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Avoiding Trial:
Mediation and Other Forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution
We all have conflicts in our lives. Filing a law suit may be the appropriate way to handle some disputes, but trials can be expensive and stressful. There are a number of different ways you can resolve your dispute without going to trial. Alternative dispute resolution, or "ADR" refers to a variety of processes for resolving disputes without going to trial. ADR includes:
- Mediation
- Settlement conferences
- Community conferencing
You can take advantage of some of these services even before you file a court case. Once you have filed a court case, the court may suggest or require that you participate in one or more of these types of ADR programs. There are private mediators in Maryland that you can hire. There is also a network of Community Mediation Centers that train local community members to provide free or low-cost mediation services. The Maryland courts also operate their own mediation and ADR programs. The court may refer you to mediation or another ADR program once you have filed a court action.
What is Mediation?
Mediation is a process in which a trained impartial person, called a mediator, helps you and the other person communicate, understand each other, and reach agreement if possible. Mediation is voluntary, confidential, and lets you and the other person decide what works best for both of you.
Mediation is Voluntary
Mediation is a voluntary process. In all mediations, if the participants cannot come up with a solution that meets their needs, they cannot be forced to agree to anything. Agreements reached in mediation are only final when all of the participants are satisfied and willing to sign their names to the agreement. While a court may order parties to attend mediation, it cannot order them to reach an agreement. If the parties in court-ordered mediation do not reach an agreement, they can still proceed with their case in court. Mediators may not be called to testify about any mediation communications, and mediators are expected to keep information confidential.
Mediation is Confidential
Mediation is a confidential process, which means that anything discussed in mediation cannot be used in court. There are a few exceptions when it comes to child abuse, imminent threats of harm to a person, or allegations of duress or fraud. But any discussions, and if all parties choose, even some agreements reached can be kept confidential.
Mediation Lets You Decide
Mediation revolves around the principle of self-determination. That means that the participants with the dispute decide what solutions will work for them. The mediator does not act as a judge. The mediator remains impartial throughout the process and will not give legal advice or make decisions about the dispute.
What is the Cost of Mediation?
The cost of mediation varies depending on the program. In some court, government, and community programs, the service will be free or based on a sliding fee scale. In other courts and in private mediation, the cost likely will be on an hourly basis and is typically divided by the participants.
When is Mediation Appropriate?
Certain disputes need to be heard by a court. If you are trying to create or change a law, to have a public airing of a complaint, address serious criminal matters, to set precedent or to challenge a precedent established by a prior lawsuit, mediation is not appropriate.
Many people in the legal and mediation fields believe cases involving domestic violence issues are not appropriate for mediation. The mediation process presumes that, with the help of the mediator, the participants can negotiate without fear of retaliation, which might not be possible in relationships that have involved a history of domestic violence. As such, in the Maryland Rules of Procedure, Rule 9-205(b)(2) states "If a party or a child represents to the court in good faith that there is a genuine issue of abuse, as defined in Code, Family Law Article, § 4-501, of the party or child, and that, as a result, mediation would be inappropriate, the court may not order mediation".
What is a Settlement Conference?
At a settlement conference the people in a dispute in court and/or their attorneys appear before an impartial person in an attempt to resolve the dispute or issues in the dispute by agreement or by means other than trial. A settlement conference may include neutral case evaluation and neutral fact-finding, and the impartial person may recommend the terms of an agreement. The settlement conference facilitator is usually a judge or experienced lawyer who can give informed opinions about how the court might decide the case, discuss how similar cases have been settled, provide advice, and suggest agreements.
What is Community Conferencing?
In Community Conferencing, all the people affected by a behavior or a conflict that has caused them harm are convened for a meeting to have a conversation about that situation. The goal of the conference is to create an agreement that will repair the harm. During the conference, all participants have an opportunity to discuss what happened, how they were personally affected, and how the harm can best be repaired. This process may be used in conflicts involving large numbers of people and is often used as an alternative to juvenile court.


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sobota 8th junij 2019
This morning the X-Yachts sailors woke up to sunshine and light breeze – but with a weather change in sight. The sailors made their last preparations on their boats; rigging the sails, plotting the GPS and chatting about the tactics before heading out to the race course outside Haderslev Fjord.
Like beads on a string they were sailing patiently after each other to sail the 8 nm out towards the race course on Lillebælt. And the race plan onboard the teams was clear: "Win the start, sail as fast as we can and simply just enjoy it", as skipper onboard his new Xp 55 Karl-Thomas Neumann put it.
Strong winds and speed records
At lunch time the weather shifted and brought along some rain and extra winds. Sailors have reported wind measurements up to 40 knots in some of the gusts which meant speed records on board the racing X-Yachts. "We saw 17,5 knots of boat speed out there today so for our boat that is pretty good. It was nice and intense," said tactician Jesper Radich onboard the German X-41 Sportsfreund.
Long distance course
The X-Yachts sailors were sent out on a long-distance course between the only 15 km narrow waters between Jutland and Funen in between some of the islands in the Southern Funen archipelago. Sports A and B-class raced on a 39 nm course, which was shortened till 27 nm. The Family A-class was sent out on an 18 nm course and the slightly bigger boats in the Family B-class had an additional 6 miles to race. The big brothers of the X-Yachts Gold Cup 2019 – the over 50 ft-class had a course of a total 38 nm, which stretched more north to the island Brandsø.
X-79 showing extraordinary courage
A team that was honored with applause after they completed the race and sailed into the harbor were four German sailors onboard the X-79 Joey. Crew, Peter Knauf explains: "We were close to saying it's too much, but we trusted the boat and kept on fighting and telling ourselves "come on lets do it". We were the last boat over the finish line but it was a joy". Owner of this boat Horst Krapohl adds: "It's a courageous feeling sailing this boat and today it's the best. We had a great team effort onboard and I am so happy we kept on till the finish."
How to host a big birthday bash
This year's X-Yachts Gold Cup also celebrated the yards 40th anniversary and racing around some buoys and socializing on shore afterwards is the best thinkable way a sailor could join in on a party. "We come here and have this great celebration and I am very happy to join in on this very iconic event. We thought it would be great to come here and enjoy Denmark," smiled Miguel A. Gonzales from Chile owner of the X-55 Mardivino.
Since X-Yachts has hosted the Gold cup for X years it is a matter of course to merge the two happenings in here in 2019. "For us it's all about the community. We want to celebrate our anniversary together with our customers and have this gathering where sailors can meet each other and have a cozy time", says Kræn Brinck Nielsen, CEO of X-Yachts while he enjoys a warm cup of coffee on the shore after sailing.
Scandinavian summers can be tricky weathervise, but the past many X-Yachts Gold Cups have offered amazing weather with wind and sun. But today the X-sailors had to show weather-wise the X-Yachts sailors have been greeted with hospitable conditions in Haderslev, but today at noon a weather front brought along some rain and additional wind.
Onboard the German X-50 Lynx five youth sailors from a sailing club in Essen were invited to joined the team in racing. "Our dream is to one day sail the Ocean Race and so today we got a little test of that," said the young german sailors NAVN.

subset: commoncrawl


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Using Supercomputers to Regulate How Supercomputers Buy and Sell Stocks
With access to supercomputing through the National Science Foundation, researchers are beginning to understand how ultra-fast computer trading is changing Wall Street.
CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, October 4, 2012 — The increasing role of computers in Wall Street trading has gathered wide attention, including a September hearing before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment. At that hearing, testimony cited a study — referring to it as "ground-breaking" — that a team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported as "the first paper to explore the impact of high-frequency trading in a nanosecond environment."
For this study, Mao Ye, assistant professor of finance, and Illinois colleagues Chen Yao and Jiading Gai used supercomputing systems through the National Science Foundation's XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment) program. Launched in July 2011, the program supports research by U.S. scientists and engineers in a diverse range of fields, and has encouraged work — such as the Illinois team and their study in stock trading — in areas not traditionally involved with high performance computing (HPC).
Since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) authorized electronic trades in 1998, trading firms have developed the speed and sophistication of high-frequency trading (HFT), and over the last few years, it has dominated the market. Ye, who led the Illinois team, notes that the amount of data produced by HFT has exploded to such an extent that it challenges data processing's ability to study it.
"Fifteen years ago, trade was done by humans," says Ye, "and you didn't need supercomputing to understand and regulate the markets. Now the players in the trading game are superfast computers. To study them you need the same power. The size of trading data has increased exponentially, and the raw data of a day can be as large as ten gigabytes."
This problem was highlighted by the "flash crash" of May 6, 2010. In the biggest one-day drop in its history, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 1,000 points — 9 percent of its value — in about 20 minutes. Analysis eventually revealed HFT-related glitches as the culprit, but it took the SEC months, notes Ye, to analyze the data and arrive at answers.
To directly address the data problem and other questions related to HFT, Ye and colleagues turned to XSEDE, specifically the shared-memory resources of Blacklight at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and Gordon at the San Diego Supercomputing Center (SDSC). Scientist Anirban Jana of PSC and XSEDE's Extended Collaborative Support Services worked with Ye to use these systems effectively.
In a study reported in July 2011, Ye and Yao, along with Maureen O'Hara of Cornell, processed prodigious quantities of NASDAQ historical market data — two years of trading — to look at how a lack of transparency in odd-lot trades (trades of fewer than 100 shares) might skew perceptions of the market. Their paper, "What's Not There: The Odd-Lot Bias in TAQ Data," received a "revise and resubmit" from The Journal of Finance, the top journal in this field. The study received wide attention, and in September, as a result, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), which oversees the securities exchanges, reported plans to reconsider the odd-lots policy and to vote on whether to include odd lots in the "consolidated tape" that reports trade-and-quote (TAQ) data.
In more recent work, as cited in U.S. Senate testimony, Ye, Yao and Gai examined effects of increasing trading speed from microseconds to nanoseconds. Using Gordon and Blacklight and processing 55 days of NASDAQ trading data from 2010, their calculations looked at the ratio of orders cancelled to orders executed, finding evidence of a manipulative practice called "quote stuffing," in which HFT traders place an order only to cancel it within 0.001 seconds or less, with the aim of generating congestion. Their analysis provides justification for regulatory changes, such as a speed limit on orders or a fee for order cancellation.
In June, The Wall Street Journal reported that trading had entered the nanosecond age. A London firm called Fixnetix announced a microchip that "prepares a trade in 740 billionths of a second," noted the WSJ, and investment banks and trading firms are spending millions to shave infinitesimal slivers of time off their "latency" to get to picoseconds — trading in trillionths of a second.
"While it is naive to eliminate high-frequency traders," Ye and colleagues wrote, "it is equally naive to let the arms race of speed proceed without any restriction."
Both of the XSEDE systems they used are "shared-memory" systems, which reduce programming difficulties for access to large quantities of data, as compared to distributed memory. "Without XSEDE and shared memory," says Ye, "we wouldn't be able to effectively study these large amounts of data produced by high-frequency trading."
The research reflects an emphasis of XSEDE — through its program in Novel and Innovative Projects (NIP) — in providing allocations of time for non-traditional HPC applications. "We're happy to see these proposals succeed," said Sergiu Sanielevici of PSC, who leads the NIP program. "The NIP team seeks out strong projects that differ from the more typical simulation and modeling applications that have dominated HPC research in previous decades."
More information: http://www.psc.edu/science/2012/trading
XSEDE, the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, is the most advanced, powerful, and robust collection of integrated digital resources and services in the world. It is a single virtual system that scientists and researchers can use to interactively share computing resources, data, and expertise. XSEDE integrates the resources and services, makes them easier to use, and helps more people use them. The five-year, $121 million project is supported by the National Science Foundation.
Susan McKenna
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Michael Schneider
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
Jan Zverina
San Diego Supercomputer Center


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Global Research, May 23, 2014
Based on research conducted in the 1990s, this article was first published by The Ecologist in September 2000. It was subsequently incorporated into the Second edition of The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003.
The research focussed on how GMO seeds were used as of the mid-1990s to destabilize the agricultural cycle in Ethiopia. This diabolical "free market" agenda was a dress rehearsal for a agri-bio-tech conglomerates' assault led by Monsanto on peasant economies in all major regions of the World.
Michel Chossudovsky, May 23, 2014
The "economic therapy" imposed under IMF-World Bank jurisdiction is in large part responsible for triggering famine and social devastation in Ethiopia and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, wreaking the peasant economy and impoverishing millions of people.
With the complicity of branches of the US government, it has also opened the door for the appropriation of traditional seeds and landraces by US biotech corporations, which behind the scenes have been peddling the adoption of their own genetically modified seeds under the disguise of emergency aid and famine relief.
Moreover, under WTO rules, the agri-biotech conglomerates can manipulate market forces to their advantage as well as exact royalties from farmers. The WTO provides legitimacy to the food giants to dismantle State programmes including emergency grain stocks, seed banks, extension services and agricultural credit, etc.), plunder peasant economies and trigger the outbreak of periodic famines.
Crisis in the Horn
More than 8 million people in Ethiopia – representing 15% of the country's population – had been locked into
"famine zones". Urban wages have collapsed and unemployed seasonal farm workers and landless peasants have been driven into abysmal poverty. The international relief agencies concur without further examination that climatic factors are the sole and inevitable cause of crop failure and the ensuing humanitarian disaster. What the media tabloids fails to disclose is that – despite the drought and the border war with Eritrea – several million people in the most prosperous agricultural regions have also been driven into starvation. Their predicament is not the consequence of grain shortages but of "free markets" and "bitter economic medicine" imposed under the IMF-World Bank sponsored Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).
Ethiopia produces more than 90% of its consumption needs. Yet at the height of the crisis, the nationwide food deficit for 2000 was estimated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at 764,000 metric tons of grain representing a shortfall of 13 kilos per person per annum.1 In Amhara, grain production (1999-2000) was twenty percent in excess of consumption needs. Yet 2.8 million people in Amhara (representing 17% of the region's population) became locked into famine zones and are "at risk" according to the FAO. 2 Whereas Amhara's grain surpluses were in excess of 500,000 tons (1999-2000), its "relief food needs" had been tagged by the international community at close to 300,000 tons.3 A similar pattern prevailed in Oromiya, the country's most populated state where 1.6 million people were classified "at risk", despite the availability of more than 600,000 metric tons of surplus grain.4 In both these regions, which include more than 25% of the country's population, scarcity of food was clearly not the cause of hunger, poverty and social destitution. Yet no explanations are given by the panoply of international relief agencies and agricultural research institutes.
The Promise of the "Free Market"
In Ethiopia, a transitional government came into power in 1991 in the wake of a protracted and destructive civil war. After the pro-Soviet Dergue regime of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam was unseated, a multi-donor financed Emergency Recovery and Reconstruction Project (ERRP) was hastily put in place to deal with an external debt of close to 9 billion dollars that had accumulated during the Mengistu government. Ethiopia's outstanding debts with the Paris Club of official creditors were rescheduled in exchange for far-reaching macro-economic reforms. Upheld by US foreign policy, the usual doses of bitter IMF economic medicine were prescribed. Caught in the straightjacket of debt and structural adjustment, the new Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE), led by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – largely formed from the Tigrean People's Liberation Front (PLF) – had committed itself to far-reaching "free market reforms", despite its leaders' Marxist leanings. Washington soon tagged Ethiopia alongside Uganda as Africa's post Cold War free market showpiece.
While social budgets were slashed under the structural adjustment programme (SAP), military expenditure – in part financed by the gush of fresh development loans – quadrupled since 1989.5 With Washington supporting both sides in the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war, US arms sales spiralled. The bounty was being shared between the arms manufacturers and the agribusiness conglomerates. In the post-Cold War era, the latter positioned themselves in the lucrative procurement of emergency aid to war-torn countries. With mounting military spending financed on borrowed money, almost half of Ethiopia's export revenues was earmarked to meet debt-servicing obligations.
A Policy Framework Paper (PFP) stipulating the precise changes to be carried out in Ethiopia had been carefully drafted in Washington by IMF and World Bank officials on behalf of the transitional government, and was forwarded to Addis Ababa for the signature of the Minister of Finance. The enforcement of severe austerity measures virtually foreclosed the possibility of a meaningful post-war reconstruction and the rebuilding of the country's shattered infrastructure. The creditors demanded trade liberalization and the full-scale privatization of public utilities, financial institutions, State farms and factories. Civil servants including teachers and health workers were fired, wages were frozen and the labor laws were rescinded to enable State enterprises "to shed their surplus workers". Meanwhile, corruption became rampant. State assets were auctioned off to foreign capital at bargain prices and Price Waterhouse Cooper was entrusted with the task of coordinating the sale of State property.
In turn, the reforms had led to the fracture of the federal fiscal system. Budget transfers to the State governments were slashed leaving the regions to their own devices. Supported by several donors, "regionalization" was heralded as a "devolution of powers from the federal to the regional governments". The Bretton Woods institutions knew exactly what they were doing. In the words of the IMF, "[the regions] capacity to deliver effective and efficient development interventions varies widely, as does their capacity for revenue collection". 6
Wrecking the Peasant Economy
Patterned on the reforms adopted in Kenya in 1991 (see Box 9.1 ), agricultural markets were wilfully manipulated on behalf of the agribusiness conglomerates. The World Bank demanded the rapid removal of price controls and all subsidies to farmers. Transportation and freight prices were deregulated serving to boost food prices in remote areas affected by drought. In turn, the markets for farm inputs including fertiliser and seeds were handed over to private traders including Pioneer Hi-Bred International which entered into a lucrative partnership with Ethiopia Seed Enterprise (ESE), the government's seed monopoly.7
At the outset of the reforms in 1992, USAID under its Title III program "donated" large quantities of US fertilizer "in exchange for free market reforms":
[V]arious agricultural commodities [will be provided] in exchange for reforms of grain marketing… and [the] elimination of food subsidies…The reform agenda focuses on liberalization and privatization in the fertilizer and transport sectors in return for financing fertilizer and truck imports…. These program initiatives have given us [an] "entrée" …in defining major [policy] issues… 8
While the stocks of donated US fertiliser were rapidly exhausted; the imported chemicals contributed to displacing local fertiliser producers. The same companies involved in the fertiliser import business were also in control of the domestic wholesale distribution of fertiliser using local level merchants as intermediaries.
Increased output was recorded in commercial farms and in irrigated areas (where fertilizer and high yielding seeds had been applied). The overall tendency, however, was towards greater economic and social polarisation in the countryside, marked by significantly lower yields in less productive marginal lands occupied by the poor peasantry. Even in areas where output had increased, farmers were caught in the clutch of the seed and fertilizer merchants.
In 1997, the Atlanta based Carter Center – which was actively promoting the use of biotechnology tools in maize breeding – proudly announced that "Ethiopia [had] become a food exporter for the first time".9 Yet in a cruel irony, the donors ordered the dismantling of the emergency grain reserves (set up in the wake of the 1984-85 famine) and the authorities acquiesced.
Instead of replenishing the country's emergency food stocks, grain was exported to meet Ethiopia's debt servicing obligations. Close to one million tons of the 1996 harvest was exported, an amount which would have been amply sufficient (according to FAO figures) to meet the 1999-2000 emergency. In fact the same food staple which had been exported (namely maize) was re-imported barely a few months later. The world market had confiscated Ethiopia's grain reserves.
In return, US surpluses of genetically engineered maize (banned by the European Union) were being dumped on the horn of Africa in the form of emergency aid. The US had found a convenient mechanism for "laundering its stocks of dirty grain". The agribusiness conglomerates not only cornered Ethiopia's commodity exports, they were also involved in the procurement of emergency shipments of grain back into Ethiopia. During the 1998-2000 famine, lucrative maize contracts were awarded to giant grain merchants such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill Inc. 10
Laundering America's GM Grain Surpluses
US grain surpluses peddled in war-torn countries also served to weaken the agricultural system. Some 500,000 tons of maize and maize products were "donated" in 1999-2000 by USAID to relief agencies including the World Food Programme (WFP) which in turn collaborates closely with the US Department of Agriculture. At least 30% of these shipments (procured under contract with US agribusiness firms) were surplus genetically modified grain stocks. 11
Boosted by the border war with Eritrea and the plight of thousands of refugees, the influx of contaminated food aid had contributed to the pollution of Ethiopia's genetic pool of indigenous seeds and landraces. In a cruel irony, the food giants were at the same time gaining control – through the procurement of contaminated food aid – over Ethiopia's seed banks. According to South Africa's Biowatch: "Africa is treated as the dustbin of the world…To donate untested food and seed to Africa is not an act of kindness but an attempt to lure Africa into further dependence on foreign aid." 12
Moreover, part of the "food aid" had been channelled under the "food for work" program which served to further discourage domestic production in favour of grain imports. Under this scheme, impoverished and landless farmers were contracted to work on rural infrastructural programmes in exchange for "donated" US corn.
Meanwhile, the cash earnings of coffee smallholders plummeted. Whereas Pioneer Hi-Bred positioned itself in seed distribution and marketing, Cargill Inc established itself in the markets for grain and coffee through its subsidiary Ethiopian Commodities.12 For the more than 700,000 smallholders with less than 2 hectares that produce between 90 and 95% of the country's coffee output, the deregulation of agricultural credit combined with low farmgate prices of coffee had triggered increased indebtedness and landlessness, particularly in East Gojam (Ethiopia's breadbasket).
Biodiversity up for Sale
The country's extensive reserves of traditional seed varieties (barley, teff, chick peas, sorghum, etc) were being appropriated, genetically manipulated and patented by the agribusiness conglomerates: "Instead of compensation and respect, Ethiopians today are …getting bills from foreign companies that have "patented" native species and now demand payment for their use."13 The foundations of a "competitive seed industry" were laid under IMF and World Bank auspices.14 The Ethiopian Seed Enterprise (ESE), the government's seed monopoly joined hands with Pioneer Hi-Bred in the distribution of hi-bred and genetically modified (GM) seeds (together with hybrid resistant herbicide) to smallholders. In turn, the marketing of seeds had been transferred to a network of private contractors and "seed enterprises" with financial support and technical assistance from the World Bank. The "informal" farmer-to-farmer seed exchange was slated to be converted under the World Bank programme into a "formal" market oriented system of "private seed producer-sellers." 15
In turn, the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute (EARI) was collaborating with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in the development of new hybrids between Mexican and Ethiopian maize varieties.16 Initially established in the 1940s by Pioneer Hi-Bred International with support from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, CIMMYT developed a cosy relationship with US agribusiness. Together with the UK based Norman Borlaug Institute, CIMMYT constitutes a research arm as well as a mouthpiece of the seed conglomerates. According to the Rural Advancement Foundation (RAFI) "US farmers already earn $150 million annually by growing varieties of barley developed from Ethiopian strains. Yet nobody in Ethiopia is sending them a bill." 17
Impacts of Famine
The 1984-85 famine had seriously threatened Ethiopia's reserves of landraces of traditional seeds. In response to the famine, the Dergue government through its Plant Genetic Resource Centre –in collaboration with Seeds of Survival (SoS)– had implemented a programme to preserve Ethiopia's biodiversity.18 This programme – which was continued under the transitional government – skilfully "linked on-farm conservation and crop improvement by rural communities with government support services". 19 An extensive network of in-farm sites and conservation plots was established involving some 30,000 farmers. In 1998, coinciding chronologically with the onslaught of the 1998-2000 famine, the government clamped down on seeds of Survival (SoS) and ordered the programme to be closed down. 20
The hidden agenda was to eventually displace the traditional varieties and landraces reproduced in village-level nurseries. The latter were supplying more than 90 percent of the peasantry through a system of farmer-to-farmer exchange. Without fail, the 1998-2000 famine led to a further depletion of local level seed banks: "The reserves of grains [the farmer] normally stores to see him through difficult times are empty. Like 30,000 other households in the [Galga] area, his family have also eaten their stocks of seeds for the next harvest."21 And a similar process was unfolding in the production of coffee where the genetic base of the arabica beans was threatened as a result of the collapse of farmgate prices and the impoverishment of small-holders.
In other words, the famine – itself in large part a product of the economic reforms imposed to the advantage of large corporations by the IMF, World Bank and the US Government – served to undermine Ethiopia's genetic diversity to the benefit of the biotech companies. With the weakening of the system of traditional exchange, village level seed banks were being replenished with commercial hi-bred and genetically modified seeds. In turn, the distribution of seeds to impoverished farmers had been integrated with the "food aid" programmes. WPF and USAID relief packages often include "donations" of seeds and fertiliser, thereby favouring the inroad of the agribusiness-biotech companies into Ethiopia's agricultural heartland. The emergency programs are not the "solution" but the "cause" of famine. By deliberately creating a dependency on GM seeds, they had set the stage for the outbreak of future famines.
This destructive pattern – invariably resulting in famine – is replicated throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. From the onslaught of the debt crisis of the early 1980s, the IMF-World Bank had set the stage for the demise of the peasant economy across the region with devastating results. Now, in Ethiopia, fifteen years after the last famine left nearly one million dead, hunger is once again stalking the land. This time, as eight million people face the risk of starvation, we know that it isn't just the weather that is to blame.
- Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Special Report: FAO/WFP Crop Assessment Mission to Ethiopia, Rome, January 2000.
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Ibid
- Philip Sherwell and Paul Harris, "Guns before Grain as Ethiopia Starves, Sunday Telegraph, London, April 16, 2000.
- IMF, Ethiopia, Recent Economic Developments, Washington, 1999.
- Pioneer Hi-Bred International, General GMO Facts, http://www.pioneer.com/usa/
biotech/value_of_products/ product_value.htm#. - United States agency for International Development (USAID), "Mission to Ethiopia, Concept Paper: Back to The Future", Washington, June 1993
- Carter Center, Press release, Atlanta, Georgia, January 31, 1997.
- Declan Walsh, America Find Ready Market for GM Food, The Independent, London, March 30, 2000, p. 18).
- Ibid.
- Maja Wallegreen, "The World's Oldest Coffee Industry In Transition", Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, November 1, 1999.
- Laeke Mariam Demissie, A vast historical contribution counts for little; West reaps Ethiopia's genetic harvest, World Times, October, 1998).
- World Bank, Ethiopia-Seed Systems Development Project, Project ID ETPA752, 6 June 1995.
- Ibid
- See CIMMYT Research Plan and Budget 2000-2002 http://www.cimmyt.mx/about/
People-mtp2002.htm#). - Laeke Mariam Demissie, op. cit
- "When local farmers know best", The Economist, 16 May 1998)
- Ibid
- Laeke Mariam Demissie, op. cit.
- Rageh Omaar, "Hunger stalks Ethiopia's dry land", BBC, London, 6 January, 2000.
- An earlier version of this article was published in The Ecologist, September 2000.
The famine – itself in large part a product of the economic reforms imposed to the advantage of large corporations by the IMF, World Bank and the US Government – served to undermine Ethiopia's genetic diversity to the benefit of the biotech companies. With the weakening of the system of traditional exchange, village level seed banks were being replenished with commercial hi-bred and genetically modified seeds.


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Điều kiện giao dịch
Types of accounts: Alpho provides its Clients with the following
- Floating (typical)* spread; there may be instances when market conditions cause spreads to widen or to shorten beyond the typical spreads
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- Trade with standard lot sizes
- Spreads starting from 3 pips on the Euro Dollar
The whole list of trading instruments available alongside the underlying asset and the Exchange where this asset is being traded can be found here.
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Maintenance Fee
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By Joshua Hart, Director StopSmartMeters.Org
Details have come to light of a man killed by a Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) Smart Meter that caught fire in Vacaville, CA on July 9th, 2010. Larry Nikkel of 230 Arbor St. died from a suspicious electrical fire that consumed his home the day after Wellington Energy, contractors for PG&E, installed a Landis & Gyr "smart" electric meter. A wrongful death suit lawsuit filed by the family against the utility, subcontractor, and meter manufacturer has now been settled for an undisclosed sum.
The circumstances surrounding Mr. Nikkel's death add a grave and tragic chapter to the growing human cost of the 'smart grid.' The following account is based on interviews with his brother Walter, as well as details obtained by the fire incident report, investigation, and coroner's report.
Larry Nikkel worked for more than 30 years as the groundskeeper at Solano Community College, and was well liked in Vacaville by those who knew him. He was in a rock band in the Seventies called The Panties who played gigs all over the East Bay. Larry loved his rock music and he loved his 1958 Gretsch guitar (the same kind as Chuck Berry played). The guitar- worth thousands- was given to Larry by a co-worker at the College, underscoring how much he was loved and admired by those who knew him.
Larry was diagnosed with throat cancer in early 2010 and had just finished his chemotherapy treatment at the time of his death. The day before he was killed, he had submitted the paperwork to retire from his job at the Community College. On July 8th, 2010, according to neighbors, Wellington Energy came through and deployed electric smart meters all along the street, including on Larry's house. Less than 48 hours later, Larry was dead- killed by smoke inhalation and burns from an unexplained electrical fire that consumed his home.
According to his brother Walter, who had spent time with Larry at his house the morning before the fire (and only hours after the smart meter was installed), there were serious electrical problems in the house that day. Larry had tried to boot up his laptop to watch a DVD that evening, but the computer would not function. The cable box did not work either. Walter and Larry both heard a very loud, high pitched "snap" coming from the wall. Later that night, after Walter had returned home, he received a call from Larry, who said that the 'house was humming.' He regrets to this day not coming over immediately to investigate what was wrong.
At about 10:30pm on July 9th, a man walking down Arbor St. saw flames coming out of Larry's house. The man opened the garage door to see if anyone was inside but this caused the fire to "flash" and so he was forced to retreat and call the fire department. By 10:40, fire fighters were on the scene. After battling the fire, crews entered the house and found Larry's body in the hallway bathroom, under a dresser (which Walt speculates he may have pulled on top of himself to shield against the heat). He had shoved towels under the door, and the water was running in the sink. He was on the floor, having succumbed to smoke inhalation and burns. Larry had placed his beloved guitar in the bathtub, where perhaps he hoped it would survive the flames (it did).
Walter remembers hearing a lot of fire engine sirens that night and wondering whether there was a large grass fire in the area. He received a call from Larry's neighbor at about the same time, and immediately got a bad feeling. He got in his car and when he arrived at his brother's house, the house was charred and blackened and Larry's body was already in a bag. Walter was distraught and started to open the bag but was stopped by the police. "Why aren't you working on him??" he remembers yelling at the emergency responders.
The official Pathology Report notes that the cause of death was smoke inhalation and thermal injuries (burns):
Larry Nikkel was officially pronounced dead at 11:04pm on July 9th, 2010.
The official cause of the fire- according to the Vacaville Fire Department's Investigation was "undetermined, but was most likely caused by an electrical problem"
About a month after the fire, Walter met Ken Burton at the house. Ken was the former bass player in Larry's band, a friend of the family and also a retired fire fighter. Walter had noticed that his brother's swamp cooler had fallen to the ground from the window, and was not burned except that the motor was charred, and the belt was melted to the pulley. The two speculated that something had caused the power cord to become so hot that it caught the plywood that fit in the window on fire, and this quickly spread throughout the house.
While they were talking, a fire truck pulled up and Vacaville Fire Dept. Battalion Chief Jansen came up to them. He asked how they were doing, and walked back to the charred breaker box, where two of the breakers were found tripped right after the fire. He asked them if they were aware that the "smart" meter was installed on Larry's house the day before the fire. It turned out that PG&E had hurriedly removed the meter following the fire.
A month later, Walter was clearing the neighbor's grape vine out of his tree. That night he started hearing loud buzzing and humming sounds coming from his wall. He immediately called PG&E, who sent a lineman out and discovered that the neutral wire was off the pole. (Walt figures he accidentally pulled the wire off). As a result, 2 TV's, and a DISH DVR player were fried because of over voltage.
Suddenly, it clicked for Walter. The humming and popping noises. The electrical problems. The "smart" meter having been installed the day before the fire. His brother Larry had died because of PG&E's smart meter. He did an internet search for "smart meter hazards" and put two and two together, finally grasping what likely killed his brother.
According to electrical engineers, the popping, humming, and appliance damage are all telltale signs of an electrical problem caused by arcing, possibly from a meter that was not installed properly. Arcing can lead to fires and explosions. (As we documented in late 2010 in our interview with a whistleblower from Wellington Energy, workers were encouraged to ignore safety hazards and only had 20 hours of training, violating FCC requirements that smart meters be installed by a professional electrician). Larry's death appears to be a direct result of the kind of violations uncovered by the whistleblower, whose reports were summarily ignored by the CA Public Utilities Commission.
On June 10th, 2012, the Nikkel family filed a lawsuit against Pacific Gas and Electric, Wellington Energy, and Landis & Gyr meter manufacturers, alleging negligence and wrongful death.
The case was settled out of court earlier this year, showing that the utilities and meter manufacturers were alarmed about the potential to lose the case, as well as more terrible publicity related to their meter program. The settlement- though not ideal as it avoids a verdict that might force the utilities to compensate others who have suffered smart meter fires or even recall the meters- has nonetheless provided a sense of closure to the family, who would have had to live through the pain of Larry's loss once again during a trial.
Meanwhile, the number of smart meter fires has continued to grow. Last year, a Stamford CT woman lost five members of her family after a fire likely started by their 'smart' meter. Twenty-four hours later, her home was bulldozed, eliminating any evidence that could have been collected showing why the deadly fire started (and preventing future fires) In August 2012, Peco Energy of Pennsylvania was forced to suspend its deployment after at least 26 separate incidents where newly installed smart meters had caught fire or exploded. The EMF Safety Network has tracked many of these fires here, and we have documented a number of these incidents at StopSmartMeters.Org.
A June 15th 2012 presentation by the Ontario Fire Marshal analyzes the numerous smart meter fires being reported in Canada and abroad and states:
"We encountered an unusual amount of fire incidents involving smart meters…prior to any proper investigation the utility company had removed and replaced the meters from the affected areas…New meters may have defects that cause electrical failures (or they may be caused by) careless installation during change over…"
It's fairly clear by now that there is another major safety problem with smart meters- aside from RF radiation pulses. Hundreds of fires, explosions, and other electrical problems have been documented. Pre-market safety testing simply did not happen in the rush to harvest stimulus funds and corporate profits. The process of third party safety testing might have uncovered these problems before they ended up killing people, but unfortunately UL certification was never sought. In cases of fire, the utility's strategy has been to blame faulty household wiring, a candle, hot ashes, anything to take the focus away from the smart meter. Homes with old or vulnerable wiring seem to be especially at risk, and surely the utilities know this by now. But they do not warn, and they do not inspect.
If we had responsible utility companies that prioritized health and safety, smart meter deployments could have included a safety check of the socket and wiring. Unfortunately such caution would have required professional technicians to work longer hours- a cost the utility company refused to bear. They can't seem to have anything get in the way of their guaranteed 11.5% annual returns on shareholder investments (in the case of PG&E). Sadly, for whatever reason most fire departments have failed to investigate smart meter fires as a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution. Meanwhile more homes burn and more people die.
When the Nikkel case came to the attention of Stop Smart Meters! we immediately connected the family with a lawyer and started to try and obtain documents from the Vacaville Fire Dept. Unfortunately, multiple attempts to get a copy of the investigation failed, even when requested by members of Larry's own family. The attorney for the case- David Kyle- who won his own small claims court case against SCE- said he's never seen such reluctance to release these kinds of documents. It finally took a subpoena and legal threats to obtain the investigation, something that a bereaved family should not have to go through simply in order to understand why their loved one died.
Unfortunately despite pledges of safety and reform from PG&E and the CPUC following the horrific explosion in San Bruno that killed a dozen people and razed an entire neighborhood, the same decisions are still being made- trading people's lives for shareholder profit. You needn't live near a gas pipeline to be at risk. This time it is a device that is being installed on most everyone's home, in every neighborhood.
While PG&E and other utilities install unsafe devices that are costing some their homes and their lives, the CPUC- led by the industry itself in the form of Mr. Michael Peevey- looks the other way. Such inaction in the face of overwhelming evidence of mortal risk is truly criminal. Let's make sure that Larry, and others who have lost their lives in the name of the 'smart grid' are not forgotten, and that we honor their memory with action and political change.
Larry's obituary can be found here.


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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]
The lung is the essential respiration organ in air-breathing vertebrates, the most primitive being the lungfish. Its principal function is to transport oxygen from the atmosphere into the bloodstream, and to release carbon dioxide from the bloodstream into the atmosphere. This exchange of gases is accomplished in the mosaic of specialized cells that form millions of tiny, exceptionally thin-walled air sacs called alveoli. The lungs also have non respiratory functions.
Medical terms related to the lung often begin with pulmo-, from the Latin pulmonarius ("of the lungs"), or with pneumo- (from Greek πνεύμω "lung")[2][3]
Respiratory function
Energy production from aerobic respiration requires oxygen and glucose and produces carbon dioxide as a waste product, creating a need for an efficient means of oxygen delivery to cells and excretion of carbon dioxide from cells. In small organisms, such as single-celled bacteria, this process of gas exchange can take place entirely by simple diffusion. In larger organisms, this is not possible; only a small proportion of cells are close enough to the surface for oxygen from the atmosphere to enter them through diffusion. Two major adaptations made it possible for organisms to attain great multicellularity: an efficient circulatory system that conveyed gases to and from the deepest tissues in the body, and a large, internalized respiratory system that centralized the task of obtaining oxygen from the atmosphere and bringing it into the body, whence it could rapidly be distributed to all the circulatory system.
In air-breathing vertebrates, respiration occurs in a series of steps. Air is brought into the animal via the airways — in reptiles, birds and mammals this often consists of the nose; the pharynx; the larynx; the trachea (also called the windpipe); the bronchi and bronchioles; and the terminal branches of the respiratory tree. The lungs of mammals are a rich lattice of alveoli, which provide an enormous surface area for gas exchange. A network of fine capillaries allows transport of blood over the surface of alveoli. Oxygen from the air inside the alveoli diffuses into the bloodstream, and carbon dioxide diffuses from the blood to the alveoli, both across thin alveolar membranes.
The drawing and expulsion of air is driven by muscular action; in early tetrapods, air was driven into the lungs by the pharyngeal muscles, whereas in reptiles, birds and mammals a more complicated musculoskeletal system is used. In the mammal, a large muscle, the diaphragm (in addition to the internal intercostal muscles), drive ventilation by periodically altering the intra-thoracic volume and pressure; by increasing volume and thus decreasing pressure, air flows into the airways down a pressure gradient, and by reducing volume and increasing pressure, the reverse occurs. During normal breathing, expiration is passive and no muscles are contracted (the diaphragm relaxes).
Another name for this inspiration and expulsion of air is ventilation. Vital capacity is the maximum volume of air that a person can exhale after maximum inhalation. A person's vital capacity can be measured by a spirometer (spirometry). In combination with other physiological measurements, the vital capacity can help make a diagnosis of underlying lung disease.
Non respiratory functions
In addition to respiratory functions such as gas exchange and regulation of hydrogen ion concentration, the lungs also:
- influence the concentration of biologically active substances and drugs used in medicine in arterial blood
- filter out small blood clots formed in veins
- serve as a physical layer of soft, shock-absorbent protection for the heart, which the lungs flank and nearly enclose.
- filter out gas micro-bubbles occurring in the venous blood stream during SCUBA diving decompression.[4]
Mammalian lungs
The lungs of mammals have a spongy texture and are honeycombed with epithelium having a much larger surface area in total than the outer surface area of the lung itself. The lungs of humans are typical of this type of lung.
Breathing is largely driven by the muscular diaphragm at the bottom of the thorax. Contraction of the diaphragm pulls the bottom of the cavity in which the lung is enclosed downward. Air enters through the oral and nasal cavities; it flows through the larynx and into the trachea, which branches out into bronchi. Relaxation of the diaphragm has the opposite effect, passively recoiling during normal breathing. During exercise, the diaphragm contracts, forcing the air out more quickly and forcefully. The rib cage itself is also able to expand and contract to some degree, through the action of other respiratory and accessory respiratory muscles. As a result, air is sucked into or expelled out of the lungs, always moving down its pressure gradient. This type of lung is known as a bellows lung as it resembles a blacksmith's bellows.
In humans, the trachea divides into the two main bronchi that enter the roots of the lungs. The bronchi continue to divide within the lung, and after multiple divisions, give rise to bronchioles. The bronchial tree continues branching until it reaches the level of terminal bronchioles, which lead to alveolar sacks. Alveolar sacs are made up of clusters of alveoli, like individual grapes within a bunch. The individual alveoli are tightly wrapped in blood vessels, and it is here that gas exchange actually occurs. Deoxygenated blood from the heart is pumped through the pulmonary artery to the lungs, where oxygen diffuses into blood and is exchanged for carbon dioxide in the hemoglobin of the erythrocytes. The oxygen-rich blood returns to the heart via the pulmonary veins to be pumped back into systemic circulation.
Human lungs are located in two cavities on either side of the heart. Though similar in appearance, the two are not identical. Both are separated into lobes, with three lobes on the right and two on the left. The lobes are further divided into lobules, hexagonal divisions of the lungs that are the smallest subdivision visible to the naked eye. The connective tissue that divides lobules is often blackened in smokers and city dwellers. The medial border of the right lung is nearly vertical, while the left lung contains a cardiac notch. The cardiac notch is a concave impression molded to accommodate the shape of the heart. Lungs are to a certain extent 'overbuilt' and have a tremendous reserve volume as compared to the oxygen exchange requirements when at rest. This is the reason that individuals can smoke for years without having a noticeable decrease in lung function while still or moving slowly; in situations like these only a small portion of the lungs are actually perfused with blood for gas exchange. As oxygen requirements increase due to exercise, a greater volume of the lungs is perfused, allowing the body to match its CO2/O2 exchange requirements.
The environment of the lung is very moist, which makes it hospitable for bacteria. Many respiratory illnesses are the result of bacterial or viral infection of the lungs.
Avian lungs
Avian lungs do not have alveoli, as mammalian lungs do, but instead contain millions of tiny passages known as para-bronchi, connected at both ends by the dorsobronchi and ventrobronchi. Air flows through the honeycombed walls of the para-bronchi and into air capillaries, where oxygen and carbon dioxide are traded with cross-flowing blood capillaries by diffusion, a process of crosscurrent exchange.
Avian lungs contain two sets of air sacs, one towards the front, and a second towards the back. Upon inspiration, air travels backwards into the rear (caudal) sac, and a small portion travels forward past the para-bronchi and oxygenating the blood into the cranial air sac. On expiration, deoxygenated air held in the cranial air sack is exhaled, and the still-oxygenated air stored in the caudal sack moves over the parabronchi and is exhaled, with some remaining in the cranial sac. The complex system of air sacs ensures that the airflow through the avian lung always travels in the same direction - posterior to anterior. This is in contrast to the mammalian system, in which the direction of airflow in the lung is tidal, reversing between inhalation and exhalation. By utilizing a unidirectional flow of air, avian lungs are able to extract a greater concentration of oxygen from inhaled air. Birds are thus equipped to fly at altitudes at which mammals would succumb to hypoxia, and this also allows them to sustain a higher metabolic rate than an equivalent weight mammal. Because of the complexity of the system, misunderstanding is common and it is incorrectly believed that that it takes two breathing cycles for air to pass entirely through a bird's respiratory system. A bird's lungs do not store air in either of the sacs between respiration cycles, air moves continuously from the posterior to anterior air sacs throughout respiration. This type of lung construction is called circulatory lungs as distinct from the bellows lung possessed by most other animals.
Reptilian lungs
Reptilian lungs are typically ventilated by a combination of expansion and contraction of the ribs via axial muscles and buccal pumping. Crocodilians also rely on the hepatic piston method, in which the liver is pulled back by a muscle anchored to the pubic bone (part of the pelvis), which in turn pulls the bottom of the lungs backward, expanding them.
Amphibian lungs
The lungs of most frogs and other amphibians are simple balloon-like structures, with gas exchange limited to the outer surface area of the lung. This is not a very efficient arrangement, but amphibians have low metabolic demands and also frequently supplement their oxygen supply by diffusion across the moist outer skin of their bodies. Unlike mammals, which use a breathing system driven by negative pressure, amphibians employ positive pressure. Note that the majority of salamander species are lung-less salamanders and conduct respiration through their skin and the tissues lining their mouth.
Invertebrate lungs
Some invertebrates have "lungs" that serve a similar respiratory purpose, but are not evolutionarily related to, vertebrate lungs. Some arachnids have structures called "book lungs" used for atmospheric gas exchange. The Coconut crab uses structures called branchiostegal lungs to breathe air and indeed will drown in water, hence it breathes on land and holds its breath underwater. The Pulmonata are an order of snails and slugs that have developed "lungs".
The lungs of today's terrestrial vertebrates and the gas bladders of today's fish have evolved from simple sacs (outpocketings) of the esophagus that allowed the organism to gulp air under oxygen-poor conditions. Thus the lungs of vertebrates are homologous to the gas bladders of fish (but not to their gills). This is reflected by the fact that the lungs of a fetus also develop from an outpocketing of the esophagus and in the case of gas bladders, this connection to the gut continues to exist as the pneumatic duct in more "primitive" teleosts, and is lost in the higher orders. (This is an instance of correlation between ontogeny and phylogeny.) There are currently no known animals which have both a gas bladder and lungs.
See also
- Alveolar-capillary barrier
- Bronchus
- Bronchitis
- Pulmonology
- Lung volumes
- Cardiothoracic surgery
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- Liquid breathing
- Mechanical ventilation
- Drowning
- Dry drowning
- Pneumothorax
- American Lung Association
- Left lung
- Right lung
Further reading
- Template:McGrawHillAnimation
- Lung Function Fundamentals. http://www.anaesthetist.com/icu/organs/lung/lungfx.htm
- Dr D.R. Johnson: Introductory anatomy, respiratory system
- Franlink Institute Online: The Respiratory System
- Lungs 'best in late afternoon'
- Chronic Respiratory Disease - leading research and articles on respiratory disease.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body, 20th ed. 1918.
- ↑ The American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary. "KMLE Medical Dictionary Definition of pneumo-".
- ↑ The American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary. "KMLE Medical Dictionary Definition of pulmo-".
- ↑ Wienke B.R. : "Decompression theory"
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21 Years Ago: Pearl Jam Release 'Riot Act'
Pearl Jam dominated the 1990s. The upstart rockers survived massive amounts of fame and managed to keep their head, carefully overseeing their career and taking control of just about every decision that could possibly affect their brand and their future. But as the 21st century arrived, Pearl Jam's world got rocked a little. They managed to release five studio albums during the '90s, and their sixth, Binaural, came in 2000. However, the disc became the first released by the band to not reach platinum status.
On a more personal level, Pearl Jam suffered through a concert tragedy that no band should ever experience when nine people died and another 15 were injured in a crowd crush situation during the band's performance at the Roskilde Festival in 2000. Eddie Vedder told Seattle Weekly, "The days following, we were all pretty inconsolable. I'm sure that the families and friends have had to live with it in much rougher ways that us. But our own personal experience was that we were practically in the fetal position over the reality of what had happened." Band manager Kelly Curtis recalled, "When we still weren't sure what had happened or how it went down, I think we all thought at the time, 'This could be it.'" But the band would eventually continue, though it was a hard road to complete.
Simply put, it was time for a break and the band decided to step away for a year shortly after their support of Binaural was complete. During this year off, Pearl Jam watched on with the rest of America during the events of 9/11 and pretty soon, not only did the band have something to say, but they decided to use their platform to say it. So after nursing some wounds, the band regrouped with determination, ready to lay the groundwork for new music.
First up was a decision to work with producer Adam Kasper for the disc. Drummer Matt Cameron said, "I think we came into this thing pretty prepared and focused in terms of what we wanted to do. Adam is a super guy, and that helped a lot—the working environment was really relaxed. We tore through it, tracked everything in about four weeks. You're really hearing it 'live,' the sound of a band playing together in a room—which you don't hear too much these days."
As stated, the sound took on more of an immediacy, and that includes the vocals and lyrics coming from Eddie Vedder. "The biggest difference we heard, from like the first day we started, was how emotional Ed's approach was," said bassist Jeff Ament to Philly.com about the sessions. "He was talking about things that you could tell mattered to him, in his gut. Stuff like 'Bu$hleaguer' wouldn't have happened five years ago; he's really gone someplace different, both in terms of what the lyrics are saying and how he sings them."
Pearl Jam, "Bu$hleaguer"
Vedder added, "Right after 9/11, there was this sense of unity that was deeply moving. But what bothered me was how quickly that became a blind patriotism. I remember a few days after the attacks realizing that the progress being made on the environment and other issues was going to take a hit, and it seemed like even questioning that was anti-American. Well, it's not anti-American to be critical of the government... . We wanted to put some ideas out there that might help create an open and honest debate."
He told Billboard, "You start feeling like, 'What do I have to say? What is my opinion?' Then I realized I did have an opinion. Not only did I have one, but I felt like it was formed by processing a lot of information and having good influences."
Guitarist Stone Gossard recalled, "Every day it would be something different. Ed would come in with an idea, sometimes it was as simple as 'all you need is love... ' You're thinking that this is going to go down the path of corny sentiment, but because he hasn't made a career out of saying stuff like that, and because of how the music comes together behind him, it doesn't. It ends up being pulverizing."
Pearl Jam, "Love Boat Captain"
The band also opened themselves up musically to additional sounds. The disc that would be known as Riot Act was the first to feature Pearl Jam collaborator Kenneth "Boom" Gaspar, who lent keyboard tracks to the song "Love Boat Captain" as well as several other songs on the disc. Gaspar, a Hawaiian musician, first got to know Eddie Vedder through surfing and admitted to the Honolulu Advertiser, "I knew him as my friend Eddie. I didn't know how big he was. I just loved him for how he was ... and how he came off to us." After some time jamming, the beginnings of "Love Boat Captain" was born and Vedder invited Gaspar to join the group in the studio. Then one song turned into more and was eventually followed by an invite to join the band on tour as well.
With the tracks finally completed over two sessions in February and April of 2002, the band turned their focus to releasing the album that would be titled Riot Act. It arrived on Nov. 12, 2002, preceded by the single "I Am Mine." The sing-along style of the track instantly connected with listeners, as well as the band. Mike McCready told Billboard, "It touched me immediately. His lyrics: 'The in-between is mine.' It's kind of a positive affirmation of what to do with one's life. I'm born and I die, but in between that, I can do whatever I want or have an opinion about something. It seems very positive to me. It meant a lot to me and still does when I hear it." The song became the biggest single off the album, reaching No. 7 on the Mainstream Rock chart and No. 6 at Modern Rock.
Pearl Jam, "I Am Mine"
The stinging but humorous dig at President Bush, "Bu$hleaguer," came next. Gossard recalled, "I wrote that. That was written at the same time we were putting together [new songs for] the [2001 edition of the] Bridge School [benefit]. That's another experiment that worked out really well. It's so satirical. People are going to enjoy it. The four-on-the-floor drum feel that Matt is playing -- he's playing a kick drum pattern we don't have a lot of in our songs. The groovy, spooky outtro is kind of a different thing." Ament added, "Everything Stone brought in was kind of dark. The one lyric he had was "blackout weaves its way through the city." That's a totally heavy line. The way Ed wrote lyrics around that, they were almost kind of humorous. It made the song even creepier to me. It took me awhile, because he actually originally sang over the verses in that song, and he had a really cool melody. I had a hard time letting go of that." The song never really connected at radio, but became a favorite amongst Pearl Jam fans, especially with Eddie Vedder often donning a George W. Bush mask during performances driving home the politically-tinged track.
The album's other charting single was "Save You," which arrived in February 2003. It's a love/hate relationship song with a punk-influenced sound. McCready stated, "I came in with that riff and we just kind of started jamming on it. It was a blast to play. The track that actually ended up on there, halfway through the song, Matt lost his headphones. He was going off. That's my favorite part of that song, his crazy drum fills. I like the solo too, but the drum fills are insane how good they are. He's doing them without his headphones, just by watching the bass." Cameron added, "It was me watching Jeff's fingers and hoping I was in time, you know? There's a breakdown of just me and Jeff. I hit a cymbal, moved my head, and the headphones went flying. A little point of interest there for the listener!"
Pearl Jam, "Save You"
The final song to be released off the album was the aforementioned "Love Boat Captain." For Pearl Jam, it was a bit of a unique song. Cameron recalled, "There weren't any lyrics when we tracked it, so we did what we thought would be a good, tight instrumental version that would later have vocals on it. When we tracked it, I was like, "Huh? What's this?" It made no sense to me. But then when the vocals were added, it made perfect sense and it elevated the entire piece."
When all was said and done, the Riot Act album was considered both a creative and commercial rebound after a rare dip in Pearl Jam's career. The album debuted at No. 5 and went on to be certified gold by the RIAA. And the band's touring showed an energized band delivering one of their more memorable tours in the history of the band. Though not a hugely successful album for the group, it is one that is highly underrated and was key in launching the second decade of the band's career.
Pearl Jam Albums Ranked
10 Best Pearl Jam Songs


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2023-2024 Undergraduate Catalog | 20243
University Studies Courses
All University Studies Courses
UNIV 1200 TRIO/SSS Life Career Planning (2 credits)
Designed to give students an opportunity to use critical thinking skills, group interaction, and assignments and presentations to explore and analyze their values, skills, interests, and career goals. This course enables students to explore areas of interest or to focus on an already established area of interest by providing time to research national and regional employment trends, salaries, and employment outlooks. Key elements of the course include values clarification exercises, ethics on the job, job shadowing, a service learning component, and interest and personality inventories. Several career assessments are administered and analyzed, including ACT Discover, Self-Directed Search (SDS), Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and Fundamental Interpersonal Response Orientation-Behavior (FIRO-B). Upon completion of the course, students can describe the process of career development, discuss the role that their values, interests, and abilities play in their career decision making, and focus their academic career toward an area of interest worthy of continued exploration.
Common Course Outline


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Hailing from Parma, Acqua Fragile were a British-inspired progressive rock band, complete with English-language lyrics. Aided by PFM's management, the band opened for many UK groups touring Italy. Their second album saw release in the United States, however with a few personal changes, including the addition of the Trip's Joe Vescovi on keyboards and the departure of vocalist Berndardo Lanzetti to PFM, the band split.
Founded: 1971
Location: Parma, Italy
Website: Acqua Fragile Project - The Official Site
Relatively unknown Italian band released one eponymous album of excellent quality before dissolving. Second release is incomplete (no vocals).
Founded: 1973
Location: Milan, Italy
Website: Alphataurus - Italian Prog-Band
Led by drummer Furio Chirico (formerly of The Trip), keyboardist Beppe Crovella, and composer Gigi Venegoni, Arti e Mestieri were one of Italy's finest progressive rock bands. Their debut album Tilt is an undisputed classic.
Founded: 1974
Location: Torino, Italy
Website: arti&mestieri official web site
Led by Gianni Leone, the band's second album stands as one of the finest and darkest prog rock albums from Italy.
Founded: 1966
Location: Naples, Italy
Website: YSLand - Il Balletto di Bronzo
One of the great (and original) Italian prog bands, propelled by the keyboards of brothers Noncenzi and the tenor voice of Di Giacomo.
Location: Rome, Italy
Website: The Official BMS Home Page
One of the few "solo" artists from Italy, Sicilian Battiato has a long career, featuring his original and idiosyncratic music. His first two albums should appeal most to progressive music fans, however Sulle Corde di Aries and Clic are even more rewarding; Battiato employs musique concrete techniques to create a unique pastiche. The pair were compiled for international release by Island in 1974. At the time, Battiato performed as series of concerts in London, however an auto accident brought a premature return to Italy.
Founded: 1945
Location: Jonia, Catania, Sicily
Website: Franco Battiato | Official Website
Another classic of Italian Prog, Biglietto per L'Inferno (Ticket to Hell) recorded two albums, however only the first was released. Giuseppe Banfi would later record as Baffo Banfi for Klaus Schulze's IC label.
Founded: 1972
Location: Lecco, Lombardy, Italy
Website: Biglietto per l'Inferno - Official Site
Although formed in 1974, Il Castello Di Atlante did not release any albums until the early 1990s. Beppe Crovella of Arti & Mestieri produced their first record, and the band continues strong as a potent live act today.
Location: Vercelli, Piedmont, Italy
Website: Il Castello di Atlante - Italian Progressive Rock since 1974
Relatively obscure group from Sanremo that released one eponymous album in 1976. Considered a classic, it was released on the Grog label.
Founded: 1976
Location: Sanremo, Liguria
Website: Myspace
Corrado Rustici's first band, brother of Danilo Rustici of Osanna.
The Strawberry Bricks Guide to Progressive Rock Third Edition by Charles Snider ISBN: 978-0-578-48980-3 On sale now!


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How to play Senjou no Waltz on Mac
Game summary
First released: Nov 2014
Play Senjou no Waltz on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)
The easiest way to play Senjou no Waltz on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.
Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.
Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).
Senjou no Waltz installation steps for Mac
Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac's security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that's left to do is install Senjou no Waltz like you would on any PC.
Did it work?
Help us improve our guide by letting us know if it worked for you.


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I got my copy of Computational Aspects of Modular Forms and Galois Representations in the mail yesterday. The goal of the book is "How one can compute in polynomial time the value of Ramanujan's tau at a prime", well, or any other modular form of level 1. It's all very thrilling!
The following fact is essential: for any modular form $f$ of level 1, and any prime $l$, the mod $l$ reduction of the semisimplification of the galois representation attached to $f$ by Deligne is a 2-dimensional subrepresentation of the galois representation of the $l$-torsion of the jacobian of the modular curve of level $l$.
From what I understand, this is somewhat equivalent (after Shimura and Deligne) to there being a modular form of weight 2 and level $l$ that is congruent to $f$ mod $l$, or something similar. Is this the right statement? Why is it true then?
Searching far and wide for an introduction to this topic yields very little.


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In this section More See Muslims Abroad as Anti-American But Opinions of Muslim-Americans Mostly Unchanged Substantially higher numbers of Americans today than in 2002 believe that Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its followers. At the same time, there has been a significant increase in the percentage of people who say that, in general, religion plays a large role in causing wars. Nearly half of the public thinks that half or more of Muslims worldwide hold anti-American views, up from just over a third who felt this way in 2002. Despite these shifting views, however, there has been only a modest growth in negative sentiment toward Muslim-Americans.
In the current poll, 44% of Americans say that Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions, up from 25% in the March 2002 poll. This opinion is as prevalent among better educated individuals and those who are more knowledgeable about Islam as among the less educated and less knowledgeable. And where white evangelicals once stood out for their belief that Islam is more likely to encourage violence, there are fewer religious differences now.
In 2002, more highly committed white evangelical Protestants than people of other religious traditions held this opinion 41% compared with 25% of white mainline Protestants, 24% of white Catholics, and 24% of black Protestants. Seculars were least likely to hold this view; only 18% agreed in 2002. Today, evangelicals and mainline Protestants have the same opinion: 51% of evangelicals and 50% of mainline Protestants agree that the Islamic religion is more likely than others to encourage violence, while this opinion also has grown among white Catholics (39%), black Protestants (37%), and seculars (38%).
People who consider themselves politically conservative are most likely to connect Islam and violence. More than half of conservatives (54%) say Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence, compared with 43% of moderates and just 32% of liberals. And while this sentiment has increased among all three ideological groups, the liberal-conservative gap is greater today than a year ago. Similarly, the South stood out in 2002, with 31% saying Islam was more violent (compared with 24% or fewer in other parts of the country); now, people in all regions have roughly comparable views on this issue.
In addition, more than four-in-ten Americans (44%) believe that religion in general plays a large role in causing wars, compared with 34% last year. Growth in this view has been greatest among mainline Protestants; 44% of white mainline Protestants now express this view compared with 30% in March 2002. By contrast, the percentage of white evangelicals believing this has grown by only five percentage points (from 31% to 36%). Seculars (at 56%, up from 46%) remain the most committed to this perception; black Protestants are the least (30%, up from 24%).
In 2002, far fewer women than men thought religion had a great deal to do with starting wars; only 28% said this, compared with 40% of men. Today, men and women are much closer in this perception: 42% for women, 46% for men.
More See Muslims Abroad as Anti-American
In addition to growing concerns about Islam and violence, the public increasingly perceives anti-Americanism among Muslims around the world. In a separate survey conducted June 4-8 by the Pew Research Center, nearly a quarter (24%) say most or almost all Muslims around the world hold anti-American views, and 25% say about half do.
In March 2002, by comparison, only 18% thought most or almost all Muslims felt this way, and an additional 18% thought about half were anti-American. This change in perception tracks closely with the actual trend in unfavorable views of the United States in many Muslim nations, as documented by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. The percentage of Indonesians who hold favorable opinions of the U.S., for example, fell from 61% last summer to 15% in March 2003.
But Opinions of Muslim-Americans Mostly Unchanged
Yet growing views of Islam as a religion that encourages violence have not resulted in a significant change in American views of Muslims, Muslim-Americans, or even of Islam in general. A narrow majority of the public 51% has a favorable view of Muslim-Americans, and only 24% have an unfavorable view (25% have no opinion). This is about the same rating as last year (54% favorable), but down from the 59% rating in a November 2001 poll, just a few months after 9/11.
Unfavorable ratings for Muslim-Americans have inched upward over this same time period from 17% soon after the attacks to 24% today. But Muslim-Americans remain slightly better regarded now than they were before 9/11; in March 2001, 45% had a favorable opinion of Muslim-Americans.
Opinions are slightly less favorable of Muslims who are not identified as Americans: 47% favorable, 31% unfavorable.(2) Neither measure has changed significantly since last year. Ratings of the Islamic faith remain lower than ratings for Muslims. In spite of the growing sense that Islam is a religion that encourages violence, however, general perceptions of Islam have not changed. Four-in-ten have a favorable impression of the religion, while 34% have an unfavorable opinion (26% have no opinion), virtually unchanged from 15 months ago.
As has been true in previous years, Muslims are less popular than people of other religious faiths but more popular than atheists. Muslim-Americans and Muslims are seen less favorably than Jews (72% favorable), Protestants (70%), and Catholics (69%), and slightly below evangelical Christians (58% favorable, 18% unfavorable). "People who aren't religious" receive favorable ratings similar to Muslims (50%), but the public has a more unfavorable view of the non-religious (33% unfavorable). Majorities of the public continue to give atheists an unfavorable rating: 52%, compared with 34% favorable. Views of each of these groups have changed very little since March 2002.
Somewhat fewer people now than last year say that Islam and their own religion have a lot in common: 22% this year, compared with 27% in March 2002 and 31% in November of 2001. Catholics have changed the most on this measure, with 14% fewer saying their religion has a lot in common with Islam. Evangelicals and mainline Protestants have changed very little. Overall, far more among the college educated than the less educated see commonality between Islam and their religion, and the views of the college educated have changed very little since last year.


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Blood pressure, measured with a blood pressure cuff and stethoscope by a nurse or other health care provider, is the force of the blood pushing against the artery walls.
Two numbers are recorded when measuring blood pressure:
The higher number, or systolic pressure, refers to the highest pressure inside the artery. It occurs when the heart contracts and pumps blood into the body.
The lower number, or diastolic pressure, refers to the lowest pressure inside the artery. It occurs when the heart relaxes and fills with blood.
Each time the heart beats, it pumps blood into the arteries, resulting in the highest blood pressure, the systolic pressure, as the heart contracts, and the lowest blood pressure, the diastolic pressure, as the heart relaxes.
Both the systolic and diastolic pressures are recorded as "mm Hg" (millimeters of mercury). This recording represents how high the mercury column is raised by the pressure of the blood.
High blood pressure means that there is higher than normal pressure inside the arteries either during systole (when the heart contracts and pumps blood through the body), or during diastole (when the heart relaxes and fills with blood).
If the pressure is high during the pumping phase (systole), then the first number recorded with a blood pressure reading (the systolic pressure) will be high.
If the pressure is high during the relaxation phase (diastole), then the second number recorded (the diastolic pressure) will be high.
High blood pressure is also called hypertension.
Blood pressure can be affected by many factors, including the following:
The time of day. Blood pressures fluctuate during waking hours, and are lower as we sleep.
Physical activity. Blood pressure is usually higher during and immediately after exercise, and lower at rest.
Emotional moods. Feelings (such as fear, anger, or happiness) can affect blood pressure.
Stress. Physical or emotional stress can elevate blood pressure.
Your child's age, height, weight, and gender. Blood pressure varies for each child.
Other illnesses. Other illnesses your child may have (such as kidney or heart disease) affects blood pressure.
Children (and adults) may be anxious in a doctor's office, not knowing what may happen and being afraid of a possibly painful experience ahead of them. Infants, toddlers, and preschoolers may be fearful of being separated from their parent or caregiver. Many emotions related to visiting the clinic can affect blood pressure and may give falsely high readings.
Before determining that your child has high blood pressure, a doctor or nurse will take several readings when your child is calm and you are present to comfort him or her, if needed. The staff may let some time lapse before retaking a blood pressure reading, to make sure your child has rested and has become calm. More meaningful blood pressure readings can be obtained this way.
Blood pressures vary depending on the age of your child, as well as according to height and weight, and the gender of your child. Generally, blood pressure is low in infancy, and rises slowly as children age. Boys' blood pressures are slightly higher than girls' are, and taller people generally have higher blood pressures than short people do.
For example, an infant may have a quite normal blood pressure of 80/45 mm Hg, while that value in an adult is considered low. A teenager may have an acceptable blood pressure of 110/70 mm Hg, but that value would be of concern in a toddler.
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has prepared a series of age- and gender-specific blood pressure measurement tables for children ages 3 through 17 years, based on percentiles. A range of blood pressure values is given based on how old and how tall your child is. According to the tables, if your child has a blood pressure that is higher than 90 to 95 percent of other boys or girls his or her age and height, then he or she may have high blood pressure.
Again, many factors, including emotions, can affect blood pressure. Readings that are high compared to the values on the table may need to be investigated further by your child's doctor.
The prevalence of hypertension and obesity in children age 8 to 17 has increased in all racial and ethnic groups since 2002.
High blood pressure, or hypertension, directly increases the risk of coronary heart disease (heart attack) and stroke (brain attack). With high blood pressure, the arteries may have an increased resistance against the flow of blood, causing the heart to pump harder to circulate the blood.
Heart attack and stroke related to high blood pressure are rare in children and adolescents. Yet, studies of young adults with high blood pressure found that many had high blood pressure as a child. By their 20s, studies show that children and adolescents with high blood pressure will exhibit harmful effects on the heart and blood vessels even with mild hypertension.
Blood pressure is classified as "primary," or without a definite cause, and "secondary," or related to an illness or behavior.
Factors that seem to contribute to primary hypertension in adults, and possibly in children, include the following:
High blood cholesterol levels
Being overweight
Secondary causes of hypertension in children include the following:
Illnesses. The kidneys play an important role in regulating blood pressure, and often have diminished ability to perform this vital task when they are diseased. A congenital (present at birth) heart defect called coarctation of the aorta may also cause high blood pressure readings. Head injury may raise the pressure inside the brain, which affects the body's ability to regulate blood pressure normally.
Use of prescription or illegal recreational drugs (such as steroids taken to decrease inflammation, oral contraceptives, or cocaine)
Immobility (such as with a chronic illness)
Severe pain (such as with cancer or burns)
Primary hypertension (with an unknown cause) is the most common cause of high blood pressure in adolescents and adults, but is less common in children.
Many children with high blood pressure also have adult relatives with hypertension, so there may be a hereditary aspect to the disease.
There is a higher incidence of high blood pressure in African-American children after the age of 12 and into adulthood.
Your child's doctor may note an elevated blood pressure reading during a routine office visit. Obtaining calm, resting blood pressures on several different occasions (days, weeks, or months apart) will provide better information about whether the blood pressure elevation is consistent or due to fear or stress.
Your child's doctor will obtain a medical history, including information about your child's diet, exercise level, home and school activities, and possible stressors. A physical examination may also be performed.
Diagnostic tests may help determine if your child's high blood pressure is related to an illness, or is "essential" or "primary" hypertension, meaning it has no known cause. Diagnostic procedures may include:
Blood tests (including those to evaluate kidney function and cholesterol levels)
Other tests may be needed to evaluate the health of other organs (such as the heart or kidneys) which may contribute to hypertension.
Specific treatment for high blood pressure will be determined by your child's doctor based on:
Your child's age, overall health, and medical history
Extent of the condition
Your child's tolerance to specific medications, procedures, or treatments
Expectations for the course of the condition
Your opinion or preference
If a secondary cause has been found, such as kidney disease, the underlying disease will be treated. If no cause has been determined, the first treatment approach is lifestyle therapy, including the following:
Weight reduction
Increasing physical activity
Healthy diet
These interventions can lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure, improve the strength of the heart, and lower blood cholesterol. These are all important steps in preventing heart disease as an adult.
Medications to control high blood pressure are only needed in about 1 percent of children with the disorder. Consult your child's doctor for more information.


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For Audrey and MAC 3D Glass
5:33 PMFirst of all, I apologize for my scruffiness but it was a super casual retro polo kind of day. I wanted to share a couple of my most favorite purchases as of late. I haven't had a post about nails for a while and although it is completely not the season (unless you are an Aussie ;) I have been completely obsessed with a color from China Glaze called "For Audrey." It's the color of Tiffany's blue! I had been scouring for this color everywhere... Ever since I saw one of my favorite Zipia.net models wearing it, it was lust.
Just a simple creme light turquoise polish, and I had come up with disappointment after disappointment until I found this. It's so love! I wanted to see the color so I just did one quick layer but even with just one, it's so opaque! I was impressed. I also bought Red-Curl Grl and Blushing by China Glaze but I have yet to try them out. For anyone wanting to get polish online, I bought mine from http://8ty8beauty.com/ and they shipped quickly and safely.
I also recently discovered a Cosmetics Company Store about 20 minutes away from my house and in the excitement of the new discovery, bought MAC 3D Glass in Racy. Apparently the 3D glasses were less sticky and more moisturizing than their lipglass brothers. I have to say, I really love it. Racy is a sheer yet pigmented hot pink-red color that really brightens your lips. My bathroom is dark so you can't tell, but it's a stronger color than it looks here.
With my good fortune I have to ask, what awesome products have you picked up lately? I'd love a couple of good recommendations. :)
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cool! you found a CCO near you!:) and the nails look great on you by the way..what products are you asking about? skincare? foundation? eyeshadow? what do you want to focus on?:)
ReplyDeletei LOVE those two outfits you posted from zipia!
i WISH i can order for there, but my god, isn't it like a $500 minimum purchase since it's a whole-sale type of online clothing store?
if not..then i sure would love to order from there...they've got CUTE stuff.- AnonymousOctober 17, 2008 at 11:10 PM
In your post for your light blue contact lenses you posted some pictures and I like your hair bangs and was wondering how you style them so they stay piecey like that, especially in the first pic.
ReplyDelete miemiemie: Oh, just anything. Your holy grails. :)
ichigobunny: Yes, I know what you mean. Zipia is so expensive! But I just look at the pics for inspiration.
anonymous: I use a texturizer paste... I have a couple different ones I use and they all work the same. Just put a tiny bit on your fingertips, rub to warm up the product, and twist pieces of your bangs together how you like at the tips. Hope it helps!- AnonymousOctober 19, 2008 at 3:31 PM
Hi Jen! Could you tell us about the quality of the nail polish you got from China Glaze - does it dry fast? does it last or does it chip fast? I love the website you mentioned by the way - they got all the colors I was looking for but could not find. Just want to make sure that the quality is good ;-)
ReplyDelete oh sure sure dear :) hmmm..HG stuff:
mascara = maybelline's volum' express in the black and silver tube
bronzer = rimmel's spicy nude
lipgloss = NYX in beige
concealer = mac select cover up
eye primer = too faced shadow insurance
blotting powder = clinique's stay matte powder
eyeliner = l'oreal hip cream liner
uhm..what else..for brushes, i absolutely love everyday mineral brushes..they're the softest!!!:)- AnonymousOctober 21, 2008 at 12:25 PM
Can you do a post on how you clean your makeup brushes? :) Thankies
ReplyDelete anna: China Glaze is overall a good quality nail polish. I've seen it at a lot of nail salons and it's on a lot of nail polish blogs. The For Audrey polish I got was obviously good quality because it was so opaque with just one coat and it wasn't too thick at the same time. As for chipping... I would say it lasted a week, which is typical. I think it also dried a bit faster than some of my other polishes. I'd definitely buy more in the future. :)
anonymous: sure! I'll add that to my future list of to-dos. :)- AnonymousDecember 6, 2008 at 10:47 PM
it really is the same tiffany's blue. Awesome! another add-on to my wanted list. And Kim Jin Hee (that model from zipia) is one of my fav models too, jst that she's a little too tanned.
Oops, forgot to introduce myself, i'm a new reader from Singapore! And u're really really pretty, and Korean!