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How will we ever hope to make desperately needed progress in the breast cancer epidemic when the mainstream breast cancer movement continues to push an outdated and scientifically debunked agenda? The evidence has been mounting that the time has come to radically re-think the tenets of the breast cancer awareness movement because it is clear that the fundamental philosophy behind "early detection" is flawed.
I would hope, as I'm sure you do, that our country's leading cancer organizations with piles of money and clout would be the first to follow the science and put people's health before vested industry interests. But unfortunately I see that even powerful evidence cannot overcome the vested interests of many of the largest cancer organizations in the country – nonprofits like the American Cancer Society (ACS) and Susan G. Komen – which continue to push screening mammograms without caution.
Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published a strongly-worded perspective from the Swiss Medical Board concluding that mammography screening is "hard to justify". It followed the February publication of one of the largest studies on mammography to date in the British Medical Journal, which reported that screening seemingly healthy women with mammography to find breast cancers – before they could be felt as a lump in the breast – did not lead to lower death rates for average-risk women in their 40s and 50s.
In assessing the role of population-based screening, this absence of benefit is only compounded by evidence of harm: 21.9% of breast cancers found through mammography screening represented over-diagnosis, according to the Swiss Medical Board. This means that one in five women who was told she had breast cancer after her mammogram received unnecessary treatment for cancer. The implication of these results is that tens of thousands of women in the U.S. each year undergo surgery, radiation and chemotherapy for non-life threatening cancers.
Why, then, do mainstream cancer organizations, like ACS and Komen, continue to promise that "early detection saves lives" and "early detection is your best protection"? Their mantra has not changed despite the increasing certainty that such claims are inflated and imbalanced. If all of this sounds familiar to you, it's because evidence has been mounting for a long time that our best hope for ending the breast cancer epidemic does not, as we've been told for years through slick pink marketing campaigns, lie in mammograms.
The perspective published by the NEJM stems from an independent multidisciplinary panel's review of the data around mammography screening and concludes that "providing clear, unbiased information, promoting appropriate care, and preventing over-diagnosis and over-treatment would be a better choice [than promoting mammography screening programs]."
Yet the mainstream breast cancer movement, which is financed largely by pink ribbons and primarily focuses on early detection programs, has not responded with evidence-based changes to their positions and educational materials. The websites for ACS and for Komen continue to eagerly push screening mammograms for women age 40 and over without acknowledgment of the harms of screening programs. Indeed, the American Cancer Society offers to send women a "free breast cancer screening reminder" – and grow their own (monetizable) email list.
After years of pink-ribbon "awareness" campaigns, the NEJM study points out, many women in the US overestimate their personal risk of breast cancer. Furthermore, they vastly overestimate the benefit from mammograms. Women believe their risk of dying from breast cancer is double if they don't undergo regular mammography screening.
Yet the data show that there is no evidence that routine mammography screening for women at average risk actually saves lives.
At what point are we going to stop this madness, take stock of the science and acknowledge that widespread screening mammography for non-high risk women is not the answer to the breast cancer epidemic?When are we going to hold our cancer charities to a higher standard – and hold them accountable for pushing a scientifically invalid message?
And are we ever going to question what we actually have to show for the billions of dollars spent on screening mammograms?
Despite leading the world in health spending, the U.S. notably lags in many health outcomes. As studies and analyses on mammography screening continue to cast doubt on this strategy, there is a growing trend in Europe to phase out population-based mammography screening for healthy women at average risk of breast cancer. Yet here in the U.S., mammography screening remains a foundation of the mainstream breast cancer movement, which has told us for more than 30 years that early detection is the solution to the breast cancer epidemic.
The evidence is in. We will never address and end the breast cancer epidemic simply through mammography screening. And the problem is not simply the tool (mammography) but the basic philosophy (early detection).
Our healthcare choices are driven by the expectation that they will improve and extend our lives – yet mammography screening does neither. Instead, widespread population-based screening has created a population of over-diagnosed breast cancer "survivors" without actually saving the lives of many of those same women.
As each woman evaluates her health decisions, we must ensure that we all have access to unbiased information, free from conflict of interest and without the heavy thumb of vested interests tipping the balance.
Editor's Note: You may have seen Karuna's article back in April of this year when it was published in The Guardian. The piece generated a lot of discussion – over 1,000 people shared it on their Facebook page and over 150 people commented on the article itself. Many of you who have been through several iterations of these debates are used to the controversy that arises from publicly challenging routine mammography screening. What's new this time around is the growing agreement that the benefits of routine mammography screening have long been overstated, and the harms long underestimated. Ten years ago, our challenge to the conventional position that "early detection saves lives" and "early detection is your best protection" was highly unpopular. Our independent position was a hard truth for many to hear even though it was grounded in evidence because it went against the grain of pretty much every mainstream breast cancer organization—many of which were and still are heavily invested (both in terms of funders and core values) in the "early detection saves lives" philosophy. We've reached a tipping point recently and now increasingly we hear more discussion about this issue and less unquestioned acceptance of the earlier screening messages.
By Karuna Jaggar, Executive Director
Posted on June 23, 2014
by Caitlin C.
Posted at: Breast Cancer Action


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Garneau Thermal Pro Shoe Covers
If you're looking for one shoe cover to provide the most warmth for the harshest of conditions, then look no further. The Thermal Pro is Louis Garneau's warmest shoe cover that provides 360 degrees of customizable protection from the worst winter can bring. A seam-sealed 2 mm neoprene outer with a fleece-lined inner provides unparalleled warmth, a customizable under sole prevents anything from seeping up into your foot, and easy wide openings with waterproof zipper and covered zipper garage keep the fouls of winter weather at bay.
- Under Sole: Durable pre-cut rubber sole for better water resistance
- Side opening: Seam-sealed Hook and loop fastener with safety puller for easy slip on/off
- Shoe Cover Visibility Features: HiViz 360
- Fabric: 2 MM NEOPRENE – Isolates from cold, provides warmth

subset: commoncrawl


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Take a look at this question:
It is clearly off-topic, yet there will always be people who will answer it and not flag it. What should we do about these people:
- Leave a comment on the answer to tell that person to flag these kind of question in the future and not answer them?
- Downvote the answer?
- Flag the answer?


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Welcome to Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome Management. This course is part of the Positional Release Therapy Video Series by Human Kinetics. The content of this course is geared to provide continuing education credits for health care professionals, such as athletic trainers and physical therapists, who utilize manual therapy to alleviate medial tibial stress syndrome (MTSS) in their patients.
Learning Objectives
1. Articulate at least three factors that may contribute to the development of medial tibial stress syndrome (MTSS).
2. Demonstrate at least two key positional release therapy (PRT) techniques for treatment of MTSS.
3. Provide a rationale for the implementation of PRT in a treatment regimen for MTSS.
· Acute, subacute, and chronic pain
· Neuropathic pain
· Somatic referred pain
· Muscle spasm
· Tissue hypertonicity
· Range of motion deficit
· Joint hypomobility
· Fibromyalgia
· Central sensitization syndrome
· Peripheral sensitization
· Postconcussion syndrome
· Headache
· Myofascial pain syndrome
· Cumulative trauma
· Lymphatic compromise
· Hypoperfusion
· Muscular weakness
· Visceral dysfunction
· Absolute
· Open wounds
· Acute nerve root compression
· Infection
· Deep vein thrombosis
· Pain or neurologic symptomology during treatment
· Healing fracture
· Aneurysm
· Acute rheumatory conditions
· Hematoma
· Acute concussion
· Relative
· Herniated disc
· Vertebral stenosis
· Sutures
· History of motor neuron disease
Monitor the patient during marked cervical extension for vertebral artery compression signs.
Test yourself by purchasing this course


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What is a Life Space Analysis?
Most of us spend our lives trying to squeeze in just one more email, appointment, phone call, or … We dream of the day we can have nothing to do. But is that really what we want?
Twenty-five years ago in 1984, Dr. Lou Brown et al. of the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed The "Life Space Analysis" which has similar exercises to the 168 hours book. Is this a coincidence?
When people ask me, "What's the purpose of the lives of people with severe disabilities?" (Like why should we let them live and use up our resources?) I have many responses (depending on my mood and who they are…) but sometimes I will answer: "People with autism and severe disabilities can take the complicated out of life. We can see life's secrets because they help us think about basic truths we don't usually think about."
I think this is the beauty of the "Life Space Analysis." It makes us see what a person with autism's life actually looks like. It gets to normalization (click here) and core values:
* Is it important to know how each person spends their day?
* Is it important to have a circle of friends and a variety of people in our lives?
* Is it important that people get to go into the community and are not in one room for 24 hours, 365 days a year?
* Does a person with severe intellectual disabilities, autism, and/or other developmental disabilities know the difference?
Life Space Analysis
The Life Space Analysis evaluation tool looks at the 24 hours in the life of a person with autism and/or disabilities:
* What was the person doing every 15-30 minutes?
* Who else was with them?
* Where did this take place?
* Does this schedule stay the same every day and weekend?
For more information on this topic read the transcript of a presentation by Dr. Brown (click here).
Over the years, this has been a useful evaluation tool for my son Aaron who has the label of autism and severe disabilities.
When I wanted to show exactly how my son Aaron's day consists of mostly sitting on the couch, licking books and repeating "You Okay?", I'd get a consultant to conduct an ecological assessment using the Life Space Analysis. We've had some great consultants over the years: Alison Ford, Patrick Schwartz, and Wade Hitzing, as well as some local folks.
School Environments
When Aaron was school age, the "what, where, who" was pretty normal: a licensed teacher had the responsibility for planning Aaron's day around a curriculum and his IEP goals. There was a process, accountability, best practice standards, and a qualified team to make things work.
There was the normal rhythm of the school environment: bus rides, classes, and specials like gym, art, and music. There was the lunchroom, students in the halls, lockers, homeroom, weight training, therapy, and vocational job training around the school and in the community…
We had an excellent functional curriculum that looked at Aaron's domains (click here). There were also after-school activities like basketball games, track, and cross-country…
There were meaningful activities that filled the day, there were people who knew Aaron for a long time and had expectations that he grow and learn, and there were many rooms–spaces in the school, home, and community. When Aaron was in school, he was on no medications.
Lou Brown used to say, "The more rooms, the more people in a person's life–the more interesting that life will be."
Adult Environments
Last week when my husband Tom and I were taking the tours of possible adult day programs for Aaron. One of the things we instinctively looked for was the "who, what, and where." What was the number of rooms? The number of people? and, What was happening in each of these environments? All the components of the Life Space Analysis.
Our "Life Space Analysis"
We went through several places, but here is the last center we visited:
The woman giving our tour had worked with Aaron 10 years ago when he was in transition from High School. She was a trained teacher and job coach. It was a vocational job and Aaron had a great experience. We were thrilled this woman might be back in Aaron's life. She would know what he was like before he started to lose his skills and regress. Maybe she would be our ticket to getting Aaron a day filled with meaningful activities and people who cared about him?
The staff in this large center was especially proud of their "sensory room" where four people were watching a large 3-D movie on a big screen.
There were other rooms: a fenced "outdoor area," an "art room" where they made and sold ceramic ornaments. There was a "cooking room" with kitchen appliances.
There was a large multi-purpose activity room where they had a party the day before.
We were told every day 6 vans took people out into the community in small groups to swimming, the Y, the park, shopping…. That sounded pretty good.
Aaron in this Environment
Tom and I were trying to imagine what this environment would mean for our son Aaron, who is 35 and has the label of autism. What did our Life Space Analysis tell us?
For over an hour, we visited the different rooms in the center, but there were only staff people in all these areas. Which struck us as odd.
All the "clients" (8-10 people with disabilities) were clustered in each of the 4 day "classrooms." So around 40 or so people were there that day, all in those 4 rooms and the rest of the building was basically empty.
We only went in one of the classes, but we saw adults making halloween pumpkins–just like every pre-school in the country. NOT age-appropriate.
Most people were just sitting at the table doing nothing. One girl was talking in such a high pitch voice, it hurt your ears. This was a concern.
What would Aaron's day look like?
When we asked what Aaron's day would look like, we found out only the most capable people, who could be semi-independent, were allowed to go the the art and outdoor areas because they needed little supervision.
People like Aaron would only go to the art room… once in a while. But they couldn't make any promises.
If Aaron was interested in going swimming at the Y, he might get to do it one time a month. But they couldn't make any promises.
He would get to go to the sensory room with his group, and they had some music instruments that might be interesting to Aaron, but many of the other people liked the quiet and watching movies on the big movie screen. So again, they couldn't make any promises.
There were also two empty rooms at the center. They were thinking of developing them when they got the funds for new furniture: "Maybe a place for people to come and eat lunch, maybe a microwave where they could fix their own lunches." But, no promises.
In summary:
All the advances of the last 50 years, everything we have learned about people with autism and severe disabilities in special education programs, and the research of best practice are not being used.
Aaron, unless some miracle happens, will continue to lose the precious skills we have all worked so hard to create.
The staff does not have the training or resources to be able to replicate the school programs Aaron and the other "clients" experienced. They could go and see these programs in action. Aaron's High School teacher has repeatedly invited Aaron's staff to visit and the school is only a couple of miles away.
Tom and I both concluded this particular program was not going to work for Aaron.
We talked about just bringing Aaron home, and me volunteering every day in the center (but they wouldn't listen to me if I was there). So, what to do?
Dejectedly, we called our care coordinator to schedule another visit to yet another center… and then good news.
The care coordinator talked to the director of another program where Aaron would receive a one-on-one staff person for 3 days a week. A Reprieve. A bit of Hope.
If you are concerned about your child's, or your own quality of life, look at the activities, people, and rooms in your lives. Maybe the ecological assessment, Life Space Analysis would help.
Speak Your Mind: Please leave your ideas in the comments.
Do you think the Life Space Analysis tool would be useful for people with autism and/or developmental disabilities?
Would it (or the 168 hours book) be useful for your own life?
Can you see the difference between having a life with too much to do, contrasted with a life with days and days of nothing to do?
Can we just sit and watch our children lose skills and deteriorate as adults?
Can we be satisfied with our own lives if we just sit and do nothing?
Keep Climbing: Onward and Upward
All my best,
Brown, L., Shiraga, B., York, J., Zanella, K. & Rogan, P. (1984). A Life Space Analysis Strategy for Students with Severe Intellectual Disabilities. L.Brown, M. Sweet, B. Shiraga, J. York, K. Zanella, P. Rogan & R. Loomis (Eds). Educational Programs for Students with Severe Handicaps, Vol XIV. Madison: MMSD.
And the difference is…
The Life Space Analysis for Aaron would show there is little for Aaron to do, few people to be with, no expectations that things could be better in his life, and the life of people with severe disabilities who were in this center.


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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Deputies in Kansas City, Missouri serving an eviction notice on Wednesday morning got quite the surprise when they found some illegal animals at the home.
A six-foot, 150-pound alligator, three pythons, a rabbit and several "domesticated" animals, including cats, were found at a home in the Kansas City, according to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.
Here's some information from @KCMO's John Baccala, spokesperson for Neighborhood & Housing Services. He says this is the first alligator call he's been to in his 3 years on the job. @41actionnews pic.twitter.com/Sel6ThxXxw
— Andres Gutierrez (@AFGutierrez) November 7, 2018
An exotic animal expert from Greenwood, Missouri, helped Kansas City Animal Health officers wrangle the alligator from the home. The snakes and the rabbit will go to KC Pet Project, and the alligator will go to Monkey Island Rescue in Greenwood.
Sean Casey, who owns the animals, could be cited for having them. He will not get the exotic animals back, although he will be allowed to keep the cats.
This is Catfish's owner who is being evicted. @41actionnews pic.twitter.com/KbSZ2zYoiQ
— Andres Gutierrez (@AFGutierrez) November 7, 2018
Casey said that he has had the reptile, named Catfish, for four years and takes good care of it.
"He eats better than I do," Casey said, adding that Catfish eats chicken nuggets, steak, rats, deer and fish.
The rabbit was not food for the alligator, though its name is "Dinner," Casey said.


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At Walt Disney World, the smiles won't have to be hidden for much longer. Starting Thursday, visitors to the theme park resort will be able to remove their masks temporarily for outdoor photos.
The change announced Tuesday tweaks a requirement that all workers and visitors age 2 and up wear masks except when they are actively eating or drinking, provided they are socially distanced and not moving about.
The mask mandate includes those who already have been vaccinated. Because of the pandemic, workers and visitors are required to wear masks, get temperature checks upon arriving and follow social distancing markers.
The announcement does not impact Disneyland, which has remained closed since the start of the pandemic. The California-based park is slated to reopen April 30.


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Frisco, TX – After junior middle linebacker Grant Olson went through a practice on Thursday, the North Dakota State Bison believe he will be ready to play in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Game on Saturday.
Olson, the defending national champions' leading tackler, was hospitalized earlier this week in Fargo, N.D., for complications with his appendix.
"Well, we were a little bit concerned," NDSU coach Craig Bohl said. "It was a little bit touch-and-go. The great thing about Grant is nobody is as instinctive or intuitive or has a better understanding as to what we're doing than Grant, so it was good to get him out there at practice."
North Dakota State (13-1) will try to beat Sam Houston State (11-3) for the second straight year in the national championship game on Saturday at FC Dallas Stadium.
Olson has registered 146 tackles this season and set a school record with 29 total tackles in a quarterfinal-round playoff victory versus Wofford.
"We are happy to be back, but we also want to win the championship," Olson said. "There are not too many times where you play the same team back-to-back in the national championship, so to play Sam Houston State makes it all that more interesting. We are familiar with them and they are familiar with us, so it is going to be even more of a tightly contested game."


text: Douay-Rheims Bible The Conquest of Ai 1And the Lord said to Josue: Fear not, nor be thou dismayed: take with thee all the multitude of fighting men, arise and go up to the town of Hai. Behold I have delivered into thy hand the king thereof, and the people, and the city, and the land. 2And thou shalt do to the city of Hai, and to the king thereof, as thou hast done to Jericho, and to the king thereof: but the spoils and all the cattle you shall take for a prey to yourselves: lay an ambush for the city behind it. 3And Josue arose, and all the army of the fighting men with him, to go up against Hai: and he sent thirty thousand chosen valiant men in the night, 4And commanded them, saying: Lay an ambush behind the city: and go not very far from it: and be ye all ready. 5But I and the rest of the multitude which is with me; will approach on the contrary side against the city. And when they shall come out against us, we will flee, and turn our backs, as we did before: 6Till they pursuing us be drawn farther from the city: for they will think that we flee as before. 7And whilst we are fleeing, and they pursuing, you shall arise out of the ambush, and shall destroy the city: and the Lord your God will deliver it into our hands. 8And when you shall have taken it, set it on fire, and you shall do all things so as I have commanded. 9And he sent them away, and they went on to the place of the ambush, and abode between Bethel and Hai, on the west side of the city of Hai. But Josue stayed that night in the midst of the people, 10And rising early in the morning, he mustered his soldiers, and went up with the ancients in the front of the army environed with the aid of the fighting men. 11And when they were come, and were gone up over against the city, they stood on the north side of the city, between which and them there was a valley in the midst. 12And he had chosen five thousand men, and set them to lie in ambush between Bethel and Hai, on the west side of the same city: 13But all the rest of the army went in battle array on the north side, so that the last of that multitude reached to the west side of the city. So Josue went that night, and stood in the midst of the valley. 14And when the king of Hai saw this, he made haste in the morning, and went out with all the army of the city, and set it in battle array toward the desert, not knowing that there lay an ambush behind his back. 15But Josue, and all Israel gave back, making as if they were afraid, and fleeing by the way of the wilderness. 16But they shouting together, and encouraging one another, pursued them. And when they were come from the city, 17And not one remained in the city of Hai and of Bethel, that did not pursue after Israel, leaving the towns open as they had rushed out, 18The Lord said to Josue: Lift up the shield that is in thy hand, towards the city of Hai, for I will deliver it to thee. 19And when he had lifted up his shield towards the city, the ambush that lay hid, rose up immediately: and going to the city, took it and set it on fire. 20And the men of the city, that pursued after Josue, looking back and seeing the smoke of the city rise up to heaven, had no more power to flee this way or that way: especially as they that had counterfeited flight, end were going toward the wilderness, turned back most valiantly against them that pursued. 21So Josue and all Israel seeing that the city was taken, and that the smoke of the city rose up, returned and slew the men of Hai. 22And they also that had taken and set the city on fire, issuing out of the city to meet their own men, began to cut off the enemies who were surrounded by them. So that the enemies being cut off on both sides, not one of so great a multitude was saved. 23And they took the king of the city of Hai alive, and brought him to Josue. 24So all being slain that had pursued after Israel in his flight to the wilderness, and tailing by the sword in the same place, the children of Israel returned and laid waste the city. 25And the number of them that fell that day, both of men and women, was twelve thousand persons all of the city of Hai. 26But Josue drew not back his hand, which he had stretched out on high, holding the shield, till all the inhabitants of Hai were slain. 27And the children of Israel divided among them the cattle and the prey of the city, as the Lord had commanded Josue. 28And he burned the city, and made it a heap for ever: 29And he hung the king thereof on a gibbet until the evening and the going down of the sun. Then Josue commanded, and they took down his carcass from the gibbet: and threw it in the very entrance of the city, heaping upon it a great heap of stones, which remaineth until this present day. Joshua Renews the Covenant 30Then Josue built an altar to the Lord the God of Israel in mount Hebal, 31As Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the children of Israel, and it is written in the book of the law of Moses: an altar of unhewn stones which iron had not touched: and he offered upon it holocausts to the Lord, and immolated victims of peace offerings. 32And he wrote upon stones the Deuteronomy of the law of Moses, which he had ordered before the children of Israel. 33And all the people, and the ancients, and the princes and judges stood on both sides of the ark, before the priests that carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, both the stranger and he that was born among them, half of them by mount Garizim, and half by mount Hebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded. And first he blessed the people of Israel. 34After this he read all the words of the blessing and the cursing and all things that were written in the hook of the law. 35He left out nothing of those things which Moses had commanded, but he repeated all before all the people of Israel, with the women and children and strangers that dwelt among them. |


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Merceko Gifts International Limited is a professional exporter from China engaged in the area of promotional gifts.Our highly experienced team is perfectly suited to help you get your message across with maximum impact.We do this by giving you access to an extremely wide range of promotional items,ensuring you get the right product for your target audience and bringing your marketing campaign to life.
For years we focus on how to adjust the 3 factors between Price,Quality & Delivery Time for every chance of business.Our mission is to help you create long-lasting relationships with your clients through the power of promotional products.We have been working on thousands of items in the lines of Textiles,Plastic and Medical Promotions.Still you can send us your special reuqirement via email or call us,and we will do the rest!
Some of the biggest,best and well know brands in the world are increasingly turning to Shine Peak Promotions to source the right promotional items to support their marketing campaigns.Below you will find examples of some of the high profile customers who trust us to deliver the goods time and time again.


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Korean badminton players, Kim Ki Jung and Lee Yong Dae, have each received a one-year sanction for violating the requirements relating to filing whereabouts information and resulting missed tests under the BWF Anti-Doping Regulations (Section 2.4).
Their period of ineligibility is from 23 January 2014 to midnight on 23 January 2015, during which time the players cannot participate in any capacity in a competition or activity as defined under Section 10.10.1 of the BWF Anti-Doping Regulations – Status during Ineligibility.
As part of Badminton World Federation's (BWF) Registered Testing Pool of International Level badminton athletes, Kim and Lee were required to provide whereabouts information for the BWF to conduct out-of-competition testing. In 2013, both athletes accumulated three (3) whereabouts failures in connection with this administrative process. The Koreans appeared before a three-member BWF Doping Hearing Panel on Monday 13 January, 2014, to answer these charges.
The panel concluded there were extenuating circumstances to only sanction the players for one (1) year of ineligibility (as opposed to the maximum two years) due to the Badminton Korea Association's failure, on behalf of the players, to make diligent efforts to keep the BWF informed about the players' whereabouts. Due to such lack of diligent efforts, the panel has recommended that the BWF should fine Badminton Korea Association (BWF Anti-Doping Regulation 12.1 and 12.2.3). Given this recommendation, the BWF has initiated a process to decide on any additional disciplinary sanction against the Badminton Korea Association.
Kim and Lee have the right to appeal (Clause 13.2.1 of BWF Anti-Doping Regulations) to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland, at latest midnight KL time on 17 February, 2014.
Please click here for the case summaries.


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If you search for Sealcoating Driveway Waltham MA, you will find Monarch Pavement, a local sealcoating contractor servicing Waltham MA and the surrounding towns. For over 25 years, the team at Monarch Pavement has been providing professionally done sealcoating jobs to residential customers with an eye for quality and a commitment to excellence.
Is your driveway in need of repair? If your driveway begins to tire and become weathered, the look of your entire property will be significantly decrease. A driveway is often times an underrated part of a homes appearance. Often times, it is the first thing people will step on when arriving at your house. Don't let a worn down driveway drag down the rest of your property and call our experts today.
Keep your driveway or parking lot looking great and performing well for years to come with a sealcoating project that:
Learn More about sealcoating here.
At Monarch Pavement, our company works with commercial and residential clients working on paving and asphalt projects of all kinds. We are able to bring top quality paving at affordable rates with 100% customer satisfaction guaranteed.
Our team prides ourselves on safety and customer service. Our team holds the highest level of OSHA 30 certification and train all of our employees with the proper safety guidelines. Our contractors bring those safety procedures to every job, as we promise to always meet or exceed all safety guidelines.
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Are you interested in learning more about professionally done sealcoating for your driveway in Waltham MA? Don't hesitate to get in contact with the team at Monarch Pavement today. Our team is ready for you call, so contact us at 781-365-1418 or request an estimate online today. We look forward to getting started on your driveway.


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Development downloads (beta releases) and additional information can be found on the UnCodeX page on the UnrealWiki.
UnCodeX is a combination of a couple of old tools for UnrealScript development: UClasses and UnDox, but it has much more features.
UnCodeX can create a class and package tree from the UnrealScript sources, analyse the content of each class for later use.
UnCodeX also gives you the ability to create a high detailed HTML API reference from your code. It includes all definitions made in classes, syntax highlighted source code, links to the type declarations, automatic JavaDoc-like documentation from your source code and much more.
Example HTML docoumentation
- Unreal 1 UnrealScript code
- Unreal Tournament UnrealScript code
- UT2003 UnrealScript code
- UT2004 UnrealScript code
- Unreal 2 UnrealScript code
- Unreal 2 XMP UnrealScript code
Currently supported UnrealEngine games
- Unreal
- Unreal Tournament
- Unreal 2 including XMP
If UnCodeX doesn't work with the unrealscript of a different game, please email me the unrealscript source of the game so I can fix the parser. And add it to the supported list.
- Automatically detects packages, but it is possible to exclude packages
- Multiple source code directories
- Customizable layout
- Customizable hot keys
- Application Toolbar support (can snap to the left and right side of the screen)
- Compile classes using your favorite compiler front-end
- Launch a test server from UnCodeX
- Join your test server
- Batch execution via commandline
- Import package priority settings from game .ini files
- possible to tag package to distinguish original packages/classes from custom packages/classes
- Commandline version for documentation generation (MS Windows and GNU\Linux i386 builds)
- Class tree and Package viewer
- Class inheritance tree
- Package tree
- Inline search
- Find a classes in the tree (using part of the name)
- Class full-text search (with regular expression support)
- Syntax hilighted source code preview of a selected class
- Class property inspector
- Package property editor
- Create subclass dialog
- Recursive delete classes
- Move classes to a different package
- property inspector to list add variables/functions/etc. in a class
- Documention generator
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There is a separate page describing the conversion between SDSS magnitudes and UBVRcIc, and ugriz colors of Vega and the Sun.
The objective of the photometric calibration process is to tie the SDSS imaging data to an AB magnitude system, and specifically to the "natural system" of the 2.5m telescope defined by the photon-weighted effective wavelengths of each combination of SDSS filter, CCD response, telescope transmission, and atmospheric transmission at a reference airmass of 1.3 as measured at APO (see transmission curves for SDSS 2.5m telescope).
The calibration process ultimately involves combining data from three telescopes: the USNO 40-in on which our primary standards were first measured, the SDSS Photometric Telescope (or PT) , and the SDSS 2.5m telescope. At the beginning of the survey it was expected that there would be a single u'g'r'i'z' system. However, in the course of processing the SDSS data, the unpleasant discovery was made that the filters in the 2.5m telescope have significantly different effective wavelengths from the filters in the PT and at the USNO. These differences have been traced to the fact that the short-pass interference films on the 2.5-meter camera live in the same vacuum as the detectors, and the resulting dehydration of the films decreases their effective refractive index. This results in blueward shifts of the red edges of the filters by about 2.5 percent of the cutoff wavelength, and consequent shifts of the effective wavelengths of order half that. The USNO filters are in ambient air, and the hydration of the films exhibits small temperature shifts; the PT filters are kept in stable very dry air and are in a condition about halfway between ambient and the very stable vacuum state. The rather subtle differences between these systems are describable by simple linear transformations with small color terms for stars of not-too-extreme color, but of course cannot be so transformed for very cool objects or objects with complex spectra. Since standardization is done with stars, this is not a fundamental problem, once the transformations are well understood.
It is these subtle issues that gave rise to our somewhat awkward nomenclature for the different magnitude systems:
Previous reductions of the data, including that used in the EDR, were based on inconsistent photometric equations; this is why we referred to the 2.5m photometry with asterisks: u*g*r*i*z*. With the DR1, the photometric equations are properly self-consistent, and we can now remove the stars, and refer to u g r i z photometry with the 2.5m.
The photometric calibration of the SDSS imaging data is a multi-step process, due to the fact that the images from the 2.5m telescope saturate at approximately r = 14, fainter than typical spectrophotometric standards, combined with the fact that observing efficiency would be greatly impacted if the 2.5m needed to interrupt its routine scanning in order to observe separate calibration fields.
The first step involved setting up a primary standard star network of 158 stars distributed around the Northern sky. These stars were selected from a variety of sources and span a range in color, airmass, and right ascension. They were observed repeatedly over a period of two years using the US Naval Observatory 40-in telescope located in Flagstaff, Arizona. These observations are tied to an absolute flux system by the single F0 subdwarf star BD+17_4708, whose absolute fluxes in SDSS filters are taken from Fukugita et al. 1996 As noted above, the photometric system defined by these stars is called the u'g'r'i'z' system. You can look at the table containing the calibrated magnitudes for these standard stars.
Most of these primary standards have brightnesses in the range r = 8 - 13, and would saturate the 2.5-meter telescope's imaging camera in normal operations. Therefore, a set of 1520 41.5x41.5 arcmin2 transfer fields, called secondary patches, have been positioned throughout the survey area. These secondary patches are observed with the PT; their size is set by the field of view of the PT camera. These secondary patches are grouped into sets of four. Each set spans the full set of 12 scan lines of a survey stripe along the width of the stripe, and the sets are spaced along the length of a stripe at roughly 15 degree intervals. The patches are observed by the PT in parallel with observations of the primary standards and processed using the Monitor Telescope Pipeline (mtpipe). The patches are first calibrated to the USNO 40-in u'g'r'i'z' system and then transformed to the 2.5m ugriz system; both initial calibration to the u'g'r'i'z' system and the transformation to the ugriz system occur within mtpipe. The ugriz-calibrated patches are then used to calibrate the 2.5-meter's imaging data via the Final Calibrations Pipeline (nfcalib).
The PT has two main functions: it measures the atmospheric extinction on each clear night based on observations of primary standards at a variety of airmasses, and it calibrates secondary patches in order to determine the photometric zeropoint of the 2.5m imaging scans. The extinction must be measured on each night the 2.5m is scanning, but the corresponding secondary patches can be observed on any photometric night, and need not be coincident with the image scans that they will calibrate.
The Monitor Telescope Pipeline (mtpipe), so called for historical reasons, processes the PT data. It performs three basic functions:
There is a document describing photometric equations used in items 2 and 3 in detail .
The final calibration pipeline (nfcalib) works much like mtpipe, computing the transformation between psf photometry (or other photometry) as observed by the 2.5m telescope and the final SDSS photometric system. The pipeline matches stars between a camera column of 2.5m data and an overlapping secondary patch. Each camera column of 2.5m data is calibrated individually. There are of order 100 stars in each patch in the appropriate color and magnitude range in the overlap.
The transformation equations are a simplified form of those used by mtpipe. Since mtpipe delivers patch stars already calibrated to the 2.5m ugriz system, the nfcalib transformation equations have the following form: mfilter_inst(2.5m) = mfilter(patch) + afilter + kfilterX, where, for a given filter, mfilter_inst(2.5m) is the instrumental magnitude of the star in the 2.5m data [-2.5 log10(counts/exptime)], mfilter(patch) is the magnitude of the same star in the PT secondary patch, afilter is the photometric zeropoint, kfilter is the first-order extinction coefficient, and X is the airmass of the 2.5m observation. The extinction coefficient is taken from PT observations on the same night, linearly interpolated in time when multiple extinction determinations are available. (Generally, however, mtpipe calculates only a single kfilter per filter per night, so linear interpolation is usually unnecessary.) A single zeropoint afilter is computed for each filter from stars on all patches that overlap a given CCD in a given run. Observations are weighted by their estimated errors, and sigma-clipping is used to reject outliers. At one time it was thought that a time dependent zero point might be needed to account for the fact that the 2.5m camera and corrector lenses rotate relative to the telescope mirrors and optical structure; however, it now appears that any variations in throughput are small compared to inherent fluctuations in the calibration of the patches themselves. The statistical error in the zeropoint is usually constrained to be less than 1.35 percent in u and z and 0.9 percent in gri.
With Data Release 1 (DR1), we now routinely meet our requirements of photometric uniformity of 2% in r, g-r, and r-i and of 3% in u-g and i-z (rms).
This is a substantial improvement over the photometric uniformity achieved in the Early Data Release (EDR), where the corresponding values were approximately 5% in r, g-r, and r-i and 5% in u-g and i-z.
The improvements between the photometric calibration of the EDR and the DR1 can be traced primarily to the use of more robust and consistent photometric equations by mtpipe and nfcalib and to improvements to the PSF-fitting algorithm and flatfield methodology in the Photometric Pipeline (photo).
Note that this photometric uniformity is measured based upon relatively bright stars which are no redder than M0; hence, these measures do not include effects of the u band red leak (see caveats below) or the model magnitude bug.
First, note that all SDSS images ("corrected frames", fpC*.fit files) have a "soft bias" of 1000 data numbers (DN) added so they can be stored as unsigned integer. Secondly, since DR1, the sky has not been subtracted from the corrected frames, but is stored in the header keyword sky in units of DN. The tsObj*.fit and related tables and the CAS database store sky values as surface brightness (maggies/sq. arcsec., where one maggie corresponds to 0 magnitudes/sq. arcsec).
All calibrated magnitudes in the photometric catalogs are given not as conventional Pogson astronomical magnitudes, but as asinh magnitudes. We show how to obtain both kinds of magnitudes from observed count rates from the SDSS images and vice versa.
See further down for conversion of SDSS magnitudes to physical fluxes. For both kinds of magnitudes, there are two ways to obtain the zeropoint information for the conversion.
Here you first need the following information from the tsField files:
aa = zeropoint kk = extinction coefficient and airmass
To get a calibrated magnitude, you first need to determine the extinction-corrected ratio of the observed count rate to the zero-point count rate:
exptime = 53.907456 sec
f0 = 10-0.4*aa
f/f0 = counts/exptime * 100.4*(aa + kk * airmass)
Then, calculate either the conventional ("Pogson") or the SDSS asinh magnitude from f/f0:
mag = -2.5 * log10(f/f0)
error(mag) = 2.5 / ln(10) * error(counts) / counts
mag = -(2.5/ln(10))*[asinh((f/f0)/2b)+ln(b)]
error(mag) = 2.5 / ln(10) * error(counts)/exptime * 1/2b * 100.4*(aa + kk * airmass) / sqrt(1 + [(f/f0)/2b]2)
Note: These values of the softening parameter b are set to be approximately 1-sigma of the sky noise; thus, only low signal-to-noise ratio measurements are affected by the difference between asinh and Pogson magnitudes. The final column gives the asinh magnitude associated with an object for which f/f0 = 10b; the difference between Pogson and asinh magnitudes is less than 1% for objects brighter than this.
The calibrated asinh magnitudes are given in the tsObj files. To obtain counts from an asinh magnitude, you first need to work out f/f0 by inverting the asinh relation above. You can then determine the number of counts from f/f0 using the zero-point, extinction coefficient, airmass, and exposure time.
The equations above are exact for DR1 and later releases. Strictly speaking, for EDR photometry, the corrected counts should include a color term cc*(color-color0)*(X-X0) (cf. equation 15 in section 4.5 in the EDR paper), but it turns out that generally, cc*(color-color0)*(X-X0) < 0.01 mag and the color term can be neglected. Hence the calibration looks identical for EDR and DR1.
The "flux20" keyword in the header of the corrected frames (fpC files) approximately gives the net number of counts for a 20th mag object. So instead of using the zeropoint and airmass correction term from the tsField file, you can determine the corrected zero-point flux as
f/f0 = counts/(108 * flux20)
Then proceed with the calculation of a magnitude from f/f0 as above.
The relation is only approximate because the final calibration information (provided by nfcalib) is not available at the time the corrected frames are generated. We expect the error here (compared to the final calibrated magnitude) to be of order 0.1 mag or so, as estimated from a couple of test cases we have tried out.
On a related note, in DR1 one can also use relations similar to the above to estimate the sky level in magnitudes per sq. arcsec (1 pixel = 0.396 arcsec). Either use the header keyword "sky" in the fpC files, or remember to first subtract "softbias" (= 1000) from the raw background counts in the fpC files. Note the sky level is also given in the tsField files. This note only applies to the DR1 and later data releases. Note also that the calibrated sky brightnesses reported in the tsField values have been corrected for atmospheric extinction.
The fpC (corrected frames) and fpObjc (object tables with counts for each object instead of magnitudes) files report counts (or "data numbers", DN). However, it is the number of photo-electrons which is really counted by the CCD detectors and which therefore obeys Poisson statistics. The number of photo-electrons is related to the number of counts through the gain (which is really an inverse gain):
photo-electrons = counts * gain
The gain is reported in the headers of the tsField and fpAtlas files (and hence also in the field table in the CAS). The total noise contributed by dark current and read noise (in units of DN2) is also reported in the tsField files in header keyword dark_variance (and correspondingly as darkVariance in the field table in the CAS), and also as dark_var in the fpAtlas header.
Thus, the error in DN is given by the following expression:
error(counts) = sqrt([counts+sky]/gain + Npix*(dark_variance+skyErr)),
where counts is the number of object counts, sky is the number of sky counts summed over the same area as the object counts, Npix is the area covered by the object in pixels, gain and dark_variance and skyErr are the gain, dark variance, and the error on the estimate of the average sky level in the frame, respectively, from the corresponding tsField file.
The SDSS photometry is intended to be on the AB system (Oke & Gunn 1983), by which a magnitude 0 object should have the same counts as a source of Fnu = 3631 Jy. However, this is known not to be exactly true, such that the photometric zeropoints are slightly off the AB standard. We continue to work to pin down these shifts. Our present estimate, based on comparison to the STIS standards of Bohlin, Dickinson, & Calzetti~(2001) and confirmed by SDSS photometry and spectroscopy of fainter hot white dwarfs, is that the u band zeropoint is in error by 0.04 mag, uAB = uSDSS - 0.04 mag, and that g, r, and i are close to AB. These statements are certainly not precise to better than 0.01 mag; in addition, they depend critically on the system response of the SDSS 2.5-meter, which was measured by Doi et al. (2004, in preparation). The z band zeropoint is not as certain at this time, but there is mild evidence that it may be shifted by about 0.02 mag in the sense zAB = zSDSS + 0.02 mag. The large shift in the u band was expected because the adopted magnitude of the SDSS standard BD+17 in Fukugita et al.(1996) was computed at zero airmass, thereby making the assumed u response bluer than that of the USNO system response.
We intend to give a fuller report on the SDSS zeropoints, with uncertainties, in the near future. Note that our relative photometry is quite a bit better than these numbers would imply; repeat observations show that our calibrations are better than 2%.
As explained in the preceding section, the SDSS system is nearly an AB system. Assuming you know the correction from SDSS zeropoints to AB zeropoints (see above), you can turn the AB magnitudes into a flux density using the AB zeropoint flux density. The AB system is defined such that every filter has a zero-point flux density of 3631 Jy (1 Jy = 1 Jansky = 10-26 W Hz-1 m-2 = 10-23 erg s-1 Hz-1 cm-2).
S = 3631 Jy * f/f0
Then you need to apply the correction for the zeropoint offset between the SDSS system and the AB system. See the description of SDSS to AB conversion above.
Ubercal is an algorithm to photometrically calibrate wide field optical imaging surveys, that simultaneously solves for the calibration parameters and relative stellar fluxes using overlapping observations. The algorithm decouples the problem of relative calibrations from that of absolute calibrations; the absolute calibration is reduced to determining a few numbers for the entire survey. We pay special attention to the spatial structure of the calibration errors, allowing one to isolate particular error modes in downstream analyses. Applying this to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging data, we achieve ~1% relative calibration errors across 8500 sq.deg. in griz; the errors are ~2% for the u band. These errors are dominated by unmodelled atmospheric variations at Apache Point Observatory. For a detailed description of ubercal, please see the Ubercal paper (Padmanabhan et al. 2007, ApJ submitted [astro-ph/0703454]).
This improved calibration is available only through the ubercal table in the CAS


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Developer/Publisher: Exordium Games || Overall: 4.0/10
Click here for the Bear With Me: Episode 2 review.
I "beared" with this game for nearly ten hours spread out over a year. What we got for a third and final episode was underwhelming at best. The last throws of the story went in a direction that took me by surprise — in a bad way. Three banana cookies later, I'm completely in awe of the lack of gameplay Bear With Me: Episode 3 has and how much of the creative capital went towards the boring, sappy, and superficially contrived story.
The story could have gone in a lot of different directions, and perhaps I could have guessed where the story was heading, but we are left with something limp and illogical. If it had to deal with subject matter that was going on, it might have actually been worthwhile. I may have even been able to sweep issues with the story under the rug if there had been more gameplay; the entire episode is a cycle of ten minutes of gameplay and then thirty minutes of story, until the last act where it's about half story and half lazily-designed puzzles and dialogue trees. Why wasn't it just a visual novel if they were so uninterested in having a game? There weren't as many puzzles or extra objects to click on compared to previous episodes and the jokes were almost completely excised — quite a departure from the "selling points" touted for the title. There are multiple endings, but none of the choices you made throughout really seemed to have mattered, or at least they didn't make it obvious that something was affected in any particular way.
Most importantly, the conclusion to this long story needed to bring worthwhile closure. There was no pay off from the creepy imagery portrayed in any of the three episodes. The antagonist doesn't get brought to justice. Nothing really foreshadowed what the "point" of the story was until the last thirty minutes where you could instantly see where it was headed. There was never anything smart or worthwhile happening. The story hit a wall and since I couldn't come to care for Amber's character or the situation she is in due to the ridiculousness of the plot devices, I was left simply groaning. Amber still remained as emotionally detached as ever except for a pivotal moment just before the end sequence — I was frankly surprised they even bothered animating something new for her.
In my experience, the audio was buggy and dialogue cut off at the last word often. The time it took for the next line of dialogue was very short and didn't sound natural (not exclusive to this episode, I might add). Oddly, this episode was noticeably littered with weird typos or grammar issues, unlike the first two episodes. The art is about equal to what has been seen before, and much of it re-used except for the new locales and a couple of new incidental characters. Only a couple of characters show up more than one time, but the majority of the characters you've ever met through the entirety of the three episodes ended up being throwaways; their fates are of no concern because you're never given a reason to care for them.
There's really not much more to say about the game without completely spoiling it.
Basically, the story doesn't matter. The last thirty minutes of the game is the basis for the entire conflict, and we find the underlying reason we are in this mess is "banana cookies."
Banana cookies??????????? Yes, that's right folks.
Here's the situation: if you are deathly allergic to bananas, yet your parents buy and bake cookies with them then only feed them to your brother, that is considered child endangerment. Your parents are playing with literal fire keeping bananas in the house to begin with. But these idiots are cooking them, having the fumes go everywhere, and also have to constantly worry how their ten-year old daughter might eat a banana product because she's a dumb kid. Not to mention, feeding supposedly-tasty banana cookies to her brother exclusively while only giving the daughter shitty cookies to eat instead… What the fuck did they think was going to happen?
So, why did banana cookies play a pivotal role in this story? Amber eats a banana cookie, she's about to die, choking on the floor, the parents call a cab to take her to the hospital, then decide its a good idea to leave their young son at home, alone, while they are dealing with this easily preventable, yet important issue. It just so happens while the son is at home, a fire happens in the apartment below and then he dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. …Banana cookies????? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON???? Why are they calling a cab to go to the hospital with a choking child? CALL A DAMN AMBULANCE! PUT THESE PARENTS IN JAIL, TAKE THEIR CHILDREN AWAY FROM THEM. Why didn't they just take their son with them???? I didn't even know banana cookies existed until now!
So, the brother is dead; I could see that coming. What I didn't see is how little any of the story of Bear With Me actually had to do with this seemingly important story point, which they used as the linchpin for our emotion in feeling sorry for Amber. However, that's not what the story is about at all. It's about her relationship with her teddy bear. Yet, there are also many other unexplained questions. Why is her imagined world rebelling against her? Why does Amber forget things? If this fire played such a big part in Amber's life, why are fires used so sparingly in events throughout the story? Why does it seem like she has the pop culture knowledge of a 30-something year old? Most of all, why is she seeing crazy shit?
If the game were brave, it would have addressed these issues in a more serious way. I thought it was obvious this was all pointing towards some sort of serious domestic child abuse situation or a traumatic event that she actively witnessed which caused her imagination to show fucked up things to her, or something like that. Instead, we got banana cookies and being told that the antagonist of the game was Amber all along. Whatever the fuck that means. Also, why did Amber really even care about her brother? We see and know nothing about their relationship to make us care that this brother even existed. It would have been more interesting had he NEVER existed. I suppose the brother being dead could count as the "traumatic event" that I asked for, but again, we don't see how it could be since we know N-O-T-H-I-N-G about their relationship, not to mention no outright hints or foreshadowing to this fact. Amber was the focus of the story throughout, and the brother was supposed to be a plot device, not the plot. We never find out why Amber is looking for her dead brother in the attic, either, when she should have known her brother was dead; this leads back to the question of why she forget things. There was never a concerted effort of actually finding the brother because we were too sidetracked with pop culture jokes.
The "red cloth" was supposed to be important, I guess, since it was actually colored red, as opposed to everything else that was in grayscale. Across three episodes, it ended up only taking up inventory space and was barely ever used. Of course this is an equally contrived plot device as it is ripped from a firefighter's uniform by Amber on the day of the fire — first, how in the hell can a 10 year old girl rip a firefighter's uniform, and second, I've never even heard of a red firefighter uniform, so that definitely shows a strange cultural divide despite supposedly taking place in America. It would seem to make sense since banana cookies must be more popular elsewhere in the world. It must also be another cultural thing where you don't call an ambulance, but call a taxi to take you to the hospital, because we all know those get to your house faster than an ambulance.
I remember they had planned for five episodes, but it seems they cut those plans and dumped the rest of whatever they had in mind into Episode 3. The mystery fell flat after losing its way, and there was nothing that made me feel like it was worth the time investment when all was said and done. What really gets me is the lack of gameplay sections and how everything is just so… misplaced. The never-ending forest thing didn't make much sense in its inclusion, nor did the trippy horror dungeon located within, since none of the horror-type imagery mattered. There's also "gaps" in the story where it felt like I missed an entire act and no one was going to clue me in on any of what happened. It would seem important to have a complete story, but I guess I'm expecting too much.
So, I'm sad to see how this all ended up. It took nearly a year to figure out Bear With Me is not worth the time investment. The biggest pun of the game really was the title itself, after all.


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STATESBORO — State regents have approved two new student fees at Georgia Southern University to help pay for an expansion of the school's football stadium and a possible move to a new football division.
WSAV-TV reports (http://bit.ly/TC0Lej) that the University System of Georgia's Board of Regents approved the new student fees at a meeting this week.
The fees will pay for an expansion of Allen E. Paulson Stadium on the Statesboro campus and a potential move to the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).


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With voters continuing to focus on economic issues, Barack Obama holds a slim 49% to 45% advantage over Mitt Romney in the latest Pew Research Center survey of nearly 2,400 registered voters nationwide. Obama's lead has narrowed since last month, when he had a 12-point advantage, though it is comparable to margins from earlier this year.
More than eight-in-ten voters say the economy (86%) and jobs (84%) are very important issues in deciding who to vote for this fall. Roughly three-quarters also cite the federal budget deficit (74%), health care (74%) and education (72%) as top voting priorities. Near the bottom of the list are some of the hot-button social issues. Just 28% say that gay marriage is a very important issue, and 34% rate birth control as a top issue.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted April 4-15, 2012 among 3,008 adults, including 2,373 registered voters, shows that Obama continues to owe his lead to support from women, college graduates, blacks, Latinos and lower income voters – all of whom support him over Romney by double-digits.
The gender gap remains comparable to those in previous surveys during the current campaign, as well as past election cycles; women favor Obama by a 53% to 40% margin; among men voters, 50% favor Romney, while 44% back Obama. Obama has lost ground among both men and women at about the same rate over the past month.
With nearly all voters concerned about the economy, neither candidate has a clear advantage on the issue. Those who say the economy and jobs will be very important to their vote divide their support almost evenly between Obama and Romney. But the candidates each have advantages on other top-tier issues. Health care and education voters favor Obama by double-digits. Those who rank the federal budget deficit as a top priority favor Romney by a 57% to 38% margin. Romney is also the preferred candidate among those who rank Iran as very important, while Obama leads among those who cite the environment.
While birth control is one of the lowest ranking issues, Obama holds a substantial 56% to 37% lead among voters who rate this as very important. Birth control is significantly more important to women (40% very important) than men (27%), but the gender gap is no greater than over issues like education and health care, which women also rate as more important voting concerns.
The End of the GOP Primary
As the GOP primary winds down, the party base is getting behind Mitt Romney. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Republican and Republican-leaning voters now say that the party will unite solidly behind Romney as the nominee, up from 57% in February. This matches the 64% who said the party would unite behind McCain at a comparable point four years ago.
But GOP enthusiasm for Romney remains limited. Even after Rick Santorum announced the suspension of his campaign, 45% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters support Romney for the Republican nomination. About as many (46%) continue to say they would like to see Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul or someone else get the nomination.
While he may not by their preferred nominee, there is little doubt that an overwhelming proportion of Republicans will back Romney in the fall. Among Republican and Republican-leaning voters who favor another GOP nominee, 88% back Romney over Obama, and 78% say there is no chance they will change their mind. This is particularly the case among Santorum and Gingrich supporters. Republicans who favor Paul are less committed to a Romney candidacy.
To the extent that Romney has a base problem, it is not with the conservatives or white evangelical Protestants. Nine-in-ten conservative Republicans (90%) support Romney, and 82% are certain about their vote. Similarly, 91% of white evangelical Republican voters support Romney; 84% say there is no chance they will change their mind. And among Tea Party Republicans, 95% back Romney, and 89% say they will not change their mind.
Instead, commitment to Romney is substantially weaker among moderate and liberal Republicans and those who do not agree with the Tea Party. While at least eight-in-ten in each group say they prefer Romney to Obama, only about two-thirds of each say they firmly back Romney and will definitely not change their mind.
The soft spots in Obama's support within the Democratic base mirror this pattern. Fully 94% of liberal Democrats say they will vote for Obama, and 85% are certain they won't change their minds. But among moderate and conservative Democrats, 89% support Obama, with just 71% certain that they won't change their minds.
One-in-Four Are Swing Voters
Overall, 23% of registered voters today are swing voters, in that they are either undecided, only lean toward a candidate, or favor a candidate but say there is still a chance they will change their minds.
This compares with 33% in June of 2008 after both the Democratic and Republican primaries were largely concluded. The swing vote is somewhat smaller in elections when incumbents are running for reelection.
Views of 2012 Primaries
As previous Pew Research Center surveys have shown, neither the public nor Republicans themselves have been very impressed with the field of GOP candidates. A separate survey,
conducted April 12-15 among 1,002 adults finds negative views of the primary process itself: Just 30% of Americans say the presidential primaries have been a good way of determining the best-qualified nominees, while 57% say they have not.
These views are comparable to opinions about the primaries in early June 2008, when 35% said the primary system had been a good way of determining the best-qualified nominees and 60% disagreed.
Currently, 51% of Republicans say the primaries have not been a good way of determining the best qualified nominees; just 39% say they have. Republicans' views of the primary process were even more negative four years ago; in early June 2008, 65% said the primaries were not a good system for picking the best qualified nominees.


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Our neighbour has a large kabir hen. They want to breed it. Someone gave them a native rooster. But the kabir hen was so big that it frightened the rooster. So our neighbour asked to borrow our rooster. I decided to lend them one of our red native roosters. It was a reasonably large rooster. But the kabir hen intimidated it. Our neighbour asked to borrow our white rooster.
Now this white rooster is My Rooster. It's a big mature rooster with huge spurs. I agreed to lend my white rooster. Here he is with the kabir hen.
After several weeks nothing happened. As it turns out, the kabir hen is just too large such that it wasn't possible for any native rooster to mate with it. What a pity! So now our neighbour will slaughter the kabir hen for a birthday on June 4.
Here are some photos of my favourite rooster.
We breed native chickens for meat. In March and April we sold a fairly good number of native chickens we've raised wondering about in the backyard. March and April was graduation month and fiesta in a few places. We also sold a pig for someone's graduation party.
We keep a couple of roosters for breeding. We don't keep roosters for cockfighting. The very first time I witnessed a cockfighting derby was last week on Pamilacan Island. They were having their village fiesta and cockfighting was one of the special events. I was able to take a couple of videos.
I personally don't know what to feel about cockfighting. I've seen roosters fighting as they often do in nature. It is bloody, violent, deadly. But it takes hours. And of course, before the fight becomes deadly, the rooster is free to run away — unless they were tied up as they often are to prevent them from escaping or getting stolen.
In a cockfighting derby, because of the frighteningly sharp steel spurs attached to the roosters' legs, the fight only takes a few seconds, sometimes a couple of minutes. Sometimes the losing rooster dies, sometimes it lives to fight again another day. At the Pamilacan Island derby, there was a veterinarian tasked to provide care for wounded or injured roosters. Perhaps for people too!
PS. Cockfighting in the Philippines is regulated by law.


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Ted Kennedy: A True Man of Boston
Ted Kennedy's first major humiliation—the first of many (and many of those self-inflicted)—came at the hands of Eddie McCormack. The scene was Southie High in 1962. Young Ted was squaring off against the popular two-term attorney general in a debate for the Senate seat that John F. Kennedy had freed up when he took the White House. A tough Boston pol who shared more than a few chromosomes with JFK's so-called Irish Mafia, McCormack planned to repay Teddy's audacity with a ferocious public beating in an auditorium full of his rowdy, blue-collar supporters.
Up until that point, Ted Kennedy's Boston bona fides were questionable, McCormack's characterization of him as a parachutist not entirely unfair. Whatever his pedigree, Ted was raised mostly in Bronxville, New York; London; and Palm Beach. When JFK rose to power and Bobby declined to take the seat, Ted's father, Joe Kennedy Sr., pushed his youngest boy to run, in spite of his brothers' belief that he wasn't remotely ready for the job. Teddy's own inclination was to set out for the territories, maybe New Mexico, to plant his flag there. As Joe McGinnis wrote in his book The Last Brother, after Ted had campaigned for Jack in 13 western states, he found that "he felt far more at ease in the West than he ever had in Massachusetts, or Florida, or wherever he was supposed to consider home." But his political prospects were brightest back in the Bay State; Teddy was savvy enough to realize that. So he stayed here, and ran against McCormack.
By then, the Kennedys were international players, increasingly removed from the hard-scrapping, cigar-chomping street politics of the Hub. The world was their constituency. To show that Teddy was indeed ready for the U.S. Senate, his father had him sent on a 16-nation tour of Africa with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Trips to Israel and Europe followed. When he arrived in Ireland—a country whose politics would become a passion—he was greeted with a haymaker courtesy of the Dublin Sunday Independent, accusing him of being a carpetbagger. "He's coming because later this year he is due to be involved in a political fight back in Massachusetts," the piece read. "He is playing the game political in what has now come to be known as the 'Kennedy Method.' You do not spend your time campaigning in your own little patch." Even the Irish, many of whom kept framed photos of JFK next to their framed photos of the Pope (from whom Teddy received his First Communion), thought this kid was a punch line.
At the Southie debate, McCormack gleefully read the Independent story to the raucous crowd, leading off a blistering direct assault on his opponent, famously ending with the line, "If your name was simply Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke." But however rattled Kennedy was by the savaging, McCormack hadn't factored in how his performance would play on TV. In the auditorium, Kennedy was finished, exposed. But on TV, a cruel and sweaty anachronism from benighted pre-Camelot times had tortured a nice, handsome, respectable young man for no good reason, and the young man had stood up to it. Or at least hadn't collapsed under it. Kennedy won the day. According to the Herald (setting a precedent for itself), Massachusetts had "voted its heart rather than its mind."
Ted, smarting from the debate, quickly set to work as if his name were anything but Kennedy, like a true son of the soil. Thus was born the duality that has fascinated and appalled Kennedy watchers for more than four decades: Edward Kennedy versus Edward Moore. The former: a reckless scion of unchecked appetites, a disgraced shambles of a man. The latter: a tireless worker who took no votes or victories for granted. The story of Ted Kennedy is the story of the struggle between these two selves.
Ted's unique knack for politics came more from the city of Boston than from the Kennedy aristocracy. Though he was essentially installed in office by his family and redeemed by TV in that pivotal debate, his skill, as it happened, was retail, the hustle—handshakes, back pats, and shoe leather. He lacked the brains of Jack and the messianic passions of Bobby, but he made up for it with the sort of tough Boston Irish ward politics that Ted's father had disdained since some nobody blew his father out of the race for street commissioner in 1908. While the Kennedys were increasingly self-exiling from Boston (Jackie Kennedy later would be vocal in her dislike for the Hub), Ted was spending more time there.
After attending a whopping 10 different schools by the time he was 11, Ted finally settled into the Fessenden School in West Newton, and then did four years at Milton Academy before attending, and being expelled from, Harvard. While in the area, he spent many a Sunday getting to know his grandfather, John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald. In his biography of Ted, Adam Clymer set the scene:
"Before lunch, Teddy would go up to the suite the 80-year-old former mayor and congressman kept in the Bellevue Hotel near the State House. Newspaper clippings would be pouring out of his pockets, and Honey Fitz would be on the phone, offering condolences on deaths and hopes for quick recoveries to the sick. At lunch in the dining room, the former mayor was still a celebrity, and people would come up to talk about how business was in the North End, about discrimination against the Italians or the Irish…. After lunch, his grampa always took him through the kitchen to shake hands with the cooks, and then they would walk around Boston, seeing the place on the Common where British soldiers drilled, and the church where William Lloyd Garrison had preached against slavery, and they would look at the decaying port, now far behind New York's in importance. He was learning about real problems from someone who was not preaching."
There were shades of his grandfather in the legendary legislator Ted Kennedy turned out to be. He built a 24/7 constituent services operation that was the wonder of the Senate. His wheelhouse was everything from foreign wars to Mrs. McGinty's husband's funeral in Foxboro. It was an approach best summed up by Marty Nolan, longtime editorial-page editor for the Globe, in the pages of this magazine in 2004. "What he had then and still has is diligence and determination, political qualities that surpass charisma and IQ," Nolan said. "He has all the tact and toughness of the youngest runt in a large Irish litter."
For his entire life Kennedy remained profoundly interested in Boston history, the continuity of things, often doing for others what Honey Fitz had done for him. He was fond of jokingly denouncing staffers who couldn't recite the entirety of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," as he could, and did, often, as part of his rolling, decades-long meditation on Boston. When NBC's Katie Couric asked him in 2004, "If you had to describe Boston in just a few sentences, how would you do that?" he said simply, "It's the best of the past and the best of the future."
Nowadays, it's impossible to show some newcomer around the city without mentioning Ted Kennedy. In fact, it's almost impossible to imagine what Boston would look like without his efforts. The harbor would still be a sump, without his furious lobbying over the span of two presidencies—H. W. Bush and Clinton—to help win hundreds of millions of federal dollars to undertake and complete the cleanup. The Harbor Islands would still be grim little mounds, had Kennedy not pushed for them to be designated national parklands in 1996. Now a marquee exhibit at the Boston Public Library, John Adams's personal library would have stayed in storage, while both the Chelsea Street Bridge and the Bunker Hill Monument would have been in a sorry state, had he not secured millions for these local projects. The ports would have been dead, too: Harkening back to those long-ago Sundays, Kennedy won $6.75 million in federal money in 2002 to deepen the harbor's channels to accommodate bigger cargo ships and reinvigorate the city's ports.
In the late '60s, backed by outraged neighborhood coalitions, Kennedy helped convince Governor Frank Sargent to call off what would have been an astonishingly destructive highway project, the Inner Belt, a serpentine monstrosity set to cut the city into pieces. Even more radically, he argued that the state be given the authority to build the highway underground, using its own money on top of the federal Inner Belt money. Nevertheless, when the time came to undertake that project, Kennedy was matched only by House Speaker and tunnel namesake Tip O'Neill in his dogged pursuit of federal dollars to minimize the amount the state would be on the hook for. When Ronald Reagan vetoed the project in 1987, Kennedy led the charge to override him, and then fought equally hard in the decade and a half afterward—frequently against Senator John McCain, who delighted in trying to shut off the spigot—to keep the billions of federal money rolling in as the project bloated.
More recently, Kennedy was instrumental in the healthcare reform effort in Massachusetts, bringing in $380 million in federal money to launch the program. This year alone he led the efforts to secure $666 million for Massachusetts schools and $4.2 million for local biotech research, among other achievements. All this came on top of his usual grinding devotion to constituent services and decades-long advocacy for hiking the minimum wage, improving education, supporting small businesses—a list of accomplishments so varied in size and scope that a full accounting has yet to be made. He's now consigned to history. Suffice it to say, this would be a very different place, had Kennedy not bested McCormack so long ago.


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The sofritas solution
I have a blogging theory in need of a good name, that all blogs eventually deteriorate into discussions of the authors' pets or meals. Eli and John have done a terrible job of validating my theory, which leaves the degeneration to me. I don't have pets, assuming you discount the salamanders that moved into our worm composting bin six years ago and are still there. I think I've verified them to be arboreal salamanders, a pretty cool type that doesn't bother with lungs or a tadpole stage and can climb buildings. Still, not a pet.
So that leaves the sofritas vegetarian meals I've been ordering at our local Chipotle Mexican restaurant. I've not talked too much about personal steps to limit climate change impacts, partly because it's not my main interest and partly because I'm hardly a world-leading example. Still, I'm not impressed with the contempt dripping from statements like "changing a light bulb won't fix global warming." It sure is part of the fix, and personal action should be one of the steps that climate activists take.
I'm not a vegetarian, love the taste of meat, and feel better on low-carb diets that are easier when they're non-vegetarian. Despite that, vegetarianism is generally (maybe not always) a better thing for the climate and should be encouraged, especially as the whole world gets richer. When it's easy to make a switch, just do it.
So if you have a Chipotle restaurant in your area and they've added sofritas to the menu, you should try it. Sofritas is an annoying made-up word for shredded tofu mixed with other ingredients, and it has a chewy texture that makes it competitive with meat (speaking as a meat-eater). If more non-meat options were this easy, I'd do a lot better on the personal level.


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Apparently, Ewoks speak Tibetan
What a surprise, right? (Ewoks might be my favorite thing about Star Wars, just FYI).
All right, so maybe I'm going to tell you two things you may not know. Are you ready for the second thing?
Pre-ordering a book is one of the very best things you can do for an author whose work you enjoy.
What does pre-ordering mean, exactly? It means ordering the book before its official release date. I'm pretty sure the most common way people pre-order a book is to buy it through an on-line retailer, but did you know you can also pre-order a book from your favorite independent bookstore? What's great about this is that it lets a local brick-and-mortar store know there is interest in this particular book. If they weren't going to carry it before, or were undecided, a pre-order (or two or three) may help them see the error of their ways.
Some independent bookstores have an on-line ordering system, and as soon as the book is up on their site, you can pre-order it. But you can also call the bookstore and pre-order it that way. I'm pretty certain that whatever works for you will work for them! They want to sell you the books you are excited about, trust me.
So why is the pre-order important? Because it makes the publisher happy to see pre-orders. And if the publisher is happy, good things might happen for the author. For example:
Pre-orders are crucial in helping a bookstore decide whether or not to carry a book. Yes, even the chain stores, because believe it or not, some books are NEVER picked up by the chains. Trust me, this is one of the worst things that can happen to an author. With solid pre-order numbers, the sales rep has a much easier time convincing stores to carry the book.
If another book the author has written is being considered by that publisher, pre-orders might help the publisher say yes to the next project.
If this book has a strong start, the author might get more publisher support/marketing dollars for the next book.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the NYT bestseller list. If a book is getting a lot of buzz and great reviews and there's a chance it could hit the list, pre-orders are vital in this situation, because pre-orders all count toward the first week's sales.
In short, pre-ordering a book is pretty much better than ordering a dozen cupcakes from Sprinkles Bakery and having them delivered to the author's home.
Better than cupcakes, people!! You know I don't say that lightly.
Okay, okay, so you really don't want to pre-order, for whatever reason. Maybe you don't have a credit card and are saving up your hard-earned babysitting money so you can buy the book when it comes out. (Anyone who buys books with their babysitting money is TOTALLY AWESOME, by the way). The next best thing you can do is buy the book in the first week or two that it's out. And then read it, and if you like it, tell all your friends about the book, too. I say this all the time - the best thing you can do for a book you love is to tell people about it. Tweet about it, talk about it, instagram it, whatever.
It's true that any time you buy a book, you are supporting the author, bookstores, the publishing industry, etc. and that is a *VERY* good thing.
But pre-orders? Better than cupcakes.
So there you go. A little Ewok trivia AND some things you may not have known about why pre-orders matter so much.


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Welcome to The Links at Moses Pointe!
Perched high above the west-shore of Moses Lake, The Resorts at Moses Pointe is 400 acres of desert beauty sculpted centuries ago by the glacial forces that carved out the Columbia Basin of Central Washington State. Given this backdrop it's no wonder that The Links at Moses Pointe is a favorite golf course to players from throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Discover for yourself why Seattle Golf Guide and so many others are saying, "I love this course." With desert conditions that provide 300 plus days of sunshine, and a living environment of beauty and warm community, Moses Pointe is sure to become your home away from home, or…. who knows, maybe your new home?


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