down.
Don't worry guys I promise this will be a running blog again soon
1. what is your favourite pie??
I don't know what my answer would be before that wedding, but afterwards it was lemon meringue YUMMMY!
2. what kind of wedding dress did you get married in/want to be married in??
I had an asymmetrical drop waist/mermaid-esq style gown with one awesome beach slit put into it. If you haven't seen my wedding pics you can check them out here.
3. what's your workout today??
3 mile run with Rex and the may challenge calendars.
PS: HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY to all my US friends enjoy your day off!


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To find your local Back to Hockey programme please click the title
Back To Hockey
What is Back to Hockey?
Back to Hockey sessions are fun, social and informal and aimed at people who either have not played for a number of years or are looking to play for the first time. Do not worry if you are nervous or cannot remember any rules; our Back to Hockey coaches will gently guide you through this series of fun and friendly sessions. We promise it is nothing like the old school days of muddy pitches and standing around waiting for a touch of the ball.
Find your nearest Back To Hockey session
Visit our Find a Club page here and in just a few clicks you can see all of your local hockey clubs and those specifically running Back To Hockey sessions.
Want a taste of what Back to Hockey is all about? Check out our video below
It is not too late to be involved!
If your club is interested in running Back to Hockey sessions in the future speak to your local Relationship Manager whose details can be found here. It does not cost anything to be involved and we will support you all of the way by providing:
- Marketing materials
- Guidance so you can maximise the promotion of your sessions
- Tips on how to create a great player experience
- Ideas for coaches and sessions plans
- Advice on retaining players after Back to Hockey
- Plus much more!
- More Club Players - 40 players have started to play regularly again in just 18 months (Prescot HC)
- More Casual Players - We can target players who just want to play for fun and do not want to commit to a club environment (Belper HC)
- Additional Income - The pitch is already booked for other teams and we are volunteers so all subs go straight into the club's funds (Wimbledon HC)
- Extra Publicity - It is an excellent opportunity to raise the profile of our family club in the local area (Gillingham Anchorians HC)
- New Volunteers - Around a dozen members have supported the sessions, which is great as it also helps promote the social side (Gillingham Anchorians HC)
- Feel Good Factor - This group have brought enthusiasm to our ladies section that, quite honestly, has turned it around (Keynsham HC)


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Western North Carolina Community Calendar
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14 Sep 2013 - 15 Sep 2013
Come on out to Paris of the South Flea Market located at US 70 & Lytle Cove Road (110 Lytle Cover Rd.) in Swannanoa this Saturday and Sunday. The market provides a unique shopping experience including up-cycled and recyled goods, wares by local artists/crafters, collectibles and hard-to-find items and some good ole funky junk! Market hours are 8am to 3pm on Saturday and 9am to 3pm on Sunday. Vendor set-up begins at 6:30am/Saturday ($15 space rental) and at 7am/Sunday ($10 space rental). Pets welcome on leashes. Come on out and enjoy the family-friendly atmosphere. More information available by calling (828) 242-1676, email: email@example.com or find us on Facebook/parisofthesouthfleamarket.
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Save the date: Classic rock on the radar
Published 4:00 pm, Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Classic rock dominates in Midland as legendary musicians head west while "popera" music opens the Live On Stage! 2014-15 season.
Live On Stage! announced its 2014-15 season which runs the spectrum from opera to country music. This will mark the group's 67th season. All shows will be at the Wagner Noel.
- Singer Fernando Varela, opens Sep. 26 at 7 p.m. with his "popera" sound fusing classical and contemporary music. He and his tenor trio Forte competed on America's Got Talent in 2013.
- Simply Sinatra featuring Steve Lippia follows on Oct. 27 at 7 p.m.
- Brian Roman will perform his renditions of songs by the likes of Tom Jones, Elvis Presley and Rod Stewart on Feb. 6, 2015.
- Live From Nashville featuring both classic country and newer hits will perform March 6, 2015.
- "Little Darlin'" became the signature hit for classic pop quartet The Diamonds, who headline the Wagner Noel on March 29, 2015.
- Folk singer William Florian brings his new show Those Were the Days on April 23, 2015. The show is a musical journey featuring the songs of Peter, Paul and Mary, John Denver as well as his former band the New Christy Minstrels.
Season memberships are available now for $85 adults, $40 children and single seat tickets are $35. Call 552-4430 to purchase.
Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center announced Santana is scheduled to perform at the center this fall. The Grammy-winning band plays Sept. 28. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday and range from $82.50-$202.50.
With chart-topping albums since the 1960s, Santana has won three Latin Grammy Awards and 10 Grammy Awards.
In the 1990s he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and honored with the Billboard Century Award. He later received the Billboard Latin Music Awards' Lifetime Achievement honor and has been listed in Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." Last year Santana received the Kennedy Center Honors Award.
For tickets, visit wagnernoel.com.
The World Classic Rockers will headline the Midland ISD Education Foundation's seventh annual Concert for Kids.
The supergroup includes former members of Journey, Steppenwolf, Boston, Santana and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The concert is scheduled for Oct. 9 at Chap Center.
Previous Concert for Kids headliners include Doobie Brothers, Styx and Three Dog Night.
For a chance to win four VIP tickets to the show, text "MISDROCKS" to 96000. Tickets will be on sale at the Midland ISD administration building. Those interested in sponsor tables should contact Peggy Kuss at 685-9557.


text: Located 3.8 mi (6.2 km) from the airport, Hostal Casa Venecia offers a great location, putting you within a 15-minute walk of Puerta del Reloj and San Felipe de Barajas Castle. Guests will have free perks like breakfast and WiFi. Also, this hostel is 0.5 mi (0.9 km) from San Pedro Claver Church and Convent and 4.9 mi (7.9 km) from Jaime Moron Stadium.


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For the second year in a row, Google is the best company to work for in America according to the 2013 FORTUNE list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For."
Also, Google "earned higher marks from marketers and ad agencies than any other media company last year, according to the latest annual Advertiser Perceptions research, offering traditional media a discouraging note as they wade into 2013," as reported in Ad Age. Way to go, Google!
What legacy media companies are on the 2013 FORTUNE list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For?" None – and none in any of the previous five years. Disney, News Corp., Viacom, Time Warner, CBS, Comcast NBC Universal did not make the list, and, in fact, only one of these huge media conglomerates have ever made the FORTUNE list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For " — Disney over ten years ago, as I remember.
The only media company to make the FORTUNE list in the last five years has been Dreamworks Animation, which is number 12 on the 2013 list and was number 14 on the 2012 list. Way to go Dreamworks and Jeffrey Katzenberg! (By the way, Katzenberg was not on the Forbes list of the 100 top-paid CEOs in the country.)
But media giant Comcast did distinguish itself in 2012 by winning the Consumerist Worst Company In America ("Golden Poo") award. Way to go, Comcast!
If you look at another list – Forbes' top paid CEOs in the United States – you'll see that there are more top-paid CEOs who run legacy media companies than top-paid CEOs in any other industry, including banks and financial services companies.
So, what's the logical conclusion? Is it that the higher the compensation of a media company CEO the worse the company is to work for? Is Les Moonves, the top paid media company CEO, worth $41.5 million? Is David Zaslav of Discovery Communications worth $40.7 million, Bob Iger $40 million, Philip Dauman $30 million (down from $43 million the year before and $84 million the year before that), Rupert Murdoch $25 million, Jeff Bewkes $20 million, Brian Roberts $19 million, or Glenn Britt (Time Warner Cable) $16.5 million?
Well, maybe the legacy media execs are worth it if the top earner on the Forbes list of top paid CEOs, John Hammergren, of McKesson is worth $131 million, or if number-two earner, Ralph Lauren, is worth $67 million (about half of Ralph's income came from yours truly, or at least it seems that way to my wife).
And Bob Iger may come close to earning his compensation because ABC and ESPN are owned by Disney, and even though Disney isn't on the list of the best companies to work for, ABC was the highest-rated overall media company in 2011, according to the Advertiser Perceptions study reported in Ad Age.
Ad Age reports:
Within cable, marketers and agencies chose ESPN for best brand strength, the NFL network for sales knowledge, The Weather Channel for customer service and AMC for advertiser satisfaction.
Among print brands, the best ranked were ESPN The Magazine for brand strength, Cooking Light for sales knowledge, Martha Stewart Living for customer service and Food Network Magazine for advertiser satisfaction.
So Iger's ABC and ESPN do better with advertisers than the higher paid Moonves's CBS and Zaslav's Discovery Communications. Thus, the conclusion has to be that Moonves and Zaslav are the most overpaid – the worst deal for stockholders – of any of the major legacy media companies.
And we also might well conclude that these overpaid media executives aren't a good deal for employees, either, since none of these media companies are on the list of the best companies to work for.
And what about innovation, the engine for growth and future success? Which companies are most innovative, Google or the legacy media companies? Obviously, Google.
It seems as though the legacy media companies are wasting money on outrageously overblown compensation to CEOs instead of investing in innovation. Bad decision.
What kind of deal are the employees of Google getting? Google is the top-rated company to work for and the top rated company with advertisers, and its CEO, Larry Page's, salary is a buck a year. That's right, $1. Pretty good deal for stockholders and employees.
What do these compensation levels signal to employees and to the public about media executives? Doesn't Larry Page come off as being a good deal for stockholders and employees and Les Moonves come off as being a terrible deal for stockholders and employees? What company would you rather work for, Google or CBS or another legacy media company?
Is it any wonder that Google is winning on all fronts – employee satisfaction, advertiser perception, revenue, innovation, and profits, and the legacy media are losing?


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Google starts to censor torrent
New York: Searching for file-sharing information via Google is going to take a little bit more effort now, thanks to new steps taken by the search engine to remove all sorts of references to torrents from its instant search and autocomplete features.
In December, Google said it was taking steps towards "making copyright work better online." Among other things, it promised that "terms that are closely associated with piracy" would no longer appear in autocompletes.
Although it may be seen as an effort to crack down on illegal file sharing, the move is a troubling one, particularly for those who provide BitTorrent services. No surprise, these companies are quick to point out that there are many legitimate uses for torrents.
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The FLLCasts Pro Subscription
Do you want to learn how to program robots using the full capability of both NXT and EV3 platforms or find interesting constructions? Subscribe now to get full access - everything from basics to advanced tutorials with specific concepts. Use them to refresh your knowledge, as materials in your classroom and team or gain new ideas. You can also download all of the additional materials such as programs, ready-to-use blocks and building instructions for robots.


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In Stock
Winsor & Newton Artist's Water Colour Sable Brushes are handmade Kolinsky Sable Hair brushes, with Birchwood handles and seamless nickel ferrules. The Artist's Water Colour Sable brush range has been created based upon the most popular and useful brush shapes for water colour painting. In addition to the quality of materials and method of manufacture, the Artist's water colour sable brush has the added benefit of a unique Winsor & Newton sculptured handle with a matte finish for the ultimate in comfort whilst painting.
The Kolinsky sable hair used in Artist's Water Colour Sable Brushes is specially selected from only the finest available, sourced from Eastern Siberia. Kolinsky Sable hair is made up of millions of tiny scales, which when grouped together in a brush head are capable of carrying a vast amount of colour. This also ensures colour is released in a controlled manner, evenly and smoothly. These brushes have a pronounced belly and are tapered at the tip to a perfect point. The constitution of Kolinsky sable hair is such that it has a natural tendency to spring back on itself. This means, the brush shape is naturally maintained during painting, giving the artist more control. Kolinsky Sable brushes are extremely durable.
The Birchwood handle has a unique sculptured profile with two 'bellies'. The Central dip allows the brush to sit comfortably in your hand and combines very nicely with the comfort of the matte finish. The second belly towards the end of the brush handle allows for different painting positions. The variety is particularly good with the larger size brushes when covering wider areas of the paper. A seamless nickel ferrule is used to fit the head to the handle. This prevents corrosion of the ferrule and handle when in contact with water.
The range includes 4 brush head shapes to suit all needs:
A round bellied water colour brush. Excellent for washes as well as fine detail work. Available in 12 sizes from 00 to 12.
Pointed Round
A round brush with an elongated pointed tip. An adaptation of the round. The extra fine taper point is for accuracy and fine detail work, plus the belly to hold colour. Available in 6 sizes from 3 to 8.
One Stroke
A short flat water colour brush. Originally, for 'one stroke' application by sign writers, many water colour artists use this for washes. Also makes a unique chisel edged flat brush mark. Available in 6 sizes from 3mm (1/8") to 25mm (1").
The longest, thinnest round water colour brush. These brushes are excellent for continuous fine lines. Available in 6 sizes from 1 to 6.
- Quality Kolinsky Sable Hair from Eastern Siberia, Made in England
- Handle: Short, Shape: One Stroke, Size: 3/8"
- Ideal for Watercolour, Suitable for: Tempera, Gouache and Inks
- Crisp Point, with amazing spring (snap) and colour carrying capacity
- Non-corroding Nickle plated Ferrule with double crimps for security
|Kolinsky Sable Hair
|One Stroke
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User Home Pages Welcome Friends and Relatives!
Welcome Friends and Relatives!Updated June 2, 2004
|For Years I have wanted to make a family tree to pass on to my children and here is the result of what I have done so far. My family is much larger than I thought, with many branches leading off in many directions! I will keep my main family tree here, and will put smaller branches of this tree here also.
Fax: 407-654-9662
My Family History
Family Tree Maker Reports and Trees


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Thank You
Our sincere thanks to our family and many friends who remembered us on our 60th anniversary.
It has been overwhelming, the beautiful cards, phone calls, flowers, gifts and best wishes we
received. We feel blessed to have you in our life.
Dean and Celena Edwards
Thank You
Sun., October 02, 2016


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I've received tickets for the Nuclear Cowboyz, but all opinions are my own.
The night started with the kids going crazy when they found out they would meet the motorcycle riders, We had their autographs in two rounds of excitement and I joined the fun and was embraced by the crew and they took a picture with me!
They had a kids zone where kids get to try helmets, clothing, shoes and sign on the motorcycle, the boys had a blast!
But the action really began with the plot of the Evil Queen who was trying to get the best motorcycle riders and Karate warriors. The children and adults got immersed in the action packed fun event where motorcycles do the unthinkable, with great stunts, engaging soundtrack and pyrotechnics!
Adding to the action, the show features the critically-acclaimed Shaolin Kung Fu Warriors defying their limits of courage through heart-wrenching martial arts performances with swift movements, extreme force and fierce concentration that test the sheer strength and agility of their bodies. These warriors will use their own bodies to bend metal rods, break objects in precise strikes and be lifted in the air on the points of handheld spears.
Entering its fifth touring year, Nuclear Cowboyz 2014 is led by an award-winning creative team and features the world's top freestyle motocross athletes, including multi-time X Games medalists Jeremy "Twitch" Stenberg, Taka Higashino, Mike Mason, Matt Buyten, Ronnie Faisst and Colten Moore as well as freestyle heavyweights Derek Garland, Jimmy Fitzpatrick, Nick Dunne, Brody Wilson, Marco Picado and more.
Show Time
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Sunday, March 2, 2014
IZOD Center
50 State Route 120
East Rutherford, NJ 07073
Ticket Information
Tickets are available now atwww.ticketmaster.com or by calling 800/745-3000. Tickets may also be purchased at Ticketmaster Retail Locations or by purchasing them at the arena's box office. All seats are reserved. Tickets start at $15 for kids. For Group Sales (15 tickets or more), please call 201-460-4370.
Experience Nuclear Cowboyz with a VIP Fallout Zone ticket. A very limited number of tickets are set aside for the BIGGESTNuclear Cowboyz fans. Each VIP Fallout Zone ticket includes: Premium seating and admission to a private meet-and-greet with the stars of Nuclear Cowboyz 2014 where fans will be presented with a commemorative VIP Fallout Zone credential and poster. Only VIP Fallout Zone ticket holders will be able to take part in the meet-and-greet. It's the ultimate VIP experience. Don't wait as these seats are extremely limited and will go fast!
I highly recommend it for all ages!


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INTENT is the leading New Zealand consultancy, delivering World Class Performance for your organisation and business.
We specialise in developing and providing sustainable World Class improvements across the width and depth of any business or organisation. Our focus is to assist organisations to raise their productivity and performance in sustainable increments, over time and across the entire business. We utilise our suite of proven methodologies and processes to deliver bespoke, sustainable solutions to improve business performance. If your business resides within the supply chain, manufacturing or office sectors and you are INTENT on improving your business performance, get in touch today and we'll help you achieve those goals.
We are INTENT on creating World Class Performance for all New Zealand business.
World Class
If your organisation needs to improve business performance through manufacturing excellence, this process will help you understand and acquire new skills across the wide range of disciplines in modern manufacturing management. Our supportive approach will ensure you are able to see early performance improvement in the chosen areas while our educational courses will help build internal capability to broaden and deepen the skills and knowledge of your team.More
World Class
Supply Chain
Alignment throughout your operations including suppliers and customers is fundamental to ensuring long-term customer satisfaction. We look right across the individual functions of your business ensuring that you have identified the types of supply chains you need to have operating effectively – whether they be characterised by the terms "Lean", "Agile", "Fully flexible", "Continuous replenishment" or other typical descriptors and identify any misalignments that provide opportunities for improvement.More
World Class
Achieve alignment from boardroom strategy to employee actions. World Class Office is a multifaceted programme, which helps businesses improve administrative processes using the power of lean thinking and lean tools.
We tailor this programme to help stabilise, standardise and simplify your internal and external functions. This leads to greater connectivity and understanding through every level of your business in a sustainable format to improve your bottom line and internal morale.
INTENT Director, Geerten Lengkeek, discusses our No.8 wire mentality and shares his thoughts on whether this is still enough for New Zealand's economy in today's competitive business environment.
More Regional Growth for INTENTINTENT offers coverage...read more
Warehouse Transformation for Southern HospitalityWith an extensive...read more
Expanding our World Class teamTwo consultants have...read more
Growing (& Sustaining) Optimal PerformanceDespite best efforts,...read more


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2009 Scion xB - Consumer Review
Build Quality
Reliability Value
Build Quality
Reliability Value
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I would buy another one!
By Dr. Bones on
Vehicle2009 Scion xB 4dr Wagon (2.4L 4cyl 4A)
ReviewI purchased a Release Series 6.0 and was glad I did. Only 2,500 of these were produced. This model comes with a Pioneer DVD Navigation system, interior LED accent lighting (can choose from four colors), a custom all-black grille, and a few other minor tweaks. It has been a great vehicle so far and I enjoy driving it every day that I am on the road. It is incredibly quiet, accelerates nicely, and handles beautifully. It has been such a good vehicle for my family, that I am thinking about getting my wife one very soon.
Best FeaturesIt feels so spacious inside. I can fold the seats down and have almost as much room as I had in my old pickup truck. It is surprisingly comfortable too for an inexpensive car.
Worst FeaturesThe Pioneer DVD Navigation system is inferior to a Garmin navigation system. Still, I like the built-in bluetooh cell phone features which I use daily. I also was able to add satellite radio for under $100. So it was worth it. Also, it needs driver and passenger arm rests!
Recommend (1) (0)
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Shane Co.
Stainless Steel Roman Numeral Necklace (24")
Description & Specifications
This brilliant necklace highlights a bold design featuring brushed and polished finishes and Roman numeral accents. The necklace is made from quality stainless steel with a matching 24-inch chain for a distinguished look.
Item Number: 41063824
Item Number: 41063824
- *Metal FinishEngraved
- Stone TypePlain
- Metal TypeStainless Steel
- Length24 inch
- EngravableYes


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Supporting Your Child's Learning Style
Supporting Your Child's Learning Style A Guest Post By Beth Ann Balalaos, LICM4All Coordinator Long Island Children's Museum Each and every child has a learning style that suits them best. Whether your child benefits from learning visually, logically, physically, or verbally, there are different ways you can help your child learn in the most positive way possible. Your Child In School Ask your child's teachers about how your child learns best. If your child is not yet in school, you can research Howard Gardner's Multiple-Intelligences. According to Howard Gardner, there are 7 types of intelligences that identify the way a … Continue reading


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The Seahawks have a problem.
In the three years since Pete Carroll was hired to be their head coach, they lead the league in players suspended and total games suspended due to the NFL's substance abuse policy.
For whatever reason, performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), don't carry the same damning weight in pro football as they do in baseball. The reasons are relatively unclear, but while A-Rod is vilified for his use of PEDs and his impending year-long suspension from baseball, most casual football fans probably don't realize that one of the star members of Seattle's "Legion of Boom" is currently sidelined indefinitely for repeatedly breaking the substance abuse policy.
Under some obscure rule, probably written into the collective bargaining agreement, the NFL doesn't comment on players suspended for substance abuse. That means that unless the player volunteers their drug of choice, the public will never know what they were suspended for taking. Furthermore, it means a lot of players claim the suspensions were due to Adderall.
If Adderall is, in fact, the culprit, then Seattle's problem is they gravitate towards players with ADHD, but I suspect that's not really the case. Below is a look at Seattle's drug use before and after the hire of Pete Carroll,1 which I believe, demonstrates a systemic problem within the locker room of the Seahawks. One that, at best, tacitly accepts PED drug use, and at worse, endorses their use. So I'll let you decide.
But first, two caveats: all data was pulled from from this Wikipedia entry. The obvious Wikipedia criticisms and concerns aside, it's the most complete list I could find. If you know of one better, leave a note in the comments and I'd be happy to update the data. The second caveat is I treated "indefinite suspensions" as 16 games, because if Gregg Williams was back after a full season, anyone can. It's not a perfect handling of the situation, but it'll do in a pinch.
Now to the data visualization!
Photo via Alex Dodd


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Here at Accuracy Systems, Inc. our main goal is to satisfy you, the customer. We have taken pride in building the right system to fit your needs for many years. We offer you accuracy, dependability, and performance that we build into our conversion rifles. We truly offer the most accurate Mini 14® and Mini 30® conversions anywhere. Our converted rifles are in use throughout the USA in the civilian and law enforcement population. We use only the finest in products and you will see it in our workmanship! We specialize in converting the Mini 14®, Mini 30® and others to Match Grade accuracy. The Mini 14® and Mini 30® are inherently inaccurate for target shooting when sub-minute of angle is important. Our accuracy tests with the Mini 14® and Mini 30® after we have done our barrel conversion have shot consistently under a MOA @ 100 yds with Factory selected ammo. We have had results around .250" to .750" with our Ultra Match Mini barrel conversions. Whether your needs are for law enforcement, civilian use, target, varmint, or hunting, we offer a barrel conversion that is right for you. We offer a truly thicker barrel from the receiver through the gas block compared to all other companies! We were the first to offer the .850 " Varmint & 1" Bull Barrels for the Mini14/Mini 30. We offer a wide selection of calibers and upgrades for the Minis. Check out some of the testimonials sent to us on a regular basis. We look forward to serving your needs. Please call us we will be glad to build the right system for you. If you are in need of repair we can help you with that also.
- Shirts are made of 100% pre-shrunk cotton.
- Shirt sizes are Small (SM), Medium (MED), Large (LG), & XX - Large (XXL)
- Color is black only.
|Ruger - Model Mini 14, Mini 30 & M77 Bolt Rifles.
|Remington - Model 700, 783, 7400, 750, 7600 Rifles.
|Armalite - Model AR10, AR 15 Rifles & upper receivers.
|DPMS - Model ARs 308, 5.56 Rifles & upper receivers.
|Other AR Model Variances:
Rock River & Bushmaster Rifles & receivers, ETC.
|Savage Model Bolt Action Rifles.
|Winchester Model 70 Rifles.
Ruger Mini 14 - 1" OD x 22" Long Bull barrel with fluting front & rear of gas block.
Ruger Mini 14 Octagon barrel. Just to change up the normal Mini.
Remington 700 Action With ASI Ultra match 1.25" Diameter x 28" Bull barrel
AR 15 ASI Gas Piston Upper with 3 Port Maxi Brake.
AR 10 ASI Long Range 6.5 Creedmoor
AR Custom barrels built to order. You specify your needs.
Remington 7400 with ASI Free float forearm & Barrel Stabilizer.
1.) Ruger Mini 14 Factory .562" diameter Barrel.
2.) Accuracy Systems Mini 14 replacement 1.00" Bull Barrel
3.) Accuracy Systems Mini 14 replacement .850" Varmint Barrel with 360 degree 32 port Maxi Brake.
4.) Accuracy Systems Mini 14 Harmonic Barrel Stabilizer 1 which is not a barrel is only for size reference.
PICTURED - TOP: Accuracy Systems full length 1" diameter Target Bull barrel.
PICTURED - MIDDLE: Ruger's factory target barrel is .625" in diameter under the hand guard and the gas block.
PICTURED - Bottom: Accuracy Systems full length .850" diameter Varmint Barrel.
What a Shooter - 24" X 1" Krieger barrel Capable of ½ MOA @ 100 yards.
Full 1" Bull Barrel!! *From the Receiver to Muzzle*
Don't Be Fooled by those telling you your getting a bull barrel just to find out it is only thicker barrel past the gas block only!!


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Illinois, Virginia annouce football series
Illinois and Virginia have met twice before on the football field.
Both came during bowl games, and both resulted in wins for Illinois, with the Illini beating the Cavaliers 31-21 in the 1990 Citrus Bowl and winning 63-21 in the 1999 Micronpc.com Bowl.
The two schools are guaranteed to play each other again. Well into the future, though.
Illinois announced a home-and-home series with the Cavaliers on Wednesday. Illinois will play at Virginia on Sept. 11, 2021, with Virginia making a trip to Champaign for a nonconference game on Sept. 10, 2022.
Those are the first games announced on Illinois' schedule in either seasons. Illinois has its schedules finalized through the 2018 season, with the 2019 schedule nearly complete as well.
News-Gazette.com embraces discussion of both community and world issues. We welcome you to contribute your ideas, opinions and comments, but we ask that you avoid personal attacks, vulgarity and hate speech. We reserve the right to remove any comment at our discretion, and we will block repeat offenders' accounts. To post comments, you must first be a registered user, and your username will appear with any comment you post. Happy posting.


text: Stay here every week with work and its a home from home. The staff are the most attentive, friendly and professional staff I've ever encountered in any hotel anywhere. The rooms are fantastic, restaurant is lovely and relaxed with good quality food, the bar is homely and serves lovely food and the leisure facilities are as good if not better... More


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Hello everyone,
As I am graduating in Geomatics at the Utrecht University in The Netherlands, I am looking for job opportunities overseas in the area of Winnipeg, Canada (suggestions for other locations are always welcome too). Currently I am working in Amsterdam as a cartographer and I would prefer working in the same field after emigrating.
Underneath you will find my resume, please feel free to take a look at it.
I would love to hear any suggestions of where to look for jobs or, of course, if you know a particular position that would be available I would be very happy to hear from you as well.
Attached Files
Edited by e.langenbach, 19 April 2013 - 01:19 PM.


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Naughty Dog On Jak 4: "No Plans Now; We Tried And Failed"
Well, damnit.
I still remember when Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy took the platforming world by storm when it released for the PS2 back in 2001. After that, the dynamic duo went their separate ways, and fans have been clamoring for a reunion. Or if not a reunion, at least a fourth Jak entry.
There has always been rumors concerning development of the title. And now it seems that in fact, Naughty Dog did attempt it. But sadly, it just didn't work out. In a recent "Ask Me Anything" session at Reddit, some fans asked Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley about the future of the IP. Druckmann responded:
"No plans. We gave it a shot at the beginning of the project and couldn't make it work for ourselves."
He added later:
"We tried and failed. :( Maybe in the future we'll try again."
On the plus side, Naughty Dog delivered not one but two amazing new IPs this generation (Uncharted, The Last Of Us), so we probably shouldn't complain too much. Still, I'd like to see Jak return at some point.
Tags: jak and daxter, jak 4, jak sequel, naughty dog
7/31/2013 9:25:35 PM Ben Dutka
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Legacy Comment System (10 posts)
Wednesday, July 31, 2013 @ 10:07:16 PM
Really, I would've been very pleased with Uncharted DF, and Uncharted 2, The Last of Us, and a PS3 Jak game. U3 was great and all but I could've lived without it having U2 instead. I prefer that one anyway overall.
Last edited by Temjin001 on 7/31/2013 10:07:42 PM
Wednesday, July 31, 2013 @ 10:17:13 PM
Wednesday, July 31, 2013 @ 11:18:56 PM
Wednesday, July 31, 2013 @ 11:31:40 PM
Thursday, August 01, 2013 @ 12:00:41 AM
Thursday, August 01, 2013 @ 1:27:48 AM
Thursday, August 01, 2013 @ 4:52:01 AM
they created a really cool unique title with the last of us so im really excited and intrigued with what else they would come up with given a blank canvas.
plus we are at the start of a new generation, if you dont see new IPs at the start of a new generation your chances aint too great to see them at all!
Thursday, August 01, 2013 @ 10:55:05 AM
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Depending on how they are structured, add-on accounts in Social Security would either force workers to pay twice for the same benefit or end up hurting the very people who most need additional retirement security. These accounts are the direct opposite of President George W. Bush's plan to establish personal retirement accounts in Social Security that would be financed by diverting some of the existing payroll taxes that go to that program.
An add-on account is a retirement account financed either with general revenue from the federal government or some form of additional taxes or forced savings from individual workers. Most opponents of personal retirement accounts (PRAs) say that they do not object to add-on accounts. More recently, some Republicans who worry about the effect of diverting some of Social Security's payroll taxes have latched on to the idea of add-on accounts. They see add-on accounts as having all of the virtues of PRAs without the political cost. But add-on accounts are just as costly as PRAs and must be linked to the existing Social Security system in order to reduce that program's coming cash flow problems.
The different types of add-on accounts are distinguished by where the money for them would come from and how the accounts would relate to Social Security. There are four possible types of add-on accounts. None, however, is an attractive way to fix Social Security.
Voluntary Add-On Accounts
Voluntary add-on accounts would allow workers to invest a portion of their paychecks in new, probably tax-advantaged investment accounts. Incentives to take advantage of these accounts might range from a tax credit for making a contribution to a direct government match of contributions. In practice such incentives would be little more than another government benefit for upper and middle-income taxpayers. Low-income workers would be unable to afford these add-on accounts, just as they tend not to participate in existing employer-sponsored investment plans.
The sad fact is that, faced with the choice between paying the mortgage and saving for a retirement that might happen 40 years in the future if the worker lives that long, many workers choose to meet today's needs. As a result, lower-income and younger workers rarely participate in employer-sponsored retirement plans-even when their employers offer to match some or all of their contributions. It is hard to see how a new system of government-sponsored retirement accounts would change this. If an employer match is not sufficient incentive to save, a government match is unlikely to be any more successful.
How would voluntary add-on accounts affect Social Security? Not at all. While these accounts would allow workers who can afford to save another opportunity to build retirement savings, they would do nothing to save Social Security. In order to improve Social Security's financial situation, a portion of these accounts would have to replace some of the government-paid monthly benefit. It is difficult to see the justice in using part or all of a voluntary account to offset the cost of providing Social Security benefits, when the same offset would not apply to workers who failed to save. Such an offset would be a major disincentive to making these additional, voluntary contributions. In addition, some of the savings that might go into voluntary add-on accounts would come from existing retirement savings vehicles, such as 401(k)s, and so voluntary add-on accounts might not lead to increased national savings. Even worse, there is the problem that low-income workers, who need additional savings the most, would be the least able to participate in these accounts.
Mandatory Add-On Accounts Funded With Additional Mandatory Savings
The money in mandatory add-on accounts could come from required savings, which would probably be collected through the tax system. One way to fund these accounts would be to raise workers' share of the payroll tax by, for example, another four percentage points of income. This additional tax would be called a "contribution" to distinguish it somewhat from other taxes. It would be deposited in an account that the worker would own. An alternate structure might require employers to collect and invest the money, but this would be a significant burden on employers. Their opposition would make passage of such a plan much harder.
The good news about this type of account is that all income levels would participate and have a nest egg available upon retirement. This money would count as new savings in the economy, to the extent that middle- and upper-income workers do not compensate by reducing their existing retirement savings, such as in 401(k) plans. The bad news is that, for lower-income workers, this program would increase their savings by reducing their lifestyles. For families who live from paycheck to paycheck, this could be a problem. For small business owners and the self-employed, the level of forced savings could spell the difference between success and failure.
How would mandatory add-on accounts funded with mandatory savings affect Social Security? It depends. The question is, how much, if any, of the new accounts could be used to replace Social Security's benefits. If the same mechanism that the President proposes to use to prevent "double-dipping" for those who choose PRAs is applied here, the accounts could significantly reduce the system's long-term financial problems.[1] However, such a move would reduce the appeal of add-on accounts, as they would be effectively little more than an increase in workers' payroll taxes to pay for the same benefits.
Mandatory Add-On Accounts Funded by Higher Payroll Taxes
This type of add-on account would require the employer and employee to split the cost of the additional payroll taxes that would go into these accounts. For example, in the case of a four-percent account, both the employer and employee would pay an additional tax equal to two percent of the worker's income that would then be invested in the worker's account. As with a PRA, the worker would probably be able to choose an investment plan from among a few options. The money in these accounts would be new savings, except to the extent that middle- and upper-income taxpayers reduce their other retirement savings.
There are two types of problem with this approach. First, because payroll taxes are a direct tax on employment, some employers would react to the higher costs by reducing employment. A recent Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis study showed that a 1.89 percent increase in payroll taxes would result in 277,000 fewer jobs being created in each of the first 10 years after raising the tax.[2] Raising the payroll tax to fund an add-on account would have the same effect. And because lower-income jobs are the easiest to replace with machines, this reduced employment would hit low-income workers the hardest. This would undermine the goal of improving low-income workers' retirement security.
Workers would experience a lower standard of living as higher payroll taxes lower take-home incomes. This again would probably hurt lower-income workers, who have less flexibility in their household budgets, more than middle- and upper-income workers. Small business owners and the self-employed, who must pay both then employer and employee portions of the payroll tax, would be the hardest hit. For them, the difference in income could be the difference between success and failure.
How would mandatory add-on accounts funded by higher payroll taxes affect Social Security? Essentially, this is a tax increase, with a few advantages. Because this type of account would be funded by the payroll tax, there would be every justification for using them to offset part of the cost of a worker's Social Security benefits. Using the same mechanism that President Bush proposes for PRAs would be likely. However, an increase in benefits would be unlikely, and workers would be limited to receiving the difference between the actual earnings on the accounts and the amount that was used to replace government-paid benefits. This would significantly reduce Social Security's unfunded liability, but at a great cost to workers. Even worse, the low-income workers who need Social Security benefits the most would find it harder to get and keep a job because the higher payroll tax would reduce employment.
Mandatory Add-on Accounts Funded by General Revenue Taxes
The final type of add-on accounts attempts to avoid any controversy about payroll taxes or the Social Security Trust Fund by paying for the accounts from general revenues. With this type of account, the government would essentially give a worker an account equal to four percent, for example, of his or her income. This gift might be described as a refundable rebate of income taxes. The money would come from either higher non-Social Security taxes, such as personal or corporate income taxes, or from borrowing. As with PRAs, workers might be allowed to choose from among a few investment options. Former Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Clay Shaw (R-FL) has introduced legislation that would create this type of account.
But the problems with this type of account far outweigh the benefits. Because the money appears to be a government gift, Congress could elect to reduce or end the program at any time, much as it ended revenue sharing with state and local governments when deficit pressures got too large. The money would only count as new savings in the economy to the extent the accounts were financed by higher taxes. Borrowing the money, such as Rep. Shaw suggests, would only shift money around in the economy and would eventually require higher taxes to repay the borrowing.
How would mandatory add-on accounts funded by general revenue taxes affect Social Security?As proposed by Rep. Shaw, workers would essentially pay twice for the same benefit. Under his bill, a worker is guaranteed the higher of either the monthly benefit paid from his account or what Social Security promised to pay, but not both. In practice, this means that most or all of the account would be seized by the government and used to pay the Social Security benefits previously paid for by payroll taxes-which workers would continue to pay. In this sense, Rep. Shaw's plan is little more than a massive general revenue subsidy for the existing Social Security system, dressed up as individual accounts. While this plan would address Social Security's cash-flow problems, once the borrowing needed to fund the accounts come due, a delayed tax increase would be inevitable. General-revenue accounts, then, would do little more than shift the burden of Social Security a bit into the future and to a slightly different revenue source.
Politicians who think that add-on accounts are a "magic bullet" that would fix Social Security without the cost or political risk of real personal retirement accounts should think twice before supporting add-on accounts. This is especially true for legislators who claim to represent the interests of low-income workers.
The add-on accounts that are guaranteed to help Social Security are little more than tax increases disguised as personal counts. Other types of add-on accounts would mainly benefit upper and middle-income workers and do little to help the workers who need additional retirement security the most. Workers at all income levels would be better served by real personal retirement accounts, such as those proposed by President Bush.
David C. John is Research Fellow in Social Security and Financial Institutions in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
[1] See David C. John, "PRA Basics: How the President's Plan Prevents Unfair Double-Dipping," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 654, February 5, 2005, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/SocialSecurity/wm654.cfm.
[2] Rea S. Hederman, Jr., William W. Beach, and Andrew Grossman, "The Unacceptable Costs of Raising Payroll Taxes to 'Save' Social Security," Heritage Foundation Webmemo No. 639, January 13, 2005, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/SocialSecurity/wm639.cfm .


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The Bombala Blue Heelers Rugby League football club gathered their first grade, ladies tag and reserve sides and headed down to Eden to play a mighty day of football with all three teams coming away with a win.
In first grade, Eden took an early lead scoring out wide before Tyler Jones displayed some great footwork and scored. Wame Belolevu's successful conversion put Bombala in front 6 to 4.
Bombala's sluggish defence saw Eden score two more tries before half time. Alex Rosten went over the line once more before half time and the Heelers headed to the shed trailing 16-12.
When the lads returned to the paddock after half time they looked like a different team.
Adam Rodwell, Luke Ingram, Paul Perkins and Blake Robinson showed great defence, while the combination of Sami Buinimasi's pace and sheer strength meant he was breaking the line on numerous occasions, gaining metres and often able to offload to Zac Slater or Andrew Guthrie.
The Heelers edged their way back in front 18 to 16 when some classy footwork by Tyler Jones broke the defensive line, finding Paul Perkins in support to score close to the posts 22 to 16.
Next points happened when Luke Ingram found Wame who offloaded to Alex Rosten on the wing to score under the posts 28-16.
The final score was 34 to 16 as the Heelers managed to keep Eden scoreless in the second half.
Players player and three points went to Tyler Jones, two points to Bailey Jones and one point to Zac Slater.
Ladies League Tag
The High Heelers put on a fantastic display of football against Eden. The women were formidable, keeping Eden scoreless and winning 46 to nil.
The return of speedster Tash Stewart and various other players coming back from injury gave the Heelers great confidence.
Players player and three points went to Patrice Clear, two points to Georgie Clarke and one point was shared between Tash Stewart and Georgia Jones.
Reserve Grade
The Bombala Reserve Grade team was able to bag their first win of the season on Sunday against the Bermagui-Cobargo side.
Andrew Rutherford bagged two tries and the return of the Anderson brothers was a noticeable addition to the team. At half time the Heelers had a comfortable lead 18 to 4. Aaron Stewart scored first points after the break and Andrew Anderson scored last points out wide taking the final score to a convincing win for the Heelers 32 to 4.
Players player and three points went to Leigh Hodak, two points went to Chris Anderson and one point went to Aaron Cusbert.
This weekend the High Heelers face two games with the first played at Candelo against the Candelo-Bemboka side on Saturday and the second against the Narooma She-Devils on Sunday.


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Govt Jobs in Haryana 2016-2017 notification has uploaded for all new job seekers.
Sarkari Naukri in Haryana 2016: The Government of Haryana claimed that they are concerned about unemployment of state and they are trying to solve this problem as soon as possible. The government will quick start online registration procedure for recruitment of 47000 posts. Authorized persons will recruit a young and talented candidate for PSU companies, Government Department, Government Operated Companies, Private Sectors companies. Your Sarkari Naukri's searching may get over soon. So, all the Government Jobs seekers are invited to check Employment News Of This Week for current & upcoming jobs.
This page introduces you about all latest/current job opening and upcoming job details. Stay connected with this site for more details.
Jobs available in the state by Qualification:
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India's one of the 18th most populous and 29th states of the nation is Haryana, situated in the Northern part of the country. It is having the rich cultural heritage as well as it is home to two national parks, eight wildlife sanctuaries, two wildlife conservation areas, four animal and bird breeding centers, one deer park and three zoos.
It has two agroclimatic zones including northwestern & southwestern. The northwestern zone is suitable for rice, wheat, vegetables and temperate fruits. Southwestern zone is suitable for high-quality agricultural produce, tropical fruits, exotic vegetables and herbal and medicinal plants. Most of the economy relies on manufacturing, retailing and information outsourcing, Agriculture, Dairy farming, Roads, aviation and infrastructure, Communication and media.
Here we have come back with latest Private sector companies' jobs notification. So those who are eagerly waiting to join Private Job in Haryana can apply for available posts after reading eligibility criteria.
Govt Jobs in Haryana 2016-2017
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Check: IBPS Exam Calendar 2016
Central Govt Jobs 2016
Here, We have listed Central Government Jobs In India. Candidates who are searching jobs for central government department can apply be reading official notification. Check below table for All Indian Central Level Jobs advertisement.
|Department Name
|Post Name
|Total Posts
|Income Tax Dept
|Sashastra Seema Bal
|SAIL Burnpur
|PGIMS Rohtak Recruitment 2016
|Senior Resident & Teacher
|Post Office Recruitment 2016-2017
|Postman, Postal Assistant and Multi Tasking Staff (MTS)
|Reliance Jio Recruitment 2016
|BE/ B.Tech Freshers
|SBI Recruitment 2016
|Clerk PO SO
|RRB ALP Recruitment 2016
|Assistant Loco Pilot
Haryana Govt Jobs 2016
- Haryana Electricity Board
- Indian Army
- Haryana Staff Selection Commission Check: UPSC Calendar 2016
- Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Limited
- Haryana School Shiksha Pariyojana Parishad
- Haryana Public Service Commission
- Income Tax Department of Haryana
PSU Job in Haryana
Indian Drugs & Pharmaceuticals: It is a manufacturing plant of Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals. Apply for this companies recruitment from its official site.
NHPC Limited: It is a government firm of Electricity. It is a power generation company responsible for transmission and produces the electricity withing the Indian state of Haryana. The Headquarters of NHPC limited is situated in Faridabad.
Rites: It is a service provider firm of the Government of Haryana and belongs to providing Industrial Development & Tech. Consultancy Services. It is one of the Maniratna Category 2 firm and its plant is integrated at Gurgaon.
Check Govt Jobs in Haryana 2016-2017 details from this webpage on regular interval. Like us on facebook to get freejobalert directly on our facebook fan page.
Let us know about this article. If have any opnions or suggesations then dont hesitate to tell us using below comment section. And yes do forward this article on Facebook, Google and on Twitter plus. Tell your friends about this article.


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Protesters gather to campaign against nuclear power on third anniversary of Fukushima
Dozens of people are protesting against nuclear power following the third anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
The crowd of around 50 protesters gathered at Hyde Park Corner before marching past the Japanese Embassy and one of the buildings housing the Tokyo Electric Company and ending near the Houses of Parliament in Westminster.
The organisers hope today's march will send a message to people warning of the dangers of nuclear power as well as remembering the victims of the Fukushima disaster on March 11, 2011.
One of the organisers, David Polden, said: "We're here because it's the third anniversary of the Fukushima disaster. We're trying to remember the victims and point out that the damage is still continuing with water (used to cool reactors) flowing into the Pacific and the main buildings are in a very bad state.
"It's still very dangerous. There are spent fuel rods at the top of the roofs (of reactors) and if the building collapses, it would be terrible and it would let out their radioactive contents."
Protesters held placards and banners calling for "no nuclear power", "protect mountains, rivers" and "no new nukes" with signs in English, French and Japanese.
Mr Polden, a London region worker for CND, added: "They're (the Tokyo Electric Company who owns the Fukushima plant) taking the rods out now, and we haven't heard any problems yet.
"The message we want to send is stop nuclear. There are plans in Japan to reopen nuclear power stations but the majority of Japanese people are against them and there are plans for power stations here in the UK."
He added that the danger of nuclear power was illustrated by the Chernobyl, Fukushima and the Three Mile Island disasters.
As the march continued, the crowd chanted "no more nuclear" and "no more Fukushima" and more people joined including the Bromley branch of the Green Party. Numbers grew to more than 100 as they passed the Ritz Hotel in London.
Margaret Toomey, a member of Bromley and Bexley Green Party, who has been giving out leaflets for campaign group Japanese Against Nuclear UK for the past 18 months, said: "We're here today because it's the third anniversary.
"The four nuclear reactors are emitting 400 tonnes (of dangerous waste) per day into the North Pacific and the company is using poor people to try and repair the nuclear reactors but things are the same as they were three years ago. There was another leak three weeks ago in a storeroom. That waste was pushed into the North Pacific."
During the march, there were individuals dressed as nuclear waste barrels which they hoped would highlight the fact that nuclear power created nuclear waste.
Curious onlookers on Piccadilly Road were accosted by some of the marchers explaining the purpose of the march and handing out leaflets.
As the march continued towards Piccadilly Circus, the fluorescent yellow banners and flags dominated the road and tourists looked on with amazement.
Members of the public who took leaflets could be heard agreeing that change was needed with regards to attitudes towards nuclear power.
Leaflets produced by Japanese Against Nuclear UK (JAN) gave a winter update about deadly spent fuel rods being removed from reactor number four at Fukushima.
According to JAN, 1,553 bundles of rods have to be removed which will take a year to complete if the rate of 44 bundles a week continues.
But the leaflet warns: "And if something 'unfortunate' does happen, it is quite likely to lead to Tokyo having to be abandoned, and a few million extra cancer cases around the world."
A Japanese marcher said it was important to say no to nuclear everywhere and said it was not the "right decision" in the UK to have nuclear plants.
Atsuko Kamura, a member of JAN, said: "We're calling on the Japanese government to take appropriate measures at Fukushima.
"It's a complicated issue and it's not solved yet. According to German magazine, Der Spiegel, within seven years seafood from around the area cannot be eaten."
Ms Kamura added the Japanese government was "manipulating" the media in the country "to cover up the dangers" still in Fukushima and as a result Japanese people did not know how dangerous the situation was.
"The media is very quiet and poor people have had to go back" to homes near the plant, she said.
Press Association


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TV station error means free ads for Hartman, Gill
CHAMPAIGN — It's probably too little too late to make a difference, but independent congressional candidate John Hartman is airing television ads.
Fourteen of them. Some in prime time. All of them on central Illinois' biggest TV outlet, WCIA Channel 3.
Here is the ad on YouTube.
Best of all for Hartman, the spots are free. All because of an apparent billing error at the station in which Rodney Davis, the Republican candidate in the 13th District race, got $14,575 of free advertising.
The station called Hartman and Democrat David Gill and offered each of them $14,575 of free advertising, too.
"We had to shoot it immediately, almost," said Hartman, chief financial officer for a St. Louis medical technology firm.
"I got the call around 4 o'clock Friday and we shot it Saturday morning in Edwardsville," he said. "A friend of a friend whom I had never met came over and shot it for me."
It's about as straightforward a political commercial as has ever been shot: Hartman walking along, looking directly into the camera and delivering a characteristically blunt message.
"If we're really going to be serious about cutting the budget deficit, we all need to have an oar in the water and we all need to be pulling together," he says. "We're going to need cuts in defense spending, cuts in domestic spending. We're going to need to put more money into Social Security and Medicare through higher payroll taxes. And we're going to have to have fewer tax credits and fewer tax deductions."
The commercial isn't as creative or flashy as those of his opponents.
"The videos on my website were shot with a iPhone," Hartman explained. "I asked the guy at the TV station if I could shoot it with an iPhone and he said, 'I don't think you'd like it with an iPhone.' He suggested a digital SLR, so I thought, 'OK, we'll step it up a little bit here.'
"The guy came over from St. Louis and he sat in the back of a pickup truck, and the truck drives along with me talking there. I tried to stay in the frame all the time."
The commercial was shot in a parking lot at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and "took me a bunch of takes, I did badly," Hartman laughed. "The thing that is really tough is that you have to state your message in about 29.5 seconds."
Up until Saturday morning, he wasn't sure what message he'd convey in that 29.5-second gift.
"On Friday night I went to half of a high school football game and went home and just decided what to make it on. I was thinking, Should it be political reform or climate change? I settled on this, something that could be kind of factual, something that would have some immediate context. We rehearsed it a few times and then after several takes we got one that was workable."
They uploaded the video to WCIA on Saturday and the first spot appeared Sunday afternoon — during an NFL football game, no less, a coveted media spot two days before Election Day. Four spots ran Sunday, six appeared Monday and four more were set for Tuesday morning. It also can be viewed online at http://youtu.be/6Jc1QpQNJcq.
Hartman said he's still not certain what happened that gave him free television advertising worth more than $14,000 — a sum almost twice the $7,940 he had raised as of Oct. 17 (against $1.11 million for Davis and $1.05 million for Gill).
"I was told they made an error, that they aired more than (Davis) paid for. I don't know whose fault it was or anything. All I know is that David (Gill) had to be offered the same amount and I had to be offered the same amount," Hartman said. No one from WCIA returned a call to confirm the story.
News-Gazette.com embraces discussion of both community and world issues. We welcome you to contribute your ideas, opinions and comments, but we ask that you avoid personal attacks, vulgarity and hate speech. We reserve the right to remove any comment at our discretion, and we will block repeat offenders' accounts. To post comments, you must first be a registered user, and your username will appear with any comment you post. Happy posting.
How convenient for Davis...... Maybe, it was an error. WCIA's news commentary has been suspiciously partisan on issues such as pension reform, legislation, and other political matters. Based on their regular news delivery, it was probably only an error though. I am sure that a CBS affiliate would not stoop to partisan politics.


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When I was fourteen and fifteen, a young freshman in high school, I devoured historical fiction. And no, Philippa Gregory, I'm not looking at you. It started when I read The Memoirs of Cleopatra in ninth grade, a tome that took me a month to read and caused many stares among my teachers when I carried it around the halls. I had a love for reading about historical figures as if they were living and breathing beside me and found that I learned much more about actual historical events in this manner, rather than in the dry form it was delivered to us in school. I read a dozen books by Jean Plaidy, a couple by Margaret George, Antonia Fraser, and Alison Weir before I stumbled upon Anya Seton.
Years later, I still love historical fiction but my bar has been set a lot higher. Years of research have made me a skeptical reader. But I still love reading fictionalized versions of history, especially ones that do not feature an actual queen, king, or princess, but ones that use historical setting to tell a story with unique, well-developed characters. These characters have to do two different things simultaneously, and flawlessly, in order to be believable in a historical setting and interesting to a modern audience: they have to act like they would in the past yet speak to some modern issue. It's very difficult, and can descend quickly into kitsch if not done well. Anya Seton's Green Darkness is one of those examples of successful historical fiction.
It's a little gimmicky in the beginning. In the late 1960s, a young American woman named Celia has just married an English noble. It was a whirlwind romance–they met and married on a boat and claimed love at first sight. A year later, Celia's husband Richard has become taciturn and withdrawn, and Celia bored and unhappy. When Celia and Richard both suffer emotional breakdowns and hover near death, an Indian mystic recognizes their symptoms and suggests an alternative to Western medicine: an exorcism-like reliving of their past life in order to free them of it. The themes of this novel are reincarnation, the power of cause and effect, and the ways in which our lives–and past lives–influence our souls and the lives of those around us.
There are two main sections of this novel, the one set in the 70s and the one set in the Tudor period of England, during the tumultuous reigns of King Edward VI and Queen Mary I. There are several reasons why this novel works. One reason is the setting; the other are the characters.
Setting the novel during the Tudor period is trite and overdone. There are so many novels that deal with Henry VIII's six wives, and with Queen Elizabeth's reign, whether it features Shakespeare or the defeat of the Spanish Armada, or with Elizabeth's controversial claim of virginity, that the Tudor period has been so thoroughly canvassed it seems like nothing new can be described. However, Seton chose brilliantly to set her novel almost exclusively within the reigns of Edward and Mary, and in doing so, manages to shed light on a violent period of English history. We learn about the politics of religion during this time period and how believing in–or indeed, even speaking about–the wrong religion could not only impoverish you, it might send you to the stake.
Factions appear in the social landscape of the novel: the Catholics and the Protestants. When Edward is on the throne, all must shut up their chaplains and hide their rosary beads. When Mary is on the throne, they must redact their previous positions and extol the virtues of Catholicism, or else be burned. The political atmosphere of the novel produces some interesting characters and taught me a lot about an often-overlooked period of English history, nestled as it is between those two giants Henry and Elizabeth.
Then there are the characters. Celia, the previous edition of the modern Celia, is an impoverished tavern girl with slightly noble relatives. Her poor but well-bred aunt takes her under her wing when Celia is fourteen, and the young girl spends some time in the luxurious Cowdray Castle. There, she takes faith classes from Brother Stephen, a devout monk disciplined to the point of self-mutilation, and horrified at the Protestant changes occurring in England. Much to Brother Stephen's chagrin, confusion, and horror, Celia falls in love with him.
The results are complicated, tragic, and vivid. This novel is not a romance, yet it is romantic. And at its heart is the question: who pays for our actions in life? If karma is real, how many lifetimes of service to others will cleanse our souls? And if we do meet again those we've known in previous lives, how do our past lives affect our present one?
Celia is not your typical romance-novel heroine. She begins the novel as a timid albeit vain young girl and becomes cynical, brave, and strong in the course of it. Brother Stephen reminds me of a much more moral Arthur Dimmesdale crossed with Orlando Bloom: stoic, self-harming, incredibly religious, yet unfailingly fair and kind. Oh, he's also supposed to be gorgeous.
The novel has aged a bit since its publication in the 70s, but it's still a lush, thought-provoking, beautiful book. I read 250+ pages in one sitting, and was entranced. Forty years ago, historical novels were still considered intellectual literature. It is only in recent decades that they have fallen in repute, probably due to subpar writers appropriating the genre and sullying its name (Philippa Gregory, now I'm looking at you). Green Darkness and the entire Seton collection reminds us what great historical fiction can be. Good literature of all genres introduces readers to new worlds, and that's exactly what historical fiction does, except it has the power to teach us about world history, our roots, and the way we can relate to people from ages past.
Seton, A. (1972) Green Darkness. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt


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If you're a fan of Hatsune Miku (or just like beautiful things) then this one is for you: Max Factory's figure of Hatsune Miku from the game 7th Dragon 2020 is on pre-order, and she is utterly stunning.
Fans of 7th Dragon 2020 and collectors will recognize the art style in this phenomenal figure - the sculptor is Shining Wizard @ Sawachika, who also produced Samurai and Hacker from the same series.
Shining Wizard @ Sawachika is also behind that dead sexy Tharja (Fire Emblem:Awakening) statue.
You can pre-order Miku now for 9,500 yen. She's due out late January 2014.
Amanda Rush is the Associate Editor for Ani.Me and contributor for OtakuCollectionDX. She swears in the middle of the night on Twitter as @TheAnimaven.


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Puppy: Lucy
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Lucy is such a joy to have around! She is very smart and quick to learn. Lucy has excellent soccer skills and could play ball all day long. Her favourite things to do are splashing in the water, chewing sticks, chasing leaves and most of all playing with her friends at the park. Although Lucy is a very active puppy she is quite laid back and loves to snuggle every morning. Being a clown she brings a smile to everyone's face. We love her so much!View Profile


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Grazing with the brunch bunch
Christine Hochkeppel for The Boston Globe
Julian's Providence
The omelets have "Star Wars" names and some staff flaunt their video game levels, but Julian's isn't just for fans of "The Big Bang Theory" TV show. The restaurant offers brunch daily, and long lines are the rule on weekends, and sometimes on weekdays. Vegans get their own section of the menu. (The tofu stands alone.) The big story here, however, is the revival and reinvention of breakfast hash, which comes in combinations like mushrooms and boursin cheese. Order it as a plate to share or as a side in lieu of home fries with the egg dishes. 318 Broadway, Providence, 401-861-1770, www.juliansprovidence.com. Brunch weekends 9 a.m.-2:45 p.m., weekdays 9-5. Entrees $3-$14.