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Carbamazepine tablets
Consumer Medicine Information
What is in this leaflet
This leaflet answers some common questions about Carbamazepine Sandoz.
It does not contain all the available information. It does not take the place of talking to your doctor or pharmacist.
The information in this leaflet was last updated on the date listed on the final page. More recent information on the medicine may be available.
You should ensure that you speak to your pharmacist or doctor to obtain the most up to date information on the medicine. You can also download the most up to date leaflet from www.novartis.com.au Those updates may contain important information about the medicine and its use of which you should be aware.
All medicines have risks and benefits. Your doctor has weighed the risks of you or your child taking this medicine against the benefits they expect it will have for you.
If you have any concerns about taking this medicine, ask your doctor or pharmacist.
Keep this leaflet with the medicine. You may need to read it again.
What Carbamazepine Sandoz is used for
Carbamazepine Sandoz has several uses:
- to control epilepsy, a condition in which there are repeated seizures (fits). There are many different types of seizures, ranging from mild to severe
- to control sudden, repeated attacks of facial pain, known as trigeminal neuralgia
- to control mania, a mental condition with episodes of overactivity, elation or irritability
- to control bipolar mood disorder where periods of mania alternate with periods of depression.
Carbamazepine Sandoz belongs to a group of medicines called anticonvulsants. These medicines are thought to work by regulating the way messages in the brain are passed on by nerves so that seizures do not happen. This medicine also regulates other nerve functions in the body.
Carbamazepine Sandoz may be used alone or in combination with other medicines to treat your condition.
Ask your doctor if you have any questions about why this medicine has been prescribed for you. Your doctor may have prescribed it for another reason.
This medicine is available only with a doctor's prescription. There is no evidence that this medicine is addictive.
Before you take Carbamazepine Sandoz
When you must not take it
Do not take this medicine if you have an allergy to:
- carbamazepine, the active ingredient, or any of the other ingredients listed at the end of this leaflet
- any other medicine containing carbamazepine
- tricyclic antidepressants, which are medicines used to treat depression.
Tell your doctor if you are allergic to oxcarbazepine or to phenytoin. These two medicines are also used to treat epilepsy. Some people who are allergic to oxcarbazepine or phenytoin are also allergic to carbamazepine.
Some of the symptoms of an allergic reaction may include:
- shortness of breath
- wheezing or difficulty breathing
- swelling of the face, lips, eyelids, throat, mouth, tongue or other parts of the body
- rash, itching or hives on the skin.
Do not take this medicine if you are taking a medicine called a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) or have been taking it within the past 14 days. Taking this medicine with a MAOI, or within 14 days of taking a MAOI, may cause a serious reaction with a sudden increase in body temperature, extremely high blood pressure and severe convulsions.
Do not take this medicine if you have or have had any of the following medical conditions:
- severe liver or heart disease
- a disease of the blood with a reduced number of red or white blood cells or platelets (risk of bone marrow depression)
- an irregular heartbeat caused by a condition called A-V block
- systemic lupus erythematosus, also called SLE
- hepatic porphyria, a disturbance in the production of porphyria, a pigment important for liver function and blood formation.
If you are not sure whether any of the above conditions apply to you, ask your doctor.
Do not take this medicine after the expiry date printed on the pack or if the packaging is torn or shows signs of tampering. In that case, return it to your pharmacist.
If you are not sure whether you should start taking this medicine, talk to your doctor or pharmacist.
Before you start to take it
Tell your doctor if you are allergic to any other medicines, foods, preservatives or dyes. Your doctor will want to know if you are prone to allergies.
Tell your doctor if you have or have had any medical conditions, especially the following:
- heart problems
- glaucoma
- prostate problems or if you cannot retain your urine
- liver or kidney problems
- problems with your blood in the past that were caused by medicines you were taking
- a mental disorder such as depression or schizophrenia.
Tell your doctor if you are of Asian descent, particularly if you are Chinese or Thai. Your doctor may want to do a genetic test before you take this medicine for the first time.
The risk of serious skin reactions in patients of Han Chinese or Thai origin associated with carbamazepine or chemically related compounds may be predicted by testing a blood sample of these patients.
Your doctor should be able to advise if a blood test is necessary before taking Carbamazepine Sandoz.
Tell your doctor if you are pregnant or intend to become pregnant. You may need to change your medication. Your doctor will discuss with you the potential risk of taking Carbamazepine Sandoz during pregnancy since it may cause harm or abnormalities in your baby during pregnancy and soon after birth. Risk of neurodevelopmental disorders (how the brain functions leading to difficulties in social, emotional and mental function) cannot be excluded among children born to women with epilepsy treated with carbamazepine alone or in combination with other antiepileptic drugs during pregnancy. But, if you have epilepsy, it is very important to control your fits while you are pregnant. Your doctor can help you decide whether or not you should take Carbamazepine Sandoz in this case.
Tell your doctor if you are breastfeeding or plan to breast-feed. This medicine passes into breast milk but it is unlikely to affect your baby. With the advice of your doctor you may breast-feed provided that you watch your baby for any signs of an unwanted side effect. If your baby develops a skin rash, becomes very sleepy or has other unusual symptoms, do not breast-feed again until you speak to your doctor.
If you have not told your doctor about any of the above, tell him/ her before you start taking Carbamazepine Sandoz.
Taking other medicines
Tell your doctor if you are taking any other medicines, including medicines that you buy without a prescription from a pharmacy, supermarket or health food shop.
Some medicines and Carbamazepine Sandoz may interfere with each other. These include:
- MAOI medicines. This medicine must not be taken together with a MAOI or within 14 days of taking a MAOI.
- other medicines used to treat depression such as fluvoxamine, nefazodone, paroxetine, bupropion, citalopram, tricyclic antidepressants and trazodone
- other medicines used to treat seizures including oxcarbazepine, levetiracetam, valproic acid, brivaracetam, lamotrigine, topiramate and phenytoin
- some medicines used to treat mental disorders such as clozapine, haloperidol, thioridazine, lithium, olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine and ziprasidone
- some medicines used to treat heart problems or high cholesterol
- some medicines used to help you sleep or calm you down
- some pain relievers such as paracetamol, dextro-propoxyphene, tramadol and ibuprofen
- warfarin, a medicine used to prevent blood clots
- some diuretics (fluid tablets), which are medicines used to reduce water retention and high blood pressure
- some antibiotics and antifungal medicines used to treat infections, such as erythromycin, clarithromycin, doxycycline, itraconazole, ketoconazole, fluconazole, voriconazole and rifampicin
- corticosteroids such as prednisolone and dexamethasone
- St John's wort, an ingredient in many medicines that you can buy without a prescription from a pharmacy, health food shop or supermarket
- antihistamines such as loratadine and terfenadine, which are medicines used to prevent or relieve the symptoms of allergies such as hay fever
- isoniazid, a medicine used to prevent and treat tuberculosis
- acetazolamide, a medicine used to reduce fluid retention and to treat glaucoma and some types of seizures
- cimetidine and omeprazole, medicines used to treat stomach or duodenal ulcers
- ticlopidine, a medicine used to prevent blood clotting
- theophylline and aminophylline, medicines used to treat asthma
- some medicines used to prevent rejection of organ transplants and to treat severe rheumatoid arthritis and some skin diseases, such as cyclosporin and everolimus
- some medicines used to treat cancer, such as cisplatin, doxorubicin and imatinib
- methadone, a medicine used to control severe pain and to treat heroin addiction
- metoclopramide, a medicine used to treat nausea and vomiting
- isotretinoin, a medicine used to treat acne
- danazol, a medicine used to treat endometriosis
- a vitamin called nicotinamide
- muscle relaxants such as dantrolene and oxybutynin
- medicines used to treat HIV such as indinavir, ritonavir and saquinavir
- levothyroxine, a medicine used to treat underactive thyroids
- praziquantel, a medicine used to treat worm infections of the blood
- medicines containing oestrogen and progesterone, including hormone replacement therapy and hormonal contraceptives.
The above medicines may be affected by Carbamazepine Sandoz or may affect how well it works. You may need different amounts of your medicines, or you may need to take different medicines.
Tell your doctor if you are using hormonal contraceptives (e.g. birth control pills or injections). If you begin taking this medicine while you are using hormonal contraceptives, they may not work as well as they should.
Unplanned pregnancies can happen. Your doctor can suggest another form of birth control (non-hormonal) while you are taking Carbamazepine Sandoz.
Tell your doctor immediately if you notice irregular vaginal bleeding or spotting.
Your doctor and pharmacist have more information on medicines to be careful with or avoid while taking this medicine.
How to take Carbamazepine Sandoz
Follow all directions given to you by your doctor or pharmacist carefully. These directions may differ from the information contained in this leaflet.
If you do not understand the instructions, ask your doctor or pharmacist for help.
How much to take
Your doctor will tell you how much Carbamazepine Sandoz you need to take each day. This may depend on your age, your medical condition and whether or not you are taking other medicines.
Your doctor will usually start your treatment with a low dose and then slowly increase it to the lowest amount needed to control your condition. Some people will need higher doses than other people will.
How to take it
Swallow the tablets with a full glass of water.
When to take it
Take your medicine during or after a meal. This helps to prevent stomach upset.
Carbamazepine Sandoz is usually taken in 2 or 3 doses during the day. But your doctor may tell you to take it more or less often, depending on your situation.
If you forget to take it
If your next dose is not due for more than 2 or 3 hours, take the missed dose as soon as you remember. Then take your next dose at the usual time and continue on with your normal schedule.
If your next dose is due within 2 or 3 hours, skip the missed dose. Take your next dose at the usual time and continue on with your normal schedule.
Do not take a double dose to make up for the dose that you missed. This may increase the chance of you getting an unwanted side effect.
If you are not sure what to do, ask your doctor or pharmacist.
If you have trouble remembering to take your medicine, ask your pharmacist for some hints.
How long to take it
Continue taking your medicine for as long as your doctor tells you. This medicine helps to control your condition, but does not cure it. It is important to keep taking your medicine even if you feel well.
Do not stop taking Carbamazepine Sandoz or lower the dose without first checking with your doctor. Do not let yourself run out of medicine over the weekend or on holidays. Stopping your medicine suddenly or lowering the dose may cause unwanted side effects or make your condition worse. If you are taking this medicine to treat epilepsy, you could develop seizures (fits). Your doctor will usually reduce the dose slowly before you can stop taking it completely.
If you take too much (overdose)
Immediately telephone your doctor or the Poisons Information Centre (telephone 13 11 26) for advice, or go to Accident and Emergency at the nearest hospital, if you think that you or anyone else may have taken too much Carbamazepine Sandoz. Do this even if there are no signs of discomfort or poisoning.
Keep the telephone numbers for these places handy.
Some of the symptoms of an overdose may include agitation, disorientation, fainting, vomiting, difficulty breathing, fast and irregular heartbeat, blurred vision, shakiness and slurred speech. If you are taking the controlled release (CR) tablets, it may take longer for you to notice these effects.
While you are taking Carbamazepine Sandoz
Things you must do
If you become pregnant while taking this medicine, tell your doctor immediately. Your doctor can discuss with you the risks of taking it while you are pregnant.
Be sure to keep all of your doctor's appointments so that your progress can be checked. To help prevent unwanted side effects from happening, your doctor may want to do some tests before you start taking Carbamazepine Sandoz and from time to time during the course of your treatment.
Contact your doctor immediately if at any time you have thoughts of harming or killing yourself. A number of people being treated with antiepileptics have had such thoughts or behaviour.
Tell your doctor if, for any reason, you have not taken your medicine exactly as prescribed. Otherwise your doctor may think that it was not effective and change your treatment unnecessarily.
Before having any surgery or emergency treatment, tell the doctor or dentist in charge that you are taking this medicine. This medicine may interfere with some of the medicines used during surgery.
If you are about to be started on any new medicine, remind your doctor and pharmacist that you are taking Carbamazepine Sandoz.
Tell any other doctors, dentists and pharmacists who treat you that you are taking this medicine.
Things you must not do
Do not stop taking your medicine or lower the dosage without checking with your doctor.
Do not use Carbamazepine Sandoz to treat any other complaints unless your doctor tells you to.
Do not give this medicine to anyone else, even if their symptoms seem similar to yours or they have the same condition as you do.
Things to be careful of
Avoid drinking grapefruit juice while you are being treated with this medicine. Grapefruit juice may interact with Carbamazepine Sandoz and affect how your body uses this medicine.
Be careful driving or operating machinery until you know how Carbamazepine Sandoz affects you. Children should be careful when riding bicycles or climbing trees. This medicine may cause dizziness, drowsiness, blurred vision, double vision or lack of muscle coordination in some people, especially when you first start to use it or when the dose is increased.
Be careful when drinking alcohol while you are taking this medicine. The combination could make you more sleepy, dizzy or light-headed than usual. Your doctor may suggest you avoid alcohol while you are being treated with Carbamazepine Sandoz.
When outdoors, wear protective clothing and use at least a 15+ sunscreen. Do not use a sunlamp or tanning bed or booth. This medicine may cause your skin to be much more sensitive to sunlight than it normally is. Exposure to sunlight may cause a skin rash, itching, redness or severe sunburn. If your skin does appear to be burning, tell your doctor.
Side effects
Tell your doctor or pharmacist as soon as possible if you do not feel well while you are taking Carbamazepine Sandoz.
All medicines can have side effects. Sometimes they are serious, most of the time they are not. You may need medical attention if you get some of the side effects.
If you are over 65 years of age you may have an increased chance of getting side effects.
Do not be alarmed by the following lists of side effects. You may not experience any of them.
Ask your doctor or pharmacist to answer any questions you may have.
Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you notice any of the following and they worry you:
- dizziness or light-headedness
- tiredness or drowsiness
- eye pain
- weakness, unsteadiness when walking
- headache
- restlessness, agitation or confusion
- difficulty in speaking or slurred speech
- numbness or tingling in hands or feet
- muscle pain or cramps
- nausea (feeling sick) or vomiting, loss of appetite
- weight gain
- stomach pain or discomfort
- diarrhoea
- constipation
- dry mouth
- swollen, red, sore tongue
- mouth ulcers or cold sores
- change in sense of taste
- blurred or double vision, swollen runny eyes, difficulty seeing
- ringing or buzzing in the ears or other changes in hearing
- frequent need to urinate (pass water)
- sweating
- hair loss
- acne
- change in skin colour
- excessive hairiness, especially in women
- sexual disturbances such as impotence
- breast enlargement in men
- unusual secretion of breast milk
- loss of muscle coordination.
Tell your doctor immediately or go to Accident and Emergency at your nearest hospital if you notice any of the following:
- signs of allergy such as swelling of the face, lips, tongue, eyelids, throat, mouth or other parts of the body; wheezing or troubled breathing; difficulty swallowing, itching, hives, chest discomfort or tightness, loss of consciousness
- skin rash, redness, blisters or peeling skin, accompanied by fever, chills, headache, cough, body aches
- sudden increase in body temperature, accompanied by sweating, fast heart beat and muscle stiffness, altered consciousness, high blood pressure, excessive salivation
- constant "flu-like" symptoms (chills, fever, sore throat, swollen glands, aching joints, lack of energy)
- unusual bleeding or bruising under the skin, nosebleeds
- shortness of breath and dizziness when exercising
- frequent infections or fever
- severe chills, sore throat, swollen glands or mouth ulcers
- persistent nausea or vomiting, loss of appetite and feeling generally unwell, which may be accompanied by pain in the abdomen, fever, itching, a yellow colour to skin or eyes, dark coloured urine or light coloured bowel motions
- diarrhoea, abdominal pain and fever
- severe upper stomach pain, often with loss of appetite and vomiting
- more frequent or more severe seizures (fits)
- sudden onset of uncontrollable muscle spasms affecting the eyes, head, neck and body
- trembling, uncontrolled body movements
- lethargy, confusion
- depression, aggressive behaviour, recurrence of a previous mental illness, hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not there)
- swelling of the feet and legs or weight increase due to fluid build-up
- change in behaviour, weakness
- change in heartbeat (fast, slow, irregular), sometimes with fainting or chest pain
- passing less urine than normal which may be accompanied by lack of energy, vomiting, headache and confusion
- blood in the urine
- symptoms of sunburn such as redness, itching, swelling or blistering that may happen more quickly than normal
- red blotchy rash mainly on the face which may be accompanied by fatigue, fever, nausea, loss of appetite
- swelling and redness along a vein or nerve, which is extremely tender when touched
- signs that blood clots may have formed, such as sudden severe headache, sudden loss of coordination or vision, pain in the calves, thighs or chest
- severe headache accompanied by stiff neck, muscle spasms and extreme sensitivity to bright light
- a fall due to dizziness, drowsiness, decrease in blood pressure or confusion.
Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you notice anything else that is making you feel unwell. Other side effects not listed above may also occur in some people. Some of these side effects (for example, changes in sodium levels, thyroid function, structure of bones, cholesterol level or blood pressure) can only be found when your doctor does tests from time to time to check your progress.
After taking Carbamazepine Sandoz
- Keep your medicine in the original container until it is time to take it.
- Store the medicine in a cool dry place.
- Do not store Carbamazepine Sandoz or any other medicine in the bathroom or near a sink.
- Do not leave it on a window sill or in the car.
Heat and dampness can destroy some medicines. Carbamazepine Sandoz will keep well if it is cool and dry.
Keep it where children cannot reach it. A locked cupboard at least one-and-a-half metres above the ground is a good place to store medicines.
If your doctor tells you to stop taking this medicine or the expiry date has passed, ask your pharmacist what to do with any medicine that is left over.
Product description
What it looks like
Carbamazepine Sandoz comes in two types of tablets:
Carbamazepine Sandoz 100mg – White round flat tablets with bevelled edges. One side bears the imprint "GEIGY", the other "B/W" and a score.
Carbamazepine Sandoz 200mg – White round flat tablets with bevelled edges. One side bears the imprint "CG", the other "G/K" and a score.
Available in blisters of 100 tablets.
Active ingredients:
- Carbamazepine Sandoz 100mg – 100mg carbamazepine
- Carbamazepine Sandoz 200mg – 200mg carbamazepine.
Inactive ingredients:
- cellulose-microcrystalline
- carmellose sodium
- silica-colloidal anhydrous
- magnesium stearate.
This medicine does not contain lactose, sucrose, gluten, tartrazine or any other azo dyes.
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Australia Pty Limited
54 Waterloo Road
Macquarie Park NSW 2113
Tel: 1 800 671 203
Website: www.novartis.com.au
Sandoz Pty Ltd
54 Waterloo Road
Macquarie Park NSW 2113
Tel: 1800 634 500
This leaflet was revised in June 2023
Australian Register Number(s)
100mg tablets: AUST R 78217 (blisters)
200mg tablets: AUST R 78211 (blisters)
Internal code:
(car060623c) based on PI (car060623i)
Published by MIMS July 2023


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Tamsin Abbott is a stained glass artist who lives in rural east Herefordshire with her husband and their two children. She completed a degree in English literature at Stirling University, Scotland specializing in medieval literature. Her love of the language and stories of medieval literature was enhanced by the fact that much of the research material she was reading was illustrated with paintings and simple woodcuts of the period.
When she moved to Herefordshire, after leaving university, she studied at Gloucester College of Art and Technology where she discovered the work of the Brotherhood of Ruralists which became a great influence in her art. In 1999, she began a class to learn stained glass at Hereford College of Art and Design and soon gained an Open College Network (OCN) in the craft.
Tamsin now makes these stunning pieces of stained glass from her studio in the Herefordshire countryside inspired by the orchards, the hills, the woods, the owls, the birds and other animals.
She says " When I painted my first hare a few years ago I had no idea of the connection I was making and the relationship I was forming! So many people are drawn to the it and I am often asked why so much of my work is about them. I think it could be because the hare embodies all those aspects of nature that we want to believe in, that it is wild, clever, bold and free. However, the hare has also long been associated with many myths and folklore, witchcraft and shape-shifters and in a way represents the female spirit of nature just as the green man represents the male energy of nature. I think that we all have a need or desire for a spiritual connection and yet we have become alienated from the major religions of the world and somehow the hare sparks something off in peoples' minds."


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Mark Harmon and Pam Dawber were married on March 21, 1987 and this year they will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. That's pretty impressive by Hollywood standards, isn't it?
Mark and Pam are the parents of two sons, Sean Thomas and Ty Christian. Sean was born on April 25, 1988 and Ty was born on June 25, 1992. The couple met in March of 1986 at a party given by a mutual friend and were introduced to each other by actress Gina Hecht. They have always been a tad reclusive and they have guarded their privacy fiercely.
Pam Dawber was born in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, Michigan on October 18, 1951. She is the daughter of Eugene E. Dawber, a commercial artist and his wife Thelma (nee Fisher), a photo agency operator. Pam was raised in Farmington Hills where she attended North Farmington High School. Gifted with a beautiful soprano voice, she later prepared for a singing career at Oakland Community College in Oakland County, Michigan. While at the college, she did some modelling in Detroit.
At the age of 19, Pam Dawber moved to New York City and began a career as a fashion model, eventually signing a contract with the Wilhelmina Model Agency. She went on to study acting and was cast in her breakout role as Mindy McConnell.
From 1978 to 1982, Pam played Mindy in the hit television series Mork and Mindy. She and co-star Robin Williams shot to fame in this comedy about a wisecracking extraterrestrial, Mork from the planet "Ork," played by Williams.
In December of 1976, Pam suffered the devastating loss of her only sibling. Born with a heart condition, Leslie Dawber, Pam's younger sister, was just 22 years old when she died during open-heart surgery.
After Leslie's death, Pam underwent therapy. "When a tragedy happens that big," she told People magazine in 1987, "you have to reassess your life." She said, "I believe my sister is out there somewhere, and that is a calming idea."
After the demise of Mork and Mindy, Pam Dawber, won the lead role in another situation comedy. From 1986 to 1988, she played freelance photographer Samantha Russell on My Sister Sam. Sam Russell shared a San Francisco apartment with her younger sister Patti, played by Rebecca Schaeffer.
Sadly, on July 18, 1989, an obsessed fan killed Rebecca in the doorway of her Los Angeles apartment building. The crazed gunman, John Bardo, had been stalking the 21-year-old actress for three years. Her tragic murder left Pam heartbroken at the death of her television sister.
Rebecca Schaeffer |
Pam Dawber has not been active on screen for quite awhile. In a 2008 interview, she said she may return to acting at some point. She also revealed that she had not seen Robin Williams for about eight years. To watch the 2008 interview, click on the link below.
Mark Harmon is the son of American football hero Tom Harmon. Tom won the Heisman Trophy in 1940 and is considered one of the greatest players in the history of the Michigan Wolverines. After his retirement from football, he became a sports broadcaster. On March 15, 1990, Tom Harmon passed away in Los Angeles after suffering a heart attack. He was 70 years old.
Mark's mother, Elyse Knox, died last week at her home in Los Angeles. She was 94 years old at the time of her death. Elyse was a model and fashion designer in Manhattan until Hollywood beckoned in the late 1930s. A contract player, she appeared in almost 40 films for major studios. When she married Tom Harmon in 1944, Elyse's wedding dress was made from the parachute that saved his life when his plane was shot down over China during World War II.
Tom and Elyse settled in Los Angeles and raised three children: Sharon Kristen (born June 25, 1945); Kelly Jean (born November 9, 1948) and Thomas Mark (born September 2, 1951). Mark and his older sisters all became actors. In 1963, Kristen married singer/actor Ricky Nelson of Ozzie and Harriet fame. She and Rick had four children and divorced acrimoniously.
In 1987, two years after Rick's death in a plane accident, Mark and Pam petitioned for custody of their nephew, Sam Hilliard Nelson (born August 29, 1974), Kristen and Rick's youngest child. They contended that Kristen was incapable of being a good parent due to drug use and mood swings.
Sam was 13 at the time and the custody battle was highly publicized. It tore the Harmon family apart. In the end, however, Mark and Pam dropped the petition and Kristen was given custody of Sam. Mark and his wife were granted visitation rights.
Following in his father's footsteps, Mark Harmon was a college football star during his days at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1972, he appeared with his parents in a television commercial for Kellogg's Product 19.
Click on the link below to watch the Kellogg's Product 19 ad.
Mark Harmon launched his long and highly successful television career with an appearance on Ozzie's Girls, a 1973-74 syndicated series starring his sister Kristen's in-laws, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. Since 1973, Mark has been involved in series after series including St. Elsewhere, Moonlighting, Chicago Hope and The West Wing. He often plays the role of a doctor or a law enforcement officer.
On the medical drama St. Elsewhere, Mark portrayed Dr. Robert "Bobby" Caldwell, a philandering plastic surgeon. He played the role from 1983 until the final episode of the series in 1986. In that last episode, it was revealed that Dr. Caldwell was HIV postive.
Harmon, now 60 years old, currently plays the lead role in the No 1 series on American television. The series is called NCIS, which stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service. It's in its ninth season and recently celebrated its 200th episode.
NCIS is viewed in more than 200 countries around the world and is translated into more than 20 different languages. This forensic police show, originally a spinoff of the CBS drama JAG, made its debut in 2003. Mark Harmon plays the part of Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a former sniper, who leads a fictional team of special agents headquartered in Washington, D.C. Their mission is to investigate crimes within the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
Mark and Pam's eldest son, 23-year-old Sean Harmon, is also an actor and has portrayed the young Gibbs on NCIS. Sean attended the Los Angeles Film School (LAFS) and has had small roles in independent productions. He has also taken classes in stunt coordination.
Sean T. Harmon |
Mark Harmon is a master at evading unwanted questions. In matters regarding his family, he remains steadfastly and unfailingly discreet. For example, when asked about the possibility of his actress wife, Pam, appearing as a guest star on NCIS, Harmon replied, "You'll have to ask her."
Pam and Mark have worked together in the past. In the late 1990s, they performed in the play Love Letters. They also played husband and wife John and Barbara Cooper in the 1999 film I'll Remember April. The film tells the story of four young boys who discover a shipwrecked Japanese soldier during World War II and must decide whether to save him.
To watch a video about Mark, Pam and their children, click on the link below.
Editor's Note and Update (December 28, 2012)
A reader pointed out that I neglected to mention that Mark Harmon appeared in the prime time soap Flamingo Road. Mark played the role of Fielding Carlyle in all 38 episodes of the show from 1981 until 1982. Flamingo Road chronicled the lives of the citizens of a sleepy little fictional town called Truro, Florida.
- Joanne


text:
Reporting Bugzilla spam
Ben Cotton
Version F36 onwards
Last review: 2022-03-11
Like any website that allows user contribution, Red Hat Bugzilla sometimes gets spam comments. There are two ways to report spam.
If you have the necessary privileges, you can mark a spam comment as private until the admins have had a chance to remove it. |
Tag comment
The preferred way is to tag the comment as spam.
On the spam comment, click the tag icon. (The alt text says "tag comment".)
In the text box that opens, type "spam" and hit the Enter key.
This will flag the comment to the Bugzilla admins.
Report by email
You can submit reports via email to firstname.lastname@example.com. Please include a direct link to the comment(s) you are reporting for spam.
Want to help? Learn how to contribute to Fedora Docs ›


text:
This article describes how to set up your own tracker just like the official Archive Team tracker just like the open-source core of the official Archive Team tracker.
Note: A virtual machine appliance is available at ArchiveTeam/archiveteam-dev-env which contains a ready-to-use tracker. A docker container is also at this fork of the tracker (unofficial).
Installation will cover:
- Environment: Ubuntu/Debian
- Languages:
- Python
- Ruby
- JavaScript
- Web:
- Nginx
- Phusion Passenger
- Redis
- Node.js
- Tools:
- Screen
- Rsync
- Git
- Wget
- regular expressions
The Tracker
The Tracker manages what items are claimed by users that run the Seesaw client. It also shows a pretty leaderboard.
Let's create a dedicated account to run the web server and tracker:
sudo adduser --system --group --shell /bin/bash tracker
Redis is database stored in memory. So, item names should be engineered to be memory efficient. Redis saves its database periodically into a file located at /var/lib/redis/6379/dump.rdb. It is safe to copy the file, e.g., for backups.
To install Redis, you may follow these quickstart instructions, but we'll show you how.
These steps are from the quickstart guide:
wget http://download.redis.io/redis-stable.tar.gz tar xvzf redis-stable.tar.gz cd redis-stable make
Now install the server:
sudo make install cd utils sudo ./install_server.sh
Note, by default, it runs as root. Let's stop it and make it run under www-data:
sudo invoke-rc.d redis_6379 stop sudo adduser --system --group www-data sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/redis/6379/ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/log/redis_6379.log
Edit the config file /etc/redis/6379.conf
with the options like:
bind 127.0.0.1 pidfile /var/run/shm/redis_6379.pid
Now tell the start up script to run it as www-data:
sudo nano /etc/init.d/redis_6379
Change the EXEC and CLIEXEC variables to use sudo -u www-data -g www-data
EXEC="sudo -u www-data -g www-data /usr/local/bin/redis-server" CLIEXEC="sudo -u www-data -g www-data /usr/local/bin/redis-cli" PIDFILE=/var/run/shm/redis_6379.pid
To avoid catastrophe with background saves failing on fork()
(Redis needs lots of memory), run:
sudo sysctl vm.overcommit_memory=1
The above setting will be lost after reboot. Add this line to /etc/sysctl.conf
The log file will get big so we need a logrotate config. Create one at /etc/logrotate.d/redis
with the config:
/var/log/redis_*.log { daily rotate 10 copytruncate delaycompress compress notifempty missingok size 10M }
Start up Redis again using:
sudo invoke-rc.d redis_6379 start
Nginx with Passenger
Nginx is a web server. Phusion Passenger is a module within Nginx that runs Rails applications.
There is a guide on how to install Nginx with Passenger, the following instructions are similar.
Log in as tracker:
sudo -u tracker -i
We'll use RVM to install Ruby libraries:
curl -L get.rvm.io | bash -s stable source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm rvm requirements
A list of things needed to be installed will be shown. Log out of the tracker account, install them, and log back into the tracker account.
Install Ruby and Bundler:
rvm install 2.2.2 rvm rubygems current gem install bundler
Install Passenger:
gem install passenger
Install Nginx. This command will download, compile, and install a basic Nginx server.:
Use the following prefix for Nginx installation:
Change the location of the tracker software (to be installed later). Edit nginx/conf/nginx.conf
. Use the lines under the "location /" option:
root /home/tracker/universal-tracker/public; passenger_enabled on; client_max_body_size 15M;
The logs will get big so we'll use logrotate. Save this into /home/tracker/logrotate.conf
/home/tracker/nginx/logs/error.log /home/tracker/nginx/logs/access.log { daily rotate 10 copytruncate delaycompress compress notifempty missingok size 10M }
To call logrotate, we'll add an entry using crontab:
crontab -e
Now add the following line:
@daily /usr/sbin/logrotate --state /home/tracker/.logrotate.state /home/tracker/logrotate.conf
Log out of the tracker account at this point.
Let's create an Upstart configuration file to start up Nginx. Save this into /etc/init/nginx-tracker.conf
description "nginx http daemon" start on runlevel [2] stop on runlevel [016] setuid tracker setgid tracker console output exec /home/tracker/nginx/sbin/nginx -c /home/tracker/nginx/conf/nginx.conf -g "daemon off;"
Or, if you use Systemd, put this into /lib/systemd/system/nginx-tracker.service
[Unit] Description="nginx http daemon" [Service] Type=simple ExecStart=/home/tracker/nginx/sbin/nginx -c /home/tracker/nginx/conf/nginx.conf -g "daemon off;"
Log in into the tracker account.
Download the Tracker software:
git clone https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/universal-tracker.git
We'll need to configure the location of Redis. Copy the config file:
cp universal-tracker/config/redis.json.example universal-tracker/config/redis.json
Add a "production" object into the JSON file. Here is an example:
{ "development": { "host": "127.0.0.1", "port": 6379, "db": 13 }, "test": { "host": "127.0.0.1", "port": 6379, "db": 14 }, "production": { "host":"127.0.0.1", "port":6379, "db": 1 } }
- Now we may need to fix an issue with Passenger forking after the Redis connection has been made. Please see https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/universal-tracker/issues/5 for more information.
- There is also an issue with non-ASCII names. See https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/universal-tracker/issues/7.
Now install the necessary gems:
cd universal-tracker bundle install
Log out of the tracker account at this point.
Node.js is required to run the fancy leaderboard using WebSockets. We'll use NPM to manage the Node.js libraries:
sudo apt-get install npm
Log into the tracker account.
Now, we manually edit the Node.js program because it has problems:
cp -R universal-tracker/broadcaster . nano broadcaster/server.js
Modify env
and trackerConfig
variables to something like this:
var env = { tracker_config: { redis_pubsub_channel: "tracker-log" }, redis_db: 1 }; var trackerConfig = env['tracker_config'];
You also need to modify the "transports" configuration by adding websocket
. The new line should look like this:
io.set("transports", ["websocket", "xhr-polling"]);
Install the Node.js libraries needed:
npm install
If you get an error while installing hiredis, you may need to provide Debian's "nodejs" as "node". Symlink "node" to the nodejs executable and try again.
Log out of the tracker account at this point.
Create an Upstart file at /etc/init/nodejs-tracker.conf
description "tracker nodejs daemon" start on runlevel [2] stop on runlevel [016] setuid tracker setgid tracker exec node /home/tracker/broadcaster/server.js
Or, for Systemd, put this into /lib/systemd/system/nodejs-tracker.service
[Unit] Description="tracker nodejs daemon" [Service] Type=forking Group=tracker User=tracker ExecStart=/usr/bin/js /home/tracker/broadcaster/server.js
Tracker Setup
Start up the Tracker and Broadcaster:
sudo start nginx-tracker sudo start nodejs-tracker
sudo systemctl start nginx-tracker sudo systemctl start nodejs-tracker
You now need to configure the tracker. Open up your web browser and visit http://localhost/global-admin/.
- In Global-Admin→Configuration→Live logging host, specify the public location of the Node.js app. By default, it uses port 8080.
You are now free to manage the tracker.
- If you followed this guide, the rsync location is defined as
- The trailing slash within the rsync URL is very important. Without it, files will not be uploaded within the directory.
You probably want to have Cron clearing out old claims. The Tracker includes a Ruby script that will do that for you. By default, it removes claims older than 6 hours. You may want to change that for big items by creating a copy of the script for each project.
To set up Cron, login as the tracker account, and run:
which ruby
Take note of which Ruby executable is used.
Now edit the Cron table:
crontab -e
Add the following line which runs release-stale.rb
every 6 hours:
0 */6 * * * cd /home/tracker/universal-tracker && WHICH_RUBY scripts/release-stale.rb PROJECT_NAME
Since the Tracker stores logs into Redis, it will use up memory quickly. log-drainer.rb
continuously writes the logs into a text file:
mkdir -p /home/tracker/universal-tracker/logs/ cd /home/tracker/universal-tracker && ruby scripts/log-drainer.rb
Pressing CTRL+C will stop it. Run this within a Screen session.
This crontab entry will compress the log files that haven't been modified in two days:
@daily find /home/tracker/universal-tracker/logs/ -iname "*.log" -mtime +2 -exec xz {} \;
Reducing memory usage
The Passenger Ruby module may use up too much memory. You can add the following lines to your nginx config. Add these inside the http
passenger_max_pool_size 2; passenger_max_requests 10000;
The first line allows spawning maximum of 2 processes. The second line restarts Passenger after 10,000 requests to free memory caused by memory leaks.


text:
How It Works
If you want what we have to offer, and are willing to make the effort to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. These are the principles that made our recovery possible:
- We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
- We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
- We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
- We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
This sounds like a big order, and we can't do it all at once. We didn't become addicted in one day, so remember – easy does it.
There is one thing more than anything else that will defeat us in our recovery; this is an attitude of indifference or intolerance toward spiritual principles. Three of these that are indispensable are honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. With these we are well on our way.
We feel that our approach to the disease of addiction is completely realistic, for the therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel. We feel that our way is practical, for one addict can best understand and help another addict. We believe that the sooner we face our problems within our society, in everyday living, just that much faster do we become acceptable, responsible, and productive members of that society.
The only way to keep from returning to active addiction is not to take that first drug. If you are like us you know that one is too many and a thousand never enough. We put great emphasis on this, for we know that when we use drugs in any form, or substitute one for another, we release our addiction all over again.
Thinking of alcohol as different from other drugs has caused a great many addicts to relapse. Before we came to NA, many of us viewed alcohol separately, but we cannot afford to be confused about this. Alcohol is a drug. We are people with the disease of addiction who must abstain from all drugs in order to recover.
Twelve Steps reprinted for adaptation by permission of AA World Services, Inc.
Reprinted from the Little White Booklet, Narcotics Anonymous.
© 1986 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc., PO Box 9999, Van Nuys, CA 91409


text:
File under: More of them dangerous nuns on the loose!
By DOUG ERICKSON
Two longtime Madison nuns who lead an interfaith spirituality center have been banned by Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino from holding workshops or providing spiritual direction or guidance at any Catholic churches in the 11-county diocese.
Sisters Maureen McDonnell and Lynn Lisbeth, both Sinsinawa Dominicans, have diverged too far from Catholic teaching, according to a confidential memo sent Nov. 27 to priests on behalf of Morlino. A copy of the memo was leaked to the State Journal.
Two other women connected to the interfaith center, called Wisdom's Well, also have been banned as part of the same action.
The memo says Morlino has "grave concerns" about the women's teachings, specifically that they "espouse certain views" flowing from such movements as "New Ageism" and "indifferentism." The latter, according to the memo, is "the belief that no one religion or philosophy is superior to another."
The women "may not share an authentic view of the Catholic Church's approach to interreligious dialogue," the memo said.
Brent King, a spokesman for the diocese, said three other potential parish guest speakers, all male, have been banned "in recent years." The women are not prohibited from attending Mass or, if Catholic, from receiving communion, King said. Asked whether they could contribute to parish life in other ways, such as reading Bible passages from the pulpit or chairing a church committee, King said that would be up to individual priests.
The action comes amid a papal crackdown on nuns. Earlier this year, the Vatican accused the most influential group of Catholic sisters in the U.S. of "serious doctrinal issues" for not following Rome's lead on topics such as the male-only priesthood and homosexuality.
Interfaith approach
Wisdom's Well was founded in Madison in 2006. The center has no physical facility but offers workshops and retreats on topics such as nonviolence, contemplative living and Christian meditation.
The center's website says it "serves to support those who desire to grow spiritually, seek inner wisdom, and yearn for a transformative spirituality." Its mission statement says the center is "grounded in the Christian tradition, while embracing the wisdom found in other religious traditions."
Along with the sisters, the third staff member is Beth O'Brien, a married mother of two and a religious layperson affiliated with the Benedictine community. She also is banned, as is Paula Hirschboeck, a philosophy professor at Edgewood College in Madison who helped found Wisdom's Well but is no longer on its staff.
The women declined comment, referring questions to the Dominicans of Sinsinawa Congregation, based in southwestern Wisconsin.
'Valued members'
The order's spokeswoman, Tricia Buxton, released a statement saying McDonnell and Lisbeth are "respected and valued members" of the order, and that both women "have been dedicated to religious life and preaching and teaching Gospel values for nearly 50 years." The Sinsinawa Dominicans "wholeheartedly support our sisters and hold them in prayer as we continue our mission of participating in the building of a holy and just church and society," the statement said.
Buxton said Sinsinawa Dominicans have never before faced a prohibition like this in the diocese. The order has 521 sisters.
Both McDonnell and Lisbeth are well-known in Madison. McDonnell served for 21 years on the campus ministry staff at Edgewood College, her alma mater. Lisbeth regularly leads classes in spirituality at the Madison Senior Center.
At the time the memo went out, McDonnell was co-facilitating a series of weekly classes with 12 students at St. James Catholic Church in Madison titled, "Just Peace Initiative: The Challenge and Promise of Nonviolence for Our Time." The class has been moved, according to an organizer, who did not want the new site published.
Diocese's 'duty'
The memo sent to priests says the four women "are not to be invited or allowed to preach, catechize, lead spiritual or prayer instructions or exercises, or to provide spiritual direction or guidance at churches, oratories or chapels within the Diocese of Madison." No publicity materials from Wisdom's Well are to be allowed inside parishes.
The memo does not give specific examples of things the women may have said that violate church teaching. Rather, the memo references problematic statements on the center's website, including that the sisters embrace "the wisdom found in other religious traditions."
King said it is both the diocese's duty and right to ensure parish speakers transmit true church teaching. "A proposed speaker's association with a group whose philosophy is inconsistent with the Catholic faith disqualifies a proposed speaker," he said.
The prohibition against the sisters came only after the diocese "patiently and prudently" investigated the matter, King said. The memo says the diocese "sought clarification" from the sisters, but "the responses from these individuals proved insufficient and inconclusive to resolve grave concerns."
Complete Article HERE!


text:
Customers demand more instantaneous, personalized attention, and companies are leveraging new technologies that go beyond traditional voice and email customer service channels to meet those demands. By implementing channels such as live chat, social media, mobile apps, SMS/text messages, self-help solutions, and more, companies can now be ready wherever and however the customer wants.
But just how meaningful are these experiences on consumer buying behavior? How long does the effect last? Do new technologies and recent cultural shifts significantly change the way experiences are evaluated? What expectations do customers have for the channels they use to contact support? And, do good interactions have the same long-term impact of negative interactions?
The following report, Quantifying the business impact of customer service, done by Dimensional Research in December of 2018, is based on a survey of 1044 individuals who have received online or phone customer service. Download the whitepaper to find out about the long-term impact of customer service on business results.
Key findings:
Customer service directly impacts long-term revenue
Excellent customer service requires a wide range of channels
Alternative channels are gaining popularity for customer service
Service channels must be coordinated to be effective
Expectations for good customer service are changing, especially for Millennials


text:
There is no way around this. There is no easy road to enlightenment.
"Enlightenment is a destructive process. It
has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing
through the facade of pretense. It's the
complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true."
― Adyashanti
Make no bones about it, awakening is not a walk in the park. It is a ride through hell. It is the tearing down of all of your cherished beliefs and everything you thought about yourself. There is no way around this. In The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, they had to enter into the Mirkwood Forest to get to their destination. There was no other way for them. It was not a walk in the park. Likewise, we must enter the shadowlands, and come face to face with our shadows. It is there that our false ideas of who we are are shattered. It is there that all of our false beliefs are destroyed. We must face these false notions and see them for what they are. This is the only way to heal, to become whole again, to live in integrity.
My good friend, Julie Anne gave a good description of this process in Enlightenment. It is a complete surrender, a process of brutal self honesty. It is a path of complete acceptance of the truth, no matter how difficult it is to bear. I still remember it vividly.
We go through life with so many false notions – of the world, of spirituality and of ourselves. We build up masks and we believe the facades. It's all a charade. It is all based upon illusions and deceit. We deceive ourselves at every moment, and the world also deceives us at every moment. We live in perpetual cognitive dissonance, justifying the most absurd things in our minds. We constantly lie to ourselves…. and we believe it. To awaken to the truth that you seek, you must tear down the lies. But we are too attached to the lies. We want to hold on to the illusions and to become enlightened at the same time. That is not possible. But there are hundreds of phony gurus and "spiritual teachers" that will tell you it is. They offer you processes to become happy, fulfilled, calm, find your soulmate, be positive, get the right job, make lots of money, balance the chakras, become healthy and whatever else you may be desiring. This has nothing to do with awakening. This is only polishing the ego. They all lead you right back into the matrix. You may even be lucky enough to get a golden cage, but it is still a cage, and you remain imprisoned in slavery. This is the road that most people choose to follow. This road is well traveled by the herd.
It takes courage, discernment and self honesty to walk the Siddhartha road to truth and freedom. Not many people have that. We have been weakened by the onslaught of programming since our childhood. Most people want to remain in the herd, as they find comfort in the company of other deluded souls. It takes a certain individual to break free of the herd. The Siddhartha road is not easy. It is a treacherous road that will shatter every part of your existence. No, it takes a certain type of person to walk that road; a person that is willing to give up everything to find his true Self.
My story was one that took me through so many paths to nowhere; detours, dead ends and off of cliffs. I had to eventually be dragged, kicking and screaming through the abyss by Grace herself, for me to awaken. It was simply my time.
Now the strange thing about this, is that worse things have happened to me before, so why did this hit me so hard? I believe because it was supposed to, for me to transform. I took everything much harder, than I ever did before. Also, everything came crashing down at once. In the past, I was strong, and I kept my sense of self, of who I thought I was. But this time, my sense of self, who I thought I was, gave up. I stopped trying to be strong. I just collapsed.
Yes, I remember it well. My entire life story collapsed overnight. My girl friend of five years ran off with another man. And she lived across the street. So every morning I would look out the widow to see his van, just to rub it in. I kept saying, "There must be a purpose for this." My health collapsed, my business collapsed, and those that I thought were my friends were not. I was alone. I tried to be in denial, grabbing straws as I was being dragged down into the abyss. My world around me collapsed, but so did my self worth, self esteem and my false ego. I felt unloved and abandoned. My life story shattered.
I was left in this darkness for some time; four months. In that time, I was slowly being dismantled, as I had to face the hard cold facts. I had to be brutally honest with myself. Eventually, I came to the point of realizing that I hated my broken body, I hated the world, I hated myself, and I really hated god. Yes, I was very angry at him. He abandoned me. I felt the entire world abandoned me. It wasn't fair. I threw out everything spiritual in my house. I was facing my darkness with brutal honesty. I sat with that for a while. Imagine the despair of seeing what lies hidden behind your persona, behind the lies you tell yourself daily.
And then a very powerful voice spoke to me. From where this voice came from, I do not know. It said, "Just surrender to the suffering." That was it. So I thought about it. I realized that I was not accepting what was happening to me. I was fighting it. I was trying to push away the suffering, but it was obviously not working. So I followed the message, and surrendered to the suffering, that which is.
This continued for two weeks, right through Christmas. I felt so rejected, so abandoned, so alone. The pain of being stripped naked in the frigid cold, with no hope in sight. But I accepted what was happening. I was no longer trying to push it away. The suffering felt endless, yet I endured it. I don't even know how to explain it. And then on the morning of Jan. 1, 2004, I woke up. Not to a new year, but a new life. The suffering was gone, all was forgiven, and I was at peace. A peace that I had never known before. That which I thought I was no longer existed. My false perception of Self vanished. I remember the singing of the birds, the Sun entering through the window, and everything around me was seen in a new light – a light of awe and amazement. My mind had ceased its chatter, I was experiencing a very deep peace.
And then it started – wave after wave of revelations, of deep knowings. I began to awaken to who I Am. I became acutely aware that I Am eternal and sovereign. Each wave awakened me more to my deepest Self. Each wave also shattered the illusions and deceptions of the world. As I awakened, my eyes saw a very different world. All the pieces fell into place. Someday I will describe the many revelations that flooded over me. I have already written much about it.
The largest wave came a couple of weeks into this. I was meditating, and I went so deep, following the river of life to the depths of my Being. I was empty, but then from this emptiness, a powerful divine love sprang forth, inundating my entire mind and body. This love is unconditional. It spread out from me everywhere. All of the bugs, the lizards, the birds, the plants, the trees, everything was inundated with this love. I could not tell where I ended and the other Beings began. We were all intrinsically connected with this love; and yet my individual Self remained. I was not the bugs, the birds or the plants, but the connection was so deep, that I felt they were as if a part of me. There was simultaneously separation and no separation. It is not easy to describe, but this divine love is nothing like the love of this world.
But when you do awaken, and you do see the world with new eyes, you soon realize that no one else is seeing the same thing. I tried to tell a few people what had happened to me, but no one believed me. They thought that perhaps I cracked under the pressure of suffering and had gone crazy. No one wanted to hear anything I said, as it exposed their false beliefs. So I remained quiet for eight years.
"I awoke, only to find the rest of the world still sleeping."
– Leonardo daVinci
How can I possibly explain something so deep, beyond the mind, where people have no concepts or understanding? What I woke up to I call Knowings, as opposed to knowledge. Knowledge comes from outside of the Self, either from the world, or from "up above". Knowings are who you are. It is not new information, but rather an awakening to your true Self. Someone who has not awakened to his true Self has a difficult time understanding. They believe it is just knowledge, a different set of beliefs. Therefor people say things like, "That is your idea of Truth. It's different from mine." or "There is no absolute Truth, only relative truths." They think they are only my beliefs. It is quite pointless to explain this to people, because all they know is beliefs. So I remain alone, with but a few friends that have experienced their own dark night of the soul, and awakened to their true Self, if sometimes only a glimmer. That is all it takes for one to see that their is a deep consciousness separate from the vast majority of people.
When one decides to take the Siddhartha road to the Self, he soon realizes he is alone on that road. The herd is going in the opposite direction. One must be prepared for that, to find comfort in being alone, not understood by others.
I cannot take any credit for my awakening. I was dragged, kicking and screaming, grasping straws. No, I take no credit. It was by Grace alone.
"Grace is within you. Grace is your Self. Grace is not something to be acquired from others. If it is external, it is useless. All that is necessary is to know its existence is in you. You are never out of its operation."
-Ramana Maharshi
As Eckhart Tolle has stated, you don't have to wait for the dark night of the soul to dismantle your false notions, your false self, your life story. You can consciously take that road. But it demands courage, discernment, and a brutal honesty of yourself. The mind is a very tricky opponent, and will deceive you at every step, as your awakening is the end of its control over you. But it can be done. Nisargadatta Maharaj did it. You must simply allow Grace to act within you.
"As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter."
– Eckhart Tolle
So the choice rests with each of you. No one can do this for you. All I, or anyone else, can offer you are sign posts, pointing in the direction. But you, and you alone, must take that road. It does little good to read my writings and not act upon them, to not take that road yourself. Otherwise, you are only hanging out at the signposts, believing that you have already arrived at the destination.
This road is not for the timid or the faint of heart. not at all. But there is no other road. No one will simply wave a magical wand over you. It is a road of destruction and the question is, "How much are you willing to give up? How much can you endure?" Because on this road, you must give up everything. Every piece of you will shatter. Can you endure that? As the great Bhaktivinode Thakur has written, "You must die to live." So how serious are you? How much do you want it? How much will you pay for it?
– Greg Calise
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text:
Foot Lining: Unlined
Materials: Grain Leather
Sole: Turtle Vibram
Get used to people checking out your kicks.
The Canoe in beautiful grain leather brings modern style and comfort to a traditional moccasin. With a breathable unlined footbed and durable Turtle Vibram sole, the Canoe carries you wherever you need to go. We bet this becomes your go-to shoe for every day.
Beadwork and material colour may vary from photograph


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So the other night I poisoned myself with vodka and orange juice to try and shake this bad case of writer's block I've been dealing with. I did shots and typed. I giggled till I cried and typed and ate pizza and drank more shots. Did it help? Was I able to make some progress on the anecdotal sections of the book? I'm embarrassed to say it did. Though what I wrote needs way more editing than my usual random typing. I know there is a lesson here and I'm hoping it's "don't fall into bad habits like thinking every time I'm stuck on something the answer is doing shots of alcohol so strong it can eat the stain off a table"*.
My Weapons. |
Will I be drinking again anytime soon? Dear God No. Yesterday was just awful. What was left of my brain vowed revenge for their fallen brethren and punished me severely for most of the day. I think that although my experiment was a success, it's something that I should hold on to for those rainy brain days. I guess you're also wondering where the cookies are. Well, I made this cake yesterday and it was just too fun to keep to myself and much cuter than the brown on brown hazelnut latte cookies. I already love campy bunt cakes but this one has a brightly colored and flavored peppermint swirly ribbon inside it that is pretty cool too. It's a super sweet treat to bring to a holiday party or make for someone who has a Christmas birthday. It's also super easy.
Don't press on the cake when you cut it – it will crush the prettiness. |
'Tis the season for sharing…
Candy Cane Cake
3 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour (you'll need a little more to dust your cake pan)
1/2 teaspoon Crushed Pink Himalayan Salt
1 Cup Margarine
2 1/2 Cups Sugar
5 Tablespoons Applesauce
2 teaspoons EnerG Egg Replacer (just powder not prepared how they instruct on the package)
1 Cup Coconut Milk
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
1/2 teaspoon Cherry Juice or Red Food Color
1/2 teaspoon Peppermint Extract
Vegetable Shortening for greasing your cake pan
Peppermint Glaze
1 Cup Powdered Sugar
2 Tablespoons Almond Milk
1/4 teaspoon Peppermint Extract
1/4 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
5 Crushed Candy Canes for decoration
Heat oven to 350.
Generously grease and flour 12-cup fluted tube cake pan. To make your cake batter blend all cake ingredients except Cherry Juice, Food Color, Peppermint Extract and Vegetable Shortening until it is smooth.
Pour about 2 cups batter into greased pan. In small bowl, mix 1 cup of batter, Cherry Juice/Food Color and Peppermint Extract. Carefully pour pink batter over white batter in pan and then very gently spread it out with a spatula so that you can't see any white batter. This will create your color ribbon and keep you from getting a a big blob. Carefully pour remaining white batter over pink batter. With a clean spatula, spread the white batter for the pink batter. It might start to blend a little but try not to. It will bake into a marbled effect if you don't blend the two batters too much.
Bake for 30-45 minutes. Different cake pans have different patterns and depth so some will take longer than others. You'll know your cake is ready when the top is golden brown and you can stick a bamboo skewer in the cake and remove it cleanly. Using the bamboo skewer, make a dozen or so little stabs into the top of the cake.You're releasing moisture from the cake to help it cool and also release from the pan. Let your cake cool for 10 minutes and then turn your cake pan upside down on a large serving dish.
While your cake is baking, make your glaze. In small bowl, mix all the glaze ingredients except the crushed Candy Canes with a whisk until creamy. Then drizzle your glaze over the cake. Sprinkle crushed Candy Canes on top.
Serve slightly chilled with hot chocolate. I really like the juxtaposition of the two.
* True Story.


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It!me's fundamental aim is to reduce waste as much as possible while still providing a clean and hip fast-food experience. The first branch's walls are made with concrete blocks clad in a non-woven geotextile fabric that is then covered with slats of coniferous plywood that are fastened to the wall. This combined with prefabricated wheelchair accessible tables also attached to the wall gives the space a lot of flexibility. The deciduous plywood chairs were cut with an NC milling machine and stuck together with a harmless glue.
The company has paid a lot of attention to ensuring its packaging is as sustainable as possible. Using only recycled and recyclable paper along with a small sleeve with a stamped logo for the burgers, cakes and wraps, It!me has cut their paper use down to 25% of that used by conventional fast food companies. Sadly, because they have a small budget, they did end up having to use plastic for their carbonated beverages, but they've offset this by providing recycling bins in the restaurant, which are then collected by a waste management company.
+ Joanna Pszczółka
Via Arch Daily
all images © Joanna Pszczółka


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The first Saitama JALT event of the New Year: Cooperative Learning by Joël Laurier
Date: Sunday, January 19th, 2014
Location: Sakuragi Kouminkan 5F
Cooperative learning: teaching that is as easy as 1-2-3-4
Current reforms in the educational landscape are pushing toward a more student-centered approach to education. The talk is now of learning more than teaching. Cooperative Learning (CL) is a research based teaching pedagogy that provides an effective teaching approach, especially in language learning. Through interactive, task based activities, students learn to take control of their own learning. By making students the center of learning, the role of the teacher becomes that of a facilitator, reducing the need to rely on teacher-centered presentations. The classroom then becomes a place where students and teachers work together to create meaningful and fulfilling learning experiences. This hands on workshop will show how attendees how they can use CL to increase active participation between students, build confidence for teachers, and deliver more student-centered English lessons. Attendees will be shown effective CL structures that make learning the student's responsibility and facilitating the teacher's concern.
Joël Laurier is a teacher at Gunma Kokusai Academy. Originally from Ottawa, Canada, he is equally proficient in both of Canada's official languages. His research interests are bilingualism, language policy and cooperative learning. He is a 2013 Kagan Academy Scholarship winner and recipient of the 2011 John F. Fanselow Scholarship from Teachers College, Columbia University where he is an MA in TESOL graduate. Along with his son Noah, he is the voice and face of the award-winning Yomiuri Kodomo Shinbum's Hello Eikaiwa weekly feature. <[email protected]>
Bryan Darr - Beyond Red Xs and Os [Short Format]
Bryan Darr presented a study of writing correction effectiveness, and the implications of such effectiveness for a teacher tasked with providing writing correction to their charges. Do we just circle errors? Shall we make notes in the margin? Do we demand re-writes? Do we take this information as something which can be used to counsel and conference with our students? In this presentation, Bryan provided his own shorthand for writing corrections as well as providing praise.


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Design, create, and modify Web sites. Analyze user needs to implement Web site content, graphics, performance, and capacity. May integrate Web sites with other computer applications. May convert written, graphic, audio, and video components to compatible Web formats by using software designed to facilitate the creation of Web and multimedia content.


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The Sopratos: A "Pearls Before Swine" Collection. By Stephan Pastis. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
Alternative Zits: A "Zits" Treasury. By Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman. Andrews McMeel. $16.95.
I'm Ready for My Movie Contract: A "Get Fuzzy" Collection. By Darby Conley. Andrews McMeel. $10.95.
Seniors' Discount: A "For Better or For Worse" Collection. By Lynn Johnston. Andrews McMeel. $12.95.
As a comic-strip reader, where do you fall on the sweet-to-scurrilous scale? Pick your position and pick your collection – these four books pretty much span the spectrum.
Pearls Before Swine is as dark, demented, twisted, weird and hysterically funny (if you like this sort of thing) as any comic being created today. Stephan Pastis, who occasionally draws himself as a cigarette-smoking slob (and maybe is a cigarette-smoking slob), is no kinder to his characters than he is to himself. The title of The Sopratos is, of course, a takeoff on TV's immensely popular The Sopranos, and the cover is a delightfully doom-laden parody of the show, portraying some of Pastis' major characters dressed as goodfellas, standing in or near a rowboat perched on the edge of a swamp, with various characters that Pastis has killed off over the years in the foreground. Longtime Pearls fans will have a great time naming all the whacked victims, from Hobart the miniature train engineer…to the pancake with a desire for friends around the world (which Pig naively sent to the International House of Pancakes, with predictably disastrous results)…to Mrs. Bootyworth, the promiscuous syrup bottle…well, you get the idea. Or part of the idea. The strips collected here include some of Pastis' worst puns ("Pelvis has left the building"), some of his strangest concepts (Pig's toys, the effeminate Viking warriors), and the out-and-out funniest parody he has ever done of any other comic strip: a sequence in which Rat becomes the babysitter for the Baby Blues kids – who drive a car to get beer for Rat and, among other things, blow up a gas station and run over Jeremy Duncan, the central teenage character in Zits. This is dark and thoroughly weird humor that will have you laughing out loud – if Pastis' twisted sense of what's funny matches yours.
If you don't understand what Pastis is parodying in his babysitting sequence, do yourself a favor and get Alternative Zits, which collects all the cartoons previously published in Are We Out of the Driveway Yet? and Rude, Crude, and Tattooed. You may want to do yourself the favor anyway – even if you already have the earlier collections – because Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman's always-excellent strip about being a teenager and parenting a teenager is even better than usual here (and that's saying something). The color Sunday strips really showcase the intricacies of Borgman's superlative drawing style, and the writing by Scott – who also writes Baby Blues – is so punchy that it can practically knock you out. Take the two-long-panel Sunday offering contrasting "When Guys Hang Out" with "When Girls Hang Out." The first panel shows guys doing not much of anything except playing and watching video games while saying, "Dude." The second panel has five girls grooming each other – every one attending to the next one over – while talking so much that their speech balloons merge into an almost indecipherable blob. Another Sunday strip shows "Backpack Geology" – levels of compaction in Jeremy's vastly overpacked book-and-everything-else carrier. Throw in sequences of Jeremy fantasizing about his 42-year-old guidance counselor, his mom spraying sheepdog scent in the house to cover the smell of wet teenagers, his father discovering that Jeremy's "oldies are too new for me to have heard of them," and many more deliciously trenchant observations of everyday life, and you have a winner all around.
That's "winner," not "whiner." If you'd rather have a whiner, check out Bucky Katt in I'm Ready for My Movie Contract, Darby Conley's latest Get Fuzzy collection. This strip has really hit its stride, and the interactions among Bucky, Satchel Pooch and Rob Wilco are funnier than ever. Rob is still the weakest character: a perpetually dateless advertising man, he is drawn with stick-thin legs and a great deal of unpleasantly prominent body hair. He also seems to be dumber than either Bucky or the frequently dimwitted Satchel. In this collection, though, Rob's many lacks become the basis for some excellent sequences. For example, Bucky decides to make statues of himself, so he takes Rob's valuable Star Wars and Lord of the Rings statues (which Rob is not smart enough to keep out of Bucky's reach) and turns them into Bucky representations – which then fall into the hands of the ferret in a nearby apartment, who uses them as voodoo dolls. Satchel, trying to help, finds Darth Vader's head and attaches it to the only doll body he can locate in the dumpster – a Barbie. Thus is born "Malibu Vader." Add Bucky's obsessions with destroying beavers and eating monkeys, Satchel's need for "doga" (dog yoga) to relieve the stress of living with Bucky, some amusing "Rejected Get Fuzzy Storylines" and post-Get Fuzzy "career opportunities" for Bucky and Satchel, and the result is – well, it's a home in which you wouldn't want to live.
You probably would want to live in the Patterson home, though, since this central location in Lynn Johnston's long-running For Better or For Worse is constantly filled with love, laughter and hints about handling real-world issues.


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The international community is intensifying sanctions on Russia. That's because of widespread outrage over alleged war crimes by Russian forces. The U.S., along with the G-7 and European Union, are targeting large financial institutions and several more of Russia's elite, including family members of top officials like President Vladimir Putin.
NPR's international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam has been following the details, and she joins us now. Hey, Jackie.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.
DETROW: OK, another round of sanctions - what are the details about this one?
NORTHAM: Well, the U.S. and its allies hit two of Russia's largest financial institutions with blocking sanctions. So that will freeze any assets that touch the U.S. financial system and also prohibit Americans from conducting business with them. One of them, the Sberbank, holds about one-third of Russia's banking assets, so well over $500 billion.
Also, there are now full-blocking sanctions on several more Russian individuals, and that includes the wife and daughter of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who, himself, was already sanctioned, and two of President Putin's adult daughters from his first marriage. And Putin was also facing sanctions.
DETROW: Why go after his daughters? Is there maybe thinking here that they could have some sort of influence on his decision-making?
NORTHAM: That could be part of it. A senior administration official said today that the U.S. believes that Putin hides his wealth, his assets such as yachts and mansions, etc., with family members that could be in the U.S. financial system or other parts of the world. So this would be a way to chip away at his wealth. And it also just shows that there are lots of different types of sanctions that the U.S. and others can apply to Russians, and that's why they are doling them out incrementally for now.
DETROW: So there's an important caveat here. Just like previous rounds of sanctions that the U.S. has taken in other countries as well, none of these sanctions would apply to energy exports from Russia. That is such a big part of Russia's economy. Is there any movement at this point to sanction oil and gas, to stop imports from Russia to Europe?
NORTHAM: Well, the EU, the European Union, is looking at whether it should stop buying coal from Russia, and that could be decided by the end of this week. Coal is something that can easily be bought elsewhere, but it's a different picture for oil and gas. Europe relies heavily on Russian oil, and particularly gas, to heat its homes and run its businesses. And if it suddenly cuts off those imports, it could have a pretty dramatic effect on their own economies. But at the same time, though, you see these pictures coming out of Bucha and some of the other Kyiv suburbs and have to suspect that, you know, there's some real soul-searching that's probably going on in Europe right now.
DETROW: If that did happen, if there were sanctions on oil and gas, would that have any impact on Putin or on the overall war?
NORTHAM: Well, it's a lot of money, and it helps prop up the government. You know, the EU said that Europe is sending about $1 billion a day to Russia for oil and gas, and that could be going towards Russia's war effort. So removing that would probably deal a blow to financing the war as well as Russia's economy. And analysts believe that the economy has already shrunk, has been hit by these sanctions so far.
But there's a lot of debate. If you sanction oil and gas, it would really hit hard. But, you know, would that make Putin back down, you know, rethink the invasion of Ukraine, or could it instead make him more aggressive because, at that point, he would have nothing to lose?
DETROW: That's NPR international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam. Thanks, Jackie.
NORTHAM: Thanks so much, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Support the ACLU of Alabama Foundation
The ACLU defends basic freedoms every day, for every American. Support the ACLU and take a stand against any threat to our constitutional liberties by making a tax-deductible gift to the ACLU of Alabama Foundation today.
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Back in May 2007, Dr. Izzat Atiya, head of Al Azhar University's Department of Hadith, issued a fatwa, or Islamic legal decree, saying that female workers should "breastfeed" their male co-workers in order to work in each other's company. According to the BBC:
He said that if a woman fed a male colleague "directly from her breast" at least five times they would establish a family bond and thus be allowed to be alone together at work. "Breast feeding an adult puts an end to the problem of the private meeting, and does not ban marriage," he ruled. "A woman at work can take off the veil or reveal her hair in front of someone whom she breastfed."
Atiya based his fatwa on a hadith—a documented saying or doing of Islam's prophet Muhammad and subsequently one of Sharia law's sources of jurisprudence. Many Egyptians naturally protested this decree—hadith or no hadith—though no one could really demonstrate how it was un-Islamic; for the fatwa conformed to the strictures of Islamic jurisprudence. Still, due to the protests—not many Egyptian women were eager to "breastfeed" their male coworkers—the fatwa receded, and that was that.
However, because it was never truly rebutted, it kept making comebacks.
For instance, three years later in 2010, a high-ranking Saudi, Sheikh Abdul Mohsin al-Abaican issued a fatwa confirming that "women could give their milk to men to establish a degree of maternal relations and get around a strict religious ban on mixing between unrelated men and women." But unlike Atiya's fatwa, "the man should take the milk, but not directly from the breast of the woman. He should drink it [from a cup] and then [he] becomes a relative of the family, a fact that allows him to come in contact with the women without breaking Islam's rules about mixing."
Now, a report titled "Kuwaiti Activists: Husband Breastfeeding from Wife not Prohibited," published earlier this month by Arabic RT (see also Garaa News) opens by announcing that "The adult breastfeeding fatwa has returned once again to the spotlight, after Kuwaiti Islamic activists supported the adult breastfeeding fatwa issued by the Egyptian Salafi, Sheikh Jamal al-Murakbi [different from Al Azhar's Sheikh Atiya]. This time around, the Kuwaitis examined the adult breastfeeding fatwa in the context of relations between a man and his wife."
While the Kuwaiti sheikhs all essentially agree that the activity is not strictly forbidden according to Sharia—only "disliked" (literally makruh)—they are divided over the particulars:
- Sheikh Nazim Misbahi, head of the Fatwa Committee of the Islamic Heritage Revival Society in Kuwait, supports the decree, agreeing that "it is not forbidden [haram] for a man to breastfeed from his wife."
- Sheikh Bassam al-Shatti, a Sharia professor, specifies: "If the husband deliberately sucks to obtain milk from the breast of his wife, this is forbidden; however, if it happens unintentionally during foreplay with his wife, then there is no problem—though it is disliked according to the four schools" of Sharia.
- Sheikh Sa'd al-Anzi stressed that "if the man, while being intimate with his wife, sucks her nipples, it is nothing, considered foreplay; but if the milk reaches his mouth, he should spit out—even if goes down in his stomach," i.e., vomit.
Consider for a moment the significance of these Islamic edicts: whether women "breastfeeding" coworkers (Egyptian fatwa, 2007), whether men drinking female breast-milk in a cup (Saudi fatwa, 2010), or whether Kuwaiti minutiae concerning bedroom foreplay—all these fatwas are reminders of the inescapable strictures of Sharia law; while these sheikhs offers various circumstances and interpretations concerning "adult breastfeeding," they are all confined to the words of the prophet of Islam.
This is precisely why, despite all the claims that Islam is perpetually being "misunderstood"—by terrorists, by "Islamophobes"—understanding what Islam commands and forbids is actually quite a simple matter: along with the Koran, determine what the prophet said in canonical hadiths.
It is, after all, no coincidence that the above mentioned Kuwaitis, like Sheikh Misbahi, were members of the delegation that recently went to ask Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti about Islam's position on churches in the Arabian Peninsula: the same source that compelled the Grand Mufti to declare that all churches must be destroyed, is the same source that advocates "adult breastfeeding": Muhammad and his teachings. All very straightforward, really.
Raymond Ibrahim is an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.