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Richard Blumenthal: Hold for-profit educators to a higher standard
For 415 students in Bridgeport and as many as 1,200 students statewide, Dec. 28, 2012, brought an abrupt and still unresolved halt to their studies at the Sawyer and Butler Business schools. Without so much as a day's notice, much less the 60 days required by state law, the schools shut their doors, leaving students to stand in the cold, their academic futures in limbo. The for-profit college industry -- like all industries -- has good actors who want their students to succeed and bad actors just looking to make a quick buck. Regrettably, it appears there are enough bad actors in the for-profit college industry to demand sweeping government reform.
I am working closely with the Connecticut Office of Higher Education, which is addressing the immediate needs of the 1,200 Sawyer and Butler Business school students. These students must be made whole -- either refunded their tuition, forgiven their loans or given feasible pathways to complete their programs elsewhere. Once we are able to meet the immediate needs of these students, I will continue to work with the Office of Higher Education, federal agencies and consumer advocates to hold for-profit schools more accountable to the students who are entrusted to them.
Approximately 10,000 Connecticut students enroll in for-profit colleges in the state each year, joining the ranks of well over half a million students nationwide. The vast majority of these students are low-income, minority, first-generation, and non-traditional students, including men and women in the military. Unfortunately, more than half of these students will drop out in less than four months, saddled with thousands of dollars of debt. Completing their studies does not necessarily provide a better outcome. According to an Education Sector report, 25 percent of for-profit graduates were unemployed and seeking work last year, faring only marginally better than their classmates who dropped out, of whom 27 percent were unemployed.
Making matters worse, tuition and fees at these for-profit colleges average 19 percent more than community colleges and flagship public universities that offer comparable programs, and they have disproportionately higher default rates than these institutions. While for-profit colleges enroll 13.2 percent of students in higher education, they account for 46.8 percent of all student loan defaults.
American taxpayers provided $32 billion, or a quarter of all Department of Education student aid funds, to for-profit colleges and universities in 2009-10. In fact, a study spearheaded by my colleague Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, found that virtually all revenue for these for-profit institutions comes directly from taxpayers. In 2011, the Butler School received $2.2 million in federal student aid, accounting for more than 80 percent of its total income that year. For that substantial investment, American taxpayers and students have a right to demand that for-profit colleges such as Butler and Sawyer do better.
Unfortunately, the HELP Committee study found that of that $32 billion in taxpayer dollars, a disappointingly small percentage actually goes to support student instruction. The report found that for-profit colleges spend more money on marketing, recruiting and profits (42.1 percent) than instruction (17.2 percent), and invest practically nothing in job placement support. One for-profit college examined in the HELP study had only one job placement support staffer serving more than 78,000 students, while employing 1,703 people in the college's recruiting office.
These statistics tell a story of dreams decimated by poor instruction, lackluster academic and job placement support, and crippling debt -- a story that has a human face to it in Connecticut and across the nation. We must demand better.
To that end, I will re-introduce this session the Advancing College Choice and Ethics to Protect Taxpayers (ACCEPT) Act, legislation that aims to prohibit misrepresentation by for-profit colleges by requiring them to disclose information such as space availability, transferability of credits, and whether a program qualifies a student to sit for a licensing exam that may be required to practice a related profession. In addition, the legislation requires the Department of Education to create a standardized disclosure sheet of publicly available data, which institutions must make available to prospective students prior to enrollment, showing how each institution measures up to other educational options. The ACCEPT Act would also prohibit the deceptive high-pressure recruiting tactics common at some for-profit institutions.
The 1,200 students of the Butler Business and Sawyer schools must be made whole and given an opportunity to pursue the education they deserve. For students and taxpayers nationwide, we must act now to ensure that federal dollars and students' hard-earned savings are not squandered on programs that prioritize profits over student success.
Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, is the senior U.S. senator from Connecticut.


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Training >> Browse Articles >> Officer Safety
Training >> Browse Articles >> Tactical / SWAT
SWAT—Not Sit, Wait, and Talk
Jeffrey J. Denning / SWAT Digest
"Hurry up and wait" is one sure thing that can be counted on in almost every tactical operation. Knowing when to wait and how to best utilize that time will help secure success and, most importantly, keep team members and the innocent safe. Aside from that, there are a few things every operator would like his administration to know… (Don't worry; I'll keep it clean.)
Fighting the Urge to Rush
Admit it: breaking down doors, "runnin' and gunnin' ", "flowing and going" is fun. Busting into a room after throwing in a few flash bangs (a.k.a. noise flash distraction devices, NFDDs) and hollering "POLICE, Don't Move!" while pointing a subgun or tricked out long gun at some unsuspecting felon is a rush. Nothing compares to it. Some might even say it's better than sex.
Most tac guys (and gals) are adrenaline-junkies. At a younger age I too exhibited some of those characteristics. I went free-fall skydiving in high school, messed up my knee on a much-too-high cliff jump at Lake Powell, free climbed (without ropes) up 90 foot rock faces, and jumped like a "stunt man" head first off a three-story building onto crudely made padding. I even trained for a short season with members of the U.S. ski jumping and aerial freestyle ski teams. It's amazing I didn't get hurt more than I did.
One of the things I really enjoyed was backcountry skiing. We'd find huge cliffs to ski off. We tried to avoid hitting the trees in the air and land in the soft powder. Years later I remember reading about a man who tried to break the world's record for the longest cliff jump on skis. He miscalculated his jump and hit another cliff plummeting several hundred meters to his death. Had he taken more time to calculate his jump, he might have set the record—and lived.
I realize that doesn't have anything to do with police work or tactical operations, but I learned a valuable lesson from reading about that experience. It taught me an important lesson: it's better to be a calculated risk-taker than just a risk-taker.
Now I run away from trouble. I avoid risk. My body doesn't recover as quickly as it used to. I don't want to get hurt.
One of the things I like about SWAT is that there is nearly always a way to improve the plan and increase the changes for officer safety. SWAT officers have the element of surprise. Time is on SWAT's side. Rarely are tactical teams forced to walk into a trap. The danger comes from rushing in.
Larry Glick, the former executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association and the founder of the International Tactical Officers Training Association (ITOTA), taught me the value of patience in order to lower risk and ensure success. He suggested that we should consider every available tactical option before breaking down a door. If it's a barricaded situation, for instance, there's no rush to go in. Wait. Use gas, a ruse, or something else to flush the suspect out. Use a robot or your SWAT monkey—"tactical primate"—in the case of Mesa, Arizona PD. Rip down a wall and wait. Open up the door and stay outside. "Break and rake" the windows and wait! Resist your urge to rush in and lower your risk. Once inside a building the level of risk raises exponentially. Hold off and be safe.

subset: commoncrawl


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Reed Saxon / AP
Judy Clarke, a defense lawyer whose high-profile clients include Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph and Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner, speaks at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles on April 26.
If he is convicted, the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect may be spared a trip to death row thanks to the addition of a criminal defense whiz — with a history of securing life sentences — to his legal team.
Judy Clarke joined Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's defense team on Monday. She has represented some of the most infamous American criminals in recent history: Jared Loughner, who killed six people and seriously wounded former U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2011; Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who drowned her two children in 1994; Eric Rudolph, who pleaded guilty to being the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber; Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; and Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted Sept. 11 conspirator.
All of those defendants were handed life sentences instead of the death penalty for their crimes. Now Tsarnaev's legal team hopes to keep Clarke's streak alive by having her join his case.
"It's no accident that she's the go-to defender in these kinds of cases," said Gerald H. Goldstein, a San Antonio-based defense lawyer and the former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, who has known Clarke for about 30 years. "She makes people want to do the right thing, for the right reason. And that's a tough job."
The victim of a carjacking by Boston bombing suspects, a 26-year-old man known as Danny, talks to TODAY's Matt Lauer about the harrowing experience, saying the pair loaded explosives into his car before he was able to escape and call authorities.
Often, the "right thing" is for her defendants to acknowledge their crimes, avoid a jury trial and, most importantly, continue living.
"They're looking into the lens of life in prison in a box," Clarke said at a legal conference in Los Angeles on Friday, The Associated Press reported. "Our job is to provide them with a reason to live."
She also offered a glimpse into what has drawn her into what she called the "black hole, the vortex" of death penalty cases since she first began working on them 18 years ago, when she represented Smith.
"I got a dose of understanding human behavior, and I learned what the death penalty does to us," she said. "I don't think it's a secret that I oppose the death penalty."
Clarke, 60, doesn't seek out big death-penalty cases; they find her, Goldstein said. Clarke rarely returns phone calls from reporters, and calls to her San Diego office went unanswered on Tuesday.
The addition of Clarke to Tsarnaev's team offers clues as to how the defense strategy may play out when the time comes.
"They are not going to put on a jihadi defense," Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told the AP, adding that Clarke's presence shows "they are going to litigate hard against the death penalty."
"The client wants to live, and he wants to avoid the death penalty," Dershowitz said of the only surviving brother in the Boston Marathon bombings. "They are not going to say, 'I want to die, I want to join my brother.'"
Clarke has been in private practice in San Diego for years, working with her husband, law professor Thomas "Speedy" Rice, but she still takes public-defender assignments.
She is a native of Asheville, N.C., who grew up in a conservative Republican household, according to The New York Times. She got her undergrad degree from Furman University in South Carolina in 1974, followed by her law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1977. She moved cross-country to practice law the following year, and has spent most of her career in California and the Pacific Northwest.
"You're going to have a hard time finding somebody, even those that are her opponents, who doesn't respect her. Some people may not like her, but she commands respect," Goldstein said.
Clarke's skill in the courtroom lies in her ability to empathize with clients, even when they are being charged with horrific crimes, say colleagues.
"She's a genius. She's among the smartest, most thoughtful people you'll ever meet," said Todd Maybrown, a criminal defense attorney in Seattle who has known Clarke since the early 1990s. "She's very intense and cares very deeply about the law and her clients."
Added Goldstein: "She does as much in terms of humanizing the judge and the jury and the other lawyers as she does humanizing her clients. There's a reason people can identify with her."
Investigators have taken a DNA sample from the wife of slain suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev to compare with the female DNA discovered on the pressure cooker from one of the Boston bombs. The FBI is also examining whether or not Tamerlan Tsarnaev met with two men in Dagestan who are considered radical Muslims. NBC's Pete Williams reports.
Clarke's rise to prominence began when she defended Smith, who was on trial for drowning her two young children. A law school classmate of Clarke's, David Bruck, invited her to join the defense team.
Clarke and Bruck nearly crossed paths again: While Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old Boston bombing suspect, recovers from his bullet wounds in a prison hospital bed, his public defender, Miriam Conrad, asked a Boston federal court to appoint two death penalty experts to the case: Clarke and Bruck, who is now a law professor at Washington and Lee University, according to the AP.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler rejected the request to let Bruck join the team, but agreed to appoint Clarke, who will join the three federal public defenders already assigned to Tsarnaev's case.
Clarke has served as the head of federal public defenders offices in Idaho, eastern Washington and San Diego, served as president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and argued before the Supreme Court.
Clarke's experiences with her clients has led to her becoming an opponent of the death penalty, Bruck told The New York Times in 2011.
"Judy would probably say if the public saw everything she sees, it would look at the client or the case differently," he said.
Related content:
- US intelligence chief orders review of Boston Marathon case
- Adding up the financial costs of the Boston bombings
- Boston suspect's widow wants his body released to Russian family
- Full coverage of the Boston Marathon tragedy on NBCNews.com


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NGDRT 10 Meter Beacon
NGDRT 10 Meter Beacon
NGDRT now sponsors the K4AIS beacon at 28270.5 KHz. Feel free to use this beacon anytime you want to see the propagation into North Georgia.
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text: There's no reason for uncertainty over the economy, says Jimmy Dunne of Sandler O'Neill. So you're going to have to do deals. Robert Kaplan, former vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, says a lot of this market is funded by the Fed, but they can't do it forever. For companies, he says, this is not a bad environment because the Fed has removed a lot of the extremes.


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Health System Innovation in India Part III
Taking high-quality affordable primary care to the rural poor with the help of handheld computers, telemedicine, and P4P.
In our first post in this series, we showed how illness in India causes financial hardship and leaves Indians—especially poor ones—with limited access to affordable good-quality health care that can actually make them better. In our last post, we outlined the Aarogyasri scheme—a novel government-sponsored health insurance program in the state of Andhra Pradesh that has the potential not just to reduce financial impoverishment but also raise quality standards in hospital care. In this post, we discuss an innovative private-sector approach to delivering and financing primary health care in rural Andhra Pradesh.


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Writing a Block Plugin
In recent versions of OJS and OCS, the content in the sidebars of each page is comprised of block plugins, allowing users to move each block around the page using the setup interface (instead of having to modify the template code). Each block, or piece of content, exists as its own directory in the plugins/blocks/ directory, and creating a new block is as easy as duplicating an existing directory and customizing its contents.
For simple block plugins that only contain HTML and images, we recommend using Juan Pablo Alperin's excellent Custom Block Manager that automates the process of creating simple block plugins. For educational purposes, this guide will continue to describe how to create a simple block plugin by hand, then give some tips on making your block more dynamic and powerful.
Note: These instructions reference OJS, but are just as applicable to OCS and Harvester.
A Basic Block Plugin
The simplest block plugin to start off with is the developedBy plugin. To create your new block, duplicate the developedBy directory in plugins/blocks/ and rename it to whatever you like (let's call it myPlugin). Then make the following modifications:
- Rename DevelopedByBlockPlugin.inc.php to MyPlugin.inc.php.
- Open MyPluginBlockPlugin.inc.php and make the following adjustments:
- Edit the comments at the top of the file to reflect your new plugin name, e.g.
@file MyPluginBlockPlugin.inc.php
- Copyright (c) 2009 George Clinton
- Distributed under the GNU GPL v2. For full terms see the file docs/COPYING.
- @class MyPluginBlockPlugin
- @ingroup plugins_blocks_myPlugin
- @brief Class for "myPlugin" block plugin
- Change the class name from DevelopedByBlockPlugin to MyPluginBlockPlugin
- Change the return value of the getName() function from DevelopedByBlockPlugin to MyPluginBlockPlugin
- Change the return value of the getDisplayName() and getDescription() functions from plugins.block.developedBy.x to plugins.block.myPlugin.x
- Modify plugins/blocks/myPlugin/index.php
- Change the comments so they reflect the modifications in MyPluginBlockPlugin.inc.php
- Change require_once('DevelopedByBlockPlugin.inc.php'); to require_once('MyPluginBlockPlugin.inc.php');
- Change return new DevelopedByBlockPlugin(); to return new MyPluginBlockPlugin();'
- Change the locale files for the plugin. Assuming you want it in English, open plugins/block/myPlugin/locale/en_US/locale.xml
- Change the locale keys from plugins.block.developedBy.x to plugins.block.myPlugin.x
- Change the displayName and description values as appropriate. If you want to add new text to your plugin, you can add new message keys and values here, and reference them in your templates using the Smarty {translate} function.
- Repeat the process for any other languages you can translate to. If you can't translate the plugin to a particular language, it is best to delete the directory for that language so that users of that language will not see incorrect information.
- Don't worry about settings.xml, it should be fine as it is.
- Open up plugins/block/myPlugin/block.tpl -- This is the Smarty template that will display the content of your plugin. You can pretty much write straight HTML in here, but you can also harness the power of Smarty (http://www.smarty.net), which is necessary for e.g. localizing the text of the plugin (using the {translate} function). For any dynamic content, you will have to make use of smarty functions and template variables, and likely also some PHP (introduced in the next section).
Start up OJS, go to Journal Setup Step 5.6, and ensure that your plugin exists in the list and is in the right vertical position. Behold, your first OJS plugin!
Advanced Block Plugins
Making dynamic block plugins will require some knowledge of Smarty and also probably some PHP. Your best source of information is the other block plugins--A good next step is to look at the user block plugin. The block.tpl file in that directory provides examples of how to create links to other pages in your system using the Smarty {url} function, and also how to use template variables that have been assigned to the template.
For example, a commonly used template variable is $isUserLoggedIn. This variable is global, or assigned to all templates in the constructor function of classes/template/TemplateManger.inc.php. You can look through that function to find other global template variables by looking at other assigned variables in that function.
Non-global variables are assigned to the plugin in the getContents() function of the plugin's class file. Your myPlugin class does not have one, so you'll have to create one to be able to assign plugins to your plugin. Here is a basic example:
function getContents(&$templateMgr) { $templateMgr->assign('isAdmin', Validation::isSiteAdmin()); return parent::getContents($templateMgr); }
You can now call the $isAdmin variable anywhere in your block.tpl template, for example
{if $isAdmin}
Smile, you're an admin!
 {/if}
More complex assignments will require a deeper knowledge of OJS. Consult the various technical guides, API references, and source code for more information on that.
We hope that you will choose to share your plugin with the rest of the community--Please upload them to the plugin gallery!


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Wendell D. Garrett, a historian and authority on American decorative arts who was widely known for his appearances as an appraiser on the long-running PBS series "Antiques Roadshow," has died. He was 83.
Garrett died Nov. 14 of natural causes at a hospice facility in Williston, Vt., where he had moved recently from Manhattan. His former wife, Elisabeth Garrett Widmer, confirmed his death.
Known for his broad expertise, a courtly manner and his delight in sharing knowledge, Wendell Garrett appeared on every season of the American version of "Antiques Roadshow" since its launch in 1997. He will also appear on the show's next season, which was filmed last summer and premieres Jan. 7.
"He was a very generous teacher and always approached his appraisals from the point of view of making sure people had an understanding of what the objects could teach about the past," said Marsha Bemko, executive producer of the program, which is modeled after a British series of the same name.
"He was a mensch of a man and a true historian."
Garrett wrote and edited many books on antiques and American style, including "Victorian America: Classical Romanticism to Gilded Opulence" (1993), "Monticello and the Legacy of Thomas Jefferson" (1994) and "American Colonial: Puritan Simplicity to Georgian Grace" (1995).
He was also associated for many years with Sotheby's, where he was a senior vice president in the American decorative arts department. From 1972 to 1990, he was editor of the Magazine Antiques and remained an editor at large for the fine arts publication until his death.
"Wendell was the public face of American decorative arts and its interface with American history," said Morrison Heckscher, chairman of the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a longtime friend.
"He was a felicitous writer, whether he was writing about antiques or historical figures, and he was an accomplished, compelling speaker," Heckscher said. "He also had a remarkable ability to connect and empathize with people."
On "Antiques Roadshow," which sends experts across the country to appraise art and collectibles brought in by the public, Garrett handled a range of objects. Among his on-air assessments: a copper kettle for making apple butter (appraised at $2,000); a circa-1850 mosaic-topped table ($8,000) and a 19th-century cabinet decorated with stuffed songbirds (he appraised it at up to $11,000 and gently advised the owner to take care handling it, saying the birds may have been preserved with arsenic.)
Garrett, who had had a form of muscular dystrophy since the age of 19, had used a wheelchair in recent years, including on his "Antiques Roadshow" appearances. But he never let his disability slow him down, Bemko said, making his trips by train to keep up with the traveling show.
He wasn't always headed for the world of art and antiques.
Wendell Douglas Garrett was born in Los Angeles on Oct. 9, 1929, the eldest of four children of Ennis and Lucille Garrett. After graduating from Wilson High School, he attended UCLA and, until he encountered organic chemistry, planned to become a doctor, Widmer said. He switched to history, earning a bachelor's degree.
He then enrolled at the University of Delaware, receiving a master's degree from its renowned Winterthur program in early American culture. He later earned a second master's degree in American history from Harvard.
In 1959, he joined the staff of the Adams Papers Project at the Massachusetts Historical Society, which edits and publishes letters and other papers of President John Adams, his wife Abigail and their descendants. Garrett was assistant editor of "Diary and Autobiography of John Adams" (1961), a four-volume set that begins with diary entries from 1755.
But in 1965, on vacation in Vermont with his first wife, Jane N. Garrett, he was perusing documents at the Vermont Historical Society when he made a remarkable discovery: He found an even earlier Adams diary, hidden in the papers of a former suitor of John Adams' daughter. "He was so excited he was almost airborne," Jane Garrett said.
"The Earliest Diary of John Adams," with entries beginning in 1753, was published in 1966, with Wendell Garrett as associate editor, along with Marc Friedlaender.
In all his work, Garrett often said that antiques and decorative objects offered a window into American social history and should always be viewed in context.
"Artifacts are three-dimensional documents that should be read like letters and public papers. They are a record of the people," he said in a 1995 interview with Tennessee's Chattanooga Free Press. "If antiques are treated as documents, our views and interpretation of the past are broadened, allowing people without a voice to speak."
Garrett was twice divorced.
His survivors include three children from his second marriage, Nathaniel, Maria Garrett de Lievano and Abigail Garrett Looft; four grandchildren and a brother, Ronald.


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She Who Burns Brightest
She Who Burns Brightest
About Evan Erwin
Evan Erwin is a long-time cardboard slinger who lives and breathes collectable cards. Creator of The Magic Show and the Marketing Manager of StarCityGames.com. In the time of chimpanzees, he's a gorilla.
About Brad Nelson
2010 Player of the Year Brad Nelson started his Pro Tour career as FffreaK on Magic Online and quickly catapulted to the top of international Magic success. He won GP DC, the 2014 Star City Games Players' Championship, and was 2nd at PT Amsterdam. He conquered Grand Prix Omaha in 2017 without dropping a single match, one week after winning the SCG Tour event in Baltimore. He now lives in Roanoke, Virginia, producing top-notch video and article content.


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Group gathers mistletoe for holidays on river trip
LILLINGTON, N.C. -- There's an old southern tradition of shooting mistletoe out of treetops with a .22 rifle, or even a shotgun. Forrest Altman prefers a kinder, gentler way of harvesting the parasitic evergreen plant long associated with Christmas holiday romance.
For the past 30 years, the publisher and former Guilford College English professor has been leading canoeists and kayakers on an annual "Sprig Outing" along the Upper Little River, where low-hanging swamp branches make the use of firearms unnecessary.
"I do not subscribe to shooting it down," said the 88-year-old Altman, who started the tradition as a fundraiser for a local conservation group. "Everybody who does this claims to be a crack shot and not destroy the mistletoe in the process. But I think it's highly likely that anybody who shoots mistletoe down from trees is going to damage the tree AND the sprig."
Besides, using a gun to harvest what has become a symbol of peace, love and forgiveness seems a bit oxymoronic to the old conservationist.
The origins of kissing under the mistletoe are shrouded in mystery and legend. One story is that the tradition stems from 18th century England, when the plant sprig was carried to the high altar of the York Cathedral, and a public amnesty was proclaimed, Altman said.
Ancient druids believed mistletoe held some kind of magical life force.
"When gathered with a golden sickle -- that was the only way to gather it, with a golden sickle -- they believed that mistletoe was the life of the oak," said Altman, who writes about paddling and nature. "Because it was still green when the oak... otherwise looked dead."
In Sweden, mistletoe was used to make divining rods because of its supposed power of revealing treasures in the earth. And in Austria, a sprig laid on a threshold is said to ward off nightmares, Altman said.
However it got started, the practice of hanging mistletoe has become an indispensable part of the Christmas tradition.
On a recent clear morning, a group of about a dozen paddlers caravanned to a farm outside Lillington, a farming community about 30 miles south of the state capital of Raleigh. After Altman and river guide Scott Sauer gave a quick lecture on cooperation and leaving the place cleaner than they found it, the flotilla of blue, red and yellow craft launched into the gently flowing stream, a tributary of the Cape Fear River.
Instead of guns, Altman and Sauer use long poles with hooks on their ends. Sauer, who painted his way through college, demonstrated how to hook the mistletoe where it joins the tree branch.
"You put the hook over it and just simply twist the hook," he said, flicking his wrist.
Normally, to "thwart" is to prevent or foil something. But Altman has learned that "thwarting" a group of boats into a platform beneath the tree branches is the best way to keep the mistletoe from sinking beneath the tea-colored water.
Altman promotes sustainable harvesting. The group floated past several immature clumps before finding some with waxy, greenish-white berries.
After a few minutes, Ron Miller was grappling like a pro.
"I think I've hit the mother lode," the paddling instructor from Winston-Salem shouted as he hauled down a huge clump and handed it off to another kayaker. Altman was impressed.
Mistletoe grows on a variety of trees -- including apple, maple and even olive -- and is harvested commercially in orchards, as well as in the wild. But the sprigs gathered on this expedition were for personal use and gifting.
"There's a certain skill to this operation," Altman said. "And there's a certain requirement of holiday spirit, so to speak."
Joan Monnig had that -- in spades.
Floating along in her red kayak and sequined Santa hat, the Chapel Hill woman led the group in "Deck the Halls" and other Christmas carols. Paddling over to neighbor Nate Jackson with a fresh sprig, she snagged his tow line, pulled him close and planted a kiss on his cheek.
"You know, a girl can never have too much mistletoe," she said. "Or too many kisses."


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The Watauga County Farmers Market
The Watauga County Farmers Market • Every week from May to October you will find quality locally farmed meats, organic produce, fresh cut flowers and hardy local plants, delicious edibles and a wide variety of crafts. Sign up for the Watauga County Farmers' Market newsletter to stay up to date on the latest news and updates by clicking here, like the market on FaceBook at www.facebook.com/WataugaCountyFarmersMarket, or follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/wcfm
The Watauga County Farmers' Market has been in operation since 1974, and is located at the Horn In The West in Boone, North Carolina. The market is a direct link between our local farmers and the consumer. Local support for farming allows increased awareness of good land practices, preservation of rural landscapes and lifestyles, and the minimal use of pesticides.
• The Saturday Market, Open May-October, 8:00am-12:00pm, Rain or Shine
• The Wednesday Market, Open June-September, 9:00am-1:00pm, Rain or Shine
Board & Staff | Booth Map | Videos | Photos | Events | Location | Directions | Bird's Eye View | Contact
"The members of the farmers' market are proud of the high quality products we sell. We hope you will enjoy coming to the market as much as we do!"
We have the High Country's finest selection of quality farm products, nursery items, crafts and specialty foods from the finest local growers, craftsmen and women, and local specialty foods producers. Membership in Watauga County Farmers' Market is limited to residents of Watauga, Wilkes, Ashe, Avery, Caldwell, and Johnson counties. All vendors must follow the market rules and comply with all applicable regulations
The Watauga County Farmers Market Vendors
Farm Products
Vegetables • Eggs • Fresh Herbs • Fruits/Berries • Honey • Nuts
Nursery Items
Bedding Plants • Containers and Hanging Baskets • Cut Flowers • Herbs • Perennials • Shrubs and Vines • Vegetable Seedlings
Bird Feeders and Houses • Candles • Clothing and Jewelry • Decorative Items • Furniture • Note Cards • Pottery
Specialty Foods
Baked Goods • Beverages • Chutneys, Relishes and Sauerkraut • Condiments • Dried Fruits and Herbs • Farmstead Goat Cheeses • Jams, Jellies and Preserves • Tomato Products • Vinegars
Market Going Tips
• Bring small bills so that making change is easier for sellers. Checks are generally accepted, most vendors are not set up to take credit cards.
• Many shoppers bring large bags or baskets to consolidate their purchases.
• Most vendors are happy to recycle or reuse: egg cartons, flower pots, berry baskets and bags.
• Please DO NOT bring pets into the market area. Service animals are welcome.
• Bring a picnic. Enjoy Horn In The West's picnic area or the nearby Boone Park. Desserts, fruits, vegetables, cheeses, bread and coffee are usually sold at the market.
For More Information
FaceBook • www.facebook.com/WataugaCountyFarmersMarket
WebSite • www.wataugacountyfarmersmarket.org
Twitter • www.twitter.com/wcfm
Phone • 828.355.4918
E-Mail • email@example.com
Contact • www.wataugacountyfarmersmarket.org/contact.php
Source & Photo Credits • www.facebook.com/WataugaCountyFarmersMarket/photos


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Kim Mordaunt's The Rocket [pictured] impressed Tribeca Film Festival judges last week and had a similar effect on audiences who gave it the narrative award on Saturday [27].
Linda Bloodworth Thomason's The Bridegroom won the documentary award. Both films received a cash prize of $25,000 and screened on Sunday along with the other festival winners.
"Our audiences have chosen two films that testify to the power of the human spirit and hope for change," said Tribeca Film Festival director of programming Genna Terranova.
"Whether it's the fight for marriage equality in the U. or a boy struggling against all odds in war-torn Laos, audiences were clearly moved by these two inspiring stories."
The 12th annual Tribeca Film Festival ran from Apr 17-28.
- The winners of the #6SecFilms Vine competition were: There Is No Sunny-Side To This Story by Kevin Polizzotto; The Book Beetle by Chris Donlon; How To Clear Out Your Garage From A Scary Ghost by Jethro Ames; and Lazer's Close Shave With Donald by Matt Swinsky.


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text: The American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC) is a partially refundable tax credit of up to $2,500 each year for out-of-pocket higher education expenses including course materials, tuition, and fees for the first four years of college. First enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the credit was made permanent by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (P.L. 114-113). The credit is applied for by using IRS form 8863.


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Activa is a modern, responsive multipurpose theme for powerful ghost blogging platform. This theme is user friendly. It is suitable for any kind of personal or travel, hobby, tutorial blog.
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v1.0 [December 19, 2013] -Initial Release


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2-Tray Box
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Black, sturdy 2-tray box with recessed handle and secure, tight latches. Features Tip-Guard trays that prevent spills. Trays have 17 compartments plus dividers to customize compartments for specific tools and supplies. Measures 15 1/2 in. x 7 3/4 in. x 7 1/2 in. 8627AB
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Anticlericalism, in Roman Catholicism, opposition to the clergy for its real or alleged influence in political and social affairs, for its doctrinairism, for its privileges or property, or for any other reason. Although the term has been used in Europe since the 12th and 13th centuries, it is associated in more recent history with the French Revolution and its aftermath.
Three principal forms can be identified. The first, developed during the 18th century, was based on opposition to clerical privilege, often corrupt, as established by feudalism. The second is associated with the rise of liberalism, which in general accused the clergy of servility to the monarchy or of ignorance in terms of scientific thought. The third, endorsed by some totalitarian systems, considered clerics to be chronically opposed to the "race," the "nation," or some other presumed ideology.
In the 18th century such skeptics as Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists chafed under royal censorship and the clergy's influence on the monarchy. The culmination of such anticlericalism was the French Revolutionaries' assault on the Roman Catholic church, abolishing its privileges and confiscating property. In 1801 Napoleon Bonaparte ended the Revolution, signed a concordat with the papacy, and "established" the church as a religious agency supported by and subservient to the French state. With modifications, this system lasted for a century, during monarchist, republican, and Bonapartist regimes.
The creation of the Third Republic in 1871, however, intensified the old-time conflict between clericals and anticlericals. In the struggle between 1871 and 1879, royalist-clerical parties opposed republican-anticlerical parties. Léon Gambetta phrased the slogan, le cléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi ("clericalism is the enemy"). The victorious republicans enacted a good deal of anticlerical legislation. The Jesuits were suppressed (1880); and the Ferry laws (1881–82) established free, secular education, compulsory civil marriage, and the opportunity for divorce. The second conflict took place as a result of the bid of Georges Boulanger for dictatorial powers, and ended with a republican, anticlerical triumph. The third took place during the Alfred Dreyfus affair (1894–1906), when an anticlerical republican bloc was formed, consisting of all republican groups in the Chamber of Deputies, determined to oust royalists, militarists, and clericals from public life. Further anticlerical legislation resulted. The Law of Associations (1901) suppressed nearly all of the religious orders in France and confiscated their property, and the separation law (1905) sundered church and state.
Spreading from France, anticlerical ideas and methods were adopted, in varying ways, in other Latin countries. In Italy anticlericalism was fused with nationalism and liberalism. Pope Pius IX, defending his position as temporal ruler of the Papal States, opposed Italian unity. When Camillo Cavour embarked on his career as architect of a united Italy, he put through the Piedmontese Parliament a series of anticlerical laws, abolishing the civil jurisdiction of canonical courts and suppressing many monasteries. Cavour's slogan, "a free church in a free state," was adopted by the anticlerical liberals of Italy.
After the unification of Italy, the struggle between clericals and anticlericals continued. When Rome became the capital, the temporal power of the popes was ended. Anticlerical legislation decreased the number of monastic establishments, suppressed university theological faculties, and sanctioned civil marriage. But no divorce law was enacted, nor was religious instruction banned from the schools. The Law of Guarantees accorded the pope full power to exercise his spiritual function. Pius IX did not, however, recognize the Italian government and in 1874 forbade Catholics to participate in political activities. This caveat was not ended until 1919. The advent to power of Benito Mussolini in 1922 for a time intensified anticlericalism, since Fascism claimed absolute control by the state. Yet no serious conflict occurred, despite continuing papal opposition to some curtailments of religious liberty. In 1929 the Lateran Treaty was signed, ending the dispute over the temporal power by making the pope ruler of the small state of Vatican City.
The Napoleonic invasion (1808) started an anticlerical movement in Spain. The Constitution of 1812 abolished the Inquisition and restricted the number of religious orders but recognized Catholicism as the established church. This constitution was in turn abrogated when Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne in 1814. Anticlericals reacted bitterly, and from that time until 1939 the struggle between the right and left in Spain was far more a conflict between clericals and anticlericals than elsewhere in Latin Europe. The conflict became especially intense after 1870. Barcelona, traditionally a centre of anti-Catholic feeling, witnessed the formation of powerful syndicalist and anarchist groups. The first Spanish Republic (1873) enacted some anticlerical laws, but these were repealed or disregarded when the monarchy was restored in 1875. During an anticlerical outbreak in 1909, mobs burned churches and attacked priests. As a pacification measure, religious orders were restricted in number and taxes were levied on their industrial enterprises. Civil marriage was made compulsory. The revolution of 1931 that established the Second Republic brought to power an anticlerical government. The legislation adopted resembled that of France. The government was, however, unable to curb mob attacks on churches and monasteries, during which priests and nuns were slain. Catholics mustered their forces in opposition. Counterrevolutionaries led by General Francisco Franco declared war on the republic, and the Falangist dictatorship that was subsequently established repealed or ignored the anticlerical laws, though conflict between church and state did not cease, even after the death of Franco in 1975.
Latin America
Anticlerical tendencies varied considerably from country to country in Latin America after it had achieved independence from Spain and Portugal. Although Colombia, for example, witnessed the enactment of anticlerical legislation and its enforcement during more than three decades (1849–84), it soon restored "full liberty and independence from the civil power" to the Roman Catholic church (1888). In Venezuela, on the other hand, the government of Antonio Guzmán Blanco (1870–88) virtually crushed the institutional life of the church, even attempting to legalize the marriage of priests. Some of the restrictions were later relaxed, but on the whole anticlericalism remained dominant. A strong outburst of anticlerical resentment occurred in Mexico in the period from 1924 to 1938, when suppressive anticlerical legislation accompanied social reforms. Anticlerical legislation remained on the statute books in subsequent decades, but the Roman Catholic clergy could work more freely than before.
Anticlericalism was not novel in Germany, but it was strengthened intellectually by ideas generally accepted during the French Revolution. Free thought, with its principle of the "lay state," made headway particularly in southern Germany and played a part in the revolutionary incidents of 1848. The rise of Marxian socialism likewise brought large segments of the working population into the anticlerical camp. But Roman Catholics in the populous Rhenish areas were mostly constitutionalists, in sympathy with some tenets of liberalism. Their political program, which led to the formation of the Centre Party, included the defense of the right of all religious minorities.
Shortly after the unification of Germany in 1871, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, adopting part of the liberal program, began the Kulturkampf, a series of attacks on the Roman Catholic church. Anticlerical legislation was enacted: the number of religious orders was restricted, the Jesuits were banned, civil marriage was sanctioned, and uncooperative priests were removed from their parishes. Resistance was punished, and some bishops were deposed. Most of the anticlerical legislation was removed from the statute books in the 1880s. The prohibition of the Jesuits remained in force, however, until 1917.
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
France: The Dreyfus Affair…on a new wave of anticlerical legislation. Most religious orders were dissolved and exiled, and in 1905 a new law separated church and state, thus liquidating the Concordat of 1801.…
Germany: Domestic concerns…feared the appeal of a clerical party to the more than one-third of Germans who professed Roman Catholicism. Both Bismarck and the liberals doubted the loyalty of the Catholic population to the Prussian-centred and, therefore, primarily Protestant nation. In Prussia the minister of ecclesiastical affairs and education, Adalbert Falk, introduced…
Roman Catholicism: After independence…form of independence movements and anticlerical revolts. The case of Mexico is illustrative: its rulers repeatedly proscribed Catholic education and promoted anticlerical interests following the country's break from Spain in 1821. At the same time, the government declared that Mexico was a Catholic country and, thanks to the papal decision…
Greece: The role of the Orthodox church…to the growth of popular anticlericalism, particularly among the small nationalist intelligentsia that emerged in the course of the 18th century. The anonymous author of that fiery nationalist polemic the "Ellinikhí Nomarkhía" ("Hellenic Nomarchy") in 1806 was a bitter critic of the sloth and self-indulgence of the higher clergy, while…
Czechoslovak history: The establishment of the republicCzech anticlerical feeling precluded the negotiation of a concordat with the papacy until 1928, when an agreement settled the most serious disputes between church and state. Ultimately, it was Germany that most strongly influenced the course of Czechoslovak foreign affairs. One of Beneš's highest priorities was…
More About Anticlericalism8 references found in Britannica articles
Assorted References
- effect on priesthood
- role of Azaña y Díaz
- In Manuel Azaña
significance in
- Czech history
- Kulturkampf
- Mexico City
- Ottoman Greece
- Roman Catholicism
- Third Republic


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When it comes to community spirit there is arguably no more dedicated confederation of folks than the ardent and steadfast supporters of Pacific Chorale.
Recently in Newport Beach they came together, as they have done year after year, for an underwriting event in advance of the chorale's annual holiday concert and dinner affectionately and traditionally known as "A Dicken's Feast" set for Dec. 16 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts and the Center Club.
What is remarkable is the generosity of the loyalists, most notably the hosts of the underwriting dinner, Martin and Margie Hubbard, at an event at Big Canyon County Club in Newport Beach.
Joining the Hubbards were Ruth Ann and John Evans, Valerie and Hans Imhof, Tom Rogers and Sally Anderson, Vina Williams and Tom Slattery, and Mary and Phil Lyons.
"I cannot imagine my life without music," said Mary Lyons, a primary benefactor of the chorale and in particular its leader John Alexander. "I love my husband, and I bless him every day for supporting me and enabling us to support this organization. My life simply would not be the same without this music."
The concept behind the underwriting dinner is to request benefactors to cover all costs of producing the holiday concert and dinner, which is a very important annual fundraiser. The congenial and charitable Ed Arnold, TV anchor for PBS SoCal, served as master of ceremonies and chief donation solicitor.
Placards detailing the needs and the associated costs for underwriting were arranged on easels.
"Do I hear $6,000 for Christmas goose?" Arnold asked. No, he wasn't kidding, and that was just a drop in the enormous bucket, which eventually filled with donations totaling $164,350 underwriting all costs of the concert and dinner enabling the Chorale to raise a maximum dollar amount for its 2013 budget.
Talented and humble artistic director Alexander, considered one of America's most outstanding conductors of choral music, thanked the dinner crowd for the unrestricted support and shared some of the Chorale's highlights over the past year including a triumphant tour of Europe with sold-out concerts in such cities as Paris.
Among the giving folks raising their hands to contribute to everything from table linens to holiday pudding were Elizabeth Stahr, Karen and Mike Carroll, Bob and Kimberly Bernatz, Warren Coy, Sharon Fair, Margaret Gates, and the much loved Jan Landstrom working to pull the event together and produce a smashing success for the Chorale.
Following a wonderful dinner of roasted beef tenderloin and pan-seared salmon topped off with Arnold's favorite dessert key lime pie, Arkansas style, the dinner crowd was treated to a mini Broadway review by talented Pacific Chorale singers Kellee King and Aaron Mosley accompanied on piano by David Clemensen.
THE CROWD runs Thursdays and Saturdays. B.W. Cook is editor of the Bay Window, the official publication of the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach.


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Dinosaurs in Literature, Art & History
There Were Giants In The Earth in Those Days
Those Sophisticated "Cave Men"
Salvation. What Must You Do To Be Saved?
Source:Pocono Record
By HOWARD FRANK
Pocono Record Writer
September 28, 2008
A real secret message discovered by a local man among Egypt's ancient ruins could be stranger than the fictional stories we love involving Indiana Jones or "The DaVinci Code."
East Stroudsburg-born Edward Nightingale says he has unraveled the most famous of ancient Egyptian riddles.
And he believes his discovery has uncovered a collection of advanced mathematical principles that could change our understanding of matter and the universe.
But that's not all.
Now, hold on to your seats. He also believes this information was intentionally embedded in the blueprint of the ancient ruins, for future generations to discover.
Nightingale, who lives in Upper Mount Bethel Township in Northampton County, has studied the Giza plateau in Egypt for almost 20 years. He even traveled there with famed Egyptologist John Anthony West to study the ruins.
The Giza plateau lies on the outskirts of Cairo and contains the Great Pyramid, the Great Sphinx and many other historically significant structures. A total of nine pyramids stand on the site.
The construction and layout of the complex, about one square mile in area, has been the subject of scholarly study and adventurer exploits Ś think Indiana Jones Ś for centuries.
The most well-known of the mysteries is how the actual structures were built. The pyramids include massive blocks of granite and stone, machined to amazing tolerances, and too heavy to move without modern equipment.
"There are 2.5 million blocks of stone in the Great Pyramid that cover 13 acres in the footprint and stands 480 feet tall, with blocks of granite in the interior that are up to 70 tons. They are machined to tolerances that you can't slip a dollar bill into," Nightingale said.
"That tells me they (the builders) knew something we don't, because we sure can't do it. As a craftsperson, I had to figure out how they did that."
But the larger, greater mystery is why the pyramids and other structures are arranged the way they are. Is it haphazard? Surely not, since some of the elements, constructed in different dynasties, were in perfect alignment. There seems to have been some enduring plan.
Three pyramids dominate the Giza complex: the Great Pyramid, or Pyramid of Khufru, the Pyramid of Kahfre and the the Pyramid of Menkaure. The sides of all three pyramids are astronomically oriented to be north-south and east-west, within a small fraction of a degree. Quite a feat, considering the pyramids were built thousand of years ago.
|Abstract of Nightingale's Paper
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."Albert Einstein
The geometry used in the layout of the Giza Plateau encompassing the nine pyramids, temples, causeways and Sphinx has been discovered. Based on the simple proportions of a circle, dividing the diameter by ╝, 1/3 and Ż then dividing these diameters and radii by factors of nine, one is able to place and explain the geometrical reasons for proportion and placement of all elements.
Assigning a factor of 1 to the Pyramid of Khafre, plotting out the geometry using AutoCAD in full scale, renders a circle diameter of 6,345 ft. or 1.2 miles.
After plotting, then overlaying the geometry to aerial photographs and survey maps result in a near perfect match. The implications of this data will have an effect on many different areas of research and study.
Musical proportions, sophisticated mathematics and a celestial clock may be found encoded in The Giza Template. If these studies are confirmed they should lead to a new approach to the Egyptian architectural and artistic accomplishment.
"If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have the key to the universe." Nicola Tesla
Researchers have been looking into this for centuries. There have been many theories over the years, but none have explained how to take into account all the architectural aspects of the plateau.
"Everybody who was studying this was using the Fibernachi series, and they were coming up with little snippets of what was occurring. But I wanted to allow an open mind without putting myself in that box," Nightingale said. (Fibernachi numbers are a series of figures built by adding the two prior numbers in the series, for example, 1,1,2,3,5,8.)
Other theories have been proposed. A fairly recent and now dominant one by researcher Robert Bauval suggested the arrangement of the three pyramids matched the Belt of Orion, three stars in the midsection of the Orion constellation. A shaft in one of the pyramids points to the spot in the sky Orion occupied thousands of years ago when the pyramid was built.
Ed Nightingale was born at Pocono Hospital in East Stroudsburg but lived in Hope, N.J. "East Stroudsburg was our local hospital, the closest one to us," he said.
A master wood-carver by trade, he creates architectural elements for high-end clientele. He's worked with Dennis Collier on projects for the National Marine Museum in Washington, D.C., and Trinity Church in New York City. Nightingale also did a project for singer/actor David Bowie.
Nightingale approached the design of the Giza complex as an architect would, by creating a drawing. The complexity of the site was apparent. "They had to have a pretty good plan," he said.
To begin his journey to understanding, Nightingale back-engineered the site. "I examined it as an 'as-built blueprint,'" he said. With laser-accurate surveys, he applied his drafting and design skills.
"As a craftsman, I've been a woodworker all my life, a fussy one at that. I had an interest that these things were placed here with an incredible accuracy that we can't even accomplish," he said.
Nightingale works with geometric shapes when he plans a sculpture, and so he began to see geometrical relationships between elements in the plateau.
Armed with a compass, ruler and an aerial photograph of the Giza plateau, Nightingale began to create an overlay, or template, for the complex.
"As an artist, when I start a project I begin with three things. I establish a center line, a horizontal and a reference point," he said.
Nightingale located the center point by drawing a line off the western face of the Great Pyramid and a bisecting line through the Pyramid of Kahfre.
After locating a center point, he drew a series of related circles and subdivisions, based on the location of a causeway at the site. Based on the simple proportions of a circle, he drew four, dividing the diameter by one-quarter, one-third and one-half, then divided these diameters and radiuses by factors of nine. He then drew lines through intersecting points of the circles and significant elements of the plateau.
Nightingale expressed the proportions of the circles as 4, 3 and 2.
The proportions were important, as they had other references in nature, Nightingale said. Among other things, 4-3-2 is the tuning of an "A" note in the musical scale of the ancients of that era. In music, the first three harmonics are produced at two, three and four times the original note's frequency.
If you square 432, you arrive at the speed of light in miles per second. And when you square the speed of light, you get the basic component of Einstein's theory of the relationship between energy and matter.
Nightingale said the template describes more than just the two-dimensional layout of the plateau. His theory applies to the elevation plans of the complex as well.
"The geometry explains the interiors of the pyramids, where objects like the sarcophagus are located using an elevation view." A sarcophagus is the case in where the mummy is placed at burial.
Nightingale's quest goes back to the mid-1990s.
"I had a 'life event' in 1996, and it was time to re-evaluate, look for the truth, what is really going on here," he said.
Nightingale traveled to Egypt in 1997 with Egyptologist West. "I had a few ideas when I started. But I promised myself I'd look at what's really going on," he said.
West is known for his Emmy-winning 1993 NBC documentary with Charlton Heston called "The Mystery of the Sphinx." West showed evidence that the Great Sphinx is thousands of years older than conventionally thought.
West discovered water erosion on the Sphinx. Rain capable of causing that kind of erosion stopped falling on the area thousands of years before the Sphinx was previously thought to have been built.
Nightingale presented his findings to West.
"As Ed will have explained, I'm pretty well convinced that he's solved a major aspect of a puzzle that has intrigued and eluded dozens of ardent researchers for many decades: the geometry upon which the Giza plateau is based. This has many important ramifications/implications for ancient Egypt specifically but also for the history of the ancient world in general," West said.
When Nightingale realized the implications of his discovery, he was overwhelmed.
"I spent months trying to decide what to do about it," he said.
Nightingale said his template doesn't just relate to Giza. He has applied it to other ancient ruins. And he said it provides a mathematical framework to describe things as diverse as the structure of spiral constellations, DNA and music.
Nightingale used a nine-based system of numbers to divide the radius and diameters of his circles to determine his template. "That's how nature operates. The nine-based formula is more how nature assembles things," he said.
Nightingale found explanations of music in his theory. "There are sophisticated mathematics, musical proportions that are just stunning. Harmonics if you want to call it that," he said. He also refers to his theory as a harmonic view of nature.
Later, Nightingale and another craftsman were commissioned to do some carvings for Pope Benedict XVI. That led him to study religious symbolism. He found his Giza Template explained the geometry of these symbols.
He even applied it to the Great Seal of the United Sates, made famous in the movie "National Treasure." The template shows eerie alignments on both sides of the seal Ś as if the template predicts where objects are placed.
So why was this information coded into the Giza plateau?
"Ancient Egypt, the Greek and Roman empires, the Megalithic and Mesopotamian civilizations all collapsed, and their knowledge was lost," author and Egyptologist Walter Cruttenden of the Binary Research Institute said.
Nightingale asks what important items would a civilization want to preserve for future generations besides life? Knowledge, he answers.
"Like Noah's Ark, they created a vessel to store knowledge. It has to last 10,000 years to be read. Since languages change over time, they had to encode it," he said.
They would have had to use geometry, Nightingale said. "I think they are encoding science there," he said.
"They postulate straight-line type civilizations. Using that as a paradigm, everything that came earlier can't be as refined as what we have now, and everything in the future is going to improve. But obviously, if we look into the records, we see that that is not true," according to Brother Anandamoy, senior monk at the Self Realization Fellowship Order, headquartered in Los Angeles. He's served the order, founded by Paramahansa Yogananda, for 43 years.
So how does a craftsman, with no formal training in physics or mathematics, develop such an astonishing premise?
It's happened before. Surfer dude Garrett Lisi, an American physicist, dropped out of academia to chase his love of sports. He moved to Maui, learned to windsurf, and worked on ideas that culminated with a precedent-setting theory of particle physics.
Lisi had something in common with Albert Einstein. They both began their quest in theoretical physics from outside the mainstream of the scientific community. The basis of Einstein's discoveries came while he worked as a Swiss patent official, not as an academic researcher.
Nightingale believes academia forces mathematicians and physicists to think inside a box. New, outlandish theories could jeopardize tenure, government funding and stature. So they are not always encouraged.
Nightingale will present his theory, formally, at The Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge at the University of California at San Diego on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 4-5. The conference includes some of the field's greatest experts. Nightingale wants his ideas out in the scientific community, subjected to peer review.
The geometry of the Giza template suggests other places for exploration on the plateau, according to Nightingale.
He plans to expand the application of his theory to other architectural mysteries that have baffled researchers. He's already begun on Stonehenge, which he said his theory explains, and is considering publishing a paper on that as well.
How did the ancients develop this advanced mathematical thinking? And how did they build the pyramids? Did they come from somewhere else?
"I don't have the answer to that. I'm just showing you the blueprint," Nightingale said. "I think it was us, but I think we've forgotten some things. Humanity's legacy is right there, in stone, and we've been looking at it for thousands of years without noticing it.
"I'm not discovering this. I'm just rediscovering what is there," he said.
Ultimately, if Nightingale's ideas are studied and verified by the scientific community, it could take years or even decades before they produce any technological advances. Still, the possibility of that is awe-inspiring. Asked about the potential enormity of his discovery, Nightingale said, "How do you think I feel? I'm just a woodcarver."
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Welcome to our fortnightly Challenge Blog
where we hope to inspire you with our cards/projects.
Our challenges start on a Saturday morning at 9.00 am (GMT) and finish on a Friday morning at 9.00 am (GMT), the day before our new challenge goes live.
We'd love you to join in our challenges and you can do so by adding a link to your design on your own personal Blog using Inlinkz or by sending us an email (see address below) with a photo attached of your card/project, which we will add to the Challenge Blog.
We have two wonderful Design Teams and you can visit their own personal blogs where you will be able to see more of their gorgeous work. All you need to do is click on their photographs which can be found on the left-hand side bar.
Please note that sometimes due to life committments, the DT ladies may not be able to visit your blogs and leave a comment on every entry. We hope you understand.
If you need to get in touch with us for any reason,
just email Diane Louise or Wendy at the email address below...


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Friends of the Library Christmas Baskets
Date(s) - 11/25/2017
9:00 am - 5:00 pm
The Friends of the Library is hosting their final Christmas Basket Silent Auction. This yearly tradition is going out in style with many of their beautiful baskets. These wonderful creations make for easy Christmas shopping and the proceeds support the library!


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To say I am a novice in $K$-theory is to overstate my experience with the field. I've been reading the various wiki articles so as to have some preparation before jumping in, and I couldn't answer the following question to myself:
I understand that $K$-theory had started with the Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch in mind, and that the only thing that was needed for that purpose from $K$-theory was just to define the Grothendieck Group ($K_0$). Once the idea of the Grothendieck group was established, this was generalized to topological spaces, as well as for other kinds of modules. Then comes the step I don't understand -- it seems that people were then trying to find the higher $K$-groups that would make $K$-theory into a cohomological theory. Milnor came up with Milnor $K$-theory, which I understand from wiki is different from later notions of higher $K$-theory. But why would one leap from the concept of the Grothendieck group to thinking that this construction is the $0^{th}$ step in a cohomological theory? What was the context/motivation for that?


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When a train laden with crude oil rolled into the sleepy town of Stroud, Oklahoma, one night this August, global oil markets reacted immediately.
The unexpected arrival of some 70,000 barrels of crude -- a pittance in global terms -- caused the premium of international benchmark Brent oil futures to its U.S. counterpart to widen by a dollar in an hour.
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It was a stark illustration of how finely tuned oil traders are to the ebb and flow of oil through Cushing, the world's biggest storage hub and delivery point for U.S. crude futures, known as West Texas Intermediate (WTI) by the industry.
While it has always been critical for traders given its role as the delivery point, the focus on Cushing has rarely been greater after an unprecedented three-month drawdown in stockpiles that fueled talk of squeezes on immediate supplies and fears that oil in storage could be drawn to minimal levels.
As that decline is showing signs of slowing down or reversing, market players and analysts are even more focused on how much oil is stored at Cushing at any given moment. More importantly, they want to know how much of that oil is light sweet that can be delivered against New York's futures contract.
A shortage of WTI and others oil grades deliverable against the contract can boost prices as the front-month nears expiry as players face being taken to delivery on their positions.
Yet calculating how much light sweet oil is stored in Cushing has rarely been more difficult to measure, despite the advent of companies using satellites and infra-red cameras to beat government reports.
The boom in U.S. and Canadian oil production and the race to build out transport options to get it to markets, first to Cushing and then later to the Gulf Coast refining center, has created a tangle of variables to track.
"It's not a straight forward answer. It is even more difficult at Cushing due to the significant capacity, tanks and number of pipelines involved," said David Auer at refinery consultants Turner, Mason & Co.
"Cushing is such a big place, with so many tanks, that a change in an assumption can make a big difference over all."
Weekly snapshots of stored oil at Cushing are produced by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the American Petroleum Institute, while energy intelligence group Genscape provides twice weekly data on the hub.
But getting ahead of that data on a daily basis, or getting intelligence on the kind of crude in storage, is where traders can find a profit or avoid getting squeezed.
Over the past three years, pipeline capacity into Cushing has nearly doubled, outbound capacity has increased to move crude south to Texas and pipes have been built to move light sweet Texas oil directly to the Gulf Coast, bypassing Cushing.
Flexible rail and barge options that can be activated to take advantage of arbitrages when they appear, or redeployed quickly when they disappear, have sprung up.
Tank capacity has swelled as well, now up to 80 million barrels according to Reuters calculations from 46 million in 2012, to accommodate the new inbound flows.
In addition to the steady stream of light Texas or similar crude, Cushing is now receiving high volumes of heavier Canadian oil through the TransCanada Corp's 590,000 barrel per day (bpd) Keystone pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta, to Cushing.
Throwing heavy crude into the mix at Cushing has added a new level of uncertainty: No longer is it sufficient to know how many barrels are in storage; now traders must gauge how many of those are light, sweet barrels.
Total stockpiles at Cushing have fallen 17 million barrels over the last 14 weeks to under 33 million barrels thanks to new pipeline capacity, according to the EIA, which will not publish data this week due to the government shutdown. Genscape reported a build last week, however, which analysts say may be partly due to seasonal refinery maintenance crimping demand for oil.
How much of that is light sweet is unknown, stirring concerns that supplies of such crude could be approaching minimum technical storage capacity levels and leave no oil in stocks which could be delivered against the contract.
Currently, there are 13 pipelines bringing crude oil into Cushing with a total capacity of 1.7 million bpd, according to energy intelligence company Genscape, an increase of nearly 815,000 bpd over the past three years.
Out of Cushing, there are 12 pipelines running in all directions with a capacity of 1.5 million bpd, the data shows. But only one major line runs south to the Gulf Coast, the reversed 400,000 bpd Seaway line, which began operations in 2012 and is a joint venture between Enterprise Product Partners and Enbridge Energy Partners .
By the end of 2014 another 1.3 million bpd will be added to pipelines going in and 1.4 million bpd going out of Cushing, including an expansion of Seaway to 850,000 bpd by mid-2014 and the Keystone Gulf Coast line, according to an EIA report.
The start up this year of two major pipeline projects: Magellan Midstream Partners' 225,000 bpd Longhorn pipeline that ships Texas crude directly to Houston and avoids Cushing; and the Seaway line, have caused the major drawdown in the hub's stockpiles.
As it became clear that those lines can ease the Cushing glut, the Brent-WTI spread narrowed to virtually zero briefly in July. Although it has pulled back to $8.50 a barrel on expectations stocks may be set up for another build period. But the spread is well off February peaks of over $23.
Throwing another curve ball into Cushing calculations is a system of trucks, barges and rail cobbled together in recent years to move crude from oil fields direct to refineries on the Gulf and East Coasts.
Waterborne shipments of crude between the Midwest and the Gulf Coast rose to a historic peak of over 125,000 bpd in June 2013, up from an average of 10,000 bpd in 2010, EIA data shows.
Traffic on rails also jumped, as part of an overall push to get new shale production to markets. Crude moved by rail jumped from 23,000 bpd in 2009 to 771,000 bpd in the third quarter of 2013, according to the American Association of Railroads.
The flexibility of these systems makes it a wild card for Cushing, such as the unexpected August restart of shipments from Stroud. The 90,000 bpd Hawthorn pipeline picks up crude shipped to Stroud by rail and sends it to Cushing.
As the Brent-WTI spread narrowed, signaling supplies of crude would be falling as Cushing inventories drained, this supply system was reactivated, sending more oil into the hub.
The plummeting stocks set up a big question for markets: How far can they drop before hitting minimum operating levels?
Such a level at Cushing, based on the amount of oil needed to be left to prop up tanks' floating roofs, would be about 10 percent of total shell capacity, or 8 million barrels, said Mark Shaw, executive director at E3 Consulting LLC, an engineering firm that has reviewed Cushing tanks designs.
Magellan, the third largest storage operator at Cushing, confirmed that number.
But Shaw said operators add another several percentage points to their calculations of minimums to ensure their operations run smoothly. If they add another 10 percent, that would indicate a minimum operating level of 16 million barrels -- or 20 percent of Cushing's shell capacity.
"(How low inventories can go) really is the question because the bulls are pushing this mantra that Cushing is going to be drained. And it's not unfounded but we need to know what is the ratio of light sweet to heavy sour presently in Cushing," said one crude oil trader.
Estimates of the split vary wildly from 50-50 to 70-30, in favor of heavy. At the extreme end of the estimates -- 30 percent -- that would point to light sweet inventories at Cushing at just below 10 million barrels.
Others, however, are more reluctant to estimate.
"The stocks that I care about, the WTI, we don't really know the breakdown of those inventories. To me that means it's impossible to know what a minimum operational level is," said Jan Stuart of Credit Suisse.
(Reporting by Sabina Zawadzki; Editing by Matthew Robinson and Bob Burgdorfer)


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Lone Survivor is a survival horror graphical adventure by designer Jasper Byrne. The masked protagonist must escape from a city ravaged by disease, by any means. Starving and exhausted, he has begun to question how much of what he sees is even real. This is a new kind of adventure where the choice of how to survive is up to you. Sneak through without firing a single shot, or kill everything in your path. Eat and sleep well, or resort to drugs to keep going. Search for survivors, or try to escape the city alone. Look after your mental health, or descend into madness...
Every so often, I hear about a game being made and I have to stand up and applaud the idea. This is one of those moments. On the SuperFlat Games blog, Lone Survivor creator Jasper Byrne has announced a new game that he's calling "Zelda x Demon's Souls." Can I get a "Hell yeah" from the crowd? The so-called New Game is still in the very early stages, as evidenced by the prototype screenshots that Byrne has released, but he has promised "It has two-handed combat, equippable weapons and rolling." Well, that's a start! Read More »
I'm going to talk to the folks that haven't picked up the Humble Indie Bundle V yet. Come over here, we need to chat. You officially have no excuse for not buying the bundle now. Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Lone Survivor have all been added to the pay-what-you-want program. Just beat the average, and they're all yours. That's like eight bucks for what's now eight games. That's a dollar per game! Math! Read More »
When I reached the end of Lone Survivor, my playtime very clearly read 4:26. Four hours and 26 minutes. For a moment, I thought I'd taken on the defining characteristic of my delirious mask-wearing avatar; I thought I'd gone mad. But then I realized there were two reasons for my gut-wrenching, tear-jerking adventure's relative brevity: 1) I had come so very, very far -- always with Death's door seemingly inches away -- both in terms of survival skills and character development, and 2) I'd fumbled around in the frustrating darkness that is trial-and-error for an extra two hours or so. Both of those facts form Lone Survivor's gnarled but never-stopping heart -- sometimes messy, occasionally offbeat, but more often than not, amazing. Read More »
Lone Survivor sounds frightfully interesting -- and downright frightful, for that matter. Described as "adult psychological horror," the game puts you in the probably soiled trousers of a tiny masked man who must both escape a disease-ravaged city and keep his frail flesh and brittle bones from turning to malnourished dust. How you go about doing so is completely up to you. "Sneak through without firing a single shot, or kill everything in your path. Eat and sleep well, or resort to drugs to keep going. Search for survivors, or try to escape the city alone," explains Lone Survivor's website. All the while, your mind claws and slips its way into reality blurring madness. It's coming out tomorrow, but you can watch the trailer now. Read More »
Release Region: United States
Release Date: March 27, 2012
Publisher: Superflat Games
Also available on: PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita


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Download the latest version of Cirrus Logic 7542 Compatible Graphics Adapter drivers according to your computer's operating system. All downloads available on this website have been scanned by the latest anti-virus software and are guaranteed to be virus and malware-free.
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Cirrus Logic 7542 Compatible Graphics Adapter Driver Update UtilitySupported OS: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP
File Version: Version 188.8.131.52
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Virge DX Driver
S3Supported OS: Win 2003 Server, Win XP Home, Win XP Pro
File Version: Version 1
Release Date: 2001-07-01
File Size: 321.8 KB
File Name:
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3,523 DownloadsSubmitted Aug 31, 2007 by TBull (DG Member):
"Unzip. - Update Driver->Point to unzipped directory->If prompted for certain files, just browse to the unzipped directory once again. - Tested. Working. - Windows XP Pro SP2 32bit"
Trio64v+w2kXp Driver
S3Supported OS: Win XP Home, Win XP Pro, Win 2000 Workstation, Win 2000 Server
File Version: Version 5.1.2535.0
Release Date: 2001-07-01
File Size: 60.4 KB
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1,485 DownloadsSubmitted Jun 12, 2008 by Misjah (DG Member):
"This one should definetely work! It came with modified win, I just backed it up and tried with another winxp and it worked, 1024x768-16bit, max resolution 1280x1024(256 colours. Please install it manualy and if asked, point to extracted directory for missing files."


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Rush'n Attack (Thomson TO)
Published by
Developed by
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Critic Score
100 point score based on reviews from various critics.
User Score
5 point score based on user ratings.
Not an American user?
DescriptionDepending on which title you use, and how you interpret it, this game is about a guy who a) rushes in before attacking b) attacks Russians (this was the mid-80s, when the US helped bin Laden do the same), or c) wears a rather goofy hat. One way or another, this arcade game arms you with a knife and sends you on a kamikaze mission against hordes of enemy fighters.
There are four distinct sections of gameplay, taking in a Missile Base, a Harbour, a Bridge, and an enemy Prison Camp. Extra weapons with limited ammunition can be collected along the way, which will make the task a lot easier. The level is divided into 3 horizontal levels, which can be moved between either by jumping or using ladders, and this gives a chance to avoid the more threatening mobs of enemy fighters.
Promo Images
There are no promo images for this game
Alternate Titles
- "Green Beret" -- European / Japanese title
- "グリーンベレー" -- Japanese spelling
Part of the Following Groups
User Reviews
There are no reviews for the Thomson TO release of this game. You can use the links below to write your own review or read reviews for the other platforms of this game.
Critic Reviews
|Mar, 1987
|8 out of 20
There are currently no topics for this game.
1001 Video GamesThe Arcade version of Green Beret appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
MSX versionFrom an interview at MSX Games Box, Konami UK's old PR-manager Dennis Henings:
Q: What did Konami Japan say when they saw the MSX version of Green Beret developed by Konami UK?
A: $%£&**(())++~~ ( or their equivalent) This was much the same as I did!
(The MSX port was, unlike most Konami games, made by an external company in the UK for Konami's old UK branch instead of at Konami's own offices in Japan.)
Related Web Sites
- X360A achievement guide (X360A's achievement guide for Rush'n Attack.)
Rola (8302) added Rush'n Attack (Thomson TO) on Jul 26, 2012
Other platforms contributed by Quapil (4825), Rola (8302), 666gonzo666 (61757), Sciere (548203), Brolin Empey (858), Kabushi (224038), Martin Smith (66862), Terok Nor (27284), koffiepad (10528) and Katakis | カタキス (40392)
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Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology's Museum encourages the public to explore ophthalmology's contributions to medicine on September 23
SAN FRANCISCO — On Friday, Sept. 23, 2011, the Museum of Vision, a public service program of the Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology will participate in Smithsonian Magazine's seventh annual Museum Day. The Museum of Vision will join participating museums and cultural institutions nationwide, including six San Francisco museums, in opening their doors free of charge to all visitors who download the Museum Day ticket from the Smithsonian Museum Day web site: www.smithsonian.com/museumday.
The Museum of Vision is the only institution in the United States whose sole purpose is to preserve the history of ophthalmology and celebrate its unique contributions to science and health. Today, the Museum of Vision has one of the world's leading collections of ophthalmic history, containing approximately 38,000 items including artifacts, archives and rare books.
The Museum of Vision is currently showcasing its anniversary exhibit entitled Collecting Ophthalmology: 30 years at the Museum in its San Francisco gallery. This exhibit highlights the wide array of artifacts dating from the 17th century to the present day. Included are selections from the rare book library, instrument collection and eyeglasses.A preview can be found online at the Museum's website.
"For more than 30 years, the mission of the Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology has been to advance ophthalmic education," said Jenny Benjamin, director of the Museum of Vision. "As a program of the Foundation, the Museum helps to achieve this objective by educating the public about the eye and eye health and the history of ophthalmology. The Smithsonian's Museum Day provides an excellent way to increase the public visibility of eye health issues and the many important contributions ophthalmology has made to medicine."
Those interested in perusing ophthalmic history, but who are unable to make it to the Museum's San Francisco gallery Sept. 23 are encouraged to go online to visit the Museum's virtual exhibits. Museumofvision.org is home to six online exhibits as well as thousands of photos and artifacts. The exhibits include:
Museum Day is a celebration of the dissemination of knowledge to anyone and everyone interested, without a price tag, emulating the free admission policy of the Smithsonian Institution's Washington, D.C.-based facilities. With support from CITGO, Museum Day 2011 is poised to be the largest to date, outdoing last year's record-breaking event.In 2010, museum goers downloaded 227,747 tickets resulting in more than 500,000 museum-goers visiting over 1,300 venues in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.
For a list of links to participating museums' and supporters' sites, visit www.smithsonian.com/museumday.
About the American Academy of Ophthalmology The American Academy of Ophthalmology is the world's largest association of eye physicians and surgeons—Eye M.D.s—with more than 30,000 members worldwide. Eye health care is provided by the three "O's" – ophthalmologists, optometrists and opticians. It is the ophthalmologist, or Eye M.D., who can treat it all: eye diseases and injuries, and perform eye surgery. To find an Eye M.D. in your area, visit the Academy's Web site at www.aao.org. The Academy's EyeSmart® public education program works to educate the public about the importance of eye health and to empower them to preserve their healthy vision, by providing the most trusted and medically accurate information about eye diseases, conditions and injuries. Visit www.geteyesmart.org to learn more.
About the Museum of Vision Established in 1980, the Museum of Vision is an educational program of The Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. It is the only institution in the United States whose sole purpose is to preserve the history of ophthalmology and celebrate its unique contributions to science and health. The Museum of Vision strives to inspire an appreciation of vision science, the ophthalmic professions and contributions made toward preventing blindness. For more information on the Museum of Vision, visit www.museumofvision.org.
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Enell sports bra is especially designed for full figured women. The Enell sports bra comes in ten sizes to fit most women from a 32 to a 60-inch bust measurement. Renelle Braaten is the founder and president of the Enell Sports Bra.
The Enell sports bra and Enell Lite Sports bra are specifically designed for full-busted women. They have become the favorite bras of women who take their physical activities seriously: trainers, physical education professionals, aerobics instructors, and women everywhere who work out hard. It has also found a niche with women whose work demands physical exertion, such as military personnel, fire fighters and police women. The Enell regular sports bra is designed for high-impact activity. Using a combination of compression and encapsulation, the bra holds breasts securely, reducing breast bounce. A hook-and-eye front closure makes the bra easy put on and take off. With a firm fit and maximum support, this is the bra to count on for maximum support. The Enell Lite is meant for low and medium impact activities, with a lower cut neckline. Women say it's not only perfect for their lower impact activities, but comfortable enough to wear all day.With ten sizes available, Enell sports bras are designed to fit most women, especially those with larger breasts. Enell knows that physically active and fit comes in all shapes and sizes.


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We've got to do some soul searching offensively. That's the bottom line. We've got really no throw game right now. The run game wasn't a whole lot better. —Kyle Whittingham, Utah head football coach
LOS ANGELES — When it came to finding positives after Saturday's 19-3 loss at USC, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham didn't have a lot to choose from. The Utes, he noted, played really well on defense.
"That's about it. That's where it stops," Whittingham said. "We struggled on 'O' obviously."
Utah (4-4 overall, 1-4 in Pac-12 play) managed just 201 yards of total offense and turned the ball over four times in the setback, all in the first half. The Utes failed to score a touchdown for the first time since a 26-3 loss to Boise State in the 2010 Las Vegas Bowl.
"We've got to do some soul searching offensively," said Whittingham, who added that the coaching staff will need to figure out the deficiencies and get them corrected. "That's the bottom line. We've got really no throw game right now. The run game wasn't a whole lot better."
The turnovers, he continued, are really what has led to the team's demise in its four losses this season.
Starting quarterback Travis Wilson threw two interceptions, upping his total to 14 on the year and 13 over the Utes' four Pac-12 setbacks. The sophomore, who played with a protective glove over a sprained index finger on his throwing hand, completed 5 of 14 passes for 51 yards.
Wilson told reporters everything was good as far as the injury goes.
"I thought I was throwing well all week, but I just wasn't making throws today," he said. "I definitely put this whole game on myself."
Backup Adam Schulz saw extensive action, completing 7 of 17 throws for 79 yards with one interception.
The Utes managed just 13 first downs in the game and a paltry 2.9 yards per play.
"A lot of it's on our shoulders," Schulz said. "If we don't perform well then the offense can't operate."
USC's defense had a lot to do with it. The Trojans entered the game with the Pac-12's top-ranked unit and wound up sacking the quarterbacks six times.
"They had a lot to do with our deficiencies," Whittingham said. "I'm not trying to paint the picture that they shouldn't get any credit because they should get a ton of credit. They're the ones that took the football away. They're the ones that made things happen with their defense."
Things started off well for the Utes. They scored on their first drive and ended a three-game run of allowing the opposition to do so.
A 42-yard field goal by Andy Phillips gave Utah an early 3-0 advantage. It capped a 10-play sequence that included a 25-yard run by Wilson on third-and-6 along the way.
USC's initial possession followed and consisted of three plays, a yard and a punt. The stop was Utah's first on an opening drive since the BYU game on Sept. 21. UCLA, Stanford and Arizona all put opening-series touchdowns on the board against the Utes in the games that followed.
The satisfaction, though, proved to be somewhat fleeting — thanks to a barrage of turnovers that followed over the balance of the half. Three interceptions and a fumble by Utah led to scores for USC.
The takeaways allowed the Trojans to build a 16-3 halftime lead. They pulled ahead late in the first quarter when Cody Kessler teamed with Nelson Agholor on a 30-yard scoring strike. The touchdown was set up six plays earlier when cornerback Josh Shaw intercepted a pass from Wilson that bounced off the hand of Utah receiver Dres Anderson.
Trailing 7-3, the Utes quickly turned it over once again. On the second play of the ensuing possession, Wilson had the ball jarred loose while being sacked by linebacker Jabari Ruffin. Teammate Anthony Sarao recovered it for the Trojans on the Utah 19 as time expired in the opening quarter.
Less than 90 seconds later, kicker Andre Heidari made a 35-yard field goal to make it 10-3.
Utah responded with a 13-play drive, but failed to convert on fourth-and-1 from the USC 11 when Anderson was stopped on a rush for no gain.
After forcing the Trojans to punt on the drive that followed, the Utes once again fell victim to a miscue. A Wilson pass intended for Geoffrey Norwood was intercepted by safety Leon McQuay III near midfield. With 23 seconds to go in the half, Heidari increased USC's lead with a 38-yard field goal.
The 13-3 score, though, lacked staying power. Wilson was replaced by Schulz, who was picked off on first down by USC safety Su'a Cravens. The freshman returned it 54 yards to the Utah 9 to set up another kick by Heidari with four seconds remaining in the second quarter. He connected on a 28-yarder as time expired to close out the half.
Heidari added a 40-yard field goal in the third quarter to bump the Trojans' comfort zone up to the game's final margin at 19-3.
USC (5-3, 2-2) prevailed despite amassing just 260 yards of total offense and 14 first downs. Utah's defense recorded five sacks, but failed to record any takeaways.
"I don't really think so much about our turnovers," said defensive end Trevor Reilly, who finished with a team-high 11 tackles. "I think about our lack of causing turnovers. We didn't do a good enough job. That could have been a difference in the game."
Utah has a bye next week and then plays host to Arizona State on Nov. 9.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @DirkFacer


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OK, so this should be the last batch of art from Halo 4 we showcase here on Fine At. Hopefully. Maybe.
While we've done a lot over the past few weeks, it's hard to resist when the artists involved keep sharing their work, and that work keeps being some of the best you'll see in the business.
This batch is from John Liberto, a man who you may know for his work on Epic's Gears of War, but who also did some fantastic work on Halo 4, including some promo images you've probably seen floating around (like, say on the cover of the game's terrific art book).
You can check out more of John's work on his personal site and CGHub page.
You can also see more Halo 4 art posts here: - Halo 4's Cortana Could Have Looked a Little Crazier - It's Like a Reference Book. Only, For Halo's Spartans. - It's Surprising How Much Art Goes Into Making Halo's Multiplayer Maps - Yes, Master Chief, I Know You're Part Robot, But I Want You To Get In This Bigger Robot - Halo 4 Was Shaped, At Least In Part, By One Of The World's Great Concept Artists - Halo 4's Environments Can Be As Beautiful As They Are Brutal