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Here's a simplified desktop or large-screen layout. It's fairly conventional and has a large banner image ( a figure element with a caption) at the top followed by several smaller, floated figures within the body copy.
I've bound these figures to the flexible grid so that they scale within a flexible layout. Nothing unusual and works reliably. You'll find that pattern across many responsively designed sites. So what's the problem?
It works fine on medium and large screens. Now let's look at it on a small screen.
What happened?
For small screens, it's common practice to linearise content, removing floats and columns and using
max-width:100%; to ensure elements don't exceed the width of their parent or the viewport.
But because of this banner image's wider aspect ratio, when it's squeezed down to fit a narrow column it loses its position in the visual hierarchy of the page. In fact, the normally smaller inline images appear larger, inverting the visual hierarchy. This is something I've noticed happening on responsively designed sites.
Upstatement were part of the team that worked on responsive poster child The Boston Globe.com. Upstatement are rightly proud of their work on The Boston Globe. They've made it the biggest image on their home page and a different format to their other portfolio items. On a large screen, the Globe portfolio item dwarfs other portfolio items.
These secondary portfolio items stay the same size across different screen size, Upstatement's designers preferring to switch the number of columns. It's a lovely solution, made even better with CSS3 transitions that animate the changes in position. While the secondary portfolio items stay the same size, the large Boston Globe image scales to fit its parent container's width. Watch what happens at a medium screen size.
And now on a small screen.
Ooops again.
The Boston Globe image gets smaller so that it's intended position in the visual hierarchy is lost as the secondary items get larger in comparison. How could Upstatement fix this?
Crush + Lovely
Crush + Lovely are obviously equally as proud of their latest work (for Duet, the one-on-one messaging app. Crush + Lovely's home page has a similar structure to Upstatement's, a larger, latest, featured item followed by several secondary items.
Like Upstatement, Crush + Lovely's portfolio items stack vertically on small screens. But unlike Upstatement, Crush + Lovely change the format of their featured item so that it maintains its importance visually. The reader can't therefore mistake what Crush + Lovely think is the most important item on their page.
How can we apply this to other designs, such as my banner image? I'm still experimenting, but so far this CSS seems to work just fine on small screens. Of course you'll need to override it at wider breakpoints. Apply
overflow : hidden; to figures:
figure {
overflow : hidden; }
Reset the max-width, width and height of figure images back to their native dimensions (in my case 800 x 400px) and position the image using margins so that the most important parts of it show in the viewport:
figure:first-of-type img {
margin : 0 -50%;
width : 800px;
max-width : 800px;
height : 400px; }
What are the lessons from all this? It's that we need to pay attention to the hierarchy of our content across screen sizes, in particular small screens. This definitely applies to images but it could just as easily apply to typography too. Sometimes it's all too easy just to squeeze elements to fit onto smaller screens, but unless we're careful, we can significantly change the meaning of our page designs.
(Screenshots taken using Aptus, available on the Mac App Store.)


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Bronxville NY Water Testing
Bronxville NY Water Testing. Our testing specialists ensure that all precautions are taken to ensure that the sample is tested using the proper testing protocol.
This also ensures that the water sample is tested in a timely manner, which prevents any bacteria in the water from multiplying and corrupting the test results.
Bronxville NY Water Testing offers:
Standard Water Potability Testing Bronxville NY: This checks for the common causes of unhealthy water and sources of low water quality. This testwill give you a basic indication of the level of some of the more common contaminants found in water including, coliform bacteria, e. coli bacteria, nitrates, nitrites, color, odor, pH, turbidity, chloride, hardness, sulfates, iron, manganese, sodium, and total chlorine.
Bacteria Only Bronxville NY Water Testing: Tests for total coliform bacteria and E.coli bacteria. Both can indicate the water may be contaminated with sewage or similar wastes. The EPA recommends that home owners in Bronxville, NY with private wells have this test performed at least annually.
Radon Bronxville NY Water Testing: Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States. Based on a second NAS report on radon in drinking water, the EPA estimates that radon in drinking water causes deaths from lung cancer every year caused by breathing radon released from water, and deaths from stomach cancer caused by drinking radon-containing water. It is recommended that Bronxville, NY residents have their water tested for radon every 3 to 5 years.
Lead Bronxville NY Water Testing: Lead in drinking water usually results from the use of lead pipe in water systems or leadbased solder on water pipes. Water in the plumbing system can dissolve lead from pipes and solder. This is called leaching.
Arsenic Bronxville NY Water Testing: Studies have shown that chronic or repeated ingestion of water with arsenic over a person's lifetime is associated with increased risk of cancer (of the skin, bladder, lung, kidney, nasal passages, liver or prostate) and non-cancerous effects (diabetes, cardiovascular, immunological and neurological disorders). It is recommended that Bronxville, NY residents have their water tested for arsenic every 3 to 5 years.
Copper Bronxville NY Water Testing: Too much copper can cause adverse health effects, including vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps, and nausea. It has also been associated with liver damage and kidney disease. It is recommended that Bronxville, NY residents have their water tested for copper every 3 to 5 years.
Fluoride Bronxville NY Water Testing: A fluoride level above 4.0 mg/L is not safe to drink. With long-term use, fluoride levels above 4.0 mg/L can cause skeletal fluorosis which is a serious bone disorder.
VOC Water Testing: Exposure to VOCs can result in many adverse health effects depending on the type, level and length of exposure. Health problems can range from minor ailments to major, long-term health complications including: eye, nose and throat irritation, headaches, dizziness, nausea and vomiting, asthma exacerbation, fatigue, allergic skin reaction, memory impairment and loss of coordination, cancer, liver damage, kidney damage, and central nervous system damage.
Pesticides in Water Testing: Pesticides are more likely to be a problem if your well is shallow, has less than 15 feet of casing below the water table, or is located in sandy soil and is downslope from irrigated lands such as farms or golf courses where pesticides are. You should also test your Bronxville, NY water for pesticides if someone in your household is pregnant or nursing, an unexplained illnesses has occurred in the family, a dangerous contaminant was found in your neighbor's well, your water's taste, odor, color, or clarity changes, or you have a spill of chemicals or fuel into or near your well.
Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon in Water Testing: Health effects from exposure to TPH depend on many factors. These include the types of chemical compounds in the TPH, how long the exposure lasts, and the amount of the chemicals contacted. Swallowing some petroleum products such as gasoline and kerosene causes irritation of the throat and stomach, central nervous system depression, difficulty breathing, and pneumonia. The compounds in some TPH fractions can also affect the blood, immune system, liver, spleen, kidneys, developing fetus, and lungs. Certain TPH compounds can be irritating to the skin and eyes.
Water contamination can have a negative affect on the health of you and your family. The effects may be immediate or long term. A USGS survey found that 70% of private wells were contaminated. The EPA recommends that you test for a minimum of coliform bacteria, nitrate and lead, even if you have public water.
In today's society, we need to do what we can to remain healthy. The EPA recommends that you have your Bronxville, NY drinking water tested a minimum of once a year..
Call us today and we will help you determine which tests are best suited for your needs 888-558-1574

subset: commoncrawl


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Trial Accounts:
Instructors can tryout the login features for free. The trial period ends at the end of the academic year in which it is being used. Instructors who decide to continue to use the login features will pay for future service through an annual institution subscription. (Please contact me if you perfer students to pay as they register. With regular institutional subscriptions, students do not pay to register.) Programs of any size with struggling budgets need to contact me regarding subsidized subscriptions at levels appropriate for your program.
$50 more for every 50 more students.
policy effect 7/14/14


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Quackwatch Home Page
Aromatherapy -- sometimes called aroma therapy -- is described by its proponents as "the therapeutic use of the essential oils of plants." The word "essential" does not refer to nutritional value but to the volatile, aromatic components that are the "essence" of the plant. Essential oils are said to be highly concentrated substances extracted from flowers, leaves, stalks, fruits, and roots, and also distilled from resins. They are alleged to contain hormones, vitamins, antibiotics, and antiseptics and to represent the "life force," "spirit," or "soul" of the plant [1]. The oils are administered in small quantities through inhalation, massage, or other applications to the skin. Occasionally, a product is taken internally. The products include diffusers, lamps, pottery, candles, pendants, earrings, shampoos, skin creams, lotions, and bath salts, and shower gels. Health Foods Business estimated that the total of aromatherapy products sold through health-food stores was about $59 million in 1995 and $105 million in 1996.
Pleasant odors can be enjoyable and may enhance people's efforts to relax. However, there is no evidence that aromatherapy products provide the health benefits claims by their proponents.
Dubious Claims
Aroma Vera, Inc., of Los Angeles, has falsely claimed that "essential oils have the power to purify the air we breathe while they relax, stimulate, soothe or sharpen our senses . . . a wonderful antidote to the air pollution and 'scentsory' imbalance of modern life." It also claims that inhaling the scents "balances the biological background," "revitalizes the cells," and produces a "strong energizing effect on the sympathetic nervous system." Other claims in the company's brochures include:
|Product Name
|Features/Claimed Benefits
|Lends a slight sense of euphoria - perfect for unwinding after a stressful day
|Clear Mind
|Freshens and sharpens the mind, making it more alert
|Promotes elimination of toxins, helps tone and firm the body
|Facilitates deep relaxation
|Mental Power
|Designed for sustained intellectual power and focus
|Ideal to rid the atmosphere of smoke and heavy odors
|Helps open the lungs and clear respiration
|Helps open higher energy centers
|Promotes circulation and encourages elimination of excess fluids
Joint Adventure, of Rogers, Arkansas, states that essential oils can be used for "many different purposes from athlete's foot to enlightenment and almost every point between!" The products in its 1997 catalog include Love Potion, Germ Immune, and Smoker's Remedy. Its Tropical Sun is claimed to "Increase circulation and warm your body . . . helps fight infection while strengthening the immune system."
Another company touts aromatherapy's promise as "a mood alternative, as biofeedback tied in to relaxation, stress release, concentration and meditation." Yet another describes the oils as "an alternative to synthetic drugs to feel good." A practitioner has claimed that the technique "addresses the nervous system and the energy fields of the body. It soothes the body, cleans the body, clears the body, and tones the body." The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy, by Valerie Ann Worwood, states that there are about 300 essential oils and that they constitute an extremely effective medical system. The web site of Beyond Aromatherapy has stated (allegedly quoting Hippocrates) "There is a remedy for every illness to be found in nature." Its online catalog includes descriptions of "ancient healing uses," astrological correspondence, and Chinese medicine characteristics of more than 80 essential oils.
Lampberger Singapore Network says its products can provide "sweet childhood," "summer romance," "aphrodisiac, and improved memory and can alleviate asthma, bronchitis, flu, insomnia, headache, agitation, elevated blood pressure,
Aromatherapy for Common Ailments, by Shirley Price, tabulates which oils are to be used for more than 40 problems, including depression, sex-drive problems, bronchitis, athlete's foot, high blood pressure, cystitis, head lice. Her table identifies from three to nine oils "likely to help" each problem. She reassures:
With self-help aromatherapy, you will be using oils recommended for a particular ailment or preventative treatment, but it should not take you long to discover which of them work best for you as an individual, particularly since simply liking the aroma of an oil may indicate that it will help you.
The Aromatherapy Workbook charts more than one hundred therapeutic applications. Author Marcel Lavabre maintains:
Even though it can relieve symptoms, aromatherapy primarily aims at curing the causes of disease. The main therapeutic action of essential oils consists in strengthening the organs and their functions, and acting on the defense mechanisms of the body. They do not do the job for the body; they help the body do its own job and thus do not weaken the organism. Their action is enhanced by all natural therapies that aim to restore the vitality of the individual.
The American Alliance of Aromatherapy, a trade association, publishes a quarterly Journal of Aromatherapy to keep readers informed of pertinent research, books, and news. The American Aromatherapy Association offers "certification" based on attendance at two 3-day weekends plus submission of a thesis that includes case studies. The course includes such topics as internal methods of treatment, essential oils in healing, addressing common health problems, and how to market yourself. The International Association of Aromatherapists has "accredited" an eleven-month correspondence course with six seminars and two final exams. Completion of the program leads to "certification" as an "Aromatherapist Practitioner." Aromatherapy Seminars, the educational division of Aroma Vera, offers "5-day certification" and other courses and claims to have over 3,500 graduates. The National Association for Holistic Aromatherapy sponsors conferences and publishes Scentsitivity Quarterly.
Insufficient Regulation
The FDA regulates perfumes as cosmetics, which it defines as "articles to be introduced into or otherwise applied to the body to cleanse, beautify, promote attractiveness or alter appearance." A general claim that a perfume's aroma is good or beneficial is a cosmetic claim that does not require FDA approval. In 1986, the agency warned that marketing a scent with a preventive or therapeutic claim would make the product a drug subject to regulatory action. Although several manufacturers have done so, the FDA has not made them stop.
A private action may have some impact. Under California law, any person or organization can sue to stop the fraudulent activities of any person or company either located in California or affecting the state's consumers. These suits are interesting because if the defendant cannot persuade a judge that its claims are true, the judge can prohibit them and assess high penalties. In 1997, Los Angeles attorney Morsé Mehrban charged that Lafabre and Aroma Vera had violated the California Business and Professions Code by advertising that its products could promote health and well-being, relax the body, relax the mind, enhance mood, purify the air, are antidotes to air pollution, relieve fatigue, tone the body, nourish the skin, promote circulation, alleviate feminine cramps, and do about 50 other things [2]. The National Council Against Health Fraud served as plaintiff, and I served as an expert witness in the case. In September 2000, the case was settled out of court with a $5,700 payment to Mehrban and a court-approved stipulation [3] and order prohibiting the defendants from making 57 of the disputed claims in advertising within California [4].


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hitchcock, OK
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P.J. Skerret
News reports have called DHEA "the mother of all hormones." A new book calls it a "superhormone." On the Internet, it's billed as the "fountain of youth hormone."
In the court of media and public opinion, DHEA is king, a pill that can help us live longer, lose weight or gain it, prevent cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's, and combat AIDS and other infectious diseases. The crescendo of praise for this hormone has drowned out the serious cautions that top researchers in the field are raising:
- "The one thing you should tell your readers is that we know very little about DHEA. The hype is out of control, and I can't stress enough that it should be used with caution, if at all, until we know more," says Samuel Yen, MD, professor of reproductive medicine at the University of California, San Diego. News reports and advertisements widely cite his studies of people who took DHEA supplements for three months as proof that the hormone "works."
"No one should take DHEA except under the supervision of a physician, who should routinely check steroid and cholesterol levels, glucose tolerance, and prostate health in men," says John Nestle, MD, professor of endocrinology and metabolism at Virginia Commonwealth University, who studies DHEA's effects on diabetes and blood clotting.
"DHEA is the snake oil of the '90s. It makes me very nervous that people are using a drug we don't know anything about. I won't recommend it," says Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, MD, professor and chair, department of family and preventive medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Her studies of natural DHEA levels in older people suggest that higher levels may protect men against heart disease.
"Selling potent steroid hormones in health food stores or by mail could be a disaster in the making. DHEA should be classified as an investigational drug and used only in clinical research until we figure out what it does and its side effects," says Peter Hornsby, PhD, associate professor of cell biology at Baylor College of Medicine. His team has just identified the body's DHEA-making cells.
Why such strong statements from researchers who think DHEA may someday have a medical use? To date, there's no solid proof that DHEA supplements have any real benefit for humans. There's also no proof that they are completely benign. "Unfortunately, we don't see the problems associated with hormone use until years later," says Peter Casson, MD, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine. He cited as an example the higher of breast cancer in women who took diethylstilbestrol (DES) to prevent a miscarriage, which was discovered only after years of use.
What Is DHEA?
Dehydroepiandrosterone, or DHEA, is a steroid hormone, a chemical cousin of testosterone and estrogen. It is made from cholesterol by the adrenal glands, which sit atop each kidney. For the first few years of life, the adrenals make very little DHEA. Around age six or seven, they begin churning it out. Production peaks in the mid-20s, when DHEA is the most abundant hormone in circulation. From one's early '30s on, there's a steady decline in DHEA production, so the average 75-year-old has only 20% of the DHEA in circulation that he or she had 50 years earlier. At all ages, men tend to have higher DHEA levels than women.
By definition, hormones are chemical messengers made in a gland or tissue that start, stop, or otherwise orchestrate activity in some other issue. That makes DHEA a hormone in name only, since no one knows exactly what it does in the body. For years it was thought to be a kind of chemical trash left over from making other hormones. Today, "we still haven't been able to identify any mechanism of action," says Dr. Casson.
In fact, about the only thing that researchers can agree on is that DHEA is easily converted into other hormones, especially estrogen and testosterone.
The Food and Drug Administration isn't sure what to do with DHEA supplements. Ten years ago the agency told companies to stop selling DHEA, which was marketed at the time for weight loss, and classified it as an unapproved new drug, obtainable only by prescription. Then in 1994, DHEA was reclassified as a dietary supplement, allowing sales over the counter.
The Evidence
Much of DHEA's reputation as a wonder hormone comes from experiments in which mice or rats were fed daily doses. Such studies have shown that DHEA can prevent or delay the onset of cancer, "hardening" of the arteries, lethal viral infections, lowered immunity, obesity, and diabetes. But what works in rodents doesn't necessarily work in humans. That may be especially true in this case, because rats and mice produce only about 1/10,000 the DHEA we do.
An early human study that pointed to possible benefits for DHEA came from Dr. Barrett-Connor's group. They measured DHEA levels in blood samples taken from almost 2,000 men and women between 1972 and 1974 and looked at how many died from heart disease. In 1986, they reported that men with high DHEA levels were far less likely to have died of heart disease, while women with high DHEA levels were at greater risk. A more detailed analysis published late last year, however, showed that men with above-average DHEA levels back in the early 1970s were only 15% less likely to have died of heart disease, while there was no association between DHEA levels and heart disease in women.
The longest and perhaps most carefully conducted work in humans comes from Dr. Yen and his associates. In their latest study, published last year in a special issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences devoted to DHEA and aging, eight men and eight women aged 50 to 65 took either 100 milligrams of DHEA or an identical placebo pill each night for three months. For three months after that, they took the opposite pill.
Within two weeks of starting DHEA, circulating levels of the hormone were a bit higher than normally found in young adults. Lean body mass increased slightly in both sexes, as did muscle strength, which also improved with the placebo. Fat body mass decreased in men but increased a bit in women. There was also a rise in some chemical markers that suggested improvement in immune function, though the number of colds and other illnesses was not measured.
An earlier study from Dr. Yen's group showed that three months of daily 50-milligram doses of DHEA significantly improved the sense of "well-being," it did not improve sex drive, as advertisements for DHEA often claim..
Another study in which volunteers took DHEA suggests that this hormone may help treat the autoimmune disease lupus. Trials looking at DHEA's ability to boost the immune system and maintain mental function in older adults are in progress.
Experiments on a few dozen people over six months hardly constitute proof that a treatment works. "What we really need at this point are some long-term clinical trials to identify clear benefits and risks," says Dr. Nestler.
One reason why such trials are crucial is that DHEA has side effects, some of which may be irreversible. Since DHEA is converted into testosterone, some women who take it grow body or facial hair and, if they are under age 50 or so, can stop menstruating. DHEA has also been shown to decrease levels of HDL ("good") cholesterol in women, and could increase the risk of heart disease, the leading killer of older women. "We have no idea what DHEA might do to the risk of breast cancer," says Dr. Nestler.
In men, the increased levels of testosterone seen with daily DHEA pills could stimulate the growth of a tiny prostate tumor that would otherwise have remained dormant. Excess testosterone could also cause the prostate to enlarge, making urination difficult.
The Bottom Line
Much of the popular and scientific interest in DHEA stems from our culture's emphasis on youth. If levels of this hormone decline with age, the thinking goes, we could avoid the health problems that accompany aging — or even extend our lifespan — by keeping DHEA levels high. Many people are already taking DHEA just in case this turns out to be true. That wouldn't be a problem if this substance were as safe as vitamin C. But as a potent steroid hormone, DHEA has the potential for far-reaching side effects throughout the body. . . .
With DHEA and aging, there are no proven benefits and some potentially serious risks. Yet people are flocking to use this virtually unregulated substance, which troubles HealthNews associate editor Arthur Feinberg, MD.
"The potential for irreversible side effects is real," he says. "So given that there's no convincing evidence for any benefit of DHEA, I feel strongly that people should not take it."
This article was reproduced with permission from the November 19, 1996, issue of HealthNews, a newsletter from the publishers of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Over the past two years, I have come across many cases of heart-rhythym disturbances associated with high-dose use of DHEA and pregnenolone. I reported one such case in a man taking 50 mg per day in the October 1998 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine (volume 129, page 588). Other side effects include acne, unwanted hair growth, scalp hair loss, menstrual irregularities, irritability, and aggression. In my opinion, DHEA, androstenedione, or pregnenolone should not be sold over the counter in doses greater than 5 mg.
— Ray Sahelian, M.D.
This page was revised on January 27, 2004.


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Paul Moller may have been working on his flying car for nearly four decades. But he's no crackpot. Meet Skycar
Inside a small, squat building in the interior farmland of northern California, a machine that can only be described as a one-man flying saucer sits next to a spacious workshop. It's not the most interesting vehicle in the building. That honor has to go to the gleaming red machine in the corner, the one that looks like a race car circa 2025, all wicked curves and multiple jetlike engines. It's a Skycar -- a "roadable aircraft," or a flying car, if you will -- that is capable in theory of lifting straight up past rooftops and then zooming off over hill, dale, and traffic jams.
Paul Moller believes he's going to put one just like it in your driveway.
It seems like a batty notion, but it's one to which Moller has unwaveringly clung throughout a nearly four-decade odyssey that has left him and his company, Moller International, in Davis, Calif., constantly on the brink of crashing and burning.
Moller, of course, is hardly the only entrepreneur to throw himself into a long-shot, long-haul venture that holds out the promise of great reward. But few have pursued as grand a vision against such daunting odds and with as much resiliency. The saga of Moller International is virtually a road map -- or, rather, an aeronautical chart -- of how to keep moving ahead with a dream when the world seems to offer nothing but wind shear. "I always believed I'd succeed if I could just survive," says Moller. "It's always been about surviving."
He just may pull it off.
Child prodigies are usually associated with mathematics or music. Moller, who grew up on a farm in rural Canada, was gifted in mechanical engineering. At age 11 he designed and built a working four-person Ferris wheel. Four years later, after an inspirational encounter with a hummingbird, he built a primitive and partially functioning helicopter.
Not interested in attending college, Moller attended an aircraft-maintenance trade school. But he never got over the thrill of building a machine that could hover, and he pored through engineering textbooks on his own and took a few night classes.
In 1960, when he was 23, he randomly dropped in on Barry Newman, an aeronautics professor at Montreal's McGill University, asking for advice on how he could take some college classes. Newman was so impressed that he pulled strings to get Moller into a graduate program there, despite Moller's lack of a college degree. Upon obtaining his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, a mere three years later, Moller got a job at the University of California at Davis, and it wasn't long before he had created the school's first aeronautics curriculum.
But a question kept nagging at him. Why weren't we all getting around the way the Jetsons did? In a world that was beginning to experience heady revolutions in computers, medicine, and even space travel, Americans were spending hours a day in machines that were essentially a 19th-century technology, stuck in traffic under wide-open skies. It was as if every element of science fiction were coming to life, except for the most ubiquitous -- flying cars. "You can't describe a future without a major evolution in personal transportation," says Moller.
Was there a way to combine the straight-up flight of a helicopter with the greater simplicity, speed, and lower cost of ownership of a light plane? The key, Moller decided, was the engine -- usually the weak link in aircraft when it came to cost, performance, and reliability issues. What if an aircraft could be driven by smaller, simpler engines that each turned a small fan-blade-like rotor underneath the vehicle?
In 1965, Moller built and flew a two-engine hovering platform he called the XM-2. The underpowered contraption struggled to make it inches off the ground and tended to wildly pitch to one side or the other with any imbalance in the two engines' thrusts. But it was a start.
By 1967, Moller was itching to spend all his time designing and developing a precursor to a mass-marketable flying vehicle that could challenge the dominance of the automobile. At that time he estimated it would take 10 years if he could get the right power plant. All that stood in his way were a complete absence of funding, enormous technical and regulatory hurdles, and a long history of flying-car failures. (See "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's ... History," below.) On the plus side, an easy-to-own-and-fly family aircraft could create one of the largest new markets in history.
Moller knew little would happen without investors. So he started talking up the idea to everyone of means he ran into. Soon the 30-year-old fell in with an eccentric but enthusiastic promoter who agreed to pay $15,000 up front and $85,000 in the coming year in exchange for 7% of Moller's about-to-be-founded enterprise. Moller scaled back his university job in 1968, set up a workshop in a garage, and started ordering parts. About three months later, with his $15,000 depleted and his debt rising, Moller was stunned to learn that his lone investor's business had collapsed.
Moller had to scare up money, and fast. It would become a theme for the next 32 years.
He quickly confirmed the obvious, which was that traditional sources of financing were not eager to throw money at a garage start-up with an unproven technology, market, and founder. Instead, he would have to play the passion card -- that is, find well-heeled people who would be sufficiently revved up by the force of his creativity, ambition, and vision to fork over significant sums of money without any conventional form of assurance that they'd ever see a penny of it again.
He struck gold later that year with Jim Fitzgerald, then the major owner of a private hospital near San Francisco. Fitzgerald not only was willing to put in some of his own money but talked Moller up to some doctors who always seemed to be looking for interesting investments to round out their portfolios -- or at least to generate tax deductions. The group put up $25,000 to start. In the coming years they would put in more than $500,000. The bankrupt original backer helped bring in money, too, by introducing Moller to prospective investors. And former mentor Newman was good for $2,000.
Those investments and others like them were sustaining in more than a financial sense. "If I ever had dark times and thought about how easy it would have been for me to walk away from the project," says Moller, "just remembering how people like that had put their trust in me kept me going."
By the end of 1968, Moller had built and tested the XM-3, a more stable version of the XM-2, though it too was incapable of controlled flight. As work on his prototypes intensified, he was bolstered by help from a few employees and a parade of graduate students who had jumped at the chance to work on cutting-edge aeronautics technology. At that point Moller found himself wondering if there wasn't an intermediate, far easier target he could pick off along the way with the tiny rotors he was developing. What besides vehicles might need a lightweight push from a blast of air? As an admittedly reckless skier, Moller had always felt that standing around waiting for a chairlift was as inefficient as forcing aircraft to use an airport. But if he could design a backpack containing a powered rotor...
It probably goes without saying that the backpack thrust unit wasn't destined to eliminate the ski-resort lift line. Of the many obstacles that arose, Moller wrestled most heavily with the requirement that peaceful mountain slopes not sound like Daytona when skiers were schussing uphill. So he developed his own muffler and tested it out on motorcycles, which were a passion of his. It soon occurred to him that the demand for motorcycle accessories far outstripped that for thrust-pack accessories. Eventually, the Supertrapp muffler, as he named it, would become one of the most popular aftermarket accessories ever made for motorcycles and would be a hit on the race-car circuit as well.
Supertrapp was a $5-million business and was still rapidly growing when he sold it, in 1988, to free up time and money for his Skycar work. "I loved creating a physical product that was made on an assembly line and that made money we couldn't have survived without," says Moller. "But it occupied a lot of my best people."
Was that successful venture a fluke? Apparently not. When Moller had started searching for a larger work space in the mid-1970s, he recognized that the Davis area lacked the sort of research-and-development industrial park that was starting to thrive around many other major university towns. So he spearheaded the development of one and made millions more when he later sold his interest in it.
For Moller those accomplishments were useful distractions. "Anything I did besides work on the flying car was to raise money for the car," he says. "Everything was for the car." To that end, the ancillary businesses were valuable not just for the cash but also for the credibility they gave Moller in the eyes of prospective investors. He might be a dreamer, but he was a dreamer who could make money.
Never quite enough money, though. Everything Moller could scrape together from investors and his side business ventures was instantly gobbled up by flying-car R&D to the tune of as much as $3 million a year. Like the resulting prototypes, Moller's finances were underpowered and lurchy. He owns the building he operates in, but he's lost and regained it twice, once frantically negotiating to keep it while lying in a hospital bed with a broken neck from a motorcycle-trail-riding accident. (He also races go-carts, and he plays racquetball daily.) "I thought they were going to chain the door that time," he recalls. Moller says that he's been involved in about nine lawsuits, everything from disputes over distributor contracts -- including one with a large investor and former board member of the company -- to liability for allegedly faulty muffler parts. Moller sued one company for refusing to pay royalties on an engine design that he says violated one of the 43 patents Moller International owns on its technologies. All suits were resolved in his favor, he claims.
One way or another, the work on the vehicles went on. By the early 1970s, Moller had turned his attention to a different type of engine, named a Wankel after its German inventor. Moller believed the engine's ability to churn out high horsepower in a light, cheap, low-maintenance package made it perfect for a flying car. In 1974 the Wankel-powered XM-4 embarked on its maiden flight of a few wobbly feet.
Moller realized there was little point in bringing out additional prototypes without first achieving quantum leaps in power and control. Doing so took him another 15 years -- 12 years past the 10-year mark he had once set for himself. "We never felt discouraged about the slow evolution of the car," he says. "The only thing that was disheartening was having to sometimes put the work on it aside to raise money."
Finally, in 1989, he smoothly piloted the eight-engine, flying-saucer-like M200X to a height of 50 feet alongside his building. In theory, 40 feet is as good as 10,000 from an aeronautical point of view. The M200X's one-man design wasn't a marketable one, but it proved the concept of a hover vehicle with multiple small engines. Moller flew the M200X more than 200 times in front of current and prospective investors and other potential boosters.
To fund the Skycar, Paul Moller developed a muffler that he marketed to motorcycle and race-car enthusiasts
By 1990, Moller was working on a new machine designated the M400. The lack of an X in the name was significant -- X is generally taken to mean "experimental" in new aircraft. From the beginning, the Skycar, as the M400 would later be jauntily named, was intended to be the real deal. It would be Moller's do-or-die project. "It was what I had been moving toward for most of my life," he says. "Making it work was everything to me. Just accepting the possibility of failure would have been the first step to failure."
The Skycar's outrageously sexy appearance is hard to reconcile with its creator. Moller doesn't look or act like someone who would build the stuff of male adolescent fantasies. There's something sturdy and utilitarian about his build and even his face, though the latter is softened by an extended Vandyke that gives him an incongruously thoughtful look. In fact, Moller shrugs off his supervehicle's hot looks as an incidental by-product of the physics of airflow. "If you design something well aerodynamically, it will probably look good, too," he explains.
Appearances aside, the Skycar is an undeniably innovative machine. It seats four in its bubbled cockpit, can be driven for short runs on its three small wheels (by virtue of which the M400 is categorized as a motorcycle by the Department of Transportation), and fits in a two-car garage. Moller claims that the Skycar will in a decade or so be quiet enough to take off from a suburban driveway without unduly stressing the neighbors, but in the shorter term he envisions that owners will drive it to a local "vertiport" for a launch.
Once the completed Skycar lifts straight up to a safe height, the machine will thrust forward to speeds of 300 miles per hour or more, under the control of 28 microprocessors running 27,000 lines of programming code that control devices such as those that readjust the flow of fuel to each of the eight engines every hundredth of a second to balance and steer the vehicle. The computers get their marching orders from the pilot by means of a pair of joysticks, but they won't wait for the pilot's slow reflexes to kick in before taking any necessary corrective action. "In a 300-mph vehicle, you're the weak link," says Moller.
Anyone who visits Moller International with the idea that the Skycar was born in a slick, futuristic working environment will be disappointed. The facilities look a lot like the branch offices of a struggling insurance company backed up against a large auto-body shop specializing in interplanetary vehicles. The main giveaway that some kind of advanced high-tech wizardry is happening there is the 21-inch computer-aided- design display terminals tucked away in one set of cubicles. But you'd also have to wonder about the shrapnel holes decorating one small room off the main workshop floor. (They were created by an experimental engine that almost ripped itself apart during a bench-test explosion.)
There are 25 employees at the company, and given the current shortage of skilled workers who are willing to work for down-to-earth salaries, Moller was happy to grab them any way he could. One electronics expert had dropped by to inquire about renting storage space when he was thrust into an interview and summarily hired; a mechanical engineer was recruited by another employee who happened to be standing around when the engineer was in a local U-Haul office returning a moving truck.
Moller has at times been way ahead of other U.S. businesses when it comes to finding innovative ways to compensate employees, though he claims that he usually ends up regretting it. In the early 1970s, for example, he issued phantom stock -- that is, he contracted to pay employees bonuses that corresponded to increases in the value of the company's stock. He ended up paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to Supertrapp employees under the plan, he says, before the company was sold. In the late 1980s he started issuing employee stock options with no strings attached, but after a key worker quickly cashed out and started his own business, Moller instituted an eight-year vesting schedule.
Turnover has been a problem, Moller concedes. The main reason: fears about the company's financial health. He recently lost his general manager to a dot-com. "He's getting $3 million or $4 million in options there," says Moller, "and here he had to worry about his next paycheck." He means that literally -- several times over the years the company delayed issuing paychecks because the money simply wasn't in the bank.
Moving ahead to the Skycar project had only increased the pressure to raise money, because of the vehicle's added complexity and the need to make it a practical, certifiable aircraft. (Just building a one-twelfth scale model of the Skycar for dog-and-pony shows cost $20,000.) Before beginning work on the Skycar, Moller had tried to broaden his fund-raising efforts. "We've explored every option known to man," he says. He contacted most major automakers about buying into his company, but they told him point-blank they had no interest whatsoever in flying vehicles. He tried aircraft manufacturers, which for the most part insisted they had enough problems getting ordinary planes and helicopters right. He made his way through much of the Fortune 500 without encountering a glimmer of interest. The only investment bank willing to get involved was Robertson Stephens, which put together a $1.5-million private placement marketed to a handpicked list of its clients. Robertson even had Moller present at a technology conference it sponsored for investors. Not a single nibble. Moller looked into an initial public offering but couldn't find an interested high-quality underwriter.
He trolled for investors through a full-page ad in Business Week. It drew a number of candidates, including a significant one: Jack Allison, an air-force colonel turned real estate agent who was also an enthusiastic pilot. After meeting with Moller, Allison gathered together 21 pilots, colleagues, friends, and friends of friends to come up with $150,000 in 1986. Allison was such a gung-ho supporter of Moller's efforts that Moller later invited him to join the company. Allison's title is vice-president of administration, but he serves more as an investor-relations specialist, especially when it comes to selling fellow aviation fanatics on the company.
When the most recent tech boom hit, Moller expected to find backers among all the young corporate hotshots stuck in Silicon Valley traffic, who he thought would appreciate the electronic sophistication of the Skycar. "This thing should excite the hell out of the computer industry," says Moller. "It's a flying computer." He wrote letters to the CEOs of all the major Silicon Valley companies he thought might be interested in the electronics behind Skycar . No one responded.
Still, it's not as if Moller has been a complete dud when it comes to raising money. He has done better with foreign corporations, attracting an investment of $300,000 from South Korea's Samsung Techwin, as well as $700,000 from a Malaysian concern and $1 million from a Finnish company. A Middle Eastern company became an investor when an executive there heard about Moller through one of Moller's stockholders. Overall, a majority of the company's large investors are from overseas.
And then there's Moller's affinity for profitably spinning off technologies. "I always try to find an element of the grand scheme to capitalize on," he explains. He has scored government contracts for producing smaller and simpler hovering machines, for example, including an R2D2-like "aerobot" designed to inspect the undersides of bridges. And the latest incarnation of his Wankel engines seems to be taking off as a product in its own right. Moller claims to have received letters of intent for the purchase of a total of 500,000 engines worth $1 billion, for applications ranging from electric generators to fire-hose pumps to personal watercraft resembling Jet Skis. Meanwhile, with all that ancillary success, Moller has had to answer some hard questions from his third wife. "She doesn't understand how I can make so much money and still be broke," he says. "I'm like the farmer in the joke who is thrilled to inherit $6 million because now he can afford to farm for another 10 years."
To keep himself in the black, if barely and erratically, Moller has continued to turn back to many of the same individual investors who have supported him over the years. "I'm pretty good at hustling," he says. "When I get desperate, I come up with something that would appeal. You can't just keep leading them to the same trough." Every company milestone, from a new contract to a technical breakthrough, is leveraged into an effort to ignite investors' interest in buying more stock, as well to attract new backers. Last year, for example, Moller started up the Skycar Liftoff Association, whose stockholding members will receive options on more stock if and when the Skycar flies. The scheme brought $500,000 into the company.
The engine was the key, Moller knew, in combining straight-up flight with the speed and simplicity of a light plane.
There are now some 450 investors in Moller International, with individual investments averaging a little over $100,000. None of the investors have gotten rich on the company, but they could have done a lot worse; during the past 30 years, the price of a share of stock has increased by a factor of 50. Moller himself helps make a market in the stock by informally helping buyers and sellers hook up with one another. The company is currently in the process of registering as a public company -- not because it plans an IPO anytime soon, says Moller, but so that the company can borrow against its stock.
Prospects for the Skycar have received indirect boosts in recent years from surprising quarters. The Federal Aviation Administration tends to be tough on new aircraft when it comes to certification, and the Skycar might have been in for a particularly bumpy ride if it were forced to qualify as either an ordinary plane or a helicopter, since it combines features from both. But the agency recently created a new category for powered vehicles. the skycar is likely to be the second such vehicle after the v-22 but a certified skycar is more than two years away. the faa is also in the process of creating a new air-traffic-control system light aircraft that will in most cases remove one of the major hassles in the need to obtain traffic-control clearances. the new system will allow special transceivers aboard light planes to communicate with one automatically directing pilots away from traffic conflicts. I make a legitimate case for this vehicle without a major change in the airspace-control says moller.
NASA has been helping the cause as well. The agency has long been interested in increasing its role in civil aviation, and chief Daniel Goldin has in recent years publicly predicted a boom in private aircraft that will annually deliver 10,000 vehicles within 10 years and 20,000 within 20 years. Moller points to that prediction as a vindication of his insistence that the Skycar market is out there. "Without that market, I'm just a maverick trying to turn a hobby into more than it is," he says. "So many people are just pursuing their dreams, caught up in their wishful thinking, and that can be sad."
Now all he has to do is get the Skycar off the ground. The first big test will be a straight liftoff of 10 feet or so (a low-hover test) while the vehicle is tethered to the ground to avoid any control-related mishaps. The original target was April 1999, but that date has been pushed back several times. As of this writing, the test was set for late August. If it goes well, an untethered flight will be scheduled before the end of the year.
The fact that the Skycar hadn't so much as hopped two feet into the air didn't stop more than 100 people from plunking down $5,000 deposits for the first Skycars. One woman in Austria has deposits on 14 vehicles, essentially establishing herself as a European distributor. The initial price of the Skycar will be $950,000, though Moller says he can steadily work the price down with greater production levels, ultimately reaching $40,000 to $60,000 -- which may actually be affordable to many Americans on a lease basis, given the traditionally low depreciation on aircraft. Don't even think about it, though; Moller has stopped taking deposits. "I don't want a huge, impatient crowd of buyers waiting for the Skycar," he says. With luck, he says, he'll be able to produce 10 "preproduction" vehicles in 2001, though some or even all of them could go to military and paramilitary organizations that have expressed interest in the machine.
What will it take for Moller to get the car into production? Another $45 million, he says, plus about $500 million more to get to volume runs. That's a lot of money, he concedes, but he points out that 15 million new automobiles are sold each year, and if he could sell one-twentieth as many Skycars at $100,000 apiece, he'd be looking at a $75-billion market. "Ford spends $1 billion just to update a car line," he says.
Even if the Skycar does make it all the way into production, Moller's story won't be over. Just as he has built ancillary businesses to raise money for the Skycar, lately he's been regarding the Skycar itself as a means to a new end, he says. Just down the road from his building he's developing a 60-acre complex to house the world's largest combined alternative and traditional health-care facility. Spurred by the debilitating illnesses suffered by his two sisters, Moller has become increasingly dedicated to promoting various health supplements and treatments. He himself takes some 75 pills a day and unprompted likes to tick off his cholesterol level (HDL 80), his blood pressure (100/60), and even his testosterone readings. In fact, though he is 63, he looks 45. The Skycar is still consuming him, he says, but he spends more and more time thinking about the health complex, which he hopes to complete within five years. "This has become where I want to end up in life," he says.
After all, he points out, the Skycar has been a long haul. "Who would have thought that something that was supposed to take 10 years would take 30?" he asks. But even if the Skycar takes off on test flights this year, Moller won't be in the pilot's seat -- his investors won't let him. "Ten years ago that would have bothered me," he says, sitting in his office. "Now I'm not uncomfortable with the idea of not risking my neck."
He looks off into space when he says that. His gaze leads to a wall that's unadorned except for a framed photograph of a hummingbird.
David H. Freedman is a contributor to Inc.
Starting point: In 1965 Moller built and flew the XM-2, a two-engine hovering platform that struggled to make it inches off the ground and pitched to the side.
Phase two: By the end of 1968, Moller had built and tested the XM-3. It was more stable than its predecessor but was still incapable of controlled flight.
Liftoff: In 1989, Moller piloted the eight-engine flying-saucer-like M200X to a height of 50 feet, which proved the validity of his concept.
More than 75 patents for flying cars have been issued in the United States since 1917. None of the vehicles ever caught on, though, because most tended to be expensive and flimsy as cars and underperformers as aircraft. Enthusiasm for the concept peaked back when hordes of sky's-the-limit young veterans returned to a booming economy after World War II. But interest seems to be picking up again -- a 1998 World Aviation Conference, for instance, attracted papers from three developers working on "roadable airplanes." Here is a brief history of the flying car:
1917: Glenn Curtiss's tri-winged, aluminum-frame Autoplane debuted, sparking interest but going nowhere fast.
1926: Henry Ford rolled out a prototype for the "Ford flying flivver" but stopped work when a friend was killed testing it. Ford remained an outspoken proponent of flying cars but never again put his money where his mouth was.
1937: Studebaker funded inventor Waldo Waterman's idea of sticking a propeller on the back of one of the company's cars, along with wings and aviation instruments. After taking a look at the result, Studebaker said, "Never mind."
1946: Robert Fulton designed and built the Airphibian, the first "roadable" plane certified by the Civil Aeronautics Administration -- which also ordered 10 for its own reps. Eleven Airphibians would be built in the 1950s before Fulton's company ran out of money.
1956: Moulton Taylor rolled out the Aerocar, the only other roadworthy plane to win federal certification. The Aerocar became a minor television star, making appearances on I've Got a Secret and alongside actor Bob Cummings on his show Love That Bob after he bought one. Taylor fell 222 orders short of the 500 he needed to start mass production of the vehicle, and only five Aerocars were built.
That same year, Ford flirted with a later incarnation of the Aerocar, then backed out.
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Researchers from North Carolina State University have solved a long-standing materials science problem, making it possible to create new semiconductor devices using zinc oxide (ZnO) – including efficient ultraviolet (UV) lasers and LED devices for use in sensors and drinking water treatment, as well as new ferromagnetic devices.
"The challenge of using ZnO to make these devices has stumped researchers for a long time, and we've developed a solution that uses some very common elements: nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen," says Dr. Lew Reynolds, co-author of a paper describing the research and a teaching associate professor of materials science and engineering at NC State. "We've shown that it can be done, and how it can be done – and that opens the door to a suite of new UV laser and LED technologies," says Dr. Judith Reynolds, a research scientist at NC State and lead author of the paper.
To make laser and LED technologies, you need both "n-type" materials and "p-type" materials. N-type materials contain an abundance of free electrons. P-type materials have "holes" that attract those free electrons. But the holes in the p-type materials have a lower energy state, which means that electrons release their excess energy in the form of light as they travel from the n-type material to the p-type material. The shedding of excess energy at the so-called "p-n junction" is what produces light in lasers and LED devices.
Researchers have been interested in using ZnO to create these devices because ZnO produces UV light, and because ZnO can be used to make devices with relatively fewer unwanted defects than other UV emitters- which means the resulting lasers or LEDs would be more energy efficient.
However, researchers had been unable to consistently produce stable p-type materials out of ZnO. Now researchers have solved that problem by introducing a specific "defect complex," via a unique set of growth and annealing procedures, in the ZnO. The defect complex looks different from a normal ZnO molecule. The zinc atom is missing and a nitrogen atom (attached to a hydrogen atom) substitutes for the oxygen atom. These defect complexes are dispersed throughout the ZnO material and serve as the "holes" that accept the electrons in p-type materials.
Not only does the research illustrate how to create p-type materials from ZnO, but the defect complex allows the ZnO p-n junction to function efficiently – and produce UV light – at room temperature.
The paper, "Shallow acceptor complexes in p-type ZnO, " is published online in Applied Physics Letters. Lead author of the paper is Dr. Judith Reynolds, a research scientist at NC State. Co-authors include Drs. A. Mohanta and H.O. Everitt of the U.S. Army Aviation & Missile Research, Development & Engineering Center; Dr. John Muth, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State; Dr. John Rowe, a research professor of physics at NC State; and Dr. David Aspnes, Distinguished University Professor of Physics at NC State. The research was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.


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How do you determine the right temp? Should everything be brewed @ the same temp or can different temps offer different drinkable results?
My first try at my own recipe was steeped @ 120 degrees for about 15min then brought to a rolling boil for an hour. I put the hops in at different stages and ended up boiling off about a gallon. The whole experiment yielded about 4 gal instead of the 5 I was going for. Now my beer tastes "Worty" Should I have increased the temp? Or is it b/c I didn't compensate for the boil off?


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Home Weatherization Visit
You are here
SECRETARY OF ENERGY STEVEN CHU: In this weatherization program, we are – we're investing money that – so we can hire local people to do the work. You save the money. That money then goes back into the economy locally. And oh, by the way, you're not – using less energy, so that in the end is going to help save the world as well.
So it's a three-fer. And the – it warms my heart, for many reasons. One of the reasons – first, you know, we hope that your home will be much more comfortable and much more enjoyable and your life much improved. But it also – I really appreciate when I meet people who are doing the work. They're deeply knowledgeable. They know what they're doing. They care. And they know how they're affecting lives. And that's really great stuff.
The thing is, we have to make plans of not only doing the homes that we can do with this money, but actually to really get it so that for the next 10 or 20 or 30 years, we take every American home and turn it into much more comfortable home.
People do not realize that you can make these improvements at far less than the cost of what you might have thought. They constantly overestimate the cost of doing this. They constantly underestimate how much money you can save. Literally, if you can imagine $20 bills being burned up and going up your chimney, to $20 bills in your wallet that you can spend on anything you want, pick – keep that in mind.
So I encourage all of you listening and all of you out there who might be listening to look at whether you can do these things yourself. I mean, it's a real goldmine. And it furthers the president's agenda of not only making the country use its resources more wisely but in the end, you know, there's this climate change issue, there's industrial competitiveness, there are all these things; and weatherization, energy efficiency is the best thing we can do.
GOVERNOR TED STRICKLAND (D-OH): The president is showing leadership in time of great need, and this program will help individuals. It will help communities. It will create jobs. And we are very thankful to the president and –
MAYOR MICHAEL COLEMAN (Columbus, OH): This is a big boost to the economy, and it's a big savings to our residents. It's going to help our city come back.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: All right! (Applause.)


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Getting a glimpse into the curious minds of others has never been so beautiful – or so bright.
Designers Brian W. Brush and Yong Ju Lee of E/B Office New York created an extensive fiber-optic installation for the Teton County Library grand opening in Wyoming that visualizes library searches in flashes of colored light. Dubbed Filament Mind, the installation, which opened at the end of January, uses over five miles of fiber-optic cables and 44 LED illuminators to collect, categorize, and render searches from libraries all across the state of Wyoming into glowing bursts of color.


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High School Dunks Of The Week: CartwheelBetween The Legs + Arkansas HS Player Shatters Backboard!
6'3 Jus FLY- Cartwheel Between the LEGS DUNK
Credit: BoingVert.com
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More Tablets Run Amazon's Version of Android Than Google's
Amazon won't say how many, but it's selling a lot of Kindle Fires — so many that the device is already dominating the market for Android tablets.
According to the latest figures from comScore, gathered by tracking device traffic on the Web, the Fire has captured more than 54 percent of the Android tablet market, making it the undisputed leader among tablets running Google's OS — though, to be fair, the Fire does run a forked version of Android.
Not bad for a tablet that's been available for about six months. Clearly, sales are trending upward, and quickly too. Indeed, comScore says the Fire almost doubled its share of the Android tablet market in the past two months alone, raising it from 29.4 percent share in December 2011 to 54.4 percent share in February 2012.
Not a surprise, though, really. Reporting earnings on Thursday, Amazon said that the Kindle Fire remains the No. 1 best-selling, most-gifted, and most wished-for product the company offers.
Interesting that the top-selling Android tablet runs a proprietary version of the OS that doesn't look much like the one Google created. At this point, there are more tablets running Amazon's version of Android than Google's.


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Recently, I was slapped in the face with one person's unprofessional behavior and dishonesty. What's more is that after expressing my disappointment in the situation, the offending party showed little remorse. However, another person involved has shown what true professionalism & integrity are, which lessens the sting… sorta. Here's the story…
It started with a verbal agreement regarding compensation for working an event. A few weeks before the event I was told (in person) that compensation would be $50 for the day, a selection of images for portfolio use. I was also told I'd be in the designer's catalog. As an added bonus, I'd get a sketch of me in what I was modeling. Typically, my rates are $50 an hour or $325 for an 8-hour day, which is how I'd have billed it since it's cheaper. However, because I'd be getting portfolio images & a tear sheet (plus a cool sketch), I made an exception and accepted the job at a significantly lower rate than normal.
Fast forward to the day of the event. Call time was 12P & everyone was on time & ready to start getting to work. In the beginning, things were running nicely, people were having a good time, & it was shaping up to be a great event.
Around 3P we started getting hungry, but there was no food. Based on previous experiences, I expected there to be food provided at a 7-hour event, so I just brought a drink & a small snack. Now, I wasn't expecting caviar & chocolate mousse, but something to snack on throughout the course of the day. Veggies, pretzels, cheese cubes, & sliced fruit are pretty typical of events because that stuff can sit out & is easy to eat. But there wasn't anything.
Normally, one would ask the person in charge what was going on, but he stepped out for an undetermined amount of time, leaving his event coordinator & assistant completely in the dark regarding wardrobe & accessories. That meant that the models that were ready to shoot we weren't able to, so 2 of those girls took a walk to find food. Their options were limited at 3P on a Sunday on the Near West Side of Chicago & all they could find was Chinese, which they brought back.
As we were eating, the guy in charge came in & immediately reprimanded us for having food. He told us we were unprofessional for eating food that wasn't "proper model food". He then demanded it be put it away & said we shouldn't be eating, but that if we were hungry we should've been eating something like fruit. So, apparently, everyone should have just gone without food for 7 hours. Talk about a morale-killer! Besides, nothing makes people enjoy an event more than crabby models with no energy, or worse, models passing out because of low blood sugar.
If someone running an event wants his staff to eat certain things, it is up to him to provide that kind of food. If he can't provide food, then the professional thing to do is notify people that there won't be food, & ask them to bring their own, limiting it to whatever he finds acceptable. It is not unprofessional for models to eat behind the scenes, while waiting for styling and/or instruction, while still dressed in street clothes.
But then came the real knife-twist. Shortly after the food was put away, we were handed a compensation agreement & asked to sign it. It was different from what I'd been promised. Suddenly, we had to choose between $50 for the day or 10 unedited images & 1 edit of the photographer's choice. No mention of the sketch. I tried to ask the guy in charge a few questions, but it was pretty clear he was too busy to listen to me. So, I sat & thought quite a bit about things, & really weighed my options.
If I walked, I'd have wasted almost 4 hours for nothing, literally. No photos, no money, no sketch, no tear. Leaving could've damaged my reputation with the other industry people who were there, & I'm not one to back out on my commitments; I act like a professional & respect people enough to stick with something once it's started. So I chose to stay, keeping my reputation intact & getting a little something for my time.
So I had to choose: a small amount of money, or one edited image. I figured I could work with the photographer individually if I really wanted to, so I opted to take the $50. Broken down, it's $7.14 an hour. If you factor in the $8 or so I spent on food & drink (which I wouldn't have bought if I wasn't working), the total compensation drops down to about $42. Basically, I worked the day for about $6 an hour, & that's not even factoring in the gas I spent on the nearly 60-mile round trip.
It bothered me that the compensation changed, & I wasn't notified in advance. I wasn't even notified promptly at call time, which is when I would have been comfortable leaving. Advanced notification of the change would have been the professional way to go about things. Instead, it was just sprung on us nearly 4 hours into the day, when we'd already invested time & money. But, I sucked it up & did my job as if I was getting paid my standard rate: with a smile on my face & without complaint.
After the event was over I asked the guy in charge about the sketch. He acknowledged that that was, indeed, part of our deal & made a half-assed attempt to find it. After a brief search, I was told he couldn't find them, & that was that. So no sketch now either.
Initially, I intended to just deal and learn from my mistakes. But later I decided that if I didn't speak up, no one would, & this schmuck would go on taking advantage of people because no one called him on it. So the next day I wrote him a letter addressing all my concerns & asked to be compensated as originally promised. I chose my words carefully & made sure it was written in a concise, professional manner. I didn't just pound out an angry note and send it off.
The next afternoon, I received a response. He said that an agreement was made, but things didn't go as expected, so the agreement was modified. I signed it, & if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been used for the event. He went on to say he was sorry I wasn't happy, but the only thing he could do was live up to the written agreement. Then, he had the gall to tell me that a lot of work went into the event, & he felt congratulations were in order. He also thanked me, as if that would make it better, & told me that if I had a change of heart & wanted to work with him again, I should let him know.
Then, he called me not too long after responding. I told him it wasn't a good time because I wasn't ready to speak with him, & hung up. After careful consideration, I wrote him back & said that any discussion could be done in writing, as he had made it abundantly clear that he didn't respect people enough to honor his spoken agreements.
He wrote me back the next day & said there's nothing to discuss. Shortly afterwards he posted on the private group for "preferred" folks involved in the event (which I am still part of) telling everyone, "Don't ever believe that I don't appreciate you all. I am so glad that I choose each & every one of you to be a part of this journey." Uh huh.
There is a lesson here, though. From now on, I will ask for a compensation agreement in writing, in advance, for every event I am booked for. Upon arrival, I will not do anything without reviewing any paperwork that needs to be signed, & if that paperwork does not match up with what I received prior to the event, I will be leaving.
This might limit who's willing to book me for events, as well as whom I choose to work with, but I'm ok with that. I am tired of being taken advantage of, & I am no longer willing to allow it to happen. If that means I book less events, then so be it. As a hobbyist, I can afford to be picky.
I heard he "changed the agreement" when it came to numerous other involved parties, so the models weren't the only ones who got screwed. To top it off, it's all just pouring salt in the wound, because everyone who worked the event was asked to promote the event through various means, invite friends, & really hype it up (and many of us did). Some people's names are attached to this person's, and who knows what kind of effect that could have down the road.
Then there's the true display of integrity & professionalism I mentioned at the beginning. The photographer involved called me last night & we talked. He had been unaware, & completely beside himself, that the person running things was using his product to pay people & that we were forced to make a choice so suddenly. To "make it right", he has offered all of the models involved a shoot at no charge. He's not comfortable providing the images from the event to the models, because it would violate his agreement with the event host, so he's doing what he can to do something for us as a "thanks, & I'm really sorry you got screwed over too". Yup, you read that right… he also got screwed.
So now what? Well, I'm going to stay in touch with the photographer & start thinking about what I want to shoot, & communicate ideas back & forth with him. Ideally, I'd like to shoot something he can use for his portfolio as well, because it's only fair. Chances are, I'll wait until late fall to work with him, mostly because I'm sure he'll be busy with previously booked work as well as with the other models involved.
A few people I've talked to about this have suggested I take legal action, because the "bait & switch" tactic he pulled could be illegal. I've decided it's not worth it to bother with screwing around with that, especially for such a small amount of non-monetary goods. Chances are, this person will get what's coming to him. Word of unprofessionalism like this gets around fast in the modeling industry, as people don't appreciate busting their asses to work with people who lack the integrity to honor their promises.
One can only hope that this person has the decency to not treat his paying clients the way he treated his staff. I can't imagine working with someone on what amounts to one of the most important days in your life & dealing with some of the unprofessionalism he exhibited. Hopefully, when dealing with actual clients, this person is honest, sticks to his word, & is professional enough lets clients know if circumstances change & he cannot deliver as promised. If I were in the situation to be working with him as a paying client, I most certainly wouldn't take the chance.
I will definitely not be working with him ever again. This person's utter disrespect for the people he hired & abundant display of unprofessionalism has completely, totally ruined any chances of that. I will continue to leave his name on my credits list in hopes that people contact me to check references.
UPDATE! August 30, 2011
I did finally get a money order for the $50 that I was owed. I had to ask for it though, and was told on August 25th that the check had mailed the morning of the 24th. I let this person know that it would have been nice to know of the delay, since the agreement said checks would be delivered by the 21st and not mailed on the 24th. This is the response I got regarding that:
i didn't mean to make you feel small. I appreciate you.
I told him, "Appreciation doesn't pay the bills. Not that that matters, because going back on your word and not notifying people you'd made agreements with until well into the event doesn't say "appreciation". No, Robert. THAT says "I don't give a crap about you and expect you to just be a doormat and accept it". Nice try. I expect my check to be delivered by Monday the 29th. I'm giving you way more leeway on this than most people would…". Yes, cold and a bit heavy-handed, but frankly, I don't care. No one deserves the kind of treatment he has shown, and I'm not about to sit quietly and let him think that treating people the way he has done is ok, because it's overwhelmingly not.
This was his response to me on the 25th, verbatim:
When i say I didn't mean to make you feel small, I really was trying to let you know that you're acting soooo small and UNPROFESSIONAL.
But you were even too small to even have caught on.
Now I'm BLOCKING you. And that's what's nice about facebook.
What ever it is that happened to you to make you so emotional is just not everybody else's fault. And if emotionally you can't handle life, go to doctor and get help, but whatever you do, DO NOT SLANDER OR HARRASS ME.
Wow. And yet I'm the unprofessional one, for desiring to be treated respectfully and compensated as promised, and for being the "squeaky wheel" in making sure that promises are delivered upon when the source has proved to be unreliable. Right… anyway…
My money order came August 29th. It was dated August 26th, two days after I was told "the check's in the mail". It has been deposited. Largely, I am happy. I hope, however, that this person has learned that he can't get away with treating people like shit. If, that is, there's anyone left in the area who'll work with him…


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cool animation stuff this time … have fun !
Dragons in Motion on Vimeo12 Dec
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- Categories vimeoing
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Gear & Stuff
- Camille Marotte – a great 5D shooter
- cheesycam.com
- DSLR Videoshooter
- F&V Lighting
- gedankenpolaroid.com
- marcotec cine gear shop
- Philip Bloom (you have to know him!)
- SeeYou Rent Berlin (germany)
- theC47 – great videoblog
- Vincent Laforet – HD-DSLR pioneer
- wide open camera
- zacuto USA – great DSLR grear
links & stuff
- Benjamin Eckstein – Filmmaker
- Brook Willard a L.A. based RED DIT
- creative live – great resource
- JJ from Orange Wedding Films
- mario feil – MF_Film
- Nino Leitner – Filmmaker Blog
- RedCenter Podcast & FxGuideTV
- Sascha Plagge – German Filmmaker
- Sebastian Wiegärtner – Filmmaker Blog
- Tej Babra – a nice Filmmaker
- ThatPostShow
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- Tom Guilmette – great gear reviews & BTS
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thank you for Considering Nana's Preschool! the only 24/7 childcare in the West valley
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A Quick Video Tour of the Programs and Services Nanas Academy Offers.
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Providing a safe and Happy environment since 2005. Shuttle Services Available, Open 24/7. Call Today! : (623)931-5015 or (623)435-2211 Se Habla Espanol!
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It is our job at Nana's Place to maximize your child's learning potential. We offer an academic program that approaches learning through exploration of art, music, dance, and theater.
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Binarization belongs to the area of image pre-processing. In order to binarize an image, the values 0 and 1 are allocated to its pixels where in most cases 0 stands for black and 1 for white. Consequently, it is easier to recognise characteristics like position, surface and form of an object.
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Originally, it was supposed to be him.
But former Tampa Bay Buccaneers star Brad Culpepper said the moment producers for CBS' hit reality TV show Survivor did a Google search and saw pictures of his wife, inquiries about getting him on the show quickly shifted to her.
Months later, Monica Culpepper was among 18 contestants announced Wednesday for the most recent edition of the show, Survivor: One World.
The contestants will be separated by gender for the competition, which was filmed over this summer in Samoa. The first episode debuts at 8 p.m. Feb. 15 on WTSP-Ch. 10.
"I pushed her to do it," said Brad Culpepper, noting that his wife abandoned plans to go to medical school when he got drafted to play for the Minnesota Vikings in 1992. (CBS declined to make Monica Culpepper available for an interview.)
"This is her opportunity to shine," he added. "Now I'm in the stands and watching her."
In promotional clips for the show, the athletic and youthful-looking 41-year-old says her status as a mom and onetime NFL wife might be her secret weapon in the contest, which features one person voted off each week until a single survivor wins $1 million.
But it was those roles that her husband missed most during the 50 days she spent filming from July to September. "We had zero contact for 50 days," said Brad Culpepper, adding the two have been married for nearly 20 years and have three kids aged 14 to 10. "I just missed her emphatically."
In addition to being the only parent in the house, Brad Culpepper couldn't tell friends or colleagues why his wife — typically a very involved parent and wife — was suddenly gone for nearly two months.
He feared rumors might start about a frayed marriage or rehab, but all he could say then was that she had taken the trip of a lifetime.
Brad Culpepper, an Eagle Scout who grew up on tiny Dog Island in the Gulf, helped his wife prepare, heading out to Anclote Key Preserve State Park with minimal supplies and the older children in tow, learning how to build shelter.
In biography materials posted on CBS' website, Monica Culpepper said she was a former homecoming queen at the University of Florida, where she and her husband attended college. "I'm never afraid to go out on a limb when it comes to getting something I want," she added.
Monica Culpepper's addition marks the second consecutive season to feature a Tampa resident; last year, lingerie football player Mikayla Wingle competed on Survivor: South Pacific, only to be eliminated before qualifying for the show's final jury.
Now Brad Culpepper, who retired from the NFL in 2000 and runs his own law firm, Culpepper Kurland, gets to watch his wife compete.
But he has a quick answer for the natural question: Would he ever do the show?
"Oh yeah," he said, with an NFL star's confidence. "I'd do it and I'd win it."


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Marcus Nilsson
Chefs will tell you that sometimes inspiration comes from the exalted—but just as often by chance. "I was shopping for porcini mushrooms at a restaurant-supply store and saw a bag of king oyster mushrooms sitting next to a package of some amazing pistachios," says Chang, though this sophisticated dish would never give away its accidental origins.
- Yield
- Makes 8 (first course) servings
- Active Time
- 1 1/4 hr
- Total Time
- 1 day
- For pickled Jerusalem artichokes
- 1/2 lb Jerusalem artichokes (also called Sun Chokes) or crosnes
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup rice vinegar (not seasoned)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 3/4 teaspoon shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven-spice blend)
- For pistachio purée
- 1 cup shelled roasted pistachios (preferably Sicilian or Turkish)
- 5 1/2 cups water, divided
- 1/4 cup mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine)
- 1/4 cup instant dashi powder (also called hon dashi)
- For radishes
- 8 radishes
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- For mushrooms
- 1 1/2 lb king oyster mushrooms (sometimes called Trumpet Royale)
- 1 (3 1/2-ounce) package enoki mushrooms
- 6 to 7 tablespoons canola oil, divided
- 3/4 to 1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 2 garlic cloves, smashed
- 3 tablespoons Sherry vinegar
- Garnish: microgreens or mesclun; flaky sea salt; pistachio oil (optional)
- Pickle Jerusalem artichokes:
- Peel artichokes and cut into 1/4-inch-thick sticks, then transfer to a nonreactive heatproof bowl.
- Bring remaining artichoke ingredients to a boil in a small nonreactive saucepan, stirring until salt has dissolved, then pour over artichokes. Cool to room temperature, keeping vegetables submerged with a small plate. Transfer with liquid to an airtight container and chill, shaking occasionally, at least 1 day.
- Make pistachio purée:
- Cook pistachios in 2 cups boiling water in a small saucepan 2 minutes. Drain and transfer to a bowl of ice water to stop cooking. Drain again and peel off skins.
- Bring mirin, dashi powder, and 3 cups water to a boil in a small saucepan, stirring until powder has dissolved, then add pistachios and simmer, stirring occasionally, until nuts are very tender, about 1 hour. Drain nuts, discarding dashi, then reserve 1/3 cup nuts for garnish. Purée remaining nuts with remaining 1/2 cup water in a blender into a very smooth but thick paste.
- Prepare radishes:
- Trim radishes, then cut each into 6 wedges. Toss with sugar and kosher salt in a bowl until sugar and salt have dissolved.
- Prepare mushrooms and assemble dish:
- Trim oyster mushrooms, keeping stems intact, then cut lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick slices.
- Trim enoki mushrooms, leaving 3 inches of stem, and reserve for garnish.
- Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a 12-inch heavy nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Add enough oyster mushrooms to cover skillet in 1 layer, then sprinkle with 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper and sauté, turning once, until golden on edges, 2 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a bowl. Sauté remaining oyster mushrooms in 5 or 6 more batches, using 1 tablespoon oil, 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper per batch.
- When all oyster mushrooms are sautéed, return to skillet, then add butter and garlic and heat, swirling skillet, until butter is melted. Add vinegar and boil, stirring, until evaporated. Remove from heat and discard garlic.
- Divide pistachio purée among plates, then top with oyster mushrooms. Remove artichokes from container with a slotted spoon and arrange, along with radishes, around oyster mushrooms. Sprinkle with enoki mushrooms, greens, reserved pistachios, and sea salt.
Cooks' notes:
·If using crosnes, halve lengthwise.
·Pickled Jerusalem artichokes keep, covered and chilled, 2 weeks.
·Puréed and whole cooked pistachios can be prepared 2 days ahead, then chilled separately, covered. Bring to room temperature before serving.
·Radishes can be prepared 4 hours ahead and kept at room temperature.
·Mushrooms can be sautéed 2 hours ahead and chilled, uncovered, until cool, then covered. Reheat in skillet, then proceed with recipe.
·Pickled Jerusalem artichokes keep, covered and chilled, 2 weeks.
·Puréed and whole cooked pistachios can be prepared 2 days ahead, then chilled separately, covered. Bring to room temperature before serving.
·Radishes can be prepared 4 hours ahead and kept at room temperature.
·Mushrooms can be sautéed 2 hours ahead and chilled, uncovered, until cool, then covered. Reheat in skillet, then proceed with recipe.


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Halifax, Virginia
HIV Negative
I started handing out condoms in gay bars and providing AIDS education in Greenville, North Carolina in the '90s when many of my friends were dying all around me. I affectionately became known as the "Condom Queen."
In the late '90s, I moved back home to South Boston, Virginia, had a family, went back to nursing school and lived quietly in my small town with small minds. I was no longer actively involved in AIDS education as there were absolutely no services or organizations to partner with in my hometown.
While on family vacation at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina last year, I was having lunch with a dear friend who I had not seen in more than 20 years. He was telling me about the work he was doing with the local AIDS services organization, and I had an epiphany. I knew in that very moment I was supposed to go back to school to become a nurse practitioner and start an AIDS service organization in my hometown.
I came back from vacation renewed and full of purpose. I immediately applied to Old Dominion University and started to research how to start an AIDS service organization from the ground up. That was in July 2011.
On December 1, 2011, The Halifax County AIDS Service Organization had its first meeting, in honor of World AIDS Day. Since that time, a small group of people with a common purpose, passion and commitment have come together to educate our community and ultimately provide services for those infected with or affected by HIV. To date, most of our efforts have focused on raising the necessary funds to apply for our non-profit status. We have participated in many community events to let people know we are here.
Once our non-profit status is approved, we will be applying for Ryan White funding so we can actually provide services like transportation, medication assistance, and linkage to local services. Currently there are 87 documented cases of HIV in Halifax County. Because of the stigma and lack of resources, most people travel several hundreds of miles to receive care. The Halifax County AIDS Service Organization is hoping to change that.
Additionally, I was recently accepted into the graduate Family Nurse Practitioner Program at Old Dominion University. My plan is to open a clinic locally for people with HIV. We are a tremendously rural area, and unfortunately, the mentality here regarding HIV/AIDS is full of fear, ignorance and hatred. Surprisingly, our organization has been well received, and we are fighting the good fight to educate others and de-stigmatize this illness. We are proud to be a part of the POZ Army, and we look forward to standing firm, with unfailing support, to fight this fight together, locally, nationally and internationally. We will overcome.
What three adjectives best describe you?
Passionate, intelligent, committed
What is your greatest achievement?
Raising children who love all people
What is your greatest regret?
I live by the code of no regrets.
What keeps you up at night?
Thinking about all the things I want to do with my organization, school, and family
If you could change one thing about living with HIV, what would it be?
That religion would never be part of the discussion!
What is the best advice you ever received?
Don't let the opinion of others dictate your actions or lack thereof.
What person in the HIV/AIDS community do you most admire?
Paul Temple Coleman. He is the first person I ever met with AIDS in 1989, and 23 years later, he was my organization's first speaker on a panel discussion! He is truly inspiring!
What drives you to do what you do?
The love of all people and knowing there will never be enough people around to show compassion and understanding
What is your motto?
Together, we can make a difference!
If you had to evacuate your house immediately, what is the one thing you would grab on the way out?
My pictures
If you could be any animal, what would you be? And why?
A cat: They are full of personality, take lots of naps and appear to have not a care in the world.
Click here to share your story.


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Scarface - High Powered
This is Scarface first Single off his 11th studio album. Listen carefully to the words... Shout out to Kadilsha
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Album Review: Switchfoot's 'Vice Verses'
After 15 years together and seven highly successful albums released, one might think that this is the point when veteran rock band switchfoot would reach a creative standstill. Multi-platinum records, numerous industry awards, and sell-out concerts are just a few of their laurels upon which they could rest. However, switchfoot shows no sign of slowing down, instead doing quite the opposite, by charging full-speed ahead into new musical territory with their eighth album, Vice Verses.
With scorching, mile-a-minute guitars, and bouncy rhythms that are hard to resist dancing to, Vice Verses is the band's most energetic album to date. The first two tracks, "Afterlife" and The Original," are rousing introductions to the album, serving up heavy doses of hard-rocking guitar and drums. The Lenny Kravitz-esque "The War Inside" features a sonic, hip-hop beat over which Jon Foreman laments about being his own worst enemy. The band even experiments with spoken word on "Selling the News." The first single "Dark Horses," an electrifying anthem, is a surefire hit.
The mellow moments on this album, which is set for release in September, are few, but when the band does slow down, it results in gems, such as "Souvenirs," a reminiscent love song, and the title track "Vice Verses," an acoustic ballad about life's seemingly simultaneous blessings and curses.