text:
It has been
twenty years since Roland Barthes succumbed to injuries sustained in a
grotesquely absurd accident while crossing the rue des Écoles after
lunch with François Mitterand, then first secretary of the French
Socialist Party and soon to be president of
France. That a sinister violence always lurked in the pedestrian
had long been a theme of Barthes's writing; in the month-long agony following
the accident this violence coupled with the structural vulnerability of
a 65-year old man who had already endured, between 1934 and 1946, a protracted
bout with tuberculosis. The lungs that had prevented Barthes from acceding
to the École Normale Supérieure at 19thereby irrevocably
queering his intellectual trajectoryfailed him definitively just
three years after his vindicating induction to a chair (of Literary Semiology)
at the prestigious Collège de France.
For much
of his incredibly prolific intellectual life, Roland Barthes was understood
to be the representative of something: of a tenaciously neutral,
colorless mode of writing he christened "le degré zéro
de l'écriture" and championed in the pages of Combat
in 1947 before devoting his first monograph to it in 1953; of Alain Robbe-Grillet's
adamantly objectivist novels of the 1950s; of the theoretical avant-gardism
of Tel Quel as it sought the grail of "textuality" from
1960 forward; of "le nouvelle critique" as attacked into existence
by a Sorbonne professor incensed by Barthes's "delirious" reading
of Racine's drama; of "French post-structuralism" as it was
polemically inserted into an Anglo-American academic situation robbed
of its complacency by civil rights and student activism and uncertain
whether to mourn or celebrate the "death of the author" Barthes,
playing Zarathustra for an atypically muscular moment, brought news of
in 1968.
(or worse, trivialized) for his "fashionability" by everyone
from Hugh Kenner to Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, this writer who
imagined himself perpetually demodéuntimely in the Nietzschean
sensehas perhaps only now found the condition of atopic legibility he
long coveted, not that of the representative man pendant to a necklace-noose
of approbative or opprobrius adjectives, but that of the singular, irreducible
and irreplaceable, body of work, the corpus risen out of and returned
to pleasure, the writing an insatiable appetite for reading yielded to
one who, like his American contemporary Hannah Wiener, cherished a malady
diagnosed by the words "Je vois le langage" ("I see
The irrepressible
profligacy of this vision (I deliberately choose a formulation with sexual
overtones: Barthes's absence of allegiance to monogamy is a defining textual
and biographical trait) is behind his distinctively insouciant performance
of "method," one reminiscent of Frank O'Hara's casual deflation
of metrics in the "Personism" manifesto or John Ashbery's bemused
manipulations of poetic "meaning" in any number of post-Three
Poems texts. Responding to a questionnaire in 1971, it was "ease"as
opposed to censure or distancethat Barthes counseled as the proper (and
most subversive) attitude to adopt toward "formalist" strictures.
Without abjuring the labor of formalization, Barthes brings to it a light
touch. His texts are worked without being laborious, they think
outside the equationestablished by the perspiring faces of Mankiewicz's
Julius Caesar, object of an especially penetrating and humorous
"Mythology" called "The Romans in Films"that "to
sweat is to thinkwhich evidently rests on the postulate appropriate
to a nation of businessmen, that thought is a violent, cataclysmic operation,
of which sweat is only the most benign symptom" (28). To O'Hara's
maxim "just go on your nerve," Barthes adjoins the composed
corollary: "don't sweat it."
most characteristic intellectual movement is inductive and essayistic
rather than deductive and systematic: each object of analysisbe it Garbo's
face or a Cy Twombly canvas, a still from Eisenstein or a page from Elle,
a concept of Jakobson's, a scene from Brecht, a theme of Michelet's, a
devotional regime concocted by Loyala, or a sex-act as described by Sadeis
addressed first in its specificity; the object is presumed innocent
of language until it betrays otherwise (as eventually it almost always
does). Though not especially fond of "dialectic" as a term,
Barthes nevertheless practices an intimate form of dialectical thinking
that moves with an ease unrivaled even by Adorno or Benjamin between particular,
and often inconspicuous, objects and the universality in which they often
unconsciously partake.
Unlike those
linguists who cannot discuss language without converting itconsciously
or notinto a protagonist of awesome subtlety and protean mutability
(Chomsky comes to mind), Barthes communicates a derogatory and antagonistic
vision of language as that which bores (here the life-long apprenticeship
to Proust is evident) and that which bullies (dominant or doxic
languages certainly, but also their militant contraries). From the opening
pages of Writing Degree Zero (1953) to the last fragment of Camera
Lucida (1980), Barthes maintains this fundamentally critical stance
toward the rule of language as acculturation and intimidation: it comprises
not a theme among others, but a commitment so primordial that his oeuvre
would be unimaginable without it.
Two modes
of activityor to use the Sartrean idiom of the early work that Barthes
retains and revises throughout his career: modes of "responsibility"follow
from this commitment, the one seeking to endure the rule of language,
the other to exceed it. Barthes's "structuralism" is
of a primarily ethical, not a scientific, cast: its intention is to furnish
knowledge that might permit one to endure the adversity of signs, codes,
and systems, and perhaps even to put into practice counter-systems like
those detailed in Sade / Fourier / Loyola (1971). The sheer stamina
manifested in works like S/Z (1970) or The Fashion System
(1967) attests to Barthes's ethical will to outlast, and whenever possible
to outwit, dominant systems of meaning. Like the Manny Farber of the movie
criticism, Barthes burrows into these systems, dwelling with embarrassing
insistence on what seems to "go without saying" (va de soi),
robbing messages of their obviousness, dislodging connotations from their
presumptively denotative shell, patiently retracing the routes by which
received ideas enter the heads and escape the mouths of those self-elected
delegates of discursive normalcy who repeat with unreflexive confidence
the tautologies of manufactured social "consciousness" (myth,
What is referred
to as Barthes's "post-structuralism" corresponds not to a discrete
period of his career (everything following The Pleasure of the Text
in 1973, say) but to the prodigious desire invested everywhere in his
oeuvre to the search for exceptions to the rule of naturalized norms,
arrogant discourses, and hypostasized images. "He has no affection
for proclamations of victory," Barthes wrote of himself in 1975.
"Troubled by the humiliations of others, whenever a victory appears
somewhere, he want to go somewhere else" (Roland Barthes 46).
Barthes exercises
considerable invention in demarcating this "somewhere else,"
space of exception, exemption, excess: jouissance escapes the economy
of readerly pleasure, it is an ecstasy that transforms both terms in the
reader-text equation; the punctum of Camera Lucida literally ruptures
or punctuates the banal surface of the photograph, it exits the arena
of studiously posed meanings for an adventure in fascination; the seminar
is subversive of the university's will-to-knowledge, it is a "phalanstery"
whose work is "the production of differences" emerging from
individuated desires.
But the most
abiding name assigned this space is simply l'ecriture, writing.
This is the word "whose ardent, complex, ineffable, and somehow sacred
signification gives the illusion that by [it] one might answer for everything"
in Barthes's text (though it should be noted that he himself, in the section
on "mana-words" in Roland Barthes, proposed rather the body).
In fact, writing is less Barthes's "answer for everything" than
the question that he never tired of responding to: "Qu'est-ce que
l'écriture" is not only the first chapter heading of his first
book, it is the rubric invisibly inscribed at the top of every page to
which he committed his hand.
Degree Zero commences with a series of definitions meant to show what
writing is not. It is not language, that ordered, collective, apparently
"natural" (but actually historical) horizon of social experience
(if Barthes has read Saussure at this point he has certainly not yet begun
to think with his categories); neither is it style, the residuealways
somewhat crudeof a given author's biology (body) and biography (past).
Between these two predetermined necessities, these forms that impose themselves
and that the writer may transform but not refuse, writing emerges
as a third term, a value more than a fact, a possibility rather than a
destiny, a stance more than a substance. "A language and a style
are blind forces; a mode of writing is an act of historical solidarity"
(14). Solidarity with what or whom? Again Barthes proceeds by negation:
not with a specific set of "consumers" to whom the writing is
addressed, but with a counterfactual community whose convening value is
not a "freely consumed language" but "one freely produced"
In a gesture
seldom to be repeated in his work, and in a tone seldom again heardone
of awe before a solemn and sublime objectBarthes turns to post-Symbolist
poetry as an exemplary site for the autonomous production of writing.
After Rimbaud, he argues, poetic writing disposes with the constraints
of consumption, does away with grammar and conventional syntax, liberates
itself from the social burden of communication. What remain are words,
vertical and vertiginous, that jut like "monoliths...into a totality
of meanings, reflexes and recollections" (47). Isolate, explosive,
emphatically phallic, the poetic word is encountered "frontally,"
received "as an absolute quantity," accepted in "all its
possible associations": "The Word, here, is encylopaedic, it
contains simultaneously all the acceptations from which a relational discourse
might have required it to choose. It therefore achieves a state which
is possible only in the dictionary or in poetryplaces where the noun
can live without its articleand is reduced to a sort of zero degree,
pregnant with all past and future specifications" (48). By becoming
an "absolute object," the sublime lexeme of modern poetrypure
paradigm shorn of all syntagmatic bondsenters the real on its own terms:
it is a thing among things, indifferent to humanity and to history (or
more carefully put: irreducible to them).
Apart from
a furtive allusion to René Char, few proper names attach themselves
to this description of a poetic writing driven to extremes: clearly what
interests Barthes is more a limit than any concrete instance. This
abstraction aside, one is unmistakably in the realm of the avant-garde,
of Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and the Surrealists; of the futurist "word
as such" (Russian) or "words at liberty" (Italian); and
of the American extension of that tradition, too subterranean to be noted
abroad in 1953, in the works of Charles Olson (whose "Projective
Verse" bears notable affinities to Barthes's manifesto) and Jack
Spicer (whose unsparing, linguistically-aware "realism" aspired
not only to include "real objects"the "lemon" of
the Lorca lettersbut to transcend poetic subjectivism in the direction
of a co-objectival condition: "Hello says the apple / Both of us
were object").
Much later,
twenty years in fact after the publication of Writing Degree Zero
(but only a few after Annette Lavers and Colin Smith first translated
it into English in 1968), Ron Silliman would find in Barthes's remarks
on modern poetry an adequate description for the emergent writing then
interesting him. In "The Dwelling Place," Silliman presents
to the readers of Alcheringa a small gathering of poems by Bruce
Andrews, David Melnick, Barbara Baracks, Lee DeJasu, Barrett Watten, and
others, borrowing his title from a phrase in Barthes's text ("it
is the Word which is 'the dwelling place'"), and his explanation
of "diminished referentiality" from Barthes's paean to the "infinite
freedom" of the radically decontextualized word." Not overlooking
John Ashbery's inclusion of Barthes's early essay on Dutch painting, "Le
Monde-Objet" (translated by Stanley Geist as "The World Become
Thing"), in Art and Literature 3 (1964), or poet Richard Howard's
admirable translations of many of Barthes's works, Silliman's references
to Writing Degree Zero announce something like the advent of Barthes's
impact on American avant-garde poetry, an impact soon to reverberate throughout
the poetic community. The second number of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (April 1978)
carries an longer excerpt from Writing Degree Zero on its cover
and the penultimate issue of that magazine's regular format run (June
1980) is largely devoted to Alan Davies's "Essai à Clef,"
a posthumous appreciation of Barthes in which Davies writes: "It
is enough to say that this magazine owes its existence, or if not, the
meaning of that existence, to the significant desire-producing language
mechanisms which Mr. Barthes constantly refurnished with his analyses
of/as text."
Hegel says
somewhere that one can no more think for a person than one can
eat for them. The same is true for reading, though a whole
caste of delegate readersthe critic, the reviewer, the professorhas
sprung out of the failure to recognize this fact. When Alan Davies asserts
that "excellent critical, attentive, writing knows its task
to be the reading of the writing of a text," he pinpoints
a value that Barthes brought into increasingly forceful articulation from
the early 1960s forward. "There remains one last illusion which it
is necessary to renounce," he writes at the close of Criticism
and Truth (1966), a book that exceeds its immediate occasion as a
rebuttal of Racine-scholar Raymond Picard's indiscrimate attack on the
"new criticism" practiced by Barthes and others: "The critic
can in no wise substitute himself for the reader. In vain will he presumeor
will others ask himto lend a voice, however respectful, to the readings
of others, to be himself but a reader to whom other readers have delegated
the expression of their own feelings as a consequence of his knowledge
or his judgment, in other words to exercise by proxy the rights of the
community in relation to the work. Why? Because even if one defines the
critic as a reader who writes, that means that this reader encounters
on his path a redoubtable mediator: writing" (91).
Whereas in
Writing Degree Zero Barthes had principally (though not exclusively:
his remarks on Raymond Queneau's plural/oral texts point in another, less
remarked direction) associated l'écriture with negationan operation
of subtraction (in Camus's "colorless" writing) and abstraction
(in the vertical, worldless words of modern poetry)his emphasis shifts
in the 1960s from a valorization of the neutral in writing to a
valorization of the plural. This transition was hastened perhaps
by the publication of Umberto Eco's theory of the "open work"
(l'oeuvre ouvert) in 1965, but Barthes's essaysstarting with
"Écrivains et écrivants" in 1960, where he first
advances the formula that writing is an intransitive act, and gathering
momentum in pieces such as "To Write: An Intransitive Verb"
(1966), the "Death of the Author" (1968) and "From Work
to Text" (1971)develop the theme immanently and insistently right
through to its aphoristic culmination in The Pleasure of the Text
By the "intransitivity"
of writing, Barthes means to invoke a condition in which the writing subject
disperses into an irretrievable contemporaneity with their practice: "the
modern scriptor is born at the same time as his text,"
Barthes writes in "The Death of the Author," "he is not
furnished with a being which precedes or exceeds his writing, he is not
the subject of which his book would be the predicate; there is no time
other than that of the speech-act, and every text is written eternally
here and now." This dispersion invests every syntagm
of the text; the work of significationpreviously conceived by Barthes
as the explosion of potentials concentrated at a paradigmatic levelis
refigured as a spasm that convulses the surface of language and
calls forth a corresponding seism in the reader, from whom is shaken not
an exegesis or judgment, both of which would reinstate the "transitive"
dimension of the message (what it is "about," what adjectives
engulf it), but another text, desirous, productive, and intransitive as
the first.
That critical
writing should extend, rather than enclose, the realm of textuality is
a proposition that retains its force even after the initial euphoria of
its articulation has faded. Much of what we presently call "poetics"
is an attemptof necessity various in its accomplishmentsto take that
proposition seriously in conditions that remain severely adverse. After
all, reviews remain for the most part the adjective-choked chatter of
people with no facility for reading or writing; "scholarship"
is still largely defined by the limits it imports from an impoverished
institutional nexus and imposes without reflexivity or mercy on its "objects."
But even "poetics," in the elastic acceptation given the word
by contemporary avant-gardists, misses the mark more often than not, satisfying
itself with displaced sociology, half-comprehended linguistic concepts,
and more than a common amount of flat-out mysticism. It would take more
than a thorough re-reading of Barthes to counter-act these tendencies,
but his ethical, secular, pleasurable attention to the "responsibility
of forms" remains a proof, past all fashion, that something more
is possible, should we so choose.
A Note on
Available Texts: For those who read French and have ample bank-accounts
(a combination of suspicious frequency in the American context), a three-volume
Oeuvre complètes edited by Eric Marty appeared from Seuil
several years ago. Much of Barthes has been well-translated into English
and kept in print by Hill & Wang. A Barthes Reader edited by
Susan Sontag in 1982 remains readily available and is a good introduction
to his work through the lens of his best-stationed advocate in the U.S.
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes and The Grain of the Voice:
Interviews 1962-1980, independently or taken together, constitute
a alternative entrance to the oeuvre, as does Stephen Heath's edition
Image / Music / Text. For Barthes the essayist, The Rustle of
Language is the best single collection. For methodology, The Semiotic
Challenge is indispensable, S/Z inexhaustible. A Lover's
Discourse: Fragments was a best-seller upon its French publication
in 1977, going through sixteen print-runs and attracting wide publicity
to its author. Louis-Jean Calvet's biography of Barthes (translated in
1994) is journalistic but passable. Jonathan Culler's respected critical
overview for the Fontana Modern Masters series (1982) can usefully be
read on the way to inspired interpretations by Naomi Schor, Steven Ungar,
and Réda Bensmaïa, among others.
to ensemble back to index


text:
Geneva, Tuesday 6 October 2015
Today, the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders was presented in Geneva to AHMED MANSOOR, a prominent human rights defender from the United Arab Emirates.
Ahmed Mansoor (United Arab Emirates) was selected by a jury of 10 global human rights organisations (See list below).
The Award is given to human rights defenders who have shown deep commitment and face great personal risk. The aim of the award is to provide protection through international recognition.
Since 2006, Ahmed Mansoor has focused on initiatives concerning freedom of expression, civil and political rights. He successfully campaigned in 2006-2007 to support two people jailed for critical social comments, who were released and the charges dropped. Shortly after, the Prime Minister of UAE issued an order not to jail journalists in relation to their work. Mr Mansoor is one of the few voices within the United Arab Emirates who provides a credible independent assessment of human rights developments. He regularly raises concerns on arbitrary detention, torture, international standards for fair trials, non-independence of the judiciary, and domestic laws that violate international law.
He has faced repeated intimidation and harassment, including imprisonment in 2011 after being convicted of "insulting officials" and sentenced to three years' in prison, although he was released after eight months.
Since being jailed in 2011, he has been denied a passport and banned from travelling. The Martin Ennals Jury has publically urged the government of the UAE to lift this travel ban and allow him to travel.
Martin Ennals Foundation Chair Micheline Calmy-Rey stated "Ahmed Mansoor continues to pay the price for speaking out on human rights issues in his country, we urge his government to lift the travel ban."
The two other finalists received Martin Ennals Prizes:
Robert Sann Aung (Myanmar)
Since 1974, Robert Sann Aung has courageously fought against human rights abuses. He has been repeatedly imprisoned in harsh conditions, physically attacked as well as regularly threatened. He was disbarred from 1993 – 2012. Currently, he represents students detained for peacefully protests.
Asmaou Diallo (Guinea)
Her human rights work started following the events of 28 September 2009 when the Guinean military attacked peaceful demonstrators. She founded l'Association des Parents et Amis des Victimes du 28 septembre 2009 (APIVA), which assists those affected, and supports them to testify in court proceedings.
The main award of the
human rights movement. The Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders (MEA) is a unique
collaboration among ten of the world's leading human rights organizations to
give protection to human rights
defenders worldwide. The Jury is composed of the following NGOs:
Martin Ennals Award Jury:
- Amnesty International,
- Human Rights First,
- International Service for Human Rights,
- EWDE Germany,
- Front Line Defenders,
- Human Rights Watch,
- International Commission of Jurists,
- World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT).
For further information, please contact: Michael Khambatta +41 79 474 8208
email@example.com or visit www.martinennalsaward.org

subset: commoncrawl


text:
A reader asked:
What's the best yoga pose that I can actually do?
"Also called viparita karani, this pose is great for soreness in the legs and tightness in the lower back," says Gwen Lawrence, yoga coach of the New York Giants. Sit on the floor with your feet touching a wall and inch your butt forward while walking your feet up the wall. Stop when you're flat on your back and your body forms a 90-degree angle with the floor and wall. With your arms flat and at your sides, hold the pose for up to 15 minutes.


text:
Hearts In The IceAbout Us
Hearts In The Ice
Hearts in the Ice is a platform for social engagement around climate change, started by Hilde Fålun Strøm and Sunniva Sorby. It is a 9-month overwintering project in the High Arctic of Svalbard, Norway. Starting in August 2019 Hilde (Norway) and Sunniva (Canada) will inhabit the 20 sq mtr trappers cabin "Bamsebu"- 78'N. They will be the first women to over-winter in Svalbard without men.
The project will serve as a platform for global dialogue and engagement concerning the changes we are experiencing in the Polar Regions which impacts the world and what we all, individually, might be able to do about it. Life at Bamsebu will be broadcast and published via Iridium satellite through social media to scientists, school children, adventurers, and interested citizens from around the world.
While at Bamsebu, for 9 months, from August 2019 to May 2020, Hilde and Sunniva will serve as citizen scientists by collecting data for existing research being conducted in the Arctic. A few of these projects will be conducted simultaneously in the Antarctic and shared with all on Social Media. They invite everyone to get involved and take the time to understand what is happening in their neighborhood.
They will be pioneers in using an electric snowmobile in addition to having the smallest carbon footprint possible, utilizing solar and wind energy, and reducing all packaging from their suppliers and providers.
They are 2 women with a deep love for the Polar regions who want to highlight the real changes happening, and engage individual action in a positive way!
Hearts In The Ice
Bamsebu Project Goals
Social Engagement
Hearts In The Ice is a platform for social engagement. Connecting students, scientists, manufacturers, environmental organizations, and all citizens in the conversation around climate change. Every contribution matters. Together, we can make a difference. The power of one.
Citizen Science
We will take observations and gather data in collaboration with the Norwegian Polar Institute, Norwegian Meterological Institute, NASA, The Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Our findings will add to existing research in the Arctic. Two of these projects will be mirrored in Antarctica with Polar Latitudes' Citizen Science Program.
Technology Testing
While at Bamsebu, we will field test cutting edge technology in one of the world's most extreme environments. We will use solar and wind energy, satellite communication, and electric snowmobiles. We will discover what is possible in minimizing our carbon footprint.
What They're Saying
"We are so thrilled Sunniva and Hilde are bringing awareness to the poles and have partnered as Citizen Scientists with FjordPhyto!
The polar regions are dynamic and changing fast. These changes affect the biology of the ecosystem, starting with the food source – phytoplankton.
The power of monitoring change comes from data gathered week after week. Sunniva and Hilde are in the perfect position to be at the front lines, helping further our understanding of how these precious places operate."
Allison Cusick, FjordPhyto Project Lead Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Hearts In The Ice
Hilde Fålun Strøm
Project Leader – Bamsebu
Product Manager for Hurtigruten, Svalbard
Married, 2 children, 3 grandchildren, has been living in Svalbard for 23 years
Member of the Negotia Board, a Union
Expedition Leader- Svalbard Summit Ski Festival 2016, Arctic Haute Route 2017, Arctic Ski & Sail 2018, Reality TV Program "71° Nord"
Responsible for all operations of the classic ship M/S Nordstjernen
Meteorological Observer at Jan Mayen and at Bear Island, 2013-14 (8 months total)
Has spent more than a full year total in Trapper's Huts in the High Arctic
Has had more than 200 polar bear encounters
Has approx 60,000km on Snowmobile on Svalbard
Proficient in big game hunting – reindeer, fox, fowl – Svalbard
Experienced in : Kayaking, Snowmobiling, Glacier Travel, Boat handling – Captain, Skiing, Dogsledding, Photography and Trekking
Sunniva Sorby
Director, Global Sales for Polar Latitudes – Antarctic Operator
Fellow, RCGS – Royal Canadian Geographical Society
Resident of Squamish, BC, Canada
Member – Historic Women's South Pole Expedition 92-93- First Canadian Woman
Expedition Leader Greenland Crossing 1999 – First Canadian Woman
Expedition Leader King George Island Crossing 1998
Skied Sierra Haute Route 1996
Climbed Kilimanjaro 5 times
Lead Instructor for Adventure 16 – Backpacking, Backcountry Navigation, Winter camping
Born in Tonsberg Norway – raised in Canada
Nominated as Woman of the Year in 2002 for efforts to promote sports education for young girls and women
Worked as Historian/Zodiac driver in Svalbard, Canadian Arctic and Antarctica
Frequent lecturer in Antarctica and on Polar regions – for over 23 years
Experienced in Mtn Biking, Running (8 marathons), Glacier Travel, Trekking, Kayaking and has one good eye for a firearm
Follow Us!


text:
Written by Reader's Digest Editors
Information for parents on symptoms that can differentiate autism from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Although they share many of the same symptoms, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism are very different disorders.
ADHD is a neurobehavioral disorder that makes it difficult for sufferers to focus, stay organized, and listen to direction. It's estimated that ADHD affects 3 to 5 percent of kids in the United States. In contrast, autism is a developmental disorder that affects the way a person communicates and interacts with others. Estimates say three to six in every 1,000 kids in the United States has autism.
How can you tell the difference between autism and ADHD?
Both disorders may affect sufferers' social interactions, their ability to follow directions, and to stay focused. But neither autism nor ADHD has one symptom that makes making a diagnosis easy. Both disorders display a combination of symptoms, and thus a professional evaluation is necessary to clarify whether someone suffers from autism or ADHD.
In order to assess a patient's symptoms, a health-care professional will probably conduct a series of evaluations, tests, and interviews. Interviews usually involve the patient, and certainly take into account observations by his or her caregivers and teachers. These interviews help the health-care professional to get a clear understanding of how symptoms are affecting the patient's daily life.
Early detection of ADHD and autism will help a child receive the right diagnosis and treatment.
Sources: Mayo Clinic, OrganizedWisdom.com, Easter Seals
Article courtesy of Reader's Digest.


text:
David Hathaway: Mea Culpa
I'm not going to add much more than to say that its enjoyable and refreshing to see a senior scientist admit that they were wholly wrong in their predictions.
How Long Will Our Sun Remain Quiet and Cosmic Rays Increase?
What Happened to 2006 Predictions of Huge Solar Cycle 24?
There were indications back then. I am writing a paper – it's on my computer as we speak (laughs) – basically saying that I made a big mistake – myself and Bob Wilson – when we wrote a paper in 2006, suggesting Solar Cycle 24 was going to be a huge cycle based on conditions at that time. The problem we had with our prediction was that it was based on a method that assumes that we're near sunspot cycle minimum.
We had just previously gone through three or four sunspot cycles that had been only ten years long each, so for the one in 1996 to 2006, it seemed like a reasonable assumption. But as we now know, we were off by at least two years. And if we take conditions on the sun now, it's a completely different story. The conditions now – using even that same technique from 2006 – says that the next sunspot cycle is going to be half what we thought it was back in 2006.
Another big prediction in 2006 was based on a dynamo model – a model for how the sun produces magnetic fields – and it suggested a huge cycle.
But there also were people back at that time saying otherwise. A group of colleagues led by Leif Svalgaard, Ph.D., were looking at the sun's polar fields and saying even at that point, the sun's polar fields were significantly weaker than they had been before and those scientists back then predicted it was going to be a small cycle.
How Small Will Solar Cycle 24 Be?
…I've come around to that view now. I think there is little doubt in my mind now that we're in for a small cycle. The big question now is how small? I think most of us are predicting small cycles. I think even the techniques I'm using now are suggesting HALF the size of the last three or four solar cycles, but my fear is that even that might be too big just from the fact that it's taken so long for this Solar Cycle 24 to really get off the ground and start producing sunspots.
I have no doubt at this point that it's going to be a little cycle. My current prediction is that it's going to be about half of what we've seen in the last four solar cycles or so. But in my gut, I feel it's going to be smaller than that! (laughs) It's just so slow in taking off and the indicators that we see – both the polar fields and the geomagnetic indicators are lower than anything we've seen before.
So kudos to David Hathaway for writing a paper talking about how wrong his previous papers have been. Absolutely no sarcasm intended or implied.
Solar Science blog to go into extended minimum
The Solar Science blog is on hiatus for the forseeable future. I have other commitments and a different focus which is causing me to cut out marginal uses of my time like maintaining this blog.
In the meantime, I recommend Solarcycle24.com and Watts Up with That for their coverage of solar issues.
If anyone knows of any other solar science resources on the Internet that I can link to, then tell me in the comments and I'll add them
Climate Change on Mars: Its all about the Sun
This just in from NASA:
New, three-dimensional imaging of Martian north-polar ice layers by a radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is consistent with theoretical models of Martian climate swings during the past few million years. Alignment of the layering patterns with the modeled climate cycles provides insight about how the layers accumulated. These ice-rich, layered deposits cover an area one-third larger than Texas and form a stack up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) thick atop a basal deposit with additional ice.
"Contrast in electrical properties between layers is what provides the reflectivity we observe with the radar," said Nathaniel Putzig of Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo., a member of the science team for the Shallow Radar instrument on the orbiter. "The pattern of reflectivity tells us about the pattern of material variations within the layers."
Earlier radar observations indicated that the Martian north-polar layered deposits are mostly ice. Radar contrasts between different layers in the deposits are interpreted as differences in the concentration of rock material, in the form of dust, mixed with the ice. These deposits on Mars hold about one-third as much water as Earth's Greenland ice sheet.
It certainly isn't carbon dioxide that's causing any climate change on Mars.
SC24: Sunspots appear in both hemispheres
Just when I thought we'd get to watch a single sunspot make its weary way across the surface of the Sun, a new sunspot group appears in the Northern Hemisphere. We haven't seen a sight like this in a long time
Of course the Sun has surprised us before – one swallow not making a summer and all of that jazz – but I remain cautiously optimistic. It will be interesting to see if the new Northern Hemisphere spots last for at least a few days.
Boy, am I a glutton for punishment.
It comes from the Far Side..?
After being starved of any significant solar activity for so long, any detection of a sunspot very nearly becomes headline news. Therefore when a significant spot is detected on the solar farside, people start writing furiously.
So what to do? The first detection of a potential (and substantial) sunspot in more than a month came from GONG
But will it survive to the nearside?
There's something that might be a spot on the far eastern limb of the latest STEREO image
But GONG now shows nothing at all
So what to believe? The next few days should show whether we're looking at a spot or a plage. I confess that the sensitivity of the seismic results interpreted by GONG are often less accurate as to whether we are seeing a solar disturbance (like a coronal hole or a prominence) or a real sunspot.
I suspect that this is continuation of a pattern we have been seeing for many months, a single sunspot or very small group with SC24 polarity passes in front of us, but nothing else happens and the Sun's activity quickly falls back to very low levels.
Because of this phenomenon, the most likely response from the solar science community is likely to be muted, after so many false dawns.
Solarcycle24.com has produced a graph showing the remarkable difference between the spotless days between solar cycles 22 and 23 and between 23 and 24.
There's no end in sight for this minimum.
Solar Climate Linkages
Just a couple of interesting articles that I think deserve wider readership.
Henrik Svensmark on the coming global cooling: "enjoy global warming while it lasts" (this is a Google translation from Danish, so the English is a little crazy)
While the sun sleeps
HENRIK SVENSMARK, Professor, DTU, Copenhagen
Indeed, global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth, on the contrary. This means that projections of future climate is unpredictable, writes Henrik Svensmark.
The star which keeps us alive, has over the last few years almost no sunspots, which are the usual signs of the sun's magnetic activity.
Last week, reported the scientific team behind Sohosatellitten (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) that the number of sunspot-free days suggest that solar activity is heading towards its lowest level in about 100 years'. Everything indicates that the Sun is moving into a hibernation-like state, and the obvious question is whether it has any significance for us on Earth.
If you ask the International Panel on Climate Change IPCC, representing the current consensus on climate change, so the answer is a reassuring 'nothing'. But history and recent research suggests that it is probably completely wrong. Let us take a closer look at why.
Solar activity has always varied. Around the year 1000, we had a period of very high solar activity, which coincided with the medieval warmth. It was a period when frosts in May was an almost unknown phenomenon and of great importance for a good harvest. Vikings settled in Greenland and explored the coast of North America. For example, China's population doubled over this period. But after about 1300, the earth began to get colder and it was the beginning of the period we now call the Little Ice Age. In this cold period all the Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Swedes [were surprised to see Denmark to freeze over in ice], and the Thames in London froze repeatedly. But more serious was the long periods of crop failure, which resulted in a poorly nourished population, because of disease and hunger [population was reduced] by about 30 per cent in Europe.
New linkage between solar cycle and Earth's atmosphere discovered
Scientists discover surprise in Earth's upper atmosphereBy Stuart Wolpert
UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere.
"It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun. This discovery is like finding it got hotter when the sun went down," said Larry Lyons, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and a co-author of the research, which is in press in two companion papers in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
The sun, in addition to emitting radiation, emits a stream of ionized particles called the solar wind that affects the Earth and other planets in the solar system. The solar wind, which carries the particles from the sun's magnetic field, known as the interplanetary magnetic field, takes about three or four days to reach the Earth. When the charged electrical particles approach the Earth, they carve out a highly magnetized region — the magnetosphere — which surrounds and protects the Earth.
Charged particles carry currents, which cause significant modifications in the Earth's magnetosphere. This region is where communications spacecraft operate and where the energy releases in space known as substorms wreak havoc on satellites, power grids and communications systems.
The rate at which the solar wind transfers energy to the magnetosphere can vary widely, but what determines the rate of energy transfer is unclear.
"We thought it was known, but we came up with a major surprise," said Lyons, who conducted the research with Heejeong Kim, an assistant researcher in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and other colleagues.
NASA on the disappearing sunspots
September 3, 2009: The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Weeks and sometimes whole months go by without even a single tiny sunspot. The quiet has dragged out for more than two years, prompting some observers to wonder, are sunspots disappearing?
"Personally, I'm betting that sunspots are coming back," says researcher Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. But, he allows, "there is some evidence that they won't."
Penn's colleague Bill Livingston of the NSO has been measuring the magnetic fields of sunspots for the past 17 years, and he has found a remarkable trend. Sunspot magnetism is on the decline:
Above: Sunspot magnetic fields measured by Livingston and Penn from 1992 – Feb. 2009 using an infrared Zeeman splitting technique.
"Sunspot magnetic fields are dropping by about 50 gauss per year," says Penn. "If we extrapolate this trend into the future, sunspots could completely vanish around the year 2015."
Hmmm, yes they could. But the solar magnetic field could simply be in a cyclical downturn of which this is a part. We need an expert!
"This work has caused a sensation in the field of solar physics," comments NASA sunspot expert David Hathaway, who is not directly involved in the research. "It's controversial stuff."
The controversy is not about the data. "We know Livingston and Penn are excellent observers," says Hathaway. "The trend that they have discovered appears to be real." The part colleagues have trouble believing is the extrapolation. Hathaway notes that most of their data were taken after the maximum of Solar Cycle 23 (2000-2002) when sunspot activity naturally began to decline. "The drop in magnetic fields could be a normal aspect of the solar cycle and not a sign that sunspots are permanently vanishing."
Yes, what he said.
Penn himself wonders about these points. "Our technique is relatively new and the data stretches back in time only 17 years. We could be observing a temporary downturn that will reverse itself."
The technique they're using was pioneered by Livingston at the NASA-supported McMath-Pierce solar telescope near Tucson. He looks at a spectral line emitted by iron atoms in the sun's atmosphere. Sunspot magnetic fields cause the line to split in two—an effect called "Zeeman splitting" after Dutch physicist Pieter Zeeman who discovered the phenomenon in the 19th century. The size of the split reveals the intensity of the magnetism
If the solar magnetism continues to decline what could this mean for the Earth?
If sunspots do go away, it wouldn't be the first time. In the 17th century, the sun plunged into a 70-year period of spotlessness known as the Maunder Minimum that still baffles scientists. The sunspot drought began in 1645 and lasted until 1715; during that time, some of the best astronomers in history (e.g., Cassini) monitored the sun and failed to count more than a few dozen sunspots per year, compared to the usual thousands.
Note that of course, they don't mention that this coincided with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age. But that would be politically incorrect, wouldn't it?
"Whether [the current downturn] is an omen of long-term sunspot decline, analogous to the Maunder Minimum, remains to be seen," Livingston and Penn caution in a recent issue of EOS. "Other indications of solar activity suggest that sunspots must return in earnest within the next year."
I'd love to know what those other indications are, because the prognostications of future solar activity have been startlingly poor from practically everybody.
I leave the last words to David Hathaway, who dares to speak the truth to solar science:
Whatever happens, notes Hathaway, "the sun is behaving in an interesting way and I believe we're about to learn something new."
Related articles by Zemanta
- Sunspots May Be Different During This Solar Minimum (science.slashdot.org)
- Is the Sun Missing Its Spots? (nytimes.com)
- "DEAD AS A DOORNAIL:" More on those missing sunspots. "Most solar physicists do not think anything… (pajamasmedia.com)


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President Bill Clinton was the greatest leader the earth has every seen. Since his departure from the White House, only Death, Destruction, and Poverty has ensued. It is clear the Clinton Bloodline was intended to rule america for all time.
The only way to regain the glory of the American Empire is to reestablish the Clinton Monarchy in all its glory. A vote for President Hilary Clinton in 2016 is a vote to firmly entrench the Clinton Dynasty and all it stands for.


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Spotter is a mobile app for your iPhone that does more than simply track the exercises and weights you lift during a session. Through it's patent-pending formula, Spotter takes that information and calculates how much you should lift the next time you do that exercise, continually pushing you towards your goal.
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Of course, it's essential to eat according to your fitness goals. Looking to tone up and lose weight? Eat a little less. Looking to get bigger and stronger? Eat a little more. Spotter's calorie calculator helps you determine how much to eat for your goal. Best part is, we tell you how many weeks it will take you to get there!
Spotter brings innovation and analysis to weightlifting and nutrition in way that's never been done before. By understanding exactly how much to lift and eat, rest assured in a matter of weeks you'll start to see and feel the positive changes with your body. It's worked for us, it can work for you too!Download Now
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Photo via Navy.mil
According to AFP, the US Navy has nabbed 7 suspected pirates in the Gulf of Aden. The Marshall Islands flagged ship, Polaris, sent a distress signal to report an attempted boarding of their vessel by suspected pirates.
The guided missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf responded, intercepting a small skiff with seven men matching the descriptions given by the Polaris crew.
The suspected pirates are being held on board the Vella Gulf until they transfer to the USNS Lewis and Clark, a civilian ship usually used to haul cargo and ammunition that has been repurposed to serve as a temporary holding center for suspected pirates.
The capture marks the first time that suspected pirates have been caught by a vessel from the Combined Task Force 151 (CTF 151), a multinational task force that conducts and focuses on counter-piracy operations in and around the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. The USS Vella Gulf has been the flagship vessel of CTF 151 since February 4.
The Navy Times tells us of the new "Pirate Brig"… an MSC ship.
The suspected pirates will likely stay aboard the Vella Gulf until sometime Thursday, when they'll be transferred to a new temporary brig aboard the Military Sealift Command supply ship USNS Lewis and Clark. One of the Lewis and Clark's cargo holds has been outfitted with foam pallets and portable toilets to serve as a holding area for as many as 26 people. A detachment of Marines aboard the ship serves as guards.


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Interview with Jonna Jinton "All the images mean a lot to me"
Now she is out with with a new collection called Northern Wilderness, in which 30 nature motifs depict the Nordic landscape. Many of the photographs in the collection have been taken far north in Sweden, in locations such as Stekenjokk, Abisko and Stora Sjöfallet, and they reflect the subtle changes of the natural world during the four seasons.
We took the chance to ask Jonna some questions and dive a little deeper into the stories behind the images.
What does a typical day of photography look like, for you?
A typical photo day starts either very early in the morning or late in the evening, depending on what season it is. When it's early summer, I'm out all night taking photographs because that's when the light is the best. I almost never shoot in the daylight; instead, I wait for the soft light when the sun is rising or setting, or in between, at night or in the light of midnight.
When the light is right, I pack up my camera bag and tripod. Sometimes I go out into the woods close to the village and sometimes I take my car and drive on the forest roads and look for some new beautiful places. And sometimes, I'll go north for a whole week, to the mountains. Then I spend all my time finding places to photograph when the light is good. A lot of the pictures in the new collection are taken further north, including places like Abisko, Stora Sjöfallet and Stekenjokk.
Is there any image from this wallpaper collection that you remember especially well?
One of the pictures in the collection of which I have an extra strong memory is "Enlightenment of Night". It was taken one night when I had gotten lost on the mountain roads up north. I had no mobile service and my GPS had led me astray. It was pitch black out, a dark autumn night. Suddenly while I was driving, the northern lights appeared, enormous, in the sky, for just a few seconds. I stopped the car, took out my camera, set up my tripod on the gravel road and started to shoot. They were the best photos of the northern lights I've ever taken. I shouted for joy so that it echoed through the woods. Then it felt like it was meant to be: that I got lost and ended up right there, right then, so that I could take that exact photograph.
Jonna Jinton explains that her absolutely favourite place is in the vicinity of where she lives. A small forest pond in the heart of the woods, which she calls the "Magical Forest Pond". She always goes there when she needs to find inspiration.
Are there other pictures in the wallpaper collection that are a little extra close to your heart?
There are three pictures in the collection, "Celestial Dream", "Stories Of The Ancient Forest" and"A Magical Place", that were all taken by the forest pond on the same occasion. I have spent countless mornings by this lake, but I've never experienced a morning that was as magical as this one. The fog and the light created the most amazing scene and it really felt like I had landed in the middle of a dream. I am incredibly glad that these images in particular became wallpaper in our new collection. I hope that my photos can send inspiration to those who choose to have them as wallpaper.
Where do you get your inspiration?
My biggest inspiration comes from John Bauer, the illustrator. Ever since I was little, his illustrations got me to see and experience the woods in a different way. He brought out something mysterious and bewitching, which has really influenced me. And that feeling that his images gave me is what I try to pass on and communicate in my photographs.
Have you got a favourite image from the new wallpaper collection?
It is difficult to choose just one motif since all these pictures mean a lot in different ways. If I had to choose, I would say "Celestial dream". This picture was taken by the "magical forest pond" and I love the tones in this photograph in particular. The blues, grays, pale greens, with a bit of yellow from the sun that shines through the mist. I think these colours bring a certain calm, and that they work really well as a wall mural. The image feels very clean, with just a few details, such as the water lilies and the old tree hanging over the water. I especially like the lower right side of the photo, which looks almost like a small starry sky in the water.
If you could choose your dream place to put up one of your wallpapers, which place would it be?
I would be extremely happy if one of my wallpapers was used in a children's hospital. I remember one time when a little boy (my friends' child) looked at one of my wall murals, which they had in their home, and told me that he used to see moose in the forest behind the trees. So he used to sit for long periods of time and look until he saw a moose. That really warmed my heart. Children have so much imagination and I think they can create their own stories just by looking at something like a photograph. It would be really great to know that one of my photos could brighten some children's day every day. Then, it would be pretty cool if one of my wallpapers ended up at the Google head office :)
Do you have any exciting collaborations going forward that you can say something about?
This year I am spending a lot of time with my music, among other things, so that's where a lot of my focus is right now. In 2019, I'm coming out with a wallpaper with IKEA, and soon I'm also going to be out with a film that I worked on this past spring as a collaboration with Google and YouTube. Then we'll have to see what happens. That's probably the most fun thing about my job, that I never really know what's going to happen next; it's more exciting that way.


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Fat implantation (otherwise known as Autogenous Fat Transfer) is a procedure wherein fat is removed from one area of the body via the method of liposuction, and, after it has been processed, is deposited in another area, where we wish to add bulk. In practice, therefore, we employ it as a filling material which we obtain from our own organism via liposculpture.
This method has been known for decades yet, it was first used more than 100 years ago. However, for quite a long time it was not a particularly widely used method. Over the last few years, however, thanks to the evolution and improvement of the techniques used to obtain and deposit fat, this method had dynamically returned to the centre stage.
Fat offers the advantage of being a material provided in plenty by the organism, which can be employed as a filling material. Its quantity is more than sufficient. The essential problem with using fat in the past has been its high degree of absorbability. This meant that of the fat that was initially deposited, a very large fraction would go on to be absorbed by the organism, allowing for only very temporary results. However, thanks to the improvement of the techniques used to obtain and process the fat, today the percentage of fat that remains permanently is rather large.
There are several possible cases in which one might employ fat as a filling material. Generally, it may be applied to any part of the body where bulk is needed. For example, typical scenarios wherein fat may need to be used involve adjusting the face of the shape (cheekbones, cheeks, jaw, chin, etc.), as well as breast and buttock augmentations, filling areas where there are noticeable dimples or dents, etc.
The fat can be obtained from any part of the body. The areas that are considered ideal are the stomach and the inner thighs. This is because these areas are rich in stem cells.
There are several theories concerning the type of fat cells that is bestable to survive in the new position. Some believe that the fat cells that have been obtained and deposited will fare better, while others consider that stem cells which have been harvested and developed into fat cells after being implanted have a better chance of surviving.
Contemporary cannulae are less harmful, allowing for a greater percentage of fat to survive. Once the fat has been obtained some processing may be performed, which in most cases depends on its centrifugation. There are, however, several other ways of processing, which a practitioner may choose to employ based on his own experience. After the fat has been processed, it is deposited in cannulae and implanted in the desired area. Of course, the final result will not become apparent immediately; we must wait for the edema to recede and also for as much of the fat as possible to be absorbed.
Fat implantation may be performed as an individual procedure, or may be combined with localized liposuction; then, then obtained fat will be deposited in another area or areas. In this case we term it liposculpture.
Over the last few years, the use of this technique in breast augmentation has become more and more wide-spread. In this case however, it will initially be used as an external retainer in order to tauten the skin and allow for new perfusion to develop. Afterwards, the fat is implanted, from which a large fraction will "survive". This procedure can be repeated more times than one, depending on the desired breast size.
The use of fat implants on the buttocks can in several cases be used in place of implants. That is, of course, when the amount of required fat is not particularly large.
Something equivalent tends to take place when adjusting the shape of the face, or correcting its flaws. Fat can be implanted on any area of the face, in order to replace lost bulk or to generally improve the shape. Due to the passage of time, particularly in the aged, facial fat tends to atrophy. Depositing fat there can improve and return the face to an earlier condition.
The procedure of implanting fat can on most occasions be performed with local anaesthesia and does not require hospitalization. Of course, if fat implantation is performed on the face, it is likely that some edema (swelling) or ecchymoses (bruising) may appear. In such cases, the patient may need to take a rest from their social or occupational activities.
In general, it is not a painful procedure and in most cases requires no hospitalization. In addition, it can be performed as a minor surgical procedure within the clinic itself.
The greatest advantage this methods offers is that it requires a material which is provided by the organism itself, and as such results in no unfortunate reactions. Additionally, it is a material that can be obtained in very large quantities to cover for any need. A particularly significant advantage of fat implantation is that its material is costless. The cost of autogenous fat transfer is practically equal to the cost of the surgical procedure altogether, without extra charge for the material.
The results, particularly for the face, tend to be very impressive.


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CannaSys, Inc. ("CannaSys") (MJTK), a provider of technology solutions to the regulated cannabis industry has received a large order from Strainwise Inc. for all of the 10 Strainwise affiliated dispensaries in Colorado.
Strainwise Inc. has rolled out gift cards to all its Colorado affiliated dispensaries using the CannaCash system, allowing them to sell $25 and $50 gift cards to all their customers, both recreational and medical.
CannaCash, a product of CannaSys, allows stores to issue unique and custom designed gift cards for their consumers and easily track sales and purchases via automated reporting and reconciliation.
About CannaSys, Inc.
CannaSys, Inc. creates, develops, and commercializes innovative technology to solve problems, create opportunities, and streamline the connections among producer, seller, and consumer/patient segments in the cannabis industry. CannaSys has developed several high-impact, low-cost product sets which help existing and new cannabis participants to monetize their offerings. CannaSys plans to develop, acquire, and build partnerships in order to bring additional solutions to market in both established and developing medical and recreational cannabis states. For further information, please visit WWW.CANNASYS.COM.
About Strainwise, Inc.
Strainwise, Inc. is a national consulting fulfillment services enterprise that provides design, procurement and operational services to marijuana cultivation facilities and retail stores involved in the licensed sales of medical and recreational marijuana. Strainwise currently provides these consulting services throughout the United States and to ten (10) retail stores and two(2) cultivation facilities in Colorado. Strainwise is a fully reporting company that trades Over–the-Counter under the symbol STWC. For further information, please contact Mark McNeely at 720-810-2392.
Forward-looking Statements
This release includes forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, continued acceptance of CannaSys's products, increased levels of competition for CannaSys, new products and technological changes, CannaSys's dependence on third-party suppliers, and other risks detailed from time to time in CannaSys's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.


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Hey guys! I know I have been MIA for a couple of weeks but I have a good reason. Like I have had announced before: I had my exams! Six back to back exams starting last week Tuesday and the last one was today!!
I celebrated the exams were over together with my fellow University of London student Anne. She is German but lives in Amsterdam and I've been in contact with her for the past academic year. Certainly these past few weeks we have really been there for each other. It's so nice to have someone who goes through the exact same thing. We gave each other study tips, last minute info and of course exchanged our thoughts of the exam we just had that day.
We celebrated with spare ribs and white wine outside in the sun at a nice restaurant/bar in Rotterdam. Perfect end! And I must say, the exams went fine! I cannot tell anything for sure yet. We have to wait 12 whole weeks until we know the results...
Today after lunch I packed up all of my books. Seeing the empty shelf feels sooo good! Well I must say, I'm actually looking forward to next year as the courses seem so excited and this is the first year we can choose some of our own!
Even though I study online I've met some very nice people over Skype and Anne in real life too. Studying online is really hard and asks for a lot of self discipline. But certainly towards the end I choose to go out less often, missed my girlfriends and luckily my bf was sweet enough to cope with me during the stress pre-exam days.
So glad this academic year is over. I will enjoy summer holiday for a couple of months and go back to work today (Wednesday) after a two and a half week study break.
Studying for my last exam on my balcony!
Back to blogging again too! Missed it a lot!


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Job Title
Quant-Structured Products Analyst
Job Description
Our Client is a world leading trading house. They are one of the major players in the trading world with over 100,000 employees and over US$ 100 billion in annual sales and revenue. They provide innovative solutions to customers across major market segments; including agriculture and food and energy and natural resources. Some of their major businesses include the trading and distribution of agricultural commodities, manufacturing and sale of livestock and feed, trading in energy, steel and transport, and the production of food ingredients. They also provide risk management and financial solutions to both their customers and their own businesses in the markets of oil, gas, energy and resources. The Company has a specialized division which lucidly manages global commodity supply chains for its customers. It offers a unique combination of physical and financial expertise to develop solutions in the oil and gas, petrochemicals, natural resources such as coal, ferrous and base metals, and ocean freight markets. Due to an expansion of the Singapore operations of this division, they are seeking a professional with experienced in quantitative analysis and ideally structuring products for iron ore and steel, for the following role.
The Quantitative-Structured Products Analyst reports to the Metals Derivatives Trading Manager and will be responsible for the quantitative analysis required for the Derivative Team Options and Relative Value Trading books. In addition he/she will also be expected to have experienced in Structuring products for the Iron Ore and Steel Trading teams. This will extend to Structuring, Evaluating, and although marketing will be focused through an established sales team, it will likely involve clear deal explanation to ensure customer fully understands the products. This position will likely lead to trading roles in Options and/or cross product Relative Value, should the candidate exhibit the right potential.
Bachelors/Masters Degree in Quantitative discipline e.g. Financial Engineering
Post tertiary qualification in relevant quantitative discipline would be advantageous
Experience & Technical Competencies:
Significant years of experience working in a Quantitative Analysis role and/or Structuring role, with a proven track record
Advanced knowledge of computer and programming skills
o VBA, C++/C or Java is required
o R and/or Matlab would be highly desirable
o SQL would be advantageous
Proficiency in English, both written and verbal


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California Quilt Shows
Jan 16 - 19 2020Road to California Quilters' Conference & Showcase - Ontario
Over 500 quilts, including antique and prize winning quilts will be on display. Martha Nordstrand from Arizona will be the featured quilter. More tha ... more »
Feb 28 - 29 2020Deseert Guilds Quilt Show 2014 - Palm Springs
"Quilting Seasons" is the theme for this biannual quilt show. Browse through 150 quilts at the Palm Springs Pavilion while listening to Harpist Bronn ... more »
Apr 4 - 5 2020Foothill Quilters Guild Celebrating their Annual Quilt Show - Auburn
Over 300 quilts on Display. We have a fashion show on Saturday. Alex Anderson will be joining us on Saturday as our special guest quilter. There will ... more »
Apr 11 - 12 2020Seven Sisters Quilt Show - San Luis Obispo
This is a huge, spectacular show featuring more than 300 beautiful quilts. The show is presented by the Associated Quilt Guilds of the Central Coast ... more »
Apr 25 - 26 2020Annual Springtime in the Pines Quilt Show - Grass Valley
Approximately 300 quilts will be on display from local artists. There will be vendor booths, silent auction, opportunity quilt, raffle prizes and a c ... more »
May 23 - 24 2020Wine Country Quilts Show and Sale - Santa Rosa
Hosted by the Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County, the show will have over 400 quilts and quilt related items on display. Vendors on site. Lots of fre ... more »
May 30 - 7 2020Quilting at the Fair 2010 - San Mateo
Peninsula Quilters Guild presents Quilting at the Fair 2010 in conjunction with the San Mateo County Fair. Noon-10 pm. See website for more informat ... more »
May 30 2020Pine Needlers Quilt Stroll - Groveland
Quilt stroll in the quaint town of Groveland, gateway to Yosemite National Park. Quilts! Vendors! Needle Artists. Knitters.
Aug 29 - 30 2020Salute To America Quilt Show - Lompoc
Over 100 quilts on display, vendor market, mini-quilts, Opportunity quilt, quilt sale, door prizes. Quilters Etc. Guild display of member made quilt ... more »
Sep 17 - 19 2020San Diego Quilt Show - San Diego
View more than 400 handmade quilts, meet guest quilters, attend quilting classes, and shop for quilting materials. Thursday & Friday, 10am-6pm Sat ... more »
Sep 19 2020Autumn in the Alps Annual Quilt Show - Weaverville
A quarter-mile of quilts! Huge outdoor show features over 350 quilts displayed in the historic gold rush town of Weaverville. Vendors, raffles, awards ... more »
Oct 3 - 4 2020Mountain Majesty - Idyllwild
Idyllwild Mt. Quilters present their annual quilt show featuring over 100 quilts, a country store, vendors and crafters, and opportunity quilt drawing ... more »
Oct 23 - 24 2020'A Patchwork of Quilts' - Garden Grove
The show will feature a Wearable Art exhibit, over 100 guild member quilts, a variety of vendors, and a quilt appraiser. Take time to visit the 'Patch ... more »
Oct 24 2020Walk on the Wild Side - Carson
African American Quilters of Los Angeles Over 100 quilts on display Quilt demonstration Vendor Mall Doll Exhibit


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CHS (CHS) Class of 2004 Alumni List
Help us Update the CHS 2004 Class List by adding any names missing from the list below:
Registered Alumni
2004 Class List
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The most popular movie of 2004 was Shrek 2 which has grossed over $441,226,247 since its release. The TV series American Idol was the most popular show of 2004.
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In an effort for the University of Mississippi School of Engineering to stay in touch with our graduates, we hope that you will take the time to share your most recent information with us. It is important that we know how to stay connected to you so that we can share all the great things happening at your alma mater.
The Rebel Network is a social networking site that is dedicated specifically to Ole Miss alumni and friends, with a helpful career networking and job site engine built in. By keeping track of your current contact information, it also allows us to stay in touch with you.
Email us at firstname.lastname@example.com
In an effort for the University of Mississippi School of Engineering to stay in touch with our graduates, we hope that you will take the time to share your most recent information with us. It is important that we know how to stay connected to you so that we can share all the great things happening at your alma mater.
Do you have any personal or professional news you'd like to share with the School of Engineering and your fellow alumni? Do you have a new job or did you receive a promotion? Have you recently gotten married or had a child? Please send us a brief notice for inclusion in the upcoming Ole Miss Engineer magazine.
David Puleo
Dean of the School of Engineering
Torie Marion
Associate Director of Alumni Affairs
Whether giving your time, money or expertise, there are numerous ways to get involved with the School of Engineering. We welcome your participation and look forward to working with you in the future. Here are a few ways you can contribute:
The Ole Miss School of Engineering has traditionally had strong ties to industry across all disciplines. Each year we bring to campus representatives from Lockheed Martin, ExxonMobil, NASA, International Paper and FedEx just to name a few. These companies benefit from interacting with the best and brightest young minds in the engineering field today. In addition, by partnering with the Ole Miss School of Engineering you and your corporation will be able to do the following:
At the Ole Miss School of Engineering, we are striving to be the best in areas of teaching and research and to bring engineering concepts to industry. With your support and the support of your corporation, we will continue to make strides forward as we educate the next generation of engineering leaders. If you or your corporation are interested in serving in this capacity or want to know more about this area, please contact Director of Development Greg Carter.
We are always looking to broaden our student's learning experiences, and one of the best ways to do this is invite industry into the classroom. Our alumni are in all 50 states and work for some of the top companies today. Their interaction with students and faculty is critical to rounding out the experiences of our students. If you have a desire to come back and interact with a class, let us know. Classes fill up quick for the upcoming year so let us know and someone will follow up with you in that request. If this is something that interests you or a colleague of yours, we welcome that inquiry. That can be arranged through Assistant Dean Marni Kendricks.
Currently, we are in the process of restructuring our engineering alumni clubs. We do have strong pockets of alumni in Jackson, Miss.; Memphis, Tenn.; Houston, Texas; and Huntsville, Ala. If you have an interest in connecting with fellow engineering alumni or want to bring a group of alumni together for a game, a recruiting fair or just some fellowship, please contact Associate Director for Alumni Affairs Torie Marion.
For 110 years, the lifeblood of the School of Engineering has been its relationship to its alumni. With graduates living domestically across the entire United States and globally in a number of countries, they've gone on to do great things in a number of areas. Those great things include giving their time and financial resources back to the school. Support from alumni, parents and friends has a real impact on the School of Engineering, our students and our faculty. In 2009, the School of Engineering benefited from nearly 400 gifts totaling more than $5 million in giving. This generosity provides the Ole Miss School of Engineering with an important source of funding for student scholarships and financial aid, and it helps ensure our commitment to state-of-the-art teaching and learning facilities.
Here are just a few ways in which you can support the school:


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Established in 1985 by professionally qualified nurses for the purpose of promoting a high standard of training for employees to obtain the H.S.E. approved Certificate of First Aid at Work in the U.K. and now approved by HSEA.
P.F.E. is a privately owned / nurse managed company aimed at teaching the contents of the First Aid at Work syllabus under the Health & Safety (First Aid) Regulations in a realistic and interesting manner. With 28 years of HSE approval and currently approved by the HSEA, P.F.E. First Aid Training Services has become the longstanding partner for many corporate organisations throughout the U.K.
P.F.E. trains thousands of people each year for the Certificate of First Aid at Work (FAW) and the Emergency First Aid at Work Certificate (EFAW). It also trains people for the First Aid at Work Instructors certificate and issues certificates for short courses in First Aid, Appointed Persons Courses, Special Hazard Courses, Paediatric and AED courses. Fees are highly competitive and customers are strongly advised to shop around and compare our prices with other providers.
Note that many organisations are now offering training with no approval from any recognised body. Please ensure that your provider is a recognised and qualified provider. The quality of PFE's courses is second to none.
Being one of the largest independent First Aid Training companies P.F.E. First Aid Training Services provides in-house training throughout the U.K. – wherever you are we can service your training requirements on a local or national basis.
From October 1st 2013 de-regulation of HSE approval occurred in England, Scotland and Wales. De regulation followed on 31st October 2017 for Northern Ireland. First Aid at Work certificates between Northern Ireland and the mainland are now recognised and interchangeable.
Training providers are no longer approved by the HSE. Instead recognition of training is provided through a variety of possibilities, some through Ofqual, some through the First Aid Industry itself and some through an independent route.
P.F.E. First Aid Training Services lTd have adopted the independent rout with due diligence and quality controls being monitored by an Independent body – the HSEA.
In 2019 P.F.E. First Aid training Services is working towards:
- ISO 9001:2015 accreditation
- SAFE Contractor accreditation
- ISO 14001:2004 -Environmental accreditation


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Sarah Ballard
Lincoln County High Stanford, KY Class of 2000
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text: The inside of the old toilet is very dirty but I cleaned the area that the flush valve and the toilet tank to bowl bolts will connect to the toilet tank. A few important steps. be sure to have the overflow tube turned in a way that it does not get in the way of the toilet fill valve operation or the flush handle and flapper chain.


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The Triple Alliance by Zoe Saadia is the bitter sweet finale of The Rise of the Aztecs' series. Bitter because it almost broke my heart to say goodbye to my beloved fictional friends and sweet because Saadia gives her readers the perfect ending.
The story begins in 1439, eight years on from where The Sword finished. Saadia uses this time shift to pick up the story of Kuini's children. This is particularly poignant for fans of the series as we have been following Kuini's journey from when he was a pre-teen himself.
His children, Ocelotl, Coatl and Citlalli are eighteen years old and entering into adulthood. Their lives have taken divergent paths over the past eight years but they find themselves reunited in Tenochtitlan during a festival to celebrate the winter solstice. There are tensions between the three as they struggle to overcome the resentment that has developed as a result of Ocelotl living in the Highlands but they soon fall into their old roles as they become embroiled in a plot to kill the chief advisor Tlacaelel.
Saadia is, without a doubt, a historian who painstakingly researches the subject matter of her books. However, even if you are not a lover of historic fiction, the strength of Saadia's writing for me is the way she encourages us to evaluate the human condition, her depiction of history highlights that nothing really changes. Our way of life may have developed but the human race is still making the mistakes that we've always made – most probably since time began.
The driving force for most of the characters within The Triple Alliance is the quest for power. Tlacaelel is the power behind the throne of the Emperor. He's a visionary who is largely responsible for the rise of Mexica and the powerful alliance with Texcoco and Tlacopan that ensures their reign of supremacy. However, Tlacaelel has no understanding of people and his desire to unify everyone under one God and ruler is unrealistic. The populace of Tenochtitlan, despite Tlacaelel's sophisticated projects to build waterways, bridges and other new impressive buildings, is a seething mass of anger and division. The different groups of people have been forcibly merged together and each group views the others as "foreigners". We only have to look at the current mass migration taking place in Europe and the explosive levels of racism and xenophobia following in its wake to see that Saadia's account of the past is still very relevant.
Even the women, who essentially belong to the noble men of the Empire, are jockeying for positions of power through their men. There is very little sisterhood in the palatial households where wives are often cast aside for younger and more appealing women. The exception to this is Tlalli, who as a commoner and concubine has very little social standing but has gained the respect of all who know her through her accomplishments and generous spirit.
The Triple Alliance reinforces the idea that women at that time had no power at all. Citalli, like her mother before her, is viewed as a valuable commodity and has been trained to be a wife from a young age. By the age of eighteen she has already been married off to the heir of Tlacopan. A marriage she had no say in whatsoever. Citalli is a strong character who is volatile and not afraid to speak her mind but her sense of power is misplaced as ultimately she is at the mercy of the men around her.
The relationship between the three siblings is presented by Saadia in a very real and interesting way. Both Ocelotl and Coatl feel the pressure of having to follow in their successful warlord father's footsteps. Ocelotl in particular struggles to find his own identity as he has a disability and can't complete with Coatl and his father physically. However, under his grandfather's guidance, he learns to value his own strengths rather than comparing himself to others. Citalli has strong feelings of kinship with both brothers but her attachment to Ocelotl becomes so intense it creates an inappropriate sexual tension between the two of them. Saadia explores this dilemma in a sensitive and thoughtful way which elicits feelings of compassion for Citalli who has no idea about her true heritage.
In giving the final novel over to the young characters, Saadia allows her series to come full circle. The youth of the characters inject the story with energy and fun regardless of the tense and serious backdrop. As with all her novels, Saadia assuredly offers her readers edge of your seat tension, leaving us desperate to learn the fates of our beloved characters.
The Triple Alliance is an exciting and satisfying read which works perfectly well as a standalone novel. However, I cannot recommend The Rise of the Aztecs' series highly enough and guarantee that if you give it a try you will be hooked and fully invested in the rich lives of Saadia's wonderful characters. Part of me is devastated to have come to the end of the road but the great news is that Zoe Saadia is such a prolific writer there's a whole new series waiting for me.


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Also found in: Dictionary, Legal, Acronyms, Wikipedia.
1. a silver coin of ancient Rome, often called a penny in translation
2. a gold coin worth 25 silver denarii
an ancient Roman silver coin consisting of ten asses. It was first minted in 269 B.C. and contained 4.55 g of pure silver. A number of countries that had close trade ties with ancient Rome, such as the lands occupied by presentday Iraq and Yugoslavia, still retain monetary units derived from the Roman denarius.


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Thursday, March 25, 2010
Physician Heal Thyself
Oh dear, I see that a bunch of doctors have decided to have a go at smokers again.
The Royal College of Physicians (RCP), using Nanny's "child centric" policy as the excuse, wants smoking to be banned in all cars as well as in public places where young people congregate.
RCP claims that passive smoking results in 300,000 extra child visits to GPs in the UK every year, for problems such as asthma and bacterial meningitis.
Irrespective of whether a child is anywhere near a smoker or not, the RCP wants also to ban anyone smoking in a vehicle (even if only the smoker is present).
The RCP wants children to be protected from not just "passive smoke", but also the sight of adults smoking.
Parks, outdoor swimming pools and school gate areas would also be on the banned areas list.
Sad to see that doctors are so keen to interfere in the private lives of others, given that the medical profession is more than prone to abuse its bodies (obesity, booze, fags and other narcotics) more than other sectors of the community.
Once Nanny has banned smoking, on the pretext of "child protection", she will ban drink then fatty foods. After all, these days almost anything that Nanny claims may "harm" children (eg obesity, drinking etc) can be viewed as "child abuse".
Like it or not human beings enjoy abusing their bodies from time time (eg via drinking and smoking), it's how we get through our time on this spinning rock in space without going completely mad.
I would venture to suggest that if doctors are so keen to reduce the number of "wheezing" kids, they may care also to tell the kids' parents to give up their cars (thus reducing the pollution in the atmosphere) and make them walk a bit more.
Better still, why not solve this problem once and for all and ban kids from being around adults?
Problem solved!
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Visit The Joy of Lard and indulge your lard fantasies.
Show your contempt for Nanny by buying a T shirt or thong from Nanny's Store.
www.nannyknowsbest.com is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
Celebrate the joy of living with booze. Click and drink!
Why not really indulge yourself, by doing all the things that Nanny really hates? Click on the relevant link to indulge yourselves; Food, Bonking, Toys, Gifts and Flowers, Groceries
12 comments:
- Tonk.11:03 AM
Another way to reduce the number of kids with breathing problems and allergies is to get their parents to stop using so many anti bacterial cleaning products....The body needs the occasional infection to build up it's immune system.
As I have said before, I don't smoke but I feel if Nanny gets her way over this issue, she will then go after thyings that may well affect me......Last week I decided to go into a local pub for lunch....It was full of chavs with kids and the kids were running around and generally being a pain in the arse whilst their chavy parent sat there smiling....I would like to see a ban again on kids entering pubs....These are adult spaces and many of us don't want chavy kids around us while trying to relax.....Sadly, in my experience, only dross take their two or three year o;ds to a pub mid week and these are the types that can see no wrong in their kid's behaviour and are likely to explode if anyone says anything to criticise them.
I watched a news report a couple of weeks ago where the British army rescued some Afghans from a lorry in a swollen river....The commander said they rescued the people in keeping with local customs.....Elders first, then men, then women and kids last...Sounds like my kind of place!!!;-)
"Better still, why not solve this problem once and for all and ban kids from being around adults?"ReplyDelete
Or just ban kids, period . . .
- Anonymous11:45 AM
Better still, why not solve this problem once and for all and ban kids from being around adults?ReplyDelete
Apart from nanny approved adults in official child raising and education camps perhaps?
- Anonymous11:55 AM
Read logically, "protecting" kids from the sight of adults smoking results in smoking being banned effectively from EVERYWHERE a child *might* be. This includes the privacy of people's homes. Banning smoking from places where children *might* congregate also amounts to the same thing.ReplyDelete
Or are they simply going to make it offence if a child happens to come into view whilst a fag is being enjoyed?
I can see they haven't thought this through properly...
- John B Stryge12:07 PM
In the 1940s/50s/60s everyone smoked, including teachers in class. There was not one asthmatic in my school. In Lord of the Flies, Piggy is victimised partly because of his asthma - which marked him out as different. If the schhol where my wife works is any indication the asthmatics would almost be the majority now. And no-one smokes.ReplyDelete
I'm not getting into the smoking debate after the abuse some trolls on here gave me last time, but I will say that they're already working on the "stop adults being around children" aspect.ReplyDelete
It's called the "Disclosure" system.
- Lord of Atlantis3:02 PM
"Sad to see that doctors are so keen to interfere in the private lives of others, given that the medical profession is more than prone to abuse its bodies (obesity, booze, fags and other narcotics) more than other sectors of the community."ReplyDelete
Speaking as a non-smoker, I trust, Ken, that none of these doctors smoke or otherwise abuse their bodies: if they do, then I feel that, regardless of the rights and wrongs of their message, they are being hypocritical.
- Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells7:17 PM
Yes, let's concentrate on fag smoke and ignore the real menace to childrens' (and adults') health: exhaust fumes. A smoker produces around 5 litres/min of secondhand smoke, whereas at 60mph the average car generates something like 10,000 (yes, TEN THOUSAND) litres of toxic fumes per mile (and no, catalytic converters don't remove all the muck). Back when I was a tadpole, there where few cases of asthma despite the fact that virtually everybody smoked. There were however very few cars. Now asthmatics seem to be in the majority yet few smoke, but there are of course many more cars. Take off those blindfolds and see the elephant in the room, Royal College of Physicians.ReplyDelete
By the way I do not, and never have, smoked so have no personal axe to grind.
- Old Greeny4:06 PM
I'm sure I read somewhere of a Gov't report in the 50's that stated that atmospheric pollution was causing illness. However, it was suppressed and the blame placed on smoking. Mind you, it amuses me to see those upright specimens of Nanny's darlings jogging through cities, inhaling all those diesel and petrol fumes, and pulling the "bulldog sucking piss off a nettle" face and frantically waving their arms about if anyone is enjoying a fag anywhere near them...Twats!!ReplyDelete
- Grant9:41 PM
Anonymous 11:55 saidReplyDelete
"I can see they haven't thought this through properly..."
Oh I rather think they have thought it through very thoroughly .....
D, TW wrote:
"Back when I was a tadpole, there where few cases of asthma despite the fact that virtually everybody smoked. There were however very few cars. Now asthmatics seem to be in the majority yet few smoke, but there are of course many more cars."
Ah, but the exhaust output from the cars is very much cleaner, in terms of obvious breathing irritants, than it was when I was the age you mentioned. There is, however no lead output as there was then. It's a correlation, but does it point to a causation?
When I started at primary school we lived in South London and I walked to school and back most days, often twice as I went home for lunch. The small of the coal and coke fires through the autumn, winter and early spring as I sauntered through the mists and fogs completely unaccompanied unless I bumped into a school chum provided quite a homely and comforting atmosphere. That I don't remember any of the kids I was mixing with being noted as asthmatic does not, of course, mean there were none.
Some years later in senior school I recall one of my contemporaries being susceptible to 'wheezing' in an asthmatic way. It did not seem to affect his life much. He was quite sporty (far more so than I ) and also an avid smoker as the school years progressed. I think he suffered more from hay fever on high pollen days than anything else. Since the school was in the middle of the countryside the effects of the one, relatively quiet, "A" road nearby were unlikely to be significant.
Another peculiarity of the same chap was the inability to wear a watch (mechanical in the pre-battery driven days) without the thing stopping within a few hours. As far as I know this devastating impediment was never diagnosed or categorised in medical terms.
All of that said I would have no problem being banned from interacting with kids for any purpose. Indeed I would welcome it.
In practical terms adults outnumber kids so the question of whom should be removed out of whose lives seems clear-cut. Come the 'age of maturity' the kids should be expected to pass certain tests and examinations in order to prove their suitability for induction into the adult world. If some never pass, so be it. Give them 3 chances before re-cycling.
Such options for control ought also to keep the "Overpopulated World" alarmists happy as well. Excess child stock could simply be checked for quality for purpose and the failures 'disappeared' without the need to bother adult society with the trivialities. Who could possibly object?
- Anonymous3:29 PM
"Better still, why not solve this problem once and for all and ban kids from being around adults?"ReplyDelete
I reckon the other Anonymous
"Apart from nanny approved adults in official child raising and education camps perhaps?"
and Mosher
"I will say that they're already working on the "stop adults being around children" aspect. It's called the "Disclosure" system."
have it just about right. Parents are Nanny's enemy because they are the only barrier between children and Nanny's brainwashing.
@Old Greeny - I read an article by a doctor (lost it when my last computer died from passive smoking). Apparently, the epidemiology which connected cigarettes with the lung cancer epidemic also connected diesel fumes in equal measure.ReplyDelete


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I have to be really careful not to vomit while typing this post.
Absolutely makes my skin crawl just looking at that picture. When I finally see past the fact that these are tiny, crawly, scattery, creepy ants I actually think this is pretty cool! These ant bottoms change colour depending on the colour of the food they are eating – their bottoms and see-through!
My fear of ants? This movie ruined ants for me: The Naked Jungle. It is about a mass of ants that sweeps through Africa eating everything in their path…including people! Poor people falling over as they try to flee, only to disappear under a moving black mass of demon ants.
Fictional movie aside, this is something that really truly does happen (but not the eating humans part). It is called Marabunta or Army Ant where a large mass of ants forage their way through the land eating insects and small animals. Some species hunt in trees where they eat birds and their eggs. The ant raid can form a path 20 metres wide! They don't build a permanent nest, but keep moving and eating, moving and eating.
Okay, freaking myself out.


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HRC Disability Case - Pico RiveraIn 2015, HRC provided critical services to over 20,000 residents.
For the Rivera family, HRC's services may have helped save the life of their very ill child.
The Rivera's Los Angeles rent controlled apartment was in poor condition when the family moved in 28 years earlier and had not received any updates since that time.
When their 15 year old son Osvaldo was diagnosed with high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia, he received several rounds of cancer fighting medications and ultimately was able to receive a bone marrow transplant - the combination of which detrimentally impacted his already weakened immune system making him susceptible to more illnesses.
Due to the apartment's cockroach and rodent infestation, mold, dust, lack of hot water and general dilapidation, Osvaldo's health care provider would not release him from the hospital to return home.
A clinical social worker contacted HRC for assistance requesting a reasonable accommodation to have the owner make necessary repairs to their apartment, based on Osvaldo's disability.
The social worker stated that Osvaldo could not be discharged from the hospital because they would be discharging him to a "tremendously dangerous and life-threatening home environment."
The property owner refused to make the repairs, even after Osvaldo's doctor confirmed that his severely compromised immune system would be very vulnerable to bacterial, viral, and fungal infections, and that an infection of this nature following a bone marrow transplant could be life-threatening.
The owner refused to make the apartment habitable - until HRC got involved.
The owner fixed the habitability issues by replacing the hot water heater, kitchen counter, sink and fixtures, applying fresh paint, re-tiling the floor, sealing holes and windows, and getting rid of the roach and vermin infestation.
Osvaldo was finally released from the hospital, and recently celebrated Christmas at home with his family.


text: |This render represents Pontiac Solstice - very cool new roadster with 170 HP engine. Modeling took big part here 'coz there is lot of interior modeling as you can see. I was quite happy at end of modeling process and i think it looks rather nice :). GM, Solstice and Pontiac are trademarks of General Motors Company.


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Capitals' Kuznetsov fined $2,000 for embellishment
WASHINGTON (AP) Washington Capitals center Evgeny Kuznetsov was fined $2,000 by the NHL for diving/embellishment.
The league announced the fine Thursday. Kuznetsov's fine is his first and came after two embellishment incidents this season.
Kuznetsov was given a warning after an incident against the Florida Panthers on Oct. 20 and then was fined as the result of an incident during the second period against the New Jersey Devils on Dec. 29. Kuznetsov went to the ice after contact with a Devils player who was going to the bench.
The 24-year-old Russian is the second player to be fined this season after the Arizona Coyotes' Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Each player's next fine for diving would be $3,000 if he is found to embellish again this season.