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Two cases: Local folks who just walked away
The disappearance of Owen Young was solved late last month when Albemarle County police announced that he had surfaced in Tampa, Florida.
Given the facts that emerged after Young disappeared in early January, it was hardly surprising to learn that the 60-year-old Charlottesville entrepreneur had vanished by his own design: His car was found the next week at Dulles airport in Northern Virginia, with no signs of foul play; he was known to be having financial difficulties; and, perhaps most significantly, he had disappeared once before, in his twenties.
Such cases– in which a seemingly well-adjusted person intentionally disappears, leaving distraught family and friends to search for answers– are rare. Yet an oddly similar drama played out in Charlottesville in the summer of 1994. Odder still, both people vanished from the same stretch of East Rio Road.
In the earlier case, Joann Pearson disappeared on July 13, 1994, during an early-morning walk. The 53-year-old woman's husband told the Daily Progress that "her absence was completely out of character."
A 100-person search-and-rescue operation– complete with helicopter, tracking dogs, and command post at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Technical Education Center on East Rio Road– was in full swing by late evening, combing the area within a two-mile radius of Pearson's Whitcover Circle home in the Stonehenge development.
The search was called off 48 hours later. Pearson's husband, Frank, told the Progress that "dogs had tracked his wife to Pen Park, where her scent suddenly disappeared, leading [police] to believe she got into a vehicle or was forced into one."
"We were scared to go out the door," Stonehenge resident Kay Roberts recalled recently. "No one knew if somebody took her."
As with Young, who disappeared from his rented townhouse at River Run– which borders Pen Park, where police dogs lost Pearson's scent– there were soon hints that Pearson's disappearance had been planned.
"Rumors... that Pearson is alive and well and living in San Diego have not been proven," County Detective Tommy Grimes told the Progress at the time that police were examining long-distance records and credit-card receipts, looking for a paper trail, but Grimes said that the search had been "far from fruitful."
"If somebody doesn't want to be found," he added, "they don't have to be found. They can stay hidden a long time."
On August 12, 1994, the Progress reported that Pearson had "left of her own free will" and was "safe in another state." Nothing more about the case appeared in the media. Pearson eventually returned and has lived with her husband on Whitcover Circle for a number of years.
Young remains in Florida, where, according to County police Det. Sgt. James Bond, he's working. Young "felt that he needed to get away from this area," Bond says.
Tracey Linkous, who knew Young through a local networking group called the Company of Friends, said, "I wasn't surprised at all" when she heard that Young had arranged to disappear, and added that that had been her assumption ever since she heard he'd done the same thing as a young man.
Young's disappearance has been discussed on cvillenews.com, where one poster, "fdr," had this to say: "He's been found; it's over; his reasons are nobody's business but those to whom he is obligated. I feel bad for his family and was glad to see only minimal coverage until the Hook piece ["Missing Man," June 26, 2003] came out. I for one hope this 'news' dies quickly."
But such cases have consequences. Albemarle County police captain Scott Hambrick, who is no longer with the force, told the Progress, after Pearson had been found, that he couldn't remember a case in the last five or 10 years "that we have put so much effort into." Because most of the searchers were volunteers, Hambrick noted, the search had not significantly drained public coffers, but it did, consume "thousands" of hours of volunteers' time.
Emotional costs were also exacted. Like the women frightened to walk alone after Pearson's disappearance, Owen Young's decision to vanish left its own kind of scars. At a "service of remembrance and appreciation" his friends held June 14 at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church, the prevailing mood was a mixture of bewilderment and muted grief.
"The Owen we remember," pastor David Takahashi said, "is the Owen who goes forward with us from now on." Presumably that's a different Owen from the one who, by then, was slipping into a new life and shedding the dust of the old.
In Exit the Rainmaker, a 1990 best-seller, Charlottesville writer Jonathan Coleman told the story of Jay Carsey, an outwardly successful Maryland community-college president who, in 1982, abandoned his life.
"I never passed judgment on him," Coleman said in a June interview. "That finally seemed, for him, the only way out– he was thinking about the excitement he was going toward." In Carsey's case, the exciting new life evolved into one that, like the old one, he ultimately abandoned.
"One thing that is a shared trait among people who voluntarily disappear," Coleman added, "is that they're very good at dissembling. It partly comes from an inability to confront weakness." Yet new lives, no matter how much respite from weakness they may appear to offer at first, have a troubling tendency to develop the same old cracks. They also have a tendency to be painful– and expensive– for those left in their wake.


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Failed attempts to deport Qatada have cost nearly £1million
Repeated failed attempts to deport radical cleric Abu Qatada have cost nearly £1million in legal fees, the Government confirmed.
Immigration Minister Damian Green admitted the bill since 2002 has reached £825,000 and is set to continue to grow.
Home Secretary Theresa May has come in for intense criticism over her handling of the case after confusion over an appeal deadline means Qatada could be released on bail within weeks.
Mr Green said the tally related to legal fees incurred by the Government in trying to return the cleric to Jordan.
No figures were given for how much Qatada, described by a judge as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, has received in legal aid over that period.
The Legal Services Commission (LSC), which runs the legal aid scheme in England and Wales, confirmed last week the 51-year-old has been receiving public money to fund his appeals.
Qatada was arrested by officers from the UK Border Agency (UKBA) on the morning of Tuesday April 17, just hours after the Home Office said the time for any appeal was up.
But Qatada's lawyers claim their appeal to the Strasbourg-based court, made at 11pm local time (10pm BST) on April 17, was just before the midnight deadline.
A panel of judges at the human rights court will now decide whether the appeal was in time or not. If the deadline had expired, the judges have no discretion to allow the appeal to be considered by the court's Grand Chamber.
Mr Green said: "Since 2002 the legal fees incurred by the Government to deport Abu Qatada are around £825,000. The case is ongoing and so further costs are likely to be incurred."

subset: commoncrawl


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4N – 5D / ₹ 7,899/- (P.P.) / 4 star
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Description:HP StoreWorks Ultrium 215 LTO Low Voltage Differential (LVD) Internal Tape Drive for Proliant Servers (Carbon) - 5.25in form factor half heightPart Number(s)
HP Part# Q1543A
Overview:As the entry point for HP 's Ultrium tape drive family the HP StorageWorks Ultrium 215 tape drive offers superdrive capacity in a compact half-height form factor that makes it easy to integrate into desktop workstations and servers. An ideal solution for network backup where capacity and low cost of ownership are critical the Ultrium 215 stores 200 GB of compressed data on a single tape at up to 54GB per hour. ??Despite its low cost the Ultrium 215's rugged design delivers excellent reliability even at 100% duty cycles and includes many of the advanced features of its bigger siblings. The drive employs data rate matching to adjust to the speed of the host reducing wear and tear on both drive and media and increasing performance particularly on slower systems. HP StorageWorks One-Button Disaster Recovery takes the worry out of disaster planning - making the Ultrium 215 especially suitable for environments with limited IT support.


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Outsourced case management operations open new channels for citizens and improve efficiency.
For decades, pursuing benefits from Indiana social services was a test of will, according to Zach Main, director of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA).
Citizens who needed services had to navigate a time-consuming bureaucracy before receiving benefits. Benefits disbursement errors and eligibility determination blunders also plagued the agency, costing the state
millions of dollars.
Before taking his position in 2005, Main oversaw construction of the Indiana Republican Party's Voter Vault database. The model he implemented is now the standard for Republican voter databases in all 50 states. Main outsourced the FSSA's case management operations to IBM, which revamped processes and technologies to decrease eligibility inaccuracies and eliminate unnecessary steps during the delivery of services. The pilot program is already in progress.
Inheriting a Mess
Main toured the organization's 107 offices after joining the agency. He found incompatible bureaucracies that forced citizens to travel more than once to government offices for social services that often took two weeks to initiate.
"We had taken the people who, in many ways, had the least time to give and the least amount of paid time off, and we were making them jump through way too many hoops to get the assistance they were entitled to," he said.
Main soon discovered the administration's business processes were more inconsistent than he and his team originally thought.
"If you walked into an office in one county, it would be a completely different experience than if you had walked into an office in another county," he said. "We found we had about 2,000 caseworkers out there, and we realized we actually had about 2,000 ways of doing business. Every caseworker within that system operated independently of the rest."
Counties managed much of Indiana's family and social services until the state consolidated those functions by creating the FSSA in 1991. However, in 2004, individual FSSA offices still operated with their own rules as if they were still county offices, said Main.
The FSSA also mismanaged money. Main discovered that 12 percent of the time, the agency made errors when qualifying people for food stamps or determining the dollar amounts they could receive. The agency also incorrectly determined eligibility 36 percent of the time when disbursing Medicaid benefits, usually giving them to ineligible recipients.
"That's the Medicaid you give to elderly people who need to be in a nursing home but can't afford a nursing home," Main said. "The state pays for their nursing home to the tune of about $3,000 a month for the rest of their lives. As you can see, those decisions can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars for just one eligibility decision."
Bypassing Government Culture
Main decided to outsource the FSSA's services to IBM because a major internal change would have been too difficult and expensive. For example, Indiana's human resources infrastructure discouraged altering job classifications, which the agency needed to do to implement new processes.
"That was virtually impossible within the old system," he said. "If the person whose job you changed didn't like it, it could trigger an appeal process that would last 18 months, and you weren't sure if you would win it in the end."
To transform the agency internally, Main would have needed a budget increase of more than $100 million.
"It's very hard for me to go to the Legislature and say I need a [multi]million dollar increase to my budget because the savings is coming beyond when their next election cycle is going to be - and maybe beyond when this governor is going to be here," Main said.
However, the IBM deal slashed the 10-year cost of modernizing the agency down to $1.6 billion, which was $341 million below the agency's current costs. That offered legislators a savings
they could brag about to their constituents, said Main.
The Solution
IBM deployed a case management suite powered by Cúram Software that used the state's legacy benefits calculation application, so the agency didn't have to start from scratch. The solution implemented Web interfaces that let citizens conduct business online with the FSSA, which reduces the number of in-person trips to agency offices.
All caseworkers on duty will be able to pull up a citizen's file and provide services. In the past, an FSSA client was assigned to only one caseworker. If a client came to the office on a day his or her caseworker called in sick, he or she was out of luck.
The agency stored client data in paper files, which only the assigned caseworkers touched. If a client moved, the agency had to mail his or her file to a different office.
With electronically stored files, multiple caseworkers, each specializing in different types of benefits, ensure that clients receive all the appropriate entitlements.
Some of those FSSA specialists might work in other offices around the state, said Brian Whitfield, IBM vice president for state and local government. "If someone had a unique case that required specialization, they had to fax and accept documents," he said. "By moving to the electronic file, we can do workload balancing around the state."
In the past, if a caseworker lacked knowledge about certain programs, that caseworker's client was at a disadvantage, said Main.
IBM also established a centralized call center that's open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. to answer clients' questions. Gone are the days when clients could only call during bankers' hours. The call center has access to all case files and uses an interactive voice response system to handle 40 percent of the calls.
"Now like normal customer service situations you run into, I can pick up a phone if I'm a client, and I can call, and whoever answers my call can open up my case from a computer and answer my questions," Main said.
IBM also implemented a technology in which FSSA employees insert mailed paper applications into a system that scans them, creates an electronic document and routes the e-copy to the proper files.
"Before, you'd have stuff coming in that was mailed, and you had to figure out manually where it needed to go, then put it with a hard-copy file," Whitfield said.
He said the fact that one case will often be handled by several different caseworkers would likely uncover and prevent fraud. In the past, caseworkers were usually in charge of their cases from beginning to end, making it easy for them to give benefits to ineligibles.
"Over the last few years before we got here, we had more than 20 of our employees arrested for fraud charges, with an average amount stolen of roughly $50,000 each," Main said. "Then we had a couple more people arrested while we were in the process of going through the procurement."
The Migration
Main was determined not to go through the same difficulties Texas faced when it tried to replace caseworker offices at the state's Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) with a centralized call center. Most of the Texas agency's seasoned employees moved to jobs elsewhere after resisting the drastic culture change. This left the agency's contractor to staff the center mostly with new employees who had the additional challenge of debugging the call center's new eligibility application.
"Texas modernized and thought they could replace seasoned caseworkers with $8-per-hour people off the street," Main said. "We had an incredibly educated work force - a lot of them with master's degrees and bachelor's degrees. The average tenure was more than 10 years,
especially as you got into more rural areas. ... We said, 'These people are too valuable to let them go off to other places.'"
The FSSA wanted 1,500 of its 2,200-person work force to become IBM employees. The agency required IBM to offer all 1,500 employees jobs for a minimum of two years at the same pay and benefits they received from the state.
Main also said the Texas HHSC tried to change too much too quickly. "They tried to change the way they did business by instituting different process models. They tried to replace their core legacy computer system. They tried to change some of the rules of eligibility on some of their most popular programs. And they tried to lay off a third of their work force all at the same time," Main said.
Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the HHSC, said the agency attempted such an ambitious plan simply because it had a lot to change. Texas' outdated system hadn't changed in nearly four decades, and colleges no longer taught COBOL, the system's programming language. The system needed quick, drastic modernization before the state ran out of COBOL programmers.
"There are also special challenges in dealing with a population as large and diverse as we have in Texas. We have 2.3 million food stamp recipients," Goodman said. "I suspect that's a few more than Indiana."
New Focus
Main said the role of FSSA's leaders changed to focus on contract management rather than traditional operations management.
"We've changed the mission of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration," Main said. The agency's primary focus needs to be contract management, he said, because 92 percent of the agency's $7 billion budget is contracted out.
The pilot version of the IBM contract is under way in 12 counties.
"Anytime you do a pilot," he said, "you make certain guesses on the number of people who are going to access the system through each different kind of channel." Main said call volume was double what was expected.
The FSSA planned for phone hold times to be only 90 seconds. Instead, they average roughly 5 minutes, Main said. However, he said when call center operators answer the calls and apologize for those wait times, they often receive surprising responses.
"[Clients] say, 'Are you kidding me? Five minutes on the phone? I waited 10 minutes at the bus stop just to catch the first of two buses I needed to take to the county welfare office. This is incredibly convenient for us.'"
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Gadflies don't make a lot of friends. Paulo Adario knows. A bustling man with a wiry build, intense emerald eyes, and flecks of gray in his beard, Adario has spent most of the past three years wearing a bulletproof vest and fending off death threats with the help of bodyguards. As director of the Greenpeace office in the city of Manaus, deep in the Amazon jungle, the 55-year-old Brazilian oversees the environmental organization's campaign to halt the illegal logging of big-leaf mahogany. "Only drugs have that incredible variation of value," Adario points out. No wonder there are people in the timber industry who would like to see him dead.
Adario doesn't fear for his life as he sips a cup of cafecito on this April morning at Raffi's outdoor cafe on Collins Avenue, but the matter at hand seems almost as urgent. "It's upside down," the activist marvels. "The people working to enforce the law are now being prosecuted by the law." Adario arrived in South Beach this morning along with Hamilton Casara, the former president of Brazil's environmental protection agency IBAMA, who now represents the state of Rondônia in the Brazilian congress. The immense man with a soft voice, shy smile, and skin nearly as dark as the wood he protects signed into Brazilian law a moratorium on the mahogany trade in October 2001. "We are grateful to Greenpeace for helping us preserve the forests," relays the first-term congressman. Now he says he has come to Miami to support Greenpeace in turn: "It's very important to defend democratic principles."
Hillary Hosta agrees. The blond, six-foot-tall massage therapist calmly carving up a vegetarian omelet was convicted of illegally boarding the APL Jade, a merchant vessel that Greenpeace suspected of mahogany smuggling, three miles out from the Port of Miami in April 2002. The smugglers got away, but the activists were charged with breaking an 1872 law that hadn't been implemented in more than a hundred years. The sparse case law on record suggests the statute, which forbids unauthorized persons from boarding a ship about to arrive at its destination, was originally written to keep shady characters from luring sailors to houses of ill repute on shore. That June, Hosta and the other activists hit with the charge pled no contest. Case closed. Then thirteen months later a federal grand jury indicted Greenpeace USA for the same crime, accusing the organization itself of conspiracy to commit "sailor-mongering." As silly as the charge may sound, the impact of a conviction could be quite serious.
While Hosta and the Brazilians finish their breakfast, the Greenpeace legal team convenes across the causeway in a windowless conference room at a Brickell Avenue law firm. There's local attorney Jane Moscowitz; Greenpeace general counsel Thomas Wetterer, who has come down from Washington, D.C., with two other lawyers; Greenpeace International sent a consultant from London as well. The team sits in black high-backed chairs and sifts through stacks of documents to prepare for a trial before Judge Adalberto Jordan in a Miami courtroom in May. If the jury finds Greenpeace USA guilty, the organization faces five years' probation and a fine up to $10,000 that could increase every time anyone in the group engages in civil disobedience. Adario's U.S. allies could be effectively shut down.
When the Search and Rescue alarm sounded at 2:15 p.m. on April 12, 2002, Seaman Darrin Grant ran for his gun belt and gear. The radio at the Miami Beach Coast Guard station reported that two Greenpeace activists had illegally boarded a commercial freighter in Biscayne Bay. Boatswain Mate Second Class David Ramirez briefed his crew, then sped past the jetties on Government Cut as fast as the 41-foot USCG utility boat allowed. There the Coast Guard saw three tugboats preparing to tow in the APL Jade. Three smaller boats, carrying flags that read "Save the Amazon" and "Stop Illegal Logging," buzzed about the freighter.
Flipping on police lights and siren, Ramirez chased a gray Greenpeace dinghy, but he could not keep pace with the agile eighteen-foot Avon. So Ramirez radioed for backup, then switched course to pursue a smaller red inflatable. The Zodiac's operator immediately obeyed a command to follow the Coast Guard boat to dock at the station. When Ramirez returned to the scene, he saw a small Sea Ray idling near the Jade while a photographer onboard snapped pictures. The Sea Ray's skipper also followed Ramirez to the station without flight or fight. By the third time the utility boat approached the Jade, a nimble 27-foot USCG safeboat had arrived, as had a Miami-Dade Police Marine Unit. The three police boats boxed in the Avon, and it was towed in on a skiff hook.
Below deck on the APL Jade, Greenpeace volunteers Hosta and Scott Anderson chatted with the freighter's chief officer, Cheang Wai Sun. Sun had discovered the pair scurrying up the pilot's ladder on the side of the ship and prevented them from hanging a banner that read "President Bush: Stop Illegal Logging." When Hosta left the ship, she gave the banner to Sun as a souvenir. Seaman Grant waited on the dock with handcuffs.
Targeting the APL Jade was a good gamble. Since 1999 the Greenpeace Amazon campaign has been tracking the traffic in illegal wood from Brazil. Directed by Paulo Adario, the field office in Manaus has documented the process, from the moment mature mahogany trees are identified by planes flying over the jungle to the wood's fate as dining room tables in Ethan Allen show rooms or do-it-yourself decking at Home Depot. Brazilian officials estimate that the trees have brought $3 billion in profits to the country since the trade intensified in the Seventies. A cubic meter of the precious wood can be produced for as little as $10 and sold on the export market for $700 to $1600.
In September 2001 Greenpeace released a report called "Partners in Mahogany Crime" that exposed the mahogany trade and how the so-called mahogany barons rely on corruption, slavery, and murder to get their goods to market. The report made a splash in the United States with coverage by CNN, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. It received so much media play and caused such a scandal in Brazil that the Federal Police and IBAMA, the country's counterparts to the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency, joined forces with Greenpeace to launch a series of raids on illegal loggers called Operation Mahogany. The Brazilian government imposed a moratorium on the country's mahogany trade. IBAMA discovered such rampant irregularities that it was impossible to determine which logs had been harvested legally, so the agency began the laborious process of comparing the amount of wood each logging company had been permitted to harvest with the amount each company was attempting to export. Any excess was deemed illegal and seized.
Logging companies sued the government in local courts in December, persuading judges in the Amazon region to circumvent the federal moratorium and allow the export of the wood. IBAMA could not simply override the local court rulings and halt the exports. At the same time, the agency had to follow the rules imposed by CITES, the international convention on endangered species to which Brazil adheres. To alert importing countries that these shipments did not comply with international law, the authorities at IBAMA stamped each permit with the words: This Export was determined by Precarious Judicial Decision (Injunction).
Since 80 percent of the country's big-leaf mahogany is exported to the United States, Brazil turned to the U.S. government for help. Early in February 2002, Hamilton Casara, who was then president of IBAMA, met with Assistant Secretary of State John Turner in Washington, D.C. In a speech on February 14, President George W. Bush revealed that he had asked Secretary of State Colin Powell to come up with a plan to crack down on illegal logging. Inspectors from the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) seized Brazilian mahogany shipments at U.S. ports.
Yet some shipments were still getting through, so Greenpeace decided to make the issue more public. The Manaus office made a list of ships that had repeatedly smuggled mahogany into the United States by mislabeling the cargo or transferring logs from one ship to another. Analyzing import data, the forest campaigners noticed that a ship called the Mitsui Osk Liner (MOL Amazonas) repeatedly carried big-leaf mahogany from the city of Belém to the port of Manzanillo, Panama. There the logs were unloaded and transferred to the APL Jade for transport to the United States. The transferred wood did not show up on the Jade's manifest. Instead it was listed on a separate manifest for the MOL. Though there was no way to be certain that the smugglers would repeat the routine when the Jade headed for Miami on April 10, Hosta and Anderson readied themselves for action. "It's like waiting for a bus," says Scott Paul, director of the Greenpeace USA forest campaign. "It just happened that the next bus was coming to Miami."
Soon after the Coast Guard apprehended the activists in Miami, FBI agents arrived. Special Agent David Grazer took statements from the Coast Guard officers and from the Jade's crew. (The Coast Guard, FBI, and U.S. Attorney's Office have all declined to comment on circumstances surrounding a pending case.) Later that night, the FBI processed the Greenpeace volunteers.
Hosta remembers the exchange like this:
Do you belong to a gang?
"Yes," Grazer said as he wrote on the intake form, saving Hosta the trouble of responding. "Greenpeace."
"Excuse me," Hosta remembers interrupting, "Greenpeace is not a gang."
"Indeed it is," Grazer insisted with a smile. "A gang is a group where members defer to the organization for their beliefs and actions."
Any gang tattoos?
Glancing at the amateurish globe the idealistic Hosta had inked in the crook of her left arm at age nineteen, the special agent wrote yes.
After eluding detection in the Port of Miami, the APL Jade set course for the Port of Charleston. While docked in South Carolina on April 14, 2002, documents from the port import/export reporting service PIERS show, the Jade's crew unloaded 72 crates, or 70 tons, of mahogany veneer. Less than one-fifth that amount had been legally permitted.
Meanwhile millions of dollars' worth of precious wood that did not make it through inspection was piling up in APHIS warehouses along the Eastern seaboard. Concerned representatives from the timber industry met in Belém with government officials from the United States and South America at a workshop from May 2 to May 4, 2002, called "Sustainable Trade and Management of Mahogany."
Among the participants was a representative from Aljoma Lumber in Northwest Miami-Dade, the largest importer of Brazilian mahogany in the United States. On March 7, 2002, 760 cubic meters of mahogany bound for Aljoma Lumber were seized in Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. On March 26, 2002, another 660 cubic meters headed for Aljoma were seized in the Port of Miami. At roughly $1400 per cubic meter, that put the Medley lumber company out more than $2 million in wood. Aljoma joined six other mahogany importers in suing the U.S. government for the release of the wood and lost. The company later refused to arrange for the wood to be exported back to Brazil as instructed by APHIS. The U.S. Attorney is taking legal action to make Aljoma forfeit the wood.
"We feel terribly wronged by this and we have lost a lot of money as a result of these actions," reports David Flinn, chief financial officer of Aljoma Lumber. "We did everything the way you were supposed to do. The Brazilian government couldn't say which particular lot [of big-leaf mahogany] was exported illegally and which was not. The wood that was denied entry and is now under suit for forfeiture could just as well have been the wood that was released. Drawing straws would be equally objective."
But someone was not taking any chances. On April 25, 2002, Peter O. Thomas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture official in charge of making sure the country complies with CITES, received an unusual fax. Signed by a midlevel IBAMA bureaucrat named Randolf Zachow, the fax dismissed the mahogany moratorium as a "mistake," a "misunderstanding," and even "madness" based on "a lot of false information." Zachow urged Thomas, on behalf of the Brazilian government, to release the seized mahogany.
At 7:00 a.m. on May 2, a source in the U.S. State Department called to alert Greenpeace USA forest campaign manager Scott Paul. The caller would reveal only that an IBAMA official had written a letter authorizing the imminent release. "I need a name," Paul pleaded.
The caller left him guessing: Look for someone with authority in IBAMA whose name begins with the letter Z.
At 3:00 p.m. on May 2, the USDA announced that all mahogany shipments would be released the following morning. Hours earlier, Paul had secured a copy of the Zachow fax and forwarded it to Adario. On lunch break at the timber industry's mahogany workshop in Belém, where he was allowed to attend but not to participate, Adario could hardly believe what he was reading. "In the workshop they were talking about how to end the moratorium," he remembers. "When someone was about to put an end to it with a single fax."
Adario alerted the president of Brazil directly. "If I had contacted the president of IBAMA or the Minister of Health," he speculates, "the wood would have been released." Instead by 5:00 that evening Zachow was fired.
In June 2002 the U.S. Attorney made a formal offer to the Greenpeace activists: Plead no contest to the sailor-mongering charges and there will be no jail time, no fine, not even any community service. The volunteers were ecstatic.
In September 2002, however, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami convened a grand jury to investigate the possibility of bringing sailor-mongering and conspiracy charges against Greenpeace USA. The grand jury indicted the organization on July 18, 2003. The indictment filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Elliot alleges that Greenpeace selected the APL Jade as the target of conspiracy "based upon the defendant's erroneous belief that the 'M/V APL Jade' carried a shipment of Brazilian mahogany lumber."
If the U.S. Attorney's Office was determined to prosecute Greenpeace for the APL Jade adventure, that didn't mean President Bush had forgotten his promise to crack down on illegal logging. On July 28, 2003, ten days after the Greenpeace indictment, the president hailed his new Anti-Illegal Logging Initiative. At the White House, in the Benjamin Franklin room, Secretary of State Powell named Brazil as an area of special interest in the government's effort. "We are all impoverished whenever environmental crime destroys a tree," Powell proclaimed. "We are all at risk when deforestation plants the seed of despair in a new human heart."
Branded criminals in Miami waters, Greenpeace decided to bring one of the organization's ships to the Port of Miami on a goodwill tour. On October 6, 2003, Greenpeace ship tour coordinator Rose Young had what she calls a cordial meeting with assistant port chief John Perez about docking the Greenpeace vessel M/S Esperanza at the port later that month and inviting the public onboard. But Greenpeace's criminal reputation had been firmly established. On October 10, assistant port director Gerry Cafiero sent an e-mail advising Young that the port does not allow public functions and that because of the "recent conduct of Greenpeace ... the Port deems your berthing request to pose an undue security risk."
When the Esperanza arrived on October 26, the ship stayed at anchor a few miles east of Miami Beach. Even so, the Coast Guard prohibited the organization from bringing any guests onboard, including the media.
Greenpeace may have failed to change its image in the eyes of the Coast Guard and the port, but the group's insistence that the APL Jade did carry illegal mahogany gave Special Agent Grazer second thoughts. As the Esperanza sat at anchor, the FBI agent contacted James "Budd" Petit de Mange, the CITES and plant inspection station coordinator at APHIS, for more information on the Jade's cargo. On October 30 Petit sent him a copy of a fax from IBAMA, which detailed the complicated process for determining whether a particular shipment of big-leaf mahogany had been legally logged. There in Table No. 5 was the amount exporter G.D. Carajas was permitted to send on the APL Jade: eight cubic meters. And there on a copy of the company's CITES permit stamped "determined by Precarious Judicial Decision" was the amount the Jade actually carried: 42 cubic meters.
Unfortunately APHIS inspectors did not see these documents when the Jade unloaded in Charleston. "There was some kind of a supplemental manifest that was not seen by our people," Petit recalls. "That shipment did not get held as it would normally."
Agent Grazer faxed the documents to Cameron Elliot. On October 31, the Assistant U.S. Attorney filed a revised indictment against Greenpeace, striking the statement about the "erroneous belief" about the Jade's cargo.
In December 2003, in a federal courtroom in Miami, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elliot and the Greenpeace legal team attempted to define U.S. law for Judge Adalberto Jordan. Greenpeace made a motion to dismiss the case because the sailor-mongering statute was too vague to stand. When exactly is a ship "about to arrive" -- three feet from the dock? Three miles out? Twelve miles out?
If Jordan determined the statute was too vague, that would be enough for the prosecution to lose the case, but it wouldn't go very far in explaining why the U.S. Attorney decided to dredge up this archaic law or to apply it to Greenpeace USA as a whole. Jane Moscowitz argued that this might be a case of "special prosecution."
At no time in the history of the United States, Moscowitz claimed, has the U.S. government prosecuted an advocacy organization for actions committed by that organization's members: not the Army of God, not Operation Rescue, not the KKK. In another case that took place at sea in this judge's jurisdiction, Moscowitz recalled, the government prosecuted Ramon Saul Sanchez for sailing into a designated security zone to stage a protest against the Castro regime, but did not prosecute his Democracy Movement.
Why would Greenpeace be singled out? Especially since the government has been so gung-ho about helping to stop the illegal traffic in big-leaf mahogany? Because, the defense motion pointed out, Greenpeace actions on other issues have vexed the Bush administration, beginning with a banner Greenpeace volunteers hung within view of the president's ranch shortly after his inauguration that read: "Bush: Toxic Texan: Don't Mess with the Earth."
The motion listed subsequent Greenpeace actions that protested the administration's policies on energy, the National Missile Defense System, nuclear weapons, security at chemical plants, the oil industry, the war in Iraq, and radioactive waste in postwar Iraq. There are certainly grounds for the Bush administration to be annoyed with Greenpeace USA. To see if the Justice Department has actually turned that annoyance into a legal vendetta, Moscowitz asked the judge to compel the government to provide all correspondence concerning Greenpeace from all relevant agencies.
Elliot countered that the 1872 statute has been used so rarely that the defense can't make a claim of selective prosecution; there's no other group for the judge to compare with the defendants.
The judge considered Elliot's argument.
"If there is a statute on the books for 200 years with only two or three prosecutions, then 250 years later somebody gets prosecuted, how do you go about proving or disproving the selective use of that statute?" Jordan mused. "What would Greenpeace have to show?"
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Jordan did not answer that question when he released his order on the Greenpeace motions on April 15, 2004. He put off any decision on the vagueness challenge until the hearing in May. But he did determine who will answer the questions raised by the sailor-mongering charge by granting Greenpeace a jury trial. That's an unusual move for a misdemeanor, but the judge gave several reasons why this is not a "run-of-the-mill misdemeanor case." The charges have been "gathering dust for over a century," and "the indictment is a rare -- and maybe unprecedented -- prosecution of an advocacy organization" that "may therefore signal a change in [Department of Justice] policy." For that reason, he noted, some people view the prosecution as "politically motivated due to the organization's criticism of President Bush's environmental policies." Finally, he pointed out, "the government apparently does not view this case as typical" since the U.S. Attorney indicted the organization with a grand jury, typically reserved for "infamous crime."
"I cannot see anything wrong," the judge concluded, "with having members of the community determine whether the government can prove the charges against Greenpeace beyond a reasonable doubt."
That is precisely the kind of tribunal Greenpeace likes best. Forest campaigner Scott Paul is confident that the organization stands a good chance of acquittal in a jury trial, "if the judge allows us to say what we want to say," he predicts. "We're feeling really good about the outcome because the angels are on our side on this."


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Givat Shmuel, Israel – June 11, 2009 – Cimatron Limited (Nasdaq: CIMT), a leading provider of integrated CAD/CAM solutions for mold, tool and die makers as well as manufacturers of discrete parts, announced that it has officially released version 9.0 of CimatronE.
According to customers' reports, CimatronE 9.0, complete with brand new features and capabilities, is the most productive version of the software to date, cutting down significantly on design, programming and machining times.
"CimatronE 9.0 has vastly improved current functions, and added many new functions which help get projects through design and fabrication faster and more efficiently." said Jose Barreto, Die Design Engineer at Weiss-Aug, USA.
"CimatronE 9.0 not only increases our accuracy and speed, it also makes us more confident than ever that the finished product will be right to the numbers as well as giving us a great finish." stated Tom Neeb, CAD/CAM Department Manager at Apollo Tool Co., USA.
There are productivity enhancements in tool design, NC for tooling and 5-Axis solutions, covering the whole spectrum from quoting to delivery. CimatronE's most productive attribute remains it's integrated CAD/CAM; design and NC programming take place in the same environment eliminating the need for data translation, preventing errors and saving time wasted transferring files from one application to another.
CimatronE 9.0 includes major enhancements to mold and die designers, including new capabilities for transfer die makers, and more automation for tool design. Automatic Features are in line with CimatronE's winning formula of Flexible Automation, prioritizing the user's ability to control and override all automatic functions. The CimatronE Electrode solution now includes a new CMM application for defining measuring points and probe paths.
Programming and Machining times have been significantly shortened with new NC for tooling capabilities. These capabilities have been developed not only to speed things up but also to ensure safe machining with no gouges and collisions, and support polish-free surface quality. New NC capabilities include significant improvements to the drilling application, with added safety measures and increased efficiency.
Additionally, new machining strategies are available for HSM and 5-Axis Milling, providing more benefits to the medical and other industries performing high precision jobs. A new impeller cutting application speeds up production for aerospace users. Cimatron 9.0 includes a new, more powerful and more accurate machine simulator with improved interaction and functionality.
"This is the fastest, most advanced version of CimatronE we have ever released," said Danny Haran, Cimatron's CEO. "At a point in time when toolmakers and manufacturers are thirsting for ways to cut costs and speed up all their processes, we are providing a serious upgrade to our software which will dramatically increase our customers' productivity".
About Cimatron
With over 25 years of experience and more than 40,000 installations worldwide, Cimatron is a leading provider of integrated, CAD/CAM solutions for mold, tool and die makers as well as manufacturers of discrete parts. Cimatron is committed to providing comprehensive, cost-effective solutions that streamline manufacturing cycles, enable collaboration with outside vendors, and ultimately shorten product delivery time.
The Cimatron product line includes the CimatronE and GibbsCAM brands with solutions for mold design, die design, electrodes design, 2.5 to 5 axes milling, wire EDM, turn, Mill-turn, rotary milling, multi-task machining, and tombstone machining. Cimatron's subsidiaries and extensive distribution network serve and support customers in the automotive, aerospace, medical, consumer plastics, electronics, and other industries in over 40 countries worldwide.
Cimatron is publicly traded on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol CIMT. For more information, please visit the company web site at: http://www.cimatron.com/
This press release includes forward looking statements, within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act Of 1995, which are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Such statements may relate to the company's plans, objectives and expected financial and operating results. The words "may," "could," "would," "will," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plan," and similar expressions or variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of the future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's ability to control. The risks and uncertainties that may affect forward looking statements include, but are not limited to: currency fluctuations, global economic and political conditions, marketing demand for Cimatron products and services, long sales cycle, new product development, assimilating future acquisitions, maintaining relationships with customers and partners, and increased competition. For more details about the risks and uncertainties of the business, refer to the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchanges Commission. The company cannot assess the impact of or the extent to which any single factor or risk, or combination of them, may cause. Cimatron undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.


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Asher Roth, Beanie Sigel, Mos Def & Mistah F.A.B - Cannon Freestyle Performance
All four emcees go in over Don Cannon's mixtape classic at a Magic after party in Las Vegas
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Posts Tagged Family Safety
A Household Employee Gone Bad and Becomes Threat to Family Safety I
Posted by ROBERT LEE in Family, Security on August 15, 2012
To be clear, I define household employees as people hired to work inside our house. Typically, we hire female domestic helpers (or maids), and male houseboys and family drivers. Read the rest of this entry »


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Several places in Atahualpa, the theme checks to see whether WPMU is running by seeing whether wpmu-settings.php exists. This file has been removed in WP 3.0+, so the check always returns false, breaking ability to use images uploaded through the media uploader for the rotating image header.
WP 3.0+ has a core function is_multisite() that works nicely for this purpose. If you want to keep backward compatibility with WPMU, maybe you could do something like
if ( ( function_exists( 'is_multisite' ) && is_multisite() ) || file_exists(ABSPATH."/wpmu-settings.php") )
(Untested, but I imagine it will work.)


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By Donald Furthman Wickets
ALL the old landmarks are going, nothing is static, everything flows. Old dreams and old nightmares become realities. Life is created in the laboratory. Sex is no longer immutable. Recently the astonishing news made the rounds that science had actually succeeded in changing the gender of two female athletes. The miracle was accomplished by surgery and duly acknowledged by law.
Mary Weston, who held (and still holds) the shotput record for women in Great Britain, is Case No. One. In 1926 Mary won the British javelin championship of her sex. "She" also, at one time or another, represented her country's womanhood at the Olympic Games. Today, Mary Weston, now known as Mark Weston, is a young man legally and is happily married to a normal young woman. Dr. L. R. Broster, a London surgeon, certifies: "that Mark Weston, who has always been brought up as a female, is a male and should continue to live as such." Discussing his athletic records before his transformation, Weston insists that he believed at the time that he was a woman.
The medals awarded to him were won in good faith. Equally sensational is Case No. Two. A native of Czecho-Slovakia, Zdenek Koubkov (nee Zdeneka Koub-kova) reaped athletic honors as a woman. In 1932 he won the hundred-meter championship at the Women's Olympics. Sports writers called him "the fastest woman on legs." For twenty-three years Zdenek lived as a woman—at one time as a corset fitter—an occupation which, as his nascent masculinity asserted itself, he found at times decidedly embarrassing. No one, except himself, doubted his femininity. However, in 1935, while he was wearing his running togs, suspicion as to his true sex arose. An investigation ensued. Shortly afterward (according to his story related to Gordon Kahn in the New York Daily Mirror), Professor Milosh Kilcka, head of a surgical institute in Podol, decided to emphasize Zdenek's masculinity by means of an operation. The operation was so successful that the Czecho-Slovakian government officially sanctioned Zdenek's transfer from the female to the male classification.
The two cases led to a request at the recent Olympics in Berlin for a medical examination of all female contestants. No action was taken by the committee, but the fantastic possibility of a complete sexual metamorphosis in human beings has aroused world-wide discussion. How is such a transformation possible? Can science alter the sex of a human being? To answer this question intelligently, we must review the evolution of sex.
There are many theories as to when and how sex is determined. Three major factors are generally considered decisive. The first factor is intimately connected with the creation of life itself. Sex, it is believed by many, is determined when first the male and the female chromosomes join each other in the sex act. The chromosomes transmit hereditary characteristics; they preordain our nervous, mental and physical being. Although the external organs are not visible in the human embryo until the fifth week, it is probable that every cell of the unborn infant bears the stamp of its sexual constitution from the moment of its conception.
When I speak of a person's sex, I refer to his or her preponderant sex. Sex is relative. No man is 100 per cent male, no woman 100 per cent female. Every male, even the lustiest, retains certain rudimentary characteristics of the other sex. Similarly every woman inherits certain male organs. Each sex carries within itself the potentialities of the other. Concealed from the naked eye many similarities exist in the male and female structures.
The second major factor in the evolution of sex are the glands of internal secretion. While sex is determined in the chromosomes, it nevertheless requires the proper male or female sex hormones to develop naturally. If an endocrine disturbance exists, a faulty sex development may take place. This faulty development, being of an endocrine nature, may be amenable to endocrine treatment.
The investigations of Professor Eugen Steinach and other students of biology have shown that our so-called secondary sexual characteristics are largely influenced by our hormones. Various differences in bodily structure, some patent, some elusive, are controlled by the glands of internal secretion. Steinach has reversed the sex of animals by transplanting a female gland upon a male, or a male gland upon a female.
He has also, by similar methods, created animals having the sex equipment and the characteristics of both sexes. Men, who have been mutilated by accident or in war, have been saved from the fate of becoming human capons in appearance, behavior and feeling by such transplantations and (more lately) by injections of the male hormone, which is now manufactured synthetically.
Steinach's experiments reveal that the hormones have a two-fold purpose! One, to strengthen the specific sex characteristics of the individual. Two, to inhibit the development of the characteristics of the opposite sex. For man is a bisexual animal fundamentally and when the dominant gland ceases its vigilance, the characteristics of the suppressed sex assert themselves.
Nature tends to return, within certain limits, to its original bisexual state. This does not mean a complete reversal of sex in its primary aspect. It does not imply a transformation of the sex organs themselves, but a pronounced modification of the secondary sexual characteristics and, in some instances, of the direction of the sex instinct.
Injuries to a gland which impair its inhibiting secretion produce startling changes in the appearance and the behavior of the person affected. When the damage is repaired the normal sex appearance and behavior return. The equilibrium is restored.
Dr. Oscar Riddle, of the Carnegie Institute, reports the case of a girl whose tumor, pressing upon a gland, changed her sexual characteristics. It seemed as if she had turned into a boy. After the removal of the tumor the changes which had startled her family disappeared and she became—what she was before—a pleasing specimen of her gender.
The basic bisexuality of man as a species is confirmed by another, more recent discovery. Every male produces certain female hormones, and every female certain male hormones. By increasing the supply of female hormones in the male beyond the normal percentage, the secondary sexual characteristics are profoundly affected.
SIMILARLY, by increasing the male hormones in the female beyond the amount needed for her endocrine balance, a parallel change is wrought in the female. These effects have been illustrated most strikingly in rats, guinea pigs, mice and monkeys. In human beings, experiments of this type are not feasible. It is, moreover, far more difficult to affect the constitution of men, because it is infinitely more complex than that of the lower animals.
This brings us to the third major factor in determining sex: the impressions received by the senses through the central nervous system. No person is completely male, or completely female, unless his brain has been "eroticized" in a manner harmonious with the sex organs and with his glands of internal secretion.
Early experiences, psychic shocks, "fixations" (to use the term of the psycho-analysts) on the father or the mother, etc., have a powerful influence which proves frequently stronger than the inherited sexual constitution. This explains some variations of the sex instinct in persons who are physically entirely normal.
"But," the bewildered reader will ask, "who is normal?" A person may be said to be normal, if he or she reacts in harmony with his or her primary and secondary sexual characteristics.
The man or the woman who receives a balanced sexual constitution when the male and female element first join together, whose glands secrete the requisite hormones and who achieves sex maturity without being sidetracked from the path of evolution by some psychic or nervous disturbance, will be normal in his or her sexual behavior.
All human beings pass through a stage where sex is more or less undifferentiated, where they are attracted almost equally by either sex. But in 95 out of a 100 cases the bisexual or homosexual components, present in all, sink to the bottom of the stream of consciousness, not to be dislodged except by some emotional or physiological explosion, or by the analyst delving in the deeps of the unconscious.
HOWEVER, any stage in the threefold development outlined may be interrupted or impeded; the slightest variation, the slightest derangement, may, consciously or unconsciously, anatomically or psychically, affect the direction of the sex instinct and constitution. Even within the compass of the "normal" there are infinite variations. My friend, the late Dr. Magnus Hirsch-feld, of the Institut fur Sexualwissen-schaft in Berlin (suppressed by the Nazis), calculated that the number of different sexual types equals 46,046,721, or three raised to the sixteenth power.
Hirschfeld's calculations were based upon the various elements which enter into the determination of sex. He insisted that he under-rather than overestimated the possible number of combinations. The number is equal roughly to 1/40 of all human beings. But, since no human being equals any other human being, since every thumb-print differs, however minutely, from every other thumb-print, we may assume that, theoretically, the sexual behavior and the sexual constitution of every human being differs in some manner from that of every other human being.
The vagaries, variations, vacillations, fluctuations, of the sex instinct are amazing. There is the historic case of the Chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont, who served the King of France as Ambassador to England, but who looked like a woman and spent the larger part of his life in petticoats. The public debated excitedly whether he was a man or a woman. In London more than 100,000 pounds were wagered on the subject. The question was not decided until his death when the testimony of three physicians established that, according to the tests then existing, he was in every respect a "male."
The Chevalier's bearing was not effeminate, although—physically at least —he had certain feminine characteristics. This did not prevent him from being an expert duelist. According to The Winged Foot, ably edited house-organ of the New York Athletic Club, he bested Saint George, the most adroit British fencer of his generation.
The Chevalier's love affairs, judged by the evidence available, were entirely orthodox. Nevertheless, some queer psychic or endocrine twist made him prefer the habiliments of the other sex. For a season he lived as a woman, then again as a man. He was (sartorially at least) a human oyster, a subject on which more will be said anon. The singular craving of one sex to garb itself with the garments of the other has been called "Eonism" after Eon by Havelock Ellis. Hirschfeld designates persons so afflicted "transvestites."
In view of the mutation of sexual characteristics and in view of the fact that both male and female elements are present in all of us, it is not surprising that nature should produce "freaks" who possess both male and female sex organs. It is only surprising that such cases do not occur more frequently! Persons who are at once male and female are "hermaphrodites." Hermaphrodites have been known from the dawn of history. They are mentioned in the lore of the ancient Greeks, in the Bible and in the Talmud. They play an important part in Hindu mythology.
The term "hermaphrodite" is derived from an ancient Greek story. The nymph Salmacis fell in love with the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose ancestry is perpetuated in his name. When the beautiful youth spurned her affection, she threw herself into his arms and beseeched the gods to unite him with her forever. The gods listened, and thus was created the first being possessing the attributes of both sexes. Certain rabbis of old expounded the theory that Adam was a hermaphrodite before the creation of Eve. An English poet, the late Edward Carpenter, disciple of Walt Whitman, echoes this conviction: "Was Adam perchance like this ere Eve from his side was drawn?"
Lawgivers of all nations took cognizance of the hermaphrodite. He is called "tumtim" in the Talmud. The Hebrews excluded the "tumtim" from the priesthood. According to the laws of Romulus, founder of Rome, hermaphrodites were placed in wooden caskets and cast into the sea. The Emperor Constantine ordered them to be executed. They were proscribed in Egypt. The Florida Indians imposed upon them the hardest of labors. In Prussia (under Frederick the Great) a person of dubious sex could decide to which side of the fence he wished to belong on reaching his eighteenth year. The same is, or was, French law. There is a case in French legal annals of a hermaphrodite who, after making the fateful decision, changed his mind and—was burned at the stake!
Sculptors, painters, poets celebrate the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. However, in spite of the poets and in spite of popular legend, the hermaphrodite in whom both organs are completely developed and function is practically unknown. According to two students of the subject, Professor Sauerbruch and Franz Ludwig von Neugebauer, only seven—possibly two—authentic cases are recorded in medical history.
In the animal kingdom, hermaphro-dism is a frequent occurrence. It is the normal state of the snail. The oyster, too, has an interesting time, for it changes its sex every season. The tapeworm passes through various stages. It is at various times mono-sexual, asexual and bisexual. In the human species we deal principally, if not only, with "pseudo" or "false" hermaphrodism.
The hermaphrodite may be "lateral": one side of the body may be pronouncedly male, the other side pronouncedly female. He may be "complex." The internal sex organs may belong wholly or in part to one sex, and the external organs to the other. The hermaphrodite may be "male"; that is to say, he may have completely developed male organs, while the female organs—though coexisting—may be only incompletely developed. Or, he may be predominantly "female". Perfect hermaphrodites are rare in the human species, but there are cases where the real sex cannot be determined except by a post-mortem.
Cases of pseudo-hermaphrodism, or dubious sex, figure frequently in the news. Recently the newspapers reported the case of a sergeant in Warsaw, aged twenty-five, who asked for admission to a hospital—to give birth to a baby. Until his eighteenth year his sex was in doubt. He considered himself a male, entered the army and was accepted. His accouchement altered his status!
One of the most famous cases in recent years is that of the Danish painter, Einar Wegener. Wegener was married and considered himself a man. At twenty he fulfilled his marital duties. Some years later, in deference to some accidental suggestion, he disguised himself as a woman. The masquerade was so successful that he adopted it frequently. His friends, including his wife, called him "Lili". Lili's second, probably his real self, began to assert itself.
He began to suffer from disturbances which resembled the monthly cycle of woman. He finally concluded that, although his external organs—though perhaps rather undeveloped — were those of a male, his body was essentially female.
A GERMAN doctor surmised that Wegener actually possessed rudimentary female sex glands, which were unable to develop because of the inhibiting influence of the male sex glands. An investigation confirmed the doctor's theory.
In 1932, Wegener's story, based on his diary, was given to the world in a book entitled: "Man into Woman," with an introduction by Dr. Norman Haire, the celebrated London gynecologist. After many consultations Wegener's doctors embarked upon a complicated series of operations. His male sex glands were removed. A few months later, according to Dr. Haire, he went to Dresden, where the male organ was also removed, his abdomen was opened, and the presence of rudimentary female sex glands was established, and at the same time ovarian tissues from a healthy young woman of twenty-six were transplanted into him. "A little later," I am quoting Dr. Haire, "he underwent another operation, the nature of which is not explained. By this time he felt himself to be entirely a woman. The Danish authorities issued him a new passport as a female in the name of Lili Elbe, and the King of Denmark declared his marriage null and void. With his consent, and indeed at his suggestion, his former wife married a mutual friend of theirs in Rome."
Another mutual friend now proposed marriage to Lili. "Before" (I am again quoting Dr. Haire) "consenting to the marriage, Lili made another journey to the German surgeon at Dresden to tell him that she had received the offer of marriage and to ask him if he could carry out yet another operation on her to enable her to function completely as a woman . . . and to become a mother. An operation for this purpose was carried out; but shortly afterwards Lili died in Dresden of heart trouble.
"There is," Dr. Haire goes on to say, "a small number of curious cases of this sort, but that of Wegener is the most extreme."
I am inclined to agree with Dr. Haire that it is unwise to perform operations, even at the patient's own request, until we know more about sexual physiology.
WE are now in the position to revert to our original query. Is it possible to change the sex of human beings? We cannot reply categorically. Our answer must be a conditional "yes" or a conditional "no." It is possible to correct certain errors of nature, but it is impossible, with the present limits of medical science, to change the sex of a mature, normally developed human being. It is possible, at least theoretically, to induce lactation in a male by stimulating the mammillary gland, if he subjects himself to the experiment before puberty. It is possible, under similar circumstances, to accentuate the growth of rudimentary male organs in the female. Science can, age may, and accident will, bring about marked changes in the secondary sexual characteristics, even of a mature individual. But it is not possible to turn a full-fledged male into a female, or a full-fledged female into a male. The surgeon's knife can dissolve (with certain qualifications) the marriage between Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. The endocrinologist can enhance the male or the female characteristics of the pseudo-hermaphrodite; the plastic surgeon can eradicate some malformations. But complete transformation of sex is not accomplished even in animals; Steinach's laboratory males and females are incapable of reproduction.
The two athletes cited in the beginning of this article never were normal females; if they had been, no medical hocus-pocus, no surgical miracle, could have transformed them into men.


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Base closures might benefit San Antonio
A Pentagon call to shutter more bases Thursday drew concern and outright opposition, but leaders in San Antonio and elsewhere in Texas say the state likely would win big if a new closure round is ordered.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that he wants to start a new base-closure process "as soon as possible" as the Pentagon moves to cut its budget by $487 billion over 10 years.
Mayor Julián Castro and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff credited the 2005 Defense Base Closure and Realignment round with pumping $3.3 billion into the economy, positioning the city to support new missions.
But Castro, Wolff and Richard Perez, president and CEO of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, said they'll have to create a group to prepare for a new BRAC and learn far more about the Pentagon's plans.
"The military investment made over the last couple of years has been essential to San Antonio's economic success and will continue to be, and so it's important for us to coalesce and to fight for the military investment that's already been made and can be made in the future," Castro said.
Few were surprised as word of a new round broke.
Bill Parry, executive director of the Killeen-based Heart of Texas Defense Alliance, said then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates talked over the past two years of holding down costs. In an August 2010 briefing, Gates said the services were told to consider consolidating or closing "excess" bases.
"This is obviously a politically fraught topic," Gates said at the time.
BRAC has been dreaded in San Antonio, which lost Kelly AFB and Brooks City-Base in separate rounds since 1995. Kelly, where 10,000 people once worked, often is credited for creating a Hispanic middle class in San Antonio. Brooks was a research hub with ties to the space program.
Both bases underwent successful transformations into civilian business parks over the past 10 years, while the 2005 BRAC is credited with creating 8,000-plus jobs.
"I've been involved in five BRACs," Wolff said. "Overall, I think we've come out pretty good, but that's because we were aggressive in what we did at Kelly and what we've done out at Brooks as a follow-up. So we've got to be on our toes and present our best case."
Panetta's proposal is likely to meet stiff opposition in Congress, where lawmakers in states and congressional districts with military installations have fought to protect federal payrolls that impact local economies.
"We should ensure our military requirements determine the budget and not the other way around," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
"It is simply premature to assess our requirements for domestic installations until we have made cuts in the large number of overseas bases," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said there is "sweeping bipartisan opposition to another round of BRAC at this time" and called the idea "dead on arrival."
Panetta neither laid down a timeline for a new BRAC nor provided a scope that might hint at how big it could be. A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. John Kirby, said no decisions had been made, adding, "There's been no deep dive into specific installations right now."
Five Texas installations could benefit from a closure round, said retired Air Force Col. Howard Ham, a former member of the Texas Military Preparedness Commission. He pointed to Fort Hood, Fort Bliss, Fort Sam Houston, and Randolph and Lackland AFBs as able to take in more troops and missions.
Fort Hood has a large maneuver area, he said, as does Fort Bliss in El Paso, which has nearly three times the troops it did in 2005, when 13,278 were on post.
Parry, whose Killeen-based alliance represents seven cities and three counties, said the 2005 BRAC found Fort Hood cost-efficient and "has wonderful training capabilities and wonderful power projection abilities."
Retired Air Force Col. William Ehrie, a former chairman of the preparedness commission, said Texas bases were considered strong in 2005. Its installations scored well on such things as good relations with the military and countering encroachment on bases, he said, but communities need to prepare.
"You've got to plan," he said, "you've got to talk, you've got to be engaged."
Gary Martin contributed to this report.


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A Camp-Inspired, Destination Wedding at Clearwater Forest in Deerwood, Minnesota
Sarah Lick (27 and a nonprofit project manager) and Alex "Finn" Macartney (28 and a doctoral student at Georgetown University) met in college while studying abroad in England. Sarah, from Minnesota, and Finn, from Oregon, wanted the focus of their wedding to be as laid-back as their home states, a celebration of their legal commitment—without "getting lost in the details of the party," Sarah says. Few details were needed at Clearwater Forest, a campground and resort community in Deerwood, Minnesota, about two hours north of the Twin Cities (and not coincidentally, across from Sarah's family's cabin, one of her favorite spots).
Sarah and Finn exchanged vows lakeside before 100 guests in a stone-walled gathering space. "Our only decorations were the rustling trees and the lapping water," Sarah says. It was peaceful and relaxing, just as they envisioned. The dinner was outdoors on the lawn—Sarah insisted on not having a tent—and the weather thankfully cooperated. Dinner, catered by Chowgirls, was served family style on farm tables, decorated with pink and red wildflower arrangements. Chocolate and coconut cakes from Yum bakery were popular among guests, as were local brews from Minnesota and Oregon. True to the authentic camp setting, the weekend included not only naturally beautiful scenery and dinner under the stars, but also games, bonfires, laughter and a reminder that when you unplug, you reconnect with nature and with those who matter most, notes the bride. —Chrissy Sorenson
yum! Kitchen and Bakery
Rocket Science Weddin...
DJ Digie
Michelle Houghland
Clearwater Forest Camp


text:
The difference between tech insiders and the hoi polloi is that the tech insiders make their real money long before a company goes public. This is especially true of the so-called unicorns – those tech companies with pre-IPO valuations of $1bn or more.
The insiders invest when the company is still in its early stages, while it's raising money to build a business the public markets will one day embrace. Carl Icahn is a pretty good example of this: He put $100m into Lyft in 2015 and added an additional $50m later on. Four years later, just before Lyft went public, he sold his stake to George Soros for somewhere around $500m. Nice work if you can get it.
The hundreds of thousands of drivers who have made Uber's success possible hardly qualify as tech insiders, of course. For those who try to make a living driving for Uber, it's no easy task. Most estimates indicate that Uber drivers make less than someone working at McDonald's. Uber's economics just don't work if the drivers make real money.
Uber (and Lyft) have also strenuously maintained that their drivers are not employees but rather outside contractors who are free to drive, or not drive, whenever they please. Employees – like the ones at Uber headquarters in San Francisco – get benefits like a health-care plan and a matching 401(k). Contractors get … none of the above.
Drivers left behind
Which is why, as first Lyft and now Uber prepared to go public, there were stories questioning whether the drivers would be left behind as the executives became multimillionaires. And it appears that Lyft and Uber did feel some responsibility toward the drivers. Well, up to a point.
According to the New York Times, the drivers aren't eligible for stock grants because they are independent contractors. So instead Lyft decided to give any driver who had completed more than 10 000 rides the opportunity to buy the stock at the IPO price. To which the only response is: Are you kidding? A driver would have to make 64 rides a week for three years to get to 10 000 rides.
Now comes Uber. In the S-1 it filed Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission it vowed to put aside shares for any driver who had completed 2 500 trips and had made at least one trip in 2019. (If you're doing the math, that's a much saner 24 rides per week over two years.) Drivers who met those requirements would be eligible to buy Uber stock at the IPO price.
The same problem
That's a better deal than the one Lyft offered its drivers. But both have the same problem: How many drivers are going to have money to buy the stock, even at the IPO price? Not many, would be my guess. If they had that kind of money, they wouldn't be driving for Uber. (To their credit, both Uber and Lyft are also giving drivers one-time-only cash awards that can reach $10,000 for drivers who have logged 20,000 trips.)
Corporations have found all kinds of ways to use stock to give employees and executives risk-free rewards, starting with stock options and restricted stock. There have been times when companies have repriced options when a stock has fallen so that employees will still be in the money.
There is no reason Lyft and Uber couldn't have done the same for their drivers. Independent contractors – outside lawyers, for instance – sometimes get stock options instead of fees. Allowing the drivers to share in the IPO is a nice gesture. Really it is. Allowing them to share in the pre-IPO riches – and making it easy and affordable for them to do so – would have been a lot better. But I guess that's still reserved for Carl Icahn and his ilk.


text:
82nd Texas Legislature, Regular Session, House Bill 2859, Chapter 336
Description: Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to the creation of the Terrell County Groundwater Conservation District; providing authority to impose a tax and issue bonds.
Date: June 17, 2011
Creator: Texas. Legislature. House of Representatives.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department


text:
- Black: absence of gender
- Grey: partial gender
- Green: gender that isn't related to male or female
|Related identities
|nonbinary, nullgender, gendervoid
|Under the umbrella term
|Pride Gallery/Agender
Agender is also called genderblank[2], genderfree, genderless, gendervoid[3], non-gendered, or null gender[4]. Agender is an identity under the nonbinary and transgender umbrella terms. Agender individuals find that they have no gender identity, although some define this more as having a gender identity that is neutral.
Tumblr user transrants (also known as Salem X or "Ska") created the agender flag in 2014.
In 2014, agender was one of the 56 genders made available on Facebook.[5]
In 2015, Dictionary.com added an entry for "agender,"[6] which it defined as "a person who does not have a specific gender identity or recognizable gender expression."[7]
Agender as gender identity or lack of gender identity
Some agender people feel that they have no gender identity, while others feel that agender is itself a gender identity. This is similar to and overlaps with the experience of being gender neutral or having a neutral gender identity.
As some agender people have no gender identity, it is important to not talk about nonbinary or transgender people's experiences only in the sense of gender identity.
Difference between genderless and neutrois
There is little agreement about the difference between terms such as agender, genderless, non-gender, gender neutral, and neutrois. These terms are often used interchangeably, or defined differently by individual writers in ways that don't necessarily match the self-definitions of others using those terms.
It is often said that non-gender or genderlessness is the experience of having no gender identity at all, whereas gender neutral or neutrois is the experience of having a gender identity, a gender identity which is not male or female, but neutral. However, these statements don't match the experiences of everyone who has taken up these identities as their own. This is a result of a disagreement between word definitions that are prescriptivist (telling everyone how they should use a word, and saying that many people use it wrong) and descriptivist (describing how people have actually been using a word, without telling them to change).
Non-gendered as an umbrella term
Some activists, such as Christie Elan-Cane use non-gendered to mean all gender outside of the gender binary. This use comes from several years before the term nonbinary, but is seen as problematic because it gives the idea that nonbinary gender identities don't exist, or that all nonbinary people are genderless. Nonetheless this usage is in some official organisations' documents and resources as the term to cover all nonbinary people. This is most common in the United Kingdom, for example throughout the recent UK Government Transgender Action Plan.
List of kinds of agender identities
It can be difficult to describe and name a gender identity that involves a lack of inner gender identity. In order to do so, some people see the need to make new names for that gender identity, or to distinguish between different but similar genderless identities. A list of these names, in alphabetical order:
anongender. "A gender that is unknown to you and others".[8]
apogender. Coined by queerspike. "Greek prefix apo, meaning away from, separate, at the farthest point; a subset of agender in which you feel not only genderless but entirely removed from the concept of gender."[9]
agenderfluid. Coined by pleurocarpus. Basically agender, but also genderfluid. Synonym cancegender.[10]
agenderflux. Coined by perfectlybrokenbones. "Where you identify as agender but have fluctuations where you feel feminine or masculine but not male or female. ".[11]
cancegender. coined by prideful-concerto. "An individual is agender as their "base" gender but experiences fluid/fluxing gender feelings in tandem with their emotions. These gender feelings may confuse or upset the individual and cause their emotional state to go haywire, which causes more gender changes."[12] Synonym agenderfluid.
genderblank. As described by Damloz: Having no gender.[13] Also, as described by anonymous: "a gender so indescribable that the only thought one gets when trying to describe it is a blank space"[14]
gendernull. As described by Baaphomett, "A gender like gendervoid but without the void."[15]
gendervoid. As described by Baaphomett, "A gender consisting of the void (also/originally used to mean the same thing as genderless)."[16]
librafluid. Coined by otterlyradical and pride-flags-for-us. "Mostly agender, but has a strong connection that fluctuates between masculinity and femininity."[17]
null gender. Coined by dieselwolfe. "Undefinable, intangible, the uncreation of gender. Its taking everything everyone throws at you, saying male, female, pick one, pick this, pick that, and taking it in, only to expel it, poisonous crystals erupting from your skin, armor against those who don't listen. A 'I don't want a label because labels don't fit but they help shut people up sometimes, so here have a label' gender label. A fall-back plan, a red herring to give people who can't conceptualize the absence, void, nullification of gender. It is, and is not. All and none. Nonexistant but present."[18]
oneirogender. Coined by anonymous. "Being agender, but having recurring fantasies or dreams of being a certain gender without the actual dysphoria or desire to actually be that gender day-to-day. e.g. oneiroboy, oneirogirl, oneirononbinary, etc."[19]
Notable people
Notable people who identify or identified as agender, genderless, non-gendered, or having no gender include:
- the rapper Raeen Roes (Angel Haze)
- drag artist Jinkx Monsoon
- activist Christie Elan-Cane
- YouTube Creator Chandler Wilson (Youtube Channel)
See also
|There are 14 alternative pride flags for this identity.
Go to gallery!
External links
- Neutrois Nonsense: On the difference between agender, genderless and neutrois
- A Fine Line: Jillian Cottle talks about Genderless identity
- Chroanagram: Gender neutral=Genderless?
- Genderqueer Identities: Genderqueer identities and terms list
- Nonbinary Tumblr: When activists don't represent, Christie Elan-Cane and Gender Identity
- Hell Yeah, Agender! (blog)
- Agender on Gender Wiki
- ↑ This quote is a snippet from an answer to the survey conducted in the year 2018. Note for editors: the text of the quote, as well as the name, age and gender identity of its author shouldn't be changed.
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/94743909934/genderblank
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/91736136744/masterpost-of-genders-coined-by-baaphomett
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/91779169274/null-gender
- ↑ Eve Shapiro, Gender circuits: Bodies and identities in a technological age. Unpaged.
- ↑ "New words added to Dictionary.com." May 6, 2015. Dictionary.com. http://blog.dictionary.com/2015-new-words/
- ↑ "Agender." Dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/agender?s=t
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/92806103824/anongender
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/92022599474/genders-coined-by-queerspike
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/93177924884/cancegender
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/92999709954/agenderflux
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/93177924884/cancegender
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/92539003104/agender
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/94743909934/genderblank
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/91736136744/masterpost-of-genders-coined-by-baaphomett
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/91736136744/masterpost-of-genders-coined-by-baaphomett
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/91929667279/librafluid
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/91779169274/null-gender
- ↑ http://mogai-archive.tumblr.com/post/92479134354/oneirogender


text:
Petface Pipkins Alpine Lodge Large
Pipkins Alpine Lodge Large is a wooden chew, treat and hideaway for your small pet. Helps to promote gnawing instincts and keeps teeth short and healthy.
Size: 57cm x 27cm x 60cm
Suitable for Dwarf Rabbits.
UK Delivery Terms
Parcels are shipped via Royal Mail or Parcelforce dependent on size and weight. Orders placed before 12:00 midday will be shipped the same day. Orders received after 12:00 on a Friday will be shipped on the following Monday (or next business day in the event of a bank holiday).
Delivery Times
Standard Delivery (2-3 Days)
Standard Delivery is via Royal Mail Tracked 48 or Parcelforce 48 dependent on weight.
Express Delivery (1-2 Days)
Express Delivery is via Royal Mail Tracked 24 or Parcelforce 24 dependent on weight.
Delivery Charges
The Standard Delivery charge is £3.99 per parcel up to 3kg in weight.
Parcels over 3 kg have a delivery charge of £7.50.
The Express Delivery charge is £4.99 per parcel up to 3kg in weight.
Parcels over 3 kg have a delivery charge of £9.50
Local Delivery
We offer free delivery within 8 miles of the centre using our own transport.
On occasion goods are subject to availability and delay in delivery of goods is sometimes outside our control. As such, delivery cannot be guaranteed and any dates we specify for the delivery of the goods are approximate only. We shall not be liable for any losses, costs, damages, charges, or expenses caused by any delay for delivery of the goods.
Any unwanted items must be sent back at the customer's expense in original packaging and condition. If you wish us to give you a quote for this please send us an e-mail, otherwise return the goods to:
Radway Green Garden Centre
Crewe Road
Telephone: 01270 878009
If you are unhappy with the goods received we will refund them if they are sent back at the customer's expense in new resaleable condition within 7 working days along with the original receipt.
We suggest for your own protection you use 1st class registered post.
Any refunds will be issued once we have received the goods, in their original condition. This refund only includes the total of goods sent not the delivery charge.
We will not charge a restocking fee for returned items.
Any goods with manufacturing faults on arrival will be replaced or refunded.
This does not affect your statutory rights.


text: I don't tend jump on every campaign going, but as a regular reader of Engadget, I thought I was witnessing an early April Fools Day post when I read that Deutche Telekom (T-Mobile to me and you) had instigated legal proceedings over Engadget's use of a Magenta. The linked post explains it a lot better than I can, but is another fine example of law firms gone mad™. To lend my support, the leading banner of this site will be in Engadget Magenta for the next few days. Hopefully DT/T-Mobile will see sense on this issue.


text:
Search For Ocean City, NJ Properties
Featured Properties For Sale
Matthew Galownia 609-391-0500x314
1670 Boardwalk, Ocean City
Featured Properties For Sale
Welcome to Berger Realty, Ocean City, NJ's leader in real estate transactions. Established in 1920, we are the largest family owned and operated real estate company in America's Greatest Family Resort.
At Berger Realty, your family's vacation is our family business. As a company, we book over 10,000 vacation rentals per year. We have a full-time, dedicated staff of agents that focus on summer rentals. Berger Realty also has the largest selection of summer rental vacation homes in Ocean City, NJ. If you are interested in renting a vacation property in Ocean City, Berger Realty is the only place to go to find the property that fits your family's needs.
Berger Realty also specializes in selling investment and vacation homes in Ocean City, NJ. Berger Realty has more New Jersey Association of Realtors Circle of Excellence Award winners than any other company in Ocean City, NJ. If you are thinking of purchasing a home at the shore, call one of our premier agents today.
In 1700, whaler John Peck began using the barrier island as a place where he and his men could put their freshly caught whales while they went out searching for more. The island eventually became known as Peck's Beach. After Peck's inhabitation, the island had a few purposes: it was an Indian summer fishing camp, a place for cattle to graze and sometimes mainlanders would boat over for a picnic or to hunt. The Somers family originally owned the land and several other families lived there including Parker Miller. In the mid 19th Century, it was Parker Miller and his family that became the first year-round residents of the island. The Millers lived at what is now the corner of Seventh Street and Asbury Avenue. Parker worked as an agent for marine insurance companies, raised cattle and farmed the land that was known as Peck's Beach. It was almost 30 years later when the Ocean City we know today was born.


text:
Separate names with a comma.
Discussion in 'Regional Forums' started by RC Pilot, May 3, 2010.
Damn,,,, I have to learn to type faster!!!
The Nut:
Boats, what the hell size is this thing anyway??
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don't f'k with my middle name man.....
AND YES, that's my middle name.:eek1 :huh but spelled Frances.....good job, severe nut-jab.....very lucky without knowing me.
That AWM....He's got a gift.
Tag on and on and on and on.....
That's a shocker.
Thats my sisters name.....:stoned
Oh Chucky?!?!?
I asked chuck what he thought and this was all the response I got.
oser oser oser oser oser oser oser
I think that's what we call a "F#@k Nut"!
pretty cool feature of Mr Nut....
lends itself well to the salute
you guys are killing and I'm glad to this thread starting to get some life....Its about time....
LOL!! Man Of Blues, I think we'd get along just fine and dandy!!
Right..so, moving right along, this is the story of Mr. Nutty and his brief (maybe) trip around the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate (real upstate. not that fake "oh, I live in Pookipsee" shit. that ain't upstate, kids.), New York.
My time with Mr. Nutty started with a bang, not a whimper when I rescued it/him from the dark, scary confines of a guardrail next to a covered bridge in Vermont, placed there by the Evil Dr. Boatman. I was so excited to save The Nutster that I forgot to take a picture of my bike at the scene, and act which caused much consternation and hand wringing amongst the faithful, but ultimately ended with laughter, cause Motorcycle People are the Coolest People there are.
Sing it with me now..."People.......people who like motorcycle people...."
Maybe not.
Our first order of business was the much anticipated and ballyhooed Adirondack Tag Game 100th Tag Extravaganza and Show. You never heard of it? Well, we ballyhooed the shit out of it. We even extravaganza'd it a little. We're a simple folk, ya see.
The Extravaganza got more...extravagant with every mile ridden:
All the way to the Tail O The Pup, where we may have ballyhooed a little, but I ain't sayin. What happens in the 'Daks, stays in the 'Daks:
By the way, every eatery claims to be in the "The Heart Of The Adirondacks". There outta be a study, I tell ya.
After we were all Ballyhooed and Extravaganza'd out, I headed back to Long Lake to put my nefarious plan into action...or possibly to place The Nuttinator in his new, hopefully brief hiding spot.
Welcome to Long Lake, New York. (We're comin into town from the South on 30 here...I suggest you do the same.) That's upstate. The real upstate:
It's a tourist town, for sure. Hotels out number the residents three to one. Really. I looked it up.
If you were of the Nutty Doc (Duc??) type, we have a place for you:
Sing it with me now....."Ah....found....mah....thrill...(bah dum, bah dah dah dum)...ooohn Blueberry Hill..."
Maybe not:
(I wonder if that's really the hill in question, the one he found his "thrill" on? It's right next to the road, lotsa traffic through there. Hmm. That's kinda sexy!)
Um...ya know, fook it. I ain't touching this one:
Little further on down the road we spot this sign (hopefully):
Take a right right (right? Yeah, right) after it:
There's even a little white arrow spray painted on the road to help you along. I thought of everything, I tell ya.
You can go straight or you can go right...or you can run straight into this truck and boat...but I recommend bearing right:
Orta be lookin at this (minus my bike):
Enter on the far right side, down three gears and let off the brakes early, flick it in before the crest, drop your knee and hard on the gas at the exit, drifting the back end all the way out to the paint
Go on up the hill...
Wide open, tucked in under the paint, tach at the redline and shift second, third, fourth, you should be just pulling fifth gear as you wheelie over the crest and out of sight
Follow the pavement to the right (I don't know where that road goes if you don't turn. Gotta check the out sometime.)
Hard on the brakes, back tire wavering in the air, downshift all the way to first for this tight right
Keep rollin:
Hug the inside of the right, short shift to third and breath it just a little as you enter the left, then pin it
You're doin great:
If you're riding like my instructions there's no way in hell you're gonna make that next right, and will probably die a fiery death in those rocks straight ahead. may as well make it spectacular
Hah! See that pavilion? (Did you know Pavilion is spelled with one "L"? I didn't know that till just now. It's French, ya know. Pavilion. It means "To Pavil". Fascinating stuff, I'm sure):
Yep, there's my bike parked there in the pavilion:
Gettin closer to my bike. Parked there. In the pavilion:
Bike. Pavilion:
Yup, there's my bike parked there at the pavilion. I wanna be really fuckin clear on this part: That's my bike. It's at the site of the tag drop. In the pavilion. I'm typing hard. Are we clear on this?:
K. See that number 6 on the floor of the pavilion right by the front tire of my bike? In the pavilion? At the tag drop?:
Go stand on it and gaze over the beautiful view of Long Lake. Notice the details of the pole right in front of you: The water thingy on the ground, the electrical thingies on the pole, the subtle shading. Bold, yet stately:
Lets walk up to the pole, shall we? Hmm...gotta water spigot thingy on the other side:
Boy there's some fine work right there...was Crankshaft here??
That's our pole. Now...look up...alllll the way up:
Fookon 'Ell, Mate! It's the Mr. Nut Job!! Whassa he hiding up dere about?
BTW, this is BYOCB if you're a short arse like me:
Whelp...there it is kids. The (dah, daa daa DAAAAA!!) USA TOR drop, all official-like, and including a picture of my bike. In the pavilion. At the drop.
We be out.
Thanks for the ride Chuck!! Well played
I am from Upstate myself....not the real upstate though, more like Colonie outside of Albany. Did spend lots of time motoring out of Harris Bay on LG though
Did I miss a pic of your bike at the drop in there somewhere?
Jeez you had me going too fast on that right and I almost wadded it up on the rocks!
This is your bike Chuck?
The one that says,,,Chuckracer,,,on it.........
I always wanted to put my name on my bike,,,,but someone would kick it over.
That's my bike. There at the Tag:
I didn't want there to be any question as to where the bike was, who's bike it was, etc.


text:
Dying In The Gutters: America's Army Comic Book
This was announced last week, but when I checked, I couldn't actually find the comic. Except now I have. Mr Linky, signing up. Anyway, popular army-recruitment device America's Army is now doing a free comic. Which you can read the first issue online now. Now, I haven't read it – I don't really understand comics, so wouldn't want to offer up an opinion. Besides – if I read it, didn't like and said something like "America's Army is useless", we'll probably get invaded. But I found this review of the comic by comics-gossip-wunder-waffen Rich Johnson at his new blog Bleeding Cool. Any good, Rich? "Not so much Generation Kill as Generation Kill Me Now" says he. Maybe not then.