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Archive for the 'Zillow.com' Category
Hey, @Zillow: Why are you calling the Realtors and lenders you prey upon #racist?
My client went shopping for houses on Trulia.com, and only 75% of those she found were bogus listings…
My note to her: "Trulia and Zillow both present inactive listings as though they were active to fool the public into thinking that they have more inventory than the agents they exploit for advertising money, even though their listings come straight from the MLS systems. Mere real estate brokers would be fined out of business for pulling these stunts."
Despair you nothing, though, hard-working dogs. Every time Trulia or Zillow are caught pulling these bait-and-switch stunts, one more active real estate shopper is turned off of their sites forever. Nice going, suits…11 comments
Things to do in Denver when all you can say is "SMIE!"
The Knights Who Say "SMIE!", spewers of beguiling lies, get their heads handed to them in Denver, but like all good shills, they just keep on spewing.Comments are off for this post
Really, What If He's Not Wrong?
A follow-up to an article on syndication I wrote just a short time ago. Keep in mind that I've never even met Jim Abbott, and am not promoting his company. But I'm listening harder now to him, and as he speaks his words continue to etch a path that I really believe warrants all of our attention.
At the end he does make a request. In San Diego you can actually withhold syndication on a property by property basis. On the MLS form simply check "No Syndication." Try it. I discussed it yesterday with a client, and I'm listing her home without giving away all the info to you know who. Oh, and I truly believe if buyers come to my site to learn about this property, even if they don't want this particular home, it will greatly increase the likelihood of my working with them in the future.
Want to skin some cats, anyone?
Where Is He Wrong?
This was in the San Diego Union Tribune, and references an occurrence at a local real estate meeting here last week.
Wednesday: Jim Abbott, owner of a San Diego real estate brokerage, backed out from appearing on a real estate event's panel after he was told to refrain from speaking negatively about real estate search sites including Zillow.
Zillow reserved a table at Thursday's 2012 Real Estate Success Event, held at downtown's San Diego Convention Center. Abbott is against third-party housing websites because he says they are inaccurate, misleading and take business from listing agents. Leaders from such sites say their platforms are popular with consumers because they're easy to use and offer lots of information.
Here's Jim Abbott's video explaining why Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com are…well, worthy of having something bad said about them.
Where is he wrong? If Zillow, Trulia or Realtor.com really believe he's off the rail, then why an effort to keep him down. Seems like a nice enough fellow. Not caustic. Simply telling a story. Oh, and I know this isn't "just in" news. It's simply news that I believe we as Realtors, actual fiduciaries to our clients, have a duty to take a stand on.
I, for one, think Mr. Jim Abbott is on point, articulate and taking us to an important question all of us should ponder and stand on as well.
Where am I wrong?24 comments
Jay Thompson takes leadership role at Zillow.com.
Thompson joins Zillow's growing partner outreach team, which includes Sara Bonert (director of broker services), Brad Andersohn (industry outreach manager), and recent addition Bob Bemis (vice president of partner relations). Together, the team advances Zillow's goal of helping real estate agents grow and market their business.
Grow and market whose business?
This is precisely the kind of leadership I have come to expect from Jay since 2008 or so: The goat takes a left when the cattle take a right. If you don't know what that means, you'll probably be taking the right turn.
I'm killing comments on this post, because I don't want you to soil yourself in public just because I'm the only person in this benighted industry who will tell you the truth.
Table talk from my email: A Judas Goat- yes? Got it.
Me: What's the point of having friends if you can't sell 'em out?
Andersohn = ActiveRainiers
Bemis = MLS systems
Thompson = TwitBook losers
Coming soon: Project FUD at REBarCamp: Can you afford to be WITHOUT Zillow?
The window on integrity in real estate seems to be closing…
Still more…
Our business is corrupt, so it's no surprise that this is the only place on the net where you can find the other side of this story. This is me from a comment at Real Estate Industry Watch:
Whatever job they end up giving him, Jay Thompson has already delivered everything Zillow is paying for: His endorsement of their brand. Now they get to make the fallacious "Even-Jay-Thompson" appeal: Even Jay Thompson thinks you should piss away your money on Zillow's advertising. Jay has yearned to be the Head Lemming of the RE.net since the passing of Joe Ferrara, but, as we saw in the Denise Lones fiasco, he lacked that sad little man's taste for blood. Luckily, Zillow has provided him with an even better cliff off of which to drive his credulous "followers." It's sad to say, but they deserve each other.
We've seen this kind of self-dealing posturing from Jay Thompson before — and not just from him, alas. But eighteen months from now — when you finally wake up and say, "Wuh happened?!?" — this post will still be here, one of many warnings you chose to ignore.
And still more…
These are two comments I posted in response to a comment from Jeff Brown in his post on social media in real estate marketing:
Wow. I can't think of a single observation in this comment that I can endorse as bearing some relation to fact. As we discussed in November of 2010, Jay Thompson tells some pretty big whoppers about his brokerage.
> a 1% conversion rate via their IDX leads
Those aren't leads. Those are names — a lot of them fake names, I expect. Decent inquiries should convert at 50% eventually.
> 2011 produced around 7,000 leads
Somewhere a nose is growing.
> That's around 70-75 closed sides
That is, two per head per year.
> I do suspect that in his market, Phoenix, a full time agent would probably need to close a side a month.
Because Starbucks only pays minimum wage.
Seriously, an agent closing fewer than 20 houses a year, on average, should find another job. He can do a lot better, hour for hour.
> I'm assuming a $150,000 price at 3% commission.
Much more likely to be quite a bit lower on price, with a sales commission of 2.5% being very common, often less. Most of Thompson Realty's listings are short sales, so I would expect 2.5% to the listing broker to be very common.
> 34 X 12 = 408 closed transactions
237 for 2011, split across 31 licensees as of today. Shar Rundio, the pick of the litter by far, accounted for 55 of those. For the rest, that leaves about 6 closings per head, on average, half your estimate — but a 150% improvement over 2010. Why isn't someone telling cloying lies about this remarkable growth in productivity?
(Nota bene: There may be some transactions closed outside the MLS. I do a few that way now. Note also that the Phoenix real estate market is 100% a Federated Govco basket case. These agents might do better in a market with actual real estate fundamentals in play.)
> Jay and the exceedingly high quality of agents he hires
Jay has one good agent — and it ain't him.
> I'd love to know what they're doing on SM
Schmoozing, like everyone else on TwitBook. They're not making money.
> Russ Shaw closed 401 sides last year[….] I strongly suspect most of those were generated by sources other than SM.
Certainly not much more than 99%.
> I may be seeing Jay in Georgia next month[….] I bet he'll have plenty to say.
No doubt. It will just be the product of elaborate fantasies.
Here's my take, an impression that hasn't changed much in a long while:
1. Jay Thompson is all hat an no cattle. He doesn't know much, and much of what he claims to know is undefended gibberish.
2. TwitBook schmoozing is a terrible real estate marketing strategy. Anyone who says otherwise needs to post real numbers, not impressive-sounding bullshit.
3. By leading so many agents down the TwitBook path, Jay Thompson has contributed to the destruction of hundreds or thousands of real estate careers.
And, of course, that's why he's bailing on real estate sales.
As icing on the cake, he can come back to screw up the careers of the lingering survivors with a big Z on his chest.
The second comment:
I'm coming back to this, Jeff, because I think it's important.
There is nothing personal about this for me. This is business, and this particular item of business — vendors and their shills deliberately leading the grunts on the ground into error — has always been the business of this blog. It's been your shining grace here, and Russell's when he wrote here, and it shows up everywhere in our archives.
Agents and brokers have always told bullshit stories about their results — always. But the impact of their fabrications were limited, both because the meme-stream was local and ephemeral and because any claims that mattered could be easily checked.
This is what the internet has changed — particularly TwitBook. All the vendorsluts are having a heyday, of course, buying virtual cocktails and signing ironclad contracts. But by now water-cooler exaggerations are turned into Holy Writ by the amplifying power of the echo chamber.
That much is very bad just by itself, but the whole point of this exercise, from the very beginning, has been to DISINTERMEDIATE THE BEE-HOTCHES!
I wish Jay and Francy nothing but the best as people, but becoming an old-school Big Promises broker, becoming the NAR's technology shill, and now selling out his TwitBook following to Zillow — these are all the polar opposite of the kinds of actions we should be taking, encouraging or applauding.
And with that I move on. I feel like the get of Sisyphus and Cassandra, and I've got better things to do with my time. This is my argument to the RE.net: Jay Thompson is now beyond all doubt a vendor. If schmoozing with him puts a warm place in your heart, I hope you don't come to discover a corresponding empty place in your wallet.
By now I think I might be beating a dead horse. My objective is to have everything I have written on this topic in one place. Among the many ugly side-effects of the TwitBook phenomenon are back-biting, back-stabbing, clique warfare and broadcast whispering campaigns. I stand, not high it may be, but alone. There is nothing I have to say about anything that I am not willing to say in public, in full view, at full voice — and then stand behind forever. I am sick to death of all of these smarmy games, but I am also more than happy to show you how to oppose them.26 comments
Regarding the Zillow.com IPO: "Since when is a seven year old company with really no large scale growth prospects that has lost money every single year on revenue less than $45 million/year worth half a billion dollars? Am I missing something?"
The question comes from a comment to a post at Seattle-based start-up blog, GeekWire. The news? Zillow.com is bumping the per-share price on its forthcoming IPO to as high as $18, up from the $12-$14 range it started with when the public offering was announced.
I like that question, because it parallels one of my own: What, precisely, can Zillow hope to do — other than provide big paydays for its VCs and founders — with $71 million in new funding? Which parts of the site will require that much build-out?
My take: The web-tech IPO craze that's going on right now is just the next phase in the rape-the-rubes strategy Wall Street has pursued since internet start-ups came on the scene in the late '90s. There is plenty of money to be made churning the stock of "businesses" that, in the end, all amount to MySpace.com — all hype, no actual value.
What's the name for that phenomenon…? Oh, yes — a bubble.
The good news: Cynthia Pang Nowak, formerly Redfin.com's queen-bee PR geek, is now signed on with Zillow. While she may be both the smartest and most breathtakingly beautiful woman on the Puget Sound, it remains to be seen if she can answer the BloodhoundBlog question: What would David Gibbons do?
Meanwhile, GeekWire.com deserves your daily attention. Run by Todd Bishop and John Cook, formerly the start-up reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a long-time friend of BloodhoundBlog, it's kind of like TechCruch in the rain — but without the bluster and hyperbole. The daily email digest is quick way to keep up with the wired side of our world.
But: Am I all wet? Does Zillow.com look like a buy to you at $18? Can it go to $36? To $180? To $0.01? I like the people who work there, and the founders have been very good to us from the beginning. But I've never seen the value of Zillow.com, except as an advertising play, and I still don't. As with the comment quoted above, am I missing something?16 comments
Brett Arends from the Wall Street Journal on Zillow's morning gloom report: "All this bearish news makes me bullish."
Our friends at Zillow.com have figured out the secret to getting news coverage: Bad news:
Home values in the United States fell faster in the first quarter of 2011 than they have in any quarter since 2008, when the housing market experienced its worst performance, according to Zillow's first quarter Real Estate Market Reports(1). The Zillow Home Value Index(2) fell 3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010 to the first quarter of 2011, and declined 8.2 percent year-over-year to $169,600. Home values have fallen 29.5 percent since they peaked in June 2006.
Negative equity reached a new high mark with 28.4 percent of single-family homeowners with mortgages underwater at the end of the first quarter, up from 27 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010. A homeowner is in negative equity when they owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth.
Meanwhile, foreclosures(3) rose throughout the first quarter as banks unfroze moratoriums and allowed foreclosures to resume. Foreclosures had fallen in late 2010 due to the slew of moratoriums brought about by the "robo-signing" controversy. In March, one out of every 1,000 homes in the country was lost to foreclosure.
With substantial home value declines, as well as increasing negative equity and foreclosures, Zillow forecasts show it is unlikely that home values will reach a bottom in 2011. First quarter data has prompted Zillow to revise its forecast, now predicting a bottom in 2012, at the earliest.
"Home value declines are currently equal to those we experienced during the darkest days of the housing recession. With accelerating declines during the first quarter, it is unreasonable to expect home values to return to stability by the end of 2011," said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Stan Humphries. "We did expect substantial payback from the homebuyer tax credits, which buoyed the housing market last year, but underlying demand post-tax credit, as well as rising foreclosures and high negative equity rates, make it almost certain that we won't see a bottom in home values until 2012 or later."
My own take is that we are at or near the knee in the curve: While supplies of fire-sale-priced homes may be abundant, resale prices are by now so low as to make cash-rich investors completely nuts. In Phoenix in April, our values were up for the homes we track. Doesn't mean we've turned the corner, but big drops from here seem unlikely to me.
Meanwhile, here's a bullish rejoinder to Zillow from the Wall Street Journal:
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Remember Japan's "zombie banks"? These were the financial institutions that haunted that country's economic recovery after the 1990 crash. They staggered on with huge losses they could never repay — the walking dead.
Here in America we have "zombie homeowners." Millions of them. According to Zillow, a record 16.3 million families are upside-down on their home loans. Sixteen million! And many are a long way upside-down. Their homes may never be worth as much as their mortgage. But they are hemorrhaging cash to pay the nut every month.
Recovery? What recovery? This looks a bit like a depression to me.
What does this mean?
All the misery makes me think of a great French general, Ferdinand Foch. He's the one who defended Paris at the Battle of the Marne in World War I. During the darkest hour of the fighting, he is supposed to have looked around him and said:
"Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent — I attack!"
In other words, when it comes to distressed housing, I'm finding it hard not to be a contrarian bull.
Why? Am I crazy?
Well, maybe. But I'm a medium-bull for all the reasons everyone else is gloomy.
First, prices in many areas are now cheap. They have corrected a long way since the bubble began to burst five years ago. Of course, it depends on where you are. I'm still skeptical of the real-estate markets that have held up best — prime stuff like Manhattan, San Francisco or Beverly Hills. It's hard to get a deal there.
But in the places that have fallen the furthest, there are deals aplenty. Zillow found only four metro areas in America that have leveled out, or risen, lately. Notably, two of those are in stricken Florida — Fort Myers and Sarasota. Have they fallen so far they've hit bottom? Maybe.
Look at this chart. It shows Miami real-estate prices, adjusted for inflation, over the past quarter-century, using Case-Shiller data. The picture is pretty remarkable. The gigantic bubble has been completely wiped out. We're back to prices seen in the 1980s — when "Miami Vice" was on the air.
The second reason: There are tons of foreclosures and short sales on the market. And there are plenty more sitting in the wings. Banks are holding back big shadow inventories of homes. And that means you can get a great deal. They have to sell. You don't have to buy. You hold all the cards. Remember, the name of the game isn't "let's make a deal." It's "take it or leave it."
Third, in many places rental yields are terrific. It's cheaper to own than to rent. There have been some forced sales in my building in Miami. Based on my math, the latest buyers have bought condominium units for six times gross annual rents, and maybe 12 times net rents. We're talking net yields of 7% or more. And rents are rising, because so many former owners are now renters.
The fourth reason I'm bullish is that you can get a very cheap mortgage. Thirty-year conforming loans are going as low as 4.3%. Throw in the tax break on the interest, and you are talking cheap finance. See latest weekly mortgage-rate update.
The fifth reason is that, as painful as this collapse has been, real estate has historically proven to offer very good long-term protection against inflation. Returns have typically averaged about 1% or 2% above inflation. At a time when everyone has been piling into gold, commodities and TIPS bonds to protect themselves against the possibility of inflation, it seems odd that the most popular and successful hedge, namely real estate, goes a-begging.
Thirty-year TIPS bonds are yielding just 1.6% over inflation, and shorter-term bonds offer even lower returns. Short-term TIPS are actually offering negative real yields. How holding TIPS may actually make you poorer.
The sixth reason I'm bullish is perverse, but I'm sticking by it. Everyone else is bearish. You cannot find a real-estate bull anywhere. No one wants to own this asset. No one wants to talk about it. No one wants to hear about it. Everyone seems to agree it's just going down, down, down — forever.
They said much the same about stocks in 1987, 2002 and 2009; Treasury bonds in 1982; and gold in 2000. I cannot prove this is capitulation, but it sure smells something like it.
As ever, if you aren't disciplined and patient, this probably isn't for you.
I have absolutely no idea when real estate is going to hit rock bottom. It may take several years. I suspect it will do so in different markets at different times. But there are good homes out there going really cheap. If you hunt down the bargains, you're disciplined about price, you get the right financing, and you hold on for five years or more, you'll probably do pretty well from here.
Zillow says, "If you will send us your clients as web traffic, we'll be pleased to sell them back to you, again and again, from now on."
Q: What do you do when your massive Realty.bot web site, target-marketed to equity-rich home-sellers, finds itself in a real estate market where most sellers are upside down and do not give a rat's ass what their homes might sell for?
A: Punt.
This is an eyeball play, up front, just pure traffic-baiting. But the genius of it is that it turns into FUD for the agents in the long run: A million necks, one noose.
These sites are just noise, by now, just more "media" — uninformed opinions from people who make their living doing something other than selling real estate. Delivering your clients to them strikes me as a poor idea.16 comments
A David Gibbons send off dance
Dear David Gibbons: Around here we dance on bridges.
I rejoice that you are seeking splendor!
Someday, please teach us all to Diski Dance on a bridge!
Where Would David Gibbons Go?
Home, of course.
Anybody who followed his World Cup trip to South Africa saw the glow on his face, in his Facebook pictures, and the longing in his heart, on his Facebook status updates. Social media are interesting platforms. They have the power to bring you much closer to people you've met or allow you to learn more about those you've yet to meet. I "met" David on Active Rain, was drawn to the Zillow brand because of him (and Drew Meyers), and am grateful to him for supporting the inaugural real estate social media marketing conference.
I've battled with, yelled at, drank beer with, collaborated with, and tried to support David Gibbons for a number of reasons but, in the end, it's all about mentschkeit. David G from Zillow is the type of guy you want on your team….and you want to play on his team, too.
I"m not going to cry about his departure because between Skype and Facebook, Seattle is not much farther than Jo-Berg. My goal today is to remind you of the single most important lesson we learned, from David G: What Would David Gibbons Do?
The WWDGD lesson is to represent yourself positively online and always sell your brand. The trick is in the delivery. David G. never skulked and pounced, like a sleazy corporate pitchman. David G. was always part of the conversation, offering ideas, debating, and developing best practices. If there was ever a spokesman for the " RE.net", Davig G would be that guy. Why? He lives in our world.
So I'll just say "Hamba Kahle" to David G. I'd say I'll miss him but I doubt I'll notice he's moved.6 comments
Who's Afraid of Redfin.com?
Bob Haywood, an Owasso, OK real estate agent makes a case for why you should be aware of Redfin.com. Bob articulates, from behind the cloaked wall on Active Rain, why Redfin.com is the REAL agent of change in the real estate industry. Read what Bob has to say:
You should pay as much or more attention to Redfin and what they are doing than you do to Zillow. Am I saying we should ignore Zillow? No! But the group who has the potential to really change real estate is Redfin, not Zillow. And here's why…Zillow is just an information source. So they give lots of information. Yippee. The information real estate vault is now open to the public. Zillow is just one of many players in the information delivery game. And guess what? Zillow exists at the 20,000 foot level. Their information is not very accurate. You and I exist on the ground level. We know our local real estate market in ways that Zillow will never know. We know what actually sold. What it sold for. What it is actually worth and often, what is about to come onto the market.
Fear Zillow.com? "Not so much", says Bob and I agree with him. Zillow introduced the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace and it has had no impact on my business these past 18 months. Only one consumer has referenced Zillow's mortgage rate quotes in their negotiation with me. That consumer did speak a lot about the Zestimate and its inaccuracy; that inaccuracy actually helped me in the negotiation with the consumer because it threw a shadow of doubt upon the accuracy of the mortgage quotes they offer.
And that is why you should watch Redfin. Redfin is a ground level company. They are attempting to take the information and link it to agents on the ground. That's what makes them dangerous. If they ever get their feet under them and decide that they actually want to be a player nationwide, they could just change the way real estate is bought and sold. And if they do, they could end up owning (many of) us. Already, there are agents becoming Redfin agents in the markets they serve. And as I understand it, when you work for Redfin, they set your commission. Their marketing pushes out the idea that the consumer saves a ton of money by NOT having to pay the standard commission to agents.
Redfin.com is a completely different story. They have built an incredibly strong following among tech-savvy, do-it-yourself types. Moreover, they set expectations of and limits to their service offering and (here's the important part)… Redfin sticks to them. Consumers fully understand those limitations and expectations and understand the trade-off between perceived service levels, performance, and price.
I can think of a hundred things Redfin could do better. I could think of a thousand things full-service real estate agents could do better and a million things lenders could do better. What Redfin does very well is define what it will and won't do for the money it charges a customer and that appears to be what consumers really want today.
PS: Republishing content without permission, from behind the Active Rain "Members Only" wall is a violation of its terms of service. I've secured permission from the author, Bob Haywood to republish his parsed commentary here in Bloodhound Blog.9 comments
Zillow.com jumps the shark, makes a big splash in the dead pool
Cathleen just discovered the hard way that Zillow.com now expects us to pay them $9.95 per listing to populate their database.
So long, Zillovians. It's been good to know you.
(News at Inman. An obvious workaround at AG.)17 comments
Why Web 2.0 Still Hasn't Mastered the Real Estate Mantra: LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
So Goggle thinks it's going to win the real estate search game. As far as I'm concerned, there is no more meaningless a result in an online property search than a red pin designating the location of a property on a map. Take the map above in the example – a snapshot of the the greater New York City area with little red dots designating search results. New York's a big city with alot of little neighborhoods. Help me understand how this solution is any better than any of the others? How has Google upped the ante in providing a better solution?
They haven't.
What I find interesting about the online search game is how many players fail to understand what makes a particular property unique – desirable – a one of a kind. How does a little red dot convey the weighty significance of LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION? I just read Joe Burslem's post over at FOREM, regarding how Google is now getting serious about real estate.
Should Zillow and Trulia be worried? Not if they view search as a value added activity. SEO juice isn't necessarily the fuel that runs an effective or valuable search. The content around the search is key. What makes a location important? When consumers seek a home – not a house – what evokes the emotional response? A view? The possibility of walking to a farmer's market on Sunday, while passing a Starbucks?
A street view is a "window" into a location, but it doesn't define it's personality. Location has an identity. Zillow has already done the homework to identify the boundaries to neighborhoods. Perhaps a valuable next step may be to better identify a neighborhood's identity – its personality – or maybe link the characteristics of a location to the attributes of a property.
If a search result can personify a property's location, consistent with how a consumer lives, the red pin comes alive. Search is meaningful.
Google – you've got your work cut out for you.21 comments
Is Web Technology Squashing the Little Guy in Real Estate?
About once a week, someone asks Redfin who built our real estate search site (sometimes they don't ask, they just take). Since we built our site on our own, we can't recommend a development partner, but we can offer advice to other brokers building MLS-powered sites.
And our first suggestion would be to bring your wallet. If you include all the employee salaries, benefits, hardware, online services, data costs and hosting costs, Redfin will probably spend $4+ million on research and development in 2009.
That may sound like an imposing number but we have costs you can avoid. We spend at least $1 million on commerce tools for tracking offers and listings, so we can give customers the same 24-hour web support you expect from a bank, limiting the administrative burdens on our agents. A traditional brokerage doesn't have to invest in this area.
We probably spend another $1 million making mistakes you could easily duck by following us at a safe distance of, say, six months. We try to avoid mistakes, but a mistake is often just a good decision outpaced by circumstances.
For example, when we had no money — scratch that, (thanks David Selinger) when no mapping technology existed that supported user-controlled panning and satellite imagery — it made sense to build our own map. Later, Virtual Earth was the best choice because Google was slow to draw hundreds of property outlines on its map. Now the best choice for us is Google Maps because we figured out how to outline all the properties at once. We just switched to GMaps today, and now it's on the front page of TechMeme.
I think we're the only folks in real estate who have used Virtual Earth, Google Maps and a proprietary map, so if you have questions on the relative merits of each service, please just drop us a line.
That leaves the cost at around a few million dollars per year to build a real estate search site with national scale, which is still too expensive. While hardware costs decrease every year, and other websites have undoubtedly achieved more with less — often by out-sourcing, sometimes no doubt by just being smarter and faster — it is still true that small brokers are struggling to pay for competitive search sites.
This is a change. Marketing, which used to be the large brokers's primary advantage, is actually getting cheaper — if Bloodhound has proved anything, it's that the web has made marketing a question of what you have to say not how much you have to spend.
But the cost of running a real estate search site is rising fast. Large brokers throw money (if not always expertise) at the problem, while small brokers struggle to compete. The small brokers ask MLSs to provide a common set of services, like listing alerts, but the large brokers sometimes block these efforts as being beyond the MLSs' charter.
And expectations are rising. Consumers now want tax records, bank records, property outlines, school data and neighborhood outlines, all of which are expensive.
The sites a Realtor could work with aren't always attractive. Realtor.com, the site funded by Realtor dues, is losing market-share. Sites like HouseValues, Trulia and Zillow are gunning to replace Realtor.com, but not all agents who want to be featured on those sites can afford the up-front costs .
It would be a shame if technology — which is supposed to lower the barriers to entry — actually made real estate less of a mom-and-pop industry. I know Redfin is part of that trend, but it wasn't what we had in mind when we started. Our focus was on competing with Century 21 and RE/MAX, and benefiting the consumer — not hurting the little guy.
What do you think? Is technology creating new economies of scale in real estate? Are small brokerages able to compete just using the public sites provided by the MLS? Will large brokerages be able to use better data access to build the market-leading real estate search sites?
And is it the role of the MLS or of the National Association of Realtors to create a level technology playing field? Will the small brokers get priced out of the technology wars? I don't pretend to know, but it would be great to hear your thoughts.45 comments


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Tag Archives: bryan mccabe
2009-10 NHL Preview: Southeast Division
Total Pro Sports – With the start of the 2009-10 NHL Season upon us it's time to take a look and see how each team stacks up. As per the norm, each preview will be broken down by division in order of how we think the team will finish. Lets take a look at the […]
2008/09 Florida Panthers Season Preview
4. Florida Panthers Season Preview Bit of a drop after finishing 3rd last year, but that has more to do with the improved Lightning than the moves made by the Panthers. Florida will be leaning heavily on young guys Nathan Horton, Stephen Weiss and Rostislav Olesz to put the puck in the net for them […]
NHL Rumors, Who's On Their Way Out?
August is usually the slowest time of the year for rumors, but there have been a few flying around the last few days that I think we should talk about. Bryan McCabe waives his NMC to go to Florida I don't doubt for a second that he has waived it, however there is a clause […]

subset: commoncrawl


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Photo: Mike Lauterborn
Has anyone ever told you, "It takes money to make money"?
That's not exactly right.
Steve Siebold, the author of "How Rich People Think" and a self-made multimillionaire who spent nearly three decades interviewing over 1,000 extremely wealthy people, has isolated a handful of financial phrases that seem like common wisdom, but are in fact misguided, ineffective, or just plain wrong.
Click through to find out which of this well-worn advice you shouldn't be following.


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Mike Curtis
LETB Director
Mike Curtis's interest and knowledge of education and training in the NHS grew from many years providing financial advice to those managing the large education and training investment budgets. After joining the NHS from University in 1987 as a financial management trainee, Mike completed his accountancy qualification three years later. Subsequent NHS roles included working for an acute Trust, the Department of Health and the Yorkshire and Humber Strategic Health Authority where he was Deputy Director of Finance. Mike has also spent several years out of the NHS, in the UK working for a major management consultancy firm and overseas for the World Health Organisation, working on developing health systems. Committed to on-going professional development Mike has a masters degree in health management from Leeds University.


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Foetal Bovine Serum
Foetal Bovine Serum, FBS (also referred to as Foetal Calf Serum, FCS) is the most widely used serum-supplement for in vitro cell culture. FBS naturally contains very low level of antibodies combined with a higher concentration of growth factors (compared with other serum products). The addition of FBS to culture media serves three key functions in cellular growth by providing hormonal factors, attachments and spreading factors as well as transport proteins. No other known substance contains the same broad spectrum of cell growth promoting properties.
Note: Serum is the liquid fraction of clotted blood. It is depleted of cells, fibrin and clotting factors. Serum differs from plasma in that anticoagulant is never added to the blood after collection from the animal. Serum is prepared by centrifuging until the clot is separated from the liquid phase.
Global and local geographic and economic conditions, climatic environment and government legislation all contribute to the availability of FBS. Further, the selling price of FBS is very dynamic being dictated by its country of origin which is influenced by supply and demand. Concerns about BSE and other adventitious agents potentially found in animal-origin materials, strongly influences the demand for specific origins with New Zealand, Australian and US origin material commanding the highest prices. Currently, prices for FBS are at an all time high.
Choose from various origins depending on budget and research needs. South American origin serum provides the most cost-effective option. Australian and New Zealand FBS assure product of the highest integrity due to the disease-free status of these island countries.
Batch testing
Up to three, 50ml samples can be sent, free-of-charge for customers to test for cell line suitability. The total number of bottles (typically to a maximum of 975L filtered serum) can be reserved for up to four weeks. The actual number of bottle available however, will depend on the batch.
|Country of Origin
|Endotoxin EU/ml
|Standard Grade
|Suitable for general applications, especially those that do not require defined biochemical and hormonal profiles or bacteriophage testing
|South America
|USDA Grade
Australia /
New Zealand
|New Zealand
|Heat Inactivated
|Sterile filtered serum is heated to 56°C for 30 minutes with continuous mixing, to inactivate various components of the serum including complement factors. Often required to preserve the integrity of immunoassays.
|South America
|USDA Grade
|Gamma Irradiated
Serum is gamma irradiated in the final containers to guarantee freedom from all micro-organisms.
NB. Irradiation will cause both glass and PETG bottles to darken in colour. The efficiency of the serum may be impaired and the shelf life reduced.
US Origin/
USDA Grade
Chilled serum is dialysed from 10kDa up to 30,000kDa, to remove small molecules such as glucose, salts and some non-protein bound serum molecules such as polypeptides. Particularly suitable for receptor studies (and radiolabelling assays).
NB. This process generally does not remove hormones that are serum bound but it may reduce growth promotion capabilities of some lots.
|USDA Grade
|Charcoal:Dextran Stripped Serum
Serum is processed through an activated charcoal filter to remove lipophilic material such as oestradiol, progesterone, cortisol, testosterone, T3, T4 and insulin. Ideal for applications requiring low levels of hormones such as steroid and steroid receptor research, immunoassay systems and insulin assay methods.
NB. This serum may show some reduced growth-promotion ability for cells requiring the presence of certain hormones.
US Origin/
USDA Grade
|Tetracycline Negative
|Designed for studying tet-inducible gene expression systems. Batches of serum are pre-tested to be free of tetracycline or tetracycline derivatives.
|South America
|Low IgG
|These are batches selected with naturally occurring low levels of IgG. Seralab does not process serum to artificially reduce IgG levels as this can affect culture performance.
|South America
|USDA Grade
|Embryonic Stem Cell pre-tested
|Batches of serum are pre-tested for ability to sustain undifferentiated cellular morphology in Murine ES Cell V 6.5. Crucial for the successful maintenance of embryonic stem cells.
|South America
|USDA Grade
|Insect Qualified
|Batches of serum are pre-tested and qualified for insect cell culture applications in both Grace's and TNM-FH insect media on a broad range of insect cells, including Sf9, Tni and D2 cells.
|For growing hepatocytes and other cells used in numerous biological assays including research involving fatty acids, cholesterol, steroids, growth hormone and drug delivery.
|SeraLab Select
|Batches of serum that have been shown to have extremely low levels of endotoxin and are of particular interest in the culturing of primary or hybridoma cells.
|South America
|Batches of serum pre-tested on a variety of human and animal primary cells including neuronal cells, fibroblasts, epithelial cells, hybridoma, myeloma, HeLa and CHO.
|South America
South American Origin - This material is sourced from a specific country in the sub-continent of South America, for example Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, Columbia, Bolivia and Chile.
USDA Grade ("Approved") - material sourced in countries approved for import into the United States by the USDA. Currently this includes Central America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and Chile. This material is collected and processed in facilities registered and inspected by the competent veterinary authority in the country of origin. In many instances the material cannot be distributed within the USA without successfully passing safety testing in USDA laboratories.
Every batch is triple filtered to 0.1µm. Quality Assurance testing precedes the release of a batch for sale. Full batch documentation can be provided including Certificates of Origin, Certificates of Analysis showing country of origin, and batch filtration records.
Major companies that collect and sell FBS globally are members of the ISIA, the International Serum Industry Association. Seralab is a major contributor to the Association.
Serum is collected aseptically by specially trained operators to ensure freedom from bacterial contamination resulting in low levels of endotoxin – typically <10EU/ml. Product codes GEM-100-500, GEM-100-106 and EU-000-FS/HS are pre-selected to have very low levels of endotoxin, typically below the standard level of 1ng/ml or 10 EU/ml. Actual values are provided in the Certificate of Analysis for each batch.


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Home > Shop By Brand > Comfort Colors > Men > Comfort Colors Collection - Longhorn Lost In Texas T-Shirt
By WE ARE TEXAS
Item #100210314
Show off your Texas pride with the Longhorn Lost In Texas T-Shirt! This unisex Burnt Orange tee features a screen-printed Burnt Orange state of Texas outline with white arched "TEXAS" text and a Longhorn logo on the front left chest, and a large Burnt Orange, white and gray screen-print design consisting of the state of Texas outline, Longhorn logo and "I WOULD RATHER BE LOST IN TEXAS THAN FOUND IN OKLAHOMA" text. This comfortable shirt is made from 100% pre-shrunk cotton fabric and is a perfect choice to wear on Game Day for the Red River Rivalry!
Machine wash cold with like colors. Tumble dry low. Do not iron.
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Rebecca Stead, Jerry Pinkney Win Newbery, Caldecott - at PW.
The one year I don't watch the streaming live video at the ALA awards banquet and I know several people who won - dangit! I'm squealin' for them - albeit a few hours later. Here are the biggies and the ones that mean the most to me:
WHEN YOU REACH ME, by Rebecca Stead. Winner of the Newbery winner.
WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON, by Grace Lin. Newbery Honor Award winner.
THE LION AND THE MOUSE, by Jerry Pinkney. Caldecott Award winner.
THE SECRET WORLD OF WALTER ANDERSON, written by Hester Bass, illustrated by E.B. Lewis. National Council of Teachers of English Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children.
ALMOST ASTRONAUTS: 13 WOMEN WHO DARED TO DREAM, by Tanya Lee Stone. Sibert Award Winner.
Wonder how many awards there are? Elizabeth Bluemle did a great post recently at Shelf-Talker giving the low-down: Know Your Awards?
Pretty groovy stuff - they all get stickers now. I may have to buy new copies....
Elizabeth Bluemle did a great wrap up of all the winners at Shelf Talker: A Cornucopia of Awards!
18 January 2010
ALA Awards are named!
Labels: BigNews
3 comments :
- Hester Bass said...
Thanks for the shout-out, e! I am bustin' my buttons at winning the 2010 NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for The Secret World of Walter Anderson. Such an amazing day - congratulations to ALL the winners!
- Tasha said...
Or instead of new copies, you can just buy the medals and attach them to your copies. Or even to those books you thought should have won! ;)
- Elizabeth O. Dulemba said...
Oh Tasha - you shouldn't have told me that. You may have just created a monster!!
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Rugby League World Cup: Australia playmaker Daly Cherry-Evans out to impress
Daly Cherry-Evans is eager to shine against Fiji after admitting his disappointment at not featuring against England.
Last Updated: 30/10/13 1:31pm
The 24-year-old playmaker lost out to Robbie Farah for a spot on the bench in the Kangaroos' 28-20 victory, but he could be given a chance by head coach Tim Sheens in Saturday's clash against Fiji.
Cherry-Evans, who has one cap for his country, was gutted not to feature for Australia in the Millennium Stadium, but he is not letting his head drop after the snub.
"Any chance you get to represent your country is a huge honour," said Cherry-Evans. "It was tough (missing out against England).
"It's a difficult position to be in not playing. Everyone here, whether it's the first week or the last week, wants to be in the 17 and I was no different.
"Obviously Tim's picked a winning side so I'll have to make sure I take my opportunities when I get the chance."
Cherry-Evans is excited at playing alongside either Johnathan Thurston or Cooper Cronk should he get the nod for their weekend Group A contest against the Fijians.
"If I do get named to play in the six or seven next week I'll definitely be excited to play next to either one of those guys," he concluded.


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Welcome to ArborBrook Stables
Where your retired horse can enjoy the life of open pastures, high-quality living, and exceptional care
The time comes when our beloved partners deserve to be retired. Whether due to age, permanent injury, or condition, it's time for them to rest. They've worked hard for us. They've given us their best, along with their hearts and souls. Memories have been made that will last forever. And now it's time to let them just be a horse. To let them wander the pastures and munch on grass. To feel the fresh air and the sun on their backs. To be taken care of with love and experience.
This is what we offer at ArborBrook Stables. A place where your best friend can live with no regular schedule. No training. No shows. Just peace and relaxation among a few selected equine friends, with high-quality care that they deserve.
Let us care for your equine friend who's time for greener pastures has come.


text: (I didn't get Dmitry's original mail, so replying here)email@example.com wrote:> Dmitry Torokhov wrote:>> Then there is issue with automatic loading of these sub-drivers. How>> do they get loaded? Or we force everything to be built-in making HID>> module very fat (like psmouse got pretty fat, but with HID prtential>> for it to get very fat is much bigger).>>>> The better way would be to split hid-input into a library module that>> parses hid usages and reports and is shared between device-specific>> modules that are "real" drivers (usb-drivers, not hid-sub-drivers).One possibility is to do that with symbol_request() and friends. Thatwould not be pretty though, imho.DVB subsystem uses that currently to load frontend modules dynamically,see dvb_attach() and dvb_frontend_detach() indrivers/media/dvb/dvb-core/dvbdev.h anddrivers/media/dvb/dvb-core/dvb_frontend.c.-- Anssi Hannula-To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" inthe body of a message to firstname.lastname@example.com majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.htmlPlease read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/


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15,000 Farm-raised Crocodiles Escape in South Africa
15,000 crocodiles escaped from a farm in South Africa after the Limpopo River flooded, the result of extremely heavy rains. The owners of the Rakwena Crocodile Farm say they had no choice but to open flood gates or the pressure from the accumulating water would have crushed the animals.
As for why the farm had so many crocodiles: They were being raised for their skins which are sold to make shoes, handbags and jackets in Europe and parts of Asia. The Rakwena farm is also a tourist site featuring guided crocodile tours.
At least half the crocodiles are so far avoiding the fate of being made into a fashion accessory. About 2,000 have been recaptured but as many as 10,000 remain free near the dense bush and in the Limpopo, which is the second largest river in South Africa.
Farm workers are searching for the crocodiles at night as their eyes glow red in the dark and they are more active night. Most of the crocodiles are small, about 2.5 meters (about 8.2 feet) long, and about 3 or 4 years old. As farm spokesman Zane Langsman says in AFP, "we just basically jump on their backs and tie them up, load them up and taking them back to enclosures." The bigger ones are caught by tying straps around their mouths, tying their legs and then injecting them with a "solution that's basically a muscle-relaxant," says Langsman.
A police spokesman for Limpopo province (in the far north of South Africa) says that villagers have been warned not to try and capture them. So far, no attacks by crocodiles have been reported and neither the police nor the army have yet been summoned to assist the workers. Some crocodiles were found on a school rugby field in Muskina, which is about 120 kilometers from the Rakwena farm and on the border with Zimbabwe.
All the escaped crocodiles are Nile crocodiles, the most common in Africa. They can grow up to 18 feet in length and weigh up to 1,700 pounds; they prey on most any animal they eat. The Limpopo River flows into the northeast corner of South Africa's Kruger National Park, which is described as a "remote wilderness" likely to offer plenty of wildlife for the thousands of still at-large crocodiles to eat.
Australian zoologist Adam Britton tells AFP that the crocodiles can travel "tens of kilometers" in a day so "realistically, the chances of capturing them all are extremely slim." The environmental impact of so many farm-raised crocodiles all at once let loose is unclear. But the massive effort currently underway to recapture thousands of crocodiles raises the question: why raise so many animals in the first place?
Related Care2 Coverage
Crocodiles and Alligators Are So Very Touchy-Feely
Australian Crocodile Plays with Lawnmower
Giant Captured Crocodile Refusing Food
Photo from Thinkstock


text: Staying Positive & Finding Myself by The Dance Grad // July 9, 2014 // 24 Comments I'm one of those people who never knew what she wanted to do in life. I never had one career in mind because I changed my mind almost every day. I chose to follow dance as a topic to study... Continue reading →


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1 - 10 of 33 Press Releases
Ford Sheds Light on the Rolling with Ford AND The BET Awards Contest
Jun 05, 2013
For the chance to win a trip for two to the BET Awards in Los Angeles and to drive the brand-new 2013 Ford Fusion, contestants must upload a 60-second video explaining why they should be a guest of Ford at the awards show.
Ford is On Track to Break Company Hybrid Sales Record in 2013
May 15, 2013
29,500 Ford hybrid models have been sold so far in 2013, placing the automaker less than 7,000 units away from the previous peak sales record that was set in 2010.
Drive 4 UR School and Help Education in the Community
May 13, 2013
The Ford Motor Company will donate to Rolling Meadows High School and District 214 Community Education each time a vehicle is test-driven at Arlington Heights Ford.
Arlington Heights Ford Announces Sponsorship of Backpacks 4 Class Charity Golf Outing
May 10, 2013
Golfers and corporate sponsors are invited to attend the event benefitting students in need, which will be held on July 26, 2013 at the Old Orchard Country Club.
Like Arlington Heights Ford on Facebook Before Tonight's AHFD MDA Boot Drive Benefit to Donate
May 03, 2013
Area Residents can support the MDA Boot Drive by liking Arlington Heights Ford on Facebook, as well as attending the benefit at Eddie's Restaurant and Lounge on Friday, May 3 from 7 to 11 p.m.
Arlington Heights Ford Sponsors Backpacks 4 Class Charity Golf Outing
May 02, 2013
The July 26th event at the Old Orchard Country Golf Club will help to provide underprivileged Chicagoland children with essential school supplies.
Arlington Heights Ford is a Proud Sponsor of the Timber Ridge Golf Tournament
Apr 26, 2013
Arlington Heights Ford will once again sponsor the third annual charity golf outing benefiting the Timber Ridge School Scholarship Fund.
Ford Unveils Escort Concept and Other Innovations at Auto Shanghai 2013
Apr 24, 2013
A combination of compact efficiency and performance was showcased in China with the Escort Concept, Mondeo, Fiesta ST, and SUV lineup.
Ford Helps New Customers Learn More About Features Through "Video Snacks"
Apr 20, 2013
Short videos give new car owners directions on how to operate Ford's new high- tech features.
Arlington Heights Ford Announces Great Incentives Direct from Ford
Apr 18, 2013
Special manufacturer savings and specials are now available for Arlington Heights area drivers shopping for select new Ford models, including the 2013 Fusion, 2013 Ford F-150, 2013 Ford Flex, and 2014 Mustang.
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Charlotte Office Condo Foreclosures:
14 Office condo foreclosures for sale in #Charlotte: $119k-830k
Fill out the quick form below to receive FREE lists of Office Condo Foreclosures, REOs, Distressed Sales & Foreclosures. FREE customized lists of office condos foreclosures!
Questions? Call Jeff at 704-277-5333.
Charlotte office condo investors we will work to find you the exact office space for your needs and my service is paid for by the seller/landlord. It is FREE for you. That's a sweet deal. And for our Charlotte office condo sellers, ask about the Jeff Taylor Team Guaranteed Sale Program. I guarantee sales results or you don't pay me.
Whether you are just beginning to look for Charlotte office space, need to sell your Charlotte office condo or are looking at Charlotte office condos as an investment, I can help you. Call or email me right now 704-277-5333 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
– Jeff Taylor


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Published in Mobiles
Sprint and Samsung to offer AM OLED
by David Stellmack on07 August 2009
- font size decrease font size increase font size
Will improve battery life and video and photo quality
Sprint Nextel has announced that it will offer high-end Samsung Electronics mobile phones with displays based on Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AM OLED), an emerging technology that will improve battery life and video and photo quality.
Most current mobile phones have displays based on Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), and Samsung claims that AM-OLED shows colors more vividly while also conserving battery power, as these AM OLED screens do not require a screen backlight.
According to David Owens, Sprint's director of customer acquisition, "The vibrancy of the screen is world class….Consumers are willing to pay more as long as they're getting value." Due to the newness of AM-OLED technology, the manufacturing costs for this technology are higher. As a result, Sprint plans to introduce AM-OLED technology in its high-end cell phone line-up, including cell phones that are video-viewing ready. The name of the new AM OLED model at Sprint has not been released yet.
Casey Ryan, a product manager for Samsung confirmed the upcoming deal between Sprint and Samsung for an AM OLED phone. Currently, the Samsung Impression, which is sold by U.S. mobile operator AT&T, Inc., is the only AM-OLED Samsung phone available in the U.S. market.
The announcements were made at Sprint's New York launch of the Samsung Reclaim, a mobile phone that includes bioplastic materials and uses a beeping charger to let its owner know when the phone is recharged and can be unplugged in order to save on power costs. The Reclaim will be available for purchase on August 16th for $49.99 with the signing of a two-year service contract. It will also be available for retail purchase at Wal-Mart beginning in September.


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Funny Car Track
You are now looking at Funny Track For Baby Car Picture.This is a coincidence that the child in this picture has created a car track that just looks like a d**k and test**les of a grown-up man. We hope that this child will understand what he has been doing since
Funny Baby When Alone With Mom Or Dad
You are now looking at Funny Baby When Alone With Mom Or Dad Picture. This is what happens when a baby is alone with their parents. A mother on the one hand takes full care of her baby, keeping him/her warm and touching him/her gently. However, on the other hand,
My Dad Always follow what Mummy says
Cute Baby Says Truth Funny Urdu Joke. Skool main dakhle k leya interview : Kaka ap k papa kia krtay hn...? Kaka : jo mammi bolti ha bs wohe krtay hain. lol...
New Batman Hair Styles For Babies
Beautiful Cute Baby Says: 'LOL I'm BATMAN' Cute Baby has his hair standing like BATMAN ears in the bath tub while taking a bath. For more pictures with captions and other cute baby funny images and batman funny pictures, visit BzTusk Image Gallery.
HAHA! So We Meet Again - Funny Mirror Talk
Beautiful Fair Color Baby looking at himself in mirror while his father is holding him. He says to himself in fun: "HAHA! So We Meet Again." For more cute baby funny pictures, cute baby moments and fathers funny images, visit BzTusk Image Gallery.
Angry Cute Boy Biting Girl With Love Funny Image
Funny Little Cute Boy in T-Shirt is Biting Cute Girl on Arm and asking in urdu: "Aur Kisi Boy Se Baat Karo Gi Bolo?". For more angry children humorous pictures and other love images and urdu/hindi jokes, visit BzTusk Image Gallery. You can also browse through our Baby Images and funny
How Father & Mother Takes Care of Baby Funny
Fathers are always accused of negligence about their children. Here is a perfect example of how mothers treat their children as compared to fathers. Although this is a big difference between mothers and fathers, however children still enjoy more liberty with their fathers than their mothers.
Protect Your Babies Rights - Funny Children Parenting
You are looking at the beautiful children costume for home use. The caption on the dress says: Silly Daddy, Boobs Are For Babies! The babies of #new #generation are too clever. With the advancement of #media, even they understand how difficult situations their mothers are going through when they have
Side Effects of Love Marriage - Funny Children Parenting
You are looking at the #parental #skills of an #australian father. He is keeping his #beautiful and cute baby within his jacket while playing video game to keep him safe from cold weather. The father is laying on yellow sofa with his baby on his chest. Both the father and
Easy Way Of Parenting - Funny Ways To Ask Mother For Milk
You are looking at the bad parenting skills of #parents. The mother in the above picture is standing in front of the #baby. The caption says that if I need milk to drink to fulfill my desire, how should I ask for it? So You're Saying: I Just Cry and


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For home estimates, professional measuring, recommendations and a flooring survey book a FREE home consultation online today.
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Please change your requirements slightly and try again.
Looking for a more affordable alternative to natural slate floor tiles? Consider our slate effect luxury vinyl tiles which combine the stunning appearance of natural slate with everyday practicality. This hassle free flooring option is easier to fit and maintain, and is available at Carpetright in a variety of styles and shades to suit your home.
Request your free luxury vinyl tile samples online now or take advantage of our home consultation and measuring service. Our professional Which? approved fitters will ensure you get the perfect finish while our uplift and disposal service takes the hassle out of removing your old flooring. At Carpetright you'll also find advice on buying, fitting and caring for your new luxury vinyl tiles.
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I'm as guilty as anyone. It's real easy to get into a routine in our daily lives. I work from home and in my case, every work morning is much the same for the first couple of hours. Shaving and washing, pretty much the same breakfast every day, check and answer emails, check RSS feeds…Not much variation in lunch routine. And so on through a routine kind of work day, shopping at the same store, etc. Routines can be detrimental. I guess you know you're in a routine when you look back on the week and each day melds into the next with no real distinction or memorable events. So how can we get out of this dreadful routine thing and keep things interesting and fresh? I guess with the New Year coming up, this is a great time to start afresh and spice things up a bit, the objective being to make each day, week and year a bit more memorable.
If you're in a 9 to 5 set up working for someone else, then there may be little you can do in the work day to freshen it up. If work is reduced to a routine, innovative breakthroughs become rare. If your job is real drudgery, consider changing. Think about earning a living online. We really are lucky these days having the option to run our own businesses online. Pluck up the courage and give it a go. Selling, blogging, web design, whatever you feel you'd enjoy doing. You'll have more flexibility to change your daily routine if you do.
I'm self employed and work from home. I do try and get out for a walk each day to give myself some time away from the PC to think or listen to podcasts. But I've been working in publishing for quite a while now and I'm looking to try some new challenge. When I look back on 2010, I can't see much memorable to distinguish it from the year before (work and leisure time) and that's a tell-tale sign that I'm stuck in a major rut. For me I'm considering trying something new – or at least expanding into something that I've already dabbled it – web design. I'm looking forward to this new challenge although I'm new to this and it may be a challenge too far pretty much from a standing start. Certainly judging by this excellent post on Nettuts+ recently. Still, in your 50s, you do tend to focus on the fact that you may only have say 15 years left to learn and master something new at work.
There's a bunch of things you can do here to cut the routine and make spare time memorable. It may also make us a little fitter and help the creative juices.
1. Try a new hobby. What about photography, blogging or cookery? If you have a young family, get some photos of them. Have a go at photo editing and see if you enjoy that.
2. Try evening classes to pick up a new skill, e.g. first aid, photography.
3. Get out more. Climb a hill, see a sunset and photograph it. Get out to the movies, the gym, meet up with your friends at the coffee shop or go out for a meal. If you're out walking, you can listen to podcasts at the same time. You probably won't create awesome memories sitting at your PC updating your Twitter or Facebook status. Do you neglect your friends in favour of a monitor? Aim to get to the end of 2011 and have some great memories to look back on.
4. If you are staying in in front of the TV in the evening, think how you could change that routine. Streaming the internet to your TV is a great new possibility to make some changes. Swap your radio listening for podcasts. I hate the old fashioned notion of radio forcing listening choices on you. Make your own choices with podcasts. Listen to what you want to hear when you want.
5. Try and get away on a memorable holiday. I know it's difficult in these times but a holiday really will give you great memories.
6. Here's another 50 ideas to break a routine life. The old adages 'you'll never get today back again' and 'you only get one shot at life' ring true, certainly as you get older. Much better to think in terms of 'so much to do, so little time'.
What can you do differently tomorrow, next week, or next year to break away from your normal routines and make life more memorable, interesting and fresh? Drop a comment below.


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Calories from Fat, Protein, Carbohydrates, Alcohol
Caloric content of fat, protein, carbohydrates and alcohol.
Calories are needed to provide energy so the body functions properly. The number of calories in a food depends on the amount of energy the food provides. The number of calories a person needs depends on age, height, weight, gender, and activity level. People who consume more calories than they burn off in normal daily activity or during exercise are more likely to be overweight.


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The Honolulu Police Department is undergoing some changes — one dealing with officers appearance, the other has to do with the blue lights on the top of their police cars and SUVs.
The purpose of the new blue light policy is to make the police cars more visible, especially during the daytime.
Honolulu police officers are now required to leave their steady blue lights on during the day. This new policy went into effect about a month ago.
"I think it's a great idea because people are more aware of where cops are. I think it's good for speed traps but I don't think it's that big of a deal. I think it could be positive on the community," Manoa resident Ashlee Bitner said.
"I believe in them for blue lights because that way I know they're not hiding and know if they're on duty or off duty," Makiki resident Paul Martinez said.
Previously, officers were only required to have their steady blue lights on at night.
But there have always been exceptions. If the officers are out on specific traffic enforcement assignments to look out for drunk drivers or speeders or other traffic infractions, then they're not required to have their blue lights on while they're on the lookout, and that policy has not changed.
The only thing that has changed is that the officers now have to keep their blue lights on during the day in an effort to be more visible to the public.
HPD Spokeswoman Michelle Yu said in a statement: "We've received a lot of positive feedback from the public. They say that the added visibility is good and makes it easier to get help if needed."
And this new policy applies not only to the blue and white police cars but also to the subsidized or personally owned vehicles as well.
Another big change at HPD is their new tattoo policy.
Starting July 1, all Honolulu police officers in uniform will be required to cover their tattoos with long sleeved uniforms or makeup.
If an officer is caught not following the new policy, he or she will likely face disciplinary action.


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Obama's new health insurance program heavily relied on a new website that was built by outside contractors to help Americans get free or cheap health insurance. Unfortunately, as most people know, the website barely worked, and just a handful of citizens were able to sign up for the new ObamaCare program. According to this CBS News Report, the website actually failed to work even before the launch date, but officials still released the website to the public. This was a huge fiasco, and still is, as the government scrambles to get new programmers to successfully complete the development of this behemoth portal.
Coincidentally, on their launch day, new video dating mobile app Instamour was able to get 50 times more users than the ObamaCare website. Since their launch, Instamour has been continuously gaining ground with thousands of people downloading the app all around the world. To top things off, they are an official sponsor for Q102's Jingle Ball which will feature performances by Robin Thicke, Flo Rida, Fall Out Boy, Austin Mahone, Paramore, Avril Lavigne, Fifth Harmony, Jason Derulo, Icona Pop and more.
When asked how his app was able to handle the influx of users, CEO and Founder Jason Sherman said, "We made sure our database was secure and scalable. We are using Amazon EC2 and S3, which is powerful, and can handle the load. Our code is also written properly, we constantly diagnose bugs, and rectify them with viable solutions as quickly as possible." The question here is, why didn't the team behind the ObamaCare website do the same thing? They are the government after all, and have a lot more money than a bootstrapped tech startup does. The Instamour team even made a parody video showing the frustration associated with the ObamaCare website that you can see here.
If you want to use a technology that works, Instamour is free to use and is currently available on the Apple App store, and coming soon on the Google Play marketplace. By downloading Instamour, you will automatically be entered to win a pair of tickets to Q102's Jingle Ball 2013 plus the best male and female video will win back stage passes to meet and greet with the performing artist of your choice! This year's official charity for Q102's Jingle Ball is the Ryan Seacrest Foundation – $1.00 of each ticket sold will be donated to the non-profit organization
About Instamour: Instamour is the next evolution of technology-based dating (TBD), enabling the shift from static online pictures/text to a real-time audio-video experience which enables real relationships in real-time. The issues which have plagued online daters for decades (out-of-date profiles, security issues, hit-and-miss communications process) are dissolved with Instamour's approach which leverages full-spectrum video and sound profiles right on your smartphone, secure instant chat, and secure video chat in real-time. The app is free to users, and available now on the Apple iTunes App Store, coming soon on the Google Play Market.


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Yesterday, March 17 was the opening day for the newest PreCure movie "PreCure All Stars New Stage: Future Friend" in Japan. As always, I was able to find many new movie flyers of the up-coming anime, tokusatsu, and live-action adaptations of popular manga coming this spring at the theater. There were also some giant stand pops for the films. Following Part 1, here is the second flyers and photos collection of the 2012 Spring films. Which movie do you want to see?
Now Showing (from left)
・"Bokura ga Ita/We Were There Part 1"
・"Ouran High School Host Club: The Movie"
・"PreCure All Stars New Stage: Future Friend"
・"The Iron Lady"
"Space Battleship Yamato 2199"
Part 1 (first two episodes) on April 7 (official site)
"Crayon Shin-chan: Arashi o Yobu! Ora to Uchū no Princess"
(April 14: official site)
"Detective Conan: The Eleventh Striker"
(April 14: official site)
"Momo e no Tegami/A Letter to Momo"
(April 21: official site)
"Niji-Iro Hotaru ~Eien no Natsu Yasumi~"
(May 19: official site)
"Kamen Rider × Super Sentai: Super Hero Taisen"
(April 21: official site)
"Thermae Romae"
*based on Mari Yamazaki's manga series
(April 28: official site)
"Uchū Kyōdai/Space Brothers"
(May 5: official site)


text: Harley is a very happy and friendly American Bulldog (mix?) Harley is so happy he can't just wag his tail: he wags his body. Of course he loves belly rubs and has been known to lay in the middles of the sidewalk on his back until someone rubs his belly. I love him!Add to Favorites


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text:
Checkmate Forensic Services - Handwriting/Printing Examiners*
Ron Rice is a Nationally
Recognized Court Qualified/Appointed Forensic Examiner and Profiler of the Authors of Questioned, Anonymous, Threatening,
Terrorist, Sexual, Ethnic, Religious Harassment and/or Forged Handwriting/Hand Printing Documents
* Approved Vendor by the Massachusetts
Committee for Public Services for Indigent Defendants.
* Approved Vendor by the Florida Justice Administrative Commission
for Indigent Defendants.
* Member of the
Massachusetts Criminal Defense Group and (former member) Florida Crime and Intelligence Analyst Association, Inc.
* A certified Handwriting Examiner NOT a pseudo-document examiner or member of any pseudo-document
examiner associations.
~*(Ron Rice is President of Checkmate Forensic
Services, Inc., d.b.a. Checkmate Forensic Handwriting Examiners & d.b.a. New England Legal Investigations
& d.b.a. WomenConfidentialWorld)
North East Office & South East Office have been Consolidated ~ Effective September,
2015, my working offfice is now based in Florida (see below). Out-Of-State Professional charges are $1000.00 per day; $185.00 per case work hour plus hotel air and surface expenses.
~(Thank you for your interest in having me assist you in your handwriting
isssue. Please do not ask me to negotiate professional fees. Daily charges are from the time I depart Florida
until the time I return to my Florida office.) ~PRIMARY SERVICES are as a Handwriting/Hand Printing Examiner & consultant/assistant to counsel
when vetting opposing pseudo-document examiner(s) with false and/or exaggerated credentials. This could be a deciding
point in winning or losing your court case! I speak from experience!!! ~Note:
Effective June 10, 2013 ~ Nationwide contact telephone number for Ron Rice has been centralized to:~ Tel: (508) 451-6964~Nationwide fax number:
(352) 435-7236 South East (HOME) Office~1425
Miller Blvd.Fruitland Park, Florida 34731 Tel: (352) 435-7235 Fax: (352) 435-7236
E-mail: email@example.com or firstname.lastname@example.com
For more in-depth information ~Google Ron Rice Handwriting
~ Site is undergoing continuing modification ~
Checkmate Forensic Services was established in 1973, and we
pride ourselves on providing our clients with high-quality personal services.
Providing superior personal service, as dictated by national professional standards and ethics, means taking the
time to listen.
Ron Rice will work with you every step of the way to
make sure you receive the services you need.
Forensic services is client
oriented, and strict confidentiality is a primary concern. _________________________________________________
- Retaining a Properly Educated, Trained & Certified
Forensic Handwriting Examiner or Document Examiner -
People from many walks of life search out a Handwriting Expert for assistance in resolving civil, criminal and/or
other personal and/or family issues. Many of these individuals are undergoing extreme trauma, suffering potential financial,
marriage, business and/or personal losses as well as related physical and mental suffering. At this time, the general
public, attorneys and courts do not have a clue as to what it is they are becoming involved with when dealing with certain
of these alleged experts.
Most alleged experts claim to be certified document examiners.
Certain of these people also allege to be both a certified handwriting expert and document examiner. Certain of them
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to be handwriting experts - although certain of them have never been properly educated, trained and certified as such. These
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People who seek help are already experiencing mental and physical stress. It is a gross act of cruelty
to intentionally misrepresent one self as being a document examiner with false and exaggerated credentials and, based upon
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client losing their case before the court or worse, suffer imprisonment. These pseudo-document examiners are a threat
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Therefore, before you retain an alleged or pseudo-document examiner, Ron Rice recommends that you
inquire about:
The length of time the alleged document examiner studied
stroke structure and what s/he studied/performed in a LICENSED and CERTIFIED state/federally APPROVED laboratory training
The number of examinations completed, and DOCUMENT the grade
average, for his/her certification.
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the alleged document examiner and his/her credentials, education, training and actual DE performances/requirements HAVE BEEN
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Do not allow a pseudo-document examiner's court testimony list, testimonials and college
degree in a profession unrelated to document examination; or membership in a private organization that certifies them as pseudo-
document examiners, fool you as they have fooled their clients and the courts where they testified. __________________________________________________
Updated October 19, 2015 [8713]


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New Distance Learning Graduate Program in Forensic Psychology
(PRWEB) – Encino, CA (PRWEB) May 18, 2006 — Donald A Eisner, Ph.D. J.D. announces the opening of the Eisner Institute for Professional Studies(EIPS) beginning September 2006. EIPS offers Masters (M.A) , Doctorates (Psy.D.) and a Certificate in Forensic Psychology. The Psy.D. program requires a research oriented paper


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Editors' Note
This issue of Mediations is broadly concerned with the ways Marxism is reflected and refracted in the lives and ideas of activists, philosophers, and citizens as a way of thinking about and acting in the world. Jim Holstun's "Antigone Becomes Jocasta" introduces us to Soha Bechara, a Lebanese political prisoner and activist whose prison memoirs resist the tropes and conventions expected of a Middle Eastern woman engaged in violent revolution: Bechara, Holstun argues, refused to engage in sectarian conflict during the Civil War, resisted being made a female martyr by the Lebanese Communist Party after her attempted assassination of SLA leader Antoine Lahad, and remained committed to revolutionary praxis during her eleven-year imprisonment. Bechara's perspective on Middle Eastern geopolitical conflict offers readers a startling new perspective on what is at stake in the region and, more important perhaps for the Marxist Literary Group, what is at stake in literary presentations of the region. When her story is taken up by non-Marxists, all that makes it exceptional disappears; Incendies, the play (perhaps) based on her life, turns her from an active communist revolutionary to a passive victim of senseless Middle Eastern violence. As she is transformed from Antigone — a woman whose ethical and political practices might reshape the world — to Jocasta — a victim of the whims of powerful forces over which she has no control — all that is revolutionary about Bechara's life is lost.
The next article also points to the expansive potential of global Marxism, both as it is practiced and as it is represented. In "Jameson Among the Contras," James Christie undertakes a new reading of Fredric Jameson's seminal "Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capital." By considering biographical details of Jameson's life — his trips to Cuba and Nicaragua, and his relationships with artists and activists in those nations — Christie provides us a new way of thinking about a first-world critic's relationship to the art and politics of the Global South. The article periodizes Jameson's encounter with the Third World at the inception of the Reagan doctrine and, thus, at the beginning of a new phase of US imperialism to go with a new phase of global capitalism. Christie's periodization is an insightful reading of an essay that has never ceased to be a touchstone (and lightning rod) for Marxist and postcolonial critics. Further, like Holstun, Christie understands the work of Marxism — here, Marxist criticism — as life's work, as inseparable from one's writing and politics as it is from one's ethics.
Malcolm Read presents another thread of global Marxism in his essay-review of Juan Carlos Rodríguez's De que hablamos cuando hablamos de marxismo. Detailing Rodríguez's career from the 1970s to the present and offering some explanation for why he remains largely unknown in Anglophone Marxism, Read reveals why Rodríguez's Marxism — inflected both by the political situation in Spain and his commitment to Althusser — should be considered a major contribution to Marxist thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The breadth of the article is consonant with the breadth of Rodríguez's work, ranging over Spanish history, encounters with British Marxism and Critical Realism, and literary figures like Góngora, Quevedo, and Brecht. At its heart, Read's contribution articulates the way that national and historical specificity — in this case, the specificity of Spain after fascism — cannot be ignored when we talk about Marxism.
We turn, finally, to Alexander Bove's elaboration of A. Kiarina Kordela's 2008 $urplus: Spinoza, Lacan. Through a careful reading of Kordela's use of the death drive, jouissance, the gaze, and the Other, Bové posits a new way of understanding the relationship between contemporary capitalism, geopolitics, and ethics. Bove's piece builds on the work of Kordela, Spinoza, Lacan, Žižek, and Levinas to make a startling claim: the mechanisms of late capitalism have transformed the death drive into a narcissistic drive to consume. But the foreclosure of the death drive has a surprising consequence: it is through its disappearance that the violent culture of terrorism emerges, so that what is at stake in any encounter with the Other turns out to be our lives.
– Jen Hedler Phillis, for the Mediations editors


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Wednesday, October 3, 2012
book review: Beautiful Lies by Clare Clark
My thoughts: One challenge with historical fiction can be making characters both true to their time and accessibly to contemporary readers. Writing about female characters can pose a particular challenge, especially in the case of Maribel Campbell Lowe, who pushed against the gender boundaries of the 1880s. Clark masterfully sets the stage of Victorian London through her descriptive and detailed writing, but it was the dialogue and inner thoughts of Maribel that most impressed me. It was fascinating to read the different ways Maribel spoke to her husband, society equals, and the hired help. Through these distinctions, Clark gave Maribel her defiant voice yet stayed true to history.
It's clear from the title of this novel there are lies, and I won't spoil the pleasure of deciphering the truths from the lies here. Clark bases this novel on the real life story of Gabriela and Robert Cunninghame Graham. Knowing the story is based on real people made it even more suspenseful. As eager as I was to discover Maribel's lies, I was also eager to see how this story matched reality (Clark has a lengthy--and fabulous--author's note at the end.) I'm fascinated by political history, as the perspective of history gives us enough distance to see the big picture, and I loved the detail of this turbulent political time. What is perhaps most impressive, however, is how Clark ties all of the details and issues of Victorian London to today. As I read, I was immersed in the world of Maribel, but I couldn't help realizing how many parallels there are to other times.
Favorite passage: "I am not interested in the Indians as curiosities. If I am to photograph them it should be as they really are. The truth, not the myth-making."
The verdict: Beautiful Lies transported me to Victorian England. Clark made the politics and culture of the time come alive and feel familiar, and I'll state my prediction now: look for this title on the 2013 Orange Prize longlist in March.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Length: 512 pages
Publication date: September 18, 2012
Source: publisher via TLC Book Tours
Convinced? Treat yourself! Buy Beautiful Lies from an independent bookstore, the Book Depository or Amazon (Kindle version.) Want more? Check out the entire tour schedule.
As an affiliate, I receive a small commission when you make a purchase through any of the above links. Thank you for helping to support my book habits that bring more content to this blog!
4 comments:
This is a book that I have been reading about for a few days now, and I am eagerly anticipating reading it myself. I love the idea that this one is based on the lives of real people, yet stays very close to the truth of their lives. Excellent review today. I need to scout out a copy of this one when I can!ReplyDelete
I would be v happy to see this on the Orange longlist -- it was a marvelous novel. Will probably end up on my top ten of 2012 -- literary, thick, rich, historical, seedy, complicated but readable...yum!ReplyDelete
I love when authors of historical fiction include lengthy notes to tell you some of "what is real and what I made up" at the end. Sounds like this one was a real winner. I'll keep it in mind for my historical fiction friends.ReplyDelete
How well an author stays true to history has a huge impact on my enjoyment of a book but it sounds like I wouldn't have anything to worry about here!ReplyDelete
Thanks for being on the tour.


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Obama Answers Questions On Syria, Guantanamo, More
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Tuesday, April 30, 2013
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Former Staffer: California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia Fired Him After He Resisted Playing Spin The Bottle
California Vehicle Registration Fees Increasing In 2018
Eureka! California-Grown Coffee Is Becoming The State's Next Gold Mine
Bill Would Boost Privacy For California Marijuana Customers
Sacramento Trying Not To Leave Low-Income Drivers Behind In Push For 70,000 More Electric Vehicles


text:
This is an experiment in golden joinery, a style of visible mending which I think I first heard about via Morwhenna Woolcock in Bristol – her film about it is over here on Vimeo. It's a textile nod to the Japanese art of kintsugi, a repair technique practised on precious Chinese porcelain from the late 15th century. In kintsugi, the damaged object bears conspicuous repair seams of gold-coated lacquer. There is absolutely no attempt to hide the damage, and in the process of repair the artefact becomes not as-good-as-new but even better than. The golden scars are integral to the aesthetic, and repair becomes an alchemical process. What's not to love? You can hear more about kintsugi in this wonderful BBC Radio 4 programme, Something Understood, which aired last September.
My mission here was to repair a couple of moth holes on the upper sleeve of a Hobbs cardigan. It's a common place to find moth holes on a woollen garment. Maybe it's the way we tend to store our knitwear? Tucking arms inside as we fold, thus making an irresistibly snug spot for the average egg-laying moth. I didn't spot any damage when I bought this cardigan second-hand, but washing revealed the two holes. Damn and blast. On with the mending.
So here's what I did:
- I stabilised the area first, tacking a small piece of pre-washed cotton tape to the reverse of the repair – this was to stop the area puckering or distorting during the mending process
- Then I created a matrix of vertical threads with regular sewing cotton, securing each unattached run-threatening loop and also creating a framework for my darning
- Next I reworked the stitches with Swiss darning (a.k.a. replica stitch) in gold thread
My verdict: this is a rather fine knit, making Swiss darning it quite eye-watering, and the gold thread I used wasn't entirely co-operative: it wasn't really flexible enough for the task. But I persisted. Here's the thread I used, top right. It's unfortunately lost its label but looks like pretty standard metallic thread designed for machine-embroidery use.
This isn't the most accomplished repair I've ever worked, but it's effective. The area certainly didn't pucker (which tends to make a repair look amateurish), and I love the impact of the gold – it reminds me of a square of gold leaf shimmering there. What do you think? And no, I don't always wear orange knitwear, though I do like orange a lot; it reminds me of marmalade and warm afternoon sun, both much appreciated in dull old February.
I hope you'll feel inspired to have a go at some kind of golden mending of your own. You might want to try a modern version on your broken ceramics. Let me know how you get on by dropping me a line in the comments – it's always good to know that someone is keeping me company here! Thanks.
And if you happen to be in the Bath area and you have something textile you'd like to try to repair using this technique, please bring it along to the next meet-up of the Big Mend on Wednesday 26th February 7-9pm at the Museum of Bath at Work. More details about the Big Mend over here. I also include Swiss darning in my bespoke Strictly Come Darning! workshop.


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DC court hears BISD vote case today
Published 5:00 am, Tuesday, April 23, 2013
A three-judge federal court panel today could decide whether the Beaumont school district will have an election on May 11.
But even if the court ordered it, making it happen is entirely another matter.
The judges of the District of Columbia Circuit Court will begin hearing the case at 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Eastern time in Washington.
Attorneys for the Beaumont school district are expected to argue that there isn't an approved voting plan in place.
The circuit court already has put a temporary stop to the election, but accepted a motion from candidates who are running for trustee positions that there still is time to decide whether the voting map as submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice for approval is valid. If the map is valid, then there would be time to proceed with an election.
Early voting starts Monday and continues through May 7.
A key element in the case is whether the voting map submitted to the Justice Department would weaken minority voting rights.
Attorneys for the candidates who want the election back on schedule argue that the new map preserves minority voting strength in four of the seven voting districts that make up BISD.
Chappell said if the federal circuit court lifted its suspension, BISD would be hard-pressed to be ready in time for early voting because it does not have voting machines, poll workers or ballots.
State election law requires school districts to have elections at the same time as other political entities like cities or counties. On May 11, Beaumont voters will elect a mayor and a port commissioner.
If BISD's election continues to be suspended, the next available election is in November. Trustees whose seats otherwise would have been put before voters would continue in office until then.