text:
From a Beginning Breast Cancer Survivor
Beverly Dubrin, email@example.com
Last Modified: April 28, 2003
The Biopsy
Decisions and Doctors
The Hair
What's Next
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in September 1997, just ten days before my husband and I were scheduled to leave for a two-week vacation in France. The month before, I had gone for my annual mammogram and was called back the next day for more detailed pictures because something was "questionable." The radiologist told me there were three micro-calcifications that should be biopsied. She advised me to get a surgeon and take care of it. I was stunned, first because I had always had normal mammograms and second because this radiologist was talking to me as if I had a surgeon at my beck and call! As the kids say, "Hellooooo!"
As luck would have it, I have a terrific primary care doctor who calmed me down, told me not to worry about anything until I was sure I had something to worry about, and got me in touch with an excellent surgeon. When the surgeon could not see me for over a month, my primary care doctor got on the phone to her office and got me in a few weeks sooner. Throughout this "odyssey," as I sometimes call it, she has made sure that I have seen the right doctors and has taken time out of her busy schedule to regularly call to check on me. I feel blessed to have her taking care of me and I say, if you do not think your doctor has a sincere interest in your well-being, find another one and do it as soon as you can, preferably while you are healthy.
The biopsy surgery went fine; I came home after it and indulged in a hearty dinner of barbecue from one of my favorite restaurants. The surgeon said she would call the next day to let me know about the pathology. Much as I tried to keep myself busy with my work, I was on pins and needles. Her phone call did not come until 6 p.m. while I was hurrying through dinner before heading for my weekly French class. She told me one of the calcifications was malignant and that she would like me to come to her office with my husband to discuss surgery options. Time stood still.
Of course, I knew that there was the probability that I had breast cancer, but until I heard her words, it did not sink in. Thinking, I had everything in control, I got into my car and headed off to class. Imagining that I was driving carefully, despite my racing mind, I stopped at a traffic light at a busy intersection and then when I saw cars driving all around me, realized that I had stopped in the middle of that intersection. I was not in control!
I guess I should say a bit about myself. I am the healthiest person I know. I am 56 years old. I have my own business...writing about travel, dining, and shopping in Northern California both for my own private newsletter and for other publications. I plan events and give guided tours for visitors to the San Francisco Bay Area. And, in odd moments, I train people to use their Macintosh computers (my prior career was in data processing, working for large corporations). I exercise regularly, swimming three or four times a week with a Masters Swim Team, playing tennis, and riding a mountain bike. I eat well (Could I have eaten too much broccoli?) and am not overweight. I have a wonderful husband, delightful miniature poodle, and many very special friends. My life is good, happy, busy, and, above all, healthy. Up to this point, my most major health problem has been severe osteoarthritis in one knee...I tried to learn to ski once and the injuries sustained from a fall brought this on.
In the ten days that followed, I saw more doctors and made more important decisions than I ever have in all my life. My primary care doctor sprung into action once again and made sure that both a medical oncologist and a plastic surgeon adjusted their schedules to make time to see me before I left for vacation.
As for the vacation...I was willing to cancel it, but as I went through the rounds of doctors, they all agreed that my going away was not going to endanger or worsen my condition. First I saw the surgeon who, in explaining the invasive component of the calcification, made it clear that a mastectomy was the best surgery option. As for reconstruction, I had already decided that, given my active lifestyle, immediate reconstruction was what I wanted. The next stop was to the plastic surgeon who explained the different types of reconstruction. The TRAM Flap was what I chose...abdominal tissue and attached muscle are tunneled up to reconstruct a new breast. This is the only procedure that generally does not require any kind of implant. Also, it is the most complicated surgical procedure, taking 6 to 7 hours. The "bonus" of the TRAM Flap, is that you get a tummy tuck in the process, and even I had a little tummy that could be made a bit flatter!
The final doctor I saw was the medical oncologist who explained the whys and wherefores of chemotherapy. It was in this doctor?s office that I relaxed just a bit after he said, "You must feel wonderful since you?ve had the biopsy. Right now you have less cancer in your body than you?ve had in years." Those words continue to cheer me when I feel a bit down...breast cancer does not pop up overnight; it takes years before even something as small as mine is detectable.
By the time I went on vacation, my surgery was scheduled, my first chemotherapy was scheduled, and I had given the first of two units of blood for my surgery.
Taking a two-week vacation in the midst of all this was the best thing that I could have done. I felt as if I had been on a treadmill and this gave me and my husband a chance to get off and catch our breath. We had a wonderful time and came back clearheaded and ready to tackle what was ahead.
My surgery was in early November, It went well and, according to the anesthesiologist, I woke up smiling. I don?t even remember talking to him, but I do remember talking with my husband in my room, debating over whether I wanted to try the morphine pump even though I was not in pain, and chatting with a friend who decided to pop in on her way home from work.
I spent four nights in the hospital, progressing well, to the delight of my doctors and nurses. The little peek I got at my reconstructed breast gave me another boost; it looked great; it looked like the old me.
Recovery progressed well. From the day I got home I started taking walks. First it was just around the block, then it was around our neighborhood, and soon I was heading out to nearby trails. Having a well-conditioned body was paying off.
Two weeks after surgery, I started chemotherapy...four treatments of Adriamycin and Cytoxan, spaced 21 days apart. I am writing this on the eve of my last treatment. Again, what my medical oncologist said was what has happened. He advised me to think of myself as a healthy person who would feel awful for two days every three weeks. That pretty much has been what has happened. I do live in fear of infection with my compromised immune system and must wash my hands a hundred times a day. When I hear someone cough or sneeze while I am in line at the post office or grocery store, I cringe. Before I go to someone?s house or have guests at my home or office, I ask if they have colds.
Five weeks after surgery, I got the OK from the plastic surgeon to go back to my old activities. So far, I am back to swimming, doing three workouts a week. This is the rainy season in California and I have only taken one short bike ride and, as a weekend tennis player, have not had a clear weekend to see how I will do with a racquet in my hand.
Right on target, two weeks after my first chemo treatment, my hair started falling out. Friends who had gone through hair loss advised me to cut it off as soon as it started to fall out. I could not do it!!!
For a week, I washed my hair in the sink with the drain closed and then fished out handfuls of hair. After a week, scalp started to show and I put on the wig that I had picked out before I started the chemo. Some wisps of hair have remained and I cherish them. Every day I look to see if new hair is coming growing back. So far, nothing is happening, except that some eyelashes and parts of my brows have also fallen out. I keep wondering if the new hair will be blond and curly as the old was...only time will tell.
With the hair loss, I learned something about myself. I found out how much of my self-image is tied up in that hair. I feel like a different me, no matter how nice my wig, or how "cute" my scarves and hats.
Once I finish with and recover from chemo, I start radiation treatments...28 treatments, every weekday for about 5 1/2 weeks. I?ve met with my radiation oncologist and next week will have my simulation done. Radiation should start in a few weeks.
After that . . . close follow-up with my doctors and keeping my fingers crossed about the future.
I cope by talking about my problems, or by writing about them. I have told everyone I know that I have breast cancer. I?ve proudly showed my reconstruction to anyone who even remotely expresses an interest in seeing it. At the pool, my swimming colleagues marvel at my appearance, check out the shape of my head, and come up with new scarf-tying tips. My swim coach keeps an eye on me, making sure I don?t overdo.
I?m happy to tell my story and hope that I can be inspiration to those who may have to go through a similar experience. A lot of my strength has come from family and friends who are out there cheering me on. In many cases, I am the first person they know who has openly discussed the whole process.
I have gained insights into the people in my life, too. While many have kept in touch, including a special group of men friends who take me out to lunch to celebrate each milestone of my treatment, some have stayed away as if I have the plague. My reaction to this is more amazement than anything else. Cancer is not contagious and the last thing in the world that I want to do is to hide away from the rest of the world.
Hopefully, the remainder of my treatment will progress smoothly and in a few months medical appointments will not hold such a predominant spot in my daily routine. But, I know my life has changed and I am going forward to lead a life that I value more dearly than anything else.


text:
Call us on +44 (0)20 7352 3115
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
A small bag can have a big impact. For high-octane
glamour The Beatty is the sophisticated choice.
The Bodie is a simple, clean style to be carried
day and night. Use it to fit the essentials - your
favourite lipstick, credit card and cell phone.
Please enter your email address below. You will receive a link to reset your password.
call us
Mon - Fri between 9am - 5pm
Tel: +44 (0)20 3384 6670
send us an email

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Enterprise Ramblings
I have a rule when it comes to judging any television series; I hold off judgment on it until I have seen the first seventeen episodes. Seventeen is a pretty arbitrary number which I came up with because I was seventeen years old when I decided on it. My rule is that a series must have at least one really interesting episode within the first seventeen if I am to continue watching it.
With The Original Series of Trek, it doesn't take anything like seventeen episodes to come across a good one; the first seventeen episodes of TOS include "Balance of Terror", "The Galileo Seven" and "The Menagerie". With The Next Generation it was more iffy; the first couple of seasons of this show are widely regarded by as being its weakest. Nevertheless, while I couldn't really point to any specific episode and say "that's a great episode!", I did like the show as a whole; the characters were good, especially regular Data and the recurring character Q. I liked Picard - his stuffiness was an interesting change from Kirk. And after years of watching TOS re-runs, it was great to be able to sit down and watch a Trek episode without being able to quote the dialogue line for line!
Deep Space Nine interested me from the get-go; the pilot alone qualified as interesting enough to hold my attention. And as it turned out, the episode after my seventeen episode marker was "Duet", which remains one of my all time favourite DS9 episodes.
Voyager struggled, in my opinion. Its first season managed to clinch my attention with "Prime Factors", "Faces" and "Jetrel", but the show as a whole suffered problems that I will talk about later.
And now we have had the seventeenth episode of Enterprise ("Fusion"), what do I think of the show? Read on...
My biggest issue with Enterprise has always been the basic premise of the show. Probably the single most defining aspect of Star Trek is summed up beautifully by Kirk's opening dialogue from TOS : "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no one has gone before." This was - and indeed still is - an almost uniquely optimistic premise for a science fiction series. Just look at some of the major sci-fi shows around in the past few decades :
|Lost in Space
|About a family who are lost and trying to get home.
|Space 1999
|About a group of astronauts (Lunanauts?) lost and trying to get home.
|Blake's Seven
|About a group of renegades, and how their noble fight for freedom eventually turns them into little more than terrorists.
|Babylon 5
|About a space station which co-ordinates an interstellar alliance in a war against an ancient evil.
|About aliens attempting to invade Earth.
|Space : Above and Beyond
|About a group of soldiers fighting a war.
|Doctor Who
|About an alien and his companions, usually wandering around lost, helping out the people they meet.
|X Files
|Aliens are visiting us (actually attacking us), and our own government is co-operating in it. Oh, and all kinds of other stuff is going on as well.
|Dark Skies
|Aliens are visiting us (actually attacking us), and our own government is not co-operating in it. Most of the history of the last few decades is a lie.
|Civilisation has collapsed, all is chaos, let's pick up the pieces. Oh, and by the way a few trillion Magog are coming to eat everybody.
Now there are some fine shows here, some that have given me countless hours of viewing pleasure. But virtually all of them are based in a pretty negative environment. In not one of them are Humans going out into space because they want to, because it is a challenging and interesting place to go - because, in the words of Q, "It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross..." That, in my opinion, is the reason that Star Trek has such a widespread and long-lasting appeal.
When I heard about DS9, I had my doubts - "what, you mean they're just going to sit there? No boldly going?" As it turned out, the wormhole meant that strangeness and adventure would come to our heroes, rather than they going towards it. After a few years DS9 gave up on the whole "going through the wormhole" aspect of the show and settled on a long war arc instead; this made it less like Star Trek and more like all the other sci-fi shows out there, but by then I was interested enough in the characters and the complex political setup of the show to stick with it to the end anyway.
Then Voyager came along, and presented us with a show which had the most anti-Trek premise yet. Essentially Voyager would be a Trekified version of "Lost in Space". The ship would not be boldly going into unknown space to seek adventure, but rather would be running back towards home. The crew would not be bold heroes, but a mixture of bold heroes and traitors. Even worse, having established this disappointing premise the creators of the show then completely failed to live up to it. The so-called "tension" with the Maquis never materialised in the early episodes, though it did fizzle up now and again later on. And for a ship that was heading home, Voyager seemed to spend a whole lot of time diverting to look at passing nebulas.
The show had some other problems in terms of characterisation and writing, though to be fair Voyager certainly did produce some excellent episodes, and maintained a consistent quality high enough - just - to keep me watching all the way through.
When Voyager finally finished, I looked forward to the next series with glee. I never really doubted that there would be a new series, and I was sure that after two such non-Trekkian outings that "The Powers That Be" would give us a real, proper Trek series again. Rumours abounded about the new series on the net - the commonest was that it would follow a group of Starfleet Academy cadets through their training, but some said it would be set on a Klingon ship, or would follow some kind of "trouble-shooter" team which went to wherever the Federation had major problems. The Academy rumour seemed silly - what organisation would put cadets in jeopardy, week after week? An alien ship also seemed unlikely, as it seemed unlikely that an audience would identify with a ship of aliens. The trouble-shooter team was a curious idea - isn't going to the Federation's trouble spots exactly what both Kirk and Picard had routinely done anyway?
One of the rumours that I most disliked was that the next show would be a prequel series, set either between the time of Kirk and Picard or even many years before the time of Kirk, at the founding of the Federation. I couldn't believe that these ideas were being seriously considered! And yet, soon enough it was announced that there would indeed be a new series, set in the 2150s and featuring the adventures of the first Starship Enterprise.
I was crushed. Any "boldly going" that these shows did would be going into territory that was old hat to Kirk and Picard. A whole seven year series was going to be devoted to filling in the gaps in the existing Trek timeline. I couldn't believe that we were getting yet another non-Trek Trek series.
Perhaps worse than this was the fact that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga would be in charge of the new series. Berman and Braga had taken a lot of bashing from Trek fans during Voyager, much of it centring around the fact that they apparently didn't care all that much about keeping that show in line with established Trek history. Braga was quoted as saying that he had never watched TOS and didn't think continuity was especially important. In the early years of Voyager I tended to ignore such rants, or occasionally even argue against them. Continuity problems are nothing new, I argued; with a show as complex as Trek had become mistakes were inevitable, and it was surprising there were as few as we have seen. Besides, I have always loved trying to explain such things away anyway.
I can date to the second exactly when my attitude changed. It was during the episode "Fury", when Janeway asked Tom Paris what was the first thing he had ever learned about warp drive. Paris replied with a little rhyme to the effect that while in warp drive a ship could only fly in a straight line.
I was agape with astonishment at this flat-out absurdity. I mean, it's one thing to have a character contradict something Kirk said offhand in some thirty year old episode of TOS... but this was the continuity equivalent of having Janeway suddenly declare that she worked for the "United Empire of Planets". I couldn't believe that anybody could make such a stupid mistake. Since that moment I have never tried to defend Berman and Braga from criticism, and indeed have weighed in with my own fair share on occasion.
Berman and Braga's "stuff it" attitude to continuity is the worst possible one to have on as show like Enterprise. It's far easier to trample over continuity in a prequel series than it is on a show set in the "present". It would be almost impossible to pull something like Enterprise off well even if you were of a mind to be incredibly careful about such things. But with an attitude of "I don't care, and neither does anybody else who matters", Enterprise was doomed to be a continuity nightmare from day one.
And so it has proved. Even before the show premiered it blundered badly with the design of Enterprise itself. Ideally Enterprise should have looked like the ring-ship seen on the recreation deck wall in Star Trek : The Motion Picture. At the very least a ship built during this era should share the general design ethic of the Daedalus class, or be more primitive even that that. Instead Enterprise borrows heavily from the Akira class, a design which post-dates the show by over two hundred years. A ship like Enterprise in the timeframe of the 2150s is like a stealth bomber featuring in a series set at the turn of the 19th century.
The first episode revealed a few more clangers - Enterprise's crew was equipped with "phase pistols", which look and act exactly as phasers do. Yet people of this time should have been using lasers, at best; Worf once stated that there were no phasers in the 22nd century. The ship is stated to be capable of warp 5, yet makes a trip to Kronos in only four days; in all fairness this particular type of nit is hardly unique to Enterprise, but by setting the show at a time when the ships were inherently slower than even Kirk's ship, the makers are compounding this problem.
As if all this wasn't bad enough, we even have blatant and deliberate gaffes such as the introduction of the Ferengi in an episode, more than two centuries before they were mysterious unknowns in The Next Generation! Yes I know that they never said that they were Ferengi, but it beggars belief that Archer and his crew wouldn't at least draw pictures of their attackers. Data at least would have recognised the Ferengi at once when he first came across them, and would have commented on the fact.
This is the contradiction at the very heart of the new series - Berman and Braga have chosen to found a show on a premise which is particularly demanding precisely in those areas which they don't think are important. After all, what on Earth is the point of doing a retro series if you are not going to do it in a retro way? I can't imagine what it was about a prequel that really attracted Berman and Braga in the first place. It was rumoured that Berman was jealous of the "never equalled classic" status that Roddenberry's TOS has in the minds of many fans, and wanted to rewrite Trek history in his own image. I don't know the man, but I find it hard to believe that he would be this petty. It's rumoured that the idea of a prequel was somewhat down his list of things he wanted to do, and that he only took it up when his first choices were rejected by the studio. This is a better possibility, but it's something that we will only know in many years when everybody concerned writes their memoirs. If then.
In a way I feel sorry for Enterprise. I mentioned earlier my seventeen episode rule for holding off on judgment of a new series. But Enterprise's "boldly filling in the gaps that other captains have not filled in before" ethos was built in from before the first episode, and its continuity problems were a disaster waiting to happen given the people in charge. I was vocal in my criticisms during the run up to the pilot episode, but I tried my best to hold my tongue during that seventeen episode run. Well, that run is now over and the judgment is in.
Enterprise has some of the same problems that most other series suffer in their first seasons - everybody is settling down into the job, getting used to the universe, finding out what works and what doesn't. The first season has not been a great one, but it's been as good or better than the likes of Space : Above and Beyond or Dark Skies managed. Its apparently doing okay in the ratings, and I have little doubt that it will eventually mature into a pretty decent show. But in my mind it will never - can never - be a true Trek series, and it can never be the shining star that it could have been.
The following is a slightly modified copy of a post I made to alt.startrek in response to the question "Why Dont U Like Enterprise" (that's how they spelled it). I figured that since a goodly stretch of episodes has now gone by this would serve as an update on what I think is wrong with the show.
First and foremost, I still don't like the premise. I want to see starship captains visiting strange new worlds, and while what Enterprise explores is new to Archer and new to us, in the context of the Trek universe it's anything but new. They're boldly going to fill in the gaps that none have filled before.
As such Enterprise lacks the capacity to really engage me, and always will.
That said, it would be possible to do a prequel series that was at least well made and worth watching. Enterprise does this to an extent, but it has serious flaws :
Action : Archer simply doesn't cut the mustard as a Starfleet captain. Kirk virtually NEVER lost a fight - offhand I know of only one time in his whole life that he did. [it's been pointed out by Tool Packing Mama that this isn't quite true, and though I would argue that the exceptions mostly involve godlike beings or some such, it's not really relevant to the point, which is that Kirk kicked ass and Archer gets his ass kicked.] Even Picard beat Klingons in a knife fight! Yet Archer is beaten up on frequently, and almost never even manages to put up a decent fight.
Sex : Enterprise's attitude to sex is childish. If they want to have sex in the show, then actually have sex! Get Hoshi into a relationship with somebody, hell even do it with T'Pol if you like. Make one of the crew a real man-eater (or woman eater) like that genetically engineered gal off DS9 and have them work their way through the crew if that's what you want. But oh noooo, we can't do that... B&B's idea of "sexing up" consists of finding absurdly flimsy excuses to put people in their underwear and have them massage one another. Oooo, I'm in the decontamination room wondering if I have an alien disease that's going to eat my skin off, don't I feel sexy...
Continuity : In terms of the odd wrong date, I find Enterprise's "couldn't care less" approach to continuity annoying but tolerable. But on a broader front, the whole premise of this show demands that this be a more primitive setting than other Treks. Yet it is not. We have a ship that can get from adventure to adventure in an average of two weeks, just as every other Trek ship did. We have "phase pistols" that are essentially identical to phasers, we have "polarised plating" that is essentially identical to shields (in the dramatic sense, not the technological one), we have a food synthesizer that is essentially identical to a food replicator, we have a transporter that IS identical to a transporter, we have no prime directive, but a crew that has followed the prime directive anyway, right from day one... and so on. Enterprise's attempt at doing things in a retro way consists entirely of doing exactly what Trek always did before, but with slightly different words for everything.
Enterprise should be taking months to get from place to place; we should see a few shows set on one planet, then three or four on the way to the next planet, then three or four shows there, and so on. There should be no transporter, no polarised plating, no phase weapons - I'd have given them handheld slugthrowers. And the ships should use lasers to chew at one another, and nukes as their "big punch" weapon.
There should be no Prime Directive nor any concept of not interfering. Let's see Archer happily arm some locals because they look like the "good guys" in their war, only to come back six months later and find that they are using the weapons for genocide. Let's see him make the mistakes that made people back home say "hey, every time we interfere it turns out badly. Let's not do that anymore."
Above all, let's see the "balls to the wall guys, let's grab this galaxy by the throat, show it there's a new kid on the block and MAKE IT RESPECT US!" attitude that you need to carve out a big chunk of the alpha quadrant and make it your own. When they meet bad guys I want to see them shoot first, shoot again, shoot some more, then MAYBE see if they can ask the smoldering wreckage a question or two! Where are the Humans
who taught the Klingons to fear and whupped the Romulan Star Empire so bad it went and hid behind the neutral zone? Where are the people who will make 150 alien races say "yeah, these guys kick SERIOUS ass, let's sign up to this Federation thing they're setting up!"
Coz sure as hell Archer and his crew don't look like those people.
And that's why I don't like Enterprise.
|Yellow text = Canon source
|Green text = Backstage source
|Cyan text = Novel
|White text = DITL speculation
|Copyright Graham Kennedy
|Page views : 15,839
|Last updated : 1 Jan 1970


text:
Take a look at Jess Haines upcoming release, Stalking the Others
H&W Investigations, Book 4
Paranormal, Mystery, Romance
July 3, 2012
Vampires, werewolves, mages–the Others are very real, and wreaking havoc in Shiarra Waynest's life. But now, she's returning the favor…
Once, she was one of the good guys–or as close as a New York P.I. can get. Then Shiarra Waynest was drawn into the world of the Others. Every faction has its own loyalties and agenda. And Shia's recent betrayal by her ex-boyfriend means that she may be on the verge of becoming a rogue werewolf at the next full moon.
Of course, with all the threats against her, Shia's not sure she'll live long enough to find out. The enigmatic vampire Royce wants her back in his clutches, as do two powerful werewolf packs, along with the police. Instead of going into hiding, Shia is enlisting the aid of her enchanted hunter's belt and every dirty P.I. trick she knows. If she's going down, she'll take out as many of her enemies as she can–and hope that in the process, she keeps whatever humanity she has left…
Ali: Is there an author that makes you go all "fangirl?"
Jess: Jim Butcher. Oh, my God. I want to have Harry Dresden's babies. (How wrong does that sound? LOL)
Ali: If you could co-write with another author who would it be and why?
Jess: I've actually done quite a lot of co-writing with others, but if I was looking to co-write to publish, I would probably want to work with either Jim Butcher or Kim Harrison. They write work that I adore and having the opportunity to work with them would be fantastic.
Ali: What are you looking forward to most about AADNola?
Jess: Seeing all of my friends again! Now I have blogger and reader friends from all over, so it's awesome when we get together to party. Plus, I've never been to NOLA before, so I'm really looking forward to acting all tourist-y and tearing up the town!
Ali: The world is under attack and you are forced to run for your life. You only have room for one book in your survival kit, what book do you take?
Jess: JOHN DIES AT THE END by David Wong. Been meaning to reread that one before the movie comes out...
Ali: Who are your favorite literary characters? (Yours or someone else's)
Jess: From my own work, I love Arnold the mage and Alec Royce the vampire. From someone else's work? Jericho Z. Barrons. Need I say more? *fans self*
Ali: Are there any of your secondary characters you would like to give more life to?
Jess: I wish I could give more page time to a number of the vampires and humans who work under/live with Royce. For example, there are the brothers, Thad and Sebastian, and the gay couple, Ken and Reece. Clarisse, the shameless bookie who is addicted to American Idol. Angus, the Highland warrior who acts as head of security and chases after anything in a skirt. I love them all, and they each have their own histories and stories to tell, but I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to do them all justice.
Ali: If you friends were asked to describe you in one word what would it be?
Jess: Geeky!
*Favorite color: Forest green
*Favorite food: Prime rib
*Boots or heels: Boots
*eReader or Print: Print
*Beer, Liquor or Wine: None of the above. I'm not much of a drinker.
*Favorite place to get it on besides the bedroom: Oh my! A lady never tells... ;)
*Favorite TV Show: Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Oh, you mean still on the air? Err. Doctor Who!
*Favorite Book series (besides your own): The Dresden Files
*Pj's or Lingerie: PJs
*Vampires vs. Shifters: Vampires, baby!
In a Town Like This, Being A P.I. Can Be Murder
Shiarra Waynest's detective work was dangerous enough when her client base was strictly mortal. But ailing finances have forced her to accept a lucrative case that could save her firm—if it doesn't kill her first. Shiarra has signed on to work for a high-level mage to recover an ancient artifact owned by one of New York's most powerful vampires.
As soon as Shiarra meets sexy, mesmerizing vamp Alec Royce, she knows her assignment is even more complicated than she thought. With a clandestine anti-Other group trying to recruit her, and magi being eliminated, Shiarra needs back-up and enlists her ex-boyfriend—a werewolf whose non-furry form is disarmingly appealing—and a nerdy mage with surprising talents. But it may not be enough. In a city where the undead roam, magic rules, and even the Others aren't always what they seem, Shiarra has just become the secret weapon in a battle between good and evil—whether she likes it or not…
Tomorrow Kris Cook will be our guest! Come back and enter to win! Don't forget your comment today enters you not only in the daily prize race but the grand prize drawing as well!


text:
Some activities are more family friendly on a smaller scale, such as playing golf or sinking battleships. Small games, big fun with this Groupon.
Choose Between Two Options
- $33 for four rounds of mini-golf, two large buckets of range balls, and four ice creams or drinks (up to a $68 value)
- $17 for two rounds of mini-golf, one large bucket of range balls, and two ice creams or drinks (up to a $34 value)
AllGolf Center
AllGolf Center provides large practice facilities where you can hone both your long and short game, rain or shine. Sharpen your drive on a two-tiered driving range with targets and landing areas, or focus on putting in the 36-hole mini-golf courses and practice-putting areas. Each AllGolf Center even has onsite 18-hole golf courses littered with hazards, where players can test their new techniques and audition new caddies. If you need a break, you can check out new clubs at the fully stocked pro shop or take horizontal swings in the onsite batting cages.
98% of 630 customers recommend
950 N Flamingo Rd
Pembroke Pines, FL 33028
+19544411333Get Directions


text:
To the editor:
On behalf of Administrator Cathy Cich, the board of directors and Charity Hospice staff, I wish to thank the community for its help with the Oct. 27 Fall Comedy Show Spectacular. The event, held at the Knights of Columbus in Mingo Junction, was highlighted by Pittsburgh comedian Jimmy Krenn. I continue to be amazed how area residents continue to support our fundraising events, especially with the state of economy. I want to assure our guests, donors and sponsors that every dollar generated at our events goes directly toward patient care. Without your help, we could not be successful in what we do.
I wish to take this time to especially thank the following: Wintersville Volunteer Fire Department; Barium and Chemicals; St. Agnes Parish in Mingo Junction; Lex-Multimedia; Cleveland Browns; Dee Jays Ribs; Damon's Grille; Mario's Restaurant; Federico Fine Italian Foods; the Ville Restaurant; Eat N' Park, Steubenville; Suzy's Hallmark; Bob Evans Restaurant; Aubrey's Bakery; J.C. Penney Hair Salon; Riesbeck's; Holiday Inn, Weirton; Pittsburgh Public Theater; Dave Barnhouse Fine Art; Applebee's, Giannamore's Pizza, Touch of Elegance Restaurant, Mountaineer Racetrack and Gaming, Senator Lou Gentile, State Park Motors; First Choice America; M&M Hardware; Marge and Howard Landkrohn; Don Heiss; June Crago; Jordan Seminara; Jacob Seminara, Joe Gibbs Racing, Mooresville, N.C.; Steubenville High School; Ron Salvino; Brittany Lazasz; Alex Kilonski; Meg Cutler; Leona Sawka; the Parishes of Triumph of the Cross, Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady of Lourdes, Holy Family, and St. Peters Catholic Church; Wal-Mart, Steubenville; Janice Kiaski and Mark Miller, Herald-Star; Best Western of Steubenville; Dave Miller; Something Special by Sheila; Bolger Healthcare; Perks Botique; Valley Wine Cellar; Celebrations; AEP, Brilliant; Annette Seminara; Debbie Yoklic; Mary Ann Reese; Jo Ann Hast; Madeline Michael; Brenda Boone; Hiidie Matics; Jo Ann Brettell; Jennie Avoli; Joan Copeland; Bill England; Melissa McMillion; Eastern Gateway Community College; Downtown Bakery; Naples Steak and Spaghetti House; First Class Customs; Sherwin-Williams, Steubenville; WTRF-TV; Gombar Heating and Refrigeration; Mosti Funeral Homes; Advance Auto Parts; Auto Zone, Wintersville; NAPA Auto Parts, Wintersville; Route 22 Pizza; Baker Boys; GPC Contracting; Hollywood City Center; Jefferson Security; Ambulance Service; Delta Care Rx; Commissioners Tom Graham, Dave Maple and Tom Gentile; Sterling Auto Body; Village Sleep Center; Tri-State Financial Services; Steubenville Lions Club; Legal Hair and Day Spa; Neidengard's Harley-Davidson; Wheeler Funeral Homes; Cain Realty; Ace Optical; Trinity Health System; Paradyme Medical; Carriage Inn of Steubenville; Project B.E.S.T.; Defelice Pizza; Hauser Furniture; Dr. Sudar Malik; PNC Bank, Wintersville; State Park Motors; Red Hat Society; Heritage Home Care; RSV Trucking; attorney Eric M Reszke; (Martins Ferry) Times Leader; Monsignor Kenneth Uram; Scaffidi's; Office Max; Merle Norman Hair Salon; Connie and Barry Robb; and Valley Converting, Lisa and Mike Biasi.
Most important, we wish to thank everyone who attended the comedy show or anonymously helped in any manner. In particular, we thank the staff of Ohio Catering for its help and cooperation. Finally, we ask the general public to support the businesses and thank anyone who helped to make this fundraiser a complete success.
Steven M. Seminara
Director of fundraising
Charity Hospice
of Wintersville


text:
Bill Russell
News about Bill Russell, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.
Highlights From the Archives
Sports of The Times
Teaching the Importance of Staying Centered
Who better than Bill Russell, in his informal, meditative manner, to lecture the freshly minted rookie class of 2007 about the wagon train of critics awaiting them?September 19, 2007 sportsNews
Playing Dress-Up, the Musical
"Pageant" is a musical in which all the contestants in a beauty competition are played by men.
July 13, 2014, Sunday
MORE ON BILL RUSSELL AND: Pageant (Play) , Longbottom, Robert , Theater , Evans, Albert , Russell, Bill
'Side Show' Producers Discussing a Move to Broadway
The musical about conjoined twin sisters had a brief run on Broadway in 1997.
July 10, 2014, Thursday
MORE ON BILL RUSSELL AND: Condon, Bill , Roth, Jordan , Russell, Bill , Krieger, Henry , Miramontez, Rick , Theater
A Grandeur That Eclipses the Grotesque
Unlike the Broadway original, a vivid new production of "Side Show" at the Kennedy Center endows the performers with stark physical deformities.
June 21, 2014, Saturday
MORE ON BILL RUSSELL AND: Krieger, Henry , Silverman, Ryan , Theater , Side Show (Play) , Condon, Bill , Kennedy, John F, Center for the Performing Arts , Washington (DC) , Russell, Bill
Only Perfect
Seven Division I men's basketball teams have finished a season undefeated and capped by an N.C.A.A. title, none since Indiana in 1976. Wichita State enters the tourney 34-0.
March 20, 2014, Thursday
MORE ON BILL RUSSELL AND: Basketball (College) , Wooden, John , Johnson, Earvin , Russell, Bill , Bird, Larry , McGuire, Frank , Walton, Bill , Basketball
Lawsuit Named for O'Bannon Has Other Critical Participants
Besides the former college basketball player Ed O'Bannon, ex-star athletes and even a sports marketing executive all have a stake in a lawsuit against the N.C.A.A.
June 20, 2013, Thursday
Reclaiming a Knicks Title
MSG Network had two videotapes that contain Game 5 of the 1973 N.B.A. finals restored and will televise the game as part of its commemoration of the Knicks' last title.
April 6, 2013, Saturday
MORE ON BILL RUSSELL AND: Basketball , New York Knicks , Video Recordings and Downloads , MSG Network , Russell, Bill , Chamberlain, Wilt , Bradley, Bill , Mattucci, Ken , Schechter, Maurice , Television
For N.C.A.A., AT&T Calls on Pro Basketball Stars
To take advantage of its sponsorship of the 2013 N.C.A.A. men's basketball tournament, AT&T and its advertising agency are creating commercials with basketball themes that are inspired by the series of well-received commercials for AT&T that carry...
March 29, 2013, Friday
MORE ON BILL RUSSELL AND: Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem , Bird, Larry , Christopher, David , Johnson, Earvin , Russell, Bill , AT&T Inc , BBDO Worldwide , National Collegiate Athletic Assn , Advertising and Marketing , Basketball (College)
N.B.A. Should Honor Its History and Learn From It
The N.B.A. and its players should commemorate two notable anniversaries: the 50th of the seminal 1961-62 season and the 35th of the rule that created free agency.
December 25, 2011, Sunday
MORE ON BILL RUSSELL AND: National Basketball Players Assn , National Basketball Assn , Basketball , Lockouts , Chamberlain, Wilt , West, Jerry , Havlicek, John , Russell, Bill , Baylor, Elgin , Bradley, Bill , Free Agents (Sports)
Secrets to Coaching Success: Share Your Thoughts
Great players don't always make good coaches--but those with modest achievements sometimes do.
October 12, 2011, Wednesday
MORE ON BILL RUSSELL AND: Baseball , Bowman, Scotty , Wilkens, Lenny , Bird, Larry , Alston, Walter , National Hockey League , National Football League , Gretzky, Wayne , Cincinnati Reds , News , Klinsmann, Jurgen , Baltimore Orioles , Robinson, Brooks , Soccer , Russell, Bill , Walsh, Bill , Hockey, Ice
At the White House, Sports Have an Honored Place
Stan Musial, Bill Russell and a former first baseman from Yale were among those receiving the Medal of Freedom.
February 16, 2011, Wednesday
MORE ON BILL RUSSELL AND: Baseball , Presidential Medal of Freedom , Musial, Stan , Russell, Bill
Rss Feeds On Bill Russell
Subscribe to an RSS feed on this topic. What is RSS?
Get Alerts On Bill Russell
Receive My Alerts e-mails on topics covered on this page.More Alerts >>


text:
Story highlights
- Tokyo tourist arrivals are expected to rise with successful 2020 Olympic bid
- Travelers can buy a single card to ride all trains and buses
- Free WiFi is rare
- Whether bright and modern or creaky and old, all public baths cost ¥450
(CNN)After a setback from the natural and nuclear disasters of 2011, tourism has rebounded in Tokyo.
The Japan National Tourism Office reports a 21% increase in visitor arrival numbers between January and August 2013 compared with the same period last year.
The renewed surge of visitors is being partly attributed to Tokyo's successful bid for the 2020 Olympics and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's efforts to bulk up the economy.
Fall is the classic time to visit the city.
The oppressive humidity of summer has cleared, autumn colors bring life to Tokyo's many parks, hearty, seasonal foods are the order of the day and the fresh fashion the country is known for is celebrated on the streets.
From sedate, centuries-old gardens to boisterous robot cabarets, here's the vital knowledge you'll need before hitting Japan's sprawling capital.
1. Tip No. 1: Don't tip
Attentive service is the norm in Japan, part of a cultural dedication to hospitality called omotenashi.
Tipping isn't expected in taxis, at hair salons, for doormen or bartenders.
Not only are gratuities not expected, they won't be accepted. Some restaurant checks will include a service charge.
If you leave money behind, no matter how much or little, don't be surprised if your server chases you down the street to return it.
2. Walk right -- on the left
With 35 million people, greater Tokyo is one of the most densely populated urban centers in the world.
Yet crowds are orderly.
Everyone waits until the light changes to cross the street.
Pedestrians on wide sidewalks follow the unspoken rule of staying to the left almost as strictly as cars (also on the left) do.
Exception: On Tokyo escalators, stand on the left and walk on the right. (Around Osaka, escalator etiquette is reversed.)
3. Drink outside, smoke inside
The more enclosed a space is, the more likely you'll be allowed to smoke there.
The smaller and homier a bar or restaurant, the more likely it is to be smoker-friendly.
Many bullet trains still have smoking cars.
On the other hand, smoking is prohibited on many sidewalks (look for signs stenciled on the sidewalk), except around public ashtrays.
Street patrols stop people who engage in aruki-tabako, or "walking-smoking."
Cracking open a beer or can of fruity, boozy chu-hai on the walk or train home, however, is a cherished tradition.
4. One card is good for all trains and buses
The Tokyo train system is actually a network of three train companies.
Originally, each system required its own tickets.
Now rechargeable Suica and Pasmo cards let riders seamlessly touch their way in and out of all lines.
As of March 2013, paying fares got even easier -- a single card became usable for trains and buses throughout the country. You can get one as soon as you arrive in Tokyo from almost any ticket machine.
The ¥500 deposit (a little over $5) for the card is refundable.
The time you save not calculating ticket costs makes it worthwhile even if you keep the card as a souvenir.
5. There are pockets of quiet everywhere
From temples hidden between office buildings (Hanazono Shrine in Shinjuku is a favorite of these) to the tree-lined canal that runs the length of Nakameguro, you're never far from an oasis of calm in the frantic city.
Winding residential streets lined with walled gardens are often just a block away from busy main roads.
If you take a detour down a little unmarked road (most Japanese streets are unnamed) chances are you'll discover a tiny cafe, quirky neighborhood art project or a jumble of ultramodern condos and rickety ancient architecture.
6. Japanese bathhouses
Public bathhouses, or sento, are a soothing holdover from a time when most homes didn't have bathtubs.
Whether it's a bright, modern place in Omotesando with fizzy water and fancy soap or a creaky neighborhood bath with a coin-operated hairdryer that's been bolted to the floor since the 1960s, all public baths cost ¥450.
The Tokyo Sento Association is redoubling efforts to make them foreigner friendly ahead of the Olympics by posting etiquette and instruction cards in four languages.
7. That word you keep hearing is 'welcome'
After a few days in Tokyo, you might find yourself asking, "What's that thing they always say when I walk in?"
Whether it's sweaty, aproned guys shouting in unison as you walk into an izakaya (lively restaurants that serve alcohol with lots of small dishes) or one perfectly coiffed woman murmuring as you enter the hush of a small boutique, they're saying the same thing: "Irasshaimase."
It's a polite way of saying "welcome."
Although your instinct may be to reply -- "Thank you?" "Hello?" -- locals insist no response is required. A friendly little bow in response doesn't hurt, though.
8. The sushi really is that good
The famous tuna auction at Tsukiji market starts just after 5 a.m., but the day's 120 free tickets are often all snapped up as early as 4.
Whether you get to the auction or not, the market and surrounding shops will be springing to life around that time -- it's the best place to enjoy an early morning plate of the freshest sushi you've ever tasted.
You need not be there that early, but many of the hundreds of shops start to close by 1 p.m.
Visit and you, too, will be one of those insufferable diners who can't eat sushi back home without saying, "It's good, but it's nothing like the maguro I had in Japan."
But hurry -- the legendary market is set to close at the end of 2013. A new facility will open a few kilometers away in 2014.
9. Free WiFi is rare
While the number of places that have free and simple WiFi in Japan is increasing, access isn't something you can count on.
Signs everywhere announce free WiFi -- if you already have a contract with the provider.
Even places like Starbucks that have relatively accessible free WiFi require you to create an account in advance.
Instead of renting a SIM card, many travelers find that renting a pocket WiFi at the airport to use with their own smartphones is the best way to get online.
10. Bacon turns up everywhere
Japan has a long tradition of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine called shojin ryori. It is painstakingly prepared and served on fine lacquerware and ceramics.
It's worth experiencing (Michelin-starred Itosho is outstanding) and guaranteed to be vegetarian, but it's expensive and a time-consuming affair.
For a quick veggie meal, you usually have to be vigilant. A "vegetable sandwich" may have a sneaky slice of ham in it, and pasta with "no meat" could be studded with chunks of bacon. "Meat" tends to mean "beef."
Running down a list of every animal product that you'd like to avoid is the only way to be sure. And your potato salad might still come with bacon.
11. Clear umbrellas are the best umbrellas
Into every vacation a little rain must fall.
If you're in Japan when it does, lucky you -- it's a perfect opportunity to pick up a clear umbrella.
It's such a simple innovation, you wonder why they haven't caught on elsewhere.
Once the first drops of rain hit the street, you'll find them everywhere.
Convenience stores will put their stock by the door. One costs between ¥300 and ¥500.
The clerk will offer to unwrap it for you if you're using it right away. Hold on tightly, but let go lightly; umbrellas are the one item that's frequently stolen in Tokyo.
If yours disappears, consider it a rite of passage.


text:
Lengthy Impasse Looms On Cuts
Budget Standoff Presents Political Risks on Both Sides
Lawmakers in both parties anticipate that a looming set of spending cuts will take effect next week and won't be quickly reversed, likely leading to protracted political uncertainty that presents risks both to Congress and President Barack Obama.
It had been thought that the cuts, some $85 billion through the rest of the fiscal year, could be averted or quickly replaced with a longer-term deficit-reduction plan. Those expectations have now dissipated. No significant negotiations are known to be under way between the two parties, which are at an impasse over Mr. Obama's demand that any plan to replace the cuts include more tax revenue.
The president and congressional Democrats are looking beyond Friday, when the across-the-board cuts, known as sequestration, are due to take effect. Their strategy is to persuade the public that the cuts would harm defense, education and other programs, make air travel difficult and cost jobs, among other effects. They hope public pressure would force Republicans to reverse course and agree to new tax revenue.
Amplifying the president's message, a new nonprofit that grew out of his 2012 campaign, Organizing for Action, is staging events next week in various communities that would be hit by the sequester.
Some Democrats are uneasy with the prospect of a drawn-out impasse. "I know that there is some common wisdom out there that people are going to have to see the effects for a while before they can deal" on a replacement for the budget cuts, said Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.), whose state has large numbers of federal workers and defense companies. "I just don't believe in that kind of governing."
The Democrats' strategy carries risks for the party. It's unclear how the public will react to the budget cuts, and Democrats could find that people aren't as inconvenienced as they predicted. That could undercut their position in negotiations with the GOP and, potentially, build an appetite for additional cuts to spending that Democrats will oppose.
But a protracted fight over the spending cuts also could take a toll on Republicans. Polling shows Mr. Obama has a far higher approval rating than Congress and that people generally favor his position in the dispute. In the battle for public opinion, the White House will argue that Republicans are the reason people may face longer lines at airport and job furloughs. If that impression takes hold, that could cause trouble for Republicans in the 2014 midterm elections.
Republicans believe they can stay united by accusing Mr. Obama of campaigning rather than negotiating and reminding people that they have backed legislation to replace the cuts to defense programs with nondefense cuts. They say they won't bend to Mr. Obama's demand for new tax revenue and that the public supports their goal of reducing the deficit.
"I don't think anyone on our side is squirming," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio). "We feel like we're on very strong ground."
A lengthy dust-up over the spending cuts threatens to derail parts of Mr. Obama's legislative agenda. He is now using campaign-style tactics against Republicans whose support he would need to pass an immigration overhaul, an expansion of early childhood education and stricter gun controls. He is set to travel outside Washington next week to illustrate the hardships resulting from the sequester—time that he would rather devote to his legislative agenda.
"It interrupts his ability to frame up the positive agenda that he proposed to the country in the State of the Union," said John Podesta, who co-chaired the president's transition team after the 2008 election. "You get distracted from all the things that you want to do, because you're back in the scrum" of a daily battle over the budget cuts.
Republicans are also coming to believe that the budget cuts won't quickly be replaced. Asked how long he expected the sequester to stay in effect and the political impasse to persist, Rory Cooper, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) said, "I honestly don't have an answer to the question, because I don't know what the president's goal is."
But, he said, Republicans would sooner leave the spending cuts in place indefinitely than give ground on taxes. "There's not going to be a moment when we break and give him a second tax increase," Mr. Cooper said, referring to the increase in tax rates on high earners that the GOP agreed to in January. "There will be no compromise on tax hikes."
Senate Democrats' bill, which Mr. Obama supports, would require taxpayers with more than $1 million adjusted gross income to pay an effective tax rate of at least 30%. It also would raise smaller amounts of revenue by denying tax deductions to companies for costs associated with outsourcing jobs and by eliminating a tax break for oil companies that drill in tar sands.
Some Republicans are turning their attention to blunting the impact of the spending cuts, rather than averting them. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) is writing legislation to give federal agency heads flexibility to administer the cuts, which are supposed to apply across the board to defense and domestic programs.
Republicans in the House are considering legislation to give the Defense Department more leeway in implementing the cuts. That measure would be part of a bill to deal with a separate fiscal deadline—the fact that funding for much of the government expires on March 27.
That deadline, when funding expires for a number of federal agencies, could prove to be the next flash point, as well as an opportunity to replace the across-the-board cuts. The White House and congressional Republicans could try to revisit the cuts then as part of a broader package to prevent a partial government shutdown, but aides said it remained unclear whether such a deal could be reached.
The fight over spending cuts is the latest in a series of budgetary battles that began in the summer of 2011, when congressional Republicans insisted on deep spending cuts as a condition of raising the nation's borrowing limit. The White House devised the idea of the sequester as part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling, and both Republicans and Democrats voted for the bill that included it.
The automatic cuts were seen as so draconian that Congress would enact a more targeted deficit-reduction deal to make comparable savings. But no such deal has been reached.
In the current dustup, Mr. Obama is showing little appetite for negotiating with leaders on Capitol Hill. Thursday, Mr. Obama spoke by phone with Mr. Boehner and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, his first time speaking to either GOP leader in weeks. People familiar with the call said it did little to bring the two sides closer to agreement.
The president, in comments at the White House on Friday, cited his plan to make his case to the public.
"Hope springs eternal," he said. "And I will just keep on making my case not only to Congress, but more importantly the American people to take a smart approach to deficit reduction and do it in a way that doesn't endanger our economy and endanger jobs."
—Janet Hook contributed to this article.
Write to Peter Nicholas at firstname.lastname@example.com and Damian Paletta at firstname.lastname@example.com


text:
I was "playing" on Project Euler and passed across the Collatz Problem, and it mentioned it was still unproven.
I immediately noticed two things:
- After the $3n+1$ the result is always even, leading to $\frac{n}{2}$
- $\frac{n}{2}$ is an trivial action, especially in a binary representation.
The first optimization that can be done is combining the $3n+1$ step with $\frac{n}{2}$.
$\frac{3n+1}{2} = 1.5n+0.5 = n+((0.5n)-0.5)+1$
Looking at the binary representation, $0.5n$ is simply $n$ bitshifted 1 position to the right.
We now focus on $n$ being an odd positive integer (as even numbers are always $2*x$ of an odd number).
Obtaining $((0.5n)-0.5)$ is easily done with the binary representation of $n$, by bitshifting $n$ to the right, and dropping the least significant bit. (Remember, $n$ is odd.)
We know full adders have a well known and well defined behaviour:
$S = A \oplus B \oplus C_{i}$
$C_{o} = majority(A, B, C_{i})$
Doing $n+((0.5n)-0.5)+1$ is implemented using a full adder where the input $B_{i}$ has been connected to $A_{i+1}$
Sorry for the confusion, but the $n$ on the in-/outputs is unrelated to the number $n$; it needs to be $i$. I will fix this in the image.
By definition, an odd binary number has always $1$ as the least significant bit, and obviously, a $1$ as the most significant bit. The $A_{i+1}$ input from the adder handling the most significant bit falls outside the $n$, and as a result, $0$.
$A_{i_{max}} = 1$
$A_{i_{max+1}} = 0$
After a complete run has been done, $\frac{n}{2}$ gets done if applicable, and the new $n$ gets fed to the calculator again.
Note that each time the length of the number grows on the most significant bit side, a "foreign" $0$ gets output to $S_{i_{max}}$.
$S_{i_{max}} = (1 \oplus 0 \oplus C_{i_{max-1}}) \neq C_{i_{max-1}}$
$C_{i_{max}} = majority(1, 0, C_{i_{max-1}}) = C_{i_{max-1}}$
$S_{i_{max}} \neq C_{i_{max}}$
(This also implies that $n$ never reaches a value in the form of ${2^x}-1$ after the initial value until it reaches $1$ because of the $0$ passed to the $B$ input for the most significant bit. As the only way not to output a $0$ for $S_{_{[msb]}}$ is to not receive a carry trough $C_{i_{[msb]}}$, which means there is at least an earlier bit with $0$ as value.)
But more importantly, when the first $0$ appears in $A_{1}$ will result in an $0$ to $S_{0}$ making the number even, and shrinking the number itself (by applying $\frac{n}{2}$).
$S_{0} = (1 \oplus 0 \oplus 1) = 0$
$C_{0} = majority(1, 0, 1) = 1$
Now, if it keeps finding an alternating bits of $1$'s and $0$'s, it keeps outputting $0$'s, and keeps the carry on. (This allows you to do $\frac{n}{2}$ several times in a row.)
Only if both $A_{i}$ and $A_{i+1}$ are $1$ again, it will start outputting $1$ on $S$.
If however, it encounters a $O$'s on both $A_{i}$ and $A_{i+1}$, the carry $C_{i}$ will will be output to $S_{i}$, and outputs $A_{i}$ to $S_{i}$ until it encounters a $1$'s on both $A_{i}$ and $A_{i+1}$
$S = (0 \oplus 0 \oplus C_{i-1}) = C_{i-1}$
$C_{i} = majority(0, 0, C_{i-1}) = 0$
$S = (1 \oplus 1 \oplus C_{i-1}) = C_{i-1}$
$C_{i} = majority(1, 1, C_{i-1}) = 1$
How does this translate to a proof of Collatz conjecture?
Note that I'm a mere programmer with a hobby interest in math problems, so excuse me for the low quality. However, I still think this is able to prove that Collatz conjecture is valid, as the growth of the number has hard limits (how many carries can reach the end), while the shrink has no hard limit (shrinks until a 1 occurs) and the switching is fair and one-way (full adder).
Note: my personal truth table for the MSB and LSB
MSB Ci MSB 010-0--- -> 011--- 010-1--- -> 100--- 011-0--- -> 100--- 011-1--- -> 101--- B LSB Co LSB ---0-01 -> ---0-10 (additional $\frac{n}{2}$ once) ---0-11 -> ---1-01 ---1-01 -> ---1-00 (additional $\frac{n}{2}$ multiple times) ---1-11 -> ---1-11


text:
Main Content
The Vanbig T-shirt from Ambig has a screen-printed brand name across the chest above "Off the Hook" lettering. The print makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to another popular skate brand you might be fond of. Anyone who sees you in this super soft tee will appreciate the mention and recognize that you're on top of your game when it comes to style.
- Tagless collar
- 100% Cotton fabric
- Imported
- Screen print graphics
- Short sleeve
- Imported
- Brand: Ambig
Ambig Customers also liked:
Special event items are produced by manufacturers only after the outcome of a game or event. These are advanced sale items and will ship immediately after they are received in our warehouse.
Manufacturer direct items are shipped directly from the manufacturer. These items are not available for international or expedited shipping.
Customized items can be personalized with options such as your name, your favorite number, and/or designs. Some options may be limited by league rules.


text:
Hot on the heels of our success at the Off License News Drinks Retailing Awards, the World Whiskies Awards 2013 were presented last week at the Waldorf Hotel in London, and, erm, we cleaned up again*.
I'm not going to re-hash the recent blog post I wrote about our success at the OLN awards, but suffice it to say, there's a reasonable-length post here about the innovations and initiatives we've launched in the past 12 months. It's well worth a read if you've not already.
Tags: World Whisky Awards, world whisky, master of malt
Categories :
Read the full story (1 Comments )
Well - last week was quite a week. Further to staying up unfeasibly late on Tuesday drinking Hot chocolate and Lemonade into the wee hours with the lovely folk at Glenfarclas and Pol Roger, I was invited to judge the World Whiskies Awards on the Wednesday evening (an amazing showing all round, the results of which can be found here). .
Following that, I was up bright and early (ish) to present at the World Whiskies Conference on Thursday afternoon (I didn't say any rude words during the course of my speech. I am proud of this).
After the world whiskies conference was the World Whiskies Awards, whereupon myself and another couple of directors were left at a table, unsupervised by any kind of grown-ups, in the presence of a bottle of Kavalan Solist, and a Batch 30 bottle of Aberlour a'Bunadh. More...
Tags: thanks, Winners, master of malt, whisky, drinks by the dram, world whisky awards, icons of whisky
Categories : Drinks by the Dram | News
Read the full story (8 Comments )
Japanese distillers made a fine showing last night at Whisky Magazine's 6th annual World Whisky Awards.
Yamazaki scooped the coveted Best Single Malt Whisky award for its 25 Year Old expression, while Nikka won the Best Blended Whisky category with its Taketsuru 17 Year Old.
This marks the second year in a row Yamazaki's has triumphed, with their sublime 1984 vintage taking home the best single malt prize in 2011.More...
Tags: World Whisky Awards, winners, whisky, bourbon, Japan, Yamazaki
Read the full story (0 Comments )


text:
Narrow your search
With built-in Wi-Fi and reliably high image quality, there's much to like about the latest addition to Canon's point-and-shoot IXUS lineup. There was some noise at middling sensitivities, but otherwise the 255 HS performed well in my tests.
Pricing not available
A return to form for the IXUS line, the Canon IXUS 510 HS is one of the best-looking cameras you can buy, and if you do, you won't be disappointed with its output. Vivid colours, fine detail and a good zoom make this camera a great choice.
Pricing not available
A potentially great little camera is let down by a slightly unresponsive touchscreen and colour fringing on some images. It's also rather expensive at £350. That's a shame, as in all other respects the IXUS 1100HS is very impressive, reproducing realistic colours with the absolute minimum of noise.
Typical price: £350.00
A great performance from this diminutive snapper proves that good camera design comes down to much more than merely cramming in as many megapixels as the sensor will allow. Its downsides are few and far between, making the Canon IXUS 230HS our favourite ultra compact on sale today.
Typical price: £230.00
The Canon IXUS 115 HS compact camera outshines many of its rivals in terms of performance, features and usability. It's not exactly a munter either.
Typical price: £145.00
The Canon IXUS 220 HS offers a fair selection of features and pretty good performance, wrapped up in a small, stylish stainless-steel shell. Its price is rather hard to swallow, though.
Typical price: £185.00
The Canon IXUS 310 HS needn't get by on its pretty looks alone, thanks to some powerful technology and impressive performance. The camera's high price may prevent it from attaining a broad appeal, though.
Typical price: £260.00
The Canon IXUS 1000 HS is another competent entry in the long-zooming compact-camera arena. There's little that lifts the 1000 above its ever-swelling pack of rivals, however.
Typical price: £270.00
Hang on -- aren't Canon's IXUS models meant to be super-smart, super-compact fashion cameras? So what's the IXUS 300 HS doing with high-speed shooting tech, an f2.0 lens, and manual shutter-speed and aperture control? Never mind -- just enjoy it. The 300 is a very good camera that marks a significant step forward in overall image quality, high-ISO performance and shooting speeds
Typical price: £300.00
The Canon IXUS 210 looks good and handles well, but its picture quality is weak by any standards, let alone for a camera in this price bracket. It's alright if you don't blow the pictures up too much or zoom in too far, but you'd have to be pretty forgiving to put up with that
Typical price: £250.00


text:
cathedral cables
I'm in Italy looking for new yarns. They can make cables from anything here:
Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (The Duomo)
Back to my book list:
5 & 6, The Mary Thomas books are real gems. Want to know how to knit a circle? Mary Thomas tells you at least 3 different ways. Want to know how to incorporate welts or pleats or or other dress making details into your designs? Mary Thomas is your woman. Written in the 1940's, the techniques described span from those popular in Victorian times to post WWII, but all of it is useful for modern knitting. Her attitude is very funny and relaxed too. I would have liked to have met her.
Astrid and Ruffle owe a debt to MT:
Kristine Konrad #
I'm normally a very quiet reader of my blogs (3 kids will do that), but I had to let you know I'm really enjoying your comments on your favorite knitting books, mainly because I have most of them myself and seeing them through someone else's eyes makes for great reading. I'm also going to have to dig out my MT books because I've forgotten how useful they are, so thanks!
Kris in SF Bay AreaJanuary 30, 2008
are you in Florence? on vacation or work? I do love Italy, it feels like a second home. (I spent a year learning about myself while studying there in college.)
My mother gave me her old Mary Thomas Knitting Book at Christmas, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. At first glance it looked very basic, but I'll take another peek!January 30, 2008
Jackie Chalmers #
NO Way ITALY, I was in Florence in September this year (oops last year, already) and fell in love with Italy. Great knits! I am sooo envious, wish I could have stole away in your luggage lol. Enjoy, and I know you will be inspired.
Jackie : )January 30, 2008
Jackie Chalmers #
P.S. have you checked out Del Vecchio palace, it is wonderful.January 30, 2008
Well, welcome to Italy. ^___^January 30, 2008
Gorgeous, I adore architecture.
I'm passing on a "You Make My Day" award to you—— because you always do make my day with inspiration and creativity!!! Check the blog today at http://www.knittingcontessa.blogspot.com for the details!
Hugs!!!!!!January 30, 2008
marcy #
Enjoy Italy…it's been 14 years since i was there and I'd love to go back!! I can't wait to read the MT books. they are one their way to me by the weekend!!January 31, 2008
Mary Russell #
Happy Birthday!February 1, 2008


text:
Don't see your question? Visit our help section.
Get access to great in-store deals and local pick-up
Sign up for our email deals newsletter!
Revealing a brand new storyline for the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil®: Revelations sees the return to survival horror, offering a tense and intriguing gameplay experience. Built from the ground up to take advantage of the Nintendo 3DS features, Resident Evil®: Revelations delivers outstanding visuals that bring the fear to life.
If you are a fan of the Resident Evil series, check out the latest game in the series, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Special Edition. Available for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
If you are a fan of the Resident Evil franchise, check out all the latest Resident Evil 6 games and accessories available for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.


text: Halloween is around the corner and this tut fits it like a glove. You want scary? Try out drawing this realistic human skull. You want to learn more art? Check out the technique in "How to Draw a Realistic Skull." I'm hoping you will enjoy this addition to DragoArt. You can show your support by faving, commenting, and clicking on "Love It"!


text:
5 Things Hollywood Thinks Computers Can Do
#4. Hacking Will Let You Steal Any Damned Thing You Want
Worst Offender: Swordfish
What Happened:
The presumed abilities of computers are fairly well detailed in the actual tagline of this movie: "Log on. Hack in. Go anywhere. Steal everything." And, that' no exaggeration. If you watch the movie, you'll realize that's exactly what the filmmakers believe. John Travolta' villain in Swordfish is Gabriel Shear (wait, wasn't the Die Hard bad guy named Gabriel, too?) and his scheme was to steal $9.5 billion from the U.S. government. With hacking.
Above: Hacking
Why It's Ridiculous:
The entire premise of the plot is that in the vast, computerized world of modern finance, $9.5 billion could slip through the cracks so that a clever hacker could, with hacking, transfer it to his own account unnoticed. This sounds plausible to some, because almost all the money exists only in computers (not even 10% percent of our money exists as printed currency) and it seems like that would make it easier to steal.
We assure you, wherever there is $9.5 billion, there are several people who will fucking notice if it's gone. In a world full of brilliant, real-life hackers, the reason the money doesn't continually vanish from your checking account is because there are equally brilliant people working on the other side.In Real Life�
Shear's entire plan was to steal the money so he could use it to run an underground anti-terror organization. We're pretty sure all that takes is writing a letter to your congressman and saying, "I would like $9.5 billion to run an underground anti-terror organization." The check should arrive within four to six weeks.


text:
Picture yourself standing on a ball that is expanding at such a rate that it makes you stick to the ball. Everything in the universe is expanding at this same rate. To escape the earths gravitational pull we would need to jet upward faster than the expansion of the earth. Each object expands at a different rate on its surface according to its size. Thus different gravity affects for different size planets.
When in space we are subject to being affected by the most distant body if we stand in its way.
I just can not explain the reaction of our tides with our moon.
Have any scientists seriously considered an idea like this?
Follow up July 23
I am no scientist, but I think someone with more knowledge might explore this idea a little further.
At the very lease the idea that every thing in the total universe is expanding, including all parts of the atom can be used as a simple way to see formulas and the same results to the effects of gravity of anything on the surface of a sphere planet or a donut shaped planet.
The area of mass will grow but the density will remain the same.
The idea can be cross referenced by light shifting etc, to see if it falls in line with the known action of planet gravity and the known expansion affect of the whole universe.
Maybe the gravity affect of a planet on its surface dweller is a completely different force than is the force that maintains the orbits of planets. keplers law I believe.
What happens when we have an eclipse of the moon?, does the earths orbit around the sun change for time of this eclipse?
My summary is that if all scientists can not explain gravity totally, then maybe the common thought for all these years is not completely a correct one.


text:
Nerf Vortex Lumitron: (Glow in the Dark Clip/Discs) Toys & Games for $19.99
Free Shipping with Amazon Prime or orders over $25.00
Great Xmas Gift! This version shoots the discs (and the glow-in-the-dark clip/discs fits ANY Nerf Vortex Line gun).
The gun itself does not perform the glow in the dark function
Also for $19.99 is the Nerf N-Strike Rayven (This version shoots the Nerf darts instead of the discs)
3 Comments add a comment
I ordered one. Now, how do I convince my wife that this was really for the kids, but then still get away with being stingy and playing with it myself.
I have waaaaay too many nerf blasters, this one will be a fine addition.
Why is this RIP? As of right now, it is still $19.99.


text:
Former Giants punter Dave Jennings dies at 61
Not a subscriber? You can purchase a single-day subscription for only $0.75 to read this and access all of our content and our E-Edition. CLICK HERE purchase a single day subscription.
Become an electronic subscriber to the Republican-American for only $8 a month. CLICK HERE.


text:
Website User Agreement
Copyright ©2009 Beaufort County Library
A Department of Beaufort County Government
Thirty years in the making, fans of the Earth's Children series, no longer have to wait for the highly anticipated final installment of the popular historical fiction series. The sixth and proposed final book, The Land of Painted Caves came out in late March. Auel again brings her extensive research and lively descriptions of prehistoric life to The Land of Painted Caves. While the book falls a little short in the strength of it characters and moves slow at times, it is definitely worth the read.
If you are not familiar with the series, beginning in 1980, author, Jean Auel began wowing readers with her first installment, The Clan of Cave Bear. The series follows the life of Ayla, a young Cro- Magnon girl that was found and raised by a Neanderthal family after the tragic loss of her family. As the series develops, Ayla grows into womanhood and faces new challenges in the world in which she lives.
The Land of Painted Caves, again follows the lives of Ayla, her lover and her daughter as they journey through their region and meet new challenges. The book reads in three parts. The first parts follow Ayla as she journeys through the caves of Zelandonni. This gives readers great descriptions of the environment in which they lived and the challenges they encounter. Auel provides great detail in her description of Ayla's pilgrimage to the most sacred caves in the land.
Auel also illustrates Ayla's relationship with her lover and her daughter. Several years pass and this provides great detail of family and tribal life in prehistoric times.
In the end of book 5, The Shelters of Stone, readers learn that Ayla is chosen to work with a spiritual leader and become a "acolyte", which is a great honor. In this book, readers follow Ayla's training to become spiritual healer, including her completion and the discoveries she makes on the way.
All in all, this book should be read for its great depictions of the prehistoric environment and the detail of the lives in which they lived. It reads a lot like The Shelters of Stone. The descriptions of the sacred caves and Ayla's transformation from young girl to hunter, spiritual healer, lover and mother make this a must read to finish the series.
Fans that have waited with great expectations and high anticipation since the last book in 2002, may be slightly disappointed. Auel leaves the story hanging in some regards and many may be left wanting more of Ayla's story. For now and 30 years in the making, this is the final book and final chapter of Ayla's heroic prehistoric life.


text:
WEIRTON - Kayla Cline and Eric Violet were united in marriage Aug. 14 at Cove Presbyterian Church in Weirton with the Rev. Ed Rudiger officiating.
Parents of the bride are Linda Cline of Colliers and the late Douglas Cline.
She is also the granddaughter of Eleanor Cline of Weirton.
Article Photos
Parents of the groom are Ed and Brenda Violet of Bellaire.
The bride wore a strapless A-line gown with horizontal satin band detail and beaded lace applique.
The bridesmaids were Staci and Molly Cline, sisters of the bride; Ruby Bonovich, cousin of the bride; and Katie Bayness, Jenna Hoperich, Tasha Sauvageot, and Brittany Kocher, friends of the bride; and Kayley Violet, niece of the groom. Flower girls were Kymberlyn and Karmendy Violet, nieces of the groom.
The groomsmen were Keith Violet, brother of the groom; Seth West, cousin of the groom; and Clayton Cwalinski, Ryan Dodds, Richard Kendle, Scott Breiding and Christ Ofat, friends of the groom.
The ring bearer was Benjamin Minor.
A reception was held at St. Florian Hall in Wintersville.
The bride is a 2004 graduate of Brooke High School and a 2008 graduate of Bethany College. She will graduate with a master's degree in special education from West Liberty University in December.
She is employed by Hancock County Schools and teaches special education at Weir Middle School.
The groom is a 2000 graduate of Bellaire High School and a 2006 graduate of Ohio University with a bachelor's degree in business.
He is employed as a human resource generalist at Warren Distribution in Glendale, WV.
The couple took a wedding trip to Pine Lakes Lodge in Cambridge. They reside in Yorkville.


text:
"This transaction is a game-changing opportunity for Molson Coors and advances our ambition to be the first choice for consumers and customers. MillerCoors is a business we know very well – its strategy, culture, brands and people – and we look forward to meeting and exceeding the needs of our valued distributor partners and consumers across the U.S."
- Mark Hunter, President & CEO
At Molson Coors, we have our sights set on becoming the first choice for consumers and customers. We hire the best talent and then provide an environment of career development, growth and success.
For more than 350 years we've been brewing, innovating and delighting the world's beer drinkers. Beer is our passion, heritage and future.
We are always looking for ways to challenge the expected and bring something new and exciting. Our innovations are inspired by the insights we gain from our customers and consumers.
We believe ethics, integrity, respect and accountability have to be a part of everything we do, everywhere we are, or it's not worth doing.


text:
Text Size:
Timeline of the World Trade Center
POSTED: 10:43 AM Feb 26 2013 UPDATED: 1:00 AM Sep 10 2014
This year, the U.S. marks the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. See the history of the World Trade Center's rise, fall and rebirth.
The views expressed are not those of this site, this station or its affiliated companies. By posting your comments you agree to accept our terms of use.


text:
I play waterpolo and while it is not often that I am blatantly choked out it has happened enough that I was wondering if you guys had any ideas for escaping a rear naked choke while underwater. The issue is that the water slows down any strikes, like elbows, so that they are ineffective and any sort of rolling or flipping motion is useless.
I used to play water polo in high school, and some of the lifeguarding maneuvers (such as taking the person under the water with you) can lessen these things.
The other thing that worked well for me (especially once I established a reputation for it) is if they are willing to choke you, then they should be willing to suffer the consequences. I would grab fingers and bend them back, pull arm/leg hairs, grab and pinch the skin at the triceps area, and for one particularly determined guy, I grabbed and yanked on his scrotum.
I was nearly choked out in one game, and it convinced me that if they grabbed me like that, they were going to pay a price for it. After a couple incidents, the word got out and I got much less overt grabbing. I still had the normal waterpolo contact, but nothing more than that.


text:
In usual $(t, n)$ secret sharing schemes, a secret $S$ is split into $n$ parts so that any $t$ out of $n$ parts reconstruct the original secret. So, suppose that there is a group of $n$ participants each one has a secret $x_i$ ($x_i$ may be its private key). My question is, is it possible to create a secret $S$ using the prexisting secrets $x_i$ ($i=1...n$) so that with any $t$ out of $n$ from these secrets ($x_i$) we can find the secret $S$?
I'd like to suggest a potentially interesting reformulation (or variant) of the problem as a form of secure multi-party computation:
As Thomas Pornin's answer shows, such a protocol does exist when $k = n$: each participant simply selects $s_i$ independently and uniformly from $\mathbb Z / m \mathbb Z$, with $S \equiv s_1 + \dotsb + s_n \mod m$. Thomas's answer also shows that, for $1 < k < n$, at least some communication between the participants must be necessary to establish the shares.
There's actually a very simple way to do this. Each participant $i$ chooses a random element $x_i$ of a finite field $\mathbf F_m$, generates $n$ subshares $y_{i,1}$ to $y_{i,n}$ of it using Shamir's scheme of order $k$, and sends each subshare $y_{i,j}$ to participant $j$. Each participant $j$ then adds the subshares they receive together to obtain their share $s_j = y_{1,j} + \dotsb + y_{n,j}$. By the linearity of Shamir's secret sharing, interpolating any $k$ of the shares $s_j$ then yields the secret $S = x_1 + \dotsb + x_n$.
(Edited to incorporate PulpSpy's space-saving suggestion; see comments.)
On a general basis, no. If $t \lt n$, then the first $t$ values $x_1$ to $x_t$ are sufficient to rebuild the secret $S$, regardless of the values of $x_{t+1}$ to $x_n$. Therefore, those last values have no influence whatsoever on $S$. On the other hand, values $x_{n-t+1}$ to $x_n$ should be sufficient to also rebuild the secret, and since the last $t$ of them have no influence whatsoever, you can rebuild the secret with $x_{n-t+1}$ to $x_t$, i.e. less than $t$ values, possible no value at all if $t \leq n/2$. In other words, it cannot possibly work.
(The intuitive way is the following: if the secret values $x_i$ are pre-existing, then they do not have the redundancy on which sharing schemes strive.)
If $t = n$ (all shares $x_i$ are needed to rebuild the secret) then it becomes easy: just XOR all of them together. Possibly, hash all $x_i$ with SHA-256 to get "random looking" 256-bit strings, and XOR these together: this will work better if the $x_i$ do not all have the same size, or have some common structure.
If you can have some extra public storage, then you can use regular Shamir's Secret Sharing, which, for a secret $S$ you can choose, yields shares $v_i$. Then, have each participant symmetrically encrypt $v_i$, with a key derived from (the SHA-256 of) his $x_i$; the resulting ciphertexts are then stored in the public storage area. That's an extra requirement (a storage area) but not as big a requirement than having each participant store a new confidential value somewhere.
EDIT: $\,$ This only works when t=1, as your previous question makes me believe you are most interested in.
Yes, see Can one generalize the Diffie-Hellman key exchange to three or more parties?.


text:
Buy Tickets
SAN ANTONIO (February 26, 2013) – The San Antonio Rampage and the Little Fighter Foundation will host their next Face-Off Against Kids Cancer event at The Magik Theatre on Wednesday, Feb. 27 at 6 p.m., in conjunction with the Theatre for a Change's theme "Magik is in the Heart, Not the Hair." The Rampage players and their Face-Off Against Kids Cancer buddies will take in a performance of Rapunzel with a reception following the show.
The play will be the fourth Face-Off Against Kids Cancer event of the season. The Rampage players met their Face-Off Against Kids Cancer buddies for the first time during a pizza and board game party at the Children's Hospital of San Antonio in November and invited their buddies out to a Rampage game on Dec. 16. On Jan. 23, the Rampage invited their buddies to Funtastic Playland for an evening exploring the 13,000 square foot indoor playground.
Face-Off Against Kids Cancer is a program that pairs Rampage hockey players with children from the Centers for Oncology and Blood Disorders at the Children's Hospital of San Antonio in either early stages of treatment for pediatric cancer or in remission. Through a series of social events through the season, the Rampage players forge lasting relationships with their respective buddies and look to increase awareness about childhood cancer in the community.
About the Rampage
The Rampage are one of four professional sports franchises owned and operated by Spurs Sports & Entertainment – the San Antonio Spurs (NBA), the Silver Stars (WNBA) and the Austin Toros (NBA D-League) – and plays its home games at the SS&E operated AT&T Center. In operation since 1936, the AHL continues to serve as the top development league for all 30 National Hockey League teams with more than 87 percent of today's NHL players being AHL graduates.
About The Little Fighter Foundation
Little Fighter Foundation is a non-profit organization whose mission is to create public awareness of childhood cancer and advocate finding a cure, as well as providing emotional and financial support to families with children affected by cancer.
About Theatre for Change
Theatre For Change is a coalition of South Texas dramatic media artists who are committed to linking the stories inherent within theatre, film, and new media to the needs and messages of non-profit organizations. We aim to weld the weakest links in our community by producing, reviewing, and creating works of theatre, film, and new media that encourage awareness, compassion, and a call to action.


text:
In this undated photo provided by the U.S. Marshals Service, Waad Ramadan Alwan, 30, an Iraqi living as a refugee in Bowling Green, Ky., is shown. Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, another Iraqi refugee, tried to send sniper rifles, Stinger missiles and money to al-Qaida operatives in their home country, and both boasted of using improvised explosives against American troops there before moving to the U.S., according to court documents unsealed Tuesday, May 31, 2011. The men were arrested after an investigation that began months after they arrived in the U.S. in 2009. Neither is charged with plotting attacks within the United States, and authorities said their weapons and money didn't make it to Iraq because of a tightly controlled undercover investigation. (AP Photo/U.S. Marshals Service via The Courier-Journal)
It's a year and half long journey that is nearing the end.
Federal investigators arrested Waad Alwan and Mohanad Hammadi on terrorism-related charges that included sending money, explosives, and stinger missiles to al-Qaida in May of 2011.
Both had already pleaded guilty to their charges, but Hammadi got life in prison, while Alwan got 40 years instead of life.
"That would've been the sentence the united states would've advocated for, but for his quick and useful cooperation to the government," said U.S. Attorney David Hale.
Alwan's case was relatively smooth, but Hammadi's was longer and involved more questioning.
The defense used lengthy questioning to try to highlight Hammadi's troubled childhood and his need for money here in the U.S. as his reasons for helping Alwan.
The united states argued otherwise citing evidence showing Hammadi's terrorist like actions and intentions.
Hammadi's attorney pleaded for a lesser sentence, but U.S. District Judge Thomas Russell ruled otherwise.
"The court just considered all the facts, and gave a sentence that the judge thought was appropriate. He's always very respectful, and very conscientious. You have to respect his judgment. It's just a harsh sentence for a 24-year-old," said Hammadi's attorney James Earhart.
This was a federal investigation in Bowling Green that lasted several months, and Bowling Green police actually assisted in the investigation.
"In this case we provided some intelligence information as well as some logistical information. The day of arrest, we were a base of operation for the FBI," said Bowling Green Police Chief Doug Hawkins.
The United States, with the help of a confidential informant, gathered lots of information showing ties to terrorism that helped the Judge Russell make his decision for both of them.
Alwan's attorney had no comment on the sentencing, but as part of his plea agreement he cannot appeal his 40-year sentence.
However, Hammadi can and his attorney, James Earhart says he likely will appeal the Judge's sentencing.


text:
Thursday, August 14, 2008
One year of CONCEPTSHIPS!
Pretty amazing... The concept ships blog has been up for a year already. This place has changed a lot since its inception and I've learned a ton about blogging since the launch. I hope no one finds this to be pretentious or ill conceived but... Given the anniversary of concept ships and the traffic that this blog has been getting as of late, I thought I would properly introduce myself and show some work... Not too much love shown on the other art forums (except for CG Channel and CorelDRAW [THANKS!]) so I have to front page myself:} HA.....Ha. Not that I think my works are up to par with a lot of the art that has been displayed here over the year but it is different enough to show ... I hope. Okay so... My name is Igor, I just turned 37 on July 20th... (Which is probably too old to run a spaceship art blog;) and these are the oldest pieces of art I own. I did these around 1987 or so, very much inspired by the Robotech series and Eastman & Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles books.
Omega 4 straight ahead? Wow... That is about as corny as the cargo pants I'm wearing in my animated header. I had no idea who I was at this point in time, I just knew I was better at drawing technical objects rather than life drawing and the like. I drew the pic below sometime in 1989. I found the wide spectrum of Berol Prisma colors yielded results similar to those in the treatment of vinyl cels found in Japanese animation. I had no clue about subtlety and layering of the colors and used them very crudely in an opaque manner.
Could that planet look any flatter? And what's up with the perspective on the windshield piece. Woah. Broke as no joke, I scored a t-shirt airbrush job, figuring that would be good experience for film model miniature work. I also started taking design classes at a local technical school. This "animation" was done around 1992, obviously influenced by Japanese anime and Manga. I actually bought a registration board with cels and vinyl from Cartoon color but never did get to shoot it with a camera and it was only a few years ago that the cels were compiled with the airbrushed background in Photoshop and Flash.
I knew that I would probably never be able to do Chuck Jones style of animating but I very much enjoyed the technical process of animation... Perhaps that is why anime was so interesting to me, lower quality anime held frames for long periods of time with only certain smaller looped elements utilizing motion. This set of ships was done in 1994. It was a turning point in the way I approached technical art as I began to utilize perspective in my drawings. I kept these with me at the t-shirt shop I worked at, hoping I would show them to George Lucas when he walked in to buy a shirt... Wow... What a goon.
From there on I studied a lot of 35mm photography and video... From Hi-8 to digital, shooting, editing and compositing. Also took up drafting which led me to discover digital vector illustration and modeling. Here is some of my most recent stuff. Thanks! Some older vector illustration work from around 2004... I use CorelDRAW.
The image above is a CorelDRAW vector illustration that was rasterized and lit up in Lightwave. Below was a test to see if I could export the vector data in EPS format and retain the information along with precise pivot points in Lightwave. Here is the test.
This is my most recent concept ship vector illustration. Around 2,500 shapes/layers.
Some Photoshop sketches... Still working on my raster techniques.
Here is some of my most recent work.
These loops were done for CG Society's EON challenge. You can see my entry HERE! I am most fascinated by animated Flash loops at the moment, like the ones pictured above. I think of new uses for these types of applications all of the time. The fact that they play real time at 24 or even 30 frames per second at high resolutions like 720 & 1080p is very interesting. Adding sound, linking and random math scripts make Flash a very important and powerful program. Below are some attempts at modeling. I am still needing to learn how to do proper spline modeling... It is eluding me atm.
Igor Tkac shameless promotion :}conceptships weekly header #24 August 15th - August 22nd, 2008
Thanks for reading my post and for supporting the conceptships blog... All of the views and positive responses make it worth operating. Back to the pros on Monday... Later!
Keywords: igor tkac igorstshirts.com igor's t-shirts digital motion graphic vector raster illustration concept ships spaceships art portfolio denver colorado hollarado science fiction sci-fi concept art multimedia blog
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Google+ Pilots
Popular Posts
Scott has been crazy busy on his book BLAST which will drop around March of 2012. It will feature art from Scott as well as Danny Gardner ...
Incredibly detailed illustrations from the French illustrator Manchu. Philippe has a new book from Delcourt/SerieB editions titled "M...
Sadly, We lost a big legend in the Sci-Fi concept art world yesterday. Mr. Ralph McQuarrie has passed away at the age of 82. I've alway...
Check out museum of the improbable. There is a Cinema 4D gallery RIGHT HERE! Keywords: 3D three dimensional concept spaceship modele...
Temporary post here. Can anyone out there help me with my CSS and HTML? I would like to give a little action to my buttons at the bottom of ...
Some huge compositions by Finnian MacManus. 17 years old and busting! Seeing the large images in his portfolio make me realize conceptship...
It is super hard for me to believe that Mobeius is gone. Jean Henri Gaston Giraud passed away at the age of 73 on March 10, 2012. I remembe...
Inspirational and unique Lego ship designs by Jon Hall. Keywords: concept lego spaceships planes by graphic desig...
KaranaK on deviantart. Some more of Alex's ships. Hi definition header. Keywords: digital video game conc...
Our friend KARANAK sent us these renders as high quality .png files with transparent backgrounds. Thanks! Keywords: high definition...
Blog Archive
- ► 2015 (172)
- ► 2014 (167)
- ► 2013 (186)
- ► 2012 (194)
- ► 2011 (136)
- ► 2010 (157)
- ► 2009 (156)
- Concept chimps by Jonny Duddle
- Concept aircraft by Zach Wolfe
- Concept ships by Gonzalo Golpe
- Nghia Lam concept ships
- Concept ships by David Hong
- Theodor Waern on concept ships
- Ben Mauro concept ship
- AH-64 Apache helicopter model from Streamline stud...
- Concept aircraft by John Wallin Liberto
- Concept ships from sparth
- One year of CONCEPTSHIPS!
- Concept spaceship art from Francois L Cannels
- Concept ships by Joel Carlo
- Jorge Gecov concept ships
- Concept ships by Benjamin Carre
- John Wu concept ships
- Concept plane car art from Antonio Lizarazu Balue
- Concept ships still frame from A new Hope
- Concept ships by Andrey Yamkovoy
- A selection of works from Conceptships.org
- Concept ships by Philip Straub
- ▼ August (21)


text:
Hybrid View
7 Jan 2013 4:43 PM #1
Unanswered: Android & PhoneGap DeviceID
I've noticed that Android apps wrapped up using PhoneGap (version 2.2) seem to not maintain their DeviceID between app launches. This problem does not appear to happen on iOS using the same PhoneGap version. I'm wondering if this might be due to some HTML5 localstorage permissions that might be preventing IO from saving the generated DeviceID. Please let me know if anyone else has run into this issue.
7 Jan 2013 9:13 PM #2
I'll have to look into that issue. It is possible that there are differences between the platforms.
What version of the sencha.io SDK are you using? We just released to 0.7.5 earlier today.
7 Jan 2013 9:18 PM #3
I'm using 0.7.5. I never tried with an older version, as I just wrapped it up with PhoneGap today.
7 Jan 2013 9:19 PM #4
Ok great. Thanks for the quick reply. I'll attempt to reproduce.
8 Jan 2013 11:40 AM #5
We are storing the device session ids in cookies and it looks like android phonegap requires some extra configuration to support cookies in the web view:
localstorage should work the same on both android and iOS.
15 Jan 2013 4:18 PM #6
Thanks for the links, I've been reading up more on this issue but unfortunately it has been rather difficult to implement. Would you be able to tell me if all devices (iOS, Android) utilize cookies for saving DeviceID? I thought documentation mentioned localstorage, so would some types of devices use that instead of cookies? If so how come?