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Hope College is one of the most environmentally responsible colleges in the United States and Canada, according to The Princeton Review (www.PrincetonReview.com), which has selected Hope for inclusion in the just-released second annual edition of its free downloadable book, "The Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2012 Edition."
Created by The Princeton Review in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) (www.usgbc.org), "The Princeton Review's Guide to 322 Green Colleges" is the only free, comprehensive guidebook profiling institutions of higher education that demonstrate a notable commitment to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation. The Princeton Review chose the schools for this guide based on a survey of administrators at hundreds of colleges that the Company polled in 2011 about their school's sustainability initiatives.
Sustainability is an ongoing process at Hope that includes not only individual and departmental efforts but the coordinating work of a Sustainability Advisory Committee "Green Team" comprised of faculty, administrators and students. Activities and practices at Hope have ranged from green purchasing policies, increased recycling and trayless dining to reduce food waste; to the creation of academic minors in both environmental science and environmental studies; to campus-wide exploration of environmental themes through events like the Critical Issues Symposium, which focused on water and food in 2009 and 2010 respectively. As one example of other recent initiatives, this past fall the Green Team organized a "Cottage Energy Competition" in which students in seven of the college's cottages worked to lower their electricity use, an event that also provided an opportunity for both the team and participants to share energy-saving tips.
The college's commitment to environmental sustainability includes having signed the international Talloires Declaration, a 10-point plan for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teaching, research, operations, and outreach at colleges and universities. Hope is also a member of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).
Released on April 17, days prior to the April 22 celebration of the 42nd Anniversary of Earth Day, the guide has profiles of the colleges that provide application information plus facts, stats, and write-ups reporting on the schools' environmentally related policies, practices and academic offerings. The free guide can be downloaded at www.princetonreview.com/green-guide and www.centerforgreenschools.org/greenguide
The Princeton Review first created this one-of-a-kind resource for college-bound students in 2010 with the U.S. Green Building Council, which is best known for developing the LEED standard for green building certification. In the fall of 2010, USGBC launched its Center for Green Schools (www.centerforgreenschools.org) to increase its efforts to drive change in how campuses and schools are designed, constructed and operated so that all educational facilities can enhance student learning experiences.
"College-bound students are increasingly interested in sustainability issues," said Robert Franek, Senior VP/Publisher, The Princeton Review. "Among 7,445 college applicants who participated in our 2012 'College Hopes & Worries Survey,' nearly 7 out of 10 (68%) told us that having information about a school's commitment to the environment would influence their decision to apply to or attend the school," he added.
"Together with USGBC, we are pleased to make this free resource available to all students seeking to attend colleges that practice, teach and support environmentally-responsible choices," Franek said. "To that end, we highly recommend the terrific schools in this book."
The Princeton Review chose the 322 schools, which are not ranked hierarchically, based on a survey it conducted in 2011 of hundreds of colleges across the U.S. and in Canada to tally its annual "Green Rating" scores (scaled from 60 to 99) of colleges for its school profiles in its college guidebooks and website. The survey asks administrators more than 50 questions about their institution's sustainability-related policies, practices and programs. The company tallied Green Ratings for 768 institutions in summer 2011. The 322 schools in the guide received scores of 83 or above in the assessment.


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FedEx Corp reported an 11.9 percent drop in quarterly profit, hurt by higher costs and lower shipment volumes in the wake of Superstorm Sandy as well as its customers' shift to lower-cost shipping methods.
The No. 2 U.S. package-delivery company on Wednesday reported fiscal second-quarter earnings of $438 million, or $1.39 per share, compared with $497 million, or $1.57 per share, a year earlier.
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Revenue rose 4.7 percent to $11.1 billion from $10.6 billion a year earlier.
The company held steady its profit forecast for its 2013 fiscal year, which calls for profit of $6.20 per share to $6.60 per share for the fiscal year that ends in May. FedEx in September cut that forecast by about 10 percent.
"Persistent weakness in the global economy and increased demand for lower-yielding international services limited profits at FedEx Express," said Chief Executive Fred Smith, referring to the company's air freight operation.
Smith in October laid out plans to sharply cut costs at the company's slumping air express business, which has seen demand drop as corporate customers look for cheaper ways of transporting merchandise.
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Chizu Nomiyama)


text: On Fri, 29 Dec 2006, Geoff Jacobs wrote: > I'd rather have volatile user-level libraries and stable system level > software than vice versa. Centos users need to be introduced to the > lovely concept of backporting. The problem (one of many) is with operations like banks. In order for a bank to use a distro at all, it has to be audited for security at a horrendous level. If you change a single library, they have to audit the whole thing all over again. Costly and annoying, so RHEL "freezes" except for bugfixes because for companies like banks and other large operations, any change at all costs money. You can see the mentality running wild in lots of other places -- most "big iron" machine rooms were rife with it for a couple of decades, and even though I've been in this business one way or another for most of my professional life I >>still<< underestimate the length of time it will take for really beneficial changes to permeate the computing community. By years if not decades. I fully expected MS to be on the ropes at this point, being truly hammered by linux on all fronts, for example -- but linux keeps "missing" the mass desktop market by ever smaller increments even as it has finally produced systems that do pretty damn well on office desktops. I still view Linus's dream of world domination as a historical inevitability, mind you, I just no longer think that it will happen quite as catastrophically suddenly. Centos, of course, won't alter this pattern because diverging from RHEL also costs money and obviates the point for Centos users, who want the conservatism and update stream without the silly cost scaling or largely useless support. However, Centos "users" are largely sysadmins, not end users per se, and lots of them DO backport really important updates on an as needed basis. Fortunately, in many cases an FC6 src rpm will build just fine on a Centos 4 system, and rpmbuild --rebuild takes a few seconds to execute and drop the result into a yum-driven local "updates" repo. So I'd say most pro-grade shops already do this as needed. My problem with being conservative with a cluster distro is that it requires impeccable timing. If you happen to build your cluster right when the next release of RHEL happens to correspond with the next release of FC, it is auspicious. In that case both distros are up to date on the available kernel drivers and patches for your (presumably new and cutting edge) hardware, with the highest probability of a fortunate outcome. However, if you try to build a cluster with e.g. AMD64 nodes and the "wrong motherboard" on top of Centos/RHEL 4, all frozen and everything back when the motherboard and CPU itself really didn't exist, you have an excellent chance of discovering that they distro won't even complete an install, at least not with x86_64 binaries. Or it will install but its built in graphics adapter won't work. Or its sound card (which may not matter, but the point is clear). Then you've got a DOUBLE problem -- to use Centos you have to somehow backport regularly from a dynamically maintained kernel stream, or else avoid a potentially cost-efficient node architecture altogether, or else -- abandon Centos. The stars just aren't right for the conservative streams for something like the last year of each release if you are interested in running non-conservative hardware. The problem is REALLY evident for laptops -- there are really major changes in the way the kernel, rootspace, and userspace manages devices, changes that are absolutely necessary for us to be able to plug cameras, memory sticks, MP3 players, printers, bluetooth devices, and all of that right into the laptop and have it "just work". NetworkManager simply doesn't work for most laptops and wireless devices before FC5, and it doesn't really work "right" until you get to FC6 AND update to at least 0.6.4. On RHEL/Centos 4 (FC4 frozen, basically), well... One of the major disadvantages linux has had relative to WinXX over the years has been hardware support that lags, often by years, behind the WinXX standard. Because of the way linux is developed, the ONLY way one can fix this is to ride a horse that is rapidly co-developed as new hardware is released, and pray for ABI and API level standards in the hardware industry in front of your favorite brazen idol every night (something that is unlikely to work but might make you feel better:-). The fundamental "advantage" of FC6 is that its release timing actually matches up pretty well against the frenetic pace of new hardware development -- six to twelve month granularity means that you can "usually" by an off-the shelf laptop or computer and have a pretty good chance of it either being fully supported right away (if it is older than six months) or being fully supported within weeks to months -- maybe before you smash it with a sledgehammer out of sheer frustration. >From what I've seen, ubuntu/debian has a somewhat similar aspect, user driven to get that new hardware running even more aggressively than with FC (and with a lot of synergy, of course, even though the two communities in some respects resemble Sunnis vs the Shites in Iraq:-). SINCE they are user driven, they also tend to have lots of nifty userspace apps, and since we have entered the age of the massive, fully compatible, contributed package repo I expect FC7 to provide something on the order of 10K packages, maybe 70% of them square in userspace (and the rest libraries etc). This might even be the "nextgen" revolution -- Windows cannot yet provide fully transparent application installation (for money or not) over the network -- they have security issues, payment issues, installshield/automation issues, permission issues, and compatibility/library issues all to resolve before they get anywhere close to what yum and friends (or debian's older and also highly functional equivalents) can do already for linux. What the software companies that are stuck in the "RHEL grove" don't realize is that RPMs, yum and the idea of a repo enable them to set up a completely different software distribution paradigm, one that can in fact be built for and run on all the major RPM distros with minimal investment or risk on their part. Then don't "get it" yet. When they do, there could be an explosion in commercial grade, web-purchased linux software and something of a revolution in software distribution and maintenance (as this would obviously drive WinXX to clone/copy). Or not. Future cloudy, try again later. > Call me paranoid, but I don't like the idea of a Cadbury Cream Egg > security model (hard outer shell, soft gooey center). I won't say more, > 'cuz I feel like I've had this discussion before. Ooo, then you really don't like pretty much ANY of the traditional "true beowulf" designs. They are all pretty much cream eggs. Hell, lots of them use rsh without passwords, or open sockets with nothing like a serious handshaking layer to do things like distribute binary applications and data between nodes. Grid designs, of course, are another matter -- they tend to use e.g. ssh and so on but they have to because nodes are ultimately exposed to users, probably not in a chroot jail. Even so, has anyone really done a proper security audit of e.g. pvm or mpi? How difficult is it to take over a PVM virtual machine and insert your own binary? I suspect that it isn't that difficult, but I don't really know. Any comments, any experts out there? In the specific case of my house, anybody who gets to where they can actually bounce a packet off of my server is either inside its walls and hence has e.g. cracked e.g. WPA or my DSL firewall or one of my personal accounts elsewhere that hits the single (ssh) passthrough port. In all of these cases the battle is lost already, as I am God on my LAN of course, so a trivial password trap on my personal account would give them root everywhere in zero time. In fact, being a truly lazy individual who doesn't mind exposing his soft belly to the world, if they get root anywhere they've GOT it everywhere -- I have root set up to permit free ssh between all client/nodes so that I have to type a root password only once and can then run commands as root on any node from an xterms as one-liners. This security model is backed up by a threat of physical violence against my sons and their friends, who have carefully avoided learning linux at anything like the required level for cracking because they know I'd like them to, and the certain knowledge that my wife is doing very well if she can manage to crank up a web browser and read her mail without forgetting something and making me get up out of bed to help her at 5:30 am. So while I do appreciate your point on a production/professional network level, it really is irrelevant here. > Upgrade it, man. Once, when I was bored, I installed apt-rpm on a RH8 > machine to see what dist-upgrade looked like in the land of the Red Hat. > Interesting experience, and it worked just fine. There are three reasons I haven't upgraded it. One is sheer bandwidth. It takes three days or so to push FCX through my DSL link, and while I'm doing it all of my sons and wife and me myself scream because their ain't no bandwidth leftover for things like WoW and reading mail and working. This can be solved with a backpack disk and my laptop -- I can take my laptop into Duke and rsync mirror a primary mirror, current snapshot, with at worst a 100 Mbps network bottleneck (I actually think that the disk bottleneck might be slower, but it is still way faster than 384 kbps or thereabouts:-). The second is the bootstrapping problem. The system in question is my internal PXE/install server, a printer server, and an md raid fileserver. I really don't feel comfortable trying an RH9 -> FC6 "upgrade" in a single jump, and a clean reinstall requires that I preserve all the critical server information and restore it post upgrade. At the same time it would be truly lovely to rebuild the MD partitions from scratch, as I believe that MD has moved along a bit in the meantime. This is the third problem -- I need to construct a full backup of the /home partition, at least, which is around 100 GB and almost full. Hmmm, it might be nice to upgrade the RAID disks from 80 GB to 160's or 250's and get some breathing room at the same time, which requires a small capital investment -- say $300 or thereabouts. Fortunately I do have a SECOND backpack disk with 160 GB of capacity that I use as a backup, so I can do an rsync mirror to that of /home while I do the reinstall shuffle, with a bit of effort. All of this takes time, time, time. And I cannot begin to describe my life to you, but time is what I just don't got to spare unless my life depends on it. That's the level of triage here -- staunch the spurting arteries first and apply CPR as necessary -- the mere compound fractures and contusions have to wait. You might have noticed I've been strangely quiet on-list for the last six months or so... there is a reason:-) At the moment, evidently, I do have some time and am kind of catching up. Next week I might have even more time -- perhaps even the full day and change the upgrade will take. I actually do really want to do it -- both because I do want it to be nice and current and secure and because there are LOTS OF IMPROVEMENTS at the server level in the meantime -- managing e.g. printers with RH9 tools sucks for example, USB support is trans-dubious, md is iffy, and I'd like to be able to test out all sorts of things like the current version of samba, a radius server to be able to drop using PSK in WPA, and so on. So sure, I'll take your advice "any day now", but it isn't that simple a matter. >> within its supported year+, then just freeze it. Or freeze it until >> there is a strong REASON to upgrade it -- a miraculously improved >> libc, a new GSL that has routines and bugfixes you really need, >> superyum, bproc as a standard option, cernlib in extras (the latter a >> really good reason for at least SOME people to upgrade to FC6:-). > Or use a distro that backports security fixes into affected packages > while maintaining ABI and API stability. Gives you a frozen target for > your users and more peace of mind. No arguments. But remember, you say "users" because you're looking at topdown managed clusters with many users. There are lots of people with self-managed clusters with just a very few. And honestly, straightforward numerical code is generally cosmically portable -- I almost never even have to do a recompile to get it to work perfectly across upgrades. So YMMV as far as how important that stability is to users of any given cluster. There is a whole spectrum here, no simple or universal answers. >> Honestly, with a kickstart-based cluster, reinstalling a thousand >> nodes is a matter of preparing the (new) repo -- usually by rsync'ing >> one of the toplevel mirrors -- and debugging the old install on a >> single node until satisfied. One then has a choice between a yum >> upgrade or (I'd recommend instead) yum-distributing an "upgrade" >> package that sets up e.g. grub to do a new, clean, kickstart >> reinstall, and then triggers it. You could package the whole thing >> to go off automagically overnight and not even be present -- the next >> day you come in, your nodes are all upgraded. > Isn't automatic package management great. Like crack on gasoline. Truthfully, it is trans great. I started doing Unix admin in 1986, and have used just about every clumsy horrible scheme you can imagine to handle add-on open source packages without which Unix (of whatever vendor-supplied flavor) was pretty damn useless even way back then. They still don't have things QUITE as simple as they could be -- setting up a diskless boot network for pxe installs or standalone operation is still an expert-friendly sort of thing and not for the faint of heart or tyro -- but it is down to where a single relatively simple HOWTO or set of READMEs can guide a moderately talented sysadmin type through the process. With these tools, you can adminster at the theoretical/practical limit of scalability. One person can take care of literally hundreds of machines, either nodes or LAN clients, limited only by the need to provide USER support and by the rate of hardware failure. I could see a single person taking care of over a thousand nodes for a small and undemanding user community, with onsite service on all node hardware. I think Mark Hahn pushes this limit, as do various others on list. That's just awesome. If EVER corporate america twigs to the cost advantages of this sort of management scalability on TOP of free as in beer software for all standard needs in the office workplace... well, one day it will. Too much money involved for it not to. >> I used to include a "node install" in my standard dog and pony show >> for people come to visit our cluster -- I'd walk up to an idle node, >> reboot it into the PXE kickstart image, and talk about the fact that >> I was reinstalling it. We had a fast enough network and tight enough >> node image that usually the reinstall would finish about the same >> time that my spiel was finished. It was then immediately available >> for more work. Upgrades are just that easy. That's scalability. >> >> Warewulf makes it even easier -- build your new image, change a >> single pointer on the master/server, reboot the cluster. >> >> I wouldn't advise either running upgrades or freezes of FC for all >> cluster environments, but they certainly are reasonable alternatives >> for at least some. FC is far from laughable as a cluster distro. > What I'd like to see is an interested party which would implement a > good, long term security management program for FC(2n+b) releases. RH > obviously won't do this. I thought there was such a party, but I'm too lazy to google for it. I think Seth mentioned it on the yum or dulug list. It's the kind of thing a lot of people would pay for, actually. > Do _not_ start a contest like this with the Debian people. You _will_ lose. And I _won't_ care...;-) It took me two days to wade through extras in FC6, "shopping", and now there are another 500 packages I haven't even looked at a single time. The list of games on my laptop is something like three screenfuls long, and it would take me weeks to just explore the new applications I did install. And truthfully, the only reason I push FC is because (as noted above) it a) meets my needs pretty well; and b) has extremely scalable installation and maintenance; and c) (most important) I know how to install and manage it. I could probably manage debian as well, or mandriva, or SuSE, or Gentoo -- one advantage of being a 20 year administrator is I do know how everything works and where everything lives at the etc level beneath all GUI management tool gorp layers shovelled on top by a given distro -- but I'm lazy. Why learn YALD? One can be a master of one distro, or mediocre at several... > I haven't used a RH based machine which regularly synced against a > fast-moving package repository, so I can't really compare. :) Pretty much all of the current generation do this. Yum yum. Where one is welcome to argue about what constitutes a "fast-moving" repository. yum doesn't care, really. Everything else is up to the conservative versus experimental inclinations of the admin. > I personally believe more configuration is done on Debian systems in > package configuration than in the installer as compared with RH, but I > do agree with you mainly. It's way short of what FAI, replicator, and > system imager do too. The last time I looked at FAI with was Not Ready For Prime Time and languishing unloved. Of course this was a long time ago. I'm actually glad that it is loved. The same is true of replicators and system imagers -- I've written them myself (many years ago) and found them to be a royal PITA to maintain as things evolve, but at this point they SHOULD be pretty stable and functional. One day I'll play with them, as I'd really like to keep a standard network bootable image around to manage disk crashes on my personal systems, where I can't quite boot to get to a local disk to recover any data that might be still accessible. Yes there are lots of ways to do this and I do have several handy but a pure PXE boot target is very appealing. >> Yes, one can (re)invent many wheels to make all this happen -- >> package up stuff, rsync stuff, use cfengine (in FC6 extras:-), write >> bash or python scripts. Sheer torture. Been there, done that, long >> ago and never again. > Hey, some people like this. Some people compete in Japanese game shows. Yes, but from the point of view of perfect scaling theory, heterogeneity and nonstandard anything is all dark evil. Yes, many people like to lose themselves in customization hell, but there is a certain zen element here and Enlightment consists of realizing that all of this is Illusion and that there is a great Satori to be gained by following the right path.... OK, enough system admysticstration...;-) rgb -- Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb at phy.duke.edu


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Copyright © 2013 Novartis.
This website may contain general information relating to various medical conditions and their treatment. Such information is provided for informational purposes only and is not meant to be a substitute for advice provided by a doctor or other qualified health care professional. You should not use the information contained herein for diagnosing a health or fitness problem or disease. You should always consult with a doctor or other health care professional.


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I spent most of last week preparing for Henry's birthday party. I had all sorts of wild ideas, like how it was going to be fun, and I wouldn't want to die at all.
Note to those around me: if you ever catch me musing, "You know what I think I'll bake? A three-layer birthday cake. I mean, I don't really have time, but how hard could it be, am I right?" I give you permission to slap me to the ground, shove me in a closet, lock the door, and then stand on the other side and berate me for my silly and pointless housewifey notions.
Something along the way went wrong. Not with the party—with me. I spent all week cleaning and preparing and thinking, thinking, thinking. Thinking about the cake! The damn cake! Which was going to be blue, and have an R2-D2 on the top (courtesy of my Star Wars-loving artistic husband). And for some reason, it had to be homemade, because to have it any other way would mean my son would hate me for the rest of his days. Also, I would bake cookies for Henry's class. If I didn't, his teacher would ship him off to an orphanage, for a mother who brings Entenmann's is surely a mother who has no love in her heart.
The cookies were not a problem, because when are cookies a problem? How hard can they be, really? Unless you forget the sugar or use motor oil instead of butter, you're in good shape. But the cake, I think, was possessed. I see no other reason for the events that followed. I think the cake needed a good exorcism.
By the time I was ready to begin the baking of the cake, I was a little out of my mind. I had spent all week buying birthday-party notions and paper plates and streamers and banners and all manner of festive shit. I had wiped down every surface in the house, including the dog, and I had mopped the entire apartment not once but several times because I decided I had to keep mopping until the water was clear. Because we live on the first floor of a building that is alongside a busy thoroughfare, where our windowsills are blackened with soot and god knows what effluence on a weekly if not daily basis, this is a challenge—but not if you're insane enough.
(It's not that I'm a clean person. My mother and husband and anyone who's every lived with me will tell you that I am not. It's that once I get started I have to do an utterly perfect job. This is why I try to avoid doing housework; I can lose days just cleaning the grout, and I prefer doing things like interacting with my loved ones and eating food and breathing.)
But back to the cake! I baked the layers while Henry was in school, congratulating myself all the while for my excellent planning. The layers would be completely cooled by the evening, at which point the frosting would begin. And the frosting, as we all know, is a piece of cake HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAHHHhhhurrrk.
So. The cake was baked, and it looked good. (I stress "looked.") I was the perfect mother and my son would be happy and successful and he would never use the F-word at me as he grabbed the keys to our nonexistent car and took off with his slut I mean girlfriend. That night I began preparing the frosting. Only I was so harried by this point that I used twice as much milk as the recipe called for, and somehow it didn't dawn on me until I was done that frosting was not supposed to have the consistency of applesauce. Whoops! I sent my husband out to buy confectioner's sugar. And then I sent him out again, because I said two boxes, not one. Only I didn't say that at all, I just THOUGHT IT and he should know what I am thinking. While he was out at the store, I wondered what to do with an enormous bowl of frosting soup; I concluded the only thing to do was immerse my hand in it, because when else do you get a chance to stick your hand in a bowl of frosting? The decadence of it!
It wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be. Mostly it was sticky, and then, oddly, it burned. I rinsed and rinsed but the burning continued. I don't know what to say about that. (The next day I told my husband about putting my hand in the frosting and he looked at me like I told him I put it up my ass. "Why would you do that?" he kept asking. "What were you thinking?"I think he was just jealous. Until I told him it burned.)
Once my second enormous batch of frosting was completed, I added so much blue food coloring to it that one taste dyed my tongue, but it still wasn't as blue as I wanted. No matter, it was good enough. I arranged my slightly lopsided cake layers and began to construct my masterpiece. Only the layers kept… sliding. And the frosting was looking a little puddley. In fact, it was oozing off the cake. But I was in denial. I kept going, kept slapping the frosting back up on the sides of the cake and watching it make its way back down.
By then I was weeping and cursing and demanding that God explain why this frosting wasn't working. I have never before experienced an unsuccessful frosting, as I am the Anal Baker who follows every baking rule and instruction to the letter. To the letter! And still the frosting would not obey me! We had the air-conditioning on because the humidity level was rainforest-level, and I was frosting the cake about two feet away from the blasts of arctic air. And yet my cake looked like a bucket of melting blue crap. I had to give up. I threw the whole thing in the refrigerator, and went to bed.
Because Scott and I had tasted numerous generous spoonfuls of frosting, we were far too wired to sleep, so we laid in bed bitching about the sorry state of our lives while millions of tiny bugs scurried hither and yon underneath our skin (at least that's how I felt) and I obsessed about the cake the cake THE CAKE. Finally, as dawn threatened to approach, we managed to sleep, and then a few minutes later somehow we got the kid to school and I presented them with the damn cookies. And then went home to regard the state of the cake.
It was now well-chilled, and looked like it had a terrible disease. Blue frosting was smeared across the top and the primordial ooze was stuck to the sides. I turned the air conditioning back on to Kelvin Cold, scraped every inch of frosting off the cake, whipped it back into spreadable consistency, began the re-frosterizing, and then watched in horror as it melted all over again. I was by now incoherent with rage. There was no reason this frosting should be doing this; obviously it had some sort of personal problem with me. I tossed it back into the refrigerator and then I calmly paced the living room and threw some things at the wall. Then I returned to the cake, scraped the frosting off again, put the bowl of frosting into the freezer, let it set for a while, and then re-frosted, this time even closer to the air conditioner. And lo, the frosting did stay put. And I was happy.
Then I went to pick up Henry from school, and when we returned, I checked on the cake, which was now safe in the fridge, sure to not have incurred any more harm. Except it had.
When I was out, Scott had taken the cake out to draw the R2-D2 on the top, and despite taking every precaution (setting the cake up less than an inch from the air conditioner, etc.) the frosting had melted. AGAIN.
I tried not to scream. I called my mother and sister for frosting advice and moral support. "Why does it keep melting?" my mother asked. Good question, Mom. They both agreed I needed to add more confectioner's sugar. Now I had a plan. Okay. I scraped the sides of the cake (AGAIN), added cupfuls of sugar, blended the damn frosting (AGAIN), and applied it to the sides. Again. This time it seemed to want to stay. Finally. But I was exhausted, and on edge from the cupfuls of sugar coursing through my veins (I don't know about you, but I can't not taste frosting), and there was no joy left in me. The cake had won.
By the time the party rolled around, I knew I had achieved a new level of insanity. I could think of nothing but the cake. The cake should be out of the refrigerator, I kept thinking. A chilled cake is not ideal. Room temperature, that's what it should be. But if I put it out and it melts! Our friends were arriving and everyone was mingling and laughing and all I could think was that damn cake better taste good or I will punch it.
Then it was cake time, the moment of truth, and the cake came out of the refrigerator, and everyone oohed—I must say, it did end up looking impressive—and I cut into it and immediately knew, as I had to put all my weight into it, that the cake had the consistency of a brick. Fuck it, I thought, and hoisted leaden slabs to everyone around me, and we all attempted to digest forkfuls while I stared at the hateful, hateful dessert. Five minutes later, I pointed at the three-quarters of cake remaining and shouted, "THERE. NOW DO YOU SEE?" Because, yes, the frosting was running down the sides and oozing all over the table. "Do you see that?" I said, as my guests muttered to each other, "And she thinks she's ready to go off her meds?"


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Contest Drawing #2 - This is in Recognition of my 200th Blog Post - Closed
This will be contest #2, recognizing my 200th blogpost. Thank you to everyone who reads my blog. The contest will start this evening and run through Friday, November 21, 2008. I am going to do another drawing out of a hat. The giveaway includes the dropstitch baby afghan, 4 baby caps, 8 pair of baby/toddler booties and 3 doilies.
- I have opened the comments so anyone, including non-members can leave a comment.
- In the comment section you can leave a name, nickname, something unique to identify you and a way of contacting you.
- I will also accept e-mail submissions. Please include Contest #2 in the subject.
- If you have previously won, you may enter again after a period of 2 months have passed to allow for everyone else to have a chance.


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News >> Browse Articles
Browse Off Beat & Bizarre Incidents Articles
City Hopes to Halt Hydrant Openings Amid HeatColumbus, Ohio -- City residents caused headaches for firefighters when some opened fire hydrants to cool off amid midsummerlike temperatures on Tuesday. Firefighters shut off about 50 fire hydrants across the city, Battalion Chief Michael Fowler said. Open hydrants are a problem every summer, he said, but the situation came early this year as the high temperature on Tuesday hit 93 ...Published almost 8 years ago |
Man Suffers Severe Burns When Prosthetic Leg Set on Fire After Losing BetLAS CRUCES, N.M. — A 47-year-old man's friends set his prosthetic leg on fire after he lost a drinking bet, causing him to suffer severe burns to his buttocks and lower back. Dona Ana County sheriff's deputies found the man naked on the side of U.S. Route 70 with his prosthetic leg in flames. Deputies learned that the man and his ...Published almost 9 years ago |
Retired Firefighter Hits Casino Jackpot, Wins MillionsMIDDLETOWN, Calif. – A retired firefighter from San Leandro won big when he visited a local casino this week. Dale Valentine was making one of his regular visits to Twin Pine Casino in Middletown on Tuesday when he hit a jackpot of approximately $8,430,301.44 on a statewide California Megabucks slot machine. "Our tribe has been committed to providing great success in ...Published over 8 years ago |
FF Resigns After Setting Co-Worker On FireAPOPKA, Fla. -- A central Florida firefighter has resigned after being charged with setting a co-worker on fire during a Christmas party last month. Apopka police say 44-year-old Jason Leblanc has been charged with arson and arson resulting in the injury of another. Police say Leblanc was at a Christmas party Dec. 18 when he poured lighter fluid on 25-year-old Jack ...Published over 8 years ago |
Sledder, 62, Hurt When Improvised Rocket ExplodesINDEPENDENCE TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) - A 62-year-old sledder looking for a burst of power got it when the homemade rocket strapped to his back exploded, burning him over nearly 20 percent of his body. Oakland County Undersheriff Mike McCabe said the man, whose identity hasn't been released, was hospitalized in stable condition Monday. [widget:news__firelinks_best] The man was hosting a Sunday night ...Published about 9 years ago |
Man Sentenced In Fake Firefighter AttackMARTINEZ, Calif. -- A Northern California man accused of posing as a firefighter to kidnap and rape a teenage girl will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. Thirty-three-year-old Daniel Alfredo Flores of Brentwood has been sentenced to 80 years to life in prison. The Contra Costa County judge who issued the sentence on Friday said Flores had shown ...Published almost 8 years ago |
Former Volunteer Firefighter Charged in Arson KillingsEAST WINDSOR, CT — A former volunteer firefighter in Connecticut has been charged with arson murder in a 1986 fire that killed a local couple. Police say 48-year-old Peter Waraksa set the fire that killed 59-year-old Orie Weeks and his 57-year-old wife, Assunta Weeks, on Oct. 7, 1986. Police Chief Edward DeMarco Jr. and prosecutors say the case file in the ...Published over 8 years ago |
Oh Deer: 10-12 Point Buck Breaks Into, Damages HomeBELLEVILLE, Ill. (AP) - An Illinois man says it didn't take him long to decide not to mess with the uninvited, antlered guest he found in his kitchen. Belleville resident Mark Page and his wife were sleeping Saturday when the sound of breaking glass and - was that hooves? - woke them up. [widget:follow_us] Page went downstairs to find a 10-to-12 ...Published about 9 years ago |
Firefighter Charged With Looting Following Joplin TornadoJOPLIN, Mo. — The Jasper County prosecutor has charged one Kansas firefighter with stealing after the May 22 tornado. Prosecutor Dean Dankelson on Wednesday filed a misdemeanor charge of stealing against 25-year-old Matthew W. Page. Page was one of three Baxter Springs, Kan., firefighters dismissed in June for alleged misconduct while responding to the tornado. Fire Chief Les Page, the father ...Published almost 8 years ago |
Miracle Boy Survives Metal Hook Through BrainCHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A North Carolina family is thankful for their 17-month-old son's life after a gruesome household injury. Jessiah Jackson is free of any apparent brain damage after a neurosurgeon removed a metal part lodged two inches into the back of the boy's brain. According to the boy's grandfather, the toddler was standing on a chair outside their home ...Published over 8 years ago |
Firefighter Marries the Woman He RescuedUK - When Julia Sbardella's chip pan caught fire, the last thing on her mind was marriage. Her only concern was for the safety of her young children as she tried to battle the flames until the fire brigade arrived. But it was an emergency which would lead to her walking down the aisle after she was quite literally swept off ...Published over 7 years ago |
Police: Son Set Father on Fire; Reason UnknownPOLK COUNTY, FL - A 58-year-old man is in critical condition this morning at Orlando Regional Medical Center after his son doused him with gas in Polk County and set him on fire, officials say. Ronald W. Harris, Jr., 37, is accused of dousing his father with gasoline on Sunday and using a lighter to ignite the gas, the Polk County ...Published over 8 years ago |
Man Finds Out He Was Shot In Head Five Years LaterBERLIN (AP) - A 35-year-old man who walked around for five years with a bullet lodged in the back of his head says he suspected for a while something was there but only went to doctors after he started getting headaches. Robert Chojecki was partying on New Years Eve five years ago in the German town of Herne when he was ...Published over 8 years ago |
Authorities: 83,000 Chickens Killed in Ohio FireVERSAILLES, Ohio - Authorities estimate that about 83,000 chickens were killed in a barn fire at a western Ohio egg farm. WHIO-TV says about 70 firefighters were called out shortly before 4 a.m. Tuesday to fight the fire near Versailles. The barn is on a farm owned by Kissinger Brothers Poultry and was fully engulfed when firefighters arrived. Fire officials say ...Published almost 8 years ago |
Man Accused of Making 7 Prank 911 Calls Arrested for ArsonBOULDER CREEK - A man on probation for arson, who allegedly tried to burn down the Mountain Store in Boulder Creek on Saturday, was arrested Tuesday after making seven prank calls to 911. Three unidentified young men spotted the fire just before midnight Saturday and extinguished the flames sparing the building from significant damage. By the time deputies and Boulder Creek ...Published over 8 years ago |
Man Escapes Ambulance After Cutting Off Own EarA prisoner had part of his ear cut off in a "calculated" sequence of events so he could escape from an ambulance in Greater Manchester, police have said. Michael O'Donnell, who had been sharing a cell with his brother, is on the run from HMP Salford after his ambulance was held up by masked men on Sunday. Greater Manchester Police believe ...Published almost 9 years ago |
Firefighters Get Much Anticipated Pink TruckPLATTSBURGH -- The pink firetruck has officially arrived. After months of waiting, members of the Guardians of the Ribbon cancer-support group are now waiting to get their themed truck decked out with graphics before it hits the streets in support of various causes. Jim Garrant, president of local Guardians Chapter 14, hopes the truck will be finished by the end of ...Published almost 8 years ago |
Drunk Firefighter Takes Engine For Joy Ride; Nearly Hits Police CruiserHAMILTON, VA - It wasn't the most inconspicuous of vehicles to choose. But the lure of a fire engine apparently proved too much for a volunteer firefighter in Hamilton, Virginia, who allegedly took four colleagues on a drunken joyride at the weekend. Sean Swanson, 27, was arrested after he nearly crashed into a police patrol car as he sped down the ...Published about 8 years ago |
Man Charged After Running Over Firefighter With CarPEWAUKEE - A Pewaukee man was charged with a felony Saturday after authorities said he struck a firefighter with his Mercedes-Benz while trying to drive through a traffic wreck scene. Chris A. Younger, 37, was charged with second-degree recklessly endangering safety in connection with the incident Thursday. Firefighters said he tried to drive around an area blocked by traffic cones at ...Published about 9 years ago |
Retired Firefighter Wins $200K Lottery PrizePORTSMOUTH - A retired firefighter has won a $200,000 lottery prize. Raynor Britt won the Powerball prize with a ticket he purchased for the Aug. 21 drawing, according to a news release from the Virginia Lottery. Britt matched the first five numbers using the birth dates of his four grandchildren, the release says. The winning numbers were 7, 10, 12, 22 ...Published over 8 years ago |


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Robert Desnos
Atlas Anti-Classics 16
Mystery, the marvellous, the city of Paris transmuted by love, and Sanglot the Corsair's pursuit of the siren Louise Lame: these are the essential ingredients of this masterpiece of early Surrealism. It was originally published in 1924 to immediate and lasting acclaim — except from the public authorities who immediately censored whole sections (here restored).
How describe a novel of such virtuosity and bravura, which never behaves as one would expect? Characters appear and vanish according to whim and desire, they walk underwater, nonchalantly accept astounding coincidences. It's a hymn to the erotic, an adventure story illumined by the shades of Sade, Lautréamont and Jack the Ripper, a dream at once violent and tender, in fact the perfect embodiment of the Surrealist spirit: joyful, despairing, and effortlessly scandalous.
Desnos was one of the earliest members of the Paris Surrealist group. His remarkable talents first emerged during the "Period of Sleeping Fits", when the group was investigating unconscious and trance states. Able to put himself in trance at will, he would pour out sonnets, prophecies, enigmatic drawings. "Desnos more than any of us got closest to the Surrealist truth," wrote Breton in their first manifesto.
An active member of the Resistance, Desnos died of typhus two weeks after his liberation from the Nazi concentration camp at Terezin.
Site contents Copyright © Atlas Press 1999-2019
BCM Atlas Press, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3XX, UK


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Jets Fan Who Threw Punch Has Criminal Record
The Jets fan caught on tape punching a Patriots fan after Sunday's game at Metlife Stadium is a passionate fan who had his picture taken with the Jets owner and coach along with= a criminal record.
Kurt Paschke, 38, is a Long Island bartender who spent time in jail for fatally stabbing another teen in 1992 outside a Sayville, Long Island pizzeria according to the New York Post, who reports he was charged with murder but convicted of a lesser crime.
Charges in the Sunday case will be brought today according to WNBC. State Police have talked to Kurt and a friend twice according to the Post.
Kurt's father,Kurt Paschke Sr., joined his wife in defending his son's action. Kurt Sr. says his son was being attacked by three women when he responded. He says he's "tired of hearing about you never hit a girl or punch a girl." He asks what was his son was supposed to do.g
Big Name Pictures
A picture of Kurt Jr. with Jets coach Rex Ryan from Facebook was posted by the New York Daily News, while Deadspin posted him posting with Jets owner Woody Johnson.
Colleen Paschke tells the Post her son was protecting her from unruly Patriots fans who were harassing them in the stands."There was a group of Patriots fans antagonizing our friends the whole game … They were drunk and out of control,'' Colleen explained to the tabloid. "Our friends were in the same row and, for instance, they were even making fun of a girl because she just gotten braces."
She says that as they left the game following the Jets thrilling overtime win, one person from the group said, "let's get them" and started throwing punches at Kurt.
The woman punched by Kurt is Jaclyn Nugent, 26, who lives in the Boston area according to the Post which reports State Police want to speak with her about the incident as well.
Passionate Fan
Kurt is a season ticket holder who usually brings his dad to games in their "Jetsmobile" mini bus decked out in green but brought his mother because of the NFL's breast cancer awareness month activities. Colleen is a breast cancer survivor.


text: Does anybody know how to insert an Interactive Panorama into a web-site using DreamWeaver MX? I've had a look around the internet and all the programs that can do it seem to require a specific .DLL file, which (believe it or not, this freaks me out too) is only available for ONE site! What's the deal? This ONE site is also under construction until September 2003 and I kinda need an interactive panorama before then.... Any help here would be hot!


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of StatueMolesters.com
I Hump
In the Weeds...
was featured on
Comedy Central's
"The Graham Norton Effect"
on August 19, 2004.
You've found it!
The reincarnation of the original StatueMolesters
web site... back by popular demand...
StatueMolesters from all over the globe have
submitted their strange adventures
and more roll in nearly every day.
Have a look through our gallery
of lunatics that have graced these pages with their own
StatueMolesting adventures.
Postcards are back! For now on limited basis and only on the latest submissions. Just click on the picture and send a greeting to your friends.
If you would like your own StatueMolesting
picture added to the collection, send
it in and we'll get it posted...
Help support StatueMolesters. 100% of our operating funds comes from sales
of advertised goods and services you see on our site. So in true StatueMolesters
fashion, we're instituting a Consumer Retention Appeal Products program(henceforth
known as C.R.A.P.). Please, let us know what C.R.A.P. you would like to see on
here. Enjoy your visit and purchase the C.R.A.P. of your choice.
Do you operate a web site that needs more
visibility? Look into putting your
banner into rotation on our site. We've been getting a
CRAZY amount of traffic... see for
Check out some of our favorite
movie clips... not statue molesters, but there's a lot
of weird stuff to see here...
find a statue... make it smile.
Special thanks to the folks over at thebooge.ca
- the original creators of the StatueMolester site - for
donating their original archive.
t-shirts, funny pics, funny pictures, humor, jokes, gags, antics, travel, statues, postcards, amusement, comedy, funny t-shirts, romance, wine and dine statues, romance the statues, on the road with statues, statue dating


text:
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text:
Difference between revisions of "Supported Hardware"
m (fixed link)
(added h4l link.)
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As a final thought in your preliminary steps to find support information for your device, you might also search with google and add "Linux" and/or "how to" to your keywords.
As a final thought in your preliminary steps to find support information for your device, you might also search with google and add "Linux" and/or "how to" to your keywords.
Revision as of 19:44, 10 November 2007
This page is intened to help the user determine whether the device they own, or one that they are considering purchasing, is supported or not under Linux.
Check For Hardware Compatibility
Before purchasing a DVB device, you should check whether it is listed as supported within the appropriate section of the wiki:
* ATSC devices * DVB-C devices (Digital Cable TV) * DVB-S devices (Digital Satellite TV) * DVB-T devices (Digital Terrestrial TV) * Sortable List of Device Vendors * DVB Conditional Access Modules (Pay TV)
If the device you're considering is not cited as being supported, then there is a good chance that it will not work under Linux. However, as the information in the wiki is not always current, you should also consider inquiring about the device's status on the mailing list (but please search the archives first!).
If you have already purchased your DVB device but can not find mention of it in the wiki's supported device sections, it might be a good idea to search this wiki for the device's name or the manufacturer name -- Reason being: while there are indeed many DVB devices available on the market, the actual selection of hardware components that a manufacturer has to choose from when designing their device is limited. As a consequence of this fact, many DVB devices have a similar component constitution, and hence some information can usually be ascertained about any given unsupported device. Furthermore, sometimes you can even adopt the support provided for another device for your own currently unsupported device.
Gathering Information About Your Unidentified/Unsupported Device
If your device is PCI based, then the output from the following commands (which likely require you to run them with root privileges) should be your first starting point:
# lspci -v # lspci -vn
Look for output lines with
Multimedia video controller: ... Multimedia controller: ...
Also read the manufacturer's details from the tin box of the card. If there are any textual/numerical markings printed on the board itself, they would be useful too - basically anything to help others identify a card visually. Send this information to the Linuxtv DVB mailing list along with the above output.
Similarly, if your device is USB based, look at the output generated from the commands
# lsusb -v # lsusb -vn
As these devices tend to be completely encased, it is difficult, if not impossible, to make any visual identifications of components used in the device's design without resorting to physically prying it open. The degree of difficulty of undertaking such a task can vary greatly, but in most cases the user can, with patience and care, find a way to non-destructively disassemble the device. Nonetheless, anyone attempting such a venture should be prepared to fully accept the consequences of their own actions in the event of an unsuccessful attempt.
As a final thought in your preliminary steps to find support information for your device, you might also search with google and add "Linux" and/or "how to" to your keywords.
You can also take a look at http://hardware4linux.info/type/87/ to see the note for the different devices.


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I love luminaries! And these are so simple to make - we just recycled some empty glass jars, pulled out some electrical tape (masking tape would work also) and used enamel paint we had left over from an old project (acrylics would be great as well). I also found some battery powered tea light at a local bookstore for only 75 cents a pop, so these were so inexpensive to make also!
I started by cutting out some shapes from the tape to stick onto the jar. Then Mina painted away. So funny how none of my girls ever want to paint things the color they "should" be...
I wasn't able to take any pictures before Maisy was this far into painting hers. She even decided to paint the inside a bit.
And this is my first picture of Lou's project, she did her own tape cutting and sticking. I love how she always puts eyelashes on everything.
After the paint dried completely I peeled the tape off to let the light shine through. Aren't these fun?
Check out these other ways to make luminaries:
Tin can luminaries
Milk jug luminaries
Mod podged luminaries
What other ways have you made luminaries?
Linking this post to JDaniel 4's Mom Halloween Traditions.


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Door Frames
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Last Updated: 25 Apr 2017
Send Enquiry to Suthar Steel Fabricators
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Every lost game inspires us to try one more time. Always remember defeat is temporary, but giving up makes it permanent.
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text:
Wd Home Improvements Roofing & Plumbing is a professional, friendly and family operated business who have been servicing Paraparap for over 40 years. We pride ourselves in completing home improvement tasks to perfection for our customers. When you require a plumber in Paraparap, roofer in Paraparap or any home improvement specialists, look to us as our team will get the job done to perfection.
We continually update ourselves with the equipment that we use and technology to ensure the job gets done in a time effective manner and perfection is achieved. With our fully qualified tradesmen on the task, the work will be completed in a professional manner. We regard customer satisfaction with the utmost importance.
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Give our team a call today for a professional quote on 1800 659 497. We will get the job done!


text:
Tag Archives: anjeanettek
Super-Sized Maple Leaf Throw Quilt
Bake Shop Basics: Quilt Borders
Today our Bake Shop Basics series continues with Chef Anjeanette sharing the proper way to make and attach quilt borders.
Do you ever finish your quilt and wonder why your sides are wavy and won't lay flat? You may not have put your borders on correctly.
Taking one border strip at a time, fold lengthwise in half and then again into fourths. Place a pin at the fold points. You will end up with three pins in the border. Fold your quilt in half and then fourths, and pin the fold points. With right sides together, pin the ends of the border to the ends of the quilt. Match the center pins from the border and quilt and pin together. Match the quarter marks from the border and quilt and pin together. I then fill in between the pins with at least one more pin for each fourth.
There often is a little bit of excess fullness or fabric on either the border side or the quilt top. Whichever side seems more full, place towards the feed dogs when sewing. The feed dogs will help ease any fullness out.
You may need to gently hold the fabric taught in front of the presser foot as you sew to help ease any fullness out.
If it seems like there isn't any fullness or excess fabric on either the border, or the quilt top, place the quilt top towards the feed dogs when sewing.
- Using a walking foot for these long seams is helpful.
- It is okay if you have to piece or sew two strips together to make the total length measurement. Just make sure you are cutting your border to the correct measurement before sewing on.
A perfectly flat quilt with borders.


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Win the Super Bowl, and head to Disney. It's a tradition now since Phil Sims uttered the words, "I'm going to Disney World" after winning Super Bowl XXI with the New York Giants in 1987.
Now, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco gets the free trip after his team defeated the San Francisco 49ers, 34-31, in New Orleans on Sunday night in Super Bowl XLVII.
Flacco was the guest of honor in an afternoon parade at the Magic Kingdom, riding alongside Mickey Mouse decked out in his best football costume. Flacco was in his street clothes.
Flacco joins a list of sports and entertainment celebrities who have uttered the famous marketing phrase 46 times since it began...


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Possibly outback Queensland's most renowned and remote town, the name Birdsville prompts thoughts of pioneering history and outback adventure in the 'back of beyond'. Once a toll point for stock crossing the Queensland and South Australian border, Birdsville had a pre-federation population of over 300. With federation came the town's decline into a town supporting pastoralists on surrounding cattle stations until tourism increased and the lure of the treacherous Simpson Desert and legendary Birdsville Track began to attract four-wheel-drivers in droves.
These days, Birdsville is a thriving community of 115 people with a pub, bakery, caravan park, two service stations and general stores and an excellent display of artwork and artefacts in the Wirrarri Visitor Centre. Come September, an influx of up to 8,000 people descends upon the tiny town for the annual Birdsville Races, which many call 'the Melbourne Cup of the outback'. The event has delighted race-goers for more than 125 years and is listed as one of the '100 things to do in Australia before you die'.
'Big Red', the 40 metre high sand dune on the edge of the Simpson Desert, the world's largest area of parallel sand dunes, is the best spot to watch the sun set. Have the experience of a lifetime at the world's most remote music festival, the Birdsville Big Red Bash in the heart of Australia's outback! The three-day festival returns from 4 to 6 July 2017, at Big Red.
The old Diamantina Crossing is the pick of fishing spots in the mighty Diamantina River. One of Burke and Wills' camp sites is marked with a blazed tree and the largest patch in the world of rare Waddi Trees, or Acacia Peuce, stand boldly on a gibber flat 12 kilometres to the north of the town; one of only three such patches in the world.
Note: Information on listed products and services are provided by the operator and were correct at the time of publishing. Rates are indicative based on the minimum and maximum available prices of products and services. Please visit the operator's website for further information. All prices quoted are in Australian dollars (AUD).


text:
UK Government Environment Ministers have announced clear and unequivocal support for the UK's peatland habitats. IUCN National Committee of the United Kingdom has advocated and worked for the protection of peatlands for years. The message by the Ministers is a recognition of the work done by IUCN and its Committee in the country.
Peatlands support many important species and unique ecosystems. Peatlands also play a key role in water resource management, storing a significant proportion of global freshwater resources and maintaining water quality.
In a letter to the IUCN UK Peatland Programme, the four UK Ministers set out their plans to protect and restore peatlands to secure their value for wildlife, water and climate change mitigation.
Jonathan Hughes, IUCN Councillor for Western Europe said: "Peatlands have been a 'Cinderella habitat' for too long. With this significant Ministerial commitment that status is changing and we can look forward positively to our internationally important peatland ecosystems being restored on a grand scale in the future".
In a letter to the IUCN UK Peatland Programme (5 February 2013), the UK Ministers set out a framework for action aimed at protecting and enhancing the natural capital of peatlands in the UK and British Overseas territories, recognising their importance for biodiversity, water and climate change.
The Ministers have also welcomed the IUCN UK Peatland Programme, Commission of Inquiry on Peatlands, recognising the tremendous contribution of all those involved and give their support for the ongoing partnership of the IUCN UK Peatland Programme in the UK and internationally.
Details of the letter are available available: http://www.iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org/news/218


text:
Latest Weather Blog
Crews make gains on massive wildfire
Related Story
OLYMPIA, WA - Wetter, cooler weather has helped firefighters make progress in their efforts to get the largest wildfire in Washington state's history under control.
With more rain in the forecast, they just hope too much moisture doesn't lead to flash floods after so much ground vegetation has been burned away.
The Carlton Complex of fires, which has burned nearly 400 square miles in the north-central part of the state, was 16 percent contained as of Tuesday, fire spokeswoman Jessica Payne said. A day earlier, the fire was just 2 percent contained.
The National Weather Service issued a flood watch from Wednesday morning through Wednesday evening because of expected heavy rainfall.
"It takes as little as 10 minutes of heavy rain to cause flash flooding and debris flows in and below areas affected by wildfires," the advisory said. "Rain runs off almost instantly from burned soils ... causing creeks and drainages to flood at a much faster rate than normal."
Still, the weather change was a positive development.
"The cooler weather and the moisture has cooled aspects of the fire down," fire spokeswoman Susan Peterson said Tuesday evening. "In some instances, firefighters were able to do a direct attack.
"We had additional crews come in, and they were able to put lines in closer to the fire itself."
Speaking at a fundraiser Tuesday in Seattle, President Barack Obama said the wildfire, along with other Western blazes, can be attributed to climate change.
"A lot of it has to do with drought, a lot of it has to do with changing precipitation patterns, and a lot of that has to do with climate change," the president said.
Obama also said Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate had authorized an emergency declaration to ensure communities that lost power because of burned power lines and poles get electrical power.
At more than 250,000 acres, the Carlton Complex is larger than the 1902 Yacolt Burn, which consumed 238,920 acres in southwestern Washington and was the state's largest recorded forest fire, according to HistoryLink.org, an online resource of Washington state history.
The fire is being blamed for one death. Rob Koczewski, 67, died of an apparent heart attack Saturday while he and his wife were hauling water and digging fire lines near their home. Koczewski was a retired Washington State Patrol trooper and U.S. Marine.
The number of homes destroyed in the Carlton Complex fire remained at 150, Payne said. Two structures, an outbuilding and a seasonal cabin, were confirmed destroyed Tuesday in the Chiwaukum Creek Fire near Leavenworth, she said.
More than 2,100 firefighters and support crew are involved with fighting the fire, Payne said. She said firefighters have had success with fire lines on the east side of state Highway 153 between Carlton and Twisp.
Karina Shagren, spokeswoman for the state's Military Department, said the National Guard has already been offering aerial support, but 100 National Guard troops were now being used on the ground for firefighting, and additional troops were receiving firefighting training for potential future use.
Gov. Jay Inslee briefed Obama on the fire situation after the president arrived in Seattle on Tuesday afternoon at the start of a three-day West Coast trip.
"We have real significant challenges," Inslee said. "To have the president here today is actually a stroke of luck."
Inslee said Obama called Koczewski's wife to express his condolences.
Inslee said officials will assess damage to determine whether the state qualifies for a major disaster declaration that would allow people whose properties have been damaged or destroyed to seek additional resources.
Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell were among a dozen U.S. senators who sent a letter to Senate leaders Tuesday asking for passage of emergency legislation to allocate $615 million to fight wildfires.
Fires are currently burning in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Arizona and California, and both Oregon and Washington have declared states of emergency.


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NBCC Awards Ceremony for Award Year 2017
Event held on March 15, 2018 at the New School, New York, NY
Welcome: Luis Jaramillo, Interim Director, The New School Writing Program
Opening Remarks: Kate Tuttle, President, National Book Critics Circle
John Leonard Prize: Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf)
Introduced by Daniel Akst
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Charles Finch
Introduced by Katherine A. Powers
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award: John McPhee
Introduced by Michael Schaub and Stacey Vanek Smith
Layli Long Soldier, Whereas (Graywolf)
Introduced by Tess Taylor
Carina Chocano, You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages (Mariner) Edwidge Danticat, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story (Graywolf)
Introduced by Carlin Romano
Xiaolu Guo, Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China (Grove)
Introduced by Laurie Hertzel
Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Metropolitan Books)
Introduced by Elizabeth Taylor
Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (Simon & Schuster)
Introduced by Mary Ann Gwinn
Joan Silber, Improvement (Counterpoint)
Introduced by Tom Beer
Nathan Englander interview at AWP 2018
Nathan Englander is with PBS Books to talk about his latest novel, Dinner at the Center of the Earth. Englander was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. He's also a Guggenheim fellow and was selected as one of "20 Writers for the 21st Century" by The New Yorker.
A prisoner in a secret cell. The guard who has watched over him a dozen years. An American waitress in Paris. A young Palestinian man in Berlin who strikes up an odd friendship with a wealthy Canadian businessman. And The General, Israel's most controversial leader, who lies dying in a hospital, the only man who knows of the prisoner's existence.
From these vastly different lives Nathan Englander has woven a powerful, intensely suspenseful portrait of a nation riven by insoluble conflict, even as the lives of its citizens become fatefully and inextricably entwined—a political thriller of the highest order that interrogates the anguished, violent division between Israelis and Palestinians, and dramatizes the immense moral ambiguities haunting both sides. Who is right, who is wrong—who is the guard, who is truly the prisoner?
Rwanda Women Rising
Swanee Hunt discussed her book "Rwandan Women Rising," the story of how the female population of the tiny African nation led that country's rebirth after the horrific 1994 genocide that left nearly a million dead.
Speaker Biography: A former U.S. Ambassador to Austria, Swanee Hunt chairs the Washington-based Institute for Inclusive Security. She is the Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, CEO of Hunt Alternatives and a member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.
Sarah McBride & Jennifer Finney Boylan | Tomorrow Will Be Different
Trans advocates Sarah McBride and Prof. Jennifer Finney Boylan discuss McBride's powerful new memoir, "Tomorrow Will Be Different."
Before Sarah McBride became the first transgender person to speak at a national political convention, Sarah struggled with the sadly familiar challenge several young members of the LGBTQ community face: whether or not to come out – not just to family, but to her peers, her classmates she led from her role as student body president.
Sarah knew she was a girl from her earliest memories, but it wasn't until the Facebook post announcing her truth went viral that she realized just how much impact her story could have on the country. Four years later, she had become one of the most prominent transgender activists, working within the walls of the White House, advocating the passing of laws, and addressing the country in the midst of a heated presidential election.
Informative, heartbreaking, and empowering, "Tomorrow Will Be Different" is Sarah's story of love and loss, a powerful entry into the LGBTQ community's battle for equal rights and what it means to be openly transgender.
Sarah McBride is a LGBT rights activist and political figure. She is currently the National Press Secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, and is largely credited with the passage of legislation in Delaware banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity in employment, housing, insurance, and public accommodations. She has been a speaker at the Democratic National Convention, becoming the first openly transgender person to address a major party convention in American history.
Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of fifteen books, is the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University. Her column "Men & Women" appears on the op/ed page of the New York Times on alternate Wednesdays. From 2011 to 2018 she served on the Board of Directors of GLAAD, the media advocacy group for LGBT people worldwide. She was a consultant and cast member for I AM CAIT, the docu-series about Caitlyn Jenner that debuted on the E! network in July of 2015; and also served as a consultant to the Amazon series TRANSPARENT. Her 2003 memoir, "She's Not There: a Life in Two Genders" (Broadway/Doubleday/Random House) was the first bestselling work by a transgender American.
Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen
Linda Heywood discussed her book "Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen," about this multifaceted and successful 17th-Century African ruler.
Speaker Biography: Linda Heywood is a professor of African history and the history of the African diaspora and African-American studies at Boston University.
Jimmy O. Yang + Awkwafina: HIGHLIGHTS
Actor/comedian Jimmy O. Yang and actress/rapper Awkwafina (aka Nora Lum) discuss Yang's new book "How to American," their roles in the upcoming film adaptation of "Crazy Rich Asians," growing up Asian-American and why Nora never became a meat inspector.
As a stand-up comedian, actor, and fan favorite as the character Jian Yang from the popular HBO series Silicon Valley, Jimmy O. Yang has achieved the American dream, but he wasn't born into it. He started his journey as a teenage immigrant from Hong Kong, determinedly chasing the elusive Hollywood career. He defied his parents' wishes, learning English by watching BET RapCity for three hours a day, and worked as a strip club DJ while pursuing a career in comedy. He was almost deported during a trip abroad before finally becoming a US citizen. Now he's written a memoir recounting it all.
In his book "How to American," Jimmy O. tells those stories and many more, while sharing some hard-earned lessons and insightful advice for those looking to achieve the American Dream.
Martin Amis | Appel Salon
"You've got to hold on to the meanings of words for as long as you can, and then cease to use them when they become ambiguous." —Martin Amis
One of the world's most provocative and widely read writers discuss his definitive collection of essays and reportage written during the past 30 years. Martin Amis in conversation with Brent Bambury.
Stephen Fry: The Waterstones Interview
The font of all knowledge on QI for many years, Stephen Fry has the kind of voice and authority that makes listening to him such a joy. His latest book Mythos is a retelling of the Greek myths and in this exclusive interview he told us about why he finds them so enthralling and why these ancient tales still speak so clearly to readers today.
NBCC Finalists Readings for Award Year 2017
On Wednesday, March 14, 2018, the night before the awards ceremony, many of the finalists read from their work at the New School Here is the complete video. See below for order of appearances.
Welcome: Luis Jaramillo, Interim Director, The New School Writing Program
Opening Remarks: Kate Tuttle, President, National Book Critics Circle
Nuar Alsadir, Fourth Person Singular (Liverpool University Press/Oxford)
James Longenbach, Earthling (Norton)
Layli Long Soldier, Whereas (Graywolf)
Frank Ormsby, The Darkness of Snow (Wake Forest University Press)
Carina Chocano, You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages (Mariner)
Edwidge Danticat, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story (Graywolf)
Camille T. Dungy, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (Norton)
Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions (Coffee House)
Kevin Young, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts and Fake News (Graywolf)
Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir (Abrams)
Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Metropolitan Books)
Edmund Gordon, The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography (Oxford)
Howard Markel, The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek (Pantheon)
William Taubman, Gorbachev: His Life and Times (Norton)
Kenneth Whyte, Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times (Knopf)
Joan Silber, Improvement (Counterpoint)
Jack E. Davis, The Gulf: The Making of An American Sea (Liveright)
Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (Simon & Schuster)
Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (Riverhead)
Inauguration of Jacqueline Woodson as the Ambassador for Young People's Lit
The Library of Congress in collaboration with the Children's Book Council and Every Child a Reader inaugurated Jacqueline Woodson as the new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.
Speaker Biography: Carla Hayden is the 14th Librarian of Congress.
Speaker Biography: Gene Yang was the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature from 2016 to 2017.
Speaker Biography: Carl Lennertz is the executive director of the Children's Book Council.
Speaker Biography: Jacqueline Woodson is the new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature from 2018 to 2019.
Caitlin Moran - Penguin Random House Presents 2018
Caitlin Moran is back with her latest novel How to be Famous, her follow up to the bestselling How to Build a Girl - and was on hand to join us on the sofa.
As well as the new book, topics of conversation included how famous people have really big heads and bad sex at 17 ("You think it's maybe something you'll get used to - like whisky and olives").
The Media, Myth & Fake News: From Watergate to Today
American University professor W. Joseph Campbell discusses the rise of "fake news" and the prevalence of media myths in this talk drawn from a new, expanded edition of his book "Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism."
Speaker Biography: W. Joseph Campbell is a professor in the School of Communication at American University. He is the author of "Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies," "The Year That Defined American Journalism: 1897 and Clash of Paradigms" and "Getting It Wrong."
Left of Black with Brittney Cooper
Left of Black host Dr. Mark Anthony Neal travels to Wake Forest University to talk with 2018 Anna Julia Cooper lecturer, Dr. Brittney Cooper.
Dr. Brittney Cooper is an Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. She's the author of Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (University of Illinois Press, May 2017) and Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (St. Martin's, February 2018), and the co-editor of The Crunk Feminist Collection (The Feminist Press 2017).
Dr. Neal teaches Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University.
FIRST LOOK: Trump U., the Inside Story of Trump University
"Trump U." is the only insider account to emerge from Trump University, one of the president's signature cons. At the heart of the outrage is Stephen Gilpin, a self-taught real estate wunderkind who found himself unwittingly at the center of a shadowy "cabal of charlatans."
Directorate S: Steve Coll on the CIA & America's Secret Wars
The U.S. is intensifying its air war in Afghanistan as U.S. Central Command has announced it is shifting military resources from Iraq and Syria back to Afghanistan, where the United States has been fighting for over 16 years in the longest war in U.S. history. U.S. Air Force Major General James Hecker recently said Afghanistan has "become CENTCOM's main effort." The news comes after a particularly bloody period in Afghanistan. Despite the spiraling violence, President Trump recently ruled out negotiations with the Taliban during a meeting of members of the United Nations Security Council. We speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll about his new book, "Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
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By Chip Becker and Sean O'Leary
High-speed rail (高铁) from Shanghai to Beijing – June 5, 2014
Today we caught the 7:30AM high-speed rail bound for China's glorious capital, Beijing. The train's top speed is capped at around 300 km/h, which is roughly 186 m/h. Needless to say, we zipped through China's countryside at a mesmerizing pace. It only took five and a half hours! Ultimately, we all seemed to have found a good balance between sleep and sightseeing in preparation for all the wild adventures to come in Beijing and Xi'an.
Beijing – Tiananmen Sq. (天安门) and the Forbidden City (故宫) – June 5, 2014
After lunch, we promptly made our way to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City smack dab in the heart of Beijing. It was hot out but that didn't stop us from seeing what we came here to see. Indeed, the history of this location is rich and formidable. However, to some extent, it felt as if we helped make some more of its history just by being there today. Fight On!
Beijing – Kung Fu show at 北京什刹海剧场 – June 5, 2014
Earlier this evening, we took a side-trip down to Beijing's Bei Hai area to enjoy a rather interesting and energetic Kung Fu show. Giant, acrobatic pandas seemed to be a common theme throughout the performance and they managed to pull a few Michael Jackson moves near the end, which was truly icing on the cake. You don't see a show like this every day!
Beijing – A trip to the Great Wall of China – June 6, 2014
You simply cannot come to Beijing without making a trip out to see the mighty Great Wall. As we climbed, the rain began to fall. But much like with the heat yesterday, the downpour did little to stop us from reaching our goal! We endured the weather, bonded with some of the locals along the way, and eventually reached the top. What a spectacular and rewarding view! All in all, it was an experience Global East Asia of 2014 will not soon forget.


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Last updated: July 03, 2013
Smithsonian-NHGRI 10th Anniversary Genome Exhibition Advisory Board
Smithsonian-NHGRI 10th Anniversary Genome Exhibition Advisory Board
NHGRI and the National Museum of Natural History have created an advisory board to assist in developing the exhibit. Membership includes:
Joann A. Boughman, Ph.D.
Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
University of System of Maryland
Adelphi, Md.
George Church, M.D.
Professor of Genetics
Harvard Medical School
Department of Genetics
Boston, Mass.
James P. Evans, M.D., Ph.D.
Bryson Distinguished Professor of Genetics & Medicine
Department of Genetics
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, N.C.
Eric Lander, Ph.D.
Broad Institute
Cambridge, Mass.
Dennis Liu, Ph.D.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Bethesda, Md.
Stephen Palumbi, Ph.D.
Hopkins Marine Station
Stanford University
Pacific Grove, Calif.
Charmaine D. M. Royal, Ph.D.
Associate Research Professor
Duke Institute for Genome Science & Policy
Duke University
Durham, N.C.
Sarah Tishkoff, Ph.D. David and Ly Silfen University Associate Professor
Departments of Genetics and Biology
School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pa.


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Software languages have evolved as execution environments became more complex:
- At first, each of the machine languages supported a specific type of machine. The focus of developer concern was a hardware event such as moving data from an area of memory to a register. The task involved an error-prone coding of 1's and 0's.
- With assembly language, the focus of developer concern became a set of commands that hid some of the complexity of machine language.
- A third-generation language such as COBOL supported many types of models, but a given variant of the language was and is specific to an operating system. The focus of developer concern is a set of office-like events such as transferring data from one file to another.
- Java supports many operating systems. The focus of developer concern is a set of objects and their super-types. This orientation allows for greater reuse over time, as inheritance enables classes written today to process objects of classes that are yet unknown.
Many of the changes from one kind of programming languages to the next have involved a formula that you might find apt: abstraction plus transform. In other words, a more general, composite statement such as COMPUTE is input to a process that reformats that relatively general construct into a set of more specific statements. Ultimately, the original statement is transformed into the machine language that is appropriate for a specific type of machine.
Abstraction plus transform might sound like an ideal without business impact, but it has the following benefits: decreased development cost, increased software quality, and increased software longevity. [1] These benefits were found during the history just outlined, as software was written for a machine of a specific type; and later, for one or another operating system; and later still, for multiple operating systems.
The way forward
Businesses are facing even greater complexity in runtime environments. Not only do web browsers represent an operating system on their own, but the server-side systems that transmit data to browsers have platforms such as Java Enterprise Edition, and within platforms, frameworks such as JavaServer Faces.
Computer languages are typically a step behind these increases in complexity. Given the history and the current need, here's the question: if abstraction plus transform benefited business in the past, could a new implementation of the same formula be beneficial now? It's a safe bet.
If the new technology is extensible, a company also can rely on it to shield the business from the effects of future change. And if the technology is open source, the continued support of practitioners and tool-makers is quite likely.
Silos and the scope of EGL
- ↑ A fuller description of the economic value of abstraction is in Ben Margolis with Danny Allan, Enterprise Web 2.0 with EGL (Lewisville: MC Press, 2009), 18-24. Those pages were based on David S. Frankel, Model Driven Architecture (Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, 2003), 3-30.