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The documents on this page provide information about the Udall Foundation's long-term strategic goals, the methods and actions taken to achieve our goals, and how we report success. Combined, these documents demonstrate how the Udall Foundation uses public funds to achieve our mission.
The Udall Foundation's activities are supported by two distinct U.S. Treasury funds. The scholarship, internship, and Parks in Focus® programs are supported primarily by interest generated from a trust fund established by Congress; the Udall Foundation may also accept private donations. The activities of the John S. McCain III National Center for Environmental Conflict Resolution are supported by annual appropriations and fees charged for services.
The Udall Foundation's strategic goals are to
For more information on the Udall Foundation's mission and goals, see our 2022-2026 Strategic Plan.
Performance and Accountability Report The Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to report annually on their progress in meeting the goals and objectives established by their Strategic Plan. Additionally, the Performance and Accountability Report (PAR) provides performance and financial information that enables Congress and the public to assess the Udall Foundation's performance relative to the resources used. The PAR satisfies the reporting requirements as outlined in Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular No. A-136.
Udall Foundation FY 2023 Performance and Accountability Report
Congressional Budget Justification The FY 2025 Congressional Budget Justification presents the Udall Foundation's request for annual appropriations to Congress.
Udall Foundation FY 2025 Congressional Budget Justification


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Wigmore Hall
Piano Sonata no.2 in A major,
op.2 no.2
Piano Sonata no.7 in D major,
op.10 no.3Piano Sonata no.6 in F major, op.10 no.2
Piano Sonata no.18 in E-flat major, op.31 no.3
Igor Levit (piano)
I found myself torn. Should I
actually have been attending the march to Downing Street against Donald Trump
and his enabler, Theresa May? There is more than one way to resist, though: of
that I am certain. Listen, for instance, to Furtwängler's wartime recordings.
(I have just been listening, on Schubert's birthday, to the 1942 Great C major Symphony.
The anger is still more palpable in Beethoven Ninth's from the same year. And
so, of course, is the power of Beethoven's music to resist.) And whilst all
great art, all great human endeavour, will have something to offer in that
respect, Beethoven lays claim to a very special place. Sceptics can rail all
they like, try to cut his music down to size, deny Beethoven's art its heroism;
they will never succeed. We know that a performance of Fidelio from Daniel Barenboim and young musicians,
many of whom would now be denied entry to the United States, has something very
important to tell us. Just as we know that Beethoven from the Palestine Youth Orchestra, two of its members cruelly denied 'permission' by an enthusiastic
Trump ally to leave Gaza, will speak of a musical necessity of which we can
barely conceive, yet in a sense need just as keenly. To hear Beethoven piano
sonatas, then, from an artist whose steadfast opposition to fascism (click here,
for instance, for his statement to a Brussels audience following Trump's
election) is not the least admirable of his humanist qualities, and to engage with
that performance as an audience member in, I hope, an active rather than a
passive sense, had its merits too.
We began in the eighteenth
century, with the second of the thirty-two sonatas, the A major, op.2 no.2. The
opening phrase sounded fresh, still, just about, of that world; the answering
phrase already showed Beethoven flexing his muscles in the direction of things
to come. Great care over articulation and phrasing contributed to the urgency
of the performance: nothing was rushed; everything counted. Accents and
sforzandi mattered in a sense far beyond 'mere' expression: their structural
function and thus their meaning too seemed almost to speak of a world we might
have thought opened up by Webern and his successors. The first movement's
development section offered proper intensification, as if taking after the
symphonic Beethoven still to come, and the recapitulation proved as much a
second development as a return, motivic working key here. That said,
proportions still spoke, quite rightly, of Classical perfection. (A question I
often set first-year undergraduates relates to whether we should consider Beethoven
to be a Classical or a Romantic composer. The longer I think about it, the more
difficult, yet necessary, a question it is. Should it prove to be question to
which just a few of them return throughout their lives, that would make me
happy indeed.) With hushed dignity, the Largo
appassionato was constructed before our ears. Architecture came to the
fore, without compromise to the quasi-vocal ornamentalism so typical of much
early Beethoven. Alas, it took the most full-blooded tone for Igor Levit to
mask, if only briefly, an all too zealous contribution from quadrophonic
bronchial activists. The Scherzo was characterised by graceful insouciance, as
if trying to recapture a Mozartian world that would ever remain just beyond it,
tantalisingly so. Its trio, both in legato and vivid drama, seems also to speak
of Mozart. If I have heard the finale more overtly loved – often loved to
death, I fear – this performance intrigued in laying bare Beethoven's musical
processes. Not that it was short on drama, far from it, but it showed, in
modernistic fashion, that those processes are not only its motor but perhaps
even, at least in part, its subject matter. Tonal surprises registered, if
anything, all the more strongly.
At the opening of the D major
Sonata, op.10 no.2, we heard a related, yet unquestionably different, tonality.
One might say the same of much else too, of course, but it was that indefinable
'character' of key – even if Beethoven might use D major differently somewhere
else – that immediately struck me. A dizzying array of themes was thoroughly
integrated in a performance that knew exactly where it was heading. It was very
fast – Beethoven marks its 'Presto', after all – yet never too fast, never
breathless. Rockets soared, especially in the development, yet their trail
never lacked grace. Again, the sheer difference
of the recapitulation registered strongly, thrillingly. There was no mistaking,
even from the first bar, the Romantic gravity of the slow movement, quite
distinct from anything we had yet heard; and yet, that vocal, quasi-operatic
quality remained to be heard too, transformed, even transfigured. Imbued with a
meaning that could never be reduced to words, Levit showed us that, if all Beethoven
matters enormously, some matters still more. Even the starkest dynamic
contrasts could not disrupt the musico-dramatic line; they strengthened it:
perhaps there is a message there for us beyond the concert hall too. After
that, the Menuetto sounded with charm; disruptions, or apparent disruptions, in
the bass, showed a different variety of charm and more than a little
Beethovenian humour. Both quizzical and furious, the finale burst forth as a
riot of Haydnesque invention that could never have been written by Haydn. Beethoven
had learned his lessons far too well to be mistaken for another. The particular
integrative impulse was very much Beethoven's own – and, of course, that of the
The first movement of op.10
no.2, in F major, sounded initially not so distant from it's a major
counterpart in approach. The devil, or perhaps the angel, proved to be in the detail.
Beethoven's good nature shone through: more than good nature, profound
humanity. Levit conveyed a fine sense of deep mystery to the development, which
proved 'surprising', even if one flattered oneself one knew it. There was
protean mystery to the central Allegretto
too. Heard as if in a single breath, it revealed such an array of incident when
one truly listened – and how could one not? The Presto finale was despatched with a virtuosity permitting of both
fury and levity (no pun intended). Counterpoint was relished, proving
generative of a well-nigh neo-Mozartian host of 'characters' plying their trade
upon our aural stage.
With the E-flat major Sonata,
op.31 no.3, we found ourselves in a very different world. What a work this is;
how much more often we ought to hear it! The tonal centre emerged gracefully,
yet not too easily, from that extraordinary first-movement introduction. (It is
as much a joy to play as to hear!) And yet, despite the differences in scale,
maturity, and so much else, there was again a sense of a host of characters treading
the aural boards before us, Beethoven's neo-Mozartian flirtations now at
greater distance and perhaps even possessed of still greater affection. Rhythm,
harmony, and melody formed an indissoluble whole, conveyed with exquisite
voicing that yet never remotely seemed an end in itself. Above all, quite
rightly, this was a drama. The second movement is, quite frankly, a bastard to
play, but you would never have known it from this performance, in which
lightness of touch and great boldness were revealed as two sides of the same
coin. It was more boisterous than Mendelssohn but perhaps gestured more than a
little in his direction. That sense of longing for an age to which Beethoven –
perhaps all of us – would like to return, yet could not, imbued the third
movement, played with tender luxuriance. All too often it is rushed, but not
here, the richness of Beethoven's harmonies present for all to hear. A skittish
contrast was announced with the finale, whose mood changes proved just as
protean as anything in the preceding sonata. It was every inch a finale, every inch
a Beethoven finale: just what was required.
To quote Hans Werner Henze, in an article entitled 'Does Music have to be Political?': 'Beethoven regarded his whole enterprise as a contribution to human progress.' Let us do so too.
To quote Hans Werner Henze, in an article entitled 'Does Music have to be Political?': 'Beethoven regarded his whole enterprise as a contribution to human progress.' Let us do so too.

subset: commoncrawl


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Absolutely thrilled!! Dust has won the 2016 Gold Winner in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards. This premier award is judged by teen readers from across Britain.
Tag Archives: Futuristic
Dust: Before and After Trailer
Here is the book trailer for Dust. What was your favorite part in Dust? Share with us by commenting below:


text:
Hip Joint Health, Dr. Kevin McCoy
Hip Joint Health, Dr. Kevin McCoy
Presented by Dr. Kevin McCoy from the Orthopedic Center at the Maryland Access Point Caregivers Conference in Queen Anne's County.
Thanks for watching QACTV — Please subscribe to get more Queen Anne's County Videos and be sure to visit our website http://qac.org/410/QACTV
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Not All Buyers Are Created Equal: The Mindset of the Serious Buyer
Just as every person is different, the same invariably holds true for buyers. No two buyers are the same. Further, no two buyers have the same mindset, emotional makeup, or approach to business. The simple fact is that buyers opt to buy businesses for a very wide range of reasons. The bottom line is that it is up to business brokers and M&A advisors to find serious buyers so as not to waste everyone's time. In this article, we will examine how we zero in on serious buyers.
A serious buyer, one that wants to achieve success and isn't just window shopping, will want to understand both the business they are considering buying and the industry as a whole. Consider this rough analogy for a moment. Someone serious about winning a game will work to understand the rules before jumping in and playing. You'll want to look for a buyer who wants to understand the strengths and weaknesses of a business. He or she will also want to comprehend the strengths and weaknesses of competitors as well as potential industry wide problems both now and in the future.
Savvy business people realize that wages and salaries make up a huge percentage of the typical business's operating cost. A serious buyer will endeavor to understand not just the wages and salaries of employees, but also additional related costs. These can include retirement related costs, the cost of training new employees, the rate of employee turnover and more. Smart buyers are looking for stability throughout the business, and that includes its employees.
The kind of buyers you want to attract are the ones that are not just "thinking about buying" a business. You'll want to only deal with buyers who have carefully thought through what it means to buy a business. A key aspect of buying a business, as simple as it sounds, is to fully understand what is being sold. For example, serious buyers will dive in and understand capital expenditures. They will also examine and evaluate machinery and equipment so that they understand what kinds of equipment might need to be repaired or replaced. Replacing and repairing equipment can mean substantial costs. That's why quality buyers can be expected to evaluate all equipment extremely carefully.
Buyers who understand what it means to buy a business will even go beyond evaluating the stability of employees and the state of machinery and equipment. You can expect a serious buyer to want to know if there are any environmental concerns, they will check and evaluate the lease, and they will want to inspect the state of all buildings. They will want to know who the key clients and key suppliers are and determine if those relationships are stable or if they put the business at long term risk.
At the end of the day, the kind of buyer that you'll want to work with is a buyer who is proactive. Quality buyers will be accessing every aspect of a business to determine its long-term viability. A buyer who goes far beyond "kicking the tires" is exactly the kind of buyer you want.
Copyright: Business Brokerage Press, Inc.
The post Not All Buyers Are Created Equal: The Mindset of the Serious Buyer appeared first on Deal Studio – Automate, accelerate and elevate your deal making.


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EDMOND, Okla. — The University of Central Oklahoma is suspending its cheerleading team due to reports of hazing.
The president of the school, Patti Neuhold-Ravikumar, made the announcement in a letter to students, faculty and staff Saturday.
Neuhold-Ravikumar didn't provide details about what happened, but said, "hazing of any kind has no place at the university and will not be tolerated."
Neuhold-Ravikumar wrote that an investigation was conducted after receiving notice of the reports. Following the probe, the president said the university decided to suspend its cheer team operations and activities through the end of the school year.
The team will also not be able to participate in national competitions for two years, according to Neuhold-Ravikumar.
She wrote that individual team members found responsible for the "unacceptable and abhorrent activities" may face university sanctions, including removal from the team and suspension from the school.
Team members found to not be involved in the activities will undergo a membership review process and may be given the opportunity to try out for next year's team.
Training on hazing and bystander intervention practices will also be required for the cheer team and for the leadership of all student organizations, Neuhold-Ravikumar said.
"The UCO cheer team should embody the spirit of our community - encouraging us to give our best effort and to represent our university with pride and dignity," wrote Neuhold-Ravikumar. "We consider our student organizations an extension of the university community and its values and we are committed to maintaining those standards."


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Four CSE Faculty Selected for 2014-15 College of Engineering Awards
Congratulations to the following CSE Faculty recipients of 2014-15 College of Engineering Awards.
Todd Austin
Research Excellence Award
Prof. Todd Austin is a world-recognized leader in the area of computer architecture research, having delivered several seminal papers that have changed the landscape of research in the field, and where he is the 12th all-time most sited author and the leader of the field's largest research center. Two of his notable works include SimpleScalar and Razor. SimpleScalar was the first architectural simulator released, in 1997, and his paper describing it has been cited over 3500 times. The simulator led to a revolution of quantitative computer architecture research where performance analysis became a required ingredient of every published paper. Prof. Austin was a core member of the Michigan team that developed the award-winning circuit known as Razor in 2003, which at the time showed a radical departure from traditional circuit design. Razor used self-checking, or adaptive, mechanisms in order to ensure computational correctness at the same time that it reduced power consumption and increased overall performance. It inspired the movement for "approximate computing" or "probabilistic computing," in which an architecture is permissive of errors in order to save power, time, and other resources.
Prof. Austin established the $28M Center for Future Architecture Research (C-FAR) in 2013, which is focused on innovation to create future generation scalable computing systems. C-FAR is headquartered at Michigan and includes the participation of 14 universities, 21 principal investigators, and 105 PhD students. It is the largest research center in the field of computer architecture, and Prof. Austin has embraced its operational challenges while fostering numerous collaborations at the center.
Ron Dreslinski
Kenneth M. Reese Outstanding Research Scientist Award
Dr. Ron Dreslinski conducts research in the area of energy efficient processor architectures, a subject that has evolved from his dissertation work at Michigan entitled, "Near Threshold Computing: From Single Core to Many-Core Energy Efficient Architectures," which takes the position that approaches to the impending end of Moore's Law, brought on by the energy dissipation limitations of CMOS, must come from enhanced devices, design styles, and architectures, rather than a reliance on the emergence of radically new technologies. He is investigating the universal application of aggressive low voltage operation across all computation platforms through an approach called "near-threshold computing" (NTC) and novel methods to overcome the barriers that have historically relegated ultra-low voltage operation to niche markets. As a proof of concept, Dr. Dreslinski has designed a 3D integrated multicore prototype with 128 ARM Cortex-M3 cores and 256MB of DRAM that operates at near-threshold levels, but that can also boost selected cores when single thread performance is needed. The prototype was received from the foundry, tested, and passed all tests, and it demonstrates over a 6x improvement in energy efficiency over conventional processors.
Dr. Dreslinski has co-authored nine journal articles, 43 refereed conference publications, and 13 refereed workshop articles. He is an inventor on eleven US patents, with several others pending. Several of his papers have already been widely influential in the low power computing arena. Intel has recently announced an experimental processor, Claremont, that leans heavily on the ideas that Dr. Dreslinski has been developing in low power computing.
J. Alex Halderman
1938E Award
Prof. J. Alex Halderman is an outstanding and innovative educator who has reshaped the teaching of security within and beyond the confines of the Department. He created the Department's first undergraduate security course, EECS 388: Intro to Security, which focuses on teaching a reasoned skepticism about systems' security that is crucial to successful defense. While most peer institutions teach security as a senior-level elective, Prof. Halderman's approach has been to offer the course to sophomores and juniors, before insecure practices become ingrained. He has open sourced his course content at eecs388.org and grading materials through a private Github repository, and schools including Princeton, Penn, and Boston University have adopted their use. At the graduate level, Prof. Halderman has completely revised EECS 588: Computer and Network Security, with students first researching and presenting attack presentations and discussing defenses and in the second half of the course forming into groups to conduct original research on security-related topics and to do conference-style presentations. In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, he created Securing Digital Democracy, a massive, open on-line course focused on the security of election technology.
Outside the classroom, Prof. Halderman has worked to create a positive hacker culture amongst Michigan students. He has provided mentorship for the hacker community within CSE's graduate program and serves as a faculty advisor for the Michigan Hackers student group, which hosts tech talks, social outings, and hackathons on campus.
Edwin Olson
Education Excellence Award
Prof. Edwin Olson is an exceptionally committed educator with strong contributions to and impact on both the College's undergraduate and graduate curricula. In six short years with the Department, Prof. Olson has been integral to the development of three new courses in robotics, which is half of the courses in the area now taught at U-M: EECS 467, Introduction to Robotics; EECS/NA 568, Mobile Robotics: Methods and Algorithms; and ROB 550, Robotics Systems Lab, a new required course for the new Robotics MS/PhD program. In order not to be constrained by the limitations of off-the-shelf educational robotics hardware, Prof. Olson has led the development of a new range of REXARM robotic arms and feature-packed MAEBOT wheeled robots (video here). These new robots, with robust components, processors, and sensors, allow students to experiment with implementing real algorithms in challenging environments, and the designs have been open-sourced so that educators everywhere can build and leverage the platforms. In addition to his work on the curriculum and in developing educational robot platforms, Prof. Olson is considered an energetic and innovative educator. He often holds lectures in his lab, blending instruction with exploration. Feedback from his students shows that they find his courses challenging, relevant, and valuable.
Prof. Olson has developed a dedicated robotics educational curriculum for outreach to traditionally underrepresented demographics in computer science, including the development of a specialized robot for 4th – 7th grade students. He has conducted outreach activities at the World Science Festival and through the College's MconneX camps, and frequently hosts student tours in his lab. He participates in an HBCU-alliance project, where students from smaller colleges spend a summer in his APRIL lab to begin developing the skills for post-graduate education programs in robotics.


text:
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text: Hello, you've reached the online laboratory of Sajid Nawaz Khan. The website exists to further my interests in web and iOS development. The site is also the home of the World's largest Origami Forum, which has been helping paper-folding enthusiasts since April 2003. I also maintain a number of mini projects — including the METAR Reporting and iTunes Music Chart service.


text: Knowing she needs to come to terms with the loss of Damon, Elena turns to Alaric to help her move on with her life. Enzo convinces Caroline to join him as he tracks down a lead to get Damon and Bonnie back, but Caroline is shocked when they make an unexpected detour and uncover what Stefan has been up to. Meanwhile, Matt worries about Jeremy who is spending time with Sarah, a mysterious girl who has recently arrived in Mystic Falls. Elsewhere, Tripp, leader of the community protection program, makes an interesting confession to Matt about his connection to the town. Lastly, with the Other Side destroyed and gone for good, Damon and Bonnie reluctantly band together to uncover the mystery of where they are and how they are going to get back home.


text:
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that U.S. diplomats in Havana had been the victims of "health attacks" that left them with hearing loss — the most definitive U.S. statement yet on a series of mysterious incidents that have puzzled longtime observers of U.S.-Cuban relations.
His comments came two days after the State Department issued a vaguely worded statement saying there had been "incidents which have caused a variety of physical symptoms." U.S. officials later revealed that American diplomats had suffered unexplained losses of hearing, and on Thursday Canada's government said at least one Canadian diplomat in Cuba also had been treated for hearing loss.
"We hold the Cuban authorities responsible for finding out who is carrying out these health attacks on not just our diplomats but, as you've seen now, there are other cases with other diplomats involved," Tillerson said in Bedminster, N.J., where President Donald Trump and members of his administration spoke to reporters.
In the fall of 2016, a series of U.S. diplomats began suffering unexplained losses of hearing, according to officials with knowledge of the case. Some of the diplomats' symptoms were so severe that they were forced to cancel their tours early and return to the United States, the officials said.
The officials told The Associated Press that the hearing loss appeared to have been caused by the deliberate use of some sort of sonic device operating outside the range of audible sound.
Doesn't make sense
Former diplomats and students of U.S.-Cuba relations said they found it inexplicable that Cuba would have tried to harm U.S. and Canadian diplomats, particularly in the fall of 2016 as President Barack Obama was ending a second term marked partly by the reopening of diplomatic relations with the island.
U.S. officials familiar with the incidents said they began to be reported last October, when most domestic and foreign observers expected Hillary Clinton to win the presidency and continue Obama's policy of normalization with Cuba.
Attacking Canadian diplomats would be an inexplicable assault on one of Cuba's most important trading partners and the largest source of tourists to the island.
"There'd be no logic to the Cubans trying to deliberately harm U.S. or Canadian diplomats," said William LeoGrande, an American University expert on Cuban foreign policy. "It'd really be unprecedented."
The Cuban government said in a lengthy statement Wednesday that "Cuba has never permitted, nor will permit, that Cuban territory be used for any action against accredited diplomatic officials or their families, with no exception."
Former U.S. and Canadian diplomats said they had been targets of low-level harassment and intimidation by Cuban agents in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, incidents that included attacks on diplomats' pets and intimidating maneuvers like tailgating and flashing bright lights into diplomats' cars as they drove with their families late at night.
"There were things like turning off your electricity, turning off your water, entering your home, leaving little reminders that they were there. Things would be out of place," said John Caulfield, the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba from 2011 to 2014.
In addition to harassment, Caulfield said, U.S. diplomats in Cuba are under 24-hour surveillance during their assignments.
"Nobody does anything in Cuba without them knowing," Caulfield said.
A U.S. official said some American diplomats in Cuba had come home to find that someone had used their toilet and not flushed it, in what was interpreted as a deliberate attempt to disgust and unnerve. The official served at the then-interests section in Cuba in the 2000s and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity because of the possibility of a return to Havana.
Messages from government
The State Department's inspector general wrote in a 2007 report that "life in Havana is life with a government that 'lets you know it's hostile.' Retaliations have ranged from the petty to the poisoning of family pets."
"All employees are fully aware that host government hostility extends to an elaborate, aggressive intelligence apparatus," the report said.
Caulfield said aggressive tactics largely stopped by late 2013 and 2014 as U.S. and Cuban officials secretly negotiated the diplomatic reopening announced in December 2014, after his departure from Havana.
He said he believed the likeliest explanation for the diplomats' mysterious deafness was "a new surveillance technique gone bad that had consequences. I do not believe they would randomly cause harm to this variety of people."
A former Canadian ambassador to Cuba, James Bartleman, said that during his 1981-83 tour in Havana, he and his staff were targets of a string of mysterious attacks.
"One morning in 1982 the butler came to say that our dog had been poisoned and was very sick and dying," Bartleman said. "My deputy ambassador called to say someone had poisoned his dog and his dog was dead. Then the head of the commercial section called to say that 'out of the blue we opened the door and a rat was nailed to it.' "
Bartleman said he complained to the then-head of the Americas section of Cuba's foreign ministry, whom he quoted as saying: "Someone is trying to harm Canada-Cuba relations."
He said the Cuban government sent a veterinarian to his house, but he sent his dog back to Canada, where it died six months later.
"We were their bosom buddies back then," Bartleman said of Canadian-Cuban relations. "We were their largest trading partner and always their largest provider of tourists. Why would they do it? It made no sense then and makes no sense now."
Credit : Voice of America (VOA) | Photo Credit: AP


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I need to have you sit in on an Apologetics class we are sitting through with my college students at church. We are making an effort to become more aware of scientific and historical proof of why we believe what we do. Trying to grow further away from our parents faith and make it our own.
Big Dog


text:
Conductivity Transmitter
Ideal for use in the brewery, food and beverage, and biopharm industries. Alfa Laval Conductivity Transmitters provide accurate and reliable measurement of a process liquid's ability to carry electrical currents.
Touch screen, easy to use
The conductivity transmitter features an integrated graphical LCD display with 3 different backlight colours. Conductivity (µS/cm or mS/cm), concentration (%), temperature (°C) and also the customer-specific medium name are conveniently indicated for on-site control for safe operation, especially for manually operated cleaning systems. It is quickly configured on the spot without a computer using the touch screen. It can be programmed to four measuring ranges, which can be easily adjusted from the touch screen. Precise control of temperature compensation is also possible from the display, which makes the Alfa Laval conductivity sensor ideal for a wide range of conductivity measurements.
All stainless steel and PEEK, hygienic design
Alfa Laval Conductivity Transmitter are highly accurate and hygienicly designed, measures the ability of process liquids to carry electrical currents.
All wetted parts are made of AISI 316L stainless steel and PEEK, and designed to withstand process temperatures between -20 and +150°C. Because the conductivity sensor can withstand high temperatures, it is well suited for use in Cleaning-in-Place (CIP) and Sterilization-in-Place (SIP) processes. These compact 3A-certified sensors may be installed in pipe sizes DN40 and larger.
High accuracy, fast response
Thanks to optimized flow geometry and fast response time, Alfa Laval Conductivity Transmitter are particularly suitable for applications that require the separation of media and/or the measurement of cleaning agents in Cleaning-in-Place (CIP) equipment. Measurements are highly accurate even at very low conductivity and flow rates.
Remote controllable, easy to use
The conductivity transmitter come with four standard pre-configured measuring ranges, which can be easily adjusted from a remote location. Precise control of temperature compensation is also possible from a remote location, which makes the Alfa Laval Conductivity Transmitter ideal for a wide range of conductivity measurements.
An integrated display indicates values for mS/cm and °C, which instantly provides users with monitoring and control data required for safe operation, especially for manually operated cleaning systems.
Product Benefits
- All stainless steel and PEEK, hygienic design
- High accuracy, fast response
- Remote controllable, easy to use
Product catalogue
How it works
Operating principle
Inductive conductivity measurement is based on the principle of a transformer. An AC voltage generator controls the primary side of the transformer. The liquid flows through the channel bore in the measuring head and forms a conductor loop, which links the primary side of the transformer and the secondary side of the transformer. The measuring cell is a homogeneous sealed body all in PEEK. Through the body is a hole, through which the media is flowing. Built-in around the hole are two coils; a primary coil supplied with an AC voltage and a secondary coil, which picks up a small signal through the media inducted voltage. The size of this voltage is dependent on the conductivity of the media. This signal is handled and amplified in the electronics to a linear analogue 4...20 mA output signal.
Also built into the body is a Pt100 sensor placed in the tip of the sensor. This is measuring the media temperature to enable temperature compensation of the conductivity signal, which is very temperature dependent. The Pt100 sensor signal also features as a separate analogue 4...20 mA output signal.
The coils and sensor are encapsulated in the PEEK sensor body, which have a surface with surface roughness (Ra) <0,8 µm. It is therefore well suited for use in hygienic processes or directly in concentrated acids or alkalis.


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I was using my google-fu on longjmp
when I came across a page from Francesco Nidito describing how to implement a Java like try/catch exception handling in C using the CPP. Very entertaining. However, I did see the dangling ETRY;
as a challenge. Can I implement a more serious try/catch without it? On top of that, can I create a syntax more elegant than the syntax of Java, Ruby and Python? I could not resist. So here is the BSD-licensed source for my version of try/catch in CPP [download .tgz]. There is one small gem, I'd like to share with those that lack the time or courage to read the source. The code below would be valid after including the try/catch header file.
try { /* Do something. */ } catch(DIV_ZERO) { /* Handle this. */ } catch(*) { printf("Can't handle %d\n", excepno); } ensure { if (0 == d) d = 1; }
Note the catch(*)
. It catches all the (hitherto) uncaught exceptions. The preprocessor expands both catch(*)
and catch(22)
to a correct C integer expression. Since *
can mean a pointer dereference and &
can mean both pointer-of and bitwise-and, the expression (arg & allones)
expands to either (* & allones)
or to (22 & allones)
. Both are a valid C expression, the first evaluating to -1
the later to 22
. To distinguish between a star and a number argument, (#arg[0] == '*')
is used to check the first character of the argument. I happen to think the catch all catch(*)
syntax is already plenty elegant but I am very open to any improvements, so don't hold back.


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Lead2pass 2017 September New Cisco 840-425 Exam Dumps!
100% Free Download! 100% Pass Guaranteed!
Lead2pass provides 100% pass 840-425 exam questions and answers for your Cisco 840-425 exam. We provide Cisco 840-425 exam questions from Lead2pass dumps and answers for the training of 840-425 practice test.
Following questions and answers are all new published by Cisco Official Exam Center: https://www.lead2pass.com/840-425.html
Which statement about a key performance indicator is true?
A. It is a qualitative statement that relates to business objectives.
B. It is a value-based description of a strategic initiative.
C. It is a quantitative target against which outcomes can be measured.
D. It is a way to determine strategic requirements to realize corporate vision.


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About Midsouth Weather Network
The Midsouth Weather Network was founded in May of 2008 by Mike Berry of SoHiWeather. Membership is open to those with Personal Weather Stations in the South Central United States (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana) and member sites can be viewed on the home page. In April, 2015, Ken True assumed hosting/administration for the network as Mike had to leave for personal reasons.
The weather networking idea comes from Chris Arndt at www.sloweather.com, he is the founder of the Southwestern Weather Network.
The members of this site contribute their data to the map on the home page allowing for a clear and live snap shot of the weather in the South Central US. It is a great place to visit when there is a storm predicted for the South Central US or if you plan on traveling to or in the area.
If you have a weather website using a personal weather station running Weather Display, VWS, or WeatherLink software in (TX, OK, AR, LA), you are invited to join our network. Membership is free, Contact Us to get started. We offer a member mesomap for your site. The map style and rotating data display was a result of collaboration between SWN members as they built their network. Ken True from Saratoga-Weather.org supplied the backend programming that makes it all work.
Weather Network affiliations:
- Africa
- Namibia Weather Network 26 Stations in Namibia
- Canada
- Canadian Atlantic Weather Network 7 Stations in E-QC,NB,NS,PE,NL
- Ontario Weather Network 5 Stations in ON,W-QC
- Quebec Weather Network 4 Stations in E-ON,QC,NB,NS
- Saskatchewan Weather Network 1 Stations in SK
- Western Canada Weather Network 6 Stations in BC,AL
- Europe
- Austria Weather Network 19 Stations in Austria
- Benelux Weather Network 98 Stations in Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg
- Czech Republic Weather Weather Network 7 Stations in Czech Republic
- European Weather Network 377 Stations in Europe
- Germany Weather Network 36 Stations in Germany
- Hellas Meteo Network 85 Stations in Greece
- Iberian Peninsula Weather Network 32 Stations in Spain, Portugal, Andorra
- Ireland Weather Network 26 Stations in Ireland
- Portugal Weather Network 49 Stations in Portugal
- Slovenia Weather Network 21 Stations in Slovenia
- United Kingdom Weather Network 59 Stations in England, Wales, Scotland, N.I.
- Pacific
- Australian Weather Network 23 Stations in ACT, NSW, NT, QLD, SA, TAS, VIC, WA
- New Zealand Local Weather Network 53 Stations in North Island, South Island
- Alaskan Weather Network 5 Stations in AK
- Mid-Atlantic Weather Network 27 Stations in PA, NJ, WV, VA, DE, MD, DC
- Mid-South Weather Network 18 Stations in TX, OK, AR, LA
- Midwestern Weather Network 55 Stations in MN, WI, MI, IA, IL, IN, OH, MO, KY
- North American Weather Network USA: National
- Northeastern Weather Network 42 Stations in PA, NJ, NY,CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, ME
- Northwest Weather Network 22 Stations in WA, OR, ID, MT
- Plains Weather Network 11 Stations in OK, KS, ND, NE, SD
- Rocky Mountain Weather Network 16 Stations in WY, CO, NM
- Southeastern Weather Network 25 Stations in TN, NC, SC, MS, AL, GA, FL
- Southwestern Weather Network 26 Stations in AZ, CA, HI, NV, UT
This site is a template design by CarterLake.org with PHP conversion by Saratoga-Weather.org.
Special thanks go to Kevin Reed at TNET Weather for his work on the original Carterlake templates, and his design for the common website PHP management.
Special thanks to Mike Challis of Long Beach WA for his wind-rose generator, Theme Switcher and CSS styling help with these templates.
Special thanks go to Ken True of Saratoga-Weather.org for the AJAX conditions display, dashboard and integration of the TNET Weather common PHP site design for this site.
Special thanks to Martin of Hebrides Weather for the great banner.
Template is originally based on Designs by Haran.
This template is XHTML 1.0 compliant. Validate the XHTML and CSS of this page.


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Estate Planning Introduction
(For "advanced" estate planning for clients with estates over $10,000,000, please click here).
Do you think your estate plan is in order?
Many people think that because they have an attorney and an accountant/CPA/EA they work with that the answer is yes. That may not be the case.
The following are statistics about the general public when looking at a group of ten.
- 1-2 will NOT have a Simple Will
- 5-6 will NOT have Durable Powers of Attorney
- 5-6 will NOT have Marital Living Trusts
- 9-10 will NOT have a Family Limited Partnership (FLP)
- 7-8 will NOT have an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT)
*Provided by the Wealth Preservation Institute
Many people know their estate plans are NOT in order but believe they are too busy and that they will get to their estate plan "when they have the time." If you have been saying that to yourself, please act now to put an estate plan in order.
Estate planning itself is a very broad topic and cannot be covered in an introduction webpage. Therefore, we have listed a few of the more important topics that are typically not dealt with properly in most estate plans. We encourage you to click on the links below as well as the links in the estate planning drop down menu at the top of the page. We are confident that this site will help you learn more about estate planning and we hope you will contact us to help put together a complete plan that covers not only your estate plan but also your asset protection plan and financial plan.


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Is Your Family Expanding?
You may have chosen the perfect color palette and all of your nursery furniture, but have you thought about some key safety checks?
"The arrival of a baby means you have to take a look at your home in a whole new light," said Tarsila Wey, marketing director for First Alert, the most trusted brand in home safety. "Take the time now to help ensure your home is safe and secure."
First Alert has outlined some crucial tasks to accomplish before the little one makes his or her appearance:
Maintain crib safety
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two-thirds of children's deaths under the age of one are caused by suffocation. Make sure that, when prepping the nursery, the crib meets safety standards. Also, avoid loose bedding or soft toys in the crib. After the baby arrives, make sure they sleep alone and are placed on his or her back on a firm surface.
Check your smoke alarms
Smoke alarms help protect your family, but in order to do so, the alarms need to be present — and working. Install a working smoke alarm in the nursery and ensure that the rest of the home is properly equipped. The National Fire Protection Association recommends smoke alarms inside every bedroom, outside each sleeping area and on every level of the home, including the basement.
Residential smoke alarms need to be replaced at least every 10 years. Check on the back of the alarms where the date of manufacture is marked. The smoke alarm should be replaced 10 years from that date (not the date of purchase or installation).
Protect from the "Silent Killer"
Often dubbed "the silent killer," carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless and odorless gas. It is impossible to detect without an alarm. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, CO poisoning is the leading cause of accidental poisoning in the United States. It is responsible for an average of 450 deaths each year. Standard CO alarms are designed to alert people to high levels of CO (30-70 parts per million), which can be fatal.
However, lower levels of CO have also been proven to be harmful to infants. Fully protect your newborn from both high and low levels of CO with the Onelink by First Alert Environment Monitor, which provides protection for those most vulnerable to CO levels as low as 9 parts per million, and peace of mind for parents. Compatible with Apple HomeKit and Alexa Skills, it also monitors temperature and humidity, and notifies users of changing conditions.
Update the escape plan
It is important to plan and practice an escape plan for your home in the event of a fire. According to an NFPA survey, only one of every three American households has actually developed and practiced a home fire escape plan. This is even more important with the addition of a new member to your family. As a family, walk through the home and inspect all possible exits and escape routes.
Identify two ways out of each room, including windows and doors. For the second story, place escape ladders near windows. You should practice setting them up so you'll be able to use them correctly and quickly in an emergency. Make sure everyone understands the plan, with special attention to carrying the newborn. Choose an outside meeting place that is a safe distance from your home. Most Importantly, make sure to practice your escape plan twice a year — and before the baby comes.
Create an emergency call list
Even though everything we need is on our smartphones these days, when a babysitter or nanny is with your infant, they might not be as prepared in case of an emergency. You might not be either! Having an emergency contact list readily available can potentially save time. It will make everything go a little more smoothly when there is a crisis. Make sure the list includes family numbers, poison control, non-emergency numbers for police and fire departments, and neighbors' phone numbers.
To learn more about fire and carbon monoxide safety and the Onelink Environment Monitor, visit FirstAlert.com or you may visit our page for a home safety checklist through our home inspection services.


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A new way to make laser-like beams using 250x less power
With precarious particles called polaritons that straddle the worlds of light and matter, University of Michigan researchers have demonstrated a new, practical and potentially more efficient way to make a coherent laser-like beam.
With precarious particles called polaritons that straddle the worlds of light and matter, University of Michigan researchers have demonstrated a new, practical and potentially more efficient way to make a coherent laser-like beam.
They have made what's believed to be the first polariton laser that is fueled by electrical current as opposed to light, and also works at room temperature, rather than way below zero.
Those attributes make the device the most real-world ready of the handful of polariton lasers ever developed. It represents a milestone like none the field has seen since the invention of the most common type of laser – the semiconductor diode – in the early 1960s, the researchers say. While the first lasers were made in the 1950s, it wasn't until the semiconductor version, fueled by electricity rather than light, that the technology took off.
This work could advance efforts to put lasers on computer circuits to replace wire connections, leading to smaller and more powerful electronics. It may also have applications in medical devices and treatments and more.
The researchers didn't develop it with a specific use in mind. They point out that when conventional lasers were introduced, no one envisioned how ubiquitous they would become. Today they're used in the fiber-optic communication that makes the Internet and cable television possible. They are also in DVD players, eye surgery tools, robotics sensors and defense technologies, for example.
A polariton is part light and part matter. Polariton lasers harness these particles to emit light. They are predicted to be more energy efficient than traditional lasers. The new prototype requires 250 times less electricity to operate than its conventional counterpart made of the same material.
"This is big," said Pallab Bhattacharya, the Charles M. Vest Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the James R. Mellor Professor of Engineering at U-M. "For the past 50 years, we have relied on lasers to make coherent light and now we have something else based on a totally new principle."
Bhattacharya's system isn't technically a laser. The term was initially an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Polariton lasers don't stimulate radiation emission. They stimulate scattering of polaritons.
In a typical laser, light–or more often electrical current– is pumped into a material called a gain medium that's designed to amplify the signal. Before the pumping begins, most of the electrons in the gain medium are in their least energetic state, also known as the ground state. Once the light or current hits them, the electrons absorb that energy and move to a higher-energy state. At some point, more electrons are high-energy than are low-energy and the device is said to have achieved a "population inversion." Now any light or current that goes in has the opposite effect on the excited electrons. It kicks them down to the ground state and releases pent-up light in the process.
Polariton lasers don't rely on these population inversions, so they don't need a lot of start-up energy to excite electrons and then knock them back down. "The threshold current can be very small, which is an extremely attractive feature," Bhattacharya said.
He and his team paired the right material – the hard, transparent semiconductor gallium nitride – with a unique design to maintain the controlled circumstances that encourage polaritons to form and then emit light.
A polariton is a combination of a photon or light particle and an exciton – an electron-hole pair. The electron is negatively charged and the hole is technically the absence of an electron, but it behaves as if it were positively charged. Excitons will only fuse with light particles under just the right conditions. Too much light or electrical current will cause the excitons to break down too early. But with just enough, polaritons will form and then bounce around the system until they come to rest at their lowest energy level in what Bhattacharya describes as a coherent pool. There, the polaritons decay and in the process, release a beam of single-colored light.
The beam they demonstrated was ultraviolet and very low power – less than a millionth of a watt. For context, the laser in a CD player is about one-thousandth of a watt.
"We're thrilled," said Thomas Frost, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering. "This is the first really practical polariton laser that could be used on chip for real applications."
The design the team used helped them achieve the beam with an electrical rather than light input signal. Getting the electrical current into the system requires electrodes sandwiching the gallium nitride and several layers of mirrors to render the electrical signal useable. Other groups' approaches put the electrodes outside the mirrors. Bhattacharya said it was tough to get the signal strong enough under those circumstances. So he deconstructed the sandwich. He put the mirrors on the sides of the gallium nitride and left the electrodes on the top and bottom.
The paper, "Room Temperature Electrically Injected Polariton Laser," will be published online in Physical Review Letters on June 10. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation.


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Although HVAC typically represents 40 percent of a commercial building's total energy use, energy efficiency historically has taken a back seat to occupant comfort in commercial-building HVAC design. With energy prices on the rise and commercial-building owners searching for ways to be more competitive, satisfy corporate social-responsibility objectives, and meet new government mandates, however, energy efficiency is becoming a greater and greater priority.
Today, HVAC systems must do more than provide a comfortable environment. They also must:
- Achieve the highest levels of energy efficiency to minimize operating expenses.
- Sustain reduced energy levels to ensure savings over time.
As difficult as energy-efficient HVAC can be to achieve, it can be even harder to sustain. Even the newest state-of-the-art HVAC systems can experience "drift," or degradation in performance resulting from malfunctioning mechanical and control equipment.
This article will discuss methods of mitigating performance drift to increase energy efficiency and sustain operating-cost reductions.
Conventional Solutions
The HVAC industry has developed a variety of approaches to optimizing HVAC-system performance. The most widely recognized is recommissioning, a process that includes an assessment of a system, identification and correction of mechanical and control issues, development of new operating procedures, and, often, implementation of new energy-efficiency strategies.
One such energy-efficiency strategy is the use of variable-speed equipment and custom-developed control methodologies. While some level of savings usually is achieved with this approach, it is not without risk. Custom solutions are unproven, can take weeks or months to program, and require hands-on functional testing to verify a system is working as designed. Additionally, without real-time measurement and verification, determining whether predicted energy savings have been realized and/or are being sustained is difficult.
With recommissioning, building operating-efficiency improvements typically range from 5 to 20 percent. Because recommissioning is focused on improving efficiency at a single point in time, however, recommissioned plants—even ones maintained to the highest standards—are subject to drift until they are recommissioned again.
Savings Opportunity
Building operators able to maintain HVAC systems consistently and mitigate performance drift have the opportunity to reduce operating costs reliably over the long term. This is vitally important to ensuring investments in energy reduction achieve expected returns.
A new means of ensuring optimized plant operation is the use of enterprise applications with integrated software solutions. Today, integrated software solutions capable of networking all of the equipment in an HVAC system and optimizing energy-system operation for maximum energy efficiency are available (Figure 1).
HVAC systems capable of providing occupant comfort, as well as annual wire-to-water energy efficiency of 0.4 to 0.6 kw per ton, achieve a new standard of HVAC-system performance: ultrahigh.
Integrated Software Solutions
Today, commercial-building owners and operators are reducing HVAC energy consumption by 30 to 60 percent with networked applications combining advanced relational-control methodologies and Web-based measurement, verification, and management services. Mineta San Jose International Airport in San Jose, Calif., for example, reduced HVAC energy use by more than 1.25 million kwh, or 50 percent, in 12 months by implementing an integrated software solution that includes control-software components that automatically and continuously optimize the operating efficiency of the entire HVAC system based on real-time building loads.
Since implementing the integrated software solution, Mineta San Jose International Airport has maintained a monthly wire-to-water energy efficiency of 0.61 to 0.65 kw per ton.
Page 2 of 2
Measurement, Verification, and Management
Web-based measurement, verification, and management services can provide continuous feedback, including detailed real-time and historical performance data that enable operators to detect, diagnose, and resolve HVAC-system faults quickly. An on-site controller captures and transmits equipment operating information (typically, hundreds of points per system), which is stored in a secure database. This data can be used for at-a-glance dashboards or to provide historical measurement and verification reporting and analysis (figures 2 and 3).
Measurement, verification, and management data can be used in a variety of ways to streamline plant operation and maintenance and ensure energy reduction is persistent. For instance, they can be used to automatically generate supervisory-level alarms that inform building operators and technicians when an exception condition is compromising the energy-efficient operation of an HVAC system. Detailed equipment trend data are accessible in easy-to-read charts and graphs, enabling fast diagnosis of system faults—even though hardware alarms may not have been triggered, and overall performance of the plant may not be noticeably impaired.
In conventionally operated plants, performance to specification often is assumed. Unless the building undergoes recommissioning, however, this assumption never is verified. System faults may go undetected for long periods of time, until scheduled maintenance or occupant complaints uncover hidden problems.
Integrated software solutions take the guesswork out of HVAC operations, allowing building operators to continuously commission a building for optimal energy performance. With on-demand reporting and analysis capabilities, building owners and operators no longer have to rely on physical-plant inspections or labor-intensive functional testing to detect and diagnose system faults.
With rising energy costs and increased pressure to be "green," focusing solely on occupant comfort no longer is enough. Building owners looking to maximize their investments must consider energy efficiency and persistent HVAC performance. While custom solutions and recommissioning can result in energy savings, they are expensive and carry some inherent risk. Just as important, they do not leverage the data available via a building-automation system to sustain high-level energy reductions over the long term.
Sustaining high efficiency requires a new approach to HVAC-system design, control, and operation. Integrated software solutions combining demand-based energy-reduction software and an ongoing online energy-management tool are the key to achieving ultrahigh-performance HVAC and guaranteeing intended payback and long-term value. Today, by applying integrated software solutions, it is possible to more optimally control commercial HVAC systems and fundamentally change the way buildings are managed and maintained.
A co-founder and the chief technology officer of Optimum Energy LLC (www.optimumenergyhvac.com), provider of HVAC software solutions, Jim Hanna has more than 25 years of experience developing information-technology products and systems. Previously, he founded and served as vice president of product development for Applied Voice Technology, developer of open-messaging platforms.


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When Lee Myung-bak was inaugurated as the 10th president of South Korea in February 2008, it was an astonishing outcome for a poor boy from Pohang, whose No. 1 dream had been simply to get a job.
Lee's life journey is a literal rags-to-riches story. He has made a political journey, too, from a student radical imprisoned for his activism to a conservative head of state.
In between, the 69-year-old was instrumental in helping to build one of South Korea's most famous companies. During an exclusive interview with NPR at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, he draws parallels between his own life and the changes South Korea has seen.
Taught Never To Seek Handouts
The fifth of seven children born to a poor farmer, Lee recalls his childhood in the country's southeast as one of "raw and painful" poverty. Just finding food was a daily struggle.
"Some days we would have to chase away our hunger by drinking a lot of water, which only exacerbated the situation," says Lee, who was quick to point out that his family's situation was not uncommon. "I must say, the entire country was very poor back then. But my family was, even compared to others, we were particularly very poor."
Lee's autobiography, The Uncharted Path, has just been released in the U.S. In it, he describes how as a child, his main meals were often the dregs left behind after brewing rice alcohol, which left him drunk.
Despite their poverty, Lee's parents — particularly his mother — instilled strong Christian values in him, which later played into his political philosophy.
"The only difference between our family and that of my neighbor was the fact that the parents in my neighboring family, they went out to the streets, asking for handouts," he says. "Whereas my parents, they wanted us to go out there and work and earn our living instead of trying to have it easy by asking people for free handouts."
To this end, Lee worked to put himself through school, selling homemade matches and rice wrapped in seaweed. In his autobiography, he writes that he wore his school uniform at all times, since he did not possess any other clothing.
By sixth grade, he writes there were few jobs he hadn't done. He paid for his university education by hauling garbage, which he says was "one of the hardest and most grueling jobs I did in my life."
Success In Business, Then Politics
In 1964, Lee helped organize huge student demonstrations sparked by outrage at the government's normalization of relations with Japan. The government declared martial law, and Lee was sentenced to two years in prison, the term being suspended for three years.
Lee was released after three months, and it's a measure of how hard his life was that he seemed to enjoy prison, where he could read and think, without being hungry. In his autobiography, he described it as a "time of renewal, both physical and spiritual."
"When I was a young man, my No. 1 hope was to get a job. I joined a small company called Hyundai — back then it was a very tiny company. And I knew that having a job was about not just earning money, but it was also about fulfilling a man's dignity, it's about gaining happiness," he says.
Lee spent 27 years at the company, where at 35, he became the youngest-ever chief executive officer of Hyundai Construction. There, he was responsible for winning Korea's first overseas contract, building a road in Thailand. This was symbolically important: the first step toward building Hyundai into the massive international conglomerate it is today.
Other Korean companies followed Hyundai's lead, becoming the powerful conglomerates that now drive the country's economy.
At Hyundai, he was nicknamed "The Bulldozer" for his dogged determination and focus, traits that served him well when he entered politics in 2002, becoming the mayor of Seoul.
His biggest success as mayor was the much-acclaimed Cheonggyecheon urban renewal project, the restoration of the Cheonggye stream, which had been covered with concrete. As president, though, his policies have made him unpopular politically.
A Third Act?
But his personal story of triumph over adversity reflects that of South Korea, the developing country that pulled itself into the developed world by its bootstraps, which President Obama noted during Lee's state visit to the United States in October.
"Your life story, from crushing poverty to the presidency, is an inspiration," Obama told Lee during the state banquet. "Your success — Korea's success — speaks to the truth that with education and hard work, anything is possible."
Lee recognizes the clear parallels between his own story and his country's success.
"I used to be a boy who had to stand in line when an American missionary came to visit my village to hand out used clothes," he tells NPR. "And that little boy who used to stand in line is now president of a country [that] once used to receive aid from others [and] is now able to provide help to other countries."
Lee has slightly more than a year left in office. As for what he'll do afterward, he has been taking counsel from Bill Gates. Lee says he has already donated most of his wealth to his own charitable foundation and spent some time doing voluntary work in Ethiopia to gain an understanding of the needs of poorer African countries. After president, his next act could be as philanthropist. It seems the uncharted path of "the poor boy from Pohang" is not over yet.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Description Bill No Zip Impact Vest:
The last couple of seasons, Bill has been getting his feet wet in the fashion water parka world with his own signature no zip pull over designs. His urban, redneck, global expertise has brought about some of our best selling designs. This year, Bill had some cookies with girl scouts, fell in love with a camp counselor, and fabricated a energy efficient bug zapper. Bill and Frank, despite rumors are still on good terms and feature all of their years highlights in their new Hello My Name Is Collection. Oh yeah, back to the vest - made from a thicker 3mm material with greater padding for those untimely bails. The Coast Guard might not have approved it, but parading around uber discotecas and some log cabins, our friend Bill gave his stamp of approval.


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Southern Company (SO) Dividend Stock Analysis
Linked here is a detailed quantitative analysis of Southern Company (SO). Below are some highlights from the above linked analysis:
Company Description: Southern Company is an Atlanta-based energy holding company and is one of the largest producers of electricity in the U.S.
Fair Value: In calculating fair value, I consider the NPV MMA Differential Fair Value along with these four calculations of fair value, see page 2 of the linked PDF for a detailed description:
1. Avg. High Yield Price
2. 20-Year DCF Price
3. Avg. P/E Price
4. Graham Number
SO is trading at a discount to only 3.) above. When also considering the NPV MMA Differential, the stock is trading at a 40.1% premium to its calculated fair value of $49.57. SO did not earn any Stars in this section.
Dividend Analytical Data: In this section there are three possible Stars and three key metrics, see page 2 of the linked PDF for a detailed description:
1. Free Cash Flow Payout
2. Debt To Total Capital
3. Key Metrics
4. Dividend Growth Rate
5. Years of Div. Growth
6. Rolling 4-yr Div. > 15%
SO earned one Star in this section for 3.) above. SO earned a Star for having an acceptable score in at least two of the four Key Metrics measured. The company has paid a cash dividend to shareholders every year since 1948 and has increased its dividend payments for 21 consecutive years.
Dividend Income vs. MMA: Why would you assume the equity risk and invest in a dividend stock if you could earn a better return in a much less risky money market account (MMA) or Treasury bond? This section compares the earning ability of this stock with a high yield MMA. Two items are considered in this section, see page 2 of the linked PDF for a detailed description:
1. NPV MMA Diff.
2. Years to > MMA
The NPV MMA Diff. of the $604 is below the $1,400 target I look for in a stock that has increased dividends as long as SO has. The stock's current yield of 3.89% exceeds the 3.12% estimated 20-year average MMA rate.
Peers: The company's peer group includes: NextEra Energy, Inc. (NEE) with a 2.0% yield, Entergy Corporation (ETR) with a 3.8% yield and CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (CNP) with a 2.5% yield.
Conclusion: SO did not earn any Stars in the Fair Value section, earned one Star in the Dividend Analytical Data section and did not earn any Stars in the Dividend Income vs. MMA section for a total of one Star. This quantitatively ranks SO as a 1-Star Very Weak stock.
Using my D4L-PreScreen.xls model, I determined the share price would need to decrease to $50.70 before SO's NPV MMA Differential increased to the $1,400 minimum that I look for in a stock with 21 years of consecutive dividend increases. At that price the stock would yield 5.3%.
Resetting the D4L-PreScreen.xls model and solving for the dividend growth rate needed to generate the target $1,400 NPV MMA Differential, the calculated rate is 6.2%. This dividend growth rate is higher than the 3.1% used in this analysis, thus providing no margin of safety. SO has a risk rating of 2.00, which classifies it as a Medium risk stock.
The stock is currently trading at a premium to its $49.57 calculated fair value. In addition, the company's high debt to total capital of 61% (down from 62%) and negative free cash flow payout of -208% (prior -378%) will keep me from adding to my position at this time.
Disclaimer: Material presented here is for informational purposes only. The above quantitative stock analysis, including the Star rating, is mechanically calculated and is based on historical information. The analysis assumes the stock will perform in the future as it has in the past. This is generally never true. Before buying or selling any stock you should do your own research and reach your own conclusion. See my Disclaimer for more information.
Full Disclosure: At the time of this writing, I was long in SO (0.3% of my Dividend Growth Stocks Portfolio).
Related Articles:
– Sysco Corporation (SYY) Dividend Stock Analysis
– Chevron Corporation (CVX) Dividend Stock Analysis
– Caterpillar, Inc. (CAT) Dividend Stock Analysis
– Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Dividend Stock Analysis
Published at Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:30:00 -0800


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Gout is a type of arthritis that causes sudden, severe joint pain. See a GP for treatment to help during an attack and to stop further attacks.
See a GP if you have:
- sudden severe pain in a joint – usually your big toe, but it can be in other joints in your feet, hands, wrists, elbows or knees
- hot, swollen, red skin over the affected joint
These are symptoms of gout.
An attack of gout usually lasts 5 to 7 days, then gets better. It may not cause lasting damage to joints if you get treatment immediately.
Ask for an urgent GP appointment or call 111 if:
- the pain is getting worse
- you also have a very high temperature (you feel hot and shivery)
- you also feel sick or cannot eat
These symptoms could mean you have an infection inside your joint and need urgent medical help.
What happens at your appointment
The GP may ask about your diet and if you drink alcohol.
They may refer you to see a specialist (rheumatologist) and arrange a blood test and scan. Sometimes a thin needle is used to take a sample of fluid from inside the affected joint, to test it.
The blood test will find out how much of a chemical called uric acid there is in your blood.
Having too much uric acid in your blood can lead to crystals forming around your joints, which causes pain.
Treatment to reduce pain and swelling
Attacks of gout are usually treated with a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) like ibuprofen.
If the pain and swelling does not improve you may be given steroids as tablets or an injection.
Treatment to reduce pain and swelling
take any medicine you've been prescribed as soon as possible – it should start to work within 2 days
rest and raise the limb
keep the joint cool – apply an ice pack, or a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a towel, for up to 20 minutes at a time
drink lots of water (unless a GP tells you not to)
try to keep bedclothes off the affected joint at night
Treatment to reduce pain and swelling
do not put pressure on the joint
Treatment to prevent gout coming back
Treatment to reduce pain and swelling
Gout can come back every few months or it may be years. It can come back more often if it's not treated.
If you have frequent attacks or high levels of uric acid in your blood, you may need to take uric acid-lowering medicine.
Treatment to reduce pain and swelling
It's important to take uric acid-lowering medicine regularly, even when you no longer have symptoms.
Things you can do to prevent gout coming back
Making lifestyle changes may mean you can stop or reduce further attacks.
Things you can do to prevent gout coming back
get to a healthy weight, but avoid crash diets – try the NHS weight loss plan
eat a healthy, balanced diet – your doctor may give you a list of foods to include or limit
have some alcohol-free days each week
drink plenty of fluids to avoid getting dehydrated
exercise regularly – but avoid intense exercise or putting lots of pressure on joints
ask a GP about vitamin C supplements
Things you can do to prevent gout coming back
do not have lots of sugary drinks and snacks
do not eat lots of fatty foods
do not drink more than 14 units of alcohol a week, and spread your drinking over 3 or more days if you drink as much as 14 units
Things that can trigger a gout attack
You might get an attack if you:
- have an illness that causes a high temperature
- drink too much alcohol or eat a very large, fatty meal
- get dehydrated
- injure a joint
- take certain medicines
Get treatment immediately if you feel an attack starting.
Who gets gout
Gout sometimes runs in families.
It's more common in men, especially as they get older.
You might have a higher chance of getting gout if you:
- are overweight
- drink alcohol
- have been through the menopause
- take medicines such as diuretics (water tablets), or medicines for high blood pressure (such as ACE inhibitors)
- have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, kidney problems, osteoarthritis or diabetes
- have had surgery or an injury
Complications of gout
It's rare to get lots of attacks (chronic gout), but if you do, it can damage your joint.
Chronic gout can also cause tiny white lumps, called tophi, to appear under your skin, usually on your ears, fingers or elbows.
This is where urate crystals form under your skin. They can be painful.
You can get kidney stones if your uric acid levels are very high, so you'll need treatment to reduce the levels.
Social care and support guide
Read our guide to care and support if you:
- need help with day-to-day living because of illness or disability
- care for someone regularly because they're ill, elderly or disabled (including family members)


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Today is no ordinary Hump Day. Oh no, my friends, today is special! So, whether you are having a mountain top day, down in the valley, or somewhere in between, it is time for a big deep breath of relaxation. December 11th is International Mountain Day! I hail from the only mountains in Texas. Born in Brewster county and toddling the Chisos … [Read more...]
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A creatively used closet can serve many purposes in a home, and this closet-turned-workspace is one of the smartest (and coolest) uses we've seen. The DIY team at Family Handyman shows you how to build your own space-saving home office in this step-by-step tutorial.
In this tutorial, we'll show you how to build and install wall shelf cabinets and a countertop and under-mount drawers, including how to adjust the dimensions to fit these projects in your closet. We'll also show you an easy way to conceal all those cords that usually dangle down behind the desk. We've included a materials list, but you'll have to adjust the quantities to fit your closet. The project shown here is constructed with birch plywood and boards and cost us about $400.
This is a great project for any intermediate to advanced DIYer. There's no complicated joinery—the wall shelves and drawers are just wooden boxes that are screwed together. We used a table saw to cut the plywood, a narrow-crown staple gun to attach the shelf backs and drawer bottoms, and an 18-gauge nailer to attach the face frames. If you don't have these tools, you can use a circular saw and straightedge guide to cut the plywood, and a good old-fashioned hammer and nails. It will just take a little longer.
Tools and Materials
Miter saw
Narrow-crown staple gun
Tape measure
Circular saw
Drill/driver, cordless
Impact driver
Framing square
Hearing protection
Hole saw kit
Hot melt glue gun
Safety glasses
Table saw
Wood glue
Step One: Measure Your Closet and Customize the Plan to Fit
Start by measuring the distance between the side walls. Keeping in mind that 32 in. is about the maximum width for a plywood shelf, decide how many shelf units you need. To figure out exactly how wide each cabinet should be, subtract 1-1/2 in. from the total measurement and divide the remainder by the number of cabinets. This will leave a 3/4-in. space between the cabinet and the wall at each end that you'll cover with the face frame. This 3/4-in. space makes it easy to install the shelf cabinets in the closet without worrying about an exact fit.
We needed three 27-1/2-in.-wide cabinets to fit our 84-in.-wide closet. We built the cabinets 47-3/4 in. tall. If you have standard 8-ft.-tall walls, the cabinets will reach the ceiling. After you do the calculations, double-check your math by drawing lines on the closet wall. Draw a level line 28-1/2 in. from the floor to mark the bottom of the 1-1/2-in.-thick countertop. Then draw another line 47-1/2 in. from the floor for the bottom of the wall cabinets. Finally, draw vertical lines for the sides of the cabinets.
You'll also have to decide how wide to make the drawers. You can use the technique we show here to build drawers in a size and configuration that will work best in your closet. The key is to build the frame and mount the drawer slides before you build the drawers. Then you can measure between the slides (photo 8) and build the drawers to fit.
Step Two: Mount the Countertop
The countertop is two layers of plywood that are glued and screwed together. It rests on cleats that are screwed to the wall studs. Start by measuring the closet interior at the level of the countertop. Use a framing square to check the corners. Deduct 1/4 in. from the length and depth to allow for the top to fit easily. You can cover any gaps with the backsplash. Transfer these measurements to your plywood and cut out the two pieces. Use less-expensive plywood for the bottom if you like. Screw 1x2 cleats to the back, side and front walls to support the top (Photo 1). Then drop the top into place and attach it from underneath with 2-1/2-in. screws (Photo 2). Finish the front edge with a 2-1/4-in.-wide board (Photo 3).
Photo 1: Draw level lines for the bottom of the countertop and cabinets. Draw vertical lines to indicated the sides of the cabinets. Then screw countertop supports to the studs at the back and sides of the closet.
Photo 2: Screw through the countertop supports into the countertop. Lay something heavy on top, or ask a helper to press down while you drive the screws.
Photo 3: Glue and nail a board to the front to cover the plywood and add strength. Wipe off glue squeeze-out with a damp rag.
Step Three: Build the Wall Shelf Cabinets
Start by cutting the parts from the 4 x 8-ft. sheets of plywood. If you're using a table saw, keep the good side of the plywood facing up as you cut the parts. If you're using a circular saw, face the good side down so that any splintering or chipping won't show. We think it's easier to finish the parts before you assemble them.
It's also easier to install the shelf standards to the cabinet sides before you put the cabinet together. Make sure the shelf standards are oriented the right way. We put a piece of masking tape on the top of each side to keep track. Here's a building tip you can use for the cabinet and drawer boxes: Nail the cabinet sides to the top and bottom before you drill pilot holes for the screws. The nails hold the parts in perfect alignment while you drill the holes and drive the 1-5/8-in. screws. Screw the sides to the top and bottom (Photo 4). Then nail on the back. If you were careful to cut the 1/4-in. plywood back accurately, you can square the cabinet by aligning it with the back before nailing it on (Photo 5). You'll cover the front edge of the cabinets with a wood face frame after they're mounted (Photo 7). Finish the front edge of the plywood shelves with iron-on edge banding. See this article for complete instructions on installing edge banding.
Start the cabinet installation by screwing a 1x2 ledger to the wall to support the wall cabinets. Align the top edge of the board with the 47-1/2-in.-high level line and drive a screw at each stud location. Next, measure from the vertical lines to the center of the wall studs, and transfer these measurements to the hanging strip at the top of each wall cabinet so you'll know where to drive the cabinet installation screws. Hang the cabinets by resting the bottom edge on the ledger, tipping them up against the wall, and driving 3-in. screws through the hanging strip into the studs (Photo 6). Secure the bottom of the cabinets by driving a nail or screw down into the ledger. Connect the fronts of the cabinets by hiding 1-1/4-in. screws under the shelf standards. Complete the installation by nailing on the face frames (Photo 7). We used a 1x3 for the bottom face frame to hide the under-cabinet lighting.
Photo 4: Mount shelf standards on the cabinet sides before assembly. Then screw the sides to the bottom top with 1-5/8-in. screws. Drill pilot holes to prevent the plywood from splitting.
Photo 5: Use the plywood back as a guide for squaring the cabinet. Apply a bead of glue. Then nail one edge of the plywood back to the cabinet side. Then adjust the cabinet box as needed to align the remaining edges and nail these.
Photo 6: Rest the bottom of the cabinets on the ledger and tilt the cabinet up. Drive 3-in. screws through the hanging strip at the top of the cabinet into the studs.
Photo 7: Nail a 1x3 to the lower cabinet edge to create a valance for the under-cabinet lighting. Nail 1x2s to the cabinet top and sies to cover the raw plywood edges.
Step Four: Build the Drawers
You can buy drawer slides that mount directly to the underside of a desk or countertop, but we'll show you another method that allows you to use high-quality, side-mounted drawer slides. We bought these full-extension ball-bearing slides at the local home center. They cost about $15 per drawer. But you can substitute less-expensive epoxy-coated slides to save some money. You'll have to measure your closet to figure out the drawer sizes. Just make sure the drawers clear the open closet doors.
Building the drawer support frame is straightforward. Start by laying two of the stringers side by side and marking the location of the drawer dividers on them. Ball-bearing slides are not very forgiving, so measure and attach the drawer dividers carefully so the dividers are perfectly parallel when the frame is assembled.
For our 24-in.-deep countertop, we used 20-in. drawer slides. We cut the drawer dividers 20 in. long and built the drawer boxes 20 in. deep. If your closet is shallower, use shorter slides and adjust these dimensions to match. The drawer slides have two parts. One mounts to the dividers and the other to the drawer. Remove the part that attaches to the drawer according to the included instructions. Then screw the part of the slide with the ball bearings to the dividers, aligning the bottom edges. The center dividers will have drawer slides on both sides. Screw through the stringers into the drawer dividers to build the frame. Be careful to keep the front of the drawer slides facing forward. Then add the second layer of stringers. Check the frame against a framing square as you screw it together to make sure it's square. When the frame is complete, measure between the slides to determine the drawer sizes (Photo 8).
Build the drawers by screwing through the sides into the fronts and backs, and then gluing and nailing on the plywood bottom. Nail one edge of the bottom to the drawer box. Then use a framing square to square the drawer box before nailing the other three edges. To attach the drawer slide to the drawers, we first drew lines 1-7/8 in. down from the top edges of the drawers (Photo 9). You may have to adjust this distance to match your drawer slides. The dimension isn't critical as long as there's about a 1/4-in. clearance between the drawer and the stringer when the drawer is mounted. Then sight through the screw holes in the slides to center them on the line before attaching them with the included screws.
Finish the drawer installation by attaching the frame to the underside of the countertop (Photo 10) and installing the fronts. Hold the drawer frame back 3/4 in. from the back of the countertop edging. Install the drawers by lining up the slides and pushing them in. Photo 11 shows a tip for aligning the drawer fronts. The hot-melt glue holds the fronts temporarily. Attach them permanently by opening the drawers and driving four 1-1/4-in. screws through the drawer box into the drawer front from the inside.
Photo 8: Make sure your drawers fit perfectly by building the drawer frame first. Then measure between the slides and build your drawers exactly this width.
Photo 9: Draw a line parallel to the top of the drawer to indicate the center of the drawer slide. Line up the slide by centering the line in screw holes. Attach the slide with the screws provided.
Photo 10: Make center marks on the frame and the underside of the counter and align them. Then use a spacer to set the frame 3/4 in. back from the countertop edging and drive the screws.
Photo 11: Starting with the center drawer front, dab on hotmelt glue and press it against the drawer. Quickly center the drawer front 1/4 in. below the countertop edge. Hold it still for about 10 seconds until the glue cools. Now position the other two drawer fronts. Drive screws from the inside.
Step Five: Finish it Off With a Cord-Concealing Backsplash
Here's a handy method to hide cords and still have easy access to them: simply mount a backsplash board about 4 in. from the back wall to create a cord trough. Drill holes through the face and install cord grommets to allow cords to pass through. We found 2-in. cord grommets at the home center, but since they were a loose fit in the 2-in. hole, we held them in place with a dab of silicone caulk. Lay a multi-outlet power strip behind the backsplash for extra outlets. We drilled a hole through the countertop so that we could plug the power strip into a wall outlet. You can also nail backsplash boards to the end walls for a more finished look.
Photo 12: Attach the backsplash with cleats, holding it about 4 in. from the wall. Then drill holes where you'll have cords and install cord grommets.
A Note on Lighting
We're not showing how to wire your closet office here, but chances are you'll want to add at least one electrical outlet and possibly cable, phone, or network wiring. We've got tons of how-to information to help you add an electrical outlet. Keep in mind that the new National Electrical Code requires that closet outlets be arc fault protected. This means you'll have to either connect to or add a circuit that's protected by an arc fault circuit interrupter (AFCI). While you're adding wiring, check out this article on adding a light.
How to Turn a Closet Into an Office | The Family Handyman
The Family Handyman is the DIYers best friend, offering a variety of print and digital resources for do-it-yourself homeowners. Their forte is accurate and complete how-to instructions for improving homes, yards, and vehicles. They publish The Family Handyman magazine, the oldest and largest publication for DIYers, and a variety of newsstand publications in addition to this web site. The Family Handymanis part of the Reader's Digest Association family of brands, including Taste of Home, Birds & Blooms, and of course Reader's Digest.
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If you look at your financial mailers instead of simply throwing them away, you may already know that federal interest rates are at 'their lowest levels in years.' But how many years exactly? A chart by @Macro_Tourist published by investing site ZeoHedge purports to show the relative value of interest rates—since the dawn of human civilization.
Looking at 5000 years of interest rate and commodity history, the site concludes that the "trend is very clear [that] epochal events drive volatility." The chart below, part of a group of timelines tracking gold prices, commodities, the U.S. dollar, shows interest rates since 3000 B.C. through the Roman Empire and to today. (All the charts are available in this PDF.)
Click below to enlarge chart.


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Mott the Hoople Will Tour U.S. for First Time Since 1974
Mott the Hoople are returning to the U.S. for the first time in 45 years – and they'll have three members of the band's 1974 core lineup.
Frontman Ian Hunter, guitarist Ariel Bender and keyboardist Morgan Fisher will lead the group through eight theater dates, all in April.
Re-branded as Mott the Hoople '74, the band also includes multi-instrumentalist James Mastro, guitarist Mark Bosch, bassist Paul Page, keyboardist Dennis Dibrizzi and drummer Steve Holley. Tickets go on sale Friday. See a list of dates, cities and venues below.
Mott the Hoople last toured the States in support of 1974's The Hoople, which featured a pair of Top 20 U.K. hits in "The Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll" and "Roll Away the Stone." Queen served as their opening act on those dates, and Brian May and Roger Taylor have both reportedly credited Mott's theatrics with inspiring their own concert approach.
A performance at the New York City's Uris Theater in 1974, said to be the first by a rock band at a Broadway venue, was later featured in a concert recording simply titled Live. Hunter's memoir Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Star arrived in 1974, as well.
Holley, a former member of Wings, also joined Mott the Hoople for a string of European festival dates last year, along with Bender and Fisher. Original Mott the Hoople members Pete Overend Watts and Dale "Buffin" Griffin died in 2017 and 2016, respectively. Guitarist Mick Ralphs stopped performing after suffering a stroke in 2016.
Mott the Hoople '74 U.S. Tour
4/1 – Milwaukee, WI, Miller High Life Theatre
4/2 – Minneapolis, MN, First Avenue
4/3 – Chicago, IL, Chicago Theatre
4/5 – Detroit, MI, The Fillmore
4/6 – Cleveland, OH, Masonic
4/8 – Glenside, PA, Keswick Theatre
4/9 – Boston, MA, Orpheum Theatre
4/10 – New York, NY, Beacon Theatre


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We have been talking about how to stop learning and start thinking. The next step is to start creating. Because in the process of thinking you open yourself up to the Universe or to God, depending on your belief system, creativity comes naturally.
Oscar-nominated composer Pharrell Williams shares with Oprah that he creates his music either in the shower (think sensory deprivation) or in the moment when he's got no more ideas. In the case of his song Happy, Pharrell reached the point where he had tried everything and the movies executives still did not approve.
To be exact, Pharrell took eight different songs to those who hired him to do the soundtrack for Despicable Me 2. They pushed him to try again by saying, "Close, but that's not it."
Did Pharrell give up? Did he tell them to get another guy? Did he start thinking negatively? Continue reading


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Yet all of this is a fraud, an illusion, a fairytale. Boehner is no sleek and stately political stallion. He's a gelding, unmanned by the 80 or so Tea Partiers who call the legislative shots and dictate the political terms in the House. When the Tea Party shouts, "Jump," Boehner must neigh, "How high?" Sad — old Eeyore of Winnie-the-Pooh fame enjoyed a more dignified existence.
With the refusal of House Republicans to extend a cut in the payroll tax that was overwhelmingly passed by the Senate with broad bipartisan support, Boehner's irrelevance is now impossible to deny.
After the Senate passed its version, Boehner said he would deliver in short order. He failed.
Even the business-friendly Wall Street Journal was appalled. "The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass," the Journal clucked.
The 2012 payroll-tax-holiday extension would put an additional $1000 in the average taxpayer's pocket at a time when the lackluster economic recovery is showing some unexpected signs of life. An estimated 160 million Americans would be positively affected.
That's a no-brainer for all but the right-wing Bolsheviks who populate the Tea Party, like radio entertainer Rush Limbaugh. The crazies would rather watch President Barack Obama fail than see the nation regain a touch more economic stability.
It is not that Senate Republicans who put their muscle behind the tax measure have purer hearts. They are just smarter.
GOP snake-oil salesmen, such as Massachusetts's junior senator Scott Brown, tacked a provision onto the bill that linked the tax reduction to the approval of a new and controversial continental pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. That one has nothing to do with the other does not matter in the enchanted forest that is Washington. But the Republicans insisted and Obama compromised, as he did when he renewed the Bush tax cuts earlier this year.
Still hoping to trip Obama up, the Senate Republicans renewed the tax breaks for only two months. But Obama knows he has a winning issue here and is confident enough to accept the restriction. That, no doubt, is one of the reasons why the president's approval ratings have ticked substantially higher, according to three well-respected national polls. The independent and moderate voters who will decide the 2012 presidential contest want action. Obama is willing to give it and House Republican are not.
There is a satisfying irony in all of this.
The more that Boehner and his insubordinate subordinates toy with Obama, the stronger the president appears to get.
Meanwhile, the Gallup Poll reports that Congress enjoys a national approval rating of only 11 percent.
On the eve of his resignation, even disgraced President Richard Nixon had more support.
Maybe America is waking up to the fact that the Tea Party and its cowardly enablers in the Republican Party are more interested in destroying Obama than in helping Americans.
Boehner is a convenient target for national anger. But he deserves a measure of sympathy. The man, after all, has no balls.
See all articles by: EDITORIAL
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Crypt::SmbHash - Perl-only implementation of lanman and nt md4 hash functions, for use in Samba style smbpasswd entries
use Crypt::SmbHash;
ntlmgen SCALAR, LMSCALAR, NTSCALAR;
This module generates Lanman and NT MD4 style password hashes, using perl-only code for portability. The module aids in the administration of Samba style systems.
In the Samba distribution, authentication is referred to a private smbpasswd file. Entries have similar forms to the following:
Where LM and NT are one-way password hashes of the same password.
ntlmgen generates the hashes given in the first argument, and places the result in the second and third arguments.
Example: To generate a smbpasswd entry:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl use Crypt::SmbHash; $username = $ARGV[0]; $password = $ARGV[1]; if ( !$password ) { print "Not enough arguments\n"; print "Usage: $0 username password\n"; exit 1; } $uid = (getpwnam($username))[2]; my ($login,undef,$uid) = getpwnam($ARGV[0]); ntlmgen $password, $lm, $nt; printf "%s:%d:%s:%s:[%-11s]:LCT-%08X\n", $login, $uid, $lm, $nt, "U", time;
ntlmgen returns returns the hash values in a list context, so the alternative method of using it is:
( $lm, $nt ) = ntlmgen $password;
The functions lmhash and nthash are used by ntlmgen to generate the hashes, and are available when requested:
use Crypt::SmbHash qw(lmhash nthash) $lm = lmhash($pass); $nt = nthash($pass);
If Encoding is available (part of perl-5.8) the $pass argument to ntlmgen, lmhash and nthash must be a perl string. In double use this:
use Crypt::SmbHash qw(ntlmgen lmhash nthash); use Encode; ( $lm, $nt ) = ntlmgen decode('iso-8859-1', $pass); $lm = lmhash(decode_utf8($pass), $pwenc); $nt = nthash(decode_utf8($pass));
The $pwenc parameter to lmhash()
is optional and defaults to 'iso-8859-1'.
It specifies the encoding to which the password is encoded before hashing.
The algorithm used in nthash requires the md4 algorithm. This algorithm is included in this module for completeness, but because it is written in all-perl code ( rather than in C ), it's not very quick.
However if you have the Digest::MD4 module installed, Crypt::SmbHash will try to use that module instead, making it much faster.
A simple test compared calling nthash without Digest::MD4 installed, and with, this showed that using nthash on a system with Digest::MD4 installed proved to be over 90 times faster.
Ported from Samba by Benjamin Kuit <lt>email@example.com
Samba is Copyright(C)
Andrew Tridgell 1997-1998
Because this module is a direct port of code within the Samba distribution, it follows the same license, that is:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.


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Adding product to your cart
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a floppy, hoppy bunny? Well, this mischievous story comes complete with a special pom-pom tail to stroke whilst you read! If I Were A Bunny is sure to set noses twitching at bedtime!
Why not pair with one of our many Jellycat plush bunnies?


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Regular price $5.00 Sale
A rhinestone encrusted frame attaches to a double-sided post, designed to fasten behind the ear. Brushed in a high-sheen shimmer, a leafy double-sided post peeks out beneath the ear for a bold look. Earring attaches to a standard post fitting.
Sold as one pair of double-sided post earrings.