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RICHMOND, Va. – With the start of a new semester right around the corner, VCUathletics.com has decided to bring back an old feature to let Ram Nation know a little more about the student-athletes they love to cheer for.
"Getting to Know" will be a weekly feature that will highlight student-athletes from the 16 intercollegiate athletic programs that make up Ram Nation. Each week, VCU Athletic Communications Graduate Assistant Marle van Dessel will chat it up with selected athletes to get inside their world and let us know a little more about themselves.
The first edition features rising junior Nate Shiffman of the men's soccer team. Shiffman has been an integral part of a new era of VCU soccer. He started 18 of VCU's 19 games last year as the defensive midfielder, guiding the Rams to 11 victories on the campaign. The Midlothian, Va. native will be back next fall to help guide the Black & Gold in what is sure to be another exciting year for VCU soccer.
MVD: Why did you decide to come to VCU?
NS: I decided to come to VCU for two main reasons. First, VCU has a great medical school program that I am interested in. And secondly, because I believe that Coach Giffard and others involved with the men's soccer team can bring a national championship to this school.
MVD: What influenced you to get involved with soccer?
NS: My mom and my three older siblings influenced me the most to play soccer. Although I had to wait until I was four years old to play on my first real team, I had been playing with my siblings ever since I could walk.
MVD: What is one thing that most people don't know about you?
NS: One thing that people don't know about me is that I watch Vampire Diaries.
MVD: Do you have any pregame rituals or superstitions?
NS: During the national anthem of every game I pray for family and my friends.
MVD: Who has been the toughest opponent you have played against? (team or individual)
NS: The toughest opponent I have ever played against was Akron my freshmen year.
MVD: If you could play on any other VCU Athletic team which one would it be?
NS: I think I would take my athleticism to the sport of track, where I would participate in the high jump and 100 meter dash.
MVD: If you could travel to any place in the world where would you go?
NS: Liverpool, England
MVD: What actor would play you in a movie?
NS: Since I'm weird and Jewish, I think Adam Sandler suits me best. It was between him and Denzel Washington.
MVD: What is the best part about being a VCU soccer player?
NS: The best part about being a VCU soccer player is being with my teammates all the time. We are a family and I love them all.
MVD: Describe a moment when you felt the most RamNation pride?
NS: After VCU beat Kansas last year in basketball to go to the final four, I've never seen so much RamNation pride. The celebration on Broad St. was an experience I will never forget.
What is your favorite…
Website: YouTube
Song: No Scrubs by TLC
TV Show: Vampire Diaries:/ …I blame Becca
Movie: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Place to play besides VCU: UVA or Akron
Place to eat in Richmond: Kobe Japanese Steakhouse
Sport to watch on TV: Soccer, but Curling is a close second
Pro Sports Team: Liverpool FC
Pro Athlete: Xavi Hernandez
Bench-press or squat: Bench
Winter or summer: Summer
In season or out of season: Definitely in season
Morning classes or evening classes: Evening
High school or college: College
Sprints or long distance: HA!...long distance
Facebook or twitter: Facebook
Singing or dancing: Unfortunately I'm not gifted in either, however I choose dancing
Winter Olympics or summer Olympics: Winter
Cat or dog: Duke! (dog)


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During the one-day drills, Iranian and Pakistani naval forces rehearsed different types of military and tactical formations of vessels and submarines.
The Iranian naval fleet present in the exercises comprised Falakhon (Sling) and Khanjar (Dagger) missile boats, Hendijan and Deylam replenishment ships as well as a Ghadir midget submarine.
Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari announced on Sunday that several Iranian Navy warships and submarines dispatched to the high seas have berthed in Pakistan.
"5 submarines and warships of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Navy berthed in Pakistan on Friday," Sayyari said.
Early in April, Iran and Pakistan started their joint naval exercises in the Persian Gulf.
Iranian and Pakistani naval forces began their joint drills in the Eastern waters of the Strait of Hormuz with the message of peace and friendship.
In recent years, Iran's Navy has been increasing its presence in international waters to protect naval routes and provide security for trade vessels and tankers.
The Islamic Republic has repeatedly asserted that its overseas naval presence is meant to convey a message of peace and friendship to other countries.
Iranian officials and commanders have repeatedly underlined that all military exercises and trainings of the Iranian Armed Forces are merely meant to serve deterrent purposes.
Late in December 2011, the Iranian Army's Navy staged 10-day wargames, dubbed as Velayat 90, to test its latest achievements in the fields of missile technology and sub-surface vessels.
The wargames were conducted in an area stretching from the East of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Aden.
During the drills, the Navy test-fired long-range missiles from coasts and navy vessels. Different types of short and long-range coast-to-sea, surface-to-surface, surface-to-air missiles were tested by Iranian vessels. Iranian submarines also launched smart torpedoes in the exercises.
Iran's naval power has even been acknowledged by foes. In a Sep. 11, 2008 report, the Washington Institute for the Near East Policy said that in the two decades since the Iraqi imposed war on Iran, the Islamic Republic has excelled in naval capabilities and is able to wage unique asymmetric warfare against larger naval forces.
According to the report, Iran's Navy has been transformed into a highly motivated, well-equipped, and well-financed force and is effectively in control of the world's oil lifeline, the Strait of Hormuz.
The study said that if Washington takes military action against the Islamic Republic, the scale of Iran's response would likely be proportional to the scale of the damage inflicted on Iranian assets.

subset: commoncrawl


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Shields gets Opening Day nod for Royals
SURPRISE, Ariz. -- James Shields will start on Opening Day at Detroit, Jeremy Guthrie will start the Royals' home opener and Wade Davis has been assigned to the bullpen.
That was the wide sweep of pitching news announced on Saturday by Royals manager Ned Yost.
SURPRISE, Ariz. -- James Shields will start on Opening Day at Detroit, Jeremy Guthrie will start the Royals' home opener and Wade Davis has been assigned to the bullpen.
That was the wide sweep of pitching news announced on Saturday by Royals manager Ned Yost.
Shields will start his second opener in a row for the Royals -- this once coming on March 31 at Detroit -- and his selection was expected.
"Any time you get an Opening Day assignment, it's an honor. No doubt about it," Shields said.
Guthrie was Yost's pick for the Royals' first game at Kauffman Stadium, which will be jam-packed on April 4 against the White Sox.
"I want him starting Opening Day [at home]," Yost said. "He's done it before, he's experienced at it. It's a good matchup, and it's an important day for our fans. Jeremy had a tremendous year last year."
Yost also said Jason Vargas, the free-agent left-hander signed over the winter, would start the second game at Detroit. The home opener is the season's fourth game, so starters have yet to be named for the third or fifth game, although Bruce Chen would be slotted for one of those.
Davis, who began last season in the Royals' starting rotation and then finished in the bullpen, was taken out of the competition for the final rotation spot and was assigned to relief duty. It means that the fifth spot likely will go to either Yordano Ventura or Danny Duffy.
The decision to assign Davis to the bullpen was prompted by the loss of Luke Hochevar to Tommy John surgery on Friday.
"[Davis] is a dominant factor down there for us, and once we lost Hoch, it became apparent to me that [Davis'] presence was sorely needed down there," Yost said. "He had been pitching as well or better than any of the candidates for that rotation spot, but as soon as Hoch went down, we all knew Wade could be a good Major League starter … but we felt Wade in the back end of our 'pen is going to be more productive for us as a team."
Although Hochevar and Davis were candidates for the fifth starter's job, it was clear that Yost had been partial to having them back in the bullpen.
"I just sat and looking at our 'pen at the end of last year, how dominant it was, and it included Wade and Hoch, and I just couldn't see us going forward with a real strong bullpen without Wade and Hoch in it." Yost said. "I sat there last night and decided now's the time to do it."
Of course, while Davis was in, Hochevar was, by necessity, out. Davis, after 24 starts last year, was moved to the bullpen in September while the Royals were chasing an American League Wild Card postseason berth.
"It's best for the team right now and something where we're going to move forward and get ready for the season," Davis said. "It'll be good for the team, and we'll have a lot of fun."
Yost said that Davis will be primarily a late-inning reliever and won't be considered a swing man who could be called upon to start if necessary.
"And he does have the ability, on days when Holly [Greg Holland] does need a break, to close games out. He's that kind of reliever," Yost said.
Yost figures that the Royals won't need a possible starter stashed in the bullpen.
"I don't need a swing guy, because the guys we're going to have in Triple-A are going to be primed and ready," Yost said. "I'm not going at it that if something happens, we can make Wade a starter. Wade's going to be in the 'pen moving forward."
The bullpen looks strong with right-handers Davis, Holland, Aaron Crow, Kelvin Herrera and Louis Coleman, and left-handers Tim Collins, Francisley Bueno and Donnie Joseph all available.
If the Royals keep 12 pitchers, as expected, there will be seven bullpen spots, and Yost is pondering whether or not a long man will be needed.
"I'm still kind of 50-50 on that," he said. "When I'm looking at the numbers and I'm looking at the quality arms that are coming out of there, I've got to weigh the need for a long man compared to another guy that can come in and shut an inning down."
That role likely would not go to Duffy or Ventura as the loser of the battle for the fifth spot. General manager Dayton Moore is on record as favoring either young pitcher going to Triple-A Omaha rather than pitching out of the bullpen. That way if a starter was needed during the season, he would be ready. Moore did say, though, that he was staying open-minded on the matter.
"I am, too, but I probably share that thought," Yost said. "That way you've got guys down there [at Omaha] that are built up and, boom."
Among possible long-man candidates are left-hander Everett Teaford and right-hander P.J. Walters.
Although clubs sometimes skip over the fifth starter because of frequent open dates in April, Yost doubts the Royals will do that in 2014.
"We're talking over a bunch of scenarios, but it doesn't really benefit us to do it," he said.


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I have been researching this for over a week now. I've tried a few tutorials on custom rewrite rules and custom post types, but I'm still not sure which direction I should go in for making this happen. And it absolutely has to happen. This is a large client who needs to retain the same link structure that is coming from a moveable type envrionment:
WP ---> http://www.domain.com/pastissues/category/here-is-the-postname.html - works on wordpress
MT ---> http://www.domain.com/pastissues/multiple-word-category-orsingle-one-here-is-the-postname.html - works on Moveable Type
I've tried:
/pastissues/%category%-%postname%.html --> this produces the right looking link, but fails when I request an article if the article has a category that is more than one word.
So I probably need to write a custom permalink plugin. I've tried looking through available plugins out there, but custom permalinks won't help me, because I'm a multi-site install.


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VANCOUVER, B.C. - With only three games remaining in the regular season, the Vancouver Canucks made a bold move Tuesday, firing team president and general manager Mike Gillis.
The Canucks have been eliminated in the first round in each of the last two seasons after falling one win short of a Stanley Cup in 2011.
Under first-year head coach John Tortorella, they sit 11th in the Western Conference and were officially eliminated from postseason contention with a 3-0 loss to Anaheim on Monday.
"On behalf of my entire family, I would like to sincerely thank Mike Gillis for his hard work and the many contributions he made on and off the ice during his tenure," said Francesco Aquilini, chairman, Canucks Sports & Entertainment. "The Vancouver Canucks had success under Mike's leadership, and we nearly reached our ultimate goal; but I believe we have reached a point where a change in leadership and new voice is needed.
"I also want to thank our fans for their support for the Vancouver Canucks through a difficult and frustrating season," continued Aquilini. "We haven't met their expectations or ours. We are committed to bringing the Stanley Cup to Vancouver for our fans and we will continue to do everything possible to reach that goal."
The 55-year-old came to the organization in April of 2008, taking over for the fired Dave Nonis. He turned a club which had missed out on the postseason in two of the previous three seasons and built them back up into a contender, snagging five straight playoff berths, five Northwest Division titles and two straight Presidents' Trophies (2011, '12).
For his efforts, Gillis was granted a contract extension in May of 2012.


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Time Out says
'If there were two things that Watt disliked, one was the moon… and the other was the sun.' The voice of the speaker lilts, dripping in comedic melancholy – the statement is part threadbare existentialism, part lugubrious stand-up. It's such dark jewels that combine to make the glittering whole of Barry McGovern's adaptation of Samuel Beckett's second novel 'Watt'.
McGovern, already acclaimed for his one-man Beckett show 'I'll Go On', takes us into the bleakly obsessive world of the itinerant title character and turns it into a comic miracle of mordant observations.
Watt, clearly a cousin to Valdimir and Estragon in 'Waiting for Godot', lurches on to a dark stage that is bare except for a hat stand. McGovern removes his coat and arranges it, along with his cases, so that the hat stand now looks like a forlorn vagrant – Watt's shadow self. Dressed in a servant's garb of dress tails but no tie, he relates his time working in the house of Mr Knott. Watt, as the name suggests, feels his existence to be a constant shrug of a question, and his service is filled with such riddles as the arrival of the sinister father-and-son piano tuners, or his stilted liaisons with a one-breasted housemaid.
McGovern's success as a Beckett performer derives not just from his dour clownishness – all sharp eyebrows and exaggerated movements – but from his dedication to mining Beckett's language in all its precise beauty. The tale of Watt's semantic assault on a pot that seems to him to refuse to be called a pot is not just extremely funny, it is also a revelation that this is as much a story about being a writer as it is about a servant's voyage into the dark heart of nothingness. Rachel Halliburton
|Event website:
|Event phone:
|020 7638 8891


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Little Known Fact: Journalist H.L. Mencken coined the term "Bible Belt," and popularized it during the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, right here in Dayton. (You're welcome, future Jeopardy contestants.)
This fact alone should qualify Dayton as the Belt's official "buckle," but if you're not yet convinced, consider Rhea County's 250 churches, thriving Christian college campus, weekly McDonald's gospel sing, and solidly Southern location halfway between the Mason Dixon line to the north and the Gulf of Mexico to the south.
As I've mentioned before, this is a strange place to struggle with doubt, a strange place to deconstruct and reconstruct faith, a strange place to launch yet another church, and a strange place to experiment with missional living. I've written frequently about the first two, but as I look ahead, I expect we will be chatting more and more about the second two.
"Missional" is a bit of a buzzword these days, and can mean different things to different people. For me, it is simply a commitment to living like Jesus in order to serve as an imperfect participant in the Kingdom of God that is among us now and an incomplete picture of the fully restored and redeemed Kingdom of God that is to come. Missional living is basically redemptive living...within a community and for the community.
On good days, this would mean pursuing justice, celebrating beauty, loving neighbors, loving enemies, and sharing the Gospel. On bad days, it would mean feeling like a complete hypocrite because I don't really like people that much to begin with.
The missional approach is different than modern evangelicalism, particularly in this region, because "the work of salvation, in its full sense, is 1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; 2) about the present, not simply the future; and 3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us." (I borrowed that from NT Wright, Surprised by Hope, p. 200).
[On Monday, I'll share a post about how this is approach is different from the so-called "social gospel."]
So how does one live missionally in the buckle of the Bible Belt, where just about everyone knows the name of Jesus? How do you do "church" in a way that is different? And if Jesus lived in Dayton, how might he spend his time?
These are questions I'll be thinking about and addressing over the next few weeks and months, and I'm going to need your input and help. Potential blog topics include:
- Rural poverty
- Racial reconciliation in the South
- Reaching out to migrant workers and their families
- Celebrating local artists and musicians
- Working in harmony with folks who are politically and theologically more conservative than myself
- Needs in rural education – both in public schools and adult education programs
- Becoming a friend and refuge for the religiously disenfranchised
- Living with less in order to give more
- Southern religious culture
- Understanding industrial communities
- Understanding farming communities
- Integration of nature and worship
What else? What do you think are some of the challenges/issues specifically related to missional living in the Bible Belt culture? Do you know of any ideas that have worked? Experts to consult? Links to share?
I'd especially love to hear from my fellow rural Southerners…but Yankees and city slickers are welcome to chime in as well! :-)
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Montgomery Alabama
August 7th 1862
Dearest Sallie, You see from the heading of this letter that I am getting away from you as fast as possible. We left Tupelo last Saturday morning about 9 or 10 o'clock on the train, and landed at Mobile Sunday evening about 2 or 3 o'clock. We then went on a steamboat and remained there until about 3 o'clock Monday morning, when the boat left for this place. We arrived here yesterday evening about 3 or 4 o'clock and as there are so many troops here going on to Chattanooga, we will not get off before 6 o'clock tomorrow morning. We will take the train at 6 and get to Chattanooga in 2 or 3 more days. I have enjoyed the trip tolerably well considering the diarrhea. My bowels have been running off ever since I wrote you last at Tupelo. I had to live on opium nearly the whole trip. My bowels are better this morning than they have been since I left Tupelo. I have not been much sick, but felt weak and bad, and had very little appetite to eat anything, and I s'pose it was all for the best, for we don't get much to eat except hard crackers and middling bacon, sometimes we buy some little nicknaks, but they are so dear we can't afford to buy much. Ginger cakes are 40 cts a piece, fruit pies are about a dollar a piece, watermelons from 50 cts to 3 dollars, chickens 50 cts, bacon-ham 42 cts per pound, and everything in proportion, apples and peaches about 25 cts per dozen, etc. I have always been anxious to ride on a steamboat, but I am satisf ied now unless I should go on a pleasure trip with you sometime when it wouldn't be so crowded. Then it would be pleasant either on the railroad or steamboat. I hope that time will come some of these days after the war ends. You may fix up your tricks to take a trip back to N.C., when we get out of debt and the war is over and everything is prosperous again and plenty.


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15 Dad Facts for Father's Day
A few years ago, we asked some of our favorite mental_floss writers to send us their favorite dad-related facts and stories for our newsletter. Here are 15 you can use around the grill today.
1. Halsey Taylor invented the drinking fountain as a tribute to his father, who succumbed to typhoid fever after drinking from a contaminated public water supply in 1896.
2. George Washington, the celebrated Father of Our Country, had no children of his own. Researchers believe that childhood illnesses may have rendered him sterile. He did adopt the two children of his second wife, Martha Custis.
3. In Thailand, the King's Birthday also serves as National Father's Day. The celebration includes fireworks and acts of charity and honor – the most distinct being the donation of blood and the liberation of captive animals.
4. In 1950, after the Washington Post music critic gave Harry Truman's daughter's concert a negative review, the president came out swinging: "Some day I hope to meet you," he wrote. "When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!"
5. A.A. Milne created Winnie the Pooh for his son, Christopher Robin. Pooh was based on Robin's teddy bear, Edward, a gift Christopher had received for his first birthday, and on their father/son visits to the London Zoo, where the bear named Winnie was Christopher's favorite. Pooh comes from the name of Christopher's pet swan (of course).
6. Kurt Vonnegut was (for a short time) Geraldo Rivera's father-in-law. Rivera's marriage to Edith Vonnegut ended in 1974 because of his womanizing. Her ever-protective father was quoted as saying, "If I see Gerry again, I'll spit in his face." He also included an unflattering character named Jerry Rivers (a chauffeur) in a few of his books.
7. Andre Agassi's father represented Iran in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics as a boxer.
8. According to a 2005 survey commissioned by TiVo, here are the top ten TV dads of all time: 1. Cliff Huxtable (The Cosby Show); 2. Sheriff Andy Taylor (The Andy Griffith Show); 3. Pa Ingalls (Little House on the Prairie); 4. Howard Cunningham (Happy Days); 5. Ward Cleaver (Leave it to Beaver); 6. Jim Anderson (Father Knows Best); 7. Mike Brady (The Brady Bunch); 8. Tim Taylor (Home Improvement); 9. Reverend Eric Camden (7th Heaven); 10. Danny Tanner (Full House).
9. The voice of Papa Smurf, Don Messick, also provided the voice of Scooby-Doo, Ranger Smith on Yogi Bear, and Astro and RUDI on The Jetsons.
10. In 2001, Yuri Usachev, cosmonaut and commander of the International Space Station, received a talking picture frame from his 12-year-old daughter while in orbit. The gift was made possible by RadioShack, which filmed the presentation of the gift for a TV commercial.
11. The only father-daughter collaboration to hit the top spot on the Billboard pop music chart was the 1967 hit single "Something Stupid" by Frank & Nancy Sinatra.
12. In the underwater world of the seahorse, it's the male that gets to carry the eggs and birth the babies.
13. If show creator/producer Sherwood Schwartz had gotten his way, Gene Hackman would have portrayed the role of father Mike Brady on The Brady Bunch.
14. The Stevie Wonder song "Isn't She Lovely" is about his newborn daughter, Aisha. If you listen closely, you can hear Aisha crying during the song.
15. Dick Hoyt has pushed and pulled his son Rick, who has cerebral palsy, through hundreds of marathons and triathlons. Rick cannot speak, but using a custom-designed computer he has been able to communicate. They ran their first five-mile race together when Rick was in high school. When they were done, Rick sent his father this message: "Dad, when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!"
Big hugs to all the dads out there. Happy Father's Day!
More from mental_floss…
The Founder of Mother's Day Later Fought to Have It Abolished
The Time They Found Those Bodies in Ben Franklin's Basement
6 Times The Onion Had Certain People Completely Fooled
19 Obscure Regional Words All Americans Should Adopt Immediately


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Write a News Story
Meet a Pioneer Pilot
Amelia Earhart Home
Back to
Story List
First woman to Fly
By: Greg S.
Florida, Age 13
She was born in 1897.The first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, she opened the skies to other women. In 1937, while attempting to become the first person to fly around the world, Earharts plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.She apparently died.
Back to
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Monday, May 10, 2010
a panini bento
It sure looks pretty in the bento box though! I love the grill lines of the panini juxtaposed with the checkered apple. :) Carrots and Sunchips (garden salsa flavored- YUM!) make up the rest of his lunch.
7 comments:
- Jenn @ BentoForKidlet said... [Reply to comment]
I love the panini in the bento! It looks great, and I bet it was delicious :D
- May 10, 2010 at 6:48 PM
- Laura said... [Reply to comment]
how do you do the checkered apple? so cool! For what it is worth, my kids don't like sandwiches - seems un-American! Your lunches are an inspiration. Thanks for posting them.
- May 10, 2010 at 7:26 PM
- Wendy said... [Reply to comment]
Oooooooh! Pretty!
- May 10, 2010 at 7:34 PM
- Melissa said... [Reply to comment]
Hey Laura - Jenn (she commented just above you!) has a great tutorial on the checkered apple that is easy to follow. You can check it out here:
It really DOES seem un-American to not like sandwiches! I am so thankful that my little eats them! I've even started the baby eating them already. I'm priming him young! :p
- May 10, 2010 at 9:26 PM
- Melissa said... [Reply to comment]
oops, that's supposed to say "so thankful that my little girl eats them". :)
- May 10, 2010 at 9:27 PM
- The Iowa Farmer's Wife said... [Reply to comment]
I L.O.V.E your blog. I love reading new ideas on what to pack (and even tried to convince my husband to buy me a bento pack the other day..he claimed it was an impulse buy and moved on down the aisle). I have to know...how did you do that to that apple? I sat staring at it for 5 minutes trying to figure it out! ;)
- June 25, 2010 at 7:28 PM
- Melissa said... [Reply to comment]
Ah, thank you!!
The apple isn't difficult to do, but it is time consuming (which is why I don't do too many of them!). Basically you cut the piece of apple you want to use and then score the lines in it (in this case a checkered pattern), then using a paring knife (or whatever sharp knife you find easiest to handle) you simply cut away the peel in between the areas you have scored.
It is deceptively more tricky to not mess up the pattern of a checkerboard than you think!
- June 25, 2010 at 8:22 PM


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A tiger on Denyse schmidt's County Fair.
Apply the tiger piece on the base with slip stitches.
I added a flower and a heart.
I have not decided to make this into a zipper porch or small tote. I don't have much time for sewing since Nina's school was over. She always needs her Mom to play with. Probably I need to wake up earlier or stay up later for finishing this project.
Changing subject, there is an estate sale going on this week in my neighborhood. We went on the first day and I got these things which are sold for very reasonable prices. Today is the last day of the sale so we are going to check out if other expensive stuff we liked are still there and the prices dropped. I love garage sales and estate sales. This is one of my favorite activities in this country.
$15 total. Yey!
my other blog. If you have not entered yet please check this post out and join it.
Have a good week end!


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It's alive! Duke Nukem Forever breaks out of vapour trail
Balls of steel, baby, balls of steel!
Duke Nukem Forever is the video games world's equivalent of the flying car: mothballed in the garage.
Twelve years in the making, this infamous slice of vapourware is set to for release in 2011. Really.
Take-Two Interactive, the publisher, even issued a press release today announcing its impending release so it must be true. And attendees at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle this weekend can get to play with a finished, but "unpolished" version.
What will they see?
Pig cops, alien shrink rays and enormous alien bosses won't stop our hero from accomplishing his one and only goal: to save the world, save the babes and to be a bad-ass while doing it. The King of All Shooters is back with over-the-top weapons, massive aliens and unprecedented levels of interactivity. This game puts pedal to the metal and tongue firmly in cheek, among other places. Shoot hoops, lift weights, read adult magazines, draw crude messages on whiteboards or ogle one of the many beautiful women that populate Duke's life; that is if you can pull yourself away long enough from kicking ass and taking names. Duke Nukem was and will forever be immortalized in gaming history, and this is his legend.
Last year, 3D Realms, the studio responsible for making this first person shooter fly, went bust after spending 10 years on the project. Gearbox took over and has licked Duke Nukem Forever into shape on PS3, XBox 360 and Window PC formats.
Gearbox is rather pleased with how it's doing. Say studio boss Randy Pitchford: "I am thrilled to be in a position with the trust, power and means to make it happen. Am I crazy? Balls of steel, baby, balls of steel!"
Sponsored: What next after Netezza?


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2035 Corte del Nogal - Suite 250
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|Tillie Politi (lf), and Margaret Nunn
abt 1940
The foggy weather this weekend provided the perfect setting for me to stay inside and work on organizing my mother's 1940s photo collection. Getting set up took the most time; I organized photos by family, got acid and lignin free archive envelopes and laptop handy. I then typed up a list that included a brief description of each numbered photo. No more pawing through boxes and envelopes to find that one photo I had in mind.
During this process I came across several pictures of my aunt, Margaret Nunn with the same girl in the photo. My mother had identified this young lady as "Tillie Politi." Mom said Tillie was a neighbor of the Nunns when they lived on Cruger Street in the Bronx.
I was curious about Tillie so I checked the 1930 Census and sure enough, the Politis lived just a few houses away from the Nunns. Joseph and Ernestine Politi were both born in Italy, coming to the U.S. in 1899; they had nine children, and Matilda (Tillie) was the third from last. Joseph Poletti did plaster work.
Tillie, thanks for being Margaret's best friend.


text:
Essex of Ozark
5173 North 22nd Street Ozark MO 65721
for a local advisor
Private room and private bath
3 nutritious meals per day and snacks
Medication administration including insulin administration
Housekeeping services
Laundry service
Our company has been providing care for Seniors since 1990 when we built our first Community.
We have served seniors in Ozark and the surrounding area for 9 years.
Our community is licensed by the MO Department of Health and Senior Services for 12 residents. Our small service number allows for the staff to really get to know the seniors who live with us — not just as a community resident, but as a person. Moving to a care facility can be frightening for both the resident and their family, but our trained staff help ease the transition with genuine caring, respect, and understanding of the feelings that accompany such a life change. Your loved one's physical health, mental health, emotional needs and safety are important to us. Finding a community who knows how to address those needs are what we are all looking for, right?
A small community lends more to a large family setting rather than a nursing home setting. Residents have input on meals and activities in their community. It is a definitely a community intended to promote independence with helping hands when needed. Our community bridges the gap between not being able to stay at home alone and not needing the services of a nursing home.
We encourage you to tour our facility, learn more about us, and see the difference for yourself.
Please view our video at http://youtu.be/F-aEKBKEGqE
Pricing at Essex of Ozark
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*Prices quoted are monthly rental charges and are provided by the communities themselves. Actual prices may differ due to one-time fees, timing and care services required. Speak with your Senior Living Advisor to learn more.
Reviews of Essex of Ozark
- Happy care
I am happy with the care from the staff at this community. This is a smaller community. The community offers a lot of great meals that are home cooked. The community is clean and a nice positive environment....
- They take really good care of my mom
I have been very pleased with Essex of Ozark. They are very personable and right on top of everything. They take really good care of my mother. The food is good, all the people are good, and it has just...
Community Details at Essex of Ozark
Senior Housing Types Provided at Essex of Ozark
The features and amenities that are displayed on this page contain marketing information provided by the community. A Place for Mom has not confirmed the completeness of the provided information, and cannot guarantee its accuracy.
To conduct a complete investigation, seniors and their families should:
- Tour any listed location to confirm the accuracy of the community description;
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- Check additional licensing and state audit information.
If you become aware of any information that should be updated or noted, please contact A Place for Mom.


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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Smoking and Home Oxygen: Doubling the Danger
As the baby boomer generation ages, the prevalence of patients using portable medical oxygen to treat pulmonary diseases is on the rise. While this treatment helps patients live richer lives with increased independence, it's critical that those who use home oxygen understand the associated risks. Normally, the air we breathe every day contains around 20 percent oxygen. The air delivered to patients using this therapy contains nearly 100 percent, making it extremely flammable. Individuals using home oxygen need to be particularly vigilant in keeping the system away from candle flames and other heat sources in the home. Additionally, there is an extremely elevated risk to smokers who use home oxygen.
Smokers who use home oxygen may understand the need to turn the tank off before lighting up, but may not realize that the danger persists, even when the oxygen isn't flowing. Oxygen can build up not only in the home, but on the hair, clothes, and body of the patient and ignite when a heat source—like a cigarette—comes close to the face, causing severe burns.
"We see too many cases where patients are badly burned because they were smoking while using home oxygen," says Colleen Ryan, MD, a surgeon in the Sumner Redstone Burn Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). "These injuries are completely preventable and it's important that patients and their families understand the risk."
Ryan is a member of State Fire Marshal Stephen D. Coan's Task Force on Home Oxygen Safety. On Thursday, January 21, Coan, Ryan, MGH staff, and state fire officials unveiled a new public awareness campaign designed to educated doctors, patients, and family members about the risks of smoking and portable medical oxygen.
"Tragic blazes such as the Quincy fire on December 26, 2009, the Whitman fire last May, and the South Boston fire of 2002 — where a smoker using home oxygen ignited a fire resulting in the death of an eight-year-old girl — highlight the risks associated with home oxygen use," says State Fire Marshal Coan.
Along with putting the patient at risk, home oxygen fires are a major public health concern. Since 1997, home oxygen has been involved in 24 fire-related fatalities in Massachusetts, caused more than 50 serious injuries, seven firefighter injuries and 69 identifiable incidents. In 2009 alone there were five severe fire incidents with home oxygen; one involved a candle and four involved smoking.
There is no safe way to smoke when using home oxygen. Until patients quit, they can practice safer smoking. Should an individual need to smoke, it's important to first turn off the tank, and wait 10 full minutes before going outside to smoke. This practice should decrease the amount of oxygen in the home and on the person. The best way for patients to protect themselves, their families, neighbors, and emergency responders is to quit smoking. To start, patients should have a conversation with their doctors to find out what resources are available. MGH offers a wide range of assistance programs through its Tobacco Treatment Service. For more information on help quitting, smokers can call (617) 726-7443, email firstname.lastname@example.com, or visit the Tobacco Treatment Service online. Patients using home oxygen should speak with their doctors and vendors about the possible risks involved with the equipment. For more information on the dangers of portable medical oxygen please visit the Department of Fire Safety.
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I don't know what you guys are doing reading all those phoney top ten lists over there, what with their overpraise of films in which women shit in bathroom sinks.
A shame, that – after all, this, mine, is the authoritative tome that Scholars will look back on and shower with statuses of validity upon as the definitive list. "Yeah, you know what, The Artist wasn't a lot more than a nice movie, Sparkle was totally right," they'll say a thousand years from now. And I shall smile down on them from Future Heaven, which is just like regular Heaven but with astronaut food, hover boards, and a hilarious robot that is actually pretty good at Stand-Up.
Anyway, here are the ten best motion pictures of the year:
{ Comments on this entry are closed }


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ACLU, lawmakers, to outline bills to protect Mainers' privacy with emerging technologies
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) � A package of bills to protect Mainers' privacy amid the telecommunications boom is being outlined in the State House.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maine and a bipartisan coalition of legislators will hold a news conference at the State House on Thursday afternoon to explain the bills.
One of the bills, sponsored by Democratic Sen. John Patrick of Rumford, would require law enforcement to get a warrant before using domestic drones to spy on people.
Other bills deal with tracking people by cell phone, and setting ground rules for getting text messaging content from people.
The presentation coincides with Data Privacy Day, which is marked internationally to educate people on the importance of respecting privacy and safeguarding personal information in the face of emerging technologies.


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Memory Imaging
Please help to improve this article by expanding it.
Memory imaging is the process of making a bit-by-bit copy of memory. In principle it is similar to Disk Imaging.
For physical memory it is common to have sections that are not accessible, e.g. because of memory-mapped I/O
The resulting copy is stored in a Forensics image format. Some of these formats have means to differentiate between an image of memory and e.g. that of a disk.
Reading from the Physical Memory Object
In Windows the Physical Memory Object, \\Device\PhysicalMemory, can be used the access physical memory. Since Windows 2003 SP1 user-mode access to this device-object is no longer permitted [1]. A kernel-mode process is still allowed to read from this device-object.
The MmMapIoSpace function (or routine) is kernel-mode function to map a physical address range to non-paged system space [2].
Also see
External Links
- Wikipedia article on Memory-mapped I/O
- Anti-forensic resilient memory acquisition, by Johannes Stuettgen, Michael Cohen, August 2013
- 64bit Big Sized RAM Image Acquisition Problem, by Takahiro haruyama, January 7, 2014
- All memory dumping tools are not the same, by Brian Moran, January 14, 2014
- Robust Linux memory acquisition with minimal target impact, Johannes Stüttgen Michael Cohen, May 2014


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A First Course in Web Development
New 9th Edition Promotional Trailer
9th Edition Now Available!
New Features in the 9th Edition
Building on the textbook's successful 8th edition, the 9th edition continues to integrate HTML and CSS topics such as text configuration, color configuration, and page layout with an enhanced focus on the topics of design, accessibility, and Web standards. Updates for the 9th edition include:
- Updated coverage of HTML5 elements and attributes
- Expanded coverage of responsive web design techniques and CSS media queries
- Expanded coverage of responsive image techniques including the new HTML5 picture element
- Introduction to new layout techniques -- CSS Grid Layout and CSS Flexbox Layout
- Updated reference sections for HTML5 and CSS
- Additional Hands-On Practice exercises
- Updated Case Studies
- Updated code samples and web resources
Table of Contents (pdf)
Textbook Links, Review Activities & More
This textbook companion website has a page for each chapter in the text containing the links for URLs listed in the book, information on emerging trends, additional examples, corrections, and review activities. Review flash card activities are available for each chapter on this website.
Students can use these activities to review concepts and terms. Some instructors use these as group activities in the classroom. They also can be made available for independent student self-assessment activities.
It's "Classroom Tested"
Excerpt of a review posted on Amazon:
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Excellent! Covers HTML5 & CSS3 the right way!
Felke-Morris does an outstanding job of covering the foundations of HTML5 and CSS3 in this 6th edition. Each chapter has Hands-on-Practice exercises with step by step instructions and clear visuals that capture the result of the code. Solutions to the practice exercises are provided in the student data files so that learners can compare their work to the correct solution. There are also end of chapter exercises and four different case studies that build across all chapters, with solutions available only to instructors. There are complete instructor materials available on the publisher's website including test banks, end-of-chapter and case study solution files, PowerPoints, example syllabus, and instructor manuals. In addition, there is a superb, open-access companion website developed by the author with tons of supplementary resources, flash cards, and chapter updates for any errata discovered after publication (webdevfoundations.net).
I've adopted this book for a college level introductory web development course after reviewing at least a dozen textbooks from academic publishers. The book is appropriate for beginners as well as those who are already familiar with web development and want to learn more about CSS layout and the differences between XHTML and HTML5/CSS3. What sets this book apart from the rest of the pack is that it covers the material based on current specifications and trends, separating HTML structure from CSS layout and styles. The vast majority of books published by academic publishers are just using small incremental updates to previous editions, still use HTML tables for layout and menus, teach depreciated elements, and contain downright ugly or broken CSS for chapter exercises. Believe me, I know - I've spent countless hours reviewing them all very thoroughly and most are a waste of time and effort.
Web Development & Design Foundations, 6th edition is the ONLY textbook out there with a full set of instructor materials that covers HTML & CSS as it should be covered. Chapter 1 introduces how the web and the Internet work. Chapter 2 gets right into HTML basics, lists, and links. Chapter 3 jumps right into CSS for style and formatting; chapter 4 covers images and introduces the new CSS3 visual effects; and chapters 6 & 7 delve deeply into CSS for page layout (that other textbooks barely touch on). Students learn to layout their pages the right way before tables are even introduced in chapter 8. Other topics include forms (standard and HTML5), mobile layouts, responsive design and media queries, multimedia, website planning and web project management, e-commerce, and an intro to javascript.
I can't praise this book enough - it is clearly best of breed. We are currently using the book in five sections of an intro web development course designed for non-technical university students and they are succeeding. Consider it classroom tested. ... Great book!
Author Profile
Dr. Morris has a unique combination of years of industry experience in addition to many years teaching technology courses. Her hands-on approach to this topic enables students to become productive quickly. More Author Info
Instructor Materials
Downloads are available to instructors with exercise solutions, case solutions, PowerPoint presentations, and sample test questions. Contact your Pearson Higher Ed Addison-Wesley representative or visit Pearson Higher Ed Addison-Wesley Publishing for more information.


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Raptors fade late in exciting opening loss to Pacers
Lowry leads Toronto in scoring, Fields held pointless
From the rookie who earned a double-double in his NBA debut, to the team's hardscrabble new point guard, to a jam-packed crowd at Air Canada Centre, the Raptors season-opener had all the makings of a positive vibe not felt by Toronto sports fans in quite a while.
It had everything, that is, except a victory.
David West scored 14 of his 25 points in the fourth quarter Wednesday as the Indiana Pacers edged Toronto 90-88, spoiling what had been a thrilling opener for the revamped Raptors.
Kyle Lowry scored 21 points, while Jonas Valanciunas had 12 points and 10 rebounds in his NBA debut for the new-look Raptors in a game that should leave fans feeling optimistic about the season ahead.
Optimism summed up Toronto coach Dwane Casey's feelings after the game.
"I'm proud of our team, I thought we showed more grit and spunk than we showed all last year," Casey said. "Yes it hurts but there are so many positives I'm looking at against one of the top teams in the NBA."
Five Raptors scored in double figures as Andrea Bargnani added 16, Jose Calderon finished with 15, and DeMar DeRozan, who earlier in day agreed to terms on a four-year contract extension worth $38 million US, finished with 10.
"It was a fun game overall, just being out there, the first time in a while, just get a feel for playing a game especially against a top-notch team in the Indiana Pacers," DeRozan said. "It would have been that much better if we had won."
The Raptors played with three new starters in Valanciunas, Lowry and Landry Fields.
Valanciunas endeared himself to fans immediately, and had recorded his first double-double in just 17 minutes on the floor.
"I did double-double?" Valanciunas said, eyebrows raised in surprise. "I'm not looking how I play, it's important whether our team wins or not. Today the team lose, so it was not enough, double-double.
"Maybe I need to have triple-double, and then team is going to win."
The 20-year-old Lithuanian looked completely unfazed by the fact he was matched up against an NBA all-star in Roy Hibbert. He blocked a shot in the game's opening minute, grabbed an offensive rebound for a layup less than two minutes later, and scraped and clawed under the basket all night.
His rim-hanging dunk in the third quarter brought the crowd to its feet.
Lowry, meanwhile, came exactly as advertised — hustle and hard work, dripping sweat all game long, jawing at officials, and grinning like a kid at the coaching staff when he drained a three-pointer.
"He's a hound," DeRozan said of his new starting point guard. "He can pick up the scoring, he can pick up the defence, whatever we may need."
The Raptors led by as much as 11 points in the third quarter before taking a 71-63 lead into the fourth of nailbiting see-saw battle that featured 16 lead changes.
Calderon — leading the Raptors' second unit that was virtually Toronto's starting unit last season — came up big in the fourth quarter, draining a pair of three-pointers less than two minutes apart, bringing the sold-out crowd of 19,800 to its feet. His second with six minutes to play gave the Raptors a 10-point lead.
But some major defensive lapses left a wide-open West to drain shot after shot in the final few minutes. His basket with 1:20 left pulled the visitors to within 88-87. The Raptors, on the other hand, didn't score a field goal in the final 4:31.
After a George Hill free throw evened the score, Indiana was given possession of the ball after a video review and Hill drained a runner that sealed the Pacers' victory with 2.1 seconds left. Bargnani missed on a last-second shot.
"Davis [West]) put us on his shoulders tonight in the fourth quarter, on both ends of the court, and just carried us," said Pacers coach Frank Vogel. "This victory is squarely on his shoulders."
Hibbert and Paul George finished with 14 points apiece for the Pacers.
Despite the fact Indiana was missing Danny Granger, who's out indefinitely with a knee injury, the Pacers were considered a stiff test for Toronto. Indiana has been picked by some basketball experts to finish second in the East this season behind the Miami Heat.
The Raptors shot just 36 per cent on the night however, while the Pacers were good on 47 per cent of their shots from the floor.
The feeling in the darkened pre-game arena was electric, with fans waving purple glow sticks as a gospel choir sang. Images of Raptors in action were flashed across the floor. The largest cheer went up for Calderon.
"The fans were amazing, I want to say thank you to them, they did a great job," Valanciunas said.
DeRozan took centre court prior to tipoff and thanked fans for their support on a big night for the 23-year-old swingman.
15 of 22 games on the road to start
"We're definitely going to work hard on the court and in the community," DeRozan said. "Enjoy the game."
How long the positive vibe lasts remains to be seen. The Raptors face a gruelling early-season schedule, with 15 of 22 games coming on the road.
"Our growth may not show until after the first 22 games," Casey, whose team went 10-23 on the road last season, said prior to the game. "But it's the NBA, nobody's feeling sorry for you, the schedule is what it is."
Bargnani scored 11 points in a first quarter that saw the lead change hands eight times. The Pacers led 27-25 after one.
The teams closely paced each other through the second, with Indiana taking a five-point lead with just under two minutes to play. The Raptors scored the final five points of the half and the teams went into the dressing room knotted at 48-48.
The Raptors used a 12-2 run capped by a DeRozan jumper to take a 64-53 lead midway through the third. The Pacers battled back to cut Toronto's advantage to 71-63 with a quarter left to play.
The Raptors are in Brooklyn to face the Nets on Saturday and back at ACC to host the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday.


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The Irony of Climate
The Irony of Climate
Archaeologists suspect that a shift in the planet's climate thousands of years ago gave birth to agriculture. Now climate change could spell the end of farming as we know it.
High in the Peruvian Andes, a new disease has invaded the potato fields in the town of Chacllabamba. Warmer and wetter weather associated with global climate change has allowed late blight-the same fungus that caused the Irish potato famine-to creep 4,000 meters up the mountainside for the first time since humans started growing potatoes here thousands of years ago. In 2003, Chacllabamba farmers saw their crop of native potatoes almost totally destroyed. Breeders are rushing to develop tubers resistant to the "new" disease that retain the taste, texture, and quality preferred by Andean populations.
Meanwhile, old-timers in Holmes County, Kansas, have been struggling to tell which way the wind is blowing, so to speak. On the one hand, the summers and winters are both warmer, which means less snow and less snowmelt in the spring and less water stored in the fields. On the other hand, there's more rain, but it's falling in the early spring, rather than during the summer growing season. So the crops might be parched when they need water most. According to state climatologists, it's too early to say exactly how these changes will play out-if farmers will be able to push their corn and wheat fields onto formerly barren land or if the higher temperatures will help once again to turn the grain fields of Kansas into a dust bowl. Whatever happens, it's going to surprise the current generation of farmers.
Asian farmers, too, are facing
their own climate-related problems. In the unirrigated rice paddies and wheat
fields of Asia, the annual monsoon can make or break millions of lives. Yet the
reliability of the monsoon is increasingly in doubt. For instance, El Niño
events (the cyclical warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean)
often correspond with weaker monsoons, and El Niños will likely increase with
global warming. During the El Niño-induced drought in 1997, Indonesian rice
farmers pumped water from swamps close to their fields, but food losses were
still high: 55 percent for dryland maize and 41 percent for wetland maize, 34
percent for wetland rice, and 19 percent for cassava. The 1997 drought was
followed by a particularly wet winter that delayed planting for two months in
many areas and triggered heavy locust and rat infestations. According to
Bambang Irawan of the Indonesian Center for Agricultural Socio-Economic
Research and Development, in Bogor, this succession of poor harvests forced
many families to eat less rice and turn to the less nutritious alternative of
dried cassava. Some farmers sold off their jewelry and livestock, worked off the
farm, or borrowed money to purchase rice, Irawan says. The prospects are for
more of the same: "If we get a substantial global warming, there is no doubt in
my mind that there will be serious changes to the
monsoon," says David Rhind, a senior climate researcher with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Archaeologists believe that the shift to a warmer, wetter, and more stable climate at the end of the last ice age was key for humanity's successful foray into food production. Yet, from the American breadbasket to the North China Plain to the fields of southern Africa, farmers and climate scientists are finding that generations-old patterns of rainfall and temperature are shifting. Farming may be the human endeavor most dependent on a stable climate-and the industry that will struggle most to cope with more erratic weather, severe storms, and shifts in growing season lengths. While some optimists are predicting longer growing seasons and more abundant harvests as the climate warms, farmers are mostly reaping surprises.
Toward the Unknown (Climate) Region
For two decades, Hartwell Allen, a researcher with the University of Florida in Gainesville and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has been growing rice, soybeans, and peanuts in plastic, greenhouse-like growth chambers that allow him to play God. He can control-"rather precisely"-the temperature, humidity, and levels of atmospheric carbon. "We grow the plants under a daily maximum/minimum cyclic temperature that would mimic the real world cycle," Allen says. His lab has tried regimes of 28 degrees C day/18 degrees C night, 32/22, 36/26, 40/30, and 44/34. "We ran one experiment to 48/38, and got very few surviving plants," he says. Allen found that while a doubling of carbon dioxide and a slightly increased temperature stimulate seeds to germinate and the plants to grow larger and lusher, the higher temperatures are deadly when the plant starts producing pollen. Every stage of the process-pollen transfer, the growth of the tube that links the pollen to the seed, the viability of the pollen itself-is highly sensitive. "It's all or nothing, if pollination isn't successful," Allen notes. At temperatures above 36 degrees C during pollination, peanut yields dropped about six percent per degree of temperature increase. Allen is particularly concerned about the implications for places like India and West Africa, where peanuts are a dietary staple and temperatures during the growing season are already well above 32 degrees C: "In these regions the crops are mostly rain-fed. If global warming also leads to drought in these areas, yields could be even lower."
As plant scientists refine their understanding of climate change and the subtle ways in which plants respond, they are beginning to think that the most serious threats to agriculture will not be the most dramatic: the lethal heatwave or severe drought or endless deluge. Instead, for plants that humans have bred to thrive in specific climatic conditions, it is those subtle shifts in temperatures and rainfall during key periods in the crops' lifecycles that will be most disruptive. Even today, crop losses associated with background climate variability are significantly higher than those caused by disasters such as hurricanes or flooding.
John Sheehy at the International Rice Research Institute in Manila has found that damage to the world's major grain crops begins when temperatures climb above 30 degrees C during flowering. At about 40 degrees C, yields are reduced to zero. "In rice, wheat, and maize, grain yields are likely to decline by 10 percent for every 1 degree C increase over 30 degrees. We are already at or close to this threshold," Sheehy says, noting regular heat damage in Cambodia, India, and his own center in the Philippines, where the average temperature is now 2.5 degrees C higher than 50 years ago. In particular, higher night-time temperatures forced the plants to work harder at respiration and thus sapped their energy, leaving less for producing grain. Sheehy estimates that grain yields in the tropics might fall as much as 30 percent over the next 50 years, during a period when the region's already malnourished population is projected to increase by 44 percent. (Sheehy and his colleagues think a potential solution is breeding rice and other crops to flower early in the morning or at night so that the sensitive temperature process misses the hottest part of the day. But, he says, "we haven't been successful in getting any real funds for the work.") The world's major plants can cope with temperature shifts to some extent, but since the dawn of agriculture farmers have selected plants that thrive in stable conditions.
Climatologists consulting their computer climate models see anything but stability, however. As greenhouse gases trap more of the sun's heat in the Earth's atmosphere , there is also more energy in the climate system, which means more extreme swings-dry to wet, hot to cold. (This is the reason that there can still be severe winters on a warming planet, or that March 2004 was the third-warmest month on record after one of the coldest winters ever.) Among those projected impacts that climatologists have already observed in most regions: higher maximum temperatures and more hot days, higher minimum temperatures and fewer cold days, more variable and extreme rainfall events, and increased summer drying and associated risk of drought in continental interiors. All of these conditions will likely accelerate into the next century.
Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scholar with the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, argues that although the climate models will always be improving, there are certain changes we can already predict with a level of confidence. First, most studies indicate "intensification of the hydrological cycle," which essentially means more droughts and floods, and more variable and extreme rainfall. Second, Rosenzweig says, "basically every study has shown that there will be increased incidence of crop pests." Longer growing seasons mean more generations of pests during the summer, while shorter and warmer winters mean that fewer adults, larvae, and eggs will die off.
Third, most climatologists agree that climate change will hit farmers in the developing world hardest. This is partly a result of geography. Farmers in the tropics already find themselves near the temperature limits for most major crops, so any warming is likely to push their crops over the top. "All increases in temperature, however small, will lead to decreases in production," says Robert Watson, chief scientist at the World Bank and former chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "Studies have consistently shown that agricultural regions in the developing world are more vulnerable, even before we consider the ability to cope," because of poverty, more limited irrigation technology, and lack of weather tracking systems. "Look at the coping strategies, and then it's a real double whammy," Rosenzweig says. In sub-Saharan Africa-ground zero of global hunger, where the number of starving people has doubled in the last 20 years-the current situation will undoubtedly be exacerbated by the climate crisis. (And by the 2080s, Watson says, projections indicate that even temperate latitudes will begin to approach the upper limit of the productive temperature range.)
Coping With Change
"Scientists may indeed need decades to be sure that climate change is taking place," says Patrick Luganda, chairman of the Network of Climate Journalists in the Greater Horn of Africa. "But, on the ground, farmers have no choice but to deal with the daily reality as best they can." Luganda says that several years ago local farming communities in Uganda could determine the onset of rains and their cessation with a fair amount of accuracy. "These days there is no guarantee that the long rains will start, or stop, at the usual time," Luganda says. The Ateso people in north-central Uganda report the disappearance of asisinit, a swamp grass favored for thatch houses because of its beauty and durability. The grass is increasingly rare because farmers have started to plant rice and millet in swampy areas in response to more frequent droughts. (Rice farmers in Indonesia coping with droughts have done the same.) Farmers have also begun to sow a wider diversity of crops and to stagger their plantings to hedge against abrupt climate shifts. Luganda adds that repeated crop failures have pushed many farmers into the urban centers: the final coping mechanism.
The many variables associated with climate change make coping difficult, but hardly futile. In some cases, farmers may need to install sprinklers to help them survive more droughts. In other cases, plant breeders will need to look for crop varieties that can withstand a greater range of temperatures. The good news is that many of the same changes that will help farmers cope with climate change will also make communities more self-sufficient and reduce dependence on the long-distance food chain.
Planting a wider range of crops, for instance, is perhaps farmers' best hedge against more erratic weather. In parts of Africa, planting trees alongside crops-a system called agroforestry that might include shade coffee and cacao, or leguminous trees with corn-might be part of the answer. "There is good reason to believe that these systems will be more resilient than a maize monoculture," says Lou Verchot, the lead scientist on climate change at the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry in Nairobi. The trees send their roots considerably deeper than the crops, allowing them to survive a drought that might damage the grain crop. The tree roots will also pump water into the upper soil layers where crops can tap it. Trees improve the soil as well: their roots create spaces for water flow and their leaves decompose into compost. In other words, a farmer who has trees won't lose everything. Farmers in central Kenya are using a mix of coffee, macadamia nuts, and cereals that results in as many as three marketable crops in a good year. "Of course, in any one year, the monoculture will yield more money," Verchot admits, "but farmers need to work on many years." These diverse crop mixes are all the more relevant since rising temperatures will eliminate much of the traditional coffee- and tea-growing areas in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. In Uganda, where coffee and tea account for nearly 100 percent of agricultural exports, an average temperature rise of 2 degrees C would dramatically reduce the harvest, as all but the highest altitude areas become too hot to grow coffee.
In essence, farms will best resist a wide range of shocks by making themselves more diverse and less dependent on outside inputs. A farmer growing a single variety of wheat is more likely to lose the whole crop when the temperature shifts dramatically than a farmer growing several wheat varieties, or better yet, several varieties of plants besides wheat. The additional crops help form a sort of ecological bulwark against blows from climate change. "It will be important to devise more resilient agricultural production systems that can absorb and survive more variability," argues Fred Kirschenmann, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. At his own family farm in North Dakota, Kirschenmann has struggled with two years of abnormal weather that nearly eliminated one crop and devastated another. Diversified farms will cope better with drought, increased pests, and a range of other climate-related jolts. And they will tend to be less reliant on fertilizers and pesticides, and the fossil fuel inputs they require. Climate change might also be the best argument for preserving local crop varieties around the world, so that plant breeders can draw from as wide a palette as possible when trying to develop plants that can cope with more frequent drought or new pests.
Farms with trees planted strategically between crops will not only better withstand torrential downpours and parching droughts, they will also "lock up" more carbon. Lou Verchot says that the improved fallows used in Africa can lock up 10-20 times the carbon of nearby cereal monocultures, and 30 percent of the carbon in an intact forest. And building up a soil's stock of organic matter-the dark, spongy stuff in soils that stores carbon and gives them their rich smell-not only increases the amount of water the soil can hold (good for weathering droughts), but also helps bind more nutrients (good for crop growth).
Best of all, for farmers at least, systems that store more carbon are often considerably more profitable, and they might become even more so if farmers get paid to store carbon under the Kyoto Protocol. There is a plan, for instance, to pay farmers in Chiapas, Mexico, to shift from farming that involves regular forest clearing to agroforestry. The International Automobile Federation is funding the project as part of its commitment to reducing carbon emissions from sponsored sports car races. Not only that, "increased costs for fossil fuels will accelerate demand for renewable energies," says Mark Muller of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who believes that farmers will find new markets for biomass fuels like switchgrass that can be grown on the farm, as well as additional royalties from installing wind turbines on their farms.
However, "carbon farming is a temporary solution," according to Marty Bender of the Land Institute's Sunshine Farm in Salina, Kansas. He points to a recent paper in Science showing that even if America's soils were returned to their pre-plow carbon content-a theoretical maximum for how much carbon they could lock up-this would be equal to only two decades of American carbon emissions. "That is how little time we will be buying," Bender says, "despite the fact that it may take a hundred years of aggressive, national carbon farming and forestry to restore this lost carbon." (Cynthia Rosenzweig also notes that the potential to lock up carbon is limited, and that a warmer planet will reduce the amount of carbon that soils can hold: as land heats up, invigorated soil microbes respire more carbon dioxide.)
"We really should be focusing on energy efficiency and energy conservation to reduce the carbon emissions by our national economy," Bender concludes. That's why Sunshine Farm, which Bender directs, has been farming without fossil fuels, fertilizers, or pesticides in order to reduce its contribution to climate change and to find an inherently local solution to a global problem. As the name implies, Sunshine Farm runs essentially on sunlight. Homegrown sunflower seeds and soybeans become biodiesel that fuels tractors and trucks. The farm raises nearly three-fourths of the feed-oats, grain sorghum, and alfalfa-for its draft horses, beef cattle, and poultry. Manure and legumes in the crop rotation substitute for energy-gobbling nitrogen fertilizers. A 4.5-kilowatt photovoltaic array powers the workshop tools, electric fencing, water pumps, and chick brooding pens. The farm has eliminated an amount of energy equivalent to that used to make and transport 90 percent of its supplies. (Including the energy required to make the farm's machinery lowers the figure to 50 percent, still a huge gain over the standard American farm.)
But these energy savings are only part of this distinctly local solution to an undeniably global problem, Bender says. "If local food systems could eliminate the need for half of the energy used for food processing and distribution, then that would save 30 percent of the fossil energy used in the U.S. food system," Bender reasons. "Considering that local foods will require some energy use, let's round the net savings down to 25 percent. In comparison, on-farm direct and indirect energy consumption constitutes 20 percent of energy use in the U.S. food system. Hence, local food systems could potentially save more energy than is used on American farms."
In other words, as climate tremors disrupt the vast intercontinental web of food production and rearrange the world's major breadbaskets, depending on food from distant suppliers will be more expensive and more precarious. It will be cheaper and easier to cope with local weather shifts, and with more limited supplies of fossil fuels, than to ship in a commodity from afar.
Agriculture is in third place, far behind energy use and chlorofluorocarbon production, as a contributor to climate warming. For farms to play a significant role, changes in cropping practices must happen on a large scale, across large swaths of India and Brazil and China and the American Midwest. As Bender suggests, farmers will be able to shore up their defenses against climate change, and can make obvious reductions in their own energy use which could save them money.
But the lasting solution to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change will depend mostly on the choices that everyone else makes. According to the London-based NGO Safe Alliance, a basic meal-some meat, grain, fruits, and vegetables-using imported ingredients can easily generate four times the greenhouse gas emissions as the same meal with ingredients from local sources. In terms of our personal contribution to climate change, eating local can be as important as driving a fuel-efficient car, or giving up the car for a bike. As politicians struggle to muster the will power to confront the climate crisis, ensuring that farmers have a less erratic climate in which to raise the world's food shouldn't be too hard a sell.
Brian Halweil is a senior researcher at Worldwatch Institute, and the author of Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket.


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Vidor's top cop resigns
Reposted From The Oct. 14 edition of The Examiner
Amid allegations of wrongdoing and shortly after a battle with an elected city of Vidor councilwoman, Vidor Police Chief Charles Eric Foerster has officially resigned his post as head of the municipality's police department.
Foerster was hired into the department less than two years ago and since that time has made waves, both good and bad, according to those likewise entrusted with managing the city's affairs and enforcing the laws of the land. Also in that time span, the police chief was awarded a substantial raise. Still, less than six months after receiving a boost in pay, Foerster sent word to the City Council he was moving on to greener pastures. In his resignation letter submitted Sept. 28, Foerster addresses his correspondence to City Manager Ricky Jorgensen.
"I have accepted a position with another city and I am resigning my position as chief of police for the city of Vidor," he stated. "I have truly appreciated working at the city of Vidor and working with such a great city staff."
The letter also specifies Foerster's last day of service to officially be Oct. 15, with the week of Oct. 11- 15 chalked up to vacation days. The actual last day of on-the-job service, according to the document accepted by the city manager, will be Friday, Oct. 8. Jorgensen said the soon-to-be former police chief will be taking a post in Jersey Village, Texas, on the outskirts of Houston. A call to the city of Jersey Village did not confirm the new position, but human resources staffer Karen Farris said the city was in the process of hiring a police chief for their department. A posting for employment submitted by Jersey Village lists the vacancy as of May 26 of this year. The salary would be an added incentive, boosting Foerster's $75,000 estimated annual pay by more than $15,000 if he is selected for the position.
"I hate to see him go," Jorgensen said of the man he called a friend. "He got the position in Jersey Village. I hate that he's going. Eric and I had a very good relationship."
Jorgensen said Foerster implemented COPsync, a program targeted at enhancing officer safety in the field; initiated a new policy manual; and began a crime unit to work afterhours and weekends to get a handle on the city's crime. According to the city manager, Foerster was an asset to the city.
Others disagree. Vidor Police Association President Sgt. David Vandagriff is one of those people. According to Vandagriff, not only does the police chief fall short of "asset," but his practices have also made him a liability.
"This man is a horrible liar," Vandagriff said matter-of-factly when asked about his chief. "If the truth was going to be good enough, he'd still lie."
Vandagriff said there have been multiple incidences during the course of Foerster's 23 months on the job, but the most egregious of acts occurred when his boss filed a falsified complaint on the veteran officer.
"I have never seen anything like it in my 25 years on the job," a bewildered sergeant told The Examiner. "I am fed up. I've taken all I can from this guy."
The conflict centers on a memorandum filed by Foerster, sent to Vandagriff's Internal Affairs file, alleging a former employee of the police department named the sergeant as "leader of the pack" in pressuring dispatchers to support the police association's collective bargaining agreement.
According to the memo penned by Foerster, "She relayed that Vandagriff was the leader of the pack and he was creating a great amount of tension within the department by talking badly about everyone, including command staff. She states he is openly insubordinate and outwardly hostile towards the command staff. She claims he speaks openly in front of staff in a hostile fashion."
No signatures are present on the complaint, according to memo, because, "The people in this report refused to sign a statement against Sgt. Vandagriff due to fear of retaliation. This also seems common here at the police department."
Vandagriff said he contacted his CLEAT (Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas) attorney, Mitch Adams, upon hearing the complaint was filed in his personnel jacket.
"I talked to the alleged complainant," Adams said. "She told me she never filed a complaint."
Adams said his next move was to send a letter to Chief Foerster requesting the document's immediate removal. In a correspondence addressed to the chief of police and faxed to the Vidor Police Department on Sept. 1, Adams detailed his client's case.
"It has been brought to my attention that a memorandum is in Sergeant David Vandagriff's personnel file. As you are aware, the memo concerns attributed to (name withheld), says specifically that she 'made a complaint' about several supervisors, including Sergeant Vandagriff.
"I spoke with (her) after meeting with you. She informed me that she advised you in person that she did not make the statements you attributed to her in the memorandum, and that she never made any complaint about Sergeant Vandagriff or any other supervisor concerning the subject matter of the memorandum.
"Considering the facts described above, be advised that the existence of the memorandum in Sergeant Vandagriff's personnel file could potentially be illegal under Tex. Pen. Code 37.10, Tampering with Governmental Record. According to the statute, it is a crime to knowingly make a false entry in a governmental record. While the element of 'knowingly' is debatable here, there is no question but that the memorandum is a governmental record. Whether or not the memorandum in Sergeant Vandagriff's file is criminal in lieu of the 'knowingly' element, rest assured that its use in any further action by the City of Vidor and/or the Vidor Police Department would also be a crime under 37.10, which makes it an offense to present or use a record which the actor knows to be false in an attempt to portray it as a genuine government record. As you have been put on notice by (the alleged complainant) of the memorandum's falseness, any use of it in the future would be criminal."
The correspondence ended with a request to immediately remove the flawed report.
"Your refusal to do so," it read, "will likely result in a complaint filed with the Orange County District Attorney's Office for Tampering with Governmental Record. It will also likely result in a civil action filed against you."
In a speedy response, Foerster answered Adams' correspondence the following day. "I received your faxed letter and I appreciate the information contained within," Foerster's response began. "As of this date, the file you write of has been removed from Sgt. Vandagriff's file."
The remaining five sentences allege the complaint was partially verified by the alleged complainant. "(She) did not retract the entire statement as shown in the memo," he said. Ending with, "It does seem like we are stuck with a severe case of he said-she said."
Adams said Vandagriff was satisfied with the measure civilly, but criminally Foerster should still be on the hot seat.
Members of the city's government agreed that criminal implications could be inferred and steps were taken to "look into" the matter. Three weeks after the exchange of letters, the Vidor City Council met to discuss the allegations made on the chief of police. The governmental body met in closed executive session Sept. 23 and returned to announce City Manager Jorgensen would conduct an investigation into the charges levied.
When asked what was revealed during the course of the investigation between the time of the assignment and Foerster's resignation, Jorgensen said, "I didn't even start the investigation."
The city manager added he has no plans of furthering the investigation now that the chief has resigned his post, nor would he forward the investigation to any other investigating agency, before abruptly ending the call.
City Councilman Matt Ortego said, "I wish the chief of police the best of luck in his new job. But if he put a false complaint in an officer's file, he should answer for that. You just don't do something like that. It's illegal, and it's wrong."
Ortego, a peace officer by profession, said making false complaints on law enforcement officers is not only damaging to the targeted individual, but to the department as well. According to him, in order for the Vidor Police Department to continue to effectively do its job, citizens must be able to trust law enforcement with their safety and well-being. Internal riffs and possible criminal actions such as this are not conducive to a productive work environment, he said.
Vandagriff said he is happy to see Foerster leave but is hesitant to rejoice in the chief's move to a new department. "I don't see how a liar like him can be in law enforcement for so long," he said. "This man needs to be purged from the system.
"My goal here is to have a great police department. We're on the way now," Vandagriff added.
Multiple attempts to contact Foerster went unanswered as of press time.


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A scathing report from the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) claims that the U.S. Park Police (USPP) hasn't the first clue how many guns it possesses or where they are and, furthermore, doesn't really care.
This "lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management" leads to "conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms, and the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing," Deputy Inspector General Mary L. Kendall wrote in a memorandum accompanying the report.
OIG initiated its review of USPP's firearms policies in response to an anonymous complaint that (1) USPP could not account for government-issued military-style rifles, (2) the agency had not conducted a weapons inventory because it could not account for all its weapons, and (3) some of the missing weapons might have been taken by USPP officers for personal use.
It took just five days of unannounced reviews of USPP weapons-storage areas for OIG to confirm those allegations.
"We discovered that hundreds of handguns, rifles, and shotguns were not listed on official USPP inventory records," OIG reported. "Many of these had serial numbers that had not been submitted to USPP property officers for inclusion into the property management system. We also found weapons in areas other than their assigned locations."
Although the National Park Service (NPS) Handbook requires agencies under NPS control, including USPP, to acquire only those firearms needed for law-enforcement purposes, OIG "discovered more than 1,400 extra weapons," including "477 military-style automatic and semiautomatic rifles" and some that "fulfilled no operational need" — all this for an agency with just 640 officers.
USPP's inventory controls are "incomplete and poorly managed," wrote OIG. Inventories are conducted on a semiannual basis, but no one verifies that the contents of the submitted inventory forms are accurate. USPP could not supply a current weapons inventory to OIG because it was unable to access an Interior Department database. The current USPP firearms custodian maintains his own inventory document and is trying to bring it up to date, but given "numerous errors on past official inventory records," he "had no idea how many firearms USPP possessed as of the date of our interview," said the report.
In addition, noted OIG:
The Force Firearms Custodian said he continued to find and receive weapons from different locations without NPS property numbers. According to his estimate, approximately 100 firearms, including shotguns and automatic weapons, did not have NPS property numbers and did not appear on inventory records. The Force Firearms Custodian provided several examples of poor weapons accountability. He recovered a USPP handgun from a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) OIG special agent who previously had been employed on a USPP special weapons and tactics team. According to the Force Firearms Custodian, the HUD agent ran a firearms qualification course in 2011 for former law enforcement officers who continued to carry firearms while retired. A former USPP Chief attended this training and still carried a handgun identified as USPP property. The HUD agent took the weapon from the former Chief and returned it to USPP. The Force Firearms Custodian did not know why the former Chief had retained the firearm. OIG is unaware of how USPP accounted for this weapon on the inventories that followed his retirement.
OIG discovered two other officers who were keeping USPP firearms at their residences without authorization; one was storing a semiautomatic rifle he had been issued while detailed to the 2013 presidential inauguration.
USPP often acquires firearms from other government agencies, but it does not follow proper procedures either to obtain the weapons or to inventory them. The USPP chief of police is supposed to sign off on all weapons acquisitions, but the current chief, Teresa Chambers, "did not recall any instance where a written request for weapons had been presented her," OIG found. Despite this, USPP has acquired over 200 guns from other agencies in the last 13 months. While some are in the possession of the firearms custodian, others are not; and the ones that are in his possession have not been added to the official inventory because he plans to destroy them.
Then there is the matter of weapons the agency doesn't — and can't — even use anymore. OIG found that USPP still has 20 World War II-era M1 Garand rifles and four Prohibition-era Thompson submachine ("Tommy") guns. The agency says it has no policy for destroying or otherwise disposing of these guns.
None of this, naturally, has happened in a vacuum. Lower-level USPP personnel have been careless in their acquisition and control of firearms because their superiors have shown no interest in such matters either.
The firearms custodian, for instance, sent a memorandum to Chambers in 2011 concerning the inventory discrepancies he had discovered. He told OIG that when he asked Chambers for direction, "she told him to continue to resolve the discrepancies" but offered no "specific direction on what he was supposed to do or a specific date for completion." His supervisors likewise showed little interest in his progress, requesting no "regular detailed briefings."
While USPP — believe it or not — has no policy for reporting and investigating missing weapons, the Interior Department does. It requires a "board of survey" to investigate missing "sensitive property" such as firearms, according to OIG. The firearms custodian submitted paperwork requesting a board of survey inquiry in October 2011, but no inquiry appears to have taken place. A training branch captain who has been the USPP board of survey chairman since 2009 "said that he had never conducted a board of survey and did not know who its members were," but he did not believe one was necessary in the case of missing weapons. Another official said the last board of survey for weapons had been conducted in 2010. Still another knew the board of survey should have been conducted but never followed up to see that it was. And "Chief Chambers stated that she was not aware of what a board of survey was and whether it was required to be conducted for missing weapons."
All this adds up to a "decade-long theme of inaction and indifference of USPP leadership and management at all levels," Kendall charged in her memorandum. "Historical evidence indicates that this indifference is a product of years of inattention to administrative detail and management principles."
She recommended that USPP establish "a professionally responsible firearms management program" but expressed "little confidence that USPP has the managerial commitment to carry out this effort without direct and frequent oversight from the National Park Service and OIG."
Everyone at USPP knows, of course, that he has little to fear from this report. Promises of improvement have been and will be made, but precious little is likely to change. Even if one of USPP's guns were actually used in the commission of a crime, well, look at how many heads have rolled over Fast and Furious. There simply is nothing to be gained by expending the time and effort necessary to control its weapons inventory.
There may, however, be something to be gained from showing the OIG report to the next gun-control advocate who assures you that only the government can be trusted with firearms.
Photo of a Thompson submachine gun