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Prosecutor`s Closing Argument in Jodi Arias Murder Trial
Aired May 2, 2013 - 20:00 ET
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JUAN MARTINEZ, PROSECUTOR: This individual, the defendant, Jodi Ann Arias, killed Travis Alexander, courted the media, has gone on national television and she has indicated that she is innocent. JODI ARIAS, MURDER DEFENDANT: No jury is going to convict me because I`m innocent. And you can mark my words on that one, no jury will convict me. MARTINEZ: No jury will convict her. None of you will convict her. This is an individual who is manipulative. No benefit (ph) to him on May 10th of 2008 to have that telephone call recorded. If he`s such a bad Mormon, then why stay with him? He indicates that, I am extremely afraid of the defendant because of her stalking behavior. She was invading his privacy by coming over and peeping in the window. Nothing more than a dildo with a heartbeat to you -- that`s what he tells her. -- gas can. I guess that`s the price of premeditation these days, $12.96. She sat on the witness stand (INAUDIBLE) each and every one of you in the eye and lied to you. She may cry now, but the jury instructions have told you that sympathy is not to be considered. If anybody is defenseless in this case, it isn`t the defendant, it`s Travis Alexander as he sits like that in that shower, with his killer standing there. Do we really need to count the number of stab wounds? Is there a requisite number to get to the total of (ph) death? No. Even after taking his gun and shooting him in the face, she will not let him rest in peace. (END VIDEO CLIP) NANCY GRACE, HOST: Good evening. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us. Jodi Arias slashes and shoots her lover, Travis Alexander, to death, leaving him dead in a wet shower stall. Bombshell tonight. We are live, camped out here at the Phoenix courthouse behind me. Explosive closing arguments going down. In just hours, the Jodi Arias murder one trial set to go to the jury. The courtroom has been packed. Seats are only given out by lottery. Why? Because Martinez kicked off closing arguments with a bang. And instead of having a bunch of talking heads talking about it, let`s listen to it. Here is Martinez in an explosive closing argument. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARTINEZ: She looked at each and every one of you, this person, and attempted to manipulate you. Well, this individual that attempted to manipulate you believes, based on what we`ve heard, that even though she may have engaged in actions, she may have done certain things, none of that, absolutely none of it is her fault. Why could it possibly be her fault? If you look back in her history, which is the important part of it, involving her relationship with men, what do you see? Well, even when she was young, she had this personality of manipulating the facts. Back when she was with Bobby Juarez (ph), what did she tell you? Well, this was an individual that was unfaithful to me. How could he be so unfaithful to me after I`ve done so many good things for him? I tried to buy him clothing. I bought him food, I even lived in a trailer that was so bad it was infested. Never mind that the reason I moved there was because I was skipping school. No, that wasn`t my fault at all. No, no, no. I was doing this for Bobby, and how does he repay me, even though it wasn`t my fault? Well, you know what? He goes and he talks -- not talks, he sends letters to another woman over the Internet. And it isn`t her fault that she found out about it. Of course not. How could it be her fault that she found out about it, if the library doesn`t have enough security attached to that particular computer to have some sort of device attached to it so that somebody can`t come along and just hit that backspace button so that whoever was using it before, maybe one or two or three or four people before that -- somebody can just come along and hit that backspace button. It is eerily reminiscent of what she told you happened in February of 2007 after she and Mr. Alexander began dating, that she went onto his computer and began to hit that same backspace button. It`s not her fault that computers have not been improved since the `90s or the 2000s such that you can`t stop hitting that backspace button. It`s not her fault that that happened. Of course not. That`s what she told you from the witness stand. And so according to her, she hits the backspace button, and there it is, this conversation between Bobby Juarez and somebody else. But that`s not her fault. But if you remember how aggressively she reacted to that, nobody was going to do anything to her or nobody was going to be putting her -- or slighting her or putting her in a position of feeling inferior, if you will. She immediately went to Bobby Juarez and did something about it. There is a pattern because the same thing happened with regard to Matthew McCartney (ph), the person that she jumped to after she and Bobby Juarez started to have problems. And I do say "jump to" because when she was dating Bobby Juarez, he moved away to Oregon. And when he moved to Oregon, he started living with a guy by the name of Matthew McCartney. And when this thing soured with Bobby Juarez, she immediately went with Matthew McCartney. And in terms of that relationship, the reason that that broke up -- it`s not her fault. Just like it wasn`t her fault with regard to Bobby, Juarez, it wasn`t her fault at all that she had these issues with Matthew McCartney. No. She can`t help it if she is a good worker. She can`t help if she`s working as a waitress, and people come by when she`s working as a waitress and try to tell her things about her boyfriend, Matthew McCartney. She can`t help that! That`s what she wants you to believe. And again, isn`t that reminiscent of what happened involving Mr. Alexander? It seems that this is cyclical. And it seems that the story repeats itself. And it repeats itself because she`s lying. And it repeats itself because she`s trying to manipulate you through all the days that she spent talking to you from the witness stand, after she had taken an oath. Well, she gets to the point where she moves to Palm Desert in California to be with an individual by the name of Daryl Brewer (ph). And of course, when she`s there with Daryl Brewer, it is not her fault, again, that that relationship is souring. No, not at all. It`s not her fault because, well, Mr. Brewer doesn`t want to marry her. What`s a girl to do? It`s not her fault. She`s got to look for another guy. And it appears that he doesn`t want to have any kids and she does. And so again, it`s not her fault. How can it possibly be her fault that somebody has free will? Absolutely not her fault. That`s what she tried to tell you. (END VIDEO CLIP) GRACE: Everybody, we are camped outside the Phoenix courthouse, bringing you the very latest, explosive closing arguments going down behind us in the courtroom. And unleash the lawyers. Dwane Cates with me, Phoenix, and high-profile lawyer Yale Galanter, former lawyer for O.J. Simpson. Galanter, you know it`s bad when you`re sitting there as the defense lawyer and the prosecution`s giving closing statements, and people are passing a box of Kleenex around out in the well. You know that`s bad when people are starting to cry because of Martinez`s closing argument. What about it, Galanter? YALE GALANTER, FORMER O.J. SIMPSON ATTORNEY: Nancy, you and I are in complete agreement. I felt Juan Martinez`s argument was passionate, effectual. I thought he hit it home. I thought he brought it home for the prosecution. I don`t think he could have done a better job. He took all the evidence. He made it make sense for these jurors. And he basically said to these jurors, Listen, you would have to believe the hundreds and hundreds of lies that Jodi Arias has told... GRACE: Oh, yes. GALANTER: ... to either find her... GRACE: And you know, Yale, another... GALANTER: ... not guilty or find her guilty of a lesser. GRACE: ... thing... GALANTER: He was great. He really was, Nancy. He was very good. GRACE: Another thing that he did that I liked -- that I liked to do when I was prosecuting, is I liked to take one piece of evidence, just one piece -- let`s just say the gas cans or let`s just say the cell phone. And I would always do a visual so the jury would get a double whammy -- they could see my argument and hear it, too -- and show everything that those gas cans proved. And he did a really good job with that today. Jean Casarez, Beth Karas joining us, Alexis Weed. Out to you, Jean. When we got to those CDS that she brought -- she kept telling the jury right to their face that she had all these pictures and CDs of Travis Alexander and her that she brought with her on her trip. But yet her trip to see Travis was completely unplanned. So why was she dragging all of that with her if she was really going on a sight-seeing trip and to see another man, a new boyfriend? So why would you drag all those CDs with you? JEAN CASAREZ, "IN SESSION": It`s called premeditation. And the prosecutor brought this in with all the other points of premeditation, and said that those CDs would then put Travis Alexander in a very vulnerable position. GRACE: Out to you, Dwane Cates. Weigh in on the closing argument. We`re about to go right back in the courtroom. What about it, Dwane? DWANE CATES, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, you know what, Nancy? I can`t lie. It was a very good closing argument for the prosecution today. But you got to remember the defense gets their day tomorrow, and there is -- there are defenses to this case. GRACE: What -- that`s what you`ve got to say? Juan... (CROSSTALK) GRACE: He just tore the courtroom up, and you`ve got to say, Now, hold on. The defense has something to say... (CROSSTALK) GRACE: You know what? I`ll believe it when I see it! CATES: I`m not saying that... GRACE: What are they going to say except... (CROSSTALK) CATES: You know what? Jodi`s a liar... GRACE: All right, well... CATES: ... everybody agrees that Jodi`s a liar. GRACE: ... if they`ve got something new to show me... CATES: The defense is going to say that Jodi`s a liar. Nobody`s going to disagree that she`s a liar, but they`re going to play it out. GRACE: Well, then what`s the defense? You know, they`ve gotten so... (CROSSTALK) GRACE: ... they`ve got self-defense... CATES: ... don`t steal a gun, drive a thousand miles and get in a knife fight with somebody. If you`ve got a gun and you go there to kill them, you shoot them. It`s clean. It`s quick. It`s over. GRACE: OK, are you serious? You`re saying that... CATES: I`m serious. GRACE: ... she just should have shot him and not stabbed him and it would have been a lot better case. Is that what you`re saying? CATES: Heat of passion... GRACE: Do you think Travis Alexander cares whether he died of a gunshot or a stab? CATES: I don`t, Nancy, and I`m not saying anything bad against Travis Alexander. I`m saying that you don`t steal a gun, travel a thousand miles to stab somebody. And that`s what the prosecution... GRACE: Well, she did. CATES: ... wants you to believe. Well, that`s what... GRACE: OK, you know what... (CROSSTALK) GRACE: ... in law school a non sequitur. It doesn`t follow. It doesn`t make sense. OK, I`m going to mull that argument you just gave me. But right now, let`s go back to the action in the courtroom, where prosecutor Martinez tore the courthouse down today. People were passing around Kleenex, boxes of Kleenex out there listening to him. And Arias -- take a look at her -- is just sitting there, writing notes like, He`s not talking about me. Like, I don`t have anything to do with this. Watch this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARTINEZ: She begins to be more attentive -- that`s the word. She begins to be more attentive to Mr. Alexander. Perhaps if she`s more attentive to Mr. Alexander, perhaps then he`ll want to come back and have her be the only one. And the way that she`s attentive is the way that everybody does it normally. I mean, she goes over to his house unannounced at night, sometime in August of 2007. And this is when everybody does. And she goes over there and starts peeping in a window to see what it is that he is doing. And he goes over there, and by the light of the television -- if you remember, there was this go-around (ph) by the light -- well, it may have been the light of the television, but now it`s the light of truth that we are looking at things, and what she was doing is she was invading his privacy by coming over and peeping in the window. And that is stalking behavior, irrespective of what Alyce LaViolette has to say. This individual, Alyce LaViolette, who has problems with the truth when she spoke to you about how many times she had testified on behalf of men (ph), this individual who, quite frankly, misrepresented that to you when she was testifying. But according to Alyce LaViolette, that was no big deal because that`s what a person does. She came over and started to look inside. And lo and behold, it`s not her fault that she has vision! So she starts looking in there, and lo and behold, there he is. Yes, there he is, and he`s kissing another woman. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARTINEZ: This is an individual who wants to play victim. ARIAS: Travis snapped. He said (EXPLETIVE DELETED) MARTINEZ: He said (EXPLETIVE DELETED) what? ARIAS: That I`m a (EXPLETIVE DELETED) idiot. MARTINEZ: Absolutely not her fault! That`s what she tried to tell you. ARIAS: And I was trying to deescalate it. MARTINEZ: Why could it possibly be her fault? ARIAS: He lunges at me like a linebacker. MARTINEZ: It`s not her fault that that happened. Of course not! That`s what she told you from the witness stand. ARIAS: (INAUDIBLE) (EXPLETIVE DELETED) MARTINEZ: This from a woman who pretends to be the victim, even though there was no abuse. Would you agree that you`re the person who actually slit Mr. Alexander`s throat from ear to ear? ARIAS: Yes! MARTINEZ: He says you only cry for yourself. We saw her crying on the witness stand. Would you also agree that you`re the individual that stabbed him in the upper torso? ARIAS: Yes! MARTINEZ: (INAUDIBLE) the reason she was crying is because she cries for herself. She may cry now. But the jury instructions have told you that sympathy is not to be considered. (END VIDEO CLIP) GRACE: We are camped outside the Phoenix courthouse, and we are taking your calls. You`ve got a lot of talking heads talking about what just went down in the courtroom, Martinez blowing it up with closing arguments, explosive in front of that jury. As I mentioned earlier, people out in the well are passing out a box of Kleenex. His closing argument was that good. I want to go back in and hear more of Martinez. Then we`ll take your calls. Let`s go, Liz. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARTINEZ: There is some contact between them on May 10th of 2008. And this is the infamous phone call that involved sex. And actually, that telephone call is very important because you can actually hear how she deals with him, even though he doesn`t know, based on everything that is in the recording, that he`s being recorded. She says, No, it was being recorded pursuant to his request, don`t you know? Really? Why was it being recorded at his request? He`s not going to be -- can`t listen to it. So what possible benefit is this call going to be for him? If he`s recorded it, he`s not going to get it. There`s absolutely no benefit to him, on May 10th of 2008, to have that telephone call recorded. Yes, he said some things on it. But this is supposed to be, from his perspective, a private conversation, never to be released to anybody between him and... (END VIDEO CLIP) GRACE: OK, notice how Jodi Arias and her entire defense team -- they won`t even look up at the jury when Martinez -- look at them! They just are just writing notes like they don`t know all this already. They will not look the jury in the eye as Martinez is making his points. Watch. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARTINEZ: ... on the telephone, and he says -- and he tells you the reason why. And the reason why is that he enjoys having sexual contact with her. And he gives you the reasons why and he talks about some specific features that he didn`t do before and that he does now. He talks about how she introduced him to certain things, how that was such a good thing, kind of opened his horizons with regard to that particular aspect. And so he`s giving her credit for opening his eyes sexually. And there`s nothing wrong with that. And there`s nothing wrong with the conversation. What is wrong, or what appears to be wrong, is one of them is recording it without the knowledge of the other. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Objection. Facts not in evidence. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sustained. MARTINEZ: You`ll be able to listen -- you`ve listened to that recording. You can draw your own conclusions as to whether or not you believe he knew or believed that this was something that was being recorded. She says, Oh, no, I kept hitting the save button. I was the one that did it. And she kept it. And she kept it all the way from May 10th of 2008. (END VIDEO CLIP) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARTINEZ: This is the last photo of Mr. Alexander. Not only is he defenseless, he does not have a gun. He does not have a knife. He doesn`t have any weapon whatsoever. Not only does he not have that, he doesn`t have any clothing. And as he sits there, he doesn`t have any dignity, either. She`s taken that away from him. And if anybody is defenseless in this case, it isn`t the defendant, it`s Travis Alexander. (END VIDEO CLIP) GRACE: Welcome back, everybody. We are live, camped outside the courthouse. Out to the lines. Debbie, North Carolina. Hi, Debbie. What`s your question? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Nancy. How`re you doing tonight, hon? GRACE: I`m doing great. Now, you should have seen Martinez giving it to Jodi Arias in that courtroom. He showed no mercy, Debbie. What`s is your question? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I loved it today, Nancy. I think my favorite part today was when -- you know, Jodi kept saying, I never brought a gun to Travis`s, I never brought a gun to Travis`s, you know, Travis had the gun. Well, so now, Juan Martinez wants to charge her with second degree burglary. Now what I`m wondering is will a second degree burglary charge help bolster the first degree murder conviction. GRACE: I don`t think so. It might help in the sense of a felony murder. But it`s really too attenuated. Unleash the lawyers, Dwane Cates, Yale Galanter. Do you think it would help at all, Yale, if he had thrown in a burglary charge on Arias? GALANTER: Yes, it could have. But he`s got such strong facts here, either under the premeditated first degree or the felony murder, he`s going to get a conviction. GRACE: Yes, see, that`s where you and I are different, Yale. You say don`t muddy the water and I say throw it all in! Everybody, we`re camped outside the courthouse and taking your calls. We`ll go straight back in the courtroom for Martinez`s closing argument. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARTINEZ: This is an individual who wants to play victim, even though there is no abuse, an individual that, according to her own statements in an e-mail on Valentine`s Day of 2007 to Mr. Alexander, said that she was destructive (ph). When the light of truth is shining on her, she is somebody who -- it`s just an individual that manipulates people. She has no problem lying on the telephone when she says what? Yea, I was faking it. And you know what she said she was faking. Even though you heard her squealing like a cat -- no, no, no, that`s -- that`s just me faking it. Remember, she said, Oh, you know, he was starting to kick me. He broke my finger. I didn`t get any medical care, but he broke my finger. What story are you going to believe from this individual? (END VIDEO CLIP) GRACE: Welcome back, everybody. We are live and taking your calls, camped out here outside the courthouse in Phoenix. With me right now and also taking your calls is a close friend of Travis and Arias. He has visited Arias several times behind bars. Dan Freeman is with us, an actual defense witness. Dan, thank you for being with us. DAN FREEMAN, FRIEND OF TRAVIS AND JODI (via telephone): Oh, it`s good to be here. Thank you, Nancy. GRACE: Dan, you stated that you observed an argument between Arias and Travis Alexander, what happened? FREEMAN: Well, which argument, the one over the backpack or the one - - the littler one where we were -- GRACE: Yes. FREEMAN: Down in Havasupai? GRACE: The backpack. FREEMAN: The backpack. The -- well, I guess the short version of it is that, you know, Jodi brought down her backpack and set it on the table, we were getting ready to hike down into Havasupai, and to leave for that hike. And I picked it up just to move it off the table and in picking it up her pack probably weighed 45, 50 pounds, it was a heavy pack. And I knew there was no way she was going to carry it. And it would end up either Travis or I or both of us would split and carry it down. So she went back upstairs to finish getting ready. I just opened the outside pockets to see what it was, and it was full of lotions, potions, make-up, things women want to make themselves look nice. And I started unloading some of the stuff that -- me, I was like there`s no way she`s going to need any of these camping and this will be doing a huge favor. GRACE: Hey, hey, hey. FREEMAN: And she came -- GRACE: Number one, not all women that go camping take, quote, "lotions and potions," so don`t be throwing us all in the same pot. FREEMAN: I do know that. GRACE: But, everybody -- (CROSSTALK) FREEMAN: I was a survival instructor for a while and I can tell you there are some who take hardly anything. But the -- GRACE: This is Dan Freeman, everyone, a close friend of Travis Alexander who is taking your calls. He is a defense witness. Go ahead, dear. FREEMAN: She came back downstairs, and as she saw the pack, and it was opened, there`s things outside, she started to get frustrated, angry about that, and started to go, why did you take things out of my pack? And Travis said something back to her. And to me, what I saw was that the backpack wasn`t the cause of whatever went on. I mean, it started it. To me it was the straw that broke the camel`s back, and there had been something under the surface and from my perspective and everything I`d seen it was where they stood in the relationship. Jodi wanted more, Travis didn`t want to go more. But they still hung out together. And that was to me -- GRACE: You visited her -- FREEMAN: What I saw on that counter. GRACE: You visited her behind bars, what was her demeanor? What did she say about the death of Travis? FREEMAN: In visiting her, I -- I didn`t talk to her a lot about that. Like we would -- she would asked how the family was, I`d asked her how it was in there. And we -- you know, I visited her the first few years that she was behind bars several times. And come to find out about the time I stopped visiting was actually about the time that she changed her plea. Which I actually didn`t know. But we just talked about how things were. And I talked to -- GRACE: OK, see, that is hard for me to take in that I know Travis is a very -- was a very dear friend of yours. FREEMAN: Yes, he was. GRACE: And it`s hard for me to take in that you wouldn`t say, why did you do it? Why did you kill Travis? FREEMAN: Well, I didn`t know she did. And by the time she changed her plea I didn`t even know that really until I came to court. And when I went there -- because everything I knew in the person or at least who I knew then, I couldn`t believe that she had done it. And, you know, I didn`t follow the news, I don`t own a TV. And so everything that I saw, I just saw people who didn`t know her making accusations. And I thought, you know, she could have done it, the crime of passion from the way that it went but I don`t know that. And if I don`t know that she did it I can`t treat her less than a friend. And I was telling -- yesterday but I realized that I probably didn`t ask because part of me maybe didn`t want to know the answer to that question. And part of me, even in asking that question showed that I already knew or that I already expected that she had done it. GRACE: Dan, question, Arias stayed at your family`s home for a week after Travis was killed to attend the memorial. What was her demeanor at the time? FREEMAN: She was distraught. I mean, I called her and she -- when she flew in and came in, her and I didn`t have a lot of conversations. I was helping Travis`s family with cleaning up the house and doing some other things. But she was quiet, she was withdrawn, she didn`t talk a lot. She talked to one of our friends a little bit more than me. But she just kind of (INAUDIBLE) around the house. My mother found her several times, hugger her -- you know, in a fetal position on the floor, or hugging her knees to her chest. Either laying on the floor in the house or on the floor outside on the sidewalk. And just -- she was just distraught. And initially I thought it was because she was distraught over losing Travis. And I had no -- GRACE: Now when you first found out that Travis was killed you actually called Jodi on the telephone to let her know. What happened when you called her? FREEMAN: She went quiet for a minute. I called, I think said something to the effect, after silence on my part for a minute, too. Said something about Travis is gone. And she -- what do you mean, he is gone? And I told her, and she was silent for a minute and started to cry. And she got emotional. And after a minute or two of me just kind of listening to her cry, I -- let her know, hey, I`m here, call me if you need anything. But I`m going to get off and there are other people I have to call. But I`m like go heal or cry or do whatever you need to without me listening. And so she cried for a minute. And then we hung up and moved on. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) GRACE: Martinez tearing up the courtroom, take a listen to closing arguments. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARTINEZ: Kill her, back on May 19th of 2008. He indicates that. "I am extremely afraid of the defendant, because of her stalking behavior." And who would know better than him? Especially since he is the one that`s had to deal with her coming over, peeping in his window. He`s the one that had to deal with her showing up unannounced. He is the one that`s had problems or damage to his car, according to Lisa Andrews, and he is the one that has her underneath the Christmas Tree and has had ring -- a ring stolen by her. So he would know that. And so then, what ends up happening is that some time passes. And May 26th, shows up. One of the important things about May 26th is that that is the day that they break up. And there is -- much is made by the defense that well, during these conversations, he`s mean to her. Well, why wouldn`t he be mean to her? Yes, there are names said before are being called. That`s correct. There are not any nice names. But he is extremely afraid of her stalking behavior on May 26th, when those names are called. And there are -- there is anger that is being exchanged back and forth. And he sort of capsulizes it by saying, or using a term that`s not quite so sexual. But really capsulizes what is going on here, and how the defendant attempts to manipulate the truth. When he says, "I am nothing more than a dildo with a heartbeat to you." That`s what he tells her, because that is how he feels, that is how she makes him feel. And yes, he uses all those other words, but he is also very derogatory about himself. He knows what`s going on. Every time that -- according to that statement, whenever she wants him the way that she manipulates him is through sex. (END VIDEO CLIP) GRACE: With me right now, Susan Constantine, body language expert, and psychoanalyst and author Bethany Marshall. Susan, I have been watching the defendant very carefully. What do you make of her body language? SUSAN CONSTANTINE, BODY LANGUAGE EXPERT: Well, when I was watching her body language from the very beginning, I saw a flood of different emotions. I saw her being very coy. I saw her getting almost frustrated. You can see her in contempt. And then I saw that where she was even using a little bit of slight intimidation in her facial expressions. And then although she shifts and then of course she was crying, which I really think that the jury is really buying that because they`ve seen her do that before. So when she`s crying, you don`t see any pain or sorrow on her forehead. You only see it in the lower region of her mouth which to me looks more like pity and you know relinquishing kind of the things that she`s gone through, really as it relates to herself. GRACE: And out to you, Dr. Bethany Marshall, weigh in. BETHANY MARSHALL, PSYCHOANALYST, AUTHOR OF "DEALBREAKERS": You know, Nancy, the way she`s scribbling notes, scratching her face, you know, the way the she`s holding her hand up there, it`s -- it`s as if she`s the secretary taking notes for the meeting, as if she is in charge of the proceedings somehow. It is her attempt to gain superiority over Juan Martinez, like she`s already writing her rebuttal instead of her defense attorney making up the rebuttal. Do you what Juan Martinez did that was brilliant, Nancy? Not only does he go through all the lies, lie after lie after lie, but he explains to the jury how she lies, and the psychology of her lying. She lies by being dishonest about the break-ups. She lies by saying, I can`t keep track of things because you`re scrambling my ability to think. At the end she pulls out the big guns with the jury and he says, you know what, jury, she is lying to you. And I thought that was brilliant. This is going to avert a Casey Anthony verdict where the jury gets confused. GRACE: Jean Casarez, Beth Karas, camped out beside the courthouse with me. Beth Karas, how is the jury responding to Martinez? BETH KARAS, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT, IN SESSION: The jurors have sat up straight all day, very attentively and stoically watching Juan Martinez. He made eye contact with them. He wasn`t looking down at his notes or reading his notes. He knows his case inside and out. And so he held their attention by being so well prepared. I guess, and at ease, and in front of the jury as he made his argument. GRACE: He`s also very charismatic. He`s extremely charismatic, Jean Casarez. KARAS: Yes. JEAN CASAREZ, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT, "IN SESSION": His body language is commanding. His body language has that charisma as he walks around the courtroom, he owns the courtroom. And he was so basic. (CROSSTALK) GRACE: Well, I will -- CASAREZ: I mean, it`s just story-telling. Huh? GRACE: I would absolutely say he struts. And you know what? It is because he knows what he is talking about. And I mean, it`s confidence. He`s got confidence in what he is saying. He knows it like the back of his hand. And when I look -- and he believes it, he believes his case. He believes he is telling the truth. And when I look over at the defense lawyers, they`re all sitting there like this. I mean, to me that speaks volumes, Jean. CASAREZ: It does, and his themes were that she was manipulative. She was a liar. And she is lying to you, and she was a stalker through her whole life. He showed patterns from when she was a youngster. GRACE: Let me hear more of closing arguments, everyone. We are live at the Phoenix courthouse taking your calls. Let`s hear more of Martinez tearing up the courtroom. FREEMAN: On that prophetic day, he also tells her something else, in Exhibit 450. She is apologizing to him. Again, she is manipulating him. She does something and she apologizes, and everything is supposed to be OK. But by this time, he has had enough. And he says, I don`t want your apology. I want you to understand what I think of you. That`s what he`s telling her. He is telling her he wants her to understand what it is that he thinks of her. He says, I want you to understand how evil I think you are. At that point, when he is writing that, he is extremely afraid of her because of her stalking behavior. And he does think she is evil. And how prophetic. Look at it, the next words, how absolutely prophetic. No one can dispute that that is the truest -- those are the truest words that are spoken in this case, and they`re spoken by Mr. Alexander even though he is not here through his writings. "You," Jodi Arias, "are the worst thing that ever happened to me." Any doubt that that is the truth? Do we need to look at the pictures of his gashed throat? Do we need to look at the sort of frog-like state that she left him in? All crumbled up in that shower? Or, do we need to look at his face where she put that bullet in his right temple, to know that what he says then is true? "You are the worst thing that ever happened to me." He is telling her enough is enough. And yes, he is angry. Absolutely angry after everything that she has done to him. And you have seen the manipulation as she has tried to manipulate you with what she has told you. And the prime example is these gas cans. No one can argue that she lied to you. GRACE: Oh, oh, she`s trying to cry. You know, just -- just pinch her, she is trying. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MARTINEZ: What`s interesting about these acts -- GRACE: Take a listen to this. The first time we hear that Arias told another shrink that didn`t testify there were 20 incidents of domestic abuse at the hands of the victim. MARTINEZ: But, if you`re not telling the truth, if you`re trying or attempting to manipulate, you do have a lot to remember. She forgot that there is a psychologist by the name of Cheryl Carp that has previously been involved in this case and had conducted an evaluation of the defendant. And during that evaluation with the defendant, she gave many, not four, many, 10, 15, 20 incidents of physical violence, because at that point, physical violence was being used as the predicate, if you will, the seminal act for post-traumatic stress disorder. That`s what she was looking at that time. And of course, let`s have a lot of acts of domestic violence. And so you now have this lots of acts of domestic violence that she doesn`t tell you from the witness stand. Compared to four that she does tell you. Which one is true? The only evidence that you have in the case is that none of it is true. Because she can`t keep it straight. And she`s attempting to manipulate the evidence to fit the goal that she has at that particular time. With regard to Cheryl Carp at that time, according to Janine Demarte, one of the things that was going is was that Cheryl Carp found that post- traumatic stress disorder of the defendant involved these acts of domestic violence, these many, many acts of domestic violence, not just four. And so now when they want to talk about this in a different vein or a little bit differently, it`s not just all these acts, it`s only four. And that`s the problem with her presentation and her attempt to manipulate you. It`s actually not even an attempt to manipulate you. They`re lies. That`s what they are. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) GRACE: We remember American hero, Army Sergeant Matthew Hennigan, 20, Las Vegas, Nevada. Purple Heart, Army Achievement Medal, parents Suzanne and Joe, grandmother Barbara, stepfather Mark, brothers Joey, Jimmy, Eddie. Matthew Hennigan, American hero. And now straight back into the courtroom for closing arguments. MARTINEZ: And then he says, in this Exhibit 450, "You are a sociopath." No, he does not have a psychology degree. But that certainly expresses a feeling about what she says, what she does and how she deals with him, how she always is manipulating him. It teases this anger out of him and tries to mix in the sex. And he says, you only cry for yourself. Well, you saw her cry on the witness stand. Did anybody debate the reason she`s crying was because she cries for herself? After all, she never intended to be caught. She said that so herself. With -- after she lied to the police. Oh, no, I was saying that because I did not want to be caught. And so you only cry for yourself. And then he says, you have never cared about me -- supposedly that could be for. And you have betrayed me worse than any example I could conjure. She has betrayed him. For whatever reason he believes that she has done something that is -- that is absolutely horrific. And he`s telling her, I`ve had it. I`m done with you. And again, this is May 26th. He`s done with her. You are sick and you have scammed me. Again, she has scammed him. Are you going to allow her to scam you, is really the question from this. Are you going to buy her lies? Are you going to believe what she tells you? GRACE: Everybody, a special Mother`s Day contest to win custom T- shirts and the handcuff necklace. Proceeds go to missing and abused children. Go to NancyGrace.com and win that necklace. We`ll be right back here tomorrow night, taking your calls live at the courthouse. Dr. Drew up next. Until tomorrow night, goodnight, friend. END


text:
Microsoft has been investing a lot of time and money into Live Search in order to position it as a serious contender to Google (and Yahoo), but the latest (February) numbers from search engine metrics firm comScore shows that the software titan continues to fall further behind. Google saw a 0.6 percentage point increase in market share last month, capturing 48.1 percent of the search market. Yahoo is treading water at 28.1 percent, while Microsoft dropped from 10.6 percent to 10.5 percent of the market. Ask.com and AOL both came in around 5 percent, a slight drop from last month.
ComScore captures data by monitoring the search habits of over 2 million Internet users who conducted 6.9 billion searches during the month of February.
The numbers are in line with our report last month, which looked at longer-term market share trends not only from comScore, but two of its competitors. They all point to the same conclusion: Google is slowly widening the gap on the competition. Is this something Microsoft can address, or does the company just not "get" Internet search?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Your Title Text
Your Subtitle text
The Facts
Did You Know
Media Resources
GTACT Activity
ars and
What is
The State of Georgia is among the top five states in the nation where fatality crashes occur involving commercial motor
vehicles (CMVs). One out of nine traffic fatalities in 2008 resulted from a collision involving a large truck. The Georgia TACT
(G-TACT) initiative is helping to decrease Georgia's fatality rate by making the general driving public more aware of the safe ways to interact with trucks and provide large vehicles with more room and maneuverability. To help reduce crashes and
fatalities further, the Georgia Department of Public Safety's Motor Carrier Compliance Division is working to educate
motorists on how to decrease risky behavior and navigate the road safely with commercial motor vehicles. The G-TACT
Campaign is funded with a grant from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
The G-TACT program uses high visibility traffic enforcement in high crash areas to determine impact in reducing high risk
driving behaviors of cars and trucks. This program uses communication, enforcement, and evaluation activities to reduce
CMV-related crashes, fatalities, and injuries. The G-TACT campaign targets high risk corridors to reduce fatalites and injuries from unsafe driving behaviors by passenger vehicles and commercial motor vehicles. Colonel Bill Hitchens,
Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety, said "The Georgia TACT campaign is not about writing tickets, but
educating the motoring public about the dangers they face when they cut off the big rigs or tailgate the trucks. The challenge for law enforcement officers is to intercept drivers operating vehicles in a reckless manner or driving an unsafe vehicle before they cause a serious traffic crash."
In addition to cautioning drivers to "leave more space," law enforcement officers will be watching for drivers of both cars and trucks that are tailgating, changing lanes too quickly, crossing the gore or median, driving recklessly, speeding, driving in the emergency lane, failing to signal when changing lanes, operating a vehicle without an appropriate license, and trucks over six wheels traveling in the left lane. "Keep a greater distance behind tractor trailers, not only so the driver can see you, but so you can stop in time should the truck driver ahead be forced to take emergency evasive action," Colonel Hitchens said. "When you tailgate a tractor trailer, you can't see what is in front of the truck and you are not prepared for sudden stops." Also, officers are conducting commercial motor vehicle safety inspections during the enforcement effort.
Aggressive behaviors include:
Following too closely
Changing lanes w/o signaling (cutting off trucks)
Not allowing CMV to merge
Driving in the "No Zone"
Negligent/Reckless Driving
For your free copy of a GTACT Community and Media Outreach DVD, email your request to
Don Lively


text:
San Francisco Colonial Museum
Located in the San Francisco Church, the oldest one in Santiago. This is a beautiful building with adobe walls that holds the most valuable collection of religious art from colonial times. The room contains the objects for self-flagellation that the Franciscans used to use, preferably during Easter Week. It also holds a collection on the life of San Francisco: 54 oil paintings made in Cuzco. This is the most valuable series of Colonial art in Chile and the best preserved in South America. Londres 4, Santiago Centro. Phone. 56-2-6398737.
La Chascona Museum-House
La Chascona is one of the homes that belonged to the poet Pablo Neruda. As with his houses in Valparaiso and Isla Negra, this one is a kind of maze of objects, large windows and magical rooms, now also transformed into a museum. It is located at the foot of Cerro San Cristobal and was designed by the Spaniard German Rodriguez Arias in 1953. It is an eclectic work full of hiding places, false doors, surreal objects, but above all books. For the same reason a surprising library stands out that, it is said, was the best that the poet treasured. Fernando Márquez de la Plata 0192. Phone. 56-2- 7778741.
Pre-Columbian Art Museum
Almost two decades have gone by since Sergio Larraín García-Moreno and the Municipality of Santiago founded the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian art. It operates in what used to be the Royal Customs Palace, one of the most important pre-republican buildings in the capital that was built in 1805 to house the colonial administration. The first floor of the building houses the temporary exhibition rooms, extension activities and the library. The permanent exhibit is in the second floor and the Chinchorro mummies, the oldest in the world, stand out among its valuable pieces. Bandera 361.
Mirador Interactive Museum (MIM)
The MIM is an educational museum that is ideal for visiting with children. It was built by authentic geniuses of fun who created some 100 games-exhibits that children can interact with. One of the most spectacular games is the one that invites you get inside a tornado. This is not the only surprise the MIM has to offer, as a museum that allows you to educationally understand physics and math problems. Sebastopol 90, Parque Brasil, La Granja. Phone. 56-2-2807800.
National Natural History Museum
This is a presentation of important anthropology, botany, zoology, mineralogy and paleontology collections and the museum is located inside the Quinta Normal Park.
National History Museum
This museum holds a collection with close to 70,000 pieces related to the history of Chile from pre-Columbian times through the 20th century, such as pieces of furniture, portraits, religious objects, weapons, uniforms, dresses and others. On the north side of the Plaza de Armas 951.
Fine Arts Museum
Its painting, sculpture, and graphic arts collections are of well-known value, with approximately 5,600 original art works by the most important authors from our country and the world. The building was built in 1910 for the centennial celebrations of the country's independence and the architecture is neoclassical with nods to Art Nouveau. The museum building is a national monument. Parque Forestal. Metro Bellas Artes.


text: First the simple part: Ancient Greco-Roman sexuality is not a good model for the modern world to imitate! But that probably sounds a bit random coming out of the blue like that, and it occurs to me you might want to know exactly what the problem is. So let me start by backing up a bit. Continue reading


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Divisions are set for the Monster Energy WWA Wake Park Triple Crown presented by Alliance Wakeboard Magazine
The WWA is proud to announce the divisions for the Monster Energy Wake Park Triple Crown, the Ten-80 WWA Wake Park Nationals, and the Regional Qualifier events. Dates and locations are already set for the Triple Crown, and the Regional Qualifier dates will be announced soon.
Registration for the first stop of the Triple Crown is now open. This will also be the first stop of the WWA Wake Park World Series, with the top professional riders from all across the world in attendance. Please fill out the Triple Crown Stop #1 Registration Form and submit it to the WWA at email@example.com
You will receive a confirmation email once you have registered. Please print this out and bring it to athlete check-in before the event.
These divisions will be at all Triple Crown events:
– Pro Men
– Pro Wakeskate
– Pro Women
– Pro Obstacles Only
– Open Men
– Open Wakeskate
– Open Women
– Open Obstacles Only
These divisions will be at the WWA Wake Park Nationals and Regional Qualifiers:
– Pro Men
– Pro Wakeskate
– Pro Women
– Pro Obstacles Only
– Open Men
– Open Wakeskate
– Open Women
– Open Obstacles Only
– Boys (13 and under)
– Girls (13 and Under)
– Jr. Men (14-18)
– Mens (19-29)
– Masters Men (30 and up)
Monster Energy WWA Wake Park Triple Crown presented by Alliance Wakeboard Magazine
Stop #1
WWA Wake Park World Series Stop #1
Texas Ski Ranch – New Braunfels, TX
June 5th – 6th
Stop #2
The WWA US Wake Park Open
KC Watersports – Olathe, KS
July 31st – August 1st
Stop #3
The Ten-80 WWA Wake Park National Championships
Dallas Watersports Complex – Dallas, TX
September 17th – 19th
Stay tuned to www.thewwa.com for more information on the Monster Energy Triple Crown results throughout the year.
Alliance MultiMedia is Alliance Wakeboard Magazine, Alliancewake.com and Alliance Visual Experiences. Alliance produces the most authentic publication, website, videos and television content focused on the world of wakeboarding and wakeskating. Our content connects with true wakeboarding and wakeskating participants, creating a trust and relationship that cannot be found with any other media company in our category. This connection has solidified our position as the premier media source in our market.
The World Wakeboard Association (WWA) is a rider formed organization dedicated to promoting and growing wake sports worldwide. It is the leading source for riders, event organizers and competitive standards.
For all inquiries, please contact the World Wakeboard Association at (407) 362-7841 or firstname.lastname@example.com


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Daytona Area MINI Motorers will meet with MINIs of Brevard for their monthly meet.
We'll meet on Saturday, 9/5 at noon in the Walmart parking lot at 3155 FL-44 New Smyrna Beach, FL 32168. Then we'll motor some back roads with a photo stop along the river.
Finally, we'll enjoy a delicious lunch at JB's Fish Camp at 859 Pompano Ave, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32169.
See you there!


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Introducing SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
Related Links http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/11/01/reportingsvcs.html http://www.dotnetheaven.com/Uploadfile/ksganesh /SQLServerReporting03112005051710AM/SQLServerReporting.aspx? ArticleID=6a8712bf-f791-49e1-a292-9c51d22cc6b0 http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/AHCreatRepsAspNet.asp
Related Links http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/11/01/reportingsvcs.html
Microsoft has finally added reporting capabilities to SQL Server 2000. With the rollout of SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, you can now generate reports from your database without the need to use third-party reporting tools. In this article, I will walk you through the basics of creating a simple report using the SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services. In the next article, I will discuss how you can integrate reports into your .NET applications.
Installing SQL 2000 Reporting Services
The SQL 2000 Reporting Services comes in three editions: Developer, Standard, and Enterprise. If you are running Windows XP, then you should use the Developer edition. There are a few prerequisites that you need to satisfy before you can install SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services on your machine:
- You must update SQL Server 2000 to Service Pack 3.
- You need to have Visual Studio .NET in order to use the Report Designer to design your reports. Also, ASP.NET 1.1 must be enabled on your web server. Initially, I had some frustrations with this aspect when I was installing SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services on a development machine. It kept complaining that ASP.NET 1.1 is not installed or not registered with IIS, and refused to install the server-side components of the Report Manager, although ASP.NET 1.1 was indeed installed on the machine. One quick way to solve this problem is to run the
aspnet_regiis.exe -iutility within the Visual Studio .NET command prompt to register the ASP.NET runtime with the IIS. To check if ASP.NET is associated with IIS, create a new ASP.NET web project in Visual Studio .NET and try to debug the web application by pressing
F5. If its works, you should have no problem with installing SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services. For my case, I had no luck in installing SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services on my development machines. Ultimately, I managed to install it on a fresh machine in the following installation sequence: Windows XP, IIS, Visual Studio .NET 2003, SQL Server 2000, SP3, and then SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services.
- You can (and should) install SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services on a separate server. This is the recommended option to avoid slowing down the main database server.
- To use the SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, you need to have a valid license for SQL Server 2000.
Creating a Report
Once you are done with the installation, you should see a new project type in Visual Studio .NET 2003: Business Intelligence Projects (see Figure 1). There are two templates available: Report Project Wizard and Report Project.
Figure 1. The new project type for SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
For now, select the Report Project template and name it "PubsReport." Click OK.
In Solution Explorer, you should see that under the PubsReport project are two folders: Shared Data Sources and Reports (see Figure 2). We will create a report using the Pubs database; right-click on the Shared Data Sources folder and select Add New Data Source.
Figure 2. Adding a new data source
In the Data Link Properties dialog, enter the name of your SQL Server. For my case, my SQL Server is on my local machine and hence I type "(local)" and select the Pubs database (see Figure 3). Click OK.
Figure 3. Selecting the database server
The next step is to add a new report to the project. In Solution Explorer, right-click on Reports and select Add New Report (see Figure 4). There are a few ways to add a report--use the wizard, manually add the report, or simply import a report. For starters, I strongly encourage you to use the wizard via the Add New Report option.
Figure 4. Adding a new report
You will now see the wizard. Select the shared data source you configured in the earlier step (see Figure 5). Click Next to proceed.
Figure 5. Selecting the data source to use for the report
For my report, I want to list book titles and their publishers' information from the
publisherstables. You can either use the Query Builder (click on Edit... in Figure 6) or type in the SQL string manually. Click Next.
Figure 6. Entering the SQL query
Select the report type. For this report, I have selected the Tabular type (see Figure 7). Click Next.
Figure 7. Selecting the report type
In the next dialog, you will choose the various fields to use for the report (see Figure 8). The list of fields is listed in the left list box. To assign a field to the relevant section of the report, select the particular field and click Page>, Group>, or Details>. Figure 8 shows that I want to display the publisher information on every page (hence the fields in the Page section) with all of the books' information grouped by type (hence the "type" field in the Group section). Within each book type, the detailed book information is displayed (hence the fields in the Details section). Click Next to proceed.
Figure 8. Designing the table
Choose the table layout and check the "Include subtotals" option if you want to sum up sales information of books in each type. The "Enable drilldown" option allows information to be collapsed or expanded (see Figure 9). Click Next to proceed.
Figure 9. Choosing the table layout
There are a couple of styles you can choose for the report (see Figure 10). Click Next to proceed.
Figure 10. Choosing the table style
In the last step, give a name to your report and click Finish to complete the wizard (see Figure 11).
Figure 11. Finishing the wizard


text:
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take the following quiz to see how well you know about driving when distracted.
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text:
Since 1962, Chart House has been dedicated to providing the ideal fine-dining experience. With 25 historic, waterfront and showcase locations across the U.S., Chart House offers spectacular views and exception service you're sure to enjoy.
Chart House gift cards may be redeemed at any Landry's Restaurant Inc., location - over 200 locations from coast to coast. Landry's dynamic portfolio of fantastic restaurants, exciting destinations, and award-winning hospitality venues offers something for everyone. Visit www.charthouse.com to find the nearest location.
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For complete location listings, visit www.landrysinc.com. Enjoy!
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text:
Over sixty thousand children help André Kuipers with "Seeds in Space"
André Kuipers will not have to manage all on his own in the International Space Station. The astronaut will have help from over sixty thousand children at primary and secondary schools. Together they will carry out the "Seeds in Space" experiment to examine the effects of light and gravity on plant growth.
Young scientists
The children, aged 11 to 13, will follow the "Young Scientists' Action Plan" in April. After following lessons about living in space, space research and plant growth, they will take part in the experiment by planting rucola (salad cress) seeds in two trays. One of these will be kept in the dark and the other will be exposed to light.
"Children are preparing for the spaceflight and the experiment in the same way as André Kuipers. On 19 April, they will be ready together for the launch", says Jasper Wamsteker, spokesman for the project's initiator, the Space Research Organisation Netherlands (SRON).
During his mission to the Space Station, André Kuipers will make contact twice via a televised link-up. On the first occasion, he will officially launch the "Seeds in Space" project. The second time, four days later, he will show his experiment in the Space Station. Participants on Earth will be able to compare this with their own experiment and draw initial conclusions about the effect of gravity on plant growth.
"Seeds in Space", financed by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, has become an international experiment, as is shown by data from the Dutch Experiment Support Centre (DESC). In addition to over nine thousand children at secondary schools and over 52,000 at primary schools, three schools in the Netherlands Antilles and six thousand participants in Germany have registered for the project. Says Mr Wamsteker: "We thought that we would get a good reaction, but this exceeds our wildest expectations."
This week, at the Russian astronaut training centre known as Star City, André Kuipers will complete the final preparations for "Seeds in Space". He will rehearse all the procedures once more and look for the best place in the Space Station to plant the seeds. Kuipers is expecting it to be a great success: "This is a splendid way to introduce children to science. They will see that space research can be very exciting and great fun."


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text:
This week's theme: the Silk Road.
tr. Hamil. The pinyin form of the poet's name is Li Bo, while the Wade-Giles anglicized form is Li T'ai-Po. I've chosen to retain the name by which he's most widely known (in the West, at least). Tu Fu was another famous Chinese poet and contemporary of Li Po's; the pinyin form of his nawe is Du Fu. I don't know who Hamil is; every single Li Po webpage turned up by Google said "tr. Hamil" and left it at that, so I've done the same. I'd appreciate any clues, though. Anyway. Enough preliminaries, on to the poem... Like the best Imagist poets in English [1], Li Po uses the simplest of words and phrases to paint a verbal picture that's delicate and expressive. This in itself is no mean achievement, but what I really like about today's poem is the way that having set the scene, the poet surprises us with a brilliantly unexpected (and unexpectedly brilliant) punchline. Even better, after reading it you know that no other ending could possibly work; there's an ineffable 'rightness' about Li Po's conclusion. Of course, the fact that 'About Tu Fu' is, in reality, about the nature of poetry makes it irresistible to me. And unlike some poets I could name [2], Li Po is not pompous or pretentious about the importance of his art; rather, he's gently sympathetic - he pokes fun at his chosen profession, yet acknowledges the intensity and dedication that that profession demands. A wonderfully compressed piece of beauty and insight. thomas. [1] As I've mentioned before on the Minstrels, the Imagists (one of my favourite schools of poetry) were heavily influenced by Chinese and Japanese poets, especially Li Po, Basho and Buson. [2] See poem #240 [On this week's theme] Certain times, events and places have a magic of association about them - names like Xanadu, Samarkand, Baghdad, the Levant and Venice each conjure up a wealth of imagination and imagery. And it's no coincidence that each of the above was a part of the fabled Silk Road, an endless repository of wondrous stories... James Elroy Flecker's verse drama 'The Golden Road to Samarkand' was what prompted this particular excursion of mine. In the days to come, I'll be running various other poems written in or about the locales of the Silk Road. As always, your suggestions are most welcome. [Minstrels Links] Poems about poetry and about poets are rife on our website; see especially the week of August 24th last year (poems 186 to 190). 'The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter' is heartbreakingly beautiful; the original is by Li Po, but the version most commonly read is Ezra Pound's - a very free translation, and one which says as much about Pound as it does about Po. You can read it at poem #70 Not _quite_ a Silk Road poem, but very close, is Coleridge's masterpiece 'Kubla Khan', at poem #30 William Turner's 'Romance' is a poem which consciously uses place-names to evoke images of the unattainable; it's archived at poem #238 Brittanica has (as usual) no shortage of things to say: [On the Silk Road] ... also called SILK ROUTE, ancient trade route that, linking China with the West, carried goods and ideas between the two great civilizations of Rome and China. Silk came westward, while wools, gold, and silver went east. China also received Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism (from India) via the road. Originating at Sian, the 4,000-mile (6,400-kilometre) road, actually a caravan tract, followed the Great Wall of China to the northwest, bypassed the Takla Makan Desert, climbed the Pamirs (mountains), crossed Afghanistan, and went on to the Levant; from there, the merchandise was shipped across the Mediterranean Sea. Few persons travelled the entire route, and goods were handled in a staggered progression by middlemen. With the gradual loss of Roman territory in Asia and the rise of Arabian power in the Levant, the Silk Road became increasingly unsafe and untravelled. In the 13th and 14th centuries the route was revived under the Mongols, and at that time Marco Polo used the road to travel to Cathay (China). [On Li Po] b. 701, Szechwan province, China d. 762, Tang-t'u, Anhwei province Li Po liked to regard himself as belonging to the imperial family, but he actually belonged to a less-exalted family of the same surname. At 19 he left home and lived with a Taoist recluse. After a period of wandering, he married and lived with his wife's family, north of Han-chou. He had already begun to write poetry and showed some of it to various officials, in the vain hope of becoming employed as a secretary. A visit to a friend in northeast China in 734 began another period of wandering, and in 742 he arrived at Ch'ang-an, the capital, no doubt hoping to be given a post at court. No official post was forthcoming, but he was accepted into a group of distinguished court poets. In the autumn of 744 he began his wanderings again. At this point he met the other towering poet of the period, Tu Fu, then scarcely known, while Li Po's fame was already immense. Tu Fu, it is clear, was completely carried away by the dash and verve of the older man, who was becoming increasingly wrapped up in Taoism and alchemical studies and at about that time was definitely accepted as a Taoist initiate, receiving a diploma of spiritual progress from the hands of a high Taoist dignitary. In 756 Li Po became unofficial poet laureate to the military expedition of Prince Lin, the emperor's 16th son. The prince was soon accused of intending to set up an independent kingdom and was executed; Li Po was arrested and imprisoned at Chiu-chiang. A high official, reviewing sentences passed in connection with the troubles, looked into Li Po's case, had him released, and made him a staff secretary. In the summer of 758 the charges against Li Po were revived, and he was banished to Yeh-lang. Before he arrived, he benefited by a general amnesty; he returned to eastern China, where he died in a relative's house, though popular legend says that he drowned when, sitting drunk in a boat, he tried to seize the moon's reflection in the water. Li Po was a romantic in his view of life and in his verse. One of the most famous wine drinkers in China's long tradition of imbibers, Li Po frequently celebrated the joy of drinking. He also wrote of friendship, solitude, the passage of time, and the joys of nature. Popularly referred to as a "banished Immortal," he wrote with brilliance and great freshness of imagination. [On Tu Fu] b. 712, Hsiang-yang, now in Honan province, China d. 770, Hunan Born into a scholarly family, Tu Fu received a traditional Confucian education but failed in the imperial examinations of 736. As a result, he spent much of his youth traveling, during which he won renown as a poet and met the other poets of the period, including the great Li Po. After a brief flirtation with Taoism while traveling with Li Po, Tu Fu returned to the capital and the conventional Confucianism of his youth. He never again met Li Po, despite his strong admiration for is older, freewheeling contemporary. -- the above three sections from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica [Endnote] I've only just noticed that the poem (or at least, this particular translation thereof) actually rhymes... a very elegant and unobtrusive touch. [Moreover] Li, bo, po and tai are all acceptable Scrabble words; Tu, fu and du are not.


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Revoked: Foxfield license down to wire
When Foxfield president Benjamin Dick learned that the racing association's ABC license had been put on probation for 18 months, he thought his longstanding dispute with the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control was winding down.
After three days of hearings, two dozen witnesses, and dueling videotapes last fall to determine whether Foxfield's license would be yanked, ABC hearing officer Clara Williamson issued her opinion January 31, ordering probation and an $8,000 fine.
That decision did not sit well– with the ABC. Christopher Curtis, the ABC's chief enforcer, fired off a memo denouncing Williamson's decision as "clearly incorrect and irrelevant" and asking for revocation of Foxfield's liquor license.
The ABC board of directors granted that request February 26, overruling its hearing officer and pulling Foxfield's license.
The revocation has Foxfield officials steaming.
"That hearing was nothing but a ruse," fumes Dick. "It makes the whole due process tainted."
Worse, claims Dick, who is also Foxfield's attorney, was that he'd met with Curtis and the chief operating officer, Curtis Colburn, on February 20, the day before Curtis wrote his memo requesting revocation.
"I said we'd live with [Williamson's] decision," says Dick. "They both started frowning. I think they were disappointed we didn't appeal."
Ten days later, Foxfield was notified that its license had been revoked. "It made me look like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz with steam coming out of my ears," says Dick.
ABC spokesperson Becky Gettings says the hearing officer's decision wasn't overturned, it was "modified" to revoke Foxfield's license, and that the ABC board of directors approved the modification.
Does it seem strange that the ABC board would radically modify the results of its own hearing officer? "We're not going to give an opinion when a hearing is pending," says Gettings. She does say that appeals are a normal part of the administrative hearing process.
Foxfield insiders have long charged that their event– despite 25 years without a human fatality or serious injury– has faced an official vendetta, and Dick charges that the ABC hierarchy has long wanted to revoke Foxfield's license. When the hearing officer didn't do that, the board went behind closed doors to revoke the license. "I have a problem with that," says Dick.
On April 11, Foxfield was invited to submit a compromise offer to the ABC board in which it would pay a $1,000 fine and an additional $1,500 fine if its security and education don't improve at this year's race. The board considered the compromise, along with Foxfield's appeal, on April 15– less than two weeks before the spring races are scheduled to run. The board's decision was not available at press time.
If the board doesn't reinstate its license, Foxfield plans to go to Albemarle Circuit Court to ask for a stay of the revocation.
Whatever happens, Dick is adamant that the horses will run April 26 and that liquor can be served by caterers who hold ABC licenses as well as by the tailgaters who've rented spaces.
In November, Coleburn told The Hook that guests invited to corporate tents could legally drink, but anyone else drinking would be breaking the law. "Foxfield itself wouldn't be violating the law," he said. "Individuals would be guilty."
A call to ask Coleburn for comment on the vendetta assertion was referred to Gettings, who says, "We're not going to try it in the media. We're not going to answer that."
Dick is not reassured, and he promises to "put on his Sam Spade hat" to find out who is behind the revocation. And Foxfield's director, Patrick Butterfield, has asked Senators John Warner and George Allen, Congressman Virgil Goode, and Delegate Rob Bell to look into Foxfield's treatment by the ABC board.
For the spring race, Foxfield will not sell general admission tickets at the gate. Instead, it's calling advance-purchase tickets "invitations." The race has also beefed up its medical facilities, including installing a helicopter landing pad that the county police requested, according to Dick. And he pledges to continue the education process with the college students who landed Foxfield in hot water with the ABC in the first place.
"Now it's just a question of whether we can get the kids to come around," observes Dick.
As this issue was going to press, The Hook learned that the ABC board had rendered an opinion on Foxfield's appeal and suspended its equine sporting event license for 15 months– unless Foxfield hires one security guard for every 200 tickets sold to crack down on all alcohol violations.


text: Many of us do not build kits to save money. It's nice to pick the parts you use and build a better quality gun than the vendors are selling. We put much more time, thought, care, pride,etc into a build than say........Century, ever will. If you just want the cheapest FAL possible, I'm not sure you ever could have beat the price of a Century built rifle. The last batches of $149.00 FAL kits were in pretty crappy shape. mis-matched and beat to hell. Maybe the $250.00 kits are nicer???


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|Jax proudly struts with a glove from ES.
It takes a village to run Dolphin Research Center. We have so many people behind the scenes that help care for our animals and ensure that everyone, from dolphin to human, really enjoys their experience. A great example of these people is our Environmental Services (ES) Department. You'll often see them around the facility, cleaning docks or securing fencing. You rarely see them interact with the dolphins, unless it's a medical assist. However, the dolphins know just how important these guys' roles at DRC are.
Recently, several members from ES did maintenance in the lagoon where A.J., Jax, Tanner, Rainbow, and Sandy reside. The dolphins went along their business as if the guys weren't even in the water. Occasionally, they swam by to check on their human friends but never got in the middle of the job.
Since the dolphins live in a natural lagoon setting, it's common for the tides to come in and flood back out. One of the members of ES noticed his glove had disappeared. It turns out that the glove floated all the way to the other side of the habitat, by the fence. He couldn't just swim out to get it, so Jax came to the rescue!
A trainer threw ice cubes out and pointed at the glove in the water. As Jax happily swam over, he had a little trouble grabbing the item with his rostrum. He tried to balance it, hold it in his mouth, and carry it on his back. Slowly, he pushed it back to the dock as the ES team cheered him on. He was so excited he gave them a high five before they continued on with their work. Way to go Jax!


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Just days after Apple Inc. patched about 150 vulnerabilities in OS X, the company is releasing yet another batch of security updates for Safari that runs on both OS X and Windows.There are 27 vulnerabilities in total for Safari version 5.0.3, with 23 of those being critical in that they'd allow what Apple calls "arbitrary code execution."
That's another way of saying should an attacker exploit these flaws, they can run whatever attack tools and exploit code they wish on your system.
Such flaws can be exploited through attackers establishing maliciously crafted web sites, for example.
The Safari 5.0.3 update can be accessed here for Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Leopard, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP. It's the third Safari update since Safari 5 was released this Spring.
And it's an update you'll want to apply immediately.
For my security and technology observations throughout the day, find me on Twitter.


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Our enterprise strategy focuses on solutions to help our customers build a better world and allows us to deliver profitable growth for our shareholders.
With our Values as a foundation, we leverage an information-driven approach — the Operating & Execution Model — to guide our decision-making process and ultimately, position us for continued profitable growth. We are committed to understanding the needs of our customers, and together with our partners, delivering industry-leading products and services that are largely focused in three areas:


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Tagging, Building, and Source Tarballs
In preparation for starting automation, we recently started to use a script,
release_sanity.py, that was originally written by a Release Engineering summer intern. This Python script assists a release engineer with double-checking that all configurations for a release match what is checked into our tools and configuration repositories. It also checks what is in the specified release code revisions for
mozilla-release and all the (human) languages for this release, which will be what the builds and language repacks are generated from.
Figure 3: Automated tagging.
The script accepts the buildbot config files for any release configurations that will be used (such as desktop or mobile), the branch to look at (
mozilla-release), the build and version number, and the names of the products that are to be built (such as "fennec" or "firefox"). It will fail if the release repositories do not match what's in the configurations, if locale repository changesets don't match our shipping locales and localization changeset files, or if the release version and build number don't match what has been given to our build tools with the tag generated using the product, version, and build number. If all the tests in the script pass, it will reconfigure the buildbot master where the script is being run and where release builders will be triggered, and then generate the "send change" that starts the automated release process.
After a release engineer starts up builders, the first automated step in the Firefox release process is tagging all the related source code repositories to record which revision of the source, language repositories, and related tools are being used for this version and build number of a release candidate. These tags allow us to keep a history of Firefox and Fennec (mobile Firefox) releases' version and build numbers in our release repositories. For Firefox releases, one example tag set is
A single Firefox release uses code from about 85 version control repositories that host things such as the product code, localization strings, release automation code, and helper utilities. Tagging all these repositories is critical to ensure that future steps of the release automation are all executed using the same set of revisions. It also has several other benefits: Linux distributions and other contributors can reproduce builds with exactly the same code and tools that go into the official builds, and it also records the revisions of source and tools used on a per-release basis for future comparison of what changed between releases.
Once all the repositories are branched and tagged, a series of dependent builders automatically start up: one builder for each release platform plus a source bundle that includes all source used in the release. The source bundle and built installers are all uploaded to the release directory as they become available. This allows anyone to see exactly what code is in a release, and gives a snapshot that would allow us to re-create the builds if we ever needed to (for example, if our VCS failed somehow). For the Firefox build's source, sometimes we need to import code from an earlier repository. For example, with a beta release this means pulling in the signed-off revision from Mozilla-Aurora (our more-stable-than-nightly repository) for Firefox 10.0b1. For a release, it means pulling in the approved changes from Mozilla-Beta (typically the same code used for 10.0b6) to the Mozilla-Release repository. This release branch is then created as a named branch whose parent changeset is the signed-off revision from the "go to build" provided by the Release Coordinator.
The release branch can be used to make release-specific modifications to the source code, such as bumping version numbers or finalizing the set of locales that will be built. If a critical security vulnerability is discovered in the future that requires an immediate fix a chemspill a minimal set of changes to address the vulnerability will be landed on this relbranch and a new version of Firefox generated and released from it. When we have to do another round of builds for a particular release,
buildN, we use these relbranches to grab the same code that was signed off on for "go to build," which is where any changes to that release code will have been landed. The automation starts again and bumps the tagging to the new changeset on that relbranch.
Our tagging process does a lot of operations with local and remote Mercurial repositories. To streamline some of the most common operations we've written a few tools to assist us. retry.py is a simple wrapper that can take a given command and run it, retrying several times if it fails. It can also watch for exceptional output conditions and retry or report failure in those cases. We've found it useful to wrap retry.py around most of the commands which can fail due to external dependencies. For tagging, the Mercurial operations could fail due to temporary network outages, Web server issues, or the backend Mercurial server being temporarily overloaded. Being able to automatically retry these operations and continue saves a lot of our time, since we don't have to manually recover, clean up any fallout and then get the release automation running again. hgtool.py is a utility that encapsulates several common Mercurial operations, like cloning, pulling, and updating with a single invocation. It also adds support for Mercurial's share extension, which we use extensively to avoid having several full clones of repositories in different directories on the same machine. Adding support for shared local repositories significantly sped up our tagging process, since most full clones of the product and locale repositories could be avoided. An important motivation for developing tools like these is making our automation as testable as possible. Because tools like hgtool.py are small, single-purpose utilities built on top of reusable libraries, they're much easier to test in isolation.
Today our tagging is done in two parallel jobs: one for desktop Firefox which takes around 20 minutes to complete as it includes tagging 80+ locale repositories, and another for mobile Firefox which takes around 10 minutes to complete, because we have fewer locales currently available for our mobile releases. In the future, we would like to streamline our release automation process so that we tag all the various repositories in parallel. The initial builds can be started as soon as the product code and tools requirement repository is tagged, without having to wait for all the locale repositories to be tagged. By the time these builds are finished, the rest of the repositories will have been tagged so that localization repackages and future steps can be completed. We estimate this can reduce the total time to have builds ready by 15 minutes.
Localization Repacks and Partner Repacks
Once the desktop builds are generated and uploaded to ftp.mozilla.org, our automation triggers the localization repackaging jobs. A "localization repack" takes the original build (which contains the
en-US locale), unpacks it, replaces the en-US strings with the strings for another locale that we are shipping in this release, then repackages all the files back up again (this is why we call them repacks). We repeat this for each locale shipping in the release. Originally, we did all repacks serially. However, as we added more locales, this took a long time to complete, and we had to restart from the beginning if anything failed out mid-way through.
Figure 4: Repacking Firefox for each localization.
Now, instead, we split the entire set of repacks into six jobs, each processed concurrently on six different machines. This approach completes the work in approximately one-sixth of the time. This also allows us to redo a subset of repacks if an individual repack fails, without having to redo all repacks. (We could split the repacks into even more, smaller, concurrent jobs, but we found it took away too many machines from the pool, which affected other unrelated jobs triggered by developers on our continuous integration system.)
The process for mobile (on Android) is slightly different, as we produce only two installers: an English version and a multi-locale version with more than a dozen languages built into the installer instead of a separate build per locale. The size of this multi-locale version is an issue, especially with slow download speeds onto small mobile devices. One proposal for the future is to have other languages be requested on demand as add-ons from http://addons.mozilla.org.
In Figure 4, you can see that we currently rely on three different sources for our locale information:
l10_changesets, and
l10n-changesets_mobile-release.json. (There is a plan to move all three into a unified JSON file.) These files contain information about the different localizations we have, and certain platform exceptions. Specifically, for a given localization we need to know which revision of the repository to use for a given release and we need to know if the localization can build on all of our supported platforms (for instance, Japanese for Mac comes from a different repository all together). Two of these files are used for the Desktop releases and one for the Mobile release (this JSON file contains both the list of platforms and the changesets).


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|A Flintoff, KP Pietersen
|Australia in British Isles 2009
DateLine: 24th July 2009
England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff said that Kevin Pietersen's absence from the rest of the Ashes will be a major concern for England. and this could give Australia a major lift.
 "If (Australia captain) Ricky Ponting was injured you are quite happy not bowling at him - and I think Australia will be thinking the same about Kevin," Flintoff was quoted as saying in Herald Sun.
 "It means a lot playing in the Ashes and I fully expect he'll be coming along to watch a few of the games once he's back on his feet."
 Flintoff said that KP is a massive influence on the English side and he wished him well.
 "He's a massive influence on our team so it's going to make it tougher for us - but he's been in pain. He will be greatly missed and we wish him well - he'll be gutted."
 "He's performed well in the past and we expected him to in the next three matches but he'll come back, he's young and I'm sure he's got a few more Ashes series in him yet."
View all Current Events CLICK HERE


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Huge Mess-Up: Fox Sports Reporter Tells 49'ers Coach That One Of His First Phone Call Was To Bill Walsh (Who Passed Away In 2007) When He Was Asked To Be The Head Coach!
Fox Sideline Reporter Asks Mike Singletary About Bill Walsh
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A few days ago I wrote about how burying dead pets on your yard creates a lot of yin energy. This prompted one of my readers to email and send me an sms. She was lucky enough that I was able to read her email right away, and because I know how serious this matter is I agreed to meet her and go to her place.
MLS said that when they transferred to their new house, things started going sour with some of the things in their life. There are several things that she shared with me, but one of the major problems that they encountered is it seems that her husband's professional life took a nose dive. She said she noticed when she moved to their house and when they buried five puppies in their yard.
When I get to their house, the first thing I noticed is that their main house door is slanted. I call this 'dragon door', because if done right they have the ability to bring dragon luck, which is an enormous amount of luck into one's life. However, this is a very tricky thing to do and I've never seen any modern Feng Shui consultants execute this. In fact, I personally don't feel comfortable doing this because a slight error in measurement, it will then become a 'yin dragon door'. This means it will bring a tremendous amount of bad luck. MLS has a dragon door, judging from how it was done, it looks like that it has become a 'yin dragon door' and he has 4 such doors in her house. To top it off, there are several more Feng Shui blunders that I pointed out to them. Not to mention, there are also dead puppies buried in their yard.
I don't really remember whether I told them this, but I felt that they're still lucky, because with so much major Feng Shui blunders in one house things could have been at its worst!
There are several possible factors why they didn't get to feel the full effects of the major Feng Shui blunders. They may be good people and have garnered so much positive karma that even if the Feng Shui blunders in their house are so big, they weren't that affected. But one thing I noticed is that they have two aspins or Asong Pinoy, a Filipino non-breed dog that are usually found on the streets. MLS's family, especially her husband and children took care of the dogs when they were surely destined to have died on the street or eaten by drunkards.
The dogs are Puti and Matic and both of them are female dogs. The carpenters who were building their house when she was still a puppy bought Puti. They want to bring her up so that they can slaughter and eat her. Matic on the other hand was an abandoned dog that gave birth to her puppies on the street. AS, MLS husband then saved Matic and her puppies. Unfortunately, Matic's puppies all died of parvo. They're the ones who are now buried in their yard.
Adopting a pet and ensuring that they become well balanced is one sure way of wiping our negative karma or fighting off bad luck. In the case of MLS and AS, I can only imagine the good karma that they got from adopting both Puti and Matic without even thinking about karma or luck.
Puti and Matic are now indoors dogs and love to seat in front of the air conditioner. Also, while they used to scavenge for food, their humans now know their favorite food. According to MLS they love to eat Menudo (pork with liver stew) but are not very fond of Sinigang (Filipino hot sour soup).
AS and MLS and their children changed the lives of both Puti and Matic and now I believe just because they're happy dogs they're also helping their humans by giving them positive chi!


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Explore your Results
All data on this site is derived from external sources, principally Europeana, but also Wikipedia. As such Niall O'Leary Services accepts no liability in respect of the accuracy of data on this website. All data on this site is presented as is and visitors use it at their own risk. More information these issues and privacy can be read here.


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Mock Questions for Acing Business Analyst Job Interviews
Receiving a business analyst interview invitation only "opens the door" to getting a job. Acing the job interview will walk you through that door to actually get a business analyst job.
How do you prepare?
Following are six basic questions along with their answers that you will get during the job interview.
Be sure to modify each answer to match your experience, skills, competencies and personality to avoid sounding like a memorized script.


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Pinterest Tacks On New Marketing Tool
May 22, 2014 11:11 AM PT
Pinterest on Tuesday revealed that it was rolling out an analytics tool for marketers designed to offer them more information on which content does well.
The new feature, Business Insights API, lets businesses track which of their boards, pins and products are attracting the most engaged users, as well as which ones aren't garnering clicks. In addition, developers will be able to use the API to track activity, helping them understand how consumers move and click on their brand's boards.
The information is available through a handful of marketing technology software applications, including Salesforce, Hootsuite, Piquora, Curalate and Tailwind. An example from Piquora shows a sleek chart displaying how many times users were directed to their retail site through Pinterest over the past month, and how those Pinterest redirects compared to competing ads or social media posts.
The service won't replace Pinterest Analytics, the already-established free data tool, but the new Business Insights API is designed to provide marketers with even more detailed analytical information, including conversion-tracking capabilities.
Bolstering Content
The new feature comes on the heels of a US$200 million round of funding that values Pinterest at $5 billion. The company has been sprucing up the site in a number of ways. It recently launched a new search feature designed to help users find their way through the 30 billion pins on the site, for example, and earlier this month it began allowing some brands to promote pins.
Those steps, as well as Pinterest's nod to marketers with the new Business Insights tool, are part of its effort to show the world it can be mentioned in the same breath as social media giants like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, said Thomas Bibby Varghese, CEO and founder of eBizUniverse.
"This is part of Pinterest's efforts to turn the hobby site into a revenue generating machine," he told the E-Commerce Times."The site so far is used by mostly women and is very addictive. They will come up with ways to monetize this."
Killing It With Data?
Pinterest has a lot to offer for businesses that are looking for a new outlet for attracting customers, said Doug Stephens, founder of Retail Prophet and author of Retail Revival.
"What's important here is that Pinterest is part of a movement to a more visual Web," he told the E-Commerce Times. "Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, SnapChat, YouTube and others are capitalizing on the move away from a text-based Web in favor of sharing images and video -- both of which are known to spread socially at an exponentially greater rate than text-based posts."
Providing marketers with analytical information is an important step for any company that wants to have a place in the current social landscape, Varghese acknowledged.
"This new tool will give companies more insight into what consumers are doing on Pinterest, and companies who have ignored Pinterest will start to take notice," he said.
However, that could take away some of what made the site appealing in the first place. Pinterest can't expect to survive if it doesn't offer these tools to businesses, said Stephens, but it also must be careful to curate the site in a way that keeps its devoted users on board, excited and clicking.
"The drawback of commercializing is that it diminishes the long-term appeal of the site for users, because companies and individuals all begin posting more content that's similar, based on the analytic algorithm," he pointed out. "In essence, the site goes from feeling organic, authentic and real to seeming programmed, predictable and boring."