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1. What is a top-bar hive (tbh)?
6. Why was the tbh invented then further developed more recently?
7. What are the advantages of beekeeping in tbh's?
8. What are the disadvantages of beekeeping in tbh's?
9. Should a beginning beekeeper start with a tbh?
10. Can tbh's be used for commercial honey production?
11. Can tbh's be used to provide commercial pollination services?
1. What is a top bar hive (tbh)?
A tbh is a movable comb hive. Narrow bars, normally of wood, rest across a container (usually a long box or trough), which forms the cavity containing the bees' nest. Bees build comb from the bars which are wide enough to give proper spacing between combs. A bar with its attached comb and adhering bees can be removed from the hive and examined. Each comb is built naturally by the bees, suspended from its top-bar. (i.e., none of the combs is enclosed in a complete frame.) No **full sheets** of comb-foundation *are* used.
Yes, in so far as I know, since all of the bars and combs can be moved to enable inspection of the hives to comply with laws in those states or municipalities that require inspection.
Top bars are the "slats" to which comb is attached. Placed side by side across the hive cavity/container, they form a roof for the hive. Bars may be made from a variety of materials. They can be cut from scrap or purchased lumber, may be made from tree branches or bamboo of appropriate size. The bars may be of any suitable length to reach across the hive, but it is critical that they be of appropriate width (or diameter) to provide proper spacing of combs for the species or strain of bees involved. An outer lid or covering is provided over the bars, for additional protection from the elements.
It probably isn't really known, but according to Eva Crane on p. 300-301 of her *opus magnum*, "Bees and Beekeeping", the earliest knowledge of tbh development was in Sir George Wheeler's book, "A Journey into Greece" published in 1682. Wheeler describes basket tbh's. One of his illustrations is reproduced on p. 301 of Crane's book
The Greeks for centuries have been utilizing upright, woven "baskets" as hives. Bars placed across the top of each basket individually support the combs. By removing each bar, the attached comb can be examined or moved. Evidently, due to the slope of the basket shape (narrower toward the bottom), the bees do not attach their combs to the sides (or do so only minimally). Therefore each comb is movable by removing the top bar from which it has been built.
In Britain and North America, bar-type hives of various sorts were often used in days of old. However, the combs were invariably attached to the sides of the hive as well as to the bars. Therefore the side-attachments had to be cut away in order for the combs to be removed. This was not much of an improvement over straw skeps or simple box hives.
Loooooooong ago. Obviously prior to 1682.
6. Why was the tbh invented then further developed more recently?
I can't say for certain, but it was probably to provide a means of keeping bees, rather than of just "having" bees. With a tbh it is no longer necessary to kill the bees to harvest honey, nor are brood combs disturbed. In many areas of the world today, tbh's are used because the "low tech" aspects of tbh's meld better with the social and economic conditions at the present time.
[Tim Haarmann] You mention "low tech". I like to think of the TBH as a "moderate tech hive". I think of a container of bees (used in many parts of the world) with no moveable frames as low tech, the TBH as a moderate tech. hive, and the Langstroth as a high tech. hive. I often talk to people about the "natural/ simple" aspects of the TBH, which appeals to a lot of the gardening, hobby beekeeper types. This is the market that I think can best benefit from TBHs. Who wants to sink $500 into a hobby right off the bat? A TBH is much cheaper and includes a lot less equipment.
[Tim Haarmann] I think the TBH has a lot to offer people in more developed countries if we are willing to step away from the monster named technology and embrace the beauty of simplicity.
[Kevin Palm] From information sent to me by Dr. James Tew of OSU, (and this is from memory), he states that the TBH was designed to be a transitional hive, helping beekeepers in developing countries make the step from log hives to the much more "advanced" Langstroth hives.
7. What are the advantages of beekeeping in tbh's?
There are many in my opinion. Some of them might be: a) the hives are inexpensive and can be made by recycling scrap lumber or fashioning the hives from existing materials such as bamboo, reeds, clay, etc., b) there are no supers to lift, frames to nail together, sheets of foundation to put in frames, no extractor and supers with sticky combs to store, c) bees are disturbed less as the hives are worked, d) more beeswax is harvested since the combs are removed from the hive, e) the honey is "comb honey" and if it is pressed or squeezed from the virgin combs, it has a superior flavor...or so I believe. :)
[Tim Haarmann] Not to mention that a well built TBH is much more attractive than a square, white, Lang.
8. What are the disadvantages of beekeeping in tbh's?
There are several in my opinion. Consider these: a) the hives may require more management in that the brood may have to be spread to get good spring buildup or if the hive becomes honeybound, b) combs may have to be harvested regularly during a heavy honey flow rather than just adding another super, c) because surplus honey-combs are detached from their top bars in harvesting the crop, and are not reused, the tbh's are probably not capable of producing as much honey as supered Langstroth hives with drawn combs, d) newly drawn and filled combs must be handled carefully. Older brood combs are very tough, e) finally, tbh's may not be suitable for a beekeeper who must, psychologically, have the very best and very finest of the latest technology in everything, or who must produce more honey than anyone else.
To prevent a "honeybound" condition (i.e., not enough empty comb available as laying space for the queen), the brood portion of the hive can be supplied with additional bars, to allow the bees to construct new combs within the nest. This provides ample laying room for the queen and reduces congestion during the spring buildup.
The routines involved with tbh inspection and harvesting just differ somewhat from the procedures for movable-frame hives.
[Tim Haarmann] You mention that the hives may require more management. I guess I feel that they require less management. I remember back when I was using Langs and a beginning beekeeper. One of my biggest frustrations was knowing when to add a super so my bees didn't swarm. To add to the frustration, I always had to have a super put together and ready to go. As you mention, the only management of a TBH is to make sure the bees don't get honey bound. This seems like a simple thing compared to the confusion I felt when I first started using Langs. Of course, it has become almost second nature knowing when to super a Lang now, but back then it was troublesome. I just don't see this same frustration in new beekeepers using a TBH.
[Mike Allsopp] I am not an avowed fan of TBH's. My feeling is that they are fun to work with, and very suitable under certain conditions (strictly for hobbyist and sedentary beekeepers), but I am doubtful on whether we should be encouraging their general usage. I think I differ from others on this due to four things:
1. There is a lot of misinformation on the importance of certain features of TBH's, such as the slanting sides and the reduction in defensive behaviour. In reality, TBH's are just low technology, horizontal Langstroths. In East Africa these days they have given up the slanting sides as they make no difference.
2. No-one has yet to adequately test the performance (in monetary return) TBH's and Langstroths. I have a guy in Cape Town doing just this at present. At first glance the TBH's are very impressive, but over a couple of seasons their total honey yield is far below that of standard Langstroths.
3. TBH's should only be used if suitable hive material is available. How can we counternance the destruction of hard wood trees to produce TBH's or log hives, as is the practice in much of Africa?
4. And the major reason: All of us bee people in South Africa are involved to a lesser or greater extent in "beekeeping development programmes" - advancing beekeeping in the rural and disadvantaged communities. In this respect I believe advancing the use of TBH's is the wrong approach. The aim of the programmes I am involved with is the rapid development of semi-commercial beekeepers that can compete with the established beekeepers, not the provision of one or two hives to each member of the programme. I suggest that using TBH's for these people retards their chances of ever becoming successful commercial beekeepers, rather than advances it. You can't easily follow honey flows or do commercial pollination with TBH's.
9. Should a beginning beekeeper start with a tbh?
It would seem that it might be best for a beginner to start with a pair of conventional hives and the associated equipment if it is financially possible. Certainly in many parts of the world more help and advice would be available than in others. But the honeybees don't care, and I really can't think of anything that should prevent a beginner from using and enjoying a colony of bees in a tbh.
[Tim Haarmann] I have started a few people with TBH. After about a year, they are almost embarrassed to tell other beekeepers they don't use the high tech Lang--go figure? Sometimes I suggest a TBH to a new beekeeper, and tell them that if they like beekeeping after a year or two, then they can purchase some Langs and all the expensive equipment. A TBH is not a very big financial investment i.e. perfect for a beginner. However, most never want to give up their TBH.
10. Can tbh's be used for commercial honey production?
In some sections of the world, tbh's are being used to produce honey that is sold in local markets. For the beekeeper whose goal is to produce tons of honey and to make a living keeping thousands of colonies, the tbh is probably not a suitable option. Allen Dick suggested that cut comb honey could possibly be produced profitably in tbh's.
[Tim Haarmann] Les Crowder, the president of the NM Beekeepers Association promotes the use of TBHs. Les uses them for comb and chunk honey as well as some queen rearing. He is a perfect example of someone who has successfully integrated both types of hives into a commercial business.
11. Can tbh's be used to provide commercial pollination services?
Dr. Wyatt Mangum is using around 200 Kenya tbh's to operate a pollination service in North Carolina. He loads the hives in the back of a pickup truck and on a trailer. Good, straight brood combs are never replaced in his hives, so some of the combs are old and very sturdy.
Wyatt prefers using Kenya tbh's because the sloping side gives him a better center of gravity when he carries the hive. He says that it fits against his abdomen better.
Joel Govostes stated that in Bernhard Clauss' book on Botswanan beekeeping, the locals refer to the tbh's as "honey cows." Joel suggested that I could just add four legs and a head....say, that got me thinking. I am going to use some 30 gal plastic barrels this spring for tbh's. I'll make a cradle with four legs for the barrel half to rest in. Cut out a cow head and neck...grazing?...looking alertly?...decisions, decisions... add a tail. I'll use an arching tin roof on top. Then paint the entire hive white.... paint the black spotting of the Holstein (Freisen?) cow...eyes, etc. Then I'll put it down in the orchard...could have an entire herd.....yeah!
[Tim Haarmann] Just an interesting side note. In Spanish we use the term "la colmena batea" to describe the TBH. colmena=hive and batea=trough. This, because it looks like a watering trough for livestock. Aagghhh, a new twist to honey cow!


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Senior Software Developer/Développeur Logiciel Sénior
Date: Aug 1, 2019
Location: Montreal, QC, CA, H2W 2R2
Company: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Job Requisition ID: 6062
Software Engineering at HMH is focused on building fantastic software to meet the challenges facing teachers and learners. Enabling and supporting a wide range of next generation learning experiences. We design, and build custom applications and services used by millions. We are creating teams full of innovative, eager software professionals to build the products that will transform our industry.
We are staffing new, small, self-contained teams of engineers with people who love solving problems, building high quality products and services. We are looking for people with a wide range of skills, who can contribute broadly bringing the right tool to the right job. We use a wide range of technologies, and are building up a next generation services platform that can make our learning tools and content available to all our products, and someday to the world. If you want to make a difference in the lives of students and teachers, and understand what it takes to deliver high quality software, we would love to talk to you about this opportunity.
The Opportunity - Senior Software Developer
We are creating teams full of innovative, eager software engineers to build the products that will transform our industry. As a learning company we expect our teams to keep learning as well, and apply that learning to their work every day. Our engineers are independent, self-directed professionals bringing the latest technologies into our products. We expect each team to tackle a big problem, goal, or product advancement, and are assembling groups that are empowered to deliver on these challenges in the way that makes sense for the company. The work is rewarding, and the environment promotes learning at all career stages. In addition to implementing software in their areas, software engineers are exposed to a wide range of core HMH technologies, and practices.
For engineers, we are looking for people who want to take ownership and wrestle a hard problem into submission. You will be asked to think through the goal, figure out a potential solution, validate that solution with your peers, and then own the implementation. You will bring your experience and curiosity to apply modern software development tools and models to the learning space. We are tool and language agnostic but rather apply a set of quality and development values and standards to our work. We are working to build a fast moving, low friction environment for engineers to bring innovative solutions to tough problems, and want people who thrive in that environment, but also understand that the freedom comes with a responsibility for the team to take responsibility for quality at every level. We have already built a modern cloud platform to power our next generation services, and are building using a variety of new technologies like Scala, graph databases, Mesos frameworks and more.
Duties & Responsibilities
- Work independently and as part of a software development team taking responsibility for solving big challenges.
- Great at turning ideas into code, and making that code usable by your teammates, and the company.
- Propose and implement technical solutions to problems and deliver to customers.
- Collaborate with the team to translate goals into implementations, deliver incrementally.
- Understand HMH goals around quality and engineering discipline and participate in code reviews at the team level.
- Looks ahead, finds and avoids pitfalls for the team.
- Test, analyze data, and improve constantly.
Knowledge & Experience
- 9+ years of experience and a bachelor's degree in computer science or related field is preferred.
- Understand the software development process and how their work contributes to the larger goals.
- Experience working with a team on a large project.
- We are looking for people who have experience with Java, Node, as well as front-end (HTML/JS) but place the highest value on ability to be productive in a wide range of environments, and learn to be productive quickly, even with unfamiliar tools.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (NASDAQ:HMHC) is a global learning company dedicated to changing people's lives by fostering passionate, curious learners. As a leading provider of pre-K–12 education content, services, and cutting-edge technology solutions across a variety of media, HMH enables learning in a changing landscape. HMH is uniquely positioned to create engaging and effective educational content and experiences from early childhood to beyond the classroom. HMH serves more than 50 million students in over 150 countries worldwide, while its award-winning children's books, novels, non-fiction, and reference titles are enjoyed by readers throughout the world. Follow HMH on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. For more information, visit http://careers.hmhco.com
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an equal employment opportunity employer and participates in E-Verify. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, or other protected group status.
Job Segment: Social Media, Web Design, Marketing, Creative, Publishing

subset: commoncrawl


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Stem cell activation is the technique to promote your own natural hair growth. It is known that there are stem cells left in every hair shaft, even when there is no hair growth or even hair follicle. We insert with a very tinny needle into the hair shaft and stimulate these stem cells. Results will be improved when special growth factors are used. These growth factors are special peptide which works like a signal agent, which actives your own stem cells. These growth factors are non-human peptide, which are produced by E.coli bacteria These are safe products and will not harm your skin or health.
This new stem cell technique will never completely replace Micropigmentation. Instead, it gives the eyebrow pigmentation a more natural look because your own hair begins to grow back. Many women lose a lot of eyebrow hair as they age. The ends of the eyebrows especially start thinning. While we've been using Micropigmentation on brows for years to create a fuller look, the look is significantly enhanced once hair-growth regenerates in the thinning areas.
3 to 4 treatments minimum requirement
Clients must use Hair Rescue Lotion at home everyday.


text: Here is Chief, finished and signed. If you look carefully, you will see that I left some unfinished areas to remind the viewer that this is hand painted, also to drive the illusion of movement. I am very happy with this piece. It's like having a horse in the studio with me. -wish I could jump on his back and go!


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Open source applications and tools are a great alternative for those on a budget. Many open source tools have comparable features to the expensive applications, and are also free. This makes it possible to have all the tools and applications without even spending any thing!
Notepad++ is a source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. It runs on Windows and is governed by a GPL License.
jEdit is a cross platform text editor with hundreds of person-years of development behind it.
Quanta Plus
Quanta Plus is a highly stable and feature rich web development environment.
Aptana Studio
Complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, along with thousands of additional plugins.
KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing.
Firebug is a plugin for Firefox that allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
Graphics Applications
GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package. It's considered by many to be an excellent alternative to Photoshop.
Krita is a graphics application for everyone who wants to get creative with images.
Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Adobe Illustrator.
Dia is a cross operating system diagram creation application.


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Lured by virgin snow, adventurous skiers are ignoring travel advisories to stay away from the conflict prone Kashmir valley in northern India. Could this be the ski world's best kept secret?
Hans Solmssen is living the good life. The Hawaii native, who looks at least ten years younger than his 58 years, is a ski guide in the upmarket Swiss ski resort of Verbier. He's just back from guiding clients on a heli-skiing trip to Valgrisenche in Italy's Aosta valley. Solmssen specialises in off-piste skiing trips for clients who want to get away from the madding crowd, something that is getting harder every year.
"The challenge now is to find more quiet places," he told swissinfo.ch. "It has made guiding more interesting because you're looking further afield and offering ski safari trips."
Solmssen in no stranger to offbeat destinations. Almost two decades ago, his taste for adventure and quest for new experiences took him to India. After indulging in a couple of climbing expeditions in the Himalayas, he visited the northern Indian state of Kashmir after a friend and fellow guide recommended the place to him. He's been guiding groups on annual ski tours to Kashmir for 15 years now.
"Kashmir has become much more popular since I first started guiding clients there, he says. "All sorts of people go there from ski bums to people who own chalets in Verbier and want to experience something new."
Back in business
In 2000, former US president Bill Clinton called Kashmir "the most dangerous place on earth". Armed insurgency broke out against India in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley in 1989 which has claimed over 90,000 lives so far. Tensions between India and Pakistan reached boiling point in 1999 leading to the Kargil war, and Kashmir was transformed from a holiday idyll to a battleground.
Pine-fringed Gulmarg, a Himalayan outpost deep in the Kashmir valley, was badly affected. Tourists from across the world would come here to soak up the Himalayan vistas - as seen from the world's highest-altitude gondola-serviced ski runs. The daily violence kept tourists away from the valley for the better part of the last two decades.
Even today, the Swiss travel advisoryexternal link cautions against visiting the region.
"It is not recommended to travel to Jammu and Kashmir, including the Kashmir valley," it states pointing to violence during protests and the military's free reign to use force.
The situation has eased in the last few years. Tourists have returned and are eager to soak up the famed tranquillity of Kashmir, which is often dubbed a "mini Switzerland" because of its beautiful landscape and topography.
In 2014, over a million tourists visited the state of Jammu & Kashmir, of which around 50,000 were from countries like Germany, Britain, Switzerland and Australia. Many come to ski and it is estimated that 3,000 to 4,000 foreign skiers, mostly from European countries make the journey to enjoy Kashmir's ski slopes.
"It is probably one of the safest places in the world to go skiing because you are surrounded by a lot of Indian military," says Solmssen. "There are some problems in Srinagar [the state capital] in summer but it is very quiet in winter when we go."
The Verbier-based ski guide added that he'd be more frightened in New York City than in Kashmir.
The revival of skiing is good news for local ski guides who earn between $40 to 100 (CHF40 to 100) a day and those working for ski companies or foreign ski tours earn between $600 to1000 a month.
Snow and culture
Ski snobs love Gulmarg because it gets some of the heaviest snowfalls in the Himalayas. The high altitude snow remains cold, crisp and light for days on end.
"Skiing-wise the route from the birch trees above the mid-station to Gulmarg is great after a half a day of snowing," says Solmssen. "When people talk about bottomless powder, it doesn't happen much these days and Kashmir offers you that."
Gulmarg is also fairly easy to get to compared with other places in the western Himalayas.
"It is just one and a half hours by plane from Delhi to Srinagar and a one hour drive to Gulmarg from Srinagar," says Mehmood Ahmad Shah, director of Kashmir's tourism department and an avid skier himself. According to him, Gulmarg is the cheapest ski destination available anywhere in Asia.
The Gulmarg Gondola is one of the highest ropeways in the world. The first section takes skiers to Kongdori at 2,600m and the second section drops them off at Apharwat mountain at 4,000m from where one can enjoy 5km of downhill ski runs.
Safety measures have improved after a Swiss skier was killed in 2014 by an avalanche during back country skiing outside the resort's boundaries. Fully-fledged ski patrol teams monitor avalanche risks and medical staff equipped with snowmobiles are on standby in case of emergencies.
But Solmssen is not too keen on attempts to make Gulmarg into an Indian version of Verbier or Aspen. He enjoys the "Indianness" of the Kashmiri ski experience which he thinks is its unique selling point. The ski guide particularly relishes the region's colonial-era hotels, traditional houseboats on Lake Dal and hearty curries.
"I am always wary of improvements because it often changes the character of the place," he says. "I think it is really nice the way it is."
European touch
The ski resort of Gulmarg, around 50km from Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Administered Kashmir, first came on the ski map of the world in 1927 when two British Army Officers, Major Headow and Major Metcarp established the Ski Club of India here. It soon became popular with British Army officers and civil servants posted in colonial India.
The introduction of heli-Skiing has given a boost to skiing in Kashmir. The original father of extreme skiing, Swiss born Sylvain Sudan, used to bring skiers from around the world to Kashmir even during peak militancy years. He had a narrow escape in Kashmir after his helicopter crashed in a mountain range in 2007.end of infobox


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Surname List
Name Index
Email Us
Descendants of "The Widow" Higginbotham
There is a link in my husband's lineage, not well proved beyond circumstance of time and place and acquaintances. It is between Caleb Higginbotham (b. about 1752 in Amherst County, Virgina, d. 1823, Pike county, Mississippi ) and his son William (b. say 1788, Amherst; d. 1852, Bienville Parish, Louisiana). Caleb married MaryAnn Cash and left very few traces of his children, who seemed to have scattered effectively. Since most of the other Higginbothams left wills or land divisions, those Higginbothams of appropriate age that can't be placed elsewhere, often end up as proposed children of Caleb. That my husband descended from this family has been substantiated by autosomal DNA matches to other Higginbotham descendants.
© Copyright 2016
Created 15 February 2016 with RootsMagic Genealogy Software


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School Colors Hat Crochet Pattern
Celebrate your favorite school or team in this two-tone slouchy crochet beanie, sized for the whole family. The crochet hat has a clever column of chain-1 stitches at the fold line that keeps the ribbing in place. Top it off with a pompom for more cool spirit.
DESIGNER Brenda K.B. Anderson
FINISHED SIZE 16 (171/4, 181/2, 20, 211/4)" circumference and 71/2 (81/2, 91/2, 10, 11)" from top to folded edge of ribbing.
YARN Lion Brand Yarns Wool-Ease (80% acrylic, 20% wool; 197 yd [180 m]/3 oz [85 g]; ): #115 blue mist, #188 paprika, 1 skein each. www.lionbrand.com
HOOK Sizes G/6 (4 mm) and I/9 (5.5 mm). Adjust hook size if necessary to obtain correct gauge.
NOTIONS St markers (m); 4″ cardboard piece for pompom; yarn needle.
GAUGE 20 sts and 12 rows = 4″ in hdc blo with smaller hook. 13 esc and 101/2 rows = 4″ with larger hook.


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Start Date - 19/03/2019
Time - 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Every 2nd and 4th Thursdays, 25th April – 27th June inclusive
The Toy Library have a fantastic range of toys and educational supplies for under 8s, plus sensory equipment for under 18s. This sessions is a drop-in stay and play session for home educating families. There will be arts, crafts, games and loan toys, including educational resources.
If you would like to play Minecraft, you can either bring your own computer, or contact us in advance and we can provide one of BAHE's computers with the Education Edition installed.
No need to book, just turn up.
Hot drinks and snacks provided.
Price: Free.
For families living within Bolton, and registered with the council, the council pay for toy library membership and loan hire charges so that you can borrow toys and educational resources. Bolton Toy Library themselves are a charity independent of the council, and will not pass on families' details without permission.


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Good thoughts, Pru … I try, but when the Tigers got spanked 12-7 by the Angels yesterday I'm afraid I lost it … the negative words flowed … but I'll get my center back today!
Interesting! I didn't know that about the history of the English language! And I agree–we can't stop negative things from happening but we can always choose to react positively.
Really, really interesting observation of how history impacted the language and how we use it. Never thought of that before, but obviously it impacts how we THINK as well. Couldn't agree more that we need to create more positive energy in our lives. Deliberately.
Good read. Positive affirmations help as well, especially if you can repeat them so often that they start running in the back of your mind automatically.
Good connections to the origin of the language, I'd be interested to read more about that!


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Yes 10 years on Dawn Again shop is back?
It's all about décor – always something new, something old
It's all about chairs – special seating special occasions
Hire Wedding – chair covers | sashes | chiavari chairs | americana chairs | chair embellishments
Shop Home Decor
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Dawn's Deal includes 12 Americana chairs + signing table with two chairs delivered, set up, packed up, picked up & cleaned only $120 any location in Adelaide metro! **please note…
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text: Holding stocks for the long term has helped this fund outpace its peers. By Marc A. Wojno, Senior Associate Editor February 5, 2008 In the late 1990s and early 2000s, analysts at Harbor International began taking special interest in Brazil. The slumbering South American giant's economy was depressed, and its currency was cheap. By 2002, interest rates there were heading down and the Harbor team, led by manager Hakan Castegren, concluded that the country's banking system was poised for growth. So, in the summer of 2002, after years of researching Brazil, Harbor invested in Banco Bradesco, the nation's largest bank, with more than 3,000 branches and some 82,000 employes. The stock (symbol BBD) has been a winner, returning more than 50% annualized since entering Harbor's portfolio. Banco Bradesco is typical of the companies that have made Harbor International one of the top-performing overseas stock funds. It's a large, well-managed company with a solid franchise. And the stock was cheap when Harbor first bought it. What is also typical is the length of time the bank has been a Harbor holding. Castegren and team take their time researching stocks and typically hold them for seven to ten years. Advertisement This patient approach has helped Harbor produce a terrific record. Over the past five years through February 4, the institutional shares of Harbor International (HAINX) returned 26% annualized. That beat the MSCI EAFE index, a widely watched measure of foreign stock performance, by an average of five percentage points per year. Over that period, Harbor outpaced the typical fund that focuses on large, undervalued foreign companies by an average of six percentage points per year. The fund's long-term record going back to its inception, in 1987, is also first rate. Castegren, who has managed the fund from the outset, prefers to invest in countries with stable currencies, politics and economies. He then looks for companies with strong brands, growing profits and undervalued assets. Most of the fund's biggest holdings are in large, well-known names. They include energy giant Petroleo Brasileiro (PBR), commonly known as Petrobras; ABB (ABB), a Swiss maker of power transmission systems and a member of the Kiplinger Green 25; Danish drug maker Novo Nordisk (NVO) and Commerzbank (CRZBY.PK, a German financial-services company. Advertisement "We're looking for strong, stable franchises that are expected to become more profitable in the future," says Ted Wendell, a principal at Northern Cross Investments, Harbor International's sub-adviser and one of the fund's four senior analysts. The fund is making a big bet on financial stocks, which currently account for 27% of its assets. It's keen, for example, on BNP Paribas. France's biggest publicly traded bank announced on January 31 that it may offer to buy Societe Generale, the French bank that was victimized by a rogue 31-year-old trader. "BNP Paribas has a very solid franchise, and we think that it should benefit from the problems of Societe Generale," Wendell says. Harbor International has a fine long-term record, an experienced management team and a low expense ratio, just 0.85% for the institutional shares, which require a minimum investment of $50,000. The investor share class (HIINX), which charges annual fees of 1.24%, still below average, requires just $2,500 to start. Harbor International is a worthwhile choice for investors seeking exposure to large, undervalued foreign companies. Show comments


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Studio with terrace for 2 people2 People / Studio / Terrace
Good things come in small packages. This is the case of our studio with terrace for two people. With all the good things of our regular studio plus a great terrace where you will be able to sunbathe lying on our deck chairs or take a refreshing shower. Oh! And do not forget to go out to the terrace to taste a delicious diner, breakfast… or whatever you like at that moment! ¿Anything else? Of course, all the amenities of our studios: equipped kitchen, free WIFI connection, 32" flat screen TV, air conditioning, heating, safe, ironing board, common gym and a common laundry room.
We also offer nice extras like breakfast service, cleaning service, high chair, blender… You only need to ask for it.
In our studio with terrace you will enjoy the sun to the top.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Pictures of the apartments are a sample of each category. The distribution and decoration may vary depending on the final apartment number on the booking, keeping the style and services displayed here.
Our cancellation policy are the same than regular reservation sites. Ask us for extra benefits!


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Q&A: Scarlet Sails' Olya Viglione
The lovely Olya and Brian Viglione of Scarlet Sails, came to town a few weeks ago, and we had the treat of being able to see them play and have a chat. They are in the middle of their East Coast tour, but they also had their amazing debut album , Future from the Past, just come out. Olya has a voice that sounds like a thousand angels, and she just may be one of the sweetest people you will ever meet. This album is her baby, and this is what she has to say about it.
Deanna Soukiasian: How have you been since the album came out?
Olya Viglione: Since the album came out it's been great. The whole process of doing the Kickstarter was an amazing experience. I didn't expect the outcome we doubled our goal, and the amount of support that we got for this record was just incredible. When you get that much support for something, it gave me the wings to think I can do anything! Right now, we are on tour, and we just shot our second video for the song "Butterfly". The whole time [we were shooting the video] it felt like a top secret, but it's so beautiful and we did some stuff with body painting, and some crazy designer headpieces. It's going to be really cool. We are getting ready to shoot our third video, all the kickstarter supporters are going to come down to our house and shoot the video. This was one of the stretch goals too, we live in this crazy house, its five floors- an old townhouse with creative people. We are doing this party, it's going to be different eras, and people are going to be dressed up, and then we are all going to end up on the rooftop jamming out with the whole band.
DS: Is the album everything you hoped it would be and is this how you pictured it?
OV: It's that and even more. There is a reason why it's called "Future from the Past", so many reasons. First of all it's what you dreamt of and what you envision yourself being and it's in the past and now it becomes the future, which is present. And it's this loose kind of concept, and it's about the dreams that are coming true and that's the present in which you live in. So with this record it was that kind of deal. I always wanted to record with some strings and horns and different types of keyboards. So we have a saxophone player, a trumpet player, a cellist, and organ player. Everytime I write a song I hear different sounds in my head, and I rarely get to use all those pieces. And this time I was like "I'm doing it" because I want to do it right.I started the pre-production probably when we got back from our last tour with Nina Diaz. So in September I came back, and I started putting song lists together for the record, and I wanted to go big on this one, and go full out.
DS: It's so important to make work that you are happy with. I think that's why the album came out so fantastic. But how has this tour been so far? It's just the beginning isn't it?
OV: This tour is kind of short we're doing eight shows, and then we are going back on the road in July. It's like, we are a band, but we all still have day jobs and stuff like that. As soon as it's summer vacation, we are going to get back on the road and this time we are going to go to the West Coast. We have never gone, so it's really exciting. It is maybe going to be three weeks to a month.
DS: Are you guys going to just California?
OV: We are going to Seattle and Las Vegas. We have a lot of people in California who have expressed they want us to come do a West Coast tour. We have the Kickstarter backers, people on Facebook, and our mailing list-people who are enthusiastic and want to see us.
DS: I think it's also how much you guys interact with your fans, with the Kickstarter, and in general I know you guys are very connected with your fans, and that really helps a lot.
OV: Yeah, that whole experience with the Kickstarter, for us it was like, who knows if it's going to be good or not.
DS: It's always a risk with crowdfunding and fundraising in general.
OV: We hadn't done crowdfunding before, and we heard it could be really questionable. But as soon as we started, it was such a cool experience, everyone was stoked.
DS: What else do you want people to know about this album?
OV: Some of the song that ended up on the album are as old as my first years in New York, in like 2011-12. Some of them are as new as 2016. There is a little bit of everything and it paints my journey, from coming to America and establishing here, and going through different crazy stuff. So, this is a very personal record for me because it's all the songs and heartbreak, and stress. And these seven years have been the most exciting and risky, and I am excited to share all those stories with the world, and I hope it resonates with people.
Make sure you go listen to Future from the Past, AND make sure to check out a special appearance by yours truly in their new music video, shooting this weekend!


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VoIP provider Toktumi has a solution that may work out well for you. They're now selling an app called Line2 (US$0.99) that mimics many of the capabilities of the standard Phone app, complete with a form of visual voice mail. Purchasing the app provides you with one month of free VoIP service. After that point, each month's continued service costs $14.95 for unlimited calls within the US and Canada. The service is purchased in-app, and was a point of confusion for me -- the app listing in the iTunes store shows a "Top In App Purchase" at a cost of $19.99 for a month. Toktumi's website and the promotional video (above) do show the lower monthly rate.
While many VoIP solutions require a Wi-Fi connection to work, Line2 works over both 3G and Wi-Fi. The app has many of the features you might want in a business phone, including call waiting and call transfer, the ability to create conference calls with up to 20 participants, and even integration with Toktumi's hosted PBX service.
For small businesses that want to present a more professional image to callers, Line2 might be just the right solution. Toktumi notes that the app also works with both the iPod touch (Wi-Fi only) and iPad (Wi-Fi or 3G).


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Our story
Sky DPC wires is a Aluminium DPC(Double Paper Coating) wire manufacturing company incepted in Davangere, Karnataka. Geographically Davangere is located exactly center in the state of Karnataka, in southern part of India, where it is well connected by rails and national highways(NH 4) for transportation.
Sky DPC wires company is offering wide range of products, as a reliable Manufacturer and Supplier, The company is considered as the major manufacturer and supplier of DPC Aluminium Wires, Paper Covered Aluminium Strips, Bare aluminium wires and rods and Slitted Insulating Kraft Paper. We are using the latest technology for manufacture our products. Our products are widely acknowledged and used in distribution transformers and power transformers. We are also offering job work service where buyer can provide bare aluminium rod and Kraft paper and get DPC wire done according to their requirement.
The company has a superior infrastructure with highly advanced manufacturing unit. The unit includes very high capacity bull block, wire and strip drawing machines, fully automated kraft paper slitting machine, Annealing chamber and DPC (Paper covering) machines for wire and strip with latest Japanese technology. The company has got very good packaging unit of the finished products. The company has very reliable, experienced and highly dedicated employees who are working in the industry from long time.
Quality Assertion
Sky DPC wires is solely committed provide the best quality DPC wire in the market. Company will take each and every step to maintain the desired quality right from raw materials procurement to the production and packing. The raw material(EC grade Aluminium) has bought from reliable vendors like HINDALCO and NALCO. During production, testing is done at each stage by the quality team by considering the following parameters, namely, Diameter(gauge) measurement, annealing process checking, tensile strength, double paper covering and packing.
Company has various clients, some of the main clients are as mentioned below.


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The Stroke Association
Stroke Information Service
The Stroke Association
240 City Road
Tel: 0845 3033 100
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
www: http://www.stroke.org.uk/
Sub-category: Charities & Voluntary Sector
Each year over 130,000 people in England and Wales have a stroke. Of all people who suffer from a stroke, about a third are likely to die within the first 10 days, about a third are likely to make a recovery within one month and about a third are likely to be left disabled and needing rehabilitation. Stroke has a greater disability impact than any other medical condition. A quarter of a million people are living with long-term disability as a result of stroke in the UK.
The Stroke Association is the only national charity solely concerned with combating stroke in people of all ages. It funds research into prevention, treatment and better methods of rehabilitation, and helps stroke patients and their families directly through its community services. These include dysphasia support, family support, information services and welfare grants. We also campaign, educate and inform to increase knowledge of stroke at all levels of society, and we act as a voice for everyone affected by stroke.


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Delphic Dalliances
Delphic Dalliances
Essay by Dore Ashton, 2006
Wherever I look in Posen's oeuvre, I see him elaborately maneuvering between bounded and unbounded. The challenge of the eternal rectangle, the sheet of paper, incites him to mutiny. But that is only half of the story. He, like so many before him, takes himself in hand (literally) and peoples the blankness with forms.
"A sheet of paper so shocks me," wrote Odilon Redon on August 16, 1898, "that as soon as it is on the easel I am forced to scrawl on it with charcoal or pencil or anything else…" To which he added that all this was in the interest of "putting the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible." More than two decades later, in 1920, Paul Klee delivered his "Creative Credo" declaring: "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible." It seems to me that Posen is a worthy heir of this great modern tradition in which the not seen - the surges of feeling, the flush of motion, the dialogue of opposing impulses - is brought to the surface declaring new situations, new perceptions (if we think of perceptions as summaries of countless sense experiences) and, of course, images.
Everyone who ever took a stick of charcoal to paper knows that a single stroke can activate myriad spaces. Often the great old masters - I think of Rembrandt with his reed pen - would, with a flourish, draw a line that denoted nothing, but galvanized the delimited space of his paper into a panoply of spaces. And he, as Posen points out, often complicated his task by drawing that inner frame to push against, just as Posen invariably does in his recent drawings.
The virtue of the inner frame is to unframe. Paradox, so dear to Posen's heart. It is the restriction against which he can transgress. But there is also a very reasonable thought here. Formal constraint has its uses for the impulsive artist. I have always liked Baudelaire's letter to his friend Fraisse defending the traditional sonnet form:
Have you noticed that a morsel of sky seen through a cellar window, or between two chimneys or two rocks, or through an arcade, etc., gives a more profound idea of the infinite than a grand panorama seen from the height of a mountain?
--letter to Fraisse, 18 Feb. 1860
Would the upward swirl and the sense of different climates of feeling be nearly so moving in Nights of Cabiria without that inward frame? In this drawing, and in so many others of recent vintage, Posen knowingly draws on the rich vocabulary developed by draftsmen over the centuries. One could call it a lexicon of techniques, if the word technique had not been so debased. Techne isn't so bad, after all, in the service of the imagination. Here, then, Posen revives certain lessons, such as the art of stumping when using charcoal. The wise use of a stumping instrument on the edge of a charcoal line can create auxiliary form, or form itself. (And to go back to Baudelaire, he pointed out that form is not made of molecules.) Then, wittily, Posen resurrects the classical technique for suggesting mass: the cross-hatch. In this instance, the lattice is given heightened transparency by means of color, but we can still read it as yet another means in the arsenal of techniques developed over the centuries.
No illuminator working on the Book of Kells could take more delight than Posen in the flourishing overflow of asides on the inner frame. Such pleasures are taken by means that range from the strident to the most subtle, as in Blowing Bubbles. Here Posen works in a relatively restrained tonal range, drawing upon the natural properties of his instruments. Pencil is silvery. Charcoal is dusky. Stumped areas are filmy. Pastel, used sparingly here, always pure and riding above, and, above all, issuing completely out into the atmosphere into which it dissolves at the very top.
Although the old ways of perspective of Alberti or Piero della Francesca are usually flouted by modern artists, they are not completely forgotten by the knowing hand. Posen proposes recessions in Piranesi, steplike, or, recalling his own earlier adventures with the fascination of folded or flowing cloths. The peculiarities of his very personal stitched line - the charcoal that bounces along in a beaded progression, not unlike certain of Max Ernst's frottages - leads the eye deceptively into depth. Above, the bit of rectangular solidity is almost like a key signature, as through the cascading forms below are, after all, illusory right down to the ornamental arabesque below. Posen is a painter. Color is a painter's means. And color, as everyone knows, heightens pleasure. When Posen is drawing it is apparent that the color of his papers, the touches of color in otherwise tonal approaches, enhances his own experience. Gives him pleasure. Nowhere is his love of the excitement of pure pigment more apparent than in Apple Tree. He is thoroughly aware of the properties of chroma. After all, he was a student at Yale during the Albers years. Nothing is more drenched than a brilliant crimson in the arabesquing lines of this drawing. Pastel, of all the draftsman's means, is the purest: Pure pigment with very little corrupting binder. Posen joyously proclaims its splendor here. Of course, he chooses his papers, in this case a deepish green, with great care. Mostly they are tinted rather than fully colored, and serve as neutral elements in the movemented drawings. He has often said that he is interested in opposites. In the language of color they become contrasts. In this drawing he wields his knowledge of contrasts to great effect and, in terms of tradition, knows, as did Delacroix, the vibrational energy of a red against a green. These brilliant color lines become activities of nature, never at rest.
While Posen's curvilinear activities often suggest human presences, they also allude to the animal universe. He is the possessor of a magnificent giant poodle, a great benign presence in his studio quite unlike Faust's. Posen has had a long concourse with animals, going back to his fondness for Mickey Mouse. Animals seem to accent his quite idiosyncratic humor, his penchant for slapstick, for the whinnying laughter of cartoons. I can hear it in the fine drawing, Best in Show, with its dogbone shape amongst pearly teeth, and the pink tongue curling forward. I hear it also in the fine sequence of rhyming shapes in Greyhounds, a kind of metamorphosis of shapes sailing into infinity. But Posen's allusion to the animal kingdom is not always benign. There is no laughter echoing in the dramatic drawing Hawk Mountain. There is, instead, menace in the hawk's heavily scumbled presence hovering over the topographic mountain trails (isolated, as is rare in his work, by the use of two differently tinted papers). The story, which Posen is never reluctant to invent, hovers also. While the eye can follow the paths Posen so often adumbrates, the imagination can only hope to grasp the many elements of Posen's stories. I'm quite sure Posen tells himself stories as he allows his instrument to wander, to inflect, to press hard on or graze over the surface. But I'm never quite sure what these secret chuckles of the artist mean. That is part of the allure of his often enigmatic drawings. Take, for instance, Dalliance II: The two emphatically drawn columns at right and left spring to the eye with alacrity. Only on second glance does the eye discern the artist up to his old tricks-that wobbling central form so reminiscent of the cartoonist's hilarity: above all, the scribbled shape of a Minnie Mouse foot. It clearly gives Posen a kick to use the mixed metaphor in order to confound the viewer (or more likely, himself.)
The kind of galumphing humor in many of the drawings is often, I believe, the by-product of a particular tool, most particularly of charcoal that offers so many freedoms. I've noticed that many artists love the motility of tone available in charcoal and often play to the point of caricature with its properties. Think only of Willem de Kooning's many bagatelles in charcoal, most particularly on the characteristics of women. Posen's dalliances I see in the same spirit.
And just in case the drawing does not induce enough contrariety, Posen often gives titles taken from popular sources, such as cartoons or songs, that, like the events configured in the drawing, work by contrast. What, you may ask, does Steam Boat Willy, or Bo-Peep, or Kong, have to do with this drawing? The answer lies once again in space. The distance between the written allusion and the depicted formal characters in the composition is yet another space.
Posen has spoken of "the ability and imagination to translate marks into symbols." These drawings bespeak Posen's dual gifts - ability and imagination - resoundingly.


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Welcome Home was founded in Ann Arbor, MI in 1993, and since then we have been making the lives of area residents easier!
Long before the big franchises existed, Welcome Home was founded to provide a high quality service for home owners. We don't take a "cookie cutter" approach to house cleaning. We learn what you want and then concentrate on delivering the highest quality service tailored to your specific needs.
When you choose Welcome Home to a Clean House, you're not just a customer, you become part of our community and assuring YOUR satisfaction is our top priority!
You can trust Welcome Home!


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The Clay Area Chamber of Commerce is an action agency
designed to meet community needs. It is a voluntary
non-profit organization comprised of
area business, professionals, and individuals who have
banded together to advance the commercial, financial,
civic, agricultural, commercial, and general interests
of the community.
The Chamber exists to provide it's members timely information
about community, county, and state issues that affect
the business community. By educating and sharing information,
the business community will grow stronger as will the
City of Clay and the surrounding areas.


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Internet of Everything and Machine Intelligence
Let's start on a light note. For a brief period of time, the Internet of Things became associated with the fridge that orders milk by itself. This retro-futurist icon is a great example of a common tendency for extremely disruptive technological waves to first enter the public realm in the form of low impact nice-to-have use cases (personal computers and robotics suffered the same fate at first). Besides being amusing, these are also instructive. The small-mindedness of a fridge that has a direct line to the supermarket is a great way to make a really important point: the value of the Internet of Everything (IoE), ultimately, is about the network, not the individual connections.
The IoE will treat the home as a living system of devices; the manufacturing sector as a society of robots and sensors; the retail sector as a never-ending multi-channel interaction; and the city as a hive of homes, retail outlets, factories, utilities and infrastructure. Accordingly, its disruptive nature will not primarily lie in the time-saving effect of automating simple tasks but rather feeding from, and feeding back into, intricate economies of network and of scale. The IoE will manifest itself in enabling previously unthinkable efficiencies and capabilities.
We are nearly there. Ubiquitous sensing, connectivity and processing are enabling continual data capture and exchange in a rapidly increasing variety of physical settings. These mini-nervous systems are still islands – the home, the hospital, the school, the manufacturing plant – but soon they will be subnets of an emerging interconnected network of the physical and industrial world. This is how it starts. But the end goal, invariably, is not just to sense, but to make sense of, to understand, to predict, to control. This is a superhuman task when faced with a sea of machine chatter. Machine nervous systems require machine minds.
Luckily, we can now build those. The last few years have seen a cascade of Machine Intelligence victories, reaching milestone after milestone: vision, translation, medical diagnosis. The list of tasks where machines now routinely outperform humans is growing at an unprecedented rate. All things considered, we don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the first half of the 21st century will be remembered for the convergence of two of the most disruptive technological waves in human history: the IoE, and Machine Intelligence. As machines become able to comprehend sensory input of various types and impossibly high dimensions, plugging them into a vast nervous system will mark a turning point in technological history. Machine Intelligence is the value driver that can turn continual streams of data into actionable insights.
A new paradigm is needed to address the challenges and opportunities of this new era of increasing data velocity and variety. We need machine intelligence designed to deal with data in motion. Data in motion will dominate the sea of data generated by the IoE. And the ability to efficiently process, analyze and produce actionable insights from streaming data in ways that can be consumed efficiently by humans will be paramount to bringing the vision to fruition. Real-life processes change over time and designing systems with adaptability and scalability as core principles is paramount. Business intelligence can yield a lot of insights, but we truly need to be able to deploy at scale the full arsenal of machine learning capability in order to leverage the wealth of structured and unstructured data generated by the IoE.
Mentat Innovations feels privileged to be able to collaborate with Cisco to deliver the vision of a connected, intelligent IoE to the world. We can now finally imagine a shift from diagnostics to prognostics in manufacturing plants, smart electricity grids and intelligent retail solutions. We can imagine a connected healthcare system offering early warnings for life-threatening conditions without additional burden on overworked doctors. Use case by use case, across all verticals, a bigger picture is emerging, of a new economy where ambient machine intelligence empowers humanity to build a better future. This starts now.
In an effort to keep conversations fresh, Cisco Blogs closes comments after 60 days. Please visit the Cisco Blogs hub page for the latest content.
2 Comments
Christoforos Anagnostopoulos
@Kinnon thank you for your thought-provoking comment. Indeed the question "can AI be controlled?" is a much better question to ask than "can AI agents become conscious?". Perhaps not quite to the point of being "sentient", machines might very well develop "minds of their own", in the sense of autonomously pursuing their own self-interest beyond our direct control. It is also instructive to keep in mind that even relatively simple animals can be incredibly resourceful and display complex adaptive behaviour driven by learning and evolutionary mechanisms, without being "conscious".
A far more perceptive article than most on the subject. The author clearly sensing the wider implications of Internet evolution.
For, By relinquishing our usual parochial approach to this issue in favor of the overall evolutionary "big picture" provided by many fields of science. the emergence of a new predominant cognitive entity (from the Internet, rather than individual machines) is seen to be not only feasible but inevitable.
The separate issue of whether it well be malignant, neutral or benign towards we snoutless apes is less certain, and this particular aspect I have explored elsewhere.
Stephen Hawking, for instance, is reported to have recently remarked "Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all,"
This statement reflects the narrow-minded approach that is so common-place among those who make public comment on this issue. In reality, as much as it may offend our human conceits, the march of technology and its latest spearhead, the Internet is, and always has been, an autonomous process over which we have very little real control.
Seemingly unrelated disciplines such as geology, biology and "big history" actually have much to tell us about the machinery of nature (of which technology is necessarily a part) and the kind of outcome that is to be expected from the evolution of the Internet.
This much broader "systems analysis" approach, freed from the anthropocentric notions usually promoted by the cult of the "Singularity", provides a more objective vision that is consistent with the pattern of autonomous evolution of technology that is so evident today.
Very real evidence indicates the rather imminent implementation of the next, (non-biological) phase of the on-going evolutionary "life" process from what we at present call the Internet. It is effectively evolving by a process of self-assembly.
The "Internet of Things" is proceeding apace and pervading all aspects of our lives. We are increasingly, in a sense, "enslaved" by our PCs, mobile phones, their apps and many other trappings of the increasingly cloudy net.
We are already largely dependent upon it for our commerce and industry and there is no turning back. What we perceive as a tool is well on its way to becoming an agent.
There are at present an estimated 2 Billion Internet users. There are an estimated 13 Billion neurons in the human brain. On this basis for approximation the Internet is even now only one order of magnitude below the human brain and its growth is exponential.
That is a simplification, of course. For example: Not all users have their own computer. So perhaps we could reduce that, say, tenfold. The number of switching units, transistors, if you wish, contained by all the computers connecting to the Internet and which are more analogous to individual neurons is many orders of magnitude greater than 2 Billion. Then again, this is compensated for to some extent by the fact that neurons do not appear to be binary switching devices but instead can adopt multiple states.
Without even crunching the numbers, we see that we must take seriously the possibility that even the present Internet may well be comparable to a human brain in processing power.
And, of course, the degree of interconnection and cross-linking of networks within networks is also growing rapidly.
The emergence of a new and predominant cognitive entity that is a logical consequence of the evolutionary continuum that can be traced back at least as far as the formation of the chemical elements in stars.
This is the main theme of my latest book "The Intricacy Generator: Pushing Chemistry and Geometry Uphill" which is now available as a 336 page illustrated paperback from Amazon, etc .


text: Big Freedia Releases New Set of Twerk-tastic Emojis March 2, 2017bigced 0 Big Freedia Releases New Set of Twerk-tastic Emojis in Partnership With Emoji Fame The Queen of Bounce Releases a Set of Over 60 Wild Emojis, Springing Up (And Down, And Up, And Down) Into Your Texts With An Incredible Set Of Booties The Emojis: New Orleans Queen of Bounce, Big Freedia, has teamed up with Emoji Fame to introduce her own line of custom emojis for the iPhone. Premiered by BUST Magazine, the package of 64 stickers features bouncing booties, trademark Big Freedia sayings, and the electric Queen Diva herself. "We're proud to say that The Queen of Bounce now has a set of emojis worthy of her title," says Gavin Rhodes, co-founder of Emoji Fame. Get hyped for this vivacious set of booty-licious emojis, featuring everything from magnetic twerking gifs to Big Freedia's hilariously exaggerated expressions. Also, stay tuned to Big Freedia's socials, as she will be giving away free download coupons to select fans on Facebook this week. In the meantime, she is currently filming Season 6 of her reality TV show, 'Big Freedia Bounces Back' (formerly 'Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce') on FuseTV and is readying her next EP. Download the Big Freedia emojis here. The Background: Emoji Fame makes custom emojis from your favorite musicians, celebrities and brands. Emoji Fame has been featured in Complex, Billboard, Noisey, NME, Guitar Player, The Albuquerque Journal, The Houston Chronicle, SF Weekly, and Bill Simmon's The Ringer. Unlike other apps, Emoji Fame's are officially licensed by the artists, which means fans' in-app purchases help them continue making the art that you love. Recent sets include the almighty hip-hop titans, Cypress Hill, Grammy-winning reggae star, Ziggy Marley, controversial punk icon, GG Allin, Legendary new-wave act, Devo, Black Label Society guitar god, Zakk Wylde, and Philadelphia shoegazers, NOTHING, among many others. Emoji Fame is the ONLY officially licensed emoji app that allows fans to message friends with custom emojis, text, and iOS emojis in the same message. Their clever custom keyboard allows fans to communicate with custom emojis in the way that emojis were meant to be used- as part of their everyday texts and emails. Links: Emoji Fame: bigfreedia.emojifame.com apps.emojifame.com emojifame.com twitter.com/emojifame instagram.com/emoji.fame facebook.com/emojifameBig Freedia: http://www.bigfreedia.com/ https://www.facebook.com/bigfreediadiva https://twitter.com/bigfreedia https://www.instagram.com/bigfreedia/ https://soundcloud.com/bigfreedia Share this:TweetShare on TumblrEmailLike this:Like Loading... Related


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Myth Buster: No jail time for uninsured
While it's true there are penalties for those who choose not to get insurance, that penalty is 2.5% of one's income and the penalties will be collected by the IRS. Jail time is not likely. In fact criminal prosecutions by the IRS are rare. Of 156 million individual tax returns filed in 2008, only 100 resulted in criminal prosecutions for those who willfully defrauded the system. The penalty will only impact those who are wealthy enough to pay for insurance and choose not to pay. The intent is that this penalty will be used to pay for the medical needs of those who choose not to get insurance.
The fact of the matter is that right now the uninsured are costing every American $1,017 in insurance premiums to cover the medical expenses of the uninsured. That's $42.7 billion this year. Under the House Affordable Health Care for America Act, Americans will be responsible for purchasing health insurance coverage and most employers will be responsible for offering coverage. Individuals, employers and the government will all be contributing to the system to be sure every American has health coverage.
Most Americans will find health insurance more affordable:
- Starting in 2013, there will be a sliding scale of affordability credits for individuals and families up to 400% of the poverty level. These credits will phase out at earnings levels of $43,320 for single people and $88,200 for a family of four based on the 2009 poverty levels.
- The sliding-scale credits limit individual family spending on premiums for the essential benefit package to no more than 1.5% of income for those in the lowest income and phasing up to no more than 12% of income for those at 400% of poverty level. So the most an individual earning $43,320 could pay for insurance annually is about $5,200 and insurance for a family of four would max out at $10,584.
- The essential benefits package caps total out-of-pocket spending to prevent bankruptcy by limiting exposure to catastrophic costs. Total out-of-pocket expenses cannot exceed $5,000 for an individual or $10,000 for a family. For lower-income households the out-of-pocket cap ranges from $500 for an individual and $1,000 for a family.
- Medicaid eligibility will start at 150% of the poverty level ($16,245 for an individual in 2009).
Businesses with payrolls over $500,000 will pay a penalty of 2% if they do not provide health insurance which will be used toward the government insurance exchange so their employees can purchase health insurance. The penalty rises to 8% for companies with annual payrolls over $750,000. Many small businesses will be eligible for a tax credit for health insurance offered to their workers.
So don't listen to the scare tactics. You won't be going to jail if you don't buy health insurance, but the IRS may try to collect a 2.5% penalty. That's $2,500 on a $100,000 taxable income.
Lita Epstein has written more than 25 books including Working After Retirement for Dummies.


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18 Sep 2018
Laura Anderson wore a shimmery black mesh dress to the Julien Macdonald show.
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Goddess Wisdom
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|Biographies| |Profiles| |Links|
S&S Information: Biographies
Tiffany and Johnnie Stiegler were both born in Santa Monica, California, Johnnie in 1982 and Tiffany in 1984. Their older sister Stephanie was a skater, so the two children began their careers early. Each began skating for the first time at the age of two.
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Show Summary
After a long career in banking, and after seeing the destruction of the community and small banking industry…Larry Muck now leads the Association of Private Lenders, an Association aimed at bringing education, ethics and structure to the fragmented private lending industry. Private real estate lenders are the salt of the earth – putting up their own money and taking all risk…with no chance of a 'bail out'. These men and women are provding deal flow and enabling deals that may not otherwise occur, in a space that is completely dependent upon capital, and a space that is all to often, completely misunderstood.
Highlights of this show
- Meet Larry Muck, and learn more about the American Association of Private Lenders.
- Join the disucssion amount the deteriation of the community banking industry, and how it's created opportunities for private lenders.
- Listen in on the discussion about how private real estate lenders and investors are improving communities, the economy and making a difference.
Resources and Links from this show:
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
FlipNerd Show Transcript:
Mike: Welcome to the FlipNerd.com podcast. This is your host, Mike Hambright, and on this show, I will introduce you to VIPs in the real estate investing industry as well as other interesting entrepreneurs whose stories and experiences can help you take your business to the next level. We have three new shows each week, which are available in the iTunes store, or by visiting FlipNerd.com. So without further ado, let's get started.
Hey, this is Mike Hambright with the FlipNerd VIP Show. Welcome back for another exciting episode. Today I have with me Larry Muck, who's the chairman of the American Association of Private Lenders, which is a private lending association that promotes education and ethics in private lending. Larry's got a lot of insights on how to raise money, how to get money, how to be a private lender, and how to work a private lender. So we're going to talk about a lot of that in just a moment. Before we get started, let's take a second to recognize our featured sponsors.
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We'd also like to thank National Real Estate Insurance Group, the nation's leading provider of insurance to the residential real estate investor market. From individual properties to large scale investors, National Real Estate Insurance Group is ready to serve you.
Please note, the views and opinions expressed by the individuals in this program do not necessarily reflect those of FlipNerd.com or any of its partners, advertisers or affiliates. Please consult professionals before making any investment or tax decisions as real estate investing can be risky.
Hey Larry, thanks for being on the show.
Larry: Glad to be here, Mike. I get to go to California tomorrow, and I was in California last week, but as you can tell I'm in Kansas City and it's rather cool here.
Mike: Yeah it'll be nice to get away from the cold for a little while, I guess.
Larry: Yeah, it's supposed to be 80 in LA, so yeah.
Mike: That'll be nice.
Larry: Yeah, looking forward to it.
Mike: Great, great. Well, why don't you introduce yourself, Larry?
Tell us a little bit about your background, and then maybe we can talk a little bit about your association.
Larry: Well, let's see. I was born nine pounds, 11 ounces. I was a big baby, still am. I spent 30 years in banking. I got my graduate degree from the University of Kansas, go Hawks. Then went on and spent 30 years in banking. And I spent most my time in a community bank, and I was with a large regional company for a lot of that time, then went to work for an even larger regional company. I was in banking at the time when lenders could actually make decisions.
Mike: Right.
Larry: We used to say in our community of about 100,000 that we made the loans that made sense. Well, I became very disgusted, honestly, with banking towards the end of my career, and probably vice-versa. I decided I needed to go out and find something else to do. I'd been president of a bank. I met my personal challenges in life and just wanted to go off and do something else.
So I got attached to the National Real-Estate Insurance Group, which insures investor-owned property nationwide, as you know. They had been a vendor supporter of AAPL for a number of years, AAPL is about five or six years old. They had thought that, given the burgeoning opportunities that were available in the market, as you know, through being an investor yourself and a flipper, rehabber, whatever, we became convinced that the association itself needed to grow, because there were many people that were getting back into private lending.
So we decided to get involved and offer administrative support, and next thing we know we were running the association. We have been involved with it now for about 18 months and have seen tremendous growth in the association and interest in what we're doing. It's been a good ride so far.
Mike: Good. And can you talk a little bit about what your constituency is? Who does the association serve? Is it hard-money lenders?
Is it all hard-money lenders?
Larry: Well, you know we have primarily hard-money lenders. Of course, Mike, we like to call it peer-to-peer lending. Because community banking is on its death bed, and because those banks are no longer making the loans that need to be made to rebuild the communities and rebuild the housing stock in the companies, that's one of the reasons why we've seen this growth.
Typically, our member is involved in lending to rehabbers, to flippers. We have some notes people in our space. They range in size from pocket lenders to private equity fund managers. Our members range in capital deploy from $1,000,000 up to $250,000,000. That's the range that we have in our membership.
Mike: Okay. Talk a little bit about the association, like what the intention is. What's the primary role that you play with bringing lenders together? And obviously, in the whole real-estate investing space, and lenders are no exception, it's an extremely fragmented group of people. I think associations, generally speaking, are fantastic to pull people together to educate and otherwise. But talk a little bit about your association specifically and what your charter is.
Larry: We were formed by a group of four individuals that had seen some really bad practices in private lending. One of them in particular had been an auditor of loan frauds. Their idea was to build a national brand around people that cared about ethics in the business. As you know, our space is largely… it's not unregulated. We of course have to comply with all state and federal lending regulations. But in the main, it's a group that doesn't have a huge amount of oversight. And we'd like to keep it that way. The way we keep it that way is by promoting good actors in this space, and leaving bad actors behind.
Our primary goals in the association are to lift the standards of private lenders and to engage with those that will operate within those standards. One of the tenants of our membership is that you have to enter into transactions with the understanding that you expect both parties to win, or all parties to win. We discourage predatory lending practices. Although, predatory lending is a little hard to define. What is one man's idea of supplying capital into a need is another person's…well, he expects to take the property back and profit from that. It's really a fine line. Really, through raising that AAPL brand awareness, we want to be able to provide quality lending experiences for the people, you know, the FlipNerds. We want them to succeed. We want to partner with people across the country and we want to be able to provide capital through our network of lenders to your constituent base.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, for a lot of folks that are listening, if they're veterans, they understand the power of working with somebody with private money, and how much easier that can be. I use money from banks, and I use money from private lenders, but I'm an entrepreneur at heart, we won't get into the political side of things, but what better way to dig America out than people using their own money and making their own decisions, rather than having to rely on essentially branches of the federal government, which we now call large banks. So that's great.
How do you do that? Can you talk a little bit about… Go ahead.
Larry: I'm sorry, I felt my soap box slip up under my feet.
Mike: I was standing on it. I'm sorry.
Larry: Thanks. I'd like to get it back, please.
The FDIC and other regulatory bodies want nothing more than to consolidate banks into cookie-cutter decision-making troughs, because they don't have to have to continue to fight what used to be 14,000 banks but is now down to 7,000. We expect that number to continue to shrink. So when you say you support entrepreneurship, I've got to tell you, entrepreneurship is what's going to save our neighborhoods and our country. I firmly believe that. And I'm going to get down off of that box. But I have to tell you, that your listeners, the people that engage with you, they are the salt of the earth. They're out there, for profit obviously, let's do this to make money, but they're out there rebuilding communities.
Mike: Absolutely. There's no doubt about it. Talk a little bit about how you spread your message through your association. I know you have some national events, some annual events, but on an on-going basis, talk a little bit about the training and support you provide your constituents.
Larry: We do have some networking events, and that's frankly a lot of the reason why people get together with us. So that they can share deals. We want to facilitate that process of sharing deals through our website and through our certification and accreditation processes. We have several different levels of accreditation that our members can reach, and we're in the process of developing another level, a little bit higher level. We have certified private lenders where people have to go through some coursework and then pass a test to be able to achieve the CPLA designation.
We have also, this past year, we've been working with brokers . We've developed a certified brokers associate program to teach people that want to supply deals into private lenders how to present them properly, and how to get the best results for what they are trying to achieve. So we want to bring deal sponsors into the mix with the private lenders, and that's one of the things that we do.
We do have, as I mentioned to you, we have an event coming up at the end of April that's a combined event between American Association of Private Lenders and our national association that houses all of our insurance clients, long story there, but the Professional Real Estate Investors and Managers Alliance. So AAPL and PREIMA, as it's known here, having an event at the end of April to provide education to both lenders and spenders. And we'll have a little KC barbecue there. Your listeners, your viewers can go to www.AAPL-PREIMA.com to engage with us in that event.
Mike: Awesome, we'll have a link below the video for that. So, in terms of some of the certifications, what's the intention? Obviously the intention is to create some consistency and practices and ethics and things like that. My real question was, can you talk a little bit about your membership and their willingness or interest in being certified in something that they previously weren't before? Can you talk a little bit about the value they would see in a certification like that?
Larry: Sure. Let me give an example, we work with a company by the name of Wealth Classes, and they are our only private lending training company that we're in bed with. Wealth Classes is training private lenders. You can get trained as a private lender, you can raise your flag up and say, "I am a private lender," but until you are accredited by some third-
party, it's difficult to distinguish yourself to the marketplace. So, frankly, the people that we have are interested in doing it because it helps them brand themselves as somebody that actually subscribes to the ethics and the standards that we're trying to set within the industry.
The other thing is, that we want to, and have, some effort to do more in terms of getting on Capitol Hill, to get into legislative commentary. We want to be able to help people understand the nature of what we do. I will tell you that private lenders have done a lot of owner finance on properties, but that has become much more difficult with the Dodd Frank Act and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. When they were putting that legislation together, they didn't even know, they've told us, they did not know that private lending existed.
So that law was crafted to smack down all of the big banks and develop some standards where they wouldn't be doing liar loans anymore, or robo signing, But it had an unintended effect, and has eliminated a great percentage of the market that would like to own a home, that really should qualify, but given the strict rules, do not anymore. So that's had an effect, not only on home ownership, but as you know, rentals are [inaudible 0:16:37] rents are raising in many markets. We're becoming more of a rental society. There are a number of factors for that. One is lack of availability in credit for home ownership.
Mike: Right, right. Why don't you tell us a little bit about how regulation is changing, and where you see things going from here? It appears to be continually worse for real estate investors and private lenders, and citizens of the country, but talk a little bit about where you think regulation is going and the context of lending and real estate investing and things like that.
Larry: It depends upon the jurisdiction that you're in. of course, a lot of lending is dictated by state law. We continue to see states like California continue to enact additional restrictions on lending. One of the recent things they came out with in the last year or so was anybody that's doing more than $100,000 in modifications to a house, that loan as to be pre-funded and held in escrow. And that's not good for the lenders, but for the borrowers it's good to know that that money has been set aside and that it'll be available to them when they actually need to draw it for their construction process.
Regulation is a living, breathing animal, it's got to feed. It feeds on it's young, it grows. We're never going to see… well we may see a few retractions in laws. Right now, people just continue, our lenders just continue to stay educated and work hard to be in compliance, and really that's the only way they can be successful in their business.
I will say this, that the California Mortgage Association, the CMA, which is really just a group of private lenders, they do a good job of quarterly meetings that have great education. We actually love and support what they do. We wouldn't aspire to be similar in having eventually regional groups and talking more specifically about state laws and compliances that relate to different states within a company. It's just a matter of time. I know that you've got 24 hours in a day, and you probably work about 22 of them, so that's where we are. More like 20. There's a lot of opportunity, but there's a lot to be done, right?
Mike: Yeah. So, can you talk a little bit about your membership overall? Obviously with the real-estate market roaring back here recently, I assume that you're seeing similar increases in your membership and the private lending community. Are you guys seeing some significant growth right now?
Larry: Yeah we have. We've been, for example you can take our conference, our annual conference that three conferences ago had about 60 or 70 people there, then we raised it, when we got involved, to 150 the next year. Then this past November we had 300 people there. Our membership continues to grow. We would expect it to continue to grow significantly because we're actually out there and people can find us now.
We have a great website that our members can develop good profiles on and they can actually use as marketing tools for the individual lending practices. It's our goal to be able to capture as much of this space as possible. We are working again with Wealth Classes on developing a deal now where [inaudible 0:21:00]. We'll be rolling that out to all of the participants very soon.
Mike: And those are individual houses?
Larry: Well the deal network…We want to be able to find investors that need capital. We want them to come through our investors to get that capital. We're working on crowd funding platform that wouldn't really be available to the public anytime soon, but we are going to be able to place sponsored deals on there to be funded by other members of the community. We're hoping to integrate the Wealth Classes community with the American Association of Private Lenders community, which gives us somewhere around 600 people that are involved with lending nationally overall.
If it sounds like I'm selling the training at Wealth Classes, here's what I know. I know there's a lot of very professional people there that are successfully getting involved in private lending. Software engineers, architects, other people like that that are actually being able to be trained for private lending. It's a great service and it's a great community.
Mike: So those classes, are they primarily online? Or are those in-
person type classes?
Larry Much: They're all in person. Everything they do is in a group, it's in a community. As a matter of fact, they're having their platinum event starting tomorrow, I'm going to for that. I'm actually going to go through their training Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and I've been in banking for 30 years, so. I'm looking forward to it.
Mike: Yeah, that's fantastic. Awesome. Well, so Larry tell us again how folks learn more about the association. You kind of want to walk through how folks can find them or how to find these various websites?
Larry: Sure. We have www.AAPLonline.com and that's our primary website. Our association that's a sister organization to AAPL is called the Professional Real-Estate Investors and Managers Alliance, and that's www.PREIMAonline.com. You know, we have national magazine that we've launched that's called Community Investor. It's a great tool and a great magazine, and people can subscribe to that for free. It's better than the cost would indicate. It's a good tool. That's at www.CommunityInvestorMedia.com. We have many more assets, and you can ask me about RentFax someday and how we're doing location risk index, and rental projections and ROI projections for people, based on an algorithm that boils down 300 data points, but that's for another day.
Mike: All right, need more time for that.
Larry: Yeah, no kidding.
Mike: Awesome. Well then tell us again about the event that's coming up in April for folks that want to find out more.
Larry: Sure. They can go to www.AAPL-PREIMA.com and they can find out about our… it's at the end of April, it's lenders and spenders and Kansas City barbecue. It'll be at the Kansas City Convention Center. If people haven't been to Kansas City, they need to come, it's a great town. And these are awesome facilities.
Mike: Especially at the end of April. That's a good time to come.
Larry: Yeah, it really is. We promise not to have any tornados or anything. That is the Midwest though. And you know about those, right?
Mike: Yeah, yeah. Awesome.
Larry: Sorry.
Mike: That's okay. Well hey Larry, thanks so much for your time today. I appreciate you joining us.
Larry: Mike, I really appreciate the opportunity to be on the show with you.
Mike: Absolutely. And we'll have links to everything down below for all the various websites so folks can track you down one way or another.
Larry: I appreciate that. Alright man.
Mike: Thanks so much for joining us today.
Larry: Okay, thanks Mike.
Mike: All right, bye bye.
Thanks for joining us on today's FlipNerd.com podcast. To listen to more of our shows and hear from incredible guests, please access all our of podcasts in the iTunes store. You can also watch the video versions of our shows by visiting us at FlipNerd.com.