text:
Bob Warming, Penn State University Men's Coach will be the featured clinician. Coach Warming ranks 3rd in all time wins in Division I. He has been named National Coach of the Year twice and Big Ten Coach of the Year twice. He is currently entering his 7th season as head coach at Penn State and 33rd season overall.
Bob Barnes, Ohio Wesleyan University Women's Coach. Coach Barnes is entering his 19th season at OWU and has won 2 national championships. He has also been named National Coach of the Year.
Jay Martin, Ohio Wesleyan University Men's Coach. Coach Martin is the all leader in career wins in the NCAA for all divisions. He is entering his 38th season has head coach at OWU and has won 2 national championships. He is also the current editor of the NSCAA Journal and has served as NSCAA president.
Brandon Koons, Otterbein University Women's Coach. Coach Koons is entering his 18th season at Otterbein University. He has been named NSCAA Regional Coach of the Year 3 times. His teams have made 6 appearances in the NCAA tournament. They have won 5 league tournament titles and 7 regular season championships.
Tiffany Crooks, Case Western Reserve University Women's Coach. Coach Crooks is entering her 9th season at Case Western Reserve University. She has also been an assistant at the College of Wooster and Xavier University. She was an Academic All-American at Ashland University where she helped her team reach the NCAA Division II Final Four.
Eric Vaughter, Goalkeeper Coach. Coach Vaughter is a national known goalkeeper trainer and has worked at a variety of universities and clubs.
All individuals that register for the clinic will receive a coach's notebook. The cost of the clinic is $100 for 10 field sessions over a day and half. The clinic will start on Saturday morning June 13 and conclude at noon on Sunday, June 14. Information about hotel accommodations can be found on the OSSCA website at OSSCA.org.


text:
The Coalition Against Environmental Racism (CAER) is hosting its 16th Annual Grassroots Environmental Justice Conference on Saturday, April 30th and Sunday, May 1st. No registration is required. Please join us for a great weekend of free food and free knowledge at the University of Oregon (EMU Fir Room and River Rooms)!!
See attached poster for detailed conference schedule. Please do not hesitate to contact email@example.com with any questions.
Saturday will be filled with workshops, panels, and speakers on environmental justice topics such as, climate justice, food justice, water justice, indigenous rights, and health equity.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Pietri Gold Cup
25th July 1908: Queen Alexandra presenting Dorando Pietri with a special Gold Cup the day after he was disqualified from the Marathon at the 1908 London Olympics, despite finishing first, for being helped over the line. The Gold Medal went to John Hayes of the USA. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)


text:
(Phoenix, Ariz. – March 23, 2006) Attorney General Terry Goddard today announced that victims of an Australian Lottery scam may be eligible for refunds through the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office.
In 1999, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office secured a judgment against Systems 3 Marketing, Inc., Systems Marketing, SMI, Sushila Devi Kumar and Sandhya Murthi. This company and these individuals were involved in a telemarketing fraud scheme that offered chances to win a share in the Australian Lottery. The company operated out of Vancouver, Canada.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office recently recovered $175,000 that will be used to provide refunds to victims of this scam, who include as many as 1,800 people living outside Pennsylvania. The following information can be used to submit claims to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office:
|Systems 3 Marketing, Inc., Systems Marketing, SMI, Sushila Devi Kumar and Sandhya Murthi.
|Period of Operation:
|The company is believed to have operated from 1996 through 1998.
|Availability of Refunds:
|Anyone who paid any money to Systems 3 Marketing, Inc., Systems Marketing or SMI at any time for chances to participate in the Australian Lottery is eligible for a refund.
|Claims Process:
|Consumers should submit an SMI Refund Claim Registration Form and an affidavit to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office.
|Consumers seeking refunds must submit their claims before May 2, 2006.
|Claim Form:
|SMI Refund Claim Registration Forms and affidavits can be obtained from the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office at www.attorneygeneral.gov or by writing to Office of the Attorney General, Bureau of Consumer Protection, 171 Lovell Avenue, Suite 202, Ebensburg, PA 15931. Telephone: (814) 471-1831; Fax: (814) 471-1840.


text:
Chefchaouen is situated in the mountains of Rif, just inland from Tangier and Tetouan. The area of which Chefchaouen is the main city is one of the main producers of cannabis in Morocco. Cannabis is being sold all over town, but it is both easy to notice and easy to overlook. The reason for this is that it is such an intrinsic part of the city life, it is sold together with vegetables, herbs and spices, and that nobody makes much fuzz about it.
Chefchaouen is a proof of the fact that cannabis doesn't necessarily lead to crime, as long as the cannabis itself is not considered illegal. Chefchaouen must be the safest place in Morocco and there will be no warnings against walking around in the streets even in the middle of the night.
But Chefchaouen has more attractions, and these apply to all types of travellers. The city is simply beautiful, with simple houses with illuminatingly white walls and doors as blue as the sky above you. Every street is better taken care of and cleaner than any other city I have visited in my life. But that's not all: everything here is dramatically set climbing up two mountains before the city ends in the water source where small kids swim in the most idyllic surroundings you have ever seen.
Next page


text:
I talked to the psychologist yesterday, and even though I still think she could have been more professional, even though I still think the tone of our meetings was not constructive, it seems like maybe we may have dodged a bullet when this arrangement fell apart.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have arrived at the angry stage of my surrogacy failure.
The psychologist told me some new things about the surrogate, let's call her M, that are troubling. That one of the first things out of M's mouth during their individual meeting was that no agency would accept her because "this is my body and pregnancy, and no one is going to tell me what to do." Suffice it to say, this is not how she presented herself to me. M also told the psychologist that no one would mentor her in her business, because they "don't want to mentor the competition" (I guess the millions of mentors out there are always from different industries from their mentees in her imaginary world). And apparently her choice to home school was not because she deems herself a more suitable teacher for her children, but due to conflict with her school system. All of this, the psychologist said, was conveyed with a certain belligerence. A sense that she is perched on a moral high ground, not only on the termination point, but in life in general.
It explains why the psychologist entered into our group meeting with an assertiveness toward the surrogate that I found in the moment, without this recently acquired knowledge, to be unprofessional. I still think she could have controlled herself a bit and tried to create a meeting of the minds, or construct a new understanding for M on the necessary mindset for a surrogate -- and maybe M could have stretched herself to make it work. But it makes sense why she approached it the way she did. She said she's screened hundreds of surrogates and no one had ever presented herself to her the way M did. Yikes.
What doesn't make sense is why M would try to be a surrogate in the first place. It offends me that, by making this all about her, she is flouting the real pain and angst that couples who arrive at surrogacy are experiencing. We need someone who can put her own agenda aside and make a healthy baby by listening to the parents and the doctors, and then, in turn, get paid for her efforts. It's not like we were going to suggest an experimental treatment on her, or ask her to give birth in a treehouse. She needed to let go of control and trust us too.
The conversation with the psychologist was healing in a way, because after I got the email from M, my first instinct was self-flagellation. Surely, I thought, there must be something wrong with me, because no one -- no one -- has this kind of luck repeatedly. I must be attracting bad luck and bad people, or otherwise f-ing things up with my PTSD-laced behavior and communication. It turns out that it really was just the bad luck of choosing someone who presented herself as a great candidate to me, but let her borderline personality hang out with the psychologist (Which, by the way? Isn't very smart. Did she not get that this person represented our interests and could block the whole thing?).
I still had to pay the psychologist yesterday. Her bill was $699. I couldn't even write the check -- I had to have my husband do it. Do you know what I could have done with $699? This is in addition to the approximately $8k we already invested in this surrogate.
[I had a whole rant here with additional specific and angry points about what went down with M. It made me feel crappy and petty to have it out there. Tearing her down, even if my points are legitimate, is not going to make anything better. So I'm deleting them, but I have to say it made me feel better to write them out.]
But there's still this: gallows humor. While writing the check to the psychologist, my husband offered that he could draw stick figures in the memo line. Perhaps stick figures in compromising positions. He didn't do it, but I love him for suggesting it.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
The Anger Stage
I talked to the psychologist yesterday, and even though I still think she could have been more professional, even though I still think the tone of our meetings was not constructive, it seems like maybe we may have dodged a bullet when this arrangement fell apart.
Posted by Good Egg Hatched at 7:40 AM 3 comments Links to this post
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Foiled Again.
Have you ever wondered if you're cursed? If you kicked dogs in a past life? If someone is trying to tell you to stop, just stop, for the love of grace, stop?
We got so far this time. So far. She came out with her husband in June. Things looked just ducky with her medically. We liked them both personally. Then the psychologist came in for that screening and fucked everything up.
The main issue was around the possibility of termination. This is such a deeply personal, not to mention politically charged issue, and I cannot handle the possibility of this post turning into a commentary on that, because I deeply respect the nuances of this issue. But here's what I will say. If you're thinking about surrogacy, make sure you know exactly where your potential surrogate stands on this issue. Moreover -- and here's what we didn't know -- make sure that, even if you feel with 100% certainty that you would never, ever terminate, no matter what, even if someone's life depended on it, make sure your surrogate is willing to give you the final word on it in your contract. Even if you agree in theory going in, the final word should optimally be yours, because you can't predict how you might feel in the moment, if a doctor tells you your child might suffer. And also, you need to know that even if she says in her contract that it is completely up to you, that she would terminate at your request for any reason, to choose surrogacy is to revoke the certainty that you can make that decision about your baby. Because even if she gives you the power to decide in your contract, in fact there is no court in this great land that can make someone terminate a pregnancy. In the one devastating case out there in the news, the surrogate said she was open to terminate, but then changed her mind when the fetus was diagnosed with a severe syndrome. And it just gets sadder from there.
I wish I had known all of this. Even though the surrogate and I were on the same page up to 99% of the matter, it turned out there was a gray area where my husband and I were a bit more liberal. Where we wanted the reassurance that ultimately, that would be our own decision to make.
I would have known this if I had used an agency. And I would have used an agency if money were no object. But it is an object.
Basically the psychologist handled this issue very, very badly, and I think that was a greater obstacle than anything else. The beginning of the end. Her unprofessional and glib approach created an air of defensiveness and distrust among the four of us that we never recovered from. And as an aside, I now need somehow handle her $700 invoice when she may have ruined my chances of having another baby.
That wasn't the only thing that happened. The surrogate got nervous after that conversation, but we always felt better when we talked about it openly. Then our financial picture changed a bit. My husband had been doing extra work to fund this operation and that got shut down unexpectedly early. So we were on hold for about a week sorting through that obstacle. And then the surrogate complained that she didn't want to use a lawyer for her contract review that my lawyer recommended, and it felt like maybe she was going to push back on everything. And our communication started to break down. And then last night, she dropped the bomb on me via email at 10 p.m. She is out. I think she is not used to this kind of complication when it comes to making a baby, and it terrified her.
And now I need to figure out how to live in a world where I have embryos that never see the light of day. Because I think I'm finally, finally seeing that this is never going to happen.
Posted by Good Egg Hatched at 10:02 AM 6 comments Links to this post


text:
Welcome to the morning report, which, thanks to a revised schedule, is now an afternoon report. The rain came down yesterday and even though the track was covered, there was plenty of standing water in the flat areas that had to be pumped out this morning. The track crew then went to work on getting the track in shape for practice, which has been cut to two sessions (untimed practice was eliminated), and considering how much moisture there was, the track condition is pretty amazing. In fact, Dunlop Tire guy Brian Fleck said they're going to start the day on intermediate tires and if the rain stays away, some riders might even end up on a hard-pack tires. There are still plenty of soft spots though, and on track walk, this reporter even had to tighten his shoelaces so the mud wouldn't pull of his shoes in a few places.
The track isn't made up of the typical parallel-lane layout you'd expect in a football stadium; some lanes even cut diagonally across the stadium floor. There two whoop sections. The first one is pretty standard and consists of nine whoops. The second is seven long, but they are a little bigger. There's also an off-camber turn that, with the wet dirt, could be pretty tough to get to the inside of.
The track crew had their work cut out for them this morning.
Photo: Hansel
As for the storylines tonight, we'll see the return of the Western Regional 250SX series and the battle for the championship between Eli Tomac and Ken Roczen. Roczen leads Tomac by 17 points, but as we know, that can all change in an instant, especially if the two get to banging like Dean Wilson and Tomac did last year at this very race. Cole Seely is ready to go as well, and says his comfort level is significantly higher than it was at the beginning of the season. For more on him, check out this morning's Going for the W. Ryan Sipes, who was knocked out of the season early with a wrist injury, is also here and will be returning to action tonight.
In 450 action, you already know what to look for. Hometown hero Ryan Villopoto holds a significant lead and Ryan Dungey and Davi Millsaps will be doing their best to cut back into it. With just three races left, they're going to need some help, which could come tonight in the form of rain. Lastly, Kyle Regal is here with Valli Motorsports and will be racing his first supercross race of the year.
Be sure to keep checking back here at Racer X Online and follow us on Twitter, @racerxonline, for updates on what's going on in CenturyLink Field.
The lanes themselves are pretty dry. Elsewhere? Not so much.
Photo: Hansel


text:
First chapter
- Imprint
- Disclaimer
- Privacy Policy
- © innogy 2018
Using cookies provides you more flexibility when using our website. We use cookies to optimise your visit to the website. Pixels are used to show you personalised information and contents. For more information, please refer to our Privacy Policy.
Also you have the possibility to view and adjust your settings for cookies and pixels here.
Select which cookies and pixels we are allowed to use. Please note that some cookies are necessary for technical reasons and must be enabled in order to maintain the functionality of our website. If you would like to benefit from every service on our website, please consider that you need to choose every cookie category.
As of now, the use of analytical cookies does not require your consent until the e-privacy Regulation will take effect. You are allowed to edit the settings of all cookie categories by deactivating your cookies in our data privacy statement.


text:
From being very much a minority taste, the beat-laden, drug-fueled behemoth of electronic dance music is now the USA's mainstream entertainment, with the repercussions of its infiltration into American culture yet to become manifest. EDM's explosion is a fascinating phenomenon for seasoned observers of the dance-music scene. At last year's Ultra Music Festival in Miami I felt as though I were stepping back in time, reminded of Edinburgh's Rezerection raves in the 1990s. The exception being, of course, that the seminaked people were dancing under a blistering sun rather than turning blue from exposure.
I've been attending raves (now a taboo word, replaced by the prosaic title "dance-music festivals") all over America for 20 years, mainly in the house-music stronghold of California but also everywhere from Chicago to New Orleans to New York City. At events like Ultra and Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, the crowd is, in the old British parlance, "mad for it," and for crusty veterans like myself there is something both uplifting and oddly disquieting about this. It would be nonsense to claim that the modern dance-music experience is inferior to the old-school one just because my 50-something legs and constitution mean I'm pretty much done with all-nighter-all-dayers and the chemicals that fuel them. That would be like a recently castrated eunuch arguing that they don't make orgies like they used to. But we wanted dance music to take over the world, and now it has pretty much happened. So why all the skepticism? After all, dance music, or house or techno, lest we forget, is not strictly a European invention. It might have been redefined for mass consumption in the Old World, but it's as American as apple pie, forged in the great musical cities of Chicago, Detroit and New York. Only now it has been successfully rebranded for the American mainstream.
If you like spectacle, EDM is hard to beat, taking the traditional rave staples of eye-popping lasers, brain-frying strobes, mind-blowing lights and cyber projections to new levels. As the doyen of U.K. dance-music commentators Simon Reynolds observed in a recent Guardian feature: "This AV glitz-blitz costs a lot, but then artists at the Deadmau5 level earn a lot, as much as $1 million for a festival appearance, while hardest-gigging man in EDM Skrillex is reportedly worth $15 million. With day tickets selling at around $125 and well over 300,000 attending over three days, the Las Vegas Electric Daisy Carnival must have grossed in the region of $40 million. The big money is attracting even bigger money: The mogul Robert F.X. Sillerman declared his intent to spend $1 billion acquiring companies in the EDM field, while Live Nation, America's leading concert promotions company, recently purchased outright Hard Events."
Therein lies the rub: Acts are now defined purely in terms of their commercial success; depending on which article you read you'll find Skrillex, Deadmau5 or Tïesto touted as the biggest/most lucrative/highest-earning act in EDM. The music seems to be posted missing in all of this. Was Derrick May's business portfolio ever compared with that of Frankie Knuckles?
The new EDM artists are no longer old-school DJs responding to changes in the mood of the crowd, leading the party from the front. As a breed they are generally straight, business-oriented music producers who preprogram their sets to tie in with the mind-boggling visual and lighting systems. The comment made by Deadmau5 that today's EDM stars basically just press play caused some hackles to rise, but it was an honest statement. Deadmau5 contends that the real artistry is in the recording studio, not in the performance.
Perhaps old dogs like myself need to get real about EDM. After all, Simon Cowell's overproduced throwaways sell more than the hip young guitar bands of the day, just as a Jerry Bruckheimer production will generally have more viewers than the coolest HBO drama. It was always thus. Perhaps we just take EDM a bit too seriously. So then why does its popularity explosion fill so many old house-heads with concern? To answer this question, we need to consider where the scene started, and where it's ended up.
It's hard to think of two more divergent landscapes than the glitzy playground of Las Vegas, rising out of the desert, and the "magic island" of Ibiza, Europe's house-music capital. I wasn't introduced to house music and ecstasy at either. That moment took place in the more prosaic surrounds of an Edinburgh city council works Christmas party. I reluctantly popped a pill, gun-shy of all drugs due to previous bad form with heroin. To my surprise, I found that I couldn't listen to Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody." I craved the beats of house music while I was on ecstasy, just as much as I'd been ambivalent to them while on alcohol. I was delighted when my friend Susan, who had given me the pill, suggested we move on to Edinburgh's legendary Pure club. I got it. I was a convert. It was year zero.
Ibiza came later, those hedonistic summers of supreme decadence culminating in my gig deejaying to 10,000 crazed ravers in the Balearic institution that is the club night Manumission. I wasn't a great DJ, but it didn't matter. I had the tunes in my bag and everybody was mashed out of their heads on E and adrenaline, so the place went crazy. So did I. I had immersed myself in a scene that was just sheer, rapturous, euphoric enjoyment. I'd been in London as a teenager when punk was at its height and had supposed that was my zenith. It had been only the warm-up act. Yes, it also had its downside—drugs and
intoxication generally do—but I wouldn't have missed it for the universe.
Now it's strange to think of Vegas, which I associate with Tom Jones and boxing, in the same way as those old days in Ibiza. Yet the isolation and anything-goes ethos the two places share have made Vegas the perfect site as the dance-music center of the Americas. Even the suited Talibanites of the Christian fundamentalist right tacitly accept that monument to capitalist excess, though perhaps with the old caveat "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."
Spring break in America, no longer limited to spring or to college kids, provided the mainstream cultural raison d'être for EDM by throwing a lot of bodies together under a four-by-four beat and a strobe light. For some time the young (and the not so young) have been flooding spots like Las Vegas and Miami Beach, looking for the party. With the staple acts long in the tooth and as stale as old bread, and the audience either dying, incontinent or suffering foreclosure, the gap in the Vegas market was yawning. And this party also had to be about more than being in a club or bar, listening to the latest mainstream pop records given the four-by-four treatment. It's hard to see youth flocking to these spots to enjoy the Cowell-esque conveyor belt of bland, disposable flunkies or synthetic "country" and teen stars. There's not a whole lot of fun in that game once puberty kicks in.
The issue of how to get young people, who will spend money whether they have it or not, into city stadiums and parks has been an ongoing one. What will they come for? EDM has provided the spectacle. It's undeniably crass to say that EDM equals house and techno plus spring-break culture, but the first two brought the beat, the other the bodies in search of fun. And they have quite possibly revitalized Las Vegas.
More crucially, the internet has demolished the old walls between cultures, ending the time lag that prevented the North American spread of U.K.-based dance genres such as jungle. By the time U.S. DJs got their hands on the latest U.K. sounds as imports, they were out of date and no longer essential. Now dubstep, the original completely networked dance scene, enjoys global synchronization, with a relatively free trade in sound files and new track edits of DJ mixes on pirate radio stations, which fans then post on YouTube. EDM spread like a virus once major acts began to tour U.S. soil, and it wasn't long before American producers got in on the act, both at home and abroad.
The genesis of this rise can arguably be charted through American R&B and hip-hop acts going to Ibiza, doing pills, discovering David Guetta and his Fuck Me I'm Famous party, and being moved to collaborate with him to make big club and pop hits. Acts such as P. Diddy, Chris Brown, the Black Eyed Peas and Kanye West then made dance music cool in America by marginalizing the gay factor. This, Boston-born dance-music luminary Arthur Baker argues, paved the way for the takeover of Las Vegas by dance giants "like Paul Oakenfold, who upped things through his touring with Madonna, and then the new-school homegrown acts such as Deadmau5 and Skrillex, who gave the kids their own stars."
Indivisible from the artistic side of the equation is the scene's commercial rebranding. This was basically about finding a new terminology to disassociate raves and house and techno music from the traditional concerns authorities and parents had about them, with their sexy vibe of near-naked bodies and, most of all, almost every participant on mind-bending chemicals. The game changer was the 2010 Electric Daisy Carnival at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Advertising rave culture as EDM is one thing, but the past wasn't so easily airbrushed. A 15-year-old girl who managed to bypass the event's age restrictions and gain entry became the scene's first high-profile ecstasy-associated fatality.
The justifiable outcry that followed this tragedy might have been a blow but in fact became a huge leg up for EDM in America. Electric Daisy Carnival was forced out of Los Angeles but, fortuitously for the burgeoning scene, relocated to Las Vegas. Moreover, the incident advertised the fact that such huge events actually did exist in the States.
What we traditionally know as raves appeal not just to the public but also to entertainment entrepreneurs. Cheaper to put on than rock-and-roll festivals, they involve fewer people to deal with and less equipment to worry about. Ironically, due to ecstasy (now also rebranded as the powdered "molly") the crowds are generally far better behaved than at alcohol-soaked rock-and-roll festivals. And then there is the one thing America has in spades: space. Huge parking lots and giant sports stadiums abound, along with a ready-made events culture of people who are accustomed to filling them. The biggest factor quite possibly lies in those three little letters: EDM. Americans are not the most difficult people in the world to market things to—that's what comes of being the oldest mass consumer society on the planet. It's an unwritten law that for any big participatory event to be successful, it must, like the USA, be hung on three letters: UFC, NBA, NFL, MLB, etc. Thus, EDM.
Driving EDM to the musical mainstream requires financial viability, meaning electronic music on this side of the Atlantic has to pitch to the masses, and the ubiquitous four-four beats of house music need to infect almost every stream of popular music. The problem with this lowest-common-denominator effect is that it can often mean that much of the music isn't very good ("soulless shit," in Baker's words). It's hard to escape the contention that EDM is catering largely to people who simply want entertainment and have minimal immersion or emotional investment in the scene. When The Wall Street Journal is moved to complain about "The Dumbing Down of Electronic Dance Music," something is clearly awry.
Yet a counterargument runs that the older rave generations are on shaky ground complaining about the commercialization of dance music. We were the ones, after all, who, having had our fill of cold fields and disused factories, started to pine for proper toilets and bars. You can't have enough in the capitalist world of entertainment, only too much. So then came the VIP lounge and the velvet ropes of the superclub, another precedent of EDM.
The good and bad aspects of EDM were summed up by Chicago house legend and articulate observer of the American dance-music scene Tommie Sunshine: "I love the fact that this music is where it is. If you say differently, you're either lying or you never got it in the first place. House music to me was always inclusive: I always wanted everyone to come to the party. We lost a lot of that inclusiveness when the whole bottle-service and dickhead-doorman thing became a cliché. But this subculture wasn't made up of people playing by the rules. And now people want to put rules on it. It's showbiz, and the love of music has been tragically lost."
Kids need their heroes, and as an old anti-house purist who grumbled about DJs stealing music before I succumbed to the power of the beat (and the pill), I'm in no position to bemoan the rise of musicianship and technological spectacle over DJ performance in dance music. But I also want people to know about the history and spirit of the rave. As Baker says, "No one is educating the kids on its underground ethnic roots, the forefathers of the old school, the gay DJs who were wiped out by AIDS. The cycle of history on dance music is about five to 10 years—before that the kids are clueless for the most part."
Here in America, Larry Levan is long gone, but some of the giants of techno and house such as Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins and Frankie Knuckles are still strutting their stuff. It would be great if today's EDM kids were checking them out. If you are investing heavily in something in terms of your time, money and social life, you should know about it. Why? Because it's yours: It's your culture and your history. If you don't, you're just another passive consumer in the supermarket line, waiting for the next tune before doing the hamster-on-the-wheel routine. And yes, since we put our own spin on it over in Europe, I also want people to know about Shoom, the Haçienda, Ibiza and the free party scene, culminating in Castlemorton and the Blackburn arrests.
Worryingly, there are signs of an imminent U.S. crackdown. The swaggering machismo of spring-break frat-boy culture has moved dubstep toward the harder sound of "brostep," which has been embraced in the States. There's no doubt the EDM experience is heavily packaged, less about music or even dancing than just about being a face in this huge extravaganza, partying hard and getting as fucked-up as possible. Another element of contemporary American EDM, one it shares with some of the harsher European techno scenes, is that under the veil of celebration there is often a tangible sense of anger and alienation. Members of the EDM generation are the first Americans who will be poorer than their parents, and they often carry a palpable sense of frustration associated with that status.
While the tragic ecstasy-related death of the teenager in 2010 illustrates that the scene perversely grows on notoriety, in the long run such incidents can only make it more visible to the authorities. The event illustrated the unavoidably symbiotic link between EDM and ecstasy. The Los Angeles Times, reporting on the Electric Daisy Carnival, stated that "about 120 attendees were taken to hospitals, mostly for drug intoxication."
There are only so many ways you can sanitize an experience that is, in essence, largely about the interface between a sound and a drug, whether you are celebrating or hiding by doing so. There will be people who say that drugs are irrelevant, that it's all about the music and they can dance themselves into a transcendental state. But with a few new-age nerdish or rehab-case exceptions, this is bullshit. If there's a party in the penthouse of a tower block, 90 percent of people, or more, will opt for the express elevator rather than 60 flights of stairs. Ecstasy, by increasing sensitivity to light, touch and above all beat, made the U.K. and European rave explosion, just as a more generic cocktail of drugs, led by MDMA, is now doing for dance music in America.
As I write this, there are moves by the city of Miami to restrict the Ultra festival, a magnificent three-day party that turns a sterile downtown into a tropical carnival. Inevitably drug use has been cited. Never mind that every single weekend, in every city in America, just as many drugs will be consumed by unsupervised people who will then likely come into contact with sober citizens going about their business. An EDM festival packed with dancing, drug-fueled, sexually liberated youth is a soft target for a reactionary politician trying to hog headlines.
So, sadly, EDM seems almost custom-made to be shunted into the firing line, contested in an America increasingly divided by age and ideology. The threat to Ultra shows that right-wing, Tea Party–driven legislators, with their seemingly relentless quest to control the uterus and to proscribe through certification where the penis can and cannot be inserted, now have such events conclusively on their radar. EDM has changed America and is changing it still. Hang on tight; it could be a bumpy ride.
This article was originally published in the April 2013 issue of Playboy. Read more from any issue on iPlayboy.com. Also, read a full interview with Welsh about the upcoming movie adaption of his book Filth here.
Photo by Getty Images


text:
Unsolved cases
When Genome Sequencing just isn't enough
Although next generation sequencing (NGS) allows for a comprehensive analysis of DNA from individuals with suspected monogenic disease, it does not always identify the causative mutation. So where are these missing mutations hiding?
The first thing to remember is that whilst 'whole genome sequencing' is a widely used term it is in fact a misnomer. The most commonly used short read technologies can only call mutations in 88-95% of the genome. The remaining 5-12% of the genome is either not sequenced to a high enough quality to allow for mutation detection or is impossible to map as a result of repetitive DNA sequences. But technology is moving fast and single molecule real-time sequencing platforms that generate reads of around 10,000 bases are filling in some of these gaps and identifying new variants.
The other issue is that the number of times each base is "read" varies according to the CG richness of the region, the size of the targeted regions (e.g. small/large gene panel, exome or genome) and the number of sequence reads obtained per patient. At least 20 reads are required to have a 99.9% chance of detecting a heterozygous base substitution.
Can we detect all mutations?
The sensitivity of mutation detection depends upon the mutation type as well as the read depth. Base substitutions (SNVs) are most easily detected but insertions and deletions (InDels) are more difficult because of capture bias (in targeted methods but not genome sequencing) and mapping issues. Bioinformatic tools to detect copy number variants (CNVs), chromosome rearrangements (structural variants: SVs) and insertions of e.g. LINE (Long Interspersed Nuclear Elements) elements are still in their infancy and their sensitivity has not been established.
Are we looking in the right place?
Even if it were possible to accurately call all variants in the entire genome it is still likely that some mutations would be missed as we might just not be looking in the right place. For example some mutations may arise spontaneously after conception (so called "post-zygotic", 'somatic' or 'acquired' mutations) which will result in varying levels of the mutation between tissues. An example of this is seen in some patients with hyperinsulinaemic hypoglycaemia, where the mutation which causes the unregulated secretion of insulin from the beta cell is confined to the pancreatic tissue. For these individuals sequencing DNA extracted from the blood would not detect the causative mutation. It is therefore important to consider the most appropriate source of DNA for sequencing studies, although in many cases blood is likely to be the only feasible option.
Looking for a needle in a haystack
Failing to identify a causative mutation may also result from difficulties with the interpretation of data rather than a failure in detection. We learnt earlier that a human genome contains around 3-4 million variants. In order to search for the causative mutation various strategies can be employed to reduce this number. However, sometimes these processes lead to the causative mutation being removed from the data set. For example there are many pathogenic mutations listed in control sequencing databases which are used to filter out common benign polymorphisms. This is a particular problem for mutations that are recessively acting, as individuals who are heterozygous for the mutation will be clinically unaffected. It is therefore important to consider the likely carrier frequency of a given disease prior to setting a 'cut-off' for excluding variants present in control populations. Even once you have correctly filtered your data for common polymorphisms, the number of variants for follow-up analysis is still likely to be large. For example a consanguineous patient will have approximately 3,000 rare or novel homozygous variants. So how do you find the disease-causing mutation? Assigning causality becomes easier when you identify a mutation residing within a good biological candidate gene or within a known regulatory region. Co-segregation studies within large pedigrees or replication studies in unrelated individuals with the same phenotype are extremely valuable in helping with the interpretation. However, variants are often identified in non-annotated regions in the genome or within a gene of unknown function. The absence of strong replication studies and/or a plausible hypothesis for the mechanism of disease will make it extremely difficult to provide convincing evidence for disease causality.
Searching for something that is not there to be found
It is important to remember that genetic disease does not always result from a change in the DNA sequence. A number of diseases are known to result from defects in the methylation status of DNA; an epigenetic mechanism used to control gene expression. These abnormalities in methylation cannot be detected by genome sequencing and a different analysis approach is required. Finally, it is important to keep an open mind about the classification of disease. How certain are you that the disease is monogenic? Is it possible that environmental factors have been at play or that the phenotype in the patient just represents the extreme tail of normal physiology or common polygenic disease?
© University of Exeter


text:
Old MacDonald had a farm. He has appeared on Sesame Street many times over the years, beginning in the 1980s, and has been performed over the years by Richard Hunt, Martin P. Robinson, Jerry Nelson, and Joey Mazzarino. He usually has a slight Scots accent, and appeared in two Sesame Street News Flash sketches in which Kermit the Frog investigates events on the farm.
Old MacDonald has also introduced music videos by The Oinker Sisters and occasionally been involved in street storylines. On one such occasion, Shelly the Turtle wanted to join his farm menagerie, and be added to the song.
In most appearances throughout the 1990s, the old farmer was a Green Anything Muppet. However, he reverted back to his original Pumpkin form when he appeared in the Elmo's World episode "Farms." He appeared as a Green AM again in the street story from Episode 4827.


text:
All of tables in Packs 31 through 40 PLUS all available Pro versions of these tables for a greatly discounted price.
This will include the pinball tables Phantom of the Opera™, Earthshaker™… plus many more tables!!!
Tales of the Arabian Nights®, Ripley's Believe It or Not®, Theatre of Magic®, and Black HoleTM are available from within the game.
Each month, regular updates will add classics like Monster Bash®, Medieval Madness®, Creature from the Black Lagoon®, Funhouse®, Attack from Mars®, Black Knight®, Space Shuttle®, Pin•Bot®, Circus Voltaire®, Big Shot®, (and many others for years to come!) along with online tournaments and additional modes to challenge yourself and compete against your friends.
Our goal is for the Pinball Arcade to become the most realistic and comprehensive pinball game ever created!


text:
The city of Clarksburg, West Virginia is a small city of about 17,000 people and is the county seat of Harrison County. It was established in 1785 and named after General George Rogers Clark of Revolutionary War fame. When Clarksburg was founded and established as the county seat, Harrison County included a very large portion of present-day West Virginia and a large part of that land was still unsettled.
Trappers and fur traders had been camping in the area of Clarksburg for at least 20 years before its founding and farmers had been felling trees and plowing fields for a good dozen years or so before the Clarksburg settlement was big enough to think of itself as anything other than a small outpost on the very big frontier. At the time, the Clarksburg settlement was nominally part of Virginia, at least as far as laws determine which state is in charge of what territory, but, for all practical purposes, it was The Frontier, and Mrs. Blogger's ancestors were there (well, actually – being "settlement-adverse" - they were a few miles to the south) with their axes, plows and seed corn.
In 1985, Clarksburg celebrated its two hundredth birthday. One thing that the organizers of the bicentennial celebration left behind for future generations was a sculpture in front of the Harrison County Court House. The sculpture, titled "The Immigrants", was created by William D. Hopen of Sutton, Braxton County, West Virginia and stands in silent tribute all the many people who have called Clarksburg home during the past two centuries.
Public – or civic - art is important, especially in a country made up of many nationalities, races, religions and cultures. It provides a point of cultural focus, a focal point for reflection and contemplation of things bigger than ourselves and, if done right, a "civic story."
Tourists from all over the world come to the United States and seek out our grandest pieces of civic art, and, through them, learn about our national story. The Lincoln Memorial. Mount Rushmore. The Statue of Liberty. Cities throughout the United States abound with less well known examples of civic art that tell smaller, more localized and more detailed parts of our national story, like the Clarksburg, West Virginia sculpture in front of the court house.
Civic art calls out to be looked at, both from a distance and from close up. It has a story to tell, and, at its best, is designed to draw you ever closer to study the subtle details. That way, you will likely think more carefully about the more detailed parts of the story.
Here's a view of the Hopen sculpture from the front, and from a distance:
You can tell right off that there's a story being told here. In fact, the story begins on the left side of the sculpture. Here's what it looks like from the side, portraying the first people to live here:
As you move from left to right, you can see the faces changing and the immigrant story unfolding. By the time you reach the far right, the figures represent the new European arrivals of the early 20th century. [Note: Clarksburg hosts one of the largest Italian festivals in the United States.] The figures are not meant to be specific individuals; rather, they are meant to represent the diverse types of people who come together to form communities over time.
Sometimes, you might miss a few details at first glance. For example, I'm pretty sure that most folks miss the coal miner (see below) with his pick crawling out of the mine until they study the sculpture a bit more carefully.
Of course, civic art reflects the time and place of its creation, with all its cultural baggage, telling us the story that its creators were commissioned to tell. Not everyone's story gets told correctly, and in some cases, there are stories that never get told at all.
"The Immigrants" tells us the classic story of West Virginia's first settlers – native Americans, explorers, farmers, craftspeople and business folk – utilizing about 16 or 17 representative figures.
But wait a minute - What's missing here? Frankly it's a problem that I notice with a lot of civic art. In fact, any genealogist will probably recognize it immediately.
The tiny babe in arms notwithstanding, only two of the representational adult figures are women. That leaves a whole lot of the story of immigration and settlement untold and unremembered.
And that's why we need to tell more stories.


text:
Alex Walton and the team have closed a raft of major territories on the upcoming Liam Neeson thriller A Walk Among The Tombstones led by a deal with Alliance Films for the UK, Canada and Spain. Universal holds US rights and production is set for February 2013 in New York City.
Rights have also gone in Japan (Pony Canyon), France (Metropolitan), Germany (Square One/Wild Bunch), CIS and Baltic States (Surreal), Latin America (CDC), Portugal (Lusomondo) and South Korea (Boomerang).
Exclusive Media also licensed rights to Hong Kong (Deltamac), Middle East (Front Row), Singapore (Cathay), Taiwan (Serenity), South Africa (Nu Metro), Indonesia (PT Amero), Malaysia (Lotus Five Star), Israel (United King), Thailand (IPA Asia), India and Turkey (Tanweer), Switzerland (Implus), Greece (Village Roadshow) and Iceland (Myndform).
Exclusive Media is financing and producing through its deal with Cross Creek Pictures. Neeson plays a private eye and recovering alcoholic hired to find a drug dealer's kidnapped wife. Scott Frank wrote and will direct Lawrence Block's crime novel adaptation.
Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher developed the project and produce through Double Feature Films with Danny DeVito and his Jersey Films.
"Liam Neeson is at the top of his game achieving worldwide box office success with Taken 2 and his other recent titles," said Walton (pictured). "This film is a smart, gripping, edge of your seat thriller loaded with international appeal and we are thrilled with its performance so far."


text:
Wednesday I pitted Monica against Penelope. Today, these shots come out of her on the beach with some dude in Ibiza. Coincidence? Yes. But let's run with the belief that if we keep writing about her, the paps will continue to follow her and feed us the goodness that I bring to you in full color below. And maybe Monica will become pap-famous like Lilo and Paris and can score herself a guy that isn't the color of the inside of my upper thigh. Isn't it always sunny in Spain? How do you look that pale and live in Spain? Maybe he's visiting from Scotland or something.
Anyway…I digress. Monica edged out sister Penelope as the hotter of the two. However, I think that in spite of my instructions, you let the undies-under-the-pits shot (that I'm sorry to say we had to remove due to a clerical error at the agency) sway your opinion. Bad underwear/underwear wearing can do that.
Which leads me to my story. Lainey mentioned in yesterday's intro that she was surprised I didn't share our "sexy" Victoria's Secret shopping experience in Vegas with you. So why not, since she's always telling you about how I scratch my balls, rarely shower, wear pleats and tear-aways, etc.
Off we go to the Fashion Show mall in Vegas in March. I'm wary at this point because I know that it's all high-end sh-t in there and we'll need a mortgage to pay for half the stuff she ogles and decides she needs cause "she doesn't have any _________". She senses this and tells me that there's a Victoria's Secret there and that she thinks it will be fun for us to go shopping for some sexy undies together. Ok, I say.
We get to the store and the first thing I see is a big sexy poster of Miranda Kerr, I think. Then a couple of nice looking sales girls, a stringy little number on a hot mannequin…I'm liking our trip to the Fashion Show Mall!
She stops at the cotton section. Not the small cotton section. The Bridget Jones wide-back section. What's up, babe? This way, no? I just want to get a couple of comfy ones.
Well guess what?? We spent the next 30 minutes looking at nothing other than "comfy ones". Every time I picked up something that might look remotely hot, she says it's gonna ride. F-king great!
Victoria's Secret is forever just a little less special in this boy's heart from that day forward.
And to finish my long-ish post and make it even more random than it already appears, I'll leave you with a clip I've posted before (my library of wares is only so deep) of the cinematic genius of Will Ferrell talking about undies in the so-called trust tree. This one is for my name dropping buddy Todd B. Former SFU all-star soccer goalie on the strength of his quickness and long reach.


text:
I've been wanting to make gak ever since we began having so much fun with oobleck, but even though borax lives in the grocery store, you would not believe how many months of regular shopping trips it took me to finally happen upon it. Don't be stubbon like me--just ask someone. Ask someone old enough not to look at you blankly when you say "borax" to them.
You will need:
- borax. Seriously, just ask.You only need 1/2 teaspoon of borax, but the store will make you buy an entire freaking box of it. Fortunately, borax is an excellent natural cleaner, and I've been using mine for laundry, on the bathtub, etc.
- 4 oz. bottle of Elmer's glue. I bought an absurd number of these glue bottles during the very good back-to-school sales, and they've been serving me well since.
- warm water, like warm from the tap, not warm from the teakettle.
- food coloring. It's fun.
2. Fill the bottle back up with warm water from the tap, screw the lid on, shake it like a Polaroid picture, then take the cap back off and pour the warm glue-water into the bowl with the glue.
3. Find a cup or another small container, pour another 1/4 cup of warm water into it, then pour in 1/2 teaspoon of borax and stir to dissolve it.
4. Dump the borax water into the glue water and stir like mad for the precious few seconds that you'll have until the borax causes the glue molecules to link together in long chains. When that happens, you'll want to start kneading the mixture with your hands until it's an even consistency:


text:
UN PRI rankings confirm our commitment
Natixis Asset Management has been a signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, or UN PRI, since 2008 and is committed to promoting greater awareness of ESG aspects in its investment decisions.
The PRI initiative was set up by investors in partnership with the UNEP financial initiative and the UN Global Compact, and cooperates with an international network of signatories with the aim of applying principles for responsible investment. It endeavors to assess the relationship between investment and environmental, social and governance issues, and help signatories include these aspects in their investment and shareholding decisions.
During the 2015-2016 annual UN PRI assessment, Natixis Asset Management's scores as compared to those for all the other signatories reflect the quality of its responsible investment approach, as it displayed ratings of A and A+ for all its investment management range and performed well above the median scores issued by the UN PRI.
Natixis Asset Management's approach is a vital component of its CSR strategy and involves both an in-depth analysis of Environmental, Societal and Governance issues (ESG), as well as their practical inclusion in investment decisions and in the definition of exclusion policies.
Natixis Asset Management also dialogues with issuers to encourage them to improve their own ESG practices via an active voting and engagement policy. As part of this policy, more than 400 issuers were approached in 2015 in coordination with teams at Mirova, Natixis Asset Management's responsible investment subsidiary.
The company also plays an active part in work in this domain by the Paris financial market and contributes to fundamental research into CSR issues.https://www.unpri.org/about
Natixis Asset Management's results are extremely promising and testify to the relevance of its approach as it works to promote a more sustainable economic and financial model.
For more information on methodology: http://www.unpri.org/download_report/19935
Find out more about NAM's CSR policy
Find out more about UN PRI
Natixis Asset Management – Asset management company regulated by AMF under n° GP 90-009 – Limited Liability Company with share capital of €50,434,604.76 – RCS Number Paris 329 450 738 – Registered Office: 21 quai d'Austerlitz, 75013 Paris.
Mirova is a fully-owned subsidiary of Natixis Asset Management. Mirova – Public limited company with share capital of €7,461,327.50 – RCS Number Paris 394 648 216 – Approved by AMF under n° GP 02-014 – Registered Office: 21 quai d'Austerlitz, 75013 Paris.


text:
formerstaffer wrote:Coming from someone with experience working on legislative staff here is a bit of my mini-guide to dealing with your Representative:
You (the legislative staffer) always answer a letter without a direct answer to the status of something so a constituent can't later call you a liar and get you in trouble with your boss. If you try and be honest, tell them the process, explain what is going on, etc... many constituents will turn whatever you give them around and try to screw you. Sad fact, I got bit a couple times and it put my job at risk so I wrote some very carefully worded form letters, ran them past my boss, and used those whenever someone e-mailed on an issue.
Also, they get 100s of emails a day and most of the time the big boss doesn't read them. Our office read every one and we provided our boss a summary of what was going on and provided a generic response to the constituent. If we knew where the boss stood, we told you. If we didn't, or the boss didn't agree with you, you got a form letter like you got. However, her office could be swamped right now and is just sending out form letters to everything covering their own rear so their boss doesn't get his ear chewed off by some constituent that slips through the carefully laid filter about how he/she never responded. It taking more than a few hours to respond is normally a sign that a good office is swamped and unable to get back to you.
Also, your best bet is to e-mail a staffer and not the representative directly. Establish a relationship with a staffer and get their e-mail, or use the directory at http://www.texastribune.org/directory/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; to find a Legislative Assistant/Aide/Director or Chief of Staff.
I answered most e-mails as fast as I could type a response. Legislative staff bust their rear (out of session I averaged 60 hours a week, in session it could be 100+) and get paid very very little to do so (You can look up any state employee's salary at http://www.texastribune.org/library/dat ... -salaries/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). As terrible as this sounds, forgive them if providing you an up to date position on a bill isn't their priority when they are monitoring legislation, lobbyist and constituents trying to slip pass their desk to bother their boss, organizing the calendar for the office, talking to state agencies to try and help people with serious problems, and barely have time to take a bite of the lunch that has been on their desk since noon and it's nearly 6 at night.... Give them time, or give them a call, and you will get a much more thorough answer.
Friendliness is key. Political staff are vain, and wield a lot of power, so show them that you know they are important and you will get rewarded. Want insider information? Call up and be lucky enough to get an intern on the phone and sweet talk them. Unless you know the boss personally (and I mean more than meeting them at a townhall) don't expect to talk to them. Staff does all the grunt work (which constituent work is), the boss busts his or her rear on everything else. High maintenance, or rude, constituents always went on the bottom of my stack. I dreaded having to call someone I knew was going to yell at me and be unreasonable.
Also, use http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; to find who your representative is. There were several reps in my boss's district and I hated having to deal with someone who we didn't even represent (unless they were nice, in which case I would still go out of my way to help them). Staffers can work miracles. I got a guy from getting the answer "you have to re-take the CHL class (and the 10 hour, not the 5 hour refresher), reapply, and we won't refund your original fee" to "Your license is in the mail" in a few days without every speaking to my boss about it.
Your letter was well worded, but if you can't call always personalize an e-mail. If I thought they sent me a form letter, or I got more than one of the same letter, they got a form response.
That said, Concealed Carry on Campus will pass. It's free and provides conservatives with browny points with their constituents. Look for it to have 130 co-sponsors and pending it getting killed by some new Democratic technique or a point of order by some clown it passing this session. Same with anything else that doesn't cost money and conservatives like (hence all the illegal immigration legislation). However, since it was pre-filed it means it will be more closely scrutinized and some liberal gun hater has a better chance to find a point of order on it.
Also, don't bother asking me who I worked for or on what side of the aisle. I'm sworn to secrecy and I'd screw myself if anyone ever found out I gave insider information.


text:
- About Us
- Issues
- Scorecards
Get Informed
- Join
- Learn
- Take Action
Get Involved
- Contact
- Foundation
- Privacy Policy
Contact FreedomWorks
111 K Street NE
Suite 600
Washington, DC 20002
- Toll Free 1.888.564.6273
- Local 202.783.3870
A government with moral and legal authority promulgates written rules and universally, impartially and uniformly enforces the rules, which provides a predictable and stable legal order on which to base economic and personal decisions. The law prevails, not the proclamation or arbitrary decision of a ruler, government bureaucrat, the enforcer (e.g., policeman) or judge.Social Security Manipulation Violates the Rule of Law
Pursuant to our Social Security Act, Trustees are tasked with reporting the program's finances. The current Trustees' report calls for prompt legislative corrections:
Lawmakers should address the financial challenges facing Social Security and Medicare as soon as possible. Taking action sooner rather than later will leave more options and more time available to phase in changes so that the public has adequate time to prepare.
Charles Blahous, one of two public Trustees, succinctly identifies the reasons Social Security is financially insolvent. The shortfall facing Social Security, as a whole, arises primarily from demographic factors interacting with the program's benefit formula and financing method:
Our politicians presume that means-testing who receives benefits (wealthy seniors would not receive promised benefits) and changing the cost-of-living formula (adopted in the 1970s) would preserve our Social Security program as we know it. However, these are difficult political votes. Presently, there is a strong coalition, led by avowed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, opposed to changing our current formula. Likewise, very few politicians support means-testing to reduce promised benefits to seniors.
Harmfully and immorally, Congress and the President will most-likely do nothing until they are forced to make unpopular votes. Simply, America's political elite will ignore and avoid being prudent and responsible until the so-called Trust Fund is insolvent, which is predicted to be 2016 for disability benefits and 2033 for old-age and survivor benefits.
Moreover, there also exists a critical, philosophical issue. Absolutely absent in this political debate – as opposed to the the Trustees duty to report on the finances – is Congress and the President's honor and respect for the Rule of Law. Should Congress and the President manipulate a long-standing law – denying benefits to some and change the established formula for all beneficiaries? Our Rule of Law states:
The law prevails, not the proclamation or arbitrary decision of a ruler, government bureaucrat, the enforcer or judge.
Incredibly, America's political elites – Members of Congress, the DC media and most academics - don't know, appreciate or care about our Rule of Law. By changing the cost-of-living formula and means-testing to determine who receives benefits, government (Congress and the President) will be saying to every worker and every employer, "Yes, you were taxed 15.3% to pay for Social Security. However, we were not honest or good stewards and now here are the new rules. Every beneficiary receives less and some wealthy people get substantially less or nothing." This is a horrible breach of an essential duty of morality and governance:
A government with moral and legal authority promulgates written rules and universally, impartially and uniformly enforces the rules, which provides a predictable and stable legal order on which to base economic and personal decisions. The law prevails, not the proclamation or arbitrary decision of a ruler, government bureaucrat, the enforcer or judge.
Alas, the present proposed manipulations are a continuation of the inglorious history of Social Security. Politicians - Republicans and Democrats – have regularly manipulated Social Security for their immediate political advantage. For example:
Thus, government unilaterally altered the contract with American workers and beneficiaries. For example, Congress and the President initiated a tax on the benefits and increased the payroll tax and retirement age.
Only personal accounts – owned by the worker – will stop government manipulation and restore the Rule of Law. America must stop robbing from the young and unborn, who will be most impacted by the presumed changes. America must terminate how Social Security is financed : the program is financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, meaning that each generation's benefits are paid for the most part from the tax contributions of the following generation, rather than saving those contributions to finance future payments. Any other fix to Social Security will continue the corrupt and destructive abuse of power by government. The only honorable solution is to stop the inter-generational theft and servitude.
I purpose the Freedom IRA, which allows young people to opt-out of Social Security by investing 7.65% in their own IRA. When a person opts-out, they give up thier future rights to Social Security, with the exception of disability benefits. In other words, they forfeit all that they have been previously taxed.
I am well aware that fiscally-prudent Americans are very concerned about the cost of such a transition. One suggestion is to entice seniors, who are approaching retirement, to voluntarily delay their Social Security benefits until they turn 72. A combination of delaying benefits and reducing taxes would substantially reduce the burden of government debt. To advance this concept, additional design parameters and fiscal assumptions must be "scored" by the Office of Management and Budget. Stay tuned.
Any other fix to Social Security will continue the corrupt and destructive abuse of power by government. The only honorable solution is to stop the inter-generational theft and servitude. Young Americans will be have a more secure retirement, and hopefully more people will understand and appreciate the Rule of Law.
Read Previous Post on Social Security:
Social Security: Structurally Violates Freedom
Social Security: Immoral Special Interest Politics
Indirectly Obama and NYTimes Admit Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme
Chained CPI - Harms Elderly and Bamboozles the Young
"The number of beneficiaries is growing rapidly relative to the number of taxpaying workers"
The beneficiaries to retiree ratio is overplayed. This ratio is falling, but not at the rate that the costs are rising. We are paying 5 times as much on twice as much income. If demographics were the problem, why is it that Social Security was insolvent in 1983 at the peak of the boomer earning years.
The comment about LBJ is not realistic. When LBJ was president, the system was a paygo system. It did not generate any material revenue for LBJ to use. The ENTIRE trust fund was roughly 30 billion, mind you Social Security was on-budget for one of his budgets.
Social Security has been means tested since 1984 with a test that now reaches up to 1/3rd of retirees. So it isn't possible to implement means-testing, and there isn't much room to expand it.
Paygo financing does not work. We take a dollar today to pay benefits, and then we make a promise of more benefits in the future. Since the dollar isn't invested - there is only one place where the money can come from.... future workers. We are the future workers. The rest is a sideshow to make people think that Social Security works or could work.


text:
BRA goes between Gothenburg - Östersund December - April.
It takes about 15 minutes by bus or taxi from Åre Östersund Airport to Östersund city center. The airport bus is conne...
Read more
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.


text:
UK HealthCare Named 'Rising Star' Hospital by University HealthSystem Consortium
University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), an alliance of the nation's leading nonprofit academic medical centers, has named UK HealthCare among the 2013 recipients of the Rising Star Award during the UHC Annual Conference 2013 in Atlanta.
The award recognizes significant improvements in ranking in UHC's annual Quality and Accountability Study, which identifies exemplary performance in patient safety, mortality, clinical effectiveness, and equity of care.
UK HealthCare has not only shown improvement from previous years, it has the highest jump in rankings in UHC's history with a Quality and Accountability Ranking of 12th among the nation's 118 academic medical centers.
The 2013 UHC Rising Star winners are:
UK HealthCare
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
Stanford Hospital & Clinics
"We have a fundamental commitment to focus on benchmark clinical programs," said Dr. Michael Karpf, UK executive vice president for health affairs. "This award is an example of external validation of our success in these efforts."
The Rising Star Award is a prestigious honor given to some of the country's most prestigious academic medical centers. For example, last year's recipients were the Cleveland Clinic, Duke University, Shands Jacksonville Medical Center and The Medical University of South Carolina.
"UK HealthCare's journey to this award began with initiatives started by Dr. Richard Lofgren and has been carried on by the senior leadership team despite continued emphasis on efficiency," added Karpf.
According to UHC, UK HealthCare has received the following rankings:
Overall Quality and Accountability - Ranked No. 12 in 2013, compared to No. 56 in 2012
Mortality - Ranked No. 8 in 2013, compared to No. 18 in 2012
Safety - Ranked No. 18 in 2013, compared to No. 86 in 2012
Patient Centeredness - Ranked No. 20 in 2013, compared to No. 38 in 2012
"UHC congratulates these hospitals for successfully focusing on health care quality and accountability improvement," said Irene M. Thompson, UHC's president and chief executive officer. "The achievements of the Rising Stars are especially notable because other academic medical centers are also working in earnest to improve patient safety and quality, and thus it has become quite difficult to stand out among more than 100 peer organizations."
The UHC Quality and Accountability Study was designed to help academic medical centers identify structures and practices that are associated with high performance in quality and safety.
Formed in 1984 and based in Chicago, UHC fosters collaboration with and among its 118 academic medical center and 299 affiliated hospital members through its renowned solutions in the areas of performance improvement, comparative data and analytics, supply chain management, strategic research, and public policy.


text:
Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.
A blog this time, and one that's Ubuntu-centered.
I've masked the address, since I'm not as perturbed as I was when I found the snotty Sabayon message. It's disappointing though.
I've removed the link from my sidebar. I don't care to lead anyone in that direction. If the browser diversion happens to disappear, I'll put it back.


text:
A Bright Boho Wedding at Leo Carrillo Ranch in Carlsbad, California
Caitlin Roberts and Nate Mencini's Cinco de Mayo wedding was a relaxed and colorful affair. From Caitlin's blue velvet platform shoes to strings of carnations in shades of red at the ceremony, each of the details from their wedding popped against the muted colors and natural elements at Leo Carrillo Ranch. The pair opted for a color palette in vibrant orange, red, blue and purple hues that paid tribute to their love of fall while staying true to the spring season. To avoid overshadowing the venue's natural allure, Caitlin and Nate filled the day with simple, yet impactful decorative details. Macramé was a major component: Woven dreamcatchers hung from the tree that served as the backdrop for the ceremony and were featured in the seating chart display. Local, seasonal blooms in bright, cheerful hues infused the desert scene with vibrancy and a festive feel. "We didn't want the spotlight to be on us the whole night, so we incorporated games and a photo booth to allow people to really immerse themselves in our day," Caitlin says. A retro photo booth bus was set up outdoors and offered a fun way for the newlyweds and their guests to remember the night. After snapping a photo, guests wrote their well wishes to Caitlin and Nate on the back and tucked it into the couple's guest book. In the weeks leading up to the big event, the duo took dance lessons to surprise their family and friends during their first dance. "Not to brag, but I feel like we slayed the dance floor. Just taking the classes brought us closer together, and it was a blast to try something new," Caitlin says. "We kept it a secret, so a lot of people were surprised when we busted out our inner Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers."
The Photo Bus
Rue De Seine


text:
Getty Images
For a week now, we've been saying/suggesting/speculating/whatever that the next destination for running back Reggie Bush likely will be Arizona or Detroit.
As of right now, the Lions look to be the likely winners.
While the Cardinals seem to have a greater need, given the decision to cut Beanie Wells and intention of LaRod Stephens-Howling to hit the open market, the Lions have been without a versatile tailback since Jahvid Best's career was derailed by an October 2011 concussion.
Bush would likely compete with Mikel Leshoure for the top spot on the depth chart, and don't be surprised if Bush outworks Leshoure and takes the job.


text:
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I was intrigued when an Ender's Game adaptation finally pushed past the development stage and made it into production. That book has been a hot property for as long as I've been covering movie news. I remember back in the Phantom Menace days Jake Lloyd was attached to play Ender... thank God that didn't happen.
If you've read the book then you know it's a tough nut to crack. High on character and moral ambiguity, the novel isn't like the current crop of young adult fiction being adapted in an attempt to grab some of that Potter/Twilight/Hunger Games money, although I'd be surprised if the successes of those films didn't help in some way push Ender's Game over the financial hump.
The action in the book all takes a backseat to character development as we follow a brilliant child made even more cunning through cruel mind games from the adults in his life, all for a purpose that is about as far from heroic as you can get.
The worry with any adaptation of this novel is that it would be stripped down to a simple "chosen young man" story, leaving behind all the elements of Orson Scott Card's novel that actually set it apart from the rest and kept it on best seller lists for years.
Summit graciously offered me my own exclusive day on the set to check it out for myself. Going in I was hoping for the best, but was cautiously optimistic. Gavin Hood's Tsotsi was fantastic, but X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a huge mess. It was such a huge mess, however, that it's pretty clear that Hood couldn't have shouldered the entire responsibility for that movie failing so miserably.
All this was kicking around in my head as I headed to the New Orleans set. I knew that no matter what Hood had cast his lead well. Asa Butterfield might be a tad old for the Ender of the book, but he's one of our best working young actors and I'll take a great actor that's slightly different from the book over "he's good enough" and the right age. He had a good Ender, all that was left was to see how seriously he was taking the job and how much of weirdness of the book survived the adaptation process.
Almost as if they knew my biggest worry about the movie was the homogenization of the source material my first stop once getting past all the ridiculous security (they were filming inside an old NASA hanger that still had rocket parts hanging from the cavernous interior, believe it or not) was to the production office where producers Linda McDonough and Roberto Orci were waiting for me in a room with walls lined with production art and a TV sitting on the conference table.
I got a look at the art before the video was ready and the first big sign that this might work as an adaption were in a little corner featuring some pretty crazy storyboards. The first thing I'd assume would be gone from the book in a movie version of Ender's Game is Ender's video game. In the story he has a rather psychotic psychological game he is given to play that forces Ender to abstractly deal with his various issues.
It's supposed to be a kind of Kobayashi Maru, an unwinnable game that has the player meeting a giant who offers two cups. The player has to choose one. If he chooses right, he's taken off to "Fairyland" and if he chooses wrong he dies. The problem is both cups are poison, so most kids get frustrated with this game right off the bat, but Ender figures out a quite violent way to beat it.
Needless to say, seeing storyboards featuring a dead giant from this video game was the first sign that they were keeping at least some of the weird shit in play. I was told they were going to do a whole Mo-Cap shoot for the video game element once they wrapped principal photography.
The prepared video was a lot of animatics and early VFX tests, mostly surrounding how Battle School would look and how the flash gun games would be explained visually. I guess I should back up a bit and explain the set up in case some of you folks reading this aren't hip to the story.
Basically there was a massive alien invasion of Earth many years prior to this story. Humanity was almost overwhelmed, but through a combination of luck and the work of a combat fighter with a keen strategic mind the aliens were repelled. As the story starts the grown ups of the world are saying another attack is imminent and if humanity is going to survive it this time they need to find another brilliant strategist who can think like the aliens, so a program is created to find, train and mold young children to be these minds.
Ender is found and one of the top brass, Col. Graff, feels like he's one of their best shots, but in order for him to reach his full potential his humanity has to be squashed through a cruel combination of reward and punishment.
Battle School is a space station above Earth, this is where the brightest kids are brought. Lots of egos are involved and it being a sort of militarized program that means violent solutions are often the solution to conflict amongst the cadets.
This Battle School has regular games in Zero G environments that let the children test out strategic theories and train them to think in three dimensions when coming up with battle strategies. Two armies fight each other with flash guns that paralyze the target hit (think of an epic laser tag battle in Zero G) and the goal is to capture the other team's gate.
Being so central to the story, the actual battles themselves had to stand out and I was curious how they were going to make it look engaging and not just a bunch of kids floating around in a dark room. The filmmakers' solution was pretty interesting. The space station itself is very Kubrickian mixed with a Mass Effect cold sci-fi style with the Battle Room a big crystal-like orb in the middle.
So, instead of a cold black room the kids will be floating against a star field, the Earth and even the sun, which I was told could very well play a part in some of Ender's battles.
One of my favorite bits of pre-vis showed how they're visualizing the effect of the flash guns paralyzing the battle suits. The sequence I saw had Bean and Ender testing things out. One of them gets shot in the leg and the camera zoomed in to a macro view of the suit's fabric, which responds to the laser and stiffens. So that's how they explain the paralysis and how if you're shot in the leg it's only your leg that is locked up. The shot, even in this early form, struck me as a smart way to show how the battles work instead of telling us in exposition.
It was time to leave the pre-production tour and go to the actual set to watch some filming. I was especially eager because I was told Harrison Ford was filming that day.
I met Ford once before on my visit to the set of Cowboys and Aliens (read that report here, even though the server switched messed up the formatting) and I was proud of myself for not geeking out on him. The only movie of his I brought up was The Mosquito Coast, but when I took a seat behind the monitors and saw him working with Butterfield I could tell immediately that I wasn't going to play it quite so cool this time around. I don't know if I was in a friskier mood or if I viewed this as my second chance that I couldn't let pass me by.
I was sitting with Harrison's assistant and Orci and I was told I'd be getting 1:1 interviews with most of the cast and Gavin, but that Harrison didn't want to do an official interview, however he would come over and have a more informal chat. It was then that I told those two to prepare for me to let loose a little geekout on Mr. Ford. The response was in the "good luck with that" ballpark.
Ford had his shot to finish before he would head over and the great 2012 Geekout would commence. The camera was behind him on Asa as Graff was reprimanding Ender for not taking the orders of his commander, a vicious little guy named Bonzo (The Kings of Summer's Moises Arias). Graff sits behind a desk, which has a glass top and he's flicking his finger across it as if it was a giant iPad and he's scrolling through various files while talking, Ender standing at attention in front of him.
Apparently Ender is top in everything... battle room ratings, test scores... but "you have a habit of upsetting your commander."
Ender replies "I find it hard to respect someone just because he outranks me, sir." At this, Graff leans back in his chair, giving Ender his full attention, rocking back and forth slightly.
"That puts you in a difficult position, doesn't it? You don't like taking orders from Bonzo... perhaps you'd prefer to give them," says Graff slyly, kind of like a parent about to unveil a Christmas present. Ender is confused. "Sir?"
Graff: "How would you like your own army? Dragon Army."
Ender: "Sir, I've never heard of Dragon Army."
Graff: "We discontinued the name four years ago. No Dragon Army ever won a battle."
Ender: "Why not a new name, sir?"
Graff: "Because we already have the uniforms."
Ender: "Who will be in this army?"
Graff: "Misfits, like yourself. Outcasts who might just be brilliant with the right commander."
That was the scene, the focus being on Ender's surprise to be given his own army when he thought he was going to be chewed out for insubordination. Ford got looser as each take went up. He messed up an earlier one, missed a line, and said to Gavin "Can we start again?" After getting a yes and as the camera was moving back to starting position he finished with a "Why not? It's the same price." I don't know why that stood out to me enough to make a note of it, but it did and I still love it. It fits Harrison for some reason.
With my headphones I could hear everything the mic picked up, so I could hear Hood giving direction and tweaking performances over the handful of takes he needed to get the shot. The biggest one was for Asa to not get in a rehearsed pattern when responding to Harrison. He felt it was getting a bit too rigid and told Asa not to take the same amount of time with each response. Asa changed up for the next take and it felt more natural.
At one point Hood went up to Harrison and asked him to really put Asa on the spot with the "You don't like taking orders from Bonzo" line. "Make him squirm" is how Hood put it. And when you tell Harrison Ford to make someone squirm goddamnit they squirm, as I was soon to find out myself.
I could hear Hood talking to someone near camera, but out of earshot from the actors and he was telling them the moments he needed to get because he wanted to cut in to closeups for most of the scene, but wanted the wide establishing shot as an option. He said he was actually using the wide as form of rehearsal for Harrison and Asa before getting in close where they had to be 100% on point.
On the next take, Hood called out "Nailed it! We're matching to that take." The crew started moving equipment for the next shot in Graff's office. The actors left and while I expected to get some time with Harrison I didn't expect it right away, so I was a little taken aback when he almost seemed to walk off the monitor and into my reality, taking a seat in the director's chair next to me.
Orci introduced us and I reminded him that we met once before. I couldn't tell if he remembered or not, but we started talking about the impressive set design and how that was what convinced him to join the production. He also started complimenting Hood's script, saying he found a way to take the film out of Ender's head and opened up the scope.
I could sense Orci waiting for the promised geekout... he might as well have had some popcorn out. There was a long silence and I kind of blurted out "When I met you last time I didn't want to geek out on you and freak you out, but I have something geeky I want tell you." He smiled (that trademark Indiana Jones half smile) and said, "Okay..." and I could feel Orci and Harrison's assistant lean in, ready for the show.
"I just wanted to tell you that I think Temple of Doom is incredibly underrated."
Silence. Harrison was just kind of looking straight ahead. "Oh, fuck me," I thought. Now he's just going to sit for a second, then calmly walk away and probably curse out one of the producers for letting me near him.
But that didn't happen, thankfully. After an incredibly long silence, as if he was trying to find the right words, he said that he appreciated me saying that. He's always liked it, too. Sweet relief!
"There's only one scene I don't like in it," Ford continued. I asked which scene, genuinely curious, and he said it was the monkey brains scene. Now, I love this scene and was about to voice a rebuttal, but... well, Harrison was still talking and you do not interrupt Harrison Ford. If you do you could very well get the Finger of Doom and God help you if that happens.
He said that when the movie came out a lot of Hindu and Indian groups bashed it for stereotyping and he disagreed with them when considering most of the movie, but said that that one scene is so comical and over the top that it fed that particular fire unnecessarily.
I mentioned that I had recently tried to change Spielberg's opinion of the movie when I did my big interview with him, going so far as to tell him he needs to quit beating up on Temple of Doom so much. Harrison said that he thinks Steven was really hurt by the ratings controversy that sprung up around the movie. Ford isn't kidding about that, by the way. I've read a lot of reviews from the time of Doom's release and the critics were cruel, saying Spielberg's movie was mean-spirited and harmful to kids. Hell, Harlan Ellison wrote that between producing Gremlins and directing Temple of Doom Spielberg was actively ruining childhoods.
Spielberg sees himself as a big kid (just watch the extras on the ET blu and see him geeking out about arcade games with the kids if you don't believe me) and I bet you that stuff took its toll on him. At any rate, Ford said he thought that might have helped color the experience for Steven.
There was a little more smalltalk, but pretty soon Harrison was called away and I got to take a wander around the sets sporting a big dumbass grin on my face because I successfully talked with Harrison Ford about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
One thing that stood out to me about the first series of sets was that the monitors and displays set in the gray, military style walls were actual backlit panels instead of green cards that would be filled in later with some CG wizardry. It was a small touch that I hope translates as something noticeable on film, but I can definitely say it stood out in person, helped create the illusion of actually being on the space station.
Orci led me over to a second stage that had the gate to the battle room and the battle room itself. Walking up to the Gate was pretty impressive. The stairs were industrial steel and the warnings on the walls and floors all helped sell the illusion of the set. On the floor, just before the gate, the words "Warning: Null G Beyond This Line" were stenciled in.
Before exploring the actual battle room, I was allowed to hold one of the hero Flash Gun props, which was a sleek, metallic pistol that actually lit up when you pulled the trigger. Naturally the laser will be CG, but it was still cool.
Looking through the gate I could see the polygon shapes called "stars" that are moved around from fight to fight, and can provide cover becoming crucial keys in winning strategies. They were placed around the room on gimbals. The room was huge, by the way. A green curtain draped along the wall... or at least I thought it was the wall. Orci and I ventured behind this curtain and found that the big room we were in was actually about 20 times bigger. This was the massive hangar that still stored a ton of NASA's stuff, including house-sized structures draped in plastic and the pieces of space shuttles that fall away as the shuttle takes off into the atmosphere. A few Raiders of the Lost Ark and Area 51 jokes were made and then we moved on.
I didn't spend much time in the Battle Room set, but I did see Hailee Steinfeld film a scene with Khylin Rhambo, who plays Dink Meeker. It's one of Ender's gambits where one person from his army is sacrificed and used as a human shield. In this case Dink is frozen into place and Petra (Steinfeld) takes his flash gun and fires John Woo style as Dink hugs her, protecting her from enemy fire.
In order to get this shot they had to get on a weird little contraption that the wire team called the lollipop. Imagine a bar stool seat attached to a long stick with one affixed wire attached at the middle. Hailee sat on the seat, Dink on the bar, his arms over her shoulders and her legs wrapped around his waist with both her arms shot out under his shoulders firing away as they float away from the enemy gate.
Dink whispers "Did you get him?" Petra smiles and says, "Oh yeah." He's looking behind her and sees their momentum is taking them on a crash course with a star and they both cringe, anticipating the impact.
We watched them set this up and shoot a few times, but ended up back at main unit for Harrison and Asa's close-ups. Asa was first to go and while he was good in the wide it was in these close ups that I really saw Ender come alive. Asa was doing small things, like grinding his teeth when he thinks he's in trouble causing his jaw muscles to pulsate... it made him look both nervous, impatient, angry and eager all at once.
Hood tweaked the moment when Graff gives Ender Dragon Army the most. His key direction was a subtle shift in eye line so that Ender goes from avoiding Graff's gaze throughout the scene to his eyes shifting over to meet Graff's when he surprises him with Dragon Army. When he got that down, I heard Hood say "That's it! I read the thank you on your face."
I could tell Hood was excited about how the scene was coming together as he worked with Asa and when he called cut on the last take he exclaimed "You have no idea how nice it is to see scenes that have been hanging around in my head for two and a half years turn out better than I imagined!"
While they were changing angles for Harrison's close up, I caught Orci flipping through AICN talkbacks on his iPad. I wish I could remember which story he was on, but yep... when you see him pop up that's for sure him, which probably means he's read almost as much shit talk about himself as Harry has.
When he disengaged from the talkback, he told me a cool piece of Ender's Game trivia: Apparently Asa Butterfield has grown two and half inches since beginning the movie. Orci said it works because they were shooting in sequence so we'll actually get to see Ender grow up a little bit in the movie.
Harrison's close ups were varied. He gave Gavin a lot of choices (something he mentioned in our official interview at Comic-Con this year). His first few takes he played it unblinking and intense and by the end he gave a more relaxed performance with a more humorous reading of the "we already have the uniforms" line. That gives Hood his choice of how to portray Graff in this scene when they hit the editing room.
My favorite moment from Harrison's closeups was when he flubbed a line in one of the first takes. He leans forward dramatically on the line "Perhaps you'd like to give them yourself," the moment he indicates he may be promoting Ender. On one take he leaned forward dramatically and says "Perhaps you'd like to... fuck shit..." then indicated he needed the line read back to him.
One of the last sets I got to tour was Eros, a bug planet that the Earth army has taken over as their command base for the big events of the third act.The hallways and rooms have a very ant farm feel, but as if an ant farm was blown up to larger-than-human proportions. The military has built into this architecture so what you're left with is a weird hybrid of two different intelligent species.
It was a massive build, which I'm always happy to see. I love the artistry of crafting a set. It's part of the illusion of cinema that I'll always appreciate.
One final stopoff before my visit came to a close was the shuttle that brings Ender to Battle School and it was here that I beheld the most amazing sight.
Harrison was testing out the Zero G wire rig for a moment where he unbuckles from the cockpit and floats down to speak to his young recruits. I mentioned in my Cowboys and Aliens report that Harrison's real-life glasses are the Professor Jones wire rimmed glasses. He was wearing those glasses, a black tee shirt and, for some unknown reason, neon green bike shorts and black shoes and socks.
So, imagine that get up and then take it a step further and imagine him hung up on wires, trying to get his balance while the wire rig bunches up the neon green bike shorts area. I was out of sight for the 45 seconds or so I watched, but quickly figured it was decent to let Harrison have his privacy as he figured that rig out with the crew.
It's a hell of a closing image to leave you on, but that's pretty accurate to how I left the set. I did do a ton of interviews which I'll be feeding out over the next few weeks. First up will be Asa Butterfield discussing the challenges of playing a character like Ender. Following that will be a rather lengthy chat with Gavin Hood where he's brutally honest about Ender's Game being his chance at redemption after X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
I liked what I saw, I liked that they're keeping at least some of the weirdness of the book and Asa seemed to be kicking ass in the lead, balancing Ender's empathy and the cold-hearted persona Graff is trying to create within him. You never can tell how something will come together, but the pieces were all there for a damn good movie. I guess we'll be finding out sooner than later as the movie starts to screen. Fingers crossed they pull it off.
Thanks for reading along on this journey. Hope you enjoyed yourselves! Stay tuned for those 1:1 interviews. Some good stuff in 'em, I swear.
I leave you with some images from the studio chronicling the locations of the film from Earth to Battle School to Eros. Enjoy!
-Eric Vespe
Follow Me On Twitter


text:
Engagement Rings
The Jason Withers exclusive Engagement Rings apps for iPhone and Android brings an exquisite showcase of our designs to your fingertips for convenient viewing. As the first of its kind, the Jason Withers mobile applications features:
- Over 200 rings in 10 different categories
- Integrated white diamond search tool
- Integrated coloured diamond search tool
- Ring size calculator
- Over 50 jewellery videos
The Jason Withers Engagement Rings mobile applications allows users to request quotes through the "Enquire by email" function of the app. One of our expert jewellery consultants will then respond to the enquiry and assist the user with their query.
All it takes is a simple smartphone enquiry to begin the design process and a breathtaking Jason Withers designer piece can be underway and within your hands in around just four weeks.
More information on "Engagement Rings" app website
Ring Sizer
Handy utility from Jason Withers created to easily find the ring size in the different countries. There are some unique features supported by the app:
- choose metric or imperial units
- choose diameter or circumference
- supports sizes of the USA, Australia, United Kingdom, Europe, Japan and China
- easily share your ring size on social networks
We are confident that you will enjoy using the Jason Withers mobile applications and will look forward to the prospect of designing an exquisite piece of jewellery for you.
More information on "Ring Sizer" app website


text:
Takeshi Murata – Untitled (Pink Dot) (2007)
Here at Rhizome HQ we have been quietly working away from within the depths of the ArtBase. I'm pleased to announce that we have recently archived six works by Takeshi Murata, spanning from his early hand drawn animations, through his pioneering datamosh works, the 3D animation that was included in Free, to his recent body of work that debuted at Ratio 3 gallery last April. The excerpts of his work now available in the ArtBase are in most cases the only high quality (read: not bootlegged) examples available freely online.
Untitled (Silver) • Untitled (Pink Dot) • Melter 2 • I, Popeye • Homestead Grays • Get Your Ass To Mars
Here are some more recently archived works we are particularly excited about:
Christian Oldham – Selected works 2010-2012
Brenna Murphy – facingface~terrestrialtrancetree
Nicolas Sassoon – Mansion Studies
John Transue, Micah Schippa, Tabor Robak, Parker Ito, Jon Rafman – PaintFX
Adam Cruces – Desktop Views
Justin Kemp – Proclaiming My Love
Kim Asendorf – ExtraFile • GIF MARKET • Solo show in Sim City
Jonas Lund – Collection Enlargement • I'm Here and There • Over and Over Again
Jon Rafman – Woods of Arcady
Sarah Weis & Emilie Gervais – blinkingsite.com
What are we missing? The ArtBase is a constantly growing and evolving archive – if we are lacking to represent a particular facet of net.art history or contemporary practices, by all means let us know. As well, we are always accepting submissions. Stay tuned for an update soon on a few big projects that are in the works!


text:
Rapidly deploy new Integration and Governance environments with flexibility based on your project requirements.
Improve agility with flexible configurations, high availability services and pricing options for two, five or more users.
Provision only what your project requires, whether that is Data Integration, Data Quality, Data Governance or all three.
IBM enables companies to scale and adapt quickly to changing business needs without compromising security, privacy or risk levels when using IBM cloud offerings.Learn more about IBM Cloud security